After about oh, 20 attempts or so over two raid nights, we finally downed Hagara the stormbinder! Or as I like to call her, Hagara bitchface.
Nothing terribly exciting or anything, just wanted to share our 4th heroic boss kill and talk a little about the fight.
Definitely not one of my favorites due to the insane RNG factor. The Ice lance/Ice tomb mechanic can either make or break your group - like when we had her down to 30% and both our healers got ice tombed. Given that the fight is dependent on 3 healers rotating their cooldowns on the tank every 10 seconds, this meant our tank just dropped like a rock. During another pull our healer ate 3 ice lances at once and died, leaving us in the same crappy situation.
I'm not sure why Blizzard hates healers so much - it seems like almost every other dragon soul encounter description or video guide begins with "this fight is very stressful for your healers..." Yeah, like all the other fights.
At least on heroic mode the phase transitions are more challenging and make the fight less boring. On normal mode it's a total snooze, whereas on heroic the ice phase makes you clench your buttcheeks and grip your mouse!
I think what I miss most from Dragon Soul in general is the lack of adds. It's nice to have one or two tank-and-spank fights as a breather but a whole raid of basically nonstop tank and spank is too much. Spine and Deathwing is really the only add-heavy fight. Blackhorn, maybe, but only for the first phase.
I really miss fights like Valithira Dreamwalker or Lady Deathwhisper. Especially on 25man mode where people would be running all over the room CCing and tanking and kiting and killing things, and someone would scream over vent, "BLAZINGGGG!!!!" or "MC ON ME!!!" and people would drop whatever they were doing and run halfway across the room to take care of business.
Ah, here I go again, reminiscing about the good old days of Wrath. What can I say, ICC was the most epic raiding experience I've had. Nothing in Cata has even come close.
Tonight is Blackhorn!
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Never met a game I didn't beat
Title says it all. When I get into a game, moderation just goes right out the window. It becomes either do or die and I won't rest easy until I've BEAT the damn game.
I don't mean "beat" as in, get to the final stage and kill the boss. Oh no, I mean more like, beat the last boss, unlock the hard mode, beat that, unlock the super hard challenge mode, and obsess over it for weeks until I beat that too, and unlock all the secret characters and easter eggs and hidden challenges while I'm at it.
Games back then had a simplicity which curbed this dangerous addictive behavior. Take for instance my favorite childhood game - Streets of Rage 2. I mean, once you beat it on easy, normal, and hard, it's over. Games nowadays, however, seem to come standard with at least 5 different difficulty levels, plus bonus stages, plus unlockable extra stages, PLUS a plethora of achievements.
Achievements are both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because it gives me a reason to replay the same damn thing over and over just so I can see the bright shiny words "You have earned the achievement - [insert some pointless menial repetitive in-game task, such as kill 20,000 boars for no reason]!". It's also a curse because it gives me a reason to replay the same damn thing over and over. For hours. And then obsess over it and scour online resources when I get stuck on a certain challenge.
Now with games like WoW, you obviously can't just "beat" it. But I think I've come pretty damn close to it, at least when it comes to parts of the game I enjoy. I don't pvp and I really haven't begun to "beat" that aspect of the game, but when it comes to pve...I've killed every damn raid boss multiple times, acquired all sorts of high end gear, and unlocked all sorts of stupid, pointless achievements. Need I reiterate about that time I spent 6 months getting the insane title? Yeah, that sort of thing is only possible when you have an insanely OCD/completionist mentality like mine.
And then there are cute little iPad games that are not meant to draw the hardcore gamers, but appeal to a more broad range of interests. They do have a start and a finish. There are a few difficulty levels and some achievements, but once you beat it all, you really are done.
These are the games that are truly dangerous. Being able to see the end in sight just means that I obsess that much more over it. I have been known to get up in the middle of the night and just spontaneously start playing games on the iPad because my own disturbed thoughts about how to get that one hard achievement woke me up from much-needed sleep. Handing me the iPad is like giving an alcoholic a bottle of moonshine.
Take for instance my Plants VS Zombies addiction that lasted almost a whole year. I played that damn game so many times, I must have killed about a million zombies. I first played it on an iPod, then moved on to the PC platform, where they gave you even more gameplay modes! Not only did I play through the entire campaign over 5 times, I unlocked every single plant, every single upgrade, every single bonus game & play mode, and beat every single one of those too. Oh, and I got all the achievements. Every. Fucking. Achievement. This kind of behavior is pretty much standard whenever I find a game I like.
I remember I played diner dash for like 10 hours straight one day. And that's not even something to brag about! A game like WoW I can at least go brag to my guildies and fellow gamers, "look at this achievement I got!" or "look at this sweet epic drop!". I will not be telling my friends, coworkers and loved ones, "hey I just beat all the minigames in PvZ!".
Sometimes I'm worried about this vicious cycle. But then again, sometimes I'm glad that at least I'm not addicted to worse things, like cocaine or hookers.
I don't mean "beat" as in, get to the final stage and kill the boss. Oh no, I mean more like, beat the last boss, unlock the hard mode, beat that, unlock the super hard challenge mode, and obsess over it for weeks until I beat that too, and unlock all the secret characters and easter eggs and hidden challenges while I'm at it.
Games back then had a simplicity which curbed this dangerous addictive behavior. Take for instance my favorite childhood game - Streets of Rage 2. I mean, once you beat it on easy, normal, and hard, it's over. Games nowadays, however, seem to come standard with at least 5 different difficulty levels, plus bonus stages, plus unlockable extra stages, PLUS a plethora of achievements.
Achievements are both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because it gives me a reason to replay the same damn thing over and over just so I can see the bright shiny words "You have earned the achievement - [insert some pointless menial repetitive in-game task, such as kill 20,000 boars for no reason]!". It's also a curse because it gives me a reason to replay the same damn thing over and over. For hours. And then obsess over it and scour online resources when I get stuck on a certain challenge.
Now with games like WoW, you obviously can't just "beat" it. But I think I've come pretty damn close to it, at least when it comes to parts of the game I enjoy. I don't pvp and I really haven't begun to "beat" that aspect of the game, but when it comes to pve...I've killed every damn raid boss multiple times, acquired all sorts of high end gear, and unlocked all sorts of stupid, pointless achievements. Need I reiterate about that time I spent 6 months getting the insane title? Yeah, that sort of thing is only possible when you have an insanely OCD/completionist mentality like mine.
And then there are cute little iPad games that are not meant to draw the hardcore gamers, but appeal to a more broad range of interests. They do have a start and a finish. There are a few difficulty levels and some achievements, but once you beat it all, you really are done.
These are the games that are truly dangerous. Being able to see the end in sight just means that I obsess that much more over it. I have been known to get up in the middle of the night and just spontaneously start playing games on the iPad because my own disturbed thoughts about how to get that one hard achievement woke me up from much-needed sleep. Handing me the iPad is like giving an alcoholic a bottle of moonshine.
Take for instance my Plants VS Zombies addiction that lasted almost a whole year. I played that damn game so many times, I must have killed about a million zombies. I first played it on an iPod, then moved on to the PC platform, where they gave you even more gameplay modes! Not only did I play through the entire campaign over 5 times, I unlocked every single plant, every single upgrade, every single bonus game & play mode, and beat every single one of those too. Oh, and I got all the achievements. Every. Fucking. Achievement. This kind of behavior is pretty much standard whenever I find a game I like.
I remember I played diner dash for like 10 hours straight one day. And that's not even something to brag about! A game like WoW I can at least go brag to my guildies and fellow gamers, "look at this achievement I got!" or "look at this sweet epic drop!". I will not be telling my friends, coworkers and loved ones, "hey I just beat all the minigames in PvZ!".
Sometimes I'm worried about this vicious cycle. But then again, sometimes I'm glad that at least I'm not addicted to worse things, like cocaine or hookers.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Top 5...cash cows
I'm nearing 200k gold on my main toon. I guess it's mostly due to gold inflation during cata, but my net (wow) worth really jumped up since the expansion launched. I remember when I first hit 100k and thinking, wow I'm so rich, I should buy something. But then the tendency to hoard my wealth kicked in, and now I'm almost at double that amount.
I really SHOULD spend it on something, it's just hard to remember that it's just pixels. When you're frugal in RL, that kind of just carries over to your wow spending I suppose.
Anyways, I make my gold the way anyone else makes gold: grind professions & sell things on the AH. While some people claim that you can make a lot of gold just doing dailies, this takes a lot of time. In a fraction of the time it takes you to do 10 dailies (which would fetch about 160g total), I could buy and re-sell a few things on the AH for ten times the profit. You just have to know what are the hot sellers and when you can get a good deal on something.
For anyone who's looking to seriously get into the AH, you must have an addon of some sort. I use auctionator, and I honestly don't know how I ever got along without it. It keeps track of all your auctions, makes buying in bulk so much easier, and even keeps an ongoing database of prices so you can monitor when is a good time to buy an sell.
The other trick is to have a profession that can craft the popular selling items, and have alts with gathering professions that can support the crafting profession. For instance on my main I have alchemy but not herbalism. I use alts to gather herbs, or better yet, buy them in bulk whenever the prices are low. To be honest though, I can't remember the last time I went near an herb. Potions and flasks are not my moneymaker of choice - I go for the transmutes.
Anywho, without further ado, here is my top 5 gold-making schemes that's worked wonders for me:
5. Cloth
This is not something I do actively, but it's something that can generate a lot of profit, especially at low levels, for relatively low effort.
Cloth is everywhere - that shit drops from any humanoid creature and sometimes you find yourself literally swimming in cloth. I know I sure did when I was grinding rep for the Insane title. I had to run Dire Maul over 100 times, and let me tell you, I racked up stacks upon stacks of runecloth.
Rather than just vendor them or try to sell them on the AH, I enlisted the help of my hubby who was a tailor. Stacks of cloth BOLTs almost always sell for more net profit than the cloth counterpart. Don't ask me why, it's certainly not difficult to turn cloth into bolts, but there you have it. I guess people don't want to sit there on their mains making bolts for 10 min straight. The opportunity cost seems relatively small to me, but whatever.
I made a tidy little profit selling all those bolts of runecloth. Even now when I run low level dungeons or raids, I always save up the cloth and sell them as bolts. I've found that frostweave bolts always sell out very quickly at a good price.
Mind you, I don't go "farming" for cloth by any means. The beauty of it is that cloth just seems to appear in your bags mysteriously. After running BC-level raids, for instance, I'll often find several stacks of netherweave in my bags. It's almost like free money!
4. BoE badge gear
I used to do this a lot more during Tier 11 raids and Firelands, not so much anymore. Some badge gear, whether it be justice or valor, is BoE and you can purchase it with your mains and send it to your alts or sell it. Well, often times my main would accumulate a lot of valor points with nothing to spend it on (all my gear came from raids). So I'd buy the BoE bracers or boots and sell them on the AH. When content is first released they sell at upwards of ~7-8k gold so it's a good way to make a lot of cash in a short period of time.
I also did this on my alts during firelands - in the process of grinding valor points I'd also rack up a lot of justice points, which I would use to buy the lower tier BoE gear. They don't sell for as much, but sometimes you're just looking to unload all the JP sitting in your bag. Overall a pretty simple way to make some money if you've got a lot of points and nothing to buy.
3. Low level instances
You'd be really surprised at the cash you can make just by clearing low level dungeons. I noticed that my gold stash was really growing a lot when I used to run tons of BC dungeons for tmog gear.
First of all, there's just the plain old gold drop from mobs. This doesn't make up a significant portion. But then there's stuff like cloth, motes/primals and other crafting mats that drop. Running the zangarmarsh instances, I'd pick up so many primals that would each sell for ~50g.
Then there are random green drops that can be DE'd - the BC level enchanting mats sell pretty well. And sometimes you'll get a random BoE blue or epic, which sell very well nowadays due to people wanting unique gear for tmog. BoEs are generally hard to come by so people are willing to pay upwards of 1000g just for some garish looking sword!
Another big bonus is certain instances drop quest/rep items. Grinding heroic Steamvaults for tmog gear I picked up a lot of coilfang armaments - enough to get me exalted with the Cenarion Circle and plenty more to sell. At one point they were going for ~120g a pop and I would pick up 10 or more each run. The creatures in underbog would drop sanguine hibiscus, which also sold well.
2. Enchanting
Just the ability to DE useless gear is a big bonus. A piece of BoP epic gear will vendor for maybe 20g if you're lucky, but when you DE it into a maelstrom crystal you can sell it for 10 times that price. As you upgrade your own gear instead of just vendoring the old epics, you can DE it and sell the shards. When you pick up BoP epics and blues from dungeon runs, you can DE it and sell the mats! When you pick up a lot of useless greens out in the world, you can DE it and sell that mats again!
I've found that enchanting as a service or trying to sell enchanting scrolls alone is not quite as effective, simply because supply outweighs demand for a lot of the enchanting scrolls. Chanters make them to level their skills and flood the AH with tons of scrolls, so that's never been a good moneymaker for me.
But one thing that has sold consistently well are scrolls for rare, useful low-level enchants. For instance, I picked up a enchanting recipe for Fiery Weapon, a popular twink enchant, and I've been buying mats for cheap on the AH and selling the scrolls for 100g a pop for about a year now. People who are twinking or leveling alts buy it up quick whenever I put some up. Of course you need to first farm the recipe to do this, and I was just lucky that it happened to drop for my alt when I was leveling her. I'd say it's worth the extra effort to farm, it's always been a consistent seller!
1. Truegold
Seriously, I've been selling truegold on the auction house since the day cataclysm came out. Ok, maybe not THE day, but let's say within 1 week of cataclysm launch, I was selling truegold and they've been selling like hotcakes since week 1.
With the cata launch came the new epic crafting recipes, which all required a hefty number of truegold. Back then truegold sold for ~1200 a pop when everyone was hungry for new epics and you could turn a really tidy profit! All it takes is some pyrite (expensive on the AH but can be mined with some persistence) and a few volatiles.
Now the price has dropped down to ~300g but it's still a steady seller. If you consider the cost of the reagents it's not much profit, but the beauty of it is that you can easily mine your own mats. I keep a couple of alts handy to mine the pyrite (or smelt the ore if I can buy it for cheap), farm volatile fires at my secret fishing spot in Hyjal, or grind some elementals for volatile air. I also keep another alt with maxed out alchemy who transmutes volatile life into other volatiles as I start to run low. It's a pretty smooth process and when you account for the occasional procs, I'd say I sell anywhere between 5-10 truegolds a week.
Cataclysm has been out for what, a year and a half now? If you assume that I've sold one truegold a day at 300g, that comes out to over 150,000g! Not bad at all. If you're just willing to do a little farming now and then, this is a real moneymaker.
I really SHOULD spend it on something, it's just hard to remember that it's just pixels. When you're frugal in RL, that kind of just carries over to your wow spending I suppose.
Anyways, I make my gold the way anyone else makes gold: grind professions & sell things on the AH. While some people claim that you can make a lot of gold just doing dailies, this takes a lot of time. In a fraction of the time it takes you to do 10 dailies (which would fetch about 160g total), I could buy and re-sell a few things on the AH for ten times the profit. You just have to know what are the hot sellers and when you can get a good deal on something.
For anyone who's looking to seriously get into the AH, you must have an addon of some sort. I use auctionator, and I honestly don't know how I ever got along without it. It keeps track of all your auctions, makes buying in bulk so much easier, and even keeps an ongoing database of prices so you can monitor when is a good time to buy an sell.
The other trick is to have a profession that can craft the popular selling items, and have alts with gathering professions that can support the crafting profession. For instance on my main I have alchemy but not herbalism. I use alts to gather herbs, or better yet, buy them in bulk whenever the prices are low. To be honest though, I can't remember the last time I went near an herb. Potions and flasks are not my moneymaker of choice - I go for the transmutes.
Anywho, without further ado, here is my top 5 gold-making schemes that's worked wonders for me:
5. Cloth
This is not something I do actively, but it's something that can generate a lot of profit, especially at low levels, for relatively low effort.
Cloth is everywhere - that shit drops from any humanoid creature and sometimes you find yourself literally swimming in cloth. I know I sure did when I was grinding rep for the Insane title. I had to run Dire Maul over 100 times, and let me tell you, I racked up stacks upon stacks of runecloth.
Rather than just vendor them or try to sell them on the AH, I enlisted the help of my hubby who was a tailor. Stacks of cloth BOLTs almost always sell for more net profit than the cloth counterpart. Don't ask me why, it's certainly not difficult to turn cloth into bolts, but there you have it. I guess people don't want to sit there on their mains making bolts for 10 min straight. The opportunity cost seems relatively small to me, but whatever.
I made a tidy little profit selling all those bolts of runecloth. Even now when I run low level dungeons or raids, I always save up the cloth and sell them as bolts. I've found that frostweave bolts always sell out very quickly at a good price.
Mind you, I don't go "farming" for cloth by any means. The beauty of it is that cloth just seems to appear in your bags mysteriously. After running BC-level raids, for instance, I'll often find several stacks of netherweave in my bags. It's almost like free money!
4. BoE badge gear
I used to do this a lot more during Tier 11 raids and Firelands, not so much anymore. Some badge gear, whether it be justice or valor, is BoE and you can purchase it with your mains and send it to your alts or sell it. Well, often times my main would accumulate a lot of valor points with nothing to spend it on (all my gear came from raids). So I'd buy the BoE bracers or boots and sell them on the AH. When content is first released they sell at upwards of ~7-8k gold so it's a good way to make a lot of cash in a short period of time.
I also did this on my alts during firelands - in the process of grinding valor points I'd also rack up a lot of justice points, which I would use to buy the lower tier BoE gear. They don't sell for as much, but sometimes you're just looking to unload all the JP sitting in your bag. Overall a pretty simple way to make some money if you've got a lot of points and nothing to buy.
3. Low level instances
You'd be really surprised at the cash you can make just by clearing low level dungeons. I noticed that my gold stash was really growing a lot when I used to run tons of BC dungeons for tmog gear.
First of all, there's just the plain old gold drop from mobs. This doesn't make up a significant portion. But then there's stuff like cloth, motes/primals and other crafting mats that drop. Running the zangarmarsh instances, I'd pick up so many primals that would each sell for ~50g.
Then there are random green drops that can be DE'd - the BC level enchanting mats sell pretty well. And sometimes you'll get a random BoE blue or epic, which sell very well nowadays due to people wanting unique gear for tmog. BoEs are generally hard to come by so people are willing to pay upwards of 1000g just for some garish looking sword!
Another big bonus is certain instances drop quest/rep items. Grinding heroic Steamvaults for tmog gear I picked up a lot of coilfang armaments - enough to get me exalted with the Cenarion Circle and plenty more to sell. At one point they were going for ~120g a pop and I would pick up 10 or more each run. The creatures in underbog would drop sanguine hibiscus, which also sold well.
2. Enchanting
Just the ability to DE useless gear is a big bonus. A piece of BoP epic gear will vendor for maybe 20g if you're lucky, but when you DE it into a maelstrom crystal you can sell it for 10 times that price. As you upgrade your own gear instead of just vendoring the old epics, you can DE it and sell the shards. When you pick up BoP epics and blues from dungeon runs, you can DE it and sell the mats! When you pick up a lot of useless greens out in the world, you can DE it and sell that mats again!
I've found that enchanting as a service or trying to sell enchanting scrolls alone is not quite as effective, simply because supply outweighs demand for a lot of the enchanting scrolls. Chanters make them to level their skills and flood the AH with tons of scrolls, so that's never been a good moneymaker for me.
But one thing that has sold consistently well are scrolls for rare, useful low-level enchants. For instance, I picked up a enchanting recipe for Fiery Weapon, a popular twink enchant, and I've been buying mats for cheap on the AH and selling the scrolls for 100g a pop for about a year now. People who are twinking or leveling alts buy it up quick whenever I put some up. Of course you need to first farm the recipe to do this, and I was just lucky that it happened to drop for my alt when I was leveling her. I'd say it's worth the extra effort to farm, it's always been a consistent seller!
1. Truegold
Seriously, I've been selling truegold on the auction house since the day cataclysm came out. Ok, maybe not THE day, but let's say within 1 week of cataclysm launch, I was selling truegold and they've been selling like hotcakes since week 1.
With the cata launch came the new epic crafting recipes, which all required a hefty number of truegold. Back then truegold sold for ~1200 a pop when everyone was hungry for new epics and you could turn a really tidy profit! All it takes is some pyrite (expensive on the AH but can be mined with some persistence) and a few volatiles.
Now the price has dropped down to ~300g but it's still a steady seller. If you consider the cost of the reagents it's not much profit, but the beauty of it is that you can easily mine your own mats. I keep a couple of alts handy to mine the pyrite (or smelt the ore if I can buy it for cheap), farm volatile fires at my secret fishing spot in Hyjal, or grind some elementals for volatile air. I also keep another alt with maxed out alchemy who transmutes volatile life into other volatiles as I start to run low. It's a pretty smooth process and when you account for the occasional procs, I'd say I sell anywhere between 5-10 truegolds a week.
Cataclysm has been out for what, a year and a half now? If you assume that I've sold one truegold a day at 300g, that comes out to over 150,000g! Not bad at all. If you're just willing to do a little farming now and then, this is a real moneymaker.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Am I spoiled?
As my alt projects all seem to peter out one after another, I have to stop and ask myself...am I just not cut out for anything other than a rogue? Am I spoiled for everything else?
The only modest success I've had with alts is my priest. Almost everything else I've tried I just can't, or won't enjoy it. Even with the priest I'm definitely not at the level of play that my rogue is at. Yeah, it's kind of fun to heal because it's so easy these days and my mana is limitless, but it's not like I'm motivated enough to go raid on my priest. Even when I see trade chat light up "LF 1 more healer for DS fresh" or some other crap, I just don't wanna do it.
All my other alts, I have no problem leveling them up, but end-game play is just way beyond the amount of commitment I want to put in. The rewards are just not there. Sure, I tanked on my paladin for a bit, but I won't even do LFR with her. The thought of tanking for 24 idiots is really too much. My shaman just hit 85 and my god, she's so boring to play. Despite the fact that enhance shamans have one of the more dynamic rotations!
What I've found is that I can't stand any of the following:
Long CDs...or any CDs really
Long cast times
Slow resource regeneration (mana, focus etc)
Having/managing pets
Slow damage ramping
I mean, basically anything that is not a rogue, I don't like playing. I tried to play ret pally and I was outraged that I could not simply spam all my abilities like I do with a rogue. What is this 6 second cooldown nonsense? I have to wait 6 seconds between abilities??? I can spam hemo almost nonstop on my rogue thanks to my ridiculous energy regen. What is this waiting business?
I tried to play a warlock, the pet drove me freaking nuts. Why are you even here? Why do my spells take so damn long to cast? Why do my DoTs take so long to kill anything? The pace just felt glacial.
I tried to play a hunter, and using focus as a resource was aggravating. Why does it refill so damn slow? You mean I can only cast two arcane shots? What is this steady shot nonsense and why the hell does it have a cast bar?
The list just goes on and on. It's a terrible shame because there are 9 other ways to play this game out there and I just can't get into any of it.
Hopefully the monk class will be enjoyable...
The only modest success I've had with alts is my priest. Almost everything else I've tried I just can't, or won't enjoy it. Even with the priest I'm definitely not at the level of play that my rogue is at. Yeah, it's kind of fun to heal because it's so easy these days and my mana is limitless, but it's not like I'm motivated enough to go raid on my priest. Even when I see trade chat light up "LF 1 more healer for DS fresh" or some other crap, I just don't wanna do it.
All my other alts, I have no problem leveling them up, but end-game play is just way beyond the amount of commitment I want to put in. The rewards are just not there. Sure, I tanked on my paladin for a bit, but I won't even do LFR with her. The thought of tanking for 24 idiots is really too much. My shaman just hit 85 and my god, she's so boring to play. Despite the fact that enhance shamans have one of the more dynamic rotations!
What I've found is that I can't stand any of the following:
Long CDs...or any CDs really
Long cast times
Slow resource regeneration (mana, focus etc)
Having/managing pets
Slow damage ramping
I mean, basically anything that is not a rogue, I don't like playing. I tried to play ret pally and I was outraged that I could not simply spam all my abilities like I do with a rogue. What is this 6 second cooldown nonsense? I have to wait 6 seconds between abilities??? I can spam hemo almost nonstop on my rogue thanks to my ridiculous energy regen. What is this waiting business?
I tried to play a warlock, the pet drove me freaking nuts. Why are you even here? Why do my spells take so damn long to cast? Why do my DoTs take so long to kill anything? The pace just felt glacial.
I tried to play a hunter, and using focus as a resource was aggravating. Why does it refill so damn slow? You mean I can only cast two arcane shots? What is this steady shot nonsense and why the hell does it have a cast bar?
The list just goes on and on. It's a terrible shame because there are 9 other ways to play this game out there and I just can't get into any of it.
Hopefully the monk class will be enjoyable...
Monday, April 9, 2012
Fangs of the Father
How is it that I always forget to post about the important things? I got my legendary daggers last week!!!
Amidst attrition and poor raid attendance our guild continued to clear DS week after week. With the hard work of our GM who was able to bring in some semi-regular PuGs to help fill gaps, and the core raid members who didn't complain once about the tough situation, we were finally able to get together the last remaining few gems for my stage 2 legendary collection. As luck would have it, I was exactly 7 short as we began the newly nerfed (15%) Dragon Soul last week.
We downed heroic Morchok with ease and even managed to get heroic Ultraxion on our second try! We had put in quite a few attempts on him already but always came up short on DPS due to some poorly geared people. With the new round of nerfs and the help of some well-geared PuGs, we were able to easily make the enrage timer and down him! My gem count began to climb towards 60...
After we downed spine, I was at 60. I hearthed back to Ravenholdt to turn them in and get the final quest in the chain - kill Deathwing and bring back a fragment of his jaw.
Deathwing went down without much of a fight - to be honest it was stupidly easy with the new nerfs. We were killing the arm tentacles before it even began casting cataclysm and we didn't suffer any of our usual tank deaths on the 4th platform. We downed him in record time and I was back on my way to Ravenholdt to get my hands on the legendaries!
When I entered Ravenholdt I knew something was up. The area was phased so that the grounds were on fire and there were dead dragons scattered about. I found Wrathion and his assistant Fahrad outside in a little clearing. When I turned in the fragment of deathwing's jaw I saw the achievement light up "Fangs of the Father" as well as "Fangs of the Father Guild Edition"! Before I could even respond to the wave of "grats!" the cutscene began to play...
As it turns out Fahrad himself is a member of the black dragonflight. And since Wrathion is the only known black dragon free of the corruption of the old gods...that means Fahrad is also under the sway of the madness that gripped deathwing as well. Wrathion's final command was for me to kill Fahrad, who screams "YOU HAVE BECOME TOO DIFFICULT TO CONTROL!" before transforming into a giant black dragon. I put an end to him and his madness using my gleaming new daggers, and Wrathion disappears mysteriously with the words, "A new age for mortals has dawned, and heroes like you are among the vanguard..."
One thing I was REALLY bummed about was that I downloaded and ran fraps of the whole thing, and for some reason it didn't capture any of the actual cutscene! It only got the portion of my landing on Ravenholdt to turn in the quest and the phased area afterwards. Basically everything except the cutscene, which is obviously the coolest part of the whole experience. Oh well. My guildies can look it up on youtube.
It was kind of lame that I didn't get to have a realm-wide experience upon completion of the legendary like Dragonwrath, but I guess this really goes with the whole theme of rogues better. We work alone in the shadows, it's only fitting that we reap the benefits of our dirty deeds alone as well.
But of course none of it would have been possible without the guild. I thanked them profusely and flew back to org where they were all assembled to check out the fruits of their hard labor. My GM even enchanted them both free of charge! <3
The best part of the legendaries has got to be the wings. Yeah yeah, I know the stats are wickedly awesome, but really it's going to be replaced by even more awesome quest greens when MoP drops. But I'm willing to bet that no quest greens in MoP will have a 5 min CD on-use effect that turns you into batman! My guildies and I really got a kick out of that, I think I'll probably using it whenever it's off CD for the next few months.
And yes, the stats are of course awesome too. The proc is a little more unpredictable than I thought as I have to be actually watching the stacks but I think it will integrate pretty well into my normal rotation after a bit of practice. At the target dummy I was doing upwards of 24-25k with only a agility flask buff. Imagine what I could do fully raid buffed on a static fight like Ultraxion!
Amidst attrition and poor raid attendance our guild continued to clear DS week after week. With the hard work of our GM who was able to bring in some semi-regular PuGs to help fill gaps, and the core raid members who didn't complain once about the tough situation, we were finally able to get together the last remaining few gems for my stage 2 legendary collection. As luck would have it, I was exactly 7 short as we began the newly nerfed (15%) Dragon Soul last week.
We downed heroic Morchok with ease and even managed to get heroic Ultraxion on our second try! We had put in quite a few attempts on him already but always came up short on DPS due to some poorly geared people. With the new round of nerfs and the help of some well-geared PuGs, we were able to easily make the enrage timer and down him! My gem count began to climb towards 60...
After we downed spine, I was at 60. I hearthed back to Ravenholdt to turn them in and get the final quest in the chain - kill Deathwing and bring back a fragment of his jaw.
Deathwing went down without much of a fight - to be honest it was stupidly easy with the new nerfs. We were killing the arm tentacles before it even began casting cataclysm and we didn't suffer any of our usual tank deaths on the 4th platform. We downed him in record time and I was back on my way to Ravenholdt to get my hands on the legendaries!
When I entered Ravenholdt I knew something was up. The area was phased so that the grounds were on fire and there were dead dragons scattered about. I found Wrathion and his assistant Fahrad outside in a little clearing. When I turned in the fragment of deathwing's jaw I saw the achievement light up "Fangs of the Father" as well as "Fangs of the Father Guild Edition"! Before I could even respond to the wave of "grats!" the cutscene began to play...
As it turns out Fahrad himself is a member of the black dragonflight. And since Wrathion is the only known black dragon free of the corruption of the old gods...that means Fahrad is also under the sway of the madness that gripped deathwing as well. Wrathion's final command was for me to kill Fahrad, who screams "YOU HAVE BECOME TOO DIFFICULT TO CONTROL!" before transforming into a giant black dragon. I put an end to him and his madness using my gleaming new daggers, and Wrathion disappears mysteriously with the words, "A new age for mortals has dawned, and heroes like you are among the vanguard..."
One thing I was REALLY bummed about was that I downloaded and ran fraps of the whole thing, and for some reason it didn't capture any of the actual cutscene! It only got the portion of my landing on Ravenholdt to turn in the quest and the phased area afterwards. Basically everything except the cutscene, which is obviously the coolest part of the whole experience. Oh well. My guildies can look it up on youtube.
It was kind of lame that I didn't get to have a realm-wide experience upon completion of the legendary like Dragonwrath, but I guess this really goes with the whole theme of rogues better. We work alone in the shadows, it's only fitting that we reap the benefits of our dirty deeds alone as well.
But of course none of it would have been possible without the guild. I thanked them profusely and flew back to org where they were all assembled to check out the fruits of their hard labor. My GM even enchanted them both free of charge! <3
The best part of the legendaries has got to be the wings. Yeah yeah, I know the stats are wickedly awesome, but really it's going to be replaced by even more awesome quest greens when MoP drops. But I'm willing to bet that no quest greens in MoP will have a 5 min CD on-use effect that turns you into batman! My guildies and I really got a kick out of that, I think I'll probably using it whenever it's off CD for the next few months.
And yes, the stats are of course awesome too. The proc is a little more unpredictable than I thought as I have to be actually watching the stacks but I think it will integrate pretty well into my normal rotation after a bit of practice. At the target dummy I was doing upwards of 24-25k with only a agility flask buff. Imagine what I could do fully raid buffed on a static fight like Ultraxion!
Thursday, March 1, 2012
The exodus
It's that time of the year where guilds slowly begin to fold. I'm talking about the exodus of players that occurs a few months before the launch of a new expansion.
Last night I heard that one of the better progression guilds in the server are more or less closing shop. No one is disbanding, but as the number of consistent raiders slowly decline, raid teams begin to shut down one by one until even the best guilds have trouble finding 10 people to push progression.
I joined the game in wrath and back when ICC was first released, there were definitely more hardcore progression guilds. Off the top of my head I can count maybe 10 or so guilds who were pushing heroic modes in ICC at a much faster pace than the rest of the server. About half of them was horde, and the server first guild also happens to be a US-top 20 guild.
Then came the waves of nerfs to ICC and more people were clearing heroics. Finally there came a point where everyone was doing at least half of the heroic modes and the best guilds on the server only had heroic LK standing between them and a full clear (with the exception of our server first - they were the only ones to down heroic LK pre-cata).
And then you saw the best guilds fold, one by one, as raiders got bored and frustrated. Some of them bled people left and right until raids were no longer sustainable, some of them collapsed overnight when the GM server-hopped. Some struggled till the end to recruit with no avail.
My guild was no exception to this. First came the disbanding of 25 man raids. Some people left while some continued on with 10 man raiding. We made it through till the end, finally downing 25 man LK before cata hit. That was a big moment for us, and I think our guild fared much better than others in that we retained most of our people in the transition from wrath to cata.
Then came cata and with it came the permanent disbanding of 25 man raids. I think many of the folks who had been around since BC and pre-BC were burnt out. Attendance problems and unforseen absences got the better of everyone and so raids came to a halt. But within a month or so 10 mans began to pick up and during firelands, the guild was a lot more like what I had remembered from wrath - we had a surplus roster and people actually had to be rotated out! Everyone was excited and eager and we pushed hardmodes with zeal.
And now, a few weeks into dragon soul, we are again having trouble filling a 10 man group. Two of our longest-residing members have left. One had quit the raiding scene a month ago, and now has decided to quit the game. Another had been sporadic about attendance ever since we completed her legendary, and now has faction transferred. I don't know how the rest of the guild took it, but their departure was a shock to me.
This kind of problem seems to be server-wide, as longtime members take temporary or permanent breaks and everyone is falling short on their attendance rosters. Many people, having cleared DS normal, want to take a break until the next expansion. Some have quit the game for good (or so they say) in favor of new MMOs such as SWOTR. Some have just simply burned out, or have new RL commitments and can't raid anymore.
The first group of people are to be expected - it is what inevitably happens during the long lull between the end of an expansion and the start of a new one. The second happened to come at a bad time. It just so happened that a direct competitor to WoW (and pretty much a sci-fi clone, might I add) would launch at a time when WoW's gamer base is bored and looking for something new. The third, well, that is a small minority and there is nothing that can be done about RL problems.
So where do we go from here?
I hope we can stick it out. Recruiting is difficult, but at the least I hope we don't lose any more people than we have already. I hope we can bump up some of the non-raiders in our guild to raider status permanently. I hope that the experienced raiders who want hardmodes can learn to live with a slower pace of progression - we might just have to wait for nerfs at this point. I hope that things do pick up when MoP drops. I, for one, would at least like to give MoP raiding a try before deciding that pandas was a childish idea. Maybe it will be, fun, I don't know.
Things look grim at the moment, but I have faith. I have faith that the people who are currently sustaining our rosters are not the type of people to suddenly up and quit. I think we'll make it. We just need patience to ride out this rough patch.
Last night I heard that one of the better progression guilds in the server are more or less closing shop. No one is disbanding, but as the number of consistent raiders slowly decline, raid teams begin to shut down one by one until even the best guilds have trouble finding 10 people to push progression.
I joined the game in wrath and back when ICC was first released, there were definitely more hardcore progression guilds. Off the top of my head I can count maybe 10 or so guilds who were pushing heroic modes in ICC at a much faster pace than the rest of the server. About half of them was horde, and the server first guild also happens to be a US-top 20 guild.
Then came the waves of nerfs to ICC and more people were clearing heroics. Finally there came a point where everyone was doing at least half of the heroic modes and the best guilds on the server only had heroic LK standing between them and a full clear (with the exception of our server first - they were the only ones to down heroic LK pre-cata).
And then you saw the best guilds fold, one by one, as raiders got bored and frustrated. Some of them bled people left and right until raids were no longer sustainable, some of them collapsed overnight when the GM server-hopped. Some struggled till the end to recruit with no avail.
My guild was no exception to this. First came the disbanding of 25 man raids. Some people left while some continued on with 10 man raiding. We made it through till the end, finally downing 25 man LK before cata hit. That was a big moment for us, and I think our guild fared much better than others in that we retained most of our people in the transition from wrath to cata.
Then came cata and with it came the permanent disbanding of 25 man raids. I think many of the folks who had been around since BC and pre-BC were burnt out. Attendance problems and unforseen absences got the better of everyone and so raids came to a halt. But within a month or so 10 mans began to pick up and during firelands, the guild was a lot more like what I had remembered from wrath - we had a surplus roster and people actually had to be rotated out! Everyone was excited and eager and we pushed hardmodes with zeal.
And now, a few weeks into dragon soul, we are again having trouble filling a 10 man group. Two of our longest-residing members have left. One had quit the raiding scene a month ago, and now has decided to quit the game. Another had been sporadic about attendance ever since we completed her legendary, and now has faction transferred. I don't know how the rest of the guild took it, but their departure was a shock to me.
This kind of problem seems to be server-wide, as longtime members take temporary or permanent breaks and everyone is falling short on their attendance rosters. Many people, having cleared DS normal, want to take a break until the next expansion. Some have quit the game for good (or so they say) in favor of new MMOs such as SWOTR. Some have just simply burned out, or have new RL commitments and can't raid anymore.
The first group of people are to be expected - it is what inevitably happens during the long lull between the end of an expansion and the start of a new one. The second happened to come at a bad time. It just so happened that a direct competitor to WoW (and pretty much a sci-fi clone, might I add) would launch at a time when WoW's gamer base is bored and looking for something new. The third, well, that is a small minority and there is nothing that can be done about RL problems.
So where do we go from here?
I hope we can stick it out. Recruiting is difficult, but at the least I hope we don't lose any more people than we have already. I hope we can bump up some of the non-raiders in our guild to raider status permanently. I hope that the experienced raiders who want hardmodes can learn to live with a slower pace of progression - we might just have to wait for nerfs at this point. I hope that things do pick up when MoP drops. I, for one, would at least like to give MoP raiding a try before deciding that pandas was a childish idea. Maybe it will be, fun, I don't know.
Things look grim at the moment, but I have faith. I have faith that the people who are currently sustaining our rosters are not the type of people to suddenly up and quit. I think we'll make it. We just need patience to ride out this rough patch.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Bye bye Mr. Lich King Guy
A long long time ago
I can still remember
How that raid used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my epic loot
I could give Arthas the boot
And maybe I'd get his epic mount
But December made me shiver
When Cataclysm was delivered
Deathwing on the world map
I couldn't even cast sap
I can't remember if I cried
When I read that Cairne Bloodhoof died
But something touched me deep inside
The day...that Deathwing flied
Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town
Did you pay the forty dollars
And do you have faith in ghostcrawler
If blizzard tells you so
Do you believe in DBM
Will it get you banned by a GM
And can you teach me how to win Tol Barad
Well I know that you love to pvp
'Cause I saw you in that one AV
You both zerged right to Vann
Man I dig that speed boost enchant
I was just a lonely low level scrub
Wearing all quest gear I was a nub
But I still got my Hyjal bear cub
The day...that Deathwing flied
Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town
Now for two years, we've been on our own
And moss grows fat on our hearthstone
But that's not how it used to be
When that lich king used to wipe the raid
Many a repair bills were paid
With the gold made from running dailies
Oh and while the raid was looking down
Bolvar stole his icy crown
The new lich king was born
We all felt a bit torn
And while the raid lead explained the fight
The pallys gave us blessing of might
And we practiced late nights
The day...that Deathwing flied
Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town
Slice and dice and mages' ice
Getting chain-CCed isn't quite so nice
Our healer could use a peel
No one likes a noob who carries the flag
And we all know it's not just the lag
Don't you have better gear in your bag
Now the Eye of the Storm was almost done
One more cap and it would be won
We all got up to zerg
But we didn't have the nerve
The allies tried to take the mid
But the defenders refused to give
Do you recall if anyone lived
The day...that Deathwing flied
Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town
Oh and there we were all in Mt Hyjal
A generation going through withdrawl
With no gear to start again
So Thrall be nimble, Thrall be quick
No one wants to get another gkick
And fire is Deathwing's only friend
Oh and as I watched him in Dragon Soul
I sometimes couldn't help but lol
This dragon born in hell
Died to Dovahkin's yell
And as I saw the loot pile up high
There was nothing that I could call mine
It all got sharded with a sigh
The day...that Deathwing flied
Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town
I met an orc who sang the blues
I asked him to please avoid the ooze
But he just ignored me and died
I went down to the quartermaster
But the gear was so lackluster
And the man there said I wasn't even honored
And in orgrimmar the raiders raged
Because they got kited by a mage
But not a nerf was spoken
pvp was still broken
And the three bosses I love to kill
Lich King, Marrowgar, and Lana'thel
Caught the last train to razor hill
The day...that Deathwing flied
I can still remember
How that raid used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my epic loot
I could give Arthas the boot
And maybe I'd get his epic mount
But December made me shiver
When Cataclysm was delivered
Deathwing on the world map
I couldn't even cast sap
I can't remember if I cried
When I read that Cairne Bloodhoof died
But something touched me deep inside
The day...that Deathwing flied
Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town
Did you pay the forty dollars
And do you have faith in ghostcrawler
If blizzard tells you so
Do you believe in DBM
Will it get you banned by a GM
And can you teach me how to win Tol Barad
Well I know that you love to pvp
'Cause I saw you in that one AV
You both zerged right to Vann
Man I dig that speed boost enchant
I was just a lonely low level scrub
Wearing all quest gear I was a nub
But I still got my Hyjal bear cub
The day...that Deathwing flied
Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town
Now for two years, we've been on our own
And moss grows fat on our hearthstone
But that's not how it used to be
When that lich king used to wipe the raid
Many a repair bills were paid
With the gold made from running dailies
Oh and while the raid was looking down
Bolvar stole his icy crown
The new lich king was born
We all felt a bit torn
And while the raid lead explained the fight
The pallys gave us blessing of might
And we practiced late nights
The day...that Deathwing flied
Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town
Slice and dice and mages' ice
Getting chain-CCed isn't quite so nice
Our healer could use a peel
No one likes a noob who carries the flag
And we all know it's not just the lag
Don't you have better gear in your bag
Now the Eye of the Storm was almost done
One more cap and it would be won
We all got up to zerg
But we didn't have the nerve
The allies tried to take the mid
But the defenders refused to give
Do you recall if anyone lived
The day...that Deathwing flied
Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town
Oh and there we were all in Mt Hyjal
A generation going through withdrawl
With no gear to start again
So Thrall be nimble, Thrall be quick
No one wants to get another gkick
And fire is Deathwing's only friend
Oh and as I watched him in Dragon Soul
I sometimes couldn't help but lol
This dragon born in hell
Died to Dovahkin's yell
And as I saw the loot pile up high
There was nothing that I could call mine
It all got sharded with a sigh
The day...that Deathwing flied
Bye bye Mr Lich King guy
Flew my drake to ICC
But the raid was a lie
Them good ol' raiders were nowhere near icecrown
Singing Deathwing is the new boss in town
Deathwing is the new boss in town
I met an orc who sang the blues
I asked him to please avoid the ooze
But he just ignored me and died
I went down to the quartermaster
But the gear was so lackluster
And the man there said I wasn't even honored
And in orgrimmar the raiders raged
Because they got kited by a mage
But not a nerf was spoken
pvp was still broken
And the three bosses I love to kill
Lich King, Marrowgar, and Lana'thel
Caught the last train to razor hill
The day...that Deathwing flied
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