And in non-WoW news…

I’ve been playing a huge amount (for me) of Team Fortress 2 lately.

The new interest in the game is due in part to a new podcast I’ve been listening to called Control Point. I started with the inaugural episode posted back in October 2007 and am up through episode 12 or 13 now. They’re a great group of hosts, with lots of laughter and great information to share – which is exactly my type of podcast.

I’ve played some casual TF2 on and off since I bought the Orange Box through Steam when it was released last fall, and it’s still the best multi-player shooter I’ve ever played. Or at least the most fun. I found Counterstrike, Halo and Battlefield 2142 to be interesting, but not all that fun to play. The simplicity of the gameplay, the classic art direction and the tongue-in-cheek humor of TF2 is exactly what I need in a shooter.

I’m still at only 76% completion for in-game achievements, but finishing those aren’t all that important to me. The best thing about this game for me is contributing to the cause…pushing through the front lines from behind a flame-thrower or a bazooka, or sprinting around healing everyone I can so they can hold a control point and keep the pressure on the incoming offensive. It’s such a rush to be in the midst of that frenetic gameplay.

My favorite class used to be the soldier or the pyro, but lately I’ve been running medic if I can. The funny thing about playing a medic is the surprise you get from teammates when they realize you’re actually healing them when they need it. It’s nice to be in that support position. And a really great side-benefit is that I get a crapload of kill assists, depending on whether I’m healing someone when they make a kill. So even though I’m a healer, I usually end up in the upper ranks of the scoreboard.

And really, nothing is more satisfying than when I see an opportunity to nail someone with my melee bonesaw. God I love that.

Here’s a random screenshot from this weekend. The theme of the hour was for the entire team to play as one class…in this case: engineers. Lots of nice defensive positions, but we were battered all to hell by soldiers, heavies and demomen in the end. And it must have been heaven on Earth for sapper spies.

WoW on the back burner (fun facts)

Not so much happening lately in Azeroth, for me.

Been spending a fair amount of time leveling Engineering – I believe I’m at 331 now, up from 260 early Saturday morning. It’s fun to be making such progress, especially now that I don’t need to revisit the Old World for lesser ores and materials. I will need to hit up Blackrock Depths to farm a minor Goblin boss, though, as he drops the recipe for Goblin Jumper Cables XL. They’re rumored to carry a 50% success rate, as opposed to the 33% success rate of the regular jumper cables, which I’ve had since level 36.

But my main goal at this point is to craft the Surestrike Goggles v2.0. Seems to require a ridiculous amount of Fel Iron ore to make casings, bolts and such right now, which I need in order to make endless minor items which turn from red to green skills within 5 or 10 points. I think it’s pretty safe to say that, like Tailoring, it’s going to be a giant pain in the ass to make it to 375. Hell, I even gave up on Tailoring at 357, but that was due in part to the stupid cooldowns on shadowcloth and spellcloth.

It appears the final recipe for the goggles includes a Nightseye gem and a Primal Nether. I can probably find the gem through a random mining node – already had a couple drop for me – but I think the Nether has to come from (either a transmute of 10 of each primal element - EDIT: I was thinking of Primal Might, sorry!) or a heroic dungeon or raid drop. So yeah…it could be a bit before I get those goggles. And rightfully so, as they really are a kick ass upgrade.

And speaking of Azeroth, I rearranged some stuff in my apartment yesterday and came across the original WoW game manual. Made for some good nostalgic reading. Interestingly enough, I learned that Azeroth (at least according to this manual) is actually the name of the Eastern continent, or what we call the Eastern Kingdoms, not the world, per-se. So as far as I can tell, the World of Warcraft is unnamed, and it holds 3 continents: Azeroth (eastern), Kalimdor (western) and Northrend (um…northern).

Another fun fact: apparently, Dwarves can be mages. It’s in the WoW manual :)

Wonder when that changed? Somehow, a Dwarf mage just seems wrong. And if someone *had* a Dwarf mage at launch, were they forced to re-roll? Hmm…

The Alt of My Alt is My Alt

And it’s my fault. But I’m ok with it, because as of Sunday, my big three are all on one server and happily doing business with each other.

Yep, the server transfer waiting period finally ended, and I slingshotted them over to my new (hopefully permanent) realm. There’s definitely a sense of completion in looking at my character screen now, with my 67 hunter, 70 warlock and 60 mage all waiting for action.

It’s been a bit distracting, as someone will be looking for something in guild chat and I’m usually able to go and find the item or materials on another character if need be. I’m also noticing odd benefits to having a few higher-level alts.

I was on the warlock last night, hunting herbs in Nagrand. Someone called for a 5th person to join their Ramparts group, and I spoke up. I figured it would be good practice for me, having not played the warlock in a group for months. But as we waited atop Hellfire Citadel for people for finish their usual pre-game RL stuff, it dawned on me that I had a primo level 60 DPS class one character slot away. I quickly swapped in my mage, and away we rode.

It was a decent run; picked up the The Witching Band from the final boss, but that was about it. My mage skills were most definitely on the rusty end of things, but I managed not to get myself killed.

I also got my hunter to 67 last night, which meant that I could begin the ghost quests in Shadowmoon Valley and reach the Teron Gorefiend group quests. I did, and I did. It’s funny how easily these quests get completed, now that nearly everyone you meet is working on the quest for their alt or helping a friend’s alt. I joined a group of 70s, who kindly summoned me to a hilltop across the nether so we could fight the ghostly level 71 elite dragon. And I do mean summoned me to a hilltop. We all crowded onto a roughly 8x8 foot space and pulled the dragon when he flew past. Being a hunter, I of course need range to do any sort of effective damage. Yeah, no. I had no range on this fight, and was reduced to pricking away with my little blue daggers and popping Beastial Wrath or Kill Command whenever the cooldowns were up.

We managed to slay the beast in the end, surprisingly. Four 70s, two of which – healer and DPS – could not see the dragon for lack of their Spectracles, and a gimped 67 hunter did not seem an ideal group for the quest, but it worked out, so yay. I got my Stalker’s Helmet of Second Sight as the end quest reward. It’s nice, but it’s not as dragon-ish as I was hoping for. It’s got more of a sea-monster feel to it. I guess that’s OK. My biggest gripe with that helm, though, is that it offers three blue sockets for the +8 attack power bonus. As a hunter, I haven’t found blue gems to be all that useful. I grabbed a couple of +12 stam and a +3 mp5 gem, but I would have really liked to have at least one red gem slot in there. Ah well. I’m sure I’ll replace it at some point.

So in all, it’s good to have all my favorite characters together at last. But it’s going to be tough spreading the love between them. My big goals are to keep focusing on the hunter’s progression, rep and attunements, while keeping an eye out for any healthy PUGs for the warlock. The mage will have to play the bench for a while, at least for the next month or so.

It's All Mine(ing)

Took a break from leveling on Sunday evening to finally skill up my mining. I got guilty during a PuG when someone asked if there were any miners present. I said yes, but I was far too low to tap any Outland veins. The other player got all serious and told me that I really should get my mining up, as I wouldn’t want to miss out on all of the ore I was leveling around.

I’d coincidentally just picked up my Swift Pink Hawkstrider the day before, so I was a bit more mobile. I decided to start mining. Moved from level 220 up to 295 that evening, mining Mithril, Gold, Truesilver and Thorium.

Oh, and I also got filthy stinking rich doing it. I must have gathered 5 or six stacks of Thorium, and god knows how much Mithril. I was in the zone. Must have watched at least 5 or 6 episodes of Buffy. Kept sending the ore, stone, random minerals and crystals to my bank alt, and at the end of the night I tossed everything up onto the AH. Next time I logged in, I collected over 200 gold.

Last night was a bit more casual; just needed to pushed mining another 5 points to 300 so I could start gathering the Fel Iron nodes in Hellfire Peninsula. I’d definitely recommend following through mining, ‘cause I thought it paid well at the LOWER levels. Had no idea it was this profitable in the post-300 skill range. But I guess we can add this to the other 19 billion things I’m still learning about this game.

Also joined a brief PvP group yesterday for the daily quest in Hellfire Peninsula. I’ve been trying to get my three Thrallmar marks every day by capturing the three contested points on the map. And by capturing them, I of course mean that I ride in, flag for PvP, wait for the tower to turn Horde-controlled, and do the very same thing to the next two towers. I’d then hide in a gully or run back to Thrallmar to wait for the PvP flag to timeout. Easy 3 marks per day.

Yesterday, though, we actually got a little 5-man group together and actively defended the Overlook, Stadium and Broken Hill for about an hour. I didn’t realize that you get a bonus Thrallmark mark per PvP kill you to which you contribute. I had my little stack of 15 marks I’d slowly been gathering since I hit level 58, but that turned into 56 yesterday, so I was able to get my Mark of Conquest from the Horde Field Scout in Zangarmarsh. Very cool.

One final holy shit: A simple level 65 quest in Blade’s Edge Mountain got me this Wild Horned Helm in less than five minutes. God I love the “find an upgrade” feature on the WoW Armory.

Ugh...blogger+blog noob = crappy formatting

Lately, I'm having to wrestle far too much with screenshots on this blog, so I'm picking a new template (tuning yet to come) and will have to go back and re-format previous photos. So presently, most of the older posts will have clipped, horrible formatting. Fix coming soon. :)

Out In OL

1 year gone

It’s oddly comforting that I’m moving through Outland again just about a year after Burning Crusade was released.

Good to be back.

Paquita, my Blood Elf hunter, is now 63 and well into Terokkar Forest. I spent two hours yesterday completing 12-14 quests at once in Zangarmarsh, only to turn them in and find that it only got me about 1/3 further toward my next level. That’s to be expected; I knew that the XP-to-level is insane, post-60, but I felt like I needed to step it up a little. So I passed on the second round of Zangarmarsh quests and rode straight on to Spinebreaker Hold in Terokkar. I found that the quests were already yellow to me, so I got a bunch of those done. I’m glad, because I recalled pushing to complete all of the available quests in a certain zone when I leveled Mercot to 70, and often would find that the next zone offered quest rewards I had already outgrown. So I found a few decent items through the Terokkar quests.

I also had a few fortunate runs through Hellfire Ramparts and Blood Furnace, so I’m sporting at least 3 new slick blue items.


Also tamed a sweet-looking Thornfang Ravanger, who I named JuanRico (reference to Johnny Rico, Casper Van Dien’s character from “Starship Troopers). It was cool. I got his loyalty level all the way up to Best Friend in a day. The only issue now, will be balancing him between my old trusty raptor (whom I’ve had since level 10) on the way to 70. It’s an aesthetic choice now, and their only obvious difference is JuanRico’s Gore ability as opposed to OldLace’s Bite. Both are mutually exclusive, and I’ll have to compare their stats more closely to see if one will help me more than the other.

Other than that, I’m just moving on up. I’m really enjoying Outland again. But I’m afraid I’ll get spoiled by the hunter. They’re so damn fun to play. I was getting bored with her before 60, but now she’s finished her Beastmaster tree, and is getting more into the Marksmanship stuff, as well as gaining new BC skills. It’s really quite a challenge to play her effectively. I worry that going back to my mage will be less fun. Ah well.

REALLY looking forward to Nagrand. That place is fucking gorgeous. Unfortunately all the questsgivers are gray at level 63, so I’ll have to ding once more before I can start that stuff.

Bittersweet

We lost, but I somehow ended up #3 on kills for the Horde...
And I love the hunter quote. There were 11 of us in there at the time.