Giddyap!

I typically don't flex, but....

On the outskirts of Deadwind Pass.

 

Cardwyn reached the end the long grind to Exalted for the Wintersaber Trainers yesterday.

Once she reached L66 --the reason for showing my UI instead of hiding it as usual-- the XP she obtained from the mobs for the Wintersaber Rep quests slowed to a trickle. With about 5k worth of reputation to go, there was no longer any reason to artificially slow down my rep grind. And to be fair, another guildie had started in on the rep grind with her own traditional single mindedness, and had about 9200 Rep to go last morning. Therefore, I decided to push it and finish Card's own grind around my lunchtime. 

Card's trustly old Alterac Ram has finally been put to pasture.

Oh, and I can report that with T3 gear, Cardwyn can hold her own as L66 against mobs that are L69 - L70 outside of Karazhan. She just happens to pull them from a pretty far distance, that's all. And that each kill nets her ~1340 XP.

Redbeard has a new grinding zone.

EtA: Corrected from XP to Rep. Oops.

Side Benefits

Having done some occasional stuff on Cardwyn the past week or so, I will say this: my lack of interest in questing in most L60 zones back in Vanilla Classic has provided me with a great opportunity in TBC Classic.

Shush. This particular quest wasn't around
in Vanilla Classic.

 

All of those quests that I never did --the Wintersaber Grind, the Rockfury Bracer quests, the EPL quests, etc.-- are still there for the taking, and they all count as XP. On most days, I'll get on early in the day when nobody else is around and knock out the Wintersaber quests, reducing them to the equivalent of a pair of dailies. Between the two quests that I have right now, and the drop rate being just low enough, I can complete them both and get 5% of a level's worth of XP out of spending about 15-30 minutes of time. Since I'm in no particular hurry, that'll get me a level in less than a month. Considering she's L63 now, this is faster than I expected.

And when I get bored of doing those quests, There's zones in Silithus with L61 Twilight's Hammer enemies to beat on.

Once I get to L66 or so, I'll hike on over to the area surrounding Karazhan to see how Cardwyn will fare against the L68-L69 enemies there.

Every once in a while I get a whisper from some random toon, asking me if I'm grinding for the Wintersaber mount, and I say "Yes." And they go away. 

Since nobody else is out there, and it seems everyone and their grandmother is working on Netherwing mount grinds, I can just relax in peace.

How To Annoy People in MMOs, Part Whatever

There's a new sheriff mount in town.

The $30 Blizzard Cash Store Warforged Nightmare party mount.

This Guy.

You read that right: party mount. You can click on an item and get the mount for the duration of the instance/raid/BG/whatever.

But what they didn't tell you is that it combines the sparkle pony's ubiquity with the Lil' XT's mind boggling annoying sounds.

The noise was so bad from having about 13 of these at the starting gate in an Arathi Basin run that I turned my sound off.  There was no way in hell I was going to click on the totem/whatever-it-is to get my own mount, and neither was a Mage.

"Get with the program!" one of the fellow Alliance BGers said.

"No thanks," I replied. "Blizz gets enough of my money, and I don't want to encourage them."

I could only imagine the obnoxious sounds of 13 metallic mounts clanking and steam whistling away. This isn't the "clink clink clink" of a Gnomish mount, but something right out of the Molten Core.*

Gah.

I do have to hand it to Blizz in that they do give the people what they want --or at least they think they want-- but hearing this noise is almost too much.



*Not literally, but it sure does look like it could have come out of Blackrock.

Moar Mounts

If you've seen one of these Winged Guardians...

...you've seen them all.

They're the Sparkle Pony of Cata, or so it seems, but I haven't heard that much discontent out there about them.  Since they're not the sparkle version of "My Little Pony", I guess people are okay with them.

Well, I've a bone to pick with them.

Since Blizz enabled flying mounts to be used as ground mounts in BGs, I see them all the time.  Flying, you see them as they are above.  Running, here's what they look like:

Yes, you're riding a BIG GLOWING ENGLISH SHEEPDOG WITH WINGS.

Anyone up for a Shaggy Dog marathon?


EtA:  Both pics are links.  The mount pic is from Blizzard's web site, and the English Sheepdog pic is from a Reuters pic found on animalpicturesarchive.com.