Comparing the three WoW's, Part 1: Raiding and PvP

One could say that there are three worlds (of warcraft?) in this amazing game we play: solo-ing, group PvE, and PvP. These three areas have an interesting parallel between them: they each have two categories of content, one of which is a gateway of sorts for the other, the other of which provides better loot. For group PvE, those two categories are heroics and raiding. For PvP, they're battlegrounds and arenas (though battlegrounds will provide gear as good as that provided in arenas once Cataclysm hits). For solo-ing, they're, quite simply, content done before the level cap and content done at the level cap. Considering the parallel structure between these three areas of the game, I think it's worth it to look at each area, examine their similarities and differences, and see what that says about the game itself.

It seems that my readership is comprised more of solo-ers than of raiders or PvP-ers, but I'll look at the group PvE scene first--I want to save soloing for last, for I suspect that is where the most interesting conclusions will come from. From the beginning of Burning Crusade, when heroics were first implemented, they were designed to be an entryway into the raiding scene: they gave loot that allowed one to enter the first tier of raiding, and they provided a challenge to those who had just reached the level cap, while still being less of a challenge than raids (and thus rewarding comparably worse loot).

It seems, however, that Blizzard has acknowledged the popularity of heroics (a full 14% of my readership seems to spend most of their time in heroics), for they have added four since Wrath was released, all of which were designed to be harder than regular heroics and to be comparable to raids in terms of their difficulty, and thus reward better gear. All heroics received another upgrade when Blizzard changed the emblem system so that the daily heroic would reward the best emblem in the game, while the bosses themselves would drop the second best emblems. While this meant that heroics did allow players to get better gear, they were still firmly in the position of a stepping stone into raids; if anything, the new heroics themselves were just added to give people who can't raid but can run heroics a place to use that new gear, and to give those looking to get into the newest tier of content another avenue to get raid-worthy gear. Thus heroics still seem to exist as little more than the step before raids; the change in the emblem system only improved that functionality, since people likely don't want to run old raids to help alts and new players gear up, so the emblem system makes it so they don't have to.

And as for battlegrounds and arena? Well, they share a similar structure; battlegrounds are available to players before arenas are, and they allow players to gear up in second-rate (compared to arenas) gear, gear which can allow them to move into arenas, where they will get the best gear. Thus the best gear is only available to those who participate in arena, while gear that was once exclusive to arena players becomes easier to get for players who only participate in battlegroung PvP.

The way gear is obtained in battlegrounds and arenas shows an interesting parallel to the way gear is obtained in heroics and raids: the latter provides better gear than the former, but gear that was once exclusive to players who participate in the latter becomes available to those who participate in the former as the expansion wears on. This can allow us to conclude that Blizzard wants players who decided to enter the arena scene a bit later than others to have a chance at getting geared up for it with relative ease. It certainly takes longer than it may have at the beginning of the expansion, but it is still easier for them to do so than if they had to use the same starter gear as people had to use during the first season of the expansion.

More disturbing, though, is the implication of this parallel that Blizzard sees arena as the PvP counterpart to raiding, and thus they see battlegrounds as the PvP counterpart to heroics, i.e., inferior content. Now, Blizzard has said that they want as many people who PvE to raid as possible, and they have certainly designed the game to make that happen. Can we thus conclude that Blizzard sees arena as the end-goal of all PvP, just as raiding is the end-goal of all PvE? It's an interesting prospect, but it might not be the case. After all, Rob Pardo, Blizzard's VP of game design, has gone on record as saying that arenas were the biggest mistake in WoW's history, and I doubt Blizzard would want to encourage players to participate in something they saw as a mistake. One could see rated battlegrounds as Blizzard's way of admitting that arena should not be the end-goal of PvP, since rated battlegrounds will allow people who play only in battlegrounds to get the same gear as people who play only in arenas. This means that battlegrounds and arenas will no longer relate to each other the way they do now, with the latter being awarding superior gear and thus being implied as being superior to the former.

Still, if Blizzard was so unhappy with the way arenas were implemented, why did they try so hard to promote them over battlegrounds? And why did they still try to do this when arena participation dropped dramatically after rating requirements were added to gear, showing that many players simply weren't interesting in arena for the experience of it? And most importantly, why did they stick with this dying part of the game in spite of the balancing nightmare it created for them? The best guess I have is that they simply didn't know what a nightmare arenas would create; Pardo himself said that if they did know what a nightmare it would be to balance the classes in arenas and PvE, they probably wouldn't have implemented the arena system. I guess their best excuse is the classic excuse: it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I wanted to make sure I had enough time to explore this topic as much as needed, so I will have to postpone looking at the parallels between leveling and cooperative PvE for my next philosophy post, which may or may not be posted next Wednesday (considering the sporadic nature with which the ideas for these blog posts come to me, I can't make any promises). Stay tuned!

Edit: As I suspected might happen, the follow-up to this post will be posted on Friday.

How to make fishing in Wintergrasp waters worthwhile

Normally I would keep something like this to myself, but I'm sure anyone can figure it out who really wants to, so I may as well put this out there for those of you who don't know about it.

Wintergrasp is a great place to fish. You can fish up Musselback Sculpin and Glacial Salmon, both very valuable on the auction house, without needing to go looking for pools. The problem, though, is that Wintergrasp is a PvP area, and if you want to fish while doing something else, that makes it difficult to do. You can't fish in Wintergrasp for more than five minutes without someone of the opposite faction attacking you, as anyone who has tried to do Dangerously Delicious can attest. Going into Wintergrasp flags you for PvP, and if a battle starts, you'll need to queue for the battle to stay in there. The key then, is to be able to fish in Wintergrasp waters without being in Wintergrasp. This, surprisingly, is possible.

The key is to stand on the edge of Wintergrasp by where the air elementals are. You can stand there and fish in Wintergrasp waters while being in Dragonblight, thus not flagging you for PvP (that won't work on a PvP server, though, but when you rolled your character on a PvP server, you knew what you were getting into) and allowing you to fish in peace, even where there is a battle going on (I have done this before). Unfortunately, those air elementals will attack you in most spots you try to stand, but there is one spot where they won't attack you, pictured bellow. The coordinates are 24, 35 in Dragonblight.











































In those pictures I am standing as close as you can stand to the water without being in Wintergrasp. The spot is in the lower-right (south-east) corner of Wintergrasp. Don't worry about needing to stand really close to the water. Your bobber with go through the rock, as you can see bellow, and you can still click it through the rock.















That said, you'll still want to get as close to the water as possible without being in Wintergrasp. My advice on how to do this is to walk towards the water bit by bit until you enter Wintergrasp and are flagged for PvP. Then walk backwards inch by inch until you are in Dragonblight again. Now mount up and fly directly upwards (space bar) without moving in any other direction. Stay up there so that the members of the opposite faction cannot attack you while you wait for your PvP flag to disappear. Once it is gone, fly back down (x key) without moving in any other direction. You can now fish in peace.

So there you go. Now go enjoy your new-found cash cow!

As a note, this post was pretty short, and all of my posts this month may be the same way, since I am participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Wish me luck!

Best Druid glyphs for your spec/area of play

Glyphs were added with the Insciption profession in Wrath of the Lich King, and they have added a new dimension to character customization. Because there are many druid glyphs, I figured it would be a good idea to write a guide to which ones I think are best. (However, because of the wide number of roles druids can fill and the fact that we don't have many more abilities than other classes, we don't have many glyphs to choose from for each role, so the decision isn't as difficult as it is for other classes.) That said, this is just my opinion, and if you feel you would get more use out of a glyph not mentioned here, feel free to use it.

Major

Balance (Leveling/Solo)
Glyph of Entangling Roots
Considering that Entangling Roots is the one thing keeping a mob from getting all up in your grill (I apologize for using that phrase), the utility of this glyph should be obvious.
Glyph of Wrath
Sometimes, however, no matter what you do, mobs will attack you, in which case its nice to have a spell that you can use without being interrupted frequently.
Glyph of Monsoon
Of course, sometimes you just want to get those pesky mobs out of melee range, and this glyph will help you do that more frequently. (Note: If you don't take Typhoon in your leveling build, then take either Glyph of Innervate or Glyph of Starfall.)

Balance (PvP)
Glyph of Wrath
Though you will have some interruption protection from Nature's Foucs, the fact that many people will probably be attacking you means that an uninterrupted stream of Wrath casts will certainly be helpful.
Glyph of Monsoon
You'll want to keep those players out of melee range as much as possible, so you'll want to be able to knock them back as much as possible.
Glyph of Barkskin
Of course, you will take damage no matter what you do, but with this glyph and with Barkskin up, you'll take less, especially from those stun-happy rogues.

Balance (Raiding)
Glyph of Moonfire
Since most raid battles tend to go on for a long time, Moonfire will do more damage with its DoT than its instant damage, so this glyph is a no-brainer.
Glyph of Starfire
Combine this glyph with Glyph of Moonfire and your Moonfire will be doing very mana efficient damage in no time.
Glyph of Insect Swarm
This one is a bit trickier. If you have a hunter using Scorpid Sting in your raid, then you have nothing to worry about, but otherwise you're tank will be taking a bit more damage. Still, it's worth it to make one of the most mana efficient spells in the game even better.

Feral (Leveling/Solo)
Glyph of Claw
Useful while leveling. However, the moment you get Mangle, replace this glyph with something... anything! (Except for Glyph of Mangle. Since you'll probably be solo-ing in cat form, you'll be using Mangle a lot anyways, so there is no point in getting a glyph that increases its duration.
Glyph of Rake
Keeps your enemies from running away. This way you won't need to chase after those runners to keep them from bringing some of their friends back with them.
Glyph of Berserk
Makes our only offensive emergency ability even better. Berserk is fantastic, so five more seconds of it is even better. That's three more multi-target mangles or 100 more free energy.

As for your third glyph after you hit 80, just take your pick from any of them. These are the only glyphs that directly benefit solo-ing ferals.

Feral (PvP)
Glyph of Berserk
PvP is all about burst damage, so now you can make your burst damage last even longer.
Glyph of Barkskin
This glyph is useful to all specs in PvP, so take it.
Glyph of Survival Instincts
For when you need to be that much harder to kill. Survival Instincts is a great way to add a bit more fight to your druid, so this glyph allows you to add even more fight to your druid.

Feral (Tanking)
Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration
Since this is one of our two defensive cooldowns in Bear Form, why not make it even better? It's going to be draining your threat anyways, so you may as well get the most out of it.
Glyph of Maul
Tanking two targets is a tricky game, but this glyph makes it a bit easier. Since you'll be using maul a lot, you may as well get the most out of it.
Glyph of Survival Instincts
While I personally don't use Survival Instincts, and thus have no use for this glyph, I know that many tanks do, so if you do use Survival Instincts, take this glyph. (If you don't, just take Glyph of Growl.)

Feral (DPS)
Glyph of Savage Roar
You should have Savage Roar up all the time as a raid DPS, so this way you will increase all damage you do by 3%. That's pretty damn good.
Glyph of Rip
Rip is an incredible finishing move, so this glyph makes it even better and gives you more time energy for Shreds of even the occasional Ferocious Bite.
Glyph of Shred
And speaking of Shred, since you will be using it so frequently, you may as well get the most out of it. This glyph makes Rip even better, allowing for a full 22 seconds of bleeding goodness.

Resto (PvP)
Glyph of Barkskin
Because they always seem to go after the healer, for some reason.
Glyph of Regrowth
In the frenzied pace of PvP, I usually end up throwing Regrowths on people whom I have already cast it on, so this glyph will be helpful for you if you do the same thing.
Glyph of Swiftmend
In PvP, you don't have the extra time to re-apply to HoT, so this glyph will be invaluable.

Resto (5-Mans)
Glyph of Swiftmend
So you never need to worry about sacrificing healing later for healing now.
Glyph of Nourish
Though PvE can get very frenzied, you should be collected enough to be able to cast Nourish on your targets with Regrowth active on them, so the Glyph of Regrowth will have limited utility. Thus you'll want to take this glyph instead.
Glyph of Innervate
This is more of a filler glyph than anything, since the really gem of a resto glyph isn't useful until you move on to 10-mans or 25-mans

Resto (Raids)
Glyph of Wild Growth
Ah, here we go. Though this is admittedly more useful in 25-mans than 10-mans, the fact is that it makes one of the best raid-healing spells in the game even better.
Glyph of Nourish
Raid bosses usually end up doing a lot of damage to the tank, damage you can't heal with just your HoTs, so this glyph will be even more useful than it is in 5-mans.
Glyph of Swiftmend
Saves time and saves mana. You know why you love this glyph.

Minor Glyphs:
Since these are mostly matters of personal choice, I'll simply say who I think each glyph is good for and leave the choice up to you. I have ordered these in what I see as order of usefulness, with the most useful ones on the top.
Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth
Though the reagents for Rebirth don't cost very much, this glyph frees you up from needing to carry them around. Although you can drop this glyph if you want three of the glyphs bellow, I recommend it for any druid.
Glyph of Thorns
This glyph is a life saver for any solo-ing or leveling druid. I highly recommend it. Anyone who has ever solo-ed without this glyph knows what a pain it is to keep shifting out of your forms to cast Thorns. It's also pretty useful for tanks in 5-mans, but if you have a druid with spellpower gear on in your group (which is more likely in raids), they should be casting Thorns on you instead
Glyph of Dash
Invaluable for PvP as any spec. Also good as a filler glyph for raiders for those long runs back after wiping on a boss far in the instance.
Glyph of Aquatic Form
This can be a pretty good glyph for people leveling, but its still more of a filler glyph than anything. Take it if you don't want anything else.
Glyph of the Wild
Nothing more than a filler glyph, but still worth taking if you are a raider and have an empty glyph slot to fill.

And those are what I think are the best druid glyphs. This is just opinion and you can take it with a grain of salt if you want, but I think you'll agree with at least some of what I say here. As for which order you take your glyphs in while leveling, I leave that up to you. By the time you unlock you first glyph slots at level 15, you should know enough about your playstyle to know which glyphs will help you the most.

How Blizzard could make shifting more attractive for druids

One of the things Blizzard revealed with the druid class Q&A was that they want to make shifting more attractive for druids. Currently, we druids spend most of our time in or respective shapeshifting forms rather than in our caster form, so we rarely get to see our armor or take advantage of our class's hybrid nature. It seems the Blizzard wanted to start doing this immediately, as we can see with one of the changes coming in patch 3.2.2.

Predatory Strikes: This talent now also causes the druid's finishing moves to provide a 7/13/20% chance per combo point to make the next Nature spell with a cast time below 10 seconds instant cast.

This means that cats will at least have the chance to see their caster forms more often, with each finishing move allowing the use of an instant healing touch or regrowth or maybe even rebirth. I could see other such changes to make shifting out of our forms an attractive option. A similar talent for bear form could look something like this:

Protector of the Pack: This talent now also causes barkskin to allow you to retain bear form's damage reduction, armor and stamina increase, threat increase, and all other benefits of being in bear form for 33/66/100% of its duration if you leave bear form.

This would allow a tank to leave bear form and heal his allies or use a crowd control spell, without him loosing his increased defenses. Admittedly, a druid using this kind of ability would probably cause less threat with his spells than he would with by staying in bear form, but the goal here is simply more utility. I'd probably use an ability like this to throw down tranquility when the going gets tough. Your healer would love you for that.

Although it would be easy to suggest using similar talents to motivate druids to leave moonkin and tree form, the fact is that most balance druids have no real reason to leave moonkin form, and most resto druids have no real reason to leave tree form. Sure, a moonkin could cast the occasional side heal, and a tree may need to use cyclone in an emergency, but for the most part, there's little reason to make caster druids leave their forms aside from simply doing it for its sake. Feral druids do need to shift out to heal, so such talents are useful to us, but they wouldn't be as useful to casters.

This only applies to PvE, though. In PvP, it's a different story. A moonkin fighting on his own can only count on himself for heals, and a tree needs to use his defensive spells to stay alive. Thus, in PvP, pretty much all druids have a reason to shift out of their forms already, and the change to predatory instincts will simply make it easier for feral druids. Perhaps moonkin and trees could get a talent reducing the cast time of their restoration and balance spells, respectively, by 50% after they leave their forms. Aside from that, I think that casters are all set in the see-their-forms department when it comes to PvP.

Like I said, though, in PvE, there is very little real motivation for caster druids to leave their forms currently, so Blizzard would need to create that motivation, and doing so without nerfing the forms themselves would be quite difficult. One of my initial thoughts on a way Blizzard could motivate casters to leave their forms without nerfing the forms themselves was to give casters a buff to their forms that contrasts the benefits of moonkin/tree form. The problem with that idea is that both forms increase damage/healing and either reduce the mana cost of spells or have a way of giving the druid mana back. Thus there isn't much that the two forms don't currently offer druids who use them.

Truly, the only drawback of moonkin/tree form is that they don't allow the use of most restoration/balance spells, respectively, but in a PvE environment, this is not a cause for concern. Unless this simple fact changes, caster druids will be forced to stay in their forms unless Blizzard can somehow change druids fundamentally.

Why the leveling process doesn't help a player learn their class

One of the most frequent arguments I see used in debates on whether or not to let players with high-level characters start new characters at a high level (say, 55) is that those 55 levels help a player learn their class. Although there are many reasons to go through the whole leveling process (as I mentioned here) I do not see the "it helps you learn your class" argument as a legitimate reason to force players to go through the leveling process after they have done it once. In other words, I do not think that the leveling process helps a player learn their class.

First of all, when many people refer to "learning one's class," they mean learning one's class for the purposes of raiding. In PvP situations, most people don't mind as much if they fight with someone who doesn't know their class, and most people are quite happy to fight against someone who doesn't know their class. In raiding, however, if someone doesn't know how to play their class, then everyone suffers. Thus, when I say "learning one's class," will from now on be referring to "being prepared for raids." This also applies for 5-man instances, which are meant to be a stepping stone between solo-ing and raids.

Now, the first thing one needs to know when preparing for raids is where he fits in. I am, of course, referring to the three key roles: tank, DPS, and healer. It is my opinion that the leveling process does not adequately prepare players for any of these roles. For example, when it comes to tanking, one concept frequently lost on new tanks is that tanks always need to hold the attention of the enemies, with rare exception. Let's imagine a warrior solo-ing his way to 80. Since has has only fought for himself, he has no concept of keeping a monster attacking him, even if he is low on health. He may be glad to see that monster run away once it gets low on health. That gives him an opportunity to bandage up or loot another guy he killed. If he has high health, then he will probably be just as glad to see that runner grab an extra guy; it means that the monster and the loot it drops will come to him, rather than him needing to run to it. Of course, everyone who has ever done an instance knows that this kind of attitude towards runners is a guaranteed way to cause a wipe. More adds means more damage means healer heals more means healer runs out of mana means everyone dies.

Now that he's gone, we can focus on the other one, right guys? ...guys?

Now let's say our little lonely warrior is out fighting a gnoll and another one runs past him to attack someone else. He is the same level as the gnolls, and his gear isn't the greatest (he is leveling, after all, and will soon replace it), and thus he can't take on two at once. Thus he lets it attack the other player, and if it comes back to attack him, he runs away. Put that warrior in an instance, and you have a tank who lets adds attack the mage and actually runs for the instance entrance when it all goes wrong, both of which are bad to do. (Note: I did both of these things when I first tanked Deadmines, so I am not making these things up.)

As for DPS, while leveling, more damage=faster kill=better chance of survival. While raiding, more damage=likely out-threat-ing the tank=death, or potential wipe. The leveling process teaches DPS nothing of threat, one of the most basic concepts necessary for a DPS to know for raids. Leveling creates a mindset that more damage is always good, and that moderation of damage is never necessary. Obviously, when raiding, the opposites of both facts are true, yet it seems that many a DPS that I have PUG'ed with have no concept of threat or damage moderation.

Healing is also a difficult concept for solo-ers to grasp. Put a priest who has always had to fend for himself in a group and he'll probably at the very least keep a shadow word: pain up on the boss. Leveling also requires strategies for survival that are not viable in groups. A solo-ing priest will use power word: shield a lot to protect them from damage and allow them to cast spells unimpeded. However, unless a priest is spec'ed deep Discipline and the tank is a high enough level (read: 80) that he doesn't need to depend on taking damage to generate rage/mana (if a paladin), then the shield will be a liability. Solo-ing also frowns upon overhealing, as it wastes mana, which means more downtime. In a group, overhealing is certainly not the ideal, but it's better than a dead tank.

Most importantly---and this can be applied to all players regardless of the roll they play in raids---solo-ing teaches a player to be self-reliant, and the habits of self-reliant players are often detrimental to the success of a raid, where everyone needs to work together. Now, when I refer to self-reliant behavior, I'm not talking about a shaman DPS healing damage he took from an AoE effect if the healer is busy healing the tank. I'm talking about a priest using psychic scream when he is attacked, a druid tank shifting out of bear form to heal himself, a mage using ice armor for its defensive capabilities rather than mage armor for more mana or molten armor for more DPS, a mana-using DPS going OOM because he was using his highest-damage abilities rather than his most mana-efficient ones, a frost mage going into an instance spec'ed for survival and not for damage and putting out sub-par DPS as a result, a hunter using distracting shot to "save" a tank because he does it when his pet is low on health and he can usually take the damage, or an elemental shaman using stoneskin totem in a raid rather than strength of earth totem because he has no use for strength or agility. All of these are mistakes I have seen players make, even in level 80 instances, where players should know better.

Just like in real life, methods you use to protect yourself in WoW are often counter-productive to the success of the group, impeding others from accomplish their goals. Oh yeah, I just combined WoW, philosophy, and political commentary with one picture and one caption. I'd like my medal now.

"But," you may say, "we all had to go through the leveling process, so why don't we all suck?" First of all, Dr. Dennis Leary would disagree with your assumption. Second of all, players learn the above-mentioned concepts not by leveling, but by doing low-level instances and/or group quests. That's how I learned about tanking, and it's how anyone who wants to learn the basics of grouping gets started. However, anyone who has already reached level 80 and is leveling a second character probably isn't going to want to run a low-level instance, so they won't get any experience with their new class in groups. And since they probably already understand the basics, why would they need to learn anything anyways?

"But," you say, "if someone has been a tank all the time they've been playing WoW, how can they learn another role?" I recently had this experience. For as long as I can remember, I was a tank on my druid. With the advent of dual-specs, I could finally become a healer, a role which I had always wanted to try out but never did for fear of losing my solo-viability. Having never healed an instance before, I read some online guides to druid healing, did the math to figure out my most mana efficient heals, familiarized myself with my new keyboard layout, and started in an instance I was already familiar with---Violet Hold. Not only did I heal really well, but I even got complimented on my healing, and I now heal raids in my guild frequently. Point is, though not all roles are created alike, learning a new role and learning it well has nothing to do with leveling.

"But," you should be saying now, "what about learning the nuances of your class? Put a level 50 shaman in the hands of someone who isn't familiar with the class and they will be overwhelmed." First of all, anyone who is lucky enough to receive a level 50 shaman should get on their knees and thank whichever god, gods, deity, or deities they worship for what they have received (unless they already have one, of course). I will admit, it would probably be overwhelming to learn a class from scratch at level 50. I think that if a "start a new character at 55" system where ever implemented, it would need to be like the Death Knight starting quests. It would grant players their talent points and abilities slowly, allowing players to become acclimated to their class at a comfortable pace. These quest-lines could also be class specific, allowing players to learn the intricacies of their class better. With the news the Cataclysm may completely change Azeroth, such a system may be possible. Imagine starting a new soldier of Stormwind/Orgimmar in a war-torn world where only a few fragments of the old conflicts remain. Since the various leaders need more troops fast, they could use these new recruits to clean up the mess left in Azeroth's old zones while using the experience to help them prepare for the coming battles. I think that quests like that would make for a good story. I'll post next Monday on ideas I have for how such a system could be implemented. (Edit: I never did this, for lack of ideas, and I apologize.) That is, unless Blizzard comes out and says the leaked Cataclysm details were hoaxed and MMO Champion was wrong.

Would they lie to us? Well, maybe... You can't really blame them if Blizzard was using the alleged leak as a foiler to test the waters with player's reaction to radical changes.

Coming back to the main point, leveling does a lot of things, but the only thing it does really well is prevent a player from getting to the new content with a new character in a timely manor. Blizzard has already said that they think end-game is where it's at, so why they won't let players get on the fast track there is beyond me.

How to pick a side hobby

WoW is a big game. There is a lot to do in this game, and though you should experience all of it in some respect, it's good to have one activity to fall back on when you just want to pass some time. Raiding, battlegrounds, and arenas are nice focuses for your game, but when you have a few hours before your guild's Ulduar run is scheduled to start or your full arena team isn't on yet, it's nice to have something to do on your own. That's what this post is concerned with; side hobbies. Here I will discuss various side activities and whether or not you will find them fun. I will also link the associated meta-achievement or max achievement.

Pet Collecting
Non-combat pets are those little companions that follow you around wherever you go. They are quite nice as a flavor item, and as a pet-collector myself, I can tell you that collecting them is an enjoyable pastime. In the days of pre-Wrath, when pets took up space in our inventory, pet-collecting was not a very lucrative hobby. Each pet you had took up one space in your bank or bags, thus making them rather cumbersome. With the new pets interface, that has changed for the better, and you can now have as many pets as you like without running out of bag space.

One of the nice things about collecting pets is the variety of activities involved in pet collecting. Some are gained through reputations, while others must simply be ground for. (I think that's the past tense version of grind. Edit: Confirmed) Many holiday events also give you a pet of some kind, which gives you even more motivation to participate in them. It you want a more focused activity with a more tangible reward, then you may not like pet collecting. Then again, most of these activities won't have tangible rewards. If you want to do something with valuable rewards, run some 5-mans or do some dailies. Also, pet collecting isn't something that you can really brag about, so if you want a hobby that will bring you fame and glory, look elsewhere. It's a shame that you can't display more than one pet at a time, but it is still nice to have many to choose from, especially when a pet showoff session happens in your raid. In the end, if you like varied activities with frequent rewards, pet collecting is a good choice for you. A good database for the dozens of pets available in the game is WarcraftPets.com.

Mount Collecting
Mounts are an important part of the game. They get you from point A to point B faster than hoofing it on foot will, and some even allow you to fly. Thus, collecting them can become a fun pastime. Since mounts are a good deal larger than pets, it's easier to show off your rare mounts than your rare pets. Like pets, mounts once took up space in your bags, which means you wouldn't want to have more than two; one for the ground and one for flight. The new pets interface also has a pane for mounts, which makes collecting them even easier.

Unlike pets, mounts often take more effort to get but come in groups. For example, many mounts require long reputation grinds, but once you finish those grinds, you get six or eight mounts that you can buy. Some mounts are also rare dungeon drops and take even longer to farm than rare pets. Of course, this means that getting one of those mounts can be a real status symbol. If you want something that requires more effort than pets but has more impressive rewards, mount collecting could be for you. Warcraftmounts.com is a good database for mount collectors.

Completing Old-world Quests
There is a lot of lore to be found in WoW, and most of it is found in the quests. Some give you engrossing storylines that also motivate you to go through those old-world dungeons that you missed, while others are just plain fun. Of course, some will make you pull your hair out with their low drop rates, but overall, old-world quests are worth doing. They give you reputation to help you get your crusader title, and though the money you make with them may not off-set the repair bills you build up, it's still worth seeing what you missed if you decided to grind through your levels like I did.

It can be difficult to remember which zones you cleared out in terms of quests, as well as which quests you did that were started by a zone drop. This can lead to long hours spent searching zones for quests you already did or grinding for items you already got. Still, doing old-world quests is really it's own reward. These quests were put in the game for you, so you may as well try them out. Although I don't know of any resources that allow you to see which quests you have already done, I know that wowhead is a great resource for finding quests that you may not have known about.

Exploration
Filling out your in-game map is a simple task that lets you see parts of the world you may not have seen otherwise. You will probably complete some of the exploration-related achievements by doing all of the old-world quests, but exploring for its own sake can also be rewarding. Aside from the title and tabard, you also get to see all of the effort the art team put into this game. Although, to be honest, aside from Jenkins, The Explorer is one of the most unimpressive titles in the game. Just saying...

Fishing
Although I did list the meta fishing achievement, fishing in general is a fun activity. You get to catch fish which can be turned in valuable food for raids, as well as some other interesting things. It's a relaxing activity that I myself enjoy a lot. In the olden days, fishing was less rewarding than it is now and was only a source of food. You may have been lucky enough to win the Stranglethorn Fishing Contest or fish up the 1 Ring, but aside from that, fishing was rather one-dimensional. These days, not only is fishing a source of some fantastic buff food, but you can also strike at rich with the dailies involved in fishing.

One of the nice things about fishing is that it's low key and peaceful (for the most part), and thus won't incur any repair bills. It's also possible to fish while waiting for other things. You can fish on a dock while waiting for a boat or fish next to a dungeon while waiting for your group to get there. Fishing is one of the few activities that you can do almost anywhere, making it quite a versatile hobby. If you seek something more action oriented, then fishing isn't for you. Also, though there are a variety of locations you can fish in and things you can catch, the basic motions are still the same. Still is you want something relaxing to do that you can do almost anywhere, you'll like fishing. A fantastic resource for fishing is El's Extreme Anglin', which has information on anything and everything fishing related.

Reputations
This is probably the most time-consuming hobby in the list. Many people grind reputation to some extent, but some are obsessive about it. Some get try to get exalted with as many factions in the game as they can. The rewards of reputation grinds aren't as great as they used to be, but back in the old days, you could acquire many things by being liked by the right people. There are also some reputations that don't really have great rewards, but people still grind them just so they can have another "Exalted" on their reputation tab. Those of you with no life could also go for Insane in the Membrane, if you really think it's worth it.

Although the ways you gain reputation with different factions vary quite a bit, they all have one thing in common: they take a long time. Grinding reputations as a hobby is not for those who play casually. This is an activity for those who really have nothing else to do and who just want to do something that takes a long time. Again, I don't know of any resources specifically for grinding reputations, but wowhead can probably help you. WoWWiki also has some good guides on effectively grinding various reputations.


It's worth noting that some of these hobbies bleed into one another. For example, pet collectors trying to get the Mechanical Chicken will need to do the old-world Distress Beacon quests, and as I mentioned, doing old-world quests will fill out a large portion of your map. You can also gain some of the rarest pets in the game by fishing. And, of course, many factions gives pets and mounts, so you will probably need to grind some reputations for those two hobbies.

So there you have it! Whatever your hobby may be, just remember to enjoy it. There's no point in playing WoW if you aren't having fun.

Why I don't enjoy PvP

I'll admit it; I'm a carebear. I have a set of PvP gear left over from my Wintergrasp phase, but for the most part, I don't enjoy PvP. It's not because I don't enjoy PvP gameplay itself. I know a lot of PvP'ers think that us carebears don't enjoy PvP because it's actually a challenge, but if that were the reason, we wouldn't raid either. I quite enjoyed the challenge of PvP, since no two players ever fight the exact same way. Each battle is always different, and the thrill of it lies in the unpredictability.

But I digress. There is one reason that I don't enjoy PvP'ing, and it's more of a matter of principle than anything. Though I enjoyed PvP after I had gotten good at it, those days when I was just starting were really rough. I was always dying, and each death meant at least 30 seconds when I wasn't involved in the battle. In Wintergrasp, those 30 seconds could easily become two minutes in the right situations. Those were two minutes of me not being able to contribute to the fight at all, gain any honor, or have any fun. And those deaths happened a lot.

As I got better gear and became more skilled in the art of warfare, I began to die less often and actually be able to kill some players in fair battles. This should have been enjoyable, but those deaths I suffered back when I was starting out had done their damage. I realized that every time I killed an opponent in PvP, I was denying someone else that minute of action, of honor, of fun. All the things I didn't enjoy about PvP, I was now inflicting on someone else. That was my definition of victory: preventing another player from enjoying themselves. PvP in my opinion can best be defined as having fun by preventing another player from having fun.

Perhaps I'm just spoiled by PvE, but I find cooperative gameplay to be a lot more fun than competitive gameplay. In cooperative gameplay like raids, everyone has fun as long as everyone does their jobs. It's a win-win situation. Even if someone doesn't get gear from the encounter, they still get emblems and the satisfaction of killing someone more powerful than them. In PvP, however, every time someone wins, someone else needs to lose. I'm sure there are people who can walk away from a defeat, use it as motivation to play better next time, and be that much more satisfied when they do win, but I'm not one of those people.

Short post, I know, but there isn't a whole lot of explanation needed, really. Keep in mind that I am not saying anything against PvP; I'm just offering my reasons for not liking PvP so that maybe you PvP'ers can realize why we PvE'ers don't enjoy your part of the game.

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!

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.