Category: Gameplay
Seven things to do while waiting for Cataclysm
A few weeks ago someone in my guild got the [Loremaster's Colors] title. I figured it would be easy since I leveled two characters to 60 before Burning Crusade came out, but when I looked at both of their Loremaster achievements, I found that I’m about seven hundred quests away from Loremaster on my main. I also realized that I’ve been neglecting some items in my Achievements window that I could have been working on. We got to talking in guild chat about what things we all want to do before Cataclysm comes out.
This requires you to finish almost 3,000 quests in the game on Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Outlands, and Northrend. I’m currently so far behind that I’m wondering if I’m ever going to be able to do it all. It’s by far an easier title to get than “The Insane“, but still tough.
In the comments section for this achievement on Wowhead, someone suggested using the addon “Everyquest” which will list all the quests you need to complete. I may try it out.
Get those factions up
Despite my work on “The Insane”, there are some other factions you may want to get up to Revered or Exalted. The Timbermaw comes to mind for their professions-specific recipes. Raising factions can help get achivements as well. The Diplomat, They Love Me In That Tunnel, Ambassador of the Alliance, Ambassador of the Horde, and The Argent Dawn come to mind.
There’s one raid that my main character hasn’t finished yet – AQ40. When AQ40 was new, we made it all the way to C’Thun, but never killed him. Naxxramas beckoned, and everyone wanted to go there, so we abandoned C’Thun for Kel’Thuzad. So this gray achievement sits in my unfinished list, taunting me. I’ve seen people try and get a group together for AQ40, but not until I’m about to go to bed. These dungeons may be level 60, but don’t underestimate how hard they may be to clothies. A Holy Pally and Warrior/DK tank may be able to dual it, but it won’t hurt to bring friends, especially a lock for the Twin Emperors. If your guild doesn’t want to do it, spam trade chat. I’d bet people are willing to run old dungeons, even if its for rep. Don’t forget your [Onyxia Scale Cloak]!
Take pictures. Lots of them.
Once Cataclysm is released, there will be no way to go back to the old world. There’s no phasing as far as the old world is concerned. What I’ve been doing with Alachia and other friends is taking many pictures in an entire area one day a week. The entire photowalk is being archived on Flickr here. You can see some of my other pictures here. If you have a favorite spot, take movies using Fraps in as high a resolution as you can.
Do some of the easy achievements
Some of the General achievements can be done by simply running around Azeroth, killing some critters and showing /love on others. Once Cataclysm comes around, chances are you won’t have time for these little nuggets until much later. If you’re working on Loremaster, you may be able to do some of these along the way.
Create a bank alt
One of my biggest problems is that I horde (no pun intended) a lot of Soulbound items. It’s gotten to the point where the items I don’t need to keep around (Netherweave cloth, Nexus Crystals, etc.) take up room. Why keep them? There’s always someone who’s leveling up an enchanter, or you have some leftovers to make bags. In fact, a lot of the herbs I had lying around were used to level up my alchemist. If you have the character slots, create a bank alt. Give the alt some cheap bags to start, buy some bank slots, and send them all your old stuff.
Starcraft 2 is growing on me like a Zerg plague
I said over and over again that I suck at RTS games. I did when Starcraft first came out, and I still do. However, after playing Starcraft 2 for the last few weeks and getting the hang of it, I can say definitively that I still suck at RTS games, but I’m getting better and appreciating why people love them so much, just don’t look for me in any tournaments soon.
Speed is one of my biggest issues. All the strat guides I read say “macros, macros, macros”, but don’t actually say what kind to make. I’m still researching that. I’ve been slowly going through the commands list and finding things like F1 to find an SCV that’s not currently active, or some key command for building an engineering facility. However, I find that I’m still not proficient in moving around the map. Oh, sure, you can just point your mouse to put your camera where you want it, but I’m talking more about the nuances in positioning SCVs where they need to go. For example, if there’s an inactive SCV, and a mineral deposit just past the edge of my camera view, I have to move my camera over a bit to tell the SCV where to go. I’m sure there’s some faster way of doing that. In fact, I’ll bet there’s a macro to find an inactive SCV and tell it to start mining again once it’s done building.
Troops seem to have unpredictable results. Firebats spew out major damage, but you pit them up against certain Zerg and they explode like a Pop Rock in water. I found that until I learn what the strengths and weaknesses are of each troop type, I’m going to have to create a bunch and send them all out like a wave of angry teabaggers (with guns).
In the mission “The Devil’s Playground”, I had to run the mission three times before winning because I found myself at stalemates every time. I’d mine and build as fast as the Zerg would take my stuff down, and had to stop the game and restart, going faster and faster each time. I’ve been getting better at it, but the micromanagement isn’t much fun. At all. Audio cues are there for when units are finished with their work, or have been completed, and I’m so engrossed in getting my SCV units to high ground that I forget that I’ve got a whole group of troops done with training. Or worse, I’ll send them all to higher ground, wait for the lava to drop, and then forget that a whole group of SCVs are sitting there waiting for me to tell them what to do.
One big problem I have is selecting a group of SCVs when they’re mixed in with a group of troops. This happened a lot in “The Devil’s Playground” because when I quickly moved the SCVs up to high ground, they’d be mixed in with ground troops, and sending them back down to mine took a while because I didn’t know how to split them up. I’m sure there’s a way to apply units to groups, and then select them, but I haven’t figured that out yet.
This brings me to me vs. the A.I. I suck even more at that. I took what I learned from playing the campaign and applied it to the vs. game I was playing. I’m happily moving along, creating, upgrading, training, and BAM! starships from the A.I. start pounding me. With tanks. And other cool things I’d never seen before. I adapted by branching out fast to mineral deposits in the field adjacent to mine, and then once again. That helped, but eventually I got my ass handed to me again, it just took longer. Games four and five both ended in stalemates where I was producing as fast as the Terran A.I. was ripping it all down. So I have yet to beat the normal A.I., but I’m still trying. There are so many little things to learn about this game. What to build first, how to manage your resources, how to patrol without getting your ass kicked, and how to protect your SCVs. Looking at the post-game graphs, I see that the A.I. builds just a bit faster than me. When that accumulates, it leads to me ending the game.
I’m not sure how long I’ll play the game. Once the campaign and story is over, it’s all multiplayer. Unlike WoW where you have a world to virtually live in, Starcraft doesn’t, so the only allure is to continue to kick Zerg ass in multiplayer. It also seems like one of those games where you have to play it continuously or you’ll lose your rhythm. I don’t think this is a game you can put down for a month, come back to it, and play as well as you did at the top of your game the month before.
I’m also trying to set up my Logitech G13 to work with Starcraft. I read that you can do it, and I read that you can’t. I haven’t tried it myself yet, but I want to assign certain tasks to the G13 so that I don’t have to hobble around the keyboard so much.
As far as the story goes, that’s really the only thing that compels me to continue on. The Raynor/Kerrigan story is pretty damn interesting and I really want to see how it all plays out. Also, the in-jokes are hilarious. I stopped counting them, but the ones I found so far are:
Iron Maiden: “Be Quick Or Be Dead”
WoW: Night Elf dance in the cantina
Army of Darkness: Achievement with the same name
Star Trek: Voyager: “Please state the nature of the medical emergency”
Zero Hour: Possible reference to the movie “Airplane!” was based on
Guns ‘N Roses: Appetite for Destruction, Welcome to the Jungle, It’s So Easy
Freedom Rock: “Is that Freedom Rock? Well, turn it up, man!”
Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “You Shall Not Pass”
Beavis and Butthead: “Fire, Fire, Fire!”
There are a lot more, but this isn’t a Wiki entry 
So for now, I’m enjoying it. I have yet to play against an actual person because I’m sure I’ll die fast. Maybe one day, but in the meantime, I’m enjoying the game.
“Game On” video sparks “The Guild” Season 4
The very successful video series “The Guild” ignited the start of season four with their video “Game On”. I find this one to be much catchier and funnier than “Do you want to date my avatar?” and love the work they put into this video.
You can watch “The Guild” on Xbox Live, and get all news of the show on watchtheguild.com.
Making 1200g in a day using jewelcrafting
On Episode 105, Lindyen talked about using jewelcrafting to making enough money to make a leprechaun jealous. On Sunday, I tried this on and off all day, and learned a few things about how things work on my server.
Sunday morning I did a search for [Cardinal Ruby] on the Auction House. I found nine for 91g each, cut them into [Runed Cardinal Ruby], and put two of them up for 108g each. The next highest was 117g and I didn’t want to be undercut too much. The reason for not putting up all nine at once is because I wanted it to look like those two were the last two cheap ones on the AH. If I put too many, it lessens the value of the lower price.
Later that afternoon, I caught that someone wanted 1000g for a [Primordial Saronite], [Cardinal Ruby] x4, and [Dreadstone]x4. The Saronite I sold for 700g, and then I cut the Cardinal Rubies with Runed and sold them for 115g each. The Dreadstones I cut as [Mysterious Dreadstone]s and sold them for 108g each. Along with gems I had in the bank, I made a total of 1200g yesterday. Not bad. I just with that jewelcrafting wasn’t so hard to level.
Starman’s views on RealID
Yesterday, Blizzard announced that their RealID system was coming to their forums. That means your real name will be used when posting. I cannot think of anything that can make me more angry than this. Why so much anger? Several reasons. First, this is a game. By definition it’s an MMORPG, emphasis here on the “RPG”. It’s a place where I can play the game my way, and separate myself from the real world. I don’t want the real world and my online world to mix unless it’s on my terms. Blizzard is now taking that choice away from me and millions of other people.
This isn’t Farmville, this isn’t a Facebook app, but someone seems to want to turn it into one. When Blizzard made this announcement, my view on the game shifted. I still love and respect the game, but now I have this nagging thought in the back of my head that someone wants it to be more of a social network than an MMORPG. I’ve been asking Blizzard for more tools to communicate with your friends in and out of the game like Everquest does, but this is too much.
Blizzard is also telling people that this is to clean up the forum trolls. Whoever thought of that decision never read Usenet. We’d argue for months at a time on particular topics, all using our real name. Granted, Usenet was unmoderated, but we weren’t afraid of calling people out. I just don’t see this change as being a help. In fact, it will move people towards other forums such as our own, the instance, mmo-champion, tankspot, and elitist jerks.
I also don’t believe that this is just for a forum cleanup. If anything, you’re going to lose a large part of the intelligent community simply because they don’t feel comfortable posting with their real name. I think that there’s something like direct Facebook integration coming. I don’t want Facebook invading a game. It’s a terrible idea because the game stood on its own. The most I ever wanted was the ability to talk to guildies out of the game, not also see their drunk pictures because they happened to be in my guild.
One argument some people have is that the forums are optional. I disagree with that. I’m paying for the ability to post to those forums. It’s where I go to ask about class issues, quest problems, and other things. It’s the first place I go to. I don’t troll the forums, but now I’m going to be punished for those that did. Also, Blizzard requires that you post on the forums when you have a customer service issue and can’t call in which means your real name will be exposed. That, to me, is not “optional”.
The people most at risk are the ones that have the most to lose. People looking for a job are probably the ones that have to worry the most. A potential employer can Google your name and “oh, look, they posted on the WoW forums. Well, we don’t want WoW players working here”. Teachers, women, children (if not blocked), and others that may be ridiculed are all at risk, simply because they posted on a game forum.
Other problems I see:
Gankers / Campers on PvP servers
Gold sellers
Annoying people on the forums (the bigots and racists are the worst IMO)
Stalkers
Professionals that don’t want their name shown in a Google search
Harassment
There are two solutions:
1) Get rid of RealID on the forums altogether.
2) Use RealID on the main forums, but allow character names on the customer service forum.
I would implore Blizzard to rethink this change. Not only does it make over 22,000 people upset, but it puts the game in a different light. Now people will think of it as the world’s biggest Facebook app, and that stings.
WoW’s hidden treasures: Grim Batol
Editor’s note: This is an idea I’ve had for a while – to write about the hidden corners of Azeroth that might have gone unnoticed, even before the XP boost. When I saw Kichelle mention on Twitter that she was checking out Grim Batol, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to get this series started. I think Kichelle did a great job in writing about an area that I’m sure not many people have visited, or even heard of. -*
Here and there around Azeroth, there are places you may have stumbled upon at tender levels, where you suffered a swift and shocking death. This was due to the mass of level 58 elites that converged on you when you poked your curious nose into their zone. This has happened to me a few times, and hopefully you were enjoying your game enough for it to happen to you too! Once I reached level cap, it occurred to me (after I stopped dancing and got a little bored with heroics) to go back and do the exploring I’d wanted to do before, while getting a bit of one-shot revenge.
One such place is the elusive Grim Batol, tucked deep into a dragonkin guarded area of the Wetlands. It certainly wouldn’t be an easy place to find at the zone’s natural questing level. Once you hit the first Red Wyrmkin, it is rather a long walk to pass through the five ominous sets of Dragonmaw Gates, and the increasingly fearsome Wyrmkin to actually reach the door of Grim Batol. The way is littered with broken siege engines and the bones of huge dragons one does not normally encounter in Eastern Kingdoms. After passing through the final gate, protected by Scalebane Royal Guard, another broken siege vehicle on a small hill points the way to the entrance of Grim Batol.
Considering the carnage you are leaving behind you, at this point you are expecting anything, anything but…a deserted moss covered door that won’t open?! No guards in sight, no sad, lonely dwarf sitting by a fire waiting to tell you the story of this ruin. There are only the flags of the dragonkin that seem to hold the fortress, and the bones and broken weapons of would-be raiders on the steps.
The place appears to strongly resemble Ironforge, and there are lights in the towers that spark my curiosity as to who the inhabitants might be and what they are doing in there. I can’t handle the suspense, so a trip to WoWWiki.com answers a few questions for me.
It tells me that Grim Batol was founded by dwarfs, which could have been seen by anyone, but that the Red and Black Dragonflight took it after it was held for a brief time by orcs. The article writer speculates that something powerful is being protected or held inside, that the dragonkin are guarding ceaselessly. For more interesting lore, check out the article at http://www.wowwiki.com/Grim_Batol
Grim Batol’s name is peppered all over forums about WoW with questions about whether or not it will be opened up for a raid or 5 man instance in the future. With many players speculating that Blizzard is winding down for expanding content, this might be unlikely, given the amount of places in Azeroth like this. However, you never know…someday you might find yourself heading to Menethil Harbor with other players, preparing to face the dragons of Grim Batol, at the behest of Magni Bronzebeard or Thrall.
Don’t forget that there is more to the game than Ulduar and Dalaran, the places you might have hurriedly capered through in your quest for the level cap are filled with places for you to explore, if you have the time and the curiosity.
Sidenote: if you like to see the sights of Azeroth, go southwest from the door of Grim Batol, and pause for a moment on the very high cliff you will encounter. You can see the high faces of the Stonewrought Dam from here.
Children’s Week: How to tick off everyone in one easy lesson
The Children’s Week minicast is going to be coming out later today, after Starman gets home from work and can get the music tacked on and posted. But here is my general impression from having played a little of the PvP part of things, and having gotten my most dreaded part, the Warsong Gulch flag return:
Put simply, from what I could tell, pretty much everyone is miserable in battlegrounds right now.
There are an awful lot of inexperienced BGers who are not geared for PvP, don’t care if they win and don’t want to be there, which ticks off the real BG players. So, some of the hardcore players then take it out on the inexperienced players by ruining any attempts at cooperation so people can get their achievements and get the hell out of there. You’d think they’d either stay out of BGs until things clear off, or they would welcome people getting their achievements and getting the heck out of there, but no, they view these poor folks as sitting ducks and free HKs. You’d think, then, that they (the hardcore BGers) would be happy with the free HKs, but with games going on forever, no flags getting capped, and no real game going on, it just pisses them off further, which makes them more inclined to do things like camp rez points, etc.
I got my achievement because a very nice Alliance DK decided to go into our flag room, and pick up and deliberately drop the flag over and over and let people return it. Of course, this got ruined in short order by another couple Alliance DKs who decided that they’d use this opportunity to shoot fish in a barrel.
I’m not sure what Blizzard was thinking when they put this achievement in. Did they hope that they would introduce battlegrounds to players who had never tried them, by making them go into them for this achievement? Because if this was my first exposure to battlegrounds, let me tell you, I’d tell you that rather have my toenails ripped out than go back into one of those again. I know they can be better than what I have experienced right now. The battlegrounds created by this debacle are places where tempers are even shorter than usual, and people aren’t really playing the game or put in any situation where they are encouraged to play the game (really, get the achievement and leave is almost the only bearable solution).
I feel sorry both for people getting achievements and for people who just like and want to play battlegrounds — though not sorry for the griefers who are taking advantage of the situation to make life as miserable as possible for anyone not “leet” enough for their league. I’ve heard stories of sustained cooperation and it would be nice to think that those are the rule rather than the exception. But so far, they’re not. This is going to be an ugly, ugly situation for the next several days. I just want to close my eyes and get through it.
I keep reminding myself: this is a game.
I do this for fun and relaxation.
Yeah, right.
The next Ren-novation
I didn’t make up the term “Ren-novation”. I credit/blame Christy from Analog Hole Gaming. But it’s a good way to describe my fascination with stupid experiments.
Meet Ursalla.
Ursalla is an orc shaman who is currently level 3. Her goal in life is to get as many achievements as she can get at the lowest possible levels, with a few parameters. We are currently in the season of Noblegarden, so lately she has been working primarily on the Noblegarden quests. My plan is to get her “the Noble” title as early as humanly (well, in her case, orcly) possible, while trying to conform to a number of internal rules:
I will not do achievements that are simply a matter of spending money. No “My Sack is Gigantique”, no buying seven bank slots, no buying pets for inflated prices off the auction house.
I will accept some help from my main (80 orc rogue) in terms of keeping her funded, sending her pets from places she can’t easily go or couldn’t acquire at her level (such as the pet vendor in Netherstorm, or non-BoP pets from the Oracle egg).
I will accept some occasional and limited help in the form of ports and summons. I accepted one port to Dalaran, so I can get to Shattrath and the major Horde cities easily. I will accept an occasional warlock summons if it would minimize my exploration experience, but NOT as a method for finishing an achievement. For example, I did accept a warlock summons to the hot springs in Un’goro, not because I am incapable of deathing my way across, but because I wanted to take out a chunk of exploration experience from Tanaris. However, I will walk (well, death-flop) my way from the hot springs to Silithus to finish a Noblegarden achievement there. I will not use a warlock summon to get somewhere I could only get with a flying mount, for example.
I also do not want to have a higher level clear paths for me. If I die, I die. I just won’t bother wearing anything that requires repairs.
One of the challenges of this experiment is limiting experience gain. I want to level as slowly as possible because the point is to finish as many achievements as I can at the lowest levels possible. Exploration experience, then, is a real danger, but at the same time I want to do as much of it on my own as I can. The Noblegarden achievement set required traveling to Badlands, Tanaris, Desolace, Silithus, and Thousand Needles.
Ursalla walked from Undercity to Badlands. Well, perhaps “walked” is too generous a term; she death-flopped much of the way. As my friend Bean puts it, there is a difference between death-flopping and death-hopping.
Death-flopping means that when you die, you run to your body, move out to the furthest possible point where you can rez that goes in the direction you want to go, and then rez. Sometimes you get aggro immediately, and I have counted that in this case, you generally get 11-12 steps before you’re brutally murdered in the average 20-30 zone. Curiously, I had to death-flop nearly 20 times to get across Hillsbrad, but only twice crossing Arathi, a higher zone.
Death-hopping is advancing by making it to the next area where you get into a graveyard that advances you along your path. Ursalla did almost no death-hopping for one reason: she was trying to minimize discovery experience.
But travelling through these areas means that you die. You die a LOT. The pink dress and bunny ears have no durability — not much protection either, but it doesn’t really matter.
I have found that, if you are of a level that’s considerably lower than what the zone is rated for, you have to get further into a zone area to discover it than if you were of an appropriate level. If you stick to the roads, you can get little to no discovery experience at all. I didn’t hit any discovery experience from Undercity until I was halfway through Hillsbrad. Unfortunately, most graveyards are located in the middle of discovery-ripe areas, such as right in Hillsbrad village, inside Tarren Mill, etc. So in cases where I felt that I might discover something by rezzing in a graveyard, I still ran to my body to retrieve it, even if that meant running back a considerable distance.
Sticking to the roads, making no detours for flight points, and being careful about not rezzing in graveyards if I thought it would mean an area discovery minimized my discovery experience. However, it could not be avoided entirely. By the time I had run from Undercity to the Badlands and planted my flower JUST inside the zone, I had gotten just over 400 experience by discovery, and dinged from level 2 to level 3. Similarly, my run from Thunder Bluff to Thousand Needles and Tanaris was similarly uneventful from a discovery standpoint; I managed to limit discovery to just five areas: Bloodhoof Village, Camp Taurajo, the Great Lift, Freewind Post, and the Shimmering Flats.
As I write this blog post, she has completed several achievements: Shave and a Haircut (free at level 1), Represent (bought a guild tabard), Second That Emotion (the emotion foods are edible at level 1), Can I Keep Him (1 pet), and the following Noblegarden achievements: Found One, Chocolate Lover (still needs to eat 40 more for Chocoholic), Shake Your Bunny-Maker, Hard Boiled, Spring Fling, Noble Garden, and Blushing Bride. She will finish Desert Rose and Chocholic later today after the servers have come back. My hope and plan is that she will still be level 3 when she gets “The Noble” title.
She is well on her way toward finishing A Simple Re-quest (complete the same daily quest on 5 consecutive days; the Spring Gather daily is doable at her level), Plenty of Pets (10 is easily doable), It’s Always Happy Hour Somewhere (she’s drunk 15/25 drinks — amazing the amount of booze buyable in Dalaran that is drinkable at level 1) and Tastes Like Chicken (she’s eaten almost half of the 50 foods needed at level 1; having a toon with every cooking recipe except for the chimerok chops and the new recipes that will be introduced next Thanksgiving helps a lot). At 5 she will start on profession-related achievements such as fishing up 2000 fish, etc. She also wants to /love critters, even if that means death-flopping her way across Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord, and finding as many books to read as she can.
There’s a surprising number of achievements that ARE possible at low levels. You just need a lot of patience, and a high tolerance for retrieving your body.
Who foots the bill for dual speccing?
Last week, Blizzard released WoW patch 3.1 which brought many changes to the game, not the least of which was dual speccing. If you don’t understand what dual speccing is, it’s when you can change your talents on the fly between two predefined specs. Normally, if you want to try out a different spec you’d have to go to your trainer, pay upwards of 50g to lose all your talents, and reset them yourself manually. Now you can go to your trainer and pay a one-time fee of 1000g to have the ability to switch specs at any time you’re not in combat.
The question is: who foots the 1000g bill for this? My raiding guild is not making people do it, nor are they giving people 1000g to do it for the good of the raid. They believe that everyone should have 1000g (some don’t) and that if it’s for the good of the raid, the player should do it. The problem I see with that is not everyone has a ton of gold. I only have 1240g. I generally do dailies and such to pay for flasks on the AH and repairs, and make sure I have a little aside for emergencies such as when I needed mats for the Titanium Spellshock Ring.
When Blizzard announced that dual speccing was going to be 1000g, some people thought it was too much. However, it does seem like a practical amount. If you switch between PvE and PvP specs every day like I know some people do, you save money after your 20th flip if you’ve reached the peak of 50g/respec.
I’ve been putting it off for a few days because in the years I’ve been playing a mage, I’ve only felt like I needed to be another spec when I was fire specced pre-Wrath, fighting A’lar in Tempest Keep who is immune to fire. Every other spec I’ve tried has always worked out for me. However, there seems to be a fight in Ulduar where frost mages come in handy. Should it be my responsibility to pony up the 1000g for the good of the raid, or should the guild pay some or all of that cost?
As some of you may know, I play a death knight on a PvP server. She’s an alt, and I don’t put as much time into her as I do my mage. My guild leader knows this, but I got a surprise in the mail on Saturday: 1000g with a note that said “Happy Repairs”. My DK’s guild does 25-man content, but I’m not even level 80 yet and yet my guild leader was kind enough to give me 1000g to pay for dual speccing.
Is this normal for guilds? Has your guild been paying some or all of the cost of respeccing, or do you have a requirement that your players should pay for it on their own?
When does a new server stop being new?
Answer: When it starts acting like an old one.
In late January 2009, I rolled up a new character on the Borean Tundra server, a brand new server that had opened on January 16. The server was just over a week old, and since it was closed to all new transfers for three months, I thought it would be a lot of fun to start over in brand new territory — a born-again newbie on a born-again newbie server. I was most looking forward to running instances at level, with other people my own level, instead of being innundated with “Paying 5G for wc run plzplz!!” in Trade and General. So, with an eye to being desirable for pugs, since I didn’t want to join a guild, I rolled up a blood elf priest.
This was not my first priest. I already had a priest on my home server, but I had not played her past level 34 and so long ago that I had forgotten how to play her, and I’d deleted her awhile ago.
My original intentions were to stay on Borean Tundra, at least until the AQ gates opened (I had missed much of that hoopla since I had been in the process of changing main servers at the time), or at least until it stopped being fun. I didn’t realize that “stopped being fun” would come first.
At first, BT was all I had intended it to be. The newbie zones were full. There were groups everywhere looking for healers, and I had more opportunities to pug any instance I wanted than I could do. I did at-level pugs for RFC, WC, SFK, RFK, and SM graveyard and library wings. I had offers to do Gnomer and DM but I didn’t end up going to those due to poor timing. I was counting every copper and silver; I didn’t earn my 35g for mount money until I was almost level 35, and that meant forgoing my own training for 32 and 34.
But shortly after I got my mount, I realized that the times were a-changing.
There were enough 80s on the server now that I could see massive changes in the economy. Suddenly, there were twinks appearing and prices on gathered goods were going rapidly upward. Within two days of getting my mount, I had 40g again. There were fewer and fewer “lfg RFC” and more and more “paying for RFC run!!!” in city chat. People weren’t as interested in running instances, even in their mid-30s, and more interested in just making the pell-mell push for 58, Outlands, 68, Northrend, 80.
In other words, it was becoming my home server, without my friends, my husband, access to my guild bank, and the earning power of my 80.
I went to BT for two challenges: playing the content thoroughly at level, and having to count my coins and make careful choices. These began disappearing rapidly at the mid-30s, and suddenly it wasn’t different anymore. So I transferred her “back” to Whisperwind, familiar names in chat, and an 80 hunter husband who’d rush her through whatever she wanted.
It was something of a letdown, but it was fun while it lasted.
