No, I’m not back.. my account is still very firmly in the “cancelled” state.. but I might be.. for an expansion.. you know depending on things. Where “things” include my first child who is due in a week. Yeah.. big things.

+experience Heirlooms:
The heirloom shoulders, chest pieces, cloaks, helms, legs and the ring grant staking experience gains. Up to a total of 50% additional experience. Sadly the ring is only available by winning the Kalu’ak Fishing Derby.

I found this very helpful chart in a comment on WowHead. Though the costs may be off.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
?   SLOT     ?      OBTAINED FROM          ?      COST      ?
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
? Helm       ? Guild - Level 20            ?          1500G ?
? Shoulders  ? WotLK - Dal/WG Vendors      ? 2175JP or 60CS ?
? Chest      ? WotLK - Dal/WG Vendors      ? 2175JP or 60CS ?
? Legs       ? Guild - Achievement         ?                ?
? Cloak      ? Guild - Level 10            ?          1200G ?
? Ring       ? Kalu'ak Fishing Derby       ?    Win Tourney ?
? Trinkets   ? WotLK - Dal/WG Vendors      ? 2725JP or 75CS ?
? Weapons*   ? WotLK - Dal/WG Vendors      ? 2175JP or 60CS ?
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Regardless, eventually my curiosity got the best of me. I can’t stand to be kept out of an area by a silly little wall. So I wandered off to check things out.

Finding #1: The Thunder King’s tugboat is kinda spiffy looking.

Finding #2: Sheer cliff walls are sheer.

Finding #3: I totally snuck in the back door and poked around in Thunder Dome. (Saurok slaves totally hate Eye of Kilrogg)

The two mini-bosses up there are pretty cool. I managed to down both of them. Of the two, the blood one (Fleshcrafter Hoku) was the more difficult. I didn’t see any Troves up there.. I don’t know if that’s because there aren’t any until the content is unlocked.. or if I didn’t see one because I’d already gotten a Trove that day. Dunno. Eventually I got bored with poking around forbidden content and went back to the new dailies.

I am a little bit puzzled. At the end of running the dailies I was checking with the quartermaster and found that one of the trinkets would be a HUGE upgrade for me. The Trinket requires Friendly reputation. So I checked my rep with SPA. I’m currently at neutral 290/3000. The curious part is I haven’t run the raid at all.. so the fact that I have -any- reputation with SPA is very curious. Teh Intarwebz says that the only way to get that reputation is through the raid. So.. I guess my current plan is to see if I can jump into a few trash runs on the raid and then use that to get up to 2999/3000 neutral and then do a quest to get into friendly. Can I even do trash runs if my gear is below the raid limit?

My “normal” guild on Nordrassil seems to have dried up. Honestly it wasn’t ever a huge guild to begin with just a few friends .. but after I went AFK for a year it seems to have petered down to nearly nothing. My normal guild is now level 14 and, with only two people playing, I don’t really see it hitting 25 anytime soon.

It happens that the “join our level 25 guild” invite came in just after I’d figured out that I didn’t have access to some of the new account bound items because I didn’t have a toon in an active level 20+ guild. So.. it’s convenient to get an invite to a level 25 guild that after a while (after I get honored with the guild) will allow me access to some pretty spiff perks, specifically the +experience head and leg heirlooms.

The problem.. is I feel a bit guilty -using- a guild so blatantly. “I’m only here for the perks” just seems.. wrong. It makes me a user. I don’t like that feeling.

Is it “ok” to -use- a guild for its perks?

Before level 15 and especially when I did that “boss” fight in the newbie area I found it VERY annoying to use up all of my mana in offensive spell casting and then get to the end and not have enough mana left over to heal myself.. even worse when I was run completely out of mana and didn’t have enough mana to prevent myself from dying. I think that’s ridiculous in a heal-capable class. “So ok,” I thought to myself, “the way to prevent this is to go with the least mana dependent spec.. so that way if I’m fighting and I need a heal I’ll still have mana available.” So initially I spec’d Enhancement and stopped chain-casting Lightning bolt. Instead I decided to focus on shocks and .. whatever the instant weapon strike things are called and let that be what killed the mobs. It worked for the most part.

It’s a good theory.. but honestly now that I think of it.. maybe not. Now that I think of it.. even in Enhancement I’ll be using mana.. and if I know Blizz.. they’d really prefer that for very hard fights all toons end the fight at -maybe- 30% mana.. if they’re lucky. So it seems like my “save a little bit for healing” plan isn’t going to be as easy as just changing specs.

Add to that.. when I rounded up all my account-bound armor/weapon/trinkets I find a decided caster heavy set emerging. The leather pieces I have are spell leather. I didn’t buy the agility leather. I have the +mana trinket. Added bonus.. at this point I don’t have enough points to just plunk down and buy the “right” armor for Enhancement spec.

I -could- still spec Enhancement.. and just suck it up that my armor will level with me.. but will ALWAYS be wrong for my spec.. yeah right. My OCD could not handle that. So instead I’m forced to decide between leveling Elemental or Restoration.

Now my eventual goal with this toon is to heal…so for at least the last 10 levels it makes sense to level resto to pick up the -right- gear.. but is there any reason to level resto before then?

The only reason I can come up with is that I want to be able to do instances.. and it -seems- that instances, even as you’re leveling, will be easier to get into if you’re spec’d to heal and I don’t -really- want to wait 80 levels before I try out the Resto playstyle.. but I’m not sure if those are really sufficient arguments.

I suppose I can make it a moot point by buying dual spec at 30.. but I’m still waffling.

Yes please.

The sad part, for me, is that I can’t log into the game again until next week. But you better believe I’ll be plunking down my valor the next day I get to log in.

BTW: AskMrRobot rocks my socks. Well worth the $12/year for full features. Just sayin’

Added bonus: MrRobot confides that new epic neck would put me at average ilvl 460. Noice!

For the boss fights I thought they ran exceptionally long. My poor baby shaman is plinking away at the boss and it’s taking for-ever.. and I KNOW the boss isn’t going to kill me.. and I KNOW that my warlock could kill this puny little boss in like one dot.. but instead I spent 5-8 minutes plinking away at the big badie. I suppose if I’d done this with 101 other people in the zone that the fight would have gone much more quickly.. but as a singleton.. yeah.. that was kind of long and boring. I didnt’ even have any cool buttons to push. IN FACT!!! In one of the boss fights I ran out of mana.. and was just hitting the boss for white damage for 80% of the fight. THAT TOTALLY SUCKED! (and coincidentally made me -REALLY- miss lifetap)

For the final “heal the turtle” quest I found it very difficult to do with only a single person. In the quest you have to free healers so they can run over an heal the gaping hole in the turtle. Then you need to protect them so they can get the turtle healed. So I’d run out in the field, find a healer who was fighting off a lizard dude. Help to kill of the lizard dude. Then talk to the healer to send him over to heal the turtle.. only.. as soon as I’d start talking to the healer another lizard dude would leap through the air and attack my healer.. so I spent a VERY long time killing lizards to “relieve” a healer only to immediatly find the healer jumped by even more lizard dudes. THEN, when I finally DID get a healer freed up they’d run over to the gaping wound and they’d get jumped by four lizard dudes. Four. I’m level freaking 12 and I’m fighting a non-stop fight to kill off four lizard dudes.. and THEY JUST KEEP COMING. In fact coming so fast no only can I not keep up, they keep killing off the one healer I have finally managed to free up.

Finally, after a VERY long time I figured out that there are also healers trapped under armor bits (which as an aside.. seriously? how did healers get trapped under armor bits? I was just questing in this area and they weren’t trapped under armor bits then.) So I freed about 3 healers who immediately got jumped by four lizard dudes. I tapped all four of the lizard dudes and dragged them away from the healers and FINALLY all of the damned NPCs who are just lolly-gagging around, not doing a damn thing, notice the bad lizard dudes and beat the tar out of them.

Again.. if I’d been doing this with 101 other newbies I’m sure it wouldn’t have been an issue.. but as a singleton it was not easy.. and even then I don’t get to have that warm glow of accomplishment.. because I didn’t really manage to protect them the whole time.. instead I just made creative use of the lazy NPC loitering about.

So anyway. Regardless I choose Alliance, not because of Aysa, but because that’s where most of my toons are already located. I popped up in Stormwind, did some running around there and then they routed me over to Westfall.

I haven’t done Westfall since probably BC. For the most part I tend to level Draenei who end up on the other continent and.. well frankly I haven’t leveled a new toon in a long time. This is the first time I’ve been through Westfall since the Cataclysm.

Um.. Wow. I suppose if you haven’t gone through it the next bit would be considered spoilers.. (and if you have it’s kind of “well duh” but whatever, it’s my blog I’ll write about it anyway).

So I’m a little bit vague about the details (I have a feeling they were spelled out in Elwyn Forest which I skipped) but for some reason there are a lot of people who have fled from Stormwind to Westfall. A lot of homeless, hungry people. And it seems that Westfall, the breadbasket of the Alliance, is suffering a bit of a drought. So the hungry homeless people are just well hungry and angry.. and very much heading towards “Occupy Westfall”.

Long long ago I ran regular Deadmines. I know the end boss was Edwin VanCleef who I believe was the head of the Defias Brotherhood. I’m sure I killed him a lot on several of my toons.

In Cataclysm I ran Heroic Deadmines.. but I didn’t know the lore behind it. I didn’t get why the new end boss was Vanessa VanCleef. I mean, yes, I get that she’s probably related to Edwin.. but the connection was just kind of a guess.

In playing through the new Westfall I have an improved appreciation for the story line and the connections. I think the “incense flashback” was inspired. You’re given a quest to burn incense inside the entrance to the Deadmines instance. The quest giver is the same Draenei who gave a similar quest in Northrend. AND!! there is a breadcrumb trail of neutral NPCs leading to the entrance of the mines. No more getting lost in the tunnels. When you burn the incense you see a cutscene showing you a party of 5 alliance characters killing Edwin VanCleef. After he dies the party celebrates, gets the loot and then runs off. A few seconds later a very young girl, Vanessa VanCleef, Edwin’s daughter, comes out of the ships cabin and /mourns the death of her father.

Suddenly, right there, we can see her motivation for being the “Shadowy figure” in Westfall inciting rebellion. It totally makes sense. I am a little bit sad that low-leveled characters who complete Deadmines don’t face Vanessa. I think those characters would have a greater understanding of the story line they’re witnessing. Instead Vanessa only shows up in the Heroic.. and only to toons who leveled through Westfall LONG before Vanessa existed as a storyline.

So yeah.. I’m pleased to be playing through the new-and-improved World. I look forward to seeing other areas to experience even more of the world’s lore.

I suppose I should prep.. heck I suppose I should have been prepping for the last few weeks.. but.. meh. I find myself below the barrier. My warlock is at ilvl 546 456. That’s 4 points shy of the hallowed 460 and I’m faced with rep grinding or 101 instances of “yet another heroic”.. and honestly I just can’t be bothered.

So what’s a poor grrl to do? That’s right, start a new toon and play through panda starter area. We’ll see how that develops.

My baby shaman,Sapph (short for Sapphire) is now level 18. Still interesting. That’s not to say my Warlock isn’t interesting. Just.. well the shaman is shiny and new.

When I’m doing a quest if I’m confused about what I’m supposed to do, or what to do next I consult the quest text. Usually there, carefully spelled out, is the instructions for this quest(“Oh! I’m supposed to take their picture with the camera, not kill them.. ok”). Rarely beyond that I need to consult the comments on WowHead to figure out what I’m doing wrong.

With Scenarios I’m finding that I miss the quest text and I am OFTEN confused about what I’m supposed to be doing or how I’m supposed to satisfy the requirements.

For example:
Last night I finished the Greenstone Village Scenario.

Part 1 “Rescue the Villagers” was frustrating since I (and eventually my whole group) got put in a green bubble and died because no one knew they needed to pop the bubbles. And, since I’ve been running Sacrifice, I didn’t have a pet out.** If I were Blizz I’d put some kind of timer on the bubbles.. ie, you can’t do anything and you’re trapped in this bubble for 30 seconds.. and it’s going to take away 80% of your health unless it’s popped. First time out the gate the bubble totally blind-sided me and managed to kill my whole group. Other than that it was pretty easy to figure out. Free these people so you can move on.

Part 2 “Rescue the Dojo” was frustrating because honestly I hadn’t identified which building was the Dojo. I was pretty close to the building when the stage changed.. I think it would have been easier to understand what was happening if I’d seen the big attacking dude walk up to the Dojo.. walk inside and start fighting. As it was he seems to have just appeared there. Other than that it was a pretty standard tank/spank.

Part 3 “Recover Burgled Barrels” was frustrating because the task text said “Return the barrels” but offered no suggestion as to where to return them to. It’s possible that the NPC said something.. but I didn’t see it. Eventually we figured out that they were to be “returned” to the Dojo.. but it wasn’t obvious. Updating the text to read: “Return the barrels to the Dojo” would have made this a lot simpler.

Part 4 “Rescue Greenstone Masons” At this point I did actually pop my map open.. and was surprised to notice that there were pointers on the map which made the location of the Masons much easier to figure out. I may need to make sure to pop the map open in future scenarios when I’m confused. Anyway, I did notice the NPC said he’d given us “Volatile Greenstone Brew” but the NPC really didn’t say what to use it for. Add to that, I looked for it in my bag and couldn’t find it. It turned out to be one of those weird buttons that shows up in the middle of your screen (can that be keybound to something?) so it took me a while to identify it. Even after I identified it -I- figured that we were supposed to use the brew to wake up the Masons. When triggering the brew near a mason didn’t actually do anything I was terribly confused.

Final Stage “Defeat Vengeful Hui” Again, this is DPS, I get DPS. The only thing that caught me off-guard was the fact that -NOW- is when the brew comes in terribly handy. Using the brew NOW easily kills the spawns. Again.. not obvious and not the first thing I tried.

In all.. it’s just .. confusing. I suppose I should be happy that it’s not leading me by the hand.. and I should have some warm glow of accomplishment when I get it done.. instead I’m just kind of getting the “Thank God that’s done” feeling. I accept that these will be easier the second time through (though in some cases with other scenarios I -still- haven’t figured out what I was supposed to be doing)

Since Blizz has engineered scenarios to have a very fast pop rate.. and it seems that all the best upgrades come from there I know that I’ll keep doing them. I just wish they had been better implemented.

**Later the scenario was frustrating because I pulled my pet out.. and it was only frustrating because I had to re-organize my spell bar to make the pet command accessible.. (which I needed to do anyway…***) But this annoyance/frustration was of my own making and not something particular to the scenario.

***The winds of change they are a-blowing. Reviewing the patch notes for 5.2 makes me think that Blizz is a little bit miffed that Affliction is running around without a pet.. and they want to make us want to have our pet out (or at least have it be an “interesting” choice we make on a case-by-case basis).. first by nerfing the goodness that is Sacrifice and second by buffing things which are NOT sacrifice. With that in mind.. I have a feeling that things may change post-patch.. and decided it’s in my best interest to get my fingers used to having the pet button back on my bar. Which entailed a complete re-order/re-though of the spell bar.. but meh, whatever.

TL;DR: (really, you should go read it )
[Richard Bartel is] arguing that “levels” make no in-game sense, that they separate friends from playing together, and that it would be trivial to come up with a better solution

Interesting ponder.

I think it’s too late for WoW. Seriously. This many years into the game.. with thousands of level-based quests/mobs/items implemented is WAY to late to think about eliminating the concept of levels.

But.. in WoW, what do levels do for us? and what would a WoW-like game look like if they didn’t have levels?

Levels, and the leveling path, give you a task list. Do this thing, gain more levels so you can move on to other leveling areas/gain faction/gain high level gear so you can enter endgame. It’s nice and mindless.. you don’t have to decide your goals for the game.. initially the game give you the goals automatical: “Increase your level until you hit the current cap” It’s easy to do .. and they give you an ant trail to follow. Quest A leads to Quest B leads to Quest C. Along the way the quests gently (and sometimes not so gently) urge you to cross into another area on the map and the levels increase around you as your level increases. It also gates players. If I’m new to the game I have 90 levels of content to play through before I can play with my friends at endgame. It’s a barrier to new players. It’s also a barrier to leveling new characters. I cannot stand the idea of leveling through Outlands AGAIN but with the current leveling system there’s no choice.

If the WoW gaming experience consisted of a 3-4 hour “intro to your character’s abilities” followed by an open sandbox world.. where quests exist and you can do quests wherever you want then why would anyone quest through the whole world? Yes, there are those who would do it because they want to experience it all.. and those whose “fun” consists of exploration.. but through many different paths Blizz has seen that players will skip the “fun” experiences in order to maximize their character. So if you could do quests anywhere across the world at any time.. then I expect the gaming experience for some players would boil down to “which quest do I need to do to get the best head gear/weapon/off-hand/etc?” and all the rest of the questing experience would be left un-done.

This hamstrings the game designers when they’re trying to show (not tell) you the lore of the game. If you’re cherry-picking only the 10 best equipment giving quests across the world you’re not going to see the unfolding stories that happen in each area. Instead you will cherry pick the best-of equipment.. and then go on to “experience” the world in raids. That doesn’t sound to me like something with a lot of staying power.

Life has no levels.. Today I am not wearing my level 40 t-shirt of software engineering. I was not suddenly rofl-stomped by higher leveled hooligans when I moved from the back woods of Montana to the San Francisco Bay Area. Life has intrinsic goals: food to eat, water to drink, warm/dry place to sleep, bonus gear to improve my existence. Beyond my basic goals I guess I have determined which RL quests I pursue(high school, college, good paying job, home ownership, etc). I experience the story of the world by consuming the media of the world past and present both globally and locally.

I suppose that could be taken as a blueprint for a level-less WoW but I’m at a loss as to exactly how you’d implement it.