Project Lore

To quote a famous song, "You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need."

Just because you farm for hours, does not mean you will get all those mats that you 'need'. Just like life, WoW is random. I've gotten blue and purple drops back to back in a one hour session, a Recipe for Savory Deviate Delight before I knew what it was for and even three drops on my second run in Gruul's.

Then again I've spent days and days trying to farm Recipe: Elixir of Giant Growth and finally bought it off the AH.

So when you're bitchin' about not get those motes of fire or the elusive Schematic: Stabilized Eternium Scope , just remember, life, and WoW life, is random.

And that you get what you need.

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You ever get to the point on your main WoW toon that the game seems to loose it's luster? Days in AV for honor points or hours Raiding Hyjal for the chance at a drop that 20 other people want? Well, I have a solution for you: Make an alt!

Not some simpleton bank mule or AH stand-in - make a real alt that you will play.

Why you ask? Several reasons:

1. To know another class as well as your main. This helps you understand the dynamics of working in a party or raid better.
2. To have two additional potential money making professions. Gathering professions on an alt can sometimes be key to making huge money in WoW
3. To re-experience the wonder of playing the easy, fun low level content.
4. To challenge yourself to level faster and more efficiently
5. To see the interactions people have with your new class that may be different from your main's class. There's nothing like playing a huge DPS toon then becoming a holy healer. People openly seem to love DPS and tend to forget the healers. Come on people - let's show some love here.

And those are just a few reasons.

So go make an alt.

And play another 85 days... lol

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So here's the question, is it still worth RAIDing if you don't get any loot? I think it is but man does it suck! With all the time it takes to get a group together. Not enough healers, too many healers, no off tank, too many tanks. We don't have the group make up for ZA let's do Kara.

So the stage was set for a nice Kara run. There are a few good drops in there I haven't got yet so I'm really excited. We easily down Huntsman, Morose, Maiden, Curator and Shade... then we get trapped in Shades room! Really, door won't open? Crap! Then our lock DC'd!!! And our group fell like a deck of cards. I just want Spiteblade!!!

Was fun though, so what do you think?

DrDark

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Oh crap... not again. Another Battlegrounds where people have no freakin' idea what they are doing or how to get there. That's it people. All you drones who would rather jump into the fray than understand the battle plans, you had better listen 'cuz I am only, only, going to saw this once: Look where you are and what you have to do. Arathi Basin is a capture and hold battleground. That means... capture and hold. Not capture and run to the next one or gank people out in the open. Capture and hold! Look... I got to farm about 60 marks from Arathi for a few items that would be nice upgrades, so do me and yourself a favor, read and memorize this strat: Capture and hold! You get more honor points for winning. You get more marks for winning. You even get better gear sooner for winning. So would you like that? Then CAPTURE AND HOLD! Crap... is that clear enough? Gawd I hope so. Now back to the bgs.

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You really want to know the secret, the real secret of making gold in World of Warcraft. No more bull$hit, no more hype, no more tricks that will make you a WoW millionaire overnight. Here's the simple straight-forward truth about how to make gold in WoW. It's three parts so be prepared. Are you ready? Here it comes... Rule Number One: Sell Everything Invest in a few high-slot bags, go kill stuff and vendor everything gray, DE ( or get a buddy to DE ) the greens and Auction House the rest. That includes blues and purples. Sell the DE'ed mats or, if your an enchanter, buff your own gear. Okay some greens are worth Auctioning, but don't AH ever one of them. Some just won't sell. Know what each class prefers and sell those greens. And if you really, really need a drop from a mob, keep it. Just DE the rest. Rule Number Two: Buy Low, Sell High Ah the free market economy in action. Finding cheap items and selling them back to people who have no idea what just happened. This takes time and an investment in knowing what people want, where to buy it for cheap and when to list it at the AH. You can do it. Without addons or data lists from web site. Each realm has it's own individual economy. Learn it and use it to your advantage. Rule Number Three: Don't Buy Crap You Don't Need Do not buy that epic sword that will be useless in 10 levels. Do not buy that little, over-priced firefly to scoot around after you. Do not buy a 28-slot engineering bag that will just collect dust in your bank after you've made your little airplane... UNLESS you really, really want to. All that stuff is fine to buy and enjoy in the game, but if you do not have your epic flying mount and your guildies are sick and tired of summoning your slow butt to every freakin' instance 'cuz they have to wait on you to fly from Shatt, then do not buy crap you really, really don't need. Now there are other super obvious ways to make gold in WoW - do quests, do dailies, farm motes, farm mats, kill monsters - but for those of you who do those are still don't have an epic flyer or bitch and moan about not having enough to get 20-slot bags, you either don't play enough to get the gold or you might be violating one or all of the rules above. So if you need gold, don't ask me. Even thought I am sitting on quite a nice pile of earned gold ( never bought even a silver from anyone ), I have no intention of handing out in Shatt just cuz some 70 noob can't make enough gold to buy a 20-slot bag.

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Great... Season 4 is here, along with a new patch which I am sure to rant about tomorrow, but for now let's all remain focused: Season 4 gear. There has always been two basic games in WoW: kill monsters or kill players, more commonly known as PvE or PvP. And Blizzard has done their best to keep the gear rewards for both sides of this dynamic as balanced as possible... mostly. With Season 4 gear PvP seems to have stepped up a little bit, namely you have to do arena to get the best PvP gear. Period. Usually you could do AV until your eye's bleed or until your voice shriveled into oblivion from screaming at the screen 'cuz most people have no freakin' idea what to do in battlegrounds. But still, with the right combination of battleground weekends, and if you were lucky, a few premades along the way, within a few months ( yes, MONTHS ) you could have a decent set of PvP gear suitable to get your ass kicked just a little less in all those battlegrounds you just spent your life doing. ( Anyone else see the futility of this? ) But now, not only do you have to do all of that all over again to get honor points and marks and new Season 4 gear, you have to have a personal arena rating to get certain items. Holy crap! Okay, yes, I have four of five vengeful pieces. I also have some other fun PvP gear, but those damn shoulders keep alluding me. That personal rating was just to much of a personal time commitment to get - all freakin' weekend trying to wack people, figure out their possible tactics against me and hoping to get a lucky crit off now and again to fry someone just to move my personal rating up 17 points. Damn it sucked. And I guess it will again. Oh well... I'm off to arena...

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Well how's about that. I started a guild about a year ago and we've been rocking it! We leveled like mad and got tons of 70's pretty quick. Seeing as we were so uber we started farming Kara. Then we moved onto ZA. At about the time we started really owning Kara I started working on this site and took a break from WoW while I did it. My first day back I'm swept up into a Gruul's Lair group and we two shot him for the first time in the guild! Oh the joy!!! So when I got back on and really wanted to start RAIDing with my guild I signed up for ZA on the guild calendar... "Oh there's no way you can go with them." "What? Why?" "Oh that's the group that runs through ZA easy they can't have you with them." Why is ZA so different from Kara? Is it soooo much harder? I know it's the next step up but really? I'm going to cause the group to fail? Me a good DPS rogue who knows how not to be killed. Anyway, rant = over.

Dr Dark

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Oh how I hate puggin'. Pick-up Groups (PUGs) in World of Warcraft are so freakin' random. I have had PUG groups that destroyed Heroic Shattered Halls in 41 min and I've have the unfortunate experience of PUGs wiping multiple times on the first Boss in normal Ramparts. Normal Ramparts! And most of them were level 65+. AHHHHHHH!!!! What to do... what to do... Join a guild is a good option... but sometimes that falls apart. People may not be on at the same time. Or people may not want to do that quest your on. Or what-the-freak-ever reason they have for not helpin' a guildie. And the other thing is that when they do decide to help out, sometimes the people are good and other times they just say that they are good. Mostly the second. Unless it's a group that's developed together over time. Then at least everyone sucks at the same level. I was very fortunate to be in a great cohesive guild for quite some time (Midnight Run, Frostmane thank you very much ) but that fell apart in the space of a weekend 'cuz a few jackasses screwed it up for everyone (that and some other stuff but that's a different blog...). But with that group now fractured beyond recognition, I'm looking for another guild that raids late server time, that knows what they are doing and likes to kill bosses instead of bitch about who got what purple three weeks ago. But back to my point. PUGs generally suck. Seriously. But what do we do about it? I know I know my class and it's responsibilities in a raid or an instance. I know I have the gear and experience in doing serious DPS and CC (Damage Per Second and Crowd Control). I also know what other classes are supposed to do and what spec they should be to do it. So I know what I'm looking for when I try and find a PUG. What I don't know is if some moron is going to go all emo (emotional) when someone else doesn't do their job or if someone who says they know how to hold threat couldn't hold a bucket of water without a forklift and two friends helping. I know we all need to get experience and learn boss strats (one of the reasons I'm helping produce Project Lore), but for heaven's sake - please be conservative in telling people how good you are when looking for a PUG. Be honest just don't tell me your the best lock in the game when you don't know when to use seed of corruption or when to enslave (Kara PUGs come to mind...). BOTTOM LINE: If you are looking to be in a PUG, be kind, be honest and don't be a freakin' moron that goes all emo at losing a greed roll on a stupid mail chest piece you'll never, ever freakin' wear. And if you do go all emo, I will forever ignore you.

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Okay, okay. Sorry. Geez... Stop your cryin' and belly achein' for crap sakes! All you frost mages who think I'm not showin you luv or that I'm bashing on you or your talent tree need to take a freakin' chill pill. Maybe you have a talent for that or something... Yeah, yeah. I know. Frost mages can do damage and it's how you play your class and your spell sequence that determines your mana management and that a frost mage is incredibly effective against A'lar and... blah, blah, blah. Hush! listen up here peeps. The point is this: fire mages still kick ass in raid situations. Period. I'm not saying frost or arcane can't kick ass. I'm just sayin fire mages kick ass. Okay. The water elemental is nice in PvP and yes ice barrier is a very cool spell. I have seen some rockin' frost mages in AV kick the crap out of buckets of people with that frost nova and ice lance. And yes, yes, I know that ice block was originally your talent tree and for that one I thank you. But my whole point with talking about fire mages before is that some people have the misperception that only frost mages are good for raiding and end-game content. That is pure bull$hiT. I certainly can, and I have seen other fire mages, decimate instances left and right, utterly destroying clusters of mobs with a few well-placed arcane blasts and dragon's breath. But this is what get's me agitated: I've actually had people tell me that their guild doesn't want fire mages because they pull too much aggro or lack DPS or suck at killin raid bosses. What f'kn morons! Those issues are with the person playing the game, not the game itself. Got get Omen2 and Deadly Boss Mods to clear half of that crap up. So once and for all, so as to quell this brewin storm twix fire, frost and arcane mages I may have inadvertently started, the real bottom line is this: we mages have CC, we have great DPS, we have remove curse, AI and can drop enough tables to feed an entire raid. Frost is great for PvP. Fire is great for PvE. Arcane can one shot just about anything their level. All are doable for killin mobs in BT, Hyjal and Sun Well and will continue to be in WotLK. Face it: If you rolled a mage, people want your DPS.

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Ah... when it's done, it's done. It's sad to see it go... but we'll all move on... What am I talking about? One of the worst things that could happen in-game: my guild disbanded. ( /cry ) Yes, a few weeks ago, maybe longer now since time has lost all meaning since I entered this state of mourning, the first guild I joined broke up over internal politics, RL issues, in-fighting, alleged favoritism and a few freakin' stupid idiot jerks ( different people depending on whom you ask ) brought about the final straw that broke the guild's back. I am talking of Midnight Run on Frostmane server. We were good. Really freakin' good. We were almost on farmin' status for Hyjal and BT, gathering mats for boss fights in BT and beginning our venture into Sun Well within a few weeks, but then it happened. On night I logged in at raid time, ready to kick the crap out of Vashj and maybe get a new chest piece, when the GM called all online people over to the Aldor bank. Then he dropped the bomb. It sucked. Really sucked. I meet some really cool people in the guild and had fun takin' down some of the hardest content in the game but now, as I stood at the Aldor bank getting my share of epic gems and wizard oil from the soon-to-be defunk guild bank, it was just dawning on me that I would probably never raid with most of these people again. A damn f'k shame. And I knew some of the reasons why it was disbanding were very legit. RL comes first no matter what anyone says. And the freakin' jerks who were making a mess of the guild's name really f'ked it for everyone. How just a few asses can come in and within a weekend f'k it up for everyone is just astounding to me. So to those who were in Midnight Run, thank you. Puffball, you are a great GM and I would join any guild you make in the future when you come back to the game. Hedone, you are an amazing healer and I look forward to raiding with you soon. Gomja, you rock as a Pali tank. Noodshot, Stings, Legendaryoda, and the rest of the MR crew, thanks for the fun. And now the guild is done. The fractured pieces split into two or three different guilds, each somewhat bashing the other for the downfall and how cool they are now. Whatever. My ego resides in myself and not in how much DPS I can do. That being said... If you have a guild on Frostmane server that raids after 9:30 server time that's lookin' for a raiding fire mage whose sustained DPS is always in the top 10, usually top 5, then give me a call. Loyalty is one thing while there's something to be loyal to, but when it''s done, it's done. Besides I want that freakin' chest to drop off Vashj! So if you need a raid savy fire mage, give me a call, but only if you raid after 9:30 server time on Frostmane. ( btw - The Armory says I'm in Divine Turtle Protectors but that's my alt's guild. And the gear I'm wearing is epic! lol )

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