Badges burning a hole in my pocket

So my paladin has exactly 50 triumph badges in his inventory, which are enough to trade in for a shiny new helm, or almost enough for both gauntlets and shoulderpads. All of those need replacing, as I'm still in mostly blue gear. The question though is whether I should bother with the badge gear, or if I should skip it in favor of spending those badges on an heirloom for whatever class I end up rolling my worgen.

Which leads into the second choice - when Cataclysm is released in November we will be able to roll a character from one of the two new races, worgen and goblins. I'm somewhat interested in goblins, but worgen are going to be insanely cool, and they're an Alliance race, so it makes sense to roll one. But what I haven't decided yet is whether I'll be leveling a worgen right away or if I'll be taking one of my 80s on the WrA server (priest, paladin, rogue) to 85 first.

Supposedly, the new dungeons are actually difficult. This would surprise me since they're making all other aspects of the game much simpler and easier, but it gives me some hope that my rogue might actually be useful in Cataclysm. Possibly. We'll see. Healers and tanks, for sure, are going to be valuable, so I will probably make my worgen a druid. I don't currently have a druid on this server, and I am going to want to be able to group more to see the new content.

And a worgen moonkin sounds pretty natural - a wolf, howling at the moon?

PvP: FPS > MMO

It's been a while since I blogged, and the primary reason is that my interest in WarCraft dropped off the table over the past couple of months. I'm a fairly self-aware person, so I can probably list the reasons why my interest has waned:

• Transitioning from pvp to pve gear on my priest, I was mocked for trying to heal in pvp gear. I understand it's not mana-efficient, but a person has to start somewhere. That's crap I just don't need to deal with.
  
  
• My rogue is weapon-capped unless I raid, and my damage is capped unless I improve my weapons. There's basically no way to improve at this point unless I raid, and even if people were seeking rogues for raids, I'm not seeking to endure raiders and their endless ventrilo crap-flinging sessions. Umadbro?
  
  
• The prospect of Blizzard forcing users to reveal their real name on the forums highlighted how much they've forgotten who their playerbase really is.
  
  
• My son plays WarCraft and enjoys talking about it all the time. I like talking about other things from time to time, and there's only so many times you can recite the raid bosses in Karazahn or wonder about the role of the Guardian of Tirisfal, etc.
  
  
• If you don't raid, there's nothing to do but achievements and alts. I already have over 2,000 levels of alts, and I don't get any enjoyment from knocking out achievements. They're fun when they happen, but they're not fun to chase.
  
  
• The community is still stupid, foulmouthed, and terrible.

I finally buckled down and picked up a copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and it's a lot more fun than WarCraft is for pvp, by far. Aside from the occasional hacker, games are balanced, and you always have the ability to kill your opponent by being smart rather than just having superior weapons or being really twitchy. WarCraft doesn't come close to how much fun the pvp is. Not even in the same ballpark.

I'm a PC player, not console, so if you see me online as Sussemilch gimme a shout.

Pristine

So far the scarcest item on my supply list are the Pristine Black Diamonds required for every libram turn in with the Shen'dralar. They've jumped from 120 to 200 gold in the auction house, and that's too steep to buy. I managed to find one yesterday in Scholomance (farmed up some skin of shadow there) and used it to turn in one tome. Did three Knot Thimblejack runs last night, and one ogre suit turn in this morning. If I do nothing but farm keys I might be able to get to Unfriendly tonight with two of the goblin factions.

I definitely want to keep up with the librams however. The darkmoon faire decks are a totally separate grind and can be done last, but the librams drop while I'm doing rep runs in Dire Maul so it's good to have the items on hand to turn them in when I can. And that means pristine black diamonds. I really wish these things had a higher drop rate. Even more so, I wish I'd kept the stack of them I had once upon a time when they were 1g each in the AH.

Fishing and Lies

Rugged leather, rugged leather, rugged leather. There's a reason why people can charge 100g a stack for this stuff and get away with it; once in a while you need to get something done and you absolutely must have rugged leather, and only a skinner can provide it. The stuff only comes from L50+ animals, and people never stay around Azeroth past level 58 anymore when the drops become common, they head straight to Outland and start questing.

Anyway, I need some of the stuff for making Ogre Suits for one of the two Knot Thimblejack quests in Dire Maul. Each turnin requires a couple of rune thread (easy), bolts of runecloth, and 8 pieces of rugged leather. I'm not paying 100g for a stack of leather, I don't care how much time it saves me, so the alternative -- is fishing.

I logged in my druid and grabbed my fishing pole and started searching for pools of floating junk to fish up mithril chests with, and because some of the notes said that I could get trunks from stonescale eel pools, I fished the eels also. Total lies. I ended up with three stacks of eels and only one trunk the whole time I was fishing eels. The floating wreckage was perfect though. I ended up with a lot of thick leather, plenty of bolts of runecloth, and enough rugged leather to do the job. Thankfully also, when you loot the gordok key and free Knot Thinblejack he leaves behind a cache of leatherworking/tailoring mats in a box and sometimes there's rugged leather in there also.

So about two hours of fishing STV, Feralas, and Tanaris, a complete clear of UBRS to farm for pristine black diamonds (none dropped all night) and a couple of clears of Dire Maul on my rogue and I was about 1000 rep higher on my goblin factions. This is going to take a long, long time to finish. I don't mind farming the older instances because all kinds of interesting stuff drops, and because my rogue is still an enchanter I can d/e the greens and blues I get and sell the materials. But I sure hope my Heroes Deck sells so I can blow money on buying pristine diamonds instead of farming them... I'm going to need about 80 of them all together, and I still need to buy/craft darkmoon decks too.

Actually, I should probably be farming Stratholme for the pristine black diamonds on my rogue instead. I wouldn't mind getting the Argent Champion title while I'm at it, and I need the abomination stitchings for libram turn-ins. I'll just have to remember to kill everything instead of stealthing past it all. I need blood of heroes too. And skin of shadow. Maybe I should spend an evening doing that instead of fishing.

So many things to do! Much better than twiddling my thumbs saying "nothing to do." Thank goodness I upgraded all my rogue's bags to 20 slots last night.

OMG. Dungeons Heroics and Raids! (Oh my!)

One thing I DESPISE about WoW: Farming. Farming Mats, farming badges, farming (my favorite thing $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$) Gold... all of it, I do not like farming, but... I am happy to anounce... my achievement (not actual achievement in-game...) of getting an entire set.

The set is very familiar to all level 80 mages: Khadgar!!!!!!!

This set I love, it is a purplish grey, and it is misty...

This set is bought from the cloth armor sellers in the "Threads of Fate" in Dalaran, across from the inn, "A Hero's Welcome". This set is bought with NO money, only Emblems of Triumph. I am thinking of farming the EXTREMELY HARD Bloodmage set, but... that would take hardcore raiding >.>... I need Frost Badges for that... well, below is the link to the armor sets.

Khadgar = http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=843
Bloodmage = http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=-247

Well, see ya!!!!!

(LFM: Simple ways to farm gold QQ)

Going Insane

For me, there are two modes for Warcraft: Goal, and No Goal.

If I have no goal, I wander aimlessly and jump through hoops mindlessly hoping that something will spark my interest or feel slightly fulfilling. I use it somewhat as therapy for a frustrating work environment, so when my day isn't productive I want my play to be, to cancel it out. Sometimes it works, most times it doesn't.

If I have a goal then I can track my progress and strive for an accomplishment. It creates its own storyline as I progress towards my goal, and the little things that I do in between add meaning to the larger story. Even fishing or mob farming becomes interesting when I attach a progress bar to it. I get the feeling that I am building something, a feeling I don't get from work.

So, I have taken on the largest goal I know of: The Insane title for my rogue.

If you aren't familiar with this achievement, it is the single hardest set of reputation grinds in the entire game. It requires you to be:

• Honored with the Bloodsail Buccaneers
• Exalted with Everlook
• Exalted with Ratchet
• Exalted with Ravenholdt
• Exalted with Booty Bay
• Exalted with Gadgetzan
• Exalted with Darkmoon Faire
• Exalted with Shen'dralar

It's possible you can look at that list and say to yourself, how hard can that be? Well, some pieces of it aren't hard, and some are. And some are very, very hard. I started working on it this Friday and ground on it in one way or another all Memorial Day weekend.

The part that I was not looking forward to was the Bloodsail Buccaneer reputation, which ended up being incredibly easy. Just kill a bunch of Booty Bay guards over and over, and you're there. When you get to friendly you do the quest to get the Bloodsail Admiral's hat and get your title with the Buccaneers, and then grind the rest of the way to honored.

After that, you need to work your reputation back to exalted with the four goblin factions, which takes much longer. Currently I'm still hated with all four, although I've made some decent progress by turning in linen and silk at Ratchet and Booty Bay. You can see my reputations here.

The Bloodsail I got done on Friday, and then knowing how useful it would be to have a MOLL-E (portable mailbox) I dropped herbalism, leveled mining to gather materials, dropped mining, and leveled engineering to 435. I love engineering on my rogue anyway, it's a lot of fun. I've ended up already using the rocket boots a lot, for the little things mostly like running through those long tunnels in Dire Maul (grinding goblin rep) or running back to the beginning of Ragefire Chasm (farming linen there). That ate about a day and a half, just leveling that.

Now that the preliminary professions are done I'm going to be doing a lot of Dire Maul runs for both the goblin and Shen'dralar reputations, so I'll want to do two things before I begin. First, I need to take my druid fishing for lots of rugged leather and bolts of runecloth. The rugged leather simply can't be bought at any reasonable price on the auction house. If I get desperate for cash I can probably fish up a few extra stacks from the mithril trunks I find, because the market is crazy.

Second, I need to take my rogue through Scholomance, Stratholme, and Eastern Plaguelands to find Skin of Shadow, Abomination Stitchings, and Blood of Heroes to turn the librams with the Shen'dralar faction in Dire Maul. The rugged leather and bolts of runecloth are used to build the ogre suit for Knot Thimblejack in Dire Maul, and I get 75 rep every time I do that.

Thankfully other people have done this grind before and posted their tips on how to do it, so all I need to do is buckle down and spend the hundreds of hours farming to get it done. But when it is done it will be an achievement that few have ever gotten and no one can argue with the value of.

Ysera

The thing that was the Ysera server, it's time to discuss it. Unless Alzheimers is setting in and I already have. I don't remember talking about it though, so it will be uniquely entertaining to me, if not to you. Anyway:

Ysera was a pre-BC and post-AQ server that opened up sometime after I was sick of playing on the Khadgar server and I decided to roll a new character there. I leveled up my hunter at launch, and managed to fold in with a good group of raiders who were all motivated to clear content asap.

We wanted to raid, but we had a specific motivation of supporting our GM's desire to do the AQ questline as quickly as possible and get him the Scarab Lord title. We were right there, leading the Horde in progression (guild name: Static) and starting our Molten Core grind when out of the blue, it happened.

Transfers had just opened on Ysera at the one-month mark. People started coming over from other realms and we had a few applicants, and we were just getting used to this when suddenly on a Monday night at 2am one of the Alliance transfers took the scepter of the shifting sands that he transferred with to Silithus and rang the AQ gong.

It was the single most horrible thing to ever happen to a WoW server.

Basically, the event is designed to last from the time the gong is rung until server maintenance. Maintenance happens on a Tuesday, so this transfer from off-realm started the event, no one was prepared for it, and no one got to participate in it because it ended four hours later when the servers went down for maintenance.

The effect on the server was devastating. Several of the top guilds (including ours) disbanded within a week. People immediately stopped logging in and went back to their old servers, or new ones. Ysera was crippled and demoralized, and people who had worked hard to prepare their guilds for the grind were infuriated.

With my guild in a shambles I left, depressed. I haven't logged back into my hunter on Ysera more than a couple times in the years since, considering it a failed experiment. Then this last week, I decided to give it another shot and logged her back in.

As it turns out, I didn't have false memories about how much fun my character was, it still is. My lady Tauren hunter has an old PvP title, a good name (Teacher) and is pretty fun to play. So for the last week I've been logging in over there and slowly leveling her up. I might just keep playing her for a while, enough time has passed between then and now that I can have fun again with an old toon.