Cataclysm Preparation and Caprioskas

Damn, 2 weeks since my last post. Work is taking its toll on my free time. May-June is always a particularly hectic time for me (budgets – oh the joy!). Combined with the new role and more away from home time is not making posting easy. Hell, it’s not even making playing easy. However, I have found time to think about my favourite subject when it comes to idle WoW speculation “What should I do next?”

Up to recently, I had a Rogue and a Shadow Priest as the main characters, supported by a second rogue and a DK at level 80 and a hunter, druid and paladin who are between 60-70. Between the lot of them there are different servers, different guilds, some duplicated professions and a general lack of organisation. It’s really time to get things tidied up so:

• Level hunter and paladin to 80 and max out professions.
• Decide on a home server and guild. Transfer the characters to there and operate with a base of 5 different classes and professions.
• Once the above, is completed add in the druid and re-do his professions, as those are the duplicated ones (skinning and LW, same as hunter).
• Decide on a ‘Main’ character between them all once they are together. When the expansion arrives the new level cap will make such changes easier as they will all need geared up anyway.

There has been some progress. Hunter is at 76 and Paladin at 67, which isn’t bad considering lack of playing time. Did some research on servers, so I’m not far from a final decision on that front, but I’ll confirm that once I’m 100% sure.

So that’s the master plan and Expansion route map for me. Which has absolutely nothing to do with the fair one and I deciding to go out last night, in theory to celebrate the new job, but any excuse really. We decided to do cocktails, which up till now has been something we have pretty much avoided (Unless you include Black Russians served in half pint glasses in student union bars many years ago). Nice Italian restaurant, arrived 45 mins before our table would be free to give ample time to peruse the cocktail menu. I went for a Strawberry Caprioska (I’d never heard of this before). Despite being someone who doesn’t even particularly like vodka, this is one of the nicest drink I have ever tasted. It was purchased in true amateur style. I saw the barman making a couple for some other patrons and promptly decided to have what they were having based on looks alone.  Crushed ice, strawberry, lime with vodka – absolutely delicious although does have a bit of a kick. As stated, nothing to do with WoW, but if you are ever looking for a cocktail its a fine starting point!

How to Opt in Like a Pro

While idly perusing MMO-Champion I came across this and promptly succumbed to dilemma overload. When TBC and WotLK beta options came out, I just ignored them. I decided to wait and just see the new content with everyone else. Turned out it wasn’t ‘everyone else’ though. Just about everyone and their dog had a beta key – well it felt like that anyway. I promptly got fed up hearing about how good the new content was from those who got the beta keys – “I’ll send you some screenshots too”. Oh yes, please do, I’d be lost without knowing how much fun you are having in every last graphic and pixellated detail….

The other side of it was people I was playing online with at the time (especially TBC) disappeared from the usual server we played on to the Hip-Kid Club server where only the Chosen Few (well it seemed like Chosen Many to me) were allowed to go. So the social side of idly chatting while playing died a bit too. Of course when they did show up it was ‘you wouldn’t believe how good the new zones are, let me tell you about…..’ Well that’s great, I’m really happy for you, would you now just please shut the f*ck up about the new expansion. How do you tell a friend, who is obviously excited and very positive about something, that you are tired of hearing about it? The answer has to be extremely bluntly or not at all. I’m pretty sure I did both at times.

Once the expansions shipped, those who had the beta keys became gurus. “Oh the quest  item? Yeah, its round about X,Y next to the dead ice wombat. (Thanks) And watch out for the ice wombats (Its fine, co-ords were great) they have this really nasty attack that paralyses you with tedium (OK, I’ll find the rest out when I get there) but they drop good amounts of gold (That’s enough now) and have a 4.75% chance to drop a green (Shut Up), a 0.35% chance to drop a blue (Please shut up) and a 1% chance to drop Eternal Components  (I hate you) and they’re skinnable (arghhhhhhh, what’s that f*cker’s home address, where is my axe and how soon can I get there?) Every last detail given in a helpful manner, whether you wanted it or not. Scratch that, especially when you did not want it.

Third time round and its the Cataclysm beta. Send in your details to Blizzard and if you are lucky a beta key will be yours. So along with getting access to the shiny new content first, the real deal about having a beta key is the ability to show off.  You also  have the chance to ostracize your close friends in the short-term and seriously piss off what remaining friends you have further down the line when you decide to be helpful. This should be and can be avoided. It just needs to be managed properly.

There is no point in having a beta key if no one else knows how you are one of the privileged and select few, elevated by Blizzard to a lofty position above the common masses. To be fair you probably already suspected this was the case, but its nice to see it finally confirmed by Blizzard.

First thing is immediately place a post on your guild forums giving your name on the hip-kid server, so you can ‘meet up with friends who are also there’. This ensures the common masses in the guild immediately appreciate your lofty new position.

Second up is reinforcement. When someone asks you if you want to join for any sort of group, do point out how you were just about to go off to the beta servers, but you don’t mind helping out, you’ll just go to the beta servers later. This reminds them of your lofty position, demonstrates you remain a benevolent type offering help and guidance when you would rather be doing something else and allows you store a favour in the bank for later manipulation.

Thirdly, when absent for a while log back on and announce in guild chat how you are sorry you haven’t been about much, but you have been busy with the beta and ask what’s been happening, ignore the answers,  what you are looking for is some poor schmuck to ask you “So what’s it like?” You can now hold court while they hang onto to your every word, grateful for the scraps of knowledge you generously bestow.

Next is keep them hanging on. Don’t give out all the info at once, milk the situation for all you can. Maintain an air of mystery, be the enigma. If anyone asks you something you don’t know or can’t be bothered explaining, just remind them under the terms of the NDA you aren’t allowed to tell. Make sure you say NDA a few times, it always sounds cool and professional.

Lastly is bow out like a pro. When the game does ship to the masses its time to prepare your exit. You will have a couple of  weeks while the rank and file play catch up, but catch up they will. You will need to compose an air of boredom. You’ve been there, seen that, done it all already and having done so its time to move onto the next big thing. Complain about the servers being too busy, and all these people in the same zones causing lag, no one can play properly like that. Besides, you can mention you have just received a key to the new LOTRO expansion beta so you’ll do that while things calm down with the noobs in the new zones and you’ll let people know how its going.

So in the face of all this, there is only really one question: Did I sign up for the beta key? Of course I did, I’m just not proud of it.

PS Work intervenes again, wont be about much for most of the next week.

That ain’t no rogue, boy…

For a few years my main was a Shadowpriest and he’s been getting ignored a bit for the past few months while I have been rogue-ing it. I decided to dust him off and take him out for a spin. Lets have a look at the purple one. Note firstly how he is not purple. I took a few pictures with him in shadowform and  they all looked awful. So here we have a shadowpriest ‘sans shadow’. I have always liked shadowpriests, but no matter what, they always look terrible. And as soon as you get a great looking mount (no matter which one it is) it looks awful too.

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The mounts in order were: Polar Bear, Cenarion War Hippogryph and Frostwolf Howler (just in case all you saw were three variations of the random purple blob mount). The Polar Bear was a particular woe of mine. Three  months doing crappy daily quests in Storm Peaks for a random quets reward, when I finally get it… its a purple Polar Bear. Lets get one thing straight, I don’t mind the colour purple. In fact I actually quite like it (especially for gear if you get my meaning), but it would be nice to have something that wasn’t turned entirely purple the minute I get it. Anyway I digress…

Having dusted down the Shadow Priest I tried an heroic or two and while I thoroughly enjoyed it, it was fair to say my gear sucked mightily. So I have embarked on a bit of a crusade to get him some better gear. If you look at the RSS feed from my Armory its all Tarsis this and Tarsis that. That’s likely to be the way of things for the next couple of weeks while I try for badge gear. I’m not giving up on the rogues, but they will be taking a back seat for a short while.

Last week, I was hanging around waiting for the dungeon finder to inflict me on some poor souls who deserved better when some one in the Guild decided to organise an Onyxia 10 player. I haven’t done Onyxia since it was a 40 player event so I decided to give it a go. I know this is a bit close to raiding, but hey ho, sometimes I do give it a shot. Having dealt with Onyxia (after a few silly wipes and lots of cries of ‘more dots’ and ‘-50 dkp’ (a bit close to the bone when you remeber this)) I decided I was on a roll and when they said lets go for a Trial of the Crusader 10 player event I agreed to tag along. “Tarsis, can you switch to healing spec for this one?” ehmmm that would be a ‘no’ – I haven’t healed since pre-TBC and have very much adopted the atitude of can’t heal, won’t heal and don’t heal since then. If its a question of me healing or you dying I just hope you have exalted rep with the repair merchant of your choice. Anyway, we tracked down a real healer and went for ToC(10). We struggled on the beasts and were all set to call it a night when we managed to down them. We 2 shottled the worms and one shotted everything else.I bagged a few upgrades seeing as nobody else would sully themselves with mere i232 gear and besides, we were somewhat caster light that night.

The main reason I got fed up with the Shadow Priest was that for a dps class the dps was kind of low. That’s been addressed to a fair bit and Mind Sear makes the class a lot more fun to play on trash mobs too. In the past I got somewhat fed up with having low dps as the mobs were dead by the time I’d finished casting my dots and they had hardly ticked at all. That seems to have much improved by having Mind Sear for multiple trash and a proper rotation for boss fights, With a few improvements in gear I should be verging on reasonable.

I’ll probably add some Shadow Priest flavour to the blog on an ongoing basis (unless I get bored with the class again!) and we’ll see how it goes from there. So meantime it will be Rogues and Shadow Priests. For any purists out there…. tough!

Spring Cleaning

I hoard all kinds of rubbish in my bank slots. ‘Its bound to be useful at some point, better hold onto it’ is my mantra, resulting in finding 3 characters and a bank alt all had full banks and full bags. I went over it last week and finally admitted it was probably in all likelihood just crap. I was carefully holding onto such useful things as a stack of Peacebloom, 1 Nightmare vine, 3 motes of Earth, 1 mote of Water, 7 linen cloth etc etc. With Cataclysm on the horizon it really was time for a clean out. I started listing it in the AH last week and I’m about 1k gold up already. Turns out there are people out there prepared to buy up rubbish. The big gain isn’t so much the extra gold, but the freed up bag space. I’ll be able to start off Cataclysm with the plenty of space and I’ll just have to make sure I don’t fill it up with more rubbish. Although I’m sure I remember saying the same thing when both BC and WotLK came out too. But I’ll stick to it this time, I promise. Honestly. Well, possibly anyway.

My rule on this kind of transaction is sell it off cheap. There aren’t going to be that many people out looking for motes of Earth so I try to make sure mine is the one that sells. If something hasn’t sold in 3 listings its time to vendor it. So there are people out there who can probably sell for more if they persevere long enough, but my aim is more about clearing off bag space than anything else. If I make a small profit at the same time that all to the good. I’m also not an AH Goblin so the time spent listing and relisting has more value to me than the few extra gold I could make by hanging out a bit longer before vendoring. I’m sitting with about 50k currently between my 3 main characters so that should be plenty going into the expansion. I may try to push it a bit more closer to the time but just now I’m happy where I am.

I’d recommend others start clearing out the bags too. Other people will have accumulated equivalent rubbish over the time and will probably try to AH dump in the near future which will drive the prices down lower. So if you need to clear the bank space I’d recommend now being a good time to sell. Good luck with it!