Welcome to the last post of the second month of my thematic experiment.  December was kind of a crazy month, like it always tends to be, but I enjoyed writing about World of Warcraft. I think some people actually enjoyed reading my WoW posts. I don’t want this site to be a purely  WoW based site so I am going to switch topics on January 1, 2011. The experiment moves on. I did make another decision though.

I am going to write two WoW entries a week. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday I am still going to write on my months chosen theme but on Wednesday and Friday starting in January I am also going to write a WoW blog entry.  For ease of navigation I am sorting these posts in a different category called “TreePunch” so when you go to my page and look at the top you will be able to select any of my categories and see just those. If you hate my WoW stuff click the Thematic Experiment button, if you don’t want to read any of my stupid shit about my version of the real world, click on TreePunch. Simple as that.

Thank You guys again for reading my stuff and all of your encouragement. I hope January can be even better.

So I know I missed Saturday’s blog. I figured since it was Christmas Day and I would have pretty good excuse. I was busy. Holidays are crazy for grown up (well grown upish) women. I was cooking and cleaning and putting on earrings. Oh yeah I had a broken kitchen faucet for all of this too.  I had a fabulous Christmas Eve and Day and it was totally worth it. Thank you Welch and Walker families for having me and making it great. Anyway, time for business.

So I have a plethora of level 80 characters because Wrath of the Lich King was the alt expansion pack. (Alts are characters that you play that are not the character you focus most of your attention on or raid with. That toon, character, is called a main.) Everyone leveled seventy billion alts to max level with varying degrees of skill. I had planned to level my hunter or shadow priest to 85 first after my druid until I started running heroics and realized what mages are like at 85.  Yesterday my mage hit 85 and it is flipping cool.

A bit of back ground is in order here. I started this game playing my mage. I played all of original WoW and half of Burning Crusade with her as my main.  Mages are a damage class that also has some pretty good crowd control and they make free food and water for their groups. I was really good at crowd control and being a vending machine and sheeper but I was pretty bad at damage. In Wrath of the Lich King crowd control became irrelevant almost immediately and soon so did being a vending machine and I lost the two things I was good at with my mage. Hodareynn, my mage, went into a box and I only played her when I needed something mined, cooked, or fished up.

I started running instances in Cataclysm on my druid and I grouped with some good mages and some bad mages. The good mages made me realize how awesome I could be on Hod again.  Our crowd control, referred to as sheep even though very few mages’ polymorph spell take the form of sheep anymore, is useful again. I love sheeping. I don’t know why. We got some cool new spells like frost ring which turns all enemies that enter it into blocks of ice and flame orb.  Hod is out of the box.

I ran my first instances on her last night. The first one went really well. I had a great group with a tank that used my sheep and knew what they were doing. I loved it. I was a sheep machine. I would turn an enemy into a monkey and it would stay that way until the tank popped it. Beautiful. I did pretty good damage too. Then I ran a second instance.

Sometimes you run instances that are so bad that you just have to write about them. I was lucky in one respect, they were so bad that I knew beyond a doubt that our fail was not just because I was playing my mage poorly. We had a new tree druid healer and he hadn’t quite figured out the new healing so he was struggling big time.  Our tank would mark crowd control targets but he would mark the wrong things. In instances you want to crowd control the enemies that shoot magic from a distance. This tank was marking crowd control on the enemies that would run to the tank and hit them. To top it off, we had a damage paladin who would run in front of the group and pull groups then hit the crowd controlled targets repeatedly so we couldn’t cc them again.  I spent the entire run trying to save the healer. My damage sucked and my sheeps never stayed sheeped. Atleast I was a good vending machine.

Pygmies

That’s right pygmies.

Blizzard is freaking brilliant. The soft, pasty skinned, badly socialized, dorky players of the World of Warcraft felt like they waited for ages for the release of Cataclysm and I, for one, feel that it was worth it.  The first two expansions were super cool; new races or a new classes, new lands, lore, newish mobs. This was all super cool but the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King have nothing on Cataclysm.  It is fairly evident that Blizz worked really hard to make sure that they really changed up the game. I have said this all before so I won’t repeat myself, much,  but I do want to highlight a few of my favorite new things.

Peacebloom versus Ghouls technically came out with patch 4.0 but I think it counts.  PvG is a mini game in the Arathi Highlands that asks a player to fight off undead using flowers. It is a direct take off of  the Pop Cap game Plants vs. Zombies and it is awesome.  The player has to plant  various plants with different abilities on their lawn to ward off the undead trying to break into their house wanting to eat their brains. Nothing more awesome than saving the world with gardening! My only complaint is that you can only  play the game once. If you need another fix you have to go get the Pop Cap game on the interwebz. I guess that is only fair.

In the new zone in Uldum the Blizzard developers let their creativity go crazy with two things: Harrison Jones quest lines and pygmies. Harrison Jones is an Indiana Jones spoof character. He is an archeologist that leads the player through the various temples in the zone. He gets players blown up, shot at, attacked by zombies,  nearly crushed by falling debris. In other words, HE IS AWESOME.

Pygmies are new mobs in Uldum. They are small humanoids with huge heads and hands that make have a great battle cry when they attack you. Make no mistake, I got my ass handed to me a few times by some pygmies, but I died laughing. They are also part of the best daily quest ever: Thievin’ Little Pluckers. A farm owner asks the  the player to take a mallet and beat down the pygmies that are stealing from his trees.  There are groups of three pygmies standing on each others’ shoulders trying to steal from the trees and you have to smack them with the huge mallet. Whack-a-Mole with the crazy pygmy battle cry, what is not to love?

Also new with Cataclysm is a new string of dirty hippie quests. The druids have massed in Hyjal and they want to save the world and they want your help. There are many standard quests like killing the evil dragonkin or harpies (I love killing harpies) like Blizz has always put into the game but they add a new level of tree hugger with quests like rescuing panicky bunnies and squirrels from fire or save the hatching turtle eggs from the bad men  waiting to corrupt the newly hatched baby turtles. One quest has you leading mostly dead baby fawns from fiery fields and another has you climbing trees and rescuing scared bear cubs from trees and throwing them onto a trampoline.  They even get players to try and redeem an evil satyr. Okay. Okay. The quests where kinda cute and quite funny considering that I enjoy making fun of the touchy-feely nature of the druids. (I know I play one, but I am not the hippie druid, I am the cynical rebel druid gorram it.) So, yeah, pretty genius on blizzards part.

Now I am off to do real life stuff. In case you guys didn’t know, tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I leave you with this thought: OOOOOGGGGGGAA BOOOGA (pygmy battle cry)

So most of the new serious players have at least one character to 85 and have begun the process of gearing those characters.  Hooray for heroics!

In WoW there are these things called dungeons or instances which are zones that five player enter into to work together and kill everything and steal the stuff from the dead bodies. The stuff is called loot and not all loot is created equal.  Different kinds of characters want different things with different bonuses or made of different materials. All instances have a loot table, a list of gear they can drop, so in order to get what you want you often have to go back to the same place multiple times.

There is also two different versions of each dungeon: regular and heroic. The heroic version of a dungeon is the same basic dungeon made more difficult. Heroics offer better loot and other perks over the normal versions so people generally want to start wanting to run heroics as soon as possible.  Sometimes people just should not be running heroics just because they can.

All of Warcraft has certain basic mechanics (aspects of the game) that stay the same throughout the game.

Crowd Control: Most classes have some form of crowd control, or cc, which makes a mob unable to attack the group.  Every mob that can be cc’ed means one less mob to be hitting the group trying to kill them. It would make sense that a group would try to cc everything they can. Its a great theory but sometimes the practice is a  little different. Some people have no clue what abilities they have and what they can cc. For example: I had to tell one player that he could in fact turn beasts into sheep and render them harmless for a short period. This particular mechanic has been in place for at least five years.

Now when the group is ready to fight a mob that has been cc’ed  the tank or someone else who is designated to break the crowd control damages the mob and makes them active and angry again. Great theory, not so much a reality all the time. Some people are completely incapable of not hitting targets they are not supposed to hit or they think if they hit it the tank or healer will save them. I am almost to the point where I let these people die. You break it on purpose you tank it….. without heals douche bag.

Don’t Stand in Shit: This is another major mechanic of the Warcrack. If a monster throws something on the ground it generally not there to help you.  Standing in poison, fire, falling rocks, or whatever tends to mean you die. This is a pretty universal mechanic throughout the game.  I am guilty of this one sometimes, as are about 99% of WoW players, but the difference is that I move as soon as I realize I am standing in stuff.  I have had people stand in stuff and take tremendous damage then get mad that I didn’t heal them through it. If you continue to stand in fire, you die.  A good example of this is a tank we had in one instance decided it would be okay to stand in the huge inky black clouds of death and that I should just heal them through it. I let them die then we removed the tank.

If A Mob Casts Something You Can Interrupt, Then Interrupt It: Mobs often have abilities they cast (take time preparing to hit you with) and many times these abilities can be interrupted. These abilities can cause damage, make the group run around in fear, heal the mob and make it harder to kill, or any number of things. Almost all classes have interrupts and should use them to stop this stuff from happening.  Many times it is vital to success that these things get interrupted. Know what you can interrupt, when you should interrupt, and do it.

Your Survival is also Your Responsibility: I’m a healer, my job is to try my best to keep the group alive. This does not mean that I should be expected to heal someone through stupid. This goes hand in hand with Don’t Stand in Shit. First of all, every class has survival abilities that either heal them or reduces the damage they take. Every player should know theirs and use them.  If you are dps in a boss fight and the tank is taking huge damage realize your healer is busy and you should probably take a healing potion, bandage, or do anything you can to restore your own health or otherwise keep yourself alive.  Simple as that. Also, after a fight, if you are low on health and the group is waiting for the healer to get mana eat some freaking food to restore your health. A good example of this is one group of mobs throw axes and stick them into random players heads that damages that player for a large amount over a set amount of time.  When this happens and we are in combat it is my job to heal the player through it. If the group goes out of combat it is no longer my job. THERE  IS A FREAKING AXE IN YOUR HEAD, EAT SOMETHING DUMB ASS.

If you are low on health do not go running into groups of mobs. It seems like a simple concept but, like crowd control or not standing in something, some people cannot seem to grasp it. I was in a group where someone died because they played stupid and did not eat after I brought them back to life. When the tank pulled the next group this player ran right in while at half health and died again. This happened two more times before the player finally typed “why do I keep dying.” I wanted to type “Sorry but I don’t heal stupid.”

Please do your fellow WoW players a favor and research your class. Know what you can do and what you should do. If you don’t, pray you don’t get a healer like me that believes it is her responsibility to let your stupid ass die.

So if you remember back to my lengthy ramble from Thursday there are still some professions to cover. First the last three crafting professions.

Inscription: Inscription uses “inks” made from ground up “flowers” to make items. One of the items they make are called glyphs. Players use glyphs to change their abilities and personalize their characters. Scribes also make something called scrolls which provide players with bonuses or “buffs.” Scribes can make cards that combine to make super cool stuff and other items. Inscription is a pretty cool profession but I try not to think about it too logically. I can’t fathom how one would use a scroll or glyph. Do you scratch it into your skin like some sort of messed up tattoo or is it a words to shape energy type of thing? I mean I get making pants. I guess I shouldn’t look too hard into the logistics of a world where I can turn into a tree.

Enchanting: Enchanters use materials they get from breaking up crap no one wants to bespell items to give them bonuses. It is expensive and a pain in the ass to level but it saves a whack ton of money and everyone will love you in groups when they get the crap that drops turned into materials to enchant the stuff they do want. Like inscription, I try not to put too much thought into how this actually works.  When I start to follow that rabbit down the hole I try to remember I play a character that can turn into a bird and it helps me suspend reality.

Alchemy: Alchemists turn flowers into magic potions that do stuff. Mostly these potions either heal, restore mana (magic energy), or buff a character.  Alchemists can also turn somethings into other things, which is sort of the definition of alchemists. So alchemists are kind of chemists and drug dealers at the same time. Everyone wants what they brew up.

Gathering professions are the second type of Primary professions and entails going out into the world (of warcraft) and gathering the crap you need for the crafting professions. I love gathering professions.

Skinning: This should be pretty self explanatory. Skinners cut the skin off of dead animals so crafters (namely leatherworkers) can use them to make stuff. It is somewhat gruesome but most skinners I know feel like they are somehow cleaning up their messes. Once you have killed an animal, what is the big deal about taking its skin? Besides it makes the mob disappear therefore destroying all evidence of the murders.

Mining: Miners fly around and find nodes of metal ore and gather them. They then turn these ores into bars. They also gather other things like gems from these nodes. Half of any realm is a miner so at any giving time there is eleventy billion jackwagons flying around and are willing to ruthlessly screw you out of a mining node. Because of the high population of miners , ore and bars don’t sell for much but it is more convenient to have one if you plan on leveling blacksmiting, engineering, or jewelcrafting.

Herbalism: Herbalists fly around and collect the various herbs of the world. Flower pickers are not quite as cutthroat as the miners but they can get quite nasty. Scribes and Alchemists use the flowers that herbalists pick.