The World of Warcraft that we play

Hello Alt-fans,

Welcome to the World of Warcraft that we play, a title taken from an old fan favourite on Youtube by Warcraft – Fan Music. Go and watch it now, i’ll wait… Better? Good, lets continue!

The last week has been spent percolating over three big topics: Outlands, professions, and heirlooms. Outlands is as amazing as remembered and I took a few detours flying between zones just to stare at the sky-boxes, most are amazing however Terokkar Forest was just an Azerothian star mat. I didn’t remember to snap any pictures until Nagrand, but that’s fine. Saving the best for last!

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Professions on the alts are a mixed bag in Outlands, and I can see them being an actual challenge. In 5 levels questing in Hellfire and Nagrand, I managed an amazing 15 blacksmithing points. The scarcity of ore to leveling speed is a real concern considering I have a 3:3 ratio on Mining to ore using professions. I recommend taking as much time as possible while leveling, really enjoy the process and give yourself time to find materials. Speeding through Outlands will just see you farming for materials at 70.

So to save myself from a level 70 material-grind and increase my interest in the leveling and crafting process, I am ‘opting out’ of heirlooms. I will replace heirlooms as soon as I can get a quest or crafted item of the right stats. Hopefully this will reduce the experience gain and give me more time in the zones, along with making the leveling process at least mildly dangerous.. which is actually doubtful.

One final note here on flying, a topic mentioned in regards to Warlords of Draenor on the podcast Extended Maintenance fairly often. It is noticeable in the Outlands quests that they were not made with flying in mind for these low zones. This leaves some quests feeling disjointed, so I try to just hoof it where possible and try to see quest hubs from the ground. I can’t speak for later zones, but it is definitely something off with the earlier expansion.

 

New Interface

The below image shows the solo mode for my tweaked UI. It’s a stark reminder that the World of Warcraft that I play, includes enjoyable 12 hour sessions tinkering with Addons and UI elements.

Some of the key addons I use include: Tidy Plates (neon), Bartender 4 , Grid (group mode w/ mana bars), Grid 2 (solo mode), Titan Panel, Sexymap, Mapster, Bagnon, Prat 3.0, Postal, MoveAnything. There are a few small quality of life addons such as hiding the player arrow, managing skins, auctions etc. Oh and Altoholic, but that’s a given.

All of these addons come with Global profiles which is almost required. Remember I have to set this up for all 11 of the alts whenever I make any change.

Solo Mode

Group 5

Group 10

You can see here how the Sexymap HUD lets me track quests / resources / players (with a toggle to normal mode if needed), and how I swap between Grid 2 for solo and Grid for group. This is an interesting facet of how Grid works with it’s set width/height by group size. Grid won’t let you dynamically alter the width by Solo mode, nor will it grow from a central position to let your solo square sit in the middle.

Things have to be symmetrical. They do. You can catch me on twitch during the week over at http://www.twitch.tv/everythingamiy to see the UI in action, and one of the alts being let out of the box.

 

#Alts4Life

Into The Wild Blue Yonder!

Hello fellow Alters!

It has certainly been a long time. I blame Wizards of the Coast and their horribly addictive card game Magic the Gathering. Over-night I ended up dropping WoW and becoming a card-junky. Luckily for for 1-woman guild, everyone here, and the realm of Azuremyst in general.. I have returned! In no small part to finding a Podcast for my commute called Extended Maintenance. Rho and Alt are hilariously funny in a rambly way, and I heartily recommend that any WoW player go and listen!

After coming back a few weeks ago I made a concerted effort to push all my characters to 60.Early Azeroth had quite a bit of variety, which was fine.. but the later zones consist of Sleepithus which takes an obnoxious 5 hours to do lvl 55-59, and Blasted Lands which while takes 3 hours right up to 60. This is all with Heirlooms, which at first I was all-set to be against on the principle of:

“I’ll level to fast to see zones, everything will be to easy, wah wah WAH!”    – Amiy, 1 week ago

After how long it has taken to push through the 55-60 bracket, how hard Dungeons are as a healer when people only have nitrous speed, and just generally how weak my clothies are.. I am less concerned. We shall see how it goes in Outland, I reserve the right to whine incessantly! Luckily I already had most of the ‘looms, so didn’t have to fork over to much gold. Check out the Wowhead – Darkmoon Faire this week if you are looking to pick up some quick heirlooms; while it is technically a waste of the DMF currency.. it is also easy for brand new players or the terminally broke.

 

So! Current state of affairs sees most characters maxed on their Professions, with only Ravine lagging behind as I had to recreate her. Sadly in doing that I lost my 375 Fisher, which I am sure will drive me nuts this week when I level it back up. As an Alt tip, I recommend being little bit of a kleptomaniac with your drops, everything has a value! Once all my characters were maxed on their professions, I made a good 10,000 gold selling off my remaining items. Arcanite Bars are great, as the crystals are so common compaered to their price; take a look at the Undermine Journal – Arcanite Bar for your realm.

 

Some of the best things to come out of the push to 60, are that I am back in the “Land of the Awesome Sky Box!”. While WotLK has the best Music, TBC definitely has the best skies. I’ll try to snap one or two of each zone at different times of the day, and make a gallery.

 

On a constructive Alter note, you should always have a plan for the characters. I made sure that different characters tried different areas, to diversify the experience as much as possible. For the healers and tanks, I split them 50:50 on specifics geared to their level vs. random queues. For the damage classes in Azeroth I tried to split the zones down the middle; while for Outland my plan is to have them alternate ‘hanging back’ until a zone is 100% complete, then skip the next zone entirely. This should mean I don’t end up seeing Nagrand 11 times.. I love it, but honstly there is a limit.

So to finish up, keep playing those Alts. You will find me on mine at Twitch – Everything Amiy on Weekday evenings, feel free to come by.

#Alts4Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mobile Armory, the Auctioneer in your Pocket

Episode 12: “Mobile Armory, the Auctioneer in your Pocket”

A very good evening to everyone reading!

As if it wasn’t enough to just play the game we love at home, the Mobile Armory application from Blizzard has finally caught my attention. The fact it’s free (now) is just the icing on the cake really! I first dabbled with the App when it was released to use the guild chat feature, but after a lacklustre free trial I gave it up as a bad job. For chatting ingame it just felt to clunky and far away from the goings on in the real guild chat. Not so for some of the other features (as I am finding out) such as the bane of my working day, live Auctions and the ability to check, collect, and create. The 3 ‘C’s of my hourly ritual.

It’s hard to explain without people seeing and having a go, which you all should be doing when you get a chance. The Auction system doesn’t require you to be in a city. That should be stressed again; no need to be anywhere near anything! Simply shift all of what you would like to sell to one character, fill their bank / bags, and have at you. What i’ve been doing is listing my auctions of an evening by funneling things to 1 character (Departure the Death Knight), then checking them all in the morning and at lunch for competition. The big sellers (i.e. my lil’ Bomblings and Smoky’s) are removed and re-listed if any competition pops up. By using 1 character this entire process is sped up to be more than manageable.

At first I was dubious about listing new Auctions using the mobile app, but it’s really rather simple. Blizzard have incorporated a ‘similar items’ area which while I’m unsure if the items are the lowest possible, the items i’m listing for the given prices are selling. Quickly too. Bigger items I would still say put some caution into though.

Levels, so many levels!

Episode 11: “Levels, so many levels!” (insert maniacal laughter)

Hello Alt-fans!

I have certainly been a busy beaver these last few weeks. All of the baby alts in Everything Amiy are now  level 40 with mounts, i’ve netted myself 5,000 gold without trying by just selling off surplas materials (this helped get some bank tabs). And for a cherry on to i’ve pushed all of my professions to 200-225+. In each post the character is shown along with it’s professions, role, and current mount – click the image for a link-through to their Armory profile. So without further ado, lets have a character role call with how things have been: nice graphics supplied at no extra cost!

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Ah the joy of the lowly Paladin, one of the first to be levelled she continues to be great fun levelling. In keeping with her Tank role I have been primarily in Dungeons, just enough outside activity to knock Andorhall on the head in Western Plaguelands. No complaints for her either in or out of the dungeons!

One interesting point when the Paladin isn’t your main character; it’s worth saving the dungeons. By this I mean don’t blitz through all of the levels at once, do a few here or there and it will really help to break up the levelling monotony. Plus it’s just such a smooth experience it makes a great de-stress after a frustrating day in the office.

In her travels she managed to see Uldaman only twice, both times the fresco (to the left) on the main doorway completely grabbed my attention. It may only be my imagination.. but all of the ‘cherubs’, just look like naked Goblins.

Just saying..

My Favourite Place in Warcraft

Welcome Alt-fans, 

You would not believe how busy the last few weeks have been! I’ve barely clocked up 8 levels across all of the alts. Main news is that Nurture the Shaman is now Resto (sigh of relief) and Ravine the Druid is now Boomkin (damned HoT’s were frustrating me). I’ll post something regarding the changes when I get a chance. 

For now, please enjoy my competition entry for the Girls Gone WoW Podcast; the requirement was to showcase a screenshot of your favourite place in Warcraft, with your favourite non-combat pet. Nethergarde mine was somewhere i took every character for the 45-58 grind back in the day. Easy killing, good loot, no alliance to play whack-a-mole with me. The Bombling has likewise followed me through the ages, with my Main Rogue (pictured) having worked hard for the recipe back when membership card renewals gained you the recipe. 

Toodles!

Shadow-who?

Episode 10: “Shadow-who?”

Hello Alt fans!

It’s been a little while since my last post, i’ve been a busy bee levelling the baby alts up all through to 35+. Just one more little push this week and i’ll be putting out a more in-depth article about the process from 60% to 100% mounts.

Today’s post is regarding my good friend, a fellow alt’er, and a brand new Warcraft player to boot; Shadow! Easily recognisable by his naming convention of ‘Shadow’ + a birds name, even being a new player he is having a great time playing 1 of each class (DK excluded). He can often be found rampaging around camps blithely ignoring quests in favour of ‘killing’ anything that moves. I have included a banner image above of all the characters, along with a name list to the left, have a guess at which is which class.

It’s been a real joy to see how the game tickles a new player, and how the changes Blizzard have made help guide new players through class mechanics. I’ve had to provide help here and their with things such as macro’s and addons, but by and large the glowing / shiny / golden pointed from Blizzard seem to be doing a great job. I still fondly remember back in Vanilla, making list with friends of levelling guides, items worth auctioning, all the fun stuff we now take for granted. When was the last time that when stuck on a quest, you didn’t simply go to Wowhead?

Oh well, only a short post (I really want to get back to levelling!). I’ll leave you with some not-so-sage-advice; turn on your blizzard beginner tooltips and make a new character, just to see what a great job they’ve done.

Remember folks, Bank alts have levelling rights too! Viva la alt revolution!

Woman with ALT-itude

Hello ALT-goers!

This weekend happened to be my Birthday (woo for me), upon returning to work this morning I found a cleverly themed card, that I believe someone at work inadvertantly thought said ‘Attitude’.  I then thought, “Hey, wait, ALT-itude!” and the below image was born!

Enjoy my birthday treat to myself.

Was good fun to make, look out for Episode 10; “Shadow-who?”

Mounts, mounts, mounts.. and Pets

Episode 9: “Mounts, mounts, mounts.. and Pets”

Happy post-weekend everyone,

Previously I documented some of my thoughts on Transmogrification for alts, well today’s post takes the same themed plans and looks into my plans for Mounts, NCP’s, and Pets on all 10 of the current Alts; the little Panda Monk will have to wait her turn to be mentioned.

The rationale behind each character was to pick the theme which I identify with on the character, and take that to it’s final conclusion. My advice for others is exactly the same, pick an aim that fits both the character and your theme. You want to stand out for originality, and in a game of this size you can be original in the combinations you choose rather than single choices.

So far I haven’t completed all that many of the characters goals, but as I do I give myself an internal ‘Amiy Achievement’ point and mark one off the list. It’s a fun way to stay sane through content that quickly becomes repetitive. One bonus is that in the thinking process it really highlights my plans for the characters in the future! Ravine the Druid will be a little ninja skinner following around others, Obscure the Rogue will epitomise the Goblin ethos of destroying the environment, and Forager the Hunter will dig up the hidden mysteries of Azeroth (read, Uldum).

The below list are my plans, those with an [O] are obtained already.

Much Fun Around Stranglethorn

Episode 8: “Much Fun Around Stranglethorn”

Hello everyone,

This week outside of the Competition-that-shall-not-be-mentioned occurred, I could be found in both Northern and Stranglethorn Vale. On all 9 baby alts. All of them! The zone truly works for every character, every profession, even every playstyle – on my Rogue and Warlock I quested my way through, my Hunter farmed Gorillas for leather, my Druid swam the shores doing fishing and herbalism.. it was crazy.

After so much time there I’ve compiled a small library of screen shots to remember the great scenery and events; consequently this post is mostly the pictures of the great time I’ve had. This weeks stand-out character is a draw between Forager the Hunter who I spent 4 hours skinning Gorillas on, and Ravine the Druid who powered her Fishing up while swimming up and down the coast. On the other side of the coin the worst character has to be Soulful the Warlock; she feels like her armour is made of paper. I’m such an awful Warlock, although her new Nightwing transformation is pretty nifty.

Competition Time Folks!

Episode 7: “Competition time folks!”

Before you get reading the Rewards and Rules, I want to wish you all the best of luck. I will be eagerly awaiting you at the finish line.

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REWARDS

• 1st Place – Little Ivory Raptor Whistle
• 2nd Place – Grell Moss
• x3 Runners Up – Paint Bomb (x50 a Pack)

(Loot codes will be mailed ingame, no out-of-warcraft contact necessary)

All you have to do to take part is roll yourself a Horde Alt on Azuremyst this Saturday (21/7/12) at 11am game time, send out a whisper to Appointed from the guild Everything Amiy to register your name and be invited to the guild. Consider yourself signed up as soon as you receive the guild invite. Only those who are in the guild from level 1 onwards will be accountable for the prizes.

You need to meet the following criteria:

• Something.. Stolen / Quested – Choose 1 from each category but NOT from the same Race. TheQuested MUST be wearable by your character.
• Something.. Gathered – Choose 1 option.
• Something.. Crafted – Choose 1 option.
• Something.. Slain – Complete the achievement.

Once all of these have been completed you will find Appointed in the age old melting pot of the masses.. Grom’Gol Base Camp! *grin*

Simply make your way down the Zeppelin tower to find her waiting in the courtyard of Grom’Gol to inspect you; please have your Achievement ready for linking.

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Something.. STOLEN (i.e quest item not handed in)

• The Lady’s Necklace – Ghostlands – Blood Elf
• Ectosplatter Sample – Azshara – Orc
• Demon Scarred Cloak – Mulgore – Tauren
• Quilboar Tusk x30 – Northern Barrens – Troll
• Tirisfal Pumpkin x10 – Tirisfal Glades – Undead

Something.. QUESTED

• Stung – Ghostlands – Blood Elf
• Sea Sister Vest – Azshara – Orc
• Mankrik’s Boar Slicer – Northern Barrens – Tauren
• Fizzle’s Gloves – Durotar – Troll
• Underestimated Crossbow – Silverpine Forest – Undead

Something.. GATHERED

• Bloodthistle x20 – Herbalism
• Light Leather x20 – Skinning
• Copper Ore x20 – Mining
• Raw Bristle Whisker Catfish x20 – Fishing
• Linen Cloth x40 – Materials

Something.. CRAFTED

• Rough Boomstick – Engineering
• Simple Dress – Tailoring
• Ornate Tigerseye Necklace – Jewelcrafting
• Embossed Leather Vest – Leatherworking
• Runed Copper Pants – Blacksmithing

Something.. SLAIN

• Taragaman the Hungerer – Ragefire Chasm – Complete the Achievement involving the death of this NPC.

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Good luck, and have fun Alt-goers!