The casual war rages on

05/07/2006

More Kraul adventures, I want to kill gnomes!...


It seems I’m stuck in razorfen kraul for a little while. Just hit level 32 while instancing in there and I finally got to finish all the quests in there! Yay!!! So now it’s pure loot runs until I either get to 34 to start Scarlet Monastery or I manage to get into a Gnomer run. I can understand that on horde side that place doesn’t get run often. It’s a pain to get to and most people hate the place. Since RFK is so close it’s easier to do RFK than bother with Gnomer. Still I’d like it if I could at least get a run going to finish the quests and get blue quest rewards. Not to mention a chance to get Acidic walkers. Still, I’m guessing I’ll get to 34 before getting in gnomer.

On another note I want to finish my quests in Hillsbrad foothills so I can start working on the 30-40 zones. So far I haven’t done a single quest in Thousand needles, Desolace or Arathi Higlands. Questing solo with a priest takes way more time when your not specced shadow but by doing the quest later it makes it easier both in terms of time and effort. That and I never run out of quests, something that was problem with my rogue.

Rant number 1! Being prepared!

It’s been said 10 000 times already! Running an instance is long, you got to prepare pulls, buff, talk strategy sometimes, lots of mobs to kill etc… etc.. Add the deaths, learning or instances for some, loot talk and it can add a lot of time. I love running instances but I love it even more when the run goes smooth and fast. If it goes fast I can do another one or go do quests and whatnot.

All of the above I can deal with and even enjoy. I don’t mind wiping much unless someone really did something dumb. I enjoy helping someone when it’s their first time in a particular instance. But what really annoys me is when people come not prepared, in real life and in game. How often have you entered an instance only to find out the hunter ran out of arrows, the priest of water, the rogue of crippling poisons. In some cases its funny, in other it can literally means canceling the run. Worse yet, those that start an instance with 30 minutes ahead of them, the classic “have to leave, work!/school!”.

I understand people can forget stuff and that real-life has a way of surprising us. That I have no problem with. It happened to me and it will happen again. When someone told us he had to leave in the middle of Stratholme as his wife needed to go to the hospital because she was going to give birth to his son we said “Grats!!”. When someone disconnects because his computer crashed its alright. In game it’s easy to see when someone has forgotten something and when he doesn’t care. I had one hunter ran out of arrows and he immediately apologized, I had one who said 200 was enough. The first one I don’t mind the second one pisses me off because he doesn’t care.

So here’s a few tips for all of you out there who are starting out at this instancing game. Not only will you be prepared and other players will see you as someone serious and that knows how to play the game. I never met a good player who kept forgetting his stuff but I’ve met a ton of bad ones who did not care about being prepared. For all those things try to do it before accepting the invite into the group. Some groups will have been looking for someone for a long time and will want to head right in. If you need some time before tell the one who invited you. Often I’ve said “I’ll come just give me 5 mins to pick up water and repair”. That way people are aware that they will have to wait a little bit.

1-Make sure you have enough time ahead of yourself. Try to aim for 3 hours, 4 if it’s a long instance. The more you have the better.
2-Check to make sure you have enough arrows/water/regents/poison/food and whatever you will need during the run.
3-If you plan on doing quests pick them and their items before heading in.
4-Repairs! Repairs and Repairs!!! Is that clear enough. Nothing is more frustrating than having people drop out because they forgot to repair. I’ve seen people get kicked out of guilds for this.
5-Make sure that your dog has taken it’s walk, that you have smoked if you need to, that you have pepsi/coke, that you have picked up your room, that you don’t have to work in an hour etc… etc… Even if real-life can surprise us you can avoid a lot of distractions with a little forethought.


These are all small things that can make the run enjoyable for everyone. Just as you expect these things out of the rest of your group they are expecting this out of you.

Of casual and hardcore, the tier .5 discussion.

I know the casual vs hardcore is an old debate. It’s a dead horse many times over but one that needs to be beaten on I think. There’s still a lot to be said about the whole thing. I’m talking about it now because a thread in the Raid and dungeons WoW forums got my attention, it’s now locked or removed. In short the original poster was saying that the .5 armor wasn’t worth the effort to get it and that it was too hard to get. I’ve done that quest line up to picking up the ogre beards and done the infamous 45 minutes Strath. The “too hard” to get part I won’t comment but the “worth it” is interesting I think. Before going further I talked with quite a few “raiders” to get the data I’ll be using in this rant.

First of all what is the .5 tier set? Basically it’s an upgrade of the Tier 0 set(or dungeon set) that was designed to provide players who can’t raid(read “casuals”) but willing to put the effort an opportunity to get raid-equivalent gear if they put in the same effort and time and faced similar challenges. Basically it was supposed to be a way for those player to get good gear without the need for 40 people.

As far as the .5 set goes it’s very good gear that’s a bit lower than Tier 1(MC gear). It’s not as good but it’s probably the best you can get if your not a raider or avid PvP player. I’ll be comparing the effort needed to get a full set or MC gear and one .5 set.

Time(same):
-Full MC set(8/8): 3 months and a half.
-Full .5 set(8/8): 4 months

This data is based on the fasted person I saw get a full .5 tier set. It’s important to know that he was playing on a very active schedule akin to the one found in raiding guilds. The MC set time is an average since that speed depends on how much the rest of your guild is geared. Since those times are so close by I’m saying they are the same and that the difference may come down to luck.

Challenge(same)

The level of the challenges are exactly the same. If you take into account the difficulty of the 45 minutes run, the special bosses and so on it’s equivalent to MC. I say this supposing the person trying for the .5 set is not doing the quest with people in tier 2 armor as getting that requires raiding and that was not the goal of .5 . You are going to die as much and spend the same time trying new stuff in the .5 quests as in MC.

Costs:

.5 set: 500 golds(average)
MC set(over the course of 3 months and a half) : 600g

Strictly speaking MC will cost you more. One the other hand MC will bring you much more money than the .5 quests, a lot much more. I’d be curious to know the real costs if we take into account how much gold the runs generates.

Getting groups for the runs/quests(same)

-.5 set: easy before 45 mins strath, medium after. Very hard for some particular encounters.
-MC run : Hard, becomes easy when the guild start raiding seriously.

I say these two balances out in the end. While getting a guild to raid is very hard, once the train starts moving it’s relatively easy to get the MC runs going. On the opposite most of the run needed to get the materials for .5 are not too hard but the farther you progress in the quest line the harder it becomes. When at the 45 mins run it becomes increasingly harder to PUG the run you need. The part where you need to kill specific Barons in Silithus requires a guild effort unless one puts a really great deal of time in getting prepared.


Blizzard succeeded in a way. They’ve made two completely different ways for different kind of players to get an armor set. They need the same effort/time/resources and one is not easier than the other. So why is .5 inferior then? What’s the real reason?

I think I have an idea why. If they made .5 truly equivalent to raid armor then the raiders would do these quests too and they would stop raiding. More often than not raiders are interested in loot more than the actual raiding experience and Blizzard knows this. I have an idea for Blizzard, make getting raid gear faster. Then people would have a real choice. For the same amount of challenge do raid to get stuff faster or do I take the long road because I can’t raid. Then we could also see some stuff in the like of the .5 armor but for higher gear to match BWL and even Naxx. It could take 3 months to get the stuff out of Naxx and 6 if you quested for equivalent gear. It’s a fine balancing act but one I’ve seen Blizzard pull out before and I believe they can do it again.

That was long. See you next time everyone!

Strange Beginnings

Strange beginnings


Welcome,

Yes this is probably the WoW blog number X starting up about some guy and his adventures in WoW. Why make another one? Well, for the most part I kind of like to talk about what goes on around me, either with my friends or trough forums and whatnot. Also, I want this blog to be not only a story about me and my character in WoW but also a column for me to talk about the game, its strategies, tactics, story and everything in between. And finally, I may have a bit of too much free time on my hands so why not make something instead of looking at the paint dry.


Meet Malphera!

Say hello to my toon Malphera! She’s a young undead priestess currently level 31 with the hope of making it into the big leagues on the Uldaman server. What big leagues?? I’m talking about end-game raiding, talking about going to say hello to my friend Kel’thuzad and killing him. As a player I’m nuts about instances. For some strange reason I find it fun to spend a few hours in a dungeon trying to kill mobs too hard for a single player. I seem to have the rare power not to be easily burned out or annoyed by those funny dumb players who seems to crop up so every often. But the thing is that I never really truly managed to go raiding due a number of events I’ll entertain you with later on. So with Malphera this time I fully intend to make it and be successful at raiding!

Back to Malphera, when I rolled on this server I decided to make a horde character because all my previous high level characters where Alliance plus I love everything that is related to the undead so the choice was easy. Why priest? One reason is that I only played DPS classes so far(mage and rogue) and I wanted something different but the big reason is that priest get to do more instances, get easier invites and manage to get into guilds easier. This is even more true on horde side. Kinda selfish I know but at the same time I’ve been told that to enjoy WoW the most you’ve got to be honest with what you want out of this game and do what is necessary to obtain it. For some people it’s RP so they roll on a RP server, others want PvP so they spend their time in battlegrounds, for me it’s raiding and instancing so I’ll play a class that’s needed for it.


45 minutes Kraul!

Razorfen Kraul is a rather strange place for me. Having played up to 60 on alliance side for a long time I know nearly every 5 man instance by heart. But for some reason I had never made serious forays in RFK, fartest I had gone was for the warrior quest a long time ago and a disenchant run with my rogue. So for me RFK was like a new instance. I say was because since I hit 26 I’ve done the place 6 times and there will probably be a 7th and 8th time. I have to say that it’s a rather funny instance. Lootwise it isn’t the greatest place(especially for a caster) but it’s an interesting instance, not too long and it looks nice even if it’s not a very challenging instance. I can’t say that there’s really any hard parts in there. Most of the groups I’ve teamed with knew what they where doing and with the exception of a total greedy whining kid yesterday it’s been smooth sailing. Most groups I’ve been with seemed in a hurry to finish the instance so it’s great practice for healing. I started calling these 45 minutes kraul runs, wich seems a trend on this server. I guess most hordes are in a hurry but as long as we survive it’s all good with me.


The rant! What I’m looking for in a guild.

I can now hear some of you guys ask who I am, why I rerolled on a new server when it’s obvious I already have high level characters who are much closer to raiding that this character. I’ll tell you why... DRAMA!

When I started playing about a year ago I approached this game with the best of intentions. Everything seemed great and I genuinely tough that if I played nice people would be nice to me and that getting 40 people together to raid wasn’t that hard to achieve, it just took longer for the nice guilds. How wrong I was, getting 40 people together is no mean feat and it takes coordination and rules because no matter how friendly you want to be when there’s 40 people involved and loot you can be sure at least one of them is going to cause some sort of trouble. I’ve heard rumors of successful end-game friendly guilds but for me those are a myth and I suspect these “friendly” guilds have the same rules as the “mean” ones.

This is what I look for in a guild now:
-organisation : Does the guild has a webpage and forum? Does the rules, recruitment process, officers and leaders are clearly defined? Do they use vent or teamspeak(required for successful raiding)

-goals : does the guild have a clear goal? A guild that say “ We’re a friendly group of friends and we plan on doing end-game when we get there” is not good enough for me. I’m looking for something more akin to “We are a end-game guild that raids from x and here’s how we will be doing it”. The first guild might be great people but to me its sounds more like : “ We want a guild for the sake of having one and not teaming with jerks. Stuff will happen when it does… nothing special planned” . The second guild has direction and will attract more members and will have more chance of doing raids than the first one. Again if raiding not on your agenda your probably better in the first guild.

-No drama policy: Every guild states it has one but few of them enforce it. I left two servers because I got sick with drama. I stopped playing 3 months and stopped playing with RL friends who did not want to start anew on another server. So I’m mighty sick of drama. So whatever guild I will end-up joining will need to have a zero-tolerance for it. In that regard I say dictatorship FTW!

But I hear some say: “why don’t you take the time to talk things over, step back, etc… etc…”. I tried all those things on my last server and believe me I was more than patient about it. Well, talking and stepping back does not resolve problems. Most of the time it only pushes the problem away to fester and then when it comes back its worse. I’m not saying never say if something bothering you but here’s how you do it. You state the problem calmly once and only once to the responsible person(officer, guild leader, etc…). If its with another guild member do it in private. Once you get your answer its final. Its not debatable or anything. That leaves you with a simple choice, either accept the answer or suck it up. If you can’t, leave the guild. Not only it’s easier on the officers who already have a painful job to do, it keeps drama down and its easier on you. Don't argue, debate or complain to other members, in the end you can’t change a guild and you can’t force people to agree with you. And last bit of advice, don’t get caught in other members drama.

-Commitment : is the guild committed to its goals and willing to take steps to realize them . A good example of this is requiring members to drop what they are doing if they are needed for a raid. It may seems cold to other people on the server but believe me that there’s nothing more frustrating than seeing 50 levels 60 online during a scheduled raid time and not be able to raid because they prefer to do something else. Along the same lines are rules concerning alts and PvP. In short its one thing to say you want to raid end-game but its another to do what is required to make it.

So what does all of this means for Malphera? Well first it means that I won’t join any other kind of guild than a raiding one. It means also that it will have to be properly set-up with a website and so forth. Besides everything I said earlier I also added a few rules for myself as I level up. I decided I would not join any guild that did not have the follwing:

1- enough members to run a raid. For me that’s about 60 active players
2- not until Malphera is level 50 or lower if invited by a guild that is already doing end-game or very close to it(so far I know only about a guild called Jade on uldaman that is at this point).
3-most of its member are in the 40+ range and showing advancement. I don't want to wait a year to get raiding and most "raiding guilds" I've been in who had a lot of low players never made it to raids.

I know I sound like I have a lot of conditions and its true but at the same time once I join a guild usually I go all out. I help a ton and I try to be as available as I can to help the guild. For me it boils down to this, if the guild you join is able to provide what you are looking for in the game then it’s your job to help make that happens. In this case once I find a guild serious about end-game and willing to go the distance I’ll do whatever is necessary to help out that guild and its members so we can progress.