Haibane.info

Month: June 2009

  • Fire warden of Kalimdor

    I’ve been immensely distracted within WoW by the midsummer fire festival quests. My obsession has been to find as many bonfires as possible, and grab all the flight points (FPs) along the way. This has been great for leveling – I started this with my human warrior Aabde around lvl 18 and am up to 23 – but it also has given me an excuse to sneak into practically every corner of Azeroth, especially areas that are way above my level. It’s been immensely entertaining, especially since there’s a real sense of accomplishment from being the lowest level character in the zone, and still managing the extinguish a Horde bonfire.

    I actually have found it easier to extinguish Horde bonfires on Kalimdor than in the Eastern Kingdoms. I also have managed to get all but three Alliance bonfires in Kalimdor, though the three remaining are the trickiest (Tanaris, Silithius, and Winterspring). I am honestly amazed at how easy it’s been to extinguish Horde bonfires, though. I have numerous strategies, ranging from just walking along the road (surprising number of bonfires are right outside the gates of Horde settlements, so you can go right up to them without getting aggro by the guards) to the infamous “corpse-hopping” where you systematically advance by getting killed, then ressurecting at max res radius in the direction of desired travel. And I wasn’t too shy to ask Guild members for an escort when I lacked another strategy – that’s how I hit the Horde bonfire in Dustwallow Marsh, thanks to a lvl 42 patron.

    My most innovative approach however was to swim. I swam from Ashenvale all the way to Feathermoon Stronghol along the west coast of Kalimdor. This got me in position to run through Feralas, and also hit the Horde bonfire in Desolace. I’m going to try to get into Tanaris next – I cant survive a run through Thousand Needles so this is my only way in. I’ll swim from Theramore and head south, then make my way to Gadgetzan. I’ve heard that if you die in the waters off Tanaris coast, you resurrect in Gadgetzan anyway, so this should be pretty easy.

    After Tanaris, I’ll try to get into Winterspring via Moonglade (I’m told that if I drown north of Auberdine, I can res inside the adjacent zone). And then I’ll try to figure out a way into Silithius, probably by asking someone lvl 80 to escort me in.

    Unfortunately I have five more bonfires to get in the Eastern Kingdoms, so I’ve given up on realistically achieving Fire Warden status there. But I think Kalimdor is within my reach. Anyone have any suggestions?

  • The Grand Tour

    my 30-day introductory membership to WoW expired today, but I haven’t yet renewed. I am resolving to finish my PC upgrade first. Unfortunately I neglected to order some thermal paste… so should I just build the PC anyway or do I delay it (and WoW, accordingly) to obtain some? I’ll have to order it from Newegg or something, which will take a week. I suppose I could use that week to do other stuff, like blog or watch anime or whatnot. Heh.

    In other news, my (human warrior) main is up to level 15. In one session I decided to basically grab as many flight points as I could, so starting from Westfall I 1. flew to Stormwind and 2. ran to Lakeshire, then 3. hearthed back to Westfall, 4. flew to Stormwind again, 5. took the tram to Ironforge, 6. ran to Loch Modon, 7. flew to Lakeshire and 8. ran to Darkshire. Actually I may have mixed the order of operations up a bit in there, it was kind of a blur. At any rate I basically have all the FPs for the Alliance in the southern Eastern continent. I’m mostly done with the pre-Deadmines quests in Westfall, but now I plan to polish off quests in Lakeshire and Loch Modan first. I’ll also pick up whatever easy quests there are in Dun Morogh too for leveling.

    Of course, this is all on hold until I upgrade the box…

  • Guild proposal: Otaku Renmei

    I’m starting to understand how to leverage my alts to each other’s benefit, but an hour with a friend I met online who took me on a spree through Westfall (and who mined and crafted some nice new armor for my warrior) convinced me that there are limits to soloing a bunch of new characcters all at once. It really helps to have a whole range of characters, high levels who can make great gear and lower levels who can contribute raw resources. Plus the secondary professions, like cooking and fishing, are almost a waste to have on more than one alt, because you have to tediously train each one up – far better to let one alt be the cook, another be the fisher, and then just mail stuff back and forth. But even so, you end up with far more provisions than you can actually use – and though I tried, there’s not much market for spider kabobs at the auction house.

    The Guild system makes more sense now. You can freely reallocate resources like raw materials, finished products, and food between high and low level chars with ease. However, the guilds my two main chars belong to are large faceless orgs whose chat boxes are full of useless chatter. The ideal guild would be one where i know everyone and whose membership is fairly small, tailored for heling people discover the game. I’d love to start one, but am wondering how many of you all would be interested in joining?

    Here’s the basic charter of the guild i have in mind:

    – invite-only, not public. new members approved by 2/3rds vote after we get the initial roster going. Cap on total membership at 2 dozen.

    – all members are automatically highest rank in the guild – no “privates”. That way everyone has access to everything.

    – set aside a night for battlefield play, plus have regular dungeon runs. Try to really sample the world and see the coolest stuff rather than focus on just grinding levels, money and equipment.

    this would basically be a way for us to easily get new alts going and enrich our experience of the game overall. Most of us are Alliance but id like to create the identical sort of guild for the Horde side too (I have one horde character so far, Aelasha the female blood elf paladin, also on Staghelm).

    Anyway, none of this is set in stone – I want your feedback. What do you all think? Whats your idea of the perfect guild? Or are you pretty much happy where you are and don’t see the need?

  • Sublime Star Trek episodes: “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and “The Offspring”

    Yesterday on sci-fi’s TNG block I caught the ending of Yesterday’s Enterprise, which was then followed by The Offspring. These are two of the best TNG episodes ever. It struck me that TNG as a series remains unmatched even by DS9 in terms of how many truly great episodes there were that really explored the human condition in such powerful ways.

    Yesterday’s Enterprise handled Trek nostalgia brilliantly though subtly – the uniforms worn by the Enterprise-C crew were directly taken from the Trek movies from Khan onwards, for example, and the shape of the Enterprise-C was far more evocative of the iconic Enterprise from TOS than the Enterprise-D (I always felt that the Enterprise-D was flat and curvy in exactly the wrong places). But the way the story retconned Tasha Yar’s character was the real lodestone – and the scene with Picard where she argues to be transferred to the doomed ship was perfection, especially Picard’s final almost-refusal resigned-approval. Plus Castillo’s simple statement, “I don’t want you here.” – superb.

    The Offspring, meanwhile, is remarkable for how it explores father and daughter love, using emotionless androids, and manages to convey the essence of that relationship in a simple scene where Data and Lal hold hands. This is the fundamental purpose of science fiction – to explore the human condition by using non-humans, and Data is the personification of science fiction itself, making the literary genre a character in its own right. The final scene with Lal and Data, where she tells him she will feel for the both of them, is one that moves me every time. And the scene with Riker in Ten-Forward never fails to make me laugh out loud.

    There’s no way around it – I need to get myself a full set of these as soon as possible. Even Firefly can’t match TNG as far as its literary science fiction credentials go – and while I wish the new Trek movie franchise all the best, the Star Wars-ification of Star Trek is not science fiction anymore, but just space opera.

    If anyone has a favorite episode of TNG to share, please comment! lets get sentimental.