Working as Intended

Yesterday, I was in ICC10 with Tanmaya and some other guildies, trying to knock out the achievements for the mount. We had 7 people and I was wondering at first if we should just go for the 25-man achievements instead since 7 people could've done this back at level 85. I figured we'd go ahead with the 10-man anyway and just come back to do the 25 since these old raids gave us something fun to do together away from banging our heads against current content and the mind-numbing dailies some of us are still grinding out.

The achievements were all a joke, really. We killed everything so fast that none of the mechanics really mattered. We did all of the fights on heroic (except LK).The only fight we had to actually do anything "correct" on was Blood Queen for bites and Valithria for the portals. Everything else was just a zerg. So you can imagine that when we got to the Lich King, we were in high spirits. The only thing annoying about this fight was waiting for the plague stacks on the ghouls to reach 30. It took some time but as soon as we hit 30, we murdered Arthas. Cue in the resulting RP cutscene and as we all waited with bated breath for the achievement to pop... Nothing. Nothing nothing NOTHING.

If our characters had minds of their own, they would've been looking around at each other with confused "WTF?!" looks on their faces, telling each other "Hey bro, did YOU get the achievement? Because I sure as hell didn't!"

We got the Neck-deep in Vile achievement but not the all-important Been Waiting a Long Time For This achievement that we actually needed to get the Glory of the Icecrown Raider meta. So, in a fit of righteous indignation worthy of even the most devout of paladins, my husband puts in a ticket to find out what was going on. Here is the resulting conversation:

So this is a KNOWN problem and has been for at least 1.5 years, maybe even more, according to some of the old posts that my husband was able to dig up. If their so-called Quality Assurance team has been working so diligently on this issue, then how come it wasn't included in any of the patches and hotfixes that have been implemented in the last 2 years? Why is this achievement still bugging out for players if they really are making sincere attempts to fix the problem? This can't be such a difficult bug to work out that they STILL haven't been able to find a fix for it after all this time.

The dude advised us to "Wait until a fix has been posted." So he wants us to wait just like all the other poor schmucks before us that have been waiting for a fix for 1.5 years for the one LAST achievement that they likely need to complete the meta. If we are this frustrated about not getting it when we outlevel/outgear the place by two whole expansions, I can't even imagine how pissed off people who did this 2 years ago are that this still hasn't been fixed.

Nice work, Blizz. Working as intended, as per your usual.

Golden Lotus farming win

I wish I was talking about Golden Lotus rep farming but, alas, I'm still not revered with that faction. No, I'm talking about farming the plants. Literally. In my little plot of farmland with the Tillers, I have always planted 16 Enigma Seeds and used to get the occasional Golden Lotus. At the beginning of last week, though, I started to get multiple lotuses every day. I even got 13 one day; should've taken a screenshot of that epicness. Every day for the rest of the week, I would get at least 4 lotuses. I thought maybe I was just having a string of VERY good luck with my plants but my husband started getting some every day, too. I doubt it's just us that are winning with this. Anyone else noticing this buff to the chance for lotuses?

Above is what a typical farm plot for me looks like these days. Not that I'm complaining!

While we're on the subject, I would also like to give a big hug to whichever Blizz employee thought of the "profession plants." These plants come in especially handy for herbalists and miners since Blizz nerfed the amount of nodes that spawn in Pandaria. Totally wrong and unnecessary, in my opinion, considering how annoying it is to gather these nodes. How many of you have had your nodes swiped from under you by an inconsiderate player who snuck in while you were clearing mobs to said node?I know it's happened to me. A lot. And the ridiculous amount of nodes that used to spawn in Pandaria have made this happen considerably less. Not so much anymore, though. Que sera sera, I guess.

I'm sorry that I need to level my herbing?

So I guess because I'm level 83, I have no right to be picking herbs in WPL. I have to leave them there for people "who need to level the skill." People can be so damn annoying when it comes to this kind of thing... If you haven't had any herbs in the past three zones you've been in and if you can't fly out in the old zones like I can, then I'm sorry but that's not my problem. As I said above, I least I was courteous enough to leave the herbs that I no longer got skill ups from. Sue me for trying to level my professions.

Take your rare spawns and SHOVE IT.

So sick of rare spawns having nearly 2m health and at least one lethal ability each, which I usually die at least once to as I try to figure out which one of them will instantly kill me. And I'm killing these things as a prot paladin. I can't even imagine trying to do this on my mage or priest. Blizzard doesn't want players farming rares like before. Okay, I get it. But the loot is already soulbound so why make players spend upwards of 5 minutes trying to kill a mob that has a chance to drop something completely useless and is not tradeable? I give up, I refuse to waste my time killing any more of these. I've killed at least a dozen and not a single one of them ever dropped anything useful for my trouble. It's just not worth it for me.

/ragedelete NPCscan

"Hi, Kettle...you're blackened."

I decided to heal Shado-Pan Monastery instead of tanking it since that place scares me with the shit healers I tend to get grouped with. Sparkbreath Girdle drops and since our tank was a monk and didn't wear plate, I rolled Need on it for offspec. Ret paladin in group also rolled Need, but he told me to take it. Monk says, "Healer, why'd you roll on that?" I told him it was for offspec since he didn't wear plate. He replies, "So according to you, I should roll on leather healing gear and take it away from healers that can use it." I told him "Like I said, I only rolled on it because YOU DON'T WEAR PLATE."

He was quiet until Gauntlets of Resolute Fury dropped. I saw the ret pally roll Need so figured I'd be fair and pass to him since I got something already. When I passed, tank says, "Oh, figured healer would roll on that, too." The ret pally said, "Obviously she's not as greedy as you think." He passed the gloves over to me. (What a nice guy.) The tank must have gotten madbro because he proceeded to chain-pull multiple groups that wiped us. Then I think he tried to vote-kick me once we got back inside because the rogue said, "Oh come on..." and the warlock said, "No, she's good." I tried to vote-kick him in turn but couldn't because as soon as we were all back in position, he kept chain-pulling again and not even waiting for mana. That whole can't-vote-kick-shortly-after-combat mechanic is infuriating sometimes.

We managed to get to the last boss and wiped on that, too, since the rogue and ret pally have never been there and didn't know they had to kill orbs. Of course, the asshat tank makes snarky comments like, "Wow, didn't think I'd have to tell people what to do" even though in the beginning of the dungeon, both dps admitted it was their first time. How would they already know what to do? The tank had the nerve to tell me, "It's people like you who **** this game up for everyone." But really, it's people like HIM that are guilty of doing that. Amirite?

Longest.Level grind.Ever.

Okay, I admit, I was ridiculously bitter when the xp-to-level was nerfed for all levels in previous expansions. It took me months to hit 60 and now people are doing it in a week or less. But damn it all, I didn't mean for Blizzard to super-buff the level grind to 90! I didn't notice the grind much from 85 to 87. That wasn't so bad. But as soon as I hit 88, it just started to really bog down. 10 hours later and I'm still only 50% into the level. I feel that after 10 hours, I should be 89 already, or at least close to it. Halfway is just ridiculous.

85 to 87 seemed to take no time at all, and that's saying something considering how much of those levels were spent playing pokewow instead of actually leveling. I'm not calling for a huge xp-to-level nerf but it would be nice to not spend 20 hours just to get through one level. Seems a bit extreme to me. The quests are at least really fun so far, so that gets me through them. But the process itself has just been so tedious that I'm seriously considering leveling my monk all the way to max after this, instead of one of my other 85's, just because I'm not keen to do this again so soon.

Pandaria Update

I was so busy preparing for the expansion and then playing the expansion, that I haven't gotten a chance to update!

So Failclysm is finally over and we can all just move on to bigger and better things. That particular expansion was just lacking for me and I couldn't bring myself to really get into it. Pandaria, however, has been amazing so far. The new continent is just absolutely breathtaking and I'm really enjoying the quests. They're a little different from what was done before and more work seems to have gone into them, making them more exciting and less of a chore to get through.

After some serious ADD on which character I wanted to level first, I decided to go with my tried-and-trusted paladin, Rhulain, who has been my main since just before Classic transitioned into Burning Crusade. As with all other expansions, when it comes time to level, I've swapped out my Prot spec in favor of Ret. Thank you, Blizzard, for getting something right by way of Dual-spec. Now I can quest as Ret and queue for dungeons as Holy. In honor of the new expansion, I have also chosen a new transmog for my Ret set. Behold! Lawbringer Armor (except I've replaced the set's shoulders with Swiftsteel Shoulders) and my faithfully-hoarded Obsidian Edged Blade from Molten Core.

My first attempts at making Pandaren characters have resulted in a new warrior (haven't played my old one in years) and a monk that I am leveling with my husband's monk. I have also faction-changed my goblin shaman (horde-side is lonely on Silver Hand) into a Pandaren shaman with absolutely no regrets.

Another new aspect that I'm really enjoying is the pet battle system. This is what I've been doing for the past several days instead of leveling like I'm supposed to. But I can't help it; so addicting! I have well over 100 pets and had some difficulty choosing which three I wanted to raise first. In the end, I chose my Crimson Whelpling, Fishy, and of course my Pandaren Monk.

As I close in on level 87, I find that I'm enjoying this expansion much more than the others before it. You might be thinking, "But Rhulain, aren't you biased against this expansion because you're Azn?!" Maybe. It could very well be my Asian lineage that allows me to appreciate the intricacies of this new world. But then again, who cares? I sure don't. All I care about is that the game is fun for me again since Wrath.

Back to the level grind!