What I am thankful for

Just like last year, I missed posting last Friday due to Thanksgiving taking up most of my time and thoughts. I was going to write a post about the things I'm thankful for, but visiting with family and friends just took too much of my time. As such, in a bit of late celebration of the holiday, that is the post I will write today.

WoW-related things I am thankful for:

I'm thankful for the automatic conversion of base weapon DPS to feral attack power. There was once a time when the only weapons feral druids could use were the ones that were specifically designed for us, which had feral attack power as one of their stats (with lowered base DPS to make up for it; we didn't need that base DPS, after all). This lead to us having one or two (if we were lucky) weapons available to us in every tier of content, weapons which were useless to everyone else. Now that base-DPS automatically converts to feral attack power, a whole new world of weapons has been opened up to us: staves, two-hand maces, polearms (which were added to our repertoire the day the automatic feral attack power conversion was added); we can use any of them that we like, and for that, I am thankful.

I'm thankful for the ability to track multiple things at once. Sure, I might not be as thankful as my hunter breathren, but as someone who once had a well-worn macro which, when activated, would cause me to switch between Find Fish and Find Herbs, so that I could go out and fish in pools while still collecting herbs, I still appreciate this change. My combined efforts made the activity quite profitable, but needing to use the macro to switch between my two tracking abilities was quite tedious. Now, it is no longer necessary, and for that, I am thankful.

I'm thankful for Leader of the Pack, specifically the self-healing aspect of the talent. The feral druid has always been a great soloing class due to the fact that it can heal itself and that its healing spells depend upon a different resource (mana) than the resource it uses to attack (rage/energy). We became even better, however, when Burning Crusade came around we got some passive self-healing in the form of Improved Lead of the Pack, an effect now baked into the main talent itself. The passive self-healing afforded by this talent makes solo-ing as a druid even better because it reduces the frequency with which we need to switch out of our forms and heal ourselves. In fact, I often find that when fighting enemies that don't pose much of a challenge to me, I don't need to shift out to heal at all; Leader of the Pack does it for me, and for that, I am thankful.

I'm thankful for Netherwing. That faction gave me some of my best memories of WoW: some of the best daily quests in the entire game, an island that was beautifully designed, the ability to walk around as a fel orc, and a mount which continues to be my favorite to this very day. That content was a great reward for buying epic flying (as if epic flying itself weren't its own reward), back when 5000 gold was serious money and having epic flying was a real accomplishment. Netherwing is part of the reason the Burning Crusade was my favorite expansion pack to experience, and for that, I am thankful.

I'm thankful for this blog (hey, without WoW, it couldn't have happened). It has helped me discover my love for typing, it has gotten me involved in a great community (the WoW blogging community), it has encouraged me to think about the game in ways I might not have considered before, and by writing these posts, I can continually create something I can be proud of.

I'm thankful for the Shattering. Because old-world Azeroth needed the reboot.

Non-WoW-related things I am thankful for:

I'll spare you the usual things like my family, my friends, my health, etc., and skip right to the things I am thankful for that might be somewhat unique to me.

I am thankful for music. It helps to quiet my ever-active mind, it keeps me focused when I need to do mindless tasks, it helps me work through my emotions from time to time, and it is generally amazing in every way. Listening to music has been one of the few things that has consistently helped me throughout my entire life. Through all of the bad spots, whatever their nature, music could either pull me through or, at the very least, speak to me in a way that validated what I was going through. And through the good times, music has been there to make them even better. Music rocks; that's all there is too it.

I am thankful for the internet. Neo-Luddite that I am, I still can't deny the great things this technology has done for me. The internet puts a wide array of information at my fingertips, information I can access with but a few clicks and empower myself in the way that only information allows me. The internet is a great melting-pot of ideas, which has opened my mind to possibilities that might have never been revealed to me otherwise. The internet makes accessing the music that I love so much even easier by making more of it available to me and giving me more means to listen to it. The internet allows me to stay connected with friends I never get to see face-to-face anymore thanks to social networking sites. The internet made this blog possible. Though it may waste more of my time than I wish it did, the internet has doubtlessly improved my life in many ways, ways far too numerous for me to list here.

I am thankful for the people in my life who put up no façade about who they really are, the people who really do act like themselves in all parts of their life, and the example they serve for me. They inspire me to do the same thing myself, and while it isn't always easy, I'm getting much better at it, with them serving as my inspiration to keep up at it.

I am thankful that this blog is as successful as it is. When I got into blogging, I didn't have big aspirations to become the next big thing in the blogosphere; I just wanted a place where I could write a lot, and perhaps someone would read it. Sometimes I go to the stats tab in Blogger's editor and am amazed at just how many hits my blog gets in a day. The most amazing thing to me is that I got this far on my own merit. I never asked other bloggers to link to me, I never shamelessly advertised myself, and I never asked my friends to read what I wrote. I just started writing without any fanfare, and over the years (year and a half, specifically), people started reading me. Not because I asked them to, not because I tried any devious schemes to draw them in, but because they liked what they saw.

Which brings me to the final thing I am thankful for: you. I am thankful that my blog has readers and that my posts get comments with a fair amount of frequency. Knowing that people read my posts has caused me to be more mindful of their quality, and practicing writing with quality in mind has made my writing better in all parts of my life. But most of all, it makes me happy to know that people enjoy what I write (or else they wouldn't read it, would they?), so to all those people who deemed my posts worth their time, thank you.

What can you do at 80 without a group? Part II: tangible rewards in Azeroth and Outland

Last week, I wrote a post about what one can do at 80 that doesn't involve grouping, the Argent Tournament, or doing dailies just to make money. Turns out there wasn't a whole lot to do at 80 that didn't fall under those categories, so now I'll be going over things one can do at 80 in Outland or Azeroth to pass the time. I'll be ignoring achievements and reputations grinds without any real rewards, so that leaves out running old 5-mans and raids and getting exalted with superfluous factions. I'll try to stick to things that only have tangible rewards. Sadly, this means the ideas below will mostly concern aesthetic things like mounts and pets, which have timeless value, since pre-Wrath gear isn't very useful now.

Get exalted with Netherwing and get a Netherdrake mount.
If you didn't get epic flying before Wrath hit, you probably never got exalted with Netherwing, which is a shame. Netherwing not only offers some of the coolest mounts in the game, but some of the funnest dailies, too. (Booterang, anyone?) If you have never had the joy of getting exalted with Netherwing, you should start by getting epic flying. Then head to Shadowmoon Valley in Outland and start with the quest Kindness. After finishing that quest chain (and assuming you have epic flying), you'll be able to do the Netherwing dailies. They don't start out that fun, but they get much better as your reputation gets higher.

Farm Baron Rivendare for his mount.
This is one of the classic WoW time-killers. Having never done it myself (I like pets more than mounts), I can't give you much advice, but I'm sure the wowhead comments section will help you there. This will have you heading to Stratholm to farm the final boss over and over and over and over again. One comment seemed particularly important, so I'll reprint it here: "You have to kill the bosses outside those necropolis things and beat-up the acolytes inside to actually open the gate the Baron."

Farm some classic pets.
Here is a small selection to get you started. The four classic whelplings will certainly take you a long time if you wish to farm them yourself, rather than buying them. Their drop rates range from 0.1% to 0.4%. Looking for a more hard core grind? You can also try going for the Disgusting Oozeling, which seems to have a .15% chance of dropping for each ooze you kill. If you are really crazy, you can go for the Hyacinth Macaw, which appear to have a .01% chance of dropping. That's 1 in 10,000. Good effin' luck.

Level your professions and secondary skills.
As I mentioned in my last post, if your professions and secondary skills aren't at 350 or higher, you'll need to head to Azeroth or Outland to do what you need to do to level them (with the exception of fishing). If your cooking is languishing in the double digits, why not bring it up to speed? Believe me, being able to make your own buff food is an amazing thing.

To avoid redundancy, I didn't include things in this post that I already went over in my post on how to pick a side hobby, so look there for more suggestions.

What I would like to see in Cataclysm. Part 2: Quests

If you read my post on the homogenization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content, you'll know I am not a fan of the way Blizzard does solo content right now. Quests, an intrinsic part of solo-ing, have become repetitive, trite, and boring. Although I frequently do the Argent Tournament dailies, the only thing that keeps me doing them are the pets. Although I think Blizzard had an interesting idea with the jousting mini-game, it isn't that great. The rest is basically kill stuff or collect stuff. Like the profession design, the current quest design in boring, lazy, and unenjoyable. This needs to change.

Now I personally have nothing against dailies; I just think that Blizzard needs to put a bit of effort into inventing creative ones. I have fond memories of Bomb Them Again!, Disrupt the Greengill Coast, and The Booterang: A Cure For The Common Worthless Peon, specifically. I looked forward to doing these dailies, since they were fun, really and truly fun. I think Blizzard can take some valuable lessons away form these dailies.

I may be looking back on the past through rose-tinted glasses when I look at Bomb Them Again!, since it made extensive use of flying mounts, something that was very exciting in the Burning Crusade, but I think there is something to be said for quests involving flying. They were exhilarating, and they actually took skill. The closest thing we have right now is Get Kraken!, and it's a horrible replacement. Flight-path-based quests will never be as fun as genuine flying quests since they take away the element that makes the quests fun: control. They also sometimes force the player to take the flight path multiple times if they don't complete the quest the first time around, which can be really inconvenient if the area of the quest is far away from the spot where you mount (Distraction at the Dead Scar, I am looking at you).

That said, even Distraction at the Dead Scar had something that made it redeemable, something that Disrupt the Greengill Coast especially displayed: skill made the quest easier. The quests these days hardly reward skillful playing. There is little dexterity required, and little motivation to put in any sort of effort to doing the quest well. Why did this not apply to Disrupt the Greengill Coast? Because you needed to use fewer Orbs of Murloc Control if you could get more murlocs in the area of effect of your orb. Thus you needed to kill fewer Darkspine Sirens, since you needed fewer orbs. Most people probably needed four orbs their first time around, but with a bit of practice, you could free ten Murlocs with three orbs easily. Distraction at the Dead Scar was especially like this, since you needed to be quick with the bombs to kills all of the enemies you needed on the first trip. Most people needed two trips when they first did that quest, and it was a very long trip. With practice, though, we could get all of our enemies in one trip. That was the key, though: we needed practice in order to get to that level of skill. These dailies directly rewarded skilled playing, something that is lacking in today's dailies.

So what can be learned from The Booterang? Mainly, quests don't need to involve killing or collecting. Slaves to Saranite is one quest that comes to mind that breaks out of this mold, but its still a far cry from the fun that was Booterang. The Booterang was a great example of creative quest design because it involved no collection and next to no chance of engaging in combat. It could also be macro'd, making the whole experience very simple and enjoyable. Still, the creativity is the most important part, and I wish we could have some more creativity in daily design.

What do I want to see in the future? I was to see quests that involve us flying into areas on our own mounts to do them, quests that actually provide a challenge. I'd also like to see these quests be more challenging for people with epic flying, since an epic flying mount made Bomb Them Again! a joke. I want to see more quests that take less time if you actually think about what you are doing, like trying to aim a bomb strategically. I want to see quests that don't involve killing or collecting. Perhaps these quests could involve giving aid to people in distress or rescuing people, or just throwing things at them. Truth be told, the current quest design is quite lacking, and anything short of a complete reversion to quests that only involve killing will be an improvement.

Finally, as a personal note, I really wish Blizzard would change the cooking quests to what they were like in the days of Burning Crusade, when each one required different meat that needed to be farmed on the day of the quest and cooked close by where they were farmed, and also rewards meat and fish, not just spices and recipes or tokens for them. The way cooking quests are now, the challenge is in collecting the non-meat ingredients, not the meat itself. This is fine if they ingredients are collected by a spot where meat can be farmed, but they aren't. Please, Blizzard, make the cooking dailies like they were before.