Special thanks to Aron, Anthony and Eric for their efforts over the weekend. I hope you enjoyed the guest posts. If you didn’t, well, maybe you’d like to write one for me next time I disappear for an extended period of time. Just sayin’.

So the voice of the community, here in the person of Gandalf the White, made its mind known to the king, and apparently Blizzard (Theoden) was able to snap itself out of the money-grubbing stupor. Apparently the potentates of the great gaming company do, in fact, listen the concerns of the people and make corrections when necessary. We must all hope that Wormtongue will take the hint and stop dumping poison in the great king’s ear.

Coming back into the game after a long weekend knowing this issue’s been resolved was like meeting a friend for beers after an unfortunate miscommunication’s been cleared up. As I played for a bit last night, I remembered why things had started to feel a bit tedious for me.

As with many aspects of my life, I’d been trying to do too many things at once. Hodir dailies, netherwing dailies, dungeons, PvP, hopping on this alt or that one… it was getting to be too much. They were all things that, for some reason, I felt I had to address now. But what’s the rush? Cataclysm won’t be hitting shelves for a while, so it’s better to pace myself. With that in mind, I think I’ve gotten a grip on how to get the most out of my WoW play-time, especially now that a second PC capable of playing the game is about to be introduced to the Loomis-Piche household.

And yes, “Loomis Peach” (that’s how it’s pronounced) sounds like a cocktail my mother’d really, really like.

Characters have day jobs, too (Dailies)

One of the first things I need to do is stop worrying about raking in as much gold as possible per day. This is supposed to be relaxing for me, not a test of how much repetitive questing I can tolerate before my head explodes. The nice thing about how the gathering of faction reputation works is that there are a few quests one can do per day that not only pay well but eventually yield better rewards. Currently, my main character’s working on his reputation with the ice giants known as the Sons of Hodir. Following that I can return to Outland and continue my quest for the staggeringly awesome nether drake, only to come back to the frozen land of Northrend to work for either the Oracles or the Frenzyheart Tribe. However, the key to enjoying all of this is to only do one set at a time.

A character can do up to 25 daily quests per day. That is a LOT of dailies. If I didn’t have other characters or concerns, I might tackle all of this faction-based work at once. But there are other things I need to attend to. The fact is that no matter how much gold I earn, I can’t use it to buy the better equipment I need to stand a chance in an end-game raid.

That means going into the dungeons, and I figure that I can do two, maybe three of those per evening. The Random Dungeon system that teleports you instantly between a given location and the dungeon in question is ideal for someone like me, who is doing daily questing in between dungeon runs. The process and somewhat tedious repetition of daily quests is broken up by quick runs into random dungeons. You never know what adventure you’ll be heading into until the loading screen appears.

Well, it’s fun for me, and that’s what matters, isn’t it?

One Multiple Personality At A Time, Please

I tend to come down with a condition called ‘altitis.’

Altitis is a serious affliction that strikes many players of World of Warcraft. Symptoms of altitis include rolling far too many alternate characters, spreading alternate characters between various servers, having a dozen or more characters below level 30 with only a handful anywhere near maximum level and dry mouth. Altitis can severely cripple a player’s ability to experience or enjoy end-game content. If you or someone you care about seems to be suffering from altitis, please remind them that dinging 80 is not the same as actually defeating the Lich King. Thank you.

I need to address my alternate characters the same way I do daily quest sources – one at a time. Heirloom items will make leveling them easier, so if I wrap up my dailies and dungeons, then switch to an alt to grind out a level or two, that should make a for a rather complete evening’s game play.

I know it also makes me something of a sad bastard and takes away from writing time, but I ride the train most days for a reason, people.

Playing is Optional

That said, it’s just a game. I don’t have to play it. I could write. I could fire up Steam. I could watch a movie with my wife, play with the cats, toss a console game in the X-box.

As long as I like it and continue to find ways to get the most out of my monthly subscription, however, I think WoW will be sticking around for a bit longer, now that it’s over that embarrassing little bit of bad advice it nearly swallowed.

So following yesterday’s WoW discussion and my request for advice, Rick Carroll said the following:

DPS is easy to find. DPS is everywhere. Good, smart dps is not. Any doofus with a computer and a connection can spam buttons at an enemy – smart dps knows what they are doing, how it works, and when to do what. That is really, really rare and very appreciated when it is found. If you like dps, ranged or melee, stick with it. Perfect it, own it. (…) Tanking is strategy. DPS is an adventure. Healing is forty-five minutes of boredom with fifteen minutes of brown undies time.

Like I said, feeling like I’m helping the group succeed, getting the last shot in on a boss and contributing to a great gaming experience for everybody is what keeps me going back into dungeons – well, that and the loot. And maybe it’s just me, but the few times I’ve tried melee DPS I’ve felt like I’m getting in the tank’s way. It’s just a personal thing, I don’t like to crowd other people if I can help it. Even when playing a medic in TF2, I try to keep my distance from the Heavy or Demoman or whomever I’m following. Of course, that’s due to me not wanted to get killed by splash damage, but I digress.

Ranged DPS seems to be where I do the best and have the most fun, and for me, that narrows things down to three classes: hunter, mage and warlock.

Hunter: Azeroth’s Very Own Sniper

I have a lot of experience playing a hunter. More to the point, I had fun doing it. I know there are a lot of fans of a specialization called ‘Beast Mastery’ out there, and while I can’t deny the appeal of a big red kitty nomming on things that offend me, most of my participation in combat while I was a Beast Master involved spamming a particular macro over and over again. Anybody with a pulse and a spasm in their keyboard hand can do that.

So when I switched to Marksmanship, having to go from a macro spam to a shot rotation, something clicked for me. I was having more fun. I was becoming more involved in the process of combat and became more aware of my surroundings. Switching again to Survival sealed the deal, as I now had to pay attention to my abilities as well as everything else, waiting for the right circumstances to trigger for me to deal out my maximum potential damage. I have to admit, I look forward to doing this again, and since my hunter’s my one character at max level and I’m a lazy busy guy, I’m likely to spend a lot of time with him once again.

Mage: The Master of Sheep Magic

I have a soft spot for finger-wigglers. Maybe it’s because they’re the alpha-nerds of the fantasy genre, but wizards have always appealed to me. Mages in Warcraft have always had a bit of whimsy about them, what with their polymorphing spells turning would-be assailants into harmless sheep. They also, at later levels can turn them into turtles, kitties or piglets.

Oh, and there’s also the tossing of fireballs and hurling of ice lances.

This would be another class that would require me to pay attention, and not just to aggro & DPS meters. Being aware of possible incoming threats, the amount of time left on a particular polymorph and what enemies are vulnerable or resistant to fire & frost spells will be the difference between me shining as an example of magely might or getting kicked from the group for being made of fail. I’d probably have to learn the most about what spells to use when if I pick up this class, but it’d be a really interesting change of pace from the pet-using gear-oriented hunter. Of the three classes, this would be the one I’d be most likely to roll on the Alliance side of things.

Warlock: Proving Once Again That Evil Is Sexy

I remember my days and nights in EverQuest. My character was a smooth-talking, intelligent and thoroughly devious dark elf necromancer. Unfortunately, “necromancer” is unavailable as a player class in World of Warcraft (as awesome as it would be) and the closest approximation would be the class called ‘warlock’. Functionally, it’s something of a hybrid of a hunter and mage, with the primary damage from the player being based on magic spells while the character uses a pet for a variety of purposes.

Besides the fun I’d have role-playing such a character, it’s difficult to say if I’d prefer this class to the other two I’ve mentioned. It’s a slightly different playstyle from the mage (unless I specialize in Destruction) but could be pretty rewarding, especially in PvP. The impression that I get is that warlocks do very well in battlegrounds and arenas, though not as well as rogues. But I’ll leave that sort of excellence to those better suited for it. My wife, for instance.

Any contributions you care to make in my decisions? Any experiences of your own you’d like to share? Hit up the comments section.

(and no, the fact that all three of these classes are available to the blood elves has nothing to do with it. At all.)

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(I like being pretty, shut up.)