Locked, Loaded, So Why Unsub?

First, a quick toasty and tasty roast.

I recently caught a retweet from Power Word: Beg about “Top Gold Makers to follow on Twitter 2014!”…  which I affectionately call “People who have not yet told me to go get a job”.  In the list, he listed a whopping 2 people I would definitely follow if you’re looking to score gold consistently (and not luck of the draw 10k crap).  I’ll let you decide who.  And if I chapped your ass by saying only 2 because you know who ONE of them is and you know you aren’t the other one, then please, feel free to take it up with me after class.

Besides, anything you read in public is useless information because when everyone knows, nobody wins.  It’s one reason I don’t publish “How To” guides on my own blog, I muse about thought processes because I already know what I’m doing and obviously most don’t.  For example, if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll never get anything except my kneejerk reactions to things, so you have to follow me for entertainment purposes only.  Since I’m not doing this for money, I don’t care how many or who follows me.  Professionally I’ve dealt in trade secrets my entire career, even signing NDAs with every contract I enter into.  One even forced me to relocate geographically upon severance.  So if you want to know what I do, you become my friend and prove we are on equal footing and the relationship would be beneficial for both parties.  Twitter is essentially high-tech bathroom graffiti with hyperlinks.

I don’t follow the Stay-At-Home streamers, they either need to get back to school or do something more productive, and I’m busy.  I do however rely on retweets of others to let me know how these boneheads are doing because it’s just not worth the time to follow the inane banter that their pointless little lives produce while calling it their pursuit in life.  Check out Gamebreaker and see how that’s going.  Just saying, my company is hiring.  Within a few hours you could pay for that fresh 90!

So support your local bleggar – tell them to go get a job.  And on to our topic!

What’s Content?  Certainly Not What You Think It Is From The Looks of It

Blizzard went and released the pre-sale event with a ~9 month projected release date on it.  They knew what they were doing, Q1 ends in 3 weeks, and they knew there would be some fallout from it because the majority of their playerbase are whiney little entitled shitheads that are used to being handed the carrots now rather than chasing them.

Let’s further talk about how freaking stupid people act by saying there’s nothing to do between now and expansion and we have months of endless boredom ahead of us.  No, really, these are talking monkeys who should uninstall and leave my game alone – everytime these chimp brains get together Blizzard takes more shit away from me.  Back when I raided was always pushing for server pole positions and having to loot players from competing guilds, my favorite time in the game was “Me” time.

Progression is over, you have just under a year to play the game your way and do interesting things that you didn’t have time for normally.  It’s been this way for freaking 10 years, progression, break, progression, break.  Anyone who’s screaming for new content at this point needs to join the bleggars and go get a job with all that free time they now have.  Like I said, I love getting content breaks, it’s sort of like daylight savings, you get an hour of extra sleep but at the expense of losing sleep when it begins!

Given how behind the devs have seemed in Twitter and elsewhere, a summer or early fall release just never seemed to be in the cards.  I said June, but that was way back in January and prior to seeing the type of tweets we’ve all seen.  After all, Blizz has historically been about polish, and forced releases are just not going to be something they engage in.

Today is all about staying occupied while we’re in a time of relative peace.  That’s right you serial killers in training, there’s lots of content.

Interesting Things To Do Between Now and Expansion Release

1.    Join OpenRaid

I know the vast majority of players are decent people.  Some decent people are also decent players, who know how to treat their fellow players in a public raid setting.  Check out OpenRaid.org, get yourself some street cred and make some friends.  I’m on there, and I do things from time to time when I want to go for an achievement.  If you suck, or like to rage in vent or drop groups as a revenge tactic, please stay away.  Otherwise, everybody in the pool!

2.    Complete Gold Proving Grounds

Most of you are going to have to do Silver just to get into Heroic dungeon modes anyhow (thanks to Blizz for letting us know LFR is definitely trash for the first new tier).  Get gold and then see how far you get with Endless.  It’s merely a test of your ability to time cooldowns and spec for a fight.  If you cannot get Silver, it’s ok, you can always …

2b. Learn how to play

It’s a perfect time to get that dps up over 50k with i500.  You know who you are, I see you in LFR with ungemmed/unenchanted gear.  If you’re rolling Timeless Isle 496 trash, you should easily be doing 80-100k regardless of mods and with the right mods.  I ran across a 515 hunter in ToT LFR the other night.  The guy was doing 34,000 dps and whining because he wasn’t getting battle rezzes.  And we wonder why tigers eat their young?

3.    Challenge modes

Grab 4 friends, some flasks, and invisibility potions and go get the gear before it’s gone forever.  Or find a group running them for gold.  I’ll tell you this, this is one of the only Tmogs you’ll want to have.  Between my S11 Elite Paladin set and my CM Gold Challenge mode gear, I’m set.  Two sets of very exclusive pieces, and the mount isn’t half bad either (Silver).  You don’t even take durability in CMs, so there’s really no excuse – except not knowing what you’re doing.

4.    Get Beloved

I personally got this when it required 70 Exalted factions, but it now only requires 60.  You make a ton of gold running the various raids for rep, and some also give up pets now.  There are plenty of resets left between now and expansion.  If you can’t be asked to do some dailies, then there’s just no hope for you.

5.    Over 600 battle pets are available

And they need to get to 25!  If you haven’t done them by now, give them a try.  I was the original “Pokemon sucks, screw MOP” asshole, now I’m with the program.  Go visit Warcraftpets.com and read some guides or see where you fall.  I’m currently working my up the Illidan ranks again, 21 spots til #1!  I love when you can keep score.

6.    Finish the Pandaria dungeon achievements

These are pretty easy, although some are annoying.  Get it done before Blizzard goes and fucks up something they’ll never fix thus removing the mount forever. It happens!  The pink dragon is a decent skin.

7.    Finish the remaining quests

I’m big on quests.  Finish Loremaster of Pandaria, it’s a decent amount of gold, rep, and toys.  You may also find out the answers to several things you’ve seen in game.  I know when I finished Dread Wastes it was an “a ha!” moment.

8.    Archeology – Seeker of Knowledge

If you have this achievement, you’ve got one of the rarest titles in the game.  It will only take you several dozen hours to get it assuming you don’t get screwed by the RNG gods, so get started now.  Besides that, you get a really nice amount of gold from the Tolvir boxes which would be the preferred box-dump.

At the very least, you will get all the BOAs offered for MoP, so when WoD hits you can start on those, too.

9.    Grind Conqueror or Justicar

Old school achievement, entirely time spent based.  Don’t suck and you’ll get it faster.  Get a group of people and dominate!

10.    Finish leveling all character slots and all classes on your server

Who needs free 90s?  Or at least have 10x90s and 1x60 for when you buy the expansion.  The 60 will receive 600 professions.  The only real reason to have a free 90 is to kickstart your WoW playing career, reroll for free, or get carried in LFRs until you get some better gear.  Profession slots are nice, but we’re not really in a boom time for those.  Besides, I think it’s more interesting to learn where the class has been instead of just seeing one level of it.

I will say I’m disappointed I’m being asked to pay an extra 10 bucks for this expansion, which offers a free 90, when I have all my server’s slots at 90.  This is more of an annoyance, like being told you are required to tip 18% for parties of 6 or more and then having a server that gives you a terrible experience.  (yes, Humperdinks, thanks for the memory)

11.    Finish all old content raids and their achievements

Hey, it’s a free mount most of the time, why not?  Gear is temporary, mounts are forever.  You will need a group for most of them.  Ulduar through Dragon Soul, and using OpenRaid makes this definitely possible regardless of your server size.

12.    Finish something that will take weeks

During Wrath it was Insane, the Scepter of the Shifting Sands, and ZG mounts before they changed them forever (also, check, check, check/check).  Today, you can go for the mount in Vale of Eternity (shard drops), which also allows you to grind exalted Golden Lotus across all toons since the shards are BOA and can be mailed to one character.  Grind the remaining achievements that require you to get exalted with competing factions (Sholozar Basin, Shattrath) and be the envy of achievement whores everywhere.

13.    Roll the other faction on another server, or maybe on your main server

Go 1-90 as your favorite mirror faction/race.  Gnome? Go Forsaken.  Tauren? Try Night Elf. Worgen? Go Goblin.  This will award the Double Agent achievement and you get to see the storyline from another perspective.  I did this back in TBC and I was shocked at how awesome the Horde was.  Today I’m almost entirely Horde. That’s right, fuck the Alliance.

14.    Do something bizarre, crazy, and probably against the TOS

For me, it’s always rolling over to the Goldshire Inn on Moon Guard.  Nekkid neckbeards all over the place all looking for the hookup and to act crazy and like deviates.  It’s entertaining for me, but for some people I’m sure this will be memories that last a lifetime.

15.    Play for the sake of playing

It’s not all about getting the best gear out of carrymode raid instances and then demanding more “content”.  This game is an endless carrot chase, with different modeled bosses doing the same thing – dropping loot.  Take it from someone that remembers the reaction to Hellfire Peninsula when it was 10 minutes after midnight on release.  Your epics become worthless in the next expansion and frankly, that LFR gear is garbage anyhow when within a month of WoD’s release you’ll probably have access to Heroic SoO versions for your xmogging pleasure.  Get away from the Auction House for a few hours, go make some new friends, do someone a solid and run them though some dungeons.

There’s a truckload of things to do, and if you can’t find something, then you aren’t really trying.  If you must unsub, then do it and leave the rest of us alone.

I await the first “That’s All Boring” reply.  Fine, if you’ve gone as far as you can this expansion to your satisfaction, then take a break.  Maybe join a gym and get rid of the Panda-Paunch, fatty.  Can’t be asked to go outside?  Fine, pick a different game for a little while.  But do not sit and demand more content because you’re bored, entitled, or have higher than hell expectations from a 10 year old game that’s had this same track record of lulls since the end of Classic.

This remains an MMO-RPG.  MMO doesn’t stand for Money Making Online (yes, you, the AH Junkies) and RPG has always stood for character progression.  While they’ve removed a lot of the aspect of progression with keeping everyone at current content by fiat (and losers calling it Quality of Life improvements…  really…), the majority of the remaining content requires your attendance and attention.  While we’re experiencing an RPG within a video game format, there’s still a world outside of stupid raids.  If you aren’t entertained, then check out.  Again, for the third time, stop acting like degenerate addicts by demanding new content from a manufacturer that historically doesn’t respond well to customer demands and threatening them with withholding your wallet.  They’ll let you in on the next adventure when they’re good and flippin’ ready.

Oh yeah, I’m probably going to go play some Rift again!

Thanks for stopping in!