Return to WoW

So I've been back playing WoW for about 2 weeks now and decided for this week's Warcraft Wednesday, I would give a little recap of sorts of how the first 2 weeks have gone.

First night back, I didn't do too much, aside from login to all my characters, check their gear and their money and professions and all that. I learned my main alliance guild is pretty dead, which is surprising as it was one of the top raiding guilds on my server throughout Burning Crusade and in Wrath up until I stopped playing. Turns out, they were having trouble with 25man raid attendance for progression nights and so those that wanted to raid new content left, some formed their own guild with non-guild friends, etc. So my main alliance guild is like a ghost town, as no one ever seems to be on. I also learned I got booted from my horde guild for being gone too long, despite telling the guild leader I was taking a break from the game and would be back closer to the release of Cataclysm. The casual raid guild I was in spawned off the casual RP guild my hordie was in for years and so I knew a bunch of the players in the guild.

My 2nd night back I joined a ToC10 pug (pick-up group) on my Boomkin. About half the members were all from the same guild so I felt okay with it - when I stopped playing pugging ToC (10 or 25) was a bad idea as most struggled with the PVP boss fight. We did pretty good though and cleared the place in under an hour. Despite not playing my Boomkin since last summer, my dps was pretty good considering my gear - I kept up and was on top of most the others in the raid. It was about 2am when we finished and I asked some of the members of the guild if they usually run raids late at night like this - they said sometimes, saying they often do stuff late at night with whatever guild members are on - if they can get a group going, they go. They seemed pretty decent so I asked to join on my Boomkin since my guild was a ghost town and promptly got an invite (they were trying to recruit most of us in the raid that weren't in the guild).

The Saturday I leveled my rogue a little bit in Borean Tundra and finally ran into Jeny via the ingame Real-ID - she had sent me a friend request weeks prior and it was there when I logged in, but we kept missing each other by hours and even minutes. I only have 3 people on my Real ID and I like it like that - Jeny (old roomie), hubby, and hubby's ingame friend who lives nearby and hang out with every so often (he was in our wedding too). I'm also relived that it somehow displays my generic common married name instead of my unique maiden name, as you can view the names of all the friends that your Real ID friend is friends with. Kinda creepy. My stalker-like tendencies kicked in and of course I looked, just to see if I recognized anyone, lol... I also put my rogue into my Boomkin's new guild, as she was in my banker guild and that was pretty lonely as it's all my unguilded lowbie alts with 1 of hubby's lowbie alts.

I also joined a VoA pug (forget if it was 10 or 25man). I soon realized as we were about to start that they had added a 4th boss to the instance, so I quickly pst'd Jeny and asked in my guild chat if there was anything special I needed to know about this new boss - basically, I pew pew the bosses, don't step in orbs when they spawn and pew pew them down and then go back to the boss. Easy peasy. Sadly, no one seems to finish VoA anymore - you're lucky if you get a group that still wants to pwn the fire boss!

I also looked at the items you can buy with Frost emblems and decided I want the caster druid idol for my Boomkin, which is 30 emblems. This prompted me to finish the ICC opening instance quests, which upon completion unlocks the next 5-man instance in ICC for you and gives you like 2 Frost emblems per instance quest, so I got 6 that way. Then I realized that the first random heroic instance you queue for, you get 2 Frost emblems upon completion, so I've been doing that daily. I also finished the ICC instance quest chain on my paladin and my belf hunter too and try to squeeze in a random daily heroic in each night too.

I also remembered you can buy tier 9 gear with Triumph emblems, which drop in all the instances and raids now and if you keep running random heroics after the first one, you get Triumph emblems at the end of each instance. My druid got a pair of tier 9 gloves off the fire boss in VoA10 and she had plenty of emblems so I decided to upgrade her 2 pieces of tier 7 to tier 9. My hunter also bought a new piece of tier 9 gear and has her 2-piece bonus. I'm working on my pally's gear - she got some nice upgrades in the ICC instances, including a new 2h axe (she'd been using the one off the final boss in Naxx10 since early 2009!)

I finally got to run Oculus on my Boomkin and Pally and my pally got her Northrend Dungeonmaster achievement - everyone on my server hates that instance (it's not so bad...) and prior to the battlegroup dungeon queue you could not find a group for it. The battlegroup dungeon queue was new around the time I took my hiatus so I'm just now getting to use it.

I also saved a random heroic group I was in from wiping in Halls of Lightning - we were fight a mob of baddies when a pat (patrol) aggro'd and killed our healer and then 1 of our DPSers, so it was just me, the tank and another DPSer. I switched out of Boomkin and started healing, as healing is my offspec, I just hadn't gotten back in the habit of doing it yet. I did a good job but the healer wanted a druid battle rez, so I gave him one... only for him to die. Again. So I just kept healing and I kept us all up. I was very proud of myself for the save, since I hadn't healed a group in ages and wasn't even in the right spec/gear for healing.

I also went through one of the guild banks hubby and I inherited and sold off a bunch of useless stuff that neither of us would ever use again (old profession leveling mats, potions, etc) and put it all up on the Auction House last weekend - I had like 700+ individual items for sale and sold all but like 50 or so. I made so much I was able to transfer most of what I made the first day to my Boomkin to buy her epic flying - yay!

My Belf Hunter also rejoined her old RP guild, as I ran into some old friends from there that were playing again and needed a guild home (I was tired of getting "ninja invited" to guilds while in major cities). Things seem a lot more lax though, like there's still RP, but you can talk about anything else in guild chat now too and use phrases like "lol" and such. 

Other things I learned:

• Heroics are super easy now and are pretty much a joke - the bosses are as easy as trash to kill because everyone is currently so over geared - in Heroic UP, we killed the first chick before she came down from her first time in the air!
• My rogue sucks in 5mans when there's casters in the group - their AoE pwn's my melee dps
• You can now transfer heirloom items to your toons cross faction! On my pally, since I had so many useless Conquest emblems, I bought my level 30 horde priest a piece of heirloom gear and sent it to her.
• If you don't wear a tabard in instances you'll get rep with the Alliance Vanguard (if you're alliance) and if you're exalted with them you can buy your epic flying for 4000g in Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord instead of 5000g in Dalaran. I did this on my Boomkin

Also, there were quite a few "dumbasses" playing Monday night.

Let me explain.

So I'm playing my Blood Elf shadow priest and decide to use the random dungeon finder. I kept getting the Scarlet Monastery Graveyard, which is one of the shortest instances in the game. The first group I had went fine, but the 2nd time... wow the tank was a jerk! As we're passing through the graveyard and headed into the crypt I completely run out of mana, so like I normally do when that happens while in combat, I start wanding the mobs until I have enough mana to cast a spell. And the tank is all "Why the f*ck are you wanding?!" to which I respond, I was out of mana - would he rather I just stand there and do nothing? He says yes, and yells at me to "drink" (which fills your mana bar) however he keeps chain pulling everything so I can't get out of combat to sit and drink up to refill my mana. Then on the final boss, this off-hand spell power orb drops - the mage and healer both roll need for it, as does the warrior tank... and he wins the roll. I saracastically comment that warrior need so much spell power and he's like "yep, enchanting FTW!" And disenchants the item promptly - there's a reason there's need/greed buttons and a disenchant button but whatever... a leatherworking pattern also dropped and he rolled need on that too - doubt he could use it though.

Then later, I'm questing in Thousand Needles, near the Raceway killing scorpids and this dwarf rides up next to me on his ram. He says something, but being that he's an alliance toon and I'm on a horde toon, I can't read what he said - it shows up as gibberish as horde and alliance can't communicate outside emoting (gestures). He then runs and rounds up a good bunch of the mobs nearby. They start attacking him however they soon drop aggro... and all latch onto me, killing me in the process as I can't handle 5+ mobs that are each several levels higher than me. He says something else, but again, it shows up as gibberish. Annoyed, I log over to one of my alliance toons and ask the guy if that was really necessary. He's all "what?" and I'm like "dude, you aggro'd all the mobs and then stood right next to me as they dropped aggro from you and went straight to me, killing me - was that really necessary to do?" "Well, I said something to you... sorry I haven't played in like a year" I was about to mention I hadn't played in 9 months, but decided not to, instead I remind him "Horde can't read what alliance says - it shows up as gibberish. Blood elves are horde toons." "I didn't see any blood elves." "Dude, look again - the character you got killed was a blood elf." "You're a blood elf?" "Not on this toon - the toon I was playing on was though." "Well I said something to you..." "Dude, horde and alliance can't talk - why do you think I had to pop on this toon to have this chat with you?" I got annoyed and switched back over to retrieve my poor blood elf's corpse and finish my quest. He rode off to wherever right as I rezzed. Talk about annoying though...

And that's my recent adventures in the World of Warcraft.