Token Female Gamer

The latest patch for World of Warcraft (patch 3.3) was recently released, featuring a few new dungeons and of course lots more gear to get.

Being the good little WoW hamster that I am, I hopped onto the gear and reputation grinding mill as soon as I possibly could. And most other times I find myself happily chasing that tantalizing carrot dangling ever so close to my nose, yet with this latest patch it seems like I am running through mud.

Adding in the badge system for purchasing gear and items was a brilliant move that opened up gear to a much larger group of people. With the 3.3 patch, new gear was added and along with that they added new badges to purchase the higher level gear. Only they made the new Frost badges almost impossible to get, unless of course you are raiding.

Even for those raiders out there, there is only one new raiding dungeon that was added. The only place that drops frost badges! To top it all off, they didn’t even finish the dungeon! Its still missing quite a few bosses.

/sigh

So I lumber through the mud, though its wearing on my patience. But I do understand why the decided to take this route. This is the last new content before the next big expansion and frankly its not much. How this is going to last for the next 8 months to a year until Cataclysm, I dont know.

We are spending these holidays with the stomach flu at home. I hope you all have a much less puke filled time off.

<3 Token Female Gamer

…Finding them.

Once resigned to the fact that PUGs are necessary and need to be suffered, finding them becomes the challenge.

Sadly in World of Warcraft the Looking for Group function is horrible. It is incredibly limited and hardly anyone seems to use it.

On my server the big alternative is the trade channel. This channel is only available while inside a major city. Since it is literally the only channel that gets used with any frequency everyone joins it, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Imagine every PUG experience rolled into one very overused channel. It’s awful and I avoid it as much as possible.

Overall finding PUGs is not that easy, especially if you are a damage (DPS) class, as they tend to be a dime a dozen. Either you sit in town reading through agonizing trade chat, or you join the severely limited in game Looking for Group feature.

(more…)

One of the suggestions that I got from my WoW raiding 101 write up was that I hadn’t mentioned anything about PUGs and how those should affect peoples class role choices.

PUG – Acronym for the phrase ‘pick up group’ – meaning to play as a team with random people.

Pick up groups are something most aspiring raiders will have to deal with, especially in World of Warcraft as it is today. Unless of course gifted with a very dedicated set of friends to play with, or part of a large guild that has enough daily active members to provide frequent group and raid buddies.

(more…)

I hope everyone had as wonderful a halloween as I did! Managed to finish my All Hallows Eve achievemnt and still go out trick or treating IRL! Candy + sedentary computer game addiction = way too many extra pounds. Time to bust out the Wii Fit! =D

Wanted to leave you all with this excellent image from Aion today. Clearly nakedness sells, but nakedness topped with a pumpkin head, zomg! Merchants wet dream. From all of the vendors that spam Aion mercilessly, Happy Halloween! Every holiday is a shopping holiday. =)

<3 TFG

Final thoughts

Here we are, at the end of this (much larger then I expected) endeavor. I hope that it has conveyed enough information to help ease the transition into raiding (at least a little bit!)

(more…)

External Additions

This is a huge topic. The meta-game for WoW is already incredibly complicated, but the meta-game for the WoW-software dwarfs it by leaps and bounds. From new interfaces to smaller addons; a vast array of options are available. Then of course we can’t forget Ventrilo and all the hardware that that spawns.

Oh you could play without all these fancy gadgets and gizmos but they really help in so many situations by increasing response time, easier access to all raid members, alerts, maps, shortcuts, and so many more wonderful ease inspiring additions that playing without almost seems archaic. Granted on a bit patch day you will be playing without them, until they are patched anyway.

(more…)

Strategy

This really comes in two parts, strategy on how to play your character and strategy on how to be successful in an encounter. Both of these can be theorized ad nauseum, but nothing can make up for experience. So brush up online and then jump in.

(more…)

The Character

The single most successful way to increase character effectiveness is to focus on enhancing the character itself. This means choosing a purpose and then getting the various character aspects – talents, skills, equipment, buffs – synched so they properly support said choice. Essentially you figure out what you want your character to be able to do and then you set them up with the best options available.

(more…)

Taking the step from being a casual player, who runs a few heroic dungeons every now and then, into a player that is raiding effectively and with purpose (my definition of hardcore) is a massive undertaking. It requires far more focused knowledge and experience then just playing casually. Suddenly many aspects of your character, aspects that were easily ignorable before, become incredibly pertinent.

(more…)