Lootables.com Love

** authors note ** I apologize for not writing in the past week without even a update but between me, my wife, and our son being sick it has been a very long week.  Hopefully now that we are all feeling better I can get back on track again. 

I would like to give a shout out to one of my new found favorite sites.  Lootables.com.  I enjoy having a lot of different characters with numerous professions.  Normally when leveling a new character I take 2 gathering professions, usually either mining and skinning or herbalism and skinning.  This way I have plenty of money coming in by selling the materials on the AH while leveling and than when I either hit 70 or get close I usually switch over to the professions I really want and power level them as fast I can.  When I start leveling my new profession I like to get it to the top level as fast and as cheaply as I possibly can since you rarely make much money while leveling but at the top level you can usually make some $$$$ .   (at least that is usually my plan)

So which site do I use as my power level guide?  Well I am glad you asked that since I am going to tell you.  After doing a ton of research and wasting a lot of time looking at other guides I stumbled upon Lootables.com.  They have the most superior profession leveling guides with complete listings of materials needed and nice write up’s on both the how and why they have you leveling on certain items.  They also give a nice listing of approximately how much money you should make or lose while leveling.  (including whether it is more profitable to disenchant the item, sell it on the AH, or just vendor it)   

A couple of other good points about this site:  there profession leveling guides are not limited to just crafted professions but also include gathering and secondary professions.  They also give detailed route maps for you to follow.  Personally I went from 0 – 350 with herbalism in a couple of hours just following there guide.  Granted it was on a high 60’s level character but still it made it extremely easy to do. 

One other feature is the last few pages in the power level guide identify BoP recipes and where they drop, BoE recipes, and all reputation level recipes.  This is one of the few sites I have found that offer this in such an easy way for every profession. 

So if you are looking at starting a new profession or just want to power level to the top of one please take a look at lootables and give it a try.  From my personal stand point I do not think you will be disappointed. 

** Disclaimer ** I am in no way at all affiliated with Lootables.com.  I am merely a WoW player who found there site after trying numerous other sites and really enjoy it.

Goals Update

Well over the last several days I managed to put a big dent into my 2 week goals that I listed in this previous post .  I completed my PMC set, power leveled enchanting to 275 on Belgarath, power leveled jewelcrafting to 355 on Salmation, got mining to 375 on Qianyi, and got regular flying mount for Belgarath.  So right now my professions are: 

Belgarath – Priest – Tailoring (375) / Enchanting (275)

Salmation – Mage – Tailoring (375) / Jewelcrafting (355) 

Qianyi – Rogue – Skinning (375) / Mining (375) 

The one problem I am having is making back the money I used up while I power leveled these professions.  It actually took a lot more than I was planning on using since I did not realize just how high the prices are on the lower level items that are needed.  Plus I got “profession fever” and got tunnel vision to level and thus lost site of some of the plans I had for doing this.  While I am making back money slowly it is taking me a little while longer. 

One plus is that while grinding I did get 2 blue jewelcrafting recipes so that saved me some money. 

Ding 70 =)

I got off from work early tonight so had some extra time to play and I finally hit 70   Now for the real fun to begin.

Bel

Short Term Goals

This is more a personal check list for me than any worthwhile blog material. I am banking on the fact that it I put some of my short term goals out in the open than I will be more likely to stick with getting them accomplished.

2 week Goals
- get Belgarath to 70 (02/07/08)
- get Belgarath regular flying mount
- drop mining on Belgarath and power level enchanting to 300. (will leave me with tailoring and enchanting)
- get Belgarath 375 tailoring (355 now and leads to my next goal)
- complete Primal Mooncloth Set
- complete enough of my quest at level 70 to accumulate around 2000 gold. Should give me a nice head start on my epic mount and pay back some of the cost from power leveling.
- drop enchanting on Salmation and power level jewelcrafting to 350
- Get Qianyi to 350 mining (at 255 now after dropping leatherworking)
- replenish my bank character after the 2 power leveling sessions. I want at least 1000 gold and another 1000 gold in inventory. (this should not be a problem depending on how the power leveling sessions go)
- respec Belgarath to 23 / 38 Disc / Holy so I can start actually healing instance runs.

1 month Goals

- complete a decent set of healing gear for heroics and regular runs.
- all heroic keys
- epic flying mount for Qianyi
- epic flying mount for Belgarath

Notes

- I initially was going to get Belgarath his epic first but after thinking about this since I am mainly only going to be running instance runs and have no gathering professions it will not really pay for itself. On my rogue I have skinning and mining now so I should be able to make the money back on it quicker and than get Belgarath his epic mount. At least that is my plan.

- I have really struggled with the decision to change my professions around. Especially since Salmation has 365 + enchanting. But the + Healing ring enchant is really calling to me.

- i mainly utilize the following 2 sites for help with my gearing decisions :
- World of Matticus Healing Gear Suggestions

- List of All + Healing Cloth Gear on WowWiki

Manners

** Warning – short rant incoming ***

One of my many pet peeves in life is manners.  Whether it is in a game or at the local Game Stop I think manners are an important part of showing maturity in yourself and respect to the people around you.  I also agree with the saying “treat others as you yourself want to be treated.” 

Now I am not saying that I have never been a jerk in game (or out).  Everyone has.  We all have bad days or get frustrated and lose our cool and take it out on the people around us.  It just happens.  But I always try to be polite and when I do lose my cool I am usually the first person to say “sorry”.  Whether I am right or wrong I should not have acted like an ass to the other person.

I know this does not directly relate to the game but this is something that I see more and more in groups and in general chat.  Just because you are an anonymous name in a computer game does not give you permission to act totally ignorant to the people around you.  One of the quickest way to get on my ignore list is to be a total jerk to everyone repeatedly.  I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt so it takes me a while to resort to this but it does happen.   

This brings me to one of my final things.  A lot of things that get said can come out the wrong way or strike another person in an offensive way.   The easiest way to correct this is to talk about it during a quiet time; usually it is best if you wait until after the raid and not right before a boss or another pull.  Usually in party chat or guild chat is not the right way, but in a private tell.    Give the person a chance to explain or even apologize if necessary.  The majority of people do not play this game trying to make people mad, yes I know some do, but the majority are good people. 

If you can not reach a solution with the person than please speak to a guild officer and see if they can alleviate the conflict.  I have seen too many times emotions get the best of someone, they say some things that they do not mean, and than /gquit.  Please stop and cool down and think about what you are going to do.  Especially if you have time and friendship invested in a guild, don’t throw it all away over a misunderstanding. 

I am not a guild officer and while I do have time and friendship invested in the guild I try not to get involved in situations unless I feel there is absolutely no choice or I feel that I can some way inject something for the good of the guild.  This past week we had a bad time in raids, we took along some new people to get them both experience and gear and it did not go the best.  I know it is tough when you go to an instance that is normally on farm and it takes a few tries since you are teaching some new people, but remember we were all new at some time.  Yes we could of did some things differently, maybe take a few less new people than we did so we had more experience to help cover them, but all in all they learned a lot and got some good upgrades that will help the “guild” as a while in the future.  While I could go into a whole long essay about people that want to raid need to put the guild in front and do what benefits it most as a whole, I think I will save that for another day. 

Suffice it to say we had some long standing members get mad about wiping and say some things that never should have been said and than when it caused conflict instead of apologizing or taking the time to explain that they were frustrated they just quit.  It never should have come to that point. 

Online Friends -vs- Real Life Friends

*** Authors Note ***  The great folks at Blog Azeroth have started a part of the forums for members to suggest blog topics and have different people blog on that topic so we get all types of perspectives.  If you have never visited there website than please make time in the future to take a look. 

Well I am the one who suggested this topic and I would like to give you a little background on why I have been thinking about this lately.  At my job I am one of the few people who plays online games so the majority of people do not have the same perspective about “online friends” as I do.  This really came into focus for me several weeks ago when I was talking to a friend at my work and we were discussing an online friend of mine who from now on we will call Paul. 

Well I had known Paul from playing Eve Online with him for over 4 years, and playing a small amount of WoW while he was taking a break from Eve.  I had never met him in real life but we had spent thousands of hours gaming together and talking on Team Speak or Ventrillo.  I consider him one of my good friends and even though we do not game together anymore I still hop on their Team Speak and give him a hard time and enjoy talking to him. 

Several months ago Paul’s teenage daughter was involved in a tragic accident and she regretfully lost her life.  It shocked and saddened everyone who found out about it in game.  I mean this person is not just a computer pixel but a friend.  It did not matter to me that I never met him because to talk to him and hear how bad he was hurting really got to me.  We posted his address on the private forums for our corporation along with links to articles on the accident and funeral information.   

Now if you have never played Eve Online than let me give you one quick piece of background : this game is not dominated by North American players but rather by European players.  Now once the address went out for Paul and his family they received hundreds of cards and numerous flower arrangements from people all over the world that  he had never met in real life but yet had touched there lives from playing an online game.  Some of the people who had been gaming with him for years flew in to attend the funeral and finally meet one of our true “online” friends. 

To me this just all seems natural.  I do not think you can qualify a friendship just by spending time in real life with someone.  Do you think people who spend years as pen pals do not consider each other as friends?  A lot of times my online friends know as much about my feelings, desires, and thoughts as my real life friends that I see every day.  As the saying goes:  “You will always be my friend because you know too much about me.”    

In closing the reason why this made such a big impression on me is I was reflecting on all this at work with some people and when they heard me talking about everything that had happened they looked at me like I was an alien.  They just could not comprehend that you can feel this way about someone you have never met. 

It lead me to wondering if other gamers feel this way about there online friends?  I know I do, and I know that Paul does also. 

I would really like to know how YOU feel about them……

Introduction to Me

Well I guess it is only fitting that my first blog is a little summary of me and my characters and what you can expect to find me writing about here.

I am 31 years old, married, and my wife and I just had our first child on Oct 24th, a baby boy. So I am a very proud papa. I work full time in a 911 emergency communications center so I enjoy my WoW time as an escape from the cruel reality of the world. Outside of playing WoW I enjoy fishing, watching the Steelers, and watching the Orioles lose more than I care to admit.

Warcraft is only the second MMORPG that I have ever seriously played. I played Eve Online from beta all the way up to the beginning of beta for WoW. I enjoyed great success in Eve and still miss all the friends I have there. I still do have an account there but rarely log in anymore except to train skills. I probably will deviate a little in my blog occasionally to throw in bits and pieces from Eve and discuss why I made the change over to WoW.

As far as my WoW career I was lucky enough to get in during the closed beta and started off playing a rogue. I played the him up to the high 40’s and a pally up into the mid 20’s. Once the servers went live I created my account and immediately leveled the rogue up to 60 almost entirely by grinding. At 60 I realized I had made a terrible mistake and almost everyone and their brother had a rogue. I was lucky enough to get into a helpful guild but after several weeks I asked to permission to reroll to a mage to better help the guild progress. The mage quickly became my main and I still use him extensively today. At the time I was a lot more naïve than I am today and for some reason I deleted the rogue. (/cry) Over the last several years I have leveled another rogue up to 70 and currently have a level 55 hunter. My main now is my level 67 Draenei Priest, Belgarath

Since I had already completed all my goals in the first part of WoW, when the expansion came out I was determined to try out a new race and a new class and since I have always wanted to heal I picked priest. I have also made a more dedicated effort to hit a lot of the quest I never did before since I was to busy grinding as fast as I could.

Right now I am working on getting the priest to 70 and than switching over to a 23 / 38 Disc / Holy build. Currently I am almost full shadow and while I have tried heavy Disc for leveling I am just not convinced it is anywhere near as close to Shadow for the speed with which you can grind out quest and mobs.

As for what I plan to blog about ….. anything that happens to hit me at the moment. My main focus I plan on concentrating on is my Priest, both the class in general and the adventures I get to have with him. Occasionally I will probably throw in some blogs about my other characters and how they are progressing, my goals in general, how much I love playing the AH to make money, and some personal interest items having to do with gaming in general and life with a wife and infant and still trying to game effectively.

Thank you very much for taking the time to visit and I hope you return often in the future to see what I have rambled on about next. Any suggestions or comments please feel free to post them here or my email address is in my “Contact Me” link on the right hand side.

Belgarath

Work In Progress

Please give me a little time to get everything up and running.  I hope to have my first blog posted in the next few days.  I am totally learning about this as I go so expect plenty of mistakes and corrections. 

Bel