World of Alcoholcraft (and too many buttons)

Last night I ignored Warcraft completely and instead partook of that rarest of things – a ‘Social Life’. This morning I suffered accordingly. Warcraft would have been far healthier for me than drinking the 2nd Mongolian beer to help wash down the Spicy Springbok & Wild Boar with  noodles. Or perhaps it was the Czech beers that both preceded and also followed the Mongolian stuff, I don’t know, had to be one of them though.  Seemed like such a good idea at the time too…

I was given a Razer Naga mouse for my birthday this week – all those buttons to master. I had been making some progress with the button mastery, but not when combined with a hangover. Did a couple of Heroics this afternoon. Managed a lousy 2k dps in the Culling of Stratholme, but followed it up with a more reasonable 3-3.5k in Pit of Saron thereafter. The mouse will certainly take some getting used to but it looks manageable (eventually). First problem to overcome is the mouse not being compatible with either Bartender 4 or Dominoes addons instead it defaults to whatever you have bound as 1-12 in your normal key-bindings That’s marginally inconvenient but no big deal. The big problem is aclimatising to a different shape of mouse and training my fingers to go to the right place at the right time. I keep finding myself looking at the buttons on the mouse rather than the screen when in combat. A bit like when you first to learn to drive and catch yourself looking to make sure you have your feet on the right pedals and ignoring things like veering into oncoming traffic.  Ok, well maybe not quite as life threatening but you get the idea.

New UI and a new mouse so hopefully some improvements to come in my gameplay over the next few weeks. We shall see.

New Ui – Lol?

For at least a year I have been playing with the same UI, which hinged around XPerl, Bartender and various FuBar mods. It sufficed but was never too pretty.  I just ended up with having tried various addons, keeping some and binning others and it mutated into a UI of sorts.  I have always been convinced if I can get the right UI, with the right button set up I may have a chance at Roguely competence.  The plan was  ask the real rogues what they use and blag it like the pretender I am. Off to  http://roguespot.com/ and request help. They came back with this:

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13642-PGUIv1.4.1.html

So when all set up it should look like this:

Suddenly I’m in a land of Dominoes, Pitbull, Titan and even changes to fonts. But if that’s what the Pro’s use….

Blind panic ensued when I realised the first main change was the number of buttons showing, I normally have about 60+ showing between, skills, abilities, macros, professions and consumables etc. PG has only 32 and one of them is empty (An empty button? Now he is really showing off).  Reading the ‘Read Me’ notes, which I always do (the minute I have completed everything or got completely stuck), turns out PG doesn’t show any of his buttons from bar 1 – he knows them off by heart and doesn’t need an on-screen reminder. The buttons in use are mainly those with CDs. Well, I’ll be sneaking in a small bar somewhere as a reminder.

When you really need to clear buttons down it’s quite amazing how quickly you can manage it. All the things you use once in a blue moon just get binned and its surprising how many of them there are.  I think I may just survive without having individual buttons for 3 kinds of Healthstone  at the same time.

I have never really been an Arena fan and it looks like PG is so I disabled the addons specific to Arena. No doubt very useful in those situations, not so useful for what I do – maybe one day I’ll have a stab (literally) at it. The portrait icon thingy also went. It didn’t sit in the box like PG’s does, instead it was just to the left and I found it annoying. I kept trying to target it as some kind of mob. Most irritating of all is some addon which announces in Party chat every time I do an interrupt – and then ends it with “LOL”. What the Hell is that all about? Announce it if you have to, but why descend into Leet speak? I will have to find a way of dealing with that one very quickly, not managed it yet though. Deserved ridicule awaits me if I don’t.

Aside from the above it’s all good, looks far better and feels a bit better than the old set-up. Whether it actually helps me play any better remains to be seen. It will take a bit of getting used to.  Watch this space for tales of exponential dps improvements and even living through instances without pushing the healer’s blood pressure to new found highs.

Update March 5th. Found the damned ‘Lol’ feature. It Lol’s no more. Balance in the world has been restored.

Achievements – Why do I do them?

Let’s have a look at my most recent Achievements:

1. Northern Vanguard – Exalted rep while ploughing through dungeons for badges. That’s reasonable.
2. Wyrmcrest Accord – Same as above, it was just the tabard of choice at the time.
3. Looking for More – Using the LFD tool in the quest for badges and upgrades. All reasonable.
4. Elders of Eastern Kingdoms -  Why the hell would anyone do this, especially me? There are no rewards for it, no upgrades, no gold, not even a silly pet at the end!

The first three above are Achievements that happen while you do other things. I wouldn’t sign up with random players just to get the Achievement, but as I need badges for upgrades, then I end up grouping with other players needing the same. The achievement is a by-product not the main aim.

Not so the Elders one. It is a grind of the most pointless order. The closest I can come to any form of justification is if you do the whole damn lot of the Lunar Festival achievements you can gain the title ‘ The Elder’ at the end. Which for a ‘more mature player’/ old swine (delete as you see fit) like myself does have marginal wry  appeal.  Its still no justification for travelling across 3 continents and several dungeons to interact with 75 characters on the way.

So why do it? Deep down on a truly Primal level I like the little Achievement earned box that flashes up on the screen. ‘Good boy, well done. Now move onto the next one (and keep paying the monthly subscription as you do)’.  I know I shouldn’t, I know its a device to simply keep me p(l)aying along – but I fall for it every time. I also know I’ll keep following – just need to finish off the dungeon ones and I’ll have that title….

Show me the money

In the words of the old Dwarven drinking song “Gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold, gold….” (I’m not even sure if there is second verse). You just can’t get far in WoW without gold. Getting your hands, paws or even hooves on it is part of the game. To some its a chore, I’ve always found it one of the more fun aspects of the game.

Its possible to play WoW and never have much more than a few gold, but its a lot easier when you have several thousand just sitting for whatever you need. The game has several gold sinks, some more necessary for a player than others. Life without a fast flying mount at 80, irritating as Hell – so there’s 5k for a start. Vanity Pet collection? Well, they’re are not called Vanity pets for nothing, once you want an ark’s worth you can start shelling out plenty. Vanity is never cheap.

Quickly checking my local AH for pets, I see this is top of the expense list. Yours for 12999, its a bargain Sir, lovely plumage the Hyacinth Macaw. Dead Sir? Oh, no its just sleeping.

Sources for gold are:

• Quest rewards
• Daily quests
• Professions
• Auction House Trading
• Buy the stuff with real money

After a while at level 80 the quests dry up and you are left with the other options. They all come down to maximising return for your time. Gold per hour.
Daily quests are the worst investment of your time. They are only of use if you have some secondary goal like badges or rep rewards or an item you can sell to make it more worthwhile. Even then use sparingly.

Professions linked with reasonable use of the AH are a must. That’s where the real money is. I have an alchemist who transmutes one epic stone a day and I sell it for about 150g. Takes me about 3 minutes all told. Even at a very conservative estimate its 100g profit for 3 minutes. Alternatively you can do a minimum of 8 daily quests taking about 80 mins and convince yourself its the same thing as you still have 100g at the end. Daily quests = grinding = avoid where possible.
I’ll talk about my fun with Inscription another time.

Auction House trading is a skill in its own and requires a degree of common sense – which a large percentage of the player base seem to be without. Its also heavily addon dependant. I have never been too keen on trading as I found scanning the AH and getting 75% of several hundred bids returned to be little in the way of fun.

I don’t understand the emotion that buying Gold generates. Its against the Terms of Use of the game and if you buy you run the risk of being banned, I’m not prepared to take that risk so I don’t do it, my choice, end of story. If someone else buys it, I couldn’t care less.
Not so for some others “He bought gold, we don’t want their type in our guild! /gkick his sorry ass immediately!” Shun the pariah!
Why? The usual answer is something about “playing by rules”. Oh, bollocks! Instead you are just trying to justify why you have spent 80 mins on daily quests for 100g, when he bought 1000g for £7. Doing dailies for the equivalent 1000g will take you several hours, while he is off doing instances or whatever else he wants to do i.e. not grinding daily quests. You are trying to justify why spending hours grinding isn’t stupid, its the ‘proper way to play the game’. Just who are you trying to convince?

And so it begins

My philosophy on WoW is simple:

• Play for pleasure.
• Play competently.
• Play either in good company (usually preferable) or solo. Do not play with people who take away the pleasure. If you wouldn’t talk to them in a pub why on earth would you listen to them for 3 hours on Vent?
• Horde characters always look better than Alliance, even Trolls.
• Never play a gnome – ever.

Grinding and repetitive raiding are the same to me – killing a boss the first time is exciting new content, farming him for loot for an entire guild is tedious. My playing time is limited and I want to maximise doing what I enjoy in that time. Anyone exalted with Hydraxian Waterlords needs clinical help and they won’t find it on this blog.

You will find me doing 5 man instances, a little pvp occasionally, playing the auction house, questing, doing achievements and levelling other characters and professions. Plenty to do without spending hours grinding Eternal whatevers and killing a boss for the 22nd time so the latest guild recruit can get geared up for ‘Progression’.

My level 80 characters consist of an Undead Shadow Priest, currently residing at an inn, an Undead Rogue who is the focus of my attention and a Death Knight who I would like a lot more if he wasn’t human and I’m too mean to pay for a faction change.
Supporting character are the usual banks alts along with a Blood Elf lvl 60 Paladin and a Tauren level 65 Druid. I’ve started another Death Knight, Blood Elf this time and female as well (more on that subject some other time). I also have a level 70 hunter I keep meaning to go back to.

You now have the ‘who’ and the ‘why’, next time I’ll talk about what I have been up to.