Community Project: All The Other Things!

Welcome to the final blog post in the “Warcraft Community’s Top Things To Do Before WoD” series!

This final post is an amalgamation of lots of other things that have been suggested that didn’t easily fit into a category.

Accessibility

“Something for everyone”

This received a staggering amount of votes compared to the rest of the subject in the category. If you think about it, WoW is one of the few MMO’s that offer such a massive range of things to do: from raiding and PvP to transmog and pet battles. You only have to glance at this project for a short selection of what we all enjoy. If this doesn’t keep you coming back, I don’t know what will.

Comics and Fan Fiction

We had to put this here as we are massive fans of the “Dark Legacy Comic“ series. Below are lists of some worthwhile things to read:

• TEH GLADIATORS – Mr B has been reading this for YEARS and enjoys it a lot
• LFG Comic – ditto as above
• Trolling Azeroth. I’m going to put this person here as they produce some funny comics, albeit, not too regularly. Check them out!
• War Crimes by Christie Golden has been recommended a lot but we still haven’t got round to reading it.

Lore

So many people suggested the Lore as one of the most important parts of the game. The story, experiencing the world from their characters point of view and the war are all mentioned. We are both very nooby about Warcraft lore, although we do enjoy reading it. We thoroughly enjoyed the short lore mini, “Lords of War” shown at the Cinematic Release:

Heallarious has also added a couple of other videos AND some books to read, see those here.

Finally, a few recommendations have been suggested which I’ll add below.

• Lore for Noobs
• Know Your Lore, WoWInsider
• Nobbel87
• Some of Aleveria’s favourite quest lines:  Fallen Hero in Icecrown, The Lady’s Necklace, Battle of Darrowshire, and Rhea’s Last Egg

As AXA says: “READ THE QUEST TEXT!”

Machinima

I literally had no idea what this was til @XimVewDew suggested it. Apparently “making [Warcraft] videos is the best ever!”… and apparently it’s a huge thing.

Mr B recommends “Blind”, telling the tale of  “a blood elf rogue trying to kill Onyxia in her human form in Stormwind”. I won’t say anymore, just watch it :p

Music

Neither of us has particularly sat and listened to huge amounts of the Warcraft soundtrack, which is rather embarrassing as I am a music teacher!! @ofgnomeregan has recommended the soundtrack below, specifically Track 9.

I think the best thing to do is get a compilation up on YouTube and discover the music for yourself. We have a lovely CD of various famous game music, which appeals to us nerds!

Professions / Farming

This is probably a very sensible thing to be doing pre-Warlords as there’s so much to farm: mounts, gold, materials for professions etc. If you have lots of alts and not all professions… WHY NOT?? They can make you a nice bit of cash too. See the Gold and Auction House post for more on that though.

@laplante_ent and @bunji05 both mentioned farming stuff for other people, which is really kind. It’s also a great way to help guildies, especially if they are gearing up and you can’t sell those old pieces of 496 gear.

My favourite professions are probably Archaeology (along with Twenty20 and others!) because of the pets and mounts (and achievements!) you can earn. I also like fishing for the same reason, and the fish do sell especially if you fish at the beginning of an expansion.

Transmogrification

“This is what makes my characters look DAMN GOOD!” (Ikralla) If you haven’t tried it yet, please do. Many love running the old raids for the perfect piece of mog kit!

World Design

What can I say? Isn’t the World of Warcraft beautiful and amazing? Loads of us post screenshots like they’re going out of fashion and there are loads of blog events which celebrate just this.

We all have our favourite places to hang out: Halfhill, Jade Forest, Nagrand, Zangermarsh… the list is almost endless. The sheer diversity – from mountains to valleys, from snow to desert, what more could you ask for? If you don’t have the Explorers achievement and title yet, go and do it. The world is outstanding.

Contributors________________________________________________________________________________________

• Twenty20
• @laplante_ent
• Marathal
• wOw_aXA
• @ofgnomeregan
• Anthony
• @Aleveria
• Ikralla
• @anne_rothman: “Sometimes I like to go /afk for a bit, sit back and enjoy [the music]”
• MissysMojo: “Just take the time to look at the world, go into buildings, check out different vendors you haven’t seen, maybe they have a cool book, or a nice staff for transmog.”
• @XimVewDew

Gaining Approval of the Kurenei

This week, I have been working towards my 59th rep, and after a couple of days of old-school grinding, I had it.

That rep is Kurenei, with the Ogres of Nagrand.

I’m going to write a tiny post about how I went about gaining that rep. There might be more efficient ways to farm it, but this suited my current on/off mood.

Location (unscientifically tested!)

1. Northwind Cleft

• 31 ogres to kill per lap
• takes about 2mins per lap
• 6-8 beads gained (including respawns on the way back)
• Start outside, kill and loot all. In cave, turn right until you can’t. Turn 180 then follow same proceedure. Lots of ores in this cave too.
• Pros: nice circular route, fast respawning ogres, good mining nodes
• Cons: lots of levellers and popular with other rep grinders as lots of websites suggest this site

 

Start here, enter cave and keeeeel.

2. Laughing Skull Ruins (near ring of blood)

• 29-32 ogres to kill per lap
• takes about 2mins per lap
• 10-12 beads gained (including any respawns en route)
• Start at one end and work your way across vertically following the mini village layout
• Pros: more beads, out in the open (I hate caves!)
• Cons: heavily contested by levellers and others in the area

Rep Gain

• Make sure you do all the relevant quests, this should take you to almost revered
• You get 11 rep per ogre plus the Warbeads you can hand in at Telaa. I handed the beads in every 100 stack, but others prefer to save those towards Consortium rep and just grind ogres. I personally find that a bit soul destroying, but each to their own.

To summarise – it’s a mean grind but you feel it goes quite quickly as you have quest items to hand in for instant reward. You pick up a LOT of netherweave cloth too – stacks of the stuff – so that’s a nice perk. Lots of competition for mobs though, so I always did it later at night.

Hope this helps!

 

Getting Excited… Or Not…

We’ve been keeping up with the Warcraft news (or lack thereof) and the newest patch hit today… if you could call it that. I was really surprised actually to see how excited people were getting over the smallest of patches. Perhaps I’m being cynical, but being happy at being able to upgrade again? More upgrades means more valour means more LFR or more Timeless Isle…

Yay.

I think Blizzard is being very savvy – by giving people a small patch, making it seem like there’s something newer to do, whilst also pushing those newer level 90’s into the current content. It should also make LFR easier with higher item levels…. in theory anyway. Well, we’ve all been moaning about that, right?

It doesn’t excite us at all. As much as we enjoy the Artcraft posts, all they’re really doing is giving us concepts to try and whet our appetite and keep us playing those boosted 90’s. By dripping in the odd screenshot of a new zone with a paragraph about creating the plants, it stops the masses from rioting. It feels like a game, and I don’t like it.

The lack of real Warcraft news speaks volumes. I would much prefer them to make a statement saying: “We’re really sorry, we know we said we’d try and get it out quicker but there’s been delays and we want to give you a great product”. Their “we never said it’d be out quicker than before” is rubbish, as we all know it was implied at Blizzcon. When we add this to strategic release of information to co-inside with other game releases (I’m looking at you Wildstar!), the sneaky business strat becomes ever clearer.

We love Warcraft and we are loyal to Blizzard, but we’re getting so sick of the “soon”… it’s not funny any more, guys. Just give us a straight answer and give us something proper to be excited about.

 

 

Milestones.

We don’t often talk about real life ‘us’, but we thought we’d make an exception because this is a special week for us! It is 4 years yesterday that we went on our first date and 6 months today that we’ve been married. Let me hear the “ahhhhhh”… 😀

Now, if that isn’t enough, this week also symbolises Mr B’s EIGHTH year of playing World of Warcraft! This may not be momentous to a non-gamer, but I think everyone reading this blog will be truly awed by this show of loyalty.

I think I can safely say that my love and loyalty is undying!

We got engaged next to Highforce waterfall in County Durham – this waterfall in Grizzly Hills was so similar we had to stop and re-create the scene!

Re-roll – DING 80! Days 16,17 and 18.

Day 16

• Level: 74
• Area(s): Grizzly Hills
• Favourite quests / moment: The Outhouse at Amberpine Lodge. We had a merry few minutes giggling!

• Least favourite quest/ moment: All the troll quests in this area. I can’t put my finger on why I don’t like them, but I don’t enjoy them at all. Possibly all the back and forth? That said, I quite like this storyline!
• Instance(s): Drak’Tharon Keep – I quite like Drakuru mon!
• Favourite ability: N/A

Day 17

• Level: 77
• Area(s): N/A
• Favourite quests / moment: Meh, dungeons
• Least favourite quest/ moment: Meh, dungeons.
• Instance(s): Violet Hold, Gundrak, Halls of Stone, Halls of Lightning,, Azjol-Nerub
• Favourite ability: I’m starting to get procs and buffs to manage now, which is proving complex!

Day 18

• Level: 80 BABY!
• Area(s): Crystalsong Forest/Dalaran, Icecrown
• Favourite quests / moment: I liked doing most of these quests, as I hadn’t done them before (except a few for Loremaster).
• Least favourite quests/ moment: The back and forth over the structures in Icecrown is irritating. We were with one of those “stop pulling the dragons”/”ffs who’s pulling dragons?”/”NOOBS STOP PULLING DRAGONS!”/”…”/ “don’t take 2 healer dragons ffs” type-tanks in Occulus. I really like this instance but the tank completely spoiled it.
• Instance(s): Utgarde Pinnacle, Occulus
• Total time played to 80: 1 day 20hours (would probably be 20 hours less if we didn’t afk all the time – but we’ll be honest!)

It is really worth  noting a new feature here.

Remember getting to Hyjal and having to scour the AH for gear or each mob would be double your health? Fret no longer! Patch 5.3 bought you “Iris Moondreamer” – a lovely lady who now sells ilvl 232 /level 80 gear for 25g each!! We outfitted ourselves for the Cataclysm for the princely sum of around 400g. /cheer

Level 80 and rocking our new gear

You Know You Play Too Much WoW When…

Here’s a collection of some of the one’s we can relate to. Add yours in the comments below!

…you ring on the way home asking whether you need to stop at the shops for mats for dinner.

… you serve dinner by yelling “food incoming!”

… you get your significant other a Birthday card saying “grats on your Ding!”

… you get into an argument with your significant other over the aforementioned Birthday card and tell your friends that you “pulled aggro with the Wife”.

… you threaten your significant other with the words, “if you don’t stop now, my beserk timer will end and I’ll enrage!”

… 8hours sleep is 4hours wasted game play.

… when your way of sympathising with your partner’s “I can’t sleep” statement, is by saying: “just alt+F4!”

… you refer mistakenly about your local town “Ironbridge” as “Ironforge”.

… when you’re tired and you tell your boss that you’re lagging today.

… when you’re asked to do the washing up by the Wife and you reply with, “what’s the quest reward?”

… when the wife drops a plate and you call her a “noob”.

… when you realise your other half is trying to talk to you whilst playing WoW and you reply with “wait a minute, babe, I’m AFK”.

… when you’re told to be careful not to get ganked as you walk home.

… you discuss cute WoW-based baby names… seriously.

Treasure Trove Scenario

The Treasure Trove scenario – a solo experience aimed at enabling you to pic up a whole host of goodies.

Quick Info

• Kill rares on the Isle of Thunder (list and map) to get a Key to the Palace of Lei Shen
• Hand the key in to Taoshi in the cave at 51,46 to gain access
• Loot chests to have a chance at things like Elder Charms, Rep tokens and Burial Trove Keys (for extra chests at the end)

As far as we’re concerned, this scenario is good for two things: getting as much gold and charms as possible, or for getting to the last room to loot the golden treasure chests.

1. Final Room run

Pros: hi-tailing it to the final room and killing the  boss there gets you access to 3 special chests which contain a chance at better loot.

Cons: there’s only a chance at the better loot – it doesn’t always pay off. You also miss out on loads of chests which contain the goodies along the way. However, if you get there quick, you can always double back and loot some in the time you have remaining.

Extras used: Potion of Light Steps (1 Elder Charm, requires Friendly with Kirin Tor Offensive), 3 Polymorphic Keys (3 charms each, requires Exalted with Kirin Tor Offensive).

Our view: It’s not worth it, we prefer the gold and rep tokens (on our mains) or the charms (on our alts). However, we’ve put together a video for you to see the route and where I used the potions and keys.

2. Loot run

Pros: lots of goodies

Cons: we never have enough time to get to the final boss and/or get caught by the traps a lot causing me to slow down

Extras used: none

Our view: Go for it! We tend to circle around the room looting every chest possible using speed boosts. We’ve uploaded a video – mistakes and all – to show how much we got and the loot.

We average:

• 10-15 Elder Charms (17 on this one)
• 1-3 Burial Trove keys (2 on this one)
• 15-20 Tattered Parchments for rep
• 1 or 2 Ritual Stones
• 200-300g

Enjoy the clip!

Birthday Celebrations!

Today was Jojo’s (@AdmiringAzeroth) birthday party in-game. Here are a few screenies from the fun.

partying with cake and booze

skinny dipping in Darnassus’ pond

a romantic pic of us together

playing hide and seek – found you!

Thank you all for a wonderful couple of hours!

Our Picture of the Week

This week comes courtesy of @TrollingAzeroth from The Trolling of Azeroth site.

It was only recently that we were chatting about WoW and he said we inspired his recent comic. Well… we had to feature this as our PoTW!

If you’re British like us and have no idea what the DMV is, it’s similar to the DVLA 🙂

If you haven’t checked his site and comics out, please do!

20 Days of WoW – Day 18

Day 18 – Your favourite outfit

I have lots of favourite outfits, and I feature them all in my transmog section (look left). So, I thought I’d feature some of my favourites from other enthusiasts.

This is one of the best ones I’ve seen all year, from @HealbotAtHeart

She calls it her “Wolfslayer Outfit” and all details can be found here.

Isn’t it amazing?!

~

Another website I find myself frequenting often is @Samaramon‘s which can be found here

One of her recent creations: “black and yellow”

She creates some lovely outfits which usually have a theme which is really helpful and easy to follow. She also produces her own art which is b.e.a.utiful, so go check it out!

Of course, there are so many amazing blogs out there which feature some fabulous outfits – I would definitely recommend you go and search them out.