I did the math

...and I've spent close to two million gold on mounts over the past year and a half.

I feel less shame about being an AH player who has never reached goldcap now. I am a mount collector.

I still don't have either of the Spectral Tigers though.

Finally...

A 200 mounts achievement has been added to the 5.3 PTR. I take this as a clear signal to start working on mounts again. As of this writing I'm at 180 or so, so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch if I put some effort in.

Up to this point in the expansion I've been mostly ignoring the goldsink mounts, such as the Jeweled Panthers, engineering rockets, that 120k reforging mount, etc, because there was never any point in buying them now; I could just as easily buy/craft them later on, and in all likelihood for cheaper. But now we have a handy deadline. I'll start setting gold aside, and as long as nothing extraordinary appears on the Black Market before then [like Invincible or Mimiron's Head] I'll make the purchases after the patch drops.

For now though, there are I estimate around three thousand welfare mounts that I've yet to bother to grind from the Pandaria factions. Not to mention all the pre-Mists mount grinds that I abandoned when the expansion came out. Maybe I wont end up having to spend anything.

Actually playing

My death knight, Geldt, reached level ninety, and I'm not really sure what to do with him now. I'm still missing a few meta gem cuts so I'll probably at least run a few Heroics until I can pick them up.

What has surprised me is that I'm enjoying Unholy spec more than tanking as Blood spec-- surprising because I normally love tanking. I find Blood has a steep learning curve and a radically different playstyle to the Warrior which I am way too familiar with. Death Knight is almost like a backwards Warrior-- instead of charging to enemies you grip or silence them so they come to you. I feel like learning to tank at an acceptable level would require me to un-learn a good deal of my Warrior technique. It also occurred to me how superfluous having a second level ninety tank is, considering I much prefer playing the Warrior.

Unholy on the other hand is a blast. I've said it before, but the disease-spreading mechanic is great fun, and I love classes that feel like they're using many different damage sources. I actually think I prefer this class to Enhancement Shaman, mainly because the AoE is easier to manage.

So this has been a nice diversion from... not playing the game, I guess. Now I'm eyeing my level eighty-five hunter and remembering all the times I had previously returned to that class to realise that I had forgotten how much fun it was.

Still "playing"

The AH is more than half my game currently. I buy using the mobile app while I'm at work and run TSM on a second account at home.

As far as actually playing the game is concerned, since 5.2 I've done a bit of Thunder Isle, a bit of Archaeology, some odd jobs around my farm, but I still feel a pretty powerful ennui about endgame. I think I need to raid again. I suddenly realised that there isn't anything compelling me to complete new solo content on my "main" toon Syrannia. I could be going in there with my warlock Coreus or another class which is more interesting to solo with than Arms warrior. Not that I dislike Arms specifically-- I just prefer ranged classes when not tanking.

I decided to start levelling my Death Knight, Geldt, from eighty-five to ninety, so I picked up Jewelcrafting on him to finally get those meta gem schematics which only drop from Pandaria mobs. I had to dump Mining to do it [Alchemy stays-- you can never have too many alchemists] so I levelled mining again on my Paladin, dropping Jewelcrafting to do so [again for him, Alchemy stays].

It's a bit of an odd thought, but what I always find disappointing about relearning professions is when you finally hit 600 skill and no achievement pops up because you already got the "two maxed professions" one from before.

So my professions as they stand are:
Syrannia [90 warrior] -- Blacksmith, Goblin Engineer
Coreus [90 warlock] -- Enchanter, Tailor
Tashraal [90 shaman] -- Scribe, Gnomish Engineer
Geldt [86+ death knight] -- Jewelcrafter, Transmute Alchemist
Ghamor [85 hunter] -- Leatherworker, Transmute Alchemist
Judicas [85 paladin] -- Smelter, Transmute Alchemist

Arldern [85 druid] -- Herbalist, Elixir Alchemist

I'm pretty happy with that. Herbalism is the weakest link, as only a gathering profession, but I have from time to time found the need to go out hunting for specific herbs that are not available on the AH, and farming herbs in druid flight form is still the best way.

The only profession I don't have effectively maxed out is Skinning, which is fine with me because it's by far the most useless profession. I think I've given Skinning to every new toon I've rolled in the past two years, but it's been that long since I actually levelled anything. I'm sure I'll get there with my Monk eventually.

So I guess this is the game for me these days. I spend more time organising my shit, "preparing" to play the game, than actually playing it. I spend hours tweaking my sell prices and buy alerts, I min-max my professions, and I love to buy levelling BoEs pre-emptively if I think there is any chance I'll find it useful. I've been buying a bunch of Mists BoEs for my L85 Hunter, for that point in the future when I finally get around to playing him again, realising the whole time that if anything it will actually make the game more boring to play due to overgearing.

But yeah, I reckon I'm set up pretty well now, for when I do end up playing the game.

Words that annoy me

I made a list of words which MMO bloggers use that make me feel dumber just for reading them. I will assign them "dumbpoints" which is a word I made up to express how much dumber I think a person is for using these words in a serious context, along with a short definition of what they really mean.

Content -- 2 dumbpoints. The cutscenes that you need to watch before you're allowed to complain that you're bored with an MMO.

Casuals -- 4 dumbpoints. Term which can be adapted to refer to any group of players of an MMO who are not currently in a world first raid.

Dancing -- 8 dumbpoints. Term describing what players do in any action video game ever made, but hate doing in MMOs.

Themepark -- 10 dumbpoints. Term used to indicate that an MMO is designed for kids who need to be told what to do and are entertained only by Content [see above].

Sandbox -- 6 dumbpoints. Term used to indicate that a game is a proper MMO for intelligent adults.

Free2play -- 14 dumbpoints. Everyone seems to use this nonsense term these days. Is it a trademark or something? Why do people think it's a word? It's three words, with spaces in between, and none of them are numbers!

LFR -- 0 dumbpoints. I need to accept that everyone in WoW uses the wrong names for everything. There is no feature in World of Warcraft called "Looking For Raid", it's called Raid Finder. But everyone calls it LFR for no reason.

Directionless

It occurs to me that I haven't been blogging much recently. I don't even mean posting... usually I end up with at least one or two drafts per week: ideas that I don't end up having the time and/or impetus to explore properly. I guess I've been busy.

My raid group has folded. It's been a long time coming-- I know I've felt it since early Dragon Soul. Too many of our regulars left, and recruitment just wasn't happening. Feathermoon Alliance seems to have very few skilled players these days [though ironically Horde seems to be doing well]. Plus I think recruitment is something that really needs to be done proactively, not just once our progression starts faltering due to not having enough people to field a consistent roster. It doesn't matter how good your people are, having poor progression will scare away anyone good enough to improve it.

So this is kind of the end of an era for me. I've been raiding with Drunken Badgers since Ulduar. I'm not really sure what to do now. Our raid was actually pretty unique; few competitive progression groups raid only once per week.

Maybe it's time to try a new server. Or even faction... I've always liked the Horde races better anyway. Feathermoon is just not the place it was when I joined the server back in early Wrath. But with seven Level 85+ characters on Feathermoon Alliance it would be a pretty big tradeoff to lose all that... infrastructure. [Or a hefty price tag to bring it with me.] But I recognise that it's only because I feel like I've spent so much time building it up that I don't want to "lose" it. The raiding game is deliberately designed so that people with a lot of in-game resources don't have an unfair advantage-- these days the only way to get an advantage in raiding is to spend three hours every day grinding daily quests.

I got my auction mule account back up and running again, so that's been churning away again. I don't feel like I'm totally poor any more! I'm currently stocking up on base materials in anticipation of the upcoming raid patch and the massive sales spike that that always brings.

Right now, the auction house is the most compelling part of the game for me. I've got fingers in more than a few pies these days, and managing it all can be a pretty involved process. I have multiple google docs full of notes, lists of materials and optimal crafting procedures. It actually works out to be a really well-structured timesink, I can spend a small amount of time and just do the optimal stuff [relisting items, craft something I'm obviously low on] with diminishing returns on any longer amount of time I want to put in.

I think I should raid again. Not just for the enjoyment of the activity itself, but the way it makes the rest of the game more meaningful by having that social group at the core.

World of Warcraft

Ennui. I has it.

I keep thinking that I should go buy a fricking Fight Club [I forget what it's called] invitation because everything I've heard points to that content being something I would really enjoy. But because the tickets all sell during peak server time-- well before I get home from work. So to get one I'd have to put in a super early bid, so I'd have to work out what amount they are actually selling for so I could bid around that amount, and by that point in my line of thinking I find I just don't care that much. I want to want to put that much effort into the game again, but it's just not happening.

I reached the Valor Cap last week. I mean the total Valor cap, 3000. I would love to buy a Stamina trinket, but I'm only allowed to buy that if I complete a couple of weeks of mind-meltingly boring daily quests, so I bought 4 ilevels instead. I think I liked the game better before they "encouraged" [forced] players to complete "a variety of content" [daily quests].

I've not touched the AH in nearly a month, which since I haven't really adjusted my spending to compensate, means I've nearly run out of gold. The AH has always been a big part of my enjoyment in WoW, but unfortunately I'm locked out of my auction mule account.

Basically the situation is that I'm between Internet providers at the moment so my only way of playing has been through a wireless dongle, and Blizzard has helpfully recognised my logging in from a different IP address each time as "suspicious activity" and forced me to perform a password reset using their online form. Which is fair enough, but their online form does not fucking work.

I fill out the form, I enter my secret question, it sends me a confirmation link in an email, but when I click the confirmation link, the Battle.net website tells me that An error has occurred, with no further explanation other than a helpful second line reiterating that An error has occurred. In case I was unconvinced by the first line alone, or the fact that I was still unable to access my fucking account.

I tried submitting a ticket [on my main account since you need to be able to log in to submit one] but the GM practically yelled at me that due to security reasons they were unable to help unless I called them. And it turns out their phone hours are between 2am and 3pm [adjusted for my local timezone]. So I guess I'll give them another call Saturday morning and hopefully I wont be so fed up with the process by the end that I just give up and play Star Wars instead. That game doesn't ban people for no reason, right?

Meanwhile I still log on to my main characters and just... don't know what to do any more. Tanking 5-man dungeons is still fun I guess. Healing raid finder is interesting enough. I got my Warlock to 90 a few weeks ago and basically haven't touched him since because I don't care enough to wait around for 20 minutes in a queue before I get to play.

As an aside, you know what I wish they would offer as a reward for tanking 5-man dungeons? The ability to skip the queue on a damage role. I mean the Call to Arms bonus could be a token attached to your account which would allow you to jump to the front of the queue for a future random dungeon-- in other words a reward relatively proportional to the contribution you are making to the system by accepting the unpopular role. [I say relatively because if it were truly proportional you would get four tokens, one for each of the four people whose queue time you assisted.] The satchel just doesn't cut it since experienced players, ie the ones who actually play tanks, have little need for the pittance of gold/items that the satchel offers.

I virtually always tank or heal in a group setting-- the only time I don't is when the class I'm playing physically can't do either. So when I am "stuck" on a pure damage class, sitting in that queue, all I can think of is the amount of time I've spent contributing, taking on the unpopular roles for other players, and that now that the shoe is on the other foot none of it counts for anything.