Archive for May, 2008

World of Warcraft is a great game - I’m sure I’m preaching to the converted here… even those who have been disillusioned and left for some reason can still likely say that the game is pretty great, but some of the game’s aspects or followers, perhaps, weren’t.

At any rate, despite holing myself up in a Guild of One recently, I want to say that Yes, I still think World of Warcraft is a pretty great game, and I have no real intention of being completely devoid of social contact in this Massively Multiplayer Online game.

But I can definitely say that what I looked forward to a month ago is different than what I look forward to today, and today I feel much happier about the future than I did a month ago.

Looking Towards The Future

I’ve always enjoyed the life of a Casual player, so getting into Raiding was an interestying foray, but not ultimately what I’ve wanted to do with my time.

Now that I have my free time back, I’m looking towards the future and making some plans.

I’m kind of, but not really, looking at setting some goals that I can have done by the time The Lich King expansion pack comes out, whenever that may be. I haven’t clearly defined my goals yet, however, nor do I keep up on the latest of when it’s coming out.

Heck, I’m still entertained plenty in the Azeroth areas and dungeons - getting the expansion pack isn’t a huge goal of its own, other than the fact that everyone will have it and I might as well get it too.

Some Goals For Before LK Releases

Priest
My first Toon Family goal is to get my 63 Priest to 70 through a combination of reputation-specific quests and healing in PUGs.

As a Jewelcrafter, I’ll be focusing on The Consortium reputation for this toon, and will probably dive into the Shattered Sun dailies once I hit 70 so I can get all of those recipes as well.

While I’m levelling through dungeons or questing for specific reputation gain, I plan to be making recordings with the intent of making various videos. I’d really love feedback on these things once I start posting them, to help me improve both in my healing and in my video-making.

Like my thoughts, I’m sure the topics will range far and wide, venturing even into the ridiculous.

Druid
I’ve got a level 30 Druid who has been level 30 for a number of months. I’d like to get her to at least 60, because I’m sure with the expansion pack there’ll be a large number of Death Knights looking to party their way through the Outland instances even when Northrend is up and going.

I’m looking forward to putting some real time and love into the Druid - it’ll be my first truly Hybrid toon of any level, and I intend to practice all of its aspects so I’m good at switching around between DPS, Healing and Tanking as the group requires.

And I’m sure a lot of PUGs will give me a lot of opportunity to hone and improve those skills… only to have “what works and what’s needed” change all around when the expansion comes out ;)

Shaman and Paladin

I have teen-level Shaman and Paladin characters that have been sitting for a bit while I got caught up in raiding - I’m thinking if I can get them both to 58 or so for the expansion and situate the Shaman as a healer and the Pally as a tank, these in combination with the Druid will give me awesome angles of others playing their DeathKnights when the expansion hits. (can you tell I don’t plan to roll one right away?)

Mage
I love my Mage but would rather advance up my plethora of other toons because with the gear level my Mage is at, raiding and heroics are the only “real” challenges, and I don’t want to get back into raiding. I ponder on PUGging Karazhan for the badges, hoping to find a group each week that can accomplish a fast run (ie: under 3 hours would be nifty), but know that would just lead to invites to other things on my Mage, who I largely don’t want to invest time in anymore.

I’ll probably mainly bring him out to run my lowbie Shaman and Pally through quests or dungeons once in a while, and to help out friends who I trade favors with.

Hunter
No real goals, aside from respec’ing to a solid pet-centric solo spec and using this toon to help my friends and lower toons (on the other WoW account) complete quests or obtain gear from Azeroth dungeons.

But For Now…

But for now, it’s time to head outside into the sunshine and take advantage of the warmth that is springtime.

Yet another wonderful thing I can do with my time, less committed!

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So, here I am, back in the Casual Gamer seat that I much prefer, after a brief foray into the experience of a mid-range raiding guild (2/4 in TK, 4/6 in SSC, 1/4 in MH - thanks for the correction on how many bosses are in each ;) ).

I had a lot of fun while raiding and gained a huge amount of confidence regarding Heroics, PUGs and holding my own in 5, 10 and 25-person raids (Troll Frost Mages R Teh Roxxorz ;) ), but the whole “raiding guild” experience took up a lot of my play time.

When I wasn’t raiding, I was gathering consumables - herbs for elixirs and oils, fish for buff foods, primals for enchants on new badge gear upgrades… and as a regular user of consumables throughout most of my grouped play time, I was on the “A” Team of DPS/CC that would be called upon when Heroics teams were being formed to farm 4-9 instances in an afternoon.

Some of my guildmates did Dailies on a regular basis, but I simply didn’t have time for it. If I was able to complete the daily Cooking and Fishing quests on both of my level 70 characters I’d be ecstatic, but it mainly turned out that I got one or two dailies done on one toon, that’s it.

But now! Now I have time to ponder the wonders that are Daily Quests!

Now I’m not collecting collecting collecting for my own raiding needs. And yes, I bought some of my materials too, because I wanted to PLAY not FARM… but it all took a lot of time.

So, I’m wondering what Daily Quests YOU do on your level 70s?

Are there ones that are short and simple like the Cooking daily gets to be once you have a stock of cooking materials that will be called upon for use?

Are there ones that give me new recipes like the Cooking and Fishing dailies do?

What are the ones that have a chance of giving me a Heroics Badge? :)

So much to get caught up on :)

June 23 edit:
Check out what Amava Knows Aggro posted in response to this inquiry.

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I’m in a Guild of One, and I’m wondering how many more there are out there who are like me.

If you used to be in a Guild of One but went back into a more social guild environment, how long did you stay in your Guild of One?


About My Guild Of One

After I left the raiding guild I got into back in February, I wandered around guildless for a little while but started to notice that guilded players were, on occasion, behaving oddly towards me as I did some fishing and questing in Zangarmarsh.

I started to wonder if, perhaps, these individuals were thinking that I was a Gold Farmer, and they were attempting to grief me as I played.

What type of griefing? Well, in less than two days of playing unguilded, I saw no less than four attempts to “train” a bunch of mobs onto me.

If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s the name given to the process of gathering up the aggro of a bunch of mobs and then running out of their battle range in such a way that when they go to run back to their reset spots, they run past a target player in battle. If done correctly, the mobs running back to reset will join into the battle with the target player. If the target player isn’t paying attention or is actually a bot with very little human guidance, this strategy can be used to kill a target player, whether they’re Alliance or Horde.

So, since I was dual-boxing and dragging my low-60s healing-spec’d Priest through her Zangarmarsh quests by my 70 Hunter with a lot more firepower, I figured the least I could do to avoid being griefed while I quest on my own would be to have a guild tag.

But I have non-social goals in World of Warcraft right now - wanting to do more video recording and video editting and PUGs with strangers… all things that will result in more writing in this blog, and more regular socializing out-of-game than in-game. And I don’t want to offend anyone with my lack of conversation in-game, which means to me I shouldn’t put myself into a social guild environment.

“Silence Is Golden” is born

The decision was made, and a guild name of Silence is Golden was selected. I picked up a Guild Charter in Orgrimmar and headed to the Auction House to buy some supplies.

10 minutes later, I rode into the Valley of Trials on my Black War Kodo, and my bags full of … more bags.

I advertised on the General line in Durotar that I was looking to buy Guild Charter signatures, and I offered 1g + a 10 slot bag in return for the signatures.

It took less than an hour to get all the signatures I needed, and the guild was formed in Orgrimmar to complete the cycle of creation.


Thank You, *boot*

I then headed to the mailbox and sent messages to each of the charter signers, thanking them for signing the charter, and letting them know the guild is not meant to be a “real guild”, and therefore that I wish them luck in their adventures on this realm.

I attached another two 10 slot bags or a couple of pieces of green equipment to each thank-you letter, and sent another 5g to each of them as well.

Then, when everyone was logged out the next morning when I logged in, I removed all but my own toons.

Benefits Of My Own Guild

If you’re feeling more social in-game than I am right now, you’d probably be wondering what benefits there are, other than having a guild tag, to belonging to a guild that is shared with nobody else on the game.

  • First, there’s that Gold Farmer issue - guildless players are viewed with more suspicion than guilded ones. Even though my guild name isn’t well known, the fact that I’m able to “get into a guild” (ha ha) seems to speak something on its own. The fact that other players won’t have had a poor experience with someone in my guild already will also give me more credibility for an odd reason.

  • Second, there’s the Guild Bank. A central place to store items shared by my toons - potions, elixirs, raw materials for professions and the likes - and an easy way to track Auction House profits and repair expenses on a regular basis. Plus, since I have two WoW accounts, I can use the Guild Bank to get past the one-hour mailing delay of items, yet still don’t have to dual-box to trade.

Not a whole lot of benefits, but since my play time is not going to be social time for the most part for the next little while, this serves me well.

Expect to see a whole whack of videos coming out soon!

I’m also looking at getting a more professional WordPress theme developed for this site and I need to clean up the categories and tags, so stay tuned for updates over the next few weeks.

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