Cap is closing (yawp)

What do you know? I was planning on playing a good dose of Rift, but ended up playing my Shadow Priest Pupunen through Uldum. Still just a bit short of dinging level 85 she's in the middle of the Harrison Jones quest chains, just bested that obnoxious Schnottz.

On the AH side I'm also closing on with the former cap - and my own goal. I'm sitting on 222 327g on my three main money crafting characters, of whom the jewelcrafter/alchemist is currently making the most of the profit. I was about to toss my gloves out of the ring earlier this week, when the Obsidium Shuffle suddenly seemed to get borked by few factors: excessive and cheap ore and incredibly low enchant mat prices, combined with just barely above cut and vendor prices of the cuts. The shuffle was for a short moment a balancing act between work and profit, until I noticed that the rare cuts had started to move. And the way they moved... Both cut and uncut rares are going now faster than I can restock them in the AH, most probably because I don't want to put too many in at a time. 5 at a time is enough for me, and over the weekend this has proved to be a good way because the prices have increased after each posing cycle.

About those Uldum quests. I have earlier read very excited posts about the smash the pygmies or gnomebliteration quests and quite honestly speaking, they were stupid and pointless. That's my opinion, though, but I do not see anything funny in smashing those pygmies with a huge mace or rolling over gnomes in a fusion reaction ball. Maybe I've lost my sense of WoW humour.

The other point I noticed was within the Harrison Jones quests. The first part was great, just the right spirit after you had killed the ten foozles and collected the rare kahookie. But the second one... IMO it just proves that Blizzard isn't concerned over the original basic fantasy status of WoW: instead they want to mix and mash everything in (like the goblin starter area, yuch) and basically break the whole setting they have been staging for the last six years. The Schnottz army wasn't any generic fantasy anymore, it was pulp fiction era fantasy. And as such it is way out of place in generic fantasy setting. Nazies shooting with smg's... Fo'hickles' sake!

Though I have to admit that some of the references to the Indiana Jones movies were pretty well done and some a bit too obviously 'overacted', the story flowed decently on rails. Never the less, I enjoyed the Ramkahen storyline more, with the way the designers have used their tools to the max, making a real 'you are the hero to save us' feel in the game. But is this the MMO way to do it? Or single player way?

Gnomore got some love, too, and I was really, honestly and genuinely surprised how many non-violent quests there are in Ashenvale! Not even through with all of them yet, and I managed to get two levels on him. He is a bit of a show off nowadays, but more of that later on.

All in all, quite a weekend. On the other side, the weekend game time will get less after this: spring is advancing, dogs have to get some exercise (I have to get some exercise, too!) and family issues pending.

Real life first. To the cap.

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Sidestepping again (YAWP)

First things first. Blizzard has decided to commemorate the attack on Pearl Harbour by releasing Cataclysm on it's 69th anniversary. I hope this is just coincidence and not a sign.

Anyhow, the weekend. I spent playing this and that, for example a great night of going through old Vanilla instance Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Ahn'Qiraj, but the main thing for me was that I finally got my unguilded crafter DK to ding 80. And noticed how the problems started right on the bat.

You see, with the quest blues and greens, I was smacking top dps in all the instances up till I dinged. After that, I feel like a slacker, not being able to even compete with the big guys. Funny part is, that even though my dk sucks in delivering, he's been just getting encouraging comments from the people I've ran heroics with. Mind you, HEROICS. I gently skipped normal 5mans alltogether.

Had I been tanking, I would have been scorned, called names and kicked from the groups. Like happened to that one pally trying to be a tank in better gear, wiping the group in the Gundrak. I stayed, with gear score below 2.5k, where as he left with his score of 5+k. Go figure.

So thus far my experience with levelling - or gearing a toon through 5mans - has been such that a melee dps is the one most easiest left alone in the instances. Tanks are under the most scrutiny, high above healers which in turn are high above all dps.

I think I start doing IC5hc's with my tank as dps. I wouldn't need to talk to anyone, just hang around and deliver. No more stress nor waiting for the one less fortunate soul who decides to do something stupid for which the tank gets the blame in the end for not saving their sorry butts.

One other thing about this DK. The first instance I applied to as newly dinged lv80 was Coren Direbrew. Ques what happened? He got both mounts on the first try. My other toons do not have the mounts as of yet. Sucks to be me.

On the other hand, I have checked the new talent builds through WoWtal.com and I think I've found builds for my tank and his dps as well as my spriest. Of course the cookie cutter talent builds will come in no time, but as far as I can see the 'new' talent system is much easier to handle and is less prone to gimping your toon completely with 'bad' choices. The PvP talents stand easily out of the trees and are in some cases more a question of choice rather than crucial things. The main talents are still there, with the characteristics.

Last but not least. Last night. Guild 5man achievement runs. With my spriest. Great big fun. For example, it took us at least 15 impales in Gundrak before we got the Share the Love achievement. Zombiefest was a blast and no one died. Pupunen still has a lot to fill for the Glory of Hero meta, but then again, so does Laiskajaakko, my warrior. Not to speak about that newbie dk.

So I have again sidestepped from my tank. Shame on me. Have to correct that soon, as the rest of the guild seems to be smacking LK weekly now. Kingslayers everywhere, except in my roster.

But hey, I still have almost 2 months to go!
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Skill or gear?

by Copra


Over the last few weeks I played quite a bit of WoW. While I was more concentrating on getting my main - protection warrior - up to the GS standards for IC PUGs, I also spent some serious quality time with my shadowpriest and for a while I had her in better gear than my warrior. Which was easy really: as ranged DPS you are more welcome to come and blunder in an impromptu PUG raid than with an almost-decently geared tank. So I got in more PUG raids with my spriest than with  my main, which of course increased the probability of loot gear.

I still cannot fathom the LFD tool, though. Even though my warrior overgeared my spriest, the latter gets PoS or HoR as random heroic all the time, while the warrior has to succumb to VH. Why? As it happens, my spriest has done the quest line in IC5 mans, where as my warrior hasn't.

As if this wasn't enough, I have been playing my unguilded deathknight quite a bit. Coming from lv74 to 78 has been quite a journey and is in fact the point of the title. You see, every time I launched to quest with my deathknight I launched the LFD. Most of the time it took three or four tries to finish the random instance. And I mean three or four total new starts, not just replacing some people in there. The experience was awful, really, as most of the time the players were obviously levelling their umpteenth alt with the mindframe of a capped and geared toon: blast in, aoe everything, move on.

At lv78 it just doesn't work that way, except when the toons are properly geared and the players really know how to play. Of course there were the entertaining runs of Ahn'Kahet, in which we just chain pulled everything in steady flow, but most of the time the group just disappeared mid-instance after a wipe.

The worst case was the druid, who came to Violet Hold as a tank, but it became very soon very obvious that he didn't know a thing about tanking. First of all, his gear was not for tanking. Second, when he was asked to kite Xevozz, he didn't even know what kiting was. And as the final straw, I was asked to tank in my unholy dps gear... I should have declined.

Later on it turned out he was levelling his third alt, and he was in fact a boomkin. And he was so full of himself that he kept saying everyone else a noob, while he was himself one, really.

On the other hand, at level cap, the better the gear you are wearing, the easier the heroics turn to be. The meager improvement of 200 in GS (up to 5.2k now) meant that my warrior gets the silent, strong type heroic runs everytime. We grouped once with Förgelös to run a couple of heroics together and his two comments were quite revealing. First one after we got into a group right after I had chosen my role was: "Well, that was fast. I normally have to wait for 5-8 minutes." (SIDENOTE: With my spriest I have the average waiting time of 13 minutes...) And the second one just after the instance was finished: "That was fast and professional. I usually spend much longer time even in the easier ones."

So all in all, at least in the capped heroics it's not about skill but gear. Gear to take the beating and gear to deliver enough damage to kill them all promptly. However, in the levelling stage the skill is more important than the gear, as I was able to beat the damage meters with few levels lower skills, talents and gear in an instance repeatedly with my dk, even against a mage and warlock.

The more I look at it, at level cap the skill doesn't rate too high. The few raids I got into were more like jumping platform games than MMO experience at its best.

My judgement is that gear >> skill. At least for now.

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EDIT. Just occured to me that I didn't define what I mean by skill. In WoW in my opinion skill is the ability to play the toon to the fullest and be able to utilize all skills appropriately, depending on the encounter. Running around a boss room is not skill per that definition, neither is doing a dance or platform jumper acrobatics while in an encounter. Like Tobold has said time and again, there should be more encounters which require strategic thinking rather than twitch.

I am not prepared

by Copra

First of all, Blizzard backed up from the RealID forum implementation. Small victory, the pebbles did their work in downing the Goliath. Now the issue is to keep our eyes on what Activision/Blizzard/Vivendi is going to do next, as they will most probably come up with something clever to get what they want.

And to open our eyes what they have implemented during the riot and ramble around the RealID issue. Whenever there is something big and rousing going on in the politics or media, something minor, but at least as annoying, goes through without anyone noticing.

Enough.

Over the weekend I learned one thing. I am not prepared, or at least my computer isn't prepared to run anything more than the basic 10 man dungeons. You see, I was lucky enough to be online when the guild ICC25 run folded due to lack of participants. There were enough people to run the weekly, though, so they asked for more people just for the heck of it.

Well... I was well among the first to rise my hand, this time with my shadow priest. The weekly was Ignis the Furnacemaster must die, which I have tanked with my warrior earlies, so it suit me well to see it from the dps side, too.

The beginning of Ulduar was simple enough for my computer to cope with, and it was actually fun to go through the Flame Leviathan encounter. But as soon as we started clearing the trash mobs from the Forge area, I saw it happen.

Slow motion jerky pictures, framerate around 7-10.

And it got even worse when we launched on Ignis. I was glad to stay alive, not a small feat when you have to anticipate seconds in advance, hoping that the cooldowns are done and bad things aren't on the floor.

From the success the group, which had grown to 23, decided to go for ICC25. I kind of hoped it would have been easier on my computer, but Marrowgar proved how wrong I was. I had tanked Marrowgar earlier in a 10 man group, without problems, but it seems that the 25 man strain to the processor is too much to handle.

Never the less, I am happy that I have at least seen the first 6 encounters of ICC, all up to Professor Putricide. Which I still have to do to get the second achievement in ICC.

The other lovely thing to happen was the impromptu guild pug doing IC5 man hc all the way through, so I got to see what HoR really looks like. IMHO, it's boring as hell compared to the build up of tension and expectations of FoS and PoS. Go in, stick to one spot, kill everything. Get past big bad wolf and kill, kill, kill.

Thanks to our guild's lovely, adorable and [add  your own favourite superlative] recruitment officer Elora, I got to experience these both. First she insisted I participated on the ICC25, and second she put the guild group for two of us 'non-raiders' to experience the IC5 as whole.

Now the experience in ICC25 was a lacking one, and I really didn't get much insight on the fights themselves due to the framerate problem. I checked my computer with the CanYouRunIt tool and found out that my processor was the main reason to the issues I had. Everything else checked on the recommended specs, even overcame them nicely. Except the crucial part.

Now the only thing to do is to get a new computer, really.

All things taken into account, the weekend was quite successful and action packed, as Pupunen got exalted with Sons of Hodir and almost exalted with Wyrmrest on top of the ICC25. Laiskajaakko got his IC5 questline done and some nice upgrades to the off-spec gear.

We'll see what the week brings in. One hell of a heatwave I've heard, but that shouldn't affect the game.

Or should it?
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Question of honesty

by Copra

The craving of that new shining gear available for Emblems of Frost is too tempting to the players. Where it earlier was the Emblems of Triumph (and all the former reincarnations), the achievable amount of the Frosts make them a real treat.

Last night proved me right once again.

I ran a perfectly excellent Forge of Souls, gaining an excellent staff (Blood Boil Lancet) and neck (Coil of Missing Gems) from the Devourer of Souls, after which I broke 3.2k on a dummy with my spriest. And on the next run in Nexus I was the top one in DPS and second in damage done.

Then came the dark moment, which says everything. Random heroic ToC5. As I got into the arena, there was an unnatural silence. No hi's,  no helloes, nothing. All of a sudden the dungeon guide, a shaman, stated: "Only dps specs in here", followed with lols and hehe's. What was the next question?

"Priest, can you heal?"

Crap! Someone had stated to the LFD that they are willing to take the healer position, and it sure as hell wasn't me! No, sir, I have been levelling as shadow through the Northrend and don't even have a proper dual spec. The only thing the DG could say was that someone must leave.

Come to think of it, he should have been more strict and kicked someone out, one of the three paladins, maybe?

I lost my temper, first time with this toon and jumped out, taking the 15min lfd cooldown. Didn't matter that much, did my AH magics and left the game.

Why I lost my temper was the fact that I couldn't even think of someone being so stupidly selfish as to choose the healer position only to come out as dps. Sure I know there is an addon which can fake your achievements for the normal raid PUG call, but I can't imagine using one myself. Only because I think its more like lying to yourself and ruining the others playtime than anything else.

In the case of LFD tool, there is no way to say which role people have initially set themselves into. Oh, I can't be sure, as I haven't taken the dungeon guide role yet, but thus far I haven't seen any way of telling which role people vouched for, except when someone leaves the group and the group starts to look for a replacement. IMO this is a lack of functionality over here, putting too much emphasis on the honesty of people. Who are selfishly using the rest of the group to gain their own emblems to get further in the content, despite of others.

Instead of forcing the players to use their real names in the game forums, Blizzard ought to take a good look on the social tools of the game and make the game more rewarding on the group play area instead of the solo gains. There should be some kind of system to rate other players in the game and there most definitely should be a way to see to what position people have volunteered when they started to look for action through LFD tool.

There should be a mechanism to reward for team play and honesty within the game. But the recent decision of Blizzard on the RealID usage has shown that these aspects are of no interest to them: instead, they are teaching the players to take as much advantage of the others as possible and concentrate on ones personal gains only.

Good work, Activision/Blizzard! 

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LFD curiosities (YAWP)

by Copra

Oh, what a wonderful toy this LFD thingy is! Oh what wonderful magic it weaves and what stories and tragedies it generates!

To begin with, I posed the question why my protection warrior hadn't ever been in LFD PUG for heroic FoS or PoS on twitter the other day. Almost a consensus of comments was that his gear isn't good enough, as the LFD system ranks the toons according to the gear level they have. Much like Gearscore, but with unknown variables.

Let me say that my experience with my shadowpriest proves that point of view wrong.

You see, my spriest was in heroic Forge of Souls which was continued to heroic Pit of Saron last weekend, and that was through LFD tool. Her gear was still 3/4 blues, whereas my protection warrior's gear is all purple and he has that second gear quality achievement (not Superior as that's iLvl 187, but at least the next one I think). Yet he has never been in there through the LFD.

That trip was quite something in all, and I surprised myself by having the average DPS of 2k+ on that run. First time in an instance, that is, and all I can say is that it was quite satisfying. The PoS run was pretty strange, though: our tank was changed three times, not by kicking but by the tanks leaving. We wiped only once the whole way through, and made Tyrannus kneel, too.

The doorway to HoR has become too familiar to me on both of my capped toons. Neither has passed that point so far.

The other curious incident happened last night. I went for a PUG run and got into Halls of Stone. Before the first pull the dps DK asked for another instance. Like what? "Could we do another one, as I don't know this", was his tell.

No one responded, the bear tank -who was excellent- made the first pull and ... the LFD was locked. The DK kept on trying to get to another instance until another player noted him that "someone is under instance lock currently" was showing and we should proceed. Only after some whining comments the truth came out.

"This instace takes too long."

Like hell it does. Granted, it's not as quick as some others, but it's still fast enough not to spoil the evening. In the minimum you get 4 emblems for the run and with tank like that it was a breeze. My spriest even got the Brann's Spanking New achievement, which means that the mid run 'boss' did actually go pretty well.

Still, the whiney DK left the group after that.

This rises the question: why the hell are people playing the game? To get as many emblems in as short time as possible? Or to learn to play their characters better and really master their class when they start raiding?

Or are they really so confident on their own performance that they don't care and think that failures are the fault of others than themself?

You see, that DK... his GS was way higher than my spriests who's gs is higher than Förgelös', but his dps and damage done on that Iron Council encounter was below us both. He had ran some ICC for the gear, but he really, really didn't know how to dps with that class.

And I admit: I'm only starting to learn mine.
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Real Performance Issue

by Copra

I hate the whole concept of Gearscore being the evaluation point of the players skill and ability to play his/her toon. The whole Gearscore adoration cult makes me feel sick and the calls in the trade channel make me wince mostly because the arbitrary number requirements do not make any sense. "LFM ICC10, 5.8kGS must, 11/12 achievement. /w me for inspection." is the epitome of this dumbass mentality.

However, enlightened from Bishopgeorge's experience with Gearscore/Recount, I installed GS myself. Now my recount shows also the performance per gearscore (calculates DPS/GS, giving a single numeric ratio of performance, normalised). And that makes me laugh time and again.

You see, it becomes even more apparent that the arbitrary GS number doesn't tell anything about the skill or the abilities of the character. Or player more like.

In levelling dungeons it's clear that the toons with heirloom gear are rerolled alts, and they most probably are playing another class than their main is. Fair enough. This means that they should learn the basics and the finesses of their alts class as well as their mains to be able to perform at the same level, right? And their GS should reflect this skill and knowledge, right?

This isn't true as often as you would like.

Now I have been struggling with the DPS of Pupunen all the time. Ever since I broke from the healing to shadow. Now I barely break the 1.7k in the instances. I can barely make 2.1k on dummy. With the gear I have on me, naturally.

The funny part is the fact that during the last few levels of levelling and instances, I still managed to be in the middle class in dps. I had few blues, mainly crafted and good enchants on them (Pupunen is tailor/enchanter, capped on latter). But only after installing that gs addon I found out that when the gear score value was taken into the account, Pupunen was overperforming the rest of the dps.

Every.

Single.

Time.

When I capped with her, I took on heroics right away. I thought I would be mopped around in DPS with all the 4k+ gs toons running gogogo in the instances.

I was wrong.

Pupunen wasn't even lowest in the normal DPS in the first few runs. In gs normalised dps she was on the top of the list almost every time, even with people geared in 5.4k gear. I was keeping 4.8k gs hunters below me in dps in Gun'Drak.

Here comes the revelation.

Her GS was below 3k.

The first heroic she ran she had 2728 gs. The next lowest player had 3.8k. The highest -who was the tank- had 5.8k. The tank was the only one higher than Pupunen in normalised dps. Heck, he was the highest overall in everything, but that shouldn't be a wonder.

In a way, I feel much better about that 1.7k on average now.

To say something more about that darned GS: In the first four heroics Pupunen got two purples and two blues to replace the levelling gear. First purple ever. Her gs rose from that forementioned 2.7k to 2.9k. Her dps, on the other hand, rose about 100 points in instance.

The other revelation came when I started to gain more and better gear to her. Purchased a cheap Merlin's Robe and saw her GS rise above 3k. At the same time her DPS rose to 2.5-2.6 on a dummy, but the standardised GS went down like a cow's tail. I hit the bottom after the high.

The reason to this was simply the disparity of the GS from the stats which really mean for the class. In my case I stacked heavily on the spellpower instead of hit: she's still hitting like a freight train, but misses so many times that her dps is severely affected. Time to see that I gem and enchant her up to the cap of 289 (which comes from the fact that I have both hit effecting talents at max). You can easily have a high GS but completely wrong enchants and gems which eat up your DPS and performance. I had learned that (except the GS part) on my warrior already, that the gems and enchants mean at least as much as the gear itself. Now the reality check was even bigger.

Gearscore should be used only as a tool, mostly to see how you perform yourself. It's a bloody arbitrary and secondary value which has no real connection to the actual skill of the player or the performance of the toon in  the PUG. A player with high GS may actually be the slacker in the group, while the one with the lowest GS - and lowest gear - may well be over-performing on their own. Sadly the one doing their best always get the stick because their numbers don't come out as good as the slacking high geared ones.

The real performance issue is within the mind of those who do not understand the basics.

Then again, all that matters is that the end boss goes down timely and everyone is contributing. Some more than others.

It's a hard life

by Copra

During the last four levels of my shadow priest Pupunen I got my experience mainly from questing. That's what I started to do with the toon in the first place and I decided that that would be the way she would become of age.

However, the lure of the LFD was too much for me, so I gave in a couple of times. Most notably the last Culling of Stratholme, when Pupunen dinged the final ding in this expansion. After which she moved on directly to heroics.

And that was the moment I made the horrible discovery.

PUG in levelling is more horrible in all aspects than PUG in level cap.

Really, the levelling PUGs are a cesspool of badly behaving primadonnas trying to shine with their level capped, Lich King slaughtering mains. Most of the time I felt sick with the bragging and/or bad playing in there. The worst ones were the runs where the tank stated that he was in the instance first time ever and got laughed at. In the end, the dps DK laughing called some names and left the group due to 'noob tank' and 'healer suxx'. (Sidenote here: it was for the best of the run. The replacement DK was excellent professional, who told the group after the instance that it was his first time there, too.)

Then I hit the cap and switched directly to heroics. What a bliss! Smooth runs, no-one was evaluating you and as ranged dps everything was luxury: keep the dps up, always keep casting and stay out of goo. It's way much easier than playing a tank, really. And even more easier than playing a healer!

There is nothing to tell the other players that you are screwing your rotations. Other than dps meter, which everyone is trying to avoid not to show how they are slacking, too.

Playing a tank or a healer is much more straining, that is for sure, and I had had my thoughts on how much easier playing a ranged dps is compared to those positions.

Now I know.

But I also know that the levelling PUGs are awful when compared to heroics at the cap. I don't think it's the water of Northrend that makes the levelling PUG players so bad: it's the air of most exp in least time which these games have taught us to min-max.

It's the idea of playing the game instead of playing a RPG and enjoying the ride.

I never thought...

by Copra

Another weekend gone. Instead of taking the Midsummer festivities seriously I found myself plunging into the longer story arcs in Zul'Drak and Grizzly Hills with my shadow priest Pupunen.

And I never thought I would make another level capped toon in the game. Let alone play hours on end without even noticing it anymore.

This happened, though.

First of all, it took a good, solid story chain in Zul'Drak area to launch the craze. As if that wasn't enough, the next chain I plunged into was actually prequel to the one I had completed, which made the whole even more interesting.

The one I'm talking about is the chain involving Drakuru. The first part of the chain begins in the Grizzly Hills, where you capture an ice troll. This captured one asks you to help him to retrieve a legendary weapon and this story leads you to Drak'Tharon Keep, a 5-man instance.

The second part of the chain takes place in Zul'Drak, where you get a mission from the local representative of the Knights of the Ebon Blade.

As I mentioned, I did the chains in wrong order: the conclusion in Zul'Drak first and the beginning later in Grizzly Hills.

Mental note: if you are about to experience the games longer quest chains in any sort of chronological or logical sequence, please work one area at a time. The story arc will tell you when to move on.

In Zul'Drak there is another troll centered storyline, that of the ancient animal gods of the local trolls. If you haven't done this chain, I urge you to go and do it! It's well worth the effort, as it really shows that it's possible to build up emotionally involving chains within the game. Well, as long as you can toss the "kill 10 rats" syndrome aside.

In Drakuru's case, I found myself wishing every now and then how I would rather change sides and side with this troll ruler. I would have liked to have the option to turn from the railroaded path, and take the a sidestep. For once at least.

In the case of Ancient Gods I would have wanted to kill all the scourge and scourge infested trolls in the area. Thankfully there was a quest chain in Grizzly Hills (to which the first Drakuru chain ushered) in which you get to help the Drakkari Troll ghosts to get their much deserved rest. One of the highlights of the Northern experience as itself, not only as a part of a bigger chain. Oh, with added bonus of Harrison Jones, the famed archeologist... and saving him!

All in all, I'm a bit sad that it's over again: Pupunen capped (and do I have stories about my observations...) and the story is over. Then again, I learned one crucial thing during the last few levels (or four... I started from 76 and ended capped...):

The stories within the quests are best served when you overlevel the content: you have the chance to see the stories unfold rather than worry whether you survive and how you can cope with the mobs.

Levelling quest content isn't the best form of storytelling, really. The mess of quests you are involved with constantly blurs the actual chains, and you will not remember what connects to what in the end. Faulty in design, really.
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Learning experience

Two weeks around the Christmas and I played several times. With several toons on several servers.

And I learned a lot of myself and my playing.

First of all, I participated the Weekly Raid with our guild. It was the Ignis the Furnace Master in Ulduar. First of all, I thought I could make it as an off tank. I knew the encounter, I had read the strategies, watched the Tankspot movies several times, even dug out some odd ones from Youtube.

And I failed as the off tank. I just couldn't gather up the adds fast enough and -honestly speaking- I caused the wipe. Twice, as I got more even more confused on the second time. I think the raid leader did the wisest thing ever at that point: took up the adds and made me do Ignis.

We one shotted it this way.

Lesson learned: my skill to tank multiple mobs in a fast moving, action packed surroundings is neigh. I just cannot target and catch up the adds/mobs the speed they come. This came even more profound the other day when I volunteered to tank for a guild group stuck in the ToC: they had hunter, rogue and warrior in there, and I just couldn't keep the mobs interested in me long enough. (Though I'm not sure if everything else was quite at place in there, as I seemed to bit the bullet a bit too fast for anything...)

I got bored to changing group from instance to another. Then again, my poor performance in the earlier Icecrown 5-mans keeps me away from joining guild run 5-mans for some peculiar reason: Like I've stated earlier, I don't want to make others suffer from me being not up to date, so I rather try to learn as much as possible before trying to ruin their day again. I'm not there, yet, and as I just run out of steam for running any more LFD PUG's, I don't know when I will be. It seems that it took me less than five nights of Random Dungeons in Dungeon Finder to wear me out. I just don't have the persistence to run for the few Emblems for my next piece of Emblem gear to make my gear score just a bit better... There just is no story in that, now is there?

So I did some levelling with Pupunen, my priest, now clad in Shadow.

What can I say. I love questing when it's 'meaningful' to the character. When it advances the story, level or gearing of the character. Got her from lv69 to lv73 in three sessions, did quests which I had neglected with my warrior. I did some of the quests with my warrior, too, earning the Borean Tundra and Sholazar Basin achievements. Which was nice, of course!

I also started Inscription on my banker toon, who is a low level druid. Specced him at the tender level of 21 to Balance, and struggled him up to lv25 in that spec: learned to love fast quests, learned to hate the running around the world at low levels. Got my inscription from 0 to 181 in few hours, and it seems that the whole profession has netted me more than cost, even though I have bought a lot of the herbs I used. Then again, this druid has also herbalism, so he brings money home after every run in the wilds.

Lesson learned: I love to do quests. Much more than the chaing PUGging in Dungeon Finder with anonymous groups. I love to see the progress in tangible measures. And as I can choose my challenge level in levelling, I find the levelling game more challenging than the random dungeons at best (I did some with Pupunen, too, with very different outcomes).

These two combined has confirmed me that if I have 2 hours time to play every now and then, I much rather play a levelling toon and chat with the people in the guild than run the mindless groups through the random dungeons through Dungeon Finder.

In short, I found out what I really like in the game. It's much more than what I suspected.

Hits and blunders (YAWP)

LFD is a wonderfull tool, which connects total strangers across the battleground to fight either select or -more often- completely random Wrath of the Lich King dungeon. It works like a clockwork, is simple, fast and very entertaining, most of the time.

And with that prelude I'm off to my weekend.

All well and fine in the world of Azeroth. I met both exceptionally working groups as well as one or two obnoxiously intolerable dps divas, mainly from the DK persuasion: I wonder if DK's have somehow replaced the most obnoxious group of all times -that being the Huntards- as the most self-centered players in the game? Then again, lets not let the few rotten apples to spoil the whole basket: there were also excellent DK's with whom I ran the Random Dungeons. Too bad they were guildies, but what can you expect? :P

The total anonymity of the LFD tool is yet to surface, for people are very polite and nice to each other. Only in few of the random groups I found people eager to chat, the most vocal was this one mage who's main phrase was "gogogogogo" after any and all encounters. But then again, that run through Drak'Tharon was very smooth and fast.

There are few annoying things about the LFD tool, too. The first, which started to pick me the first time I ran it, is the fact that a) you can be 'denied' from a group before it launches and b) of someone declines the group invite for a reason or another the whole group is returned to the queue. The first one I cannot explain because I haven't tried to be a leader yet, but the second is annoying example on how dumb the piece of program is. It makes a selection from the set population, but cannot make a reserve list from which to amend if any of the individuals rejects the invitation. Probably this can -and hopefully will- be tweaked in latter versions.

One nice thing, though, for the DPS classes over there. As I grouped with a guildie, a DK, we got a random group running within seconds. So in a way he was riding along with me being a tank and in constant need from the system. All in all, it pays to stick with a tank in this sense, too. As we found out, we saved each other's butts more than once, and the groups we ran from wipe more than once. Imagine that tank and DPS save the day after a triggerhappy paladin -the healer- decides to tank a miniboss and few adds... It was fun and furious and all the cooldowns were used, but we prevailed. And were the only ones alive when the dust settled.

The only thing that didn't go as well as I thought was the finale of the weekend, in which I decided to go with guildies into the IC hc 5mans chain. Forge of Souls was a blast and went so fast I didn't even know what happened. Really, I had to ask before we entered the portal to Pit of Saron what just happened. I was just keeping the mobs and bosses on me and trying to keep them hitting me, mostly without a problem. Old rules of not standing in anything and avoiding the blasts applied, FoS was surprisingly easy. For the group, that is.

Pit of Saron was something else, though. At least for me, as I have this problem with moving and tanking at the same time. Add to that multiple mobs and I'm having really hard time.

Forgemaster Garfrost was already somewhat hard on us, as the healer got eaten alive by the cold stacking on him on the first try. This was the first wipe in the whole run, but not the last... sadly.

Ick was the second, and I'm not sure as of yet, why. Maybe it was me, not moving the boss enough to help the dps to be in a spot without the toxic sludge, or something, because on the second run it went smoothly. The ramp up to the passageway proved to be problematic. My computer had frozen earlier due to some UI issue, but now I got DC'd. Luckily before a pull, but never the less. Something's wrong with my 'puter, as this wasn't the first nor the last case of freezes and odd behaviour. But up we went to the Scourgelord Tyrannus.

Which was the wipefest. First pull: I didn't know what hit me, but it hit well over 17k overkill. Second pull: it hit even faster and harder. Third pull: my screen froze just as Tyrannus jumped off of his mount. I came back to witness a wipe.

So. It left a very sour taste in my mouth.

Things to be happy about. New shiny shoulders for Laiskajaakko: it cost 45 Triumphs, but was worth it. Pupunen left Outlands and is now capable of Cold Weather Flight in Northrend: she'll next start running the random dungeons, too.

To do: find a good DPS gear set for Laiskajaakko's Arms build. He's lacking a decent dps set for runs in which the tank is better, which are usually guild runs. But it would be nice to see the instances from the dps point of view and to see how other tanks do the job, especially in the instances I have trouble with mobs.

All in all, a good solid weekend of fun.

How about yours?

Grouping pains

Now I have proven to myself that it's way much easier to get invited into a group as a healer than as a tank. I levelled my priest Pupunen to lv60 only to get the new riding skill and accompanying flying mount to her, and even before that the invites to come and heal in the Hellfire Ramparts or Blood Furnace had started to come in. In fact, the moment I rode her through the Dark Portal at lv58 marked the beginning of the invites. If only I had the time to participate the runs, I would gladly do so. But currently, as she is my tailor-crafter for my trading company, I'm not really playing her at all. Only levelling when the whim strikes me.

On the other hand, with my tank toon, Laiskajaakko, I have to do some real and dirty work to get into a group. Granted, he's currently at level 76, about half a ding short of cold weather flying, but still. I can go asking, begging, even paying for a group, but there always seems to be tank or two available in a group.

Or the group is looking for a speed run through the instance. Ok, a boost from a higher toon of someone's capped raiding toon.

Which just sucks.

Like I have posted several times earlier, a new and upcoming tanking class player is in a difficult spot to earn her/his spurs in the group instancing due to the fact that a) a tank is a crucial part of the group, b) the Northrend levels have more players who have capped toons (and usually know how to play) and c) the tank is supposed to take active leader role in the instance. Or at least be able to pull the group through the instance at steady pace (according to the people who have gotten used to plough through the instance at lightning speed).

I feel tempted from time to time just to jump the bandwagon and take up my lovely priest: as Discipline she is quite well versed in both damage dealing and healing, and as it happens, her first Hellfire Citadel run provided her with only healer boss loot (save one mace), so she's pretty adequately geared for the level, too. Whereas my tank is well geared with the Kaluak reputation chest and some very nice quest loot giving him some 15k armor and 15k unbuffed HP, which naturally should be higher. But what the heck, he's still levelling and the last Nexus run showed that I can now hit TPS in the range of 2.2k-2.8k and keep three paladins at bay with that.

But still, I'd rather group than solo. Even through Wrathgate.

Paradigm change for me, thank you!

I've been Tweeting about it and I was ecstatic about it in my earlier posts, but I haven't reported about the actual issue itself. Yes, how the Three Stooges have joined the ranks of a new guild. The three blind mice have found a new home, and if all goes well -and no one of us blunders spectacularly- we should be approved as 'members' to this fine bunch of casual raiders.

Anyone who has even the slightest inclination in looking places like WoW Armory or such will find out that we have been rolled into Highland Warriors , which is -after the recent Mimiron kill (HarGREAT!!!) in Ulduar 25- at rank 23 in the server wide progression list, and in Ulduar10 on the 12th spot.

And the first casual one, besting many of the hard core guilds over there.

As I have a lot to do with this, all I can say is that I'm in a group which has brought up the competitive part in me. Like my recent rant about not being prepared shows, it hit hard to realize that the people in this guild are professionals, and I'm just a noob. I feel like a guy in a tv show who went to fight with the masters -or their best pupils- of ten martial arts after 6 weeks of training said: I don't know what I'm doing here, these guys fight to kill...

Maybe I'll have enough to pull it through as casual and someday raid with this fine bunch.

I've been online to the extreme during this week, and I can see it's affecting my casual being. I'm stressing over the progress of my toons and I'm not really enjoying the ride: it's too darn slow!

But then again, if I'm giving up on the content, I will feel miserable: how did I get here? What happened in the earlier part of the storyline? And so on.

So far what I've seen in the guild has been about two grades better than I have thought it to be. Like I said, the people are professionals in their way: personalities, but all are clearly focused on doing their best. If Gevlon calls casuals as morons and slackers, he sure as hell hasn't seen these casuals! The activity is such that people are organizing lower level achievement 'raids' (to Old World content) while the raid locked teams are doing their runs. And all the while there are questions whether anyone is interested in coming to heroics... I'm dumbfounded after all the time in the quiet small guild living and being able to follow all chats at the same time. I need a paradigm change with this, definitely.

The sheer amount of people and toons has fooled me in the way that my social ape has gone bonkers and I have been slapped in private for greeting the toons as they come in. Only because I just cannot connect all the gadzillion alts with their respective mains, yet, and I've been greeting the ones I know I've been chatting with/to. Can't help it, or my hyperactive clicking on the Guild Greeter announcements... oops...

So I have to prune the Guild Greeter list and personalize the greetings a bit. Already I have introduced my signature greeting in logging in (Terve kaverit == Hello friends in Finnish) and upon logging out (Soommoro which equals approximately kkthnxbb and laters). And I think that will be all of the 'native' things I'll use.

What I've been doing? Laiskajaakko has been questing and like I have said earlier I hate Gjalerbron for its repetitiveness and grinding status: the storylines in there are nice, but the killing is not. Though I cannot say that killing Glaciron didn't boost my spirits... It was great, but too easy...

I got Pupunen to Outlands at level 58, and I think it wasn't a level too soon. So far she hasn't done any combat, but the current Discipline will have to do until I get her to Shattrath and can dual spec her to holy and shadow. I just want to see how the dual speccing works and how easy it is to jump from the evil killing machine to the holy healing machine.

Can anyone tell how you can click the action bars with Clique on? I can't click the skills as I have Clique on for some reason... And for healing I have come very dependent on clique...

Tonight... I will run with LFG on all the time and go where ever it may take.

Impossible situation?

I've taken my priest, Pupunen, out of the storage again. Respecced her to Discipline, only to discover how much more efficient Disc is in damage dealing compared to Holy. Truly, Discipline suits better to the soloing up and occasional grouping, with it's lacks in healing side and all.

The server I'm playing in is a peculiar one. Especially the Alliance side: all the epic gear prices plummet within few days way, way below Allakhazam values. And at the same time, I'm selling pre-BC scrolls with huge profit, practically without competition. Epic which Allakhazam gives the price of 2500g is left unsold at 700g: this cannot be a sign of a healthy AH or end game farming. Phaelia's Vestments: last price I saw was around 2000g, when it's being reported being sold for 5000-6000g on other servers.

Is this server over farmed at the moment?

The requirements in the LFM announcements in the trade channel tell the same: LFM for Naxx10, must have achievements for bosses. Must have epics to prove. Every announcement requires achievements to make certain you have done it and accomplished the deed. I bet Greedy Goblin would love this situation. No more M&S's ruining the day, right?

Then again, I'm way too casual to pay any heed on this. I want to experience the game, and I want to experience the content. If it requires me to gain achievement before I can experience it (dilemma?!), then I think I won't experience the content as it is. If the only way to enter the raiding scene is to buy myself the gear to fulfill the requirements to be able to enter the raid from which the gear drops, then there has to be something very awry about the whole end game concept.

The more I think of this, the more I'm trying to stay away from the WotLK. The more I postpone the purchase of it.

Well, with Pupunen I have found new joy in the lower level grind and questing, and I most probably will be pretty happy with that.

Oh, by the way. My middle son, age 11, plays on another server. He has a draenai shaman, and he's just entered the Ashenvale. On the way there he created a minigame for himself: Azeroth racing. You see, there are these trees and roots which arc so that you can run underneath them. Obvious lap arcs you can see in racing games... We had loads of giggles about this as he ran through Darkshore to Ashenvale, skidding all over the road to find the lap gate...

What's your minigame Blizzard doesn't reward you about?

Addition to last post

Just remembered the quest I revelled upon in Desolace, which I thought would create something interesting. I mean the Down The Scarlet Path from Brother Anton, in which he, member of Scarlet Crusade, instructs the player to contact Raleigh The Devout for more information on how to contact Scarlet Crusade and join the Crusade.

I was so intriqued on the possibility, so I travelled the whole way to Southshore.

Only to be disappointed.

The quest is the entry quest for Scarlet Monastery. /boohoo

I want to join the Scarlet Crusade... Isn't there a faction for that? Where do I sign to grind rep for Scarlet Crusade?

Lack of proper attention to design

I should have written this a few days ago, but I wasn't in the right mood for it. In fact, I'm not in the right mood for it now, either, but I have to write it just to get it on writing.

You see, I started questing with Pupunen, and as per my modus operandi I chose the area which is generally avoided nowadays in the level range 30-35: Desolace. And now I know why.

The quests in Desolace are awfull. The area is like grey Blasted Lands or Badlands, which makes it even worse. And if someone comes and says that there are different shades of grey in the quests, I beg to differ.

The main questlines evolve around the Centaur hostilities, and the player -whether Horde or Alliance- is offered 'the freedom of choice' in befriending one faction or the other. Magram or Gelkis, it's up to you, but never the less it requires killing 50 Centaurs of the opposite faction to open the chain.

And the rest of the quest lines in the area are mostly killing ten foodles and collecting three dingies. Mostly killing.

I think that people are avoiding this area also because of the fact that you have to make the moral decision to start killing neutral mobs which cause you no trouble when you are questing. In a sense, you are ushered to kill for the sake of killing. I don't see any difference in this compared to the much discussed torturing in WotLK, as it makes you do something you as a player wouldn't normally do. "But you kill mobs all the time" I hear someone say. True, but usually the mobs have been painted as opposing and hostile forces, justifying the act: in the case of the Centaur Clans, neither are better or worse than the other, it's up to the player to decide which peacefull faction to kill.

And it sucks.

Because after killing the 50 needed to befriend the faction you get another quest to kill 30 of another Centaur Clan: for Horde this third faction is easy, as it is Kolkar which have been pestering the Horde in the Barrens already. But for Alliance, this is just more of the same.

And at the coastline you have to kill Naga's for several quests. And Burning Blade zealots.

On the positive side, the area has also the funny moments: the vendormats for recipes for Mystery Meat, the missing merchant quest line ( with distinct references to Star Wars ("Whoever attacked the wagon was efficient and swift."), the nice Kodo roundup and naturally the fact that the area is empty of competing players. But the area is a pain to go through: Once I finish the area, I'm not going back except to visit Maraudon, which I still consider one of the most beautifull Old World instances.

I think Desolace was created for the grinding kind of players, but without proper attention to the design: the are is bleak, the variation of mobs is weak (centaurs, nagas and mannoroc's) and the grinding is... grinding.

I want more quests with more variation. And no moral decisions which make you feel bad afterwards.

Priests against Shadowfangs

Friday's ex-tempore laughter run: priests against Shadowfangs. Actually, it was three priests against Shadowfang Keep and Archmage Arugal. The three were Bishopgeorge, Pupunen and Flimsy, for whom the run was a real boost in gear. Robes of Arugal serve a caster for a quite long time, and is currently extremely easy to acquire.

Which reminds me of one certain thing. Because of the fact that Shadowfang Keep is deep in Silverpine forest -and "Horde Territory" as Flimsy put it- it is pretty hard to reach at the correct level range and thus is much neglected by the Alliance. As is Wailing Caverns, which serves the Hunters and Rogues with similar love as Shadowfang Keep serves the caster classes.

This is a shame, and I think it's the most obvious sign that people are levelling just to get high and fast: sadly I have to admit that I have resorted to the similar thinking with Laiskajaakko recently. 

Now The Order of the Fist has a nice base from which to form the runs, so it would be easy enough to run these instances in a succession.

And it doesn't mean a thing if the Instance is in contested area: heck, people are running Ragefire Chasm by Alliance toons and Stockades by Horde toons! Ask them if it matters! 

Achievements don't make that separation.

Besides, it's fun.

Recap of all things

Again a short lapse of not writing. Somehow I've already gotten into a state where I feel guilty when I don't log into the blog for a few days. In fact, I could see that from my twittering: it grew solidly during the weekend...

First of all, I had the flu of the year: high temperature, so high that I woke up shivering uncontrollably. Call to the nurse and rest of the week off from work. Knowing what a pile of ...work there would be, this wasn't exactly the optimum solution.

First thought: time to play. Second: I cannot sit at the computer, I faint. Plus wife had her day off... No play for a day. Except some Spore, entered the space age. The first age in the game I find myself not so much amused.

Then the long haul. The .wtf repairs earlier paid out, and now that I started using Carbonite more I found out the shortcomings of it more precisely. Granted, it's not such a resource hog as GuestHelper, but boy, does GuestHelper's route planner work! It's way better than the one in Carbonite and GuestHelper updates the routes more readily according to the toon's whereabouts than Carbonite. So I switched back with Laiskajaakko.

In fact, I have some material for a few posts already because of the longer playing last week. Thursday and Friday went nicely by the 'puter, I dinged a couple levels with Pupunen and a few more with Laiskajaakko, entering Winterspring again and... well, that's for another post. This is just a recap.

I was quite well on Saturday, so I attended to my friend's birthday party in the evening. His band also performed there (see http://www. ahmametal.com for more info) and I really had a blast. This trip to civilisation reminded me why I should live in a city: to see more like minded people -and old friends!- and be a part of the community I used to be. Then again, next morning at home I remembered why I don't want to live in the city. The peacefull surroundings and the four huge dogs really make the difference!

The dog's, by the way, are better: only the male is still having symptoms of the kennel cough, for which we'll be extending his antibiotics. Should be over in a week or so. The foot is healing very nicely, in fact frighteningly so. I'm saying this because when the foot heals, he will want to run. Which he shouldn't do because of the cough... 

The younger ones are full of energy and the pup is the rascally demonspawn again, tearing all paper and cardboard she can find to shreds within seconds. A box here, turn your head and it's in 1 cm x 1 cm pieces. That's her. Very untypical Irish Wolfhound. I suppose we should file a complaint to the breeder about her fault of being overactive... :P

That's for recap. Off to write the additional posts.

Cheers and Holidays!

Weekend in games

Another weekend passed, another year under belt. Actually the weekend started with company pre-Christmas party, which was a blast. At least compared to the last years fiasco. Sang a lot, drank somewhat more modestly due the first and overall I was rescued back home in a decent condition.

Woke up on Saturday at around noon. Logged in later 'only to check the AH', but instead that resulted not only checking the spiffy 170g more on Pupunen, but also checking in with Copra.

And boy Hudson is right. I logged in, checked my gear and tried to empty my bags from unnecessary quest stuff, but because I put the LFG tool on, I was asked to join the Blood Furnace in about a minute after that. The 'group' was two DK's, who were adamant that we could handle the instance by the three of us.

It became clear after the first wipe, that a) two tanks will not make it and b) Copra's mana efficiency with feral gear was insufficient. Also I learned that it helps a lot to change to the tree form if you are going to heal... After a few mobs we got a feral druid into the group, who quit the group because the DK's didn't want to reset the instance (we had just started!), the group split. The feral, however, invited me to another team, which was with three DK's. We cleared the site in one, swift, solid flow. And even though this was the first time I healed as druid, I was thanked for great heals and especially great for a first timer. Thank you, pleasure to serve! With the drops from this I got my MP5 up to 40 and overall mana almost to 5k. Not bad, considering my gear was still almost feral.

After that I just got rid of the excess loot when I was invited for the Hellfire Ramparts. Jeeves! I didn't even have LFG on!

I must say that I laughed out when I saw the group. Four DK's and me. You gotta be kidding me. They said they had tried on their own, in fact they were in the first mini-boss already, but had wiped because they had no healing abilities. Right, and onwards. No problems in the first, Watchkeeper Golgomar, nothing in the second, Omor the Unscarred (two parts of the quest done), but the darn Vazruden was the tough part. Nazan, whom he sends to 'protect' him, was easy, but the dragon Vazruden rides was the death of Copra. The DK's pulled the Dragon into such a place (the bridge to the platform), that it was impossible to avoid the dragon's breath. As Copra started to take damage, he was dead. Wipe one.

Second try resulted almost the same, but it was closer. And it was my fault that it went bonkers, like it always is. After which the group called it quits.

Copra earned an upgrade to his mana, mana regen and MP5 at the cost of armour and agility. I just have to learn to avoid damage better and see next time that I'm not at the bridge but on the platform to avoid the darn dragon.

What was the most interesting thing about this was that... I really, REALLY liked it! Healing seems to be for me, even though I'm at a loss of what to use and when and obviously I'm using too much time clearing curses and poisons. But all in good time, these were my first runs as a healing druid and healing with HoT's is pretty different than the way of the Priest. It's more proactive healing than reactive healing.

Sunday came, got Spore: Galactic Edition for my birthday present. And I was left alone with the dogs (kids can take care of themselves already) and the game. What's amazing with the current games for PC is that when you first install them from DVD, it takes at least a half an hour. Then it patches itself, loading of the patch taking at least another half an hour and the patching another! When it finally was ready, I had leafed through the Art of Spore, the game manual (which I never read) and played some pinball. Yea, what wouldn't you resort to when waiting for a game to install.

The start went smoothly, it remembered my details after removing the Creature editor. I just loved the start, the meteor and all, but the little bugger bugged me. The cell-stage is the most frustrating so far, really. But I have to run something else than herbivore next time...

The biggest surprise came from the stage when the creatures emerged from the water. Biggest because the game is full of sense of wonder, joy of finding and understanding and exploration. The surprise was to find creatures from my friends (JoBildo being one, cheers!) and my former creations from the demo Creature Editor, which I thought were lost! I think that when I start the game anew, I will play the creature stage a bit more, because of the exploration, the social minigame and the sheer scope of the continent.

Now I rushed through it by doing the things the game suggested, and found myself in the Tribal stage sooner than I expected.

Being the social, diplomatic and peacefull in nature, my creatures were/are herbivores, social and diplomatic. So the tribal stage was a pretty straight forward after I realised that I need enough of the instruments to conduct the diplomatics properly. Got an achievement for finishing that stage under an hour, which amazed my son who had played the game by his friend. And never got that fast.

I finished the game in the Civilisation stage, after conquering one continent by converting the cities to my super-religious dogmas. The other continent is having a civil war: two cities are fighting each other, so it would be like stealing a candy from a kid to finish them off.

All in all, I played about six hours of Spore, enjoying every moment. I think it delivers everything that it promised, at least so far I have been thrilled, amazed, surprised and laughed playing it.

I can't wait to play more. And that is a good sign.

Why is it so hard?

I'm still a bit crossed and angry over last nights WoW session. First of all, I cancelled the guild run, as no-one was interested in going to ST. That's ok, people have real life, too.

However, I joined a PUG when I was begged to. Pupunen, being the Holy Priest, is pretty comfortable in healing role, and I know from my BG experience by now that I can heal pretty decently, even in hard and fast situations. Granted, my gear isn't up to the healing profession, as I haven't been able to gain any replacements for my shadow-era gear.

So, into the SM we went. Hunter, Paladin, Warrior and Pupunen. Piece of cake, I thought, all being over 31. Even with a total f**k up group the Graveyards and Library should have been manageable.

And then they went directly for the Library. All was well when the warrior was tanking, but at the same instance the hunter started his combo the whole hell broke loose. The warrior and the paladin couldn't keep the aggro which that hunter created. Never the less, we cleared the corridor to the Huntsman's Cloister, the first yard in there. I should have been warned at the point when the hunter started to ask for shield... because he started to play melee-hunter.

After the yard and the beast tamer we got a new member, and the hunter and the warrior took off to summon. Thankfully, we cleared two encounters with that paladin, without a hitch, until the hunter came back and started pulling extras. Pupunen went out of mana in no time, and this caused a wipe. And I did something I have never done before.

I quit in the middle of an instance.

I was furious. I was in 'holy rage'. My mana burn was flaring. You get the drift.

I logged out and back in, this time with my Tauren druid. Quick run to Thunderbluff, respec for free (?! WHAT?!) and Copra is an asparagus. Cool. The whole action bar setup went anew, as Copra had been in deep feral thus far, and honestly speaking, the gear... well, it's feral to the blue.

Hearthstone to Shattrath and off we went with my brother's newly specced lv63 Fury Warrior. Killing machine to the top. Like Copra was hitting 1700 - 2200 points with Starfire, when the warrior Executed with about 3500.

I felt gimped.

Add to that the fact that the Zangramarsh quests are killing, killing and killing again. I resent the whole place because of that. Because of the fact that 5/0/46 Druid isn't suited for killing, per se. I'm a healer, for crying out loud.

The only thing I liked about the Outlands this time -compared to the experience about 8 months ago- was the fact that it was ALIVE! There were more players around than ever I have seen. The negative side of this was the fact that mostly they were in groups lead by a 70+ toon and choo-chooing through the mob infested areas and killing the quests away.

I was angry. I was mad. I was tired after I logged out.

First of all, how the heck it is always hunters in the lower levels you have the most complaints about? In my case this guy represented the total neglect of other players in the group by taking the aggro time and again. He didn't even notice my OOMs and direct telling that I need mana to be able to heal and that the tank is my priority. I hate to say it, but it's people like these that are the real burden to MMO's, with their total lack of understanding that they ruin the fun for the others by the way they are acting.

Learn to play your class, noob. Thanks.

Secondly, I'll be damned to return to Zangramarsh. I hate the visuals, I hate the killing, I hate the mobs. It's awfull. Disgusting. And the speeded levelling doesn't lessen the impact at all.

Whence I login with my beloved asparagus, I'll be beaming out distress signals to be saved to Hellfire Citadel or somewhere else. But no Zangramarsh. I do anything to avoid that cesspool.

Oh, yes. I have a guild on ally side. Well, I'll play with my brothers as the priority, guild on the second place and ally on the third.

HORDE FTW!

PS. Made 160g overnight again, with Pupunen, lv33. More to come today, I bet.