Cataclysm has been an interesting expansion. I thought I might sit down and briefly reflect on the patch that was and what I enjoyed and didn't enjoy.
The Good
The Raids: I quite liked the raids in this patch, many of the mechanics were interesting and while my guild rarely completed them before the next one came out, I did get to experience more then enough.
Archaeology: Initially I didn't like archaeology, but with time it really grew on me, I still haven't got a lot of the rares from Cata, so I hope to work on them some more over time.
Transmogrification: I LOVE this feature. Being able to change the appearance of your gear is a lot of fun, and it was nice to be able to make yourself a little more unique rather then just being yet another hunter in the latest tier gear.
LFR: I didn't use it much, but with looking to change my playstyle a little (breaking away from a lot of guild orientated raiding) I am looking forward to raiding when I want to, if only just to try it out.
Challenge Tames: I didn't try for many, but I did enjoy the ones I did get (Bantha'los and Deth'tilac)
The Bad
I didn't do as much overall during this one as others, my fear of pugs reached an all time high and barely ran any dungeons without people I knew.
Too much downtime: The break between the last major patch and the pre-patch for Mists really was a bit too long. While I did get some achievements and similar things done, really I spent way too much time paying for a game I wasn't really playing.
Fire: I am so sick of seeing things on fire, or lava, or lava with fire in it.
Vash'jir: I couldn't stand this zone, I plan only to enter it again to complete all the quests there for loremaster, then never again.
Looking forward
I am really looking forward to Mists. I am planning on taking my time and really enjoying the expansion in my own time - previously I have felt obligated to rush levelling to get ready for raiding etc.
Pandaria looks amazing, so I am hoping to really take it all in without ignoring all of it in favour of speedy levelling.
There looks like there is going to be so much to do in the new expac, so I am getting pretty excited about the whole thing =D
Happy Hunting!
A blog about being a hunter, a knitter and a librarian.
Showing posts with label Nostalgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nostalgia. Show all posts
Monday, 24 September 2012
Wednesday, 19 September 2012
My First Mount (or, why you should never challenge siblings)
Like many others who are new to the game one of the first things I was looking forward to was getting my first mount. This was dampened slightly when I started Dali and saw that the Draenei mount was the Elekk. I was rather... unimpressed. As I got closer to level 40, I set about researching my alternatives, luckily I discovered that I could get mounts from other factions if I was Exalted with them. My favourite faction mounts were the Saber Cats, so I decided that I was going to get myself exalted with Darnassus, before even reaching level 40, so that I could start my hunter on a Saber cat from the very start.
When I informed my older brother of my great plan - to hit exalted with Darnassus by the time I reached level 40 so I would never have to ride an Elekk, he laughed and informed me that if I managed to hit exalted with a faction by the time I hit 40, he would pay for both my mount AND my riding training.(being still new to the game, I was hopeless at making money, I don't think I went anywhere near the auction house until AFTER I hit level 70).
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
Thus I set about on my first reputation grind. Slowly but surely I made my way through each and every night elf area that I knew of, when I ran out of areas I knew, I took to the internet. Thotbott was a big help to me at the time, being able to sort quests by the reputation gains you got from completing them helped me immensely. I was just over level 30 so when I ran out of Night Elf areas I could access, I resumed levelling for a short while, so I could access even more NE quest givers. During my research for grinding rep I learnt about roll-over rep, where rep gains for one faction rolled over into "linked" factions. In this case, all the Alliance areas were linked, so when I ran out of Darnassus quests to do, I started on Stormwind quests beginning the whole process again - clearing out human area after human area) I started also farming cloth for the repeatable reputation hand-ins that were available for each faction.
It took a lot of work, but in the end I hit level 40, and exalted with Darnassus in the same day. My brother (who I like to think was somewhat impressed with my determination) handed over the gold and watched me proudly buy my new Saber cat. It wasn't long after that when I hit exalted with Stormwind and managed to scrape together the gold to buy a horse as well (even if Draenei did look a little silly on horses - better a silly horse then an elekk any day)
I have to say of all the achievements I have managed in Warcraft, this one - getting exalted with a different faction well before the "normal" time (and proving my brother wrong) was one of my greatest. Getting that first mount was amazing, and what made it even better to me was how hard I worked to get it. It was a great feeling, summoning my Saber for the first time and riding around knowing how much time and effort and research I poured into making it happen.
Now my main has over a hundred mounts, and with the introduction of the latest patch, majority of my alts have over a hundred mounts too.
It makes me a little sad that now getting your first mount on other toons is an expectation. It's not something that as a seasoned player you consider important or special - not having one is a hindrance, and then when you do get one, you spend most of your time complaining about how slow 60% speed is, and later, how not being able to fly is a pain in the rear.
It's not too often anymore where I go through what I would consider undertaking an "epic" grind like this one (though farming for my talbuks comes in a close second.) It's thinking about this feeling of losing that epic-ness that usually triggers me going on and on about how my perception of the game has changed since I started playing, however I think I might leave that for another post.
Your first big in-game achievement is always special. I know I will remember this one for a long time to come, and there are few other things I've done in-game which will come even close to what this one meant to me.
Also, my brother has never again bet money on me being able to do or not do something again, so it's lucky I eventually learnt how to make my own gold XD (though I have had to get him to throw me a loan on more then one occasion).
Happy Hunting!
When I informed my older brother of my great plan - to hit exalted with Darnassus by the time I reached level 40 so I would never have to ride an Elekk, he laughed and informed me that if I managed to hit exalted with a faction by the time I hit 40, he would pay for both my mount AND my riding training.(being still new to the game, I was hopeless at making money, I don't think I went anywhere near the auction house until AFTER I hit level 70).
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
Thus I set about on my first reputation grind. Slowly but surely I made my way through each and every night elf area that I knew of, when I ran out of areas I knew, I took to the internet. Thotbott was a big help to me at the time, being able to sort quests by the reputation gains you got from completing them helped me immensely. I was just over level 30 so when I ran out of Night Elf areas I could access, I resumed levelling for a short while, so I could access even more NE quest givers. During my research for grinding rep I learnt about roll-over rep, where rep gains for one faction rolled over into "linked" factions. In this case, all the Alliance areas were linked, so when I ran out of Darnassus quests to do, I started on Stormwind quests beginning the whole process again - clearing out human area after human area) I started also farming cloth for the repeatable reputation hand-ins that were available for each faction.
It took a lot of work, but in the end I hit level 40, and exalted with Darnassus in the same day. My brother (who I like to think was somewhat impressed with my determination) handed over the gold and watched me proudly buy my new Saber cat. It wasn't long after that when I hit exalted with Stormwind and managed to scrape together the gold to buy a horse as well (even if Draenei did look a little silly on horses - better a silly horse then an elekk any day)
I have to say of all the achievements I have managed in Warcraft, this one - getting exalted with a different faction well before the "normal" time (and proving my brother wrong) was one of my greatest. Getting that first mount was amazing, and what made it even better to me was how hard I worked to get it. It was a great feeling, summoning my Saber for the first time and riding around knowing how much time and effort and research I poured into making it happen.
Now my main has over a hundred mounts, and with the introduction of the latest patch, majority of my alts have over a hundred mounts too.
It makes me a little sad that now getting your first mount on other toons is an expectation. It's not something that as a seasoned player you consider important or special - not having one is a hindrance, and then when you do get one, you spend most of your time complaining about how slow 60% speed is, and later, how not being able to fly is a pain in the rear.
It's not too often anymore where I go through what I would consider undertaking an "epic" grind like this one (though farming for my talbuks comes in a close second.) It's thinking about this feeling of losing that epic-ness that usually triggers me going on and on about how my perception of the game has changed since I started playing, however I think I might leave that for another post.
Your first big in-game achievement is always special. I know I will remember this one for a long time to come, and there are few other things I've done in-game which will come even close to what this one meant to me.
Also, my brother has never again bet money on me being able to do or not do something again, so it's lucky I eventually learnt how to make my own gold XD (though I have had to get him to throw me a loan on more then one occasion).
 |
| (This picture is not directly releveant to this story... but I also have matching dragonhawks!) |
Sunday, 2 September 2012
Learning how to Hunter: Part One
When I hit level 70 and started taking part in more dungeons and raids, I quickly began to realise that my regular play style wasn't really suitable anymore, especially with the emphasis in BC dungeons being placed on Crowd Control.
When I took part in my first ever real dungeon group (fortunately with some guildies) I got asked to trap something, and after a miserable attempt to manage this (I got the mob trapped... about 2 seconds before everything else was dead and the tank pulled it) I realised that I had quite a few vital things to learn about being a true hunter and I needed to learn them very quickly if I intended to continue to take part in these sort of things.
So I began looking at researching my class properly. Just having a glance around at a few resources for specific things wasn't good enough. I needed to really focus on making myself a better player all round. So I found myself turning to one of the pillars of hunter society, BigRedKitty.
BigRedKitty was one of THE hunter bloggers of the time. His blog was hilarious, informative and interesting. It was entirely thanks to him, that I became the hunter I am today, and it was a sad day when he announced he was leaving Warcraft, and blogging about Warcraft for the foreseeable future. He taught me about shot rotations, stat priorities, raiding and dungeoning, hunting for rare-spawns and all manner of other hunter skills and tricks.
One of the most important things I ever learnt from BigRedKitty, that I have never forgotten, was how to chain trap. (I also learnt that "hunters are the superior class, foshizzle"as he would say, but that's irrelevant for now)
Long before trap launcher (but after the dreaded feign-trapping skill that so many vanilla hunters had to learn) there was chain trapping. The art of taking your target away from the group and keeping it trapped for a long as you possibly could.
With BigRedKitty's guide to chain trapping at hand, I wandered around the lengths of Arathi Highlands slowly but surely, pulling raptor after raptor into freezing traps until I pull one raptor into at least 2-3 traps in a row. When the time came once more to enter a dungeon, and the announcement of "Dali, trap the square" came over party chat, I found myself putting my new found skills to the test.
There have been only a few times during my years of playing Warcraft where I have felt such a sense of achievement as when I managed to pull of a successful chain trap in a dungeon for the first time, and subsequent times as well. Chain trapping became of my favourite things to do as a hunter in a dungeon - I had a greater purpose then just dpsing. I was bringing something else, a skill that not everyone could do, which was highly valued in groups. I will admit I got incredibly jealous when we had a mage in the group cause they would often get CC priority over myself. But you win some, you lose some.
I was rather disheartened when Wrath came out and chain trapping (or indeed any CC) was not essential anymore. While some groups still asked for it, over time it became a dying skill, and by the time Cataclysm came out and the trap launcher was released it was rarely done anymore.
I feel that Chain Trapping was one of those skills which really defined being a hunter. Being able to go into a group and chain trap without hesitation was a great feeling, even more so when it was acknowledged by others in the group as a job well done. These days I sometimes feel like there are no more of these defining skills which made you take your class and their abilities seriously, where what you can bring to a group is an expectation and not something that you can take pride in, knowing that you poured time and effort into learning something, and you can see the result right there in front of you.
As corny as it may sound, the day I successfully chain trapped in a dungeon for the first time, was the day I strated to feel like a true hunter.
Ah nostalgia :)
Happy Hunting!
When I took part in my first ever real dungeon group (fortunately with some guildies) I got asked to trap something, and after a miserable attempt to manage this (I got the mob trapped... about 2 seconds before everything else was dead and the tank pulled it) I realised that I had quite a few vital things to learn about being a true hunter and I needed to learn them very quickly if I intended to continue to take part in these sort of things.
So I began looking at researching my class properly. Just having a glance around at a few resources for specific things wasn't good enough. I needed to really focus on making myself a better player all round. So I found myself turning to one of the pillars of hunter society, BigRedKitty.
BigRedKitty was one of THE hunter bloggers of the time. His blog was hilarious, informative and interesting. It was entirely thanks to him, that I became the hunter I am today, and it was a sad day when he announced he was leaving Warcraft, and blogging about Warcraft for the foreseeable future. He taught me about shot rotations, stat priorities, raiding and dungeoning, hunting for rare-spawns and all manner of other hunter skills and tricks.
One of the most important things I ever learnt from BigRedKitty, that I have never forgotten, was how to chain trap. (I also learnt that "hunters are the superior class, foshizzle"as he would say, but that's irrelevant for now)
Long before trap launcher (but after the dreaded feign-trapping skill that so many vanilla hunters had to learn) there was chain trapping. The art of taking your target away from the group and keeping it trapped for a long as you possibly could.
With BigRedKitty's guide to chain trapping at hand, I wandered around the lengths of Arathi Highlands slowly but surely, pulling raptor after raptor into freezing traps until I pull one raptor into at least 2-3 traps in a row. When the time came once more to enter a dungeon, and the announcement of "Dali, trap the square" came over party chat, I found myself putting my new found skills to the test.
There have been only a few times during my years of playing Warcraft where I have felt such a sense of achievement as when I managed to pull of a successful chain trap in a dungeon for the first time, and subsequent times as well. Chain trapping became of my favourite things to do as a hunter in a dungeon - I had a greater purpose then just dpsing. I was bringing something else, a skill that not everyone could do, which was highly valued in groups. I will admit I got incredibly jealous when we had a mage in the group cause they would often get CC priority over myself. But you win some, you lose some.
I was rather disheartened when Wrath came out and chain trapping (or indeed any CC) was not essential anymore. While some groups still asked for it, over time it became a dying skill, and by the time Cataclysm came out and the trap launcher was released it was rarely done anymore.
I feel that Chain Trapping was one of those skills which really defined being a hunter. Being able to go into a group and chain trap without hesitation was a great feeling, even more so when it was acknowledged by others in the group as a job well done. These days I sometimes feel like there are no more of these defining skills which made you take your class and their abilities seriously, where what you can bring to a group is an expectation and not something that you can take pride in, knowing that you poured time and effort into learning something, and you can see the result right there in front of you.
As corny as it may sound, the day I successfully chain trapped in a dungeon for the first time, was the day I strated to feel like a true hunter.
Ah nostalgia :)
Happy Hunting!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)