5.2!!! Well.. soon!!

What does this mean? Depends on what type of wow player you are.

Raiding

For a raider, you're hopefully stocking up on raid consumables, because we all know once that patch hits, the prices are going to skyrocket again. Feasts, flasks, and pots, are already on the incline on my server, and it would be wise to stock up sooner than later. This advice also goes for enchants and item upgrades. Beltbuckles, enchanted vellums, gems, and leg enchants are what AH lovers like myself are stocking up on to sell at a hugely inflated price after the patch. So get what you need now.

Some interesting info on the world bosses and new rares in Pandaria can be found in the 5.2 Patch Notes, but here is a quick recap:

New Zandalari (I am assuming rares) will be spawning in Krasarang Wilds, Dread Wastes, Townlong Steppes, Jade Forest, and Kun-Lai Summit.

"Zandalari Scouts can be handled by 1 or 2 players, while elite Zandalari Warbringers will likely require a full party of 5 heroes. Defeat Warbringers to gain special drops, including crafting materials, reputation gains, an achievement, and even the chance to get one of three new rare mounts!" 

So thats pretty awesome! I cant wait to start rare hunting with the guildies again. Though, in my guild I am known for my distaste for all things pvp, I do enjoy going around with them looking for rares and swatting a few Hordies out of the way if they have the tap. Plus I am a mount/pet addict so I will be super excited if I actually get one!


 "Players of the same faction that participated in a fight with Pandaria world bosses (Sha of Anger, Galleon, Nalak the Storm Lord, and Oondasta) now get shared credit for the kill and will be eligible for loot."

This means that you don't have to be invited to a raid group (who has the boss's tap) to get credit for a world boss kill. DO keep in mind that this also means if a player of the opposite faction/ add from the boss attacks you, the odds of you getting heals are also slim to none, since you wont be seen on any healer's raid frames. 

"Galleon now respawns much more frequently, but players can only receive loot from him once per week."


Yay! I am happy about this, and considering I only got to kill him once since he was added to the game, I don't care about only getting loot once a week. After all, he IS a raid boss, just not found in an instance, so I feel that lockouts should be treated the same.

Throne of Thunder raid bosses in Normal and Heroic difficulties have a chance of dropping items with the Thunderforged designation. Thunderforged items are 6 item levels higher than their Normal or Heroic counterparts and will drop more frequently in 25-player raids.

This is interesting! I am glad that blizzard is giving some reward to the people who do 25m raiding without making us wee 10m teams feel like we need move up to 25. I don't want to go back to Wrath were I ran 10m on my main and then pugged 25m weekly. I just don't have the time, nor the patience to put up with 25m pugs beyond LFR.  The odds of me ever seeing these are slim to none, and the odds of me GETTING one is even smaller. I do say they are awesome, but affects my characters very little.

"To encourage Raid Finder groups to persevere, each time an Raid Finder group wipes on a boss fight all players in the group receives a stacking buff that increases health, damage dealt, and healing done by 5% (up to a maximum of 10 stacks). This buff is cleared once the boss has been killed."

I like this! Everyone hates LFR and sometimes, the groups are just bad.. horrible,. terrifyingly bad!  I try to not be mean, or sarcastic, and I'd rather whisper to someone what they are doing wrong rather than in /i for everyone else to see. This I hope, is a successful change. One thing I am worried about is how with the buff stacked, people will not see their true dps and damage reflected in true numbers. 

"Satchels obtained via the Raid Finder now have a chance to contain additional rewards, including: consumables, Spirits of Harmony, rare pets or mounts, and Raid Finder versions of Normal and Heroic difficulty zone drops that were previously unavailable from Raid Finder encounters!" 

This actually makes me want to spend my coins in LFR. Right now, I DO NOT see my efforts of going into a huge pug and getting 28g as a reward and enough justification for the loads of time I have to put into dailies to get my 90 coins a week.  With my luck Ill continue to get nothing, but ill give it a shot for a while.

Battle Pets

For Pet battlers there are a TON of spell changes and as much as I could easily spend a whole day just doing pet battles, I spend most of my wow time on other endeavors. BUT! I will do some copypasta of a few note worthy changes.

"A number of new pets can be found on the Isle of Lightning, including rare spawn drops, wild pets, and raid boss drops."


"Elite Battle Pets have been added to the game world. These rare pets will spawn alone against an entire team. The Beasts of Fable taming quest will now become available from Gentle San or Sara Finkleswitch once Aki the Chosen has been defeated. Defeating all of the fabled beasts will award the new Red Panda pet, while completing the associated daily quest has a chance to award the rare brown, white, and orange variants "

My little pets are not nearly high level enough to get capture these guys, but one day I aspire to get out the and battle them!

"Level capped players will now have a chance to earn Lesser Charms of Good Fortune after winning a pet battle versus a pet within 5 levels of the highest level pet on their team. Higher-level pets will offer a better chance to earn a charm."

This makes me kinda want to do more battles...  We have a guildy who actually quit the game due to his hate of dailies, so this WOULD be a way to get charms.. though probably not a great way since it's only a "chance"... and it would give him an excuse to spend more time battling pets.. which he actually liked. lol.

Players may now participate in pet battle duels while in the Throne of Thunder instance.

I know what I am doing when we're standing around waiting!

"Players with a high fishing skill have a chance to fish up new pets. The Pet Journal has clues on where these elusive pets could be found."

Jewlcrafting

There are changes to fishing, Jewlcrafting, leatherworking, blacksmithing, tailoring, and archeology but I am only going to cover the JC changes. Check out the 5.2 Patch Notes for more info on the other professions.

Jewelcrafters may find the designs for Serpent’s Heart and uncut Primal Diamonds during the course of their adventures (world drops).
  
Serpent’s Heart is a daily cooldown that consumes several Serpent’s Eyes to create a random rare quality Pandaren gem.  In addition, there is a small chance that a player will discover the design for the Sapphire Cub or Jade Owl. (Looks like this will finally be the Panda version of The Fire Prism from Cata)

The design for uncut Primal Diamonds requires Spirits of Harmony and large quantities of uncommon gems (ew)

Items

Transmogrification rules have been broadened for several weapon types.
       
           - Two-handed axes, maces, and swords can be Transmogrified to each other.
           - One-handed axes, maces, and swords can be Transmogrified to each other.
           - Staves and polearms can be transmogrified to each other.

The ethereals that offered to upgrade items using Valor or Justice Points have departed Azeroth for the moment. They may yet return in a future patch. (There has been some discussion in my guild weather or not this was a failed attempt to gradually make the raids feel "easier" without actually nerfing the content. For ME it felt like I could still work on getting some "better" gear when the RNG Gods choose to hate me week after week)

        -The cost of Valor Point gear introduced in patch 5.0 has been reduced by 50%.
       - The cost of Valor Point gear introduced in patch 5.1 has been reduced by 25%.
       - Skyshards are now Bind on Account.

I am happy for the price reduction, my much neglected alts will be ecstatic to get out of blues.. though I am too lazy to do dailies on them so this change is like "yay" but I don't think it will really affect me. I have never seen a Skyshard so meh.. Still trying to figure out how a guildy got the drake a month into the game...

Dying guild?

What does one do about a dying guild?

For the most part, every player has experienced a situation similar to this, or at the very least knew someone who has. Right now the guild I am in seems to be dying. Like this is worse than end of cata content. If we weren't playing wow, the main raiders and/or officers could always be found in our very active mumble channel. Mostly playing League of Legends (Amg pvp.. I think I just broke out in hives thinking about it), or on our dedicated Minecraft server.

The faithful raiders in our guild (ones that actually stick around for more than 1-6 weeks before dropping off the face of the earth) have become a close knit group of friends. We are connected outside of game through various social networks Ect, but when it comes to WoW, and the lack of any progression in raids or even attempting to put a group together anymore, when is it time to call it quits and move on? Should you leave these amazing people? Will you find a guild that you fit in with a just as much?

I seemed to be cursed, as the thee people I became closest to as friends have all stopped playing the game what so ever, one to the point that he has disconnected himself from every guildy in every other game we played from him. The thing with this guy is there was never drama with him, he was a pretty chill guy so we don't understand the sudden and extreme cutoff.

While I still have time before my school becomes overwhelming with homework and just life in general, I want to raid, I want to experience bosses in a controlled environment, unlike the chaos with LFRz.

Two weeks later I come back to this pose and due to all of the guild inactivity I am honestly consorting putting stop to my subscription.

Will this be the end? :( sad making thoughts

Sigh.

So, I've noticed that in my last two posts I've started with "first off" I don't know what I do this but I almost did it again with this post. >.>

With this blog I want to portray the fun things of WoW and not be someone who just complains about the stuff they don't like about this game. That said, I hate being forced into pvp situations while I am busy doing things like dailies, and or just landing at a flight path.

I am a bust student, and for the most part because of lack of time, I get around to do dailies once a week.  When I do have time during the week to hop on and cram as many dailies in within lets say a 1/2 hour, I don't have time to be corpse camped and griefed and be just killed constantly by the same three people while I am minding my own business not bothering the opposite faction what so ever.

I am not stealing your nodes, I am not tapping your mobs, I am not taking your quest items. I am simply there just trying to do my thing, mostly avoiding you. Probably on the opposite side of the quest area if at all possible. Sometimes, I've even helped overwhelmed players of the other faction that have pulled more than their health pool can handle, simply so they don't die.

I get it, I play on a pvp server, go ahead kill me, I can tell you right now I am not going to fight, I am going to stand there and let you kill me, I know nothing about pvp, and don't have trinky's equipped to stop your incessant stuns. Now that you've killed me, and boosted your ego slightly by killing someone who you've forced into a situation in which they are not comfortable with, grow up and move on. What is the point of killing me again and again and again and again? You're like one of those little flies that just wont go away, or a buzzing mosquito in my ear while I am trying to sleep.

The fact that I can just move on to another part of the zone or another area completely shows that I can move on and deal with the little quest area that you've claimed as your own later.  Its when you start following me and killing me no matter where I go that I get annoyed. Do you clearly have nothing better to do than kill someone who is obviously not as good as you? Someone who doesn't spend their life in game and grinding battle grounds to get gear that gives you a clear advantage over my ofspec Elemental pve gear?

No offense to anyone who plays one, but through my entire wow experience the biggest douche-bags and worst griefers out there for me, are undead rogues.  I don't know why it is, but for some reason my very presence offends you to the point that you must kill me, stalk me, kill me some more, and then rinse and repeat.

Tillers Tip! Podcats and Heriloom Transfers

First off, I am aware that nobody reads this blog, and really I don't see why someone would follow me. I have only just started to post again after two years, that said, I still want to talk about this game, I still want to post information and tips that I find helpful. Maybe on day someone will read my teeny portion of the internet, but for right now, I just enjoy having an outlet to talk about WoW on.

Tillers Tip!

http://www.wowhead.com/object=210582/dark-soil#.

When you're out looking for the Dark Soil to in the attempts to get all of the Tillers to be your best friend, turn the Ground Clutter and Environment detail settings all the way down
(Esc > System > Graphics > Environment section > Pull-downs for Ground Clutter and Environment Detail ). What this will do is take away detracting pretty things on the ground while you are flying around! Some of the clutter and detail can end up hiding the Dark Soil or at least make it a bit difficult to see!(not all of the time mind you)

I tried to be all awesome and get some good screenshots of the difference, comparing full ultra settings to turning down the Ground Clutter and Environment Detail. Unfortunately for me, at the time I was trying to do this, there were other people looking for the Dark Soils as well! Most of the time when I found one and got ready to take the screenshots this pesky priest of the opposite faction would fly up and take it. Sigh.

Podcasts

So its obivous that I am a WoW nerd here, I am blogging about the darn game and all! So I might as well also say that I listen to WoW podcast during my commune on the oh so amazingly wonderful public transportation system of Vancouver. Just want to give a heads up to anyone who reads this, that they should 1. Start listening to podcasts, they are awesome, and 2. Listen to The Twisted Nether Blogcast AND TwizzCast.

I have been a faithful listening to The Twisted Nether Blogcast (TNB) since Wrath.  Yeah. its been a while, but the hosts are still awesome and as entertaining as ever! Now for Twizzcast! It took me a while to find a podcast that I really liked beyond TNB, I spend a lot of time on the awesome public transportation and the recently bi-weekly shows of TNB wasn't enough. BUT! Thanks to TNB I came uppon an amazing weekly podcast. The three hosts have great complementing personalities, and each of them brings something different to the table, when it comes to their WoW knowledge and experiences.  Twizzcast is a newer podcast, under 40 shows as of right now (I think), but the quality and the popularity that this show has is amazing. The guests are unique and (I am going to say it again) amazing. They aren't just bringing guests that are a part of the community, but have in the past had the actor who did the voice of Illidan from WC2, a member of the Blizzard Dev team, the owner of Icy-Veins (extremely popular raiding and class resource site), and that is just to name a few. Now they don't always have famous or industry people on, they also bring in players, and have some amazing talks about classes and raiding and the game in general. All in all this Podcast awesome and I can only see it getting better. If you need something to listen to, please check out Twisted Nether Blogcast (http://www.twistednether.net/) and TwizzCast (http://www.twizzcast.com/)

There is one teeny gripe that I have with one thing in one episode that came up. The hosts were talking about the possibility of heirlooms being transferred from server to server, there is a blue-post out somewhere in the interwebs that says this doesn't look like it will be happening within the MoP time frame. Two of the hosts feel that the code to make this happen is simple, and that Blizzard keeps pushing the implementation of this feature back because of business.

Heriloom Transfers

There has been talk about the possibilities of this feature since before Cata, Unfortunately making this happen is a lot harder than most people think. Now, I am not a programmer, and I am still a student just studying game design, but a part of learning how to make games means learning how to program for various game engines. With my experience, networking is a nightmare! Creating the algorithm that would allow a player within game to send an account bound item to a different server is a task that I would never wish upon my greatest enemy. I understand that the quality of programmers and technicians that Blizzard has would be of a higher caliber than most companies in the game industry, but still, it would not be an easy task.

Items generated on a server, most likely have some sort of server ID which locks them to that specific server.  Right now item ID's are complex and quite large. They will have information like servers, whos account they are connected to, what character they are soulbound to, enchants, gems, reforging.  Anything that makes that item unique in any way will be in that item's ID. These large ID are probably also a reason why Void storage as it is now, removes all unique enhancements to that item (gems, enchants, reforging, transmog).

The state that servers are in right now, do not communicate on the level that would be required to transfer item ID's. People can bring up the argument that as a player can be pulled into another server and play there for a while, including killing world bosses, rares, and well.. other players. I don't know for sure, but the way blizzard MAY handle this is by treating that host server as a temporary instance, similar to something like LFR or a Heroic. The rules are still the same. A player cannot trade gold, or items from their respective servers, they however, can trade items for up to two hours that have the same Instance ID. Now, items that are generated while in a group with someone from the host server will generate an instance ID, allowing the players to trade. Special items like herilooms and crafted BoE's, are not generaged by killing mobs, or found in an instance. They never have an instance ID, meaning they can't be shared in the same way.

You can look at it in the same sense as Realm Transferring a person's character. There is no way for a player to do this, it is a paid service because someone has to do it. It is not done with a single click of a button. Someone has to actually move all of the information associated with that character from one memory server to another. Like I said before, servers just don't communicate on the level of complexity that would be required to transfer special items.

This is a feature that  people have wanted for a long time, and it is something that Blizzard has said that they are working on it. But to be completely honest, would you rather have programmers and technicians working on heirloom transfers for a percentage of the player population, or generating new content for a much larger audience?

So long! Cata Recap - needless yammering about my Cata memories.

First off, Holy Crap it's been an entire expansion and more than two years since I've posted! As much as I aspired to be active in the blogging community, life beyond the computer screen takes precedence. That said, I've been getting the blogging itch for about a month and finally blew off the dust on this old account!

Can anyone guess where this is?

So.. one of the most recent posts on here was a Wrath Recap.. wow.. that was long ago! I thought about doing a Cata recap, but I am going to lean more towards a timeline rather than just picking memorable moments in my time played.

To be completly honest. I enjoyed Wrath SO much more than Cata. I don't if its because I have this strange love for Lordaeron and Arthas, and didn't feel any attachment to the storylines in Cata. WAIT! That's wrong! Aside for my liking of Lordaeron, Arthas and the Alliance in general, I really enjoy the story of the highborn, and was legitimately excited for Vashj'ir, and then it just never happened. I felt that the end of Cata came too soon, that the push to get out of this expansion and onto Mists, happened a patch too soon. I still feel that we could have handled another raid before Dragon Soul and the Vashj'ir raid would have been a very nice contrast in environments to follow Firelands.

At the beginning of Cata I started on my EU account, nice thing was the Paris Midnight release was I think 4PM my time, so I got to start early and get some good play time in before it was stupidly late at night. Unfortunately, Cata release the day before my finals for College started, so I only got to play opening night. 

I found Deepholm SO pretty :D

Taking a two week break from wow for school, I came back leveled up my Resto Shaman and started spamming 5 mans. This was the WORST playing experience I have ever had. I was an excellent Shaman healer in Wrath, and now I sucked. I couldn't keep the tank alive, any melee that took damage would go down like flies, and on really bad fights, the casters were dieing just as fast. I have never been called so many horrible things and names in the three years prior to playing this game. I was miserable and eventually quit because I just couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. (During my hiatus, Blizz acknowledged the crap-factor of Resto Shaman and did buff them, plus SOME people learned how to freaken CC mobs, and also nerfed all of the 5 mans).

Still to this day, I have yet to resub my EU account.
 
(Personal crap, you can bypass this if you only want to read about the game)
During this break from the game, my personal life exploded, my dad got sick, and I couldn't handle the stress that the accelerated college program I was in was putting on me while dealing with life attacking my heart and my head. I took a break from school and moved home. I started back at my old job, helped my dad get better and got back into wow.

I captured my death when getting the Achievement "Stood In Fire"

I re-subbed my old US account on patch day of 4.1. I started completely new. No gold, no high level characters, no awesome mounts, and no heirlooms (GASP!). I decided to play on Ner'Zhul and play a class that I had never played at max level before, a Priest. I leveled her from 1-80 as Disc, picked up duel-spec and Shadow to level in Cata. To my guildies surprise, I leveled this toon extremely fast (especially since I had no gold, knew nobody to recruit a friend with, and had no heirlooms). Once I capped her, the guild pulled me into a BWD and said heal. Let me tell you, I was BAD. Despite leveling as disc I had no idea how to play my poor Priest at a raid healer's caliber. It took a while, but I got some gear, did some research and eventually got better.

As a guild, we had a lot of pain and drama in Firelands, besides myself, we cycled through healers like nobody's business!   I switched things up, leveled a shaman and came back to healing like a boss! (Despite always and STILL losing healing shields to Holy Paladins... SIGH) Due to the lack of reliable healers and constantly losing our top DPS to guilds who raided more (which only happened because people kept leaving!), we couldn't get actual progression in Firelands until the first nerf.

ZOMG! someone didn't finish texturing HoT! Ignore the horrible UI

As for Dragon Soul, rinse and repeat the story from Firelands. Other than the shiled, which in 8 months.. never dropped once. So I guess I could be happy that a freaken pally never stole THAT shield from me.

As Cata was starting to wind down I leveled a ton of alts, got a ton of titles, made my mount and pet collection much more substantial than what I had on my EU account. Though.. the Brewfest Kodo has still eluded me.... One day it shall be mine once again!

If anyone actually reads this.. THANKS! :D  I have an idea for another post already. Just have to wait for another bout of insomnia and me avoiding homework to get it written!

With Cataclysm coming I wanted to take some time and think about my most memorable moments in wrath. Well considering I first started playing WoW at the end of October 2008 99% of my playtime has been during Wrath, despite that... I want to recollect on the things that will stick in my mind of the time “before the cata hit”

The pre 3.2 Titanium rush



Everyone who had read the patch notes knew exactly what was going to happen. The ability to prospect Titanium was a huge thing! ZOMG epic gems! I remember back then I would spend hours upon hours farming for titanium and maybe be lucky to get half a stack a night. The air in Icrecrown was filled with players on their flying mounts hopeing to be the first one to see titanium node pop up.


At the time my guild was a close net group and many of use would curse at each other when our gatherer notes wold pop up with finds of Titanium multiple times in a row – sadly this was never me. I can recollect my most common phrase then was “Damn you Merb!” (Merberan , A holy Paladin who rolled so well that when we wanted to win something people joked about rolling with ./merbroll and you would get an instant win, he also was very lucky with finding these nodes!)


Nearing the end I was desperate to get my hands on Titanium before the patch I decided to go the fast, easy and sadly expensive way . The Auction House. I would by any stack that was below 250G (Which wasn’t a whole lot). Once 3.2 hit I believe that I had about 35 full stacks to prospect... (1/2 of what the evil pally had sadly)

Son’s of Hodir Rep Farming

Just thinking about this with my first 80 still gives me shivers, It wasn’t just the DAYS of rep farming it was that at the time I played on a PvP server. So during my drudgery of doing these quests that were cool the first week it was also guaranteed that I wouldn’t make it out alive from the cave while hunting for Viscous Oil.

I would also like to note that it took me about two weeks to realize that I could save gold by doing “Thrusting Hodir’s Spear” naked. Man! the amount of gold I would have saved would have been nice to have once I had to rep to buy the silly shoulder enchants.

This Shield


The Vigilant Ward, it took our guild two months for it to drop off Anub'arak. Thankfully! For the first time ever while raiding in this guild I won a roll over the Merb-roller (see above). Little did I know this also meant that I would never ever get a new shield. I still have it now! Not because I like it but because nothing EVER drops. When I have the time I still do ToC 25 in desperate hopes 1) a pug can beat the faction champs, 2) The upgrade drops, and 3) that I could get a roll high enough to win it. (Still has yet to happen)

The day Cata hits I have made a bet with a friend that I the first quest I do will be a shield upgrade – to which I miiiiight /nerdrage .




The Undying day that Sath died.



Yeah.. I know look at that date, sure we were uber geared for Sath 10 3D and Naxx 10 but still! Even at this point if you have the gear it doesn’t make a player who knows and follows tacts enough to not die. The best part of this run was the friendships that were formed as we truly did bond that night. (oh and I got the drake! Channeled ./merbroll and it so worked!)

Something that solidified the night for me was the letter that we got from the Raid Leader the following day, as we decided to shard all of the loot and divide it up among the group.


It reads"

“You almost forgot about it. But a hero ofcourse always ends up with certain gifts at the end of the story. Most of the time that’s the girl, and even more so one that is so pretty you’d almost wonder why said hero hadn’t converted to heroism earlier.

That said, the bosses we have overcome on our heroic evening sadly didn’t drop any women. They did however, drop loot, Epic loot. Which we have been able to turn into sweet sweet crystals.

Hereby is your share of the loot
Enjoy , Brave Hero <3”

Now despite the fact that I am a woman, and that I am not attracted to them at all.. I enjoyed this note and still hold onto it safely in my bank.


And for now, I believe that this is where I call my recollection on Wrath to a close for the evening. If anyone would like to comment please feel free.

My first time! - Be gentle

My persona is Meli, and I am a World of Warcraft player.

I proudly say this and ignore the stigma because I love this game. It is true that it’s hard not to get consumed by it especially like me who at one point was raiding ICC 10/25, VoA 10/25, Toc 10/25 and the Weekly on more than one toon not because I had a need to but because I wanted to. However since moving from home to the coast and going to art school I have cut my playing to 8 hours a week (on a good week).

I have four level 80 characters (Shaman, Paladin, Druid, and Warlock) plus two more on the way (Hunter 77 and Priest 68). Aside from raiding it is obvious that I am an alt-o-holic on top of that I also am a prof-o-holic. When it comes to a game so vast as WoW it’s hard to limit myself to just one thing. I want to experience everything. I like to see the different sides of the game dynamic and how it affects us as players.

I am currently a full time Student at an art school studying Game Art & Design, My big dream is to work for Blizz obviously, but being Canadian makes that dream practically impossible to achieve.

In the future this blog will mostly be about World of Warcraft from a healer’s perspective. I hopefully will keep this blog up but like most new bloggers we are all gun-hoe in the beginning and fizzle out in about a month.

I have a love for this game and want to get involved with the community surrounding it.