Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Dread Lord, Death Knight, what's the difference?


So, as you may or may not know. My copy of WoTK came in the mail and I have been somewhat busy trying to work on the Warlock. Well, I was until I decided finally to start a DK, cause you know, I CAN.

So, after a few million quests in Borean, I stopped my warlock at level 72. Most of my guild mates are still only 71 or less so, I am in no hurry to show them why I am a serious WoW crack baby. Above is my latest action shot of the warlock and my pet, old Thangore...

So, on to the Death Knight. I decided to try the Horde side of things this time, since I would have chosen that side anyway if it had not been for outside influence, and maybe I just wanted to win a few BG's once in awhile. In any event, I decided on a blood elf, just because, well because they spin in the air while jumping. Pretty cool in my book.

I created the character, and immediately I was thrust into a very calculated series of events that prepared my DK for Outland. I played for about 12 hours before I reached level 60 and I have been in Outland since level 58. Much to be said for the DK, although I am not totally clear on what I am doing or how to drive the character to it's potential. I can drive the hell out of a warlock, but this weapons with casting is a bit different then I am used to.

Some of the things I like so far is that I started with all of my personal bag slots filled. Only 12 slot bags, but that was enough to get me started on my journey. I also like the fact that all of the flight paths for both old continents were filled in. I didn't have to do any exploring, and I can already fly wherever I want. I also like that they loaded me up with some pretty decent armor and a nice weapon. Even the greens at level 60 are still not quite good enough for me to change over. I also liked the quests that they gave me while building my level 55-58 DK. Even though I had not too much in the way of options fo quest choices, I found the cannon quest to be very fun, and it kind of reminded me of that first encounter in that old Commodore 64 game "Beach Head II". Graphics have changed, but the concept is the same,(kill everything moving). I also liked the way they made the terrain look different during different phases of your journey away from the Lich King. The king is a lot shorter then I thought he would be. I figure they used some sort of mutiple player instance to show the lands in different variations until the quest lines were complete.

The ending kind of threw me for a loop. I mean with the "300" against 10,000 gouls and me, I figured we were going to win for sure. Suddenly, all fighting was stopped and there was a conversation between a priest and the head of the lich army. Something about the bad guys dad fighting scourge etc. etc. Then the Lich King shows up to kill the high priest commander, and somehow gets hurt and teleports to safety. Arthas, the Lich King left his command center in the Plague Lands behind so we "good" Death Knights formed our own group called The Ebon Blade. They gave us a cool little "Death Gate" hearth stone that we can use to recall home for training or whatever. I still don't know if we have to train for the rune inscription later down the road or not.

I was also wondering if I am caught up on all of my talent points. Things went by so quickly, I was hoping I didn't miss a quest or two that may have given me more talent points. I suppose I will know for sure at 80, but I did have all blue armor and weapons at the end which led me to believe that I was on the right track.

So, the Plaguelands still hold no real value for me. I hate that place because most of the quests are in a dungeon that I do not wish to visit. So, I immediately found the flight master and headed to the Swamp of Sorrows so I could hit the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands. Once I hit Hellfire Pen, I made my way to the other two flight points so I could link to Shat and claim the Scryers Inn as my home.

So, now I can portal all over the place, but I have no clue as to where anything is in the old lands for The Horde. I am sure it will be a slow and painful process, one which I will curse Tom Chilton for along the way.

One thing that has me irritated just a little is that I have no reputation with the Blood Elves, of which I was a member at some point before I was abducted by the evil Lich King. I am not sure if this will prevent me from getting a mount in that area, and I know I won't be able to purchase a mount anywhere else. I haven't really investigated that avenue just yet.

Outside of that, I have been grinding my way up the level chain. I really appreciate all of the abilities that the DK has compared to my Warlock, and I am learning new things as I go. Gold is already looking pretty good, so I feel I made the right decision in going to the Horde side. Now I have a better way to make money for my other Horde characters if I choose to build them.

I guess time will tell, but for now, I am in the Dark.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Northrend to Alaska, comon, the rush is on!



Goodness, I forgot just how annoying questing can be. I would think that all that Epic gear I have would keep me a little safe, but some of these crazy mobs up in Northrend are giving me a hard way to go.

Almost level 71 now, and I got the old Tailoring up to 375! Just in time to have to build it to 450. I would start to cry, but that would be a weakness, and we can't have that with skulls on my shoulderpads now can we?

Yea, I am playing a Hot Warlock Chick. A lot of fun really. I didn't think I would even play WoW, let alone have a level 70 running around.

The World Server for Northrend is still a bit unstable. I think we are going to need a larger rack of servers to handle this expansion. Doing quests is a breeze, but unlike when I started a new character 5 years after release, there are tons of people fighting over resources. Overcharged Capicitors are being overcharged for daily, and I suppose at some point I will have to let them overcharge me for one. I am at that point already, where I need one to complete a quest out at the Airstrip.

I am however impressed with how much data they are storing on characters and items now. I was reading the acheivements page last night, and even though some stats are incorrect, probably due to when they started tracking the events, it was interesting how much they could tell me about my character.

So, we grind for levels again. I hear there are already some 80's running around. Death Knights are like a dime a dozen at the moment, but I am sure that will calm down eventually.

Profession: "Grand Master" (Thanks Evocare) I see they have adopted something else that reminds me of UO. In UO, Grand Master was for skills more than professions, but it all works the same I suppose.

A semi-interesting interview with Tom Chilton, formerly "Evocare of BV" if you are interested. He is alive and doing well, we had a very brief hello and that's about it, but he did say he was glad that I was sucked into WoW. Made me chuckle and want to kick him at the same time.

Anyway, I am off to see a man about a horse, or a mammoth or a Death Charger, or something...

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Nothing to see here, please move along...

Well, I got my WoTK expansion. Everything seems to be in order so far. I was a bit shocked that they tried to tell me my 1G of memory laptop was not sufficient to play WoW with the expansion, but so far it is working.

I didn't start my Death Knight yet. I am still trying to decide if I should just go ahead and switch to horde with the DK or not. It would certianly help getting a Hordie up to speed faster then waiting on a new roll, but I am still unsure.

Kelly Kindred started up her old account to come hang out with me on Norgannon. It is not the greatest server in the world, but it is workable right now. Norg was crashing a lot yesterday, so I will have to see if anything good came out of the last maint update.

See you in BG!

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Get Your Email For Nothin', And Your Epics For Free...

Well, after about roughly five hours of downtime, the illegal PvP Epic gear has vanished. No word on the Email situation except for the up to a few days server message of last night. Blizz also sent out emails to let us know our email is jacked up.

The good news is that Blizzard can track items obtained illegally, by glitch or bug. This will help me sleep better today.

I don't think banning everyone who did it would be the right choice for 2 reasons. It was Blizzard's mistake, and they obviously can identify all the illegally obtained items through their database system. Nice going on that fix Blizz...

I would still bet there might be some job openings at Blizzard today, so check your local listings.

Edit: The Email was returned the following day at about noon. I am pretty sure I got all of my stuff back.
CIAO!

It's Like A Nightmare, It Just Keeps Getting Worse...

In what would seem the worst patch since World War II Online launched, Blizzard released the mother of all bad patches this Tuesday...

Most of us couldn't even login until late Tuesday evening. Those of us who did, found that all of the Email was gone along with any cash we had made or auction returns etc...

So Blizzard apparently addressed the email issue, even though we didn't get any of our email, Blizzard at least "found it". Somewhere out there, on a server someone forgot to turn back on earlier or something. Blizzard sent a nice message via the server login message in that we would have our email back within the next day or two...

When I was finally able to get back online, the Trade channel was loaded with people saying there was free BG gear in the Champions Hall... Bah! A trick you say? Nope. All of the Season 2 PvP cloth gear was "Free". Both the Merc Gladiator Felweave and the Dreadweave sets were free for the taking. Oh, and that's not all there were a couple of really nice epic neck pieces and an epic ring. These were only gear sets for Priest and Warlock I was told. The Champions Hall was filled to the brim with hopeful players looking to get their hands on some free loot. The up side for Blizzard is that all of the gear is Bind On Pickup, and it has no sale value. So really, all you can do is wear it or let it take up some bank space.

There was also something about 1 free arena weapon, that I couldn't verify because it was for another class, but there were also some arena items that no longer had a rating requirement. Stupid me didn't have enough arena honor to get any of that stuff. After about an hour or two, the server login message was changed again letting us know that Blizzard was aware of the prices being incorrect on the Arena Gear and asking us not to make those purchases at this time. I am not sure if they actually did anything to stop people, but they did give some warning that there would be a resolution forthcomming.

So, the servers went down again this morning about 5AM (MT). I suppose we will just have to wait and see for how long and what steps Blizzard will take to repair all the damage from the latest patch.

The suck part is that I actually played, long and hard to get all that S2 gear. I knew it was going to become obsolete when WoTK came out but this is crazy! All this with the launch of WoTK coming out tonight at midnight... Oh what a joy it will be going to work at Blizzard this morning.


Good luck fixing this one guys! If restore a backup, please go back to Monday, October 13th or so. hehe

Here is some reading on the subject courtesy of VN: Hall Of Hero Giving Away Free Stuff and What are the odds

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Oh yea, the Zombie thing...

Okay, first off, I just wanted to say it wasn't all that bad. Sure, they turned everyone into a zombie, but it was actually kinda fun if you gave it a chance...

There was a lot of chatter in Trade channel about this, some said it was grief, others had some good fun. Once I realized nothing would get done that day, I just let em have at me. I got to blow myself up and everything was good again. Death was another way to get rid of the zombie curse, but then you had to run back and get your corpse. I found this to also be annoying because I wasn't offering to play as a zombie and had no idea what the consequence would be for my death. Finding the healer was also a bit too confusing. I knew where he/she was one day, but the day I got infected, they weren't there anymore. I think an easier way to dispell the effect besides those options would be better down the road.

Some things about future events though. You might want to be a little more selective in what NPC's you turn into something else. It is a bit annoying that if you wanted to ignore what was going on that you could not. Including the players would be okay if we knew what was going on. I had no idea that when I logged in that day, I would be instantly infected. It took me a few minutes to figure out why my spells were not working. Not knowing I was not myself, well was a bit frustrating and confusing. I think the Breaking News or a Login message about what is going on may be useful in the future.

My best suggestions for "Normal" or "Optional PvP" servers would be this. Don't have the event take away all of the quest givers and battlemasters. Also, don't place the fate of other players in the hands of players. Anytime you give us rope, we will automatically hang ourselves. There are plenty of other NPC's out there that can be messed with that it really shouldn't take away from the experience all that much. But if Bobby and Beverly Bluebie want to continue on their normal boring existence, then I feel they should be allowed to do so.

Patience young Grasshopper...

I am waiting for the realms to come back up on my day off, and decided to talk about some of the changes as of late.

I read this morning that epic mounts for Warlock and Paladin are going to be available on the trainers at 61. Well, that is all fine and dandy, but I had really planned on making a mint on selling Warlock runs through Dire Maul for the epic mounts. I wonder if all my tools for that long quest will still be in my bank, and will they still do anything? Maybe there will be an "epic, epic" mount at level 80 and my stuff will still be useful. Of course the Warlock epic was almost completely impossible, while the Paladin quest while similar was a heck of a lot easier. I had already bought training for my fast ground mount before I was able to complete the huge and terribly confusing epic mount quest for Warlock, so I would have been grateful to just go get the darn thing from my trainer.

I have switched to Affliction, and I am enjoying some really good PvP sessions with a fairly destructive set of Dots. Most mobs can no longer withstand my attacks and I can usually fight 4 or 5 level 69-70's and actually live. Before I was barely able to keep up with 3 of them. I have the Abyss Shard, so I am making use of that now with the Voidwalker for doing dailies, but I still prefer the Felhunter in PvP. I am not sure how well it is working, but the "perception" skill has been made passive, so I assume it is on all the time. We used to have to activate it for a 20 second burn and seek out those darn stealty Druids and Rogues. You also get some added perception from your Felhunter, so the enemy sneaking up on me and killing me before I can retaliate has become a little less annoying.

My tailoring is still at about 367 or so. Getting resources after level 360 has become next to extremely boring. I just don't have the will to go get 800 stacks of 20 cloth to produce 7 stacks of the cloth I need to level up the skill. I guess that is what seperates the tailors from the hacks. I just can't give that 100% of my time right now.

I am a little weary of the changes to the level cap. I just received all of the epic items for my warlock, and those will all likely become obsolete when the WoTK patch comes out. This is not really all that exciting for me. I worked many, many hours on getting that stuff just so I could be a little competitive in PvP, and I will probably have to do it all again. It would be nice if Blizzard would be so kind as to make some things "upgrade" via cash or some honor rather then have us re-aquire all of those items at a higher level.

I am excited about the new class though. I think it will be great right up until the first couple of nerfs, and then when they introduce another Hero Class character into the mix.

Well, that's all I can think of for the moment. Anyone looking for me can give me a shout on Norgannon. Try the Doom Forged Battalion guild.

See ya soon!