On the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content

If Burning Crusade was Blizzard's attempt to homogenize World of Warcraft in some way, Wrath of the Lich King was their success. We could see the beginnings of homogenization in BC: all elemental items were now primal [element], which were obtained by combining motes; starter gear could be obtained from badges of justice, gotten from any heroic instance; and many reputation grinds were done in instances, not by grinding various mobs. (There were exceptions, of course.) We also saw the advent of dailies, a reliable, albeit repetitive way to make money. Class balance was brought into sharper focus and actually attempted by Blizzard, and most classes had something unique to bring to the raid. Profession balance also become a concern, and Blizzard tried to give every profession something special to make it different from the rest and worth taking.

The problem with Blizzard's design philosophy during BC was that it was near impossible to keep all these things balanced. Some reputation grinds were immensely harder than others with worse rewards, some classes were more useless than others in raids (although, as I discussed here, I think that was a mistaken assumption), and some professions were much more useful to the crafter than others. Despite their best intentions, Blizzard wasn't able to balance everything in BC, but it was certainly a start.

Wrath of the Lich King changed all that. "Bring the player, not the class" became Blizzard's new design philosophy. Their goal was to make each class equally viable so that raids would choose to bring people based on the player's skills, not their class and spec. It was a noble pursuit, and for the most part, it was successful. Frost mages still fall behind in DPS and ret paladins were overpowered for some time, but most classes were on equal footing. Not only were the classes now performing more or less equally, but they were also given new abilities that had been exclusive to other classes for the longest time. For example, Leader of the Pack was one of the main draws of bringing a feral druid to raids. With the release of Wrath, however, warriors were given the same ability. This was one of many examples of class exclusive buffs being given to other classes. With these new buffs was added a new buff mechanic: identical buffs no longer stack. If you bring a feral druid with LotP and a fury warrior with Rampage, your raid members will only get a 5% bonus to their melee crit chance, not a 10% chance. Since buffs like these were also made raid-wide, there was no longer a benefit to bring multiple members of the same class to give the same buffs to different groups in your raid. Thus many classes lost the unique things they had previously brought to raids, and these buffs became viewed as mandatory, rather than a nice bonus to bringing along an atypical DPS'er to your raids.

Blizzard wasn't done there, though. They made reputation grinds more similar as well. Most factions now have their own dailies which grant rep, and for some you can also don their tabard and gain rep from any heroic or level 80 instances you enter. Compared to the old days where only certain instances gave rep with certain factions, this gives players much more flexibility in how they gain rep. I have bad memories of grinding Steamvaults to get rep for my Earthwarden. It was not a fun instance, and the only thing that kept in bearable was the fact that it dropped two pieces of the hunter dungeon set, as well as two pieces of the mage set, so I had a constant supply of DPS. With the advent of Warth, you can now run any instance you like and gain rep, allowing you to choose to run easy ones or ones which drop gear you want. All these changes makes grinding reputation easier, and as a result, the rewards from reputation grinds are less remarkable. Still pretty good, but not as remarkable.

It was worth it, though.

Speaking of dailies, they became a lot more prevalent in Wrath. Once the exclusive right of those with flying mounts, these repeatable quests were revered for the amount of money you could make with them. (120g was a lot back in those days) With patch 2.4, new dailies were added with the Isle of Quel'Danas, as well as the cooking, fishing, and PvP dailies, all of which did not require a flying mount. There were now dailies for everyone, but they were still a distinct, separate part of the game.

Nowadays, dailies are everywhere. Almost every faction has daily quests now, and most of what you do at level 80 that doesn't involve a group involves daily quests. Trouble is, there are only really two rewards from daily quests: rep and money. Once you have gotten your rep as high as you can with the various factions, the only reason to do dailies is for the money. (With the exception of the Argent Tournament dailies, that is, which also reward Champion's Seals, but those are incredibly boring. Patch 3.2 can't come soon enough.) The problem with this is that the different sets of dailies award vastly different amounts of money, so unless you have a lot of time to spend on them, you're only going to spend your time doing the ones that reward the most money. Thus you spend your time doing the same dailies over and over and over again, and unfortunately, they haven't got any more fun since Burning Crusade. Since there weren't as many dailies in Burning Crusade, they didn't need to be as fun and varied, and yet Blizzard still put in the effort to make them interesting. Now we have more dailies than we could ever have dreamed of, and yet Blizzard hasn't tried too many new things with them. I'd even go as far as saying they are less fun than they were before. Perhaps I just have rose-tinted glasses, but I miss the days of Bomb Them Again! and Disrupt the Greengill Coast. The only daily that really compares is Thrusting Hodir's Spear, though it is a pretty awesome quest.

Yes, that dwarf is in the dragon's mouth. This quest is a far better reward for getting honored with the Sons of Hodir than those shoulder enchantments are.

Burning Crusade also brought a lot of changes to professions that made them more viable and useful. However, this caused a lot of players to take professions only for their own self benefit and drop them when they were no longer useful. (Case in point: tailoring and leatherwoking had good starter armor for raiding that only the crafter could equip, but this armor was quickly made obsolete by raid drops.) When Wrath was released, the crafter only benefits were radically changed. There was no more starter-set BoP crafter armor and many of the old exclusive benefits were removed or made less useful (Example: with the advent of potion sickness, which prevents people from using more than one potion per battle, the Alchemist's Stone and its upgrades lost much of their appeal.) New items were added to most of the professions that gave stat bonuses that were exclusive to the crafter. They weren't that exclusive, though, in that with the exception of tailoring and engineering, they all give more or less the same stat benefits. The only thing that differs is how those benefits are conferred; enchanters get exclusive ring enchantments, leatherworkers get bracer enchantments that are better than the equivalent enchantments, jewelcrafters get gems which are better than the gems they can give to everyone else, alchemists gain improved effects from their elixirs and flasks, blacksmiths get to add extra gems to their gear, and inscribers get shoulder enchantments that are better than their Sons of Hodir counterparts. And unlike in the days of BC, these effects no longer apply to you if you drop the profession, so you can't level up each profession and then drop them to get all of their buffs on your gear, which most min-max'ers did back in the day.

What this means is that, with the exception of tailoring's cloak enchants and all of the engineering benefits being added in 3.2, professions are now less about what they give you and more about what you can give others. The unfortunate part of this is that some professions just aren't as useful as others. Alchemy sees a lot more use than leatherworking, and ditto for enchanting compared with tailoring. More importantly, the professions are all much more similar now. That's really the point I am getting at with this post: everything is much more similar in Wrath of the Lich King. Everything has been streamlined, simplified, and almost dumbed down.

How you acquire your profession's recipes is a perfect example of this change. With rare exception, all recipes for all of the professions are either obtained from a trainer or obtained from another NPC by trading for them with some sort of token or material you usually use. New research mechanics have also been added, but these are guaranteed to give you a new recipe, unlike the days of BC when you could discover a new recipe every time you made something. Gone are the days of checking wowhead to see which vendors strewn over the land sell recipes or plans that you need to buy. Factions also play less of a role in our professions. Maybe I feel that more than others because I am an enchanter and we get no recipes from faction quartermasters, but I find it a bit disappointing that getting all of our recipes is so simple and... well, boring.

That's really my main problem with the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King. Everything is more boring now. I still find raiding and instances to be fun, but all of the nuances of solo-ing have been lost. I find this especially ironic since this expansion was supposed to be the one for the casuals. From all of the changes made, I'd wager that Blizzard's intention was really to get casuals into instances as soon as possible, rather than improve their old stomping grounds. After all, the sooner we start raiding, the less time we spend on our own, and the less time Bizzard needs to spend on developing solo content.

In fact, all of these changes can really be traced back to Blizzard trying to get people to raid more. All classes were made raid viable, so no players can blame their class for not raiding. Reputations were made easier to get exalted with, so players can spend less time getting their raid starter gear and get into raids sooner. Dailies became more prevalent so that we would always have something to do to make a bit of money for the repair bills. Professions were homogenized so that players could pick a profession they liked rather than one that would have a positive impact on their raiding. It seems to me that all of these changes were made for the raiders, and not us solo-ers.

I see a parallel between these changes and the arena fiasco. When arenas were released, they brought class balance into sharper focus. Previously, the classes' individual strengths and weaknesses in PvP were glossed over by the fact that battlegrounds were so huge that players' individual contribution or lack thereof weren't easily perceivable. With arenas, however, classes were pitted against each other in a very direct way, and the sad state of class balance was brought into sharp focus. Because of this, Blizzard began to balance classes around their performance in arenas. This became a problem as classes that were perfectly balanced for raids were nerfed because they were doing too well in arenas (such as resto druids). This also applied to battlegrounds, where the battles are more objective based and longer, and thus emphasize survival rather than rapid killing. Because of this difference, some classes lost effectiveness in battlegrounds because they were too good in arenas.

This kind of thing still goes on, and what makes the situation ironic is that arenas are the part of the game with lowest player participation. There are even many die-hard battleground fans who hate them. Arenas used to be more popular when they were a source of easy epics, but now that all arena gear requires good ratings, those days are gone.

In the same way that PvP was balanced around arenas, I think that PvE content has been balanced around raiders. While this could be seen as a good thing for players who want to get into raids as soon as possible, those of us who don't are left more or less in the dust. Don't get me wrong; I do enjoy raiding, but some people just don't have the time for it, and it is those people who suffer the most from these changes to PvE. Solo end-game is dying. I would like to think that the new Argent Tournament dailies we are getting in patch 3.2 will change that, but even if they do, it's such a shame that they will only be available to people with the Crusader title, which will force players to play inferior content in order to get to good content. If these new dailies disappoint like the last ones did, we solo players will just have to go back to levelling alts; there's just nothing fun left to do.

Edit: Patch 3.2 has been released, and I have to say, I am pretty disappointed with the new dailies. With the exception of Get Kraken!, they are all typical, predictable, and boring. Come on, Blizz! Challenge your quest designers. Give us something new!

How to pick an item to grind for money

I'd just like to state off the bat that this post will mostly apply to people already at the level cap, although you may be able to use this advice bellow level 80. So, suppose you are tired of the grind of dailies and you want to try to make some money some other way. How can you do it? To give you a hint, the answer was in the second sentence of this post. Yes, grinding. It may not be very appealing to you, but it's really your other option aside from playing the auction house, and I know that that method does not work for me. I'll warn you know that this post won't cover the act of grinding itself; just how to choose where to grind.

Before you start, you may want to get a base line of how much money you wish to make per hour. To get that base line for myself, I did all of the Ebon Blade dailies excluding Intelligence Gathering (it takes too damn long) and all of the solo Alliance dailies in Icecrown on the Bombardment excluding That's Abominable! (again, takes too damn long), since those sets of dailies have the highest amount of gold per hour. I then recorded how much gold I made and how much I made per hour.

Ebon Blade:
75 gold (+15 gold in herbs), 17 minutes, 270 (318 with herbs) gold/hour
Bombardment:
110 gold (+10 gold in herbs and cloth), 30 minutes, 220 (240 with herbs and cloth) gold/hour

This means that my baseline is 250-300 gold per hour for my farming. The reason I picked that base line for myself is that, if I'm not making more than that, then I'll make more with dailies than by farming. Of course, if you want to use farming to break up the monotony of dailies, then you don't really need to worry about a baseline based on dailies. In fact, most of you probably won't want to worry about a baseline at all, so if you don't want to, then don't.

Now for the instructions. One big mistake people make with farming or with any kind of money-making method is not being flexible. They pick one item to farm (or one method for making money) and farm that every time. However, if you want to make the big bucks, you need to be a bit more flexible then that. Start by seeing what sells well on your server. Auctioneer can help with this, but it isn't necessary. Don't dismiss anything in your search for a good thing to farm. Meat may not seem like a worth-while thing to farm, but there may be a dearth of Chunk o' Mammoth on your realm's AH that you could take advantage of. If you need a place to start, Eternal Air and Fire usually sell well. Fishing can also make you a good bit of money. In my experience, the only high-end fish worth fishing for money are Musselback Sculpin, Glacial Salmon, and Dragonfin Angelfish, and it's infinitely better to fish in pools than in open water. You should also look into using your gathering professions to make money. Ore and herbs usually sell well. I can't speak for miners, but as an herbalist, I know that Adder's Tongue, Lichbloom, and Icethorn are my best sellers.

As a note about Adder's Tongue, the reason it sells well is that it is fairly low level for a high-end herb, and thus doesn't get picked a lot. What this means for you is that you can look into low level markets with low supply but high demand and take advantage of them. Low level enchanting supplies can make you money in this way, as can low level ores and herbs. I haven't tried this kind of venture myself, so all I can say is keep your eyes open for opportunities.

The other key to making money with farming is knowing how many of a particular item you can farm in a certain amount of time. If item A is selling for 10 gold and item B is selling for 20 gold, but you can get 30 of item A in an hour and 10 of item B, you'll want to go for item A. It's also a good idea to see if you can farm for different things at the same time. At the lake in Borean Tundra, I can farm Tiger Lily and fish for Musselback Sculpin at the same time. Depending on the market, I can make quite a bit of money there by farming both things at once. If you need a macro to switch between your various tracking skills, here's the one I use.

#showtooltip
/castsequence [nocombat] find fish, find herbs

This allows me to see both schools and herbs by switching between the two. You can switch what I put in there with your own tracking skills or add more if you wish too.

Now for the money making part. This is where Auctioneer will really come in handy. Before you start farming, check the AH to see what is selling for high prices that night. (Having a dedicated auction alt also helps for this part) I once checked the AH and saw that Glacial Salmon was selling for 150% of it's usual price. I pounced that opportunity and starting flying over the rivers of Grizzly Hills. Within a half hour, I had four stacks of Salmon, which I sold at 40 gold each. All four sold quickly, and I ended up making 160 gold. That's 320 gold and hour. It may not seem like much, but it's more than I could make with dailies.

Don't expect to see too many opportunities like this, though. Most items that sell for high prices have a lot of people farming them, meaning their supply is fairly stable, so the price is too. Of course, the market place is just as unpredictable as the real one, so you never know. Just look for markets that reliably sell well and you will be all set.

To summarize all that, watch for markets that typically sell high, know how many items you can typically get in a certain amount of time, and use that to make money. With a tad bit of luck, you could become quite rich, and the fact that you won't be doing the same thing every day (*cough* dailies *cough*) means you won't get bored as quickly.

New abilities and talents I'd like to see in the next expansion

The news that Blizzard has applied for the trademark for "Cataclysm" has sent the player-base into a flurry of speculation. Many suspect that the next expansion will take place in the Maelstrom. Like the other expansions, we will likely see more talents and more abilities when the next expansion comes out, which got me thinking about abilities and talents I'd like to see us druids get. Think of this as a wish list, if you will. Note that I don't have a full list of all of the new talents that we could get, especially in Balance since I am not as familiar with that spec.

New Abilities
Level 81: Slink (Feral): Instant, 5 minute cooldown, requires cat form
The druid slinks back into the shadows, entering an improved prowl mode for 10 sec. Also breaks movement impairing effects.

Level 82: Gift of Thorns (Balance): 64% base mana, instant cast, Reagents:Wild Spineleaf
Gives the Gift of Thorns to all party and raid members, causing 73 Nature damage to attackers when hit. Lasts 30 min.

Level 85: Graze (Feral): 10 rage/25 energy; 15 second cooldown; instant cast; requires cat form, dire bear form
You graze the enemy with your claws, reducing movement speed by 50% for 15 sec. Also interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 5 sec. [With the addition of this ability, the interrupt effects would be removed from Bash and Maim.]

Level 90: Propagate (Balance): 25% base mana/20 rage/50 energy, 10 second cooldown, instant cast (usable in all forms)
Causes your next area-of-effect spell or ability to apply a damage or heal over time ability to the targets hit. Effect applied varies by spell.
Hurricane, Starfall, Typhoon: Moonfire
Swipe (Bear): Lacerate
Swipe (Cat): Rake [will cause a combo-point to be applied to your main target]
Tranquility, Wild Growth: Lifebloom [no mana will be restored when Lifebloom runs out]

New Talents:
Balance:
Tier 1:
Barbs: You thorns causes (50/100)% less threat when cast on targets not affected by Defensive Stance, Dire Bear Form, Frost Presence, or Righteous Fury. Also causes thorns to reduce the target's threat by (200/400)% of the damage it causes when they are attacked if they are not affected by one of the aforementioned abilities.

Tier 11:
New Moon: (Requires 3 points in Eclipse) When you critically hit with Wrath, you have a (11/22/33)% chance of reducing the cast time of your Wrath spell by 100%. Effect lasts 10 sec and has a 30 sec cooldown.

Haste of the Earthmother: Your Moonfire and Insect Swarm damage over time effects have a chance equal to (33/66/100)% of your spell crit chance to critically hit and reduces their duration and the time between their tics by an amount equal to (33/66/100)% of your spell haste.

Feral:
Tier 10:
Howling Roars: Your Demoralizing Roar increases your dodge chance by (2/4)% for 30 seconds and your Savage Roar increases your melee haste by (5/10)%. Also causes your Challenging Roar to taunt the affected targets for (50/100)% of their effective threat and gives Tiger's Fury a (50/100)% chance to reset the duration of your Savage Roar to its 5-combo point maximum.

Tier 11:
Roguish Instincts: Increases the damage of your bleed effects by an amount equal to (50/100)% of your Armor Penetration and reduces their duration and the time between their tics by an amount equal to (50/100)% of your melee haste.

Tier 12:
Scent of Blood: Increases your dodge chance and critical strike chance by (.4/.8/1.2/1.6/2)% in Dire Bear Form for each stack of Lacerate on your target and by (1/2/3/4/5)% in Cat Form for each of your cat bleed effects on your target. Also causes bleeding targets to appear on the mini-map until they pass (20/40/60/80/100)% of your maximum tracking range.

Tier 13:
Feral Instincts: 3 minute cooldown, instant cast, requires Cat Form or Dire Bear Form
Your heightened instincts cause you to increase you dodge chance by 5% each time you don't dodge an attack and increase your critical strike chance by 5% for each attack that doesn't critically hit. Lasts 15 seconds.

Restoration:
Tier 10:
Abundance: Whenever your heal over time effects overheal the target, (25/50)% of the overhealing done will be done to another party or raid member within 20 yards of the target.

Tier 11:
Revitalization: Gives the tics of your heal over time effects a chance equal to (50/100)% of your spell critical hit chance to critically heal. Living Seed will be activated by these critical heals.

Swift Healing: Your haste also reduces the duration of your heal over time effects and the time between their tics by (33/66/100)% of its effect on the cast time of your other spells.

Tier 13:
Cenarius's Blessing: 5% base mana, 40 yard range, instant cast, 3 minute cooldown.
Places Cenarius's Blessing on the friendly target, reducing all damage they take by 50% for ten seconds. All damage taken while Cenarius's Blessing is active will be transferred into a damage over time effect that deals the same amount of damage over ten seconds.

Why Burning Crusade wasn't that bad for class balance

A lot of people liked to complain back in the day about how the not-pure-DPS classes still fell behind their counterparts in DPS. Feral and balance druids, ret paladins, and others were denied slots in raids because their damage, and thus their perceived contribution to the group, was low. Damage meters were a big part of this accusation, but they missed the bigger picture. DPS classes who couldn't do high DPS brought something even more valuable to their groups; group buffs.

Let's take, for example, Leader of the Pack, a feral druid talent. Back in the day before raid-wide buffs, it increased the melee and ranged critical strike chance of all group members by 5%. This was a pretty big deal, and it made feral druids a good addition to any melee-DPS group within a raid. However, because cats didn't perform well on the damage meters, they were generally not viewed as valuable group members beyond tier 5 content.

Like I said before, damage meters miss the point when it comes to measuring a DPS class's contribution to a raid, and I'll explain why. Let's say you put that cat druid in a group with four other melee DPS, none of which are cats. Not only is that cat contributing his own damage to the raid, but also the increase in damage that LotP is giving his group members. Let's assume that the four other group members all do 1000 DPS without the cat in their group. Now let's say you add that cat to the group and all their DPS goes up to 1050. That cat could be doing 800 DPS on his own, but because he is responsible for an increase of 50 DPS for his four other group members, he is contributing to the raid just as much as they are.

Paladins were really unappreciated in this manor. The could increase everyone's critical strike chance against the target by 3% with Improved Judgement of the Crusader (now Heart of the Crusader) and could increase everyone's damage by 2% with Improved Sanctity Aura (now simply Sanctified Retribution). They also allowed holy paladins to actually use their judgments, since they could use Crusader Strike to refresh the duration of judgements other than their own. This meant they had endless raid utility, but because their own damage was so low, they were overlooked.

I actually find the Burning Crusade system to be more fair than the current system of "bring the player, not the class" where everyone does the same amount of DPS and each group buff has multiple sources and now affects the whole raid. In the olden days, hybrid classes couldn't do as much damage as the pure-DPS classes, but their could fall back on their healing and/or tanking abilities to help them while solo-ing. This gave them more solo-ablity, while the pure-DPS classes (rogues, hunters, mages, warlocks) needed to rely on their high damage output to kill the mob before it could kill them. Hunters and warlocks could use their pets, but they still had no way to heal themselves reliably or take a lot of damage. Thus it was only fair that they should be able to do more damage than the hybrid classes.

Now all the classes can do the same amount of damage while they are out on their own, but the pure-DPS classes have no defensive or healing abilities to fall back on when things get desperate. As a druid who can fall back on both defensive and healing abilities, I feel bad for classes who can't get themselves out of a jam as well as us hybrids. We druids, as well as paladins, shaman, and priests, can heal ourselves when things get out of control, and while death knights and warriors can't heal themselves that well, they can still use their tanking abilities to get themselves out of a jam. The pure-DPS classes have no skills of that nature, and when things get out of control, their only options are to rely on their pet or flee.

So, should we go back to the old system? I think that the new system of everyone doing equal damage is too ingrained in the player psyche for Blizzard to change it without the hybrid classes feeling cheated. I do miss the days where every class brought something unique to the raid, but those days are long gone. BTPNTC is here to stay. I suppose this can only be expected; balancing the different group buffs around one another was probably just too difficult for Blizzard.

How to leveling fishing without being bored

I love fishing. I'm not sure why, but something about it just calls to me at my most basic level. And yet, until just after patch 2.4, my fishing was stuck squarely in the journeyman range. It was the new dailies that motivated me to level fishing, and though I now love fishing a lot, I have to say that leveling it was one of the most boring experiences of my WoW career. Leveling cooking along with fishing made it somewhat interesting, but the monotony of sitting in one spot for hours on end making the same motions really grated on me. It was during this time that I developed certain strategies for leveling fishing without going out of my mind with boredom, and I still use these strategies today.

The mechanics of leveling fishing are now a no brainer. Back in the day, you couldn't fish in most areas if your fishing skill wasn't high enough. Also, it was possible that your skill was high enough to fish in an area, but not high enough to be at that magical number where you always caught a fish. This meant you would sometimes catch nothing at all, meaning no reward for all that effort, and no skill up, either. Nowadays, you can fish anywhere. If your skill is lower than a zone's "minimum," you'll only fish up various pieces of grey junk. If you skill is in between a zone's minimum and it's "no junk number," you'll alternate between catching fish and junk. That means no more failed casts and no wasted skill-up opportunities. What this means for you is that the only advice you really need on leveling fishing is advice on the subjective aspects of the experience. That's what I intend to give you: advice to make the process itself more bearable.

The first thing you need to do to make the strategies I am about to present to you work is a bit of preparation. Start by binding fishing to a key on your keyboard (or two). (escape menu -> key bindings) The ideal position for the key that you bind fishing to is one right next to your mouse. That way, you can go from right-clicking the bobber with your middle finger to hitting your "fishing button(s)" with your thumb. If your keyboard and your mouse aren't close to each other, move them. I use the + and - key on the number pad on my keyboard. I picked two keys that were right next to each other so that I had more room for error when I cast fishing. You see, these strategies will require you to cast fishing without being able to look at the keyboard, so it's a good idea to bind fishing to either a very large key, or two keys right next to one another.

I also highly recommend that you turn on auto-loot while fishing. (escape menu -> interface -> combat -> auto loot) It speeds up the process dramatically since you won't need to click on the fish to loot it. Finally, I recommend that you fish with WoW in windowed mode. (control-M for windows, command-M for macs) This will make perfect sense for my second method, but for the first, just remember that it means that you won't need to move the mouse as much to click the bobber.

Now you are ready to multitask, and that is what's at the core of keeping fishing interesting: doing something else while you fish. If you are new to fishing, it may be a bit much to ask of you to do something like that, but if you are at that level of fishing skill, it probably isn't boring for you yet. In that case, you don't need this advice. For the rest of you, here are the very methods I used to level fishing.

Reading while Fishing
While I was leveling fishing, I checked a book out of my local library specifically for the purposes of keeping myself entertained while I did it. Reading was the first kind of multitasking I did while fishing, and it's what got me started on this road. Although almost any book will suffice for this purpose, if you are picking a book specifically to read while leveling fishing, there are a few things to keep in mind. Fishing while reading can be counterproductive if you lose your spot in the book every time you look up, so a book of factoids or a book written in short stanzas is a good choice. These books are set up in such a way that it will be difficult for you to loose your place, with all the line breaks and everything.

Fishing while reading may also help you read the book itself if it is a boring book. I know that I wouldn't have been able to get through the lull in the middle of Crime and Punishment if I hadn't been fishing while reading it. Although fishing while reading can impede your understanding of the book, if you just want to get through the book, fishing will help a lot. Excitement of fishing + dullness of Raskolnikov's inner turmoil = bearable read.

His angst almost turned me off from Russian Literature for good. Thank God for WoW and fishing.

When you are ready to begin, start by placing the book somewhere on your desk where you can hold it down with your left hand. Put your right hand on the mouse with your thumb close to your fishing button(s). The process should go something like this:
1. Cast fishing.
2. Move your cursor over the fishing bobber.
3. Read.
4. Listen for the noise your bobber makes when you catch a fish.
5. Right click.
If you correctly executed step two, you shouldn't need to look up for step five. Assuming all goes well, you should now have a fish in your inventory and a few lines of the book in your head. Now you just need to repeat these five steps. The only point during this process where you will need to look away from your book is step two. Step two may be accomplished any time between steps one and four.

This is the most basic kind of fishing multitasking. It takes practice to get good at it, but once you can do it successfully, you'll be able to move the cursor over the bobber in a fraction of a second, meaning more time for reading. That is the most important skill this will help you develop: being able to quickly see where the bobber is and move your mouse over it. This skill becomes even more vital with the next kind of multitasking

Browsing the Internet while Fishing
This is where windowed mode becomes vital, unless you use two computer screens, in which case browsing the internet while fishing is nothing more than high-tech reading. I you can actually set up this kind of thing, then just reffer to the dirrections for reading while fishing. Of course, you probably won't be able to use two screnes, which means you will be cycling between whatever web-site you are looking at and the WoW window itself. For this setup to work, it's important to organize your windows in a way that facilitates easy switching between the two. This isn't an issue if you can tab between your windows. (On a mac, this is accomplished with command-tab. I don't know how it is done on windows, but I assume it's control-tab) If you can't tab between your windows, then I recommend that you use the following setup: have WoW right up against the left side of your screen so that when you move your mouse as far left as you can, it will be over the window for WoW. Then leave about a quarter of an inch of space between the left side of your screen and the left side of your preferred web browser. Also, make sure the window of your web browser is wide enough that it sticks out a good distance from the right side of the WoW window. To sum all that up, make your two windows overlap and have each one stick out on one side.

Like books, it will do you no good to read a website where switching windows will cause you to loose your place. With enough practice, this will become a non-issue. Until then, web-comics are a good choice. Most can be read in the time it takes you to fish up your catch, and the panels help prevent you from losing your place when reading a longer one. I can't give too many recommendations, but I'll try. Cyanide and Happiness is always short, but it may be a bit shocking for some people. XKCD has more high-brow humor, though it is also a bit geeky. As for WoW-related webcomics, I recommend Dark Legacy and NPC. Funny picture sites are also good, since picture don't take your very long to read, and it is thus impossible to lose your place. I recommend lolcats and its affiliated sites. (You can find links to the affiliated sites on top of the home page.)

Or try both at the same time!

One more thing to mention is that, for this to work, you will need to be very quick at seeing the bobber, moving your mouse over it, and clicking it. This is where all that practice from the reading method comes in. If you are good at that, then all you need to do is pick your website. Once you have your website picked, just follow one of the following sets of steps, depending on whether you are alt-tabbing or not.

Alt-tabbing Method:
1. Cast fishing.
2. Alt-tab to your Internet page.
3. Read/look at/view your Internet page.
4. Listen for the noise your bobber makes when you catch a fish.
5. Alt-tab to WoW
6. Right click on the bobber.
And repeat.

Manual Window-Switching Method:
1. Cast fishing.
2. Move your mouse over the right edge of your Internet page and click.
3. Read/look at/view your Internet page.
4. Listen for the noise your bobber makes when you catch a fish.
5. Move your mouse quickly to the left side of the screen and click.
6. Right click on the bobber.
Y repite. This is where you will be glad you moved the WoW window as far left as you could, since you won't need to aim your cursor before you click; you'll only need to jerk your mouse to the left and click.

That's all there is too it. Using either of those methods should make fishing much more enjoyable to level. You can also use them after you have reached 450 fishing to make some gold while reading or browsing the Internet. To do this, I'd recommend you fish is a zone where you won't catch any junk without applying a lure to your fishing pole. That way, you won't need to re-apply your lures every ten minutes. According to El's Extreme Anglin', you only need an effective skill of 475 to fish in Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, and Howling Fjord, which are the only zones worth fishing in, anyways. I recommend the in-land waters of Dragonblight, since you will catch both Musselback Sculpin and Dragonfin Angelfish, both of which sell well on the AH. If you prefer a more tense atmosphere and don't mind applying lures, then Wintergrasp will probably net you more profit per hour, since you will only be catching fish that should sell well. Just park yourself somewhere off to the sides where people aren't likely to go, and keep your wits about you.

Well, there you go! If you have any more ideas for multitasking while leveling fishing, or any ways to make fishing more interesting, feel free to share them in the comment section bellow. Also, those pictures and accompanying comments; yay or nay? I think it added some flair to the wall of text, but I want the opinions of you, dear readers. This blog is for you, after all.

I leave you with this image from GraphJam, one of icanhascheezburger.com's sister sites.

They forgot Chuck Norris jokes, homophobia, people being rude to people who ask legitimate questions... though I suppose all those go under the category of General Douchbaggery.

Ideas on how to make the new cat/bear forms scale with gear

One of the biggest complaints of the druid community has been that, while everyone else gets to see their characters look more and more awesome as they progress through content, us druids are left looking at the same old animal forms. It wasn't too bad back in the days of vanilla WoW, when the only way druids could contribute to raids was to heal and Tree of Life didn't exist. Since we spent all our time healing, we spent all our time in caster form, so we got to see our armor change like everyone else. Fast forward to BC, and there was a shapeshifting form for every spec. Sure, there were Dreamstate healers who healed in caster form with healing touch, but for the most part, every druid spent most of his or her time in a shapeshifting form. It was here that boredom began to creep in, as everyone was getting decked out in their T4, 5, and 6 armor and we looked exactly as we had since level 10/20/40/50 (bear/cat/moonkin/tree, respectively).

The new forms that we are getting in patch 3.2 will certainly help to alleviate our boredom with our current forms, but Blizzard still has not unveiled any plans to make our forms change as we get better armor. Some may question the necessity of such a system, but I doubt that there are many non-druids out there who would be happy with their armor never changing on a cosmetic level. If they get to see their character become progressively more cool as they get better armor, why shouldn't we?

There was an entry of wow.com's Shifting Perspectives column that detailed the issues that such a system would create. (I ♥ Allison Robert, by the way.) According to that post, there could only be two systems for druid forms to scale with gear: the first is that our forms would improve as we got better gear (or from some other indicator), and they would continue to improve as our gear got better, getting more and more cool as we went through the various expansions. The other system is that we would start over with the most basic versions of our forms every time an expansion came out, meaning if you had all best-in-slot gear and had the best druid form, when the next expansion came out, you would start from square one. The first system presents the problem of creating more work for the art department. It also presents the issue of how the art department can keep expanding on our forms. To paraphrase the article, after they've added as many symbols as they can, how else will they change our forms? Adding more bands? gems? tufts of hair? rockets? As for the second option, if we simply started over with our most basic form every time we started a new expansion, druids would eventually get tired of progressing through the same cycle of changes to our forms.

So how can we scale our forms with our gear? How can we druids show off just how phat our loot really is? I personally think that the idea of coming up with a new set of druid form artwork with each expansion isn't that bad of an idea. (Sorry, Allison.) That said, I don't think they should completely revamp our forms with each expansion. Rather, Blizzard could keep the basics like colors and models the same and simply change the details. Specifically, they could change the symbols above the front legs and the necklaces.

Currently, the symbols on bear form are a circle with a dot in the middle and an arc under it. It is the same on cat form minus the circle. I think that cat and bears still leveling in Azeroth could keep this symbol, and new symbols could be given the druids who are mostly decked out in gear from one of the other continents. Perhaps a crack to represent Outland's fragmented structure and an ice crystal for the frozen wastes of Northrend. If the next expansion ends up being the Maelstrom as people suspect, we could get a whirlpool design. You may think that this kind of theme-based symbol design may be somewhat cliché, but since druids are masters of nature, it's not unreasonable to expect their forms to mimic the world they inhabit in some way.

(Edit: Since I wrote this, the next expansion has been confirmed to be taking place in a sundered Azeroth. A crack would probably better represent that level of gear than Outland gear.)

I also think the symbol could change color to reflect the quality of the gear the druid is wearing. Due to the eclectic nature of vanilla WoW gear, this may not be practicable for pre-60 druids, but once they get to Outland, I think this would be rather easy to implement. After all, in both Outland and Northrend, the lowest level blue-quality gear tends to be just a smidgen better than the equivalent highest-level green gear. Thus Blizzard could set up a scale by which the symbol gets brighter as the average ilevel of the druid's gear increases. The symbol could also change color as the druid moves from mostly greens to mostly blues to mostly purples. Since the same shade of green that would look good on the white cat model would probably not look good on the black cat model, Blizzard would probably need to come up with different shades of greens, blues, and purples for the different models. The symbols could change their design based on which level of content the majority of the druid's gear comes from: mostly Outland gear would be a crack, mostly Northrend gear would be an ice crystal. The symbol could also keep its brightness relative to the content it comes from, so someone in the best Outland gear possible would keep a bright purple crack until they upgrade to Northrend blues and get a blue ice crystal.

As for the necklaces, because they are a more subtle feature of the design, they could simply be designed after the kind of trinkets (in the sense of tchotchkes, not equipment) the druid would pick up in their respective continents. Perhaps burning legion paraphernalia in Outland or Vrykul artifacts in Northrend. The necklaces could then simply become more detailed as the average ilevel of the druid's gear increased. Perhaps more gems could be added or certain parts made bigger.

These are just some ideas. I do not think it would be very hard to implement something like this in the game. However, after looking at the same cat for at least three years, I'm happy with the changes we are getting and promise not to complain for at least another expansion pack.

Why you should not rush to the level cap

This is an issue that is close to my heart. When I first started playing, I rarely did quests since I didn't want to move around from area to area until I had leveled past the area I was in. Thus I did a lot of grinding, since vanilla WoW was not made for efficient leveling. Grinding gets boring when you do it that much, so I found leveling to be a chore. That was until I bought a leveling guide that showed me how to level quickly by moving between areas and always doing quests, and leveling became fun again, since the levels were coming in faster than they ever had before. I realize now, however, that I was really misguided in trying to level quickly, because once I got to 70, I had one of those horrible "What do I do now?" moments. I realize now it would have been more enjoyable if I had tried to see more while I was leveling, rather than rushing to the top.

Though Ghostcrawler (the lead system designer for WoW) has gone on the record as saying that the level cap is where it's at, I disagree. I have nothing against high end content per se, but I feel it's wrong to assume that end-game is better than leveling and that one should get there as fast as he can. There is a lot of joy to be found in leveling, and since it is a necessity anyways, you may as well savor it rather than viewing it as a necessary evil.

There are a few things in my mind that stand out as making leveling enjoyable. One is simply learning new moves and adjusting your playing habits to incorporate them into your gameplay. Though some of the abilities you will learn are somewhat useless, most of them add a unique facet to your combat, and this makes learning each new ability a unique joy.

More important, though, is the sheer amount of content to be found during the leveling process, especially in vanilla WoW. Once you reach the level cap, there are some more quests that you can do in Icecrown and Storm Peak, but everything after that is just running instances and raids while doing the same daily quests over and over and over again and waiting for Blizzard to add more content. While you are leveling, however, the content is already there for you, and there is plenty of it. Some of my best memories of leveling are quests I did in my trek from 1 to 60, including the Nesingwary series of quests in Stranglethorn.

Some of you may view questing just a way to speed up the leveling process, helping you gain more experience points and thus making leveling easier, but it is so much more than than. When you start the game, the intro cinematic gives you your general motivation. For me as a Night Elf, it was to defend Teldrassil. However, once you leave your starting zone, that initial motivation no longer applies. The question is, then, why do you fight? The answer can be found in your quests. From helping random civilians to doing a job for the King of Ironforge, quests keep you motivated to continue fighting, and thus continue playing.

More importantly, quests also provide a lot of back story for the game. If you never complete the Defias Brotherhood quest series, you'll never know what your motivation is for entering the Deadmines and killing Van Cleef, or why he rebelled against Stormwind in the first place. If you don't complete the quest that starts at the end of Uldaman, you'll never learn the origin of the Dwarves. And if you don't complete Big Game Hunter and the quests that lead up to it, you won't get the reference when you do their equivalent quests in Outland and Northrend.

What I'm trying to say is that questing is fun, and it's one of the main reasons to play that game. Once you reach end-game, you get one or two zones of level 80 quests, and then you are limited to the repeatable daily quests. The same ones. Over and over again. And while killing ten Defias thugs for one quest isn't that different from killing ten scourge zombies for another quest, doing it over and over again on the same enemies gets repetitive.

So when you do reach end-game, you have three choices of things to do: solo-ing, PvP, and raiding. Because Wrath of the Lich King homogenized the process of reputation gains and making money through dailies (more on this in another post; edit: this post can be found here), solo-ing in Wrath is pretty boring. Gone is the variety found in Vanilla and BC. All of your recipes for professions come from one or two sources; all of your reputations are increases through dailies and/or instance runs; all of your income comes from dailies now, since farming isn't as lucrative as it used to be. Along with their other forms of homogenization, Blizzard reduced the number of items used by high-level characters by a great deal, meaning there isn't much of a fortune to be made in farming. After all, with few items to farm, more people are farming the same items. High supply = low price.

Contrast end-game solo-ing with leveling and the choice of which is better is pretty clear. While leveling, you rarely do the same quest twice, and never over and over again, which keeps them interesting. And since not a lot of people are leveling characters these days, you'll find items which people still need, for leveling their professions and such, that aren't in constant supply. Admittedly, the demand isn't consistent either, but that's what keeps it interesting. You also always have a reason to fight, whereas solo-ers who reach end-game will finish their quests and have little reason left to keep fighting.

As for PvP, there is nothing to prevent you from PvP'ing as a low level character. You may not be in fair level brackets, but like I said, that's what keeps it interesting. Besides, those unfair deaths at level 21 fuel the anger which lets you kill lowbies at level 28. Good times, eh? I'll admit that I don't know much about PvP, but I know a lot of PvP'ers who says that resilience ruined PvP. Well, guess what? Up to level 60, you will find no resilience on your gear. There is arena, which you can't really do unless you are at the maximum level, but if you play WoW mainly for arena, you are better off rolling a character on an arena realm anyways.

The only remaining facet of end-game content that I have not touched upon is raiding. I will admit, this is the only case where end-game has leveling beat. Instances up to end-game (at least the ones worth doing) are limited to five people. If you seek more of a challenge and more of a social experience than that, then end-game is your only option. If you also raid in order to overcome the challenges of it, then you won't find much satisfaction in low level instances. "Progression" no longer exists anywhere other than level 80, so if you enjoy the progressively difficulty of raids, you will find little satisfaction is the dungeons of yore.

If, however, you run raids just for the phat loot, then I can't tell you that you will have more fun at 80 than on the way there. Instances are the best source of loot from PvE no matter what your level, and though you may use the argument "Oh, you'll just outgrow any instance gear you get while leveling," the same can be applied to the gear you get at level 80. Even if you deck yourself out in best-in-slot gear, another raid instance will be released a few months later, and your gear will become obsolete again. It's the same cycle either way:

run instances -> get good gear -> new content is released/becomse available -> gear becomes obsolete -> run new instances -> repeat ad infinitum

So what makes that cycle more enjoyable during leveling than raiding? Nothing really; it's just less work. You may think that you'll get less satisfaction out of your phat loot if it's easier to get, but really, how much satisfaction do you actually get out of your purples? In the end, gear itself is a bad reason to run instances. At least while you are leveling, you can use the excuse that it makes your leveling easier. Conversely, any gear you get while raiding only go towards making raiding easier; you are basically raiding so that you can raid more. The only excuse to do this is if you enjoy raids for themselves, and if you do, then gear is really a non-issue.

Thus concludes my thoughts on leveling. When you role your first character, take it slow, breath it all it, try some instances, and keep questing! That's how you keep the game interesting. If you already have a level 80 character and you steam-rolled your way there, try rolling an alt to see all the content you missed; there's a lot of it in this game, and it would be a shame to not see it; it was designed for you, after all.

How to get started playing WoW

Since this is the first advice post of my blog, I figure a good way to start is to focus on the beginnings of any World of Warcraft player's career. I will not be covering the technical aspects of setting up an account and things like that, since those are surely adequately covered elsewhere. Instead, I'll be focusing on the subjective aspects of the experience. Since this is such a long post, I'll put a table to contents down bellow. Just use control-F or command-F (PC or Mac, respectively) to find what you are looking for.

Should I play World of Warcraft?
What realm should I play on?
Should I be a member of the Alliance or the Horde?
What class should I play?

Should I play World of Warcraft?

This is the first question you should ask yourself before you begin to play WoW: should I be playing in the first place? It's a simple question, but one you should carefully consider before playing. I feel there are certain specific questions you need to ask yourself as a way to figure out whether or not you should play.

-Do I have enough time to play? I like the way one of my friends put it: WoW is not addicting so much as it eats up all of your free time. If you don't have the necessary free time in the first place, you will probably end up pushing your obligations and responsibilities off to the side in order to make time for WoW, or you just won't play, and you'll pay for that time spent not playing. Neither alternative is very attractive, so if you don't have the time to play, don't play.

-Can I afford to play? Aside from the $20 cost for the game, there is also the $15 monthly cost (or $13 monthly if you buy six months at a time, which I do). If you can't afford to pay that, you definitely shouldn't play WoW. I doubt this would be a problem for most adults, but teens and kids would probably need to get a part-time job to pay for WoW. Of course, WoW could be the excuse you need to get a part-time job, which can help you life in so many ways. Of course, if you won't take the job seriously or can't handle a part time job, don't get one just to play WoW. If you take this path, be sure to get the job first so you don't set up a WoW account without the means to pay for it.

-Will I enjoy playing? In my opinion, WoW is a very accessible game from a genre standpoint. There's something here for many gamers, but some people won't enjoy it. If you absolutely hate playing with other people, WoW is not for you. You can have a good time on your own in the game (as I do, frequently), but the beauty of the game is in its social interaction. Grouping with four other people to bring down a monster too powerful for you to bring down is an incredible experience, and you will miss a lot of what the game has to offer if you refuse to play with other people.

-From a similar point of view, if you dislike micromanaging, you may not like WoW. There are plenty of console games out there for people who simply want to pick up the game and play, and though WoW isn't as bad as I'm sure other games are, you do still need to manage things like your armor, what's in your bags, which quests you are going do, and other such things. You'll also encounter more micromanaging as you progress through the game and more features are opened up to you, such as talents, which allow you to specialize your character's fighting style. Don't let the prospect of such micromanaging scare you; the game introduces its many features to you at a gradual pace. If you have played any sort of RPG or action-RPG game, then you'll be able to handle it, but if that really isn't your thing, then go play a game without RPG elements.

There is also the issue of whether your system will run WoW, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue. To give you an idea of what you really need to run the game, my old eMac ran WoW on the lowest graphics settings without too many problems once I upgraded it to one gigabyte of RAM, which was an easy process. But then again, WoW isn't about graphics; it's about the experience. And that's where the next question comes in: what will WoW give me?

-A LOT of play time. I have spent no less than 55 days on my current main character, and considering my altoholism, I have probably spent about a hundred days in total playing WoW. And that's not actual days; that's days of time spent in the World of Warcraft. That's almost 2500 hours. Granted, I have been playing for almost four years, but that gives you an idea of how expansive WoW is. That's also a pretty good deal from a money perspective: I've spent about $725 on playtime, the game itself, and expansion packs, which means WoW has given me more than three hours of playtime for each dollar I have spent on it. I have rarely gotten such a deal from a console game. Granted, this kind of ratio is highly dependent on how much you play, but it's a good deal none the less.

-A social experience. At it's heart, WoW is about your interactions with other players. I doubt you could play WoW without being influenced by someone else in some way. The in-game economy is based completely on the Auction House, which is the portal for many of your in-game monetary transactions*. The Auction House allows players to sell items to each other without needing to be on at the same time, and thus is how you will probably make and/or spend a lot of your money later in the game. There are also a good deal of quests that require you to group up with someone to finish them, or else level well beyond the intended level of the quest. And lets not forget instances, in which you and four other players (it increases to nine more and twenty four more at the highest level, but don't worry about that yet) get together to defeat the enemies in an area which none of you could survive on your own, and are thus awarded with better-quality equipment and the confidence of working together with other players to achieve something. If you prefer competition to cooperation, then you'll probably spend your time in battlegrounds, the game's main areas for player vs. player action. These are also cooperative in nature, as they are team vs. team style. Anyways, the point of this wall of text is that, where ever you go in WoW, other players will impact you in some way, and that's what makes it fun. You can even just use WoW as a portal to socialize with other people.

-You get to be part of the WoW community. I'd argue that it's just as fun to be a WoW player as it is to play WoW. We have our own in-jokes, on-line communities, clothing, and even web-comics. When you start playing, don't try to take it all in too quickly. Like any sort of cultural assimilation, you'll learn slowly what makes the WoW community tick. Once you become a full-fledged member of that community, you will realize how great it is. I can tell you from personal experience that talking with another WoW player in real life is an experience that cannot be described; it's a closer bond than most people expect it can be.

So let's say you've decided to play. Now for the next issue.

What realm should I play on?

Because there are too many WoW players to fit on one server, Blizzard splits them up so that we don't all crash their computers by overcrowding the game. Picking which server you plan on does not affect the game itself to a great extent; you'll see the same content, but each server as has different players on it. I'd say that if you have any friends that play WoW, play on their server. Make sure you also play their faction as well. (More on that later) Of course, if they are merely acquaintances, you may wish to choose a realm from scratch. This is also your only course of action if you have no friends who play WoW. In that case, you have three issues to worry about: realm type, time zone, and population.

Realm type: There are four kinds of realms: PvE (player vs. environment, your basic normal realms), PvP (player vs. player, in which members of opposite factions can attack each other whenever they want to except in starting areas), RP (role playing, where you pretend to actually be your character. The real world is not mentioned on these realms.), and RP-PvP (role playing realms with the attack caveat of PvP realms). I'd say you are best off starting on a PvE realm. That way you don't need to worry about high level characters coming to kill you for their own personal enjoyment. (it's called griefing, and it happens frequently on PvP realms) If you feel like that you would enjoy the rush of playing in a risky area,, then be my guest and try it, but if you regret your decision, don't be afraid to make a different character on a different server. I'd also avoid RP unless you are actually into that kind of thing. You can move your character to a different realm if you regret your decision, but it costs $25, so don't take such a decision lightly.

Population: Realms with a low population have the issue of a weak economy (less money moving around) and a lack of players to help you. High-pop realms sometimes get too full, and you basically need to wait in line (it's called a queue) to get in. Medium population realms seem like the best fit, but they suffer from empty starting zones, like all well-established realms. On well-established realms, people frequently are already at the highest level or well on their way there, so there won't be many people to help you when you need it in your low level areas. If you are recommended to a new realm when you start, I'd say make your first character there; new realms are more likely to have characters your level, so you won't be alone and you'll be able to find people to help you.

Time Zone: This is probably the least pressing issue, but it helps to have the in-game clock be in sync with your clock. Check the list of realms here for all the realms in your time zone. If your sleep schedule is radically different from other people's, it may be in your best interests to join a realm that is not aligned with your time zone, so that more people will be on when you play.

Now for the tougher issues: Alliance or Horde, and what class?

Should I be a member of the Alliance or the Horde?

The ten races in the game are split between two warring factions: the Alliance and the Horde. It would be far too simplistic to say the Alliance are the good guys and the Horde are the bad guys; if you look up the lore on the subject, members of the Alliance have done some really bad things to others for no good reason, and many members of the Horde are just victims. Players on opposite factions can't communicate with each other other than through macros such as /hug and /hi.

Anyways, factions are a touchy issue. Many players have a lot of faction pride, especially Hordies, so I'll just go from my own experiences. The easy answer is that if your friends play, play which ever faction they play. Otherwise, you won't be able to communicate with them or play with them very much, and that won't make the game very fun, will it? If that isn't a factor, then keep reading.

Though everyone will rush to tell you otherwise, the communities of Alliance players and Horde players aren't that different. Everyone likes to say that Alliance players are little kids who just play Alliance because the Alliance races look pretty and that Horde players are more mature. While this may be true, I have generally found that it didn't impact my gaming experience noticeably. Besides, both sides have their jerks and grieffers. If you prefer to play with people who are proud of their faction choice, then go with horde, but if that's really your main motivation, it's a pretty weak one in my opinion.

If you plan on being a role-player, then your choice should be based on which race you wish to role-play as. Each race has their own history and dominant personality, and though you can break from that in sculpting your character, it's frowned upon to deviate from the standard conventions too much. The game's manual has a nice guide to the history of each race in the Races in Conflict section (page 168), so refer to that when choosing which race you will roleplay as.

If neither of those are issues for you, then just pick based on which class you want to play and which race's built-in strengths and abilities you prefer. It is my opinion that the Alliance has better racial abilities than the horde, but this point could be debated forever, so I won't go into it too much. Unfortunately, not all classes are available to each race, so you will need to pick a class before picking a race. If that seems like too much, just go by which race you like to look at the most. You will be looking at your character a lot, so it helps to not have one you find ugly, at least until you can cover him in armor.

What class should I play?

Now for the truly difficult question. Class is not a decision to be taken lightly. Which class you pick impacts your gameplay more than any other decision you make. Each class has its own unique fighting style, so you will want to pick a class based on your preferences in that area. Your choice of race is limited by your choice of class, so pick your class before setting your heart on one particular race.

Warriors: defensive melee fighters. Warriors can take damage very well, but not necessarily dish it out as well as other classes. They fight in close range combat and tend to take longer to kill enemies than other classes. This gives you a lot of room for error when playing. Warriors are good if you want a melee class with a lot of survivability and hardiness.

Rogues: offensive melee fighter. Rogues can't take too much damage before they die, but they can dish it out really well. They can also use stealth, allowing them to sneak around. If you prefer to end battles quickly and like to sneak around, rogues are a good choice.

Hunters: eclectic ranged fighters with pets. Hunter fight mostly from afar and can train beasts to fight for them, making them popular with newer players. The have a wide range of tools at their disposal, including melee abilities, traps, and the ability to track enemies. They are the only class that specializes in ranged weapons like bows and guns, making them not as dependent on their mana as other magic using classes. If you want a class that fights from afar with a wide range of tools and with the assistance of a constant companion, hunter are a good pick for you.

Mages: potent ranged fighters. Mages are perhaps the weakest class in the game in terms of being able to take damage, but they specialize in doing a lot of damage from afar and keeping their enemies at bay. They also have a wide variety of spells available to them, including the ability to summon food and water to restore their health and mana. If you want to play a class that fights from afar and is delicate but potent, mages are for you.

Priests: defensive ranged fighters. The prototypical healer, priests specialize in helping out their allies. They can fight for themselves and do it quite well when played right, but even then, their focus is on helping others as they kill their enemies. If you want to play a defensive magic class, help others in their combat, or play an assitive role, the priest is a good class for you.

Warlocks: demonic ranged fighters. Warlocks specialize in weakening their enemies more than hurting them, with various curses than affect their enemies in different ways and spells that do damage over time rather than instantly. They can also summon a variety of demonic minions to help them. If you want to play as a caster who is slow and exacting, rather than fast and swift, and you like to have minions doing your bidding, the warlock is a good class for you.

Paladins: defensive magic melee fighters. Paladins are like priests if priests were strong melee fighters rather than delicate casters. They aren't as offensively gifted as other classes, but they can still hold their own. They, like priests, shine most in groups. They can also take a wide variety of roles, from defensive to assistive to offensive. They have arguably the highest survivability in the game, being able to heal themselves and shield themselves from damage. If you like the idea of playing a defensive melee fighter with many options available to you, paladins are a good choice. Just know that if you want to play horde and play a paladin, you will need to purchase the Burning Crusade expansion pack; paladins only became available to the horde with the addition of the Blood Elf race, which was part of the expansion. And be warned that the first 20 levels of leveling your paladin will be the most boring experience of your WoW career; just trust me on that.

Shamans: Shamans are the proverbial jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, though that last part doesn't apply to them as much as it used to. Their fighting style is a mix of ranged magic fighting, melee fighting, healing, and using special totems they can drop to give themselves and their allies unique benefits. They are also a very fun class to play. If you want an eclectic class with many tools at your disposal, and you want to be able to "do it all" without needing to do any of it particularly well, shamans are the class for you. Just know that if you want to play alliance and play a shaman, you will need to purchase the Burning Crusade expansion pack; shamans only became available to the alliance with the addition of the Draenei race, which was part of the expansion.

Druids: The master-of-all class. Druids are my favorite class. They start out as casters, mixing offensive and defensive styles, and then branch out into melee with the addition of shapeshifting into a bear or a cat. By playing a druid, any role in the game will be open to you, be it defensive or offensive, melee or ranged. They do take a while to get interesting, but if you focus on your melee shapeshifting abilities, you will be guaranteed new experiences all the time while leveling and will be rewarded with a class with very high survivability and a wide variety of fighting styles. If you want to be able to choose between different fighting styles and have a lot of options available to you, pick a druid.

Death Knights: Hybrid defensive-offensive melee fighters. Death Knights are only available to people to have a level 55 character of a different class and have purchased the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack, so if you don't satisfy both of those criteria, then don't worry about trying to play one. Death Knights are very efficient melee fighters, using both defensive and offensive tactics and being able to specialize in either. They have very high survivability and can do many things on their own that other classes need assistance to do, such as killing powerful enemies. Playing a Death Knight feels like a mix of playing a Paladin and a Rogue. If you enjoy being a melee powerhouse with high offensive and defensive prowess, the Death Knight is for you.

Finally, don't be afraid to try new things; I had to try all the classes in the game before I realized that druids were the class for me. I'd say you should try each class at least once, but not all at once. Being able to compare them will help you stick to one that you enjoy the most.

Fin.



*If you already play, you might think that I should say "the vast majority", but don't forget about repairing your armor and buying trade items from vendors. Those count as transactions too.

The blog itself

Salutations!

I am Ardol (my Blogger name is O-Digga, but I will be going by my WoW name instead), a World of Warcraft player who happens to be really into philosophy. Of course, you could tell that from the title text, couldn't you? This is my blog, WoW Philosophized, in which I discuss the game from a philosophical perspective. Knowing I could never keep a daily blog, I have decided to stick to what I am fairly good at: consistency, rather than frequency. Thus comes the different topics.

Monday's posts will be the general miscellaneous posts. Any "housekeeping" posts will go here, as well as favorite links, stories from the real world, and even philosophical analysis or discussions of non-WoW-related things. These are all just ideas, and I don't guarantee any of them.

Wednesday's posts will be advice, tips, and help. Rather than the regular kind of advice that you may get on other blogs (which specs to use, best way to level, weapon A vs. weapon B), my guides will cover general issues that may not get much coverage in other blogs. I plan to include my philosophy in these posts somehow, but they will be more advisory in nature than philosophical.

Friday's posts will be my philosophical musings on WoW. These will be the meat of the blog. I plan to cover a wide range of topics, from design philosophy to simply playing the game. I encourage you to disagree with me in the comments and debate whatever with your fellow commenters.

So, that's the plan. I plan to keep this blog on the down low for a week or two, just to see if I can actually do this. Once I have a good amount of content in here, I'll go more public with it, linking to it on other sites and probably requesting to be posted in WoW.com's Daily Quest column. And so it begins!