Oh holy hell: The Wrath of the Lich King expansion has been confirmed by Blizzard for a November 13th release date. I seriously wasn’t expecting that. In fact, I was banking on it being delayed until late Q4 or early Q1, because that is when I start going into winter season hibernation mode lol. Dammit, I am going to have to juggle WoW with Fallout 3 and possibly Rock Band 2. Where hath my time gone?

Small WoW update because I’ve been “busy.”

• You know, I haven’t really thought much about what Keiya’s protection build will be under the new talents when the patch goes live. I will assume that is coming soon given the announced release date, background loader, and the PTRs. This assumes that we are still raiding when the patch is released.
• I finally got Mojo, the much coveted pet frog from ZA this weekend. It only took about 50 hex sticks.
• Doombeard will tame a core hound and name it Udon. Not the green core hound, the red ones from the Molten Core. Taming one has been a huntard dream since way back in the day.

It’s probably relatively pointless to blow all of my badge gear on lolret items at this point, given that greens and low level blues will probably replace half of it. My ret set isn’t so good that I will hang on to it for a while. I’m really not sure what to do with my remaining badges though. Some folks are buying gems and then selling them for cash. I need to double check to make sure they aren’t useful when the expansion goes live.

At long last Doombeard the huntard, my one and only high level alt character is 70. It only took one and a half years to get him from 60 to 70. But, better late than never! He’s not a new character; I rolled him approximately a month or two after I had rolled Keiya way way back in early Vanilla WoW. He gets played in short bursts. I’m not really all that much of an alt whore.

So is at 360 mining now, 365 with the glove enchant. I can trivially reach the cap tonight. Ore farming is a lot easier with a flying mount. His alchemy is stuck at 300. The original thought was to make him Keiya’s pot bot. But, since I don’t have a character with herbalism and since it’s not like my guild is short on alchemists, that’s kind of pointless. I may pick up a secondary gathering skill instead for $$$.

I might actually level Doombeard to 80 in reasonable time because of him being my gatherer. No fucking way I am going to buy all of my ore on Keiya to skill blacksmithing. That was way too expensive /anal lube. I also missed having another high level character to toy aruond with. Everyone else had a chance to run their dumpy-ass alt through Karazhan when it was on farm. Meanwhile, poor Doombeard was stuck in the low 60’s QQ.

Doombeard’s one and only pet is Cheesecake, a Swap Jaguar from the Swamp of Sorrows, tamed when I was in the low 30’s. Before Blizzard normalized the pets, his tamed attack speed was at 1.2 the second fastest in the game. the fastest being Broken Tooth, a cat from the Badlands with a former attack speed of 1.0. I had thought about taming him but couldn’t catch the spawn, he’s rare. I will tame either a Devilsaur or a Core Hound come WotLK. I’m leaning towards Core Hound for the nostalgia factor. Cheesecake will always be my favorite though.

My hunter’s gear is utter ass, aside for his Stalker’s War Bands, acquired 6 months ago LOL. WTB welfare epikz.

Dammit, I regret my disenchanting sprees. I am almost certain that at some point I had all or close to all of the plate DPS belts from the heroic instances, the Worgen Claw neck from Karazhan, and another cape. I unfortunately, don’t have any of my spare DPS gear enchanted or gemmed since it rots in the bank, prot being so great for burst DPS and all :P. All of the gear alternatives were pulled off of the MaxDPS ret gear ratings.

Edit: Added the SSO neck per recommendation.

Gear that I will most likely keep
You know, with one more T1 item I can get get the dumb set bonus. WTB Gruul loot whoring run.

• Head, Shoulders & Hands: Justicar Crown, Justicar Shoulderplates & Justicar Gauntlets
• Chest: Netherforce Chestplate
• Wrists: Bladespire Warbands
• Legs: Vanquisher’s Legplates
• Feet: Skullshatter Warboots
• Libram: Libram of Avengement
• Trinket 1: Hourglass of the Unraveller
• Trinket 2: Bladefist’s Breadth
• Ring 2: Voilet Signet of the Master Assassin

Gear that I will most likely replace
I’m at 90% into revered with the consortium. I guess I can finally finish off my rep and then get the gems tonight. I don’t have a whole lot of spare badges anymore, I blew a crapload on gems this past weekend. Besides, I’m not sure that it’s worth blowing gems on DPS gear.

• Neck: Adamantine Chain of the Unbroken
  Option 1: Shattered Sun Pendant of Might
  Option 2: Haramad’s Bargain 
• Ring 1: Mithril Band of the Unscarred
  Option 1: Angelista’s Revenge (60 badges)
• Back: Skyguard’s Drape
  Option 1: Dory’s Embrace (60 badges
  Option 2: Blood Knight Warcloak (25 badges)
• Waist: None 🙁
  Option 1: Chain of Unleashed Rage (60 badges)
  Option 2: Girdle of Seething Rage (75 badges)
  Option 3: Veteran’s Plate Belt (40 badges or some amount of honor that I don’t have)

I’m down a couple hundred gold again. That dumb tankadin belt pattern from the Tier-5 instances finally dropped in SSC this weekend, so I crafted it for myself. Screw farming the mats, I’m not that patient. I never bothered getting it commissions because it is kind of a sidegrade to my current belt. I like having paladin tanking piece alternatives for the sake of threat, mana and what not (versus warrior pieces).

The Bulwark of the Amani Empire finally dropped in Zul’Aman. FINALLY. I carry so many damn shields: one for healing, one for spell damage, one for resistance tanking (+5 resist all chant), and one for raid tanking (with the stamina chant).

Oh! Apparently there is a “Twenty-Five Tabards” Achievement in WotLK for tabard collectors, yay! Umm, so can we get a tabard rack now? Please? I like color coordinating them with different armor sets (for example, my Frost Resistance set is blue so I would equip a blue tabard). I also very much like having bag and bank space. Oh vanity…

The screenshot is of folks participating in the, “Anal Game” in the server trade channel. Apparently this game is a regular event, lol. I wonder if it’s a Proudmoore specific activity or if it occurs across all servers. I miss the global LFG channel beucase most part, the spamtards stayed there instead of leaking over into other channels. I used to legitimately follow the trade channel for trading…

We did Blackwing Lair last weekend with around 10 to 15 people (well up to Firemaw), retro raid! I was a heal bot the last time I was in there way back in vanilla WoW, so tanking it was interesting. lol at having people hearth back to grab their Onyxia Scale Cloaks.

My hunter is 68 and 3/4ths, almost level 69! His mining is at 337, 342 with the +5 mining enchant. It’s really easy to skill in Hellfire Peninsula because there is a virtual crapton of Fel Iron nodes all over the place. Selling the ore has yielded more than enough gold for my poor hunter to get his flying mount, and then some more to pad Keiya’s wallet for the expansion pack. Farming would be way easier with a flying mount.

I finally chanted my Zin’rohk with Savagery. Mongoose probably would have been better but I don’t have Mongoose and was too lazy to outsource the chant (I like chanting my own gear). It’s been sitting in my inventory for months and I am itching to use it because well, it is ginormous. Peen sword!

So I guess that more or less means that I’m going to, at least part of the way, level retribution. Hmm, I think I’ll do an audit of my retribution set to see what slots I need to fill, what gems/chants I’ll need, and what I should blow the rest of my badges on. I have so much spare gear and shit just lying around all over my bank (our melee DPS for the most part all wear leather or chain, guess who usually soaks most of the lolret pieces?). Possible level 70 retribution leveling build.

You know, the rewards program is tempting me to sign-up for a second account so that I can two-box level my alts atop a glorious zhevra mount. Blacksmithing finally gets some love in the form of Blacksmith exlusive patterns that add a socket to armor pieces. Tailors also get love in the form of Flying Carpets. Why no Blacksmithing toys? Why am I not allowed to craft a flying magic anvil? QQ.

I’ve made up my mind on mining: I’m not going to drop it. Last night I skilled from 115 to 190; I’ll finish off mithril this week (a skill fo 245 is needed to poke at the small thorium veins), and hopefully be mining in the Outlands next week and onwards. Skilling mining is so damn painful because I’ve done it on my paladin. The same mining circuits over and over….The new areas should be mildly more interesting.

I would like to have 5k gold by the time the expansion rolls around. My original goal was 10k, but fat chance I’m going to get that unless a couple more Sunmotes roll my way. Oh by the way: Players can now be reported for both raid ID theft and guild bank theft according to Belfaire, a blue poster.

“People whose raid IDs have been “stolen” are encouraged to contact the Game Master department with an in-game ticket explaining the situation. We’ll examine the case and see what we can do.

 

Preemptively: Yes, regulars, this is a new policy.”

Another blue post in the same thread:

“Sure. We’re also asking any victims of mass guild bank theft, regardless of permissions the person may have had, to report it to our Game Masters for review.

 

We won’t be able to help all victims, but there should be an increasing number of actions against those who abuse their withdrawal privileges to hinder guild progress.”

Awesome, it’s nice seeing Blizzard taking action against asses who intentionally try to steal another guild’s progressed instance. I’ve had the misfortune of dealing with both issues in the past. To be fair though, the theft occurred way way long ago when “guild banks” were pretty much level 1 officer alts.

That was actually the incident that lead to Guild Master being passed down to me. I should post about my guild history one day. I think I did that already, but nuked the post when I dumped my old database.

Oh by the way: lol, comic of the day.

Back to WoW blogging! The trickle of Wrath of the Lich King news is exciting. Besides, game wise, there really isn’t a whole lot else worth playing or writing about until some of the AAA titles come out in Fall. I think I’ll hang onto some of my legacy gear a bit longer. It looks like, according to an interview with Jeff Kaplan, some of the achievements are going to retroactively activate through related quests that have been completed (ie Onyxia’s Head) and boss drops in your inventory/bank.

My paladin is an armorsmith and enchanter, that’s not going to change anytime soon if ever (I’m the guild armorsmith and one of the main enchanters). I have a large stash of enchanting materials stock up but, if I recall correctly, the low level Brning Crusade enchants starting using the new materials early on. The thought of having to level blacksmithing makes me retch a bit; that was so expensive…

My hunter is an alchemist and minter. His alchemy is stuck at 300 and his mining is below 100. I, as mentioned previously, will most likely drop mining to pick up inscribing. I’m tempted though, to level mining and drop alchemy for the sake of feeding Keiya ore. Mining was a pain in the ass to level though, I don’t imagine myself doing it again.

Apparently the new tradeskill uses raw materials extracted from herbs via milling. Milling is to inscribing as prospecting is to jewelcutting. My lowbie mage is an herbalist and a tailor. Since they upped the old world experience gain x number of months ago, and since as of the last patch she has her mount, I’ve had interest in leveling her once again. She also has an Staff of Jordan chanted with +40 spell power waiting for her (I was going to do Soulfrost, but that was way too expensive. Even for a twink lol).

I wonder if they will roll out the new talent trees and UI/mechanics changes before the expansion pack is released. I would love to start recollecting non-combat pets without negatively impacting my bag space.

I’m hearing about raid attrition hitting a lot of guilds on my server. I wonder if it is a local issue or if it pre-expansion anxiety. One of the problems with my server is that when drama happens, instead of merging or joining into a pre-existing guild, the general thought is to branch off into a start-up raiding guild. So consequently, there are probably 50 guilds all at the same tier of progression and all fishing from the same pool of recruits.

So the expansion pack! Word on the street is that it is going to be released sometime late Q4 of this year. I wouldn’t hold my breath on that, my personal bet is on it being delayed to early Q1 of 2009. I’m actually hoping that they delay it so that I can squeeze a few more titles into my fall game budget *Fallout3Rockband2etc*. Blizzard works on Blizzard time lol!

Keiya will of course, will remain a protection specced tank upon hitting the serious level 80 content. Until then, I haven’t decided what I want to level as. You know, I haven’t leveled as a prot spec before; I specced protection a month or two after hitting level 70 out of guild need (and never looked back since!). Retribution is actually a pretty fun leveling spec. I might end up going lolret for the sake of pure novelty (I have a reasonable crit set in the bank, we shit spare plate DPS gear).

My hunter, well, he needs to get off of his ass and finish off his last one and a half levels. I’ll replace his mining profession with inscribing. Keiya will remain blacksmithing and enchanting, I’ve soaked way too much gold and time to ever change my professions (in addition to being the official guild armorsmither and one of the official guild raid enchanters). One of these days I’ll have to take a look at the WotLK profession materials so that I can get a better idea regarding what I need to start stocking. That’s what we all did pre-BC and it worked out well.

I might give Heroic Magister’s Terrace trinket/pet farming another go this week since I’m that “busy” during the weeknights. I need to replenish by badge stash anyways, I used a lot of it on my gem spree this weekend, to swap out some of my crap blue gems.

OMG Devilsaur!