breakfast-topics
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Breakfast Topic: Little Red Riding Nether Ray
I know, I know... today's breakfast topic comic seems a bit dark and gloomy -- but don't worry! Things are not what they seem! The girl's grandma is actually a professional hunter of evil grandmavores. The girl-grandma team tricks the beasts into their doom: first, little Red lures the beasts close to the cottage, and then Granny springs a woodsman-shaped target dummy on them and mutilates them from behind with her epic daggers disguised as knitting needles. Annnywaaaay, the topic for today is these scary creatures known as nether rays! Now we can ride them! But... the question is, does anyone want to? I know the nether ray in this picture looks pretty spooky, and I'll admit that there are some screenshots in which they look okay at first. But over all, aren't they really rather ugly, pudgy and too much like a fish with serious dental problems? I was over there questing in Skettis with a friend of mine today, just earning some money in a few spare minutes I had to play, when we stopped to gawk at the Sha'tari Skyguard dwarf just swooshing along on his nether ray mount, looking as pudgy and as awkward as can be. I realized, this thing doesn't look like it should be a mount at all. Your legs kind of sink through the creature's tendril hood or whatever it is, and some races apparently have their hands hanging out in thin air, holding on to reins that should be there on any normal mount, but not on this one.Do you agree that this thing is an ugly waste of your reputation grinding time? or am I totally missing the aesthetic genius of this?
Breakfast Topic: Knowing when to quit
How do you know when you've had enough of Azeroth and it's time to go do something else? Do you play for a certain amount of time every day? Do you PvP until your eyeballs get all red and puffy? Do you grind and grind until you at last have something to show for your effort?Personally, on most days, I have lots to do, and commitments force me to say "I gotta go!" But on days when I have the whole day off and nothing specific planned, sometimes I feel like I can just let loose and play as long as I want. Other times I feel the need to limit myself to a certain amount of time with WoWTimer. I try to listen to that little intuitive meter inside my body that is always measuring whether or not whatever I'm doing is still a good use of my time. Seriously, when I'm spending too much time on WoW (or on anything really), I get this feeling in my chest and in my back, something like a tensing of muscles that tells me I should be more productive. It's different from sitting in a chair too long... it's more psychological, perhaps.How do you prevent yourself from getting carried away?
Breakfast Topic: WoW vs. Real Life
Sometimes it happens: you get online and meet up with some of your Azerothian friends, and they invite you to go do something interesting when suddenly your phone rings, and one of your Earthling friends invites you to go do something interesting in real life! You're faced with a choice of staying in Azeroth or returning to Earth.For my part, I mostly made one of those unconscious choices a long time ago, that if this sort of thing happened, I would usually choose to leave Azeroth and go experience real life. I had realized that it's too easy to lose oneself in the imaginary world and then come back to real life with a sense of emptiness. But with the right kind of moderation, I feel like both my time on Earth and my time in Azeroth are full and enjoyable.What do you do when someone says "do you want to go hang out with us?" when you had planned to play WoW? Do you usually choose one or the other, or does it totally depend on the situation?
Breakfast Topic: How often have you respecc'd?
My mage began her time in WoW as a fire mage, blasting everything in sight. I was in love with blastwave, utterly, but I couldn't seem to deal with crowd control at all, and since I was spending a lot of my time soloing, I respecc'd to frost. That was my first time switching specs. Since then I have respecc'd one more time, this time to one of the frost dps spec's recommended here on WoW Insider's Build Shop. I absolutely adore my spec now, and can't see ever changing it, despite my occasional longing for my Water Elemental by my side. As I was talking over this little respeccing history with a friend yesterday I realized that I imagine that's fairly rare for players. I know in his case, as a paladin, he's had to respec numerous times, depending on the situation. It seems that being a jack-of-some-trades class means that you spend a lot of time and gold at the trainer erasing your talent trees. What is the most number of times you have respecc'd a character? When would you consider enough to be enough?
Breakfast Topic: Betting on patch 2.1
Another week, another Tuesday maintenance. And it's not even a rolling restart week! So here we are all twiddling our thumbs and waiting for the servers to come back online. And, alas, while we've all no doubt been having fun playing with patch 2.1 on the test realms, we do know that today isn't the day. Of course this only leaves us with lots of room for speculation -- so I'm asking you, good readers, when do you think patch 2.1 will be headed towards the live realms? The patch has been running on the test realms since April 13th, which means next Tuesday's maintenance will be approaching the 4-week mark that I always use as a general guideline for patch releases. But Blizzard has been known to surprise even me. So let's hear your predictions -- when do you think we'll see patch 2.1 on the live realms?
Breakfast Topic: How did you pick your class?
When I first started playing the game, way back when, I didn't really pick a single class -- instead, I rolled one of nearly everything and played through a few levels here and a few levels there. I honestly don't recall how or why a warlock became my main character and my first class to 60 (and, yes, I was a warlock before warlocks were cool). It was picked, primarily, at random. I didn't have any detailed knowledge of any of the classes, but happened to enjoy leveling that one more than the rest. But after that first character, I picked classes with a bit more knowledge of what I was getting into -- after all, you can't level to 60 without learning at least a little something about the other classes. My next to 60 was a priest, whom I selected because I wanted something that was the polar opposite in playstyle of a warlock -- so I leveled a priest. (In hindsight, it wasn't so terribly unlike a warlock for soloing or questing: they're both classes with fear doing shadow damage. But in groups they were worlds apart.)And now that I've started off with my story, I'd love to hear yours. how did you pick the class you're playing today? Was it the result of hours of meticulous research? Was it a random choice? The casual recommendation of a friend? Done because your group of friends needed tanking/CC/DPS/healing? Or did you just try everything until you found a good fit?
Breakfast Topic: Failing to succeed
Over at Kill Ten Rats, Zubon has brought up an interesting point about failure. So you're the best tank, or the best rogue, or the best mage you can be. You've played this role game after game -- the class names have changed, but your playstyle hasn't. Says Zubon:You are stuck in your comfort zone. You need to go out there and fail. Try a lot of things. A lot. You will be lousy at most of them and you will do dumb things. But a few of them will really work for you.What do you think? Are you stuck in a rut in the gaming world? Maybe it's time to go out and try your hand at a new alt! [Fan art by Astrid Hansen]
Breakfast topic: How's 2.1 treating ya?
Now that we've had a little time to digest the lengthy 2.1 patch notes, it's time to ask what you think of the patch so far. Of course, I imagine opinions vary a great deal based on what class you're playing. I, for one, am incredibly impressed by Blizzard's ability to make me want to play a healer a little less with every new patch. (And I like healing.) But are you looking forward to the new content? Eager to jump into the Black Temple? Or are you disappointed by class changes and trying to decide what to reroll?
Breakfast topic: Welcome to the first of April
The first of April is upon us again which means that for the rest of the day we need to be prepared for any sort of jokes by Blizzard and our fellow players -- and who knows what we can expect. Back in 2005, Blizzard announced the Pandaran Express. And in 2006, they fooled yours truly with a fake Burning Crusade race announcement. (Hey, they announced it on March 31st -- what were we to think?!) And this year? Well, nothing unusual has come from Blizzard yet -- but the day is still young!So are you prepared to resist the onslaught of April fools' jokes -- or are you planning on playing some jokes of your own?
Breakfast topic: what do you dread?
Yesterday we talked about what new game features you might be looking forward to. Today let's consider the flip-side -- changes we might see in the future that you hope will never happen. When you can't be sure what Blizzard might have planned for the game, it's easy to fear for the worse. More class nerfs? Hundred player raid content? More bugged, unbeatable encounters (at least until Blizzard hotfixes them)? Or perhaps something completely different -- what game change do you most dread seeing?
Breakfast Topic: what are you looking forward to?
We've heard a lot lately about the changes -- many negative -- that came with the 2.0.10 patch. But let's look on the bright side for now, and talk about upcoming changes (or possible changes) that we're looking forward to. The next expansion? The mythical hero class? Guild or player housing? Or perhaps you're happy with the game just as it is and would be happy with more of the same. Me, I'm waiting for class balance to do another 360 and put priests on top of the world again. (Yep, some days I'm just a hopeless optimist!)
Breakfast Topic: Favorite quests
Yesterday we talked about the most annoying quests you'd found in Azeroth and Outland -- so today we're talking about the opposite. Let's hear about the most interesting, most rewarding, and most out and out fun quests you've found in the game since the expansion's come out. My own personal favorite remains a fairly early quest in Terokkar Forest. Exploring the Cenarion Thicket for other quests, you're likely to run into the half-crazed Warden Treelos, who requests that you slaughter a beast he calls Naphthal'ar. Of Naphthal'ar, Treelos tells you:If you can, convince it to come down for tea. But, by all means, get it to stop staring at me!And once you have slain the beast, Treelos mourns:It's for the best, really. If it cannot civilly accept an invitation then it has no business attending.That little interaction makes me giggle every time I recall it, and -- for me at least -- makes an otherwise simple "go here, kill this" quest a memorable favorite.
Breakfast Topic: Favorite zone
Everyone seems to have their favorite places in Azeroth (and now, Outland!). Zones you always look forward to leveling high enough to play in -- and zones you dread leveling high enough to play in. My own favorites are Duskwood (when playing Alliance) and Ghostlands (when playing Horde) for their immensely creepy feel. And my least favorite? That would have to be Stranglethorn Vale, the zone where, with every character I've played thus far, I give up on my obsessive need to complete every quest in a zone. What about you -- have any particular favorites or least favorites?
Breakfast Topic: What's in a name?
Players on each realm are required to have unique character names -- which can be an annoyance if you didn't create on the day the realm opened. Whenever a new realm is launched, common and popular names are quickly used up, and at some point naming becomes an annoyance. (Even more of an annoyance when people attempt to take a name they want by inserting special characters -- I've yet to figure out how to invite some of them to groups.) For my part, my most often played characters are "Lizzy" (uncreative, I know, but I created soon after the realm launched and grabbed it), "Blush" (which seemed to me the perfect name for an undead rogue), "Raawr" (a druid, and the only spelling I could find that worked), and "Coraline" (a book character whose name never seems to be taken). So what's your character name -- and how did you pick it? Do you have some uncommon standbys that are usually free? Do you abuse the random name generator until you find something you like? Do you just hit random keys on your keyboard?
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Breakfast Topic: What's the noobist thing you've ever done?
We were all newbies at some point, weren't we? And none of us started out knowing everything there is to know about the game. And in learning, I'm guessing each of us made some mistakes that we'd look back on and shake our heads sadly, wondering how we ever made such silly choices. I'll start off with my own story -- and you can add yours in the comments. My first character to level 60 was a warlock (well back before warlocks were the flavor of the month), and it was certainly a learning experience. And, yes, I was one of those warlocks you would see running around with a fiery enchanted sword. I know, it's terrible and wrong, and I hang my head in shame to think of it, but at the time I didn't know any better. So what about you -- have you had any particularly noobish moments in WoW?
Breakfast Topic: I can't believe we survived that...
As a healer, my very favorite game moments are the ones in which, after a particularly messy pull, the rest of the party stops for a moment to say "Wow, how did we survive that?" Not that "good healing" is necessarily the answer -- as in my experience, a typical how-did-we-survive-that moment requires timely action on the part of multiple party members. My most recent how-did-we-survive-that experience came during a Scarlet Monastery run yesterday. A friend of mine was after a drop from Mograine, but it was an odd hour and there were few people around interested in groups. So with a level 40 paladin and a level 43 druid, we decided to duo the cathedral. Neither of us were sure we could take out Mograine and Whitemane at the end, but figured that trying was better than sitting around doing nothing. And while I think we both burned nearly every cooldown, in the end, to our own surprise, we emerged victorious. So with that said, what's your best story of surviving despite the worst odds?
Breakfast Topic: Best advice for a newbie
I'm sure we've all had this problem. You've got a friend who's just picked up the game and suddenly you're hit with a barrage of questions. What's the best class? What's the best race? What do you mean I shouldn't play a Night Elf priest? (No insult to Night Elf priests in the audience -- but you have to admit it's not the best race/class combination.) And once they do manage to create their first character and explore the newbie zones, you're in for another round of questions. What sort of weapon should I use? How do I add buttons to my hotbar? What do you mean my rogue shouldn't focus on intellect gear?Ah, newbies and their endless supply of questions. But I'm sure we were all there at one point, and so I'm asking you -- for the benefit of all players who have ever had to help a new player get started -- what's your best advice to a newbie?
Breakfast Topic: Looking for...
In the time it takes you to read this post, another hundred players will have posted on the official forums about the shiny new looking for group interface that rolled out with the 2.0 pre-BC patch (on the 9th of January). Blizzard told us to give the new LFG tool a chance -- after all, the system can't work if no one utilizes it -- but nearly a month later the steady stream of complaints hasn't stopped. At this point, are you still willing to give Blizzard's LFG system a chance, or have you resorted (like so many others have) to searching for groups over whatever channels are available to you?
Breakfast Topic: Why stay in general chat?
I see lots of complaints both here and on the official forums about General Chat, and how people are tired of other players asking the same questions, over and over and over again. I don't know about you, but when I create a new character, the first thing I do, even before getting the character added to my guild or getting my interface set up, is /leave general. Maybe I was just brought up in the "don't complain about what you can't fix" school, but why doesn't everyone who complains leave general? Have you ever left it and gone back because you missed it? (Picture Credit: Mankrik)
Breakfast Topic: Your first weekend in the Burning Crusade
As we wind into our first weekend since the much anticipated release of the Burning Crusade, I wonder what everyone's up to. Some people around the world are already hitting level 70 -- a feat, which, with my leveling speed, astounds me -- and I've even seen the first level 70 on my home realm. Of my immediate circle of friends I have a few people of lower level who haven't bothered to buy the expansion yet, several pushing their mains as far as they can, others starting anew with Blood Elves or Draenei, and yet others who can't decide which alts to play. With a priest at 62, a rogue at 61, and a new paladin at 14, I think I fall into that last category. So what have you been up to since the release, and what does the weekend have in store for you -- in Azeroth or Outland?
