Repopulating the Old World: Cross Realm Zones

Sometimes I think you want me to touch you.
How can I when you build the great wall around you? - Tori Amos, China


In a move that surprised everyone, Blizzard has announced that they are going to begin testing Cross Realm Zones in the Mists of Pandaria Beta. I love this idea like a big sloppy Dwarfling kiss, and given the subject of my last post, the timing of this announcement is particularly serendipitous.

I am a unrepentant Wrath Baby; I created my first character in the very twilight of the Burning Crusade expansion, mere months before Wrath of the Lich King went live. Because of this I have never experienced the Old World as the thriving, vibrant place that it was in Vanilla.

For me and thousands of other people who joined the game late, levelling in World of Warcraft is a solitary experience. The wilderness of Azeroth outside of the major cities is filled with bears and bandits and monsters of all types, but even on busy, highly populous servers, meeting another character is something of a rare occurrence. It's a lonely life, being a lowbie in Azeroth, but the new Cross Realm Zones aim to change that.

The way that Blizzard is trying to implement this is quite brilliant, if you ask me. Basically, certain realms will be linked together based on population, and each of those realms will share certain zones that are flagged as "Cross Realm". Using the Barrens as an example, a character on Sargeras would walk out of a realm-exclusive Orgrimmar into a Barrens shared by 5 other servers, and would see and interact with characters from all of those realms normally, just as if they were all on the same server. At the same time, Blizzard will have the ability to keep highly populated zones (Cities, to be sure) exclusive. This way Stormwind won't be crushed under the weight of thousands of people standing at the fountain oogling the fifteen thousand naked Night Elves dancing on the mailboxes.

I think this feature is fantastic. Not just a technically brilliant solution to make an older technology scale and adapt to the changing reality of the current, max-level focused state of the game, but also as a step to the ultimate goal of eliminating realms completely. I talked about this back in January, but the elimination of the barrier walls around the different realms is a very clever way for Blizzard to extend the life of the game. Right now, if Blizzard chooses to do so, the only realm-specific areas are the main cities, the Auction House and any zone that is going to be populated enough not to be a concern like the Cataclysm zones and the new Mists of Pandaria zones.

As a social, massively multiplayer game, it is always a little bit odd to run around the world outside of the two major faction cities of Stormwind and Orgrimmar and see, well, nothing. By repopulating the Old World, new players will finally get an experience that is close to what older players experienced when WoW was new and when having a maximum level character was rare: A world that is full of people to interact with.

It really doesn't matter that there are no group quests in the game any more, nor is there any real need to team up with people to defeat the quests that people are given. Having a lot of people busily running around doing there own thing is exciting. It adds an immense amount of flavour to the game.

Like the bustling sidewalks of downtown New York, it's all about vibrancy and life and activity; it's about the soul of this game, which is missing in the low level zones. Bringing that kind of life back to zones other than the cities is going to go a long way to help make new players—and old players who love lowibe alts like myself—remain excited about this game for years to come.

After all, it is World of Warcraft. Bravo, Blizzard. Well played.

The Joy of Lowbies

"It strikes! one, two,
Three, four, five, six. Enough, enough, dear watch,
Thy pulse hath beat enough. Now sleep and rest;
Would thou could'st make the time to do so too;
I'll wind thee up no more." - Ben Jonson The Staple of News


As I mentioned in my last post, I don't have much in the way of free, unimpeded time to dedicate to WoW these days.

The only raid boss that I attempt these days;
believe me, this is a fight with a lot of movement.

I'm sad to say that such an odd, irregular and easily interrupted schedule is not one that is conducive to raiding. Over the past couple of months or so my level 85s have withered due to neglect. My regular raiding has completely ground to a halt after going 8/8 on two toons with no heroic bosses down at all.

With only an hour or so of available time in an evening, running dungeons or LFR seem like an exhausting, implacable mountain to climb and not worth the effort. Doing daily quests gets very boring very quickly. Maximum level PVP is new and scary and intriguing, but would require a fair bit of effort to get the gear that would allow me to survive for more than the brief moment between when an enemy sees me and when he decides that I should be dead.

So what's a Dwarf to do?


THE JOY OF LOWBIES

I am an Altaholic, but not in the usual way. I am in a guild with several people who I would consider the norm for extreme cases of Altaholism: They tend to create an alt and focus intently on it until it reaches max level before giving a new one any real attention. Consequently, they have a lot of max level characters and characters that are well on their way there.

I am a little different. I have dozens of low level characters of every race and every class scattered around 10 or 12 different servers. Not including the Death Knights (only one of which I've ever gotten out of the starting zone; he's level 62), only a couple of these characters are above level 25. My highest level Horde character ever just dinged 18. Seriously.

I really enjoy low level characters and low level questing. There is something very compelling about boiling a class down to its very essence and seeing it naked and helpless in its infancy. In those initial levels each class is very similar: Uncomplicated, pure, and a joy to play. To see which skills are learned and when, and to discover how to use each new skill and see the way a class gradually becomes more complex is very intriguing.

I'm not really clear as to why, but I seem to hit a brick wall between level 14 and level 20. In the mid-teens the class will have taken shape and while many important and class defining abilities are yet to come, the fundamental structure of how the class is played is evident. For me, at least, this is when the experiment to test my attitude towards a class feels as if it's run its course.

As well, it's at that point that a character is out of the starting zones and into the next areas (Barrens, Westfall, etc). These zones are larger and more involved than the starting zones and feel more general and less specific to the character. This is when my mindset changes from, "This is a fun toy to play with," to "Oh gawd, I have how many freakin' levels to go?!?". Taking a character through these zones begins to firmly cement the notion in my head that I'm committing to the grind to get the character up to max level; a long and daunting process, especially for someone who levels as slowly as I do. Therefore, any character that makes it past that barrier and hits 20 is one that—in my head, at least—has been selected to survive and make the slow journey to level cap.

I have really only levelled a couple of different characters past this breaking point. My first character, a hunter, got to level 48 before he was abandoned and left to rot as I switched servers. My Warrior, Priest and Paladin all got to max level in Wrath, and two of them have gone onto 85. Thallie, my Shaman and current raiding main (the cobwebs on her are, at least, fresh) was the first character I created when Cataclysm launched and is the only one that I have managed to take to max level since then. So many more have failed this litmus test and remain unlevelled and unloved.

It seems that the decision to go past the level 20 barrier is a significant one for me. It is a mental commitment to that character; a commitment to learn and master the nuances of the class at the very highest levels. However, if the class, or the character's name or the server or anything else doesn't feel right, then that character is doomed to a shadowy half-life of neglect. Not to be deleted, but doomed to sit in the Inn at Sentinel Hill or at The Crossroads with pitiful white or grey gear, never to be the hero that they could be due to the capriciousness of my whimsy.

So having said all that, with a fervent desire to play but with limited play time in which to do it, I have been spending a lot of time with my low level Alts lately. Some have pushed past the elusive and mysterious Level 20 and have become, at least in my mind, actual characters, whilst some are still merely interesting toys to experiment with. It's been a lot of fun, and I've been indulging myself by seeing areas of the game and doing activities that I've never done before. It's as good a way as any to ride out the end of this expansion, at least until the raid healing bug bites me again.

Catching Up

"The time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things: of shoes and ships - and sealing wax - of cabbages and kings." - Lewis Carroll

Unless this is your first visit to Battle Medic (and if so, welcome!), you are aware that the month of April was dominated by the 20 Days of WoW Challenge. I wasn't really able to do much posting on topics other than the challenge itself, so I figured that it might be nice to pull up a chair, pour ourselves a drink and catch up on what's been going on.


LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE CHALLENGE

"Reading the quotes you chose for the beginnings of these posts is awesome sprinkles on a cupcake of win." - Glorwynn of Heavy Wool Bandage via Twitter

Of all the comments and reactions that my 20 Days of... blogathon generated, the one quoted above is my absolute favourite.

I learned many things during the last month while I tackled the Challenge. I learned that I like writing and posting everyday. And even though I didn't accomplish my goal of posting each and every day, I like the feeling of frequent posts. I have never in my life written as much or as often as I did last month. It was a lot harder than I thought to consistently churn out quality content, even when the topics were set ahead of time. Overall, however, I am extremely happy with how the Challenge went.

There are several posts that I am unsatified with (Day 7 and Day 19 were fairly lackluster efforts), but there are many more posts that I am very proud of: Day 5, talking about the books of Azeroth. Day 15 surprised me since the post ended up having nothing to do with WoW at all, but reads well and felt really good to write. The post on Day 17 is special because I had a lot of fun doing the images of Southshore and Loch Modan for it.

I also realized that I really enjoy writing the little in-character fiction pieces that I included in Day 20: Denouement, and the older post Pushing a Boulder Uphill. It is a completely different style of writing; one that is quite compelling and something that I want to explore further. I am very pleased with how Denouement turned out, even though I wish I would have given it one final edit before hitting the publish button - I think the prose could be a bit tighter.

The 20 Days of WoW Challenge also taught me that I have a long way to go in terms of engaging my readers and generating more interaction through the comments. I was blown away by the reader response to these posts when it came to pageviews - I averaged about 120 pageviews per day, not including people using readers - but those views didn't translate into comments. It's something that I would like to improve on, but am not entirely sure how.


THIS WEEK MONTH IN RAIDING

After several weeks of working on it to the exclusion of everything else, Shadowgarde finally managed to down Cho'gall a couple of times, bringing us to 9 of 12 bosses down in normal progression. Cho'gall still refuses to drop Holy Paladin gear, however, which puts him on my naughty list.

I find it amazing that once I got comfortable with what I needed to do and when I needed to do it, the fight becomes quite easy. The trick for me as the Paladin assigned to the tanks was to learn to anticipate the moments during the add phases that the Cho'gall tank would be taking extreme damage and to time the use of cooldowns accordingly. As well, convincing the Add Tank to stay within Line-of-Sight so that my Beacon of Light could heal him helped tremendously.

Unfortunately, we've had a bit of a setback in raid attendance. Our two tanks and several of our regular raiders have gone AWOL since Easter, leaving us scrambling for alternatives. We've been doing fine; we're still managing to get our farm bosses down without too much fuss, but our progression work on Nefarian has completely ground to a halt. And with Patch 4.2 looming on the horizon and with it the imminent appearance of the next raiding tier, time is running out to accomplish my 12/12 goal.


LOWBIE ADVENTURES IN TANKING

What does it mean when there are a dozen mobs running all over the place, spells flying every-which-way, so many things going on that I can't even begin to keep track of them all, and through it all somebody is constantly punching me in the face?

Oh yes, it must mean that I'm tanking.

I took Fannon 2.0 into the Scarlet Monastery Library last night to get the last experience points needed to finally ding level 40. In the process I dipped my foot into tanking for the first time since the Elemental Invasions that preceded Cataclysm, and for the first time ever on a Paladin.

Now, firstly, I was a full five levels above the next highest in the group and going into the SM Library at the very last level that I was eligible to do so in the Dungeon Finder, so I expected it to be a complete faceroll. I wasn't disappointed, either. We steamrolled the dungeon, and I was doing double the DPS of the next highest person - again, not unexpected given the level discrepancy.

I mention it because even given all that, Tanking is just as chaotic and insane as I remember. Trying to keep track of where the mobs are, who they're attacking and still keep up a threat/DPS rotation was a lot of work, whereas healing the same dungeon on my lowbie Shaman, Thallie, was a snorefest.

We succeeded and completed the dungeon without any casualties, or really even any real scares, even when I pulled Arcanist Doan somewhat prematurely. But the lesson learned here is that I need to do a lot of work before I can call myself an accomplished Tank. It gives me a new appreciation for what those meat-shields go through every raid.

On the other hand, my main's Protection off-spec (which arguably has better gear than my main spec), is a lot of fun to play doing dailies on Tol Barad.


THE FAST AND FURIOUS FOURTEEN LEVELS... WITH BUNNIES

The wife and Dwarfling went to visit family for six days over the Easter holidays, which allowed me the unprecedented opportunity to binge on WoW like I haven't done in months. And while I spent a fair bit of time raiding and instancing on my main, I also dedicated a great deal of time to my young, dungeoneering Shaman.

When we last left Thallie she still had the Level 30 achievement banner hanging off of her, and when the Easter weekend started that's just where she remained. Twenty-four hours after my wife left for her trip and dozens of random dungeon runs later, however, Thallie was sitting at a very pretty level 40. All told I probably spent about Eight or Nine hours running dungeon after dungeon and having an absolute blast.

Scarlet Monastery Library, Armory and Cathedral, Razorfen Kraul, Maraudon, Dire Maul Warpwood Quarter, and Uldaman were all knocked down in exceptionally short order.

In the process I was fortunate to run into a couple of extremely good groups of people. On two separate occasions the random groups were fun and chatty and above all competent, and so stayed together for multiple instances. As fast and anonymous as the Dungeon Finder can tend to make instance runs, it's still a wonderful feeling when you run across that great group that is a lot of fun to play with. It's a pity that it doesn't happen very often.

Aside from the dungeons, though, I also decided to get Thallie her first title. Noblegarden has been my favourite WoW holiday ever since I did it for the first time on my priest, and "The Noble" is probably my favourite title as well. I ended up gaining about two levels just from doing the holiday quests and the few quests required to get the boat needed to cross Thousand Needles so I could do [Desert Rose] and [Hard Boiled].

Bunnies! Bunnies, it must be bunnies!

The tricky part of the Noblegarden meta achievement for me was finding an Orc female, which apparently are as rare as a Blood Elf with a mullet on my server. I even tried running Battlegrounds to see if I could find one there (which ended up getting me another 2 levels). I ended up riding to Orgrimmar (Water Walking for the win) and using Far Sight (also, FTW) to spy on the entrance to see if I could spot one. It took me two evenings of searching, but I eventually found that green, fanged goddess, stuck bunny ears on her and got my achievement. The Hordies that were outside Orgrimmar only killed me a little.

They were rather short-sighted considering Thallie is a relatively rare Dwarf Female, and was also wearing the Elegant Dress - perfect for their holiday achievement needs.

Oh well... say hello to Thallie the Noble, level 44.
 
 

News From the Lower Levels

Over the past several weeks while I have been working on the 20 Days of WoW Challenge, I have kinda been neglecting writing about anything else. While I managed to sneak in my take on Call to Arms, it's been hard to find the time to write about other topics, even though my mind and my notebook are bursting with ideas.

While playing, I have been spending much more time these days on my alts and yet oddly, I still only have one 85. My lowbie Shaman and the other Fannon have been keeping my attention these days at the expense of my higher level alts. Fannon the Second is about to hit level 40, and Thallie the Shaman just dinged 30 last night.

LEVELLING

I must say that the levelling experience after Cataclysm is superb. The pace seems fine tuned; it's quick and fun, but doesn't overreach the level of the zone unless you use heirlooms or run dungeons. The quests themselves are executed better as well, with a vast majority of the tedious and time consuming running back and forth between quest-givers and quest areas removed. Duskwood in particular has benefited from getting rid of the need to run back to Darkshire from the Raven Hill graveyard every 10 minutes.

The two alts that I am levelling up simultaneously are both using a different approach: Fannon, my Protection Paladin on Azuremyst, is questing and trying to amass as much gold as possible, while Thallie, my Shaman on my main server is in full heirlooms and levelling up through the random dungeon finder.

FANNON THE PALADIN AND THE QUEST TO GET STINKIN' RICH

Firstly, I am finding it damned confusing to have two characters the same name. Normally, all of my characters have unique names and, while I don't do any roleplaying, in my head at least they are all unique individuals. When I created a new character on Azuremyst, I named him Fannon because the guild I was joining is full of people from the Blogosphere and Twitter who know me by that name.  However, I'm finding it annoying when referring to the two Fannons in writing, and calling the Paladin "Fannon 2.0" kinda ruins the immersion for me.

Anyway, attempting to put aside my own mental problems, I am astonished at how quickly Fannon of Azuremyst is progressing through the levelling content. Obviously, starting on a new server means that this Fannon doesn't have access to any Bind to Account Heirlooms or any help other than the perks that being a member of a Level 11 guild will bring.  However, even lacking heirlooms I am plowing through the levels.

Same-level quest mobs get mowed over like tall grass in front of a riding mower piloted by a cocaine fiend. Quests are turned in by the bunch. Quest hubs are squeezed and used up like limes during a tequila drinking contest. The quests and the levels just fly by.

In what seems like very little time (in fact it's a little over a day of actual playtime), my little Effin' Paladin is about to ding 40. All of these levels were done with questing; he hasn't stepped foot into a dungeon yet. It's a little hard to believe he's that high, because the levelling process has seemed completely effortless.

The other bit of interest with Azuremyst Fannon is my goal of becoming wealthy by level 85. This isn't going as fast as the levelling, unfortunately. As of this writing, he is sitting at 440g with another 100g or so on the Auction House. I'll talk more about this in another post (hopefully this week) and give some more details on how I've gotten to where I am.

THALLIE: THE DUNGEONEERING SHAMAN

Note: I was too lazy to take another screenshot of her.

Thallie, as you may recall, is my little levelling Resto Shaman on Sargeras. At some point she has managed to acquire a full set of heirlooms - although her shoulders are cloth and her mace is the wrong itemization for healing. She has been spending her time sitting in the Dwarf District of Stormwind next the the Shaman trainer and faithfully running dungeons to gain experience. I haven't spent as much time playing her as I have with Fannon of Azuremyst, but she's been packing on the levels too.

Over the past week or so, any chance I get I log onto Thallie and hop into the Dungeon Finder. I must say that I am pleasantly surprised with how well these low level instances have gone. Admittedly, some of the lowest level dungeons go by extremely quick and they sometimes remind me of the final days of Wrath when Tier 10-wielding 10-man PUGs would storm into Naxxramas for the weekly raid quest and steamroll over the bosses in 30 seconds.

She has seen more low level dungeons than any of my other characters ever have, and I've done a few that I had never seen before. Ragefire Chasm, Wailing Caverns, Stockades, Gnomeregan and most recently Scarlet Monastery Graveyard have all been conquered by this intrepid little braid-wearin' healer. Oddly enough I have never got Deadmines or Shadowfang Keep. Go figure.

With full purchasable heirlooms - Cloak, Shoulders, Chest, Hat and Weapon - in addition to the experience bonus that comes with being in a level 24 guild, each dungeon is easily a full level or more. And with the way Blizzard has restructured the dungeons, most of them are very quick runs. And her gear is fantastic. She has gained seven or eight levels in the past few days with 5 or 6 dungeons and very little effort.

The biggest problem I've seen is just trying to keep the same group throughout the dungeon. People drop out after defeating a boss, finish a quest they need or dinging the level they wanted then leave, and new people quickly take their place. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I have had very few long waits for a group, and most of the tanks I have had have known their stuff well enough so as to not cause any problems. Running all these dungeons has been quite enjoyable.

QUESTING OR DUNGEONEERING: WHICH IS FASTER?

It's not exactly a fair comparison given the heirlooms, but even so there is no question in my mind that levelling through questing is much faster than levelling through the dungeon finder - assuming you are playing a non-healing spec. Mobs melt like butter in front of my Protection Paladin, but are not surprisingly quite a bit tougher to my Restoration Shaman.

The questing zones are just so incredibly well designed that there is virtually no downtime while questing. The quests are varied and fun, and proceed in a logical, story-driven manner which is completely engrossing. I have not felt as if I were grinding once since I started taking Fannon 2.0 through his journey.

The biggest advantage to running dungeons during the levelling process is the same as it always was: gear. For a minimal investment of time and effort there is a whole lot of great, blue quality gear available. Thallie's gear is a lot better than Fannon's paladin gear was at the same level. On the other hand, having great gear is far less important during questing than it was (or it may be that Protection Paladins are just ridiculously overpowered), and the mobs die just fine in quest greens.

Zero to Wealthy in 85 Easy Levels

These days is really easy to get a new Alt started, and there are various strategies on how to get a quick start in terms of money and gear. Just recently, Big Bear Butt posted a guide for getting a great head-start on money when starting up on a new server. Starting from nothing, on the other hand, is rarely done any longer.

Rades over at Orcish Army Knife took up this challenge recently, and has inspired me to do the same.

I chose to create my new money-grubbing alt on Azuremyst, Alliance side, so that I could hang out with the Eff the Ineffable folks while I was playing. Naturally, I rolled a Dwarf Paladin and named him Fannon. Finally, my blog title and preferred subject makes sense! Of course, I haven't started healing with him yet - in fact I'm levelling Protection - but he's the right name and right class, so I'll call that a win.

My goal for this character is to level to 85 on a new server with no money, no gear and no high-level characters to help him out.  Any blog content that happens to get generated is simply a bonus.

The guild perks are going to mean that I will be getting some bonuses in terms of loot from mobs, but that's the only support I am going to accept from the guild. I joined only to have some awesome people to talk to. I've already had to turn down several very generous offers of startup cash from a very welcoming and kind-hearted bunch of people.

DAY ONE:  0g, Level 0

Bright-faced and with bushy beard, Fannon the second found himself in Anvilmar with lint in his pockets and little else.

In doing the initial quests and not spending money I was barely managing to keep a whole silver to my name.  Blizzard seems to be very tight with giving out cash at the extreme low levels, and I was scrounging to even get money for my new abilities.

At level 5 I picked up Mining and Enchanting, figuring that the low level enchanting market - which did so well for Rades on Medivh - would earn me some easy cash disenchanting any green items that I could get from questing or snag from the auction house cheaply.

I managed to scrounge together 6 silver by putting off buying Holy Light and headed to the auction house to see if I could snag a green item or two to flip or disenchant for some easy startup cash.  Six silver doesn't really buy much, even the really low level items, but amazingly I did manage to snag two green axes and disenchanted them into Lesser Magic Essences, which at the time were going for a really solid 1g99s each.  Sadly, it seems that the low level enchanting mats market is not very strong on this realm, and not long after I posted those the market had crashed down to 40s, which while substantially less, still represented a very good profit.

What really worked well for me is Copper Ore.  Even though it seemed as if Dun Morogh was completely mined out, by the end of day one I had managed to get a couple of stacks of ore and managed to quickly sell them for about 5g each.

I took the profit that I had made and reinvested it in some more greens to disenchant and relisted the Lesser Magic Essences in stacks of 10, which seemed to be selling better than singles.  Along with some more ore, I quit for the day with a healthy 6g6s and about 30g in potential sales sitting on the auction block.

As well, I was level 12 and completely finished with Dun Morogh.  I decided that Fannon 2.0 would level through the new quests in Westfall, which I would begin on Day Two.

END OF DAY ONE: 6g6s, Level 12.

Gettin' Jiggy with the Shammies

Oh god, that title isn't dating me at all.  I was considering some variation of ShamWoW, but slapped myself and moved on in the nick of time.

Over the past two weeks since the arrival of the Dwarfling, I have been getting the Alt-itch.  You know the one; it's the itch you get when your main is geared up enough that nothing but raiding drops will help and you're looking for something else to do.  This feeling actually comes at a good time, since as I expected my play time has become much more restricted than before and I don't have as much time as I'd like to devote to heroics or extra raids.  I hear that they're working on an ointment to cure this, but it's not ready yet and all you can do as of now is to scratch it.

So this past Sunday, I asked the Twitterati which alt I should focus on:  The Dwarf Shaman or a Druid.  The replies were mixed.  It didn't get all that ugly, but do you ever get the feeling that if you put one hundred Druid players in the same room with one hundred Shaman players that eventually a no-holds-barred knife fight would break out?  We healers are a passionate bunch, aren't we?

In the end, to nobody's surprise, the Dwarf Shammie won the day.  You have read the title of this blog, right?

Thallie, looking badass in her mismatched heirloom gear.

This is Thallie, my newest and cutest dwarven battle medic.  She was created as soon as 4.03 dropped and the world changed, but has been languishing a little bit as I have been leveling and gearing my Paladin.  I took up the call of the elements and spent a little time leveling her on Sunday.

Oh, and just because I'm a little nuts, I've decided to level her as restoration.

The original plan was to level her through dungeons as a healer.  As an unrepentant Wrath Baby, I did not get the chance to see a lot of these dungeons at the level they were meant to be seen; either I soloed them at max level or was run through them by guildies while leveling.  The desire to see these dungeons and run through them as they were meant to be seen is very strong and would be a fun way to level.

The major drawback of leveling through dungeons and the thing that is really bugging me is that I am going to miss all of the lovely new quests that Blizzard has created for us.  I really enjoyed the changes to Dun Morogh  and Loch Modan and I am really torn about missing a large chunk of the rest of the zones.  The experience gains in dungeons are amazing and even with a mix of questing and dungeon running I'll end up out-leveling the zones extremely quickly.  I've run her through three dungeons now, pretty much doing levels 14 through 21 without questing at all and in doing so I completely outleveled Loch Modan and had to dump most of the quests and move to Duskwood (also as recommended by my Twitter peeps).

Riding into Darkshire took me back, however, since I was immediately ganked by a party of level 85 asshats burning down the town.  I've never understood what makes that fun, honestly.

Anyway, the low level dungeons are a lot of fun, even though there is not a great deal of healing required in them.  During the Wailing Caverns run that I did on Sunday I spent more time dealing damage than I did healing, letting Earth Shield do most of the healing work.  I had never been in that instance before, so it felt really good to see some "new" dungeon content.

By the way I am really a terrible DPSer.  Just plain awful.  "Please, Mr. Tank, take some damage so that I don't look like I'm being completely carried through this dungeon!"

I think in the end I'm going to end up doing a vast majority of dungeon leveling where I can squeeze in the time to do it.  The questing will naturally come when I either don't have time to do an instance, or while I'm waiting for the dungeon finder to get a group together for me.  But I just have to accept that with this plan I am not going to get the full story that is being told in each of the zones.  The lore nerd in me cries as the prospect, but that's the price for quick leveling, I suppose.

How do you level your Alts?  Do you prefer LFD leveling or questing?  Or are Alts something that you don't have time for?

I would like to give a special shout-out to Mylindara of  the Crimson Blades guild on Sargeras for helping me out with the screenshot featured in this post.  I was stuck at work with no access to the wow armory and he was good enough to grab it for me.  Check out his blog Cleansing Waters at http://mylindara.crimsonblades.info/.  

Next Up: Heroics

A few normal dungeon runs tonight and Thosif is now eligible to queue for Heroic dungeons.  Well, barely able to queue.  I am at 329 exactly and had to cheat a little to get that.  I have two ilvl 333 items that have +Hit on them, and PVP Ornate Pyrium Gauntlets that put me over the top.  The gauntlets, while they have a lot of useless Resilience, are still a major upgrade to the Stormhammer Gauntlets that I was wearing before.

This is why I love the Reforging concept so much.  Reforging allows you not only to optimize gear, but to turn a piece that is an absolute upgrade in all ways but one into something useful.  The flexibility is greatly appreciated by this Holy Paladin.  Using the gauntlets as an example:  They come with Int and +140 haste.  I reforged the haste into spirit and then enchanted the gloves to give back +50 haste.  The net result is 56 Spirit and 134 Haste.  An effective compromise.

Ophelie has a great article about reforging for Holy Paladins over at Bossy Pally.  As well, Kurn has put out the definitive list of pre-raid gear for Holy Paladins.

My gearing strategy has been to emphasize Spirit and Haste over Crit and Mastery.   Any item that is missing either of those two stats is getting reforged, if possible.  I am tending to lean towards putting spirit on first over haste for the extra regeneration and I think my mana longevity is good so far. 

The bosses on the normal modes have been much, much easier than I thought they were going to be.  I have been jumping into the dungeons without a great deal of prep work beforehand, and it hasn't really mattered yet.  Some of the mechanics are important (like the Upwind buff on Altarius and Grounding Field on Assad in Vortex Pinnacle), but the trash is way more dangerous than the bosses if it's pulled wrong.  I have yet to wipe on a boss fight on normal; all my wipes have come to bad or accidental pulls on the trash packs.  I'm sure its worse on heroic, and I'll find that out first hand tomorrow.

Fannon’s Tip of The Day:  Once you are at the level cap you can change the XP bar to show a Faction’s Reputation so that you can keep track of it as you're grinding.  To enable this, go to your Reputation Tab (default Hotkey is U) and click on the Reputation you want to track.  This pops up a box with a couple of checkboxes, one of which is Show as Experience Bar.  Check the box and you’ll have a Reputation Bar on the bottom showing you how much rep you need to get to the next tier.

Ding!

Last night I did the last half of level 84 and got the Ding! that everyone looks forward to most.  Thosif is now at the level cap with a 323 iLvl; just about ready to enter heroics.  I completed three dungeons to get the final 6 bars of XP, two Vortex Pinnacles and half of a Stonecore run.  All of them went very smoothly, setting myself up for the inevitable shock that I'm sure I will experience when I start focusing on the harder dungeons.  I was hoping to get Grim Batol or Lost City of the Tol'vir, neither of which I have seen before.  But no, the random dungeon finder had other ideas.  At least it put me together with three amazing groups.

Disco Stu has come to heal you!

Of course, level 85 as a Paladin means that you are going to be looking at this guy on the left an awful lot, Guardian of the Ancient Kings.  I think this spell has a lot of promise, and I'm really looking forward to trying it out.  But wow... Blizzard sure made this guy look stupid.  I guess they feel that Paladins need to have more wings than anyone else.

I still need to finish questing in order to get my faction Reputations to where they need to be.  Earthen Ring is my priority, as they have some really nice things for Holy Paladins.  So that means that I'm heading back to Vashj'ir, which I did only enough of to get my seahorse mount and find the entrance to Throne of the Tides.  It's ironic that after I hit the level cap the first thing I do is go to the starter zones.

Really... I can't even look at this guy.  He had better be worth it.

Slowing Down is Hard to Do

“To make the merry-go-round go faster

so that everyone needs to hang on tighter,

just to keep from being thrown to the wolves” – They Might Be Giants 

This is a post about slowing down. 

This is a post about taking the time to soak in all the wonderful things in the world.

This is a post about joy.

In our modern world, the pace of life is always increasing and the demands on our time are always getting larger.  We have more to do and less time to do it, and the small amounts of free time that we do have are precious.  I’ve noticed this in my own life and my initial reaction is to try to cram more things into my free time in order to get the most value out of it.  However, in squeezing more stuff into a finite amount of time, it’s inevitable to derive less satisfaction out of each activity as you attempt to finish one thing and move on to the next.

In World of Warcraft, this manifests itself in the tendency to race through content to reach other content, and it is at its worst at the beginning of an expansion.  Once the expansion is installed the leveling process begins and most people will jump on the server and slam through the new content at lightning speed in order to get to the level cap.  The first person to reach 85 did it in a mere 6 hours.  Once there, they begin the endgame:  grinding Heroics to get better gear to allow access to Raids to gain better gear to allow access to harder content which gives you access to better gear which gives you access to harder content, etc, etc, etc, ad infinitum.  Then Blizzard releases a new patch and you start whole process over again.

No wonder this game can sometimes feel like a job.

The thought occurred to me:  Is this really the best way to spend my free time?  I love this game, but am I getting the most enjoyment out of it and therefore getting the best value for my free time?

I play World of Warcraft to relax.  I truly enjoy this game on many levels and I find it’s a great way to unwind.  I love the lore.  I love the stories.  And the gameplay.  Why am I rushing through all this wonderful content in order to see other content?  How much do you really see when you blitz through 5 levels in 6 hours?

This came to me last night as I was leveling Thosif through Uldum.  I was waiting for the Dungeon Finder to pop up and I decided to do a quick quest or two while I was waiting.  I looked at my map and saw there was a quest nearby, so I headed for it.  It was a quest to grab some Ancient Tol’vir weapons which were located in boxes guarded by a few mobs that looked tougher than what my Holy gear could handle.  Just then a something arrived and distracted the guards, so I flew down, grabbed the weapons and flew away, thinking myself very clever. 

That’s when I realized that I actually had never even read the quest text, nor did I realize that the questgiver gave me a horn to summon friendly NPCs to distract the guards so that you can get the weapons.  I got the quest done in the most efficient way possible, but I derived the minimum amount of enjoyment out of it and felt as if I missed out on something.  I felt that in the rush to get to 85, I was actually missing out on a huge amount of great content just to get to different content a little faster.

The same is true of leveling a new alt.  Even with a completely new questing experience from level 1 to 60, and a whole new world to explore, I find it extremely hard to slow down and enjoy each quest and each zone.  I feel like I’m conditioned to scroll down to the bottom of the quest, find out how many rats I need to kill, look at the map to find out where they are and then go and do it in the most efficient way possible.  Never have more innocent mobs been so thoughtlessly slaughtered than right now.  Is that fun?

I want to enjoy this game on a deeper level than merely slaughtering Kobolds and dinging levels.  I really want to have each moment that I spend in Azeroth to be emotionally fulfilling and entertaining, and I’m just not getting that with the pace that I’ve been going.  And this goes not just for the game, but for every aspect of my life.

It’s time to slow down and smell the Peacebloom. 

I am making a New World Resolution in honour of the new Azeroth.  I resolve to read through every quest that I get and to give each one its due consideration.  I will slow down the pace of leveling to truly take in all the glorious things that Blizzard has given us with both this expansion and the complete make-over of the old world.  I want to appreciate the stories that Blizzard is telling.  I’m going to be more patient in dungeons and not nerd rage over wipes or having to explain things.  I’m going to enjoy this game and all that it has to offer.  Who cares if I it takes me a few extra days to hit 85?