A little politeness goes a long way

There was a time not so very long ago that I wondered where I would be a few weeks after Wrath went live. I wondered how the new areas would “feel”. That was one thing I really could not check on the Beta. In my opinion the character of the zone, the whole server in fact, is made up from the collection of personalities that hang out there. They were not all in the Beta, so there was no “feel” for the place.

What has the feel been? Mostly positive. The asshats are pretty badly outnumbered by decent folk. I do have one beef however, apparently others do as well. Death Knights who use their purple ray of “get over here, I want to beat on you” to snatch quest mobs away from those who actually are waiting their turn.

Perhaps its just something Arthas taught them in their 3 level Death Knight boot camp.

The worst however so far was a 71 Warrior who was questing away in the Borean Tundra while I was farming there on Drupadi. I can understand his frustration, but before you call someone out at least make sure you know what your talking about. I never actually saw the person, I just got whispered buy him. It went something like this:

• A-hole [71 Warrior] Thanks for being such a *&$^%. Quit stealing all my mobs you @$#%#$@ Noob. All you have to do is wait your turn like everyone else, a little politeness goes a long way!
• Drupadi [72 Hunter] I don’t see you, what is it that I am kill-stealing? (wondering if my gorilla was aggroing something I was unaware of)
• A-hole [71 Warrior] You who I am! I am jumping up and down right behind you! You are stealing all the dogs with your damn purple DK lazer beam! (still don’t know for sure what mobs he meant, perhaps the ones up by Fizzlecranks airport for the poop quest)
• Drupadi [72 Hunter] I don’t know who you are but I am grinding Caribou for chilled meat, and I am a Hunter not a Death Knight.

crickets chirping awaiting response…………

• Drupadi [72 Hunter] I understand mistakes can happen and you obviously mistook me for someone else, however a simple “sorry ’bout that” might be in order. After all, a little politeness goes a long way.
• [You are now being ignored by A-hole]

Judging by the amount of hate and discontent this person was spewing into general chat as well he was “unhappy’ with the current state of the game. More specifically he was unhappy that there were in fact other (gasp) people playing at the same time. Apparently this somehow caused greater inconvenience for him than it did for anyone else. With any luck he will go find something more enjoyable to do with his time.

Perhaps fighting with other kids on the playground over who get to go first in kickball.

Fishing and cooking 375 to 450, the lazy way

Yes, I know. Spend more than 12 seconds coming up with a title.

The title fits, sue me.

Sometime soon I will be going and updating my guides to leveling Fishing and Cooking to reflect the new changes. Until then I am going to make a bit of a “addon” in the form of this post. Actually it would be more of an appendix, but I don’t like them. They get all sore and painful and have to be removed.

What was I talking about again? Cooking, got it. Train back on track now.

Assuming (yes I know, never assume anything) that if you are reading this you have already maxed out your cooking and fishing skill to 375 and are now looking to head to Northrend and jack them up to 450 with a minimum of fuss. If that is what you want, this may be a bit of help.

FIrst, head to Northrend. It does not matter which way you go or which faction you are. It does not matter which port you go to.

If you are Alliance your choices are Valiance Keep or Valguard Both of which have fishable water inside the safe zones. They also both come equipped with Grand Master Fishing trainers in the form of  Old man Robert at 58.72 in the Borean Tundra and Byron Welwick at 60.64 Howling Fjiord. In addition both areas also have Grand Master Cooking trainers in the form of Rollick MacKreel at 58.71 in the Borean Tundra or Brom Brewbaster at 58.62 in the Howling Fjiord. As if that was not convenient enough they both have inns with a mailbox and a free cooking fire.

If you are Horde your choices are Vengance landing or Warsong Hold but in this case only Vengance Landing has fishable water inside the safe zone. They also both come equipped with  Grand Master Fishing trainers in the form of Angelina Soren at 80.27 Howling Fjiord and Fishy Ser’ji at 42.55 Boren Tundra. Like the Alliance, Grand Master the Cooking trainers are handily located as well. You have your choice of Orn Tenderhoof at 42.54 Borean Tundra or Thomas Kolichio at 78.28 in Howling Fjiord. In addition to that they both have inns with a mailbox and a free cooking fire. On my Horde fisherman I decided to head to Howling Fjiord simply because I could fish right in the town.

The way I went about this one was simple. Train up fishing and cooking, grab a stack of +75 fishing lures from the local vendor, and start fishing.

Note,  the vendors selling +75 lures in the starter towns are as follows:

• Wink Sprinklesprankle at 58.62 in Valguard

• Beem Goldsprocket at 58.72 in Valiance Keep

• Barnabas Frye at 79.30 in Vengeance Landing

• Brokkan Bear-Arms at 41.55 in Warsong Hold

Grab a soda, turn on some music, and get to fishing.

When your bags start getting a bit full, head over to the inn and cook. When you get to cooking level 400 you have a choice to make. Either keep right on fishing until you hit 450 and cook what you catch, or head over to the pool of your choice and fish up ingredients for the level 400+ buff food.

Personally I just camped out until I hit 450 fishing which took about 3 and a half hours. I was then able to hit 415 cooking just by cooking up everything I had caught so far. As an added bonus, I never had a problem with fish getting away even with only the +75 lure attached.

The main reason I went all the way to 415 in one place is simple. Since every recipe that is still green at 415 requires Northern Spices from the daily quests I wanted to level up as far as I could before needing them. Well, there is one exception in Feast. It is is green till 425, but the materials for it do not come from fishing. Since this is about leveling both together I will just ignore that one.

Speaking of daily quests, that’s your next mission. They are handed out by Katherine Lee at 41.65 in Daleran for Alliance or Awilo Lon’gomba at 70.38 in Dalaran for Horde. Start doing the dailys for the Dalaran cooking awards. They can be spent on either Northern Spices (1 award for 10 spices) or on cooking recipes of level 400+ skill (3 awards per recipe). They each also award a bag of goodies, usually consisting of 3 to 6 Northern Spices and perhaps a few other knick knacks.

Pick the buff food that best suits your character(s) and go fish up whatever it requires. A full listing of the level 400+ recipes can be found HERE. To save you the math, it will take 60 Dalaran Fishing Awards to purchase all 20 of the recipes, and they are BOP.

Myself, I went to Dragonblight and fished up a couple stacks of Dragonfin Angelfish for Blackened Dragonfin. It has carried me to level 424 as of the time I write this, and will carry me to 425 and beyond as I do more dailys and get more Northern Spices. Actually with any luck I will hit 425 today after the dailys reset.

Well, as far as I am concerned that is the end. Once you or I have reached 425 skill there is no recipe in the game we can not cook. I suppose if you are like me and it just bothers you to not have a completed skill you can fish up a bunch of mats and spend your cooking awards on spices just to finish it out. There really is no need however. I suppose the extra 25 skill points are just there so we have something to look forward to while cooking buff food for the next year or so.

Random Acts of Kindness

Yesterday I had an interesting experience. I was happily questing away on Drupadi, slowly crawling my way from 71 to 72.  I don’t know if it was just the area I was in but the asshats seemed to be out in full force. Plenty of mob stealing and such. There were a few examples of people just simply being decent that come to mind.

There was a time when I was grinding the same mobs as a level 71 or so Undead Rogue. We were each keeping to separate ends of the spawn area, in short we were sharing. I look up at one point from the three mobs I had going on my pet (crazy respawn rate) to see a pile of things respawn right on top of the Rogue.

In a streak a Paladin zipped in front of me, already dismounting. He dropped a consecrate right on top of the dog pile that was chewing off the rogues face and proceeded to tank them all while the three of us killed them off. With the respawns down, the friendly pallidan dropped a buff on me. Then he mounted up and headed on his way, asking for nothing but receiving many thanks.

Another time I came to the end of a quest series. One of those that call for you to go kill a named mob that spawns in a cave. I head over expecting the same kill stealing spawn camping a-holes I had kept seeing. I was wrong.

What I saw there at the cave reminded me oddly of the movie Airplane. You know, the scene where everyone is standing patiently in line with pipes and bats and such? The one where they are all taking turns knocking the freaked out passenger back to his senses? Well, it was a lot like that. There was A line about 5 players long standing at the cave entrance. The mob spawns, the first in line tags it, then we all burned it down. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The biggest surprise if the day came when my son (hereafter known as the klutz) decided that falling off the top bunk onto the floor full of Lego blocks seemed like a good idea. Well priorities being what that are as soon as I heard the noise I jumped up from the computer to go check on things. (He is fine)

I come back to the computer about 10 minutes later fully expecting to at least make a corpse run, perhaps even have to log back in depending on how long I had been afk. The scene I saw when I came back made me forget about all the asshattery of the last few days.

I was sitting at about 5% health.

My pet was dead. (he was on defensive, I wonder how many he took with him)

There were so many dead mobs stacked up around me that I could not count them.

And there was a certain Undead Rogue, killing everything that spawned on top of me.

I popped back up from being afk, saluted and thanked the hordie that had watched my back. Then I mounted up and rode back to town. I left secure in the knowledge that while there are asshats out there there are some truly decent folks behind some of the other monitors.

Gone Fishing

Many of my plans have changed since I first started planning for Wrath.

Here I wondered if my newest hunter, Dechion, would make 70 before Wrath hit. The answer? No he did not. He in fact made 60 Wednesday evening and is now parked in the inn at Honor Hold waiting for me to get back to him.

I have thought a good bit these last few days about where I want to put my time. I know I will end up with 4 level 80’s it’s just a matter of who gets leveled first. Reading back I actually had some really good thoughts on this that I posted here.

I got the expansion, set it up, and journeyed to Northrend. It is crowded, it is laggy, and I hate fighting for quest mobs. I ask myself, where sould I spend my time……

I need food for the journey anyhow. I think I will just pull out my pony keg, find a nice quiet spot under a tree, and fish.

I hope you are enjoying the journey as much as I am, see you in a few days.

You forgot WHAT!

I was reading a post written by Larisa at the Pink Pigtail Inn this morning. She talked about her experiences with the midnight release of WotLK in her town. I Unfortunately have been a bit sickly of late. That coupled with the fact that I had to be up at 3:30 in the morning kept me comfortably in bed when midnight rolled around.

As one of the comments in her post stated, I think the folks who showed up had more to do with RL responsibilities and schedules than anything else. Here are just a few examples I know of of the top of my head.

This particular 39 yr old had his copy sitting at Best Buy waiting for work to be over the next day. Sick+early to work= Meh, I’ll get it tomorrow.

Then again my 60+ yr old mother in law (Plays a holy priest – and raids) drove about 45 minutes to the next town over to pick up her copy and two for hew middle aged sons that had to work in the morning. (They play a tanking druid and a BM hunter, just in case anyone cares)

I would love to see something like this launch on a Friday night instead of a Wednesday. If the timing would have been different I think we would have seen a totally different crowd.

Now push in the clutch, I am shifting gears.

 

The funniest story of the midnight release however has to be my friend Wayne.

Just at midnight he arrives at the local Best Buy (is it just me that always tries to type Beast Buy?).

There I go off on a tangent again.  Best buy, check. Midnight, check. Preorder, oops.

Oops as in you lost the ticket, or oops as in you forgot to preorder….  You guessed it, he forgot.

Well seeing the hour and a half long line filled with assorted gamers, and knowing that was the line for preorder pickup, he wandered over to the employee refereeing this whole thing and asked if there were any copies that would be available to those who did not preorder.

After being informed that there were in fact unspoken for copies of both the basic wrath and the collectors edition he asked for one of each.  He then proceeded to walk past hundreds of people who kind of watched in disbelief. He went straight to the empty register, paid for his games and was gone.

He completely forgot to preorder, and as his penalty he was in his car on the way home at 12:04.

Sometimes it pays to be a bit older and more forgetful.

Tick Tock

Tick Tock.

Can you hear it?

The sound in the distance?

Tick Tock.

Louder it gets, with each passing moment.

Mere hours to go until the invasion begins.

Tick Tock.

My bags are packed, my gear prepared, my affairs are in order.

My gun is cleaned and oiled, my powder is dry.

Tick Tock.

The crowd is gathered, each quietly making ready in their own mind.

The boat will be arriving soon to take us to Northrend.

Tick Tock.

I stand idly at the dock, pet at my side, alone even in a crowd.

Listening as the sound grows steadily louder, impaitently waiting.

Tick Tock.

Last minute preperations for WotLK

As I sit here and continue to be beaten about the head and chest by zillions of tiny flu like creatures I ponder Thursdays upcoming release of WotLK. More specifically I am thinking about last minute preparations that I plan to make for both myself and my characters. The wicked combination of being ill and just having returned from a 3 day 1200 mile road trip has left me unable to string two coherent thoughts together. That is how you are getting stuck with my “shopping list” of what to do.

I figure it’s like a grocery list, if I write it down I am less likely to forget it. Yes, not “I won’t forget it”, just “less likely”. you have no idea how many times I go list in hand to the store and still manage to come home without something important, say my car for instance.

See, I lost my train of thought. No, I can’t give a description….I forgot what it looked like.

Where was I… Oh, yeah. Last minute preparations.

Here are some things I plan to do between here and the WotLK launch, in no particular order. Please keep in mind I am whacked out on cold medicine. This is just my list, your mileage may vary.

• While I am thinking about it, go to the grocery store before Wrath hits. nothing will spoil my day like having to run to the store for something while trying to partake in the awesome lagfest that I am sure is coming.

• While I am at it find all the chores I can do in advance and do them over the next two days. Less time getting distracted by that pesky “real life” will mean more time to fight 37 other people for 2 arctic boars to get their “arctic boar mountain oysters”.

• On a side note, did you ever wonder why it’s always like Snouts, Spleens, Gizzards, and Hooves the quest givers want? Why not get like T-bones or tenderloins or something at least kinda useful?

• Pack everyone for the journey. Make sure all my characters have several stacks of food and water.

• Clear all their bags. If it’s not required for the business of leveling it goes in the bank.

• Speaking of needed for leveling, grab my level 70 flasks and elixirs from the bank. I won’t need them for raiding at 80, but those and a few scrolls perhaps will go a long way towards making the harder quests easier.

• Buff food, Using up my old “raid consumables” made me think of this one. I am thinking I should likely bring a stack or two of appropriate food. (Apparently I need to go do some fishing this afternoon)

• For long time it has not mattered where I logged of. Wednesday night everyone gets parked at the inn. Rested XP will start to matter again.

• Kind of second nature I would think, but make sure everyone is repaired. Red gear 30 minutes after I hit the beach would be….. inconvenient to say the least.

I think that about covers everything I can think of right now. I am sure there is more I really should do prior to wrath hitting, like buying arrows for instance. Yes, arrows might come in handy.

Now while I am thinking about it I really should go do some fishing……..

I was there

A silence has settled across Azeroth. It seems the land itself is holding it’s breath, both excited and terrified of whats coming next. It is peaceful, but not restful. It is the calm before the storm

The plauge of zombies fades slowly into memory. Soon to become nothing more  than a campfire story for the fresh faced recruits. One more tall tale to entertain as the team gathers at the summoning stone. A way to say, I was there.

We fight the scourge in the outlying areas. They attack and attack, relentless in their determination to stake their claim to Azeroth. We push them back again and again, gathering the Necrotic Runes that the Argent Dawn needs so badly. We are rewarded with a tabard. A way to say, I was there.

There are as many stories as their are people, the mage Larisa for example is a veteran of many campaigns. She has fought bravely against the forces of the burning legion for the last several years. After many battles she finally saw Illidan dead at her feet. Reaching down she took a souvenir. She claimed the Skull of Gul’dan as a trophy of her victory. A way to say, I was there.

The grizzled old Troll lounges in Lands End tavern. He drinks beer and watches the band, relaxing in his retirement. When new faces come to the bar he will often limp over and strike up a conversation. Once he has a drink or two in him he will start telling tales of adventures past. He talks of battles won and lost, and of friends long gone. Absently while he rambles he fingers the worn leather straps of his Onixya Hide Backpack. His way to say, I was there.

Morham runs here and there, from the bank to the auction house and back again. He is gathering supplies for the coming invasion. Getting slowly louder he hears the drums of war once again sounding to the north. As he finishes getting his things in order he decides to go take one last gallop around Elwynn Forest, to plant in his mind a memory of a warm green place. He does not even realize it as he calls Midnight to go for his ride, but the horse itself says something. It tells any that see him, I was there.

Every character is different, each with their own story to tell. Some have never left town, others have been to the very ends of the world and back. As the future comes rushing towards them, just days away, some at least must ponder where they have already been. In their travels they become marked by the journey. They gather everything from trinkets to pets, to titles and more.

What do you carry that says, I was there?

The biggest buff yet

First let me apologize for yesterdays rant.

Reading back over it I kinda come off sounding like a spoiled teenager who did not get his way.  Well that is totally not true, I am actually a spoiled adult that did not get his way. I just need to plan better for next year. Better planning for next year, thats definately on my list of things to work on.

During this mornings reading I found a really interesting site I thought I would link, The Daedalus Project. It is a really fascinating study of the psychology and demographics of MMORPG’s. I got started reading and did not look up for over and hour. Go ahead and go check it out, I’ll be here when you get back.

/dance

Back? Good.

I just wanted to touch briefly on what I consider one of the most game changing new features, the ability to swap between two talent specs on the fly. It was specifically stated that respeccing between the two specs of your choice would be possible while still in an instance between fights. It will not work in arena, and although not stated I am assuming it will not work in combat either.

I don’t think how game changing this truly is has hit people yet. It’s like having the best of both worlds. Its more than the Pally who can have Healing/ DPS/ Protection (pick 2 from column a) or the Warrior who can have a Protection build and a DPS build at the same time. The things you can do with this are not limited by the more traditional roles, but by your creativity.

Take my priest Morham for instance. He specced as a 23/38/0 Improved Divine Spirit healer within hours of hitting level 70 and has been there ever since. I would have loved to do a bit of DPS from time to time, but I am too cheap to respec constantly. I would have loved to try out Circle of Healing, but always needed to be 23 points deep in Discipline to get the spirit buff for everyone.

What if, after this goes live, I were to build a deep holy healing build that does not have those 23 points. I gimp my raid by taking away that buff right? Wrong. I will have a second build in the wings. A Discipline DPS build, built around holy damage and Smiting. That build has the Improved Divine Spirit.

Once every 30 minutes I switch to my Discipline build, buff the raid, and switch back to deep holy.

I have not looked deep into how this will effect everyone or every class, that was just one example that popped into my head like a lightbuld coming on as I read the news. It lets you do more with less. We will be much more likely to be able to be able to build a group with the people who are availible as everyone will have more of a choice of what role to play at that point in time. It effectively makes every class a hybrid.

For me this is the greatest buff to come out of WotLK. I can have my cake and eat it too.

Why, oh why, do I think of these things?

I was on the beta a day or three ago when I heard it.  Just standing in Shat minding my own business and there in front of me were two people arguing about how replacing healing and damage with spellpower was going to be the end of the world. Great cracks opening in the ground, the dead rising from the grave, dogs and cats living together, you get the Idea. They talked on and on about how everyone would be after the same gear, how there would be no variety.

The mage was convinced this was put in place for the sole purpose of making everyone else take his loot.  

The priest was certain that with so many dps cloth wearers out there that she would always get out rolled on her loot.

 

 

Admittedly it was more entertaining than watching TV, so I just kinda sat there and watched. I figure if they wanted this to be private they would use whispers instead of chat bubbles. Back and forth it went, no one seeming to make any headway. After about 15 minutes or so I decided to say something. They had been going back and forth without really comparing anything.

Well, it just so happens that I have been really lucky in Kara and actually had both the healing and dps tier 4 gloves on me at the time. I linked them both so they could compare what the change actually looks like. Oddly they were still able to tell the difference between the healing piece with MP5 and the DPS piece with crit.

The conversation then turned to how even though one piece might be better for one or the other it could still be used by both. Mage having mana issues in long fights? swap in a few pieces of “healing” gear for the mana regen. Priest need a bit of hit/crit? swap in a bit of dps gear. Farmed that “perfect” piece of gear till you can run the instance in your sleep (and likely have) without it dropping? Odds are something close did and you are using that while you keep trying.

It seems at the end of the day that both were happy with the way it looks like it will work out. There will be less shards, less wasted gear, and easier gearing up. Overall it seems like a win-win to me.

 So off I went, logging back to the live servers to work on my upcoming hunter. I still had the whole thing rolling around in my head though. Somehow I ended up thinking of it like a commercial for a certain trademarked candy that we will not mention by name.

 

 

 

Mage: Hey! you got your healing on my spell damage!

Priest: No, you got your spell damage on my healing!

struggle, struggle, struggle…

Both: Hey! this spellpower stuff is pretty good!

 

Why, oh why, do I think of these things?