Yes, I know this ostensibly a WoW blog, but sometimes real life cannot and should not be ignored. I don’t live far from NIU, and have some friends that went there. My heart goes out to all the families affected. I know there is no way to make the pain any better, but sometimes you just have to say what you feel. My heart is broken. I wish I had some better words or some kind of answer for why these events occur, but I do not. My thoughts and prayers are with anyone affected by this tragedy.

The shared WoW blogging topic over at Blog Azeroth asks, “How did you come up with your character names?” So, where did I get Pummra? Where do I get any of the names I use? I suppose it helps to start at the beginning. It is not THE beginning, but it is A beginning.

Pen and Paper. I know that a good percentage of the MMO community cut their roleplaying teeth the old fashioned way, with a pen, paper, a few books, and a 20 sided die. For me it began when I was about 19 years old. My best friend Mark had been hanging out with a few older guys who lived nearby playing D&D and Rifts. I was your typically direction-less 19 year old, so it sounded alright to me. So came my initiation into Pen and Paper RPGS in the smoky, dusty basement of a guy named Emmitt. (Is that the perfect name for a guy who lives in his parents’ basement playing RPGs or what?) The first step, of course, was to roll a character. Most of you know how this drill goes, pick a race, roll stats, pick a class, pick skills and on and on. At least, that’s the order I always went in.

So what came last? The name. And the name was, by far, the part I spent the most time on. Here I had spent all this time “assembling” the character I was to play. Thinking about how and why he would fight, where he came from, what kind of goals he might have. So I sat and thought. I thought some more. I walked around, got a drink. Thought some more. Ugh. The hardest part of creating a character, right from the start, was coming up with a decent name! I wanted it to be memorable and unique, but everyone knows how difficult that is!

Since then, I’ve changed my philosophy. I’m not so worried about the “perfect” name for my characters. I just want something that says something about ME. This is especially important with WoW – are there any names left? At least the Gold Sellers have it easy. They just seem to roll their faces on the keyboard warlock-style to come up with their names. (Which has always made it hard to report them….”Uhh, laksdfowien just tried to sell me gold!”) Anyhow, I started to think about things that I liked a lot to make me unique. For awhile on Asheron’s Call I went by Hombre Lobo because I was a big fan of monster movies and had a Spanish dictionary. This also started my philosophy of carrying a theme. In WoW, I started with Mummrah, which was the name of the bad guy mummy dude in Thundercats. I loved that show as a kid, and it sounded like a cool name for a warlock. My other character names are almost all variants on “Mummrah.” I have Mumm, Pummra, Pumrah – you name it! With my alt-itis, it also helps the people in guild identify me no matter what character I’m playing.

So, how do you come up with your names? The Blizzard random name generator? A complex mathematical formula? Identity theft?

Blizzard removing attunements to the various high level instances is ruining the game. Ok, I don’t actually believe that, I just thought maybe if I said it first, I could get any “hardcore” readers to agree and quit reading. In my opinion, these “attunements” are extraneous to the game, and here’s why.

Gear and skill determine success. So, Black Temple will be open for anyone who wants to enter come patch 2.4. Surely there are hardcore raiding guilds everywhere bemoaning this development, angry that basically anyone with an account can now tread on “their” turf. Well, I can’t evade that argument. It’s true. I can now get together with 24 other guildies and hit Black Temple. It should be fun for us when we wipe in about five seconds, and the fun will surely continue as we wipe over and over and over again. You see, the point of the attunements to these major league instances was twofold. One, it required a good deal of coordination and determination to complete the necessary steps. Two, the “hoops” you had to jump through FORCED you to prepare yourself for what was to come gear-wise. If you had any hope of avoiding repeated wipes in places such as Mount Hyjal and the Black Temple, you had to be as close to the top of gear progression as possible.

My guild is the perfect example of why removing attunements isn’t going to ruin anything for the hardcore raiding guilds. The attunement for SSC has been gone for quite some time. Surely by now we have bested that instance? No, not even close. Not one iota. We’re a casual, family oriented guild. We don’t even step FOOT in SSC, we’re still trying to get Gruul on farm. However, I’m surely glad that I could at least take a step inside SSC and take a look, and the same will go for MH and BT. Don’t worry you hardcore raiders out there, I still suck!

One of the biggest challenges facing the casual player is keeping up with the guild. When you only have a couple of hours here or there to devote to WoW, you can quickly find yourself lagging behind the “curve” of guild progression. As a casual player, this is just something you have to learn to live with. There will be days when you log in and see half the guild in Kara or Gruul’s, leaving nary a soul to join you in a regular Shadow Labyrinth run. It can also be difficult because your guildmates probably ran Mechanar on regular a thousand times before you started asking. Don’t despair, with focus and determination, you can close the gap. I recently went through this myself, and here are a few tips I have to share to maximize your time in WoW.

Guild 5 Mans and Focus. As I said before, this can be tough. Chances are a lot of the peeps in your guild will puke if they have to run regular Arc one more time. Keep at it though, and in a good guild you will get your runs.

When you’re looking to get regular5-mans going, you have to be flexible. Don’t get tunnel vision about the one drop you just HAVE to have in SL- be prepared to run nearly any five man instance out there. On this note, make sure you are aware of every instance drop you could use. When you’re gearing up, every green you replace can make a huge improvement and get you that much closer to heroics. There are some great sites out there with focused loot lists (4 Haelz has a GREAT list for resto druids, for instance), do your homework. It will also help if you shoot for the instances that maximize your chances at a drop. If Mech only drops one great item you could really use, while SV has three very good drops, choose SV. It’s hard enough getting a regular 5-man going sometimes – maximize your chances. The good news is that if you can get a run going with over-geared guildies, it will most likely be pretty easy and you will usually have first crack at the drops. In a few short runs you can have the upgrades and rep to try the easier Heroics.

PUG 5 Mans. I hate em. You hate em. We all hate em. PUGs are such a crap shoot. Will you end up with the “tank” who insists on using a 2-hander because he “doesn’t like to use shields?” Will you end up with the hunter who’s never used a frost trap before? Sadly, the fact of the matter is, sometimes the only route to progression for a casual player is a PUG or two. Roll the dice, sometimes you get lucky! Again, keep that flexibility and focus I mentioned earlier, and you’ll progress.

Tradeskills. Don’t ignore em. Yes, I know how frustrating it is to try to level these. Sometimes, though, it can be the best avenue for a casual player to get their gear up to par. Warrior? Take a look at engineering. (Heck, the epic goggles in Eng are great for ANY class!) Druid? Leather working, no matter the spec. For a feral you can go for PrimalStrike, and for a Resto you can shoot for Windhawk. Priest or Mage? Level that tailoring! The point is, there are GREAT upgrades in the armor creating tradeskills, and you generally need very little help to get them up, it’s just a matter of time. I spent many 2 hour sessions farming Primal Air for my Windhawk set, and I don’t regret it one bit. I didn’t have to beg anyone for anything, I just had to meticulously gather my mats on my own, and run a few easy heroics for nethers. One of the most satisfying days I had in WoW was when I finally completed my [Windhawk Hauberk].

“Easy” Heroics. So, you managed to swap out most if not all of your greens for blues, and managed a lucky epic drop or two. Now you’re ready for heroics, but where to start? Heroics are a whole new ball game, and it helps to start slow. One of the generally accepted heroics to start with is Slave Pens. It’s not too long, only has one or two tough pulls, and even has quite a few mobs that you can skip. Underbog is another good choice for a first heroic. Heck, maybe you could hit one then the other. Ramparts is another fairly easy heroic, and from there a good progression would be into Crypts or Blood Furnace, both are still on the “easy” side, but the difficulty is definitely ramping up, with a few tough pulls and some interesting boss fights.

Believe me, I know it can seem intimidating when you finally just hit 70, and your guild is already looking at SSC or beyond. Stick with it, stay focused and flexible, and before long you’ll find yourself farming heroic badges for real nice epics, and putting together your list of Kara drops you’d like. It can be done, you just might get to the party later than the rest of your guild!

I have been kicking around the idea of starting a blog about World of Warcraft for quite some time. I find blogs to be a great way to share information, ideas and stories about the game we all love. I have played since early beta, and from the start I could see that this was the game I had been waiting for.

I fondly remember my first days in Azeroth, before hunters were even in the game, and when weapon and tradeskills were bought with “skill points” you were awarded in combat. (Of course, back in those days there was no limit to how many tradeskills you could have, and herbalism fueled both Alchemy AND Enchanting!) From the very start, WoW was so much more alive, detailed and fun than any other MMORPG I had played. As a brief MMORPG history, I began with Ultima Online, worked my way through Asheron’s Call, Dark Age of Camelot, and basically any MMO that was ever released. When World of Warcraft first took up residence on my hard drive, however, all the “dabbling” in other games was over.

Presently I play a level 70 restoration Druid named Pummra on the Whisperwind server. (Bonus points if you know the name reference!) I also have a level 70 BM Hunter, but since I rolled the druid I haven’t looked back. The druid, to me, has a unique blend of versatility and soloability.

You see I have a wife, a family and a job, and can only devote 6-10 hours a week to the game at the most. The hours I can spend don’t come all in one chunk, either, so I usually play in 2 hour increments. This limits my ability to participate in big time raiding (which occasionally gets me down) and forces me to stick with five man content and solo play. Lucky for me, WoW has oodles of content to support a player like myself. My quest log is still almost always full or close to it, and in a pinch I always have alts to play if I can’t get anything bigger going on my main. If all else fails, I can just stand around Shatt and dance in tree form. (Which looks amazingly close to how I dance IRL.)

What I hope to do through the course of this blog is share my experiences as a casual player. I want to share what has worked for me over the years to hopefully help out any other players that find themselves in a similar situation. Let’s face it, many of us will never see Mount Hyjal or the Black Temple, (not till 2.4 hits, anyway – but even then wiping on trash won’t be fun!) but there are still many, many things to do in this game for kicks. I’ll try to get into what those things are, with an emphasis on the casual player and the druid class. Anyhow, thanks for stopping by, and I hope you come back in the future.

In my next post I plan to address ways to gear up when you find yourself “behind the curve”. Cheers! (No, I’m not British, regardless of how I spell colour.)