Holiday Roundup

Been playing a little of this, a little of that:

SimCity Societies: Fun for about three days, then I became bored. Haven't tried the newly-added "challenge modes" yet, but I'm not exactly captivated by the gameplay. One of the things I liked about previous SimCities was watching my city grow and change over time - in Societies, what you place is what you get. I got nine of the ten achievements by building a small town that earned a profit, letting it run at top speed while I had lunch and read for a while, then using the hundreds of thousands of dollars I'd accumulated to build the rest of the city types on the same map. The "Authoritarian" one is the only one I haven't gotten, because it's dependent on having your Sims be not upset but not overly happy, which requires some fairly specific planning. Overall, I give it a resounding "eh".

The Sims: Seems to have run its course again. I've got a lovely little town I can come back to when I feel like it, but the charm has, once again, worn off.

TR: Went to the roleplaying event on Defeat of Earth Day, which was fun, if predictably disrupted by bored players with particle effects. The clans that showed up in uniform looked damned sharp though. Played some on Resurgence Day, but missed the actual attack. Pity.

My main hit 18 and I'm nearly done with Divide - one more boss, a few CP attack/defense missions, and the instances, and I'll be on to Palisades. I think the plan will be finish Divide, finish Wilderness on Jaxon, run through Palisades, go back to Divide on an alt, do another zone on the main, etc. The cloning system is awesome but there's definitely going to be some repetition, particularly when I have 8 troops to run through the 30-50 content. Fortunately, Divide at least has some bits I want to do again (the Bane-in-prison quest line in particular is fascinating.)

The fun of combat has definitely not diminished, and I'm beginning to play with some of the unique Ranger skills - I can see how the classes will begin to differentiate. I also want to start fooling around with crafting, now that there's a global trade system and one can find markets to sell equipment with well-chosen mods. 30 is a ways off yet, though.

The Sims 2

I acquired almost all of the Sims 2 expansion and "stuff" packs (long story) and decided to install them on Sunday just so I could throw out all the shrinkwrap. This was probably a tactical error.

I played the Sims back in the day, and quite enjoyed it, and the Sims 2 was a definite step up in complexity and depth. But after a while the irony of neglecting my housework to do virtual housework gets to me, and I shelve the series. There are some neat things going on with the expacks, though, and they've been fun to explore. (Note: I installed four expansions and three "stuff" packs at once, so I'm not real sure about which bit came from what.)

More stuff is always a plus - the house construction and interior design aspects of the series have always been near the top of the list for me. There are also quite a few new min-maxer treats since the original, like "talent badges" for things like fishing and "lifetime achievements" that, if achieved, seem to shortcut the whole mood concept (permanent platinum mood? Woo!) I love having kitties running around, so I'm down with the "Pets" pack, but "Seasons" just seems like a long-delayed wishlist item packaged all shiny.

I haven't started my own business yet, so can't comment there, but if I don't update about TR as much, it's because the Stilwaters are busy fishing and mowing the lawn :P

Divide, part 1

Spent a while in Divide today with my ranger - it's much bigger, and feels much more dangerous, than Wilderness. It's a nice contrast, actually. I like that not all of the Logos have handy quests to point them out, although I will probably end up hating it if I can't find all of them.

I've played my specialist some, too, and am starting to get a feel for how to play him - much more defensively than the Soldier, for obvious reasons. I really didn't use the soldier's skills that much, other than the chaingun, but I'm feeling the lack in some cases. The Repair tool is damned handy, though.

My Commando is on ice for the moment - I don't want to try to run Divide with two characters at the same time, or I'll go nuts.

I'm really looking forward to the holiday events - I will have a week off at the end of the month, so I should be able to take part in the RP memorial service as well as the Bane assault on Foreas base. Good stuff!

Tabula Rasa: The Soldier

The Soldier class is the intro to the combat line of TR's class tree. As such, I think it performs its function tolerably well. There isn't a tremendous amount of distinction at this tier, but really levels 5-15 are more about learning game mechanics than class roles, and the tools the soldier has available work fairly well for that purpose.

There are four Soldier-specific skills, and I tried out all of them. Since they're the real distiguishing factor, I'll focus on them for the purposes of this review. (Attributes are non-class-specific, and crafting is its own topic.)

Rage: Rage is on the verge of being drastically altered, so I'm mostly going to skip it, other than to note that I'm not very good with remembering to buff myself regularly. It was pretty awesome when I did remember to use it, but that's probably at least partially because it's 5x as powerful as intended.

Shrapnel: This one was fun - it's a point-blank AoE effect, handy for those tight situations. It has a longer cast time than I'd really like, but it seemed to do pretty decent damage, and AoE always makes me happy. I may play with it further on my melee clones (I can't see it being too useful on a sniper, though.)

Machine Guns: I can't imagine why you wouldn't put at least one point in this. I saved my chainguns for heavy targets like Kael and mortars - they're ammo eaters and you can really go through cash if you use them too much - but situationally, they were invaluable.

Reflective Armor: Again, why not put a point in it? In these lower levels, you level past armor far too quickly to cling to any particular piece, so I used the best stuff I had at the moment, type be damned. The concept is fascinating, though, and I like the idea of different advantages to full-suit vs. piecemeal armor.

Overall, the skills seem reasonably well-chosen to give players a taste of upcoming decisions. The idea of armor types that are more complex than simply "good, better, best" is a critical one, even if the actual choice isn't critical this early. Shrapnel is reflective of skills to come (carpet bombing and scourge, in particular) and Rage is a nice differentiator between Soldier and Specialist. I was able to solo the Wilderness instances with sufficient but not excessive challenge, and I definitely got a solid grip on how to play a heavy combat character.

The only real lack was in melee combat - other than critical kills, I really don't have any taste of how that would work. Hand-to-hand doesn't make much sense when it severely damages your weapon, plus the shotgun has beautiful knockback and is well-suited to those kinds of close-quarters situations. I was originally planning to aim for Spy, but I know I like sniping, and I have no idea if I'd like melee. A melee weapon - even a set of brass knucks - would give players a way to try out that playstyle here, where the stakes are low.

(As it is, the critical kill concept is just bizarre - distance and cover are your best advantages. Why on earth would you give them up? But that's a rant for another day.)

Next Tier

Finished Pravus Research, which wasn't a bad zone but for a bugged quest drop that made me restart it. Fortunately, all that meant was I had to kill about three extra Bane, so I'm not too cranky. Finishing the instance and associated quests meant I did get my clone credit in time, so I now have a Ranger and a Commando at 15, who each have an extra clone credit. Go go alt fiend!

Got both of them to Divide, where it is clear I will be kept happily occupied for quite a while. I'll probably switch off between the two of them and my Specialist, who's only 8 and has a ways to go in Wilderness. Soldier class review incoming, once I gather my thoughts.

Caves of Donn

Ran the Caves of Donn solo tonight. Wasn't too terribly hard, minus a couple of mismanaged group encounters, and the regrettable slaughter of the party of Foreans I led into a Bane mortar. I like the instances, although I wonder if the intro movies are supposed to be quite so choppy. It may be time for a driver upgrade, who knows?

Dinged 14 somewhere in there - we'll see if I can make it through Pravus without dinging again - that would allow me to clone before 15, so my clone would get the credit at 15 as well. Either way it's not a huge deal, I guess.

I'm slightly baffled by the change to crafting - now all weapon mods require crafting skill as well. I suppose that's nice enough, but I'm not spending a point on it on an actual fighting character. I'll make a crafting clone at some point and play with it then. Until then, I'll just sell off all the recipes and save the components for the forthcoming Military Surplus.

Work was insane last week - hopefully I'll get more time in the next few weeks.

Oh, THAT Button

Figured out why I failed one of the Crater Lake missions - I hadn't radioed in to HQ to complete it and trigger the next part of the chain. As a matter of fact, I'd never even seen the "Radio HQ" button until I went back in, completed the mission again, and scrutinized the mission log to find out what went wrong. I think that was my first actual radio mission, and had NO idea how it worked. Well, now I do!

In happier news, I successfully completed all the Crater Lake missions, this time solo. I'm sort of glad I had a squad to take out the mortars with, the first time, but I was able to avoid them this time and get everything that remained done. I'm halfway to 14, though, so I'm not sure I'll finish the ToO before 15. Oh, well.

Now that I figured out how to do the damned thing, I think the instance was actually quite fun. It wasn't scripted at all that I could tell, but the missions were laid out such that it had a very nice flow and felt like a coherent storyline. I'd heard really good things about TR's instances from friends, and am happy to find myself in agreement :)

Inside My Head

Great article at IGN about playing Sarah Morrison, with the three devs who trade off playing her in-game. The "expanding her character as we go along" sort of dynamic is one that's always really drawn me to the roleplaying side of MMOs, even if I'm REALLY bad at RP.

And by bad, I mean I'm antisocial and quiet at the best of times, so I tend to do all my roleplaying inside my own head. All of my MMO characters have fleshed-out backstories to greater or lesser degrees, but I'm the only person who knows them. It's still a pretty big part of my fondness for any given MMO, though.

Fleshing out the history and relationships between my characters and figuring out their place in the world gives my creative brain something to do while muscle memory drives most of the gameplay. Some games make this easier than others - contrast Ultima Online, where I could play a half-mad shepherd priest who ranted about the Virtues while running around barefoot and praying fanatically at shrines while being followed by a docile herd of goats, to World of Warcraft, where about the quirkiest thing I can do is collect booze (no, really - my rogue has a bag and a half full of quest reward flasks and beer-stein maces) or play a Retribution paladin (which I don't, actually.)

City of Heroes was probably the best for RP, of my previous MMOs. It had detailed and cohesive worldbuilding and a plausible framework for the characters to fit into. There weren't very many restrictions on the actual character appearance/backstory/whatever, but the world itself was fairly restricted - you play a hero involved in the struggle against evil, both banal and profound. That restriction, in my mind, actually makes RP easier - and more fun. It feels less like pointless wankery and more like just interacting with the world.

Tabula Rasa works for me in much the same way that CoH did - I have a definite framework to build my character in, but I can imagine whatever motivations and history I want to. Instead of the fabulous costume creator, there are the "ethical parables" - they're minor touches, and they seem to be almost impact-free in terms of actual gameplay, but so far they've been the hooks to hang my character development on. (Well, that and the cloning system, which I swear I started playing with at least 48 hours before reading Old Man's War.)

Why is this important, since it only takes place in my head? I don't know if it is, to anyone else - certainly of the above list, the least RP-friendly game is doing the best. But for me, if I can thoroughly develop a character or two - story-wise, not gameplay-wise - I'm pretty damn hooked. I still mourn for my UO character Itarion, deleted untimely, and his descendent Jeremiah, sold off on eBay in a fit of madness. I've been playing UO for ten damn years. I have an incredibly high level of investment in that game - those characters, partly, but also just that world, in which I've created a whole epic saga spanning generations. We don't have enough data on longevity and MMOs to make generalizations about this level of commitment and a game's long-term success, but I know it makes a difference in how invested I get in a game.

First Instance

Ran Crater Lake tonight - did it a little bit fast, seem to have missed an objective. One of the squad had clearly done it before and was moving right along, but I don't really feel like I learned it. It was interesting, certainly - and would probably be very hard to solo at 12 - but I think I'm going to run it again, solo, to try to figure out what I missed.

Predators

Took 'em out - actually wasn't that bad. Three shots with a rifle from behind, and boom! That puts me at instances-only with my soldier, just in time for me to fly home and spend some uninterrupted time playing. The short-session nature of this game works when I never have more than half an hour before someone needs the computer, or we're going to eat, or something, but I am rather looking forward to doing some serious catassing after all this family time.

Stilwater

So I decided to go for it, and my in-character TR adventures are now available at stilwater.blogspot.com. I'll probably keep doing out-of-character updates here, because it requires different brain cells.

Speaking of which, I'm through with all but the instances in Wilderness (well, that and killing a trio of Predators, which I haven't really attempted since the one embarrassing failure.) I did the assaults today - that was interesting, but also sort of frustrating, as I clearly couldn't succeed solo, and even retrieving the tokens was risky. I've seen a lot of requests to make the tokens pop into your pack instead of staying on the corpse as loot, and I can see why.

Also ran a few missions with my Specialist - Pinhole Falls was vastly easier now that I know the trick to fighting Miasmas. Picked up a couple of Logos, hit level 6 with him, did the parable mission that I wanted to write a post about. Since Jeri's at the instances-only part of Wilderness, I'll probably play him more. He's definitely fun to write about - thinking about what it would be like to be a clone, and an opposite-gender clone at that, is neat. (Jeri, on the other hand, is well on her way to being the stereotypical nutbar sniper. Also fun, but in a different way.)

The tier-and-clone system makes for interesting character development - I honestly have no idea what Jaxon will ultimately be, but I can pick whatever works for his character at each point. I like that. I like it a LOT. I mean, if he ends up being too broken to be an effective soldier, he can even be my crafter alt :P

(Note to self: Write an essay about the psychology of clones in TR's world. Along with the class review and the Wilderness review, I suppose.)

More Checkboxes

I got all of my LZ defender tokens about ten minutes after I made yesterday's post, and switched to Imperial Valley. Wow, it's much more intense there - more Bane, less downtime. The shotgun-berserker method doesn't work as well there - too many groups sniping from too many different directions. For the last wave I found a sniper's perch in the hills above the city and just used my rifle - took almost no damage, and when I ran out of targets and dropped down to collect my tokens, the plains were positively littered with my kills.

I got my Bot Stomper title in the course of the CP defense, then took out the last handful of Xanx. All I need for the ToO now are the instances, which I probably won't get to until I get back home, and CP assaults. I'm not sure how easy those will be - certainly Wilderness 1 is well defended, but the other instances may be more likely to get overrun.

The official site's latest promotion is HIGHLY tempting - it would be a great way to polish my fiction-writing chops. I'm going to think about it for a few days, but perhaps I'll create a sister blog to this one just for in-character musings.

Control Points

I'm at my parents' house this week, so my playing time will be sporadic. I hopped on yesterday and just hung out at Landing Zone, defending. It was fun - the first couple waves I died several times, but I got the hang of it and my token-to-death ratio went way up. (Shotguns FTW!) I could wish for the assaults to be somewhat more frequent, but when they come, they are intense. Word on the wire is that the higher-level control point assaults are waaay more difficult - looking forward to those.

About 25 more tokens for me, then I'll hit the imperial valley CP for a while, see how it differs.

The Unblogroll

I'm not at all interested in maintaining a blogroll of any sort, but I find myself annoyed that not enough people are talking about what I want to talk about. I may not be the only one, so I'm going to (probably periodically) make a list of sites that I'm reading:

RGTR.com - The official site, non-intuitive name and all.
TR Stratics - Stratics has been doing this a while and generally has a clue. Also, reasonable forums, if you like that sort of thing.
Planet TR - Also reasonably-populated forums.
Tentonhammer's portal - We'll see if they keep it up, but they have a bunch of guides, interviews, etc at the moment.
Zeus Character Builder - Very handy

That's what I've been hitting so far - if anyone's found a well-written blog or three, I'd love to see it.

Squadding Up

I bounced around a bit last night, looking for a base being assaulted, then I decided to go take out the three Devils for the medicine mission. There were five or six people hanging around, and each time the three bastards spawned, we'd blow the hell out of them, and presumably somebody got credit. After the third or fourth repetition, when I realized I'd only gotten one credit and didn't know which one it was for, I asked everyone if they were in a squad. They weren't, so I issued invites, and the next round, we all got credit. How brilliant is that? *eyeroll*

I really like the sort of ad-hoc cooperation that I'm finding - you hear the whine of a Bane dropship, you drop what you're doing to blow the crap out of the enemy, and so does anyone else who happens to be nearby. I haven't seen a single complaint about "kill-stealing" - we're at war, and the point is to fight the crusties, not each other. However, I could wish for a different kind of kill-credit, where multiple solo people could get credit for one kill - or perhaps the playerbase just needs to get used to squadding up. Why not? The XP gets split anyway, and the loot drops aren't worth fighting over - besides, I just set them to "free-for-all" and let them fall where they may. Worked fine, no one complained.

After that, I turned in the quest, got the ethical-choice quest (I'm not going to spoil those here,) and defended a base for a while. Waiting around for an assault? Exactly as boring as you'd expect. The assault itself? High-adrenaline fun! AoE damage rocks - shotty, shrapnel, shotty, shotty, all dead! The laser chaingun came in handy on the Kael, who are immune to physical, but otherwise it was the shotgun all the way.

Still just 11, and I think I'm running out of Wilderness quests, but I have a lot of base assault/defense tokens to collect. Plus I need to kill those predators - I tried one, but it smoked me as soon as it noticed me. Need a different strategy for those dudes, it appears. I also kinda want to spend some time on my specialist - my MMO strategy is usually "create a character, play 5 hours or so, figure out what I've done wrong, create a new character, do it again." I'm going to keep my main, inefficiencies and all, but I'm looking forward to a smoother run of the Wilderness pretty soon.

Hey, Readers!

It looks like talking about TR is much more interesting than talking about WoW, at least at the moment - I have commenters! Welcome, all!

I changed the tagline, and will no doubt feel much guiltier when I don't post for a while. (That doesn't mean I'll necessarily post more often, but at least I'll feel guilty about it.)

No TR yesterday - went to bed early. Plan to play some tonght, though. I'm thinking that I'll do a Soldier class review when I hit 14.99, and/or a Wilderness zone review.

Oh, and check out the Recruit a Friend program - a three-day trial isn't long, but if you've got friends on the fence it might be just enough.

Sniping

Well, that was fun. My new strategy for that quest worked perfectly (talk to NPC to spawn mobs; run like hell up the ramp to the first platform; snipe.) The get in-have fun-get out model worked wonderfully - I was moving as soon as the loading screen finished, and I turned in two quests with no more than about a minute of downtime. So not only did I go to the grocery store and cook meals for the next week, I hit 11 as well :)

More TR

Played TR and Civ III, alternating, all weekend. Civ III is an addiction - TR is fast becoming an obsession.

I never like playing ranged characters, unless the ranged combat is pretty visceral. Most MMOs don't do it for me. Guild Wars did - or perhaps the melee just sucked, I can't remember - and TR does, too. I'm beginning to think I might like Sniper better than Spy.

Got another level or two, finished most of my non-instanced quests, and completed a few Targets of Opportunity goals. Kept banging my head against one quest where five or six Xanx (big, web-shooting, evil spiders) spawn practically on top of me. I can't quite clear them out before they pin me down and armor-ignore me to death. I have a plan, though - we'll see.

Next up, the rest of the ToOs, including hanging out and defending some control points for a while. I've gotten a token here or there as I've stopped by, but haven't spent any concentrated effort on it.

Man, I'm digging this game - and, from the tone of various forums, so are a lot of other people. I haven't seen so much positivity since the last time I looked at the Darkfall forums - and hey, this game has actually shipped!

Tabula Rasa

I was apprehensive about this game - I love Garriott's previous work (see previous, re: UO) but he hasn't shipped a game since I graduated high school, and I was afraid he might have lost his touch. Or his mind - a sci-fi mock-shooter? I mean, really.

But I sucked it up, bought the (shiny, gorgeous) collector's edition, and... haven't been able to put it down. Let me make no bones about it - all marketing spin aside, it's an MMO. Quests, stats, skills, titles, instances - nothing has leapt out at me so far as being completely revolutionary. But there are a couple of things that make it worth a try, in my opinion:

- It's a different theme. Military sci-fi, rather than fantasy. Aliens rather than monsters. Guns rather than swords. As much as I dig fantasy, I am heartily tired of it, and this is a nice change. I played Auto Assault some (may it rest in peace!) and other than squishing pedestrians, the sci-fi theme was the good bit. TR's is even better done, plus it's prettier and runs better. The storyline itself is solid and fully-realized, from the dogtags and orders sheet in the CE, to the NPCs engaging the enemy and shouting orders, warnings, and "Oh shit!" just like real soldiers, to the interesting Supreme Hippie benevolent aliens that gave all the player characters spiffy powers.

- Combat is fast-paced and highly interactive - and fun! The only other MMO that felt as exciting as this was City of Heroes, which had extensive knockback mechanics that made combat feel much more real than the "hit button-watch particle effect-see floaty number" combat system that most other MMOs offer. TR's combat is mostly ranged at the low levels, but positioning and cover are really important, and I end up moving, retargeting, crouching, charging in for a critical kill (your opponent stands there, dazed, and if you run in you can kick its head off for double XP!) backing up, and whipping out the shotty for a couple of hits of click-BOOM, sometimes all in the same fight. I like interactive combat - it's why I prefer a backstab rogue, because I like having to think about positioning, and work at it to maximize my effectiveness. But WoW has NOTHING on TR for dynamic, fast-paced combat.

- The Cloning system. It's sort of a gimmick, but it's perfect for me. I like alts - a lot - but I don't love re-running the first ten levels half a dozen times to find out what the gameplay differences are at the high levels. The cloning system allows you to copy your character at all the class-branching decision points, and not backtrack nearly as much. I also like not having to pick a class straight off - I am pretty sure my main is going Spy, because hey, backstabbing! But if I change my mind, I can - at any point - and not lose ground.

- Garriott's signature "ethical parables." Branching quest chains, where the choices you make affect how different people and groups see you. I've only hit one so far, but it worked. They usually do, for me. I went with my gut on the actual decision, and then found myself feeling nervous as I went back to the original quest giver to tell him what I'd decided. It's a level of engagement that WoW has never managed (which I've bitched about before) and it does a great job of getting me invested in my character and the world.

- Exploration and badgewhoring: I'm a classic "Explorer"-type MMO player. I like to see things, collect things, and check things off a list. TR's "Targets of Opportunity" system is tailor-made for players like me. (Think CoH-style badges, but better organized.)

I haven't really played with the dynamic Control Point battles yet (self-scaling constant fighting around a base) but I've heard good things about them. I've also heard that the instances are lots of fun. I can't see myself getting sucked backed into WoW with patch 2.3, even though it buffs my rogue stupid high, so I'll probably be reporting on my adventures in TR for a while.

(Edited to add, thanks for the link, TR team! :) )

Betrayal

So I got a shiny new computer, and installed a whole bunch of games I had lying around. As a result, I haven't touched WoW in at least a week. Since my alternative activities have been a) untagged and b) generally rogue-like, I'll blog about them here until such time as I find it necessary to change the blog tag line or I go back to playing WoW.

Guild Wars:

I'd played Guild Wars obsessively for a month when it came out, then got distracted and haven't really come back to it. I never got past level 15 or so. When I heard about Eye of the North, I decided to give it another spin.

My ranger-mesmer is still pretty cool, and I got the hang of playing her in just a few minutes. I still love the AI minions that actually do what they're supposed to. I finished one quest, felt satisfied, and... got distracted. Again. So far I haven't come back to it. But hey, no monthly fee, so it'll wait.

Civilization III:

I actually wanted to play Civ 4 (which performed like a dog on my old box) but I could only find disk 2. Civ III was handy, so I popped that in instead, and promptly lost track of... about a week. God, these games are horribly addictive. It took me a couple frustrating games to remember my l33t Chieftain-level skills, but I've been playing for half an hour or so every morning, taking over the world. It's fun, and I'm going to try to pace myself.

Ultima Online:

The Invasion of Magincia has totally sucked me back in - my love for UO was cemented years and years ago during the invasion of Trinsic, and this one brings back fond memories. My heretofore-neglected paladin is getting a workout, and I've even gotten around to sorting out some template issues on my crafters. I haven't been logging a ton of hours, but I pop in every other day at least.

Tabula Rasa:

I've been playing TR every night this week, so I'm going to pull a review of that into its own post. Short version: it rocks.

Scholo, Sort Of

Didn't play at all last week, due to massive work-related drama. Ran AV a few times on Saturday, and today hit up Shattered Halls again, finished some BEM quests, and ran Scholo just far enough to get the last of the deeds I needed. No AD rep for that one, though - most disappointing.

Also got my Riding training and flew around a bit on my broom - look forward to doing some more of that. Otherwise, an unexciting week all around.

Baby Steps

I'm clearly getting to the point with my rogue that progress is going to be in fairly small increments, but I'm still having fun. A few things I got to this weekend:

- Ran Shattered Halls, finishing two of the three quests and upgrading my shoulders with one of the rewards. (Incidentally, "kill x" quests where the number of available mobs in the zone exactly equals x? Effing annoying.)

- Began questing in the CE hub in Blade's Edge, and dinged Revered with CE. (Apparently, all for naught, as 2.3 will make the Heroic keys available at Honored. *shrug*)

- Spent far too much money clearing the the Tier 0.5 set upgrade quest I was on - I wanted to get it out of my queue, and the items were on sale, and I had the cash... so I got it done. Got the next two steps done too, but balked at spending ANOTHER 40 gold. I'll pick that back up after I have my flying mount.

- The above quest line took me to Silithus, so I ran several quests there. I don't like the desert zones much, but it is an interesting part of the storyline, so I did enjoy it, and will come back next time I'm in the mood for some low-challenge content. Went from halfway to Friendly to two-thirds to Honored, too.

- Cleared the three elite quests I had waiting in Nagrand - just one left, now, and it looks like that one will give me an upgrade for my ranged slot, too.

- Ran the Headless Horseman five times, picked up the welfare-epic ring (which was only a fraction better than my blue ring, so it's not that big a deal, anyway) and picked up a couple of different brooms. I should soon be able to buy the flying-mount training, and now I'll have something to tool around on while I save up the extra hundred gold for the mount :) This was a pretty easy boss, but it was fun!

- I also ran the lowbie Halloween content on my Blood Elf Pally, who is sitting at 19 waiting for patch 2.3. I run WSG on him from time to time, but see no point in running through content right before all the rewards are boosted. I am looking forward to playing him, though, because I want to see all the Horde content!

First Voice Chat

I hardly played over the weekend, instead getting some actual RL chores done. But Sunday night I decided to pop in for just a few, and I'm glad I did.

First, I jumped into an AB, and won it handily, which is usually an astonishingly rare occurrence. Perhaps the skew isn't so bad at 70... will have to experiment further.

Just as that was ending, a Shadow Labs group was looking for one more DPS - they were already past the first two bosses. Perfect. We had some issues with trash pulls, mostly due to bad luck and people not paying attention, but the first boss gave us no trouble - perhaps because our leader turned on her voice chat and... led. Explained the strat, called out when we needed to move, etc. It was a piece of cake.

We wiped on Murmur, and just before we were going to start again the tank bailed, but the group got me my Karazhan key fragment, which was kind of them - and I got to finish one of the quests I had. So I was able to upgrade my bracers, plus I won a mace that dropped off of the one boss we fought, and it turned out to be, according to shadowpanther, one of the best blue offhand weapons available. So a good short run, overall.

Play Much, Drink Much, Post Little

Brewfest was much more entertaining with the hourly invasions, but it's still entertaining. I will have enough tickets to get a ram, although I'm not sure I want one. I also added several items to my collection of alcohol-related trinkets and quest rewards, which I count as a win. My Blood Elf alt got a spiffy hat - even better!

I have not had a successful instance run since I posted last, although I've had a number of unsuccessful ones. (First boss in Shadow Labs; wiped three times, gave up. Different group beat him, then the tank bailed. We found another tank, reset because he asked us to, beat him again, then... the tank bailed. Asshole.) (Oh, and if the group wipes three times in the first four pulls in Steamvaults? GIVE UP.)

I have had any number of successful elite quest runs, though, so I can't complain too much - gotten more gear out of that than the last ten instances. I'm now entirely wearing blues except one ring, one trinket, and my bracers, plus I upgraded a couple of my existing blues. I also have tons of money and am revered with the Kurenai. So, not actually complaining all that much.

I did a bit of grinding since the patch and hit Revered with Argent Dawn, and finally turned in all the stuff I'd been hoarding. Other than all the extra bankspace, I got about a fifth of what I'll need to hit exalted. I'm going to wait to run Scholo and finish those quests and Strat for the last quest or two there before I do any more grinding. It's not a horrific rate - about 1k an hour - but it's not awesome either, and I have other things to do.

I really, really like Nagrand. Some site (Wowwiki, maybe?) compared it to Westfall or the Barrens - I completely disagree. It's gorgeous and peaceful without feeling sere and barren. The quests aren't terribly interesting, and the amount of grinding that'd be required to hit Exalted with the Kurenai makes my toes curl, but I spent a solid weekend there are really enjoyed it. It's a pleasant change from the otherwise dark and grim zones in Outland.

Other than the last three elite quests in Nagrand (I hate you, Hemet Nesingwary!) my plan is to move on to the Blade's Edge Mountains, where I will certainly hit Revered with Cenarion Expedition and open up my first set of heroics. I'll also keep attempting the Auchenai instances, Steamvaults, and Shattered Halls, as opportunities arise. Chipping away at the Azerothian instances is a perpetual task, as well. I also plan to spend some time flying around Outland as soon as I pick up another couple hundred gold. Exploration is really my thing, so I'm looking forward to that more than anything.

70 At Last

So I finally dinged 70, and actually didn't even see it happen - I was distracted by a series of text messages. So anticlimactic.

It wasn't the only thing I did this weekend, by a long shot. Let's see how much I can remember:

- Ran Mana Tombs; ran Auchenai Crypts. No gear, good XP though.

- Ran Durnholde again for the heck of it, tried BM once before I realized that it kinda sucks and I'd rather wait until I'm ready to get the key from it. No gear.

- Dinged, fixed my build (hemo and cold blood ftw!) and started the Kara attunement quest line.

- Realized that elderly dragons should be left in peace. (No, seriously - Emberstrife ate my lunch. Twice.)

- Cleared the remaining non-elite quests in Terokkar.

- Ran Strat undead, FINALLY. Bunch of 60s and a 70 mage - everything's easier with enough AOE DPS, isn't it? No gear (I'd love to pick up my class set pieces, but no dice) but a toooon of rep, since all the rep rewards are doubled since the patch. The Baron's head turnin got me around 2400 rep alone. Doing the couple of Scholo quests and the one Strat quest I have left should push me over to Revered, or close enough to grind it, anyway.

- Jumped in to a Sethekk Halls group for just the last boss, which means I got my Shadow Labs key, but couldn't get either of the quests done, so I'll have to run that one again.

Next up: Shadow Labs for the Kara key fragment, Scholo and UBRS when I can, Shattered Halls, Sethekk, Mana Tombs, and Auchenai Crypts as I feel like it, and Steamvaults as soon as I get past Shadow Labs. And questing in Nagrand, when I'm not 5-manning.

Man, this game has a ton of content. I'm not NEARLY done. (Also, the quest reward xp-to-gold conversion? Very nice. I made 150 gold, easy, for turning in maybe 8 or 10 quests.)

LBRS

Had a startlingly successful, if long, LBRS run last night. The rest of the party was gracious enough to let me collect the gems (which are now 100% drop, thank Elune) so I got all of my business done, including restoring Warosh's mojo and finally killing Wyrmthalak. On to UBRS and glory!

Pardon me, I need to go make an elderly dragon an offer he can't refuse.

Dungeons New and Old

My plans to grind Eye of the Storm fell by the wayside - it seems my PvP mood has petered out, as it usually does. Instead, I ran a couple of 5-mans:

- LBRS, which was a tedious and painful attempt to drag 4 terribly underleveled noobs through the content. We made it just about halfway through with three personnel changes and, by the end, it was me, a pally, and a shaman. Killed Voone and called it a day. Got one quest done, but still have quite a few to go. (Also, the Devout Belt dropped THREE TIMES - what's up with that?)

- Durnholde, which I'd never done, with a group of two hunters, a feral druid, and a well-geared 70 priest. It was fun, and went quite smoothly. No drops for me, but went from 0/3000 to around 4000/6000 with Keepers of Time, which blows my mind - so much rep! While it was an interesting instance, I don't have any particular desire to grind it, and plan to move right on to Dark Portal.

- Steamvaults, with two warriors, a feral druid, and a holy priest. A little light on the DPS overall, but three of the group members were in the same guild and they knew what they were about. We made it all the way through, and while I didn't get any drops, I got a fabulous helm as a quest reward. Also got within 1k rep of Revered with Cenarion Expedition, which is awesome - I'm looking forward to running some Heroics soon.

I'm about halfway to 70 at this point, and feeling pretty good. I think I'll get back to questing soon, and keep running 5-mans as they pop up. I definitely want to hit Shattered Halls as soon as I can - I'm not far from Revered with Honor Hold, plus there is an awesome set of blue shoulders as the quest reward for killing the end boss there. I still need to get through Auchenai Crypts, if only for my sense of dignity (I've tried it twice and never made it all the way through) and I've never even seen Mana Tombs. I think I should also drop by Kara and pick up the key quest line pretty soon...

PvP and Cat-Vacuuming

I haven't really made progress for the last couple of weeks, despite playing a fair bit. I got Exalted with the AV faction, which is stupidly easy in comparison to the other two factions, and gives a stupidly high amount of honor. I got enough tokens to buy everything I wanted plus some, and picked up the marshal's helm for when I ding 70. I really need a new weapon more than I need the helm, but I was near my 100-token limit and didn't want to waste them.

Last weekend I ran Arathi Basin repeatedly, because I'm a masochist. GodDAMN, do I hate that BG. It's boring, frustrating, and we always lose, which means I have to do it three times as often to get the tokens I need. I just about have enough to pick up my epic belt, though, so I'm reasonably satisfied.

This weekend will probably be Eye of the Storm over and over, and since I've only run it once, I dunno how painful it'll be. I need quite a few tokens to pick up all the stuff I want, though, so I'll have to slog through it. I'm sick of being badly undergeared, and I have no desire to join an arena team, so this is the easiest way to get into decent level 70 gear. And I don't hate PvP - really, I don't - I just hate that Alliance always loses everything but AV. I'm sure my counterparts hate AV as much as I hate everything else.

I also spent a little time clearing the last couple of Steamwheedle Cartel quests I'd missed, tipping me over into Revered with a couple of the cities and getting me pretty close with the others. No way am I doing repeatable quest grinding for them, but I like feeling like I got as high as possible. I'm eagerly awaiting the next patch, where I can go back to the Plaguelands and clear out the last of my tasks there - for double rep! I am guessing that at 70 with reasonable gear I'll be able to solo-grind the instances at least a little. I want Exalted with Argent Dawn, dammit!

Oh, and I finally cleared out the Windsor escort quest, which means I am DONE with BRD for good. Finally. Now all I need are some BRS runs and I'll be keyed for Onyxia! Heh.

Alterac Valley

Haven't played all that much since my last post (enough to hit 999/1000 with Exodar, though :P) but spent a fair bit of time in Alterac Valley during the last double rewards weekend. Being Alliance, we won literally every time - probably ten for ten matches. It's an interesting BG - it's kind of nice for me to be able to sneak off and capture a mine if I feel like it, or run with the pack, gather a bunch of items, then turn them in once I die. That's mostly what I was doing, and I got into a pretty good rhythm with it. Even got to run the beacon out to get air support during the one close match - that was satisfying, and a perfect mission for a rogue.

I doubt I'll be doing it much during off weekends, because the queue times are just absurd, but I will probably spend this next weekend running AV. Gotta get that rep to exalted, too, after all :P

Woohoo!

That is all.

Playing, Not Posting

Although not all that much, really. I'm trudging through the endgame, and I'm really astonished at just how much content there is in BC - I'm at 68, and am only maybe halfway through the third zone of six. I've finished with Zangarmarsh and the SP/UB instances for the moment, and have gotten through some of the Terokkar Forest content, although I haven't touched Auchindoun yet.

Every so often I get bored and go back to Azeroth to clean up some quests - I'm working on some of the Blasted Lands stuff at the moment - but I'm holding off on all the Argent Dawn grinding I had planned because the next major patch doubles the rep gain rate. Which is GOOD NEWS, believe me, because I'm a completist, not a masochist.

I'm slowly checking off gear upgrades, and I'm in about half blues at this point, which isn't too bad. The gear comes slowly compared to the pace of the content, though. I suppose if I cared more I'd be grinding more instances and fewer quests, but I want to wait until 70 to at least have a shot at the really good stuff - why spend three days in Underbog to get a pair of pants that will be replaced in two levels?

Overall, still having fun, although real life has been intruding. It is summer, after all.

Busy Busy

Been playing quite a bit in hotel rooms, lately - traveling a lot. Consequently, I haven't gotten much of substance done.

- Hit 66
- Finished most of my BRD quests - just need to do the Windsor escort quest
- Finished (solo) one Scholo quest
- Hit honored with Sporeggar, friendly with Kurenai, and and very close to honored with CE
- Am about 2500 rep from being Exalted with all Alliance factions

Most of the above is pretty much just vaccumming the cat, but it is kinda fun to do level 20 quests and one- and two-shot everything. I play these days so I don't have to think about anything.

Busy Weekend

Out of town again, so I don't know how much I'll play this week, but a couple of bullet points on the weekend:

- Ran LBRS with a pickup group, which ended up being a moderate success - it's an interesting, if long, zone.

- Ran Underbog with more wipes than I usually like, but we made it all the way through, I got a nice new set of throwing knives, and dinged Friendly with Cenarion Expedition.

- Got through all the Midsummer quests except for the dungeon-run one, including the steal-the-enemy-fire ones, and now have the pieces of a totally over-the-top angel-of-light suit, complete with halo :)

- Finished the Draenei starting areas (as much as I could - many of the quests seem to be race-limited, which was disappointing), finished a number of other nagging quests, and am very close to hitting Exalted with Gnomeregan, and am confident that I can hit Exalted with Exodar fairly easily after clearing Zangarmarsh.

Not exactly racing towards 70, but I enjoy setting my own wacky goals :)

Noobishness

Spent the last couple nights running the Draenei starting area - it's definitely, like the BE starting area, a step up from the first set. More interactivity, more interesting quest lines - I'm enjoying it. Even if they nerfed the rep rewards, unlike ALL THE OTHER starting areas :P

Quick Wins are Fun

I had to work a couple hours of overtime last night, so I hopped on, ran one WSG with my pally, won it, and hopped off. I'm catching the rhythm of Warsong Gulch as a healer, as opposed to a stealth ganker - Blessing of Freedom? Rocks. I still need some practice before I'll be really useful, and I'm certainly not twinked enough to be really uber, but I'm having fun.

Another long weekend

Only ran one instance - Blood Furnace - but FINALLY got a piece of gear I could use out of it. My first socketed item, too. Finished the rest of the quests in Hellfire Citadel, dinged Exalted with Darnassus, and then ran WSG a bunch of times on my Horde Pally, which was fun, although it's annoying running 10-19 when you're not a twink.

My plan, after consulting various charts and strategy guides, is going to be to run Slave Pens and Underbog several times each to get my Cenarion Expedition rep up before starting all of the Zangarmarsh quests. I also want to run Scholo, Strat, and BRD again, but I'm not going to sit around and wait for those. While waiting for groups I may see what WSG is like in the 60-69 bracket these days - I expect it's dead, since there are no rewards above 60 other than the title you get for maxing all three Azeroth battlegrounds reps. Which I am totally not going to do. Really.

Completionism Strikes Again

Not willing to sign on for another late night instance, I took care of my AH business and wandered around a bit. Completely failed to solo the group quest that I am now TEN LEVELS OVER, and decided to do something a little less challenging.

Like noob quests.

Seriously, I spent an hour and a half last night finishing all of the quests in Dun Morogh. Got my bow skill up a hundred points or so, dinged Exalted with Ironforge, and felt like the biggest loser ever -but also felt kinda good that I'd gotten it done. I think I have a problem.

A General Rule

The guy whose first question to the female toons in the group is "Are you a chick IRL?" is, invariably, an asshole. Last night's BRD run was no exception - we got to Windsor, then had to add in the Wipemaster General, and did not get much further before he wandered off to respec and I bailed. I feel bad about bailing - to a degree - because the rest of the group was really very solid, but it was after midnight and I had no desire to sit on my thumb for 20 minutes while the "tank" screwed around in Ironforge.

(No sign of the Scholo folks from the previous evening, which was no surprise...)

Scholomance

Did some minor housekeeping last night, went fishing, and ended up hooking up with a Scholo group. We got a bit further than the last time I'd gone, but didn't do any bosses or actually finish any quests before our tank bailed. We sort of casually talked about doing it again tonight - I don't have my heart set on it but if I'm on and they're on, I'll run it again.

Notes

Actual work stuff delayed this post, so the details aren't all that clear from this weekend, but I know I did the following:

- Ran Strat Live (we didn't finish the last boss, but I cleared two of my quests)
- Ran BRD (Short run, did Bael'gar and talked to Windsor. Bael'gar is a PAIN.)
- Ran Ramparts (Nice and smooth, minus some minor personnel juggling in the middle. No good items to equip, although I got a BoE blue out of a chest)
- Cleared several quests in Hellfire Peninsula, including the bombing runs, which were fun.
- Cleared some of my rep-gain inventory, dinging Friendly with Thorium Brotherhood (mostly to get the three stacks of Dark Iron Residue out of my bank) and Honored with Argent Dawn. Also in the process of running Ramparts dinged Honored with Honor Hold, netting me a nice sword.
- Cleared a few more Azeroth quests here and there - my quest logs are pretty low as a result, which is a nice change. I still need to kill Obsidion, though.

Overall, it felt like a productive weekend, even though my server was down for several hours on Saturday. I got the house cleaned, too!

Blizzard Pwns Thottbot

No, really. First thing I'm going to do when I get home is turn off data collection - why provide it to a third party when I'm getting it straight from the source?

Ran a couple of quests last night, nothing of serious interest. It was nice to be able to jump in for an hour, feel like I made progress, and log out when I felt like it.

A good pickup group

I didn't really plan to get much done last night, but a solidly leveled group was looking for one more for Blood Furnace, so I joined up. It was one of the best PUGs I've done - smooth as silk, cleared the whole thing. Didn't get any particularly good loot but the quest reward finally replaced my lvl 45 Sergeant's Cape. I didn't discover til after we were done that I was the replacement for a mage that had wiped the group on the second pull and stormed off threatening to report somebody. In contrast to him, I was apparently a god :) And it's a great instance to be a rogue in - I handled the crowd control with no difficulties, and we never had a pull we couldn't take.

It was fun to run a group successfully that had a less-than-typical makeup, too. We had a Warrior as main tank, a Shaman off-tanking, a druid healing, another druid doing ranged DPS (and probably off-healing, too) and me doing CC and melee DPS. Everyone filled their roles with no issues. Overall, a very satisfying run.

And I did it with just one shot of Vanish left in the tank, and never had to use it - now THAT'S a good group.

Stuck in Azeroth

I thought I was done with it - I really did. But I finally got around to clearing up some of the old group quests that had been sitting in my log for twelve levels, and now I want to clean up more zones. Damn my completist urges. At least I got everything ready for another BRD run, should I ever desire to do such a thing.

I also got in a very bad Scholo/Strat group - we wiped three times in the first two rooms of Scholo, decided to run Strat instead, wiped at least five more times, and finally I gave up. Half an hour later, I discover that the remaining members of the group have found a 70 druid and a 65 mage and are chugging merrily along. Grr. I still want to clear those instances, but I'm expecting it to take a while.

I do enjoy knocking out all of these quests and moving forward along the various attunement paths, but it is mildly frustrating that I don't progress in any other way - I don't get enough xp to notice, and of course anything less than a lvl 60 blue or, probably, purple, is going to be worse than what I already have, with the exception of some special-use trinkets. It's not like I raced through the game and am now paying the price by having outleveled the content - on the contrary, I've taken my sweet time and still there's way more content at 60 than I'll see before 70 unless I give up on leveling entirely. This shouldn't be a bad thing, but it puts me in a weird place - I don't want to move further into Outland while I have all of these Azeroth quests hanging around. I guess I'll just continue to bounce back and forth. I do wish Blizzard rejiggered the old 60 content to keep it fresh for people in my shoes who came to the table late, though. As it is, no one but the congenitally stubborn has avoided BC this far, and once you have BC, why run the old content at all?

Soloing Hellfire Peninsula

Sunday and Monday I spent most of my playtime running quests. I still have trouble getting used to the change in conning - where an even-level non-elite mob in Azeroth is about a 5 on the difficulty scale, it's about a 7 in Outlands. Screws up my reaction time with the panic buttons :) I've finally hit my groove in Hellfire, I think - the quests flow, they don't seem *too* hard, and the rewards are pretty nice. I still have probably a day and a half of questing before I've cleared it.

Finally got bored and dicked around with the auction house, then went fishing and got the last few points I needed to 300. Ended the weekend about three-quarters of the way to 62, with quite a bit of potential gold up on the AH for my shopping pleasure. I'd like to get my epic mount at some point before 70...

Back!

The wheel has turned, apparently, and I'm back playing WoW. Only my main, so far - don't have much desire to run with my nooblet pally at the moment.

Saturday I played all day long, trying to get a Scholo or Strat group together, and finishing all my Plaguelands quests while I waited. Got the Scholo key, finished every other non-group/raid quest I had (including the EP PvP quest, which was lucky - usually those towers are perma-Alliance, but it looked like a Hoardling was running around capping, so I just followed him. True cooperation :) ) and dinged 61. I had a good time with it, too - I like killing undead. Also did my Very First Raid - a pickup raid to Zul'Gurub. We only got through one boss, and I didn't get any loot to speak of, but it was interesting. I'd need some practice before that dynamic really makes sense to me - I understand my role in 5-mans, but am pretty fuzzy on the big ones.

I also did both halves of the Children's Week event, so I'm now the proud owner of a turtle and a... blob. They were not very hard, and really kinda fun.

After I'd gotten done with all of the Plaguelands stuff that I could do, I shipped out to Hellfire Peninsula. Finished some quests, picked up a Ramparts group, and ran that successfully (although with quite a few deaths.) It's an interesting, really quite short 5-man with some real challenge and a high boss-to-trash ratio. The last boss is quite a challenge, and we killed him on the second try with me literally dying with my dagger in its heart - we hit the ground at the same time. Very dramatic.

Why Forums Don't Scale

It's a math problem.

The number of potential interactions between users goes up exponentially with the number of users. The interactions are what need moderation, of course. Therefore, the number of moderators needed to keep a constant level of oversight goes up exponentially too.

The income per user, of course, does NOT go up exponentially. (Although that would be a neat business model, if someone made it work.) There is definitely a level at which you can make forums work with a single mod per shift - or even one real mod and a bare minimum of oversight. A bit higher, you can do with 2-3 people during the bulk of your posting hours. That's still a pretty reasonable budget for a (pre-WoW) successful MMO. Beyond that level, though, it is either too expensive to do at all, or it just gets done badly - and badly moderated official forums are, in my experience, worse than none at all.

It's not that I don't think official forums are valuable, although, having tried both sides, there is a definite advantage for the community manager to being completely divorced from the moderation side of things (and, by extension, for the company - the players can't complain that we're censoring them when WE aren't even involved.) It's that I think that for games past a certain size, the expense of having official forums is not offset by the value. I can get many more valuable things done when I'm not moderating, and if someone offered to pay for a staff of moderators, I could honestly find other work for them that I think would benefit the game and the community much more.

Eating Bees

If you're interested in the sort of stuff we talk about but want to see it done better, check out http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org - Sanya Weathers, formerly known as the infamous Tweety, covers community management in her inimitable style.

New Terminology

"Ninja" = left side of the group.
"Pirate" = right side of the group.

Got that from a soldier buddy who used it in a training class. I LOVE IT.

The Opposite of Alt-itis

I don't actually have all that many alts right now (not counting all the sub-10 chars I have running around on random servers.) I have my rogue, a 27-ish human pally, a 15 BE pally, a 20 dwarf hunter, and a 15-ish NE druid. The original reason for all the alliance alts was to cover the crafting professions, and to try out some different playstyles. But I'm discovering that I have little patience for retreading the same ground, and I only really enjoy rogues and pallys. I've also come to the conclusion that crafter alts just aren't feasible - the crafting system is not really set up so that a character can be strictly a crafter. While I don't intend to delete the alliance alts, I'm considering selling off all the mats they're holding and sending their gold to my main, where it will do some good. I was planning to level at least the pally, but I really like the BE better, cliched as he is, and would rather see new horde content than the same old alliance content again. I may end up keeping some of the leatherworking mats, as I may decide to go leatherworking with my rogue at some point, but otherwise I have tons of drops stored that are doing no one any good.

Still Liking the Blood Elves

Only played a bit this weekend, and only hit my BE Pally, but I'm still digging the quests and overall layout of the new BE areas. Nothing else to report, sadly.

Interest is Waning

I didn't play much last week - I've been actually working out and eating right, and that definitely cuts in to my gaming time. I did play a bit over the weekend, but didn't accomplish anything particularly remarkable - I cleaned up most of my remaining solo quests in Azeroth, didn't get any really good loot or much xp, and next time I log in I'll probably hit Hellfire Peninsula and get a few more uberloot quests done there. My overall commitment is fading, though - this is part of my regular cycle. We'll see what happens. I may make this blog somewhat more general.

In other news, Puzzle Quest? Better come out for PC, like, soon. It's a great concept and I'd happily pay some cash to get my hands on it, I just don't own either of the consoles it's currently shipping on.

Duoing

I was on a business trip all last week, so I didn't play at all. While I was gone, one of my friends decided she wanted a copy of WoW for her birthday, so I got it for her (actually, she snuck off and bought the game for herself, so I bought her BC.) Last night she started a BE Rogue and played for a bit with my pally. I was still wiped from my trip, so we didn't play for long, but we'll probably be playing on and off for a while.

Guld Invites +1

Why is it always the clueless jackass in the group who wants me to join his guild?

Molten Core

...is a dungeon I may never see, but I'm attuned anyway. I spent most of yesterday in BRD, first with a group that would have been decent except for the idiot 'lock who wouldn't listen to a damn thing anyone said, but we were actually doing ok until the healer had to bail. Conveniently, there was a group with 2 60s and a 69 'lock forming up, and they were happy enough to take me along. It took frigging forever, but we cleared the whole place, got our attunement and a metric assload of blues. Being an enchanter is awfully handy in this situation - I got three or four blues myself, plus a bunch of greens, and it would have been a sad little pile of gold if I hadn't been able to DE them. (The only one I was able to use was the Ghostshroud, which makes me look like a nun. It's awesome. :) )

Got next to no XP for running it, and I will need to do it again if I want to do the Onyxia chain, but I had a good time anyway, and what's the point if it's not to have a good time?

More Happy Elf Madness

(Because my Blood Elf pally is a happy, happy elf indeed...)

I didn't have much time to play last night, so I got on to my BE alt instead of my rogue. The fun thing about an uber-low-level alt is that I could play for 45 minutes and ding twice. The BE lands continue to impress me - none of the quests feel "grindy" at all - and there are little touches, like one find-the-missing-foozles quest that had the foozles as both clickable objects in the murloc camps AND dropping off the murlocs themselves, which felt both more real and less irritating to me.

I (presumably) made my first gold, as well - it seems awfully screwy that ten minutes of running around at level seven can net you enough copper ore to earn a gold - a gold at seven will twink you out pretty good. One of my goals with this character is to be the richest damn elf ever - I don't have any particular reason, I just want money. My first gold is a pretty good start.

Blood Elves

Sundays are "dick around" days for me, so among other things I got another level on my lowbie druid and started a Blood Elf paladin. (Yes, I know, it's not like there is a shortage of them, but I don't want to start a second rogue, I hate casters, and I hate warriors more. My options are kinda limited.) I want to say, I think the development team did an excellent job with the Blood Elf new player experience, and it's worthy of congratulations.

It's basically the same format as the other starting areas (totally safe newbie area to get you to level 5 or so, then a quest that takes you to the next area) but it's a little more dynamic, and there are some nice touches - like a quest that shows you how to use the Blood Elf racial ability. I would love to see similar quests added for other races - it didn't occur to me to try War Stomp with a Tauren until many levels in.

The post-level 5 areas are much more diverse, as well - it's not just one single, overwhelming quest hub. I only played til level 7, but this felt much more interesting and less overwhelming to me.

The actual quests and race details are well done, too - the Blood Elves have a distinct feeling of a group that firmly believes itself to be in the right, despite unsettling evidence to the contrary, and that will do whatever is expedient to reach their goals. Silvermoon City is gorgeous, well-laid-out, (mailboxes in every corner! What an idea! Two banks! Two auction houses!), and deeply creepy city. There are little NPC interactions going on, like a citizen being hassled by the guards, a protest which is effectively (and disturbingly) controlled, and of course, the paladin chapterhouse, which holds a very unsettling secret.

My only real quibble is that it still feels very stagey - there doesn't seem to be any way to affect any of these interactions. The quests don't have any meaningful choices, even where it would be interesting to have them - do I assassinate the guy, or let him go after paying me protection money? Do I lie to the teacher for the students, or turn them in? This isn't a failure compared to the rest of the game - it's actually interesting that I'm feeling frustrated about the lack of choice with these quests, because I certainly never did with my rogue, who has made it through most of the rest of the content. It's actually, I think, a sign that Blizzard is reaching for more meaning, and getting close to it. Just... not quite close enough to make this old-school Ultima fan really happy.

I would love to see some branching quest lines put in - preferably more than one. Ideally, I'd love to see a neutral playable race - that is, the race itself is neutral, like the goblins, but players, though their choices, can build up rep with either the Alliance or the Horde - or carefully walk the line between. But then, I still want to make Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar Online.

Guild Invites +1

(I'm not sure I'm actually remembering all of these - it seems there was another, more random one, but I can't place it.)

The blind-inviting, bad-puller Hunter who was our group leader in my ill-fated BRD attempt blind invites me, THEN asks me in /tell if I want to join. Which I do not. Any guild that has members that blind-invite is not a guild I want to associate with.

I Finally Gave In

... to the Burning Crusade, that is. I dinged 59 yesterday and couldn't bear the thought of wasting even a smidge of XP as I hit 60, so I ran out and bought it. Let me just say, the people who were raving about the quality of the first few quest rewards weren't kidding. I about doubled my DPS and got some pretty impressive armor, all in the first 5 or so quests. I'm not done with the old content, yet, and will probably hop back and forth as the whim strikes me, but at least I have the option now.

In other news, had a FABULOUS run through Sunken Temple - even better than the last one. Which means I got The God Hakkar done just in time for the quest reward (a pretty nice blue dagger) to be superceded by green BC gear. Heh. Oh, well, shards are always nice.

Also dinged Neutral with Timbermaw, finally, and I am SO done with that grind. I'll have to be pretty damned bored to come back to it. At least Argent Dawn has several different things going on, and maybe someday people will want to run Stratholme and Scholomance again. I want to at least see that content...

Also ran Arathi Basin a bunch more times and finally got my belt (which will no doubt also be superceded by BC gear shortly). Mostly horrific, irritating, one-sided losses, and one lucky easy win, when we were for once on the up side of a huge numbers disparity. I like PvP - at least when I'm in the mood - but I really, REALLY get sick of constant losses.

Tried to run BRD, but it was a total comedy of errors - the usual half-hour search for a healer, in which our leader blind-invited any random pally or druid he saw, then he pulls a group of five with no prep, we wipe (well, except for me, but Vanish counts as a wipe), we wait for the druid to run back in, then he rezzes... the warrior. Instead of the Shaman, who could have rezzed the rest of them. I just gave up, at that point - I'll find a saner group at some point.

Right now I'm sitting about 4k xp from 60, and if I don't get a sudden urge to run WSG a bunch of times, I'll hit it the next time I sneeze. That would have marked my first max-level character in an MMO. *sigh*

Pickup Groups Don't Always Suck

I really don't understand the hate for PuGs - they generally do what I want them to, which is get me through content I can't do on my own. Last night I got lucky with them. I was in Western Plaguelands, planning to grind for two hours to make best use of my Dragonslayer buff, when a 65 'lock asked in general if anyone wanted to kill Araj the Summoner. We got a few folks together and took him out - one death, due to some weird glitches, but otherwise not hard. I'll have to do him again when I've finished the Scholo key chain, but I got a nice bit of rep and XP for doing it this time.

Since I didn't have the buff anymore and didn't particularly want to grind, I dropped by the Hinterlands and found a pair doing the Ancient Egg and Saving Sharpbeak quests - they were gracious enough to run me through, even though they'd already gotten their quest items. Two obnoxious group quests off my list - I am a happy rogue.

Guild Invites +1

Forgot this one, because it actually led to an interesting (and long) conversation - got invited to one of the larger casual guilds, whose members seem to be in damn near every pickup group I do. I asked some questions about the guild, and apparently while they're pretty big, they're suffering pretty bad from having a really wide range of levels - they can't get more than about ten people for any given bit of content at a time. That's a problem that will presumably solve itself, particularly once the higher levels cap out and can't do the raid content until they pull some more guildies up, but it's an interesting problem to have, and explains partly why, when these folks are in a pickup group, they have no better luck than I do finding a healer or a tank to join us.

Arathi Basin on a Monday Night...

...isn't quite as much fun as on the weekend. Got rolled once, pretty quick, fought tooth and nail to lose 1750 - 2000 on one, and the last one we only had 7 people show up, so we let Horde 5-cap before the timer ran out. I was gonna try to do that one again (one token per 5 minute battle isn't bad, even if it is sort of embarrassing) but picked up Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer while waiting and decided not to burn that on PvP.

Guild Invites +1

Random whisper, this time, from a fellow whose guild misspells the word "Guardian". Um... no.

Enchanting and PvP

No, not at the same time.

Sunday I ran some quests, dinged 58, then spent a good bit of time (and money) getting enchanting up. I think I've worked out a way to make money on the AH by disenchanting stuff, but we'll have to see if my auctions actually sell to prove the point. I'm at around 230 right now, and will get up the rest of the way when I make back some of that cash.

Sunday is usually housecleaning and laundry day, so I actually did the dishes, swept, cleaned the catboxes (the term "catass" becomes all too literal if I don't attend to this chore) and put in some laundry. Now, while it's totally possible to spend half a day doing laundry, most of that time you're not actually *doing* laundry, so I decided to take advantage of the Arathi Basin bonus weekend and get some tokens towards some of the decent blue gear. Won two, lost three, which is about right for Alliance on my server, and actually had a reasonably good time. Normally AB bores me to tears, but the wins were satisfying and the losses quick and painless. The quickest was the match in which we were 8 men down, and Horde 5-capped and won literally seconds before the match was closed for lack of players - a vastly superior outcome, because this way at least we got a token.

Ended the night poor, 58, and with 9 AB tokens - couple more hours and I can upgrade one bit of gear, at least.

Guild Invites: +2

One from the Awesome Healer (see previous) which I declined somewhat regretfully, and one from the Politest Twink Guild Ever, the representative of which asked me to sign their charter in exchange for 1g, which I accepted, because he wasn't a dick, and when the charter was full and I /gquit, he whispered his thanks for helping them out. Politest ever! Was a pleasure doing business with you.

Sunken Temple

(I'm going to break this weekend up into several posts, for my own convenience.)

I dinged 57 on Saturday by finishing up a few quests in Felwood and Winterspring (Thanks to the 60+ who helped me out with the Most Annoying Quest Ever.) At some point it occurred to me to glance at the ST queue, and there was a group with two 58s (hunter and warrior) and a 48 rogue. That sounded viable to me, so I hopped in with them. We scrounged up an excellent 50 priest, ended up having to fly there because the meeting stone was being screwy, and finally got started.

This was one of the better pickup groups I've been in - 4 high level, skilled, reasonably mature players, and one 13 year old with Tourette's. Despite a few bad pulls, we only wiped once, and we cleared the whole instance, finishing three of the quests in my list. I will probably try to go back to do The God Hakkar, but if I don't get around to it, I won't miss it much.

No decent loot for me, sadly, but I got about half a level of XP. By the time we finished up and I turned in my last quest, it was definitely bedtime.

Nothing Exciting Here

As I predicted, last night was pretty solidly unproductive. After some pointless dicking around, including determining to my satisfaction that that couldn't solo King Mukla, I ended up in Felwood grinding teddy bears. My oh my, was that boring. So I did a quest and called it a night - I'll have to do that grind in short stints, because I just don't have the patience. I only need about 800 more rep to get to neutral, though, and neutral's all I want.

Guilds in WoW

Since the point of this blog is to talk about my experience outside of a guild, I suppose it makes sense to discuss why I've made that choice. So, here we go.

There are a couple of reasons for the existence of guilds:

- Social contact: meeting new people, coordinating communication among people you know, providing a limited chat channel for people you, presumably, want to talk to.

- Ease of grouping: in theory, a guild would provide a group of people that you could team up with. More on this in WoW specifically later.

- Help with individual tasks: Grouping to level/and or powerleveling.

- Accomplishing goals too big or long-term for pickup groups: in WoW, this means raiding. I've seen people advertising Molten Core pickup groups, but they're not the norm.

I might be missing some aspects, but it seems to me that the above cover most of the possibilities. Now, for me half don't apply - first, I'm an antisocial bastard, and second, I'm not max level (or even close, since Burning Crusade) and so raiding is pretty much out of the question. (It might be possible to start raiding in the mid-high 50s in a few months, but right now everybody's exploring the BC content, it seems.)

Now, the other two just seem... problematic. In a level-based game like this, at any given point there is a "band" of content that's productive to you to experience. You can try stuff a bit harder, or a bit easier, but you won't actually progress running Deadmines at 50 or exploring the Plaguelands at 14. So at any given point, there are likewise a "band" of players in the right level ranges that are interested in running the same content.

There are a couple of ways guilds can help players in this kind of setup - they can be very large, and try to have plenty of players at all bands, so that the guild is basically a microcosm of the player population as a whole. This is only really helpful when these players are selected with some care - otherwise, you may as well just group with people at random. The problem is that selecting people with care implies a selection process, and that implies someone overseeing it - leadership, of some description. Now, it is certainly possible to have a dedicated staff of officers committed to making the guild membership friendly, helpful, etc... but most of the large general guilds I've seen are also the ones that recruit pretty much at random, and unless they have a REALLY cool tabard, that just doesn't seem worth it to me.

The other way to do it is to basically pick a "band" and grow the guild together - for example, getting 10-20 level 20ish folks, running instances and quests together, and getting the average level of the guild up as you go. The problem here, for me, is commitment - in order for this to work, you have to play pretty much exactly as much as your fellows. I can't commit to that - I'll play 40 hours in a week, then not play for a month, then give up sleep for three days, etc. So... I solo, and do pickup groups for instances, and it works ok. Maraudon was agony finding groups for, but I got through it, and got three blues from it.

It'd be different if there was a sidekick/exemplar system like City of... has - I'd cheerfully run Deadmines weekly to help out lowbies, and take lowbies with me on high level runs - but getting a system like that to work in an item-based game is vastly different than getting it to work in a game that has, functionally, no items at all. You'd have to make explicit the "meta-level" concept that Tobold talks about, and adjust the sidekicking to work relative to that.

From everything I've read, the "banding" happens even at max level, except it's extended to gear or "meta-levels" as well, and raid groups have the same problems - either be efficient, but struggle with keeping everyone on the same band, or be huge and hard to manage. The added quirk that "meta-levels" are gained by gear improvements, which are awarded by chance, fiat, or arcane DKP systems rather than automatically and fairly by playing the game, like xp is, makes it that much harder to keep people together.

Vacuuming the Cat

Respecced last night, for the first time (I'd use a freespec to go from a dagger assassination/combat build to a sword combat build, but otherwise hadn't tweaked it). I understand the logic behind picking a single spec... but I don't like it. I want to do high damage with high crits and no actual thought involved in gameplay, and after playing around with the tool for an hour and a half, the best spec for that was damn near even across the board. (The lvl 70 spec will be daggers, although at 56 it's non-specific - I don't actually HAVE a dagger right now.) Got that laid out, and immediately saw in Stormwind General "LF1M for Sunken Temple!"

Woohoo! Maybe I'll get a ST quest done!

...not.

We got in, killed the first two troll minibosses, wiped for some ungodly reason, then the tank discoed. We went a bit farther with only four, then the hunter bailed, although the tank came back. Found another hunter, made it outside to summon him, the tank discoed again, then the rogue discoed. Neither of them ever came back, so the three of us remaining hung around for a while in the LFG tool. I ran around the swamp killing swamp things for Mazen's Behest, so at least I got something done. (Yes, that's a level 41 quest. I'm a completist. Yes, I know.) I also found a crate of lost supplies for The Lost Supplies, which didn't give me any particularly useful rewards, but it was something to do.

The new spec actually looked pretty good, although it's hard to tell how much of the extra damage was coming from the new rank of Eviscerate and how much from my much more frequent crits. It certainly felt stronger.

Finally, after switching to BRD, not finding anybody willing to do that, and giving up, the group broke up. Wonderful. Just another Sunken Temple run.

I also found the alliance quest hub, which I'd somehow missed when it would have done me some good. I'll come back at some point, with one character or another. I wonder if the quests there give Exodar rep now?

After turning in the quests at Nethergarde, I couldn't face the idea of grinding, so I went back to Westfall to pick up a quest I'd forgotten about and run Deadmines again. This'll be the last time that running it will do me any good in enchanting, though - I'm about past the 1-20 materials range. It was fun anyway, though, and I got something I had always wanted - my very own parrot! Screw selling this at AH - it's MINE! ALL MINE! So now I have two birds - the chicken and this rare-drop parrot. I win!

Anyway, not a good day for xp, rep, or quest completion, but I got some very valuable cat-vacuuming done. Tonight I'll probably get about as much accomplished.

The Argent Dawn Grind, part 1

I've been stuck at 55 for a week or so. I blew the weekend dropping Herbalism in favor on Enchanting, just for kicks, then running Deadmines and Stocks to get lowbie greens to disenchant. Somehow I never get tired of the Deadmines... it's a fun instance, and eminently satisfying to blast through one- and two-shotting everything. Anyway, this got me up to 150 pretty quick, but didn't exactly net me much XP.

I'd like to do the Sunken Temple, but I can never seem to get in a full group, so, last night being Monday and a bad night for sitting LFG, I decided to just grind. I picked Argent Dawn because I happened to be in Stormwind, and knew there were a couple of quests I could do.

All Along the Watchtowers was easy enough, minus one minor aggro radius miscalculation that left me flat on my ass. Those 56 Elites seem a wee bit harder than one would expect.

I also did Target: Dalton's Tears, giving me two sets of cauldron drops to gather.

Then, I settled in to grind. I just hung out in Sorrow Hill, killing level 50-51 ghouls and skeletons. I swear the ghouls were designed to piss off rogues, with their 2 minute poisons. I decided to take advantage of my sword build and stood on the path and chucked knives at critters to pull them. It was... grindy. Not very exciting, not dreadfully profitable - one green gun, and one green enchant recipe, about 35 minion scourgestones, and enough cauldron/cloth drops for four or five turnins. But, you know, some days I'm in the mood to grind, and it wasn't THAT bad - I dinged both 56 and Friendly.

Maybe now I can actually take even-level quests, with my improved Eviscerate. We'll see.

Statement of Purpose

I've been playing WoW casually for a year or so, now, and finally made it to the 50s. All of a sudden, I'm awfully popular - I get guild invites all the time, utterly at random. I have no particular desire to be in a guild, but by all reports, the WoW endgame is not really feasible to solo.

Well, I'm going to try.

This blog is basically my WoW journal. I may, at some point, change my mind and join up with a guild - and I may, at that point, post about it. In the meantime, I'll just be chronicling my adventures.