You made playing a Hunter a matter of pride!
(and awesome job TJ for putting this together!!!)
BRK Video from Temerity Jane on Vimeo.
Showing posts with label WotLK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WotLK. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Doing your duty.
Or: currently the only place to take a crap in the game.
When I first started playing WoW one of the things that struck me most was the sense of humor written into the game experience. Every once in a while you would be questing along and something small would happen that would make you laugh hard enough that you were in danger of falling off your stool.
When in a group this was usually apparent when one of your friend's character would simply stop interacting with the game. One minute they would be running around getting quests, then next they would just be standing there.
In Burning Crusade that sense of humor got reduced to making us do lots of "poop-quests". The NPC would have you go searching through the droppings of zone monsters looking for seeds or a lost wedding band.
The Ewwwwwe facter was fun the first time, but it got old pretty fast.
In Wrath I am happy to have found that not only is the sense of humor elivated again, they have started to introduce consequences for your blindly accepting quest after quest for no reason other than an NPC has a yellow arrow over his head.
Some of those consequences are rather dire. In the horde quest chain you actually help the Undead rebels create their New Plaque that causes disaster at the Wrath Gate.
In Grizzly Hills your blind actions help one of Arthas's minions gain a promotion, and you even get good equipment upgrades from it (yeah that made me feel just great thanks...).
Others have a smaller "ah crap, that was me" moment attached. For instance while helping infiltrate a pirate compound you end up killing the only male walrus around for the sake of making a few bars of soap, and screw up the mating rituals of the local animal population.
Little things that reflect our current attitude towards our world can be amusing reminders.
Then there are some that are just funny. Just a few days ago I rolled into Amberpine Lodge and discovered a bunch of wonderfully tasting seeds that some kind person left out for visitors. They were so yummy I downed them all!
Turns out they were some magic seeds that the Lodge needed to survive the winter with...d'oh!
/hand+forehead
Who knew?
Well, there is only one way to get them back.... (notice that the guard walking by dosen't even bat an eye.)
*Sighs*
40 years old, and somehow this is still funny.
Oh, and the best part is that the outhouse is re-usable after the quest is done if you ever need a cheap laugh.
When I first started playing WoW one of the things that struck me most was the sense of humor written into the game experience. Every once in a while you would be questing along and something small would happen that would make you laugh hard enough that you were in danger of falling off your stool.When in a group this was usually apparent when one of your friend's character would simply stop interacting with the game. One minute they would be running around getting quests, then next they would just be standing there.
"Um...Fiara is everything ok, did you disconnect?"
"No no, I'm just laughing at the quest giver because he is making fun of me for doing every quest in the zone...."
In Burning Crusade that sense of humor got reduced to making us do lots of "poop-quests". The NPC would have you go searching through the droppings of zone monsters looking for seeds or a lost wedding band.
The Ewwwwwe facter was fun the first time, but it got old pretty fast.
In Wrath I am happy to have found that not only is the sense of humor elivated again, they have started to introduce consequences for your blindly accepting quest after quest for no reason other than an NPC has a yellow arrow over his head.
Some of those consequences are rather dire. In the horde quest chain you actually help the Undead rebels create their New Plaque that causes disaster at the Wrath Gate.
In Grizzly Hills your blind actions help one of Arthas's minions gain a promotion, and you even get good equipment upgrades from it (yeah that made me feel just great thanks...).
Others have a smaller "ah crap, that was me" moment attached. For instance while helping infiltrate a pirate compound you end up killing the only male walrus around for the sake of making a few bars of soap, and screw up the mating rituals of the local animal population.
Little things that reflect our current attitude towards our world can be amusing reminders.
Then there are some that are just funny. Just a few days ago I rolled into Amberpine Lodge and discovered a bunch of wonderfully tasting seeds that some kind person left out for visitors. They were so yummy I downed them all!
Turns out they were some magic seeds that the Lodge needed to survive the winter with...d'oh!
/hand+forehead
Who knew?
Well, there is only one way to get them back.... (notice that the guard walking by dosen't even bat an eye.)
*Sighs*
40 years old, and somehow this is still funny.
Oh, and the best part is that the outhouse is re-usable after the quest is done if you ever need a cheap laugh.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Holiday Questing...wha? Again?
I recently read this post by Pike, the author of Aspect of the Hare, where she talks about her feelings about being a veteran WoW player faced with repeating the holiday quests for the sake of an achievement.
Like Pike I have been playing WoW for a while. I actually got hooked by the Make Love Not Warcraft episode of South Park that aired in Oct '06. I had actually been avoiding WoW after it launched just because of how deeply I had immersed myself in Blizzard's other games.
A Small Digression
At least those games came to an end. Yeah there is BattleNet, but initially you beat the game and waited for the next hot RTS (real time strategy) to hit the market. I started my Blizz career with Starcraft, moved to Diablo II, and then lost several weekends to Warcraft III.
I new that it given my addictive nature towards RTS games that an MMO which routinely added content was just bad news for me, and I was probably correct. WoW is now so much a part of my day that performing the minor chores in game, like gathering herbs or mining, is how I wind down after work in the evening. It is also how I like to enjoy my first cup of coffee in the morning.
My morning kind of looks like this:
I usually wake up when my cat Hamlet drops whatever toy has his fancy today next to my head and starts to play. Next I blearily rise and start the coffee, feed the cats, then grab my coffee and begin my day at the WoW Auction House.
Then if I am playing that day I will decide which character I feel like working on. Lately that has been my DK Bert.
And the Point Is?
Well to make a short story long, the point is that over time I have done the holiday quests enough to really not even notice them happening anymore. This morning I realized that I have heard fireworks and rockets being set off now for over a month, and was wondering when I would be able to do my AH work in peace...(yup this gamer is just about to ding 40...get off my lawn!)
So this year we have a new twist to the holidays in the form of Achievements. It is a simple idea, do the quests and get a few achievements done and maybe earn a new title or tabard or something like that.
Now the question is do I really want to go back and do them all again?
Achievements are fun. Its kind of like leveling without leveling:
Eat a billion gumballs and Whoosh/Ding! A little tag appears, an announcement goes over the airwaves and all your guildies respond by saying "Grats".
I like that, its a fun way to affirm that there are other folks playing the game with you. Its why we all say "Ding!" in guild chat, right? Even on that new rogue alt that levels every ten minutes?
The downside is that some of the holiday content, while it was quite fun the first time around now kind of makes me want to jab a pencil into my eye. Headless horseman is a great example. When it first came out I was right there in line with everyone to do my 5 runs each day to get the new epic rings and hope for the squashling to drop.
This year...meh.
I did it to help some guildies and that was fun. Otherwise I was all about getting to level 80.
This Lunar Festival I decided to go for the elders title and you know what, I ran right into the fact that I am burned out on PUGs. I ended the festival three coins short of the title. Each coin inside a dungeon in Northrend where the way is blocked unless you down a boss.
A guild run was out of the picture given that I am part of a very casual guild of busy adult types, and thus we have two level 80 characters, myself and a friend in the Midwest that has had his hands full with his child.
So over all I really enjoy the wacky achievements like killing 15 turkeys in under 30 secs or whatever, but I just can't easily get motivated to redo the holiday quests.
And that seems rather odd to me given the number of times I have leveled through the Barrens....
Like Pike I have been playing WoW for a while. I actually got hooked by the Make Love Not Warcraft episode of South Park that aired in Oct '06. I had actually been avoiding WoW after it launched just because of how deeply I had immersed myself in Blizzard's other games.
A Small Digression
At least those games came to an end. Yeah there is BattleNet, but initially you beat the game and waited for the next hot RTS (real time strategy) to hit the market. I started my Blizz career with Starcraft, moved to Diablo II, and then lost several weekends to Warcraft III.
I new that it given my addictive nature towards RTS games that an MMO which routinely added content was just bad news for me, and I was probably correct. WoW is now so much a part of my day that performing the minor chores in game, like gathering herbs or mining, is how I wind down after work in the evening. It is also how I like to enjoy my first cup of coffee in the morning.
My morning kind of looks like this:
I usually wake up when my cat Hamlet drops whatever toy has his fancy today next to my head and starts to play. Next I blearily rise and start the coffee, feed the cats, then grab my coffee and begin my day at the WoW Auction House.
Then if I am playing that day I will decide which character I feel like working on. Lately that has been my DK Bert.
And the Point Is?
Well to make a short story long, the point is that over time I have done the holiday quests enough to really not even notice them happening anymore. This morning I realized that I have heard fireworks and rockets being set off now for over a month, and was wondering when I would be able to do my AH work in peace...(yup this gamer is just about to ding 40...get off my lawn!)
So this year we have a new twist to the holidays in the form of Achievements. It is a simple idea, do the quests and get a few achievements done and maybe earn a new title or tabard or something like that.
Now the question is do I really want to go back and do them all again?
Achievements are fun. Its kind of like leveling without leveling:
Eat a billion gumballs and Whoosh/Ding! A little tag appears, an announcement goes over the airwaves and all your guildies respond by saying "Grats".
I like that, its a fun way to affirm that there are other folks playing the game with you. Its why we all say "Ding!" in guild chat, right? Even on that new rogue alt that levels every ten minutes?
The downside is that some of the holiday content, while it was quite fun the first time around now kind of makes me want to jab a pencil into my eye. Headless horseman is a great example. When it first came out I was right there in line with everyone to do my 5 runs each day to get the new epic rings and hope for the squashling to drop.
This year...meh.
I did it to help some guildies and that was fun. Otherwise I was all about getting to level 80.
This Lunar Festival I decided to go for the elders title and you know what, I ran right into the fact that I am burned out on PUGs. I ended the festival three coins short of the title. Each coin inside a dungeon in Northrend where the way is blocked unless you down a boss.
A guild run was out of the picture given that I am part of a very casual guild of busy adult types, and thus we have two level 80 characters, myself and a friend in the Midwest that has had his hands full with his child.
So over all I really enjoy the wacky achievements like killing 15 turkeys in under 30 secs or whatever, but I just can't easily get motivated to redo the holiday quests.
And that seems rather odd to me given the number of times I have leveled through the Barrens....
Friday, January 23, 2009
PUG'd Out
or Bringing Up Number Two
Arggghh. The realms are down for emergency maintenance. Darned lag and arena issues....
That's OK though it gives me a few moments to write a little update on the gang.
Fin has been working hard running PUG heroics, and we all know what a crap shoot that is. My experiences have been pretty positive though and I attribute that to the fact that he is a healer.
Here are some of the drops that he is sporting: Helm of Anomalus, Cape of Seething Steam, Gavel of the Fleshcrafter, Annhyld's Ring, and a Band of Guile.
For crafted epics I have been using Earthgiving Boots, and Earthgiving Legguards, and I am currently gathering materials for one Wispcloak.
Gathering the mats is kinda fun, I am currently working on gathering 100 clams to purchase a Siren's Tear from the Murloc Ahlurglgr in Borean Tundra.
Being a little tired with Pugs I decided it was time to start bringing up my second character. It looks like my Death Knight Bert will be the next to make the jump to Northrend.
Leveling has never been faster. I left Bert at Falcon Watch with about half of the Hellfire Peninsula quests finished. When I was done with Hellfire Bert was almost halfway through level 64 so I went ahead and skipped the Zangarmarsh and Terrokar Forest zones and went right to Nagrand.
The Nesingwary quests, half of the Garador, and Throne of the Elements quests have Bert at level 66. It is time to research DK tanking specs. I'd like to have that picked out by level 70 so I can be fully familiar with how the mechanics work when I try to start running level 80 dungeons.
Well, realms seem to be back up.
I'll keep you updated on my progress. I am also working on a post about how to use the Routes add on. Big Bear Butt mentioned it on his blog (I can't seem to find the post though), and I have fallen in love with it.
More later.
Arggghh. The realms are down for emergency maintenance. Darned lag and arena issues....
That's OK though it gives me a few moments to write a little update on the gang.
Fin has been working hard running PUG heroics, and we all know what a crap shoot that is. My experiences have been pretty positive though and I attribute that to the fact that he is a healer.
Here are some of the drops that he is sporting: Helm of Anomalus, Cape of Seething Steam, Gavel of the Fleshcrafter, Annhyld's Ring, and a Band of Guile.
For crafted epics I have been using Earthgiving Boots, and Earthgiving Legguards, and I am currently gathering materials for one Wispcloak.
Gathering the mats is kinda fun, I am currently working on gathering 100 clams to purchase a Siren's Tear from the Murloc Ahlurglgr in Borean Tundra.
Being a little tired with Pugs I decided it was time to start bringing up my second character. It looks like my Death Knight Bert will be the next to make the jump to Northrend.
Leveling has never been faster. I left Bert at Falcon Watch with about half of the Hellfire Peninsula quests finished. When I was done with Hellfire Bert was almost halfway through level 64 so I went ahead and skipped the Zangarmarsh and Terrokar Forest zones and went right to Nagrand.
The Nesingwary quests, half of the Garador, and Throne of the Elements quests have Bert at level 66. It is time to research DK tanking specs. I'd like to have that picked out by level 70 so I can be fully familiar with how the mechanics work when I try to start running level 80 dungeons.
Well, realms seem to be back up.
I'll keep you updated on my progress. I am also working on a post about how to use the Routes add on. Big Bear Butt mentioned it on his blog (I can't seem to find the post though), and I have fallen in love with it.
More later.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Holy Crap!! Infected!
Stopping in Booty Bay this morning on my way to train a gorilla I found these conspicuous crates sitting on the dock.So I investigated and I was immediately infected and had to find a cure or be turned into a zombie within 10 min.
I am now flying to Stormwind to try and find an Argent Dawn healer before it's too late.
Damn You Lich King!!!! Curse You!!!
Its only a three minute flight.... hopefully I'll be ok
Edit: Made it, I found a healer inside The Gilded Rose in the Trade district. The kind healer took care of me right as I walked through the door.
Keep your eyes peeled people! Arthas and his minions are about!!!!
Whatever you do, don't eat or touch anything green, glowy, and pukey looking.
The plague is what took down Lordoron!
Now I'm off to let my pally get turned into a zombie....
brainssssss, braaaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnnnsssssss
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Holy Crap! What do we do now!!??!!
or Life in World of Warcraft 3.02
Alas poor Ilidian I knew him well....
WoW 3.02 is currently being added to the servers, and soon we will emerge into realms that appear the same, yet all will have changed.
These are exciting days ahead. The next month will be spent learning how the new game mechanics function, and planning out how we want to approach the expansion. Some will want to charge ahead to level 80 and the new endgame content, others will go hit up the new Death Knight class, still others will be sleeping in Inns and building up a bit of XP to stay just ahead of questing level requirements.
If you were around for the 2.0 update you are probably patiently keeping an eye on the Realm Status web page while doing other things, dishes, work, laundry...you know.
This is old hat for us, for we remember the old days when our worlds would fall apart once a week, but would usually be back up by 11:00am.
Sometimes not.
OK, most of the time not.
And usually we would spend the next two or three days getting our add-ons straightened back out.
For those that are Burning Crusade babies who came to the game in the times of rolling restarts and short scheduled game maintenance... DON'T PANIC!
I repeat DON'T PANIC!
We will get through this.
What we are going to do is get back to our roots and once again start paying attention to all the other research sites, QQ'ers, and hunter how-to bloggers that got us from huntard to hunter the first time around.
We are also going to try things on our own FEARLESSLY. These changes bring exciting new things to WoW that will enhance the game and hopefully make things more fun.
Sure things will be off balance and wacky for a bit, but that is to be expected. Adequately testing a game for 10 million people to play is one heck of a task for our developers, so to this end we will also be Patient. Let the huntards and @ss hats piss and moan and complain, while the rest of us take things in stride and enjoy all the new adventures ahead of us.
The advantage is we are heading into the expansion informed and experienced. We can do this gang, we have been here before, and don't forget that there are new people out there that will need our help on the way.
One of the great things about the Hunter community is our willingness to stop what we are doing and show someone else the tricks of the trade.
*sings* Its a whooooole new wooooooooorrrrld, a fantastic point of view!
Here is my list of Hunter Research sites.
Some old and some new, all of them friendly and all are passionate about our fav class.
Keep these handy for when you are stuck and want a little help, or maybe a good laugh on a realm maintenance Tuesday.
Edit: This is looking like my new side bar....
Hunter Blogs
Big Red Kitty
Aspect of the Hare
The Hunter's Mark
Gun Loving Dwarf Chick
ReNoobed
Twisted Nether Wiki - Blogs of all classes listed here.
Hunter Forums
BigRedKitty Forums
Elitist Jerks
WoW Hunter Forums-Official
Research Sites
Petopia
WoWHead
WoWWiki
WotLK Wiki
Kaliban's Loot Lists
Podcasts
The Instance
Twisted Nether
World of Warcast
Big Red Kitty
Alas poor Ilidian I knew him well....WoW 3.02 is currently being added to the servers, and soon we will emerge into realms that appear the same, yet all will have changed.
These are exciting days ahead. The next month will be spent learning how the new game mechanics function, and planning out how we want to approach the expansion. Some will want to charge ahead to level 80 and the new endgame content, others will go hit up the new Death Knight class, still others will be sleeping in Inns and building up a bit of XP to stay just ahead of questing level requirements.
If you were around for the 2.0 update you are probably patiently keeping an eye on the Realm Status web page while doing other things, dishes, work, laundry...you know.
This is old hat for us, for we remember the old days when our worlds would fall apart once a week, but would usually be back up by 11:00am.
Sometimes not.
OK, most of the time not.
And usually we would spend the next two or three days getting our add-ons straightened back out.
For those that are Burning Crusade babies who came to the game in the times of rolling restarts and short scheduled game maintenance... DON'T PANIC!
I repeat DON'T PANIC!
We will get through this.
What we are going to do is get back to our roots and once again start paying attention to all the other research sites, QQ'ers, and hunter how-to bloggers that got us from huntard to hunter the first time around.
We are also going to try things on our own FEARLESSLY. These changes bring exciting new things to WoW that will enhance the game and hopefully make things more fun.
Sure things will be off balance and wacky for a bit, but that is to be expected. Adequately testing a game for 10 million people to play is one heck of a task for our developers, so to this end we will also be Patient. Let the huntards and @ss hats piss and moan and complain, while the rest of us take things in stride and enjoy all the new adventures ahead of us.
The advantage is we are heading into the expansion informed and experienced. We can do this gang, we have been here before, and don't forget that there are new people out there that will need our help on the way.
One of the great things about the Hunter community is our willingness to stop what we are doing and show someone else the tricks of the trade.
*sings* Its a whooooole new wooooooooorrrrld, a fantastic point of view!
Here is my list of Hunter Research sites.
Some old and some new, all of them friendly and all are passionate about our fav class.
Keep these handy for when you are stuck and want a little help, or maybe a good laugh on a realm maintenance Tuesday.
Edit: This is looking like my new side bar....
Hunter Blogs
Big Red Kitty
Aspect of the Hare
The Hunter's Mark
Gun Loving Dwarf Chick
ReNoobed
Twisted Nether Wiki - Blogs of all classes listed here.
Hunter Forums
BigRedKitty Forums
Elitist Jerks
WoW Hunter Forums-Official
Research Sites
Petopia
WoWHead
WoWWiki
WotLK Wiki
Kaliban's Loot Lists
Podcasts
The Instance
Twisted Nether
World of Warcast
Big Red Kitty
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