The Thrill of…Archaeology?

I always kinda thought of Archaeology as land fishing. And like fishing, I tended to enjoy it a bit more than most players. It was an amusing way to pass some time brainlessly until I decided to work on some other activity. (Or perhaps work on some non-WoW related activity while I did so.)

But today, today was different. For the first time in my WoW history, I have been giving alts some attention. I’ve been mostlty leveling them for tradeskills, primarily through the Cooking & Fishing Dalies and the Darkmoon profession quests, just because.

I’ve been making sure one alt at a time gets through all the profession quests. And the last one I needed on the first sub-30 alt was Archaeology.

Well, it has been fascinating. Low 20s hunter, roaming through huge archeology sites. Cutting her way through dense groups of monsters to put her surveying equipment down again. Hoping that you don’t acidentally get teamed up on.

When you are near the levels of the monsters around you, this is no mere land fishing. As you collect each piece, you don’t know how many more things you might have to fight to get to the next. You push forward though, wanting to see what prize your hard work might bring and knowing you are putting yourself at risk each and every time…

 

Teaching a Geekling to Tank…

Well, four gnomes between 15 and 18 queued up for LFG yesterday and we hit the deadmines.

In our party we had:

Warrior Tank – Age 11 – New to Dungeons that don’t involve a 80+ toon carrying them along. (Youngest Daughter)
Priest Healer – 30-something Playing since Wrath. (Me)
‘Lock DPS – 30-something Playing since Vanilla
Mage DPS – Age 13 – Quiet possibly her first time in a dungeon ever. (Older Daughter)

First of all, next time we queue, I’m going to let whoever joins the four of us know:

“Hey, welcome! Just to give you advance warning, our tank and our mage are both kids and are still learning to play. We plan on teaching them as we go through, but we ask you be a little patient with us as they are learning.”

I thought of this halfway through. Our random rogue, who ironically wore the title “the Patient,” kept running ahead and killing things before we even got there and killed all the trash to one boss while we waited for our Mage to reboot due to PC issues.

I figure from now on, if I let folks know up front, at least they know what they are in for and if they want to drop, so be it.

That said, I’m having difficulty figuring out how to teach my young tank how to tank. She knows she needs to hold onto everything. I’m trying to figure out how to teach her how to pay attention to everything around her. Quite often I would mention other MoBs involved and she would be like “Huh? Where?”

If I tried to get her to mark things and establish a kill order, would any random 5th actually follow it?

More frustrating is the lack of skills at our level:

Hey, there are like 5 mobs right there, all clumped together and we have no AoE and she has no way to establish AoE threat.

It was an easy run, with no wipes, but I’m struggling to figure out how to teach her to tank…

Heh, I almost wish there was a nice “invincible” group of mobs that she could gather up and then I would actively try and pull threat off of her.  Granted, I guess threat isn’t the main mechanic for tanks in this brave new Azeroth, but still “Don’t let things attack your group” is still a pretty core concept.

Thoughts?

Such Strangeness in our Brave New Azeroth

I am back from yet another extended break…

I am not the player I was. When I started this blog, I dreamed of being on bleeding edge raiding, dabbled in theory-crafting and sought arena glory. I never got anywhere close to any of those things.

These days, I play “Animal Crossing: WoW Edition.” I go out, collect things, (pets, achievements  mounts, recipes  level alts, work on a crafting network and have a foursome of gnomes that I play with my wife and two daughters.  (We’re all around  level 15 at this point.) The world is a playground and whatever strikes my fancy I go and do.

I still have a bit of a running to-do list in the back of my head of things I want to accomplish. But I do as I see fit and am having fun doing so. Other than my wife and daughters, no one is depending on me to do a thing. I’m not a raid leader, heck, I haven’t set foot in a current content raid since the Firelands. I still do research, but a lot of it has to do with what is striking my fancy at the moment.

That research though is what is becoming weird.

WoW has a declining population, I get that. But as more info is added in the game itself and there are less people providing information outside of game/are playing the game, the information becomes less reliable, this past information includes my own memory too.

Take for example this incident during the Lunar Festival.

Me: Hey, I should go do the Lunar Festival on an alt, it will be easy XP and I can work on other things while in flight.

So, I pull up the great guide on WoWHead by Perculia start popping around from Elder to Elder.

Me: Hey, there’s an elder in Strat, it’s not too far from the back entrance, I’ll just head in, grab him and head out.

I walk into the back entrance. Start heading over to where the elder is and find myself stuck at some gates. That’s odd. I /tar the Elder.

Me: There he is!

I cannot get past the gates to get over to live side.

Finally, I give up and go over to the live side entrance to speak to the elder which requires a much longer walk. Not a horrible thing to do, but annoying since I knew how to get there.

Apparently, since Cata, live side and dead side of Strat have been split due to closed gates, so folks in dungeon finder can’t do both.  😦

I don’t blame the guide and all the new kids probably didn’t think to use the back entrance, if they knew even where it was. Although, the wonderful Perculia did update the guide once I let her know it was only accessible via live side.

—-

Here’s my example thought from today.

I’m changing one of the professions on one of my toons to engineering. The Animal Crossing Collector player wants to get as many schematics as I can. Well, apparently Mekgineer Thermaplugg drops a lot of engineering recipes.

My brain: Hey, I wonder if we can go in the back door to Gnomer, hurry to Thermaplugg, kill him, grab the schematic and hearth out and then reset over and do it all over again.

My brain: Wait, I know they took your key, does the back door even work anymore? Lets look online.

I cannot find it. There is information about the back door. Apparently the key drops again and disappears when you leave the dungeon. Is it permanently sealed? Can you use a blacksmith key or a seaformium charge to open in?

The comments from pre-WoW 4.0 are many, finding Cata and MoP comments are rare and it was an entirely different world post 4.0. The old information never dies and you have to filter through so much to find the valid info. People are hesitant to downrate old data as it was valid at the time it was posted, so it lingers and it becomes harder and harder to find good information, if anyone has even bothered to put it out there.

—–

It is just odd, how much of the world isn’t as I remember it or gone entirely. But then, so much of it is similar or the same.  But there is more information on the old world than the new.

Although, now that I write that I look at the player I am and was. It’s still me, I still have goals, the collect bug has always been there. (Most notably with achievements.) I am not the player I was, but I am very similar to that person, while still very different.

 

Ack! I must have gotten distracted by something again!

Because I’ve been a quiet Feral lately.  Of course the 80+ hours I worked last week might have been a contributing factor.

Unfortunately, I have some confessions to make to you all.  There are things horribly horribly wrong with me that you all need to know.

*I think the fact that I get to level cooking 6 different times in Panderia…is totally frigging awesome!  Look at all those boxes I get to check.  It’s stuff to do!  That’s cool!

*I ❤ Dalies!  My wife does not like all the Rep dailies available this expansion.  Whereas I’m trying to figure out how to level alts using dailies.  Again, maybe it’s that whole, I like checking boxes thing, because, I can do down my list of dailies and do this and that and then the next, etc.  Hmmm, maybe I should make a spreadsheet or a checklist by toon.  I mean like 1 – 60 using just cooking and fishing and holiday dailies will go slow, but I’ll get there eventually!

*I’m actually thinking of playing primarily ~gasp~ bear this expansion.  (Well, in PvE at least.)  Bear was always a secondary hobby.  I would dabble, but my passion has always been kitty.  It’s just to be honest, with my limited play time, I want the perqs that come with being a tank.

* I am an achievement escort!  Oh wait, everyone already knows that.

Actual content coming soon, I promise!  I just need a nap or something.  72 hours at work if it’s a slow week is hitting me pretty hard!

 

 

For the…

So I’ve been reading several of the articles over on wow.joystiq.com, about the Alliance dissatisfaction with the storyline.

I’ve been popping back and forth between sides lately.  But this is a small slice of that has always felt true to me:

“For the Horde!”

It feels gutteral and primal and motivational.  It inspires feeling and makes me want to take action.  It feels powerful!

“For the Alliance!”

It feels like a cheap imitation of “For the Horde!”  In my head, the accent I tend to associate with this, does not feel motivational or inspiring.  It seems to just not make me feel.  I almost want the Alliance to have their own phrase.

I think in the actions I tend to associate with the Horde, I see a grunt, who isn’t putting a lot of thought into it, “For the Horde!” is just a rallying cry, a simple unifying thought to spur to action.

Whereas on the Alliance side, the cry needs almost needs to be an equivilent of “Remember the Alamo.”  We are the sleeping giant.  So when we are the hero, there is a wrong to be righted.  “For our side!” isn’t enough, we must be reminded of the wrong we are putting right.  Remember the Wrathgate!  Remember Gilneas!  Remember Theramore!  Remember our heroes lost doing what’s right!

None of those seem to quite fit, but the idea is there.  The Alliance seems to need justification for Heroism, whereas the Horde can succumb to it’s Bloodlust!

More to come…

So, this week I am catching up on all the work I missed last week because I was on vacation.

And remember how I said over on my sub-30 Feral Druid PvP gear post, “I’ll probably break these up into smaller chunks going forward.”  Well, I just dinged 59 yesterday, so I’ll probably cover 31 – 59 in one chunk and then chunks of 60 – 69, 70 – 79, 80 – 84 and I’ll leave 85 to the experts.

Although, that said, anyone grinding rep for Cenarian Circle, I have discovered, thanks to cross-realm zones, Silithyst counts don’t seem to reset with realm reboots.   So, if you want to earn the bonus rep for mob kills in Silithus or AQ, hitting 200 turn ins is actually possible, although, it is a slow trudge across the desert with no movement speed buffs.  (Feral charge works though. 😉 )

Just a quick word of advice…

Take it from me, if you migrate from a PvE to a PvP server, AFKing while on a flight path can lead to you coming back to a surprise…

Working on Some Site Maintenance

Slowly updating this site after too long sitting around with retired blogs and outdated data in the links.

If folks have good online resources for me to link, let me know in the comments and I’ll include them in the site updates.  Ya’ll probably know better resources than I can find just scavaging around on my own, so help me out.

Soon, I’m going to have a series on PvP armor for the leveling feral.  (An odd topic, I know.)  And I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things.

So I’ve Retired…

I’ve hung up my claws as it were and no longer have a WoW account, if there are any readers left around.  However, I did want to note one thing that I am super excited about, Lori & Corey Cole, the creators of the legendary Quest for Glory series are now working on a new project, “Hero-U!”

QfG is one of my all time favorite series.  So definitely go and check out their site:

http://www.hero-u.net/leaders/

And if you can afford it, definitely make a donation to the Kickstarter once it gets going on October 19th.

Spread the word!  And support what looks to be a great new game.  And for all the kitties out there, may your DPS be high and your rotation sufficiently challenging.

First Impression of the PTR

So, last night I log in and boot up the PTR for the first time.

Woo!  My main and a fully decked out premade are there waiting for me.  And the gear on the pre-made made me drool.  (Although, my main has a better PvP set.)  Gem, enchant, fly around a bit was all I was able to do, but today I’m on the case to make the PTR, playable.

See, I didn’t think of the fact that, well, I had no addons, all my macros were gone, etc.  Basically the PTR is a clean copy of the game and while the game is technically playable that way, I miss my stuff, especially my zoom out macro, I forgot how close to your toon the base game keeps the camera.

I may take advantage of the PTR to overhaul my UI.  I attempted to do so once upon a time and well, it didn’t go so well.  It ended up choking my computer heavily and my numbers dropped like a rock due to the extreme lag.  This time, I’m going to try and see what I can mod, while hopefully keeping the changes as low impact on my memory footprint as possible, because it’s honestly time for a change.  I feel cluttered and could use some more macros.

And this time I also have the advantage of Addon Control Panel, hopefully that will help as I play with things.