.

1. Get an authenticator

Ok this I already got.. hooray. Nobody’s going to steal my 5 years of hard work.

2. Finish Loremaster on my druid

I only need to do few Northrend areas and I would be done.. but for some reason I can’t get myself to do it. Maybe one day.

3. Get past 8000 achievement points

Currently at 7240 and I’ve pretty much done all fun ones. Rest require either hard work or PvP. Ugh. Or just wait for Cataclysm.

4. Redo the layout of my blog

I’m not really happy how it looks. I pretty much just hastily got something together so I could get started. Next time I’ll put more thought and time to it.

5. Level Jewelcrafting

I have couple characters who have it but both got skill under 200. Probably would do it on my paladin since she’s the only lvl 80 one.

6. Gear up my current lvl 80 alts

That means warrior and warlock. Rogue and paladin are pretty much done.

7. Attend more WoW-podcast live recordings

I’ve slipped a bit about this. The thing is when it’s evening in US it’s crazy early morning here. However every time I get myself stay up or set the clock to wake me up for it I will later feel it was worth it. More coffee I guess.

8. Finish the remaining holiday achievements

Missing 7.. mostly annoying stuff like Perma-Peddle. I did get my Violet Proto-Drake last year so at least that’s done.

9. Collect rest of the vanity pets on my ‘wanted’ list

This means everything non-loot card, promotional or expensive.

10. Do some WoW-related fan art

…and actually put it on web. Stay tuned.

So.. patch 3.3 has been out for a little over a week now and I thought I could talk a little about the new stuff… lots of good things and I’m quite happy how it turned out. Even the server came back online in time.

Druid changes

* Eclipse: This effect will not activate again within 15 seconds of either type of Eclipse effect firing, in addition to the existing 30-second cooldown for each type of Eclipse. In addition, Eclipse now grants a 40% critical strike chance to Starfire and 40% increased damage to Wrath, up from 30%.

I’m pretty happy how all this WiseEclipse addon episode turned out. Personally I didn’t use it beyond trying it out since at the time only thing we were doing was farming ToC and I did not feel necessary I should rely on a mod to increase my DPS. So actually my damage went up a bit with the patch unlike for those who were using the mod. :P And you have to admit.. the way the mod increased your DPS felt a bit like cheating.

* Rebirth: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes.

While it’s a good change I can’t say I am 100% happy about this. If someone dies you should not kinda get away with it so easily. Ressing is annoying too… eats your DPS, mana and screws up your Eclipse.

* Force of Nature: Health on the treants has been increased.
* Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Good! There’s nothing more annoying than boss 1-shotting them. PvP side doesn’t matter much to me since I don’t do PvP on druid (anymore).

The Looking for Dungeon system

Woah.. this came out a lot better than I expected it to be. I am not a fan of pugging anything… ever since the early Burning Crusade I’ve avoided it like plague. It’s amazing how much it does when you eliminate the hassle of getting group together to minimum. And if it’s a really bad group the downtime for trying again is very little.

What I don’t like is how the cross-realm activities seem to make some people think they can behave however they please because the other players are not from same server and it does not matter what they think. This is very common in battlegrounds but there it at least was limited to the chat. Now you have to worry about the cross-server-ninjas too. I haven’t had that many bad experiences yet but there’s been a few. One in particular bothered me.. I was doing some emblem farming runs on my rogue and a hunter from one of my servers higher end raiding guilds was there. Once we had finished he need rolled on Frozen Orb and quickly left the group. After I was out I did a /who on him and noticed he was in Ironforge. I even went as far as checking the auction house and sure enough he had put it on sale right away. Now I could not care less about the item but doing stuff like that just isn’t cool. What I think many players haven’t even thought about is when they behave badly ‘in public’ it’s not only their reputation which plummets in the eyes of others but it’s their guilds reputation too.

Another thing what bugs me is the silent players. How hard it is just to say hello at start and thank for the group when you’re done? Seriously. Sure you join the LFD for the rewards and not to socialize but there’s no reason you can’t be friendly while doing it. I had this one pug where I said hello in the start but nobody else said nothing during the whole instance run. That kinda upset me and didn’t bother to thank for the smooth run once we were done.

Okey the last thing.. loot. There is no way in hell I am going for full scale pug, rather not even partial, if I actually need something else than emblems. You never know what kind of people you end up with and I really don’t want to risk it. If you need loot, go with the guild group.

The new instances

I’m just going to talk about the new 5mans… the raid instance(s) valid their own post which will come in the near-future.

Have to say I’m very impressed. The design on all 3 new ones is close to raid quality and they clearly put effort to it. Bosses are really fun too and have nicely varying abilities you have to watch for. Pit of Saron is probably my favorite one in terms of design and for bosses Ick and Krick. Only thing what kinda ruined that encounter is the gnome yelling instructions.. while it was kinda funny it also spoiled figuring out the encounter yourself.

First time I was doing all 3 on heroic we ended up losing 1 DPS just as we came to Halls of Reflection.. and since you kinda have to unlock the instances we could not just ask someone to come and fill in. Soo we 4manned it which was very exciting to be honest.. not had so much fun in a 5man for a while.

And even more HoR fun followed.. this time on normal mode as we 3manned it. Warrior tank, shadow priest and myself on holy paladin. First bit went just fine but for the last one I had to swap on my retri spec.. so we did it without dedicated healing and it worked. Heh.

Lootwise the ToC trend continues with good items and I will be picking up lots of them for my alts. My druid obviously has better gear than what 5man has to offer but I didn’t get completely left out. Aah.. Nevermelting Ice Crystal is just amazing. For some reason dropwise my guild has had the worst luck with caster DPS trinkets. For example the one from Anub’arak didn’t drop a single time. Not freaking once. I could complain about trinkets a bit more but let’s leave it to this…

So the design was cool, bosses were fun, loot was great.. but what I enjoyed most was the storymode that carried through all 3 instances. I can’t say I know every last detail about lore but I do enjoy it a lot and I’m always eager to learn more.

Aaand you got to love the new Jaina model.. hrhr. <3

Random minor stuff

* Arena Set Bonuses: The two-piece set bonus for all Wrath of the Lich King Arena sets now provides 100 resilience and 29 spell power or 50 attack power. The current four-piece bonus will remain, however it also now provides 88 spell power or 150 attack power.

Amazing news for my PvP rogue(s). I kinda like the fact that you get compensated a little more for wearing items that sacrifice a lot of damage for the more defensive stats. There’s a lot of debate about should you wear PvE or PvP armor and this tips it more towards the PvP as it should be.

* Ignore list expanded to 50 to match the friends list.

Awesome.

New ground animations for Hippogryph mounts came out really cute. I’ve had the Cenarion War Hippogryph since it got into game and the lack of ground animation has been kinda annoying. At least the poor bird can stand on his feet instead of hovering around all the time.

All in all I think this patch has started out really well and I’m looking forward to having more fun with alts outside raids and with my main in the ICC 25.

Big part of how successfull you are in WoW is do you have the resources to back up your doings. Most people do not have all crafting or gathering professions on their characters and they need to rely on support from friends or gold to fill in the gaps. And even if you’d have all of the professions there will still be at very least the repair costs. Nowadays it’s very easy to get gold but it wasn’t always. Back in vanilla, and most of Burning Crusade there were no daily quests to do. You had to grind, grind and grind a bit more. So let’s take a trip down the memory lane and see what was the hot stuff back then (from my personal point of view obviously). This is TOP 10 countdown of most grinded mobs pre-wrath.

Aah the legendary patch 1.9 and Ahn’Qiraj. Handfull of repeatable quests which mostly involved killing bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. And I did kill bugs.. enough to get exalted with Cenarion Circle. All the Silithid were elites so you could not solo them with all characters and those who could not were forced to group up. I however could, outdoors anyway.. roots didn’t work indoors back then. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would have been if I would not have been able to solo them. Grindy stuff like that is something you want to do on your own time… late at night. I wonder what for I was grinding the reputation anyway. Oh well.. couple years later you got a fancy title for it.

Yes this is a fish. And quite elusive one. You can fish it from several locations: Hinterlands, Winterspring, Moonglade, Eastern Plaguelands, Zu’Gurub… But the tricky part with this was you can catch it only during the night and not same amount all the time. If you fished between 12am and 6am the only fish to drop was Nightfin. Sounds fun doesn’t it. It was! My favorite place to fish them was Hinterlands.

Level 59-60 elites which meant they dropped 17-20 silver each which was quite amazing amount back then. Also if you look at their loot list it’s mostly just grey items which were good for cashing at vendors. And since they’re elites not everyone could solo them and there was not much competition for them. Not my favorite place to grind money but a solid option if some other place was feeling too crowded.

I didn’t grind at Tyr’s Hand until rather late part of vanilla. All mobs are elites and many are ranged, lots of patrols and bunched up mobs. So as a druid it was a little bit difficult if you wanted to do it alone. But eventually my gear kicked up and I could do it. And they of course added the Moonkin form into game so I could actually take few hits. Money was pretty much the same as from giants in Winterspring but Scarlets also dropped Runecloth which was nice addition.

The main food source during Burning Crusade. These guys dropped Chunk o’ Basilisk which was needed for making Blackened Basilisk. There are other locations to get it besides Terokkar Forest but this was best of them by far. If you just followed the small streams or the northeastern cliff edge you would find lots and lots of them very close to each other. Very easy to farm and I did it a lot.

Later in the game I spent lots of time grinding at Northdale. Lots of ghosts around who drop Runecloth, Essence of Undeath and Invader’s Scourgestones which you could use for Argent Dawn reputation. Then there’s the water elementals who drop Essence of Water which I used for making Hide of the Wild to sell in auction house. Back then the droprate of essences was very very low so they fetch quite a price.

I’ve always thought the Timbermaw Furbolgs are kinda cool so I did a lot of rep grind for them, before they made it a bit easier and actually gave some repeatable quests. It took ages and I got past revered before the quests were put in. But I made some serious money while at it and damn it felt good when you finally hit exalted and turned in The Brokering of Peace and Magni yelled for all Ironforge to hear:

Above and beyond the call of duty indeed… the amount of time involved kinda creeps me out now when I think of it.

This was the number one grind spot in Burning Crusade. The place was jam packed with mobs dropping Mark of Sargeras, Fel Armament and Netherweave Cloth. This is where I grinded two characters to exalted with Aldor. I didn’t buy anything from auction house to speed up the reputation so I saved and earned a lot while doing it myself. Another good thing about this spot was the two elites patrolling in the area which cut down the amount of bots.

Best place to grind in vanilla. At least it was for me since I had skinning. Yetis are kinda funny.. they’re one of the two skinnable humanoids in game (in addition to worgen). And being humanoids they also drop money so double win for me. I made lots of gold by selling the Rugged Leather in auction house. Whenver I needed money without too much hassle or stress I just headed for Winterspring.

Holy crap these guys are the most awesome thing ever. When I was leveling through Un’Goro I didn’t get killed by them but I did get chased by them every now and then. And oh it was so hilarious to watch someone get stomped by them. At some point.. maybe level 56 or so I thought I am so going to try and kill one of these things on my own. It wasn’t that easy and not all Devilsaurs are the same.

When I got to level 60 it was time to start collecting money for epic mount. I had (tribal) leatherworking and skinning as professions and I had put a lot of effort in keeping the skill high. Often instead of leveling I paused for long times to skill up my leatherworking instead. So, I had profession high so I bought myself Pattern: Devilsaur Gauntlets and Pattern: Devilsaur Leggings. Then it was just a matter of lots of grinding and hopefully selling the products for good price.

I’m sure everyone’s been to Un’Goro so you know that Devilsaurs are pretty small in numbers. There was four spots where I sat and waited for them to walk by. Killing them wasn’t easy so I needed safe locations with lots of room to mess around without accidently running into other mobs. After a while it became fairly routine so the stress factor weared off and I actually became quite good in hunting them.

The biggest hazard for me was other players. I understand they might have meant well when they come rushing to my ‘aid’ and breaking my roots so the Devilsaur just charges and beats hell out of me. And every time I tried to explain why I need to do it alone they just went “lol you were going to die and I saved you lolz”. Sigh. Of course I was going to die because you freaking tried to kill me! So I just made a shout macro and spammed it every time I saw someone coming to ward them off. Sometimes it worked sometimes not.

It took forever but the items I crafted sold for 80-100g a piece which was insane amount of money back in those days. And for quite a while I seemed to have the monopoly on these items at the auction house so.. yay for me. Eventually the day finally came when I had collected the 1k gold I believe it was back then and bought Reins of the Swift Frostsaber. And I have Devilsaurs to thank for that.

Hm.. seems like I got a bit carried away on this last one. But they deserved it.

Couple days ago I went and made the biggest auction house purchase of my whole WoW career. 10k gold for Parrot Cage (Hyacinth Macaw). I’m pretty passionate pet collector so for me it was all worth it but there was a problem now since I was down to around 50 gold. Well obviously I’d have to do dailys a lot for a while to get back up where I don’t have to worry about money. But how much do I need to keep myself up to snuff on raids anyway. I have never really thought about it before and the answer was quite surprising.

The Essentials

1) Flasks & reagents

These are the things no serious raider goes without. Nobody. Flasking up once / hour gives a serious boost to whatever you’re doing. And the price? Well obviously everything depends what server you’re on. On my server the average price for 1 flask is 25-29g. Let’s say 30g tops.

Reagents? They cost so little I don’t even remember how much. Just keep a good stack with you at all times if your spells require them or you haven’t glyphed out of them.

2) Repair costs

This is where it gets trickier and obviously depends what type of armor you’re using. Is it a farm raid or wipetastic progress raid. Last Thursday I had a farm raid. I repaired before leaving Dalaran as I always do and went to Wintergrasp and did Firewatcher, then moved to ToC 25 and cleared it. Then we went to Onyxia 25 and did that. I didn’t die a single time during this and when I came back to Dalaran and went to repair I had lost durability worth ~3 gold. Wow.

Progress raids then? Well I can’t say I have really memorised how much but I’d think around 60 gold for one night is pretty close.

3) Food

First let’s think the health/mana food/water. There’s usually a mage around so 98% of time you won’t be using vendor bought food or water. And what if you were.. only time you’d be eating/drinking it is right before new pull after you’ve done buffing.

Buff food then. I know nowadays people slack with this when you can just take a bite from someone elses Fish Feast. Which by all means is fine but you still should have your own stuff as backup. Just like normal food it might sit there for months before you take a bite off it but it’s good to be prepared.

4) Health and mana potions

Another ‘when do I use this anyway’ category. I don’t know how much they cost in auction house.. not a clue. I’m still using the ones I’ve got as drops while questing or doing instances. Health potions I had not used hardly at all until having a go on hardmode Mimiron. So yee.. 1 boss in current content. Mana potions I’ve used more often but still very rarely. If I end up so low on mana I have to use them it’s probably because it was one of the longer fights, I had to combat res someone and give my Innervate away – probably to the person I ressed. But still the usage of these potions is so low I won’t have to buy or make more of them during this expansion if it stays the same.

5) Gear upgrades

Gems, enchants… armor kits. Once you’ve got your first proper raiding gear all the big money investments are probably gone. I don’t think many get huge number of upgrades in short amount of time. Let’s say 1 new item / week tops if even that. Last time I got something was… 20 days ago. And it was a necklace (without socket) so no additional expences required. So expences on your gear are so sporadic you can’t really count how much gold you need to keep up with them.

6) Luxury items

For me this is Potion of Speed, Potion of Wild Magic, Fish Feast, Runescroll of Fortitude and Drums of Forgotten Kings.

Fish Feast I use all the time because I think it’s nice you can provide stuff for your group with so little effort. And I do like fishing. Mostly anyway.

Potion of Speed and Potion of Wild Magic I have to buy from auction house and they’re both around 25g for 5. How often do I use them is another thing.. not very often. If it’s some hardmode fight they’re nice to have and give you some DPS boost but that doesn’t happen so often. I only have to restock maybe once a month.

Runescroll of Fortitude and Drums of Forgotten Kings are something I can make but what I don’t carry around with me. At least haven’t so far. But I do keep various crafting materials on my banker so should we ever miss a priest or paladin I don’t have to mess around with auction house or go grind mats.

What’s the damage, doctor?

Scheduled raids 3 nights / week, 1 of them is farm raid, 2 are progress/hardmode ones if signups permit. Farm raid is 2 hours because it just doesn’t take longer with current content… other two are 3 hours.

Flasks: 224g
Reagents: whatever
Repairs: 130g
Food: none
Potions: none
Rest: too sporadic to count

Grand total of 354g. With all the money falling from skies just by doing few dailys that amount of gold is nothing. I bought the pet 2 days ago and I’m already at 900g. Only things I’ve really done is some Argent Tournament dailys, skipping lancing ones and the TFA, and a little bit of questing at Borean Tundra.

Also about the flasks or anything for that matter.. if you do have the professions to provide you the only thing what’s really going to cost you is the repairs. I do have a herbalist and alchemist btw but I’m too lazy to grind. Actually I got every single profession covered on some character except jewelcrafting – but I have a miner so I can get the raw materials and have someone else craft for me. So technically I could be self-sufficient if I’d just want to but I’m too lazy for that… doing few dailys once a day or even every couple days feels like a snap when grinding mats is just a drag.

What did I even worry about.

Personally I like the holiday achievements. It’s nice to do something different, however pointless, every now and then. And with the Strange Trip done I don’t have to stress about not missing any achievement anymore. Hm, actually this is a good time to look back on the past holiday events. What was good and what was bad.

Lunar Festival

This is just about running around the world and talking to NPCs. I think this is one of the best ones because it gives you an excuse to go out there and see the world. Many zones are really beautiful and last time I hoofed around some of them I still had older computer and the graphics were nowhere near as good as they are now. Zones like Ashenvale, Darkshore, Felwood, Azshara, Moonglade, Duskwood and Feralas are my personal favorites.

Love is in the Air

Erk… I just didn’t like this one.. at all. Flirting with city guards all day long.. not really my thing. Also I can’t flirt with just anyone.. have to be pretty ones, which made it all more difficult. Darnassus was easy, Stormwind annoying and Ironforge just impossible. They don’t allow females in Ironforge guard? Oh, and that terrible Flirt With Disaster? Psshh… felt dirty for a week after it.

Noblegarden

Eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs, more eggs, even more eggs. Those who waited couple days for the rush to pass I’m sure it would have been easier. I did all the necessary achievements during first 1,5 days and it was really frustrating at times. Well there was once achievement in this one I actually liked.. the Desert Rose. Maybe it’s a druid thing but it made me feel good. Kinda like what Rimblad does at Light’s Hope Chapel in Eastern Plaguelands.

Children’s Week

Children’s Week has been one of my favorite holidays just because you get new pets. What really made me fear and stress about Children’s Week though was the PvP related achievement School of Hard Knocks. These holiday events are a PvE thing, right? So why this then. Ok to be honest it wasn’t that bad and I think this achievement was more pain for those who actually want to do PvP than all the achievement junkies who run in to mess their game with achievement that encourages to play the specific battleground wrong way.

Oh well.. whatever. I got new pets and Veteran Nanny so I’m happy.

Midsummer Fire Festival

This is like Lunar Festival except bonfires instead of coins. And I like the same thing about this one too.. you get an excuse for some sightseeing. The seasonal boss, Ahune in Slave Pens is nice addition but since he was still at lvl 70 this time there’s really nothing he contributes. Well, maybe a pet if you’re lucky (I wasn’t).

Brewfest

What really annoyed me in Brewfest is the way you need to grind the price tokens for items. 350 for all the clothing you need for Disturbing the Peace and another 200 for Brew of the Month. Then you need another 100 if you want to buy the Pint-Sized Pink Elekk and who knows how much more if you still want something. Ok, granted you can cheat a bit and sell the Brewfest clothes after doing the achievement and get your tokens back but still. If you make people grind something pointless like that then at least don’t make them so expensive.

On the plus side Coren Direbrew was updated to lvl 80 with all the loot and the trinkets are very welcome to many players. If not for your main but you still can get some easy upgrades for your alts.

Hallow’s End

This one was also very nicely done. The achievments were funny and not too grindy. Except maybe if you weren’t very lucky with the random goodie bag you can get every 1 hour. And of course another sightseeing trip this time for candy buckets. Headless Horseman in Scarlet Monastery is pretty fun, probably the best of all seasonal bosses. I hope they upgrade him to 80 this year so the loot goes up too. As downside there was a PvP achievement but it was very easy so… whatever.

Pilgrim’s Bounty

I’m glad they’re adding new holidays and at a glance the achievements look pretty fun too. Looking forward to it.

Winter Veil

Lots of easy stuff here and you get presents! With a Little Helper from My Friends was annoying but doable in reasonable amount of time. I see they added a new achievement for this year.. BB King. To all you Horde people out there… when you go do this on Varian Wrynn, please aim right at the family jewels. Thank you.

Battle-what-net?

For the off chance someone might not know what Battle.net is here’s a little something for you.

In 1997 Blizzard released their first Diablo game and along with that an online gaming service called Battle.net was launched. It was the first online gaming service incorporated directly into the games and with it players could easily create accounts and find other players online to game with. And most important thing of all: it was free. Later other Blizzard games; Starcraft, Warcraft 2, Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 also made use of this service.

So, what’s ‘new’ Battle.net?

Instead of a game specific account you will have player account which contains all the Blizzard games you play. In addition to being a LFG tool for different games it will most of all be a social networking service – avatars, friend lists, achievements, player rankings, voice chat… You will also be able to record and share your Starcraft 2 matches.

But the most exciting feature by far is the…

Real ID

Simply put you will have a friends list where you add the person, not the characters. Let’s use WoW as an example: instead of adding all the 10 characters your friend has on the server you will only add one which will always display which character, server or even game he/she is on and you will be able to chat with him/her. That’s right, cross-server, cross-faction and even cross-game communication.

Using this feature will be optional and only people who you’ve allowed to see your Real ID can do so. No gold spamming from WoW while playing Starcraft 2 or anything.

Here’s a link to a picture at MMO-Champion which shows how your WoW friends list will look after the change.

Merging your WoW account with Battle.net will be mandatory

It is not that yet but I’m sure by the time Starcraft 2 hits the stores it will be. If you just play World of Warcraft your gameplay experience does not change in any way. Except that thanks to the Real ID feature you can chat with friends on other servers and friends who are playing other Blizzard games. And hey, your friends list will be a lot shorter. I believe there is a limit on how many characters you can add to it? Well, this helps on that matter.

Aah the excitement!

For me the Real ID is just an amazing feature. I got friends who play on different servers and factions and as for myself I play on 3 servers. Not to mention when Starcraft 2 comes I will be playing that. Diablo 3 too without a doubt. Gaming relationships are about to become a whole lot easier. Can’t wait.

Four years of World of Warcraft and four summers. One thing you’ve learned from it is that players gaming habbits always change during summer. Some play more than usual and others play less. People playing less is a bad thing for raiding guilds when you are not able to hassle enough people together to fill a raid.

Why the lack of interest in playing then? I think right now there is a sort of general lack of interest towards the game for many players. You’ve grinded your reputations and badge items already, there’s not much or nothing to be gained gearwise by doing the content for the smaller groups (5 or 10 man) and I would believe most of even the more casual raiding guilds have cleared the content already. Or is it just so hot you’d rather go outside than sweat indoors.

Assuming you still want to play, what else can you do then?

Summer is a time of solo playing and there’s many options for that. Leveling alts is something you can really put an effort to during holidays – especially if your playtime is limited (thanks to a job for example). Knowing you got whole day/night free to do whatever you want without interruptions makes playing feel more relaxing. Rather than ok I got 2 hours to play and then I have to stop to prepare for a raid and raid from 21:00 to 00:30 and then go to bed.

Maybe you could even make a new alt. Some class you’re interested in but have never played it before? Go for it. Another thing is if you’ve always played only as Alliance or Horde, try playing the other faction for a bit. I was on Alliance side for almost 2 years until I made a Horde alt and it really had a fresh feeling to it to try the other faction when you don’t know all the quests etc by memory.

What about professions. If something isn’t up to cap maybe it’s a good time to start working on those. Even the secondary ones are all useful. First Aid is something every single raider should have. I know mana is not so much of an issue nowadays so your healers probably won’t have any trouble keeping you up but there are and will be situations when bandages really come handy. From the current content General Vezax is a grand example. Cooking and Fishing work hand in hand providing the food buffs. Not only to you but for everyone else in the raid too with very little additional effort. While there already might be few people in your group who always bring the Fish Feast but wouldn’t you too want to be the hero of the night and bring the fish. And come on.. if you cook it yourself it always tastes better.

Still got something to be gained by doing daily quests? Perfect opportunity for that. Whether it’s reputation, gold, items or achievements you want, daily quests can provide all that with very little time invested on it.

Speaking of achievements, there is plenty soloable ones if that is your thing.

Or just screw it (and do something else)

WoW is cool but maybe you want a break from it. Reading a book and watching movies or tv series are probably the most common. Do I even have to mention them?

I’ve come across people who have never really played anything else than WoW. Well at least you picked up a good one but come on… if you can enjoy one game then there has to be other ones you would like too. Gaming industry is huge and I can understand it might feel difficult for someone new to it to try and find something suitable for you but it is well worth the effort. Ask your friends or browse a website dedicated to gaming. My personal favorite is GameTrailers. Watching game reviews on video gives a very good impression of what the game is like. Just pick the platform you want the game to be on (PC, Xbox, PlayStation, Wii…) and start browsing. Checking the ones with highest rating is a good start.

Since you’re reading this you must be interested in WoW more than just playing it. Ever thought about writing your own blog? If you enjoy having a conversation and sharing your thoughts about WoW then maybe you’d enjoy writing a blog about it too. It’s easy and does not cost you anything if you don’t want it to. Still hesitating? Shoo! Go on and do it. Once you’ve got started come and introduce yourself to other WoW bloggers at Blog Azeroth.

Aaand once again since you’re reading this you must be interested in reading about WoW. But what about listening? I’m talking about podcasts. Just download an episode and fire it up on your mp3 player. Simple. I often listen episodes while playing – can make a boring grind fly by. As examples I could mention Twisted Nether Blogcast, Epic Dolls and Rawrcast. ED is my personal favorite and although it is no longer updated ( /cry ) you can still download the old episodes.

Last but not least… well, actually for me it would be least, go outside? Just stay in shadows and watch out for insects.

Alright.. so what have YOU been doing?

Me? Well as far as WoW goes I’ve been playing my tauren hunter. Not much but I’ve got her to 43 so far. Finaly got finished with Stranglethorn Vale quests. Stupid place on a PvP server. On the plus side however, I did manage to get a lvl 80 human rogue into my freezing trap. Made me smile for a week. Other than that I’ve logged on druid to do fishing and cooking daily but that’s about it.

Outside WoW I’ve dusted up some old games. Diablo 2, Worms Armageddon, Disciples 2, Mass Effect, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance 2, Splinter Cell… I did buy Sims 3 too. Fun fun fun.

What comes to reading I got inspired by playing Baldur’s Gate and started reading R.A. Salvatore’s Dark Elf trilogy again. Also fun x 3.

I’ve also spent quite a bit of time watching tv. Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis mostly. Started watching Eureka too, never watched it before but have to say I do enjoy it. Also 2nd season of Ghost Hunters International began few weeks back which is fun too.

Have fun people.

Vanity what?

What the term vanity usually brings to mind for people is the small non-combat pets but there’s actually a little more to it. Any item you might want to hold on to not because of its attributes but rather for the sentimental value, looks or just maybe because it has a special name. Or how I like to put it: anything that makes you happy just by looking at it.

Most common items people hold on to is probably the small pets and special mounts. For the fact that they’re easy to storage (nowadays anyway) and with just a click of a button you can easily spice up your character for a little more uniqueness.

Once you get to items that actually take bank space people become more selective on what they save. However even the most practicality first people probably hold on to something even when the item is obsolete on its combat value. I would guess weapons are the most common for this. When you finaly got your hands on that awesome Rhok’delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers, Benediction, Ashkandi, Greatsword of the Brotherhood or especially any of the legendary weapons, I seriously doubt you’d want to let that item go after all the work you did for it.

Another thing I would add to the mix, although not actually classified as items, is the titles. If you deliberately go for a specific title so you can make your character more unique how’s that different from working hard to get a set of permanent bunny ears.

Why do we collect these items then

For me the the most driving factor is probably to collect sort of ‘trophies’ to commemorate parts of my adventures over the years of playing the game. Like saving all the tier sets I’ve ever obtained. I want to have something tangible (other than an achievement) left from all the hard work I’ve put to a specific instance.

Then there’s the items with special looks or text. Collecting items purely for their looks is probably more rare than any other. I fall into this category of collecting also and for me it’s robes. All kinds of pretty robes. I think there’s like 20 something in my bank and all just because they’re so pretty. Maybe that’s kinda girly thing to collect just for the sake of being pretty but.. oh well. On the other hand I can imagine for RP people having all kinds of different clothing (props?) is very important.

And what about the ‘text items’? Well I can say Pet Rock and Tear Stained Handkerchief always gets me. And seeing Awbee’s Scale should make everyone sad.

With the exception of Heavy Leather Ball, toys are rather new add to the mix. Wheter it’s goofing around by letting a dozen Paper Zeppelins chase you while waiting for a raid start or pissing everyone off with that Toy Train Set, these items are good for killing time. And everyone love’s the Archmage Vargoth’s Staff.

Problems

The biggest issue for collector is the cruel fact that the items take space from your bank or bag slots. You got the gear for your main spec, then maybe another for dual spec, you might also do PvP from time to time so that requires yet another set and if you’re a raider you probably got some kind of resistance gear also. Then there’s all the trinkets, jewelry and other items you might want to hold on to for the remaining part of the current expansion just in case you need the particular attributes they offer. And that was just the gear part.

For more bank space my advice is to make a bank guild and store all non-bop items there, freeing your characters bank for items that cannot be moved. Ask your friends to help with getting the signs for guild charter or go to a lowbie area and say on general chat that you pay 5g for everyone who signs – I know from experience you get flooded with whispers when people get a chance to get money with minimal effort.

Significant improvement for storaging vanity items came when small pets and mounts got integrated into a menu system rather than each being a separate item. In future I would like to see similar change on tabards.

Standing out

What we ultimately try to achieve with vanity items is making our characters unique and stand out from the masses. Nobody wants to be a clone. As a druid I find it rather annoying that when I’m ‘working’ and shapeshifted I look just like everyone else. Leaving only title (Matron) and small pet (usually Mini Diablo) to separate me from the rest. Changes to feral druid forms were just amazing and here’s hoping balance and resto druids get similar changes in the future.