According to my account information, Azeroth has been my part time home for three years now. I had heard of World of Warcraft ages before, probably sometime around release date but had resisted the temptation to join. It was only after watching a friend play and later sharing his account for a bit that I signed up myself. Initial dreams of levelling up to join my friend and his guildmates soon fell by the wayside as I dabbled in altitis, falling further behind as those more focused players forged ahead towards 60. I was not new to Azeroth exactly, having played Warcraft 1, 2 and 3, as well as most of their expansions. Blizzards other games, Diablo and Starcraft also got regular workouts. The 3-d "Roleplaying" world in an MMO was different to the strategy games I had mostly played before. I loved the game!
My first character was an undead warlock on my friends account. I managed to level him up to about 15 or so in the relatively rare times I got to play. I had fun but probably made every rookie mistake in the book. When I got my own account started, I made an effort to re-create the same character. He still exists, gathering dust along with all his guildmates on one of the US servers, since there were no Oceanics available back then. I ended up inheriting the guildmaster position as most former members transferred off or quit the game. My friend had moved on to another guild to try raiding but found the time difference too difficult. He and some others had also started alts on Alliance on one of the first Oceanic servers. Of course I followed as well, generating one alt of each class and of each race/gender combination. Nearly all of these characters made it to the low 20's before abandonment. I continued creating characters on every oceanic server as they opened up "reserving" my spot. Each of these got levelled up to at least the early teens as well. Before long I had over 20 characters to manage.
My friend fairly abruptly quit the game about June 2006, and most of the other friends and guildmates I had made had dispersed all over the place. Another RL colleague had level 60's on another server, so I played there for a little bit and continued to shuffle between all the various alts for a few months. One evening I was mucking about on Dath'Remar, on an under-used Rogue I'd created some weeks earlier, when the Tirisfal Glades newbie chat was reasonably active.
Someone was moaning about how he couldn't get into a guild, since they were all full of transferred level 60 raiders who were not interested in lowbie scrubs. Several others piped up in agreement. I offered the obvious solution: Make one yourselves! There was a bit of discussion back and forth, mostly about how it was too expensive so I offered to raise the funds myself. 10 silver is a large amount to an unassisted lowbie newb like myself, so I actually spent a couple of hours grinding and _vendoring_ linen cloth and the like to scrounge the cash. By this time, the newbie crowd was all around level 10.
Since this was an alt on a server I was unlikely to visit again soon, I offered to general chat the funds to get that guild started, and were there members willing to sign up? Sure enough one chap called Stickykey volunteered to be guildmaster and there were enough people around to get the charter signed in short order. Several names were discussed before my suggestion was picked as the most likely. Thus was Crimson Legion born.
Guild mastery changed hands several times between Stickykey and myself that evening as we established ranks and set up guild powers. Stickykey had never had access to the guild controls before so basically palmed the role over to me to set up. Ranks established, guild powers loosely defined and about 30 people recruited, I logged for the night.
I forget the exact sequence of events, but Stickykey was going away for a while so I was going to be "temporary" guildmaster. The new guild kept gathering members rapidly and there were enough sensible people in officer positions to keep it running smoothly even when I also didn't log in for a few days early in the piece. We had over 100 members in the first few days then recruitment started to die off a bit as we left the newbie areas. Some players and myself created extra alts and returned to the newbie zones for more recruiting, though even in these early days we did NOT spam the chat channels .... we just offered assistance or grouped up with people and recruited from there.
By the first weekend it was clear the guild needed some structure and basic rules. There had been some silly behaviour and some people left because of it. I searched the web for free forum hosts and found one that looked vaguely suitable. We had a competition to design a guild tabard, and a donation drive to raise funds for it. As usual, I was spending too much time on alts and my main was falling behind the other members as they rushed into the 20's and 30's. We even recruited a few higher levels, most of whom left fairly soon after for late game guilds.
After some discussion on our forums, a revised rank structure was put in place. I organised a few guild wide events that drew reasonable participation levels. Raiding against the Night Elves became a fairly regular event, often involving other guilds as well. Our core leadership group settled in to their positions and we kept a lookout for more talent to join us. Stickykey made a few brief visits but was missing most of the time without much explanation.
By December, we had grown to nearly 300 members and our highest were nearing the level cap at 60. Everyone was eagerly awaiting the release of The Burning Crusade. My stable of alts had grown yet again and I had got most of them on Dath to around level 20. Crypt was nearly 40 and looking forward to his mount.
We lost a few members to raiding just before TBC release, then quite a lot more in about February as people hit 70 and wanted to raid then. A core group of officers moved out and formed a splinter guild only for higher levels. I transferred guild leadership temporarily to Xera, an officer and founding member, who was leaving that night to join a raid guild. Xera then transferred guildmastery back to my alt Decrypted. Cryptography joined the new splinter guild.
Over the next few days I found the demands of actively participating in two guilds to be too much hassle. The leadership team of the new guild were taking it in a direction I didn't feel comfortable with and I missed out on lots of things in Crimson Legion while mucking about on Crypt, so in a short time I quit and rejoined CL.
The splinter guild lasted about 2 months before internal drama, and possibly bank thefts, caused it to almost disintegrate. A few refugees returned to Crimson Legion, others moved on to other guilds and a handful persevered. Eventually the remaining guildmaster quit, handing control over to the bank alt of one of my officers. There are still 6 members listed on the armory website but these are dead accounts or otherwise inactive.
We periodically go through cycles where members leave, convince others to go with them and start a fresh guild. More often, a member will quit to start a guild with their school friends. Nearly all of these attempts are unsuccessful and a lot return to the CL family.
One recent exception has been Poshmina and her guild. Posh was in CL for only a month or two but was a very talkative and active member when she was here. She left, poaching a number of our members and has gone on to establish what looks to be a very successful guild. They had 275 members when I last looked, including a higher proportion of max level characters than we maintain. I wish them every success!
People come and go all the time, but the essential core of the guild has remained strong. We hit 500 members about 6 months after handing in the charter, despite semi-regular purges of inactive members. I have mentioned in another post that there are limitations imposed by the game that have caused us to keep below the magic 500 from then on. We hit that limit again just last night so we are due for a purge again.
About the time of our first anniversary, an interesting bug manifested itself. Some officers were playing around abusing the demote and remove powers, then re inviting or promoting the victims. Somehow this bugged out and Mannak got guildmaster rank alongside Decrypted. Now, Mannak is a nice enough guy but he should have been about rank 4 or 5 at the time, not a higher officer and certainly not co-GM! Some people made accusations of hacking but I seriously doubt it. It was interesting trying to fix this... he couldn't gquit, becasue the guildmaster powers couldn't be passed on. I couldn't demote him back to his normal rank, because of course he was the same rank as me. Eventually I petitioned it and a Bliz Gamesmaster sorted it all out. I took the opportunity to have Cryptography re-instated as guildmaster and Decrypted gladly stepped down from the hot-seat.
In August 2008 I took an overseas holiday. Before I left I transferred guild master rank to Sebra, one of the rank 1 officers. I think she did an excellent job looking after the place but she was in a hurry to transfer it back once I returned. Any of my top level officers could have held the spot while I was away, but I know Sebra through work which would make sorting out any issues easier. Everything went smoothly except for the guild bank bug that I posted about in another message.
Crimson Legion celebrated its 2nd birthday in October 2008. We have maintained membership of around 400-500 members throughout our existence and are reasonably free of guild drama.
A solid core leadership group have kept it alive and thriving. I am intensely proud of their efforts. World of Warcraft is still a very interesting place to be and I have no intention of leaving any time soon.
Thank you to my guild members for making it a place I'm happy to return to.
Showing posts with label Altitis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Altitis. Show all posts
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Trade skill synchronicity
One advantage of rampant altitis is having most trade skills covered. This enables efficient use of almost any materials and much less wastage while levelling up.
My highest level characters are generally equipped as gatherers. They farm materials while I level up and mail them on to the trade skill alt. Crafted materials are made up and then either mailed to the banker alts, or passed on to another alt for more crafting.
Cryptography my "main" rogue is a skinner and leather worker. I've kept up the skinning but LW has lagged behind. Occasionally I'll make a bit of effort to get it going again but usually find some other distraction. Mostly the leathers are sold on the markets. I have considered dropping LW on several occasions but have resisted so far.
My new Death knight Cryptoknight is a herbalist and enchanter. This is my main farming character at the moment since AOE farming of low level areas is supremely awesome. He uses the enchanting almost exclusively for disenchanting of BoP items in instances. Herbalism is still quite low but is progressing and every one of the mats found is passed on to another alt for use. Excess enchanting mats are passed on to the banker for resale.
Mortified is my primary bank alt. She's now a level 35 mage, so has increased her maximum trade skills to 300. Enchanting is the main priority at the moment. She disenchants almost everything that gets sent to her from other characters and sources hundreds of items each auction session. She is also an accomplished tailor. Both tailoring and enchanting were level capped at 225 for a long time but now have room for expansion. Tailoring provides gear for my cloth wearing alts and also supplies market and disenchanting opportunities. Eventually I'll have to get her out and questing for more levels to keep up.
Afterdeath is a lowbie priest. She was originally herbalism and alchemy but has dropped herbalism in favour of inscription. Eventually I'll have to get some her some levels but for now I am well below the level cap on either trade. Herbs are supplied by Cryptoknight then used in either inscription or herbalism. Inscription is starting to supply decent glyphs for my alt army or for guild use but is also making lots of weapon and armour vellums for my enchanters. I do not use a lot of potions on any alt and those that I do use are higher skill ones.
Rigormortis my warlock blacksmith and miner has been transferred off the server. He is now the highest level alt on his new realm and may end up dropping the blacksmith in favour of enchanting or something. He used to supply reasonable green and blue items to my lower level alts, or supplies for disenchanting. Mining of course is always financially rewarding in the AH.
Decrypted is a miner/blacksmith. Both of these have been neglected since Rig did most of the work. He's also a warrior and probably the least likely alt to be properly played any time soon. When I originally planned out the trades, he was going to be an armour smith to complement Rig's Sword smithing. Not sure which way he will go though I do have three plate-wearers now.
Ashnazg my Paladin is also a neglected character. Mining and jewelcraft are his token efforts. One day I might actually spend some time getting this guy levelled up since AOE farming is so fun on the Death knight! When and if I do, Ash will add further to his current trade skills.
Methane my druid gets an occasional workout. He is purely a gathering character with skinning and mining as professions. Most of his output has been passed on to my lesser leveled alts. I chose to make him a dual gatherer becasue druids are so versatile. Stealth in cat form, travel form, swimming form and flight forms all make for a character that can get to places easily.
Insolence is a blood elf warlock. I originally had jewelcraft and mining but dropped jewlcraft for herbalism a while before wrath was released. Now that Cryptoknight has much better herbalism I am considering going back to jewelcraft! Either way, she is my primary non-enchanter bank alt and doesnt get much sun at the moment. Jewelcraft generated a lot of enchanting materials but there are many other low level jewelcrafters producing rings and necklaces so theres not a lot of profit at the low end.
Cyanade the shaman is a skinner and leatherworker. For a long time I was passing scraps to her from Crypto's lower level adventures, so her leatherworking skill isnt too bad for the amount of play she gets! Back in the day I had planned that my two leatherworkers would specialise in one of the three types but that is still a long way off if it ever happens!
Last but definately not least is Kytlin, a hunter just barely short of level 50. Mining and engineering are her professions. Both are lagging behind where they should be, mostly becasue being a hunter is so much fun I forget to mine! Engineering so far has just been a massive gold and materials sink with very little to show for it. I have the gnomish remote control trinket that is supposed to be good on mechanicals... but I cant even remeber trying it out!
Anyway, the synchronicity part of this is the several chains of supply that I can have between my characters.
A fair few quests require crafted items. In theory, my alt army has been able to supply most of these... but in practice, the AH has been too tempting. Alchemy, Blacksmithing and Engineering crafted goods are the ones most often needed in quests. Be aware that the quest rewards are often worth a lot less than the cost of the crafted items!
Most craft skills can make objects that fuel the enchantment market. A large proportion of tradeskill gear gets consumed this way. If you are not an enchanter, be sure to price your junk greens on the AH at a price that is attractive for disenchantment. Blue gear is rarely worthwhile either to craft for sale, or for disenchantment.
My current best chain of recycled crafts is this: Herbalist farms herbs. Inscriber mills them for ink, then makes weapon or armor vellum. Enchanter uses farmed enchanting mats to place enchantments on the vellums, which then are passed on to other alts for use or resale. If everything works out I could get 4-5 skillpoints on three characters from the same stack of herbs!
My highest level characters are generally equipped as gatherers. They farm materials while I level up and mail them on to the trade skill alt. Crafted materials are made up and then either mailed to the banker alts, or passed on to another alt for more crafting.
Cryptography my "main" rogue is a skinner and leather worker. I've kept up the skinning but LW has lagged behind. Occasionally I'll make a bit of effort to get it going again but usually find some other distraction. Mostly the leathers are sold on the markets. I have considered dropping LW on several occasions but have resisted so far.
My new Death knight Cryptoknight is a herbalist and enchanter. This is my main farming character at the moment since AOE farming of low level areas is supremely awesome. He uses the enchanting almost exclusively for disenchanting of BoP items in instances. Herbalism is still quite low but is progressing and every one of the mats found is passed on to another alt for use. Excess enchanting mats are passed on to the banker for resale.
Mortified is my primary bank alt. She's now a level 35 mage, so has increased her maximum trade skills to 300. Enchanting is the main priority at the moment. She disenchants almost everything that gets sent to her from other characters and sources hundreds of items each auction session. She is also an accomplished tailor. Both tailoring and enchanting were level capped at 225 for a long time but now have room for expansion. Tailoring provides gear for my cloth wearing alts and also supplies market and disenchanting opportunities. Eventually I'll have to get her out and questing for more levels to keep up.
Afterdeath is a lowbie priest. She was originally herbalism and alchemy but has dropped herbalism in favour of inscription. Eventually I'll have to get some her some levels but for now I am well below the level cap on either trade. Herbs are supplied by Cryptoknight then used in either inscription or herbalism. Inscription is starting to supply decent glyphs for my alt army or for guild use but is also making lots of weapon and armour vellums for my enchanters. I do not use a lot of potions on any alt and those that I do use are higher skill ones.
Rigormortis my warlock blacksmith and miner has been transferred off the server. He is now the highest level alt on his new realm and may end up dropping the blacksmith in favour of enchanting or something. He used to supply reasonable green and blue items to my lower level alts, or supplies for disenchanting. Mining of course is always financially rewarding in the AH.
Decrypted is a miner/blacksmith. Both of these have been neglected since Rig did most of the work. He's also a warrior and probably the least likely alt to be properly played any time soon. When I originally planned out the trades, he was going to be an armour smith to complement Rig's Sword smithing. Not sure which way he will go though I do have three plate-wearers now.
Ashnazg my Paladin is also a neglected character. Mining and jewelcraft are his token efforts. One day I might actually spend some time getting this guy levelled up since AOE farming is so fun on the Death knight! When and if I do, Ash will add further to his current trade skills.
Methane my druid gets an occasional workout. He is purely a gathering character with skinning and mining as professions. Most of his output has been passed on to my lesser leveled alts. I chose to make him a dual gatherer becasue druids are so versatile. Stealth in cat form, travel form, swimming form and flight forms all make for a character that can get to places easily.
Insolence is a blood elf warlock. I originally had jewelcraft and mining but dropped jewlcraft for herbalism a while before wrath was released. Now that Cryptoknight has much better herbalism I am considering going back to jewelcraft! Either way, she is my primary non-enchanter bank alt and doesnt get much sun at the moment. Jewelcraft generated a lot of enchanting materials but there are many other low level jewelcrafters producing rings and necklaces so theres not a lot of profit at the low end.
Cyanade the shaman is a skinner and leatherworker. For a long time I was passing scraps to her from Crypto's lower level adventures, so her leatherworking skill isnt too bad for the amount of play she gets! Back in the day I had planned that my two leatherworkers would specialise in one of the three types but that is still a long way off if it ever happens!
Last but definately not least is Kytlin, a hunter just barely short of level 50. Mining and engineering are her professions. Both are lagging behind where they should be, mostly becasue being a hunter is so much fun I forget to mine! Engineering so far has just been a massive gold and materials sink with very little to show for it. I have the gnomish remote control trinket that is supposed to be good on mechanicals... but I cant even remeber trying it out!
Anyway, the synchronicity part of this is the several chains of supply that I can have between my characters.
A fair few quests require crafted items. In theory, my alt army has been able to supply most of these... but in practice, the AH has been too tempting. Alchemy, Blacksmithing and Engineering crafted goods are the ones most often needed in quests. Be aware that the quest rewards are often worth a lot less than the cost of the crafted items!
Most craft skills can make objects that fuel the enchantment market. A large proportion of tradeskill gear gets consumed this way. If you are not an enchanter, be sure to price your junk greens on the AH at a price that is attractive for disenchantment. Blue gear is rarely worthwhile either to craft for sale, or for disenchantment.
My current best chain of recycled crafts is this: Herbalist farms herbs. Inscriber mills them for ink, then makes weapon or armor vellum. Enchanter uses farmed enchanting mats to place enchantments on the vellums, which then are passed on to other alts for use or resale. If everything works out I could get 4-5 skillpoints on three characters from the same stack of herbs!
Friday, September 5, 2008
Wageslave
Again not too much to say. Work has been hell, and will be for probably another couple of weeks. With what little gaming time I've been getting I've nibbled away at my main projects:
I got both my main and alt Alliance characters to 21 on Cael. I invested a fair bit of my gold back into the market, mostly getting enchanting materials to skill-up. These two guys are doing ok money wise but not as well as the ones on VeCo.
I took a brief moment to log into my guys on VeCo.. and lucky I did, because I'd forgotten I had some outstanding auctions before I went overseas. I had a number of items in my mailbox with only 1-2 days left on the mail duration. I fired off a few emails and scanned the AH but haven't really spent any time there.
Most of my time has been spent on Dath. I was inspired for a few sessions to work on levelling my rogue Crypt. I managed about 3/4 of a level before getting distracted again. Somehow I ended up on a guild run into SM that was massively overpowered. We cleared Lib, Arms and Cath in well under an hour. I ended up swapping out for my hunter, who is at least more level-appropriate for SM. Was mostly pointless for me but was fun and we geared up a couple of lower level guildies.
Since then, I've been tinkering with my hunter. I've had a couple of lower level instance runs with other guildies and spent quite a bit of time helping a friend learn her hunter alt. She's just hit 24 and gained beast lore, so I took her "shopping" for skills. Like many newbie hunters, she'd let her pet languish with the lower levels of bite and growl etc. I'm fairly sure she's got the hang of it now though. The learning of skills from wild beasts is one thing I will miss once Wrath gets here.
I got both my main and alt Alliance characters to 21 on Cael. I invested a fair bit of my gold back into the market, mostly getting enchanting materials to skill-up. These two guys are doing ok money wise but not as well as the ones on VeCo.
I took a brief moment to log into my guys on VeCo.. and lucky I did, because I'd forgotten I had some outstanding auctions before I went overseas. I had a number of items in my mailbox with only 1-2 days left on the mail duration. I fired off a few emails and scanned the AH but haven't really spent any time there.
Most of my time has been spent on Dath. I was inspired for a few sessions to work on levelling my rogue Crypt. I managed about 3/4 of a level before getting distracted again. Somehow I ended up on a guild run into SM that was massively overpowered. We cleared Lib, Arms and Cath in well under an hour. I ended up swapping out for my hunter, who is at least more level-appropriate for SM. Was mostly pointless for me but was fun and we geared up a couple of lower level guildies.
Since then, I've been tinkering with my hunter. I've had a couple of lower level instance runs with other guildies and spent quite a bit of time helping a friend learn her hunter alt. She's just hit 24 and gained beast lore, so I took her "shopping" for skills. Like many newbie hunters, she'd let her pet languish with the lower levels of bite and growl etc. I'm fairly sure she's got the hang of it now though. The learning of skills from wild beasts is one thing I will miss once Wrath gets here.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Out with the old, in with the new part 2.
This one should be a lot briefer than the other post!
I mentioned that I rolled a Draenei Hunter on the alliance side of a server where I have existing Horde. This server has a few of my friends from Dath'Remar who are already semi-established.
Draenei males are new to me. They DO look awkward and hugely top-heavy. Looks aside, they are perfectly capable as hunters. I rushed through the first 5 levels in about 45 minutes, slightly slower than the average because of lots of chatting.
I had finished with the newbie zone and was attempting the fishing quest in Azuremyst Island when my friend showed up. Her character is a level 23 paladin, also a Draenei. We were members of a party and the level difference is quite large, so the exp I got per kill was dramatically less than if solo. Having my own personal defender however made rushing through the early quests very easy. Since the majority of my exp was coming from questing, I pushed through lots of the Azuremyst stuff very quickly. Progress seemed to follow along about the same as it has when I've done the quests solo. I hit level 10 at a very fast 3 and a half hours then completed the taming quests solo.
My pally friend was joined by our other hunter friend and they both farmed the blood elf bandit for his mask for a while. I attempted to re-tame the cat from the last stage of the hunter quest, but it timed out and he despawned. As a replacement I grabbed the nearest cat. Not quite as successful as the Tauren from yesterday. With my new pet in tow I rushed through the furbolg related quests up north, spending about 20 minutes killing every Murloc in sight, even long after the quest was completed. I renamed the cat "Purrgatory". He dinged several times chasing the fishmen.
Once done with quests on Azuremyst, I headed over to Teldrasill to get skills and grab a owl pet. I ran out of time so have logged out in the inn at Dolannar. Since this guy had assistance from my friend, I didn't work as hard on self-funding as I normally would. I got a 2g starter fund, with which I bought 3* 8 -slot bags and upgraded my sword. I bought cooking, fishing, first-aid skills, and have again gone with skinning and mining as gathering skills. One annoyance is that the skinning trainer will not talk to you until after you complete the first of the furbolg quests.
Anyway, a quick visit to the AH selling my paltry collection of leather and ores got me about 3g, of which 2g was mailed back to my friend to repay the "loan".
Somewhat redeming myself for earlier foolishness (check the comments), I was walking back to town when I was rudely attacked from behind. My new pet went nuts and I lucked out on the loot: [blood elf bandit mask] This adds to the 2-3 others that my friends have already farmed. We will be looking to flip these over to the horde auction house if they sell for lots more there than on Alliance.
These two new projects have cost me 4 alts on other servers.
RIP
Aula, 22 Human Warlock (f)
Larceny, 15 Gnome Rogue (m)
Leaflitter, 16 ish Night Elf Hunter (m)
Acrinomy, 16 Orc Warlock (f) (yes her name was a spelling error!)
I mentioned that I rolled a Draenei Hunter on the alliance side of a server where I have existing Horde. This server has a few of my friends from Dath'Remar who are already semi-established.
Draenei males are new to me. They DO look awkward and hugely top-heavy. Looks aside, they are perfectly capable as hunters. I rushed through the first 5 levels in about 45 minutes, slightly slower than the average because of lots of chatting.
I had finished with the newbie zone and was attempting the fishing quest in Azuremyst Island when my friend showed up. Her character is a level 23 paladin, also a Draenei. We were members of a party and the level difference is quite large, so the exp I got per kill was dramatically less than if solo. Having my own personal defender however made rushing through the early quests very easy. Since the majority of my exp was coming from questing, I pushed through lots of the Azuremyst stuff very quickly. Progress seemed to follow along about the same as it has when I've done the quests solo. I hit level 10 at a very fast 3 and a half hours then completed the taming quests solo.
My pally friend was joined by our other hunter friend and they both farmed the blood elf bandit for his mask for a while. I attempted to re-tame the cat from the last stage of the hunter quest, but it timed out and he despawned. As a replacement I grabbed the nearest cat. Not quite as successful as the Tauren from yesterday. With my new pet in tow I rushed through the furbolg related quests up north, spending about 20 minutes killing every Murloc in sight, even long after the quest was completed. I renamed the cat "Purrgatory". He dinged several times chasing the fishmen.
Once done with quests on Azuremyst, I headed over to Teldrasill to get skills and grab a owl pet. I ran out of time so have logged out in the inn at Dolannar. Since this guy had assistance from my friend, I didn't work as hard on self-funding as I normally would. I got a 2g starter fund, with which I bought 3* 8 -slot bags and upgraded my sword. I bought cooking, fishing, first-aid skills, and have again gone with skinning and mining as gathering skills. One annoyance is that the skinning trainer will not talk to you until after you complete the first of the furbolg quests.
Anyway, a quick visit to the AH selling my paltry collection of leather and ores got me about 3g, of which 2g was mailed back to my friend to repay the "loan".
Somewhat redeming myself for earlier foolishness (check the comments), I was walking back to town when I was rudely attacked from behind. My new pet went nuts and I lucked out on the loot: [blood elf bandit mask] This adds to the 2-3 others that my friends have already farmed. We will be looking to flip these over to the horde auction house if they sell for lots more there than on Alliance.
These two new projects have cost me 4 alts on other servers.
RIP
Aula, 22 Human Warlock (f)
Larceny, 15 Gnome Rogue (m)
Leaflitter, 16 ish Night Elf Hunter (m)
Acrinomy, 16 Orc Warlock (f) (yes her name was a spelling error!)
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Out with the old, in with the new.
This weekend was the first time in a while that I have had a decent chunk of time to actually play Wow. I spent quite a lot of time on my bank alt on Dath'Remar, buying and selling stuff on the auction house. On the theory that money in my bags is idle money, I've re-invested about 700 gold in speculative items. There are now about 300 separate auctions up with my name on them. I had quite a few sales while I was still putting items up so my balance only decreased by about 200g in the process. When I next log on I expect to see several pages of "auction successful" mail and a much healthier bank balance.
One bad thing is that I seem to be stuck with several mail and plate items above level 60. My banker is an enchanter, but not yet high enough to disenchant these items. Unfortunately, quest rewards at the 60+ level seem to give better gear than random greens, so they rarely sell. Mail and plate are particularly nasty, since they cost a fortune in AH fees for every listing. Not quite sure what I'll do with these yet.
With the rest of my time I started two new projects. Friends and guild members on Dath’Remar have created alliance alts on another server. I already have several alts on that server's Horde. It's been an unwritten rule that I won't play both factions on a single server, even when the game will allow it. I've now broken that rule. It's a "normal" pve realm, so it IS possible to play both sides on the one server. I've created a male Draenei hunter, and have a remaining character slot for another bank alt, probably a NE druid.
On another server, I deleted an unused alt and created both Tauren Hunter and Tauren Druid. I don’t think I've ever had Tauren Hunters before. I spent several hours working on these guys and have kept rough notes on their economic progress. Part of the reason for creating these was to demonstrate clearly how taking two gathering professions at the very start can cure your money blues. I followed most of my own tips from my earlier post: Cure the Cash Flow Blues
First, I generated both characters at the login screen. I chose Druid for their flexibility and hunter for ease of use and farming ability. I'm not sure I'll ever work on these guys enough to get them very high level so they have to be useful in the lower levels. It helps that I like both classes a lot!
First character to start was the hunter. Its been a while since I've rolled a Tauren, so I sat through the intro movie. Essentially, the Tauren owe their continued existence to Thrall and the Orcs. We are supposed to hate the centaur. That's OK.. Centaur are humanoids and drop lots of cloth and coin.. I'll have no trouble farming them and will be doing something for our tribes!
The first few quests in the Tauren starter area are all about proving your worth to the tribe. One quest chain continues all the way until about level 12. Hunters make short work of the early quests, often killing the monsters before they get close and since most are neutral you can always engage at maximum range. Bag space is however at a premium. Sell the useless bread and water you start with, it’s unnecessary and wastes space you need for questing.
My hunter had reached level 2 before completing even one quest, and was less than a bar from level 3 by the time I'd got back to town. I sold all the junk I had scavenged and bought the first few skills from the trainer. Still too little money left over to buy another bag. Off I go to complete more quests. Again these early quests are easy since all the monsters are non hostile until you engage them. They were substantially tougher though and my axe was deployed a lot more. Hunters really suck in melee, but at this level there's almost no choice.
By the time I hit level 4, I was quite a distance from the village and bag space became a problem. I needed 4 of the available 16 bag slots for quest items so I tried to keep only stackable items in the other slots. I had to throw away several grey items before Ii managed to kill Sharptusk, grab his head and hearth back to town. Ding level 5, and still not enough money to buy a bag. Oh well, off I go to Bloodhoof village for the next stage. Elapsed time to level 5: 39 minutes and change.
I kill a few wolves that were close to the road on the way to Bloodhoof. This plus travel experience lets me ding level 6 at about the same time as I pick up the quests in town. I see that the fire festival is set up to the south east, so I go over there and restart the fire and collect a few more fire festival quests. The next series of Bloodhoof quests all involve hunting animals for their parts, so off I go killing tallstriders, wolves and cats. Bag space here is at an absolute premium. I think 10 of 16 slots were needed for quests in this area, so I had to stagger them somewhat. Quests to the south of Bloodhoof all completed, I returned to town, trained up and found that I had a little extra cash left over.
In my other post I’ve suggested skinning and mining or herbalism as good combinations for moneymaking. Both herbalism and mining are not good for hunters, since they interfere with your tracking abilities. There is a skinning trainer in Bloodhoof , and cooking, first aid and fishing trainers, but for mining I needed to go to Thunder bluff. I bought both the skinning knife and mining pick in preparation. Training complete, I activated the "rite of vision" quest and followed my ghostly wolf guide up to the mountain cave west of TB.
I spent quite a lot of time killing the harpies near the cave. One type is a caster and is easy to fight as a hunter since they stay at range. The other types are melee but not too hard to kill. I had only one close call where I was attacked by a patrolling wolf while fighting two harpies. The Tauren racial thunderstomp ability saved my behind then.
Once I'd collected enough claws and linen from the harpies, It was off to kill Dwarves further south. The quest goal here is to collect "broken tools"... but the little guys only dropped "mining pick". The first time I did this zone this was confusing! You have to collect the 5 mining picks then travel to Thunder bluff and "break" them at the forge there in the city.
By the time I had made it to TB for the first time, I had hit level 8 and was really struggling with both lousy hunter melee skills and no bag space. I sold off all the grey items, broke the dwarven tools and visited the auction house.
After going AFK for 10 minutes while auctioneer scanned the entire auction house I came back to sell my extra white gear. I had several stacks of leather and ruined leather, as well as linen and some meat to sell. Leather seemed reasonably priced, so I listed mine. Ruined leather is almost worthless but the AH average was still better than just vendoring it, so I listed those as well. Linen cloth is often a great seller, since everyone needs first aid skill, and it’s used for newbie tailoring as well. On to the AH went my stacks.
When I tried to list my spare wolf meat, I noticed a problem. Auctioneer was telling me that each piece was worth ~700 gold and that I couldn't match the lowest price. WTF? lobwbie meat, that you can get for free killing level 5 wolves at 700g? No way. It usually sells for a handful of silver each at best. What had happened is that someone has tried manipulating prices. They listed several items at 700g, and then listed most of their stock at a "more reasonable" 2-3 gold a stack, hoping to fool people into buying it at the inflated price. This would still be many 100's of percent higher than the usual price.
I put my few pieces of meat on the AH at about 3s each. With the last of my remaining silver I attempted to find under priced items on the AH that I could bid on or buy out and resell. There was only one item I could afford, a crunchy spider leg. I bought it, but then couldn't afford to list it.... and I'd also forgotten to buy the mining skill. Stupid!
I ended up vendoring the mining pick and one piece of spider meat to afford the mining skill, then off I went to continue questing. I headed south along the mountain ranges, killing the last few cougars needed then headed off to Bloodhoof. On the way I saw Mazzaranache respawn. I am tempted to go pick him up once I hit 10! Back in Bloodhoof I finally scrounged the cash for the mining pick a second time and handed in as many quests as I could. The nearest quest remaining was the level 6 one to kill bristlebacks to the west of Bloodhoof. It was close to the mountains where I had seen some copper mines so I went off collecting first.
I mined several nodes of copper then headed into the bristleback's cave. Careful targeting made the kills quite easy, especially the casters. Lots of cloth, some coin, and even a couple of chests made the loot pile up rapidly. Deep inside the cave were the poachers, the last guys I needed for the quest. These were also quite easy since they are hunter types and stay at range as well. I cleared the whole cave, looted the chest, mined the three copper nodes and was about to hearth back to town when I realised that it was still on cooldown. Damn, I'll have to fight my way back out. Here is where I made my biggest mistake of the night.
On the way back out, I found a patrolling bristleback entering a previously cleared area. I needed to get past him, so I engaged. Just as I finished him off, another respawned right next to me and attacked, right in melee range. This fight took a lot longer... too long in fact, because two more ranged guys had also repopped further up the corridor and were hammering me with arrows. Even a health potion wasn’t enough to save me, trapped between fresh respawns behind and ahead.
I made it to almost level 10 before my first visit to the spirit healer. With just a little more care this could have been avoided. Ah well.. I ended up in town without having to use the hearthstone cooldown so its not all bad. Resurrection sickness wasn't an issue for a below level 10 character but the cost of repairs was a concern. I hadn't repaired at all up to this point as I was replacing crap grey gear with more crap grey all the time.
Hand in all the quests and I dinged level 10. Yahoo! Elapsed /played was a shade over 4 hours of which maybe half an hour was stuffing about in town or AFK eating dinner.
Level 10 for a hunter is the most exciting time... you get the three-part taming the beast quest line that ends in you getting your first pet! Hooray!
The quest for Tauren involves capturing in order:
An Adult Plainstrider (tallstrider)
A Prarie Stalker (a wolf)
then a Swoop (carrion bird)
I had the fire festival buff on while I did these quests which nearly resulted in some dead animals. Each time they were hitting me they were taking some fire damage. The wolf was down to about 5% health at the end, but thankfully survived just long enough!
Each of these creatures are quite close to Bloodhoof Village making this a fairly painless exercise for Tauren compared to other races. The plainstrider is neutral so is even easier than otherwise.
When I completed each stage I dismissed the temporary pet just before engaging the next one. The plainstrider reverted to neutral while I was on the bridge just north of Bloodhoof, then fled off south to his home. The wolf and the swoop were both found in the same area, so when I released the wolf he immediately engaged me. Ungrateful wretch! Luckily he dropped a claw I needed and some leather.
Swoops, in the wild, have a knockback caster interupt ability "swoop". This seems to be supressed when using the taming rod during the taming quest. Its back in action again when you release the bird however! I intended training the exact same swoop used in part three of the quest as my first real pet. This proved much more challenging than I expected though, since he managed to get off the swoop ability twice during the taming, forcing a restart both times. Each taming attempt used up mana and I had to wait a few seconds to get enough for the final tame. Also, the fire festival buff was still going and the poor swoop was taking damage each time he hit me. When the third taming attempt finally succeeeded, I was at about 7% health, almost no mana and my new pet was down to under 20% health as well.
Welcome Accipter, my first pet. I wonder if I'm unique in taming one of the EXACT beasts used in the taming quests as the first ever "real" pet? Anyway, he was initially very unhappy with me and since I hadn't yet completed the final stage of the training quest, I couldnt feed him! Off I went immediately to Thunder Bluff for training!
During all this time, not one of my auctions had sold and I had not yet been lucky enough to find a new bag, nor had I had the spare cash to buy a new one. Bag space was still very limited! With hearthstone, skinning knife, mining pick, fishing rod, a stack of bandages, a stack of healing pots as permanent items, as well as partial stacks of leather, copper, linen etc as tradeable items there wasnt much left in the old backpack. I had been keeping a stack of meat aside for pet feeding but mush have vendored it somewhere along the way since I had only once bit of meat on hand for feeding Accipter. He was momentarily less annoyed but soon reverted to unhappy. Now I have a pissed off pet and no food!
The solution presented itself in the form of fishing from the lake in TB... however I hadn't yet leveled fishing skill, so nearly all of the attempts were unsuccessful. I even bought a lure for the rod which helped a bit. At least I got enough fish to bring Accipter to happy state before I returned to adventure. We killed the harpies just north west of TB for a quest, and spotted and killed the ghostwolf for his hide. Accipter dinged several times and I hit level 11 before returning to town and retiring for the night.
I relogged in as my brand new druid and rushed through the initial quests. He dinged level 5 in 42 minutes, but he also found 2 bags, one off the very first kill! He made it to level 6 and Bloodhoof village in under an hour before I logged him out and quit wow for the evening.
Now for the good bit:
Just now I logged in again to my hunter to check his auctions. Last night he had 2 silver and change. This morning, he's got 2 pages of "Auction successful" mail messages and a much healthier bank balance of 6g, 75s with about 20 more unsold auctions waiting.
Best sellers were stacks of copper bars, at about 3g, leather at 1.5g for several stacks, and linen making up most of the rest. I also had a single silver bar and 2 malachite from chests that sold as well.
6g is more than sufficient to pay all the training costs up to level 20. I'll be able to buy at least 8-slot bags for both characters, but will look into 10 or 12 slotters first. The most cost -effective ones tend to be the 16-slot netherweave bags, since there are lots of "lazy" high level tailors making them but they are out of my price range for now.
One bad thing is that I seem to be stuck with several mail and plate items above level 60. My banker is an enchanter, but not yet high enough to disenchant these items. Unfortunately, quest rewards at the 60+ level seem to give better gear than random greens, so they rarely sell. Mail and plate are particularly nasty, since they cost a fortune in AH fees for every listing. Not quite sure what I'll do with these yet.
With the rest of my time I started two new projects. Friends and guild members on Dath’Remar have created alliance alts on another server. I already have several alts on that server's Horde. It's been an unwritten rule that I won't play both factions on a single server, even when the game will allow it. I've now broken that rule. It's a "normal" pve realm, so it IS possible to play both sides on the one server. I've created a male Draenei hunter, and have a remaining character slot for another bank alt, probably a NE druid.
On another server, I deleted an unused alt and created both Tauren Hunter and Tauren Druid. I don’t think I've ever had Tauren Hunters before. I spent several hours working on these guys and have kept rough notes on their economic progress. Part of the reason for creating these was to demonstrate clearly how taking two gathering professions at the very start can cure your money blues. I followed most of my own tips from my earlier post: Cure the Cash Flow Blues
First, I generated both characters at the login screen. I chose Druid for their flexibility and hunter for ease of use and farming ability. I'm not sure I'll ever work on these guys enough to get them very high level so they have to be useful in the lower levels. It helps that I like both classes a lot!
First character to start was the hunter. Its been a while since I've rolled a Tauren, so I sat through the intro movie. Essentially, the Tauren owe their continued existence to Thrall and the Orcs. We are supposed to hate the centaur. That's OK.. Centaur are humanoids and drop lots of cloth and coin.. I'll have no trouble farming them and will be doing something for our tribes!
The first few quests in the Tauren starter area are all about proving your worth to the tribe. One quest chain continues all the way until about level 12. Hunters make short work of the early quests, often killing the monsters before they get close and since most are neutral you can always engage at maximum range. Bag space is however at a premium. Sell the useless bread and water you start with, it’s unnecessary and wastes space you need for questing.
My hunter had reached level 2 before completing even one quest, and was less than a bar from level 3 by the time I'd got back to town. I sold all the junk I had scavenged and bought the first few skills from the trainer. Still too little money left over to buy another bag. Off I go to complete more quests. Again these early quests are easy since all the monsters are non hostile until you engage them. They were substantially tougher though and my axe was deployed a lot more. Hunters really suck in melee, but at this level there's almost no choice.
By the time I hit level 4, I was quite a distance from the village and bag space became a problem. I needed 4 of the available 16 bag slots for quest items so I tried to keep only stackable items in the other slots. I had to throw away several grey items before Ii managed to kill Sharptusk, grab his head and hearth back to town. Ding level 5, and still not enough money to buy a bag. Oh well, off I go to Bloodhoof village for the next stage. Elapsed time to level 5: 39 minutes and change.
I kill a few wolves that were close to the road on the way to Bloodhoof. This plus travel experience lets me ding level 6 at about the same time as I pick up the quests in town. I see that the fire festival is set up to the south east, so I go over there and restart the fire and collect a few more fire festival quests. The next series of Bloodhoof quests all involve hunting animals for their parts, so off I go killing tallstriders, wolves and cats. Bag space here is at an absolute premium. I think 10 of 16 slots were needed for quests in this area, so I had to stagger them somewhat. Quests to the south of Bloodhoof all completed, I returned to town, trained up and found that I had a little extra cash left over.
In my other post I’ve suggested skinning and mining or herbalism as good combinations for moneymaking. Both herbalism and mining are not good for hunters, since they interfere with your tracking abilities. There is a skinning trainer in Bloodhoof , and cooking, first aid and fishing trainers, but for mining I needed to go to Thunder bluff. I bought both the skinning knife and mining pick in preparation. Training complete, I activated the "rite of vision" quest and followed my ghostly wolf guide up to the mountain cave west of TB.
I spent quite a lot of time killing the harpies near the cave. One type is a caster and is easy to fight as a hunter since they stay at range. The other types are melee but not too hard to kill. I had only one close call where I was attacked by a patrolling wolf while fighting two harpies. The Tauren racial thunderstomp ability saved my behind then.
Once I'd collected enough claws and linen from the harpies, It was off to kill Dwarves further south. The quest goal here is to collect "broken tools"... but the little guys only dropped "mining pick". The first time I did this zone this was confusing! You have to collect the 5 mining picks then travel to Thunder bluff and "break" them at the forge there in the city.
By the time I had made it to TB for the first time, I had hit level 8 and was really struggling with both lousy hunter melee skills and no bag space. I sold off all the grey items, broke the dwarven tools and visited the auction house.
After going AFK for 10 minutes while auctioneer scanned the entire auction house I came back to sell my extra white gear. I had several stacks of leather and ruined leather, as well as linen and some meat to sell. Leather seemed reasonably priced, so I listed mine. Ruined leather is almost worthless but the AH average was still better than just vendoring it, so I listed those as well. Linen cloth is often a great seller, since everyone needs first aid skill, and it’s used for newbie tailoring as well. On to the AH went my stacks.
When I tried to list my spare wolf meat, I noticed a problem. Auctioneer was telling me that each piece was worth ~700 gold and that I couldn't match the lowest price. WTF? lobwbie meat, that you can get for free killing level 5 wolves at 700g? No way. It usually sells for a handful of silver each at best. What had happened is that someone has tried manipulating prices. They listed several items at 700g, and then listed most of their stock at a "more reasonable" 2-3 gold a stack, hoping to fool people into buying it at the inflated price. This would still be many 100's of percent higher than the usual price.
I put my few pieces of meat on the AH at about 3s each. With the last of my remaining silver I attempted to find under priced items on the AH that I could bid on or buy out and resell. There was only one item I could afford, a crunchy spider leg. I bought it, but then couldn't afford to list it.... and I'd also forgotten to buy the mining skill. Stupid!
I ended up vendoring the mining pick and one piece of spider meat to afford the mining skill, then off I went to continue questing. I headed south along the mountain ranges, killing the last few cougars needed then headed off to Bloodhoof. On the way I saw Mazzaranache respawn. I am tempted to go pick him up once I hit 10! Back in Bloodhoof I finally scrounged the cash for the mining pick a second time and handed in as many quests as I could. The nearest quest remaining was the level 6 one to kill bristlebacks to the west of Bloodhoof. It was close to the mountains where I had seen some copper mines so I went off collecting first.
I mined several nodes of copper then headed into the bristleback's cave. Careful targeting made the kills quite easy, especially the casters. Lots of cloth, some coin, and even a couple of chests made the loot pile up rapidly. Deep inside the cave were the poachers, the last guys I needed for the quest. These were also quite easy since they are hunter types and stay at range as well. I cleared the whole cave, looted the chest, mined the three copper nodes and was about to hearth back to town when I realised that it was still on cooldown. Damn, I'll have to fight my way back out. Here is where I made my biggest mistake of the night.
On the way back out, I found a patrolling bristleback entering a previously cleared area. I needed to get past him, so I engaged. Just as I finished him off, another respawned right next to me and attacked, right in melee range. This fight took a lot longer... too long in fact, because two more ranged guys had also repopped further up the corridor and were hammering me with arrows. Even a health potion wasn’t enough to save me, trapped between fresh respawns behind and ahead.
I made it to almost level 10 before my first visit to the spirit healer. With just a little more care this could have been avoided. Ah well.. I ended up in town without having to use the hearthstone cooldown so its not all bad. Resurrection sickness wasn't an issue for a below level 10 character but the cost of repairs was a concern. I hadn't repaired at all up to this point as I was replacing crap grey gear with more crap grey all the time.
Hand in all the quests and I dinged level 10. Yahoo! Elapsed /played was a shade over 4 hours of which maybe half an hour was stuffing about in town or AFK eating dinner.
Level 10 for a hunter is the most exciting time... you get the three-part taming the beast quest line that ends in you getting your first pet! Hooray!
The quest for Tauren involves capturing in order:
An Adult Plainstrider (tallstrider)
A Prarie Stalker (a wolf)
then a Swoop (carrion bird)
I had the fire festival buff on while I did these quests which nearly resulted in some dead animals. Each time they were hitting me they were taking some fire damage. The wolf was down to about 5% health at the end, but thankfully survived just long enough!
Each of these creatures are quite close to Bloodhoof Village making this a fairly painless exercise for Tauren compared to other races. The plainstrider is neutral so is even easier than otherwise.
When I completed each stage I dismissed the temporary pet just before engaging the next one. The plainstrider reverted to neutral while I was on the bridge just north of Bloodhoof, then fled off south to his home. The wolf and the swoop were both found in the same area, so when I released the wolf he immediately engaged me. Ungrateful wretch! Luckily he dropped a claw I needed and some leather.
Swoops, in the wild, have a knockback caster interupt ability "swoop". This seems to be supressed when using the taming rod during the taming quest. Its back in action again when you release the bird however! I intended training the exact same swoop used in part three of the quest as my first real pet. This proved much more challenging than I expected though, since he managed to get off the swoop ability twice during the taming, forcing a restart both times. Each taming attempt used up mana and I had to wait a few seconds to get enough for the final tame. Also, the fire festival buff was still going and the poor swoop was taking damage each time he hit me. When the third taming attempt finally succeeeded, I was at about 7% health, almost no mana and my new pet was down to under 20% health as well.
Welcome Accipter, my first pet. I wonder if I'm unique in taming one of the EXACT beasts used in the taming quests as the first ever "real" pet? Anyway, he was initially very unhappy with me and since I hadn't yet completed the final stage of the training quest, I couldnt feed him! Off I went immediately to Thunder Bluff for training!
During all this time, not one of my auctions had sold and I had not yet been lucky enough to find a new bag, nor had I had the spare cash to buy a new one. Bag space was still very limited! With hearthstone, skinning knife, mining pick, fishing rod, a stack of bandages, a stack of healing pots as permanent items, as well as partial stacks of leather, copper, linen etc as tradeable items there wasnt much left in the old backpack. I had been keeping a stack of meat aside for pet feeding but mush have vendored it somewhere along the way since I had only once bit of meat on hand for feeding Accipter. He was momentarily less annoyed but soon reverted to unhappy. Now I have a pissed off pet and no food!
The solution presented itself in the form of fishing from the lake in TB... however I hadn't yet leveled fishing skill, so nearly all of the attempts were unsuccessful. I even bought a lure for the rod which helped a bit. At least I got enough fish to bring Accipter to happy state before I returned to adventure. We killed the harpies just north west of TB for a quest, and spotted and killed the ghostwolf for his hide. Accipter dinged several times and I hit level 11 before returning to town and retiring for the night.
I relogged in as my brand new druid and rushed through the initial quests. He dinged level 5 in 42 minutes, but he also found 2 bags, one off the very first kill! He made it to level 6 and Bloodhoof village in under an hour before I logged him out and quit wow for the evening.
Now for the good bit:
Just now I logged in again to my hunter to check his auctions. Last night he had 2 silver and change. This morning, he's got 2 pages of "Auction successful" mail messages and a much healthier bank balance of 6g, 75s with about 20 more unsold auctions waiting.
Best sellers were stacks of copper bars, at about 3g, leather at 1.5g for several stacks, and linen making up most of the rest. I also had a single silver bar and 2 malachite from chests that sold as well.
6g is more than sufficient to pay all the training costs up to level 20. I'll be able to buy at least 8-slot bags for both characters, but will look into 10 or 12 slotters first. The most cost -effective ones tend to be the 16-slot netherweave bags, since there are lots of "lazy" high level tailors making them but they are out of my price range for now.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Altitis - the many of me
I posted over on MW's blog wowkittycollector listing all my Alternate characters.
***
I have reached the game cap of 50 alts. It wont let me create any more.
My alts are as follows:
Druid : 4
Hunter : 11
Mage : 5
Paladin : 2
Priest : 5
Rogue : 4
Shaman : 3
Warlock : 13
Warrior : 3
They average just a shade under level 20.
My highest is Cryptography, an undead rogue on Dath'remar.
Next highest are a warlock, hunter and two druids, followed by a bunch of warlocks and hunters. I cant seem to get into my pallies, warriors or shammies, though mages and priests are ok.
Yes, I suck at levelling... maybe the above would explain why!
***
Now, that's a ridiculous amount of alts. There's no way I can give more than a few of them the attention they really need. So, why so many?
Well, I've tried to cover at least one of every class, on each of Horde and Alliance. I've also attempted to have at least one of every race and gender. I think I missed male Draenei but I have all the others.
On Dath'Remar, an oceanic PvE server where most of my time is spent, I have the allowed 10 characters, all on horde. I have a character there doing every one of the available professions. Some have specialisations in mind, so there are a few duplicates. I will have to drop some profession to cover the new runes skill coming in Wrath.
I have two other servers with loads of alts, both PvP. One has horde characters and the other a swag of alliance. Again they have the full spread of available professions.
My alt armies serve two other purposes. I have at least one alt on every oceanic server. Essentially this reserves my place there since Blizz sometimes locks the creation of new characters when a realm gets full. Of course, now that I have reached the game limit of 50 alts total this serves no real purpose. My alt army also spreads, thinly, onto each type of server. So, there are alts on each of "normal", "rp", "pvp" and "rp-pvp" servers.
As if that isn't enough alts, I also play three other MMO's and have almost maxed out the number of alts available in those games as well. That's about another thirty characters. Only a few have repeated names.
I guess the only real reason for so many alts is that I just like trying out new things. I'm not particularly interested in powering through a game to the end. Gear and loads of money aren't my thing either, though some of each helps a lot!
In later posts I intend giving some tips on managing swarms of alts for those of you with a little more focus than I!
***
I have reached the game cap of 50 alts. It wont let me create any more.
My alts are as follows:
Druid : 4
Hunter : 11
Mage : 5
Paladin : 2
Priest : 5
Rogue : 4
Shaman : 3
Warlock : 13
Warrior : 3
They average just a shade under level 20.
My highest is Cryptography, an undead rogue on Dath'remar.
Next highest are a warlock, hunter and two druids, followed by a bunch of warlocks and hunters. I cant seem to get into my pallies, warriors or shammies, though mages and priests are ok.
Yes, I suck at levelling... maybe the above would explain why!
***
Now, that's a ridiculous amount of alts. There's no way I can give more than a few of them the attention they really need. So, why so many?
Well, I've tried to cover at least one of every class, on each of Horde and Alliance. I've also attempted to have at least one of every race and gender. I think I missed male Draenei but I have all the others.
On Dath'Remar, an oceanic PvE server where most of my time is spent, I have the allowed 10 characters, all on horde. I have a character there doing every one of the available professions. Some have specialisations in mind, so there are a few duplicates. I will have to drop some profession to cover the new runes skill coming in Wrath.
I have two other servers with loads of alts, both PvP. One has horde characters and the other a swag of alliance. Again they have the full spread of available professions.
My alt armies serve two other purposes. I have at least one alt on every oceanic server. Essentially this reserves my place there since Blizz sometimes locks the creation of new characters when a realm gets full. Of course, now that I have reached the game limit of 50 alts total this serves no real purpose. My alt army also spreads, thinly, onto each type of server. So, there are alts on each of "normal", "rp", "pvp" and "rp-pvp" servers.
As if that isn't enough alts, I also play three other MMO's and have almost maxed out the number of alts available in those games as well. That's about another thirty characters. Only a few have repeated names.
I guess the only real reason for so many alts is that I just like trying out new things. I'm not particularly interested in powering through a game to the end. Gear and loads of money aren't my thing either, though some of each helps a lot!
In later posts I intend giving some tips on managing swarms of alts for those of you with a little more focus than I!
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