It’s using a model from the shoulder that drops off of Herod. I used to hate it, too, but wearing it around you get used to it pretty fast.
That’s the PvP version, though. Not quite as useful for leveling.
Northrend will almost certainly give you more XP and better quest rewards, even when looking at low-level Northrend zones versus high-level Outland zones. If you’re enjoying yourself, though, there’s no big need to rush. It’s your $15 a month–do what you enjoy.
Gemming anywhere below max level is a bit more complicated, because your caps keep changing every time you ding, and the stats you have on your leveling gear generally aren’t ideal. For a leveling Fury Warrior, I’d say that Hit and Strength would both be very useful (you probably won’t even be able to reach the cap just gemming straight Hit).
I think I can deal with the lopsided look, eventually. In a way, in sorta makes sense that the gun shoulder should be less encumbered.
The left handed thing bothers me for some reason. It just looks wrong. Nothing against left handed people or anything, it just looks off. I guess I see everything from the perspective of a righty. A southpaw look gets me all confuddled.
Just FYI, the gear you equip won’t affect the hand that your character holds his weapons with. They use the same hand all the time. And all characters are designed as right-handed. That’s why he’s holding the gun with his left hand–so he can pull the trigger with his right.
But that’s just not the way it’s actually done. Well, ok, it isn’t done that way by humans on earth. Dwarves on Azeroth may do it that way…and apparently do.
You generally tote your shooting iron in your shooting hand. When you’re about to fire, the left hand supports the far end of the gun, while the right hands slides down to the stock/trigger.
I haven’t actually watched the shooting animation carefully…I noticed this while looking at the character select screen yesterday. He is carrying the shotgun in the left hand, which means to fire it right handed, he’d have to make an awkward motion to get his hands in the right position. Awkward motions with loaded guns are generally contra-indicated. It would be easy to fire with a normal motion if he were going to shoot southpaw style.
I’m guessing the guy in charge of hunter animations just isn’t a gun guy.
I’m willing to bet that the guy who does ranged weapon animations just made one for bows and adapted it to crossbows/guns to save work, accuracy be damned. Aside from the orientation of the hands, you can animate the arms in roughly the same place for a longbow and firearm in the ready position (hold your arms up and try it!).
IIRC, WoW characters carry the gun by the barrel in their left hand at about the same position as they hold it when firing. Seems to me that to shift into firing position, the left hand needs to move the gun so the right hand can grasp the stock/trigger, then shift a little so it’s supporting the underside of the barrel.
While it may not be the same way people carry guns RL, it seems to me to be vastly more efficient and able to come to a firing position faster to do it that way than to carry it in the right hand, then shift to left to hold it so the right can move down the gun to grab the trigger.
Okay, I’ll try and give you what little thoughts I have on such matters
I think the single most important thing you can do to keep your players is to forge a community. Build a non-guildomatic website. Encourage guild meet-ups irl. Get a shoutbox for your forum. Fraps your guild conquering the latest content and upload it to youtube. Play other games with your guildmates. Do whatever you can to bring your guild together, and give your best players something to feel connected to.
Another thing, you can fight attrition, but you can’t beat it. You’re always going to continue shedding players for as long as you continue exist as a guild. This needs to be accepted. When a good player quits, needs to take a break from WoW, or transfers on to a more-progressed guild, do not burn bridges. Don’t alienate them. Don’t remove their access from your guild forums (maybe the strategy forums if they moved on to another guild). Having a decently-sized alumni population is perfectly healthy for a long-running guild. These players will make up some sort of veritable reserve pool for your recruitment. Many of them will eventually yearn to come back to the game, and you want them to come back to your guild, not someone else’s.
Also related, if someone inquires into your guild, but backs down due to whatever reason: DON’T BURN BRIDGES! Vigil’s current best warlock flipflopped something like six times on joining. Eventually, he decided to transfer and he’s been the best warlock on their roster for 6 months now.
Recruiting on websites like MMO-champion, WoRaids etc. doesn’t really work. It’s nice for reinforcing your brand name, but not much else. I’ve noticed that nearly all the applicants from such sites are garbage players. Websites like WoWprogress, and Guildox are where your website-oriented recruitment attention needs to be. Craft a powerful, but modest recruitment advert for your guild and you have a good chance of standing out.
The best way of acquiring solid players quickly is acquiring a few players from a dying guild (poaching). This is a gamble. Make sure to do thorough background checks. The last thing you want to do is recruit their bad players and by doing so alienate their good players + have brought cancer into your guild. Also, don’t worry too much about the cliques these players will form. These matters usually resolve themselves. Of course, if they get too uppity, don’t be afraid to crack the ol’ whip either (usually a strongly worded post is enough).
On merging, I think it’s really only appropriate as a last ditch effort. It’s a double-edged sword by any standard, but unfortunately it’s sometimes necessary. In DnT, we were at the brink of collapse. Be very VERY VERY careful when considering a merge. The mention of it alone is powerful enough to cause the WoW guild equivalent of the L.A. riots.
If you have anymore specific questions, let me know. This is about all my aching hands can type for now
Also, a few of the statistics I collected:
Vigil application statistics
We’ve received: 338 Applications
Started receiving on: 6-27-09
Today is: 3-11-10
258 days so far.
1.31 Applications submitted per day
Accepted (Offered interview): 30/338
Joined: 18/338
Still with us: 11/338
In real life, hunters normally carry their gun with both hands, barrel up, left hand forward, right hand back. That’s the easiest way to carry it for a quick shot. When walking and not expecting to shoot quickly, some will carry it one handed, usually in the right hand, but then to fire it’s a simple matter of sliding the right hand down the stock while the left hand swings over to support the barrel.
A right handed shooter carrying a gun the way my dawrf carries his would take longer, and incurr more risk of accident trying to get off a quick shot and making such an awkward transfer. Essentially he’s reaching across his body, swapping hands, and trying to raise the gun to his shoulder all in one movement.
On my first toon through Outland, I think I stuck around until level 70. She went HP -> Zangarmarsh -> Terokkar -> Nagrand -> Shadowmoon Valley, and then headed to Northrend. Then it was quite a while before I got another toon that far, and in the intervening time they drastically boosted Vanilla and Outland XP gains. I’d also started using a leveling guide that takes you through a very efficient quest order for max XP in the shortest amount of time; it’s also a bit out of date - while the quests are still the same, it was written before all the XP boosts and of course it doesn’t take things like “rested XP” and heirloom gear into account. So you end up way ahead of where the guide thinks you should be, XP-wise, and following toons were going HP -> Zang -> halfway through Terokkar, dinging 68, and off to NR.
I did try to go farther in Outland with my second toon there, going to Blade’s Edge and Netherstorm after Nagrand, since I hadn’t done those two zones on the first toon, but I had to talk to the NPC in Org and turn off her XP gains to keep her at level 70, because I didn’t want to finish Outland at level 75-76. Got her all the way through Blade’s Edge and about halfway through Netherstorm before I said, “Meh, screw it”, turned her XP back on and headed to NR.
OTOH, having been back to Netherstorm recently while working on Loremaster on my main, I’ve got to say that Netherstorm is a really fun zone. Moreso than Shadowmoon. Shadowmoon is pretty dismal, while Netherstorm is pretty lighthearted (it’s full of goblins - what else would you expect ) NPC’s quoting “Hotel California” as well as John Denver and Elton John. (Seriously. I was talking to a goblin NPC near the rocket ship in Area 52, when another goblin NPC (named “Experimental Pilot”) approached the rocket project boss and said, “All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go.” The full conversation is at that link. Compare that conversation to this )
They also appear to be the same shoulders worn by the orc Kor’kron Overseers that replaced the abominations in Undercity.
I’m not a gun guy these days, but I did a lot of shooting when I was a kid/teenager because my dad was (and still is) a big gun enthusiast. A right-handed shooter will typically carry a rifle/shotgun in his right hand. There’s sort of a pistol grip integrated into the front of the shoulder stock, just behind the trigger. You actually grip the weapon with your right hand; the left hand is simply used to steady/support the barrel.
Also, the bulk of a rifle’s/shotgun’s weight is toward the back end of the weapon* - using the left hand to swing it up to the right shoulder would be extremely awkward, if the left hand is holding it under the barrel. Much easier to hold it in the right hand, with that hand already holding the gun near the trigger, and simply lift it straight up into position.
*This is more true with modern rifles, where the barrel itself tapers from quite thick at the back to thinner at the front; old muzzle loaders (which we can presume the guns in WoW are, even though we never see the loading process) had barrels that were pretty much the same thickness from one end to the other. But the “action” (the mechanical bits) are still toward the back, and old muzzle loaders also tended to have a lot of metal decoration and reinforcement on the wooden stock.
A bow, though, is the opposite - a right-handed shooter grips the bow in his left hand, using his right (and theoretically stronger) arm to draw the string.
So they simply based everything on how a bow is held.
I take it that you haven’t seen the male draenei crossbow animation? They reload by flipping the crossbow in their hand, which then clips right through their arm. :dubious:
Female trolls… don’t get me started on their combat animations. This is why I don’t dual wield on my hunter, aside from the fact that I haven’t found a dual combo that would trump her current stat stick. It looks like she has a broken spine when she tries to hit someone while dual wielding. :eek:
WTB better animations for vanilla races in Cata. (Well, I’d settle for being able to blink, but let’s not get all ambitious here now, yeah?)
ETA: And yeah, Azerothian logic is not Earth logic.
Thanks for the input. I’ll stick around in the Outlands. A quick peek showed that Nagrand is really cool looking, and I like the story in Terrokar. I just wish there were something else to mine here, because that is always the first thing I max out. Still need ore for blacksmithing, though, so it’s all good.
I’ve been able to log into Cairne, it just takes around 5-10 minutes. Just give it some time and you’ll get in.
Finally got my 4 piece on the warrior, it’s so nice. Shame I’ll be relaxing at the beach this Sunday while everyone else works on BQL. I’ll have an extra slice of fudge cake for you guys.
I’m becoming very amused with people who’re shocked when I CC something. Had a tank freak out in FoS because I used Wyvern Sting to sleep an add he couldn’t reach, he had no idea hunters could do that. He thought I was the most awesome person ever.
Those who have moved to other guilds can also be good for “word of mouth”, although this applies more to other kinds of guilds; in turn, if the reason for moving has been something like “I needed to slow down” and other people are having a similar problem, being able to give references to these other people is also good PR.
Something I’d like to ask recruiters to do, and forgive me if I start by telling you one of my little war tales…
Back when my previous guild exploded, at about the time WotLK came out, I applied to a raiding guild. My main (a hunter) hadn’t wrapped up any of the long Outlands raids because of the way the old guild worked, but I did have experience, I’m reliable and BYOP (the few times I’m not at the instance’s entrance when invited, people actually remark on it). I was still working on my SoH rep, had a job where I could have very bad connections (if calling from a hotel), and was about to move. The recruiter accepted me based on my interview and on running a couple of instances with me (he’d said “several” but considered it was enough after two).
Then the recruiter left, after informing the other officers of his decision but before I’d been invited. I offered to repeat the interview etc. and explained that there were things I thought the officers needed to know before I got in. They said “no, no, just come in”.
I got in trouble for Not Sitting Outside The Instance waiting in case the raid needed a replacement (you do have to be kidding me), but also for not getting HoS fast enough, and for having much lower DPS than the other hunter (the one who had twice my crit%…).
So the request is, if someone asks to have an accepted application reviewed: do!
) NPC’s quoting “Hotel California” as well as John Denver and Elton John. (Seriously. I was talking to a goblin NPC near the rocket ship in Area 52, when another goblin NPC (named “
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