2701

Exactly what I was looking for. I should’ve thought of that page in the first place. Thanks!

2702

If you want to raise your cooking skill on a lowbie alt, now’s the time to do it. I went from like 140s to 280+. I’ll probably grind it until I’m 350. The Thanksgiving vendors outside each city sell recipes that’ll take you through 300. And then all the ingredients are purchasable, though not at each city… but mages are porting people between cities.

2703

There’s also a neat 10% reputation boost when you have Spirit of Sharing (gained from eating at tables), so if you’re grinding reputations it’ll help you a bit.

2704

Yes, this is definitely true. It only takes an hour or so to go from 0 to 300ish. Alliance side, you start in Stormwind, skill up as much as you can, then go to Ironforge, then to Darnassus. Finally, you return to Stormwind for the final stretch. Most of it can be done pretty much AFK until the very final stretch that requires killing a bunch of turkeys, but that’s pretty easy, too. And the main goal of the exercise is to get past all the really awful skilling required for vanilla cooking.

2705

Dedication is right. It’s like a month of grinding to get both the tokens and the rep, isn’t it?

2706

I think you can theoretically get access to the vendor in something like 15 days. After the first 3, you can start doing dailies that get you the tokens for when you unlock the vendor. So probably less than a month. Personally, it took me over a year, because I hate doing dailies.

2707

You have to become a Valiant with the 5 reps in your faction, which each take 5 days assuming you do all of their dailies every day. You also have to be exalted with all 5, which usually isn’t too hard and is made easier by taking the rep token things from the other dailies. But you also have to actually do the other Argent Tourney dailies for the seals. I don’t remember how many you can get in a day, but it’s not much. Something like 10 or 12 from the quests themselves and then 3 from the heroic ToC 5 man. It’s probably quicker and less maddeningly boring to just run heroics for JP.

2708

On the negative side, I am not a big fan of Blizzard’s approach to live events, which seems to be “if you’re not at the level cap, get out (and here’s a portal for you to use)!”

I am working on the pilgrim bounty cookingpalooza with my new level 20 warrior and the Cataclysm pre-event starts in Stormwind just as I need to head to Ironforge. The griffon cannot be used, as there’s an ‘emergency portal’ in its place – which will port me to the city gates, which is pretty much where I already am. I don’t know if the tram is working during the event but getting to it would involve dodging a bunch of level ?? elementals (and Blizzard sure loves that model).

Why anyone at Blizzard thought removing the flight paths out of the city during the event would be a good idea is beyond me. Talk about a buzzkill. As enthused as I was last night, I’m equally annoyed tonight.

2709

Yes the event is really interesting.
As I predicted most people don’t give a fuck anymore as they have the achievements / farmed the extra bosses so at least during off-times it will take quite some time until the Earthen Ring despawns the elementals.

From a logical perspective I think it’s realistic that in the wake of an elemental invasion normal services would cease incl. banks / auction houses / vendors and flights.
It’s like a terrorist strike if you will where all of these things would stop as well (airports / stock exchange / shops).

The main question is if this will end once the shattering happens this week or if it will go on until December 7th when Cata goes live.
Dec. 7th would be pretty annoying I agree though I evacuated all of my bank chars to Undercity and have the achievement on all my mains so I can ignore the invasions.

2710

As far as logic and immersion goes, this is the same company that puts NPCs in the game with names like McWeaksauce. :P

I can understand trying to impose certain logical rules on the invasions but the designers have to realize that a lot of players won’t give two hoots about them and will not want to be inconvenienced by having flight paths, mailboxes and other services in major cities suddenly vanish. This isn’t a unique problem to WoW, as I’ve seen world events in other MMOs also handled less than ideally.

The bottom line for me is if your design is actively annoying to players, chances are it’s not a good deign. The world event – if you’re not a direct participant – is pretty annoying (to me).

Ironically, after getting off the boat in Stormwind Harbor and promptly getting squashed by an elemental before I could do anything, I realized my best course of action was to simply revive at the graveyard in Elwynn Forest, since that was fairly close to the pilgrim bounty setup, anyway.

2711

It’s running until the shattering, which should be soon, unless of course they add yet another stage pre-shattering.

2712

Just be glad they didn’t do the zombie event this time around. You would have really hated that.

2713

Zombie event was awesome.

2714

MMO-Champion is reporting that the Shattering will take place during tomorrow’s downtime. How convenient. :)

2715

Blizzard said most people hated it, probably for the reasons Ned listed here. They just wanted to putter around doing what they do, and didn’t care to be interrupted.

Oh, good. Fortunately I moved all of my alts out of Dalaran yesterday, except my mage who can port himself.

2716

Need to finish 5 more dailies on my lock (for handing in 25 quests once Cata is live) and then I’m leaving Dal forever as well with her and the druid.

Rogue will probably come back once to do the book achievement sometimes.

I thought about one thing yesterday: Those Holiday achievements that required putting stuff on players of the other faction (like now -> shooting a rogue of every race) will be much more difficult in the future as there is no city where both factions will hang out for now.
I smell a lot of dead bodies in front of the cities…

2717

Or, you know, PvP.

2718

MMO Champion also posted all the info about the new factions and their rewards.

Thank god they all have tabards this time!

2719

Is anyone else just…giddy…about all the new stuff? When I created this thread all those years (year) ago I never imagined I’d be this excited. Tingly, even.

2720

Yeah, giddy enough to re-sub and buy the last two expansions and start playing again after 3+ years.