Oh, the glorious day. Every time I 'get the chance' to login to Gnomore feels like a celebration. I definitely have to put that certain part in quotes because I could log in Gnomore much more often, but decide against it. The reason is the additional work it creates: launch Fraps, clean the folder, login, screenshot, log off, run Infran and punch the pictures to Picasa. Instead I lazily login to my AH toons and do some idle crafting, perhaps run a random or two.
Everytime I play on Gnomore is planned session, and that separates it from the 'normal' playtime. Of course, I start and run amok in the game, with no plan on what to do, where to go and how did I get there, but the time is set for Gnomore.
This time it all began from Ratchet, where our hero was having a very long drink with his new goblinish friends. As it happens, they had quite a lot to discuss about marketing, market shares and profit, which ended when Gnomore checked his mail.
Oh, just made a half of my money worth profit, how's that for a start of a day? The sales were around 450g, mainly from the ores and herbs posted: finally the bars crafted a while ago had sold.
Then it was off to roam around the Northern Barrens. Someone might ask why would a tiny little gnome run around a horde infested area, but I think the next picture explains that part a bit...
I can see these huge... tracts of land and gatherable stuff! This in mind, Gnomore set to find the fame, fortune and ways to improve the skills in herbalism and mining. How little did I know at that point how this session would turn out to be...
First there are the small pools from which you can fish something pretty tasty.
And then there are some great views to look at.
And some crying over lost 'friends' and vendors (up where the Wailing Caverns vendors used to be).
Of course, in the end the whole trekking lead to ... Ashenvale.
After running a couple of nice quests, I remembered that Gnomore is trained Archeologist and lo and behold! There were three of the Archeology dig sites in Ashenvale and the fourth was at the Nazj'vel, the place Gnomore hated even before the next visit.
The quests Gnomore ran broke the achievement for 100 quests done: have there been so many non-violent quests so far in the game?!
And the game again shoved the big middle finger to me as a player by showing yet another rare I don't remember seeing...
And as I came back from Nazj'vel to the Zoram Strand flight point I had to giggle a bit. You see, there is this weapon merchant in that outpost (don't remember the name of it, a new Alliance outpost), whose name is Varas. Varas means thief in Finnish... quite a proper name for a MERCHANT!
Upon returning to Ashenvale my surprise was quite a big one, when I noticed that there were still two Archeology dig sites in the map: one in Forest Song, which is a Night Elven outpost at the eastern part of the area, and the other being The Ruins of Stardust at the southern part of the area. Both of which have a flight point right besides them!
Of course I noticed the latter flight point after running to The Ruins of Stardust two times from the night elf village.. but the curious part was the fact that these two dig sites repeated at least four time!
I noticed in the end of the session that my playstyle with Gnomore had changed considerably from running from a gathering node to another to running from dig site to dig site. The best part of this is the fact that you can do the Archeology Surveying at the same time as you are being pounded by a group of mobs, even! Something you cannot do with gathering, as the 'channeling' is interrupted: great injustice, don't you agree!?
After all this it was back to home, that being still Darnassus. On the travels I had met one wonderful player character, a human shadowpriest called Bernhardt, who buffed Gnomore, responded to my emotes and all in all acted like a good fellow player. I later sent him a single Mageroyal as a token of appreciation and got a very nice single liner thanking for the thought. Very nice.
What was not so nice was a druid who challenged Gnomore to a duel, which I had to decline. I said to this character, that I am a non-violent gnome, who has not killed anyone in the game, I'm a pacifist. The response was stunning. "U noob" after which this character hearthed out. I had to take this further and asked in /2 Trade that what kind of player tells me I'm a noob when I tell him after declining the duel that I'm a pacifist. The impromptu set of responses was immediate. "noob", "stupid", "noob" and a whisper pointing at certain nationality.
To conclude this session, I got a response to my query about the kill statistict from a GM. Sadly they cannot meddle with the statistics at all, but the overall tone of the response was nice.
CONCLUSION:
Archeology has changed the way I'm playing Gnomore. If the dig sites are located as conveniently as they were in Ashenvale, the levelling will be very, very dull run from a site to another. To be correct, it will be dull flying after the easy - and safe - experience and finds. I think I have to combine more gathering to the digging, and try to find an area where the gathering is progressing the skills, too.
In short, Gnomore has to have more challenge and less Archeology in easy places. Mental note made.
.
Everytime I play on Gnomore is planned session, and that separates it from the 'normal' playtime. Of course, I start and run amok in the game, with no plan on what to do, where to go and how did I get there, but the time is set for Gnomore.
This time it all began from Ratchet, where our hero was having a very long drink with his new goblinish friends. As it happens, they had quite a lot to discuss about marketing, market shares and profit, which ended when Gnomore checked his mail.
Oh, just made a half of my money worth profit, how's that for a start of a day? The sales were around 450g, mainly from the ores and herbs posted: finally the bars crafted a while ago had sold.
Then it was off to roam around the Northern Barrens. Someone might ask why would a tiny little gnome run around a horde infested area, but I think the next picture explains that part a bit...
I can see these huge... tracts of land and gatherable stuff! This in mind, Gnomore set to find the fame, fortune and ways to improve the skills in herbalism and mining. How little did I know at that point how this session would turn out to be...
First there are the small pools from which you can fish something pretty tasty.
And then there are some great views to look at.
And some crying over lost 'friends' and vendors (up where the Wailing Caverns vendors used to be).
Of course, in the end the whole trekking lead to ... Ashenvale.
After running a couple of nice quests, I remembered that Gnomore is trained Archeologist and lo and behold! There were three of the Archeology dig sites in Ashenvale and the fourth was at the Nazj'vel, the place Gnomore hated even before the next visit.
The quests Gnomore ran broke the achievement for 100 quests done: have there been so many non-violent quests so far in the game?!
And the game again shoved the big middle finger to me as a player by showing yet another rare I don't remember seeing...
And as I came back from Nazj'vel to the Zoram Strand flight point I had to giggle a bit. You see, there is this weapon merchant in that outpost (don't remember the name of it, a new Alliance outpost), whose name is Varas. Varas means thief in Finnish... quite a proper name for a MERCHANT!
Upon returning to Ashenvale my surprise was quite a big one, when I noticed that there were still two Archeology dig sites in the map: one in Forest Song, which is a Night Elven outpost at the eastern part of the area, and the other being The Ruins of Stardust at the southern part of the area. Both of which have a flight point right besides them!
Of course I noticed the latter flight point after running to The Ruins of Stardust two times from the night elf village.. but the curious part was the fact that these two dig sites repeated at least four time!
I noticed in the end of the session that my playstyle with Gnomore had changed considerably from running from a gathering node to another to running from dig site to dig site. The best part of this is the fact that you can do the Archeology Surveying at the same time as you are being pounded by a group of mobs, even! Something you cannot do with gathering, as the 'channeling' is interrupted: great injustice, don't you agree!?
After all this it was back to home, that being still Darnassus. On the travels I had met one wonderful player character, a human shadowpriest called Bernhardt, who buffed Gnomore, responded to my emotes and all in all acted like a good fellow player. I later sent him a single Mageroyal as a token of appreciation and got a very nice single liner thanking for the thought. Very nice.
What was not so nice was a druid who challenged Gnomore to a duel, which I had to decline. I said to this character, that I am a non-violent gnome, who has not killed anyone in the game, I'm a pacifist. The response was stunning. "U noob" after which this character hearthed out. I had to take this further and asked in /2 Trade that what kind of player tells me I'm a noob when I tell him after declining the duel that I'm a pacifist. The impromptu set of responses was immediate. "noob", "stupid", "noob" and a whisper pointing at certain nationality.
To conclude this session, I got a response to my query about the kill statistict from a GM. Sadly they cannot meddle with the statistics at all, but the overall tone of the response was nice.
CONCLUSION:
Archeology has changed the way I'm playing Gnomore. If the dig sites are located as conveniently as they were in Ashenvale, the levelling will be very, very dull run from a site to another. To be correct, it will be dull flying after the easy - and safe - experience and finds. I think I have to combine more gathering to the digging, and try to find an area where the gathering is progressing the skills, too.
In short, Gnomore has to have more challenge and less Archeology in easy places. Mental note made.
.
