Saturday morning Wild was getting some crafting done and got a whisper from his old shaman friend, Bf. "icc25?" Short and to the point as usual. Wild said "sure" and Bf responded that he would pass my name along to the raid leader. Bf is still in the FS guild, although two of his alts are now in MM. I was curious about the raid - ie, was it an FS raid, a PUG? You never know with Bf.
Wild waited around and didn't get an invite. No problem, I'd said yes on a whim and because it was Bf asking. But Bf whispered back asking if I'd gotten a whisper from the raid leader. When I replied "nope, but np if they don't need me" Bf gave me the raid leader's name to contact him directly. The name gave me a moment of pause. I see his name in /trade chat all the time and he belongs to a guild with a high epeen - ie, they fancy themselves as elite raiders but still raid with PUGs, and the guild membership seems to turn over constantly and rapidly. My interest in the raid dimmed quite a bit. I did not contact the raid leader, but in the interest of fairness I waited a few more minutes to see if they were going to get back to me. Nothing, so I whispered Bf a "thanks for asking, but no invite, and I'm gonna log, good luck in there!"
He sent back a "thanks, sry" and I noted that their raid had already started and they were at Lord Marrowgar, the first boss (this info is sent back automatically when whispering someone in an active raid). Wild coudlalso tell that they were running with 24 raiders, since the info also included "24/24 alive." Lots of reasons for holding that one spot open - perhaps they had someone coming, etc. Wild didn't care, but I'm glad I didn't end up in that raid.
Melasahnd and Rakta did some neutral AH work in Booty Bay over the weekend, not only for Lost but also to pad the guild bank vault with gold the DER family had come up with. We are looking pretty good. One of Sis's extended family, a level 80 on another server, might also be joining us, which would be a great boon to our guild. Funny thing about Booty Bay, though. It's a neutral town, so both alliance and horde can come there. The town is run by goblins (goblins run all of the neutral towns, I believe) and the average level of the goblin npcs is around 77. For some reason I have yet to figure out, players are always attacking the neutral npcs in Booty Bay. Most of the time they don't get down to where the less known about neutral AH npc is, so it doesn't affect our transactions, but I still don't know why it goes on all the time.
Mery has a couple of pics of a new set of gear she is working on. Now, a certain degree of color blindness might hinder Mery's efforts to have a perfectly matched ensemble, but she's pretty happy with her first shot at it. Mery will accept "constructive" criticism and suggestions on color coordination and other gear choices that might work better. Obviously, her new outfit is tailored to match her pair of butterfly pets and is intended to show off her charms rather than her killer instinct.
Wild did two random Heroics on Friday to get from 20 to 30 triumph badges. The first was CoS (Culling of Stratholme) which is very long but easy to do. Wild then joined a Nexus run in progress. They were about a third of the way in and said they'd had a terrible healer and an afk warlock - apparently both were kicked from the group. Often the healer gets blamed for problems that aren't his fault, but Nexus is also an easy run so Wild stayed to see how it worked out. Well, a mage went offline soon after we started and we four manned it almost to the final boss, when she finally logged back in saying she'd had computer problems. No matter, we could have finished with just four, as fortunately the tank was decent. Wild had time for one more, and the queue's were short since wild was signing up as a healer. But random Heroics are just sooooo boring ... Wild had had enough after the two runs. Wild still needs two more runs to get the forty triumph emblems he needs for his heirloom leather chest piece.
Oh Noes! I just read that the current heirlooms will not work past level 80, so Wild cannot use heirlooms for leveling to 85. Ok, I guess that makes a kind of sense, so that some players don't get a leveling advantage over others, but ... Sigh. The good news is that now Wild won't have to do those two extra random heroics! There will be new heirlooms to be acquired once the first player gets to 85: a cloak and a helm. Once Wild gets those, total xp increases for under level 80 toons is 45% xp boost (with 4 heirlooms) vs the 20% we have now. Wow. I've also heard that the new heirlooms will come from Guild awards, which may or may not suck depending on how that works, which is still unclear.
I've drifted into news about the Cataclysm expansion, or "Cata" as the shorthand that seems to be popular. Here's some more.
There's a Cata change to Dungeon Finder I find amusing - As it works today players sign up on dungeon finder, and when a group is full everyone is instantly teleported just inside the instance. Things will still work this way in Cata. However, one of the frustrations of a group (and subject to some hilarity) is that when a player dies or the group wipes, players might not have any idea where the entrance is to the dungeon they were in or how to get there from the graveyard where they were deposited. They never needed to know since they were instantly teleported directly inside from wherever they were. In Cata, players will be required to have already found and visited the entrance to a dungeon before dungeon finder will allow them to sign up for that dungeon.
Some more Cata tidbits about capital cities. In vanilla WoW there was a capital city for horde (Orgrimmar) and one for alliance (Stormwind). There was no neutral city that both horde and alliance called home (ie, set their hearth to more or less permanently). When Outland was released, the neutral city of Shattrath become the primary hearth point for both factions. Sure, Org and SW were still important, but Shattrath was the primary home. Then came Northrend and Dalaran became the neutral city home to both factions.
Cata will not have any new capital cities. None. The new zones are spread across the World and there is no central gathering place for this expansion such as Shattrath and Dalaran were in previous expansions. Neither of those cities are anywhere near where the action is going to be in Cata. The expectation is that in Cata the horde will return to Org and the alliance to SW. The as yet unknown piece of this is whether the two faction cities will get a portal hub like exist in Shattrath and Dalaran. If it doesn't, travel across the realm may still be centralized at Dalaran.
Level Professions Now or Wait?
What is the best strategy for leveling professions: get professions to 450 skill before Cataclysm or wait until after release?
Typically, the mats for leveling professions quickly becomes more expensive when an expansion comes out and older content is no longer farmed. There would also be no ramp up to 450 after Cat to start skilling up to the new level. So getting to 450 now might be the best choice. However, with all the changes to professions (such as random stats, eliminating specializations, reductions in mat requirements, etc) would it be better to wait and take advantage of them after release?
Ruby Sanctum - Dead and Buried Already?
[A post I made on the WoWhead forums]
From what I've seen on my realm and read on the forums it seems like few PUGs or guilds are bothering with Ruby Sanctum. PUGs seem to find it too hard to build a raid that can coordinate well, which RS requires, and so there are virtually no /trade requests for RS. Comments from raiding guilds are that it's "too hard" or "too trivial" depending on whether the guild has killed Halion or not. Either way, I don't see many guilds bothering to go to RS anymore.
A third reason, and perhaps the most telling, is why bother? The gear is nice, but it's a major effort to get it (ICC25 is easier), plus it will all be obsolete in a few weeks when Cataclysm arrives.
So, is Ruby Sanctum going to become the quickest raid ever to go from new to forget about it?
Most replies were yawns. Ruby Sanctum is a boring instance, several said. It's too difficult for PUGs, seemed to be a consensus opinion, which would explain why it's rare to see RS PUG runs advertised on /trade. The loot is very good, including some Bis (best in slot) gear in the hard mode versions. But gear upgrades to ilevel 288 (the best gear in the game currently) is going to be replaced almost immediately when Cata arrives. The gear currently available in the Beta starts around ilevel 300. Yes, I said "starts" at i300. Quest greens in Cata will be better than a lot of top end gear we have now. I've seen a few posts saying that by level 83 most players will have replaced almost all of their WotLK "epic" raiding gear with Cata quest gear. So why bust our heads getting gear out of RS?
But there are other opinions as well, and the discussion is still ongoing.
Oh, and now might be the time to let it slip that Naithipe has some news about her whereabouts the last several days. This could be interesting, but it will have to wait until the next post, assuming JB can get the full story out of her.
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