Professions in Garrisons – what do we know?

A Professions in Garrisons question is on, as part of Blog Azeroth Shared Topic.

I noticed – or could not find – any topics relating to the information about WOD!! I don’t understand!!

So with that in mind, here is one of my first questions:

With you being able to build a third profession area – what are you likely to choose? Have you got all professions covered by alts so are just going to focus on money making? Did you take professions specifically for mounts/raiding or some other purpose but didn’t really want to?

Is there a profession you want for specific reasons?

– Dragonray

I thought the professions aspect of the garrison idea was going to introduce a more Star-Wars-ToR-ish feel, where your NPC helpers go off and do mini-quests as part of assisting with professions (official Garrisons source, and the artCraft blogpost). Maybe that was what I wanted, and  I’m almost certain that something I’ll use.

The garrison will also replace some of the daily activity which was part of the Half Hill Farm in Mists of Pandaria. That might mean a work order area like the current daily farming, or might mean a wider approach which is more like your personal home within the game. I hope it is a home within the setting, as it is something lacking from a story perspective.

They are also going to reflect major achievements, and be “sharable” to others. That is pretty interesting; especially if a degree of customisation is allowed.

In terms of my professions (the question asked in BA) I have almost all profs covered by Alts, but those alts take ages to catch-up to current max. For example the MoP professions have been available for a very long time, but I am still raising my Inscription and Jewelcrafting.

Talk Azeroth had a summary of the recent Blue Tweets on Garrisons too, worth a gander.

Some pretty cool building specs are coming in. “City Portals” is a Mage Tower spec that opens ports to every major city. Source

We should be clear that garrisons is not about decorating and placing furniture. Gameplay is our focus. Source

Buildings need to be unlocked and upgraded to get specs. Mage Tower is no different. Source

We do have Monuments that you can place from achievements. Source

If a garrison helps me, then that is brilliant. Happy killing, TyphoonAndrew

Background Music – Blog Azeroth Shared Topic

The current Blog Azeroth Shared Topic – Background Music is on now (8th to 14th Feb), and its something that factors into how I play.

• When leveling the first times through anywhere I’ll have the sound off, unless I’m totally solo’ing. When solo’ing I like the music.
• As above for instances, when in them for the first few times I won’t use the sound so I can concentrate.
• Solo’ing old instances I try to remember to turn the sound on.
• If I’m not listening to the music, I’m listening to Podcasts, both WoW related and all the other odd podcasts I like.
• If I’m on vent I’ll not have the sound on, but sometimes will have both my earbuds from my phone in so I can hear podcasts or different music, and also my gaming headset. It means there are a lot of cables around, but during a heavy wow session I don’t move much.
• The music I’ve been listening to recently is some of Wagner’s Ring Cycle (an opera), and some 90s grunge music. Both styles are the music of my youth.

Happy killing, TyphoonAndrew

Shared Topic: What do you want for Winter Veil?

This week’s Blog Azeroth’s topic comes from Be MOP, with the question:

Winter Veil is around the corner and it’s time to sit upon Greatfather Winter’s lap and answer the important question, “What do you want for Winter Veil?” Is it that expensive grand expedition yak? a nice transmog custom outfit? or a Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock?

What is on your Winter Veil wishlist?

Well a full set of item level 509 gear would be a treat…

…plus maybe 100 magic coins that each convert to 1000 Valor Points when used. And maybe 500,000 gold just to splurge on fun things. I’m not greedy.

Or the Yak mount (above), or Rocket mount, or Mimron’s head, or the undead dragon mount from Wrath.

Or a permanent “Footsteps of Illidan” effect so that I leave a trail of green fire behind me when I walk.

Oh, how about the ability to cause idiots in 5 mans to log-out for 10 minutes?

And as my birthday falls between the 3rd to 9th – I’d also like some ingredients to max out Cooking.

And every Bind to Account item in the game too. Just because I might use them.

I was never a kid who had a problem asking for the huge impossible gifts from Santa, but had some trouble understanding why the big guy never quite got the messages.

I’d settle for a little bonus rep with Shieldwall and the odd few others.

Such is life. Great topic.

Whats your Guild style?

A snappy little shared topic was raised by Tzufit in the Bloz Azeroth forums.

Every guild has a certain personality, style, and even traditions all of its own. Do you have certain abilities that you always need to use on a boss kill screenshot? Or perhaps your guild holds an annual holiday party? What special traditions does your guild have?

From my perspective, we have a few consistent jokes:

1. We rant about killing Dragons, often. Rawr!
2. We always try to blame one of a few players for small mistakes. If you slip and fall from the AH roof, then it’s time to find that scapegoat. Firstly its Ram’s (boomkin/resto Druid) fault, then its Dia or Gen’s fault depending on who you ask, and then if that fails we blame Ram anyway. We used to blame any Shadow Priest, but they’re scarce now. I wonder why?
3. Most raiders argue about who should get loot instead of them. That is so great.
4. We help each other. We ask questions, and we go a little extra for each other.
5. Most of the guild types almost complete sentences, and we have a few folks who are grammar fanatics. I love that, the avoidance of leet-speak makes me happy.

Happy raiding

What would you start over as?

If you had the chance to start all over again in WoW, what would you play?

Now I don’t know why on earth somebody would choose to restart from scratch, as I think there is always a strength in using your old toons. Starting a level 1 Alt is very different from starting on a new server clean. I tried this once, and did not last long until I transferred a higher level toon over to make the process easier.

TLDR – I’m too lazy to start over without a high level toon to grandfather gear and bags.

Would you switch to a new class or race at level 80?

I would only consider switching to something else if I had decided to switch Factions, then I’d grab an Orc – as I see it as the perfect Unholy Death Knight race / class combo. But I like my Draenei Death Knight, it has the mass which matches a Death Knight. Tauren would be another OK choice.

Maybe a Worgen in the expansion.

And also what if your account was destroyed and you needed to start from level 1? What and why choice of class, race, and faction?

I’d probably not play for a long time, if at all. Starting from scratch would be such an ending, that I don’t think it would work. Unless I was supported by a few high level mates.

Given a bit of time to get past the grief; my characters would be x2 bank toons, a DK main, and a Hunter, Paladin, or Warlock as alts. Got to have something to do when the rested runs out.

And most of all what would you plan to do with it? Raid, PvP or just hang out in Dalaran?

I’d keep casually raiding and running 5 mans. I only like PvP in bursts, and can’t take the RP side seriously. If  real life permitted I’d raid seriously, 3 times a week.

And yes, I’d be one of those guys who are also hanging about in Dalaran, looking for a PuG or some such to entertain me.

Proudly pinched from the Blog Azeroth Shared Topics

… the Impatient

A wonderful guest post brought to you by Gnomeaggedon and Blog Azeroth. Enjoy!

I’m a patient kind of guy…

No really I am!

• I’m the kind of guy that’s happy to stop at the amber traffic light rather than racing it.
• I’m the kind of guy that is happy to give up the last car parking space on Xmas eve to go looking for another one for an hour or two.
• I’m the kind of guy that doesn’t knock grannies out of the way in a supermarket when a new checkout opens… I might as well stay where I am, I will get out eventually.
• I’m the kind of guy that get freaking pissed off when 8 random instances NEARLY start… but one person doesn’t click ready.

Why are you not ready?

You are a tank, you know you will get an invite as soon as you join… why join if you aren’t ready?
Was it you that joined 3 times, or was it you and two of your spanky tanky mates?

Why are you not ready?

DPS being not ready at 1st glance is pure stupidity… they waited 20 minutes THEN decided they weren’t ready?

On closer inspection it’s understandable… you fell asleep at the keyboard waiting, or couldn’t cross your legs any longer, or your Mum called you to bed… or, well there are a million reasons why.

The Inpatient

Squidly is already going 1/2 insane with the new LFG insto-PuG interface. I am hanging somewhere between relieving myself in empty Carlton Draught stubbies and slamming the ESC button and quitting out of WoW.

It is quickly sending my insane.

I used to be able to handle waiting in LFG for an hour or two for a raid or an instance, because I knew I could do something completely different while I waited… battlegrounds!

I know the very mention of battlegrounds sends some people into an anaphylactic shock, but for me, it is the perfect tension and boredom relief.

• PuGs getting you down… go kill some Horde.
• Quests becoming way too monotonous… go kill some Horde.
• No one studying your T7.5 armor on the Dalaran bank steps anymore? … go kill some Horde.
• Haven’t got the requisite 10,000 gearscore or the Hard mode achievements on day 2 of the patch release… go kill some Horde.

Now Squidly has it hard… there is no time to ponder the unfairness of it all (generally), click join queue and the invite is starring him in the nose.

Gnomeaggedon is a different story.

No matter how often he tries to check the ITANKIT! or IMHEALZ! options, he is always just lowly DPS, waiting at the back of the queue.. wondering if he is even in the right queue, but too scared to leave it because he will lose his place.

So boredom… can’t do BGs while I wait.. can’t even fish in the big raid pond, just have to wait until a tank and a healer both join the queue so 3 more DPS will leave.

Maybe Blizzard don’t realize this, but you should never let a Mage get bored… definitely don’t let a Fire Mage get bored.  Even twiddling our fingers has drastic results.. cause you know we twiddle our fingers right before the Fireballs explode from our finger tips.

Gnomer does Origami

Gnomeaggedon once took up Origami, but the very act of folding the pieces of paper represented an Arcane Blast…

Paper meet Arcane Blast…
Arcane Blast meet dust….

I don’t even have that spell on my tool bar!

yeah so anyway… I think I am just bored…

I have spent 5 days waiting for Internet to be connected at my new home… 5 days of being forced to watch free to air TV.  I probably should have gone to the Melbourne Town hall and showed off my latest Blundstones (http://www.blundstone.com/)...

I log on and join a queue and I have to wait!  I’m a healer and you are forcing me to wait?!? Then I have to watch as I rejoin the queue time and again when people don’t join… so in the end… I didn’t join.

I’m a Healer, I don’t do Gearscore or Achievements!

I grabbed a VoA10 pug that was being  organized… Then they asked me to link achievements.. boring… I just ignored them… did they want a healer or not?

If they were that fussed about it, they could have used their own Internet to find out.

While they were waiting for my response an old mate whispered asking if there was room… there wasn’t, but I dare say there would have been no place for a guy that probably has a gearscore bigger than the rest of the raid put together.

I ignored them long enough to get going and the only people that died were the stupid people.

Hell, I play a Fire Mage as a main… I know Fire hurts, so why on earth would you stand in it?

Then Wintergrasp popped and we got kicked out…

Then we lost Wintergrasp… that bores me to tears!

How could we lose Wintergrasp?  There aren’t enough Horde players on Aman’Thul to field a full raid group!

Then WoW crashed while I was repairing.. they asked me what I was doing.. “Buying Crack from the Dalaran Commerce Exhange”… I must be bored…

The true sign of impatience

But apart from all of that, Christmas is too bloody far away…. I mean, as I write this it is 11.40pm on December 23rd… that’s like ONE WHOLE DAY I still have to wait!

It’s a little bit more, a few hours more, because really I just want to experience Christmas through my 3 year old son.

Some people want to relieve their sporting prowess through their children… I just want to regain the joy of Christmas… I intend to stay up all night trying to get a glimpse of Santa.

If I find out he dropped by Typhoon Andrew’s place before he came to me, I will march that 5 kilometres down the road and…..

Wish him and his family a very Merry Christmas…

I guess while I am at it, I can wish you all the same!

I must be bored…. so bored I am going to log back into WoW as soon as I send this off…

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

TyphoonAndrew here – just wanted to say thanks and wow to the BA guys and Gnomer. These blog posts just write themselves! kek.

Warcraft Year in Review

This blog is primarily about World of Warcraft, so at years end this is the time to ponder some questions raised by the good folks out there in the community.

Q1. What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2009 that you’d never done before?

A1. This is the first year that I’ve purchased pvp gear, and then gone on to enjoy using it. I’m starting to understand the appeal and reasons for pvp in world of warcraft. The time and gold spent in getting the gear ready was made really satisfying when I started to hold my own in pvp.

Q2. What was your favorite new place that you visited?

A2. Has to be the ToC instance, simply due to the fact that it has such an odd reason to be there, the story was large in terms of the experience we had, and yet I found it misplaced in the overall grand scheme of the game. The fact its strange makes it appeal, as it keeps me thinking.

It was certainly not Ulduar, as the boss fights in there have to be some of the worst for “cheap theme” or “trick mechanic” I think I’ve had the displeasure to experience.

Q3. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

A3. More time in game. My game time was basically back to being a casual player, and that is hard to take after playing a lot harder for a while.

Q4. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

A4. Probably getting the Crusader title, but I’m not a heavy achievement nut. Getting consistent top dps in some runs was nice for a while too. Or not reaching through the internet and killing other players…if I had force powers…

Q5. What was your biggest failure?

A5. Missing raids, and the way my real life wrecked my raid attendance. Going from a raid leader to a casual was a blow, but had to be done.

Q6. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

A6. A few things:

• Patch 3.3 – hopefully the best patch they add until the xpac.
• the flying book can be used by Alts
• All the heirloom items

Q7. What do you wish you’d done less of?

A7. Pugging with asshats. I bet the spread of asshat will be wider, but somehow we’ll still have failure with the new tool too.

Q8. What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?

A8. Outlandish podcast because they are a silly munch of folks who sound much like my guildies from years ago. Great songs too.

Q9. Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2009.

A9. Gearscore means nothing. Your rep with old world means nothing, and the fact you can speak leet means less than nothing.

This post was brought to you by the shared topic/meme in the Blog Azeroth forums.

Oh, and my 5 blogs to spam with a similar post:

• BobTurkey
• dps we deliver, as maybe she’ll blog again
• Pink Pigtail Inn, sure she’s already done it, but need to make sure.
• Skeleton Jack
• Gravity,

Other flying mount ideas

BA Shared topic: Flying Mounts for classes.

Shaman = Wind Funnel / dervish. They fly like a superman/woman through the air with a swirling mist around them. Shaman are in tune with the elements, so make the elements move them around. You could use a version of the cyclone affect.

Warrior = Brutally stronger looking warhorse. Make the model much more like a Clydesdayle. Solid, thick necked, and about 10% bigger. Like the warhorse from Ladyhawk.

Paladins = Pegusus. The discerning Paladin’s mount of choice, available is a range of colours and styles…

Priests = Give’em wings, like those used in the Draenei quests in the starting area. You’ve gone so far into being a representative of the light, that you’re now almost angelic. People will re-roll priests to get this, which won’t hurt the healing community either. Think Gabriel in the film Constantine.

Mage = Levitate, unlike the Shaman, they just fly. Mages in a huge range of games and themes can fly. The hard part will be them not getting their capes caught in the Warrior’s whirlwind. Like Magneto in the XMen films. Oh, and of course brooms and carpets, but something avail to the Mages.

Druid = More skins for their current modes. Dragonwhelp, butterfly, sparrow…

Warlock = A demon akin to the Nazgul in PJ’s Lord of the Rings. A mutated, demonic, mottled dragon-ish hell-thing. An undead dragon is not going far enough. It has to be Demonic.

Hunter = Let’em ride giant owls, and all sorts of “natural” fliers. Even those snake-serpents are just as viable as the Ogrilla/Skettis squids as mounts. Also pet dying means no flying mount till they res it and make it happy.

Rogue = Don’t know. Maybe a flash powder affect that makes them invisible, and then they move that way. “I leave you now! *poof* ” Its the one class I can’t think of a good creature that matches them. Perhaps they miss out on a special.