Gitr Knows WoW

Unlike your other World of Warcraft blogs. Quality over quantity, and a terrific community.

Gitr *FINALLY* Dings 70!

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After 30d 18h of /played time on Gitr, he momentously hit the level cap at 1:30am EDT January 13th, 2008. It was a time of great celebration… amongst myself, as the server and guild were pretty much empty at the time. He dinged as he turned in a quest in Shadowmoon Valley. The whole thing was vid-captured, but there seems to be some problem with clipping it to the actual event. Stay tuned for the link soon.

Now, the path for getting keyed for Karazhan has begun. It looks like level 70 will be fun, since he’s already got a blue 1H mace (Apexis Crystal Mace) that does 71.7dps! Well, it cost 120g, but that was cheap for what simple blue armor sells for. That doesn’t really matter, though, because in just 2 short hours of questing away in Nagrand, I racked up 75g and didn’t turn in my last 3 quests for over 13g each. The mace is up to 334 skill level, so I’m almost hoping Gitr can find another one on the AH and dual wield them when he’s not running an instance as a tank.

You know what’s so darn cool about being 70? I don’t give a rip what level something is now. I need rep in Nagrand, so I just went out after the lowest level mobs that gave rep and drops. Such a great feeling.

It’s late, once again, so I’d better get some sleep so I can function at work and school.

Introducing BlizzCast – The Blizzard Podcast

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Blizzard has joined the rest of the community with their very own podcast today! The first episode features Samwise Didier, their Art Director and concept artist. They discuss what he loves about Warcraft and Starcraft. It’s a great listen and I look forward to many more episodes. Down with WoWpodcast, long live BlizzCast.

Check out the transcript if you are on a lame connection or download the 24MB mp3 file.

You can subscribe to the feed by clicking this link and, as always, please subscribe to our feed to make sure you don’t miss any of our articles.

Ding 69! Ten Hours to Go…

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This morning Gitr dinged 69 by completing a quest from Ruaan Weald, deep in the Wyrmcultist cave. Experience Fu is estimating that I have 10 hours of leveling to go to ding 70. Here is my plan for the week to get to 70 in good shape:

  • Go back to Shadowmoon Valley to complete many of those quests that I’ve neglected by doing Netherstorm instead.
  • Do frequent LFGs when I do get 2-3 hours to play to get into some instances for XP, rep, and loot.
  • Play the AH to get enough gold for my flying mount upon the big ding. Time to go get Auctioneer Classic again… Advanced is bugging the heck out of me.
  • Clear out all of my group/elite quests that are jamming my questlog.
  • Research the Protection spec I will be using for instances/raiding with Doom’s Assailantsย on Silvermoon (US-PvE).
  • Consider re-speccing now and simply instancing my way to 70 in really fine, fun fashion. Who wants to grind/quest anyway?

Preferred Methods of Improving Your Gear, Sub-70

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Since all of my toons are still sub-70s, none of them are eligible for the best crafted items or the heroic/end-game instance loot yet. That still leaves me with several options for getting better gear than the standard quest rewards. Let’s begin, shall we? Then we’ll discuss what is best.

  • Outlands provides a cornucopia of group quests at the end of long questlines that often reward you with blue, even some socketed, gear that is far superior to the regular AH greens.
  • PvP is an option all the way through the levels, with varying degrees of reward value. You could arguably save up all of your BG marks for level 70 and get some working man’s epics right out of the gate.
  • Rep rewards offer blues for Honored/Revered status throughout Outlands. The Hellfire Peninsula rewards for Honored will hold you over for several levels, so check out what the later rewards will get you and whether they are worth it to you, since those 5-mans only take 2 hours with a PuG or 30-60 minutes with well-geared guildies.
  • Lastly, who can resist socketed blue gear from the 5-man instances that you will need to master in order to do them in Heroic mode anyway? There is some dang fine gear in there that puts the old Tier 0.5 junk to shame.

Personally, I’ve been indulging myself in as many quests as possible and running them all the way to the final Elite group quests. When I have a bucketfull of them, I look for someone in the area or hop on the guild chat or LFG channel to knock a few out for massive XP and shiny rewards. Some faction quests take you to instances for super rewards, starting in Ramparts onward.

On the nights that I have the time and patience, I run the instances for Rep, XP, and loot… all in one. You should be able to get 15-20g, another 20-40g in greens and vendor trashing, and a considerable amount of rep if you haven’t done all of the quests in the zone yet.

My personal favorite when I wasn’t leveling as fast was to play the AH a tad harder than normal and just buy my way into blue and purple gear. I’m making about 150g per day by questing, vendor trashing, herbing, and selling greens on the AH. I haven’t even been playing the AH because I hate Auctioneer Advanced for that, so I’m going back to the regular version to play for my flying mount coming up in 26 bars.

OMG! 132% until 70! /shudder

Raiding for Dummies, Noobs, and Jabberwocks

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So I have started yet another toon, but this one will, perhaps, get to do something none of my other ones have: that is raid. He is my first Alliance character in over a year, so that in itself will take some getting used to. I know the Horde area like the back of my hand, but playing the Alliance feels like a whole new game.

I have done many 5-man instances, but honestly I still feel like a noob with every one I have done. So I need to not only level a new toon rather quickly, I need to practice and hopefully master my class. So I have a few questions to help me become a better player, so that when I do raid, I wonโ€™t be the weakest link.

  • What are some things one should be doing while leveling to prepare for instances?
  • Should I try pre-BC instances to better learn my class, or should I just get to 70 as fast as possible and maybe do run thrus of lower ones then?
  • What has someone done that made you pleasantly surprised in a PUG? What have you done that surprised people?
  • Now in my case, I am a Demon spec Warlock. I am going that way for leveling. When PUGing, should I automatically give everyone a Healthstone? If there isnโ€™t a Priest who do I Soulstone? Should I offer to do crowd control or just ask which demon they want?
  • What are some of the worst things you have seen a Warlock do in an instance that I should avoid? What have you done in an instance that immediately made you smack your head with your palm?

Give a guy and hand and give me an education I won’t soon forget.

Gitr Goes Widescreen

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This Christmas, Gitr broke down and built a brand new system and got gift cards to buy a new LCD monitor. What transpired is nothing short of a gaming revolution. WoW is an all new experience now. If you are playing on an old computer, trust me, I feel you. I was running at 1024×768 resolution with the shortest vision and nearly everything turned off. Entering Ramparts, frame rates dropped to a measly 4fps, which makes both tanking and healing exceedingly difficult.

On Wednesday, the new computer got built with a fresh install of Windows XP on a new SATA drive and got all of the WoW patches loaded for some evening playtime. Here’s the current system build, resulting in 35-72fps (depending on the location and party size) with everything at max and my new 1680×1050 resolution:

  • 2.66MHz Intel Core2 Duo with 1033FSB
  • ASUS SLI-ready motherboard
  • 2GB 800 DDR2 RAM
  • 160GB Western Digital SATA HD
  • ASUS Silent nVidia GeForce 8600GT 512MB
  • Envision 22″ Widescreen LCD with DVI-D cable

I’ll move to SLI, 4GB RAM and additional hard drives when the time comes and then top out with a Core 2 Extreme when the prices match what I just paid for this chip. So… using my wife’s bonus, we got all of this stuff in time for my week off of work (don’t worry, I have money coming in this week to replenish her bonus), got a desk, rearranged the office, and took down all of the Christmas decorations. It’s been quite a week, so it’s time to start posting again. BTW, Ding 68!