World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft has nine classes to choose from when creating your character, Warrior, Paladin, Hunter, Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Shaman, Druid, and Monk.  But there is a secret tenth class, in, the Banker.  Each player has a limited amount of space to store items in.  Each item takes up one bag slot, though some stack up to a certain level (often 20).  Gear is always one item per slot.  There are several options for storage available with varying uses.

On your person, you can carry 5 bags, one being the core 16 slot “backpack”, the other being varying sizes depending on what kind of bags you have.  Most low level players have 6-8 slot bags, there is a 14 slot bag that can be bought easily and cheaply from the Bag Vendor, the most common largest non specialized bags are the Frostweave (20 slots) and Embersilk (22 slot) bags that can be tailored.  Mists of Pandaria added the 28 slot Royal Satchel for Tailors to make as well, though getting the recipe is a long reputation grind and then the materials to make the Royal Satchel require a daily cooldown.

A level 90 character likely has 4 Frostweave or Embersilk bags in addition to their core 16 slot backpack giving them 96-102 slots on their person.  There are also specialized 32 slot bags for professions, such as a 32 slot herb bag, or 32 slot mining bags.

Players also get a bank, which is only accessible from a bank but allows long term storage of less used items and trinkets or particularly notable items the player may have picked up over their travels.  The base bank has 28 slots and has an additional 7 bag slots for purchase.  Bag slots work like the player bags, in that any bag can be stuck in a bag slot.  Having a full compliment of Frostweave or Embersilk bags in the bank will give the player somewhere around another 120-130 item slots.

There is also a Void Storage vault.  This is a special 80 slot bank that is primarily used for storage of armor that a player wants to use for Transmogrifying.  Transmogrifying (where one armor is given the appearance of another) can be done directly from the Void Storage.   It costs a player 100g to unlock the Void Storage vault and another 25g per item to deposit items into storage.  It’s not cheap to use so anything that is frequently taken in and out is not recommended for Void Storage.

In the end, a single player is looking at around 300 item slots to keep junk they collect.

You can get a LOT more with a Bank Alt.  Many items that clutter up your inventory are crafting Materials.  These are items you may need later and in large quantities.  They may also be items that you are just collecting up to sell on the auction house.  They may e items you want to keep for an alt, such as Heirloom Gear.  All of these items are much more effective when pooled on a character that is dedicated to storage.  This character will never run any quests, so he doesn’t have to worry about carrying quest items or upgrading his gear or hauling around vendor trash items.  The Banker can be loaded up with bags dedicated to storage of items.

With a little effort the banker can be part of his own guild, giving access to an even larger and much nicer storage space in the form of the Guild Vault.  I finally gave my Banker a guild but wandering around Orgrimmar offering 20g to anyone who would sign my guild charter.  It takes 4 other folks to create a guild but only one person is required to maintain it.  So you can get people to sign up, then kick them out.  If you are upfront about this they often won’t even care that you’re kicking them.  Generally, characters without a guild (necessary to be able to sign) are low level and could use a few gold anyway.

Each page of the Guild Vault has 98 slots.  The cost to open a new page is increasingly larger but for a few thousand gold you can eventually, easily get an extra 400 or so bank slots.

The Guild Bank is organized very nicely too, especially compared to the player bank.  Each tab can be given a custom icon and name, making sorting large amounts of Materials really nice.  Another nice benefit is that you can give yourself a fun custom title as your Guild Name.  This really helps for the aspect of tricking out your Banker.  Some people choose to run around as naked Orc bankers, I prefer to run around in a stylish Banker Suit.

Lately, in between working on stuff with my main, I’ve been running a few Alts with different purposes in World of Warcraft.  Firstly, I made a fully decked out Twink(ish) Troll Monk nammed Raman.  It’s kind of a play on Ramen and the Jamacan vocal patterns of the Trolls.  I d previous runs onquite a bit of Justice and Valor from my previous runs on Seige of Orgimmar and so I loaded up my new Monk with appropriate heirloom gear.

Heirlooms are are a special kind of gear designed for alts.  They provide high stats and they “level up” along side your character meaning you never have to worry about swapping gear along the way.  They also provide some nice experience bonuses for leveling.  Unlike many items they are Bind to Account, not Souldbound (to one character).  They can be sent cross realm even.

Having the full set of gear makes him crazy powerful and he levels really fast. This makes him a pretty kickass Tank with little effort on my part.  Which is the point ultimately.  I want a Tank, a level 90 Tank.  The Heirloom gear wears off at level 85, I can limp along on whatever until 90, at which point ‘ve already got a ton of Timeless Isle Leather gear on my main I can throw on him for a pretty decent level 90 Tank.  I’m a bit concerned about the ultimate utility of the Brewmaster Monk tank, I’ve read a few times that they are “squishy” next to other tank classes.  I guess time will tell.

I’ve also taken an old neglected character and started building a “Bank Alt”.  He is not a true Bank Alt since he’s not level 1 but I don’t particularly care.  Straxus was a Blood Elf Priest I had made to accompany my Son’s BE Paladin.  Except my son quickly out leveled the Priest and i didn’t care much for playing him anyway.  Later I started throwing some of my clutter junk at him for storage.  I’ve recently started turning him into a true Bank Alt, complete with suit and large sacks.

Straxus is also not yet a full bank alt.  I need to fully deck him out with Frostweave Bags or Royal Sachels.  I need to get better gloces, shoes and “weapon”.  I need to start up a one man guild for Maximum Bank Space.  I really need the Bank Alt too since, on my main, I have started doing alternate professions.  I dropped Minning for Herbalism, I plan to use all those Herbs to do Inscription and maybe Potions next.  Eventually I’ll land on Engineering, which will require I use my neglected Death Knight to mine some ores.

Finally, I made a new alt on a PVP server.  There was some discussion on Reddit about doing “something crazy” and making an Alliance Guild that would be self sustaining and helpful to eachother for everything on the Illidan server, a PVP server.  PVP servers have Player vs Player, always on, so in addition to threads from monsters, there is the thread of players from the opposite faction swooping in and killing you.

The catch here is, Illidan is apparently 99% Horde controlled.  Playing Alliance is literally suicide.  I have not gotten out of the long Worgen starting zone yet to see if there even is a Reddit Masochist guild going but that’s fine, if there isn’t I can always make one.

I decided to go ahead and roll a Worgen Rogue for several reasons.  First, Leveling may be tricky, and the Heirloom Armor I bought my Monk is actually Rogue Heirloom gear.  Both emphasise the same stats.  The experience bonus will be a HUGE help.  I clear zones with the Monk after like one or two quest hubs and gain 2-3 levels every dungeon.  Second, the Worgen starting zone is lengthy.  By the time I am in the real world where PVP will be an issue I should be high enough level to do queue for Dungeons.  If all else fails, I can just hide somewhere and run dungeons until I am a decent level, or at least until I can learn flying riding.  Also, Worgen is the only “cool” Alliance class anyway.  Horde 4 Lyf and all…

As for Rogue, Rogue can use Stealth, which will be really useful for questing if there are Alliance nearby.  I can easily hide or sneak past them as needed.

My only regret is that the Heirloom Gear will prevent me from wearing a Dapper Tophat like a proper werewolf.

So I’m done.

Done with World of Warcraft.

Maybe I’ll come back, probably, but for the moment, I’m just done.  It’s just not fun anymore, that’s all there is to it.  I enjoyed it immensely but I just can’t find myself enjoying it.  I log on and it’s just a chore. 

I guess I just don’t enjoy “grinding”.  I was having a ton of fun when i was running around the world doing quests and getting some story, but then I made it to Level 90, and I did some things in Pandaria, and then it got dull, and now I’m done.  There are still quests to be done but it seems silly to do them again on my level 90.  I could start over but got what a pain that is, it took me months to get where I am now.  I could keep going, there are new and exciting patches coming and new content and loads of Panda stuff I have not yet done but i just don’t want to.

The “end game” just sucks.

I log in, I run around doing the same dozen or so daily Pandarian quests, then I go lose a bunch of PVP rounds while being screamed at for being a “noob” because I don’t spend 20 hours a day perfecting my characrer, and it just sucks.   I did a few raids with my guild but even that is awful.  The guild is nice people, but after dying against the same boss 30 times over the course of 3 hours, it’s time to give up and move on for a while.  That’s not fun, it’s tedious, and stupid.  I think that’s part of my dislike as well.  All of the end game is about grinding out better gear from dungeons and raids and PVP.  It’s all doing the same thing over and over to heard Honor of Valor points or to hope that one good item drops from a boss, then hope you win the roll from a group of folks.  These activities are all intense and difficult.  The early dungeons consist of 5 people steamrolling through waves of monsters.  The later stuff is 5-10 people pounding on “monster trash” for hours that, trash that is so strong it could wipe every dungeon you played before this.

It’s just boring.

I just don’t have the time or care for this.  Besides, this obsession is killing all of my other interests and it needs to stop.  It’s a good game, I just started to let it get too much of me and I just got tired of it.

So, Death Knights.

Death Knights are a little odd in how they work.  Unlike every other class, you cannot create a Death Knight until level 55.  I’m not real sure why this is exactly, I guess it makes slightly more sense for a harbinger of doom to be an experienced powerful warrior, not some crummy level 1 nobody.  Also, according to the plot, Death Knights seem to be fallen or corrupted warriors, so maybe the idea is, you would “recreate” your character as a Death Knight.  As a Death Knight, you work for the Lich King Arthas.  This pleases me some because of all of the Warcraft Lore previous to playing WoW, Arthas is the only name I immediately remember.  I THINK I recall Sylvanas Windrunner, leader of the undead, but Arthas I remember for sure.  I get the impression he’s not exactly the main baddie of the world anymore.  That is some huge Dragon or something. 

Maybe.

I’m not real sure of the over arching narrative yet actually.  It doesn’t even really seem to be Horde vs Alliance.

I actually really like this model.  I really wish that you could just assign any new character a starting level below your highest character.  Maybe do it in levels of 5 so it’s easier to sort out what starting equipment is needed.  You get some spottiness with how to start their questing from there, except chances are, you’ve already done the lower quests anyway, so the player would just dump in and start picking up yellow !s.

Dark Knight is an interesting class to play.  You are a pretty bad ass Melee class, but you also get a host of magical skills to throw around as well.  It’s designed to be a combination class like this of course.  Probably the closest class would be a Paladin, except the Paladin spreads buffs and heals with magic while a Dark Knight spreads diseases and negative effects.  At least that the impression I’ve gotten.

Also, it’s kind of curious how things pan out for the starting zone, as you essentially start out against everyone, Alliance and Horde.  This would sort of make it difficult to travel the world for sure.  Finding quests could be tricky as well.  I actually almost thought maybe Death Knights simply didn’t progress beyond this little mini story line they get for their starting zone, except I’ve seen DKs wandering the world.  I don’t want to spoil anything, but you essentially fall out of favor with the Lich King and set out into the world.

There are some nice little touches attached to this though.  As I first entered Orgrimmer, NPCs were jeering me as I walked past.  The whole “Piss off, you killed people and we hate you still” mindset.  It’s neat.  I kind of wonder if the pseudo redemption of your character is ever expanded on more.  There are touches in the starting zone, I met with a non corrupted Tauren who urged me to head to Thunder Bluffs for example.

I’m still preferring my main character, but I plan to revisit the world through this Death Knight Tauren at some point.  Oh yes, on Taurens.  I’ve noticed that it’spretty much a requirement that Tauren names have to be a play on Cows, somehow, so I named my dark Tauren, Angus Black, which is both Cowish and Dark Knightish.

I’ve been playing through dungeons, which are grouped matches with 4 other players where you fight tougher than normal enemies.  These groups generally consist of a Tank, who absorbs damage and attracts the enemies, a Healer, who keeps the tank (and the group) alive.  And three DPS or Damage Per Second people, who have the job of dealing out as much damage as they can, as quickly as possible.  I am DPS, which is the most common type, since it’s easiest to play.  I like to think that I’m actually pretty awesome at DPS though since Fury Warrior ie Berserker is essentially entirely designed around buffing yourself up to throw out critical hits all over the place.  When I hit, there is a visible drop on the enemy life bar, even on bosses.

Dungeons are good for a lot of things.  They give good experience, you can use them along with Tabbards to increase your reputation with factions, and they drop the best loot from monsters.  We’re talking sometimes ten times the stat boosts of normal quest equipment of comparable levels.  Not to mention that working with a group of people is fun as well.  Most groups seem to work pretty well for being random pairings, the system is really designed to work well.  You can even often manage to loose a DPS or possibly two.  Occasionally the Tank or Healer drops out, which tends to mean the death of the group though.  Sometimes a DPS can step up and Tank, the healer is usually not replicable. 

The biggest real problem I’ve found is the Tank gets over zealous and pulls in half the dungeon population at once.  The healer can’t keep up and the DPS can’t deal lout enough damages to keep things at bay.  Eventually the tank dies.  Next, all your DPS which suddenly find they are the target of a horde of enemies, finds themselves in the graveyard.  It’s easy to forget that you even have a life bar as DPS, since your focus tends to be on the enemies and not how well you’re doing.

If you’re lucky, the Healer noticed that his Tank dies and his DPS has dies and he’s cut and run to a safer area.  This means that once the enemies clear out, he can revive everyone on the spot.  Otherwise you all get to walk back to your corpses in spirit form, which can be a long process.  If someone gets frustrated and drops then the walk becomes pointless anyway as the group quickly falls apart. 

The Healer probably kills most groups, though it’s not often his fault.  Sometimes the Healer just doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but if the Tank is pulling too much, there isn’t much the Healer can do.