Yeah, I’m still feeling the love as well. I took a bit over a year break during the BC / Wrath time frame, which helped.
They’ve also done a lot to make the game significantly more enjoyable for someone with my rambling play style - Achievements, LFD, LFR, all give me plenty to do. Of course I am slowly closing in on 9 85s. Maybe my tune will change then…
My guild has had a bit of turnover due to non-SWToR reasons. (new baby, joined the military for 2 examples) And since we already cleared DS10 we are struggling with Hardmodes. H:Morchock is down but that’s the only one, We were getting YorSag close, but no luck. We may move on to Ultraxion to try that one.
In the meantime we’ve been spending time on FL achievements to get everyone the mount.
Personally I’ve been struggling to get the shoulder piece of my Tier-gear so I can drop the hood for the Valor piece.
My itty bitty guild is looking pretty hollow. It’s a tiny raiding guild of about 50 toons and a dozen or so players, none of whom I know IRL. I have been logging in to do dailies (holiday stuff, mostly) most every day but I’m not seeing any guildies on at all. Apparently, the toon most recently on after me isn’t on but once a week or so. So I guess my guild is comatose. 
Oh, well, it was a guild-of-convenience for me, since I don’t raid.
Odd, too. I haven’t even felt the need to improve my gear. I could queue LFRs but haven’t felt the need. I haven’t even felt like queuing heroics, and I could definitely use the Valor Point gear in many slots, but that grind just isn’t appealing to me. About the only thing that’s interesting is working on vanity pets and mounts. (So, for instance, running the Crown Chemical Company daily in hopes that the Love Rocket will drop for me. Yes, I am secure enough in my masculinity to use it.)
My sense is that a lot of guildies have moved on to SWTOR, if they’re actively gaming at all.
ETA: I’m not sure I’ll even buy the xpac. What’s been described of Pokemon Adventures in Panda Land leaves me cold, and the homogenization of class roles and talents (as I read it) doesn’t feel appealing.
gnoitall,
I take it that Crown Chemical raid is an easy one?
Thanks
Q
Crown Chemical Company is not a raid. It’s sorta like a dungeon, except there is only one fight, against three wimpy semi-boss-like mobs. The fight is typically over in 90 seconds or less…sometimes a lot less.
You zone into a special version of Shadowfang Keep. The mobs you’ll be fighting are in the courtyard at the bottom of the stairs. Ideally the tank, but sometimes a jackass dpser, will start the fight by speaking to Alchemist Something–(maybe Humbolt?). The three mobs will change from green to red, scatter, and there will be a small onscreen countdown until the fight starts. The other two mobs will activate slightly after the first one. Just dps the mobs down, and move out of the purple stuff on the floor—think they call it either a perfume or cologne spill. If you start taking damage—move. If you think of it, you can grab a reusable potion from the table to your left. There are two types, each confers immunity to either perfume or cologne, but not both, and you can ony have one active at a time…but the potions are not really needed. If you get a potion, use it before the fight starts. It lasts a few minutes.
If you want to do it, I suggest just queueing up as dps for it. You’ll see how easy it is–and the dps queue for it is not bad…usually around 10 minutes.
The loot is a blue quality, ilvl346 neck piece. If it is better than what you have and appropriate for your class, you can roll “need” on it by clicking the dice on the loot box. If you would not wear it, click either the coins or the disenchant symbol. It disenchants into a shard that sells for about 100 gold or so.
Once per day, after winning the fight you also get a “heart shaped box” that will appear in the first empty spot in your bags. The box will contain a few of the holiday currency tokens, like you get from turning in the bracelet quests. You will also get a few justice points–26 I think. There is a small chance that you might also get a “toxic wasteling”–a non-combat pet that will follow you around if you summon it, or a “love rocket”—a somewhat phallic shaped mount.
I officially cancelled my subscription yesterday (doesn’t technically expire until the 26th), though I plan to come back to at least try out the next expansion. All I’ve done in the game for the last few months is basically log in most of my 85s each day and run the same (roughly) regimen of dailies on each of them, and I’m just bored stiff. MoP has piqued my interest, since it looks like Blizz has finally realized that a lot of people don’t raid and that there needs to be something for those people to do at max level. Especially when you can hit the cap 2-3 weeks after the Xpac comes out, even faster if you powerlevel. Though I’ll admit the pet battle thing doesn’t really grab me.
I’ve been playing City of Heroes instead. There are other MMOs I’d like to try, but as a Mac user WoW and CoH are my only real alternatives. But CoH has impressed me with its much more mature and helpful playerbase and the amazing number of options available to characters. CoH is also not end-game focused; its “the journey is more important than the destination” philosophy perfectly suits my approach to games.
You’ll always have a “home” in the guild, Rik, and I appreciate your helping Wolkie with the gear.
At least one other poster mentioned the “Pokemon” Xpac. I tend to agree about being leery of it, and I’m thinking this is Blizz’s effort to pull in even more younger subscribers, and y’all know what that means, right? More of those little shits running around hopping all over the place on their huge mounts blocking qg’s/vendors, mailboxes, filling the chatbox with their name calling nonsense and just generally making a nuisance of themselves.
I am loyal, yes, but not to the point of aggravation.
Thanks
Q
No idea if you’re interested, but you can play SWTOR on a Mac–you just need Boot Camp to do it. My spouse does it, as do several friends, and it runs just fine (assuming your Mac is relatively new).
I’ve found that the SWTOR player base is similar to what you described–not very many idiots, and at least on my server, General chat is downright civilized. It’s quite a change from WoW.
There is definitely endgame stuff out there, but I haven’t had this much fun leveling in WoW for a long time. The story for each class and the companion system make each different class a little mini-game in itself. It’s kind of the best of both worlds: single-player when you want it to be, but shared when you need help or want to hang out with friends.
Oh, yeah. I left out the apparent popularity of “Kung-Fu” Panda, didn’t I? 
Also, I know I can avoid all the aggravation by just not buying the xpac, but that would leave Wolkie at level 85. Although I could play his other 8 alts…
Has Blizz ever been known to pull an expansion out of the game completely?
Thanks
Q
Pandarens were present in the Warcraft 3 expansion, so they predate Kung-Fu Panda by at least 5 years.
Annnnd… I forgot to mention that my bud, Oakminster has joined the guild and will be there from time to time to help ol’ Wolkie out when he/we needs it. Yeti also is with us as is jayjay when he recuperates, and Suburban Plankton.
I’ve said from the outset that any of our guildies can leave whenever and that’s the way I still feel, although yeah, I have to admit there’s some cameraderie that’s developed which I will miss. I have tried to keep it a “no-pressure” guild, and anyone can show up whenever, and it’s worked fine that way. I have gained enough knowledge, confidence and great gear now that I don’t mind playing solo. Big change from 3 years ago, huh?
It’s also had the added benefit of keeping my mind active, as I’ve said many times before. Some people do crosswords, word-finds, etc. I play WoW. 
To Oak: I’m gonna see about doing that Crown Chemicals dungeon (raid and dungeons still confuse me!) in a bit, so thanks for the info.
Also, I checked out CoH, and I don’t think it’s for me, guys. Don’t know if it’s my age or just because I love the Middle Ages so much, but even though the art sucks, I still love the questing and the swordplay in WoW. Also, I’m no fan of Anime’.
So what’s a good alternative for me, if I were to leave Wow, is my first question, and my second is, would my computer support two MMPORG games downloaded on it?
Here’s what I have:
I’m not really a computer guy, but the issue with multiple games on your computer has more to do with available hard drive space than it does with the amount of RAM you have, so long as you have at least the minimum system requirements to run the game. If you have enough room on your hard drive to install another game similar to WoW, there should be no problems as long as you don’t try to play both games simultaneously. The computer I’m on right now has WOW and CoH on it, and I still have tons of room for other stuff.
Speaking of CoH, you might want to at least try a demo version of the game. I think it has gone free to play, with added features for those that are willing to pay for it. I haven’t played it in years, but as I remember, it is considerably easier to learn than WoW, and has the most amazing character customization system I have ever seen. If you wanted, you could make a character very similar to Wolkie. A strong fighter that wears plate armor and swings a sword fighting bad guys. He’d just live in a modern city populated by very different monsters. CoH is also the most solo friendly game I’ve seen. Unless things have changed, most of the dungeons in the game will adjust themselves to your party size…you can do the same adventure by yourself, or with friends, and the game will provide a suitable challenge.
I’ll second this. I have WoW, CoH, Lord of the Rings Online, DC Universe and Star Wars The Old Republic on my computer and I only have 2 Gigs of RAM and all the games run fine.
Currently I’m playing Star Wars and I gotta say it is a lot of fun running around and beaten on people with a lightsaber. I didn’t think I’d like playing dark side because I thought I would feel bad but they did a really good job story wise so that it makes playing a bad guy a lot of fun and I don’t feel bad at all about beating on other bad guys.
I guess that answers my question (re: Mogle’s answer about the Pandarens in xpac 3.)
Thanks
Q
It did? I was merely correcting your apparent mistaken impression that Blizzard was ripping off Kung-Fu Panda. (And just to be clear, I was not referring to any World of Warcraft expansion, or even WoW, but the expansion for the real time strategy game, Warcraft 3.)
And, with the exception of “street-sweeping” missions (where you just go around and find enemies of a particular kind and defeat X number of them), missions are instanced. You accept the mission, go to the door it points you to, and you have the place to yourself. So there’s no racing other players for mobs.
Another nice feature is that your Contacts (the CoH name for questgivers) will give you a whole chain of missions to do, with a complete story arc from just one Contact. Once you’ve done a certain number of missions for a contact, they’ll give you their phone number and you can just call them from wherever you are instead of having to run back to them every time. They’ll introduce you to other contacts, and when you’ve finished up everything one contact has for you, you pick another contact and do stuff for them.
Not really “ripping off” KFP, Mogle, but capitalizing on it? I know, it’s mincing words, isn’t it?
No, sorry for the misunderstanding, but I thought that since I can’t find the Pandaren in my version of WoW, it must have been discontinued.
I didn’t know about Warcraft 3. I only came in on BC, and then at a handicap, sorry.
But, while we’re on the subject of “ripping off”, don’t you think that WoW does do a certain amount of that? I do, and I’ve certainly seen some references to that in this thread.
Thanks for the clarification. I had no idea that Warcraft 3 was a stand alone game.
Quasi
It does sound intriguing, guys, and just “up my alley”. I’ll try it out, but I’m still stuck in medieval times and plus that one guy looks like Captain America. 
Thanks
Q
Couple of things
I have noticed while fishing, if the bobber lands where you can’t see it, and you turn the toon to where it IS visible, if you get into the transparent chatbox, you can’t click and catch. However if you move the hook around on your toon’s body it will eventually show and even though you can’t see it in the water you can still click and catch.
Some of my guildies have told me not so save the lower level heals, and I’ve been meaning to ask y’all at which level I SHOULD begin saving them for you in the bank?
Thanks
Q
Observation (no reply necessary): I’m currently at work trying to get exalted with K’Aluak, so I can get a better fishing pole, and I’be noticed that “U’taik” in U’Tupe saounds just like ALF of the old tv series. The same voice can be herad by the qg in Moaki Harbor in the “Planning For The Future” quest.
I’m pretty sure it’s Bernie Brillstein who did ALF’S voice, so I was wondering if that might be him, and how many other celebs have lent (sold) their voice talents to Blizz?
Q