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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

You could say I have been so lost in the grind I couldn’t find my way out of it to get on here and write a little bit for you today…but than again you could just say things have been busy…and you could be right.  In any case there’s no need to fear, well you know the rest.

Where to begin, last time I left off shortly after the Book 11 patch in LotRO.  I have been a busy little bee ever since the patch, originally I bought a quaint little dwarven abode deep in the Thorin’s Hall homesteads, but that turned out to be even too dark for my tastes…hard to believe really.  So, I managed to accumulate the required 7 gold to purchase a large house in the bree-land homesteads and with enough luck a new neighborhood opened up with the perfect little cottage by a lake, so now I reside at 4 Garden St. Morglan, Breeland.  I have it open for anyone who wants to take a peek inside, just please leave the toilet seat up and take all empty beer bottles with you…someone decided to have a party while I was out grinding on reputation and made a mess of the place…I think I need to get a pet warg to keep the riff-raff out.

Of course you know my captain has been level 50 for a little while now, so what do I do since there is no point in doing quests?  Luckily Turbine doesn’t leave me bored, there is plenty to keep me occupied, the last patch was HUGE, I mean I still haven’t seen all there is to be seen since Book 11…I am still on Book 9, that is a long and winding trek to get these books done it seems.  I am not in a huge rush to complete them or anything.  Our kinship decided to try our luck at the 12 man raid in the riff…that turned out to be more than we had anticipated, multiple deaths and much crying and a little bit of frustration, after about 3 hours we decided we had been tortured enough and called it quits.  I have to say this dungeon was at about the same difficulty level of say AQ 20 man, reminded me of that sort of strategically planned attack style…but in other news, I have been milking the new decorations for all I can in the AH.  I am not going to go into details, it might be bad for business, but let me say I am not hurting for gold these days.

I have been playing my original character, Sean, burglar, he is now almost level 33 and I really enjoy playing him, and although he can’t heal very well, if at all, I still like the stealth and crit attacks he so wonderfully executes.

I promise screenshots of my home in the next post, I didn’t get any good shots before the server went down today, until next time friends, happy hunting.

You might expect to see me going on and on about housing in LotRO, of course the hype got to me yesterday and after installing the patch (which took almost 2 hours total, but gave me time to read up on housing) and logging into the game I made my way to Thorin’s Hall Homestead and bought a standard dwarf house.  You might ask, why a dwarf house, you are a man of Rohan?  Well quite simply stated, it gives me quick access to Thorin’s Hall, where the superior forge is located, I am a weapon-smith after all, plus I really think the whole cave look is cool and my online friend also lives there.  I probably spent a total of 3 hours running around checking out kin-mate’s houses and taking a peek at all the furnishings available in the other races stores…I fixed up my digs the best I could, it is only a 2 room little abode, can’t expect too much.  I might upgrade somewhere down the line, our kinship was taking a collection and we plan on having a house in Breeland.  That is fine and dandy, the whole experience reminded me of playing the sims, without the happiness, hunger, and bathroom meters going off of course…

I will post screenshots soon for those of you dying to see some housing.  Our kinship decided to buy a kinship house in Bree-land.  The place is quite large and neat to look at, plus the extra binding point is nice to have as well.

Now, onto the subject at hand, ideas about how death could be a new game in itself in an MMO.  Now, I know there are much better thinkers out there than myself on this subject, I am no MMO genius or anything, so these ideas are things I have had in my noggin and just want to share here.

First off, I think that there could be a way for a game developer to create it so that when a player dies in a virtual world there could be a choice beyond the typical go back to the graveyard or rally point and return with damaged items or lower experience…there could be the ability to return to the game world as a spirit.  Now, let me explain a bit here, obviously you would not want the whole game full of these spirits, there wouldn’t be any reason to stay alive and gain levels right?  So, say for example you have been playing an MMO, the max level in the game is level 40, you made it all the way to level 20 and finally got killed.  Now, as you are presented to ability to resurrect you are also given the option, only one time, the first time you die, this option appears.  It tells you if your tormented soul wishes to remain in the spirit realm it may do so, but you will not have a leveling system and you can only use a limited number of skills, more skills can be learned by accomplishing certain tasks, such as, completing a series of quests involving haunting innocent players when they least expect it.  So, you choose to remain a spirit, now there are other spirit guides in this realm, some are good and some are pretty bad.  It is your choice to follow either path, and you gain a sort of faction with each the more you do quests with either one.  There are steps in the faction, say upon reaching stage 2 of the faction of good spirits, you can manifest yourself to be seen for an extended period of time, while you are seen you are casting a bright light and those who interact with you receive a mana and or health bonus for an hour…  On the opposite side of the spectrum, if you were to follow the bad spirit guide and reach say out of 10 levels of factions, you gain level 10, you would be able to summon along with yourself all bad spirits within a 100m radius of yourself at night near graveyards in the game, while you are summoned you would have the ability to cast fear into the hearts of the innocent people you come in contact with, nothing can kill you because you are already dead…Of course, there could be more to it than this, you get the general idea.  Without the ability to level as a spirit what is the point of playing?  For some people the simple fact of scaring the crap out of people could be reward enough…for others, the ability to be a guardian angel for characters would be a fun thing to do.

Now, there could be a quest as a spirit to get someone in the game to do a series of quests which could be either contacting a shaman healer NPC or someone else who would be able to bring you back to life, you would have to be playing as a spirit for at least 5 days time and reached level 4 on either the good or bad spirit faction to be considered for this.  Upon being resurrected you would return to the world of the living with the ability to see the spirits in the game and occasionally interact with them.  If you were good as a spirit you would gain an ability in the living world to heal others, whether or not you are a healing type or not, if you were a bad spirit and you were to return to the living you would gain the ability to shadowmeld, similar to the night elves in WoW.  I could go on and on about my thoughts on this, I think it would be something neat to test out, but then again it would add a whole new aspect to MMO’s today.

I don’t know if there is a game out there anywhere similar to this, thoughts and opinions are welcome…

A lot has happened since I hit the level cap last week with our good captain.  I managed to finally get to make a trip into Carn Dum with my kin over the weekend and I got the last item I needed for my level 45 class quests…some putrid slime off of this giant beast with tentacles, the actual battle with the boss wasn’t as hard as making our way through level 54 leeches the size of volkswagen camping vans…but it was done and I got my cool new halberd of war and earring of command and what I didn’t know was that I got another legendary trait, in defense of middle earth, it is a buff that I can cast and anyone within 15m of me gets it too, it increases all stats by 50.  Needless to say I was near tears after all was said and done…so many thanks to my brothers and sisters in Strength In Numbers for making it all happen.

I have been grinding on reputation in Haudh Iarchith, the new barrow downs dungeon.  So far I have only increased a small portion, obviously the time invested into gaining reputation isn’t supposed to be small, but then again I remember grinding rep in WoW and it seems a bit easier in LotRO for some reason…On that note the dungeon of Carn Dum wasn’t as long as most I encountered in WoW either, but the battles we fought took a bit more strategic planning.  We encountered a few bugs while in there also, but overall the experience was pleasant.

I have yet to complete book 7 chapter 8, which will get me a key to enter Carn Dum, the key isn’t required as long as someone in the fellowship has it you can enter the doors as well, but it would be good to get one just in case for future use.

I have started playing my burglar, Sean, again and I am enjoying it quite a bit.  The play style is quite different than what I was used to with my captain, so after a couple days of slaying beasts in the lone lands and north downs I have once again become comfortable playing him, I went from level 20 to 25 since Saturday, with some help from friends of course…

The ability to start a conjunction is a really nice trick to have, if ever I am in a fellowship and we need some health or whatnot, I can attempt to start it, sometimes it misses, but the majority of the time it works without a hitch.  Also, another nice trick is the ability to riddle mobs, basically stunning them so I can more easily handle multiple mobs at one time.  I usually only use this when I am questing solo, it has gotten me out of a few tight spots.

I am looking forward to Book 11, the release of housing is something I read about some, but I don’t think I will get a personal abode, mainly because I am still poor…well poor by level 50 standards…hehe, still working on my weaponsmithing craft, so farming for ore is never ending, I have cut back on buying crap off the auction, now that I am part of a kinship with multiple grandmaster craftsmen, it is much easier to put in a request for an item and get the mats for it then to try to buy it on the open market.  I am looking forward to seeing Gollam and taking on a Balrog should be interesting…

So, there I was, halbred in hand face to face with a fire breathing drake who wanted nothing more than to flame broil my ass and devour me whole, leaving nothing but a pile of bones where I once stood…but I held strong to my convictions and with my fellows by my side we ousted the beast and showed him who his daddy was…screenshots…

Before you say anything, let me tell you that is wasn’t by some random chance of the Gods that we happen to find this beast…oh no, we were chosen to eliminate this putrid being from the face of Middle Earth, so those young tiny hobbit children can sleep well in their little hobbit beds in their little hobbit holes in the ground.

Well, and of course a beryl shard is always good to loot too..

First off let me say I think I finally found a theme I like for the blog, I shouldn’t be changing it again for a while now..

Well, let me see where to start, oh yes, picture this…fornost, Friday night, I get invited to by a kinmate for a fornost run, which I have attempted twice before but never finished due to the time needed to finish the place and also because it was too difficult for the fellowships I was with to complete.  But, here is where it gets a little shady…the leader of the fellowship is a level 32 captain, which myself playing a level 44 captain could appreciate, but then we also had a level 50 guardian, who by the will of all that is the best guardian I have ever seen play the game.  Not only did he hold the aggro, he knew the instance like he owned the damn place.  So, the rest of our fellowship was comprised of a Burglar, Champion and Hunter, not a bad combination, but where is the Minstrel?  I was leery of that from the beginning of the run, but after tackling 2 of the 4 bosses with only one death I knew we had a chance to finish the place.  The only hiccup we had was once when we were standing on the ledge over looking the mobs below I accidentally autotargeted and ran toward a mob, falling of the edge and dying…but our guardian kept it together and made his way down to escort me back to safety…since that time I have disabled auto move toward next target…not sure why I ever used it to begin with…

That was Friday night, killing the final boss in Fornost, finally, after months of trying, well not really, but it was nice to complete those quests I have never done before.  Saturday came and I found myself wanting some Enemy Territory: Quake Wars action, so I fired up the demo and decided to try out the Strogg once again, it is fun playing defense for a change, seems like the GDF are always outnumbered, at least on the servers I play on…I like the differences in the races and the game overall is very entertaining, especially when you play against worthy opponents.  I figured out how the destroy the sewer gate, and basically how to win the game on the GDF side, I like to switch classes throughout the battle to help out our team.  I guess my only complaint is how the rank you achieve only stays with you for the duration of the 3 rounds…I think the highest I reached was rank 13 playing the strogg, it was a long fight, I managed to call in a defense turret right at the exit of the tunnel and then I got the jet pack and stood on the top of the tunnel exit throwing down bombs…eventually someone on the GDF called in a hammer bomb, which obliterated myself and the turret…I love the sheer size of the explosions and the sound is speaker rattling as well.

Sunday some of my kinmates and myself decided to team up and grind our reputation in Evendim by gathering the sashes off of the tomb robbers, it will take a while to get your reputation up to get anything worthwhile…and I don’t even know for certain what the rewards are for having a high reputation with any of the factions…I’m sure there are resources out there to find that information, but I am feeling lazy today.

Someone asked me yesterday how I like Lord of the Rings Online compared to World of Warcraft and I said it isn’t fair to compare the two games really in my opinion because both are great games and each of them gives me different levels of happiness from an entertaining perspective.  I can’t say I will never play WoW again, but as for now I am happy waging my war against Saron in the vastness of Middle Earth.