See: Loot Unicorn

See Also: Mistshroud Armor

Of COURSE that would be the set I really want to collect for Angoleth. I guess I should go after the Dragonstalker Recolor instead, as Ahn’Kahar Blood Hunter doesn’t look much more likely. It shouldn’t be any harder to get than Annorah’s Earthfury Recolor.

And yes, I am counting my lucky stars that Aely already HAS the Soulforge set, all of T9 with matching boots and weapon, and several other really attractive sets of mail armor.

***Thanks for reading this post from Too Many Annas. May the Loot-Fu be with you***

Murphy’s Law of Transmogrification

As an aside, I’ve been blogging both at Just One Anna and at Seven Deadly Divas a little more than I’m writing here, so if you need your Anna fix but don’t care if it’s WoW Related (though the Divas do talk about gaming!) you can find me there too

***Thanks for reading this post from Too Many Annas. May the Loot-Fu be with you***

Just call me… Penguinbane

I’ve resorted back to my old playstyle, which is very single player oriented – something you can do easily as a hunter – and there’s something about Cataclysm that’s niggling at my brain.There has been a greater trend – starting definitely in Wrath, but a little in BC too – towards a differently constructed world.

Here’s what I mean:

In the old Vanilla WoW zones, you did typical adventurer quests, encountering various groups and cultures who needed help. Occasionally you did a Big Important Thing, but most of your helping was as a subordinate to the leaders of those cultures. When you were in Eastern Plaguelands, you helped the Argent Dawn. The leaders of the Dawn directed your quests, and though you knocked out some big bads, by and large your questing there was as a helper to that group. Same with Desolace, Winterspring, and Stranglethorn. Even Burning Steppes had a presence that made you feel like you were “joining up” with an established group and pitching in your hand.

(I’ll mention that during this time reputation was a very different beast, and you didn’t have 14 factions per expansion to gain reputation with either.)

I’ve now completed Vashj’ir, Hyjal, and Deepholm, and in each one I was coming into a situation not as a subordinate helping a greater group but as a savior bailing out an inept group who couldn’t do it without ME.

I was THE CHOSEN ONE. I SAVED THE WORLD. There are PROPHECIES about me. I’ve single-handedly turned the tides of war and bailed out various groups who screwed it up or couldn’t hack it in the first place. And my leveling in the newly redesigned lowbie zones has been similarly flavored. While things are much more streamlined – which is nice (I didn’t really like the great cookie crumb trails all over the world more than anyone else) – there’s a feeling of my little dwarf warlock as Important (with a capitol I).

And that is a very different feeling.

I’ve always been an altoholic. There were various zones of various flavors to go and level and each one could be connected to the character – or skipped if it didn’t make any sense. My hunter did Borean Tundra, because that kind of adventuring makes sense to her, and she spent a long time in Sholazar Basin. Aely did most of her early leveling in Howling Fjord and Dragonblight, and put in a lot of time in Stormpeaks out of fascination with the Keepers.

But that was harder to do in Wrath than it was in Burning Crusade, and harder in BC than it was in the original game. Annie Mae ran her tiny level 1 gnomebutt down to Elwynn Forest, and was a “Southern” Gnome. Those choices are harder now, and it’s much easier to level on one straight path that ends up being THE one path later on.

And now that Angoleth has saved Hyjal, a zone that has a lot of meaning for her, I don’t know that Annie Mae will really make all that much sense there.

Angoleth already saved it. She didn’t help the various groups involved, she actually was THE CHOSEN ONE. So there’s no real motivation for me to take Annie Mae through the zones, with the possible exception of throwing baby bears onto a trampoline. The replay value is different, and the feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself is gone.

Cataclysm has introduced an extremely linear, extremely heroic, personalized leveling scheme that uses “silly” quests as flavor instead of relying on what was, in my opinion, the greatest strength of the early game. The world itself.

And that’s after completing the content up to level 83. Somehow, I don’t expect 84 and 85 to be much different.

I’m starting to think that’s why so many people are “done” with Cataclysm already. They’ve been the savior. They’ve bailed out the Earthen Ring and saved all of Hyjal. So when they go through to play it again, it feels like just a re-play of the same old single player game they’ve done so many times before, instead of feeling like they’re bringing up a new adventuring character who is part of a bigger, more dynamic world.

Which, you might say, is accusing people who don’t RP of being roleplayers. But they do call it a MMORPG for a reason. *wink*

***Thanks for reading this post from Too Many Annas. May the Loot-Fu be with you***

The Chosen One and Single Player MMOs?

I had two characters at level cap in the original game – Angoleth, my hunter, and Aely!Priest. During Burning Crusade, I leveled two new characters to cap – Annorah and Aely!Pally. In Wrath, I added Annie Mae and Annylais (who is 71).

Right now, I want to talk about three of those characters – namely Angoleth, Aelflaed, and Annie Mae.

Annie Mae, as a Wrath leveled Gnome Warrior, was riding a Stormwind Horse at level 35. Meaning she was exalted with Stormwind by then, purely through doing quests in Elwynn Forest, Westfall, Redridge, Darkshire, and Azuremyst, plus The Deadmines and The Stockades, and a few other assorted quests. As a Gnome at level 80, without even finishing her “Gnomeregan Valiant” quests, she is max-rank exalted with Stormwind and nearly exalted with the other four Alliance factions. She would get there easily through finishing the Valiant dailies, but I’m too lazy to do them on multiple characters.

Aely, as a Burning Crusade leveled Human Paladin, has her Crusader title, and was exalted with all five Alliance reputations well before she finished with the five sets of Valiant dailies.

Angoleth, as a Night Elf Hunter and my original main, isn’t even revered with the Alliance reputations, even though she’s finished two of the Valiant daily sets (Darnassus and Exodar). I tallied up the amount of faction rep you get with the various Alliance races for doing all of the Valiant quests, added it in… and she won’t even be exalted with her home faction (Darnassus) when I finish.

Reputation was a different beast back in the day. It was harder to find, slower to earn, and had different weight to it.

You received discounts on your repair bills only after you got to Revered, and those discounts applied to anything purchased with that faction – like epic mounts (which cost 1000 gold back then, which was a lot more gold than it is today). So Angoleth, at level 60, did every low level quest in Elwynn and Dun Morogh, trying to get to Revered with Ironforge and Stormwind (which she eventually did, barely) to help with her raiding repair bills and the cost of ammo. She did the same with Darnassus, getting to Revered to help with her purchase of an Epic Mount (the same reason I started PVPing with her, since back then if you had a Sergeant title, you got an extra 10% discount on mounts).

Which leaves me with a level 80 character who will be buying Champion’s Writs to fill out her faction reputation for… well, probably a long time. And possibly annoying everyone in Alterac Valley as I try to do turn-ins for spillover rep. One of the few benefits to all the PVP I did in the original game (aside from the kind of awesome Grand Marshall’s Crossbow) – I’m already exalted with the Stormpike Guard.

Actually, I think that was the only faction – other than the Hydraxian Waterlords – that I was exalted with when Burning Crusade launched. Go figure.

At least she’s almost honored with the Timbermaw? (Boy did /that/ grind take a long time)

Anyhow, I’m not really sure what else there is to say about it – I can’t change what quests I’ve already done, and I don’t really have any other way of increasing faction rep outside of the Tourney dailies and PVP. I’m certainly not saying that we should go back to how things were; obviously, I’ve benefited from the changes on other characters.

I’m just a little frustrated with how slow it’s going as I try to catch Angoleth up with my other, newer characters.

***Thanks for reading this post from Too Many Annas. May the Loot-Fu be with you***

Reputation Woes

Pure dumb luck. I did a pass by the spawn points in Storm Peaks – no wolf, so I went to swing back through (just in case), and s/he spawned underneath me. Trapped, tamed, done. Commence squee.

Now s/he just needs a name!

Edit: I think I’m going to go with Signy for her name.

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So about that Spirit Beast…