Dispatches from the Frozen Wastes

The cold snows of Northrend are much more my thing than the Outlands were. In fact ive been pretty much blown away by the scenary so far.

Because im that kind of person, even before i got my beta key i had been working on a plan for launch and so naturally as soon as i was patched and ready to go, i put the plan into practise.

I logged my priest and excitedly portaled Stormwind, ive had a harbour fetish ever since i was a little girl and checking out SW's new virtual one was top of the list. Even though i still cant quite figure out how the water gets from the sea to the canals, i was impressed. The port is huge, adding to the feeling of a huge military mission heading north. I rode around for a bit, taking it all in and then i spotted a flightmaster... yes thats right, you can take an airtour of the harbour. Ive been around 5 times now.

Another day, another beta patch

I havent really been able to test much yet, but here are my highlights of todays patch.

1. Nature's Grasp is now a trainable spell and all ranks have been changed to 100% chance on getting struck. This coupled with the fact that roots are useable indoors is lovely. Its always been at least one point ive had to find before. Yes, i know its not a pve spell, but its so handy on trash in outdoor instances like ZA/MH and well you cant avoid pvp on a pvp server now can you.
2. *New Spell* Wind Shock: Instantly blasts the target with a gust of wind, causing no damage but lowering your threat, making the enemy less likely to attack you, and interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 2 sec. Blizzard made on good on their promise of a cheap interupt to replace the fact that we couldnt use rank 1 earthshock anymore. Its still on the global cooldown and shares the same cooldown as all other shocks but as a resto shaman, im primarily interested in being able to interupt and thats all.
3. New rank of Water Shield at 76. 100mp5 plus 400 mana when you crit or take damage should help out balance our mana now that we cant downrank.
4. Glyph of Levitate -- Your Levitate spell no longer requires a reagent. Yay, ive jumped off too many things only to realise too late ...... EEK NO LIGHT FEATHERS.
5. Cooking: Critter Bites, Use Throw a critter bite to a critter to control it. I forsee endless fun chasing people around with squirrels. Definately a reason to level cooking.

Tamung the TNAK

In a bid for a change of pace we decided to try 2 manning Hellfire Ramparts this morning. I really wasnt sure how far a lv 64 enhancement shaman and a lv 64 prot warrior would make it, but we surpassed my expectations. The trash went smoothly as did the first boss, although he failed to drop anything useful (cloth spell damage shoulders which went into my healing/spell damage set).
We bravely fought on to the 2nd boss and thats when disaster struck. Our battlegroup fell over... so we will have to go back another day, but all in all, it went pretty well.

In other Orc related news, we have completely finished Zangamarsh, half done Terrokar and started doing Nagrand. I also got ganked twice, once in Nagrand by a horrible little dwarf rogue who we could have killed whilst he was afk destealthed and once in Terrokar by a 70 hunter, also a dwarf, who if he hadnt potted or run through a pile of mobs i would have killed. If if if, but it certainly seems that dwarves hate orcs... i feel victimised.

Everything including the kitchen sink

Ive always had an inventory problem. My bagspace seems to vanish overnight as soon as I get beyond lv 15 or so. I just cant bring myself to throw stuff away, after all it might come in useful for something, leveling an alt perhaps (murloc eyes), farming rep (bone fragments), skilling up a profession (solid stone). But how much of this stuff do I actually need, when it comes down to it, very little.

Crucial and necessary items that should never be thrown away.

Number 1
The pvp trinket, otherwise known as the Medallion of Horde/Alliance. Whilst this comes in a variety of flavours, 5 minute, 2 minute with 20 resilience and 2 minute with 45 resilience they all at the end of the day, do the same thing.

Use: Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character.

Whenever I level a new toon, its the first thing I spend my honor on. Easily optained, this remains in one of my trinket slots all the time whilst Im outdoors as you never know when someone of the opposing faction will decide to be a jerk. Obviously if you are on a pve server its slightly less of a "must have" but in recent times its also been useful in numerous pve encounters, most namely Rage Winterchill and Archimonde. In fact its been so useful on those and other encounters than some high end PvE guilds have been making their members/applicants farm one.

My verdict: Dont leave Shattrah without one.

Tick Tock

So I was doing my early morning forum browsing and I spot this:

With the release of Wrath of the Lich King approaching, we wanted to provide you with some important information. In preparation for the expansion, we will be issuing a new content patch in the coming weeks. Much like the patch made available shortly before The Burning Crusade's release, this content patch is designed to bridge current game content with that of the expansion and will contain some exciting changes and additions. We have outlined some of the larger features scheduled to release with the patch below:

New class spells and talents. Ok good as long as they fix them all first. Its going to be interesting trying out new things in pvp situations as well as getting to play with the characters I couldnt copy to the Beta. Although I would hate to be trying to kill KJ or get Gladiator rank with all the new talents/spells throwing the balance yet again.
Barbershops in capital cities. Great, Ive really come to dislike my nelves hair. Both my priest and druid have the same long straight hair which seems really unpractical, especially for the druid, what with all the shapeshifting.
Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades. Not too exciting
Stormwind Harbour. Yay, its my new favourite place to hang out so doing on live when talking to guildmates etc will be great.
In-game guild calendar. Good, our guild are currently trying to make us use GEM which i hate.
Hunter pet skill revamp. Cool, not too excited about that, primarily because I slack at leveling hunters. Mine is just too low level to get anything fancy.
New profession: Inscription. Now the dilemma, do I drop any of my 70s professions for this and if so which one. We currently dont know huge amounts about inscriptions which makes it hard to decide. For example, you can make scrolls, which arent BoP, a teleport thingie which works like astral recall returning you to your Hearthstone location on a 15 minute cooldown which is BoP and of course glyphs. On the whole though im fairly excited about this and will at least farm a lot of low level herbs even if i just sell them when the patch goes live.
Two brand-new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles:
Orgrimmar Arena.
Dalaran Arena. I always get the ruins of lordereon so im not too bothered about this. But on the whole more content means more choice which is a good thing.

Over all, as Im currently neither a hardcore PvPer or PvEr, im pretty happy with all of it.

As mentioned above, this is not a comprehensive list, just some of the major highlights. We’ll post the full patch notes as soon as they’re available. Regarding Inscription, please note that all Burning Crusade players will be able to select Inscription as one of their two professions and level up to a skill level of 375 with it. Upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players who purchase and install the expansion will be able to continue leveling in Inscription and the other professions beyond 375.

then I panicked. I really thought we had more time....

An Eagle Eye View

Even after playing for so long, it seems there are still things for me to discover. Despite having leveled 4 alliance toons to 70, Ive never noticed the eagle before.

Alterac Valley Blues

Ive always loved AV, right from the start when it was a 24 hour zergfest, when casting even the tinyest heal at Snowfall graveyard was guarenteed to get you splatted. Ive played it happily through its many manifestations, when breaking into the Horde base was a slow painful process, one death at time, but what never ceases to amaze me is the fact that despite it being ingame for so long, most people dont seem to understand how to play it.

Happy days are here again

There is a new beta patch on the test realm and my favourite note so far has to be:

Mace Specialization (Arms) no longer stuns enemies, and now generates 10 rage.

No more badly timed (from my perspective naturally) skilless stuns from nabs who dont have pummel or kick shortcutted. Obviously there might be maces with a stun effect as a passive but I can cope with that.

My second (yes I know this has been in since the beginning of beta) favourite thing is:

Ghostwolf works on water again.

They're creepy and they're kooky, Mysterious and spooky

It seems that the Addams family have relocated to the Howling Fjord. Have to say Im loving the look of the WotLK. The gothic, mad scientist look of the Undead area is just beautiful in slightly creepy fashion.

Mounts, mounts and more mounts, part 2

The Orclings finally hit 60. Its taken a while and now Im relieving how painful Hellfire is for 2 melee classes. Its half tempting to respec to elemental but my gear just isnt up to it at the moment.
In other news I got a spirit of competition on this toon as well, although it was about as far from the spirit of the Olympics as you can possibly get... zerging 11 alliance with 40 horde. Ah well, it helped us get our matching Frostwolf Howlers.

Mounts, mounts and more mounts

Finally picked up my welfare horsie on my warlock.

Have to say I prefer the normal mount to the epic version. I like the fact that its a lot more wild looking, less domesticated than the 60 version which suits a demon steed.
The letter telling you to go and get a mount is a nice touch however. Its just a shame that they didnt send a warlock specific one, someone leveling a warlock as their first character might end up buying an ordinary mount when they dont need to.

First thoughts on WotLK

Have to say Im pretty much blown away by the scenary. Its far better in my opinion than the Burning Crusade. Ok, Ill admit to being biased, fjords, penguins and crystal forests are far more my thing than demon pigs, scorched earth and red orcs, but so far, Im loving it.

My must sees would be as follows:

1. Take the boat from Menethil to Howling Fjord, regardless of where you intend questing.
2. Make a DeathKnight and do the starter quests, even if you never level any further.
3. Look at and or kill the Clockwork gnomes, so much cuter than the real thing.
4. Run around SW harbour and take the flight if you are alliance.

All in all, Im happy to be testing it, obviously Ill be happier when my Priest gets rescued from her current location, stuck between Stormwind and the Borean Tundra, but thats hopefully a minor inconvience.

Happy happy Joy joy

I have a Beta key!

Once the childlike excitement dies down, Ill post some screenshots.

Going for Gold

Once upon a time in my miss spent youth I had a computer game called "Going for Gold" in which you could compete in various running events with the ultimate aim of reaching the Olympics. It was a very frustating game, so when I discovered that Blizzard had added an Olympic tribute ingame, I was a little nervous. Luckily all Blizzard wanted us to do is pvp, I mean thats easy right. I do that all the time. So fueled with all the stories of people who got their pet after their first game, I queued up all excited. Several hours later I was both frustated (alliance in Nightfall are dubious at the best of times and even when we did win, no medal in the mail) and grumpy. I even dragged the gnome out of bed so I had someone capable of killing stuff to heal.

Then just when I was going to give up for the night, it was late and I had run out of nets (thats another story), there it was, glistening in my mail box.

Here I am in my Competitor's tabard with my brand new shiny pet. He even claps his hands together to show his approval.

PvP brings out the worst in all of us

If you must make macros like this to be used at the start of Battlegrounds, make sure its all spelt correctly. Blizzard are highly unlikely to use "u" instead of "you". Seen quite a few of these recently, all with really bad grammar/spelling, the worrying thing is each time its spammed into chat, at least one person leaves the battleground. Coincidence perhaps. Hopefully.

On a slightly related note, got ganked by 3 separate 70s in the Searing Gorge today. Guess what they all had in common?

Yep, all rated below 1550. So do high rated players not gank lowbies? Am I just meeting scrubs taking out their frustation on greys? Maybe I should make a "LF high rated lowbie gankers" forum thread to see if anyone holds their hand up and says "Yes, im a Gladitator and I gank low levels with pride".

Progress

Ive been working on my little list over the last few days and I think Im actually making headway.

The Orcling is lv 51 and counting, we managed to break through the Badlands into lusher and more interesting zones which really speeded up the leveling. The screenshot is the only good screenshot of the Badlands, me leaving it.

Got the Rune of the Guard Captain. A task made slightly harder than it should of been by the fact I was 5 levels lower than the mobs and Tamung was using a brand new weapon and so couldnt hit them. I wish the Alliance had a version of this trinket.

Hit Alterac Valley for the first time earlier today. It turns out that in the 51-60 bracket in Cyclone is really biased in favor of the Horde. Got 500 honor in 10 minutes along with 25k experience for completing a few of the quests. I also got to upgrade my main hand by getting the mace from the kill Vanndar quest. Its just a shame the queue times are horrible, but since the alliance get slaughtered 15 to 40, I suppose we can hardly blame them.

Guide to Leveling on a PvP server

Whilst leveling my little orcling Ive been considering the whole leveling process and how being pvp flagged effects it. This little guide is just for people rolling brand new alts on servers they dont already have any high levels on.

1. Get mining and skinning. Regardless of the profession you want at the level cap. Obviously it will vary from server to server but on the two ive leveled alts on recently 20 copper goes for 2/3g and iron can be as much as 15g. With these two its easy to make money fast.

2. Using the money you make from mining/skinning, always make sure you have the highest level of health/mana pots you can you.

3. Look out on the AH for upgrades all the time. Thats why having gathering professions pays off. Its hard to make money with crafting professions as you level and its even harder to keep them up to date. For example without large quantities of gold, you cant afford to buy higher level cloth/herbs etc and you cant killing the mobs that drop/protect them.

4. Learn first aid and keep it up to date.

5. Download an addon like Witchhunt. Being aware of your surroundings is crucial to successful and stressfree leveling on pvp servers. This is especially true if you enjoy being the aggressor yourself. Running at a mage three levels lower than yourself is one thing. Running at said Mage and then discovering he is questing with 2 higher level friends is another entirely. Observe your prey first. Make sure they are alone before rushing in.

6. If you are a hunter or a warlock, dont have your pet on aggressive. Its a sure fire way to die in neutral towns plus its awfully embaressing.

Summer Holiday

Where would you holiday in WoW and why? For some reason last night I started thinking about this (my mind wanders when Im tired). So thanks to the Azerothian Travel Company I would like to offer some destinations for your consideration.

You want a beach holiday? Well have you thought about Stranglethorn Vale. We are currently offering two week breaks to this paradise on Azeroth. You will be staying in Booty Bay, a town well known for its fine cuisine and even finer Junglevine Wine and Rum. Your base will be the Salty Sailor Tavern, which is located right in the centre of town. The sea, shops and other amenitities are all within walking distance.

We offer a wide range of activities once you arrive in Stranglethorn.

1. The coast around STV teems with sealife and as such fishing is a very popular activity, both with locals and guests. Who knows you might even manage to net a giant shark. Any fish you do catch can be cooked for you back at the Tavern.
2. For the more adventurous we have diving or snorkling trips to the Vile Reef where you can explore sunken ships and the drowned Troll city. As a souvenir of this you can even collect your own blue pearl to prove to your friends that you dived those crystal clear waters.
3. We also offer many trips to the variety of ruins that litter the landscape. Ask an Azerothian Travel Company Goblin for more details.
4. Our safaris are also very popular, we take you out to see all the wonderful animal species that bless our landscape from tigers, panthers to gorillas and basiliks. If you want, for slightly more gold you can hunt any or all of them.
5. Another daytrip which has proved popular in the past is the chance to visit a reallife, active Pirate ship. As part of this deal, you get snuff, rum and the opportunity to ask the pirates any questions you might have about their lifestyle. Its a must really.
6. For those of you interested in animal life, a trip to Jaguero Isle is an experience like no other. You get to see the largest Gorilla in existance (at least on Azeroth). Marvel at his size as you watch him from our cunningly concealed hides.
7. We can also offer daytrips to Ratchet for duty free booze.

This is only a small selection of what is available. If you have gold, we can arrange pretty much anything you might want to do or try, dancing girls included.

Caveat: Like any paradise STV has its hidden dangers, but we havent lost a tourist since, well, last week.

Why I love STV

Gaming Aims

Im a list person. Without them I successfully manage to avoid doing all the things I dont enjoy. However since Blizzard have confirmed that they intend to release WotLK this year, its time to tidy up some loose ends.

The aims are fairly basic:

1. Rep grind
2. Farm gold
3. Pvp/battleground tokens
4. Level all toons to 70

So here is my to-do list by character (in no particular order).

Honeysuckle

1. Level. Which I admit currently seems impossible. Our next target is the Badlands, one of the few zones I absolutely loathe. Because going from 40 to 70 seems like far too big a task Im going to break it down into subsections, bite sized portions if you will. Honeysuckle's first task then is to hit 50 then 60 and so on.
2. Exalted with Silvermoon for a chicken. My Orc will look adorable on a pink and fluffy bird. The hard part will be persuading Tamung he wants a matching one.
3. Enchanting to 300
4. Fishing to 300
5. PvP trinket
6. Get the Rune of the Guard Captain

Amaryllis

1. Exalted with Winterspring Sabers
2. Exalted with all the Alliance factions
3. Revered and then Exalted with Skyguard
4. Exalted with the Aldor
5. Exalted with the Kurenai
6. Leatherworking to 375
7. Fishing to 300/375
8. Cooking to 375
9. Complete all quests in Blade's Edge, Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley
10. Exalted with the Shattered Sun

Mariposa

1. Exalted with the Cenarion Circle
2. Revered/exalted with the Skyguard
3. Revered/exalted with the Winterspring Saber Trainers. This has been a work in-progress since my priest hit 60 in the summer of 2005. However this time im serious about ticking it off.
4. Exalted with all the Alliance factions
5. Primal mooncloth bags in all slots
6. Complete all quests in Blade's Edge, Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley
7. Cooking to 375
8. Exalted with the Shattered Sun
9. Exalted with the Kurenai

Briarrose

1. Exalted with the Cenarion Circle
2. Exalted with the Skyguard
3. Exalted with the Kurenai
4. Exalted with the Consortium
5. Exalted with the Shattered Sun
6. Exalted with the Aldor
7. Farm the crusader weapon enchant
8. Exalted with all the Alliance factions

Calantha

1. Exalted with Orgi'la
2. Honored/Revered/Exalted with the Netherwing
3. Fishing to 375
4. Exalted with the Shattered Sun

Clova I

1. Level to 30
2. Get a mount
3. Tame a hyena, preferably the "Giggler" as I like his black and white spotty coat
4. Level to 40

Clova II

1. Level to 10
2. Tame the pink plainstrider

Nebel

1. Level to 20 for Blink

Sugarplum

1. Level to 20. My troll wants shadowguard

Snowdrop

1. Level to 40
2. Collect my welfare mount

As I complete each aim, Ill tick them off in a brief post and should I run out of aims for a specific character in a separate post Ill try and come up with some new ones. That however is unlikely to happen anytime soon.