Now playing

WOW is not the only game I am playing right now. Actually I think I've never played as many games simultaneously as I do now. About a month ago we purchased a PS3 - and I am growing more and more fond of it. The games I am most looking forward to are no longer PC titles, but PS3 titles.

Now Playing:

Assassin's Creed (PS3)- My wife has almost beat it and I am up next. Actually I had a sneak preview last night playing to the first city (Damascus). The animations are amazing and the visuals are stunning. I am not so sure about the gameplay yet though. I am not a big fan of open world games. We'll see as I go deeper into the game.

Resistance Fall of Man (PS3)- My first FPS game on a console! Initially I had some serious problems with the controller but I've almost ironed them out. I still feel that the PC has a superior control system but when a game is slower paced and "developed" for a console it doesn't really matter that much. I am almost complete with the game and I am having a blast so far. I especially like the weapon designs...

Vegas 2 (PS3) - I am a huge fan of the Rainbow Six games. I do think that the Vegas series is less fun than the previous - much less tactical and strategical choices but more in the action department. I've just begun playing but am enjoying it so far.

Call of Duty 4 (PC) - This game is amazing. The single player experience is like a movie (and just about as interactive) and well executed. The multiplayer is the best FPS action since the original Counter Strike.

Soon playing (backlog):

Genji (PS3) - While I've heard that this game is utter crap, I bought it cheap on Tradera (swedish equalent of E-bay). I am going to try it...

Heavenly Sword (PS3) - It looks amazing and it has a cool redhead as main character.

 

Wish list:

Condemned 2 - The first one was an amazing horror survival FPS which gave me the creeps. Last one I played that I really loved was Silent Hill 2. I have high hopes for this game!

Dynasty Warrior 6 - Me and my wife have played the previous titles together so this is naturally something we look forward to on the PS3.

 

What are you playing besides WOW?

Stay with me forever...or at least 10 levels

Today I tamed a new pet... 

My first pet was an Elder Springpaw and I swore I was going to keep it to 70. It lasted until the early twenties where I found new love in a tranclucent Ghost Saber. This cat was surly staying with me all the way. It wasn't until 10 levels later in the deep jungles outside of Grom'gol where I forgot all about my ghastly cat and tamed a blood red raptor. I loved my raptor and said to myself that this is the one. It would be the one because raptors themselves were so rare as pets. Cats can be seen everywhere. Most Hunters go for the black kitty Humar or the white striped tiger from Winterspring but I've also seen alot of Ghost Sabers on my realm. Then... during a long quest grind killing coyotes in the Badlands (ten levels later) I suddenly found myself drawn to the wolf... I shrugged it off. My red raptor "Fury" was going to stay with me... all the way!

I managed to keep my Raptor happy for 2 more levels... and then halfway into 46 while fishing Glossy Mightfish in Tanaris I could no longer resist the urge. I made haste to the Badlands, waved bye bye to my Raptor and promptly put him into the stable and then rode to the far north-east of the zone. That's where I found him... my new love - a Rabbid Crag Coyote. While I want to keep him all the way to 70, I am probably going to find a new pet when I reach 55-57...

Did you keep your pet all the way to 70?

WOW patch 2.4 is here!

Today the European realms were updated with patch 2.4... Now the fun of updating all mods begins. Each time a major update hits I am reminded that I use way to many mods...

New blogs on the blogroll

I've added a few more blogs to the wow blogroll that I usually read.

• Big Bear Butt Blogger - Life through the eyes of a bear... druid.
  

• Cricital QQ - Pee-vee-pee through a mage's perspective. It is actually much more than just a squishy's take on battlegrounds. So get over there.

• Gun Lovin' Dwarf Chick - A hunter oriented blog that brings up all kinds of WOW topics.
  

• Too Many Annas - Shaman galore together with other general WOW stuff. Good read!

In addition you really should take a look at the "Looking for players in all the wrong places" by Big Bear Butt Blogger. One of the best wow articles I've read so far. It does also have that "he is writing about me feeling" too...

Patch 2.4 hunter notes

With the advent of patch 2.4 soon upon us I took some time to check out what it has in store for specifically for hunters.

It seems to me that the biggest change to hunters in this patch is the class becoming even more easy to play.

So lets look at each of the hunter specific changes in turn shall we.

 

• Equipping a thrown weapon while in the middle of an Auto-Shot will no longer cause animation issues.

Eh? I am not sure what the point is to equip a throwing weapon during combat but I guess exploiters have their ways of confusing their opponents.

• Casting Flare while in any way not visible, will no longer cause your flare to be invisible to other players.

Never tried this myself but I guess it is a viable exploit in the battlegrounds. Always good to get rid of these.

• Hunter’s Mark: Hunters with Improved Hunter’s Mark will now properly overwrite Hunter’s Mark cast by Hunters without the talent.

Simple bugfix but this was previously sometimes very annoying in raid situation with eager hunters without IHM.

• Improved Mend Pet now has a 50/100% chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.

This little improvement for BM hunters is nice, now you can be certain to dispel those nasty debuffs from your pet. Arguably you can now move one point in the BM tree from IMP to somewhere else. Personally I love to have 100% dispel chance.

• Multi-Shot: This ability will no longer strike any secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.

Now here is the big thing for casual and new hunters.. no need to have multi-shot break crowd controlled mobs. Personally I think this is slightly sad as it was at least a small challenge in instances not to fling the usual multi-shot all the time. Still it will make it harder to detect Huntards quickly.

• The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase.

Always good to have proper tooltips.

• Track spells will now persist after death.

For those of you that hang around in the battlegrounds - this is good stuff! Its simply annoying to turn on all the tracking every time you die.

• Hunters will no longer spin around if they cast Aimed Shot or Steady Shot while facing away from their target.

Nothing more than a minor bugfix.

 

So all in all we get a few bugfixes and with the change to multi-shot - easier life in instances. Cheers!

Goals Updated

Time to update my goals:

 

My Short-term goals:

• Get Engineering up to 300
• Get Mining up to 300 before level 58 (I want to be able to mine as soon as entering the Outlands)
• Level to 47-49 before starting next round of glorious battleground PVP
• Earn enough gold to buy a mount at level 40
• Level up to 40 once the PVP badges are collected
• Earn 20 Warsong Gulch badges to buy Forest Wind Bracers before levelling past 39
• Earn 20 Arathi Basin badges to purchase the mail boots before leveling past 39

Long-term goals:

• Get the hunter up to level 70 before next expansion (40/70)
• Max out Engineering (235/350)
• Max out Mining (185/350)
• Get fishing up to 300 before going through the outlands portal (180/300)
• Get full PVP gear

Yesterday I reached the number of WSG badges needed for the epic Windtalker's Wristguards and the AB badges required for Defiler's Mail Greaves. With those complete I run around and explored Ashenvale and boom! My hunter turned 40 when discovering The Warsong Lumber camp. A hearthstone later my hunter left Silvermoon with a new black Hawkstrider and all the mail he could wear...

I've now left battleground mode and returned to leveling again. I already miss WSG! I'll level up as quickly as possible to return to the battlegrounds around 46-48 for the next batch of PVP gear.

What are your goals?

I feel it is just as important to have goals in WOW as it is in life. Without them you'll risk advancing at the pace of a restoration druid or worse wobble around like a rogue high on his own flash powder.  Personally I have a few goals, both short term and long term goals. When you’ve defined your goals you can break them down into more detailed tasks - and then start working on them.

My Short-term goals:

* Get Engineering up to 300
* Earn 20 Warsong Gulch badges to buy Forest Wind Bracers before levelling past 39 (13/20)
* Earn 20 Arathi Basin badges to purchase the mail boots before leveling past 39 (completed)
* Get Mining up to 300 before level 58 (I want to be able to mine as soon as entering the Outlands)
* Earn enough gold to buy a mount at level 40 (completed)
* Level to 47-49 before starting next round of glorious battleground PVP
* Level up to 40 once the PVP badges are collected

Long-term goals:

* Get the hunter up to level 70 before next expansion (39/70)
* Max out Engineering (235/350)
* Max out Mining (180/350)
* Get fishing up to 300 before going through the outlands portal (180(300)
* Get full PVP gear

So right now I am spending all online time in Thunderbluff signing up for WSG games. With my limited play time I can usually manage to get around 20 badges over the course of a week. I’ve had about 50% wins so far in WSG and 75% in AB. Between games I usually craft deadly blunderbuses and accurate scopes to put on AH. Obviously the goals change as I level up.. I imagine that once I’ve reached Outlands I’ll add a few reputation goals.

What are your goals?

Sick with flu

I have been out of comission for almost a week. I've finally regained my health and then my little kid gets sick. Its a bad omen since he was the first one to get it meaning we are already in the next cycle. I hope we won't catch it again.

Quaranteene protocol initiated.

Action in the Needles

So the other day my hunter finally reached Thousan Needles. I did get there a bit late so most quest where very easy for me. Now at 1k needles is usually where I start to bump into higher level opposing toons... and this time was no different. There is an escort quest up in the Highperch and alliance have a quest to collect poison sacks or something similar from that area. Anyway I was happily killing my way out of the area with the tauren escort when I spot a mounted dwarf warrior... and of course his level was ???.

At that time my hunter was 32.. and mounted meant that the dwarf was at least 40. The dwarf charged me and managed to chip away almost 50% health in the first round. However.. I did manage to wingclip him and gain distance and lay a trap... of course I managed to plop down the wrong one and the dwarf was incinerated (fiery trap). Both my pet and the escorted tauren started to bash at the little dwarf while I ran away for some distance... and then promptly started to kite him. I was sure I was going to eat an intercept - but none came.

The dwarf must have paniced, realizing that he was himself at 50% health. He started to target my pet. Big mistake. It allowed me to focus all DPS back on him... and voila - a dead dwarf! I checked him up on the armory afterwards and he appeared to have been level 47. Poor dwarf.

In the end I did not suffer one death in 1K needles... a new record for me.

My hunter is now 34 and questing away in Hillsbrad. Still very little PVP...

Earning gold through engineering

I've always loved the engineering profession but I've always felt that it was more for fun and a helpful for PVP (remember the glory days of the iron grenade?). When I started anew with my hunter I went engineering for the ability to craft ammo and other cool trinkets and relying on money generation to come from ore harvesting.

When training up engineering I made a large number a number of Deadly Blunderbusses , a semi-crappy rifle. I went to the AH to sell the stuff I made figuring that I get at least a few silvers worth out of it. There was already a couple of deadlies in AH - with the price tag set to 5 gold. Interesting. So I listed a few at 4.5 gold a piece. Two hours later I had sold 5 of them.... I have a feeling that it has something to do with a horde quest in Ashenvale, where a NPC requests a Deadly Blunderbuss as part of a quest objective. For alliance you could probably make a gold or two on Bronze tubes which is required for a quest in Duskwood.

I've been making these guns like crazy and sells about 3-4 each day. I have made a lot of gold in very short time for a new character that doesn't have a main to support it.

I've also discovered that an accurate scope sells for about 5-6 gold on my server. Not bad. So all you engineers out there - go make some gold!

Warsong Gulch & Arathi Basin

 

Around level 26 I started getting serious about WSG and AB. Besides getting a "DING" going up against real people in the battlegrounds is what I really love in WOW.

I prefer WSG since I really think the fast paced capture-the-flag mode is exciting and calls for interesting strategies. However in WOW the matches in WSG often turns into honor grind somewhere in the middle. This is not what I sign up for. Those games can drag out for ages. Therefore I usually sign up for AB at the same time... By the time an AB opens up you can usually tell if the WSG game is a deadend or a great one. I've read somewhere that in an upcoming patch there will be a time factor in Warsong. I can't wait. Right now fighting to collect the 20 or so WSG tokens you need for a PVP reward takes too much time.

Going into Arathi Basin at 29 is a whole other ballgame. It is fun, fast and interesting as people still have no mount or tier 4 talents. I had great fun defending the Gold Mine together with two other hunters (Slampan & Hottopic). Unfortunately they came from another realm so the odds of us three defending the GM again is slime to none. Needless to say nothing could get through our defenses letting our team focus on other nodes.

After a day and some odd hours in Arathi Basin I had enough tokens to purchase the AB boots. They are amazing for the level with an added bonus of increased movement speed! Nothing beats increasing movement speed before having a mount to royally transport you around.

My hunter has now turned 30... and while I gained the valuable hunter skill Feign Death it also means being the lowest of the low in the next BG bracket. I might stay away from the BGs until at least getting to level 35-36.

Adding new blogs

A minor update: I've added two new blogs that I tend to visit quite frequently.

First one is Aspect of the Hare: Pike's World of Warcraft Blog - a hunter blog chronicling the adventures of a hunter and her quest to be  a girl who loves the hunter class and made the most of it.

And the second one is Out of Mana - a PVP oriented blog which I used to visit all the time on my last WOW cycle. She has some great advice on arena play and PVP in general.

Great Hunter Macros I

My hunter is getting older and dinged 26 the other night. I thought it was time to start learning to play with a few macros. There are a ton of hunter macros out there but most of them aren't really that useful. Personally I prefer macros that either give me a definite edge in a pinched moment or macros that allow me to get away with less buttons on the actionbar. Less is more.

After scavenging the web for great macros to help me tidy up the actionbar I've found these:

 

Pet Engage Macro

The following macro first of all checks if your pet is present. If not it will cast Call Pet and if it is dead it will cast Revive Pet. The next part is that it will check if you have are attacking a target - if not attacking then your pet will attack. If you already are attacking your pet will be recalled.  Finally you will cast Hunter's Mark on the target.

/cast [nopet] Call Pet;[target=pet,dead]Revive Pet
/clearfocus [target=focus,dead]
/focus [target=focus,exists]player;target
/clearfocus [target=focus,noharm]
/petattack [target=focus,exists]
/petfollow [target=focus,noexists]
/cast Hunter's Mark

Heal/Feed/Revive Pet Macro

This macro is useful to further minimize the bindings for controlling your pet. Specifically this macro calls your pet if not present, revive if dead, heal if in combat and feed specific food if not in combat. Holding down any modifier key (shift, ALT or CTRL) while activating the macro will heal him instead of feeding when out of combat.

If you select the "question mark icon" when creating the macro your icon will show what action it will perform when activated.

Remember to specify the food item in the macro.

#showtooltip
/cast [nopet,modifier] Revive Pet; [target=pet,dead] Revive Pet; [nopet] Call Pet; [combat][modifier]Mend Pet
/stopmacro [combat]
#showtooltip Feed Pet
/cast Feed Pet
/use <food item>

 

These and more macros can be found at the wow-europe.com hunter forum in this topic.

Laptop survives coffee spill

Yesterday I did it...

After lunch I got myself a nice cup of black coffee as I always do. Actually I almost always have a cup of coffee when at the office. (I typically drink about 6-7 cups during the day). As I reached over the desk to get a stack of papers I knocked over the coffee cup. About half a cup's worth of coffee spilled directly onto my Dell XPS M1710 laptop. With lightning reflexes I didn't knew I had I swooped up the laptop, turned it upsides down and powered it off and ejected the battery.

Keeping it upside down, the poor laptop was dripping coffee. I wiped the worst of it and then brought it downstairs to the support department. The engineer just laughed at me and asked: "So this is your way of getting a new computer?"

This morning Support came back with the laptop - it reeks of coffee but it works like a charm! My lightning rescue apparently paid off! I've improved my backup settings... no longer do I have all the important files on the hard drive but on the network. Phew.

Sad thing is... now I  have to wait a year before getting a new office computer.

PlayStation 3

In an attempt to avoid putting up new wallpaper at home this weekend I asked my wife if she didn't want a PS3. To my surprise she was instantly happy and forgot all about the wallpapers. We rushed away to the store and bought a PS3 system together with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and SingStar...

So far I've been very impressed with the PS3. Uncharted is incredible beautiful and runs excellent. The gameplay - while heavily inspired from Tomb Raider - very fun. I love both the jump puzzles and the gun battles. I am a bit rusty when it comes to using the PS controls to run around as I am much more used to mouse & keyboard.

Installing the PS3 was very easy and it detected my network without any hassles. The PlayStation Store is not as impressive as the XBOX marketplace but I've downloaded quite a few demos and movies already.

I need faster broadband!

I also tried the demo of The Club, a FPS (First Person Shooter) game I was looking forward to play. It was not my kind of game... very arcadish and the controls nowhere near what I expected. I know I am still very fresh to playing FPS on the consoles so it might change. I am still going to check out the Club for PC as soon as a demo appears on steam.

WOW on a MacBook - Get a good mouse!

Last night I took my little hunter out for a trip to Darkshore. My goal - to tame a Ghost Saber. As he just turned 23 I thought it wouldn't be too hard, yet still a wee bit challenging if I would run into any alliance going hostile on me. I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to try out my MacBook. In could be interesting to know that I've pimped my MacBook to 4 GB of RAM.

The game flows very nice on the Mac although I've turned down the video settings a bit. It still looks good. The biggest problem though was the mouse. I have a wireless mighty mouse. Using the right mouse button is a pain. I died a few times due to my inability to maneuver correctly. I blame this mostly on myself being unused to how the mouse behaved - and not having all my usual mods installed. That's right. I played "naked". You quickly realize how important certain mods are for your playing experience. For example I use Bongos2 for a good actionbar layout.

In the end I got my new Ghost Saber and headed back to Ashenvale. To my disappointment, I was never bothered by any alliance. In fact the area felt very desolate. I did spot the Moonstalkers and I have to admit that they are probably the most cool looking cats in the game with their black and blue stripes. Damnit.

Soloing the starting elites as a hunter

One thing that makes life easy as a BM hunter early on is the capability of going toe to toe with quest elite mobs solo. I imagine that hunters aren't the only one capable of it but certainly have an easy time doing it.

As my tough hunter (still unnamed by the way) neared the end of the quests in Ghostlands I had the pleasure of:

1. Killing Kel'Gash the Wicked at level 18 solo

2. Killing Knucklerot and Lurzan at 19 solo

The pet grabs aggro and swallows the hurt and the hunter deals damage while also making sure that Mend Pet is ticking away. The biggest problems while taking out these elites is keeping adds from walking into the battle. This is why I try to avoid engaging Knucklerot or Lurzan in the actual scar... as there are numerous undead there roaming about.

My lil' hunter is now 22 and has left Ghostlands behind. I did an epic fishing journey to increase the food supply to my cat. Shortly thereafter I waved goodbye to the cat and tamed a new beast - a raptor. Sadly enough it didn't appreciate fish at all...

I might have to look for a new cat soon or all the fish will start to smell.

Selecting professions

When I start a new characters there are always a few things I do fuss about a lot before actually getting on to play the game.

1. Selecting appearance - I can play for 20 levels and then decide that I don't like that particular hair color or style... or that the skin tone I've chosen is to light and looks weird in certain light. I have rerolled toons for this reason. I do feel stupid when throwing away 20 levels because of appearance.

2. Decide name - This used to be my biggest problem. I have petitioned GM's about name change (but they've never allowed me to). The name decision takes normally about 2-3 days for me and before I am happy with it there is no reason to actually play in fear of having to reroll... With the new renaming functionality I don't have to worry about this anymore. My current hunter has a good-for-now-name and when I've settled on his "true" name I'll change it. For me that is $10 well spent.

3. Choose professions - When starting a new character I almost always start with skinning & mining. They allow me to quickly generate a sufficient gold stash early on. Especially mining can be lucrative to get enough gold to upgrade all bags very early and get all those weapon skills.

In my world you can either have professions that suit your class. For example a tailor / enchanter for a mage/priest/warlock or why not mining/blacksmith for a warrior. This time around I am creating a hunter and I've tried the skinning & leatherworking path previously - it has always left me disappointed. It works well early on but as soon as you hit about 45+ its uses starts to fade. And for all the time you put into it it just isn't worth it as most of its products can be bought cheap on AH.

If you fancy PVP then engineering used to be the number one profession... however it is expensive, boring to level and filled with (in my opinion) useless gadgets. It certainly has its uses for a hunter though with its ammunition and guns.

Note there are no good guides on wowwiki but if you need a 1-375 engineering guide I can recommend looking at this WoW Engineering Guide or the guide at gotwarcraft.com.

I am currently going mining & engineering but I am in no hurry to level it up. I am going to split my ores 50/50 to sell and to level engineering.

Oh and don't forget about fishing! Probably the most boring profession of them all.. .but it does wonders for keeping your pet happy and more importantly your purse.

My hunter has now reached the respectable level of 16 and had his first few looses in Warsong Gulch against twinked rogues. Damn they hit hard.

First pet - an Elder Springpaw

This morning my little hunter dinged 10. After completing the hunter quests to tame a mistbat he managed to tame his very first own pet - an Elder Springpaw.

Playing a hunter, one of the fun aspects is actually to find a good pet companion. I am one of those who care less about stats and percentages and more on style. Although a pet without dash or similar speed talent is too slow for my tastes.

I am probably going to visit Darkshore around 20-25 and get myself one of those spectral cats...

WOW performance on a MacBook

When the latest Leopard upgrade came there was a glorious cheer from the Mac gaming community. Apparently the new upgrade did a few wonders to the way Leopard handles 3D graphics. (Check out tuaw.com's report.)

Yay! While I never intended my own black little MacBook to be a gaming rig I just had to see how WOW would perform on it. But actually getting WOW onto the machine proved a bigger task for me.

I started out by downloading the client from wow-europe.com - which took the whole night. After the install there was numerous new patches to download. Finally logging in... "This account has been upgrade to TBC, you need to download the Burning Crusade".. Oh no.. I hoped it wouldn't be necessary to download TBC too. Plugging in the MacBook from the office gave me at least ridiculously high download speed and after only 20 min I had the TBC client downloaded. Installing that and downloading a new slew of updates took an additional 20 minutes.

I had the feeling that after all this preparation the game would run extremely poorly on my MacBook. I was wrong. It was very much playable! Now I've only zipped around a little in the Barrens and not entered any of the major cities but the performance was impressive for the little MacBook. Granted the video settings are set to medium (or low) but it still looks ok.

I'll post some more data when I've had more time to fully test it.

Ho-hum to Azeroth we go!

I've had a long and nice break from WOW but now it has found me again. The break has been good and I've had a good time checking out all the games I've missed from 2005-2008... Especially I've been impressed with some of the shooters such as Manhunt and Condemned (which sequel I am eagerly awaiting).

Yesterday however I did fire up the old WOW but instead of going back to my purple-clad rogue I rolled a new character. My choice of character is based on a play style that allows for both good group- and powerful solo play - the hunter. Also I did make a Blood Elf... I know the BE's racial traits aren't on par with the Orc, the Troll or the Tauren when it comes to hunters. It is all about style this time.

I've added a :: wow links :: section to the menu and I'll be filling it with blogs I visit these days. If all turns out as I want it... I'll only be playing wow a couple of hours a week. No speeding through the levels, just playing for the fun of it. I imagine quite a lot of battlegrounds.

Essential hunter wow links:

• BigRedKitty
• The Hunter's Mark
• Petopia

I am sure there are more out there...

MacBook upgraded

I recently bought a black MacBook and became a true mac-fan. My only use for the MacBook is to use it to write and manage photos. I also really needed a light laptop, since my Dell XPS M1710 hardly qualifies as a portable laptop.

Anyway when I bought the laptop it came with 1GB memory and additional memory from the apple store was insanely expensive. So after looking at various Mac forums I learned what memory fit and what doesn't. There is actually an abundance of information for mac users when it comes to upgrade their Macs. Everything from detailed and helpful forum posts to heaps of instructional videos on youtube. I ordered 2 x 2GB memory banks from webhallen for just below € 100 and they arrived three days later.

Getting into the MacBook proved to be the biggest challenge - you really need tiny screwdrivers to get in there. Almost no violence at all was required to swap the memory banks.

Going from 1GB RAM to 4GB made my MacBook very speedy. A noticeable performance increase in switching between applications and giving the whole system a little less sluggishness.

Unfortunately for my wallet... this upgrade was just the first. I've decided to invest into a new wireless network, integrating my Mac, TV and consoles into one glorious organism. More on that later though. 

EVE of destruction

In order to make ISK in EVE I have been running level 3 missions with a Myrmidion. I've been saving up for a battleship to tackle the even tougher level 4 missions. My research have concluded that a battleship is the preferred ship when taking on L4 missions. From a typical level 3 mission I can make about 4-7 million ISKs from bounty, loot and salvage.

My base of operations is in a 0.5 system with a 0.4 neighbour. Several missions have taken me to low-sec and I've never actually thought twice about going there for missions.

Yesterday however... I had just bought a bunch of Hammerhead II's to up my DPS a bit. (I fly Gallente and drones are my main weapon). I figured I'd do another mission before picking up the drones. The mission takes me to the low-sec system next door... So I warp and end up in a gate camp.

Heart starts to pound. I am relatively new to EVE pvp so at this point I consider my options to be 1) try to make it back to the gate to warp home, 2) Bet that the camp is just being set up and try to warp to nearest station or 3) attack the bastards and hope my army of drones and myrmidion can chase them off. I went for option 2...

I had just uncloaked and started the aligning process when all targets start to blink. I am being targeted. My warpdrives are jammed. I open up with my guns on the first target and unleash my drones. The jitters I am having must have clouded my senses a bit. After a while I realize that I've targeted the biggest ship of them all.. a Megathron. Curiously I've almost eaten through half its armor. I then discover a frigatte orbiting me at close range... the tackler. I quickly switch target, my drones realigning to target the frig... but at that point my armor has almost melted away and the ship structure is being blasted away in huge chunks. Seconds later my Myrmidion went out in a huge ball of plasma. My little escape pod managed to scurry away and warp to a nearby station.

Fortunately I'd insured my Myrmidion and interestingly enough I was paid more insurance than the cost of a new one. However it did set me back quite alot in terms of ISK. Getting all those modules takes time. I've learned my lesson though.. and for the next shopping spree I'll buy at least 2 sets of modules.

So I am futher away from my battleship goals now... doesn't help that I don't really appriciate mission running either.

Scroll of Resurrection

One after another my friends are finding themselves drawn back into World of Warcraft. They're getting a Scroll of Resurrection which allows 10 days of free play. Getting back after several months is tremendous fun especially in company of friends. The first days they don't remember why they quit in the first place. One guy tell me that he'll just level his latest character up to 70 and then just farm enough equipment to start playing arena games... at which points he swear he'll only play one day a week. Somehow I don't believe him. There is no easy way to quickly farm for arena gear.. it takes time... and then suddenly you farm for instance items... and then you need gold and you are in the vicious loop that will make that arena goal further and further away.
My characters cannot be resurrected by a scroll yet... so I am still safe. I will resist the urge to play WOW though. I have so much more fun with "normal" games right now... and time.

Comments now moderated

After several "Buy WOW Gold" comments I've turned on comment moderation. I just can't stand MMO gold sellers. 

EVE online soon available on STEAM

CCP & Valve recently announced that the MMO EVE online is coming to Steam. Very interesting. I personally started using Steam about a year ago and just like iTunes I has me buying games like never before. I am at the point where I first check Steam for games before even considering buying it in a store. Steamed games can be accessed from any computer and at a relatively good price. I am just waiting for them to allow your save games to be stored on steam as well.

When EVE online comes to Steam I am sure it will entice a lot of new players.

By the way... the last steam game I bought was the old 2004 release Manhunt. A really good stealth game. I've made it about half-way through the game and it is getting a lot tougher. It is very casual unfriendly... you can only save at certain points and if you quit and return you are likely to replay a lot of the level again before reaching your previous last checkpoint. I expect Manhunt 2 to have a more friendly save system. I am too inpatient these days to replay levels.

New artist - Emilie Autumn

  Since the day I installed iTunes I've increased the amount of new music I listen too. Almost every month I buy a new album from an artist I haven't heard before. The pricing on iTunes is perfect and quite frankly I am no longer interested in the CDs themselves. I play all music at home through my computer or my iPod.

Last night with the latest paycheck on the bank I flipped through Orkus, an alternative music magazine I usually read and found an article about Emilie Autumn. She plays the violin (both classical and an electo version) together with suggestive lyrics combined with a gothic backdrop. Sounds like something for me so I went ahead and purchased the album Opheliac.

I've just started to listen to it so I am not quite ready to lay down the verdict. So far I like what I hear...

I also managed to add a few tracks from various artists. Gotta love the "just for you feature" on iTunes. It takes a while before the suggested tracks becomes relevant but it learns for each new purchase.

Reset, rename and restart

A new name on the blog and voila it has been resurrected from the place of abandoned blogs. With Hexapuma's World I am no longer covering WOW since I don't play it anymore. However there is a ton of other things I do and obsess over.

One of the games I currently enjoy is EVE-Online and I am in the process of launching into a full pirate career. EVE is one of those fantastic open ended type of MMO where you can actually become anything you fancy. Play the game your own way. Of course this means that it is full of roads leading to very bad situations that can be very hard if not time consuming to get out of. Going pirate is one of those roads...

Looking at the important fixes for the 2.3 patch

I always find it interesting to look at the patches to see what the developers fix... sometimes it is annoying bugs, balancing issues and then sometimes you find such important issues such as:

Fishing

• You can now fish in Ironforge again.

It does show though that they have a solid bug reporting tool and that they do tick these smaller issues of the list. I imagine that these fixes are quite small and painless. I imagine that alliance rogues are now happy fishing away outside the rogue trainer in Ironforge.

How to maintain stealth...

One of our defining characteristics as rogues are to keep out of sight and attack at our own leisure. Monty Python gives us a lecture in the art of "How not to be seen":

Farming gold - Cobra scales

So in order to get cash for my epic mount I've retorted to killing cobras in Shadowmoon Valley around the Coilscar. They don't drop in huge numbers but for an hour of farming them I can usually get about 4, and they sell for 30-40g at the AH. In addition to the other drops and skin I make pretty good profit. Especially since I really loathe the daily quests. Not my cup of tea...

Also a little shoutout to my warrior friend who has started up his own warrior blog... visit him at Blood Fury. He is a bit confused but hey what can you expect from an orc wearing plate. All that metal cooks his brain...

Taking Un'goro crater by force

Yesterday I took a break from Bioshock and returned to Azeroth with my orc warrior. At level 53 he was getting ready for the Un'goro grind. I don't know what to make of that zone - part of me hate it and part of me enjoy it. Back in the day when people were still racing to 60 the crater was a dangerous place where you had to go in pairs or you would be killed and camped. Yesterday I felt very lonely with the exception of an orc hunter I bumped into in the cave of apes.

No matter if it is a fun zone or not it is a very exp rich zone. The quests gives a lot and all the grinding adds up as well. By the end of the night with all quests completed I had gained 1 1/5 level. Btw.. I could not find any elite quests in Un'goro... strange since most other zones have at least one or two.

One thing with un'goro... the Silithid Pox disease sucks to get as a warrior ... 40-50% extra damage from physical attacks. It hurts. Lots of extra rage though.

Bioshocked...

... WOW is in a temporary holding pattern. Just got Bioshock. Amazing soundscape!

This week in Warcraft

So another week is nearing its end. What have I been up to... well like the last weeks I've been busy levelling and PVPing with my orc Warrior. This week I've gone from 45-51 and managed to get myself a few cool PVP items as well. From Arathi Basin I've secured the Defiler's Plate Greaves and from Warsong Gulch I first saved up for the Rune of Duty but at the very last minute changed to the Berserker Bracers which do have one slight oddity - they can be equipped at 50 (most other pvp rewards are equippable at 38, 48, 58). Just as I dinged 51 I quickly flew to Alterac Valley, got the AV quest and popped into the queue. After 25 minutes of AV the horde ended up victorious and I claimed the Ice Barbed Spear. Now back in the day when I played an alliance warrior I tried to get this weapon for ever and ever... at first you had to kill the Ice Lord but it was later changed to simply winning the battleground.

Lastly I've done alot of tanking.. especially in Uldaman. I hate the instance mainly because it is soo time consuming. Tanking can be hard but practice and practice will make it smoother. I mainly play with PUG so you can imagine that I do party with a lot of huntards and warlocks that can't keep their dps in check or even worse start pulling at their own leisure.

My other alt, a Blood Elf Warlock, turned 20 and also managed to get enchanting up to 235. To get higher I need to level him to 35 which will take awhile. Maby never.

I didn't completely forget my rogue. Dear Warspike was brought out a few times to instance a wee bit. We did Shadow Labs but with no interesting drops for me.

I am putting more and more effort into my orc warrior at the moment. I love to play the warrior class and it really suits my type of play - rushdown galore! You put everything on the table and either you outdps your target or you don't. No fancy stuff.

I am really thinking about getting the Grandmaster Axe before proceeding beyond level 60. A long grind for nothing?

Battleground faces

After reading about Eye Of the Storm tips and tricks on both Out of Mana and Massive Multiplayer PK and having a blast playing alot myself this weekend I figured that there are many different types of BG players.

First you have the Fearless Commanders trying to give a few orders to the ragtag PUG that plays. I've tried this a few times but I don't really have the patience to shout out all the commands nor the thick skin to take the shit from all the puggies who just want to assault stable over and over at the sacrifice of the other nodes.

The Suicidal Solo Maniac - running around alone on the bg and usually dying to the defense. Sometimes they manage to ninja a flag in AB. If you have too many of these it is game-over. Winning is done in groups. If an attack is called out by the commander to the gold mine, you can be sure that the SSM is heading to the stables...

The Stalwart Defender - They dig down at one of the flags or the flag room in WSG and defend it. Usually I end up as a defender in AB and EOTS. The most important thing is calling out incoming attacks early. I am usually alone at the nodes I defend so I won't be able to hold out long against a large group. My main tactic is stalling the flag cap until reinforcements arrive.


The Bored Defender - This guys starts out defending but after no action he moves - usually the node is captured right after he leaves. Patient rogues for the win...

The Big-Mouthed-PVPer - There is always one guy that has the best tactics and makes sure everyone else know they need to L2P. These guys are always the first to call out that the enemy team is a premade... even when they come from different servers.


I actually had a really good discussion with an experienced commander the other day about which nodes to capture... as a horde player I am a strong believer in capturing (and holding) Farm, Gold Mine and the Lumber Mill. That way you can have a strong force at Mine and Lumber Mill and only one at Farm. Lumber Mill should be strong enough to ride down and defend Farm when ever needed. Small diversionary attacks against BS and Stables to keep the enemy afraid of attacking. My rationale is that too many places to much importance in holding the Blacksmith - avoid it and you're enemy will have to fear loosing it instead.
What kind of battleground fighter are you?

Making gold the expensive way

I recently found one of my old IRL friends in WOW... but on a different server than me. After some consideration I decided to move a few character to his server. After all playing with IRL friends is so much more fun than with random puggies.

My first action was to create a new character on that server and check out the AH prices. I discovered that epics and certain trade goods were horribly overpriced compared to what exists on my own server.

So back on my original server I invested about 1500g in mats and various epics. At my server Ravencrest you can find epics for around 20-40g during the weekdays. Thats Stockade Pauldrons, Destiny etc. With a backpack full of ore and epics I transferred my first char.

I've already made tripple that amount of gold and I still have lots more to sell. I am also going to transfer 2 more characters in the next two months. But it isn't completely free... I do have to pay real cash for the transfer charge. But since I was going to move the character anyway =)

Now take a moment and think about how much money blizzard makes on character transfers.. how many characters do you think transfers each day on both EU and US? Its a lot of cash... and it is more than the monthly fee. Think about that.

Advantages and disadvantages of alts in PVP

For the last couple of weeks I've been focusing alot on my little sidekick warrior. I am having a blast. In PVE I have somewhat hard of running certain quests that I know was easy as pie with my rogue... in PVP I am learning that the warrior is all about offence. There is no room to hesitate or play cautiously. When it comes to rogue PVP you often have a lot of tricks that allows you to reset the fight, restealth and escape. Vanish, Blind, Sprint etc.. so many opportunities to really change the fight. Where as a warrior your options are much more limited. (Let me remind you that my warrior recently dinged 42 so not all talents/skills are available yet I assume somethings change when you have all the goodies such as spell reflect etc). My tactics as a warrior is usually based around charging in as quick as possible to get first strike and then land a hamstring before starting to seriously pound the target. I am also switching stances like crazy. I must to defeat warlocks or priests. A rend is worth gold against rogues... but a well timed Thunder Clap or Demoralizing shout is worth even more... A rogue affected by a TC/DC often behave like a deer staring down the headlights of an onrushing car.

Anyway my real issue is that after playing my warrior I am loosing alot of rogue reflexes. I assume this goes for all players going with two or more characters. If they aren't the same class they risk loosing that edge (which I am sure doesn't really impact PVE at all).

However you do gain a lot of insight into other classes which is invaluable... I would strongly suggest to seriously try to play any class that you find is a bitch to fight against with your main. My personal arch-enemy is the shadow-priest. Granted I haven't encountered that many of them the last couple of months.. but back in the days they were my nightmare.

New gear and a subtlety build

While I haven't been playing Warspike very extensively the last week I have gotten myself some new gear... a few trips to the battlegrounds have payed off and I've bought the Veteran's Leather Bracers. I did thought about buying the Veteran's Leather Gloves first but the bracers was stats-wise a better upgrade for me. The gloves will be next though...

I've also picked up an expensive piece of head armor: The Night Watchman. The armor itself is not that über BUT its special effect - improved stealth detection - makes me a very happy rogue. Currently I am spending most of my time in various battlegrounds and being able to detect stealthed opponents is helping me alot!

In addition to the new gear I've respecced to a subteltly build, and with even more stealth detection. I still haven't gotten the new combos and skills into muscle memory so I am having slight trouble right now of downing my opponents efficiently (i keep forgetting premeditation and preparation for example).

While the sub build offer mediocre dps compared to mutilate or a fullblown combat build it does add alot of versatility... I find myself using rupture and garrote ALOT more in certain situations where I am not the target.

It is not the size that matters....

One of my many alts just happens to be a proud axe wielding orc warrior and for the last couple of weeks he has been running around with tiny shoulder armor. At first it was kind of funny to see all the brutish orcs with dimnished shoulders. Now it is just plain irritating. Gief big shoulders back!

Apparently this is a bug glitch that came from something completely different during the last client patch... and we have to be nice and wait for the next client patch to get brutish shoulders again. Hopefully the patch is just around the corner and if I am not mistaken already on the test servers.

When it comes to orcs - Size DOES matter!

While both june and july has rained away here in the south of sweden August now shows promising weather! Today I took the famly out to the beach for the first time this vaccation... I expect to be able to farm the beach all week...

Short stop in Arathi...

So I took a short stop in Arathi to turn in one of the AB quests (capture all nodes)... I figure since I am grinding the battlegrounds for better PVP armor I might as well do the quests associated with them. Arriving in Arathi I find Hammerfall besieged by a hunter and his friend... the hunter, a level 69 night elf and a level 33 warrior. They had apparantly been playing tough guys with our friendly hordes in the neighbourhood.

I got into stealth, sapped the hunter and killed the little one in two strikes.. before he would break the sap (obviously not wearing his PVP trinket) I could reset the fight... I hate fighting against hunters and part of me just wanted to vanish and be happy with the lowbie kill. But I went in and after a short fight the hunter lay dead at my feet. A lot of hordes praised my name with /yell and I had become hero for a day...

It wasn't much but I had great timing... and I love taking out bullies.

First 2vs2 arena experience

So I just finished my first arena game... a 2vs2 with an IRL friend playing a resto druid. A rogue and resto druid feels strong. However in our first match we got defeated. The opposing team was a Warlock and a Paladin. Man.. I hate paladins. They seem to last forever. In this particular match we went for the warlock first. Didn't really feel good. While I pounded on the warlock, and tried to blind/gouge the paladin at all possible times the warlock did burn down my druid. In the end I was alone against them both... and it went quick downhill from there.

Next time I rather go with my gut feeling of trying to burn down the paladin first..

For our next game the server crashed... bah... so I probably started my arena career with a loss and another loss due to disconnects. It is mainenance day tomorrow so that might be the reason.

New patch notes on PTR for 2.2.0

Well a big PVP oriented patch is on its way to PTR. For the full specs check out http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

There are alot of small fixes and changes to all classes as well as instances and items. My biggest concern are those affecting us rogues:

• Blade Flurry: This ability will now do damage to secondary targets when the primary target takes no damage due to a damage shield (such as Power Word: Shield).
• Elusiveness now reduces the cooldown of Blind by 8/15 seconds.
• Master of Subtlety: The bonus damage from this talent is now properly removed when a Rogue loses stealth from zoning.
• Sap: It is no longer sometimes possible to Sap two targets at the same time in the outdoor world.
• Sap duration against PvP targets has been reduced to 10 seconds.
• Sword Specialization: This talent’s free extra attacks can no longer trigger additional extra attacks.

The new blind seems very sexy... and while sap is now reduced to 10 seconds of CC so is the mage's polymorph!

Death from above

Finally I've gotten Warspike airborne! A green mount seemed to be the perfect candidate for my future aerial maneuvers. Flying is amazingly fun... although with the initial flying mount it is kind of slow. I have started to grind the money for the epic mount... It will take me quite some time.

I've also managed to get exhalted with Aldor! YAY! My first faction at exhalted. Everyone keeps telling me that the Aldor/Scryer faction is the fastest one. It did net me a great 1h sword... so I am back to Combat Swords for the time being. I didn't really like mutilate for PVE and it looks like I am going to do a bit of grinding for gold...

NEWS: Planned Resilience Change...

Just spotted this on www.worldofwarcraft.com:

"In the next major content patch, the combat rating, resilience, will also reduce the damage dealt by damage over time (DoT) effects. As it currently stands, each new tier of equipment adds to the amount of damage DoT abilities have, yet that damage is not mitigated through combat ratings found on typical equipment. This change will help ensure that DoT effects do not scale too well compared to other damage mechanics.

The amount of damage reduced will be equal to the critical chance reduction effect that resilience grants."

Right now there are quite a lot of shadowpriest/warlock teams that are relying on dots to take down gladiators with full resillience gear. Some teams have begun stacking shadow resist gear that they switch to during the games...

This seems like a great thing. All damage should be covered with resilience!

Stalking Halaa

In the middle of the african-inspired Nagrand lies the neutral city of Halaa. It is the object of the zone's outdoor PVP mode. When killing a member of the opposing faction you are awarded a Halaa Battle Token - and if your faction controlls the city you can use these (together with research tokens gathered from the zone's mobs) to purchase pretty good PVP gear.

For about a week Warspike has called Halaa home. Especially when controlled by the alliance. You see stealthing and stalking in the Halaa is very easy.. and several 64-66 comes there to turn in their tokens and they don't really expect a dagger in the back. The guards will assist if I get too close so controlling the fight is paramount. Crippling poison or you better have vanish ready. The mutilate build is excellent for this kind of dirty burst kill.

My favourite PVP moment here was when ambushing a hunter on his flying mount at ground level. After a few stuns he managed to get away and simply soared up in the air with almost no health... I had 4 full combo points on him and next thing a Deadly Throw killed him midair! I love being a rogue =)

I've collected 60 marks.. earned a good chunk of honor and now purchased the Shadowstalker's belt and leggings. It was actually a pretty painful week to do all the marks at once. But now that I am done I can leave Halaa and the alliance there alone.

My next stop is grinding Aldor rep to exhalted... and I am very very close. You see in Nagrand I've been killing beasts like there is no tomorrow (when not in Halaa). The leather and especially the clefthoof leather sells for a good deal of gold. For those earnings I've bought Fel Armament and Mark of Saragas. Doing the Aldor quests in the Netherstorm has helped as well.

Oh.. I am close to finally buying a flying mount.. but we'll see if the gold I have after a few quests is enough.

Learing the mutilate build...

So know I've earned some experience using a mutilate build. I am not convinced that this is the ultimate build but it seems amazing for battlegrounds and large-scale battles. The burst damage you can deliver is more than anything I've been able to deal before. For PVE I think it is simply horrible. I have been trying to finish a few quests in Netherstorm for gold and rewards but with my mutilate spec it takes forever... and the corpse runs. You see when I was a combat rogue I could easily deal with one or two adds without breaking a sweat. Just pop AR+BF+Evasion... With a mutilate build there is really no ace up the sleeve when that extra add comes. I've also discovered that I am truly in need of both more crit and +hit for mutilate to shine. A missed Kidney Shot can screw up a whole battle.

After a few battles I think I got a PVE combo going:

1 Start with cheap shot for a good stun and 2 combo points
2 Mutilate during the cheap shot for 2 more combo points and sometimes 3 with seal fate
3 Wait for energy and then Kidney Shot. There is really no use throwing a 5pt kidney shot if you don't have full energy
4 Mutilate (at this point you have Find Weakness and Imp KS running for additional 19% of damage)
5 Mutilate
6 You usually have 5 combo points here... and I like to throw an Eviscerate

This can also be done against unsuspecting, non-trinketing players... but I've found out that it is seldom they'll let you bash unhindered.

I'll finish this post off with a little PVP anecdote that happened yesterday in the Alterac Valley BG. There was a huge battle raging at Tower Point, the alliance was slowly gaining more and more ground. A very strong defence kept the allies fighting for every inch (meanwhile our own attackers made progress further and further into the dwarves territory). With my mutilate build I wanted to try out burst damage. I looked for mages standing in the middle of the "crowd". I could not find anyone hurt. So I just picked one with big shoulders (usually the damage dealers from hell) and crept up behind him. I released everything... cold blood, Ferocity trinket and a long string of loud curses. I managed to get about 3/4 of his health before his friends started bashing on me. Suddenly I had a debuff list almost covering the whole screen and I got a nasty stun. When the stun released I managed to give the mage one last mutilate - it critted and the mage died. With almost no HP left I did what any rogue would do... Cloak of Shadows, Vanish & sprint. I survived... and as soon as I hit friendly space I got a ton of heals...

For me it was a glorious moment. This is what I've been dreaming of doing as a rogue in the battlegrounds. And that my friends is what still keeps me as a mutilate rogue. I am not going back to combat for awhile.

Boom 70, and respec to a mutilate build

After hours of slaving away in the Netherstorm Warspike was finally rewarded by reaching level 70.

Three cheers for me!

My goal at 70 has always been to start PVP in full. I look forward to all the four battlegrounds as well as starting up an arena team with a few of my guildies. I will not grind much more, nor quest more than neccessary so I feel confident that I can leave my combat fist spec behind. Even though it worked really good in PVP I've always wanted to go back to be a rogue with daggers.. hiding in the shadows waiting for the perfect strike.

I have two builds to try out in the near future, the first being a PVP oriented Mutilate build. The second build is the old classic dagger PVP build - 30/0/31. Actually the last one is very similar what I used with Hexapuma pre-TBC.

What was the first thing you did when you reached level 70?

Warspike almost 70

Warspike dinged 69 today ... and only a few hours later the experience bar showed a litte less than 60% left to 70. It seems the road from 69-70 is much shorter than the earlier levels. I remember feeling the same when my first toons were about to hit 60. I suspect I'll hit 70 tomorrow.. and then I'll be busy with getting flying mounts, aldor exhalted, getting PVP gear and more importantly finding an arena team.

A dagger lurking in the shadows

So there I was, in the middle of the forest south of an alliance outpost killing Fey Dragons to left and right. That damn fey powder wouldn't drop. Just as I pocketed the last dust my debuff bar lit up like a christmas tree. This usually only means one thing... a warlock. Before I had gotten my hand out of the bag I had at least 3 dots running and more coming. Before TBC that would have been the end of the grind and the beginning of a long corpse run. Not this time. Activate cloak of shadows and then boom VANISH.

The battle has been reset.

The scared gnome mounted up faster than you can say Gnomeregan and rode away.

When I get jumped and manage to escape or turn the battle I can't let it go. So I followed him in stealth. I could follow the trail of mobs returning to their positions as he rode past. It seemed he would elude me... but then just as I spotted another gnome (rogue) my the castbars lit up... SHADOWBOLT... I had found him.. or rather my mods spotted him for me. After that it was easy to stun him to death. With Will of the Forsaken and the PVP trinket Warlocks are now easy mode...

I just love stalking the prey as a rogue. I've heard that druids are even cooler with their Track Humanoid to make the task easier. Nah that is too easy =)

An economy going rampart?

The other day I asked a friend if he could craft the Felsteel Whisper knives (throwing weapons) as my rogue Warspike soon hits 70. He was very happy to make them for me but I had to supply the ingredients (and I would expect nothing else). A lot of materials are required for the knives - they are blue level 70 knives after all. When I browsed the AH for the materials I realized that the price for me to get all this stuff would be far more than the price of actually buying the knives themselves on AH. Just a week earlier I had seen them on AH for as little as 30-40 gold. The sum of the mats I would have to buy would on my server be 150-200 gold.

Which led us to a lengthy discussion that the economy in World of Warcraft is seriously wrong. The materials are more expensive than a finished product. Why is it that the common commodities are so expensive? One reason could be that everyone needs the same materials in this case a bit of felsteel (engineers, jewelcrafters and all the blacksmiths) but how many actually needs the throwing knives? And as a guild mate of mine pointed out... everyone and their mother are power-levelling up their crafting professions which makes a huge material demand. And it doesn't end there but many end-game players choose to have two crafting proffessions for those imba BoP's. Every rogue should have blacksmithing for the Drakefist Hammer and jewelcrafting for the Nightseye Panther ... or enchanting to play the AH market for even more gold to afford those pricey materials.

So what possible solutions are there? I see none within the current game mechanics of WOW. So I'll throw out a few ideas...

#1 Restrict the crafting skills to one craft per player

#2 Allow everyone to gather material - this will probably flood the market with mats and thus make sure that a finished product is worth more.

#3 Have mats gathered be BoP and redesign a new interface for the crafting where the crafting can be made into a group action. It can be as simple as a Warlock's summoning. Click on the forge .. add a few mats and BOOM a new item.

#4 Stop the gold buying... we all know that has one of the biggest impacts on the economy.

What are your suggestions?

Warspike's modified pvp combat build

Currently Warspike's build is combat fist but with a slight difference from the cookie-cutter build. I've put points into MoD for additional stealth - and when doing lots of BG that stealth is very welcome. I can easily say that rogues without MoD are very easy to spot... For me MoD has become a requirement.

Warspike's Combat Build

Assassination Talents - 15 points

The first tiers of the assassination tree is almost a requirements. I would recommend all rogues to go for 11 points here. Malice, Ruthlessness and Relentless strikes are god send.

# Improved Eviscerate - rank 3/3
# Malice - rank 5/5
# Ruthlessness - rank 3/3
# Relentless Strikes - rank 1/1
# Lethality - rank 3/5

Combat Talents - 41 points

Combat tree for sustained damage. If you do venture down the combat tree make sure you pick up the signature moves here - Riposte, Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush. When you combine BF and AR you are effectively in god mode. Add evasion and not much can withstand your fury. This goes for both PVP and PVE. Although make sure you have the target stunned before starting.

Personally I chose to go with Combat potency (for that extra energy) and all the way to Surprise Attacks (10% damage increase) and I love them both!

# Improved Gouge - rank 3/3
# Improved Sinister Strike - rank 2/2
# Deflection - rank 5/5
# Precision - rank 5/5
# Riposte - rank 1/1
# Improved Sprint - rank 2/2
# Improved Kick - rank 2/2
# Dual Wield Specialization - rank 4/5
# Blade Flurry - rank 1/1
# Fist Weapon Specialization - rank 5/5
# Aggression - rank 2/3
# Adrenaline Rush - rank 1/1
# Nerves of Steel - rank 2/2
# Combat Potency - rank 5/5
# Surprise Attacks - rank 1/1

Subtlety Talents - 5 points

The king of the rogue talents - if you are the stalking kind of guy that is... I cannot play wihtout it, I feel naked and I do even consider dropping a few points from assassination and put them into camoflage for increased speed as well.

# Master of Deception - rank 5/5

This works for me, although I used to play with maces before getting my Nexus-Claw and that was even more fun! With mace specialization you get a chance to stun and increased weapon skill. Very handy... and very annoying for your cloth targets.

Patch 2.1.2 is here - Arena Season 2

Right now the 2.1.2 patch is getting downloaded ... with lots of warnings on the downloader that "the download is not authorized"... sounds interesting. I guess I'll know about that in a few hours when the servers gets back up.

So lets just quickly look at what the new patch brings.

* Start of Arena Season 2...

The biggest thing with the patch is of course the start of the new Arena season. This also means new gear! I am at level 67 (almost 68) so for me the season could have waited a few more

weeks. I'll be getting into the season early on though. Just as everyone have upgraded their initial gear to season 2.

And the second biggest thing (IMHO):


* PvP Trinkets: Insignia of the Alliance, Insignia of the Horde, Medallion of the Alliance, and Medallion of the Horde have all been redesigned. The trinkets for all classes now have the same effect: Dispels all movement impairing effects and all effects that cause loss of control of your character.

This is huge - and will be very interesting to see how it will work. This will even out the playingfield between a few of the classes.

You can view the full patch notes here.

Update: It seems that a few people's anti-virus programs are detecting Trojans in the patch. According to Blizzard this is false alarm and you simply need to update your anti-virus program.

Finally - Cloak of Shadows

So finally Warspike has reached the esteemed level of 66 which means a trip to the rogue trainer for that lovely skill - Cloak of Shadows. The skill allows a rogue to remove all harmfull effects and then have 90% resist to everything nasty for the next 5 seconds. The number of PVP tricks that this skill alone allows is amazing. Needless to say CoS is an integral part of end-game PVP.

In addition I've made it to Nagrand now. A beautiful zone with lots of beasts to kill - and skin! It seems that every mob that goes down has something for a faction, a quest or just plain simply some good knothide leather. The landscape is very interesting - rolling hills with little ponds and other interesting landmarks. Even though it is pretty open it is hard to spot the opposing faction... very interesting.

I haven't taken part in the world PVP action in Nagrand yet. There is a neutral town smack in the middle and apparently either horde or alliance will have control over it - along with its questgivers and other NPCs.

Going from level 64 - 66 went amazingly fast and I guess the main reason is the ease of doing the quests in Terokkar forest.

Reputation grinding in WOW

One of my biggest problems with WOW is the constant requirement to grind repetation for the various factions. Actually it is not the need for the grind but how the grind is supposed to be carried out that disturbs me.

Take Thrallmar for example. A high reputation for Thrallmar is required for a few crafting recepies but more importantly the key to the heroic instance in that zone. When a new player arrives at the Hellfire Penisula the most obvious thing to do is to do quests for Thrallmar - for reputation, experience and gear. But the most effective way to gain reputation is actually to avoid the Thrallmar quests and go for the ones out at Falcon Point (gives reputation for Silvermoon) and hit the ramparts and blood furnace over and over again until honored with Thrallmar. When finally honored with Thrallmar then should the quests should be completed (at this point the player is also probably over the minimum/recommended level for the quest making them a breeze). This saves multiple runs into Shattered Halls later on for that precious exhalted reputation.

While I understand the need to have reputation grinding as part of the current system, I would prefer it to be a little more similar to how Aldor/Scryer reputation is gained - using quests, and token turn ins. For example I have choosen Aldor for Warspike and it allows me to either go out and kill orcs for tokens or buy them on AH... buying them on AH allows me to grind other things I find more interesting and sell or trade tokens. It gives me freedom to play where I want to... I have yet to experience the new 2.1 content with the daily quests and all - I expect it to work out much better than that annoying Thrallmar reputation =)

It reminds me of the old days in Diablo II where most (end-game) players kept doing runs into Mephisto to get the good loot. It was the only way to really gain good end game gear.

Oh and Warspike turned 65 the other day! I have him decked out in the Thick Draenei leather set so far. I am not going to get overboard in gearing up until I hit 70.

New patch 2.1.2 incoming

Seems like the big 2.1.0 patch spawned quite a few issue to be taken care of... mostly minor changes but for us rogue there is the revertion of Sword specialization:

The change to Sword Specialization making its extra attacks appear in yellow has been reverted. Extra attacks will appear in white and act like any auto-attack. They will no longer reset the swing time of your weapon. [2.1 changed Rogue Sword Spec to do yellow damage and not reset swing timers. This reverts the "yellow damage" part.]

I guess yellow damage and no swing reset was too powerful or conflicted with something else. It has been reverted for warriors as well. I never had any time to try it out as I have been busy with joy over mace specialization.

Check out the full patch notes at: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

Also there seems to be new functionality over at the armory with an item database and more goodies. It is not implemented on the european site yet. Actually going to the armory at the european site crashes my firefox... over and over again.

Ding 64!

Warspike is slowly sneaking towards level 70 and all the goodness that awaits! Recently he passed the 64 mark. I've also installed the mod auctioneer to see if I can get some help in making great money from the AH. I usually manage to do Ok but it can't hurt right?

It does take quite awhile to scan the AH for prices and the mod itself do have a heavy memory load. I'll see if I can manage to keep it around.

What is your experience with auctioneer?