Obeying the Muse

Recently I accepted an offer from Windsoar over at JadedAlt where she is playing Muse to any of her blogging friends.  She gave each of us a different subject/question to address. What I thought was so cool was how she kept managing to come up with good questions that were all so specific to each blogger.  Here was my mission, should I choose to accept it (which, obviously, I do, though perhaps not as promptly as I should have).

/cast Muse

So, I know you play several toons, and they’re in the around the 40-60 range (if nothing’s changed ) How did you NOT get hit with the leveling bug? How do you choose which toon to play, and what makes you trade them in for the next alt? Do you and the missus have a specific duo? What do you enjoy doing in-game together?

Ok, that was mean–answer the ones you want and ignore the rest! I got a little carried away ^^

 

I am, indeed, an altaholic.  Here I am, playing for over a year, and still, I have no 80’s.  In fact, I have several characters all stuck right around the same point.  Two points, actually.  Looking through my alts on various servers it would appear that I tend to get stuck right around either level 12 and level 40.  Let’s look at the notables from my roster

Rayzorstorm- Argent Dawn- Feral Druid 50 (yay!)

Desdeamona- Lightninghoof- Holy Paladin 45

Morgaunt- Uldaman- Protection Warrior 40 (yay!)

Mykale- Cenarius- Frost Mage 45

After these guys I have a ton of toons that are all right about level 10-12, though I think there are two that managed to make it into the 20’s.  Among them are two hunters, two warlocks, a rogue, 2 priests, another paladin, another warrior, and 3 shamans.

I understand the phenomenon of bailing on toons in the teens.  It makes sense.  You decide to roll a new race/class combo just to see how you like it, and then you go back to your main.  But why do I consistently get stuck around the 40’s?  There are a couple of reasons for this, I think.

First, my four higher toons were each the first that I rolled on each of those four servers.  I originally started on Dawnbringer with my wife because we really didn’t know what the hell we were doing.  Rayzorstorm is dedicated to leveling with her warlock, Lahruna.  He is restricted to staying within two levels of her, or I get in trouble.  We really love questing as a duo.  Each time I’ve started on a new server, it’s been to play with different friends from real life, except the change from Dawnbringer to Argent Dawn with Rayzorstorm, which was to join SAN.  The problem with this plan is that I still don’t get to play with any of these RL friends because they’re all raiding.  So I go on leveling.  First I rolled Mykale on Cenarius, then Morgaunt on Uldaman, and then most recently Desdeamona on Lightninghoof.  I’ve been most involved with Des and Rayzor lately, though Morgaunt saw some good action this last week.  I haven’t touched Mykale in a while, mostly due to a conscious effort to be a little more focused.   

I think I tend to get stuck around the 40’s because leveling really starts to slow down around there.  Previous to this you stay in a zone for about 8 levels, and the content naturally leads you on to the next step.  Once you hit this point, though, the world starts feeling very big, and quests seem to involve more and more running around, which takes forever.  I think there’s also a tendency to start feeling lost around this point because there isn’t a place that you’re supposed to be, because the world is supposed to start feeling wide and open.  Add to this that professions really start to get harder at this point and you really start to slow down.  It makes it really easy, for me at least, to get distracted by the idea of trying something new.

Windsoar asked if I get the leveling bug.  I live for the leveling bug.  When the story is clear and driven, I dive in.  But as things get more diffused, and especially if they get grindy, I get bored and switch over to another toon for a few levels. I don’t believe in power-leveling with the aid of higher level friends, because I actually want to see and experience the world.  If I could stay focused on any of these characters longer, I’d be a lot further along.  I’ve sort of decided to leave Mykale in the dust for a while, partially because it’s so much easier leveling with my tanks, or my holy pally, due to the quick LFD queues and survivability.  And more importantly, I get much more social interaction on all of my other realms than I do on Cenarius.  I’ve recently begun to understand how important an active g-chat is to my enjoyment of the game.

Well, I think I’ve rambled on this subject for long enough.  I hope you were a-muse-d!

-Razorstorm

The 10th Layer of Hell: Grinding for mats that won’t drop

I finally ventured into Searing Gorge with Rayzorstorm (previously Darrien), my Feral Druid level 48, in search of Sarah Tanner to begin delving into Elemental Leatherworking.  I had never been into Searing Gorge before with any toon.  Previous to this it was only a place that I dared see from the back of a griffon, a scary place where big fiery mobs with ?? for their level are everywhere.  It was a little spooky to walk in there and realize, “wait a second, I’m the right level to be here!”  I proceeded to find Sarah and embark on a quest to gather Hearts of Fire, Globes of Water, Cores of Earth, and Breaths of Wind.  Actually, I already had Cores of Earth sitting in the bank from some random questing, so I was 3 out of 4.  I started with Hearts of Fire, since they could be found on Magma and Inferno Elementals right nearby.  I looked them up on www.Wowhead.com and saw that the drop rates were low, 5-7%, but that anything else with higher drop rates was well out of my range.  So I went to work as a kitty tearing up countless elementals, making endless loops around Searing Gorge (I even got the achievement for exploring it!).  This began a grinding process that went for hours and hours and hours, just to get 2 Hearts of Fire.

My poor guildies on Single Abstract Noun were so nice to me, giving me sympathy as I moaned about the cruelty of getting Elemental Fires instead of Hearts of Fire.  Luckily the gchat is so entertaining and active that it kept me in good spirits.  I whooped and cheered and did the happy bear dance when I finally got the second Heart of Fire to drop.  This joy was quickly dampened by the realization that I needed to do it again for the Globes of Water.  I then flew to Feralas (crazy long commute!) to gather the Globes from Sea Sprays and Sea Elementals.  This became another few hours of grinding elementals just to get 2 Globes.  This was made more dangerous by the involvement of large Sea Giants that invariably can be found near these water elementals, and happen to love squishing druid kitties by ganging up them 2-on-1.  No one said mobs were fair.  I died a few times to these giants, but that wasn’t much of a problem.  The problem was the hours upon endless hours that I spent grinding my way through elementals for the quest mats.  If it hadn’t been for the saving grace of SAN guild chat, I think I would’ve lost it.  Again, when it finally dropped the second Globe, I whooped and hollered and did the happy bear dance.  Now to get the Breaths of Wind from some air elementals in Tanaris!  I’m almost done!

The Happy Bear Dance

Something that struck me as very ironic was that I actually got some decent drops during this process.  I found  some very sellable greens, along with some elemental fire and water, which tend to sell quite well in the auction house.  However, I didn’t give a damn, because they weren’t Hearts of Fire or Globes of Water. 

I have conceived of a new layer of Hell.  Enter the 10^th Layer, where the poor lost souls are damned to wander the world grinding endless waves of mobs, only needing one more item to finish their quest, but never actually finding it.  What a terrible fate that would be.  /shudder

-Razorstorm

Darrien -> Razorstorm -> Rayzorstorm

From the minute I saw Miss Medicina mention the creation of Single Abstract Noun on Argent Dawn-US, I started seriously thinking about rolling a new toon on that realm. I’d been thinking that I really needed a toon somewhere that actually used my longtime handle and now blogging pseudonym, Razorstorm, and this idea of a social guild full of chatty bloggers just made me giddy thinking about it. So I popped open the Droid Armory on my phone and checked to see if there were any “Razorstorm’s” on Argent Dawn. To my delight, none popped up! “Woohoo!” I thought, followed by, “Ah, man, another alt that I’m really going to want to play. At this rate I’m never going to get a toon to 80!” Then I had a wonderful idea, paid character transfer.

I’ve always thought of Darrien on Dawnbringer as my main, since he was my first toon, my highest level toon (not that it’s very impressive…) and he’s also the one I most identify as me, since it’s the one I play with my wife. The problem is that we have had a devil of a time finding a decent guild. I have come to realize that an active guild chat channel is one of my major factors of guild enjoyment. We don’t ask much from a guild. We quest together, we dungeon together, and we don’t take much from a bank. We don’t like to get power-leveled through dungeons that are too high for us. Mostly we just want community. We had found a small lovely group of players that were all friends in real life, and we just fit right in. And then at some point they all took a WOW hiatus, or switched their efforts to alts on other realms, or something. Whatever the cause, we were left with a silent guild chat, and usually only us online. We were low rank, so we couldn’t invite others, and we had very limited bank access. Finally we just left and joined some other guild that was recruiting in trade chat. This one was also quiet and boring. And then we tried a third with similar results. Lately we just haven’t played them because my wife has been too busy, and I get in trouble if I play Darrien without her. So I’ve been working on alts, mainly Desdaemona lately. The founding of SAN gave me a great idea: Transfer Darrien and Laruna (my wife’s warlock) to Argent Dawn and join.
I realized when doing the setting up the transfer that I would have to change Darrien’s name (Laruna didn’t have to change her’s which made it an easy sell to my wife). This wasn’t such a bad thing since I really liked the idea of having a toon named for my longtime handle: Razorstorm. I looked it up on the armory, and it said the name was free. Unfortunately, the armory lied. When it came time to change Darrien’s name, Razorstorm was not available, so I settle instead for Rayzorstorm, which is still pretty cool. However, I am totally irked by the fact that someone has my name, but is clearly less than level 10, or else the Armory would have picked them up. So some bank alt or other has my name! /grumble. So, whoever Razorstorm on Argent Dawn, I hope you value that name. And if you happen to be Horde, oh boy, you better watch out if I run into you in a battleground!
So, to wrap it all up, last night I did the transfer, today I joined the guild, and tonight I am sitting at my computer just staring at the busiest guild chat channel I have ever seen, and loving every minute of it! Now I have to peal my eyes from the chat channel and go farm some leather!
-Razorstorm (or Rayzorstorm, I guess I can get used to that…)