Last Wednesday, December the 23rd, after running the random raid quest, I ran a few random heroics. Toward the end of the night, I was in a PUG doing Halls of Stone. We wiped on the lasers because the tank didn’t see them, apparently. Anyway, when I released and spawned at the graveyard, I got immediately disconnected. I tried logging in again, and the same thing happened. Within seconds of logging in to Ernst, I got disconnected. Out of curiosity, I logged into other characters; they were fine. Only my mage – my main character – is affected.

I contacted Blizzard, and at first they revived my character and moved him to Elwynn Forest. But I still got disconnected upon logging in. Next, Blizzard had me remove the WTF, Interface, and Cache folders, basically returning WoW to a fresh install. That didn’t work.

I tried logging in on my wife’s computer, but that didn’t work either.

So, since the problem exists on different computers, I’m certain it’s something on Blizzard’s end. I’m still waiting for a response from them after I updated my latest in-game ticket. I also sent an email message to tech support.

So far they’ve been courteous in their attempts to remedy the situation, but have been so far unsuccessful.

I missed out on 3 or 4 Triumph emblems last Wednesday, and I’m missing out on more every day that this problem exists. I’m quite ticked.

For the first time in my World of Warcraft career, I was able to experience new patch content immediately upon release. Well, I shouldn’t say that; our guild isn’t ready to go raiding Icecrown Citadel, but I ran the Icecrown instance last night for the first time, and others in the guild were in there the first night. It wasn’t until after 3.2 went live that I got my first character to 80, so everything was already in place.

So far, I absolutely love the “Fall of the Lich King” patch.

The first thing I took advantage of was the Dungeon Finder. The night 3.3 went live, most of my guildmates were already doing the Icecrown instance, so I gave the Dungeon Finder a try. The interface was easy to use, and it was only a few moments before I was pulled into a dungeon. That first night the auto-portal didn’t work; which wasn’t terribly surprising. No big deal.

Heroic ToC was the dungeon selected for us, so we all just ran to the tournament grounds on our own servers, entered the coliseum, and there we were. The group performed very well with a Death Knight tank and a tree throwing heals; it probably went more smoothly than some of our all-guild runs. I looted a ring, we congratulated each other when finished, and went our separate ways.

On my second dungeon of the night with guildmates, we discovered the button near the minimap that will port you to and from the dungeon.

I had been hearing of complaints in the Trade channel while in Dalaran about the Dungeon Finder not working, but I or my group have used it a half dozen times or so and haven’t had any difficulties.

Last night while running the Icecrown instance, two of our guildmates had to leave after we finished Pit of Saron. We grabbed another guildmate that had logged on in the meantime, but we had to PUG the fifth. And again, it went very smoothly. It literally took a few seconds between confirming our roles, and having a decently geared Death Knight ready to continue through the Halls of Reflection with us. If it hadn’t been for the Dungeon Finder, we would have had to call off our Icecrown run before the Halls of Reflection.

So yeah, I love the Dungeon Finder. Not only can it keep your group going if a member has to log out, but it will likely be the end of those boring nights when there aren’t enough guildies online to run a heroic. And I’ll be able to run those dungeons I’ve never done (Occulus, Halls of Stone) because no one ever wants to do them.

Thank you for contacting us about the inability to socket a gem into a Bind on Pickup item. We discovered the two-hour trade window is preventing the gems from being socketed, but if you wait, the issue will resolve itself. Please note the timer will count down only when the character is logged into the game. You may also enchant the item to instantly remove the timer and bind the item to your character. Your patience while we resolve this matter is greatly appreciated.

I first encountered this little bug the other night when I won a pair of [The Obliterator Greaves] from Heroic Violet Hold. Our tank, also our guild master, gave me a gem to throw into the socket. I popped it in and got the “Socketing a gem will make this item untradeable” message. When I clicked Okay nothing happened. At the time, I thought maybe an add-on was conflicting with it, so I ignored it.

When I logged back in the next night, the two-hour trade timer was expired and the gem socketed fine. Maybe it was just a fluke. But when the same thing happened to the [Helm of the Violent Fray] I got from the regular Trial of the Champion. I mentioned this in guild chat, and someone else said the same thing happened to them. So I submitted a ticket and received the above mail from a GM shortly thereafter.

So keep this in mind as you’re getting gear. Pass the information along to your friends and guildmates, and hopefully we can at least avoid some frustration.

Last night I went to the Trial of Champions (regular) with some guild mates. It was my first time there, and I had fun; though I’ll need some more practice with the jousting. I came away with my first two epic pieces of equipment: [Breastplate of the Imperial Joust] and [Legguards of Abandoned Fealty]

Since getting into the higher levels, I’ve been doing more instances and even got into the Alterac Valley battleground a few times. I’m starting to do dailies. I’m thinking about what gear I want to get down the line, instead of whatever happens along.

I’m starting to think differently about how I play the game. Up until I made this Death Knight, I was content with the day-in, day-out process of leveling my characters. I was an altoholic, jumping from one character to another after a week or two.

I don’t want to wander blindly through the game anymore, though. I want to have a main character and some alts, instead of a bunch of semi-main characters. I want to be able to do Heroic dungeons with my friends and guild mates. I want to run people through instances, instead of being run all the time. I want to see the Old World dungeons before the Cataclysm. I want to be able to participate in the holiday events like Brewfest, Winter Veil, etc., and not feel guilty about it because I should be leveling. I want to be able to go on those holiday raids and actually be able to use the loot I get. I want to know what people are talking about when they discuss boss encounters and raid strategies and dps/tank/whatever builds…

My time in WoW is limited, and I want to make as much of it as I can. I’m tired of spinning my wheels – which I’ve basically been doing for 4.5 years – while people that have only been playing for a couple months already have a character at the level cap.

In order to achieve this, I joined a casually serious raiding guild. What I mean by casually serious is that there are over 90 characters in the guild, many of which are level 80. There’s no set raiding schedule, but you can almost always find a group to run an instance or daily with you.

This is the first “raiding” guild I’ve belonged to. I’ve always just had small guilds that would serve more as a chat room than anything else. We can still goof around in the new guild (which is a huge plus) but we also have the resources to get our members epic gear and what-not.

Does this mean I’m moving from “casual” game play to being a raider? No. I’m still a casual player simply because of my schedule. I have a fairly rigid window of play time, and sometimes I have to miss events because of it. And to be honest, I don’t want to have anything more than a casual relationship with my World of Warcraft. I like being the one in control of deciding what to do on any given night. But it’s also nice to have the option to run a few instances if I feel adventurous. If a guild mate says “Anyone want to run a Heroic?” I’ll be able to say “Sure, I’ll come.”

From a post on WoW Insider, which links to a blue post on the Official WoW Forums, race changes are coming soon.

This was actually mentioned in the announcements for the Faction Changes, but this is the first I’ve heard of it directly. I had read that you could finagle a race change by flipping to the other faction, then back, but that would take 4 months, because of the 60-day cooldown.

This is awesome. My only question is will they allow Goblins and Worgen to be included in these Race Changes? Or will they exclude them because they want people to experience the new starting zones and new content? This would make total sense, and I wouldn’t QQ at all if they decided to go this route.

But what about Death Knights? Goblins and Worgen will be able to be DKs, so that would allow people to skip 58 levels worth of leveling and exploration. In that case, would it be any different than allowing a level 80 to change to a Worgen or Goblin?

After all, if someone really wants to experience the new starting areas, they can just make a disposable character and probably get through it in 2-3 sessions. Once they’ve gotten through the new areas, they can delete the character and go back to their main to explore the rest of the revamped content.

Personally, I kind of hope they do exclude the Worgen and Goblins from the Race Change service. If they’re included, it will destroy any sense of accomplishment in leveling a brand new race to the level cap. Remember Burning Crusade and the race to get your brand-spanking-new Draenei or Blood Elf to 70? That could be rendered moot with the Race Change service.

But on the other hand, the prospect of changing my Death Knight to a Worgen is very tempting…

Is it just me, or do the quests in Northrend seem much more disjointed than in the Outlands and the Old World?

In the original game and in Burning Crusade, as you worked your way through a zone’s quests and came to outgrow the zones, some of the last quests would take you to the next zone. They might be trivial little quests like, “We’re concerned about This and That; go talk to So-And-So over in the next zone and see What’s Up.” These quests wouldn’t be difficult at all, nor would you get a large reward or a lot of experience. But they served a very important purpose: they kept you going on to the next zone. They kept you moving about as smoothly as possible from the zone you just outgrew to a new one that would test you even more and hone your skills to an even sharper edge.

Northrend doesn’t seem to do this. Several times now, I’ve had to ask in General chat, or look online to see where I was supposed to go next. I would work through the quests in an area, and that would be it. There wouldn’t be any “Go talk to That Guy over there” kinds of quests. There would just be no more left.

There have been quests that move me between different settlements in the same zone, but the transitional quests have been severely lacking.

I’m wondering if this is by design, or if it’s just poor quest planning. They could have done it this way to try and promote exploration; getting players to new life and new civilizations, and find quests on their own. But this goes against the gameplay they developed throughout the rest of the game. Or is it a simple lack of communication between teams assigned to different zones?

Whatever the case, it’s caused me a fair amount of frustration and confusion. My only solace is in the hope that I’m not alone.

For about a month and a half now, since Wrath of the Lich King came out, I’ve focused 99% of my game time on leveling. I’ve been playing MMORPGs for about 8 years now¹ and have never had a character at the maximum level. It took months after Burning Crusade was released to even get a character to 58 so that I could experience the Outlands. When Wrath of the Lich King was released, I was sitting at 65.

With WotLK, however, that’s going to change. It’s already changed. Within a month of release, I took a Death Knight from 55 to 68. Now, not even 50 days after release, I’m well into level 73. I know, this might not seem like much to a lot of other players, but it’s pretty big for me. Usually I get sidetracked by alts; The only other characters I’ve logged on since WotLK’s release has been my Auction House mule, and a couple Alliance characters for quick tasks – grabbing Winter Veil gifts, putting things up on the neutral Auction House, etc. Professions have even taken a back seat – no seat, rather. My Death Knight had been without any professions (besides First Aid) until yesterday; I picked up Mining and Engineering.

So I guess you could say I’m enjoying the Death Knight class, since no other character has so dominated my attention.

Hey look at that; another month, another post.

Seriously folks, I’m hoping to get back into the blogging now that the expansion is live, and I have my Death Knight out and ready to spread destruction to the world. Well, carefully meted out destruction that’s been preapproved by the Horde bureaucracy, anyway.

I didn’t pick up our copies of WotLK until Friday, and it wasn’t until Saturday night that we were actually able to play. Since neither of us have made it to 68 with any of our characters, we didn’t have to worry ourselves silly trying to decide whether we should level to 80 or create Death Knights.

I was able to blow through the DK newb area and quests in about 2 hours. There were no noticeable changes from the beta, other than the complete lack of lag. Fellow Betans, you know what I’m talking about. On more than one occasion I had to quit playing the beta because the lag was so bad. But live, the newbie area was nice and smooth. There were only a few quests during which I noticed even a little bit of congestion, but it wasn’t bad. I don’t know how things were on Thursday – probably quite a bit worse – but I was a bit surprised.

So my Blood Elf Death Knight is ready for the Outlands. I’m looking forward to it, actually, because the other two times I’ve gone through Hellfire Peninsula has been on the Alliance side. I don’t expect the quests to differ a lot, but just the change of scenery in towns and such will help alleviate the sense of repetition.

Yeah, I know. I get this brand new blog set up, then I go and disappear for almost a month. Well, to be perfectly honest, I’ve had a severe case of Expansion Blues. Rashes and everything. I’d been playing in the Beta, but after getting my third Death Knight through the newbie area, I decided to stop wasting my time. I currently have a Rogue and a Mage trudging through the Outlands, and the last thing I wanted was to have another character doing the same Hellfire and Zangarmarsh quests I just got done doing, or am still in the process of doing. Especially when I’m just going to be going through all that Death Knight stuff again when Lich King goes live.

On top of that, friends were playing in the Public Test Realm before 3.0 went live, so guild chat was a little quiet. I wasn’t about to deal
with the PTR when I already had to deal with Beta updates every 15 minutes. Plus, 3.0 stuff was already in the Beta, so….

Enough about the excuses, though. The other night, I popped in after downloading the patch, and took some of my characters to the barber shop. First on the docket was my rogue. For the longest time, I’ve harbored a deep regret for the hair style and color I’d chosen for him. Long and bright purple, I really don’t know what I was thinking. It looks horrid, and doesn’t even go with all of the RP lore, etc. that I’ve concocted for him over the years. So I took him in there and bleached his hair white, cut about four feet off, and now he has a respectable, functional ponytail about shoulder-length. Stupid me, I should have grabbed a screenshot. Oh well.

Yesterday, some time during the day, I remembered that 3.0 also included an easening¹ of the experience required for levels 60-70. So, I logged on my rogue last night and got back to work. Hey, there’s still almost a month before Lich King – maybe I can still hit 70 by then!

When I logged in, I saw that Enyx was one (1) experience point from 64. Now, being the cynical person I am, I can’t help but wonder if because of the experiencing easening I should have been thrust into 64 just because of the experience I’d already gained in 63. But then, I guess Blizzard didn’t want to give people “free” levels. I mean, really, what are the odds that I just happen to have one less exp point than I needed?

Regardless, all I had to do was turn and grab a Handful of Candy. 5400 free experience. Ding 64. Oh, remind me to get my new skills when I’m in Stormwind again.

Over the course of the night, I had the help of a 70 Pally friend. I was running around Terrokar doing all kinds of quests. I ended up the night a little over 60% through 64, which is fracking amazing. At one point, having just turned in a half-dozen quests, I saw my Titan Bar said I was pulling in almost 180,000 experience per hour. As kick-ass as that is, I wanted to talk about my Rogue’s performance compared to pre-3.0. Overall, I’d say my DPS has doubled; if not doubled, then it’s gone up at least 70% since before the patch. Pre-3.0, I’d average about 250 dps; if I got a lot of crits, I might finish the fight with 325. Last night, before my friend came out to help, I was doing 400+ regularly. With big crits, I’d be pushing 600. I even destroyed my previous record for single highest damage output. It had been a 2100-something Eviscerate, but last night almost right out of the gates I dropped a 2460.

Now, not only will the decreased experience required make it easier to level, but with so much more DPS, these next 6 levels should fly by. Especially if I keep getting help.

Speaking of that… let me pose a question. Is it faster to level by doing all the quests on your own and getting the maximum amount of experience for all of your kills, or is it faster to have a high-level friend help you so you can get (more) quests done faster? I’ve never really compared the two methods, so I don’t really know.