I thought I was safe. When the new items from Zul’Aman and Heroic Badges were first announced, I plopped them into a spreadsheet to compare against my Primal Mooncloth Set. I breathed a sigh of relief to discover that, even though I’d look the same way I’ve looked for the past 4-6 months, at least I wouldn’t have to dress in jungle chic for the sake of stats. And then I went to Zul’Aman. We killed Halazzi and the [Shimmer-pelt Vest] dropped, an item that I initially discounted as a “downgrade” from my Primal Mooncloth. As the only Druid there, however, I picked it up anyway. After all, it was obviously a direct upgrade over the leather [Stonebough Jerkin] I had sitting in my bank.

After the raid, I decided to revisit the leather items corresponding to my PMC pieces: the tunic, belt, and shoulders. One of the issues I had difficulty with was placing a value on the Primal Mooncloth set bonus. After all, 5% of mana regeneration while casting will scale with your current Spirit. To avoid comparing apples to oranges, I converted this bonus to its MP5 equivalent, using the “mana regenerated while not casting” value you get when you mouseover your Spirit in the character window and multiplying it by 0.05:

Mp5-equivalent Set Bonus_PMC = (Mana Regen Outside 5SR) * 0.05

For me, this ended up being 227 * 0.05 or 11.35 MP5. Once I’d figured that in, it was a relatively simple matter to discover that my initial assessment of these items was wrong. These new items are a clear upgrade, basically giving me a ton of free Armor and Stamina while retaining roughly equivalent healing stats. I’m not sure how this happened, but I feel abashed about it now.

Because I’d already committed myself to breaking my Primal Mooncloth set (and to becoming a fashion disaster), I pulled the Heroic Badges I had sitting in the bank and purchased the [Gnarled Ironwood Pauldrons] that go with this set. I then flew up to Netherstorm to purchase the Season 3 [Vengeful Gladiator's Kodohide Gloves]. I am considering purchasing the corresponding helmet since I wear the Season 2 helmet right now, but doing so would mean that I’d probably be unable to puchase the Season 3 weapon once Mr. Phae and I start PvPing together again. 150 gold in enchants, gems, and Fel Armaments and one [Cenarion Expedition Tabard] to cover my hideous new tunic and I now look like a Feral. /cry

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…Keeps the Armor Repairman Living in the Style to which He’s Become Accustomed

I started doing Daily Quests just last week. My interest was piqued after doing a couple of the Cooking Dailies and seeing my total gold jump up for so little effort. I now /kick /kick /kick myself for not having started doing them sooner as I’ve made a little over 700 gold in just a week or two. I’m sure the novelty will wear off sooner or later, but for now I’ve been working on a technique to do Blade’s Edge Mountains Daily Quests while I dry my hair in the morning since I sometimes don’t have time to do them before raids.

I’d like to give a shout-out to the Daily Quest guides that Big Bear Butt wrote. If you’re looking to get started on your path to piles and piles of gold (or just need to save for your epic flight form), these guides are an excellent resource:

• Shatari Skyguard
• Reaching Neutral with Ogri’la
• Ogri’la and Sha’tari

One note that I will make about the BEM “Simon Says” quest is that I find it’s easiest to send myself a tell with the color sequence, rather than numbering each position or using a pen and paper. So for instance, “/tell Phaelia r b b g y y y”. Thanks very much to Valenna for this handy tip! Also, while BBB mentions that it can be difficult to wrangle Aether Rays without accidentally mauling them to death, I confess that I do not find this to be an issue with 50 points in Restoration. I have been using Insect Swarm, Moonfire, and Thorns to reduce their life while using Lifebloom and Rejuvenation to keep mine at a healthy level. This works very well for me, and I rarely have mana or health issues (I also recommend wearing your PvP set if you have one for the additional mitigation and hit points).

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Valenna and I were discussing the other day some of the reasons that World of Warcraft has managed to be so successful, especially relative to its competitors who have managed to capture only a fraction of the market share that Blizzard has. One of the reasons we decided they've done so well is that they've included so many outlets for progression, outlets which are — in many cases — independent of gear and level. Here is a list of the progress "tracks" we were able to come up with:

1. Level This is one of the more obvious ones, and pretty much all MMOs have it. It is, however, fairly easy to max out and really serves as a catalyst to grant access to many of the other tracks. The Talent trees can probably be considered part of levelling since you can only progress further in them as you gain in level, even though you can pay to adjust your points later.
2. Reputations While there were several faction grinds available prior to the Burning Crusade (Cenarion Circle, Thorium Brotherhood, Wintersabers, Furbolgs), TBC introduced a plethora of new factions. So many added at once allowed Blizzard to make each individual faction easier (and more fun) to improve.
3. Inventory and Bank Space This includes the number of bank slots you've purchased. It would also include the size of your profession-related bags (such as a 24-slot enchanting bag). Take it a step further to include the size of your bank slot bags (I only have two 18-slotters in my bank). And while we all have the same 16-slot backpack we received at character creation, that may soon change. Even the keyring grows with you.
4. Professions This includes your two Primary Professions as well as the three Secondary Professions (Fishing, Cooking, and First Aid). Gathering professions unlock new levels of potentially gatherable materials while production tradeskills allow you to build a repertoire of rare, often expensive recipes. Even if I know I will never use a recipe (Mail resist gear, for example), I will still buy it to help complete my collection.
5. Keys and Attunements This includes both Heroic and non-Heroic keys (like the key to Scholomance and Scarlet Monastery) as well as character "flags" like the attunements necessary to enter Molten Core or Blackwing Lair. I personally didn't complete my Scholomance key until a few months after the release of Burning Crusade. And I know many players still hope to complete their Naxxramas attunements, even if it won't be necessary in Wrath of the Lich King.
6. Gear This is a pretty self explanatory one, but can be measured in a variety of ways (individual stats). Some enjoy the "quest" for gear so much that they dedicate an inordinate amount of time toward building gear sets for their offspecs or complete resistance sets they don't necessarily need. This would also include a PvP set, which often require players to optimize differently than they might for PvE content.
7. Raid Progression Strongly tied to gear progression, raid progression is something that's generally derived from one's guild or a guild alliance. This is so strongly typed that different class-specific sets are numbered for the "tier" of dungeon from which they are acquired (Tier 4, 5, 6).
8. Battlegrounds Stats There are a number of progression stats associated with Battlegrounds and the Honor System including Honorable Kills, Honor totals, reputations with each BG faction (including the special title for reaching Exalted with several), and total damage/healing/kills/etc. in a given game. Alterac Valley even has a separate progression track for the trinket that hearths you to your base.
9. Arena Stats Your wins-losses record, team rating, overall participation and how much of a particular Season's items you've been able to purchase all help comprise this 3-bracket track. At the end of each season, the top-performing players are additionally rewarded with special titles (Challenger, Rival, Duelist, and Merciless Gladiator) and the best of the best receive a special flying mount. And coming in Season 3, you'll be able to improve your Personal Rating, as well. This is one of the few progression tracks that is necessarily competitive.
10. Mount Class The different levels of mount class can be described as standard ground mount, epic ground mount, prestige ground mount (rare dungeon drops and reputation-based), standard flying mount, epic flying mount, and prestige flying mount (Netherdrake, Hippogryph, Skyguard). This idea is parodied by the Blood Elf female flirt emote, "I normally only ride on EPIC mounts ... but let's talk." (In real life, I drive a standard ground mount, a Ford Escort. I guess that makes me a car n00b.)
11. Money Often used as a catalyst to propel you along one or more of the other progression tracks, some players horde their money and make playing the Auction House for fun and profit a whole game in and of itself. Raliah, an adorable gnome Rogue in my guild, has been known to go Scrooge McDuckin' in her bank vault.
12. Interface Layout Whether you develop addons yourself or simply pride yourself on your computer's ability to run at more than 5 FPS with 150 addons going, developing the "perfect" UI layout is a lofty goal for many players (myself included).
13. Exploration Newly-discovered zones in World of Warcraft have a Fog of War enabled before you've mapped out individual regions (which also yield experience prior to reaching max level). At one point I played with this Fog of War disabled via an addon but I found exploration a lot less fun and rewarding. Exploration also includes the collection of new Flight Points, making your overall travel easier.
14. Consumables I take a great deal of pride in the number of inventory slots wasted occupied by glass bottles of colorful fluids. I carry five types of mana potions, health potions, Battle and Guardian Elixirs, zone-specific Flasks, delicious fishies, bandages, three types of mana regenerative water, Intellect and Spirit scrolls — not to mention four stacks of Druid-specific reagents. One would assume that these items would take up less space over time since they're called "consumables," but that doesn't appear to be the case.
15. Collectibles This category includes things like non-combat pets (particularly the rare ones like those acquired from seasonal events), dresses and special occassion clothing, and fun "toys" like Steam Tonks, the Snowball machine, and [Elune's Lantern]. Due to the perceived difficulty in acquiring these items, they are also one of the largest culprits for "wasted" bank space. A special subtype in this category are the items acquired from TCG "loot" cards (like my fishing chair). These items are "special" because not everyone can get them. And the people who desire them most for the sake of character "completeness" are more likely to get "hooked" on a collectible card game, as well. It's a win-win for Blizzard!
16. Class-Specific Skills This includes skills like Lockpicking, Pick-Pocketing, and the special, vanity Polymorphs available to Mages. These are skills that you might not ordinarily increase or progress in the course of levelling. This might also include the optionally quested Warlock pets (such as the Infernal) or even the Hunter pets tamed from rare, aesthetically different wild animals.
17. /played time For some, a high /played time is something to celebrate; for others, a low /played time relative to their accomplishments is considered better. The latter is generally true of alternate characters or newly-minted mains as it's often an indication of how quickly the player was able to get the new character "up to speed" with those of his peers.
18. "Landmark" quests These are quests that players might feel are "essential" to their characters' backgrounds. These might include the quest to kill Van Cleef in Deadmines or Onyxia Attunement. Some players even get a kick out of completing ten daily quests every day (sickos).

Phaelia's Next Progression Track?

This got me to thinking that, if I'm not necessarily enjoying the 25-man raid content, maybe I should explore some of these other avenues of progress. So for the past couple of nights I've been working on profession-related objectives such as the new cooking dailies and collecting fish for our guild bank. I've also cleaned out some bank and inventory space, used my tradeskill timers, and done a few of the standard daily quests for the Skyguard. All in all, it's been very laid back and refreshing and has helped to renew my interest in other activities such as Heroics.

The sheer number of individual progression tracks (of which I've only mentioned a few) is likely one of the reasons so many enjoy playing alternate characters. The instant gratification of being able to progress so many new tracks at the same time is ... well ... gratifying. It's also likely a big reason that Blizzard has been so reticent to introduce Player Housing to the game. To be excecuted well, such a momentous endeavor should likely incorporate many of those tracks listed above in addition to several new tracks that would need to be introduced. I have no doubt that, should we ever gain the ability to "play house" in Azeroth, I will neglect all of the above-mentioned progression tracks in pursuit of Sims-like progress. And all my guildmates will be left asking if I can "come out and play."

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For the sake of clarity, let me emphasize that I am not considering quitting the game. I’m just lamenting not knowing what to do with myself and the tediousness of the activities I have available to me. Don’t worry … but thank you for your concern. =) Oh, and from all the tremendously supportive comments, it’s apparent that I’m not alone.

---

My interest in World of Warcraft has been on the fritz over the last six weeks or so. A variety of factors have contributed to this, including: working long hours, having no clear path of progression for my character, and a disinterest bordering on loathing for 25-man content. As you may have noticed, my blog posts have become less frequent the last few weeks. My workload lately has increased tremendously, probably somewhere around 200%. As many of my posts are written at work, I haven’t had the spare time to devote to regular updates. And when I do come home, I’m often too tired to think of anything exciting to write about … and the last thing I want to do is any mathematical analysis since I spend my time at work programming.

My guild Aegis Hestia seems to have hit a wall in terms of progress, having successfully placed both Karazhan and Gruul on farm, but making little headway against Magtheridon. We’ve also recently begun work in Serpentshrine Caverns. And the fact that I just used the word WORK to describe what should be considered a leisure activity points to how I’m feeling about the game in general right now. Like many guilds, we’re struggling with the transition from 10-man to 25-man. Adding enough people to the roster to help fill out those 5 additional slots has been difficult. And, as we are a casual guild, we’ve been suffering from underperformance and a sort of identity crisis about whether it’s fair to selectively extend raid invites based on DPS and even healing output. To make matters worse, for a couple of weeks, Mr. Phaelia and I logged in on the nights when 25-man content was scheduled, only to have several raids in a row cancelled due to lack of interest. You can just imagine how much I want to be logged on, waiting outside of Magtheridon’s Lair for an hour, “hoping” to see 5 more people log in. “Hoping” because, as much as I’m ashamed to admit it, these cancelled raids were often more a relief than a disappointment. But unfortunately, these cancellations also brought with them a burgeoning sense of apathy. When you log on out of a sense of responsibility, when it becomes evident that your sentiment is not shared, your interest in what you already aren’t enjoying wanes further.

But I still love the game. I just don’t love what the game has to offer me right now. I hate the difficulty of 25-man raid content that seems to try to tell me that my guild is not good enough and that there may not be any further progression available to me, at least until Zul’Aman. But I guess I don’t have high hopes that this content will be as easy to master as was Karazhan (which was not necessarily easy — we struggled a lot with Prince Malchezar). The fact that the Zul’Aman and Heroic Badge items are hideous is just icing on the cake.

I know that there are many more progression-oriented guilds that have breezed through the content we’re now struggling with. I know that makes them better, more organized players on average, but I don’t necessarily believe that they are more skilled than I am. I recognize that beating the content is something to be proud of — especially if you’re one of the first guilds through. But surely at this point, there wouldn’t be any harm in “nerfing” some of the introductory 25-man content to allow a little more leeway for guilds like mine, guilds who will never aspire to be on the “cutting edge.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Phaelia has even less interest than I do in playing right now. And it’s hard to make the “responsible” decision to log on and raid when he has decided instead to work late. Even harder when I don’t have someone to help move us to the starting place while I cook dinner or someone else’s ready checks to listen for while I read blogs (yes, I’m that bored lately). Many gamers write about their many wonderful experiences with their spouses who game. But what you don’t see as often are gamers who write about the other side of the coin: when one spouse loses interest — even temporarily — in the hobby that, in many cases, brought the two together in the first place. It makes maintaining your own level of interest that much more difficult because the game is never even close to the same without them.

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Sorry for the lack of updates of late. We had an out-of-town guest over the weekend, and my limited free time has been devoted to working on a new guild site for Aegis Hestia.

My guild uses Joomla, a PHP-based content management system which has upsides (it’s free, and there are a lot of plugins for it) and its downsides (I’m a VB.NET developer and don’t have experience with PHP). Our current site has been misbehaving for some time so our guild leader decided on a fresh install. I was reluctant to help out at first, having previously devoted so much time to designing and maintaining the existing site, but was eventually won over by the idea of something new and fresh (and working). It helps that several of our guild officers have chipped in to help move over important information.

To avoid getting overwhelmed and having the project take up more time than I can afford, I clearly outlined my goals for the new site.

• Unlike last time, I didn’t want to spend a tremendous amount of time doing design work. I found a Joomla theme that was both clean and generic (and free). It looks great right out the box, and I figure I can customize it as time goes on so that I don’t have to make a large time investment upfront.
• The current site uses a menu plugin called “transmenu” that allows us to have dropdown menus. I went a little further with this than maybe I should have and the result was that it’s harder than it should be to find important links (like the Guild Application). For the new site, I made sure that it’s much easier to find the “Apply to AH!” by making it a primary menu item (rather than nesting it under “Guild Information”).
• We presently use SimpleMachines forums, a set of forums that weren’t built for Joomla and had to be integrated using a plugin called a “bridge” so that the two can talk to each other. The solution has always been imperfect, however. Luckily, this time around Joomla had a great set of forums called FireBoard which are designed to be entirely integrated with the Joomla framework. This in and of itself was a huge selling point for me when deciding whether or not I wanted to help develop the new site.
• While I like the design of our current site, I feel it mispresents the atmosphere of Aegis Hestia. Its subdued colors (purple and gray) and the piece of fantasy art I selected make us seem stolid and boring. This time around, I wanted to do something more fun, so I’ve been working on a banner that features several of our core raiders interacting with one another. Here’s a preview of what I’ve done so far:

  

  I’ve incorporated several inside jokes to please the membership:

  1. Two of my friends Sabelyna and Marreyn play a Warlock and a Mage respectively. They’re shown at the far left side of the banner. Marreyn is lecturing Sabelyna on something, probably telling her to use Lifetap instead of asking her for water. The small black cat asleep on the ground next to Sabelyna is one I gave her a few weeks ago.
  2. Our guild leader Devilcs plays a Gnome Warrior. This by itself is pretty humorous so I depicted him flexing to demonstrate his strength. One of our officers, Kaimeline, stands behind him laughing at this display of machismo. Devil is also obsessed with having the skull icon on at all times during raids, so I included that symbol over his head. This has the added benefit of drawing attention to him as the guild leader.
  3. I’m known to have a few glasses of wine during raids, especially for content we’re farming. As such, I depicted myself admiring a glass of wine.
  4. Antipas plays a Human Warrior who has jokingly asked that he be allowed to bid “sexy” (rather than “need” or “want”) on items that he thinks would look good on his character. He’s shown in an open-chested red shirt and the closest thing I could find to black silk boxers doing the “crotch thrust” portion of the Human Male dance.
  5. Raliah plays a female Gnome Rogue and is one of the most beloved members of the guild. Always willing to lend a hand to those in need and an unusually active raider, Raliah is probably the closest thing we have to a guild mascot. She also really enjoys fishing so I’ve depicted her in ninja-like clothes stealthing around and carrying a fish. If she ever manages to acquire a Mr. Pinchy pet, I’ll definitely have to add him!
  6. Niade plays a Shadow Priest very well. I’ve shown her in as close a representation of Shadow Form as I could, using the Priest spell Levitate to hover like a ghost.
  7. Lutgehr is an outspoken Dwarf who frequently expresses his distaste for Elves in general and guys playing Female Night Elves in particular. I’ve illustrated him pinching the furry bottom of one of our Feral tanks, Currant.
  8. My husband plays both a Human Warrior and a Gnome Mage. While his Warrior can take a hit, his Mage definitely can’t and this concept is something he seems to struggle with, dying every pull on the way to Gruul. He’s shown dead in the banner, having been turned into so much Gnome-colored paste by some baddie or another. My friend Valenna who is known to ridicule him for his carelessness is shown kneeling over him with a smile on her face.
  9. Painmaiden plays a Night Elf Hunter and is one of the people I recently met face to face at a guild gathering. In game, he’s both friendly and skilled. He’s also one of the more talkative members on voice chat, making raids that much more enjoyable when he’s present. Meeting him face-to-face, however, revealed something else about him. He’s a bit of a cowboy, with a 10-gallon hat and boots to match. I’ve shown his character Painmaiden in the hat closest resembling a cowboy hat, brown leather boots, and overalls.

  As time goes on, I intend to add additional guild members to the banner — probably giving preference to active raiders — perhaps as a way of “earning ones stripes.” The current banner has fourteen people in it, and I suspect there’s room for another 20 or so.

• Several of our guild members have blogs like this one (Druid Tank, More than Plate Wearing Priests, Parry, Dodge, Spin, Resto4Now, and Survival FTW) so I wanted to make these guild-generated resources accessible to our membership. I’ve included a few of the blogs’ RSS feeds in the right column, highlighting the 3 most recent articles. I plan to eventually add them all once I have the authors’ permissions.

So far I’m really enjoying the work on the new guild site. I hope to have it up and running within the next few days so that it doesn’t occupy so much of my free time, however, until then, I’m afraid that my post rate will be lessened.

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