Should I?

Well, It’s been several months since I’ve played WoW. Very soon after I quit, they changed all of the skills to match the upcoming expansion and new level cap. 2 weeks later, they released the expansion, and increased the level cap from 70 to 80…10 more levels of grinding.

The things that makes me want to play again:
- It was fun
- I miss the friends
- I had something to do when I was bored
- It is cheaper per month than buying a new game (or 2)

The things that make me want to stay away
- It is a time-sink
- More grinding
- It’s addicting

I tried to get some information about my account today, and for some reason my account is no longer available…wait…WHAT?!?!

I tried to retrieve my password. “Your account is no longer available, or your e-mail address is incorrect.” Umm…ok. My other e-mail. Same answer. …great. 7 characters, all in the outland, and 2 70s…lost. Okie dokie then.

Now I have 2 choices. Try to call blizz and have them reset my password/account manually, or quit WoW forever. I’m not going to level a new toon this late in the game, it’s just too much work now…speaking of which…

How can Blizzard expect folks to play now? It was one thing to have to get a character to 60. Wasn’t too hard, had some time requirement to play it, but it wasn’t that bad.

Then they went to 70 and added outlands. They lowered the XP needed from 20-60 to get folks to the outlands, but even then it still took an insane amount of XP to go from 60 to 61, then 9 more levels. OK. I’ve got my original toon and another to 70. (i still have 5 more in outlands and they’re all boring because of the same grind.) And now they’ve added levels to 80, with 1.2-MILLION xp required from 70-71…at least that’s what everyone tells me. It was a long enough grind to 70…no more. How can Blizzard expect folks to do it? Perks…that’s how.

Around the mid-point between the expansion of Outlands and the Lick King, Blizz added a “recruit-a-friend” feature. The point? Well, you invite your friend. You help your friend level (by power leveling ro joining them with a new toon). Once they are high level (over 60 or so within a month), they can grant you levels to any of your toons that are lower then them. You gave Blizz a new customer, and now that customer can give you levels. If they happen to make 70 within a month, they can give you levels to match. How about that?

Another perk was lowering the amount of xp needed from 20-70…again. The problem with this is that 90% of folks running a new toon is missing out on most of the content from the original game. The actual grouping for VanCleef or Zul’Farak, Maraudon…any of them. Onyxia’s lair is not longer ran (rarely now), URBS, MC…none of them are ran. It’s become a grind-fest to 70 to play the new content. Do the quests…get the xp…get to 80 to play with the rest of your friends now.

I’ve been in contact with several of my friends via my old guild forums, and since the expansion, about 1/3 of them quit. Get to 80, do the same thing. Quest, grind, take down a boss, and level a new toon. Over and over again.

So…what now? Even with all of this repetitiveness, I’d still love to play again. I would like to at least enjoy some of the new content…play the new Death Knight. But since my account is gone (it is…verified), I’m not doing this all again. Sorry Blizz….I’m out!

A bigger stick

Yes, I have a new airplane. I never got around to taking pictures of the trainer, but it was a fun plane to fly. It seems, though, that I learn fun things a bit quicker than others.

I was able to solo fly on my second day, and was starting to fly inverted on my second weekend. This weekend, I was doing inverted flight, knife-edge flight, and small hovers…something most folks don’t think a trainer can do. It wasn’t easy, but it was possible.

During my last Saturday flight, Jason (the guy from whom I bought my trainer) was talking to the guys about my fast learning. He hinted at the possibility of swapping his BigStik for the trainer. He would be getting his trainer back (for the kids) and I would be taking the next logical step up…the BigStik. After I landed, he brought up the idea to me, and we agreed. As of last night, I was a beginner/intermediate pilot!

This morning I took it out at 730 before the winds picked up, and flew it around. A small bit of trim here and there, then hands-off flying. Perfect trim. More rolls, loops, inverted, knife-edge, and even some high-speed low-altitude passes. Such a FUN airplane.

Now it was time for landing. I wasn’t sure how it was going to react. I started to bring it in. It slowed down MUCH easier than the Nexstar, and flew just a slowly. Right on the runway. First landing with the Stik and it was right on. Same for the next 3 flights. I love this plane!

On another note, as a WoW player, I found this:

I thought it was funny. Kind of nerdy, but funny.

As of right now, I have 10 days, 21 hours, 25 minutes, and 32 seconds until I leave for Oklahoma. Give me another 5 hours and I’ll be with my family. Lisa and Anthony left on the 30th of October to get a head start up there, but it seems like they just left and we still have forever to go. less than two weeks is the reality…2 years is what it feels like.

Drugs for an addict?

Well…back to WoW we go. The month off was nice, but the boredom from already doing it all was worse. Besides, I’ve got some friends that have been looking for me there. :)

Someone mentioned that WoW is like Everquest (Ever-crack). An addicting, self-indulgent videogame where one can be what they want, and how folks have wasted away playing it. Well., if that’s true, I’m about to give drugs to a person in rehab!

Makin out like GANGBUSTERS!!!!

Last night was my first FULL Karazhan run, and MAN WAS IT FUN!!!

The whole shebang started around 9:30pm. Group fell apart, so we got invited to a better group, one that was made up by the #7 guild on the server for alliance.

4 hours later, I walked out with 4 epic pieces of gear, 4 Void Crystals, and 5 Shards. Bringing my damage and hit rating to an all-time high for me. I’m DEFINATELY becoming a Shadow-Mage now.

The funny thing about the group, was that I was top on the damage-meters for DPS the entire time, and only at the VERY end did I get beat by a shaman for entire-instance damage…2236. That’s ONE Shadow Bolt worth of damage. I can’t wait until I get over 1000 damage and 200+ hit rating…

Hacking SUCKS!

Well…another friend had his account hacked. He was on leave for a couple of weeks working on a few of his characters. He decided to have one of the power-leveled… A.K.A. Pay to have his toon leveled for him.

Well, he kept getting e-mails from the company saying that he needed to change his password back, and he had no idea what was going on. A mutual friend saw him popping on and off the toon several times this past weekend, but didn’t think anything of it.

Sunday evening my friend logged on to find his decently well-geared Warlock sitting at the mailbox…naked. Damn-near everything he owned, lost. All but his PvP gear was missing. The deal with PvP gear, is that it cannot be sold, or disenchanted…only destroyed, which they did to one piece only.

His prior-hack gear rating, via be.imba.hu was approximately a 147…able to easily go to Karazhan, and on the verge of going to Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon. Now…well…lets just say he can’t even quest in the Outlands. Yeah…that bad.

I know it’s a game, but like I stated earlier, it is time well spent with friends, and yes, there are other things to do, but to see someone get all of his work lost in days is unnerving.

Just don’t ask why he paid to have his toon power-leveled…or should I say, paid to have his toon hacked….

Next time, take the advice…it’s dangerous to go alone without it.

***UPDATE***

Another friend had his account hacked.

Supposedly, he was about lvl 53, and paid some company to have his toon brought to 60. This was to take 3 days, but 5 days later he logged in and everything he owned was sold (including 2 70s), 3 new toons were created, and they were naked as well.

After about 4 days of investigation, they were able to give him replacement gear, appropriate gold for each toon (about 1200 total), and he was back in business. Although Blizz never found out he was paying for leveling (bannable offense from their EULA), he did learn his lesson about power-leveling:

It’s not worth it.

Patch Tuesdays….

Patch Tuesdays are wonderful. Oh, if you DON’T play WoW, Tuesdays are when the servers get updated, and today is the date that patch 2.4 comes out. Yes, another patch, but this one adds a new instance, new gear, new quests, blah, blah, blah…it’s new content.

A friend of mine has noticed that his guild needed more casters for damage, and I got invited…right after I got keyed for Karazhan. That night, they invited me to a 25-man raid of Doom Lord Kazzak, and I had fun. The only problem that came up was the realization that I was not geared well enough for raids, so that friend successfully brought back the spark that had me interested in my Warlock, and back to questing for gear I went.

In addition to the quests, he made me start searching for gear-related stuff so I could figure out which way to go as far as damage. One place I found was called Be Imba.

This site takes information from the WoW Armory, and rates each gear item, enchant and gem, and gives you a score based on that gear. It also can tell what may be mis-enchanted and/or gemmed wrong based on your class, and what is wrong about it. Not too shabby. At the bottom, it also has a nice raid meter. Although the meter may not be too accurate, it does give you an idea of where you could be gathering your gear.

In the picture above, the red bar means that my gear is from that part of the meter…quests, rep rewards, etc…and the blue bar shows that I am now at the low end for being able to go to Karazhan. Low…but able. Good thing I got the Key.

Discovery FTW

After months of lagging around, and not paying attention, I finally gave up the druid, and started/finished my quests to get keyed for Karazhan. This instance isn’t a full 25-main raid, but rather a large 10-man group with several sections, each having their own boss.

From WoWWiki.com, “Karazhan, the Ivory Tower, is an abandoned citadel located in southern Deadwind Pass. The tower is best known for its last known occupant – Medivh, the last Guardian of Tirisfal. After Medivh was killed by the army of Stormwind, the tower sealed itself off from the rest of the world. But recently, Karazhan has reawakened – an evil presence has taken the tower as its own, its halls crawling with spirits and demons…and Medivh’s presence is still alive and well, even decades after his death.“

Even though it’s not a full raid, it is extremely hard and it takes a good group to survive the encounters. Inside, there are many events from playing a game of chess, to watching an opera. Unfortunately, you interrupt each one and are forced to defeat the boss to continue.

Feels like I’m going to be busy later.

HELI FUN continued…

Well, I sent my heli to a friend in Oklahoma to go over the thing trying to find what was causing it to wobble so much. The only things he found were a tight tail belt, and a couple of screws that needed to be replaced. Otherwise it flied great. He was also going to upgrade the gear and maybe fix a couple more things, but as long as it flies, I’ll be happy. Should have it back next week.

FAMILY

Anthony has been on Spring Break this past week. It was nice being able to sleep in, but since he goes back to school next week, I’ll need to start waking up at 2:45pm again. During the week, he’s been building all kinds of stuff and every time I go in there, it’s another mess with cars, Transformers, Legos, Lincoln logs, etc…

Lisa has been busy with work, picking up the slack from others who aren’t doing quite what they should (sounds familiar.) But all-in-all she’s having fun.

All your base….

YAY…the weekend has been saved. Got notified that we will NOT be working this weekend, so now it’s time to get my WoW on, but first, a story….

A couple of months back…I had my shoulder surgery. Thinking it would be like last time, I would be able to type on the computer, or play games. I was WAY off. I could barely move my arm at all, and the Laz-E-Boy became a permanent fixture to my backside.

Anyhoo, I left my WoW account open so I could dance the 1-finger tango and still type to my friends. Due to the drugs I was on, this wasn’t the foremost thing on my mind, and I ended up not logging in for about 3 weeks.

When I did log in, I found that my level 70 warlock was missing. What the hell? Where did ALL of my toons go? I had several alternate characters on my home server, and all but 2 were missing. I back out of the character screen to view what realms were active, and I see one that was not familiar to me. I log in, and what I see next was disturbing to say the least…a NAKED warlock.

When I log in I found myself standing next to a mailbox…naked. No gear, no weapons. Bags? Empty. Bank? Empty. No guild affiliation, no friends.

I realized at that point, my account had been hacked, transferred to a NORMAL (Player vs Environment…PVE) server, and everything I had “sharded.”

“Sharding”, is an Enchanter’s talent that allows one to disenchant all green (and up) items/gear that are worth something. The act of disenchanting, destroys the item, and gives the disenchanter the materials to enchant stuff with magical powers. Generally, the higher quality an item (green -> blue -> purple) the higher quality materials you get from the sharding, thus more money made in the Auction House.

After calming down, and noticing that all of my toons except the two mention above, and my warlock were deleted, I contacted a GM (game master.) They took about a week, but found that someone had indeed hacked my account, used a pre-paid credit card to transfer my toon (you can transfer only 1 way…PVP to PVE, you cannot go the other way…causing even more grief) and disenchanted my existing gear. They then mailed everything I had through 3 level 1 toons before landing on a banned account. The banned account owner was probably getting close to being unbanned, and Blizzard ended up deleting that persons account totally. Evidentially, I was not the only account hacked by this person.

After this week, I was notified that they have restored much of what I had, but some things were lost and I would have to work for them again. I can’t even remember what it was that I lost, but it probably wasn’t very important.

Needless to say, my password was changed, and ALL add-ons were verified and downloaded from trustworthy sources. I still wonder why the dude had to delete all but two of may alternates though. Guess it was his way of screwing with me.

Yes, it’s just a game. Yes, there is no real-world value to show for all that time. But you know what…it’s a fun game that I play with a lot of my friends when I’m bored.

Now…time for the Outlands!!!!!

WoW boredom

Boredom sucks. I have a 70 lock, 64 hunter, 52 druid and 22 shaman…and I’m bored with ALL of them.

What about PVP? I transferred from a PVP server to a “care-bear” server to get away from it.
If you are not in the “know” on this EXTREMELY addictive game, on PVP servers, all players are flagged for player-vs-player combat when in a contested area, or in an area that is hostile to your faction (alliance or horde). When a person gets flagged for the first time in a contested area at level 20 or so, a level 70 player from the opposing faction can come and “gank” you, effectively ruining your quests, making you run back to your corpse to continue grinding for experience points…unless thay camp your corpse, at which time you can resurrect and run, or just wait out that player and hope they get bored waiting for you to rez.
On the other hand are Normal “care-bear” servers in which a player does not get flagged in contested areas. This prevents ganking, and allows one to quest at their own pace without the fear of wasted time from corpse camping. However, they DO get flagged in the opposing faction’s cities though, but this rarely happens unless folks get together to raid an opposing faction city.

Anyway, I transferred to a normal server to enjoy questing, but since I transferred, the questing has gotten too repetitive. I like to quest with my friends, but lately we are all on a low point in our WoW playing, so the boredom ensues…