I’m almost there! I’m looking 70 right in the eyes This weekend I finally got some time to team up with my GM and with alot of his help we kicked out about 20 quest in Nagrand, if not more, this took me from 20% in level 66 to about 20% in 67, what a long hard grind, it would have taken me 8 hours to do other than the 3 that it did take.

   Leading up to level 63 my GM had showed me some of the places to get rep and be able to grab some of the good gear and weapons, well now at level 67 I still haven’t run into any gear as good as I’ve been wearing, which means sell everything I get, which means some good coin toward that flying mount I’ll probably never see

   Tonight I’ll again start the grind to slowly pull myself to level 68 but it’s a long grind ahead, I can see why some don’t make it through their 60’s.

   Last night I decided to play with a couple macros, doing some reading, I saw that you can do everything from change gear, use trinkets and use spells. Since I use an addon to change gear, I didn’t need that, but the other things interested me.

   After reading on the WoW Forums and BorkWeb some different examples of what you can do, I jumped right in and started my macro experience. My first try I wanted a macro that would, when I’m in stealth, I would pick pocket my target, activate my 2 trinkets, and then attack with one of my skills. This doesn’t work, OK it worked but I would pick pocket and when I activated my trinkets, I would be unstealthed, which defeats the entire process. Moving on, I decided to break my macros up, one for trinkets, one for stealth pick pocket and attack and one for hack and slash.

   The trinket macro was easy, just use the trinket spot on your character:

/use 13
/use 14

Next I worked on my Pick Pocket, again a very easy macro:

/cast Pick Pocket
/stopcasting
/cast Cheap Shot

Then the hard part, How was I going to make my hack and slash macro, after further reading I saw a command called /castsequence in which you add what ever attacks you want in a row and then each time you mash that button it will do the next attack and better yet if you use the ? icon, it’s suppose to show the next attack you’ll use along with the cooldown timer. Sounded exactly what I wanted.

/startattack
/castsequence reset=target Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Sinister Strike, Eviscerate

Not exactly what I used but close enough. My first problem was I started to test it and as i’m mashing the button I see nothing happening, then I notice I’m completely spamming my guild channel with the entire macro like 10 times. Yes I was called a noob! I had a space in fromt of one of the slashes and it decided I wanted my guild to know what I was trying. Second problem, My icons never changed, so it only showed me my first attack and didn’t change after that, so I was flying blind on cool downs. Final and biggest problem, You don’t always want the exact same attack, for a rogue, you may sometimes miss or not get a CP for an attack, in which then you want to wait or add another attack, it takes the smart out of the attack and really isn’t much fun either.

   I ended deleting the last macro and keeping the first 2, I’m not sure how often I’ll use the trinket one (I always forget the extra help) but the pick pocket/attack macro is nice, one button to do a couple things, I can then take over the attack from there and do what I need to do to bring the beast down.

Past Post on other blogs about Macros

• Writing macros, a series of lessons
• Trinket Macros
• The Zen of Mage Macros

   Just a quick couple notes: When you choose your faction in Shatt, go check where your HearthStone is set to, believe me, it sucks to Hearth home and guards are suddenly trapping you and kicking you out of the city!

   Another note, comes from the WoW forums:

Ok this has annoyed me for god knows how long.

call me a noob, call me what you will, but it is extremely annoying the amount of times I’ve arrived in the inn in shat aldor or scryer and i’m 90% of the time facing the wrong way. always trying to run out of the inn and end up in the inn instead of shat city.

ok i may be petty for saying this but does anyone else get annoyed with this or is it just a case of “get over it dude” and move on =)

Elphie kindly answered:

Stand where you want to be when you hearth in. Talk to the innkeeper and get a new hearthstone.

Your position when you hearth in is based on where you were standing when you get the set hearthstone spell cast on you. Hope that helps!

I’ll be fixing that tonight for myself!

   Last night I didn’t have alot of time to play but started into Outlands for some questing when I get another tell from my GM asking me about my rep with different factions in Outlands. After which we spent the next hour kissing up to many a furry creature in the forest.

   I’m learning more and more just how important Rep in this game is, not really for progression in the game but for weapons and armor you can’t beat it. The mysterious part of Rep is that some quest you can only get while friendly, but once you hit honored, that quest is gone. By finding the correct quest while you have the correct rep standing can give you that extra 800-1200 rep points you may need down the line. Last night by playing the Rep game, back and forth, partialy completing parts of quest, turning others in at the correct time, I was able to get the [Hardened Stone Shard] which is one kick butt dagger.

   The last couple days have made me rething all the faction turn in quest, instead of selling all the turnins on AH, I may start to see how they can help me in the long run.

   Saturday night I login to find I’m still in the low 61’s (like someone was suppose to be leveling me while I was asleep) Eash quest I was taking in Outlands were taking awhile and I needed to feel some fast XP before the 61 slump hit me. So I decided to clear out my quest log of left overs that are not in Outlands.

   My first stop was Silithus, here I had 2 quest to finish, I figured, I’d blow through them and then head to the rest of my quest log, but that’s not what happened. While walking around Silithus my GM sent me a tell asking why I was there, after explaining everything, he offered to come to Silithus and help me out. So began the next 3 hours of doing just about every quest in the area. Along with a history lesson on how these beast use to be elites and how the boss used to be a large raid and now it’s 2 man (did I get DKP for that? )

   All these quest brought me to 30% till level 62. So on Sunday we spent an hour or so turning in rep for all the city factions (which I hadn’t done), and argent dawn rep points, which took some time just to get friendly with then, since I had all but skipped the pleaguelands when leveling. Ding! 62 finally. Now I should be albe to move a bit quicker through Outlands. I’ve completely cleared my quest log of anything but Outlands quest, cleaned the bags and banks of 40 left over quest items I had, which is nice to have all that space back and now I’m moving on, heading back through the portal a new rogue.

Past Post on other blogs about Silithus

• Deadclasp
• Hellfire at level 55
• Silithus

Dragon Kill Points (usually abbreviated with the acronym “DKP”) designates a kind of currency which is earned by participating in endgame raids, and spent by acquiring loot from endgame bosses. The term DKP is also frequently used to designate raid-level loot system in general. The most popular systems for endgame loot distribution are point-based (and thus DKP systems). The very first endgame loot distribution system was developed by the guild Afterlife in 1999 and named for the original two EverQuest end bosses, both of whom were dragons

This week my guild is starting to use DKP, I helped set up the site and using it with decay seems like the best option for getting plums when there are 25 people. What are your views on DKP and does your guild use it, want to use it or do you have horror stories of it?

Past Post on other blogs about DKP

• The Perfect Loot System….
• The Concept of DKP
• A view on DKP

   I wish this was going to be a how to, but it’s really a question, What is the best way to increase my hit points? I recently went into an instance with guilies and yes they are 70’s but is the hit points between 60 and 70 that high? I’m sitting at like 3400 HP, I’m made sure most my gear has high agility and my Cit is like 16% but do I need to rethink some of my gear and work toward a higher HP, being a rogue with only 3500HP I can sometimes get hit once or twice and I’m eating dirt.. any suggestions?

   Noob Question, from Me, When in an instance and you die a couple times, just how do you repair? I had no idea, Sunday afternoon I’m in an instance with some of the guild mates and when you’re doing AQ20 with 10 people and not everyone is 70, and you have a noob like me, bad things start to happen. I probably died 3 times before anyone else so my armor was starting to turn red, I was wondering what I could do, but there weren’t any NPC close, so I shrugged it off and still played but kept my distance, yeah range shots with a rogue just aren’t as fun.. Suddenly we have 2 wipes in a row and I hear one of the guildies say over Vent, “hey is there an NPC close to repair?”, With my armor at ZERO! I listened! A reply comes back, no but I have a couple repair bots in my bag.. What? What is a repair bot??

   I guess at level 300 you can get a recipe to build a [Repair Bot] but many engineers didn’t create them because they were so expensive. Now after patch 2.3 the price has come down and you create 5 instead of one. As an engineer at level 250, this is one of the things I will make sure I always have created and in my bag once I hit that level. This bot could make or break an instance. Not only does it repair but you can also sell items to it and buy many NPC items including the highest ranking shot and arrows. With this bot you could easily become someones best friend.

   I was thinking last night, What started me on this long and addictive gaming called MMO’s and I began to remember my first MMO. **ScoobyDo dream sequence** The year is 1996, just a year before I had started working at an Internet Provider because after getting my first internet bill of 130.00 I know I had to some how get it for free instead of paying by the hour, yes back then you paid for internet by the hour. I had been messing around with MUD’s (Multi-User Dungeon) but they were only text, I started to hear about a graphical MUD coming out by Sierra On-Line called The Realm. Why not I’ll try it, so I sign up and like World of Warcraft there was a fee to play. This was also the first time I ever used a credit card online and also the first (and only) time my credit card # was stolen (had to be someone at Sierra). I’m not sure how long I played but I do remember on holidays GM’s would just drop items around the world. On easter we found eggs, Christmas there were presents, just like winter vail. Oh and they had player housing also (Hint WoW) you had a chest in your house to store things and (if I remember correctly) you could stand complete suits of armor and prize trophies in your room. Here are a couple other images I found online of the game.

   When hitting 60, it seems the only thing I could think of is getting my faster mount, At about level 50, I figured it was going to be around 600 Gold so I started saving. I would be at about 700G, buy some gear, food and things off the AH, but always kept my gold around 550+. So the day comes, I ding 60, YES time for my mount, Zone home, Fly to SW and make the run to the trainer. All the while broadcasting in guild chat that I had finally hit 60, I’m getting my mount.

   The trainer and I happen to be friends, she works for someone I’ve done some quest for and my rep helped also, so my total for training and the horse come to 595G, yes! I have 598G, I buy my mount and I’m happily on my way, riding around, faster than light (well faster than my other mount I named Light). Once I get tired of riding around, I figure what’s next, I’m 60!! oh yeah, skill training, I visit the rogue trainer and I guess he’s not really my friend, because for some reason he will not train me… What? Skill Training cost gold? I had totally forgotten, you get so use to just going up, clicking on all the training and not thinking that it’s taking your gold as you train.

   Fine, I’ll sell stuff on AH, go to the bank, pull out a ton of junk that’s been sitting in there.. I’m sure you see where this is going.. What? Gold to sell stuff on AH.. HELP!!! After many many laughs at the noob on Guild chat, a fellow guildie loaned me 100G to help me along.. I felt sooo stupid! (specially after writing about how can 70’s not have gold)It hasn’t taken long to remake that 100g but I may wait another week to repay him, I want to get a nice nest egg set before giving it back (which he said I didn’t have to but I will, even if it just goes in the guild bank). I guess this could be counted as Noobie Example #2 (see Noobie Example #1)