Blizzard In Game Support

Has anyone had to use Blizzard's in game support to get a problem resolved? Sometimes, most the time, it is not too bad, but other times...

I had to put in a ticket because I could not fly in Azeroth after buying the pilots license on my Hunter Brieanna.

While I was waiting for a response, I hit the forums and found one other person that could not fly anywhere. I immediately headed to Northrend to see if I could fly there. Guess what? I couldn't fly in Northrend or Outlands either.

Three days after I put in the ticket I finally received a response. I was told that I would be unable to fly in the starting area's of Azeroth as they are no fly zones... My problem was, as stated in my ticket, that I could not fly anywhere in Azeroth. They went on to say that they hoped they answered my question, but if not, feel free to put in a ticket...

A ticket is a maximum of 500 words. I could not express what I was feeling at that point in 500 words or less. I tried though. I really didn't want to wait another 3 days for more "advice" so I sent an e-mail directly to Blizzard. For those of you who do not know how to do this, the e-mail address is: wowgm@blizzard.com. That would be used for technical support only I would think. I received an answer in less than 3 hours telling me that they had fixed my character and I was all set. Sure enough, I logged onto Brieanna and could fly in Azeroth. I should have done that in the first place.

Anyway, because Brieanna could not quest in Deepholm, I switched over to Gomorra and he is now 83. I got Brieanna to 82 before I could not go on anymore due to not being able to fly. I will get Gomorra to 85 then go back and finish off Brieanna.

I also dual spec'd my Priest Brieonna to be Holy/Shadow. I have been wanting to try Shadow for awhile now and, with what I have seen of the Cata dungeons and how hard they are to heal, I figured now was as good a time as any.

Why Can't I Fly In Azeroth?

Everything was going pretty good, I got Breeonna to 85 and started working on Brieanna. Everything was fine for a little while, then I lost the ability to fly in Azeroth. I can fly on all my other toons, just not Brieanna. Needless to say, that is putting a damper on my ability to quest. Brieanna is 82 and should be questing in Deepholm. I did all the quests there that I can from the ground but you need to be able to fly to get up on the shelfs for the other quests.

I have had a ticket in for 2 days now with no end in sight. This is keeping me questing in Hyjal and Vashj'ir where you don't need to fly too much although it is very helpful. I deleted my WTF, Cache and Interface folders but that didn't help so now I wait...

Breeonna - Level 85 Elemental Shaman

I finally got Breeonna to level 85. I followed the quests from Vashj'ir to Deepholm to Twlight Highlands where I finally got to 85.

The problem I had was running out of quests. I could see in the achievements how many quests there were in each zone, but found myself unable to find any more around the half way mark. I still have 4 80's to level to 85 and I figure by the time they are done I will know where all of the quests are.

Gearscore seems to be out the door, now it is item level that determines how good your gear is. My current item level average is 326. That means I can only do normal Cata dungeons because you have to have an average item level of 329 to do heroics. Right now I am doing Stonecore, Vortex Pinnacle, Grim Batol, Lost City of the Tol'vir and Halls of Origination. All on normal. I will have more on the dungeons once I get a little more used to them. The sad part is, after waiting up to 45 minutes in queue, I usually end up getting queued into a dungeon in progress. I have done all the above mentioned dungeons start to finish but only a couple complete runs in each, the rest were partial runs.

I am going to continue to work on Breonna and get her geared up a little more before I start to work on the others. While I was questing I was making between 400 to 600 gold a day from quests, dungeons and the quest rewards I couldn't use and sold to a vendor. There seem to be a lot of Plate rewards along with a lot of Mail with Agility and Strength on it.

How Do I Get Back To Vashj'ir?

"Where's the boat back to Vashj'ir?" and "I hearthed out of Vashj'ir, how do I get back?" are questions you see in Trade every couple minutes lately.

I made this mistake myself. In my rush to get out and explore I forgot to train my professions. Once I got to Vashj'ir and realized that the things I was skinning were not giving me points, I hearthed back to Stormwind and got training. Then I went back to the docks to wait for the boat back to Vashj'ir. It never came.

You can only take the boat to Vashj'ir once, when you have the quest. After that you will have to use the portal found on the island in the middle of Stormwind Lake. The portal is available to use only after you have been to Vashj'ir on the boat. As for the boat, it takes awhile to get to the dock in Stormwind the first time you go so be patient. It comes to the last, most northern, dock, the same one that goes to Northrend except this boat looks like the one you would take to Darnassus, it is a sail boat, not a steam ship like the one that goes to Northrend.

There is also a flight path above water on Vashj'ir, at a place called Sandy Beach. There are what I call "swim points" in Vashj'ir. They are like flight points but you take a Sea Horse instead of a flying mount. Once you find one of these, located in underwater caves, you can take it to the flight point on the surface. It will drop you off right on the edge of the beach at the flight point. The flight point is directly connected to Ironforge and all points from there.

Flying back there you just land at Sandy Beach then go over to the "swim point", on the shore, and take a Sea Horse back to the depths.

You will also get a Sea Horse mount relatively soon after you get there. That makes things so much easier as your swim speed on it is pretty fast, allowing you to get around quickly. It is a big place and you have to go all over it. You will also get a buff shortly after you arrive, I think it is a reward for the first quest, that allows you to breath underwater and swim faster. This is a permanent buff meaning every time you go under water in Vashj'ir it will kick in and you will be able to breath.

450 Mining

I got Breeonna's mining skill up to 450 yesterday. I finished up in Sholazar Basin mining Saronite Ore. That gives her 2 maxed professions, Mining and Skinning on the eve of the Cataclysm release.

I had mining on a couple other toons but never got it too high, I think 326 on Gomorra was as high as I ever got. Other characters I think I deleted it before I got to 50. I made a lot of gold leveling up my mining and as I was 80 I wasn't too worried about the mobs that can be a real pain when leveling. I made over 1,000 gold leveling mining up. That is already spent on 300 riding skill on my Priest Brieonna.

Lets see what Cata brings tonight.

Mining...

First off I would like to state I hate mining. It is one of Breeonna's primary professions. Why would I make a primary profession that I hate? Because there is a lot of gold in mining. If you don't have another profession that uses ore then it is a gathering skill and pure profit.

A couple days ago I looked at Breeonna's mining skill and saw it was at 91. That is because I hate mining and could never bring myself to do it. I decided I would either have to get rid of mining or level it up. I decided to try and level it up. In the course of a couple days I have brought my mining from 91 to 425. I am now mining Cobalt Ore in Northrend and making a lot of gold in the process. I have made about 1,000 gold so far. I just got my 425th point and now I am heading over to Sholazar Basin to mine Saronite Ore. From what I have read online, Sholazar Basin is the best place to mine for it. I have mined some Saronite Ore in some of the dungeons I have been through, but not enough to get a full stack to sell yet.

4 Years Playing World of Warcraft - 12/1/10

It was 4 years ago today that I loaded up WoW on my laptop and found Azeroth. A lot has changed in the last 4 years.

My first character was a Warrior named Durgan. I leveled him to 19, then saw a Warlock on a Felsteed and decided I had to have one of those. The Felsteed that is. I put the Warrior aside and made Gomorra, my Demon Lock. It took me until April 2007 to level Gomorra to 70. I was 56 when Burning Crusades came out and reached 70 in 49 days /played.

As 70 was the cap, and I was there, I decided to make a Feral Druid which I named Wranngar. I leveled this with another player, Axeelina, and reached 70 in 23 days /played. Wranngar was my first level 80, beating out Gomorra.

When Wranngar and Gomorra were both 80 I started playing a Beastmaster Hunter again that I had made a year and a half before. Brieanna was 27 when I stopped playing her. I got her to 80 pretty quick, a total of 15 days /played. That was when I started wondering how fast I could get a character from 1-80.

I started Breeonna, an Elemental Shaman, and decided to see if I could level a character from 1-80 in less than 10 days /played. I did a combination of dungeons and questing to level this character up. I never sat around and if I was going to be away from the keyboard for more than a minute I would log out. During this time I started another character, completely throwing out my rule of only leveling one character at a time, and made Brieonna a Holy Priest. Both the Shaman and Priest were wearing 5 pieces of BoA gear. They were wearing shoulders, chest, weapon and 2 trinkets. I only had one set of trinkets so I would send them back and forth depending which character I was playing.

I ended up getting Brieonna to 80 first in 12 days /played. Then I got Breeonna to 80 in 8 days 14 hours /played satisfying myself that I could get a character to 80 in less than 10 days played.

Times have changed since I made that first Warrior, Durgan, who I ended up deleting. I have seen new worlds come, twice, and I have witnessed The Shattering. I am now looking forward to Cataclysm and flying in Azeroth. Let's see what the next year brings.

More Dungeons

I have been doing a lot of Dungeons on Breeonna, as a matter of fact that is about all I have been doing. I have been exploring what is left of Azeroth between dungeons.

I did find something amusing in Lakeshire last night. Apparently they have bare knuckle fights in the basement of the Inn there. Last night was a dwarf against a human. There were a lot of people there just watching the fight and cheering on their favorite.

I had one Halls of Reflection last night that I didn't finish. That was the first one in a long time that I didn't finish. It was a Heroic and we died 4 times before everyone bailed. The problem seemed to be the healer not being able to keep up. But then again the whole group had some problems. We wiped for the first time on the second boss, Marwyn, in the first part. When we came back from that the tank ran to the other side as soon as the spirits came out. I thought that was a little weird but I thought maybe he had a plan. He didn't. He thought we would only have to fight the last boss and not the waves of mobs. That cost us another wipe.
Finally we got everyone on the same page but still couldn't bring down the boss in 2 more tries, that is when everyone bailed.

I had a few more dungeons that were pretty interesting. I do a lot of random dungeons because the normal randoms queue in half the time a heroic does. That way I have less wait and more play. In normal randoms you get a lot of people that are under geared and inexperienced. I learned my lesson on healing, it is usually easier to heal a heroic that it is a normal because the people in the heroic are usually more experienced. Another problem with the normals is I end up queuing into Oculus, Culling of Stratholme and Trial of the Champion a lot because a lot of the players are under 80 and those are the only ones they can get into.

Redridge Fox

I got a Redridge Fox for Brieanna yesterday. I saw someone else with one and figured, why not? The Foxes, tamable as hunter pets, are new with patch 4.0.3. I am not sure if I will use it, but it only took me a minute to run over to Lakeshire and tame one.

**I mistakenly called this the Redwood Fox in the original post, it is a Redridge Fox.

The Shattering - 11/23/10

It took some time to get logged in today between maintenance running over then the problems people had logging in but I finally got in. Of course there were the mandatory disconnects following that but after an hour or so it stabilized and I was able to take a look around.

The first thing I went to see was the Park in Stormwind. That was a total wash, gone. It looked like it got blown off the face of the world. I also noticed that Stormwind got a face lift. The cobblestones in the street were much more defined and had a pattern to them. The outsides of the buildings were crisper and cleaner. The colors were more vibrant. Then I got to the center of town, the Trade District. There were some more changes there too. The fountain outside the bank has water in it now. The auction house moved to a new location, across from the bank. It is now bigger and less crowded.

When I went outside Stormwind to the Valley of Hero's I saw where one of the statues got knocked down (into the water I assume) and now is on a sled to be brought back up. You can see the feet still standing on the pedestal where it once stood. Looking back at Stormwind from the main gates you can see damage to the towers. There is already scaffolding up so I assume they are already fixing it?

I didn't notice any real changes in Ironforge.

From there I headed to Westfall. I got a surprise when I got there. Sentinel Hill is now a fortress. It has walls around most of it and a lot more buildings. They moved the flight point up next to the original tower now. All of the original buildings are still there, they just added a lot more to it. There was really a lot of content in this patch even though the expansion is not out yet. I noticed a lot of homeless people around Westfall and other areas as I explored them, I guess some of the ones in Westfall used to live in the park in Stormwind as they are labeled as Stormwind refugees.

From Sentinel Hill I noticed a vortex of some kind throwing trees and rocks up into the air. I decided to go over and see what that was all about. What I found there was a glowing hole in the ground. It is called the Raging Chasm. I didn't spend too much more there and these were the only 2 things I found.

I headed to Blasted lands from there as I heard there were going to be some changes there too. I found Nethergarde Keep to be pretty much the same as it was although I ran into some mobs by the mine. I headed south east from Nethergarde Keep and eventually ran into Shattershore. This is all new territory in Blasted Lands. I headed west along the shore and found the Red Reaches. There I found the Bloodwatch Shrine. Continuing west I ended up in the Tainted Forest. As soon as you enter the Tainted Forest from the Red Reaches there is a tiny village called Surwich right on the shoreline. There is a dock there that looks like it is set up to receive a boat, another sailing point? Surwich had an Inn and a couple houses and is dark like Duskwood. From there I headed deeper into the Tainted Forest which eventually lead me back to the Blasted lands I knew. I headed back to the flight point and took a flight to Arathi Highlands.

When I got to Arathi Highlands everything seemed to be the same. My real destination was Southshore as I noticed there was no longer a flightpoint there. While heading to Southshore on the road I noticed a new road (31,54), right across from Stormgarde Keep, with a sign that said Hinterlands. I followed that and found they had put in a tunnel from Arathi Highlands to Hinterlands. I think this is a great idea. When I was leveling up my first toon, Gomorra, I looked all through Arathi Highlands to find a way into Hinterlands from there, there is none. I went through the tunnel to Hinterlands and found that there is a road right from the tunnel to Aerie Peak making that a lot easier to get to.

Continuing on my way to Southshore I noticed a lot of Horde (PvP) mobs everywhere. I even got flagged when I stopped to help out a Rogue that was fighting some. When I got to Southshore I found total devastation. The place was taken over by someone (Forsaken?) and was deserted of Alliance life. I went into the Inn and it was deserted. It looked like they had just packed up and left a few minutes before I got there. There were still fires going in all the fire places but there were no people or furniture. It reminded me of the abandoned Inns you find in places like Moonbrook in Westfall and Raven Hill in Duskwood except this place was still clean and not falling apart.

I headed up to Chillwind Point to catch a flight to the Wetlands to see if anything happened there.

When I got to Wetlands I couldn't believe it. Menethil Harbor was flooded, the docks were all warped and busted up and houses on one side of the keep were under water. The whole place had 1-3 feet of water in it. They had sandbagged to keep the water out of a lot of the buildings. I took a quick ride around outside of the keep but didn't notice anything straight off. It was getting late so I decided to call it a night. I will do some more exploring tomorrow and see what I find.

Black Temple

I had the opportunity to run the Black Temple the other night. It is a level 70, 25 man raid located in Shadowmoon Valley, that I had never done before. We had a group of 21 players with about 35% level 75+. There is a lot of nice scenery in Black Temple as in most the dungeons/raids. From what I understand a lot of the older dungeons/raids are going to be changing in Cataclysm.

Here's a little history on the Black Temple:

The Black Temple is the fortress of Illidan Stormrage, the lord of the Outlands. It was once known as the Temple of Karabor and has changed hands many times over the years. This raid drops Teir 6 and also drops the legendary Twin Blades of Azzinoth. The entrance to Black Temple is not at the gates but through a breech in the southern wall.

You used to have to be attuned to run this raid but attunement is no longer required.

Before the shattering of Draenor the Black Temple was once called the Temple of Karabor which was a sacred site of the Draenei. Shortly after the formation of the Horde, Gul'dan ordered the temple to be taken and made it into the headquarters for the Shadow Council. They also named it the Black Temple in the process.

Following his defeat to Arthas Menethil, Illidan returned to the Black Temple where he resides today. Neither his activities or mental state are known at this time. While Malfurion has stated that Illidan has become mad and delusional, believing that he killed Arthas and accomplished the mission Kil'jaeden had sent him on. If Illidan has descended into madness and believes he accomplished his mission it would make no sense for him to worry about Arthas or Kil'jaeden coming after him; he would believe the former dead, and the latter appeased. But then again, those afflicted by madness rarely make sense.
**Source: WoWWiki

So that is what we walked into. Overall we didn't really have a problem and moved through it quickly and smoothly. A few of the lower level players died a couple times but we really didn't have that many deaths and no wipes. Due to the higher levels present we were able to pull whole rooms at a time. I can see how this would be a pretty tough raid if everyone was level 70, it sure wouldn't have went as fast and smooth as it did I am sure. Unfortunately the Twin Blades of Azzinoth did not drop. I have been playing WoW for 4 years (December 1st) and have yet to see a legendary drop. Here are some screen shots I took during the Campaign.

Random Dungeons 11/22/10

I have been pretty busy lately. I gave up doing my daily's because they nerfed the gold payout, and started doing dungeons instead.

I have done most of the dungeons on Breeonna and have been getting her some better gear with Justice Points in the process.

When I first enter a dungeon, first and second fights, my DPS is really poor. Usually less than 3k. Then I find my groove and it starts climbing, up to as high as 6k. That is about as high as I ever get on Breeonna but she is slowly creeping up as I get better gear on her.

In the past few days I have done every heroic dungeon at least twice, some a lot more. I just got out of a heroic Halls of Reflection that went really well. I remember when a chill would go down my spine when I would queue into it. Now I look forward to it. If you have a good group it is a cakewalk like it was today. If you have a poor group, and I have been in many, it can be pretty rough. I remember starting a lot of them I never got to finish because people bailed. I got a couple achievements on Breeonna who apparently didn't have them.

I was in a pretty funny Trial of the Champion yesterday. The Tank was a Paladin in blues and greens and had 20k HP. Did I mention it was heroic ToC? That was interesting, there were a couple wipes, and a lot of the Tank dying which would leave the tanking to me and a Rouge. But we got through it. Normally I would have bailed but the Tank and Rogue informed us at the start that the tank was a fresh 80 looking to get geared so I figured I would stick around and help out. The Priest that was healing ninja'd the Tank neck piece that dropped for some reason. It was STR and STA, not usually what a Priest is looking for in a neck. I think he did it just to be a jerk.

I stayed with them for another random which turned out to be Violet Hold. He had a lot better time in there and got a nice set of leggings. I have been seeing some new drops from these old bosses lately, ever since the last big patch as a matter of fact. I got a new shield for Breeonna the other day in Pit of Saron that I had never seen drop before. It is a pretty nice caster shield.

The bottom line is I make more gold doing random heroics than I do with my daily's now that they nerfed the payout.

Stratholme - Mount & Rep Runs 11/19/10

I did some mount and rep runs in Stratholme on Breeonna and Brieanna tonight. I didn't expect the mount to drop and it didn't in the 5 runs we did. I did get some rep tho. There were 3 of us that were doing these runs, me and 2 people from the guild. We had no problem at all because it is a level 60 dungeon and one 80 could solo it, never mind 3.

What we were after, besides rep, was the Deathcharger's Reins that drop off Baron Rivendare. It has a .02% drop rate, not that great. I have done runs for this mount before but have never seen it drop. I know it does drop because I see people riding it, but not a lot of people riding one.

I did manage to get the Key to the City, which drops off Magistrate Barthilas, for Bireanna and Breeonna, which allows you to enter through the servants entrance and open gates inside so you can do quick mount runs. I now have this key on Brieanna, Breeonna, Wranngar and Gomorra.

The reason I was trying this again was someone said they are revamping the classic dungeons and this mount, along with others is going away. I have not verified that but I am going to look into it.