Mystic Worlds

Wanted: Some Gear Upgrades

I think I need to look into upgrading some of my gear again.  I don't have the funds to purchase anything from the AH.  Besides which, now that I'm not twinking I don't want to buy anything anyway.  Having not played my Warlock in so long, I'd forgotten that she's a level 300 Tailor/Enchanter, and revered with Argent Dawn.  So last night I looked through her patterns and compared the stats to my current armor.

If I can farm the mats in a reasonable period of time, I'm going to upgrade into some Mooncloth set pieces.  I could farm instances for some set pieces that might be better but I like to solo too much for that nonsense, and pick-up groups can be hard on a priest.  I found four patterns that can supplement the Dreadmist BOEs I got off the AH: Mooncloth Robe, Mooncloth Leggings, Mooncloth Circlet, and Argent Dawn Boots.

Many people say that the Mooncloth sets aren’t worth the comps because you can replace the with the 40-man raid sets.  However, I won't be raiding until the BC content.  And even if I wanted to, the guild my priest is in doesn't do the 40-mans.  They're new, very small and on a low population server.  Whatever gear upgrades I get would be hard won through PUGs.

I'm still debating if I want to use the comps needed for + Mana Regen on these bracers or wait until I have something better than Dreadmist?  And for those of you wondering why my priest is even in Dmist gear, you may want to find the post that went up a few days ago.

My New Healing Spec

In anticipation of doing the new instances in The Burning Crusade, I respec'd out of Shadow into Holy.  Too bad the release date was pushed back.  Regardless, I'm going to stick with this spec until BC arrives.  After having played a Shadow priest, this spec feels very slow when soloing or farming.  And when you pop into a BG you know you're going to do nothing but heal.  Still, it is a nice little change and adds something "new" to playing through these last 2.5 levels.

The talent combination I chose is for healing in instances, combined with some damage and interrupt mitigation for PVP.  There's nothing spectacular about it.  There's only so much you can do with the current trees.  I opted out of Lightwell commonly called, LOLwell, based on what I've read on the forums from other priests.  Not going for the 41 talent point allowed me to go deeper into the Discipline tree.

So far so good.  I do notice that I can heal with a little more ease.  Healing as a Shadow Priest isn't impossible.  However, it does require good gear, good groups and very careful management of your mana.  Since going Holy, I've healed two groups through Undead Strat where we had no warrior and no mage, yet did just fine.  I'll brag a little and also mention that there were no deaths. Other than me, the party members were level 60, but none of them had any epics.  We had several close calls but managed to survive.

Depending on how much I play BC, I might go back to Shadow to level to 70.

Note: Missing the last 3 pts which will go into Holy Specification.

Blizzard Executives Are Really Smoking Crack

Want to know what ground breaking new is gracing the WOW home page today?

"After months of anticipation, the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game is now available!"

Are these people for real?  Yesterdy they announced that the much anticipated Burning Crusade Expansion pack isn't coming until January 2007, and have the balls to put this on the home page the very next day.  Is it me?  Or who really gives a fart after yesterday?

I need to rename my blog grumpy gamer.  Unfortunately, that name and blog is already taken.

No Soup or BC in 2006 for you!

Gotta love Blizzard.  I want to be them when I grow up.  I want to be so successful that I can tell my customers screw you, we do this shiznit my way or take the highway.  Blah-blah they don't release unpolished content.  This is taking it to the extreme when you consider the hype and drama surrounding this expansion.  The Collector's Edition is already sold out and now they tell us that it's not releasing until January of 2007.

I'm not sure where we and game vendors got the November 2006 date from originally.  Had they ever committed to that time frame or was it merely an urban legend?  Dunno.  What I do know is that the release of the BC Talents and Spells really put the XPac into the spotlight for most players and they've been obsessed ever since.  The forums for most classes are brimming with pleas for one thing or another.  Players are threatening to quit the game or boycott playing certain classes - behavior based around the immanent arrival of BC.  Even if they released them only because of that supposed leak, they never should have put up new talent calculators.  That only fanned the flames of expectant change.

I got caught up in the hype myself.  Not so much in the desire to get my hands on it quickly, because Blizzard pisses me off a lot, but I did buy into the new way of leveling inside of instances.  I get burned out on WOW and if I can do more in less time and with less grinding, then sure, why not.  So stupid me goes and respecs a couple of days ago to Disc/Holy.  Figured I'd better try it out before hand.  I wish I knew then what I know now - that the new BC instances and leveling to 70 aren't right around the corner.  I never would have spec'd out of Shadow.  Damn, here goes 50G (tweaked the Disc/Holy build 3x before I got it to match my playing style).  Oh but wait, now I have time to get a level 60 mount before they start costing me left breast.  I guess that makes the cost a wash.

Bleh, I wonder what rank I slipped to this week.  I guess I shouldn't have stopped that either.  Looks like the upgraded loot from the new dungeons is a bit further away than we all thought.  I have Z-E-R-O intention of raiding the current 40-mans on this toon.  At 57.8, I will run out of "real" things to do very soon. Hmm, whats a closet WOW addict to do with oneself?  Uh oh, I feel NaNoWriMo calling my name.

I'm trying to think of other examples of a company that was on the top of the hill but exhibited such arrogance that they eventually hit bottom.  Geek that I am, only techno examples come to mind: IBM not making a portable PC, Wang not buying into the idea of PCs, Wordstar and Lotus not jumping on Windows.  One day, Blizzard, one day.

A Priest in Sheep's - Err, Warlock's Clothing

This could be controversial, or more common than I'm aware.  I don't check-out what other players are wearing all that much when I'm playing.  And no one has said anything to me about it, so maybe lots of people have done this.  I saw the three BOE pieces for the Warlock's Dreadmist set on the AH the other night and bought them.  The Priest's Devout pieces were there too for 3.5 times more gold.  I wasn't willing to pay the difference, and the pieces were a definite upgrade for me.

The Wraps, Belt and Bracers are the only BOE items for the sets.  With more guilds having MC on farm status, I'm seeing more and more of these items for sale.  The set bonus is identical for both so I don't think it's a big deal.  The primary difference are the stats on the individual items.  The priest gets more +Spirit and + Intellect, while the Warlock gets more stamina.  I'm a Shadow Priest who likes to solo and do some PVP.  For me, it's a fine trade-off.  I wouldn't do this with my T1 but for D1, I don't think it really matters.

 

PVP Reward Pay-Off

I reached Rank 5 a few weeks ago, but slipped back to four when I couldn't play much afterward.  I know I'll never be Rank 14 in the current system and with BC around the corner, their wasn't much use in trying too hard.  I did have my eye on a few items that would help my damage output and stamina.

On the road the Rank 5, I become Honored with the WSG faction.  That was my goal more than the rank.  I had my eye on the Lorekeeper's ring.  What Shadow Priest wouldn't like +healing|damage and + mana per second.  As soon as Tuesday I arrived, I picked up my goodies and am swearing off BGs until the expansion.  The trinket was good for PVP but I need something more generic now.  Of course it's still useful when farming alone but I'd still like something with + resist or + to some stat.

Hallow's End Tricks-n-Treats

Halloween has come to the world of Azeroth.  I'm not big on the holiday events in WOW, as they tend to be go-fetch quests.  There's not much you can do with a world event if you don't want to do extensive coding.  The quest items are timely and cute, it's just the questing part that is mostly been there and done that.  They did add a few cute twists like bobbing for apples and shapeshifting of avatars as some of the rewards.  Nothing earth-shattering but accessible for most all levels of the player-base, which I'm sure is an objective.

Interacting with any Inn Keeper will provide you with a treat.  The rewards range from buff food, to toon transformations, to Halloween-esk clothing.  There is a 60 minute cool down on grabbing these treats.  The only quest that I found was to trick-or-treat for an Orphan.  Sorry, forgot the kids name.  For Alliance you had to hit the capitol city Inn Keepers and execute the requested emote, and track town a gnome that was in the Mystic Ward.  Forgot his name too, or rather the spelling and the point isn't memorable enough to bother looking it up.  *Smile*

Cities decorated for the occassion.

Wearing the mask I got from the IF Inn Keeper

Shape-shifted into a bat by the treat from Theramore.

What Happens When You Kill Horde 1x Too Many

While questing in Felwood, I kept running into the same Undead Warlock. I used to give Horde a pass if they didn't appear to be a threat. I stopped doing that when it continually bit me in the ass. You leave someone alone and the next thing you know, they show up behind you with a buddy. You go splat and make the run back to your corpse. If you're unlucky enough, they might even camp you.

After this happened to me many times, I decided kill first, ask questions later. If I see a Horde, I attack. I don't dismount to kill some lowbie running about their business. But if you're in a place that I want to be - well, there can only be one. So back to this Warlock. I'm thinking she was a farmer. She was 3 levels higher than me and couldn't fight fer shit. I made short work of her every time I crossed her path. I wasn't camping her corpse. We must have been on the same quest chain because she turned up over and over. So I killed her over and over.

I guess she got tired of it and called for reinforcements when I killed her at the local NPC area. Next thing I know all these Horde ride up and pound me into the dust. She rez'd and buffed. They waited for her to turn in her quests, then they all head out. I figured I had it coming and just waited until the left before I rez'd, turned in my stuff then headed in the opposite direction.

Elves R Cool

Elves are so cool looking. They're sexy, hot and mysterious. No wonder people can't resist running around virtual worlds with these avatars. If you're going to fantasize, you might as well think big. *Smile* My first three gaming characters were human. I had this very special rule about only being human. Then I made my Night Elf Huntress. It wasn't long before I fell in love with how good I looked. When it came time to roll a priest, only NE would do. This is just a random picture I took. I was picking up some mail the other day when I looked up to see another sex-kitten standing next to me. We looked so much alike, we must be related. I guess she's a distant cousin.

Illianah, my NE Huntress on the left.

The Longer They Take

The longer it takes for another MMORPG to face off-with WOW, the more it will take to capture any of their players.  I think that game publishers are thinking the opposite, hence the delay of games expected to release in Q3 2006, being pushed back to Q1 2007.  I think this is a mistake.

I don't know what the potential is of untapped gamers but we know the number of current players.  The longer I play my current game (WOW) which I'm tired of, the more entrenched I become.  The more entrenched - vested, the more you have to give me to get me out.  If I try a new game and it feels like, ZOMG another grind, then I'm more likely to say, "Why bother? I might as well play my existing toons and not re-level."  Unless the PVP is substantially better, why go back to the bottom when I can advance from where I'm at now?

There is no way to avoid leveling up a toon, acquiring decent gear and maturing a profession to make money.  Unless a game does something SUBSTANTIALLY better than WOW, why on earth would I start over?  I love fantasy and am craving immersion.  However, I'm not going to re-do all that I've done for new scenery, animations or different classes that amount to nothing more than a new skin.  You can't give me a thief class with the status quo skills and make me think it's anything other than a rogue.

Maybe I'm just a backwards thinker, and that could most certainly be the case.  But from where I sit (playing and paying), the longer a game takes to storm the gates of WOW, the more they're going to have to bring to the table.