neiname

Mages have the ability to sheep and do instant area of effect spells that really help out later in the game. While I don't know if they get anything cool, they are a desirable class in the end game. Also, the aoe spells allow much faster lvling when you learn those spells. A mage I know says he can clear 35-40k an hour if there are no other alliance around in the right area. Right now as fully specced shadow/disc priest I can clear 25k-30k an hour unrested in the center town of W. plaguelands.

hardcore

Um, I'm not sure how much clearer I can explain it. She's directly in front of the Scholomance keep on the right. Her name is Eva Sarkhoff, and she doesn't have a quest exclamation point.

Depends on what you're looking for. The Orb of Transformation is a fun trinket, but it really isn't useful for anything. You won't fool any horde in pvp, because the colour of your name will give you a way. But on the other hand, it is really fun and cool.

Ginwen

Unless they fixed it in the newest patch, once you finish the quest to go over 225, you need to gain at least one skill point before you log (to 226) or you can never go over 225 (actually, I always do it before I leave the area, so no idea if zoning would screw this up). So for cooking and fishing, make sure you have materials for another skill up once you finish the quest.

Jonny2k1

Yesterday was a good day for me, WoW wise at least. When I logged on I was finally a grunt and pretty far on my way towards SGT. I also hit lvl 45, but it's going to be a long road to 60 now. I bought the Helm of Fire but was a little disappointed with the 15 minute cooldown for the price I paid (20G) but it's still cool to have that extra damage when I need it. I spent a couple hours yesterday farming worn junkboxes to get my lockpicking up - it was a lot of work for the payoff, but my lockpicking is pretty darn low for my level.

khai

Nothing like that. Your really cool abilities come in your talent trees. Evocation for 1000% spirit for the mana regen. Presence of mind for instant cast spells. Improved Arcane Explosion for devasting aoe damage. Pyroblast, Blast Wave, Cold snap, Ice block. All of that stuff is what makes you a mage

IMO, a mage is one of the few classes in the game that relies REALLY heavily on talent points.

Expect yourself to be the key crowd controller and aoe slave when you start hitting the later instances. Oh, and the level 60 vending maching in Ironforge and Orgrimmar.

neiname

Last two nights I raided Upper Blackrock Spire and Scholomance, tonight I am going to to focus on questing and grinding to get my character level up. This game is like a job.

Fandango

That is the point when people stop having fun with the game and get bored doing the same thing over and over.

Bacon

Someone in my group just won an epic ring, first epic I've seen drop

Tuan Jim

Wellll, I finally got my internet hookup (shared satellite) in my room and even managed to log in a few times yesterday (after patching), however despite my approx. - dsl speeds, I keep getting dumped by the server. I'm guessing it's a packet loss thing. Things run fine and I seem to be moving smoothly, but then I just get dumped out.

If anyone has suggestions on a fix for this -- turning down graphics, disabling other things, it would be nice to at least be able to stay online, in game long enough to chat with folks and whatnot -- even if I can't handle any real battles or anything. It seems I have similar issues with MTGnline -- the only other online game I've tried so far.

thanks,
SPC Tuan Jim

glassdragon

\
I wouldn't worry about that too much, some nights i get dropped every 2 minutes even though i have a very high bandwith. Some nights are just bad, if it continues for awile though i'd contact blizz tech support about it

Darkfriend

You can always check out the tech forums here:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/bo...w-tech-support

But like glassdragon stated some nights are just bad... I have a cable connection and I've never been randomly booted; the worst I got was extreme lag and standing next to my corpse without being able to resurrect. I had to log out/back on.

fumanstan

I'm not particularly sure on how a shared satellite connection may differ from a standard satellite internet provider, however generally a satellite connection is extremely poor for most online games simply due to the limitations of the technology. Disconnections and high latency are typical, from my experience. Even a Dial Up connection would allow you to maintain a more stable connection.

timewaster

wow, you're lucky.
I used to get booted once ever 2/3 days especially on Sunday nights when its the most busy.
alot depends on your server. If you're on a pvp server, you will have a higher chance of getting booted.
The last few patches seems to have fixed it though, I have not gotten booted in over a month.

DaveNinja

I got my mount for my level 35 warrior alt. I had to buy it now because i was worried i'd be tempted to spend the money before he hits 40. Ive been stalling on leveling him because my wife has a priest alt at level 23 now, so i figured i'll just power level her to around my level and then we'll both start getting experience.

joeblow69

Huh.. I've been having lots of problems on multiple servers, and the problems never show up on the server status page.

What happens for me, is usually when I enter a city (large or small) after wandering around the countryside for a while, I won't have the ability to talk to anyone. I right click on people, but my guy just shrugs his shoulders. That's a tell tale sign that I'm about to get booted. It happens way too frequently.

That would happen EVERY SINGLE TIME I entered Ironforge. Luckily I'm doing the horde now, so I don't go there.

neiname

Priest/Warrior, powerful combination. I would recommend that your wife sink almost all talent points into shadow/discipline as that will allow her the fastest way of lvling. Particularily I would recommend spirit tap, reduce cooldown on mindblast, shield timer reduction to name a few.

DaveNinja

she's going full shadow right now. she's got spirit tap, stun and working on faster mind blasts. I have a level 32 priest, the shadow talents are awesome around that level.
Our main duos are level 53 Mage (me) and paladin (her). In the long run having a warrior and priest should make it easier for us to get into parties and raids.

hardcore

I wouldn't bother with improved mind blast unless you are planning on pvping. I almost never use mind blast when I am playing with someone else because it generates so much aggro. There's no real advantage to a warrior/priest duo if the priest pulls aggro all the time. Besides, without the talents you can mind blast and follow it up with two mindflays as the target is running towards you. By that time your mind blast will have cooled down.

DaveNinja

my wife has been soloing with her priest trying to catch up to my level. I just remeber mind blast being my main weapon with my priest. i think i had some shadow damage bonus gear, so that probably helped.

neiname

She needs to get the improved shield in discipline as it reduces the amount of time you can cast the shield spell on yourself from 30 seconds to 15 seconds, immensely helpful for staying alive, rest of the talent tree should go into shadow.

Crashnburn

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pag...gy/4272418.stm

Deadly plague hits Warcraft world
By Mark Ward
Technology Correspondent, BBC News website

A deadly virtual plague has broken out in the online game World of Warcraft. Although limited to only a few of the game's servers the numbers of characters that have fallen victim is thought to be in the thousands.
Originally it was thought that the deadly digital disease was the result of a programming bug in a location only recently added to the Warcraft game.
However, it now appears that players kicked off the plague and then kept it spreading after the first outbreak.
Since its launch in November 2004, World of Warcraft (Wow) has become the most widely played massively multiplayer online (MMO) game in the world.


Its creator, Blizzard, claims that now more than four million people are regular players.


Last rites
Wow is an online game that gives players the chance to adventure in the fantasy world of Azeroth that is populated by the usual mixture of humans, elves, orcs and other fantastic beasts.


As players explore the world, the characters they control become more powerful as they complete quests, kill monsters and find magical items and artefacts that boost abilities.




To give these powerful characters more of a challenge, Blizzard regularly introduces new places to explore in the online world.

In the last week, it added the Zul'Gurub dungeon which gave players a chance to confront and kill the fearsome Hakkar - the god of Blood.
In his death throes Hakkar hits foes with a "corrupted blood" infection that can instantly kill weaker characters.


The infection was only supposed to affect those in the immediate vicinity of Hakkar's corpse but some players found a way to transfer it to other areas of the game by infecting an in-game virtual pet with it.
This pet was then unleashed in the orc capital city of Ogrimmar and proved hugely effective as the Corrupted Blood plague spread from player to player.


Although computer controlled characters did not contract the plague, they are said to have acted as "carriers" and infected player-controlled characters they encountered.


Body count
The first server, or "realm" as Blizzard calls them, affected by the plague was Archimonde; but it is known to have spread to at least two others.
The spread of the disease could have been limited by the fact that Hakkar is difficult to kill, so some realms may have fallen victim to his parting shot.

The digital disease instantly killed lower level characters and did not take much longer to kill even powerful characters.

Many online discussion sites were buzzing with reports from the disaster zones with some describing seeing "hundreds" of bodies lying in the virtual streets of the online towns and cities.


"The debate amongst players now is if it really was intentional although due to the effects of the problem it seems unlikely," Paul Younger, an editor on the unofficial worldofwarcraft.net site, told the BBC News website.
"It's giving players something to talk about and could possibly be considered the first proper 'world event'", he said.
Luckily the death of a character in World of Warcraft is not final so all those killed were soon resurrected.


Blizzard tried to control the plague by staging rolling re-starts of all the servers supporting the Warcraft realms and applying quick fixes.
However, there are reports that this has not solved all the problems and that isolated pockets of plague are breaking out again.


The "Corrupted Blood" plague is not the first virtual disease to break out in online worlds. In May 2000 many players of The Sims were outraged when their game characters died because of an infection contracted from a dirty virtual guinea pig.

timewaster

yup.
I play as horde on archimonde and can confirm this problem.
my mules (lvl 1 chars) are always dying in ogrimore.
You would think blizzard would learn from their past mistakes as this has happened before in the past with another mob.

nickdawgy

I got a blue mace yesterday worth about 20g. So I decided to auction it for 1g start, 15g buyout.

3 minutes later, someone bought it......for 2g.

I was like "what the hell"

Now that person is selling it for 20g start 25g buyout. Is it possible that there was a bug that made mine sell for so low, or the person used a hack? I always check my auctions before I list them, so it wasn't a typo by me.

Crashnburn

I would bring it up with Blizz... I don't think they'll really do anything about it, but I would deffinately bring it up with them.

nickdawgy

Well I decided to send the buyer some mail telling him of the issue. He was cool about it (he's level 60, so he probably has alot of gold) and said if it doesn't sell for the 25g he asked for, he'd give it back to me minus the 2g he spent on it and his auction fees of 2g. I told him I'd make it an even 5g.

If it did sell, he'd send me 15g and keep 10g for himself. So either way we both win. But good to know there are people like him out there