How am I conquering the pre-expansion slump?

A shared topic on Blog Azeroth proposed by Jaedia of The Lazy Sniper asks us how we are conquering the pre-expansion slump, a slump I am definitely feeling. Sadly, I started feeling this slump long ago with the disappointment I felt with the Argent Tournament. Having gone through all of the other solo content in Wrath of the Lich King, I put high hopes in the Argent Tournament to revitalize my interest in game, but with the lackadaisical design of the daily quests, I quickly grew bored and resolved to do it only long enough to acquire enough Champion's Seals to get the Argent Pony Bridle and the five pets. Once I had those, I quit the tournament forever, and have not returned. The dungeon finder briefly reignited my interest in the game with the way it made it easy to chain run heroics, but it had the unintended effect of making me burn out even faster, to the point where I realized that there were no heroics that I liked anymore; just those I didn't hate as much as others (and I had something to hate about each one). Thus the things that were probably implemented specifically to keep people like me (non-raiders) interested in the game failed to capture my attention.

So what's a soloist to do? Why, what we soloists have always done; roll an alt! Problem is, with the remake of Azeroth coming soon, there's less motivation to go through the process of leveling a character again, when we can only assume that it will be more fun when the expansion comes out. This is made worse by the fact that all of the content begins to feel a bit stale when you have leveled multiple characters, even though you may be going through it with a new class. As such, we need to find a reason to want to level that character, other than just experiencing that content again. With that said, though, experiencing the content again isn't that bad of a reason to level an alt, since it means that the old content will be fresh in our mind after the Cataclysm happens, allowing us to appreciate the new content that much more.

But if experiencing the content to be able to appreciate the new content isn't reason enough for you to level an alt, then why should you? What has worked for me so far is the goal of having an alt that is a "pet craftsman". I leveled my shaman with the goal of having a pet jewelcrafter, and I leveled my priest with the goal of having a pet alchemist, and those are the only two alts of mine (beside my Death Knight, who had an unfair start) that made it past level 25 (they have both made it past 60 at this point). I know I said in my post reflections on leveling a shadow priest that leveling an alt is more fun with two gathering professions, but if you usually level your alts that way and are looking for a change of pace, perhaps leveling them while also working on a crafting profession is the change of pace you need.

What can you do at 80 without a group?

As someone who doesn't have time to raid and who doesn't enjoy PvP, heroics are the only way I can engage in group play at the level cap. However, with the addition of the dungeon finder and the heroic chain-run binge it brought about in me, I have since grown tired of heroics. Having gotten all that I can out of the fishing dailies, cooking dailies, and all that I care to get out of the Argent Tournament (seriously, I really don't like that place), I have been pondering; what is there that is left for me to do? As I said in my post on the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content, most of what there is to do at level 80 is split into five categories: 5-mans, raiding, battlegrounds, arenas, and dailies. I have been growing more and more tired of dailies, but I suppose that is because I am no longer working towards a meaningful goal. I used to do the dailies for the reputation, then I did them for the money in saving up for the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth. Now, when I do them, it is simply as something to do, and they aren't that enjoyable in that way.

So, that brings us to our topic: what can one do at level 80 that doesn't involve groups? In writing this list, I am excluding the Argent Tournament and doing dailies for the sake of making money.

Finish any quests you never did
I am, of course, referring to the one-time quests, not the dailies. I personally hit 80 in Sholazar Basin, so that left two whole zones of quests for me to do. If you haven't finished off the one-time quests in Northrend, do them. They give you gold and are quite fun, as well.

Work on your reputations
There are quite a few factions in Northrend, and you can try to get exalted with them if you need something to do. Sadly, the only way to get exalted with most of them is through dailies and heroics, but if you do dailies while working toward a goal, they aren't so bad. The main benefit of doing this is that eventually you'll be able to talk to anyone when you want to repair your gear and you'll be able to get the repairs at the lowest possible price. If you decide to work on your reputations, see my post on how to level Northrend reputations without championing, which goes over how to get exalted with the Northrend factions without grouping.

Level your professions
There's a chance you didn't get your professions to 450 on the way to 80. I know that as an enchanter, getting to 450 was very difficult and took a lot of time, so your professions may be lying in your spellbook, waiting to reach their full potential. If so, max them out. It will make leveling them easier when Cataclysm hits.

Level your secondary skills
Granted, if you are starting from scratch, cooking and first aid will require doing more than just grinding in Northrend, but you can level fishing anywhere now, so your only concern in that case is overcoming the boredom you will inevitably feel while doing it. Cooking is a no-brainer to level now, and I imagine first aid isn't much more difficult (as a druid, I don't really have any use for first aid, so I haven't leveled it to Northrend levels).

Go out and farm stuff
Collect things with your gathering professions. Go and fish somewhere. Grind some elementals for some motes. Grind some beasts for some meat. Go to Storm Peaks and grind some Relics of Ulduar. Go out and grind the materials for some high end crafted epics, or just sell the stuff you get. Ironically, the monotony of farming can really break up the monotony of chain-running heroics quite well. It may not be the most efficient way to make money, but when you are bored with the best way (dailies), the second best begins to look even better.

Explore
Northrend is an amazing continent. It is really well designed and looks just beautiful. Why not get on your flying mount and just go out and explore? Find some little nook or cranny you missed while leveling up. Fly to the top of a really high mountain. Do something with no mind for the reward. You just might get an achievement for it as well.

Sadly, because of Blizzard's homogenization efforts, there isn't much to do at level 80 that doesn't involve dailies or groups. If you don't like any of the ideas above, your only choice is to go back to old content. Next week, I'll write a post about things you can do in the old world if you are bored with Northrend's end-game.

Are our actions in WoW meaningless?

As those of you who found my blog through wow.com know, I am currently reading World of Warcraft and Philosophy. Though the book as a whole is very interesting, there is one point in it that has stuck with me ever since I read it: we give our lives meaning based on how we change the world, and because the world of WoW is almost impossible to change in any meaningful way by player action, everything we do in WoW is meaningless.

I think the most poignant example of this point is the Argent Tournament daily quest You've Really Done It This Time, Kul. For those of you who do not have access to this daily, it involves killing members of the Cult of the Damned for keys to unlock the cages holding Kul the Reckless and four other crusaders whom he has taken with him to fight the Cult of the Damned. Unlike the other Silver Covenant Argent Tournament dailies, this one is not on a rotation with any others, meaning you do it every day. Every day, you go free Kul from his cage, and sometimes he says, "Thank the Light. I'll never do anything this foolish again." And then, the next day, he is back in that cage, and you need to rescue him again.

Many dailies are the same way. No matter how many times you do Taking Battle To The Enemy, the number of cultists in Icecrown is never reduced. No matter how many times you do The Ghostfish, Marcia will never discover the secret of that Phantom Ghostfish, as evidenced by the fact that she will likely send you out to do the daily again. No matter how many times you do Vile Like Fire!, those buildings will never actually burn down. Dailies pretty much involve players doing things over and over again with no perceivable impact on the game. Not one. The Argent Colosseum was built in spite of the fact that I'm pretty sure no one did the dailies that involved collecting materials for their construction. The obvious exception is how the Sunwell Plateau dailies unlocked the next round of dailies as people completed them, but this is the only exception I can think of.

Think, also, about quests that send you out to kill an enemy that is threaten the town. I am sure many players will be familiar with the quest Wanted: "Hogger", in which you set of to kill a gnoll who... well, the quest never exactly makes it clear why he is a threat to Stormwind, but he must be. He is an elite, after all. Anyways, you get together with your friends, you kill this guy, and you go to get your reward. And yet, if you go back to that area, who do you find? Hogger! Yep, he has respawned, and your efforts to do Stormwind a favor have yielded nothing. Look at the first quest human receive when they start out: Kobold Camp Cleanup. You go kill those kobolds as Marshal McBride requested, and yet they are still there when you return for the next quest. I could go on and on, but any quest you do will have no real effect on the world around you, save the Wrathgate questline in Northrend and the series of quests in the Death Knight starting zone. (Both of which, you may notice, are often considered the best questlines in the game. Coincidence? I think not.)

Instances are almost identical in this regard. Suppose you and four of your friends go through Deadmines. After much trial and tribulation, you kill Vancleef. It was hard work, but you now have the satisfaction of removing that threat to Stormwind. Or do you? The next day, you see some people talking about how they are looking for more adventurers to help them go into the Deadmines and take down Vancleef. But I already killed him, you may say to yourself. Curious as to what they mean, you decide to follow them into the instance. The reappearance of the henchmen you killed before him gives you the impression that something is amiss, and lo and behold, there he is. The man himself, standing as if you have never killed him. Substitute any boss in any raid and it is the same case.

In short, almost nothing we do in WoW actually impacts the world itself, and thus, it is meaningless. We do get gear and experience for what we do, but that only affects our characters, not the world around us. Keep in mind that meaningless doesn't mean pointless. Our actions in World of Warcraft are fun and enjoyable, and for that reason, they have a point. I am only arguing that within the world of WoW itself, they are meaningless.

Is that a bad thing, though? If it weren't for all of the mechanics discussed above, WoW could not exist as a game. Dailies need to be repeatable by their nature. Enemies killed for quests need to respawn so that other people can kill them and complete the quest. Instances need to reset for the same reason. If instances were one-time things only, then it would be more and more difficult to find groups for them as the years went on. How many alliance players do you know that haven't run Deadmines? In other words, our actions in WoW need to be mostly meaningless, or else WoW couldn't exist as a game.

But is WoW doomed to meaninglessness? I think not. There are certainly things Blizzard can do to make our actions feel like they are having some effect on the world. Having more questlines like Wrathgate would be a start. Then we would feel like our efforts are actually changing Azeroth in some way. As for dailies, perhaps the number of enemies we need to kill or the number of objects we need to collect could go down as we do the daily. Imagine, for example, you go into the Argent Tournament area, and you pick up Taking the Battle to the Enemy. After you do it for five days, you notice that the number of cultists you need to kill has gone down to fourteen. After five more days, it goes down to thirteen, etc. Heartened by this fact, you keep doing the daily until, after twenty five days, you only need to kill ten. When you reach this point, the quest text itself changes. When you first started, the quest text read like this:

The coliseum is perched in the most dangerous part of the world, adventurer. The territory we've taken from the Scourge has been paid for in blood and misery, yet the enemy continues to strike back with a seemingly limitless army. To make matters worse, this undead army is supported and assisted by mortal sympathizers, the Cult of the Damned.

Go forth into Icecrown and slay any cultists you encounter.

Instead, it now reads like this:

When we first came here, adventurer, we were under constant threat from the Scourge and its mortal sympathizers. Thanks to your efforts, however, we have managed to reduce the threat they pose. Our work is still not done, though; go forth into Icecrown and keep killing those cultists.

Once again, you are further motivated to keep doing the daily. After fifty days, you now only need to kill five cultists to complete the daily (it wouldn't go any lower than that). Now the quest text has changed again.

We can't thank you enough, adventurer. Thanks to your tireless efforts, the Cult of the Damned is hardly a threat to us anymore. Still, we cannot rest, for if we stop our efforts now, they will only regain strength. You know what to do.

So you keep doing this daily, but you soon grow bored with it. You stop doing it each day, and upon going back to do it after thirteen days, you are horrified to discover that the number has gone back up to seven. After all, if you aren't keeping those cultists in line, who will?

To make this more general, I think it would give our actions some meaning if dailies rewarded you for doing them by becoming easier as you do so. However, to keep things fair, they would become more difficult if you neglected them. They would never go over their original amounts, though, which would never be made unreasonably high to account for the fact that it would eventually be reduced.

What about raids? Can anything be done with raids to make them feel meaningful? I doubt it, unless you are ok with running a raid only once. Perhaps a boss could say things like, "This time, I will not fall!" before you fight him, but there is no way to give raiding meaning without changing it in some fundamental way. If you make the bosses easier after they are defeated (this makes sense, since being defeated would, in fact, make them weaker if they needed to use all of their resources to come back to life), then players would complain about not being able to face the "real" boss more than once. It's a shame Blizzard nixed the old model of unlocking new dungeons by completing old ones, since that would give your character's actions in raids some sort of meaning. Perhaps they could make the final bosses in each raid drop an item that starts a quest to become attuned to the next dungeon, and it would be lootable by everyone. I would consider that a happy medium between the old system of attunement and the new system of accessibility.

Before ending this post, I want to bring up again that just because our actions are meaningless within the world of WoW doesn't mean that they are meaningless in our own lives. They bring up happiness, they allow us to socialize with people while playing a fantastic MMO, they provide a diversion from life's drudgery, and they allow the creation of a greater community of WoW players. Any time spent playing WoW is only meaningless from your character's perspective; it is not meaningless from your own.

How to level Northrend reputations without championing

As I mentioned in my last advice post, it is possible to get exalted with all of the Northrend factions without entering an instance. The easiest way to gain reputation with many of these factions is championing, wherein you where the tabard of the faction you are championing in a level-80 5-man instance and gain reputation with them as a result. However, this approach requires to you have good gear (the main purpose of raising your reputations) and be subjected to PUGs, which are really hit and miss. This guide is concerned with getting exalted with each of the Northrend reputations, including the ones that can be championed, without resorting to championing. Some are harder than others, but it is possible to get exalted with all of these factions without entering an instance, and that's what this post concerns.

Alliance Vanguard/Horde Expedition
These two are pretty easy. The Silver Covenant/Sunreavers dailies that you get from the Argent Tournament are one way to raise your rep. You can also do the dailies on your faction's floating ship in Icecrown, The Skybreaker and Orgrim's Hammer, respectively. That should be enough for you to get exalted in a timely manor.

Argent Crusade
This faction used to be much harder to reach exalted with without championing, but it's easier now. Before, the only repeatable way to get Argent Crusade rep was the daily Troll Patrol, but now the Argent Tournament quests also give Argent Crusade rep, making this grind much easier. If you are a Death Knight, however, then the Argent Tournament quests with give you rep with the Knights of the Ebon Blade, leaving Troll Patrol as your only option.

Frenzyheart Tribe/The Oracles
Nothing special here; just do the dailies.

Kirin Tor
Whoo-boy! This is not an easy faction to get exalted with without championing. Make sure you use wowhead to find all of their one-time quests so you can make this grind as short as possible. Once you have exhausted that option, you have only three left to you:
1. Fishing dailies (given by the Dalaran fishing trainer)
2. Cooking dailies (given by the Dalaran cooking trainers)
3. Jewelcrafting dailies (given by the Dalaran jewelcrafting trainer)
If you ever needed an excuse to level your cooking and fishing, here it is. You can also watch the auction house for a Sealed Vial of Poison, which can be turned in for 250 rep, but it is really expensive (at least on my server) and uncommon, so don't count on buying a lot of these for easy rep.

Knights of the Ebon Blade
Once you complete their Icecrown questlines, the Knights of the Ebon Blade will have two areas with dailies for them. Three dailies can be found in the Shadow Vault in northern Icecrown. Three more can be found on Death's Rise, a little ledge part-way down the cliff southwest of Jotunheim. Doing all of them will net you 1500 rep a day. If you are a Death Knight, then the Argent Tournament quests will also net you Ebon Blade rep, making this grind much faster.

The Kalu'ak
This little faction does have some nice goodies to reward those who get exalted with it. They have quests in Borean Tundra, Howling Fjord, and Dragonblight, and each area has a Kalu'ak daily quest, each of which gives you 500 rep. The daily quests are unlocked as you complete the questline in each area. You can use the turtle boats to shuttle between the three areas if you don't want to spend the money to fly there.

The Sons of Hodir
In order to even start gaining rep with these guys, you need to do a long quest chain starting with They Took Our Men! Once you finish the quest chain, you can do dailies to get rep with the Sons of Hodir, and you unlock more as your rep gets higher. Individual quests will unlock similar dailies, so make sure you do all of the one-time quests they offer. You can also look for Everfrost Chips in The Storm Peaks, which can be turned in for Sons of Hodir rep, as can Relics of Ulduar, which can be bought on the Auction House.

The Wyrmrest Accord
Aside from their one-time quests, these guys have three dailies you can do. Two are in Coldarra in Borean Tundra, and one is in Dragonblight. The two low-level ones are unlocked after quests, but the level-80 one can be started almost immediately. They are Drake Hunt, Defending Wyrmrest Temple, and Aces High!
Note: Aces High! starts with the quest Corastrasza, which is started in the Transitus Shield, the same area where you start Drake Hunt.

There you have it! Some factions are easier than others to gain rep with without championing, but only the Kirin Tor is really difficult. Good luck!

What I am doing in-game

Since I am at a loss for something miscellaneous to write about and I recently went through a sort of revelation when it comes to my way of thinking about the game, I decided to detail what I am currently doing in-game.

I recently went through a phase where I was seriously considering why I was playing WoW. The only thing I ever did with any consistency was the fishing dailies. I found (and still find) the Argent Tournament dailies incredibly boring, and I have done the other dailies (at least the ones that give good money) to death, so I no longer enjoy them, either. I went over my general disapproval of Blizzard's dependence on dailies for Wrath solo content in this post, so read that if you want to know why I am so jaded toward daily quests. Anyways, because of my reluctance to do most dailies, especially the Argent Tournament ones, I have pretty much exhausted the Wrath solo content.

For some reason, the possibility of doing group content more rigorously never occurred to me, but when I thought about it, I realized that that was what I enjoyed most about WoW. Helping other people succeed, seeing new content, and experiencing new battles was what I enjoyed most about the game, and my comfort and aptitude with being a healer can certainly help me do that. As such, I am currently focused on getting better healing gear so that I can eventually move past Naxxramas and see Ulduar. There is really one thing about my healing set that I need to address more than the rest: my trinkets.

Currently, the two trinkets I am using in my healing set are both low-level green trinkets I got from some of my first quests: Futuresight Rune and Infused Coldstone Rune. They may be bad, but what I like about them is that they are both on-use trinkets, rather than random proc trinkets. This allows me to use them when I really need them. Still, I really need to replace them, and frequently running Trial of the Champion on normal mode has allowed me to obtain Tears of the Vanquished. It might not be an on-use trinket, but the fact that I don't need to worry about activating it probably makes it more useful. The other trinket I would like to get is the Winged Talisman from Heroic Halls of Lightning, but because of the lack of popularity of that instance, I'm not holding out hope of getting it any time soon.

The rest of the items that I want are all available through emblems, so I plan on running a lot of heorics, especially the daily heroics, since I will need 110 emblems of triumph to buy every piece of EoT gear I want. That's 55 daily heroic quest, and I have only done two since Blizzard added EoTs to them. Anyways, here's the gear I want, arranged by what emblems they take and how much I want them.

Emblems of Triumph:
Idol of Flaring Growth (25)
Band of the Invoker (35)
Talisman of Resurgence (50, this is my backup in case I can't get the Winged Talisman)

Emblems of Conquest:
Evoker's Charm (19)

Emblems of Valor:
Band of Channeled Magic (25)
Disguise of the Kumiho (25)

Once I have gotten all the items I want that I can buy with a certain emblem, I'll use any more I get to upgrade my armor, which is pretty good currently and doesn't warrant immediate replacement.

So, those are my plans for upgrading my gear. They originally included running normal Trial of the Champion a lot (the heroic version has nothing I can use aside from a marginal upgrade to my chest armor), but I have already gotten everything I want from that instance, so it's on to getting badges for me. The nice thing about doing the daily heroics is that I'll be able to see all the work Blizzard put into making those dungeons, which is, in my opinion, one of the best reasons to run instances. This was especially true when I ran Halls of Stone today, and I have to say, though we did rush through it (that DK tank was really impatient), I'm glad I got to see the work Blizzard's art department put into that dungeon.