You may have noticed this already, but I’m all for stating the obvious.
People are either raiding the hell out of ICC, or warming up alts for the Cataclysm.
The raiding isn’t happening for me. It occurs to me I haven’t even picked up this weeks weekly raid quest.
I’m not even chasing the Frost emblems in the daily random. There’s no question that they are a great way to augment your ICC emblem haul, but I’m not racking up the T10 gear, so my enthusiasm has waned.
As for leveling alts… It was raised the other day by one of my mates. My immediate “no” changed to a maybe reasonably quickly, but I’m stretched playing two characters… So 3 is pushing my luck and time.
Instead I am finding myself spending more time playing my alt…. errr my main… errr the one relegated to alt status, my original love, this blogs inspiration.
Yes, Gnomeaggedon has managed to push Squidly into a dark corner.
Sure Squidly gets let out for a run occasionally, particularly if my mates are looking for heals for a random etc… but otherwise Squidly is too far down the character selection screen.
What has brought on the change of mind?
A few things pushed me over the edge.
Cheap T9
At 1st it was just Squidly grinding out the emblems. Fundamentally instant queues encouraged me to stock up, fast.
Soon enough I realized that Gnomeaggedon could join in on the feast. The difference was the relatively (to Squidly) long queue times.
But with Gnomeaggedon, I got a breather from the PuGs, which even I admit can bring you down on occasions.
Relatively quick instance groups
Waiting 10, 15, 20 minutes for a group is such a pain and I was spoilt by Squidly. However, the reality is that I have stayed in LFG all night (yes 6 hours) without getting a group pre-LFD, so as long as I could find a way (apart from laps of Lagaran) I would be happy.
Raid tastings
Since spliting with my group of mates, Gnomeaggedon hasn’t raided… That’s since Naxx… 3 raid instances ago.
Squidly ran a few, people are always:
LF1M heals & G2G
Want Resto Shaman! /drool Heroism
However I have found spamming LFG, Trade and General chat:
Low gearscore, out of practice, low dps Mage LFG raid, pst
didn’t usually get me many spots… Maybe if I didn’t mention I was a Mage I might have more luck.
The weekly raid however has people filling spots with anyone, anything.
LF1M, Non-Combat Pet acceptable, owner must have GS > 0 (That excludes you Balth)
PvP goes Boom!
Then there was War… Gnomo a Belfo.
I lost my enthusiasm for BGs a while back. Squidly was the last nail in the coffin. I know I have complained in the past about dps forgetting the poor healer, but in hindsight Squidly has a life expectancy measured in minutes, whereas Gnomeaggedon’s is measured in seconds.
It frustrates me no end that Blizzard has 50% more HKs on Squidlys permanent record than on Gnomeaggedon, still maybe that’s true. I know Squidly just soaks up the Honor and kills when he’s in a BG, but Gnomeaggedon has to work at it… Maybe because Squidly is healing packs and Gnomeaggedon is /failsoloing packs.
Loremaster
The worst part of the 20 minute LFD wait was not being able to do anything. I’m still frustrated that I can’t queue for a combination of raid, BG & instance.
WSG is usually complete before an instance pops. I can normally do 3-4 before a raid invite pops.
So, desperate to do something, my attention turned to the Old World. Needing a reason to be there (no, 10 copper piece rewards are not reward in themselves), I pulled the achievement card.
Wondering how much time I have spent waiting for raids, instances and BGs… Eastern Kingdoms done and 150 quests of Kalimdor.
Love
Two types of love…
Love is in the air.
I’m not really fussed on getting the holiday acheivements with Squidly. If I have time and excess energy, sure.
Gnomeaggedon however seems to have 1/4 of each of the holidays done. Not bad considering I probably would have only dedicated 1-2 hours to each one and dedicated is an exaggeration.
Gnome love
- Well, love of my Gnome, Gnomeaggedon.
- When I put my PvP hat on and strut around the spirit healer, I feel alive.
- When I’m bottom of recount, yet still pulling threat on the bosses, I feel at home.
- When I get to the character selection screen and look no further than the 1st character, I feel releived.
How To: Sorting your characters on the Character Selection screen
Question: What would you do to get your characters in the right order on your character selection screen?
It’s frustrating that while you can sort on an iPhone app, you can’t sort them in game.
What a mate of mine did…
A combination of:
Deletion, Renaming and character transfer + renaming.
They are (for) now in the perfect order… Some people are too [anal] retentive.
Gnome taking 1st place again
So with the approach of Cataclysm I’m not racing to complete Arathas
(note to Aman’Thul – if you want a pug Gnome and/or Squid on a regular basis, then drop me a line. I’d love to see more, but my mates guilds are so far ahead of me that they only get me in for roflstomping content when 15 or 16 bodies in the 25 man raid make no difference – note, I’m not joining your guild, but I will roll on your phat loots).
Instead I think I will fill my time with all the other bits of the game, still plenty for this old Gnome to see and do before the world comes to a cataclysmic end.
Ohhh have you noticed how many Mage bloggers recently rerolled and loved healing?
Have you noticed how many are coming back to their 1st love!
Getting less Patient with Age.
PS: yes OK, Squidly got most of my weekend time… Something about an “Elder” title.. Squidly the Elder feels much more appropriate right now that Squidly the Patient.
Let me tell you how frustrated I am with the split holiday activation. I realise most of you have no idea what I am talking about, but on the Oceanic Servers we get lucky. Our events start at midnight local server time, so we had the Lunar Festival (the Love festival etc) start 3/4 of a day before any other US realms…
BUT…
We dont’ get the whole thing!
Our instances are on the Battleground time clock – which means we don’t get them until (at least) 7 pm. It’s such a pain having to waltz around quests and achievements you can’t do.
Yes, the events do finish the “day early” (well, on-time server time) as well.
What are Blizzard afraid of, that we Oceanic types might get a world 1st? 1st Valentine’s delivered?
Let’s consider that a bonus for limiting us to playing 6 nights a week due to weekly downtime?
Europe already has the full event, so we aren’t going to spoil anything…
Gnomer and Out!
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I would love to be able to reorder the character selection screen. Yes. Blizzard must make it so.
If only we could have one of our characters follow the other as a NPC. My feral could pull huge packs and AoE grind while my priest healbots. Or my DK could tank instances for my lolret.
@Klepsacovic
Yes like Mario Cart Double Dash, you can switch to your healer when you need to pop a heal and Z button right back to your DPS/Tank to spank down Bowser!
On a more realistic note, maybe Blizz would allow you to switch character in a raid (while not in combat of course) so that if you’re on a fight that can be 2 healed you can bring in your Mage to blow stuff up and then switch back after the fight. For those healers that are not dual speced DPS any ways
Alas, poor Balth now has a GS over 100.
I’ve seriously thought about spamming trade (or responding to other spams) with “Geared Retpal. know the instances”
And see what their response is to a level 18 Ret.
BTW, I noticed something on Amon’Thul that I don’t see on Velen: “Must link achi & stats”.
OK, maybe I saw the achi thing ONCE on Velen, but stats? *shrug* No clue even HOW t odo that. Still, the achi requirement is rare on my home server, but every other trade/lfg spam is asking for that on “your” server.
Yeah we want your acheivements, GS & Stats for everything. I won’t buy a stack of linen cloth off you without a GS > 4,000
You can’t join my guild without a GS < 100
I actually saw someone spamming for ICC farming last night and the had a GS cap! Max of 5k.
Interesting development….