"Everything is a hunter weapon"....Until 5.0

 

            Everywhere you look you'll find people discussing the biggest features of the upcoming expansion, namely those that were announced in the Mists of Pandaria expansion trailer (i.e. Pandaren, Monks, Pet Battle System, etc.). However, I have found that I need to do a bit more digging around to read up on someone's opinion of the smaller features coming with the above-mentioned features. So, I decided to start my MoP series of blogs by discussing these smaller features while I think of a way to put a new spin on my discussion of the larger 5.0 features.

            With that said, I thought I'd start off with one of the smaller features that will have one of the biggest impacts on my main, Kairiana, the Hunter.

Ranged slots are going away!!!

            That's right! With the new expansion, all bows, guns, and crossbows will become Hunter-only weapons, wands will turn into one-handed weapons as another weapon choice for the casters who can equip them, and relics will turn into vendorable grays.

            Of course, with this comes a whole other slew of goodies. First of all, the quote "everything is a hunter weapon" (minus maces, of course) will no longer apply, as Hunters will no longer be able to equip melee weapons - meaning, no more "stat sticks". Thus feral druids, rogues, and enhancement shaman won't have to worry about sharing their weapons with a hunter, while a hunter no longer needs to worry about losing the awesome +agi ranged weapons to rogues (and there shouldn't be anymore +str ranged weapons for hunters to pout about).

            The other interesting part of this is how the hunter slot will work. From everything I've been able to gather thus far, their weapons will be equipped in their main hand slot like everyone else, and those weapons will be two-handed. Of course, as soon as this occurs to most of the Lord Godfrey fanboy (and girl) hunters out there, a bunch of people start contemplating the idea of duel wielding pistols and small crossbows! Personally, I think this idea is awesome, and I'd love to see a new flavor added to hunters. However, I doubt we'll get quite that lucky. It would require a lot of reworking for the hunter in general, not to mention making the developers go back and add in countless one-handed guns and crossbows throughout the various levels of the game.

           

            Still...I would love to play a WoW version of Diablo 3's Demon Hunter....

            Oh! and of course, the biggest thing coming...er, leaving with this feature is Hunters' minimum range! With the removal of melee weapons for hunters, should a hunter end up in melee range of something, they will actually be able to keep shooting at their target! I am especially looking forward to this, because fights like Occu'thar and Throngus were a big pain in the butt during certain phases.

            So, needless to say (though I've already said it), I am super excited about the removal of the ranged slots! Not only does it fix Hunters, but it means my other characters won't be carrying around useless stat "sticks" of their own (i.e. relics and bows/guns I never shoot). Hmm....maybe this is one step towards fixing Hunter PvP, too?

Mists of Pandaria

 

BlizzCon brought us a LOT of news regarding the upcoming expansion: Mists of Pandaria. I plan on writing a series of blogs about the various features, but here is a quick little outline of the various features announced at BlizzCon:

New Features

Pandaria

Level 85-90 quest zones

No flying mounts until level 90

Pandaren

Fairly new race with lots of room for lore development
Neutral until level 10 - then pick Alliance or Horde
Classes: Monk, Hunter, Mage, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warrior

Monks

No auto-attack

Tank, DPS, and Heal specs

Two resources: Chi & Light/Dark orbs
All races except Worgen & Goblin

Pet Battle System

Pokemon

Challenge Modes

Timed runs

Normalized gear

Leader boards

Non-stat Transmog. gear

Scenarios

            Group Quests

PVE Battlegrounds

Revamped Features

Talent System

            Specs ≠ Talents

            1 of 3 talents per 15 levels

Classic Race Models

            Sorely needed model revamps

No More Ranged Slots

            No more minimum range for Hunters

            No relics/stat-sticks

            Bows/Crossbows/Guns will be Hunter Only

            Wands will become main-hand weapons

No more Shaman “Buff” Totems

            Totems will be more about utility

Warlock Resources

            Each spec will have its own resource

                        Affliction – Soul Shards

                        Demonology – Demon Power

                        Destruction – Infernal Embers

Hunter Evolution, Part 2

Hunter pets have come a long ways throughout the past seven years. We’ve come from doing a long quest chain which taught us out how to tame different pets to no longer needing this quest chain and getting pets from day one. We went from being required to tame pets we didn’t want to keep so that our permanent pets could learn special abilities to no longer needing to teach our pets any skills, besides what they gain from their talent points. Hunter pets have gone from being quite complicated and unique to being much simpler (almost like those strange warlock demon pets), though still unique.

            One of the first things I noticed about hunter pets that set them apart from any other pet class I’ve played before or since was that hunter pets actually gained experience (until recently). While all other pets were automatically the same levels as their masters, hunter pets actually needed to grow with (or at times, after) the hunter. Back in the day, when a hunter tamed a beast, that beast stayed their original level right after they became buddies with the hunter. It was the hunter’s job to then take that beast out to gain experience in Azeroth and grow in strength. If you tamed a pet at your level or just a little below, this wasn’t that big of a deal. However, if you decided to tame a level 10 beast while you were level 60, or if you kept a couple of pets in the stable for too long, you had a much bigger task ahead of you.

Pets would only gain experience from killing monsters that you would also gain experience from. This made leveling super-low leveled pets a major pain in the butt! If your pet was too low, chances were your little friend would be one-shot by the big bad meanies you wanted to kill, thus not gaining the experience to grow stronger. Thus, low-level beasts with awesome skins tended to sit in the stable in hopes that they’d magically get stronger without dying multiple times (and getting cranky with you).

I can’t remember exactly when it happened (I think it was in Wrath), but Blizzard finally heard all the whining hunters and changed pets so that they would never be less more than 5 levels lower than the hunter. This allowed hunters to tame whatever level pet they wanted (so long as it wasn’t higher than the hunter) without too many issues. Beast collectors could have some really neat pets AND actually get to hunt with them, yet the pets remained unique in that they still gained experience.

Then came Patch 4.0.1 where Azeroth changed drastically! (Well, classes did…the world didn’t change till 4.0.3.) Hunters could now have up to 25 pets between the pets they brought with them in the world and the pets they kept in their stable. I know I was one of those hunters who went out to tame a wide variety of pets I had always wanted, but never tamed due to the limited space for them to live in my stables. I think I had at least 10, if not 15, pets by the time Cataclysm was finally released, and I had worked ‘em all quite hard to make sure they were 80 by release so I could hunt with any one of them I wanted as I leveled up through the new zones. However, I eventually started to fall into the same habit of only hunting with one or two of my pets on a regular basis, and it was getting difficult to keep them all leveled up with me.

So then Patch 4.1 came along and Blizzard decided to fix my dilemma (and that of more whining hunters) and just make it so pets would level when their masters did, making it so hunter pets always matched the hunter’s level. No more pet experience!! While this made life a heck of a lot easier to keep certain pets on hold in case I needed a specific pet buff for a group, we had lost one of the things that made our pets different from the warlock demons! Game play wise, it was very nice and convenient, but character-wise, I’ve found it rather odd. One of my good WoW friends clarified what was so strange about it: Warlocks summon their pets, so it makes since for them to summon a pet just as strong as they are. But a hunter pet is tamed from the wild… How is it, then, that they can magically ding about 75 levels in the time it takes to tame them? While I don’t miss the pet experience grind, I do miss the feeling that my pet is growing up as I take it out hunting, building our hunter/pet bond…

            Another aspect to hunter pets that has drastically changed in the past 7 years is pet Happiness. Like pet experience, this one doesn’t exist anymore. The whole idea was that a hunter pet had three differnt moods (Unhappy, Happy, Very Happy), and those moods determined how well you and your pet worked together. Of course, this whole concept has undergone a few changes, too.

            I will never forget the time I was doing quests in Teldrassil, doing some quest down by a lake south of Dolanaar. I hadn’t been able to feed my pet for awhile because I didn’t have any more meat or fish, so my nightsaber ran away!! I even vaguely remember having another one turn on me and attack, but I could be remembering that one incorrectly. Either way, back in those days, one of the main aspects to the pet happiness system was that they gained or lost loyalty depending on their mood. The lower their loyalty to you, the bigger the chance that they would run away from you. This aspect to pet happiness was simply in place to make hunters feel like they were actually bonding with their pets – building a relationship. However, this got removed quite awhile back with thanks from many hunters around Azeroth. I myself enjoyed it at first, but the more I played with my specific pet, the more I even forgot about the whole loyalty system. I sill didn’t like seeing my pet mad at me, so I always fed him, but after that first time or two of losing my pet, I never lost another one and the whole loyalty system just didn’t seem to fit anymore.

            However, pet happiness stayed very much a part of the game. Throughout much of WoW, the main reason to keep your pet Very Happy was so that it’d do 200% damage, whereas if he was Unhappy, he’d only do 75% (or was it 50%? I can’t remember…) Again, I never really paid much attention to it, other than tossing my cat some fish when his little happy face turned yellow before moving on to the next foe. That is, until Wrath when we finally got a pet talent that would keep our pets happy so long as they were fighting something. Needless to say, I made sure to always have this talent on my pets because I was sick of having to carry multiple stacks of food all the time – especially for the rare occasion that I’d take out a pet that didn’t like fish or meat. I do know a few hunters who didn’t take the talent so they could put more points in other talents that upped their pet’s dps, but I could usually count those hunters on one hand. For all intensive purposes, pet happiness was now a thing of the past.

            So come Patch 4.0.1, when our stables expanded and hunters got a lot of other new toys and things, pet happiness finally went away for good. The few hunters who still fed their pets rejoiced! The hunters who constantly made use of Glyph of Mend Pet to keep their pets happy rejoiced (and kind of freaked out when their pets unexpectedly shrank with the new glyph that replaced mend pet). And those hunters, like me, who simply kept their pets’ happiness talented shrugged their shoulders and moved on with life, happy they wouldn’t have to worry about picking up the pet happiness talent on their next tame.

            Pet abilities have undergone a huge evolution throughout the past seven years! Back in pet loyalty days, the way to train your pet in new abilities was to tame another pet with the ability (and rank of said ability) that you wanted, get that pet to officially learn that ability, then go back to the stable to bring out your main pet to teach him the new ability. This became a huge chore really early on. First, you had to know what abilities your pet was able to learn. For instance, cats could learn just about anything (which is why I picked a cat in the first place); where as certain other pets were unable to learn Claw or Bite. Next, you had to know where to train in the ability you wanted your pet to learn. The only one you could get directly from the pet trainer was Growl. All others required you tame the right beast to pick it up. I can’t remember where I printed it out (it could have been old-school Petopia), but I distinctly remember printing out a list of all hunter pet abilities and which beasts taught them to you at the various different ranks that were available.

            From there, not only did you need to know what to tame and where it was, but you also needed to know when to tame. Each rank of each ability required your pet to be a specific level before he could learn it. I often had the problem of forgetting there was a new rank available until I was 5-10 levels higher than the required level for the rank of the ability I wanted my pet to learn. Other times, I tried learning a new pet ability too soon, finding I was one level too early to learn Claw 3 after flying all the way across the continent to get to the correct zone and finding the beast I needed to tame.

To top it off, as more patches were released, more pet abilities were being released as well. I believe Dash and Dive were two of these abilities that came out after the original pet abilities. Hooray! Time to print out another list and start juggling yet more abilities while my pet levels up – and people wonder why I stuck to the same cat from level 10…

So needless to say, I was thrilled when they finally took out the need to tame more pets to learn more pet abilities and instead made it so we could simply learn all these things from the pet trainer. Of course, this happened relatively early on in the game still – back when gold was still hard to obtain, and I was very careful about training in things I knew my pet (and I) would use. I don’t think I ever had my pet properly set up until I was able to start doing dailies on the Isle of Quel’Danas and earning some actual gold…

So now we come to the days of Pet Talents. I want to say this came in Wrath, but I might be mistaken (I’m typing this without access to any WoW sites at the moment so I can’t look it up). The entire pet training system got scrapped and our pets innately learned some abilities while learning others with the new pet talent system. A hunter’s life was becoming simpler. The main reason to tame different pets now was because you liked how they looked and/or you liked their species specific abilities. For instance, a warp stalker got to warp up to the target really quick. Almost every species of pet got something different from each other, keeping pets quite diverse despite having a lot of similar talents.

Then comes Patch 4.0.1 (yet again…). Pets are still very much the same as they were, except that their specialized abilities are a little diluted. Rather than one cat getting something another cat might not have, all cats now have Roar of Courage (+STR/+AGI buff), all bears can hibernate to gain health, all core hounds can cast their own version of Heroism/Bloodlust, etc. Pets have officially been balanced in terms of their dps output, changing it so that the pet you should use depends on the group make up and which buff you aren’t gaining from your group members. For instance, if I do not have a warrior or death knight in my group, I’ll whip out the cat for Roar of Courage. However, if my group does have that buff covered, I might whip out my wolf instead to get the Crit buff, if there isn’t a feral druid. I especially like to pull out my core hound for Ancient Hysteria whenever we don’t have a mage or shaman in our group (partially because of the buff, and partially because Chromaggus just looks so cool and I enjoy bragging about going into BWL to tame him).

Of course, this brought yet more whining from some hunters huntards who simply wanted to be told which pet they needed to use to max out their dps. They went from being told they must use a wolf through most of Wrath to being required to think about providing a buff to their group that they don’t already have based on the group composition. However, I for one welcome the change because I do have to put for that extra thought when I call my pet. I always make sure to have my cat, wolf, and core hound with me, and try to pick two other pets with different buffs so that I can help my group as much as possible.

So there you have it. Hunters and their pets have come a LOOOONG way! And I know I haven’t covered every little thing either! For the most part, I am glad we’re at where we are today. The only reason I miss the really old stuff is that I want to shove some of that old stuff down some Huntard throats at times. There are a lot of young’uns who don’t have a clue as to how easy they have it!

Hunter Evolution, Part 1

             Hunters have evolved quite a bit throughout the years, which is part of the reason I still play one. Many of the changes have been gradual, which makes it that much more interesting when looking back at how they started out, as I have forgotten a lot of the more “challenging” times for hunters. So decided to delve into the past and review the different aspect of hunters and how those aspects have evolved. I’m going to break this down into two posts: one on hunters themselves and another on hunter pets. So let’s start out by delving into just how hunters have changed throughout the near seven years they’ve existed. I’m going to look at things such as skills, resources, and how my own huntress has changed, as she has grown with the game as much as I have.

Back when I first started playing WoW, my only experience with hunters was playing a beast master in E.Q. – and while they are both pet classes, they are quite different, as a beast master was more of a melee character, while a hunter is meant to fight from a distance. The problem with the whole ranged fighter thing comes in that for the first ten or so levels of a hunter’s life, they have no pet to help them keep mobs at a distance (or they didn’t until Cataclysm…). Thus, hunters started out with a few melee skills so they could fight monsters up close if they couldn’t keep their distance. This made learning my actual rotation as I finally did level up and get my pet rather difficult, as I didn’t have a clue just what skills I should keep up on my action bars and which were obsolete.

However, as the game has evolved, low level hunters have evolved as well. While I can’t remember just how every skill changed as new patches came out, I clearly remember when patch 4.0.1 was released and level 1 hunters finally had a pet! The pets were technically only guardians, not allowing the hunter to have much control over their pet, but the pets are able to at least hold aggro long enough for hunters to shoot their targets down without being forced into melee range too often. The starting skills have also been adjusted to reflect this change. Many of the key shots in a hunter’s rotation appear quite a bit earlier than they did in the past – especially Steady Shot. While this particular shot used to be just a hard-hitting filler that hunters didn’t get until around level 50, it is now available as early as level 4 so that hunters can regen focus while beating down the baddies of Azeroth. Hunters could finally attack from a distance from their birth, and have abilities to do so without relying on Auto Shot to always do the job for them.

The only skill I can distinctly remember getting removed from the game was Volley. With this skill, hunters used to rain down a ton of arrows/bullets onto a designated area, making for a great AoE ability. However, with the change from mana to focus, this ability was removed from the game as Blizzard figured channeling the ability was too similar to caster channeling one of their spells – and since hunters deal physical damage, not magical, channeling the skill didn’t make much sense anymore. Instead, they finally changed Multi-Shot so that would hit anything near the hunter’s target as a cone effect, compared to the original “target plus two others” model. However, when this change was first implemented, Multi-shot didn’t really put forth the kind of damage expected. It felt very week, and many hunters didn’t bother much with AoEs at all. Blizzard did finally up the damage output of Multi-Shot, and it has become quite satisfying seeing a large number of arrows flying from my bow to hit a huge slew of mobs in front of me. I just wish it didn’t take up so much focus all the time – I miss the days of chaining AoEs the way I used to chain Volley…/sigh.

Since I’m on the subject, let me go ahead and delve into the whole Mana/Focus aspect of hunters. Throughout most of WoW, hunters dealt mostly physical damage, yet used the magical resource mana to do so. While many took it for granted, there were plenty of other hunters who felt this was very odd. Most of our shots were instant casts compared to our spell-casting, mana using cousins. The other physical damage dealers all had their own resources – rogues and feral druids have energy, warriors have rage, and death knights have runic power. Something just didn’t quite feel right for the hunters. Blizzard was very much aware of this and kept telling the community that they were looking into the matter, trying to figure out something that would feel right.

Well, finally Patch 4.0.1 was released, and with it Hunters lost their mana and gained focus. While focus wasn’t entirely new to the game, it was new as a player resource (it was previously only used by hunter pets). Of course, with this new resource came a lot of new challenges. Just how should a hunter set up their rotation to ensure they had enough focus to keep their most powerful shots going when they’re off cool-down? Steady shot got a revamp as a focus regen shot, while Cobra Shot was also introduced to do the same thing, as well as refresh Serpent Sting. The idea is to simply weave in enough Steady/Cobra shots into the rotation to keep the focus up for the bigger shots in our rotations, yet use Arcane Shot to keep the focus from hovering at 100 the entire time the other shots were finishing their cool-downs. It makes for a rather interesting balancing act if you want to remain at optimal dps output.

Some hunters figured it out quite quickly (especially if they tried it out on the Beta or PTR before it went live), while others simply gave up and never played their hunter again. The majority of hunters played around with the whole thing for a couple of days before they finally felt comfortable with it and could pull off their rotations without thinking too hard during combat. I was one who started testing out focus on the PTR, but it still took me awhile after the patch was released before I fully grasped the whole thing. Of course, do still find myself struggling with focus from time to time. If my group is killing a pack of trash with low hit points, I can at times find myself struggling to do any damage once my focus is gone, as nothing lives long enough for me to cast a Steady or Cobra shot. Granted, it’s not something I should really worry about – things are still dying at a quick pace, I’m just not helping all that much. The main thing I have problems with is getting into too much of a Steady/Cobra Shot spam, keeping my focus maxed out for too long when I could be casting an Arcane Shot for more damage, or on the other hand, I’ll start casting Arcane Shot a bit too much and by the time Chimera/Explosive Shot (or Killing Blow) is off cooldown, I don’t have enough focus to shoot them. This doesn’t happen to me quite as much nowadays, but I do at times get myself in a zombie-state when I’m not thinking enough about it, or someone in my group makes a mistake and we’re all kind of panicking, at which times I do start to miss the endless mana pool I had back in Wrath…

Another resource we had to deal with until Patch 4.0.1 was ammo. We started out with stacks of 200 arrows/bullets, which ran out very quickly if we didn’t stuff an ammo bag full of ‘em. We then finally got the stack size upped to 1000 during Wrath. This made things a bit easier on our bag slots, but it still felt rather clunky. I hated having to buy stack after stack after stack of arrows in the AH on a regular basis, especially when engineers had them so overpriced at times – which is the main reason I finally made my own engineer. I get why Blizzard wanted to keep ammo around for so long – I enjoyed knowing my arrows were actually flying out to deal damage to the evil monsters in front of me versus some magical arrows that appear from nowhere, but most hunters agreed it was finally time to get rid of the bulk in our bags. The whole idea was just starting to feel tiresome and outdated. I still think it would have been need to have a static arrow/bullet in the ammo slot on our screens to compliment our bows/guns with some cool effects, like extra fire damage or something…but then again, most of our shots cover most types of damage (fire, poison, etc.), and scopes are there to add extra stats…

So really, when I think about it, hunters themselves have changed, but not quite to the extreme as a few other classes have. That is to say, if you don’t consider their pets – And what kind of psycho doesn’t consider hunter pets when thinking about hunters?? If anything has changed drastically when it comes to hunters, it’s their pets… However, I will save that discussion for next time. Till then!

Upcoming Patch 4.3 goodies

 
       The buzz around the entire WoW community has been focused on the upcoming "goodies" for Patch 4.3: Transmogrification, Void Storage, and the Raid Finder. Normally, I'd simply sit around and wait for the patch to see just how good things are and what the final results end up being (since things are bound to change between now and release). However, the talk doesn't appear to be fading anytime soon, so I thought I'd put my own opinions out there, though I doubt anyone will actually be reading them.

Transmogrification
      So the basic gist of this new feature is players will soon be able to take a piece of gear they are currently wearing and changing it to look like another piece of the same type (plate, cloth, sword, etc.) to customize the way their characters look. At this point in time, we know the process is going to cost some gold, though the actual amount is not set in stone yet. We also know there will be limitations on this as well, such as not being able to make a weapon look like a Legendary or some silly fish.
   Pros
People who have saved up loads and loads of old gear so they can sit AFK in their capital city looking cool can now look cool while raiding with level-appropriate stats on their gear.

   Cons
People who haven't saved up tons of old gear but what to look like their wearing old tier gear will now have to go farm it all up.

      I will admit, this is a pretty cool feature. There are some really neat looking pieces out there. However, I can't exactly say it's something I plan on using very much at this point in time. For one thing, I can't think of any hunter pieces I really want to farm up badly enough. The only one I've really considered is going back to Tier-10 because it was one of the few sets I actually owned - and regaining it all again wouldn't be difficult since I could buy it all with Justice Points. (Though it would be rather nice to have the heroic 10.5 set since it's a nice shade of purple...) However, I'm rather liking how my current gear has been looking for the most part, minus a few pieces. About the only reason I think I'd use this is so I can actually make my gear match when I'm gaining pieces from different sources. Murloc-green pants sooooo do not go with flimsy looking reddish boots and bear-face shoulders. I guess I'll just have to wait till we get there before I truly decide if it's something I'll use or not....

Void Storage
      Simply put, this is going to be a new "bank" which will charge players to deposit and withdraw gear and other keepsakes that they don't want in their normal bank. The main reason this feature is coming out is to compliment Transmogrification by allowing people to store their tons of old gear without it cluttering their main bank slots. Items deposited in here will also lose all their enhancements (gems, enchants, reforges).

Pros
Players with a ton of crap in their banks can finally make some room to store more stuff. They are even going to have a bag-search feature to help their hoarding habits!

Cons
Players who don't have their banks stuffed to the exploding point have little use for this.

      I'm definitely one of those who fits into the "Con" category. I am an absolute neat-freak with my bags and banks. More often than not, I put stuff into my guild bank for others to use before I put it in my own, knowing I most likely won't get around to using the item in question for awhile. I also rarely hold on to gear I'll never use again, as I don't tend to sit AFK in Stormwind just to show off my "loots". Unless I suddenly decide to go crazy farming stuff for Transmogrification, the only use I'll have for Void Storage is to shove my archaeology and holiday toys inside it. However, I know plenty of people who will make great use out of this feature!

Raid Finder
      The Raid Finder is supposed to work similarly to the Dungeon Finder in that you can queue up for raids and/or fill in a raid group when you don't have enough friends or guildies to go.

Pros
The "casuals" might have a slightly easier time getting into raid groups and actually experiencing content they otherwise only hear about in trade chat.

Cons
This could turn out to be a big, big mess. Raid compositions are a little more touchy than 5-man groups, though Blizzard has been doing what they can to balance things out so things aren't quite as group-make-up dependent.

      As I mentioned in my previous post, I've never been much of a raider. When I do raid, it tends to be with PUGs, as I rarely have time to commit to any set raiding schedule. If Blizzard gets this feature right, I could actually find myself using this one once in awhile. However, there is still a very big IF on this right now. With what little experience I have with raiding, I know some fights require two tanks, while others require only one, or perhaps three. The number of healers varies from fight to fight, and how well the group of people work together. Not to mention, the Dungeon Finder is rough enough with 5-mans half the time. Getting 5 total strangers to work with each other without drama can be asking quite a bit at times, not to mention getting 25 total strangers to kill a raid boss. I will most likely be trying this one out when it is released, but, like most people in the WoW community, I plan on doing so very cautiously.

      So there you have it. I know it's not very concise or anything. Heck, it's more just rambling than anything else. But I'm about to go to sleep, and I can't say I expect anyone to actually read this anyway, so *shrug*. I mostly just wanted to get my thoughts out there and if someone does read this, cool.

Starting WoW

      I have been playing World of Warcraft (WoW) for the past 6 and a half years. Growing up, I played a lot of video games on my Nintendo consoles and the computer. I also watched my parents play various computer games. Throughout middle school, I remember my parents playing a lot of Diablo II, especially my dad. So when a friend of mine introduced me to EverQuest (EQ), I mentioned it to my dad, thinking it was something he would like as well (which would also mean I could play at home). My uncle (dad's twin brother) also talked to my dad about EQ, so it sparked my dad's interest even more.

      My parents eventually subscribed to EQ. My sister and I played on their accounts, and we all played for about 3-4 years. We had also dabbled with Anarchy Online for a short while during our time playing EQ, but none of us really stuck on it for long. Around the time we were all getting very bored with EQ, EQ II and WoW were both coming out. Given our dissatisfaction with EQ at the time, we opted to go to WoW upon its release. So both my parents cancelled their EQ subscriptions and got WoW subscriptions instead with my sister and I continuing to play on their accounts. Since a handful of our EQ friends were also going to WoW, we followed them to Blackhand server.

      I remember not having much of a system to picking my race and class back in those days. I knew I wanted to play a Night Elf almost instantly: female Horde races were ugly, and night elves were about the only race I liked at the time on the Alliance side (humans looked boring, dwarves were ugly, and gnomes were too goofy-looking) - that, and I wanted to ride a white tiger! Yeah, I wasn't the most serious of MMO players back then. When it came to picking my class, I simply based it on my main characters from EQ: druid and beast master. Since WoW druid sounded so different (and not as appealing to me) from the EQ druid, I opted to go with the closest thing to the beast master - a hunter. the main differences were simply that you could tame your own beasts and that you fought at range instead of in melee (though it took me awhile to not fight in melee when I first got started). Since the name I used in EQ (Sariana) was taken, I ended up naming my night elf hunter Kairiana. While I do remember deleting this toon once or twice to recreate her and tweek how I played her, I still play her as my main to this day.

      During all my time playing WoW, I have continued to play on Blackhand server, only experimenting with toons that don't stick very long on other servers. I have since subscribed with my own account within the past year or so. I have continued to focus on Alliance characters and have leveled up a handful of alts. I currently have Kairana at 85 along with a Shaman, Druid, Mage, Rogue, Death Knight, Paladin, and Priest. The only classes I don't have at 85 are a Warlock and Warrior. My warlock is currently working her way through Outland, and my warrior continues to be non-existent for quite some time. While dabbling with one once in awhile, I never seem to get far past level 20 before deleting it. Maybe I'll finally get one going once I have the lock to 85 and have nothing better to do with my time.

      I've never been much of a raider (Dad's the one who went that route, transferring to a different server and going horde and everything!). Rather, I spend most of my time questing, running 5-man dungeons, and just socializing with my friends and guildies. I am currently the guild master of <Gamers R Us>, a small guild full of friends who feel like a familiy, though we're spread throughout the country. The only raiding experience I've really ever had was some pugging throughout the later part of Wrath and currently the occasional Baradin Hold runs with my hunter or shaman.

     So, now that you have a better idea as to who I am and my background with the game, you can look forward to various different blogs based on my experience with my multitude of toons and views on upcoming features and current game news!