Well my play time has been sporadic with family in town and all the holiday parties. I have managed to play my Mage some and am really enjoying it. He’s up to about level 45 now. I’m also surprisingly entertained by the pet battles. It’s not the battling as much as trying to find new and rare pets.
I also had time to run an LFR on my Druid where I won an offhand. Grrrr. What the heck am I going to do with that. Oh well. Maybe I’ll get a great main hand to go with it some day.
Well I think that the Mrs. is burned out on WoW again. We’re pretty much professional WoW quitters at this point, so I’ve learned to recognize the signs. I’m still going strong. I think I’m going to play an alt in between my LFR time. She hasn’t logged on for over a week. Oh well.
The good news is that I’m sure this will lead to a lot more wife aggro where I’m playing and she’s upset about it. Bring it on!
Well before I started doing LFR and pickup raids on the Sha of Anger, all I ever heard about was how hard it was to actually win loot. I went into these expecting to never win anything. In my entire WoW career, I have always been incredibly unlucky in getting loot as well, from my hardcore days as a Rogue in vanilla WoW to my Priest in Wrath, I just never got gear quickly.
When I ran my first Sha kill and won some loot I was amazed. It was PVP gear but the stats were still all significantly higher than what I currently had. Then I did LFR and won something on my first run. My next LFR did not yield any loot. But then I did Sha again, and won loot, and LFR again, and won loot. That’s 4 items in 5 raids. Granted that 2 of those items are PVP items from the Sha, but they are still huge upgrades and usable for PVE.
I don’t know how long this lucky streak will continue, but I’m loving it right now.
So I was out with the Mrs. and saw this plant that made me want to get check on my farm immediately. Anyone who has ever worked on their Tillers reputation, can clearly see that this is a witchberry bush.
I’ve been a healer for just about all of my MMO days. Back in EverQuest I played a Cleric as my main. In WoW, I played a Rogue, Hunter, Priest and Druid. Even during those DPS days, I always had healer alts. I guess there’s just something I enjoy about the control and knowing that the group won’t die as long as I’m playing as I should. There was also the benefit of much faster queues.
Now, I rarely find myself queuing for random heroics. Scenarios want you to be DPS spec, and LFR is just fast all around. I’m thinking I could spec Balance/Moonkin/Boomkin as my main and still adequately heal a heroic with my off spec Resto in the same gear.
It would also let me experience the content differently. Presently, I never see the names of half the bosses we fight. All I do is stare at health bars and try not to get caught in poo on the floor. I feel like I’m missing much of what the raid content has to offer.
I’ll reforge my gear and let you know how it goes moving forward. Oh, also they have the minor glyph now that lets me not look like a giant chicken while in Balance form. It makes your normal form slightly translucent, which is very nice for me since one of my main burnouts on my Druid has been staring at the same form for too long.
My wife and I just completed our first LFR instance. We weren’t playing Cataclysm at the time this feature launched, but it always intrigued me. We come from a background of heavy raiding, and part of our quitting Cataclysm was the fact that after we leveled up we didn’t have the time to invest into raiding so we fizzled out.
Since we queued on a weeknight during prime time, we got into a raid much quicker than I expected. It probably took all of 1 minute versus our typical 5 minute wait for heroic dungeons. This was impressive. Since it was our first LFR, we were only able to enter Mogu’shan Vaults. People were throwing down banquets and buffing. It was very exciting to the pair of us. I got the old raid feelings back.
As a healer and DPS, we weren’t too worried about mechanics as there were enough other people that we could just follow the masses around and stay out of stuff on the ground. We also have the Deadly Boss Mobs addon which helps as well. There was talk in raid about strategies either which I found was a little odd. Nonetheless, the pulls continued and bosses were engaged.
We cleared all 3 bosses and only wiped once on the third boss before killing him. My wife managed to die several times somehow. She won some gloves on the first boss, but unfortunately she already had similar gloves that I purchased for her to get her to item level 460. I won a slick new ring on the second boss which was an upgrade. I thought we did very well considering how many people complain about never winning anything.
We had a great time, but I could see how it could get boring in time due to the lack of challenge. The whole raid took probably 40 minutes due the wipe. We are looking forward to going back and seeing the other raids as well. What a great idea by Blizzard for the casual raiders like us.
I know I said that I was planting 10 Songbell Seeds every day (1 Spirit of Harmoney) and the rest veggies for my cooking. Well I changed my mind. Spirits of Harmony are the only thing that cannot be bought or traded. I can also use those to make some high end leatherworking gear too which sell for a lot of gold.
Due to this, I have decided to max out my Songbell Seeds/Motes/Spirits of Haromony every day. I’ve even started digging up the quest plant each day and planting Songbells in it’s place. That’s 1 more Spirit of Harmony every 10 days I do that.
What a great Thanksgiving. This was the first year in forever that Mrs. WA and I didn’t have family staying with us for the holiday. We did have to do a lot of running around though, but more importantly, we had the night to ourselves once our daughter was asleep.
My real life friend said that he was doing Sha of Anger, and since we had never done it, the Mrs. and I both jumped in. He bugged out the first couple of attempts, but we finally got him with about 9 short of a full raid. There was smoky clouds everywhere and read guys whacking me on the head. There were warlock gates zipping me all around. This with the major lag from my old computer made everything a challenge. It was fun though.
I’ve heard stories on all my podcasts about people never getting loot so I wasn’t expecting much. I used my bonus roll since I have accumulated a few of those, and I actually won. I ended up getting PVP gear, but all the stats were significantly better except I lost a little crit which isn’t a big deal to me as a healer. (I know I need to reforge that out, but it hasn’t been a priority for my blues and greens.) The great news was that the wrist spot I got was actually one of my weakest. Yay! Oh and the Mrs. won nothing. Sorry love.
That item also pushed me over the 460 threshold to queue for Looking for Raid. I’m very excited to try that. I have to help the Mrs. get over that level as well though so that she can raid with me. I don’t even want to imagine the aggro I would get from her if I was in a raid instance and she was questing. Yikes!
First I think add-ons are great and wonderful. That’s not what I’m talking about today. I’m talking about the near divorce/WW3 that occurred last night at my house around some add-ons.
My wife was doing some research on her Warlock class the other day to see if she could boost her DPS any and came across a site that was very helpful and recommended a specific add-on. I’ll leave the names out here, because I think the add-on itself was very well done and players with much more time and patience could probably utilize all features and settings more easily. Anyways, it looked really slick, and I’ve been using the same UI setup for several years now so I thought I would give it a try.
I get it installed and immediately notice that my action bars are completely messed up. Ok no big deal right? Wrong. After about 15 minutes I get my bars positioned how I typically play with them and feel like everything is ready to go. Instance time. Let’s see if Mrs. WifeAggro’s new spell rotation is any better. I should acknowledge that she warned me ahead of doing an instance that I should quest with the new UI some to get used to it before the instance. Bah. I’m tech savvy enough and have been playing WoW on and off since release. I got this one in the bag. (Surely this won’t comeback to bite me right?)
We get into one of the new Scarlett Monastery instances (not sure which) fairly quickly. I’m the healer and she’s a DPS. Alright I’m ready to heal the dickens out of this instance. Wait. Where are the group bars? Ohhhh there they are. Well I’m not used to that, but I can make it work. First pull incoming. Where is my target window? Oh over there. Got it. Where the heck is the tank’s health bar? What??? Oh ok. Wait people are dead…I think. How is that happening. Oh all my hotkey bindings have been removed so most of spells weren’t actually casting. Hmmm. Great.
So we rez up and push on. I can’t figure out the health bars to save me so I just cast HoTs on everyone and keep the tank full of HoTs with occasional direct heals just based on what feels right. Everything is fine until I realize that I have no idea where my mana bar is. Grrrr. Innervate on myself whenever it pops. We actually made it to the through with no significant setbacks with this strategy. Then we got to the whirlwind boss. In old school WoW it was the guy that dropped Herod’s shoulder and I think that it’s some sort of ancestor of him in that place now. As a healer I never really get to look at the boss targets. I’m always staring at health bars. Anyways, I can’t keep up with health bars and people are dropping, I’m dropping, tanks are dropping and I’m having to mouse click half my heals because I can’t find the key bindings setting in this new UI. After a couple of wipes and a lot “suggestions” from my wife. I drop group. I literally could not heal with that set up and had no way to fix it in short order.
After I left, I camped, deleted all the new add-ons and reinstalled the old set up. Luckily it kept all my settings, and I was back up in no time. So in the end, add-ons are great and I strongly suggest them, but use what feels good and definitely toy around with them on your own before getting into group situations. It’s like they say, you never appreciate what you have until it’s gone. That applies with me and my add-ons too. Once I got my old set up back, it was like putting on that old pair of comfy pants or sweatshirt. Everything just felt so right and cozy.
I would say that one of the biggest complaints with the current expansion is daily quests and the need to do them to gain reputation with certain factions. In previous expansions, a character could wear a tabard representing a certain faction, and then chain run instances to earn that reputation passively. Now, that mechanic is gone, and one is required to complete a chain of dailies.
These daily quests unlock at level 90, and it would take hours to complete every available daily quest every day. Due to this and my limited play time, I knew this would not be an option. I picked the one that I was most interested in initially which was The Tillers. Since I had already been farming prior to 90, it was much easier to to build my farm. I would make sure to complete those quests each time I played and then work on a second or third faction if I still wanted to quest.
My second priority was Golden Lotus since this will unlock a lot of leatherworking patterns for my Druid and also unlocks access to other factions. You also need reputation with this faction to use your Valor Points for high level gear. My third priority was Anglers. My fishing was horrible on my Druid since I didn’t play him much as a main character prior to Mists of Pandaria. These quests are easy and usually entertaining. I’m not even sure what rewards are available for this faction other than a neat raft you can purchase to float on while you fish.
Now that I am exalted with The Tillers, I typically harvest/plant my crops, do my Golden Lotus dailies and then queue for an instance while I work on my Anglers quests. I haven’t even looked at the other factions yet since I have plenty to do for my play style. I would suggest that anyone who is feeling overwhelmed by the dailies and factions, to just look at the various rewards, prioritize a few that you would like to work on. Also keep in mind that you don’t need to be exalted with all the factions to get their best rewards. A lot of the exalted rewards are just vanity items and not necessary for people with limited time, unless you just really want it.
Yay I finally maxed out my Tillers rep. There I am with my sexy new tabard and a field full of Songbell Seeds which are Motes of Harmony when they bloom. My real life friend, who is a far more serious player than I am, didn’t realize you could grow those. In addition to Motes of Harmony, you can grow the basic tradeskill materials for each profession.
My maxed out farm has 16 plots. If you do the daily plant each day and the rest Songbell Seeds, that’s 3 Spirits of Harmony every 2 days. Another tip, you can turn in the daily plant quest and then tear up that plot and plant something else.
I think I’m going to plant enough Songbell Seeds for one Spirit of Harmony per day, and use the rest to plant cooking crops until I max that out.
Odd thing is, that I was the one with the issues this time. I don’t know what it was, but something just had me in a cranky mood last night. I couldn’t snap out of it, and I knew I was being an Ook Dooker. We were finishing dinner and then it was bath time for our daughter. My amazing wife said “why don’t you go farm or something.” There may have been some sarcasm in her statement, but it was awesome nonetheless. The amazing thing is, that I did need a mindless distraction like that to flush out my day. Anyways, 15 minutes later, and I was happy and chipper again. I love WoW…oh and my wife too.
I haven’t had much time to play over the last few days, so I thought I would talk about one of my favorite WoW things to do out of game: Podcasts. Most of my travel for my job is done while driving. I’ve driven over 16 hours in a day on multiple occasions. Many times I’m on remote stretches of highways with only a few radio options. This pushed me to seek other alternatives. My wife suggested that I find some podcasts on stuff that interests me. I started with some generic gaming podcasts and a few comedy ones.
That worked well, but I couldn’t relate to most of video games they were discussing. I wasn’t playing WoW at the time, so it never occurred to me to search for a WoW related podcast. I was excited about the upcoming release of Diablo II though, so I looked for something to feed that excitement. I’m not sure how, but I settled on The Instance and This Week in Blizz.
The Instance is primarily a WoW podcast, but they were discussing a lot of Diablo content at the time since WoW was at the end of its current development cycle awaiting the release of Mists of Pandaria. I listened to both of these through the release of Diablo II and past my burn out quitting stage. Over this time, the discussions and information on WoW was being absorbed as well. I credit the podcasts with bringing me back to WoW and exposing me to a different side of the game, the casual side. My wife listened to one of the episodes with me on a road trip and said “Man this makes me want to play so bad.” Haha.
I still listen to and love The Instance in addition to several others now. It was my first and still my favorite. The production value is very high and these guys have been doing it forever. The WoW developers tipped their hat to these guys as well by naming an in game item after each of the three hosts’ characters in Mists of Pandaria. I believe that these guys are the standard that every other WoW podcast is measured against. If you’re a fan of WoW and don’t listen to podcasts, you should try at least one episode.
I’ve been seeing things everywhere in real life that remind me of something in game. Apparently, my daughter can’t wait to get a red serpent mount.
Below is Alani from Veil of Eternal Blossoms.
As I was saying, after getting my Pandaren Monk to 40, I decided to dust off my old Tauren Druid to experience the new expansion content for 85-90. I LOVED this part of the game. I started with the leveling specialization of Feral Combat or whatever cat form is now. I still had most agility gear from when I quit my tanking in Cataclysm. As I leveled, I really enjoyed the new content. One of the greatest changes in my opinion is the fact that you can’t fly through the continent until after you reach level 90. This requires you to be on the ground and really be immersed in the world around you.
Once I reached the second zone, Valley of the Four Winds, I decided that I wanted to start collecting intelligence gear as well so that I could heal in dungeons. I had some some of this previously as well, and truthfully, I’ve almost always been a healer in my MMO life. I played a cleric all throughout EQ, and had played several max level priests in WoW in addition to my healing druid. After the challenge of collecting two sets of gear became too cumbersome, I decided to learn the Druid Balance spec which I had never done. This would also let me collect one set of gear to heal in dungeons, which fit in with my new casual playstyle as well.
I took probably about an hour of questing to really get the rotations down. I love it now though. I do have same peeve of looking at the same character graphic, but at least it changes when I heal in dungeons. I like the he whole nature spell aspect too.
I used Balance to finish the leveling to 90, and I feel like I really have it down now. I dinged 90 around the same time that I finished the third zone in the progression. I realize that it would have been much faster to head to the higher level zones, but I wasn’t in a hurry. I continued completing each zone to get the achievements, and also to wait on the Mrs. who decided that she would try playing again as well.
This new expansion offers so much content and ways to progress and entertain yourself in game. I’ve heard about hardcore players who are going crazy trying to complete all the available daily quests in a single day. I know that I just don’t have the time, nor would I want to do that. I’ve just been focusing on 1-2 factions at a time to max out and mixing in some dungeons here and there as well as some scenarios. This is most fun I’ve had playing since I had to quit in the Wrath expansion. Huge props to Blizzard on nailing this one.
Previous to coming back to WoW this time, my last experience was a short-lived stint in Cataclysm. Prior to that, I was running a 10-man guild in Wrath of the Lich King with some real life friends and some other acquaintances from in-game. We were progressing through ICC when, my wife and I had to shelf the game to prepare for the birth of our first child. (Yay for real life bedroom raids.) Several months later when I was confined to the house, I thought that I could play Cataclysm casually during nap times. It didn’t play out as I expected. I could never get immersed into the game, and when I did have time to play I was too tired or felt like I should be doing other things. After getting to max level again at a slow pace, I decided that I just didn’t have time for the game.
I thought that I would never play WoW again. This is a thought that I’ve had many times. I mocked the last of my friends that was still playing while everyone else moved on due to real life issues. I teased him about the expansion and that all of us were going to come back for Pandaria. I had no intention of doing this. I had played Starcraft 2 and then Diablo. I think the gameplay of Diablo made me crave the WoW gameplay. In addition to that, I also started listening to various podcasts (The Instance & This Week in Blizz)which discussed Diablo in addition to WoW. As I burned out on the grindy playstyle of Diablo, I started to be intrigued by the new features in Pandaria. There seemed to be a vast array of new options to make a casual playstyle easier to accomplish.
After a couple of months of listening to the podcasts, I was in. I decided that I was going to make a Pandaren Monk my new main. My previous main was a Druid that I had done some light tanking with. Part of my burnout issue was due to the fact that in bear form, my character always looked the same regardless of new armor upgrades. I had stared at the same outdated bear graphic for hours upon hours. Uggh. I needed a change. I loved the Pandaren starting area and the feel of the game. After I left there, I loaded up my Monk with all the +experience gear that I had from leveling my Druid in Wrath. Once I hit 15, I started doing instances as a Brewmaster. It was very common to level twice in one instance from the kills and the dungeon quests. I hit 40 very quickly from there, and was really enjoying the Monk tank.
At this point, I thought I would jump on my old druid to see the new 85-90 content. This is getting long. I’ll pick up on my impressions of 85-90 tomorrow.
Hello and welcome to our blog. Anyone that has ever gamed with a wife or girlfriend or ever tried to game while having a wife or girlfriend will be able to relate to this blog as we share our experiences. I’d say that we are both avid gamers. I remember when I got my first Nintendo back in 1987 and spent countless hours playing Zelda. I’ve gone in waves of hot and cold with my games since then and have realized that they will always be in my life.
I didn’t start really gaming while being in a serious relationship until about 2000. I was spending hours upon hours playing EverQuest which drove my girlfriend (now wife) crazy. She hated that game and the time it took that we could have spent together. A couple of years later, I decided to try to get her into the online gaming scene since she had never really experienced it before. I started her with The Sims on my PS2 next to me and then transitioned her into The Sims Online on another computer next to me. Once she was hooked on the online gaming, I got her try EverQuest with me. That grindfest was a nightmare trying to catch her character up to mine, and I spent more time trying to power level her character up to mine than she actually spent playing it. After a few months, we both burned out on that idea, and EverQuest faded away. I tried a few other games afterwards like City of Heroes and Eve but I didn’t enjoy those worlds.
From there we had a brief Halo phase on the then new Xbox Live in our first apartment together after college. She loved that and the time together was enjoyable. She started out filling the walls with holes and moved up to blowing herself up with grenades. After a few months she was a respectable player, definitely a keeper. Around this time, EverQuest 2 was coming out, and the idea of playing an updated version of my beloved first MMO was intriguing. I tried playing it with some of my old EQ buddies, but I just couldn’t get into it. The fact that I still had to group to kill low level bugs was such a turn off.
Some of my other friends were raving about World of Warcraft at the time. My first impressions of the game after playing the EQ games, was that the graphics were too cartoonish. I gave in though and purchased a copy. My first character was a Night Elf Hunter, and it…was…AWESOME! I was hooked immediately. After a few levels, my friend told me to make a Rogue instead, and that became my main character. I was playing a ton and logging on in the mornings before work just to do a quest or two. It felt like everything I had been wanting from an MMO experience.
My wife was curious about the game and was asking questions about it. Then she said those words that changed our lives: “Do you think I would like it?” Oh boy. I told her that I definitely thought she would and that it was nothing like EQ which she was still a little turned off about. The next time we were out, we got her a copy, and she quickly caught me on her Gnome Warlock.
From there we’ve been in casual guilds, created our own guilds, been hardcore raiders, taken breaks, played other MMOs (Warhammer, Age of Conan, probably some others I’m forgetting), and are now back playing casually. We’ve learned a lot about maintaining balance between games and real life and making time for each other as well as our games. And now we’ve decided to share our knowledge and experiences with others. Feel free to comment or ask us questions. We love our games and love talking about them.
