The Color Purple

There are some of us that have been around long enough to remember when the color of the text of your loot meant something.  But at max level, pretty much everything you get after the first patch of the expansion is a purple.  They don’t introduce a new level of greens or blues.  So the idea of something being purple being special is…lost.

The color of the text stemmed such popular use of the phrase EPIC, but when everything is epic, can anything really be epic?  Before patch 3.2, when item level became visible on gear, there were add-ons that would calculate this mystery number called “gear score” that would tell you, but mostly other people, how good you were.  It was based off some formulas that weighed the values of your items and came up with an arbitrary number, so that people could judge you and decide if you were geared enough to take to ToC.  

Now however, since item levels are available, the game calculates your average iLevel and the game itself uses this average to determine if you are geared enough to be tackling certain content.  The idea that players could out perform those of higher gear level by using skill and knowledge of the game all but disappeared.  People can get awesome gear scores and still be terrible.  We all know this, we’ve seen it. 

So this gets me back to my original thought, the value of that purple text, the “epic” status of the item.  Since everything has an iLevel, there really is no value in the text color.  It used to be a visual indication of item rarity when iLevels were not available through the game, but now you can just look at the iLevel and determine which epic piece is best—this is what most players do.  Higher iLevel must be better and it’s pretty much true. 

So why when there are new patches in an Xpac, aren’t there new iLevel greens and blues?  Why aren’t there new blue items that drop from DS that have the same iLevel as say…something from T11?  Or even so, why do ANY of the items even have special colored font anymore since it doesn’t matter because usually a higher iLevel is better.  At end game level 85 requirement items are pretty much all purple.  So I basically ask then…is there a need for green, blue, and purple anymore??  Does the purple color still excite you on a boss or is it just expected?  It’s a purely visible and cosmetic thing…I’m not sure I’d notice if they ever decided to remove item text colors.

Holiday Success and Failure

After a flurry of world events, Lunar Festival, Love is in the Air, and the Darkmoon Faire, things have returned to normal on the server.

Unfortunately for my characters, I had many real life situations happening at the same time and didn’t get to take full advantage of the holidays.  I did manage to complete some of the events though.

Elgar had just two holidays left for his meta-achievement for all the holidays, and those two were Lunar Festival and Love is in the Air.  I had none of the Lunar Festival completed, but had a good start on charms and flowering people.  I was able to finish it up and finally after years of slowly doing holiday achievements was able to get his Long Strange Trip completed.

Well, it's certainly been a LONG trip.

I was hoping to get some of the Elders done on my Paladin so that I could get the engineering patterns, for completeness, and also on the Druid because I figured it’d be easy to do the dungeons when you can stealth past nearly everything.  Sadly, neither of these things happened.

I did the holiday boss for Love is in the Air a few times but no Love Rocket for me and not enough tokens for a mount.  That’s okay.  But sadly, on Saturday, the last day of the Love is in the Air, I was checking mail on my toons and noticed that Troutwort was just two achievements from “The Love Fool”.  The two achievements were looting a bouquet and pitying the fool.  Well he had 0 love tokens and it’s 11:30pm.  I suppose that I probably could have pulled it off before the 2am end of holiday, but I was pretty tired and decided just to kick myself and make a mental note to finish it next year.

In other news, my worgen priest also hit level 60 after doing his Wintersaber daily.  I figure I’ll do that on him, just 15 more days now.  Sousa also got exalted with the guild finally.  I’ll need a new project for a bit while I wait for the worgen to finish up Wintersabers.  I think I’ll finish up my druid transmog set and then either work on Haydn or Kalinnikov.  If MoP is coming out this year, I should make a push to get the toons to 85.  Six so far, but I’d like to get a few more or at least some within striking distance to hit is shortly after.  I usually avoid power-leveling after a new Xpac, going from 80 to 85 after release should be pretty barren, except for a few crazy power-leveling pandas.

Sixth of Six?

What is this?  I don’t even!

Repgrind is making me post some pictures.  So here they are!

I couldn’t follow the rules very well, I don’t know who would have WoW screenshot subfolders…but because I rename some pictures that I crop for the blog, the 6th image in the folder was a picture that’s already been posted.  Boo.  So I went with the 6th image that isn’t renamed…but since those sort by date, that was my LFR run, again an image that I’ve already posted. 

So it was time to sort. 

I sorted by date first.

Eonar Server, circa 2007. Ado makes an appearance! So does Rossini...when he was still Kittykat!

Then I sorted by name.

Rossini in demonform...looks like an alt run of Naxx-10! Oh! Hi Karius!

Then I sorted by size.

Elgar in bubbles...cowering, of course.

Wow, that’s some crazy photos…it also reminded me that I’ve been playing WoW for over 5 years now…you’d think I’d be a seasoned veteran, but there’s still things I haven’t done!  Sorry for the weird mini-pics, the photos aren’t uploading for me correctly today.

Fate of Theramore

I am slow getting the news sometimes.  I don’t read the big WoW news sites like I used to, they are blocked at work and at home, I’d rather spend that time playing the game.

So though it’s been in the news for some time now, I just found out that in MoP the Alliance city of Theramore will be captured by the Horde which will fuel the Horde vs. Alliance war again.  Apparently, the appearance of Deathwing was too much of a distraction for the Alliance leaders to be aware that they lost Southshore to the Horde in that expansion.

The loss of Theramore however, seems far more detrimental to me.  The only Alliance city you can portal to that isn’t on an island in Northern Kalimdor, Theramore was a nice waypoint for the Alliance to get to and from Kalimdor easily, the boat there was nice too.  This was good for those that aren’t level 85 and can’t port to Mt. Hyjal or Uldum.  Blizzard’s decision to have the Horde capture Theramore is a bold move.  My gut reaction is…”What is the Alliance going to capture?”  I was kinda pissed that though there’s supposed to be this war that will be triggered, where are my toons?  Why isn’t Elgar running off to help save Theramore??

Then the idea hit me… instead of just Blizzard deciding the fate of Theramore, it would be awesome if the players could decide the fate.  After patch 5.0 rolls out, Theramore should be a daily quest hub, that month before MoP is released should be the time of final decision of the fate of Theramore.  Make it a daily quest hub for Alliance and Horde players where the Horde are on the assault and the Alliance on the defense…make PvP quests as well.  Basically, make it feel like the setting of the war and make the outcome variable.

If through the number of daily quests completed the Horde and Alliance could shift the battle, right up to release date, that would really give a feel of war.  Which ever faction completed the most daily quests (or some other point system) by the time the release for MoP would happen they would gain or keep Theramore in the expansion.  This would be a per server outcome.  Either way, the war would escalate feelings leaving into MoP and the difference per server would be if Theramore belonged to Horde or Alliance.

I know people will say well if the population leans heavy one way or the other that will be the outcome, well, so be it.  There will be some that easily keep or gain Theramore and there will be servers where it is very close.  This type of event helps build server community as well.  There could even be a special event boss to kill a commander on the other side, they would drop loot that would be big upgrades easy in the last month (think of the elemental invasions).  This would really give the server a feel of battle.  In the end, Blizzard ends up with two different maps for Dustwallow Marsh that are implemented on a per server basis, but it would give a really awesome feeling when you went there, knowing you earned to keep/gain that city!

This also helps with one of the issues that WoW struggles, and that is a dynamic world that you feel part of.  There haven’t really been world events like this that seemed to change the world.  Even when we didn’t defeat the elementals in say IF during the elemental invasion, there really wasn’t much of a consequence.  Something like this changes the game, but not on such a large-scale that it disrupts too much game play.

I know Blizzard doesn’t have a plan for such an event, but to me, it would feel far more real if I at least had a chance to try to defend Theramore before it’s just lost overnight to the Horde.

Somebody Likes You in Their Tunnel

Congratulations to my Worgen Priest for getting Timbermaw as his first exalted reputation.  They have some fun trinkets/items!

Outlands (Again!)

In a way, I think that depending when you started playing the game you have a certain attachment to content.  I started playing about 3 weeks before the release of BC and spent quite some time at level 70 in Outlands before LK rolled out.  So though many people loathe Outlands, I have a special place for it in my heart, I probably always will.  

That being said, this past week was quite a fun time for me.  Though I have loved the new zones and leveling up alts through all the questlines in the zones, I still get really excited when I get to head back out to Outlands, the land I know so well.  Where I don’t need to look at the map to find where quest monsters are because I have them all memorized.  And though the quest hubs are weird and Hellfire is a terrible landscape that looks like they ran out of time for landscape so just painted it all red…I enjoy walking through the portals and getting gear and doing the dungeons that I am familiar with.

In the past week I managed to get to characters to level so that they can start Outlands.  Mouret my worgen warrior and Linus my worgen priest both dinged 58 and have/will venture into Outlands.  

Mouret followed the same path as Haydn did before him finishingSwampofSorrowsand then dinging 58 in Blasted Lands.  I didn’t finish up Blasted Lands like I did on Haydn but leapt right to Outlands with him.  A few quests and boom, he’s level 60 and flying about.  I’ll probably stick it out in Hellfire with him for a bit as I’m leveling with a friend who has never seen Outlands.

As for Linus, I spent some time on Kalimdor having just completedSwampofSorrowsand having already completed Blasted Lands, I decided I should go check out some of the new quests in Felwood and Winterspring.  I didn’t spend enough time in Felwood, but there were definitely some MAJOR improvements to the quests there.  Well done Blizzard.  I left the zone early, and did all of Winterspring to take me from 52 to 58.  I liked the Winterspring quests, again a huge improvement there.  After doing a bunch of quests for the Timbermaw, I did notice that I was revered with them, I turned in a few more and am over halfway to exalted with them.  I chuckled that my first exalted faction may be Timbermaw on that toon.  Having worked on them before on other toons, the reputation gains are much better now and very quick, I applaud this change as well…no one wants to kill 5000 furbolgs to get to exalted like you had to before.

So here I am, with two toons on the edge of Outlands.  I’m excited to run through it again as it has been a long time.  I may pick up tanking on the warrior if I can get some gear and I’ll heal many dungeons on the Priest and spend time at the Sporregar and Kurenai with him, a good first title may be Diplomat.