KDS Gaming

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 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.

I finally resubscribed to WoW last night, as well.  Blawle is right.  After being logged in for about 10 minutes I get my first tell asking me to heal some random PUG in whatever heroic.  2.5 months away from the game and I was already debating if my decision to start playing again was a good one.

I ran an instance with B and some friends on my priest.   Was fun, but I dps’d instead of healing.  Her shadow set is lacking so it just wasn’t that enjoyable for me.  B and I went and killed Onyxia together afterwards and that was actually fun.  Those are the little things I miss about the game.

I was asked last night if I’d be raiding again.  I doubt it.  At least not for awhile.  Not only do I feel I have better things to spend my few hours of free time after work each night doing, but the desire to do all of that just isn’t there right now.  I used to be competitive and wanted to be one of the best.  I enjoyed working hard and pushing through learning nights in order to be one of the few on a server with x piece of gear.  I’m not really anymore.  I hadn’t been even before we took our summer break from WoW.

So I logged over to my Gnome Lock for awhile.  I think I may finally level the little demon.  I started to a little last night before bed and I really do miss playing a lock.  I love healing on my priesty, but I’d rather just play her alongside B’s warrior.  With my lock, I can run around with B on whoever, but I can also go out and have fun alone in the WoW world, just me and my demon.  And apparently my over powered demonic form, too.

All in all, I’m giving WoW a shot now that crazy RL stuff has slowed down.  We shall see how this goes.  A lot of really interesting games are on their way to releasing soon, so I may find something else to get into.  As if I don’t already have enough stuff around the house as it is.

I guess that’s the down and upside to working at a video game store. 

So in reactivating my WoW account, I’ve come to realize, nothing stays the same except everything.

My guild is the same, my toon is the same (barring a few spec changes I made), the content is mostly the same, but it’s all somehow different.  I spend about 90% of my logged in time afk on Facebook games to be honest.  The other 10% I spend staring at stuff, and the other 4% of the time I spend raiding.  For you math whizzes that makes 104% because, at times, it feels like it takes that much time.

Somehow all of the things I felt would of somehow changed, didn’t, because well, lets face it, I didn’t make them change.  The good news, however, is that in staying the same, PuGs have somehow become the norm and I think that’s where the fault is.  PuGs somehow take the fun and enjoyment out of the game.  To spend hours wiping to the same encounter because of some new guy you don’t know sucks, to spend hours wiping to the same encounter because of someone in your guild being a tard is fun.  Vanilla was fun because of the required understanding everyone had of each other, Wrath is slightly less fun because only fresh content requires that.  Sure there were raiding pugs back in Vanilla after awhile, but generally they were carried by the group composers core group late at night, or they were prescheduled pugs, which really kind of makes them not really pugs at all!

AFKing, as a tank, in a city, during prime-pug-time, is seriously entertaining.  I don’t have great gear, I don’t have much (read: any) Best in Slot gear.  Yet I can afk and come back to a screen full of tells, some apologetic, some angry, some just weird, but almost all requesting me to run something.  Raid, heroic, normal, carry some level 5 through a group of rats, who knows.  I personally enjoy it, if I’m feeling nice, I might even respond and say “No thanks,” or state I’ve already run it.  Most of the time I don’t even reply, which in turn leads to the angry tells at times.  lol