And so we dive into my final entry in this little miniseries of mine: my personal thoughts on Outland and Northrend. Unlike the other two entries in which the zones were sorted North to South geographically, I’m going to go roughly by level on this one; I think it’ll read smoother.

So here we go~!

Hellfire Peninsula: I’m not even gonna beat around the bush on this one: my main goal with this zone is to get in and get out as quickly as possible. Yeah, I’m not a fan. I just don’t like it. Don’t like the scenery, don’t like the quests… and when on a PvP server, don’t like the fact that it is filled with Death Knights who out-gear you in every way imaginable and love to remind you of this fact. Hellfire Peninsula does have one (major) thing going for it though, namely that walking through the Dark Portal and being faced with this huge war between level ?? demons going on is one of the most epic things in the game, period.

And I gotta admit, I do like Ramps. Classic Outlands instance, really.

Other than that, it’s get to Zangarmarsh as fast as possible because this is a zone that is hard to skip– you’ve pretty much gotta spend at least some time here unless you’ve maxed out your leveling as much as you can in Old World.

Zangarmarsh: Easily my favorite zone in Outlands. There’s really no contest. It’s so serene and relaxing, the glowy sporebats and fireflies contrasting against the blue landscape, and I really like the quests, all 54 or so of them– yeah, there’s not many, and I’ve maxed ‘em out on basically every toon I’ve leveled. Plus I love each and every one of the Coilfang Reservoir instances– Underbog is my favorite. I love it so much that I’ve farmed that place to death for Sanguine Hibiscus and Sporeggar rep on two characters now and I’m still not sick of it.

Also, a hunter in there tamed a druid. Awesome, no?

Terokkar Forest: Sort of an overlooked zone that I think tends to be skipped over by people who are able to do a couple quests here and then bounce right on to Nagrand. Even I’m guilty of that; I’ve probably spent less time here than any other Outlands zone with the possible exception of Shadowmoon Valley. There are some really unique and interesting quests in Terokkar though, and I think I’ve probably done most of them across the spread of my three characters who have gone through here.

The Auchindoun instances I’m iffy about. I like Shadow Labs. Who can forget “TIME FOR FUN”? or, ya know… this:

The others… eeeehhh… I can never remember which is which anyway. Sethekk is okay I guess.

Nagrand: It’s pretty. It’s relaxing to kill millions of Clefthoof/Talbuk/etc. in an odd sort of way. The Kurenai rub me the wrong way for some reason that I can’t put my finger on so I much prefer this zone on my Horde characters, because the Mag’har > all.

I’ve gone through random Halaa obsession periods and I’ll be the first to admit it. Hey, when you can get snazzy arrows and bullets in there, you’ll do crazy things for them.

Killed more ogres than I care to count in the name of a pretty Talbuk on my Hordie (my poor Allies will never get one, as I mentioned earlier… weird distaste for the Kurenai so I sorta don’t want to grind rep for them.)

All in all though, I never understood the massive “omg BEST ZONE EVARRRRR RLLRLLRLLRMRGLRMRGL” stuff, I think I’d place it… third or fourth or so in my list of Favorite Outlands Zones. It’s a nice zone, I just think it’s overrated. Don’t kill me. x_x

Blade’s Edge Mountains: Pretty much the most underraed zone ever. I love this place. Yeah it’s a pain to navigate, that’s why you save the more annoying bits for 70 (oh hey, you can get flyers at 60 now. No more excuses, guys! Quest here!) I found the quests to be fun and interesting and the scenery is just oddball-ish and thus lovely. Also, there’s a gnome town called Toshley’s Station.

A gnome town called Toshley’s Station. And that whole place is nothing but sci-fi references.

Instant win.

Shadowmoon Valley: I never really liked this place. Like, I went here to get my flying mount, to go mote farming (because that stupid Elemental Plateau in Nagrand was always being camped even at 4-freakin-AM) and occasionally to go Scryer rep farming by killing the blood elves that wandered around. That was it. I attempted to do some quests here a couple times but I didn’t really like them. …am I nuts?

Netherstorm: Ah, Netherstorm, clearly the superior level 67-70 zone. Crazy purple landscape? Check. Goblins? Check. Biodomes (Pauly Shore not included)? Check. I am proud to say that Tawyn and Lunapike both dinged 70 here. Tamaryn dinged 70 doing the Karazhan key questline, which was an acceptable substitute. *nods*

Also: Awesome memories of doing Heroic Mech in the name of the Sun Eater for our tank. POSITIVE STAND BY THE BOXES, NEGATIVE ON THE OTHER SIDE, GUYS.

Borean Tundra & Howling Fjord: Doing these two together because I liked them both about the same. Howling Fjord was prettier and had the nice music, but Borean Tundra had the whole alienesque landscape going on that I have a huge soft spot for. Also some pretty nice quests.

I really don’t understand the Borean Tundra hate that gets flung around. I liked it. Yes, I even liked Coldarra. (Actually I liked Coldarra a lot.)

Dragonblight: Tied with Zul’drak for my favorite Northrend zone. I pretty much do every quest here, on every character. Wrathgate questline is obviously a must, but I like it all, really.

…what else is there to say? I just like it >.>

Grizzly Hills: I really like the scenery and the music but I have a hard time getting into the quests (Outhouse quest aside). The Drakuru questline that leads you into Drak’tharon Keep is epic, though, largely because it continues to amazing effect in…

Zul’Drak which IS THE MOST UNDERRATED AND AWESOME ZONE IN THE GAME, scratch what I said earlier about Blade’s Edge being the most underrated, Zul’Drak takes the cake. I just finished up spending a lot of time here with Lunapike and loved it even more the second time around than the first. Whole questline with the old Troll gods: awesome. Questline that has you wearing a Scourge disguise and uncovering the rest of Drakuru’s storyline: awesome. AWESOME AND WIN ALL AROUND. The only bad part is that the Gundrak instance brings back painful memories of either a.) Sunken Temple *eyetwitch*, or b.) this brief period of time where WoW crashed anytime the last boss turned into a Rhino. Fortunately that last problem has since resolved itself >.>

Sholazar Basin:
Number of Oracle eggs opened: None, because I’ve never finished the questline
Number of times I’ve circled this place, going herb-farming and idly keeping a lazy eye out for Loque: Far too many
Number of times I’ve declared Sholazar general chat the new Barrens Chat because everyone and their mom is also doing the above: Far too many
Making a sincere, honest attempt to get into the quests here anytime I have the appropriately leveled character, and then promptly running to Zul’drak 30 minutes later: Priceless
There are some things gold can’t buy, for everything else there’s ZUL’DRAK I’M SERIOUS YOU GUYS, YOU’RE MISSING OUT

Crystalsong Forest: It’s so prettyful, there needs to be more stuff here. *sage nod*

Storm Peaks: I fell madly in love with this zone the first time I did it, the whole questline where you get to turn into that blue chick was very memorable. Too bad it had to culminate in the most painful rep grind of all time (Yes, Sons of Hodir pre-Relics-of-Ulduar, I’m looking at you.)

Because of this, there was a time when I ranked this zone up there with Dragonblight and Zul’drak, unfortunately, the Sons of Hodir sort of soured it for me, I’m afraid. I still do like K3 (Much love for goblins and goblin towns), and I do still like that blue-chick-questline.

I got a Polar Bear mount on literally my second or third day of doing the Brunnhildar dailies. I feel kind of bad because I don’t use it nearly as often as I use my army of Mechanostriders… o_o

Icecrown: My initial thoughts were that it didn’t live up to Storm Peaks at all, however, it has sort of grown on me. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve never been one of those people who was into spooky-undead-stuff, but the Knights of the Ebon Blade alternate between making it pretty cool and really, well… cute in a bizarre sort of way (who wouldn’t love an abomination telling you you’re their favorite person in the world?) so I’ve come to appreciate the grotesque in a way I never really did pre-WoW, if that makes sense.

Also, I like the Argent Tournament, and jousting is awesome and fun and apparently I’m one of approximately three people in the world that think so, but hey.

WELP, that’ll do it. Sorry to crit you all with the giant wall of text. I hope you enjoyed Pike’s thoughts on the world… of… Warcraft… huh. That wasn’t even supposed to come out like that. It just did. Kudos Blizz on the name of your game being handy to use in a sentence? XD

Really though, as you can see, the number of zones I have liked or loved really outweighs the number of zones I have disliked, and of those few zones that I dislike they can usually be passed over in favor of a nicer zone, so perhaps that explains why I enjoy leveling so much and revisiting all those zones. It’s like meeting up with old friends.

<3 Azeroth. (And Outlands).

Continuing my series from yesterday: Pike’s opinions of the zones of World of Warcraft.

Ah, Eastern Kingdoms. I tend to avoid it while leveling, primarily because despite my soft spot for Alliance and for normal PvE servers, the vast majority of my alts have somehow wound up being Horde on a PvP server (irony much?) and as such, you are considerably less likely to be ganked in Kalimdor (Ashenvale being the big exception). Eastern Kingdoms, on the other hand, is filled with more places to avoid. Anyways, let’s take a look.

Isle of Quel’danas: I pretty much lived here in Burning Crusade for a good month or two. It’s how I saved up money for my epic flyer. Once I had it, I vowed to never go back. >.> I did go back for a brief moment with Lunapike, my second 70, unfortunately that was on my PvP server and it was pretty much the Revenge of the Wrath of Gankzilla so I wound up doing the Shatt dailies instead. I did like that one daily where you flung bombs at people, though…

Eversong Woods: It’s pretty and there are magical brooms like from Fantasia, and there’s a fun quest where you get to polymorph this guy. I only really quested here once, though. I went back later with a troll, but promptly encountered the Ammo Vendor NPC who refused to sell me ammo because I was a smelly troll. You may think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not, I swear to heck I couldn’t buy ammo. So, being a proud troll, I left. Hmph, I say.

Ghostlands: I quested about half of this place once before growing extremely bored and scrapping that character entirely. Since then my Ghostlands experience has pretty much been narrowed down to two things: Zul’Aman meeting stone, and exploring the crazy undead stuff in the southern end of the zone when I was curious to see what it was.

Everybody tells me this is the place to quest so I may end up giving it a second try. Maybe. We’ll see…

Tirisfal Glades: Was always a little too creepy and dark for me personally, although the Eastern edge by the plaguelands grows randomly pretty for a moment or two. No, seriously, it does. Anyways, my fondness for this zone depends greatly on my mood and if the character I’m playing has a good reason to be there or not.

Oh wait, I just remembered Scarlet Monastery, aka Second Best Thing in the Game After Karazhan. Yeah, Tirisfal can stay. *nod*

Western Plaguelands: I like all the “kill the skeletons” quests cause they’re short n’ sweet but I typically don’t do much here beyond that. Scholo is a brilliant instance though, but I’m not quite as obsessed with it as my significant other is (he has been farming that place for Headmaster’s Charge for years and has never seen it. Also, once he drew me a detailed map of that whole instance from memory. This was promptly followed by maps of Naxx and Stratholme. But I digress.)

Eastern Plaguelands: Crazy zone that I’d love to do more in but I always get distracted by Winterspring. *cough* I love the little dialogue that goes on in Light’s Hope Chapel. One time they gave me a quest to go to Naxx and kill stuff. It was a level 60 quest. I completed it in level 80 Naxx. I got 40 silver for it. It was great.

Gosh, I will never forget the day before patch 3.0. I got keyed for old Naxx and then me and some friends went inside. I’d never been in before.

Bigglesworth never gets a break, does he?

There was also a random Night Elf NPC sitting by the wall who I seem to recall having some really suggestive dialogue though I can’t remember the specifics. (It’s also possible I was just really tired at the time.) We– hunter, warlock, paladin– attempted to three-man a couple pulls, one of them was the spiders in Spider Wing (lolwipe) and one of them was a gargoyle which we eventually aalllllmost DPS’d down and healed my pet through, at which point the gargoyle promptly healed himself. /facepalm @ us.

The boyfriend and paladin friend decided to log out in Naxx. The night before it was deleted. The next day they couldn’t log in because the whole game would crash and they had to contact GMs. I giggled.

Silverpine Forest: GO HERE IF YOU WANT TO FARM BRIARTHORN. I’m serious.

Also, Shadowfang Keep is awesome.

Alterac Mountains: This zone is fun. And it used to be hard. Remember when that ogre town was all elites? Good times.

Hillsbrad Foothills: I really liked this zone on my RP server. Then I made the mistake of going there on my RP-PvP server. Hillsbrad… I will quest no more forever.

Arathi Highlands: Probably one of my favorite zones period; it’s so pretty and Stromgarde is a lot of fun. You used to have to go there to get First Aid training as an Alliance. I don’t think you do anymore, which is sort of sad, because it was fun that it was out in the middle of freakin’ nowhere.

The Hinterlands: Tragic tale with this zone. I loved this zone. I loved it a lot. I loved it so much that I did millions of quests there and then… I got sick of it. I can hardly stand the place now. I go there, do the Jintha’alor quests (another place that used to be crazy challening and fun but it was nerfed… it’s still pretty fun though), and then leave once those are finished.

Also: getting to the Horde town in this zone is a royal pain in the rear. WTB a better map so I stop hurtling to my death off of the cliff. >.>

Wetlands: I have a soft spot for this zone. I spent a lot of time there on my first character and so it’s pretty nostalgic. When I was level six and being run to Stormwind, though, those crocodiles? *shudder*

Dun Morogh: It’s no Winterspring, but it’s not bad. By the way, I like Gnomeregan. *is shunned*

Loch Modan: It’s so pretty! But I have a hard time getting into the quests here. And some of the quests here are hard. Those troggs, eesh.

I remember the first time I did the Children’s Week quests. I was level 16 or so and my orphan kid wanted to go to the big dam here. I went there for the first time and was just as awed as my orphan. I always think of that when I think of this zone. <3

Searing Gorge: I maintain my stance that Blackrock Mountain is basically the most epic thing Blizzard has ever done. As such, I like Searing Gorge by default, even though the quests there tend to be a pain in the butt.

Burning Steppes: See above. I think I might actually like Burning Steppes a little more than Searing Gorge. Mostly because of the whole Ruins of Thaurissan which has this whole creepy and epic feel to it.

Badlands: I remember the first time I went here as a Hordie. It was like “FINALLY AT LONG LAST I CAN FLY FROM UNDERCITY TO BOOTY BAY!” And gosh, getting there as a Hordie was a pain, too.

Anyways, this is an okay zone that I’ll usually do a quest or two in before moving on. The random-mob-who-likes-to-aggro-on-you population density seems to be unusually high here, though, so I typically don’t spend much time here because I get annoyed.

Elwynn Forest: Love it, it’s Nostalgia Central. All we need is for Goldshire and its vampire RP conclave to be taken off the face of Azeroth and we’ll be good to go.

Redridge Mountains: Full of fun quests although said quests said to be a notch high in the difficulty level, I’ve noticed. I die here a lot as a lowbie. >.> I still enjoy this zone overall.

Westfall: Say what you will, this zone is awesome. The Defias questline is made of three parts win and two parts fun, and Deadmines is one of the bestest instances ever. <3 Westfall.

Darkshire: The last time I seriously quested here was on my first character, Tawyn. This was back when Mor’ladim would show up behind you and OMGPWN you in about two hits, and back when Stitches was the scariest thing known to mankind. The quests here were really great; I have no idea why I haven’t quested here since my first toon. I should do that again. *puts on “To do” list*

Gosh… those questlines… some of the best in the game, really, at least until you get to Zul’drak. Good stuff.

*giggles at level 29 Wash*

Deadwind Pass: The first time I went in here out of curiosity, I was owned by these level ?? carrion birds. Then I saw a level 70 brazenly run into those birds. I was like, “Noooooo!!!!!!!” but on he went, completely unfazed. I was astounded.

Anyways, Karazhan is my favorite thing ever so by extension, I love me some Deadwind Pass. It could really use some more love.

Swamp of Sorrows: Horde has some decent quests. Alliance has some annoying quests. Sunken Temple is my LEAST favorite instance of all time to the point that even Gundrak is painful because it’s all too familiar. Final Verdict: B- , but extra credit because Stonard is a nifty lil’ lore town.

Blasted Lands: You know those quests where you kill millions of different animals to make these elixirs and stuff for you? Pretty sure those quests have the worst drop rate in the entire game. Just sayin’.

Used to be the awesome place for leveling weapon skill because of those mobs that never die but I think they nerfed that. >.>

This one time, I tried to solo one of the demons in the Tainted Scar. Yeah, that didn’t work…

Stranglethorn Vale: “And back in my day, we walked up and down Stranglethorn Vale– no mounts, no extra flight points– uphill both ways!” *waves cane*

Ahem, I actually enjoyed this zone on my first character. I felt like I was there for fifteen-bloomin’-levels, but I liked it nonetheless.

Then pretty much all my alts after that were on a PvP server aaaaaaaand yeah. I’ll wake up really early in the morning to do the Nesingwary quests cause they have good loot, then I run far, far away…

Next time: Outlands and Northrend! STAY TUNED~

I was totin’ my pack along the long dusty Winnemucca road,
When along came a semi with a high an’ canvas-covered load.
“If you’re goin’ to Winnemucca, Mack, with me you can ride.”
And so I climbed into the cab and then I settled down inside.
He asked me if I’d seen a road with so much dust and sand.
And I said, “Listen, I’ve traveled every road in this here land!”

I’m starting a little miniseries that will go over the course of a few days in which I talk about zones in the game and what I think of them. Mostly because I’ve sort of been wanting to write something like this for a while, and because it sounds fun. It’s not really huntery per se, but ya know what, that’s okay! =P

Teldrassil: A looooooong time ago I installed a little thing called “The World of Warcraft Free Trial”. I rolled up a Night Elf named Tawyn– why yes, my very first character is still my main– and soon found myself in this crazy world of purple trees and boars that I was supposed to kill.

Because of all this, I have one word to describe Teldrassil: Nostalgia. It may not be one of my favorite zones, but I can’t travel there without smelling the innocence in the air and remembering how floored I was the first time I wandered into Darnassus and was met with swelling music and giant tree guardians and tons of funny-looking buildings.

I secretly really like Darnassus. Don’t tell anyone.

Azuremyst Isles: Decent starting area but not my favorite, a fact which generally causes people to spaz out, but hey, I’m weird. In fact, Bloodmyst Isle is pretty much the one area in the game I’ve yet to fully explore because the only draenei I’ve played past level 10 opted to go directly to Westfall without collecting $200. In a way, I kind of like having an area of the game I’ve never seen before, to the point that I… keep sort of deliberately putting off exploring it, if that makes sense.

I never go into the Exodar unless my Hearthstone is firmly not-on-cooldown. That place is a black hole. /shudder

Darkshore: I like it. Has some quests I really enjoy. I sorta like the overall mood. It’s by the sea, but it’s a stormy sea. It reminds me of the Pacific Northwest coast where I spent my earliest childhood years. From an RP standpoint I sort of want to say this is where my druid grew up but I’m always wary about saying things like that because Kalimdor lore confuses me sometimes and you never know what was here five years ago and what wasn’t. >.>

Moonglade: The first time I went to Moonglade it was with a level 55ish Tawyn who wondered just what was in the little sideroute in the Timbermaw’s tunnel. I was surprised to find this whole zone I hadn’t known existed. That’s really about all I’ve got to say about this, other than my druids all teleport here ASAP upon dinging a new level. Can ya blame me? The trainer is right there!

Winterspring: Looooooooveeeeee this zone. I go here with all my characters and I’m never tired of it. I love exploring that crazy scary area at the bottom of the zone too; that unused instance portal with all the pretty Hyjal trees and greenery on the other side. Makes me really wish I could go through there. /whine

Felwood: There are aspects of this zone that I like a lot and others that I don’t like quite so much. In the end the scales tip towards “like” although I don’t go there on all my characters.

Azshara: Bestest most craziest zone ever. I love this place. I’d move here. Random NPCs with no purpose, elementals yelling at you, this airstrip on an island in the middle of nowhere where you get to call a dwarf down on an airplane, a crazy mage living in a tower, and unused battleground entrances for both Horde and Alliance? Sign me up! The only thing I don’t like about it is navigating, it does that whole thing where one second you’re on a huge cliff and the next thing you know you’re pretty much below sea level and there’s like, one place where you can get back up and I can never find it. Other than that, love this zone.

Ashenvale: Been here enough that I’m kiiiinda sick of it. Tend to avoid it. Though I have fond memories of doing the Astranaar quests the first time around, but I’ve never been able to get myself to do them again. The best part of this zone is the area by Blackfathom Deeps with all the naga, though I’m not a particularly big fan of BFD itself.

Stonetalon Mountains: Love! I don’t even know why I love this zone, I just do. It’s fun. I’m crazy. I know.

The Barrens: I’m fond of this place in some way that I can’t quite pin down. It really sort of makes you feel like a Hordie. You’re aren’t really Horde unless you’ve been through the baptism of fire that is the Barrens, almost.

My favorite quests in the zone are the ones down south of Camp Taurajo, though the travel is a pain (not so much anymore with mounts at 20… but the travel used to be a pain. Of course, that’s what paying the quillboar blood shards for a temporary speed boost was for!)

Pro tip: Turn off General chat.

Durotar: Nice enough zone if you can succeed in not being blinded by orange. Things I dislike: the cave in the orc/troll starter zone (I get lost every. friggin’. time), and the fact that there seem to be too many quests to do before you hit level ten. Of all the newbie zones, I only feel that way with this zone, really. It’s like, they kick you out of the starting zone and then you’ve got a troll town and then you’ve got Razor Hill and then you’ve got these goblins and it’s just like “aaaaaaaaaaaaaah quests.” But yeah, I don’t really mind the zone as a whole.

Desolace: Another zone that I like for some reason. I especially like the coastal area because it’s so… different from the rest of the zone but still seems to fit. It’s kind of relaxing to hang out at the Desolace coast.

I can never decide if I like Maraudon or not. Leaning towards liking it cause it’s pretty but it’s like Wailing Caverns-times-500 in the maze department so I don’t go without My-Boy-The-Wonder-Navigator.

Mulgore: Looooove it. Helps that it sorta looks like Mulgore where I live IRL. <3

Dustwallow Marsh: I really like Theramore a lot. I have memories of that huge giant Alliance questline culminating in this showdown where Jaina showed up and it was just epic. But the rest… eh… there are things I like and things I don’t but all and all I tend not to spend a lot of time here.

Feralas: Another zone that I really like. I think it’s more fun on Horde than on Alliance. Alliance kind of tosses you at these weird islands and stuff whereas Horde just has you wondering around home base at Camp Mojache, making nice ‘n easy experience by shooting gnolls and ogres. Plus, I have bad memories of waiting for the boat for what felt like 15 minutes at Feathermoon Stronghold.

I like Dire Maul in a “I’m going to get lost, but I like the aesthetics” kind of way, sort of like Maraudon, really. Best thing that ever happened there was jumping down a floor without dismissing my pet, followed by said pet pulling the entire instance onto the group’s face. It was funny afterwards…

Thousand Needles: Easily one of my favorite zones in the game and contains pretty much one of the best questlines ever. Seriously, you get to jump off a cliff and then you get whisked away when you are about five inches from the ground. TELL ME THAT’S NOT AWESOME.

Silithus: And this is the part where I’m stuffed into a straitjacket: I like Silithus. Because it’s absolutely nuts. Giant bugs. C’mon. It’s crazy, and awesome. The only downfall is that the quests suck, for the most part. I put up with them because it’s such a weird ethereal zone filled with floating obelisks and I just sorta like the overall atmosphere.

When I was a noobling I went down to southern Silithus where AQ was and I had no idea what those crazy buildings were for but I thought it was the coolest thing ever. The end.

Un’goro Crater: I’ve had a couple characters spend a lot of time here farming Mountain Silversage to fund epic mounts back when they were expensive. So I sort of feel like I’ve spent more time here than I should have, and in that way, I’m in no big hurry to spend much more time there in the future.

On the other hand, dinosaurs. Plus, millions of little nooks and crannies all along the edges, if you look, and I’ve found some weird stuff in said nooks and crannies. So all and all it makes up for it. *nods*

Tanaris: I still remember the first time I took my first character and wandered south of the Shimmering Flats right into Tanaris and Gadgetzan. Pretty much instantly I went running to Mr. Pike, “OH MY GOSH I FOUND TATOOINE!!” I was really excited. I fell in love with it almost instantly and ya know what, I still like Tanaris. It has that weird alien-esque quality to it that Silithus has that makes me love it. The coast is gorgeous and has quests that involve pirates and giant turtles. And Zul’Farrak is one of the greatest instances of all time, and this shall not be debated. If there was an instance hall of fame and only five or ten instances in all of WoW could go in there, ZF would be a shoo-in. So yeah. Win-win situation.

Next time: Eastern Kingdoms, and we see if Pike continues her streak of liking everyone’s least-favorite zones and vice-versa! Stay tuned!

After spending a good month or so sitting around waiting for a guild to fall in my lap, I realized I had to take matters into my own hands. Off I went, searching the realm forums in search of someone that was recruiting and that fit my criteria.

After a bit of looking I stumbled across a guild name that I’ve seen literally since I began playing WoW over two years ago. I know very little about said guild, other than the fact that they’ve been around forever, but their recruitment ad on the forums as well as their website painted them as a group of friendly and good-natured people who did stuff like roleplaying and both 10 and 25man raids! It sounded like as good a place to start as any.

Anyways I filled out an application and sent it in, and today found an in-game mail from an officer telling me that they’d liked the initial application and wanted to interview me! At that point they were in Ulduar, so I went and did other stuff and came back to do the interview later.

First thing that the interviewer said was that he’d checked out my blog (which I’d briefly mentioned in the application) and that he really liked it. I was like “x__x;; /blush”

Second thing we talked about was loot rules and how raid signups were done and both of these more than met my approval.

Third thing we talked about was how they encourage spec’ing the spec you enjoy and do well with, and raiding with that spec. This really met my approval.

Fourth thing we talked about was how the current hunter officer in that guild “Really likes BM but is frustrated about getting it to work in a raid environment”, and this somehow segued into how both her and I tend to use MM when DPS is truly needed because both of us like it better than Survival.

Fifth thing we talked about was how I instantly met the hunter officer’s approval because of said previous facts.

Then… I was accepted into the guild. They asked if I wanted an invite right then, or wanted to think about it. I told them I wanted to think about it for a day or so. Partially because I do, and partially because the thought of joining a big raiding guild without my friends sorta scares me. Oh, my friends are always there. We all have our chat channel. We all hang out outside-of-game, in Ventrilo and in AIM chats and on forums. Heck, just today three of us went on a Kara stomp (guess what failed to drop off of Attumen, again?) and it was the most fun I’d had in weeks.

But going off and joining a whole new guild filled with whole new people, for the first time ever, is still a scary prospect. I really hope I make a good impression, and almost more than that, I really hope I don’t step on anyone’s toes. I mentioned my blog a few times in the interview, in a purely logistical fashion (“Would I have the permission of the guild to occasionally post screenshots or how-to movies featuring the guild on a site that gets over a thousand hits a day”, etc.), and because of that I have this fear of coming off as some “high and mighty blogger” or something, which I don’t think I did, but I worry anyway. I probably worry too much, to tell the truth.

Honestly though, I think this may just be “the guild”. The one I have been looking for. I felt like I had a rapport with the interviewer and I really liked what I was hearing about how things were run and about how they raided. It truly weirds me out that, outside of doing Karazhan fiftybazillion times in Burning Crusade– this will be the first time I’ve really been in a raiding guild. Who knows, maybe you will be hearing Ulduar stories from me soon, if my schedule allows… o.O

So I’ve had a lot of people on Twitter or even on my last post (which wasn’t even Q&A related!) ask me for my thoughts on the recent Hunter Q&A. Though at first I was sort of reluctant to do so, out of fear that maybe everybody and their grandma would have already blogged about it, I decided to go ahead and do it anyway. At the very least, you get to hear the thoughts of a casual raiding hunter who currently isn’t raiding and thus has to resort to playing her level 46 and level 76 hunters respectively, in the meantime. /cough

For the sake of length, I’m only going to be mentioning the aspects of the Q&A that interested me and/or I felt warranted some commentary from me. I apologize if your favorite part wasn’t mentioned. If you leave a comment asking for my thoughts on a certain thing, I would be glad to let you know my thoughts either in the comments, or in a future post. ^_^

We want to clean up some of the clunkiness that still exists around pet control (both the UI itself and what the pet does on the battlefield).

This is interesting, though to be honest what I am mostly looking forward to at this point is a revamp of the pet stats window that is a part of your character screen. I’d love to see my pet’s crit, haste, etc. Wouldn’t you?

We still want to make ammo more of a gear choice than a consumable. We’re not sure if this would be as simple as getting the 125 dps arrows to upgrade your 120 dps arrows, or if you would do things like swap between your fire and poison arrows… but that kind of thing is definitely on the table.

WTB Fire and Poison arrows. Like that’s not even me being reasonable and/or logical, that’s just an “OMGWANT.” Guys, have you ever played Ocarina of Time? Seriously!!

The problem with upgrading hunter ammo currently is how we work the progression. We don’t want to drop ammo on bosses for what I hope are obvious reasons so long as they are consumed. We need to have ammo improve as other gear improves, however, or the hunter overall starts to fall behind. Therefore there has to be some barrier that stops freshly leveled hunters from getting the best ammo while letting cutting-edge hunters procure it. In Burning Crusade, we handled this through a reputation grind, but it still wasn’t a very satisfying answer. In Wrath of the Lich King, we went with Engineer-crafted ammo and more recently changed the way ranged weapons scaled so that they would keep improving even if the ammo did not.

For 3.2 we lowered the cost of the ammo quite a bit — only 4 gold for a stack to manufacture. If you were paying 50 gold a night, that should drop to say 16 gold a night. Long-term this won’t be a problem because arrows won’t be consumed.

My ammo bag (Yes I still use my ammo bag *huggles it*) contains about two rows worth of the 1000-stacks of cheapie vendor bullets, and the rest is all Mammoth Cutters. I have an engineer friend that will send me free boxes of them on occasion, otherwise I’ll literally buy out the Auction House. Yeah, it’s pricey, but at least they last forever. I only use the Mammoth Cutters for raids or when I’m in a heroic with another good hunter (I get sooooo competitive around good hunters. I dunno if that’s good or bad.)

I’ll add that the melee attack issue for hunters themselves is something we keep discussing. While we are unlikely to go back to a melee-focused build for hunters, we might consider a model where hunters don’t run away most of the time but switch to melee attacks – perhaps even a single punishing attack on a cooldown before the hunter Disengaged or whatever. This would be one of those things that helped hunters feel more different than actual magic casters, and might make them care about melee weapons as more than stat sticks. Additional feedback from the community on this sort of thing would be appreciated.

I don’t really see what is wrong with us having a stat stick even for a physical-damage class. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but rogues and warriors have a “Stat-bow” or “stat-gun” right? Though, I sorta like the idea of having one hard-hitting melee attack pre-disengage. That sounds fun.

Q: Would we consider allowing auto-shoot to work while moving? If there aren’t plans for that specific change, is there anything in the works that will assist hunter dps in fights where a great deal of movement becomes necessary?

A: Moving should feel like a penalty. We don’t want ranged attackers constantly circle strafing FPS-style because it confers a defensive advantage without giving up an offensive one. Moving is supposed to be bad and how you handle it is a test of your skill.

Repressing my urge to run around is a difficult thing for me to do and is one of the reasons I love instant-casts and instant-cast-based classes (hai, resto druid) so much. But on the other hand, I do agree with the reasoning here, especially from a PvP standpoint. So yeah.

Q: Are there any long term plans to possibly removing the need for hunters to rely on a different resource system then mana?

A: I hate to do this to you, but this is a great BlizzCon question. For these Q&As, we’d like to keep the focus on each class’s current status and short-term plans, but at BlizzCon we’ll be happy to go into some more detail on our long-term vision for them.

What I’m about to say is going to cause a mass exodus from my blog, but ohwells:

I actually like hunters having mana right now, in endgame at least. (Leveling I will touch on in a moment.)

See, you know why I could never get into playing anything that relies on rage or energy or runic power? Because the whole experience is just my character saying “NOT ENOUGH ENERGY! I NEED MORE RAGE!!” over and over and over and me being frustrated because the button I want to click is grayed out. Sure, you have the comfort of knowing you’ll never “run out of mana”, but it’s not a big enough tradeoff for my extreme impatience.

I was one of the few people who liked the new Aspect of the Viper when they announced it in WotLK beta. I was one of the few people that defended it on the forums, and I got a lot of flak for it which is one of the reasons why I quit hanging out on the beta forums. It works nicely for me when you have a decent amount of mana replenishment going on, and I like it. /shrug

THAT SAID.

There are downsides. One downside is that if you lack outside mana replenishment, you feel like you are in Viper a lot, and it gets annoying. But to me, the biggest problem hunters have with mana right now BY FAR is leveling. Good luck finding old-world hunter gear with intellect on it, and good luck not being in AotV 75% of the time. My leveling hunters tote around stacks of mp5 food and mana oil and spec for ultimate mana efficiency at the cost of better talents and I’m still in Viper most of my time. Sure, we have no downtime, because we can still keep killing stuff while OOM or close to it. But you’re supposed to learn to enjoy your hunter partially because of those big numbers popping up on your screen. If you’re in Viper most of the time, it becomes silly. Not to mention stuff takes forever to kill.

My proposition: Either somehow make Viper work better with leveling, or for the love of the Earthmother, give us more intellect. Seriously.

/endrant

Now for hunters specifically, we think the class is just too cooldown limited, which creates problems with haste. We’ve driven in that direction in order to give hunters a more interesting rotation, and to be fair, we feel like we’ve done that. But being cooldown limited isn’t necessarily a fun way for the class to play and we think it’s one of those things that makes hunters feel more like casters than like ranged-weapon users. (Hunters are casters in the sense that they’re ranged dps, but we still want the emphasis to be on the gun or bow.) More on this at BlizzCon, too.

The class feels too global cooldown limited to me at times; by the time I can dig into my rotation it often feels like your average mob is half dead already. That’d be cool if haste lowered the global cooldown for us. I dunno if that would be OP or not. That’s for Blizz to figure out, not me. (Can you tell I know nothing about theorycrafting? XD)

Q: Beast Mastery falls behind Marksmanship and Survival in regards to DPS, especially when the pet dies, due to how much damage comes from the pet when specialized in the Beast Mastery talent tree. Do we have plans to bring the potential damage the Beast Mastery tree offers to be more on par with what’s currently possible with Survival and Marksmanship?

A: Ideally, we want Beast Mastery to be able to do competitive damage with Survival and Marksmanship. Realistically with dps classes, it’s a math problem, and one tree nearly always edges out the other ones in most situations. That doesn’t mean we stop trying, but it also means we have to be realistic about what it will take to really get the specs to within 1% dps of each other, which is sometimes the point I fear we’d need to hit.

The buffs to Catlike Reflexes and Wild Hunt were intended to boost Beast Mastery a little without causing every hunter in the game to swing back to Beast Mastery the way they all swung to Survival a few patches ago. We don’t necessarily like buffing Beast Mastery through the pet all the time. However, Beast Mastery also doesn’t have a signature attack like Chimera or Explosive Shot. At the same time, we don’t necessarily want to give them one because then Arcane Shot risks just vanishing from the hunter rotation. But, we can’t just buff Arcane Shot (unless it is very deep in Beast Mastery) because Survival and Marks use that too. See the problem? Ultimately the tree is supposed to be about pets, so we would rather make the pet easier to control and give the hunter ways to get the pet out of trouble so that they don’t face the profound dps loss of pet death. And even then, having a pet that is 50% or more of your dps is always going to have design problems, so we can’t go overboard. Beast Mastery and Demonology (and even the Unholy death knight) are going to be at a greater loss when their pet dies. That’s just the cost of having a more powerful pet.

I know not everyone here agrees with me, but it made me extremely happy to see that little phrase “We don’t necessarily like buffing Beast Mastery through the pet all the time.” Now don’t get me wrong, I love having my pet be 35%, 40% or so of my damage. I love when there is synergy between hunter and pet and we proc things that make one another stronger. But lately it feels like Blizz has just been buffing the pet and buffing the pet even more and hey guess what, we’re buffing the pet again!… and pretty soon we’re going to get up to that uncomfortable point where we were at the beginning of WotLK where my pet was doing 55% of our total DPS on Patchwerk and it just felt so very, very… “Well, I may as well sit here and read a book while my pet does the work.” Ya know? I want to see the Beast Master hunter get some love too. I want to see more things that the pet does give the hunter some sort of beneficial effect. That’s why I fell in love with the tree in the first place and I haven’t been seeing it lately and it’s left me a somewhat unsatisfied Beast Master.

It does also make me happy to see that Blizz is aware of BM needing a buff. That’s really all the reassurance I need. Yeah, it may take ‘em a while to get around to it, but I’m in no rush.

We’d rather not have to come up with additional mechanics needed to heal pets or keep them alive. We’d rather just the pet didn’t die in situations where a player that can make intelligent choices wouldn’t have died.

Awesome idea, thanks Blizz <3

I would also like to add, I've been thinking lately it may not be a bad idea to just take Improved Revive Pet and Improved Mend Pet and make the effects of those baseline for all hunters and replace them with DPS talents in the BM tree. In my mind, every hunter of every spec should be making an equal amount of effort to keep their pet alive anyway. (Which is why I never use the “Beast Master is difficult to play because we have to have pet control” argument on this blog– I think all hunters have to have pet control. But maybe that’s just me.)

Hunters in the online community tend to focus a lot on overall PvE dps or overall PvP survival and not get too much into pet comparisons. Someone theorycrafts the best pet and then hunters just go and get it instead of discussing what the other pets would need to be more competitive. To be fair, there is some of that discussion, but it’s not always easy to find, and I have looked. It’s not super high priority given some of the other hunter design issues we’re looking at, but we do want pets to be a choice.

Translation: HAY GUYS LET’S TALK ABOUT THIS. No, I’m serious. Though it sorta surprises me that Ghostcrawler is having trouble finding this stuff online, I see people talk about it all the time. Perhaps our ol’ crab buddy is looking in all the wrong places.

Q: Due to the number of abilities available to hunters, many level 80 players have expressed concerns in regards to placing all necessary abilities on their action bars. Are there any improvements coming that will assist hunters with this particular issue?

A: We recognize this as a problem. We need to get more buttons off of the bar. We made some progress with streamlining say tracking and aspects, but we’re not there yet.

An aspects bar, maybe up by our pet bar, would be cool.

Q: Additionally, do we plan to expand upon the number of pet action bar slots? Due to the current number of slots available for pets, hunters frequently have to swap pet abilities in and out of their spell/ability book.

A: Yes, we definitely want to do this. The whole pet bar needs a little work. There are still some bugs relating to which abilities can be moved on or off the bar and whether they default to autocast or not. We want the bar to work much more like character action bars.

Sounds good to me.

Q: Do we have plans to increase the number of stable slots available to hunters?

A: Obviously we increased it a lot in Wrath of the Lich King. We want to try and keep the pet as some kind of decision — they aren’t supposed to be like mounts or titles where you just collect as many as you want. We expanded the size so that players could have say a Tenacity pet for soloing and a Ferocity pet for raiding, but we don’t want every hunter to have every family available here. Now one potential problem are the Spirit Beasts, which are collected by hunters and not trivial to replace. We have also discussed expanding the Spirit Beast concept to have rare skins of other pet families (that otherwise don’t convey a combat bonus). If we do that, we’d probably have to expand the stable slots.

We’ve also considered a model where the hunter doesn’t even need a stable and can work more like a warlock where they can just summon their pets whenever they want — with the remote stable ability from the dual-spec feature, we’re pretty close to that already. If we went this route then maybe the stable could just become pet storage in the same way your bank has all those Invader’s Scourgestones and Zul’Gurub bijous that you don’t use often but can’t bear to part with.

I am on two minds with this. On the one hand, I like the general idea of having a limited number of stable slots. That way, not every hunter has every pet in the game. On the other hand… well, lemme put it this way. You know how many hunters I have? You know how many times I STILL agonize about my lack of stable space across all my hunters? Yeah.

My own little suggestion and solution for this would be to make it so you still have your five stable slots, but then you could re-obtain any pet you had previously released via the Stable Master. Hey, they say they help you find lost pets and companions, right? =P You would have to release one of your current pets to make room in your stable for it, but then you would get your previously-released pet back at whatever level it was when you released it. I’d give this service some sort of slowly-increasing fee akin to talent point re-spec’ing just so it doesn’t become an extended stable slot and you’d still have to put some thought into it. And you couldn’t access any of said released pets mid-raid via Call Stabled Pet. So you’d have your five pets “at the ready” and then any of your past pets you could get from the Stable Master for a cost. That way, the hunters who spent forever taming Loque only to never use him in a raid, would feel better about releasing him, knowing they could get him again without having to do the camping thing again.

I dunno, it seems fair to me.

And that’s that! Like I said, these are just my thoughts on the matter. No doubt most people disagree with at least one or two things I said, and that’s fine. I’m in somewhat of a unique position right now, and on top of that, we all have our own differing thoughts on the state of the game, and it’s good to have those differing opinions.

And with that Wall of Text, Pike is out!

(The correct continuation of the title, by the way, is “Carmen Sandiego” said in a deep Rockapella voice. This shall not be disputed.)

One of the things that has been on the ol’ mind lately is the popularity or lack thereof of various specs and classes. Not so much in a QQ sense even, but in a “Man, where did all those [insert spec] here go? I kinda miss having one in my raid” sense.

These mysterious endangered species specs vary from server to server and even from personal experience to personal experience but here, I’ll tell you mine, class by class…

Death Knight:
I actually see all three DK specs fairly evenly represented. Unholy is probably ahead by a smidge. It’s the pet, I tell ya, people love ‘em (more on this later).

Druid:
This is what inspired me to write this post. Where the heck are all the feral druids? I can’t even remember when the last time I had a bear tank was. The other druid specs are doing quite well. Trees are arguably the healer I see most these days (though not by a large margin… but I would put them in front), and I probably group with more boomkin than mages. Cats are seen frequently in lower level dungeons, and by the same token, bears are seen relatively frequently at low levels too because it’s easy for a leveling kitty to just step in.

But at endgame? Where are all you lovely fuzzy teddybears with a yummy 5% crit bonus hiding? My hunters miss you dearly. Seriously, let’s say I get into a VoA. “We need one more tank,” someone says. “Invite [so-and-so]“, says someone else. /who So-and-so. 40% chance it’s a paladin, 40% chance it’s a death knight, 15% chance it’s a warrior, and 5% chance it’s a bear. Why? I dunno. Ghostcrawler keeps saying they’re OP, how does he know if no one is playing them? =P

It is my hope that with the next patch and the improved forms, more people will be inspired to take Feral for a spin. I miss bear tanks.

Hunter:
I’m sure most of the readers of my blog know this one goes without saying. Survival is currently eating the biggest piece of the cake by far in my groups. Interestingly there seem to be roughly similar (though much smaller) numbers of Marksmanship and Beast Master. I sorta think it’s cause I’m on an RP server. We’re more likely to get the people who think about their character when they think about their spec, hence, more people staying BM. On the same token, I swear I am the only hunter on the dang server without a Spirit Beast in the stable.

Mage:
Okay. What I am about to tell you is going to blow your mind.

…

…

I raid with Frost mages more than both of the other specs combined.

It’s actually gotten to the point where I wonder what it’s like to raid with a non-Frost mage.

I think it’s the water elemental. Like I said, people love them pets.

Or maybe it’s because the poor frost mages are in the same boat with me, the Beast Mastery hunter, so all we do is PuG stuff. Who knows!

Paladin:
Paladins are living the high life right now, I swear. They’re so ubiquitous that being in a group without at least one is a surreal experience. “…where’s Might? Where’s Kings? Didn’t they come default with Heroics? Is this a bad dream?”

I see paladins of all three specs quite frequently, although I see Prot and Ret slightly more than Holy. Probably because they synergize together better so everyone dualspecs to those. Although, the Prot/Holy types who are good with both specs? They are to be feared. For being the most useful person in the world. Seriously.

Priest:
I see priests pretty evenly represented. Shadow priests are in vogue right now mostly because the good ones are Gods of Recount. Disc is still sorta that crazy spec that no one understands so they’re lagging behind Holy a bit, but I’ve seen them in my groups too.

My priest knowledge is roughly comparable to my knowledge of higher mathematics (“Oooh look guys, I can make my caluclator say “Hello”), so moving on…

Rogue:
I know nothing about the rogue specs. Like, Subtlety is for sneaking around I guess? I couldn’t tell ya who is what by playstyle though. Fortunately I’ve configured my XPerl to show me someone’s spec when I target them. As such, I have cleverly deduced that Assassination was all the rage at the beginning of WotLK, but since then the pendulum has largely swung back around to Combat, at least from what I’ve seen. Subtlety is pretty much extinct although you still see the random Sub rogue while leveling.

Did I mention I know nothing about rogues? I know nothing about rogues. The class is a completely foreign concept to me.

Shaman:
I have no idea where all the resto shamans are hiding, because I know they’re there.. I sorta think they all got scooped up by raid guilds the second they materialized in the game world because I never see any in PuGs, but I always see them standing around in Ironforge (never Stormwind) with super fancy gear and usually an Amani War Bear and a Hand of A’dal title. Hence my hypothesis.

Anyways, Elemental/Enhancement representation seems to be pretty even, with Enhancement gaining the edge in lower levels and Elemental gaining it at higher ones. I like shamans. I could never get into playing them, but I like having them in my group. *pets them*

Warlocks:
You’d think I’d know more about warlocks seeing as my boyfriend plays one and writes about them on WoW Insider. But I really don’t. All I know is that there are approximately 1395802462 times as many Demonology warlocks as any other spec, and I blame the Felguard. (See? It’s that pet thing again like I was telling you about.)

Sometimes I’m in a group with an Affliction or Destruction warlock that isn’t my boyfriend. It freaks me out. “Wait, you mean warlocks that aren’t my boyfriend use their imp/felpuppy? /boggle”

Warlocks in general are kind of an endangered species, which saddens me, because the world could always use more in-instance summoning stones, don’t you think? >.>

Warriors:
I am convinced that 99% of the world’s prot warriors either rerolled Death Knight, or respec’d to DPS. Yes, I have no idea where our tanky warrior friends went. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for prot warriors, they just looked like they were working so hard in Burning Crusade– no idea if they still have to work hard or not, but the soft spot remains. I’d like to see more of them just for that.

This one time I saw a Fury warrior dual-wielding Legacy and something else. I was kinda jealous. The End.

And that, as they say… is that.

This has been a Pike Incorporated Presentation. One’s experiences with various classes and specs may vary. Some restrictions may apply.

Marksmanship Week wraps up with a VoA10 yesterday where I did a pretty dang good job– I was in the lead on Recount by a large margin on both Archavon and Emalon, and some of my long-time friends who were in the group commented on my sudden noticeably big jump in DPS. Yes, where Survival failed to bring the increased numbers, Marksmanship delivered– a lot.

And so we reach the end of this great Spec Experiment. Things I’ve learned?

- Marksmanship is definitely replacing Survival as my dual spec. I don’t need to be the raid group’s emergency replenishment bot when I don’t have a raid group anymore. >.>

- I was using my wolf this whole time as part of my experiment to really try to min/max this as much as possible, but I miss my raptor so much that I will probably go back to using him full time. Furious Howl has a cooldown, but Raptor cuteness is forever <3

- I was sort of expecting to spec back to BM and suddenly flail around feeling like I had nothing to do and everything was "easy" after playing specs with a lot more buttons to push. But in all honesty, the reverse was true. For me, Beast Master feels very difficult to play well, and I think a lot of it has to do with perception. With Marksmanship, topping the DPS chart feels smooth and near-effortless, whereas with Beast Master, it feels like I'm prancing on a rather precarious position and one misstep will cost me. So I really really have to try to coax what I can out of it, merely to reach the lower level of what I got as MM. The result is that, oddly enough, BM has suddenly become sort of a more stressful spec to play o.O It’s kind of weird and I’m not sure what that will mean for me in terms of playstyle. Though lemme tell ya, I can’t wait until BM gets this supposed buff that we’re supposed to get… and hopefully still will… /crosses fingers

(Note: I don’t mean to offend anybody here; I know the idea of “which spec is the most challenging to play” seems to be a really touchy subject, with most everybody clamoring to claim theirs as the most difficult to play. I think first of all a.) it’s subjective, and b.) I haven’t found a single hunter spec thus far to be boring to play– awkward, yes, *glances at Survival* but certainly not boring– and to me, that’s what counts. They are all challenging in their own way. /nods)

In the end though, I don’t really aim for giant DPS numbers so much as I aim to be competitive; so long as I am somewhere in the top 3 or 5 (depending on whether it’s 10man or 25man) then I am content. This experiment has been an awesome and eye-opening experience to me, but I’m glad now I’ll be able to close Recount for a while and not worry about it.

/leans back and streeeeeeeeeeetches

For those of you looking for the last portion of my Naxx guide, fear not, it’ll be up tomorrow morning. I was really itching to write something “contemplative-ish”, though, so here we go.

Basically I’ve found myself rather… “lost” when it comes to what I want to do in WoW lately. The summer slump has hit my Naxx group, hard, to the point that last I checked they’re done for the time being, so I’m out a raid group. My little casual guild o’ friends is losing people (on good terms, by the way) either to real-life issues, or to bigger raiding guilds. Oh, we have chat channels and the like, but still. I suppose more and more I am feeling lonely in game, and my two level 74 alts that I have been playing, while fun, seem to be losing their luster. In fact, I’m really glad that I have my Naxx guide to post this week, because I honestly have done nothing in WoW these past several days except dailies and occasionally dinking around on random alts.

I’ve put a little bit of thought into what to do, and I’m still pretty undecided. I don’t want to be done with the game, and more importantly I don’t feel done with the game, but I could use a rez, so to speak.

The prominent thought that has hit me is “join a raiding guild already!” I don’t see this happening for a few different reasons:

1.) Super crappy and unreliable work schedule. What raiding guild would want someone who could only show up once, maaaaybe twice a week and thus would probably wind up super-undergeared?

And to make things harder, assuming the aforementioned guild exists in some iteration or other…

2.) It would have to be on an RP server. The number of times I have rolled alts, gotten them to level 15ish, and then quit in a fit of depression, is exactly equal to the number of times I have rolled alts on non-RP servers. No offense meant at all to you non-RP folks, it’s a matter of playstyle. There is just some difference that I can’t quite pin down between RP and “normal” servers and I feel uncomfortable playing on anything but an RP server, I really do. This also rules out transferring to an Oceanic server since they have no RP servers (aside from the fact that I’m a failure of a computer geek and raiding at 4am wouldn’t work for me.)

and 3.) It would preferably have to be on Silver Hand, my home server. I wouldn’t be completely averse to a server transfer, I just… aside from my friends being here, I’ve grown oddly attached to my home server, Trade Chat trolls and all. Nowhere else really feels the same.

So once you’ve looked at my criteria you can probably see why I’m thinking the odds of me ever getting into a raiding guild are slim to none.

But what else is there, really? As mentioned, playing the alts and the “funding-epic-flyers-for-all-my-toons” game are fun, but something is definitely missing. Last time I reached this point, Wrath of the Lich King came out a month or two later, this time…

I suppose I am looking for advice and ideas on how to spice up my WoW again. I want to be able to feel the spark that I used to and be hit with random flashes of inspiration to write for you guys. What would you guys like to read? Lemme know.

Oh and, no promises and this is tentative, but… Alliance hunter LF guild, PST.

I majored in filmmaking. Yes, that’s right, while the bulk of my friends were busy doing math or science or English courses, I was learning about cinematography and lighting and screenwriting and sound design and watching dozens of movies. (Actually, probably the two courses that taught me the most were the black-and-white darkroom photography class and the “class” where I was the prop manager for an on-stage rendition of “Kimberly Akimbo“, but I digress).

One of the 200-level courses was an editing course and its professor was a guy that most of us loved to poke fun at. The reason is because he was a very proud self-professed “dinosaur” who liked to go into long rambles on how kids these days would just rush into digital editing without ever once touching a real piece of celluloid, and how this was a horrible, terrible loss. Because of this, our big project for this class was to take a bunch of footage that was filmed long, long ago and turn it into a ten-minute long story. Oh and this was “real” film footage– no digital editing allowed.

This project was notorious throughout the school’s film program for the tears it induced; little sketches and cartoons depicting the hellishness of it all hung taped to various shelves in that dark, warm, sticky editing room filled with Moviolas and splicers. There was almost always someone in there working on a project, and everyone was filled with relief when the semester ended and the project was over and we could all safely move on to doing the rest of our school career’s projects on Final Cut Pro.

And so it may shock you to discover my reaction when I discovered not long after that, that my class would be the last ever to do that project– from then on out the school’s program was going completely 100% digital from the start, and no future students would have to do the one token “film editing” assignment.

I felt sad for them.

Because suddenly I realized that in a way, my professor had been right all along. There’s something about actually handling that film footage that teaches you something that is hard to explain. Those future kids wouldn’t get to experience literally being drowned in reels of loose film as you sat on a hard metal foldup chair in that tiny room, bent over your projector, trying your best to imagine your near-microscopic viewing screen was a wall in a theater. They would never get to experience having to think over all your editing choices and weigh them carefully with your instincts before making that splice, because if you later decided you wanted an extra two frames of footage you had to go tape your film back together– no “Undo” buttons here. Those future students would never get to experience all the literal sweat and elbow grease and wouldn’t get to view the joyous celebrations of a group of college kids who would sneak bottles of wine into that infamous room on the night before the project was due, refusing to uncork them until 2 or 3 in the morning when their cut was done and they could wind up your final film with pride, knowing they had just accomplished something very tangible. Because nobody did that in the clean, airy, and yet somehow very sterile computer rooms.

Yeah… my professor was right.

You’re asking why I’m telling this story, and you’re going to giggle at me when I tell you why, but oh well. I’m telling this story because everytime I think of chain trapping and how it seems to be such an un-needed and un-practiced skill these days, I think back to editing class and how once again I feel like one of the last of the old guard.

Some of my favorite memories in Burning Crusade where when I would go into a heroic with a tank that knew me and maybe a healer who knew me, and then two PuG DPS. The tank would mark up a pull– on a hard pull there would be the tank’s target and then there would be, for example, a sap, and a sheep, and then my beautiful blue square– the trap target.

I’d lay down my trap, the rogue would sap, the mage would sheep and then the pull would begin and I’d pull my mob into my trap and pewpew away at the skull. Then skull would be down and the rogue and the mage would run towards my trap… but oh wait, what’s this? The tank is headed at sheep, instead! So we’d all DPS sheep and I’d retrap my target and then the mage and the rogue would rush over to– oh wait, she trapped it again? And the tank, who knew me very well, would go right over to sap without blinking and we’d all DPS sap and then everyone would turn around right as I had finished calmly pulling my mob into yet another trap. At which point the tank would perhaps pause and /dance a bit before finally charging in.

Those moments were beautiful. And every time they happened I grinned to myself and knew I had pulled off a job well done. These days, things are easier and we don’t have a chance to pull that kind of thing off anymore. More than ever before, we are about the fabled Massive Quantities of Sustained Ranged DPS once spoken of by a wise man, and we have little room for anything else. Better? Easier? Your opinion. But as for Professor Pike, who has turned into her editing professor– I think that a hunter who has never trapped before is missing a little piece of knowledge and experience that they would find useful and fulfilling if they learned how, even in today’s world (of Warcraft).

Which is why my hunter kindergarten courses will always contain something on chain trapping, and why my sidebar still links to my Chain Trapping Tutorial Movie. Some of the specifics are different, but the basic gist of it is the same. And I still talk like a dork, so that hasn’t changed either. >.>

Remember: time and space are your friends. Lay your trap out early and use distance to your advantage, because that will buy you more time.

<3

(Oh, and in case you are curious, the title of this post, "In the Blink of an Eye", is the name of a book I read in that class, by master editor Walter Murch. I have long thought there was something very “huntery” about editing (or “editory” about WoW hunters), in that in my mind, both are sort of the unsung heroes of the finished product. Looking through that book recently, I’ve discovered there is actually a chapter called “Misdirection”. I rest my case. =P)

I don’t know about you guys, but I am a huge dork so I tend to play a little game with myself where I’ll try to come up with awesome new talents for the Beast Master tree. Most of these imaginary talents really focus on my favorite part of that spec– the synergy between pet and hunter. So most of my ideas involve the hunter and pet bouncing things off of each other, making each other more powerful. My ideas also tend to be a little, well… let’s put it this way. I really dislike those talents that are a flat “Your pet does n% more damage, period.” Not so much because they are bad talents, so much as they are a.) overdone and b.) simply not very exciting!

Observe:

In the Beast Master tree:
Unleashed Fury: Increases the damage done by your pet by 15%.
Kindred Spirits: Increases the damage done by your pet by 20%.

In your Ferocity pet’s talent tree:
Spiked Collar: Increases the damage done by your pet by 9%.
Shark Attack: Increases the damage done by your pet by 6%.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to complain or anything. I like having a pet who can make things explode with a single swipe.

But I’m that person who sits here and thinks “Ooooh they’re redoing talents this expansion/patch/etc., I wonder what types of things we’ll get! Maybe we’ll get like… a Poison Dart attack that increases the damage done by mine and my pet’s special attacks for ten seconds and maybe if my pet crits it will increase the critical strike chance of my next hit or maybe my pet’s attack power will be increased by a percentage of my stamina and my intellect will be increased by a percentage of his stamina, or maybe when his Frenzy procs I go into a Frenzy too and I get some sort of bonus, or or or or…

…

…or more increased pet damage. Kay.”

Ya know? Now those are just examples I pulled out of my hat, nothing too serious, but you get the drift. I guess my point is that a lil’ more variety would be nice.

Ah, but a hunter can dream. I’m sure most of us have spent some time thinking about a personal “idealized” version of our spec or class. …or maybe that’s just me cause I’m a supergeek. I’m okay with that, too. Still, I’d be curious to hear if any of you are like me, and if you are, what sort of ideas you fine folks have thought of.

And in other news, this sort of scenario is kind of turning into a tradition: