Almost nine months into the game and the shiny bits are starting to rubb off a little. Starting my very first MMORPG was most definitely exciting. Reaching the 'firsts' were at times even more exciting. I still recall with great nostalgia getting my first 14-slot bag from the Darkmoon Faire, powerleveling from 37 - 40 non-stop to buy my dinky mechanostrider (and how fast that slow mount seemed!), hitting exalted with darnassus with my gnome and purchasing a super fast nightsaber and then making my first round of flight expenses to purchase my green griffon. I remember getting my first purple item and surprisingly, my first blue item on each of my characters. I guess I could keep writing as there are just so many firsts to had. However, it's not just the milestones that I recall fondly. It's also the fun in general. I have favourite farming spots for all the gathering professions, favourite grinding spots for each class at different levels, favourite travelling routes to pick up flight paths and favourite vendors - how daft is that?
It took a while to realize that it's not for the objectives that I play. I don't play for the uber rare raid loot or the elitish titles. I don't play to be exceptional or sport a rare item. I don't park my characters at the bank and I'm not a guildie. I simply enjoy the mundane. I enjoy running my auction toon from the auction house straight to the bank. I enjoy spending ten minutes here and thirty minutes there gathering a few mats to craft a leg enchant or blue gem. I enjoy playing the battlegrounds for no other reward than that I enjoy playing in the battlegrounds.
As soon as I take my eyes off the moment and begin to search for the big prize at the end, I no longer feel an inclination to play. It's just not fun anymore. The idea of rep grinding for weeks horrify me. So does the idea of battleground farming. Trying to string along bg after bg so I can wrack up hundreds of thousands of honor points to buy a set of gear which will be old and tattered in comparison by the time I finish is disheartening. It isn't fun. I'm just not an achiever. Not much of an explorer either it seems as I've never tried to find the airport in the mountains outside of Ironforge. Maybe my characters are just a little ordinary. The bread and butter type. Maybe.
Friday, 24 October 2008
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Level 19 gnome warrior twink
My indecision has sparked off yet another thread of gameplay - twinking. I'm level a gnome warrior at the moment to twink and are thinking about the following gear:
Head: Lucky Fishing Hat
Neck: Sentinel's Medallion
Shoulders: Talbar Mantle / Defender Spaulders
Back: Sentry Cloak
Chest: Blackened Defias Armor
Wrist: Cavedweller Bracers / Fortified Bracers of the Bear / Beetle Clasps
Hands: Thorbia's Gauntlets
Waist: Cobrahn’s Grasp
Legs: Chauses of Westfall
Feet: Silver-linked Footguards / Nat Pagle's Extreme Anglin' Boots
Ring 1: Seal of Wrynn
Ring 2: Protector's Band / Meadow Ring of Eluding / Blood Ring
Trinket 1: Insignia of the Alliance
Trinket 2: Minor Recombobulator / Arena Grand Master
Main Hand: Shadowfang
Off Hand: Redbeard Crest /Arctic Buckler
TwoHand: Night Reaver (2H Axe) / Runic Darkblade (2H Sword) / Glacial Stone (2H Mace) / Smites Mighty Hammer (2H Mace)/
Ranged: Lil Timmy's Peashooter / Venomstrike /Hand of Argus Crossfire
Head: Lucky Fishing Hat
Neck: Sentinel's Medallion
Shoulders: Talbar Mantle / Defender Spaulders
Back: Sentry Cloak
Chest: Blackened Defias Armor
Wrist: Cavedweller Bracers / Fortified Bracers of the Bear / Beetle Clasps
Hands: Thorbia's Gauntlets
Waist: Cobrahn’s Grasp
Legs: Chauses of Westfall
Feet: Silver-linked Footguards / Nat Pagle's Extreme Anglin' Boots
Ring 1: Seal of Wrynn
Ring 2: Protector's Band / Meadow Ring of Eluding / Blood Ring
Trinket 1: Insignia of the Alliance
Trinket 2: Minor Recombobulator / Arena Grand Master
Main Hand: Shadowfang
Off Hand: Redbeard Crest /Arctic Buckler
TwoHand: Night Reaver (2H Axe) / Runic Darkblade (2H Sword) / Glacial Stone (2H Mace) / Smites Mighty Hammer (2H Mace)/
Ranged: Lil Timmy's Peashooter / Venomstrike /Hand of Argus Crossfire
Update
Exploration came a little late for me. I was happy with all I was doing until I started loosing badly in the battlegrounds. At first, pvp was so much fun that I didn't care who won or who lost or how much honor I received. Playing was reward enough. Wish that didn't wear off.
It's demoralizing and much less fun when you are prepetually outgeared and outskilled. Alliance players seem to have this complete aversion to play in groups or to play strategically. I suspect Alliance players who are the exception play in premades and/or known groups. I certainly don't see them often enough.
It's not the loosing that is demoralizing, it's the lack of organisation. I'm tired of watching it all fall apart as singletons or small groups veer off into different directions. I'm tired of players who show no restraint and simply attack any horde at any place at any time just because they can see them. Most of all, I'm tired of not being able to hold my own. Although my resilience are up to 300 through painstaking commitment, I'm still mostly dying. Now I just die when I have the other person's health down to 2% rather than 92%, but I'm still the first to bite the dust. Arg! Doing a little better against squishies, but then the group problem hits. I take out one and get pounced on by a gazzilion, or so it feels. And since the biggest group I'm usually in is small, there isn't anybody else to heal or help since we're all outnumbered 3-1.
The result of this has been complete indecision on my part. I abandoned my level 70 gnome rogue to start up a troll rogue on a pvp server, only to realise that I don't want to be on a pvp server. At least, I don't want to level on a pvp server. I like farming as much as pvp and putting on my ipod, finding a nice grinding spot and spending a while mindlessly slaughtering mobs to skin, or running a little circular mining route, or flying over netherstorm with my druid in search of herbs is fun. I don't want to be ganked. I want to farm in peace and quiet. Not happening on a pvp server. Even when it feels as if I'm the only person in all Stonetalon mountains, I'm not happy leaving the base by myself. And farming in a group is just not the same. I want my solitude. I want to solo. The result of that experiment is a mid-level twenty rogue and a well-off auction toon lying dormant on burning steppes.
And so I went back to my gnome rogue, only to loose again. The result - I started a Belf Warlock on a pve server. She's now mid-twenties and I am still undecided. As much as I enjoy playing her, there's more to WoW than levelling and I seem to be stuck leveling multiple toons because I can't make up my mind. With WotLK coming out shortly, it's an even bigger dilemma. Shall I level my level 52 hunter in order to dump skinning for inscription? Or shall I level my level 22 mage to have inscription and engineering? Shall I put my alliance characters on the back burner and roll horde side instead? Or shall I get my level 68 night elf druid up to 70 so that I can level her to 80 for the arena? So many options and come to think of it, I'm not sure any of it is me.
I like the bread-and-butter profession recipes - the ones that are not BoP or require rep grinding rather than raiding. I like the battlegrounds, but only as a small percentage of my play time, otherwise WoW becomes too competitive for my taste. I think I will like the arena when I finally get my teeth into that, and so it's leveling remains. Ironically enough, the content everybody is rushing through to get where they want to play, is what I enjoy most. I like vanilla WoW, don't mind outland and there's few things as relaxing as leveling a toon just about anywhere.
As for pvp, the more toons I level, the better I am at pvp. I play better against opponents when I know how they play. Leveling one of each gives me that edge that I need. I'm best at defeating druids and rogues because I have a high level druid and rogue. I know how to counter, I know what they have and what the cooldowns on all the spells are. I realise that I don't need to level a class in order to have access to this information, but I don't level for this reason. I simply find that leveling different classes is what I enjoy doing and the added bonus is that it improves my pvp game too. And of course, my auction toon is gathering dust as nothing sells and nothing is bought prior WotLK. Is it wrong to say that the things I look forward the most to in the coming expansion pack is to have a vibrant auction house again...
It's demoralizing and much less fun when you are prepetually outgeared and outskilled. Alliance players seem to have this complete aversion to play in groups or to play strategically. I suspect Alliance players who are the exception play in premades and/or known groups. I certainly don't see them often enough.
It's not the loosing that is demoralizing, it's the lack of organisation. I'm tired of watching it all fall apart as singletons or small groups veer off into different directions. I'm tired of players who show no restraint and simply attack any horde at any place at any time just because they can see them. Most of all, I'm tired of not being able to hold my own. Although my resilience are up to 300 through painstaking commitment, I'm still mostly dying. Now I just die when I have the other person's health down to 2% rather than 92%, but I'm still the first to bite the dust. Arg! Doing a little better against squishies, but then the group problem hits. I take out one and get pounced on by a gazzilion, or so it feels. And since the biggest group I'm usually in is small, there isn't anybody else to heal or help since we're all outnumbered 3-1.
The result of this has been complete indecision on my part. I abandoned my level 70 gnome rogue to start up a troll rogue on a pvp server, only to realise that I don't want to be on a pvp server. At least, I don't want to level on a pvp server. I like farming as much as pvp and putting on my ipod, finding a nice grinding spot and spending a while mindlessly slaughtering mobs to skin, or running a little circular mining route, or flying over netherstorm with my druid in search of herbs is fun. I don't want to be ganked. I want to farm in peace and quiet. Not happening on a pvp server. Even when it feels as if I'm the only person in all Stonetalon mountains, I'm not happy leaving the base by myself. And farming in a group is just not the same. I want my solitude. I want to solo. The result of that experiment is a mid-level twenty rogue and a well-off auction toon lying dormant on burning steppes.
And so I went back to my gnome rogue, only to loose again. The result - I started a Belf Warlock on a pve server. She's now mid-twenties and I am still undecided. As much as I enjoy playing her, there's more to WoW than levelling and I seem to be stuck leveling multiple toons because I can't make up my mind. With WotLK coming out shortly, it's an even bigger dilemma. Shall I level my level 52 hunter in order to dump skinning for inscription? Or shall I level my level 22 mage to have inscription and engineering? Shall I put my alliance characters on the back burner and roll horde side instead? Or shall I get my level 68 night elf druid up to 70 so that I can level her to 80 for the arena? So many options and come to think of it, I'm not sure any of it is me.
I like the bread-and-butter profession recipes - the ones that are not BoP or require rep grinding rather than raiding. I like the battlegrounds, but only as a small percentage of my play time, otherwise WoW becomes too competitive for my taste. I think I will like the arena when I finally get my teeth into that, and so it's leveling remains. Ironically enough, the content everybody is rushing through to get where they want to play, is what I enjoy most. I like vanilla WoW, don't mind outland and there's few things as relaxing as leveling a toon just about anywhere.
As for pvp, the more toons I level, the better I am at pvp. I play better against opponents when I know how they play. Leveling one of each gives me that edge that I need. I'm best at defeating druids and rogues because I have a high level druid and rogue. I know how to counter, I know what they have and what the cooldowns on all the spells are. I realise that I don't need to level a class in order to have access to this information, but I don't level for this reason. I simply find that leveling different classes is what I enjoy doing and the added bonus is that it improves my pvp game too. And of course, my auction toon is gathering dust as nothing sells and nothing is bought prior WotLK. Is it wrong to say that the things I look forward the most to in the coming expansion pack is to have a vibrant auction house again...
