Project Lore

Up until the past couple of months, I always stuck with Horde characters. Sure, I've tried out Alliance here and there, but never found them quite as intriguing. I'm sure the fact that my RL friends I play with are all Horde also plays a role. But now that I've been true to the Horde since the WotLK release, I decided to try out an Ally once again. And the fact that I wanted to roll a character on the Executus server so I could play in the Alliance Project Lore fan guild gave me a good push. I know my way around gameplay pretty well, and I expected a refreshing change of pace when I rolled a draenei hunter. But as I've been leveling with her, I've been surprised by how much it has changed my perception of the game by adding to it. Obviously, Alliance is a new faction, and draenei a new race for me. And therefore, it's a new starting area to learn my way around. Pixie is my first hunter character (but thankfully I have a little guidance on how not to be a huntard). I've tamed my first combat pet, Artemis, and started training fishing and cooking for the first time to support his dietary needs. I picked up a couple of professions I've never leveled before - herbalism and alchemy -  just to keep the excitement going. And the friendly group of players in the guild that I'm new to have done a good job of making me feel welcome. So how has all this affected gameplay? Well, there have been a couple of funny moments. Like the first few times I came back from questing and initially thought it was weird that I was walking into a group of Draenei and not getting attacked. Then, realizing I'm one of them now. Also, the first couple of quests to kill Bloodelf spies or other Hordies tore at my heart a little. My Locomomo started out just like them! And now that I've pointed out differences in how we speak in vent, I owe my guildies some props. I've gotten a lot of help learning my way around the Alliance areas that up until now, I've only ever heard of and never fully experienced. And, I learned how to cluck at a chicken until it laid an egg that I now have for a pet. That confirmed my suspicions that indeed each faction has a few surprises up their sleeves. So all this new stuff makes it almost like I'm playing for the first time again. But at least I know the basics and lingo to help get me through. And it's making clear to me just how wide the world of warcraft can be, if you choose to utilize all it has to offer. One aspect that I'm looking forward to seeing in action will come once I leave the starting area. This is my first time on a PvP server. Have mercy! Has anyone else had a similar experience when starting up a new character?  And how long did it take you to get into the groove and past the feelings of awe that come along with the unknown?

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Many people, including us at Project Lore, find monotony in playing at level 80. Without the overall goal of leveling up, you can feel misguided. Many people decide to create alts so they can again have that purple (or blue) experience bar on their screens. You may find that it is much easier to level than before! With a recent patch, more than 60 new graveyards now scatter Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. There have been a few new flightpaths added over the past few months (Un'goro, Ratchet, Mudsprocket), ghosts move faster as of 3.0.8, and the amount of experience required to level has been slashed repeatedly. The XP required for 10-60 is less than half of its original value, and 60-70 has been slashed by just as much since the release of Wrath. In the case that you have high level friends on other servers, you can now make a new level 55 death knight on their server (provided you have a level 55 on your "home" realm). I've already taken advantage of this and now have death knights running around a half dozen realms. If you have an active level 80, you may want to consider getting a few Heirloom items if you plan on leveling any alts. These items are "bind to account" and can be mailed between your characters. Their stats scale with the level of their owner, and even their armor type in limited instances. Perhaps most importantly, the shoulder pieces give you an additional 10% experience gain from killing monsters. This means you have to do about 10% less stuff for every level from 1 to 80. That's like requiring only 90% of the normal experience required level (provided all your experience comes from killing monsters). Not to mention, shoulder pieces don't really start appearing until the mid 20s, so its a good extra boost in power by putting something in that otherwise empty slot. You can pick up a pair of these shoulders in many flavors for whatever spec of whatever class you want for either 200 Stone Keeper's Shards (for pieces with resilience) or 40 badges of heroism (for pieces with more PvE stats). I'd use the Shards personally since most people will have many more of them than badges, but if you are swimming in badges and already have tier 7.5 gear, you might want to use some of those badges on heirloom gear. There are a couple cool trinkets too. They can be bought for 50 emblems of heroism and give you 2% of your health or mana back when you kill something. Additionally, they offer some stats. The Swift Hand of Justice gives you 2% health when you kill something and haste, while the Discerning Eye of the Beast gives you 2% mana when you kill something and spell power. These can greatly reduce your downtime while leveling. I'd personally pick the Swift Hand of Justice first since anyone can use haste and gives you flexibility to change your mind with which alt you want to level. In addition to these pieces, you can find every flavor of weapon, off-hand, and ranged weapon. The stats scale well with level, and it keeps your alts well-geared without having to worry about tracking down every last piece to keep them powerful. If you can convince your friend to start playing WoW with you, you can use the refer-a-friend program and get 3x the normal experience when you play together (provided you are both under level 60 on the characters you are leveling and are within 5 levels of each other) along with many other nice benefits, like the fancy zhevra mount. They don't even have to pay until after either 10 days or if they want to level past 20. Lastly, you may want some addons to help you track the rest experience status of all your characters. If you use FuBar, check out RestFu, which shows you the rest status of all your characters, time to fully rest, and more. What tricks and addons do you all use to enhance your alt experience?

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I hate this thing so much...

One thing I love about video games is their ability to allow me to blow off steam.  When I ran up against an unbeatable bug in one of my computer science projects in college I would turn to video games for relief.  After "Killing Nazis", which meant playing Day of Defeat (pre-Valve), I would return to my task at hand, relieved of stress and with a fresh mind.  More often than not, I would have an epiphany shortly after those breaks, getting me past the frustrations and into new ground.

Yesterday was one of those days.  With my attempt at being more green and lowering my heating cost failing at every turn, I walked away from the half-installed pellet stove defeated and highly annoyed.  Not wanting my foul mood to affect my lovely girlfriend, I sealed myself off in my office/ferret room/gaming haven and booted up WoW for some stress relief.  In Solidsamm's world of Azeroth, everything was smooth as silk. I was greeted with a few hundred gold in the mailbox upon logging into my Auction House alt.  Pretty good start.  After beginning my scan of the AH with Auctioneer I was asked if I would like to provide some DPS for the Vault of Archavon.  I humbly accepted, logged onto Solidsamm and rushed towards Wintergrasp for my first Wrath raid encounter.  Along the way I picked up a stack and change of Saronite, some Titanium and an assortment of crystallized elements. The vault doesn't have much to offer, just another instance in a collection of Wrath's one-boss raids.  After clearing a few trash mobs we walked up to Archavon with noses plugged and began the generic tank-n-spank encounter.  The raid's overall DPS was pretty low - mine being a pitiful 1,900, need more heroics! - but we managed to down the Stone Watcher before his enrage triggered, and with only one death.  I quickly grabbed my Emblems of Heroism and glanced at the item drops to see a piece of leather had dropped and I was the only Rogue in the raid!  Darn, serves me right for checking the armor class instead of the name.  I guess everything wasn't silk. Despite the lack of loot (can't expect epics everyday) my hour of WoW served its purpose.  I got to relax, joke with friends, meet some new people, get asked to join a guild and take out some bad guys.  With just shy of an hour played, my mood had gone from sour to chipper as I headed off to bed.  I <3 video games.

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Many moons ago, Bastosa and I discussed how and who we planned on getting to 80. Back then I figured I would simply keep healing my way up to level 80, pushing my priest as my main toon. While things started out that way initially, Solidsamm has returned to the forefront. After Mutilate's “from behind” requirement was removed, I jumped at the chance to try the new dagger spec that would not force me to be behind my target at all times. The freshness that came with the conversion is exactly the reason I returned my angry Gnome to main status.

There are two reasons why I knew I was going to be hooked on World of Warcraft when it was released in late 2004. First off, I have loved the WarCraft universe since I first entered it via WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness. Secondly, and probably most important, was Blizzard's reputation. The company should just make their tagline “We don't make bad video games.” While a game can have the best story ever, it'll still suck if the gameplay isn't there to back it up, enter Wrath of the Lich King.

I had a pipedream that I would level mostly through instances, but without a close friend who's main is a healer, that is pretty hard to accomplish these days. Lucky for me the quests in Wrath of the Lich King have diverse goals, interesting lore, and an attachment to the zones that keeps me interested. While grinding via quests may not be the best XP/hour (that still goes to good old fashioned grinding), it is incredibly less mind-numbing. I will save that process for leveling my fishing.

Now that many of you are well on your way, or already 80, who and how did you get there? Did you roll that Death Knight and start from level 55 or abandon that idea and go with one of your level 70s? While I have done some instances, I generally haven't gone back to them after finishing their quests. How about you?

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As we all wait for Wrath of the Lich King, I've been doing a lot of achievement grinding. It gives me something to do other than leveling alts, and I finally got my Loremaster of Kalimdor achievement the other day. In order to complete it, I ended up having to do a few raid quests along with some rarely done quests in Silithus. I also had to nearly complete the Raene's Cleansing quest line in Ashenvale, which provided me with the awesome Rod of Transformation to turn me into a furblog. Luckily, I was able to stop at the final step and keep the rod, allowing me to transform into a furblog whenever I please. While grinding out the quests for this achievement, I've of course run accross a few low level horde who I would sometimes leave alone, but sometimes I would just have to one shot them. There's just something fun about running by, tossing an Earth Shock and maybe a Stormstrike, killing a player without breaking stride. If they're in my way again, they'll probably be scared that I might do it again. Hopefully that stops them from stealing my quest objectives. Now, Bastosa has wondered about the joy of ganking, and doesn't see the fun in killing low level members of the enemy faction, but I do. Part of it is revenge. I can't count the number of times I've been killed by horde because I was not on an even playing field with them. Either I'm half dead from killing mobs or 10 levels lower than the enemy, and I find myself dead. Of course, I won't waste my time camping some level 30 undead warlock, but if I happen to see one, I will usually kill them. If I happen to see them again, I may kill them again. If you're on a PvP server, that's what you can expect. I'm not out to ruin anybody's night, but to give you the experience of a PvP server. I dealt with it, so you can deal with it. While I won't just camp anybody unless they've done something to deserve it, such as corpse camping me, I can think of a few easy solutions. Here are a few of the things I like to do if I get camped. Get your friends. Especially during early WotLK leveling, lots of your friends will likely be in the area and willing to help. While you're at it, group up and blast through some quests together. A group is much less likely to get ganked than a lonely player. Go somewhere else. You can usually find another place to level. There are a lot of areas and subzones and more quests than you'd ever need to level. Move on to the next area and come back later. Log on an alt (or a main). Grab your other characters and get some work done on them. Or, if you're leveling an alt, take your main and do some dailies. Maybe play the Auction House game for a while. You probably won't get killed in the AH unless there's some sort of plague going around. Take a break. Make a sandwich, grab a drink, or get some errands done. While you're out getting things done, your campers are waiting for you to come back with no idea that you've logged out, balanced your checkbook, and beaten Little Big Planet. What are all of your strategies for avoiding gankers? Are you looking forward to ganking in Northrend? How often do you kill the lowbies that happen to be in your way?

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My fellow blogger Bastosa recently posted a nice article on the grind to level 80. It will be interesting to see how well the 5-man instancing team sticks together. From my previous experiences, running with a group of friends over and over caused us to become a bit competitive.   One evening, we called it a night after a few productive hours of grinding XP.   Well, we woke up to see that our Mage had stayed up all night to get three levels higher.  It wouldn't have been the end of the world if he wasn't six levels higher than the lowest person, and refused to come back and help us. The Mage's overly competitive nature basically killed our group. Bastosa's logic – that a group leveling together in instances should create skilled raiders down the road - is sound nonetheless and I hope it works out for them. For me, I will be going the same route as a few of the commentators, questing and exploration. Here is the major difference though, I will be leveling my newly acquired level 59.99 Priest instead of my faithful Rogue. Thanks to the Refer-A-Friend benefits, my buddy and I managed to level up a new set of alts to level 59.99 in under three days playtime. For the moment, we are both enjoying our never-before-played class and do not feel like stopping. By the time Wrath of the Lich King drops on November 13th, my new Priest should be 70.  At that time I hope to have enough experience under my belt as a healer – yes, also my first healbot - to begin healing in all of the new 5-man instances. Heck, if all goes well and I ding 70 with time to spare, I will probably start a tank on that server.  People always need a tank.  We have to burn those extras hand me down levels somehow. This isn't to say that I am abandoning my Rogue. I have been roguing since day 1 and have no intention of stopping. Yes, there have been ups and down through that time. Rogues were overpowered to begin with, causing us to be nerfed left and right. C'Thun was incredibly annoying as a dagger Rogue.  Gruul is just annoying, and I still have little group utility (that will change with the Echoes of Doom patch). It would be nice to say that I will try to co-level the characters on my main server.  Trading back and forth to get the most benefit from Rested XP, but honestly, that is just a pipe dream. So what about you guys? Sticking with your main? Taking this opportunity to switch your main? Re-rolling Death Knight?  Or experiencing the new content with an alt first? Bastosa, best of luck to you and your group. Be sure to update us when you ding level 75. I can't wait to do the Heigan dance again – the pull to him...not so much.

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So you have finally hit level 70 on your alt, or perhaps it is your main.  As you begin to run the 5-man content while trying to get into Karazhan and doing PvP in between it dawns on you that most of your gear lacks enchantments.  Whatever shall you do? Most players will quickly look-up what materials are required for class-appropriate enchantments, only to be shocked or annoyed at how much the enchantments will cost them.  For this discussion we will focus on weapon enchants, generally the most expensive and often the most important. Being a melee class character - a Rogue to be exact - Mongoose is the best enchantment, its tooltip reads "to occasionally increase Agility by 120 and attack speed slightly."  Yum.  But here's the catch, the materials are expensive, costing:

• 6 x Void Crystal
• 10 x Large Prismatic Shard
• 8 x Greater Planar Essence
• 40 x Arcane Dust

Not to mention the fact that you have to find someone to do this for you, which may cost you a little extra. Well maybe Mongoose is a bit nuts, after all you did just hit 70 and are likely to replace your gear soon.  So how about Executioner which will allow you "to occasionally ignore 840 of your enemy's armor."  Not to shabby in this day where bear tanks easily have over 16,000 armor.  Materials for this one?  Not much different:

• 6 x Void Crystal
• 10 x Large Prismatic Shard
• 6 x Greater Planar Essence ( - 2 GPE)
• 30 x Arcane Dust (-10 AD)
• 3 x Elixir of Major Strength (+3 Elixirs)

This begs the question, to enchant or not to enchant? The benefits of such should be readily obvious, you get a boost in selected stats but at what cost?  A character in my predicament, just hit 70 with some basic Karazhan and PvP gear, will easily replace much of their gear in a the coming weeks.  So should they waste all of those mats on a high end enchant?  Probably not and the drawbacks aren't horrible. Lower stats mean lower DPS in my case, or lower healing or crappier tanking in other cases, but not matter what the reduction is by an incredibly small percentage.  Of course, we cannot forget the endless ridicule that may ensue fromguildmates or persons in your party.  Avoiding the constant teasing could make the decision for you. There is one other route, a compromise of sorts.  Instead of getting a high end enchant like Mongoose or Executioner on my Emerald Ripper - an item easily replaced - I will get a medium grade enchant.  Therefore I have SOMETHING which will help me avoid some ridicule while gaining SOME stats but not "wasting" obtuse amounts of gold on mats.  One could argue that I should just save that gold to put into the high end enchant later, but then we get into a vicious cycle and I hate those.  As for my Merciless Gladiator's Shiv?  Well, it won't be replaced nearly as quickly as the Ripper, so Executioner it is. This was my first post here at ProjectLore.com.  Was it good for you?

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So, as most of you know from my older post about my alt I'm currently leveling a Druid. From the comments I've tried a bunch of stuff and I'm having a bit more fun, so thanks everyone! That said, I'm now spec'd balance. I know, I know, but it's a change from my Rogue so I'm really enjoying it. Recently though, I was questing in the lovely Redridge Mountains, and I got a random whisper from someone asking for my help with a 26 Elite. "Ok," I said, and I headed over. We had a full group of 5 and there wasn't a tank. So I did what any good level 27 Druid would do and *bam* bear form, growl, swipe. I have to say, it was almost a life changing experience. After such a long time trying with all my abilities to avoid aggro, it was so freeing to want it for a change. And not having the guy leave me to kill a healer was so satisfying... I think I'm going to be a Bear Tank! - Dr Dark

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How do you choose your professions? If you just want to make money, clearly there is a general consensus that taking a couple of gathering professions such as mining and skinning would be best. Just head out for a little while, gather up some materials, and sell them. No sinking money into leveling, no rare recipes to find, no investing in mats to make something and hoping it sells. However, if you want to make your character as effective as possible in battles, it will probably cost you a bit of cash. All of the crafting professions have a few items that can only be used by characters with the right profession, but some are better than others. A couple of the nice ones are engineering for goggles, leatherworking for drums, enchanting for ring enchants, and alchemy and jewelcrafting for trinkets. Let's say you decide ring enchants and drums are best to make your character top the dps charts. How are you going to make that profit? Doing enchants and making armor kits will only make you so much money, especially if you have to buy mats. So, now you have to make an alt in order to provide mats and make a little more money. But don't you want to make your alt as uber as your main? I guess that's just something you'll have to decide for yourself.

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So I've been leveling an alt. Now I will say that I have a lot of alts. Mostly from starting a character before I had a 70 and just losing interest before they were done. My first character was a Troll Hunter. I got her to 31 before the Burning Crusade... Well then of course we all had to roll Draenei, so I started a Paladin. After getting him to level 52 I realized I just didn't like Pally that much. I never wanted to Tank, I hate healing, and the melee DPS just wasn't kicking it. So I started what was to become my main, a Night Elf Rogue! Now that I have a full level 70 I've been wanting to level another. So I started a Druid... but I hate leveling again! So where is the fun? Is the fun seeing how fast I can level? Maybe trying to find quests I missed on my first go? I just don't know. So please if you have an opinion on how to level an alt without gouging your eyes out with boredom... comment here and let me know. - Dr Dark

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