KDS Gaming

Mage is now 80, with decent gear. Current time at 80 is 21 hours, nearly full epics, and most are above ilvl 200, just have to replace the trinkets which is easy enough to do with about 100 badges. My gear may not be of the greatest quality, but I do know this; I haven’t forgot how to play one! I’m sitting at 2k spellpower, from the 1.3k I had right when I hit 80, 25% crit and 11% hit, so not far to go to be “raiding quality.”

One thing that I have noticed through the time of WoW is guild loyalty has dropped to basically a non-existent state. During Vanilla raiding, if you raided with another guild you were pretty much kicked out of the guild if not just ignored within the guild. No matter the instance, unless you were in a Naxx level guild and running MC with a few alts then who cared. But prior to that point even most AQ40 guilds still farmed MC-AQ weekly. Once BC hit, the 10v25 separation came to fruition and loyalty started to slip a bit after guilds made the move into the 25 mans they didn’t really care about 10 mans. As a guild leader at the time we sold many items to outside raiders from 10 mans, made quite a bit of gold doing so, and even more enemies when they realized their main tank was saved to a raid already and couldn’t make the guild raid!  But even still, as an Illidan guild we ran alts through 10 mans and even some 25s almost daily.  This is unheard of now it would seem.

Wrath brought the raid jumping to a new level though. There is near 0 instance farming, there is near 0 guild loyalty, and that is just disappointing. Atany point in time I can log on and get into a raid, even one as new as RS. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad thing, but the elitism that these “raid leaders” feel running these raids is unheard of. If you invite someone, even if they “suck” as long as they are doing their job they are contributing. I will agree with kicking people that aren’t doing their job, that’s fine, be it a tank that can’t hold aggro or a dpser that’s 1/2 afk. But I don’t see a need for “pst GS” that is just absurd. And seeingthings like”VoA 10 GS 5500″ wtf are you even going to use from VoA 10? I mean honestly, I have a warrior in near full ICC10 man and crafted gear and my GS is barely above that. If someone knows how to play, they know how to play, if someone doesn’t then they don’t. More gear won’t change much, except how hard they hit when they decide to actually pay attention.

Haven’t updated in awhile. We had a few technical difficulties with the site for one, but those are fixed now. On to wow! Time constraints have pushed raiding to a back burner, as well as even paying for my account! Finally finished my tanking boots and had to pull the plug shortly after that to refocus for a short bit. HOWEVER! We are back and good to go now.

With the NDA finally being lifted, there is Cataclysm data and screenshots everywhere. If you have not seen them already, check out TankSpots fly through videos for the redesigned areas, very good redos on Org and Stormwind for sure. Org looks like a whole new area, SW is about the same, but some subtle yet great changes have been made.

3.3, have not stepped foot inside Ruby S yet but from the looks of the fight it’s like an Onyxia with Kalecgos, Sapph and Sarth thrown in with some floating purple lasers. I know it takes a lot to build a raid instance, I understand the work and effort, but on the other hand I am rather disappointed at the reuse of mechanics. Linked health has to be one of the most annoying things when it’s used like it is in the Halion fight. Then there is the loot… The distribtution of points has always been annoying to me for this expansion and this instance just further compounds it. If an item has a higher ilvl I don’t believe it should be 100% better, BUT when it comes to tanking gear, if an item has a higher ilvl it should, at the least, have more stamina than something of a lower ilvl. Case in point, crafted boots vs Halion 10 normal boots. It’s 1 stamina point, but it’s still 1 stamina point. Strength is different too, but that doesn’t seem to bug me as much. I understand that the points are put into hit, but hit is lackluster at this point in this game at this gear level. Personally I don’t miss, I ensure that, and I could do without the hit and have that bring the stamina above a 10 man drop on a 25 man crafted piece. BUT, enough with that. Different gear for different reasons, but I’m running out of bank space!

In other news, Midsummers completed, mount obtained!

So… Recently we have both undertaken the daunting task of getting a decently fun title. While working around everything, and managing to farm rep for endless hours, it’s pretty interesting. To be honest, I didn’t even know some of the pirates or quests required for the title didn’t affect Bloodsail Rep. I’ve also learned of a few new areas, like the dock in Dun Morogh!

All told I think the title will take about 4-6 months to complete, which isn’t too bad. It’s a bit grindy, but allows for a little variety, there are so many factions needed that you can swap them every couple of hours worth of grinding and make it feel new. I only wish I were smarter and hadn’t faction swapped away from my rogue before I picked up those 1400 heavy junk boxes, now I have to level ANOTHER rogue! (or pay again to swap and transfer him )

I do have to say, I believe this to be the most grind induced title available in the game. It’s only true rivals are original HWL (or GM but less so GM as Alliance PvP was very heavy back when PvP ranks were introduced) and Battlemaster, but even Battlemaster can be done quickly if you have a PvP farm team. I can’t think of 14-39 people I can get to farm me 1400 junk boxes, or 84 librams, or 200 Large Brilliant Shards! (Ok maybe the shards, but I doubt any rogues want to donate the 1400 junk boxes!)

I’m not too concerned about the DMF rep, as it’s fairly easy, farm some of the first turn in (have almost all the Thorium Widgets done), farm a few decks, make a few on a scribe, profit. Only one that really gets me in Shen’dralar, on our server there are 0 librams up, ever, for any price, so that means I have to personally farm DM for 84 librams + 1 class book, that doesn’t sound too fun to be honest. But it will all be worth it in the end, and along the way I might just hit “The Exalted” as well, we shall see, since I am still fitting in dailies and other rep farming as well.

So after swapping factions I quickly realized that my current server had very little to offer guild wise that would even remotely fit a raiding schedule I could fit into.  After B started looking into guilds on other servers he came across a small guild on our original server.  Long story short we are both back on our original server, although we would have been Horde raiders back in the days of Vanilla WoW… which is when we resided on this server.

It is crazy to think it’s been years since I’ve met some of the people that are still playing on my old server.  It’s crazy to think I’ve been playing the same game for multiple years, too.  But it’s been a good change so far.  I’m happy to be back.  Something about this server that is just… different from other servers I’ve played on.  And I missed it.

Now I just need my old PK guildmates to come to my server and be Alliance and the world would be in perfect harmony.  Or something like that. 

I’ve been every sort of raider you can imagine.  In Vanilla WoW when I was just a baby Undead Lock in the good ‘ol World of Warcraft I leveled up and instantly became hooked on raiding with a small guild full of fun people who, for the most part, were not terrible players.  I stepped into Molten Core fresh to 60 and I was in love.

At the time I was only 18 in real life, and finishing my 2 year degree in college.  I had no real ambition to jump into a career, nor did I care to really continue on with college.  Irresponsible?  Possibly.  But that was me after spending my 11th and 12th grades of high school in college instead.  I had a jump start on life and I really didn’t care to take advantage of it.  Go figure.

Sometime after grinding through Molten Bore week after week with that first guild I found myself craving more in the raiding world.  I found my way into a hardcore raiding guild.  I was in awe at the amount of dedication and drive it took to succeed in this guild.   It wasn’t just about raiding, it was about all of the farming for raids.  The killing of bosses in smaller instances, such as ZG, in order to save an item that when turned in, gave the zone a buff… ultimately in order to stack multiple badass buffs on your raid. Only to quickly port back to an instance so that you could work on that last boss for 2 hours in hopes that every last buff would be enough to boost your raid just enough to get that server first Nefarian kill.

I was one of the hardest  of hardcore raiders once upon a time.

In BC I ran a guild with my fellow author to this blog.  That was the best experience I have ever had with WoW and raiding.  All of the people we came in contact with along the way who enjoyed the guild have told us more than once, the same thing.  I loved it.  It was a very dedicated job though.  And I say job because it was exactly like having a job.  We managed to be a faction first kill guild for a little while, even though we basically took in people who had never raided before and taught them how to raid.  I loved it though.  It was fun to show people that they could be a hardcore (I say that in easy-mode BC hardcore terms) raiders and enjoy the content just like any of the assholes who managed to find their way into grinding raiding guilds.

We were pretty dedicated and serious when we ran the guild.  Sometime after starting that though it became a chore dealing with server drama and a lot of the guild members found themselves conflicted.  Many had grown inflated egos after tasting real raiding and sought out other ‘hardcore’ raiding guilds, and after awhile it just became a drag to force things to work.  I didn’t want to drag my few loyal friends and raiders along, making them wait until I could hopefully fill in spots for raids every night, so I called it quits.  My reign as the token female guild and raid leader on the server was over and I gracefully stepped down and let everyone go.  I was good though, I basically took everything from the guild bank, including gold, and gave it out to guildmates as they asked for it or needed it.  There was nothing selfish about the move to step down, it just simply was time to move on.

It was a sad day.  But I was happy to have a break from leading for awhile… and the other guild leader had already begun his journey into our next adventure, Alliance raiding. (Prior to this, we were both always Horde raiders.)

So I took a break and disappeared from the Horde on my server.  I went from playing an Undead Lock to leveling a Gnome Lock.  It was a welcomed change.  And over the course of leading a guild on this server we had befriended MANY Alliance players.  It was only natural that I made a change for the better and rerolled. (Oh the things we did before faction swaps!).  Eventually it became clear that the guild all of my friends was in could use another lock.  I offered to level my Gnome in hopes that my experience as a raider would outshine my lack of gear as I wasn’t even 80 yet at the time.  They accepted me and I took on the challange to level as fast as possible.

So yea, long story short - I leveled up and got back into hardcore raiding, from the Ally side of things.  This lasted for awhile, but things grew tiring when the guild began to turn into a lot of bitching and moaning about this and that.  We were dedicated and successful and it was enjoyable, but eventually it was time to take a break.  And that we did.

I finally got on with a real life.  I got a job and started getting consistant hours.  I had to stop raiding all of the time in order to grow up and be an adult.   I never have found my way back into hardcore raiding since.  Not that it’s that hard anymore, things have changed so much since the Vanilla days that it’s easier than shit to raid all of the time and still keep up even if you have zero time to grind or otherwise outside of raiding.

I’ve been casual, I’ve been hardcore.  I’ve seen all the old and most of the new.  I’ve loved it and hated it, followed and lead.  Now the question is, what will I do next?

After faction swapping my healer I’m wondering how healing is from the other side.  I’m finding very difficult to come across a casual-semi-serious raiding guild that would fit my RL schedule.  It’s annoying and I am wondering if maybe we could try our hand at running a guild again, now that it’s so much easier to keep up with raiding.  At least then we could raid on our own times.

It’s rough though, being an adult and accepting that if I want any amount of time outside of WoW and work, that I can’t just sit and play WoW all of the time in hopes of raiding again.  Hehe.

Being grown up isn’t half as fun as growing up.

I miss raiding.  We shall see what happens!

So recently both writers here faction swapped, from Horde to Alliance. We’ve both raided as both sides and have no misconceptions that problems exist on both sides nor do we think that “the grass is greener.” We did it for personal reasons and because we enjoyed the characters we swapped. With that aside, we’ve heard a lot of issues with faction swaps. We had our fair share, but all were contributable to something that was done by the user. Once the listed problems on the FAQ on the official site were dealt with, there were no problems and the whole process took just over 30 minutes, including the “Character must be logged out for 20 minutes” catch.

Having the same character, but having it look totally different and actually play different is a great thing. It adds new life to your character, new aspects to the game, and I must say, if you have nothing tying you down to a faction and want to make a good bit of gold, swap and redo all the quests you’ve already done. I lost about 1k or so completed quests in all areas, so that is a lot of free and easy gold that I don’t need to do anything to get back. I must say it is rather funny to see in the Feats of Strength tab you earned a PvP title years after the system was removed too.

In the server downtime today, for WoW, I’m sure a lot of people are going to be bored. I’d recommend checking out Aion personally. It’s not the same as WoW, that’s for certain, but it’s a welcome change. Right now the game is in open beta, and having played most of the closed beta of Aion there are a lot of good things that have come about for the game. Not to mention the cool aspects of flying that are built into the game. It plays a lot like AoC in that it has a semi-reactive system, but it doesn’t require constant input like AoC does. It is a great game with a lot of fun, I just hope that it will continue and have some lasting power once the “end game” phase comes out, the Wintergrap-esk concept of a raiding instance is not really that much fun when it’s the only option; that type of system works fine in a Warcraft like game where there are multiple instances and raids to do so that you aren’t required to control a certain PvPvE zone just to enjoy the game. Also, the crafting system is truely involving in Aion, it grants you experience, has some neat animations, and has a ton of quests to focus around leveling your professions; though sadly they are a bit overwhelming at first once you catch on it’s not bad at all.

Out of nowhere, faction swaps are now out. Who saw that coming? Going to use them? Disappointed that you can’t Faction Swap + Transfer in one transaction? Craziness if you ask me.

Personally I’ve always wanted faction swaps, as a play who always makes friends with opposite factions, it only seems fun to not have to relevel to play with new friends on a server if you really enjoy your class, of course random alts can always be fun, but those can take forever. The swap system seems pretty good too, thus-far, other than the flood of people using it, the chart posted on the official site is pretty good, just lose some “in progress” quests, which is understandable.

So I’ve decided to finally slow down a bit on finishing what I’ve wanted to do on my warrior, (ie finish all reps, get the last few mounts from said reps, finish Thunderfury (>.<) ) and start leveling the other 5 toons I’ve had sitting at 70 for awhile (70 meaning 71, 71, 71, 71, and 73 lol). In doing so I began questing to get them all to their current levels, then quit a good awhile ago. So I’m picking up where I left off, which is easy when you keep them all at almost the exact same spots in both the world and in quests, it’s a rather boring yet effective leveling method though low drop rate quests will wear on the psyche of someone leveling with this method. However, I hadn’t really touched them since battleground XP had been introduced. Now for anyone that knows my other toons, I basically leveled all of them in some twisted way to PvP with.

So as a result, I’ve spent the past day in AV with my druid and she’s made 100% of a level and maintained all of her rested XP. So I can still go quest on her, should I really want to attempt to kill something in PvP Resto gear (I’ll pass thanks). As a result of doing this, I’ve also ended up with quite a bit of honor, I’ve lost maybe one game I believe, not bad odds. Not a really bad trade off either, I gain a level per about 12-ish games, get some honor; which easily translates to gear for level 80 or epic gems to auction and turn into gold, it seems like a total win win for me.

Gearing at 80 will be made worlds easier for now too, at least if I have some PvP gear, while it may not be the most ideal for PvE, at the very least it is sufficient. I won’t be going into a heroic or Naxx with greens in major slots, I won’t be gimp in, at the very least, the +healing department, while my mana regen may be slightly lower than I would like at 80 that is easily remedied by flasks, foods, and five second rule dancing. I never got the chance to really raid on my druid, but I did on every other toon, so that needs to swap, I think the tree needs a chance finally.

As for the DPSers, I might just level them a low level DPS in a level 80 instance doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. At least with the druid I’m at the top of the healing meter and the bottom of the deaths meter, so no one can really say anything. There again though, leveling as a DPS in level 70 raid gear isn’t that hard, leveling as a healing in level 70 junk gear is a bit harder.

With Blizzcon going on you’ll see nothing but posts about the new WoW expansion, I know.  So I wanted to keep this short and sweet.

I just watched the Announcement Trailer for the new content and it sent chills all over me.  Maybe I am just that nerdy, I don’t know.  Or it may be that guys voice… he’s kind of creepy sounding.  Regardless, right now I am looking forward to what will be offered in the next expansion.

I did see some tweets regarding changes being made that were not included in that trailer, though.  I’m still torn about some of those, but I will have to get more of an opinion later as the details surface rather than just the bold and blunt statement of ‘this will be no more!’

A Gnome Priest.  Oh hellz yes.

So earlier we decided to two man some older content, level 60 stuff, it’s a decent way to have some fun and make some gold to be honest.  Bosses take maybe 5 minutes and yield around 20-30g if you two man most of them; gold amounts have dropped since we quit playing awhile back sadly.  Both of us have run everything in the game, in their original forms, at the time they were released so it gives us a break from “new” content and something to look back at and how the game used to be.

Tonight the fun ended at Ossirian.  We both have killed him many times on our Vanilla / BC raiding toons, but it’s a rather funny fight to do with just two people, or I’m sure one if you can manage it on say a Druid or Paladin…  Regardless, for anyone that knows how the fight originally played out, you know that it was a lot of running, a lot of kiting, a lot of tornado avoiding and a lot of decursing.  We didn’t kill a singl guardian in Ossirians room and just ran right to him and killed him where he stands, with his 300% damage bonus, he hit my tank for about 3k each time, not that hard considering the 35k health pool in my outdated gear.  Even D was able to “tank” him when I was stunned, which is oddly enough spell reflect-able go figure.

As far as doing this for any real purpose, there isn’t one other than some minor achievement points and some gold, the books from AQ20 vendor for 10g each, and some nostalgic gear that’s fun to sit around in sometimes.  Relating to achievements, I’ve begun working on finishing multiple ones on my warrior that I had started by got lazy about doing, like Ambassador and others similar, so now I’m 6 mounts from 50, have over 50 pets, have Ambassador, and will have Crusader soon!

Catching back up like this is a time drag, would be much easier if we stuck to the old toons, but to catch them back up in gear would be even more of a time sink.  Oh dilemmas.