Reputation, Mounts, and Pets

Oh man, oh man, oh man! Not only have I not been doing personal updates, but I'd like to take note of the things happening in World of Warcraft! Note, I'm not a professional news media person. Nor am I a news media person of any sort. Most all of these things (Okay, all of them) are things I've read off of MMO-Champion, which always has its latest news article right there to the left of my posts.

Earning reputation with various factions has long been an important part to World of Warcraft and as time has gone on, we've made tweaks and changes to the system to make it more interesting and to give players access to unique items. For example, we recently hotfixed the game to apply a change to some reputation items which you can read about in our recently updated blog that allows players to purchase certain items much sooner. And we're not done!

Coming in a future patch, earning reputation is going to become much more fluid. Basically, once one of your characters has reached at least Revered reputation with a faction, all other characters on the same Battle.net account will then earn reputation with the same faction at twice the rate. Going one step further, and as an added bonus, your main character who reached Revered will also begin to earn double the reputation as he or she climbs to Exalted.

Here's a simplified break down:

Any single character earns Revered reputation with a faction
All other characters on the Battle.net account begin to earn double reputation for that one same faction
The Revered character earns double reputation as he or she works toward Exalted
???
Profit

We’ll keep you posted as this change is closer to being implemented. In the meantime, we’d love to hear your feedback!

Well! I've been thinking about how I want to handle my army of level 85 characters. Hey, don't judge, I've been playing since vanilla, I've had a lot of time to perfect the art of leveling and fail to subdue my alt-itis. With this, I think I will be putting off leveling any of my characters in Pandaria until this patch hits. A handful of my reputation farms might also be stopping on my main at Revered until this new system is implemented, depending on how long it takes and if the revered to exalted boost for the main character is going to be officially part of the new system.

This is a good thing for me because I don't want to get burned out on leveling, reputation grinding, or anything of the sort. And, with only one character on my main's server (potentially two. I'm torn between my Mage and my Shaman for who will be moving my gold to pay Kaless for the Panthers), this news puts a good lull in the game progression for me. It's hard for me to stop, back up, and just enjoy the game for what it is, but I have been! I really, really have been! Playing the same character for a month or two as my only level 90 will do me good.

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The 150 mount achievement meta mount is coming in 5.1! It's a Jade Kite!

Oh my. Horde side, I'm sitting at 135 mounts without counting the two freebies of having a Horde Paladin. I'll be getting the three Cloud Serpent mounts as soon as I have the gold (+3). I've already ordered up two more Panther mounts (+2), and I am planning on buying a Red Drake soon (I've never done that. +1). That means I have 143 phantom mounts right now. Go go rep farm!

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And last but not least...

A new item has been introduced that can be used to upgrade the quality of Battle Pets: Battle-stones.
Battle-stones are available in two basic types, general purpose Battle-stones that can be used to upgrade the quality of any pet, and family specific Battle-stones, which can only be used to upgrade pets of a specific pet family.
Battle-stones are available in two qualities: Flawless Battle-stones can upgrade pets directly to Rare quality, while Polished Battle-stones will upgrade a pet to Uncommon quality.
Players will have a very small chance to obtain a general purpose Flawless Battle-stone after winning a match against wild pets; defeating higher level opponents increases the chances of obtaining a stone. These valuable items are not soulbound, and can be sold on the Auction House.
Family specific Flawless Battle-stones can be found in the Sack of Pet Supplies obtained from performing Pet Trainer quests, and are Bind on Pickup.
General purpose Polished Battle-stones can be purchased for 1000 Justice Points.

For someone like me who only has an uncommon quality version of some of the rarer capture pets, or wants to boost a pet that can't be caught (Wolpertingers are Uncommon quality! How could they do that!), it'll be a wonderful change. I'm definitely going to be looking forward to adjusting some of my wonderful pets so that they're all on that epic blue stage! Equality for all pets!

Shade in the Mist!

Well. I don't even know where to begin! Other than that I've been slacking off in order to keep up in the game. To sum up my game time, I have come to hate the Golden Lotus rep grind. Yes, they give me more dailies so I can keep advancing in my reputation. But they keep giving me more dailies! Stop with the dailies! Just give me more rep for my dailies done! I do not need more to do when 2+ hours of my day alone is dailies with the handful of factions I'm playing for! And I'm not even doing all of the major raid ones off of the bat.

To start out with, I like mounts. I love mounts. Mounts are forever. Gear is not. So I have been questing towards my mounts first and foremost. The Tillers, Order of the Cloud Serpent, The Anglers, and Golden Lotus are the only people I've been working for so far! I am nearly exalted with the Order of the Cloud Serpent, so I will no longer be doing dailies for them starting tomorrow. Instead, I will add in The Klaxxi, who I have ignored for so long that they are still Neutral with me. Or maybe I won't and I will just focus on the three remaining reputations until I can drop The Tillers (2/3 through revered as of this post) as well. The Anglers, I have -just- hit Revered with today. And Golden Lotus? I'm still honored. Because I hate them. Stop giving me more dailies! At least dailies aren't required to be done every day. I can blow people off every now and then.

A friend of mine is a dumbass. I've told this to him to his face. He is a Scribe who made an epic off hand weapon and sold it to someone or traded it for a Ruby Panther. That's nice. He put it on the auction house for 25k gold. That's nice. He then told me to come and buy it off of the auction house, resulting in him getting heavily taxed. Facepalm. I told him to get me a Sapphire one next and trade it to me directly. I'll pay 25k full, he won't get taxed, and we'll both be happy. Except that by the time he could make another, the price of the Scribe fans had dropped too much. I'll be moving my gold to Moon Guard soon to pay a wonderful guildmate for the Sapphire (and eventually Onyx) Panther mounts. Until then, thanks a lot Agravar. You tried, you're a good friend.

I've also been having serious bugs with CRZ and the Netherwing. Now, I've hit exalted with the Netherwing. On other toons. Two or three other toons. I have all of them so I have no reason to grind it again. But on this toon...

That's right. That's me. On a slave drake. In Barrens. Buff and all. Not only that, I keep getting an odd sight every time I go from Teldrassil to Azuremyst of vice versa:

And to sum up my mount related news... Apart from nearly having my Blue Cloud Serpent and my new Ruby Panther, I've acquired the Dragon Turtles and can now solo Onyxia and EoE. I'll be taking my boyfriend along and we'll be trying 25 man a few times as well for achievements!

And to sum up my personal new... my Snow Cub named Snow is extremely shy and likes to hide under things. Benches. My feet. My Spectral Tiger...

Glitchcity, Outland

With Kal now going to do his Netherwing dailies for his shark dragons, I decided to tag along to tell him what the eggs look like and try to find an example one for him. Picking a random mount to fly into the zone I've only just unlocked (Am at neutral and will likely never do the quests due to owning the mounts already), I get my Vial of the Sands mount. I dragon my way in, land on the runway, and realize that with everyone aggressive, I should probably mount up and assume my orcish ways. So, I randomly get my Cenarion War Hippogryph and mount up, with no change. I fly out of the zone and back into the zone...

Well, I got it halfway right at least! And there, I saw a gnome with quite the funny looking hat!

Having enough for the day, I headed on out to do my Golden Lotus dailies. I finally got friendly after being stopped halfway through my dailies the day before due to a glitch. Well, Kal needed leather for his Booterang, so I headed into Netherstorm to skin some. Passing over the Twisting Nether, my screen did its usual freezing thanks to Cross Realm Zones. And, once I was back into the Netherstorm...

Oh well!

90 and a Mount!

Hit 90 a few days ago, and still gearing up. Every morning for the past three days I've taken a few hours out of my time to run myself and my boyfriend through heroic and regular instances for Cenarion Expedition rep. Perhaps about 6 hours worth of work later...

I also bought some Alliance Grypons, but they're not as pretty. And my boyfriend was certainly stoked. He's loving his new mount (and his druid isn't even 71, either!).

Tempest and the Virmen

One would think that a hunter, any hunter, much less this hunter would be bored with farming. And, at first, they would be proven right, for Shade was a restless soul. Even picking up a hoe and trying to wield it proved challenging at first, as her fingers honed to the finer art of stringing a bow and calloused beneath mail armor from hours of practicing her art of killing.

And yet, after her experiences with the Sha, having one come out of her, had left her shaken down to her very core. Though she hid it well, the seeds of doubt had been planted within her and swelled like a tumorous growth, slowly feeding off of her fiery spirit. Returning to more simple things that had never interested her before now proved a source of newly found comfort, and as such, she began to take time each day to tend to a patch of dirt just off of a beaten road.

Each morning, she checked the crops, harvested the abundance of food which had grown, and began anew with cleaning the soil of rocks, tilling it to keep the ground breathing. She made certain that no virmen were lurking beneath the earth, hungry for food they couldn't create but only steal, pulled weeds until her filthy bare hands ached along with her lower back. And in the end, the scent of freshly turned earth renewed her spirit and gave her hope in the rest of the day to come.

At first, her white tiger took no interest in this new activity of hers. What fun was there in tending to the earth and growing food which he could not eat? Tempest lazed around the farm, taking to sniffing at virmen holes or lazing in the fields with an ear turned towards his hunter's labors, waiting for the moment that they would be off on their next great adventure. Though he knew that this work gave her a foundation, his attention span and cravings for the hunting she had promised when they had first formed a bond didn't allow him the leisure to enjoy another's pleasure.

It was around the second or third day of the harvest that his sapphire blue eyes caught movement within the earth. Shade's back was turned at that point in time, trying to scrub her hands clean with fresh well water. Drawing himself up silently, the great tiger, born in the Jade Forest and elusive enough to evade all but the most keen-eyed of beings, stalked slowly towards these boring crops of inedible plant material. The soil nearly boiled as one of fruits of Shade's harvest began to wriggle and writhe with a newly found life. Instinctively, he reached out to tap his paw pads against this orange growth. And still, it shivered.

A low, thunderous growl escaped the feline. With starved instincts, he sank great fangs into the fruit, hoping for a mouthful of meat and blood, but none was to come. But it still fought, and too stubborn to let go, Tempest fought back. What Shade saw next was her great white tiger playing tug of war, and winning, against a virmen, which was slowly pulled out of the earth as Tempest easily overpowered the over-sized rat.

Once unearthed, the virmen quickly let go, but it was too late. Tempest lunged and had his breakfast.

Disturbed and amused at the same time, Shade forced the tiger's maw open and away from the kill, something only one of her kind could ever get away with against such a creature. Even she ran the risk of losing her hand, but it had to be done. Grabbing the thing by its tail, she gave a great swing and tossed it over the road and into a far field, away from her crops.

That day, Tempest became a great asset to guarding Shade's crops against overly large rodent men, for he was no longer left bored and wanting. Though he was given a bath more often than he would have liked, for after each lucky daily harvest, Shade would bring slightly chewed vegetables to market and didn't want to have to explain the blood stains on her white tiger.

Mists of Pandaria

Savage (now named Tempest) versus Raticate!

I've been roleplaying and questing since I began way back during February of 2006. One thing I noticed about the quests is that only a handful of them ever actually disturbed me, excited me, or moved me. In general, I was too busy trying to survive each experience to pay much attention to what was going on with the story line. The only one that ever stuck out for me was Westfall, because of the oddities of pigs without livers, the back story of the Masons being screwed over by Stormwind for their pay and making plans for revenge. That, and my friend always commenting on how sexy VanCleef's voice is.

Burning Crusade's quest lines didn't offer a whole lot. It was a bit more involved, but I was generally far more interested in other things. Nagrand was a very fun grind the first three times around, but soon, even that zone, captivating in its beauty, faded into another mindless grind fest in which I always had to remember to attune myself so that I could later quest in Nagrand by doing the first quests in Hellfire Peninsula, which was always such a blindingly annoying shade of red that all I could think about was escaping to the tranquil blue of Zangarmarsh, then to the adventurous outdoors and alien safari of Nagrand. On the occasion I would visit the extremely dry Blade's Edge Mountains to recapture some memories, as it was the first place I had hit max level on a toon, but generally I would fly to the purple-dyed zone of the far north to round off my last level or two. The one far to the south always remained untouched unless I felt like playing Netherwing savior again.

Northrend. I hate Northrend. One time I managed to push a grind through it in two days. No heirlooms. I wanted to gnaw my hands off afterward. If there was any expansion I could skip when playing alts, it would always and forever be Northrend. Neither of the starting zones capture more than a grind-y feeling. The only two zones I enjoy are Zul'Drak for the amazing line beginning with a cursed choker from an old friend and the sheer beauty of the jungle in Sholazar Basin, complete with a ship that spilled over into the rivers from the sea being barely held back.

The Cataclysm held very little in the way of new quests which inspired me. Vash'jir is a waking nightmare for me. I hate deep water. I cannot stand it in real life, and I cannot stand it in World of Warcraft. If I cling to the bottom, I feel a bit better, but watching a fast tide ripping about, even though it won't bother my toon, sets me on edge. Certain bits and pieces stood out, but apart from the revamped lower level zones, such as the end of the Eastern Plaguelands chain, the entire experience was unforgettable with a very painful introduction into heroic dungeons due to people not knowing what Crowd Control is.

All in all, I quest through things without feeling a whole lot. My mind shuts off while I quest, resulting in a drooling, questing zombie with a rotting brain and little sense as to what is going on. I've tried to get involved in the quests, but reading the flavor text of every one just makes my thoughts decay faster, my attention span flickers, and I go back into my old habit of going through the motion.

But even I'm drawn into the Mists of Pandaria quests.

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From the vivid scenery to the content of the quests all linking together and drawing one in... yeah, here and there it's slow, and one start off feeling the grind of getting that first level in after feeling as if you've done so many quests, but soon enough one forgets that and can't help at enjoy the incredible voice acting, amusing nods to everything from Skyrim to Battletoads, the delightfully scripted cut scenes, and feeling that moment where it feels as if everything you've done, rather than feeling repeated, has all been leading up to one amazing moment.

I reached level 86 and acquired my Savage (temporarily named Snowblind and renamed Tempest courtesy of my boyfriend) on the first day. At the end of my second day, I'm level 88. In another day or two I should be max level, then on the fast curve to gearing up, depending on how many tanks and healers have also reached maximum level. In the meanwhile, I've finished up Valley of the Four Winds, almost wrapped up the Jade Forest (I fell off of a cliff of a certain place you cannot get back up without the right Flight Path... which I didn't get, so I have to wait til 90 to finish that one up), and am one part off of finishing up the Krasarang Wilds. For once, I'm actually motivated to finish up and do everything in a continent... Not because I want the achievements, but because I want to see everything the developers have given me to explore!

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Including the nasty water stuff!

Savage

So, to expand on what happened earlier, after the hour spent trying to do the first Alliance quest (not even kidding, it took an hour of sitting in the copters before people figured out how to do the quest with the limit exceeded on how many engines could be in the air), I managed to catch sight of Bloody Tracks. My heart crawled into my throat as I noticed them and began to follow them backwards. Across the zone I went, using Camouflage to stay safe. I kept losing sight of the next track, however. Even when I cast a flare to see if I was at the end of the line, I got nothing. Confused, I kept roaming, eyeing the maps to make certain I was on course.

A Draenei hunter appeared ahead of me, telling me she hadn't been hunting as long as I had. But, unfortunately, she seemed to be hunting Savage, too, for she knew to follow the tracks backwards. Along we went, and I ran ahead up the correct path, and she followed me. I dropped my Camouflage early and a tiger began to attack me. Even with poor level 85 gear, he didn't hit me for a lot, so I ignored him. I found the edge of the tracks and backed up to wait for the next one to be placed. She dropped one early. No Savage. I dropped one, Savage came up... I hit tame! It wouldn't go off because of the other cat getting in my way somehow... Not sure why, but I had him targeted, and it wouldn't go off. She hit tame... Angry over her trying to steal a mob off of my flare, I shot him, but he wasn't aggroing her, so I couldn't take back my discovery. Not even an apology was uttered on her behalf. I went and quested to get it out of my system.

Earlier today, I came back around and sought out the tracks again. And, again, I found them! Savage was around! But, again, I couldn't continue the trail through the halfway point. I couldn't find any other tracks, and the ones that I had found faded. My heart sank, for surely Savage had been tamed again. I had lost again. But at least it wasn't a painful act, and just the challenge of the hunt. Others want him. Not just me. I went back to questing again, feeling better than my reaction before. I can be happy for someone who deserved it.

Later, I came and sought. No tracks. And again, even later still into the evening, I sought. And I found tracks. My impression was that they were facing the same way as they had the last two times, but upon closer inspection, they were tracking back the other way (heading to the western end of the zone instead of east). Surprise caught me as I saw, right before my eyes, another track dropped. I fumbled, realized I had my Water Strider out, and seeing other hunters around, dismissed it. I stood on the latest track and kept looking... There, a track! I flared... too close to the foot print as Savage winked into existence, his name grayed out from a previously failed attempt at a tame, then faded. Readiness and Flare again, and I hit tame!

And my Savage has come home to me. I dont' know who failed to tame this beautiful creature earlier. I don't know what his/her name will be yet, I've been insisting that my boyfriend name the kitty. He's not so good with names, of course... But I don't mind. Good names take time to think over. For now, I'm just admiring this glorious creature at my side. A set of stripes around his neck look like a collar. :3