The Vanity of an Ancient King

World of Warcraft is readying their latest expansion, "Wrath of the Lich King". Slowly, new items are being uncovered that will be found in the expansion. The latest is this:





Rumour has it that it's going to be an Engineering-crafted item. I'm *sooo* dropping Blacksmithing so my dwarf can make this.

I've decided every day should have its own theme. Today's theme is "Stupid Accomplishments"

While at the office, I decided I needed to take a break from doing actual billable work, and finally hash out my button bars in World of Warcraft. You see, I recently downloaded an add-on to the game that will allow me to assign commands to 120 buttons, order them in arbitrary groups, and assign keyboard shortcuts easily. This process isn't as simple as you may think. First, you must figure out what's available. Then you need to create some form of taxonomy, then you need to see how on earth they will fit into the interface. After that, you want to assign your keyboard shortcuts. This took roughly 3 hours. Oops.

But at least it's done. Now I get to do the same thing for all my other characters.

::eep::

I have much work still to do, but I thought I'd take a minor break and check on my Dwarf Paladin on World of Warcraft. It wasn't long, however, until I decided I wanted to take a nap.



It's difficult to sleep with all your gear on…





But it is better to leave the boots on ;-)

Now that I am in the 50s, I thought I'd start a "serious" (Alliance) guild in Gilneas.

Why?

Because I crave shiny things, and chances are pretty good, you do as well. The guild will have these purposes:

1) Advancing Professions

2) Leveling lower-level characters

and when we have enough 60+ characters

3) Bigtime Raid instances like Molten Core

4) Battlegrounds PVP


I think it's important to recruit all levels, classes, and professions, with the higher level characters having Officer/Squad Leader positions.

"Serious" in my mind doesn't mean gaming all night every night, but it does mean putting in time to further the health and welfare of the guild (helping people with quests, materials, etc). We will also have regular scheduled Raid events.

If you are interested, let me know your existing Gilneas toon, and if you're not on Gilneas, make a new toon, and post here. Also, tell your friends! We'll need 60-80 people to do MC and the Outland end-game instances.

Also, if you're thinking about playing World of Warcraft, let me know, and I can supply you with a referral token. Just reply here.

Later, when the guild is created (name not yet decided), I'll create an LJ account for the guild.

Just so people know, I'm "Visigothe" Dwarf Paladin playing on Gilneas.

So after day 2, I have some thoughts on the game. It's fun, and not as tedious as many such games are, but it still has its share of *massive* tedium. Unlike in offline RPGs, you don't gain experience by killing random monsters (well, you do, but it's paltry). You seem to make the most XP by doing quests, something that in offline RPGs is purely optional. I suppose this is to make the world seem more like a world, and less like a hunting trip. It also encourages grouping, aiding the social aspects of the game. It is however, *really* hard to remember what to click/keys to press just to talk to someone. I still haven't figured out how to talk to someone who isn't in your party (and isn't in your immediate field of view).

The really ugly part about WoW is the mapping. Is it so difficult to have a "live" map with all the places you've been, and markers to where you need to be (assuming you've been there, or have been told where something is)? The tolkein-esque maps are almost entirely useless, as they are waaaay too zoomed out for me to figure out how to get back to where I need to be. Is this universal suckage, or am I missing the "make everything suck less" key command?

Is there a penalty when you die? I've died twice, perhaps 3 times, and I don't believe I've lost anything (money, XP, items). Does this hold true for the higher levels as well? If there is no penalty for death, why don't I just pkill people, and gain XP?

It sucks that trial accounts can't receive items from people. I had a bunch of loot I wanted to give to vishanti, but no soap.

I thought WoW had an in-game voice-chat option. I haven't figured out how to make that happen.

Big ups to bigsabu for hopping online and grouping with me last night.