The Road to Firelands

Leveling with Malcore has been going very well. I guess that isn’t surprising as Death Knights are pretty tough but without leveling speed bonuses I was afraid I might get a bit bored and stall out at some point. The easier leveling curve in Outland and Northrend has made a big difference in that regard. I have been able to focus on the quests and hubs I enjoy the most. As of today he is already starting the quests in Zul’Drak and I hope to have him into the Cataclysm content by the later part of next week.

For his professions I have been leveling Mining and Blacksmithing. Since this is my “no support” character this combo made the most sense. I can make him some armor and weapons and take advantage of any of those specific recipes that become available from the rep vendors later on. Without a gathering alt Mining is also essential so no dual crafting for him!  I will be getting all of his secondary professions done eventually (even Archeology) but I will wait on those until I am closer to the level cap. At this point I have Mining current and Blacksmithing is getting close. Even gold has been easier to come by now that he is in the Northrend content. I have to admit this is going much smoother than I had expected.

As a last note I want to mention one perk I am really enjoying as a Death Knight. The Acherus portal makes things just a bit easier for me overall. From Acherus it’s only a four-minute flight to Silvermoon so I don’t have to feel locked into making my home base Orgrimmar. Undercity might be a little closer but I like the layout of Silvermoon better and as a Blood Elf it feels more like home.

Right now I am just trying to keep my momentum up until I can finish leveling and get going on both the Tol Barad and Firelands Dailies. I may yet stall out but I am hopeful Malcore will make it through to 85 so I can spend some time on him in the Battlegrounds and catch up on all of those secondary professions.

I swore I would never level what I call a “complete adventurer” again. After everything is maxed I may even get him the Crusader title. After the fifth one I swore I would never do that again either but Malcore seems to be the exception to all my rules.

Soloing Again

Although it’s been over a year since I last posted I am starting up the blog again. I’ve been playing WoW since my last post but I’ve also tried some different games and even spent some time in the Mists of Pandaria Beta. With seven 85’s I have enjoyed playing WoW but at one point this past spring I just couldn’t bring myself to level another alt.

Still, here I am again. Oddly enough, it wasn’t Mists on the horizon that reinvigorated my interest in the game. It was actually a combination of factors and a little luck.

Just after the release of Wrath Blizzard offered free transfers off my original Horde server. With the queue times on Moongard exceptionally long our small friends and family guild took them up on the offer and moved all of our characters over to Sisters of Elune. I couldn’t stand the thought of just abandoning our 2-tab guild vault so I made a Death Knight to take over as guild master and promptly left him behind in Shattrath City.

Like many players I had been in the “end of expansion” doldrums lately and despite an arsenal of heirloom gear I still didn’t want to bother with leveling and gearing a new character. During this time I gave Star Wars the Old Republic a try but the games buggy nature and excessive (to me) downtime made that short lived. LotRO hasn’t been of interest for awhile and I even went back to Rift for a time.

As always I started to miss Azeroth again so I jumped back into WoW but the doldrums were still there. I just didn’t feel like leveling a new guy or playing any of my 85s. Because of Real ID our friends and family guild on Sisters is also largely unused since we use Real ID to keep in touch instead of the guild chat so we can play either Horde or Alliance without losing touch. Consequently we all went different directions with our characters, joined different guilds and whatnot.

On almost a lark I decided to log onto that Death Knight on Moonguard (named Malcore) I had left behind a few years earlier. I had a tough day of work ahead of me so during my morning game-time I just wanted to relax. To do this I thought I would just run around Eversong Woods and start to level his Mining. It was mindless but I love the zone and that activity really helped me to unwind.

I ended up logging in on Malcore again the next morning (my only time to play is before work) and I kept working on his Mining. It was nice to have the two-tab vault so every now and then I would head back to a city and dump all the mats into the extended storage space he has. I wanted to keep the mats as I had decided Blacksmithing would be my profession of choice if I continued to play him. A few mornings later I had caught up his Mining to 300 and I could gather Outlands mats. My first thought was “okay, now it’s off to Hellfire Peninsula”.

There were a couple of problems though. The big one was that for the last few years I had always had heirloom gear for leveling – but that was all on another server with my 85s. Another was that when we left Moonguard we had stripped out all the cash and mats from the vault and I had only left Malcore with about 10g in his pocket. He also had no glyphs, flight training, or any gear other than what I had received from the DK starter zone. The guild itself was from before guild leveling existed so it had no guild levels and no guild perks.

Then it hit me – what a perfect soloing experiment. Death Knights are great soloers in general so I decided to make that my theme for him.  Malcore would be self sufficient to the best of my ability. I wasn’t even going to make a bank alt for him. I would have only one character on this server with only his personal guild to add extra support. I don’t know anyone on Moonguard any longer so that fits well also – no help from anyone outside the guild either.

I took advantage of the guild rename feature and choose “Solo of Fortune” to reflect more accurately my little project. Old timers will probably recognize the name from an old Cyberpunk supplement and career type. That in itself was a play on words from the magazine called Soldier of Fortune. The name just seemed to fit all around.

Thanks to Real ID I am not that isolated and I can chat with my family and real life friends whenever they are online. I must admit that at first I thought Real ID was a useless feature (sorry about that Blizzard) and now I couldn’t be more thankful it was added to the game.

Malcore is now embarking on his adventures in Outlands and beyond.  My initial concern about the lack of heirlooms, cash and guild perks has actually made it more fun to play him. I am sure this style of play isn’t for everyone but for me it has been like a breath of fresh Azerothian air.

Fisherman’s Gloves

It may be an old habit but I still like having a pair of gloves with the Angler enchant on them. The bonus to Fishing used to be more important when most fishable water had a minimum skill level required to use it. Although I don’t really need the bonus anymore I keep them in my pack along with my Weather Beaten Fishing Hat.

In the past I have put the enchantment on a grey or interesting looking quest reward glove that I would otherwise vendor. Recently, while leveling one of my Goblin alts, I ran across a quest that even gives you a pair of gloves that are perfect for the Angler enchant – Fisherman’s Gloves.

You get this as a reward from a quest called “Beware of Cragjaw!” that starts at a sign beside Cragpool Lake in the Stonetalon Mountains. This is a Horde-only quest chain added with the revamp to the old world in Cataclysm. Before you rush out to the lake to pick up the quest (as I did on Tazok) it is actually gated along with all of the quests for Krom’Gar Fortress. This should have been a one-off quest but with the new quest structuring you need to do a chain to access it. It’s mildly annoying but it doesn’t take long.

To get everything started you need to pick up the breadcrumb quest in Ashenvale at the Horde occupied outpost of Silverwind Refuge. Take the quest that has you ride a wagon into the Stonetalon Mountains and then sit back and watch as you bounce along.

After this you pick up the quest from an Orc named Saurboz to rearm the mines along the path. Once completed he then sends you to find a missing Goblin engineer. The Goblin is dead but a note on his corpse leads you to a leader of the Night Elves who is at a nearby tent with her pet cat. After defeating her you get the Alliance Attack Plans and then Saurboz finally tells you to take them to Krom’Gar fortress. This opens the quests at the fortress along with the one at Cragpool Lake for the gloves. Just fly over to Cragpool Lake and pick it up. Cragjaw may look mean but even at level he is very soloable.

So if you are a Horde player these might be worth a little side trip to pick up. The gloves are cloth so any class can use them. On Tazok (then level 82) it took about 20 minutes or so to do the whole chain.

Happy Fishing!

Assignment: Goblin Operative

Back in early December I wrote a post about wanting to change my poor, long suffering Rogue from a Human into a Goblin. I say long suffering since he has undergone several racial incarnations at this point and a few faction switches to boot. I did it the first time before there were any faction changes. At level 56 I was so tired of being Undead I deleted him and rerolled as a Troll. Sadly, it didn’t stop there and I am at the point where I now RP him as an agent of Ravenholdt Manor. I look at each change as a new assignment he has been given and his new race as his disguise for wherever Lord Jorach is sending him.

After seeing and later playing the Goblins I still wanted to make him one.  Then last week, while I was in the midst of uncertainly about which main character to play, I found myself inspired by the Horde for Life podcast to try out the Wyrmrest Accord server on the Horde side. I mulled it over for awhile (okay, I asked my wife if spending the money was crazy) but in the end I bit the bullet (with her patient smile of support) and made the change.

I knew from past experience that the main things he would lose with a faction change were his Crusader title and all of his rep with the Silver Covenant/Sunreavers faction. At least he got to keep his Argent Tournament Tabard and can still use it.

Although he kept all of his Horde faction reps I was surprised that his Orgrimmar rep was changed over to Goblin. Now he is only Neutral with Orgrimmar but he did keep his wolf mounts and can still use them. I guess if I need to do one rep over again then Orgrimmar isn’t a bad one. There are lots of quests around that grant the rep even if I decide not to go back and take it to exalted while regaining my Crusader title.

It is sure nice to be settled though. Wyrmrest is turning out to be a great server and I am so glad I made the move.

 

Why do These 5 Levels Seem so Daunting?

When I log on these days I have continued to suffer from an odd feeling of restlessness. I don’t think its burnout, especially so early in an expansion, but something is certainly up. With only 5 character levels ahead of me I have had less motivation than ever to level my existing 80’s or even new characters beyond level 30 or so. This lack of leveling ambition feels strangely out of place given the new content and races and race/class combos that are now available. This should be the perfect time to start fresh – perhaps even on a new server and do it all over from scratch. So what keeps holding me back?

Whenever I have felt like this in the past I have just started a new guy and off I would go. This time around I have noticed that I stall out on all of these new alts once I began to get serious about their professions.  This expansion may have only added 5 character levels but the professions have advanced as if it were a full 10-level expansion.  With 75 more points and the addition of Archeology I have found that starting a new character seems like a more daunting task than ever.

This got me thinking about the next expansion and what it might bring. My guess is that the next and subsequent expansions will all consist of 5 levels. This seems like a reasonable expectation, especially if Blizzard is shooting for an 18 month development cycle for new expansions. Increasing the cap by 5 levels is probably more achievable with that time frame in mind.

I think the next expansion will also include a content update to Outlands and any remaining parts of Azeroth that haven’t been already done. However, I think the professions will continue to advance by 75 points each time. From this point forward I feel that a character’s leveling will be much easier to max out than their professions. This is especially true with Fishing and now Archeology. Both of these are pretty hefty time sinks to level up.

I think we may very well have seen the last of the 10 level expansions. I doubt Blizzard is in any hurry to have the max level reach 100. Stretching those levels out over the next three expansions makes a lot of sense.

 

Diving Back In

Still struggling to find a new main for this expansion I decided to level my original main, a Tauren Hunter, while I puzzled it out. With a three day weekend I had a little more time to play him than normal and managed to take him from 80-82 and get him into Deepholm.

I may be slow but it took me from 80 to 81 to feel comfortable with the way Hunters work now. I shelved him after the change from Mana to Focus not because I thought the change was bad but because I didn’t feel like taking the time to relearn the class right then. Since I felt like I was in a bit of a holding pattern anyway I thought it was a good time to dive into it and I’m glad I did.

So, for the time being I will be writing about life as a soloing Hunter. It’s a great soloing class but my struggle will be when I try out battlegrounds again on him at 85. I had a mixed experience with it during BC and Wrath but hopefully I can have fun with it until I settle on a new guy to level.

 

The Goblin Starter Experience: Revisited

I still haven’t settled on a new main but in experimenting with a few more alts I decided to try out a Mage again, but this time a Goblin. The only downside is the linear, no options, 13ish levels of questing to get him out of their racial starter area. I really didn’t want to do all of this again but I was enjoying him (despite the robes and no melee) so I kept going.

Going though the Goblin starter experience a second time was a little easier and I even paused a few times to enjoy the best parts and grumble at the worst. I have been better able to see a few of the problem areas this time around and I want to mention them.

Kezan

First, if you like the Vegas style of Kezan (as I do), then don’t rush to finish it. Once you leave it’s gone for good. I only wish I could come back to hang out at higher levels. I really enjoy these first 5 levels so it’s nice that I can go back on alts anytime I roll a new Goblin just to mess around there again.

The Islands

The questing here is where I started to get antsy again. In my personal opinion the island zone where you wash up on shore should have been close enough to swim (or find a raft) over to the Echo Isles so you could continue on to Durotar if you so chose. This way you could head off to the other early Horde zones if you like or stay with the Goblin Quests. I know this stage sets your character up for joining the Horde but I just feel like it goes on too long.

There are a few bright spots where these quests are interesting or fun but many of them feel like filler to me. You know what? I think they are filler. Between taking Skulzy (my Hunter) though and coming back on Gonzo I played though the Worgen starter experience to check it out as well. By comparison, the Worgen zones were great from 1-13. I never got bored or wished I could head somewhere else.

I think that the content and quests for the Goblin storyline fell short of what was needed to match the Worgen starter experience. As a result the Goblin zone feels stretched by comparison. I feel like there are several quest hubs that I could easily skip (but you have to do them to progress) and still get the best parts of the story. I guess Blizzard needed to add this filler so the two starter experiences dropped new characters out with the same amount of experience. Sadly, the Goblin zone suffered for this.

The Fate of Candy Cane

Then, almost at the very end, there is one quest that actually irritated me. As a player I really hate it that you are forced to kill Candy Cane to finish the Goblin zone. I frankly didn’t care that she hooked up with my old buddy Chip and then Gallywix. She wasn’t a girl you could count on. Gonzo knew that from the outset. He certainly wasn’t going to kill her over it.

It makes me wonder what bad dumping that Blizzard writer had that made them feel killing this NPC was necessary for ALL Goblin players (I am guessing the females have to kill Chip in a similar fashion) to get to get off the island and into the rest of the game. That is somebody with a lot of bitter feelings toward their ex.  I should be clear here that I don’t mind that the quest is in the game but I think it should be an optional side quest and not necessary to progress to the final confrontation with Gallywix. I don’t think Gallywix even mentions her death in the final fight.

With no other option, and to his eternal shame, Gonzo did the quest and killed Candy to get off the island. The real kicker? Candy is a hostile mob but she doesn’t aggro on you. You actually have to initiate the fight. You can’t even lie to yourself that it was all in self defense. I know I sound a bit dramatic here but I just think this particular quest was one of the creepier ones I have had to do in this game.

Gonzo had come to really despise his old assistant, Sassy. She had him by the balls and she knew it. There was no profit in what she wanted and he didn’t want to do it. When he saw Candy standing atop the overseer’s platform in the slave pits he knew she was bad news. He had always known that but she was still special to him. He guessed he was a sucker for a pretty face.

As he approached Candy he gathered bands of shimmering energy around him.

Candy looked at him in disbelief, “Sweetie, don’t…”

Hardening his resolve Gonzo said, “Sorry, it’s just business.”

The fight didn’t last long. Candy was no match for Gonzo and they both knew it. Tears welled up in his eyes as he released wave after wave of destructive force at her. She rained blows down upon them and he let them all land, hoping she would find a killing blow. It never came. He encased her in ice and then lashed out with a final burst of energy that left her lifeless on the platform.

The deal with Sassy was clear. He had to bring her Candy’s heart in payment to get off this island. Gonzo wept over her body but did the deed. Her brought her heart back to Sassy and spat in her twisted face.

“Sassy,” Gonzo said, “mark my words. One day this’ll be you. I don’t care how long it takes but you and your cronies will burn. I will see to it.”

Sassy tested the weight of the heart in her hand. She appraised the little package and looked at Gonzo with a broad smile full of pointed teeth. She blew him a kiss.

There was more to do in the deal, but once it was all settled they sailed for Orgimmar. The first thing Gonzo did when he set foot in the city was hit the bars and get sloppy drunk.