Accidental potential, camels and bugs

I  got Hidden Potential for Ebonchill, my frost artifact weapon. Sort of by accident. To get it, you need to have a specific class hall ability which gives you portals to all Broken Isles zones. Then you randomly get a line in chat and when you take a portal, it takes you to Frostfire Ridge where you loot an item that gives you the new skin. I actually didn’t notice the line in chat so when I took a portal to Val´sharah, I was very surprised to end up on Draenor. I feel bad for all the players who really want it and either missed it the first time or it hasn’t happened for them yet. RNG.. It only works on stuff I don’t care about that much..

I´ve been farming Slabhide in The Stonecore for Vitreous Stone Drake. I haven’t got it yet but I wore Ramkahen tabard during the heroic runs and got exalted with them so two new mounts! Tan Riding Camel and Brown Riding Camel. I love camels in WoW. They’re hilarious.

I also asked a friend to let me hit them for Duel-icious. He didn’t fight back so I got it. Thanks, Skopek!

I got enough Champion’s Seals in the Argent Tournament for another mount. I bought Stormwind Steed and now I’m having a break from that awful, boring, evil place. I’ll come back for the remaining 7 mounts one day.

I got Legion Cook. I was at 793 and all my recipes were green or grey so I used the Darnassus cooking daily quests. They’re easy and quick and give +1 to cooking and Epicurean’s Awards which I still need for old recipes.

I’ve been doing the PvP WQs a lot and I got The Darkbrul-oh for completing The Darkbrul Arena twenty times. It’s my favourite one out of the four Free For All WQ. I still need to do 6x Mission Accomplished , 9x Saddle Sore and 13x  Off the Top Rook. They give 500 honor so they also help with prestiging but they’re not always fun. I try to kill NPCs and not players if possible but some people actually want to do PvP on a PvP quest. Can’t really blame them, right?

I completed To Honor One’s Elders, the Lunar Festival achievements. I already did all the fun parts last year, so there was just a lot of flying around. It was very boring but at least it was easy and I didn’t need anyone else to get it. And it didn’t take too long.

I spent some time in Silithus doing the Call of the Scarab micro-holiday. I didn’t meet a lot of people there which was weird, I thought people would do it more. But maybe that was just my server. I first logged in about six hours after it started and Horde was already winning in EU. I don’t feel a lot of faction pride so congratulations, Horde, I salute you and maybe we’ll win next year 🙂 Enjoy your bragging rights.

All the mounts!

I was playing a lot this week and I got cool stuff 🙂

I´ve been doing the Argent Tournament dailies and I finally had enough Champion´s Seal for a mount. I got Quel’dorei Steed. There´s a funny discussion on Wowhead page if it´s a unicorn or not. Someone called it “bicorn” which is either funny play on words or bisexual corn, whatever that would be.. Anyway, it´s pretty and I like it. I can´t ever have enough horses, with or without horns. Those dailies are getting really boring so I´ll probably get one more mount from there and have a break, at least for a few weeks.

 

I also finished The Molten Front Offensive (another daily quest hub) and got Flameward Hippogryph. It´s slightly on fire. If I ever switch spec from arcane to fire, this will be my favourite mount. Those dailies are not that bad but I´m still glad I don´t need to go back there. At least for now, there´s more to get.

 

I think I was the only player who didn´t have Azure Water Strider but I finally got around to finishing rep with The Anglers and bought it. Nat Pagle still thinks I´m a stranger though. He´s a bit stupid. Why were you in my garrison for months if you don´t know me? Someone should teach him about stranger danger.

 

Another great thing that happened was The Prestige. I reached Prestige level 1, level 50 and got a quest that sent me to the Stormwind Keep. There were leaders of Alliance and other important lore characters and Anduin had a lovely speech about me and everyone cheered for me and it was very heartwarming. I have a huge crush on Anduin which made the whole experience the best things ever! It felt so rewarding. Now I want to go and grind more prestige levels. Genn Greymane wasn´t there which is ironic because he gives the PvP WQs where I kill Undead and get a lot of honor. I should look up where he is now and report on my progress.

The achievement also gave me a new skin for Aluneth, my artifact weapon. It looks like someone took the base skin and smashed it on the ground. Very fitting for a PvP look.

 

Patch 7.1.5 came and slightly changed my gameplay. I was worried but it´s actually not that bad and I´m already getting used to it. And I feel stronger which is always nice.

You can now buy a new pet from Conjurer Margoss, Trashy, so I have my own raccoon. Hopefully, it won´t smell too bad. But it´s really cute so I´m keeping it anyway.

 

I also ran Stonecore about 30 times to try and get the Vitreous Stone Drake from Slabhide. You can farm it on normal but I keep getting the “You have entered too many instances recently” error which is annoying. I´ll keep trying and maybe I´ll tell you how I got it next week 🙂

 

Advantages and disadvantages of being a new player

WoW is a huge game with a lot of options and many, many years of content and if you start playing now, it can be really hard.

Other players have memories of Vanilla questing, their first time flying on Outland, running Karazhan, killing the Lich King, being annoyed with Thrall for stealing the Deathwing kill,  being stuck in Siege of Orgrimmar for months, being stuck in their garrisons for months and as a new player, I´m sitting there thinking “That all sounds so awesome! I wish I was there with you!” But I wasn´t. For most of that time, I didn´t have my own computer or knew English well enough to play the game properly. Even when I was an adult, it took me some time to be able to pay the subscription (when you´re a librarian in a post-communist country and you pay for something in £ or $, it can be expensive).

I can´t ever catch up to people who´ve been playing longer than me. I hear about people getting achievements for collecting 300 mounts and I have “only” 123. I´m working on What a Long, Strange Trip It´s Been and barely anyone is doing the achievements required. If there was a new reward added in the last few years, people are doing some of the things, but for you, it means you´re not able to get all the rewards in one year.

Basically, I feel lonely. I listen to podcasts, read blogs, talk to people but how many times have you heard someone say “Hi, I´m XY and I´ve been playing since WoD”? I´m sure there are people like that but I´ve never met one. To be honest, I´ve never really looked for them but it feels like we don´t exist. Other players don´t realise we exist which sucks sometimes, I even made a forum post about it (and got lovely responses).

It does have its advantages though.

I don´t get nostalgic. I´m not stuck in the past that probably wasn´t as good as people say it was. Nostalgia is evil and I think it keeps some of the veterans from enjoying the game now. I also don´t get salty about things like class changes because I´ve only played my class in two expansions. Part of it is my personality but I´m more flexible because I don´t compare latest class changes to all previous versions of a class. (I want to see myself in five years. I´m sure I´ll be making forum posts like “bring 7.1 arcane mage back!” because that´s what us people are. But for now, I can work with whatever Blizz gives me.)

I´m not saying the game is perfect now but overall, I believe it´s better because Blizz had years to learn how to make a great game. Not enough quests for leveling in a zone? No transmog? No flying on Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor? Mounts in bags? Nope. All fixed before I started playing.

I don´t get bored. I have only 50% of achievements points so it will take me years to finish everything I want. And it´s not just the boring stuff, like 94 days of doing daily quests in Argent Tournament just for the mounts (I did the math, I really need to spend 94 days in that place). I don´t even have Loremaster yet. There´s so much content in Pandaria I´ve never experienced! And that´s just one class on the Alliance side. So many things to do, so little time.. But I´ll get them done all eventually. At least the fun things 🙂

 

My plan for 2017

I thought this would be just a short paragraph but I ended up with quite a list so this is what I want to be doing in 2017:

Keep doing PvP for the prestige levels. The PvP world quests are not bad and I usually do one or two battlegrounds a day. People can be very rude and evil there but I try not to read chat too much and I´m usually having fun. And if I´m not having fun, I just do something else instead. I don´t think the rewards for prestige levels are going away anytime soon so I´m not in a rush.

Doing world events for What a Strange, Long Trip It´s Been. I already have Hallowed Be Thy Name and Merrymaker so I hope to finish it this year. I don´t think it will be too much trouble but I´ve heard some scary horror stories about the Children´s Week so we´ll see. Reins of Azeroth are very helpful (not only with this achievements but also with mounts, toys, pets and all the things!).

Keep up my mount farming, run ICC, Karazhan and The Eye every week. I only need to kill one boss in Karazhan and the Eye so it doesn´t take a lot of time but it´s tedious and I get lazy. But I really want those mounts so I´m going to farm them and if I don´t get at least one of them in 2017, I´m going to be sad and angy. And continue farming them in 2018 because I must have them!

After we get flying in 7.2, I want to finish the Legion exploration achievements. I´m missing almost all the “Adventurer of ..” and “Treasures of ..” because I can’t be arsed to do those without flying. I kill a rare or pick up a treasure if I see them but I´m not going to look for them. I don´t enjoy that. These achievements and archeology are the only reasons why I miss flying. But we´re getting flying eventually, so they can wait.

In the meantime, I want to continue doing MoP archeology (I´m almost done!) and finish Loremaster of Outland and Loremaster of Northrend, I´m 2/7 on Outland and 5/8 on Northrend. Wrath zones are mostly good but Outland is evil, ugly and boring. I read the quest texts and the stories are not bad but the quests themselves can be tedious.

If I´m done with all this before 2018, I´m going to do Loremaster of Kalimdor to finish Loremaster. And I also want to do pet battles. I´ve done a few but there´s so many achievements! I wasn´t very good at them so I´ll need to do a lot of research first. But that probably will be my plan for 2018.

I played a lot of WoW in 2016 and I want to do other things in my free time too. I got into Assassin´s Creed games recently and I want to get back into reading. I used to read a lot and I miss it. I made a list of books I want to read (or re-read) in 2017 and it´s long, including Dark Tower series, Harry Potter series and The Lord of the Rings. WTB more free time.

The shield.. Must..have..the shield..

I got the Draenor Curator achievement for finding all pristine versions of Draenor solves!

I know a lot of people hate archeology but I enjoy it. It´s an easy thing to do when I want to play but I´m too tired to do anything that requires thinking or planning or meeting other people. I don´t have all the MoP achievements yet so I´m usually digging in Pandaria and I rarely meet any other players there.

I got most of the Draenor Curator still in WoD and I was only missing the Pristine Gladiator´s Shield. It was frustrating. I didn´t want to spend more time digging on Draenor because the ogre digsites weren´t appearing for me often so I decided to dig in Pandaria and use the RestoredArtifacts to buy ogre fragments.

When Legion came, I didn´t have time for archeology because I was too busy enjoying new content. Things eventually calmed down and sometime around the beginning of December, I was back on Pandaria, digging for a several hours a week and buying Crates of Ogre Archaeology Fragments and still no pristine gladiator´s shield. I looked it up on Wowhead to see if I was doing something wrong. Nope, I just needed to keep trying. I even made a ticket to make sure it wasn´t bugged. Nope, I just needed to keep trying.

I don´t know the exact number but it must have been more than 400 crates until I finally got the pristine gladiator´s shield. There was some strong language. A lot of it. For several hours. I usually don´t mind when achievements take long to finish (they´re called achievements for a reason) but the RNG can be frustrating when I´m only missing one solve for months. Stuff of nightmares..

I really like archeology in Legion. You get rare solves by completing a quest every two weeks. They require you to dig but they don´t take too long (well, that´s how I feel but I got the Draenor Curator which took forever so.. other people might have a different opinion). I´m not very lucky when it comes to previous rare solves so I appreciate this. Some people say that it takes away the sense of accomplishment and exclusivity (one of the rares is a very cool mount) but I´m not competitive and I don´t feel the need to prove all the hours I put into this profession. If more people have a cool mount and it makes them happy, I´m happy for them!

Even Legion Curator is much less pain than the previous achievements for pristine solves. There´s only 15 of them, 5 for each race, and I already have 9 just from doing the quests for rare solves. And you can target them better because you can only dig for one race every two weeks so you´re not getting fragments  for a race you don´t need. It´s a good system. Good job, Blizz!

About me

I’m AnnInWonderland and I’ve been playing World of Warcraft since WoD. I’m on Aggramar (EU).

My main is a female Kul Tiran mage Anniy, Archmage, Farmer, Kingslayer, heroine of the Alliance and a total badass, who dies quite a lot but doesn’t really mind. That’s what the spirit healers are for.

If you start WoW now, you have an unlimited amount of content to experience (well, not unlimited, but it definitely seems like that). I’m a bit of an achievement hunter (and that might be a bit of an understatement..) and I want to get as much of them done as I can. So I think I’ll be finished with everything sometime around 2030..

My favourite thing to do in WoW is.. well.. it changes. The first few months, it was questing. I took a long time to level my mage, often stopped getting XP to finish a zone and I almost got Loremaster of Eastern Kingdom done in the process. I also had times when I really enjoyed dungeons, daily quests, mount farming, reputation grinds and even PvP and pet battling and most recently, mythic+ dungeons.