Stuff I'd Like to See

So I've come up with more things I'd like to see in wow.

1.) Vanity Gear Set
I believe it was EQ2 that did this first? A separate set of equipment you can equip so your character doesn't look like a clown when you start getting new gear. Death Knights in particular will be getting a very nice blue set once they finish questing. I'd like to keep that set in the visual spectrum even when I start getting outland equipment. Because everyone knows that you start looking like a hobo with a fetish for bright colors when you start upgrading gear.

2.) Fix the 'Death Knight' label on the main screen
Instead of cramming 'Death Knight' across the class selection button why not make a little room for the class name above the classes. Little things like that annoy me.

Current Roster

So I've worked my way up to four level 70 characters on World of Warcraft.

Frost Mage, my current main
Hunter, my farmer
Warlock, my PVPer
Shaman, my healer

Each of them are (or were) DPS, see a trend? My next character is a Druid and as soon as WotLK comes out I'm making a Death Knight. I'd like to see the difference between current tanks and the next-coming tank first hand. My wife has a Prot-specced warrior who serves as out main tank. A friend of ours is the current healer, a holy paladin. And I serve as the current DPS/CC/Healer substitute. With the addition of my tank we'll have a very diverse array of characters at our disposal. So within our group we'll have two choices for an account to tank, two for healer, and plenty of DPS to go around. We feel the synergy and honestly I love the core group we have going. Now if only we could instill that within others in World of Warcraft some how. We may join a guild but honestly I just don't see the benefit other than doing raids. We'd love to do raids but we don't want to experience the drama ourselves. Plus we own a bank guild that has four tabs purchased. I think we're doing okay now.

Honestly the last time I joined a Kara pug it went smoothly, so smooth in fact that I was tempted to ask the hosting guild if I could join with my mage. I opted against it though because I just don't see the point. Last time I succumbed to this urge we all ended up suspending our accounts and I bought Age of Conan, which was a complete waste of time. Anyone out there want to buy Age of Conan? Comes with a free necromancer.

Internal Competition

While I haven't read the interview yet I read online that Blizzard isn't afraid to be compete within the company. This is good news in my opinion, I'd hate for my next Blizzard MMO to be delayed because they don't want to take away from their World of Warcraft player base. I will also say this, I think they should introduce a multi-game subscription plan. Charge your character base $20 a month to play all of your games. I will most definitely be playing the next Blizzard MMO, every game they've published has been entertaining for hours on end. I still pull out the games from the Diablo and Warcraft series frequently to amuse myself with from time-to-time.

I have a station account and I own every Sony game that can be associated to it with the exception of Vanguard, I haven't purchased it yet but as soon as the game drops to $20 I'll swoop in to snatch it up. In all honesty none of the games have kept my attention long but they have their merits. Just imagine the power Blizzard would have if they had two or more MMOs that you could switch between at will. People would stop urinating.

Things I would like to see in WOW

Expansions are to a game as CPR is to a dying man. Morbid I know but the point is this: Expansions for games are supposed to breathe life into the game itself. Instead of just putting a Band-Aid on the lifespan of my favorite game I would like to see something different.

In the past the WoW devs have answered our respective prayers for divine intervention and added new low-level and mid-level content. I want to see more of that. So what will happen in the next expansion after WotLK? Who knows, but this is what I would like to see. I know I've posted this before but this is an expanded list (an expansion if you will).

Into the Maelstrom
-A new race for both sides or maybe a neutral race? Half-naga, complete with water breathing and a built-in swim speed.

-Of course a class suited to the sea-faring type of adventurer. I'm thinking 'Mariner' or 'Swashbuckler'. A hybrid class capable of melee dps and wearing a max of mail armor. A rogue-warrior cross breed. It may help with tanking. Who knows, maybe the class has built-in damage mitigation so that it can tank?

-More content for leveling up your characters, not just another 10 levels. Complete with a new submerged city and sunken ruins to quest in. (Zone-wide water breathing would be required to reduce problems in leveling other races there; you know someone would want to.)

-A new type of mount that is water-based. Who wouldn't like a mount that has not only a 100% land speed but a 280% swim speed? Hippocampus? Dolphin? Something fish-like.

This is problematic I know, because not all races have a water-breathing ability. So how do you counteract this? Have an attunement quest that characters have to perform to get a water-breathing buff for these areas only. Just a few ideas to throw out there, something different. Maybe introducing a whole new continent and faction would be the key? Someone opposed to both the horde and the alliance.

Enter one of my creations, a race that is half demon, half elf. We already have them in the form of the demon-siphoning elves in hellfire peninsula. So we introduce the third faction of WoW, The Spawn, children of Kil'jaden.

Initial races could be half-breeds. Humans and blood elves have already been corrupted so let those two be the starting races. Give them a beginning area not unlike outland and offer new mid and high-level content based around the demonic theme. Maybe they start in the equivalent of 'hell' or one of it’s' layers. Each layer would offer a new range of content like moving from Westfall to the Redridge Mountains. So why send characters there? Why else, for expanding the territory and looking to defeat the latest menace. Or instead of hell maybe old Killy made plans to raise a whole new continent for his children?

Polishing others' mechanics

I've seen a lot of posting about how blizzard stole this mechanic and just polished it or that mechanic and fixed it but I'm not really in agreement with the 'negative' argument of that side. If someone impliments a feature into their game and it sucks, then someone else impliments something similar but more polished and easy-flowing who wins but the players?

Now I, above all else, know that there will always be those players that have to nit-pick and pull everything apart just so they have something to complain about. I just ignore those guys, they're never happy. Here's what Activision-Blizzard needs to polish next:

Guild Housing - Instanced or not I think that guild housing is a damn good idea. Not only would it reduce traffic but it would give guildies a place to congregate and plan together. Giving your guild a better face than a list of letters thrown together to make a vaguely fantasy-esque name. This opens up the possiblity for adding rooms, decorating, guild banks, guild vendors, guild forges and crafting stations, etc.

Player Housing - This goes along with guild housing, who wouldn't like to have their own house complete with forges/vendors/bank space/etc. What about a room with your accomplishments listed? Several sets of equipment on dummies just waiting for you to pick it up?

Cosmetic Changes - This is actually coming (somewhat) in the next expansion via new hair cuts and dances but I want to see more. I want to see something similar to the everquest mechanic that allows you to use one set of equipment for your appearance and one set for stats. Tell me you wouldn't see more females running around in skimpy clothing and I would laugh. This would also open the possiblity of adding previously unsuable equipment to the character. I've seen several peices of mail that I wouldn't mind outfitting onto my mage. I'd also like to see you able to leave spots blank.

Mentoring - In City of Heroes (and I think in eq/eq2, it's been a while), which I played for a little while, you can mentor someone by bringing your level down to theirs and apparently vice-versa. Now unfortunately I didn't get far in those games because they just don't appeal to me. I like being able to solo mainly and jump into a group to get an instance done. That would be an interesting concept to add to wow. I think you'd see more low-level instances being done.

Overland PVP/Objectives - Also an upcoming feature in WoW via the next expansion. I'd like to see whole cities that are capturable. A guild, or series of guilds take over a city or a keep by defeating the inhabitants and the NPCs therein. After the long bloody battle they hire npc guards to keep their town safe from invasion. Maybe they set up overpriced vendors? Maybe a faction vs. faction goal? or a server vs server vs faction vs faction goal? I think I'm getting ahead of myself.

Oh well, that's some more things I'd like to see in wow!

Goal Really Exceeded! / Weekend in WoW

Daily quests and magisters terrace, nothing more nothing less. Even my wife has gotten into the habit of doing her daily quests. 100g for free every day is nothing to scoff at for a half hour to an hour of work. So I discovered a small cache on my level 62 shaman, though technically that didn't come from daily quests it does count. I'm currently sitting pretty on Stormrage with 3,775g. Not a bad haul. A few more days and I'll have my first epic flyer. Honestly the daily quests have satisfied my need for a routine with my characters. I do the dailys on my three 70s then switch to my lowbie shaman to finish her leveling off.

So on to the shaman? She's currently at +315 damage at level 62. That's more bonus damage than my mage had at 60 in mostly blues/purples at 60. Interesting, very interesting. Honestly the exponential growth potential of all of the classes is astounding. From paladin tanks to shaman healers and even shaman dps it's staggering. When you hit the levels above 70 you really feel like a hero, something special.

Goal Exceeded!

So after doing the daily quests on three characters, every day, all weekend, I have exceeded my goal and bumped myself up to 3,416 gold! Not far now!

Magister's Terrace continues to be 'big pimpin' if you'll pardon the lapse of grammar. We ran it again only this time my wife and a good friend of ours made up the dps while a tankadin and a holy paladin made up the tank/healer combo. As I thought, this instance gives tankadins the chance to shine. It went smoothly, with only one wipe (my fault I think), and a few deaths. We walked out with her getting a new staff and the rest of us getting shards. Our tank (damn him), won the phoenix pet that dropped.

This weekend hasn't held much other than me doing daily quests and gathering materials. I've gotten to the point where I need four primal mights for my enchanting and craploads of adamantite ore for my warlock's engineering. Thankfully though nether of them are as resource-demanding as blacksmithing, which sucks. My wife, as a matter of fact is pondering getting rid of blacksmithing in favor of something else because of the fact that it is so ore-intensive. And with each smelt requireing 2 bars it's just not right.

So another point I've come up with is Tailoring. As it is, it is very inefficient. I think that tailoring should be grouped up by class, not damage type. Mage Tailoring, Warlock Tailoring, and Priest Tailoring. This is why: I have come to a juncture (don't get me wrong I love my frost mage) where I want to try a fire/ice or fire/arcane combination. My hard work at shadowweave tailoring makes me NOT want to try it, that compiled with the cost of respec makes me not want to change my current spec out.

Mage Tailoring could be Fire/Arcane/Ice
Priest Tailoring would of course be Shadow/Holy/Healing
Warlock Tailoring would be Shadow/Fire

You could even use the current names Spellfire for mages, primal for priests, shadowweave for warlocks. That would have been a much better division of tailoring.

Money Making the Easy Way!

Phase two of the Shattered Sun Offensive is on! So I've got a list of 10 total daily quests I can do per day per character. Holy crap. So this weekend I will have plenty of time to do those quests on all three of my level 70 characters. Plus my mage has access to an extra six or so quests that I can do quite easily. That's 360g per day for the next three days. By the end of this weekend I will have 3100g so I am quite close to my 5k goal. Go Stormrage!

I may do this for all three of my characters just so I can get them all flying around in the proverbial "big pimpin'" style. That would greatly increase my leather/mining farming time on my warlock and hunter. I'm quite excited. Can you feel the excitement?

Of all the quests I've done in WoW the new daily quests are not only the most rewarding but they are the most fun. Not only am I getting roughly 10g per quest but I am also getting rep toward valuable patterns and random drops that can include greens and badge. Those greens are all being disenchanted for enchantments.

On that note I have worked my cooking, tailoring, enchanting, and fishing all up to 375 on my mage. Yay mage! Problem is that I can't make my runed eternium rod because it requires four primal mights. They go for about 150g per on my server right now so I will have to go farm motes and find some nice transmute specialist to let me use their cooldowns for a tip. Maybe I can trade for arcane dust? :)

How's the money making going?

Well honestly real-life issues have kept me from my money making dreams. I've only been able to do the daily quests on two of my characters thus far. Oh well, I'll get to it when I can. Other than that I don't have much wow to report on.

Quake Wars has turned out to be one of my worst enemies, it's one of those games I really want to play but can't. I keep getting disconnect errors even with nothing else running on my network and connection. Multiple servers by the way too. I've been cruizing the forums but I haven't found anything that addresses my problem yet.

Pleasant Patches

I remember back in the day when you couldn't just go to a gryphon master and click on a distant four-point flight and walk away from the machine, you had to plan out your flight for the least possible resistance and individually fly to each point. I also remember when patch days were far from smooth. This patch, like the burning crusade release was very smooth.

Honestly I have to say I'm impressed with the new content and changes. The combat log has been revised quite nicely though I rarely ever use it. None of the other class changes have really made a difference to my characters with the exception of the icy veins change, which I must say is nice. Having worked myself almost half way across the honored bar with the shattered sun offensive, and my server being 86% to the goal already I am quite impressed with the speed in which things are progressing. Even better is the daily quest increases. I have three 70's right now. I was only able to complete the daily quests and do an instance of the magister's terrace with one, then dailys for another. By my calcuations if I do all the daily quests I can on my characters (some of them are not attuned) I can make 280 gold per day. That's almost 300 gold just for doing a few quests. Now of course it will take some time to do all of the quests and I have other (real life) things to get to so I may not be able to do them all every day. Even if I only do 200 gold worth a day that's still an epic flying mount in less than a month's time. If I pool my resources it's 11 days total to my goal. I'm excited.

The magister's terrace (normal mode of course) went surprisingly well for my group. We wiped two times on the priestess and her flunkies and three times on Kael'thas, mainly because our healer wasn't used to healing. All of the drops, while mage drops, were not upgrades for me and I expected that since I'm decked out in heroic blues/purples and a bit of karazhan gear. One thing that I did get on the first run was the steelweave enchant. Quite interesting. I can't use it yet because I need the void shatter pattern first. Once I hit honored with the shattered sun offensive it's on like Donkey Kong!

The two daily quests on the island are so easy it's stupid, especially with so many people crawling over the island, it looked like a rave in the quest hub, honestly. You gather four stacks of this mana dust from the wreched dudes and kill/convert five sentries.

The quest in hellfire penninsula to destroy the fire elementals was easy because everyone around you with their little ember out gets a charge. However, the one to drain the felblood initiates was quite difficult with so many people doing the quest yesterday. This morning wasn't so bad.

In nagrand, the inspections go well and since my hunter is a skinner he can do the other quest for the nether at the same time. I haven't tried it yet with my miner but my hope is that you can get it from mining elementals as well. Last but not least the quest in to get the sunfury attack plans always goes well for me, the drop rate seems to be fairly high.

All-in-all, the content introduced is quite helpful to someone trying to save for an epic mount. Tonight I am going to finish all of my daily quests and do the same with my wife's characters.

Holiday + WoW = ?

So I've been playing wow a lot over the holiday, go figure. I've gotten to the point where I have my Nether Ray, I have my combat medalion, etc, but I don't have the cash to buy the next riding training. So I'm also neutral with the netherwing. Great, but I can't continue until I get 5,000 gold. Wow. I've worked myself up to 1600g doing daily quests and selling all the crap in my bank. My main problem is that I can't find anyone that needs to do the preliminary quests to the daily quests.

I have three level 70 characters right now and each would be more than capable of doing the daily quests as all of them have their epic and flying mounts (I wish now I hadn't gotten the other two their mounts. All it has done is slow my main down. Oh well.).

So how to rectify my delima? Well, the only other thing I've discovered as being profitable is fishing for motes/random fish to sell and grinding for minerals and leather. However, seeing as my leatherworker hasn't reached 375 yet I don't know how much of that I want to sell vs. use.

So I call again, what did my readers (what few I have) do to make their cash?

Reputation

I hit exalted with the skyguard this morning. I got my trinket and my nether ray. However, I still don't have the money to ride it though. I sincerely hope that blizzard tunes down the cost of the training soon just like they did when the burning crusade came out. Once that came out I bought an epic mount for all of my characters.

The prospect of getting an epic flying mount for all of my characters seems impossible. Not all of them have completed the prerequistes for the daily quests though I was thinking of doing it. But with patch 2.4 there will be more daily quests available per day so that will suppliment the whole issue. I have three 70s and one 60 right now. We'll see how it turns out.

Does anyone know a better way other than sniping the auction house or doing daily quests for cash? Don't get me wrong I am a big supporter of daily quests but after a while the same old quests get boring.

A tale of hunters and pets!

I pulled my hunter out of grind mode the other day to pick up a new pet, I figured it would be the perfect time to try for the elusive ghost wolf. Apparently I was incorrect. I missed my chance to get the damn coolest looking pet ever, I think it's unfair of blizzard to fix the issue once people have been able to get the pet in the first place. So I decided on getting the only unique carrion bird available. Trachlea, I think the name was, anyway it's the bird in the bone wastes for the torgos quest.

The begin of the XP grind starts here, and I thought I was done with that. I don't think there are enough viable unique-looking pets at level 70. I mainly use my hunter to farm primals so this pet will be heavy on the resistances for obvious reasons. My hunter got his ass handed to him last time I tried to kill two fire elementals at a time, whereas my frost mage can take between 4-8 if I do it right with AoE.

Honestly it's to be expected that a high level mage with good gear can take more but I was having issues with one elemental let alone two. My pet, a warp stalker, was just a novelty pet more than anything. I've gone through all of my options and apparently I will have to gather my friends together and go for the 70 ravagers that inhabit the mines in the netherwing area.

Petopia has been quite in invaluable resource through this endeavor!

Faction Stigma

For the Alliance!
For the Horde!
For both?

I've met players that go alliance and horde but few that do both. The going stereotypes that currently dominate each faction is that snot-nosed brats and idiots roll alliance and mature types roll the horde. What about those of us who roll both? Honestly I don't have any high-level horde but I do have both. It seems that if you're one side or the other you're good but if you're both it's like being bi-sexual in this day and age. Most people argue pick a side, but when you pick the side they have complaints as it is.

For the record, I love the lore on both sides but I like the 'friendly' look of the alliance for my own reasons and the 'primal' look of the horde for the same. So what happens when I finally decide which side to choose? Well let the social stigmas flow. Until then my cry is "For both damn you!".

Honestly I have been thinking of pulling my horde characters out and trying the horde side again. I've been having issues trying to find groups and a friendly guild on the alliance side. What about the readers? Do you think that the horde or alliance side is more friendly?

Weekend in Warcraft

So I didn't get much WoWing done this weekend but my friends and I have hit an impass. We need a tank. My wife started a warrior for the sole reason of tanking for us. I am planning on creating a tank-specced DeathKnight. The third member of our group has already made a warrior as well. Apparently the key to getting a group is no longer being a holy priest, it's being a tank of any sort. People are even desperate enough to start taking tankadins (honestly they aren't that bad). So barring the fact that I hate playing warriors we must all apparently succumb to the tank shortage.

(begin rant)
This sucks in particular because we have three additional members (all of whom are currently not talking to us for various reasons), that have a potential tank. A warrior, a feral druid, and an epic pally.

Personally, I am damn tired of people telling me how I am supposed to play and who I am supposed to have. If my wife wants to play her priest shadow, so be it. If I want to play my mage frost, so be it. If I want to play my shaman elemental, SO DAMN-WELL BE IT. As soon as you start telling people what they need to do with their account they get just as pissed as I am now. If you don't want to hear me tell you how to spec your druid, leave my wife alone about her shadow priest. I have some friends of mine pissed at me right now because I told them what to do with their alts, shove them up their anus. I'm tired of people demanding that we compensate them. I could never play my mage because everyone always wanted me to run them through dungeons with my 60 hunter. F-you, F-your characters, and it sucks when people demand shit from you doesn't it? Enough said.
(/end rant)

Problem with WoW

One of the big problems with wow is that it's soloable. Hear me out before you decide this article is worthless. Because being a prot warrior is not soloable (Arms/Fury FTL), that makes tanks harder to find. No one wants to switch to Prot because the only use for Prot is soloing. A feral druid actually has fairly good DPS, a tankadin can tank/dps/heal to solo. Protection warriors really suck at battlegrounds and soloing. Why? No DPS. You can take all the hits in the world but NO dps.

Last night for the daily heroic there were seven DPS-specced warriors in the queue but no tanks to be seen. The solution? BALANCE the warrior class. Give Prot warriors DPS and make DPS warriors a viable tank solution. Give their attacks more agro and allow them to taunt their brains out. ANYTHING to increase the amount of tanks out there.

The addition of DeathKnight will be welcome in my opinion, however, the majority of DeathKnights out there will be DPS specced (AGAIN). Blizzard, if you read this (I doubt it) give us more TANKS!

Heroics, an epic tale!

With the current tank issue going around, and I'm sure all have felt it, I have begun trying to think of solutions to the problem. The main problem is that it sucks to try and level a tank in any form. Plus taking is heavily dependant upon your gear. Enter the deathknight!

So we'll have a new tanking/melee dps class that we can rely on. Great, hurry up with that shit blizzard, I'm getting impatient.

Last night my heroic group went through the daily like it was butter, we only suffered one wipe and that was because I had an emergency to attend to. Our feral druid tank did very well. Tankadins and Feral druids have become quite a tank alternative. What will deathknights do to those classes? Well honestly I think it will ease the tank load, I doubt having another tanking class would harm our game any. However, a flood of Deathknight tanks may make other tanking classes look much better. Because they've had experience tanking and have already been balanced. No nerfs or buffs going around that are too jolting.

World of Angercraft!

So barring of course the normal woes I had a very ugly wow night last night. Not only did a mod I was using swap out my strange dust for my arcane dust on mouse over (twice resulting in a sale of 20 arcane dust for 99s 99c) but I seem to have run into a point of gaming-hell which I am very upset about.

I have a close-knit group of friends that I game with. Between them we have two healers, three tanks, and ten or more DPS characters. Most at 70 or close to it. Why the hell does someone start a character they don't want to play once everyone present (including a significant portion of help from myself), gets to 70?

I'll tell you why, it's the same reason why my hunter is no longer my primary character. The call has always been for me to get my high-level character on to help everyone else level. I did that so frequently that I got sick of my hunter. Now they are experiencing the same, and all I have to say is "oh freaking well, it sucks doesn't it?". Tasting your own far-flung feces isn't fun is it?

So why the hell, between all of those tanks can't we form a group? Because it sucks playing something that you're sick of. So that leaves us groupless and me mad enough to hang myself from the ceiling with my mouse cord! Oh well, I doubt it would support me anyway, which is what makes the statement funny right?

Jewelcrafting

I'm late to the party. Apparently Jewelcrafting isn't as popular as it was before. Blue gems aren't selling for much though the patterns apparently are. I've come to the conclusion that I am leveling a jewelcrafter for nothing.

I've had this issue with several professions so far. Leatherworking, Tailoring, Enchanting, now Jewelcrafting. Engineering remains my favorite but it's not for profit. Not even selling gyro-balanced khorium destroyers is very profitable. Tailoring wasn't really all that profitable but it's great for bags. Enchanting, I don't use it much. If it weren't for the fact that I can sell the supplies for quite a bit of profit I'd drop it as well.

Does anyone out there make a good profit on ANY of the crafting professions?

Weekend in Warcraft

I have really taken to the shaman elemental build. Since I have a level 70 mage I can transfer (via my wife) food and water to my shaman in stacks. Honestly it's like being a nature mage. Up until this point I have been soloing. But now we have a deadly trio. My wife's 60 combat rogue, my 60 elemental shaman, and my friend's 60 holy paladin. Honestly we go through mobs so fast it's sick. Which brings me to the next part of the wonderful ordeal.

The paladin mount quest. My warlock finished his with the help of one 70 feral druid. Then we did the feral druid's warlock quest with my 70 mage and a 70 paladin. The paladin mount quest is rather difficult to solo with a 70 mage and a holy paladin. Other than some serious jewelcrafting my WoW weekend was uneventful.

My rogue, who has hit level 8, is destined to become a PVP twink. I haven succumbed to the twink-my-alt craze until now but it seems my wife has the urge to do the same with her hunter. Why twink? Well I don't know yet but apparently we're going to find out.