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… as per the official World of Warcraft website.

There is going to be a good deal of excitement from folks about this.  People who innocently rolled their first characters on PvE servers, only to find out later on at 70 when they decided that they loved raiding, that most of the top raiding guilds are on PvP servers.

On the other hand it will undoubtedly create a huge uproar from the hardcore folks who put in the extra time and effort to level their characters on PvP servers.  And let me tell you - as someone who leveled my first character on a PvP server - it can be incredibly frustrating and take a lot longer.  You also gain a sense of pride for having done so and have no problem at all referring to PvE servers as “care bear” servers.

For those players, seeing the droves of incoming newly 70 PvE wimps with zero honorable kills transferring to their servers in quest greens is going to be maddening to say the least.

I went the other way though.  I got tired of the ganking and the PvP braggarts on Lightninghoof.  I spent most of my time on the edge of a paid character transfer.  Then I eventually just rerolled on a PvE server with some friends and coworkers.

Oddly enough, the PvP braggarts are even worse here on Shandris.  But I get a kick out of it because what do these people know about PvP?  This is a care bear server!  Try getting a quest done or even just getting to the front door at any raid instance when you can’t unflag and hide somewhere for five minutes. If you haven’t experienced it, trust me. It sucks.

I always wondered though, why would Blizzard not allow PvE to PvP transfers?  They’re missing out on a ton of income by not allowing it. I mean, that does seem to show that Blizzard really had the interest of the players in mind. Like they thought that the PvP server players deserved the honor of being the only ones on those servers.  If you wanted to play on a PvP server, you had to earn it.

And that is why I believe they’ve made this change now.  Money.  Imagine the spike in their bank account when this went live.

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Sorry folks, I forgot for a few days that I had a blog.

Work continues to be hectic after the move. Much of the cubicle sections that we trailored to Alabama and hauled up the stairs have now had to be taken back out and placed in storage.  Double work for no results.  Good stuff.

Leveling continues with Recruit-a-Friend Team 2.  With some tweaks.

Rapid the rogue and Important the priest have reached level 30. Important has 225 Enchanting.  Maxed out until he’s level 35. Total played time so far is 12 hours. Pretty awesome I think.

After playing the first 30 levels with them however, I’ve decided to put in Asplode the Mage as a pinch hitter for Rapid. Having a squishy priest follow around a melee class who relies heavily on stealth to be effective just isn’t a good situation.

Granted, it would be an amazing leveling team if they were being played by two people instead of just me.  But I simply can’t take the time to switch to the preist, cancel his follow command, sneak up with the rogue and get all stabby, then switch back to the priest to get him in range for heals and put him on follow again, then switch back to the rogue to continue DPS. Over and over again.

I imagine it will be much more fun to round up a bunch of quest mobs and do the typical frost mage kiting bit to burn them all down while getting priest heals, then run around and collect the loot.

So. Given that. I’ve been running the mage around on follow with Strange the shaman. Strange goes around one-shotting stuff for a while and generally just cleaning out an area, then Asplode follows up collecting the free-for-all loot while Strange regens his mana.  It makes for easy times.  None of that “running back across half the map to my corpse and wasting five precious minutes because I accidentally got two adds” crap.

Asplode is level 26 now.  When he reaches 28 I’ll grant him the two extra levels that Strange has available to give, then team him up with Important so he can start earning triple experience and Rapid will be put on the shelf for a few weeks. Asplode was originally to be my “Grant a level” target with the levels that Important is earning.  With the team change that means that Rapid will be recieving those levels instead once Important has reached level 60.

Sunday was a 3/4 clear of Tempest Keep. I snagged an extra Pauldrons of the Vanquished Defender token from Void Reaver and turned it in for a pair of Merciless Gladiator’s Kodohide Spaulders. I was also given the Ethereum Life-Staff from Solarian as nobody else wanted it. Two very nice additions to my healing set.

And speaking of my healing set, I should really take a few moments and try it all on to see where I stand on bonus healing.  Last I checked, without any gems or enchants (which I still haven’t gotten), I was sitting at a bit over 1100.  With the new items I’ve gotten since then and some gem/enchant love, I’d be willing to say I’m easily at the 1500 mark.

Also, happy Harvest Festival everyone!

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Watch out Northern Alabama

Posted on September 4, 2008 by Megalis | No Comments

I’m here.

I’ve had a few days to settle in. Get used to the commute to and from work (1/5 the distance of my old commute in Florida). Check out the local mall. Sample the local cuisine.  Etc.

I’ve been back and forth to Florida so much over the past couple of weeks that I’ve only officially spent like four whole days here in Alabama.  It’s hard to make the judgement call this early so I won’t. I’m just here for now taking it all in.  We shall see.

Recruit-A-Friend Team 1 (Horrible/Strange) has completed their run to 60.  I ran to Outland immediately upon hitting 58 in Eastern Plaguelands.  Well, honestly I was about 40-50% into level 58 from extra quests I had completed.  Anyway.  It only took 6 quests in Outland to get the team to 60 from that point.  Crazy. This also means that my lowbie Warlock, Overtime is now level 60 as well.  And since he was already 33 before I granted him any levels, and you can grant a total of 29 levels, that leaves 2 extra levels to grant to someone else.

What’s that you say?  What am I planning next?

How about Rogue/Priest?

Yep.  Recruit-A-Friend Team 2 consists of Rapid the Undead Rogue, and Important the Undead Priest.  And when they have reached level 60 I’ll take a short break to level my Blood Elf Mage, Asplode to 29. Then grant him the 2 spare levels from my Shaman and the other 29 from my new Priest.

At this point I’ll have 2 level 60s that I barely know how to play, 2 that I only vaguely understand and 2 more that I should know fairly well.

The 2 that get the free levels to 60 (Warlock/Mage) will be a mystery to me when I start playing them again. I’ll take them to a trainer and spend 100g or so training all of those new spells, then try and figure out the most logical place for them on my hotbars.  Then I have to scrape together some gear for them (I already vendored off all of the warlocks level 30 gear and haven’t even begun to start shopping for level 60 gear to put on him).

The Shaman and Priest (the two secondary ‘healbot’ type characters who follow the Hunter and Rogue respectively) I will only have a moderate understanding of. I will have played them to some extent all the way from 1 to 60 so I won’t be as lost as with the Warlock and Mage. However, with triple experience you only get 1/3 of the practice time with a character to begin with.  Add on top of that the fact that they are on auto-follow the whole time with some macros to help out their travelling companions with healing and a tiny extra bit of damage, and you can see why I won’t really know how to play them.

The Hunter and the Rogue I should be able to more or less play like a typical newb who just hit 60.  I’ll be a bit behind the curve with the whole ‘1/3 of the usual played time’ thing, but I think I can manage.

And when that is all said and done.  If there is enough time left on the 90 day Recruit-A-Friend period.  I may. JUST may. level a Warrior/Paladin combo.

But that is REALLY pushing it.  I mean, I do need to eat/sleep/socialize/go outside once in a while. Plus I have that whole day job that pays for my two WoW accounts and internet connection and such.

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Multiboxing = Cheating?

Posted on September 3, 2008 by Megalis | 8 Comments

As Recruit-A-Friend Team 1 stood in the Blasted Lands at level 58 - directly in front of the Dark Portal - anticipating their journey into Outland and their last two levels of Recruit-A-Friend triple experience goodness (really I was tweaking some settings in X-Perl), another level 58 player trotted past on his mount.

Then he stopped.

And he turned around and came back to size up my team.

And he said “doubling up huh”.

And then he called me a “cheating fuck” and hopped on through the big green portal.

I immediately submitted a ticket to a GM about this and continued on into Outland.

A few minutes later I felt better of it and abandoned the ticket before it got a response.  I figured it would go like this:

  1. I speak with a GM who assures me that multiboxing is not cheating.  I’ve already done plenty of research into that topic as the last thing I want is to not be able to play WoW because I cheated.
  2. Multiboxing hater gets a 24 hour ban for swearing at me.
  3. Multiboxing hater is forced to play Call of Duty 4 on his Playstation tomorrow night.
  4. Multiboxing hater comes back from his 24 hour ban and is even meaner and more hateful to someone else than he was to me, taking out his post-ban aggression on some poor innocent soul(s).

Instead, I just let him go about his business questing in Hellfire Peninsula. 30 minutes later I see him in Thrallmar - still level 58 - as I’m logging out my two level 60 characters.

One thing I’ve learned in life is that bad people punish themselves. The more you try and punish them, the more they’re just going to take it out on their next victim. Just try and stay out of their way and grin at them whenever you can. It confuses and infuriates them far more than any silly punishment.

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