Warcrafting: My alts

[bruceb]

 Lariko is my primary character at this point, the one getting my time and attention. But flexible as her options are, I sometimes want a change of pace. Also, I've been wanting to try out the new mechanics for leveling up on new characters, so that when the new race/class combos and world changes get implemented, I'm not learning everything all at

Comments

[wtimmins]

Have you ever taken a look at Warhammer Online, for a BIG change of pace?

They have an 'eternal free trial' going, where you can play up to level 10 (out of 40), and a few equipment limits.

You may end up not liking it, or it may be a fun thing to blow off steam now and then, but I think some of the mechanics are interesting in a general 'how to do a MMO' fashion.

The open groups, public quests, and pvp elements are very interesting.

[wtimmins]

It also has some interesting healer class/power design, though it's not unique.

[bruceb]

I have, but I'm nowhere near that good at or interested in PVP to use it well, for starters.

[tomscud]

One of my mains is a discipline/shadow priest, who mainly plays discipline for random dungeons because of the much faster healer queues. I'm finding it to be a very different experience healing with him in under the new rules; I'm still trying to get used to using Smite on a regular basis, and I'm not sure how that would work in an actually challenging fight as opposed to the current Heroic dungeons (which are pretty much a joke in terms of challenge at the moment).

[bruceb]

I'm wondering about that too. My experiments so far involve early shielding and renews, then some smiting, then rescue healing. I suspect this isn't optimal. :)

[wtimmins]

For what it's worth, btw, this and other commentary about some of the QoL stuff (dungeoning, primarily) is starting to chip away at my resistance in playing WoW again.

Account security makes me very nervous, and I'm not thrilled at the plethora of servers, though the battlegroups thing helps a lot. The idea of not being able to play with friends of mine because they are on 20 different servers annoys me LOTS.

(Which is one thing I love about Eve Online, Champions Online, and Star Trek: Online -- single world)

[bruceb]

Account security really is a solved problem. Authenticator software is free for a zillion mobile devices, including iOS, and it works - I'm aware of zero incidents of accounts using authenticators being hacked. Server spread is a valid enough dislike, though.

[timgray]

Yeah, I remember from City of Heroes, in fact, that we were always casting around for a healer. I didn't do a lot of teaming in WoW.

Since getting a day job that involves sitting at a computer all day most of my mmorpg urge has gone away! One of these days I'll check out the old neighbourhoods... Though the prospect of a massive download doesn't help either.

[wyldelf]

It was largely thanks to the dungeon finder that caused me to abandon my rogue as my main (who was 76 at the time of abandonment, and the only character I had gotten to the 60 level cap before BC, and I expected to hit 80 with) for a druid. Once I got to 80, I added a resto spec thanks to dual talents, and started collecting gear for it. Being able to queue as tank or healer is a big advantage. Although with the innervate nerf, the mana drain from the switch is a lot more painful. But the druid remains my only 80 (the rogue is at 77, thanks to hackers who hit my account only a week or two after my druid hit 80, and continued to level my rogue since she was the highest character on that account

[bruceb]

Sometimes the repetition is annoying. The very worst for me so far is a few levels in the upper 20s when you get the Scarlet Monastery cemetery a lot. And yeah, I do questing whenever I feel like a change of pace.