World of Warcraft update
It's been a while since I updated my Warcraft status here. A lot has happened in the meantime.
I'd discovered the value of small eggs at Christmastime, and made around 800 gold selling them. I haven't found a source of income to replace that, now that the season's gone, but enough money is trickling in that I don't have to touch my nest egg of 500 gold. Unfortunately it does seem that the Alliance Auction House on the Maelstrom server is just about the worst one imaginable; the Horde outnumbers the Alliance at least 7 to 1 on the server, so it's hard to sell almost anything (because there aren't many buyers). I've ended up disenchanting most of my leftover magic items (including some pretty powerful ones) to extract enchanting ingredients. Another drawback to being badly outnumbered; there aren't many sellers, either. It's almost impossible to find a scope for Linkomac's gun, for example.
Character Status
Linkomac (Draenei hunter, skinner/leatherworker) has reached level 55. Sebastian had been pushing me hard for that, because he really wanted to make a Death Knight; he thinks they look like Black Riders.
Omacmage (Human mage, herbalist/alchemist) is level 40. I'd kind of given up on him for a while, but my discovery of random dungeons changed that.
Domac (Dwarf paladin, enchanter/tailor) is level 30 and rising fast. She's currently maxed out both her enchanting and tailoring skills, and can't increase them until she reaches level 35, which is what I'm pushing for. I've been learning a lot about playing paladins; I hadn't been making anywhere near the best use of her abilities.
Zeldava (Human warlock, herbalist/inscriptionist) is level 23. I've only taken her into one random dungeon so far, but I'll keep playing her.
Deathmac (Draenei Death Knight, no professions yet) is level 55 (i.e. starting level for his class). Sebastian designed him. We'll see how he goes.
Roguemacina (Night Elf Rogue, no professions yet) is level 5. Rogues and Druids are the two classes I've played least, so I thought I'd give a Rogue a try. Plus it would be handy to have someone who can unlock the boxes I'm finding!
I have several other characters (including some Horde ones on another server), but I haven't been playing any of them much. I took Lukemac the fighter (level 27) into a random dungeon, but even though I had signed up for dps rather than the tank role, several people in the party kept yelling at me and demanding that I tank. Tanking is much trickier than just dealing out damage. Heck, being a fighter is probably the hardest class in all of WoW, at least so far.
Guilds
There's no way to avoid saying it: Guilds in Warcraft suck, or at least all the ones I've seen so far do. So far only ONE has been even slightly useful to me. And in that lone exception, it was a person rather than the guild that helped me. I was in a high-level dungeon as Linkomac, and I died. I had to run back to the dungeon to ressurrect myself. Unfortunately I didn't know the way to the dungeon, and the arrows on the mini-map weren't very helpful; it was a very confusing area. I asked the party to guide me, but I took too long, and they all quit. So there I was: dead, and lost, with no one to help me. I couldn't find my way back to the graveyard to be raised, and I couldn't find a way out anywhere. I was trapped.
At one point I found a gate out of the area, the Searing Gorge. Unfortunately A) I was dead, and so couldn't open the gate, and B) I didn't have the key anyway. Running around as a ghost for an hour or so in a strange, creepy area was a really unpleasant experience. I opened a GM ticket to ask for help, but as always they were experiencing "an unusually high number of requests" (how can it be unusual if they always say that?). So in desperation I asked the Guild if anyone could help me.
One player knew the area I was in, and gave me directions to a graveyard and a spirit healer. Better still, he gave me directions to a nearby flight master - so when I was raised I was able to acquire that flight path, thereby giving myself permanent access to (and escape from) that area.
But in general, my experience has been that guilds are disorganized, useless, and rife with petty politics. Which is a pity, because I don't think it has to be that way.
Random Dungeons
It's ironic that I played WoW for so many months before I discovered random dungeons. In the few weeks since I have, I've probably gone up more levels than in the entire preceding five months! For those who don't play WoW, random dungeons are a way to sign up for a group adventure. You click on a button, and in a few minutes you're teleported into an "instance", a high-level (for your level, that is) dungeon which is exclusively for your party; other players can't enter. You're assigned four other players to complete your group. You get a lot more experience and far better treasure than normal adventuring. You even get extra gold and a special magic item just for you when you complete the adventure.
When you sign up, you have to pick at least one of five roles: Tank (usually a fighter-type with heavy armor and high hit points, whose job it is to keep the attention of enemies on himself/herself while staying alive), a healer (commonly a priest, druid, paladin, or shaman, for obvious reasons), and three damage-specialists or dpsers (any class can do this). The problem...there are several problems.
One problem is "ninjas", people who sign up for a random dungeon, do little or nothing, and "need" all loot. Quick explanation: when a really valuable item is found, all members of the party get a shot at it. Each one gets to choose their basis for claiming the item: "Pass", which indicates that they don't want it and removes them from consideration for that item, "Greed", which means that they'll take it if nobody else needs it, "Disenchant" which is like greed except that it automatically reduces the item into magical enchanting ingredients if they win the item, and "Need" which means that they really want and need the item. There's a random factor, but "Need" almost always beats "Greed" and "Disenchant". A ninja always "Needs", even when it's an item that can't be used by their class. Once identified, they're usually kicked out by the rest of the party, who then have to either proceed with a group of four, wait for a new random player to come in, or start in a new dungeon with an additional player if they can.
Once I was in a dungeon when one of the players said to another one "Hey, where's your weapon?". We all took a look, and sure enough the guy hadn't even equipped a weapon! He was standing near combats, picking up loot, but not fighting or helping at all. So we kicked him out.
Another problem: not all players are good at the roles they've picked. Tanks are by far the biggest problem in this regard. Some of them just rush around like mad, attracting the attention of enemies but not actually holding on to their attention or fighting them. The alerted monsters then run over and start attacking the dpsers or the healer. That situation often leads to total party death, which is called a "wipe".
God, some of these explanations must be painful for the WoW-experienced people on my flist! Sorry. I'm probably getting some details wrong, too. Please feel free to correct me, if I am.
A lot of tanks tend to try to hurry through the dungeon. This is a real problem for most dpsers and healers, since they use mana to cast their spells and must drink to restore it - which takes many long seconds. If they stop to drink, a rushing tank may well be far out of sight before their mana is restored, requiring them to run like mad after the tank and hope that they don't encounter any wandering monsters along the way. If they keep up with the tank and don't drink, they're relatively helpless and useless.
Fighters tend to be the worst about rushing, because their mechanism works in a naturally opposing way; whereas healers, hunters, paladins, and in fact every other class except rogues (I think) use up mana to power their effects, fighters gain "rage" to power their effects - and it goes up when they're fighting, and goes down rather quickly if they stop and rest. So the game itself pressures them to keep moving and fighting, while it requires almost everyone else to stop and rest frequently. That's a flaw.
A similar problem occurs when you're playing a skinner. Some random dungeons have monsters which yield large amounts of valuable and useful leather. The problem is that skinning each animal takes time, and the rest of the party is often not willing to stand around while you skin. At this point, unfortunately, there's no way to speed up the skinning process.
I ran into one tank once who was completely ridiculous. He sprinted through one section of a large dungeon, reaching an early boss and killing him; the whole thing took less than 30 seconds. He then announced that the run was over, and quit. The rest of us had had to wait for fifteen minutes in queue to enter that dungeon, and that jackass had basically wasted all that time for us retroactively. We could have waited for a new tank, but we were far from the entrance (that's where new characters appear), and others started quitting too; so the dungeon ended.
There was one tank who started out by saying "I'm the best tank there is. Follow my orders and shut up or you're through" to the entire group. Someone immediately said "Is that what your mommy tells you?". The tank instantly quit, and the rest of us had a good laugh.
But the dying problem is the worst element of random dungeons. By their nature, they're often set in parts of the world that you don't know. And if you can't find the entrance to the instance, you have to hope that your party is helpful and patient. More than once I've found myself dead and totally lost after a party quit on me, forced to run around for a long time until I found a spirit healer to raise me from the dead - and I'm not the only one that has happened to! A couple of times I found the entrance to the instance, but it was underwater; for some reason, as a ghost I couldn't enter it (which is the better way to be raised). When I tried to sink in the water, my ghost just sat on the water; it was impervious to ectoplasm, probably due to a glitch. Finally someone told me to put my camera-view into the character's viewpoint, face directly into the instance under the water, and push on both mouse buttons at the same time. That worked.
Blizzard really needs to address the dying/stranded problem, I think.
Valentine's Day
Having some fun with the Valentine's Day quests. They're not too hard, but I found one way to speed them up. You're required to kill some specific enemies and blow up a chemical wagon in one of the link of quests. The enemies are almost always located far away, in an area that's fairly high-level for you. There's no way of getting around that, and it's do-able, but you can save a little time by first going to the chemical wagon not far outside of Stormwind and blowing it up; the enemies that surround that wagon are low-level, not useful for the quest but also no problem to deal with. The wagon counts towards the quest, though.
I ran into an irritating glitch last night as Linkomac. For part of the quest I had to talk to an NPC in the inn. Unfortunately I couldn't enter the inn, no matter how I tried. I'd been in it before, but now it was as if the doorway was covered with invisible glass. I suspected that the problem was the Valentine's Day decorations hanging from the top of the inn door; Draenei are taller than most other characters, and we tend to get blocked by things more easily than other races. But eventually I tried to enter another door, and that's when I discovered that all doors everywhere were now blocked for me. So I logged out, logged back in, and was able to enter and complete the quest.
I also had an annoying time trying to find a particular quest-related NPC in Stormwind Harbor. Unfortunately he wasn't indicated by the usual question mark on the mini-map, so I spent a long time searching the Harbor (and the internet, if you want to know) to find him. Eventually I discovered him sitting right out in the open in the middle of the place. Irritating!
I'd discovered the value of small eggs at Christmastime, and made around 800 gold selling them. I haven't found a source of income to replace that, now that the season's gone, but enough money is trickling in that I don't have to touch my nest egg of 500 gold. Unfortunately it does seem that the Alliance Auction House on the Maelstrom server is just about the worst one imaginable; the Horde outnumbers the Alliance at least 7 to 1 on the server, so it's hard to sell almost anything (because there aren't many buyers). I've ended up disenchanting most of my leftover magic items (including some pretty powerful ones) to extract enchanting ingredients. Another drawback to being badly outnumbered; there aren't many sellers, either. It's almost impossible to find a scope for Linkomac's gun, for example.
Character Status
Linkomac (Draenei hunter, skinner/leatherworker) has reached level 55. Sebastian had been pushing me hard for that, because he really wanted to make a Death Knight; he thinks they look like Black Riders.
Omacmage (Human mage, herbalist/alchemist) is level 40. I'd kind of given up on him for a while, but my discovery of random dungeons changed that.
Domac (Dwarf paladin, enchanter/tailor) is level 30 and rising fast. She's currently maxed out both her enchanting and tailoring skills, and can't increase them until she reaches level 35, which is what I'm pushing for. I've been learning a lot about playing paladins; I hadn't been making anywhere near the best use of her abilities.
Zeldava (Human warlock, herbalist/inscriptionist) is level 23. I've only taken her into one random dungeon so far, but I'll keep playing her.
Deathmac (Draenei Death Knight, no professions yet) is level 55 (i.e. starting level for his class). Sebastian designed him. We'll see how he goes.
Roguemacina (Night Elf Rogue, no professions yet) is level 5. Rogues and Druids are the two classes I've played least, so I thought I'd give a Rogue a try. Plus it would be handy to have someone who can unlock the boxes I'm finding!
I have several other characters (including some Horde ones on another server), but I haven't been playing any of them much. I took Lukemac the fighter (level 27) into a random dungeon, but even though I had signed up for dps rather than the tank role, several people in the party kept yelling at me and demanding that I tank. Tanking is much trickier than just dealing out damage. Heck, being a fighter is probably the hardest class in all of WoW, at least so far.
Guilds
There's no way to avoid saying it: Guilds in Warcraft suck, or at least all the ones I've seen so far do. So far only ONE has been even slightly useful to me. And in that lone exception, it was a person rather than the guild that helped me. I was in a high-level dungeon as Linkomac, and I died. I had to run back to the dungeon to ressurrect myself. Unfortunately I didn't know the way to the dungeon, and the arrows on the mini-map weren't very helpful; it was a very confusing area. I asked the party to guide me, but I took too long, and they all quit. So there I was: dead, and lost, with no one to help me. I couldn't find my way back to the graveyard to be raised, and I couldn't find a way out anywhere. I was trapped.
At one point I found a gate out of the area, the Searing Gorge. Unfortunately A) I was dead, and so couldn't open the gate, and B) I didn't have the key anyway. Running around as a ghost for an hour or so in a strange, creepy area was a really unpleasant experience. I opened a GM ticket to ask for help, but as always they were experiencing "an unusually high number of requests" (how can it be unusual if they always say that?). So in desperation I asked the Guild if anyone could help me.
One player knew the area I was in, and gave me directions to a graveyard and a spirit healer. Better still, he gave me directions to a nearby flight master - so when I was raised I was able to acquire that flight path, thereby giving myself permanent access to (and escape from) that area.
But in general, my experience has been that guilds are disorganized, useless, and rife with petty politics. Which is a pity, because I don't think it has to be that way.
Random Dungeons
It's ironic that I played WoW for so many months before I discovered random dungeons. In the few weeks since I have, I've probably gone up more levels than in the entire preceding five months! For those who don't play WoW, random dungeons are a way to sign up for a group adventure. You click on a button, and in a few minutes you're teleported into an "instance", a high-level (for your level, that is) dungeon which is exclusively for your party; other players can't enter. You're assigned four other players to complete your group. You get a lot more experience and far better treasure than normal adventuring. You even get extra gold and a special magic item just for you when you complete the adventure.
When you sign up, you have to pick at least one of five roles: Tank (usually a fighter-type with heavy armor and high hit points, whose job it is to keep the attention of enemies on himself/herself while staying alive), a healer (commonly a priest, druid, paladin, or shaman, for obvious reasons), and three damage-specialists or dpsers (any class can do this). The problem...there are several problems.
One problem is "ninjas", people who sign up for a random dungeon, do little or nothing, and "need" all loot. Quick explanation: when a really valuable item is found, all members of the party get a shot at it. Each one gets to choose their basis for claiming the item: "Pass", which indicates that they don't want it and removes them from consideration for that item, "Greed", which means that they'll take it if nobody else needs it, "Disenchant" which is like greed except that it automatically reduces the item into magical enchanting ingredients if they win the item, and "Need" which means that they really want and need the item. There's a random factor, but "Need" almost always beats "Greed" and "Disenchant". A ninja always "Needs", even when it's an item that can't be used by their class. Once identified, they're usually kicked out by the rest of the party, who then have to either proceed with a group of four, wait for a new random player to come in, or start in a new dungeon with an additional player if they can.
Once I was in a dungeon when one of the players said to another one "Hey, where's your weapon?". We all took a look, and sure enough the guy hadn't even equipped a weapon! He was standing near combats, picking up loot, but not fighting or helping at all. So we kicked him out.
Another problem: not all players are good at the roles they've picked. Tanks are by far the biggest problem in this regard. Some of them just rush around like mad, attracting the attention of enemies but not actually holding on to their attention or fighting them. The alerted monsters then run over and start attacking the dpsers or the healer. That situation often leads to total party death, which is called a "wipe".
God, some of these explanations must be painful for the WoW-experienced people on my flist! Sorry. I'm probably getting some details wrong, too. Please feel free to correct me, if I am.
A lot of tanks tend to try to hurry through the dungeon. This is a real problem for most dpsers and healers, since they use mana to cast their spells and must drink to restore it - which takes many long seconds. If they stop to drink, a rushing tank may well be far out of sight before their mana is restored, requiring them to run like mad after the tank and hope that they don't encounter any wandering monsters along the way. If they keep up with the tank and don't drink, they're relatively helpless and useless.
Fighters tend to be the worst about rushing, because their mechanism works in a naturally opposing way; whereas healers, hunters, paladins, and in fact every other class except rogues (I think) use up mana to power their effects, fighters gain "rage" to power their effects - and it goes up when they're fighting, and goes down rather quickly if they stop and rest. So the game itself pressures them to keep moving and fighting, while it requires almost everyone else to stop and rest frequently. That's a flaw.
A similar problem occurs when you're playing a skinner. Some random dungeons have monsters which yield large amounts of valuable and useful leather. The problem is that skinning each animal takes time, and the rest of the party is often not willing to stand around while you skin. At this point, unfortunately, there's no way to speed up the skinning process.
I ran into one tank once who was completely ridiculous. He sprinted through one section of a large dungeon, reaching an early boss and killing him; the whole thing took less than 30 seconds. He then announced that the run was over, and quit. The rest of us had had to wait for fifteen minutes in queue to enter that dungeon, and that jackass had basically wasted all that time for us retroactively. We could have waited for a new tank, but we were far from the entrance (that's where new characters appear), and others started quitting too; so the dungeon ended.
There was one tank who started out by saying "I'm the best tank there is. Follow my orders and shut up or you're through" to the entire group. Someone immediately said "Is that what your mommy tells you?". The tank instantly quit, and the rest of us had a good laugh.
But the dying problem is the worst element of random dungeons. By their nature, they're often set in parts of the world that you don't know. And if you can't find the entrance to the instance, you have to hope that your party is helpful and patient. More than once I've found myself dead and totally lost after a party quit on me, forced to run around for a long time until I found a spirit healer to raise me from the dead - and I'm not the only one that has happened to! A couple of times I found the entrance to the instance, but it was underwater; for some reason, as a ghost I couldn't enter it (which is the better way to be raised). When I tried to sink in the water, my ghost just sat on the water; it was impervious to ectoplasm, probably due to a glitch. Finally someone told me to put my camera-view into the character's viewpoint, face directly into the instance under the water, and push on both mouse buttons at the same time. That worked.
Blizzard really needs to address the dying/stranded problem, I think.
Valentine's Day
Having some fun with the Valentine's Day quests. They're not too hard, but I found one way to speed them up. You're required to kill some specific enemies and blow up a chemical wagon in one of the link of quests. The enemies are almost always located far away, in an area that's fairly high-level for you. There's no way of getting around that, and it's do-able, but you can save a little time by first going to the chemical wagon not far outside of Stormwind and blowing it up; the enemies that surround that wagon are low-level, not useful for the quest but also no problem to deal with. The wagon counts towards the quest, though.
I ran into an irritating glitch last night as Linkomac. For part of the quest I had to talk to an NPC in the inn. Unfortunately I couldn't enter the inn, no matter how I tried. I'd been in it before, but now it was as if the doorway was covered with invisible glass. I suspected that the problem was the Valentine's Day decorations hanging from the top of the inn door; Draenei are taller than most other characters, and we tend to get blocked by things more easily than other races. But eventually I tried to enter another door, and that's when I discovered that all doors everywhere were now blocked for me. So I logged out, logged back in, and was able to enter and complete the quest.
I also had an annoying time trying to find a particular quest-related NPC in Stormwind Harbor. Unfortunately he wasn't indicated by the usual question mark on the mini-map, so I spent a long time searching the Harbor (and the internet, if you want to know) to find him. Eventually I discovered him sitting right out in the open in the middle of the place. Irritating!