Mark of the Wild

First, the Gnomeling has re-enabled WoW. It turns out he couldn’t stand watching me PvP alone any longer, which is rather sweet. Especially since the final straw was when my priest got smothered by 90 percent of the opposing team in Arathi Basin and died rather fast. I’m really not sure what difference his presence would have made.

So we have finally got around to making our two little druids (his 4th and my 3rd). Which brings me to the rant bit. So you make your brand new character and start running around whatever flavour start zone goes with your race but nothing attacks you unless you smack it first. Perhaps fair enough for the first few quests, break new players in gently, but quest after quest, still facing yellow mobs seems a little unfair. I remember the days (you know the ones, when warlocks had to climb mountains barefoot in search of elusive soulshards and ret paladins were rare and fabled beasties that everyone had a story about, but no one had actually seen one) when that spider cave on Teldrassil was a dark and dangerous place. Each and every step inside had to be tentative, drop your guard once and flock of spiders would leap on your face. Now you can saunter through the place, hands in pockets whistling and they don’t even stop and look at you.

Having battled your way through a horde of green hairy limbs, you came to face with Mummy Spider. Big teeth, bad attitude… not any more. Now she’s more than happy to stand by whilst evil little elves make off with her eggs.

A candidate for Azeroth's worst Mother competition?

Now I don’t particularly like whining about how much harder the game used to be or how Blizzard have sold out to Casuals (a favourite refrain of some of my ex-guildmates) but I do think this creates a bit of a false impression. When the majority of mobs make a beeline for you, all teeth and claws, having this sense of kindergarten til lv 5 seems a bit too much. Githylss should be vile and nasty and fond of biting your face off, after all she’s a mother being robbed of her children, not to mention a rather large spider and the first challenge nightelves  face. Once you leave the safety of whichever start zone your new character calls home, the world becomes a much scarier place. Maybe our training leads should come off a little sooner.

TLDR version of above: Make Githylss vile again. Mobs with names should make you tremble as you sneak closer, not giggle as you waltz past.

The second thing which has been annoying me recently is heirlooms. Now I somewhat naively assumed that everyone would have heirlooms (well not everyone but certainly the majority) and that idea has swiftly been proved false. We entered WSG at lv 16 for some fun and much to our surprise discovered we had by far the most health. In some cases twice as much and that was without needing to go bear. Now, I’m against a two tier system. It hardly seems fair that just because this isn’t my first character, I can have far better second hand gear in a competitive PvP environment. After all, its not like I farmed the gear on the character who is wearing it, a la lv 80s. If Blizzard had wanted to give an experience boost to people rolling through content on alts, they could have just made that aspect of the heirloom gear into something like an armour patch which you could buff onto a character. So yes you would  level faster but the playing field isn’t so screwed in other ways.

Leading on from that is my third annoyance of the week. People who enter battlegrounds at lv 10, particularly those with sub 250 health. Apart from getting in the way, they don’t usually bring anything to the battle. Well, apart from being cannon fodder of course. I wish Blizzard had increased the number of battleground brackets, so that it went 10-14 and 15-19, 20-24, 25-29 etc. The difference between a lv 10 and a lv 19, especially when the latter is wearing heirloom gear and the former isn’t, is just too big.

Butter wouldn't melt in our mouths

My heirloom gear looks better than his, although I have to admit I don’t look particularly druidic or at one with nature.

Anti Druid Goggles

It really should come as no surprise that when you view the Alliance Faction Champions through the Belbi’s Eyesight Enhancing goggles that this is what you see…

Is it just me that finds it odd that the shape shifting class aren’t allowed to have any fun with random shape shifting items. That even the NPCs seem to be suffering from the whole druid plus Noggenfogger = unfair duels whinefest of 05/06. I really don’t see why outside arenas, transforming effects can’t work on druids. Maybe in Cataclysm…

For the rose has thorns

Now that the only remaining unconquered content is Yogg 0, its time to break out the alts. First to be transferred was my little kitty druid Briarrose.

Now I haven’t really played her since the new cat/bear forms were introduced so this was the first time I had a good look at her new flash looking fur. She looks more like a domesticated house cat than a ferocious wild beast.

Briarrose would be perfectly at home in Silvermoon City being dragged around on a ornate silver chain by some Bloodelf. Lying on a stack of cushions and purring for treats, extra loud for gnome snacks. Then there is the jewellery. I mean going into battle wearing necklaces and trinkets doesn’t seem like the most practical idea ever. Don’t think I’d like being strangled by my own fashion accessories and a cat wearing ankle bracelets.. come on.

You enter a battleground and spot a bright pink cat. Its possible you could think a variety of things from “oh poor kitty got lost” to “lol who wants to pvp looking like a cuddly toy” and no doubt several far ruder and more critical things. However you aren’t going to be trembling in your shiny boots. No fearsome Orc warrior is going to stare down a plush toy and blink first. It just wouldn’t happen.

Its bad enough when seen by itself, but when you put Nightelves and Taurens together, our shame becomes much more apparent. Tauren cats have evil written all over them and ooze bad assness from every pore. They look mean and aggressive, just waiting to rip your throat out and we look half asleep.

On a slightly related note I want a tree form that looks like this, autumnal. Anyone else find it odd that the current model for the “Tree of Life” looks half dead? They should have gone for brighter colours.

First order of business once I can bring myself to look at her without giggling  is dealing with the epic flying raven quest line and then I need to figure out what easily craftable gear I can make myself in readiness for hitting 80.

Have a break, have a Kit Kat

Still no instance servers for anything other than raids unless you are willing to run backwards and forwards for up to hours on end. Unfortunately bouncing doesnt seem to help at all and the movement ends up giving me motion sickness, so I’ve shelved that idea for the time being. The new flavour of the month battleground is the Isle of Conquest which I already find disappointng, partly because despite it having such epic possibilities the tactic on Misery EU at least is simple:

The majority of both sides rush the hangar. The one with the most healers/superior firepower wins and gets on their airship. Defending is for sissies and the bored guy up a tower semi afk  reading porn. The side that got the airship plants bombs til gate explodes, meanwhile the opposing side are off having a picnic somewhere not interfering because thats not cricket. The gatedown side then kill the boss. This usually takes 8 to 10 minutes and completely avoids the point of a battleground, i.e. Player versus Player. Its only remaining plus point is that the Alliance boss is the totally awesome High Commander Halford Wyrmbane, he of the 7th Legion previously found hanging out in Dragonblight. Although given his speech:

Through the valleys and peaks of Mount Hyjal, across the shifting sands of Silithus, against the Legion’s dread armies – we have fought. We are the nameless, faceless, sons and daughters of the Alliance. By the Light and by the might of the Alliance, the first strike belongs to us and the last strike is all that our enemies see.

We are 7th Legion

given when you talk to him in Dragonblight its pretty disappointing that his Keep seems to be made of paper and that he goes down like a stone even when faced with the puniest of enemies.

Alterac Valley is now comprised of 32 people not lv 80 and 8 stupid/insane lv 80s trying to carry them to victory (Ok, thats data based on one battleground, but why let accuracy stand in the way of a good bitch). Which I have to admit I find a bit offensive. Don’t get me wrong, I help guildmates out with boosting instance runs (at least I did when we could get the servers) and I’ll help people with elite quests if I’m passing etc, but I really dislike the principle of having to work four times as hard in a battleground to carry people I don’t know through level.

Which brings me to the title of this post. Am I quiting, of course not. I’m far too addicted, plus my GM would hunt me down and slaughter me. So, in order to take my mind off annoying battlegrounds and unavailable instance servers I decided to make a new druid. Now I already have two sitting at lv 51 and 71 respectively, one horde and one alliance. However neither are on my current server and in this particular case, its more about the journey than the destination, starting at lv 1 made the most sense (to me at least).

So Thalia was born. Which give me one last thing to moan about, Heirloom items. Ok, so Thalia was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, lucky her. But what about people who don’t have the luxury of a main with badges to spare on that particular server? WoW by its a very nature will never been balanced at the top, those with the most time to spend will always have better gear faster than the rest. However I feel pretty strongily that the getting to that level cap part should always be fairly balanced. However it seems like Blizzard are doing the complete opposite. On the one hand they are trying to level the playing field at 80 by making epics and raid content more accessible, yet they unbalance at it lower levels by making it easier and faster to level successive characters on the same server.

Can’t help thinking the new bearform looks rather dumb, rather like a circus bear all dressed up for other’s amusement rather than some fearsome force of nature.

Anyway thats the all the negative energy purged from my mind (for this week) at least. I intend to write some much less whiny posts encompassing stuff like my 5 favourite underused NPCs, the joys of low level battlegrounds without twinks (on Thalia) and possibly some useful stuff about raiding as a priest (but probably not), oh and more screenshots, lots more screenshots of random shiny stuff.

Hello Kitty

I always wanted to be a pink kitten. Pretty sure I have a plush toy that looks rather like the pink and white one hidden away somewhere.

Much to my surprise I actually like all of them but its like the tauren cats are all male and the nightelf ones are all female which is a bit weird considering most gamers are male.  If “My little pony” came with a pet cat, it would be the same hues as these. Lovely in a little girl’s bedroom but slightly out of place when a male nightelf shapeshifts.

This sounds so horribly ungrateful but

I hate the new Alliance bear forms. The yellow glowing eyes give a slightly rabid look and I loathe the brightly coloured sideburns. I don’t want to look like some weird experimental cross between Elvis and a polar bear.

My biggest issue however is, what if I really like a certain cat form but loathe its corresponding bearform. Am I going to have a pick an acceptable middle ground that I’m not too keen on but at least I don’t get embarressed about having to go bear/cat. Then there is hair colour. My little druid still has the hair colour she was made with, it goes part way to defining her and looking at these pictures I feel shes going to have to hit the hair dye.

As you can see from this picture of her taken one frosty morning in the Borean Tundra her hair colour is probably best described as teal. Its a colour I happen to like a lot and one she’s been happy with for the last three years. However looking at the picture above, I can’t help but think the one on the bottom left is likely to be what she will morph into and its my least favourite of the lot. If I had to pick one, it would be the bottom right so already I have a dilemma and we haven’t even seen the cat form ones yet.

Looks like my dual spec will be boomkin/resto.

Edit: The boyfriend thinks she will be the bottom right so all whine is temporarily suspended til the cat ones are released.