Rep Grinding instead of playing Northrend

Yes its true. I am doing rep grinds instead of doing a lot of the Northrend content. I am just more interested in getting as many exalted reputations as I can manage instead of doing yet another quest in Northrend. I am in no hurry to get to level 80 and am nearly to 75 while most of my guild has at least one 80 each. But again, that's no problem to me.

So this week I am working three reps. I am working on Shattered Sun Offensive honestly wondering why I didn't do it before. I am making 4050 rep a day doing those quests still available to me and will be exalted by Tuesday if I can keep up my pace through the weekend.

At the same time I am working on two that do not earn me experience. Sporeggar and the Timbermaw. I already have the Kurenai done so the Diplomat title will be mine soon.

Sporeggar was going to be my next to actually reach exalted until I did a 45 minute test today. In 45 minutes I was able to kill 170+ mobs generating more than 60 feathers for turn ins. With the changes to Timbermaw now granting 350 rep for 5 feathers I will soon have enough to go from somewhere in Friendly through Exalted in one shot in another 3 or so hours of game play.

Sporeggar is going more slowly in that I am doing the 750 rep repeatable quests for killing 18 mobs. I can do about 7 or 8 runs through the quest in an hour but I honestly get bored doing just 3 runs. So that one will take more time. Expected Exalted to be Sunday.

A bit of Real Life

Well RL has kept me from playing much of the game lately. But there are no complaints here.

On Thanksgiving while in Grand Turk around 230 in the afternoon she said yes.

I am so so excited and really am looking forward to this next step in life.

Approaching the Expansion

Well I haven't made it here nearly as much as I'd have liked. But then again I haven't had nearly enough play time in WoW as I would have liked either lately. Real Life, or that fantasy world we live in when not in WoW, has been terribly busy.

I just in this last week before the expansion ran my second Kara. I've been blessed in that my guild is really quite wonderful about sharing and not taking things that arent needed so those that do need, usually get. Perfect example last night is when our main healer and our raid leader both backed out of the T4 gloves roll so I could have it. Thank you both very much. Not sure how much the set bonus helps me for those, but they were a major upgrade. As was the new belt I got that although off spec was such an upgrade they gave it to me as well. I was still using my Tenacious Defender Belt from level 60 in Ramps. I'm sure all the 70 horde I kill in the BGs enjoyed inspecting me with that on, but its time has passed.

My reps are all currently very low in general to the rest of the guild for the end game content. I currently have only 2 of the Heroic Keys and am having trouble finding the time and motivation to run any regulars to get the rep up. Anyone else feeling the lack of motivation in the run up to the expansion? Like a built in break.

Actually the expansion also marks the end of the line for many of my friends in WoW. They're using it as a chance to get out of the game and continue on with RL matters instead. To them I wish them all luck and well being in their chosen endeavours.

Life of my 70

Its been a long time since I posted and I must admit I've just not been feeling it lately for WoW. We have been very busy in fantasy land (what most call RL, WoW is RL to me sometimes) and my priorities just haven't included WoW.

But now that patch 3.0.2 is out and we have achievements and new talents I'm LOVING my life killing people in the BGs. Sure I can often get owned as I not always the best PVP'er but it is fun to be that much better now with my new talents and the ever improving gear.

I am disappointed to find that I have been unable to find many heroic or raid runs with my guild. I would like to keep building up and taking advantage of the time before the expansion comes out to further gear myself. But at the same time the break from the game has been great. I am very excited to get the expansion and start on the run up to 80. That alone will take me past Christmas and seems like it will be forever just like the run to 70 did. But it will get done and I will be able to finally afford the things that matter. The huge new mounts, the current fast flyer, the new gear and all that fun stuff.

So to the guild who may be reading this, continue to have fun. I will be back full time next month. Just hit or miss for now for me.

New Armor

When I was grinding honor and marks at 59 and 60 I was able to save up and get the S2 2H sword and also the s2 legs. But I grew tired of constant AV and decided to level before going further.

Well last night I finally got my next piece. The S2 Chest. It took grinding for 6008 honor yesterday, a personal daily best. But I finally have a couple pieces and FINALLY got rid of the Battlemaster's Breastplate that I had since those grinding honor days at 59 and 60.

Over the next couple weeks before the expansion comes out I will alternate between grinding gold and grinding honor to get the other pieces. Sadly it's too late for me to get enough arena points to get the s4 gloves but I am moving along and hopefully will be mostly s2 geared at least.

DING!

Yes everyone, I finally hit 70 on Friday evening. It took longer than expected as after work my GF decided to throw some agro my way and insisted on going out to eat. Not what I wanted to do, but I knew once I hit 70 I'd want more play time than I've been getting lately. So I agreed and out we went.

But after less than an hour of playing I finally had enough to ding on the quest turn in and off I went to do it. It took me about 26 hours of game play spread out over about 9 months of RL.

I am loving life as a 70. I still am geared with a lot of level 59 and 60 twinkish gear I had and never replaced and I'm still able to hold my own in most battlegrounds. There are some hordies who are just uber and I can barely scratch and die quickly but am SO happy to finally have my s2 sword and legs on. They've been in my bank for what feels like forever.

So finally, CalDMint is top level. For about another 5 weeks when Blizzard takes that away from me.

My Last Break in Play before My First 70

Well I am back at work now after going home to play WoW on my lunch hour. This is really a very common practice for me. It helps me play more WoW. It helps me stay focused at work by taking a real break during the day, of which I wouldn't be paid for anyway. And most of all it helps me reduce girlfriend agro in that I play less when she's around because I played some when she wasn't.

And so it is with great fanfare that I sit here now and proclaim to the world that CalDMint is currently at 87.5% into level 69 leaving only 2.5 boxes to go to level. My questing in the past day or so has been in Netherstorm doing Area 52 quests. One of my guildies told me that the quests here are in his opinion the fastest way to level from 68 on. So I started late but the xp rate including turn ins has gotten as high as 135,000 xp/hour.

I am very excited that in another 2 hours I will once again be infront of my computer and about an hour or so later I will DING once more.

So please excuse the bluntness of this but YAY ME!

Always a Silver Lining?

I am back in the office still not feeling well after a day of being home sick. One of those fun days were you're running for a bathroom every 30-60 minutes not sure which way it wants to go.

But it was a nice lesson in the silver lining theory. I was able to play much more wow yesterday before noon than I usually do all week when working in the office. As such I was able to do that wonderful thing called Ding days before I thought I'd be able to. I'm still not 70 and am really hoping to soon, but I know it'll come in time and probably before the expansion makes 70 worthless.

So it was on this day when I was feeling so so bad that I was able to make something good of it and continue my quest down that all powerful warrior's road.

Learning to Cook

As everyone knows there are those that say "Anyone can cook."

But how true do you all think this is? Many of you I am sure can and do cook well. A few many not be able to cook at all. I definitely fall into the latter. But I am slowly starting to learn, in large part under the expert tutelage of my girlfriend.

It truly amazes me how easy some of the few things I've learned to do are. Now that I know how to do them. But it has always been one of the things in my life I wanted to learn and never did and as with every great endeavor they only get done when you do them.

And of course this leads to the need of new toys, ah I mean tools, in the kitchen. After all, who wants to chop vegetables with an old dull knife when you can have a brand new one that feels like it was made just for you? This is how it felt when I picked up my first Wusthof Culinar knife in the store the other night. I knew right then I had to buy one and try it out. Luckily I also knew that the store wanted too much money for it and I went home to buy it online at amazon of all places. So now as I get ready to head home for another lesson in cooking tonight, I am filled with expectation on the delivery of my new knife.

Getting on the Bus

Well we all have varied feelings about the degradation of common courtesy in the world today. But I have a different view on this as proven to me every time I board the bus in the morning on days I can't walk to work.

I think most people feel its a nice idea to let women board the bus first and you wait until they've gone before trying to push in. Just the way I was raised. So imagine my "love" of people when I go through this each day and wait to let women on first and then when they get on the bus they stay and stand right at the front. Making it so we have to push and excuse ourselves around them in tight quarters to get to the free space towards the back.

So I say, although I do not agree it is right, that I can certainly understand how our society has gotten away from being nice to others and the whole "women and children first" theory.