Monthly Archives: August 2012

Second pair at 80

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My second pair, a warlock and a druid, are now at level 80. I got there faster than I thought I was going too. Patch 5.0.4 dropped on Wednesday and I was about 3/4 of the way through level 74 at the time. Anyway, I logged in on Friday morning intending to get it to perhaps level 76. I wanted to tank a dungeon on my paladin, but I hate pure pugging, so I was waiting till some guildmates come online. Anyway I started levelling and before I knew it I was level 76 and so I kept going and by lunchtime I was level 80.

Now I’ve not seen any announcement, or a datamined report, that the Wrath xp has been nerfed but it must have been. I know that the Cata xp was nerfed this patch so maybe they just extended that a little. Either way comparing the two isn’t very fair now. However, I didn’t have Have Group Will Travel which did mean more travelling time, on the other hand I had the benefit of aoe loot.

Anyway the /played time was 1 day and 5 hours. I did make a couple of adjustments to when I hit certain dungeons, and I added a few dungeons in. All told I felt it went a little easier this time round with the benefit of experience. There are certain bosses which killed my boosting characters every single time though.

I have all the enchanting mats up to 425 ready, and some cata mats. I need to work on getting more of those. I also have a lot of cloth left over. I have a fair bit of low level cloth already that I know is excess. Hopefully I’ll be able to make a little on this in Mists with the rerollers. Failing that hopefully I’ll be able to help my friends.

The only question now is now what? I can’t get on with other faction stuff, as I can’t faction change the second paladin until after Mists. Given that the xp nerf was applied in 5.0.4 I could level the warlock to 85. I’m pretty sick of Cata levelling so I might not, it depends what I feel like. I won’t be boosting any more pairs, though I have another seven weeks I think of RaF left. I’m ready for Mists basically. The achievement nut in me doesn’t like that none of my bars are fully green anymore, what’s worse is I can’t even go after all the new achievements yet to make them green. Oh how you torment me blizz. Hopefully the pre-expansion events will be more, than just one scenario in the last week before Mists, so I can get on with that in the month that’s left.

Happy Patch Day

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This post could just as easily have been entitled “Surviving the pandamonium” or “A taste of things to come”. The first referencing surviving the patch to start Mists of PANDAria (see it was a deliberate spelling mistake), the second because of all the blog topics I now have in mind.

I remember when the world changed for Cata. I was excited to see the changes and annoyed at the bugged exploring achievements (which were never fixed). However, the patch was just an exciting event and I wasn’t really affected by it. I just logged on and played like I always did. This time it was very different, and several hours later I’m still not at the stage I was when I logged off Tuesday night.

The talent system has changed, abilities have been changed/removed/added, glyphs are all different, rotations are different. I’ve not even got this set up right yet on my protection paladin, I haven’t even done my ret offspec yet. I have an alt of every class so some might not get set up until Mists at this rate.

I also run a fair few addons now. I decided to wipe the slate clean with Mists and deleted all the addons, and the wtf folder (after backing it up of course), to clean it up. I’d had a custom ui on my paladin and so I decided to rebuild that and then roll it out to all my characters. Addons, even updated ones, and patches don’t tend to mix so I’ve still not got this properly sorted on one character, let alone all of them.

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Mog My Closet: Runeblade of Baron Rivendare

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Anyone who’s run Stratholme, hundreds of times for the mount, will understand the joy you feel when you’re numbly looting and see an epic item. When you realise it’s not the mount, it takes that elation away, leaving you feeling worse than seeing yet another Helm of the Executioner. However, that does the Runeblade an injustice as it’s an awesome looking sword, much too awesome looking to sit in the bank.

Be warned though that if you try for the Runeblade you will drive yourself just as insane as trying for the mount.

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Bringing transmogrification to the account level

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In Mists of Pandaria mounts, pets, titles and achievements are going to the account level. What you have on one character you will have on all characters. There are some exceptions most notably a large amount of pvp associated items. However, for the most part these features are going account wide.

Transmog is a purely cosmetic feature which allows further customization of our characters. We have to choose what gear we wear because of stats and sometimes our personal tastes mean we hate the tier set. In the past we’d wear it as we had no choice, now we can wear it for the stats and transmog into something we do like the look of.

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Mog My Closet: The Achiever

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I put this together in MogIt when I was searching for my Mists look, for the start of level 90 anyway, and I like it well enough but not enough to ever collect it. I don’t know if it’s the blending of the colours but it’s just not my cup of tea. However, I like it well enough to share it with the world, perhaps in the hope that it’ll suit someone else, better than it suits me.

You will need the 25 tabards achievement for this look.

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The Fifth Element

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When I wrote the post about why Mists was such a big deal I mentioned potential. Each expansion has added something, and that something has become a staple of the game, and been added too in future expansions. Mists is adding a whole host of new features which will become part of that staple, so what could they add in the fifth expansion? Unless the world explodes then there will be a fifth expansion. I’m not going to speculate on the lore of that, that’s for another post, this is about features.

In Mists we’re getting Pet Battles, Challenge Modes, Scenarios and more. What could we have in the 5th instalment of the warcraft universe?

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Mog My Closet: Argent Crusade

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I was thinking of what my new look would be in Mists. I’ve been running the Argent Tournament everyday getting those mounts now we’re on the expansion downtime. I put the tabard on to teleport there and then I take it off again. So, when I was needing inspiration for a transmog set I thought “why not use the tabard”. I won’t be using this one myself for some time due to some pieces being from T11 heroics. Therefore I thought I’d share it.

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Thoughts on Mists Cinematic

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The Mists cinematic was released on Thursday afternoon and the reaction to it has been decidedly mixed. Some loved it, some hated it; some liked it for different reasons, some were just a bit meh about it.

When I first saw it I was excited, it was the cinematic that was the first sign that Mists would soon be upon us. This was the start of the pre-expansion events and I want Mists to be released yesterday so I was excited. I watched it and the one thing that stuck with me was Chen’s expression when the Alliance soldier handed the Horde orc a weapon so they could both fight this new threat together. It was a very self satisfied smirk.

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Mog My Closet: The Fire Core

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I love this set so much. It took me several months to put it together due to the random nature of drops. I wanted a Firelands/Molten Core set that wasn’t a dress (which both T12 and Judgement were) as I do loathe dresses – particularly on my paladin. You could say this is my version of T12.

I hope someone out there likes it as much as I do. Oh and this is only for paladins as some of the pieces are class restricted.

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Heroic Realms – A Possible Future?

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I’ve written a few posts about warcraft and difficulty, about accessibility and the endless hardcore vs casual debate. The Grumpy Elf wrote a post the other day about how removing the grind was killing the game. I then went on the forum and cast my eye down the most popular topic list. I don’t post on the forum and I can’t read too much as there are a lot of trolls there. However, I do dip in every now and again.

This thread argued that a new realm type should be created. We have pve realms, pvp realms and rp realms. Why don’t we have heroic realms? The original poster had obviously thought about what they were suggesting, as the big argument against such realms is development time. My immediate reaction was to shake my head in disagreement, but then I actually read the post all the way through, and I thought that there were some good points there.

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