Entering Outland (again)

One of the constants of World of Warcraft seems to be that crossing that threshold from Azeroth to Outland, passing through the Dark Portal, is as exciting the second or third time as it was the first time. Today I did it for the third time.

My Shaman turned 58 last night, and during my lunch break while working at home today, I snuck on long enough to take him through the portal and start his Outland adventure. He joins my Warlock and Hunter in experiencing the Outland content.

A couple things come to mind as worthy of note about this event. First, leveling from 20 to 58 occurs so quickly now that, upon reaching level 58, several problems become evident. For one thing, my armor sucks for taking on those first few quests out of Honor Hold, the ones meant to gear a character for the first three or four levels. My chest piece is a level 39 green, and most of the rest of my armor and weapons are high level 40-ish. I have a helm and boots from Sunken Temple, one of only two instances I ran, and I have the Cold Forged Hammer from the Alterac Valley battleground quest line, but these are my only blue pieces of equipment.

As a result, when I first attempted one of the Honor Hold quests, I found that I barely held up against a single Orc in combat. A guildmate suggested buying some “cheapo” Outland greens off the AH, but there is no such thing as cheapo greens anymore. Prices are exorbitant, and although I can afford them, I see no reason to further contribute to an inflated economy.

Instead, I commissioned a guildmate who is a leatherworker to make me some armor. Much of the best armor to be made by leatherworking isn’t available on the AH, so I feel like I am getting a better deal this way, simply by paying for the mats.

Another problem that became apparent the moment I stepped through the Dark Portal is that my mining is at 255, and the lowest level Outland ore I can gather requires 300 mining. I don’t know where to place the blame for my mining lagging so far behind. I found it to be an incredibly difficult profession to level, whereas typically gathering professions are the easiest to advance as one levels. When I reached my fifties, an ore node seemed like almost a rare spawn, and invariably it was in the bottom of a cave full of mobs.

Some zones seem almost empty of ore. Felwood comes to mind. The only ore I found there was one each of Thorium and Mithril in the bottom of the cave in the far north, in Irontree Woods, and one node around the Deadwood Furbolg camp, also in the north.

I have been saving the Thorium I have gathered, and now that I can smelt it, I am hoping to get at least another ten points off it before it goes green. Of course, that wastes it, as far as my other profession–Jewelcrafting–is concerned, because what I really need is the raw ore for Prospecting. But my first priority has to be leveling my mining, though. My Jewelcrafting has lagged at around 220, mainly due to the lack of access to a trainer except on the Exodar, but I am content to let it lag until I can start mining Fel Iron in Outland.

All in all, neither profession has endeared itself to me as a favorite; I still like Herbalism/Alchemy as the one profession combo good for any class of character. However, I’ve invested too much time and effort into these professions to drop them now, and I think in the end it will all pay off. Should I have taken two gathering professions and powerleveled Jewelcrafting at 70? Probably, but it’s too late now.

Other than those small snags, my entry into Outland for a third time was as exciting as ever. I am looking forward to gearing up my Shaman and maybe even trying out a healing spec, eventually. Right now, I am torn between remaining Enchancement and respeccing Elemental, just to try it. I will probably remain Enchancement. It’s a fun spec, with high survivability (especially with all post-41 talent points put into Resto), high DPS, and some 5-man group utility with Windfury Totem.

My biggest complaint about Enchancement is that it doesn’t allow me to contribute much to PVP…or even to survive very long. I routinely get my butt handed to me before I can even come with Stormstrike range of an opponent.

Other than that, a 0/41/20 Enchancement build is a solid PvE spec.

In the meantime, I am just marveling at how I brought another character to Outland in about the same amount of time it took me to level my first character to 20. About two months of irregular play, starting in late February at level 6, and my Shaman is in Outland.

Getting to Know You

In one of those flashes of brain activity that can either lead to a “Eureka!” moment or turn out to be merely another Senior Moment, I had what seems like a great idea just now.

Someone ought to create a WoW Networking site, similar to Facebook, in which players can enter as much or as little about themselves into the online database as possible.  The only required fields would be character name, WoW Realm, and real life hometown.

This idea occurred to me as I was wondering if anyone in my hometown plays WoW (presumably there are), and if so, how would I ever find out?

Thus the purpose of the site, as I see it: to allow people to identify players in their local area.  Why would anyone want to do that?  Mainly,  because some people may want to extend their in-game friendships to real people outside the game.  Groups of real-life friends, usually numbering in the single digits, often play together and sometimes even create small guilds.  This networking website would allow for the extension of that idea further outside the game.

What Next

Question of the week: are you becoming bored with World of Warcraft? Patch 2.4 went live two weeks ago, and I’ve noticed some fidgeting in various forums about disappointment with patch 2.4, as well as the expected lack of new content between now and the release of Wrath of the Lich King. On a personal level, I’ve had a good friend stay away from the game for weeks and not really miss it. At this time, it is still unclear whether she will return to full-time play or not.

According to WoWInsider, there is already a slow-down in raiding progression as people no longer see the point in raiding for gear that will quickly be replaced on day one of the expansion. Furthermore, the Isle of Quel’Danas is opening up fast, probably faster than Blizzard could have predicted, no doubt because like me a lot of people are doing the dailies on two or more characters.

Speaking for myself, I can feel myself slowing down in my playing. My raiding is pretty much confined to one night a week, now, and I am focused exclusively on the 25 man content. I have not been back to Kara in awhile, though I wouldn’t mind another tour of the place, just for the badges.

The Dailies are a great source of income, and I try to fit in as many as I can on my two 70’s, but primarily NOT to open content but for very selfish reasons: I want gold for an epic flying mount, and I want gold for when the expansion hits. Depending on when I reach the magic number of 5000 gold, I may not even buy the epic flying mount.

I am sort of hoping that Blizzard will drop some hint as to what can be expected in regards to mounts and the expansion. Will we be able to have our epic flying mounts in Northrend? Will there be a price cut? Will we have to replace current epic flying mounts with some new variety specific to the expansion?

Raising 5000 gold has been a real chore for me, and I am not even half way there (just a little over 1600 gold in the bank, thank you). I don’t want to feel like money that could have been spent leveling my professions was just thrown down a rat hole.

At the same time, the dismal speed of the normal flying mount is enough to drive me crazy, sometimes. I would love to have an epic flyer, probably the Netheray mount, since I am close to Revered with the Skyguard.

So yes, I am feeling a little at loose ends. I have been leveling my Shaman, and PvP-ing with my hunter and warlock far more than in the past. I often find myself doing the PvP daily first, and then continuing to PvP even after completing the quest.

I have also been having daydreams about returning to my Horde warlock and my Horde guild on Hydraxis. It would be great to level my Orc Warlock to 70, so that I have the option of changing characters (and factions) when the Expansion rolls out. I am already considering making my Shaman my Alliance main, if I don’t go all-out Horde.

I guess my question is, again, is anyone else feeling a similar level of boredom or ambiguity about the game? Anyone thinking of changing things up for the expansion? I still love WoW. I still play, every free moment I have.

But I find myself more interested in simple, practical things, like making gold, leveling professions, and leveling alts to 70, all in preparation for WotLK.

Down on the Farm

As of last night, I think we can officially consider Gruul on farm status. We have downed him three consecutive times now, and last night, we one-shotted the whole raid instance. Maulgar and his council fell twenty-four minutes into the encounter, and Gruul went down at forty-eight minutes.

We finished so early, we celebrated by taking a trip to Magetheridon’s Lair. For most of us, it was our first time in there. We had the requisite accidental wipe during the raid leader’s explanation of strategy, due to someone right-clicking one of the channelers. No wipe protection on that one, since we warlocks were saving our Soulstones until just before beginning the encounter.

It was actually kind of hilarious.

“Everyone! Pile onto the door! Die at the door!” The raid leader shouted.

It didn’t really matter where we died, however, because the encounter resets a few seconds after a wipe and Mags and his channelers cannot be aggroed without someone attacking.

So we came back, and someone accidentally wiped us again! Some of us were not so cheerful this time. “Who do I send my repair bill to?” Someone said over Vent.

But overall, we took it in course, and third time’s a charm, after those wipes we ran the encounter two or three times just to test ourselves and see how the fight goes.

I think Magtheridon will go down pretty easy. By the last run through, we had the channelers down in good time, and we were starting to get the hang of clicking the cubes to banish him. We were still a little off in our coordination there, but we’ll get it next week, I’ll bet.