Daily Thoughts: 4.2 Impressions and Tips

Now that I’ve gotten a little over a week to play around with 4.2, a couple of the new raid bosses, and a few days of the new daily quests out in Hyjal and the Molten Front, I’m here to tell you – this patch did not change WoW significantly. There hasn’t been too much of a shuffle in spec balance; arcane mages still pewpew excessively and you’ll probably still be kicked from a raid if you try to bring your subtlety rogue. So far it seems to be a mostly a standard WoW patch. Follow after the break for more about the Firelands, Hyjal Dailies, and other stuff. (more…)

Daily Thoughts: Bad Luck

After my Paladin, who is now pretty much as geared as possible with the exception of valor point and raiding gear (and one piece of Earthen Ring rep gear for the Holy Offspec), I’m working on gearing up my fury/prot warrior. From a little math of my total justice points earned, I’ve killed about 50 bosses on him… and won 2 pieces of fury gear. An interesting bit to note, rolling greed only, I’d won 3-4 pieces of off-spec tanking gear before I had enough justice points to buy a 346 piece from the vendor. I simply have no luck attempting to get fury gear for this warrior. I bought the epic dps chest piece, got an epic belt from Hyjal Rep, won bracers and a trinket from heroics. Aside from those pieces, despite 50 boss kills, the rest of the gear is from regulars or, even worse, quest rewards. Sometimes the rolls just don’t go your way.

What I find most interesting about the warriors lack of loot, is that I haven’t lost rolls for fury loot. After 50 boss kills, only 2 pieces of fury wearable loot have dropped. So, ironically, the warrior could also be considered very lucky because I’ve won 100% of the fury drops. When wanting to call yourself unlucky, it’s good to look at the situation from as many views as possible.

A good friend and guildy of mine was asked by our guild to switch mains as our guild was fairly overburdened with plate dps classes. Fortunately, this (being only a couple of weeks ago) was still fairly early in the expansion. His warrior though, was already pretty much decked out in pre-raid gear. So with a little grumbling he began rushing his rogue to level 85. Within days of reaching level cap, he grabbed a couple of pre-raid best-in-slot heroic pieces and, in a unusual stint of good luck, 1 epic from each of the first two pulls in a Bastion of Twilight trash run. Effectively putting his rogue ahead of his warrior in terms of gear in probably 1/4 of the time. Luck is a funny thing, isn’t it?

Most Viewed Posts of the Last Month

For those of you curious about the effect of keywords and content on the incoming views, this could be an interesting list for you. Check each of these and notice the keywords. The top 5 in order from most viewed to least of the past 30 days are as follows:

Cataclysm Faction Reputation Guide
Weekend Update: No Dailies in Hyjal
Daily Thoughts: Hyjal
Daily Thoughts: Uldum Thoughts and Screen Shots
Daily Thoughts: Ret Gets Buffed in Patch 4.0.6

 

Note here that people are really interested in checking up on the new Cataclysm zones and the new factions. Hyjal it seems is of particular interest to a great many people, probably because there’s no dailies (yet) but a ton of great loot. In a future content patch blizzard will be adding some along with changes to the zone. This would be a great time to write some relevent articles and drive more viewers to your site. For those not so interesting in writing blogs, but reading them, I’ll be doing a full guide for the hyjal dailies once they come into existence.

Daily Thoughts: The Great Reign of Griefers and Trolls

The lull before cataclysm brought out the Great Reign of Griefers and Trolls. This time was expected to end after the release of Cataclysm, when the expansion should have brought about more activities for these griefers and trolls to do that weren’t griefing and trolling. Many theorized that these players had previously been so occupied diving into the content, in some way or another, that they weren’t bored enough to be so driven to harass those who don’t think everyone in the game is a ‘bro’. Occasionally of course, griefers and trolls end up harassing each other. This is similar to a gang war. The major except is after the words are done flying between the two players or groups of players, no one has been shot. On the other hand, many innocent by standards in /trade or /general have lost precious IQ points in fray. Now we are weeks into the Cataclysm and the tremendous amount of rude players have not receded into the black depths of their parents basements (or where ever they come from). No, they are still out in force! For the first few days of Cataclysm it seemed even worse. General chat in hyjal was just as abusive and useless as trade chat usually becomes. Douches were out in mass sniping kills, jacking nodes, and otherwise doing whatever they can to be as selfish, unhelpful, and unpleasant as possible.

Now weeks later, trolls in trade chat haven’t quite died down to normal levels, but there’s even more nerd rage spam about someone ninja’ing something. Players are more likely than ever to find their elementium node stolen after a mob hits them while they were trying to mine. After such an event, even a /say of “really” could result in being spammed by the offending players guild with “umadbro”. Although I haven’t been personally privy to this event, I’ve heard many stories of 3 guild-mates joining a dungeon queue as tank or heals for the quick queue time, then refusing to tank or heal. At which point, given the simple majority, they kick anyone from the group unable or unwilling to tank or heal until they find someone who can. You might be shocked by this, but yes, the griefers are organizing. (more…)

Daily Thoughts: Good News About Dailies

A post over at WoW Insider regarding  Blizzard’s Lead World Designer Alex Afrasiabi’s interview on G4 has informed me that A future content patch will see Hyjal fully healed, and new daily quests”. Check out the other details and find a link to the full interview HERE. Two weeks ago I’d be pretty excited about this, but my main already has exalted here through the dungeon grind. At least alts will be able to pick up the leveling blues and entry-level epics easier.

Other good news in regards to reputation grinds is the addition of a repeatable reputation gaining quest for the Ramkahen in Uldum. We now have quest Fire From the Sky that grants 250 rep and some gold upon completion. This joins Thieving Little Pluckers which I believe only grants 150 reputation.

For information about all the cataclysm factions, their reputation dailies, and loot, check out my Cataclysm Faction Reputation Guide.

See you tomorrow! Probably.

Weekend Update: No Dailies in Hyjal

* EDIT – I’ve made a comprehensive faction guide – check it out HERE. *

Naturally the one new cataclysm reputation I really want to grind for the Belt of the Ferocious Wolf, has no dailies. So, for all those who’ve been searching for the location of the Guardians of Hyjal dailies, they don’t exist. The only way to get your rep there after you finish the quests in the zone is to do dungeons with their tabard that you can pick up at friendly. You should be revered by the time you finish the zone, so it isn’t too far to go. Next I’ll probably be after Ramkahen rep for a few things.

Wowhead of course has a nice list of the factions stuff here.

Tomorrow or the next day I should have my impressions of Uldum up here, so check back!