Monday, August 30, 2010

The items I never sold or destroyed...

I just got my account stolen, leading to a serious amount of paranoia. It turned out it was my own fault; I had entered my username and password on a phishing site. Some of the phishing mails are good, some are insanely good. This one was pretty good.

Anyway. I just suddenly got mail that my account was suspended because of gold selling. I filled out a contact form, and after about a day, the suspension was lifted and most items was returned to me.

The downside; What a mess. Full cleaning required, please. In addition, I noticed a few items that the GM hadn't restored that I got when I asked specifically for it. I have no guarantee that there might not be other items missing as well. It just comes down to my memory, which frankly is a bit bad with 8 different characters.

The upside: I got a good opportunity to look through my items.

My priest is my oldest character. I had no less than two 16-slot bags in my bag full of technically useless stuff. Vanity items, if I can call it that. I got a chance to see through them now.

Each of them tells a tale. I did sell a lot of them during this cleanup, but there are still some that I can't destroy. I'd like to share the tale of a few of them.

My Gnomish Battle Chicken

Its level is dependent on your engineering skill - it is for example lvl 82 at my current skill, I believe. Anyway, at somewhere around 35 I had skilled engineering all the way up to 300, despite being low level, with the help of materials from guildmates and friends. In battlegrounds, walking around with a lvl 60 battle chicken at level 35 was actually a real threat. Oh, what fun! Since it has a 20 min cooldown, I constantly switched trinkets after each one had been used.

Arena Grand Master

If you don't know, it requires you to "win" the gurubashi arena chest 12 times in order to get it. And I did it long before level 60? How? Well, three ways, really.

One was to ally myself with any horde interested that was there. Before the fight, we agreed on who would loot the chest should we win, usually by /roll. I never fought horde in the arena, for roleplaying reasons. If some horde didn't want to join my cause, I didn't enter the arena until they had died or the chest was gone.

The other way was to go for it at 6 in the morning. Since it spawned exactly at 6, 12, 18 and 24, "all" I had to do was stand up early and get the chest if there were none other nearby.

The final way was combined with one of the other, namely the Gnomish Mind Control Cap. I did sell that one in BC, though, as it was useless then. Of course, sometimes I ended up fighting FOR the one I tried mind control (backlash), but fair enough, that was in hindsight fun as well.

My best memory was when there was a lvl 60 night elf druid who really, really wanted the chest. I stood behind a pillar and watched her kill all alliance left and right. I was only lvl 45, not a real threat to her at all. Anyway: I just leapt into the arena while she looted the chest, and used the cap. Then I looted the chest, while she (mind controlled, like a minion) attacked an alliance player who just had respawned. Naturally, I ran afterwards. Boy, was she angry at me! She chased me for a loooong time. Fortunately, she didn't have epic riding skill, and I had the carrot on a stick, so I eventually outran her.

Imperial Red Robe

This one I bought purely for roleplaying reasons and its looks. I still think it looks neat. I paid 5 gold for it, which was a rather big fortune at that point in my career, somewhere around 30ish, long before I could actually equip it. I used about a handful of times on roleplaying occassions, and even got offered 15g for it, which I refused.

Piccolo of the Flaming Fire

I never got this one in classic. I got it at the end of BC, I think, while soloing a part of Stratholme. It wasn't even intentional, I just aggroed the rare mob and had to defend myself. It's a sort of item I just can't throw away, since it's so hard to get hold of again. But would I really miss it? I doubt so.

Hydrocane

I spent a few hours farming for this one. It was hard for a discipline priest at level 55ish. And in BC I didn't even have a use for it. I finally decided to sell it yesterday. I also sold Azure Silk Belt, which I had made for the purpose of swimming. I figured I can just use Levitate instead to run on the water.

Speeeeed! Gimme what I neeeeed

From my WSG career: Nifty Stopwatch and Skull of Impending Doom. Who knows, these might come in handy again in Cataclysm with rated BGs? I actually got half-way through revered just by playing WSG and enjoying it. Yes, I know a lot of people are exalted, but I also know that most of them painfully grinded it. I didn't play if I didn't find it fun.

Various irreplaceable quest-items

I'm considering selling Barov Peasant Caller. I don't think I'll ever use it, and it's not really great. However, it is irreplaceable. I can find a bit more reason to hang on to Moist Towelette. I used it on my shaman to get Intense Cold. They're less useful for a priest than say a shaman, though. In Cata all healers can remove magic anyway. I just can't help but some day... some day I'll find a use for it. Bah. Highly unlikely. However, also possible with rated battlegrounds.

What do you mean? You SOLD it?

Those mentioned above are what I decided to keep. I sold the rest. I do actually regret not hanging on to my enchanted White Wedding Dress, the one I was "married" in. However, seeing that it wasn't soulbound, I gave it away to another troll who was marrying after me. Oh, fun roleplaying times.

I also got rid of the Warden Staff, my classic PVP staff, a long time ago. I caused a druid in my guild to guild quit when he discovered he had it, despite him having farmed and attempted to buy it off the auction house for a long time. I think I paid 150g on the auction house, which was a pretty big heap of gold for that time.

If any of you have any vanity item tales to tell, feel free. I'm all ears.

Monday, August 23, 2010

A recommendation


I'd just like to recommend an awesome wow-related comic and blog: Thoughts for Food.

Look! A diversion!



I suddenly felt the need to write something again. I guess a quick update is in order.

While on a "break" from WoW, I've been playing mainly Team Fortress 2, and Mass Effect 1 and 2. Team Fortress is fun for a while, but it never manages to keep me stuck for very long. Mass Effect was awesome. Played through the first game three times as an adept (since you need to unlock difficulties in order to beat Insanity). Played through the second game once on Hardcore, and half-way again on Insanity. First time as an adept (imported from ME1), the second time as a Vanguard. After I beat the Collossus on Tali's recruitment mission by charging right up to it and beating it in melee on insanity, I didn't find the motivation to play through the rest. Felt like I had done what I wanted with the game.

Anyway. I've been playing some WoW again recently. About three weeks ago, I created my first "real" alliance character, a gnome warlock with a mean faced called Malict (by the way, if she happens to be undressed it is because I've mailed the heirloom robe to my low-level horde mage).

My initial motivation for creating her was that I wanted to experience the retaking of Gnomeregan once it becomes available, first-hand. It has already been greatly parodied by Complex Actions, with a follow-up. I reckon level 10 or so would be enough, but while playing I found that I enjoyed it a lot and just kept leveling for a while.

It was fun and interesting playing a warlock. I've always liked dots when playing dps, and so affliction came pretty naturally for me. I also liked having a pet from my death knight, and warlock pets are even more functional than the ghoul. Since I've never had an alliance character, I could only mail heirlooms, not money. Thus, I had to earn my keep by using the auction house. It was also pretty entertaining in moderate amounts, and I only earned as much as I needed to buy glyphs, train and live "comfortably", not buy equipment.

Being only dps and not having the option to tank or heal was a different experience. Sure, I've dps'ed before, but this time I *had* to dps. I must admit, I missed the possibility to choose between the two. Or three, in the case of druids.

A downside was naturally that I didn't get to play affliction in any instance. Yes, I was specced affliction, but almost all mobs died before I'd gotten even a full corruption on them, meaning I was ruining my own dps by dotting them instead of just nuking them. Almost all trash mobs ended with me channeling Rain of Fire repeatedly.

Seeing new places (or at least, places from a different angle) was pretty interesting. All the zones seemed very ... empty, though. Not strange, I guess. I just missed any social interaction at all. And in instances, most people are pretty silent. Add to that that I had buttons to click almost all the time to keep up my dps.

I spent some levels as demonology, speccing for max survivability for PVP. However, I specced back at 30 to get Curse of Exhaustion and Siphon Life. I loved those. However, at the same time, my survivability in PVP against rogues went down by 80%.

Last night I found I wasn't very keen on leveling Malicit anymore. I was wondering if I should pick up my troll mage Rime instead, whom I've had at level 20-something since the second year of wow. Look at it this way, her name is Rime. Practically every name meaning anything at all in any vocabulary have already been taken a long time ago.

I've thought a lot about what I want to play in Cataclysm. I guess I'll write more about it later.