Oyayu

My Warlock and Priest combo reached level 59 last night, so I decided it was time to boost the paladin.

I created the Paladin and Shaman combo and boosted them to level 30 using the following method:

1 - 8: Intro quests

8 - 15: Ragefire Chasm.

15 - 23: Shadowfang Keep. I have virtually perfected the boosting in here now, I may well make a video on how to Paladin-boost this place in a couple of pulls for excellent exp/hour.

23 - 30: SM Library.

I kept on going until I was a couple of bars from 31, and then granted levels from my Priest to my Paladin. Once I completed the Dark Portal introduction quests I had dinged 59. The screenshot of my played time upon ding is included below.

Once these 3 are level 60, I may well start on my Mage (currently been relegated to being my bank) and the Shaman I used to boost my Paladin. That would give me every class at 60… Interesting decisions to be made once WotLK comes along then, do I carry on levelling something that I already have at 70, or pick another class to push through the outlands content double quick and start with? Hard to say right now.

With the recent changes to the refer-a-friend system in WoW, you’ve now got quite an incentive to give this a whirl. You basically get given triple experience from all sources, including quest hand-ins. Not bad.

I’ve been levelling a Priest and Warlock together, primarily through boosting in instances to this point, though I think now it’s time to switch to questing for experience. Below is a basic instance boosting guide to maximise your experience. Keep in mind that I was using a level 70 Rogue or a level 70 Paladin to do the boosting, depending on which instance I was doing, I have put which class I was using in brackets.

Level 1 - 10: Manual questing or grinding.

Level 10 - 15: Ragefire Chasm (Rogue)

Level 15 - 17: Wailing Caverns (Rogue) - Grab the quests for here for a massive exp boost.

Level 17 - 25: Shadowfang Keep (Rogue) - Pick up the quest in UC on your way, and pickup the two at 18.

Level 25 - 40: Scarlet Monestry (Rogue) - Start off in Library or Armory, depending on the class, you may as well pick up some loot while you’re here. Once you get 33 go to UC and pick up the quest, then do Library, Armory, and finally Cathedral. Now repeat Cathedral until you reach 40.

Level 40 - 50: Blackrock Depths (Paladin) - Pull the first room in 2 pulls, then go down the left hand tunnel to Roccor, clear to Roccor in 2 pulls, kill Roccor. Head out. Reset. Repeat. That should take you about 12 minutes per run depending on the gear level of your paladin.

It would probably be a good time to give up boosting here and switch to proper levelling, however if I was to continue I would go with:

Level 50 - 55: I’d probably go with the Paladin to Strat living.

Level 55 - 60: Head to Ramparts, would certainly be advisable to take a healer or two with you here along with the Paladin.

I am currently 44, and have given up on instance boosting in favor of questing for experience for a while, I’ve just done 25 levels in 2 days, so a change is more than welcome. Good luck to all you multi-boxers!

Arguably the largest change that is coming in Wrath of the Lich King is the introduction of our first hero class, the Death Knight. Now, I personally went through varying emotions revolving around the Death Knight. The first was joy that they were adding a new class to the game, then there was disappointment when we found out they were only adding one new class to the game. Now I’ve tried it out, it’s somewhere in-between, Death Knight is most definitely cool. The armor, the attitude, the big massive sword. There is of course the doubt in the back of my mind that they should be adding two new classes, so people at least get some choice in the matter… Instead at current rate we’re going to have half the server running around the Death Knight starter area come the 5th of when it’s ready.

On with my first impressions. The character creation screen would be the obvious place to start. Unlike the other characters you get to start at level 55, and you don’t get kitted out in rags like the other classes, you get some very impressive looking armor.

Upon entering the game you don’t get the race-specific entry movie, you get a special one for Death Knights which gives you a little background and introduces you to the Death Knight starting area. I’ve included a video of this below, obviously the usual spoiler warnings apply.

You immediately come face to face with The Lich King himself, who following the usual spiel about death, doom and destruction he sets you off into Acherus to begin your training as a Death Knight. Your first quest earns you your Rune Blade, which is the basis of everything that a Death Knight is. The mechanics themselves are relatively simple, you have a set number of Runes, which you need to use abilities or cast spells, these runes replenish themselves over time. You also have a rage-like Runic Power which is also needed for some abilities.

The quests that you get within the first hour or so of playing your Death Knight are highly entertaining, and very rewarding, not only do you get a slew of blue quality armor, you are also awarded the talent points you would have gotten from levelling to 55 yourself. The quests range from controlling a floating eye to scout out the area below Acherus, hiding in a mine cart to be snuck behind enemy lines, through to stealing a horse. As you can probably tell, this is not your ordinary starting area, but what else would you expect for a Hero class?

The experience flows surprisingly fast while in the Death Knight area, I made it to 57 in just a few hours and I have still not completed the area, so I will get back to you once the area is complete and I have been turned out into the real world.

My main concern for Death Knight is the starting area come release day. I have painful visions of 400 Death Knights running around wreaking all kinds of havoc, but ultimately not getting a lot done. This was somewhat relieved when I saw the area on the beta servers, there were a lot of Death Knights around, and I mean a lot, however the quests were all still completable without too much hanging around waiting for re-spawns… So hopefully Blizzard will have planned for this effectively. Just be warned when you have to go and kill Mayor Quimby, I’d definitely advise getting in a group for that one, even if it’s just a group with the random others on that quest.

Overall, Death Knight is very fun to play, the Rune system is interesting, and I can see it becoming quite complex without being too restrictive to play. The starting area and quests are exceedingly fun, and even if you don’t have any intentions on levelling Death Knight seriously (is there anyone?) then you should at least take one through here just to experience the quests.

After getting up and finding a beta invitation in my inbox, I spent most of the day basically downloading the client, and patching it. After a 2gb client download, and another 750mb or so worth of patches, I finally had it all up and ready to go.

The login screen itself is the first striking thing you will notice, as with TBC we’ve had a change of scene and are presented with a striking blue ice tundra, with a skeletal dragon to boot.

I copied my hunter over, but the first port of call was obviously to create a Death Knight, that is a post in its own rights though, so I will leave that until tomorrow when I have escaped the confides of the Death Knight starting area. You can check out some screenshots from my first few escapades as a Death Knight in the WotLK Beta screenshot gallery.

Back to my Hunter. The talent trees have undergone a mass of changes, but to keep it simple at this point of time I decided to revert to my favoured Beastmastery grinding tree, with the new talents in it and the new pet changes, this was still the obvious choice to me. The end-of-tree talents allows you to tame a variety of so-called “exotic” pets - which I was exceedingly excited to hear included the Devilsaurs from Un’goro crater.

Once my spec was taken care of, I hopped on a flight to Un’goro to find myself a Dinosaur. Rawr! It didn’t take me very long, and after a brief spell as the worlds largest ice cube, I had myself a massive new pet. I named him Schozie after a friend, and set him to work to test him out. I have included a video below so you can check him out!

The next thing for me to check out was the barber shop. I was happy to see that both my Undead Rogue and Blood Elf Hunter could both have pig tails now. The interface itself is still a little buggy I found, you had to really get the camera in just the right position to even be able to see your own character, but other than that, paying 7g for a new hair cut is a good way of keeping an expanding economy under control I suppose. Not that my Hunter needed another gold sink after respeccing at least 3 times a week on various whims, it was a massive achievement if my respec costs were ever below 50g…. I digress. The hairstyles on offer are just models you can see on other races in effect, the pig tails are blatently from gnomes, and I’m sure when I dig a little further there will be many other same models from other races, but that doesn’t really matter, it lets you add some variety, which is always good.

So all-in-all, my first few steps into Wrath of the Lich King have been as expected, there are some changes, there are some similarities, hopefully tomorrow I will get around to the nitty-gritty of Northrend and trying out some of the new quests they’ve put in.

The Early Days - Final Fantay XI

I feel it best to start somewhere back near the beginning. My first serious MMO was Final Fantasy XI, I had tinkered with various ones before getting hooked here, including Everquest and Lineage - neither of them really kept my attention for more than an hour so, that was until the day I heard about Final Fantasy XI.

I have been a massive fan of the Final Fantasy series for a long long time, even moderating the late MGON Final Fantay forums for a few years, so the prospect of a new Final Fantasy game was all it took, the fact it was an MMORPG, at the time, was mearly a side note for me. This soon changed.

Without ranting on too much, I played FFXI for a long time, and achieved virtually all that was there to be achieved, including getting a craft 100, which as anyone who has played FFXI will tell you, is no easy task.

Following various deviations, including being a founding member of what has become arguably the most successful European Linkshell, and creating another character (not as common in FFXI as in other games due to the job switching system) - I eventually grew bored of FFXI. However my MMO flame had been sparked, and I was hooked.

World of Warcraft

It didn’t take me long to find World of Warcraft, and starting up on an RP-PvP server with a group of people was probably a wise decision, the community feel of FFXI is not quite as present in WoW, and being with a group of friendly people from the start really made my transition into the game much easier.

I didn’t take WoW as seriously as I took FFXI, thankfully, I levelled to 60 with some ease considering it was a PvP server, but I didn’t really partake in the end-game activities initially.

After a period of boredom, trying out some other games, and an eventual server change to play with a good friend who I played FFXI with, I tinkered about with a bit of raiding, and eventually quit right before The Burning Crusade came out…

Lord of the Rings Online

LOTRO was well hyped, and after playing some beta and pre-release, come the final release I was ready to get going. I was levelling a Minstrel with the friend from WoW, and FFXI, who incidentaly also has a blog at schozie.com, and also levelling a Burglar on the side.

The game was good looking, and somewhat engaging for a while, however once both those classes reached the level cap, there was really not a lot left to do. We grew bored, and one day at work we decided we should just buy The Burning Crusade and make us a couple of Blood Elves. So that’s exactly what we did…

The Burning Crusade

Schozie decided to make a Paladin, as he hadn’t been able to be one Horde side when we played the last time, and I took up Hunter. I pretty much shot to 70, got some gear, and decided it was time to raid. While raiding my way through Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair, Maggy, SSC, and TK, I managed to pick up some pretty good friends and have a fair amount of fun, more fun than I’d had in my previous end-game activities anyway.

On the side I also got my Rogue from 60 to 70, and levelled a Druid to 70 as well. I also have a 61 Warrior, who is just a pain in the arse to level, so it’s anyones guess if she makes it to 70 before Wrath of the Lich King.

The Future

Believe it or not, that is the brief introduction to my MMO history, but that’s not really why this blog exists… I want to talk about the future of the game genre, the games I play, the games I want to play, and anything else that takes my fancy.

The biggest two players coming up right now are of course Warhammer Online, and the WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King… So I guess that is where my focus will lie mainly, however there are of course some far off prospects to consider, such as Aion, Chronicles of Spellborn, and Stargate Worlds.