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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.

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How To Survive: Alterac Valley

I am NOT a PvP-er.

If you’re like me and don’t PvP, it’s a bit daunting going into a BG and having no idea what to do, where to go or what the objective is. This week it’s Alterac Valley, so I thought I would blog:

Alterac Valley for Alliance in 5 VERY simple steps

  1. Follow the group. Pack mentality works every time. There are 40 players in this BG and the majority will head straight for the end objective which is…
  2. Kill the boss. You start at the top, “Drek’Thar” the boss is at the bottom. With 103m health and 4 buffs, he’s quite a dude. By doing other stuff, these disappear making him much less menacing. In order to do this, you first need to…
  3. Capture the towers. After the initial mad rush out of the Ally base, breakout groups will go and ‘cap the towers’ en route to Drek. The main ones are Iceblood Tower, Tower Point and the Frostwolf Towers (by the boss). In order to do this, you kill the boss inside. Each tower is on a timer, giving the opposing faction time to defend and recapture. Once the timer is out, the buff on Drek wears off. Of course sometimes there might be nasty Horde lurking inside…
  4. Pewpew. Whether this is killing the Horde who may try to defend, or killing the mini bosses in the towers, or the NPCs who lurk around.
  5. Wait around. For Ally, this is *usually* a faceroll. I usually go and kill the mini boss in the Iceblood Tower, then wait at the boss, killing any hordes who might try to defend. EZ.

Visual Aid

My highly professional picture for you below.

You’re the blue. Horde towers and bosses are in red. Kill the red and any Horde you pass on the way.

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See, who said PvP was complicated?!

Community Project: Gold Making & Auction House

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

As Twenty says, “WoD will probably be extremely expensive”, so I’m in all agreement that increasing your gold wealth is probably one of the best ways to spend your downtime at the moment. Whether you like to farm your materials and gold, or use the Auction House to flip items for profit, we all need at least a small disposable sum.

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Farming

In a roundabout way, farming is directly related to your gold wealth. Whether you choose to or not, I’m willing to bet that the vast amount of wealth on our servers come from someone farming the mats.

Our favourite farming space is in Krasarang Wilds, one of the Angler’s daily spots on the beach. Pop a potion of luck, take a lowbie alt friend and park them on the roof of a hut and voila, both profit. They get lots of free xp, you get lots of cloth and greens to disenchant.

Another excellent space is farming the Mogu in the Vale. These, of course, drop the Skyshards for Alani, but also Cache Keys which have a chance to give you loads of lovely goodies, in the form of cloth, leather, gold etc.

We also have a friend who swears by farming Grim Batol and Naxxramas with a potion of luck. He sells and disenchants the greens, whilst also pocketing a lot of profit from the pets. I’ve recently had some good luck with pets from SSC too.

Organising

If farming isn’t for you, how about taking the first step to cleaning out your bank account and void storage? By being brutal and throwing out stuff you don’t need (do you REALLY need those Nexus Crystals???), you can pocket the profit. Non-soulbound stuff could sell on the Auction House…. nothing to loose, right?

P.S, I recently sold some cageable pets that I had double of…. well worth it!

The Auction House

Matt: “It’s not for everyone, but I’m a big fan of the AH-goldmaking “mini-game”. Buy low, sell high, take some chances, win big! I just passed the 600k gold mark this week, so it’s definitely both fun AND profitable.”

I’m not an Auction House extroadinaire, but the basic tips are simple: choose a market, keep an eye on it, buy low, sell high. Into Transmog? Great, use your knowledge there. See a stack of spirit dust mispriced? Buy it, then resell. There are plenty of guides (and people to approach on twitter!) online, and as Matt says, it can be fun!

Some of the contributors for this section have written their own pieces of advice – find all links below!

Remember folks, it’s not real money. Set yourself a small goal and go for it – what have you got to loose?!

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Community Project: Areas and Exploration

Welcome to the second blog post in the “Warcraft Community’s Top Things To Do Before WoD” series! Today, we are talking about the loose subject of “Areas and Exploration”. If you’re looking to journey to far (and not so far) off places… this is the page for you!

Easter eggs

This was another fairly popular topic within the community suggestions. These little nuggets of joy are not, in fact, chocolate goodies, but references to the outside world or inside jokes which are found in-game. I, alongside much of the community, LOVE to go and find these eggs. My favourite is probably the house from the film “Up”, found off the coast of Jade Forest…

…but some are as simple as the city guards responding to your /salute or your companion pets idle animation of lying down if you’re still.

See below for information so you can go and find them!

The Lorewalkerscho

We are going to put this in here, as we think it is the best way to explore the whole of Pandaria (and access the lore!) once you reach max-level in MoP. Of course, you could do it on your ground mount for a more “immersive” experience, but it’s just as beautiful (and quicker) from the air.

The Lorewalkers are a reputation faction introduced in MoP, who focus, as their name suggests, on the Lore of Pandaria. Their reputation grind is the easiest to start you off: as you explore Pandaria, you stumble across their scrolls of lore.

Each one counts towards a set, which in turn when handed in, awards reputation. You can read our own detailed post here.

Faction Capitals

Levelwhimsically (click for the original post!) recommended visiting the opposing faction capitals and as an Alliance-only player, I think it’s a fantastic idea. The best way to go about this is rolling a little alt and go explore. The easiest would be:

  • Stormwind —> Human
  • Orgrimmar —> Orc or Troll

Of course, there are other capitals to explore… roll a Tauren and go and visit the particularly quirky  Thunderbluff, or a Night Elf and the beautiful city of Darnassus. Whichever you choose, you will have a confusing but satisfying hour.

Navimie also wrote an excellent post about Dalaran. You should read the original post as she is so passionate about it: “Dalaran is not merely the city of magic – the place is MAGICAL!  It’s full of wonderful little secrets and references”. 

What she recommends to do, among others, is to go and visit Windle Sparkleshine after 9pm who is responsible for lighting the lights of Dalaran. You can buy a “Windle’s Lighter” off him (for a nominal fee of about 50s) when he’s finished which enables you to go around the city and light the lights that he missed. It was such a fantastic 10 minutes of my play time and I can’t recommend it enough.

Eversong woods

I’m putting this here because Haenlic was so passionate about it, I couldn’t miss it out. I’ll quote directly. ABSORB THE ENTHUSIASM!

“The atmosphere in Eversong Woods […]  is so relaxing.. it’s so beautiful! I always finish EVERY quest there to stay there as long as possible.

I could stand there for hours just listening to the music while doing other stuff.”

The Whispering Forest

Click here for our full post.

Up in Tirisfal Glades, there lies a strange ring of mushrooms in the forest. If you wait patiently, Faerie Dragons start to appear. When there are a good crowd, magic happens and the forest comes to life.

If you haven’t yet experienced this, you must. It was fleeting and beautiful.

Festivals

I was going to write about the Wanderers Festival before Erinys’ blog post about her 3 favourite things cropped up. We both agree that this little festival is a wonderful way to spend an evening… you can read my more detailed description here. You also get an achievement for going – winwin!

wi-wanderers-festival

One of my other favourites is the Darkmoon Faire – pets, mounts, games, free profession skill-ups. What could be better?

How about Pirate’s Day, where you can dress up like a pirate and drink rum all day? Or Day of the Dead, celebrating the Mexican festival of the same name, where you can earn a rather wonderful Macabre Marionnette pet? How about the more romantic Love is in the Air event – where you can daub yourself with perfume and defeat the Crown Chemical Co whilst smelling divine?

The other world events in WoW are very fun. I know lots of people moan about the grind and the need to do them for the meta achievement, but we both really enjoy them. With achievements, pets and rare mounts up for grabs… how can you resist?!

We hope this page has given you some places to go and re-discover. The contributors to this category came across as particularly passionate.

As LeeAnn so perfectly puts it:

“Exploring, the endless potential for discovery.

You can run through an area 700 times and on 701 you think, “Oooh, I never saw THAT statue/ building/ big ass monster about to eat me before!”

 

Contributors__________________________________________________________________________________________

Community Project: Achievements

This is the first category for the “Warcraft Community’s Top Things To Do Before WoD” community project. Below are plenty of ideas submitted by the community (whose contact details are at the bottom) via twitter, in-game or blog. Have fun!

The Feat of Strength

DoctorHannah is a big fan of the feat of strength you achieve from earning 9,000 achievement points and told me that it’s one of her “greatest achievements”. Well, if that’s not enough of an accolade I don’t know what is! There are many ways to go about earning those points doing things you enjoy or something new you might want to try. As Velgana states, “it allows you to focus on the new content that comes out, without having to sweat about going back into the old world”. Lots of the MoP achievements are now much easier than at release, so don’t let that put you off!

9000

Proving Grounds

@clewdacris is a big fan of the proving grounds, resolutely stating that they “really help you improve”. If you are a beginner or trying for the Endless roles, the solo scenario just requires grit and determination to progress. There’s no pressure, as you’re alone, and you can try a Tank, Healer or DPS role as you prefer. Not convinced yet? Well, there’s a title and achievement points up for grabs plus the bragging rights when you reach gold. An excellent guide can be found here.

Sky Race 

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This is one of my favourite achievements. The Sky Race is part of the Order of the Cloud Serpent dailies group and rep grind. Even if  you hate grinding reputation, it’s worth getting to revered so you can take part in the Sky Race and ride your Cloud Serpent to victory! It’s a lot of fun and there are several achievements to gain too: from finishing the race, to beating your competitors and coming first.

 

Rare Mounts and Mount Farming

This was one of the most popular responses within the community.It seems like everyone is using the calm time to grind those pretty new mounts and the achievements/feats of strength that accompanies them. As the Mistress of Faff points out: there’s 250 mounts to collect to earn that beautiful Felfire Hawk in WoD – the sooner we get on it the better! Twenty20 makes an excellent point to the community – actually, *most* of these mount runs are old content and therefore soloable, which at a time when many people are taking a break, it’s very handy! Some of the prettier dungeons, like Vortex Pinnacle and Magisters Terrace make Tome want to stay in there forever and make the farming seem less arduous.

@witty_warlock and I agree that the Argent Tournament is an excellent way to go about mount farming. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an absolute nightmare of a grind and unless you do it on multiple characters daily, it’ll take you months. However, with over 10 mounts available (not to mention the pets, tabards and banners!), it’s an excellent – and easy – way to earn more mounts.

STUPIDTOURNAMENTI love this meme by dressedtocuddle.blogspot.com – bang on the money!

 

There are some more fun mount grinds out in the world: @elpheagle can give more information on the 9,999 bone farm from the Isle of Giants which awards the Bone White Primal Raptor. Whilst farming these, there’s also a chance at a Primal Egg, which when hatched, awards one of 3 raptor mounts – you can go back and hunt for all 3! Axa suggests The Netherwing Drake grind which is now very easy with an addon and multiple dailies per day… nothing like the TBC days, it’ll take you only a couple of weeks and awards multiple pretty drakes.

In WoD, a new mount feature in-game will enable us to see where which mounts we have not yet earned, plus where to get them – like the pet window we have currently. Until then, use the links above and Google ’til your finger pads are worn away!

Challenge Modes

We argued about putting this in the achievements category as it doesn’t really fit anywhere. However, I won so here it is. Challenge Modes are a new feature that MoP offers in order to test your mettle against the bosses of Pandaria with scaled gear and a time limit. @trimbleirl is a big fan, stating that although they “are tough if you’re not prepared” they are totally worth the hassle. We recommend finding a good group of pals, or trying OpenRaid and giving it a shot if you have the time. They’re fun!

Meta Achievements

I had to put this in here, as there are so many other achievements in-game that earn you a greater reward when completed as part of a set. For example, world events, raiding and dungeon metas, PvP and so on. There are too many to mention here, but they are exceptionally varied: from old to new content, PvP to PvE, levelling to end-game, that there must be something that interests you. @Aleveria loves to have a goal to work towards and I agree when she states that a whole day can be lost working towards it!

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Feeling Nostalgic

Since our return to Warcraft, we have been enjoying revisiting places which make us happy – for me, Nagrand and the older dungeons, for Mr B, the Horde and its various races. Here are a few of our favourite screenshots this week.

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Nagrand

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Sethekk Halls

y (1)

Riding Brutusk, Ashenvale

y (2)

A Gnomes-eye-view of a Wyvern flying overhead.

z (16)

A birds-eye-view of one of the Tempest Keep dungeons (Arcatraz if I remember correctly!)

We are off on holiday tomorrow for a few days, so we look forward to seeing you all next week. TTFN! 🙂

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.

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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

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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!

 

Minecraft Series #4 – MCDONALD’S!

Here is the next building to show off our Entertainment Complex, Maccy D’s!

I shamelessly copied the design from one of my favourite Minecrafters, Keralis. Here are some of our pics, and the video is below.

2014-06-28_18.09.26The inside:

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The serving/prep area:

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The little drive-thru area:

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It’s a great little build, but be warned, he does whizz through the talk through – get the pause buttons ready!

I changed the inside slightly, and made lots of changes to the car park so it fit in with our world, but I think it’s a lot of fun.

Wildstar Follow-Up

Apologies for the silence, we’ve been busy this week!

As promised, a write up for our Wildstar experience. We honestly don’t have a huge amount extra to say – if you’d like to read our other post, click here.

wildstar1After our initial play through, Mr B wasn’t interested at all in exploring the game further. Unfortunately… “more of the same, it’s boring” was about the description uttered.

I stuck with it however, and did another level but I can’t say my initial thoughts changed much.

Questing: The questing is like normal questing – grindy, silly (collecting leeks, really?) and running about everywhere. What I did like, however, was picking up random bonus quests – I assume this has something to do with the specialisation you pick at the start – and I had a nice little exploration quest up a tree. A good idea, very much like the random bonus events in Diablo.

Levelling: Certainly more challenging and time consuming than the other MMO’s that I’ve played! The use of the mini-map, as I said before, is clever, but some quests don’t feel too linear which is confusing.

Looks: Very pretty, graphics are brilliant. Scenery is very nice and the default UI is fine. Unfortunately, neither of our computers (mine is only a year old!) can run it, so even with graphics low – which looks terrible by the way – there’s too much lag to play effectively. I like that you don’t have loads of abilities at once (I’m looking at YOU Warcraft!) but I hate using F to interact.

Variety: There’s lots of interesting characters to choose from and they’re all quite unique. I didn’t get chance to play them, but I did flick through. You get to have a lot of input into your character too, which is nice.

The Future: As I said last time, this game feels too much like a laggy, unpolished WoW to me so there’s no way I would subscribe. However, if it ever lost this sub-based model, I would be the first to buy the game. I could see myself pottering around it in a few spare moments, but not enough to make a sub financially viable.

All this being said, I didn’t get far in levels and I know many people that love the game. The guest pass is a fab way of finding out whether its for you!