The DK Collection...

Well, I decided to post my Male collection of DK's I have been running when I can't find anything to do on my own server... Well, not that there is much time for that, but when I get super bored, you will find me running around on one of the other Stormstrike realms. Occasionally I like to see what the other servers are like, and there is no better way then running in with a level 60 and checking out the action.

Plus, if you need to speak to any enemies or allies from those other realms after the BG's that is the best place to do it. Confront them head on I say. Like I said, in BG's often it is worse to read text from your own team mates then it is to hear something from your enemy. Our battlegroup has mostly normal and PvP mixed servers, and you know when the PvP server guys are online. According to them, their elite PvP server skills are unmatched by us low life normal server guys.

I'll tell ya what. I am almost wishing I had started on a PvP server anymore. It is not that bad, and I would rather run with guys/girls that like to do the same thing I want to do instead of hanging with the loot scooping, crazy raiders sometimes.

I see messages in trade now about how you can come on this pug or that pug, but they are rating your gear etc... I am thinking "what is the fun in that?" At the same time I am thinking it is 7 gold a pop for repair each time I die, and sometimes that can be a factor. But I think it kind of takes the fun out of pugging. I have been in raids with guilds that just need a couple pugs to fill out a 25 mix, and they have been the nicest folk on the planet. On the other hand, there are some guilds out there that insult each other to the hilt for not being on their "A" game, so it all comes down to who you hang out with.

I normally tell these guys, and I am sure they can tell by the PvP gear that I don't really know what I am doing in a raid situation. They seem to be all good with that in many cases, because they are so overpowered anyway, that I probably couldn't screw up.

Which reminds me about another topic. Tanks and Healers are the most wanted in raiding and instances because they do have a unique ability to make things happen. I am all about DPS because all I have to do is shoot at anything that moves, and if the Tank is good, then I won't become the target of destruction. But the tank has to not only shoot, but also must keep "all" of the monsters we are engaging interested in fighting only them. So, they play the "keep the threat" game with each monster, convincing them the Tank is the only threat in the room so I can continue my nice and damage free reign of terror. The Healer on the other hand is taxed with keeping everyone alive, mostly the tank, and I'll tell ya, that is not always an easy task. Choosing the wrong types of heals, or healing the wrong guy can cost lives and item repair costs start to skyrocket. I have noticed that there is a serious healer depression on my server, and I think that's just because the pure pressure of that job must be overwhelming.

I have tried being a healer of sorts with my Pally, and I actually do fairly well with a hybrid DPS/Healer. Xina is okay at attacking, but I am still not quite ready for toe-to-toe action there. I am missing the key ingredient "skill" needed to actually cut the competition to ribbons. My healing and distance attacks seem to serve me pretty well.

I have been working on a Horde healer a little bit, even though I find it to be extremely difficult. I know that if I ever get that Healer to 80, people will be throwing gear my way to get me in their raids. It could possibly be the best geared character I will ever have if I can get it together and make it work.

Macros are something I need to work on now. They are becomming increasingly more important in BG's where you need to drop things faster or pull of spell combos etc. I see these Shaman that can drop totems at lightning speed and I am thinking I need to be able to do the same before I get too far along... My Shaman, Leighlou is coming along nicely. So far she is one of my favorites for PvP combat. The Shaman have stopping power that is unmatched by any of my other toons, and can run in wolf form and drop totems as needed. It is definitely going to be interesting to see this character at high levels.

I don't know why, but I have been doing a little bit of the Headless Horseman dailies, and Mydnight is still low in unarmed combat. While I was waiting for all of the other folks to put out some fires for me, I went out and started building her skill in punching. The little level 5 wolves in Goldshire took me way into the 300's before slowing down to a halt, so I only have a little bit more to go now before she can punch her way through a concrete wall. Myd was sporting her Pirate costume, looking kind of cute.

I try to spend some time with all of the characters I am working on, and things are going slow. I have also been trying to level the new characters as PvP rather then doing all the quests, and that seems to be working well. My druid is the highest now at level 38, and my Mage is the lowest at level 22. I have found each class to have something I can use in either PvP or raiding, and I hope to one day have all of my mini-armada ready for Lagaran and some dailies for cash! WOOT!

Well, it's my birthday, so I am thinking I should try and get some WoW action in before the days end...

Ciao!

One More For The Road...

You might say I am some what hard pressed to have one of everything, so I have went and created my fifth Alliance character, the Shaman into the Mix.

I really loved the Shaman in the level 19 PvP bracket just for getting flags. That's something my Lock rarely ever got to do. Dropping those little totems and running like hell is very fun. Most people forget to shoot the totems first anyway, so it was fun to be on the other end of that for a minute. Now, level 20, we will be taking a break from PvP to move into getting some gear for the level 29 bracket.

I absolutely love the Druid character. She is at level 32 now, and I am getting ready to take her into Theramore for some hard core leveling. The level 29 bracket PvP for the Druid was like mopping up helpless newbies. Probably contributed why I sailed from 28 to 30 in an afternoon. I even got a couple blue items off the Warsong vendor in Auberdine. I had no idea that you could by other gear out there that doesn't exist in the Hall Of Legends. It is the first time I have ever actually found the "real" entrance to a PvP arena, and was rather shocked to know there was other things afoot out there.

I was chatting with someone about the Lock's high-end pets the other day and realized that Blizz is still content with the Ritual of Doom. The quest to get this pet is long and painful. Then after all the pain you can never cast the deamon because it takes 4 people and one of them has to die. After one of you dies, assuming it isn't the Lock, then he/she has to enslave the deamon before he goes balistic and tries to kill everyone. I call BS on this spell. It is stupid to have to involve other people in a ritual where you may die, and why 4? So there is only a 25% chance the Lock will be the lucky one to get killed? I never understood that one, and it is why no one ever sees the deamon. Who the hell wants to pay for repairs for some dude to run around with a pet for 3 minutes? NONE!

I leveled my mage to level 22. This character is probably the hardest one to level, yet very powerful. I think I will like this character more as we move into the higher levels. The PvP for me and the mage wasn't all that grand. I felt like there was just not enough punch yet to go PvP so I skipped it for now. Maybe next round.

I don't really care for most of the races, so I kinda stuck with the ones I have something I like about them. The Blood Elves can silence as a race, and the Draeni can heal a little which is also something I like more then most other things.

Anyway, things are going good... I played a few DK's on some other servers. Maybe I'll get their mug shots for fun. Until next time...

No Rest For The Wicked...

The thing I really hate about playing both sides of the fence in WoW is the fact is that they can't interact with each other even on the same account.

On the Alliance side I have my level 80 Warlock which has tailoring and skinning skills. On the Horde side I have my level 80 Death Knight which has Alchemy and Herbalism. The problem I have is that if I had those two together, they would make a great team for making money. The DK has all of the essences needed for the Warlock to make the really cool level 80 cloth. I can farm this stuff with the Warlock, but the DK gets them faster. I also need Frost Lotus that sells for almost 40G a piece on the AH that the DK can farm. Plus the DK can make all of the PvP potions and it would be cheaper to give them to the Warlock instead of buying them all of the time. Considering each of the really good potions sell for 25G a piece on the AH, I could save a small fortune.

However, that reminds me that Frost Lotus is the suck as far as farming. I usually have to cruise Wintergrasp for several hours just to get a couple of them. I think my last session of flying the landscape for them yielded me about 7 total. Some of this stuff, the Blizz folks put way too much emphasis on making you fight or spend huge amounts of time farming. For some, I guess it is no big deal to get from a dungeon, but not all of us find raids and dungeon runs that will yield a high volume of materials.

I am toon building more on the Aliance side right now. I am working on a Mage, Pally, and a Druid. The Pally just turned 20, so I went ahead and posted her pic. The Druid is level 26 and the Mage is still just 16. I think the Mage is the hardest of the three to level, but I am getting better at driving the toon doing the "stick and move" tactic of freezing my opponent, running back and then shooting the crap out of them.

I seriously hate leveling, but I now realize that the Blizzard devs back in the day were more sadistic then I could ever imagine. The pain involved in leveling characters in the early levels is horrible. Although, you do level faster, the types of things they want you to do and the "Epic" quests are just too time consuming. The Chistmas tree effect of going to a zone and seeing 20 exclaimation marks just leaves you with the feeling you are going to be in a zone forever. The number of times you are overwhelmed and killed is also a bit high for my liking.

Some zones aren't too bad, but on the Horde side when they send you to the undead zone to level from 10-20, and even with the blood zone in Exodar, you just get the feeling your life is going to end before you ever get to level 20 where they start to push you off to other places to level. Eventually you will all end up in the same places, and the tedium will be more intense as you will have to repeat a huge number of the quests per toon. I don't really like seeing a huge number of quests in one place, and I really hate doing the huge chain quests when you have to see the same guy more then a few times. I like the scenery and the types of things to do be more random and different to keep my attention.

So, for now, I am trying to get more "Alts" in the mix so I can possibly make some cash down the road without having to rely so much on purchasing mats. I have got some time before Cataclysm comes out, and I can't seem to keep up with the ever-changing PvP/Raid gear, so what the hell?

That's all I got...

LTNS

Wow... Looks like I have been too busy to write for some time here. The new Pallys are coming along and I have been working on a Feral Druid for a couple of weeks that I am enjoying somewhat.

It is such a different kind of character that it is a little harder to master then some of my other characters. I do PvP with all my lowbies now, and I have had some fun in BG's even without a mount. I am amazed at how fast the ques are for low level combat. I did seem to like the 19 bracket better then the 29 just because it is much less complicated and the gear is fairly easy to obtain through the AH or whatever. People all seem to know exactly what you need and have no problems letting you know that your gear is not quite up to lowbie par.

Patch day this week was again riddled with issues. You wouldn't know it looking from the outside, but once you log in, you can see the "top secret" notes that they allow you to see while asking you to be patient that there are problems they are addressing. I personally didn't experience too much of the issues, except for some crazy lag at one point. I didn't play that much on Tuesday, but they were still working on it Wednesday.

Anyway, I haven't had too much to bitch about lately, so I guess that is why I have been so quiet. I am sure I had some ideas about writing something, but I don't recall them at this time.

That's all I have for now. See ya in game!

Top Of The World Ma!

So according to several sources, the next expansion will be a little less conversation and a little more action. As they say in game, Less QQ, More Pew Pew...

Now, I have been bitching a storm about how they need to make the old lands viable again, and sure enough, I guess they are thinking about that too...

You can see the official Blizz announcement and trailer here for Cataclysm...

Quick! Everone re-roll a Worgen! Oh, and they finally gave Horde a "short" race, (Goblins) how sweet... So much for Stranglethorn Vale discounts!

I absolutely agree that the two oldest continents need life put back in them. Fixing things that have been broken forever, and of course getting the high levels back in there is a very good idea. This actually does things two fold. It allows new players a different, but better experience then we had, and it gives us old players a reason to start from scratch again. You can't discount the fact that new players may not really care about the experience we had. They won't miss anything, because they would never have known anyway. Old players will have a reason besides the auction house to get the hell out of Lagaran, and do something more productive. If Bliz finds a way to reward us for helping out the new players, I bet you would see a lot of that going on too.

The ability to fly on the old continents will in fact be a major boon for the game. I can't even tell you how many times I have had to go back and complain about not being able to fly around in the old lands. It again gives us a reason to be there.

The new dungeons and stuff, great, if that's for you. I would rather be able to do the quests and level a lowbie to 80+ as fast as I can doing quests. I never did and probably would never do the dungeons anyway, but I can only imagine that those folks that like that sort of thing will enjoy it.

I have so many friends that level and level, and never even play their 80 characters. To me, changes like that would be excellent.

I still think they need to reconsider doing Outland in that expansion as well. That place is so huge and has a lot to offer, but since the level cap was moved, we have no reason to look at it much past Terrokar Forest. Okay, sometimes I fly around just to see stuff I missed playing my original character, and once in awhile I do the fishing daily, but that's about it.

So, when we get the offical word, I am sure I will have more to say about it.

For now, that's all I got.

Cross Faction Communication...

In the battlegrounds I have no problem with keeping the talking divided. I also see no reason to force the main channels to have open communication between the two factions. It helps keep things more of a secret for doing major city raids and stuff like that. Not that people don't have two computers or accounts and spy on each other now. Nothing will ever rid you of the spy game completely, and maybe we don't want to do that.

What I would like to see is the ability to communicate with individuals you choose to do so with. I see no reason why we can't open up guilds/parties/raids/whispers and even email to those on the other side we would like to play with. You should definitely be able to email your counterparts on the same account. Getting things accross from one side to the other should not be so difficult. If the "Vision (tm)" is accessabilty, then I think we need to open that up just a bit further.

I mean, war is one thing, but when you are outside of the battlefield, why not allow the Horde and Alliance to talk to each other if both sides decide to do so? Guild, Raid, Party and Whispers are some areas where we can expand. The newer sections of Azeroth are not all about the war between Alliance and Horde. I mean, even in real-time, if I decide to speak to someone we (United States) are at war with, doesn't mean I am some sort of traitor. Outside of military personel, there are simply some people that don't condone or go to war with a particular group just because someone says so. There are other reasons to be friends with people. Be it religion, jobs, relationships or whatever, there are people that could benefiet greatly from the ability to communicate with people on the other side of the fence.

If there is any possible way to cheat this in bg's or whatever then deny access to guild chat if an individual is a member of an opposing faction while they are fighting. But raiding and even grouping together should be allowed.

I think this would promote more of the social side of things and not force people to go to a side that they may not enjoy just because all of their friends are playing that faction.

A Few Notes On Raiding...

Oh, before I forget... Thanks to Bliz for finally giving us a way to get to the Blasted fricken Lands without flying for eight million years! The picture above shows Myd's excitement when she saw the portal in the Mage Quarter of Stormwind. I have seen the portal on the Hordie side in Org, but forgot to comment on that one.

Hazmat has recently been traveling with a raid guild as a "PUG" and finding out there is a calmer more functional side to raiding. The group is more calm about what you have on and every single move you make. So, I don't really know each piece of armor I need, so I don't roll on items so far. I have mostly been interested in the emblems of conquest, which seems to be the only thing anyone really does with the raids anyway.

The point I am trying to get at is the raiding is a pretty loveless act. Everything is calculated, and everyone knows what is going to happen every single time. The real excitement is finding out if something will drop that you want and you happen to roll high enough on your 100 sided die to actually get to keep the item. It is so systematic and boring compared to PvP which has its own issues, but the game changes constantly. You don't always win, but you don't have to pay a huge price in gold for losing either.

I don't know, I just think there should be a little more fun packed into raiding somewhere. A suprise now and then, and maybe a way to make people go there not just for the gear. I mean, I like gear, but just enough to get me through the onslaught of people trying to kill me. My gear that I have picked up in the auction house and my PvP gear is better then most of the stuff Obsidian Sanctum and Naxx had to offer. I don't know, but it just seems like it can be more fun.

That's all I got...