The leveling experience.

Adam does not seem to be fond of quests in Vash'jir. He makes some valid points, but I have to say, most of the things he finds wrong, I actually find right. I guess we can't agree on everything, right? 

The main reason I play World of Warcraft is because I love every bit of lore Blizzard has created, be it Warcraft, Diablo or Starcraft lore. However, while I do enjoy the lore behind most of the quests, I haven't found the gameplay required to complete it very engaging up until now. I enjoy mmo's because of the social aspect and the fact that other players are interacting with the same world I am in their own way, and I can actually witness that. When it comes to gameplay, however, I prefer the way most single player games handle it - story driven and "on-the-rails". While not perfectly, I feel that the new way quests are designed does this quite well. There are flaws, some of which Adam mentioned, and some of which I too agree with, but for the most part, I find it more engaging than it previously was. Those quests he mentioned where you basically do nothing, I see as cut scenes, which I love to watch in single player games.

Now, I haven't played through Vash'jir completely yet, but I have seen this in other zones, including some of the revamped vanilla zones and I think that it's an improvement. Not all the time, not everywhere, but for the most part, definitely.

TL;DR: I like the new leveling. It feels more engaging and story driven and I don't think it will get as dull as it used to when I go through it on my twentieth alt. 

Skipped One!

Sorry... no excuse really, it just happened.

Yesterday, I did a big move. I decided to stop going for performance so hard and dropped Enchanting on Larthas in favor of getting back Mining. My mage will have Tailoring/Enchanting anyway, so I thought I should just make things easier on my main. Handling Blacksmithing only won't be as inventory intensive and will make other parts of the game simpler.

This is why I've spent some time yesterday and today leveling my Mining again. I won't be selling the ore, because I intend to make my Worgen an Engineer anyway. The leveling goes much faster now, luckily. Flying in the old world really helps, and there is no need to track Thorium so much, since you can just leave for Hellfire once you hit 275. I got it up to 350 and tomorrow I will be getting it to 400 in Northrend. Once I hit that, I can go to Hyjal and start Mining Obsidium to level Blacksmithing to.

Other than that and a couple of heroics, I really didn't do much. I had very little to do anything else. Also, nothing dropped in heroics yet.

The roll continues!

Four out of four, people, four.. OK, I'll stop, it's getting annoying.

Today, Larthas got to 85. I did some archeology first, same as yesterday, and then went back to Uldum to finish the rest of the quests. I have one left until I get an achievement and that one is reserved for the instance, unless it wont count, in which case I missed a quest somewhere again.

While clearing Uldum, I also did a dungeon or two, and then went to Twilight Highlands. I did a few introduction quests and then found a group for the new arena chain there. Mid way through that, I got the last bit of experience needed for level 85. I finished the rest of the quests, got a nice weapon for it and went to discover the entrance to Grim Batol on the way back to Stormwind.

I then did a round through the new zones and bought some new equipment from the quartermasters. I also bought two pieces from the justice points vendor which got my average item level high enough to queue for a heroic. I got Vortex Pinnacle and it really wasn't to hard to complete, once we started using proper crowd control.

That was it for today. Tomorrow, I will spec properly, try to do a few more heroics and maybe level my professions a bit. The marathon to 85 is officially over.

I'm on a roll

Wow, I'm three for three right now! Let's see how long this will last...

Anyways, today, I finished around 70-80 quests in Uldum. Man, do they milk the Indiana Jones thing there. Also, the cat people are cool. Before I went there, though, I did some digging with archeology and also managed to stumble into a quest that turned into a daily at the Gurubashi arena. If you are going to Uldum, thats an easy 80-90k experience the first time you go there, and around 45k each day after that. Seriously, you complete the quest in under 20 seconds so it would be stupid not to do it.

I also did a few dungeons, including some new ones I found, and got some pretty cool loot. When I realized I'm already half way to 85, which takes a total of 9 million experience, by the way, I decided it was time to give it a rest and go back to Stormwind. I took the Hero's Call introduction line for Twilight Highlands while there, and then did some quests with Anduin, uncovering a Twilight conspiracy involving the mayor of Stormwind.

Tomorrow, I intend to go back to Uldum to complete the remaining quests and, with the help of some dungeons, get to 85. If that won't be enough, there's always a whole other zone to complete.

Also, I sold some bags with Sahtral. The netherweaves aren't as popular as I expected, but the frostweaves do sell well. Hopefully, the price of netherweaves will rise once people stop leveling their mains and create worgen. If not, I can still sell them at a profit, just not as big as I expected.

That's right!

Two posts in two days people! I'm on a roll!

What happened? Cataclysm got released is what happened!

I managed to log in at 0:01 and went to Hyjal immediately. It took me a bit under two hours to get my first level. The quests there were great, the lore was great, and I loved it how some of the quests actually prepare newbie players for raids. Anyways, at two in the morning, I decided to go to bed and woke up at eight in the morning the same day.

I had breakfast, and went right back to the game. I cleared the rest of the Hyjal quests and this got me to a bit over 82. Before I went back to Stormwind, I tried out archeology a bit in Winterspring. Then my brother in law came online, so we went to Blackrock to discover our first dungeon entrance. We queued for it and I went to Deepholme, while he went to Hyjal. The flight through the rift in the Maelstrom was epic!

About 20 minutes of quests later, we got the queue and entered Blackrock Caverns. The dungeon was not very hard, but we did wipe a few times due to not being aware of the tactics. Eventually, we completed it and I got a few upgrades through drops and quest rewards. I continued to do quests in Deepholme and soon discovered Stonecore as well. I queued for this one alone, since my brother in law was still in Hyjal. This one felt a bit harder, but nothing we couldn't handle. I completed a total of 113/125 quests in Deepholme before I couldn't find any more. I guess I either missed a few of them somewhere, or the daily quests count for the first time I do them.

I again returned to Stormwind and decided that was enough leveling for the day. I did some digging around the world, went to Uldum to do the intro and find the dungeons there, and then also went to Vashj'ir to find the entrance to the Throne of the Tides and also do the intro. Tomorrow, I will be doing some dungeons and questing in Uldum.

I'm loving every minute of the expansion. Everything is brand new again and the quests are fun and nicely streamlined. WoW is pure fun for me again!

A long time ago...

 ...I actually wrote on this blog! Well, I think it's time to do so again. Over the last few weeks, I had exams again, and my computer was busted again, so I barely even touched the game. The worst part of it is, the computer broke just when the Cataclysm patch was released so I didn't get to experience any of the changes from the start.

Well, exams are over, the computer is now working, so I've been very busy.

I continued to clear my inventory and sell everything that will become useless tomorrow. This means I left the eternals and common gems I had, as I expect those to be in demand once all those new Worgen start to go to Northrend and level their professions. I also left some enchanting materials, but not much, since I used up most of them. My scrolls sold for the most part, but I still have a bunch left over so I hope I will somehow manage to sell those later, at least at a discount for a partial return of my investments.

Lashtar is doing well with inscription, but I didn't stock up on inks because of my computer, so I'm just selling the stuff I already made. Still, he started at around 1000 and is now at close to 7000. With a single 5 minutes-a-day time investment, I think this is pretty damn good. With all of this, I am right now sitting on about 220 000 gold total, so I think Cataclysm won't be a financial issue.

I also cleared Larthas' inventory and bought him some flasks and potions of water walking. I was also going to buy some swiftness potions, but there aren't any on the auction house. With that and the vendor mount he owns, leveling will be a painless process. I did nearly the same things with my other characters but I still have to research what a good leveling spec would be for each of them.

I also leveled my mage to 65. He can now make frostweave and netherweave bags and he already made a whole bunch of them hoping the price would increase tomorrow and over the next few weeks. He should make a nice profit on those. I really loved leveling in the old world with him. The whole 1-60 content redesign is awesome and it plays great. Leveling is truly fun again.

Most importantly, I decided to leave my guild. After all the breaks I had because of hardware and other issues, I just didn't feel like I belong there anymore. Also, I don't think I will be able to raid as much as I used to, so that's another reason I felt it was time to leave. Since I have so many alts, server transfers are out of the question, so I made my new home in Nerf Me, a much larger guild which, while they do raid, also makes room for social players which is what I will probably be for the next few months. I might do a raid every now and then if there's room and I have the time, but mostly, I will be taking it easy and enjoying the game at a slower, less time intensive pace.

Anyways, over the next few days, I will be leveling and finally experiencing some truly new content, so I'm not really sure how much I will be able to write, but I promise to at least try and give you a short update.