Prior to 3.3 I tried my best to not PuG. Anytime I had to it was an unpleasant experience at best. Healers the spent more time typing than healing, DPS that performed worse than the tank, tanks that didn’t know how to hold AoE aggro, etc. But now with the cross server dungeon finder it’s like these kind of players don’t exist. Party chat is generally quiet, with only a few things said regarding boss strategy or AFK announcements. I’ve had runs where the only thing ever entered in party chat was a quick hello before the first pull and a quick thanks before people dropped group. People show up, do their job, and leave. And in the rare event of some one not knowing their job or being under-geared they are honest about it, and perfectly willing to follow directions given to them.

So where are all the morons and asshats that we’re used to dealing with? Well, I have a theory on that. Even with the new dungeon finder there is still a considerable number of people spamming trade for heroic runs. What I’m thinking is that this is where all the asshats have gone too. The new Vote Kick feature has had the added effect of discouraging them from letting the dungeon finder form groups for them. My guess is that due to their nature they have gotten kicked from most random groups they have joined. This has forced them to either change their ways or stop using the dungeon finder. I really don’t care which they choose because in the end the rest of us end up with a better quality pool of players to group with.

Anyway, enough of the bad and back to the good.

The best PuG I’ve had was actually just a few nights ago. Me and three guildies PuGed a healer for Heroic Forge of Souls. This guy was great. Sure he was a little under geared, but he admitted it and was trying his best. And that’s what made him great: his effort. Halfway through the run he even joined us in our vent channel to make things a little easier. Everything went fine until the last boss, where we wiped several times (maybe because of my non-uber geared tank, maybe because of heals, who knows), but we stuck with it and finished. This guys attitude is what made it a great PuG. He was polite and willing to stick with instead of dropping group after the first wipe.

So how about you? Have any horror stories or dream runs with the new dungeon finder? If so, leave them in the comments.

• Forge of Souls – Short, fun instance. Two quick emblems.
• Pit of Saron – Fucking awesome. What’s better than a shit talking gnome riding a zombie? A gauntlet in an ice tunnel that is literally falling down around you. And the Pit features both.
• Hall of Reflection – Lore wise this one rocks, though it will become rather boring once you have farmed it a while.
• New Dungeon Finder system – Overall it seems to work pretty good. I like being able to teleport to and from instances (huge timesaver). It seemed a little buggy last night, but that may have been due to general server instability.
• Emblem of Frost gear – Have you seen the stats on this stuff? It’s completely insane. I’m decked out in the best ToC-10 had to offer with a smattering of stuff from ToC-25. This stuff blows my current gear out of the water.
• Misdirect – Amazing. This is a huge change. How huge you ask? In a heroic 5-man I was dumping almost 50k threat on my tank with one Misdirect. Now imagine multiple Hunters in a raid all doing it at the same time. Can you say goodbye to aggro problems forever?

That is all I was able to test out last night. Tonight I plan to hit up the Frozen Halls instances some more along with a few random PuGs for fun. So what do you think of 3.3 so far?

But give it a rest already.

Cataclysm won’t be released until next year. That means 12 months (give or take, my money is on a November 2010 release) and, at very least, one more content patch left in Wrath. Play the game as it is now. Yes Blizz announced a ton of changes, but Cataclysm isn’t even in beta yet, so who knows how many of those changes will make it through.

Remember, BlizzCon is more than just a “Look at Our Cool Shit” weekend for Blizzard. It is a test-bed for new ideas. They have everyone’s attention, making it a perfect time to throw out ideas and see what kind of reaction they get. We know how they work, if enough people whine something gets changed. So they announce huge game altering changes and see how much whining happens. Think of it as a mass informal consumer questionnaire.

Anyway, my point is enjoy the game as it is now. There are still raids to be cleared, gear to be got, and fun to be had. So have fun today and worry about tomorrow when it gets here.

And the best part of it? It “Smells Faintly of raspberries.”

I currently have two level 80 characters, a Survival Hunter and a Resto Shaman. My Hunter is in Ulduar ready gear (have yet to pick up any drops there) and my Shaman is in a mix of heroic and Naxx gear. I have long considered the Hunter my main, but with very little to do on my him outside of raiding (I hate dailies), he has been seeing very little play time. Consequently I have been taking a deep interest in learning to heal with my Shaman and getting him geared up.

Also, these 2 characters are in different guilds (on the same server). My Hunter is simply a raider in Soulbound, while my Shaman is a senior officer in Circle of Friends. I won’t go into any more detail about that here, I’ll save that for another post. The raid leaders in Soulbound are aware of my Shaman, but will generally only ask me to bring him if our raid has entered PuG status since the toon is in a different guild. Anyway, enough background and on with with the story.

This realization of multiple mains came upon me last Saturday night during a 25-man VoA run with Soulbound. We were short people so we started pulling in PuGs to fill slots. The raid leader wanted Heroism, but we couldn’t find any Shamans. My Hunter already has the achievement for Emalon, so I offered to switch to my Shaman. So I jump over while the raid continues the search for more people. Long story short, in the search for more people I end up inviting a friend of mine (an awesome Prot Paladin) who I have been running occasional heroics with on my Shaman. We did Archavon first, and then started to weed out the people with too low DPS for Emalon. Several Soulbound people had started to log on so we began pulling them in for Emalon. One of those pulled in was another Resto Shaman, so I was asked to switch back over to my Hunter, which I of course did.

At this point my friend (the Prot Pally mentioned above) whispered me and asked if I had switched to an alt. His question confused me for a second, and then it dawned on me. While he has grouped with me many times, I had always been on my Shaman, never on my Hunter. I was even on my Shaman when I invited him to join the current VoA run. Naturally I explained to him that my Hunter was my main and that my Shaman was an alt.

But after that I got to thinking. I have been playing my Shaman so much lately that it has become more than an alt, yet my Hunter is still my main when it comes to raiding. So that leaves me with a declared main, and an alt that is more than an alt. Well, what is more than an alt? A main.

That leaves me with two mains.

There are only three that I (reluctantly) try to do every day: the daily cooking and fishing on my Hunter (only the Northrend ones) and the daily jewelcrafting one on my Shaman. Other than those three, I haven’t done dailies in almost 2 months. And the three I attempt to do don’t get done every day. Hell, the only reason I do them is because they are the only source of certain rewards. I do the cooking daily to buy recipes and spices, the fishing daily offers a shot at some epic gems (also to level of my fishing a little bit every day), and the jewelcrafting daily is the only way to buy more gem cuts.

And to be perfectly honest, there will be a point when I will stop doing even these dailies. Once I have a sufficient stockpile of spices, there will be no reason to do the cooking daily anymore. I might continue to do the fishing daily simply for the easy gold while I fish up mats for buff food, but it will be far from an everyday occurrence. There will also come a time when I won’t need to buy anymore recipes, meaning no more reason to do the jewelcrafting daily. Sure, I will need to do it once in a while to keep myself supplied with Dragon’s Eyes, but at most this will be a once a week thing.

You may be wondering why I have an aversion to daily quests. It is really a simple reason:

They are boring. Completely, totally, utterly, mind-numbingly boring.

I used to do 15-25 a day. Hell, that is how I made enough money for my Hunter’s epic flying back in TBC. I even got him a Nether Ray and a Nether Drake. But now? I can’t stomach doing more than a few. I choose to make my money elsewhere. Sure I ground to exalted with the walrus guys, but it was only 3 dailies a day, and as with the dailies i still do, it was the only way to get the best fishing pole in the game. And once i got it, I never did those quests again. Argent Tournament? I’ve been there a total of one time, did the dailies once, and never went back. Even the announcement of more content up there in 3.2 is not enough to make me go back. I’m not even exalted with the Sons of Hodir yet. I just can’t bring myself to go up there every day.

But unlike Anea, I don’t feel the slightest bit of guilt. I am having fun, and after all isn’t that what a game is for? Go level an alt, go for achievements, run instances, or even just sit in Dalaran talking to your friends. Don’t let a game you love turn into a job you hate.

For those wondering about where I make my money now, no I do not buy gold. I use the AH to keep myself supplied with gold. Buy mats, craft, and sell. Simple, yet I enjoy it and it takes very little of my in-game time.

But anyway, what have I been up to the last month? A lot. Previously mentioned work and chores around the house mostly, but you guys don’t care about that. In WoW though I have been raiding (a little), leveling alts, working the AH (more on that later), and adjusting to new officer’s duties in my “alt guild” (a lot more on that later).

Also, you’ll likely see some changes in the blog over time. Not only looks, but in content. Part of what has kept me from posting for an extended period is that I have not been focusing solely on my Hunter. Since my Shaman has hit 80, he has been getting tons of play time. That, coupled with the huge interest I have taken in the AH lately, means that the focus of this blog will change to encompass everything I am doing in the game.

While I hope these changes don’t alienate any of my readers, ultimately I blog for my own enjoyment. So while I hope everyone decides to stick around, I will understand if some of you who want straight Hunter info move on.

Gnoll 1: Hey, look over there. Some guy just walked into our camp.

Gnoll 2: Huh? Where?

Cnoll 1: Over there, right next to Carl.

Gnoll 2: Oh yeah, I see him now.

Gnoll 1: He looks awful familiar…..

Gnoll 2: That’s the same guy that keeps riding by on an elephant.

Gnoll 1: What’s he doing?

Gnoll 2: Um, it looks like he’s picking a flower.

Gnoll 1: Why isn’t Carl hitting him with a club or something?

Gnoll 2: Well, I think Carl is doing his best to pretend the guy doesn’t exist.

Gnoll 1: Come on, lets beat the guy up.

Gnoll 2: Um, I think Carl has the right idea. The guy is minding his own business, so lets just leave him alone.

Gnoll 1: Leave him alone? But we always beat up people who come in our camp.

Gnoll 2: Look, I just don’t think it’s a good idea.

Gnoll 1: Why not?

Gnoll 2: Cause this guy is not the typical adventurer we see around here. I mean look at him. He’s huge. And one of his daggers is encased in fire! I mean do you really think its smart to mess with a guy walking around with a dagger encased in fire?

Gnoll 1: Well, granted it might be a tougher fight than usual doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

Gnoll 2: Try? Sure, go ahead and try. You can end up like that crocolisk over there. He copped a bad attitude with the guy and now I now you can’t even count the pieces.

Gnoll 1: Yeah, but we’re a lot tougher than a crocolisk.

Gnoll 2: Did you not see what happened to Steve when he accidentally bumped into the guy yesterday? The guy’s dagger cut poor Steve in half, and it was just hanging on the guys belt!

Gnoll 1: So why don’t we go get even?

Gnoll 2: Nope. I’m going to do just like Carl and pretend the guy doesn’t even exist.

Gnoll 1: Come on, we can’t do that. Everyone will laugh at us if we don’t try and take him.

Gnoll 2: Fuck that. Let everyone laugh, at least we’ll still be alive. Just let the god damn hippie pick his fucking flower and get out of here. If you really feel like beating some one up after he leaves we’ll just gank that level 20 mage wandering around over there.

But even if that wasn’t an issue I still wouldn’t like them. There is just too many people. With a 10-man, runs start close to on time, while it can take up to an hour to get all 25 people together for a heroic. Vent becomes unbearable. Too many people talking at once means you can’t understand a soul. Wipes can take ages to recover from. All this because of the number of people.

Yet I will most likely continue to run them. Heroic raids are what a large number of my guildies are interested in, which means that is what my guild will strive to run, and I want to run with my friends. Also there is the matter of loot. I want a shot at the best loot in the game, and that means I must run heroic raids (I also think this a motivating factor behind many of my guildies). While I find this to be a bad decision on Blizzards part, there is little to be done about it.

So what does this mean? I will continue to run heroic raids, and hope people want to run some 10-mans too.

I bought dual specs for both my Hunter and Shaman. I don’t have any complaints about it so far. The talent preview option is great. And the action bar switching when you change specs is beyond awesome.

The new fishing dailies in Northrend are fun, with fairly lucrative rewards. A nice change I noticed while doing them was that fishing nodes now sparkle quite noticeably, which is great for those of us who have the graphics effects turned way down.

I haven’t messed with the Argent Tournament too much yet. I don’t know if I will spend too much time with it though. I just have too many other things I am trying to get done right now.

And Ulduar. Don’t get me started on this one. The odds of me being able to even step foot in there before next month are between slim and none. I wish everyone luck n there, but I am severly jealous.

Well, I don’t have much else to say about the patch right now, but rest assured I will post about it as I work my way through it.