Too many alts, too little time

For anyone reading along at home I am blogging on my personal blog at the moment trying to do NaBloPoMo’s daily posts in November…

There’s a bit of WoW there a lot of the time, so have a look.

We got a puppy.

We’re getting a new kitchen.

We’ve not been playing since before 2.4.3!

And now… We can haz beta.

D’oh!

My main is my Paladin. It has been for the longest time. Except that for a while it was my Warlock. I enjoy playing my main a whole lot, but it’s at a point where Trakand can’t do anything without 4, 9 or 24 other people to help achieve it. Otherwise the achievement is less meaningful. Same with Poisonberry. Sure I can do dailies or mote farm, and I do both of these things when not alt-ing it up, but neither feels like the meat of the game. When your main gets to raids and heroics, the rest of the game feels like time spent supporting these activities. I do enjoy raiding, I love it in fact. I suck at PVP and hate Arenas with a passion (I did enough to get the Altette her S3 Hunter axe then quit), but the PVE game, that I can’t get enough of. And people tell me I’m at least not dreadful at it…

…but I love levelling too.

I like the ability to solo content that has meaning, or to duo it with my beloved, and to see my character progress by a number ticking up. I enjoy seeing the same problems as last time, but having to come up with new solutions for a new class… That’s why I’m an altaholic I think, because doing the same content again from another perspective feels fresh and fun to me, as fresh and fun as the first day I logged in in 2004.

So the “main game”, which is to say the game I play with my main is one I enjoy. But it’s also nice to try the view from the cheap seats from time to time. After all killing kobolds never gets old.

I’ve been Alliance since December 2004.

Actually, that’s a lie. I’ve had my dalliances, with the Horde. I’ve had level 11 Priests, level 14 Warlocks, and once managed to spend a whole couple of weeks Horde-side when I moved to the EU servers.

But, by and large, I’ve been an Alliance player.

Not, it would have to be said, entirely through my own choice.

First time out the gate I really didn’t understand this whole factions thing. And the purple elves looked pretty neat. So the Altette and I made our purple elves. And spent weeks getting to level 12! We finally got to 42 on them in around 5 months. Then stopped playing for an age. Eventually we started again on the US Dark Iron server in time for the Penny-Arcade / PvP webcomic guilds. And since the P-A guys were Alliance, so were we.

When at the tail end of 2005 we rerolled on the EU side we convinced some friends with 60s to come play Horde with us since none of us had done it. It was a blast, we had a steady 5-man party with healers, tanks, the works. It was almost perfect. Except our friends had 60s, in a raiding guild… So they drifted back to their old toons, and since it was a PVP server if we wanted to play with them, we had to go Alliance if we wanted to be on that server. So back to Alliance we went, and we both got our first, second and third 70s on The Maelstrom (EU) Alliance side.

But part of me just likes the Horde.

I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the deceitful Forsaken skulking around, maybe it’s the architecture of Orgrimmar, maybe it’s the tranquility of Mulgore… I just enjoy playing Horde a lot, even though I know it’s the same game. So I’m back Horde-side in my spare time levelling my Druid very casually, and playing lowbie Blood Elves with the missus (who dislikes Shaman, or thinks she does). I’m also having a lot of fun, and I’m finally starting to understand Feral as a levelling spec. And it’s great to be doing quests I have never done before too!

In which our hero finally notices he got linked from Bigredkitty a month ago, attempts to explain his lack of blogging and expounds on the virtues of focus (and why he has none).

So, I got linked by BRK. And didn’t notice. I had a traffic spike. And didn’t notice. Go me! Truly I am a nub. If anything should have kicked me in the behind and made me blog that should. But it didn’t. Anyway…

I’ve had a busy real-life lately, in fact I think I’ve logged on only three times (maybe four) since 2.4 hit, and once since 2.4.1! Work has been hectic, and I’ve been dieting (see my real life blog for the gory details). Still, not an excuse, not even much of a reason.

And now onto Focus.

I have none.

Not in the Hunter sense of the word, in the even more crucial sticking to a character sense. You see, in the time since I last blogged, I have a new character and have fiddled around the roster a lot. Meet my second Paladin and my old new Druid. The Paladin was an attempt (successful) to see the Horde Paladin starting quests before the disappearance of M’uru as those quests would never exist again. The Druid… well… It’s not mine. It was Mrs. Alt’s on another server, she did a Druid to 30, I did a Shaman. Then we each went Alliance, and eventually got 70s. But we want to see Horde content. So we swapped. I have her Druid, she has my Shaman. And yes, we were mad enough to get new accounts just so we could have our Hordies on our Alliance PVP server. Why did we do this? Primarily because we want to see the Horde storyline 1-70, we’ve done the Alliance stuff so much it’s burned into our brains, but the Horde side is like a whole other game we can play. And since it’s WoW it’s a game we know we love. Since my real Paladin has 375 Enchanting we figured if we levelled on our real server we could twink our Hordies courtesy of the neutral AH.

Meanwhile our raiding guild surges ahead into Mount Hyjal and Black Temple. It’s also awesome fun.

And there are new dailies. Awesome fun.

So two MORE new alts, new places to raid, and 3 70s trying to do dailies.

Yet real life keeps me away from WoW.

If I had the ability to focus on a task I might manage something, instead… I flit like a magpie from shiny thing to shiny thing.

Next time (which will be sooner I hope)… The Druid (in more detail), or the Paladin (finally) or the Shaman (possibly), or perhaps some randomness. I know this, it’ll be much less of a wait than this post was!

Not a Paladin, not a Shaman, not a rant about the Life Tap nerf (or its reversion)… It’s…

A lowbie Hunter!

I love levelling, I know a lot of people find 1-70 to be the foreplay to 70’s intercourse (to use the vernacular), but I don’t. 1-70 is its own experience, and it’s why you fell in love with WoW in the first place! Don’t believe me? Well you sure didn’t do 1-60 (or 1-70) saying “I hate this, it sucks, but the endgame will be worth it!”. Not back in the day at any rate, and not even when I started playing on the US servers. You did 1-60 because you enjoyed that game, then you learned the mantra the game changes at 60.

Now 1-70 are the content you bolt through to get your welfare epics and then PVP or instance your way to the “real endgame”.

Well bugger that! I enjoy levelling I love to level characters, I love seeing the same stuff from a new perspective… I’d love even more to level horde, but we’d miss our friends on The Maelstrom too much to move… Last time I went to 70 I stuck around Azeroth to 62, just so I could have gold giving quests left in Outlands at 70, that’s how much I like levelling (and the old world).

So a Hunter then. First of all the name is a particularly bad joke… My wife’s Hunter is Hikaru (that’s hick-ah-roo, not hikaroo like kangaroo) and she was named after Utada Hikaru, indeed her son of hakkar was called Utada (her black cat is called Ravage).

So I have a joke Hunter. Except it’s not a joke now. My wife (70 mage, hunter, druid) wanted to level a Shadow Priest and I wanted to level my Shadow Priest too, but I wanted to go 1-30 with her, so I made a Hunter, now I think Almeara’s going to be stuck at 30 while Utada goes to 70. Why do I like it? Well, I loved my Blood Elf Hunter, my wife (on a Rogue) and I 2 manned Dar’khan at 19 with them, and that left a lasting impression. I like pets, especially boars, and I like crowd control. In fact if a Hunter could heal instead of DPS it would be my perfect class (I like CC and I like healing, DPS I find a little dull to be honest). It would be totally non-solo viable, but since I duo with my wife (I need a new name for her, Altette perhaps?) and she is all about the killing it would be fine!

So my Hunter then, I realise my spec is non-BRK approved, but I might fix that. Still I like IAotH too much, and little Kungen (who tanks all) is surviving just fine without the extra HP and a minimal armor boost. I’m having a blast, I considered levelling survival, then I got real around level 9, just in time to not do it!

OK, I’ve rambled a bit, not surprising, but there you go. My new baby, and my current pick of the litter for fun.

This is Poisonberry.

She’s my Warlock, and my ex-main.

I levelled her over Christmas 2006 and raided Kara and early SSC/TK with her. Then I went back to my first love my Paladin. But this is about Poisonberry. At the moment she’s specc’d Affliction, not because I have a great love for the spec but because it’s what my gear can allow right now. I had a go at Demonology raiding for a few weeks at the start of the year and it’s a load of fun but really needs 2 pieces of Tier 5 and a Void Star Talisman to work best. So when I saw the horrors of the incoming Lifetap nerf I reckoned it was time to switch back to the dull but reliable mana camel build.

So what do I like about Warlocks? Well initially I liked just about everything. Warlock was my first real DPS class. Well my very character was a Rogue which I got to 42, but I was dreadful and to be honest I don’t think you could consider it “DPS”. After that I had a Priest and then a Paladin, so a Warlock was a real change of pace, you can pump damage out very nicely. Levelling the Warlock was good fun, and the nice thing about Affliction was that with both Lifetap and Dark Pact you never really run out of mana and can keep going forever, and the flexibility of the pets makes you able to survive almost any situation. I remember soloing Araj in Andorhal at level 60 with DoTs and using the Voidwalker sacrifice to get the hell out of there in one piece.

When raiding a Warlock is a nice class to play for DPS. DPSing in raids is more relaxing than Healing, at least in my experience. Healing can get pretty stressful, especially if you have to play whack-a-mole, on the other hand DPS is nice and comparatively simple, focus on the mob, pop the DoTs up, Bolt bolt bolt, refresh DoTs and Lifetap/Dark Pact when you need to.

So, I like my Warlock. But that’s my problem. I like all my characters…

Next time, some kind of a healer. A Shaman or a Paladin, I don’t know!

Yes, the site’s a Work In Progress…

Please excuse my blog-dust.

My name’s Trakand. Or it might be Poisonberry. Or Mutsumi. At a pinch I answer to Almeara, Erowynn and Utada as well. Anyway, my name’s…one of those…and I’m an Altaholic.

There’s loads of Paladin blogs and Warlock blogs, one very big Hunter blog, several awesome Druid blogs, a couple of nice Priest ones and at least one Shaman blog.

I plan to be all of those things to some degree. And also none. I want to talk about WoW from the point of view of a level 70 Shaladock and a level 10-30 Huntruiest. I know a fair bit about some of my classes and almost nothing about others, but I hope I can learn and I hope that we can all learn from each other.

At the moment I have a raiding Warlock and Paladin, a freshly 70 Shaman, a 30 Priest, 26 Druid and tiny baby Hunter all vying for my attention. When I have some to spare. And now I intend to blog about them too… We’ll have to see how this goes. Still it’ll be a fun experiment!