Monthly Archive for September, 2008

From being a Bartender to playing Dominos

Published
by
Yashima
on September 30, 2008
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or: The Quest for a better Interface

I am always on that quest.

If you are an addon/interface junkie like me you know that one of the most important addons is the “bar” mod that you use. I’ve tried them all starting with ctMod, Flexbar, Bongos, Bartender and probably some more. For a long long time now I’ve been using Bartender4.

Bartender4 is a nice enough mod developed in the Ace community. (writing while eating please forgive the missing links I might add them later). But lately I feel like I am running into a dead-end with the mod. Bartender3 could be found on other sites besides wowace.com. Bartender4 seems like a forever-alpha which can only be updated through files.wowace.com . Maybe I missed some announcement or a split into a new project.

With the upcoming changes to files.wowace.com (mainly its not going to be there anymore in the near future) and not being sure when and how these changes are going to come about I am looking for stable alternative mod sites. So I went back to WoWI. Most of my favorites can be found there. All except a handful – a handful I can play without if 3.x comes and breaks my UI and files.wowace.com both. I was able to test the most important ones on the PTR this week. I hate being ridiculed in guild chat because a patch broke my UI. It has happened.

I found everything I needed on WoWI. Yay! Everything but one mod: Bartender4. And it’s not on curse or wowui either. One sad druid player I was …

So I took another looked at Bongos again which I used before Bartender for a very long time and only dropped using because WAU (the WoWAceUpdater) made updating mods so perfectly easy (which is the reason for the huge amount of traffic wowace.com gets). Then I saw: Bongos is discontinued. Oh noes!

Only moments later I noticed a link to Dominos. Developed by the same guy and obviously ready to go for Wrath. So here I am sitting on the PTR having a working bar mod which was easily configured in about 5 minutes.

Bye bye Bartender. Hello Dominos!

I am sad about wowace suffering from popularity as it is. I am sure there will be a solution. But I don’t want to be caught with too many wowace-only addons when the problem explodes before the solution is ready to go.

Blog Feature: Guides

Published
by
Yashima
on September 30, 2008
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Many blog writers like to write guides for others – I am no exception.

Wether mine are any good is not for me to decide. But to make it easier to see what kind of stuff I wrote that I think may have lasting value (at least until Wrath hits), I made a guides page: see my pretty new page full of guides.

I also made a new Characters overview page from which the single character pages can be reached: Characters Overview.

Leveling Inscription

Published
by
Yashima
on September 29, 2008
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Not yet finished. I am not sure it is possible to really level this profession to the max. I am stuck just below level 250 at 248 exactly.  What follows is the protocol of my leveling Inscription on the PTR.  I’ll update the protocol when I level more.

Most important lesson learned: use all Ruby Pigments or Fiery Ink – which is made from them – to make Fine Vellum. This stays orange for a while. Everything else is a waste of very valuable mats. If things stay this way run in circles in teh Swamp of Sorrows to farm endless amounts of Blindweed.

Notes on the side:

  • Scrolls are quite expensive to craft
  • Cutest item “Certificate of Ownership“: allows a hunter to rename his pet
  • Funniest Tooltip “Unpredictable Results beyond level 40″ (on Scroll of Recall I)
  • Scrolls of Recall only usable for Scribes themselves :P
  • WoWHead’s Inscription Data from Wrath differ from the PTR (big surprise)
  • my French is really bad but I was still able to communicate a little ;) PTR weirdness

Subtle and interesting: for a while every 5 points new Glyphs become available and the old ones turn yellow, most efficient way to level is to make a lot of different glyphs. Nice touch. While people are leveling there will always be a lot of different glyphs on the market. Sadly this doesn’t stay true later on and around skill level 230 leveling becomes hard right now because Glyphs become available and are instantly grey.

How Inscription works basically:

You mill herbs for pigments. You get 2-3 pigments from 5 herbs you mill and have a chance for a rare pigment of appropriate level.To make items you usually need parchment which you buy from the vendor. Most items need 1 parchment and 1 or 2 inks. At Skill Level 80 you can make the first Glyphs.

Continue reading ‘Leveling Inscription’

5 subtle 3.x features

Published
by
Yashima
on September 29, 2008
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I rarely do PTR. Usually I just wait for the patch to come around. I read some patch notes before a patch but that’s all I do. Except this time around.

We’re getting a new profession and unlike Jewelcrafting I want to get in on this one right away. Admittedly I got to the PTR late. I could already be done testing how to level Inscription. Instead I am still waiting for my herb bank to transfer. Maybe it already has transferred, I don’t know because the Blizzard page keeps killing my browser. Maybe they could hire someone who knows what they are doing? Or they should make a Web-PTR?

But back to playing on the PTR.

So far I have noticed a few nice little things. (Yes I also noticed Achievements, Statistics, new Talents and Inscription but everybody talks about that *G*)

1. The shadows. I just love them. It makes the world come alive so much more. Flying through outland with your shadow gliding below you. Or seeing a shadow pass over you when someone flies high above. Terrokar looks lovely with all the light and shadow. It sounds like a little thing when they write it in the patch notes, but it is definitely not.

2. New Music. The login screen has new music. I was sick of the old theme. Especially since I often log out by afk the music would be running forever and even when the sound isn’t turned up you can hear it all over the house. And the fresh new Wrath background looks great as well.

3. Early Video Options. Even before logging in you can now change the graphics settings. This is great – of course we won’t be using this a lot but still a thoughtful little addition.

4. New Windowed Mode. The windowed mode now has the option to remove the windows-window-bling (titlebar and border) and the game looks like I am playing full screen on the left display and I can still move easily to the second one for surfing. It’s just the kind of thing that is incredibly nice but so small a change nobody talks about it ;) Except me of course.

5. Fewer addons needed. Several classics will be integrated into the default UI: Omen and MobHealth are the two that I noticed. I haven’t played without addons for a long long time but the UI has really come a long way from the first days. But I could not do for very long without …

Indeed it was quite weird to be on the PTR. At first I had no addons, no key-bindings, no macros. Not even my main had been copied yet and so I played a bit vanilla WoW with a level 1 Druid, with no money, no bags and the default UI. <3 Teldrassil.

As soon as Yashima was copied over I started testing addons. A lot of them are already working with the patch (Outfitter, Pitbull, Chinchilla, Mapster, Quartz, ArkInventory, Posessions) but some are not (Bartender4 and Autobar most prominently).

Since files.wowace.com will be going away sometime soon, I don’t think I can do the same as I used to do these last few patches: patch the game and run WAU to update all my addons. I understand that the traffic they get is just way too much (on patchdays they have Terabytes of downloads). So right now I am testing my addons and try to get as many to a working version as possible.

The most important ones still missing I mentionned already.

Right now I have been moving over to WoWI again. It used to be my favorite site until wowace came along. One thing in favor of WoWI and not using WAU: the libraries are internalized and my addon folder looks a lot smaller and neater than before. I can actually see which addons I am using. I might keep it that way …

Done Exploring

Published
by
Yashima
on September 24, 2008
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Last night I went to the Draenei starting areas and finished one of my pre-Wrath goals: Exploring.

Here’s the map before taking the final few steps:

Maybe I will copy Yashima to the PTR just to take a look at her achievements a bit early ;)

Public Embarassment

Published
by
Yashima
on September 17, 2008
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Many of you will know the dailies of the Netherwing faction especially those who would like to be flying around on a Netherdrake. Actually I fell in love with Netherdrakes when I did the quests in Nagrand where you fly around on one.

So once I had my Swift Flight Form I decided to start questing for the Netherwing. It started easy enough with some herb farming. Then more and more quests opened up – some good (Booterang anyone?) and some bad (farming poison glands sucks) until I finally got to the point where I could do the Earning my Wings quest and was then able to race the Netherwing champions for the title of the “Top Orc”.

I did the first race versus the Oldie McOld. It was easy but something new. Then I did the second race. A bit harder. The third race already took me two tries. So I raced. I finished all the races but the last two. I kept failing to win against Captain Mulverick. I got frustrated and stopped trying.

Then I took a long long break from WoW before I continued questing for the Netherwing.

I started helping the Netherwing again after I finally made myself get the Mats for the Soul Cannon quest and the Subdue the Subduer (great fun that one as well, I love quests that use flight …). After going to the Netherwing area to turn in the quest I remembered those unfinished races.

I tried myself versus Captain Mulverick and voilà: I won on the first try! I was so excited that I decided it was time to challenge Captain Skyshatter and … he decided it was a good idea to announce it to the whole zone via “yell” that I was going to race him:

“Prepare a funereal pyre! Yashima  has challenged Skyshatter!“

Lovely. I got whispers with “Good Luck” from random people in the zone. I thought it was quite nice. At that moment I didn’t realize what that meant.

That last race is hard and of course I failed the first try. I tried again.

“Prepare a funereal pyre! Yashima  has challenged Skyshatter!“

Oh noes and failed even faster.

On the third retry I realized something:

“Prepare a funereal pyre! Yashima  has challenged Skyshatter!“

It was absolutely embarrassing to be publicly dissed for failing the quest again and again. While I usually don’t have trouble trying forever to succeed at a quest, I did have trouble having my repeated failure announced to everyone every single time.

I sat there for 5 minutes while chatting with a random person who told me he needed four tries and I was thinking of quitting. But then I made up my mind and tried again.

“Prepare a funereal pyre! Yashima  has challenged Skyshatter!“

Another epic failure. So I whined to the guild how embarrassing my public failure was and that I was giving up after the next try.

“Prepare a funereal pyre! Yashima  has challenged Skyshatter!“

But that try went great. I didn’t get hit by meteors, I was able to follow through the endless number of u-turns he does and I was declared “Top Orc” just as publicly as my failures before were public.

The race was great and the whole experience was fun. Even the embarrassment because it is so rare that such things happen. I want more stuff like this. I can’t quite describe what it is about this that fascinates me so much but it is definitely among the better content.

I love when people accidentally pull Doomlord Kazzak and he starts yelling loud enough for everyone to hear on Hellfire Peninsula.

Give me more such things!

Subscriber Loss

Published
by
Yashima
on September 16, 2008
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After moving my blog from http://www.delusions.de/wow to http://wow.delusions.de I forgot to update my feedster urls and managed to drop from 160-something to a mere 13 subscribers

:(

*hits self on head for stupidity*

Bigger Bags are Better

Published
by
Yashima
on September 14, 2008
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Aren’t they? I leveled a character to be a Tailor to make my own bigger bags. Seriously. That’s one of the reasons I leveled Thalya. It is easier to make your own bags instead of having to ask someone. Well okay so playing the Mage was fun even though I am more of the melee type.

So today I farmed my way through Sporebats to get from just below Honored to Revered with the Sporeggar to be able to craft this lovely herb bag: Mycah’s Botanical Bag (added in 2.4). 28 Slots. So it isn’t quite cheap to craft and I’ll have to decide who to give these bags to. The bank char with all the herbs or my future Inscription Master?

7 Todos before Wrath

Published
by
Yashima
on September 14, 2008
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With patch 3.0 coming out any week now and maybe only six more weeks till Wrath comes out (if that 4th November date is still the latest rumor, update: looks like Nov 13 now), the time until the addon hits is finally starting to look finite. Are you still looking forward to the addon or are you frustrated by the changes coming up to your favorite class?

I am looking forward to the addon. I am excited by all the changes coming. But then I am not raiding and many of the changes just make life easier for the casual (not raiding) hardcore (playing too much at times) that I am.  So I’ve been thinking a lot what kind of activities in the game make the most sense to prepare for the addon. What kind of stuff will make my gaming experience smoother later on?

Here’s my list of things to do to prepare for Wrath:

1. Death Knights: Reserve a character slot and a name for your Death Knight – you will play one, right? You might also prepare some big bags – DKs don’t come with 18-slot bags, or do they?

2. Inscription: Reserve a profession slot on a high level character and collect enough herbs to easily level Inscription. If you don’t have a herbalist already, consider leveling that.

3. Achievements: Prepare for any achievements you really want to have quickly (f.e. explore old zones for the Explorer title)

4. Gold, Gold Gold: Hoard money, because you’ll need it, for example sell off old materials that won’t be needed as much after Wrath comes out

5. Honor: if you are a PvPer farm Honor now (not sure how Arena Points will translate)

6. Leveling: finish leveling those alts because you’ll soon be leveling your Main again. Consider stopping at level 60, because experience needed to level to 70 will be reduced …

7. Talents: Look at the new talents for you Main’s class and try to decide what kind of spec you’ll want to level to 80.

My PvE->PvP Transfer

Published
by
Yashima
on September 13, 2008
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Yáshimá on her new serverThis is a rant. You’ve been warned.

I was so happy about the news and the first I did was rush to the Account Management and trigger a transfer.

I started with my first character on a PvE server. I was scared of PvP servers. Back then it seemed just too hardcore for me. My first PvP experience was during a 3 month stay in Ultima Online and I did not want to go back there.

World PvP on PvE servers happens. You still get killed sometimes because people kill your questgivers and then you get mad and try to get them back and then you’ll be killed anyway. Or that’s how it was then. Meeting Horde was either meaningless or annoying when they would take away herbs you had fought to get and you couldn’t even send them a complaint. Generally you just could not talk to half the people playing alongside you.

Then the guild broke apart and we re-rolled on a newly opened PvP server because some of my friends wanted to be on a PvP server. I went along and never regretted it. Oh yes I whine about being ganked and I gank back. I hate being camped and I have learned some impressive new swear words just meant for raging about how I hate being killed by another player … but I went back for a month to play my old character after BC and it sucked to be on a PvE server. Really sucked.

I have just leveled a character through 20 levels (40-60). It is rare that I met Horde. I did get killed about once or twice per 2-3 hour session. I whined about it every time and sometimes I relogged. So? I also met a number of “nice” hordies who would help out or simply not kill you and I didn’t kill anyone who didn’t offend me first. World PvP on PvP servers is pretty rare away from some hot-spots like Strangle, Chillwind and Southshore. Instead you sometimes have the opportunity to see that people could kill you, but don’t!

The aggression between the factions is there both on PvE servers and PvP servers. There are other ways to interfere with someone else besides killing them. You can tag all the mobs, steal their herbs and ores from under their nose etc.. You camp quest givers in lowbie areas instead of players. Is that so different? PvP servers are much more honest in that respect. While I hate being ganked at least it is open aggression not the passive aggressive shit that went on on the PvE server. If someone is playing nice on a PvP server you know they really are being nice – until they turn around and kill you when you are down to 10% of your hit points ;) But that’s what PvP servers are for.

The only thing I missed on the PvP server was my old character. Now I was finally able to move her. I had to delete my level 18 Paladin and now I have 3 Druids and no Paladin. I just wanted that character where I could play her again. I wanted to look at the Warden Staff in her inventory and remember how I found it.

We already have a couple who returned from summer hiatus because one of them also wanted to move an old character to join us and was so excited they couldn’t wait anylonger to start playing again. That is how it is for our guild. People want to have their old characters with them and so we are very happy about the change.

I understand that people believe this will lead to increased ganking on PvP servers. But right now I think the fraction of sociopaths, who have so little ties on their current server and would change from a PvE server to a PvP server just to go ganking without the trouble of leveling as PvP, is vastly overestimated.

We have our own (infamous) gankers on PvP servers, we’re used to dealing with this one way or the other. Believe me those PvE care-bear gankers can’t be as bad as the people who inspired threads multiple pages long on the realm forums.

In my opinion most moves will be friends joining friends or people retrieving their old characters. There will of course be moves from raiders to join raiding guilds … and a few gankers. I don’t think those few will make a real difference – and if they are – they are fodder for our own Captain PvPowers!