WoW Monkey

So much to do, so little time!

Needless to say, I got lucky, managed to find a local shop that had the game and grabbed a copy. Unfortunately, I had class. So, first impressions, having not played the beta, wow. Just wow!!

From the boat to the dock at Valgarde, a very nice intro into the zone, and while I’m sure I’ll get tired of it eventually, there was quite a bit of effort put into this place. I’m happily surprised.

Questing/Grinding/Mobs/Etc:

Firstly, I managed to go the wrong way (and subsequently wasted a fair amount of time). Not having played the beta at all, I wasn’t really sure where any of the quests are, so having to use wowhead.com constantly kinda sucked. But, all in all everything was pretty straightforward. The first thing I noticed was the interaction between mobs. Right off the bat, two mobs were fighting amongst themselves, which really added a nice bit to the environment.

Utgarde Keep:

I have to admit, I was a bit worried about setting foot here for the first time. All in all the instance is amazingly long, detailed and FUN! Awesome place, really! We made our way fairly slowly upward toward the end and generally speaking, didn’t have much trouble. None of the people in the group had any prior experience other than reading the strategies briefly, but that didn’t seem to hinder us too much.

So, 500k into the level and moving along pretty fast, a LOT faster than i’d expect, hopefully tomarrow i’ll run UGK a few times to get some more practice/gear/etc.

All in all, The Lich King expansion to World of Warcraft has met and exceeded my expectations thus far.

Oh, and screenshots. Lots of screenshots!!

I needed a break today. Not entirely sure if it was the weather, or the four levels of grinding/questing yesterday that did it, but yea.

So, nothing really of note today. I worked on a few old questlines I had sitting in my quest log for the longest time. I also went to Lower Black Rock Spire and started the questline there for the key, solo. I have to admit, that was fun. I had never really raided much pre-BC so a lot of the content I had only experienced post 60. And even then, I hadn’t really done much of it.

Not really much else to report here other than that. Maybe tomarrow will be more productive.

Yea, I’m a bit late on this post. I didn’t get much done directly related to Shadowshiftr today, however, I did work on an alt. Yes, I do realize I need to stay focused — and believe me, I am. The reasoning behind playing the alt was to try to get him closer to 68 before LK so I could spec his alchemy which would directly help Shadow.

So, what did I do today? Several normal ramparts runs, and quested him from 58 to 61. I don’t think there’s any way for me to get him to 68 without playing him constantly until the patch hits. So, back on the backburner he goes.

For those who are curious, here’s a few screenshot of him at 60 with his two new wolf friends:

What did I do today to help prepare myself for the task of being able to tank WoLK content?

Shattered Halls, Heroic, in under 45mins.

So, what better way to enjoy the day than to spend it with guildies and a good friend of mine tanking probably the easiest SHalls Heroic I’ve been in. Actually, would be kinda unfair to say it’s been the easiest, since I had never been there prior to today on Heroic mode. Then again, being able to do it in 45 minutes I think really managed to shock a few people.

Did i mention I did it in 45 mins!!!!

LoL, sorry, bit proud of it!

And, of course, screenshots:

Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting to get quite as much done as I did today. Was off to a slow start with mail management. Luckily a few guildies and I decided to get two heroics done later on which went pretty awesome. 23mins for Heroic Slave Pens and another 30mins or so for Heroic Setthek Halls. Also 2 more heroic achievements down.

On the personal progression front, I think I’m a bit less squishy overall. I also noticed my tanking, while still not to the point where I’d like to be by Lich King, is a bit less rusty than I was. My own fault though, I really should have focussed more on this toon instead of trying to play a million and one different alts. Owell, live and learn.

And a few screenshots.

Goals for tomarrow:

More heroics. Practice my tanking before LK.

Anyone that has played World of Warcraft can attest that after some point, mail management becomes a nightmare. The expansion pack is coming and now more than ever I really need to get a handle on my mail. One of the reasons for all of my alts, was in order to have mules so I could send items back and forth in mail to eliminate the clutter amongst my bags. Unfortunately, now that mails have an increased capacity (they hold 12 items instead of one — both a good and bad thing), when the mails are about to expire and will not bounce back to their sender, they tend to create even more clutter than they were eliminating in the first place.

Items have been sent from one character to another, sometimes as partial stacks so now my inventories and mails are cluttered up beyond belief.

Needless to say, I spent about 4 hours today trying to get things under control, managed to get Shadowshiftr’s mail empty 100% and started to work on another bank toon — but barely scratched the surface of the amount of stuff I had.

For those that are curious, I’ll attach some bank guildtab screenshots to a private post later. So, what do you do about bank clutter? Do you AH it all? Vendor it? Send it back and forth in the mail? Comment

They say first impressions are the most lasting. So far, Resolve has met and exceeded my expectations. Granted, I’ve only been with them a day and a half,  but so far so good.

In the past day and a half, I’ve already managed to run several heroics, including:

Blood Furnace

Ramparts

Durnholde

Black Morass

and Heroic Magister’s Terrace.

The last one I’m particularly interested in because I had only been there 3 times total, on normal. Heroic, while being a challenge, was fun.  We had a bit of a rocky start, but a few near-wipes were avoided.

Gonna share some screenshots I thought were pretty cool too, loving the new swipe mechanic:

So, so far, I’ve run more heroics lately than I have in the past, trying to get back into my tanking role. I’ve also been working hard on getting my toon properly gemmed and enchanted.

added the following:

15 agi gloves

12 agi cloak

6 stats chest

and the following gems:

2x Delicate Crimson spinels

1x Beaming Fire Opal

Goals for tomarrow:

More Heroics. 12 stam on boots. Figure out the last 2 gems I need for bracers and helm. Possibly buy the season 2 shoulders but undecided on that yet.

All in all, had an awesome day and awesome time. See you tomarrow!

Kudos to a good friend of mine, and he doesn’t know it yet.

“Any monkey can follow a guide, written by others — I want to be the monkey that writes the guide”

And so we shall. And SO we shall!!

First of all, welcome! So if you’re here you probably know me or one of my alts. If not, I’m Shadowshiftr of Alleria (US). I’ve been thinking long and hard lately and decided to make Shadowshiftr my “one and only” main toon once Lich King is released.

So why start a blog? Well, the reasoning is two-fold — I want to document my progress for myself and friends and see how far I manage to get.

A little history for those who know me, think they know me, or just are bored and want to read along:

I originally started playing World of Warcraft before it became the “cool” kid on the block. Back in 2005 I rolled a warrior (Warli) on Alleria to try it out. I was inspired to play this game from a class I was taking at the time about persistant online worlds. Yes, you read right — Warcraft was a research project (heh!).

Truthfully, I didn’t like it at first. I had come from a background of normal multiplayer and singleplayer games and was not used to the MMO aspect of the game. Eventually though, a friend managed to convince me to roll another toon, another warrior, on Mal’Ganis. Eridius was born.

Through and through I played that toon but taking some time off because I had still not gotten into the game, I managed to miss out on raiding pre-BC. I rolled a few other toons on Mal’Ganis, a hunter, a mage, shammy and a few others but never really got into the game on that server. Eventually, the server started to suffer from long queues and the long waits that went along side them. In addition, I was also elected to become officer of a friend’s guild but because of some drama, things weren’t going to well there.

Before I knew it, I was back on Alleria, bored of my other toons, I decided to roll a druid. And wow I am glad I did. At the time, I had been getting a bit tired of the tediousness that my warrior had become and needed a breath of fresh air. I started to explore my options by rolling and playing many many many alts. I rolled a rogue, a lock, but nothing could compare to my druid.

Flash forward, December 2006. The Brethren.

What an awesome bunch of people I thought! And so they were. They opened their arms and took in my baby druid, to, what was then a full-time raiding guild. Boozefighter, Aelith and many others really extended themselves. I managed to get my druid to 70 eventually. Upon getting geared through heroics, I eventually managed to help form a raid that ran semi-consistantly with the guild.

But, all in all, while The Brethren did raid, they had started to become more and more casual as time went by.

I started to see more and more of the content I had wished I was a part of pre-BC, going by again. I surely wasn’t geared enough for anything past Gruul’s and Mag and I likely wasn’t going to get there soon enough.

What to do? Well, by now Blizzard had announced that the expansion was only a few months away. Great! I thought, I’ll get myself somehow in a position to be able to tackle the new stuff head on once it’s released. In the meantime, I focussed once again on pvp and alts to pass the time.

Flash forward, 2 days ago:

“Great news”, a friend of mine says, “we finally got you a spot in our progression guild as feral tank for LK”. So, now the moment of truth. Take it? and leave behind all the friends in The Brethren? or miss out again…. clearly I could not let this happen a third time!!

So, here I am. A proud member of the progression guild Resolve. Wish me luck!