The Other Side

Noblegarden, and, specifically the achievement Shake Your Bunny-Maker, brought the Alliance and Horde together, if only for a moment. I know I tried to make myself as adorable as possible so that the Alliance wouldn't kill me on my quest to find a Female Dwarf for the achievement.

It also got me thinking about my long-forgotten Alliance alts, specifically my own lady dwarf, Ceridwyn. She's a hunter, one that had been sitting at level 20 for quite a long time now, on the Darrowmere server. I decided to log onto her and do the Horde there a favor by running her to the front door of Orgrimmar. Naturally I was killed a few times, but not that many, and I know that at least three members of the Horde got their Noble Gardner achievements thanks to me. Made me feel are warm and fuzzy inside.

The strange thing is, I have a hunter on Gul'dan, a lady orc by the name of Dahr, also around level 20. I seem to have a really difficult time with her, though. She doesn't hold my interest (it may be because I was trying to attack things way, WAY over my level... I've returned to the Barrens for a bit to level up some more before going back to Ashenvale). My alliance dwarf, though? Love her. Managed to get her half-way to 22 in about an hour, and plan on playing her a bit each day now to slowly level her to see the other half of the game I pay for. I don't have any high-level alliance toons (I'm not counting the Death Knights I made) and I'd love to have at least one 70+ toon. The storyline is quite different.

It was actually a bit funny to see the state she was in when I logged onto her after letting her sit for months. She still had an ammo pouch. lol I got rid of it, managed to earn some gold, bought a bigger bag to replace it, worked on her engineering profession to make better ammo and went after those quests. I think, as long as I can keep her experience in the blue, I'll level her fast. Her racials are even decent even though people hate treasure-finding, as a rule. I used it last night to get some free Melon juice, and who wouldn't want free drinks for mana? Especially since she doesn't have Aspect of the Viper yet.

I know Alliance is outnumbered by the Horde on her server, but it doesn't bother me much. It has a low enough population that leveling shouldn't be an issue, and hunters level pretty quickly anyway. Only thing I wish I had was a low-level guild for running instances with and such. I don't think such a thing really exists anymore, though, so I guess I'll just have to be guildless until I get closer to the level cap.

Regardless, I think in the near future there will be a few more posts about how the other side lives, and the story lines there that pique my interest. Should be fun. :)

The Noble, Children's Week, and Arthas

Last night, Yrovi officially became "Yrovi the Noble" when she managed to find a lovely female dwarf sitting outside Dalaran. Naturally, she had been waiting ever so patiently outside the Alliance area for quite some time (dressed up all pretty, with a cozy fire, and egg basket, and flowers) before giving up and running to Ironforge to attempt to find one in it's natural habitat. The guards were rather upset with this idea, naturally, and alerted several other Alliance members. She did meet a rather cute gnome outside, though. I warned her not to play with her food, but she was in a good mood, and still sated from eating all those chocolates from the day before, so he survived the encounter, even when flagged for combat. She gave up when even the great home of the dwarven race had no females and hearthed back to Dalaran after exploring the area. Right outside the bank, pretty as you please, calmly sitting on her ram, was a lady dwarf. I laughed heartily, for at least a few minutes. So, that took care of Shake Your Bunny-Maker.

A short trip to Brill and a flurry of egg finding produced the 100 chocolates needed to purchase a bunny from the nice belf there, which then resulted in Yrovi taking the quick trips needed to the various starting areas. They all had plenty of others with bunnies, waiting patiently, and within no time Spring Fling was taken care of as well, which was the last thing needed. Thus, Yrovi became Noble, and is one step closer to a lovely purple drake, something she desperately wants as she'll be unable to get such a magnificent, speedy, flying beast any other way (yeah, never going to do arena).

Of course, "finishing" Noblegarden only draws attention to next week's event: Children's Week. Children's Week happens to be one of my favorite world events, as the little kids are so very adorable. Last year at this time, I wasn't a high enough level to go to Outland (I think I was around level 40, only just on a mount), so I was only able to participate in the original version, with a little orc child. I'm not complaining, though, as I loved every minute of it. Of course, it means I'm 3x more excited this year as I can do the original, the one in Outland, and the new one for Northrend. :D I'll be getting the little pig, and the baby hawkstrider, and whatever pet that ends up being the reward for the Northrend orphans.

Of course, I'll need to prepare for it as best I can. Bad Example requires several sweets for the achievement. I've managed to purchase several already, specifically the ones you can get in Dalaran. I need to still find the ice cream (I think it's sold on the zepplins, so that's nice), the chocolate cake (although our resident paladin has one already, so maybe they'll share? *puppydog eyes*) and a tasty cupcake. I have two of the emotion food recipies, but not this one, naturally.

Hail to the King can most probably be completed on regular, so that won't be an issue for me. I'll try to do it at least once before the event, though, so I'm not going in blind. The last one that isn't "easy" is School of Hard Knocks... and it will be very "not easy." I enjoy some PvP, but I'm not a guru or anything. Two of the requirements seem relatively straight forward: Assaulting a flag in Arathi Basin, and Assaulting a Tower in Alterac Valley. It's possible that, like the quest you get around level 35 or so for Arathi Basin, you just have to be in the area when someone assaults the flag to get credit. The other two, though... oh, man. Capture the flag in Eye of the Storm: at least I'm a tank, so I could theoretically be a good candidate for this, though it means I'll need to be much more pushy and aggressive than normal. I have no experience running flags. Finally, return a fallen flag in Warsong Gulch: this is going to be the hardest part of the entire thing, in my mind. I can only imagine the sheer number of people attempting to do this at the same time in a normal WG match, and compound it with the need for doing this achievement. It's not going to be pretty, that's for certain.

Noblegarden may have been easily completed in a couple of days, but Children's Week will be a beast. A beast that cannot be fed or sated. I suppose I should look into getting some PvP gear, like the Savage Saronite set. I'm still going to run as Prot, I think... maybe. I'll lose a lot of defense with that set, although the resiliance will help make up for it, and maybe the extra stamina and increased crit will help. I've also been an avid Wintergrasp participant, so maybe I have some marks of honor that are gathering dust. If so, I can purchase a nice epic PvP piece, one that will have a socket, even. Maybe I'll start doing what I can to run it when it's up to get a few more marks before next week. The best part about all that is that I can use the gear from then on, making PvP even more fun. :D

As a footnote: I bought Arthas, Rise of the Lich King by Christie Golden this weekend. I haven't finished it, yet, but I have to admit I'm pleasantly surprised. I expected it to be a little over-the-top, maybe even cheesy, but it's really pretty good. It helps that I actually really like Arthas as a character and that I have played Warcraft III and thus know what's going on. Still, I'm finding it a good read and would recommend it to any WoW players out there looking for something to read. It gives an insight into the guy we all love to hate, and who wouldn't enjoy that? I won't give anything away here, of course, but if you've even slightly considered getting it, go do so. Or, if you're still not sure, borrow it from a friend. I have to admit that the $25 price tag is a little hefty, though, so maybe you'll wait for it to come out in paperback. Regardless, read it. :)

Nearly Noble

Noblegarden is in full swing! Yrovi awoke early yesterday and ran immediately for the town of Brill where she joined a few others (and later many, many others) in searching for the brightly-colored eggs hidden around the town. She found many eggs, ate many chocolates, bought several items with chocolates, and was occasionally bombarded in Dalaran with bunny ears while searching for a lady dwarf to do the same. She is but two achievements away from becoming Yrovi the Noble (cute title, don't you think?) and I suspect that she'll be sporting it soon enough, as long as the rather elusive female toons come out to play.

All in all, the holiday is pretty simple and straightforward, though I'm still missing a female orc and dwarf (where are you guys?!?) for the achievement. I've yet to see a bunny pet drop from an egg, too, so I'll keep opening eggs 'till I get enough to buy one (100 chocolates) or find one, though the RNG is not very nice to me, usually.

Yrovi also ran regular Culling of Stratholme again, this time as dps... and let's just say that, while we made it through just fine, she was only pulling about 1k dps, sometimes less. That's just terrible. At least I know why the dps was so terrible: bad gear, especially weapons. Also, Yrovi's hit and expertise is below cap, so that's not great either. I do know better than to go into a heroic with my current set-up, at least, and will be avoiding them like the plague as Fury until I've run more of the low-level dungeons for blues.

Thanks to Tyra's amazing heals, we didn't wipe, but the bosses took some time to burn down. Thankfully the pace in CoS is more or less determined by Arthas (the worst group member ever... he never waits for the tank, especially during the gauntlet), so I didn't feel too terrible about it. I plan on looking at gear upgrades soon for my dps set, especially my weapons, so I'm not such a loser anymore. To be fair: I was still more or less at the top of the damage meter, even in my sorry state. Yeah, no wonder it's hard to find good dps these days. I find it a little amusing, though, that I'm a tank who wants to dps, when usually the bad pug'd members are dps who want to try tanking. It was mostly a guild run, though, with three members from CoF, which made it fun. Any time we can run stuff together is good, since few of us are level 80, and most that are still need lots and lots of gear upgrades.

Boston Marathon and a Champion

I'm finally back from Boston, after spending 4 days there to see the Boston Marathon and the city. It's actually a pretty cool place. I'm glad I got to see it.

The Marathon was interesting, too. I have to say, seeing people run over 26 miles is pretty impressive. It has also taught me that all runners are masochists to some extent, even my friend who participated in the event. Honestly, I saw how a human can condition their body to be able to endure that kind of exertion and what happens to a human body when you have an off day, or even the worst day ever. Some of the runners looked to be in a great deal of pain, mostly from what looked like really bad muscle cramps. I swear I could see some of their leg muscles spasming from the sidelines. And yet, after all that, all of them will continue to run, many of them will run marathons, and probably all who requalify will be back next year to do it again.

Of course, being the WoW addict that I am, while watching the marathon, it crossed my mind that our toons must be in amazing physical condition. For the first 30 levels, they run everywhere. They run in all weather, at a constant pace, carrying huge backpacks and bags filled with stuff, and wearing heavy armor and weapons. At least Yrovi does, seeing as she's decked out in full plate with a heavy shield and axe.

Of course, the game couldn't be realistic. It wouldn't be fun if it were. If we were forced to walk everywhere before we got our mounts, we'd be bored to tears. If we were forced to only carry what we "realistically" could lug around, then no one would have anything. Of course, if we would get a non-combat pet pack mule or squire that had extra bag space, I probably wouldn't complain. And yes, I know, there is a squire in game now, but his backpack is obvoiously just for show, since he hasn't offered to carry any of my stuff yet.

That's right, Yrovi recieved a free child yesterday (read: Argent Gruntling) who follows her around and carries a pennant of the Undercity for her. After working her way up the ranks in the Argent Tournament yesterday (and a little during the Boston trip), she finally earned the right to become a Champion of the Forsaken. Because she's best friends with them, too, she can now call herself Yrovi of the Undercity. Very cool.

Of course, this also means that she has to become a Champion with all of them. She has approached the delgation from Orgrimmar and is currently training as a Valiant for the orcs, while continuing with her Champion duties. Also, the Black Knight is a complete pansy. Yrovi knocked him clean off his horse and he didn't get up (yeah, actually, I think the encounter was bugged because there was no second phase to the fight... he really did die the minute he hit the ground and I got credit; very strange all around).

The day ended with her taking a very nostalgic trip back in time to Stratholm to Cull the city with Arthas. She's still not sure how she feels about that, seeing as she grew up there and that's where she turned into the undead. Still, she knows that the timeline must be preserved and all that, and she'd do anything for Chromie. I'm fairly certain that little gnome is the only one in all of Azeroth that Yrovi wouldn't eat.

So Yrovi has gotten a few new achievements: Culling of Stratholme, 100 Stone Keepers Shards, Leaning Tower (because I think I'm addicted to Wintergrasp, seriously), It's Just a Flesh Wound, and Exalted Champion of the Undercity. Once I earn a few more champion's seals, I'll be buying the very sexy, white, skeletal warhorse from my faction's quartermaster. Eventually I'll get the tanking axe and the non-combat pets, too. *sigh* So much to do, how will I get it all done.

IRL: Boston

This weekend, I'm traveling to a place I've never been to before. And no, it's not Silithus or Naxxramas. In fact, it's not in Azeroth at all. /gasp

A friend of mine is running the Boston Marathon, so I'm heading to Boston to cheer her on. That means, of course, that I'll be dealing with WoW withdrawl, seeing as I doubt I'll have access to Warcraft in Boston. I suppose it's possible, and I am planning on taking my laptop along, but I'll probably be too interesting in the city to actually want to play.

Also, I haven't patched up WoW on my laptop, yet.

I still have to pack and do some housecleaning before I head off for the north. Hopefully they'll be nice to this little Texan.

Poor Yrovi will just have to wait on getting further along in the tourney. Or maybe not, who knows? Could be that I'll be able to play for an hour or so at night in the hotel room. I guess it depends on whether or not they have internet access.

Anyway, wish my friend luck and good weather for her run, and hopefully I'll survive 4 days without WoW, if it comes to that. ;-)

Alts, Their Jobs, and a Banker Gone

I am an altoholic. I've fessed up to it before, heck, I'm pretty okay with it, even proud. I love all my little toons, even if I don't get to play them often. I should say, though, that I make my alts work.

That's right. Every toon has at least one job, most have two. They may not be the best cooks, or know where the good fishing spots are, or be versed in field medicine, but they do have jobs. I try to match their skills to something that makes sense, something they will enjoy, but in the end all of them have to work for themselves and for the others, including Yrovi. Usually Yrovi supplies them materials, and they work diligently, doing their best to become masters of their crafts. Some of them are doing quite well at this. Others are lagging, but they have their reasons.

My former banking alt has thrown in the towel, though. She is a troll priest and demands the chance to get out of Orgrimmar once in a while. So not too long ago, she revolted, dropped everything she was doing, and ran to the Alchemist and Engineering trainers. She is now somewhere in the Barrens, possibly fighting quillboar, I'm honestly not sure. If you're there, and see a troll priest by the name of Eruza cackling maniacally with explosives and strange elixers, keep your distance... she's not quite herself.

My other toons tend to fall in line, though. Purah, my death knight, is a Scribe (something he did when he still lived, you know) and he is very good at finding plants with pigments he can use. Mål, the paladin adept, comes from a fairly well-to-do background, and knows how to craft jewelery as well as procure the precious stones and metals he needs to fashion his beautiful and useful pieces of shiny art. Untainted the rogue can skin just about any beast she comes across and is fairly deft at fashioning armor from their hides. My mage, Xapha, is an enchanter and tailor, creating her own robes and magical wands, as well as helping out the other toons with disposing of unneeded magical items. Her bags come in handy as well. A druid in my employ, Xyno, can also skin animals and knows where to find many rare plants for milling and potions. She's one of my suppliers. In fact, all of my toons can do just about anything, except blacksmithing. I leave that to professionals.

Unfortunately, having all these professions means that many materials are needed. Yes, some of them can gather their own, but most materials are very expensive and take a great deal of time to gather together. I find that I have less and less time to put forward to simply leveling professions, especially when they are able to progress along their chosen paths so very quickly. For example, Mål is already level 35, well on his way up the ladder, and so busy working for the Blood Knights (or anyone else willing to pay for his time and services) that he has had little time to focus on making rings or amulets. The fact that they only get broken down into their magical components for Xapha to use in her enchanting doesn't help his ego, either. And this is just one example. All of my little workers are having difficulty keeping their jobs up to date.

The worst part? There isn't really a solution, other than to make more time: time to gather ore, herbs, and skins; time to do dailies for gold to pay for all the little things you can't get elsewhere, like thread for Xapha; time to take Yrovi through old dungeons to get random green gear and cloth... and since Eruza went crazy and left her all-important post of distribution hub, I need to choose a new banker, and preferably one who won't go insane in the next few months.

Of course, once I do, I'll need to stock them with gold, buy them extra slots in the bank, buy big bags (or get xapha up to snuff and make big bags), and get them familiar with the auction house. That's more gold needed, as an investment this time. *sigh*

I can honestly say, at least, that the major purchases I needed to make on Yrovi are taken care of. She's got everything any adventurer could want: the best flight training, for Outland and the cold Northrend, an expanded mind (dual spec), and good-sized bags to hold all her needed items. So if I'm going to create a new banker, now is the time. Perhaps my gatherer druid would be good? Or my shaman twink who I only occasionally send into battle? Or maybe my hunter, who hasn't done much but slack off in Ratchet with the goblins? Tough decision, but one that needs to be made, since having to constantly go back and forth myself is getting old. We'll just have to wait to see what the future holds, though.

Get That Groove Back

So patch 3.1 is firmly in place (mostly) and that brings with it all the fun of a new patch and all the diffculties of one, like broken add-ons and funky interfaces. I think about half of the ones I downloaded don't work anymore. D: It's okay, though. I'm sure in the next week or so they'll get updated. Of course, a broken interface is actually the least of my problems, I think.

I used to have this great system down and my time on WoW was pretty organized. Not in a "too-uptight" way, just an efficient way, that let me get the most done in the shortest amount of time. That system has fallen by the wayside completely. I realized last night, totally exhausted from allergy medication, that my perfect little system had more or less imploded over the last few days in anticipation of the Ulduar patch.

I was all over the place, doing the Argent Tournament dailies, then trying to head back to Dalaran to try the new fishing dailies (and, man, those take you all over Northrend, don't they?) back to the tourney, then getting sidetracked in Storm Peaks... basically, I was like a chicken with my head cut off. Normally this wouldn't bother me, but I've noticed other things about my playstyle that has really started to bug me.

For one, I'm a tank that doesn't really tank. Isn't that the dumbest thing ever? I haven't run any instance in well over a week. The good thing is that I'll be running Heroic Utgarde Keep tonight more or less for sure. If it goes well, maybe our group will run a couple others. I mean, I've been level 80 now for weeks and have less than 10 heroic badges. So that makes, what... 2 Heroic dungeon runs total? Sad. Just pathetically sad. I should be getting geared up and ready! I mean, eventually we're going to raid, right? ...right?

I purchased the dual spec ability, so I can go fury when I don't want to tank, but, honestly, I have no clue how to play a fury warrior. That's going to take time to research and get down. I can at least say that my gear I have for my dps set isn't too terrible, for a starter set. Most of it is at least blue in quality. For me, it will be more a matter of figuring out a rotation, and not starving myself of rage. Something tells me the fury spec I went with isn't the most efficient, either, so that may have to change.

Of course, the system still has a few kinks to work out as I realized this morning during a Wintergrasp fight. I switched to Fury, then noticed how low my hp got and decided to go back to prot. Imagine my surprise when I didn't have devastate or shockwave in my arsenal? Last night, one of the guild's death knights complained about it, too, but since it had worked fine when I first got the ability I thought he was just missing something, you know, on his end. Turns out he was right. When I switched, it didn't redistribute some of my talent points, specifically at Devastate and below in the Prot tree. Of course, I didn't figure this out until after I ported back to Undercity to go relearn those abilities, thinking I'd have to buy them off my trainer. Still, having two specs at my disposal is a cool new feature and I'm sure Blizz will get it worked out soon.

I'm tempted to work on fury by staying in that secondary spec during my dailies, at least in the lower zones, like Scholozar Basin. Yeah, I'm woefully behind on my Oracles rep, not to mention any other rep. I'm going to have to map out all my dailies again and try to figure out the order in which to do them. I used QuestHelper for so long that I don't think I know how to play without it. Lightheaded and TomTom might help me out, but honestly QuestHelper did what those two do automatically AND tell me the most efficient way to go about them. Thankfully, Outfitter is back, so gear swapping isn't an issue. I don't know about QuestHelper. I really liked automatic waypoints.

In any case, I have time. Our guild still isn't ready to raid and we won't be until we start getting the newer 80's all geared up with heroics. If this run tonight goes well, maybe we can play around with doing a weekly thing. That would be nice, and get us used to a schedule that may evolve into a raiding schedule. In the meantime, maybe I'll PuG the Northrend instances I've never seen, not as a tank, but as a fury warrior on regular to get even better gear. That would be nice. :)

Split Personality and the Tourney

Although 3.1 has caused some problems, seeing as the realms were down again this morning when I woke up at about 6 am, I was able to get on a play for a couple hours last night. Nearly all my addons that I manually updated (RIP WowMatrix) don't work with 3.1. Don't know why. GoGoMount, for example is claiming it's out of date. Frustrating, because I don't want to deal with Swatter constantly giving me error messages, so I just leave all the "out of date" ones turned off. Still, I feel a little crippled without all my shiny addons.

Anyway, I logged onto Yrovi and headed straight back to Dalaran by way of my hearthstone (Yay 30 minute cooldown!). I started by going to my trainer in Undercity, stopping by the mailbox on the way to pick up some gold I sent to push me over the 1000 gold mark. I set my options to allow me to preview my talents before permanently learning them and went to town fixing up my main spec, which is still a Protection build. Once that was taken care of, I paid my trainer to "expand my mind" (goodbye 1000G) and recieved the dual spec ability.

My second spec is a Fury build, one I'll probably have to change later on down the road. I've never specced fury, having leveled protection the whole way. I have no idea what I'm doing. It's... interesting to say the least and definitely feels like a newly-discovered split personality. I do at least have a full set of DPS gear and it even contains a good amount of blue items. I switched out my gear, got into Beserker stance (very strange for me lol) and took the zeppelin to Howling Fjord.

My two weapons I have are a 2H Sword and a 2H Mace. My 2H Sword skill was much higher, seeing as I was still occasionally carrying around the Hellboar Carver for a bit back before patch 3.0. I hadn't touched a 2H Mace, though, since about level 30. My skill was way below 200, so the poor wargs and Shoveltusks outside the Horde base got a beating. At least I got some chilled meat and Shoveltusk flanks out of the deal, allowing me to finally make some Great Feasts. Not sure when I'll get to use them, though. Maybe Thursday when the guild does those heroic runs, for fun and lolz.

Even with that little detour, though, my weapon skills are still too low. Figured that out when I decided to do some dailies for gold since I was now broke. It took me far too long to kill the Captured Vrykul in the mine in Brunhildar village. Still no Polar bear. She hates me. D:

After playing around a little more, I switched back to my more comfortable Prot spec and gear and made for the northern part of Icecrown. There, right where it was supposed to be, was the Argent Tournament, already in full swing, full of people. I made my way to the Argent Pavillion, picked up the starter quest and got to work. I started earning my Aspirant tokens on my way to becoming a Valiant. I did all the dailies available to me, picking up some nice gold and my daily allotment of 5 tokens. I also honed my mounted combat skills, working on the various training dummies. I must say, they improved the Tourney a great deal from when I messed with it on the PTR.

They moved the mount you need to complete the various mounted quests to a spot right outside your faction's main tent. There are also various Argent Champions you can ask to explain how to fight against various training dummies. This is pure win in my mind. Trying to just figure it out on the PTR was frustrating. With all that, I managed to snag both Argent Aspiration and Tilted! already, so I imagine getting all the others won't take too long. ;-)

I'm already exalted with all of the Horde racial factions, so that part of the tournament is more or less unimportant. Of course, it also means that I don't have to worry about grinding that rep or wasting my Champion's Seals on faction commendations. It also means that certain high-level achievements will automatically happen when I get the lower level ones. I forsee many titles in my future and I don't even have to be Timear.

The only drawback? I'll probably get so focused on the darn tourney that I'll forget about everything else. There's so much to do now that there is no way I'll get it all done. I haven't even mentioned the new fishing dailies, or even the sweeping changes to cooking and fishing, or the fact that I'm totally behind on my other rep grinds, like the Oracles and Sons of Hodir. Gah! I want to do everything!

3.1 Has Arrived! Icecrown, Here I Come!

Today is Tuesday. Today is the day that we have extended maintenance for Patch 3.1, and, boy, has it been long in coming. Ulduar, dual specs, the Argent Tournament, tons of new items including armor, weapons, pets, and mounts, and plenty of class changes are all included in this patch. Also, everyone gets a free respec! Hooray for free respecs. It's a chance to clean up that spec if you made a minor mistake and couldn't be bothered to spend the 50G to fix it.

As evidenced by earlier posts I've made, my focus will be on the Argent Tourney, at least at first. I'm no raider, not yet ayway, and there are plenty of rewards I want from the Tournament, like the tanking axe from the trolls, a little squire gruntling, and the ever-so-beautiful white skeletal warhorse from the Forsaken, not to mention all the various non-combat pets available from each racial faction.

Since I haven't even stepped foot in the Vault, Naxx, or the Obsidian Sanctum, Ulduar seems a million years away, although all of the lore associated with it has my interest. Check out the trailer if you haven't already, just for kicks if nothing else. Varian is being a total ass again, as is Garrosh (not that this is unusual behavior for either one of them); Thrall and Jaina still have that total vibe going (I still haven't decided if it's adorable or creepy as hell); and the Kirin Tor are all pretty much just sitting there going "WTF? Get your sh!t together, morons, or we're all gonna die." It's fun. I giggled a bit. I also have a pretty sick sense of humor.

Becuase I'm so very behind the curve, even when it comes to casual players in general since the consensus is that you can PuG the entry-level raids, I'll be taking Yrovi to Icecrown to participate in the tournament. She recently (while helping prepare the way for Mål's eventual move up in the Blood Knight ranks) achieved exalted status with the Argent Dawn. One of my first goals with the new patch is to do dailies for the Argent Crusade. Once Yrovi is exalted with them as well, she'll get a nifty new title: "The Argent Champion" Nice, huh? I find it amusing, seeing as she was theoretically once a member of the Scourge. It's appropriate, though, since the Forsaken hate the Scourge and Arthas so thoroughly.

The tournament holds lots of rewards. Most of them are more vanity items than anything else, like shirts, tabards, banners, minipets, and mounts. There are, however, both rare and epic-level weapons available provided you have enough Champion's Seals. Now, as much as I love me some minipets and mounts, I feel a touch obligated to do all I can to upgrade my gear, especially if it is easy. All it takes is a small rep grind over maybe 10 days or so to get enough seals for a very nice tanking axe that actually looks pretty sweet. It is better than my current weapon in just about every way, and will help me on my way to preparing for raiding or even just running more heroics, since I'm woefully behind in that department as well (*cries* I only have 6 heroic badges so far, how sad is that? The resident Holy Pally just got the achievement for 500! *cries again*). Of course, that's entirely my fault for not wanting to PuG Heroics due to being nervous and not being familiar with instances. It's all a catch 22, though, so I'll stop there. I've qq'd about all this before anyway.

So, I guess my goals are as follows for 3.1:

1. Begin the Argent Tournament and work my way up the ranks, earning Seals.

Results in more reputation as well as opening up more rewards, like mounts.

2. Do Argent Crusade daily quests to reach exalted as quickly as possible.

Results in gold and a very nice title: Yrovi The Argent Champion

3. Purchase my Second Spec from my warrior trainer.

Results in a chance to play as DPS instead of the more intense tanking role.

3. Earn enough Champion Seals to purchase a sweet axe.

Results in a better weapon to aid in tanking, thus preparing me for harder content.

4. Run more heroics... for real, this time.

Results in badges to purchase gear upgrades, thus preparing me for harder content.

5. Eventually become a champion of all of the Horde factions in the Tourney.

Results in cool achievements, rewards, and another cool title: Crusader Yrovi

So, provided everything goes well, I'll see some nice upgrades soon as well as an entirely new way to play the game. I've been really lax in running heroics. I need to quit talking and start doing, but I really do feel uncomfortable running heroics when I haven't been in an instance before. There are days when I wish that I hadn't rolled a tank because playing as DPS is so much more fun, hence all the time I've spent on Mål. Thankfully, dual specs can help with that. It'll be interesting to run instances as dps, if I can manage to find a group. Notice I said "instances" not "heroics." I've been saving up all the plate gear I get from quests and such that is geared toward a warrior dps build, but they aren't heroics standard stuff. I've been in enough bad PuGs to know better than to think I can just switch specs and jump right into heroics.

I'm wanting to go Fury, of course, dual-wielding Two-Handers with Titan's Grip. It looks like a ton of fun. The only real drawback at the moment is that I'm going to have to level up all my two-handed weapon skills, seeing as I haven't touched any since around level 62 or so. I think I played around with the Hellboar Carver in Zangermarsh a bit, but once 3.1 hit and prot could actually do some damage, all my two handed weapons got vendored.

As for heroics, more and more members of the guild are hitting 80 and gearing up. That's good news for me, because it means I can tank for them. In fact, one of our mages who hit 80 about two weeks ago, is ready to start running heroics and I think he's tired of all the PuGs, too. He set up an event on the guild's calendar to run heroic Utgarde Keep later this week. He has the unfortunate circumstance of being unable to play weekends easily due to work. That means he can really only run stuff through the week. Fine by me, as long as we don't play too terribly late. I'll run heroics with my guild anytime, because they have to love me, even if I screw up. lol ;-)

And hey, over the next few weeks, maybe I'll just run all the instances on normal, to get a feel for them. It's a normal thing to do, and I feel that it's sort of my job to at least have a basic idea of each of the Northrend instances. In the end, I eventually want to be able to say, "Hi, my name is Yrovi and I'm one of the Main Tanks of Cradle of Filth." I think that would be really cool. :)

The Terrace Two-Man and Level 35

I had a great deal of fun tonight, running a two-manned Magister's Terrace with our resident holy paladin, Tyra. That's right, just the two of us. I had never gotten a chance to see it before, so it was a unique experience. I have to admit, I've become just a bit burned out on end-game type stuff, so running something just for fun, without any reward other than seeing something I hadn't seen before and being able to take part in some lore (i.e. seeing Kael'thas, even in the poor shape he's in within the Terrace). Too bad the little pet didn't drop, but that's probably asking too much anyway. Regardless, I learned a thing or two, enjoyed myself, and earned two achievements tonight: Magister's Terrace and Got My Mind on My Money.

Speaking of old content, I've also been running Scholomance for Dark Runes and Argent Dawn rep (and jumping over to Stratholme for a chance at the mount) with Yrovi and that has it's own brand of fun. Pwning these instances is easy at level 80, but I had never done Scholomance before, so it was totally new to me. I've also figured out how to get to the Baron in Stratholme, but it still bugs out so that I can't get out of the instance. I have to port. My runs for the mount will be limited to one, or maybe two a day due to this if I ever get serious about it. I probably won't, though, seeing as I'm a Forsaken and our mounts look just like his already. Still, it's a cool instance and I need to be as familiar with it as possible. For later, when I have to run through on my Pally.

I'm farming those Dark Runes for a reason, you know. ;-) When Mål, my little ret pally, is level 60, I plan to go ahead and do the epic mount questline, rather than try to buy the summon Charger spell from the trainer. I have my reasons, the least of which is that it should be cheaper overall that way, plus you earn your Blood Knight tabard with the quest and it is the only way to get that particular tabard. Mål must have it! He just ding'd level 35 this evening, so there is still a great deal of time left before I need all these things, but better to have it sitting in the bank, ready to go, than to have to put him on hold at level 59 or so. I get about a level a day when I log on to him at the moment, so he's well on his way to starting that questline.

The questline requires various items of different qualities, and most of it is farmable, so Yrovi has been hard at work preparing. The added bonus of Argent Dawn rep is just icing on the cake, seeing as there is a title involved if you get exalted with both Argent factions. Yrovi must have it! Too bad the Argent Tournament in 3.1 will essentially make the cloth turn-in quests for city reputation obsolete, because farming Scholomance for runecloth is so easy. Just running the first three rooms a few times yielded over ten full stacks of runecloth. Tailors, if you're in need of runecloth, get a high-level run through part of Scholo and you'll have all you could want. I kept about half of them for my tailoring alt and dumped the rest.

Speaking of tailoring alt, I really need to look at the professions I have. All of my toons have their professions slots filled. I think I've covered everything, aside from Blacksmithing. I've been wondering about some of my less-played alts, and while the main reason I don't log on to them often is because of time constraints, I think their professions may have a bit to do with it as well. My priest, for example, was the second character I rolled on my main server after Yrovi. I intended to level her so that our guild would have a healing priest for end-game. Yeah, that never happened. I want to make her viable again, though, so I've thought about dropping her professions (tailoring/enchanting; my mage happens to have the exact same professions and she's much more fun to play) and replacing them with something a little more fun: Engineering. The profession has plenty of issues. I personally agree with many other engineers out there, and have to say that at end-game, engineering is lacking. Still, while leveling, this predominantly PvP-slanted profession could be a real boon for a priest, with bombs for dps, target dummies to hold aggro for a few seconds, and gadgets and gear to improve stats. Heck, I have engineering on my main, I know how to level it, and I know how to use it to my advantage. It just may make my priest playable. I'll keep tailoring and enchanting on my mage, which makes more sense, lore-wise, anyway, and get my priest rocking the Engineering.

The only thing is, what do I pair with it? I already have two miners, ore won't be an issue. I have an herbalist and a skinner, but I may still go with one of those. Several engineering recipies require leather. I could go with another crafting profession, but what would it be? Alchemy? Or maybe I keep enchanting? This is going to take some thought, I think. I'll let you know. ;-)

The Lull and Saving the Day

Recently, Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan spoke about how the quest design team goes about doing their job and how they use questing to control the flow of the game and the pace of the players. It was an interesting read and got me thinking about my current problem that I happen to be facing with Mål. You see, I've been leveling him at a pretty decent pace (he just ding'd 34) thanks to the fact that I've really fallen in love with the Retribution Paladin's playstyle and his amazing survivability. In fact, I like it almost as much as my prot warrior. That said, he's currently hanging out in Eastern Kingdoms, having a really hard time questing.

I'm not sure what is making this section of leveling so hard. Could it be the increase in leveling speed that came with 3.0? Or maybe it is just poor quest design left over from Vanillia WoW. It's possible they didn't quite get it right when designing Hillsbrad Foothills and the surrounding area. Or, it could be that this just happens to be a slow level-range anyway and always has been. I just don't remember having this much trouble leveling Yrovi, although that was a very long time ago. Heck, it's probably a combination of all of those.

I have solutions open to me, of course. The simplest is to hop over the big water to Kalimdor and do quests there that fall in my current level-range. There is a problem with that solution, though, and it's kept me from doing it. Desolace. I'd have to quest in Desolace at this stage, and, frankly, that isn't an option. I despise Desolace. I consider it worse than the Barrens at this point, and that's saying something. Granted, I have a mount this time through, but I still refuse. It's grey, ugly, and everything seems to center around those flea-ridden Centaurs. So, no hopping over to Kalimdor (Unless I absolutely must).

I could run instances. Scarlet Monastery, for example. The biggest issue with this solution is the problem of finding groups. It seems like there is no one around my level anymore, at least, not when I have time to run something. It's hilarious how many whispers I get to run something 5 seconds before I'm planning to log off. Still, it's an option and a very viable one if you get the group together. In fact, Mål ran Library and Armory last night, which is what ding'd him to 34 and got him some shoulders to wear when he hits 37. It was an excellent group, too, with a Shammy healer (one Mål has run with before, during a rather... unique 3-manned Shadowfang Keep run... maybe I'll write a little short-story about it on my other blog), a fantastic Pally tank who practically ran us all through with a blazing pace, a frost mage who laid down some mean blizzards, and a rogue with poisoned blades filling in the other DPS slots. You were all awesome! I did get to play hero at one point:

So our tank was great, pulling large groups we aoe'd down, holding aggro like it was nothing and things were going great. We blew through the Library Wing so fast, I couldn't believe it. We decided to hit the Armory as well, especially now that we all had our little red keys, so we jumped down into the bowels of the Monastery to face Herod. On the way, our tank overpulled by a few and our Shammy healer couldn't quite keep up with the heals. I was being a DPS and didn't think to pull back to provide extra healing support, but knowing my pathetic little heals, I proably wouldn't have helped much anyway. So the tank fell, along with our mage. Wipe was looking probable, so I thought fast, laid down a Consecrate, cast Righteous Defense, used my taunt to gather up the remaining four or so mobs (damn adds that like to come into the middle of a brawl) and did all I could to hold aggro while praying to the light that I survived. Healer saw what I was doing and started healing me (which gave me a bit more mana, thank goodness... I have a whole new respect for Prot Pallys and their mana needs), the rogue payed attention and burned down the mobs and I tanked with a vengeance! Needless to say, I helped save us from a total wipe and we continued the instance after a quick drink and rebuffing with no issues. It was freaking awesome to team up with honestly good players in a PuG.

So back to the problem I was talking about up there... leveling in the mid-30's is a drag, yo. You see, it's not that there aren't quests available to me. I have quite a few in my log. But they're red. Bright red. I don't mind doing orange quests, or at least trying them, as I've found that I can do most of them with no problems. As a ret pally, I can take stuff down that I never could have on Yrovi. Of course, having several heals available to me help tons. I have my spells, my statues from jewelcrafting, bandages... plus I wear heavy armor and can put up an aura to help with that, too. Heck, I was taking on raptors for their hearts in Arathi that would occasionally land a crushing blow. I had to bandage up after each fight, but I was doing okay. Nevertheless, the quests are a pain in the behind and more or less undoable if they're red. The added issue of travel through the various zones for all these options is like straw on the back of a camel, and we all know what happens with that.

Still, through all that, and my QQ, I haven't gotten bored. I may find it hard, or occasionaly aggravating, but I keep coming back and that just proves to me that Mål isn't just some passing fad for me (like my rogue, who I haven't touched in a month... maybe I should watch Blind again to get in the rogue-ish mood *wink*). He almost has the making of a Main in him, if I wasn't so into Yrovi. It's possible that by getting to 34 and a learning a new spell, those other quests that were red are orange now. Maybe I can knock a few more out of the way. I'll give him some time to rest up, get blue XP, and I'll come back to him for more. Once I hit level 40, though, I'll have to focus on him a bit to get his gear up to snuff. Replacing everything for plate is going to be interesting, especially since his gear is already showing some age now.

One way or another, I'll push through the Lull of the 30's and hit the 40's and find my groove. Maybe I'll even get to save the day again in the process. ;-)