Leafshine: Lust for Flower

Too Many WoW Characters (For Netherspite)

Good news: My guild, The Shattered Ravens, downed nasty Mr Netherspite for the first time last night!

Bad news: I wasn't there! Horrible, busy work stuff (and my other half returning from holiday) made me unavailable for play. Boo!

However, this does give me the chance to introduce a guildie who is just finding his blogging feet! Martyn is a man with Too Many WoW Characters (and an understanding fiancée (who has a 70 hunter (and a high-level Priest))).

Anyway, feel free to wonder over, check out his account of last night, and give him a WoW Blog readers welcome! And tell 'im that Leafy sent you…

What Sort of WoW Player Am I?

The Many Annas recently posted an interesting gamer personality test, which rather reminds me of the Myers-Briggs thing they made me do at work when I reached the ranks of management...

I had a go at the test, and, as it turns out I'm a:

SEAK

SEAK players are usually very interested in the the 'total experience' of a virtual world--meeting other people and finding the unique places within it. They don't care much for PVP or levelling, but meeting up with online friends to see new parts of the world is usually fun and exciting.

Breakdown: Achiever 33.33%, Explorer 60.00%, Killer 26.67%, Socializer 80.00%

And, to be honest, I'd say that was pretty accurate. Perhaps a Horde-side alt, to see new quests and areas, would be the way to go...

Back in PvP Action

So, that "not doing PvP" thing? Uh, didn't work out so well.

You see, I saw this and thought "oh, looks nice".

And then, well, I bought the new rep-based PvP set. And I had to test it, right?

100th Post: The Pre-Wrath of the Lich King Lull

Wow! I can hardly believe that I've reached 100 posts already*. What started out as a wee side-project has turned into something rather more popular than I expected, and I'm very grateful to all of you who swing by and visit this blog from time to time.

For my 100th post I shall give you:

The State of the Leafy

The problem I have with Leafshine is that, for now, she's essentially "done". There's some incremental gear upgrades she needs, to ease heroic running and Kara/Z'A trips, sure, but I'm running out of new things to do. Despite my earlier complaints, I'm nearly done on the Shattered Sun Offensive rep grind (a successful trip to Magisters' Terrace helped with that), so I'm running out of things to do. And I'm not alone.

Fixing The Shattered Sun Offensive

It's time to be positive. It's time to stop complaining about the Shattered Sun quests and suggest how it might have been done better. This is what would have improved it for me:

1. Rep-based Quest Chains: At each level of reputation, a new PvE quest chain is opened up, that would have given us more of the lore behind the Shattered Sun Offensive and Kael's fall. That's only four quest chains, and it would have given us something to look forward to after each round of dailies.
2. Random Dailies: To break the monotony of the quests, have sets of random quests, alongside the progression ones. The mechanism is already there in the instance, Battleground and Fishing/Farming dailies, so it would make sense to extend it to the SSO. A degree of randomness would really alleviate the feeling of doing the same thing again and again.
3. More Geographical Diversity: The addition of random quests would give the chance of spreading the load a little, spreading the quests right across Outland - or at least anywhere where Kael's forces have a presence. Time is ticking for Outland, so it would have been nice to have the quests give us something of a "farewell tour".

Those few changes would have made the difference for me. Any other suggestions?

Why Leafshine Isn't Making Movies

A few people have asked why I don't do movies anymore. There's a very good reason:

Why Leafshine Isn't Making Movies from Leafshine on Vimeo.

Yes, there's a bug in the graphics drivers for my model of MacBook which corrupts WoW-recorded video. Apparently Blizz are working with Apple on this, but there's no firm date for the fix.

And so, my Azerorthwood ambitions are on hiatus. Sorry.

The Lame Sun Offensive

So, we established yesterday that I'm bored of daily quests.

Now, let's imagine that I'm not. And let's look at some of them. And let's see just how lame they are.

Take, for example, the demon-killing one:

This was bad enough in Phase II, but in Phase III you can get dozens of people competing for, what, 10 demons? I am so bored of Mages running through, and AOEing until they tag a new spawn. Without Moonfire, I'd be completely screwed on this one.

And then, there's the boats:

There's about six Belfs on each boat. And three boats. 18 mobs for a daily quest that half the server is trying to do.

Did Blizz actually think about this? Sometimes the demon-killing in Blade's Edge Mountains was bad enough, but don't worry. They solved the problem by making the new quests more attractive and reducing the number of mobs. I believe the correct response is "WTF?????".

Roll on Wrath and some decent questage again.

Take Your Daily Quests and…

So, been a bit quiet around here, hasn't it?

*watches tumbleweeds drift past*

There's a reason for that. And the reason is:

Yes, Patch 2.4 has bored the pants off me. It appears that the new content model for the end game is to do the same thing again and again and again and again.

My goodness, I am sick and tired of daily quests.

I was really hoping that there might be a traditional quest line or two as part of the patch, but no. It's daily, daily, daily. And some of them are just bizarre. Is there any point at all to taking readings off an anomaly or six in Nagrand, bar the off chance of a Badge of Justice?

These days, when I go to login, I either think "nah", or go play one of my lowbie alts instead. The idea of spending an hour doing exactly what I did yesterday with Leafy just isn't appealing.

Blizz, I know you love yer dailies. But please, please, start giving us some traditional quest content with these patches.