Author Archives: Sam

Mists Beta: Protection Paladin in August

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I decided it was about time I had another good look at protection paladins. The beta is winding down now, so I wanted to get a good look at the spec changes that will be live in just a few weeks. I wrote about my first look on the beta, and about prot pallys, in April. I’ve not written about them since as, in all honesty, I’ve not taken a good look. It’s long past time where I need to do that as in just a few weeks this’ll be the new reality.

So let’s compare what I wrote a few months back and see how much, if any of it, is still valid.

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Choosing that perfect race/class combo

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I want to have a max level of every class. Right now I have eight out of ten classes maxed out, leaving three still to go come Mists. I also want a horde, and I’m currently levelling on RaF experiment Mark II, so that makes five. However, even if I wasn’t planning on leveling anything else it does intrigue me about how people pick their combo. How I pick mine and how someone picks there’s will be different. What factors come into play?

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Mog My Closet: A Robe For All Occasions

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It’s no secret I don’t like dresses. My friend who introduced me to warcraft said long before I realised my mage shouldn’t be my main, “if you hate dresses so much you shouldn’t play a mage”. Anyway, I’ve discovered some of them look alright, or at least they do when modelled by my paladin, maybe my mage makes everything look ugly. This isn’t a standard transmog set post, more a collection of robes from the hundreds that are available, or in other words when I wind up laughing at my own jokes.

I put this together some time ago and then never got round to formatting this post properly. It’s been sitting in drafts for a while so it’s time it got posted. I have lots of saved posts ready to go right now. Let’s have a fun one today.

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Why Mists of Pandaria is a big deal

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I am super excited for Mists, I really am, and I’ve been thinking about why I’m so excited. I remember being excited for cata but I don’t think it was the same level of excitement. Whether that was because I didn’t know the game as well (I’d started the January before so been playing less than a year), or whether cata just wasn’t as exciting, I’m not entirely sure. However, Mists is exciting and not just because it’s giving us an escape from the Dragon Soul, which eight months in is a little stale.

I’d been giving this some thought one night when I couldn’t sleep. I pulled my phone out and watched the Mists trailer from 2011, I then went looking for the same trailers for Cata, Wrath and TBC. That’s when it struck me about why Mists is so exciting.

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Shutting the door behind you

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There’s an expression in English which is basically when you’ve got to the top, rather than holding out a hand helping others up as you were helped, you shut the door behind you so you’re the last one that can get there. On the eu forums there’s a nearly 200 page thread and WoWInsider got in on the act as well. The topic? The age old argument of casual vs hardcore. Now I’ve covered this a bit before and said something similar to what the indomitable Matt Rossi said. We’re all different, and with a large player base we’re as different as can be. There is no one universal truth, everybody has their own truth influenced by their experiences, and so we’re all right and we’re all wrong.

However, if I was just going to rehash the ‘please can we all just get along’ this would be a very short post.

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The Direbrew Dilemma

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For the last three days, since September 25th became the day, players have been speculating on what would happen to Brewfest. Well, last night the blues posted their answer which was that it was going to be upgraded for level 90. Now Brewfest starts on the 20th so Coren Direbew would be inaccessible for five days, it ends on the 5th giving players 10 days to kill him. The catch is you have to be level 89 in order to queue for him, meaning those 10 days aren’t kill opportunities but levelling time. As blizz have stated that they want people to stop and smell the roses, and won’t allow flying until level 90 to better facilitate this, there was predictable outrage at this mixed message.

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May we live in interesting times

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A few days ago I posted my new cata bucket list. I posted it a day after I’d written it and the day after that I’d done what I could of it. The rng items and the argent tournament obviously take time and are a daily errand so not those. That left me wondering ‘what now?’ which is precisely what I was thinking when I wrote that list. Now one of my flaws is that I’m a tad impulsive and I’m not terribly patient. Run before you walk syndrome if you want to call it something.

The two months between now and Mists, and my need for a goal, led to me pushing ahead with a plan that I wasn’t supposed to enact till Mists.

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New Cataclysm Bucket List

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About six weeks ago I posted my cata bucket list. I also included my general warcraft bucket list under the ‘one day but not today’ heading. As those were very general and all encompassing goals which will take a long time, if ever, to complete. However, I’ve finished my cata bucket list which has made me wonder “what now?”. With no indication of when Mists is likely to be released I’m facing, at the minimum, a couple of months until then. So it’s time for a new bucket list, or an expanded one anyway.

Hopefully in two months time I won’t be having to post another bucket list, as Mists will soon be on the horizon.

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Gear: What is it good for?

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The Grumpy Elf wrote a post the other day Is Gear the Great Motivator? which really got me thinking. I’d had a conversation the night before with a friend, guildie and often fellow raider. He was saying that if Mists wasn’t released soon then he’d quit the game and wouldn’t come back. He said there was nothing to do, that all he was interested in was kitting out his character in the best gear he could, that the only better gear he could get was from heroic raids which he didn’t have the opportunity to run, so he was done.

People play for different reasons, this guy plays for gear, I personally can’t do that. I think that there’s a lot left to do in the game but he said he wasn’t interested in any of the content I listed. He’s all about the gear and once he’s got it (or as much as he’s able) then he’s completed the game until they bring out another tier of content.

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A Single World: Good or Bad?

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This is Blog Azeroth’s shared topic for this week and the first shared topic I’ve participated in. Technology has moved on a lot since Warcraft’s debut in 2004. Realms or servers were necessary then as there wasn’t another way to handle the population, or if there was it wasn’t a feasible option back then.

It’s something that I don’t really appreciate most of the time. I was 14 in 2004 and so it seems like only a couple of years ago to me, it was high school and that’s very recent, but it’s not. 2004 was eight years ago, nearly a decade, and in technology terms that might as well be hundred years with how fast things advance now. Did I even have broadband in 2004? I don’t remember as it seems impossible that I haven’t always had it.

So if it isn’t technology that is holding back the single world what is?

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