Kevin's Watch

Yes, I spotted that, heh. I've ordered a copy of the game (because the online payment system doesn't take my debit card), which'll arrive next week sometime.

YAY!!! i started fishin!!! its fun!!! i got a msg in a bottle and a crapload of tuna. also got some blackmouth that i can use in my alchemy!! murrin if you get any blackmouth i'll take em off yer hands...trade ya for any other fishies. fishin is fun.

I got my fishing up to 75 this morning. I found a nice spot by a waterfall on the boundary of Stormwind and Westfall. No one bothers you.

I leveled up to 14 this morning. Now, I'm having a serious money crunch. Too much flying about the countryside. I should take the Deeprun Tram up to Ironforge. I got to find quests that pay cash.

Most of my cash came from selling stuff from my professions--metal and stones when I had too many of them, and items I made with those, too, gave me a couple silver a go. I'm not sure how the prices go with herbalism & alchemy, though.
When you get around lvl 18, head over to the Redridge Mountains east of Elwynn Forest and go to Lakeshire--that's where I started getting the really good paying quests. Though you might not want to go north of the town (or too far out into the lake) until you're above 20.


If you want your fishing to go up quick, find a fishing trainer, buy the best lure you can get, and spend the full ten minutes of the lure's effects fishing. You get better items, less fish get away, and your skill rises with every catch up to about 100; every two or three catches to 150. It doesn't really matter where you fish, either, as to the skill gains.

After picking up the spells offered at level 14 the mana drain went up considerably, it seems. I have to take longer breathers between attacks.

I carved through that farmers field with those harvester golums with my dwarf rogue on the other server (my rogue is also at lvl 14) - rogues regenerate their energy quickly, but I have to pick at it with the priest with the slower mana regeneration.

I'm finding that with my mage, too--lots of downtime. Good thing is, mages can use a spell to create food and drink.


Just witnessed an interesting conversation in the game--one player telling another that he was going to report him for not roleplaying.
Edit: Hah. after further bickering he went back on what he said, saying "I could report you but I'm not going to".

I haven't noticed much roleplaying at all. A guild was advertising that they did it when I was in Goldshire. Other than that, not much evidence.

what exactly is meant by roleplaying???

i mean...what is there to report? i don't get it.

seems to me if you're playing...well then...you're playing.

Some more strict roleplay servers require you to remain in character all the time.

For example, the person in my guild whose roommate accidentally unlearned her professions would have had to come up with an in character explanation for her ranting, rather than simply explaining what actually happened.

It's fun, but it can be difficult to keep up all the time, especially if you're on Vent a lot.

Murrin wrote:Just witnessed an interesting conversation in the game--one player telling another that he was going to report him for not roleplaying.
Edit: Hah. after further bickering he went back on what he said, saying "I could report you but I'm not going to".

It's really... um... 'fun' when it just keeps going and going:

Person 1: (says something out of character or belonging on a different channel)

Person 2: I'm going to report you for not roleplaying.

Person 3: That's not roleplaying either, I'm going to report both of you.

Person 4: I'm going to report all of you for spamming.

...and it probably keeps going, but I've left the channel by that point. These days I turn off most channels if I'm going to be spending any amount of time in a city.

Damelon wrote:I carved through that farmers field with those harvester golums with my dwarf rogue on the other server (my rogue is also at lvl 14) - rogues regenerate their energy quickly, but I have to pick at it with the priest with the slower mana regeneration.

There's a talent called 'Spirit Tap' on the first tier of the Shadow tree that helps a heck of a lot with priest mana regen. You get a boost to your spirit after killing an enemy that gives xp, with 5 points in it you hardly have to stop and drink at all.

Anything similar for mages?

Stormwind and Elwynn Forest were crowded tonight. Lots of high-level players hanging around duelling in Goldshire. Funny thing was, they were nearly all Night Elves and Draenei.

Ahh... didn't see you, but just realized your new mage wasn't on my friends list yet. Fixed. I like the new patch, for the most part. The ability to add notes to the list is nice, helps keep track of alts.

Also nice that primal nether is no longer BoP. I had been three badges short of getting one for a long time since I haven't had time to run heroics lately. Bought one in the auction house today and was finally able to make my epic engineering goggles.

Not sure how I feel about the changes to getting keyed for Kara. I had been working on my key for a long time, and was almost there. I guess it's like the lowered rep required for heroic keys - lousy if you put a ton of effort into getting them with the higher requirements, but on the bright side it's niiice for your alts.

I like the PvP changes for the most part, too. Nice that honor is instantly available, and you always know how much you have. Though it was kinda fun staying on until the day calculated, hoping you had enough for that shiny new item. Ah well. I like that you can turn in marks for honor, since I have a zillion extra marks. Full slot of everything except WSG, because I hate WSG. Three hour games with our heavily-guarded flag carrier hiding in our fort and their heavily-guarded flag carrier hiding in their fort, and not enough offense for either side to cap. I think the changes they made there were good, because I did go in a couple of times today, and it went pretty quickly.

Lotsa new quests, new dailies, new zones... Now if I only had more time to play.

i have no idea what she just said but i'll take her word for it.

In a nutshell, they made it easier for high level folks to get shiny gear from playing in battlegrounds, and also made it easier to make some of the best crafted level 70 gear.

They also made it easier to get into some of the end-game raid dungeons, which previously required a key that was earned after a loooong series of quests.

I'm guessing such things will keep getting easier up until the new expansion, 'cause it's all gonna be useless at level 80.

I believe I logged out just after you came online, Sorus.
And our clocks just went forward, so it's going to be even harder for me to be online with the rest of you.


I'm not sure what I think of them adding 10 levels for each expansion. I used to play Guild Wars, so I'm used to that system, where the level cap was 20 and you achieved it halfway through the first game. It just doesn't seem necessary to raise the level cap, when doing so actually reduces the challenge of most of the game content.


My time is up--I could log on this morning, but now I get the "you have used up all your prepaid time" message. Back on sometime in the week, hopefully.

Aww... hope to see you soon.

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about the level raise. On one hand, I am looking forward to being able to level again. On the other hand, I am not looking forward to all my hard-earned gear becoming useless. And Karazhan, Black Temple, Zul'Aman going the way of AQ 20 - becoming obsolete before I get a chance to run them. Though I probably will be doing Kara with my guild, and no one has done Black Temple. Not on our server, anyway.

In patch-related news, I am glad they did away with the silly pose that female night elves assumed when they were hearthing. People were always threatening to knock me over.

Murrin wrote:Anything similar for mages?

You can use evocation every 8 minutes to regenerate pretty much all your mana in about 10 seconds, but nothing like spirit tap. You can make all the water you want though!

I think the point of adding new zones and raising the level cap is to keep providing new things for more casual players to do. WoW before the Burning Crusade was a very different place, players practically hit a brick wall once they'd hit level 60 and gotten their blue class set from Strat, Scholo and Blackrock Spire. From then on your only options were severely limited. You could raid Molten Core, but assembling 40 people who know what they're doing and have good enough gear is really tough. You needed a big guild to do it and a lot of time to dedicate both to the raids themselves and the farming to pay for your repairs. Zul'Gurub, at 20 players, was somewhat easier to get into but the later bosses were easily as challenging as anything Molten Core had to offer (we took down Ragnaros long before we got Hakkar and we'd never have finished the place without our gear from MC).

PvP was very different back then as well, the players on each realm and faction were ranked from No.1 down. There was one High Warlord/Grand Marshal and the number of people at each rank doubled from there down. You could only buy the good PvP armor at the higher ranks but your honor decayed over time and you were competing against everyone else on your faction. To get to number one would literally take 3-4 weeks of non-stop PvP for 18 hours per day, it was insane. If you didn't fancy or didn't have time to PvP, your only other option was to farm gold to buy epics on the Auction House. People did it but I'm really not sure why. If all you're doing is grinding, why do you need good gear anyway? Compounding the problem was Blizzard use of content patches to add one elite 40 man raiding dungeon after another, which 3/4 of the player base would never even get to see.

It's far better now, thanks to the Burning Crusade and subsequent patches. PvP is a good way to invest small chunks of time towards getting better gear (it's just a shame they've made rogues suck in PvP now ) and although Karazhan's instance-tying killed a lot of guilds, the multitude of 5-player instances and the addition of heroics have introduced much more content that can be completed with a pick-up group. My favourite addition are the daily quests. You can only complete each one once per day, which stops them from being completely farmed out, and a maximum of 25 per day. Getting access to all of them is hard, but now the Shattered Sun Offensive is in effect I can do up to 12 and they pay 9-12g each, plus rewards. I can now make around 130g from a 2 hour play session and my goal of a Nether Drake seems reachable now (I have 3500g saved up so far).

Yes, but all that still doesn't explain the need to raise the level cap. They could easily have added content designed to give the level 60 players a new challenge and left it at that, rather than lifting it to level 70, then 80.

It's hard to say exactly what Blizzard's motivation is for raising the level cap. I would guess that they wanted to expand the game world by adding more zones and players are only likely to play through that content by levelling in it. The problem with improving at level cap is that each incremental improvement is harder to obtain than the last, if you introduce more zones in that way then a lot of players will never get to see all of them. Another benefit is to spread players out within the game, as if everyone heads for the same content at the same time the consequences for server performance and the in-game economy can be quite extreme.

The extra 10 levels in the Burning Crusade were actually quite pleasant (albeit big) and I'm looking forward to levelling in Lich King without the pressure of having to rush to level cap for raiding. The drawback of course, is that the game gets increasingly daunting for anyone starting out for the first time. They have taken steps to address this; xp gained from quests below level 60 has increased by 25% and the xp required per level has decreased by 25%. I'm sure they've thought about starting people off at level 40 or wherever, but you learn so much about the game and how to play your class in the first 20 levels. I don't think the game would work without that progressive introduction of new skills and spells.