Ring Bonus 8: Warlords of Draenor

ringbonusalbum_0Tonight on Ring Bonus we discuss the latest World of Warcraft expansion pack. AKA, the reason why the show has been on hiatus for the past month and some change. Well that and being busy and “busy.” Dave also discusses his recent excursion out to a defunct water park in the middle of the desert to play airsoft and also old crabby ladies.

As always, thank you for listening and please feel free to subscribe to the Ring Bonus via the RSS feed as well as via iTunes. We also have a forum and would love to hear topic suggestions and what not.

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We’re Still Here!

We’re still here, not dead yet! Our normal recording evenings have been somewhat occupied as of late but we did record an episode last night. It should be released soon, most likely to night after I finish editing it. In lieu of us being us and generally busy, we are most likely going to aim for a bi-monthly to monthly release schedule, at least throughout the holiday season. So if anyone actually listens to us or reads this, thanks!

Personal Loot and Stuff [WoW: WoD]

I had kind of a whiny post prepared whinging about Blizzard reverting the LFG personal loot system back to need and greed, but it appears that it was reverted back the next day the next to so all is well I guess. I am a bit surprised that they reverted it as soon as they did; Typical Blizzard turnaround time is Soon™ not soon.

The final boss for each dungeon is apparently, now guaranteed to drop a piece of loot to everyone in the group, which I think is fantastic and should hopefully mitigate the problem of group members leaving after completing whatever boss it is they are farming. I really have a severe dislike for the time wasted by PuG loot roll drama and the personal loot system seems to alleviate that problem.

WoW’s 10th anniversary goodies are out. We tried queueing for the Molten Core last night, but the wait was too long for how late it was in the evening so we were forced to drop out. I am assuming that a full run is going to take at least 2 hours for a random LFR group. I am pretty sure that I swore to never set another foot into the Molten Core ever again after completing literally at least a hundred if not more guild runs back in the day. But that mount is pretty spiffy so you know…

I used my free level 90 boost on Doombeard, my hunter. I know it’s probably wasted on him given that he was boosted a whole 7 levels, but I really did not feel like playing any other character other than my hunter or my paladin and I really wasn’t digging finishing the Cataclysm content and then trudging through Mists of Pandaria before I can finally setup a second garrison. Also, ore farming. It’s been about 4 years since I had last done anything with my hunter other than use him as a glorified mule. I don’t remember how to play him and my action bars are in a state of disarray

Ding: Level 100

I dinged off of a follower quest. When it said that the reward was a significant increase to character experience, they weren’t messing around because that was a huge chunk of XP off of just one thing. In general WoW news: Everyone is getting 5 free days of WoW for the major server meltage at launch and Tuesday evening marked the second day in a row in which I was able to log on to WoW at prime time with no queue and no lag. So all in all, everything is once again okay in the World of Warcraft.

I had a pretty interesting LFG experience on Monday evening. It is always kind of a bummer having to wait an hour in the instance queue only to have the group fall apart and fail mid instance. I guess it is a pretty bad sign however, that I ended up (successfully) Retribution tanking the two bosses after the tank had died about 10 seconds into the fight. I really don’t know how monk tanks are supposed to work since I kind of skipped most of that expansion, but I am pretty sure it’s not like that. My husband takes that as an omen that I should start tanking once again so that our queue times decrease. We will have to see about that…

Really looking forward to doing the train instance. Certain people need to hurry their asses up so that we can queue for it tonight. Poke poke poke.

Which Character Do I Boost to 90?

I am in a bit of a conundrum as to which character I should instantly boost to level 90. One thing to keep in mind is that I am really not an alt person; The only character that I really care about playing is my paladin. My one and only high level alt has mainly served as a profession mule which is why boosting a level 60+ character looks like a pretty attractive option at this point. My current options are:

  1. Use it on my level 83 hunter: This option is probably a huge waste but my hunter is the only other alt that I really ever play and I really really really don’t feel like finishing the Cataclysm content and then trudging through MoP. The main advantage of course would be the profession boost. I would probably end up dropping alchemy and scooping up either jewel crafting or something else before the boost.
  2. Rush my level 45 Druid to 60 and then boost him: My top choice so far. I would still benefit from the professions boost and would have a tertiary high level alt that is capable of healing, tanking, or casting. Also assuming that I do eventually level my hunter, 3 garrisons > 2 garrisons.
  3. Use it on another class outside of my comfort zone: Probably a warlock or a priest. Eh.

Assuming that I do go with either the first or second option, I would need to decide in which professions to boost. I have enchanting and blacksmithing on my paladin. My husband recommends weed picking and tailoring to make bags. 

Keiya’s Level 2 Garrison Build

I have built my garrison up with leveling and questing in mind. I have no doubt that once I upgrade to garrison level 3 or if I choose to raid in this expansion pack, my build will change.

Dwarven Bunker (Large): The Dwarven Bunker has an awesome, if not the best Level 1 perk for leveling: It doubles your chance of receiving a random item upgrade from quest rewards and increases the potency of the upgrade. So instead of receiving a green or blue quest item, I quite often receive blue or even purple items instead. It works on any quest reward, including followers by the way.

Lumber Mill (Medium): It is to my understanding that until you are at least at garrison level 3, the Lumber Mill is probably your best best since it yields extra garrison resources for poking at trees that you find while out and about in Draenor. It takes a little under 13k garrison resources to upgrade to level and I think someone calculated it out to be a month’s time approximately, so every little bit helps.

Enchanter’s Study (Small): The enchanting building is great if you don’t have enchanting or anyone to hitch a ride off of since it lets you disenchant gear in your garrison. If you do have enchanting, it allows you to get patterns and extra mats. Between my two professions, I find enchanting more useful than blacksmithing.

Salvage Yard (Small): Allows you to receive Salvage from missions, which have a chance of dropping items for your followers or something like that. I’m taking the Internet’s word on this one. I just built this and have not receiving anything useful to date.

Warlords of Draenor: Day 3

Ding level 94. I actually got a decent chunk of unhindered WoW play time in today (since we were out most of the day yesterday and I absolutely refuse to take time off of work for WoW); We had managed to logon just before the queue started so go us I guess? I haven’t had a chance to do any of the new instances yet. We were going to run one this morning before heading out to run errands, but my gear level was slightly too low.

The unscheduled maintenance as well as me probably falling out of leveling sync with the majority of the realm seems to have hammered out the in-game latency problems that I was experiencing on Thursday. The queue, which I am sitting in at this moment, however is still quite silly. I guess if anyone was on the fence regarding purchasing the expansion pack now or waiting, waiting for at least a week or two would probably a more prudent decision.

Leveling up in Warlords of Draenor feels more or less inconsequential. Instead of getting a talent point to spend every other level or so, we now instead get a randomly chosen perk which may or may not be useful. In my case, it leans towards ‘not.’ Yippee.

I am pretty surprised at how large of a role the garrisons are in this expansion pack. I had figured that they would at best, be a moderately sized minigame with a couple of perks, bht they are actually an integral part of both gameplay as well as the storyline; I guess after saving the world of Azeroth several times over, we deserve a to feel important. Having fun mentally planning out how I want to optimize my garrison on my main and alt.

In internet drama news: The r/WoW was shut down due to general Internet tantrumming. Still unclear if the new “official” World of Warcraft subreddit is /r/realWoW or /r/WorldofWarcraft.

Warlords of Draenor: Day 1

Warlords of Draenor marks the first expansion pack in which I did not order the physical copy of the Collector’s Edition to add to our shelf. Part of me feels mildly sad that we won’t be adding to the Blizzard shelf, but the majority of me knows that it’s probably not worth paying $20 more for a couple of toys that I will likely never use. I purchased WoD and logged in yesterday morning. Everything was awesome and near empty until I had caught up with virtually everyone else on the server (after completing the introductory quest line and hopping on the boat), at which point the game started to go slow as balls.

Proudmoore definitely wasn’t empty last night, to say the least. I happened to get home from work and also happened to sign on just as the server was starting back up from a crash so, no queue time for me! My husband on the other hand literally had to wait almost the entire evening to sign on. I don’t recall the previous two WoW expansion pack launches having a queue over several thousand (or much of a queue at all) and I don’t recall having that much of a lag problem. Several people have suspected that not having a secondary starting zone or a new race/class to split the player base may be part of the issue. Then again, I don’t recall the previous two expansion packs being DDOS’d on launch either.

Aide from queueing and server issues: Ding, level 91. Enjoying the garrison thing so far even though it’s obviously the WoW version of one of those mobile apps.

Odds and Ends: November 12th 2014

I’m not going to promise that I am going to regularly update my journey to level 100 because I am generally horrible about updating this thing, but I will make a valiant effort.

My initial fixation with World of Warcraft has obviously passed, seeing as how I have not logged onto the game in about two weeks or so. There really though, is not a whole lot to do in WoW at the moment other than to level my alts and raid on my paladin, which I’m not in the mood to do at the moment. In theory I should clean up the mess that is my bank. I guess much like virtually everyone else, I am just biding time until the expansion pack releases in a couple of days.

I admittedly haven’t been playing much of anything other that The Sims 4. Partially due to being real-life busy, partially due to spending time with other hobbies, and partially due to obsessively playing and documenting my Legacy Challenge Family. I am actually pretty close to completing the challenge. Generation 8 just reached adulthood, so generation 10 isn’t all that far away. I haven’t decided if I am going to start a new challenge afterwards or if I will put this game down for a bit to play other things.

Watching:

  • We just started watching The Legend of Korra Book 3. Still greatly enjoying even even though Korra is kind of a turd at times..
  • Sword Art Online II: I will admit that, despite the show being mediocre, it is nice that the series has returned to Aincrad.
  • Parasyte: This show is new this season and is based off of a manga series that I read and enjoyed quite a bit about a decade ago. Just think of it as a more violent and more fucked up version of Midori no Hibi. Migi is by far the most interesting character in the show so far; Everyone else is pretty mediocre.

The Naruto manga has come to an end after 15 years. I started watching/reading it shortly after the anime series was released in Japan, so it’s a series that I have been following for quite some time. I’m not sure how I feel about some of the romantic pairings. It’s almost as if Kishimoto started coupling the leftovers (Choji, Karui, etc). Also, apparently everyone had sex and spawned at literally the exact same time, given that their kids are presumably all around the same age. Regardless, I am pretty satisfied with the ending.

Blizzard Fortress 2

Well, I can’t say that I was expecting Overwatch or even a game like Overwatch to be announced at BlizzCon this year, but I was really hoping that new intellectual property would be announced and that is exactly what I received I guess. I am pretty sure that the last new piece of IP released by Blizzard was Starcraft and that was released what, 16 years ago and change? So even if it is obviously a Blizzardified Team Fortress 2,  having someone break out of the sequelitis plague makes me happy. I am also pretty curious as to how much of Overwatch was originally the now defunct Titan if any.

I like the basic premise and the art style, particularly the character designs. However, I don’t think that they did too good of a job making characters with a visually distinct silhouettes based off of the short preview clips that were shown. If I recall correctly, Valve specifically designed the Team Fortress 2 characters with very distinct profiles that could be seen easily from a distance, while moving at a high speed, and so forth. I guess we will eventually see how that impacts gameplay.

There is a suspicious Overwatch sized hole in my gaming schedule for a casual FPS and I haven’t yet played a Blizzard game that I did not enjoy, so bottom line: Will I be playing Overwatch? Sure.