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Shared Topic – The Pre-Expansion Slump
Over on Blog Azeroth, Jaedia proposed the following question:
With Cataclysm only months away (we can assume), a lot of players are finding themselves bored with current content. How do you, your friends, and/or your guild conquer the pre-expansion slump?
I dealt with the pre-expansion slump the same way anyone bored with current content would – running old content.
You never call anymore.
It started months ago, back when there was actual snow on the ground outside. I had grown sour with Northrend. I was at the point where I was just powering through my dailies to make my gold. Once I developed a pattern, a method to the madness, I turned my quest runs into speed trials. Every day I’d try to get 20+ quests done in the shortest amount of time, maybe ninety minutes or so, while maxing out my earnings. I wasn’t worried about missing anything by going through so quickly. I was sick of seeing jousting and snow, mammoths and snow, and snow and snow. At least running my speed trials would minimize the time I’d have to see any of them.
Other than Dwarves named Grumpy and Dopey, who could stare at this all day?
One day in Dalaran I decided it was time for a change of scenery. Time to get out of the snow and see something new, or at least different. Faced with two options, running an alt or taking Herc back to prior content, the Fury Warrior was given the nod. But this wasn’t going to be some kind of vacation. Hells no! Just because he wasn’t earning XP, this departure was going to be beneficial in some way.
The relocation spot? Nagrand. The mission? Grind rep with the Mag’har and earn a new talbuk mount. After killing a few hundred Ogres and the grind started to get to be a bit too much, Herc started killing Ogres using weapons that had not yet been capped, including his bare hands. In the end, he nailed down an achievement and a talbuk.
I want to punch this guy too.
Since then, I’ve taken a further step back into content by going after the World Explorer achievement. It’s been keeping me out of Northrend, and has me checking out zones that I will probably never see again after Cataclysm. At the end of the Azeroth World Conquest Tour, I’ll pick up the title of “Herculano the Explorer.”
After that? Maybe a Netherwing Drake.
There’s always something to do. It’s just a matter of finding it.
This is Herc the Merc, squeezing every drop out of the previous content.
Fury Warrior Plans Gobal Conquest, Gets Sand in Codpiece
Making movies, making music and FIGHTING AROUND THE WORLD!
As part of the World Explorer achievement, each of the four continenets must be explored – Northrend, Outland, Eastern Kingdoms, and Kalimdor. Northrend was a breeze to finish, because who can’t fly around for an hour or two. Since it was more or less a fluke to finish one of the four, I decided a more focused effort would be needed to finish off the remaining three. Outland would be last, to cap off more flying. Which left the Old World. I had a twenty-sided die nearby (of course I did – and any nerd worth their salt should have one too), and with a single roll my next step of World Domination was set before me.
Welcome to Endor, er I mean Kalimdor.
Like most of my masterful plans, I decided I would start from the bottom and work my way to the top. I took a flight path to Gadgetzan and began plotting my route. Turns out that Herc had been busy in his younger swath of destruction days and had nailed down most of the locations I had hoped to cap in one sitting. It took a few minutes of riding before I managed to complete Explore Tanaris Desert.
One of the perks of having been through many of these locations before is that Herc had the flight paths. When you’re covering many miles, it’s always best to rack up Air Miles whenever you can. Saves time, and over a number of hours, saves sanity. It wasn’t a long flight, but landing in Un’Goro Crater kept things rolling. Again, only a few spots needed to be explored so Herc mounted up on his Alpine Goat of Death and a few more minutes later I’d finished Exploring Un’Goro Crater.
This is when it started to get strange. I was riding north to the path taking me to Silithus, and I noticed that I wasn’t seeing any beasts. Nothing flying, nothing crawling. Granted, it was one in the morning but that shouldn’t have mattered to the in-game talent. Maybe I was just tired and my eyes were playing tricks. Maybe every living creature in Craterville heard that Herc the Merc was in town, and decided it was safer to head to Freeport (Everquest reference FTW). I kept riding, entered Silithus and headed across the zone to the few places I needed to explore. It took some time but I reached the point I needed to, yet I wasn’t being credited with the discovery. Right about then I noticed the angry red monitor button on my UI. I checked the latency and saw a number higher than Lindsay Lohan after four rails of breakfast cocaine.
Breakfast is the *sniff* most important meal *sniffsniff* of the day.
I wasn’t sure what that meant for certain, but it was clear I couldn’t go any further until I cleared up the issue. I exited the game and rebooted (twice) before I was able to log back in. There I was, back in the south of Un’Goro Crater. Great. Two a.m. was yelling at me from my watch, but I had to finish the southern part of the continent. I would not walk away having only seen sand and a giant hole with some T-Rexes running around in it. I grabbed a Pepsi Max, gulped it down, and got back to business.
The caffeine might not have been a good idea. The spiked alertness was good, but the crash afterward gave me keyboard dimples on my forehead. When I woke up, I noticed that I Had Been Busy.
Before I dragged myself to bed, I took a final look at the Map of Conquest for Kalimdor.
There’s still plenty of grey on that list, but it’s only a matter of time before another continent falls to Herc the Merc.
From Sea to Frozen Sea
In Canada-land, my fellow Canuckleheads are celebrating Victoria Day, a holiday to celebrate Queen Victoria. I think it’s Queen Victoria. Wait, are we still part of the monarchy? Why can’t I be bothered to see why we’re celebrating Victoria Day?
Two reasons. The first is that it’s a day off, so shut up. It could be Giant Scary Bunny Day for all I care.
Celebrate me or I will eat your soul.
The second reason is that I have more important things to research.
It would appear that I had stumbled upon an Achievement that I never thought I’d be interested in, yet was surprised how easy it was. If nothing else, the greatest difficulty is in the time it takes to complete. Not a big deal for Herculano, for unlike 99% of the gamer population and 75% of the North American population, I have patience. Unlike the masses who feel they are entitled to all the goodies without putting in the work (ie the “I have a life” crowd), if the outcome is deemed worthy I will mindlessly perform whatever task is necessary to achieve it. As many time as it takes. As long as it takes.
Not everybody likes it when it’s over that quickly.
The task? The Explorer title.
It was an interesting revelation as Herculano went through his JC Daily this past weekend. For some reason I can’t explain (mostly due to the residual alcohol content in my system from the night before – if one glass of wine is healthy, surely a bottle of it washed down with an assortment of fermented hops-juice must be even better!) I opened his Achievement panel and started looking around. Generally speaking I’m not an Achievement Hunter. If I get one, it’s unintentional. However, flipping through the “Explorer” subsection revealed that not only does completion of the achievement give you a title, but you get a nifty epic tabard simply by completing the sub-achievement of exploring all of Northrend.
While I did put in the time (and necklaces) to become Exalted with the Mag’Har and pick up their tabard, it couldn’t hurt to pick up another one. Especially since I’d just have to sit on my Drake and fly around. I thought to myself, how hard is that to do? Why doesn’t everyone have this tabard? Why does my mouth taste like kitty litter?
Some questions are best left unanswered.
After checking on the Explore Northrend tab of the Achievement, I was smacked with a Good News / Bad News scenario. The good news was that most of the places that had to be explored were done. There was maybe only one or two grey locations that needed to be found. The bad news was that there was one or two undiscovered locations in almost every zone, including Sholazar Basin. How do you not explore all of Sholazar Basin? Most people nail that exploration nugget by accident! Just fly around in a circle and poof! Ten Achievement Points!
And so, with Gatorade washing an array of pills down my throat (seriously, there should be warning labels on alcohol bottles), I travelled from Icecrown to Dragonblight, from Borean Tundra to Howling Fjord. All that time, with the wind whistling by and the rhythmatic flapping of the drake’s leathery wings, the pounding in my head downgraded from “Jackhammer” to “Fat Guy Tapdancing While Wearing Bowling Shoes”. It was a zen moment, when both body and mind were at peace (more or less) and I had completed something.
I landed in Howling Fjord and rushed to the mailbox. It might not have been something as snappy as a title, but with people so anxious to stand out from one another, to be a unique snowflake, something cosmetic as a tabard would certainly make a difference! It wasn’t until actually returning to Dalaran, the first step of World Domination completed, that I took a look at the Tabard of the Explorer.
Well… I mean, I’ve seen worse tabards. I can’t think of any offhand, but I know I’ve seen them. This tabard, however, lasted all of ten seconds after I realised that I’d earned it by flying around. I was never in any danger, it took little effort, after seeing a Night Elf Druid wearing the same tabard it was relegated to Bank status. I garbed in my previous tabard, the one I put in some long hours to earn. The one that not only looks snappy, but if you stare at it just right it looks like a giant H.
Still, the seeds have been planted. Alexander the Great thought he was clever when he conquerored all of the known world. Herculano the Explorer sounds much more epic, don’t you agree?
This is Herc the Merc. Have a week.
The Pug is The End
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on gearing up my Arms Warrior. The mighty Tauren is in line for a server / faction transfer to play with some people I know IRL. I wasn’t sure how long I was going to maintain the grind, forsaking my other characters for the Warrior. He’s been fun to use, and I’ve enjoyed running the LFG tool with him. Still, was I going get him a full T9 suit before making the move? Or, how would I know when it was time to let my other characters sink their teeth into the Emblems and mouth-breathers who farm them?
It came as a bit of a surprise. I’d forgotten that he’d already earned his title “the Patient” (he doesn’t wear the title – why would he?), but I hadn’t been paying attention to how close he was to the next part of the Achievement.
Woah.
After returning from the completed PuG, the mighty Warrior checked his mailbox. Seems the jokesters at the WoW Dev Team decided to celebrate the achievement by taking a small, rodent-like canine and stuffed him in a box.
Looking down at the slobbering, bug-eyed pooch and watching it drag its butt across the snow, it hit me. Time to take a break. Perhaps the Tauren might put in his papers and ship off to Parts Unknown in the near future. His departure will cause some adjustments to be made in those left behind. Being an Inscriptor & Jewelcrafter was nice, but maybe the Inscription will have to be replaced with Blacksmithing. More gold going his way…
… and he’d just picked up Epic Flying, too.
Progression
Back on the net, back in the game. New motivation there, strides to be made.
For example, Rokk has been doing it big in Wintergrasp.
He’s amassed enough enough of a bodycount to pick up an upgrade.
From there, he knocked off a couple of reputations: Exalted with Sons of Hodir and –
Gemmed some gear, shoulder enchant SoH, and put a new killing tool in Rokk’s hand, made by Rokk’s own hands.
All this in the past 24 hours. How was YOUR day?
Rokk Talk 