I’m Multitask Challenged…

I am a guy after all, I have an excuse.  No, but what I am getting at here is the fact that with a MMORPG such as WoW there are soooo many things you can do to keep yourself occupied.  I really should write down a list of things I would like to accomplish, but where’s the fun in that?

My problem is I want to do a lot of things in the game and sometimes I forget to catch up on certain skills that I meant to have maxed out a long time ago, i.e., cooking skill, as of right now I am sitting at around 365 cooking skill, and I found The Rokk in the Lower City of Shattrath to do the cooking daily quest, mo money…  There are a lot of recipes you can pick up either on the AH if you are lazy and don’t want to go find them, or you can go find Supply Officer Mill who is in the northwest guard tower at Allerian Stronghold.  Along with giving you some gold you also can pick between a box of fish or a box of meat as a reward, the boxes contain various food and even recipes sometimes.

Another things I have been working on is my fishing skill, currently sitting around 208, I know I have been slacking, I found a nice website dedicated to everything related to fishing in the World of Warcraft, El’s Extreme Anglin’ – WoW Fishing Guide.  At this site you can find just about anything you would want to find out.  One nice little tidbit of information that I was not aware of was that your fishing skill will go up no matter where you cast your line, and this whole time I thought I had to go to a higher level zone to get it skilled up, guess I was wrong, not the first time.  If you are serious about fishing I recommend you go visit Seth who is fairly close to The Rokk in Lower City he gives you the quest, Rather Be Fishin’, and the quest itself is simple enough if you are at least level 62 or so, go kill the eels in the little pond just northeast of Shat to collect the items needed, the reward is a nice fishing pole that adds +20 to your fishing skill and +52 stamina.  I would do the wowhead link but I am have limited access here because of the man and his stinking firewalls…but you get the idea.

Also, I haven’t done much research, so I don’t know, but my weapon skill, staff to be exact is still pretty low somewhere around 315, so I made my way out to the blasted lands to beat up on the servants there who don’t die…and once again I don’t know if a higher weapon skill translates to more damage while in feral form, but I am sure it doesn’t hurt.

I had a pretty good day yesterday as far as making some gold goes, I decided to go do some quests in Netherstorm that I hadn’t gotten done prior to hitting level 70.  After about 4 hours of questing I managed to make around 170 gold, that is with 2 daily quests and the rest regular quests.  Not too bad really, I am glad I still have so many quests to do, it just means more easy money for me.  Right now I am sitting at a total of 2475g between my characters, almost halfway there.  I am shooting to have 5k gold by the end of this month, I will try to remember to come back to this post and see where I am at in 28 days.

Does anyone else have issues with the sound in the game when you are using Ventrillo?  I don’t know if it the hotkey I am using, left ctrl or what, but whenever  I am on vent the sound in the game just shuts itself off and back on sometimes.  It is very strange, and usually I don’t care if the sound is on, except when I am in the battleground, I like having that extra sense to add to my awareness of my surroundings, you know the stealth person moving by you noise and stuff…I have checked all my settings and my drivers are all updated, I have no clue why it turns on the sound in the game.  If anyone has dealt with this and knows why it happens or how I can stop it from happening feel free to leave a comment, thanks.

Why does alliance lose in the BG’s?

If you have been spending any amount of time in the battlegrounds recently you know why I am asking this question.  I have been inspired, once again, the excellent blogging by people out there is very cool and I have to thank Phaelia at Resto4Life for This Post.  Where she posted about her thoughts on why the Horde always wins in PvP.  I have to say I agree with everything she has to say for the most part, I too remember the days of the Tauren Mill raids and fighting back and forth from Southshore…ahh the days…

But, then came the battlegrounds, the place to go if you wanted to get into some real pvp action, the very long queues and somedays where I didn’t get into a battle because I would wait 2 hours and have to logoff the game…that sucked.

Fast forward to today, January 2008 and here we are with near to no wait time with the cross-realms bg’s helping that.  But, where the alliance used to be able to count on Alterac Valley as a sure win, that isn’t really the case any longer…after not doing any type of PvP since pretty much March of 2007 I have found myself once again back in the battlegrounds…my impressions?

First, I am sooo grateful for the reduced queues, thank you, but, then we see the premade issues, where, for myself anyway, the Horde seem to have the upperhand, where out of 20 matches played, at least half of those the Horde had at least a party of 5 that were premade, then about 4 where the Alliance were premade, and the rest were just random people.  The results were clear, 85% of the games I played it was a victory for the Horde.  The few wins by the Alliance were either a very close victory, or I was in a BG with an Alliance premade, giving us an advantage.  I was lucky enough to complete a couple daily quests with the wins we had, but let me say I felt the burning sting of defeat, and total ownage, and it doesn’t make me too happy about the whole ordeal.

I have a Troll Shaman who I spent quite a bit of time doing some PvP with a couple years ago and I remember how easy it was to accumulate honor points and improve his gear with little time invested.

I think Phaelia hits the nail on the head when she says,

Many of the best PvP players on Alliance rerolled to play with Horde, bolstering their faction’s collective expertise on the field of battle. Horde grew more seasoned more quickly because they could play more often. And once the ball was rolling in that direction, there was no stopping it. As most would attest, PvP is most fun when you’re winning. No one enjoys losing all the time. And so as veteran and newly-minted Horde won more and more games, more and more players were encouraged to reroll so that they too could experience the thrill of victory. Even today, players who are just beginning to play the game are told that, if they enjoy PvP, they should roll Horde characters, both for their superior PvP-based racial abilities and their winning records in Battlegrounds.

So, why does the alliance lose in the BG’s?  I think the answer is quite simple, winning is more fun than losing, the Horde has been labeled as being the winners, so why would anyone wanting to kick ass in the battlegrounds roll a toon on the alliance side?

Something to think about.  In the meantime I will keep playing my druid just because I enjoy being the underdog and I have the keep the faith that things can only get better…right?

WoW Log 8 Jan 08

Just hit me it is 08…where the hell have I been?  Hmm, oh well, time goes on….big news for me is I made it to level 70 with my favorite toon, Tabeyus, currently he is specced feral because I really enjoy tanking/dpsing stuff.  I have accumulated some healing gear just in case the need ever arises.  You can click on my armory page to see pretty much everything about him if you want.

I’ve been tweaking my UI’s some here and there, and besides an annoying little issue where a couple buttons on my bars aren’t clickable when someone in the party is speaking I think I have it pretty much how I want it.  Here is a screenshot of me in the heat of battle while doing some quests in Ruuan Weald.

I started doing the daily quests with the skyguard and also in Shadowmoon Valley, these not only give you some gold but after investing enough time and getting your reputation up high enough you can get some nice mounts.  Right now my main goal besides working on reputation is getting enough gold to afford the artisan riding training skill, which of course is 5,000 gold…right now with all of my characters combined I have been sitting at around 1,000g.  But, now that I have reached my final level the costs of training new skills combined with upgrading my gear via the Auction House will cease and the income from completing daily quests with two characters will help tremendously.

I would also like to say in case anyone from Pug Repellant stops by, I think you guys and gals are cool and I really enjoyed playing with you all, but my endgame goals don’t really involve doing any hardcore raiding and I have some other friends in my new guild, Spirit Walker.  So best of luck to you all.

I joined this new guild because I have a good friend, Waterspirt, who has been in it and asked me to join, they seem to fit me very well, casual, mature players, etc…

Anyway, reaching level 70 once again in the game was a whole hell of a lot easier this time it seems.  I am sure the fact that I did these quests before helps, but also because of flight form.  I can’t begin to tell you how much of a help having that is.  Not only is it cheaper than buying a mount, but it is an instant cast, just like all the other animal forms.  Plus, if I get close enough I can still collect herbs while in flight form, bonus.

I haven’t spending as much time playing the AH as I used to, not sure if I ever will be as tied up in that as I was in the past.  I guess I find myself making more gold just doing quests and enjoying myself as opposed to spending half my gaming time watching the market.  I think it probably shows how we all change over time, usually for the better.

The grind is never going to end my friends.  You see, the struggle, the will to go on, this applies to all things really, is what matters and what we should hold on to, without the drive, the grind, the struggle, what is the point of it?

WoW Log 28 Dec 07

Well I hope everyone has had an enjoyable Christmas.  I can’t complain really, Santa decided to bring me a late present, perhaps it was because he was so busy he figured I could wait a couple days and surprise me with a gift left on my porch…What was this gift?  Well it was a Logitech G15 gaming keyboard.  I am happy I got it, I am still tinkering with the different macros and bindings.  I went to the logitech.com website and downloaded the latest software and got everything installed, it automatically detected my two games I am currently playing, WoW and Enemy Territory Quake Wars without a hitch.  When I started up WoW the LCD display immediately showed me my current character’s stats, which is very cool.  Overall I am happy with the keyboard, the litup keys are nice too because I prefer to game in a dimly lit environment most of the time.  Usually the only light I have is from the television playing in the background.

Also, I picked up a new mod from the curse gaming mod site, it is simply called Quest Helper and it does just that, it helps you complete quests showing you the quickest routes and where to go and what to do.  In a way it makes questing too easy, but I have to say it makes life much easier, I have taken a lot less time looking up quest information on wowhead now giving me more time to get stuff done.

Tabeyus is level 65 now, I have done a couple guild runs into the Blood Furnace as a tank of course and I think I am getting better at it.  Last night there was 4 of us, our main tank a warrior, a priest, a hunter and myself and besides a few hiccups we owned the place.  I got a new set of shoulders off the last boss, rounding out my feralness quite well.  I can’t wait to get flying form…traveling through the outlands on the ground isn’t so bad, but could be so much better with air travel.  I managed to reach level 375 in alchemy over the past few days by buying the required mats to make the dreamless sleep potion.  One less thing to worry about later.

I also started doing a few daily quests with Giznad, since he has nothing better to do he might as well earn some gold for me, so I have been doing the Skyguard quests taking out the Skettis eggs and escorting the prisoner.  It is an easy way to get 20 gold every day.

Helzbelz is now level 26 and playing him has been a learning experience, testing out my healing abilities while in a group has been fun, I have found that the holy shield is my best defense in almost every situation besides when I want to make a jump from a high distance it doesn’t protect me from taking damage.  I am going to go with a shadow priest build for leveling and I might change that once I get to a higher level.

Until next time friends I will be lost in the grind and I hope everyone has a Happy New Year.

WoW Log 22 Dec 07

Hello again and welcome back to another installment from yours truly.  I wish you all the best and Happy Holidays!  Now, where was I?  Oh yes, the last time you heard I was back in the World of Warcaft and this still holds true…  I decided since I hadn’t tried my hand at playing a priest that it was about time I try one out, so I went ahead and created a Draenei and so far it has been pretty interesting.  Playing a priest is somewhat similar to playing a warlock, mainly because you are squishy and you rely primarily on your spells to take out mobs and such, but they are very different in a lot of ways too because you don’t get a pet, which is good in my opinion, but you get your power word spells, such as shield and fortitude…the shield has proven to be one of the most important spells I know…but overall I have enjoyed playing him.  Right now my priest, who happens to be named Helzbelz is at level 16.  I just learned the skill Physic scream, which sends any mobs within 8 yards of you running in fear…well most of the time anyway, that helps if you have more than one monster attacking you…obviously.

I have decided that am going to focus my attention on leveling my druid, Tabeyus, and my new priest, Helzbelz, my hunter who is level 70 and my warlock who has been level 60 are merely banks/ auctioners and crafters for my other toons.  I decided to pick up jewelcrafting for my Draenei because he has a racial skill of +5 to gem cutting and because I haven’t tried that trade out yet, so far it has been pretty useful and the items I make usually sell pretty well on the AH.

Questing on the islands of the Draenei has been pretty fun and besides the few killing for drops quests, they go pretty quickly.  My plan right now is to reach level 20 and attempt to find a mage who could port me to either Stormwind or Ironforge to save me the run all the way from Menethil Harbor…that is quite a haul and I have done it plenty of times before, but if I don’t have to I am willing to pay for someone to save me all that time…

Overall my reintroduction into the World of Warcraft has been quite enjoyable, almost too much fun, I have to catch myself getting from getting too far lost in the grind because that can be dangerous if you don’t leave a trail of bread crumbs to find your way back home again.

Enjoy the screenshots, I am currently using Mirage UI, see the link listed under Gaming Sites.