Pushing towards 85

I'm working my way through Vash'jir on Aretae, and frankly, I'm surprised that I've come this far.

My original plan was to just level Aretae far enough to farm junk boxes so I could use them to grind out Ravenholdt rep for Aetherna's Insane in the Membrane achievement. Since I didn't have a character with inscription to help with the Darkmoon Faire reputation grind, I figured that I'd go ahead and make him a scribe as well, and so kill two birds with one stone.

So, yeah... get him to level 75, level up Inscription until I could crank out Darkmoon cards of destruction, and that would be it, right?

So. Why do I find myself under the sea, running around and leveling all the way to 82, with level 85 fast approaching?

Honestly?

Being sneaky is fun.

I can't see myself taking Aretae into any PvE content, unless it's as part of a guild run with folks who are willing to put up with my absolute n00bness. I've really got no interest in a combat or assassination spec, so he's going to stay subtlety for a good long while. Given that, I think he's always going to be a lone wolf type (how appropriate!) - but there's a lot for a lone wolf to do at level 85. Like, maybe hang out in Tol Barad and stun-lock healers.

Maybe. Like I said, being sneaky is fun.

Music Monday: "Let me go, boys; let me go, boys; let me go down in the mud where the rivers all run dry..."

Distracted

After running through the Rise of the Zandalari quest chain on Aeth, I found myself a bit distracted. While everyone else has been assaulting Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub, Aeth, Laen, and my other toons have been sitting more or less idle while I took Aretae on a tour of Azeroth.

Last Monday, he was level 35.

As of last night, he's level 60.

Total play time: about 25 hours.

Yowza.

He's got +35% to XP from heirloom items, +10% from guild perks, for a total of +45% experience... and that's before counting in the advantage of rested experience gains.

Heirloom items with decent enchantments means that he can hack through just about any mobs that might get in his way. Last night, in Hellfire Peninsula, as a level 58 rogue, I was able to survive several encounters with 2-3 level 60+ mobs. It wasn't pretty, and at times I ended the fight on the ragged end with only a few hundred health, but it was certainly doable.

While leveling him, it was a real struggle to keep him in level-appropriate zones. He was gaining experience so quickly that I think the only zones he actually completed were the Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes quest lines. Those really only got completed because it was easier to do the final few quests rather than to move on to the next zone. In most cases, as soon as the quests in a zone turned green, I abandoned them and left for the next most difficult zone I could find.

My only complaint through this process is that I wish Blizzard would lower the "required level" for a lot of quests. At one point, I left the Burning Steppes to hit the Swamp of Sorrows, thinking "Well, if I can go through level-appropriate mobs like a hot knife through butter, I obviously need more challenging opponents." Turns out that the Swamp had plenty of XP for a budding herbalist, thank you very much, but aside from that... nada. At level 50, I was just shy of being able to accept any quests in the zone. So I did some herbing, returned to the Steppes to complete the quests there, and then pretty much ignored the Swamp except for a brief stop-over on my way to the Blasted Lands.

Level 58 to 60 were done in Hellfire Peninsula, where - thankfully! - you can still get a decent challenge. The mobs were tough, but not too tough, and plentiful enough that it felt dangerous. I think I used Vanish to extricate myself from sticky situations more often last night than I did during the entirety of the leveling process up to 58. I also found myself routinely using cooldowns that were afterthoughts at best in the Old World content.

Another thing that I found refreshing about Outland is that the quests chains are much, much, much less linear than the new Old World content. The "I know where all the quests are, run around and pick up everything, then circle the map slaughtering everything that moves" strategy still works quite well here.

Which gave me pause. There's a real difference in questing from BC to Wrath to Cata. Personally, I think that I'm leaning towards the idea that Wrath questing (minus the phasing snafus) was the most successful model. We'll see how things work out with the Firelands in 4.2, where it looks like Blizzard is trying to take some of the best questing elements of BC, Wrath and Cata and mix them all together in a (hopefully!) wonderful stew.

I'm thinking about putting together some quest graphs for a few zones, similar to what Cynwise did for battlegrounds - an abstract representation of quests, and how they relate to one another. I suspect that BC zones will show a quest graph like an aromatic ring structure - lots of core quest hubs immediately available, with short chains leading off of them. In Wrath zones, I'd expect something similar, except with the occasional "side chain" from one hub leading off to and opening up another. Cata zones feel like they would end up being a single long chain of linked quests, with short stubs of "side quests' here and there.

I'm interested in seeing how many "join points" there are in quest chains. There are a few that I know of - mostly breadcrumb quests in BC and Wrath, that occur at the end of other quest chains and point you towards another hub. You can get those quests before you get the breadcrumbs, though, so while they're "linked" in a way, the link isn't a strong one. So instead of a linear march through content, you end up with a web of quests, which gives you the ability to pick your way through the content in a way that's suitable to you.

I'm going to have to think on this a bit more. It's an interesting problem - how do you tell a story in a non-linear fashion? Hmm. More to follow, unless, you know, I get distracted again.

Music Monday: "Run Away", by The Hollow, who have an interesting 3 Doors Down sort of sound to them. Bonus points to you if you can explain the relationship between the band and SF/Horror writer F. Paul Wilson...

Bourée

Lots of achievements this weekend, thanks to guild runs of Tempest Keep and 10-man Ulduar. I'm impressed with Ulduar - there's a couple of boss encounters that are trivial in Cataclysm raiding gear, sure. There are others (Freya, for example) that are still more "coordination checks" than "gear checks". No matter how hard you hit, if you don't know the fight and work together, you're not going to succeed.

Dinked around on Aretae for a bit, getting him to level 35... at which point I moved him to the Western Plaguelands. I'm looking forward to doing the EPL quest chains again, this time with a level-appropriate (albeit overpowered-in-enchanted BoA items) character.

Playing a rogue is a different experience. I definitely enjoy the solo play style - sneaking, sneaking, sneaking is fun. I'm thinking about respecing from Combat into Subtlety just because I like the sneaky, more meditative aspect of the class so much. I just can't see how that contributes to team play, though. So I somehow doubt I'll ever take him into a dungeon.

As combat, my twitch reflexes just aren't there, and playing a combat rogue seems to be all twitch reflexes. Maybe I'll have an "ah-ha!" moment and The Ideal Priority Rotation will crystallize in my mind, but for now, I still feel like I'm mashing buttons and watching things die. I'm actually hoping playing in a more level-appropriate area will force me to think a bit more about what I'm doing instead of depending on his BoA Items of L33tne55 to carry me through fights.

Music monday... Ian Anderson, master of the flute, playing a duet with mission commander Cady Coleman. In spaaaaaaace!

I love living in the future.

Hope

I queued for a random Heroic dungeon on Aeth last night, and got SFK - not my favorite dungeon, by far, though not the worst out there. Buff, pull, and... less than 30 minutes later, we were done.

No wipes.

One death due to distraction IRL.

Most of the blues ended up sharded.

As a whole, the group made use of what CC we had, popped cooldowns and trinkets at the right time, focused fire in the right ways, and generally just managed to do the right thing for the majority of the time in the dungeon.

All in all - a very nice run.

That's not an isolated incident, either. The LFD groups I've been in recently have generally been pretty good. There's still the occasional gem of a group, if by gem you mean "steaming pile of carp", but other than that, I've pretty much been denying Sturgeon his due.

What does this mean? Beats me. Maybe I'm just lucky, and my next half-dozen times in the queue will leave me pulling my hair out. Maybe all the brain-dead l33ter-than-thou players have gone off to farm Tol Barad or play Rift or something else, leaving behind only the rational, cooperative players. Who knows?

Whatever it is, I've been enjoying it lately, and I hope it continues. My random dungeon runs haven't been quiet, by any stretch of the imagination. I like that. The fact that most dungeons still require at least a modicum of communication helps remind you that your fellow players are, well, players. Even when they're not a friendly chatter-fest, there's at least the occasional lol or comment to keep the run from feeling dead.

I'm almost finished grinding out Gileas reputation for Aeth, though. I'll keep running dungeons with her after that to work on getting the next nice piece of valor gear... but I'm thinking that maybe it's time let Laenshield shake the dust off of his boots and give healing some regular dungeons a try...

Closing in on the United Nations

Exalted with the Earthen Ring on Aetherna. That's 47 exalted reputations!

Next up: Gilneas, along with some other work on The Violet Eye. The bosses in Karazhan are challenging as an arcane mage, but doable. The reputation calculator at wowjuju tells me that 5 clears of Kara would be enough to get Aeth to exalted... since I can't manage a full clear solo, figure on maybe another 7-8 solo Kara runs.

Some other reps that remain to be ground (grinded?) are:

Lich King Factions

• The Ashen Verdict. Friendly, 3998/6000. Going to have to see about joining some of the ICC runs I've seen advertised in /trade to pick up this reputation.

Burning Crusade Factions

• Ashtongue Deathsworn. Friendly, 3263/6000. Black Temple time!
• The Scale of the Sands. Neutral, 0/3000. Only available option is the Mount Hyjal raid in CoT.

Classic Factions

• Darkmoon Faire. Friendly, 2210/6000. Advancing reputation here is only possible via Darkmoon Deck hand-ins, requiring about 100 of those to hit exalted. Urgh.
• Hydraxian Waterlords. Friendly, 2379/6000. I could kill 700 elementals to get to honored, but from there, my only option is to clear Molten Core something like 20 times to reach exalted. Double urgh.
• Brood of Nozdormu. Hated, 31861/36000. Whoo. Ahn'Quiraj, over and over and over. There are a number of repeatable quests that give rep here, though, so it's not nearly as daunting as it may seem at first.
• Ravenholdt. Honored, 11999/12000. Requires... 255 junk boxes? Huh. Easier than I thought it might be. I may be able to buy up some heavy junkboxes here and make a decent sized dent in the remaining reputation.
• Bloodsail Buccaneers. Hated, 10025/36000. Yeah, I think I'll do this one last.

PvP Factions

• Silverwing Sentinels. Neutral, 192/3000. Capture the flag in WSG something like a thousand times. No thanks.
• Stormpike Guard. Friendly, 1056/6000. Looks like something like 30+ AV battles, which sounds a whole lot more doable.
• The League of Arathor. Neutral, 341/3000. Arathi Basin over and over and over and... you get the idea.

So. I know that I can solo Kara on Aeth, at least in part. I'll have to see how well she can handle the ruins of Ahn'Quiraj solo - that may be doable, at least in part. Same for trash in Molten Core, if not the bosses. Ravenholdt may be doable simply by purchasing the repeatable quest turn-in items. After that, I'm looking at finding or organizing runs of ICC, Black Temple, Mount Hyjal, and other raids for reputation.

Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on...

Taking it Easy

Not much activity over the weekend, as my wife and I were spending time in each other's company as part of a marriage conference. While teh phat lewtz are quite nice, they really don't hold a candle to spending a weekend with the love of my life. Hence today's song for Music Monday.

Even despite that, though, what play time I did get allowed me to pick up a couple of new achievements on Aeth. A couple of heroic dungeons (Stonecore, Throne of the Tides), Rotten to the Core, exalted with the Ramkahen, One Hump or Two, and the Straw that Broke The Camel's Back.

Oh, and Lil' Game Hunter and Expert in Archaeology.

So. Um. Actually, quite a bit got done, I guess. Enough to push me to #4 in the guild ranking for achievement points. Not that I pay attention to that or anything, though. Or that I'm gunning for the #3 spot or anything like that.

Not at all!

Getting in the Mood

For PvP, of course.

Well, what did you think I meant?

"You can run on for a long time, run on for a long time, run on for a long time..."

Learn more at the WoW Wiki

Storybook Love

This is for the woman who, 19 years ago, agreed to share my life. I doubt that she ever anticipated that being my wife would someday include lying in bed, making snarky comments about my character's shoulders while watching me defeat internet dragons. There's a thousand other things that have happened in our life together that neither one of us ever anticipated, though, so all things considered, what's a few dorky shoulder pieces and a couple of internet dragons between friends and lovers?

Shari - my princess, my queen, my friend - thank you for your tolerance, your patience, and all our years together. You, my love, are made of win.

The Agony of Defeat

No, nothing so mild as loosing Tol Barad for the 173rd straight time. I wish that were all it was!

No, alas... I'm a Pittsburgh native.

Which meant that last night was both exhilarating and depressing, in just about equal measures... with, unfortunately, depressing edging out for the win. C'est la football! I was really hoping they'd get that "7 Superbowl Win" achievement, but hey, there's always next year.

Yeah, missing the seasonal achievements stinks, doesn't it?

On other fronts, Aeth is back to achievement hounding with a vengeance. She's picked up a bunch more BC era heroic dungeon achievements, and has started to get serious about grinding out her Keepers of Time rep. I've got enough gold to keep me more than happy, enough challenges (achievement-oriented or otherwise) to give me some enjoyable diversions, and enough interesting stuff on the horizon (most of the regular Cata dungeons and heroics) to keep me happy.

Yep - aside from the Halls of Origination, I've really not run any Cata dungeons yet. I'm starting to think that progression content may not be my thing, if the idea of leveling archaeology or getting The Limnologist has more appeal than wiping repeatedly on Baron Ashbury.

Yeah. Baron Ahsbury. Between Stay of Execution and Mend Rotten Flesh, that guy's a nightmare. Not because he requires interrupts - that makes the fight interesting. It's that he has three abilities that he uses that require interrupts, and missing any one of them will pretty much ruin your chances of downing him unless you can make an heroic effort (no pun intended) to recover from the setback. Heaven help you if you miss an interrupt, or mistime an interrupt, or double up on an interrupt and so miss his next "interrupt this or fail" ability.

Hmpfh. We'll see how hard he is after the 4.0.6 patch, once he forgets how to Mend Rotten Flesh.

Oh, and for music monday: this one's for Myrann, Eeler and the rest of my WoW friends who - unlike me - are rejoicing at the outcome of the game yesterday. All in all, folks, if the Steelers had to loose, I have to say I'm happy that they lost to the Packers - they're a fine, fine team, and they deserved the game.

Hopefully, we'll see a rematch next year!

Roguish

Aeth's grinding out reputations and running dailies. Laen is busy gathering cloth, generating dreamcloth and knitting some epic-level armor pieces. Life in Azeroth - minus the whole "impending doom as Deathwing prepares to destory the world" vibe, obviously - has taken on a slightly domestic feel.

Which is why I spent some time on Aretae, the Worgen rogue, this weekend. My immediate goal is to get him to level 20 so it doesn't feel like I'm crawling everywhere I go. Long term goal, obviously, is to get him to a high enough level to help Aeth get the Insane in the Membrane achievement.

Playing a low-level alt is always interesting. I'm a hero of Azeroth! I've defeated constructs of the Titans, Old Gods, and the forces of the Lich King!

And now I'm collecting corrupted crawler parts in Darkshore. Hence, today's music monday song. See? I have a reason. It's not just that I bumped into it again last week, and have had trouble erasing it from my mind since then. Nooooooo! Not at all. This is a carefully selected song designed to indicate the POV of voluntarily going from a high-level character, on top of the world, to a low-level alt clawing his way up through the ranks. Not at all an attempt to pass on a particularly insidious ear-worm to you all.

Ahem.

Aside form the whole "back to the beginning" thing, playing Aretae is a very different experience for me. Rogues are... frenetic. I feel less like I'm playing a careful, reasoned game, and more like I've walked into an arcade and jumped on one of those button-mashing fighting games.

I mean, I even have combo points and finishing moves!

I'm almost ashamed to admit that my "fighting style" with Aretae is, in fact, button mashing. Since most of the mobs in Darkshore are lower-level than he is, it really doesn't make much of a difference what abilities I use - things die amazingly quickly. I feel like some sort of whirlwind of death and destruction chewing through packs of enemies, leaving broken bodies in a growing wake of death and destruction across the land.

I die pretty often, too... but the whole "engine of controlled fury" thing really is kind of fun. I find myself thinking that maybe doing a battleground or two would be interesting. Just, you know, to see how it feels to be on the other side of a stun lock for a change.

Indentured Servitude

Today, Aeth will finally reach exalted with the Wildhammer Clan, which will finally let her get a Lightning Flash Pendant. First epic, yeah!

That still leaves her with a number of Cata factions to continue to grind rep with. Guardians of Hyjal, Ramkahen, Earthen Ring... and Baradin's Wardens.

The Wardens.

The key to the reins of the Drake of the West Wind and the Spectral Steed.

Not to mention the Stump of Time and the Insidious Staff.

Oh, yeah - and the Rustberg Gull.

If you're keeping count, that's a total cost of 625 Tol Barad Commendations.

Assuming that the Horde continues to dominate our server and hold Tol Barad nearly 100% of the time - which seems to be the case right now - Aeth can earn a maximum of 6 commendations a day via the daily quests.

That's 105 days of Tol Barad dailies.

I manage dailies about 5 days a week, so that's 21 weeks worth of dailies. Just over 5 months in Tol Barad.

Yeah, I don't have to do them. I don't need the Drake or the Steed. I probably really don't need the Stump or the Staff, either. I certainly don't need the Gull.

But I wants them... I wants them!

They're my precious.

I'm not saying that I've sold my soul. That would be... silly.

I've apparently just... rented it out for a bit, maybe.

Busy Times

This past weekend was very busy IRL... my wife and I attended a winter retreat with out church's teen group, which resulted in (a) a lot of good memories which unfortunately came with (b) a reminder that I am nowhere near to being a teenager any more. Ooof. Getting old, man. I mean, it couldn't have had anything to do with playing murderball in the snow, right? Exercise is healthy for you!

Since we were essentially incommunicado for a day and a half or so, I did something I usually don't do, and logged in on Friday morning before heading to work. I really didn't want to miss doing my JC and cooking dailies, and once I did them, I realized I was something like 36 rep away from reaching revered with my guild. Since I had managed to get my 40 exalted reputations the night before, I was thinking, OK - let's push this over the edge!

One fishing daily later, and... whoa! Am I the first person in the guild to hit revered? Must have been, because along with Aeth getting to the new level of guild rep, we got the Diplomacy and Ambassadors guild achievements. Woohoo! Very nice. I'm just bummed that nobody else in the guild was on to see it. Ah, well.

In related news, Laen managed to hit level 84 yesterday. Which meant he was able to do the intro quests for the Twilight Highlands, and unlock the vendors there. Vendors who were sooooo grateful that Laen had saved them from horrible death at the hands of the Horde, that they were willing to offer him a massive discount on their merchandise! If by "massive discount on merchandise" you mean "massive indifference, discounting that I just saved your rancid hide and your merchandise from going up in flames".

Gotta love the vendors.

In any case... Laen has access to the high-level enchanting and tailoring recipes now. In the long run, this may not make much of a difference - the cost (in terms of heavenly shards and bolts of embersilk) that these trainers charge is outrageous across the board. I'm pretty sure that you can make the case for tailoring being the most painfully expensive profession to level... well, no. On average, JC is probably the most expensive, given that (on average) it chews through something like a half-dozen green gems a week in exchange for a recipe or two. In terms of a more immediate "Holy cow, where did my money go, and why is this man smiling at me that way?" expensive, though, tailoring is definitely up there.

Even though he's got access to the Twilight Highlands trainers now, I'm going to keep pushing Laen through to 85 and beyond... got to get his reputation up to honored so that the grind to max out enchanting and tailoring count for guild achievements.

Edit: Almost forgot! Music monday... enjoy your Buffett!

Mighty Laenshield At Bat

I Started working on leveling Laenshield, my shadow/disc priest, this weekend, and frankly, the experience was very different from leveling Aetherna, my arcane mage (who got to run a couple of dungeons with some guildies... more on that in a later post).

Obviously, the Great Crush of folks experiencing the new Cataclysm content has died doen significantly. Taking Laenshield through Mount Hyjal, there were one or two places where I ran into someone else killing the same mobs I was after... but that's just what it was, someone else, not somemobofotherplayers. That was a definite plus.

Also, things seemed to go much faster this time around. Starting in Mount Hyjal, it took Laen about 4 hours or so to get to level 82 (well, 4-5 bubbles in to level 83, but who's counting?) I think you can attribute this two a couple of reasons. One, guild perks and rested XP - that's a decent bonus right there. Two, I had upgraded Laenshield's gear with a bunch of crafted Deathsilk and some random cheap crafted green. I'm sure that sporting a couple of ilvl 290+ pieces instead of the 230+ pieces that Aeth had helped make a difference.

Three... shadow priests are just OP, man. I thought Aeth was a leveling monster with her glyphed evocation allowing for a simultaneous heal/mana restore every two minutes. Woohoo!

Yeah. Compare that with "I heal myself every time I do damage, and I'm constantly doing damage. Mana restoration? Can you say 'replenishment'? How about 'shadow fiend' and 'dispersion'? I knew you could!"

When facing more than a couple of mobs, it could get dicey, of course. And while Laen was burning down mobs consistently, there was an obvious bit of "get the DoTs up" ramp-up time before they really started to suffer. Still... while Aeth has the "massive damage in short time" spot in my heart all sewn up, Laen is definitely holding strong in the "massive damage over long time" slot. Especially with those shadowy images, which are just way, way, way cool. There were times I'd DoT up a target and just run around to watch my apparitions chew the face off of a poor mob.

On the minus side, embersilk cloth is still rarer then hen's teeth. Running through Mount Hyjal in it's entirety got Laen enough cloth to... um. Make a set of shoulders? Almost? Yeah, the whole "cloth is hard to come by" meme is being ruthlessly exploited. On the plus side, though, the crafted cloth gear really is kind of awesome. So we'll call it a draw for now.

Oh, and for music Monday - here's what really has to be the PuG anthem in Cataclysm. "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right; here I am, stuck in the middle with you..."

How in the world did that happen?

Here I am, a month of so after Cataclysm came out. I've pushed Aeth to 85, and started her reputation grinds with Therazane, Wildhammer and Tol Barad Wardens. She's geared enough - barely - to qualify for running heroics, though I've not yet stepped foot in any regular dungeons.

Laenshield has been hanging out in Ironforge, buying uncommon greens for cheap, and turning them into massive stacks of cash. Well, dusts and essences, really - but when a 30g weapon can DE into 3-4 essences worth 30g each, well, that's just a money-making opportunity that can't be passed up. In between times, he's been buying cheap netherweave cloth and making bags. Both the DE and bag business seem to be winding down, though, so I may be taking him out into the wilds of Mount Hyjal soon.

Poor Aeven will have to wait her turn until after Laenshield levels up. I expect that she and Aretae will be the laggards, at least until Aeth has managed to snag all the achievements she can squeeze out of Cata... and Northrend, and Azeroth, for that matter. Lots of new quests in the old world to do, lots of new achievements in the Old World, as well! And not just the ones that have been added in the expansion, either... I'm thinking that wandering through Karazhan solo might actually be possible, now. Maybe not the boss fights, but 100k health and 20-30k dps should make the trash wonderfully grindable!

Oh, and Music Monday. Enjoy! Today it's Clannad, with a live version of "In A Lifetime".

85's Calling

Back later. Level 85 is calling.

In the meantime, entertain yourself as The Pogues and Joe Strummer perform "London's Calling".

Me? I'll be down by the river...

Cataclysmic Thoughts

There's a ton of folks out there commenting on the Cataclysm leveling experience. I've got my own thoughts on the subject (some good, some bad - what else did you expect?), but I'll save those for later.

Right now, I want to play.

I've managed to level Aretae, my Worgen rogue, to level 13 just by completing the Worgen starting areas. After that, I've spent most of my time on Aeth, leveling her to just shy of 83 through Mount Hyjal and part of Vas'jir. I keep forgetting that I have Flame Orb, which doesn't really seem to be impacting how I level much at all. No dungeons yet - just haven't had the time to dedicate to that - but soon, soon...

Some random thoughts:

Yes, you will replace your T9/T10 gear fairly quickly. Halfway through leveling, Aeth has gone from 20k health to 35k health, and she really does need that to survive. Squishy, squishy mage!

The guild leveling experience needs some serious work. The XP cap stinks like rotten fish; not because it limits how fast you can level a guild, but because it makes it difficult to gain guild rep. I'm not positive, but I'm fairly sure that Aeth hasn't gained any guild rep in the past couple of days, because our (small) guild capped guild XP gains for the week, and - guess what! - you only gain guild rep when you earn guild XP. Yay.

The guild achievements interface is way cool. Especially when you get a random guild achievement popping up while running around, and realize that it's a milestone documenting how your band of merry men and women have been accomplishing things in-game. We got Making History (500 archaeology projects complete) last night, and it was definitely a little rush.

I play on a PvE server. Which suits me fine, until someone swoops in and steals my node while I'm killing mobs around it. Bleah. Bad enough when it's Belf pally scum, but when you're Alliance? Dude, just ask if you can have the node. Or at least help clear the mobs. Fail.

On the plus side, I have nothing but praise for Malfurion's Raiders on Kirin Tor. I've had encounters with a couple of folks while leveling in Mount Hyjal, and they are - to a person - some of the nicest, most gracious folks I've ever encountered outside of my own guild. Two thumbs up, and I hope I get the chance to run some random dungeons with their folks.

Being a mage - with the ability to teleport in a world without portals - is fantastic. I'm sorely going to miss the ability to pop around the world like an insane magical gopher when I turn to leveling Aeven and Laenshield.

Oh, yeah. It's Monday - time for some music! I went searching for a live version of "Queen of all Argyle" by Silly Wizard, but wasn't able to find just what I wanted. So instead, here's a "video" of the studio recording of one of my (and my family's) favorite songs.

Working On It

"Can't you see I'm working on it?"

Wow. 4.0.3 hit, and it seems like I'm still discovering new achievements. New fishing and cooking dailies in Stormwind, new dungeon achievements, new per-zone quest achievements for the Old World... it's almost overwhelming. Where to start? Well, I did what any reasonable person would.

I took a vacation.

Oh, well, OK - it was something of a working vacation, as I toured Azeroth and picked up all the new flight points. Technically I was "surveying the damage", or something like that. In truth, I was playing tourist. Oooh-ing and aaah-ing over the rents in the landscape, getting all fan-boy squee over the sight of murloc babies in the Blasted Lands, and generally getting all excited about the idea of finally being able to fly in the Eastern Kingdoms.

After vacation, though, it was back to work. The ogres of Ogri'la? They love me in that... um,. wide open, shard covered plain. I ended up with a mess of apexis crystals for my efforts, which will probably never do me any good at all. Ah well.

Next step was to give free reign to my OCD, dive right in and start cranking through the new quests available in the Old World. As a level 80, they're obviously not much of a challenge... but the lore is nice and tasty! As others have noted, though, there's kind of a weird mix of quests in some zones. I started in Arathi, where I found myself doing the quest chain to free Myzrael again. Wait, what? I mean... didn't I do this already? Isn't she, like, bad news? Hmm. Maybe a slightly different quest chain would have been better in this case.

What's odd is that elsewhere - where you encounter Quae and Kinlory - the quest text makes an obvious allusions to your previous help in foiling a similar plot. Other quests are similar, but not entirely, like the quests they've replaced. Others are entirely new.

Let's be honest, though. It doesn't seem to matter that the whole world seems to be turned upside down and inside out as far as continuity goes... man, I mean, I've fought with myself, I've fought myself one on one and in groups, I've travelled in time so many times that... really, I just don't know anymore. Maybe this is normal for those who are chronologically gifted.

Or maybe this is Deathwing's work? I mean, he's stirred up the elements and shattered the world. I think you can make the case that in WoW, at least, time is similar to - if not exactly - an element. Maybe the Shattering has fragmented more than the material world.

It's an avenue to explore. I'll keep an eye on it, and see if there are any obvious clues that manifest themselves as I trek across Azeroth, killing and re-killing evils new and ancient. If I come across any further insights, I'll let you know.

Rest easy. I'm working on it.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

The spousal unit was not feeling well, so I missed music monday. Oops. Never you fear, though - at the end of the post is, to make up for it, legendary bagpiping.

No, I'm not kidding. As Joel says, "But I loves me some bagpipes, as long as it's something rousing enough to make me want to strip down, paint meself blue and go slaughter some Englishmen. And I'm not even Scottish."

Speaking of slaughtering things... with the Shattering approaching quickly (hey, didja hear? The 4.0.3 patch is almost upon us!), we managed a guild run last night through Molten Core and Zul'Gurub. Which netted Aeth a couple of old-world raid achievements. Nice! Now if she can just get Blackwing Lair and the Ruins of Ahn'Quiraj, she'll have her Classic Raider achievement done.

Reputation with Ogri'la and the Sha'tar is moving along swimmingly, and I've even managed to trip a few rifts in the meantime. I'm somewhat bummed that the Crystalforged Darkrune event is still borked - my understanding is that it's a pretty good chunk of reputation there. Even with the quest bugged, though, you can still get 100 rep from completing the first phase of the event, and a few hundred rep here and there can't hurt.

In other news, it looks like the Shattering will, in fact, drive Aetherna insane. Apparently while the Shen'dralar faction is going away in Cataclysm, Blizzard has decided that, rather than eliminate the Insane in the Membrane feat of strength entirely, they are just going to drop the Shen'dralar reputation requirement. So my decision to unload my librams and other rep materials looks like a pretty good choice... and it looks like leveling a worgen rogue scribe is back on the table.

Though if I'm going to go that route, I need a name... a good name.

Oh, and bagpipes. Lots of bagpipes.

Experience Matters

Apparently, experience does matter. I ran Aetherna through the Shadow Labyrinth early last week, and was incredibly frustrated - she died at least 4-5 times on trash mobs. At one point she managed to end up with a dozen mobs, including a couple of extra-tough Malicious Instructors, all trying to gnaw her face off.

Ouch.

Last night... she breezed right through. There were a couple of tight spots, but mana shield, evocation and invisibility (not to mention mirror image) saved the day. No patches, no in-game changes, no additional buffs. Just having run it once recently was enough to refresh the "Oh, yeah, this pull is a pain... wait a few seconds for mirror image, there we go, now kill!" bits of memory that I needed to have available.

Another 3 runs of Shadow Labyrinth should see Aeth at Exalted with the Lower City, which is wonderful. She hit revered with Ogri'la last night, based on the three dailies she's been doing. I've tried to do the event at Shar'tul's transporter a couple of times, but apparently it's bugged... when you get to phase 2, mobs show as friendly, so you can't actually complete the even and go on to phase 3. Bummer.

And now, for Music Monday... here's a wonderful lady, Karan Casey, singing a very bittersweet song about young men going off to war. She's accompanied by James Taylor, who's voice adds a nice element to the song. I'd say this is more of a "WotLK" theme song, though; I'll have to think about what an appropriate Cataclysm tune would be.

Deciding to stay sane

No, this isn't an election post. Sorry if I disappointed you.

While I've been kind of on-and-off working on getting "The Insane" on Aetherna, , I've decided that, overall, it just isn't going to be worth it to try and complete the achievement in the time before Cataclysm comes out.

Bloodsail rep? Sure, I could grind that out. Darkmoon rep? It will take time, but it looks like that's possible to complete in Cataclysm, so no worries there. Ravenholdt rep? Haven't heard anything about it, but I'm willing to bet that they'll probably still be around even after Cataclysm. Shen'dralar rep? Oh... ooooooohhhh.

Here's what tipped the scales for me: I have one - count it, one - Pristine Black Diamond. After running Dire Maul North enough times to end up with two dozen librams. With that kind of luck, I could run instances 24/7 for the next month, and barely make a dent towards the three stacks of diamonds I'd need to get my Shen'dralar rep to exalted.

Well, I suppose I could just buy them. If I emptied the purses of all my alts, I could expect to scrape up... 10? Maybe 15, if I were lucky. And then be dead broke, and still well short of what I needed.

So, yeah. Probably not going to happen.

So, I'm going to gamble a bit. I'm going to guess that Blizzard will allow some form of "The Insane" in Cataclysm. Either the old quests will still be available, or new quests will be added, or unavailable factions (Bloodsail, Ravenholdt, etc.) will be replaced with new factions.

Actually, I'd like the later option. Everyone who has the title "The Insane", now? Give them a feat of strength, "Ancient Insanity", to commemorate it. Then add a new "Insanity" for Cataclysm... "the Unstable", or something like that. There you go! Everybody's happy.

In any case, I'm going to sell off the materials I've gathered so far. Here's my thinking: when Cataclysm comes out...

• If it turns out that the old quest lines are still available... well, I'll have the cash to buy replacement materials off of the auction house.

• If it turns out that there are new ways to gain rep with those factions, then I'll be exactly where I am now with those factions... plus a pile of gold.

• If it turns out that there's a "new" version of the Insane with different factions, then I'll be exactly where I am now with those different factions... pus a pile of gold.

So - assuming that I can't complete the Shen'dralar rep grind in time for Cataclysm, my best bet seems to liquidate my assets and hold on for a couple of weeks to see what the future brings.

Oh, and to keep with the Music Monday theme from the earlier post: here's Nightwish with "The Islander". Why, yes, I do like fiddles, flutes, and bagpipes mixed in with my electric guitar. Why do you ask?