The Week I Stopped Playing WoW

Don't Panic! It's not forever, and I haven't even cancelled my sub.My Guildies also know if they need me they can add my battletag which is in my guild note and I shall log on :)

For the past week or so I have only been playing Diablo 3. This has mostly been to try and get my characters ready for Reaper of Souls and to get my Witch Doctor and Barbarian to 60 (mission accomplished!)

Initially when I started the project I was lamenting the fact that I would not be able to buy Reaper of Souls until after it's release date due to funding issues, but a very kind friend has since bought it for me so all things going well (and as long as the game code arrives today!) I should be able to play it at the same time as everyone else.

Now I've noticed that I don't take as many screenshots on Diablo as I do in WoW, despite some of the graphics being equally stunning - but in a different way.

My current favourite character is no longer my Demon Hunter! (Shock! Horror!) I have been immensely enjoying my Wizard so she may be the first one to try Act V (If I ever finish replaying the quests after I had reset them >.>) I am also looking forward to making a Crusader!

I've not really bothered saving much gear for a Crusader as with the new loot system I've found that my characters have geared up fairly well on their own as they level - however I have saved a couple of Flails, just because they happened to drop!

This is how my ladies look atm:

Even though I have levelled the Witch Doctor and Barbarian to 60, I'm still not overly fond of playing them, the Witch Doctor especially, so they may just sit there and do nothing, not sure yet.

If any of you are thinking of coming back and checking out Diablo and Reaper of Souls I would heartily recommend it as the new loot system is awesome and the gameplay is so much more fun with the new difficulty levels - levelling a new character in Torment 1 at low levels if you have a character at level 60 already is awesome!

I shall be coming back to WoW eventually (and will likely still be logging in for raids) but for now I shall just be playing Diablo! :)

In other news, my very good friend and guidlie Arideen has finally joined both Twitter and the Blogosphere! He has decided to keep from being bored in the coming months he is levelling a characters from scratch on a new server with no heirlooms to try and recapture the initial joys of levelling. He is going to write about it in his blog and chronicle his journey.

You can find him on Twitter under the name @LunaManifestum and you can find his blog over at Arideen's Hunt go give him a follow!

Blending In Nicely

Still playing my lowbie Deathknight (who's levelling has been severely hampered by Pokémon - am one pokémon away from completing the Central Kalos Pokedex!)

She has however reached a respectable level 68, and I'm going to wait until she hit's 70 before sending her packing to the cold north. Her current levelling path has her questing in Blade's Edge (and whoever thought that two quests to kill two different sets of 30 ogres was a good idea, oh my gosh :-p) and its a place that makes it hit home how large and (for the most part) empty a lot of these areas are now.

Here is my Deathknight looking small and insignificant on her Iron Skyreaver (a mount that is fairly large!) against the backdrop of one of the Blade's Edge canyons.

I've purposefully stayed away from a lot of the information about the new zones and thigns we may see (granted there isn't a LOT of information, but I always do this as I prefer to have a very vague knowledge and be pleasantly surprised when its released). However flying around today, I can't wait to see what a lot of these areas used to look like, when we head forth into Warlords of Draenor. I know the zones aren't going to exactly match what we see in Outland today, but part of me from a purely historical point of view wants to be able to match up what used to go where and try and figure out what made it how it looks today.

Other than that, Happy Commercial Love Day :)

The One Where I Took Lots of Screenshots

Yes I know, I have enough characters, but I love levelling! Plus it contributes to the Year of Faff!

Since my last post I have made a new druid, who is currently residing in the all Druid Guild Druids of the Beast over on Shadowsong. She will likely go the same way of my poor Warlock in The Tweeters guild on Doomhammer and be rarely logged in, but I will level them both eventually and enjoy being able to connect with people I interact with on Twitter!

In other news, The Friday Fun Run group went to Mogu'shan Vaults! I know, a proper grown up raid!

I spent the Thursday and Friday actually levelling my priest to get to 90, and she hit 90 at about 4pm. Queue me rushing around alts finding Timeless Isle gear, and taking said priest off to the Isle for her free Burden!

The raid itself went fine, but I definitely felt a little overwhelmed healing wise, and definitely felt very low on mana on more than one occasion. I need to do some more reading up on holy at 90, but for now, I have switched her to disc and will try that :)

I've also spent some time on the alts, with the Druid looking for Aeonaxx, the hunter actually getting the mount to drop from Stonecore (Woohoo!!), and more levelling with friends :)

 Peekaboo!

Friend's shield just spinning in mid-air.... 

The Drafia are still raiding, and still working on killing Garrosh (got to Phase 3 this week! Progress!!) However, it seems this week, Thrall decided he was hungry and dived face first into our Noodle Cart!

I also finally figured out how to get up on the bridge by Huolon! (Yes I'm aware this is old news to most, but its taken me a while :-p) I spent a nice half hour there AFK while i browsed Imgur.

And because this post doesn't have enough screenshots yet, have this one that I don't even remember taking!

In wider WoW news, new character models for human female have been released! Even when I played Alliance, humans were one of the last races that I would choose for a few reasons. The biggest reason is that I felt playing a human in a fantasy game was a waste of a character, but also, the fact that the model itself looked completely naff.

I am so glad that the new model looks so good, it gives me hope for the rest that we are yet to see (I'm even starting to hope that troll females will have more than one face to choose from!)

Apart from this, I have mostly been playing Donkey Kong on my 3DS, and am awaiting the arrival of Pokemon Y (the first Pokemon game I will have ever owned) to see what all the fuss is about!

The Important Things in Life

A few things have happened in real life this weekend that have made me appreciate what, and who, I have.

You've heard me talk about my Nephew many times. On Saturday morning, we heard the sad news that his other Grandfather (his Mum's Father) had suddenly died from a heart attack. My Nephew's Mum and my brother and broken up (amicably) and she was due to be moving back in with her Father - much shock all round.

Due to this we had my Nephew all weekend as the last thing his Mum needed to worry about was a two year old running around.

Even though I didn't know her Dad very well, it was still a shock and made me want to re-establish my own relationships, both outside of the game and inside.

My very good friends Landerolin and Siorai have alt characters in my horde guild, and we spent the day yesterday levelling together, nattering on Vent (until I had to go afk to help with dinner).

Kudos for those of you who can tell where we are!

I also have applied and been accepted for one of my old Alliance alts back on SWC to rejoin The Wanderers, so I can re-establish old friendships there also. My shaman has started the levelling path between 85 and 90 (currently 86!) though she was very confused when visiting the inn at Dalaran:

Yep, someone had managed to get Gymer the Storm King up here and he is dead in Dalaran - at least it looks that way. I'm starting to think it may be a bug as the corpse has been there for a few days now (and I doubt someone is purposefully bringing a new one here every time it despawns!)

My druid is settling in well in Draenor, she has a nice new transmog also!

Her gear is also coming along nicely, she has gone from ilvl 494 on SWC to a current ilvl of 517! She's done a bit of Flex raiding and has started making her way through LFR, and is currently queued for ToES for the legendary part (tho I doubt I shall get all the way to the end of the legendary questline, already have umpteen characters at various parts of it.)

My gold making plans for the next expansion keep going awry as I keep spending the gold....

I needed a Traveller's Tundra Mammoth okay? Honest!

New Year Resolutions are Hard!

So yeah, I may have slightly forgotten about the blog posting!

In my defence I'm a bit ill at the moment so haven't been at the computer much :)

In other news, my RaF characters are still levelling, along with a pair of monks for fast XP! I now have a level 51 Druid levelled purely by granted levels so far, not sure how high she will end up going ^^

Yes, still in starter gear! :D

As we can no longer see our RaF links on the website, I'm not entirely sure when my account link runs out so am racing against time to level my alts as fast as I can ^^

Other than that, have levelled Inscription on my Warlock to give her something useful to do, and am just generally faffing about atm :)

Catchup and Shinies!

So I have 2 sets of RaF characters levelling away on Draenor, one on each faction at the moment.

Just really enjoying the questing again, even if on multiple classes I already have ^^

The highest ones at 41 currently are these pair:

Balance Druid and Elemental Shaman! I quest away on the Shammie with the Druid on follow, tabbing between accounts to accept and hand in quests when necessary! Brings a whole new element to the game ^^

Then the Alliance alts are these pair:

A Protection Paladin and a Frost Mage! (And yes I'm aware my choice of names is highly unoriginal ^^)

They are only at level 10 so far but are getting some levelling love today!

Also I finally got around to buying my Alterac Pup and Enchanted Fey Dragon mount!

All is good so will check in again soon :)

An Alliance Itch

So the last few days I have come to the conclusion that I do not wish to do LFR on all my level 90s. And this has left me a little bored.

I have my nice new Draenei priest that I free character transferred from Draenor Horde to Emerald Dream then faction changed so she has been levelled from 83 to 85 and is working her way through Jade Forest now :)

Its been so long since I levelled an Alliance character of any description that it has made a nice refreshing change.

Here she is:

I've always liked Draenei females so am loving levelling her atm. She is still Holy mainspec and takes mobs down fairly quickly with the "DPS" Chakra.

I also finally gave in and made a Dwarf Hunter. Not only have I made a Dwarf Hunter, I have made her on a PvP server!

This may not bode well, but as she is still sub level 10, all is right with the world!

Not sure how long they will stick around, but it's nice looking back in on the Alliance questlines :)

Trademarks, Countdowns and Levelling, Oh My!

So blogless weekends are fast becoming a thing :-p

I apologise but we have my nephew on weekends and seeing him become a proper little person is so exciting ^^ (Even if his favourite word is currently No)

In other news, as most of you no doubt know, MMO Champion posted about a new trademark being registered "Warlords of Draenor".

Most speculation seems to centre around a return to Outland, either going back in time or picking up where we left off. Either would be fine with me as so many people seem to talk about the brilliance of the TBC expansion, but I only started playing towards the end of it so never got to experience the parts most people loved. That being said, it will be interesting to see if a revamp of the current Outland is on the cards (and I hope it is as I have had so many characters "stuck" in that part of their levelling paths!)

Countdown wise, The Godmother has been informing us how many days are left until Blizzcon on her blog! I have my virtual ticket and will be slowly altering my sleeping pattern over the following week to enable me to be awake for as much of this weekend as possible. Alas funds do not allow me to attend Barcraft-on-Thames or I would have attempted this also! I need to start listening to more podcasts though it seems!

Levelling wise - I have made another warlock! This followed a guild conversation of me having multiple alts (I do not have over a hundred hunters! Nice as that sounds) and that I should definitely make an undead Warlock as my next alt - so this is what I am currently levelling!

I am levelling her as destruction as a) I miss Rain of Fire, and b) I want to learn how to play it! She is currently level 26 and counting! (If you want to have a nose at her and tell me if I need to change any talents (and yes I'm aware she has no glyphs yet!) you can find her here: Aurosa).

I also have my #hunterweek character to level - she has been removed from the loving bosom of the hunter only guild on Draenor to get our guild perks and she is sitting at level 11 waiting for me to come back to her.

The Shaman is quite well geared now and I must say I have fallen in love with Shaman healing. She keeps up with much better geared characters and is usually near the top of the healing meters and I'm having little to no mana regen issues. I'm even thinking of doing the legendary questline for her too to get a cloak!

Flex wise, we have killed Garrosh again and more people got their heirloom weapons! We usually manage to clear parts 1 - 3 on a Thursday and then keep the last part for Saturday night. This last Saturday our illustrious guild leader forgot about Flex (shock and horror!) and went to a Firework display. A guildie who has his number texted him to see where he was, ending him saying he would be with is in about an hour. So I queued us thinking I could try and lead us through the first couple of bosses until he managed to get online. Queue us wiping over and over to Siegecrafter Blackfuse ending in us taking a ten minute break until he got online - then we proceeded to one shot the boss. 

I'm not to worried about this as we have only done those bosses twice now so I am not as well versed in those as I am with the others, but it was stupidly funny how easily the boss fell over with our Guild Leader there to talk us through it on Vent!

No loot for me this week, but it was lovely to see more people signing up for the Flex runs and getting loot (we are generally running with between 20 and 25 people each time now!) I'm even starting to wonder if we are going to have to start up another Flex group to fit everyone in ^^

Roll on Blizzcon!

That Escalated Quickly!

There seemed to be a mini-explosion in posts regarding the Alliance's role in Mists yesterday!

So firstly, thank you to all those that read mine and left me such nice comments and retweets, here have a dancing Moonkin Hatchling (awww look at the googly eyes!) :)

Seems that we have touched a nerve in a lot of the player base, whether they be Horde or Alliance!

It will be interesting to see which direction the story goes after the Siege of Orgrimmar to say the least! An idea did come up on Twitter courtesy of Marathal: 

I think this is a brilliant idea and would be an interesting story to participate in and play out, even if it runs the risk of having a similar consequence for the horde feeling sidelined.

I could see the story working though as I can picture Prince Anduin studying the dark forces to find out how to combat them and it going from there (yes, another corruption story).

In other news, the Closed Beta for Hearthstone has gone live in the US. I've not done a lot of reading up on this but it does look fun. Like many other people last night I spent quite a bit of time camped out on Twitter hoping for a Beta key even if I wouldn't be able to play quite yet. However it wasn't to be so fingers crossed for when it goes live in the EU ^^

In personal WoW news, the baby Warlock has reached Northrend! She looks forward to making the Lich King's forces cower before her. The baby Mage has progressed to Valley of Four Winds and is working her way through the quests quite nicely, and the newly transferred Hunter is gearing up nicely and can now get in to Mogu'shan Vaults!

More Levelling!

Today Farmer Yoon gave me his farm! \o/

So I promptly planted crops for August Celestials and Dominance Offensive being the last two factions of any use that I need on my hunter.

Also did my Anglers dailies for the third day running (which is almost unheard of for me) and finally got my Master of the Ways title :D

It felt so satisfying to then hand in all of my extra mats for Ironpaw tokens, and get my little cooking apprentice.

I then promptly logged off the hunter as didn't fancy doing any LFR today (and yes I know this is bad but shhhhh it'll be fiiiiiiiiine!)

Logged back to the priest and today so far have levelled her from level 62 to level 70 with a combination of questing and dungons. Still specced as holy, even DPS'd a few dungeons earlier with a guildie and DPS wasn't too shabby.

One thing I can't get used to is dungeons that turn me into a human. I get that some for lore reasons have to be Alliance, but must it always be a human? D:

They are the most boring race available to play, I already am one, why would I want to play one in game??

Here is a screenshot of me earlier today in my icky human form:

And this is me right now in my usual form, much better I'm sure you'll agree!

Going to aim to get to 75 at least tonight I think! :)

Why do I call myself an Altoholic?

The answer is pretty straightforward - I like levelling characters!

My original aim was to have one of every class at max level, an aim that I'm still working on, but have ended up with more than one of some classes (which I shall explain another time!)

I didn't always have a small army of alts mind. In fact, it took me long enough to get my first character to max level that a new expansion came out!

It all started back in 2008, some friends where I worked were playing so I decide to give World of Warcraft another try (having tried it a year or so previously and not liked it at all, with a human priest).

So I created an account and made a character. Ideally I wanted to create an elf (and the only ones that looked how I wanted were Blood Elves) but my friend was playing Alliance so I made another human priest. Progressed slowly through the start area and got as far as Goldshire.

The server I started on was Steamwheedle Cartel, a role-playing server. It bears saying that I had no idea what role-playing meant or how to do it, I only started on that server because that is where my friend played.

Goldshire was no where near as bad as I later found it could be (and no where near as bad as Argent Dawn EU or Moonguard US are!)

However while levelling around here I encountered more players than I had seen previously. I had no idea there were so many things people could be! And it was here I first encountered Night Elves! These fantastic creatures could ride tigers!

It was then I saw a Night Elf hunter, not only was she riding a tiger, she had one for a pet!

Well, that was it, I had to make a new character because I wanted to ride a tiger and have one as a pet!

And so, Aurorasofia the Night Elf hunter was born.

However, I still basically had no idea what I was doing, so spent ages levelling her through the start area (back when the mobs were still red names!).

Had a blast bumbling along on her through the levels, with my good friend Varethius despairing of me because I was taking ages to level. I didn't care though, I was having a great time, and if I couldn't quite do a quest because it was too hard for me, well that was fine, I would just ride around uncovering the map and exploring.

He tried to get me to do some dungeons, but after one attempt where I died over and over I refused to do any more (and this lasted long into Wrath!)

Despite this I was still unsure exactly what a dungeon was, and still managed to get myself killed by accidentally wandering into them. "Ooh a swirly portal!" I would think as I went to explore and experience yet another inevitable death.

This coupled with my complete lack of understanding about how gearing worked meant a slower levelling experience. A while back I managed to find a website that for some reason had the armoury of my hunter saved back when she was level 51. At the time she was battling foes wearing a mixture of cloth, leather and mail, some white quality (bigger armour number means I live longer!), and spirit gear (for the mana regen of course!)

Here she is pictured with her trusty Warpstalker (that I still have) that I had no idea at the time was a Tenacity pet! My understanding of the different types of pet was as noobish as the rest of my understanding at the time.

Every now and again my friend would check what I was wearing and give me an overhaul, however, when he explained that green gear was better than white, and blue better than green, I assumed he meant the colour of the armour itself, so I was rather bemused when he told me my gear was no good. What did he mean by this? I'd worked hard to make sure it was all the same colour!

I didn't care how long it was taking me, I was enjoying myself! So I carried bumbling along, and then Blizzard announced their next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King!

We were excited and I vowed to reach level 70 before it came out! (Quite a feat as I believe I was still level 50 odd at the time, and levelling was no where near as fast as it is now).

Fast forward to three weeks before the release and I still wasn't level 70. I think I'd reach roughly level 60, and remember distinctly hating levelling in Outland, so found any excuse to be back on Azeroth when I could.

I also discovered add-ons! How great were these? Queue some of the most horrific UI set-ups I've ever known.

I can't remember all of it now, but I remember running around various parts of Azeroth whenever we heard that a new invasion was happening, collecting the scourgestones! I ended up collecting enough to get my first full set of epics, (and boy do I wish I'd kept these now that transmog is in the game!)

I also remember spending a large amount of time avoiding cities as I didn't particularly want to be a zombie, but then I can also remember standing with my friend (a paladin) and a few people he knew as they were healing people? I could be mis-remembering this and maybe we were just standing by one of the NPC healers, I confess, I'm not 100% sure.

All this combined meant that I still wasn't level 70 and the release date of WotLK was drawing ever nearer.

I booked some time off work and settled down to level, and managed to get to the end level, two days before the release of Wrath!

However, I still had no idea how to play properly, and could still be found meleeing things on occasion if the mobs got too close because "it was easier". Also I had just gotten Misdirection at level 70, and had no opportunity to use it, so it was a fairly long time until I learned the proper use of it.

I remember being dragged through a run of Karazhan shortly after hitting 70 with my friend Varethius and his then guild the Furlocks, the first (and last time for a long time) that I did a raid! I had no idea what was going on and was told to just follow and stay close, and make sure my pet didn't attack things.

I wasn't even aware at the time that it was a raid, I just assumed it was a long dungeon - I had no way of knowing it was any different thanks to my time avoiding all things instanced!

My levelling to 80 went smoothly enough, so smooth in fact that I can't remember most of it. I spent the majority of my time levelling unguilded, as I saw no point in them and was quite happy going about by myself. I'd briefly run my own guild with a few people from work (Twilight Legion) and joined a couple here and there, but none kept my interest for long.

Not long after hitting 80 I was wandering around Dalaran, trying to decide which achievement I wanted to go for next, (seriously, achievements are THE single best addition to the game!), when I noticed an advert in trade from someone looking for raiders for their guild.

Ordinarily I wouldn't have paid any attention but the name of the guild grabbed my attention. it was The Wanderers. I loved it straight away as I spent a large part of my time wandering around exploring!

I whispered the person and he asked me what raiding experience I had. I said I hadn't been 80 very long, but I had done something called Karazhan if that was a raid? I wonder if Kalevipoeg still actually remembers that conversation? ^^

And thus started my time as a social member of The Wanderers! A guild I was to spend many happy years in until very recently.

I still avoided raiding like the plague, despite helping the team on a few occasions through their Naxxramas and Ulduar runs, my raid awareness was 0 and my skills close behind so I kept to myself.

I started doing dungeons with some of the people in the guild, who taught me the different types of pet (after I tried a few dungeons with Blinkie the Warp Stalker and couldn't understand why my DPS was so much lower), and with the help of Allaria the hunter class leader, I slowly learned how to actually play my class. I also learned how to choose better gear as I went along properly!

Then came a social raid set up in the guild, for the non-raiders and people who had alts to take part in to Naxxramas. I signed up and checked all the tactics, and was incredibly nervous the entire way through.

It was a lot of fun, and I even got myself a new bow!

Shortly after I made a priest and a druid, and then truly started my altohlic ways, with this character taking a back seat and doing not a lot else except getting to max level in Cataclysm. For the rest of Wrath I played my druid and levelled another hunter and raided Dragon Soul heroic in Cataclysm, both tales for another blog.

Now I've come full circle back to my first character, who now looks very different and has moved home and faction, and joined another guild. 

Towards the end of Cataclysm I faction changed Aurorasofia to horde, I decided that I wanted one hunter on each faction, and wanted to experience the horde side of things properly. Still on Steamwheedle Cartel I joined The Drafia, a guild that I knew some people in as they had alts in The Wanderers.

Fast forward again to Mists and The Drafia decided to move server as SWC had become dead on horde side (and not much better on alliance!), so I decided to move a few characters with them. Draenor was chosen as the server and it is so much busier than SWC!

I had never played on a busy server before so I brought some more characters over and haven't looked back!

Plus, it finally means that Aurorasofia can be the character I always wanted her to be :)