Being Exalted

When I started playing, one of my goals was to become Exalted with a faction, any faction, before I head into Outlands. Last week, I decided I should try to become exalted with Darnassus before I hit level 50. The problem is, I didn't have any Night Elf-related quests, especially not in Tanaris. Then my friend reminded me I had totally bypassed Feralas when I was busy doing Tanaris quests and going into Zul'Farrak. I didn't want to make the same mistake of bypassing Badlands, so I went to Feathermoon Stronghold and got the quests. Fortunately, they were still green when I got them, and they still were when I completed each stage.

At first, I thought maybe it wasn't possible to do it before level 50 because I was still short by 2000 at the end of last week. Tonight, I finished a quest chain that started with The Missing Courier. It led me to my first Silithid encounter. (Truthfully, they kinda give me the creeps, but I never liked bugs in the first place.) Upon completing that quest chain, I got a load of reputation.

Lo and behold, "You are now Exalted with Darnassus."

It's pretty exciting any way you think about it. I figured my goal would force me to do quests more often rather than power-level all the way to Outlands. (I think) it doesn't give me anything special, but I get the satisfaction of being a true Night Elf player.

Get a Room!

As I walked through the Dwarven District in Stormwind, I passed by an interesting scene. I guess I'll let you see for yourself what it was.

If you can't make out that that thing is, it's two toons (human male and night elf female) who appear to be making out on the streets of Stormwind... It was an odd sight. They were in the same guild too. A few seconds after I took this screenshot, the female logged...

In other news, WoW Insider has confirmed that Patch 2.3 will be released during next Tuesday's regularly scheduled maintenance period. Arena season 3 will start one week after the patch is applied. And of course, like any Blizzard release, there's always a possibility of a delay, as Drysc confirms.

Loronar ding'ed 48 and 49 over the weekend. This is attributed to approximately 5 runs on Zul'Farrak, to which I decided I'm never going back again unless my friend who is lower level than me needs help. There's something about Zul'Farrak that makes it hard to get good PUGs. There's always at least one person who is a ninja, can't tank properly, disconnects, or has to leave early (of which I'm guilty too, but that's another story).

I wasn't particularly looking for a Zul'Farrak run one night when a guildie asked me if I wanted to come. I decided it wasn't that late yet, so I joined her group. Unfortunately, halfway to Antu'sul, she disconnected from bad Internet connection. We found a replacement, but he was aggroing everything around the cave. After wiping twice, I decided it wasn't worth my time, so I left.

Another time I ran Zul'Farrak, Sang'thraze the Deflector dropped from Antu'sul after a hard fight with two people dead. Our group's paladin promptly rolled Need and logged. When he did that, the other two party members had rolled Greed already, except for me. (Our fifth party member left after we kept bugging him about how he shouldn't go take any mob he wanted as a rogue.) I was still on Feign Death, and the other two party members were on their way back from the graveyard. I didn't roll until the timer was down to the last few ticks. Oddly enough, the roll was among the three of us who rolled Greed, and our shaman won it. However, she checked her bags, and the sword wasn't there. We thought maybe it was because she had died and needed to actually loot Antu'sul to get it, but it wasn't there. Not entirely sure what happened. Shortly afterwards, we got another fourth person and went ahead with the rest of the instance anyway. We got to Gahz'rilla but decided to clear the area first before summoning him. The problem is, there was a mob of five (2 healers, 2 ranged, and 1 melee) that we could not kill. We wiped at least three times on it. Before we decided to give up, we rang the gong anyway and managed to pull him without aggroing any other mobs. With our warrior as tank, and my cat as the off-tank, we went all-out DpS on him and managed to kill him without much trouble.

The final time I went to Zul'Farrak, we didn't have a tank, but we had two hunters (myself included) and a warlock. It was enough for a while until the other hunter left because he kept disconnecting. After wiping twice on Antu'sul (because of his basilisks), we decided we needed a fifth person. We found a mage to replace him and everything went well until we got to right before freeing Sergeant Bly. For some reason, the server dropped me and the mage without warning. I promptly logged back in and was successful, but our mage never made it back. So we found another fifth person, a real warrior tank. Then our fifth party member had to leave, leaving us with four and no Mallet of Zul'Farrak. Fortunately, I had already gotten Gahz'rilla from before. I only needed Velratha for the Second Mosh'aru Tablet. Afterwards, our warlock got disconnected. As our warrior was AfK, our priest and I decided it wasn't worth looking for more people and left the instance.

Thus ends my questing through Zu'Farrak. No more annoying trolls. At least until Zul'Gurub.

I still need to run Maraudon again because I never finished it the only time I ran the instance...

Let Professionals Do It...

...especially when trying to set up a massively multiplayer online game (aka MMOG). Take Blizzard and its 9 million World of Warcraft subscribers for example.(1)

Okay, I'll burst the bubble of anonymity. I go to an Ivy League school. Last month, the Ivy Council, an umbrella organization that includes all of the Ivy League schools' student governments decided it would be a good idea to create an event that would unite Ivy League students in a social (and outside the academic and athletic) environment. Their solution: GoCrossCampus (aka GXC, or GCC).

GXC was the brainchild of five students, four from Yale and one from Columbia. It grew out of popularity of Yale's Old Campus Tree Risk, a similar game where Yale students were able to conquer its campus using virtual armies. Though crude in style and code, the original game was able attract hundreds of students.(2) The idea was expanded to include the whole of Ivy League, pitting its armies into battle across the New England region. GXC distinguishes itself from the connotation of "just another game" by branding itself as a social online game. Each Ivy League school could elect commanders to lead the team in strategizing and arranging alliances. Recruitment and retention were important as teams could received army reliability bonuses and participation multipliers.

I'm not sure what the developers held in mind when they designed a "social" game. I'm sure they wanted Ivy League students to interact amongst each other, but it definitely went beyond it. Teams began getting serious and created alliances, created its own thinktanks, formed intelligence and counterintelligence units, and formed councils for discussions behind closed doors. Leaders even met outside the game person-to-person on campus. (This would not happen very often in WoW.) There are two chatrooms in the game, one is available for the school you belong to, and one for the public (think guild and General chat). Both have their own quirks. Contrary to popular belief, Ivy League students are just like any other students. The only difference we have is probably some form of enmity we have for each other, big or small. Calling names and making jokes. And then there are those who go against the commanders' battle plans and decide to attack whatever territory they want, even if it's an ally's territory.

There's also a disconnect when game developers design a game and fail to anticipate problems. For about a week, the game was running perfectly fine. Flash-generated maps were being generated with little problem, and tracking your own team's army movements was easily trackable. However, surges in player registration and problems with the server (note the singular word) began to mount as registration reached 3000, not counting the other campus games GXC was going to start. Only when the maps started to become buggy did they finally decide to get three more servers. Commanders of each team and their advisors, fortunately, managed to get flash maps (that were disabled because it was eating up too much server power) with the help of each team's resident computer expert by looking into the game's source code. Coordination became very hard to do when the majority of the players could not get updated maps. Static maps were put up every few hours, but that is lacking compared to having immediate data available to you for urgent army placement. Turn ends were a nightmare because processing was beginning to take several hours.

By the time the developers decided to "indefinitely pause" the game until it could address design issues, the Ivy League championship game had registered 8000 students. Even 4 servers can't handle that with poor management As I quote Brad Hargreaves (Yale '08), one of the game's developers, the game's continuing technical issues "[have] shown us that our identity lies closer to a pickup game of coed football than World of Warcraft."(3)

My take is, GXC and Ivy Council got a little bit too overexcited with their idea. Don't release a game or open it to thousands of players before it's ready. If anything, delay it for put it into beta phase. I've played enough browser games to know when a game is ready or not. The successful ones anticipate problems or quickly fix them if they are unanticipated. They shouldn't try to bite off more than what they can chew. Games like Space Federation have done very well with this. I'd be surprised if the majority of the 8000 players return to GXC when the pause finally ends at the end of the month.

References
(1) "World of Warcraft Surpasses 9 Million Subscribers Worldwide". Blizzard Entertainment. 24 July 2007.
(2) "Students hazard all in campus Risk game". Yale Daily News. 23 January 2007.
(3) "Ruminations upon a Pause". GoCrossCampus. 4 November 2007.

The (Still) Missing Diplomat

I was browsing WoWWiki (which is a great source of information for all things World of Warcraft) for some new things I could learn, then I stumbled onto something unexpected.

Patch 2.3 is adding more quests to The Missing Diplomat quest chain for Alliance, one of my favorite quest chains, as part of increasing player experience in Dustwallow Marsh. Theramore forces seem to have noticed the sudden presence of Defias agents on shores to the north and sends an investigation. One of the interesting things about the new chain continuation is one of the steps, a survey of Alcaz Island.

I've arranged with Cassa Crimsonwing, the apprentice to Theramore's gryphon master, to allow you to use one of her beasts to survey Alcaz from the air.
— Jaina Proudmoore

Does this mean we will get to control some kind of aerial mount? This would be a first for aerial mounts outside of Outlands. If so, I wonder how Blizzard is going to limit the use of this mount so that you can only use it to survey Alcaz and not go wandering off where you're not supposed to be able to go to in the old Azeroth environment. This has been one of the main hindrances for Blizzard for not implementing flying mounts in Azeroth. They've designed the environment such that there are places where you can't visit by conventional methods (eg. Hyjal), while the Outlands environment was designed to be fully accessible.

Again, the new chain ends without actually finding the missing diplomat, King Varian Wrynn. It just indicates that Stormwind will increase its crackdown on Defias activity.

Hallow's End, New Discoveries

First of all, thanks to BRK and Mania for linking to our site. I never intended for this site to be high traffic, but some people have taken an interest in reading it regularly, which is a good thing!

Second of all, thanks to all who commented on my previous posts. While I rarely write a response comment, I do read them all and am glad that the topics I write about have some relevance to people's experiences. Thanks also for the recommendations on how I can be a better hunter. :]

On Monday night, I went over to Curse and downloaded the latest version of Omen. I can finally track how much aggro I'm pulling off my pet now and am being more careful about it. Yesterday, I was killing Southsea Pirates in Tanaris for quests. I remember a week ago when I kept pulling the aggro off my pet after several crits, but now I've been able to keep them at a distance. With Mend Pet rank 3, I was also able to manage accidentally pulling off 4 mobs at the same time without dying. After some quick switching between melee and ranged, I killed all 4 pirates in no time. I thought this was definitely an improvement and decided to go ahead and solo Andre Firebeard and the surrounding 3 mobs to finish off the quest for his head. Normally I'd be a bit hesitant to do this because I've never been able to manage crowds that well before, but learning crowd control and using a threat meter helps very much now.

I then ran Zul'Farrak with my new add-on. Got quite a kick out of it because I could now see how threat works in a party.

With Hallow's End ending, I guess I never ended up having the time or the drive to do the Wickerman Festival quest in Tirisfal. And I still have 28 Hallow's End candies in my bag... I hope your Hallow's End was more filled with scary stuff than mine! Winter Veil starting soon?

On the other hand, I spent my Hallow's End exploring and questing in the Hinterlands yesterday. Home to the Wildhammer clan dwarves, this place is teeming with gryphons! It reminds me of Warcraft II's Gryphon Rider units. There was no problem solo-questing here since most of the mobs I found were already green by the time I got there. I think it's annoying how quests you pick up in Tanaris leads you here... It's like on opposite ends of Azeroth, and there's no direct way to get there.

As a final note, I'd like to mention a few additions to my blogroll. I don't know how I didn't add this before, but Mania's Arcania is a good read. She is the creator of Petopia, and her blog is a must read for frequent updates on new patch 2.3 discoveries. Outland Bound discusses a issues with etiquette in PUGs and is definitely a good read for kicks and for learning how to PUG better. Psycho & Chaos has two hunters: Alliance and Horde. The last two blogs I found through BRK's blog promotion post, and I'm glad I discovered them. It's fun to read alongside players who also have lower-level characters like mine. Totems 'R Us is a shaman blog, one of the few out there. I thought I'd put it in just for the diversity. :]

Happy November!

Hunter Gearing

So I have a question for you all. How do you gear a 40s hunter? I've gone all-out on agility since I started and now have 216 agility. You've probably noticed that my HP has been decreasing over the weekend from over 2000 to 1800 now. I've been getting nice mail pieces and loots with lots of good agility buffs, but they're lacking in stamina buffs. As it stands right now, my agility is almost double my next buff, and my armor is no longer green-lit in the armory.

The problem is I tend to melee quite often, and my swords skills is now 222/225. I have a feeling that it's gonna be a problem if I don't get more stamina and/or armor.

Should I balance my gear more?

Azeroth Exotic Animals

Oops, haven't posted in a while.

I was asked by my friend who had not completed the Master Hunter quests if I could help him complete the King Bangalash stage of the chain. Since I was getting annoyed at the aggro radius of Bloodsail pirates onboard their ships, I decided to go and help him out. Since both of us are hunters, we started talking about how cool it would be to have Bangalash as a pet.

Then it hit me. I had not taken a second pet since I got my rare Duskstalker at level 10. The only other times I had tamed other pets was taming a Ghostpaw Alpha and an Elder Ashenvale Bear to get Bite 4 and Claw 4. I know you must be thinking "A hunter who doesn't tame pets for skills? Does this guy even know how to play a hunter?" I had not taken pet skills as a priority as playing a hunter. Why? I was too busy exploring Azeroth itself and questing. I was pretty happy with my pet anyway; there was no pressing need to change it.

But then Bangalash changed it all. After taming him, I felt like as if I were level 10 again. How cool it was to learn Dash 2 and find out how fast cats can be!! And then I realized (a second time because I've forgotten since level 10) that a Duskstalker can learn Prowl. So then I decided to track down an Elder Shadowmaw Panther to learn the skill. The problem is, I still haven't been able to learn it after taming it. I'm not sure what's going on because I've gone around killing at least 10 mobs with it without being able to learn anything from it when it should normally take 2 mobs. If anyone knows what's going on, feel free to let me know that I'm an idiot.

It's funny how Bangalash looks like my Striped Frostsaber mount though.

The next day, I got so excited after taming Bangalash that I decided to look for a suitable name for him. After wiki-ing white tigers, dubbed royal Bengal tigers (and learning that they're actually normal Bengal tigers with a recessive gene), I decided to name him Mohan, after the first of tamed royal Bengal tigers.

Being the compulsive wiki browser that I am, I started looking at odd colors of various animals, such as the white lion, black tiger, and blue tiger. They are actually much like Sian-Rotam, the infamous ghostly Shadowclaw, and Moonstalkers. It doesn't stop there! There's still the rare raptor mob Takk the Leaper, black lion Humar the Pridelord, and albino gorilla Ukh'loc. How cool would it be to tame all these very unique looking animals? Blizzard definitely did not make up all these animal colors out of the blue. They are very real!

Oh, I forgot to mention I named my Duskstalker Vornskr...because I wanted it to be vicious even though it doesn't look like one.

As a last note, thanks to Kestrel for linking to our blog. I noticed a spike in my site views and was wondering how that happened, especially since I didn't make a post... :P

Dungeons: Lessons Learned

Recently, I decided that I'd try playing a bit more in dungeons than in the world environment. Dungeons had never been something I desperately want to go to, even for the loot. By the time I hit level 20, I had only made two runs through dungeons. Once in Blackfathom Deeps, and once in Deadmines. Those runs probably shouldn't even be counted as actual runs because there was always a 60+ helping me and another person. It was either for the quest or just for fun. Even now, I mostly go through dungeons just to finish off quests rather than grinding for a specific rare item.

When I go into the 30s, I was recruited a couple times by PUGs for runs through parts of Scarlet Monastery. This was my actual first experience going through a dungeon where we had a full 5-member party with the regular combination of tanks, DpS, and healers. I've made a couple of friends along the way, and each of us has learned several things in our roles. I've had my share of sending my pet at the wrong target and pulling a few more mobs than we wanted. We've also had times where our plans don't go exactly as planned; times where one guy had to go AFK for some time; and problems with a party member not playing his role right and being a pain about it.

It happens. I take note of it and move on, I suppose.

Last week, I had just logged in at Booty Bay not sure what I wanted to do that day. While walking around vendors and such, I was whispered by a hunter in the low 30s. He asked if I could help him run SM. At this time, I was already 42 and had just reached the upper range of Cathedral's level range, and the other instances won't really do me much good with experience and loot anymore. Why not, I decided. After all, I was pretty much in his position not too long ago. So we got a group together, another person in the mid/upper 30s, others at the first guy's level.

First of all, it's a bad idea to go through Tirisfal when there are so many Horde 70s running Graveyard to have a chance at the Headless Horseman. I should've thought about that beforehand. We had a few problems getting ganked on the way and at the summoning stone, but we were soon on the way to running Library. At first, I wasn't used to being the "big boy" in the group, having the higher level character. It gave off an aura that I should be better than everyone else, and I wasn't really ready for it. I didn't mind picking up the aggro from someone who shouldn't have gotten it since I could take the extra blows, but it gives you a perspective from above: what it's like to be the de facto leader. I pretty much passed on all the dropped items since the others will need it more. I also realized how important communication is, especially if close-quarters combat is needed. I tend to make the assumption that everyone is on the same logic path as I am.

After that run, the night was still early, so I decided to look for a PUG for Razorfen Downs so I can get my Vanquisher's Sword quest reward to replace my aging Cruel Barb. This time, I took the initiative to gather up people in the LFG/M channels who wanted to run the instance. Soon enough, we had a warrior tank, resto shaman, an ever-useful druid, and two hunters. This time, the run went rather interesting. The initial run up to the the quest to protect Belnistrasz went without a glitch, with the tank managing well. The stages after that one were more interesting though. The other hunter, a BM/MM hybrid was a friend of the warrior tank. While observing his play, I noticed his higher-than-average-use of Multi Shot. I tend to keep away from using Multi Shot too much in dungeons just to avoid the accidental aggro, but here was a hunter grabbing aggro on 2 or 3 mobs once in a while. We had a few close calls with our healer, but it was worked out in the end. Fighting Amnennar the Coldbringer was a bit more interesting because our healer died once (but not for long thanks to resurrection). Fighting him was not bad, but the problem was the little minions that he spawned. I don't think we had our priorities right because the minions die when Amnennar dies. I ended up having to pull the minions off our healer a few more times before we finished the run.

All in all, I was satisfied in two rather different experiences I got from running dungeons that day. I think I still have much to learn when working in groups.

Exploration Adventures

My curiosity took me to interesting places the past few days: The Blasted Lands and areas I've yet to explore in Stranglethorn Vale.

I had just finished doing some quests that got me Exodar reputation in Swamp of Sorrows and decided to go back to finish off the Gelkis/Magram chain in Desolace. So I went the usual route through Deadwind Pass to Darkshire to fly off to the nearest harbor. But before I made it to the flight point, there was a quest giver who wanted me to deliver something to Nethergarde Keep. After getting some pointers from friends, I decided how hard could it be? I mounted up and went to The Blasted Lands, dodging some Horde NPCs guarding the Swamp of Sorrows flight point. The path was relatively straight forward, and soon enough I finished the quest as well as getting the Nethergarde flight point. Blasted Lands seemed to me like pictures I've seen of Outland. I can' t wait until I get there, granted I should get Burning Crusade first...

I got bored yesterday and looked at my Stranglethorn Vale map and noticed the big island kind of attached to the Cape of Stranglethorn. I thought it was strange that I've been there many times and haven't been able to get that part of the map to show, so I decided to go find out what else was there. I ran into a druid who was questing for Akiris Reed, so I helped him out even though I finished that quest already. We stumbled into the holy water spring on that island that gave me the exploration experience. But more than that, we also spotted the rare mob Naga Lord Sakrasis. Killing him was pretty straightforward, and we were also rewarded with Talisman of the Naga Lord.

After grouping, we decided to go questing for Zanzil Mixtures. It was quite a pain doing this, especially since we wiped a few times because of the random quick spawns happening. I probably should've practiced my trapping, but the situation almost got out of hand a few times. The find of the night was more exciting: the world drop Dazzling Longsword. At first I thought my eyes were playing with me when the name was purple, but they definitely were not. First epic find! I didn't win the roll, but finding the sword itself was pretty exciting.

LFG Hogger

One of the first elite NPCs that can be fought when starting a new character is Hogger, a gnoll in Elwynn Forest wanted by Stormwind's guards. It has been the subject of raids by level 1 characters with some difficulty.

Last week, Blizzard's Eyonix posted a comment on the "Anti Hogger-Nerf Movement" thread in the forums:

Hogger is becoming a level 73 outdoor raid boss. His loot will remain the same, I'm afraid.

I look forward to seeing level 70's going "LFG Hogger" on General chat.

Following the Crowd

A lot of people are picking up on the 2.3.0 patch notes story, so I guess I'll just mention a few things I noticed.

It seems like they're making a lot of changes to Stranglethorn Vale's environment (for the better?) to try to make it less annoying. Rebel Camp is now an Alliance flight point, which I'm not sure is a good thing if the only it'll do is draw more Horde campers. I am excited about the removal of Elite status from the ogres though. It's just in time for me to do the Mai'Zoth quest.

Not sure about the new dungeon level range adjustment and new meeting stone requirements yet. It's definitely going to reduce the number of level 70s running newer characters through dungeons.

The exciting changes for hunters will be Trueshot Aura's new status as a real aura, Arcane Shot change, and Serpent Sting. Perhaps the increase in Serpent Sting damage will make hunters a better DpS class. This kinda makes me rethink Loronar's talent build as a Marksman (for which I'll probably get some rap for not going Beast Mastery as endorsed by Big Red Kitty), especially in considering whether or not Improved Stings would be something worth investing in.

Speaking of talents, I had to respec yesterday after going through most of level 40 without Trueshot Aura. The reason? I was putting talents into Improved Aspect of the Hawk, to which Someone responds that it may not be as versatile as I thought it would be. I was also putting talents into Hawk Eye, which increases my range. Needless to say, I can no longer properly judge range for starting Auto Shot since I no longer have the 6 extra yards...

So many talents! I wish I could just learn them all.

The ! and the ?

One thing I absolutely love about World of Warcraft is the sheer number of quests available to do. I admit I'm a lore and history nerd, so I read if not skim all the text of the quest descriptions. It's amazing how Blizzard can come up with all the story for this game.

There's nothing like the excitement of seeing a new ! on top of an NPC's head and the ? for completing the quest. It's free experience and XP too (provided you can complete them)! I'm pretty sure I did 99% of the quests from Teldrassil, Darkshore, and Ashenvale, and by the time I was moving on to Eastern Kingdoms, I was 1/3 through Revered for Darnassus and Honored for all other Alliance factions.

Quest chains are especially my favorites. These are probably my favorite and most of the major quest chains there is for 40 and under:

• Raene's Cleansing. Picked up from Raene Wolfrunner in Astranaar, this is the one of the first major quest chains available for Night Elves and Draenei. The story revolves around an attempt to recreate a legendary rod that had been used by the wizard Dartol to infiltrate furbolg tribes. The rod was split into three pieces when Dartol's true identity was discovered. This chain provides a wealth of background information about the furbolgs, especially the mystery surrounding their corruption. You actually have the option of not turning in the last stage of the quest and keeping Dartol's Rod of Transformation, which does a pretty cool transformation effect. I've actually seen people use this instead of completing the chain.
  
• The Legend of Stalvan. Stalvan Mistmantle is the mystery character behind this quest chain. Legend has it that he was responsible for a massacre of a family of nobles, but no one has ever been able to link him to the event as the killer. What's interesting is that one can find a younger Stalvan in the Old Hillsbrad Foothills event of the Caverns of Time. You can watch an excellent movie about Stalvan made by Silet that provides Stalvan's history.
  
• The Defias Brotherhood. Probably one of the most mysterious groups on Azeroth, the Defias Brotherhood is known for its thievery and underground activities. This quest chain takes you through the history of the brotherhood, showing that the group was not always an evil band of mercenaries. Residing in the Deadmines, the leader of the group, Edwin VanCleef was once a stonemason for Stormwind before he went into hiding. Killing him drops a pretty good sword that I still use.
  
• The Missing Diplomat. Perhaps the most intricate of Alliance quest chains, this one takes you through many parts of the Eastern Kingdoms and to Theramore Isle in Kalimdor. Although the king of Stormwind since the end of the Second War had been Varian Wrynn, citizens of kingdom had been told that his son Anduin Wrynn (named in honor of Sir Anduin Lothar?) had recently risen to the throne without any explanation. The actual reason is the secret that Varian Wrynn had gone missing during his journey to Theramore to speak with Jaina Proudmoore, the ruler of a separate human Alliance faction in Kalimdor and one of the heroes of the Third War. Even through the 17 stages of this quest, the chain's storyline has yet to end. Blizzard has expressed its intention to continue the storyline sometime in the future.
  
• Tiger Mastery, Panther Mastery, Raptor Mastery, Big Game Hunter. As a hunter, this is a quest chain that should definitely not be skipped (even if it's in the despised Stranglethorn Vale). The rewards of this chain include decent gloves, leggings, chestpiece, and bow/gun. While this can be considered a "grinding" quest chain, it can test your skills as a true hunter while killing the beasts and their elites on your own.

Let me know if you have any other quests/chains that you find very interesting and I'll definitely check them out if I haven't already (even if it's a gray quest!).

Binds on Equip

The inspiration of this blog comes from the numerous World of Warcraft blogs available out there. Though no one specific blog inspired this one, I do admire many of them out there.

I started playing World of Warcraft (unofficially) in early August when I borrowed one of my friends' warlock for a week because he wasn't going to be able to log on for some time. Needless to say, jumping into the game at level 20-something was a bit strange because I was learning everything on the fly. Fortunately, I had other friends who had also recently started or have been playing the game to help me out.

It was my first MMORPG, but definitely not a first-timer to Warcraft. Having read a lot of lore along with my introductory play time, I was drawn into getting an account for myself.

Why a hunter? I was probably "forced" into the decision because while playing on my friend's warlock, I picked up the highly prized Ranger Bow by chance from a chest in Duskwood. Of course, I didn't know how valuable and powerful it was at the time, but reading about it drew me into making a hunter as my first character.

If you're curious, no, I didn't use it to "twink" my hunter. I am now using a different bow after hitting level 30, but I have that first bow to blame for drawing me into this game! Since I hit level 40 last Sunday, I figured this would be a good starting point as any to start writing.