Meet Walakea. He's a newly created troll shaman, and he's in <Undergeared>, a guild with which Gevlon aims to raid Icecrown Citadel, using only blue gear.
Gevlon seems to be happy with bloggers being in the guild, so I'm going to blog my impressions and experiences with the guild.
So -- why am I joining this project? For a few reasons:
- I like levelling new characters, questing, and trying new classes. I've wanted to roll a shaman, and try Horde, for quite a while. This seemed like a good excuse to level a new character.
- All of my resources are on Alliance characters, so making a Horde character involves either starting from scratch, or abusing the cross-faction auction house. This way, a rich benefactor (ie: Gevlon) gives me 100G, a set of bags, and tells me to get on with levelling. Not a bad start for a new alt.
- I'm a fan of Gevlon's blog and genuinely interested in the project. I want to see if it can be done.
- There's nothing to lose. Worst case scenario? Gevlon calls me M&S on his blog, I get /gkick'ed, or the project otherwise fails. I still have a new shammy alt, and 100 of Gevlon's gold. I can live with that.
Even though the project doesn't officially start until this Saturday, enough people (including myself) rolled new characters yesterday to get the guild started. So far, Gevlon (as Koltas, the blood-elf mage he's using) has acted pretty much as I expected, and set the tone of the guild:
Guild Message of the Day: Welcome and good luck levelling! Please keep the guild chat for finding groups or asking WoW-questions and NOT for social chat.
...and then later, he set up some initial guild ranks, and told us:
[Guild] [Koltas]: You might recognized "Lolled!" as lowest rank. If someone says "lol" or other social nonsense, he can get himself demoted. I hope I don't have to tell what happens with a "lolled" if he does it again :-)
That pretty much made /g go quiet. Of course, as soon as he logged off, it exploded with pages of social chat. I really don't see how he can police this rule, unless he implements some Gestapo-like scheme to get us to rat out "socials" in his absence. Personally, I'm keeping quiet.
It's an interesting project, and it gives playing WoW an extra strange quality. It's made me suspicious of all my guildmates, paranoid and careful about what I say, and I'm trying to treat the whole experience as a science project. I straddle the line between social and anti-social myself (my own MMO playstyle is somewhat similar to Gevlon's) so I'm really interested to see where this guild idea goes. I can't shake the feeling that we're being used by Gevlon to prove a point, and not one about undergeared raiding: about what moron socials will do for some gold and internet fame.
Labels: undergeared, worldofwarcraft
Considering the dungeons required for Classic Dungeonmaster, here is my personal favourite bosses, in roughly recommended instance level order:
- Mekgineer Thermaplugg
Lots of people hate Gnomeregan, but I don't really mind it at all. I like Thermaplugg not only because of the nice quest rewards from The Grand Betrayal but also because he's quite clearly gone bonkers. And not only bonkers, but sat in a giant robot suit and in charge of a huge supply of bombs -- great fun!
- Amnennar the Coldbringer
I've picked Amnennar purely because he's a lich, and I love the undead and specifically the lich model. The build up to the fight with this lich as you climb the Spiral of Thorns, defeating his undead minions along the way is also pretty cool. I love killing me some undead.
- Gahz'rilla
Gahz'rilla is a huge, three headed hydra who lives in Zul'Farrak. Your reward for slaying such a terrifying beast? A [Carrot on a Stick]. I think this might be a metaphor for the entire MMO industry.
- Princess Theradras
Ooh, she's so purdy.
- Shade of Eranikus
Along with Dreamscythe, Weaver, Morphaz and Hazzas, Eranikus is a favourite of mine because he's a dragon, and killing dragons is a very satisfying fantasy trope. He also drops the quest item that gets you the [Chained Essence of Eranikus], which is a fun trinket. Any item that lets the trapped soul of a dragon whisper death threats to you is pretty good in my book.
- Bael'Gar
I really like Blackrock Depths as a whole, but Bael'Gar is my favourite boss of the instance. I like the gooey lava blob adds he summons and I have fond memories of soloing him with my hunter, my pet dying right at the last moment, but still pulling it off.
- Immol'thar
This is another pick because of the model -- I think this is a great looking boss. It's also an interesting fight, due to the evil floating Eye of Immol'thar adds he summons, and his ability to teleport players high into the air, leaving them to fall to their (potential) deaths.
- Grand Crusader Dathrohan
Once you get Dathrohan down to 40% health, he reveals his true form - the Grand Crusader has been possessed by the Dreadlord Balnazzar. I like fights with really obvious phases and transformations, and turning into a huge demon is a pretty good example of the tranforming-boss genre.
So - which are your favourite classic bosses?
Labels: worldofwarcraft
Tipa of West Karana just called out Gevlon, the Greedy Goblin, saying:
he has a huge fanbase of rabid World of Warcraft followers, even though he is a psychotic sociopath
...and...
[his] greed and arrogance is the heart of the cancer that kills WoW’s community ... the world needs fewer joysuckers, not more.
If Gevlon was offering his guidance on cold, dispassionate economics and sociology as an EVE Online character, rather than a goblin, I don’t think he would be reviled by his blogging peers in such the same way. WoW is very much a social game.
Gevlon’s Greedy Goblin blog is one of the few WoW-centric blogs I have posted on my blogroll, and it’s one of the first I check in the WoW section of my feed reader. I wouldn’t call myself a rabid follower, but I can get behind his goblinish way of playing. I enjoy playing the auction house and mocking what Gevlon calls the M&S – morons and slackers – even though if he looked over my gear and achievements, I’m sure I’d be labelled M&S without a second thought.
Now, don’t get me wrong: he is psychotic, and perhaps a little too fond of Ayn Rand for his own good, but I think the WoW blogging community (and certainly the WoW-playing community) is large enough to suffer a little egocentric greed.
I first started reading Gevlon’s blog for help making money. I was sick of farming elementals and repeating dailies to generate income, and he has lots of good tips for playing the auction house. When you get into it, the AH is a mini-game in itself. And once you’re playing the AH at Gevlon’s level of industry, you can be controlling aspects of a whole server’s economy. In a way, it can be like PvPing your own faction. There’s something very satisfying about being self-sufficient amongst the sea of the larger WoW community. And if you can game that community for fun and profit – well, why not?
Maybe there’s a bit of goblin blood in me, too.
Labels: worldofwarcraft
» Blizzcon 2009 Bloodelf caster, by djwu.
As well as Wizard 101, which is our current love, we also play World of Warcraft. We're not subscribed at the moment, but because of the recent news about Cataclysm, it's back on my mind. WoW is never far away, with some excellent blogs in my RSS reader and the official Armory app on my iPhone, even when we're not playing it's a part of my daily nerd-news routine.
When we play WoW, we play it like all our MMOs -- as essentially a two-player game that happens to have very good multiplayer options. We're in a guild that consists of our mains and alts, and one other person, a real life friend. We complete quests, grouped together, and tackle five-man instances once we're over-leveled and over-geared enough to manage them with only two or three characters. Playing a protection paladin and discipline priest combo probably helps. Our occasional third man is a beast mastery hunter, so between us we have the "holy trinity" of tank, healer, DPS covered, with a pet for off-tanking.
Naturally this cuts us off from the latest 5-man content, and essentially all of the 10-man and above raid content, and subsequently our gear is never better than end-game crafted pieces, reputation and quest rewards. We're happy with that. Our innate misanthropy keeps us from grouping or raiding, but that's exactly how we want it.
We experience much of the game one expansion behind the rest of the world. Yes, we've started questing in Northrend, but we're still working through Outland dungeons and reputation/daily quests.
I wonder how many people play like us? I imagine our playstyle is a smaller niche. When we're playing, we're pretty hardcore. Not hardcore raiders, as "hardcore" often implies, but I research talent builds and work out best-in-slot quest rewards, read the patch notes, and don't mind a bit of theorycrafting with Excel and the Wowhead comparison tool. I think the hardcore vs. casual stereotypes are a myth, or at least much more complex than some people make out.
Labels: worldofwarcraft
