Things to do to prepare for raiding

I was doing some thinking lately about raiding, more specifically raiding in the new 4.3 raid. With a new raid and new heroics to get gear from, 4.3 is looking to be full of cool things. It is also the perfect time for someone who is leveling at the moment and is interested in raiding to prepare themselves to do so. Between crafted gear, VP/JP gear, BoE epics, and the new heroic gear, someone can go from a freshly dinged 85 wearing greens and quest blues to a nicely geared ready to raid 85.

But getting the gear is only the first step to get yourself ready to raid like a pro. In fact getting gear is usually one of the easier things you can do. My warlock hit 85 on a saturday and couldn't even run regular heroics. So I got to work and between JP gear, BoE epics, and crafting gear, he was only a few points of shy of running trollroics which would up his item level/stats enough so that if I choose to take him into a raid, I can pull my own weight. After some luck with heroic drops he was ready for trollroics!

I know several people are in this boat, finally 85 and wanting to raid in 4.3 so I decided to come up with a few things to do to prepare themselves to raid.

Walking on the Dark Side

November is upon us and with it comes the endless torture that is Christmas music. /shudder. Also with November comes the realization that Star Wars: The Old Republic comes out in next month, seven weeks from now to be more precise and slightly less time before the deluxe pre-order people get their early access. Now what does this mean for you? Well nothing if you have no plans for playing SWTOR, now if you are planning on playing it...you should be super excited as it is almost here.

Why am I mentioning a competing MMO when I play WoW? Well because...I'm a Star Wars nerd. I can hide it from you all no longer. As such I will be playing TOR when it comes out. Will I be leaving WoW for TOR? NO I will in fact not stop playing WoW. I plan on playing both games until one or the other stops being fun or I run out of money to pay for both. Or I die from Nerdgasm overload.

Now I know to some people out there, it's blasphemy to play anything other than WoW and to said people, I am betraying everything I claim to love because of my plan. Honestly those people are crazy.  I love WoW and have been a fan of the Warcraft Universe since Warcraft 1 was released. Warcaft 1 was actually the first game that I had ever downloaded off the interwebs (that's what we called the internet back in the day) and I loved it so much I went out and bought the legal version. I still have the game and its instruction manuals somewhere in a box in the garage, that's how much I loved reading through the manuals to learn the story of the game. If Blizzard released Warcraft 1/2 for the iPhone/iPad/iWhatever I'd buy them in a heart beat. I remember playing through the Warcraft 3 campaign and geeking out at how awesome a storyline Blizzard had crafted. WC3 was yet again another game that I pirated and went out and bought a full copy after playing it a little.

Now that I have established what a Warcraft fanboy I am, let me tell you about my Star Wars fanboy cred. I grew up watching the movies, riding the Star Tours ride at the Disney MGM theme park, wishing that I could get a lightsaber for Christmas(still wish for this one), reading the expanded universe books, dressing up as Darth Vader for Halloween, and playing many of the Star Wars games that were produced. For the longest time I equated Christmas with Star Wars because certain channels would show all three movies on Christmas day and I of course would sit and watch as much as I could before I was dragged away from the tv to do other stuff. Even though I was vehemently against the idea of having to pay monthly for an MMO, I popped my MMO cherry with Star Wars Galaxies. I couldn't resist the idea of being able to play a character in the Star Wars universe. So many good memories there. /reminisce

Anyway back on topic, WoW holds a spot in my heart but my heart is big enough for some TOR loving. When the game comes out 10 of my guildees and I are planning on playing it and we've already created a Sith guild through the pre-launch guild system that BioWare has created which I find pretty cool. Not having to start on new server on launch day and hoping that your can get all your guildees online to sign a guild charter is definitely a bonus in my book. As I said we are going Sith so if any of you readers have an interest in playing with a super awesome guild when TOR launches, feel free to app at the link above.We could always use a few more fun loving peoples in our war against the forces of dumb lightsider(run by Stop and Asros) nublets.(run by Fimlys)

Will I be tuning this blog towards both WoW and TOR? Now that one I am not sure what the answer is yet. I am still undecided if I want to talk about TOR here or at all. As the launch date gets closer I will make a decision. Maybe if I see that my readers want to hear about TOR I would do it. I still have plenty to talk about in WoW, I just sadly haven't had the time to write quality posts due to work, saddening I know.

So to recap: I will be playing both WoW AND SWTOR, I may blog about TOR, I will definitely continue trying to blog about WoW, and most important Tacos are the most versatile fruit. =D

Twanking with a Tink

Or what to do after going from level 1 to max level in 3 days, only it's not a paid account, it's a trial account, and there are many restrictions and so, many considerations.


While I'm on my honeymoon, you my lovely readers get to enjoy the following guest post with the ridiculously long post title by my blogging buddy Revoemag. - Jed

Ok, first thing’s first.  My name is Revoemag, or as most call me, Rev.  While Jed is away, he was kind enough to ask me to write a guest post in his corner. (on his corner?) Anyway, I’ve been an off and on WoW player for a few years. Right now, I’m really an off WoW player.  My main account has been down for nearly a year now. A month or two ago, I was craving to play again and happened to read that trial accounts were free to play up to level 20 indefinitely, or until blizz changes that.  I thought, why not, and created a rogue, a class I was familiar with.  I had known Jed for a while, hanging out in the Blog Azeroth chatroom, and decided I would roll my lowbie on the Ursin server, where Jed and his Avengers were located.  I had also never really played on Alliance side and so I made a frightening little gnome named Plazlo. (as a side note, I’m not really convinced gnomes can be non-frightening despite what Jed might claim) Plaz was a fun little experiment and if you’d like more information on him, you can find it here on my regular/irregular blog.
Now then, this post is not about my scary pedo-looking gnome who Stop and Jed think is better-suited to driving a white van and offering candy to children.  No, this post is about the second and third trial toons that I rolled, Revwyn and Revys.  Rev and.... well.... Rev are both Pallies, one Horde and one Alliance, Revys the prior, Revwyn the latter.  After rogue-ing for a while on my last toon, I was really wanting to learn to tank, and the trial account was a good opportunity to do this.  I also thought it might be fun to play each Rev and compare each faction, so here we are. Anyway, part way through the process Revwyn has become the main toon that I’ve been playing, possibly because she progressed quite a bit faster than Revys.

Plazlo and his big white van, er...ram

Revwyn made it to level 20 probably in about 3 days of playing her.  Really, if one so desired, a new toon could be taken to level 20 in probably 1 day.  She started running dungeons at level 15 and getting into some battlegrounds, some meaning Arathi Basin or Warsong Gulch, the two that are available at by level 20.  After she was maxed out level-wise, I thought I would gear her up, and twink her out as I had done with Plaz.  I really didn’t know what to make of twinks at that point.  I had heard of people paying gold to turn off xp-gain and maxing out their toon at a lower level, or making a twink.  Many people choose to do this at level 19 which puts them at the top of the 15-19, formerly 10-19, battleground bracket.  19 is very common, though there are other common twink levels.  For a trial account, you can turn your xp off any time, just like a regular account, though it does cost 10 gold I believe. You could roll a 19 twink; however, if you are going to do Battlegrounds, you will be placed in the xp off bracket with paid account 19 twinks, which have a huge advantage that I will speak of later.  What most trial twinks seem to do though, is go ahead and let their level cap out at 20.  This puts them in the 20-24 Battleground xp off bracket.  In theory, people could roll a 24 paid account twink and roflstomp level 20 trial account twinks.  In my limited time in Battlegrounds at this point, I’ve seen very few 24s.  By and large, I saw mainly level 20s, and I’m guessing by what I saw and what would make sense, that they were all trial accounts.  Anyway, I thought I would make a sort of trial twink at level 20 out of Revwyn and as I searched around the web, there is a whole community of people doing this.  I found guides and forums dedicated to trial twinking, so apparently I was far from alone.

People twink characters for various reasons, some for battleground competition, some for battleground pwnage (booooo), some for running dungeons, and other reasons.  I suppose I did this for various reasons.  I wanted to spend some time getting familiar with tanking and it worked very well for this.  At level 20, you can queue up for 6 dungeons, RFC, VC, SFK, WC, BFD, and Stocks.  WC and SFK are the fairly level appropriate options at level 20 and once you are geared pretty well, as a tank BFD and Stocks work just fine.  Bosses in the latter two are 5 levels higher than you, but as a tank if you have at least a mediocre amount of hit, have a good health pool, and generate decent threat, they are fine.  If you queue for a random, really you’re going to get put into WC or SFK.  It’s never put me in any of the others once I hit level 20.  I can’t tell you how many time I’ve run those two, but it’s been too many.  You might ask why would you run these over and over, and the main answer to this is rep.  Once I discovered that the Ambassador title/achievement (gaining exalted reputation with the 6 home cities of your faction) was possible, it’s been Donkey Kong on running dungeons.  

Really I think the most efficient way of gaining rep is probably doing the starting zone quests until you reach Honored with each city (city A will gain spillover reputation while you are gaining rep for City B until city A reaches Honored) and then throwing on a particular city’s tabard to gain rep for that city while killing things in dungeons.  Doing the quests in Dun Morogh is particularly rewarding as you get 250 rep for Gnomerregan and Ironforge each for each standard quest and then spillover rep for the other cities.  Once at Honored with the cities, then running 5s is a pretty speedy way of gaining rep.  SFK rewards a little under 3000 rep per run and takes a little less than a half an hour with a decent group.  WC yields a little over 3000 rep per run and takes a little more than a half an hour with a decent group.  Really good groups move a bit quicker. This works well so you don’t feel like getting put in one dungeon gimps your gain by a significant amount.  At least I didn’t feel that way, plus I think I’d go nuts only running WC or SFK.  The variety helps.  The longest stretch of running these dungeons is of course between Revered and Exalted.  It takes about 8 runs to get from one to the other.  As it stands now, Revwyn is exalted with 5 of the 6 cities, with Gilneas being the last city, currently at Honored for her. The downside is that she now hates SFK and WC.

Revwyn

Another bonus of gaining rep as a trial twink is for the bags.  Once you hit Revered rep with a city, you can then buy that city’s 16 slot bag from their quartermaster.  This is a very good idea, as bag space for your character and the bank become necessary.  Why is bag space necessary as a trial twink? The answer is simple, professions and only 3 bag slots in the bank.  Technically, you have the ability for the normal amount of bag slots in the bank, but your gold is capped at 10, so once you need to pay 25g for your fourth bank bag slot, you’re done.  Now, back to professions.  In twinking your little butt-kicker, you are going to eventually (most-likely) want to have some nice buffs for your toon.  These buffs include things like Tasty Lion Steak, Heavy Crocolisk Stew, Course Weightstones, various pots, maybe little stone statues, etc.  Keep in mind, with trial accounts, you cannot trade with other players, use the AH, or receive mail, so anything you want that comes from a profession, you have to make.  

You will change your career path often, so having plenty of room to store various mats, enchants, and buffs is a good idea. Along with this, in choosing a profession, it is good to plan ahead.  Take that statement as far as you can go.  For maximum efficiency, think of what professions you will want to end with.  Mining, Skinning, and Herbalism have very nice benefits in Toughness, Master of Anatomy, and Lifeblood.  This all depends again on what you want to do.  Are you a tank wanting to pull multiple bosses at once in WC, (say for instance someone, somehow “accidentally” pulls Kresh the non-aggressive turtle mini-boss in WC and brings her up to your Lady Anacondra fight. Don’t ask, it hurts too much.)(or say in BFD you want to survive if someone lights all four candles to open the door to Aku’mai)(or when someone pulls Gelihast before clearing any of his room in BFD), are you wanting to pump out big numbers as dps, (OH! or someone pulls Baron Silverlaine and his entire room in SFK), are you wanting to carry the flag in Warsong Gulch? (Did I mention someone, somehow pulled Kresh from the stream in the middle of the instance up to Lady Anacondra?) All of these things factor in to where you want to end up with professions.  On a trial account, all profs are capped at 100, though as it stands, you can take secondary profs above 100 even though it says you have reached the cap.  

Another thing to consider, is racial bonuses to profs.  For instance, blood elves get a 10 skill point bonus to enchanting.  This allows you to get at least a couple more enchants.  For a tank, it would give you an extra stamina enchant to your shield, which Revys is currently flexing.  In Revwyn’s case, she gets a 10 skill point bonus to jewelcrafting, which is good because she likes shiny things and little stone men. *shrugs*  It would allow her some additional shinies and Heavy Stone Statues, which would come in handy for self heals.

Revwyn learning about shinies

There are some key things that most trial twinks, and full account twinks shoot for.  The Lucky Fishing Hat, the Arena Grand Master trinket, and PVP BoA gear.   Most are comfortable enough to state that the LFH is hands down the best headslot item for any twink at low levels.  It’s a little trickier for Alliance though.  The hat has +15 stamina and 84 armor, which in regards to health, makes it the best head slot item over anything.  The nearest Alliance piece is the Rifle Commander’s Eyepatch which has +11 stamina, +8 hit, +8 agility and 110 armor. Most would take the LFH over the RCE, but as with most gearing decisions of twinks, it’s situational. The RCE is a really great piece for a set of +hit gear for times when you’re taking on higher level mobs. Anyway, to get the LFH, one needs to fish up Keefer’s Angelfish, a rare fish, during the Sunday fishing derby.  Revys has tried this once and failed and I’ve yet to have Revwyn try it since she has the eyepatch.  She’ll get there though.  

Now the Arena Grand master trinket is considered by most to be the all around best trinket to get as a lowbie twinkleton.  It has +12 stamina and upon use gives you a bubble which absorbs 1000 damage over 20 seconds. First of all, 1000 damage is huge at level 20 for any purpose.  It’s a fantastic emergency button for any role and either PVP or PVE.  The health bonus alone is also very hefty.  Now for the crappy part.  To get one of these, you need to turn in 12 Arena Master trinkets to Short John Mithril in the Gurubashi Arena.  The Arena Master trinkets are looted from the chest that Short John leaves in the center of the Gurubashi Arena every 3 hours at 12:00, 3:00, 6:00, and 9:00 server time.  Looting the chest takes 8 seconds (I think) and the arena is a free-for-all PVP area.  This can and does suck depending on your server.  Sometimes multiple level 85s show up as getting the AGM is an achievement.  Sometimes other twinks show up.  Sometimes nobody shows up (\o/).  Ursin was very kind to Revwyn as she was able to get 2 Arena Grand Master trinkets in less than 2 weeks.  I would check most mornings before work, most evening slots, and day slots when possible.  She also hit up a couple of the 2:00AM slots. (my actual time is 2 hours ahead of server time)  Most of the time on Ursin, nobody would show up.  So, for any of you thinking of starting a twink either paid or free to play, Ursin is a great place to get going and you could always server transfer later.  PVP BoA gear is really something that I’m not all that familiar with yet, but if you’re on a server where competition for the Arena Grand Master trinket is fierce, then you might want to shoot for getting these first for the stat help, including resilience.

Currently, Revwyn is at a good point of relaxation.  She’s got pretty good pieces in every slot, at least for most situations.  Since her activities are varied, she’s got a few different gear sets she’ll go between.  It depends if she’s carrying a flag, tanking big pulls, taking on high level mobs, it just depends.  That’s one I wish I would have been better at, gear selection.  There were many times where quest rewards wouldn’t really give me a decent mail item with appropriate stats for say tanking.  In retrospect though, there were several times I just randomly picked a quest reward when nothing notable was there and later learned I could’ve picked up say a leather piece with huge stamina.  Now ideally, Revwyn wouldn’t ever wear something like that, but being a twink isn’t always ideal for what gear is available and so wardrobe issues are common.  There might be situations where I would forsake the armor and strength loss and really need to push stamina.  

So, if I started a new twinker, I’d try to be better at thinking about situational circumstances.  Another thing I might try to do is to plan my race better.  The racial abilities that certain races have can really make a difference with your gameplay and gearing.  The big one that comes to mind is the human racial Every Man for Himself. With that, humans can forsake the Insignia of the Alliance and pretty much equip 2 Arena Grand Master trinkets all the time.  With Revwyn, she has a nice HoT racial, but for PvP, she has to equip the Insignia.  Though, once she uses her Insignia, she can then quickly equip her second AGM and have the extra 120 health.  For dungeons at her level though, she just runs with 2 AGMs all the time.  She can still get locked up, but as a pally, she’s got enough ranged abilities that I’ve never had it be a problem.

Well, that’s the long of it.  Is playing on a trial account as fun as a normal paying account? No. Is it fun? Sure.  It really works well for filling in the gaps when you really don’t feel like you’re going to play enough to pay for an account.  Also, it’s free and for free, it’s pretty fun.  The nice thing is, if I feel like not playing for a few weeks, I don’t even have to think about the money side.  It will be there waiting when I do feel like playing.  It wouldn’t be for everybody though, I understand.  Also, when comparing trial twinks to normal twinks at the same level range, normal paying account twinks statwise kick the crap out of trial twinks every time.  With BoA gear and much heftier enchants, paid twinks hit harder and are much healthier.  

Anyway, for the immediate future Revwyn will be running 5s with her Gilneas tabard, fishing for Keefer’s Angelfish on Sundays, queue-ing up for some BGs (not Bee Gees, though Jive Talkin is pretty sweet), enjoying holidays, and finishing up some gear.  Not looking forward to farming for the Diamond Hammer as a world drop or the Foreman’s Leggings from Foreman Thistlenettle.  BTW, Revwyn’s killed that bastard a terrible amount of times, and he will not drop his pants.  One nice thing about horde, they have pretty good pants. (in the form of Kalecgos Pants from a quest chain) The next long term project for her could be getting enough honor points to buy some PvP BoA gear, but I haven’t decided if I wanna take the time.  This was not intended to be a guide, but I know it got a little preachy.  Anyhow, It’s what I’ve been doin.  For more information on twinking and trial twinking, just snoop around on the web.  I particularly like Cynwise’s Green Tinted Goggles, Psynister’s Notebook, and Twinkinfo.com.  Any thoughts or suggestions, just send ‘em my way.  Oh, and if anyone has a lowbie they’re leveling or otherwise and need a twank to run them through some of these instances, feel free to give me a shout.

Guest Post: Life on the Other Side

While I am off getting married and enjoying my honeymoon, I have decided to treat you my loving readers to a few guest posts written by some very nice people that I totally suckered were nice enough to write a post for me.

Today's post was written by Stop of several blogs across the interwebs. So without further ado...




Life on the Other Side

First off, I blame Jed for everything.

Ever since quitting World of Warcraft back in March, I’ve never really gone MMO-less for any period of time. I went from WoW to Rift, then rode the Rift wave until I died of endgame boredom and/or got into the SWTOR beta, then played that gleefully until it went down for a week or so to do a new release and I decided to cut back on my beta-ing - enough to get a good test experience and data for Bioware, but not enough to burn myself out on the game before the game even comes out. So that left an MMO-shaped hole in my life.

Around this time, 4.3 news started leaking out. I can safely say that I feel that for 4.1 and 4.2, Blizzard pretty much phoned it in, but 4.3? 4.3 looks, well, at least better. The new instances aren’t rehashes (although Murozond, really?). The new tier gear looks like some work was actually put into it rather than “take armor, add fire, lather, rinse, repeat.” But the one feature that started to rekindle my interest in the game was Transmogrification, especially time spent in Blog Azeroth Chat with Ratshag trading costuming ideas and coming up with the most horrifying plate costume ever for a Death Knight, to commemorate BC-era clown suits, and that’s when the urge hit to resubscribe, which I accidentally mentioned to Jed.

I’m not sure if it comes across to his usual readers, but Jed is a very persistent person. Once I had mentioned even briefly considering resubscribing, neither rain, nor sleet, not worries about playing on a PvP server would stop him from getting me into his guild, and so, one server transfer later, I found my death knight leveling on Ursin, a member of the Avengers of Azeroth, and me getting used to two big changes:

1. Playing on a PvP server, and
2. Playing an Alliance character.

It’s actually been less of an adjustment than I expected but there are a few big adjustments for a mostly-lifelong Horde PvE-server player.

• I still don’t like Stormwind. I’m not sure I ever will. Say what you will about Orgrimmar’s aesthetic (Neo-Brutalist architecture), but they at least had the sense to put every facility in every part of the city outside of the goblin slums. Stormwind, to the best of my knowledge, has two auction houses, neither of which is terribly easy to find from the air. On the other hand, at least Stormwind color-coded their roofs to make it easier to get around. But seriously - give me Ironforge anyday. I think I might be a dwarf at heart.
• The Alliance NPCs are starting to get more likable. I came up in an era when Thrall was everything the Horde should someday aspire to be - wise, brave, and willing to talk instead of throw down - and our opposition was Varian “The Chin” Wrynn, his weepy sidekick Jaina, and a bunch of pissed-off dwarves who’d stop a father from retrieving his own son’s corpse. Nowadays, with Garrosh leading the Horde to its own inevitable self-destruction via infighting, the complete disappearance of one faction leader, and Sylvanas making deals with devils of all sorts, suddenly The Chin doesn’t seem like such a bad guy, and I definitely have grown to like Anduin and Moira (especially after reading The Shattering - this is my first time interacting with them after reading the book).
• Having to take the credo “if it’s red, it’s dead” seriously. Now, I’m not exactly flying around ganking lowbies or anything. But I have had to get used to the fact that if I see a Horde character in a contested zone, they’re considered hostile to me and I’m considered hostile to them. This is new to me - I kept my flag off at all times on all my old servers, and on Rift I even toggled on the option that disallowed me to accidentally flag myself. But the net change? I’m just a little more wary of that troll druid across the way - I don’t ignore him like I used to, but I don’t go out of my way to smash him into the ground.

There are other changes, of course - accidentally flying into the wrong tent or part of the city when in Northrend areas, for instance - but I’m slowly discovering the side of the game that I never really got around to before.

Well, discovering it until December 20th, anyway.

When I was young

I came up with this post idea and decided on a title and since then I have not been able to stop thinking of this clip from The Lion King. You've watch it, you can't unwatch it! Anyway...moving on. Since summer started I have been working long hours, dealing with the frustration from recruitment, threatening guildees to get them to log on for raids, putting the finishing touches on my wedding plans to my Lady Love, and sacrificing gnomes to the Bioware Gods to let me into the Star Wars: The Old Republic Beta. After a while, all of these things tend to leave me drained and feeling a little burned out.

Sad I know. *Cue Sad Keanu picture*

Now normally this would be the part where I go on and on about how the game has changed and no longer fun for me and I am debating quitting for TOR. BUT thankfully for you faithful readers, that is not what is going to happen!

There have been a couple of things that have happened to me that have helped me cope with all of the above reasons to quit and I got to tell you, I actually am feeling recharged and ready for more WoW.

First off I decided that I would level a horde alt to see how different their horde quest lines were while leveling up. Since I'm sadly maxed out on character slots on my main account I decided to level on a different server (with no heirlooms/guild perks) and I looked around for a good place to call home. I ended up on Drenden, which is the home of Rades, Miri, Liala, and Narci, all of whom I enjoy talking to on twitter. After a little while I decided to transfer an 80 horde DK over to this server since he had been sitting around collecting dust for years. I'm not joking when I saw that his gear was appalling. He was leveled around the time when TOC was released and he had a lot of 5 man heroic/non-heroic gear from there. Looking at his gear was kind of like opening a time capsule and looking through it to see all the stuff that was cool at the time.

I server transferred him over and set about leveling him. Even with horrid gear, he was able to kill stuff rather quickly and I only had to spend a few gold on the AH to get him upgrades. While questing and running instances I was able to enjoy being in a guild without having to be the leader. I was just a regular member and it was a welcome change of pace. After 6 years of being the guy everyone in guild looks to for answers, comments, or anything and everything they need help with, it was nice to log in and not have to deal with that stress/pressure. Not that leading my guild is a huge source of stress, I just stress myself out and over think things. I am my own worst enemy. : /

Just wanted to make a note, I love my guild and wouldn't trade it for anything but like in real life sometimes you have to take a vacation to get away from things so you can appreciate them more when you return.

Well back to the story. It has definitely been a nice change of pace to just be one of the crowd and that has helped me relax a little. Mind you I don't just log on and head to that server right away, I play my mains first and if we aren't doing anything too exciting I switch to the horde server. It is a nice way to unwind.

Another thing that has helped rejuvenate me is all this talk of transmogrification. I know for some people out there, the game has taken a turn towards World of Dresscraft and honestly, I couldn't care what other people say. I've been playing for 6+ years now and some of the gear that I had previously worked so hard for can now be shown again without suffering dps loss. My mage will be proudly sporting his old MC raiding gear because that set was in my mind so awesome. My first raid experience was in MC and like they say: You never forget your first. I will be sporting the ever so sexy 6/8 Arcanist set, 1/8 Netherwind set (Helm), and 1/6 Field Marshal Regalia(gloves). For his weapons, I haven't quite decided what I will be wearing but since 4.3 isn't going live any time soon I have some time to figure it out.

Some of the chatter about the whole mogging experience is about how instead of giving us new content we are getting something so silly and useless. I for one welcome our new Mogging overlords. Why? Because this has been something that many vanilla veterans have been asking for since forever. We worked hard for our gear and to replace it with greens and have it sit around collecting dust or being vendored just seems wrong. I really wish I had raided Naxx because they had some of the coolest gear around and the level 80 Naxx just doesn't compare. I know some people will say that it is just a reason to show off E-peen or to brag about how great you are at the game but that isn't why I am looking forward to it. I will be the first person to say that I am not the greatest WoW player out there. But as I mentioned, I have been around for a long time and have had many memorable moments that I treasure and look back on fondly. Being the DPS who got the killing blow the first time we downed Ragnaros, being the person who could kite General Drakkisath to the Beasts room because we didn't have a hunter who could do it (and living through it), these are just two of those memories. If I can wear a mogged set that looks like the gear I wore then, it will remind me of why I play the game: to have fun and do crazy stupid stuff to enjoy the game.

Thats all Mogging is: a different way to have fun. The people shouting out against mogging seem to have forgotten that they play a game with millions of other people and not everyone has the same idea of what fun is. I can't wait.

It seems that talking about the olden days always make me ramble on a little too much and I think I strayed from my original topic. Well than, back to making me enjoy the game again!

The biggest reason why I am really enjoying myself again is a person. No it isn't my fiancee, my Lady Love who is awesome and all, but it is actually a new member of the guild. This person is a cousin of a guildee and this is his first MMO. Having him in vent and listening to him talk about the game, you can hear the enthusiasm and pleasure he gets from the game. This enthusiasm for the game is really contagious and after listening to him, you can't help but feel happy with the game. It reminds me of when I first started playing the game and how I felt like the world was so amazing and new and I could do whatever I wanted. An example of him being giddy and happy with something so simple: My Lady Love was running him through a lowbie instance on her mage and at the end she made a portal to Stormwind for him. He was in vent with us and he had no clue what the portal was and when he took it, he literally was speechless for a few seconds. He was awed by a portal. This was something so routine to most players that we don't even give it a second look. My fiancee and I laughed for a few minutes about that and we both felt a little special that we were able to make his day with something as simple as a run through of an instance and a portal afterward.

My Lady Love and I grouped with him several times along the way on our level appropriate characters and we ran instances together. Every time he ran an instance he was in vent with us and he could not believe the game was as cool as it was. We giggled and talked about when we felt the same way and for both of us, it had been a while.

When the world of Azeroth was new, everything was awe inspiring. From the sheer size of Ironforge to the fun escort quests where we felt like we saved an NPC's life and made a difference. Somewhere along the way we lose that sense of awe and we start becoming jaded about the game. We no longer look at the game as a game but as a job. Sometimes it takes a change of faction to appreciate the game, sometimes it requires playing dress up, and sometimes it requires a new person to remind you that the game we choose to play is pretty damn awesome. I have always liked WoW but there were times when I felt drained and just didn't want to deal with the trolls both in instances and in trade. But after all this, I feel like I am ready for more and I can handle anything thrown my way. It is a game after all, a truly awesome, fun, and magical game and I'm glad I was reminded of this.

I chose wisely

Stupid work has kept me so busy that I haven't been able to post anything lately and I am sorry for that. I have several drafts that I have started but I just haven't been able to find the time to finish and post them. I know apologies mean nothing and people want posts!

So for everyone who wants a post...here is a picture. It isn't just any plain old picture mind you. It is proof that I chose wisely when I proposed to my lady love. Here is the cake topper for my grooms cake:

That's right, she is that awesome. =D

I'll try to get a post up soon so that you my lovely readers will find another reason to ask yourselves why you continue to put up with my crap writing. If you are an aspiring blogger and feel that you want to take pity on me and toss me a guest post, please feel free to contact me. I'd love to get a guest post.

Looking for Trouble

Recruitment. The word most Guild Masters/Officers dread hearing. Why? Well because of the sheer amount of work that comes with having to deal with recruitment as well as the frustration that arises because of it. Whenever a guild loses a person, it is usually a blow to the guild, unless no one liked the person who left in which case a party may be necessary to celebrate their departure. More often than not it isn't a party. For many guilds, when one person leaves the guild, the rest of the guild will have to work extra hard to make up for that person.

The majority of guilds are a house of cards. Each member being a card holding up another card holding up another card and so on, ultimately forming up a complete house. If you take one card away from anywhere in the house of cards, the other cards have to bear an uneven weight and the whole house may come crashing down. GM/Officers are tasked with maintaining the house and keeping it in order and stable. When one person leaves, they have to scramble to cover for that person, whether it's a raider, an RP'er, or PVP'er. The problem is that recruiting is a difficult and sometimes long process unless you get incredibly lucky and find a person right away. It seems that this expansion, recruitment has become more difficult. What am I basing this statement on? Well other than personal experience, there are other bloggers who have blogged about what a tough time they have been having with trying to find people for their guilds. Buckle up kids, because this is going to be a long block of rant that is hopefully tied together by a central topic. Of course knowing me...it'll just come off as random ramblings but if you're reading this than you clearly are ok with random randomness.