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.