World of Warcraft has lived up to its name and turned the world of PC gaming into a world of WoW. The most successful MMORPG (massively multiplayer role-playing game) to date, boasting over 11 million subscribers (that’s more then the entire population of Switzerland!) and its showing no signs of slowing down as it nears its five year anniversary.
I haven’t been playing World of Warcraft much of late.
Two weeks ago a brand new patch was released. It boasted a huge amount of new content and it completely broke the game. Finally, two weeks after its release, I am starting to find my WoW legs again.
The new features were many, like a new high end raiding dungeon (that is way too hard) and a new tournament system that tests feats of skill (like jousting). But the one that got me was the option to have two sets of talents.
“Players level 40 and higher will now be able to visit their trainer to pay a one-time fee and access the dual talent specialization feature.” 3.1.0 patch notes.
It’s not clear what I was thinking as I plunked down a thousand gold to purchase this new feature. I can only attribute it to being blinded by the Shiny New factor. Because if I had for just one second stopped and really thought about what I was getting into, I am sure that I could have saved myself lots of wasted gold and two weeks of agony.
I have been called out! Challenged!! My World of Warcraft mettle questioned!
The task? Get my level 44 Warlock to reach level 80, by December.
The reward? $20, plus all mounts in between paid for.
I have been talking about leveling my warlock forever. Currently I play a hunter and though I love the class I find that there is an overabundance of hunters. Plus their utility in groups is rather limited. So I dream of having a warlock to take on raids and be useful.
December shouldn’t be too hard to manage. My goal (totally unlikely) is to get 50 this weekend, and possibly 60 by the next. Getting from 70-80 is going to be the slow part. At least this will give my hunter a chance to get all the dungeon achievements for old world, as I will just have my hunter run all the dungeons for my little warlock. Powerlevel for the win!
<3 Token Female Gamer
What is Hunter Wonder Day you ask, it’s the day that hunters turn into damage super heroes and get lots of fat loots. (Maybe I can convince Blizzard to add it to the official World of Warcraft Holidays.)
My little orc hunter definitely celebrate it just recently. Check out her obscene crit. (It is completely real, no photoshop magic here!)
Usually she runs more in the 8k crit group, but that day she did have some help (besides me!). It was in the midst of completing the quest The Battle For Crusaders’ Pinnacle. The Crusaders, ever determined to win, buffed her with bonus damage. That coupled with criting Kill Shot allowed for the 20k crit range.
But the Hunter Wonder Day was not over because after completing that quest she ran a heroic dungeon and got a fancy new bow! Drake-Mounted Crossbow !!
Every day should be Hunter Wonder Day. =D
<3 TFG
As a Hunter most of my attention is focused on a few things, DPS (the higher the better), Pet management (as in try not to have it run off, agro everything in range, and thus kill my entire party/raid), and agro management. Sometimes I even get to crowd control and back in the day I used to pull (ah the days of Feign Death pulling, recapturing a fine EQ moment).
I pass off agro as much as I can with skills and feign death and I do a pretty decent job of staying out of harm’s way, but there are still times where I manage just a bit too much damage and get the attention of the big bad monster anyway. It’s made worse by my need for pick up groups, meaning the skill and equipment of the tank is not something I can count on.
And then the Death Knight joined the happy little World of Warcraft family. The more I play alongside them, the more I love them. A skilled Death Knight can keep agro like no other class.
It’s fabulously fun, but it’s also made me lazy. I hardly pay attention to my agro anymore. In times of panic, which inevitably happen (not always my fault!), I have lost track of my feign death button (due to laziness) and actually died. DIED!
This is of course entirely due to the death knight being so awesomely awesome. Pretty soon I will just auto follow the Death Knight tank around and sit back with a hot cup of cocoa. And they said hunters were easy to play before. Pah!
<3 Token Female Gamer
I finally named my new World of Warcraft Pet Dino! Its a little homage to my childhood. =)
When I first saw this particular new pet the fist thing that popped into my head was Barney! I was determined to get myself one and call it Barney, but the developers foiled my fantasic plan by not providing a good purple skinned model.
Thats okay, I like Grimlock better anyway. If you still aren’t sure where the name comes from, look here.
<3
Token Female Gamer
After clawing, grinding, dragging my character to seventy in preparation for this new World of Warcraft expansion (Wrath of the Lich King) I find out that had I just waited it would have been so much easier.
In this patch they dropped the amount of experience required to get from level sixty to level seventy. ARG!
And and and, get this, they have added talent trees to hunter pets. (In case you don’t know my level seventy character is a hunter.) Not only did they refund all of my character’s talent points, now they expect me to pick talents for my pet as well. I may never spend talent points again. ^_^
<3
TFG
Last night, okay really early this morning, I finally made level 70 with my Orc Hunter. This is the very first character I made on the very first day the live servers came up for World of Warcraft. She has 25 days 10 hours played.
Let the celebration commence.
