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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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Recruit-a-Friend? Recruit-a-Myself!

Posted on August 18, 2008 by Megalis | 5 Comments

A few months back, someone in our guild had invited a friend (a fully experienced raider) to roll a character on our server and join us in our raiding escapades.  This friend had two accounts, rolled a Shaman and a Priest, and leveled them simultaneously in our guild.

It was neat to see his two characters progressing at the same time. I imagined how satisfying it must have been when he finally dinged 70, to have more or less leveled a Shaman and gotten a free 70 Priest out of the deal.

I had been pondering the fun and challenge of opening a second account and dual-boxing with some new toons for a good while.  Whenever I could I pestered him for advice. I wanted to know what sort of setup he used to play two characters, how he handled looting quest items for both of them, how much extra work it was to have a character constantly on follow behind you, etc.

Then BAMF!  Blizzard drops the Recruit-a-Friend promotion on us.  Invite a friend to start a trial account and if they upgrade to a full-access account, you get cool stuff.  When they pay for their first month, you get a month of game time free.  When they pay for their second month, you get an exclusive Zhevra Mount.

But even better in my opinion, and regardless of how much game time the recruited friend pays for, is that you get triple experience when grouped with them.  AND for every two levels that a recruited character earns, they can grant a free level to a lower level character on the account that recruited them! How the hell can I say no to that!?

I did some digging around to see if I was allowed to refer myself or if I had to do it covertly.  Well, along with the official Blizzard FAQ, I found this amazing Recruit-a-Friend - Ultimate FAQ on the forums from Vrakthris.  I read every detail and decided that everything looked to be in my favor and I had nothing to lose but time.

I sent out the invite to myself (the same email address that my primary account was already setup with) and opened the trial account under the same exact name and billing details.  I purchased my WoW key online, then upgraded my account to The Burning Crusade. I then copied my entire “World of Warcraft” install folder to “World of Warcraft Two” and made a start menu shortcut to the copied executable.

I already had a level 10 Hunter that I had started under my primary account a few days earlier.  I decided that I would stick with him and roll a (Resto) Shaman to cruise around with him and his pet and keep everyone’s health topped off and free from poisons and diseases.  Of course the totems are nice to have around as well.

I loaded up my two instances of WoW, one on each of my monitors in windowed mode, pointed Firefox at Jame’s Horde Leveling Guide (free, not a paid link) and got to work.  It took me a good three days to really get the hang of it.  And I’m still tweaking things as I go.

So that was 8 days ago I guess and my Hunter and Shaman are now level 35 and moving fast. Factoring in the time it took me to get my macros/keyclone software/system crashes all ironed out, I probably realistically have about 20 hours of played time in them.  And that is with me maintaining the primary professions on both characters and stopping to buy greens from the auction house.  And don’t forget about the ridiculous quest chains that Shamans must do to get their totems.  And of course my hunter has to have just the right pet.

I’ve had to skip huge chunks of my leveling guide because of the bonus experience.  I bought a blue polearm for my hunter at level 20 and two hours later it was replaced by superior green gear.

Anyway, when those two hit level 60 and the Refer-a-Friend bonus no longer applies, I’m going to grant my Shaman’s levels to my level 33 Warlock.  So I’ll have a 60 Hunter, 60 Shaman and 60 Warlock.

And then?

After that’s done I’m going to roll a Priest to tag along with my level 9 Rogue and level them to 60.  Then I’ll get my 21 Mage up to 30 on his own and use the “Grant a level” program to make him 60 as well.

By that time, WotLK should be mere weeks away and I’ll have several options to look forward to leveling to 80.  Along with my Druid as my main of course.

Unless I still have time to spare.  In which case I still need a Paladin and a Warrior…

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