I’ve spent the vast majority of my WoW experience doing PvE.  To be completely honest, I’ve never really liked PvP.  For those of you who are Blizz fans, it all started in D2.  I was a huge Diablo fan, but PvP just escaped me.  I had a whole pile of 90’s and did maybe a billion solo hell Baal runs, so I knew what I was doing - I just didn’t enjoy all the crud that comes with PvP.

It takes a certain mentality to really enjoy killing people.  Mobs are one thing, fighting another human being is quite another.  Maybe I’m just not the ruthless type.  Although you would think if you can learn how to do one really well, then why would the other be tough?  Well, I finally decided that it was a huge hole in my game and it had to be fixed.  Oh, and it was making Gavin mad that I sucked at it.

So for those of you who are pros at PvP this may be a little boring and you might want to move on to another post.  But we all had to start somewhere with everything and you might actually find a bit of humor here if you can cast your mind back to when you were just beginning your PvP experience.  Plus, you might actually be able to help those people who are just starting out by adding comments on the beginner bits instead of doing what most good PvPer’s do - laugh at people.

That one thing - the punk factor, kept me out of PvP.  I simply hate being laughed at, spit on, and all of the other ego trip idiot things people do when they win.  More than likely they are losers who never won at anything else in their lives so they feel some uncontrollable urge to rub it in when they actually succeed at something.

As a result, PvP can be pretty intimidating at first.  So these observations may be just the boost you need to get started if you’ve been putting it off and “concentrating” on your raiding or leveling.  Well don’t wait any longer, you’ve got to just jump into the fray and take your lumps as a rookie.

Right off the bat, understand that you’re going to have to grow a little thicker skin to be able to swallow PvP, especially at first.  The jerk factor doesn’t stop with the guys on the other side.  You’re going to be the victim of a fair amount of ridicule from members of your own teams as well.  Which is a real shame.  No one actually knows how to play team sports any more.

So you’re really going into Battlegrounds and world raids with a bunch of individuals doing their own thing.  Because of that, sometimes you’re going to lose even though you could have won, and all those individuals are going to blame each other, and you, and your mom, and your sister and anyone, in fact, but themselves.  If they are so smart, why aren’t they organizing pre-mades?  Oh well, you just have to live with it.

You’re also going to feel virtually naked your first few Battlegrounds.  So much of the success quotient in PvP is in your gear.  And you’re not going to have the right kind of gear until you’ve done your share of PvP, so it’s a circular referrence.  How do you get a LOT better in PvP situations?  Get good PvP gear.  How do you get good PvP gear?  Play a lot of PvP.  So you can see you have to go through the rookie blues for a while until you can start collecting some honor gear.

That was the whole point for me in starting my PvP grind - to grab at least the full current set of gear before the WotLK debut.  And I figured it sure wouldn’t hurt me to get a few hundred battlegrounds under my belt to try to get up to speed on the whole concept.  So I hopped in about 50 games last week as a trial by fire.

Despite getting whacked a good number of times by players who simply had more skill and a lot better gear, it’s really not too bad after about the 20th game.  It took me about 5 games to even have an idea what was happening, and then another 5 to figure out what maybe I should be doing besides just tagging along and killing what I could and trying not to just be dumb.  So after 10 games I felt better.

Then I could really try to participate and help do my part to win the matches.  Easier said than done.  My first 20 games on my hunter went really badly because I am simply the wrong spec and forgot to take that into account before I went in.

My Shadow Priest did a whole lot better, even though he just hit 70 and has virtually nothing but crafted gear from tailoring.  I made sure to do a little more research and respec to a PvP friendly build as well.  So I did the full holiday weekend of EOTS games, about 20 in WSG, and a few AB just to check it out.  The encouraging part?  If you’re pretty good at PvE, you can figure out the PvP stuff faster than it looks like those first few games.

You learn pretty quickly which classes are going to give you fits, and you can either avoid them or just know you’re probably about to take a beating.  But that also means that there are some classes you will normally best if you play your cards right and you’ll know how to spot them and hunt them down to take them right out of the fight.

The biggest difference between PvE and PvP is really just the speed of the game.  PvP is really a case of Fast and Furious.  But after a while you will feel yourself getting a LOT quicker with not only your spells and skills, but just moving around the battle fields.  As you process information faster and learn to spot certain things it makes a big difference in how well you will do.

But the real point I wanted to make here (after a little rambling) was that maybe the one thing that will give you some sense of pride as you begin the PvP gear grind is to be a team player.  As I mentioned before, you’re going to be playing with a lot of punks, but that doesn’t excuse you from doing the right thing.  You can often be more valuable to the entire battle not just by whacking people but by doing other, more subtle, things that will not show up in the end-of-battle list of kills and damage/healing done.

Just a “for instance,” as a shadow priest.  Since the SP is not a big killer with a gob of life I can’t really mount a 1 man assault on a captured tower and wait for reinforcements.  But I did find that I could slow down about 4 enemy players chasing a flag carrier.  In that way, just the two of us could do something faster than if we had grouped up five guys to try to take and control the mid field.  When the flag gets picked up, there will often be a big chase scene, and most of the time no one will stop to gank the little SP running along with the group.  So I had the freedom to dot, flay and get some blackouts in on several enemy players, basically letting my flag guy get out scot free.

Now, realize that once the flag got out of reach I was dead meat.  But that’s sometimes the whole point of being a team player.  Go ahead and mount that 2 man assault you know is going to fail if it will buy your team time to grab some other tower.  Run away from situations when you’re going to die anyway and try to get that one druid to chase you to give your group an advantage.  Look for any way you can to create annoyances for the other team and give your team the best shot at winning - even if it means not scoring any personal points in the game.  Take one for the team in other words.  Sometimes you will help more by taking a death and occupying a few enemy toons until reinforcements arrive than if you waited for help first.  While you are waiting they might have time to get a zerg up for one of your towers.

And more than anything, just realize that you’re going to win some, and you’re certainly going to lose some.  You can’t let it make you mad or yell at the other folks in the group.  You’re going to get into those games that are pre-mades for the other faction and you’ll be toast from the start.  When the other team is REALLY a team, you’re going to have a hard time winning as a PUG cluster.

But maybe the best example of how satisfying it can be was an epic comeback I was privileged to be a part of in one EOTS round.  When the bubble dropped, there were only 6 of us in the game.  It was a rout from the very beginning.  At one point, we were down 1,200 to 150.  Then the team numbers rounded out and at full strength, we charged back for the win by just 50 points.  It was one of the most satisfying victories I’ve ever had playing WoW.  Just as good as the first instance Boss drop and definitely as good as that first Gruul or Vashj kill.

Now I can begin to see why people do a lot of PvP.  It can be really fun.  Sure, there is a grind involved - it wouldn’t be fun if it wasn’t difficult in a lot of ways.  So I look forward to having my first full set of PvP gear here in the next few weeks, and seeing just how different it is on the other side of the pile of purples than it was when I started.  I plan on keeping the old gear as a reference point and running a few games with the old gear and then the full set of new gear just to see how big a difference it makes with the same skill set.  Should be a fascinating journey as well.

So, all you folks that have been lolly-gagging around doing all PvE, it’s time to hop into some battlegrounds and get your feet seriously wet.  Or, you can follow me straight off into the deep end.  I guarantee, it won’t be long before you will start to Dominate!

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25 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Yesterday I started a little argument with one of our faithful readers and posters James M.  Don’t take it personally James, and I certainly appreciate your feedback, it makes me really research hard to back up my points.

The original statement I made is that most of your gear from tBC is already obsolete since WotLK will be out in a few months and you’ll be replacing almost all of your gear in a few levels anyway.  That certainly was the case in tBC, and I expected nothing different from the next expansion.

To make myself perfectly clear, I probably should restate the position a little more carefully (again, thanks to James).  It’s not that you will NEED to replace T5 gear with greens because the greens in the 71-73 zones are better, but you probably shouldn’t START trying to get geared up for the expansion if you aren’t already because the gear you will get in Northrend will be ALMOST as good anyway.  If you already have 4 out of five of your T5 set, and a guild running the right stuff to get the last bit, then go for it.  But if you have several toons at 70 that aren’t in high-end raid gear, now is certainly too late to worry about the grind of getting top end gear.

Now, Blizzard has certainly made every effort to make the gear from tBC raids more viable in WotLK than pre-BC gear was in tBC, but there is also a bigger difference between level 75 and level 70 toons and gear than there is between level 60 and 55.  The reason is that as you rise in levels, the gains from gear contribute a more significant percentage of your base skills than at lower levels.  I don’t have time in this article to go into a lot of detail on that, but every level gain is a more significant leap than the last one.  By the time you get to 75 you will be fighting mobs that will just be a LOT stronger and tougher.  Therefore, the gear has to scale faster to keep the game playable solo without having to go back and do 25 man raids from the previous patch.

Just so you all know I’m not pulling this idea out of some mental dork zone, let me give you a good example of what I mean.  The following picture is of the T5 hunter shoulders from the Rift Stalker set.  To get these shoulders you have to be able to go to Tempest Keep, a 25 man raid dungeon.  These are a 54%  drop and in a 25 man raid you can reasonably expect at least 3-5 folks to be rolling for these.  That reduces YOUR chance of getting the roll to below 10% per run, meaning you may need to make 5 full runs to have a reasonable shot at them.  Sound hard yet?

I would imagine that no more than 5% of the nearly 40,000 people who read DYS on a regular basis (or only about 2,000) have even sniffed the prospect of getting into a run on TK.  I would wager that the real number of people at DYS who have had a legitimate shot at these is in the low hundreds.  So saying that T5 will be ok until level 78 is making a HUGE assumption that there are just lots of people who have been able to build their complete T5 sets.  If you look at the guild progressions on any given server, there are normally less than 5 guilds from each faction that have even made it to TK even today.  That means it’s a pretty safe bet that only a few dozen guys on each server have completed even the T5 set, much less the T6 stuff.  It’s that rare.

(Uber Dominate Your Server congratulations to those of you who have completed full sets!  If you’re one of those guys you might pop your armory link into the comments)

Here they are:

Now, my original intent was to show that you will be able to get almost similar gear SOLO in Northrend fairly quickly and easily, so if you’re just beginning to collect T5 stuff, you probably just don’t have time and it might be a waste of time unless you already almost have all the set bits.

For one little quest in the Dragonblight zone at level 72 you can choose these green shoulders as a reward:

Ok, so no sockets, no intellect, and no hit rating, but if you CAN’T get your T5 shoulders before WotLK, these should do you just fine.  Going solo, the extra 19 stamina, 4 agility and 10 AP will almost make up for the loss of Intellect - especially for BM hunters.

Let’s look at a couple of others a little higher up the level ladder at level 73 and 74:

Besides that, these choices would also be a decent fit for a Shaman depending on spec.  If you have multiple toons, you probably have not had time to get a whole pile of epics for all of them.

Not good enough to show you what I mean yet?  Ok let’s try weapons, those are a different type of thing, so let’s stick with hunter weapons and look at some good bows from tBC compared to some simple solo quest rewards from WotLK.  I’m just going to assume you all know or can find out how difficult it is to get the epic bows I’m showing here, the greens and blues that follow each tBC bow is from WotLK level 75 or lower solo quest reward.

So I think you’re beginning to catch on to what I mean.  You can certainly go to Northrend in your T5 gear and not worry about having to completely replace everything in two or three levels, but if you’re not uber geared there’s no need to worry about it much.  In many cases, even good epic weapons will be replaced pretty quick.  Armor seems to have a bigger gap but there’s one more thing we haven’t talked about yet that may make the armor argument completely disappear.

We have not yet seen the gear drops for Northrend instances!  If they are as good as tBC instance drops, you may certainly expect to find gear that rivals T5 and T6 at level 72-73 Boss loot tables, we just don’t have a way of looking at those yet on wowhead.  I could probably have made even better cases for T5 armor vs. Northrend early instance drops if there was more information on WotLK items, but there simply is not enough to choose from as of yet.

One interesting thing about WotLK drops is that there are a lot of items that come with random enchantments.  Not that that is any different from the other two sections of the game so far, it’s just that we haven’t seen all the random enchantment drops yet so the names for all those possibilities don’t yet exist.  All of those Booger Beater Longbow (of the bandit, of the fletcher, of the whale and that sort of thing) all we have is the pre-name without all the suffixes yet.  The random chant stuff may be the best fit for many specialty builds.

So if you don’t like the armor comparisons above (I admit I wish I had more to choose from but it made the point anyway - triple stat greens are not really going to happen) just wait until you see the boss drops from the first few Northrend instances.  If a couple of level 73 greens have decent stats you can bet that the blues from Boss drops will be even sweeter.

The whole point of the original discussion with James was not to bust your hump to try to finish up tBC raids for gear (and certainly not for rep) since you will be able to find comparable gear in WotLK relatively easily and quickly, and you are certainly going to want to save the rep grind for the new factions unless you are REALLY close to hitting exhalted with someone.  It may not always be BETTER than tBC epics, but it will be close, and for leveling that’s good enough.

Besides, just like we’ve been saying all along with tBC, the really fun stuff will be the NEXT end-game content, so go quick to 80 and then start collecting your gear for the serious raids at the end of the WotLK.  If you think the T5 and T6 stuff is good, you will be beside yourself looking at T7 and T8.  When that stuff starts popping up we’ll certainly let you know.

The nice thing is that you’re not going to have to wait long for a final verdict on this topic.  Gavin and I both got our Beta keys last night, so we’re about to find out how fast we both replace all our gear during testing.  We’ll be sure to keep you posted about our progress.

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46 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

I like a good laugh.  We all know that there are times during the grind of the time-sink that is playing WoW that frustration sets in.  Despite all the nerfs and buffs to leveling it still takes a while.  So it’s nice that the folks at Blizzard have a good sense of humor in designing certain quests to give you a decent chuckle from time to time.

Actually, a lot of the quests and NPC’s have names that invoke something from pop culture.  These are good for a snicker or two.  There’s Spraggle Frock in Un’Goro, Haris Pilton in Shattrath, and quests like ‘Message in a Battle’ that always make me grin a bit.  But there are two quests in Outlands that really take the cake.

The first one is in Hellfire Peninsula.  Foreman Razzlecraz just outside of Thrallmar has this little chain quest with the task “Shizz Work.”  You’ve helped him get parts for his broken down shredder in the quest “Outland Sucks!”  Which is a little funny to me since by the time Gavin and I were getting to this chain Outland was sucking wind a bit already.

So, once you bring Razzlecraz his shredder bits, he claims that one of his felhound pets ate his key.  In his own words:

I finally got my shredder working but I seem to have lost the keys. I keep a pack of felhounds to protect my camp. They don’t do a very good job and they like to bite me a lot. They also like shiny things. I think this one felhound I have may have eaten my shredder keys. I’ll pay you if you’ll take my felhound on a walk. Kill some hellboars and let him eat. He’ll do his business. When he’s done, see if you can’t find the keys in his “leavings.’

This is a prime example of why you should read the quest text.  Pretty funny so far, but the sheer ickiness of this quest only gets better.  So you go start whacking hellboars nearby.  When you kill one, you blow this whistle and the felhound goes to “work.”  There’s this horrid ’splut’ when the felhound eats the pig, and then a big steamy felhound fart and PLOP!.  Now you’ve got a nice big pile of poo to root through.

What’s worse is that now all quest items sparkle.  Sparkling, fresh felhound mess!  Digging through this juicy treasure chest is no picnic either.  It yields a couple of things you really wouldn’t want to find - like gnawed bones and acidic slime.  You even get the “Stanky” debuff from the adventure (I’m not making this up) which you can see below.

In the second shot you can see that the debuff even occupies the “Dummy” slot, meaning it does nothing, but you might be a little dumb for rooting through demon poop.  The only thing it really does is give you a green “stank” aura.

If you have a mod that shows spell casts on your screen you will also notice that Blizz is very thorough when they do anything.   When the felhound drops his load, the spell he casts to make it happen is called “Create Poodad,”  here’s a pic of this wonderful talent - too bad they don’t give out cards for vanity spells like this at Blizzcon eh?

The next bit of fecal fun comes in Nagrand.  Elementalist Lo’Ap wants you to root through piles of poo to find digested Caracoli beans.  While I was working on this quest I came across a pile of poo that was quite different from the rest - see for yourself:

How did THAT get there?  I don’t see how any of the Talbuks in the area could do the deed up in that bush, but there it was - a curly, sparkling load of Talbuk treasure.  At least we can assume that these piles are not as fresh as the Shizz Work turds, since there is no stanky debuff after sorting through them.

Once you get all the beans you need from the curly-que poo, you get a stack of Nagrand Cherries.  Lo’Ap responds like this:

Please do not wash yourself in the sacred waters of the Throne.

<Elementalist Lo’ap holds a prepared caracoli tablet up.>

You place this under your tongue and allow it ample time to dissolve. Once it has dissolved, you will be able to breathe water as if it were air.

I have to eat these?  He knows where they’ve been!  These guys are just sick.  Actually there is something like this in real life.  If you’ve seen the movie “The Bucket List,” you know that one of the big jokes in the movie is that Jack Nicholson’s character likes a certain kind of coffee called Kopi Luwak.  The reason it is the “rarest beverage on the planet,” is that the people who make it get the coffee beans from the dung of the Asian Palm Civet, a cat sized mammal.  Again - I’m not making this stuff up, people really drink this stuff.  You can see the Wiki for yourself here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak

So in WoW instead of making coffee from our latrine beans, we get some sort of timed release, under the tongue tablet that lets us breath under water - you think it’s from the gas?  Before Blizz made all the quest objects sparkle for us, the Rare Bean quest was actually a little difficult.  One comment at thottbot read something like “so now I have to find these piles of crap that are the exact same color as the background, just what I needed to make my day - a quest to find camo poo.”

I know this wasn’t a big tip that you can use, but it might serve as a nice little reminder that there are a lot of silly and whimsical (ok - sometimes doodie jokes) fun things in WoW.  So take your time and enjoy a laugh or too, even if it means sorting a little poo.  (Sorry, I couldn’t resist)

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11 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

There is a real void in the marketplace for high quality gaming headsets.  You can count the number of decent sets on one hand.  You can find great audio headsets in the hundreds.  You can get single ear headsets with terrific microphones all over the place as well.  We’re not sure why it’s so hard to find a headset with 5.1 stereo sound AND a good noise canceling mic at the same time, but that’s just the way it is right now.

There are certainly a big pile of products out there that CLAIM to be both of these things, but you know someone is lying to you  if they are trying to tell you that their headphones have great sound and uber features for $29.95, that’s ridiculous.  I guess some companies have not quite figured out that lying to their customers just doesn’t = win in the long run.

If you’re cheap, just stop reading this right now.  Stick with your Wal-Mart Logitech earbuds and forget you ever saw this post.  (Logitech makes great mice, but the headphones - not so much).  I’m not cheap, and I’ll tell you why.

There are certain things you should spend really good money on.  We (should) spend 25% of our lives in bed sleeping, you should spend some serious dough on a really good bed.  You spend a good majority of your time wearing shoes, those should be very comfortable and high quality (this applies to all clothing really, but especially to shoes in my book).  Life is too short to eat yucky food, and so forth.  So I typically default to “you get what you pay for.”  Spend a little more on most things and you will be much happier with the results.

I mean, how many times have you gone to a restaurant like Village Inn or some huge chain thing and gotten horrid food with really bad service?  Go down the street to the more expensive place and the food will be spectacular and the waitress will be awesome - it’s worth it to me.

It’s the same thing for me with headphones.  If I’m going to be wearing something for 8 hours every night they are going to have to be comfortable and sound good.  And since I use Skype and Vent a lot the mic needs to be out of the way and work well.

I’ve had headphones that sound great but hurt my ears.  Microphone booms that rub on my face and I can’t get into a position that feels right where people can still hear me.  Comfortable headphones with crummy quality sound, headphones with bad connectors, you name it.  There was always something majorly wrong with every single combo headset I ever used or reviewed.

I finally had enough with all of it and went on a major search for a real quality gaming headset.  I even looked at aviation headsets, although the sound quality and connection to computer seemed iffy on those (as well as costing up to $750.00) .  I just wanted something good, and I wasn’t too worried about what it cost.

Some of the gaming headsets seemed a bit gadgety to me.  The rumble feature doesn’t seem to be as important as really clear sound and comfort.  So I looked at the offerings from one of the most trusted names in quality audio headphones - Sennheiser.

Sennheiser has always been a good choice for the audiophile.  Not the very best, but certainly always mentioned with the best.  It’s hard to beat Sennheiser for quality as well.  Everything they make is solid, both in performance and construction.

Enter the PC 350 gaming Headset.  These babies were only recently released, or I would have been using them for months already.  From the moment you pull them out of the box, you can just tell you’re ears are going to thank you for them.

Everything about the PC 350’s is just right.  They are probably the most comfortable headphones you will ever own at this price, and you can wear them forever.  The sound is great, even if you have to tweak your levels a bit through your sound card interface.  Some reviewers have complained about the bass level, but honestly, when have ANY headphones been able to really thump?  If you have a decent sound card you can add some nice sounding bass boost to the sound and I actually had to turn the bass boost down for the PC 350’s.  In other words, they can handle whatever you throw at them.

The mic is out of the way, doesn’t pick up ambient sounds, and yet still gives great voice clarity in every situation I’ve used it.  It’s not all up in my face either (you can tell I have personal space issues).  In other words, everything about these headphones is what you’ve always wanted. I mean, the cord is even 9 feet long!  The picture above does not do them nearly enough justice.

These are going to set you back a bit more than $150.00, but when you are ready for a serious upgrade in your sound and voice environment, go grab a set of PC 350’s, you’ll never settle for a lesser gaming headpiece again.  All you need to do is click the picture to get your own pair from Amazon.

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23 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

I got an email from Blizzard last night. At first, I thought maybe it was my beta invite - but no such luck.  It was news about a new program that can really help you level if you use the Lawbringer rules.

Now It seems that Blizz gets it from both directions from a lot of players.  New players say the game is too hard at times, experts hammer them when they nerf things.  It seems like every decision they make is met with some controversy.  It’s not going to be any different with this one.

A few days ago I told you about the two rules I run with: never quest out of rest and always run in a party of two.  Well, the new recruit a friend system is really going to make rule number two very attractive to a lot of folks, and probably draw the ire of many power players.

Here’s how it works: you refer someone to play WoW and when they activate their new account they insert a code that links their account to yours.  The two accounts stay linked for up to 90 days and if you also play with the toons of the friend you referred you get some BIG buffs to your leveling.  Take a look at these!

• When in a party with your friend you both get TRIPLE experience
• For every two levels your friend gains, they can give one of your alts a free level
• You and your friend can summon each other from anywhere in Azeroth

Now, if triple experience doesn’t get you fired up I don’t know what will.  There are a couple of other nifty little things that might be of interest to you as well:

• When your friend pays for 60 days play time, you get an exclusive Zhevra mount (Epic Speed) at level 60
• When your friend buys their first 30 days of game time you get 30 days free.

So for those of you who already run in a team this could be a real bonus.  It certainly will blow all of the arguments for going solo out of the water.  And before you say - “well, yeah, if you can get somebody else to play,” think about it really hard.

Gavin and I already own three accounts each.  But this buff is so good, we may very well just have to have one of us start a new account to take advantage of this little deal.  For all of you couples and buddies that already play, you might consider doing the same thing.

In 90 days you could probably get 2 or 3 toons each to 70 using these experience buffs and summoning skill.  Since you get 30 days free when you buy 60 days, your total out of pocket cost is $40 for the TBC key and $15 for the 60 days play time since you get $15 free on your main account.  So for $55 bucks you can get the better buffs than any set of epic in the game as far as leveling is concerned, and a vanity epic land mount to boot.

Considering that if you were to buy a level 70 with zero gear it would set you back about $500, and powerleveling will cost you about $350 to 70 (if you even trust those things) and just buying one or two thousand gold would cost you more than $55 bucks it sounds like a bargain to me.  I am in no way advocating those things, I discourage them strongly, but in the current market place being able to buy triple experience and 35 free levels for just $55 bucks sounds like a deal.

You see, Blizz wants people to actually enjoy the new content in WotLK, so they have made a way for you to level to 70 as easily as possible.  Especially if it gives new players a serious buff to leveling, then it’s a good move so that more people will be ready to go when the next xpac goes live than were ready for tBC.  So they nerfed XP from 30-60 and now this.  Plus, since Death Knights will start at level 55, it only makes sense to make leveling for any other class easier as well (although I assume this will still be in effect for DK’s when WotLK comes out - talk about getting to end game fast!)

So go get your mom, your brother, your granny an account and double box it if you have to to make this work for you.  You can’t make leveling any easier than this friends.  Refer yourself - and Dominate.

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36 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Let’s talk about the grind of leveling a little bit. The really fun stuff only starts at level 70; and that dead period starting at about level 30 where you nearly have to live in Stranglethorn Vale is something we all hate once we’ve done it a few times.

The are two ways to take the pain out of leveling and do it faster and more efficiently than you ever thought possible. Joanna’s guide brags about making it from 1-60 in 6 days played time. But when you look at the rest of his characters they are a much more modest 7 or 8 days played time to level 60. Still sounds fast right? You can do it too, without having to memorize every quest in the game and without having done it a hundred times before. Guys like that spend all their time doing only that. They love creating new characters on new servers and racing everybody to level 70. Not me, that’s the grind part, unfortunately it must be done.

Now, keep in mind that Gavin and I are working on making leveling a serious breeze even going solo.  (And Gavin is going to hit 70 WAY faster than 6 days!)  Our horde leveling guide is going to walk you through every single step from 1-80.  That’s right, I said 80, more on that in the next few days.

Gavin is a solo nut.  He gets a real thrill out of leveling which is just not my bag.  I prefer another method.  It took me some time to convince him to try it with me, and I’m not sure he’ll ever like it as much as going solo, but at least he can see what I mean now.  The screenshot for this post is Gavin and me as we worked on our quest pathing in Hellfire.

There are other things much more fun about this game than making leveling itself a race. It’s also really hard to do un-twinked. If you are starting from scratch on a new server, it’s tough to level really fast because you have to spend at least a little time gathering and selling something or you’ll be too broke to afford repairs and get your training.

Furthermore, I hate getting one character all the way to level 70 and then stopping and going back to level 1 with another toon and having to do it all over again. There’s a better way of doing it. There are two parts to this – two rules I level by. The first rule is: never quest out of rest. The second one: Never roll alone.

Don’t Quest Out of Rest.

If you will create three or four toons on your account, plus one banker, you can pretty much play all the time and almost never run out of rested experience bonus. When you kill mobs under the rested bonus you get 200% experience. Plus, if you combine it with questing you can get almost two full levels of experience from one full bar of rest. That’s because every time you turn in a quest, it pushes your rest bar further along since you are gaining experience without killing anything.

One quest turn-in generally speaking is about the same as killing ten mobs at a minimum at low levels, the higher you go the more a quest turn in is worth in relationship to time. If you are killing mobs about the right level you can get one or two lines per ten kills up to about level 30 or so. So if you do 5 quests and kill 125-150 mobs, that’s 1 level - especially at lower levels.

If you are killing a mob every 10-20 seconds that’s 3-6 kills per minute, meaning you can gain a level every hour or so as long as you don’t run out of quests to do. This will work up to about level 20, and then it’s going to take you up to two hours per level. Past level 30 you can count on about three hours a level, around 40 will take four hours, after 50 nearly five hours; and watch out for level 65 plus, they take some time.

If you just can’t stand it and have to do something with your toon and you’re out of rest, use that time for farming (which I never do) or grinding for rep, or running instances for gear.   Of course, there isn’t much of a need any more to grind out rep until you hit 70 anyway, so if you must go looking for herbs or something do those kinds of things when your rested bonus ends.  Since I never farm you can see why I can make a hard and fast rule that I just don’t do much of anything out of rest.

Just for grins let’s say you follow my rule and never quest out of rest much. How long will it take to hit level 70 if you can average the leveling times I listed above? Seven days 5 hours. Considering even Brian Kopp is showing some of his toons hitting 60 in 6 days, that’s pretty good! Seven days playing it easy too. We’re not talking about trying to achieve perfection or break any records. Just by questing in rest, you can take your time and have some fun. Run a few instances and do a profession; help out a friend or two along the way – keep it a game for Pete’s sake! This brings us to rule number two.

Never roll alone.

Now you can certainly go from level one to around level ten much faster solo questing. You might even go up to 16 or even 20, but after that I recommend going questing in a group of two. Two people can kill mobs 125% faster than you can alone. Even though you have to share experience, if you are questing in the rest bonus it’s the same amount of experience you would be getting if you were feeling “normal!” Plus; if you can kill 100 mobs per hour alone (if the mobs are your level or lower) you will be able to kill about 225–250 mobs per hour with a friend. And you will be killing mobs up to two levels higher than you. This means you can take another day or so off of your leveling time to level 65 just by doing everything with a buddy.

Even if you don’t buy the argument that it’s faster in leveling time, you can certainly agree that two people with some skill can do almost anything but run instances.  You can bag every rare elite you come across, do all of the team quests, and even quest in areas two to three levels higher than you could solo.  Plus, it’s just a LOT more fun.

Sure, you have to kill twice as many mobs for the loot quests that require you to get 10 of something, but it will end up taking less time to get 20 for two people than it would for one person to get 10 by himself. I can pretty much count on getting a ding every time I sit down to play, most of the time two, on every character I log in without having to grind it out for hours at a time.

As an added bonus, if you are cycling through characters like this, by the time you are done you’ve got three or four level 70 characters with awesome gear ready for just about anything and probably less than 25 days played time. Now THAT sounds like a lot of time, but my first toon didn’t hit level 70 until 23 days played time (dang I was a nub). Granted, it was faster the next time out, but both of my first 2 70’s took me more than 30 days. If I had known this back then I could have had four or five level 70’s in the same amount of played time.

The other really cool thing about playing with a friend is that you’ve got some good company and many things that will make you mad trying to do solo are almost too easy with two players. So get back to having a good time and have more of it - quest under rest and roll with your crew. It will bring the fun back into the greatest game around.

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We did a post on the Artisan cooking quest, as well as a two-part guide to the Artisan Fishing quest.  There was a bigger purpose to all of that.  Some of the best raid buffs come from cooked foods, and even more specifically, cooked fish.  We don’t want you to have to always buy everything from the AH, so here’s how to put those two secondary profession skills together to make leveling cooking a breeze.

(We have yet to find a way to make leveling fishing faster, so you’ll just have to grind that one out)

Cooking fish is the easy way to get from 1-375. The recipes are easier to find, the mats are easier to get. It’s is much faster to fish up 3 or 4 stacks of fish than to grind out 3 or 4 stacks of raptor eggs.

To find where to go to get each type of fish, just click the Thottbot link and then sort the fishing list by clicking the Drop % on the list with the header that says “From Fishing.” These pages will give you the very best location to catch the maximum number of each fish per type.

1 – 50: Brilliant Smallfish = 80. Mats (1 Raw Brilliant Smallfish)

• 80 Raw Brilliant Smallfish

51 – 100: Longjaw Mudsnapper = 80. Mats (1 Raw Longjaw Mudsnapper)

• 80 Raw Longjaw Mudsnapper

101 – 175: Bristle Whisker Catfish = 120. Mats (1 Raw Bristle Whisker Catfish)

• 120 Raw Bristle Whisker Catfish

175 – 225: Rockscale Cod = 80. Mats (1 Raw Rockscale Cod)

• 80 Raw Rockscale Cod

Here you’ll go do your cooking and fishing quests.

226 – 275: Spotted Yellowtail = 80. Mats (1 Raw Spotted Yellowtail)

• 80 Raw Spotted Yellowtail

Before you move on to the next step, go get the Master Cookbook so you don’t have to stop and run all over the world to go get it in the middle of cooking.

276 – 325: Your Choice – or combination of the following = 80.

• Mightfish Steak. Mats (1 Large Raw Mightfish, 1 Hot Spices, 1 Soothing Spices)
• Baked Salmon. Mats (1 Raw Whitescale Salmon, 1 Soothing Spices)

After you reach 325, go get all of the Outlands fish recipes:

• Blackened Trout – Mats (1 Barbed Gill Trout)
• Feltail Delight – Mats (1 Spotted Feltail)
• Blackened Sporefish – Mats (Zangarian Sporefish)
• Grilled Mudfish - Mats (1 Figluster’s Mudfish)
• Poached Bluefish – Mats (1 Icefin Bluefish)
• Golden Fish Sticks – Mats (1 Golden Darter)
• Spicy Crawdad – Mats (1 Furious Crawdad)

Seriously, that’s all there is to it. The Trout and Feltail will get you to 340, the next four to 365, and Spicy Crawdads to 375. Short and sweet – and very Dominating!

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We walked you through getting to Nat Pagle for this quest, and it’s high time I showed you how to catch those four fish.  Before you head out, be sure to bring along your shiny baubles otherwise you’ll kick yourself when you get to the first fishing hole!

Here’s the link to the Quest on wowhead - http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=6607 Nat asks you to go catch four fish and then return to him when you get them all. What we’re going to do is show you the fastest order to go get these fish, and the best spots to fish.  For reference, paths in yellow are for Alliance, and Horde is red.

FISH #1 - Feralas Ahi

For the Feralas Ahi just fly to Feralas (Feathermoon for Ally, Camp Mojache for Horde) and run to the little lake in the middle of the map to catch the Feralas Ahi. The map is pretty easy to follow here. Just run down to the bridge that crosses over the waterfall and jump off the road. There’s a little spot that sticks out into the pond with no roaming mobs. This one is easy for both factions.  I normally get the Ahi in just a few casts.

FISH #2 - Sar’Theris Striker

After you get the Ahi, fly to Desolace for the Sar’Theris Striker. Horde will only have to get off the bird at Shadowprey Village, run a bit south down the coast, and fish.  Be sure that you leave Shadowprey village completely, your sub-zone on your minimap should read Sar’Theris Strand, you cannot catch this fish while the zone map reads Shadowprey Village. Ally have a little longer run from Nijels Point down to the coast.

FISH #3 - Savage Coast Sailfin

Now fly back to ratchet and take the boat to Stranglethorn Vale. As soon as the boat lands, just hop off the north end of the dock and swim over to the first place you can stand near the little camp of pirates. This fish, the Savage Coast Blue Sailfin takes about 2 minutes to get. You might even try to catch one right off the end of the dock.

FISH #4 - Misty Reed Mahi Mahi

Now for the last (and hardest) fish to nab, the Misty Reed Mahi Mahi. Horde toons can fly to Stonard, but Ally Chars will have to fly to Nethergarde Keep in the Blasted Lands, or to Darkshire in Duskwood and run around Stonard to catch up

When you get to the beach, avoid the Murlocs and you’ll find a little spot just after the sand ends where there are no giant crocs or Murlocs patrolling and you can fish in a little peace. Once you’re done here, hearth out.

Now all you have to do is go back to Nat Pagle and turn in your fish, and you’re done! Congratulations and happy fishing! Oh, and always remember to Dominate.

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With a little over 50% of the vote, the winner is Fran Molina!  Her torch-tossing heart dominated the competition. Fran wins a $50 gift certificate to Amazon, now we just have to figure out how to get the card to Brazil!  Congratulations Fran, I guess you helped all the guys find their romantic streak!

The Contest is over - and you better believe this: girls rule.  I guess all you guys lost your artistic streaks in all the bone-crunching testosterone of mangling fires.  Or maybe you just forgot it like we all do birthdays, anniversaries, our wallets . . . what was I saying?

I digress.  There were only three entries in our little competition and unfortunately nobody actually got a shot of the fireworks.  Gavin had me working like mad on our next project so I missed the show as well.  There’s always next year right?

The nice thing about having only three entries is that it’s going to be pretty easy for you guys to vote on the winners and we’ll have a clear 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place.  So let’s show you what the lovely ladies sent to us and you can be the judges.

ENTRY #1 - Fran Molina

Fran hails from Brazil and took this terrific shot of the torch tossing event that was one of the daily quests during the festival.  As you can see, this took some planning and coordination between Fran and three of her friends.  Vote Fran if you love girls from Brazil!  (Oh, wait - vote Fran if you think she’s the greatest WoW artist at DYS)

ENTRY #2 - Eleanor Anderson

Eleanor submits this fabulous display of herself and four others dancing around a brazier of dancing flames in the throne room of Lordaeron.  Chicks certainly know how to make friends and influence people!  A vote for Eleanor may also be “FOR THE HORDE!”

ENTRY #3 - Ellimace

In full fire festival regalia, including the Crown of the Fire Festival, Mantle of the Fire Festival, and Vestments of Summer, our night elf princess Ellimace watches over her Brazier of Dancing Flames.  It certainly took the effort of visiting every bonfire and dousing all the Horde capital city fires to acquire all that gear.  A vote for Ellimace and this goddess will watch over you!

Leave your votes for our three lovely ladies as comments in this post, and may the best woman win!

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On July 3rd, Blizzard made the above post at www.worldofwarcraft.com This is big news from Blizzard for WotLK since the Beta for Burning Crusade was a closed event.

Hurry over to the home page and register your accounts for the Beta opt-in.  Now, registering an interest in being invited to the beta does not guarantee that you will be included in the Beta by any means, just that you will at least have a chance at getting into the Beta.

The only way to guarantee a spot in the WotLK beta is to buy a Beta key somewhere.  As of this morning there were 8 Beta keys available from people who attended Blizz Conn in Paris that listed their beta cards on ebay, if being in on the beta is worth $600 bucks or so to you.  Of course, these beta keys also come with a murloc suit or a Tyrael pet (which is an awesome thing to me being a monster D2 fan!) but the price is a bit on the - well, silly side of enormous.

Normally when Blizzard announces an opt-in for a Beta, the beta itself is not very far away from starting.  Sometimes it is a matter of a few weeks between an open Beta announcement and the start of the beta itself, which is pretty exciting.  This announcement means that we can be pretty sure that the full retail release of the WotLK expansion will be before the end of 2008.

We try to not only help you be prepared at DYS, we also want you to get so far ahead you can Dominate!  What better way to dominate WotLK than to know it before anyone else does.  Register right this minute - if you get in on the Beta, be sure to post back here with your toon names so that you and other DYS readers can team up and crush everyone else from day one in the Beta and beyond.

Good luck, and always Dominate!

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