On Disturbing Images

I went snowboarding today; first time this season. I'll be whining about it come monday, I'm sure, once all the pain catches up with me.

at one point I noticed the ski patrol taking someone down the hill on a sled pulled by a snowmobile and what I saw made me do a double-take. there was a kid on the sled, covered from head to toe with a tarp (I assume to keep any snow kicked up by the snowmobile off of him) and someone had laid his board right on top of the kid.

at the same time my brain was processing this image, another one flashed through my mind. you know those ornate stone carvings that decorate the lid of a great warrior's tomb? where he's laid out across the lid, dressed in his armor with his sword clasped in both hands across his chest? yeah, that's what I saw.

mildly disturbing, to say the least.

Continue reading "On Disturbing Images"...

On Tips and Tricks

a few random tricks I've learned over the years:

- you can't be sapped by a rogue when you're in any kind of animal form (druid's bear, cat, seal and cheetah forms, shaman's ghost wolf); handy in the opening moments of arena matches or when defending a node in bgs

- if you're a NE or rogue, you can eat and drink while stealthed; click the eat/drink buttons first, then click stealth

- if your group has a shaman in it, fight close to her totems whenever possible. some totem effects trigger on each tic and if you're forced out of range, you won't get their benefits. tremor totem is a prime example of this; if you're on the edge of it's effective radius and you get feared you may end up running out of range before it tics again.

- you can cast non-damaging debuffs on cc'd targets without breaking cc. for example, you can cast curse of shadows, vampiric embrace, etc. on a sheep and it won't break.

- shaman's disease and poison cleansing totems cost less mana than their corresponding single-target spells.

- if a rogue opens up on you with cheap shot (stun) and you have your pvp trinket equipped, it's often best to wait until he follows up with kidney shot before you use eit or you'll just be stunned again right after you break the first stun.

- if a player kills you in pvp, you don't take durability loss. however, if you're being attacked by both a player and a mob and you die it depends on who delivers the killing blow. if the player got you, no loss. if the mob got you, say hello to your new repair bill. for this reason, I usually try to kill whatever mob I'm fighting when someone tries to gank me unless I think I stand a good chance of taking them both.

- charge mechanics (feral charge for druids, charge and intercept for warriors, etc) can often be used to travel over terrain that players normally can't traverse. for example, you can often charge up the side of a hill to a mob that you wouldn't otherwise be able to run up.

- terrain that is an obstacle for you generally isn't an obstacle for mobs. mobs will run right through fences, poles, rock formations, etc. whereas you have to either jump over them or go around. something to keep in mind when you're running away from that 5-pack of mobs you face pulled.

- when you agro mobs in an instance, they will chase you all the way to the entrance. you can't run away from them like you can in the rest of the world (some boss encounters are exceptions, but they're rare). you can, however, run out of the instance completely and they will usually reset after a minute or two. if you feigned death, used invisibility or vanished keep in mind that even though you've dropped agro, the rest of your party may not have. wait until the entire party is out of combat (or dead) before you stop feigning/hiding or you may end up with agro again.

- when someone resurrects you, you will come back to life standing on the spot where the resurrection spell was cast - not where you died, not where the resurrection caster happens to be standing now, but right on the spot where the actual spell was cast. this is especially important to remember when druids use their battle rez as wipe protection. if the druid was standing near a mob when he cast the spell, the recipient is going to rez right on top of that mob and have a less than ideal life-after-death experience.

Continue reading "On Tips and Tricks"...

On PvP and PvE Servers

I started playing WoW with a group of co-workers about a month after the game was released. we all rolled horde on Stormrage, a PvE server. we played together for a couple months and then started to drift apart due to IRL obligations, new games, loss of interest in WoW, etc. I was the only one from the original group that stuck with WoW; ended up moving to another PvE server, falling in with a small, good guild and leveled up my first 60.

fast forward 6 months or so and a series of unrelated events all happened around the same time:

1. a big patch for WoW was on the horizon. I forget which one, but it had so many major changes to each class that it was enough to rekindle interest in WoW in my co-workers.
2. Blizzard was rolling out several new servers to keep up with growth in the player base.
3. the masters of the penny arcade and pvp online web comics decided to bring their long-standing "feud" to WoW by rolling opposing factions on one of the new PvP servers. they chose Dark Iron.

I was a long-time reader of both comics and when they made announcements about their new guilds in their forums, I suggested we all re-roll on Dark Iron (alliance - since we'd all played horde already). I'd never played on a PvP server and we thought it might spice things up a bit; add a new element of challenge to the game. PvP servers held a certain mystique for me. only the hard-core players rolled PvP. not only did you have the environment to contend with, but you also had hostile players to deal with as well. players on PvP servers had to be a cut above the rest, I thought.

I've been playing on Dark Iron for the better part of two years. I know all the major guilds and I've been in a few of the better ones, I have a feel for the markets, I've got 4 70s here, I've raided the old stuff and the new and I've made good friends along the way (most of my old co-workers have long since stopped playing). despite all this, I still question my decision to roll on a PvP server to this very day.

why? I guess I was a bit naive about what PvP servers were really like. I thought that the added element of danger, of having to always be looking over your shoulder, would make the game more interesting; more fun. I thought that there would be more large scale conflicts, like the old SS/TM battles or the raids on Org and SW that used to happen on my PvE servers. I thought that each faction would be more tight-knit, helping each other and watching their backs.

what I found instead were roving bands of lvl 60 (and later, 70) gankers that merrily stomp your lvl 20 ass just because they can (and then teabag your corpse and corpse camp you - because they can), raid/arena-geared 70s setting up shop in lowbie zones, killing anyone and everyone they can (players, quest mobs, npcs, etc.), entire zones where questing on some nights can be nearly impossible due to the on-going gankfest and more ass-hattery, even amongst members of the same faction, than I ever expected.

now, that sounds like a whole lot of QQing and I guess it really is just that. I just don't have the ganker mentality and I think you really need that to enjoy a PvP server. if I see horde my first thought is to just ignore them, not run up and turn them into paste. more often then not, if I come across a hordie getting mauled by mobs I'll save his sorry butt. sure, if you're mining an adamantite vein I might make you fight for it. even if I kill you, though, I'm not going to /rude, /spit and /lol over your corpse and then camp you for the next 20 minutes. I don't even begin to understand what compels people to do that.

I'm all for fights on somewhat even ground, like getting jumped by someone within 2-3 levels of me; take your best shot and good luck. three of us and three of you and a rare spawn between us? bring it on and may the best group win. this is the kind of pvp I was expecting, not having a ?? rogue ambush me when I've got 3 mobs on me, have 1/4 health and no mana. where's the skill in that?

so here I am on a PvP server with what I've realized is a PvE mentality. I've got great friends here and I really don't want to leave them, but when my alt (or even one of my 70s) gets ganked repeatedly it really takes the fun out of the game. I could just suck it up and go about my business. I could say goodbye to my friends and guild and transfer servers. I could even re-roll on a fresh server and retire my Dark Iron characters. none of these are ideal solutions, however. what's the right choice? no clue.

Continue reading "On PvP and PvE Servers"...

On Hunters and Huntards

hunters are a subject that is near and dear to my heart. I've played a few of them over the years and currently raid with my 41/20 BM hunter, Harl. when most people think of hunters, "pew pew" is what first comes to mind ("huntards" is a close second, I'm sure). while dishing out MQSRD (Massive Quantities of Sustained, Ranged DPS, as BRK likes to call it) is indeed our primary role, we bring a lot of other useful stuff to the party: crowd control (traps, pet off-tank, scare beast, kiting), agro control (misdirection, distracting shot, feign death), tactical intel (tracking, stealth detection), squishy protection (pet taunt, intimidation, distracting shot, mail armor), group buffs (ferocious inspiration, trueshot aura, expose weakness) and even potential wipe protection (feign death + jumper cables ftw!). a hunter that knows all this, that really lives and breaths it, can be a huge asset to any party or raid.

as with any class, however, there are good hunters and not so good hunters. the class attracts players of all kinds, from those who want to kick ass and take names in any scenario (e.g., Harl) to those who want to live out their fantasy of being yet another Legolas clone running around putting arrows in anything and everything. I think partly due to the strong mythology associated with the hunter class (bow-wielding elves from gods know how many fantasy stories, rangers from D&D, tolkein, etc.) and also in good part due to the ease with which one can successfully level a hunter (you can easily solo all the way to 70 without learning how to use even half of the abilities of the class), the hunter community as a whole includes an above average number of... less skilled members, shall we say.

there are a few key skills and characteristics that make the good hunters stand out from the rest. BRK covers all this in far more detail than I'm going to go into, so if you want more info on any of the topics listed here, head over to his blog and dig around.

Chain Trapping

chain trapping means keeping a mob constantly frozen and out of the battle until your party is prepared to deal with it. to do this well, you have to be aware of your lay trap cooldown, you have to be aware of when your trap's going to expire, you have to be aware of where your trap is relative to the mob's position, your position and the expected location of the main fight (don't want stray AOE to pop your trap), you have to be able to run your mob into your new trap each time the old one expires and on top of all that, you have to be dishing out MQSRD on the main target. is it rocket science? not really. is it easy? hell, no. if you want to have any hope of running heroics and raid instances, though, you better know how to do it.

Pulling

any class can pull to start a fight, but hunters excel at it. we can misdirect pull, pet pull, single-target pull, silencing shot pull (for those pesky caster mobs) and trap pull (lay a trap in the path of a pat), just off the top of my head. what really makes us shine, though, is that if the pull goes bad we simply feign death and everything resets. no deaths, no wipes, no loud cursing in vent. get up, dust yourself off and try again. no other class offers that. now, granted things can still go wrong. feign death can be resisted, maybe the priest panics and drops heal on you when he sees 8 mobs rushing in to eat your face and thereby draws agro, whatever. and yes, there are some pulls where having someone else do it (shackle pull, sheep pull, etc) makes more sense. those exceptions and Murphy's Law aside, however, pulling is a hunter's job.

Pet Management

a hunter's pet is one of the defining characteristics of the class. it accounts for 10-35% of a hunter's overall DPS, can act as a tank and/or additional dps, can act as a decoy, can rescue other party members when things go bad, can act as a scout, can buff both the hunter and the party (BM hunter pets, anyway) and can even attack when the hunter himself is out of commission (e.g, stunned by a rogue). why, oh why would any hunter ever throw all this away? and yet, it's not uncommon to see hunters running around with no pet at their side, especially in instances.

a hunter without a pet is gimped, no matter what spec he is. there's no excuse for not having your pet out and active. there's also no excuse for not being fully aware of where your pet is and what it's doing at all times. pets in PVE should always, always, always be set to passive. not defensive, definitely not aggressive, always on passive. this makes the hunter completely responsible for everything the pet does. that means telling it who to attack when, remembering to turn off growl when you're working with a tank, managing any special abilities it has (charge, intimidation, fire breath) and keeping it alive (mend pet really is a no-brainer these days). and that doesn't mean you just leave it standing by your side the whole time. your pet is as much a part of you as your ranged weapon is; use it.

Kiting

back before Burning Crusade came out, one of the measures of a good hunter was the ability to kite Drakk. the success of an entire 10-man raid group was dependent on one lonely hunter's ability to drag a raid boss halfway through the instance without losing agro (had to pop him every now and again to keep him interested in the chase), getting close enough to get hit (had to stay 30 yards away or get roasted) or getting lost and winding up in a dead end while the rest of the raid dealt with Drakk's guards. not many hunters did it well and those that did were in high demand (UBRS was the shit, back then).

kiting is one of the harder skills to master as a hunter because unlike a lot of WoW, it requires pretty good reflexes and coordination. you really need to master the jump shot if you want to be an expert kiter. you also have to be aware enough of your surroundings to avoid running into obstacles, other mobs, off cliffs, etc. all while also being aware of where your kited mob is and dumping as much damage into him on the run as you can.

this is easily my weakest skill as a hunter, but do not underestimate just how important it can be. case in point: during a recent Illhoof attempt in kara things went sour and by the time we got Illhoof down the entire raid was dead except for me and an out-of-mana pally healer. Kil'rek spawned just as Illhoof ate dirt and the only thing that stood between success and a wipe was whether I could kite him around the room until we wore him down. it was an ugly (on my part; the pally rocked!), tense, 3 minute ordeal but we finally got him. if I'd just held my ground and tried to shoot him, it would have been a wipe in about 10 seconds. needless to say, I went out and did a good bit of kiting practice after that experience ;)

Agro Management

hunters have some of the best agro management abilities in the game. we can selectively give agro to another party member (misdirection), we can build agro quickly to take it away from others (distracting shot, burst DPS) and we can dump our own agro (disengage, feign death). using these tools a good hunter is a master of the agro table. with great power, however, comes great responsibility. good hunters *do not* pull agro from the tank (this includes their pets, when soloing), they *do not* shed agro onto squishies, they *do* pull agro off squishies and they *do* control lose mobs until a tank can pick them up or cc can be established.

Situational Awareness

this one covers a lot of ground, but it really separates the good from the merely average (or the truly bad *shudder*) hunters. a good hunter is aware of what's going on around her at all times. she knows where the party members are, where the mobs are, which targets are for what (kill, off-tank, cc), when her trap's about the expire and how long she has on her trap cooldown, where she is on the agro table relative to everyone else, where her pet is and who's face he's eating and where that pat that's due back in a couple minutes is (tracking ftw!). in the midst of all this, of course, she's serving up all the MQSRD she's physically able to which means she's also watching her shot cooldowns, her sting timers, her trinket cooldowns, her special ability cooldowns, etc.

since she's a ranged attacker, the hunter is in an ideal position to keep an eye on the entire fight and react to unexpected changes. mob breaks CC early and the tank can't see it? send in the pet with a mend pet already cooking to hold it until the tank gets there. mob eating the healer's face? distracting shot to pull agro off the squishie. mob running away? concussive shot to keep it from getting too far too fast. unexcepted add? smack it and walk it into a trap until the party's ready to deal with it. these are the sorts of actions that make players rethink the Huntard stereotype.

all of the skills mentioned here are what make up a good hunter. there's one characteristic that I didn't mention, however, and it's arguably more important than all the rest. that characteristic is the ability and *drive* to learn how to be a better hunter. all of us hunters start off as noobs, but some of us work hard to grow out of it.

Continue reading "On Hunters and Huntards"...

On Buying a Mount

so, you're coming up on 40, 60 or 70 and you want to buy a mount. for many players, getting their mount is a pretty defining moment in their character's career. for some, it also a major trial. why? because getting a mount ain't cheap. oh sure, the mount itself isn't terribly expensive; 10-200g and it's yours. but buying the riding skill? yeah, that part sucks. are you going to have 90g to train apprentice riding at level 40? 600g for journeyman riding at 60? how about 800g for expert riding or even 5000g(!?) for artisan riding at 70?

now, if you've already got a 70 running around outlands and you're playing an alt, chances are that funding your alt's lvl 40 mount is going to be cake. but what if it's your first character or your getting on towards 70 and eying your flying mount or your just flat out broke. how are you going to scrape all that gold together?

a lot of my guildmates, especially those new to the game, seem to find themselves in this boat. so, I thought I'd put together a rough guide to making gold in WoW.

Professions

one of the best ways to make piles of money fairly easily is to have a gathering profession. mining, skinning and herbalism are great sources of income. the trick, of course, is that you have to actually sell what you gather - that means no crafting profession (or at least putting it on hold until you buy what you're saving up for). sell what you gather in the AH or by advertising in the /trade channel. get a feel for market prices by looking in the AH first and price accordingly. I usually try to sell things in full stacks (20 ore, 20 leather, etc.). some things sell better than others. for example, for herbalism briarthorn sells quite well (it's used to make healing potions) while bruiseweed often doesn't sell worth crap. check your auction house (AH) to see what sells and what doesn't.

if you want to really make the most of gathering, take up two gathering professions. mining/skinning or herbalism/skinning works best as you can skin many of the mobs you kill and pick up herbs/ore as you run around questing. you must be level 5 to train professions. I recommend starting as soon as you can and practice your profession every chance you get - it sucks to get to a new zone with higher level ore/herbs and not have the skill to gather it. don't be that guy...

Vendor Trash

get the biggest bags you can early on (buy them from the AH or directly from players that have tailoring) and pick up everything you can when you're out killing mobs. sell all of it. food you don't need, items of poor quality (gray items) and anything else you don't think other players will want should be sold to a vendor. you might be surprised how much some of this stuff is worth. vendor trash at level 70 is often worth 2-3g each(!). over time, you'll get a feel for what trash is worth hanging onto (gray weapons and armor) and what isn't (fish oil, delicious cave mold, etc.). if you run out of room in your bags, toss out lower value items to make room for higher value items as you come across them until you can get to a vendor and cash out. I'll talk more about this below, but most items of common quality (white items) have some potential for use by players and should be sold in the AH instead of vendored. these are crafting materials ([Spider's Silk]), spell reagents ([Light Feather]) and the like. not all of them are useful, but looking through your local AH should give you an idea of what sells and what doesn't.

Crafting Mats

as you're out and about laying waste to the countryside, you'll come across a lot of common (white) and uncommon (green) items. many of these are used by players with crafting professions to make things. since these items generally can't be bought from vendors, there's a pretty good market for them. examples are ore, stone, leather, herbs, gems, spider silk, certain types of fish, certain potions and so on. some of these items sell really well (some gems you might find in your 20s and 30s will sell for 1g each) and some of them hardly sell at all (peacebloom? meh). as always, check your local AH.

BoEs

throughout your travels you'll be picking up green (and blue, if you're lucky) quality items that are Bind on Equip (BoE). items that are BoE can be sold to other players (as opposed to Bind on Pickup, which means only the character that loots the item can use it). weapons and armor are the most common examples of BoEs and there's a very fluid market for these in every server's AH. an item's value is usually based on it's stats and abilities. understanding the value of an item at a glance is something you're just going to pick up over time. there are all kinds of variables involved (which stats does it have? if it's a weapon, is it slow or fast? is it a twink item?) and I'm not going to get into them here. as a place to start, though, you can either ask around or check the AH for similar items to see what they're selling for. if it looks like you can sell an item in the AH for more than the item's vendor value, toss it in the AH. if there doesn't appear to be a market for that item, either vendor it or have it disenchanted - see below.

Disenchanting

characters with the enchanting profession require materials to do enchants. they get these materials by disenchanting green or better quality items in various essences, shards and dusts. there's nearly always a market for enchanting materials and, unlike nearly all other items out there, there's no auction listing fee for enchanting mats. you literally cannot lose money by listing mats on the AH over and over again if they don't sell the first time. now, I don't recommend enchanting as a profession if you're trying to make money. it's a *huge* money pit to level it up. what I do recommend, however, is to have access to an enchanter that can disenchant (DE) all the crap greens you pick up that you can't sell in the AH. you can go about this in a few ways: 1) take up the enchanting profession yourself (ugh), 2) talk to your guild enchanter about it, 3) ask around in the /trade channel for an enchanter that will DE for you; expect to pay them for their time, or 4) create an alt to be your enchanter. I recommond option 4. create a new character, get them to level 5 (not much more than an hour's work), run them to a major city and have them learn the enchanting profession. your alt can now disenchant items up to level 50. mail all your greens to this alt, melt them down and mail the mats back to your bank alt to put up in the AH (more on bank alts below). to DE items higher than level 50, you'll have to level up enchanting. it's probably not worth it at that point, but at higher levels the vendor value of green or better items is often pretty good. so, just vendor whatever you can't sell in the AH (or look into options 1-3).

Questing

should be obvious, but questing is a great way to rake in the cash. this is especially true for those level 70s trying to put away 5000g for an epic flier. all those quests that you haven't done since you hit 70 are now worth 7-12g each on top of whatever the original quest rewards were because you get gold instead of xp for completing quests once you hit the level cap (i.e., 70). aside from the direct monetary rewards from questing you can make some good money off quest reward items, too. if none of the rewards are useful to you, get into the habit of picking the reward that has the highest vendor value. in general, 2h weapons sell better than 1h weapons, weapons sell better than armor, plate sells better than mail, mail sells better than leather, etc. when comparing similar items. quest rewards are almost always BoP, so you're only choice is to vendor them or disenchant them if you happen to be an enchanter (gods help you).

Cloth

all humanoid mobs (including most undead) have a chance to drop some type of cloth when you kill them. cloth is used for first aid (everyone should have this secondary profession - even healers) and tailoring, primarily. the only source for cloth is mobs, which means there's a good market for it. all the cloth you pick up that you don't use for yourself (you've been leveling up your first aid, right?) should go directly to the AH. as with other crafting mats, try to sell it in stacks of 20 and check the market for current prices before you post. prices can fluctuate pretty wildly, so it's best to check each time you put up new auctions.

Farming

when all else fails, there's always farming. farming is the act of deliberately going out in search of stuff to sell. you can farm mobs or crafting materials. farming mobs usually means killing humanoids and undead. they drop cash, cloth, decent vendor trash and seem to have a slightly higher chance of dropping BoEs. if you're a skinner, beasts are also a good choice to farm for leather. farming crafting materials means running around one or more zones putting your gathering professions to good use. so, running around looking for ore to mine and herbs to pick. this isn't all that viable until you have a fast mount, but it can be a good (if dull) source of income.

once you get close to 70 you have a couple new options for farming - rep items and primals. many outland mobs drop items that can be turned in for rep with the various factions. for example, [Mark of Sargeras], [Unidentified Plant Parts] and [Arcane Tome]. these items tend to sell very well. outlands mobs and resource nodes (herbs, ore veins) also have a chance to drop motes, such as [Mote of Fire]. 10 motes of a given type can be combined into a primal (e.g., [Primal Fire]) and these, in turn, are used in many high level crafting recipes and are always in demand. they sell quite well, ranging from 3-30g each depending on the type (fire and air tend to sell the highest, earth the lowest).

Helpful Addons

there are two addons for WoW that I highly recommend to aid you in your money making efforts. they are Auctioneer and Gatherer. they're both made by the same developer and you can download them individually or as part of a package from the auctioneer website. installation and usage instructions can be found at that site. in brief, auctioneer helps you manage your auctions in the AH and, most importantly, helps you get an idea of what any given item is worth on the current market. gatherer keeps track of all the places where you've found various resource nodes (ore veins, herbs, etc.). this is helpful when you're out farming for resources as you'll know exactly where to go look for nodes instead of wandering aimlessly. both addons are far more complex than what I've just described; check out the website for all the gory details.

Auctions

sell low. if you use auctioneer, it will give you an option to price your auctions 5% lower than the nearest competition. I tend to go even lower than that; 10-15% lower then the currently cheapest listing. it might seem counter-intuitive since you're trying to make money, but look at it this way: if you price your stuff lower than everyone else, you have a much better chance than they do of selling your stuff. if you price it the same as everyone else, you don't stand out and you may not move your auctions as quickly. everytime you have to re-list an auction because it didn't sell, you lose deposit money. making *some* money is better than making *no* money. lastly, always always *always* list a buyout price on your auctions and list them for the longest time possible (24 hours/very long). speaking for myself, I hate to wait for an auction to finish both because I want instant gratification and because I don't want someone else coming along at the last minute and outbidding me. so, I nearly always use the buyout option when I'm shopping. if you don't provide a buyout price, you're missing out on a lot of potential buyers.

Bank Alts

this suggestion isn't going to help you make money so much as it's going to make your life easier. create an alt character that you only use for storing things long term (BoE items you can't use yet, crafting materials you want to save for later, etc.) and for doing all your AH business. park this alt at a mailbox in any of the major cities. I recommend either IF or SW for alliance, Org or TB for horde because in this cities the mailbox is right next door to both the bank and the AH - less running around. anytime you're out and about and you pick up something you want to auction, mail it to your bank alt. at the end of a play session or even every few days, log into your bank alt, grab everything out of the mail and go do business. keep all the proceeds from your successful auctions on your bank alt and think of it like a savings account. dip into when you need to, but try to let it grow. that's your mount fund right there. if you really want to do up a bank alt in style, level it to lvl 5 and train enchanting. that way your bank alt can DE all the greens and blues that just won't sell on the AH. remember that mail is instant between characters that belong to the same account. so, you can transfer items between your bank alt and your main character(s) with no waiting time. if you're a pack rat and want to keep everything that might even potentially be useful, make more than one bank alt! it's cheaper than buying more bag slots...

so... does all this stuff really work? let me put it this way. every character I've ever had that has reached level 40, 60 or 70 has had mount money ready to go by the time they ding'd. I've also funded two epic flying mounts and currently have the cash laying around for a third if I wanted it. that right there is over 15,000g. it works ;)

Continue reading "On Buying a Mount"...

On Knowing It All

WoW is a pretty rich game in terms of things to know. 55 different factions, 121 distinct zones, thousands of quests, tens of thousands of mobs & npcs, over 20,000 items and well over 30,000 different player abilities (spells, racials, trade skills, etc.). add in less tangible things like strategies, theory crafting and out-of-game info (upcoming releases, patch notes, etc.) and you end up with an overwhelming amount of information to keep track of and digest. many players will embrace blissful ignorance in the face of all this, but some of us like to know it all... or at least convince everyone else that we do ;)

over to the right, under the Resources header, I've posted a short list of links to sites that I use to help me make sense of it all. it is by no means a complete list (google is your friend), but these are the sites I use most frequently. here's what each site is good for:

Wowhead: this is *the* site for looking up info on how to do a quest, where to find an item, how a spell works (and opinions on whether it's good or bad), what crafting patterns are available at your level, etc. if you're looking for info related to a quest, npc, mob, item or ability in the game you'll find it here. Wowhead also has some handy tools, such as a talent calculator (I find this one a bit less clunky then the official calculator found on www.worldofwarcraft.com). there are a few other sites out there that provide similar info (Thottbot, Allakhazam), but I prefer Wowhead.

WoW Wiki: just what it sounds like; a wiki for all things WoW. while it does have some quest, item and class info I use wowwiki for two things: faction info and instance guides. they have easily digestible rep grinding guides for most of the factions in the game; very helpful towards the end game. for almost all of the instances, they have a page detailing where to find it, how to get attuned/keyed for entry, what kind of trash mobs to expect, what the bosses are and some basic strategies for defeating them. it makes a handy reference if you've never been to a particular instance before or when no one in your group can remember what abilities the next boss has.

Armory: this is a service provide by Blizzard where you can find info on items (Wowhead does a better job), characters, guilds and arena teams. character info is what I use it for. ever see someone run past you wearing some sexy gear and wonder what it was? ever get stomped by someone from the other faction and want to know what their gear/spec was? Armory has the answers. look up characters by name and server and you can see what gear they have on, what their talents are, professions, reputation, guild and arena team affiliations and more. in addition to looking up someone else, it's also handy to look up your own characters if you need some info about them and can't log into wow... like, when you're at work and writing a blog about WoW... >.> note that although the armory data comes direct from the game servers, it's not always up-to-the-minute fresh. sometimes it might be a day or three behind.

Petopia: for you hunters out there, this is the place to learn about all things pet related. what pets are available, where and how to tame new pets, how to train your pet, what all the pet skills do and so on.

Evertras' Mage Page: back when I was playing my mage I used to cruise the mage forums looking for tips on specs, spells and how to use them with a focus on pvp (I was on a pvp server). Evertras' name popped up again and again. he's got some great info for mages on his site (talent builds, macros, add-on recommendations), but what earns him his place in my list are his series of mage pvp videos. more than your typical ZOMG POM-PYRO CRITZ NUB FOR 1000000!!1! crap, his videos are very well-edited how-to vids that show you how to make the most of your mage in solo and small-group pvp encounters. fun to watch and educational to boot.

Elitist Jerks: this is the place to go if you want to understand the game mechanics at a really deep level. want to know much +hit you need to never miss? want to know if dual-wielding with WF/WF does more dps than dual-wielding with WF/FT? want to know how damage mitigation works? you'll find it all here. it's not always the easiest info to digest and you won't always find concrete answers (some mechanics are still hotly debated), but in general the info here is very high quality. do you need to know all this stuff to play the game? not at all. will knowing even some of this stuff make you a better player? absolutely.

you'll also notice some (woefully few) links to blogs on the right. these are sites I visit frequently and often learn things from, but not necessarily places you can go to look up answers to specific questions. BRK is the outspoken, self-appointed patron saint of Beast Mastery hunters everywhere. he's opinionated, often witty and knows his shit. Harl, my own BM hunter (41/20, baby!), owes an awful lot of his success to various bits of wisdom gleaned from BRK's writings. his blog is also a great place to discover other cool wow blogs, such as Out of Mana. Megan's posts on Out of Mana are usually pvp oriented, with a focus on arena. even though I don't play anywhere remotely near her level pvp-wise I still find the tips, tricks, strategies and observations she writes up to be stuff I can learn from. both blogs are literate, intelligent, not entirely humble... my kind of players, in other words ;)

Continue reading "On Knowing It All"...

On New Beginnings

I know, I know... just what the world needs, right? yet another World of Warcraft blog. so what makes this one special? I haven't the foggiest. blogging's a new idea for me and I'm not quite sure what direction I want to run with it, yet. expect things to ramble for a good while, I think. this probably won't be specific to WoW, either, though that's going to be the focus.

a little about me... software engineer by trade, located on the west coast of the US, thirty something, devilishly handso... er, where was I? oh, right... world of warcraft. you might say I'm rather fond of WoW... and by "fond" I mean I've played a bit... and by "a bit" I mean I've played a lot. I didn't realize just how much until I sat down last night to add up all my characters and /played time for this post. it was... eye opening. here's how the numbers stacked up:

- 22 characters (19 if you skip the bank alts)
- spread across 5 servers (pve and pvp, horde and alliance)
- 4 lvl 70s (2 created post-TBC), 3 60s, 5 in the 40-60 range, the rest in the 20s to 30s
- over 150 *days* of /played time

I started playing in december of 2004, a month after release. my first 60 was an undead frost mage back when [Glowing Brightwood Staff] was one of *the* hot caster weapons (sold for over 1000g) and MC was shiny and new. since then I've played warlocks (one to 70), rogues (one to 60), druids (one to 60), hunters (one to 70), shaman (one to 70), more mages (one to 70), paladins (one to 58) & priests (my current "main" - 34 and counting). I've played undead, orcs, tauren, blood elves, night elves, gnomes, dwarves and humans. some might say I've got an mild case of altoholism... or a short attention span; take your pick.

I'm a casual raider (ZG, AQ20, kara) and casual pvp'er. I've been in every non-raid instance that's out there at least once, though I've vowed to never set foot in a few of them again (*cough* Uldaman *cough*). I've been in big guilds and micro guilds and held roles ranging from noob to class officer.

so, yeah... I've played a bit ;)

why "Elvis Does Wow"? I didn't want to use a character name because I change who my "main" character is all the time. elvis is a IRL nickname. you know how people have coffee names? that's how the elvis thing got started. it just kind of stuck from there...

anyway, welcome to the blog. this is going to be my outlet for all the wow stuff that's been floating around in my head for the last few years; my own experiences, tips and tricks I've learned along the way, random observations and the odd rant or three. who knows, someone might even learn something ;)

Continue reading "On New Beginnings"...