Level 30.5 - 33.5

Yup, another few hours, another 3 levels or so. I'm so far ahead of the guide though that it's pointing me at grey quests, so I'm going to skip the current section I'm on (30-33 Wetlands), maybe pick up the last few quests it suggest and just move on to the next section. The real hard part will be to make sure I keep up with whatever big chains I'm in the middle of so I don't miss out on the big payouts in the end.

Overall, I don't think I'll do the whole RAF thing again, it's fast, but it's requiring a lot of concentration and effort to get things done. It might just be me and wanting to play both characters to the max, but I'm not wholly enjoying it, the leveling is way too fast to pass up, but not fun enough to do again. I think. Could just be I'm stressed/tired, not sure I've been sleeping well lately.

-LaFollet

Level 27.5 - 30.5

Well one thing I can say is it's fast.

I only had about 2 hours or so since my last post to play, and got another 3 levels, including a Stocks run, which I'm kinda high for. Unfortunately I didn't get it in a random, as I was going to out-level it soon, so I didn't get the random loot, but I'm getting better at Healing and DPSing at the same time.

More later as more things happen.

-LaFollet

RAF Leveling - The Beginning

Well I got my dual-boxing set up going, and logged about 12 hours over the weekend, and got my Priest/Hunter pair up to level 27.5. I'd expect that to be faster, but I don't have access to the TBC starting zones, so I'm kinda on my own for leveling to about 23. It's still fast, but I think I might opt into the TBC Trial, to get 10 days, and power my next two groups through that section fast. Not really going to start either of them before I get my first pair higher, still evaluating a bunch of things and planning different stuff.

-LaFollet

Titles... Why do I always forget them...

So pretty much all of my characters have stayed just about where they were in progression. Still quite enjoying the Dungeon tool, and even respeced my Tank spec to Healing since I was getting a little tired of tanking all the time. Powerleveled Enchanting on my Death Knight up to 300, so she's ready for Outlands enchanting stuff, and PLed Jewelcrafting to 350, so she need Cobalt Ore to continue that. I just need to grab some farming time on my Paladin to grab the ore, and once I have that I have a ton of Saronite Ore just waiting to be Prospected.

I've finally found a copy of the original WoW box to serve as the basis for my RAF PLing, but haven't had a chance to set in my Multi-boxing stuff yet. Getting close, and I should have the time to do it this weekend, but I've hardly had the chance to do more than my Daily Heroic and Wintervale Events on my Paladin. I'm thinking of doing Priest/Hunter, Shamen/Paladin, and Rogue/Druid as the teams to 60, in that order. I'll try to keep things posted as to where they're at, what I'm doing, and how much/how little fun the whole thing is. ^_^

-LaFollet

Stuff and Things.

So I'm totally loving the new Dungeon System with 3.3. It's truly epic in it's awesomeness! The only thing I'm not so over-joyed about is how much longer it takes to get a group when I'm going as DPS than as a Tank. These are my only two options right now since my Paladin is still my only 80. But it's not that big of a deal as long as I remember this fact and when I just want to DPS have something else I'm doing outside of dungeons, like say mining or daily quests.

My Death Knight is still at 61, although I've caught Jewelcrafting and Mining up to her level, but I'm now seriously considering dropping Mining and picking up Enchanting on her. Being able to craft JC rings and DE them on the same character will save time, and my Paladin is going to be keeping Mining since she tanks an awful lot. (Stamina bonus from Mining is great for tanking.)

My Warrior hasn't moved since the last update.

My Druid hasn't really moved since the last update.

My Priest hasn't leveled since the RAF debunk.

My AH Hunter alt has leveled to 11 through the RAF grant levels though... ^_^

I'm still seriously considering buying a WoW box set to RAF PL some characters up to 60. If I do that with two different characters on my main account I'll be able to bring both my Warrior and Paladin up to 60 with grant levels, as well as push my AH Hunter up a few levels too. The actual cost in real money will be negligible, the only real issue is the time/timing of it right now.

It's close to Christmas Holidays, so I have a few more days off than normal, but more other commitments. Also if the RAF program survives Cataclysm I have several new alts I'll want to roll up. Over all though, it's probably a really good idea for right now seen as I need more higher-level characters to fill profession slots to cover my manufacturing of stuffs and things.

On less my-character-related-news the guild my Paladin is in has been bugging me to raid more, it's not really what I'm interested in right now, especially with the new Heroics and Dungeon Tool available. I wasn't sure they were going to be a good fit, and really, they probably aren't a good fit for me. I'm not sure if I'll be sticking around, but they're good people, so it's a slightly sticky situation. Really I need more bearing on the whole thing before I can make a concrete decision.

Oh ya, it seems the "regular raid schedule" for them is going to be Wednesdays/Fridays, which just doesn't work at all, not that anything works for me right now... ^_^

-LaFollet

RAF Leveling - Debunk

So, anyone who's run a Trial Account before knows that it will cap out at level 20.

I haven't, and I didn't...

Figured there was something like that, but couldn't find it anywhere. So it's totally confirmed that if you want to RAF Powerlevel yourself with a second instance of WoW you need to drop some cash for it. There's just no other way to do it.

With that particular scam debunked for now, I've been soloing old raid content on my paladin. It's an interesting challenge, and has it's fun points, but mostly it's just spending-time until 3.3 drops.

Hopefully tomorrow...

-LaFollet

RAF Leveling

I'm going to try to post as much as possible with as much details as possible during my RAF leveling test. So I finished Tuesday morning at about level 12 with my Priest/Hunter combo, and that was probably about 3 hours in on the characters.

Now, after about another 3 hours, they're both level 19, and the Hunter is in dire need of a new bow. >_<

I can't send/trade anything to the Hunter since it's a trial account, so Training/Mount is going to be a huge issue. I've basically kept the training down to the absolute minimum possible, and she's getting loot priority to pick things up to sell, but other than that, things are going fast.

-LaFollet

Updates, never enough of them...

I've always had this issue when writing about my WoW experiences. I get started, with the intention to keep things up to date whenever anything happens, but then things start happening and I just don't have the time to keep up with the writing side of things.

Well, I could write really small posts, with just the bare facts, but where's the fun and interest in that?

But anyways, on with the update:

My Paladin is trudging through Heroics/Raids, gearing up with badge stuff since I haven't had a decent roll since I transferred her. I've long since been uncritable for raids, and am just a few hp from 30k unbuffed. In fact I could probably get there right now just by re-gemming a tiny bit for more stamina.

I've got three blues left, and the badges to replace at least 2 of them, but I'm kinda in a holding pattern waiting for 3.3 to drop to see what's going to happen really with it. I should probably just replace my belt/cloak with better things, waiting to replace the old trinket with the badge one from 3.3, but I'm having lots of fun with alts.

My Death Knight is still at 61 waiting for a friend to possibly join back in 3.3. I've been leveling Mining/Jewelcrafting on her since I really enjoy JCing as a profession. I'm in the last stages of the old-world grind on both of those, with 15 or so points in mining to go for 300, and about 50 points to 300 in JCing. Most of the 250+ Mining points were gained through smelting Thorium Ore mined up by my Paladin. The reason I did this was it was easier to mine the rich nodes in Silithus on my Paladin than on my DK, especially since I would have had to get about 25 points to even mine the Rich Thorium veins there. I still have a few points to get before she's Outland Mining Ready, but it'll be easier than having to mine up all of them on her.

My Warrior is now in Dustwallow Marsh (or at least was last time I played her), and just hit 40 and got the epic land mount. I'm still not convinced that I like the way a warrior plays, but now that I'm getting a few more instant attacks things are picking up. It's starting to feel less like I'm just auto-attacking, sometimes using Heroic Strike, waiting for thing to die. I've still got high hopes for dual-wielding two-handers at 60, but since I don't have the BoA one-hand weapons I'm using one of the two-handers as Fury spec right now.

My Druid is chilling in Redrige right now, building up some rest xp at about level 22, and I really have to say that it's quite fun to play a Druid! The tactics involved with being able to switch between roles with just a click means that you can single-target things down fast in cat, or if you pull a few, swipe-spam them down in bear. I really have to get some glyphs for her, but I've got a bit before she tops up on rest xp and needs to be played some more.

My real newest project, as of last night, is a Priest. Yes, another Priest, the 4th one I've seriously made. It just feels wrong not to have one ok! What's different about this is I'm dual-boxing on my computer with a trial account, just to try out the Recruit-A-Friend method. So far, it's been crazy fast. I'm doing a Priest/Hunter combo, with the Hunter providing Tank/DPS and the Priest providing Healing/DPS. After about 2 hours of sorting out I've hit 12ish on each, which is quite fast, and I think I'll be moving on to a new area, since I've got quests that are -6 levels to me if I continue following the current section of the guide I'm on.

All in all, lots going on, lots to write about, not enough time to write about most of it.

A few other highlights though:
-Saving the 10 man Ony attempt by picking up Ony after the MT died
-Generally out DPSing everyone in my sad Ret set (not even hit-capped, like no badges spent on it)
-Making about 1k in casual AHing, and I mean casual, just the odd resell here and there
-Powerleveling cooking to 350 with the Thanksgiving holiday, so wonderfully easy!

-LaFollet

Slow in the updates...

So I got all excited and back in WoW, and so have been neglected my waltz down memory lane.

As an update on what's going on right now with my characters:

My little Warrior is now in her late 30s, in the land of Desolace, one of my least liked zones...
My little Druid is approaching 10, and decimating tons of stuff in the Draenei starting zone with just her BoA mace. (Gotta love that stuff!)
And my not so little Paladin has traversed space and factions to join the Alliance on Zul'jin.

I'm actually a little surprised about how much I've been enjoying playing my undergeared paladin in 5 mans, even though my tanking is weakish, and my DPS is definitely sub-par at around 2kish. However, that's to be expected considering the gear level I'm at, which isn't that high yet. Still greens/blues/epics from 70.

But now back to the fabled tales of WoW-past:

November 17, 2006 is when my first break from WoW ended. I know, not that big of a break, probably on the order of 7 or 8 months at most. But during a Risk game with some friends, someone I didn't know at the table rekindled my interest with his own continuing interest in the game.

That's how my first Alliance Priest was born. Lucieleyna came to being on Daggerspine as a purpose-rolled Shadow Priest. The guild that I was aiming for was a high-end raiding guild that was in Naxx 60 at the time, but I was more aiming for the expansion and raiding at 70 with them. I remember that Burning Crusade came out right as I was leveling through Stranglethorn Vale, with all of its annoyances.

I did end up getting her to 70 and doing some light-raiding with that guild, but it very quickly lost it's shine for me as they were very hardcore and very strict about their raiding schedules and such. But rather than cause another break from the game, I actually ended up jumping back to Horde, on a new server, transferring over Euphe, with a co-worker. His guild seemed like exactly the kind of guild I was looking for, little did I know what was to come...

-LaFollet

Just a quick update today, lots of things going on and stuffs to do.

So I've totally re-subbed to WoW, just for a month right now, we'll see how things go...

I've rolled up a new Alliance Warrior on the Zul'jin server, and already gotten her up to level 24. Not bad considering things.

Hopefully I'll get some time to continue my recount of WoW soon.

-LaFollet

Smells like...

Fresh Forsaken, just popped out of the grave, whatever am I to do?

Why level up of course!

This is the farthest back (obviously) in my World of Warcraft playing, but it's also a time that I didn't keep track of anything. There was no log, no history, no posts on the guild forums detailing pointless fun things that I'd done that day/week/month, so this is probably going to be more of a summary of the first 60 levels of WoW for Euphe. And probably a (poorly) organized smattering of memories.

So, what I remember about WoW on my first time through:

I remember grinding on zombies around Brill to get Linen Cloth to make bags with, cause bags were awesome! (Went Tailoring/Enchanting on Euphe right from the start, cause Bags are Awesome! (And enchanting is all alone.))
I remember standing around Shadowfang Keep waiting for the rest of my party to assemble while I talked with a shamen friend about how they can tank... Sorta...
I remember dueling said Shamen friend, we were both on alts, me on a Rogue, with my pet snake out, so he knew where I was in spite of being in stealth...
I remember doing the "Robot Chicken" escort in The Hinterlands with my co-worker (on his 60 warrior) and our friend the undead rogue. (They went on to have a relationship for a while.)
I remember playing in Scarlet Monastery dueling with my friend's warrior and him saying I'd be able to beat him soon (with me at like 30 something and him being 60).
I remember doing instances with my co-worker on his alt-priest, our rogue friend on her warrior, and me on Euphe, tearing things up and taking names.
I remember doing Battlegrounds in the 50-59 bracket, owning all comers since Shadow Priests were the stuff back then.
I remember going through Black Rock Depths with a group from our guild. And swiping a truly large amount of loot since I was the only one who needed anything from their at that point.
I remember going through Strangle Thorn Vale, and the horror it was...
I remember watching my co-worker grind fire elementals in Un'Goro Crater on his lunch breaks, since they were good money and something he could take relatively painlessly as Prot.
I remember my first time in Molten Core, at 56, thinking I'd level from the xp since I was so close to 57 anyways.
I remember the first Epic Item I ever got. Sorcerous Dagger off of Lucifron. I said I wanted it through whispers, as our guild was doing it, then no one else said anything so I got it! While I was still 58. (Or there abouts.)
I remember grinding for Fel Cloth in the Jadefire Run, since it was good money and was needed for a bunch of things I wanted to craft.
I remember the craziness of what we were doing in Molten Core, crazy things like our two main tanks (my co-worker and our rogue friend-turned-warrior) being in a different vent channel just to talk to each other and ignore the rest of the raid, and yet still making progress on things.
I remember the guild basically falling apart from drama just as I reached level 60, leadership changes, my co-worker and friend leaving to re-roll alliance, and me just quitting the game.
I remember foolishness in the Plaguelands, with the group-cross-faction quests there.
I remember finally dinging 60 in the Eastern Plaguelands.
I remember crazy Strat/URBS/Scholo runs and trying to get my Dungeon 0 set.
I remember the guild-first downing of Kurinnaxx, and how I was healing for it and Lightwell was keeping me alive, if not anyone else.

...

Oh man, so many good memories from that time, and some bad ones too. I know nostalgia does bad things to our memory, everything seems better than it was, less frustrating, and less grindy, but it was a good time for me.

Kinda hard to believe it only lasted from December 19th, 2005 to August 1st, 2006. (According to my billing history, I know for a fact though that I stopped playing before my time ran out, it was a 6-month subscription, and I know I was back to CoH before the summer.)

It was a crazy time, my noobness was great, but so was my enjoyment for the game. Nothing will quite be the same as that first play-through, my only regret is not being able to remember more of the good times that I had.

-LaFollet

Once more from the top....

So I'm thinking that since I'm thinking of going back to World of Warcraft, I should probably write down my WoW history. I have a good chunk of it from one section, June 4th, 2007 to April 7th, 2008, when I was in a guild called Engines of Destruction, which ended in drama and a /gkick, which really wasn't my finest moment, but it is my most memorable since I have a ton of posts that I made in a "log thread" while in that guild.

It's quite interesting, since you can distinctly read my mood go from happiness with the guild and game, through frustration with things, to abject horror at my situation leading to a thread lock then shortly after (probably within a month), a /gkick.

But really, I'm getting far ahead of myself here. The tale really begins December 19, 2005, 4:55:45 PM.

Clearly I don't remember that date off the top of my head but rather got it off my WoW account as the creation date. I remember why I got in to the game, or really who I got in to the game for. One of my co-workers at the time was playing, and we often talked about the differences between WoW and City of Heroes, each trying to get the other to come to their game for some co-op goodness. In the end I made the jump to WoW since I was getting tired of CoH anyways, and he bought me the original box.

Yup, my original introduction to WoW was a gift of the original World of Warcraft game by a co-worker. Man he's an awesome guy.

But that gift actually came a few days after I'd already opened a trial account to see what this "WoW game" was all about. I rolled up an Undead Priest, cause my friend's guild needed healers, and Undead was the, at the time, most visually appealing horde character I could make.

And so began my long obsession with Priests in WoW...

But anyways, Euphe crawled her way out of the grave, (where do they keep getting those fresh Forsaken anyways?) to start her un-life in the wide world of Warcraft.

More later, of course. ^_^

-LaFollet

Again?!?!?!

So ya, I'm thinking of going back to World of Warcraft.

Again.

Quick rewind of things from earlier this year:

Champions Online started to catch my attention as something quite interesting and new.
At the same time was getting very bored with WoW and my guild's progression therein.
CO was delayed, WoW was prolonged, boredom was amplified.
Got in to CO's Open Beta, fun abounded. Wow was dropped.
Two months later, CO's lack of end-game is starting to become very apparent.

That's the 2 minute version.

Now don't get me wrong, I like Champions Online. It's fun, innovative in it's power selection, interesting in it's action-link play style, and absolutely awesome in it's costume creator. The problem though, in my mind, is that's provided a good breadth to the game, but their is a distinct lack of depth, just plain not enough stuff to do.

Now I may be expecting a little much from an MMO just in it's infancy, but when I want to continue a character that I enjoy playing at whatever "max level" is, I want interesting things to do, and as many of those interesting things as I can get my hands on. Champions just doesn't have that yet.

Yet.

I've still got high hopes for what's to come. Hopefully some concrete endgame of some sort, not just in character progression gear-wise, but also in variation of things to do, or at least locals to do the same awesome bad-guy-woopin that the whole game is about.

But that doesn't change the fact that I'm looking back at World of Warcraft with those old "man that was fun" eyes again...

-LaFollet

Soloing

Soloing, what's the big deal with it anyways?

Why does everything have to be soloable? Why can't things be group-mandatory?

I'm eagerly awaiting the release of Champions Online, and it's promise of free-form character creation, and while perusing the CO forums I come across a poster who seemingly wants to be able to solo everything in the game.

Well, not quite, but that's how he first comes across. He and his wife were enjoying soloing through the Hollows in City of Heroes, when at the end of the zone there's the 8 player Trial mission. Apparently this caused his wife such trauma that she has sworn off playing the game at all ever again.

Now I can understand the desire to play through the content you want to play through with people you want to play through it with, but going so far as to shun a whole game based solely off the fact there's one mission that you've come across that you don't enjoy seems a little excessive. In fact it seems like something an immature-gamer would do. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the wife in some 6 year old, but rather she's having an extreme reaction to a relatively small issue in MMOs, which is you can't always do what you want when you want, and some times at all.)

Now what his has really brought up is how much soloable content should there be in an MMO? And what more should content scale in any way?

City of Heroes was the king of scaling content. Everything short of open-spawns would scale based on the number of players you had in your group at the time when the mission started. Great for challenging things based on whoever you have around at the time, but it somewhat takes the punch out of "group required" content since everything can give that same feeling of fighting larger harder opponents by just bringing more friends.

World of Warcraft on the other hand has distinct tiers of content. You have the solo-quests, the group quests, the 5 person dungeons, the 10 man raids, and the 25 man raids. You can take 24 friends along with your questing, but it's beyond overkill (and offers logistical problems like quests that can't be completed in raids, and therefore you have 5 groups of 5 not one group of 25 people.) What that typically ends up with in game is people solo to quest, except when needed, and group for other things. If you can't group, you can't do the higher levels of content.

Hopefully CO's solution to this, which is to have enemies who call in reinforcements if they're outnumberd, will allow solo content to scale to groups, yet at the same time still allow group-content to pop in it's own unique way. We'll see how things are soon enough.

-LaFollet

Greetings, no one?

Well I hardly expect anyone to read this, ever, but that's not why I started up this blog anyways.

Why I did start up this blog was to have some place to drop my thoughts/feelings about what I love doing. So this will be about things like Manga, Music, Sci-Fi, and of course, Games. What more this will be used as a place for me to vent/rant about things, because I've often found that getting something off my chest makes me feel better about it, more so even than resolving whatever got me riled up enough to want to vent/rant about in the first place.

We'll see how often I post and how long this actually keeps up, but considering that it's not affiliated with any guild I'm currently playing with (in WoW, my current time-sink of choice), it has a better chance of lasting than other blog-type things I've done. (No one can lock my blog because I vent at the leadership of the guild for whatever reason.)

That's all for now,
Till the need for Ramblings poke me again!

-LaFollet