Sunday was a day off for myself, so I decided to focus on my mage, Msmage. She's level 65, working her way into Terrokar Forest, fire specced, and in desperate need of Lower City rep. 9000 rep in particular. And what is the best way to get that rep?
Arakkoa Feathers. Lots of them. 1080 of them.
I've been working at this all week, taking Eldron to Veil Shalas and running circuits around there nuking every Arakkoa in sight and seeing just how many I can pull with my pet and not have Sweetums die. I've been buying every significant and reasonably priced auction, and when I've been bored with my hunter, Msmage has gone to the various Veils to grind. When Sunday came, I still needed 480 to finish off the rep grind. So, off to Veil Shalas again, for about 5 hours of constant slaughter.
I really can't find words to describe how dull grinding Arakkoa feathers is. At one point I thought I was going to be sick.
I made a little bit of fun along the way though. I passively killed a Tauren warrior who was using Thunderclap constantly by body pulling extra mobs into his aggro radius. He died, his mobs reset, I killed them.
I let a Belf pally kill some mobs for me by pulling them through his consecration. Well, the worked until I pulled so many that he died... ah well.
I helped out about 6 different players, Alliance and Horde, with the Skywing escort quest. Luanga the Imprisoner, the elite that spawns at the end of the escort, drops 3-4 of the feathers, as opposed to the 1-2 that the other Arakkoa drop.
I then switched to my mage for some grinding. She singed 66, which was nice, as the majority of lvl 65 was rested experience grinding for feathers.
Sundays are also raid nights, so eventually Eldron was brought back into play, and he joined in on our first ever kill of Leotheras the Blind. No, his trinket didn't drop, and neither did any Hunter T5 (I reeeeeally want a second piece for the set bonus), but we've been wiping on him for two weeks now, and dropping him would be considered a small success.
The big success came at about 1am when, having returned to my mage, the 480th Arakkoa feather of the day dropped. To say I was relieved would be an understatement. I actually danced a little in real life!
And so, I can finish one grind, and get back to another - Levelling!
Monday, 8 September 2008
Friday, 5 September 2008
Armory Applications
So, it's time to return to the subject of applying to guilds. Tonight, I'm going to talk about what I look for on an armory profile.
I guess the first thing I look at is gear. Gear can tell a lot, but at the same time can say very little. Ideally, a good applicant for our guild should be equipped in Kara epics or above. However, that is not to say that blue gear is not a positive thing to see, so long as they are well-chosen items. For instance, seeing 2/5 of the Beast Lord Armour or Bladefist's Breath on a hunter would be perfectly acceptable, showing evidence of the hunter's understanding of the class. Any greens are a bad sign, indicating that the character either has no instance experience, or hasn't bothered to complete any of the end-game quest-chains in Blade's Edge, Netherstorm or Shadowmoon.
As for PvP gear... well, anyone can log off in PvP gear after a night of arena or mark-grinding. There are other signs that a character is a PvP-head or a raider on an off-night.
Next up is the spec. Now, I know my Hunter specs, and there are certain things that I look for. Gone BM and not taken Ferocious Inspiration? Specced MM and taken Concussive Barrage? Gone SV and... well... stuck there for PvE? You'd better have a very good reason for mis-placing those points, and be very open to a gentle re-spec before standing side-by-side with us in a raid. This may sound arrogant, but in a raid it's your responsibility to maximise your damage, and putting points in talents that don't increase your damage/increase your health/increase your mana pool, thus staving off Viper/provide a handy buff to the raid or group, then you're failing at that responsibility.
Having reviewed your spec, I then move onto your tradeskills. I have no snobbery towards which crafting skill you have taken, so long as you have one. Each skill can provide powerful lvl 70 BoP items, many of which are as good as boss drops. Farmbots, characters with two gathering skills, had better be putting their money to good use by buying good equipment or mats for good equipment. But the main reason why I like to see a fully levelled crafting skill is that it shows a level of commitment to the character. It takes time and patience to reach 375 in a crafting skill, and people who achieve this are less likely to drop their character if they don't get taken on a raid a few times.
Finally, I'm off to take a gander at the reputation screen. As a general thing, I would expect to see exalted with Violet Eye and Aldor/Scryer, along with at least revered with Honor Hold, Cenarion Expedition, Lower City and Sha'tar. Notice any connection? Yes, they all get rep from instances. Hitting a high level of rep with these shows that you have grinded like crazy in instances, hopefully heroics, and have a good level of experience with different encounters. Turn in an application promising Kara-level raid experience, and then have a rep level of 275/1000 neutral with VE... well... we'll look elsewhere, thank you very much!
(Yeah, this happened recently, the same guy who CBA to link his armory profile...)
I hope this reassures potential apply-ees to guilds that the people on charge won't just gaze at their gear and make a decision based on that. I also hope it warns potential apply-ees that there are several ways that their application bullsh*t can easily be seen through.
I guess the first thing I look at is gear. Gear can tell a lot, but at the same time can say very little. Ideally, a good applicant for our guild should be equipped in Kara epics or above. However, that is not to say that blue gear is not a positive thing to see, so long as they are well-chosen items. For instance, seeing 2/5 of the Beast Lord Armour or Bladefist's Breath on a hunter would be perfectly acceptable, showing evidence of the hunter's understanding of the class. Any greens are a bad sign, indicating that the character either has no instance experience, or hasn't bothered to complete any of the end-game quest-chains in Blade's Edge, Netherstorm or Shadowmoon.
As for PvP gear... well, anyone can log off in PvP gear after a night of arena or mark-grinding. There are other signs that a character is a PvP-head or a raider on an off-night.
Next up is the spec. Now, I know my Hunter specs, and there are certain things that I look for. Gone BM and not taken Ferocious Inspiration? Specced MM and taken Concussive Barrage? Gone SV and... well... stuck there for PvE? You'd better have a very good reason for mis-placing those points, and be very open to a gentle re-spec before standing side-by-side with us in a raid. This may sound arrogant, but in a raid it's your responsibility to maximise your damage, and putting points in talents that don't increase your damage/increase your health/increase your mana pool, thus staving off Viper/provide a handy buff to the raid or group, then you're failing at that responsibility.
Having reviewed your spec, I then move onto your tradeskills. I have no snobbery towards which crafting skill you have taken, so long as you have one. Each skill can provide powerful lvl 70 BoP items, many of which are as good as boss drops. Farmbots, characters with two gathering skills, had better be putting their money to good use by buying good equipment or mats for good equipment. But the main reason why I like to see a fully levelled crafting skill is that it shows a level of commitment to the character. It takes time and patience to reach 375 in a crafting skill, and people who achieve this are less likely to drop their character if they don't get taken on a raid a few times.
Finally, I'm off to take a gander at the reputation screen. As a general thing, I would expect to see exalted with Violet Eye and Aldor/Scryer, along with at least revered with Honor Hold, Cenarion Expedition, Lower City and Sha'tar. Notice any connection? Yes, they all get rep from instances. Hitting a high level of rep with these shows that you have grinded like crazy in instances, hopefully heroics, and have a good level of experience with different encounters. Turn in an application promising Kara-level raid experience, and then have a rep level of 275/1000 neutral with VE... well... we'll look elsewhere, thank you very much!
(Yeah, this happened recently, the same guy who CBA to link his armory profile...)
I hope this reassures potential apply-ees to guilds that the people on charge won't just gaze at their gear and make a decision based on that. I also hope it warns potential apply-ees that there are several ways that their application bullsh*t can easily be seen through.
Thursday, 4 September 2008
Guild Applications: Epic Fail!
Well, it was kind of inevitable that I was going to touch on this topic at some point - most WoW blogs cover this in varying levels of detail. My girlfriend is thinking of leaving the gradually sinking ship that is her guild, and is looking around, so I've seen a fair few of these recently. So why not cover it?
No answer? Then let's go!
WG has a pretty simple application form, far more basic than most raiding guilds that I've taken a look at. We ask some basic questions about who you are, what your main is, what raiding experience you have, what your raiding availability is, would you respec if asked to (we only ask that people turn up to raids in PvE specs, not PvP).
Oh, and to link to your Armory profile. It's really rather simple - we've even allowed direct HTML linking on guest accounts for our forum! How hard could it be?
Why do people think that guilds that have an application process will quite happily accept someone who CBA to fill in the form? The amount of people we have had whose application reads 'can i join ur guild i hear u guys are really nice' (or something similar) is astonishing. It's a very nice moment when we have a proper application submitted, and generally speaking, a fully filled application counts for more than the amount of purples you have equipped.
I'll be back later to talk about what looks good on an Armory profile.
No answer? Then let's go!
WG has a pretty simple application form, far more basic than most raiding guilds that I've taken a look at. We ask some basic questions about who you are, what your main is, what raiding experience you have, what your raiding availability is, would you respec if asked to (we only ask that people turn up to raids in PvE specs, not PvP).
Oh, and to link to your Armory profile. It's really rather simple - we've even allowed direct HTML linking on guest accounts for our forum! How hard could it be?
"- Give us an overview of your equipment. You can list items here, or link to WoW ArmorySo, let's get this straight. YOU want to apply to OUR guild. We ask a very basic question, and you can't be arsed? As I wrote in reply to this application, 'I now don't care about what purples you have except one - your epic fail.'
cba"
Why do people think that guilds that have an application process will quite happily accept someone who CBA to fill in the form? The amount of people we have had whose application reads 'can i join ur guild i hear u guys are really nice' (or something similar) is astonishing. It's a very nice moment when we have a proper application submitted, and generally speaking, a fully filled application counts for more than the amount of purples you have equipped.
I'll be back later to talk about what looks good on an Armory profile.
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Who Am I?
Hello all, Eldron here!
I hate writing introductions, and have given up on a decent one for this blog after my 5th or 6th attempt. Instead, I'm gonna take a few minutes to talk about who I am.
I am a level 70 Night-Elf hunter called Eldron, based on EU-Nordrassil, and am currently a member and officer of Wolf Guards, my second guild. I chose to roll a hunter after a disastrous attempt at levelling a warrior. Ardron, my first toon, did OK up until the mid-20s when it became clear that I had no idea how to play the character and that I harbored a severe dislike for Redridge Mountains as a zone to quest in (this was before Patch 2.3 when elites inhabited a large part of the zone). So, I sat my warrior down in the inn and went off to Teldrassil to play with a hunter.
Choosing a hunter was a bit of a strange choice for me. Although I have a great affinity for ranged weapons both in gaming and in real life (I once held a qualification to teach people how to shoot air rifles), the concept of having a pet was kind of off-putting for me. However, upon reading the class descriptions in the WoW manual, I decided that magic users were not for me, nor was shape-shifting. Thus, the hunter was the only class left to roll as a Night Elf, based far away from Westfall and Redridge. And so, Eldron was born.
Eldron levelled his way all the way to level 10, when he was able to tame pets. Having tamed one of the nice Nightsaber Stalkers that inhabit Teldrassil, I gave him a cutesy name, Sweetums, as the idea of a furry killing machine with a cutesy name tickled my fancy (I was alse unaware that you wouldn't be able to re-name him), and Sweetums has stayed by my side ever since.
Around level 25, I started questing with a Dranei shaman called Shikoba. After a couple of days of meeting up with him to kill things and grind XP, he asked me if I would like to join his guild. Guilds kinda scared me at that point, I was unsure of meeting people online and felt that I was better off on my own. However, Shik had been a nice player, and his description of the guild - one of mature players - made me hopeful that I wouldn't be in a guild with a bunch of little kids. So I accepted his invitation and became a member of Pride of St George.
The Pride was a great place to level and learn the game. As I had started playing WoW about 2 weeks before Burning Crusade was released, the steady rise of players from lvl 60 up to 70 inspired me to get on with my levelling and, despite one moment of insanity at level 40 that I will write about one day, I became fairly good at putting on XP and working my way upwards. At some point, a vacancy arose for an administrator for the guild's forum, a position I put myself forward for and was given. After much work to reinvigorate a lifeless forum, I was promoted to officer within the game.
As I completed my last few levels to 70, I started meeting up with fellow officers in real life, and we laid out our plans for the future of the guild. Karazhan was on the menu, and we started running lvl 70 instances and easier heroics to gear ourselves up. Finally, in December 2007, 11 months after rolling Eldron, I led our first exploration of Karazhan, downing Attumen and Moroes on our first attempt.
Progression came in Kara, sometimes easily (Big Bad Wolf), sometimes with a lot of pain (Maiden). However, frustrations began to arise. Apart from myself, no-one else seemed to be that interested in 2 raids a week to really push our progression, and attempts at getting a second raid night off the ground failed. After many weeks of pondering, I decided to look around for a new home for Eldron, a home with more regular and dedicated raiding, but not a hardcore, DKP-ruled, miss-a-raid-and-get-booted home. Wolf Guards had a pretty good reputation, and I was accepted into the guild.
I am now Hunter class-leader in the guild, as well as an occasional assistant raid leader. I split my time between Eldron (raiding ZA, SSC and TK, grinding dailies to build up his bank, skinner, leatherworker, cook and fisherman (fisherelf?)), Starbug (lvl 70 druid, JC and shard-maker), and levelling my mage, MsMage (currently lvl 65 and rising, herbalist and alchemist).
And I guess that's me!
As for this blog, it's gonna be mainly hunter-focused, with occasional thoughts on new info from the Wrath beta, and occasional druid posts, mage posts, crafting posts, leveling posts, etc. etc. etc.
I hope you enjoy this!
I hate writing introductions, and have given up on a decent one for this blog after my 5th or 6th attempt. Instead, I'm gonna take a few minutes to talk about who I am.
I am a level 70 Night-Elf hunter called Eldron, based on EU-Nordrassil, and am currently a member and officer of Wolf Guards, my second guild. I chose to roll a hunter after a disastrous attempt at levelling a warrior. Ardron, my first toon, did OK up until the mid-20s when it became clear that I had no idea how to play the character and that I harbored a severe dislike for Redridge Mountains as a zone to quest in (this was before Patch 2.3 when elites inhabited a large part of the zone). So, I sat my warrior down in the inn and went off to Teldrassil to play with a hunter.
Choosing a hunter was a bit of a strange choice for me. Although I have a great affinity for ranged weapons both in gaming and in real life (I once held a qualification to teach people how to shoot air rifles), the concept of having a pet was kind of off-putting for me. However, upon reading the class descriptions in the WoW manual, I decided that magic users were not for me, nor was shape-shifting. Thus, the hunter was the only class left to roll as a Night Elf, based far away from Westfall and Redridge. And so, Eldron was born.
Eldron levelled his way all the way to level 10, when he was able to tame pets. Having tamed one of the nice Nightsaber Stalkers that inhabit Teldrassil, I gave him a cutesy name, Sweetums, as the idea of a furry killing machine with a cutesy name tickled my fancy (I was alse unaware that you wouldn't be able to re-name him), and Sweetums has stayed by my side ever since.
Around level 25, I started questing with a Dranei shaman called Shikoba. After a couple of days of meeting up with him to kill things and grind XP, he asked me if I would like to join his guild. Guilds kinda scared me at that point, I was unsure of meeting people online and felt that I was better off on my own. However, Shik had been a nice player, and his description of the guild - one of mature players - made me hopeful that I wouldn't be in a guild with a bunch of little kids. So I accepted his invitation and became a member of Pride of St George.
The Pride was a great place to level and learn the game. As I had started playing WoW about 2 weeks before Burning Crusade was released, the steady rise of players from lvl 60 up to 70 inspired me to get on with my levelling and, despite one moment of insanity at level 40 that I will write about one day, I became fairly good at putting on XP and working my way upwards. At some point, a vacancy arose for an administrator for the guild's forum, a position I put myself forward for and was given. After much work to reinvigorate a lifeless forum, I was promoted to officer within the game.
As I completed my last few levels to 70, I started meeting up with fellow officers in real life, and we laid out our plans for the future of the guild. Karazhan was on the menu, and we started running lvl 70 instances and easier heroics to gear ourselves up. Finally, in December 2007, 11 months after rolling Eldron, I led our first exploration of Karazhan, downing Attumen and Moroes on our first attempt.
Progression came in Kara, sometimes easily (Big Bad Wolf), sometimes with a lot of pain (Maiden). However, frustrations began to arise. Apart from myself, no-one else seemed to be that interested in 2 raids a week to really push our progression, and attempts at getting a second raid night off the ground failed. After many weeks of pondering, I decided to look around for a new home for Eldron, a home with more regular and dedicated raiding, but not a hardcore, DKP-ruled, miss-a-raid-and-get-booted home. Wolf Guards had a pretty good reputation, and I was accepted into the guild.
I am now Hunter class-leader in the guild, as well as an occasional assistant raid leader. I split my time between Eldron (raiding ZA, SSC and TK, grinding dailies to build up his bank, skinner, leatherworker, cook and fisherman (fisherelf?)), Starbug (lvl 70 druid, JC and shard-maker), and levelling my mage, MsMage (currently lvl 65 and rising, herbalist and alchemist).
And I guess that's me!
As for this blog, it's gonna be mainly hunter-focused, with occasional thoughts on new info from the Wrath beta, and occasional druid posts, mage posts, crafting posts, leveling posts, etc. etc. etc.
I hope you enjoy this!
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