Category: World of Warcraft

[World of Warcraft] I asked a friend of mine how many in-game days in took him to get to level 60 and he figured about 25 days. It can probably be done faster, but he tends to goof off somewhat like I do on occasion so I figured it was a good estimate for me to take as “the time it will take me to get to 60”.

Then I looked at the /played for *all* of my characters. Here is what I have: 28 rogue, 28 shaman, 15 warlock, 15 hunter, 13 mage, 12 rogue, 11 warrior, 11 hunter, 8 priest, 8 druid, 6 warlock and 4 paladin.

If I did my math correctly, I have a total of 11 days, 6 hours and 9 minutes in all of them. That is 270 hours or so. I have heard people say that you can get to 60 in 350 hours but I am not sure if that is true or not. Even if I put all of my time into only one character, I would not have come close to level 60 yet. That is sad.

I’m probably over-analyzing it.

And then I think 25 days??? Damn that is 600 hours of gaming.

I’m having a hard time *not* playing World of Warcraft, even though I’m not enjoying it when I do play. I’m getting very little free time lately with lots of plans taking up what is normally my gaming time. But even when I do get some free time, I pop into WoW and kill ten rats before I’m heading off to bed. I’m just not finding 2 hours to play at night any more.

I’ve been saying “hey” to my friends in-game but nobody ever responds any more. I blame the level 60 zerg-fests going on. The social aspect in this game is all but dead right now.

Since I have been limited to only small bits of game time, I started a Dwarf Paladin over the weekend. I figured if I only have 30 minutes, I want to level a few times for that old time feeling. I noted that the class has changed from during beta. Seems like there is a little more action now, even if one of the actions is casting a 30 second buff every time I attacked something.

I don’t think I will ever get to 60.

[World of Warcraft] I’ve decided it is time to leave my current guild. They are an end-game hard core raiding guild and that is about it. Sure they are knocking out all the high level bosses in short order, but there is nothing for anyone under 60 to do.

They have no social events, no “help the lowbie” nights, no silly contests for fun, or anything else keeping me interested (role playing).

I will start trying to find a guild on my server that is more like what I am looking for, or else I’m going to move to the server where my old Asheron’s Call 2 guild went to. They do all the things I miss from those days. Why didn’t I follow them in the first place? Well, they went Alliance (just like during beta) and I wanted to try Horde instead. My brother was playing Horde and I knew I could mooch gold off of him so there I went.

I really want to stay on the same server because of the people I already do know so I’m going to try hard to find a guild there. Perhaps I need to start my own…

[World of Warcraft] Logged in the other day to find my brother defending Tarren Mill against those smelly alliance dogs. I really wanted to help out so I ran over there with my level 28 shaman.

When I arrived I found my brother at a sliver of health so I tossed my largest uber heal on him. His health bar barely even moved. WTF. He died. I decided I would rez him. He said no thanks and came running back shortly from the graveyard. Fine.

Now that I was PvP flagged, I figured I’d go lay some smack down. I found a level 60 (they are all level 60 these days) mage on the loose. Tossed a frost shock on him. RESIST. Try again. RESIST. And the RESISTS continued.

Back to Tarren Mill to wait out my PvP flag cause I am of no help. One second later (in the heart of town) I am dead. 1280 damage or something like that in one shot. Some mage hit me with Arcane Blast of some sort. FFS. So now I find a safe place to wait out the PvP flag.

With no flag, I head back out in Ghost Wolf form. I spent the rest of the night scouting for our side without having a PvP flag on. It was kind of fun, I guess. I was a hunting dog, “Over here master!” Well, maybe it wasn’t that much fun after all.

I’m losing hope of having anything meaningful to contribute in PvP or in the battlegrounds before I reach level 60 – which is quite unlikely to ever happen at this point.

One unrelated side comment: There are some turtles in the river near Tarren Mill. I can kill the level 30 turtles pretty easily, but the level 31 turtles are a *lot* harder, like 50% chance to die for me. What’s up with that? I’m suprised to see one level have so much effect.

[World of Warcraft] Since nobody was on that I care to talk to on my normal server, I decided to try out a certain Role Play server.

I rolled up a gnome rogue on this server a while back so I logged him in and proceeded to enjoy the silliness. And damn, those role players go all out. They were walking around (not running) and drinking and talking and fighting and dueling and complaining and getting all emotional. Very interesting.

I think if I found a guild more interested in role play than getting the next level, I might be pretty damned happy with that. I’ll have to do a little searching to see if there is anything like that.

Oh, and I got my little gnome rogue up to 12 tonight, hehe.

My guild took on Ragnaros the other day and all I got was a video capture of the event. Damn I wish I could go on some of those raids, it looks fun. Ragnaros is the most impressive monster I have ever seen in any game. Fire and smoke swirling around him like a molten lava tornado, explosions of flame and fire, players being tossed around like paper dolls. Very cool.

Oh, they all died as Ragnaros won that round. They did, however, manage to kill Onyxia again so I was able to get the uber 2 hour buff once more.

I’ve started playing my warlock more now as my level 28’s sit on the back burner. The warlock is level 14. Yeah, it’s no wonder I’m not going on end-game raids yet. My experiment into the Alliance has been put on hold. I just can’t get into playing a female character.

The one class I want to play all the way to 60 is a priest but I’m not sure I could do it with my schedule. I may have to try it. Anyone out there play one to high levels? How are they solo? I like the idea that they are wanted in groups.

[World of Warcraft] Just read an interesting thread over at the Lurker Lounge forums.

The basic question they ask is if it would be considered an exploit to bypass content in an instance by stealthing past it to get to the end boss.

Blizzard is clearly trying to keep people from bypassing content. Thus, it does bring to question if using stealth is acceptable in this case. Is it a skill designed for sneaking past a threat or is it a skill designed for sneaking up to a threat? Or both?

Personally, I have used stealth for both reasons. It is one of the main features of the class for me. I have snuck past a whole camp of minions to get to my main objective and then snuck back out. I also use it to sneak up on a threat in order to eliminate it.

It is my opinion that using stealth to bypass content in this manner is using the skill as intended. I do not think it is a cheap way of doing a quest either. There is risk, it is not guaranteed. I snuck through Shadowfang Keep one time to get to the end and it was a slow, challenging, risky process.

What do you think?

The World of Warcraft test server is now open to active subscribers of the game. You’ll need to go into the account management web page and choose which character(s) you want copied and also download a small .exe file. Seems pretty painless so far.

[World of Warcraft] I spent the night listening to my guild defeat Onyxia. Got a nice buff afterwards and viewed her head on a pole in Orgrimmar. The lag as everyone gathered in Org was dreadful.

Then I begged for a Strong Troll’s Blood Potion from a guildmate and finished my final quest from the night before. Turning that one in found my Rogue at a new level, 28. Grats! Thanks!

After that, the quest line continued and I was asked to go grab a keg of beer from some nearby smelly dwarves. I knew where it was and ran over there. Upon arrival, I spotted a group of 5 people getting ready to go in the same place I was going. I tagged along, eventually finding my keg and then sneaking back out. Nice easy way to finish a red elite quest.

[World of Warcraft] Had an enjoyable session last night. Although, it didn’t start out that way.

I logged in and really had no motivation. My quest log did not draw me in, and they had objectives that seemed unclear to me. So, I decided to fight some mobs nearby that were giving me about 300xp per kill (with rest bonus). Even still, with 20,000 xp to next level I was not having any fun.

Inhibit logged in and soon asked me if I wanted help with anything. I told him about my situation and he asked what quests I had. He knew of them and offered to run with me through them. Sounded good to me.

We started by taking out a named blacksmith and his apprentices near Tarren Mill. Then we had to take out 3 different named NPCs not far from the blacksmith. I had been in this area several times over the past few weeks and had not even noticed these guys. What a dolt.

All I had left of those first two quests was some miner and we headed south to find him. After taking him out I found there are some Torn Fin mobs on the beach. I needed 5 eyes for a quest so we cleaned the beach. Then we went east to find the Daggerspines as I needed 5 scales from them. I had not seen either of these mobs before so it was a nice change.

From there, Inhibit had me follow him as we swam east down the coastline. Eventually, we came upon an area with sunken ships. Swimming into the shore I noticed another ship, a pirate ship! turns out this is Faldir’s Cove and I’ll be doing some quests there later on. I really liked this area and wished I could make it my in-game home. Was really cool to be there and explore a little. I can’t wait to go back, it scratches my explorer itch big time.

From there we swam up a channel to the east and under a crumbling bridge span. It was really great to see things new and fresh like this. We climbed out of the water just after the bridge and went up the hillside to eventually be right next to the top of the bridge. Had to take out a few smelly dwarves but they were no challenge to us.

Then we followed the path the rest of the way to Hammerfall where I picked up a new flight path. I logged out there, with just a sliver of xp needed to hit level 28 and I have a quest still to turn in.

What a great night. I finished 3 quests, discovered 4 new areas (perhaps 5), got about 50% of the xp needed to level, went swimming, discovered a new flight path and city, visited with pirates, explored sunken shipwrecks and fought 2 completely new mobs. All thanks to Inhibit, dude you rock.