Anyway, I am upto 43 now, after spending an unplanned evening on Saturday doing some questing and Pugging a group for Scarlet Monastery (Library & Armoury) which was a good PUG again.

I am a little overpowered for the library & armoury wings, but needed to complete them. I was wanting to do Cathedral but the group I was in was not getting together, so I swapped to a group that wanted to do Library & Armoury.

It did not take long to clear these areas. They are pretty tiny and no one died. I was stupid enough to miss an item for Test of Lore within the Library and only found out after the instance had reset. Though I am overpowered for the instance, there is a lot of elite group mobs in the first part. I spent 10 minutes trying to reach the book, but gave up in the end.

My questing in Arathi highlands led me to Faldir’s Cove, mainly I wanted the achievement for exploring all of Arathi Highlands. What a lovely place, there is a series of quests under water that are returned to the cove, and easy XP. I am always looking for areas that I can minimise the leveling time as I want to get to the end game, to play with my guild, as soon as I can. I hope to get there before they move on to 3.1 stuff, but that might be a struggle.

I was invited to a group in record time, 2 others were in the group already, a rogue (which I have not really played along side until last night) and a warrior. The group quickly formed, so I made my way over to the summoning stone and helped bring the others to the instance.

The group lead, the rogue, and the warrior were both members of the guild ‘Your Mum have great Epics”. I complemented the rogue on his guild name, though the “have” should be “has” but now was not the time to correct their grammar. The 2 members of the guild seemed to be of Dutch (at least not British) origin from the language in the group chat.

Our little Group

The instance started quickly. The rogue was in a rush, which suited me, as I just wanted to get the instance over with after my previous experience. Razorfen Downs is full of groups of mobs. I quickly atoned myself to using a couple of DoTs then switching to my only AoE spell – firestorm, which seemed to work well, even if I dragged some aggro. When the first boss was killed, every one started greeding / needing and I wondered how come the pop-up did not start for me? The loot method was group and the chatter was filled with need / greed statements, but I did not get the pop-up. That pissed me off.

Anyway, wanting to get the achievement, I carried on. The group wandered through the instance, killing and collecting, and killed the last mob. Achievement gained, I wondered back out of the instance, to complete the quest given before you get in the instance. Low and behold, on handing over the quest, I dinged level 40!

Level 40! Half way there! Well, not half way, a quarter maybe. I am half way through the levels, but my progress will slow, and all the good stuff starts at level 80. I am filled with joy knowing that I have got this far. I span around on the spot, danced and trained.

Normality set in, I spent the rest of the evening completing quests in Stanglethorn, and even managed to get to Kargath after a very tedious run through what seemed like most of the Eastern Kingdoms. I intend to get some new spells over in Undercity and return to stranglethorn to finish things off.

Whilst waiting for one of the members to finish off what he needed to,the druid healer went offline, with a promise to return. He did return and the  went up the side of the instance entrance to get a quest there, and then headed for the swirling portal.

Going through the portal and to the right, was our first mob fight. For those of you that have not done Razorfen Downs, there are a lot of big groups of mobs, so when fighting, you are fighting more than one, mostly 6 creatures. Our tank did a great job in leading and tanking, marking the ones he wanted downing first and second. The mobs seemed to go down pretty quick. The feral druid did die on the first fight, not sure why, but he was resurrected quickly.

We went on for a couple of fights, and then the healer went offline, without a word. It took me a while to notice (my screen blinkers were on, concentrating on DPS and spell rotation), and the party came to a stop. The group stood around giving him 5 minutes to come back, but he didn’t. The rest of the group floated away. I tried to get them back, we could grab another healer, but no one said a word.

Is this normal? Have I done something wrong? Did I look at the healer in an inappropriate manner? Was my use of drain life not what they expected? Have they read this blog and decided to have a laugh at my expense? Ok, even I know the last one is extremely doubtful (not the laughing at my expense, the reading my blog part).

I am getting increasingly frustrated with PUGs, and can not wait until I reach 80 and be able to raid with friends and acquaintances that are members of the same team. I want to play with people that communicate effectively with each other and try to expand on your abilities and theirs to get to the goal. PUGs force you to play with people that you have never met and will never see again, even in the Warcraft world. Forcing people to be unselfish is akin to asking a 2 year old to use his knife and fork to eat. He starts of with all the best intentions, tries his heart out to use them, but then his own hunger overrides these intentions, and he just wants to get the food in his mouth as quick as he can. PUGs start out as everyone being nice but, when push comes to shove, people go back to their base instincts – getting what they want at the expense of everybody else.

Maybe it is something I need to talk to the leaders of my guild about – have a kindergarten for new players (and alts). Arrange times for groups to go through dungeons (5 man low-level dungeons in the classic part, then BC etc when they are ready), and recruit people who are at a lower level. It is all very well recruiting level 80s, but there will become a time when those 80s get bored, frustrated or whatever and move on from the guild. If you encourage team work in new characters, guide them through the low levels, the groups that form when they get there will be gelled from the start.

Don’t get me wrong, our GM has supported me in other ways, giving me a nice staff for when I get past level 40, and the other guild members help by providing gear which has assisted me from the start. It is just that I want to not have to use PUGs to get through these instances, I want to do each instance with more or less the same group of people, so I can build up relationships, learn how other classes and my own work and learn how to be effective during raids.

My problem is that I don’t know how a hunter operates his abilities because I can not tell a good hunter from a bad one. This is more difficult if there is the player factor involved. A bad player could be using the correct abilities, but in the wrong order. I measure my comparable DPS, and can see it fluctuate against other players, but is this because I have improved or is it because other characters were not doing as well? Consistency in your team is the only thing that can give you this. You won’t see Sir Alex putting together a totally new set of players for his Champions League match tonight. The core will stay the same, and they have played together time and time again. This is what makes a good guild and I want this right now in my levelling. Right now, damn it.

On a positive note, I reached level 39 whilst in the instance. Only one more to the big 40. I will try again with Razorfen Downs tomorrow, and hope to have more success. Sorry for the rant, but I needed to get it off my chest.

I started the day in Booty Bay and flew over to Grom’gol Base Camp to start several quests in the area. I got the Defense of Grom’gol quest, and headed out of the camp to kill some Lashtail Raptors and just past them I needed to kill lots of Bloodscap trolls for their ears. When I reached the Bloodscap trolls camp, I chanced upon a level 33 Alliance Druid. I killed him quickly, as he was down on health, and moved in to kill my own trolls.

Unsuprisingly, the druid did not like the fact that I killed him, and returned the favour. I don’t think he took my honourable kill very well. Retaliation went on for several kills each. When we had killed each other, killing a troll or two weakened the Druid or myself significantly that it really was not a lot of effort to kill for the other to kill us again.

I was fortunate to get the assistance of 3 horde guild mates (not my guild, but 3 questers who were in the same guild) who seemed to be after the trolls themselves. As there were 3 of them, they made light work of the trolls & the alliance druid every time he popped up. I assume this would piss of the druid significantly – this was not ganking, as we were all mid 30 characters, just a bit unlucky for the poor Alliance Druid. PvP action around Stranglethorn is common, and something I had considered as being a problem.

I had been warned that this would happen, but want to get to the Hemet Nesingwary Jr quest line (just for the shear hell of it really, but I like the way the real world is mirrored in WoW – I want the Ruby Shades from Haris Pilton when I get to Shattrath City, not to mention her huge bag), so I was expecting it. What I did not expect is the other Horde players camping the spawn ground for the trolls. The dropcount on Bloodscap ears is pretty low in the first place, so when most of the mobs are tagged  by the threesome I was hanging around for quite a while.  I did finally get the required number, and headed back to Booty Bay and the boat to the Barrens.

A kindly uncle gave me the robe as one of the Components for the Enchanted Gold Bloodrobe (I could not find one on our auction house, though the pattern was there) so I completed the first step in this quest, ran back to Booty Bay for the second step (after flying to Origrimmar to visit the Auction House for the gold bar and set up my own auctions) then over to Desolace for the Hatefury Blood & Infernal Stone. Both mobs were quite easy, if picked out together. I had some fun with the Hatefury satyrs, as I enslaved one of them and made him beat up his brood before releasing him. I need to make use of this trick a little more often, as it is fun and saves me Mana & Health!

My next stint will be a run to Undercity to complete the Bloodrobe quest and a few others in Arathi Highlands. Wish me luck!

Love is in the air. Don’t I know it? Trying to go about your normal business in Undercity has been painful in the last couple of days with all the people milling around the bank area hunting down guards and asking to be cured of their broken heart. I am starting to love the seasonal quests and activities available in WoW, as it allows lower level characters like me to get a quick achievement or two. I do wish there was a boss fight available to lower level characters during the seasons, as I am not able to complete some of the achievements yet, and will have to wait till next year when, hopefully, I will be level 80 or whatever the level cap is then.

Anyway, back on to my progress. I have got ½ way through level 35 now, completing the quests around Arathi Highlands & Hammerfall by killing lots of things. Last night, I was completing a quest called The Princess Trapped, in Drywhisker Gorge and was near the great big shard, which was my goal, when I see 2 red names hovering in the distance.

My immediate reaction was “Shite, hope they let me get to the shard before they chew my ass, as I am not soul-stoned”, so I stopped where I was, soul-stoned, armoured & buffed myself, and then carried on, keeping a watchful eye. I killed a few more mobs, and a Death Knight ran past me, grabbing the chest close to me on his way. “Great” I thought, “they are going to leave me alone.” I turned the corner, heading for my goal, to see them jumping off the cliff to the lower level, where I had come from. I killed a few more creatures and tried to stay calm.

Suddenly, I am whipped across the floor and dead. The Death Knight had used some ability on me, and I was dead. Thankfully I was soulstoned, so I waited for them to disappear, but they weren’t going anywhere. They were corpse camping.

I kept my head, and out waited them. Thankfully, before I was respawned back at the graveyard, they went on their merry way, probably laughing to each other. So, I respawned, completed the quest, and hearthstoned back to Hammerfall.

Whilst I know this is what I should expect on a PvP server, it is interesting to note the different approaches people take to ganking, and I guess it is a reflection on society as a whole.

Ganking is probably widespread because the gankers have been ganked in the past. Maybe I should rephrase that. The killing of low level characters of another faction when you are on a PvP server is common as the high level character has had the same treatment in the past, when he or she was levelling their current character or an alt character.

This is a vicious circle that lower level characters put up with and higher level characters enjoy, either in retribution for being on the receiving end of ganking or just out of fun. There is no material gain that a ganker gets, no honour, no experience, nothing. It is just a bit of fun, the way some people take enjoyment out of squashing bugs. I could understand it more if there was an achievement (like Pest Control) that required you to kill 10 level 0 – 10 characters of the opposite faction (with superior ones for the next ten levels etc), but there isn’t.

Ganking does have its equivalent in real life (though it rarely leads to death). Bullies of all forms prey on weaker individuals, using physical or emotional acts to upset and devalue the victim. Again, there is no physical gain from the act (well, maybe lunch money) and it is usually caused by a vicious circle in the same way. Also, a person in seniority will step in to stop bullying (or try to) when it is repeated, similar to a GM stepping in when gankers corpse camp.

Like bullying, I am sure there is no way to stop ganking in WoW. The vicious circle is in place. If the first inhabitants of the PvP server did not gank when they were of high enough level, maybe it would not be a problem. Maybe it isn’t a problem. I get annoyed by it, especially when I am near the end of a particularly long quest chain, a fair way from a graveyard and forgotten to soul-stone.

Do I think that I won’t be the bully ganker when my time comes? Doubt it. I think I will seek out Death Knights particularly and make the effort to travel back to Arathi Highlands to exact my revenge.

As the WoW turns stages a conversation between 2 mobs as they see and react (or not) to Temerity’s character.  In homage to her witty playlets, I thought I would have a go at making my own.

What follows is a conversation between myself and my favourite (don’t tell him that) minion, Mezzjuk. Sorry I can not write or be as witty as Temerity, or express the slow drawl used by the Voidwalker but I enjoyed writing it and it wasted a quite evening.

Mezzjuk: Why do you call?

Jerolin: Hey dood, thought you might want to help me out for a bit

M: You died didn’t you?

J: Huh? Sorry?

M: Well, the only reason for me to be summoned again is that you died or you decided try out one of your other, may I say, poorer, minions for a change

J: Nooo, my finger slipped and I de-summoned you.

M: You died.

J: No, I went into Ragefire Chasm, and took Impy as he has not been out for a while.

M: Look, I don’t mind if you died, you are learning, but just admit it.

J: No, slip of the mouse, really.

M: Death. Got to be, look you have only 2 soulshards left, your health is below half, and you have no healthstones. You died.

J: Ok, I died. It was against 4 elite Boulderfist Ogre’s who caught us by surprise.

M: ….

J: They weren’t Elite

M: ….

J: There was only one of them

M: …..

J: She wasn’t an ogre

M: ….

J: It was a Alliance rogue, caught me unawares, level 75! Damn ganking!

M:….

J: Level 55

M: …..

J: Level 25, but she had a mean stare.

M: You really need to get a grip. Remember – Mage Armour & take that nice potion which adds to our armour everytime it runs out. There is really no excuse.

J: I know, I know, but I forget when there are pretty flowers to look at.

M: Also remember to do your soulstone. You get a big booming message when that finishes from that Necorisis thingy majig.

J: Ahh, but the flowers..

M: Get a grip

J: Anyway, enough of this chit-chat, whilst I case this Immolate, can you go and attack that raptor?

M: ….

J: There, that’s the Immolate done, now for corrupt… Hangon, why aren’t you attacking?

M: Huh?

J: You are meant to attack what I attack

M: Me? No, I am in passive mode.

J: Damn it, why did you change that?

M: You must have left it on when you ran like a cissy to get away from the “elite ogres”

J: Just go!

M: I obey

J: ok, back to it. I’ll just cast Curse of Agony on him, then swap to the other raptor

J: Now, Immolate, Corruption, CoA

J: Fear! There, now what are you upto?

M: Finished off the first one, running after the second guy! Come back!

J: Don’t worry about him, he’ll die without your help

M: Must attack! Come here!

J: Look, give it a rest

M: Attack! Awe he died before I could hit him!

J: The power of your Master!

M: the power of the 1 key more like..

My thoughts on 3.1 and every other patch (I started playing WoW when it was 3.0.3 (ahh, those were the days!) and survived till 3.0.8 ) is that what was wrong with the old patch? As a noob, everything is new, I have not really learnt my trade, and can not see the difference between my character from 3.0.3 –> 3.0.8, as during that period he has gone from 1 – 33, several changes in armour & game-play style & racked up the abilities, so I am proficient (notice I did not say good) at being a warlock.

3.1 may be seen as a large shift in the PvP rating of each class or significantly change the order a raid leader would pick a specific class when putting together a raid group, but it means very little to me, at the moment. I suppose that this is due to everything being new & my character is changing quite significantly every level with new spells & talent trees to learn. If I had a level 80 character & my skills had not changed for a long period, then being forced to rethink how I approached a situation would be tough. I have to re-think (well at least give it a thought) every couple of levels.

What affect does the fact the Voidwalker Consume shadows ability is no longer channeled but has a cool down? I just wonder if all these changes discourage casual players who just about got to grips with how their old character worked, and now need to relearn things.

Why do things change so much? Maybe it is because I new to MMORGs in general, but patches to games never really happened to other games, and if they did, it was only to fix a bug or ten, not change the dynamics of the game. I assume patches are a ploy for Blizzard to keep earning our £10 a month, and keep the game interesting. I know there is more content coming for everyone that has reached the end of Lich King content, but I have not reached Burning Crusade stuff yet, and quite happy with the content in the original game.

I guess, as I pass out of my noob status (if I ever do) I will appreciate the small differences these patches make. I certainly don’t appreciate the download time of the patch, the lag of the servers after it has been applied & the biatching people seem to make when one thing or another is broken.

Belkin Nostromo N52 Speedpad

Whilst reading the musings of Mystic Chicanery on her use of the Belkin Nostromo N52, I remembered that I had one of my own, sitting gathering dust in a cupboard at home, and decided to give it a try. Anything to give me the edge when playing, especially in instances.

I am using Dominos as my main button replacement & have altered their display to show a 5×2 grid, and assigned the top 10 keys on the main pad to these buttons. This is all my spells, including a couple of macros which step through my basic spell rotations and send my minion in for the kill.

The dpad thingy is mapped to the WASD keys, used for movement. I have experimented with using the diagonals on the dpad for quick switching between forward and right etc. but this seems not to work too well, and leaves my character stuttering in the correct direction. I think if I play with the timings for this, I will get more joy, but for now, it is pretty redundant.

My usual jump key is the space bar, but there is no similar position on the N52, so I made the “forward” key on my mouse (used in other desktop apps to go forward, i.e. in Firefox or Internet Explorer), which seems to work well. The thumb button on the N52 now brings up the map, as it is not a frequent use button, and I should not be moving and need to bring up the map. The big red button is mapped to shoot (my wand gets heavy usage when I run out of Mana), and finally the scroll button “click” brings up my bag.

The bottom 4 buttons on the main pad are the same as Mystic Chicanery, Shift, Alt, X & Tab. I have re-assigned some of the shift+ combinations to Autobar buttons, which holds my healing potions, bandages & Healing stone, so if I am in a sticky situation, I can use this combination to bring me back to life. This seemed to work well, it is just a matter of my fingers getting used to their positions.

I have also used Dominos to switch button sets when I use the scroll key on the N52. This will not be used in combat, but set before to switch from a Instance set to a soloing set to a instances with lots of mobs set, where most of the buttons will stay the same, but the default curse will swap from Curse of Agony to Curse of Elements, as an example.

Overall, I think it will assist my performance in the long run. Now, as I get used to the different feel to my left hand and stop myself from using the keyboard, I am not going to do an instance with it.

All this configuration is my excuse for getting killed by one shot from a level 32 Alliance rogue in Hillsbrad Foothills. I was low on health, lost my Demon Armour and no soulstone at the time. I saw him on his mount running towards me, and suddenly he was gone. Next thing I know, I was dead. How do I combat stealth? Thankfully it was only a short run from the graveyard. Life and learn.

A Felhunter

Last night, I was determined to do 2 things, complete the latest Warlock quest, to earn the right to summon a Felhunter & attempt Razorfen Kraul.

The Felhunter quest, Seeking Strahad, like the other Warlock quests, is not a difficult quest, but long. It took me into lots of new areas in Hillsbrad Foothills & the Wetlands, which are all rich in Alliance characters & strongholds. When I finally reached the locations, killing the mobs that were close to the prize, or holding the prize, was quite easy. The problem with the quest is the running involved (a lot easier with my Felsteed, but still tedious) especially as it involved numerous trips on the Zeppelin between Orgrimmar & Undercity & varous trips using flight paths to Ratchet & down to Thousand Needles. It took a while, but the final part sees you heading back to Ratchet, into a tent, and the Felhunter is summoned. Kick its arse, and there you go, new spell & a nice Soul shard bag. Whilst I am not grateful for the soul shard bag, my other bags are just as big, and are not restricted to soul shards, so this was a vendor item for me.

Once this was done, I hung around & did some quests in Thousand Needles, and looked for a group. It didn’t take long before we had a full complement, so I headed towards the great lift, and waited for the others to arrive. When we were all assembled, we headed into the instance.

The tank did a good job, grabbing lots of Razorbacks and keeping hold of them. We quickly whipped through to the end boss, and got the ding. Most of us then spent some time completing the other quests, the escort back to the entrance & getting the tubers, dug up by a helpful hamster.

I need to learn how to change my play style for these instances. My DoT spells work well when the mob lasts a while, and this is only true for the end bosses. There are several sites out there that have hints on what to do so I will be doing some more reading and letting you know if I can make it work. As a DPS, being 4th @ 20% is not good enough. I know if you looked at the stats for the last boss only it would be different, but my rotation of DoTs does not really kick in for anything else but these.

Onwards and upwards though, nice group, for a change.

I had several unplanned WoW sessions last week & over the weekend, due to my own illness. Not wanting to disgust you with the details, but I kept visiting the toilet, which meant the evening out I had planned with my nearest & dearest, as well as a children’s birthday party went ahead without me.

My new achievements

So, yesterday, I achieved level 30! What an achievement! 2 days, 3 1/2 hours of playtime, and I am at my first goal. I did this really by questing. This is the best way to race through the levels and using Questhelper does reduce the effort (trying to find the correct mobs to kill, trying to find the location of a certain NPC etc). I was guilty of doing a couple of grey quests (those that I thought were still green), but most of my time was spent completing quests. The XP you gain from the quests is more than any other route.

You will also note that I got my first mount as well. This is pretty easy for a Warlock, as they get their first mount free (well almost) by visiting their local warlock training and learning how to summon a Felsteed. What a wonderful brute!

My Felsteed & I

I really enjoy running around on his back, I think I will call him Terrence.

My last achievement of yesterday was An Honorable Kill. This was achieved whilst questing in Ashenvale Forest, whilst I was trying to get to the big 30.

I was in Splinttree Post, sorting out my quests, when I got asked to join a group. The group request just popped up, with out any prior warning. The player in question then did not answer my question, when I asked which quest she wanted to do as a group, so I declined and moved south for Destroy the Legion.

Requesting a group like this is an irritation for me. Why would I join the group when this happens? Another example happened in the same area. I was just going to the inn here so that I could log off for the night, when another Request for Group popped up. Again, I politely ask the requester which quest and he links the quest in the whisper reply. Not knowing the quest (it wasn’t one I was currently on) I took my time in answering, as I was doing a quick bit of research. I was then bombarded with whispers, begging me to help. I explained that I was going offline, but was still badgered. I quit.

Why do people think this is the right way to go about getting a group or some assistance? Begging for help won’t help your cause. A quiet /whisper can you help, but begging or being rude wont.

Anyway, back to destroying the legion. As I made my way to the area, a whisper came along for a request to group for the quest. The player in question was polite, and as I was doing the same quest, I joined his group. We wiped the floor with all the required mobs, and it was all over very quickly. As I headed back to Splintertree, I came across a horde priest & alliance hunter having a fight, and I did my horde duty & assisted my fellow hordesman. Another achievement done. On to Razorfen Kraul next.