Connected Realms

On Monday, Drak’Tharon finally made the list for connected realms. I had been both dreading and looking forward to this feature. The dread stemmed from my experiences with Cross Realm Zones. There is little to no leveling content that requires having other people around, so CRZ served only to create competition for quest mobs, rare spawns, and gathering nodes. It would be a huge understatement to say that I am not a fan of CRZ.

On the other hand, however, over the course of the expansion, Drak had gone from a less-populated but still reasonably active realm, to a place where it is impossible to gather enough people to kill a world boss. We’re talking like, a dozen people max on the Timeless Isle during prime playing hours. No more than four people regularly posting their wares on the auction house.

When the announcement finally came, I was more excited than disappointed. Part of this is because of the realm we were being connected to, the previously joined duo of Firetree and Rivendare. I already had a slate of alts on Firetree because that is Stunnah’s home realm. With the joining of realms, all of them could be in SR and I would be able to mail things back and forth freely between them.

I had the good fortune to be home and online when the connection was completed. The first thing I did was log onto Wega and check out the much more robust AH. Where there had previously been one page of battle pets when Drak was solo, there were now no less than three. Let’s see, Gulp Froglet for 2k, super tempting, but there are more pages to look at. Better wait. Ooh! Vengeful Porcupette, 3499! *snag*

Next I see requests in trade chat for more people to do Storming Stormwind. Hmm … I’d killed Tyrande and Velen back in Wrath, but had never gotten around to finishing up the other two. And I honestly can’t recall the last time I *ever* saw anyone looking to do it. So I joined in. The group fell apart somewhere between Stormwind and Ironforge, but hey .. I got Varian checked off the list!

As for the Timeless Isle, well … I did get ganked once while helping to kill a rare, but … omg there are at least people there *to* kill rares.

So far, I give this new feature two thumbs up. We’ll see if my opinion changes any when my Alliance server Winterhoof, which had quite a lot more activity than Drak or even Kargath, gets connected. It’s in the list for the next round.

How about you? Any of you out there on a realm that’s been connected? What do you think so far?

Alt Week: Warlock

I never really liked warlocks. I tried making one not too long after I started playing. I figured it would be easy, since I had already leveled a hunter, so another pet class should be no big deal. But … I dunno. I just never quite got it. She made it to about 23 but stalled there and was eventually deleted. Now .. this was back in BC, and a lot has changed since then. You had the big talent trees and had to figure out where to put those points. You had all of the spells and had to figure out which ones were supposed to be used with which spec. Yes, sure I was only 20-something, but even at that small level I was overwhelmed.

Then in Wrath I picked up maging. Well obviously since I was now a mage I had to hate warlocks, right? So I never got around to trying another one. Mage was easier to make sense of. If you’re fire, use fire spells. If you’re frost, use frost spells. If you’re arcane … well you get the picture.

Cata changed everything around, of course. With the talent revamp, I figured it was time to try again. I made a male worgen. He still exists, and I level him occasionally, but I had a hard time getting used to his casting animations so he joined my group of set-aside alts.

Then in Mists we got the green fire questline. Naturally, I took this as a sign to try once more. I had several revamped zones in the Eastern Kingdoms that I hadn’t seen yet, so I also used it as an opportunity to level through them. I made a female undead on Averry’s server, partly to avoid leveling on my home PvP server and partly to (finally) have a max level character to play with him there. This time, it stuck.

Madorsa made it all the way to max level.

She’s run around the Isle of Thunder with Averry’s lock, killing rares for the Tome of the Lost Legion. We both eventually found a copy on the AH for a price that we felt was reasonable, so that chapter is over. She’s run LFRs with him also. I think she still has to complete the final wing of ToT, but she’s eligible to go to SoO now as well. She’s spent a lot of time on the Timeless Isle. The survivability of the lock compared to ret pally is just … yeah. She killed stuff that Van would run away from. Even in lesser gear.

She started on her green fire quest. It’s been very interesting so far and there is so much lore. I’ve taken a ton of screenshots. Unfortunately, the scenario part is long and I had to log out shortly after this screenshot was taken, but this particular exchange amused me.

So … I’ve gone from basically disliking warlocks immensely, to having one as my second main. She’s the only character besides Van (and Kerick but he’s the same class/spec as Van so that doesn’t count) to have completed any raiding this expansion. Ok, fine, Kirgra hit up a single wing of MSV because some Prinnie wanted company, but otherwise .. that’s it. I’m getting that end of xpac itch to drag alts through content though, so maybe soon I will have others completing LFR too.

Alt Week: Shaman

This is probably the smallest alt week for me, because I only have one shaman, Kriann.
She is adorably cute …

as only a girl dwarf can be.

She is totally getting leveled. Really. I mean, I *know* I rolled her in Cata when dwarves could become shammies, and she’s still in Outland but … she has all those heirlooms and she’s 66 so very close to Northrend. Lava Burst is fun! And she’s the only one I have so … she has zero competition to become my first max-level shaman. The only other one I had, got deleted in favour of making a panda, who is still sitting on my character select screen on Drak without ever having been logged in.

Alt Week: Rogue

Um .. I have rogues. You just can’t see them, they’re stealthed.

Honestly, I’ve tried rogues many times. They make great bank alts. *cough*

I don’t know why I haven’t stuck it out on one. They are a lot of fun. I love to go sub and do a stealth-shadowstep-ambush combo on something or someone. But I just have so many other things to do that I play for a little bit, then get sidetracked on something my main or a main alt wants to do and then the rogue gets set aside again.

Kroy has made it the farthest of any of them.

Ya um, that screenshot is 3 years old. Almost four years. And he’s gained maybe 30 levels since then … he’s up to 53. He WILL get leveled someday. It’s totally in my plans. I just don’t know when it will happen. I have this far-reaching goal to get every class leveled at some point. So far I have DK, paladin, mage and warlock. I also have monk, warrior, hunter and priest at level 84-87. That leaves druid, rogue, and shaman, all of which I have at levels 41-65. Now, if Blizz will just stop adding content (read: pets) I will have time for leveling!