Kor'kron 501st

Hunting on Hutta

Posted by Peter (Devee) on March 22, 2012

Posted in: The Old Republic. Tagged: hutta, karrels javis, nem'ro the hutt, the old republic, tor, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

Thanks to some really fantastic friends, I started playing The Old Republic last week! After a lot of debating, I created a Chiss Bounty Hunter with the intent of becoming a Powertech so I can tank. gem created a Cyborg Imperial Agent so she could become an Operative and heal. We might reroll later before deciding on what to keep, but I’ve really enjoyed the game so far.

We were totally hanging out with Nem’ro the Hutt here! I really like how gem’s character turned out. Of course, I had to be Chiss. Thrawn is the biggest hero of the Star Wars universe, right? I love him.

TOR is very similar to WoW so far. I know there are a ton of differences, but if you know how to play WoW, you can start playing TOR easily. There were a few differences I noticed right away. First, the story is more engaging. All dialogue is voice-acted, and it really does add a lot. When you log into the game, it gives you a story summary of what’s happening. That’s fantastic. There are zones in WoW that I don’t even remember. What did we do in classic Thousand Needles? No idea! Of course, the next thing I noticed was AOE looting. Fantastic.

gem and I really know how to rock out. Chiss love to dance, you know.

We made sure to do every mission we came across. One proved too hard; we had to “release” (or whatever TOR calls it) and respawn somewhere else. We came back later to do it though.

I don’t really understand how dying works yet. I can let gem rez me, or I can just click rez myself. What’s the difference? I get the rest, I think. The more often I die, the longer my rez timer. If I don’t want to wait, I can respawn at a medic. Someone please tell me what the difference between rez’ing myself and getting rez’d is.

Look, companions! I was hoping for Nem’ro’s accounting chick. She totally led me on! At first it seemed like she was into me, but then she kept saying “I’m a bit busy here, hun,” or something like that. Condescending little…

Also, I was rooting for a different person to be gem’s companion. Alas, Karrels Javis was not her companion.

The companion system is interesting. I’m not sure how much micromanaging I’m supposed to be doing in battle. So far, I let her do her own thing for the most part. I guess it’s cool for now that she’s a healer and that gem’s is a tank, but we should have that covered after we pick our advanced classes.

Nate came to hang out with us on Hutta! Kristine did as well, but I forgot to take a screenshot. She also crashed my computer (coincidence? Nah), so please excuse my lack of screenshot. Plus, Nate looks sweeter. Super sweet, really.

I really like the way TOR does phasing. In WoW, you enter a phase unexpectedly. I could be walking along with another character and suddenly enter a phase. On top of that, the two of us might be in different phases. In TOR, phases are clearly marked. Areas have what appear to be forcefields blocking them to denote their phasing.

Also, your party can come with you when you enter a phase. Because of this, maybe it’s better to think of them as the equivalent of instances in WoW – at least with respects to the instance portal and the way they work. These phases are clearly not dungeons. Also, I don’t know if phases change over time. I particularly like the phasing in the Molten Front of WoW. It’s public, and everyone can hang out together, but it looks different to different people.

I also liked that certain quest areas were phased and marked as heroic. Heroic areas in TOR are harder than surrounding areas, I guess you could say. Unlike in WoW, they’re not harder versions of a non-heroic version. A heroic area in TOR doesn’t have a corresponding non-heroic version. These places can also be done alone or with a party. I think it’s a pretty cool touch. I suppose it also means no one else, other than your party, can interfere because they can’t enter your phase. I hadn’t really thought about that previously.

Eventually we made it off Hutta! I impressed Nem’ro the Hutt, killed the other bounty hunter, and became sponsored in the Great Hunt! gem manipulated events to cause Nem’ro the Hutt to align himself with Empire! Off to new adventures soon!

Into the Nether

Posted by Peter (Devee) on March 21, 2012

Posted in: Achievements, Devee, Journal. Tagged: blade's edge mountains, consortium, ethereals, kael'thas, netherstorm, outland, Protectorate, shadowmoon valley, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

(I have to be honest. I’m anxious to talk about TOR actually, but I want to put it off a little longer just so I can finish the first planet before I talk about it. So, WoW:)

Lately I’ve been questing in Netherstorm. I’m trying to use my time more wisely. Yes, there are a few things I still need from the Raid Finder, but those items won’t help me. However, there’s content out there I’ve still never seen. I should see it!

But first, look at this cute picture from Blade’s Edge Mountains:

Okay, anyways, back to Netherstorm.Even though I read all the quest text always, sometimes I feel like it’s hard to remember what a zone’s about. What’s Netherstorm about? The Burning Legion is present there. The Consortium and Protectorate are there learning, profiting, and fighting. (I had to double-check what factions of Ethereals were there despite just playing this weekend.)

There’s the village of Kirin’Var (I had to look that up) consisting of the spirits of former Kirin Tor, killed by Kael’thas and his followers. I finally got that nifty staff that summons an image of Archmage Vargoth.

There’s some really beautiful Blood Elf architecture here, too. Who wouldn’t want a huge tent set in a broken world half exposed to the nether?

These guys do, apparently!

Not only did I finish the zone, earning “Into the Nether”…

…but I, Devee the Seeker, also earned the “3000 Quests Completed” achievement! Now it’s off to Shadowmoon Valley. (I see you farmin’ primals in Shadowmoon Valley…)

Mists of Pandaria Press Event

Posted by Peter (Devee) on March 20, 2012

Posted in: Lore, Mists of Pandaria, PVP, Raiding. Tagged: battlegrounds, character models, female pandaren, garrosh hellscream, LFR, Mists of Pandaria, mop, siege of orgrimmar, silvershard mine, temple of power, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

After the NDA on the Mists of Pandaria Press Event lifted, WoW Insider had a lot of new information about the expansion.

The Siege of Orgimmar

This was by far the most exciting news. In Mists’ final patch, we will lay siege to Orgrimmar to remove Garrosh Hellscream as Warchief. What an awesome move! I’m really curious to find out how he falls that far out of favor with the entire Horde. Some of this was planned for a while. Chris Metzen said “We always knew we would make him Warchief, but that would be a short reign. It’s not his Horde.” It would have been nice to see Hellscream hand over the leadership and take up a military position or something of that sort, but this solution works well too. The development of Varian also sounds fantastic. In the same interview, Metzen says that Varian will say something along the lines of “Protect the kids. We’re not here to conquer these people; we’re here to bring down a guy that needs bringin’ down.”

New Battlegrounds

Two new battlegrounds – also great news! Temple of Power is set in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. In it, the Horde and Alliance battle for a powerful artifact. The artifact sits in the middle of the battleground with the two factions’ graveyards on either end. When someone picks up the artifact, they start earning points for their team. However, holding the artifact also causes damage to the holder; the longer they hold it, the more damage they start taking. In addition, the farther from the center the holder runs, the less points they’ll earn for their team. This keeps them engaged. It sounds like a fun new battleground gets its inspiration from a FPS match type just like most of the other battlegrounds.

On a similar note, have you heard of payload maps in TF2? Well, tha’s what you’re getting in Silvershard Mine. The Silvershard Mine is an abandoned Venture Co. mine in Stranglethorn Vale, and the Horde and Alliance are fighting over it for resources. Standing near the mine cart moves it forward; get it to the end, and you win. In addition, enemies can flip switches to make it take a longer path. This also sounds like a lot of fun.

(Image from WoW Insider.)

Female Pandaren

The female Pandaren model was also revealed! Females can be black and white like their male counterparts or red pandas. The red pandas will have tails, too! They’re very cute!

New Raid Finder Loot Rules

This is particularly interesting I think. Instead of rolling against other players, you simply have a chance to win a random piece of loot usable by your spec. Quite the departure from normal loot mechanics, but a good one for the Raid Finder.

New Computer and TOR!

Posted by Peter (Devee) on March 19, 2012

Posted in: Carpe Flux Capacitor, Journal. Tagged: Carpe Flux Capacitor, hardware, the old republic, tor, upgrade, world of warcraft, wow. 1 Comment

Or: Why I Have the Best Guild

As I’ve mentioned previously, my guild is pretty empty in World of Warcraft; however, most of the members have been playing The Old Republic together. My little Intel i3 laptop with integrated graphics can hardly play WoW, so I didn’t want to spend money on TOR when I knew I wouldn’t be able to play it.

Eventually, my friend Kristine shipped me a copy of the game. The idea was that if I couldn’t play it now, eventually I’d get my computer fixed and upgraded and would then have a copy. Mooglegem and I excitedly planned our characters and spend hours in character creation only to find that my computer could most definitely not handle TOR.

Did my guild shrug it off and tell me they’d see me later? No. They shipped me a computer.

Nate had an extra computer he wasn’t using, so he shipped it last week and I got it up and running Friday night. It’s a Gateway FX7026 with a Core 2 Quad CPU at 2.50 GHz and 4 GB of DDR2 RAM running Vista Home Premium 64-bit. I had some trouble getting it to run at first, but after a recovery it’s working. It’s crashed a couple times while playing TOR, but I hope to have that fixed soon (and even if I can’t, it’s not a huge deal).

The computer was missing the side-panel, which would make heat an issue. Again, what did the guild do? You’d think they’d inform me to buy one, but Kristine ordered one and had it shipped to my house. On top of this, Justin upgraded his video card and shipped me his old one. It will arrive tomorrow.

Simply amazing. I’m so lucky!

Day 2 – Why I decided to start a blog

Posted by Peter (Devee) on March 14, 2012

Posted in: 20 Day WoW Blogging Challenge. Tagged: blog, webpageless, world of warcraft, wow. 1 Comment

I’ve enjoyed blogging for a while but didn’t have a great place to write about WoW. I’ve had a website since elementary school, although it’s drifted from Geocities, to being hosted locally, to being commercially hosted. It was a never a blog but rather a location to store funny things and ideas mostly. In 2000 my site was renamed “WebPageless.” Shortly afterward I started the “Fuzzy Journal” as a parody of Live Journal because I disliked the idea of LJ. My opinion changed and that became the focus of my site. At that time I was coding everything by hand. In 2004 I upgrade to Movable Type, and that was the start of the “modern” WebPageless. In fact, I’ve lost most of the older content. Now I try to stay away from boring journal posts unless I did something interesting, but I still love writing.

How does this relate to this site? I wanted to share a ton of WoW screenshots, but it didn’t really seem to fit with WebPageless. Sure, WebPageless was already without focus, but I didn’t want to overrun it with screenshots, so I created a separate site using Movable Type. It was a flawed system, especially since I wanted to let guildies use it without logging into the actual site and being able to mess with it. I came up a zany approach using lots of e-mail forwarding and Flickr. Each person had their own e-mail address to which they’d e-mail screenshots. This would get autoforwarded to Flickr. Flickr used the Movable Type plugin to automatically post to the blog, and because each person had his or her own e-mail address, the blog would know who was posting it. But what if I wanted to talk about things without posting screenshots?

It seemed like I talked about World of Warcraft enough to make a completely separate blog, so that’s what I did. I was hoping that Mooglegem would post a lot too, but that’s rare! Anyways, that’s how Kor’kron 501st was born!

Day 1 – Introduce yourself

Posted by earthwormgem on March 12, 2012

Posted in: 20 Day WoW Blogging Challenge, In Character, Role-Playing. Tagged: in-character, introduction, meme, world of warcraft, wow. 1 Comment

Hi everyone! I don’t usually talk about myself like this, but I guess that’s what this challenge is all about! My name is Mooglegem – my parents were planning to name me something normal like Theresa or Regina, but after my mom’s first drunken night on the town since my conception, it was decided – my name is Mooglegem.

I love dogs! Growing up in Silvermoon made me feel like I had to be a cat lover. Sure, they’re soft and cuddly… until you cuddle them too much and they start biting you and your eyes start swelling up and your skin gets red and bumpy. I might be the only Blood Elf who is allergic to cats. Anyway, I love dogs! They’re so friendly! I actually love all kinds of animals – the larger, the better. I considered studying to be an animal keeper, but my parents were repulsed by the idea of me smelling of animal musk and cleaning up poop. I excelled with the arcane arts, so I studied magery instead.

… and now you know all about me! Yay!

20 Days of Challenging WoW Blogging « clearcasting

Posted by Peter (Devee) on March 9, 2012

Posted in: 20 Day WoW Blogging Challenge, World of Warcraft. Tagged: clearcasting, introduction, meme, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

I noticed Arioch of clearcasting was taking part in a “20 Day WoW Blogging Challenge,” which seemed like it could be fun. Because I’m hardly even playing WoW right now, I thought it would be fun to try it. Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to talk Mooglegem into doing it as well!

Day 01 – Introduce yourself [Devee] [gem]
Day 02 – Why you decided to start a blog [Devee] [gem]
Day 03 – Your first day playing WoW [Devee] [gem]
Day 04 – Your best WoW memory [Devee]
Day 05 – Favourite items in game
Day 06 – Your workplace/desk photo and/or description
Day 07 – The reason behind your blog’s name
Day 08 – 10 things we don’t know about you
Day 09 – Your first blog post
Day 10 – Blog/Website favourites
Day 11 – Bad habits and flaws
Day 12 – A usual day in your life/online time
Day 13 – People players/bloggers that you admire
Day 14 – This upsets you
Day 15 – Your desktop background on your computer and why you chose it
Day 16 – Things you miss post Cataclysm
Day 17 – Your favourite spot in game or outside it
Day 18 – Your favourite outfit
Day 19 – In your bags/bank
Day 20 – If this was your last day playing WoW, what would you do?

via 20 Days of Challenging WoW Blogging « clearcasting.

Shall I start today then?

Day 1!

My name’s Peter, and I go by Devee in World of Warcraft. I started playing WoW on launch day but would play in bursts. I never reached a level cap until I hit 80 on my troll disc priest. Not only did I take breaks from the game, but I took my time when I played. I enjoyed exploring, reading all the text I could find, and getting to know the game world. Perhaps this is a leftover trait from playing table-top RPGs. I also had roughly 50,000 HKs by the time I hit 80! I started raiding with Carpe Flux Capacitor in 3.3, completing ICC 10N, ICC 25N, and some heroics. Mooglegem and I also somehow convinced the guild to take us to Ulduar and earn our drakes! I took a short break from CFC in T11 but came back at the end of T12 to swoop in and clear Firelands. We raided T12 for a while but stopped due to low interest (and raid finder). I love raiding, but it’s hard to devote the time. However, battlegrounds are always fun! (Also, I love healing!)

In real life I work for a technology company in a cubicle with a custom WoW figure in a protective, plastic case. I live in Southern California and graduated from UC Irvine.

Bastion of Twilight, Rolls, and Giants

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 22, 2012

Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: bastion of twilight, bot, cho'gall, deathwing, Dragon Soul, ds, giants, roll, spine of deathwing, theralion, twilight ascendants, valiona, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

We might be a few patches too late, but Mooglegem and I finally did Bastion of Twilight this weekend. There was a group doing a transmog run, and we joined mainly to finish Bastion of Twilight. As you can see, we proudly took over Cho’gall’s throne!

Surprisingly, Valiona and Theralion seemed to be the hardest fight in the raid. I guess this must be due to interesting mechanics since we all out-geared the entire raid. Cho’gall was significantly easier than the Twilight Ascendants also.

I also fulfilled a patch-long dream of flying off Deathwing after getting him to roll! In normal and heroic mode, you have to make Deathwing roll to succeed in the encounter. In LFR, you don’t need to make him roll, so by extension, you should not make him roll. I always hope he’ll roll just to see it. It was kind of a let down. I expected the camera to stay fixed so I could actually watch him roll.

Oh my god! What’s that on the other island?! Giant Devee and Mooglegem!

New Mounts

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 20, 2012

Posted in: Devee, Holidays, Journal. Tagged: bear, darkmoon dancing bear, darkmoon faire, love is in the air, mounts, swift lovebird, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

Three holidays at the same time might have been a lot of work, but at least I got a couple mounts out of it! First, we got out Darkmoon Dancing Bears. It makes me sad thinking about the painful way bears are treated in captivity (especially how they’re taught to “dance”). Still, I like collecting bears in WoW because bears are cute, okay?

We also snagged the odd Swift Lovebirds. In this picture, our Lovebirds are kissing! Or it’s possible they’re just being kind of ugly together.

(Horde) Love is in the Air

Posted by earthwormgem on February 14, 2012

Posted in: Devee, Holidays, Journal, Role-Playing. Tagged: baking, cookies, crafts, horde, love is in the air, world of warcraft, wow. 2 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

Zug Zug

I actually made these totally sweet confections for my guild’s Secret Santa, but I never got around to posting them.

About a year ago, Harley sent me pictures of these beautiful Horde cookies from C is for Cupcakes with one sentence: “but how do we make them?!” They’re pretty fancy looking – with fondant maybe? …probably? I haven’t tried working with fondant yet. It sounds like a lot of work. Maybe I’ll make it a goal to try working with fondant by the end of this year. Hm…

I was pretty intrigued by the idea of making Horde cookies for months – I didn’t want to put a lot of time into planning them, but I really wanted to make them. Eventually, I got off my lazy butt and started researching custom cookie cutters. I severely mangled a few cookie cutters before I ended up with this thing:

Man, I need some RL blacksmithing skills. >__>

The hardest part was flopping these symbols onto the oval portion. The little arms would rip off, and I’d have to roll it out again. I’m sure if I had the patience to stick it in the fridge after every step (roll it out, stick it in the fridge, cut, stick it in the fridge, flop, stick it in the fridge, repeat), I could have avoided some real aggravation, but… *ahem* Thrall’s balls! The Horde doesn’t wait for anyone!

Anyway, I hope you have a great day!

Love is in the Air

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 14, 2012

Posted in: Devee, Holidays, Journal. Tagged: Dragon Soul, Holiday, love is in the air, romantic picnic basket, skyfire, warmaster blackhorn, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

Happy Love is in the Air! And happy Valentine’s Day for those of you keeping track in the real world. Mooglegem decided to put down her Romantic Picnic Basket on the deck of the Skyfire before we chased Deathwing this week. Quite a few people decided to join!

I hope everyone’s spending the day with a loved one!

Grinding in LFR

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 13, 2012

Posted in: Game Mechanics, Raiding. Tagged: Dragon Soul, grinding, LFR, love is in the air, T13, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

This weekend I did LFR as I always do. It was terrible. I enjoyed having the opportunity to see Dragon Soul at first, but I stopped having fun in LFR a while ago.

Why?

The trash is incredibly boring. The bosses are not challenging. We only wipe if a large portion of the group has no idea what they’re doing. There’s very little I need (two rings). The upgrades I do need aren’t even that helpful. (And of course, my computer can’t handle 25s very well.)

It seems to me that there’s two reasons to do anything in World of Warcraft. The biggest reason to do anything is that you enjoy it. The secondary reason is the reason on which Blizzard depends to keep us all paying; we do things we don’t enjoy because it will help us do the things we do enjoy. This is called “grinding.”

I like raiding. I like the increasing challenge of pushing ahead, and I like experiencing new content for the design, story, and lore. Doing LFR was great because it was a way to see Dragon Soul. However, there’s no challenge in it. Yes, there are still wipes, but they’re never because of me. The only reason to do LFR is for equipment upgrades and Valor Points. But upgrades are only important because they help you to do better. Grinding for upgrades falls into the second category of why we play World of Warcraft. However, I’m not raiding normal Dragon Soul at all. I’m not in a raid group currently, and PuGs all seem to want the full achievement. I suppose I could try talking a PuG into taking me, but it just doesn’t seem worth the trouble. The most Dragon Soul I’m seeing is LFR, and I’m obviously able to complete that easily every week. If that’s the case, why try for upgrades? Upgrades aren’t going to help me in normal mode because I’m not doing normal mode, and they’re not going to help me in LFR because it’s already not a problem.

Why even do LFR then? Well, that’s exactly what I’m wondering. I’m going to try to stop doing things that I don’t enjoy. Some small grinds might be worth it. For example, I’ll continue doing the Love is in the Air holiday boss for the chance at the mount. However, I’m not going to make a big deal about working LFR and other heroics into my week. I don’t even need Valor Points anymore, so is it really worth stressing over LFR for two rings that I don’t even really need?

There’s a part of me that wants to be as best equipped as possible, but is being “BiS LFR” really worth saying?

The Success of LFR

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 10, 2012

Posted in: Game Mechanics. Tagged: guild, guilds, LFR, looking for raid, vishanka, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

I don’t have access to Blizzard’s data to know whether or not LFR is successful. I suspect it is, and I have some personal examples to back this claim.

First, my guild has stopped raiding. While it’s possible that this was partly due to people not caring about Dragon Soul as much after seeing it in LFR, this is also the reason why I can thank LFR. I’m unable to raid normal mode currently, but at least I’ve seen it in LFR. Of course, the same can be said about Mooglegem and our other raiders.

The better story, however, is a friend of mine in a 5-man guild. He plays every Friday night with his small guild of close friends. They don’t want to recruit people they don’t know, they don’t want to merge with another guild, but they don’t want to leave their guild. Many hardcore WoW players might find this odd, but I don’t think it’s such a rare scenario. He had never raided before, and I told him about LFR.

Last weekend he ran LFR for the first time. While it can seem very easy for those who have done normal mode, it was exciting for him and he was focused the whole time on his role, not even having the time to look around and enjoy the scenery. I’m sure as he continues to run LFR, he’ll become accustomed to it and get the chance to look at the detail and enjoy the encounters.

And he even won Vishanka, Jaws of the Earth.

Dev Watercooler — The Role of Role – World of Warcraft

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 9, 2012

Posted in: Game Mechanics. Tagged: balance, blue post, class roles, dev watercooler, ghostcrawler, mechanics, specs. Leave a comment

Dev Watercooler — The Role of Role – World of Warcraft.

Yesterday Ghostcrawler discussed class roles in WoW regarding classes that have multiple DPS specs. He discussed each different model in detail. It’s worth noting here that he didn’t say which was best, and he didn’t give any indication of the direction Blizzard will be taking in Mists. However, it’s still an interesting read.

Here are the roles he mentioned for DPS. These are his exact words put into a numbered list.

Everyone is equal all the time
Everyone has specialties and you match the spec to the situation
You swap specs to gain specific utility
There is just a best spec for PvP and PvE
Don’t have multiple DPS roles

What should you take away from the whole discussion? This quote:

But Which is the Best Model?

Hell if I know!…

Taking a Break

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 6, 2012

Posted in: Devee, Journal, Raiding. Tagged: Carpe Flux Capacitor, deathwing, Dragon Soul, LFR, lore, story. Leave a comment

It looks like Carpe Flux Capacitor is taking a break from raiding. The last few weeks we’ve been unable to raid due to lack of attendance. Our guild leader took a vote to see if we wanted officially to take a break. The idea is that if we don’t do this officially, we’ll continue to waste our time showing up, and then the people who have been showing up will get tired and quit. While I want to raid, I agree with her thinking; I voted in favor of the break as well.

There’s a lot of joking that The Old Republic killed us, but the people who are playing ToR all login for raids. We’ve just been dwindling, and not everyone makes it every week. I think LFR is contributing. There are three reasons to raid.

Gear for the next raid
Experience the fights and lore
The actual “game” of achieving progressive challenges

Being that Dragon Soul is the last raid of the expansion, there’s no reason to use it to gear up. We will not this gear to be able to do the next raid because Mists of Pandaria’s greens will be better than what we can get here. I don’t agree with this point because it seems to me that if we only raided to be able to do proceeding raids, then why raid at all? Still, I believe this is one of the reasons people raid, and one of the reasons why we don’t have the attendance now.

As for experiencing the fights and lore, LFR killed this. We’ve all experienced Dragon Soul already. Yeah, there are obviously mechanical differences (and I’d really love to see Deathwing roll), but the story is the same. We’ve seen it. There goes that incentive.

What’s left is pure game. Doing normal mode solely for the challenge of pushing ourselves. This is all that’s left. Even if we finished normal mode, this would push us to do heroic as well. It doesn’t look like this reason is enough.

In general, I like LFR, but I think it contributed to this. Regardless, it’s done it for me as well. I like the idea of raiding, but the break is nice too!

Breakfast Topic: What parts of gameplay do you consider a chore?

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 5, 2012

Posted in: Game Mechanics, WoW Insider Breakfast Topic. Tagged: breakfast topic, gear, grinds, LFR, valor points, wow insider. Leave a comment

What do you consider a chore in WoW? What are the not-that-fun-but-necessary parts of the game? What are things that you just won’t do because they’re too tiresome?

via Breakfast Topic: What parts of gameplay do you consider a chore?.

Saturday’s Breakfast Topic on WoW Insider was on parts of WoW that are chores or grinds. I don’t think the chores are separate than the parts I enjoy. That isn’t to say that I enjoy the chores. It’s just that WoW requires players to do the same things again and again until fun things become terrible.

I was going to write about this anyways, but it fits in well here:

LFR was fun. LFR is a chore.

Grinding normal mode has a reason. Usually, unless you’re heroically geared from the previous tier, you don’t clear normal mode right away. You work at it, and as you do, you get better gear. Eventually the gear (along with skill) allows you progress further in normal mode.

LFR allows any group to immediately succeed and finish. Why bother gearing then? I suppose for normal mode, but it’s just so, so, so boring at this point. I still do it because I want to get better gear. And luckily, I’m almost done. There’s a ring from LFR that’s an upgrade, and then I’ll be done with both Valor Points and LFR drops. However, it’s been boring for a while now.

How do we fix this chore?

I suppose we get rid of LFR loot. Valor Point I understand and like. Yeah, the three 5-mans seem like chores now too, but at least I get some choices. I can raid the current tier, I can do random heroics, I can do LFR, and I can do Baradin Hold. All of these things give Valor Points. However, if you need LFR loot, you have to do LFR. This should be fixed!

But what’s next? No more drops from raids at all? Stupid!

That’s not exactly what I mean. In normal or heroic raids, at least you’re making progress (in theory). It’s never ridiculously easy. If it was, you’d plow through until you got to the boss on which you were working.

LFR doesn’t help in LFR, because you’re able to plow right through LFR. I don’t think you should have to grind the same boring thing over and over for a single piece of loot. I’m happy to have normal and heroic raid bosses drop real loot, but things that are purely for grinding should award Valor Points, allowing people to choose from a variety of things to grind.

Here’s my solution: Leave tier tokens in LFR. Have more VP gear. Done!

As an aside, how about giving Valor Points for completing specific heroics, but not as much as a random? Just a thought.

Albino Drake

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 4, 2012

Posted in: Achievements, Holidays. Tagged: blizzard, camel, drake, elders of cataclysm, leading the cavalry, lunar festival, mounts, one hump or two, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

While doing Elders of Cataclysm (which I did finish), Moogle suggested we stop to buy camels. They were cheap, so I picked up both of them. Let’s be honest though; I don’t think I’m ever going to really want to use them. till, One Hump or Two? is nice.

As an added bonus, I got Leading the Cavalry for obtaining 50 mounts! That’s pretty cool. I just have one small issue with this.

I get 50 mounts. Blizzard must be able to guess that if I have 50 mounts, some of them must be pretty sweet, right? And then Blizzard goes “since you have so many sweet mounts, check this one out!” What is it? A boring Albino Drake. Thanks so much Blizzard.

But still, I’ll take it!

Conqueror and ICC 25H

Posted by Peter (Devee) on January 30, 2012

Posted in: Devee, Journal, PVP, Raiding. Tagged: arathi basin, conqueror, defilers, grind, ICC, icebound frostbrood vanquisher, icecrown citadel, reputation, t10, title. 1 Comment

What an amazing weekend in WoW! I suppose that picture gives you a clue about part of my happy weekend, but let’s go through in order.

I knew this weekend was going to be packed with action before it even started. How? Because it was Arathi Basin weekend, of course! The Defilers were the last faction I needed to earn the “Conqueror” title. I was around 18,000 out of 21,000 reputation, and a win gives about 140 reputation. What’s the first step to doing well in a battleground? Scaring your enemy of course, and what better way than wearing the face of a wolf on your head?!

It doesn’t look particularly priestly, but I suppose it looks trolly!

On Saturday, it finally happened; I hit exalted! After all that long grinding, I was finally Conqueror Devee! It was a long grind. Keep in mind that I was around 50,000 HKs when I hit my first level cap at 80. Also of note – it’s a grind. It’s not skill. I’m actually not that great!

As an aside, Cynwise posted a great article called “The Problems of PvP Reputation Grinds in Cataclysm” on “Cynwise’s Battlefield Manual” today. It’s a great read (as is the entire blog), and he even /salute’d me for reaching Conqueror!

Then I called a very important meeting with Mooglegem and other Horde commanders in the Hall of Legends. New plan: Get 10,000 more HKs so I can be “Devee of the Horde.”

Then it was off to Icecrown Citadel for my second week of joining Buzzleetgear’s ICC 25H. That’s my T10 in the picture. It’s what I most often picture Devee wearing because I wore it for so long. ICC was the current raid for about a year, and it was also the first current raid for which I was raid-ready, so that tier is very special for me.

I needed two achievements. I needed Portal Jockey on Valithria, and I needed to be bit on the Blood-Queen. Buzzleetgear was nice enough to set me as the second bite! The first bite was for the person working on Shadowmourne. I’m guessing he set me as second since I needed so few achievements, which was nice of him. Then, on Valithria, I was designated the healer to stay outside of the Emerald Nightmare. It went well! I was so nervous about the achievement that I stayed inside Valithria’s hitbox, making sure to set my camera so I wouldn’t see the portals. It was freaking me out! Luckily, we were successful! And then during the Lich King fight, I was set as the ranged stack point. Quite the honor! It took a couple pulls, but we did it again. By the end of the night, I received three heroic tier tokens (and a Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher that you can see at the top of this post). And that brings me to my final screenshot of the day.

How do I look in my Heroic Sanctified Crimson Acolyte gear? Wonderful? Priestly? Amazing? Yes to all of this. I’m looking forward to running with his group more in the future even though I won’t need it. ICC is very fun when you haven’t been running it for a year, and Buzzleetgear is a great leader!

Favorite Cataclysm NPCs

Posted by Peter (Devee) on January 25, 2012

Posted in: WoW Insider Breakfast Topic. Tagged: bears, breakfast topic, cataclysm, erunak stonespeaker, hyjal, legionnaire nazgrim, mylune, nazgrim, NPC, thrall's balls, vashj'ir, wow insider. Leave a comment

Today’s Breakfast Topic from WoW Insider was on memorable NPCs from Cataclysm. Anne Stickney begins her discussion with Mylune, the dryad from Hyjal. She ends with two questions; “Do you have a favorite NPC that was introduced with Cataclysm? Who stands out in your mind?” Well, I skipped a lot of quests from Vanilla and BC (and a couple zones from Wrath), so I’ll pretend that NPCs I didn’t know about previously count.

First, I completely agree with the choice of Mylune. She’s so cute. Devee would totally love to hook up with her. Read the quest text from these two quests. Don’t you want to cuddle her?

Speaking of things I want to cuddle (and Hyjal), I love the bear cubs you save. Do they count as NPCs? No?! Well… um… then I also love Tortolla, the giant turtle that you get to hang out with in Hyjal.

I also like Erunak Stonespeaker. I’ll admit, it’s not really because of him. What I love is the way he progresses with you as you play through Vashj’ir. Very cool. It made the zone feel much more alive.

There’s one final NPC that I have to mention, and he’s also from Vashj’ir. Thrall’s balls is he a good one! Of course, I’m talking about Legionnaire Nazgrim. Hey! Technically Legionnaire Nazgrim was introduced in Cataclysm.

Priestly

Posted by Peter (Devee) on January 24, 2012

Posted in: Devee, Journal, Priest, Transmog. Tagged: gear, outfits, transmog, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

First, my evening started with good news. Fiirnok wants to do LFR again this week with us! No one else in the guild seems to want to do it really, so we decided to do it together on Friday. Then, Darth got online! I haven’t seen him in over a month, so I’m glad he came back around. He plans on getting raid-ready this week and rejoining the raid team next week.

Next, some bad news. There weren’t enough people to raid again this week. We need every active raider to be available to be able to raid pretty much thanks to some drops. Oh well.

Then back to good news! I spent the evening working on transmog! You can see the front of it above. Below, you can see the back.

I was trying on all sorts of random things from the AH and not really finding anything I liked. Then, as I was looking through Mooglegem’s tailoring, I saw the Runecloth Robe. It was so… priestly! I’ve always thought that most gear I’ve had looked too aggressive. When I saw that robe, I knew I had to use it! Then I just had to match some pieces to it.

Head: Heroes Crown of Faith
Shoulders: Mantle of Prophecy
Back: Wrap of the Great Turtle
Chest: Runecloth Robe
Hands: Sanctified Crimson Acolyte Gloves
Belt: Vestal’s Irrepressible Girdle
Main Hand: Incineratus
Off Hand: Bioluminescent Lamp
Wand: Crescent Wand

The set can be improved by finding white gloves and by getting rid of this darn dagger. Daggers do not look good for a priest. As soon as I get a mace, I’ll have plenty of transmog options. Just you wait!

The Light of Dawn

Posted by Peter (Devee) on January 22, 2012

Posted in: Raiding. Tagged: glory of the icecrown raider, icebound frostbrood vanquisher, icecrown citadel, lich king, light of dawn, pve, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

We might not have progressed in Dragon Soul this week, but we still progressed! Mooglegem and I finally Icecrown Citadel 25 Heroic. We couldn’t help but proudly sport our new “the Light of Dawn” titles here.

It seems that every week a paladin named Buzzleetgear leads a ICC 25H on our server. It was a lot of fun, and I’ll look for the run in the future. We had a few problems, but nothing to really bother me.

Going into the raid, I needed seven more achievements to get Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25 player) and the Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher – the four heroic wing achievements, “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” on the Blood-Queen, “Portal Jockey” on Dreamwalker, and “Neck-Deep in Vile” on the Lich King. I managed to earn the heroic wing achievements as well as Neck-Deep in Vile. I don’t think the other two achievements should be too hard in the future. I’m definitely feeling excited about the Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher being within my reach! I also snagged a heroic tier token. Heroic sanctified tier 10 is a beautiful light blue while the sanctified I had now is orange. The blue looks gorgeous and very “priestly,” I think. I hope I get some more tokens in the future!

Is it sad that my best PVE title is from Wrath?

The End of the Line

Posted by Peter (Devee) on January 16, 2012

Posted in: Lore. Tagged: black dragonflight, chromatic dragonflight, chromatus, deathwing, nefarian, netherwing dragonflight, onyxia, sinestra, twilight dragonflight, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

“Mere whelps, experiments, a means to a greater end. You will see what the research of my clutch has yielded. Nefarian, Onyxia, Sinestra… they were nothing. Now you face my ultimate creation. The Hour of Twilight is nigh; the sun sets on your pitiful mortal existence.” – Deathwing, Ultraxion encounter in Dragon Soul

This quote always makes me a bit sad. Deathwing sums up much of the story of the Black Dragonflight, and by the end of Dragon Soul, we seem to bring it to a close. Allow me to explain what I mean.

Many of the bosses we fight can be grouped together. For example, we have Old Gods, Scourge, trolls, and Titan constructs. We also have the Black Dragonflight. Unlike some of the other that are grouped together by race or purpose, Nefarian, Onyxia, Sinestra, and Deathwing are family. In Vanilla, we kill Deathwing’s son and daughter, Nefarian and Onyxia. In the Burning Crusade, we see Sinestra, Deathwing’s prime consort and mother of Nefarian and Onyxia. Wrath of the Lich King brings us Onyxia again. During Cataclysm, we kill Nefarian and Onyxia for good, we slay Sinestra, and we go on to kill Deathwing himself.

It’s interesting having an entire family as bosses – a lineage of enemies for us to battle. It seems like that’s done now. On top of this, Deathwing himself doesn’t even seem to care that they were family (not that I’d expect him to care at this point). In fact, I think his mentioning of them in his monologue before the Ultraxion fight exemplifies this and is a nice detail reinforcing the fact that he’s insane and cares only about destruction. Deathwing calls Nefarian, Onyxia, and Sinestra nothing compared to his ultimate creation, Ultraxion. Never mind that they were his children and lover.

Will we see more of the Black Dragonflight as enemies in the future? I suppose we could, but I doubt they’d serve any real link to Deathwing. New black dragons could become evil all on their own. (Update: I understand that there are uncorrupted black dragons. However, if they become bosses in the future, they will most likely be bosses for some other reason. The on-going problem of the Black Dragonflight has still been solved.) Then we have three new dragonflights that were created, either directly or indirectly, by the Black Dragonflight.

First, there was the Chromatic Dragonflight – dragons that possessed the powers of all five flights. As far as I know, and I might be wrong because I didn’t play endgame in Vanilla, there’s only one known adult Chromatic Dragon. Chromatus has five heads, each a different color. While he was defeated, he’s not exactly dead. He planned on mating with a Blue Dragon to create natural Chromatic Dragons, and I believe Blizzard will definitely return to this in the future.

Next, there’s the Netherwing Dragonflight, dragons that were exposed directly to the Twisting Nether and were, well, twisted by it. So far, they haven’t stirred up much trouble. They wanted to be left alone, and they eventually were able to do as they pleased thanks to player involvement in the Burning Crusade. We could definitely see more of them.

And then there’s the Twilight Dragonflight, Netherwing eggs further twisted by the Black Dragonflight. We see them a bit in Wrath of the Lich King, first as drakes in the Obsidian Sanctum and then as Halion in the Ruby Sanctum. In Cataclysm we see them quite a bit more, culminating in the slaying of Ultraxion.

Really, Blizzard could throw anything at us. There’s always a way for them to bring back anything they want – Black, Chromatic, Netherwing, or Twilight. In my opinion, we won’t see any trouble from the Black Dragonflight for a while. They’ve effectively been wiped out, although new Black Dragons could be born or less important ones could decide they’re mad and decide to fight us. The Netherwing have been rather neutral. Sure, they could get mad or turn evil if Blizzard decides to do that, but there isn’t any reason for it. Without a powerful Black Dragonflight, I don’t see a high chance of more Twilight or Chromatic Dragons being created. Of course, there’s still Chromatus. It’s very likely we’ll see him again.

With the end of Cataclysm, we see the end of the line of Deathwing. It’s been fun.

Hagara and Ultraxion

Posted by Peter (Devee) on January 7, 2012

Posted in: Devee, Journal, Raiding. Tagged: hagara, ultraxion, warlord zon'ozz, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

This week we managed to kill Hagara and Ultraxion! It was only our second time killing Warlord Zon’ozz, and we one shot him with no problems. That alone made me happy. Then it was on to Hagara. We did wipe a few times to placement in the non-primary phases, but she was still very easy. It’s very similar to LFR. Of course, we have to be more careful about losing people to ice walls. Also, we have to make sure to break people out of ice tombs. My only issue was that I had to pay attention to ice tombs to keep the tanks from getting LOS’d.

Ultraxion was bit of a bigger problem I think, even though I expected him to be easy. Luckily I never screwed up Heroic Will, but mistakes were made. I don’t remember one person in particular having continually trouble. Rather, I think different people would slip. Overall, a very easy fight.

I don’t imagine us ever again getting stuck on Warlord Zon’ozz, Hagara, or Ultraxion. That’s exactly how I like it. RNG in fights is bad. I like to get stuck, try repeatedly, and then never get stuck again once we’ve acquired the skill to overcome the challenge.

I’ll be out of town for the next raid night, but if I’m right about us not getting stuck again and they manage to get a full raid group, I’d suspect a Blackhorn kill next week. hopefully they can fill without me!

Winter Veil, PVP, and Fishing

Posted by Peter (Devee) on January 2, 2012

Posted in: Devee, Holidays, Journal, PVP. Tagged: fishing, sea pony, warsong gulch, winter veil, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

During Winter Veil, there was a nice woman Lyllian giving out presents to people under the tree. It seems like she must have had a variety of things wrapped, because some people got different things. I got a mood ring, so I bought her some flowers and gave them back!

In Warsong Gulch, I met a DK from Mal’Ganis named Craigmack who had some interesting RP announcement (although not a very good RP name.

“Sons of the Horde! Of Thrall! My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of The Horde fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of the Horde comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Warriors of the Horde!”

I entered a WSG match with a fun team composition. We had a prot warrior, a mage, a hunter, a resto shaman, and six healing priests. Near the beginning of the match, one of the priests dropped group but was replaced by a holy paladin. Being so heavy on healing, we weren’t sure how we’d fair. It seems like most of the enemy team hit our flag carrier. The enemy flag carrier was being guarded by two healing priests. I went to get our flag back with the restoration shaman and a hunter. It was so much fun! The shaman stayed on heals, the hunter DPS’d the enemy flag carrier the entire time, I worked on CC. Using a combination of Mind Control, fear, and Mana Burn, I kept the priests in check while the hunter got the efc down. It felt great, and I don’t normally use MC quite as much! By the end of the match, our composition had changed a lot, but in the screenshot, you can see the shaman and me talking.

Ysera is hot.

I finally hit exalted with the Warsong Outriders. I would have done it over the Christmas weekend, but stupid Christmas got in the way! Now I’m almost 18000/21000 with the Defilers. Once I hit exalted with them, I’ll be a Conqueror.

Today, I decided to do some fishing at the Darkmoon Faire. I maxed my fishing skill…

…and then I caught a Sea Pony!

Moogle caught one too! We enjoy fishing! =D

New Cloak

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 20, 2011

Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: gear, outfits, transmog, transmogrification, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

I got a new cloak that matches my shoulders really well! I’m actually pretty excited. It looks especially good when my Archangel wings are active! I’ll show you that later!

Transmog

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 19, 2011

Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: hammer of purified flame, outfits, quel'delar, transmogrification, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

I’m really enjoying transmogrification. Here I’m using some PVP mooncloth robes, a bioluminescent lamp, a Dragon Sould weapon, a 4.3 heroic belt, my T13 head piece, and T1 shoulders.

I really wish you could transmogrify weapons into a different type. I want to use a mace! I have a very nice troll mace I’d like to use as well as the Hammer of Purified Flame that I received after returning Quel’Delar to the Sunreavers.

Hot

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 18, 2011

Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: Carpe Flux Capacitor, girls, outfits, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

I only hang out with the hottest girls. It’s blood elf bunnies all the way for me, you know?

I might have the sluttiest guild leader. No complaints.

Dragon Soul 3/8

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 17, 2011

Posted in: Raiding, Videos. Tagged: Carpe Flux Capacitor, Dragon Soul, kill shot, video, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

I realized I never posted kill shots! Oh no! Here we are after having killed Morchok.

And now you get to see an off-center kill shot of Yor’sahj the Unsleeping. He must have been tired.

This is our newest kill shot from Tuesday! We killed that dumb Warlord Zon’ozz!

And another video from Zaghar! Woo!

LFR, Dungeons, Dailies, and the Darkmoon Faire

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 16, 2011

Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: Arena, cooking, dailies, darkmoon faire, Dragon Soul, fishing, LFR, PvP, well of eternity. Leave a comment

I thought I’d share some screenshots of my activities. Here Mooglegem and I are hanging out with Thrall and the Aspects. That jerk Deathwing is in the shot too.

We had to borrow some power from the Burning Legion in order to fight them in the Well of Eternity.

I finally finished all my cooking and fishing dailies!

I got on this stupid ride and couldn’t get off of it again. Every once in a while, custom interfaces fail me. I took a guess and typed /exitvehicle. Luckily, that’s the correct command.

I got into a group for the Darkmoon Faire arena and we totally kicked butt. It was a lot of fun!

Happy Winter Veil!

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 15, 2011

Posted in: Holidays. Tagged: Carpe Flux Capacitor, winter veil, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

Today marks the first day Winter Veil! As Greatfather Winter walks across the land, his billowing cloak leaves behind a wintry veil. By welcoming him into our cities and hearts, we are rewarded with a great Feast of Winter Veil!

Here you can see me celebrating with some hot chicks. Um, I mean Moogle, Harley, and a non-guildie we ran into who likes to celebrate!

And for our Secret Santa, we have five whole people who signed up! Wooo!

Loot Rules for Tier Pieces

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 13, 2011

Posted in: Raiding. Tagged: Carpe Flux Capacitor, LFR, loot rules, raiding, T13, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

This patch introduced the Looking for Raid tool, which is great. It allows people who weren’t able to raid previously to raid. It allows people who already raid to minor upgrades faster. Because tier pieces from LFR will satisfy set bonus requirements along with normal mode pieces, it allows raiders to reach their four-piece bonus faster. However, this creates an interesting problem.

When a tier token drops in normal, should a raider who already has the LFR version pass on the token to allow someone who doesn’t have tier 13 for that slot at all a chance? This would help people reach their set bonuses faster as well as give pieces to people who need them the most. However, there’s another side to this. What if person A runs LFR every week, and person B never runs LFR. Person B might have an initial advantage because they’ll get the LFR T13, but in the long run, person B will be better off because they’ll be able to collect 4-piece normal T13 while person A is stuck in LFR T13.

I was thinking about this yesterday so I brought it up with my raid leader / guild leader. As it turns out, she’s been thinking about the same problem. It’s a difficult one, and she plans on asking how the raid team feels. Many of us already pass on loot to let less-geared members have gear. I think we’re all a nice bunch. However, I don’t like the idea of having to always pass on all my tier gear. Last week we ran the LFR all together during our raid time. If we keep doing this, perhaps it won’t be a problem.

I’m still not sure how Carpe Flux Capacitor will handle this. We’ll see how the raid team as a whole feels. I’m sure various raid teams out there will handle this differently. I’m curious what others are planning to do.

Pre-4.3 Journal

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 11, 2011

Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: alterac valley, hellscream's reach, molten front, Tol Barad, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

Remember how I talked about 4.3 the other day? Well, I did some stuff before 4.3 as well.

Mooglegem and I checked out the view of the Molten Front. We were kings of the Spider-Hill on our Flameward Hippogryphs.

We finally finished the Molten Front too except for one pesky achievement. Where’s Mankrik is much more annoying than Where’s Waldo.

Those tauren gave me this big bean dinner, and my stomach didn’t like it.

With Molten Front out of the way, we decided to start doing Tol Barad dailies. Mooglegem would sometimes get stuck in a tree after we slow fell from a tower.

“I claim this tree in the name of Carpe Flux Capacitor!”

While we were questing, preparations began for the next battle. Mooglegem got teleported outside of the hold, but I was stuck inside. However, she was still within Tol Barad. I hearthed out to meet up with her again, but I guess they close the gate to Tol Barad from the peninsula. Then she had to teleport out as well.

During our raid, our tank, Craca, tried to fly away!

For some reason, I was floating above my mount in Uldum. I checked, and it only happened in Uldum, and only with my interface enabled. I use an addon called DragViewPort to change the viewable area of the screen (to create a black rectangle at the bottom). For some reason, this wasn’t compatible with Uldum.

Mooglegem and I eventually did all the Hellscream’s Reach dailies and earned exalted! While there are still more things to purchase, we got what we really wanted – spectral wolves.

Mooglegem keeps watch in Alterac Valley!

After rolling over a bunch of enemies in Uldum, we earned Kata-Mary crowns! What a sweet quest!

And I think that’s almost everything I failed to talk about previously!

Week and a Half into 4.3

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 9, 2011

Posted in: Game Mechanics, World of Warcraft. Tagged: 4.3, darkmoon faire, Dragon Soul, hour of twilight, T13. Leave a comment

We’re now into the second week of 4.3, and I’m extremely happy with it so far. It packed a bunch of features – void storage, transmogrification, three new 5-mans, Dragon Soul, the LFR, the Darkmoon Faire, epic gems, and more!

The first thing I did was look at the simple additions of void storage and transmogrification. I immediately filled my entire void storage. It has 80 slots, and in my opinion is pretty cheap. It’s 100 gold to unlock and 25 gold per item deposit. That’s 2100 gold for 80 slots. What a deal! Next, it was time to transmogrify my gear. I have to be honest; I’ve never been as good as I was in Icecrown Citadel. And I know why! It’s because of my gear of course. To solve this, I transmogrified my gear to look T10. (And actually I’ve been doing well this patch, so it must be working!)

The three 5-mans are very fun although very easy. Nozdormu informs us that we need the Dragon Soul to defeat Deathwing, but we’d need to go back in time to get it. Unfortunately, access to that time period is blocked to him, and the disturbance is in the future. In the first heroic, Nozdormu travels with us into the future in End Time. There we defeat shadows of past heroes in a dark future in which Deathwing succeeded in killing everyone. In the end, we fight Murozond, leader of the Infinite Dragonflight and formerly Nozdormu. This fight is most likely what drives Nozdormu insane and pushes him to become Murozond. Of course, this is also the first time Nozdormu decides to change the timeline, which most likely contributes as well. The fight itself is amazingly cool. Nozdormu gives us the ability to set back time. Our mana and CDs are reset, but Murozond’s health does not reset. It’s pretty cool.

Next up we’re sent back in time to the War of the Ancients where a young kaldorei named Illidan helps to fight the Burning Legion. We even get to fight Azshara (by the way, she’s hot). In the end we’re able to snatch the Dragon Soul. In the final 5-man, Thrall now has the Dragon Soul, and we escort him through Dragonblight to Wyrmrest Temple where the raid begins.

In the raid, we first fight an elemental giant who’s turning the earth against us. Next we fight two faceless ones in the spawn of the Old Gods. I won’t go into the rest of the details because I don’t want to spoil anything. However, we do revisit the Eye of Eternity, board an airship, fight on Deathwing’s back, and then fight Deathwing a second time. The Spine of Deathwing is an especially awesome fight. You cause adds to explode, knocking pieces of armor partially off Deathwing’s back. Then you break tendons holding them in place, sending them flying. Wow, how awesome.

Some people in my guild are annoyed at the difficulty already of 10-man normal, but I’m quite content. It’s the second week, and we’re 2/8. A boss per week is good progress in my opinion. One boss per two weeks would be fine with me even. However, when we add this to the fact that LFR is incredibly easy, I’m not annoyed at all. LFR is broken into two raids of four bosses each. The first is a complete faceroll. The second is a bit harder, and tanks especially will want to read about the fights before entering. Still, I’ve already completed the entire raid in LFR. While it’s easier, it’s very cool to be able to see the entire story. I imagine there are a ton of players out there who never raided previously but can now at least see all the assets. This is fantastic. And if they want to learn to truly raid, they can enter normal (which is easier than it was previously in my opinion). Then, if they want to be challenged as a raider, they start heroic progression. This is a cool way to segment things.

Enough about raiding. Isn’t there an even more casual form of PVE than LFR? There is – the Darkmoon Faire! Again, this is a big success. The coolest thing about it is the ambiance. I love being there. It really feels like a faire. It offers five dailies that are all carnival games. These gives tickets that can be spent on mounts (dancing bear!), pets, heirlooms, and transmogrification gear. There are also quests that can be done once per month for each profession (primary and secondary). There’s also a quest that tasks you with collecting 250 grisly trophies. These appear in your inventory randomly when killing players or PVE enemies that are in your level range. However, they don’t appear every time, and I wish they appeared more. The only annoying aspect is that there are also items that start quests that can drop in battlegrounds and heroics once you get the Darkmoon Adventurer’s Guide. There are nine of these, and they can be turned in once per month each. You can trade them, which is nice, and more importantly, you can find them even when the faire isn’t around. That’ll be great next month, but I really want to maximize my tickets, and I haven’t found them all for this month yet!

tl;dr, right? Well, I’m loving the patch!

Morchok and Yor’sahj the Unsleeping Kill Videos

Posted by Peter (Devee) on December 7, 2011

Posted in: Raiding, Videos. Tagged: Dragon Soul, kill videos, Morchok, raiding, Yor'sahj the Unsleeping. Leave a comment

Zaghar has recorded our first kills of Morchok and Yor’sahj the Unsleeping! Watch as they fall before the might of Carpe Flux Capacitor!

Leading the Cavalry

Posted by earthwormgem on November 12, 2011

Posted in: Journal, Mooglegem. Tagged: achievements, firelands, mounts. Leave a comment

In the last few weeks, I’ve been bombarded with mounts and pets! I’ve become exalted with the guild and finished the Firelands, which I guess only means that I’ve gained 3 mounts, but I swear it feels like a lot when I don’t know which ones to put on my bars. When I learned the Flameward Hippogryph, I was pleasantly surprised with Leading the Cavalry! Hooray!

I never went out of my way to purchase all the faction mounts – I mean, I really don’t know what I’d do with seven skeletal horses. Maybe I’ll start collecting them now to work up to the Red Dragonhawk!

World of Troncraft!

Posted by earthwormgem on November 10, 2011

Posted in: Glitches / Secrets / Hidden Things, Journal, Mooglegem. Tagged: errors, glitch, glitches, textures, video card. Leave a comment

A few months ago, my paladin was flying out of the tunnel in Undercity when the world flickered and changed…

When she emerged, the skies were filled with Retribution, Devotion, and a Hammer of Justice! Clearly, she had a lot of paladin-y things on her mind.

There goes the zeppelin!

… and here are just a few more shots of Tirisfal Glades:

Yay! I hope you guys got some amusement at the expense of my video card ;) Have a great day!

Hallow’s End Weekend

Posted by Peter (Devee) on November 1, 2011

Posted in: Devee, Holidays, Journal. Tagged: 4.2, firelands, hamuul, leyara, molten front. 1 Comment

I had a great weekend in WoW! First, I bought some new valor point gear. Then, as you can see in the screenshot above, I acquired my conquest helm and shoulders. Awesome! Mooglegem and I also racked up a bunch of conquest points from doing 2s. It went really well, too!

Because it was Warsong Gulch weekend (and we’re trying to gain reputation), we played a lot of WSG! We also took it upon ourselves to turn everyone into Leper Gnomes.

We filled the Moonwell in the Molten Front, leaving only one more group to add to the offensive. Then, while deep in the Molten Front battling Leyara, Hamuul came to help us! He’s alive and okay!

Look! See how awesome Hamuul is?

LOOK, LOOK!

Lastly, we finished the questline for Leyara’s locket. Mooglegem and I make pretty good Druids of the Flame.

Happy Hallow’s End

Posted by earthwormgem on October 31, 2011

Posted in: Journal, Mooglegem. Tagged: Familiar, hallow's end, Holiday, pets. 1 Comment

I had a lot of fun during the Hallow’s End event this year! I feel like video games make holidays feel way more festive for me. For instance, I don’t usually throw together costumes or go out trick or treating, but I celebrate in-game by doing the quests annually. Plus, the cities in WoW have more decorations (A GIANT PUMPKIN IN UNDERCITY! YAY!) than I expect to ever see in Irvine, CA.

Anyway, my mage is super happy with her new Feline Familiar! I collect a lot of pets for her, but this one is actually a familiar! I loved the kitty’s witch hat so much that I found one to match :)

Top 10 Goals

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 29, 2011

Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: goals. Leave a comment

There are always a lot of things I want to do in World of Warcraft. Here are the top ten 10 things on my mind.

VP Gear

Valor Point gear! Of course, I want to continue getting my PVE gear. I’m close, but there are still some more pieces I need. While I do want VP, I’m not grinding any heroics. Lately we’ve been doing 6/7 in Firelands. Along with an Occu’thar kill, that puts me close. And then I call it for the week, because there’s no way I’m going back into the Zandalari heroics. This week we extended and killed Ragnaros on Tuesday, so I’m going to be very low on Valor Points.

Molten Front

I think this type of phased quest hub is a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the Argent Tournament back in Wrath as well. Unfortunately, Moogle and I don’t have a lot of free time on the same evenings, so I’m only doing the Molten Front once or twice per week. I wish it wasn’t so grindy!

PVP Gear

I still some gear here too. Unfortunately, it’s all going to be shit when the next tier comes out anyways.

Warsong Outriders

16171 / 21000. Please, let me hit exalted already. Luckily WSG is fun!

The Defilers

15067 / 21000. Another one of my favorite battlegrounds. Hopefully not too much longer.

of the Horde

Here’s a long-term goal. 83314 / 100000 HKs.

Loremaster of Cataclysm

I’ve finished Vashj’ir, Mount Hyjal, and Deepholm. In the Twilight Highlands I’m 32 / 95, and in Uldum I’m only 6 / 105.

Tier 11 Raids

I was 5 /6 in Blackwing Descent, 2 / 4 in Bastion of Twilight, and 1 / 2 in the Throne of the Four Winds when I stopped playing, and I’ve yet to even get into a run for any of the old content since I’ve returned.

Goblin Starting Zone

Umm… I made a goblin.

Worgen Starting Zone

No progress here. Someday I’ll get around to rolling a worgen.

Exalted with CFC

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 28, 2011

Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: achievements, dark phoenix, guild achievements, kor'kron annihilator, mounts. Leave a comment

Kor'kron Annihilator

This might be embarrassing, but I finally hit exalted with my guild, Carpe Flux Capacitor, earlier this week. This is amazing news because of two primary reasons – the Kor’kron Annihilator and the Dark Phoenix.

You know, I wasn’t that happy with the Kor’kron Annihilator when it was first announced, but after I first saw it in the game, I changed my tune. I’ve been waiting for this mount, and I’m very happy with it. I think my favorite aspect is the guild banner; I’d love to see more of that kind of thing (oh man, like the banners in Diablo 3).

Dark Phoenix

I have to admit, I feel a bit bad about the Dark Phoenix. My guild might have earned it, but I didn’t finish any of the three Tier 11 raids! Thanks, Carpe Flux Capacitor!

Ragnaros Down!

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 26, 2011

Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: guild-first, kill, loot, Ragnaros. Leave a comment

Sweet loot time!

We did it last night! I guess all it took was moving our Rag night to Tuesday. We were planning on calling it, but twice said “okay, one more pull.” In classic underdog style, that was when we killed him.

The night was fun even before a kill was entering our reach. On one pull, when we called a wipe I decided to trigger a trap.

Into the air.

For some reason, we had always had trouble on the transition phases with the adds. To be honest, I could never place what the problem was besides the obvious (adds hit the hammer and we died). Things went much better last night, and we were consistently getting past it once we changed our strategy a little. Someone stepped up with a new idea that ended up working well. Basically each person was given a designated number, and each add was numbered. Obviously these linked up. Point is, we ignored the concepts of “left” and “right” and just numbered the adds.

I don’t think we had ever seen the Living Meteors previously. We struggled a bit there for a while. Once we had four Living Meteors running around, it was hectic and strategy went out the window. However, in the end we triumphed and even earned Ragnar-O’s (totally without meaning to do so).

Pop!

Some sweet loot dropped for us too, of course. Mushkin got Sulfuras, which is really awesome lore-wise in my opinion. It seems a bit smaller now though than when Ragnaros wielded it. Oh well. The priest/paladin/warlock head token dropped, and Harley won that. Lastly, and most importantly, Fingers of Incineration, nice new gloves, dropped for me!

Hopefully we can get this fiery jerk on farm!

Mists Of Pandaria

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 25, 2011

Posted in: Game Mechanics, Mists of Pandaria. Tagged: 5.0, Blizzcon, challenge mode, expansion, Mists of Pandaria, monk, pandaren, pet battle system, scenarios. Leave a comment

This post is sort of obligatory now, right?

Mists of Pandaria, the next expansion, features a new continent, a new playable race – the Pandaren, a new class – monk, a pet battle system, revamped talents, a new battleground, more ways to earn VP, PVE scenarios, and challenge mode heroics. I have to say, I’m pretty happy with everything announced. There was nothing they did that disappointed me, and multiple announced things were pretty close to exactly what I wanted.

New Continent

Going somewhere new is good. From the shots I saw, Pandaria’s asian-inspired look is gorgeous. And there’s a giant turtle that’s a zone. Come on. You sold me on the expansion right there, Blizzard! When our characters finally reach this new land, they’ll find a bunch of breweries! That’s another pro.

The Pandaren

The Pandaren seem like a very interesting race to me. I like having another old, wise race in the game. Both factions could use a little more wisdom, and the Pandaren will hopefully bring that.

Monks

I want to play this right now. The lack of an auto-attack is interesting for a melee class and should make for fun mechanics. I’m particularly interested in healing with a monk. I haven’t had a good track record with playing alts, but I’d love to get a monk going.

Pet Battle System

I’ve been asking for this for a long time! Granted, I wasn’t asking for it in WoW, but what Pokemon fan hasn’t wanted a Pokemon MMO? We knew Nintendo wouldn’t do it, but here it is thanks to Blizzard. On the other hand, I’m not too keen on pets being tradeable. Some pets won’t be, and I’m hoping Blizzard will make it so that the only pets that can be traded are the ones that, in the current system, are able to be traded before being learned. I don’t want achievement-related pets to be tradeable.

Revamped Talents

Talent trees are a thing of the past. People might use the word “tree” in the future, but they’re not trees in 5.0. Every 15 levels you’ll be given a choice between three talents. From what I saw, every talent was fairly interesting and will actually make some differences. Obviously, reducing the number of talents increases the importance of each choice, and that’s pretty cool. Also, those polymorph talents. Mmmm.

Battleground

Payload. Please. I want to participate right now.

More VP Choices

I always appreciate choices as to what content I complete. I like to try to see everything, but I don’t want to grind the same content repeatedly. Right now, I don’t have a problem with VP because I’m actively raiding. We’re 6/7 weekly, and after I do Baradin Hold, I’m only one heroic’s worth of VP short (which I skip because I’ve done those to death and they’re boring). However, for a while I wasn’t part of the main raiding team, and I can tell you, doing those Zandalari heroics seven times each week is tough. Sometimes I feel like Blizzard forgets that part of some of the players’ lists of dailies are “go to work,” “perform chores at home,” and “run errands.” Getting Valor Points from more places mean we won’t get burned out as easily.

PVE Senarios

Battleground-like experiences that are PVE? I am so excited about this. Admittedly, they might not end up as fun as I hope; however, I love Battlegrounds and think this could provide an amazing and fresh way of playing the game.

Challenge Mode in Heroics

This is actually something pretty similar to what I was asking for in a previous post. While not exactly the same, this can provide more fun from the same content. Already done grinding a heroic? See if you can complete it faster! Now in that same post, I called for the end of gear upgrades so that skill could play the important role. And in challenge mode, gear will scale down. Sweet.

Excited

So yes, I’m excited.

Ragnaros Still Stands

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 19, 2011

Posted in: Devee, Holidays, Journal, Raiding. Tagged: alysrazor, Baradin Hold, beth'tilac, firelands, hallow's end, headless horseman, Ragnaros. Leave a comment

Last night was a particularly fun raid night! I don’t really know what does it always. I suppose it’s just the company primarily. I feel like naming people is kind of mean because it excludes others, but playing with Darth, Nate, and Lang is just so fun. Also, there was that Moogle girl. She finally made it to the first night! That means she went from 0/7 to 6/7!

Anyways, I was in a particular good raiding mood. Drinking that beer pre-raid might have helped! I also got to up top on the Beth’tilac fight, which was really exciting. We got in some Ragnaros attempts, but we didn’t make much progress. We can’t seem to get all the adds down. I can’t really say what’s going wrong. But Alysrazor gave me a delicious trinket! I was a happy priest.

In other news, after the raid I found that the Horde was holding Tol Barad! That’s rare on our server. I found a 25-man Baradin Hold and was the only priest in the entire raid! Of course, no PVE gear dropped for me, and only one piece of PVP gear. I didn’t win. I was so excited about being the only priest.

The best news though? Well, Hallow’s End started, of course! I love the entire holiday so much, but the Headless Horseman is just the best.

Horseman rise… Your time is nigh… You felt death once… Now, know demise!

It is over, your search is done. Let fate choose now, the righteous one.

Ragnaros Attempts

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 14, 2011

Posted in: Devee, Journal, Raiding. Tagged: Ragnaros, T12. Leave a comment

Last night held another evening of Ragnaros attempts. The Firelord almost defeated me before I even entered the Firelands: my computer didn’t want to boot, and I have expected it to bursts into flames! It wouldn’t even POST. It’s a problem I’ve been having between my video card and motherboard, but I’m too cheap to figure out what’s wrong with it.

An hour late, I make it to the raid. We were missing a few regulars, but we had Traykal, the alt rogue (not alt that happened to be a rogue – the player’s second rogue) of former CFC member, Kaytral. It was cool to see him again. My healing still isn’t anywhere near Syravia’s, but I was holding my own. I don’t think healing was ever an issue. Unfortunately, we still couldn’t down him.

We’re having a lot of trouble with mechanics. Besides little dumb mistakes or general flukes, adds weren’t dying, we weren’t collapsing right, and seeds were placed everywhere. Harley, our guild leader, reprimanded us a little at the end of the night a bit, and I think she was spot on. It’s a delicate thing – make people realize how you’re feeling and how they’re doing without making them feel pissed or stupid. It just made me want to play better next week.

We had some fun attempts though! I like that fight. There are things to do! Still, I don’t think it’s a very complicated fight honestly compared to some previous final bosses. I’m sure we’ll get him down soon.

Real Money Auction House

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 12, 2011

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: auction house, USD. Leave a comment

Blizzard’s already including a real money auction house in Diablo III. What’s keeping them from doing the same in World of Warcraft? Customer backlash? Yeah, I’m sure a ton of players would be really upset, but that happens constantly. At first, I thought it would be terrible. The more I think about it now, the more I wonder. It would be like buying time – not skill. You could purchase mats and BOEs, but it’s not like you could buy your tier gear with money.

I think you’d see a lot of crafters spend USD in place of gold on their materials. You’d have people who no longer want to gather their own mats. This would cause demand and price to increase. On the other hand, there are some people I’m sure who didn’t have an interest in gathering previously who would take a stab at it to make some real money.

Who knows where prices would settle. Personally, I doubt we’ll ever see this in World of Warcraft, but Blizzard must have thought about it. I think I’d be okay with it.

Sneak Peek: Guardian Cub Tradable Pet – World of Warcraft

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 11, 2011

Posted in: Blizzard and Battle.net, World of Warcraft. Tagged: pet store, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

Coming soon to a Pet Store near you: the new and titanically cute Guardian Cub companion. You’ve soared across Azeroth on the majestic Winged Guardian. Soon, youll be able to purchase a pint-sized Guardian of the Titans sidekick to accompany you on your adventures.

via Sneak Peek: Guardian Cub Tradable Pet – World of Warcraft.

Well, this is interesting. Blah, blah, a new pet purchasable with USD. What’s interesting is that it’s not BoP. I wonder what the demand will be like for this in the game. If demand is high enough, will this be a way to effectively buy gold from Blizzard (after selling the pet on the Auction House? I’ve heard that some people are upset by this. I don’t really care, but I’ll take a look at the prices. It’ll probably not be worth it at all, but if it sold for enough gold, sure, I’d pick one up for $10 and sell it. It would have to be a lot of gold, and I doubt it will be, but it’s still interesting.

Repairing Gear with Trade Skills

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 10, 2011

Posted in: Game Mechanics. Tagged: crafting, professions, repairs, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

Othor_NL Oct 3rd 2011 8:27AM

how about being able to repair your gear by using the trade skill (BS, LW, Tailoring) + appropriate mats (Ore, Leather, Cloth)?

– WoW Insider, Breakfast Topic: How do you want WoW crafting to change?, 10/3/11

Recently I read a Breakfast Topic about changes to WoW crafting. The author suggests a crafting system with more creativity and experimentation – a system in which a crafter would mix materials in an attempt to make something new. It’s an interesting concept, but I don’t think it could work. If this system was implemented, most people would alt-tab out of WoW to look up the best recipes. Soon an add-on would be created to handle this for players. They wouldn’t have to mix and match or experiment; they would simply pick what they want to make, and the add-on would handle what materials would be used. And then we’d be back at the current system.

Another suggestion was that all crafters should be able to break what they crafted down into the base materials. While it does make sense that a blacksmith should be able to melt down armor to get something reuseable, implementing this would increase the amount of materials crafters could access. To compensate, future recipes would just cost more.

I’m not completely negative though. There was something in the comments that jumped out at me. What if a crafter could repair the type of armor they create? We want to increase our actual play time and decrease upkeep time. Blizzard is already placing repairers at the front of raids. Why not just let us handle it ourselves? They want repairing to be a small goldsink, and they could keep that somehow. Either it could still charge the person getting repaired (without it going to the repairer) or it could use mats. I don’t think it should be a lot of mats, but it could work. Also, I think it’d be best if people couldn’t repair their own gear. This would mean that it’s to help groups repair each other, not to allow a person to never have to seek out repairs. Finding repairs is part of the game. I’m not going to bother trying to flesh out this system; I simply think it’s interesting to think about.

Account-bound Achievements

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 9, 2011

Posted in: Game Mechanics. Tagged: achievements, world of warcraft, wow. Leave a comment

I keep seeing posts on the forums about people wanting account-bound achievements. They no longer want an achievement system tied to particular characters. Instead, your achievements would be seen from every character. This would put achievements more in line with Xbox 360 achievements or PS3 trophies. Unfortunately, the argument I see is strange.

First, there are people who want it all tied together. They think that once you have the Firelands achievement, for example, you should never to obtain it again. No matter what character you’re using, you could bring up your achievements, see that you’ve completed the Firelands, and link it. The upside to this, of course, is that you won’t be forced to grind through things multiple times. In addition, you won’t be penalized by switching characters to suit the needs of your group.

Obviously a lot of people are against this. They think that each character should have to earn the achievements to have it displayed. You could look at the Firelands achievement once again. Having earned the Firelands achievement as a healer doesn’t say anything about your ability to tank. The same could be said about many other aspects of playing your character. You might know how to PVP on your Death Knight, but what about on your rogue? They’re different and should be treated as such.

I’m in favor of account-bound achievements. However, I don’t understand why people seem to think that the existence of account-bound achievement would remove character-bound achievements. I saw one suggestion of certain achievements being account-bound and certain achievements being character-bound. This is still flawed. Why not keep the base system the same way it is now. Every character has a set of achievements. An achievement earned on one character is not an achievement earned on another. This way, you’ll still be able to tell what was done on each character. However, on top of this system could be account-bound achievements. These wouldn’t be different achievements. Rather, it would display every achievement you’ve earned on any of your characters and, along with the date earned, list the characters that have that achievement.

With this system, we’d keep all the perks of the current achievements, but we could also look at every achievement we’ve earned on any character at a glance. Looking to join a Firelands raid? You could link both versions of the achievement, possibly showing that you’ve only done the first three bosses on the character in question, but you’ve actually completed the Firelands on two other characters. This gets 100% of the information across.

Making Gold in 4.3

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 8, 2011

Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: 4.3, auction house, blacksmithing, enchanting, gems, gold, jewelcrafting, looking for raid, mining, ore, patch. Leave a comment

Lately I’ve been thinking about how I plan on making money when 4.3 hits. Sure, I want to make money now, but patches are where the money is. I have enchanting and mining, so that’s where my focus is.

Mining

I think I’m screwed. First, I’m terrible at this. It might seem surprising that someone could even be bad at mining, but I have a terrible secret. I’ve been stockpiling ore forever. I keep toying with the idea of becoming a jewelcrafter for the JC-only rings (even though Mooglegem can already cut all my gems for me), but instead of stockpiling just what I’d need to level or, better yet, not stockpiling at all and just buying back what I need later, I’ve stockpiled everything.

With the widespread theory, now proven false, that jewelcrafters would be able to prospect epic gems from ore in 4.3, that gave me even more reason to stockpile. And honestly, I’m not even the person stockpiling my own ore. I’ve been giving it to Mooglegem. Regardless, I have no idea what to do with this ore yet. Lots of people have been stockpiling it. Some have most likely already begun unloading it, but I suspect many will continue to hold off for 4.3 just in case things change. I think my best bet here is get off my ass and auction the old ore while letting Mooglegem prospect the new ore anyways. I’m betting that will yield a higher profit. If the numbers don’t back that up, we’ll have to hold all the Cataclysm ore until the next expansion when people will be leveling new professions again.

Enchanting

What to do, what to do? The time of using excess mats to create enchants for the Auction House is behind us, left in Wrath. Shards are in far too short of supply for me to use my own mats for enchants to sell, and even essences are hard to find. What will 4.3 bring?

Maelstrom Shatter is now live on the PTR, turning a Maelstrom Crystal into two Heavenly Shards. This means crystals and shards will be plentiful, leaving us with a shortage of dust and essence. Yes, random uncommon-quality equipment does drop in instances, so we’ll still have some. It won’t exactly be a shortage, but those mats will be the limiting factor. I suppose that means the thing to do now would be to stock up on cheap dust and essence, wait for 4.3, and then resell them later or use them for enchants and sell those. Heavenly Shards should be sold now while people could still have a demand for them. They’ll be cheap in 4.3!

Ore -> Enchants

I could also use the ore to make enchants. After finding a blacksmith, I could smelt all my ore, get the additional mats needed, and have the BS craft a bunch of gear for me for the purpose of disenchanting. This would give me additional mats to either put up on the AH after 4.3 hits or with which to create actual enchants.

Too long; didn’t read

Ore will be super cheap, so it should be used for something else and, if cheap enough, purchased in bulk. Either prospect it or blacksmith it.
Sell Heavenly Shards now while supply is low.
Purchase essence and dust now before demand increases.
Purchase gems, flasks, and pots now before demand increases in 4.3. This isn’t about making gold as much as it’s about saving gold.

No Raid? New Spec!

Posted by Peter (Devee) on October 7, 2011

Posted in: Devee, Journal. Tagged: addons, guild, pets, raids, shadow, specs. Leave a comment

We didn’t have enough people for our second raid night, so we spent a little time talking about guild stuff before calling it. Our second raid night is changing from Wednesdays to Thursdays. That shouldn’t really make a difference to me, so I’m fine with it!

Because I don’t need anything from heroics anymore, I decided to make a shadow spec. Saving my action bars is easy with Action Bar Saver, and saving talent specs is also very easy with Talented. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to save glyphs that I know. I guess it’s not that hard anyways; with the list of all known glyphs right there, I just have to remember to scroll through and pick applicable glyphs every time I respec. Still, sounds like something I could get wrong. I PVP’d a little in my new shadow spec (actually designed for PVE), but I didn’t get around to trying it out in a heroic. Maybe next week sometime!

Also, check it out! We got the Armadillo Pup! He’s a cute little guy, don’t you think? I like him.

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