I came into World of Warcraft during The Burning Crusade, but it was late in the expansion. My first character to quest through Outland was Siori, and when the time came I selected Scryer because (I believe) they had a rep-based Enchanting recipe she needed. That’s it. That was the whole basis for my decision.
In the time since, I’ve kind of alternated between the two factions, more or less on a whim or a fancy. Truth be told, no one even needs to talk to these people anymore and I often don’t. So I really don’t hold any allegiance to either. I’ve never looked up the story between the two sides and as a lore fan, I probably should at some point and perhaps then I will care more. Until then, I just don’t. It’s like the Oracles and Frenzyheart in Sholozar Basin. It’s a conflict that just never did a good job of pulling me in or swaying me one way or the other.
It shouldn’t have been that hard. I was already more than halfway to Exalted with my Blade’s Edge guild. So, more rep granting quests (such as Elders and dailies) and I would be there in no time. When I got up this morning, I think I was actually about 75% of the way there. So I figured I would knock off the Kalimdor Elders and see where that left me. Turns out I missed a few. It wasn’t a big deal, as there are plenty of ways to nab some quests. I decided, for a change of pace, that I would head to the Isle of Quel’Danas and do those dailies.
I rounded them all up and handed them in…only to find those quests don’t actually grant any reputation outside of the Shattered Sun Offensive. Hrmph. So, off I went again. This time I headed to the Darkmoon Faire and did the quests there. When Saintvache was done there I was so close, yet so far. So I circled and picked up a few more Elders and did some pet battle dailies along the way.
Must get rep. Must get rep.
At long last I was a single quest away and I had to head back and hand in a pet battle quest in Orgrimmar. Huzzah! Exalted. Gimme my Dark Phoenix!…it’s not there. Neither is the Scorpion. Frustration begins to kick in and I inadvertently close the Guild Vendor window. I whisper Repgrind for advice but she doesn’t know either. Reopen the window and low and behold it’s there. But I don’t have Artisan Riding, which is required. Are you kidding me? Off to the flying trainer I go…
I have flying, but need better flying for a flying mount. Just take the damn gold already.
Alright. So, I’m Exalted. I have Artisan Riding. I…no longer have the gold on this toon. Oh come on already! Look at TitanPanel to figure out where my gold is. Wonder why the hell my level 40 Warrior has 2,000 gold and proceed to shuffle most of it, and some from my banker, back to Saintavche.
Guild Rep? Check. Artisan Riding? Check. Money? Check. Hand it over.
Yes, Saintvache finally capped this morning. As you can see I picked up a sexy set of achievements in the process. Better late than never. Despite a higher survival rate than Tumunzahar, I definitely found the leveling process to take longer. Perhaps because there was such a hiatus in the middle of Tum’s go that it didn’t seem so bad. I will say, quite obviously, it improved when I ended up in a new guild. The XP boost was nice. But even so, I found 89-90 was smoother than the rest of Pandaria. I think because even when I couldn’t really hop on and bang out some bubbles of experience, I could still take about 10-15 minutes and do three little quests to get me close to a million xp per day.
I would start with the Cooking Daily. On Horde side, my personal preference is Thunder Bluff. They’re all pretty simple and if you land Mulgore Spice Bread, you’ve really got it easy. I will say a Fishing Daily will help even more, but few of my toons have fishing (two come to mind). After that I took the Blasted Lands portal, where I headed to Karazhan for the Pet Battle Daily, and then back to the Blasted Lands to go through the Dark Portal and do the Pet Battle there. As I said, three quests, almost one million experience.
For what it’s worth, you need just over 18 million experience to go from 89 to 90. If you did just this every day and used your time for other toons, you would ding in just under three weeks. Sure, that still seems like a fairly long time, but not when you’re only popping on for 15 minutes at a time. You’d be there before you know it (toss in the Darkmoon Faire around the same time for a couple of easy Profession Quests as well and you’re laughing).
So now what? Well, I joined said Guild last Saturday or Sunday and thanks to the Lunar Elders and the rest of my ventures, I’m halfway to Exalted. Since I helped them unlock the Dark Phoenix mount, I find myself beckoned to finish that rep and get said mount. I’m sure part of that will come via the Timeless Isle. Once again, it has more appeal as a class that can throw out some damage and survive, versus my Holy Dwarf. Along with that, it’s probably time to start boosting the rest of the Amateur Army. I know Liouxpold is on Pandaria, but I can go without the place for a little bit.
I talked yesterday about the Lunar Festival being my favourite among the in-game holidays. I won’t repeat why, but I will add to it in case it’s just not your thing. If you are leveling anything at the moment, even if it’s just guild rep, then you owe it to yourself to start visiting Elders.
See that? Saintvache isn’t quite level 89 and that’s the experience he’s getting for each Elder he visits. Obviously the experience scales depending on level, but you can work a lot harder to get said xp. This is even better if you can buddy up with someone and get them together (RaF lovers, this speaks volumes for you). For instance, I know Liouxpold will do a bunch of them, so I told Tome that she’s welcome to come along with a low level toon and get them as well. The nice thing in a buddy system, is getting someone who can use a flying mount (read: BE a flying mount) and protect the “little sibling” as you go out and about together.
The other bonus, and why I offered to take Tome when I go, is Guild Rep. Heck, even Guild Experience if yours happens to need it. But for rep, I was getting 275 reputation per Elder. Granted, I have the Epic Tabard to boost it to that level, it’s still easy pickings when you need to improve your standing in your own Guild. As I just found myself in one on Sunday, and helped unlock the Dark Phoenix mount, I’ll take all the rep I can get -especially if all I have to do is pay my respects to a forgotten member of Azeroth.
Most players who’ve been around for a significant period of time know Moon Guard’s reputation as a server, most specifically as it pertains to Goldshire. If by some chance you’re not familiar with it, Goldshire is the first main town of the human start area. If you’re not familiar with Moon Guard, it’s recognized as an RP server. The combination in this case has resulted in it commonly referred to as Pornshire.
I actually didn’t know this when I rolled Estheriot on said server. I had a Troll Priest as well, but she was recently deleted. Now in the case of Estheriot, she never went to Goldshire because she’s a Death Knight. Well, she’s also a Worgen, but either way I wasn’t going to be passing through there as I leveled. Sure, I went by when I headed to the Darkmoon Faire, but I never stopped long enough to know if anything of any nature was going on, much less the Pornshire reputation.
However, even before I took my hiatus this year, I wanted to see for myself. Not because it was something I wanted to take part in, but really just to see what it was all about and literally to provide this post. Basically a “what you wanted to know, but were afraid to ask.” Let’s face it, many people wouldn’t want to be caught in a place like that. So, last night I sauntered on in. For a Friday night, around midnight Eastern, I was told the place wasn’t very busy. One of the people I spoke to wondered if it was a result of CRZ’s, but couldn’t say for sure. Having said that, I went into the inn and sure enough it was fairly busy.
This is NOT busy?!?
I decided to check out the whole place and was surprised by what I saw upstairs. The Horde are quite present. They basically have their room upstairs where they trigger the least amount of NPC aggro. Still, I watched them dispatch any who came in and no Alliance took to attacking them. There were plenty of Alliance in the room to begin with, so part of me thinks it would have to be Real ID in some cases as one certainly wouldn’t be able to translate the language of the opposing faction all that easily.
Not surprisingly, because I was a female toon, I drew attention. No, I didn’t dress the part, nor did I pretend to be anything other than m’self. With some, I was actually able to do a little bit of normal RP’ing, which it’s been a long time since I had (always enjoyed it, never caught on to the right circle). However, there were a few private whispers that were fun to respond with “I’m a male blogger here to write a story on the reputation of this place.” More than once, they went silent.
After spending nearly an hour in the inn, I learned a lot about the whole atmosphere and reputation. Is there Erotic Roleplay present? Very much so. However, you really have to keep an eye out to even realize it. Well, there’s times where it’s incredibly obvious what folk are doing, but most of the time it just seems to be normal conversation. The occasional emote suggests otherwise. For the most part, though, it almost seems like a brothel mixed with a rave club.
But what I think surprised me most (besides having to look up futa…and trust me, don’t do that unless you really want to know), was just the friendly atmosphere. Conversation was casual. It didn’t necessarily jump to the ERP type of discussion In fact, most of the RP advertised was for standard roleplaying and it was people trying to form a group to do so. Of course, like any social location or channel in the game, you had your flagbearers of idiocy, but they could be easily ignored.
Over time I’ve seen many calls for Blizzard to do something about this place. Some are just disgusted by the idea and others paint the argument of what if a young person coming out of the human start zone happens to come upon this kind of environment? Valid question. However, let’s say they roll on any other server and just get to a city where they can be subject to Trade chat. To me, that’s going to raise far more concerns than what I saw and read tonight. To me, Blizzard has no grounds for concern. If RP servers were this active in general, they would be an even better batch of servers. Again, not necessarily the full content of Goldshire, but the general sense that this is a group and a friendly one at that. Now, should Blizzard keep an eye on it? I think so. I wouldn’t want to see something happen that would make certain goings on more open and attention drawing. Or worse, players put in very uncomfortable positions whether through harassment or otherwise.
In the end, it would seem that Goldshire lives up to its reputation on this server. There is a lot of RP’ing going on. But I want to be clear about that. There’s a lot of roleplaying. Is there Erotic Roleplay? Yes. However it’s not as predominant as the WoW community would have you believe. You can almost always find someone to chat with in that nature, if it’s what you are looking for, but you’re not going to be bombarded with it in text and visuals. Basically I expected to walk into the inn and see a sea of nearly nakedness, if rumours were to be believed. Instead, like I said, it seemed like a brothel/rave location. People went there to be their character. The ones who sought something could find it and the ones who just wanted to relax could do so. They were surrounded by like folk, in a way that all RPers would probably like to be. Just, perhaps, not quite in this particular scenario or reputed location.
I won’t lie. For selfish reasons, this weekend and next I scheduled Laid Back Raids for Saturday night and I never know how that is going to turn out. Some folks have plans and some simply don’t notice. With Algalon on the schedule for the Alliance last night, I knew for sure that Healblade was out. After that was a crap shoot
We ended up with about seven of us, eight when Zwingli was able to join us early on and then again for the final two bosses. In 10-man, that was serious zerg. Well, except for the fact that I wanted an awesome screenshot of Algalon, but instead targeted him and interrupted his little constellation speech. We wiped when I think he removed the entire floor. No fight, just more of a “how dare you” as we all died. So we regrouped and hoped that didn’t happen again. Well, us Claws of Nature folk…despite “thinking” we were within the platform for the fight, were in fact not. But at least I got to watch them whoop the star-crossed boss.
I think if you look close you can see Repgrind’s Mage getting off a spell. I can’t remember if we still had two alive at that point…I know Magik was dead beside me. I was fine with dying, but disappointed I didn’t get the shoulders to complete Liouxpold’s current transmog. However, I did win the roll for Avalanche when it dropped from Hodir. It would seem after years of being a crossbow only guy, Liouxpold is turning into quite the bow collector. Which is probably good. Man did I get heckled on his behalf last night. No Guild Page, not Exalted with my own guild, no Cold Weather Flying, “Turn off aspect of the pack,””turn it off again please”…yeesh, it was never ending!
The good news was that we rolled on and I had forgotten Magik had never finished Ulduar, in fact Cat Lady was as far as he had gotten (back when it was current). So to be able to show him the whole place was great. To be able to down Yogg-Saron at the end was perfect as well.
Also during the raid, Magik, Mrs, and myself got a pleasant surprise as one of our other guildies (Grexinimi) was on and kinda doing his own thing…
So, needless to say when the raid was over…Magik went straight to Stormwind, while Mrs. and I switched to toons that were Exalted with the guild and we were all proud owners of Dark Phoenix pets. Magik and I captured the moment…that prissy Hunter Naeda was too good for us, I guess.
So as it seems I didn’t do enough with WoW yesterday, I kept myself busy into the evening. Siori had flown down around the Caverns of Time (for no particular reason…and if she did have a reason, it wasn’t there) and I decided to check what her Keepers of Time reputation was at (since Exalted held one of the few Enchants she needed yet). She was about 2k away so into Black Morass I went. Wasn’t sure that even on Heroic I was going to get enough, to be honest. However, my backup plan was just to run it again once or twice on regular to finish it off. But, I didn’t have to:
Yeah, when you see people hitting 50 and 60 and whatnot, 15 seems kinda diminutive. But then I usually only do the ones I really want something from (hence I never had any trouble offering my services to Wyrmrest Accord). So I probably have plenty of characters at various stages of Honoured and Revered, but it isn’t often I hit Exalted. I will say this, the Keepers of Time have themselves a rather spiffy tabard.
After that, I resumed my pet taming efforts. Namely, I headed off to Outland with Tumunzahar (he’s got 310 flight, so it just makes sense…and mining). I went out there on the premise of leveling some pets so that I could eventually get my Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdom Tamer achievements as all I have left for either one is the Cataclysm zones. So off I went into Outland and a short while later…
Yep, I captured a Cat in the Netherstorm to get the achievement. I’m still not certain what they’re doing out there. I had a shot at a Nether Ray, but it whooped me. However, when I got the Tamer achievement I decided to look close at Outland Safari. I needed eight, and two of them were in Netherstorm. I captured a Nether Roach easily enough. They’re everywhere. The previously mentioned Fledgeling Nether Ray is less often, but still there if you don’t mind flying around a bit. Well, the first one kicked my arse, and the second one I trapped but then lost the fight. That happened once more before I accidentally killed one. Seems it was all for a good reason, as the next one was a Rare and it was tamed properly and the match was won.
Can I just interrupt my ventures to share something? Words cannot be spewed vehemently enough to share just how tedious this scene is:
As I griped to Real ID folks, I do not understand it. Tum faithfully needs five or six traps to catch a pet. I mean, when it takes him less than four, I’m in pure shock. I have pets go from full health to dead in the time he fails to catch something. You could cover something in beer and he’d still not get it. My other toons? They average 1-3 traps. I know some will profess RNG, but I’m almost to the point where that seems shenanigans at best.
Where was I? Oh, yes, safari. So I tamed my Netherstorm ones and looked to see where the remaining half dozen could be found. The Scaled Basilisk Hatchling and Skittering Cave Crawler were both in Blade’s Edge so that’s where I went next. I found a spot where the Basilisks were everywhere. As a Cave Crawler joined the first battle, I had tamed both in next to no time. Four to go!
I circled down into Zangarmarsh and over to Sporeggar for the Sprout. If you’re not familiar, these things spawn about every 15 minutes (the only saving grace for a zone that has nothing more than Toads and Snakes). Of course, the area is also camped pretty good on average. Well, I sat in the middle of the town and low and behold one spawned…and my stupid bird got caught on a mushroom. I wish the Orc that swooped in was flagged…
Knowing I had fifteen minutes before another one I decided to venture off and catch something else. The Warpstalker Hatchling was a piece of cake but there was no Flayer Youngling. Back to Sporeggar I went and saw three Sprouts. I zoomed in and went after one with relative ease. Can I just say, when you get to Outland you really should go get a Clefthoof Runt because they’re adorable and hit like a tank. It was one of the ones I grabbed first out there because I knew I wanted one and it proved to be a boon against pretty much everything else. So I caught my Uncommon Sprout and was down to a mere two pets.
I flew over the ridge again and still no Flayers. So out to Shadowmoon Valley. The Fel Flame is so cool looking I was certain it would be a rare spawn. I went into the fire area and sure enough there was nothing. I flew north of the Warden’s Cage and began making my way along the river towards The Hand of Gul’dan when I saw one. I had read they hit hard and were tough. Well, not really from my experience. Then again, might have been dumb luck but it was pretty easy to catch (4-5 traps and all). So I flew back to Northern Terokkar and found nothing.
I was going to camp and decided to make another pass and sure enough I spotted a Flayer! Swooped in and in true Amateur fashion I nearly killed the damn thing. But, success was had!
Even better, was amidst my happiness (and knowing I was off to bed after my success) I only happened to notice blue text in the chat window. I didn’t realize the Youngling was a rare. Well, it wasn’t. I actually had my first Battlestone drop…which I didn’t even know they did. Having not done any research I figured they came from the Pet Trainer fights/dailies. I was later informed it was both.
No, I haven’t decided which pet will be the lucky recipient. Fluxfire Feline seems a strong option, as does my Spawn of Onyxia. Heck, I’d even consider my Little Black Ram. But, I’m in no rush. I plan to hold on to it for a bit and widen the pet stable some more (208 Unique at last glance…I’m getting there) first.
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