First off, my client no longer crashes every 2 minutes. Whether this is because I applied a fix or because there was a new patch, I don’t know. If you’re still having problems, you can try what I did – which basically was to uninstall the client and download the enUS version. For some reason the enGB version seems to be a lot more bugged and crash-happy than the enUS one. So if you’re running the GB version and still crashing a lot, give it a try with the US one.
Now, as I’m finally able to play a little longer than two minutes I decided to start my project of checking out every starter zone for all the races. I love the starting experience and I’m curious to see how it’s been changed. Since Worgens are new and shiny (well, hairy at least) I decided to start with them.
I’m not going to go into detail quest by quest or anything, there are plenty of other places that do that. I just want to give my general impression of each starting experience and how it seems.
So, introducing my now level 11 Worgen Hunter: Rhobin (and his precious side-kick.. eh.. pet.. Chuckles)
Rhobin the Worgen
Their zone – as I’m sure you’ve heard and seen in screenshots – is lovely and dark, filled with despair. The architecture is Victorian and the men all wear top hats (okay, not all - but a large majority!). I love the women’s looks as well though and I’d love one of their hats for my own humans.
Anyway, the whole starting experience is rather pleasant – while slightly bugged in places – and the quests are a lot more diverse than what we’re used to. It’s not all go here and kill X amount of this, but there’s quite a variety. Sure, you still get quests to kill things or pick things up.. but you also get quests where you get to ride around on a horse and piss worgens off by tossing a torch at them.. or having yourself catapulted on top of a Forsaken ship. How cool is that, really?
I liked the fact that you get a bag within the first five quests, and it even auto-equips! You get another bag before level 10 as well – so by the time you’re level 10 you actually have two extra bags already.
The atmosphere is great and it follows a pretty worked-out storyline. You start out as a non-worgen helping the town out against invaders and end up becoming one yourself. Around level 10 you will get around to the quests that teach you more about the worgen heritage and history – which is pretty interesting if you’re into the lore behind things.
Around level 6-8 you get to the areas where thing are starting to phase quite obviously. You’re in a basement turning in a quest when the world literally shakes beneath your feet and as you come back outside the ocean has swallowed up the area where you were questing just a moment ago. It’s pretty neat, and I like how the phasing works – somehow it feels like it gives more life to the story.
On the whole, I really enjoyed the Worgen experience. Compared to the old starting areas from previous expansions you can tell that the game has really come a lot further with what it can do, and also putting more work into the starting areas.
Some random thoughts after playing a Worgen:
- The racial trait isn’t 1% increased damage as was originally said, it’s 1% increased critical rating
- Their casting animation when casting Hearthstone is way too.. wobbly.. while you’re standing there casting it looks like you’re about to lose your balance
- Some re-spawn rates of mobs are over the top and you’ll suddenly find yourself over-run and killed.
- Two Forms (the worgen racial that allows you to switch back to human forms) at level 10 is kind of bugged (image in gallery)
- I’m disappointed that when you use your racial sprint you’re actually doing just that, sprinting. Would have been much more cool if they’d get down on all fours to run faster instead of just normal running.
Below is a gallery of screenshots from my Worgen experience, if you click on them you’ll see them bigger with comments 
-
- Worgen Awaaaay!
-
- Lifeguard
-
- I’m smelling the flowers
-
- Greymane
-
- Forsaken Ships
-
- Cinderella.. Almost
-
- Worgen Tree
-
- Two Forms, yeah!
-
- Rhobin the Worgen
Yep, you heard me! I was really lucky and got a Beta key. Sadly it’s on a “spare” account I have so I have to make use with pre-made characters rather than transferring my own, but hey – at least it’s Beta, right?
Since I know not everyone wants spoilers I will put posts that are about my Beta experiences with a title that starts with “Cataclysm:”, that way you know that if you don’t want any spoilers you can disregard those posts. However, I won’t be giving big lore spoilers I imagine. I’m more interested in the starting experience for the races in the new starting areas and how the land has changed. But if you wanna be certain, don’t read anything that starts with “Cataclysm:” in the title.
I only got it last night and haven’t had time to do much, but I can show you (spoiler free) what my experience is currently:
Cataclysm Beta Experience
Yep, that pretty much sums it up so far. I tried a Worgen.. managed to get to level 5 before it started giving me those error and eventually not even letting me log back in. I also tried a couple of pre-made characters. You start right outside of Stormwind when you do.. and I managed to make it to the gates before it first crashed. Got back in, got to the market square.. and now it wont’ let me back in without crashing.
Tried a few more and it just keeps crashing. I hope it will let up cause at the moment it’s maybe 1 minute game play and then 3 minutes to reboot and get back inside. Anyone else had these problems? Is there anything that can be done to – not fix it, I understand that’s not possible, but at least make it happen a little bit less.
I have been in the same guild now for probably close to three years. I joined them in TBC while they were working on Tempest Keep and I’ve been with them since. We’ve had a rough time though, and halfway through Ulduar we went from a dedicated 25 man guild to a 10 man guild. With the changes coming in Cataclysm we’ve decided that 10 man is what we will remain. However, in the expansion slump (and other reasons) we currently don’t even have 10 active players (which I find very sad) and we’re going to have to find some more.
Now, for Cataclysm I want to make some changes, but I don’t know what my fellow guild members feel about it. Being a strictly raiding guild obviously hasn’t worked for us because we’ve always been just at the edge of the numbers of people that we need, and has 1-2 people not been able to make it – there has been no raid.
Cataclysm Guild Changes
With the changes made to guilds in Cataclysm I think a social raiding guild may be the way to go (for us poor bastards who never were a huge guild to begin with), because it gives you more people to work at the guild rewards as well as a nice, social environment (which I know I personally want). I hope that the Cataclysm changes also mean that more people are interested in joining a guild.
What I want, and think would be nice for everyone involved, is a combination of raiding and social. I think we should have raiding members as well as social members. The social members would be people we know/recruit for the social aspect – but they may also be interested in jumping into raids when there’s a spot free. And if there was no spot free that week there will pretty much always be an alt raid going which they can join. (Most of our members have very well-geared level 80s and I suspect a lot of us will still have a “main alt” in Cataclysm that will be fairly well geared.)
I think this provides a few things; a social environment (since 10 people total in a guild is kind of… little), hopefully a friendly atmosphere with people happy to help/chat, as well as a larger player base for raids.
I know a few people who quite enjoy raiding, but can’t commit to a schedule the way we currently ask. They would be perfect as social members because they could jump in when we need someone, get their raid fix, but not be required to do so. They wouldn’t have to be online every raid day, but can be online when they want to.
The member ranks in the guild would look something like this.
New Member (New people who may be leveling, want to be social members)
Trial (New people who intend to be raiders and have applied as such)
Alt (Alts of everyone in the guild)
Aspirant (People who are no longer new, but still leveling)
Social (Top level social members who don’t want to/can’t raid regularly)
Raider (Top level members who wish to raid and can commit to the raid schedule)
Senior Member (Considering this. Maybe for members who have stayed in the guild a long time, but are not officers)
Officer
Guild Master
So what does it mean?
To me, a Raider is someone who can commit to the raid schedule and show up regularly. Of course being on vacation for two weeks doesn’t mean you lose your rank, but in general you would be there for pretty much all raids. (Of course anyone can be sick or have something else to do once in a while, but I think you know what I mean.) If someone gets a new job or something else which prevents them from making enough raids for a longer period of time (like I suddenly start working shifts so that I can only make 1 raid per week average) then I think they should probably be a Social member.
A Social member is someone who either is unable to/or not interested in raiding every raid night, but they may be quite happy to do so when there’s a spot free or join alt raids. Social members to me fills up the guild and makes it friendlier and a little bit bigger – I want people to talk to! They also would be a huge help when we’re a raider short some days (which will inevitably happen).
I think for raid sign-ups Raiders should get priority on a spot, because after all, they’re the ones who show up every night. Social members will get spots when there’s ones available – or possibly on the lower-end bosses if one of the Raiders want to sit out. (If you think of ICC it would be easy to take a Social for the first 4-6 bosses or even more depending on your raid setup, and just bring Raiders back in for the progression fights.)
Some possible problems
One of the problems raised is about loot. Will Socials get the same chance at loot as the Raiders who are there every evening? My initial reply is yes. If you kill something that night, the Social did as much work as you did on killing that boss that night and deserves the loot from it.
Of course this has raised some concern. What if we’ve been working on a boss for X amount of weeks and a Social happens to be in the raid that evening when we do down him? Will they get that awesome item that a Raider needs? A Raider who has been working X amounts of weeks on the boss and the Social only this one evening?
I find this a very difficult question to be honest. There are two sides to the story. Your Raiders might feel screwed over because they feel like they worked so much harder for the kill, and at the same time why would the Social bother coming if they know they’re not allowed to roll on loot unless no one else wants it? In the end, I think there is no other way than to simply leave everything to a roll, because in the end if a boss dies everyone was working as hard on that try, and deserve loot. I know a lot of people may not agree, but I don’t see us taking people along and then saying they can’t have loot, because then they wouldn’t want to go anyway.
I think there are a lot of things to work out still, and I don’t even know yet if my guild will go for the raiding/social idea I have. But this is what I would really like for my guild to be. I want to raid (I love raiding), but I also want there to be enough people for just chatting or doing fun, silly things.
What do you guys think? Does it work to combine social with raiding and if you have, how have you worked out the details of loot priority, raid spots etc.?
Recently I was asking a friend of mine for ideas for blog topics because I wasn’t quite sure what to write about. She suggested writing about how playing in a male-dominated environment has changed me. It sounded like an awesome topic, only I can’t actually think of any way that it actually has changed me. The one thing that stands out to me is the use of language. People in games curse a lot. I used to never curse, suddenly I find myself saying words I never thought I would.
My Aversion To Cussing
Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely no saint and I don’t put my nose up at those who curse – but I used to take pride in knowing the language and proving that I didn’t need to use such words to get my point across. This all stems back to a teacher I had when I was 15 (loooong time ago) who calmly told us all off when we used curse words. Not even bad ones, just the ones that have slipped into every-day language – like “Damn that was a fine meal!” She made a point that if you had to use curse words it was because you didn’t know the language well enough to use another, better, word.
After that, I made a point out of not cursing. I had dreams (and still do) of being an author, and therefore would not stoop to that level. (I was 15 and pretentious.. what else can I say.) That did stick with me though, and I still don’t like it when I curse.
Language in WoW
When playing WoW you quickly learn the abbreviations like LFG, WTF, QQ and so on. I will use those, because their actual abbreviations, but you’d never catch me saying “plx”, “thx” or anything else that’s not a proper abbreviation, it’s just lazy typing. But I’m also using gaming words like “noob” and “fail” (I know “fail” isn’t a gaming word solely, but I find we use it in a special way that I never did before).
Cursing happens quite a bit, there’s a lot of WTF and fuck this and fuck that. Worst of all is, I find myself sometimes slipping out with a “fuck” – and I hate it. I don’t like that word really, and hearing myself say it on vent really annoys me. My Guild Master says he’s taking the full blame for me using it because he curses too much in raids. (Personally I rather blame him cause he makes me so mad when he yells in raids!) But in the end, I guess I can deal with the occasional curse getting through.
Words/Phrases I really Dislike
Then there are a few things people say in WoW that really annoy me. There are two in particular that I can think of straight off the bat, because they are just so wrong - on every level.
“That’s so gay”. “You’re gay.” Or any variation of it. In the gaming community the word “gay” is used to put someone/something down. It’s something bad, non desirable. I don’t quite understand how this happened, is the gaming community so much against gay people? I would have put it down to the 12 year olds that play the game, except for the fact that I hear my own guild members 20-30+ years old use it. I’ve even used it myself without thinking sometimes, and then I sort of give a little mental slap to myself. What the hell am I saying?
I’m so sick of “gay” being used as something bad that no one wants to be. Can’t we just say “You’re stupid”? Because really that’s what we mean when we say it. Using the word in a context where it doesn’t belong just ruins the original meaning of the word.
Next to “gay” comes my other big bugbear. “The horde/alliance just raped me”. “With this spec you’ll rape faces.” Some people might say that I’m over-reacting – but I do not think we should use the word “rape” in a sense that makes the word worth less. Rape is a serious thing. By people using it to describe actions in a game (that really have nothing to do with rape) we are de-sensitising ourselves to the word. When someone says the word “rape” people should listen. If people are using it in a different context people will stop thinking about it in its proper sense.
One of my best friends was raped a few years ago, and trust me – there is nothing laughable about the word “rape”. So please, let’s stop using it in any other context than its original purpose.
Yo, Bitch!
Last, but not least – I want to mention women/girls calling their girlfriends “bitch”. Maybe I’m over sensitive, but I don’t think bitch is a nice word. If a guy calls you a bitch you’d be biting his head off – so what makes it okay for women to call each other the very same word? To me it’s like an open invitation for guys to do it too. “But she called you bitch! It’s all just for fun!”
I wince every time I hear the word bitch, because to me it has bad connotations – and I suspect to a lot of other women as well. The fact that it’s a girlfriend saying it as a joke doesn’t really change that for me, and I really prefer if we could all just stop using it. Same with lootwhore and similar words. Anything with the word whore in it sounds horrible. You might use it about a guy and think it’s harmless, then you use it about a woman and she might actually take offense.
I think people forget that it’s not just words. They may have been used in the past to hurt people, and while you may just use them in jest that is not how they’re received. When someone is angry with a woman it’s easy for them to quickly go for the words bitch and whore, so using the same words in jest doesn’t quite cut it. Because we all know there is a serious side to it too.
What are your experiences? Do you have words/phrases in WoW/games that you don’t think should be there, or be used in that way?
PS. I’m sorry if this post seems disjointed, I’m stuck with a horrible headache and nausea, so my thoughts may not be as clear as I’d like to have them. But I still wanted to get this post out since I’m already late. Grrr for a busy schedule.
Mondays are always bad days, I’m like Garfield – I hate Mondays. You’ve just finished the weekend and you really don’t want to be back at work/school just yet – and you know this is just the first day of your week.
To cheer myself (and hopefully some others) up here’s another pick of my favourite YouTube WoW Movies. The song and video makes me feel like Disney just bought the rights to WoW – but since I was a big Disney fan when I was a kid… teenager.. okay I might still watch one once in a while, I really enjoy it.
Some time ago I got a question posted in my comments section asking whether I was interested in making some gold. Of course I was, who isn’t? The person asking was no one other than Markco from Just My Two Copper, and when I said I was a total noob when it comes to gold making he decided to give me some pointers (that he said I could also post on my blog).
I’m not someone who hangs out at the Auction House all that much, or take chances – so I probably could have made a lot more gold than I did. But by selling various stuff I got while leveling, selling epic (cut) gems (I have a JC and two transmution specialists, so it works out nicely) and a few other bits and bobs I’ve gone from my original 10-12k gold to above 50k. For me, that’s quite nice.
Below you can send the guest post Marcko wrote for me on how to make gold, maybe it will help some of you as well
Current Balance
*****
Saga, so you want to make some gold? How about you sit back, relax and grab some noggenfogger to pass the time while you read up on how you can become a zillionaire in wow! What, you don’t believe me? What if I told you there’s a forum (and it’s the first place I recommend you check out) where there are about half a dozen wow millionaires? Your first assignment is to check out the profession forums and I don’t mean on the wow forums! At the JMTC gold forums you’ll find everything you need to make gold whether you have addon problems, noob questions or just want to read about how other players have succeeded. With thousands of members and over 30,000 posts I’m sure you’ll find something you can use to help you get started.
Ok so I gave you the greatest tip I could first, now how about some more specific information with regards to your professions. Since you have every profession I’m going to go all out and give you a handful of cross-profession tips which will really put you on top of your competition.
Saronite Ore -> Uncommon Gems + crystallized earth -> Rings/Necks for infinite dust
Frostweave Cloth + infinite dust -> Frostweave Bags
Saronite Bar -> Transmute Titanium Bar + Additional Saronite Bars -> Titanium Rod or Titanium Plating or Titanium Shield Spike or Titanium Weapon Chain
Saronite Ore -> Uncommon Gems + Eternals -> Transmute Meta Gems -> Cut Meta Gems
Cobalt Bar -> Cobalt War Axe -> Greater Cosmic Essences
Essences + Dust + Armor/Weapon Vellum III’s (from inscription) -> Enchanted Vellums
Saronite Ore -> Rare Gems + Eternals -> Transmute Epic Gems (GET TRANSMUTE SPEC PLZ!!!!1one11!)-> Cut Epic Gems
Additional Powerful Resources:
Last but not least, addon help time! Check out the addon section of the JMTC gold forums as well as my articles on Snatch List and 22 Steps to Using Auctioneer.
That’s all for today Saga, hopefully I have set you well on your way to becoming an auction house pro! Be sure to check out the resources I listed here as well as my daily updated wow gold blog and don’t be shy about becoming part of the community I’ve worked so hard to create.
Markco out!
What do you guys do to make gold? Are you an Auction House pro or do you grind dailies etc.? Or do you simply not care?
I was reading MMO-Champion (as I do pretty much ever day since I’m a glutton for Cataclysm information), and there was this image of the new models for the faction leaders. Now, aside from the fact that Ysera and Sylvanas – both supposedly (at least originally when it comes to Sylvanas) are night elves – have obviously blood elf bodies something else struck me. The human models for Jaina and Varian Wrynn look good.
Now, don’t get me wrong – most of my characters are human females. I just love their animations when fighting and some of their faces are okay. When I was horde I found them plain and boring, but I’ve grown to love them. However, when compared to Jaina’s face – you can see that the graphics could be so much better.
See the difference?
Then of course there are the male humans. I’ve always found their faces to be absolutely horrible (them and night elf male) there is not a single handsome male face among them. Then you see Varian’s face – and you go like. Why can’t they look like that?
Seriously? Ugliest face in game?
My friend says that our models can’t look like that because they’re faction leaders and they should look special. Sure, I’m all for them looking special. But isn’t it enough that they might have special clothes/armour and a face that no one can choose? Why can’t we have similar faces in the sense that we have the good graphics?
I noticed already in TBC that Blizzard could do a lot better than the faces we could pick at the creation screen. Inside Magister’s Terrace you meet this guy. His face definitely look a lot better than the original male faces.
Pretty Boy
I really wish Blizzard could give us some updated graphics for our character models. They obviously could do so much better.
This post I did focus on the human faces for sure, mainly because the night elf model (Ysera) doesn’t even look like a night elf, and Malfurion.. looks like a bird. If you want to see all of the faction leaders from MMO-Champion you can check this link. (Btw, is it just me or does Garrosh look like a total knucklehead?)
Which character models do you think need an update/upgrade?
Some time ago I wrote a post about respecting your tank. The reason behind it was that a lot of new tanks get a lot of grief when they first start running Heroics. Recently I’ve been playing my Priest quite a bit while gearing her up in Heroics and while you definitely don’t get the same kind of grief that you get as a new tank there are a whole other aspect of things you encounter as a healer.
Buffing Takes Mana
When I first zone into a new Heroic the first thing I do (after saying hello) is to buff everyone, including self-buffs that I need. As a Priest this means 4 different buffs, 3 if I skip Shadow Protection (there are a few instances where this one is useful). After these buffs I am at about 50% mana. Please, tanks and dps, after the healer has buffed the entire party let them sit down to drink if they want to. I know some well-geared healers don’t care and are good to go, me personally – I like to sit down and drink for a few seconds. It’s infinitely annoying to then see the tank and dps run off and start the first pull.
Dispelling
This is a pet peeve of mine. Maybe dps classes don’t realise because they never played a healer, but not every healer has every kind of dispel. If you’re a paladin, shaman, druid, mage, priest and so on – the fact that you’re in the Heroic as a dps or tank doesn’t mean that you’re suddenly unable to hit your dispel buttons. Please help your friendly neighbourhood healer by dispelling things that you can. If you’re taking insane damage from a poison and the poison isn’t taken off you, odds are you have a Priest for a healer and we can’t remove poisons.
It’s not about doing the job for the healer – it’s about helping out. Undispelled debuffs generally cause more damage, meaning the healer has to waste more mana and time healing things that wouldn’t have to be healed if you helped out. Again, over-geared healers probably don’t have a problem with this – but not every healer is ICC geared.
Don’t Stand In The Stupid
This is a simple rule that goes for everyone everytime everywhere.
J u s t d o n ‘ t s t a n d i n s h i t t h a t h u r t y o u.
It’s that simple. Your healer will love you for moving out of it and might happily give you some healing after that when you make an actual mistake. Being too lazy to move out of the stupid because “the healer can heal me through it” is not an approved technique of playing.
See That Blue Bar? It’s Mana. If It’s Running Low – Let The Healer Drink.
I love a tank that keeps an eye on my mana bar and slows down or stops pulling when I sit down to drink. Sure, I’ll say in party char when I need to drink, but those special tanks that you don’t even have to tell – I just love them. I like to be that tank myself. Everyone says the tank sets the pace for the instance – and while that’s partly true – I think that the tank and the healer in combination set the pace for the instance.
If you’re the tank and decide to pull superfast, that’s all well and nice, but if your healer is oom you’ll still wipe. For that very reason, please pay attention to the blue bar.
Resurrection
Trust me, any healer worth it’s weight will resurrect you when you die. Yelling “REZ ME” won’t make it quicker. If you haven’t been resurrected despite the fight being over the most likely reasons for this are 1) The healer doesn’t have the mana to do it yet and is sitting down to drink, or 2) You’re still in combat.
Just wait an extra few seconds and I’m sure you’ll find that the healer is resurrecting you. Not yelling about it will probably gain you an extra heal when you are resurrected as well. Because we like people who don’t yell at us. Also, saying thanks will probably get you more heals throughout the rest of the instance too. We’re fickle like that. We like polite people and will heal you a bit extra if we like you.
Don’t Tank If You Shouldn’t
If you’re not defense capped – don’t enter Heroics. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – new tanks are good (we need them), but don’t enter Heroics before being defense capped. Have 21k health and be defense capped, I don’t care – but don’t come in and not be crit-immune.
Same goes for dps who think they’re tanks. You know threat and aggro management? Work on it. I don’t want to heal leather wearers or even plate wearers who aren’t tanks. If you’re a fury warrior with awesome gear? I don’t care. You’re not crit immune, you shouldn’t tank. I can spam heal you, but if that boss crits you – you’re still dead.
Pull According To Your Party’s Limits
If the tank is now awesomely geared, there’s no point in pulling a whole room at a time. Most likely even while being spam healed the tank will die, and so will everyone else. I’ve also seen well-geared tank who pull big packs, not realising (or not caring) that the dps is not well-geared and therefore killing said big packs will take too long, doing nothing but draining your healer’s mana.
Pulling bigger packs isn’t necessarily always quicker. If your group is well-geared and can aoe them down, then yes. But if your group is a ragtag group of newish 80s, then it’s only going to take longer because your healer will have to sit down and drink after every pull.
Eat Something!
Another one I’ve said before. If your healer is sitting down to drink they obviously need mana. If you’re not on full health, why not take the opportunity to sit down and eat something as well, or bandage? I especially notice this in Heroic Halls of Reflection. My gear is a mix of pvp and pve, with some really crappy pieces in it. My mana regen is atrocious and I have to sit down and drink after virtually every wave. It drives me nuts to see dps just standing there waiting for the next wave at 75-80% health instead of sitting down and eating something. All it does is make me waste more mana.
In Conclusion
Just try to be respectful of everyone in your party; new tanks, new healers – even new dps. I’m sick of tanks who are pricks because they “are a tank”. Well, yeah – I have three tanks myself, and I don’t act as a prick on any one of them. Be mindful of your party – pull according to gear and let people eat and drink. Don’t go ahead and pull just to make it quicker or for the sake of pulling. I think you will find that it won’t make it quicker at all, but rather the opposite.
In short, I really just want us all to not be asshats and look out for the party.
While having nothing else to do this weekend I was browsing YouTube and found some really good WoW videos. One of my favourites was this one by Cranius and Legs. I’ve seen Cranius before – he’s also the man who brought us the awesome Big Blue Dress song and video. It made me want to roll a mage back in the day!
This one is called Wrought, and even if you don’t enjoy the song itself – you should watch the movie because the story is really good.
RSS Feed
@spellboundsaga
Deviantart
Spellbound Stories