New Tonight, Deathwing Returns…And Now Here’s Bob with the Weather

So patch 4.0.3 hit last night and everyone is either a) up in arms because their portals/favorite spec/damage/heals/old tree form/cappuccino bar is gone, or b) very pleased with the changes in the world landscape/questlines/race-class combinations/guild mechanics. Personally, I’m a little of both of these. Am I happy that Warriors got hit with the ugly stick yet again? Not at all. Do I like the cosmetic changes to the old world setting? Absolutely. Do I want my portals back? Hells yes…well, except for my mage. Katsuko is raking in portal tip cash by the bucketful. I’ve already had to go get more portal reagents twice in the last 2 days (normally I only need to buy them once every few weeks…guess I need to rememorize the location of reagent vendors in Org and Dal again). Am I having fun? Dude, I’m having a blast. This is just what the doctor ordered for this game.

So like one of my favorite blogging compatriots, Dechion, the first thing I did after getting the kids fed and put away for the night was log on and roll up my undead hunter, which was THE thing I was most looking forward to. Had a name picked out, bags and gold ready on my trusty bank alt, and even knew where I was going to train his main pet (a Lion that will be getting named “Akodo,” naturally). Ergo, Shigetoshi was born…or died…or both; and let me just say that the new “awakening” portion of the Undead creation process is fantastic. Levels 1-10 are completely updated with very compelling vignette stories, which I certainly appreciate, and immediately immerses you into the game experience. Compared to early leveling before, this feels much more like you inserting yourself into the canon story rather than playing an FPS until you get to Silverpine/Barrens/Westfall/wherever. For now, Shigs has a Darkhound pet, which is very not bad for leveling as far as ferocity pets are concerned.

Also, the scenery! The beauty of the environment is outstanding, and I was very happy with the way the early Brill/Tirisfal questlines were arranged. No more running halfway across the continent to do inane things with/to Gnolls or grinding 200 mobs for 8 moldy fingernails. Quest item drop rates are much higher, at least early on, which can only increase your sense of accomplishment if you’re just now picking up the game.

I could go on and on, but let me just finish up with a few nice things I’ve noticed:

• The faction-specific quartermasters. This is an outstanding addition. For 10 silver, you can buy a tabard for each faction in their major cities. Like the LK factions, these tabards will allow you to grind rep for that faction while in any dungeon. Once you hit Exalted, which shouldn’t take too long with your home city, there are a number of excellent blue BOP items for sale at low prices, and a 16-slot bag that runs a little over 1G is available at Revered.

• FPs in starter cities. Brill, Razor Hill, and the cow city all now have FPs to the capitol a la the Space Goat and Blood Elf baby pools.

• Cosmetic baby gear improvements. Your starting gear looks much more like a military uniform or Nordstrom’s off-the-rack stuff, rather than something from the Homeless-Crackhead-of-the-Month-Club catalogue.

• Hellscream's Temporary Staffing Services, Inc. I mostly just found this amusing. However, I'm interested in seeing what odd jobs for heroes get tossed up there in the future. Maybe unique weeklies? Special quests that hand out Feat of Strength achievements? Envelope stuffing for the Argent Crusade's membership drive?

• New Orgrimmar. My God, Blizzard outdid themselves here. I really wish Undercity would have gotten a facelift like this, but Orgrimmar is a beautiful sight to behold. It can almost make me forget that Hellscream’s dumbest progeny is now running the place. Almost.

• Dude, valium. Speaking of, I talked to Hellscream last night just for fun and HE STILL TALKS LIKE THIS NO MATTER WHAT HE IS SAYING! CAN I BORROW A CUP OF SUGAR! I'M MAKING PIE AND NEED SUGAR! GIVE ME SUGAR OR I WILL DESTROY ALL YOU LOVE! I miss Thrall already...

OK, time to go. Need to jump back on my hunter for a bit. Remembrancer: Part II is in the can and being edited. Be prepared for a time jump.

And Now for a Word About Characters

So, my wife is currently waiting to have her traitorous galbladder removed. I am scamming the hospital wi-fi, trying to think of things to do to keep myself occupied, and not going batshit crazy with worst-case scenarios. It's a simple procedure, but I had the same thing done 3 years ago and they had to do it the old-fashioned way...with a chainsaw and a baseball bat, apparently.

But that's as it may be. I'll try to keep off that. I wanted to go into how I choose and develop characters a little bit, since this is a question I get with a fair amount of regularity IRL.

So, I've been playing various RPGs for a really long time. In fact, I remember the old West End Games Star Wars System. Loved it; roll far too many D6's for no good reason. Yeah, I'm getting grey, I know. I've played AD&D 2nd, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, L5R, Rifts, Doctor Who, B5, WoT, V:TM, and so on. I go to GenCon every year, half to play the Legend of the Five Rings CCG, but half to see the weird new RPG tabletop experiments that are coming out. So I've got a fair amount of experience playing make-believe.

All those systems varied wildly from each other, for the most part. But the one thing that remained constant was the characters. Any RPG, no matter how poorly designed or executed, can be a really good time if you have interesting characters you like, care about, and enjoy playing. Conversely, the best-designed system in the world will fall absolutely flat if you don't give a damn about what happens to the main players (The Phantom Menace, anyone?).

That being the case, I go out of my way to build and play characters that are not just fun, but have history, personailty quirks, annoying habits, hopes, dreams, goals, character flaws...in short, I try to make them as close to real people as I possibly can, because that makes for interesting dialogue and game play.

What do you do, for instance, when your main group of characters has been hired by the mob to do a smash-and-grab at a local jewlery store, which sounds fine, but one of the PC's uncles owns the store and actually was a huge influence in his or her life? Maybe got him or her into NYU through his connections with the geology department? Or if another of the PC's was busted for petty theft 6 months ago and has been turned into a narc to avoid prosecution. How does he react to this? Does he do the job on the down-low, or does he stoolie out and run to the cops? Or how about a third who is naturally conceited and can't helping bragging to a few of his buddies after the job, and is overheard by a friend of the jeweler's?

See? Good, rich characters can make something that seems pretty ordinary on the surface (listen to the bit about the sandwich) and make it, if not epic, then so much more realistic, deep, and fun.

The same rules translate over to WoW, as far as I am concerned. Arthas, Sylvanas, Varian Wynn, Tirion, Thrall...these are all fantastic characters with rich, meaningful storylines. To create characters that are any less than 3-dimensional then, to my way of thinking, is an affront to the people who imagined up this awesome world. Therefore, my three flagship characters, Kusamoto, Tsurii, and Katsuko, have been developed over the course of months, even years.

Kusamoto, in particular, has a rich history, as he is my L5R alterego. I've been playing that game so long, in fact, they folks at AEG decided to give in and make him, and I, a part of canon. It's a nod at my peserverance and in a really strange way gives him, and therefore me, a kind of immortality most people can only dream of, so I am immensely humbled by the honor Shawn Carman and company have done me. So, here's my alterego, Kusamoto, in the card game:

Naturally, who else could I have chosen to create for my flagship WoW character? Since I play horde almost exclusively, the racial choice wasn't much of one (Blood Elf was the only thing that came close) and class was similarly chosen for me (Pally, of course). So I roll him up along the same lines as my card game character, and here's what I come up with:

You can see the similarities in type, which is why I was immensely pleased at how he turned out in game, and was really looking forward to playing the hell out of him. Only one minor problem:

I didn't like him.

In fact, he sat on the shelf for about 4 months before I started grinding away at the Blood Elf starting quests, but I still wasn't having any fun with him (and I'm certain the reverse was true). I couldn't figure it out at all. Until one day, in SFK, I chose DPS or healer, got in as a healer, and realized my mistake.

THIS Kusamoto was NOT entirely "my" Kusamoto. He preferred healing over righteous fury, and more "white collar" pursuits, like Inscription and Herbalism, over the down-and-dirty professions like engineering or mining. While this originally came as quite a shock, it made perfect sense with the background I had in my head of a mid-level functionary's son forced into a role and profession he never really wanted. And now, he finds himself, by virtue of his skills in writing and oratory, as the political figurehead of an organization he is more than glad to let Katsuko run behind the scenes while playing straight man to a undead warrior.

Even though I had built the character along the same lines as my true alterego, he changed and grew before my eyes in surprising ways because of the same rules I follow when building characters, not in spite of them. It's frightening when that happens; when a character you have made, played, and were both mother and father to, suddenly matures into something you never expected. Frightening, but also very exciting. It means you've done your job in creating and raising him well, and now you are simply along for the ride.

So, this has been pretty wall-of-textish, but I hope I got my point across. WoW is, for all intents and purposes, a tabletop RPG in a lot of ways. Character creation and development is similar, and if you go out of your way to make interesting characters with breadth and depth, it will never get old, no matter what changes are made to the game, and you will always enjoy playing it.

OK, back to the really real world of waiting for my wife to be out of surgery. But let me ask everyone: Who is your favorite WoW character (NPC, your own, or someone else's) and why? I'd love to hear your opinion.

He Got Next?

So now that Tsuri's in Outlands and the endgame is in sight, I am already thinking about who gets leveled next. I have a few choices, all of which are fun in their own way, but I haven't really settled on one in particular yet. Hopefully you kind, gentle readers out there can assist me (and take the decision-making process out of my hands...shirking responsibility FTW). So, here's a quick dossier of who's available:

Name: Fujimaro

Faction: Horde

MO: Hunter

Race: Orc

Server: Silverhand

Tradeskills: Leatherworking & Skinning

Current Level: 9

Benefits: Hunters are still EZ mode, even with the BM nerf, and it's really nice being able to pay attention to just one or two things in battle vs. the 50 different things you need to worry about with a tank.

Detriments: BM, what I wanted to get into, got smacked with the errata anvil really hard. Not sure about MM or SV as a main type, really.

Favorite Quote: "I'm old, but you're dead. I win."

Name: Richhard
Faction: Horde

MO: Warlock

Race: Forsaken

Server: Silverhand

Tradeskills: None chosen
Current Level: 5
Benefits: Dude...it's an undead Warlock named Richard! How can you go wrong? Plus the racial abilities of the Forsaken are still the best in the game, IMHO.
Detriments: I've tried Warlocks before (the failed Tsuko experiment) with very little success. Getting my mind wrapped around the squishy world is difficult.
Favorite Quote: "I...like...to...kill...things. What part of that is difficult to understand?"

Name: Kusamoto

Faction: Horde
MO: Paladin
Race: Blood Elf

Server: Silverhand

Tradeskills: None chosen

Current Level: 2

Benefits: Pallys, in general, are pretty powerful and flexible. I can DPS, tank, heal, whatever. This I like.

Detriments: I really can't stand Blood Elves as a general rule. Not sure why; playing one rubs me the wrong way. Plus, their racial abilities and survivability factor are not good, and the starting location sucks for quest leveling.

Favorite Quote: "Better to die for something than live for nothing."

Name: Tsanuri

Faction: Alliance
MO: Shaman
Race: Draenai

Server: Blackhand

Tradeskills: Mining & Engineering

Current Level: 10

Benefits: I rolled up this toon so I could mob around with my boys from the Swift Sword, and ended up liking the class really well. Shamans are a nice mix of Priest and Warrior, and the space goat racial heal is very cool.

Detriments: I wouldn't be able to roll with my local friends on Silverhand very often, except for raiding and heroics with Tsuri.

Favorite Quote: "Wait, don't tell me. The ship crashed again, didn't it?"

So each choice has its good points and bad, and I'm really torn as to which one should be my secondary focus after 80ing Tsuri. Please shoot me a reply with which you think would be the logical next choice.

Thankfulness

Considering it's that time of year, I decided to put together a list of WoW-related things I am thankful for. This is just the top 5, I'm sure there are more, but I figured it would be at least partly amusing.

5. No more patches for awhile. The last 2.6 gig patch that I had to load twice did it's best to destroy my calm.

4. That I'm not Gamon. How much would that suck? There you are, sitting in the corner of your favorite watering hole, trying to drown your sorrows in a cool pint, and every motherfucking adventurer that happens along or hearth's in has to beat the crap out of you and take your bling as the first thing they do. It isn't bad enough that you lost your job at AIG (that's Azeroth Insurance Group, if you haven't seen them around), your wife left you for a handsome rasta Troll, and Realmwide Hovel Mortgage foreclosed on your yurt. Now, you can't even drink in peace.

3. That the zombie event is over. It was fun for a few days, but really, doesn't n00b griefing get old after awhile? Me and a friend ran for the hills in Stonetalon to wait out the zombipocalypse. I even bought a gun for it ('cuz I hear guns are good against zombies).

2. That I didn't have a lvl 70 when WotLK hit. After watching Androctonus try and actually complete the new quests without waiting for quest item/boss respawn and only doing about 1 quest an hour because everyone and their brother was logged on trying out the new stuff, I was very glad my little 20s self was tooling around, basically alone, running dozens of quests with no interference.

1. Horseyfied! It feels so good to be able to run away from mobs or actually have the ability to explore the world without getting callouses on both my middle and index finger from the mouse. Mounts: Best WoW option evah!

Welcome to the World...of Warcraft: A quick general guide for new players

OK, now that I have the impotent rage out of my system courtesy of the Gnoll issue, time for the promised content. A few words before starting, however...




*pours another scotch and soda*

OK, much better. Please note that a lot of the stuff I'm going to go over is general in nature. I'm not going to get into quest specifics or where to find teh fat lootz. This is specifically for someone starting the game out of the box having just read the manual and logging on for the first time, and are things I wish I had known when getting going for the first time. End of disclaimer. Let's begin with...

In The Beginning: Choosing Your First Character

Before you even start the game, you already have choices to make: Race, Class, faction (Horde or Alliance), sex, hair color, features, 401(k) allocation percentages...OK, that comes later, but you get the idea. Notice that each race has it's own racial bonuses, but may only be allowed certain classes to choose from. In general, you obviously want to pick a race you'll enjoy playing, but also look at the bonuses for the races and match them up with the Class you want to play. Generally speaking, Gnomes don't make good warriors and Trolls are crappy at spellcasting, but Gnome warlocks and Troll hunters are extremely powerful characters.

When I first started, I made Matsu Tsuri, the Undead warrior, because I figured it was the simplest thing I could put together to learn the ins and outs of the game. Later on, I found that warriors, particularly tanks, are some of the more complicated characters to learn. For your first character, Hunters are very good because of their stand-off and shoot capability, the ability to "track" mobs (which allows you to find or avoid monsters as you will) and train certain monsters as pets to do the dirtywork up close. Mages and Warlocks are also good, as they have the ability to do massive damage from afar or sic their summoned minions on people. For a first character, I would choose one of those three and leave Warrior, Paladin, and Shaman for a 2nd or 3rd toon.

Whatever your choice, once you have created a character and chosen a server to start on, your journey toward heroic stature will begin with...

"Dude, can you go snake me 16 wolf pelts and some sage?"

Yes, starting quests are not very glorious. Then again, as cool as your character looks, your stats and armor will be visciously uncool for awhile, so put glory on the back burner for now. Remember that you can have up to 25 quests stored in your log at one time, so run around and grab every quest from the starting area you can before attempting them. I highly recommend, both for the sake of enjoying the game and learning how quests work in general, not using thottbot or similar to "cheat" on the quests. While it feels unethical to me, I'll give you a practical reason: Some quests are in the same area with each other, so it is possible to multitask quests IF you have read and understood what they're asking for.

Beginning quests aren't very difficult (duh...they're for Level 1 civilians), so you should be able to go out and complete 2-3 quests at a time and then return for quest turn-in all at once. This will save you some upfront time and running back to the same area over and over again to do multiple quests you could have polished off in one shot.

After you complete a few quests, you should have been able to level up a bit and may have actually grabbed some decent armor in the form of loot off the monsters you've had to exterminate. Pick the pieces that give you best armor ratings and sell the rest, but don't worry about buying anything else at this point. Early on, the drops you get from mobs will be roughly the same quality as the stuff you can buy off a vendor, and it may even be better. You'll need gold at later levels for things like the Auction House, flight paths, skill training, food, melon juice, Blood Elf "escorts," etc. Start the habit early of only buying what you absolutely need so that later on you can afford the cool stuff without begging with a tin cup outside Ogrimmar.

Questing vs. Kill-Crazy Rampage

The best armor and weapons you will get early on will come in the form of quests, as will the most XP. While laughing maniacally and killing everythig in site is sometimes quite fun, it is not the most efficient way to level and get gold, loot, etc. Questing can be difficult, time-consuming, and frustrating, but it is the best way to level early, bar none.

Each quest you do within the first 5 levels or so gives you anywhere from 150-300 XP. Each quest usually takes about 15 minutes. So, my math advisor wishes to inform me that questing nets you roughly 10-20 XP per minute. The starting mobs, on the other hand, only give out 15-20 XP each, and there is no guarantee in the beginning that you can kill enough of them to compete with the questing math...and you might die. There is always that.

Therefore, take and complete every single quest you can early on to net the maximum amount of experience in the minimum amount of time. on't worry, there will be plenty of stuff to beat on later, and I guarantee it will beat back.

Class and Profession Skills

As you progress, you will need to visit skill trainers often. your starting area will have a skill trainer for your chosen Class that is more than willing to teach you the tricks of the trade for a price. Make sure you visit your trainer at every level early and then every other level once you hit 10.

After completing your first group of quests, you will be shipped off the bunny hill to a new area where more quests will be available, but also the first few skill trainers you can learn various professional skills from. This is where your character starts to take on a life of his/her own. What do they excel at? When they aren't beating on poor, hapless animals, zombies, or fish-men, what do they do in their spare time? You can choose up to two main professions to take on, and any number of secondary ones (first aid, cooking, fishing, etc.). Generally, you want to pick a profession based on three criteria:

• Will it compement your class choice? In other words, it doesn't make a lot of sense to choose tailoring as a profession if you're a Paladin (unless you're going for some karmic warrior-monk theme or something) since tailors can't make the best armor, weapons, etc. for Paladin-class characters. Blacksmithing might be a better option for your character.

• Will it complement another profession you already have? Herbalism and Alchemy feed very well off one another. You can level them almost simultaneoulsy. Mining and Blacksmithing are also complimentary. Engineering and Inscriptions? Not so much. You'll find much more difficulty leveling 2 disparate skillsets than two related ones; not to mention the cost involving buying raw materials when, in the other examples listed above, you can farm them for virtually free.

• Will it make you money? Mining, skinning, and jewelcrafting can all make you a ton of cash if done right. Ore and refined bars of ore are always in high demand, as is leather armor, raw materials, jewlery, etc. Money makes the world...of Warcraft...go 'round. If you're all about the Benjamins and don't care about actually making anything, by all means, choose 2 farming skills and rake in the cash. Remember, though, at higher levels created items may outdo drops, so choose accordingly.

OK, that's all for the moment. There's plenty more, but I'm getting sleepy and I'm out of Scotch. We'll continue tomorrow...

This is for All You New people...

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Corps. I’ve started this blog in response to a lot of the information I’ve seen online regarding new WoW players, since I am one myself (just started up in July and didn’t buy BC until last week…yeah, I’m behind the times, apparently). While the game is fantastic fun and an excellent diversion from rl (stock market crashing, obscenely rich automobile manufacturers flying in their private jets to Washington to beg for bailout money and then retiring to eat Chicken Marcella at Spago’s, long hours at work…well, I’ll stop now to avoid the need to start taking Valium), I have had my share of frustrations finding good resources to help newbies like myself get to some semblance of respectability in a decent amount of time.

Now, having said that, the blogs to the left are some of my favorites and talk general strategy very well, so I encourage you to visit often. Plus, they are damned entertaining to read. But, unless you want to go buy the $40 strategy guide to power through and ruin some of the earlier surprises, you’re basically stuck figuring it out on your own or leaning on friends who, while extremely helpful and patient, would much rather be guild-raiding Kara then picking Strangleweed (thanks, Paul).

So, I’m going to post my experiences here, both good and bad, along with some of the tricks I have found helpful in my quest to not only understand and enjoy the game more, but to piss off a minimum number of people while doing it :-)

Oh, by the way, we will be using harsh language in this blog. This is the really real world and I don’t pull any punches. Sometimes you just have to scream “sonofabitch!” at the top of your lungs to make a point.

Disclaimer Part II: Most of what I will be going over here is from the point of view of a Horde-side tank. For those of you wondering, a tank is a protection-specialized warrior that excels at taking damage and drawing fire away from the rest of the party members, especially the mages and priests that tend to go squish when someone looks at them wrong. Tanks are meatshields, plain and simple. While they may not deal as much damage as, say, a Paladin or a Fury-spec’d warrior, they can take a serious beating while dishing out party buffs and enemy debuffs, as well as area-affect damage, to give groups a better chance at survival in instances and high-level dungeons.

Disclaimer Part III: I know, if you’ve played any MMOs before, you may have seen something like this scroll up in your text box and wonder if it’s really English:

[GENERAL]LF1M SFK NEED PALLY.

The first time I saw something like this, my initial reaction was to start railing incoherently on people to stop butchering my language. See, I’m a writer by trade and by choice, so text/chatspeak makes the veins in my forehead bulge and my teeth grind. Unfortunately, it’s a WoW thing, and I will admit that it has come in handy when I need healing in an instance setting and don’t want to type out, “I beg pardon, Mr. Priest, Sir: Could you please heal me and pass along that wonderful Fortitude spell so that I might have a chance at living through this? Thanks so much, old man” while I’m being shivved by six scary-ass Centaurs. Much easier to type “heal fort buff plz.” However, we are not in a real-time war setting here, so I will try to keep the acronyms to a minimum. There are a few well-known ones that I may not be able to stop myself from using, but I will use regular English wherever possible.

Additionally, since I am currently sitting at a brand-new level 27, I will be updating this regularly with my progress and thoughts as I go (as well as the occasional inane commentary for your viewing pleasure…not, not that kind of viewing pleasure; there are plenty of other sites for that).
So tomorrow, I will post the first installment going over levels 1-10 for your edification. In the meantime, look me up on SilverHand if you need a tank. That is all...