Archive for May, 2008

I’ve been reading the lastest WotLK news here, here, and here.

The Death Knight actually sounds pretty interesting, interesting enough to try. The reports say that if your account has a level 55 you can create one. But it’s not clear if the character you choose has to be at least level 55. It’s probably safe to assume it does. I’ve also read that they’ll start in a new starting area. An entire zone jam packed with the same class running every which way, waiting for mob respawns, should be quite the sight!

For some, it will suck to think about facing not another 10 levels to obtain, but 25. I’m sure this will deter them from creating a Death Knight. At least not until after they’ve leveled a character from 70 to 80. Personally, I think it’s a good idea to provide players with some time to learn the new class. But is it really necessary to start 25 levels behind the new cap? Hopefully the new starting area will last long enough to avoid regrinding Outlands.

Having everyone start their Death Knight with exactly the same arsenal of spells seems cheap to me. Everyone and their Mom will be making them. What if the desire to create a Death Knight, already minimized by facing 25 levels to the cap, were lessened even more? What if your Death Knight retained some of its previous class abilities corresponding with its character level at creation? Talented abilities would be included and a level 55 mage would have fewer options than a level 70 mage. So if you wanted to be a really powerful Death Knight, you would use a level 70 character to create one.

There’s a variety of ways to retain former class abilities. We could choose an ability from each one of the three schools. Or we could choose a single 31st and/or 41st talent. If I were a Druid or Shaman and wanted to carry over Nature’s Swiftness, it would become a Death Knight version of the spell. It would still provide an instant cast, but instead of affecting a nature spell, as I’m sure Death Knights have absolutely nothing natural about them, their rune system or a spell from one of their schools would be affected.

Admittedly, even if everyone and their Mom creates one, I’ll be right there in the mix trying the newest Blizz candy.

BIG FAT HAIRY EDIT

So it seems I’m wrong and you don’t use a current character to create your Death Knight. Everyone and their Mom will be running around as Death Knights making it nothing special for a freaking Hero Class.

This will present a challenge to us altoholics. If I want to create a Death Knight, I guess I’ll have to delete my bank characters.

/sigh

Welp, here’s The Ragga at level 24. If you peek at her gear, please don’t laugh at her melee weapon. I’m not going out of my way to equip Ragga, which means I refuse to spend gold on low level greens or farm for gear. She simply levels too fast and it would be a waste of my gold and time. Quest rewards, gear crafted by my leatherworker, and whatever my other characters come across in their travels will do just nicely for her.

Technical Stuff

Ragga has 3 unspent talent points. I’m not sure where to put them yet. I absolutely love love love the increased range with Hawk Eye. My current sequence of button clicks are send pet, hit my hotkey for attack, and simultaneously cast Hunter’s Mark. If I’m at max range, Bambaataa usually gets to the mob before my first arrow. If I crit and pull aggro, I have enough room to slow the mob down with concussive and whittle away their hp until they are either almost or completely dead before reaching me. It’s pretty awesome!

So I’m thinking if I want to BG a bit in my 20s, I might want some points in Improved Concussive Shot. Combined with Hawk Eye, it’d be a great help to slowing down enemy flag carriers and/or their healing support.

Until I’ve made that decision, I won’t be spending any more talent points.

Fun Stuff

Ragga has another pet!

Mama Druid sent her a little gift she came across in the Outlands. It’s a colorful little companion that has what looks like little sparkles trailing behind it.

So cute, and such vibrant colors!

Speaking of pets, I don’t think Ragga’s going to be able to tame any others besides her trusty boar. Bambaataa is just too awesome. He’s almost ready to get his armor.

This is the second and a half installment in a series featured weekly on Tuesdays.

Character customization in WoW is pretty limited to face, skin and hair color, hair styles, and sometimes accessories such as jewelry or facial markings. Some races and genders only have a handful of options, while others have three times as many. Even so, you will at some point run into a character that looks just like yours. The only way we truly can be unique snowflakes in WoW is with our character’s name.

In this week’s installment, I’m being cheap and adding a few things I missed in last week’s post.

The Addendum

I embarrassingly forgot to include a name generator created by one of my favorite WoW bloggers, Faeldray of Petoholics Anonymous.

PANDA WoW Name Generator - In addition to Faeldray’s gorgeous blog, designed by none other than herself, she has awesomely created a name generator for everyone to use. It stands out from the others discussed in last week’s post because it is WoW specific and players can submit name suggestions. If you have some great ideas for Undead female names, head on over there and submit a few as they are needed most. If you come across a name you like, Google it to learn more about the name and search for it in the WoW Armory to see if it’s a unique snowflake name.

On the Topic of Unique Snowflakes

I failed miserably to bring this up in last week’s post. If you are wanting to differentiate your character with a unique name, be sure to always check the WoW Armory to see if it’s being used. Your parameters for uniqueness may vary - two pages of names may be fine with you as long as the name is not taken on your server. However, the pinnacle of uniqueness is reached when the Armory returns no search results. When that happens, I squeal for joy!

Next week - Naming your character: Meanings or Keywords

Related Posts

Mama Druid’s names
Naming your character: Personal Inspiration
Naming your character: The Generator
Naming your character: Meanings or Keywords
Naming your character: Azeroth Languages

I just realized something.

When I feel as if I don’t have a good handle on things in RL, I seem to react by attempting to organize my ingame goals and objectives.

I break out spreadsheets, map out professions, specs, character names, the works!

Sadly, it’s a temporary fix.

Every couple months or more I go through a “phase” where I try to plan what my characters should be doing. I have been referring to them as projects, but that’s not what they really are. It seems I’ve come full circle with it. The first time I did this my project was to create a character of each race and class, which I did. However, months later, and after several deletions and recreations I lost sight of the “one of each” project. Another time I was going to create a hunter of each race in an attempt to try all the different pets I wanted. Heh - I’m still working on that one. In fact, spinning my wheels on it as somehow the highest level hunter for this project is a mere 15 when I started it almost a year ago.

Once again, I’m thinking of sorting my characters so that I have one of each class and race.

Except now, I’m seeing it for what it truly is - a very strange way of responding to RL disorganization.

Hmmm… gonna have to mull this one over a bit.

Introducing… Klaus von Sudenfed.

The most awesome PuG (you like the play on words?) has been a member of our family for two weeks now.

He gets along with everyone - even the cats - indicating a mastery of aggro control. If it were up to him, he would roll need on all the loot, err… food he could get. But he knows his role in our group and is quite grateful to receive the food his master* puts in his dish.

It’s been a lot of fun getting to know this fella. He likes long walks, as long as he gets to stop and pee on anything he can. He likes rides in the car, especially while perched on your lap looking out the window. I’m beginning to wonder how we managed to live without him!

* Master used here in reference to the Master Loot option ingame. It’s not at all a reference to how we view our relationship with the newest member of our family!