Onward from 80

So, you hit level 80, and wonder what to do next. Really? Well no, I see there's still "so much" to do that it's a constant dilemma to figure out what to do. Quests all over the place, raids pulling close, loads of heroics, plenty of gear to upgrade, reputations to gain, professions to level, pvp, and many another thing. I don't see anyone getting bored particulary soon. Loken on the other hand (as you can see in the above image) got quite tired of our little pug wiping horribly on him. Rogue ye be? Anyway, for ye rogues out there, the rogue.raidcal.com still hasn't updated yet... So glyphs and specs will be tricky to calculate. There's a few other options available though, and there's also Rawr but that one's primarily developed for druids, and sadly not updated to 3.0.x for rogues yet. As far as glyphs go, Sinister strike + Slice and Dice + Rupture seems to be the primary way to go as combat spec. I'm using a pretty weird spec currently, mainly for lack of weapons. I sort of stumbled into Greed during a heroic Stratholme, you just don't let something like that get disenchanted. The problem with fists however, it that there's just nothing really worthwhile to use as an offhand. I'll sort that later though. What's on TV right now... Monkey business on Discovery channel :P Poll end Another poll ends, which started during the zombie event. You can still get your favourite zombie food during a quest in Zul'drak. Yumm...

Braaaains! - 202 (54%)

Stay away from me!! - 78 (20%)

Wha? Ow... guh. brainss... - 58 (15%)

I'm hungry. - 36 (9%) And a new poll: How fast did you reach level 80?

Wednesdays, bloody wednesdays

It's wednesday, and here in Europe that means it's "scheduled maintenance" from 05:00 to 11:00 CET. If you have a day off, that means you can sleep late :P Or as I'm doing right now, write some text while you're waiting for the servers to kick into life again. And a long wait it is indeed. So, yesterday I got tired of having to break open my current mouse, replacing the duct tape and paper I keep stuffed under the buttons to ensure the buttons still "click", and ordered myself a new sword. Sword? well, see for yourself: It's a Logitech G5 laser mouse. With a cord yes. If you think "wireless" is cool or (omg) believe sales drivel spoon fed to you because it's "a useful thing of the current age", then you're obviously a gullible casual gamer, or simply forced to play on such crap because you're not using your own computer. Batteries suck, avoid them like a plague. Anyhow, It's been ordered last night, and I've gotten confirmation that it's been mailed and due to arrive tomorrow. Total cost: 34,95 Euros, ex 4,95 E shipping. What a long strange trip it's been Christmas soon, so we can get started on the second part of that achievement. Keep in mind the final reward is a proto-drake of 310% flight speed. Much like the gladiator's drakes and ashes of al'ar. There's a quest in the howling fjord which allows you to ride one of the beasts for a quest, as a teaser I guess. Somehow I managed to stay mounted on my raptor while doing that, so that made some interesting screenies. It also gives a nice perspective on the SIZE of that thing. It's huge! The expansion is great, leveling goes steady (mailman was a bastard and delivered it a bit late though) If you haven't already gotten it, be sure you do. There's grizzly bears fishing for salmon, herds of animals going around, animals fighting each other for territory, new models and so much more. But that's not all! I'll let a few screenshots speak for themselves. I've been an Iron Dwarf: Ridden a storm giant. See that small green thing on top of his head? That's me glaives mon: I've been a zombie, again: And taken on a rather unceremonial flight as a zombie: Dalaran is quite a sight: So, currently level 77 and able to fly again! A word of warning though, while it's tempting to immediately start flying everywhere and obtaining the World Explorer achievement. Don't. Seriously DO NOT get that achievement yet. There's a very annoying bug with it, which causes the tabard to be mailed to you every single time you change zones. Some guild members have complained about having as many as 100+ of the tabards in their mailbox, with no sign of the steady stream slowing down. So seriously, do NOT get that achievement yet. Hopefully blizzard will fix it soon. Onward to 78 today! ps: Extended maintenance until 13:00.... bloody french! ps2: Extended until 15:00 ... /sigh

Critter Visitsplosion

Well, it looks like we got a post linked on WowInsider, which caused a slight,,, somewhat large...,, err. Alright let's face it this blog in it's current form was not build to support the sudden appearance of about 28K more visitors than usual in such a short time.

I suspect in part I should thank mania for the spike, as the Wowinsider scouts picked up the link trough her blog.

Here's what I woke up to this morning :


Normally we're at around 1-2K views in a day. So we've just been hit by about a month worth of traffic, in the time of less than 12 hours. It's only reasonable to see the web server give a little hiccup at that. I've had the issue before, and took some measures to ensure it's not as likely to cause trouble in the future. But apparently the measures were only a half fix. The CSS trick seems to have worked and the site loads fine for the most part. You'll just notice that there's a couple of images that will refuse to load.

Well, it's a good thing the site gets stressed so and then, it forces me to think of a way to make it more efficient in the future. Let's see how soon the images come back up and we'll work from there.


Poll

Another poll reached it's ending date, and as such we'll be starting a new one. Not without posting the results of the previous one however.

What do you feel as being the most enjoyed play style?

DPS - 75 (41%)

Melee - 61 (33%)

Tank - 40 (21%)

Caster - 38 (20%)

Healer - 37 (20%)

Ranged - 30 (16%)

Physcal - 14 (7%)

Since the blog audience has a slightly larger number of rogues, and focuses for some parts on DPS I guess the results were fairly predictable. The total number of votes on that poll could have been higher though.

Since WotLK will be releasing at 00.01 tomorrow (tonight), I'm wondering where you've ordered your CD / DVD. You can leave that here in the comments here if you wish though. The poll the next few weeks is a bit more straightforward :
* Did you get your WotLK box on time?

Mine is currently in the mail, slooowwwwly making it's way to my house.

WotLK - Boost your XP advantage

When the expansion starts (less than two days from now !!), you'll either want to dive straight into the new content or finish up your old content. Depending how well Blizzard's account server holds out *cough*. To get yourself a head-start however you could gather up and complete some quests, even daily quests and turn these in as soon as your level cap is increased. 25 quests can be a lot of XP quite quickly. If you're racing for the first zones, (and there will be many who are) then you'll want every edge you can get. WowWiki has a decent list of available daily quests. Be sure to empty your quest log before starting, and pick up as many as you can. Try to avoid the ones which give low cash and XP as a reward. Then, park yourself in Ogri'la and await thursday's arrival. Now, the servers come up, you've upgraded your account and you can complete the quests in the following order :

The first three quests : bombing, banish more demons and the wrangling quest.

Hearth to Shattrath and you can turn in seven: Intercepting the mana cells, sunfury attack plans, multiphase survey, the daily heroic, normal daily dungeon, daily pvp and for great honor.

Go to SSO Island and turn in another seven quests here : Open for Business, Disrupt the Greengill Coast, Ata'mal Armaments, Don't Stop Now, Crush the Dawnblade, Know Your Ley Lines, The Battle Must Go On

Use BT necklace (If you have one), to go to netherwing island (otherwise use the scroll from the "know your leylines quest" and here you can turn in another nine quests : The Deadliest Trap Ever Laid, Disrupting the Twilight Portal, The Booterang, Dragons are the Least of Our Problems, Picking up the Pieces, The Not-So-Friendly Skies, A Slow Death, Netherwing Crystals and one of the gathering quests if able.

Fly to terrokar : Turn in the bombing quest. After that you should head back to shattrath and take the portal to whichever city has the zeppelin or boat for your faction. With minimum travel you should be one of the few people on the island to reach level 71. Not good enough? Alright, then have a grab at this leveling guide to get you trough 70-80 even faster! As you can see however, that's a grand total of 25 quests exactly. There are plenty more quests, some pay more, some less. Group quests and raid quests especially should be savored. Just don't go out of your way to turn them in and most certainly don't waste any time completing them on the actual patch day. After all, you want to start with Northrend as soon as possible. Low xp quests : Avoid these if your quest log is full.

Relic's emanations.

Fishing / cooking quest

Further conversions

Keeping the Enemy at Bay

Arm the wards

The Air Strikes Must Continue

WotLK vs Madonna

The numbers game The 13'th of november 2008 World of Warcraft - Wrath of the Lich King will go live around the world. The game we play with over 11 Million other players. But, even while it's currently the largest MMO in the world (and likely to stay that way for a while yet) The amount of attention it gets in the media is quite sparse. Why though? At the clock of midnight 12-13 november a large number of stores worldwide will be opening their doors to begin the sale of this latest expansion. It is expected to sell several million copies within the first week of time. Several million, times ~30 euros per sold copy, makes for several tens of millions of cash flowing from our pockets into that of Blizzard. And that's just one week. Blizzard released WoW at 23 November 2004 to the USA and 11 Februari 2005 in Europe and other countries. 11 January 2007 there were 8 Million players, and at 22 Januari 2008 there were 10 Million players worldwide, currently 11 million. This Chart shows the growth rate of the game we play. As you can see it's just shot trough the roof unlike any other MMOC out there. What makes it so successful? How does "one" game company manage to make a game so large that you can get over 11 million game subscriptions running across the planet? WoW and the media A game unlike any seen before, with a number of followers larger than some of the states in the USA. And yet, how often do you see or hear anything about it in the newspaper, discovery channel, general news? Never if at all. If I hadn't told my parents I was playing it they would probably have never heard of it. And when you "do" see it linked in some way trough the odd link on BBC it's because some chinese guy stabbed a fellow player to death for hacking his account. Is that how we want people to see our game? Something that creates so much violence among players that we're willing to go out there and stab each other to death? I don't think so. Yet that's the only news "worthy" of being shared with the world aparently. Addicts dying of thirst because of a game addiction, addicts killing each other, addicts dying of sleep depravation, addicts running into a school and shooting up their class mates out of sheer frustration. That is not our game. Yet the media seems to want to make us believe so. Well, for any concerned parents, I suggest you buy the game yourself and try it out yourself before letting your kid play. You'll see the game itself is quite harmless. Perhaps you'll even be able to enjoy playing the game together as several people I know have and do. Freaks? What makes a WoW player a WoW player? Dressing up like it's some halloween party? No. With a a large enough fanbase you'll see people like that for really just about anything. Dressing up as your favourite characters isn't just something that's done for games. And certainly not just for WoW. Mind if I show you this link? Indeed, Starwars. If you don't know what that is.. what rock have you been living under all these years? Startrek has the same freaks. Though fanatics or devotees would probably be a better term. Movies such as predator and alien have people create costumes just as well. Even sick freaks (and in this case it's allowed) dress themselves up like power rangers or teletubbies..... No, dressing up like freaks is not something the average wow player does. Not even Medieval reenactments like those. No, the average wow player is either a kid who does school at regular times and plays 4-5 hours when school is finished. Or a regular working person you'd never have expected it of playing from 9-12 after dinner. There's even a youtube video of a guy playing wow while he's working at the stock market. (can't find that link right now sorry) World of Warcraft is everywhere, yet at the same time, it's being kept quiet like it's something secret and personal. Like it's something to be ashamed of. Bigger than? More of the numbers. As the subject of this post gave a hint, madonna. Personally I don't like the frigid old corpse, so she's the perfect target to use in this post. Reasons? Well she's done some anti piracy stunts and is actively opposed to P2P sharing of her creations even though she's a millionaire a few times over already and doesn't even make more than 2% per sale. Robbie williams (even though I don't like his music) Is an active supporter of P2P and sharing his music. It's free advertising guys, anyone enjoying the crap you probably didn't even write yourself is going to buy that CD anyway, anyone who doesn't simply won't. But that's another story. Since starting in 1982 the old crone (M) has sold over 250 million albums and 150 million singles. I've never bought a music CD in my life, ever, and never will (Music radio for the win) so I'm not sure what the exact price on an average single or album is. Though I'm quite sure it's outrageous. The apple iTunes store sells most songs under a single dollar. And according to cd-universe her albums are switching owners for about 8-15 dollars. So let's see, old ugly hag sales: 250 mil albums * 13$ : 3.250.000.000 150 mil singles * 1$ : 150.000.000 Blizzard, World of warcraft sales: 6 mil Original CDs * 30€ : 180.000.000 11 mil TBC CDs * 30€ : 330.000.000 11 mil WotLK CDs * 30€ : 330.000.000 4 years * 11 million users * 12 months * 14€ : 7.392.000.000 isn't quite accurate as it starts low, then goes high. So we'll take the median which is ~3.696.000.000 Total profits from sales: * M : 3.400.000.000 $ * B : 4.536.000.000 € - converted: 5.795.647.200 $ Now, that's not including the concerts that M has given, or the profits she gets whenever a radio station runs her crap, or any profits off movies and other fees she'll get for doing absolutely nothing. But still. Based on pure sales along blizzard is leading by a none too shabby 2.395 million $ for World of Warcraft alone. Now, take into account that it took the old hag 26 "years" to produce those sales, while blizzard has been producing World of Warcraft for only "4". So, is World of Warcraft is bigger than Madonna? I'd think so yes, and still growing. World of Warcraft. What's your game? -- The above article was inspired by Tweakers.net (Dutch)

Search and Find

You've explored all of azeroth and all of outland. You've done 2200+ quests and are aching to start on Northrend to get your loremaster's colors. You got your albino drake and skunk pet, a few dozen factions exalted, you've even completed every dungeon in lands old and new. But still the 13th of november is a way off. What to do? Well, let's find some critters to love! Note that you can even /love dead critters. (you sicko) So if you 'accidently' right click one.... To all the squirrels I've Loved Before. 21 Critters to be found in varied locations. Some of these are in Northrend but this way you can get started ahead of everyone else. Most of the list can be found on the aforementioned page on wowhead, but here's a more complete overview :

Cat : Eversong Woods, Silvermoon City, Elwynn Forest

Chicken : Westfall, Hillsbrad Foothills, Elwynn Forest, Arathi Basin, Duskwood, Tirisfal Glades, Shattrath City, The Barrens, Azuremyst Isle, Dustwallow Marsh, Redridge Mountains

Crab : The Steamvault, Dragonblight, Ghostlands

Cow : Elwynn Forest, Hillsbrad Foothills, Arathi Highlands, Westfall

Deer : Elwynn Forest, Darnassus, Teldrassil, Moonglade, Ashenvale, Blade's Edge Mountains, Alterac Mountains, Azuremyst Isle, Darkshore, Stonetalon Mountains, Western Plaguelands, Westfall, Moonglade, Dire maul

Ewe : Shattrath City

Frog : Maraudon, The Slave Pens, The Steamvault, Zangarmarsh, Ghostlands, Dire maul

Fawn : Elwynn Forest

Gazelle : The Barrens

Hare : Durotar

Parrot : Un'Goro Crater

Prairie Dog : The Barrens, Nagrand, Mulgore, Arathi Highlands, Westfall

Rabbit : Dun Morogh, Elwynn Forest, Scarlet Monastery, Moonglade, Redridge mountains

Ram : Loch modan, Wetlands

Sheep : Elwynn Forest, Redridge Mountains, Loch Modan, Hillsbrad Foothills, Alterac Mountains, Westfall

Swine : Durotar, The Barrens

Skunk : Terokkar Forest, Bloodmyst Isle, Azuremyst Isle.

Squirrel : Darnassus, Ashenvale, Dire Maul, Magisters' Terrace, Zul'Aman, Moonglade

Toad : Black Temple, The Steamvault, The Underbog, Darnassus, Un'Goro Crater, Wetlands, Swamp of Sorrows, Ghostlands WotLK critters

Borean Frog : Borean tundra

Steam Frog : Borean tundra If you find any of the above critters in other locations, just leave a comment to this post.

First

Don't you just hate it when people do that? Ya know "first!", first page, first after blue, first on second page, first on third page, first post. Seriously, get a life you sad excuse of pixelated retardism. Luckily any such behaviour is rewarded with a ban on the EJ forums as well as the MMOC forums. It's sad that blizzard isn't doing the same yet. At any rate, it's the "first" of the month. November, 12 days until WotLK! As well as a new month to pick up your consortium gems. Free gems are always good, even if they're no longer as valuable as they used to be.