meet Grysh

Grysh is our newest entry into our alt collection. so new, in fact, that she doesn't even show up in the armory, yet (else we'd link her). Grysh is a BE death knight, which we rolled on Elune (pve server where we had our first 60 way back in classic WoW). spoiler alert, we're going to wax poetic about what it's like to start up a death knight. if you don't want to know, stop reading now.

first off, it is an AWESOME experience! blizzard did a really nice job with the death knight starting area.

you start off at level 55 with no talents and 6 abilities. it's a bit of a mystery how the whole rune/runic power system works and we think that's one of the areas where the starting zone failed a bit. a couple quests that helped demonstrate your abilities would have been helpful. anyway, it's a very manageable skill set to open up with.

you start out in green-quality gear (which looks awesome, btw. very similar to Sylvannus' old look before the 3.0.2 patch) and you're standing next to Arthas in a floating necropolis in EPL. yes, *the* Arthas. after chatting with him, you start a series of quests that have you leading the assault to destroy the scarlet crusade. over the course of a very epic quest line, which includes events like using siege weapons and piloting an undead frost dragon to massacre scarlet crusaders from above you gain blue-quality gear and talent points as quest rewards. it took us a few quests before we realized we were gaining talent points as quest rewards; it's a brilliant system.

by the time you finish the starting zone (after an epic battle between the lich king himself and tirion fordring at light's hope chapel) you've hit level 58, are decked out in full blue gear and have all your talent points. after a quick stop at a capital city for your final starting quest, you could walk right into outlands without ever setting foot in the rest of azeroth.

where it really shines, though, is in all the little details that blizzard took care of for you:

• you automatically learn all flight points on both continents


• you automatically have artisan first aid up to heavy runecloth bandages


• you start out with several weapon skills at 270


• you leave the starting zone with about 20g in cash from quest rewards and selling off old gear


• you start with 4 12 slot bags in addition to your backpack


• you leave the starting zone with your mount, which is an epic land mount (even though you're only level 58), which was free


• one of the trinkets you get as a quest reward is comparable to the standard pvp trinket that frees you from all roots and snares

every time we thought to ourselves "oh, we're going to have to go train that" it turned out we already knew what we needed to know. the only thing you have to train yourself are professions.

we can't even do justice to the quests in the starting zone. they're just very well done. what really makes it feel special is that the zone actually changes appearance *just for you* based on the quests you've completed. this is what blizzard is calling phasing. it's kind of like an instance, except that anyone that's met a certain set of requirements will see the same thing you do without having to pass through an instance entrance or anything. in the case of the DK starting zone, it changes over time (buildings are destroyed, NPCs change locations, etc.) and those changes are permanent (i.e., they don't revert after 5 minutes for the next guy in line). it's pretty cool and hard to visualize until you experience it yourself. we'll be very interested to see where this gets applied in northrend.

so, for now we're going to focus on Grysh for a bit and let all the hubbub in northrend die down a bit before we go back. we're running around the noob lands leveling up skinning and herbalism (no cash cows on this server, so Grysh will have to fund herself), but we'll be back in outlands soon enough. we can't wait!

Continue reading "meet Grysh"...

/facepalm

things not to do while instancing:

- do not show up drunk.

- do not proclaim to the group, loudly and repeatedly, how drunk you are. also, see above.

- do not get out-dps'd by a tank who's 3 levels lower than you (yes mr. 65 warrior, we're looking at you).

- do not turn party chat into a cyber session. if you must cyber, confine it to whispers. bonus points for amusing mis-tells. btw, that "hot" female drae priest is most likely played by a guy...

- do not whirlwind next to the sapped/repentanced mob.

- if the tank tells you not to stand in the green shit, do not stand in the green shit.

- if the tank tells you he's going to corner pull, do not stand in the doorway and swing at every mob that passes you.

- if the pull goes bad, take it like a man and DI the healer. do not bubble and run like the sissy we all know you are.

- if you see a land mine, do not feel compelled to step on it.

Continue reading "/facepalm"...

new (old) content

Daelan reached 55 seasons last night, but it was not a pretty process. we found a quest line in the blast lands that we'd never done before. we'd seen it, but back in the day it was a group quest (parts of it, at least) and since we hardly ever travel with a group we'd never bothered to do it. however, since patch 2.3 a lot of former "group" quests are now solo-able content (elites aren't elite anymore, etc.). so, we decided to give it a whirl this time. besides, it fit in nicely with the 2nd stage of our lvl 50 warrior quest (killing mobs in the same area).

so, we go around merrily killing mobs... and get ganked by a warlock (70; in full merciless glad gear, naturally). ok, fair enough. we were close to the road leading to the dark portal and it was an opportunity gank. meh. we rez and get back to killing and a short while later get ganked again. belf hunter this time. we had two mobs on us when she walked up, watched us work the mobs for a bit and then decided that we weren't dying fast enough or something. in goes the pet, we give the hunter a couple of token whacks and we're back having tea with the spirit healer. wonder if there's a frequent dier program we could sign up for... once again, rez and get back to killing (lots of mobs to kill) and we get a visit from a lvl 63 prot warrior. death by devastate spam. curse you cruel world! at this point we're just happy that the blasted lands is a fairly small zone; makes for shorter corpse runs.

we finally wrapped up that quest line only to learn that there's another one right after it (and one after that, too, according to wowhead). so we accepted, 'cause it was new content for us, and that's where the real fun began. back to where we were killing mobs, only now we had to carve a path right through the middle of them and into a cave they've taken up residence in. hmm, this is going to hurt. we make it about 1/2 way into the cave and then get an unlucky 3-pull (one was hiding behind a rock). we almost get things under control when a patrol catches us in the arse, we run out of health potions and we go down. meh, bad luck. run back, rez and clear the rest of the way into the cave and we find our quest mob and 2 guards. switch over to tanking gear and in we go! ... and down we go. quest mob has a 75% armor pierce ability and we picked up an add. ok, crappy start but we can do this. we run back, find a safe spot to rez and try focusing on the guards first this time instead of our quest mob (most of the damage seemed to come from them last time). our plan didn't quite go down the way we'd hoped and we took another visit to dead-ville. run back, rez and ZOMG RESPAWNS ON TOP OF U... dead. crap. we needed a break (and health potions), so we spirit rez and hop over to IF to train (we'd hit 54 earlier). quick stop in the AH for health potions and to look for gear upgrades (why in the name of all that's unholy is plate so gods-forsaken expensive on our server?! 150g for a green, level 50 chest piece?! ugh.) and we're back on the bird to the blasted lands.

we battle our way back into the cave, slice and dice the patrols (yes, we see you mr. I'm-hiding-behind-a-rock-waiting-to-eat-your-face-when-you-turn-around mob) and get to our quest mob; our decomposing skeletons still on the ground as a reminder of our less-then-stellar earlier attempts. tanking gear... check. defensive stance... check. houston, we are go! we go for the guards first and ignore the boss, use a health potion half way through the 2nd guard and then it's just us and ugly. it got hairy towards the end and we were down to 5% life with 1 minute to go on our health potion cooldown, so we popped our intimidating shout/bandage macro and prayed... "oh crap, he's immune to fear! ... but we're still bandaging ourself... ?!" we got a lucky break; ugly decided to try to repeatedly cast mana burn on us instead of ripping our head off and we got a full bandage in. smacked him around a bit more and VICTORY... and that was step one of that quest line. next few steps have us running off to azshara to go swimming or something. we're not sure if it was worth the aggravation and 1.5g repair bill, but it is new content for us and we got a war story out of it.

Continue reading "new (old) content"...

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"...