Third 90 and more to come I suspect

My Druid ding’ed 90 in WoW last week, which makes a tally of three level ninety characters: a Death Knight, a Warrior, and a Druid.

Next will be my slowly leveling Shaman who is now level 71 (the toon in the top left if the image below) and a long time lost Shadow Priest who is level 82 (bottom left character).

In my character list I also have a handful of 85s and then each class smattered down to a lowbie Monk at level 13. I do not really want to repeat the 85-90 grind so many more times, but the leveling path in Pandaria is so fixed there is little choice. Perhaps I could level by only queuing in Dungeons and just farm my way through the Pandaria starting area for materials to sell. That will only be moderately dull as well but will ensure my lowbies have the ability to increase their professions.

The Wrath of the Lich King content on the baby Shaman is sensational by comparison to 4x more Pandaria zones and a Cataclysm story.

If I cannot raid regularly in 5.4 due to work & life, then I might as well start working on these alts. Getting through the levels is something I can do whilst also being interrupted, and it is not “hard” content to do.

Who’s that new Monk?

After a bit of mucking about I’ve followed the horde of wow players in Mists and created a new Monk, as my distraction and newbie toon. After a few posts about names I followed at least some of my own advice and called the Monk Tetsuho, which is an ancient Japanese firearm (or could mean silly Australian for all I know).

The plan is when I’m capped or frustrated beyond reckoning with the main, this little monk will get some play. I’m in no rush.

Some tips for what and how to name your Pandaren

With all the new furry hand slappers (monks) adding to the regular characters in World of Warcraft many players are looking for that perfect Pandaren name (yup, this adds from the post where I had no idea for a name – I still don’t).

Here are some tips:

• Please pick a name that is not overtly stupid. If you previously created a character called “Iownyoutoo” then you should read this first tip a few times. Let it sink in.
• If you pick the name of a real Panda living in a zoo, be prepared for it to potentially “retire” in your life time.
• Pop culture or odd references will get a good thrashing, and on the non-RP realms that seems fair an reasonable. I know a Hunter named Schrödinger who always used a Cat. Perfect.
• Anything involving beer, stout, ale, etc will be actually be suitable to the lore for a change. Alehound is still a crappy name, but given we have an official NPC called Stormstout there is an excuse to get a little left field.
• Names which combine quasi-roleplay themes are really cool, especially the two word combos: Thunderpaw, Powderkeg, Ironfoot, Raindancer, Firehammer.
• Don’t forget that the Pandaren lore is both heavily spiritual and also respectful of the elements, much in the same way that the Shaman and Earthen Ring is, so all the elemental based (earth, air, fire, water) names are up for grabs, with all the variations; Mountainsong, Firebrew, etc.
• Not a fan of the “bare” instead of “bear”, although if you’re an Australian and you want to really mash the lore into a blender then some “Koala” references might be really dangerous and fun.
• Silly is great when it’s openly so – Whoflungpoo – that means you!

There are resources already sprung up to help folks find that perfect name, such as (from the other post about Pandaren Monk names) these with a few extra thrown in:

• Brewslee, Tonypanda, Jackiepan, Bearhanded, Honeybadger, Fubear, Wotwentwong, Fumanpooh, Pandozer, Thelonious (mmo champion)
• Dancingbear (please don’t Google that with safe filter off)
• Some nice Roleplaying related names from the legit lore
• WowInsider added a nice page with some hints too, worth the read for the roleplaying aspects of Pandaren characters.

a sufficiently clever Panda Monk name

I’m terrible at creating clever character names, and the challenge of creating a spiffy Monk name for my Pandaren is doing my head in. I went looking at the big wiki list of fictional bears, but it didn’t help. Frankly I think I’ll give up and call it something odd and not used, and unrelated to a meme.

And so from around the internet I’ve seen some good ones: Brewslee, Tonypanda, Jackiepan, Bearhanded, Honeybadger, Fubear, Wotwentwong, Fumanpooh, Pandozer, Thelonious, Dancingbear (all via mmo-champion).

I’m especially looking forward to all the silly ones. I suspect some snarky sort will also create a Pandaren Monk called AarthasDKz too, just to be ironic.

Oh here is some: Furbyfestish, Bipolarbear. See I told you I suck at this.

These Heirlooms smell Monky

I love heirloom gear and Psynister has noted that we have some heirloom legs on the way for characters. Booya!

These new leg items are effective right up to level 85, which is no benefit for my plate wearers, but a huge deal for the alts and Monks that will be scraping XP from every mob, rock, and flower. The legs have a guild achievement to be unlocked (each profession at 600 in the guild) before they can be purchased, and that achievement is not possible to complete until MoP is released.

As an extra note he’s also got some details on the new Monk staff heirloom too – the Burnished Warden Staff. It’s a staff built for Agility dps and tanks, which smells like Monk to me. It is also available from the vendors as of patch 5.0.4 – its in game folks. It appears to only be useful up to level 80 though, and imho its darn ugly. An Obsidium Bladespear might be nicer looking for levels 80+.

All I need now is a sufficiently clever Panda Monk name… Great work Psy!

(edited to fix some errors in the information, thank you to Gen and Bristal for the comments)

Old Thoughts About Warcraft Monks

I was doodling back in 2010 about what a monk might be link if introduced into World of Warcraft. As far as notes go, this was a long way from what Blizzard did. Thought it might be an easy quick distraction….

100k passes and silence

Are you one of the Annual Pass holders who wishes to get your Beta for Panda-rama-rama? Cool, so am I, because I want to try out a Monk. Yay for this:

WoW.com wants Monks too

I want Monks in the game, as I’ve said before. And now wow.com backs me up.

Expect a long rant about this soon, and yes I know I have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting this anytime soon.

A melee healer and dps is not game breaking. It will mean a new set of dps gear needed, something like cloth with agility on it, much like the rogue and cat gear now.

For healing maybe they’d need to me mana users, but with all the new stat changes being talked about an int and spirit based healer cloth gear is not a stretch at all.

C’mon Blizzard – Monk us.

Monks in Warcraft, I’d roll one.

After the Deathknight is old news, and the next expansion has rumbled into familiarity; what will be the next hero class?

Arch-Druid has been mentioned, Barbarian might help some synergy with Diablo 3, and Warcraft 3 had some neat classes. Regrettably most of them are too specalised to be applied to both Horde and Alliance.

I suggest the Monk, and here is why…