Young urban miner/herbologist

October 8th, 2008 by straumnes

When I discovered professions, quite early on, actually, I was thrilled. I am always at least a little thrilled by thing that bridge from WoW to real life, like emotes and sitting in chairs. I am certainly easily amused, at any rate.

Skinning and leatherworking were the first two I picked up, just on my trial account. They happened to be the first profession trainers I’d come across, and I felt they fit in with being a rogue. Also, all the animal corpses I left in my trail were fairly disturbing to me. I was extremely diligent about it, religiously skinning every possible beast that I killed, then crafting them as soon as possible. I felt bad about just selling all the things I made to vendors, but at the time I didn’t know about the auction house, and being on trial, couldn’t use it anyway.

On Elsarrin, I made her an herber/alchemist, because I thought it fit really well with being a shaman. Elixer of water breathing helped with my water totem quest at any rate. (Just an aside, unrelated to anything; I’m in a wireless cafe right now, a symptom of being homeless…er, yeah. But my butt hurts like you wouldn’t believe, and I wouldn’t even mention what is really going on right now, but some dude across the room is huffing so loudly. I can’t even…it sounds like he’s forgetting to exhale, and then every 10 seconds or so, his lungs almost stop working and he has to jumpstart them.)

So, I wasn’t nearly as fastidious with alchemy on Elsarrin as I was on Magdala. I think I kept up on herbing alright, though. One day, I read a post about how incredibly expensive crafting professions end up being, and how they get you no money until you’re 375. I hadn’t really considered having two gathering professions before, but I wanted to try skinning/herbing, I think because I was still bothered by animal carcasses.

After I did that, though, I never really leveled up skinning, and I think I sort of forgot about picking herbs. Then, I started playing Straumnes anyway, and I’ve volleyed back and forth a lot with professions on her. I think I started out with skinning/mining, but I never did either of them, and then by the time I remember I was in the Barrens and didn’t feel like quickly going to get them up.

Being a hunter doesn’t really lend itself to gathering. Skinning, maybe…but to mine or pick herbs, you generally need to be tracking it, or at least I do, or I completely overlook the node. With a hunter, though, you can track cooler things. Like Demons, or Elementals. Or just Beasts, because it’s nice to be able to dash through a big field and know where to sidestep and not be slowed down. Hunters are really uninhibited with movement, which is just another thing that probably helps them out with leveling so quickly; before, I would have to kill at least twice as many of whatever was between me and my destination, because I couldn’t easily tell if I could move around everything or not.

Tracking everything means almost no surprises if I’m doing it right, and it is really nice to just breeze through a place, stop a couple times when I accidentally aggro something, which is so easily dealt with by a pet, and run on my merry way. If I had a mount ( D:< ) this would surely be even easier.

So, why would I ever even have herbs or mining up as a hunter? Yes, moneymaking is nice, but I don’t like standing around…despite my propensity for it. So, I don’t like changing what I’m tracking to pick up some ore or plants. Recently, I’ve almost run out of gold. I don’t even know how…training doesn’t cost that much, but I imagine it’s because, well, I’ve spent a lot of money at the Auction House trying to get decent hunter mail at 40.

Everything mail with +agi is literally over 30 gold, it is obscene. I caught someone selling mail legs “of the Monkey” armor in Trade…miraculous that I was reading Trade when it was posted, and that I was even able to notice it among the mountains of stupid on the channel. Even moreso, that they were selling it for 3 gold. I gave them 4. It isn’t like they crafted it and deserved a tip, and I don’t know if they just had no idea what was up at the AH recently, but I was just so grateful.

So, recently, I’ve been lurking in the AH, trying to pick up practically anything that is +agi or +stam or +ap. I still have a leather chest because I figure my armor is better off having decent bonus stats than actually protecting me. I was sort of wrong about this when I went to Uldaman the other night and the tank wanted me to take care of almost all non-elites on my own. They mentioned earlier that he didn’t want us using AOE, as well, and I really hope he didn’t mean it anymore, because like hell if I’m going to not use Explosive Trap on those stupid Earthen when they’re up on my ass.

That run, in fact, was not that great by my standards, but that tank, right before we got to the last boss, kept saying we’d done a really awesome job and we should be proud of ourselves. Really? The next night there, the run was way better, but we wiped…I had the distinct feeling that everyone there was kind of out of it, except for maybe the idiot rogue who kept pulling on accident because she was kind of lowbie. I felt almost positive it was a female player, and felt simultaneously annoyed and guilty about this.

Female players in the game is of course one of those weird topics. I always admit to it when I’m playing; maybe I actually really suck and am unfortunately propogating the stereotype that we are horrible players, but it’s more realistic that I range from mediocre to alright, or even good for my experience level. Of course, anyone who asks “r u girl irl?” is going to say something at least slightly creepy if you say yes, but I cop to it anyway. It was really predictable lol when I said “No, I’m really a girl” in a group, when someone said I was probably a guy, and someone immediately asked “Turkey or ham on a sandwich?”

For the record, I said both. I also said that salami and/or roast beef was disappointingly missing, everyone else in the group “omg!”ed, except for the other girl, who got bitchy and said that hard salami was way better. Whatever, jealous much?

Tags: , ,
Posted in hunter | No Comments »

Wait, I was supposed to bring arrows?

October 8th, 2008 by straumnes

My fear of grouping wasted me a lot of time. Had I gotten over it, I may have discovered early on that I don’t like getting up close and personal in a fight; hence, playing a hunter really being ideal for me. What I’m hoping is that by the time I hit 80, I will really not be totally pathetic at playing a hunter, and be able to differentiate myself from the loads and loads of mediocre-to-suck kind that litter WoW.

I take pride in the fact that I already understand that I am a ranged DPS dealer, and that I should understand how to do CC. Now, being able to actually perform both of these even adequately isn’t exactly in my repertoire yet, but I’m comfortable giving myself time. For now, learning and understand my role in the game is good enough; I recently read someone asking whether being a Survival hunter in WotLK will make them ideal for melee or ranged DPS in raiding.

AFAIK, being a hunter means, absolutely, ranged DPS, when it comes to raiding. PvP is something I have zero knowledge about, so while apparently melee fighting is good for this, I will probably never experience that. Am I wrong that a hunter should never, or at least almost never, melee in endgame raiding, and that asking whether they will be “melee or ranged DPS” is an idiot question, akin to asking where the inn is in a major city instead of walking up to a guard?

I read people making posts about having solo-leveled the whole way to 70 (soon to be 80, yuck) and this quickly became undesirable. When I was looking up hunters before making Straumnes, I read I think more than once that one of the many, many reasons they are so reviled is because they aren’t used to playing in a group, since it is so easy for them to get all the way to 70 alone compared to other classes.

I think this really helped me push past my illogical fear of people on the internet who don’t know my name ore face thinking my imaginary character, on a computer game that is just a bunch of pixels, is dumb. I mean, IRL, I’m pretty intelligent. This is something I’ve been told all my life, and easily accepted because, well, I am. At one point, I finally noticed that being smart for realz and being smart on WoW, not always, but often, are related. As long as one retains a semblance of intelligence, and an ability to learn and take advice or criticism, I’ve heard it’s generally easy to play WoW well. So, I at last understood that continuing to spell thing correctly, capitalize if I have the time, and pay attention to my mistakes when I notice them, or if they’re brought to my attention, I won’t be made out of fail.

I’ve never outright asked anyone if I sucked, but it’s almost always on my mind if I’m playing with someone else, and I’ve wanted to after someone’s been like “This is my first tank, how am I doing?” Invariably, the people that ask this are doing fine, or great, which I would like to hear myself, although I expect to hear “Uh, you are doing this, and this, and this wrong.”

Posted in hunter | 2 Comments »

Third times the charm

October 8th, 2008 by straumnes

I made Straumnes because I rolled a toon for someone’s guild signature. On WoW Ladies on livejournal, we do each other this favor many times daily. They happened to be in the Blood Elf starting area, I happened to name the toon Jamesjoyce. I actually really loved what hitting Random had made, and contemplated actually playing them. This was after about a month of logging onto Elsarrin, feeling like a total failure, logging out, and then just reading stuff about World of Warcraft online instead of actually playing.

Jamesjoyce was going to be a priest, and at first I made her on Scarlet Crusade (US), then immediately rerolled her as Straumnes due to it being an RP server. I can’t remember what made me reroll a hunter, but it was probably just me wanting something easier to play than a priest, as well as having a “real” pet. I remember when I bought Elsarrin a moth, not knowing the difference between a hunter pet, and something non-combat, and was more than a little disappointed that it wouldn’t go hit things for me.

Once Straumnes was about level 15 and I was running around the Barrens (I hate the Eastern Kingdoms, at least Horde areas, with burning firey contempt), I opened WoW one day and realized I totally hated her face. It wasn’t actually the Jamesjoyce model, as I’d change it to look “moar boring”. The face kind of sucked, though, because belf female lips are weird and puffy. I actually agonized over deleting her and starting over, because not only did I not want to have to level her up (only 15 levels or whatever), but I had a pet black boar named Hunjoro that I felt this extremely deep and passionate love for. I was talking to him in my head all the time, and I really didn’t want to delete him.

I couldn’t handle the face, though, and rerolled. Now, my dislike for belves is pretty much as great as anyone’s. After I read their lore, they were still obnoxious, but I had a lot more respect for them. Draenei are, I think, the only race with a worse recent history than Sin’dorei. But everything about them bugged me; their emotes, their architectural style, how pissy they all look, and of course, most of the players. I try to combat this by having Straumnes be very invested in seperating herself from other blood elves, not just by being annoyed by the whole Silvermoon societal culture in general, but by genuinely respecting Thrall and the rest of the Horde. Part of this was running her the hell out of Eversong Woods, and actually to Mulgore. Visually, it’s my favorite starting area, period, although I like the Draenei starting quests the most, I think. Then, once she hit level 10 there, take her to Durotar because I want a wolf mount, and the quests will be painfully easy with her being up 10 levels, and having a pet.

I did this with my first, second, and third version of Straumnes. See, once I got to level 17 on the second one, I had become fed up with hearing about how awesome Moon Guard was for rp, and by the obvious lack of it on Scarlet Crusade. Deleting her a second time wasn’t nearly as difficult; I’d made a stupid trip all the way to Teldrassil for an owl, and gotten another boar, but I didn’t really care about the pets any more; the magic had, sadly but fortunately, faded.

Once on Moon Guard, getting to 17 was an absolute breeze. It’s really satisfying for me to top myself in levels. There’s not much I can pride myself on in WoW that doesn’t have to be with not being an idiot (For example, I’ve never asked anyone for directions, almost ever. Once, when looking for a rare spawn for a quest). Beating myself is really the only thing I ever have to congratulate me on, other than when I got my elekk, and if I get a sweet drop.

I didn’t just get to 17, I actually did Ragefire Chasm. On Straumnes v1 and 2, I’d gone through the Hidden Enemies questline up until you have to actually go into the dungeon and sort of stopped there, due to my former group anxiety. However, I was in love with Thrall, and really wanted to actually do something for him, so the third time around, I sucked it up and accepted a random group invite to go there. And being in a group with a hunter was actually easy! I had 3 things to do as a hunter; send in my pet after the tank, shoot it, and then loot it. We didn’t kill whoever was on the cliff, so I got to do it again. And then I did it again, and again, until I couldn’t anymore because I was too high a level.

I kind of hate Moon Guard, especially now that I heard about the Dance of the Dead event on Steamwheedle Cartel. The only place you tend to see people rping openly is of course Silvermoon City, which I try to avoid, and RP-guilds that aren’t belf-focused tend to be very anti-belf…for good reasons, but still lame for me. The one I’m in now is actually all blood elf, due to it being a guild for Farstriders. So, it’s a guild comprised of the most hated Horde race, and class in the game. I suppose it could only be worse if it were an all Gnome hunter guild, but seeing as that’s not a possibility, I’m stuck in the middle of Lamest of the Lame.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Nubcakes

October 8th, 2008 by straumnes

Like many, I started WoW with a trial account. I made a human rogue, and spent the next two weeks thrilled with everything. Last year, I was working evenings, and would come home around 12 o’clock at night. It quickly became a routine that I would pop a couple Weiner Wings into the oven, log into WoW, and eat up while spacing out to Blackmoth Super Rainbow, and running around Elwynn Forest and Westshire. Yeah, two weeks to get to level 17…kind of lame.

This is the first computer game I’ve ever really played, and while I’ve played a couple tabletop RPG’s before, I was more into the roleplaying side of it, and that really doesn’t factor into most of what people do on WoW.

My rogue, Magdala, sits at level 17 now. When I went and bought everything a couple months ago, I decided to recreate her on my friends server, a plan that was forgone when I realized my friend would probably quit WoW again before I got even close to her level…only 51, but said friend seems only mildly interested in WoW.

I made a Draenei shaman that was way more awesome to me; Draenei because they are fine as hell, and shaman because I thought it was interesting that this was the only Alliance race able to do it. Elsarrin was pretty awesome despite the fact that I was still completely clueless as to what I was doing; at this point, I’d learned, like, basic button functions (still did not know how to autorun…yes, think back to your days of that) and how to add things to my action bar, and tab through it. I got her to 35 over a period of perhaps 2 months. My leveling slowness is something I’m deeply ashamed of, but I try not to give myself a hard time about it, especially since I never, ever grouped with anyone on Elsarrin, meaning I did absolutely no dungeons with her.

Playing a shaman really doesn’t suit me. Aside from that, draenei are the only decent Alliance race. I wish they were Horde, although that’s unrealistic…if the blood elves weren’t shunned by the Alliance, and stuck with them, maybe draenei could have been welcomed to the Horde as a way of the orcs saying “Sorry for killing you so much! We’ll help you out now.”

Back to that point, if I had been in groups and was a healer, which I think would actually be a really good role for me (I like helping people, staying away from the action, and actually being recognized for the work I’m doing), this might be a good class from me. I had group-phobia, though. The idea of anyone else relying on me in the slightest made me get an intense rush of adrenaline due to fear, and being lightheaded on top of not knowing what to do (”What totem does the slowing thingy?! Aah, they’re hitting me!”) is a super awful combination. I was determined to solo absolutely everything possible, and just not do what required a group, which is sort of the antithesis of what WoW is about anyway.

I’ve been thinking about picking up Elsarrin again…I miss my blueberry-goat, but I’d want to respec resto, read some stuff about what this actually means, and heal lowbie instances to get used to it. In any case, she’s sitting around in Southshore on her elekk (I am proud that I actually managed to get her a mount), while I’m running around Kalimdor on a belf hunter. Magdala has been in the Stormwind auction house for about 6 months, and she’ll probably stay there forever and ever.

Tags: , ,
Posted in rogue, shaman | No Comments »