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.

I’d love to know what it all means; what each element explains and what aspects of the game Blizzard felt deemed further explanation for that market. Some of the sections are pretty easy to figure out: how to install the game, basic movement, quest-givers, etc. But other sections are a bit more mysterious. In what ways do Koreans approach a game like WoW differently? Which mechanics of the game might be confusing for that demographic and which ones are more intuitive?

I considered throwing all of that text into a basic online translator to get a glimpse of the messages within. It wouldn’t be 100% accurate (as no online translators are), but it would at least give us an idea of how Blizzard approached the presentation of the game in a market obsessed with Starcraft. Unfortunately, the entire manual is done in Flash, so the text can’t be copied and pasted like a basic HTML document.

Even without a vague understanding of the content, you have to appreciate the imagery. Again, some of the visuals are familiar to all of us WoW addicts. Others are quite unique to the Korean (or at least Asian) market. So, I encourage you to take a look for yourself.  And as you dive into a completely unfamiliar experience, remember that the game itself is the tie that binds a global community.

It’s easy to believe that since we all play the same game, we’re all pretty similar. I don’t mean that we’re all basement-dwelling antisocial geeks. For the record, I do play WoW from my basement office. What I mean is that it’s easy to apply broad stroaks across our beloved game’s player base and assume that we have many traits in common. The Korean site got me thinking differently.

Despite the fact that a “well-geared” Mage probably shares 90% of the same armor, spec, and spell rotation with more than half of his colleagues, we love different things about the game. And we approach it in different ways. For some people, it’s an escape from a stressful day at the office. For some, it’s the only form of social interaction that they’re comfortable with. Others may have the desire to lead people in the achievement of common goals. And still others riff on the games within a game: the meta achievements, pet collecting, role-playing, etc.

I’ll finish this rant with an open question. Why do you play WoW? More specifically, what makes you a unique player? This blog gets a decent amount of traffic, but most people read the posts, click a link or two, then bounce. I’m asking for audience participation on this one. Stick around for a couple minutes longer and leave your thoughts. This subject intrigues me and I don’t think I’m the only one.

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.

Why?

Excellent question. There were a lot of contributing factors, but the main two were my frustration with constantly, and I mean constantly failing in Battlegrounds and, well… the Alliance on Garrosh-US are mostly douchebags. As I mentioned in my last post, I went back to a former guild. Within a couple weeks of rejoining my old comrades, the officers announced that they were all faction changing within a matter of days. My frustration with the Alliance’s perpetual PvP failure had already reached a point that it was affecting my enjoyment of the game. So when they announced that they were jumping ship, I was only too happy to join them.

I’ll miss a lot of people on the Alliance side. There were some good friends that I never had a chance to wish farewell. You see, after a particularly epic Wintergrasp fail, I immediately logged out and initiated the faction transfer. It was a hasty, impulse decision. But if I hadn’t done it there and then, I would have hemmed and hawed about it for days on end. I regret that I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, but I’m glad I left when I did.

So, the new/old guild. When Devv first dinged 80 (during my sabbatical from blogging), she joined a fun group of laid-back raiders called Of Course It Explodes. Unfortunate name, good peeps. Things were super-fab for several weeks in my new guild until a ridiculous prick named Schultz came along. We butted heads in a Heroic and he segued the argument into gchat afterward. I tried to hold my tongue, but I eventually gave him a piece of my mind. Our GM told us both to knock it off. And we did.

A few days later, I logged in to find myself /gkicked. I whispered the GM and he relayed an interesting bot of fiction from my old pal Schultz. He claimed that he put me on ignore and I responded by creating multiple level 1 characters to continue to badger him. This was a straight-up lie. Our GM asked us to exchange apologies. We did and I was welcomed back to the guild, not entirely sure what I was apologizing for.

Second verse, almost the same as the first. About a month later, I again logged in to find myself guildless. This was getting old. I whispered our GM again. He again defended his actions by relaying a Schultz original tale. After clearing up the matter once more, I was invited back to the guild. I accepted the invitation on Predatore, but I was ready to find a guild with 100% less Schultz for Devv. She declined her third invitation to Of Course It Explodes. Such a tragic name. They realized it too.

What was Blizzard thinking when they disallowed guild name changes? Clearly, they weren’t. As the officers became more and more dissatisfied with our moniker, they eventually decided to disband and reform our rapidly expanding guild. The level of organization in preparing for the switch was incredible. The officers covered all of their bases and the transition was seamless. What was once Of Course It Explodes was now Aegis. As of this writing, the Armory shows 117 members. When I logged Devv out of her Alliance digs for the last time, the more accurate head count was less than 70. More on that in a minute. Rewind a bit first.

So Devv was guildless. The whole, “You’re out! You’re in! You’re out! Come back!” Remember… remember where we left off? Coolio. Moving on. Devvy-Devvs was sans-guild. For the first time since I started playing WoW, I hit up the official forums to start my new guild search. On the Alliance side of Garrosh-US, there are a handful of top-tier progression guilds and their coat tail-chasers, a handful of widely respected casual raiding guilds and their coat tail chasers, and then the rest of the realm. The “rest” is mostly composed of super-casual guilds and, well… scrubs. I’m not a hardcore raider by my own or anyone else’s standards, so the top tier was out. But I was geared and ready to move into ToC10. So I set my sights on one tier down from the top.

At the time, Deception was one of the more respected casual raiding guilds on the server. Although there wasn’t a dedicated progression team, they were moving through content right behind the top-tier guilds. I started conversing with the GM via whispers for a few days before I wound up among their ranks. A few days later, I saw the message “Schultz has joined the guild” pop up. Wow. Just… wow. But this time around, things were different. Somehow, we put aside our differences and wound up running a lot of content together. I even took his side in a disagreement in Naxx25. But Schultz only lasted a few weeks before he moved to another guild, so enough about him.

I spent a few weeks in Deception, happily grouping with guildies for some Heroics and an occasional raid. During a particularly busy week at work, I wasn’t able to log in to WoW for about three days. Upon my return, I discovered that about 50% of the guild had /gquit. Half of the guild bailing in a mass exodus would be troubling enough, but the fact that 90% of the core raiders were involved in the ship-jumping festivities made it difficult to justify remaining in the guild. This was compounded by the fact that the people who I considered friends had all left… all of them.

It took me a few hours to figure out that the majority of the departed players had splintered into two factions. Half of them went on to form The Fraternity, led by one of my closest friends from Deception, Fairchild. The other half were absorbed into… get this… Aegis. Not even kidding. It seemed like a no-brainer to join the ranks of The Fraternity. I enjoyed the company of most of the Deception refugees who landed their. And by “most,” I mean all but one.

When we were all in Deception, a Druid by the name of Kyndris was our #3 healer. As she was the only one of that trio who made the jump to The Fraternity, she became our #1 by default. Unfortunately, her personality type made it dangerous for her to be the top-rated anything in a social environment. She was a prima donna. She was arrogant. And frankly, she wasn’t that good of a healer. It’s not that she couldn’t keep a tank up or kick in her fair share of raid heals. Her problem was that she used zero healing add-ons and overhealed like it was her job. She would always snap back, “I can’t help but overheal.” Her rationale was that she was better-geared than some of our tanks and DPS. Yeah… not kidding.

One night, the gang took a group of some of our relatively new 80′s to run 10-man Ulduar. Kyndris was joined by another healer who was slightly out-geared by her, but much more talented at the mechanics of healing. Clearly, she felt threatened by him. After a wipe that resulted from Kyndris overhealing, generating threat, and quickly going down, the other healer took the opportunity to question her decision to not use add-ons. Given her flawed personality, Kyndris saw the resulting argument as the perfect opportunity to /gkick the healer who was about to overtake her as the guild’s best. My first thought was, “That… just… happened.”

I promptly whispered Fairchild and told him that I was tired of her bullshit and that the recently kicked healer was a bigger asset to the guild than she was. I explained that many others also felt this way and would probably leave if she wasn’t reeled in immediately. The other healer was promptly invited back, but what came next kind of surprised me. Fairchild logged into his other level 80 toon,a Draenei Hunter named Fireaway, and /gquit. Moments later, another good friend was right behind him.

I decided to whisper my old Aegis GM to see how things were shaping up over there. The next day, their recruiting officer, Luminata (who was also a former Deception guildie and has since faction-transferred himself), asked me if I could jump on Vent to see if I would be a good fit with the current generation of the guild. This part of the conversation stands out to me the most:

Luminata: I see that you recently left The Fraternity. Do you still have a good relationship with Fairchild?

Me: Yeah, in fact, Fair is one of the reasons it was difficult for me to leave. You, Fair, and I used to run Ony back when we were barely geared for the fight. Why?

Luminata: He brought his Hunter, Fireaway, over to Aegis yesterday. Just wanted to make sure you guys were on good terms.

All I could think was, “Hell yeah!” I got to escape the irritation of Kyndris, hook up with my old Of Course It Explodes pals, and bring along my best friend from my Deception/Fraternity days. What else could I ask for? Well, maybe a win or two in Wintergrasp. Or not getting five-capped in Arathi Basin. Or considering Alterac Valley a victory when we actually won. It was getting to the point that we considered it a win if we prevented our opponents from knocking out the Alterac Blitz achievement.

I think that brings the story full-circle. Ms. Devv is now a member of Torn Asunder. Some Aegis guildies are still migrating over; others have decided not to make the jump. But I have faith that Kalagrim (formerly the Draenei Kalanar) will rebuild the guild back to the level we’d come to expect in our Alliance days. In the meantime, I’m roflstomping my former brothers in arms in every battleground and Wintergrasp. Devv made the faction change over a week ago and has been extremely active in BG’s every day since. She still hasn’t lost a BG since going Horde. Dead serious. On her first night as a Blood Elf, she ran Alterac Valley five times. Since then, she runs it at least once a day as part of her daily routine. She hasn’t even died in AV, much less lost… not once. For all the time that I “hated” the Horde, it’s amazing how quickly I’ve changed my tune. I’m reminded of a very appropriate line form Casablanca:

Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

*Since the time that this was posted, I’ve gone back and updated the header to an image of Devv in her new Horde digs.

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!

More for My Gold

Specifically, I’m talking about Dual Talent Specialization. That’s a 1000G investment that is rarely put to good use on my alts. Devv has been swapping back and forth between Arcane and Frost for her PvE and PvP needs respectively. But my DK and my Druid account for a 2K gold investment that, prior to patch 3.3, was little more than a sunk cost. Why? Because I’m a chicken-shit, usually too afraid to step out of my comfort zone for fear of failure. Predatore generally gravitates toward Blood DPS. But he could be tanking and getting into Heroics in two seconds flat. And Mezzanotte has been happily burning down the mobs of Northrend as a Boomkin. But the need for healers is much greater than the need for deeps.

A couple weeks ago, a Holy Paladin changed the way I look at my secondary specs. I was questing on Mezzanotte, plowing through her early 70′s. As she neared endgame, I was starting to dread questing out those last few levels. I was just ready to be… done. To break the monotony of questing, I queued my little laser chicken up for a random Northrend dungeon. After a 15-20 minute wait listening to instrumental soft rock versions of the hits of Journey and Foreigner in the Blizzard lobby (how cool would that be if you could teleport to an actual waiting room with magazines and stuff?), she was plopped down at the entrance to The Nexus.

Whenever I enter a dungeon, I generally take a peek at the other party members’ specs and gear. Holy Pally healer? Works for me. Level 80 Holy Pally healer in mostly ilvl 232 gear or better?!? Very cool! Not that it was any of my business, but I asked the Healadin what a well-geared level 80 was doing in a normal dungeon. He responded that he was practicing healing in an environment where it was less crucial for him to perform flawlessly. Genius! Pure genius!

Why didn’t I think of that? Now, I’m not suggesting that everyone pick up a second spec and queue up for Heroics. That’s missing the point. I’m suggesting that once a day, grab that second gear set (if necessary), activate that lonely talent spec, and jump into a normal random dungeon. You’ll be rewarded a couple Emblems of Triumph for you effort and have a chance to hone your skills without fearing the wrath of the epeen asshats that populate the upper half of the Dungeon Finder system.

In Mezzanotte’s case, she’s had a Resto spec sitting in her back pocket since level 40. Outside of healing a few Outland dungeons, the only time Resto has been activated has been when she’s visited her class trainer to fill in the incremental talents specific to that tree. At level 80, it’s a lot easier to compensate for an undergeared DPS than an undergeared healer in Heroics. As such, it would be easy to queue her as nothing but Boomkin and forget all about her healing abilities. But the Dungeon Finder system gives her the opportunity to practice healing without losing all of the Triumph badges she’d accumulate in the Heroic version.

More for My Money

I’m not talking about gold here. I’m talking about my money. As in, the fifteen clams a month I drop on this game. Before three-point-three went live, finding a group for Heroics was a frustrating experience. While the search was understandably easier for healers and tanks, DPS were left with only a couple of undesirable options. You could select up to three specific dungeons in LFG and hope for the best. But for DPS, throwing your name into LFG was a lot like posting a classified ad titled “Registered Sex Offender Looking for Love.” You weren’t likely to get many responses. You could spam Trade with “LFM for H Dungeon X,” but unless you were trying to do the daily or H ToC, you could count on getting exactly zero tells. Don’t even get me started on attempting to recruit tanks and healers for the cause.

But Dungeon Finder changed all of this. Gone are the days of camping in Dalaran, spamming Trade, and trying to quickly PST the rare tank or healer that popped into LFG before somebody else snagged them. In short, Dungeon Finder has allowed me to run as many Heroics as I want in a completely non-intrusive way. It honestly doesn’t bother me that I sit in queue for an average of 15-20 minutes per Heroic. In fact, I enjoy the way it splits up my playtime. When I log in, I click the green eye, then go about my dailies. I can usually knock out my cooking daily and half of my Argent Tournament dailies before my group is ready for me.

Since Devv has knocked out the Crusader prerequisites, she has nine dailies available to her in the tents to the north. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them, but they’ve become more of a chore than a pleasure. I’ve done them all a million times. I’m actually to the point that I enjoy “Get Kraken!” because the mechanics are a change of pace from the usual fare. Popping into a random dungeon is a nice little break from the grind. It’s kind of like a halftime show.

With the exception of PvP, I can pretty much do whatever I want while I wait in the queue. It’s truly a “set it and forget it” experience. The only downside is that sometimes I do truly forget it. Last night, I wrapped up a daily and snuck outside for a quick smoke. As I headed back to my office, it occurred to me that I might have just F’ed myself in the A. Sure enough, the little green blinking eye was gone. Doh! But if that is the biggest issue I meet with Dungeon Finder affecting my habits, I’ll take it.

PvP… Yes, PvP

Euripedes is either going to kill me or love me for saying this, but you can pick up an entire set of ilvl 226 or higher PvP gear without ever stepping foot in a Battleground or Arena. For a grand total of 325 Emblems of Triumph, you can pick up the five-piece Arena Season 6 set. I know Season 8 is right around the corner, but these ilvl 232 beauties are a huge improvement over the crafted blues or PvE gear that many of your teammates and opponents are running around in. Devv is piecing together the Furious Gladiator’s Regalia set right now.

But what about the accessories? The trinkets, rings, necklace and non-set armor pieces? Those all take Honor Points to purchase. Remember when you started running Heroics? That little Wintergrasp buff meant that you were racking up 12-16 Stone Keeper’s Shards per run. After every run, you had to sneak a peek at your Currency tab to see how close you were getting to 300 of those bad boys for that drool-inspiring Black War Mammoth. But I’d venture to guess that you haven’t checked your SKS count since you acquired a mount that, as it turns out, doesn’t fit through many doors.

When your faction has WG, 30 of those dust-collecting Shards will earn you a Wintergrasp Commendation and a cool 2000 honor. Not too shabby. Your bracers, a ring, a trinket, necklace, belt, cloak, and boots will run you a grand total of 294,400 honor. That will cost you approximately 148 Wintergrasp Commendations, therefore 4440 Stone Keeper’s Shards. I know that sounds like a lot, but it is possible. If the average Heroic drops 16 Shards and you run five Heroics a day while your faction controls Wintergrasp, it would take you less than two months. Another 70 Stone Keeper’s Shards will earn you both your head and shoulder enchants. A +20 Resilience gem is yours for the low, low price of 20 Shards and you can fill that Meta slot for another 15.

The only holes you’ll have to fill are one ring and one trinket. But by this point, you should be geared enough to grind out some Wintergrasp Marks of Honor and fill them in. It will only take you 40, which works out to a little over 13 Wintergrasp victories. If your faction can’t pick up 13 wins in two months, you probably don’t want to be gearing up for PvP anyhow. Consider a faction transfer. The only things I haven’t covered are weapons, off-hands, relics, and ranged. You’ll pretty much leave your PvE gear equipped in these slots. For realz. And bickety bam! Bob’s your uncle. A full set of pee-vee-pee without ever stepping foot in a BG. Random Heroics FTW.

How does this affect me? ToC, ToGC, and ICC are the only raids that interest me at this point. Maybe the occasional VoA, but that’s a 30-minute faceroll. If I were to run all of them in one week, I’d still have a lot of playing time available to me. Taking an interest in PvP again has added another dimension to my playing. I remember how excited I was when I dinged 80 and started gearing up for raiding. I get that same sense of excitement as I’m gearing up for PvP. That Lock that roflstomps me in WSG? Come see me next month.

Holy crap! This was a long one. In my next post, I want to spend a little time talking about why I went back to my former guild and my adventures in a bittersweet return to PvP. Everything old is new again. That would make a nice post title!

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.

Regardless of how they made it into the run, they did. The fact that they don’t belong there is a moot point. So far, my personal experiences have all been with DPS, which is a lot easier to compensate for than tanks and healers. The “bad” ones usually fit neatly into one of three categories: a) DPS too low to be there, b) IQ too low to be there, or c) all of the above. The first category doesn’t really bother me. I’ve always thought of 1.6K DPS as a minimum for most Heroics. As long as I can do three times that and the tank can hold aggro, what the other deeps are doing isn’t really a concern of mine. The second category… that’s a horse of a different color. These are the DK’s that Death Grip adds and drop Death and Decay before the tank has aggro. They’re the tab-targeting Locks that pull the boss while you’re still clearing trash. The Boomkin that Typhoons and Starfalls every denizen of the dungeon. And the Hunter with his pet set to Aggressive.

But let us not forget the third group: the unholy amalgamation of everything that is wrong with the world. Not just the World of Warcraft… the world. I’m not being a drama queen here. Think about it. We’re talking about the sixteen-year-old girl who just squeaked out a passing score on her driver’s exam shooting through the suburbs as she applies makeup and texts her BFF. Think I’m exaggerating?

Yesterday, I queued up for a random. After a few minutes, I wound up in Halls of Lightning with a Prot Pally, a Holy Priest, a Feral Druid, and a Prot Warrior. Notice something a little unusual there? Two Prots. The Pally was around 40K HP buffed. The Warrior, on the other hand, was around 24K HP buffed. The Pally quickly demanded that the Warrior switch specs. He barked, “I don’t need an off-tank in here!”

The Warrior obliged, but the Priest objected to the harsh request. Turns out, the Priest and the Warrior were guildies. Some words were exchanged. They weren’t necessarily nice words, per se. Before we got started, the Warrior indicated that his DPS would be a little low as he was gearing up to be a tank… yet he entered as DPS… spec’d as a tank. Yeah.

The Pally took off like a rocket and before we knew it, General Bjarngrim was down. There was literally no downtime before the Pally made his next pull. The Feral Kitty asked if we could slow down. The speed demon Pally wasn’t havin’ it. He gave brief pause as we prepared to make a mad dash through the Slags and up the steps on the other side. And when I say “brief,” I mean very brief. The Priest, kitty cat, and glorified off-tank did not make it through as they tried to follow through much too far behind. With nearly 40K HP going for him, the Pally remained alive as I AoE’d the Slags off of him. The rest… died.

While 60% of our group made their corpse runs, I took a quick look at Recount. My DPS was a little inflated by the AoE-fest, but not far from the 4K I tally in most Heroics. The Drood had about 1.5K, which was OK. I can compensate for that. But I nearly whizzed my pants when I noticed that the Warrior had racked up a cool 235 DPS. That’s not a typo. There’s no decimal point or “K” missing. Two hundred thirty-five damage per second. My Boomkin did double that in Hellfire Ramparts.

But at that point, I was determined to press on. If you look at 1.6K as a baseline for Heroic DPS, the damage trio needs to contribute around 4.8K to have an effective run. The Druid and I surpassed that number effectively, the tank was holding aggro just fine, and until the slow-pokes became crispy critters in the Slag room, the healer had been doing just fine too. But their corpse run took long enough that the Slags respawned. Without hesitation, the trio dashed into the room. The Pally noticed their questionable choice and rushed in to rescue them. He effectively grabbed aggro and escorted the gang to the steps. Health bars were a little low, but they made it.

It looked like we were in good shape until Mr. Three Digit Deeps raced around the corner to “safety,” pulling the next group of elementals on the landing. Rather than race toward the tank, he dashed around erratically trying to DPS them down. Let me remind you of something: two hundred… thirty… five! He was dead in a matter of seconds. Once he was no longer amongst the living, they wandered over to me. I knew I couldn’t escort them to the tank. The Slags were almost dead and would be exploding soon. If I popped Invisibility or Ice Block, the Healer would be their next target. So I Blinked to the corner that they came from, sacrificing myself to hopefully buy the Pally, Priest, and Druid enough time to knock out the Slags before they had to take on the off-tank’s pull. No such luck.

So, the Warrior became the proud recipient of my Second Annual Cow-Punching Noobtard of the Year Award. And a perfect example of the third group I mentioned above. His DPS was awful, but that wasn’t his greatest flaw. Most experienced players can compensate for a weak damage-dealer in the group. What you can’t always work around is stupidity. The Dungeon Finder tool is all about luck of the draw. Blizzard even gave us an aptly-titled buff to illustrate that point. Sometimes your luck is good, sometimes it’s bad. Just don’t let the bad experiences discourage you from using it. We’ll go on a magical adventure through Planet Happy Thoughts next time.

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!

I flirted with the idea of rolling another Priest. When I closed my second WoW account, Ellyza went down with the ship. Like an idiot, I created that account in my son’s name instead of my own. Thus, I couldn’t transfer her over. Same deal with my Hunter, Arpeggio, and my Shammy, Raulduke. As you’ll notice, none of those names are links to Armory pages. After much deliberation, I mailed all of their belongings to toons on my main account and deleted them, one by one. I know I didn’t have to delete them, but I wanted to make sure that I was never tempted to double my WoW budget by reactivating the account. It was painful.

Where was I? Oh yeah! So, I briefly flirted with the idea of rolling another Priest. And when I say “briefly,” I mean like… eleven seconds. While I truly enjoy leveling casters, I determined that I just don’t have the patience to get a Priest to 80. Leveling a Priest is a lot like driving a Ferrari that’s stuck in second gear until you find a perfectly straight road. Sure, they’re badass and they look supersweet, but it takes forever to kick things into high gear. How about a Pally healer? Scroll up two paragraphs. So what’s left? Droods and Shammies. I’ll take one of both, thank you! And so I did.

Meet Mezzanotte. As of this writing, she’s a level 74 Balance Druid with a Resto spec in her back pocket. I rolled the little lass the first week of September and she’s on pace to be level-capped sometime next week. That’s… kind of sad. I was amazed by how much Blizz nerfed the leveling process though. In addition to that little boost, her climb to 80 was also expedited by her big sister and brother. Her Heirloom chest, shoulders, trinkets, and staff took a bite out of the leveling timeline, no doubt. Also, by the time she dinged 30, she had enough gold sitting in the bank to buy her Epic Ground Mount and training, Dual Talent Specialization, her Flying Mount and training, a Tome of Cold Weather Flying, and Epic Flying. As soon as she dinged 70, Mezzanotte knocked out the Swift Flight Form questline and was zipping around the frozen tundra with reckless abandon. I realize that I could have waited one more level and just paid for the training, but I really wanted to experience the questline for myself. The Northrend leveling experience has been ridiculously easy with the gift of flight.

The day I created Mezz, I also rolled a Shaman. But Sciamano stalled at level 10 when I got completely addicted to the mechanics of the Druid class. Someday, my little Elementalist will join the ranks of his older siblings. But for now, he’s just a paper doll for his Heirloom chest, shoulders, and mace. When Mezzanotte reaches the big eight-oh, he’ll also inherit her trinkets. As much as I’d like to think that I’m not crazy enough to level two toons, back-to-back, that’s probably what will happen. With Mezzanotte’s Herbalism and Alchemy skills capped out, I’ve realized how nice it is to avoid the Auction House for my Flask and Potion needs. My little Shammy took on Mining and Jewelcrafting and I’d really rather not pay for gems for much longer. You know what that means.

Oh! I almost forgot something. Some of the denizens of Garrosh have asked what the names of my toons mean. Fair question. My dad’s side of the family is all Italian. Starting with Predatore, I began naming all of my toons in Italian. It’s pretty obvious what his name means. Drop the “e.” Mezzanotte is a mouthful that literally means “midnight.” Sciamano is Italian for “shaman.” Very original, I know. I’m not sure if I addressed it in the past, but Imbroglio, my lone Horde toon, means “a complicated mess.” He’s been stuck at level 22 for what seems like forever. Given my very strong dislike for the Horde, he may never reach 80.

Well, nine paragraphs seems like enough for my return to WoW blogging. I have another post in the works with some big changes to follow. This little corner of the Warcraft blogosphere has become inappropriately-named on all fronts. More on that and the correction are coming soon. And by “soon,” I don’t mean another ten months from now. Maybe nine. Don’t hold your breath. Use an Elixir of Greater Water Breathing instead. Aaaaaand…. cut!

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.

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?

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’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!