Monday Random Thoughts

- I really missed posting here.

- I think I enjoy the friends I have made on the blog as much as the friends I have made in my guild.

- I don't think I will be posting as often as I used to, but I do intend to drop a small post here and there from now on.

- "Small" being the swing word word here.

- Small for me is not the same as small for someone else.

- I plan to level my hunter first.

- Marksman.

- Not because MM will be OP at the start because we get our main artifact abilities first but because MM, to me at least, seems like the best leveling spec.

- That used to go to BM.

- But with limited pet survival as it is and the loss of the glyphs that helped with a pet ability to survive, added to the loss of the misdirection glyph, MM just seems better.

- For those interested here is the MM hunters best choices for a leveling spec.

- Again, my opinion only, feel free to disagree.

- Level 15 Talent: Lone Wolf

- The other two options, while they give you a pet, are not as good as they would be if the pet had any chance at surviving.  So you are best off with lone wolf.  You have the tools to survive without a pet.  If you play correctly, and choose the right talent next.

- Level 30 Talent:  Black Arrow.

- If you kill a mob fast enough the cooldown resets, even if you don't, you will only 4 seconds without a pet out.  And the black arrow pet can survive WAY better than the actual pet.  So this is a no brainer.

- Level 45 Talent: Post Haste.

- Speed boost.  'Nuff said.

- Level 60 Talent: Patient Sniper.

- You can go Explosive Shot if you want to AoE your way though quests and are good with the timing, but Patient Sniper is a set it and forget it ability that you do not have to worry about. I feel the added focus helps and reduced debuff time does not hurt, so it is good to go with.

- Level 75 Talent: Binding Shot.

- Since it was added I think Binding Shot was always the best in its row whatever it was against, nothing changes here.

- Level 90 Talent: Barrage.

- Even with the recent buff to crows and volley they do not seem worth it.  However, for leveling both are viable options.  Not kidding. If you want to test one, play with it a little. If not, barrage will do the job.

- Level 100 Talent: Piecing Shot.

- Actually I could say "anything not named Sidewinders".  Sidewinders is dreadful for leveling as it leaves you with no on demand always there instants and possibly waiting on abilities.  Not a good combo if you want to keep leveling at a nice pace.  One thing that always made hunters the best leveling class in the game was instants.  Without sidewinders you have both arcane and multi and as they generate focus and don't spend it you can fire forever without having to worry about resources.  With shared tags now, you want to hit the world, even if someone else is fighting it. And to do so you absolutely NEED arcane and multi.

- Just a reminder.  This setup is not very good for DPS and should not be what you use while in dungeons if you want to contribute your fair share.

- But for leveling, I think this is the way to go.

- After I level my hunter I am going to level my druid, a lot sooner than I normally would an alt.

- I want to get a leg up on it because I know I will not be raiding as a hunter unless something changes in the next 24 hours, or shortly after, balance wise.

- And I do like druid tanking and druid healing.

- Not exactly fond of feral, I hate that wait for energy design, it is slow and boring.

- Partly why I hate the sidewinders MM design too, the wait on proc design is boring and adds nothing to the game, fun wise.

- Balance is give or take.  It is leaps and bounds better and more enjoyable now with that stupid cycle crap, but I am still not really big on playing balance.

- I've cleared out any left over quests not done from my quest log.

- I've cleared out all the old mats and things I will not need from my bags.

- I have a couple of stacks of food and potions and a stack of flasks, which I am 100% sure I will not even use half of.

- I am guessing the total leveling experience should take no more than 5 flasks at most, maybe 4.

- BTW, alchemy, mine are 2 hours, so that means 8-10 hours to level.

- Yes, I plan to level in one sitting.

- I always do.

- Well, except for cataclysm where I made the mistake of going to the underwater zone first.

- By the time I was done I was so dizzy and sick and had to lay down and ending up sleeping for hours.

- Funny part is, I still came within 5 hours of realm first.

- Someone dinged realm first and 4 hours and 40 minutes later I dinged max level.

- That basically means if I had not spelt for 17 hours I would have been realm first by a full 12 hours before anyone else.

- Wow, my main server has some slow levelers. lol

- Or at least did for cataclysm.

- I would not be surprised if they, like myself, did the first zone and needed to take a break.

- I hope blizzard never does an underwater zone again.

- Some people love it but I hated it with a passion.

- Oddly enough, I liked it on my druid.

- Seal form maybe?

- Not sure, but it was the only character I did not feel ill on when I went there.

- What "seems" to be my final count on max levels is as follows.

- I still have many 90s left behind but I got a fair amount to 100 thanks to invasions.

- 6 Hunters.

- 4 Druids.

- 2 DKs.

- 2 Priests

- 2 DHs.

- 2 Mages.

- 1 of every other class.

- I still have a few others are 90 that I did not get around to.

- Not like it is really a big deal.

- I do not see me playing many alts with how restrictive being behind on an artifact weapon will be.

- This will be the most alt unfriendly expansion ever.

- Unless they do something to massively increase alts leveling of artifacts.

- Which I believe they will do.

- Not massively, but some.

- Hopefully it will be enough to be worst leveling alts.

- But knowing blizzard, they are always a day late and a dollar short.

- The will probably give us some awesome alt catch up mechanic 2 months before the next expansion comes out.

- Gee, thanks for nothing blizzard.

- Here is to hoping to do something 2 months in and not 2 months before it is over.

- Cheers.

- You can do it blizzard.  I know you can.

- Don't let the grumpy one down.

- Again.

- So what did you like about warlords?

- I loved the leveling.

-Think it was the best it had ever been.

- So why did I have so few alts before this invasion let me level a ton easy?

- Because I dreaded what was at 100 for us.

- So I never even bothered leveling them.

- These invasions have been fun for alts on servers I did not have much on to begin with.

- Selling the gear was a great way to make a few bits of coin.

- On a few low levels I just popped into one or two invasions.

- Not really for the levels, for the gear to sell for gold.

- Got enough on those lowbies to get them bags.

-Which is all I ever really wanted.

- I like to actually level them, and will some day when I am bored, but at least now I will have some bag space.

- That is the single most important thing to me in the game.

- I still say if blizzard really wanted to make money from me, offer more bag slots in the blizzard store.

- I would buy it for every active player I use.

- Add five more bag slots on my main?

- Yes, thank you.

- Add a second row of bag slots in my bank?

- Sure thing, thank you.

- Make my starting bag twice the size?

- Hell yes, take my money.

- I am the worlds biggest sucker for bag space.

- I would gladly spend real money to get more.

- Back to leveling in Legion.

- What zone will you do first?

- Honestly I really do not care for me.

- Being things scale now all zones are the same in terms of which you "should" do first.

- And as I always get loremaster on day one doing all the quests I will do so again and do them all.

- So for me the order really does not matter much.

- HOWEVER!

- I will not finish any single zone until I am max level.

- Why you ask?

- The end of zone rewards are the best of the bunch, gear wise.

- The zones, quests and yes rewards from doing said quests scale based on your level.

- So I am going to save completing the best quests until I am max level.

- Won't really be a huge boost to power and anything I get will be replaced in a dungeon but it will be something to start off with.

- And anything to start off with will be good.

- You know those first day, heck, first week dungeons will be a nightmare to do.

- New bosses for everyone, new mechanics for them to learn, I see a wipe fest coming on.

- And god forbid we get a disc priest as our healer.

- I have never ever even considered kicking someone based on the spec they play, and I would not start a kick, but if one popped up, I would hit yet without even a seconds thought.

- Disc priests are not healers, they are a support class.

- Fantastic for raids, actually beyond fantastic for raids.

- If you have someone that knows what they are doing a disc priest in raids are amazing beyond the meaning of the word amazing.

- But in a five man, when everything is on their shoulders?

- Expect a lot of deaths.

- I have run with some mythic skilled players and they could not hack it.

- When we over geared them.

- How do you think most will do at a minimum gear level?

- Very poorly, to say the least.

- Word to the wise on how to run with a disc priest on day one.

- Have them blanket the entire group before the pulls.

- Let them drink after every pull.

- Do that and you will be fine.

- Get one raging chain pulling tank with a disc priest and expect to wipe a lot.

- Get one go go go damage dealer that pulls for the tank and expect to wipe a lot.

- Respect the design that disc "can" be awesome if given the time to do so and play it slow and steady, and you will have a smooth run.

- But you know as well as I do no pug is going to do that.

- So I expect a lot of disc priests to get kicked.

- The reason they will give is "bad healer".

- But the real reason should be "I don't understand how the class works so I would rather kick them than let them drink and get attonement on everyone first."

- Poor disc has been destroyed, just like so many other classes.

- I want to give fire mage a shot.

- I know they fixed a lot.

- I know if felt smoother.

- But I am just stuck in the past and remembering the nightmare it was with the luck based proc system.

- Even if it is not really like that any more.

- Just the thought of it is a turn off to me.

- I'll give it a real try this expansion.

- I mean, if I ever want to play ranged again and do respectable DPS I'll have no choice but to be a fire mage.

- And I see ranged will be a huge issue next expansion.

- With so many ranged specs being bottom of the pack and the most played class in the game losing one of its ranged specs and being poor DPS in the other two, I think finding ranged for a raid to be hard.

- Funny thing is, you know what held my raid team back this expansion mostly?

- No melee.

- Nope, not shitting.

- I would see in trade all the time "looking for ranged, on xxx" but for my guild we would have 15 people, 2 tanks, 3 healers and 10 ranged.

- Usually 1 lock, 2 mages, 1 boomkin, and 6 hunters.

- Over all on most bosses it did not hurt at all, but there were a few we needed melee and we had none most of the time.

- Admittedly we had, had being past tense here, some of the best melee in the world.

- According to the log sites at least, DPS wise.

- The #1 warrior, the #3 feral druid, and 4 other really competent players, even if they were not ranking.

- Another feral, a monk, another warrior and a death knight.

- But one feral went away to collage, the other had to go heals, the monk got a job that interfered with raid time as did one of the warriors, the other warrior just quit outright and the death knight became a tank because we could not find a replacement.

- And there you go, one mythic team, dismantled by real life and all our melee gone in one sweep.

- I am not kidding, we lost all the melee over the course of 1 month, and went from about to step into mythic (we were on heroic archie at the time) to stuck doing heroics for the rest of the expansion.

-Only made it 4 deep mythic myself.

- Because we lost our 20 and we could not recruit any more.

- Oh, we tried, but thanks to flex anyone we recruited thought showing up was "optional".

- Sorry, if you are a raider showing up is not "optional" even if it is flex.

- And the ones that did show up were either one of two things, or both.

- A) dreadful DPS, as in sub 30K over a 720 item level, or B) somehow managed to stand in everything, even things that we did not know where there.

- I'll be the first to admit melee can be daunting, I hate it myself, but we could not find one single decent melee as a replacement to what we lost.

- For months we tried and for months we never found one.

- We never got back to 20 regulars.

- I miss 10 man mythic.

- "I used to be a mythic raider, until I took an arrow to the knee"

- The arrow was 20 man mythic, in case you did not get the idea.

- I really hope raiding will be better for us next expansion.

- Either that or I have three options.

- One being to accept the fact I no longer raid mythic.

- Or two, change guilds to fill in where I am needed in an already running mythic guild.

- Or three, recruit like crazy and hope for the best.

- Option 3 is not really an option however.

- I no longer have the time, nor the desire, to run multiple runs of the same thing each week to "test" people out.

- I want to have my cake and eat it too, which probably will not happen.

- I want to recruit people that are already good raiders to start with.

- I do not want to teach during progression.

- That is what the saturday night alt runs are for.

- Am I wrong for not wanting to start all over again after so many years?

- Eh, maybe I am just being selfish.

- But so many years of training people to raid and experiencing some minor successes here and there, has worn me down.

- I have reached selfish stage.

- I just want to raid with people that know how to raid.

- I don't want to teach any more.

- But who am I kidding, I will end up doing it anyway.

- As someone once told me, "you can't change who you are"

- And I am always one that looks at a person and sees the potential of what they can be.

- So I will go back to teaching them.

- And I will be grumpy about doing it.

- But in the end, I will smile when I see them do well.

- Perhaps, for me, that is the bigger reward than the mythic kills.

- We do play the game for fun after all.

- And while kills are fun, helping someone get good enough to enjoy their first kills can be just as satisfying.

- I have high hopes for Legion.

- Even if I am worried about a lot of the little things.

- Did I mention I am still extremely bitter about not getting a beta invite?

- I wrote some good guides from being on the warlords beta.

- Those guides were even picked up and used on ask Mr. Robot.

- I supplied solid feedback, found and reported bugs, and over all did a solid job as both a tester and a reviewer along with my guides.

- And I did not get a beta invite.

- Yeah, I am very bitter about that.

- Blizzard did me wrong.

- I think on the strength of my guides alone I should have got and invite.

-I think that was part of the reason I left.

- I felt slighted.

- Well, on a happier note, my next post will most like be titled Ding 110.

- Have fun leveling people, and be sure to explore everywhere.

- There are wonders to be found in the world of Azeroth.

- And I expect to enjoy finding all of them.

- See you on the broken shores.

- Have an excellent day.

The Legion is Coming and I am Ready, How About You?

First off, long time no post.  I hope everyone that reads here has been well.  Sorry for my extended absence, as it was, but I had always said that if I ever really were to quit I would write an I quit post.  It does not make sense to do so.  I complained here on this blog because I loved the game.  If I were truly going to leave that would mean I no longer loved the game, so, why post in a blog about it. 

Either way, I never really left the game.  I was still playing, even if only on an extremely limited basis, but my love for the game was lost.  Lost so much that while things still bothered me about the game I really did not care enough to take the time out of my day to post about it.

Now with the "where the hell have you been" out of the way, I'll get right down to my grumpy thoughts on all the current topics I can think of, in as short a way as possible, if that is even possible for me.

Legion Outlook:

I won't say that there is not one factor about legion that does not scare the hell out of me in terms of game play, there are actually 3, but over all I am cautiously optimistic about it and believe it has the potential to be freaking fantastic.

Blizzard has a track record of swinging the pendulum and this expansion will no doubt be one where it is swinging in the better direction, in my opinion at least.  The game started out good with the original release and got better with the burning crusade and reached its peak in wrath, where it has been swinging the pendulum ever since.

Wrath was great, cataclysm sucked so bad I still shiver at the mention of how it destroyed the old world and ripped a gigantic hole in the continuity of the game for absolutely no reason what so ever.  Then we had mists which was fantastic from the get go with constant content releases and lots of stuff to do, and it was pretty alt friendly too.  The end was a little blah because they left it alone to start working on, believe it or not, warlords, when the pendulum swung back it complete garbage.  So much so it even got someone like me that loves to complain about thing to say, this is such garbage it is not even worth taking the time to complain about.

So if all goes according to blizzards track record, Legion should be just this side of awesome, maybe even with a bit of fantastic on top.  I have some high hopes rolling into this one.

The Three Things That Worry Me:

I go into this expansion with no class to play. I've been a hunter since I started and I love being a hunter so I will level my hunter first.  I will max out my hunters artifact, I will get achievements on my hunter, I will get reputations on my hunter, but I will be doing it just so I do not need to go back later to do it, as I like to complete things, if they ever fix my hunter.

As it is now the hunter is completely unplayable.

Beast Mastery has issues with pets not being able to take a hit, and as you can not do any real damage yourself the fact that your pet constantly dies to almost everything in 2 hits means you are doing no damage at all.  There doesn't  feel like there is enough hunter part of a beast mastery hunter, it is all about the beast, the tissue paper thin dying all the time beast.  No thank you.  This is supposed to be the soloing spec, the spec here pets can take raid bosses, not die to elites in 2 hits.  The spec is broken from a game play perspective until the fix pets at the very least.  I, maybe, could live with there being very little "huntering" to do with this spec, if at least the beast mastery part was better.

Marksman is just flat out unplayable.  It is a sit and wait play style now for a class, and spec, that has always been about the rapid fire of abilities.   I had to wait 45 seconds for a marking targets proc.... 45.... fucking.... seconds.   And this happens all the time.  And you know what there is to do between procs?  Get up and go make a coffee.  Add this annoying luck based proc system to the wait for things to line up system to the god awful 1.5 second global cooldown, and you just crated a borring spec.  The sad part if that for leveling I think MM will be the best spec.  Just don't take sidewinders, whatever do you.  Sidewinders is the best DPS selection, but if you want to ever feel like a hunter should feel, you need that arcane and multi it replaces to allow you to go back to the rapid fire, or as close as you can get to raid fire with that snoozefest 1.5 second global cooldown, type of game play.  Too bad not takeing sidewinders gimps your DPS so badly.  It was would a good talent if it repleased either arcane or multi, but replacing both, it makes the spec unplayable.  At least if you want to actually enjoy it anywhere outside of a raid that is.

And survival, what needs to be said about this.  Hunters only have 2 specs now.  Survival is no longer a hunter spec.  Hunters are a ranged class, even by blizzards definition, survival is melee, this not a hunter spec.  In all seriousness, The game did not need an more melee classes before Legion and then they added an unneeded hero melee class, and they swing a perfectly fine ranged spec to melee to add to an over crowded area where no one wants to play to begin with.  They should have added more ranged specs because people want ranged.  If anything Outlaw Rogues should have been moved to ranged with their pistols, and maybe Arms Warriors should have been switched to range as weapon masters with throwing stuff.  It made no sense to make survival melee.  I will admit I played it and I really liked it, and it is pretty easy to max out DPS with it, but with all things considered, if I really wanted to play melee, I would have done so a long time ago.  I hate melee, and making my class have a melee spec did nothing to change that.  So this spec is not even an option to play.  Unless it becomes top DPS spec and i am forced to do so.  I really dread the idea of that happening.

Add to all that, all 3 of the hunter DPS specs are near the bottom of the pack, 20% less than the top of the pack, which makes them a raid liability, to say the least.

What to play:

With all that said the first worry of mine is what to play.

As stated, hunter is not an option.  Outside of the fact that early on MM will be godly as it gets all its powerful abilities before the other classes, once everyone catches up, it too will be left in the dust, but those first few weeks should be fun.

I have tried all specs, doing dungeons raids, invasions, you name it, for every class.  I like demonology warlock and it is an option, I guess.   I really like shaman healing and melee.  Shaman melee was the only melee class I ever really got into, not sure why, but it felt nice playing it again. Rose tinted glasses a bit remembering how much I loved it maybe, but even after playing it I still liked it.  It is fast paced, my preferred play style, and it doesn't have that huge gap it used it, but it is still melee, and in a very melee heavy expansion I can't see that really helping any group when they will be in desperate need for more ranged to begin with.

Over all druid looks to be the way to go.  Of all the classes they seem to have gotten beaten by the removal bat the least.  Balance is better than it has been in ages.  Feral is still wait and burst design which I am not fond of, but it does offer very good numbers which is a nice reward for all that waiting.  Druid healers are once again kings of the mobile healing ranks and with the exception of shaman on many fights, will be the best healing option.  And bears, my beloved bear the mana sponge. They seem to be in a nice place even if they do need a lot more healing than all the other tanks combined, and I love love love that I actually have more buttons for defense than I used to.  Add to that I am now a bear that shoots laser beams.  How awesome is that.

Put it all together and think that I have been main tanking, on a druid, since BRF released.  I tanked all our progression kills since then.  I guess I am now a druid tank.  Not sure I like it, I want to be a hunter, but blizzard does not want me too be one.  So not it is not just the guilds need that will make me tank, but it is blizzard itself that will make me tank.

On the bright side, druids have the BEST artifact weapons in the game.  I mean have you seen those awesome bear forms.  Yeah, I think I can live with being a bear main and only a bear main for one expansion hoping they fix hunters for the next one.


Artifact Weapons:

This is worry #2 because once again blizzard has stopped taking their anti psychotics.  They are downright delusional.  They say that this will be the most alt friendly expansion ever.

Lets go over the facts.

Fact one:  They said, paraphrasing of course, "This will be the most alt friendly expansion ever."

Fact two: They said, their own words paraphrased, that "it should take 3 or 6 months for an active play to max out their artifact weapon."

These two things mean two completely and  different things.  One says it will be alt friendly the other said it will make playing alts nearly impossible for most of the player base.  Get back on your meds blizzard so you can stop taking out of both sides of your head and get things straight.

It all depends on what you consider active.  I consider active to be 20 hours a week.  I consider myself an active player when I am enjoying the game and 20 hours a week seems about right, in my opinion at least.

Now with that said I would say that puts me in the top 20% of the players in terms of time played each week.  Maybe even top 10%, who really knows.  If it is going to take me 3 to 6 months to make out one weapon, for one spec, how long do you think it will take the average player?  Two years maybe?

Now how exactly is that alt friendly.  I'll tell you, it is not.  I expect HUGE changes to artifact progression pretty early in legions cycle, because this is most definitely the least alt friendly addition to the game ever made. 100% no doubt.

Yeap, the people at blizzard are off their meds if they think this will be the most alt friendly expansion ever.  Not with artifact weapons at least.  Not by a long shot.

Now to issue two with the artifact weapons.  They give us our weapon so not longer are we stuck behind RNG to choose whether or not we get one.  And we power it up by actually playing the game.  Oh my god how I love that idea so so so much.  No RNG. Being rewarded with power for actually playing the game.  Awesome idea blizzard, you had me at hello.

Then as time went on we see three relic slots on our weapon.  What are these for inquiring minds want to know.  Real gems do not go in them, relics do.  Where do we get these relics?  As random drops.

Mother F-ers.  So you took my one RNG to get a good weapon and turned it into three RNG occurrences now.  You dirt sucking bottom feeders you.  Took an awesome idea that removed the horrible design of allowing "random" to dictate what gear we have out of the game and then added triple the RNG back into it by making us have to get drops to get out item level up.  You people are indeed the scum of the earth.  What a bait and switch.

"We removed RNG to add more RNG."

Screw your blizzard.

But it does not end there, no, not at all.  Those relics all have secondary abilities on them.  So not only do you need to get three relics to level  up your weapon through nothing but random luck, but now you need to get the right ones.  Not just any +50 item level piece will do, you want the +50 that gives your a bonus to one of the abilities you use.

So you added more RNG to the RNG that you said you were removing from weapons drops by adding artifact weapons.

You know, I am really getting sick and tired of blizzards double talk. And from the looks of it, having lost close to 70% of its subs last expansion, it looks like many others have as well.  No real wonders there.

The artifact weapons worry me.  We still need weapon drops, but now 3 per weapon instead of just one, and the right three to make it even harder, and not having a leveled weapon will make playing alts, or at least getting them into pugs damn near impossible.

Great idea blizzard, poorly executed.  Even before legion is released you can tell this will be the worse addition to the expansion.  It will backfire just as garrisons did.  People will love it at first and then hate it 6 months down the line when they worked their ass off to level up a weapon and then blizzard does some balancing and that top DPS weapon you worked your ass off for it now sitting on the bottom of the DPS charts and you need to do it all over again for another spec, or worse, another class.

Artifact weapons are DOA as an idea.  They failed before they even started.  Adding more RNG than we ever had before and making alts unplayable unless you quit your job.

The Third Worry:

Seriously, when I started this post I had three worries in mind and I forgot what the last one was. Perhaps it was not all that important and I was just worried about it for nothing.  Maybe when I addressed the pressing matters of classes and artifact weapons option three paled in comparison.

But I guess I will leave some lesser gripes here.

Legendary items.  Hate them, they will feel mandatory for any player that wants to perform well.  They will be luck based and extremely rare at that.  Horrible game design blizzard, there is no other word for it.

Flight.  How can they make the same mistake twice in a row.  You lost so many people last expansion from this stupidity, so why make the same mistake again.  Flight should be included on launch.  Sure, make us get an achievement for it, but it should be added on launch.  I really hate you for doing this to us again blizzard.  More and more I am getting sick and tired of this shit.  Maybe next time I leave it will be for good.


Invasions:

Are you loving these or what?

I did not level many alts this expansion despite the one really good thing about warlords was the fantastic leveling of it.  I just did not want to put myself in the position of feeling I "had to" maximize my garrison on yet another character.  It was my decision not to level most of my 90s, I get that, but it was the garrisons that made me not want to level them.  So we can share the blame on this one.

However, I have been leveling like a mad elf these last few weeks.  Many of my characters that were sitting at 90 are now 100.  A few that were lower are now 100, and of course one horde and one alliance demon hunter are now 100 as well.

I did a refer a friend and he and I leveled from level 1 to 100 in 4 hours. No shitting. But even more important, I will be getting my emerald hippogryph once he pays for some time.  I hope he pays for some time.  If he doesn't I will give him the money to pay for some time.  I love hippogryphs, can't you tell?

As I am typing this I have some of my 100s, yes, I actually activated my extra account just for this and leveled all 5 characters I had on it from 85 where they left off to 100,  just flying over invasion spots to get the baggie.  No real reason to participate in it on a level 100 other than the gear.  Invasions are for lowbies to level.  There is nothing a 100 can get from them except gear.  And you can not buy the gear with shards, so no reason to participate to get more shards.

Hey, I know I am doing "bad" by just hanging out there, but blame blizzard for poor design.  Do not blame me for taking advantage of it.

Speaking of taking advantage of it, have to love how fast you level.  Added a few more hunters to my 100 ranks, 2 more druids, another DK, and will surely have at least 3 more at 100 before it goes away, more if I stop writing this novel and get back to playing.

Shard Tech:

I am not quite sure how I like the new shard tech so far.  It is a great idea to keep areas from getting crowded during rushes and to make lesser visited areas seem fuller, but there are still some bugs that need to be worked out.

The other day myself and 2 fiends were in a group together, none of us could see the other.  We were in a group, but all three of us were on different shards.

If blizzard wants this to work, and I am sure they do, they need to give this a priority fix.  If you are grouped with someone you should always be on the same shard as them.  It really is that simple.  Fix that and I think this new shard tech will be a winner.

Still really disliking it for hunting rares and stuff, but blizzard screwed that over a long time ago with this CRZ garbage that really should have never been implemented to begin with.

Level Scaling:

From what I have seen so far it has been pretty damn awesome.  Sure I have seen some abilities that did not scale correctly, but that is bound to happen, lets just hope they continue to adjust them, but over all it has been great.

I did an invasion with 4 others and all 5 of us were completely different in level.  No two even close, and we managed to go around together, fighting the same things, and all contributing our fair share.  It was awesome.

I always said that blizzard is great at taking ideas from other games and making it their own.  I liked the scaling down in FF 14 the first time I saw it some time ago and said I would love to see this in warcraft.  Well, we now see a better version.  Instead of scaling the player down to the lower player, we both retain our own levels and our own skills and play together.

Well done blizzard.  I am really liking that we can play together, for this at least.

Makes me wonder, will this ever come for the entire world?

Maybe in WoW 2.0.  Coming soon to a gaming console near you.  I am sure of it.  Why else gut all the specs like that have if they were not trying to port it to a console.

But it does make me wonder.  Why did my hunter lose two thirds of their abilities, but most of my other classes did not lose many, if any, and some even have more buttons than before.

I think it is all one big conspiracy because hunters were so awesome.  They just do not want anyone playing them any more. They were afraid if they did these class halls and left the hunters as awesome as they were they would have taken over all the other class halls and turned everyone into a hunter.  The priest hunters, the druid hunters, the dk hunters, yeah yeah, that's the ticket.

Enjoy release day.  Get ready for a great expansion.  I am sure it is going to be one, because it has to.