Countdown to hiatus

Things are slowing down, as many other bloggers have mentioned. My guild has lost its top players to more advanced guilds. We still clear Ony10, VOA10, and ToC10 weekly without breaking a sweat. Ulduar10 is not worth our time anymore, even though we never killed General Vezzaxx or Yogg. My mage and druid have collected an impressive array of 10 man gear (Even though I accidentally vendored my Ony10 tanking neck and only found out the next day!!!!).

There isn't even much to get from farming emblems from heroics. That and I've farmed said heroics into the ground.

My priest hit 80 a while back, and now has some decent gear, enough to run the new Icecrown 5man runs in 3.3.

My rogue is up to 74 and coming along nicely.

It's time for a little break.

I am going to let my subscription expire on November 24th and I will come back after the winter holidays, in January. One big reason is I am going home to the US in mid-December, where I won't have time to play much anyways, and would rather spend time with my family in any case. I'll be back online in January once I get back to Japan.

I have 2 goals to achieve before November 24th:

1. Get my rogue to 80 and start earning some honor points. There's no point in running dungeons now when I will be able to in 3.3 and earn more emblems, and faster. I plan on pvping with the rogue as well, so I want to try to hit the honor point cap of 75,000 before Nov. 24th. If I cap, then I can buy some items and stay near the cap. That way I will be able to buy 1 or 2 honor pieces when season 8 rolls around.

2. Honor cap my mage for the same reason. He has about 45,000 points and is well geared, so it should be much easier.

When I do get back I will have a lot more to do:

1. Run my druid, mage, paladin, priest, and rogue through the new Icecrown 5 man dungeons, as well as the new LFG system.

2. PVP on rogue and mage.

3. *If* the functionality to mail bind-on-account items to characters of the opposite faction makes it into 3.3 (I'm still not sure), I will be able to use my accumulated heirloom gear to help my alliance Shaman and Warrior level up a bit more. I've let them be since I heard of the possible change because I would be able to level them 20% faster. I like efficiency.

4. Eventually run Icecrown 10 and 25 man raids. Seeing as this is the last big content patch, I'm in no rush to plow through it. It'll be there until Cataclysm comes out in the second half of next year (my guess).

Having a plan in mind helps put thing into context. In a way, I'm excited to have some time off so there is something to look forward to when I get back, and I have some fun goals to take care of until my sub runs out! Yay.

Guild chat humor

Seen in guild chat:

[Levelingguy]:Damnit!!!!
[Concerned guildie1]:what?
[Concerend guildie2]:??
[Concerned guildie3]:Something wrong?

...moment of silence...

[Levelingguy]:Dammit I just dinged all over myself!

I was laughing for awhile on that.

I do not like and will never buy Blizzard's RMT pets

In case you haven't heard, Blizzard will start selling companion pets in the blizzard store for $10 apiece. The title is self explanatory,so I shall dive into it.

1)I don't really care about pets.
This is purely subjective, as of course some people enjoy collecting and displaying pets. I'm likely to pop 'em out when I get them for a little bit, then forget them forever. It's just not an engaging part of the game for me.

2)$10 is a lot for what you get.
That's as much as it costs to play some subscription games for a whole month. I'm a monetary min/maxer (i.e. cheap) so this doesn't really jive with me. If I were to spend $10 on my gaming I'm more likely to put it towards another month of Warcraft, or towards another game.

3)This blurs the lines of content access.
Blizzard says they will never sell items, etc. that will strengthen your character. These are just cute pets. However, since WoW has launched many policies have fallen by the wayside, such as PVE->PVP transfers and name changes, the kinds of things they once said they 'have no plans for at this time'. Now they are available...for a fee. What about other content? Will there be pay-to-play zones or holiday events (buy a 'ticket' to the NEW Darkmoon Faire!)?

4)Their charity angle bugs me.
Blizzard is donating 5 of every 10 dollars from Pandaren pet sales to the Make-a-wish foundation. That will probably come to quite a sum, and I am happy for the charity and those that benefit from it. What bugs me is it seems like they are tossing on the charity to the new items for reasons OTHER than charity (self-promotion, making an overpriced commodity seem more reasonable in price). Its almost as if they are using the charity as an excuse to introduce RMT commodities to a subscription game. "See, a charity is involved! This makes selling you services for a game you already pay for more palatable". For a multi-billion dollar enterprise they could do better.

I'm not one to gloom and doom about the game much, I enjoy it a lot, but this development bothers me. I hope blizzard doesn't take this game and commodify it much more.

Happy 1 year anniversary Alt Fanatic!

Yay, my blog is 1 year old. I am happy to have a place to share my WoW experiences, and I would like to thank the 200 or so people that stop by every week to take a look and sometimes share their comments. Its a very tiny corner of the wow blogosphere, and an incredibly small spec on the Web, but it's my spec, dammit!! I don't have much to reflect on, this blog is more a stream of conciousness than anything, if I have piqued your interest please take a look back on my blog archive.

I don't know if Alt Fanatic is still the right name for the blog, I just play a lot, and on many characters. I am also keeping myself from making any new alts until Cataclysm rolls around, so I can experience all the new lower level content and enjoy it as much as I can. In any case, Happy Birthday tooo meeeee....

Some updates:

- I hit 60 with my rogue alt. Having only played Assassination or Subtlety specs on my previous rogue (whom I retired, as the friend I played it with on a different realm quit WoW) I played this one as Combat spec. Its really refreshing to just run up to mobs and beat them down in succession, instead of sneaking up and doing an opener into a combo. It makes for faster leveling in any case.

I just had my first taste of Killing Spree. I don't like the way it changes your camera angle 5 times as the animation plays, but it sure does a lot of damage, especially against multiple mobs if blade flurry is activated as well. When I hit 80, I think I want to devote some time in PvP sneaking around and killing people/capping flags from stealth. I always enjoyed being sneaky as a druid in cat form, but I didn't have a good 'toolbox' to do much except sneak around.

I am looking forward to trying out PvP with tools like vanish, blind, sap, preparation, shadowstep, cloak of shadows, cheat death...does anyone else derive pleasure from frustrating opponents? I always get the most kicks out of cycloning, sheeping, freezing, or slowing other players. It's nice to kill them, sure, but even if I die, I imagine them raging at me for messing with them so much. I can remember one time I chased a druid, applying slow every time they shifted, I must have slowed him 20 times! Kinda silly I know, because I was too busy slowing him to cast a damage spell, but it was all in good fun. But I digress.

-I am finding myself very averse to running heroic dungeons on my druid or mage, even for the daily quests that award 2 Emblems of Triumph. I guess I'm a bit burned out on running them, and the reward, for me, isn't worth the time I put into them. On my 'fresh' 80 priest, I still have a lot of gearing to go to bring him up to speed, but even doing the daily heroic is kinda blah. And I have no interest in farming heroics for Emblem of Conquest gear, when I can run new 5-mans in 3.3 and get almost equivalent gear AND emblems of triumph.

With my priest I have stepped into Ulduar though, and successfully healed Razorscale. I am hoping to bring my priest on further farming runs into Ulduar, VOA, and hopefully runs for Onyxia or TOC10 soon. Shadow priests are getting buffed in 3.3 it looks, so I am eager to take advantage of that as well.

My paladin has languished, and I only log onto him to transmute epic gems. I want to tank and heal with him, but I simply don't have the time or need, as my druid is a much better geared tank and healer at this point. Gear-wise he has fallen behind the content so I may shelve my druid until 3.3 and gear my paladin up a bit.

I ran TOC10 twice last week on my druid and mage. The druid run went well as a tank, it was a guild run and we cleared the instance without much trouble. Only Anub took some serious concentration. On my mage, I joined a pug and we cleared the whole thing, struggling only on Anub, and we finally downed him on our last attempt of the night. 5 Bosses is also a good amount, more than once wing of Naxx, but not as interminable as Ulduar (In that all the bosses are in one environment and its hard to call when some are clamoring for one more boss before the end of the night.)

We tried TOC10-Heroic and got promptly stomped into the ground, attempt after attempt. We will need to amp up the coordination and teamwork if we want to down these bosses in their 'true' forms. Our core group is getting pretty powerful though, we 9-manned Koralon this week instead of pugging in a non-guildie.

Hmm, that's about it for now. Let's hope I get my Sinister Squashling in the next week. It's all I need for the achievement I mostly completed, fittingly enough, about one year ago.

Burned Out???

I'm kind of surprised myself, but I found myself avoiding logging on to my main character yesterday. If I logged on, I felt, I would be dragged along to our weekly Onyxia and OS10 runs, and then we would go on to Ulduar, and I would have to heal or tank on my druid (because my guild is perpetually short on healers and tanks, what else is new), and not play my mage or priest as I would prefer. Its not that I don't need the badges or Ony drops, but seeing as I have healed AND tanked Anub 10 without any issues, what I have at the moment is certainly sufficient. I guess I am a little burned out on the combination of druid tanking/healing and the current content. I am a heavy alt-er, I guess I shouldn't be surprised playing one character so much would tire me out.

Since I'm not a hard mode kind of guy, nor a 25-man player, there doesn't seem to be much to do until 3.3 rolls around.

So I logged over to my alliance shaman and sizzled some nerubians to a crisp and dinged a level. Do elemental shamans ever run out of mana?

I am resisting rolling up a warlock...must...wait...until...cataclysm.

You can stop farming Heroics for emblems now...until 3.3

Adding Emblem of Conquest drops and Emblem of Triumph daily quests helped bring many people back to heroic dungeons, for better or worse. As nice as it was to have something to do between raids, it still feels a bit silly as we steamroll through instances to grab 3-5 emblems. Well, you can all stop, for now. The reason is in 3.3, these instances, designed for people with blue gear, will drop emblems that can be used to buy items that have almost twice the amount of stats of any blue gear. That's quite a gear gap.

Of course, this will help new characters gear up faster, but won't it be strange for a new level 80? To go from this to this? Seems like gear whiplash waiting to happen. I can't quite pinpoint it, but it seems throwing out any curve of gear progression will produce players with a limited understanding of itemization and what gear is best for them. There are still players rolling need on epics in heroics (ilvl200) when their current item is from H-toc (ilvl219) or better. Perhaps this design is for the alt-ist in mind - my priest looks mighty funny at the moment with a mix of blues and Ulduar level epic gear, but at least I am familiar with the gear and what to do with it.

As tempting as it is, I don't think I'll be going back to heroic dungeons just to farm emblems, though. The reason is there will be three new 5-man dungeons in 3.3. On top of getting emblems for the heroic version, they will drop a myriad of high-quality items (lvl219/lvl232) that will make it worth my while. Plus I don't have to kill Loken for the 200th time.

10-man TOC - Short and sweet

A short post-

The guild I am in had a recent surge of new recruits, and we gathered our top players and took on TOC 10. Most of us had never seen the encounters, except maybe on a video, or had read about it. In 2.5 hours, we had cleared all five bosses. We wiped along the way, we developed strats for our group, had a lot fun. We especially enjoyed one-shotting the pvp-style encounter, with lots of cc executed quite well, for a group that rarely PVPs. It was great and the group had an enjoyable time. I wouldn't call it hard or challenging, just fun, which is a departure from the difficulties we have had in Ulduar (we have yet to defeat General Vezaxx or even see Yogg).

I am perfectly fine with this arrangement. I log on, do my bit (I was tanking! Fun fun!) work with my guild mates to overcome the encounters, loots passed out, good times are had. In that respect, the coliseum is a success for me. I look forward to clearing it again this week. The gears we earn might let us tackle Ulduar and finish it before Icecrown. We will also be better geared for the heroic versions of the new 5-mans.