Pre Panda Planning

As the new expansion looms closer, I'm starting to look at my roster of characters and wondering what I'm going to do with them. For the sake of planning, here they all are, listed in order of preference in terms of how much I play them, and pay attention to them.

I suspect pruning is necessary in the case of Rakshas - I fear he might have to go, as I don't enjoy the Death Knight class enough to play two of them. It's unfortunate as he is my second Alchemist (Transmute spec'd), but we have to do what we have to do.

Consolidation might also need to happen for my two Horde characters. They are currently on different servers, and I'm finding that US-Argent Dawn (RP) is a bit too slow and the AH a bit too dead for me to have much fun there - I've re-rolled the priest on US-Area 52 (PvE) to see how I like it - it is the third most progressed server in overall rankings, is in the New York server cluster giving me a latency of about 30 in Orgrimmar and much, much bigger in terms of population and activity. If I like it as much as I hope to, it will become my Horde home.

After I consolidate, I won't be rolling any more Horde characters, as between the Death Knight and Priest, I will have tanking, melee-DPS, ranged-DPS and healing covered.

My Alliance characters will, for the foreseeable future, remain on Moon-Guard, where I want to have another go at a Hunter and Shaman, both of which I have had a lot of trouble getting into in the past. I might even do the Resurrection Scroll thing for my wife's account and steal an 80 of one of those classes... tempting. Meanwhile, there is the Mage and the Rogue to get to 85. Hrm.

Ideally, I want to hit Pandaria with all classes at 85, 8 Alliance side and 2 Horde side. It'll also give me the leverage I need on the Alliance side to cap out all my professions (I'm just missing Leatherworking and Engineering right now.)

That is a lot of work, especially as I don't really enjoy leveling anymore... or so I thought until I started playing my Priest and man, Trisfal Glades is relatively fun to level through! I really want to play through the Forsaken Zones but didn't want two Forsaken, so I moved the Blood Elf after I hit level 5 and did all the quests starting from Death Knell. So far, so good.

Conservatively, I'd like to get all the characters I've got up to 85 at least, and maybe think about doing the Hunter and Shaman at some point when the leveling bug bites again. Ideally, I want to see this when I log into Pandaria:

How far will I get? We'll see how I do.

As for Innana, she'll finish What A Long Strange Trip It's Been later this month, with Children's Week and park me somewhere around ~10,500 Achievement Points which is respectable, even if that puts me a distant fourth behind three other Achievement junkies in my guild. I'd really love to knock out the old Wrath 25-mode mount achievements but those can be finicky to get together.

Then there are the remaining Heroic modes in Cataclysm to do... sometimes it feels like there just isn't enough time, and wasn't it just yesterday we were talking about Pre Cataclysm Planning?

Ah, well. We're all getting older!

It's Over Nine Thousand!

This weekend between bouts of Turkey and Stuffing floating in an ocean of butter, I took the time to grind out a bunch of low-hanging achievements and a profession that has been hounding me since Cataclysm launched and crossed the Nine Thousand achievement points line.

At first I just went for the easy stuff - getting Pilgrim got me well within striking range. After that, the cooking/eating/drinking achievements easily finished with purchases from the Auction House, a bit of cooking, and a little help from a guildy who cooked up all the cookies for You'll Feel Right As Rain.

After that, I grabbed an easy rep grind over a couple of hour or so to get two achievements and a pet, and then win-traded my way to another achievement over at the Argent Colosseum. Jumped off a cliff and bandaged myself for another.

After that, being so close to the end, I just began to grind out Archaeology as I had never finished it, stalling in the 300-range somewhere, and began to rack up the achievements until the finale when with five points left to go, I racked up three in a row, all adding up to the big one.

All done. Now I'm kind of looking at that number and wishing for a 5-digit number, especially with how many achievements I haven't ground out (a few meta 25-man stuff from Wrath, a few more Holiday things yet, several PvP ones, etc.), it shouldn't be difficult at all to hit 10k points. But I can take it in a more leisurely fashion. With the buff Archaeology is receiving in 4.3, I might even go back to get some achievements from there - I rather enjoy a few of the rare items you can get from there.

It was surprisingly relaxing to spend a few hours doing a low-stress activity like this. I do hope we see some kind of account-wide achievement tracking ability in 5.0 as I do hate being on an alt and not being able to prove that I know what I'm talking about when I'm trying to PuG something. Plus, a few of the really hard PvP achievements are very difficult to duplicate multiple times and if I have it on any one character who's not my Paladin, it's really aggravating to try and duplicate that.

Anyway. If 4.3 hits tomorrow, the relaxing down-time will be over and it's nose to the grind stone time. I'll need to cap Justice and Honor next week on at least two characters for PvP gear and start getting Valor and Conquest capped again.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig.

I'm Shy!

Online at least.

I really don't think I am in person, I'm fairly aggressive when it comes to socializing, and I don't really have any fear of speaking in public, meeting a new group of people, or whatever, but for some reason, when I'm taken out of my comfort circle in Warcraft, I do find myself acting in a very reserved and shy manner.

Specifically, I have an alt in a Horde guild on another server, and it's a large guild with a lot of people on and a lot of activities and I'm sure everyone is very friendly, but I seldom if ever pipe up to say anything or contribute much to the guild as a whole, nor do I get involved with it. As silly as it sounds for a man of my age to say, I feel shy and don't want to engage and make myself seem a fool! I'd rather sit in /trade looking to do stuff rather than ask in Guild.

Which is just insanely silly.


I remember back when I first really went looking for a new guild and joined a hardcore 25 man raiding group, I was the quiet guy who never said anything in Vent and used "Please", "Thank you" and smiley faces in nearly everything I ever said in Raid or Guild chat. When I got promoted to solo-tanking the really scary stuff in Ulduar, I was still really terrified to say anything, because there were 24 other people who were counting on me to keep pulls together.

It wasn't until months later when I got pulled into the selective 10-man group that was clearing a lot more content regularly that I began to feel like a part of the group and began to loosen up and some of those friendships are what led to my current guild, where I do feel very confident, and I work hard to assimilate new people in, though we are a much smaller guild by comparison.


All of this is well and good, but then I realized that it extends to a much bigger level when I think about my blog.

There is a large and vibrant and active blogging community - and I have never really participated in it. I don't really know how to, and I'm kind of scared to try to even start a dialogue. I don't know why I can be so much more confident and overcome any social anxiety in the real world where it can be a lot more overwhelming and when it comes to engaging in online communities, I get shy.

Anyway. There's not really a point to this other than that I logged into my Horde character, sat around for a few minutes staring glumly at /trade where nothing was going on, then I logged off and went to read a book.

So, um, sorry to be so inconclusive. As a bonus, here's a set I'm considering for my tanking transmog set!

Alts and Guild Experience

I've been busy with my main and alt (Paladin and Warlock) and have been having a lot of fun with them, both in PvP and PvE - but I kind of want something completely different lately.

For a while, I was thinking about playing another game on the side and there are some very good and solid games out there, and if I wasn't playing Warcraft, maybe they would hold more appeal to me, as I love exploring a brand new world from scratch, but I miss my Warcraft friends way too much (even if just on Battle.Net) so I log back into my server, but then, I think, I've been missing the Horde lately something fierce just for a change of scenery.

Quickly Catching Up & Recruitment

The reason for the lack of posts lately is a minor bout of surgery I had a couple of weeks ago and now I've run out of archived entries to post. I'm in a bit of discomfort, and it's making it hard for me to do much more than sleep, veg in front of the television or WoW, and a day at work is enough to wipe me out. I'm hoping to be back to a regular posting schedule soon, as there's a lot to talk about.

We finished up Cho'gall last week and are going to start hitting Al'Akir this week. 4.1 is coming out, and I am really excited to pick up the Amani War Bear (mount number 97!). I have finally gotten my warlock all ready for raiding and am enjoying the crap out of her. I'm terrified of starting our pulls on Nefarian (hopefully) next week.

On the PvP side of things, my Paladin's 2's Arena team cracked a thousand rating after 2 weeks of matches, and I think I might have a 3's team going soon. A friend is almost done leveling her Shadow Priest and I'll be doing 2's on my Warlock with her. We're even talking about recruiting for a Rated Battleground team.

Speaking of recruitment, we're about to loose two long-term members to real-life attrition and I've been trying to recruit like crazy to no avail. If you have any characters Alliance side on Moon Guard and are looking to raid, please contact me here or in game (on Innana or Merricat) or you can apply directly through our website. We're ideally looking for a (non-druid) healer and a DPS but we're flexible and we'll make room for the right people.

Anniversary!

Today, Raiding After Dark is a year old!

I could go back and do a sum-total of words written, but I doubt it'll be significant since I only had 57 entries which amounts to posting once a week, more or less, not a lot to brag about or anything, but consistent. Maybe I'll double my rate for the next year!

But anyway. I'm going to use this opportunity to reflect on my last year in Warcraft.

Thinking About Cataclysm

Man, dog days of summer indeed. I had 4 people absent this week, and wound up recruiting three new recruits, all of whom have been awesome. I'm a little worried about having maybe one or two too many people, but I'd rather have choice than be short and have to PuG.

Even with 4 subs, we still managed to get 11/12 in one night and taught Lich King to the 3 new recruits. So, not a bad week of raiding at all. Since Malygos was the weekly and I realized we'd never actually done You Don't Have An Eternity, we decided to knock that out and called it a week. I've also been kind of burning out on ICC so next week I set up Ulda 10 hard modes for an off night, let's see how many folks show up for that. Maybe we can wrap up our Rusted Protodrakes achievement (One Light In The Dark!) and get a few more folks the Starcaller title from Algalon, maybe.

I've also been thinking of promoting someone in the guild up to Officer status to help us out - he's one of our most reliable and knowledgeable people and he loves the game passionately, and I have a lot of trust for him. Will need to talk to our GM and pitch her the idea before speaking with him.

Anyway. Moving on.

With Cataclysm coming up, I've been encouraging folks to figure out what they want to level first and what role they want to play at 85. Because I know I've been thinking of switching to Retribution full time. That would be a HUGE change for me. I've always tanked but the last few months of play have been interesting in that they make me appreciate the game from a different side (DPS) and I've been enjoying it tremendously.

I'm not 100% sold on the idea, but it is something I'm considering seriously. I think it'd be a lot of fun.

But the thing is... I said almost the exact same thing regarding my main at the end of TBC. I thought my Bear Druid would be my main and tank as main spec in WotLK but I just fell in love with my Paladin after 3.0 hit live and completely switched over to him.

As it is, these are my alts ranked in scale of interest I have for playing them:

1. Death Knight for Frost DPS - based on the new talent trees released, they look to be in a really interesting place and with their ultra-fast locked GCD style of play, could be a lot of fun
2. Druid who mostly heals as a Tree now, and with the promised changes, might become an even more OP healer
3. My 72ish Warlock is just a joy in PvP and in PvE as Affliction and I love the aesthetic of the class, plus, it'll give me a chance to race change her to Worgen and be a foxy warlock
4. There is my mage at 80 who mostly serves to make me flasks and stuff, but he was my first character in WoW and maybe I could swap to him in Cata as we don't have any mages in our guild right now
5. And finally, I *could* just finish leveling my 65 Warrior if I wanted to go Fury and top meters all day long

And so, my poor Paladin with close to 6k Achievement points and my most progressed character is competing for attention against all these classes.