New Guild


Back when Grexel was, say L11, she was trundling around the windmills in Tirisfall Glades. Early days on a mage are quite hard going but she was doing okay. Standing outside the Zombie Family crypt that needed clearing I was debating whether it was possible.

Standing nearby and displaying the same sort of hesitation was a similarly leveled undead priestess. Her name was Aglaia. We agreed to join forces and I had to invite her into a group because she was on a trial account. First time I'd done that.

Fast-forward to Paronymous in the Boulder Lode mines in the Southern Barrens. I had to go AFK for a bit and when I came back I'd been buffed. Back in the fray was the same Undead Priestess. I didn't remember the name straight away but by the time we'd been through a couple of the Dwarf-slaying, helicopter 'sploding quests I was pretty sure. She remembered me as well. (I say 'she'; I have no idea what gender her player is)

Most recently I decided to clear up some old quests so I was in the Auction House shopping for Trollsblood. Guess who was selling it?

By now Aglaia was progressing far faster than me. Up in the mid-sixties (I dinged 47 for Paronymous on the weekend) Not only that but she's started a guild. Bloody over-achievers.
Not that I mind because I got a very polite inquiry as to why I had 'chosen' not to join a guild. Long story short I am now a member of Viridian. Yay.

Better still three of us banded together on the weekend to knock off some of the Midsummer Festival Quests. It was light-hearted and chatty. Nothing we did was much of a threat but the whole guild is new so I reckon any interaction is healthy.

Here's our group photo (That's me on the left):



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Prognostications


One of the things I keep meaning to get around to is making some predictions. I stumbled across The Barrens Chat which was about to start on a project tracking some Noob friends of his through their development. It made me wonder what the Lvl 80 me would think of the Noob me.
Only time will tell with that one.
I can, however, record the converse: What does Noob me think of Endgame me?
So I present for the sake of future mortification...

10 Things I Expect To Happen In My Warcraft Future

1 Glyphs - I've looked them up. I assume I just have to go to the Auction House. Maybe I can get them from the Inscriber trainer or Reagent seller. Or something. I'll almost certainly get an Inscriber sometime as well. L80 Me wont know what took me so long.

2 Raiding - I could do that! What a good idea It would be a little bit like actually playing the game. I'm thinking of going through Wailing Caverns with Paronymous (Druid 46) just to clear out the Quests. I'm hoping I can pass it off as Healer Training and just invite whoever's nearby. How badly could I screw up at that level? Come the Engame I don't see myself in a hardcore raiding guild. I expect to play a lot of PUGs.

3 Cash Cache - I'll get a Bank Account. I'm already passing everything to Grexel for Auction or Disenchanting. I don't really want to relegate her to mule/banker. Definitely need more room to store materials and stuff. I assume I can afford it now.

4 Old scores - I will go into the Plaguelands and nuke it to the ground. Grudge bearing is the finest form of roleplay. This will probably happen before I get to 80 but I might make it a monthly catharsis. Truth be told L80 Me will probably have better things to do.

5 Warfare - I will get my head around Battle Grounds. So far it's just been a series of mad panics. I'm sure I am everything that makes people LOL or gag about it. Certainly someone felt so comfortable exterminating me in the Arathi Basin that the took the time to laugh at me. I expect these to still be hard but I imagine I will have a plan/strategy/overview that will work better than running in small circles with my hair on fire.

6 Macros - I am this special kind nerd; a wannabe programmer. I suck and never really put the time in but I really like the idea of it. Sorting out macros is about right for my effort:result ratio.

7 Add ons - So far I have only put in one. I haven't felt the need. I fully understand that this means I don't know what I'm doing. Just like the macro issue I don't really think it makes sense to force the issue. I just don't feel like I know what I'm doing well enough to make modifications usefully. In the future everybody has a million addons optimising themselves. Then again Blizzard keeps including things like Quest Helper.

8 Community Involvement - Love to get out there in the Blogosphere more. I'd like to get Sargeras to guest post some time. It'd be nice to get on the Twisted Nether some time too. Voice of a Noob Generation, that's me.

9 Expansions - Some day I'll make 60 and pick up the Burning Crusade. First order of business: Alt up a Blood Elf. Then I understand there's some sort of Anger of the Lichen after that. So I guess I'll roll a Moss Knight, or whatever. I hear that can make you Noobish all over again.

10 PVP - I already created a Warlock on a PVP server. I can't even remember why. I guess I always knew that was something I needed to do. Maybe my usual server was down or something. Certainly didn't get very far. I imagine the UbĂ«rMe that reads this will be thinking “You chose a class you hadn't played before? What are you? Stupid?” But I kinda like the Warlock idea and I kinda want the PVP thing so somehow that's what I did. My Endgame self will, of course, stride the bloody plains pwner of all he surveys.

11 Theorycrafting - This would, of course, require learning to count. It could happen.

So, that's on the record. Let's see how it all turns out.


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The Doctor Is In


"Hey Druid..."

It was my first proper interaction with a Level 80.

It was actually kind of weird being addressed directly. Partly because I was just outside the Inn at Kargath and there are quite a few NPCs chatting amongst themselves around there. So that was my first thought: quest encounter.

The other thing is that Endgamers are, to be blunt, kinda funny looking. They've got all this mad gear and this one was on a tricked-out cat mount of some sort. So I found it difficult to figure out where to look to make “eye-contact”.

So when I realised that it was a player talking. I did a classic double-take; checking to see if there was somebody else he could be talking too. If had a macro to point at myself and say “Who? Me?” it would have gone off automatically.

He wanted to know if I could cure poison. Which, of course, I could. I don't think there was any real threat involved but he'd picked up something called Mother's Milk which lasts a while and was probably just annoying.

I tried cure poison. Didn't work. I assumed it was just my level and the Level 80 was pretty sanguine about it, too. But I knew I had another poison thingy that I hadn't put on a taskbar so I had a little look in my spellbook.

Abolish poison, that was it.

He was chatting away that he'd tried some sort of rune and that hadn't worked either. I tried abolish. It seemed to work. My patient was too busy assuring me that it was no problem to notice that it worked.

Then the penny dropped. He managed to shout “Yay! You got it! Thanks!” and hug me in the time it took me to type “Abolish” because I thought he'd want to know for future reference.

And then he was gone in a cloud of dust.

It wasn't technically RP. It was something better than that. I was there, with my skill set, helping out as a Druid.

And, damn, it felt good to have been useful.


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Horsey! (kinda...)



You just wouldn't read about it. While I was writing this post I was listening to The Instance. Turns out the whole mount system is being re-arranged. Here's the original entry:

“Nobody with a good Kodo
needs to be justified.”
—Flannery Wiseblood
Got me a sweet ride.
Elsewhere in Azeroth people talk about getting their Epic Flying Mount for umpty-gazillion gold; well, mine cost 8g50s. The hard part was getting trained to ride. It cost me most of everything all my toons had got.

As I approached the critical amount of cash I had been thinking I would do it differently. Because Paronymous is a Druid, he already has a travel form. So it seemed like a good idea to leave him off it and spend the money speeding up Grexel. However, with the adventures in spousecraft I thought I was going to be playing my Horde toons less so poor Grexel was in danger of getting very little play at all.

Two other factors played into this. Firstly I realised that Paronymous' income was increasing rapidly. Lots of greens dropping and more cash for the quests. Perhaps it would be more efficient to speed him up and pass the money down to the others later.

Secondly, the next step in rescuing the Princess Mazael was one of those go find someone in a new location affairs. I like these and I understand their value but at this level its not even go to the next region; it's cross two regions to get to the region where the mad geezer is hiding somewhere.

Sounds like an argument for mounted travel if ever there was one.


So it turns out that patch 3.2 is making mounts available at Lvl 20 and their going to cost a total of 5 gold including training. I don't know if it's going to 'ruin the game for all time' or whatever but on the face of it I ought to be the player with the biggest complaint. If I'd waited a week or so all that fretting and farming and planning would have been redundant. With the same money. I could have had mounts for everybody and probably would have spent the time leveling Undabridge (my hunter) because I could have got one for him too.

On the other hand maybe I'm lucky. If I'd just levelled and picked up a mount in the same way that I get my spells and things it would have been far less of an adventure. At the end of the day Blizzard could technically give us all unlimited teleportation, invulnerability and DPS but that wouldn't really be a game.
(Actually I think that might be Second Life, which would explain a few things)

So maybe I paid my 38g50s for the experience of being the last player to experience that bit of content. A conflict like that won't be available to players starting after 3.2 until they get much further into the game.

I suppose they'll get there quicker but they wont know what they're missing.
Hah! Noobs!


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Well, well, well...


What a crazy week.
After the initial surge of play I wasn't really sure what would happen. Would playing in the evenings be a go-er? Or would the plethora of Other Things To Do put WoW on the backburner until the next weekend?

I thought I'd leave it until at least Wednesday before suggesting it myself. I am extremely conscious that I could spill into overpressuring at a moment's notice.

It was blissful. We dressed in his'n'hers robes, went for long walks on the beach, and slaughtered murlaps in their millions. We agreed latest play times and then over-ran them wildly.

On Thursday I got stuck at the office. When I finally called in that I was on my way home she had a surprise for me.
“You'll be so proud,” she said.
“You're playing without me?” I asked.
“I made a Tauren,” she confirmed.

My spouse was alt-ing. Admittedly she didn't know what class she had made. I assume it's a Warrior because I think that's the default. It didn't seem to bother her not to know. So, you know, whatever works, right?

But then disaster struck.
Or more accurately disaster snuck in, inflicted a nasty Damage-over-time and then ran away laughing.

My wife suffers from insomnia.
She'd had a couple of problem nights during the week but there had always been some other reason at play. Mosquito bites; it's the rainy season. Sometimes you have to drink coffee, even if you know it's bad for you.

It became clear and indisputable that playing World of Warcraft was over-stimulating her and therefore keeping her awake. It's a really significant problem. Come Saturday we knew that rather than upping her trial that we would have to let the Couples WoW experience go.

Serious bummer.

Who would have thought that the barrier to Spouse on Spouse Warcrafting would be that she likes it too much?As it stands now the trial is gone. There is one thing left that I can try but, well, health comes first, kids. Health comes first.



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Raptor Bait


This is of course an homage to the brilliance of Emily Horne and Joey Comeau over at A Softer World. If you aren't reading it already, you should be.

What it actually shows is yet another screenshot taking misadventure on the captured princess quest-line.


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