New First Impressions

As promised, here goes again.

First of all, the transition from the Old World to Outlands is immense. I could say that it's the Same game, but it's not the same Game. This comes down to the much discussed (earlier at least) problem of Outlands greens outgearing the Old World raid gear.

The first thing I did as a new lv58 was to get the two quests for better gear, namely for a new shield and new sword. The rest would come as the defences and damage dealing would be up. But still I was killing two, three, even four levels higher demons and demonic creatures with more ease than the Furbolgs or Owlbeasts in Winterspring! And the greens quickly replaced my blues which had been sufficient for levelling in the Old World.

One thing I have to complain about, and that is the fact that the quest rewards and majority of the loot -for a plate wearer- are for a certain flavour of the month class of TBC. That is paladin. The plates seem to have, almost all of them, some intelligence and +spell power, with the cost on +STR or +STA. So far I have been able to find only one quest reward helm which has been devised for a tanking plate wearer, and that's been after doing all quests available till lv61. And my chest and legs are with +INT... stupid, I know.

The other issue I'm having with Outlands is the incredible design of the mobs. Like I stated earlier, I could easily tackle higher level mobs with less downtime than in Old World in similar levels. But the real problem I have with them is the ease of downing versus their experience value! They seem to give much more experience than the similar level opponents in the Old World, making the levelling even faster, leaving more content unattended!

Negatives, negatives. At least in my book. 

But there are positives. Shocking news in my blog: something to give applauds to!

It seems that the Outlands is a lot more populated now than when I visited there last with my horde toon: there were lv58-62 toons running around, killing mobs and even grouping randomly to tackle some harder opponents. Grouping in the fly for one opponent and breaking up after downing it! I posted earlier a question whether the games you play change the way you play other games, and I think this is in the similar lines: reminds me of the Public Quests of WAR, the way people are just forming for one opponent only to fly in their different ways after achieving the 'quest finished' sign.

Nice. I love it!

I'm not sure whether it's because of the high population in Hellfire Peninsula or has it always been this way (my memory fails me), but the respawn rate is very, VERY high: it's like you cannot clear your way to a quest objective before the first ones have respawned, twice, as they have been camped by the second wave of quest doers! This is both good and not so good in the sense of helping more people to complete the 'gathering quests' and making the experience gains even higher (as you have to fight your way back to the quest giver).

Outlands change the way you play for sure. Too bad most of the quests are kill ten foozles and collect four dingles (by killing foozles till you get enough) types. The few exceptions to the rule are very refreshing (like bombing the demonic portals).

I know I shouldn't say this, but it feels so hard to return to Old Azeroth and help guildies. 

Do I really have to? 

Yes I do. The members of the Order deserve it and some more.

To the Outlands

Laiskajaakko finally got to lv58 and I had decided way earlier that he will hit the Outlands as soon as that happens. One of the nicest things about having the exp bar disabled is the fact that dinging surprises you completely: I was returning quests in Sillithus when the golden light engulfed the hardened warrior and I knew it was time to go. Sadly the Dark Portal was so far... which caused some extra stress on my system.

But then again, looking this from the guild side, it was a good thing. Hitting the advertising macro in every zone I passed flying surely created both interest and ignores. 

I just turned in at least two quests on the way and grabbed the 'necessary' quest from the warchiefs at the Portal before entering the great unknown...

Boy is the transition huge. I had been -and quested some- in the Outlands with my horde character (Copra), but that's about a year ago, so I really didn't remember what it felt like to bring the toon into this 'first expansion'.

The first hindrance came when I tried to get the quest from the flight master: one of my addons causes the flight map to launch on top of the quest frame, so I couldn't accept -nor return- the quests in question! The only solution I got was to disable the addons, work the quests and enable them again... causing some addons to reset, naturally.

But off we went, to the Honor Hold. I grabbed the first quests available and punched myself into the LFG for Hellfire Citadel as soon as I hit lv59 (when it came available).

The run, as smooth as it was, came to my mind after I read this post from The Scourge: in the group were three DK's (lv62, 64 and 65), my warrior ('are you a tank?', 'Your spec?') and a shaman (enhancement... 'You heal', 'But...', 'You heal'). The group 'leader' was adamant on having the polearm from one of the bosses and the DK's were having an argument about that till the end. I was happily in the group, just trekking along, trying to tank where possible.

Alas, the tanking was impossible, but a few nice comments to the Shammy ensured that I was the 'Last Man Standing' when the crap hit the ventilator: one of the DK's just couldn't help dying, being wiped out at least three times on the run.

Which came to my mind after reading the forementioned post...

All in all, I gained almost a level in the Hellfire Citadel, as I entered right after dinging 59. What a bliss.

This calls for another post about the first impressions. New first impressions.

Silent running

The holiday season has been pretty messed up thing in here: there have been one day off within a week, making both the working and spare time a drag to plan. However, the Order has been active enough to keep me returning to the game.

First of all, I have worked hard on AH with Pupunen to gain enough gold for the third Guild Bank tab. And now it's here! The cost is astronomical for a lv35, being 500g. That's almost the same as the second riding skill and mount at lv60, which really hurt my planning on getting a new mount for Laiskajaakko.

Secondly, I have been helping people to level with Pupunen. That has been fun, especially when the level gap hasn't been too wide. Next we'll have to start organising some pre-planned guild runs.

Because we had an impromptu one the other day. I had been helping some lower level members with their harder quests in Loch Modan for some time and was just about to logout for a dinner, when one of our Veteran's logged in and asked if anyone was up to Gnomeregan. Why, of course, because Pupunen had her questlog full of Gnomerquests. Within the next two minutes we had a group of four ready to go. A boost, as our highest member, lv80 Deathknight, had decided to join us for the Achievement!

So I ate with the family and logged in. The group was already at the entry, but the instances were so crowded -once again- that they couldn't get in! I got the invite, emptied my bags and ran to the instance, only to catch them right inside the door.

Needless to say, the run was smooth and solid, though we had one lv15 with us. He was pretty unaware of the threat his character generated, so I had to tell him after his first death to stick with us and not even breath! He died another time for running into a patrol, but that was... pure coincident and bad planning.

All in all, we all had fun, the lower of us had nice loot and I got several quests done on one run. As I returned the quests to Tinkertown, I noticed that I had still two quests undone in Gnomeregan... So Pupunen will have to go there again, this time with guildies who are a bit higher than on the first time. Maybe even without the boost?

Flippin' an' floppin'

In addition to my freakish addon habits, I have been as crazed over the AH in WoW for quite a long time. Before I started to look for addons to do this and that I was already buying trade goods for cheap and selling it on market price: mind you, I have never been greedy, just taking my share of the wealth.

And then I made my first encounter with Auctioneer.

When I came to the EU server I made it my aim to have 1000g before my main hits 40, that is, the level when you could purchase your mount originally. However, with the aid of Auctioneer and BottomScanner I was able to accomplish that way before that. The Auctioneer scans began to take more and more time with each subsequent version, though, and that started to hinder my playing otherwise. A married man with work, kids and dogs -plus actively working with them- equals minimal time to leisure (read: games), and thus every single minute is precious.

And Auctioneer started to steal that time.

Now as I have returned to the habit of scanning, flipping and posting for the guild, I'm becoming more and more frustrated with the scanning and data processing phase of Auctioneer. Granted, it's a great tool for a AH nerd like me, but I'd rather not resort to pen and paper again. As there is an addon which takes care of the data collecting and sorting, I will use that instead. But the time it takes...

It's normal to have a scan take some 12-15 minutes. That's what it took earlier, too. But the darned data processing (Three stages) takes another 15 minutes, if I'm lucky! Then, when I finally get to the searching and deal finding, the first data collected is over 15 minutes old, leaving most of the bids having less than 30 minutes (short in WoW terms) left out of my grasp: they have either expired or purchased. As are the really interesting deals where people who really don't know the value of their stuff just sell them off in redicilous prices. Like Pattern: Robe of the Archmage (Allakhazam: 136g) in sale for 7g...

I have to dig into this. Most probably there is nothing I can do about it, except reinstall the Auctioneer Suite and hope for the best.

Never the less, I have flipped quite succesfully lately. Yesterday, when I checked my post, AH and reposted the expired ones, I saw that I had made almost 700g profit during the last 7 days. And I haven't even touched the materials market, yet. The server I'm in is very competed, mostly because it's one of the EU first generation servers and filled with long term players. I'm really a newbie in that troupe, but I'm doing my best to serve my Guild.

I was just wondering, what would it be if there was no Auctioneer? Would there be less understanding for the pricing? Would there be only hardcore data crunchers running the markets?

I think we'll never know. And I hope they could tweak the Auctioneer a bit faster for the matter.

Happy New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

May this year -2009- be prosperous, virtuous and filled with happiness to all readers, their families and loved ones!