Lost In The Grind

Yep, I am still here.  I had a long….no, not long, more like, unnecessarily long days during the damn airshow here…it went off without any major accidents or incidents…one thing to note though…somehow a pile of poo ended up on one of the metro buses…no clue who would be crapping their pants on a public bus, but I guess they couldn’t hold it…other than that, yeah, things were hectic and the blue angels did their thing…so all is well in the world.

Not only was I putting in 15 hour days working, but my wife was back in South Dakota for her sisters’ wedding, so the poor dogs got to sit at home all alone all day…luckily they didn’t leave me any messes or tear anything up…

The cyberpowerpc has been shipped as of yesterday, scheduled to arrive at my doorstep on 28 May courtesy of Fedex…fingers are crossed it comes in one piece and there aren’t any major issues when I plug it in and fire it up.

As far as gaming goes, I haven’t had much time to do much besides play my hunter, Giznad, he has been neglected for quite a while, I have primarily been focusing on doing dailys for gold and battlegrounds for some gear, also joined up on a 2vs2 arena team, we won 1 out of 10…better than I figured we would do…give me a break, I have yet to get a single piece of pvp epic gear…so shoot me!  Also, I took up leatherworking as his primary profession since he has maxed out skinning, it made sense, I spent over 100 gold getting leather off the AH, it will take time, but eventually I hope to get to the point where I can craft my own armor to wear.

Oh yeah, finally getting some much needed time off, big 4 day weekend coming up…woohoo!  I just wish my new machine was here to enjoy it…oh well, 6 more days!

In case you haven’t seen all the news about the release of information about the Death Knight, go check it all out at wowinsider.com and come back here…okay?

Well, I’m not going to talk about all the cool abilities and spells and stuff, what I would like to talk about is how I plan to decide on which character to “turn” into a deathknight.  According to the news, you are allowed to have one deathknight character per realm per account.  The only prerequisite is that the toon be at least level 55.  Any race/class can become a deathknight.

So, as I take a look at my characters I have that are level 55 I also think, what if I turn both of my level 70 characters into deathknights?  Will all the time and energy I spent gearing up my elemental shaman in PvP gear go to waste?  I don’t know for certain, but I would think that deathknights, being dual-wielding tanks, would wear plate armor…It is a hard decision for sure, then I think, the next highest level character I have on the horde side is a female blood elf paladin which I currently use as a bank toon, do I want to play a female toon again?  Not really…so then the next highest level character I have that I would most likely level to 55 would be my priest…that would be the most likely character that I would try to level up and change into a deathknight, primarily because I love playing my elemental shaman too much to abandon him now…

Now, as far as the alliance side of the house, it’s kind of strange how spread out all of my characters have become…for example, I have my original warrior toon, Tabeyus, he is level 60 and sitting on Ghostlands, the same server as my Horde family.  Next, I have my female warlock, level 60, she is on Sen’jin along with my dwarf hunter who is level 70…But for the past few months I have been spending most of my time playing alliance on Eldre’Thalas where you find my favorite character, Tabeyus, my level 70 resto druid along with my other lower level alts…

So, also that I am cutting back my play time a lot, I feel I should focus more on one faction and probably just one main character and one alt.  Currently, I have the most pull toward my horde toons, which coincidentally also has the most success in the battlegrounds and Arenas…so as of right now, Rekkr, my holy priest will be making the descent and becoming a deathknight…trading his robes and staff for plate and swords…surely the adventure will be one worth telling…

Here is one of those posts where I talk about how I don’t share too much going on my life and how no matter what is said or done the only thing capable of making changes in my life is me.  Searching my heart and seeing where things have gone because of things I have or haven’t done has made me realize how lucky I am to be married to my wife.  Letting go of things that I have held to tightly has given me freedom to see things differently.

I am once again feeling the burnout of WoW, like so many other people out there, it seems to be an endless cycle with no end in sight.  I am constantly chasing the proverbial carrot on a stick only occasionally getting a nibble which only increases my appetite and leaves me frustrated.  Don’t get me wrong I have made friends in my adventures and I find my escape in this world, but when it comes down to it, they cannot replace what I already have right here at home…

Don’t get me wrong, I am not giving up, but I am going to be cutting back my gaming time quite a bit. 

Of course anyone who has a level 70 character in WoW is aware of the fact that there are numerous daily quests to complete. I myself have done a lot, but not all, of them since the 2.4 patch. Every single one of them reward you with gold and a lot of them will even give you items, the latest daily quests even give you badges of justice which you can turn in for gear or various other items. As for me, I have only done the quests that give the badges a few times and out of those few times I was given a few badges in total. The quests themselves aren’t difficult to complete, but they require some traveling and time to get done. If I wanted to complete the maximum number of daily quests, which is 25 right now, I could do that, but after a while it get’s really boring. The other option would be to team up with a partner or even a group and knock out these quests together, this at least makes the time spent grinding them out more enjoyable.

To this day, I REFUSE to go find the skettis escort guy and save his ass one more time…that is one daily quest that causes a lot of frustration for players, and those of you who have done it time and time again know what I mean…he spawns in one of three locations…people are standing by these spots all the time, you can create a party, but even if half the party is sitting at another spawn point and person outside your party and fly up and start the quest…it get’s really old…

As far the the new dailys are concerned, I find myself concentrating on all the quests available at the Isle of Quel’Danas. My typical routine is to get to the Isle of Quel’Danas and pick up all the available quests, currently we are in phase 3 on both Eldre’Thalas (currently 80% complete) and Ghostlands (currently 40% complete), usually I start out killing the demons near the portal, impale the banner into the Emmisary of Hate and get the ley lines done for the portal at the same time. Then I will make my way over to the Blood Knights and Marksmen and Summoners and get the next ley line completed. Then I will take out the wretches for the 4 raiments and kill the Arcane machines and turn them into good guys…Next I use the raiments on the blood shard crystal and then ride up to the dragonhawk mount fellow and do the bombing run over the boats and take out the 6 guys there, return and complete the bombing run on the dead scar. The dead scar bombing run was very frustrating to me the first few times I tried to do it, mainly because the whole island was so crowded it was near impossible to get all the kills you needed because everyone else was dropping bombs at the same time. These days I get all the kills I need 9 times out of 10 the first trip. Once that is complete, I run over and turn in the quests I have done so far, then I make my way over to the Nagas and farm them until I get the keys I need to open up the chests and get the ore and also finish my last ley line while I am in the area.

As of right now, these are the quests available to us in the third phase of the daily quests. I am hoping we reach phase 4 this weekend on Eldre’Thalas, also, as of right now both Tabeyus and Drollam are both honored with the Shattered Sun Offensive, there are various recipes and nice items available for reasonable prices as your rep gets higher.

As far as all the other daily quests out there, I have only done them a few times and because of the limited playtime I have had lately I find it much easier to spend an hour completing 7 or 8 quests and gaining reputation a very good investment of my time.

You know it’s a funny thing, this constant rebirth of new characters.  We call them “alts”, which to me isn’t really accurate.  I would prefer to call my “alts” something more personal, like little brothers or sisters of my older toons.  Call it roleplaying or what you will, but all of my toons are related somehow, even the ones on opposite factions.  Albeit, they are twice removed cousins of an uncle that was married to a grandmother who had a secret affair with a troll who was in love with a night elf…anyway, the drama involved in creating a family history so intertwined as cross-faction love affairs could get deep.  Let me get back to the story of my weekend…

Meet, Ikonik…

He’s my Draenie hunter, he is big, bald and wields a crossbow, he shoots it like he is a bounty hunter on a mission and reloads it like the Terminator reloaded his sawed off shotgun in Terminator 2…  And, he was born Saturday morning and reached level 18 this morning.  I wasn’t trying to powerlevel him or anything, it just seems that he is good at killing stuff…I know you are thinking, no shit, he’s a hunter, he has DPS and a builtin tank…why wouldn’t he be effective?  Perhaps I have spent too much time playing my healing hybrids, but I really, truly enjoy playing hunters.  So, I call him the little brother of Tabeyus and Tredon, my night elf druids on Eldre’Thalas.  He is adopted of course, would be hard to explain how a full-blooded Draenei would be related to Night Elves…I am sure I could come up with something creative…but meh…

So far Ikonik has been finishing all the quests on Azuremyst Isle and is getting close to finishing up the quests in Bloodmyst Isle.  He had help from Gaiana, my friend I play with a lot, and made the aquaintance of her Draenei Mage, Kuriosity.

He has taken the professions of mining and engineering primarily because he can make those cool looking goggles and of course all the guns and various contraptions are very cool also.  Eventually I have hopes of being able to create one of those cool flying machines.  But, of course that is along way off.

Overall I had an enjoyable weekend leveling my young hunter.  In the future you might hear me calling him Arnold…just cause of how he reloads his weapon and how he looks when he is swinging his 2 handed swords, resembles Conan the Barbarian…

Welcome friends, sit right back as I tell a tale of a little known guild called Zombie Squad…  As some of you might recall I have been a guild leader before over the span of my gaming career.  It can be a rewarding and very time consuming thing to do, but ultimately it can one of the most rewarding experiences in MMO’s if you have good friends and players to make your guild a success.

Forgive me if this story sounds familiar, I am starting from the beginning and working my way to the current status of affairs.

So, there I was, playing my little troll hunter on Ghostlands, I was making my way into the main entrance into Silvermoon City and I ran by a blood elf who sent me a whisper asking me a most peculiar question.  He said, “Hey, you want to be a guild master of my guild?”  I replied, “Why don’t you ask someone in your guild?”.  He replied, “Cause nobody is online and I am quitting the game.”  I said, “Uh, how many people are in it?”  He said, “38″.  I reply, “Hell, why not?”  Next thing you know, I am given the Zombie Squad and he leaves and goes offline…after a few seconds I open the guild pane and realize I am the only member…he lied to me, and at first I was pretty angry about it.

I took a few minutes to think about it and realized, well, the name is kind of funny, but at least I have been saved the hassle of getting people to sign the guild charter…and the fee involved with that…

Then after about 20 minutes I think, I don’t want to be a guild master right now…so I put it up in trade channel…giving away a guild master position…immediately I get 2 whispers…the first person to reply, Zappage, says she was in the guild before and the old guild master was a jerk and always mean to people…I said, well he is gone now and I don’t want to the responsibility of it.  So, she is given the lead and I was thinking of leaving, but thought twice about it and stayed, as second in charge.  We invited everyone who we could over the next week or so, randomly selecting folks without any thought of it…believe it or not, we reached a total of 100 members in this time.  It was pretty shocking how fast it had filled up…and we had all kinds of personalities, everyone from kids with attitudes, to adults, to mom’s and dad’s and the whole bunch…it was pretty exciting for a good while, but eventually I started to see the trend…since it seemed I had the highest level character in the guild, my troll shaman, he had the majority of the funds and I paid for the bank tab and would deposit into it, we had it setup so members could repair their armor courtesy of the guild bank, this was fine, but after a while the gold went from around 70 to down to 30 and hardly nobody was making deposits…also, shortly after this time Zappage had some family issues to deal with and gave the guild leader back to Drollam.  Still not ready to take on the job, I passed it onto the next highest level character in the guild, he seemed like a pretty level headed person, but he was very nervous about the job, while I was offline that same day he passed on the guild leader job to another character in the guild…

Well, now, this is the way the guild went on for about a month or so, eventually we had made some friends and a lot of the younger players had left the guild for whatever reason…But, still Drollam, my shaman is the only one giving into the guild bank as far as gold goes, by this time he is level 70 and the daily quests help out, but I am realizing that I can only give so much before I draw the line and say ENOUGH!

So, 2 days ago, while I am playing my young druid with my alliance family, I decide to create a new guild on Ghostlands, with the intention of inviting all the good friends I had made in Zombie Squad.  My friend, Gaiana and I discuss this for a bit and she comes up with the name, Soulbound.  It hits me and feels just right, so we switch over to our Horde characters and I send a message to one of the other officers and tell him and he is happy to join the new guild.

I go to create the guild and the name, Soulbound is already taken, so I go with, Soul Bound.  Still lacking enough people to sign the charter I advertise to pay 1g for signatures….it takes about an hour before we get it all done and so the new smaller, tight knit family known as Soul Bound is created on 9 Apr 08.

With advice from Dyasha I get the tabard designed, with funds from Drollams daily quest adventures I get the first bank tab.  Yesterday I came up with rank names and ran it by the guild last night and have that setup.  So far, our guild is small, but we are stronger because of the dedication I can feel in everyone.  The goal of the guild is to casually level and have fun helping each other in the game.  Pretty straight forward, minimal drama, everyone in the guild besides the few random folks who signed the guild charter are friends of someone in the guild.  I know there are those guilds out there with recruitment processes that are very hard to get through and I understand the reason for it.  The only requirement for our guild is that you are trustworthy and kind, not too much to ask, but then again, these seem to be qualities lacking in a  lot of people these days.

This ends the story of the birth and death of the Zombie Squad, as of yesterday I was told that the guild had disbanded after half of the players had left to join our new guild, basically leaving behind all the takers and the people who were actually giving to the guild are now going to be able to reap the rewards of their dedication.  I see only good things in the future for us…so bright, I got to wear shades!

One of the aspects of WoW I enjoy is entering the battlegrounds and testing my skills against other players. Obviously the goal is always to win, but because it is a team effort it isn’t as simple as deciding to play defense or offense and doing your best. You can have a full set of PVP gear and have the best spec and have quick reflexes and all the addons and it still doesn’t mean you are going to win. Why? Because battlegrounds isn’t a 1 vs 1 battle, even the arenas require teamwork. Hence, the creation of premade raids designed specifically for Arathi Basin or Eye of the Storm. With my experience of playing battlegrounds on a few different battlegroups and now having two level 70 toons, one of each faction I can see differences and similarities. When you are hanging out in a major city either doing some crafting or checking the auction house you see the endless chat in the trade channel, unless you decide to leave channel 2 it is always there. I have to say I rarely see advertisements for premade groups for battlegrounds while playing my horde shaman, on the other hand for quite a while while playing my alliance druid it was very common to see groups looking for more or single players looking for a premade. Maybe I am ignorant to it, but I think the horde are generally either more experienced or more confident in their abilities and prefer to join up with the other random players without much concern of being punished by the alliance. At the same time I think the majority of alliance players aren’t that experienced with pvp and therefore seek out other players who have the experience and will make a better team to compete.
Here lately I haven’t been in the battlegrounds with my druid mostly because I enjoy the gameplay of my shaman much better. Both characters have their strengths and weaknesses. My feral druid has a lot of crowd control and lasting power, and while playing in cat form he can deal some damage, but it is melee damage and means he has to catch his enemy to hurt them. On the other hand my shaman can hit players from quite a distance with the lightning shock and chain lightning spells. My shaman has totems that can counteract almost any movement impairment. As I progress along and gain more honor eventually I would love to be decked out in all the season arena 1 epic gear. Eventually I will seek an arena team to take it to the next level. I have been invited to join a couple arena teams with my druid, but I just don’t know if I am ready to commit yet.
A lot of Horde players were thinking the changes to Alterac Valley with 2.4 would make winning more difficult, but I have seen the tried and true strategy that almost guarantees a win for the Horde every time. It is quite simple, all the horde need to do is send defense to Galv and cutoff the alliance offense between Galv and the IB graveyard. If you can control that choke point you will win. Trust me, I played a lot AV since the patch and I have seen the horde send everyone on offense, we lose every time. It is just a matter of time, the game might take 20 minutes to complete, but you can’t lose if they can’t get to Drek.
A typical game would go like this, keep in mind I always go on defense in AV, it’s a habit. Waiting in the cave, watching the clock tick down to zero, finally the gate opens and everyone runs out. Half the time someone will say, need 15 to go D, meet at Galv…I am already on my way there regardless. I ride to Galv, sometimes the Alliance is meeting us there, but most of the time we have a few seconds to get ready for their arrival. If we have enough on D we can keep them from even entering his chamber, but occasionally the initial rush of Allies will overtake our D, at this point someone screams, NEED MORE ON DEFENSE, GET TO GALV! So, after respawning, I make my way back over, sometimes alliance will be attempting to take the tower, so I make my way up, throw down an earthbinding totem, reach the top and find a horde rogue battling a mage, so I summon firey, my fire elemental pet who puts out more DPS than I do…either the mage kills the rogue and I am left having the battle him/her or the mage is dead, here comes a druid up the tower in cat form, he pounces me and firey starts burning his fur…by this time here comes a blood elf priest to my rescue fearing the druid, I cast lightning shock on him and cold shock, and we own him. Tower is saved…I make my way down to check and see what’s up with Galv, the alliance are still hitting it hard but our defense if keeping them from killing him. At this point the game has been going on for about 10 minutes and we have 450 reinforcements and the allies are at 390…looks good…keep it up.
I decide to make my stand the path near IBGY, I lay down my totems, usually earthbind/tremor, grounding, poison cleansing and totem of wrath. Sometimes another player will stand next to me, sometimes a group of players will be there with me, catching the allies as they attempt to reach FW and beyond. After another 5 minutes we have taken out another 10 alliance characters who tried to sneak past us but didn’t. Looks like a druid or rogue ninja’ed a tower down at our camp, there are already players there taking care of it. I hold my ground. Then like as if were we in some kind of old western stand off in the center of town, the dust blows across the ground, just out of reach of my lightning bolts stand a mage, a hunter, a pally and a warrior just eyeballing myself, a mage and a hunter. Looks like rocky, my earth elemental pet is ready for action, so I put his totem down, and commence to bring the pain…First cast is chain lightning, it gets their attention, crits them good, the mage starts to cast something, I lay down a grounding totem and catch it, the hunters cat is all up in my face pissing me off, but rocky gets his attention and lets take care of business. The cure poison totem is doing its’ job. The damn pally must be holy he is healing everyone as soon as I hurt them. The mage and hunter I am fighting decide to get closer and I say to them let’s take out the healer! They say, OK, so we focus fire, he uses his bubble…always the bubble…Well, I am getting beat up pretty bad by the mage and hunter, so I take on the role of healer for our little group, they keep hammering the pally til he goes down…now it is a matter of time before the mage and hunter will die, but by this time here come 3 more allies, a priest and that cat druid again…ugh…
I say in BG chat, need more to help defend IB, believe it or not, nobody has a smartass comment, and a handful of people arrive…at this point the battle has gone on for 18 minutes and we have 280 reinforcements, the allies are down to 150…ugh…come on! I lose track of the events after this point, but it continues on in the same manner until we eventually win a little after 25 minutes of fighting.
Of all the places to fight against other players, I do have to say I enjoy AV the most, perhaps because it is the biggest and you can get lost in there if you aren’t watching what you are doing. Just having a gameplan before you enter can mean the difference between victory or defeat.

Well, let me see here…so many things to talk about, perhaps I should just pick one subject and go from there…  Okay, well, as far as the World of Warcraft is concerned I have been fully engaged in completing daily quests with Drollam, who is my level 70 elemental shaman, see the link on the right to his armory profile.  Currently I have 3 pieces of the gladiator gear and soon I will have the 4th, looking at getting the gloves next.  Last week I went broke buying the normal flying mount, so all the new daily quests are a blessing for me.  I average about 100 gold a day, give or take…depending on how much time I put into completing them.  Besides upgrading my gear via battlegrounds I am also trying to save up gold for the epic flying mount.  Of course this takes a lot of discipline and dedication on my part, I have yet to save up enough money on Tabeyus, my level 70 feral druid.  I came close one time but decided I needed a badge of tenacity and some enchants, so there went 1k gold right there.  Tab has been spending most of his time hanging out with his family on Eldre;Thalas completing the daily quests and pretty much just hanging out.

My newest, “Main” character is Rekkr, he is a holy blood elf priest, and my first priest toon I have played past  level 20.  Come to find out, I really enjoy playing a healer, who knew?  You could have guessed that by my choice of main characters already, but neither one of them are restoration specced…I just like having that ability for whatever reason, call it a security blanket or what you will.  Anyway, Rekkr spends most of his time with Dyasha, who is a blood elf hunter, they enjoy playing together and make a pretty good team.  He is level 38 and is looking forward to getting a mount in a couple levels.

If someone were to ask me which faction I prefer playing, Horde or Alliance, I wouldnt’ be able to answer that question honestly because I enjoy my characters on both sides.  To me, it all comes down to the friends you have and the people you play with, without these your gaming experience is incomplete.  As far as being a casual player with no big goals of reaching the top of Mount Hyjal, yes, you are right, that doesn’t sound like something I would be interested in doing.  But, I don’t degrade those players who seek to be what people call the “best” players, or those with the “best” gear.  As long as you are having fun that is all that matters.