WoW

Making Myself a ‘Better’ Player #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

stargrace November 3, 2011 3Comments

When I play an MMO I typically take it upon my self to ‘be all that I can be’ when it comes to my character. I know this opens up a can of worms about the min/max that goes on in games, but it’s just one of my many generic ‘goals’. I like to be good at playing my character. I don’t like to be a liability for the group I’m in, and it’s fun to know that I play well. If I don’t play well at least it’s not from lack of effort. I don’t hold this over other players heads because personally it doesn’t matter to me how they play their own characters. I just take pride in the things that I do, and I don’t really think there’s anything wrong with that until you start projecting negative attitudes towards other players. If you harp on them for not being ‘as good’ as you and tease and make fun of people then I will very quickly have a problem.  That being said there are a few sites I use in order to learn more about my characters for World of Warcraft. You can play just fine without using any external resources, especially if you’re really good at figuring out the mathematics of the game yourself but I am not one of these people.

ElitistJerks (forums) – Now doesn’t this forum sort of go against everything I believe in as a gamer? Sort of. I only read the class sections and I stay away from every sort of comment that vaguely resembles someone trolling. Forums are notorious for flame wars and that’s really not something that I need to get involved with. If you can look past the ‘elite’ attitude of gamers you’ll find some fantastic information. You just need to develop a bit of a selective reading skill. It gets easier over the years. My issue with this forum is that as time goes on there are fewer and fewer updates by people who really know their class. I’m hoping when 4.3 goes live this may change a bit.

MaxDPS.com – a site I’ve only recently started using, this gives you a choice of stats to input and then find optimal gear for your character. It also includes things like spell rotations, and talents. There are some faults with the site, for example they only have one rogue spec listed (combat) and the gear is a bit behind. I couldn’t find some of my pieces listed. Still, it came in handy.

AskMrRobot.com – I was just told about this site yesterday, and I absolutely love it. You can input your character from the armory and then optimize to find gear that’s BiS (Best in Slot). It also tells you which gems, enchants, and reforges would suit your spec the most, and allows you to customize what tier of gear you’re aiming for. You can leave off certain BiS options like ‘Too lazy to get exalted rep’ – if you select this it won’t list gear for you that requires exalted reputation. Using this site I was able to narrow down what upgrades I should work towards, where they came from, and then what to do with them.

PLAYING a character well is still something that’s completely up to you. If you’re going to constantly stand where you shouldn’t stand, you’re going to die. If you run ahead of the tank, are impatient and pull on your own, constantly badmouth someone in your group, or any other number of ‘bad player’ things you’ll never be one of those ‘good players’. It doesn’t take high dps to be a good player. My warlock is a great example of this. She’s wearing pretty poor gear at the moment and only parses around 5-7k dps, but I know where to stand and what to do on specific fights. Staying alive and not being a dumbass dying to certain encounters is just as important as being able to parse high. When you’re able to do both, well now, that’s what I strive for. My priest is getting there, I have 0 raid gear and can hold a steady 11-12k dps on single targets, I’ve been able to parse as high as 42k on group encounters depending on how many adds there are. None of that matters if I don’t know enough to move out of the way when a flaming ball of lava is headed in my direction.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Working on Those Fireland Dailies #WoW

stargrace November 2, 2011 0Comment

I finally earned enough Mark of the World Tree tokens to complete the first request for 150 of them. It takes 9 days of daily quests to unlock the second ‘hub’ and you have a choice of two of them. Once you’ve unlocked that one it will take another 5 days of daily quests to unlock the third ‘hub.’ In total it takes approximately one month of daily quests to complete the ‘event’. There’s a fantastic write up about it over on icy-veins that I suggest people check out if they’re interested in the specifics. Right now I’m doing daily quests from the Shadow Wardens, and once I’ve gathered another 150 Marks I’ll be doing the quests for the Druids of the Talon. There are numerous rewards for all of this including three vendors with some really nice items for sale, gear, patterns, and companion pets.

I’ve been doing these quests with my priest and I’m kicking myself for not having started them with the warlock. I’ve put so much time and effort into the priest that it’s finally focused me to playing a ‘main’ which is great, most of the time.

You’ll have to forgive my lack of posts this month (or lengthy posts in any case) as I’m participating in NaNoWriMo for the month (feel free to add me to your buddy list!) but I’ll try to keep the site updated with what I’m up to and any quests of interest. Honestly the majority of my time is spent working on these fireland dailies, and when I’ve completed those I head to Tol Bard and do the dailies there. It leaves me with two dailies free, and I have been working on the cooking and fishing quests in Ironforge so I can complete the achievement for them. I see a lot of people upset (and some not so upset) about the new companion pets that are being sold in the Blizzard store, but it doesn’t really bother me. I saw some trying to be sold for 10k yesterday (someone was looking for reserves) but I didn’t see very many people interested in it. I guess we’ll see where it goes.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

Everyone Loves a Dragon Sighting #WoW #WorldofWarcraft

stargrace October 25, 2011 1Comment

Apparently this massive dragon is a rare occurrence on my server of Argent Dawn, and last night was my first time seeing the event. From trade chat I gather that this event takes place as a player obtains their legendary weapon, but aside from those few details I know absolutely nothing about it. Anyone else able to shed some light for me? Nonetheless it was really neat to see.

There, I’ve Said it. I Play WoW (And EVE) #WoW

stargrace October 24, 2011 7Comments

This weekend was one of those weekends where I almost hate to admit that I play (and enjoy) World of Warcraft. That’s how heavy the snark was that hung in the air. It’s not the first time I’ve dealt with this situation, but it’s yet another reminder of how judgmental people can be. Especially people who are passionate about their hobby (which in this case happens to be gaming). I’ve been on G+ for a little while now (you can find my profile here if you want to add me) and I have a few ‘circles’ of people that I post to. One happens to be a general gaming circle, which I’ve diversified into an EVE Online circle + general gaming, because as it turns out EVE players do NOT like to see posts about other games. Especially not games called WoW. During one post that was actually about social interactions and the lack of finding a ‘home’ in an MMO some random player decided to tell me that since I had posted about WoW, they were going to remove me from their circle. This was the first comment I had seen like that – but not the last. It didn’t matter that I consider myself a nomadic gamer bouncing from game to game, or what I actually had to say. They saw the words “world of warcraft” and panic set in.

Blizzcon lead the way to the announcement about the next expansion which is going to introduce a new race and a new class as well as some interesting vanity pet combat games. Personally, I think the race is an interesting concept and one that has been around for quite some time. EQ2 also has a panda race, and players can quest for illusion items in order to ‘play’ them. The monk class reminds me of a combination between druid and paladin. Able to tank, dps, and heal, but wears leather and is melee combat focused. I haven’t decided if I’ll create one yet but I think it’s pretty safe to say that I will. I don’t find the expansion all that incredible but of course I’m going to wait until it actually launches (or I can test it) before I pass too much judgement. It doesn’t surprise me that Blizzard is feeling some pressure now in the MMO market, after all they’ve been ‘top dog’ for quite a long time and probably don’t know anything else. Years have passed and eventually they’ll have to fall. How they handle themselves during the next little while will make all the difference in the world.

Right now the Halloween event is in game and I’ve been trying to win the headless horse mount which comes from the daily reward. So far, no luck. Last year my warlock managed to win one but the priest just has really bad luck when it comes to that sort of thing. Alterac Valley happened to be the battleground for the weekend, which is my favorite battleground of all time so I spent most of my evening grinding honor points and purchasing a few more upgrades. I picked up the helm and now I’m working towards the honor required for a weapon. 3500 is a long way to go, but I think I can do it. Once I’ve finished of my dps set I’ll continue working on a heal spec. I’ve got a few pieces collected so far (back, shoes, weapon, and pants) but would really like to finish the set off.

In the mean time there’s always archaeology to finish off and crafting to be done. I still haven’t maxed out my tailoring or enchanting, although I have a number of other crafts that are currently finished. There’s lots to do (as always) and I’m enjoying the fact that I split my time between WoW and EVE, two VERY different games but both equally fun and relaxing to me. I hope everyone else had an amazing weekend, no matter where you found yourself.

Happy gaming!