Rotating classes - how to keep wow fresh

Every once in awhile I rotate my character main to a new one. Mostly it happens after reaching certain goals that has been hard to achieve. With my (3rd) rogue this happened shortly after dinging 70 halfway into the TBC cycle. I had played my rogue a lot and been forced to level fast to keep up with my guild. I realized that I burned through content too fast and also my appreciation of the rogue.

So since I took a few months away from WOW and then returned to a new character. After a few false starts I got really hooked on my hunter Stormspike. I had loads of fun, totally ignoring leveling pace or any other issues.  I dinged 70 and started doing dailies and shifting my focus onto PVP. Loads of fun.

When WotLK arrived it was time to change again. After the hunter changes I realized I wasn't interested in relearning the hunter. Instead I watched with joy at the latest changes to the protection warrior. Suddenly it was viable to not only level as protection but also PVP with it.

I rolled an undead warrior, (my 3rd highlevel warrior throughout my wow career) who now is quickly approaching 78... I don't care much for the endgame, it is the journey that I love so much with WOW.

Time-wise I suspect it is soon time for me  to rotate into a new character and I think that either a Paladin or a Death Knight would be the best move. Yet I am still having fun, and I haven't even gotten started on the PVP side of things. Yay!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

I've been super busy the last weeks and by the looks of it I won't be able to get some really free time before the end of this year. So kill a gnome and Happy New Year!

Elite servers vs casual servers

I've recently started a new character (death knight) on a PVE server where my younger relatives play. Playing on that realm is quite different from my home realm, EU-Ravencrest.

EU-Ravencrest is the home to several top-performing PVE guild, and according to www.wowprogress.com, EU-Ravencrest is ranked at first place. (On a side note. It is interesting that the top 22 servers in terms of PVE progress are PVP servers...)

Playing on EU-Ravencrest means that you are constantly surrounded by top-performing players. Raid and HC gear is standard and running around in blues is a laughing matter, even for alts.

PUGing instances on EU-Ravencrest is usually fast and mechanical. Everyone knows their class and the instances like the back of their hands. Of course there are exceptions, but if you stay away from people who use "lol" or "m8" in their sentences you're home free.

Now on EU-Hellfire (rank 125/232) there is a much bigger variety among the players. You'll find lots of guilds with younger players (11-15) and a lot of very casual gamers. You don't see tier gear as frequently as on Ravencrest, people actually /emote when they see legendary items...

For me it is actually a blast to play on this "casual" server - people still view WOW as a game and not as a clinical and mechanical as it is viewed upon on Ravencrest. However I do miss the PVP aspect, there is less excitement in the world. No risk of aggroing the opposing faction, getting corpse camped etc. Don't get me wrong - I don't like being grieved but there is a certain appeal to the danger that it might happen if I am not careful enough...

The Army of One

My hunter, Stormspike, is sitting in the Howling Fjord waiting for the rest of my little army to catch-up. My hunter is my main PVP machine and I've come to realize that when I play him I concentrate much more on taking out innocent leveling gnomes than following quest directions. Stormpike has taken the Howling Fjord route. It is a very beautiful zone with lots of interesting PVP terrain. I especially like the mountainous area above the alliance village in the north.

 

The undead rogue Warspike who has been inactive for almost a year, has been awaken from his slumber. He never got  the gear attention he should have and could get level 68 leather upgrades for several gear slots. A skinner & leatherworker who will have plenty to do in the Fjord. I've moved him over to the Fjord and started doing a few quests with him.

 

 

My  Orc arms-warrior, Gorespike, was destined to be a 70 PVP machine is still 66. I guess I forgot him somewhere on the way to Northrend. I have no desire to wake him so I might just as well dump him somewhere in the Outlands/Azeroth on farming duty.

 

 

The Blood Elf paladin Shieldspike has been waiting for action at the inn in the Badlands. She managed to get to the respectable level of 56 before slowly sinking back into inactivity. Her goal was to get to 59-60 and stay in that PVP bracket.

 

 

 

But my latest love is Urthiel, an undead protection warrior. I started playing him just little over two months ago and he dinged 67 last night somewhere in Terokkar. He will probably be my first character to ... eventually ... get to 80. Playing a protection warrior is amazingly fun. They are so... resilient. Leveling up in the same wave as all the new death knights make his questing very very hostile. There aren't many DKs that can resist a show of strength. So far I've managed to defeat almost all DKs that attack me. There is a little secret to easy Death Knight killing, but I'll leave that for another post.

Speaking of Death Knights, I do have one somewhat dormant. A female Orc who patiently waits for me. However I am only going to play her with together with my wife (she has a blood elf female knight).

Oh and these are not my only somewhat-active characters. I do have plenty more. I am an altoholic after all, but most of them are below 60.

Then there are my alliance chars that hasn't been active for over a year. Hexapuma the rogue, Aela the Hunter, Ripperjack the Warrior and Hexapanther the Paladin. They've transfered off to another server. Phew.. I should probably get into a rehab or something. Starting new characters is so much fun...

Battlegrounds, PVP and the Gender discussion

I've finally returned to the land of the living or should I say digital life after a long and exotic vacation. I've experienced life with very little Internet - and it was good... but it was also good to return to the civilized world.

I've picked up Soul Calibur 4 - an awesome game if you are into fighting games. I've had a couple of really great online fights. The quality of many players out there is near godlike... or at least compared to myself. I do have to start focusing on a specific character if I am going to have any chance online at all. I've always been the type of player that can play all characters and still have a good chance of winning. This isn't really the case online... This playing style is evident in my WOW style as well. I have a hard time focusing on a specific character, instead I love to play different alts.

My hunter has gotten the most of my attention the last six months - and he still have it. I have now managed to secure a few more PVP gear pieces. Still on my honor-shopping list are the rings, neck, leggings, gloves and melee weapon. Oh and my latest purchase (shoulders & chest) did drain my bag of gold a wee bit. I bough those nice epic +10 agility gems... probably overpriced but hey its a game and I simply get what I want NOW. Problem is that I must return to grind a wee bit of dailies before getting more gems. I am not broke but down to a few hundred pieces of gold.

Gender talk

Oh and I've seen quite a few posts in the bloggosphere about gender... quite frankly I don't give a shit if you are female/male. If your blog is interesting to me I'll read it. Personally I think Green Hunter has the right attitude and quite a few other blogs simply rants about in order to stand out.

In-game its just the same. Age and gender doesn't interest me - maturity and language does. WOW is just a game to me - I have most of my social contacts outside the game. I get into WOW to stomp a few gnomes in the battlegrounds. Leveling up, grouping and instancing is just a side-effect of me getting a char into the correct BG bracket. Don't get me wrong - I can be social in-game and I do from time to time but its when I do find like minded people. Needless to say I don't hang around raiders too much. We have very different views on the game.

The Beta

I got into the LK Beta... I've had very little time to play it so far. There are a lot of crazy stuff going on with talents at the moment. I am sure that it'll be balanced properly before launch - remember that Blizzard introduced the new talents before the launch of BC to get it balanced. I am sure it will happen again. I will try to get a Death Knight leveled during the beta - so I can focus on getting my Hunter to 80 as soon as possible.

The Alt

I am getting another paladin leveled - my little Blood Elf is at 45. My goal is to get her to 60 and then stay in Alterac Valley 'till the launch of LK and then enjoy a faster leveling between 60-70...

Oh... Darth Vader in Soul Calibur 4 rocks... that is how a death knight should be....

No Wrath here - move along

There is no end to the blogs publishing stuff about WotLK. Talent calculators, engineering thingys and what not. I am not writing anything about it, nor while I until it hits retail. I am one of those who actually love discovering something new and fresh when it is finished and not in beta state.

My fellow guildies keep yapping about "Have you seen the talent X for hunters".. or "How are you going to spec".. give it a rest. Lets enjoy it when it arrives. I will.

No more WotLK... actually I am going to play Diablo 2 tonight just to skip WOW. Maby just a quick AB or even a WSG but nothing more.

The play schedule of a casual WOW addict.

So what does a casual wow addict's play schedule look like? Let me show you:

Monday
Morning - 1hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & some AH/mail
Lunch - 45 min - Battleground (approx. 1000 honor)
Evening - NIL

Tuesday
Morning - 1hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & some AH/mail
Lunch - 45 min - Battleground or Blade's Edge quests
Evening - 3hrs - Battleground (approx 3K honor) or the odd instance

Wednesday
Morning - NIL
Lunch - NIL
Evening - 1 hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & AH/mail

Thursday
Morning - 1hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & questing
Lunch - 45 min - Battleground (approx 1000 honor)
Evening - 1 hr - Battleground (approx 1000 honor)

Friday
Morning - 1hr - Skettis dailies, Nagrand dailies & AH/mail
Lunch - NIL
Evening - NIL

Saturday
Morning - NIL
Lunch - 2 hrs - Battleground (approx 2000 honor)
Evening - NIL

Sunday
Morning - NIL
Lunch - 2 hrs - Battleground (approx 2000 honor)
Evening - 1 hr - Dailies & Battleground (approx 500 honor)

If you add it up its about 16 hours / week. 11 hours of those are in BG's and remaining 5 hours are spent on dailies and in front of the AH.

In a week I'll net about 11'000 honor and 300 gold (more depending on Ore & loot sales. This week however I missed my Tuesday evening play session in favor of a social happening... WOW always get shafted .. it is lowest on the priority scale.

So there you have it. Actually it is way more than I thought I played. I would also estimate that I spend at least 30-60 minutes / day browsing WOW related web pages. Pumping those 16 hours up to at least 20 hours / week. Comparing this with the rest of my life:

Sleep - 56 hrs / week (32 %)

Work - 41 hrs/ week (23 %)
Family - 36 hrs / week (21%)
WOW - 20 hrs / week (11 %)
Other - 22 hrs / week (13%)

I need to cut down on sleep...

What does your schedule look like when you really add it up?

Assassins Creed on Steam?

Just updated Steam and the patch notes mentions:

"Updated game overlay to support Assassin’s Creed"

This makes me very happy. While I already have AC on the PS3, seeing big titles appear on Steam is great. I am sure that digital distribution is the future for the otherwise piracy infested PC market.

Interestingly Assassins Creed is not yet mentioned on Steam's  coming soon...

Did you miss any April Fools Day joke?

I am sure most of you got the various blizzard jokes - Tauren Marines in StarCraft 2, the Bard hero class using a Guitar Hero interface etc. Fortunately wikipedia has a page containing all reported 2008 jokes...

Sick with flu

I have been out of comission for almost a week. I've finally regained my health and then my little kid gets sick. Its a bad omen since he was the first one to get it meaning we are already in the next cycle. I hope we won't catch it again.

Quaranteene protocol initiated.

Laptop survives coffee spill

Yesterday I did it...

After lunch I got myself a nice cup of black coffee as I always do. Actually I almost always have a cup of coffee when at the office. (I typically drink about 6-7 cups during the day). As I reached over the desk to get a stack of papers I knocked over the coffee cup. About half a cup's worth of coffee spilled directly onto my Dell XPS M1710 laptop. With lightning reflexes I didn't knew I had I swooped up the laptop, turned it upsides down and powered it off and ejected the battery.

Keeping it upside down, the poor laptop was dripping coffee. I wiped the worst of it and then brought it downstairs to the support department. The engineer just laughed at me and asked: "So this is your way of getting a new computer?"

This morning Support came back with the laptop - it reeks of coffee but it works like a charm! My lightning rescue apparently paid off! I've improved my backup settings... no longer do I have all the important files on the hard drive but on the network. Phew.

Sad thing is... now I  have to wait a year before getting a new office computer.

Comments now moderated

After several "Buy WOW Gold" comments I've turned on comment moderation. I just can't stand MMO gold sellers. 

Reset, rename and restart

A new name on the blog and voila it has been resurrected from the place of abandoned blogs. With Hexapuma's World I am no longer covering WOW since I don't play it anymore. However there is a ton of other things I do and obsess over.

One of the games I currently enjoy is EVE-Online and I am in the process of launching into a full pirate career. EVE is one of those fantastic open ended type of MMO where you can actually become anything you fancy. Play the game your own way. Of course this means that it is full of roads leading to very bad situations that can be very hard if not time consuming to get out of. Going pirate is one of those roads...