jumping games

Last night I was questing in Ighaluk Crag when I saw the Shoulder of the Chamberlain waaaaay up on the tip of a rock. I jumped around the base of that rock pile for several minutes, growing increasingly frustrated with my inability to understand the variables that control Saurok-form jumping. Why did sometimes I jump far and sometimes short? Why could I not get onto that one rock no matter what distance I jumped from, even when it seemed that the apex of my jump was high enough that if I jumped from just the right horizontal distance, I ought to be able to make it? Large muscle coordination has never been something I was good at in real life, either. Eventually I got so fed up that I looked in my quest log to see if the Crumbled Chamberlain quest rewards valor points. Upon finding that it doesn’t, only money and a Shan-ze Ritual Stone, I said forget this! and dumped the Head of the Chamberlain and the two other parts I’d already found right there on the beach.

Having run through the rest of the day’s quest sequence, I got to the Swollen Vault and found this little challenge awaiting me:

Despite an impressive and slightly intimidating number of skeletons on and around the pillars, I didn’t find that jumping game to be particularly difficult — well, this time, at least. Maybe it was beginner’s luck…

It reminded me of a cross between this:

and this:

So if the Swollen Vault’s lightning pillars are giving you trouble, you might want to go practice jumping in Blackfathom Deeps and staying out of the fire with Darwin.

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those reputation blahs

BTH and I must have finally reached Exalted with his brother, because when I went over to babysit the kids the other day, my sister-in-law gave us a key to their house.

Kamalia, however, has been lax about doing her daily quests and her daily heroics, and this is what her reputation pane looked like as of Monday night:

As you can see, I’ve been neglecting the “serious” factions in favor of the “fun” factions. Now that the Grand Commendations are available, it’s really time to buckle down and get the August Celestials and the Shado-Pan to Revered. (I think I’ll only purchase Grand Commendations for the “serious” factions, though — I won’t mind doing the “fun” factions at the slower pace with alts.) After I’ve achieved that goal, I plan to choose one faction at a time to work on getting to Exalted. And I do want to get to Exalted with all the vanilla!Pandaria factions, eventually, for the story payoffs and for a Pandaren Kite of my very own.

Here I am on a flight path — I’m glad that there’s a way to get one of these awesome kites to use anywhere!

(I jest about having to grind rep with my relatives; BTH and his brother are very close, my sister-in-law and I have liked each other immensely from the first time that we met, and I’m glad to watch my nieces and nephew at any time.)

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the new most annoying daily ever

When the Argent Tournament first debuted, I hated jousting. It took me a long time to get the hang of it. I still don’t do the ICC courtyard jousting quest because it was so annoying.

This one, though, this here Golden Lotus daily, is worse. The most obnoxious thing about it is that the guys continue to kick your body around even after you are dead, delaying your ability to release and run back.

At least your gear doesn’t take durability damage from those deaths, that’s a mercy.

The fireworks one isn’t nearly as difficult.

And no, I don’t want your super special tricks and tips on how to do it right.

I just want your sympathy.

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some quick thoughts upon finishing Tides of War

I finally finished Tides of War last night, and the very first thing I did in the game after finishing the book was move all my Tauren who had been in Orgrimmar back to Thunder Bluff. Although there’s no pre-launch events (other than the Theramore’s Fall scenario) that might allow Orgrimmar in the game to temporarily assume the grim, oppressive atmosphere that it has at the end of the book, I still couldn’t bear to leave my Tauren there knowing what was “really going on” in that city.

WTPlay the Siege of Orgrimmar raid nao! I can’t wait to punch Garrosh in the face!

When is that Vol’jin book supposed to be coming out, again? I’m really looking forward to reading it and seeing if/how it follows up on Vol’jin’s actions (and Baine’s, too) in Tides of War.

After finishing the book, I definitely want to play through the Alliance version of the Theramore’s Fall scenario before I play through the Horde version. Although I’ve been leveling pretty hard (for me) with Kinevra over the past few weeks, she’s only level 82 — and then after she gets to level 85, she has to get to ilevel 353 before she can do the scenario. I did find five pieces of ilevel 377 crafted PvP gear on the AH for reasonable prices, so hopefully it won’t be too much more difficult to meet the gear check.

Thus, I’ll post the rest of my thoughts on the book later in the week, so that I can include my thoughts about the Theramore’s Fall scenario, too. I’ll be on a bit of a blogging blackout until then, because I want to get my own thoughts posted before I go read other people’s reviews.

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Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery cough up the loot

After having been reminded by WoW Insider and WoW Roleplay Gear that Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery will be getting overhauled in the rapidly approaching Patch 5.0, I’ve spent the past several days tediously farming.

I’d already farmed Scholomance three times to get the Sawbones Shirt for Kregga, Ketura, and Kamaliya and to get the Bloodmail Legguards with the latter two.

Reviewing my alts who were capable of either queueing for or soloing Scholo, I determined that Kaprikka, my Draenei Mage, was the one who most wanted Alanna’s Embrace. At level 61, she was able to kill Ras Frostwhisper easily, but the trash packs in the big room directly underneath the entrance gave her lots of trouble — she usually died at least once while clearing a path through that room. Based on my previous experiences in Scholo itself and on my experience with farming the Embrace of the Wind Serpent as an RP-wear item for Kerisa, I expected it to take me the whole week to get Alanna’s Embrace — so I was delighted when it dropped last night!

When Kaprikka had filled her bags and exhausted her dungeons-per-hour limit, I queued specifically for Scholo with my Blood Elf Warlock, Kalaneia. I wanted the Clutch of Andros, a handsome black belt that coordinates marvelously with the Black Velvet Robes. It drops off Kirtonos, the very first boss in the dungeon. I felt like it would be very jerkish to just drop group after the first boss if I didn’t get what I wanted, so for the first several queues, I stuck around for the whole dungeon. In that manner, I picked up the Staff of Metanoia, Necropile Robe, and Shivery Handwraps. Eventually, however, I got so sick and tired of the place that I did start dropping group when Kirtonos didn’t drop the belt.

I am very, very grateful to Navimie, Saintvache, and Morgion for taking time out of their own busy play schedules to give me some quick kills of just Kirtonos. The belt finally dropped when Morgion was helping me. Thank you so much, all of you!

On Monday, I took a break from Scholomance to hit up Scarlet Monastery. Kalaneia already had the Robe of Doan, and the Mantle of Doan has a craftable equivalent, so I didn’t need to do the Library.

Upon consulting my characters who were of an appropriate level to queue for the Cathedral, I determined that Kelilla, my Gnome Mage, was the one who most wanted Whitemane’s Chapeau. I love the way that hat model looks on Gnomes, and Kelilla had just gotten her tailoring up high enough to make herself the Robe of Power, my favorite chestpiece to pair with Sally Whitemane’s iconic hat. Kelilla was lucky enough to win the Chapeau on her very first run through the Cathedral, but I queued her up for a few more randoms until she’d dinged 40.

I tried and tried to convince Kaohana, my Tauren Priest, also a tailor wearing the Robe of Power, that she didn’t need the Chapeau because in a couple of levels, she’d be able to wear its white equivalent, the Gossamer Headpiece. It didn’t work. She insisted on queueing for the Cathedral at least a few times. I was so ticked off when the Chapeau dropped on her first run and a HUNTER ninjaed it! There was also a Mage in that party; the Mage’s roll beat mine by a large margin, but the Hunter’s roll beat the Mage’s roll by only one. I ran the Cathedral four or five more times and didn’t see the Chapeau drop again… and then Kaohana reached level 42 and finally conceded that the Gossamer hat would work in more sets for her in the long run, anyway.

I saw the Aegis of the Scarlet Commander drop in one of Kaohana’s runs and realized that it would be a great shield to use with Kamaliya’s pink set. So Kamaliya cleared out the Cathedral a few times, too.

She also managed to snag a pair of Gauntlets of Divinity. I’ll definitely have to use those in a Transmogrification kit for her sometime in the future.

Now if any of the rest of my characters want anything from Scholomance or Scarlet Monastery, they’d better hurry up and figure it out quickly!

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freestylin’ frustrations

After a couple of days of dedicated effort, I have outfits assembled for all of the Transmogolympics events except the Freestyle.

I know the gender and I have the race narrowed down to two, but I’m having trouble figuring out what I want my NPC to do.

Hmm, what about a… Paladin Mount Exchanger! For a suitably gold-sink-ish sum, this NPC would allow a Paladin to summon the other Paladin mount from their faction instead of the one for their own race. For example, a Dwarf could learn to summon the Exarch’s Elekk, but they would no longer be able to summon the Warhorse. The Exarch’s Elekk would completely replace the Warhorse in their stable, and their count of mounts learned would not increase — this would be to prevent Paladins from having an advantage in the mount-collecting achievements from exchanging their mounts. But really, this is the kind of cosmetic thing that is being done with glyphs these days, so why make an NPC for it?

Speaking of glyphs, how about — a Glyphmaster! This NPC would live in The Scribes Sacellum in Dalaran and would teach all the glyph techniques currently only obtainable from Books of Glyph Mastery. But with the overhaul to glyphs and Inscription coming in Mists, perhaps Books of Glyph Mastery will be going away entirely and the recipes from them that survived the overhaul will be reallocated to the trainers anyway.

This will require quite a bit more thought. At least I still have most of the rest of the month to cogitate upon it.

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ZOMB PANDA KIDS SQUEEEE!!!1!!

No-one on my blogroll has done this yet, so I guess I get to be the first!

Did you SEE those Pandaren kiddos?

from WoW Insider’s Around Azeroth column

They are so cute and adorable! Even better, you get to supervise one as a Pandawan Apprentice Cook! I am tickled pink that Blizz has made child models for the Pandaren. Now they need to hurry up and make true child models for all the other races they haven’t done yet!

In other Mists-related news, I’d better hurry up and get mini-Kam to 85 so that I can move the rest of my Tauren over to Bloodhoof. I DO NOT WANT to be on a PvP server when the ability to shoot down a flagged enemy player on a flying mount goes live.

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What guild would take a player who only wants to raid normal modes?

I’m in a quandry about what to do about raiding come Mists.

On the one hand, I haven’t been sure that I even want to raid in Mists. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to raid in Cataclysm at first, either. Once I got started, though, I enjoyed it — especially after we joined ES.

The crux of the problem is that I’ve never been very enthusiastic about heroic mode raiding. I enjoy the challenge, teamwork, and sociality of normal mode raiding, and I’m willing to do the necessary preparation work for it. The extra preparation and focus needed for heroic mode raiding, however, skew the work:fun ratio of raiding too much over to the side of “work” for me.

So when the end of Dragon Soul was in sight, I notified ES that I planned to take a break from raiding after we’d completed the raid on normal. My decision contributed to ES having to downsize from 25s to 10s, and because I had clearly stated my disinterest in doing heroic modes, I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t make the cut for the 10s team. BTH wasn’t picked for the 10s team, either, and he promptly found himself another guild (that was still doing 25s) on another server. I had followed BTH in every guild change he’d made in the past, but I didn’t follow him this time. It didn’t make sense to leave a guild that I was socially happy in if I wasn’t going to be raiding anyway.

I enjoyed my break from raiding very much. I didn’t even set foot in LFR for months. It occurred to me recently, though, that if I wanted to get a Timepiece of the Bronze Flight to go with my Vagaries of Time, I’d better start doing some LFR. And doing LFR has made me miss raiding normal modes with ES very much.

So now I’m thinking that I probably will end up wanting to raid in Mists… but who will I raid with?

I’m moving my Tauren alt guild off Lightninghoof regardless — I hate being ganked and I’m tired of jumping at shadows whenever I’m out in the world — and I’m planning to move it to BTH’s current (PvE) server so that I can level Kamalia from 85 to 90 with him. But BTH isn’t completely happy with his current guild and might go looking for another one at the start of the new expansion. And I’m not sure I want to join his current guild, either — among other things, they want folks to be in Vent whenever they’re logged into the game, not just when a raid is in progress. And would they even take a player who only wants to raid normal modes?

I’m leveling mini-Kam to leave behind in ES when I move the rest of my characters, so that I can keep open the option/possibility of raiding with them again in Mists. But would it be fair to ES (or any other guild) to ask for a raid spot for the beginning of each tier, when I know that I won’t want to continue into the heroic modes?

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conflicts of interest

While I have been somewhat tempted by SW:TOR or by checking out LOTRO since it went F2P, WoW is still my game of choice. What to do within WoW, though, is often quite the sticky wicket.

I’m not going to write out a comprehensive, semi-detailed “bucket list” of things I want to do in WoW. I’ve found that, for me, making a written list can turn a creative project into a series of chores and effectively kill my enthusiasm for actually finishing the project — better to keep the list in my head and risk forgetting a few of the items of lesser importance. A lot of the stuff on my list runs along the lines of play through zone X with character A, zone Y with character B, and zone Z with character C. The only thing on the list that is really time-constrained by needing to be done before Pandaria is playing through Theramore/Dustwallow Marsh from the Alliance perspective, and I’ve already got an appropriately-leveled toon parked in Theramore waiting for me to just do it.

BTH got accepted to the other guild he’d applied to and transferred his Bear Tank over to the new server, leaving his Tankadin and his Hunter in ES (for the time being). Kamalia and Kerisa are still in ES. I’m not sure what BTH’s new guild’s policy on social members is, and their 25s team already has two Resto Shaman. I also don’t want to move Kamalia out of ES until mini-Kam is prepped to take her place — or at least level 85 and ready to give back all her heirlooms.

BTH’s new server is Bloodhoof. It’s a PvE server, and I’d have moved my lower-level Tauren alts and their guild over there already except for a couple of difficulties. First, I already have toons on Bloodhoof. Bloodhoof is where I’ve been keeping all my “gimmick” characters — the underpowered Death Knight, Thrifty-lynne and Iron-lynne, the Goblin Time Capsule, and the Gilneas Time Capsule. Kaumalea can be server-transferred, but the others can’t. I’d have to delete them — setting back my 2012 in 2012 progress — and reroll them on a new server if I wanted to bring Kamalia’s family over to Bloodhoof. And if I did that, I might not reroll the Chiselspark twins at all, as I’m having more fun with my own variation on the concepts (the underpowered DK). Second, when I looked up the guild transfer information, I discovered that a guild has to be at least level 2 to be eligible for server-transfer. My alt guild is just under 50% of the way from level 1 to level 2 — and I’m not sure I even really want the 5% bonus XP perk from guild level 2 for those characters, anyway. I could get more guild XP by going questing and dungeon-running with those characters, particularly the two highest level toons in the guild — Kregga the DK, who would, at some point, like to go to Well of Eternity and see how she looks as a Night Elf, and Ketura the Hunter, who recently dinged 81 while doing Argent Tournament dailies and mining around Icecrown.

But leveling mini-Kam and leveling my alt guild conflict with each other. Mini-Kam is already in ES and actually wants the guild bonus XP perks. Adding another degree of conflict just on Lightninghoof, because I went to all the trouble of getting Kerisa a Tsunami card, I feel like I really ought to get her geared for Resto and run some endgame content — dungeons and maaaaybe LFR — with her as a healer.

And doing things to advance the goals of my higher-level characters conflicts with 2012 in 2012, because that objective will advance most rapidly if I pile on the levels by playing with my lower-level characters.

As you can see, I’m having a really hard time prioritizing my various objectives. I usually end up just playing whatever I feel like at the time, and while I have a lot of fun, most of my goals don’t advance very quickly at all. Not to mention the things I’m doing or want to do outside of the game…! Too many fun things to do, too little time!

sigh

Now that you’ve listened to me whine, how about some cheese to go with it?

My Hunter is a Beast Master, so I’ve felt like she ought to have at least one Exotic pet in her stable. I wasn’t really interested in most of the Exotic pet families, however. Finally, I decided to tame Arcturis, the Spirit Bear…

… and I named it as an anagram of BTH’s Bear Tank’s name.

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the world has changed

I have to admit I was pretty envious when I found out that ES had killed Deathwing on Normal without us during our vacation — even if it was “only” on 10s when ES is a 25s guild.

Or was?

I was all excited to go finally defeat Spine of Deathwing on 25s and make our first attempts at Madness of Deathwing on 25s this week. BTH was looking forward to completing those encounters on Normal difficulty — he ran LFR every chance he could get during our vacation (I haven’t set foot in it yet). When we logged into WoW and Mumble on Tuesday night, however, we joined instead a solemn, serious, saddening conversation about how the RL Boss has taken away enough of ES’s raiders that the officers are considering downsizing to 10s.

I’ve said for a long time that I don’t really care whether I’m raiding 25s or 10s, as long as I get to raid at least some of the time. BTH thinks that 25s are a lot more fun than 10s — but I think I’d rather run 10s with people I like than 25s with people I don’t like. I have enjoyed raiding 25s with ES, but a lot of that has really been because of the personalities in the guild, and not so much because of the larger raid size in and of itself. I told the officers that I’d be happy to stay in ES if it becomes a 10s guild, but that if BTH goes looking for another guild/realm, I’d probably end up going with him.

I was uncertain about switching to ES even though I wasn’t really socially happy in our previous two guilds just because I didn’t know what to expect out of a new guild. Now I’m even more socially insecure about leaving for another guild/realm because I actually enjoy being in ES. (I already miss the people who are gone for RL reasons )

BTH is starting to consider realm-switching, and I’m not quite sure how I feel about that.

If BTH goes to a PvE realm, though, I would definitely want to follow him. I hate — like Alizabal hates — being ganked while I’m questing or farming. Kamalia is only on a PvP realm because that’s where BTH already had friends and a high level toon when I started playing. Guild/raiding ties, my ever-growing number of alts, and now an alt guild & guild bank have been keeping me there. It would cost a lot of money to move eight characters plus a guild and guild bank to a new realm… but then, I spend money on transferring one or two characters at a time every three or four months anyway as I change my mind about how my various alts ought to be sorted.

If BTH goes to another PvP realm, I’d still transfer Kamalia & family to a PvE realm, and I’d power-level Kilauea to raid with him. As much as I like being part of the ES community, social ties aren’t enough to keep me on a PvP realm in the absence of active raiding involvement on that realm — though I might leave a newly-rolled alt in ES just to keep in touch. But raiding with a Resto Shaman that wasn’t Kamalia, and not raiding with Kamalia herself… well, it just wouldn’t be quite the same.

~*~*~

The official raid was 10s again this week, and people who’d been away for the past two or three weeks were given priority for the spots. We cleared through gunship easily on Tuesday, and last night we took on Deathwing.

Madness of Deathwing took only four or five attempts, and while it was a fun fight indeed, I must confess to some disappointment that we didn’t spend a month wiping on it the way we did with Cho’gall, Al’Akir, Nefarian2.0, and Ragnaros2.0.

Unless we manage to get enough people to continue doing 25s, Normals are finished. And yet, I’m not particularly enthusiastic about doing these fights on Heroic (especially Ultraxion). I’ll still stick around until Falowin completes his legendary daggers, but I wasn’t expecting Dragon Soul to be over nearly so quickly.

The world has changed, and now we must all find new places within it.

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