A wild blog post appears!

I'll be honest with you I completely forgot I even had a blog until someone mentioned it the other day. I decided to log in and saw several new comments and discovered I still have several hundred visitors every week despite having not updated since July (Seriously? July, are you for real?) and that made me feel pretty bad! While I really only use my blog for myself it still makes me sad that people would visit and not find anything new. Sorry guise!

The Pre-Warlords patch (6.0.2) The Iron Tide came out last week so I've been busy collecting BoA weapons from Heroic Garry for all of my characters. Although I have been having a lot of connection issues since the patch which has left a bit of a bitter taste. I really hope things are fixed for next week. Still, I can't believe WoD is almost finally here and I'm really excited!

Back in March I wrote a post containing a list of things I'd like to do in game before or during WoD. Lets take a look back and see what I managed to get done and what I completely forgot to do!

Challenge Modes - I completed these on both my Priest and Shaman! Which were the only two sets I really liked. I was mega late to the CM party this time around but plan on doing them much sooner in WoD.

Learn how to play and Re-roll Horde fit perfectly into each other. A friend on Twitter joked about me moving to his server and re-rolling Horde to join his raid team. Several months down the line and I've done exactly that! I transferred my Priest (main) to join my already ninety Paladin on his server and used my WoD boost on a Hunter. I transferred my namesake DK (Soco) and an old abandoned Shaman over to join them. These will be my five characters throughout WoD. I'm going to try my absolute best not to level or play any other characters. My altaholism had gotten beyond a joke in MoP. I finished Vanilla with 2 x 60's. BC with 6 x 70's. Wrath with 9 x 80's. Cataclysm with 12 x 85's and MoP? I've honestly lost count. I think around 17. I recently deleted six level 90's from an old Server. I'll allow myself to level one more alt from 1-100 in WoD but only if I really really have to. In theory I should be much better at my chosen classes. I'm already a much better Ret Paladin than I was a year ago although I'm still Baddy Mc Badderson as melee.

Clearly not everyone's happy about the Belf army I've accidentally created.

Loremaster - I completely forgot I wanted to finish the last three achievements. I completed the old version and had tasked myself with doing over all of the new zones since the cataclysm. Desolace, Stonetalon and Feralas remain uncompleted.Oops!

Achievements - I've gotten a lot more raiding achievements done over the past few weeks. I had stopped raiding during heroic DS so only did LFR throughout MoP meaning I missed out on all of the raiding achievements. I did Heroic Terrace of Endless Spring a few weeks ago with @pixieburst from Twitter as well as Siege of Orgrimmar. I only have to finish off getting the Klaxxi buffs to get my mount! This weekend we plan on going to Throne of Thunder so hopefully I'll get a few from there and be a bit closer to the getting the mount from the meta.

Brawlers Guild - I completed Brawlers as well as Deck your collection and the previous achievements! I plan on doing the updated version at 100.
 

Giant Dinosaur Bone - These are now BoE but I'm at 4000. Part of me wants to continue to grind the rest but a bigger part of me wants to just buy them and be done with it because I'm lazy. I'm not sure which side will win out yet.  

Domination Point Commission - I finished this and got my pet :3
 

So we had some wins and some losses. All in all I've been having a pretty good time in WoW recently. This week I've been leveling pets for the Celestial Tournament something which I've been putting off for ages. I finally hit 200 mounts. I'm finally back on the Horde where I belong and I've joined a guild and intend on returning to Mythic raiding in WoD with a great group of people and my fiance <3.

What's everyone else been upto? Did you complete things you wanted to do before WoD?

Challenge mode Gold complete. Disc Priest.

Priest Challenge Mode Set

This week my group and I completed our Challenge Mode Golds. By completing Gold you automatically complete Bronze and Silver so obtain all of the rewards.

Rewards.

Bronze - Title. The Undaunted
Silver - Pandaren Phoenix mount. Which you can see the in the screenshot above. You can only chose one. I went with Emerald. In 6.0 if you have one mount you'll be rewarded with all of them.
Gold - Class specific armor set. Transmog only, it has no stats. Challengers Path ability in your spell book. Which allows you to teleport to the entrance of each of the challenge modes you've completed on Gold.
Completing each of the Challenge Modes on Gold in a guild group will also reward you with Thundering Serpent Hatchling pet which you can purchase from the guild vendor.

What are Challenge modes?

If you haven't yet done Challenge modes, I urge you to do them as they're incredibly fun!
Challenge Modes are timed heroic instance runs. They are however not just super fast heroics. They're heroics on steroids. Any gear over 463 will be scaled down to that level. Meaning you can't just bullshit your way through them with superior gear.

In terms of gear I didn't go out of my way to gather a BiS I had a few older pieces which I used. While your gear is scaled down gems aren't so I just went with the pieces which had the most gem slots.

Challenge mode. Disc PoV.

When you enter the instance on the Challenge Mode setting you're faced with a wall and an orb. Clicking the orb will give you a five second count down and then the wall will go down. On the right hand side of your screen you'll be given an objective.

Challenge mode. Disc PoV.

Once you begin a timer will also be added to the right hand side of your screen showing you how much time you have left to complete the instance.

The first two instances we did were Temple of the Jade Serpent and Gate of the Setting Sun which I did as Holy but then switched to Disc for the rest. They're all completable as Holy I just wanted to try them as Disc and also to help out with DPS during low damage parts.

I wouldn't say that the Challenge modes were difficult. They were challenging and a little bit stressful in parts but certainly not what I'd call hard. I was incredibly nervous going into our first one. Gate of the Setting Sun which has the bomber-man part at the very beginning, these bombs will one-two shot you. People's deaths weren't my fault but as the healer they felt like they were. We must have wiped on that first part about 12 times with me proclaiming "I'm not good enough to do these!" but once we all stopped being bad at life they went smoothly. We had quite a few wipes at the beginning of Scarlet Halls due to a bug, mobs not resetting properly. At the beginning you have to use the buckets of meat on the NPC and let the dogs chomp on him, however if he's stunned the buckets don't seem to work correctly. It took us a few tries to figure out him being stunned was causing the problem. Of course we were only going for gold and not going for realm best times so I suspect that would increase the difficulty if you were pulling more mobs, rapidly.

Bosses were easy but the trash hit like trucks wielding trucks and required ample cool down usage. Unfortunately our Tank didn't have a mic which made things a bit more interesting! Particularly the trash at the beginning of Temple of the Jade Serpent, mobs before and after the second boss in Scarlet Monastery for example. Thankfully my boyfriend is a great Paladin and helped out with some of his own cool downs.

I'm really glad we got a chance to do them before they go away and hopefully we'll start challenge modes much earlier in WoD so we get a chance to try for some more competitive times.

Priest Challenge mode set

To Do list.

This is gigantic if you read all of this congratulations and thanks! 

Zerohour recently wrote a post on his blog Locked, loaded, so why unsub? (he comes across as a total dickwomble but that man has a point.) While I agree with the sentiment of his post. I am one of those people who will likely unsub for a while until WoD but mostly because I want to try out WildStar. Given that I no longer raid the lack of new content doesn't really bother me, I am a bit disappointed as I was expecting WoD to be a lot closer than December ("or before").

Zero's post did spur me on to get my ass in gear though! There's a bunch of things I've had on a mental check list for a while. Some I want (or need) to get done before Warlords, some I can continue working on throughout Warlords.

Challenge Modes

The minute I heard about Challenge Modes I knew I would want to do them. However when MoP launched I somehow got it into my head that they couldn't be done cross server. I wasn't prepared to try and pug them because I'm both pretty shy and not entirely confident in my own ability as a player. My Fiance, ex raid team and the majority of my friends all play on other servers. So I resigned to the fact that I was never going to get a chance to do them nor get the awesome Priest challenge mode armor. However thanks to a comment left on my blog (<3) I found out that they could in fact be done cross realm! Since then they've been on my to do list but kept being put off until now.

We started doing them last week with the intention of doing one each week on a Wednesday night and spending no more than two and a half hours on them. We're running with a Prot Warrior who has no mic, Ret Paladin, Warlock, Hunter and me healing on my Priest. On the first week we got Temple of the Jade Serpent and Gate of the Setting Sun. This week we got Shado-Pan Monastery and Stormstout Brewery. We're only going for Gold as neither of us see any point in going for less. On our first night we were a few seconds away from getting Gold on Temple of the Jade Serpent due to a miss timed heroism. We stopped mid way though the last boss and reset the instance, porting us back to the beginning to start over.

On the first night I ran as Holy but I've switched to Disc and I'll probably continue to do the rest as Disc. They're incredibly fun, if you've not tried Challenge modes yet I urge you to do so. We're already planning a second set of characters to do Challenge modes on. Same group of people just different classes. I think I'm going to go with my Mage as the set is gorgeous. It does mean however that I'm going to have to grind some gear for my Mage to get myself some more gem stlots.

Which brings me to the second and third thing on my list. Also 2b on Zero's list.

Learn how to play

Ok so for me this isn't quite as extreme as the examples Zero points out in his post. I can comfortably do over 100k dps on the majority of my alts. However I'm not entirely confident in my ability on most of them.

I'm a good healer. With the exception of Druid I'm fucking terrible at Druid healing I think because I don't enjoy it.
I'm an OK tank.
I'm an OK ranged DPS
I'm a fucking awful melee DPS. I hate the play style.

My fiance and friends are always telling me I'm better than I think I am. Regardless I could be better at all of them.

Going forward into WoD I've decided that I'm only going to play five classes. I don't need 17 level 90's or the other 14 between 85-90. This ties into gold making. Ever since I started making gold I've always focused on having way too many max level characters to churn out daily profession cooldowns. I just don't enjoy that anymore. Cycling though each character doing their farm and daily CD + crafting for so long has taken it's toll and I've become completely bored of the entire thing. Throughout WoD I'd like to at least try to limit myself to five characters. Sure I'll still make gold but by only using those five. I've not decided on which five yet. Only two so far. My Priest and a Hunter. This will also give me an ample excuse to play these classes better.

One thing in this vein that I'd really like to do is the Warlock green fire quests. I'm not a particularly bad Warlock but I'm certainly not very skilled either! 

Re-roll Horde

I started out life in Vanilla as Alliance but the second they brought out the faction change option on the Blizzard store I was off. I loved being Horde it just felt right but I was convinced to return to the Alliance to raid with friends. We later as a group all returned to the Horde but during Cataclysm I went back to the Alliance in favor of better raid progression. Now that I don't raid except for the occasional casual run and with everything being cross realm, I can be whatever the fuck faction I want. And I want to be Horde! Lok'Tar Ogar!

The Godmother has welcomed everyone to join her in leveling a character from scratch without boosting it to 90. You can find information here if You'd like to join in.

I've decided to level a Hunter on my chosen realm destination once I faction change my Priest. I'll happily pay to faction change and server transfer my Priest as she's my main however I refuse to pay for any other characters as none of them are as important as Korla. I don't have the same bond with my alts as I do with her. They're really just classes to me, as apposed to actual characters. If that makes sense? I've decided to level my little Horde Hunter with only the BoA weapon as I felt the xp gain was far too fast. I'm probably going to level mostly though Kalimdor as I haven't done so in a while but I want to complete any zones tied to the Undead first as they're my favorite Horde race. I've done the Blood Elf quests far too many times.

Loremaster

I completed the original Loremaster which was a giant PITA but when they revamped the entire thing in Cataclysm I also went though and completed the new achievements for completing each zone.
I only have Desolace, Stonetalon and Feralas left to complete. My new little Hunter may be tasked with this.

Achievements

I went balls to the wall when achievements were introduced, I had a little bit of a competition going with a friend. But recently I've not really been chasing them. I got exalted with all of the Pandaria factions via dailies, I was one of the few people who actually enjoyed doing them at the beginning of MoP but never stopped to do the achievements tied to them Yak Attack, Getting around with the Shado-Pan for example. I've been working on some of these this week and it's been fun.

The hardest part is actually waiting for the exact daily you need to become available. At the moment I'm working my way though the Quest section of achievements. As I have almost everything in the General section complete. Missing 11 mounts for Mount Parade (200 mounts) and about 50k short from Got My Mind on my Money (loot 200,000 gold).

Within the topic of Achievments I have a bunch of things I need to get finished. I'm missing a load of Pet Battle achievements. I go though phases with Pet Battles where I get really into it then burn myself out on it similarly to archeology. I don't have many more to collect and level but I do have a few. I've also still not tried the Celestial Tournament so that's on the list.

The only thing I'm missing from Reputation is Emperor Shaohao. This is something I'm going to have to devote some serious time to as I don't do the weekly quests. So my reputation is so far behind.

I'm hoping to get a group together later this week or next week to finish off the Pandaria Heroic Dungeon achievements along with the Scenario achievements.

Brawlers Guild 

I've almost completely avoided Brawlers Guild since it's introduction. I think my Priest might be rank four. I'm terrified of being called bad from onlookers. The run back is also a pain if you do die. I'll admit that I'm a terrible Shadow Priest. I have a Shadow spec sometimes for doing dailies and such but for the most part I do them as Holy or Disc. Despite my Priest being my main since BC I've never raided as Shadow only doing the odd Heroic after well out gearing them. I'd really like to learn how to play Shadow and be able to do more than 150k dps. I could complete Brawlers Guild on another character, one I'm more comfortable DPSing on but I want to complete it on Korla. 

Stupid grindy shit

Giant Dinosaur Bone - One of the mounts I still need is from handing in 9999 Giant Dinosaur Bones. Currently at 2000. I've been doing this on my Hunter but not nearly as often as I should be.  

Domination Point Commission - After handing in 2000 of these Proveditor Grantley gives you a Rodent Crate which lets you summon and capture the Sumprush rodent battle pet. Currently at 1.3k.

Twilight Harbringer, finally!

One of the great things about my new guild is their weekend achievement runs! Since I quit raiding during Cataclysm one of the things I've missed most is not the raiding itself but the atmosphere, comradely and friendship. The achievement runs my guild does during the weekend feels very much how raiding used to feel but without that little bit of added stress. The guild I used to raid with never took things too seriously during our raids and there was always a lot of banter between fights.

Last weekend I finally got something I'd wanted for a while but had never gotten around to doing since I stopped raiding right after we had cleared normal DS! I just didn't have the patience to continue raiding DS heroic as it was one of my least favorite raids. Reins of the Twilight Harbringer from the Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider achievement.

He's fucking glorious!

Twilight Harbringer.

The next post in the 20 Days of WoW blogging challenge asks "10 things we don't know about you" This ones got me stumped a little so I'll happily accept questions if you have any! Could make it a bit more interesting. Feel free to DM me on twitter if you don't feel comfortable leaving a comment.

Are there any achievement mounts you've got your eye on?

The ups and downs of having a bit too much gold.

Blizzard have thrown a bit of a spanner in the works this week offering 50% off of some of their services. This could be my opportunity to get off of my quiet server and actually meet people.  The biggest problem in transferring is the 50 thousand gold limit. First world problems, I know, right?

When moving from a small server to a larger server it's often difficult to find items which will retain there value when you get to the other side. Coming from a smaller server also means there are fewer things to buy. There are no TCG mounts on my AH no crafted mounts either.

There is currently no Living Steel. Not a single cut or uncut Primordial Ruby nor any Sha Crystals! Of course this isn't a typical representation of my server but it is typical of my luck when I need something!

Yesterday I started out with 900 thousand gold. After buying a few things, crafting a few mounts and splurging on some over priced pets I'm almost down to goal of 100 thousand gold. I'm transferring two characters and after I do I won't likely return to the serve. My alts will become completely abandoned and I'll start over again on my new server. The gold limit on transfers is 50 thousand per character.

In an attempt to get rid of some of my gold I bought my Boyfriend and I both a Grand Expedition Yak. 108k Each with guild perks

I have been meaning to buy one for a while just for the achievement but I never seemed to get around to it. That's one bonus to having a fair amount of gold to play with. Being able to treat other people. Sadly I have no other friends on the server so I had no one else to off load some on!

I bought a pet off of a Mage in trade he was asking for 6k saying that he was selling it cheap because he was desperate for the gold to buy his epic flying and no one else would buy the pet. So I gave him 10k for it. In retrospect I should have given him more.

I feel a bit shady just randomly trading gold to people. I don't want Blizzard to ban me or the recipient thinking either of us is buying or selling gold.

Have you ever transferred server having a bit too much gold? How did you get around it? Have you taken advantage of the 50% off of services at the moment?

Edit:

Depleted-Kyparium Rocket.

I bought myself a Depleted-Kyparium Rocket for 99k because, fucking cannons man. Fucking cannons. 

Exalted with The Order of the Cloud Serpents

This week I've been slacking, slacking with a capital SLACKING. Wait, scratch that I've been slacking since Mists of Pandaria was released this week has been no real exception. I'm usually pretty reputation focused but so far I've been neglecting my daily's most days! I got Tillers to Exalted pretty quickly on my main, deciding to work mostly on one faction at a time. I'm slowly working my way though Golden Lotus, Shadow-Pan and August Celestials but only every couple of days. My Paladin and Hunter are both Revered with Tillers and my Hunter is slowly gaining Golden Lotus reputation for Leather working patterns.

During Pilgrim's Bounty if you eat five of each food at the bountiful table outside the capital cities you get a buff called Spirit of Sharing. With this added incentive I decided to finish off my Order of the Cloud Serpent grind. I hadn't been farming eggs or doing the profession quests because I'm super lazy and I hate archeology with a passion but I knuckled down and did all of my quests after handing them in..

Wait... what?

You can't actually be serious? Are you serious? You are aren't you?

So with that wonderful experience behind me I went out egg hunting. Until this point I hadn't bothered looking for the Onyx Eggs but I came across a few and handed them in and finally got my Cloud Serpent! I'm a little sad that you can't ride them on other characters as I bought the other two colours and was hoping to use a different one on my Hunter and Paladin. Oh well, Korla worked for them so I guess it's only fair that she's the only one that gets to use them!

Day Four. WoW Blogging Challenge - Your best WoW memory.

It's been a while since I wrote a post for the Soulbound - 20 days of WoW Blogging challenge - hell it's been a while since I blogged full stop! If you follow me on Twitter then you'll know that I've spent the past few weeks bitching and moaning about toothache in a lot of pain thanks to an abscess in my tooth. Thankfully the pain has gone and everything is getting back to normal. I was unable to play WoW other than logging in to do a few daily quests from time to time because WoW simply couldn't hold my attention though the pain and frustration.

We're onto part four of the challenge - Your best WoW memory. I've been playing WoW for so long, I've met some incredible people and have had such a great time over the years that it's hard to pinpoint one isolated favorite memory. I can say with no uncertainty that Wrath of the Lich King was my favourite expansion for many reasons.

With better knowledge of the game as well as a better understanding of my own class behind me. A better computer than I had previously played on during Vanilla and The Burning Crusade and a bunch of degenerates I called friends I was able to beat what was at the time current content. I was unable to raid anything past Karazhan during BC due to technical issues so I only got to see most of the BC raids during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

One thing I accomplished during Wrath of the Lich King is certainly one of my most favourited WoW memories, not only because of the act it's self but with whom I accomplished it with. It's also how I got here.

I've always liked reputation grinds but when the feat of strength Insane in the Membrane was released I shied away from it. It seemed like far too much. It literally sounded insane! A really good friend had just returned to WoW after a long break and he knew he wanted to get the title. I offered to help him out in anyway that I could. I started the initial reputation grind with him for Raveholdt which involved killing Syndicate mobs until honoured but I figured two people doing it was faster than him doing it alone. That was my downfall, the beginning.

Over the next couple of weeks I leveled a Rogue of my own as the only way to get additional rep with Ravenholdt is to hand in lockboxes which you pickpocket off of level 60 mobs. As Vad didn't have his own character with Inscription he'd send me herbs every few days to be milled and turned into cards, to be turn into decks for the Darkmoon Faire. At the time there was no other way to gain their reputation. We used one of my guild banks to store all of our cards and already made decks. As each Faire drew closer we'd swap cards between us to finish off any decks we were close to completing.




I really enjoyed the time I spent working on the Insane it taught me a lot. I had to check the Auction house daily, I was hemorrhaging so much gold on herbs that I had to look to other places to make gold to pay for them. I started to learn about my own professions, what to sell, how to sell it and when to sell it. I started reading gold blogs and became involved with some of the members of the gold making community and I'd like to think I've come out of it with a few friends.

I especially enjoyed that I got to complete it with such an amazing friend who helped push me on when I felt like my milling finger was breaking or when I really didn't want to run Dire Maul for goblin reputation even just once more.

Vad doesn't play WoW anymore but thankfully we're still in contact, I look at my title and smile from time to time.

Too badass.

Technically only one expansion late!

Last night I managed to get an Ulduar twenty five run and finally finished off my Yogg with zero keepers netting me a fair few achievements and my Ironbound Proto Drake from Glory of the Ulduar Raider. I didn't raid twenty fives during Wrath of the Lich King so I've had to get most of the achievements through pugs but I've been lazy with it. With MoP coming and the new account wide mount system I decided it was finally time to finish it off!

I love him, he's one of my favourite mounts in game.

Ironbound Protodrake.

PvP week!

Reputation and achievement points have always been the driving force behind me doing shit I don't actually want to do. I'm a sucker for them especially rep (I'm sure there's a deep rooted psychological reason for this but we can explore that later).

Looking at my achievement summery it's glaringly obvious which side of the game I neglect. I'd love to get the justicar achievement. There are many others I could get along the way. So I've deemed this week "PvP Week!"  I thought giving it a title (albeit a not very good title) would make it feel more fun and interesting. It technically started on Monday the 14th of May however I've slacked several days only managing to do two or three battlegrounds so I'm starting over - or extending it to two weeks, whatever.

So what is "PvP week!"? I hear you wonder. It's a week (or two) in which I force myself to PvP my face off instead of idling around Stormwind or doing anything else remotely enjoyable in game (I jest I'm just awful at PvP).

"But wait, I thought you hated PvP so much so that you even transferred off of a PvP server?" Well that's not strictly true. I do enjoy controlled, organized PvP (especially with friends and some kind of voice communication). It feels very much like PvE in the sense that my main focus is playing whack-a-mole with Grid much like I would in a raid. Except instead of avoiding fire on the ground I'm trying to line of sight the Mage while also keeping a Rogue off of my back at the same time. I just don't like the "if it's red it's dead" attitude of many players on PvP servers. Preying on lower, lesser geared players. Hurtling after players who have been caught out while doing their daily quests perhaps already low on health and taking advantage of it. That's the part I don't enjoy dishonourable killing. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

The Justicar achievement requires you to gain Exalted with all three of the Alliance forces. My current reputation is as follows.

Silverwing Sentinels        352 / 12000 Honoured
Stormpike Guard             999/999 Exalted
The League of Arathor     5214 / 12000 Honoured

That's actually pretty depressing. I know I'm not going to get all of these to Exalted just by PvPing for an entire week (or two) I'm not that naive. These are pretty harsh grinds to do but I'm up for the challenge! While I'm really doing this for the reputation, to take my focus off of the daunting task ahead of me I've noted down a few achievements which I want to get in the process. I'll head out to obtain those and take any reputation and additional achievements I get as a nice bonus for now.

47,296 Honourable Kills.

Battleground wins need 100 of each.

Alterac Valley  52

Arathi basin  51

Eye of the Storm  21

Warsong Gulch  61

Strand of the Ancients  26

Isle of Conquest  21

Battle for Gilneas  2 (Troll face)

And 8 Tol Barad Wins.  Need 25.

Sporting the PvP recolour of Priest Tier 6 during this en devour just feels right.

Is there a side of the game you particularly avoid due to your own dislike or your lack of time/ability? Are you willing to just grin and bare it to get that achievement or last recipe you need from a reputation grind?

Want to take part in PvP week with me? Or your own version Send me an @ reply on twitter @SocoWow.

We'll meet back here in a weeks time to catch up on how things are going!