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 )

   As I’m getting higher in levels, I’m starting to realize just how important quest are. At the lower levels, you notice, wow that quest gave me a boost, but you’re new to the game and killing is sooo much more fun than running around taking water or gems to another NPC. Then you hit level 20ish and things start to slow down. I probably grinded lvl25-32, I knew that quest would give me the needed XP but my problem was, finding the quest. Oh yeh you can look online and find quest you need but usually first you need to know the area that you are in, and since I had no idea where to head for my upper 20s and lower 30’s I roamed around in the lower areas, grinding and wondering if I like this game!

   To get to the new area that your level should be at Blizzard adds quest they call breadcrumbs, they lead you to where you need to go, but what if you don’t find this quest or you want to go to another area? Well Blizzard to the rescue, they’ve added an atlas of all the World of Warcraft and by going to customize you can choose region levels, this will list every area and the level of beast that roam that area. Another good tool is the addon for Fubar called Fubar-LocationFu, this addon will not only tell you info on the zone that you are in but will also recommended zones/instances you should go to based on level and friendliness of the area.

   After grinding so many levels, I never want to go back to that, I’ve now learned that you can sometimes easily level twice in one sitting with just doing quest, This isn’t to say you won’t be grinding to get that drop for the quest, but it gets rid of useless grinding.

   One thing that is a must know when in a group are the rules for Need, Greed or passing. While these seem to be straight forward, there can be slight changes when in a guild group.

Usually these are the rules..

Pass - I don’t want this item to use and I also don’t want it to sell.
Greed - I intend to sell or auction this item.
Need - I will USE this item. You WILL NOT SELL IT. (Some groups may wish you to equip it there and then, some groups will just trust that you will make use of it after the instance.)

Just one last point on “Need”, your character really should be able to use it there and then, also “needing it for the money” is not need, that is the greed option.

   The one difference I’ve found when in a guild group and something you may want to ask or get straight up front before heading into an instance is Blue Items.. Mostly those that bind on pickup (BOP). The groups i’ve been in usually hit pass, so they can discuss it and not have to worry about the need/greed timer. Believe me, you don’t want to be the ninja that hits greed and everyone else hits pass, you get it and 2 others could have used it.. oops! yes it happened to me (Noob!). It makes sense, because since it’s BOP and you can’t use it, then you would only be able to sell it for small small amounts to the NPC’s, so usually someone can enchant it and the group shares what comes from it.

   While i’m talking about looting I might as well add what the different loot options are for groups, since many don’t know.

Round Robin - Everyone takes turns in looting. It is your turn to loot again when everyone has taken their turn in that “round.” This setting is recommended for most situations. If a player bends down to loot a monster under Round Robin looting, then if they leave items on the corpse that they haven’t looted, anyone in the party can loot them. Keep in mind that more than one person will be able to loot a corpse if the person currently looting already has enough of the quest items that that specific monster dropped.

Free-For-All - This setting allows anyone in the party to loot any corpse. You might find this option useful if no one cares who gets what, or how often any one person gets to loot.

Master Looter - This setting allows the group leader to loot everything and allows the leader to decide if other members in the party are to get items, and what items they should get. This becomes useful when very powerful items are dropping and people can’t be trusted to pass them out fairly. Any time an item is distributed using the Master Looter system and the item is quality epic or above there will be a confirmation dialogue to confirm that the item is going to the correct person.

Group Loot (default) - When an item equal to or above the threshold (details on threshold below) is on a monster that is killed, everyone gets a pop-up box on their screen with the item and pass or roll options and a timer. Anyone who rolls, displays a number between 1 and 100, the highest roller of all those who choose to roll automatically gets the item. Anyone who waits until the timer expires automatically passes. Items below the threshold are taken care of by normal round robin rules. If more than one player ties a loot roll, a random player will receive the loot. An interface option, “Detailed Loot Information” is defaulted to ‘on.’ If you turn it off you will only see the roll and Need/Greed option of the player who won the item rather than information for every player.

Need Before Greed - Same as group loot, except players who cannot use the item automatically pass.

   We all love our time in the game to look great but there are times when we may either need that extra boost of FPS (frames per second) or just can’t see something on the ground we need (like a quest item). Straight from Daostrasz’s Realm is just how you can setup a couple macros to make your screen look like the two seen below, one low rez and the other high rez.

Edit: Now that I’ve added lightbox to show images, I see how dark these are, either look at the larger size or this week i’ll add lighter images.

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   I’ve added two buttons to my HUD so on the fly I can change back and forth, I laugh everytime I see the low rez, it makes me think someone is cutting all the grass in the world. Check out the link above to see other settings that Daniel has laid out for us. Here are the 2 main listings for the /macros

My “Min Detail” macro looks like this:

/console showDetailDoodads
/console showLowDetail
/console horizonfarclip 1305
/console farclip 177
/console groundEffectDensity 256
/console detailDoodadAlpha 100
/console characterAmbient
/console maxLOD 2
/console SkyCloudLOD 1

My “Max Detail” macro looks like this:

/console showDetailDoodads
/console showLowDetail
/console horizonfarclip 2112
/console farclip 777
/console groundEffectDensity 256
/console detailDoodadAlpha 100
/console characterAmbient
/console maxLOD 3
/console SkyCloudLOD 3

Large sized

   Coming from other games where you could change the look and feel of the game with addons, one of the first things I did when begining WoW was checkout all the mods & addons. The image to the right is a screenshot of my current HUD, as you can see, I have all the info I need on my screen, any buttons I need are there and important ones have shortcut keys to them and I feel the layout works (for me).

   Now I’ve gone to some extremes completely changing things around, but usually players will just install one or two addons, such as, to show their current quest or their Aggro, but there are thousands to choose from. My favorites are Auctioneer (helps make me Gold!) and Fubar, which will hold many many other addons within it (see top and bottom bars in screenshot). I plan on adding a post every so often on differend addons and what they do, but till then, check out these sites for World of Warcraft Addons. http://www.wowinterface.com/ & http://wow.curse.com. For auctioneer check out http://auctioneeraddon.com/

   I spend alot of my time soloing, for one most my friends are already lvl70 but also I just have a problem grouping (mostly with people I don’t know). This is something I need to change to get the most out of the game or at least most fun, I think. I’m sure most of it comes from I’m quiet around people I don’t know but in game i sometimes need the help.

   Yesterday I was doing a quest around Booty Bay that was lvl 40+ and a lvl35 asked if I could help him on the same quest, I for once in my life said yes, I only needed a couple more items, so after I got mine I had him change the loot to free for all and allowed him to get all that was left. This was a huge step for me, I’ve never grouped with someone I didn’t know, I’m not sure if I’m afraid I’ll get us killed, look to much like a noob or what i’m afraid of? babysteps

   Many will say that you can solo most the game and the game is enjoyable if you play how you want, I kind of agree on this but the reason I’m in an MMO is for the other players, why not use them, oops.. I mean join them

   This week started Darkmoon Faire in Elwynn Forest. This is the first of this event that I’ve been able to attend and I’ll have to say it was fun. Not fun as in I spent hours playing around in the area but it was a fun time away from grinding or questing. To be able to do something a bit different once in a while is probably one of the things that keeps players on WoW.

   I started hearing about the faire in Ironforge when I was given a ticket to the faire by a vendor walking around by the bank. I had a few items in my bank that said “turn in at the darkmoon faire” so why not go? When first ariving to the area where the faire is, you notice crowds of people, both Alliance and Horde are welcome (but sometimes things get out of hand and the entire town of Goldshire becomes a battlezone.. See images below) A couple of the fun items at the faire are the Steam Tonks, you control them and attack other Steam Tonks, but what I like best are the [Heavy Leather Balls] you can buy and then throw at other players, it goes straight into their pack, so you see these balls flying everywhere.. good fun

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   Turning in items (usually 5 of each) will give you tickets to turn in for a prize, many of the turn ins I had 4 of the five so I bought the extras on AH just to see what my prizes were. I ended up with enough tickets for [Minor Darkmoon Prize], [Lesser Darkmoon Prize] and a [Darkmoon Storage Box]. The 2 prize bags had mostly worthless green items in them only worth a couple silver and the storage box had 14 slots, but nothing extra special about it. None of them worth spending your hard Gold on. Here is a list of the turn in items so you can be ready for the next faire in 3 more months.

   This weekend I decided to do a little fishing in the Stranglethorn Vale Fishing Extravaganza. This tournament starts on Sunday afternoons at 2 -4pm server time. At 2pm there is a yell from Booty bay announcing the start of th tourney, then pools of “tastyfish” will start to appear. The way to win is to be the first with 40 “tastyfish” and turn them in at BB.

   To fish in Stranglethorn Vale (STV) you only need to have 225+ fishing skill but those under level 40 may want to bring a higher level friend for protection from some of the beast. at level 60 the beast will stop aggro on you and there will be no worries, but for those of us way under that, watch your butt!

   There are different objects and gear one can wear to make their fishing even better. First there are lures that you can buy from the fishmasters, these will usually add +10 - +25 to your fishing but take awhile to use. There are many other fishing rods that can be used like [Nat Pagle’s Extreme Angler FC-5000] or [Arcanite Fishing Pole], fish finder books that you can catch and even gloves enchanted to up your fishing skill [Formula: Enchant Gloves - Fishing] and dont forget your [Lucky Fishing Hat].

   When the tourney begins, you will see the pools start to show up, remember these pools only hold up to 5 of the fish you need, so make sure you cast right into the pool, only take the 5 and if someone tries to share your pool, leave at 4, so not to waste time. Having your hearthstone set for BB is also a good idea to save you from running back and someone getting there before you.

   With the right gear and practice you may win, I didn’t but it was my first time. If you don’t win, that’s ok, there are also other special fish to catch for some elite fishing gear. Hope to see you along the shore…

   One of the hardest things I’ve had to learn and still gets me in WoW is dying. Being an old school game player I do everything I can to keep from dying, reason being is that games use to have penalties for death. I can’t tell you how many times i’ve lost XP or had to go find my corpse and get my equipment off of it. (picture running into a group of beast in my underwear). But this isn’t true in World of Warcraft, there are no penalties or xp loss, the worst part is the time it takes to run to your corpse and sometimes you’ll get a 10% durability loss on your equipment.
   This doesn’t mean go into a raid or group not worrying about a wipe or just yourself dieing, but it does mean it’s not the end of the world, take a deep breath and say it’s ok to die, it’s ok to die… There do you feel better?

   I know at some time I’ll add a couple ads on this blog, it always helps. If I use a service like google adwords, it will scan my blog, see I’m talking about World of Warcraft and will auto place ads about WoW. Problem is most of those ads are about buying ingame gold. Since this is one of the first post I wanted to let everyone know my feelings about buying gold for the game. I’m against it, I’ve know people that have bought gold in the past and just like anything, if you feel there is an unlimited amount, you don’t care what happens to it.. So while I buy, sell and grind to make my gold, when it comes time to buy something I really think about if I want to spend the gold, are the stats on the item that much higher that what I have? But when you buy gold, most people spend most of it within a week on things their toon didn’t really need, then suddenly they need to buy more. I haven’t been in the game long enough to see what it does to the in game economy but you can only imagine.

   Today on WoWInsider they talked about how do you spot a gold farmer? While there are some good points listed, I tend to only report the spammers standing in town yelling about their gold for sell. I wonder how many reports it takes to get them banned or if others even report them anymore and just go along with their game.

   Do you report spammers, gold farmers or anyone?