Tag: Journal

The Alliance is Bored

Gaming

Lately, as I play my new blood elf hunter, I have been frequenting the Tarren Mill and Hammerfall.

Tarren Mill is under attack!

Why yes, yes it is. Tarren Mill is being slaughtered, probably as you read this. A group of well geared level 70’s are sitting on the hill (or worse, sitting in town) killing all the NPCs. The master tailor is dead, so are the quest givers, and the innkeeper… everyone, all gone. You get maybe five minutes to do your thing after respawns before they wade in again.

Hammerfall is under attack!

Look! Epic mounted level 70’s are riding through town again and killing everything! The guards at the entrance to the battleground are dead? You don’t say! Oh look, they’ve accidently attacked the flight path guy, all those spawns should keep them out for twenty minutes.

But why do I say the Alliance is bored? Well, because 95% of the Horde who frequent these areas are level 25 to 35, and most of the NPCs are 40 to 50. Are there no battlegrounds for these people to fight in? Are there no towers for them to siege? Oh… wait… I forgot, the Alliance outnumber the Horde on Durotan… I’d tell you by how much, but despite all the info you can see in the Armory you can’t get simple info like population counts! But wait, players have been running a census for a long time, so while not 100% accurate, it is close… almost 3 to 1.

So far, I’m decent at PvP, but I haven’t been able to win a 3 to 1 fight, especially when I’m level 32 and my opponents are all over 60.

If you read my blog, and you want to play WoW, come to Durotan and play on the Horde side. I’m usually playing Calibre or Wayd. Look me up and maybe I’ll hook you up with a little funds to get you up and running as long as you promise to spit in the eye of any Alliance you run across.

On The Hunt

Gaming

The Burning Crusade came out to much fanfair. Lots of people have blogged about how it is either totally awesome, more of the same, or a complete waste of time. I’m enjoying it, but probably not for the same reasons that everyone else has.

Most of my friends always wanted to play the Horde. And I must admit, playing on the side that is, in PvP, the perpetual underdog appealed to me. Back when I used to play FPS games exclusively, I always joined the losing side in public games to try to even the score. You can’t be the hero if you win all the time… heroes are supposed to pull victory from the jaws of defeat, not lazily claim another victory from the pile of easy wins. But one thing always kept me from getting in to the Horde: the male-hunchback syndrome.

All the males of all the Horde races have their heads slumped down and look like they should be ringing the bells of Notre Dame. It would be one thing if the women were hunched too, but they weren’t, it was just the men. But with the introduction of the Blood Elves for the Horde in the Burning Crusade, finally there was an upright standing male to play.

So the wife and I rolled up some blood elves, and rather than our usual form of one of us playing damage and the other support, we decided to both play hunters.

It really is kind of silly. Another friend of ours plays a warlock and when we all group, its like we have a six person group, not three. The one thing we lack is reliable healing, but luckily (or is that sadly?) you can pretty well avoid the need for healing with the proper tactics. We kill… everything. Pets and traps, bows and arrows. The animals tank, we slow them and burn them, and we pincushion them. It’s almost not fun unless we push the envelope and work exclusively on Orange and Red quests, fighting stuff three, four and five levels above us.

It is definately a different game than the old priest/paladin game we are used to playing.

Sneaking Seventy: The Beginning

Gaming

I am sure it has been done before, but I don’t care. I’ve rolled up a new character in the World of Warcraft, he is a rogue, and he shall not fight, and he shall only do quests that can be completed without killing. My goal is to explore, everywhere and everything, hence the title: Sneaking Seventy.

So far, I’ve explored Stormwind, Elwynn Forest and some of Westfall… and then I went to Dun Morogh. The ability of monsters to see me and kill me is astounding… I definately need some money and some gear. I’ll post screenshots later.

Alliance: I love it when a plan comes together

Gaming

So, this past weekend I decided to do a little PvP in the Battlegrounds. As usual, I dumped myself into all three BG queues and then headed off to mess around with low level quests I never did.

It took a while, but just as I was finishing up a handful of Darnassus newbie quests (Woohoo! 11 faction per turn in!), I got the call to enter Warsong. If you’ve read some of my ranting before, you’ll know that for the Alliance on Durotan Warsong Gulch runs last about as long as it takes for the Horde to run the flag three times. Non-stop. They just chain us, mostly because the entire Alliance side is out getting honorable kills, wasting time while me and maybe one other guy try to defend the flag. One shadow priest and one other random guy just often are not enough to fight off four or five Horde. We usually down a couple of them, but their shaman/druid/rogue will take off at high speed and that’s all she wrote. (By the way, being able to use speed forms or sprint while carrying the flag should be forbidden. It sucks that I start fighting a guy, he runs off with some speed boost, and I’m in combat so I can’t mount up and chase him. Blizzard, either remove the use of speed abilities while flag carrying, or remove the combat flag in BGs.) All I usually ask is that a hunter or two stay on defense and use their ice traps. I realize that druids switching forms can break free easy, but it help against everyone else.

Anyway… so I go in expecting it to suck. Only, it doesn’t. One guy starts shouting orders and, lo and behold, people listen. We win, 3-0. Yeah!! So, I re-enter the Warsong queue, and twice more I get in, and twice more we win. Awesome! Then I guess people stop joining, or perhaps too many people are in queue, so I head back to lowbie quest fulfillment. A short while later, an Arathi Basin call comes in. Whoosh…

So, Arathi Basin, like Warsong, seems to just suck for Alliance. And it doesn’t fail to disappoint in the first round. After asking to be invited to the raid a few times, I start inviting people. Most of them are in groups already, in the raid. I do invite three people to my group: two priests and a druid. All the healers in Arathi were not in groups. At this point some of the people start bitching about lack of healing, so I explain the situation. They start arguing that you don’t need to be grouped to heal. I explain about group heals, and the fact that Power Word: Shield can only be cast on group or raid members. All the other healers back me up, but some of the melees (rogues mostly) continue to say we don’t need to be grouped. I finally relent, “Hey, you’re right, we don’t NEED to be grouped, it just makes it about 10,000 times easier, especially since most of us have CTRaid_Assist installed and can easily target and heal anyone in range in the raid IF THERE WAS A RAID FORMED AND WE WERE ACTUALLY INVITED INTO IT.” Just then, the pop up for Warsong springs up on my screen. I click it and zip over to Warsong. I’m about to leave my group when I notice that they are all also in Warsong. We stick together and put down the most awesome 4 healer defense ever. Another Warsong victory.

After Warsong, I go back to the queues. Immediately Arathi Basin pops up. I’m hesitant, but I go in anyway. The good leader from the earlier Warsongs is in there. He gives commands, and people actually listen. Its a tough fight (I think the Horde side had more “raid level” players, because by far their outfits were sillier and they were really hard to kill), but we managed to eek out a victory by a mere 50 or so points (2000 to 1940/1950).

Finally, as I’m about to queue up again, the Alterac Valley gong sounds and I zip in quick. Normally I come into Alterac toward the end. All the towers are gone, and its the weakening dregs of an 8 hour zerg fest who remain emboldened by a few new players. But this was a new start. Immediately everyone rushed forward to try to take a new graveyard. The entire half-hour I was there, we fought at this location. We pushed up and down the hillside, getting so close to the flag at times. And then my computer locked up.

Ah well… maybe next time.

Alliance: Good doesn`t mean Nice

Gaming

Ishiro and Lorilai head to Winterspring to do battle with demons in the south because Ishiro needs some felcloth. Unfortunately, seeing as we have gotten all our gear doing quests and picking stuff up as we go, never in the auction house, we are poorly equiped to handle level 60 elites as a duo. So after getting our spirits crammed back into our bodies, we decide to do something else instead. Quests in Silithus.

Seems some of the guys there want us to kill more of those Twilight Hammer guys, so we are off to do that. Sadly, the pages they drop are a repeatable quest that people farm for faction to be able to complete other quests. First camp we hit, the one in the far southwest, a group of 60’s are pummelling everything in site. Second camp, just west of the town, also camped by a group of 60’s. Third camp, ah-ha! Only one rogue here. Of course the rogue spots a priest and runs up to me and says, “++”. I ignore him, assuming he doesn’t speak English. “zu” he says. “++”. He keeps running over, helping us kill stuff and repeating “zu” and “++”. Now, at this point I assume he wants something, but I have no idea what. Finally I say, “Sorry, I don’t understand you.” He stands silent a while and then says, “hp”. Hmm… I guess he wants a stamina buff. So I relent and give him one. He then proceeds to steal kills from us, and when he gets caster mobs with pets, he continually dumps the pets on us after he killed the casters. An interesting way to say “thank you”.

Lori and I are happily grinding away. We kill the 10 Geolords they wanted us to kill, and we are now collecting pages for the hermit. 77 kills in total and we got 7 pages. A 1 in 11 drop rate for an item that is also used in a repeatable quest that everyone and their brother appears to want to farm. Ugh. However, prior to the end of our evening, a raid force shows up. We are wondering what is going on, they are Alliance which means I can talk to them, so I ask. No reply. Ask a couple more people, ask in general channel. No answers. Without warning they trigger some god awful boss mob that blasts some area affect poison crap that nearly kills us. We scramble to survive our fight (3 mobs at once, that Keeper bitch keeps showing up at the most inopportune times), and then scramble to heal up. Then we get splattered again with the poison ooze and start healing and running.

After they kill the thing, I ask what it was, what it was for… no answers. I mention it would have been nice to give people a warning before spawning a boss like that… no reply. Then the raid group decides that with the boss dead, they all need faction and pages, so the 40 of them descend on our little camp and make everything dead. Nice.

So we pack it in for the night, still needed 3 more pages for Lori to complete the hermit’s quest. I really want to finish this crap so I can get away from Silithus. The place has been good to us, but there are just far too many wackjobs and assholes running around.

Alliance: Sometimes I wish I was Horde

Gaming

Ishiro loves him some Alterac Valley.

Now, for those who don’t understand, let me explain. In World of Warcraft, if you wish to engage in PvP but do not wish to engage in open PvP out in the wild where you can get ganked, outnumbered 5 to 1, there are Battlegrounds. Warsong Gulch is Capture the Flag: each team has a base that holds a flag and a field between the bases, and your team tries to get the other team’s flag and bring it back home. Arathi Basin is Control Points: there are 5 control point locations on the map you have to assault and hold, while holding them you earn points (10 at a time), and the first team to 2000 wins. Alterac Valley is a Campaign: huge map, with a home base, towers, control points, and other stuff, if you hold a control point that gives you access to a graveyard which allows you to better hold the battle lines, the winner is the one who defeats the other teams general.

I like Alterac Valley for a number of reasons. One, there is lots to do. You can capture rams to equip your NPC ram riders. You can gather minerals from the mine. You can PvP and collect armor fragments to upgrade your NPC guards. And more. Because the war is usually long (5+ hours) people learn to organize and play together and leaders emerge. Two, the Alliance wins fairly often at this. Mostly we win because after 6 hours, the Horde team usually goes for an end run, we defend it, and they start quitting. I’ve heard its different on other servers.

But that doesn’t explain the title… see, in Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch I have never been on the winning team. The Alliance sucks. People spend too much time going for individual kills, no one ever wants to play defence (less honorable kills to be had), and the Horde just rolls right over us. I’ve actually been involved in an Arathi match that ended 2000 to 80. That’s right, we managed to hold one control point for 8 ticks. And most Warsongs end with a 3-0 loss, usually because I, a priest, am the only one on defence no matter how much I ask for help.

Another thing… the Alliance on my server just blow at organization. They don’t form up groups, they don’t listen, and generally they just don’t play well together. We win Alterac because its a long haul campaign, were Arathi and Warsong usually take less than 30 minutes (especially at the rate we allow the Horde to get points). The other team, however, always seems to move together in groups, defend each other, play well… it makes me envious.

I keep trying Arathi and Warsong in hopes I can find people who are good at it… until I do, though, most of my efforts will be in Alterac where more often than not we can win.

Alliance: 60

Gaming

And Silithus was as good as I expected it to be. Lorilai gonged 60 and a few moments later Ishiro did as well.

Then I spent the rest of the night telling people that “No, I don’t want to join your raiding guild.” Do these people just sit around doing a /who on level 60 priests? Some of them were even kind enough to inform me that if I was interested I would need to respec as a Holy Priest. Hmm… lemme think about it… No.

Seriously, it was really irritating and it probably is not going to stop.

The night was very cool other than that, and was a perfect example of why I love these games. There is this quest chain in Silithus, Noggle has been poisoned and the person helping him needs to find a cure. So first we go get samples of certain spiders and scorpions. No luck. So we try some other spiders and scorpions. Ah-ha! He’s cured, but in all his confusion of running away from a nest of scorpions he stumbled into he’s lost his pack and would like it back. It turns out there is also a wanted poster for proof of the defeat of Deathclasp, a scorpion who has been doing alot of killing. So, Lori and Ishiro head down to Bronzebeard’s camp (we’d been there before) and looked around for this nest of scorpions. When we find them we also find Deathclasp. So, we prepare for battle… charge in… and everything is going well, until it goes horribly wrong and both of our spirits are wisked away to the graveyard. Hmm… new plan. See, Deathclasp is a level 60 elite, and he’s got a 58 guard and a 57 guard. And at this point we are still level 59. Having been messing around in Winterspring before coming to Silithus, we both have mechanical yetis. I blew mine in the previous fight when things started to go wrong thinking the extra damage might help out. It didn’t, and its going to be a while for it to refresh. But Lori has her yeti, and I have my mechanical dragonling (yay engineering!). Last time, we foolishly tried to fight Deathclasp first because I forgot the basic rule: If the elite is a caster and the guards are not, kill the caster, but if the elite is not a caster, kill the guards first. Essentially, casters always have less hit points, and a caster elite will tear you up with spells and mostly you can ignore non-elite guards for a little until you finish. An elite warrior, however, is just going to take too long to kill, so the tank should get aggro, kill the guards, then fight the elite. And with a yeti and a dragonling, the second time we were easily victorious. Booyah.

I love single group and duo play, because its extremely dynamic, often chaotic (unless you are methodically pulling single mobs and snoozing away the exp), and almost always satisfying. And the paladin/shadowpriest combo that I’ve seen a number of people shun works very well for us. Other things might work better, but so what? And then to have this brilliant night of duoing sullied by the spam of guild invitations looking for heal-bot number X to raid Molten Core… ugh. Even worse was having to hear back the responces when I would tell them “No, I don’t plan on doing any raiding. Single group and PvP are what I’m into.” Genius replies like “LOL” and “No raiding? What’s the point of playing then?” and “Loozer”, and lets not forget “U just ding? Wait a week and gimme tell when u bored. U change mind.” Whatever…

Alliance: Silithus and Tradeskills

Gaming

The land of Silithus has been very good to Ishiro, as he is pleasantly making his way through level 59, well on his way to never needing experience again… until they raise the level cap that is. Its exciting. I’ve never been at the level cap of an original game before.

But, Silithus is a very dreary land. I guess it is a testament to the art skills of the guys at Blizzard that this desert wasteland actually depresses me. Or maybe its that the Hive bugs are a constant reminder that I actually sat through Starship Troopers 2… on purpose.

Besides the levelling, I have been doing what I can to work on Ishiro’s tailoring and engineering. Since I’m not rich enough to buy felcloth from the market, nor bored enough to farm it, my tailoring these days consists of making mooncloths when I can, which is one every 4 days. I can usually find 2 felcloth in 4 days. Engineering on the other hand is going even slower. Lorilai is an armor smith, and her skilling up is using all the materials, and since she’s the miner she gets first dibs. I did manage to make myself a mechanical dragonling which should be a fun toy once an hour.

I really want to spend more time in the PvP battlegrounds, but I think getting 60 first will be a good thing, because as much as I love the BGs, I’ve always felt like a runt. Well, soon, runt no longer.

Alliance: Making My Way to 60

Gaming

Ishiro of the Holy Order of Come Get Some Mutha Fu… I mean, the Shadow Priest has been palling around with his Paladin buddy Lorilai. Its funny, but when you don’t play for like 2 or 3 months, it seems like the 200% experience bonus just never ends. We’ve gone from 56 to almost 59 over the course of a couple of 3-4 hour game sessions. Of course, all those quests worth 4,000 – 6,000 exp each don’t hurt. If this keeps up, I expect us to hit level 60 within the next week, maybe two, all depending on Jodi’s work schedule.

One thing I can’t stand though is all the damn Horde. One of my pet peeves in WoW is really appearant right now. We are messing around with in Silithus and Winterspring, two places where either the Devs got lazy or just ran out of time because its neutral towns and both Alliance and Horde get the same quests. I suppose we could play on a PvP server where I could do something about that, but open PvP just grates my nerves. As it is, I had to repeat a quest 4 times the other night because it was an escort quest and a group of bored Horde kept killing the NPC. We could have fought back, but 5 level 60 Horde would have wiped the two of us at 56 all over the mountain side. Anyway… 60 will come soon enough for us, and then maybe we can level the playing field a bit.

The Journal

Gaming

So, I am back to playing WoW a little more consistantly, or at least I hope that I am. For the time being, I will be playing two characters. Ishiro, a human priest on the Durotan server, is currently level 57. With him I mostly play battlegrounds and run quests with Lorilai, Jodi’s paladin. And then there is Ishiro, an undead warlock on the Eitrigg server, who is level 26. My plan there is to level him up and do battlegrounds and run quests with Lochie, Jodi’s warlock.

Essentially, I like battlegrounds and I hate raiding. A brief sojourn back into first person shooters (thanks HL2!) reminded me that most games are relatively boring once you learn the tricks of the game engine, but when you come up against another human being things can get interesting. My only grip with PvP in the context of MMORPGs is the disparity between casters and melees. In a traditional FPS everyone is on the same footing. In RPGs melees can run and jump and strafe and hop around the world like a jackrabbit on crack, but casters mostly have to stand still and pray they can not get interrupted and keep the target within the field of vision. It might be okay if casters we much more powerful, but as a priest, I’ve been killed enough times with a single weapon swing or in a matter of seconds to know that it just isn’t true. But I’m learning to deal with it.

That said, from here on out, everything posted in this category will be concerning what I’ve managed to do in game for either the Alliance or the Horde.