Finally 80 & Azjol-Nerub

Actually my warrior managed to reach 80 at least a week ago but I've been to busy with life to actually do something about it. With the Big Ding! I flew around Northrend to pick up a few pieces of reputation gear. Pants from Argent Crusade, breastplate and boots from Wyrmrest... in the end it actually seemed that Urthiel would be ready for his first heroic.

A guildie whispered and asked if I would like to tank the daily HC. With my defense stat a little over 540 I thought this would be a great experience. The instance of the day: Azjol-Nerub. It is at least in normal a rather quick affair but with interesting pulls that challenges the tank. Great fun.

At the time I did not have skype/vent installed on my computer so while the rest of the party would talk I had to rely on /party. The party by the way consisted of Protection Warrior, a resto druid, a retribution paladin and a dagger rogue. We started making our way into the instance... and there was lots of killing and after a while we ended up at the last boss. I did not think of it much at the time but rather now afterwords... we didn't CC anything, just hacked adn crushed our way through multiple-mob pulls. Great fun. Now that I've read up a bit on heroics it seems that at least a little CC is recommended. Oh well my guildies have pretty decent gear to carry up a fresh 80.

Oh, the end boss... well here we started to wipe.  It was a very hard fight with the dangerous POUND spell killing me once and our resto druid another time. The cheer amount of poison from the spider adds racked up two more wipes. A total of four wipes was necessary before we could down the might beetle. A plate belt dropped out for me... great success!

Urthiel of Ravencrest's Path of a Hero Journal

Urthiel of Ravencrest's Path of a Hero Journal

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Cheap Titansteel Shield Wall

My warrior is only halfway to 79 but I could not resist a quick glance at the AH  to scan for interesting gear upgrades. Once you hit 80 you are expected to start replacing those nice blues with fantastic purple epics.

I found that someone was selling the Titansteel Shield Wall for only 600 gold. I have no idea why the sudden drop in price as these usually sells for 1200-2000 gold on my server. There was no hesitation though - bought!

Urthiel the Explorer (my first title besides the old PVP titles) tanked Utgarde Pinacle yesterday. My first 80 instance... Had a lucky run and besides the nice quest rewards (Silver-Plated Battlechest & Faceguard of Punishment) the first boss (Svala Sorrowgrave) dropped Svala's Bloodied Shackles which was a nice upgrade.

I'll be trying to get another PUG to the Pinnacle in order to have go at  the nice tanking neck - Amulet of Deflected Blows - that is dropped by Skadi.

Urthiel is starting to look like a proper viking.. but you do know that fighting vikings did not have horned helmet, right?

Rotating classes - how to keep wow fresh

Every once in awhile I rotate my character main to a new one. Mostly it happens after reaching certain goals that has been hard to achieve. With my (3rd) rogue this happened shortly after dinging 70 halfway into the TBC cycle. I had played my rogue a lot and been forced to level fast to keep up with my guild. I realized that I burned through content too fast and also my appreciation of the rogue.

So since I took a few months away from WOW and then returned to a new character. After a few false starts I got really hooked on my hunter Stormspike. I had loads of fun, totally ignoring leveling pace or any other issues.  I dinged 70 and started doing dailies and shifting my focus onto PVP. Loads of fun.

When WotLK arrived it was time to change again. After the hunter changes I realized I wasn't interested in relearning the hunter. Instead I watched with joy at the latest changes to the protection warrior. Suddenly it was viable to not only level as protection but also PVP with it.

I rolled an undead warrior, (my 3rd highlevel warrior throughout my wow career) who now is quickly approaching 78... I don't care much for the endgame, it is the journey that I love so much with WOW.

Time-wise I suspect it is soon time for me  to rotate into a new character and I think that either a Paladin or a Death Knight would be the best move. Yet I am still having fun, and I haven't even gotten started on the PVP side of things. Yay!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

I've been super busy the last weeks and by the looks of it I won't be able to get some really free time before the end of this year. So kill a gnome and Happy New Year!

Elite servers vs casual servers

I've recently started a new character (death knight) on a PVE server where my younger relatives play. Playing on that realm is quite different from my home realm, EU-Ravencrest.

EU-Ravencrest is the home to several top-performing PVE guild, and according to www.wowprogress.com, EU-Ravencrest is ranked at first place. (On a side note. It is interesting that the top 22 servers in terms of PVE progress are PVP servers...)

Playing on EU-Ravencrest means that you are constantly surrounded by top-performing players. Raid and HC gear is standard and running around in blues is a laughing matter, even for alts.

PUGing instances on EU-Ravencrest is usually fast and mechanical. Everyone knows their class and the instances like the back of their hands. Of course there are exceptions, but if you stay away from people who use "lol" or "m8" in their sentences you're home free.

Now on EU-Hellfire (rank 125/232) there is a much bigger variety among the players. You'll find lots of guilds with younger players (11-15) and a lot of very casual gamers. You don't see tier gear as frequently as on Ravencrest, people actually /emote when they see legendary items...

For me it is actually a blast to play on this "casual" server - people still view WOW as a game and not as a clinical and mechanical as it is viewed upon on Ravencrest. However I do miss the PVP aspect, there is less excitement in the world. No risk of aggroing the opposing faction, getting corpse camped etc. Don't get me wrong - I don't like being grieved but there is a certain appeal to the danger that it might happen if I am not careful enough...

5 Great uses for Spell Reflection

One of my favorite skills on my warrior is Spell Reflection which you'll get at the venerable age of level 64. You need to have you shield equipped and 15 rage. It is not affected by global cooldown. It gets even better with talents - improved spell reflection allows you to reflect spells from party members as well. It makes it more "unpredictable" in PVP.

1. You can use it to reflect a Paladin's Hammer of Justice. They are usually very predictable and unless you happen to meet a skilled retadin odds are that he'll use it quickly to dish out some burst damage. GIB!
2. Use it in boss fights to avoid super damaging spells or stuns. Check out WowWiki for a few boss uses (TBC only)
3. Death Knights have several spells that can be reflected - they are far more than just melee combatants.
4. Charge close to a recently blinked mage, activate it and watch him frost nova himself. GIB!
5. If a warlock tries to cast Unstable Affliction at you, reflect it and watch with joy as his party members tries to dispel the curse without expecting the unstable debuff.

New gear = great fun

My warrior, whom I started just a month prior to WOTLK, have reached Northrend. It is a blast. Now that the main crowd has moved beyond the starting zones it is less crowded and you don't have to stand around waiting for specific spawns.

My warrior was 68 when starting out in the Fjord and after an initial burst of questing I relocated him to the Borean Tundra. A great move. The quests in the Tundra is so much more fun... in the initial quests around the Warsong citadel you can save horde prisoners who will join you temporary while in the quarry. It felt like running around with a five-man party. Heals, fireballs and charging warriors. The quests in the Howling Fjord are not in any way bad - it is just that the Tundra quests are so much better.

Another great thing with my warrior is getting new equipment with almost every quest. It wasn't half that fun with my hunter who was decked out in (pvp) epics.

New equipment = great fun!

I'll try to get a PUG together for Utgarde Keep tomorrow. I am sure it will be an amazing experience.

The Army of One

My hunter, Stormspike, is sitting in the Howling Fjord waiting for the rest of my little army to catch-up. My hunter is my main PVP machine and I've come to realize that when I play him I concentrate much more on taking out innocent leveling gnomes than following quest directions. Stormpike has taken the Howling Fjord route. It is a very beautiful zone with lots of interesting PVP terrain. I especially like the mountainous area above the alliance village in the north.

 

The undead rogue Warspike who has been inactive for almost a year, has been awaken from his slumber. He never got  the gear attention he should have and could get level 68 leather upgrades for several gear slots. A skinner & leatherworker who will have plenty to do in the Fjord. I've moved him over to the Fjord and started doing a few quests with him.

 

 

My  Orc arms-warrior, Gorespike, was destined to be a 70 PVP machine is still 66. I guess I forgot him somewhere on the way to Northrend. I have no desire to wake him so I might just as well dump him somewhere in the Outlands/Azeroth on farming duty.

 

 

The Blood Elf paladin Shieldspike has been waiting for action at the inn in the Badlands. She managed to get to the respectable level of 56 before slowly sinking back into inactivity. Her goal was to get to 59-60 and stay in that PVP bracket.

 

 

 

But my latest love is Urthiel, an undead protection warrior. I started playing him just little over two months ago and he dinged 67 last night somewhere in Terokkar. He will probably be my first character to ... eventually ... get to 80. Playing a protection warrior is amazingly fun. They are so... resilient. Leveling up in the same wave as all the new death knights make his questing very very hostile. There aren't many DKs that can resist a show of strength. So far I've managed to defeat almost all DKs that attack me. There is a little secret to easy Death Knight killing, but I'll leave that for another post.

Speaking of Death Knights, I do have one somewhat dormant. A female Orc who patiently waits for me. However I am only going to play her with together with my wife (she has a blood elf female knight).

Oh and these are not my only somewhat-active characters. I do have plenty more. I am an altoholic after all, but most of them are below 60.

Then there are my alliance chars that hasn't been active for over a year. Hexapuma the rogue, Aela the Hunter, Ripperjack the Warrior and Hexapanther the Paladin. They've transfered off to another server. Phew.. I should probably get into a rehab or something. Starting new characters is so much fun...

Battle of Northrend & Gnome Death Knights

I logged into WOW about 1900 PM yesterday only to find a queue of 1580. It took almost two hours before I could get into the game. Well I did have Metal Gear Solid 4 to complete so it wasn't really that bad.

Well into the game I discovered that on our PVP server the Howling Fjord is now a battleground. Horde and Alliance ride in packs and anyone alone is fair game. At times alliance and horde was questing side by side but real often someone started fire off an arrow (yes it was me) and a huge fight started. Amazingly fun. Although I feel it slightly makes exploring end enjoying the new continent to the fullest.

Last time I checked the bulk of the hardcore raiders are now approaching 75-76 with the odd 77...

I took some time this morning to play my warrior (L62) in Hellfire. I was jumped two times by level 58 death knights. While I won the fights - these guys are nasty. One second I was killing boars and then WHAM I am sucked away into the blood thirsty reach of a gnome death knight. When they level up higher they are going to be a royal pain in the pvp butt. I will have to create one just to learn their abilities... right now I have no idea what they are doing and why.

Northrend ohoy! First impressions.

About 10:00 PM the European servers allowed players into Northrend. There was a massive gathering of taurens and blood elves around the zeppelin towers. Initially people boarded the zepps' and when it flew away they all ended up at the GY of Brill. Apparently people had to restart their clients for the game to register that you had an upgraded account.

So last night my hunter caught the zeppelin from Brill and arrived in the Howling Fjord. Of all the taurens, undead and blood elves I was one of 4 that successfully arrived at the Howling Fjord.

I played for about 2 hours - and it was huge success! I haven't had this much fun in a long time. It was fun just shooting the new wolves and exploring the new zone.

Experience trickles in fast. Even in a highly competitive environment I gathered about 300k of the 1500k exp in 2 hours needed for level 71.

Oh, and it is expensive. New rank of first aid goes for 50 gold and the other profession skills ends up at around 35 gold each.

Lich King Tactics

Tonight the Wrath of the Lich King is released in Europe. I already have secured my box from a good contact, however I still have to wait for the servers to "open".

I now have serious problems choosing what to play next. I've even become interested in picking up a Death Knight.

My tactics when it comes to consuming the Lich King expansion is to ... chill. I am going to take it really slow and be sure to read all lore and really explore the lands. Most of the people on my guild are going to race to 80 as quick as possible. I am going to figure out how to make gold while leveling (since I hate farming sessions) and just enjoy. I don't expect to turn 80 this year. What is your approach?

 

Last night I participated in a few skirmishes against the Lich King's invasion. It felt rather lackluster so I took my little warrior & priest duo to their first excursion into the Outlands. Every time I've gone into the outlands for the first time with a character it has been more or less a pain. Not this time. My protection warrior backed up by a disc priest was able to tear through the mobs in Azerothian blues.

I've now replaced most of their gear. The priest did have gear from Shadowfang Keep... *blush*. My biggest problem is that there are so many tanks on our server that they keep yelling for DPS in the LFG channel. How about that. I've leveled 3 DPS characters before this and they had trouble getting into PUGS because everyone was screaming for tanks.. go figure.

My hunter is now sitting happily in his Argent Dawn gear (although a bit pissed about having to wear a sissy skirt). I managed to secure all pieces except the breastplate in little more than an hour of relaxed grinding (I was practically alone).

Where are you hiding?

I realized that it was quite a while since I updated the blog... well I haven't given up on WOW. On the contrary I've been so busy at work and in Azeroth that I haven't had the time to write anything. Patch 3.0 did really renew my interest in WOW - to the point where I don't even long for the Lich King expansion. I am having fun right here, right now.

New talents

After the 3.0 patch I've been a mess trying to figure out what specs to use and what works best for me. The interesting thing is that most classes that I play (Hunter, Warrior, Rogue and Paladin) have had some dramatic changes. Experiencing the classes again has been tremendously fun.

My hunter is deep in the beast master spec. 52/9/0 with an army of three new exotic pets I am leveling up. I currently have a worm from silithius that I am doing amazing tanking tricks with...

My warrior is not only enjoying but loving the new take on protection. A tree that I never used before even as a tank.

Achievements

Completing achievements had an initial boom that has now subsided - with the large number of characters I play it is untenable to try to complete all achievements. I will have to select one char to really focus on - and that has proven very hard for me. It looks like my dear hunter will be the achievement ho...

Hallow's End

A very fun event that I've squeezed the most out of. It bothers me a bit that I never got the plate helmet for my warrior (but I got the AP ring). I've used the event to level up chars and with my hunter really tried to complete as much as possible. I never got all the masks and the cloth helmet. Better luck next year I suppose.

Multiboxing

A new joy... I've taken a priest and a warrior from 1 to 54 in very short time. Going into instances with two characters have proven to be quite challenging! Just questing and killing in the normal world is simply fast and very easy. I find PVP pretty hard though and it usually leaves my priest dead while my warrior tries to finish off any gankers. However with so many 70 running around right now insta-gibbing lowbies it isn't really that fun...

My latest achievement was completing all of Maraudon with my two chars at level 52... great success and lots of fun. The little green blobs with AOE were the most lethal mobs.

Wrath of the Lich King

Ten days to go... and it looks like I might be on a business trip during the launch. Oh well... I guess it is going to be slightly less crowded in the new starting areas when I get back. With potential 80's running around griefing and ganking. My biggest concern is which character to level to 80 first. I am leaning toward taking my hunter...

Hexapuma's Army: Multiboxing

While waiting for the next expansion I've gathered a small army of toons. It seems I can't help myself to go creating more and more toons. With the latest "Recruit a friend" (or RAF for the cool kids) boons you can actually level a couple of toons really really fast.

What you get from playing with a friend:

* Friend-to-friend summoning - once every hour (I think) you can summon your friend. This cuts down on travel time immensely - especially since you'll level so fast you want to visit trainers so much more often.

* Triple experience gain - you get triple experience from quests AND killing mobs. Triple is fast - very fast. It is so fast that you'll skip most quests in a zone because it is becoming grayed out. It also makes instances leveling very interesting.

* The recruited friend can grant bonus levels to your characters... even more leveling.

There are a few caveats in the mix though. Your "friends" account gets linked to the recruiter. This means that only those two accounts will gain the triple experience when playing together. It is also only active 3 months... so if you want to level multiple characters - get cracking!

Of course you can always get yourself a second account and either multi-box them (playing two accounts on the same computer) or if you have two computers play that way. I currently have two computers setup next to each others to play my two accounts. It does require a few macros to run successfully but it works like a charm.

I am currently leveling a Warrior and a Priest this way... My warrior tanks and accounts for most of the DPS... the priest is little more than a pocket healer and when not healing auto wanding the target. I am not using the two characters full potential. Probably 3/4 of the warrior and 1/3 of the priest...

It is really interesting way to play... much more room to botch up comparing with running with just one character. It feels a little bit like WOW in difficult mode.

Great 3.0 info over at Too Many Annas

Time to visit Too Many Annas - she has written an excellent summary of various class guides dealing with the impeding 3.0 patch. Go, go now!

Stormspike and the Sky Captain of Tomorrow

Early this morning Stormspike threw his last fire bomb over Skettis and was rewarded with exalted status with the Sha'tari Skyguard. Finally got an upgrade to Bladefist's breadth - the Skyguard Silver Cross, while it lacks Bladefist's active AP buff it gives 0,5% more crit and increased AP after each kill. Nice farming trinket.

I also got a pet Nether Ray Fry and more importantly an epic red Nether Ray flying mount.

Next goal - cooking 375... and 7 more WSG marks.

Almost there...

After a few hours of grinding in the Skettis area Stormpike is now at 19890 / 21000 - it is so close that it felt stupid not to go all the way. But I do have a job to go to. I probably need a new faction to concentrate on after... or actually finishing up quests. With Stormspike I haven't even touched the quests in Netherstorm yet... Best thing is I'll fly around there in style - on my new netherray mount.

Getting ready for the Lich King

As my attention for WOW is slightly wandering at the moment I had to sit down and review my current goals. Especially those I should do before the LK expansion.

1. Get 30 WSG marks for my PVP leggings [ 19/30 done ]
2. Get exalted with Sha'tari Skyguard in order to get the Netherray mount. [ 12800/21000 done ]
3. Get Cooking 375 [ 372/375 done ]
4. Get engineering 375 [ 362/375 done]

That is all I really want to do... now it would be sweet to complete the reputation grind for the Scryers [ 1610/21000 done ]for the greater AP inscription - but hey I have a life too - I hate grinding.

Regarding my alts... there is nothing they need to do before the arrival of LK.

I am in no hurry. When the expansion comes I am truly going to enjoy the new content in a rather slow pacing. The only thing that might speed up my leveling depends on the new battlegrounds...

Looking at Warhammer Online...

I've been cheating on WOW...

A couple of days ago I installed WAR as most of my co-workers have started to play WAR on a regular basis. I don't want to miss out on the fun.

I bought the game from EA's online store and was able to download the client in little more than an hour. It then took almost another hour to install the client on my laptop (a crappy DELL M1710 XPS) running XP.

My experience so far:

* It crashes alot - last night I crashed 3 times over a four hour period. It seems to be related to my computer and lack of recent drivers. Thank you DELL.

* It is fugly - while it looks much better than CONAN or  games that tries to do semi-realism the animations spans from poor to bad.

* Lackluster game level design - the level design feels (judging from the starting levels of CHAOS and Dark Elves) old and more similar to EQ and Asheron's Call rather than WOW.

* Lack of connection to the game character. I think the controls feels disconnected, hits aren't looking like they connect. I don't expect miracles in a MMO but this is mediocre at best.

The good things:

* The quests are interesting and the quest descriptions are engaging.

* The environment, despite the level design, is very immersive.

* Public quests is THE SHIT. Extremely funny and cool.

* WAR's battlegrounds (the name escapes me at the moment) are great. You can always enter the BG queue - no need to visit a certain battlemaster. Best of all - when the game is over you are returned to where you started. I really really hope Blizzard takes a hint from this.

* Fresh classes (careers) - Squig Herder, Chaos Marauder, Witch Elves... Warhammer has a great lore and it uses it to the fullest.

* Tome of Lore - the tome is where all lore, character archivements and rewards are stored. It is amazing... no wonder WOW is including an archivement system in LK - they've been busy playing the WAR Beta.

All these things said ... after an evening of WAR I still had to finish my gaming night with an hour of WOW. Trying to collect the 30 WSG tokens I need for the PVP leggings. Unless EA totally devotes time, money and resources into WAR it will never compete with WOW.

Killing birdmen...

I've been taking a few minutes each day to complete the dailies in Skettis. Stormspike has now just a few thousand rep to go for the epic netherray mount. The Skettis area can be a real warzone depending on the time you go there.

Morning - zone is generally only visited by people who wants to do their dailies with as little fuss as possible.

Lunch - during lunch the area is heavily populated. There are alot of PVP going on. I suspect that the area is visited by both PVPers and a few brave souls that try do complete their dailies.

Afternoon - early afternoon is safe but around 15-16 PM it starts to heat up again. I suspect the younger crowd are coming home from school and starts their dailies.

Evening - chaos. Anything goes. Some evenings the area is camped, others devoid and you'll never know if you're going to get ganked when doing the escort daily.

Night - empty and safe for dailies. 

I personally don't like PVP in an area like Skettis. The mobs are 70-71, hit quite hard and it is very easy to gain adds. On the other side it is a great place for ganking/griefing if thats your poison.

In around 20 minutes I'll get around 500-750 rep with the Skyguard, loads of netherweave and 40 gold. It is no more than what I need. I've heard about some people that keep a stack of 20 000 golds... I can't understand why they bother with keeping such a big stash.