Loremaster, and angry fist waving at Sporegar

So, I've decided to slowly make my way through all of the quests that need doing in order to get the Loremaster achievement. It's going to be quite the grind, as I have about 300-400 quests in the old world that will need doing, and a good chunk of quests in Outlands as well. Thankfully, I've been fairly systematic in getting quest achievements out of the way in Northrend, so there shouldn't be too many issues there. Considering it is highly likely that the Loremaster achievement will either be done away with or changed in a big way when Cataclysm gets here, it just makes sense to try and get it out of the way now. I'm hoping to have completed everything in about a month, but it'll be mostly a case of scrounging up those last few quests in the old world from NPCs in strange places that will make or break the whole thing.

One interesting thing that I've noticed in Zangarmarsh while trying to pound out the last couple of quests that I need there in order to get the achievement for that zone is that a huge chunk of Sporegar's quests don't count toward it. I did the rep grind so that I could do the quests in their village, but when I turn them in (including the ones that send me to Coilfang, etc.) they aren't counting. It's kinda frustrating, but at least I have a few more quests I can do for the Cenarion Expedition that should help count towards it so it isn't the end of the world. Moreover, the rep rewards granted for these quests appears to have gone up, so that should get me to exalted a little quicker so I can get that pet they have. =)

Yeah, Yeah...

I know, I said I was having a good time on Alleria, but I wound up moving my priest to Spinebreaker, and things have been going pretty darn well so far. The Horde population there is huge compared to my previous server, so it is quite easy to PUG stuff. I've already plowed through ToC 25, and got far further in ICC 10 than I was ever able to on Alleria. City chat is awash with PUGs, and I'm really liking it for checking out content on an adhoc basis.

Another project that I have on the go there now is putting together a guild (Relaxomatic). I'm going for something a lot more social than anything else, but we will be looking at raid content and PvP when we have enough people. It's definitely something I'm enjoying, hunting down like-minded players to join the guild. Hopefully, we'll go on to amazing things in the coming weeks, and months.

Anywho, just a quick follow-up to my last post. =)

Poking Around Other Realms (Is the grass always greener?)

Usually I spend my time Horde side on Alleria, but the last little bit I've been poking my head in on a couple of other servers where some friends are playing. First, I should point out that the Horde has a very tiny population on Alleria, so things are quite quiet over there. You can actually have a conversation in trade chat on that server if you so choose. On these two servers I've visited of late (Spinebreaker and Stormreaver) the populations are much larger (I'm referring to Horde on Spine, and Alliance on Storm). It was a pretty big surprise. I've been on busy servers before, like Area 52, but the sheer amount of chatter I saw in the main cities was astounding.

Granted, the vast majority of it was people looking to start pugs, or trying to track down a crafter to make something for them. At first, I thought I might like the idea of bringing one of my 80s over to such a server if only because it looks like there's a lot going on there. Then I started to wonder whether I'd be happy on a busy server in the long run. I do like the quiet on Alleria. There may not be a million and one pug raids starting every ten minutes, but people there are largely really nice and get along well. It's not like a high population server were asshats can sort of blend into the crowd a little bit easier. If you're a moron on the Horde on Alleria, people will remember, and good luck getting any groups for stuff then.

Some people may really be into the big crowds, but I think I'll continue to enjoy the backwater charms of Alleria. I may not be able to pug as much, but at least I'll retain my sanity thanks to the quiet here.

Blowing the Dust Off

Well, I'm back after a lengthy hiatus. I've been up to quite a bit, futzing around in the 5-man Icecrown Dungeons, as well as taking a stab at some of the 10-man content. I'm still not a big fan of raiding (too time consuming), so I haven't even gotten past Deathwhipser yet. What I have been having quite a lot of fun with of late is battlegrounds.

I've always liked the competitive, yet relaxed nature of these PvP battles. I can wander around doing my dailies, or knocking out classic quests while waiting in the key, then eventually it's off to the battleground for a bit of fun. In theory I could do this with the dungeon finder as well, but I'm a healer, which means almost instant invites to these groups, so I wouldn't get much done with my questing before going off to a dungeon. Moreover, there isn't much left for me to get in terms of gear drops from the new 5-man dungeons, nor the triumph badge gear. I suppose there are the achievements, but I'm in no rush to go do those.

This past week, Strand of the Ancients has been the holiday battleground, so I've been spending most of my time there. Some people complain about how reliant the zone is for using vehicles to get things done, but I like that element of it. It adds an additional element to the battle, and makes your team work to protect them, not just having 75% of the players randomly fighting the opposing faction somewhere, which can often happen in a battleground. The big thing is just getting people to communicate in order to win, and it's surprising how rarely this happens. A lot of times no one in my groups would make a decision on which gates to storm (resulting in everyone randomly going their own way, and losing), or which graveyards to cap when on offense, and while defending the Strand, plenty of people would neglect to call out when the enemy was. I've pretty much taken it on myself to give out some basic assignments when on the ship heading into the battle, setting a gate order so everyone has a basic idea of what to do, and will hopefully work together toward that.

About the only real gripe I have with battlegrounds at the moment, though, is that the queue times are kind of long, with waits of 10-15 minutes being common, and that quite a few times I'd be dropped in a battleground when it's almost over, so I'm stuck in the queue for a lengthy period of time and only get a few hundred honor points from the battle when I eventually join. Apparently some of the changes coming in the next patch may address this, and more importantly it will be doing away with marks of honor. Word on the street is that after the next patch we'll be able to trade these in for honor points, and rumor has it we could be looking at 2000 points per mark. I have so many of those that I've collected over the years, and never spent. If this rumor proves to be true, I could have many hundreds of thousands of honor points to play with come next patch, and can get a respectable PvP gear set. I could certainly use it, as I'm playing in mostly PvP gear at the moment with the exception of a pair of i245 boots that I recently acquired.

So yeah, I'm pretty much in full-on dailies, and classic content mode right now, with liberal splashes of battlegrounds thrown in. Maybe once I get a little more PvP gear I'll even look into doing some arenas. As it stands, I like this mix of PvE and PvP that I've been doing as of late.

The Gear Score Debate

Over the last few months we've been seeing more and more people looking to gear score as a way of screening potential additions to a PUG. The assumption is that the higher a person's gear score is, the more qualified they are to join the group. The problem comes in that not everyone thinks this is a good idea, and I happen to fall into that group.

There is a lot of gear inflation going on in WoW these days, and it is masking players' competency. I have been in a number of PUGs that have had members with very good gear scores performing badly (dying in the fire in VoA or ToC 10), having unusually low dps for their gear (makes me wonder if these toons were eBay'ed or the person was just lazy and playing with auto attack only). Gear score is not necessarily directly proportional to a player's skill.

On occasion it might be useful to catch someone who is way undergeared for a raid. Maybe the person is very casual, or inexperiened and does't realize a freshly minted 80 probably isn't going to get far in the upper echalons of ToC 10 / 25, or Ulduar. In that case, I just assume politely tell them that they'll need to gear up for such instances, and then find a new person for their slot. However, asking for gear scores and unrealistically high stats from people to run the heroic daily is just annoying, and more likely to get someone on my ignore list.

It's funny, Blizzard brought up the mantra " Bring the player, not the class" a while back, but now the playerbase's mentality seems to be bring the gear score, and not the player. I really do hope that Blizzard continues to trivialize gear as we move forward, putting the emphasis on tactics, not stats. It'll put more emphasis on player skill, not the gear they are wearing.

The Hunt for the Sinister Squashling

Of all the things that I need to do for the Hallow's End achievement, the one I'm apprehensive about is finding the Sinister Squashling. There are a few ways to get it, with the most popular being a rare drop from the Headless Horseman, completing the daily quest where you bash a pumpkin that appears after putting out the fires from the horseman in a lowbie town and defeating his low-level shade, or possibly getting it as a trick or treat goody from an innkeeper.

Last year I was able to get the helm that is also required for the achievement, but no such luck on the squashling. I wouldn't mind getting the seasonal achievement out of the way this year, but I guess it's one of those things we'll have to wait and see on...

Hallow's End

Another year, another two weeks of putting out fires in starting zones, and hucking pumpkins at people's heads. It's Hallow's End in Azeroth! Oh, and apparently there's this Headless Horseman guy hanging out in the Scarlet Monestary that has a really cool mount, but I say poppycock to such a rediculous rumor. ;)

Anyway, I'm not sure how much I'll get involved with the events this year. I've been running around gathering candy from buckets, and I'll probably do some of the other achievements, like G.N.E.R.D. Rage, but I doubt I'll go overboard this year. About the only thing that I really, really want is a Sinister Squashling, but that has more to do with my mild obsession with collecting pets than anything else.

I've been noticing that interest in hunting the Headless Horseman has dropped off fast on my server (at least on the Horde side). There was a flurry of requests for groups on Sunday, but yesterday it died off pretty quick, even in the evening when people are back home from work / school. Maybe it'll pick up later, or perhaps they're getting tired of seeing nothing but rings drop from the guy after they defeat him.

There's also a somewhat funny pic I took of a taunka near a candy bucket that I took while wandering around Northrend. It's on my other computer, so I'll slap that up later when I have some time. It's good for a chuckle. :)