KDS Gaming

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 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