Suguay Productions

The release of Cataclysm for most in World of Warcraft is reason enough to be playing almost constantly. And just a week or so after it’s release begins another reason for some to be playing and that’s the Feast of Winter Veil. Ok, these are reasons for me to be playing.

Have you seen the new content yet? Have you played any of it yet? In addition have you seen what they have done to the old world parts of WOW? Have you made a Worgen or a Goblin yet? Which one do you play most?

Yes, I got Cataclysm the day it was released. I did not stay up all night to get it at midnight. I got it the day of release on my way home. I even managed to get it loaded on my computers before I had to go off and do something else. It was, alas, the next day before I had a chance to really get into it. The first think I did was create a Goblin. I play both Horde and Alliance just on different servers. I started playing my Goblin and doing some of the beginning quests. I have to say I haven’t gotten very far with her. I got side tracked leveling my Draenei Death Knight. I think the Goblin will be interesting to play and fun. I just haven’t gotten very far with her. There’s so much to do and I don’t have unlimited time to play. So I’ve started her and we’ll see from there.

I did start a Worgen though honestly I may re-create because I’m not sure I like the class I chose for her so I’m not going to really discuss the Worgen except to say, at first I was confused in creating the character, I got to choose what my Wolf-person form would look like and then I got in world and I was this boring human. Then I got far enough along that I was no longer confused or disappointed. I haven’t played the Worgen enough to have an opinion on the race.

I have finally found reason to give a little love to my Draenei Death Knight. She was languishing at 80 with her trade skills still needing work and I had little interest in working on them. Until Cataclysm. Now I need to get her to 85 and since I’ve caught most of her skills up to close to Lich King level, well, I might as well work on them as I go. Especially since some skill now give XP as you do them and there are new Cooking and Fishing Dailies that award a point to that skill when you complete them. There are new Jewel Crafting Dailies as well if your Jewel Crafting is high enough, sadly mine is not. I’m getting there though. I can still do the Dalaran Dailies so that works. Added bonus, all those dailies once again give me XP, so there is more reason to do them.

And then along comes Winter Veil. This is one of the world events in WOW that I really like. The Blizzard people decorate every inn and town with at least a pretty tree. There are quests to do that give you holiday awards. It’s just fun. Then on December 25 you get to open presents under the trees. For Horde it has been in Orgrimmar and for Alliance it has been in Ironforge. It’s just good fun.

For now I’m really enjoying the new expansion and the holiday. I hope you are too.

 

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

So did you participate in the pre-Shattering events for Cataclysm or were you off doing other things trying to avoid the main cities? What about Pilgrim’s Bounty. Have you done anything for that?

I did for both. I wasn’t really staying away for a particular reason but I didn’t seek them out until, someone pointed out some valuable information. The pre-Shattering quests to deal with the cultist and such offered good experience and cash for not a lot of really hard work. The Pilgrim’s Bounty cooking quests made it quick, easy, and fairly cheap to level your cooking to 300 in about an hour maybe two.

Since my level 80 Death Knight M was sitting with her Fishing and First Aid maxed out and her cooking at a pathetic 137 it seemed like doing the cooking quests were an awesome idea and way to at least bring her up to the Outlands level of cooking. Now I will be running around Outlands trying to level my cooking. Beats having to run all around the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor first and then having to run around Outlands and then Northrend. Yeah. Way better. So I did the quests on M.

Then I decided my little Gnome Warlock would be a lot better off if I leveled her cooking while I had the chance since she’s at 28 and it seems to me it should just make things all around easier. And I’ll be able to better work on her cooking as I go. The Gnome Rogue got the same treatment. In the case of the Warlock the experience gained from doing the cooking quests was almost enough to get me a level. For the Gnome Rogue, it did get me a level. I went from 13 to 14 just doing the cooking quests.

Next, I had to get on my Horde side characters and get them fixed up. I first did my Troll Rogue over there. She didn’t get enough experience to level but she did get some good experience. I was trying for the achievement where you kill a bunch of Turkeys in a short amount of time or at least kill them all without loosing the timer, I think it was a buff, I didn’t look, anyway you have to kill turkeys without that disappearing. On the Troll Rogue I got 27. I thought I was doing pretty good. But not good enough for the achievement. I took out my Blood Elf Death Knight and tried it on her and got 33 and still not good enough for the achievement. Oh well. I think I still have today so I might try it again. Or not and wait until next year.

So I got the cooking up on 3 of my Alliance toons and 2 of my Horde toons. I was going to do a third Horde toon, my Orc Warrior who is 27. Yeah, that hasn’t happened yet. He was hanging out in the Barrens when the Shattering happened. He died just trying to get to a safe spot. They have totally destroyed Camp Taurajo. It’s in ruins an tatters. The way to Mulgore appears to be blocked off my a massive gate that is guarded by the Alliance. And all the mobs are 3 to 5 levels higher, minimum, than my poor Warrior. I managed to get him to the camp that is near what is left of Camp Taurajo. I don’t remember the name of it. I was just glad to get there. He’s hanging out there now while I decide on his next move. This will make leveling him up a different experience than it was going to be. But he still needs to have his cooking leveled so I may take care of that for him today. Who knows.

The pre-Shattering quests I did on my Gnome Warlock, well what was available. I did them on my Draenei 80 Death Knight, Blood Elf Death Knight, and my Troll Rogue. I didn’t make real effort to get them on everyone. And to be honest, I was like a lot of others by the end, the rifts and fights in the cities were more annoying than anything. Especially when I logged in at 6:00am to check my mail only to not be able to find the mailbox because Iron Forge was being evacuated. I did try to help out and kill things in that case. Only to die. So then I tried to free trapped citizens, only to have the even end before I could find the last 5 in the Great Forge. Yeah, the quests were fun, that part though got a little tedious after a while. Probably because so few others seemed interested in participating. Oh well.

Now we are all prepared for Cataclysm or maybe not. Our world has just been rocked hard and maybe you’re not ready for the changes coming in the expansion. Or maybe you can’t wait for your Worgen or Goblin. I for one am looking forward to a Goblin Rogue with Engineering. I think it makes the most sense, should be fun to play and if not a Rogue, Warlock if it’s available. What about you?

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft a bit more since the big patch came out. It helps that I was on vacation. It turns out things are quite so bad as I was dreading and a few things maybe got better. I think I have even solved my Death Knight dilemma.

I have re-spec’d my Rogue Y though I must confess to not having given much time to her. I haven’t seen a real difference here, but again, not much time spent with her to really offer an opinion other than it didn’t get worse.

After talking with some friends I finally decided to take my Horde Death Knight G and spec her out as Unholy. She’s at 75 so this is a good test and it gets me all 31 points in my main spec. This has turned out to be fun.

The ghoul that you get for a pet is kind of funny and a bit helpful, oh and ever so expendable. I forgot that I could now fly in Northrend until I realized my flying mount was no longer unavailable. I tried it and sure enough. Now it should be so much easier to do those things in Zul’Drak that you had to time your path just right or spend a lot of time killing trash to get to the quest you were trying to complete. Now, I haven’t done a dungeon on my Unholy Death Knight yet. I hope to get that done some time this week. If it all goes reasonably as planned then I will spec out my Alliance Death Knight M as Unholy and maybe go try one of the Heroic Dungeons that everyone is saying is so hard now. My luck, I’ll get Occulus which I already think is hard.

I had intended to spend some time leveling my Alliance Rogue. Let’s face it, Gnome Rogues are fun. They are tiny, they move fairly quick, they stealth. What’s not to love? Oh and they are so funny when they run in stealth. Make one and try it just to see. You’ll get a chuckle. Oh, anyway, I intended to work on her. I got distracted and little on M is stuck at level 13 waiting for more action. What was my distraction? A Warlock.

I started a Gnome Warlock W. I’ve gone with Demonology as my spec. I have to say that I am very pleased with it so far. I’ve gone from 1-23 in just a couple of days. I’ve even done a Dungeon with W. While it was a bit long, those early ones are, it was fun. And I got a run with a good group of people. I think they were going to do more but I didn’t have time. Sadly. It was great to realize that I could DOT things and send my Felguard off to help kill stuff and by the time I’d get to one of my longer spells most of the stuff was dead. Cool. Ok, I didn’t get a chance to look to see what level everyone else was at. For all I know they were 3 levels higher than me and doing all the work. Still, there were no complaints, no grumbling and I got 3 or 4 nice pieces that I was able to use and not just sell or auction. That’s always cool.

And so for all my dread and concerns about the patch and the changes, it looks like things so far are turning out ok. I might feel a bit differently with my 80 DK when I really get back to playing her. Then again, maybe not. I think I’ll still be thinking the changes have turned out ok. It’s not so bad.

 

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

We all know patch 4.0.something.whatever is out. We’ve known it was coming. Some of us even decided to try it out on the PTR before it went live. Some of us meant to and didn’t get to it before it hit. It’s a big sucker. I’m downloading it now. Yes, I know, I’m a couple of days late but this is the first opportunity of any time I’ve had to address it.

I have to admit that I have some ambivalence and trepidation regarding the changes. I know they are all in preparation for the expansion. I am excited to see the changes, especially to the land, in Cataclysm. And so we have to deal with the changes in the patch. I’ve heard lots of concerns from one of my friends. He’s not very happy about what was being done to his Paladin. That’s fine. I get that. And I will be honest, I’m not very happy with what they have done to the Death Knight.

You may recall that my only level 80 character is a Death Knight. I have been playing DPS in the Blood spec. I like the Blood spec but I don’t want to tank. I tried to learn to play the Frost spec as I have another DK that I’ve been working on, on a different server. I just don’t care for it. It’s slow. There aren’t enough buttons to push fast enough.

So now that I get a re-spec opportunity I’ve got to figure out what to do. I could go blood and I would have to learn to tank. I could got Frost and learn to deal, I could go Unholy and figure that one out. Now, if this isn’t bad enough, there is the little issue with the need to re-gem and to get new glyphs. I’m just not happy about this. Quite honestly it’s going to be expensive and I still haven’t recovered from my last major purchase which was the Epic Flying. Seriously, this is just annoying.

Since I do have that other Death Knight that also got a re-spec, and I’m not sure I’m going to keep, for silly reasons but they will do, I suppose I could sped her as Unholy and see how that works out. But do I want to deal with the ghoul?

I’m really having trouble getting interested, not to mention excited, about playing my Death Knight again. There’s just so much work that will be involved in getting back to a comfort level. Ugh.

Then again there is my Rogue. Yep, this has potential. Yes, I still have to deal with the re-spec but…she’s only at 46. Not so many points to have to dither over. Also, I play combat for my Rogue and I read something that looks like the combat Rogue is going to get a little more ability to deal with multiple threats. WOOT! I like my Rogue but I’m more comfortable with it for single targets or two at the most so this could make it even more fun to play. Guess which toon I’ll be playing first? Yep. I also don’t have quite so much already invested in gear and glyphs and all so it won’t be as annoying to get her ready to go. I may still have to learn some new bits but that feels less a chore than my Death Knights.

One of my friends who has several 80 level toons was telling me that he ran out of inks to make his new glyphs and so hasn’t been able to completely retool all his toons. Nor has his wife who is in the same boat. This is a big patch and it’s a big chore to get back to really being able to do some damage.

I’ve heard that tanks are having trouble holding agro in the dungeons and that the dps are pulling it away. I’ve been told that that means dps will have to learn to play better. Ok, that’s fine if you play a class that has some spells that give it something special, like a Rogue with Sap and some of the casters. I usually play a Death Knight for this. Death Knights don’t have a lot of finesse type spells. They just beat the garbage out of stuff. That’s what they do. They don’t do subtle. As this is my reference point, while they are complaining about the situation and the crappy dps I’m feeling a little assaulted. On the other hand they are telling me that this is more like when Burning Crusade came out and when a Heroic Dungeon was a real challenge and getting through it meant something. Ok. I can see where this would be good and return a certain amount of challenge to the game for many more players.

While I’m lacking in enthusiasm for the changes at the moment, I can see how some of the changes to the talents and such are a good thing. Lets face it, last week if you were a Blood Death Knight you pretty much had all the same stuff the next Blood Death Knight had as far as talents and gear and gems and glyphs. Everyone was pretty cookie cutter because things had been analyzed and tested to the point that there really was only one build per spec that did the most damage, held the most agro, or healed for the most amount at a time. I think, at least until they’ve analyzed and scrutinized all the changes in enough situations that there will be a time period where not all Blood Death Knights will look the same and not all Combat Rogues will look the same. There may be a little room for some variety and individualism to be had. I think this will add some challenge as well. I think it will now take more than a gear score and spec to determine if you want a particular person as part of your raid team.

Change is usually a good thing. It keeps us from getting complacent and it keeps us learning and adapting. Sometimes though there is the desire or need to whine a bit about all the effort that is involved in that. I guess I better log in and get started.

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.