Secret Garden

Back in October, I had a rant about the state of Archaeology and within a week I issued an apology and thank you to Blizzard for fixing the issue in a patch. In November I was fairly unimpressed with the gift for WoW's 8th Anniversary and stated that 8% rep gains on kills was a very poor gift, and that 10% would be a better figure which should apply to XP gains on quest completions. I have checked the Patch notes and have found no reference to this change, but I can confirm that levelling quests now give 10% extra.

It would be nice to think that Blizzard is listening to me and making appropriate changes, but I am not that stupid. What it probably indicates is that Blizzard and myself are on a similar wavelength, I don't read the forums but, I am guessing that the issues mentioned above have been raised there at some point.

Yesterday I complained that this expansion is not Alt friendly, but the change to quest rewards and double reputation from commendations may be enough to smooth over the next few months. The reputation increase only started in Europe yesterday so it still early days.

I have yet to sample the delights of 5.1 so I shall give a review when I am as angry as the Grumpy Elf, who wasted a night doing the new dailies.

One improvement I did notice was the pre-population of previously unknown Flight Points. It makes sense in Real Life that I can fly to New York without first going to JFK Airport, so now the only things missing are to speed up the flight time and to implement direct flights.

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Last night I intended to logon to WoW and check out patch 5.1. Unfortunately I was distracted by a couple of programmes on the BBC. The first was a CGI marvel in the form of Supersized Earth and then Goodnight Britain.

Supersized Earth is one of those programmes that looks like it made to be sold around the world, and with the computer graphics and engaging content was just totally addictive. It looks like I will need to watch the first episode on BBC i Player.

Goodnight Britain was an interesting if slightly patronising look at the world of sleep deprivation. Of the 5 unfortunate subjects, I was able to diagnose 3 without any medical training. The 2 cases I did not identify are Parasomnia and Insomnia caused by a broken internal clock.

The 2 cases that I was most interested in were Sleep Apnoea and Heavy Snoring. I have written about Sleep Apnoea before, but the tiredness now as mostly gone away, so maybe it was that LFR Dragon Soul was too boring to keep me awake.

No Limits

I am not a Twitter user, I don't fully understand the need to tell the world what you have just eaten, and every little thought that goes through your head. I don't understand the need to divulge everything about yourself on Facebook, I understand that it is a decent place to find people that you have lost touch with.

I am quite a fan of Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, but never in a million years, am I that bothered that I would follow him on Twitter. Anyway there is no need to, when any salient points are re-communicated by WoW Insider and the other WoW news sites.

One item that fell down between the cracks is this little snippet from WoW Insider. On it's own it is just a throw away remark, appearing in a throw away medium, but taken in conjunction with the historical context, it shows another twist in Blizzards game philosophy.

It is quite common for Blizzard to take polar opposite philosophies from one expansion, but this more than hints at the current status of Mist of Pandaria. Let's take a look at what transpired.

RigelWoW@RigelWoW - @Ghostcrawler Can a new 90 alt catch up gear-wise this arena season with conquest being usable for item upgrades? MoP seems alt-unfriendly.

Greg Street@Ghostcrawler  - @RigelWoW We agree we need more alt solutions. MoP was designed to be compelling without alts. That means if you have alts, there's too much

In a nutshell MoP is alt-unfriendly, and Blizzard state that it was designed that way. Gee thanks for consulting with all the Altoholics about how they wanted the new expansion to pan out.

The following is my list of how the expansions affected Altoholics.

• Vanilla - Alts were non existent due to the levelling times - Alts were Rogues and Mages taken to level 8 or 10 and then dumped for Hunters.
• The Burning Crusade - The birth of Alts as max level characters. Blizzard screwed up the end game content by swapping and changing between 10 and 25 man Raids. After Zul'Aman everybody not in 25 Man raiding guilds went off to create Alts.
• The Wrath of the Lich King - Not intended to be Alt friendly, with 4 different lockout on the raids, but it was very easy to gear up to just under the current gear content. Levelling Alts was preferable to the Argent Tournament
• Cataclysm - The restrictions on Raid lock outs should have been a golden age for Alts, levelling from 80- 85 was quick and easy, but the content was dry and boring, and the Molten Front was very anti-Alts.
• Mists of Pandaria - content galore, removal of daily quest cap, scenario's, challenge modes, LFD, LFR, Pet Battles and the Tiller's Farm mean that there is no free time to devote to Alts

In my opinion Alts flourished in TBC and WotLK by accident. In Cataclysm they were actively encouraged and punished in equal measures and MoP is the anti-Alt expansion.

All this can go away if Blizzard makes Reputation Account Wide. There is enough Account Wide functionality already in the game, that one more would not make much difference. If Role Players want to climb hills backwards then they could even toggle the facility on or off depending on their level of masochism. With 5.1 now live, most of us are still coming to terms with the content released with the expansion. Now would be a good time to let us move onto the new content and let us play the game that we choose in a world of multiple choice.

Wonderful World

Don't know much about history etc....

Yesterday I discussed some approximate levelling times for the new expansion. The Grumpy Elf left his customary comment yesterday, and it left me wondering if I was actually doing something drastically wrong. The figures below are not verified (that would take way too much time), but they appear to approximately correct. The data is from the Ascendancy website and shows the quest rewards for each of the zones and the associated mini hubs.

 

Level	XP
86	13000000
87	15080000
88	18980000
89	22880000
90	27560000
Total	97500000

 

The Jade Forest

Paw'Don Village 2998 K

The Wwaterspeaking Ceremony 1997 K

Pearlfin Village & The White Pawn 3123 K

Dawn's Blossom 981 K

The Arboretum 780 K

Greenstone Quarry 786 K

Ruin of Gan-Shi 1890 K

The Temple of the Jade Serpent 1170 K

The Battle for the Forest & Overcoming Doubt 1188 K

Tian Monastery 2064 K

Nectarbreeze Orchard 1019 K

 

Total 17996 K

 

Valley of the Four Winds

Thunderfoot Fields 2253 K

Mudmag's Place & Silken Fields 2042 K

New Cifera 1056 K

Chen's Masterpiece 3571 K

The Stormstout Brewery 894 K

The Hidden Master 1909 K

Nestingwary's Safari 1951 K

 

Total 13676 K

 

Krasarang Wilds

Zhu's Watch 1843 K

The Incursion 1754 K

Nestingwary member 822 K

Temple of the Red Crane 2034 K

Small Jinyu town by the river 437 K

The Water of Youth 1365 K

Stoneplow 1157 K

Fishing pandas to the south 1697k

 

Total 11109 K

 

The Veiled Stair

 

Total 629 K

 

Kun-Lai Summit

Binnan Village 733 K

Inkgill Mere 1633 K

Westwind Rest & The Youngal Invasion 3067 K

Shado-Pan Fallback 856 K

The Yak Wash 1621 K

Grummle Bazaar 891 K

One Keg 807 K

The Thunder King 2751 K

Zouchin Village 2144 K

Quests at the shore 978 K

The Burlap Waystation 3386 K

Kota Basecamp 1743 K

Winter's Blossom 1605 K

Temple of the White Tiger 238 K

 

Total 22453 K

 

Townlong Steppes

Fire Camp Osul 4736 K

Mislurkers in the Sumprushes 2235 K

On Hatred's Path 3879 K

The Sha of Hatred 4461 K

Tai Ho' Investigation 4348 K

 

Total 19659 K
 

Dread Wastes

The First Paragons 5854 K

The Might of the Klaxxi(included a few dailies) 6024 K

Taste of Amber 6213 K

Like a Deck Boss 3700 K

 

Total 21791 K

The Grumpy Elf thinks that it is possible to level from 85 – 90 in 12 hours. Which would require a colossal 8,125,000 XP/hour. My suggestion was for about 40 hours which would require a far more modest 2,437,500 XP/hour.

In the interest of science, I decided to run a test to see what kind of XP/Hour I could reach if I went for broke and tried to maximise my levelling experience in a short time frame of about an hour.

The scenario was as follows:

• Level 87 Dwarf Arms Warrior
• iLevel around 398
• Starting point – The Veiled Stair
• Time frame 1 Hour (approx.)
• Approach: Questing, kill as many mobs as possible and only mine nodes that are in close proximity
• Guild Level 25 – Full Rested XP and WOW 8th Anniversary Tabard

The start of the zone involves 2 quests and lots of mob killing through the cave system. The two quests are Educating Sarok and Robbing Robbers of Robbers. My method of calculating XP/Hour is the built in app in Titan Panel, so I flew to the flight point and then logged off and back on to reset the timer.

The first few kills set the XP/Hour into overdrive, but the figure soon settled down to around 3 – 4 Million XP/Hour. Handing in the quests spiked the system to over 5 million, but the next quest, The Spring Drifter is a slow boat ride to Kun-Lai Summit, which obviously sent the figures plummeting. The XP for a level 87 killing an equal level mob is 29,972 XP with mining providing 16,402 XP per node.

I quickly collected all the quests in the area and in an attempt to increase my speed I was a little more reckless than usual and threw myself into large packs of mobs. Warriors have great regenerative skills, but Arms is ultimately a DPS spec and not a tanking spec and my reckless approach did result in 2 deaths due to misjudging the number of opponents.

In the end I settled into a quicker than normal tempo and eventually stopped after completing Binan Village and Westwind Rest. The time taken was 1 hour 20 minutes and the results can be seen below:

 

 

The most important figure is near the bottom XP/HR This Session 5,121,197 which is way above my usual dawdle speed of 3,766,620 XP/HR which includes going AFK for cups of coffee and snacks.

Using these figures shows that at my usual speed it would take 26 Hours to level from 85 to 90, but at the new improved speed it would only take 19 Hours. The question is could I maintain that pace for 19 hours and I think the answer is probably not.

At a pace of 19 or 20 hours to level a character, that means that even I can level to 90 in a week with my restricted playtime.

In summary I massively overstated the time required, but I also believe that I would find it impossible to reach the XP/Hour that the Grumpy Elf thinks that he can obtain.



 



Babylon's Burning

When I first started playing World of Warcraft seven and a half years ago, my life was very different. I was thrust into parenthood not once but twice, I had two children both aged under 2 years old, and still I decided to play one of the most absorbing computer games known to man.

Back in those days I would work, look after the children and play WoW until bedtime. It had a lovely work/life balance to it. Whilst the children were sleeping upstairs, both parents were killing internet dragons in the room next door. My game time was maybe as high as 5 or 6 hours a day, but it didn't really matter I was able to spend time with my family at various stages of the day without neglecting the children or my wife, we even got to spend quality time with our close friends, via Ventrilo, Mumble or Skype.

Moving onto 2012, I now play alone, and I am only officially allowed to sit down and concentrate on WoW when the children are safely tucked up in bed. These days that time is squeezed by my children wanting to stay up longer and longer, it is not really a surprise that they no longer need 11 or 12 hours sleep each night. The longer they stay up, the less time I play, with the exception of a few minutes that I am able to grasp whilst they are having a bath or doing things in their bedroom. This means that at most I have 4 hours play 5 times a week, with 2 days off to watch TV with my nearest and dearest.

The result of this is that I have two different type of sessions, one for quick easy tasks that can be dropped immediately and longer more in depth passages of play. The short easy tasks, involve Auction House activities, crafting, profession research and dailies. The longer sessions are for levelling, scenarios, LFD, LFR and PvP.

Dailies are by far the largest part of these relaxed shorter sessions, in particular I am tending 10 farms but only actively on the 3 level 90's. The longer sessions are devoted entirely to levelling and as much as I want to try other things I am always drawn back by the desire to have a full compliment of max level characters.

This is the rut that I now find myself in, and I am unable to go off and explore new avenues of play. We all find routine in our everyday lives and WoW is no different. This is the biggest reason that we need to have a summer holiday, just to break up the routine and be spontaneous and do something different for one or two weeks a year.

This style of play was first established during the Cataclysm expansion, and with the harder style heroics and the loss of my wife and friends to the game, I took solace in the levelling game, and later started doing PvP.

I am in a rut and want to get out but I seem unable to change my playstyle. This week I promise that I will sample some of the other fruits on offer. I will miss an entire day of dailies and concentrate on another aspect. As yet I am undecided what to do , but I will wait for the weekly reset before I take the plunge, small steps on the road to recovery.

I was wondering if the levelling process is too long, too short or just right? My rough calculations are as follows:

• 8 Hours per level.
• 5 levels.
• 40 hours from 85 to 90.

Obviously you can argue the toss, but I think these are reasonable timings. The only problem for me is that I am only able to devote 20 Hours each week to the game and that would take 2 weeks for each character to get to max level. I still have 7 characters at level 85, so that is 14 weeks, depending on me concentrating solely on this one task.

Now does that seem too long or should this process need shortening? I am not looking forward to repeating the same content until some time in March 2013. I think I might be in a coma by then.

Mr Writer

I started this blog back in February 2012, so in many respects I am still a baby blogger. My first post was actually written in the November 2011, but I never posted it cause I was unhappy with my writing style. At end of April 2012 after 26 posts, I had received 190 visits according to my blogger stats, unfortunately most of those are probably me checking the formatting and editing any obvious mistakes.

In May 2012 something called the Newbie Blogger Initiative was launched, I threw my hat in the ring because after 26 posts I realised that nobody was reading my posts, and as much as I enjoyed writing them, I also felt the need to share them with anybody who would listen.

I didn't fully partake in the NBI but I did my best to share a little link love to those writing about World of Warcraft. To be honest I only have a passing interest in the other games in the MMO genre, and tend not to read about SWTOR, Rift, Guild Wars, Eve and Everquest. The exception to this is the reasoned arguments put forward by Tolbold.

My second post into the NBI was to examine my own reasons for taking part, after Tobold had raised the issue of the purpose behind the NBI. Tobold wrote a comment on my blog which was a real shock at the time, but it made me think about why I was blogging.

Blogging becomes just part of the daily routine, I write about what I have done in the game, and comment about the thoughts of fellow bloggers. My biggest influences in this thought process are Tobold, The Grumpy Elf, and the Godmother (I thank them all). They provide plenty of information to think about, and often these can lead to some of my better posts.

Yesterday the Godmother wrote a post entitled Zen and The Art of Satisfactory Blogging, the article is about confidence in your own writing, and writing to make your own happiness.

"A lot of that has to do with my own confidence in ability, and this is where the second point come to the fore: writing should be about making you happy. I will never understand someone who bemoans having to write something 'because they have to' " The Godmother

I have never had any confidence in my own writing, I lack the creativity and imagination to write any decent prose. I am far more scientific and mathematical based in my thinking, and this makes me doubt my own abilities in the use of language. Writing about WoW is different somehow and it stems from the deep level of involvement in the game, that makes me want to write something that might help others. The game is so vast and wide and after 4 expansions, it is impossible to know everything about the game, and this is the one of the reason we read blogs and information sites to keep ahead of the changes.

Personally I have no idea if my writing is beneficial for anybody else, but I use it frequently as a jumpstation to other sites. I have no idea if my writing style is easy or difficult to read, and I lack the confidence that the Godmother has in abundance.

I write because my friends no longer play this game, and need to talk about it with somebody. Quite often that communication process is a one-way street, and I get to offload my own thoughts.

I now know my own limitations, and I will never be the next BRK or BBB, I lack the wit, charm and intelligence to be able to write that well.

What I do know, is how pleased and incredibly happy I felt seeing my name mentioned by Tobold. Blogging is not about visits per hour, but about hopefully writing something worth reading, and to give back something to this rich and diverse community.

Have A Nice Day

 

 

 

Have a happy Thanksgiving if you live in America, if not just have a nice day. Last night I think I have upset the Fickle Farming Gods. Does it really need to be this tough to keep a farm running. The occupied soil and the beams of light are annoying, but if I had a mana bomb, it would be heading towards those green tentacle things. 

 

 

 

 

 

Smoke and Mirrors

I had planned to write about class balance and the levelling experience in Jade Forest, but I have been distracted by 2 articles by Tobold, "WoW the Single Player Game?" and "Estimate the Challenge Percent". I will try to answer all three in one article if I can possibly stay on the subject and not stray off as I have a tendency to do.

Starting with "WoW the Single Player", the catalyst was the post written by the Godmother about Cross Realm Zones and Blizzard's Public Relations Department. The comment sections picks up on purely the CRZ issues, with the general gist being that nobody likes the added competition or the glitches that accompany the feature.

Tobold reasons that if you don't like the competition, then why are you playing a Massive Multi-player Online game? There was a time before MMO's and most of us are old enough to have been gamers before we discovered World of Warcraft. I personally played all the Warcraft games, and games like Baldur's Gate. For me WoW is merely the combining of these games with the emergence of a technological breakthrough in servers and increased home network speeds. Nobody would play an MMO with a 56K Modem.

Do I want or need other people in my game? Personally the answer is no. I have engineered my game to gain the maximum amount of independence, free from asking Guildies and even worse the general populace for help and assistance. I have all the professions at max or near to max level, and have more gatherers than I know what to do with. The only interaction I need with other people is for scenarios, instances and raids. It can be argued that the Tiller farm and Pet Battles only emphasises the solo end game activities, and suggests that I am not a minority player. Valor can be gained on my own, although the process is of course very slow.

If I need obtain some Thorium or Adamantite ore and the price on the Auction House is extortionate, I will go and farm the ore. Now the point is, I have made a decision that it is worth spending my limited time going to personally obtain the ore, but I need to be able to gather sufficient quantities in a certain timeframe for it to be worth the effort. If Adamantite is the same price as Ghost Iron Ore, then the answer is simple, because I can gather a lot more Ghost Iron than Adamantite, I can sell the Ghost Iron and buy the Adamantite and will have saved myself some time.

Cross Realm Zones are creating competition for resources and as a consequence are causing scarcity of items on some realms. Simple supply and demand economics, demonstrate that under normal conditions, if demand remains the same and less items are supplied to the market, then the price will increase. This can cause an issue for those people who are trying to level a profession at the same time as they are levelling their Pandas with either no nodes available or expensive raw materials.

The second subject "Estimate the Challenge Percent", is based on the theory that the casual majority are doing nothing in the game that is particularly challenging. Levelling is not particularly difficult at levels 85-88 and is only as difficult as the challenge you set. There are no more group quests, like there were in WotLK's  Dragonblight which had at least 5 quests requiring grouping. These group quests have been moved into their own instance and are now called scenarios. The advantage of this is that they are designed to be completed with any mix of characters (with the possible exception of 3 healers and can be repeated if a player wants to. Scenarios also group other people wanting to do the same content at the same time, without the requirement for Guild and General chat shout outs.

The difficulty setting on Heroics as been reduced from the Cataclysm benchmark of healers doing triage and a requirement for crowd control. I believe AoE is back in vogue (please note that I have not done Heroics yet this expansion). A large amount of time is being devoted to dailies, farming and pet battles, all of these have a low level of difficulty. It can also be argued that those who are doing a weekly Looking for Raid are not partaking in difficult challenges.

I am still doing the unfashionable levelling of alts so my percentage of difficulty sits firmly in the 1% category.

On the subject of levelling, I am yet again visiting Jade Forest, and have noticed that the area seems to be much easier than first time through the zone. During the levelling of my Hunter I was getting used to a new toolbox of tricks and found the increase in the power and hit points of the new zone level 85 mobs to be considerably harder than the equivalent level 85 mobs in Cataclysm. My big shots and cooldowns would only shave small percentages off the mobs hit points and of course the respawn rate was crazy with some unfortunate positioning would attract a large posse of mobs.

My last foray through the zone was on my Death Knight and the Jade Forest was a stroll in the park. That appears to be nothing compared to the juggernaut power of my Warrior. My warrior, Dumpyrustnut is fortunate enough to be wearing 3 items of Blue 415 gear, which is created as a proc through Blacksmithing. Having said that I am still only at an average iLevel of 389 which is well below what most raiders would have romped through the zone wearing.

I am finding that even as an Arms Warrior, I want to pile the mobs up high and Thunder Clap and Cleave my way through the assembled foes. If that is not quick enough then Bladestorm is on hand. Either my mind is playing tricks on me or the mobs in this zone have be nerfed. I do not have empirical evidence to backup my claims, but it not unreasonable for Blizzard to make the levelling of alts easier. They are going to make reputation grinds easier with patch 5.1 for both main characters and alts.

To bring all of these points together, I believe that Blizzard have created a single player game, in a multi-player server environment, that is easy to play with a difficulty option only for the most dedicated raiders. This may be the MMO of the future, only time will tell.

3 Is The Magic Number

I am suffering from a lack of sleep yet again by staying up late and chasing the XP bar. My Death Knight, Blamebob limped into the 90 bracket. I hearthed back to the Shrine of Seven Stars, grabbed panda flight and jumped into bed (that was in Real Life, not the game).

My reward for such hard work was one more achievement:

 

 

The update of my levelling curve is detailed below:

1. 25th September - Release Date
2. 16th October - Ding 1 (22 Days)
3. 8th November - Ding 2 (23 Days)
4. 19th November - Ding 3 (11 Days)

I am definitely getting quicker, but I was already at 87, so the 11 days is only for 3 Levels.

I did encounter a little problem at the end of the levelling curve, after completing the whole of Townlong Steppes, I only had one breadcrumb quest to start the Dread Waste (Klaxxi) quests. That breadcrumb was sat on a wall on the border between Vale of Eternal Blossoms and the Dread Wastes.
I know from previous experience that there is a flight path next to the Quest giver and I had the quest Threat in the South, unfortunately no Flight Master wanted to send me there. I tried scaling the wall from both sides and eventually discovered this little nugget of information.

"Alternately, you can ride to Shado-Pan Fallback, enter the doors and ascend the staircase to the top of the wall, you can then ride southward to get there."

This however is one rough ride, and you are very likely to be attacked and dismounted en route. The Shado Pan are busy fighting the Mantids on the ramparts and they will take great pleasure attacking a lone player running along minding their own business. I choose to continue running without attracting too much attention or damage.

Death Knights start the expansion and seem to suffer more than Hunters and Shaman in the degradation of their powers around levels 88 and 89. The Klaxxi quests became a war of attrition at time and will no doubt please the Grumpy Elf that I experienced the Dread Wastes at level 89 before I strap on my crafted PvP gear at level 90 and start kicking butt again.

My next choices for levelling are Mage, Paladin, and Warrior. My Mage is an enchanter/tailor and it would be nice to level those professions properly. My Paladin is an Alchemist and is already at max level. My warrior would provide Blacksmithing which will clothe my Warrior, Death Knight, and Paladin, so it is probably going to be Warrior by default.

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Yesterday I discussed the WoW Anniversary, and today the Godmother further discussed the issue. The point I was wanting to make was in the comments section, where I first got an idea from Dobablo and then got the answer from Iometa.

 

To summarise the comments, Blizzard have given us a Present of 8% extra XP and reputation gain from killing mobs, at the same time that you can get the Spirit of Sharing from the Thanksgiving Holiday. The Spirit of Sharing gives 10% on all kills and quests, making it infinitely superior to the Anniversary version, the downside is the pain in the arse way to refresh the buff every hour.

 

Thanks Blizzard for giving us a worse buff than one we have available every year. Here is a tip to make everything better, have a 10% anniversary reward on mobs and quests, but make it last 2 weeks and is activated via the Tabard/WoW Icon in your bags. Win Win - well done Blizzard.

Happy Birthday

Happy 8th Birthday, World of Warcraft. I find it slightly disturbing that my son is nearly 8, and I have been playing this game for the entire length of his life. The game has changed but not as much as my son, so I just wanted to say thank you Blizzard for keeping my mind body and soul active when I wasn't changing nappies (diapers for the Americans out there).

I have seen some complaints about not getting a new pet, but to be honest who wants a pet that everybody else in the entire game has. This game allows individualism in our outward appearance of gear through transmogrification and a choice of hundreds of vanity battle pets to show off our whacky choices.

Brian: No, no. Please, please please listen. I've got one or two things to say.
The Crowd: Tell us! Tell us both of them!
Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong. You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!
The Crowd: Yes! We're all individuals!
Brian: You're all different!
The Crowd: Yes! We're all different!
Man in crowd: I'm not...
Man in crowd: Shhh!
Brian: You've all got to work it out for yourselves.
The Crowd: Yes! We've got to work it out for ourselves!
Brian: Exactly!
The Crowd: Tell us more!
Brian: No! That's the point! Don't let anyone tell you what to do! Otherwise - Ow! Ow!

Sorry, I had to put in the above sketch from Monty Python's Life of Brian. My point is yes we are all different, but there are only so many races, colours, sexes, models, piercings, and facial hair to choose from, that we are pretty much the same at the end of the day. Although there is a difference between a Tauren and a Gnome, we still all have the same gear choices.

Does anybody still use the Baby Blizzard Bear or Onyxian Whelpling from the 4th and 5th Anniversaries? I am guessing the answer is firmly no. The reason is that they are not unique, and we all want to be different.

If I was to do Pet Battles I would definitely use the cutest cuddly pets to perform unspeakable acts in combat. It is part of my perverted thinking to have a cute killing machine.

Do not mourn the fact that we have no gifts, enjoy the fact that we get an extra 8% XP. Why not 10% it's a nice round figure, go on Blizzard push the boat. Ok, I get it 8th anniversary 8% XP, 7th Anniversary 7% XP. With all the Reputations issues at the moment give us a temporary amnesty, 2 weeks of big rep gains, not 8% on mob kills alone. That extra 1 rep for the Black Prince is going to come in really handy.

Hey Hey My My (Into The Black)

It's better to burnout, than to fade away

Cataclysm had some rough times, but I never unsubscribed. I kept the game ticking over, by changing the way I played the game. Early Cataclysm was just too hard core, especially for healers of which I have 3, so instead I PvP'ed. The Troll dungeons were too long and too damn hard for random groups, so I PvP'ed. I am not a PvP'er but I used my time in the game and had some fun in the process.

Early Mists of Pandaria, does not appear to be too hard, but there is so much to do. Last night, I was burned out and did not want to do anything. I have so many options that I just felt over faced by the whole experience. I can only liken the experience to my 'All Inclusive' holiday a few weeks ago, were food and drink is available 24/7 that in the end you just do not want to eat anything. Sometimes there is such a thing as too much.

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I managed to catch up on some podcasts this week and in particular I struck by the general conversations in the Hunting Party Podcasts. The 3 Amigos were joined by BRK, which was my main reason to listen in on podcast 148 and 149. The 4 podcasters are very knowledgeable about the game and in particular about Hunters and theorycrafting. It would appear that Hunters have so many options, buttons, cooldowns and changes from the Cataclysm model, that even the experts are not too sure what spells they have got and in which spec they reside if at all.

 

All this comes at a time when Beast Mastery, which has traditionally been the lowest of the 3 specs in terms of DPS output, is now top and the class that is traditionally the most popular Marks Man is currently one of the lowest performing DPS specs in the game. Hunters have tended to drift to the so called highest performing spec. In the Burning Crusades which is now thought to be the previous Golden Age of Beast Mastery, the specs where divided as follows:

 

1. Marks Man - 55%
2. Beast Mastery - 30%
3. SurVival - 15%

These figures first appeared in Big Red Kitty's Blog at the time when BM was king, so it shows that the herd are not always up-to-date with the parses. It is more difficult to determine primary specs now that most people are dual specced and everyone has a BM spec so they can show off their Exotic Pets, which is why they take their figures from Raiding parses and not something like WoW Census.

Blizzard wanted to do away with cookie cutter specs, but we have ended with a scenario were the theorycrafters are not 100% comfortable with the Hunter class. Having a Hunter has your main was like putting on a comfy pair of slippers. Nothing really changed that much. Changing mana for Focus, did anybody notice a change in our play style, nah not really, but making spec based spells available to all specs throws the class into turmoil. A Beast Master with Readiness, WTF! It is going to take time and Tier sets always favour MarksMan, but at the moment their best spec is very average at best, and has a far more complicated box of spells and cooldowns than Mages which are rocking the free world.

 

Guild Ox has a breakdown of Classes and Specs that are raiding and PvPing. I am guessing that with the rapid transfer of information that is contained in the WoW community, that this will closely match the recent DPS parses that Frostheim analysed for WoW Insider.

 

Using Frostheim's figures for 10 Man Normal Raiding, and the Guild Ox popularity graph, it shows that the most popular specs are the current best performing specs in a 10 Man Normal Raid. As if by magic the reverse is also true, and the current worst performing are the least populated specs.

 

The interesting point from this is where 2 specs are viewed as being similar in performance then the population distribution is also split equally. If Blizzard could ever balance the specs it would be an interesting game with DPS classes having a 33.3% distribution splits. We all know of course that this will never happen

 

Hot Fuss

Later this month, I will be celebrating my 15th Wedding Anniversary or Ruby anniversary for those that are that way inclined. As parents for the last 9 years we don't tend to get out much as a couple, but we do like to go to a concert especially in November as treat to yourselves.

This year was a real treat for my wife, who has a particular soft spot for the Las Vegas Rockers, The Killers. Being an old git I prefer to sit down for my concerts these days, but my wife wanted to stand and dance, so I reluctantly agreed to stand. Little did I know in advance I would be suffering from a touch of sciatica caused from decorating the dinning room at the weekend. It was caused by over stretching whilst painting the ceiling.

On Tuesday 13th November I finished work early travelled the 30 miles from one side of Manchester to the other, picked up my wife, after a quick change of clothing, said goodbye to the kids and set off in the direction of Manchester. It is probably the same in every city, but in Manchester they raise the price of parking tickets to ridiculous levels. I only want to park not buy the parking space. Our cunning plan was to park at one of the few Tram Stations that as it own car park, and get the Tram into Manchester grab a bite to eat and go to the concert.

We arrived in Manchester safely but we were running short on time, so no time for fine wine and dining. It was off to Burger King were we witnessed four drunks being forcibly ejected by a very hefty security guard. Maybe they paid his wages in burgers and fries.

I am quite partial to a Burger King but the service in their eateries is appalling. They are the polar opposite of McDonalds. McDonalds offer cardboard food, quickly and cleanly. Being short on time, this was an agonising wait for the food, and my wife was rushing me with every mouthful.

We arrived at the Manchester Arena with 21,000 other happy punters and got our tickets from the box office, so that we could join the first of many queues. Inside the arena is chaos and moving several metres in any direction takes strategic planning. It took 10 minutes to get to the toilets and I was pleased that I wasn't overly desperate.

We then queued to get the tickets checked, queued down the stairs, queued to get a wrist strap tagged, and then onwards towards the stage. The floor of the arena was full of what can only be described as Grummle Packers, with kegs of Fosters Lager, strapped to their backs, and selling a pint for the princely sum of £4.50.

At 9.00 PM the concert started with the lights still on, with the Killers performing one of their biggest hits "Mr Brightside". The arena was rocking and my wife was dancing and spilling other peoples beer with her flailing arms.

Four songs in the music died, and the enigmatic lead singer Brandon Flowers announced that he was too ill to continue. The band walked off to hushed silence.

I picked up our belongings and rushed my wife out of the Arena as quickly as possible. The rest of the audience stayed in situ not believing what had just unfolded in front of their very eyes.

At £40 a ticket that equates to £10 a song, which is considerably more expensive than i-tunes.

If the concert is rescheduled on a night that we can attend, then we will have had 2 nights entertainment out of the same event. If not it was a Great Rock 'n' Swindle.

No Way But The Hard Way

Cooking and First Aid have always been fairly easy to level in World of Warcraft. These 2 secondary professions could easily be progressed via the random drops in the expansion levelling process. The key components are cloth and meat, which are always in abundant supply or alternatively for those with a bigger budget, they could be levelled via the Auction House in a matter of minutes.

Fishing and Archaeology take a far more leisurely approach, but have been significantly streamlined over the years with daily quests for fishing and more fragments per digsite in the case of archaeology.

First Aid is still as easy as ever but the new grindy profession is Cooking with the new ‘Way of’ system. Levelling from 1-525 is now a one stop shop, but 525 to Zen is a different kettle of fish.

It is only 2 days ago, I was espousing the need to only do the parts of the game that you want to, and yet I am here today to complain about the jumbled mess I am in, trying to complete all 6 ‘Way of’ at the same time. The figures below tell their own story.

 

Total Ingredients to Complete all 6 Way of
	Brew	Grill	Oven	Pot	Steamer	Wok	Total
100 Year Soy Sauce	5	5	5	5	5	5	30
Ginseng	25						25
Green Cabbage	250						250
Jade Squash	65				250		315
Witchberries	315						315
Jade Lungfish		13		25			38
Raw Crab Meat		50					50
Raw Tiger Steak		25					25
Redbelly Mandarin		50					50
Striped Melon		65					65
White Turnip		250					250
Krasarang Paddlefish			76				76
Mogu Pumpkin			250				250
Raw Turtle Meat			50	13			63
Wildfowl Breast			25		50	13	88
Juicycrunch Carrot				315		50	365
Mushan Ribs				50			50
Reef Octopus				50		13	63
Emperor Salmon					63		63
Giant Mantis Shrimp					25	50	75
Scallions					65		65
Crocolisk Belly						50	50
Red Blossom Leek						250	250

There are 22 items involved so that is potentially 22 bag slots or nearly an entire bag devoted to the basic ingredients, and that is before you start making the end product. Of these items only 2 are purchased, these items are Ginseng and 100 Year Soy Sauce.

Vegetables

Vegetables can of course be grown on the farm or alternatively a bag of 25 can be purchased with an Ironpaw Token.
 

Green Cabbage	250
Jade Squash	315
Witchberries	315
Striped Melon	65
White Turnip	250
Mogu Pumpkin	250
Juicycrunch Carrot	365
Scallions	65
Red Blossom Leek	250

Although at first glance the figures look on the high side, it is quite easy to achieve when the farm is in full operation with 16 slots. The downside is the opportunity cost of not growing Motes of Harmony.

Meat

Meat is the by-product of killing beasts and you will naturally accrue a sizable stash through levelling and daily questing. It could be argued that 88 is a lot of birds to kill.
 

Raw Crab Meat	50
Raw Tiger Steak	25
Raw Turtle Meat	63
Wildfowl Breast	88
Mushan Ribs	50
Crocolisk Belly	50

Fish

Fish is the result of fishing (duh), and in my opinion is the part where the ‘Way of’ system falls down. These appear to be very large quantities of fish, and in particular 75 Giant Mantis shrimp.

Jade Lungfish	38
Redbelly Mandarin	50
Krasarang Paddlefish	76
Reef Octopus	63
Emperor Salmon	63
Giant Mantis Shrimp	75

For anybody who has gone off in search of the fabled Giant Mantis Shrimp, there are not many pools available and you will spend plenty of time flying around the coast of Pandaria looking for them.

Fishing and Cooking have always had a symbiotic relationship but there was nearly always an alternative. Now the budding chef must also be a fisherman, and quite frankly this is another grind on top of our other grinds. In many respects it mirrors the issue of gating reputation behind another reputation; it is double trouble and will only lead to more complaints and extra discontent.

Blizzard has to traverse the rocky road between content and repetition, and at the moment repetition is winning.