Mist of Pandaria Archives - Alternate Image Gaming

Mist of Pandaria

The Valor Dance: Dailies, Reputation, Upgrades, Trouble

March 22, 2013

Mists of Pandaria has brought us a bit of a roller coaster when it comes to our valor points and how we acquire and speed them. In Cataclysm, there were very few changes (just the move from 1 dungeon per day awarding valor to 7 per week) and we essentially just did a few heroic dungeons, killed a few raid bosses, and spent our points when we had enough. In MoP, however, the valor gear was gated behind reputation which was gated behind dailies. Valor being unspendable before doing enough dailies has been much lamented by the player base. Of course, since launch, each patch has brought a new curve ball in terms of valor. Continue to see the different valor changes so far, the problems with those changes, and what’s coming up in patch 5.3!

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Mist of Pandaria

Wild Speculation About the Future

March 19, 2013

Occasionally, we all get the urge to speculate about how the future will turn out. It’s practically a compulsion that’s part of the human condition. Everything from end of the world prophecies that get people in an uproar to gambling show people’s desire to see what’s coming. Us Warcraft players are no different but unlike in the real world scenarios that don’t seem likely (I’m looking at you 2011 raptures) – there is pretty much no end to what Blizzard could bring us. Looking back at Mists of Pandaria, I doubt many people saw the Pandaren coming but finding out there is a new titan facility that we’d yet to discover wasn’t a big shock. Continue after the break for some (potentially) crazy ideas about what I predict is in the pipeline and some stuff that just isn’t going to happen (move on demon hunter dreamers!).

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Mist of Pandaria

Transfer Gold Cross Realm

March 18, 2013

Ever want to start a character on a new server but don’t want to do it without the power of your gold? Transfer to a different server but hampered by pesky limits on gold transfer limits? Something recently occurred to me, it may have been obvious to others, but I’d yet to hear about it. The new pet system in 5.2 is a perfect way to send gold between characters on different servers. Continue to see how and why this works.

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Mist of Pandaria

Valor Upgrades and Why I Hope They Stay Gone

February 20, 2013

Patch 5.1 brought forth a fantastic (or so I may have seemed at first) new feature – gear upgrades with points. This feature allowed a player to take their piece of gear (as long as it met item level requirements) and upgrade it up to 8 item levels with justice points for blues or valor points for epic pieces. This gave players the ability to continue to use their valor points long after they had already purchased or surpassed the valor gear available. In this way, players could keep gaining more power for their characters even if they have incredibly bad luck with drops. Heck, I’ve been able to upgrade my Raid Finder Sha Touched weapon to be nearly the item level of getting a normal drop and above the Mogu’Shan Vaults two-hander that I’ve had no luck on. So why, when I heard that patch 5.2 would remove the valor upgrade vendor, was I happy to hear about it? And why on earth would I hope they stay gone? (more…)

Daily Mist of Pandaria

Daily Thoughts: More Awesome MoP Images

October 17, 2012

The first few of these came from the Pandaren starting zone The Wandering Isle (great starting experience, by the way), and the rest from Pandaria.

Daily Mist of Pandaria

Daily Thoughts: When Does Accessible Become Too Easy

October 10, 2012

I participated something last night that made me wonder if perhaps making content accessible to the masses can have an adverse side effect of making that content far too easy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those who hails back to the “harder” old days that let only an elite few actually see all of a raids bosses. I really like that there are normal modes to bosses that don’t require dozens of attempts to kill. I love the relative ease of blowing through a MoP heroic dungeon without much worry that I might be wiping to this boss for the next 45 minutes. I even enjoy the concept of the Looking for Raid feature. Particularly on nights where we’re short guildies online to do a normal raid or just so I can take an alt through the content without having to make a second raid / join a second raiding guild. So, keep in mind that I think it’s okay that the LFR bosses and trash pulls can be a low stress, easy-going, fun way to get some sub-par raiding gear. But after doing the first 3 bosses of Mogu’shan Vaults, perhaps we should consider that content that has been made so accessible that there’s no challenge left might not be worthwhile content after all. There may be some spoilers to raid content after the break, so be warned!

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