I went to the Undercity last night for the first time, to close out a couple quests. That place is creepy. Just creepy. The monstrous guardians with three arms and their ribcage open, the ghostly bank tellers, the glowing green river, everything. I couldn’t find the NPCs I need to talk to for ending my quests; navigating around Undercity is frustratingly complicated. But rather than log out in that undead city, I hearthstoned back to Crossroads. Undercity is just too creepy to stay there over night.

And I still have the Scout rank on my name. I still don’t like it.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I joined in a PvP battleground — Warsong Gulch. It was a different, interesting, and fun couple hours fighting against other players rather than just against the computer-controlled monsters of the world.

I was surprised that I did decently in the rankings. I was closer to the top of the listing than the bottom. But I don’t think I’ll bother with that aspect of the game anymore. It just wasn’t my favorite kind of game. I’ve never been all that interested in deathmatch style games, either in first-person shooters or adventure games. That’s one reason why Guild Wars didn’t really interest enough.

But I’ve found one side effect of entering the battlegrounds that I didn’t know about or expect. I now have a military title: Scout. I didn’t want a military title, don’t want the title, and think it’s stupid for someone who has no real interest in the PvP side of the game. Now when someone looks at my character, they see someone who has participated in PvP. And unfortunately, I’ve learned that the title will never go away. No matter how long I go without ever going back into a battleground, my character will always retain the Scout ranking. That’ll look pretty silly when I eventually reach level 60.

“Scout” is the Horde name for the Alliance equivalent of “Private”. Ain’t that impressive?

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

The WoW Auction House (AH) is an interesting beast. Some days of the week are more busy than others (as would be expected, I guess). Sometimes an item sells immediately for a very high price, and then the next time it fails to sell for three days.

In talking with my friends about WoW, apparently I have very bad luck with the AH. They regularly sell things for a gold, but I have trouble selling the same things at all. Of my group of friends, I have about half the gold as anyone else. Leatherworking is not a good skill for making money, so far as I’ve tried. Between buying materials (thread, etc.), using materials (leather taken with the skinning skill), and wasted deposit money for items that don’t sell the first or second time, I’m lucky to break even selling my wares on the AH.

The only good thing I’m seeing with leatherworking is making gear for myself or my friends. But it takes so much to level up the skill to where I can make good stuff for use, I sometimes think I could probably save money by just purchasing it off the AH and forget about using a skill.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

My whole table game group is now playing WoW. I’ve teamed up with one at a time, occasionally over the past couple weeks, but last night we managed to all be on at the same time. It was a lot of fun to team up as a group. Usually when I play WoW, I’m playing solo, hunting and questing by myself. A group adventure is wholly different experience — not a better experience (and certainly not worse, with friends), but different.

Most of us are in the high teens, but our sole warrior tank was only 15th level. The dungeon we were invading was full of 20th-level monsters. The warrior was being pummeled, mightily, but our party priest managed to keep her alive, at least so long as none of us screwed up. We all died a few times. (Read “few” as “six to ten”.)

As a hunter, I am back, away from the front line melee, so I can see more of the battlefield. I need to make a macro to say, “Run!” with one key stroke. There were a some instances of being overrun by enemies. It was really disheartening to see the tank and my pet get surrounded by 3 or 4 tough enemies; I knew both would get killed in the next 10 seconds. And to make it worse, then one or two more would come after the priest and/or me. There just isn’t enough time to open a message and type before things get irrevocably bad.

Although, I learned and got to practice some group tactics. But when enemies
respawn behind us (or in the middle of us), tactics kind of get thrown to the winds. I’ve got to figure out how to use the traps. I haven’t used any yet, although I’ve had the fire trap for at least two levels. I’ve gotten practice at pulling enemies to us, one at a time, but when the enemy is a spell caster or range attacker, they don’t come to us like I want.

I made 20th level on my hunter. Twenty is a good level for hunters; they get a lot of good skills and abilities.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com