Monday, August 18, 2014

release date

So we have a release date!! I never thought I'd see the day when Blizzard would release a game earlier than initially expected. It's not as early as I like, but I can definitely live with it.

My plan to get everyone to 90/600 before my account expired totally failed. I don't even know what happened, to be honest. There was that day when they were having all those issues and no one could log on. Other than that, I just don't know. It just didn't happen.

I'm going out of town for 4 days at Labor Day, and I've decided I'll renew my account when I get back. It's silly to renew it now because I wasn't really doing anything anyway, and I know I won't have time to play for a few days even before we leave, so I'd lose a whole week, which I hate to do.

In the meantime maybe I'll play beta? I'm not gonna lie; I completely forgot I had a beta key! I've had it for awhile now, but after they did the first character wipe after I got it, I was done. I had a key for Cataclysm beta, and I don't remember them doing that. Then again, I didn't play it much either because I didn't want to spoil anything. Maybe I'll give it another go, though. If I do, I'll be back here to let you know how that goes. Otherwise, I'll be back after Labor Day!

Monday, August 11, 2014

10 Years 10 Questions

I saw this over at Plenty of Paladins, and it looked like fun!

1. Why did you start playing Warcraft?

I went home for the summer after my sophomore college, and when I came back, I found that my boyfriend was playing WoW. He had played before but hadn't played since I'd known him. I didn't even know what WoW was. He wanted me to play, but I wasn't a gamer, and I thought it looked ridiculous. I resisted for a long time. Fast forward to later in the year when the BC trailer was released. I saw it, and I was intrigued, but I didn't let on that I might want to play. I went home for Christmas break, and as a way to "hang out" with Josh, I decided to get a trial account. I asked for the full game for Christmas, and the rest is history.

2. What was the first ever character you rolled?

The very first character I rolled was an undead warlock named Kilauea. I hadn't told Josh that I'd made an account, and I spent a couple of hours getting to level two (seriously). My sister (who was 9 and had been playing on Josh's account over the summer) then informed me that Josh was alliance and I wouldn't be able to play with him if I was horde. So I deleted her and rolled my human warlock, Loihi. When I was level 24 (after playing for months and months) they were offering free server transfers for high pop servers, and Josh decided to take it. I was stubborn and didn't want to go. Then the window closed, and I was stuck by myself on Scarlet Crusade. I ended up abandoning her and rolling a new Loihi on The Scryers. She ended up being the first one that I leveled to cap, and she was my only level 70 until WotLK came out.

3. Which factors determined your faction choice in game?

The last question pretty much explains that. I wanted to roll horde, but my boyfriend was alliance because the friend that got him into it was alliance. Eventually we ended up rolling horde. I prefer pretty much everything about the horde. I even have a horde insignia tattoo in real life. Loihi will always have a special place in my heart, though, and I tolerate the alliance for her :P

4. What has been your most memorable moment in Warcraft and why?

Dang, there are so many, but I'll just share one.
There was one time we were in ICC 25, we had just pulled Sindragosa, and some of our guildies in California started saying in vent that they were having an earthquake. They were all very nonchalant about it, while those of us who don't live in earthquake country were kind of freaking out. We were all, "Are you okay?! Do we need to just wipe it?!" We ended up killing Sindy with hardly any issues, and if I remember correctly, it was our first Sindy 25 kill. Apparently earthquakes are good luck.

5. What is your favourite aspect of the game and has this always been the case?

I'm always happiest when I'm in a guild with people that I like and we can do things together. I've been in KoT for many, many years, but their roster has changed a lot, and we've had a lot of periods of inactivity, but we've always been able to come back and make new friends and have a blast with them. Unfortunately (for the sake of the guild), Josh and I finally have grown-up jobs. KoT is a west coast guild, so they don't finish their raids until around 1am our time. That just doesn't work for us. Hopefully we'll be able to find a guild home on our horde characters soon.

6. Do you have an area in game that you always return to?

Not really. I typically hang out in Orgrimmar/Stormwind, but only for convenience reasons.

7. How long have you /played and has that been continuous?

I'm not at home, so I can't check my /played. However, it wouldn't be accurate anyway because there are a lot of hours that were *cough* not me playing... Before I started having "my friend" play on my account (Cataclysm) I think I had 100 days on Loihi (not to mention Amayaa and Adelaide). I have played on and off since December 2006 (more off than on) with my longest continuous span being December 2007 to October 2010. In most "off" times, I only took one or two months, but my longest off time was December 2012 to December 2013. I renewed my account for December and January and then let it ago again until July.

8. Admit it: do you read quest text or not?

No. I'm too impatient. Even when I first started playing, I would only skim it enough to find out what I needed to do. Still today, I only read it if I'm stuck.

9. Are there any regrets from your time in game?

My biggest regret was bringing some real life acquaintances into our guild. For the first time, Josh and I had a pretty successful guild running Naxx (WotLK). All of our RL friends had quit playing, and when we met some people who had quit but were looking to get back into the game, we invited them to roll on our server and join our guild. To make a long and painful story very short, they destroyed our guild. It broke my heart, and I'm still not over it five years later.

10. What effect has Warcraft had on your life outside gaming?

It has affected it in a lot of negative ways from time to time, but it has also affected it in positive ways. I have made some very good friends in game, two of whom I've met in real life. One has now traveled from Michigan to South Carolina to hang out with us 3 times - one of which was for our wedding. It can be a good stress reliever, but it can also be a stress inducer. It's just really important to find a balance between WoW and real life. I'm going to be honest; I struggled with that for awhile. I think I have a good handle on it now, though.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

i'm back

I can't believe it's been three years since I posted here. I didn't love Cataclysm and never played seriously. I did raid finder a little towards the end, but I was never in a guild and never saw a non-raid-finder raid. Then there was MoP, aka the worst thing that ever happened to WoW. I honestly can't even remember who I leveled first - human Loihi or Amayaa. I want to say it was Loihi. Josh and I leveled together and we ran a few heroics, and then we were done. Over it. At some point I came back and leveled whichever one I hadn't leveled first, as well as Gatsbie. After about two months, though, I lost interest again. This expansion just sucks.

I am really looking forward to Warlords of Draenor, however. I'm super excited about it, and I really hope they do this one right. So right now, I'm preparing. I'm getting all of my characters leveled up to 90 so that I have choices. I'm leveling all my professions to 600. And I'm trying my best to stockpile gold. Maybe I just haven't found the right strategy yet, but I think it's always pretty difficult to make money at the end of an expansion. No one really needs anything, so you might sell mats to people like me who are getting their professions leveled up, but other than that, it's hard to really pinpoint something that is going to make you money.

So right now I have:
Amayaa - Blood Elf Paladin - Level 90
Gatsbie - Troll Druid - Level 90
Loihi - Undead Warlock - Level 90
Katniss - Orc Hunter - Level 90
Loihi - Human Warlock - Level 90
Adelaide - Draenei Shaman - Level 89
Ladella - Undead Priest - Level 89
Avena - Blood Elf Warrior - Level 88
Liora - Tauren Shaman - Level 87
Whimsy - Gnome Warrior - Level 87

Needless to say, I have lots of choices. I probably won't play Whimsy or Adelaide at all because they're on a server where my guild and pretty much everyone I knew left. I transferred my main off that server, and there just isn't really anything left for me there. Luckily, I have both another shaman and a warrior. I hope to have Ladella, Avena, and Liora to 90 by the end of this week.

I don't even remember leveling my professions, but somehow I already have jewelcrafting, enchanting, alchemy, inscription, engineering, herbalism, and mining at 600. I don't have all the fancy schmancy new recipes, but again, it doesn't really matter at this point. At least I won't have to worry about doing leveling any of that when WoD comes out; it will be ready to go for the new stuff. Today I was working on blacksmithing. I think I got to 530 or something. I just need to farm a ton of ghost iron and I'll be finished with that. I've been debating leveling a tailor. Human Loihi's tailoring is maxed, and I leveled that as I went with her. (She was my first character and has been around since vanilla.) It was a nightmare even leveling it that way, so I don't know if I will pick it up on my horde server or not. Josh does have a max level tailor, so I don't necessarily need it.

Once they announce the release date, I'll be able to come up with a better plan. If it does end up being December (or even November) I'll probably just unsubscribe until they drop the patch. If it is coming sooner, then I may spend my time PvPing until that patch drops. I have no interest in trying to get into anything PvE-wise at this time, though.

So I guess we'll see where everything is on Thursday.