Friday 17 July 2009

The Doom and Gloom

I'm a little behind the curve on the WoW front, but now it seems my Guild has been infected by this mass exodus from WoW a lot of bloggers are ranting on about.

I'm surprised by this for a few reasons.

In all the online games I've played, around this time of year, EVERYONE unwinds via a holiday, out with the family more, down the park with the kids, socialising at the pub more, whatever it is, they do a bit more of that.

Why not, in this dribble soaked country of ours, if there is some decent sun, we should get burnt pink asap!

So there is a lot of doom and gloom associated with this summer vacation from PC's.

I've found its usually covered up in different forms though.

A lot of blogs have said its based on people falling out of love with the game. Misery loves company and all that.

This is true in most cases, but often happens with all games, not just WoW, so those people are really just scare monger's, since WoW is still hugely popular, and for all those that leave WoW, a great deal actually come back, with a different view on what they wish to do while playing it.

Darth @ wow alone is doing what I reckon the rest of the ones leaving are going to do. Myself included.

Leaving WoW isn't permanent, but just allows players to focus on other things over the summer, then come back. As with most things in life, breaking the grind of the same daily thing is good sometimes.

There is a slightly different variation where guilds experience loss, often related as well. It comes in the shape of people you've recently let into the guild, and occasionally a slightly more long standing members, announcing they are looking for a more active guild. It usually takes this form :

"I'm moving to play in a guild that raids in more endgame content"

But really means, they don't want to be in a guild that is about to go south over the summer side of activity.




Its not that I don't agree with everyone being so gloomy about the guilds of the EU taking a hit in activity, its just that all games I've ever played online have this trend. Often this is also followed by a new game picked up at the end of summer to replace that distant memory of a past favourite one.

For WoW however this trend is somewhat flawed. I mean this because we all usually come back. There isn't yet a game that can replace WoW at the end of your summer break, and for now, we are all the happier for it.

To date I've stopped playing WoW three times, at the end of each three month subscription, and plan to do the same at the next intermission. Having some time off helps, I'm moving house, so it works out quite well for me.



Realistically there is going to be little change in the trend of WoW and its associated players, just that everyone is getting a little more vocal about it shows there is still interest in the old girl yet.

The doom and gloom is over rated and i for one won't be convinced WoW is tanking. Its summer, and I'm off to enjoy it the way I want to, WoW isn't back on the dusty game shelf, but will just get a little less time from me and everyone until the summer is over.

How my Guild makes me laugh!

Yes its that time of year when it seems everyone is winding down from WoW, going on holiday, and generally just taking a break from the daily routine and grind.

I played very briefly last night, I had a a little time on my rogue and some on my paladin, just running around doing some grinding, nothing worthy of noting.

What I think is worth noting is something that I think my friends in my Guild have only just come to realise:


Rangeybear: "I'd almost go as far as to say your deliberately not leveling to 80 just so we can moan at you for not catching up".

Me: "Me...not level....on purpose.... noooo...never!!"

Rangerbear: "That's it. No more tea drinking for you!"

Me: "Carling o'clock then every time I'm on?"

Rangeybear: "You'd never get that drunk anyway...".


The convo did dwindle off a little, but in essence the beginning hit the nail on the head. I've not joined WoW from a group of gamers that support it, rather I started off as a WoW hater, but willing to see why it was so bad. It was something that sucked the soul from your very dearest of friends, and then you had to coax them back into the normal realm of the gamer.

So I had prejudices about WoW. I still do.

I'll say it right now, sometimes I wonder why anyone plays the game. A subscription is something I'm not keen on. Fast tracking a character to 80 is something I can't understand. I thought that the only appeal with any game, is the experience it grants you to get involved in. In WoWs case, I'd argue that the main experience in the game is the massive volumes of story that shapes the lands of Azeroth.

I'm guilty of racing through the game on my rogue, in an attempt to catch up to my friends levels, but in the end, I came out of it worse for not knowing all that much about what I've done in said game.

Things I won't do unless I can help it:

  • Level any character I have to 80, for the purpose of anything but my own.
  • Raid with people I don't know, or raid at all if I can really help it.
  • Rush through the game to get to the end content.

Essentially I am a solo player anyway, so it comes as no surprise I only really play with my guild when it suits me. My experiment with my paladin to solo everything is really enjoyable.

Yes my rogue is sitting at lvl 78 and quite possibly wont move from there unless a new level cap is introduced. I shall play as many quests, experience as much lore as possible, and ENJOY playing the game rather than chasing endgame content.

I'm almost deliberately not leveling so my friends can have something to moan about, just for the laughs we have when chatting online. Not that this makes a huge impact on them or me, but its a fun social interaction we have via the Internet as supposed to face to face over a BBQ.

WoW isn't the only game I play, far from it, I've got my fingers in a great many gaming pies, however I find my style of approaching WoW is quite different to most peoples regarding how its played. I'm in it to experience the lore and enjoy every zone on offer.

So to sum up, I'm banned now from my routine of booting up WoW, with a cuppa in one hand and my mouse in the other. Especially if Rangeybear is online.

On the plus side, I have to drink Carling while I'm on when he is.

My friends are sometimes really good to me.

Thursday 16 July 2009

Ragefire Chasm - Tick

So yesterday I decided to follow up part of my lvl 20 paladin quest.

Ragefire Chasm is quite possibly the lowest instance I can think of to run through, and I also needed to activate a thingy to get a boss to steal some blood of his. I've always wondered what that glowing thingy was for at the back of this little instance.

Soloing it at lvl 22 was easy enough, I only pulled at max a mob of three, even if they are lvl 13-1 elites, they still packed a bit of a punch if I got four of them. The real downside to doing this instance like this was I wasn't getting any xp unless I killed a boss, because all the mobs were grey for me.

Still my little tankadin breezed though the simple little instance, I was amazed that I managed to fill all my 16 slot bags while in there, with a whole bunch of greens, and the occasional blue. Having sent them off for selling/disenchanting, I made a tidy profit of about 5-10 gold. Plus that's now two down on the paladin quest.

I've got to run into Shadowfang Keep and Razorfen Downs to get the next two things I need. I know that SF is going to be a pain soloing, so I might just wait until I've leveled up to about 30ish.

I'm still running a bunch of Rep gaining q's for undercity, which will all end up in me hitting SFK anyway. Then I'll pop over to Tarren Mill for a little bit, then back over to Ogrimmar for some Rep grinding there.

Flight paths and what not are slowly getting populated, and my Rep is shooting through the roof.

While I've been running around, I've been mining mainly copper, some tin, and super rarely some silver ore.

Copper sells for about 6g a stack at the weekends, and late evenings. I'm sitting on about 100g atmo just from that, not amazing but great for such a low level character that's only selling rarely. Tin ore I've found isn't all that great on the AH, but silver is, everyone wants silver. I think I probably could sell that in trade chat for a bit more if I were patient enough.



I've also been doing my cooking as and when I've got something to roast up, this has netted me enough buff food to last forever, I'm always running around with that bit extra stamina and spirit, which is nice. I think I'll level cooking up on this character as I go along, that said, I've said this for my Lock and Rogue, both of which I abandoned around the 150 mark. Here's to hoping.


So next on the agenda will be to get some more Rep, I made a boo boo with my exalted status with Silvermoon city, I'm exalted with tranquillien not them, so I'll have to work on that as I level.

After I hit about lvl 25-6, I'll run back to ghostlands and finish off that 3k hp boss in deatholme, who apparently needs 5 people to kill him.

Not on my watch.

Wednesday 15 July 2009

Lets tackle this early on before I change my mind

So I should probably comment on the Gevlon blog.

I've been there, read a great deal of his blog, and possibly 50 times more so with regard to his comment list.

A great deal of the blogs I've been reading regarding WoW have commented on him, his ideals and his waffle, with a particular theme that occurs in every single post I've read:

Your either a Gevlon lover, or a hater.

So where do I stand on this front?

Well first off I am not one to follow the crowd, but in doing so, I have discovered there a few, no... more than a few people that share very similar views and traits with me. Which kinda makes me feel less of an individual.

Anyway am I anti or pr0 Gevlon.

The short answer is neither, or more like a bit of both.

The long answer is fairly boring but I agree with his gold making ideas, his ruthlessness to the AH and a great many of his goblin like views. I disagree with more of his recent posts, that seem to have drifted from the original point of his goblin activities, and more onto the communities of WoW and their malpractices according to him.

If I had to choose, I'm more likely to agree with his opinions, but being more and more inclined to solo WoW rather than socialise, the decision is made a lot easier.



In more interesting news, my paladin is still a soloing king and is grinding those undead like nobodies business.

I opt'd out of helping my friend last night, mainly so I could level my paladin and also jump on my rogue and farm some gold. Herbalism is gold.

Oh and I randomly fell over this blog which has made me laugh all morning. Maybe i'll roll an Alliance *cringe* dwarf *cringe* Hunter *cringe* just for the lol's.

If I did, a good name would be needed.

Not sure why but calling the hunter "Star", and the pet "Bug", seems to appeal to me....

Tuesday 14 July 2009

Why Paladins are cool - IMO

So as I mentioned before I've finally settled on a paladin to play with. The reasons were quite simple, but surely based around a good class to play content on my own.

Yes I'm in a guild, no I'm not playing with them with this paladin, yes I do play with them with my rogue.

I've played as a rogue for a long while, and as fun as it is, its not a class that can run in, and live to tell the tale. The paladin however can do this!!

My paladin is a really fresh change from sneaking around, everything I encounter that might want to hurt me, comes at me and dies, often along with some friends that just sort of get dragged in ;)

So whats new?

Well other than the fact I can't hide from the bulk of my attackers, and quickly stab them in the back, not a great deal.

Actually that's a lie.

There are heaps of differences.




First off I started in ghostlands, not a place I've really bothered with before, other than previously helping some lowbies in our guild run through. So the initial experience was a completely new area to start up in. My rogue was undead, so he started over in undercity.

I don't recall any of the quests I'd done with guild mates here, so doing them was really refreshing and fun.

My new pally made really short work of everything in the starter area, no surprise there, I don't think anyone can have trouble there. The first mini boss went down easy. A quick run later and I'd made it to something like level 4 and off to the dead scar section, before popping over to silvermoon.

I've not died yet, something most might not find all that interesting, but in my experience dying happened all to often on my rogue.

Another thing I should add here, is the fact that I've done all the quests. Since I'd made up my mind to solo everything, I wanted to to do everything solo.

Getting into the actual ghostlands, I must have been about level 14 ish.

Here instead of slowing down, my ganking took an upward spiral. That's right, paladins pee all over undead with holy buffs and crits on undead.


This is why I love being a paladin.

There are two bosses patrolling the ghostlands, one I remember being called knucklerot. I do remember my guildies having huge problems with this guy.

The first time I ran into this guy, having run away, (what? he's a lvl 21 elite, I'm level 18) I noticed that there was a group of 3 players, a mage/priest/rogue trying to take him down. They failed, and I felt sorry for them.

Then I did something silly. I thought what the heck, I'll give it a go. So I tagged him. I'm a jewelcrafter so I have a stone carving healer, among self buffing things, potions and the ability to ignore damage while i heal for 12 seconds.

Buffed and crazy, the fight went stupidly easy, it was over quickly, he didn't even hit me back once.

A level 18 vs a lvl 21 elite.

Sure it took a great deal for me to micro manage my stuns, heals, and rescue health packages. But I did it. Not only that but the previous group had rezed and were just watching me do it.

Having looted and chuckled to myself for actually pulling something like this off, I got an invite. Naturally I ignored it. I'm soloing after all, but I did suggest that if they tagg'd him first and dealt some damage I would swoop in and add extra damage to help them from wiping.

I did this on both those elites with them. Gaining nothing, except for the sheer awesome knowledge I could do it on my own.

I've done it a few times since.

I've also soloed all of deatholme except for the elite boss with 3k health in the middle. Its not that I wont do him, but I know I'm likely to die in there, and I'd rather not. I might try him soon since now I'm level 22 and could probably take him on with no trouble, even if he does have help.

That's another great thing about paladins. Not only can I buff myself, heal myself and gank, I can gank more than one enemy at a time. I have AOE's.

Dropping two AOE's will kill any mob I have coming at me round the level 18 mark. A few hits later, or a self heal, and I've just dropped 4 enemies in one go. My rogue main is crying right about now. That said this is only most effective against undead enemies, but not exclusive to just them.

Now c'mon, that's cool.

Now I'm level 22 and exalted with the chaps in ghostlands.

I've made the jump over to undercity, so I can quest there and run the instance round there. I should probably go try running the one in Ogrimmar first though, if I remember correctly that's a lower one, and therefore easier to solo.

On a side note, a guildie that has a paladin, and is stuck at level 30 wants me to come and help him out of his grinding rut. I'm thinking about it, but since I want to solo content, I'm not sure I will, but if I do I should be able to see the group abilities as a protection paladin come into play. I'm still unsure, in the event I do, it will only be because I've soloed what he wants to do first, then do it again with him coming along.

I'll probably just use my rogue so my paladin stays exclusively a solo player.

Do you play as a paladin, and if s/he's not your main, what great differences have you noticed?

The History

I've been playing WoW for ages now, probably over a year, not including the various breaks I've had from it.
I played since my Day of Defeat: Source clan changed from fps to MMO. We rolled an alliance Guild with about 15 strong of us playing. We played on the Bloodscalp EU realm, under the guild name of "UWE" which, coincidentally was the name of our DOD:S clan.

This was pre-wrath, and a whole bunch of my friends were still at Uni, so they had a bit more game time than I, and leveled a wee bit quicker.

I played a super healing priest named "Slowshoe" a safe name, since it can be interpreted in two ways, Slow shoe or Slows hoe. Make your own conclusion ;)

After I managed to level myself to get into Outland, I swapped spec to shadow priest and went off being a vampire with health leaching abilities.

Most of my time was spent soloing or getting a boost here and there with some friends. On the whole, I missed out heaps of lore, with the aim to catch up.

I never did.

As such I wasn't really enjoying the game greatly, and often just didn't play. My timing was quite good in that respect, because my core friend group within our Guild (mainly leaders of the previous clan version of us) were getting fed up of our GM and or other people, or just being an alliance player.

So upon my return I went to a new server, rolled a horde rogue, and didn't look back. My friends caught on, and slowly shifted themselves over, and we re-created the Guild on the horde server, minus all the boring rules we had previously and in addition, all the cool people (save a few that found a cooler alliance guild that was super efficient raid wise etc.)


Great I thought, not only have I got a few levels advantage, but we are all starting on a roughly even field so no-one will run off ahead and leave me, and a few of the others behind again.

Sadly this quickly changed back to the others leveling faster and leaving myself and some mates behind.

So playing my rogue was heaps of fun, when I got on, I loved the idea of not being seen, pinching money, then killing for more money, just this tactic alone netted me a decent amount of cash to start off with.

I played on and off, enjoying being horde way more than alliance.

Wrath came, and I enjoyed the changes and quests you could solo with ease as a rogue, in fact almost all quests were solo-able with a rogue, t was just certain instances or raid things I sucked at.

The need to learn the lore kicked in, as this is really what I enjoy most in games, the story. So I wanted to go back to all the content I'd missed, while my guild prepares itself for raids and endgame content, I'm off playing solo. Typical me.

Even as a level 78 rogue, I didn't find soloing instances all that easy, in fact, with my stealthy build, its been darn near pants soloing content.

Which brings us up to where I am now pretty much.

I've done a bit of research, and based on a simple idea of self healing and tanking, from way back when, a paladin seemed the right way to go. Oh I'm sure someone will say they aren't the best tanking or best healing, but I wanted to play one, that I can level and solo most things with, straight off the bat.

So I've rolled my paladin, and this blog will be based around him, my rogue, my bank warlock alt, and some other alts, as and when I dream them up.

Have I revealed too much about my characters, hopefully not.

So i've been thinking about...

I bought myself a website a while back, and forgot about this blog.

Said website has undergone so many changes I can't remember the point in getting it, and what i'll adventually use it for, still, having it makes me feel great and stuff.

Since i've been checking out blogs on WoW and investigating all kinds of various ways to play, i've re-discovered this blog space I made ages ago.

What i'll use this for is to waffle about my WoW related experiences and things that come to mind about WoW and other blogs I read, that was I dont ahve to cover it on my actual website that is going to be about erm, JOEGAMER and related things....

So lets populate this bad boy with things I have mentioned and deleted in other past versions of blogs and gossip places.