meet the new guy (again)

no, not that new guy; this new guy. yes, we're back. many thanks to all the folks we spoke with both here and online for helping us think things through. we decided to go back to DI rather than roll on a new server; the chance to play with Bell again was just too irresistible for us!

so, meet Daelan.



Daelan is the latest addition to our ever-expanding stable of characters (#25, we think) and is our current "main". we thought we'd try out a warrior since we've never taken one past the low 20s. it also gives us a chance to try out a prof we've never leveled before; Blacksmithing. the list of firsts continues as D is also our first character (since we knew what we were doing, anyway) to not have at least one gathering profession. between Engineering, Blacksmithing and all the general care and feeding that goes into a warrior (staying on top of the gear curve, repair bills, band-aids, etc.) we probably should have named him Moneypit... it'd be a bit closer to the truth.

D's got some choices to make. originally, we were thinking we'd go prot once we hit outlands because we were enjoying our (limited) tanking experiences on Varynth. however, we keep having this beautiful mental image of roaming the virtual countryside handing out beat-downs with something like the [Lionheart Executioner] that just makes us all warm and fuzzy inside. so, we'll have to see about that.

secondary to that decision, we also have to figure out which way to specialize in blacksmithing. this one we need to research a bit as we haven't looked at what sorts of end-game recipes are available for each specialty and how they compare with available rep gear and such. we're guessing our talent spec will heavily influence this choice, though.

for now, though, we're just having fun leveling up a new character. we've decided not to follow our usual power-leveling race to 70, but rather to just take our time getting there, work on our crafting profs along the way and take the liberty of skipping over some of the crappier questing zones (*cough* blasted lands *cough*) that we'd normally suffer through. you know, stop and smell the roses and all that.

it's good to be back.

Continue reading "meet the new guy (again)"...

decisions, decisions...

>.>

<.<

yeah... so, we're back. sorta. well, not really. we're thinking about coming back, though. we're having a really hard time deciding if we should or not.

see, life in the real world has been going pretty well... we've gotten back in touch with old friends and made some awesome new ones. we've had the great fortune to meet a wonderful woman. we've done some international travel. we've caught up on some hobbies. we've started learning a new language. we've gotten back into our gym routine. we're probably out doing something at least 3 times a week. all good stuff and exactly what we wanted to reclaim by way of leaving wow a few months back.

of course, we still have times where we don't have anything going on. maybe we don't have plans that night or friends are out of town over the weekend or whatever. naturally, being a gamer we've been filling this time playing games; half-life 2, a little diablo II (seeing the DIII trailer got us excited), nwn2, dawn of war (and all the xpacks) and other random stuff. great games and all, but they just aren't giving us the same satisfaction that wow did (to be fair, they aren't giving us the same moments of frustration either).

there are elements missing that we didn't think we cared about so much before we started playing wow. the sense of being a part of something larger is a big one... being able to interact with other people in-game that have shared the same experiences you have. when you gain a level in nwn, for example, you don't really have anyone to share your "Ding!" moment with. we haven't found that same sense of accomplishment and satisfaction in other games that we have in wow, either. getting our first mount was a memorable moment for us, as was hitting 60 the first time, seeing a new instance boss, etc. part of why those moments were so big was that there were others there to share them with us. another missing part is the whole social aspect. we miss being able to talk with other people while we're playing; chatting with friends, asking someone for advice about a quest or item, etc. we have to admit that we don't miss trade chat, though (or barrens chat, for that matter...).

now, for the sake of completeness we acknowledge that we could side step this whole dilemma by simply finding something else to do with our free time. watch tv, take up gardening, critique porn, wear funny underwear and save the world, etc. we're a gamer at heart, though, and this is how we enjoy spending our free time.

so, that leads us to the big question: should we go back or not. since we're in a rambling mood, we thought we'd lay out some pros and cons from our perspective, listed in no particular order.

cons:

• our biggest issue with wow in the past was being able to maintain a good balance between wow and our social life. being aware of this, we hope it would be less of an issue if we were to go back, but it's something we worry about


• until WotLK comes out, there isn't a lot in wow that we haven't already done. there are a couple classes we haven't delved into deeply, yet, but most of the content we've seen numerous times before


• once we hit 70, we're likely to get bored again. we don't want to commit the time to raiding and pvp's never been much of a focus for us... so what are we going to do when we hit the level cap again?


• we're not sure where we'd want to roll a char again. pvp servers were annoying us last time, but that's also where we still have a few friends. do we roll on a new server and start from scratch or go back to our old server where we know some good people?

pros:

• it's fun!


• it's fun?


• we haven't found another game that's been able to entertain and engross us the way wow has. obviously that's good and bad, but since this is under the "pros" section let's just consider the good part here


• we made some good friends playing wow


• we like the social interaction side of MMOs; being able to share the experiences with like-minded players


• we really enjoy the leveling process, mastering the nuances of a new class and being able to share that knowledge with others. it's something that we think we're good at and that's important to us

this is obviously not an exhaustive list, but it's all we can come up with off the top of our head. our two biggest worries are that we're going to get sucked in again or that we're going to be bored out of our minds once we hit 70 again (a month or two at the rate we level). the bored part is less of an issue; WotLK will probably be out in a few months and if we get bored we simply find something more entertaining to do. as for getting sucked in, we *think* we can maintain a reasonable balance... but we don't know for sure.

so, yeah... we've been thinking about signing back up and rolling a warrior. just for the hell of it. no guilds, no raids, play when we feel like it and we've got nothing better going on.

thoughts?

Continue reading "decisions, decisions..."...

Game over, man! Game over!

so... yeah. title kinda says it all; we've decided to quit WoW. it's partly due to boredom (we hit the level cap several times back when it was 60 and we hit it 5 more times since it was raised to 70), but mostly due to us wanting our social life back.

way back in the day, before evercrack or dark age of camelot or any of those games saw the light of day, we stumbled into a beta tester position for an online game (this was before the term MMO started getting tossed around) that ended up never seeing the light of day.

long story short, we ended up getting very involved in that game. involved to the point where one could argue that it was a bit too much. as it happened, the game never got off the ground, the developers went their separate ways and we got busy with other stuff (school, mostly).

fast forward a bit and the wonderful world of online gaming that we know today began to take shape. we were fascinated by it, read all the reviews in the gaming mags, talked to friends who played, drooled over the fancy new graphics and cool ways to interact with other players... and we avoided every single one of them like the plague. see, based on our previous experience with that little beta tester gig and knowing that we have an addictive personality, we were a bit worried that we'd get sucked into one of them if we gave it a taste.

UO, EQ & EQ2, DAOC, SWG and many more all went unplayed. we did pretty well avoiding them over the years until WoW was released and a few of our co-workers, most of whom were old hands at EQ, convinced us to try it out. three years later and we were still playing... and not doing much else.

that's where the real issue lies for us. depsite our best efforts, we were never able to strike a good balance between WoW and everything else. it was just too easy to get into WoW and our social life suffered as a result. while we were making new friends on WoW that all lived thousands of miles away, we were losing touch with our local real-life friends. we'd get home from work, fire up WoW and play until the wee hours of the night. the weekend would roll around and we were far more likely to be playing WoW then doing anything else. it got to the point where when we did make time to hook up with old friends, we really didn't have much to say when people asked us what we'd been up to for the last few months; we'd played a lot of WoW and that was about it.

now, don't think that we didn't enjoy our time in WoW. sure, there were crappy moments but the reason we've been playing for three years is because it's fun! every time we hit the level cap was a magical moment for us. nabbing that drop we'd ground away forever for, hitting each new level, killing a new boss for the first time, meeting awesome people through the game, rolling yet another alt... these are all things we've enjoyed and things that we'll definitely miss.

however, since we don't trust ourselves to balance WoW with real life, it's time we parted ways with the World of Warcraft. we did not, of course, go full-on /emo, shard our purples and delete all our characters, but we did terminate our WoW account. so, while we don't have any plans to come back to WoW, never say never and all that.

in the meantime, good luck to all of you and thanks for reading :)

Continue reading "Game over, man! Game over!"...

meet the "new" guy

we're home sick today so we figured it'd be a good time to update the blog. as we mentioned last post, we've been playing a lot less WoW lately. most of what little time we do play has been spent on Varynth, our fledgling blood elf protection paladin.

before we started our prot career we were, of course, using a two-hander. we didn't do much tanking in our ret days so our one-handed weapon skills were fairly feeble. that was something we had to fix right away if we wanted to be a worthy tank. how do you improve your weapon skill? you hit things. repeatedly. for a really long time. sound boring? you're right, it is.

you have some choices in how to go about this tedious process, though.

you can skill up by attacking mobs your own level (i.e., over the normal course of questing). the downside here is that your low weapon skill level relative to the mob's level means you're going to miss or be dodged/parried a lot. this, in turn, means it's going to take you forever to kill mobs and they will be gleefully beating the snot out of you in the process. maybe this is a reasonable option if you're only 15 points or so behind on your weapon skill, but if you've got 100+ points to make up this ain't the way to go about it.

if you happen to be a warlock or have a (very bored) warlock friend, you can chain-banish a demon or elemental and just auto-attack it while it's banished. we're not sure if this still works, but you used to be able to skill up weapons this way. same goes for beating on an evade-bugged mob, though those are a bit harder to come by when you actually want one (plenty around when you *don't* want one, of course).

if you're a class that can heal yourself, even if it's not your spec, you can find a mob that heals itself but doesn't hit very hard and go to town on it. some of the mobs outside the scarlet monastery are great for this. by the time they're gray to you, they won't be hurting you much but they last a good, long time. toss a heal on yourself every once in a while and auto-attack away. bring a book or something; it's a dull process.

our favorite method by far is to clear out low-level instances. if you're a squishy, this probably means running deadmines. if you can take a bit more of a beating, pay a visit to the scarlet monastery. as a prot pally, we love running SM. we gather up 8-12 mobs and burn them down with little to no downtime between groups and we pick up weapon skill points along the way. the cloth, BoE greens (and shards, if you happen to be an enchanter) and vendor trash you pick up are a nice bonus, too. it's a pretty efficient weapon skill training plan. plus, it's just damn cool to be standing in a pile of sparkling bodies when all the smoke clears...

Continue reading "meet the "new" guy"...

we're not dead, yet

no, we're not dead or kidnapped or caught in a time warp or anything else like that. we are, however, taking a bit of a break from our usual WoW routine. we've taken 5 characters up to level 70 now, all alliance and all on the same server. frankly, we're a bit bored. our two "main"s, harl and zhered, are about as well geared as they can get short of doing 25-man content and while we *would* like to see that content, we're not sure we want to sign up for a heavy raid calendar right now. plus, we'd have to go guild shopping... we hate, hate, *hate* leaving a guild once we've decided to join one, so the "try before you buy" model that a few folks have suggested to us just doesn't really fly. we're one of those "get it right the first time" types, so selecting the right guild takes a lot of time and work. time and work that we don't feel like putting in right now because our interest is waning a bit.

we haven't completely given up WoW, of course. we just needed a change of pace. back in the mists of time, we rolled a blood elf paladin so we could see the new horde starting zone that came along with TBC. we ended up leveling him up to 58, but never got around to taking him into outlands before we shifted back over to playing alliance again on Dark Iron. since we'd been itching to play horde again anyway, we decided to pick him back up, re-spec to protection (he was ret back before ret was FOTM) and go hit outlands as a tank.

it's been fun! totally different play style from what we're used to. we've played every dps class out there and we're used to killing single targets fairly fast and being able to take 2 mobs (maybe 3 if we're playing a class with good CC) without it being too scary. as a pally tank, it's a whole different ball game. now we take 4-6 melee mobs at once and it's actually *easier* for us than doing a single mob at a time. casters, though... casters just suck. we can't mitigate magic damage worth beans and it *does* take us a while to kill stuff. that's the downside of life as a pally tank (no spell reflection). pretty nifty overall, though.

hellfire peninsula feels like a totally new place what with all the horde-flavored quests and some new twists to areas we thought we knew inside out (we had no idea that the orcs near the pools of aggonar were actually a horde-friendly faction!). we've been running around picking up tanking gear from quests and the AH, trying to gear ourselves up for the big show - Hellfire Ramparts. that'll be our first real test of tanking to see if we like it or not. if nothing else, we're looking forward to getting into groups a hell of a lot easier (LF1M, tank! PST).

Continue reading "we're not dead, yet"...

it's that time again

meet Yarzill the Merc. ain't he pretty? when you hit exalted with the Netherwing faction Lord Illidan pops over for a little chat and reveals you for the traitorous wretch you really are. Yarzill here swoops in to rescue you from certain death and dismemberment at the hands of a very upset orc overlord. he then flies you off to shat in a victory lap of sorts and drops you off in front of all the netherwing drakes in lower city. you get your shiny new drake for free by talking to the one you want (you can buy the other colors later from a vendor back at the dragonmaw camp for the usual 200g fee).


we went with [Reins of the Violet Netherwing Drake]; thought it matched up nicely with shadowform. took us 11 days this time around (opened up the dailies on mar 1, hit exalted last night on mar 11), which is about 3 days faster than it took harl. the human Diplomacy racial definitely makes a big difference when it comes to rep grinding (25 to 55 more rep for each quest). the rest of the difference is probably due to better luck with finding [Netherwing Egg]s; we found at least 1 and as many as 5 each time we were doing the dailies.

we'll probably continue to do a few of the less tedious netherwing dailies as they're a great source of cash. we made 100-150g a day doing just the dailies, not counting any drops or herbs we picked up along the way. we're back up to about 3400g now and much of that can be credited to dailies. now we just have to figure out what to do next... it feels weird to not have a specific goal we're working towards.

Continue reading "it's that time again"...

Kara!

Z finally got his kara key saturday and we had a chance to go play in KZ last night with our old guild. it was a last minute "hey, we think we're going to raid tonight. wanna come?" kinda thing, so it was a little rough around the edges. we made a mad dash to the AH on the way to the meeting stone to stock up on consumables and realized that we'd never really thought about caster consumables before. ended up buying some [Elixir Major Mageblood] (which was a mistake, but Harl can use 'em later), the [Schematic: Mana Potion Injector] for Harl (finally!), some [Superior Wizard Oil] (thought about going for [Superior Mana Oil] instead, but thought we'd try it without first and see what the mana situation was like) and a couple old-school [Flask of Supreme Power]s (they were way cheap compared with [Flash of Pure Death] and it's only a 10 point difference in spell damage). once we were fully raid buffed we were looking at +918 shadow dmg. mmmm, tasty. was even better when we brought in a shaman later on and had a Wrath of Air Totem at our disposal; zomg +1019 shadow damage! we wish that's what our stats looked like normally...

as far as the run went, it wasn't bad. they had cleared through morose on a previous night, so we started with maiden and then went on to opera (wizard of oz), curator, shade & chess; they all went down on the first shot. it wasn't always pretty, but we got the job done. prince was a different story. we made four attempts and never got him below about 40%. not really sure why he was so much trouble, but last night was just not our night for prince pwnage.

but what about "teh phat lewtz"?! we thought we'd be sitting pretty, being the only dps clothie in the raid (no mages or warlocks), but the loot gods decreed that it would be all healie gear, all the time. meh. we ended up with a couple bits of it anyway; the [Blue Diamond Witchwand] because none of the other healers needed it and the [Ribbon of Sacrifice] due to a very unfortunate error by the master looter. we still feel pretty bad about that, but at least it'll come in handy if we end up having to heal our way through the arcatraz again. we also picked up our first 10 [Badge of Justice]s. now we have to figure out what to save up for...

speaking of healing arc... never. again. we ended up going in as a healer because we really, really wanted our 3rd kara key fragment and putting together a group was like pulling teeth. we ended up with a prot warrior, 2 rogues, an elemental shaman and a shadow priest in healing gear (a little over +900 heals at the time). it actually went better than we expected it to, partly because the tank was awesome and also due to the shammie backing me up with a couple extra heals when pulls got hairy (that guy was on top of his shit. we love playing with people like that!). we did have one wipe right before the 2nd boss (damn you, aoe silence!), but all the bosses went down on the first try. that said, it was ZOMG STRESSFUL!!!1! we don't know how you full-time healers do it. we spent the entire run staring at health bars; praying they would stop going down and start going back up. one of our resto druids friends told us that she doesn't even know what the inside of most instances look like because all she does is watch health bars. bleh. major props to all you healers out there, but it's definitely not our bag.

Continue reading "Kara!"...