Thursday, March 17, 2011

Sooo ya!

It has been many moons since I have graced this page with the meandering and musical notes of my typing prowess. I have been through hell and back, got T-shirts to prove it too. I have injured my back, been on workers comp, returned to work and have been laid off since I posted last. This is not to say that these are the cause of my long silence, just a re-cap of events outside of the game that have occurred since my last write.

After my last post I was sure I would never return to WOW on a regular basis or at least anything near my then habitual 8+ hours per day. I was lucky in that when I hurt my back and was out of work for almost 10 months, my wife allowed me to return to Azeroth seeing as I could do little else while either doped up to my gills or in so much pain I couldn’t even see straight. SO I played quite a bit then and was able to continue playing after returning to work. I was playing less yet still having a good time playing and digging the new content. I still am.

I went back to work for almost a year before being laid of due to government cutbacks. So as I languished at home lamenting my lost job and very few prospects for a future job right away, I played more WOW. I was excited for the launch of CATA, and have been playing it since launch. Hell I was playing it before launch. I have to say I am impressed with the way they handled this expansion. It went off with very little trouble and not too many glitches. Those glitches that did occur were quickly fixed and no one even had time to QQ about them. There are still a few lingering, but I’m not sure that they are even worth mentioning since they don’t seem that common.

Since we do not have a ton of money we only have one account active and it happens to be the original account created in the very beginning of my WOW time. It contains my second character Jolygreen and his friend Coat. Now while I was hurt and out of work I managed to get him to 80 and geared very well. I then stopped playing him in order to level a Holy Paladin, I missed playing a pally.

I made him Holy and it turned out to be really fun. His name is Kerfluffle. As I started playing they completely revamped the way the characters can allot skill points and changed the trees for cata. It came at a good point for me in that I was not all set in how I healed. I was able to learn the new way of healing quickly. For this pally I took full advantage of the new random dungeon systems as soon as I was high enough level. I leveled Kerfluffle almost exclusively inside dungeons using mostly dungeon quests. Applause to Blizz for putting the quest givers into the dungeons and having some quests activate and get turned in on the fly inside the dungeons. I managed to get to 70 or so before having to quest outside the instances, mainly for gear as I was getting very few pieces of decent gear inside them. I screwed around a bit an got geared enough to do the 70+ instances and then continued to heal inside dungeons until 80 and left them again for gear.

Kerfluffle got to 80 very quickly. I actually dinged 80 before cata was released. I was also 80 for a few weeks after it got released but meh. I was 80 for some time really and was able to gear him up for and beyond heroic level instances long before cata dropped. After I became pretty epic at heals I decided to explore ret a bit more and began gearing him up for it. He does ok but still isn’t what I want for dps. Gear will come eventually I guess.

Cata dropped and I had to wait for a few weeks to afford the game. I decided to go for the collectors ed for the swag. Here’s where I will end this post so I can continue the next with my first impressions of cata.