Faction-Switching coming soon!

Well on the back of Ulu's adventures in Character Re-Customization, I awoke and read this Blue post this morning:

We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it.

As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the faction-change service in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience on the realms, and there will be some rules involved with when and how the service can be used. The number of variables involved increases the complexity of implementing this service, but we plan to take the time needed to ensure that it lives up to expectations before officially rolling it out. We’ll go into much more detail on all of this here at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as development progresses. In the meantime, we wanted to let you know that because this type of functionality requires extensive internal testing well in advance of release, you may be seeing bits and pieces of the service in the test builds we use for the public test realms moving forward.

Up until now you've only been able to change non-gameplay-affecting elements of your character. You can change your character's hair style and coloring in-game, or change elements like your gender, name and even server via account management for a modest fee.

The prospect of changing your faction throws up all sorts of interesting questions. Will your race change as well? (If so, will this lead to people being able to alter their race whilst remaining in the same faction?) Will the option be limited based on the current faction balance of the server you're on? How does this affect people on a PVP server where you're limited to toons of one faction or another?

It's a weird one all right...

A Kick in the Jewels...

First up, they announced at the weekend that they'd be nerfing Jewelcrafting:

In the next major content patch we will be removing the prismatic quality of the jewelcrafter-only Dragon’s Eye gems. Like other gems, they will have to match the socket color to receive a socket bonus. When this change occurs, players with qualifying jewelcrafting skill will be provided a yet to be determined amount of Dalaran Jewelecrafter Tokens as compensation.

[...] Nerfs are rarely (if ever) something that returns positive feedback, but we feel this change is necessary to bring this profession more in-line with the bonuses from the other professions. The stat bonuses are meant to stand on their own, not provide extra socket bonuses or ignore meta-gem requirements.

It now goes from being an overpowered profession to a merely useful one. A nice offset to this change would be the introduction of mixed-color Dragon's Eyes (ie: green, purple and orange), but I'm not about to hold my breath over that one!

In response to Galo's remarks on my last post:

Could be a idea maybe Macroing it to target target cast and putting a line of text in the macro that yells out that said spell is casted on tank so the raid is aware for obvious reasons of the spell. That may be a idea.

I know I redid most of my macro's for Divine Protection, DS/DS I have a line of text in the macro that yells out it's casted so the raid and especially the healer is aware spell is casted in case tank really needs extra attention. May have to do that with LoH as well.

I already have a line my Divine Protection/Divine Sacrifice macro warning my healers in /rw that I'm using DS so they can adjust healing appropriately. I've also macro'd Hand of Salvation with a /rw warning to the DPS, although I usualyl find I have an exceptionally healthy threat lead early in the fight.

I don't bother with Target's Target on my HoS macro, but that might be an idea to get double use out of it...

In other news, I stepped into Arenas again on Friday with the Frost Mage who also hangs out in my 2v2 team. We spent the first six games getting our asses handed to us before we clawed back wins in the last three. It's inspired me to make some changes to my Retribution Spec to make it more PVP friendly (there's no point in having a raid-optimized Ret spec when I PVP in maybe one fight a week.) In the end, I went for this: 0/20/51

What I lost:

Improved Blessing of Might: It's nice, but not mandatory for Arenas
Swift Retribution: The haste is good for sustained DPS, but not big for burst
Righteous Vengeance: Great for sustained DPS, but again, not a big burst talent.
Divinty: 5% extra heals is covered by one of my other choices below.
Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian: I'll miss my 1-minute Sacred Shields, but I wanted to try some other toys.
1/3 Two-Handed Weapon Spec: I needed to trim points somewhere, and Crusade gives better bang for the buck.

What I gained:

Vindication: I figured I'd experiment with this talent. Debuffing someone's Stamina can mean them dying more quickly.
Eye For An Eye: A quintessential PVP talent, and it should be nice vs the low-end folks in high-crit PVE gear.
Divine Purpose: Turns Hand of Freedom into a "mini-PVP Trinket" on a short cooldown.
Stocism: Less Stun time makes me a happy fellow.
Guardian's Favor: Boosts Hand of Protection and Hand of Freedom, your go-to buttons in Arena.
Improved Hammer of Justice: More Stuns = More Happy Times!
Improved Righteous Fury: An extra 6% damage reduction's pretty much a no-brainer.
Improved Devotion Aura: This is the only talent I'm not 100% sure of. The healing boost makes up for the lack of Divinity, and the extra mitigation might help when we're against a tough physical DPS team. It also means if Ulu does go ret for a boss fight whilst raiding, he can still give the healing bonus.

Hi, I'm Space Goat!

Well here it is, the much-threatened rebranding.

Drawing on one of the greatest television shows ever as inspiration for the name at least felt right. The content will unfortunately be the same rambling about tanking as a Paladin and running a small guild that I've maintained up until now. I'll try to make it entertaining, but I can promise it'll be self-involved at least!

Well what's there to say? Big changes in the Prot field promised in 3.1.

Divine Guardian is going the way of the Do-do, and it looks like we're getting something similar, Divine Sacrifice as an 11 point talent. The big difference is it isn't tied to Divine Shield so it'll allow us to use this ability whilst keeping aggro.

Why would we want a talent that makes us more damage? Well say you've got a fight where the boss damage is relatively insignificant, but the raid damage adds up (Loatheb springs to mind) then it's a way to absorb some of the damage. Another example would be a boss where you only tank him for part of the fight, like Hydross in SSC.

It's certainly going to give us some unique utility in 3.1, but I don't think (as the Chicken Little brigade may claim) that it's going to make us into off-tanks.

I'm also interested in the new Glyph of Divine Plea that offers 3% damage reduction when DP is up. I wonder if that, combined with the new Guarded By The Light (50/100% chance to refresh DP's duration when you hit a target) is intended to replace Blessing of Sanctuary. It feels a little clunky, but it could be what's on the dev's mind, which concerns me.

A New Direction, or just a Diversion

I've been hitting my head off the notion for the last month and a half that I have nothing really to write about. The first tier of 5-10man content has proven to be trivial (with the exception of Malygos and Satharion +adds), and strategy guides for each of the bosses fill the interwebs. I have no special insight to offer about most of them.

There's no deep mystery about tank gearing either. You get the Defense minimum, you get enough Effective Health to survive the bosses burst potential and then you stack avoidance and threat stats as appropriate. It's effective, but also bo-ring and again, the internet has lots of guides on this. I might write a post at some point listing my preferred stats in order, but that'll be a wee bit down the line.

The only thing I can talk about that I haven't really covered to date is my experiences in leading a small casual guild, which has been something of an eye-opener. I have no intention of making this blog AngryRaidLeader 2.0, but hey, it'll give me something to write about until something interesting happens (like the 3.1 patch hitting the PTR)

On the "Difficulty Curve" (Or lack thereof)

I've already heard grumblings from the first couple of level 80s in my guild (a Prot Warrior and a Ret Paladin) about how "easy" the levelling process was. My response is "of course it is"!

The new level cap isn't just about giving players new abilities and more talents, it's about devaluing their current gear to the point where they can offer them reasonable upgrades. In that respect, it's a hill between the players and new content. People can charge up and over it if they have the time and energy, or they can leisurely walk over it and enjoy the view. I suspect most of us fall between those two camps.

I'm not going to comment on Heroics or Naxx10 until I've had a chance to do them, but if they're as straightforward as I've heard then it can only be a good thing. The one thing that The Burning Crusade lacked was a decent Molten core-type entry-level raid, womewhere where an entire guild can go in and gear up on, or that experienced/well-geared guilds can just sidestep completely and move onto the next content.

I know folks are going to disagree with me here, but I think Blizzard have got the balance right this time.

Update 07Oct08

Well as the witty title may give away, I'm at something of a loss about what to write. I haven't felt the need to play WoW in a while now, although I've been following the Beta changes from the sidelines. The lack of friends and the ever present latency at peak times (ie. the only times I can get on) keep me from actively participating in Beta much.

Since the reorganization of the Prot tree a few pushes ago, things have been looking relatively stable for Tankadins as we head towards the release of 3.0 (next week if the rumors are to be believed). Numbers have been tweaked, but there haven't been any massive changes.

We still don't have an 11-point talent as of this writing, and I imagine we won't see one this side of release. It's kinda sad, but I prefer it to them throwing in some half-assed placeholder to buff/nerf at a later date.

Early data by theorycrafters and raiders seems to indicate that we were sufferring in terms of health and mitigation compared to our eternal "nemeses": Warriors. This seems to have been mollified by the news that in a forthcoming Beta push, the Shield of the Templar talent will be modified to reduce incoming damage by 1/2/3%. This should bring us closer to parity with our fellow shield-bearers.

So sorry readers, nothing exciting to mention here.

What I did on my weekend by Ulushnar, level 70.

Ok, so I played some of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. It's fun, but the boss fights are an annoyance to someone who's used to tanking his way through fights. I'll get back to it at some point.

But if you're reading this, you're probably wanting some Wow-based information, right?

• I've pretty much given up on the Beta server. It's always a bundle of lag and ass at peak times (ie. the times I can reasonably log in). Still I have a semi-decent idea of the starting zones now, which is all I'll really need.
  
• Friday night, I finally maxed-out Ulushnar's Engineering and made his Turbo-Charged Flying Machine Control. I have a chopper now and the lore-freaks can suck it!
  
• On Saturday, I spent most of the day doing old-world content with Ulu. I went to Blackrock Depths and solo'd most of the Onyxia quest chain before patch 3.0 obliterates it. I got all the way up to the part that requires Upper Blackrock Spire.
  
• I then realised I didn't have the Upper Blackrock Spire key, so I went into Lower Blackrock Spire and had Ulushnar solo the bosses there to get it. Given it's a 55-57 level dungeon, it was something less than a problem for Ulushnar.
  
• on Sunday, I also made a Dimensional Ripper - Area 52. Ulushnar now has a Helicopter and a Teleporter.
  
• After that, I spent a fair amount of time helping various guildies kill the Brewfest boss before wrapping up the weekend with a Karazhan clear last night.
  

Speaking of the Guild, things are going ok. We currently have a 14-man membership, and I'm hoping another four people to return from Warhammer before WotLK and join in. There's been a largely positive response from most folks, with the exception of a couple of folks.

Now we just have to spend 7 weeks getting ready for the WotLK release.

A Fresh Start.

Well, with eight weeks until Wrath of the Lich King and raid sign-ups steadily declining, I've been looking more and more to my plans for Wrath of the Lich King.

Chaotic Divinity has been my home in WoW for better or worse for three years, from fresh lvl 60 hunter to lvl 70 tankadin. However, over that time my priorities have shifted. Whilst I'm still interested in a casual approach to raiding, I find the situation as it stands in CD a little too casual. People can sign for every raid or no raids and it doesn't matter. With a membership of over 50, we were routinely struggling to get 25 off the ground. Even when we did, about half the group were generally unfamiliar with the encounter.

We needed a stricter approach to attendance and a tighter group. Sadly I couldn't do either of things whilst keeping the things in CD which were so attractive to some members.

The first ray of hope came at the start of the summer, when it was announced that the WotLK Dungeons would be switchable between 10 and 25-man mode. Suddenly it would be viable to take a tight group of 10 regular raiders all the way through the endgame.

After that, the idea sat at the back of my mind. I'd mention it in passing to folks who reacted postively enough to the idea, but i didn't have an idea about how best to proceed. I thought about setting up an unofficial "group within a group" inside CD, but that would have been unfair. I then considered turning Surprised Survivors into a raidguild. However there's a few people who either wouldn't want to join the group I was thinking of, or who I wouldn't want in that group. Even though I've been GM for most of it's life, I just didn't feel I had the right to kick people out of their home.

So the only option was to make my own Guild. I discussed the matter with a few guildies and we decided to set it up and make the announcement if and when CD finally decided to shut down raiding before Wrath of the Lich King.

As it turns out, that happened tonight. So I've now transferred Ulushnar to his new guild, the Smart Casual Raiding Company, and we've begun the process of recruiting new members.

Pre-TBC we won't get much more than a few ZA/Kara runs and maybe a few Achievement-chasing old-world raid runs after 3.0 hits. The real goal however is to hit the ground running in Wrath with a group that'll be ready to knock on the gates of Naxxramas relatively quickly.

If it all goes to crap now, I've no-one to blame but myself.

Puggers can't be choosers.

Well I haven't really been playing much Beta recently. This is due to the EU Beta server being up and down more often than the knickers of a workaholic prostitute. Speaking of which, I don't want to hear any chimes of empathy from my American readers: The kinds of problems you've had on Beta recently have been with us from day one. Or at least from the point I arrived.

In other news, CD seems to have settled into a pattern of one Hyjal farm run a week. Last night we cleared the first three bosses in record time and actually managed a go at Azgalor. That might have even become a kill if a pesky Druid had paid attention to where to run when he got the Impending Doom!

Apart from that, I've slowly been stockpiling mats for if/when I move over to Blacksmithing. Whilst doing that this morning, I got a whisper from a random druid. It consisted entirely of "Spec?". I figured if he/she/it was going to ask me questions without engaging me in a conversation or at least being interesting/polite, then I would do likewise, and I replied "A/S/L?". The exchange ended at that point.

Which brings me to something that grinds my gears. I'm disinclined to PuG at the best of times, but if someone whispers me "spec?" or words to that effect without trying to engage me in conversation, then they're gonna get crap back. If some know-nothing DPSer wants to know my unbuffed HP like it means anything, then I'm gonna demand their Attack Power and crit chance before saying "Is that all? No thanks". I am, however, Archduke of the Assholes.

As probably only tanks read this, I'm doubtless pissing in the wind, but here's my thoughts on what it would be nice to hear from prospective Puggers:

Wrong: "Spec?"
Right: "Are you able to (Tank/Heal/DPS)?"

Let the person you're contacting know what you want. If they can't help you, they may know someone (or have an alt) who can.

Wrong: "What's ur HP?"
Right: "Have you tanked (insert target Instance here) before?

The first question distills the Tank's knowledge, gear and ability down to one easily-fudged number. The second gives you an idea of wether or not he can do the job you require of him.

Wrong: "Looking for two more, need Tank and Healer"
Right: "Three DPS Looking for Group"

I mean, c'mon people, be honest! ;)

Beeee-taaaaa!

Well my Beta key arrived last night! About 97% through downloading the Client. News will follow.

Update 14Aug08

So what's been happening since last we looked at our heroic Space-goat?

I managed to grind the last of the gold for Ulu's Artisan Riding on Tuesday evening, but not the gold for the mount itself. Luckily, some auctions took care of this on Wednesday and Ulu is now the proud owner of a Swift Purple Gryphon. The whole grind's kinda made me bored with daily quests, so I'm gonna hold off on grinding Netherwing Rep just yet.

Ulu's mining's coming along fine. I'm now at the 255-ish level, so I should be terrorizing the mining nodes of Outland on my birdie by the end of the weekend.

My next goal with Ulu after this was to max out his Engineering and make the Flying Machine, but I'm currently holding off on this. Looking at what's come through from the Beta thusfar, it seems that Engineering won't have comparable Goggles in WotLK, or indeed anything that would be specifically advantageous to a Tank. I'm going to stockpile materials and if this appears to be the case closer to release, then I'll drop Engineering for Blacksmithing.

In terms of raiding, there really isn't that much going on. The last 25-man CD managed was on the 31st of July. No matter how many we recruit, we never seem to get more than 20 people in a raid. I'm one failed raid away from giving up on 25-mans altogether.

Preparations for Wrath

Well when I checked my banker's mail before work this morning, I found an enchanting pattern I picked up last night had sold. This puts me at nearly 4.8k gold after a weekend of daily grinding and selling almost everything in my bank that wasn't soulbound! If a couple of more auctions go through, I should be able to get Artisan Flying for Ulu tonight! And then it's off to Netherwing ledge!

In other news, Ulu has now dropped Enchanting for Mining and I'm slowly levelling that. After completing that, I'm going to level the last 7 points of his Engineering skill and make him a Turbo-charged Flying Machine. Lorefiends beware!

Raiding is going less-well. For every amazing raid we have had, we have 2-3 that just fail to get off the starter blocks. I figure things'll pick up again after this month, but then we'll have a few weeks until Warhammer Online sucks away our playerbase.

And by the time folks start to filter back by that, we'll be staring down the barrel of WotLK's release date.

Honestly, I'm not sure if I can be bothered anymore.

What Genre?

Well, on beholding my Biker regalia, Loopinvariant had this to say:

That's just as bad as adding space ships and space goats in BC. They could at least have made an attempt to fit it in with the genre. Not cool, no thanks.

I have to ask: What Genre? The Dwarves have had Steampunk technology since at least Warcraft 3. This is again in line with the Warhammer world they ripped off, where the Dwarves have the self-same Gyrocopters they introduced for Engineers in WoW a couple of patches ago.

Blizz are focusing on making the game fun rather than "authentic", which isn't a bad thing in my opinion. There are MMO's out there offering a more "authentically Medieval" fantasy experience, like Age of Conan or Lord of the Rings online. I'm happy for Blizzard to follow their demented muse wherever it takes them, as long as the end result is fun.

Afterall, look up Fantasy at Dictionary.com some time. The first definition you'll see is:

imagination, esp. when extravagant and unrestrained.

Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Preparing for Wrath...

I've been slowly getting my ass in gear for the Expansion.

First thing up is getting my hands on my Epic Flyer at long last. Between powerlevelling professions, respecs and the occasional splurge on epic gems on the AH, I must have squandered nearly 20k Gold over the 18 months or so I've been playing Ulushnar. This is gonna stop now, I'm going to grind my dailies like a mad thing and get Artisan Riding for Ulu at least. I'm currently 2k gold in with 3k to go. should be doable if I don't slack.

I've also got my hands on a decent one-hander for Hammer of the Righteous. Depending on Wether or not the speed's been normalised in the Expansion, I'll end up using either the Spiteblade or King's Defender unless something better drops in the meantime.

I'm also giving consideration to dropping Enchanting for Mining closer to the expansion release date. Mining gives a healthy stamina boost now and it'll also make levelling Engineering in the Xpac much easier.

Finally, I'm thinking about my raiding situation post-WotLK. There are people who I enjoy raiding with in CD, but I'm more and more attracted to the notion of setting up a small 15-20 man guild and focussing solely on the 10-man side of content. The new Guild Calendar introduced in Wrath seems really nice, and along with the Guild Bank, it seems the non-guild Raid Group is something of an awkward anachronism.

Of course the problem is that a lot of the people I'd currently want to fill this ten-man guild are in Guilds that they have friends in and probably wouldn't leave.

Ah well, we'll see what the next couple of months bring.

Thoughts on Warhammer Online

Well, apparently the relase date for Warhammer Online has been announced as September 18th, and I'm honestly not bothered. I've had a changeable and varied relationship with Games Workshop's fantasy franchise which dates back many years.

I used to play the wargame a lot, but I left behind my love for the wargame in my teens, where it was basically a case of whoever bought the newest army was instantly the most powerful.

I did play the RPG a couple of years back and I really loved it, even with it's clunky career system. It was brutal, harrowing and relentless, starting out like D&D but quickly turning into Call of Cthulu. I can remember turning to my GM at one point and asking "I can't understand why my character shouldn't give up in the face of the overwhelming powers arrayed against them." His answer was basically along the lines of "well if you don't, who will?" It was one of the first Fantasy RPGs I played that defined heroics as more than "slaughter a villageload of Goblins, kill the evil wizard and get the treasure."

But the things I loved the RPG for just wouldn't translate into an MMO.
What's basically left is WoW. And yes, I know Blizzard liberally borrow Games Workshop's character designs, but ultimately that kind of nitpicking doesn't matter. If Blizzard made a tabletop wargame with minatures, I'd call it a Warhammer rip-off.

It's also a Wow focussed around PVP which is "Realm vs Realm". At one point it sounded like an interesting notion where each race had their own capital which was locked in a border skirmish with a race on the other faction. Of course, expediency and a desire not to clash with Wrath of the Lich King's immenent arrival has meant that this has been reduced to basically one captial for each faction.

All the races in a faction together from the start? I'm not seeing a gigantic difference to WoW at that point. Then there's the fact that there's 14 playable classes in a PVP-focussed game, each with the requisite three talent trees that have been de rigeur since Diablo 2. Wow has enough problems balancing 9 classes, and I'm not loving EA/Mythic's chances with nearly twice that number.

I'm glad they're getting it out when they are. With a month or two between Warhammer and Wrath of the Lich King, it'll be enough time for some folks to try WAR, get sick of it and come back.

It's time for Good News/Bad News.

Good News: One of my guildies decides she doesn't want her WotLK Beta key from the '08 WWI. She sends me the code on Saturday the 2nd of August and I promptly redeem it.

Bad News: I then find this forum post :

The deadline for redeeming your code for the current round of invites is Friday the 1st of August. Codes registered after this date will not be eligible for beta entry until a later date, so we encourage everyone to register early and be part of the vanguard into Northrend.

Ah well, I'll be getting into Beta. At some point. Maybe.

In other news, I've decided to take a short break from 25-man raiding. At the moment it's still a crapshoot about wether or not a raid will go ahead on a given night, and for every raid that goes ahead and does well, there's 2-3 that either fail to go ahead, or end in us going with a suboptimal group and wiping a lot. Since I have, for my sins, taken a seat on the CD council again, it means I'm in the unenviable position of telling the 15-20 people who did show up ready to raid that it's not going ahead.

Not the mostest fun job in the world.

Waiting for WotLK

Every time they mention a new WotLK ability for Paladins, I get a little bit more scared. They're giving us everything we could ever want. Crushing Blows gone, Stamina as a threat stat, a ridiculous Strength to BV ratio, Lay on Hands on a 20min Cooldown, a fast mana recovery ability, Two new, on-demand single-target threat abilities and the news that most of our spells will scale with Spellpower and Attack Power.

And yesterday, they gave us a Shield Wall on a five minute cooldown.

Why am I scared? Because it's frankly too much. If we get all this, we'll overshadow Warriors as the Tanking class in WotLK. This is something that I just don't believe Blizzard will allow. It's gonna get scaled back, I can feel it in my bones. But hell, I've got hope.

Now please Blizz, hurry up and bring out WotLK. Every time I see what we will be, it makes it harder to go back and play what we are now.

I am not an Agony Uncle...

Anyone who's met me IRL or listened to me rant in Vent will know that I am not someone you need to turn to for reassurance and advice.

People asking me about ignorant guilds not giving them a chance or the idiotfest that is the pugging lifestyle are unlikely to be patiently indulged.

I have been part of the same raid group for just shy of three years now. I've gone from A.N. Other Hunter to one of the group's main tanks. I have never encountered any significant Tankadin prejudice. Our first and second Prince kills were with a Feral Druid and Ulushnar respectively tanking. Similarly, I never pug these days since if I can't get my friends interested in an instance, I'm not interested.

I am therefore not the person to come to when someone lols you out of a Pug in favor of a green-geared warrior. I am also not the person to ask if your guild's giving you grief or refusing to let you tank the big boys.

My standard advice in that situation would be:

Grow some balls. (Or y'know if you're a girl whatever works in that place. Ovaries maybe?)

The high-end raiding scene is full of the kind of social retards that make me look like the Dalaih Lama. They will take exception to any johnny-come-lately storming in and bidding on their epics. Take it on the chin, and stick to your guns if you believe you're right. That said, don't stick to your guns so much that you fail to realise when you're wrong.

Before you realise it, you'll be the jerk lording it over the new guy.

Plans for WotLK.

Well, on CD's forums, folks have started talking about plans for WotLK. I figured I'd share mine with all of you lot.

Well no surprises, mine begin with getting Ulushnar to 80. My current plan for this is to do all the lvl 70-72 quests, and then do the rest of my levelling by either running instances or solo grinding. This way I'll save the maximum amount of quests for gold at lvl 80. I think I'll stick with Engineering as one of Ulu's professions, but i'm torn between keeping enchanting or taking up mining again. Mining offers a buff to Stamina in Wrath, plus it'll make levelling Engineering much cheaper.

After that, I'll do the rounds of the level 80 instances with my friends to get geared up, and hopefully I'll be knocking on Naxx's door within two months. After that, I think I'm going to focus solely on the ten-man versions of instances. Getting a decent group together for 25-mans has proven to be a hit-and-miss affair at the casual level, but getting a solid ten-man would seem to be easier.

In between doing all that, I'll start a Death Knight once the initial surge has died down. I hate alting as a general rule, but since they start at lvl 55, the pain is somewhat mitigated.

What I probably won't be doing is levelling Wulfsblood any time soon. I'm just not a big fan of playing DPS any more, so he'll get a break until I feel the need to go back to him.

Not that excited about the Beta

So the Beta's been released and invites have gone out to people who were at the WWI/Blizzcon and select other folks. I've opted in to the "lottery" of Beta keys, but the more i think about it, the less bothered I am if I get in.

It'll of course be nice to play around with the new Tanking toys and see the new content. On the other hand, I remember a year and a half ago when TBC went live and me and my friends took our first steps into Hellfire Citadel. It was pretty special to experience it all fresh for the first time and I'm looking forward to that again.

Of course, saying all that, if I end up with a Beta key, I'm gonna use it. By the same token though, if I don't get one, I'm not going to be that bothered.