Recently in Ameland Category

I dinged 72 tonight in Borean Tundra, over a dozen quests still left to go, and wondered to myself. Is there a benefit to doing both of the starter zones, Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord? On beta I did both, and found I was barely halfway through Grizzly Hills before I got the quest in Dalaran to fly out to Sholazar. That was also before I had a 20% jump start in xp from my previously mentioned daily plan. I am almost certain I could get by pretty effectively without having to do the Howling Fjord, and instead moving on to Dragonblight right away. The lore of that zone makes it even more tempting, I assure you.

The flipside to all of that, of course, is gold. Cold, hard cash. If I do all the quests available as I go along, Borean, Howling, Blight, Grizzly, Sholazar, Zul'Drak, Storm Peaks, Icecrown, well I should hit 80 by Sholazar or Zul'Drak, I would think. In Beta I skipped a big chunk of Grizzly Hills to move on to Sholazar, and hit 77 about halfway there. I am pretty sure I would have left Sholazar late 78, or somewhere in 79 if I had stayed in Grizzly. This means it wouldn't have taken much in Zul'Drak, or maybe an instance or two, to hit 80 in that zone, leaving me roughly 2-2.5 zones of pure quest gold plus dailies.

This will be even better on Telaan, who will be leveled third, cause he is doing 2 dailies every day, and is nearing on 71.5. I suspect he will be into 72 before I pick him up to level again. How all of this might hit Ameland or Arita I am not sure, while I am pretty sure Connroe will be hit hard since he has about 22 levels to go and a long road to go. I think I will take him in chunks. In the end, this leveling thing can be tricky. In BC it took me 3 70s before I perfected it for Telaan, and I just do not know how close I can get this time to perfection. I had time between my toons to evaluate, collect, prepare. I do not see any Unidentified Plant Part type items that are tradeable in Wrath, so that might be hard. Time will tell, I suppose. What do you all think?

As I write this it is just over 48 hours since I installed Wrath of the Lich King and boy have I been busy! As I mentioned in a recent All Things Azeroth, I started off by making my Death Knight named Connroe, then I completed my daily plan. This plan was given to me by Makea of Murloc Queen and went like this: clear out quest log completely, travel around Outlands getting all of the daily quests you can, then log out on the Isle of Quel'danas and wait for Wrath launch. After Wrath is installed, turn the Isle dailies, then return to Shattrath to turn in dailies there. Once Done there, I flew out to the Netherwing Ledge and turned about 10 dailies there to complete the daily quest plan.

I did a full 25 dailies on two of my 70s, and the rough numbers from those dailies was roughly 300k XP and about 150g. The one mistake I made was on making the fishing daily as one, and it gives no XP or gold, just the bag. On my Druid I did 16 dailies, netting about 200k XP and about 100g. I personally feel that since I would have spent time in game anyway, and am not hurting for gold, that this was all a very good way to spend a few days ore Wrath. Once I finished the daily turn ins, I took all my 70s to Northrend and trained them in all of their professions, costing roughly 300g for two primary and all three secondary skills. Once they were all at inns, getting rested XP, I logged back to my Death Knight and got him through the first phase of the starting experience.

On day 2 I began to work on Connroe right out of the gate, thoroughly enjoying doing the experience when it counted. I quickly made it through the experience and stayed in Stormwind at the end to begin making use of the 1500 herbs I had stocked up to level Inscription. Right now Connroe is *350* and am waiting to hit 60 or so in order to train up to Grand Master. Connroe is also right now at 150 in Blacksmithing, though I may take a break from leveling that for a bit due to the large number of new Death Knight miners in the game, including some guildies. The last thing that I have spent time doing, or I guess lucked into, was that I got all 5 toons(Medros, Ameland, Arita, Telaan, and Connroe) hearthstoned in Dalaran. I knew it would take a couple days for Argent Dawn to see a nice number of 74 Mages, and I found one in Stormwind who was willing to portal all of them to Dalaran for a generous tip. The Mages I saw in /2 were talking 100-200g per portal the night before, and I was not willing to throw my gold away like that.

As for today, I intend to finish getting all my 70s the Borean - Howling - Dalaran Flight Path connections(all Tuskarr villages, Dalaran, and the alliance settlements) in order to facilitate easy travel through the first 3 zones of Northrend. Then, I think I am going to let Connroe rest a bit, and work on getting Medros to level 74, the point where he would have gotten the ability to go to Dalaran anyway. So, how have you spent your first 48 Wrath filled hours? Are you, like the SK Gaming/Nihilum mega guild, trying to get into raiding and clear Wrath on 25 man? Or are you just relaxing and leveling comfortably?

I have two hunters. I know, I know, one of them I barely mention in these pages. I kinda left him hanging at 41 when the leveling bump hit and I favored my new Paladin, Telaan, who is not happily propped up at level 70. While Ameland, my main hunter, is great and all, sitting with a perfected Marksmanship spec that I love dearly, I do so wish I could find a reason to level Traluun up. Then I just finished watching Big Red Kitty's Devilsaur video from the beta realms. Like in cartoons from days of old, a light bulb went on.

So here's my plan. I will still do my profession stuff and questing, what ever I have left of them, on Telaan, but then I will work when I can on Traluun. I did some quick math, and the point when Traluun can get the final Beast Mastery talent point would be level 60. That means that at Level 60, he can run over to Un'Goro crater and tame him a Devilsaur. I am pretty sure I can do 20 levels in a month or two, even on a boring hunter type like Traluun is now, and be ready for that lovely talent point when the 3.0 patch hits pre Wrath.

Have you ever rolled a second character of a class you already have, just to try out a new spec? Is there a spec you haven't tried that you plan to when Wrath hits? Let me know in the comments!

After my recent time off from game, I have found it harder and harder to play the characters I have. My Paladin isn't hot enough my druid too thin and with racials that suck, and my hunter has just horribly boring speech patterns. I am sad to announce that effective immediately, I will be liquidating all of my current characters across most realms and making Horde versions with the same names. Arita will become a Tauren Druid, Medros a Blood Elf Paladin, and Ameland a Troll Hunter.

I will miss my friends on the Alliance side and invite every one of them to join me in the abandonment of the Alliance to the kids who have made the faction unplayable. The Alliance is filled with noobs who can't play their classes, can't PvP worth a damn, and can't follow the rules no matter how clear they are. Hope many times do you need to ask the same moron to not be talk about raid progression, his latest pnwage, or whatever in Say channel before you just want the chance to force him to stfu at the end of a gun?

On that note, it is almost time for work, 2.4.1 has just downloaded, and the realms are offline for an extended maintenance, so I am going to go get ready for work. Ishnu-dal-dieb.

If have spent any appreciable time in the Outlands, especially in Shattrath City, you have likely seen them alongside a hunter. If you have spent time in Dustwallow Marsh since patch 2.3, you have likely fought them. The Grimtotem Spirit Guides, also known as the Ghost Wolf, was discovered post 2.3 to be tameable if you could get your tame beast spell down so it took less than the 7.5 seconds they lasted for. Blizzard was asked if this was within the scope of acceptable behaviour, and a CM replied that yes, it was fine, the Devs had talked it over and found it to be acceptable, and as well a fun and ingenious way to get a unique pet. To quote my fellow hunters: They lied.

The reaction around the WoW Blogosphere has been plentiful, fast, furious and accusatory on this topic. There have been some posts that have been purely informational, most have been full of anger, suspicion, and frustration at the decision Blizzard made. To me, this looks like a CM said it was all fine, so that hunters would not be making a land rush to the marsh, while Blizzard tried to decide if this was really ok. A couple of bloggers pointed out a few definitive side effects this controversy will have. 1. Do not trust the CMs, for they have no true information, cannot speak to or for the developers, and have no authority. 2. Do not trust Blizzard, because "it's fine, it won't change" has now been proven to be a lie, and if they will lie repeatedly(remember all, the Serpent taming lies of 2006) how can we possibly trust them now?

Here is what I think Blizzard needs to do, right now, and as quickly as they can. They need to acknowledge the hunter community with something other than placating and 'you're SOL' type responses. They need to bring back the spirit guide as tameable, even if they remove it in a later patch *with forewarning* so that hunters will not have spent hundreds of gold to get one only to be left in the dark. They need to have a respected person, who has not been shown to have lied blatantly to the community in the past, to address the community and make guarantees about what will happen in the future in regards to issues that are in discussion, instead of feeding us lies like we had here. They also need to guarantee the model of the ghost wolf will not be removed or changed.

As a Hunter, I was not planning to get a Ghost Wolf. They look cool, but I do not play my hunter enough to justify the cost, and I am already leveling one lower level pet(the white owl in Felwood) and do not need another. As the point has been made, though, they are a unique way to express your hunter dedication and whenever someone saw a player with one, they would know that hunter spent a lot of time and money to get that pet, not to mention the effort required to get their pet to level 70. If Blizzard does not do these things now, then I see no or little chance that their CMs, Devs, or representatives will be trusted for a very long time. These are the kinds of mistakes that will give an opening to other games to steal away huge chunks of the playerbase.

Ameland, Level 70 Night Elf Hunter
Traluun, Level 41 Draenei Hunter

Today I finally got my last 70 up to Ogri'la, the Ogre heaven, and had Ameland proclaimed an Ogre king. Due to the quest chain to get this, I made a nice 350g today just from a few dailies and the Ogri'la chain, I already have my 2 lowbies up to 300 in their crafting professions, only Telaan's mining needs to get to 300, but that is more of a time based thing. I am trying to decide what to do with my money now. I have the 1600g for my hippogryph, whenever I get the rep for it, and the only 70 without 375 in a primary profession is Ameland, who has 370 Leatherworking. I may need to go to the AH and get a rough guess of the mats needed to get those last 5 points...