The Tao of the Korean World of Warcraft Site

Earlier this week, WoW.com broke the story that the Patch 3.3.2 patch notes had been posted on the official Korean site. Not content to just read their translation, I decided to head on over to the Korean World of Warcraft site to snoop around a bit myself.

Now, please understand that I can neither read nor speak Korean. My curiosity pertained to the aesthetics of the site rather than the content. I clicked around a bit, finding some familiar and unfamiliar imagery. Almost immediately, I discovered this little gem: a beginner’s manual in a region-specific artistic style. Don’t strain your eyes. Those images are clickable.

For The… Horde?

*Ahem*

So I, uhh… fkshn chngd….

What? Oh sorry. I said I faction changed!

Yes, that’s correct. The imagery that you see at the top of this page* is no longer representative of Ms. Devv. She is no longer physically a Draenei, though the Exodar will always have a special place in her heart. The magical mistress of the arcane is now a… drum roll… Blood Elf.

Dungeon Finder: Two Perspectives (Part 2)

As you may recall, I devoted my last post to crying like a little girl with a skinned knee about the injustices that we’ve been served via WoW’s new Dungeon Finder tool. This time around, we’re going to dig into the more positive aspects of said tool. So, without further space-filling text in the first paragraph, let’s put on a happy face!

Part 2: The Good

I could spend literally all day discussing the multitudes of little benefits that the new system provides, but I’ll instead focus on the three that affect me the most personally… cuz this is my blog. Go get your own. Unless you already have your own. Then this is just awkward. Where was I? Oh yes, my top three reasons that Dungeon Finder is not the Antichrist. They are:

1. More for My Gold
2. More for My Money
3. PvP… Yes, PvP!

I will now address each bullet point in its own paragraph with its associated heading, thus giving some order to this post and enhancing its aesthetic appeal. Go!

Dungeon Finder: Two Perspectives (Part 1)

As with any major patch, 3.3 brought with it some conversation pieces that still resonate today. Was passing out Emblems of Triumph like candy the biggest nerf the game has seen? Was adopting a QuestHelper-like interface catering too much to the noobs? Did allowing shoulder enchants to be BoA cheapen the Sons of Hodir rep grind a bit? Arguments could be made for both sides of all of these questions.

The change that stands out the most to me is the Dungeon Finder system. I was originally going to do one post discussing the pros and cons of the new system. But as I started writing, I realized it might be best to devote one post to the good and one post to the bad. Today’s post will get the negativity out of the way so we can all hold hands and sing “Kumbaya” next time around. Without further ado…

Part 1: The Bad

Alternate title: The Cow-Punching Noobtards Can Haz Herokes. Yes, that’s right. We’ve all dealt with it. Regardless of Blizzard’s attempt at restricting undergeared players from entering Heroics for which they are not geared, they’re still getting in. Sometimes they’re coming in as part of a group. Some guildies couldn’t find a fourth or fifth member to carry their newly-minted 80’s through Heroics. Congratulations. You just won that role. Other times, and I’ve seen this, they’re sporting quest greens and blues and a crafted ilvl 245 item or two. The law of averages just humped your leg.

Movin’ On Up

I’m back, ya’ll! It’s been nearly ten months since my last post. If you kept up with my real life misadventures, you know I had a rollercoaster of a year. I took a five month sabbatical from WoW to focus on some family issues that I think are finally resolved. If you’re playing along at home, that means that I’ve been playing again for about five months without blogging about it. This probably cost me a few power gamer credibility points too. I actually let real life come before WoW. Craziness.

When I last checked in, I believe Devv was sitting somewhere in the neighborhood of 74 and Predatore had recently dinged 80. In the time that I was away from the game, twinking got bent over and dry-humped by Blizzard. Oh sure, you can still enjoy some twink on twink action… if you want to sit in queue for eleven days. So, Kaddisfly reluctantly made the symbolic gesture of dinging 20 in Warsong Gulch, kissing his crazy-expensive twink life goodbye. Dante… well, the little Rogue with a big heart hasn’t left Ironforge since 2008. And 2010 isn’t looking much better for him.

But 2009 wasn’t all bad. Ms. Devv hit level 80 in early August and hasn’t looked back since. I also welcomed a couple of new additions to the family this year. Frustrated by the time wasted in LFG waiting for a tank and healer (this was pre-3.3, mind you), I decided to take matters into my own hands. Tanking has never interested me. I’ve rolled three Paladins, leveled them to 10, then deleted them as I quickly lost interest in the class mechanics. Plus, tanking seems boring as Hell to me. But healing… well, that’s a horse of a different color. It seems challenging and fun, exciting and scary. With that in mind, I decided to roll me some healz!

Real Life

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. Real life has sunk its claws in me once again. I’ve played WoW so infrequently lately that there’s really not much for me to talk about. If you’d like to see what’s going on in my life, you’re more than welcome to check out my personal blog here. Otherwise, I’ll be back soon. And by soon, I mean within the next three or four weeks. Until then, take care, friends.

Patch 3.0.9 and Some Caverns of Time (That Kinda Rhymes)

Apparently, when the servers come back online today, we’ll be playing with patch 3.0.9. Not a whole lot to get excited about here. But something stood out to me:

Fixed an issue where players using nVidia 3D glasses were unable to see spell cooldowns.

As Gnomeaggedon pointed out last week in this post, we’re still without live instance maps four years after the game’s release. Yet the developer’s are devoting resources to correcting an issue being experienced by 1/100th of 1% of the game’s demographic? And a bunch of 3D glasses-wearing noobtards at that. Wow. Just… wow.

Aside from that, our Arcane brethren are about the only members of the Mage community to be affected by the patch. I’ll be interested to read Larisa’s thoughts in a few days. Oddly, Death Knights were completely untouched for the first time since the release of Wrath. Looks like Blizzard might be reaching a comfort zone with their controversial Hero Class.

As minor is it may seem, I’m pretty pumped about this one:

Fixed a player movement error in which other players were appearing to move erratically when traveling beside them.

Earlier this week, Drkdmon and I were running Torgath through Escape from Durnholde Keep. None of us had done it on those particular toons, so we needed to knock it out so we could run him through Opening the Dark Portal later that day. Once we freed Thrall and defeated Captain Skarloc, we galloped off to Tarren Mill. As we traveled, Drkdmon kept phasing in and out next to me. His glitchy movements were driving me nuts. Good bug fix, Blizz. You have my stamp of approval.

As an interesting sidenote, we had to run Durnholde two-and-a-half times. The first time, I forgot to accept the quest from Andormu. I talked with him. I opened the quest dialogue box. I even read it, which is a rarity for me. I just didn’t accept it. We figured this out as we attempted to enter the Dark Portal section of CoT and I just galloped in place as the other two entered the instance.

The second time in, we had a couple of setbacks. Drkdmon wiped us as we were setting the Incendiary Bombs in the Internment Lodges. I grabbed aggro from the first group of mobs and pulled them away from the others. I noticed that at some point, Torgath’s heals weren’t coming as frequently. Before I had a chance to figure out why, I had mobs attacking me from behind. I glanced at Torgath’s health as he slumped to the ground dead. It was at that point that I noticed Drkdmon battling the second group of mobs.

“How did you guys pull aggro from a whole different set of mobs?” I asked.

“Steve (Drkdmon) attacked a whole different set of mobs. He didn’t even go after the ones you did,” Torgath replied.

“Nice job, ass hat,” I said.

Corpse run. Second verse, not quite the same as the first. A little bit different, but a little bit worse. After destroying the five Lodges and defeating Lieutenant Drake, I told the guys to hold up in the basement of Durnholde Keep. I was the only one with the quest anyhow. I had a plumber coming over to the house to look at a clogged drain pipe. I knew that it was only going to take a few minutes with a power snake, so I knew the guys would be OK with it. As Torgath and I entered Durnholde Keep, Drkdmon went missing. His little blue party dot was right by us, but he was nowhere to be found. As we knocked out the last few mobs on the main floor, Thrall shot past us and down the hallway to the front door.

“What the f**k?” Torgath asked?

“Who the f**K let Thrall out of the prison?” I demanded.

“Steve,” Torgath answered.

“Jesus Christ! You’re killing me, Steve. I’m the only one with the quest… a quest that I can now no longer turn in,” I barked.

“Let him die,” Torgath offered.

“Steve or Thrall?” I asked.

“Both,” Torgath laughed.

And so we did. Our first run at the Dark Portal wasn’t much better. Torgath trained every Jaguar, Tarantula, and Crocolisk from the entrance to the instance to Medivh. We didn’t actually wipe. We just watched Medivh die as I fought every creature known to man in front of him. Drkdmon compunded the problem by attempting to knock out the Rift Lords and all of their adds by himself without heals. His rationale was that it would prevent the other Infinite-named mobs from spawning. Decent logic, but not exactly what you want to hear when you’ve got fifty spiders and kitty cats all up ons. Lesson learned: kill all of the trash on the way to Medivh. They have no tether point.

Okie-doke, kiddos. Servers should be back up now. I’m off to level Devv a bit.

Update: Maintenance extended by two hours. Why am I not surprised? Maybe they hadn’t worked out all of the kinks on that nVidia 3D glasses bug fix.

Playing With a Full Deck

See what I did right there? With the… cuz people usually say you’re not playing with a full deck. Never mind.

Anyhow, I finally put together a full Prisms Deck this morning. While the Nobles cards tend to sell quite well on my server, the Chaos, Undeath, and Prisms cards are plagued by a couple problems. First, they just don’t seem to sell well. But when they are selling well, undercutters come out in force, selling 100G cards for 15-20G.

I decided a little while ago to hang onto any of the Chaos, Undeath, and Prisms cards that dropped while crafting Darkmoon Cards of the North. Along the way, I’ve picked up a lot of Chaos and Undeath duplicates. But last night, I got to one card short of the Prisms Deck, two cards short of the Undeath Deck, and three cards short of the Chaos Deck.

As I resumed leveling Devv to 80, I started looking at Darkmoon Card: Illusion as a viable endgame trinket. With only the Two of Prisms left to go, I decided to take a quick look at the AH to see if it would be worth just buying the missing card last night. There were two listed, one with a buyout of 89G and the other for 99G. Typically listed for 100G, they were both reasonably priced.

But then I noticed that the 99G card had a starting bid of 50G 50S and had only 12 hours remaining. That was a mere 50% of its valuation. The opportunity cost of farming the mats for hours and hoping to create that card justified the purchase. Well, it at least justified a bid. I placed my bid of 50G 50S, crossed my fingers, and hoped for the best.

When I woke up this morning, there was a Two of Prisms sitting in my mailbox. With just over five levels remaining until Devv dings 80, she’ll have an Epic trinket waiting for her. Hey, it’s better than a tabard for her first 80 Epic, right?

Ridiculous

In just over two days, I’ve caught more than 1000 fish. Both my Fishing and Cooking are now up to 300. Along the way, I caught Old Ironjaw, successfully fished from four of the five junk nodes needed for The Scavenger achievement, and got a lucky drop of Recipe: Tasty Cupcake while doing the PvP Daily Blackriver Skirmish in Grizzly Hills. Devv is still at 74. Predatore is still in greens and blues.

But the guild did run through Utgarde Keep last night, something Predatore had never done. With two 80 DK’s, a 75 Warlock, and a 66 Pally, it took us about ten minutes.

I’m getting ready to log in right now. When I do, I’ll be completing the Kalu’ak Dailies, farming some herbs, then resuming my Fishing/Cooking addiction. I’m not stopping until I get to 450, ya’ll. If you happen to be on Garrosh-US, hit me up for some Tasty Cupcakes. I’ll holler at ya’ll soon!

I’m So Focused Rig… Ooh! A Quarter!

I have A.D.D. I have no medical evidence to back this up. Nonetheless, I’m confident that it’s true. My RL friend Matt once told me that a shiny object could distract me from speaking to a supermodel.

I’ve had very clear goals for my top two WoW toons recently: make a ton of gold selling Darkmoon Cards of the North on Predatore and level Devv to 80. After dropping 5000G on Predatore’s Epic Flight, he’s back up to 2600G. Devv is halfway through level 74 and she’s done nearly all of the quests in Grizzly Hills. She just might move into Zul’Drak early. So far, so good, right? Wrong.

Yesterday, I took a quick peek at Predatore’s skills to see how high his First Aid was. I noticed that his cooking was at 4/75 and he had never even learned fishing. I think you can see where I’m going with this.

I played WoW for approximately four hours yesterday. Nearly all of that time was spent fishing, cooking, and traveling. At the end of the day, Predatore’s Fishing was at 176/225 and his Cooking was at 225/225. He has all of the items necessary to complete his Artisan Cooking quest. A quick journey to Tanaris will open things up to 300 when I get home tonight.

As if leveling Cooking and Fishing wasn’t enough proof of my A.D.D., I actually got distracted during my distraction. I decided to travel to Orgrimmar to try to get The Fishing Diplomat achievement. With no means of going invisible, I’d hoped to take out the guards, haul ass to my fishing spot, and hope for the best. I never made it past the front gates.

I spent about 35 minutes dueling Horde toons, flagging, un-flagging, making corpse runs, and watching duels. By the time I left Orgrimmar, I nearly forgot why I was there to begin with. I finally hearthed back to Dalaran and took a port to Ironforge so I could fly to my next fishin’ hole: Arathi Highlands.

When I got to Arathi, I was pretty focused on catching 40 to 60 Mithril Head Trout. I caught about 12 of them when I saw the yellow message “Refuge Point is under attack.” Oh, Hell no!

Needless to say, I high-tailed it to Refuge Point, killed the level 41 Tauren Druid, then corpse-camped him twice. I probably would have done it more, but after the second time, he had the good sense to wait five minutes to rez.

Defending Refuge Point reminded me of my time spent leveling Devv through Arathi Highlands. I had one quest left to turn in before I was done in the zone. When I got back to Refuge Point, some level 70 Horde toons had slaughtered all of the NPC’s. I had to sit and wait a few minutes before the questgiver came back. When he did, he was promptly killed again.

A combination of that memory and my three recent kills put the taste of blood in my mouth. That was all the motivation I needed to gallop off to Hammerfall and slaughter everyone. A level 40 Blood Elf Mage was approaching one of the NPC’s as I killed him. I can only assume that he was trying to turn in a quest. It must have really pissed him off because it prompted him to flag and attack me… a level 80 Death Knight. Bad choice. I killed the misguided Mage a total of four times.

My Fishing would probably be closer to 225, but it’s just so damn easy to get distracted. At least with Cooking, you stand in front of a fire and cook everything you have in your inventory. It’s quick, painless, and easy to level. Before logging, I got the Catch 250 Fish achievement. I don’t care what people say. Having the patience to watch the little bobber bounce 250 times in one day is an achievement. I’ll take a “gratz” for that one.

So, Predatore still has 2600G and Devv is still level 74. After an entire day off of gameplay, I’ve made no “real” progress. I think my best bet is to get both professions all the way to 450 right now so I don’t get tempted to step away from my goals again in the near future. I really want to get Devv to 80, then get both her and Predatore geared up. I’m confident that I can stay focu… hey, that guy looks like Newman from Seinfeld!