KDS Gaming

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 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.

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.

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.