/dev/games 08 Sep 2008 01:12 pm
Dear Warcraft Diary (Part Thirteen)
Another week has gone by, and tons more content was experienced, so hurray.
I’ve spent the better part of the last week trying to raise the 550 Gold that Homp will need in order to actually ride one of those epic Zhevra’s that I got from the Refer-a-Friend system. Mostly been playing the auction house (”buy-low-sell-high-buy-low-sell-high” is my mantra these days) and gathering leather and ore. I should have enough money by the end of the day, so that’s totally awesome. Homp is currently 98% to 62. Hopefully that gives you some insight into exactly how fast RAF makes leveling from 1-60, and how slow leveling 60-70 can be (fortunately getting sped up when patch 3.02 hits!). The good news is she has finally replaced all of her pre-Outlands gear (thanks Silvio for running me through those quest chains for the last 3 pieces I needed). The bad news is that every gear upgrade now seems kind of insignificant.
I’ve had some real fun having Homp take lower level guys from the casual group through instances. I escorted Juls through the Stockade (by the way, I will never return to that instance; it’s so bland and there didn’t seem to be any gear or money present) and the Scarlet Monastery Library, both of which got him tons of XP and me some decent stuff to disenchant or sell. Also ran Jack and Juls through Gnomeregan (a.k.a. Gnomeregeddon) which was my first time through there. I’m glad I went, because I think it’s my favorite location in the game at this point.
Jess and I got our sub-20 pairing of Hunter+Paladin to 30 on Saturday and got some sweet mounts to show for it. I never thought we’d get that far, and it’s great to see our characters having a good time riding around. Looking forward to hitting up Stranglethorn with her, a.k.a. Kill Quest Party Time.
Jack stumbled upon Battlegrounds last night and his experience there made me desperately want to play along with him. But I no longer had any characters in their 20s that could play with him… Except! The first character I ever played (a dwarf priest) was on this server after a free move from when Burning Crusade came out. His gear was terrible ( a belt with +Fire damage? I must have thought that boosted wand damage as well? Or that priests had fire spells?) and he was only level 20… And his name was so stupid… But Jess’ character had all these stored Refer-a-Friend levels saved up! So I autoleveled him from 20-29, bought him some cheap gear on the auction house, respecced Shadow (he was Holy of all inexcusable specs), and trained him up. I also paid for a name change and I think it was worth every damn penny. I dubbed him “Hugbringer,” which when teamed up with Jack’s gnome warlock Doomsnuggler you can’t avoid seeing our many thousands of enemies cowering and crying and clawing at the exit (it also helps that both of them have Fear). So then Jack and I went and played a bunch of Battlegrounds and it was pretty fun! It made WoW seem more like an actual video game, for one thing. For another, we checked out the level 60 and 70 gear PVP reward weapon models and I knew, in my heart, that I had to play tons of Battlegrounds so that I might rock that sweet stuff.
Plus there’s the free epic mount to consider. And the fact that priests and shamans will be in extremely high demand when Wrath comes out (since there will suddenly be a glut of Tanks in the form of Death Knights, which should really unbalance the scales as far as tanks and healers go). I might just see Hugbringer going all the way (well, with free levels).
