Friday Linkday: August 7, 2009

It's time for this week's links! With Patch 3.2 hitting this week, WoW blogs are aflutter with reactions and information related to the "Call of the Crusade" patch. Here are a couple of my favorites:

1. I really like Gray Matter's post on First Impressions. It's a casual look at some of the first few things he noticed when logging in after installing 3.2. Isle of Conquest sounds like something I'll never, ever want to do given my general distaste for vehicles.

2. More of a guide than a summary of reactions, Banana Shoulders has included an excellent compendium of information on The Argent Tournament. The crusader's tabbard looks pretty cool.

Of course, that's not the only thing bloggers are blogging about:

3. After logging in I got something in my mail about Northrend orphans! I thought, wait, it's not Children's Week! It's not exactly, but it's sort of the same. You get an Oracle or a Wolvar to take around Northrend and then at the end the orphan mails himself to you! Isn't that adorable? I can't wait to do it! I'll probably get on it tonight. When I do, I'll be following WoW.com's lovely Walk-through.

4. Finally, if you've read anything about "female gamer archtypes" please read Sydera's Revisited post over on World of Matticus. Luckily, all the guilds I've been in have been extremely female-friendly and I hope my experience is more of the norm than the article suggests.

Politeness Goes A Long Way: The Valiance Expedition Rep Grind

Here’s the thing: I don’t have very much gold. I’m level 77 and I’d like to be able to take an epic flyer around Northrend. The reputation discount for Artisan flying in 3.2 really excited me. Right now, I’m Revered with Valiance Expedition so I could get the skill for 4250 gold. But since I’m nowhere near that, I’m pushing for Exalted, by doing four PVP daily quests in Grizzly Hills and one PVE daily quest in Howling Fjord.

The Howling Fjord quest is called Breaking the Blockade and involves riding around on a stolen Zeppelin and bombing pirate ships. The best part of the quest is the imprisoned Goblin that yells when the zeppelin arrives and leaves. The first time I did it, it took me about five tries and quite a bit of time.  I can now do it in one run. Stand as far towards the very front of the zeppelin as you can (think “I’m King of the World” in Titanic) and then tilt your camera at the boats. When the boat is behind the zeppelin you can tilt your camera around and get a few shots in. Be sure and hotkey the bombs as well.

The PVP quests are fairly straightforward.  The only issue I’ve had with them is being ganked by Horde players. I don’t PVP. When a Horde player attacks me, and he’s not say 5 levels below me, I’ll just run away. With level 80s this sometimes doesn’t work. Yesterday, I had to hop Hordeside to ask a Belf Priest to stop ganking me. She apologized and said she was having a bad day and went to play on another toon. Later, another level 80 decide to start killing me, until I /plead–ed him to stop. He /sorry–ed and left me alone, so I /thank-ed him and he left me alone. Politeness goes a long way even in skirmishes between factions!

Thoughts on Patch 3.08 - No Love for Locks

I thought I'd cover the changes coming to Warlocks in the upcoming patch 3.08. Oh, look, there's only three! While Bliz has promised to "fix" my beloved class soon, this obviously doesn't cut it. Come on, Bliz, now's good, but before would have been better!

Drain Mana: Now drains a percentage of maximum mana.

Drain mana is pretty worthless for actually obtaining mana. Whenever I try to drain mana from something I hardly get a drop before the mob bites the dust. I'm not sure if this change will help any.

Emberstorm: Now works with Conflagrate.

Emberstorm is a tier 6 Destruction spell and therefor it wont matter to me. Perhaps this will answer the debate of what does more DPS on Destruction locks: shadow bolts or immolate + conflagrate.

Ritual of Summoning: Will now create a summoning portal object which can be re-used for multiple summons for 5 minutes.

This is awesome. Saturday night I was with a group of 40 trying to kill the Horde leaders (we got Silvermoon and Thunder Bluff and then the raid leader had to go). I was the only warlock, and people kept asking for summons. I eventually had to tell people to suck it up and fly over. With a reusable stone I would have been able to keep many of my shards.

Since that's all we got this time, here are some other patch changes of note:

Tapping: All player spells which cause a creature to become aggressive to you will now also immediately cause the creature to be tapped.

This is great for warlocks! I can't count how many times I've had mobs stolen out from under my nose.

The run speed in spirit form has been increased by 50%. Night Elves in Wisp form will now move at 75% speed.

This will make dying suck slightly less.

Racial restrictions on mounts have now been lifted. Night elves on mechanostriders? Tauren on raptors? You’re not seeing things.

So this will make it easier for people to obtain 50 mounts. One of the guild leaders has a human they really want to put on a mechanostrider. The question is, will cloth prices go up as people attempt to gain reputation in other faction cities?

Hiatus Ends!

There have been a lot of changes in my life since I last posted, and I think I'm finally in a place where I can play (and therefore update this blog) again. And yes, the existence of the expansion helped a little, too. I'll admit it! I'm intreaged.

The patches look as though they will be finished installing any moment now, and right now playing sounds a bit more amusing than writing.

No offense!