25 September 2011

Oh what a time it's been...

...with both the game and myself. I still play as much as always, albeit, in different ways...again. :)


I've noticed that I seem to have this hurdle in the game which I never quite get over. In a nutshell, I get one of my other selfs to level cap, set an end game coarse of expectations for them then run into this hurdle. Or more like stone wall. Everything seems to just stall out at that point and I then run through an array of alts trying to figure out how to get past that point. I've pretty much accepted that this is due to my own personal abilities more than anything else.

Then there's those times when I realize that from leveling different alt's professions along the way, I simply run clean out of any bag and bank space. An on-going problem that only gets solved one way, make another bank alt. It's a vicious circle my friends.

The problem with bank alts is that I love, REALLY LOVE, questing. Running through Azeroth, single-handedly setting the world right by killing all sorts of monsters and badies. Which means that they generally seem to grow up. Bank alts of mine generally take on nothing more than gathering professions to sort of help pay their way. If they do age to level 60, then they're allowed to accept a crafting profession. Hopefully at that point, one of their brothers, sisters or cousins has enough crafting mats stored up to give the new crafter a good hold on things.

Kaimara (human mage) is a pretty good example of this vicious circle. She started out as a bank alt back when, but did have two crafting professions, tailoring and enchanting. Enchanting mats became rather scarce and difficult to farm, so it got dropped. Then she got stuck in Dalaran, one bar into level 78, then proceeded to collect dust while brother Khrox stormed ahead.

Khrox (dwarf hunter) is actually "younger" than Kaimara in the timeline of things, but he forged ahead and proceeded to level cap. Here again, mining and skinning were his mainstays until level 61 when leather working came about. With what mats he had stored up, along with another cousins' gathering mats, leather working capped out rather quickly over his final push to 85.

Alisym (Nelf mage) is about (but not) the only one who still pretty much just banks regulary, holding all the extra cloths, bags and gems everyone else comes across. Then comes Cle (gnome spriest). His mining and skinning turned into mining and engineering, and he is coming up in the ranks rather quickly. His only problem lies in the mining though. He does come up with a lot of elemental stuff in the process. Motes of this, crystallized that and now volitiles. This is okay, but where to put them? They are needed by several family members. Sol with his alchemy, Kaimara uses them in tailoring, and Khrox in leather working. Even Cle has some use in his engineering. Back to the vicious circle, enter Ariannia (Nelf hunter), banker and level 20 atm. You see where this is going? There is one other banker sitting in the fold, a human priest. Everyone except the newly adopted Ariannia is over level 50 and playable if so chosen. And that's only on the Spinebreaker realm. ROFLMAO!!! Sol used to have his own personal guild bank, kinda sorry he gave it up now.

Well now, how's Azeroth treating you these days? Eleven or so million people might think it belongs to them, but when one of my family members pop in, it's all theirs. And, btw, in order to attempt to break the vicious circle thing, Ariannia is being limited to banking, skinning, and being the official achievement hound. Right now, she's 14/1352 (1%) LOL

08 September 2011

What to craft next?

Khrox has been taking a bit of a break lately, he's been feeling a little battle-worn. As part of his R&R, he's tail-gateing little cousin Cle in Outland, making sure he is well and fully supplied. I don't, (probably could'nt anyway), duo-box. It's just a matter of logging in and out between them. Anyway.....Cle has entered Netherstorm now, making that final push towards Northrend.


I have this strange bug about professions. If I hang up for any reason skilling them up, I drop them and move on to something else. There are times to be stubborn, and other times when beating your head against the keyboard just isn't worth it. A recent example would be Kaimara, she had tailoring and enchanting. Enchanting mats in Northrend became a real grind to get hold of, so she dropped it and concentrated upon her tailoring. Doing soooo much better now!

Cle had two gathering professions up into level 60, then dropped one in favor of engineering. It worked out great. At 68, his mining is well above his level and his engineering can't really advance anymore until he's in Northrend. Since he really don't need anymore Outland ores, he's taken to just stockpileing them for possible AH sales. As with many servers, there are so few people leveling through Outland and Northrend that mats for any profession are at all time highs. On Spinebreaker in particular, the population seems to have taken a rather large dip. Not good for the economy, especially Ally side, but these things tend to ebb and flow over time. Consequently, banking extra mats is always a good thing.

On the other hand, Khrox is fully maxed on all his chosen professions, as is Sol. Although Kai is stuck in Northrend, she is able to tailor some level 80-85 outfits. So all the attention and pressure falls upon little Cle to make good with his engineering. But it's all fun. Nothing like a little shadow priest who can sneak about throwing bombs at mobs, and then letting out a psycic scream to send them all running while he's tormenting them to death. After all, there's always the fall-back of Power Word: Shield, and run like the wind if things get a little out of hand. :p It all comes down to this: Gnome Shadow Priest + Engineering = Devious Fun! Speaking of which....it's time to go sow havoc in some battlegrounds, again.

What professions are you finding fun these days, or annoying? Are they making you enough gold to get by on, or laying around stealthed? Do you find yourself changing professions to suit your characters' needs?

05 September 2011

Aww...blame the game

Hmmm...as usual, I 'm a bit slow with posting here. Blame it on the game. :) No, really! It does seem that the game is a rather central point of my attention span more often than not. So let's just realize now that if I'm not here, I'm there. We good on that? LoL

Both Khrox and the little spriest have been engaged in some new aspects of the game, at least new to them. Khrox finally got his first taste of arena battles, courtesy of his guild leader. More on his initiation to arena's in a bit. The little spriest isn't so little anymore. At level 63, he's romping through Outland spreading disease, pain, messing with your mind stuff and death. He's also strong on alliance presense in each zone's pvp dailys. Just loves taking all those towers and fortifacations away from the Horde. This little gnome has got some serious ankle-biting going on!

Let's talk a bit about Cle first. If you're new here, he's a gnome shadow priest who favors battlegrounds over dungeons. In fact, he hasn't seen the inside of his first dungeon...yet. Always a possibility it could happen. At level 61, he finally gave up skinning and took up engineering for the fun of it. Mining had been his other gathering profession all along, so he had plenty of metal bars and ore banked. He practically raced through all the early skill ups, and now sits at 353 skill. He made mostly all pieces and parts to get there, with exception to some later level bombs and his first flying machine. Engineering is not a big gold maker, so far. In fact, most everything you make is useful only to yourself. It is though, a FUN profession. Neat little things that go BOOM! , and little personal items that create/add some very interesting effects. Looking over his trainers list of things to come, well, I can see that battlegrounds just might become incidental playgrounds. And, no telling what might happen with those world pvp encounters.

And then there is Khrox. Once again, if you're new here, Khrox is a dwarf hunter. He leveled to cap as a Beast Master, loves battlegrounds, and you'll most likely find him running about in his MM spec these days. He is decked out in the best honor point Vicious pvp gear and quite thirsty for the conquest point upgrades. The Horde nation has this intense hatred for him, so all seems rather good for now. At least on the surface.

TBH at this point, on a personal level I have this fear thing of trying new things in the game. First it was dungeons, "omg! I'll get the group wiped." Then it was battlegrounds, "I'm such a noob Huntard! I keep dieing all the time." And we won't talk about all the early BG chat tossed at me. LOL, the end result is total procrastination.

This effect carried over with me when I changed guild membership. Part of the reason for changing guilds was so that I could progress my pvp into arena and maybe even rated bg's. It's been over a month now and I still had'nt gone forth with arena entry, until this past Saturday.

I was sitting around in the Dwarven District in SW, self-debating which bg to do. Along came one of the co-gm's of the guild, the one who recruited me, and we started chatting. Next thing I know, she's created a 2's team for us, and now the nervous fear sets in. She says we can try some practice games first if I wish, which sounded really good to me.

Well, I guess the season is old enough now and no practice games were available. The entry que pops up again, I accept it, saying oh good, we got one! Wrong. lol, she tells me no. It's the real thing, go all out. Needless to say, I died in like 15 seconds. By the fourth round of losing, I was lasting closer to 30 seconds. btw, she's a disc priest and wound up fighting several long minutes on her own until she suffered some horribus death. Again, and again.

This kind-hearted gm kept telling me everything's okay. She had a great attitude and mindset. Even pointed out her own mistakes as she thought them to be. Then something happened. On the next game, even though we lost again, we actually had a good 5-6 minute fight on our hands. This was rather encouraging for me. By this time, I was entering the arena stealthed, and tossing out several traps in what I hoped would be the main fighting area. Seemed like a good plan, and to some extent it was working.

A stroke of luck on the next game, the other team did'nt que, we won our first by default. Yea! The very next game.....well, we actually WON! It's like "OMG, we beat them!" We que'd a couple more times, although we still kept losing. Then I suffered a disconnect that lasted a bit. By the time I got back in, the co-gm had gone on with her regular arena teams. I whisper'd her generous thank you's and appreciations. We ended our arena outing with a 2 win--10 loss record.

I really have a lot of respect and admiration for this gm. She's a very accomplished pvp player in her own rights, yet she took the time and had the patience to get me started, in spite of my inner fears and obvious failings. And about that win/loss record? She said the losing and points didn't matter for her, it was all about getting me the conquest points I needed. In my mind, she is an "Epic" player. I think I'm going to be with this guild for a long time now. It "feels" like "home."