WooT!

Mogana

Thanks to Pie, Nim, Vru and Sy for the help

– Fikkle

May the Horde be with you!

Email Question and Recruit a Friend

So the other day I received our second email question EVAR!  Okay, so not a huge deal, but I was super excited.  Matthias and Emi wrote asking:

Hello, I have found good info for me on your site. I was wondering if the 90 day bonus counts for all characters or only for 1? The Blizzard site isn’t clear for me and the Zhevra mount, how is it used? Mailed as an item? Can it be given to the friend or how does it work all together?

Thanks from Matth & Emi

So I did edit the question a bit, but I assure you I can haz permissions!

Well to the question.  First of all, a great big thanks to Matthias and Emi for taking the time to read the blog.  Its always nice to know there are real people out there on the intertubes. 

On to Recruit a friend.  The recruit a friend applies to all characters that are on the two linked accounts.  So if Emi recruits Matthias, then it would count for every character on her account and his.  Now a few things about that.  If the level differences between the two characters is more than 7, they won’t get triple xp for killing mobs (if the mobs are grey to one toon, neither gets 3x xp).  So if she ran a 70 with a level 1 toon, it wouldn’t work.  If they started together, then it will. 

The Zhevra mount is given to the account that recruited the friend.  So if Emi recruited Matthias, then her account would be given the mount.  It is equivalent to a level 60 epic riding mount.  Once the new account has paid for a two month subscription, Emi can go on to her account management page on the Blizzard website and select one of her toons to give the mount to.  It will then show up in her mail box.  It’s soulbound, so it can’t be traded and she’ll only get it once.  So she should be sure of which toon she wants it on before she chooses.

 

Other than that, there’s a few more neat things.  The grant a level ability is really cool.  Matthias’ account will be able to grant any toon on Emi’s account a free level for every two levels he gets, up to level 60.  So if his toon hits 30, he can grant one of her toons from level 1 to level 15.  If he hit 60, he can grant from 1-30 or 30-59, etc.

 

A few last things, they should have each other in their friends list and be partied together to get the triple xp (and to be able to summon each other).  The 3x xp has range restrictions, which I’ve found to be about 30 yards, so if she turns a quest in when he’s outside that range, she’ll miss out on the triple xp and just get regular xp.  Same for killing mobs.  They also get triple rep bonuses while they’re grouped and they won’t use up any rested bonus either.

 

Hope that clears a few things up.  I’ve found the Recruit a Friend promotion to be both fun and expensive.  Since I’ve started, I’ve managed to level:

Enhance Shaman, 60

Resto Shaman, 60

Demo Warlock, 60

Prot Pally, 63

Ret Pally, 24

BM Hunter, 37

Sutblety Rogue, 43

Assasin Rogue, 39

Fury Warrior, 30

Holy Priest, 30

So I realize there is a huge bit of altaholism in there.  I know, I’m an addict.  To be fair though, so of those were leveled only to help my friend get a few toons up and some are the ones I dual box with that I just haven’t finished yet.

I’m hoping to get a Rogue, Warrior and Priest up to 60 before the promotion ends, and eventually I’m going to try my hand at trip boxing the two Shammys and Warlock from 60-70.  I’m waiting on getting the Dreadsteed, which is a long, expensive quest.

 

Fikkle

 

“May the Horde be with you!”

Dual Boxing Goodies

Hello everyone, so I’m a few hours late on getting up some info on some of the dual boxing tools I’ve found out there. I’ve been playing around, reading some of the diffarent programs available. The first one I heard great things about was keyclone. I’ll have more on it later. The big downside of trying this program out is that it costs 19.99 for a one time download. I’ve played along with some of the settings, but still am having some issues getting it doing what I want it too. I’ll try to play around with it tomorow. But for now, I have to get to class. Wednesday is my busy day afterall!

I’ll have more info up on keyclone later, but until then, cross your fingers, and pray I’m smart enough to figure out the interface and command functions!

Feeling a bit slow,

~Sy

Go forth and multiply, err, your alts!

Well I’ve been pretty busy in game as of late.  We’ve been using the recruit a friend bonus to level a bunch of alts and its been a lot of fun.  So he’s the short’n'dirty of it:

Dual-Boxing:

Orc Shaman and Orc Warlock:  I spent the most time on these two so far.  They were a great amount of fun.  My warlock ran around and dotted stuff up while the Shammy healed after life tap.  They are currently at level 59.

Forsaken Warrior and Forsaken Priest:  These two are currently at level 18.  They were the first two I started, but they got sidelined for a bunch of other characters.  I’ll get back to them eventually.

Human Warlock and Dwarf Paladin:  These two were to be my ally experiment.  They only made it to level 9 before I put them on hold for other toons.

After I’d started all of these, one of my RL friends wanted to do the Recruit-a-Friend bonus as well.  So I sent him an invite from my second account (the dual boxing having taken place with my first and third accounts), and we started levelling together:

Grouping:

BElf Paladin: My newest pally made it up to 24 with my friend’s Warlock.  We put on them on hold to try something else out since he’s new to the game and wanted to try other things.

Orc Hunter: Yes, another HUNTER!  So we both have Orc Hunters, getting the triple xp together.  It is pretty crazy having two BM Hunters running around destroying everything.  They are currently sitting at level 28 and they’re going to be getting their mounts very soon.

Dranei Shaman:  When we all decided to head over to the Kael’thas server, I decided to make another Shaman.  I had so much fun leveling my first Shaman and now playing him in Outlands that I wanted to level another.  My friend is leveling a Human Paladin (planning to go Ret) and Sylus is leveling a Human Mage while Nim is leveling a Dwarf Paladin (planning to go Prot).  I’m going to be trying an elemental build until at least level 40 when I may decide to switch to Enhancement.

Grant-a-Level:

Orc Shaman:  So my first Shaman was sitting at level 30 when I started the dual-boxing experiment with my second Shaman and a Warlock.  As they levelled I granted levels to the first Shaman, wanting to continue playing him.  Because he was level 30, I was able to grant him levels all the way to 59.  Because he was in level 30 gear, with level 30 skills, it took me a few days to make him Outlands ready.  First, I had to buy all of his gear on the AH.  Level 57-59 greens can be a tad pricey, so bring your pocketbook.  Second, he was a skiner/miner, but I decided to completely re-roll his professions into herbalism/alchemy and relevel it.  The last thing, when I’d last played him at level 30, he’d only ever used two handed axes.  Now that he was 58, he was going to be dual-wielding one handed axes.  So I had to level that skill right from 1.  All in all, it was a lot of pain in the butt for the great reward of not having to level through 30 levels of stuff that I’ve done a million times.

Now we got an email question the other day (WOOT! our first one).  The person wanted to know how the grant a level thing worked.  Well, you need a higher level toon from the new account, and a lower level toon from the old account.  They need to be grouped in party and in the proximity of each other.  Then, the toon from the new account can right click on the other’s picture and select <Grant a level>.  The old toon then has to click accept, and they will suddenly ding.  Even if you’re in front of the bank in Orgrimmar.  Like I was.  Expect a whole bunch of tells to the effect of: “WTF????” and “HOW DID YOU DO THAT???”. 

So anyways, rinse and repeat until it won’t let you.  You can only use the grant a level until level 59.  Once the toon on the new account dings 60, all of that goes away and is lost forever.  My personal recommendation is to have the toon that is getting the levels granted to it to level up to 1 bubble before 31.  So like 19 bubbles into level 30.  The reason is that your experience bar stays filled at the same percentage each time you ding (at least that was my experience).  If you are level 30, you can be granted levels all the way up to 59, and thus you finish one experience bubble from level 60.  Brilliant!

So, go forth and multiply, err, your alts! 

 

– Fikkle

Recruit a Friend OPness

WOW, I’ve played so much wow over the past few days!!! I’m in altaholic’s heaven! A few years back, I started a troll priest. I’m not playing him, but, I decided to pull out the ol’ priest bag of tricks for another go round. Back in the day I got fed up with lvling hte troll priest. Come to think of it, that was the last troll I ever played. I just don’t don’t like the trolls. The female trolls are okay, but the males make me sick. Not sure if it’s the posture, or what, but they annoy the crap out of me.

Anyway, back to my point. So, Nimrock and I are lvling with this new recruit a friend system, and it si going sooooooo fast. I’ve gotten to lvl 40 in just over 1 day played time. That includes going out and lvling herbing when nim isn’t on.  So, I have a wicked shadow priest who is ready to get back to lvling when the server comes back up. When he gets to 60, I’m looking at a shammy with Nim’s druid. Or a mage…or my lock getting some lvling loving…I’m not sure. Then, fikkle, nim and I are going to lvl a few alliance toons. This is scary, as we have no sugar daddies on that side of it…so, it could get ugly. Either way, I’ve got some lvling to do, so back into the fray! I’ll catch you all on the flip side of 60!!!

So, I leave you with my lvl 40 studhorse priest. Enjoy.

You only wish you were as sexy as this!

Dual-Boxing Bonanza and Recruit-a-Friend Fun

Hello, my name is Fikkle and I’m an altaholic.  I’ve been playing alts for about a year now and no matter what I do, I can’t seem to give them up.

Okay, so that’s my little confession, which anyone who knows me knows is true.  Of late, I’ve been taking it to the next level.  I’ve mentioned a few times before that I have multiple accounts, so I suppose it was inevitable that I end up Dual-Boxing at some point.  As a preamble, I don’t think this is technically dual-boxing, at least not the way true mutli-boxers would think of it.  I don’t have any key switch doohickeys or anything like that.  I simply run two windows of WoW on one computer, run around, and keep one toon (usually my healer) on follow. 

Right now, I’ve been working on a Demo Warlock / Resto Shammy combo, and its going quite well.  The one great thing about the Warlock is that they’re pretty self-sufficient when it comes to levelling, so I don’t need to spend much time healing on the Shammy.

But the true beauty of the whole thing is the bonuses.  I went and got another account with the Recruit a Friend promotion, much like Syllus and Nim did to help each other out.  The bonuses from this are freaking awesome.  And for an altaholic, this is Blizzard sticking the bottle directly in my hands, uncorcked and all.  Nim and Syllus are a bit more efficient at leveling than I’ve been dual-boxing, but thats expected, as certain quests will take me a bit longer to accomplish and whatnot.  Not to mention that I took the time to do all of the Warlock demon quests, and then the Shaman totem quests whenever they were available, and since the bonuses require both characters to be in the same vicinity, all that was done one after the next.

So, speaking of the bonuses, lets do a quick recap of the bonuses:

Zhevra Mount: For the account who invited the friend if they subscribe for two months.

Triple Experience: For both accounts, when leveling and turning in quests, up to level 60 or after 90 days.  (Note: players have to be on each other’s friends list, in the same party and near each other when gaining xp for the bonuses to apply.)

Unused Rested Bonus:  All the rested xp that you get while logged out or standing in a city is accumulated, rather than used up, while you’re getting the triple bonus.

Summon Friend Ability: Once an hour you can summon your friend from the linked account.  This is especially useful since one of you can set your hearth in a major city and the other can set it to the area you’re questing in and you can summon each other back to train, and then back right away to level again.

Granting levels: For every two levels gained by the new account, the new account can grant up to one level for a lower level character on the old account.  (Note: This ability is taken away when the new account hits 60, so you would have to use them before then.)

The FAQ from Blizzard can be found here.

So my conclusion?  Of all the things people claim is OP in this game, this is truly OP.  For the two characters I started dual boxing, I hit level 40 in three days worth of playing (real time not game time).  This promotion is an altaholics dream.  I have always enjoyed trying out new classes and whatnot, and this is giving me a chance to do that, and get those characters to a high enough level that if I decide I want to bring them to Northrend I will totally be able to.  The only downside to this new promotion is that you level so fast that you won’t make enough money to train your spells without sending some gold from a higher level character, so I recommend doing that right away.

I think Blizzard’s intent with this promotion is to get some new subscriptions obviously, but to also allow those new players to make it to a high enough level to be able to participate in WOTLICKEE when it is released, which personally, I feel is a great idea.  Having started WoW after the release of BC, I know what its like to try and play catch-up to legions of players who had way more experience playing and started 59 levels ahead of me in the expansion.  This is the time to get a friend in game if they want to try it, so go ye and recruit a friend, you will love the rewards!

 

– Fikkle

“MONKAY, EAT PUNKIN!”

Altism on the rise

I’ve been doing alot of reading at work about autism. Aparently, it is on the rise in the united states. On further investigation, it would appear that it is on the rise, mostly due to several new disorders being lumped under the “autism umbrella.”

Why would I talk about this in a wow blog? Really, I have no clue, but, it makes an interesting paralel with my alt-ism being on the rise! I’ve been putting abadon and syllus on the backburner for a bit. In it’s place, I’ve been lvling a pally, in his 40’s, a warlock, in her 20’s, and a  shammy in her teens. I’ve been lvling them so that they always have rested xp. When one runs out, I log the other one. I’m making several observations about lvling this way. I love all three classes, and can see the viability, and the fun, in playing each class. The pally, spec’d prot, can take a beating forever and keep right on going. He’s been rolling with a rl buddy of mine, so while I hold everything, slowly beating them down with shield spike, holy shield, and ret aura, he picks em off with his bow. It’s a good plan, it works, and I CAN hold aggro!

The Warlock is fun as well, but definatly not in the same way. This is my second lock, but I’m too cheap to transfer my 54 lock to this server, so rerolling I go. Lock’s are alot like hunters, especially when you use the blueberry for solo grinding. Granted, it is diffarent, but has the hunter-pet feel to it for me. In a group, I know I play a diffarent roll. I have the most fun in groups with my lock, at this point I prefer the imp to the succubus, but have no problem pulling her out to do some cc or dps.

The shammy I’m rolling is so fun. I’m going to lvl her enhancement, and just beat the living crap out of everything, which is a blast when you are in the mood to stomp some alliance booty. It’s nice, I have the cash to get her some good weapons and decent chants as she lvl’s. She is staying pretty OP in my opinion.

Now, will abadon and syllus be making a comeback soon, probably yes. I’m just a bit burned out on end game content at the moment. I may just continue to do intermitten daily quests for gold, battlegrounds for honor (to save for wrath) and do some arenas to get some arena points as well(also save for lvl 80). If I do this, I could see two or three more toons hitting close to 70 before wrath comes out. Then I can decide which toon to take to 80 with abadon, as he will be 80 before anyone else. It might be fun having another class that has a bit more utility than a hunter, you know, a shammy that can heal, or a pally that could heal/tank/retnoob it up. Options are endless!!!

It’s also been a bit busy in sylus-land recently. I’ve been preparing to leave my job. It’s quite the hassle when you want the next person set up to take over, and not just leave them hanging! I’ve also been making all of the needed preparations to start back to school in three weeks. YIKES, I’M GOING BACK TO SCHOOL!!!! It’s scary, and exciting all at the same time. I’m now a non-traditional student…yes, I’m that middle aged lady in your classes with the rolling backpack and test curve destroying grade you all dread…sort of, all accept the lady part…and the backpack part…and the grade part…okay, so I’m not that lady, but I do feel like a dinosaur everytime I go on campus…

So, if you are every at pitt state university, look for me…I’ll be the guy with the for the horde hoodie on in the teachers education building. There can’t be too many of us that want to be teachers! Also, I’m not sure if one of us mentioned this to you before or not, but Fikkle and I are going on the Twisted Nether podcast! We are really excited to be on Bre and Fim’s show!!! Every week I look forward to hearing their guests share about what makes them tick. It’s always exciting! I’m ashamed to say I’m about two weeks behind on listening to them, but they are on my ipod ready to roll!!!

And, in other news, is BigRedKitty having a littleredkitty???? Stay tuned to BRK to find out!

So, until next time, keep mailing grimshott all of your mail, bug him to play more!!!

~Uncle Sy

An Epic, If Misunderstood Quest

So as we all know the Mid-Summer Fire Festival started this week.  I looked at a couple of the reward options (from the vendor) and wasn’t really all that impressed.  There really wasn’t anything at all that I wanted for either Fikkle or Grimshott.  The only thing that I was remotely interested in was the non-combat pet, the Spirit of Summer. 

However, on Friday I started a new alt (I know, I know).  So anyways, he was level 7 when I logged Friday, and I was on early Saturday and was able to get him up to level 11 when a few guildies logged on.  Talk then started about the festival.  The more I got to thinking, I figured it would be nice to have a rare-ish non-combat pet for my Shammy.  Grim runs around with Bananas while Fikkle has his Mana Wyrmling.  So I decided that after I finished my Fire Totem quest chain that I’d start collecting the Burning Blossoms for the pet.  The pet cost 350 Blossoms.  Each of your faction’s fires that are honored grant 5 Blossoms, while each of the opposing faction’s fires that are put out grant 10. 

Normally, I would’ve tried for the daily quests to get my 350 Blossoms, however, all of next week I’m going to be travelling to Iceland and not sure of whether I’ll be able to sign in.  So I started running.  When it was all said and done I had visited all but five fires in Azeroth (and none in Outlands).  The only ones that I missed were the two in Silithus, the two in the Burning Steppes and the one in Western Plaguelands.  I also got almost all of the possible flight points in the game, and managed to level to 15 just from discovery experience and turning in the festival quests.

18 hours after I began I logged out for the night, three blossoms short.  Sunday morning I logged in, completed one of the dailies and received five more blossoms and purchased my pet.  When I announced in guild chat I was told that I had to blog about this wacky adventure.  Nimrock even suggested a beginning for the tale: “It was a dark day when young Maharaja began his epic, if misunderstood quest, to capture the flame of summer.”

So for any lowbies out that that you may want to get some festival rewards, have faith, it is possible!

Fikkle

Wading Through Now to be Prepared For WOTLICKEE

Just a quick side note before I get started.  I have started pronouncing WotLK as wot-LICK-ee and can’t see myself ever stopping.  It makes me chuckle every time I do.

 

The Blog Azeroth Shared Topic for last week was about “Preparing For Wrath of the Lich King” (wot-LICK-ee).  I realize I’m a bit late to the shared topic, but I was thinking about this earlier today and wanted to talk about it anyways.  Since it fits into the shared topic, its going to be my contribution to the WoW Blogoshpere for the week.

So we all know that the evel cap in Wotlickee is going to go up to 80.  This is not news people.  I’ve noticed on some of the blogs I read and podcasts that I listen to, that people have mentioned this is going to make getting alts to endgame quite prohibitive.

Having 4 characters above level 60 at the moment, I’ve been through the level grind a few times now.  The first time, with my Mage, was alright because, well, I didn’t know any better and wanted to get my first character to 70.  The second time, with my Hunter, wasn’t all too bad either, since I did know better and new what to do and what not to do. 

I was actually leveling him before and after “The Great XP Change of 2007″.  When he first started out, I was xp grinding from killing mobs repeatedly until about level 30 when I wanted to die and never grind ever again.  So from there, I switched to Jame’s Horde Leveling Guide and used that until about level 50.  When I was at level 49, the patch hit with the changes to leveling.  On my hunter, I really only got to see the changes in effect for about 10 levels.  It actually didn’t make all that much of a change as the instead of it getting progressively harder to level into the 50s, the difficulty was scaled down to pretty much the same as it had been for me in the 40s.

And then he hit 60.  At that point, it was kind of like when you’re running on the beach out into the water.  While you’re on the sand, running is easy and fast.  Even when you first start to get into the water, its only ankle deep and not really slowing you down at all.  But there comes a point where you can’t lift you’re legs out above the water any more and you’re suddenly slowed to a very slow pace.  Then you have to wade out further until the water is deep enough that you can start swimming.

Levels 60-70 are like wading into the water and they really slow you down.  You know you want to get to the swimming part at 70, but you have to get through the not-too-deep part and not-too-shallow part of the water which requires you to wade.  At least now, its only 10 levels.  We all know it isn’t that bad, even though leveling slows down significantly.

But when Wotlickee starts, wading through the water is going to get twice as long, at least for the forseeable future.  Blizzard is well known for changing content as they see how it plays out, but they are also known for taking their time to do that.  This means that most of us will have been through that slog at least once or twice, and possible even more times than that.

So what is all this going to mean for us altaholics?  Well, as most altaholics generally have numerous characters, most of them are on the beach running.  There will be the odd one that we get out into the water and who will start to wade through all of this content yet again.  For most altaholics, the ones running on the beach, this won’t have too much of an impact.  But its those of us to start to wade out into the water again that are really going to be affected.

Having done this four times, I know that right about the time a character gets up to level 58-60, they start to get some really cool abilities, stuff they never had before.  When that happens, we generally feel like we want to get these toons to the endgame and go for a swim.  But with Wotlickee we’re going to be slowed from achieving this by the increased wading time to get there.

So getting our alts that we want to play into the endgame is going to take that much more time and be that much more frustrating.  If you already have most or all of your toons at 70 that you’ll want at 80, then you’re already ahead of the game.  If not, you’re going to have a lot of wading to do to get there.

This is kinda where I’m at right now.  I have a Druid at level 64 and a Priest at level 61-62ish that I’d like to have at the end game.  I also have my baby Alliance Dwarf Hunter who hasn’t even hit 30 yet that I’d like to one day have at the end game to do content with some of the great bloggers out there who only play Alliance side.

But getting all three of them to 70 before Wotlickee is not impossible.  And doing it now, before the expansion hits means that you’ll be able to spend more time in Northrend rather than wading through an empty Outland, not to mention the ease of getting groups for instances (now as opposed to then), or the lack of relevance a lot of the gear there will have when Northrend is open.

So get out there and start running or wading your way to being prepared for Wotlickee now.  Even if the game is scheduled to release before Christmas, there is still plenty of time to take a brand new toon from 1-70 if you really want to.

Metaphors hurt my head.

Fikkle

Now A Sidhe Devil!

So my Alliance side experiement has received a bit of a jump start again.  A while back, BBB posted that he was leaving his guild to form a more casual style guild with some like minded folks.  Since then, quite a few of the Pox Arcanum folks have joined Sidhe Devils and I decided that if I was going to try to level an Alliance toon to see another part of the game that I might as well do it with some like minded fun people. 

So several weeks ago I transfered my Dwarf Hunter, Grimshott, over to the Kael’thas server in anticipation of joining up with Sidhe Devils .  Unfortunately, RL events and work had kept me from even logging him in since then.  But Tuesdays in Pox Arcanum night for White Poxomatic and since I had a bit of spare time before we started poxing, I decided I’d give my Dwarf the ole college try and get back to leveling him.  Luckily for me, the great BBB happened to be on as well and after a few whispers and a little confusion on my part about the sign-up process I got an invite and I’m now a proud member of another great WoW community.

So I just wanted to throw a great big shout out to all the Sidhe Devils out there.  If you’re interested in finding out more about the guild, you can check it out here .