who said raiding was boring?

oh right, that was me wasnt it.

Well maybe i was a tad hastey in my comments on stale content.

Blue posts today confirm that after 3.1 goes live we wont be able to get the rewards from the “Glory of the Raider” and “Heroic: Glory of the Raider” achievements. This means that all and sundry will be trying to complete the meta achievements as soon as possible.... Its a shame to see them go, but like the amani war bear the rewards were indended to be obtained for completing something particularly difficult at that level.... After that they becoming less meaningful...

rest in peace plagued and black proto drakes!!!

Variety is the spice of life

In todays post I wanted to talk a little bit about how you prioritise your play time. Like many people out there I certainly don’t have time, and nor would I want to play all day every day, so the time I do spend in wow is at times limited. To combat this I set myself objectives and prioritise what I want to achieve, although if im honest these seem to change daily.

The last couple of weeks I have been on a bit of an achievement drive, which has taken me back to Azeroth and grinding some reputations. I have found this really enjoyable, even if at times it doesn’t feel like ive done much for an evenings work. The problem with focussing on doing achievements on Cav is that it leaves my other toons somewhat neglected.

This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. For now Tay (warrior) and my death knight are solely reserved for playing with my girlfriend, we go our own little adventures and work through the content together. However it has left Masa (hunter) and my various other lowbie alts to mull around SW aimlessly.

Im torn between wanting to complete everything (and I mean literally everything) on Cav, or levelling all my other characters!! There are a lot of other classes ive always wanted to try and never had the chance, maybe that’s where my time would be better spent.

For now I will continue to focus in on cav! But at some point I really wanna tank some stuff… and maybe even take my hunter for some [yawn!] dps!!

How do you prioritise your game time, do you split it over your toons, focus on your main, or do you just play sporadically without defined objectives?

when raiding becomes stale.....

The fundamental problem with current end game content is the lack of end game content! and moreover, original raiding content.

From a guild point of view, i think its fair to say we are a middle of the road sort of guild. We arent particularly bad in any areas, but nor are we the best guild on the server. Although we only officially raid 3 nights a week for 25man content, we also do the 10 man equivalent on days off, and to be fair, we clear the current content in around 2 days give or take an hour or so to finish up. I guess my point is, we arent "hardcore", but we take it seriously none the less.

Given this, and although it should be something to be proud of, im quite disapointed to be able to say that i have, excluding Sath 3D cleared all current end game content. This from a guild that never made it to BT!!

Whilst the current content holds its own challenges, its not even close to the difficulty of vanilla or TBC content for difficulty, in fact its childs play in comparison.

Achievements have added replay value, even after the whole guild is kitted out, but really blizz... rescaling a vanilla instance and 3 single boss encounters..... really not good enough for launch end game content.

The next patch is scheduled to include all new content in the form of Ulduar, and to be frank, it cant come a moment to soon!

Lady Luck was on my side

Okay, so i just wanted to write a quick gloat post regarding my amazing luck tonight.

I have been writing a list of things i want to achieve in wow over the coming months. One of which was to finally get my argent dawn rep up to exalted. In doing so, i saw no harm in also grinding for barons mount. I never really expected it to drop, i dont have a huge deal of luck usually when it comes to things like that.

So i did 3 quick runs tonight before getting an invite to a heroic CoS. At this point we were still a man down so i went back into strat:undead for another run, the group was assembled and ready to go just as i got to Ramstein. I quickly got past him to the baron as the summon came through... downed him quickly, checked my loot box!!! and no fricking way.....


Most of the guild were obviously happy, although there are a few that i know have been trying for the mount for sometime now, and i did feel a very small amount of sorrow for them....

so... 6 runs into my adventure i have obtained the not so holy grail! i am a very happy healer right now

Not Just another world event

As you are probably all aware this week "love is in the air", and normally i would choose to rant on how its another feature designed to encourage us to run around like mand men for a week trying to get all the achievements, however today i learnt the real magic of love week.

As of writing this i still dont have all the achievements, but i seem to be collecting bags full of crap i have no use for. It also strikes me that the trade channel is full of people selling rockets, flowers & love fools! and theres money to be made. The economist in me says "sell them 1g below your nearest competitor.... make a mint", but i choose to ignore this voice and instead i keep an eye out for people requesting items....

• Along come a human warlock, and she requires some rockets...
• I drop her a quick whisperer saying that if shes makes her way to Ironforge i have 5 rockets she can have for free.
• 5 minutes later she appears, and offers me a variety of holiday items, none of which i need.
• I reassure her i dont want anything in return and theyre more use to her.
• She trades, says goodbye and leaves.
• I continue to fish for 5 mins and i get a whisper.
• Said warlock has now completed all the holiday achievements and is a "love fool"
• She extends her gratitude again and trades me a candy....

Get this, and this is what makes wow worth it every now and again!

the candy reads....... "You're the Best!!"

Achieve Greatness

Usually at this point post expansion I would have taken two characters through to the level cap, however as it stands I only have one! This is down to two major factors:

Firstly Time! I have committed to raiding regularly which consists of 3 nights a week, 4 hours a night! Then, believe it or not, I like to spend some time with my girlfriend. This essentially leaves me with an hour here and there to just “play” warcraft.

This in itself would not be a problem, however it leads my nicely on to my second point and problem, a fairly new thing to warcraft, simply known as, ACHIEVEMENTS!!!

I want to start by saying im by no means an achievement whore (as they are so affectionately known). Im not interested in spending hours at a time doing the same dungeon for 1 fricking achievement, but there are some that I am enjoying working on.

For example, at the moment I am working towards by chef and salty titles, which involves completing a number of cooking and fishing related objectives, two professions that I find both relaxing and enjoyable.

After which I am planning to work through some of the old world reputations and maybe even the 50 mount achievement. Basically any achievements I get along the way are a nice bonus!

Last night however I did find something quite interesting on a site dedicated to all such achievements. Via this site I discovered that in terms of achievement points I actually rank at 169 on my server!! The server is on high population, so admittedly I found this surprising, especially when you consider I didnt complete any of the outland dungeons at all.

I guess what im getting at, is that whilst achievements have certainly added something extra to the game, it strikes me that many of these so called achievements are less of an achievement and more of an award for perseverance. “congratulations on spending 4months grinding on the same mobs for reputation!!! Heres 10points!!!!”

How do you rate achievements, and do you got out of your way to obtain them?