Special thanks to Aron, Anthony and Eric for their efforts over the weekend. I hope you enjoyed the guest posts. If you didn’t, well, maybe you’d like to write one for me next time I disappear for an extended period of time. Just sayin’.
So the voice of the community, here in the person of Gandalf the White, made its mind known to the king, and apparently Blizzard (Theoden) was able to snap itself out of the money-grubbing stupor. Apparently the potentates of the great gaming company do, in fact, listen the concerns of the people and make corrections when necessary. We must all hope that Wormtongue will take the hint and stop dumping poison in the great king’s ear.
Coming back into the game after a long weekend knowing this issue’s been resolved was like meeting a friend for beers after an unfortunate miscommunication’s been cleared up. As I played for a bit last night, I remembered why things had started to feel a bit tedious for me.
As with many aspects of my life, I’d been trying to do too many things at once. Hodir dailies, netherwing dailies, dungeons, PvP, hopping on this alt or that one… it was getting to be too much. They were all things that, for some reason, I felt I had to address now. But what’s the rush? Cataclysm won’t be hitting shelves for a while, so it’s better to pace myself. With that in mind, I think I’ve gotten a grip on how to get the most out of my WoW play-time, especially now that a second PC capable of playing the game is about to be introduced to the Loomis-Piche household.
And yes, “Loomis Peach” (that’s how it’s pronounced) sounds like a cocktail my mother’d really, really like.
Characters have day jobs, too (Dailies)
One of the first things I need to do is stop worrying about raking in as much gold as possible per day. This is supposed to be relaxing for me, not a test of how much repetitive questing I can tolerate before my head explodes. The nice thing about how the gathering of faction reputation works is that there are a few quests one can do per day that not only pay well but eventually yield better rewards. Currently, my main character’s working on his reputation with the ice giants known as the Sons of Hodir. Following that I can return to Outland and continue my quest for the staggeringly awesome nether drake, only to come back to the frozen land of Northrend to work for either the Oracles or the Frenzyheart Tribe. However, the key to enjoying all of this is to only do one set at a time.
A character can do up to 25 daily quests per day. That is a LOT of dailies. If I didn’t have other characters or concerns, I might tackle all of this faction-based work at once. But there are other things I need to attend to. The fact is that no matter how much gold I earn, I can’t use it to buy the better equipment I need to stand a chance in an end-game raid.
That means going into the dungeons, and I figure that I can do two, maybe three of those per evening. The Random Dungeon system that teleports you instantly between a given location and the dungeon in question is ideal for someone like me, who is doing daily questing in between dungeon runs. The process and somewhat tedious repetition of daily quests is broken up by quick runs into random dungeons. You never know what adventure you’ll be heading into until the loading screen appears.
Well, it’s fun for me, and that’s what matters, isn’t it?
One Multiple Personality At A Time, Please
I tend to come down with a condition called ‘altitis.’
Altitis is a serious affliction that strikes many players of World of Warcraft. Symptoms of altitis include rolling far too many alternate characters, spreading alternate characters between various servers, having a dozen or more characters below level 30 with only a handful anywhere near maximum level and dry mouth. Altitis can severely cripple a player’s ability to experience or enjoy end-game content. If you or someone you care about seems to be suffering from altitis, please remind them that dinging 80 is not the same as actually defeating the Lich King. Thank you.
I need to address my alternate characters the same way I do daily quest sources – one at a time. Heirloom items will make leveling them easier, so if I wrap up my dailies and dungeons, then switch to an alt to grind out a level or two, that should make a for a rather complete evening’s game play.
I know it also makes me something of a sad bastard and takes away from writing time, but I ride the train most days for a reason, people.
Playing is Optional
That said, it’s just a game. I don’t have to play it. I could write. I could fire up Steam. I could watch a movie with my wife, play with the cats, toss a console game in the X-box.
As long as I like it and continue to find ways to get the most out of my monthly subscription, however, I think WoW will be sticking around for a bit longer, now that it’s over that embarrassing little bit of bad advice it nearly swallowed.
Here’s a couple of tips for ya:
1. Dailies
Do the Argent Tournament dailies, and once you are exalted with all the city factions, you can grab a satchel that holds 10g (and occasionally an extra Champion’s Seal). Until you’re exalted, you should grab the Writ and turn it in to whatever faction you’re lowest with. Grind the Valiant dailies till you’re far enough into revered that you will get exalted with spill over from the remaining factions. If you switch cities as soon as you have enough Valiant Seals you’ll gain 11,250 (not counting the four reputation Writs, which can give you another 1000 for who you turn into, and 250 for everyone else) so plan accordingly.
These will net you a lot of money quickly (doing all the Crusader’s dailies takes me about 20-30mins, and nets almost 300g. And once you have purchased whatever items for yourself you want (pets, mounts, tabards. I’d skip the gear as it’s easily replaced) you can sell pets. Check the neutral AH as well as cross-faction pet collectors will pay out the nose for the pets. I usually make over 1000g just on pets.
After you do your AT dailies, do Knights of the Ebon Hand (Shadow Vault and Death’s Rise) to reach exalted for the Head Enchant(hunter), then Sons of Hodir for shoulder enchants.
If you still have time, round it out with Jewelcrafting Dailies (if you have JC) as using your tokens to buy Dragon’s Eyes once you have all the cuts that benefit you is good money.
2. Alts
I suggest grabbing the mod Altoholic if you don’t have it already. It lets you see how much XP, Rested XP, items, and gear. Really great for managing your alts.
I personally feel that questing and (especially) dungeoning without rested XP is a waste. So I level multiple alts by creating a priority list of what order I want to get them to 80, then play till I burn out their rested XP, then move on to the next and so on until the first has a good amount of rested XP again. (Sub-BC content 50%, BC content 30%, WotLK content 15%).
Purely dungeon-leveling will also give you a good chunk of time on each character (15mins – 45 mins for DPS) to work on other things. Chores, writing, whatever.
Lol, typo. When talking about selling pets, it’s supposed to say “1000g/week”
See, this is the point in the game where I got bored and frustrated. It felt like I was working a job rather than playing a game. Running the same dozen dailies and the same handful of dungeons night after night just became tedious. Altitis sets in pretty quickly at that stage. But that’s really the same thing over and over again, isn’t it?
Also, I thought you rode the train because the cops around here don’t like your sweet after-market coffee can exhaust. 😉
@Mike I agree it can get tedious. AT dailies aren’t that bad because (as a Crusader at least) only 4 are static. The other 5 are random between 3 or 4 possibilities. So there’s at least some variety. Ebon Blade and Sons of Hodir don’t take that long to reach exalted, especially after you don’t need anything more with Triumph badges and can buy rep that way (exchange 1 Triumph for 1 BoA token worth 250 rep).
But I think Wrath is far better than BC was. Every zone has at least a few. AT is just the most efficient. But you also have a couple in Coldarra, Oracles/Frenzyheart, down by Ymirheim, Gunship, Wyrmrest Temple, one in HF, 3 in Grizzly Hills, Brunhildar daily, JC, Cooking, Fishing. I think the last time I checked WoWwiki there was like 50 dailies. So at least you can spice it up.
And, when going through dungeons, do the first one random for the Frost (or Triumph for the 69-79 alts) but after that, I do specific runs to target the runs I need loot from, so at least there’s that feeling of “Well, maybe ____ will drop.”