Check out the screen shots over at Daostrasz’s Realm and while you’re at it, can anyone let me know what lightbox plugin he’s using, mine only shows smaller pic, but it could be because their hosted on flickr.

Check them out

   I’ve still got 20 levels to go until I hit 70, being at 50, I’m saving up for my mount at 60. Even though I now have what I need, that’s all the gold that I have currently. I was still able to save 600+ gold at 50 but I hear many say “wait till you hit 60+ you’ll have tons of gold from the outlands” but I also see level 70 people in chat and even guild chat saying they have nothing, why is this? Is gold easier to come by after 60? If so why do people at 70+ have nothing? Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t a lot of the gear used at 70 bought with honor or is it the thousands of gold you see the flying mount cost that breaks them? Or is it just bad money management?

   Many of us during this holiday season will be traveling, some visit family, some head south to the warmer weather and others vacation places they’ve never been before. This leads me to ask, where will or would your toon visit in the game if they could go anywhere for Winter Vail? Is it an instance that you would only see in a 25 person raid? Is it your homeland (starting point)? Or could it be lands that haven’t been discovered yet (can you say expansion?) If you wouldn’t be attacked this joyous season, where would you visit?

   As soon as I get home, I’ll add an image of me on the turtle mount, Yes I finally got it. All it took was disabling all my addons, which I cheated in doing. I have all my addons setup just how I want them and I have many in the directory that are not enabled, so I would have had to make a list of all the addons I had and then disable all, get the mount and then go down the list and enable just the ones I was using or I could have made backup copies of the Interface and WTF directories and deleted the originals, got my mount and then copied the directories back over, But I chose door number 3. A laptop that I use for traveling has a copy of Wow on it with no addons installed (since it doesn’t have enough memory to run them) Boot up the laptop, get my mount and I’m all set. I now have my Turtle Mount! yeh for me! All is good in my world, or so I think.

   While walking around in IronForge with my turtle, showing it off, someone walks up to me and ask if I can unlock a box for him. Being a Rogue I have this ability but have never done it for someone else, but I’m a nice guy so I say ok. Correct me if I’m wrong but I figured he trades the box to me, I unlock and then he opens it, Correct? Well he starts the trade, I see our trade windows and his lockbox, it turns green, I accept and nothing happens (just like with the turtle). Thinking it was because I was mounted, I dismount and try again, still doesn’t work. Ok, Houston, We have a problem.. It seems that one of my addons is stopping trades, I can buy, sale and buy back from vendors but I can’t trade. The loot vendor in BB must trade the item to you instead of “sell” it to you.

   I love addons, they bring so much to the game, but I understand why many don’t use them or only use a couple, because when things go bad it can be a pain to figure out. When something like this isn’t working, how do you know which of your 20 addons is causing the problem? When a new patch comes out and suddenly only part of the addons work, you have to find all the updates, many devs stop working on their addon and you have to find a replacement and many times there are just objects sitting on your screen that you have no idea what they are, what addon created them or even how to move them. Do you feel addons are worth the troubles? I must because I keep debugging them.

   Now on to my problem, how do I test each addon? I can’t ask someone to stand there while I disable 1 addon, logon, try a trade with them, it doesn’t work, logout, reenable the last one, disable another addon, logon, test again… 20 times. I wouldn’t even do that.

Just a quick blurb on the changes i’ve done recently to the site. I’ve added a few more blogs that I read to the BlogRoll on the Sidebar. I’ve also added the last comments and any trackbacks that I may get in the future. Wordpress has an RSS feed built in but I’ve ported that over to FeedBurner for SEO purposes. (So if you’ve been on my RSS feed and notice something messing up, just resign up and it should work. -see top right corner) I’ve added a few more graphics and lastly I’ve added google ads at the bottom of each post.

   Some like it some are totally against it, but the WoW Trading Card Game has the special loot cards. Get one of these cards and you end up with something special ingame that others can only dream of.. ok that’s a bit of a stretch but there are a couple nice things. Most are just toys, a dragon kite or a fishing chair but the one everyone wants is the Spectral Tiger Mount. With the odds of getting one of these loot cards so high, it’s probably better off buying one off of ebay, but I’m a lucky person so why not try.

   A month ago I’m at a mall and see the cards, so I buy 5 packs, sit down in the mall getting ready for my winnings, open them and find nothing.. blah.. Like I said the odds of getting one of these cards is completely crazy, so I tell myself, next time I’ll buy 5 more and that’s it. (I’m not a gambler at all) So this week I’m Christmas shopping and see the cards once more, buy 5 packs and to my suprise, I’m a winner. I may be lucky but I’m not lucky enough to get the tiger mount, I won the Turtle Mount, yes the turtle mount, the one that when ridden it only has walking speed, anyone can ride it, you don’t need to be level 40, but it’s something.

   Running off to Booty Bay to claim my prize Turtle, first you go to the card games site and put in the secret number you scratch off the card, they then send you to Blizzard who gives you an in game secret number, just for your server (if you put the wrong server, you’re screwed and might as well make a toon there now). So armed with my in game secret number I find the NPC in BB, click on him, choose riding turtle, input the the # and nothing happens No wrong number, No here ya go, nothing. So what do I do? Do I contact the card game makers? Blizzard? I found an email address on the card makers site and sent a brief rundown of what happened and asked what my course of action should be to resolve this. I haven’t received an answer yet (it was just last night) But as I was standing at the NPC after sending the email a level 1 walked up to the NPC and stood there for maybe 20 minutes, it had to be a GM because one they were level1 in BB but also when I tried to inspect them, I didn’t have the choice, I could point at her but when I tried to whisper, the whisper said there is noone logged in with that name. After her 20 minutes of standing there, she just vanished. So still no idea what I need to do, or what I can do.

Edit: Come to find out, I bought the wrong pack of cards to try to win the Tiger mount, but if this works itself out, I have Speedy the Turtle!

Edit2: The company just got back with me, they say I should try disabling my addons for everything to work, I can then reenable them. Have you seen how many addons I have?

   From time to time I’ll let everyone know just how much of a noob I am, in hopes it makes others feel better.

   Example #1 always check maps and other resources online before heading to somewhere you’ve never been before. Last night I needed to go to MoonGlade to turn in a quest that I had, had help with, yes it was way beyond my level but I figured now since it’s just a “goto” to finish it, I might as well do it. A quick look at the map, well MoonGlade is next to Darkshore, so I fly to Darkshore. Looking at the map once more, it looks like I can get to Moonglade by going north in DarkShore. Wrong.. But I’ve come all this way, maybe I can go off roading and swim to MoonGlade, it’s right next door.. After 2 hours of swimming, checking every break in the mountains and refusing to turn back, because I’ve come to far already, I find out there is only one way into MoonGlade and it’s protected buy many over my level. So My body lays in the tunnel connecting to MoonGlade but with maybe 1 or 2 more respawns I should make it Check out the map for the longest route to MoonGlade. (What a noob!)

EDIT: A friend just sent this to me.. those mobs inside the cave are faction based.. you can do the quests in lower felwood (lvl 47-50) to gain rep with the furbolgs and they wont attack you in the cave.. Thanks! lol

   As a World of Warcraft Noobie, one of the things I need to get use to is the different styles of play, I’m not talking among others in your group or guild but the different styles you use depending on what you are doing in WoW.

Some of the Wow playing styles I’ve noticed:

   Soloing - When soloing, you usually have control of your situation. Making sure you’re only fighting one or two beast at a time and being out in the open there is usually an easy escape route no matter which way you run. There usually isn’t a mob hiding around the corner that you can’t see and you don’t have to worry about anyone but yourself to do something stupid (which still happens). With Soloing, your style is mainly hack and slash, run if there is a problem and if something big happens, you have the time to use an emergency skill (like vanish)

   Groups - In a group each person has their own job, this is where your style will change, with others to look out for, not just if they die but are they pulling other mobs or just have no idea what they’re doing, but also when it comes to attacking and exit strategies. Now instead of, it’s just your job to kill, it may now be your job to heal, or to stun while others do the damage. Working as a team is always different, but also completely different when things go wrong. When out soloing a mob may hit you for a couple hundred or less health points, but in an instance or dungeon, you may pull a mob that was hiding around the corner that is hitting you for a thousand health points, suddenly you don’t have the time to think about what’s happening, start to run, decide to use your emergency escape, it’s now do or die. This is where some of those skills your trainer taught you, that you wondered if you should even buy them come into play, these skills you’d hardly ever use when soloing now are life savers.

   Battlegrounds - I’ve gone over some of the battleground styles and game play on the linked post.

   Alts - This is where things can start to get confusing. When I first started my Alt Hunter, My first thought is how do I walk anywhere without Stealth (Rogue Main). But I finally got into the swing of using my pet, attacking with it and once it had Agrro, I could start to attack. Then I’d go back to my Rogue and wonder where my pet is. Even though this can, like I said be a bit confusing, it’s always good to play other classes, how else will you know what the other player in your group is trying to do or should be doing if you’ve never played that class before.

What are some of the different styles you’ve used? What was the main do or die difference for you that you “had” to learn?

   Question: How long have you gone before sending help to your alt?

   Last night I decided to roll my first alt, even though I’m not at 70 on my main, I still wanted to see how Hunters played, So I roll a Night Elf hunter and go on my marry way of killing and leveling. First thing I notice is wow, my bag is getting full pretty darn quick, even at level 2 I was quickly filling it up, yes I could trash the grays, but I had planned on selling everything, this way my main doesn’t have to send anything to my alt. Running back to the starting area, I couldn’t find anyone to sell my good to, I’m sure i missed them but I wasn’t going to spend the time looking all over for them. I’m now at level 3 and level 4, bags are full, no need for money yet but i’ve already had enough.. Log off..

   Logging into my main, I hit the AH, buy 3, 16 slot bags and start to hit send when I think, hummm I may need some gold in the near future, so slap on 10 G and hit send. All the while in my head I’m seeing my self on the way to a twink (ohhh nooo). Logging back into my alt, I soon realize not only is there noone to sell my stuff to, but there are no mail boxes in the starting area. It was time to move on to an area with a mail box any way, I had completed all quest in the starting area and had hit lvl5.

   Moving on to a town, the first thing I did was get my mail, equipt my bags and (hanging my head in shame) by equ from a vendor in town that was better than what I was using. At least it was still my level of equipment and now some uber stuff bought off the AH (which could still happen so I won’t preach against it:) ) So as you can see, I lasted about 30 minutes before sending the kids money, how long have you waited? Have you started a toon on another server just for this reason? And if you do send your alt stuff to you set limits, or is it what ever they need, the alt gets?

   As someone that has played many many MMORPG’s over the years, I’ve never been a (PK) Player Killer or played any kind of PVP so everytime i’d read about the BattleGrounds I would wonder if it was something I would like and could I get past the fact that I was killing another player. But I’m at level 48, a good level for the BG, I have very good armor and weapons (some may call me a twink but I’ve played the AH from day one and have plenty of G to play with) So why not try the BG once.

   I’m not sure why but I was afraid that first time I clicked join and the BattleGround splash screen showed up, would I suck, would I die right away, would people be yelling at me.. I hope not on all of these. When the BG begins, everyone is behind a gate, at this point everyone starts throwing out buffs (I think they are free at this moment and so many seconds after you revive at a graveyard). When the gates open the game has begun, everyone runs out and at least on Arathi Basin you have to capture the different nodes on the map. A good team communicates well and helps each other, my first play this wasn’t the type of team I had, everyone just ran around on their own, not even helping each other. This probably made me feel better, because if I was going to majorly messup, I might as well do it with a buch of messups anyway.

   The game went quick, we lost big time and the score board came up, I hadn’t done bad at all 7 kills and only 5 deaths, I’m thinking if I can keep my deaths lower than my kills, I’m doing well. During the night I played 3 times, with 2 loses and 1 win, but the one win was so close my nerves were shot and it was time to head to bed (and dream about fighting all night long). When the night was over I had over 30 kills and something like 400+ honor points to use toward buying extra equipment and potions.

   The game is pretty simple, but you do end up having to completely change how you play compared to PVE. I had read alot on the BG’s and most helped when I had finally got into the game, but one thing I hadn’t read anywhere was about the buffs that show up every once in a while, I would see these buff icons in the BG but didn’t hit them because I wasn’t sure what they did. After some searching this morning I found an answer from TenTon Hammer

There are a few special icon buffs a la Unreal Tournament on the map as well. A speed buff pops every thirty seconds or so in a small alcove to the side of the long center tunnel in each base. Additionally, healing and berserking (a buff that allows you to do +30% damage, but increases damage taken by 10%) icons occasionally spawn in each of the small outbuildings in the mid-field. When you’ve killed a player, right click their corpse to remove their insignia so that they can only revive at their graveyard (you can also loot a small amount of coin on occasion - but this coin doesn’t come out of their personal account). If you die and press the “Revive” button, you’ll take the ghost form at your faction’s graveyard, where a special NPC will cast an area-effect resurrection spell every thirty seconds. If you’re within the area as a ghost, you’ll revive with full health, full mana (if applicable), and (if you’re a warlock) a pet.

   More info can also be found at WoW’s offical page on battlegrounds and their Generial BG info page and for deeper info with many of the abbreviations used in BG chat check out Battlegrounds for Dummies. Read through these pages, don’t worry about pvp if you’ve never done it, don’t worry about sucking (there were some bad players in there) and don’t worry about having to win, it’s all about the game and I have to say it was fun and I’ll be going back.. (ok, so what Alt do I want to roll to just play BG’s )