Mount Farming

I don't always play World of Warcraft. I played it when it was new, didn't much care for it. Many years passed. Didn't think much about it. Some friends of mine played, and I would hear about it usually rolling my eyes.Then sometime in 2012 a close friend of mine gave me an account with a  fairly large amount of playtime on it. I began to play, and found something in the game that interested me; mount collecting. 

So I saw the end of the Cataclysm expansion, and the beginning of Pandaria. The account ran out of time, and I didn't return till right before the next expansion would hit. This is where my mount collection got much bigger. 

The expansion, Warlords of Draenor, had two things about it that made it very friendly for my hobby. One it was a very friendly expansion for making new characters and getting them to max level. It was also a very easy to farm gold in due to the addition of Garrisons. So once a character was at max level you spent 5 min doing your garrison stuff, and then had free time.

So between lots of easy gold, and lack of much else to do, I was able to acquire most of the available mounts at the time. Mounts from old raids that have a 1% drop rate, not to hard to get when you run the old raid 10 time a week with all your alts. Mounts from 5 man instances, there again no problem, but even faster because you can run those every day. And of course the ones that you can just trade between players, that is where the garrison's gold comes in. It was a wonderful time. 

Then Legion came out. It was not friendly toward alternate characters. Nor was it a great from gold. So again I left. Came back just last month, friend gave me some time. Not sure if I will stay.

Improving World of Warcraft Part 2

Warlords of Draenor

A new expansion to World of Warcraft released this month. Just like the last four expansions, the launch went poorly to say the least. Long waits to sign on, new incredibly glitchy content, and of course the worst trolls and white knights fighting for hours in general chat.

To actually play the game you will need to wait. It will take between 90 minutes and 5 hours to sign on. You will need to find something to do during this time. This is where a handheld or gaming console would come in very handy. Never thought a new PC release would lead me to playing more 3ds and Playstation 3. Seems Blizzard found a way to make it happen.

Now once you are on you will be greeted with new content. For some reason almost none of this content is phased, so you will be trying to do the same quest as over a thousand other players at the same time. This will make completing any quests virtually impossible. You need to kill 8 of a particular monster, so do the other 1500 players in your immediate area, so good luck with that. Not only that also the servers are going down several times an hour hotfix various problems, so after hours of waiting you will likely get less than 15 minutes of time in game. That monthly charge on your credit card seems so worth it.

Now if you do actually manage to get on for more than a few minutes you will get to watch "The rule of Aaron" in action. If you are unfamiliar "The rule of Aaron" the idea that the worst 1% of a group will ruin it for everyone. In this case the worst 1% is debating in general chat about how the launch is going. One group feels that there is no problem and no mistakes have been or are being made.  The other feels they are being raped (or worse). Both groups are very vocal, and neither are interested in facts or logic.

Now the actual new content is good. There is a city building mechanic that is very well done, along with new and interesting zones. The loot system has been revamped giving you more of a reason to go through content multiple times. The new stuff is great, actually getting on to enjoy it is the main problem.