Turkey to Azeroth
Holidays are fun and exhausting. Fun because we saw a lot of great places (and great beaches!), exhausting because after the first 3 days I fell dead asleep at 10 (and because a loud 3-year old – not mine – can be hell).
Beach. I has it.
However, I did have my laptop with me and I did manage to find a good wifi connection, so my latest project, no. 4 in my quest to get all healers to 80, Aushra the shaman almost hit 60 while I was in Turkey.
This means two things:
1. I’m having fun! I like shammy healing and I think she will be my new main alt when she gets to 80. Also, OMG RaF is the best thing EVER, totally worth buying a second account.
2. Since my priest on Defias is 66, I am basically doing Outland twice, at the same time. This is not fun. I hope Deathwing sits on Auchindoun because the place is a shithole filled with tanks who don’t understand that if I’m being mana drained I need more fucking breaks than usual (yes, even though 2 hours ago they ran with a priest who could heal blind and one handed and was always on 110% mana).
It also seems like I’m a lucky charm. [That, or actually having main spec healers helps.] The guild is struggling through summer holidays and class balance, so with one healer gone things get pretty tough. Raids weren’t very happy while I was gone, but everything seems to be back on track. Class balance is still not ideal and we’re using a lot of offspecs/alts on occasion, but we are 6/12 in ICC heroic and we also managed to do a bunch of frostwyrm achievements. I’m constantly impressed by how well we’re doing considering we almost never get 10 main spec, main char, 100% sure sign ups… last night we ran with 1 offspec healer, 1 alt tank, and 1 guy who can’t follow instructions or do basic things, and we still got 3 or 4 achievements (mostly 1 shots) and a heroic. We might really get those pretty skeletons after all…
Here’s another beach to end with. Yes, you should envy me because I had a great holiday :D
This post has 11 comments
June 21st, 2010
During my long time playing wow I have met 2 big groups of players – one who play a single char and never play any alts, and an other who play lots of chars, altoholics. I don’t understand much the reasons of having so many max level chars, because of the time investment one puts in a main char (meta achievements, pets, reputations, etc).
I also have alts, but I always wanted to have a different experience with my alts, that’s why I tried a level 29 twink for bgs, a level 60 classic raider, and my level 80 mage who is very different than my rogue main. So, I am a bit curious what drives you and any altoholic readers because for me all the alts are a big hassle, and I always feel that am neglecting my main char when improving any alt.
Tbf I got in that phase again when I resent what Blizz is doing regarding leveling and raiding, because yes, it should be accesible, but not this dumb. True, the options are there, you can level by doing all the quests on each continent, but you don’t get any real bonus from that. On the other hand, it is a bit silly how players ding 80 and very soon they are doing ICC… This fearsome raid has become very trivial in the past few months, and even though I don’t believe in hardcore raids, I say that it shouldn’t be so easy to get in and get hi ilvl items.
June 21st, 2010
Oh and gratz for your awsome holiday, the pics are refreshing!
June 21st, 2010
ICC normal is easy (well, the first wing which is puggable). ICC heroic is definitely not easy, not everyone can get there, not everyone will have a frostwyrm, so it’s nowhere near faceroll. Also, since I have only killed Sindragosa and LK once, I don’t think those encounters are easy in any shape or form, and I doubt the casual WoW player has many chances of seeing them, let alone downing them.
Alts are fun because you get to see a different playstyle. They’re an ongoing experiment. By leveling alts I learned that I love healing, I don’t like tanking, I’m bad at DPS… useful lessons. I don’t think you can tell if you will like a class unless you play it until level 40 – I never thought I’d like to heal and I had a huge surprise when I rolled Jen.
I like leveling with friends more than alone, but I also enjoy meeting idiots in PuGs, honestly. I call it a lesson in human relations.
And I like the gearing up process more than the polishing. I like being a fresh 80 and getting upgrades wherever I set foot in. Then I start getting bored…
My alt status now is:
Lvl 80:
- Jen, druid – <3
- Jensmth, warrior – retired ex-main, don’t feel like playing melee again
- Jnee, mage – thought I’d like ranged DPS but I don’t, moved to Defias to be an enchanter for my leveling priest
- Shiny, paladin – don’t like tanking that much and pally healing is meh, so she’s probably going to retire in Cataclysm
Low levels:
- Khrista, priest – I don’t like priest healing very much, but I’m leveling her to play with friends
- Aushra, shammy – seems fun, will be my next project
- random warlocks, rogues, hunters below level 30, cat farming DK – not terribly preocupied with leveling them any time soon.
As for the generic why? There’s nothing to do on my main. I raid 3-4 hours every couple of days and there’s nothing else I want on her. Old raids are boring, rep grinding is even worse, there’s no achievements (except raiding ones) I want… so outside ICC, there’s nothing to do with her. Shiny is as geared as she’ll be and I don’t feel like playing my other 80s. I’d go out, except I’m an antisocial bitch and all the friends I’d actually like to see live in foreign countries.
June 21st, 2010
Ok I wrote a whole new blog post in the comments…
June 21st, 2010
Have you tried healing disc on your priest (comment on your long comment)? Somehow I manage to associate playstyle of a leveling disc priest to a resto druid and like it a lot more.
Finally got a shaman to almost 40 myself and hopefully it’ll start being cool; I’m working on the “all healing classes at 80″ quest too.
June 26th, 2010
I just specced my priest disc today… and it doesn’t seem druidy to me, but she’s pwning in battlegrounds :D I’m going to be 68 soon, I hope it’s really better for mana regen than holy because I expect the worst in Northrend.
June 21st, 2010
Ok, I knew that you’ll say all that, because I got this explanation from other people as well, but isn’t gearing up repetitive and boring? To me gearing up is the most annoying thing in wow, because it involves luck, greedy/selfish people, boring grinds.
Speaking of grinds, I don’t see how a grind like Zul Gurub or AQ40 is more boring or time consuming than doing the same LK heroics every day for months. Besides, gearing up is never over, like rep farming, because you get so little time to enjoy your new tier set.
The hard grinds (rep) are Molten Core and those related to the Insane achievement. They are also pointless (ravenholdt or shendralar)
About ICC being easy – I know a kid who plays wow, he is 12 yrs old, he has a level 60 hunter and a level 80 dk. He is clueless about playing in a raid, he doesn’t have gems or enchants, not even cheap ones, yet he was doing Dreamwalker in 25 man some days ago. He leveled to 80 using his starting area gear plus some random drops, whithout doing quests and stuff, so he knows almost nothing about wow. However, he got in ICC 25 man :)
Imo, polishing a char is better because like in real life, learning a job is easy, but mastering it is not, and usually people tend to admire polished things and their creators, not the apprentices. Sure, wow and rl are different things, that’s why people have different approaches in wow.
I think you are a kind of person that “enjoys the road” more than the destination since you move so quickly from one thing to an other (which isn’t something bad).
June 26th, 2010
It’s easy to get a character to the point where the last raiding tier is the onlyupgrades you can get.
I have a main – hunter and 5 alts. 2 of which could raid ICC25 heroic without much trouble.
I’m not saying this to be charlie “big potatoes” it’s just boring investing in one character which you can’t improve any more.
June 26th, 2010
I am a bit of a masochist, I like pugging, meeting idiots and yelling at them. It’s also easier to level/gear on your main realm – when Aushra hits 80 she’ll probably get crafted ICC and ToC gear 1 hour after dinging, then she’ll be dragged in ICC normals by guildies, and so on. Khrista will be a different story, we’ll see…
Grinding LK heroics is very boring, yes, but it gets you something useful – gear to raid. Grinding a level 60 raid gets you… nothing I’d be interested in, since I don’t care about rep, legendaries or tier sets.
And getting carried in ICC isn’t the same as doing ICC with a real guild. The fun is in playing with people who know what they’re doing… (and this is one more reason why I have a 10-man guild now and not a 25-man one)
June 21st, 2010
I do envy you! I haven’t had a holiday in forever.
Gorgeous pics.
June 22nd, 2010
Jealous! I’d love to visit Turkey one day. (I love the photos!)