Absolute Beginners

8 Years playing, and still I have some absolute noob moments. In my attempt to level my Panda Monk, I have had a relatively seamless transition between the old expansions. That was until I pitched up at Hyjal.

On arriving at Hyjal the first quests send you off to kill Elementals, find some berries and kill 4 hidden orcish dudes. Having smashed all in my wake, I karate kicked my way to the elementals. Wow do they hit like a train and how many Hit Points?

The problem was of course one of stat inflation, which after an expansion of rampant gear inflation in WotLK it is not a surprise. Having only quested through Sholazar Basin, my gear was in the region of iLevel 162. If you look at the weapon below this is something like the one I was using.

 

When cataclysm launched 2 and bit years ago, everybody would have been sporting at least iLevel 200 Epic weapons. Typically something like the transmog favourite the Staff of Trickery from the Heroic Violet Hold.

 

 

 

Alternatively from the Forge of Souls, it was possible to obtain the Tower of the Mouldering Corpse (lovely name). This was from the first of the three Heroics which dropped with Icecrown Patch and was very doable even with LFD.

 

 

 

These items do not compare in any way, shape or form. Even if you ignore the large increase in base stats like agility and stamina, the biggest leap is in the damage per second, with a doubling of the base DPS. Even as a linear increase this should result in the Elementals dying twice as fast. Sadly I did not work this out until I received the following as a quest reward.

 

 

More than double the DPS and I was swapping from a 2 Hander to a 1 Hander. The worst part of all this, is that at level 80 there is a quest to continue your training to be a Monk. The quest reward is the Bladed Staff of the Echoing Gong.

 

 

After that there is no problem in Hyjal, and everyone will run away in terror as soon as you approach.
Tip for non-noob moment, complete your training ASAP, it's worth it.

Land Of Confusion

 

2 Posts have struck a chord with me recently. The first was the Godmother with Find Your Smile, which did not go into specifics, but it did mention that "Nothing's changed with the game since yesterday: the problem is me." Now it is not my place to even guess what it going on with the Godmother but sincerely hopes she finds her mojo, or whatever is bothering her.

The second post was from the Grumpy Elf, and yet again Grumpy is bang on the nail with some Blizzard design flaws. Blizzard's design philosophy reminds me of some of the better American TV shows of the last 20 years. They start with a plot for the pilot and the first few shows and then make them up on a weekly basis. If the show extends into several seasons then the plot goes askew because they had a start and no ending, examples of this are the X-Files, Lost and Heroes.

Blizzard have over time, refined, changed and not settled on a philosophy for over 8 years. They call this evolution but undue tinkering maybe the issue. Take for instance the Raid philosophy over the years:

• Very difficult Raids
• Easy Raids
• Huge numbers of participants
• 25 total strangers in a dumbed down version,
• Raiding 4 times a week with different lockouts.
• Fluctuated between 10 and 25 man raids in the same expansion
• They have made end game difficult to obtain
• They have made end game easy to obtain
• They have had expansions where it possible to raid on multiple characters
• They have had expansions where you can only really raid on one character
• Some raids have one boss
• Some raids have 13 bosses

The problem is they fluctuate from one side of the spectrum to the other without ever finding a sensible middle ground. One example of this is WotLK in which Call of the Crusader, (or whatever it was called) had no trash, and 4 tiers of difficulty with different iLevels on the 4 raids. Blizzard decided to introduce lockouts in an attempt to control player behaviour and reduced the gear to 2 sets of iLevel gear. The result was total freedom to choose how many times you could raid in a week to a restrictive once a week By the time Icecrown Citadel was the current raid, the player base had multiple alts to raid with due to the ease of gearing alts to endgame content by bashing out as many 5 man heroics as possible, in very quick instances (5 to 10 minutes was not uncommon ).

Cataclysm was supposed to be Alt friendly but they introduced gated content in several places which slows and deters people from grinding out the same content again, and again and again. The 5 man Heroics went from 5-10 to 2 hour marathons through the Zul's in a war of attrition of find a tank and healer who would stay for the duration.

Mists of Pandaria, was designed with the philosophy of plenty of end game content, which is all supposed to be optional. You simply choose to do what you want to do, when you want to do it. The problem is some of the options are not optional and are totally mandatory, resulting in repeat activities required to be undertaken every day, with no ability to shortcut the exercise.

Reputation is not optional, dailies are not optional, can you afford to not tend to your farm, in terms of resources or money, 1 LFD and 1 scenario a day, weekly LFR and Sha of Anger. The gear drops seem to be poor and psychologically who wants good Blue gear when you can have Purple Epics.
Valor must be capped each week in order to upgrade or purchase new gear.

Honestly I can not see a way of getting gear other than through valor at the moment and the accumulation of an item every fortnight is just too much like hard work.

I like to accumulate lower end gear quickly and when it becomes difficult, or hard work, I tend to move on to my next alt. On an effort versus reward scale I want lots of reward for a small amount of effort, and I can then duplicate the effect 10 or 11 times on all my alts. Being stuck with one character for the whole expansion is not my idea of fun. I want to do my bit for the community too, I have no Tank and my main is a ranged DPSer, but I do have 4 alts that like to heal, and I have not the method or enthusiasm to do it under the current system. 5.2 will not bring any respite and no shortcuts.

When faced with the same inability to gear my alts or raid on my main, my choice in Cataclysm was to PvP. In MoP I have elected unintentionally to tune out and drop out. If dailies have become mandatory, then I have chosen to do something else. At present I am levelling a Panda Monk, after that I have an entire stable of other alts and I have yet to even touch Pet Battles.

The Grumpy Elf also identified that the easiest way to gear for PvE is through PvP. This is a weakness in the design and now that PvP are additional to the iLevel not instead of, they become genuine alternatives to the PvE gear. Honor and Conquest gear is achieved relatively easily and in the past I often done old content to cheat the system. This includes doing the PvP quests in the Grizzly Hills for a whopping 55 Honor a day for killing 10 Orcs. and then moving done to the harbour to complete the other 3 quests. Added to these quests is Wintergrasp and Tol Barad. The bigger Battle Grounds like Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest,  offer places to hide for those less initiated in the art of PvP. Lets face it crafted PvP blues are going to ensure that you do not get to see much fight time, and it is better to sit and wait on Noob Hill (do not sit or even worse dance, as you will only upset the veterans).

Right now the game is starting to look like early Cataclysm did. Remember the peak numbers of WoW subscribers came at the start of Cataclysm not at the end of Wrath of the Lich King. Mists of Pandaria was given a good honeymoon period before the criticism started, but I seriously think that patch 5.2 needs to be a good one if they are not going to get a big drop in subscriber numbers again.

Having taken several weeks off to level a Monk, I am much less stressed about doing dailies. Dailies are not the problem per se, it is the routine that you get into to complete your To Do List. Everybody eventually rebels against doing the same tasks everyday for a long time, this is one of the reason why we as humans need to take a summer vacation. If School years were made up of 30 weeks straight with no breaks, then kids and Teachers would be hitting each other with sticks by the end of it. Now Blizzard does not make us do the same tasks everyday, but they do provide certain incentives to do so. I am not forced to logon with 4 max level characters, tilling and sowing and harvesting my crop, but the missed opportunity of not harvesting 16x4 plots on my farm of Enigma seeds or Songbell seeds.

Ann Stickney at WoW Insider recently argued that Daily Quests must go, not because they are bad or because she does not like them, but purely because it is not compelling content, and we have enough other things to do. Reputation grinding via daily quests, when we have had it so easy with Tabards and chain running Heroics for 4 years. The result of these two expansions left me personally with green reputation bars, when compared to vanilla and Outlands I have plenty of gaps in my reputation bars. Ann also points to the 5.1 quest hub as being a very good implementation of Dailies interspersed with storyline,  I totally agree with this point and also made the same argument here.

I recently read The Queue on WoW Insider were someone wrote in and asked a question about running Operation:Shieldwall for a second time and the rep gains from the commendation. The writer was very dismissive asking why anyone would want to do this content a second time on another character. I thought this was a strange response, because of all the current Daily Hubs this is the one that I would do on multiple characters because the valor rewards are so much better than the pre 5.1 rep grinds.

World of Warcraft wants to be all inclusive and yet the contradictary behaviour of Blizzard shows they are making the episodes up as the go along, there is no joined up thinking at the moment and we can expect more mood swings from the developers in all aspects of the game.

For now I am going to keep my head down and play the game my way and at my pace. Remember when you are in LFR and waiting for a healer, I have 4 of them but Blizzard does not want me to play them any more.

Immigrant Song

Apologies for the lack of posts in the last few weeks. It is not that that I haven't been writing them it just that I have not finished them. I have had several posts in draft form and so it is my job to determine if they are still worth posting or not. The reason for my tardiness is simple, I am just too damn busy at work since the Christmas break. January is the new financial year and a chance to spend large amounts of money on new servers, laptops and desktops.

This post was originally started when I first arrived in Northrend at level 68. I was enjoying myself in Nagrand at the time, but I received the call from the King and set forth from Stormwind Harbour.

The step up from Outland was non-existent, and if anything I suspect the starter zones have been nerfed slightly. Being able to fly allows quick movement into quest areas and I can see why Blizzard likes to restrict flying for expansions and new zones.

On arrival at the Borean Tundra, I took the screenshot below.

 

A familiar pattern was emerging, with Herbalism being above the old 375 for the Outland expansion, and Archaeology and First Aid were exactly were they needed to be. Cooking and mining are slightly below the requirement but are within 25 skillups which allowed for the next tier of training. Fishing of course is lagging behind, but this is not an issue.

 

I completed half of Borean Tundra before swapping to Howling Fjord. I completed this zone until I reach the achievement I've Toured the Fjord which is a staggering 130 quests, before moving to Dragonblight and doing sufficient quests to get to Level 77 and then onto Sholazar Basin.

 

I was able to complete 3 levels in the Region due mostly to herbing and some mining. There is plenty of competition for resources, but then again there are a lot of resources. I am still surprised to see max level characters fighting with the monks for Adder's Tongue and Saronite Ore. Have these people got nothing better to do?

 

In general Northrend like the Outlands is still a good place to level, even on the 11th occasion. I did plan to do more instances than just Utgarde Keep, but I just kept rolling through the quests instead.

 

I finally ran out of money to pay for the last flight skill of 5000G. being short by only a few hundred gold. I decided to dip into my treasure trove and have not left my Monk penniless and destitute, although that would possibly be a good Role Playing choice.

Ramparts

The Outlands feels like a comfortable pair of old slippers. The zones may not be as polished as Pandaria, but there is a homely feel about the place. The XP rewards are excellent (if you want to level quickly), but the mobs seem to die a hell of a lot quicker than I remember. The Fel boar used to be a challenge at level 58 and it was very important to avoid being double teamed by the orcs whilst collecting wood and metal. Now unfortunately it is just a roflstomp through the zone, with multiple mobs being a requirement not a hindrance.

Traditionally I have been involved with people who would offer to drag your worthless carcass around the Hellfire Ramparts, in a whirlwind of death, carnage and mayhem. I tentative asked a friend if he was busy, and after he had completed a LFR, he appeared in Hellfire Peninsula all set to commit Genocide on the Outland Orcs.

It does not really matter which class you run this instance with, because the AoE damage is a one shotter for even the Bosses. I had enough problems trying to loot the bodies and keep up with my friend on his Frost Mage.

I have not done any of the old instances for awhile and was very impressed with all the quests being neatly contained within the instance. After about 2 minutes with the second boss down I noticed that I was not the only person with an achievement for Hellfire Ramparts. Oov has a stupid amount of alts (nearly as many as me) and must have skipped instances when levelling through the Outlands on this character.:

The third boss died a little quickly, so quick in fact that Oov killed the dragon before the rider had dismounted, rendering my quest as incomplete. As an apology I was dragged around Blood Furnace and a second trip round Hellfire Ramparts.

I noticed during this time, that I was far more comfortable in Ramparts than Blood Furnace, and it got me thinking as to which instances I have enjoyed over the years. The following is my list:

Vanilla

Best: Uldaman - This brings back happy memories for me. I am not sure why, because the original design was shocking, with something like a 8 level gap between the entrance trash and the final boss. Either you are too strong for the start or hideously out of your depth for the last boss. Still I always enjoyed this instance, you can't beat killing a room full of Dwarves dressed up to look like Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top. Other notable highlights are Deadmines for being the first and Shadowfang Keep for making a skinner earn his keep.

Worst: Maraudon - I can only liken this place to having someone put a bag on your head, put in a car and driven around for 30 minutes, then put in a cellar and then asked which way is North. People where known to lose the will to live just finding one of the two entrances.

The Burning Crusades

Best: Underbog - This was just a crazy mixed up instance, with tight packs of mobs 4 wacky bosses and plenty of herbs and skins for everyone. Sporebats and Naga, it was a strange drug induced trip.

Worst: Shattered Halls -  The Burning Crusades had some tough instances but this was tough, if I remember correctly it had gating requiring a certain reputation with Honor Hold. The normal version was harder than the Heroic versions of some of the others. The Gauntlet and the Slime Pool just left me cold.

Wrath of the Lich King

Best: Drak'tharon Keep - WotLK required us to run a daily Heroic and thankfully they had a good bunch of them. This was quick and easy and a lot of fun, except for waiting for the end bit with the inevitable appearance of the LK himself. Running out of the instance was fun dropping down the water sections, unless some wisecracking DK turned on Path of Frost.

Worst: Oculus - Possibly the most hated instance ever. WoW is about heroes using the skills they have learnt over time. Riding on the back of a dragon and fighting with strange spells was a complete disaster. This kind of instance will never appear again, just like an entire zone under water. 3D combat in the air or in water just does not work. Even nerfing the place and extra rewards kept many people out of this instance.

Cataclysm

Best: Hour of Twilight - This is my winner, not because it was good, but because I didn't mind doing it and the rewards were very good. This was the last of the instances introduced with patch 4.3 and all 3 were better than the dross that had preceded them.

Worst: Zul'Gurub - This was the worst instance of a bad bunch. This instance took longer to complete than a raid. Zul'Aman was slightly better only due to the fact that the timing was far less than Zul'Gurub.

Mists of Pandaria

It is still too early to make any decisions on the current expansion but I would be interested to know what people think of the current Heroics. Please let me know which the fastest ones are.

It's A Mystery

Just a quickie from my questing in Zangarmarsh. I was doing a quest for the lovely people at Sporeggar, Now that we are Friends... when then offered me an interesting Polearm.

 

I am just curious if any one can remember which class this was designed?

That Smell

Levelling cooking up to level 300 as always been problematic. The problem is the last 30 or so skillups. Using the CraftersTome as my bible, it would appear that the last vendor recipes end at level 250, which suggests that they are unlikely to be still green at level 300.

In Vanilla WoW we had all the time in the world and as part of levelling we would visit almost every zone, and on some quests we would even be sent on FedEx quests all over Azeroth. Now the quests are streamlined and the number of zones we are required to visit is vastly reduced. This is why keeping cooking recipes on a vendor in Feralas does not make any sense any more. I didn't even go to Kalimdor when levelling.

The other issue is that recipes are predominantly Fish based, so unless you have kept your fishing skill at a similar level to your cooking, because the only pools at the top end I could find were for Stonescale Eels. I doubt there are many Goblins on your realm that are fishing and selling Large Raw Mightfish, Darkclaw Lobster, Raw Whitescale Salmon, or even Winter Squid.

I could choose to wait until I can get to Pandaria and skill up cooking all in one go at Halfhill, but why should I waste all the Ravager Flesh, Buzzard Meat and Clefthoof Meat that I am going to collect in the next 10 levels.

In order to complete my cooking up to 300, I sent my Druid to Booty Bay to fish for Raw Spotted Yellowtail, which proved to be not high enough for my requirements, so moved to the Blasted Lands to fish for Fillet of Redgill and Large Raw Mightfish. This area also proved to be not what I was looking for so I moved to a secluded beach between Blasted Lands and Swamp of Sorrows. This area gave a wide variety of fish and clams, but unfortunately I collect a large quantity of Stonescale Eels at the same time.

In order to use up all the fish I had caught I neede to look up the recipes for Darkclaw Lobster and Raw Whitescale Salmon. Google stated vendor Feralas and the one comment indicated Camp Mojache. Using that logic I assumed Feathermoon Stronghold would be the place to go. I dispatched my mage to Theramore, and nearly broke her neck when she fell from the non existant Tower (Thanks Garrosh) and then flew to Feathermoon. I spoke to every vendor in the area with no luck at finding the recipes and then flew to the encampment south of Dire Maul, still no luck.

Back in Stormwind I decided to buy off the Auction House and was stung for 175 Gold for a 2 Gold recipe (ouch). In the end I had wasted too much time to justify carrying this charade.

The result of fishing for 10 minutes in 3 spots, flying to Feralas can be seen below:

 

I am really quite annoyed that I should have had to do this to level a secondary profession, and I am very annoyed for being fleeced for 175 Gold. This can be so easily fixed by Blizzard, but as Grimmtooth pointed out they are only interested in current content, and the old stuff and bug fixes can stay as they are. This is not a good model for new starters to encounter.

 

p.s. The vendor in Feralas is Vivianna and I have no idea how I managed to miss her.

Soundtrack of Our Lives

In case you hadn't noticed, I have more than a passing interest in music. When I first started blogging my post Titles were going to be pop culture references in the style of World of Warcraft. As per usual things did not quite go to plan and music became my only theme for my WoW posts.

Over the Christmas period I did happen to catch a little snippet of news that was very relevant to me,

"Making digital copies of music, films and other copyrighted material for personal use is to be made legal for the first time under government plans. It has previously been illegal in the UK to rip songs from a CD to a digital player or transfer eBooks, music, films and games from one device to another. "

From my earliest memories, I can always recollect people taping albums for use in the car, to lend to someone else, making mix tapes, recording songs from the Top 40, when it was broadcast every Sunday on BBC (Radio 1). Now if you are in your teens and you are reading this, you will probably have no idea what I am talking about.

Before the advent of MP3 players and more importantly the iPod, music was recorded onto cassette tape (see below).

Once upon a time we used to load computer games using this media, but alas I am digressing. Portable music was first introduced to the world in the form of the Sony Walkman.

In 1979 the Sony Walkman went on sale, and was bought by millions of people worldwide. If you watch any films from the period you would also think we all travelled on Roller skates or blades or whatever was the fashion.

The point I am making is that most of the tapes used were copies of the vinyl recordings. One of the reasons was cost, but also Walkman's had a habit of chewing up tapes and nobody wanted to lose their latest and expensive recording of Abba or Blondie.

In the late 80's when I was at University, I used to 100's of tapes a year and record all the music I could get my hands on. I was of course too poor to spend money on CD's and besides I did not own a CD player. I did however own one of these.

Notice the double tape deck for the easy and very illegal coping of tape to tape.

The world had of course moved on in leaps and bounds and everybody is consuming books, music, films and television in ever more diverse ways.

My music collection is now incredibly large and legit. I do not use bookcase for books, they are filled exclusively with CD's and DVD's (No Blu Ray yet). I do however keep an electronic version on my computer, and just in case I have 2 further backups of my music collection on external USB drives.

The total of music stored on this digital media can be seen below:

A quite staggering 200 GB of music files. Now I predict that on the day that HMV appointed an administrator, that the physical media is dying a death, and that the reality is that people will eventually have a NAS storage system or more likely all our media is going to be stored in the cloud.