Category: Warcraft

The Flaming Boomerang

Posted on by Gazimoff

Ever since patch 3.3.3 was released I’ve been thinking of switching back to my Fire spec. It made me  feel nostalgic about the early days of Warcraft, where I originally levelled as a fire mage. I only deviated from this spec for parts of both Molten Core and Naxxramas, sticking with fire throughout Burning Crusade. When I started raiding in Wrath I only went to Arcane due to the hitcap benefits. The spec then received an almighty buff, propelling it to become the must-have raiding spec for nearly all mages. I’d been stuck as Arcane ever since.

As a result my fire spec has been largely abandoned until earlier this week when I decided that I had to change. There’s only so much I can take of going through the same instances as the same character casting the same spells until something snaps inside. Not wanting to go all medieval on my keyboard, I dusted off my old fire spec and went down to the target dummies to practice.

The first challenge to face is gearing – even though +hit gear is thrown at you so that you can comfortably make the Arcane hitcap, it’s not quite sufficient to reach the 446 that a fire mage needs. Luckily I’d kept back Dying Curse for just such an occasion. Couple that with the fact that I usually raid with a Draenei for Heroic Presence plus either a shadow priest for Misery or a balance druid for Improved Faerie Fire, and all I have to reach is a manageable 342 hitrating.

The next trick to master is keeping up a solid set of debuffs. The fire spec is slightly more complex than an arcane one in that Living Bomb always needs to be on the target. Each fire mage needs to cast their own Living Bomb, making debuff watching that little bit trickier if you’re not the only one in the party. Once you’ve got that down, you can happily Fireball away at the target until Hot Streak procs. When Hot Streak goes off, cast your instant-cast Pyroblast then go back to Fireballing. Just make sure that Living Bomb is constantly on the target.

The complication sets in when working out Improved Scorch. Even if you’ve got other effects in your group to provide the critical strike chance by 5%, you’ll still want to apply it for the 3% crit chance buff to your Fireballs. This one works slightly differently though in that one mage can apply the debuff for all the others in the group. This means that you need to coordinate with others about who will apply the debuff. Luckily the chance of encountering another fire mage in a raid is fairly rare, so you can usually apply anyway. Again, like with Living Bomb, this always needs to be applied on the target.

UPDATE: The above paragraph is wrong. Have a look at this article for an update on Improved Scorch

There are various tricks you can use to alert yourself to various spell procs as well as tracking when debuffs need to be applied, and I’ll be talking about some related addons in the near future.

Things can get even more complicated when you start looking at converting gear from an Arcane spec focus to a Fire spec focus. The reason being that haste benefits Arcane mages tremendously – the more haste they have, the more spells they can cast. For a fire mage with Burnout and Hot Streak, crit strike rating has more of a part to play. Not only do you deal more damage from your spell critical strikes, but you have an increased chance to trigger Hot Streak as your chance to crit increases. For me it’s not currently clear if haste is the better stat to go for above crit for fire mages, but it’s something I’m looking at closely.

At the end of the day though it doesn’t matter to me as long as I’m having fun, and going back to Fire is something that’s hitting all the right nostalgia buttons for me. I’ve also been able to “prove” it’s a viable raiding spec after managing to pull aggro during phase 2 of Lady Deathwhisper and topping the damage and DPS meters on Saurfang. These are inconsequential though, as long as I can cackle like a maniac while smacking my buttons.

Half-Baked

Posted on by Gazimoff

Every so often I come up with this idea that seems really amazing in theory, but incredibly dorky in practice. Like the Gnomish Mage’s Mana Pie.

This image by me is free for you to reuse under CC-BY-SA 3.0

Yes, I know, I need professional help…

Under the Hood

Posted on by Gazimoff

Spoiler alert: In-depth discussion of the planned changes to Cataclysm, primarily focusing on mechanics and core engine changes, leveling experience and endgame experience. All information here is public knowledge unless specified.

Over the weekend an avalanche of news came out about how development on Cataclysm is progressing. In an interesting change the majority of information was shared through a series of interviews rather than through blue posts on the official Blizzard forums (although there are some follow-ups). The removal of Path of the Titans and Guild talent trees are the two big items, along with the changes to Inscription and Archaeology.

What’s interesting is the overhaul the core game engine is receiving in order to make the overall experience better. One of the Ghostcrawler interviews mentions that the game was only expected to last for two or three years. Now they’re not just looking at the capability they need for Cataclysm but also for future expansions and development. In another interview he mentions that the revised game engine will have a number of hooks that can be adjusted, allowing for individual spells and abilities to be fine-tuned much more precisely.

What does this mean? Hopefully it’ll get classes to the stage where individual talent trees will be on an even level, so for example Fire, Frost and Arcane mages should be very close together. You’ll probably still get an “optimal” spec, but the differences between the three should be much smaller. It should also mean there’s less reliance on random-number-generation – something that the Fire tree suffers from immensely.

The problem with building a game engine is that it takes a lot of time and careful planning to pull it all together – especially something as complex as Warcraft. It’s also a problem that doesn’t scale well as you throw additional resources at it – as you scale up a programming team you can easily lose focus on the goal unless you have very tight project management. Having to put a large amount of your coding and design effort into bringing an old, creaking engine up to date is also going to pull them away from generating new content for the expansion.

The end result though is that most of the hard work won’t be visible to the player, at least not initially. It’s like changing stuff under the hood of a car, replacing the engine and upgrading the shock absorbers. It’s still the same car and works in the same way, it just remains unseen unless you flip the lid open and take a look inside.

It should however creep into the game through subtle ways, one of which being the revamped glyph system. In essence, being able to provide additional hooks into the spellcasting (or perform ability) process means that you have greater control over how they can be adjusted. Part of the change to glyphs includes providing a “middle tier” between powerful spell changes and basic cosmetic or remove reagent requirement ones. This middle tier is going to rely on the additional hooks to perform the subtle tweaks to abilities, so that the situational stuff can truly be situational and not incredibly overpowered or ridiculously weak.

There’s also scope for more interesting racial abilities, item bonuses and so on. You might find that items have properties that would work like a glyph, providing unique interactions with the spell casting pipeline in ways we haven’t seen before. It also means that we could get to the stage where an item does different things depending on the class or spec of the character using it.

Of course this additional complexity is going to be a nightmare for one team of people – the theorycrafters. As spells become tweakable in more ways, so the models used to predict their behaviour become more complex. if you think the guys with their spreadsheets and simulators have it bad now, imagine how bad things could get for them in the expansion?

In essence though it feels that in order to get at all the expansion’s content, you’re going to need to roll alts. Both Cory Stockton and Tom Chilton have commented on the amount of new quests that are being sunk into the game in order to sort out the level kinks. Improved crafting profession itemisation should also help, particularly around Inscription. If you’ve ever leveled a mage you’ll understand the frustrations around getting offhand items, rings and trinkets at the lower levels.

What does all this mean for me as a player? Larisa says that all she wants from Cataclysm is good raiding and a good guild, and I can appreciate that. But a hangover from my single-player days is that I want stuff to do in the game – zones to explore, quests to complete and characters to progress. I currently don’t feel that I’ll get that on my main character, and will have to roll an alt if I’m going to truly explore all the changes that have been brought in. Whether it’s a Worgen Mage or a Gnome Priest, I feel it’s going to be restarting that gets me the most out of this impending expansion.

Coming Back To Haunt Me

Posted on by Gazimoff

So, where to begin with this one. About three years ago I agreed to build a realm website for Earthen Ring, the roleplay realm I was on at the time. It was one of those things where I put it together, handed it over and pretty much left people to it. Needless to say the forum didn’t get maintained, the software didn’t get updated and it’s now a sprawling mess.

About a month ago, I was asked to give it a bit of a kick-start again. After taking backups and performing checks, I’ve moved everything over to a new architecture. And while Earthenring.EU currently looks fugly as hell, at least it has a solid foundation now on which I can build things. I’m currently tinkering with a number of things here and there in order to get things working right, but I’m learning a lot as I go so it’s a slow process.

This means that I’ve been getting cross and frustrated with web software, while Curio (my mage on the server) sits on the Cathedral steps and responds to questions in whispers etc. It also means that some of the blogposts I’ve got queueing up are having to wait a little until I can finish them off. I just hope you can be patient with me while I’m working on other things.

Luckily there have been several things to make me smile as I’ve been working away. So here’s a little link love to those great people who have helped make this whole thing slightly more bearable.

Enjoy!

Choose Your Weapons

Posted on by Gazimoff

A while back I mentioned that I had four different weapon sets on my mage and was having trouble choosing which one was the best. Theorycrafting wasn’t really helping me much, with no clear winner emerging. In the end I decided that the best way to test them was to go out, do some target dummy tests and run a few heroics with them. It means that I can test them against my own playstyle as well as getting a feel for each of them.

Unsurprisingly, both Nibelung and Sister Svalna’s Aether Staff came out at around the same for single targets, with Nibelung really coming into it’s own for those AoE sessions in heroics. Abracadaver was only slightly behind, which surprised me as I was expecting a much bigger boost from the haste. I only have 450 haste normally so I’m nowhere near the softcap, although I do get the tier 10 2-piece set bonus most of the time.

The Frost Needle and Scourgelord’s Baton came in last place, and so will be banked. I can’t risk disenchanting them though – if a substantial one-hander or off-hander drop then I’ll need the other one to sit alongside it.

As I was doing all this testing I gradually became frustrated – it didn’t really make sense to me why I could end up with four sets of weapons, all from the same instance and all similar in quality to each other. It wasn’t as if I could say that there was a clear upgrade path, or if there was a clear best-in-slot that I could work towards. Instead, the approach was to offer similar weapons that do similar things, but work in slightly different ways.

  • A sword and off-hand combo
  • A staff with an “on use” ability
  • Another staff with a low procrate ability
  • A third staff with just high base stats and nothing unusual

Frustratingly for me, I couldn’t even decide what I like more as a player. Do I like to be able to just compare raw numbers – if the numbers are bigger on the new item, it’s an upgrade? Do I like to go for things that are a little unusual? I know I don’t like on-use items as I always forget to use them (trinkets being a perfect example), but that’s more preference and playstyle than throwing away good quality gear.

Anyhow, just as I was beginning to settle on which items to keep and which to put into cold storage, along comes this blog post from Tachyon. If you’re not aware of his work, Tachyon is a mage blogger who is heavily into theorycrafting. His best achievements are developing simulators that calculate DPS for a given gear selection and spell rotation. The information he generates is fantastic in terms of working out stat priority and so on.

His latest post on DPS volatility is a real eye-opener – it shows why ten tests or samples are unreliable for calculating DPS, and that you need something like a thousand in order to build up even a rough picture of DPS. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m unlikely to run the same instance with the same gear a thousand times just to test if it’s a marginal improvement.

But more fundamentally though, I’d probably never be able to tell which was the better or worse weapon for me because they’re all so close to each other. That and Lady RNG adds her own influence, distorting whatever results I get. I might end up feeling that the mathematically worst choice gives me the best result just because it’s “lucky”.

It also makes me wonder if any of this will get better in Cataclysm? I mean, I love choice, but I’d rather not have to be a mathemagician just to be able to pick and choose between the huge range of loot on offer to me. It might be that with the Spirit mage changes there will be a clearer choice for us – if it’s got intellect and stamina but no spirit then it’s a mage weapon. I like to have plenty of upgrade chances and I do appreciate the idea of moving away from identikit gear choices as well, but I’d really like it to be easier for me to work out if something is an upgrade or not.

I’m also reminded of the times when I first started raiding. Everything seemed so much clearer – it was an upgrade or it wasn’t. There didn’t seem to be as much choice – Molten Core only really had the Staff of Dominance or the Azuresong Mageblade to choose from. There also seemed to be much more competition for loot, with about nine other players also keen to get their hands on the same gear. I’m not saying that an abundance of choice is a bad thing, but it just seems to take that epic edge off things.

I guess I’m looking forward to Cataclysm all the more as a result – the raid dungeon changes mean that loot will be the same for both 10 and 25-man. This in turn makes itemisation easier, which should make upgrade paths clearer. I’m aware that the expansion isn’t a panacea or cure-all, but I can live in hope.

Gazimoff the Librarian

Posted on by Gazimoff

I’d scarcely believe it myself, but Mana Obscura is now three months old. It’s come a long way in such a time and is an incredible amount of fun to do, but it’s starting to groan at the seams a little now. It needs a careful eye cast over it, a little tweak and clean here and there, a little bit of spit and polish. It also needs a bit of work under the hood.

First things first, I’ve changed the name slightly, dropping the pretentious “the” and just sticking with Mana Obscura. I’ve also procured manaobscura.com as an address on the interwebs, and ManaObscura as a pigeonhole on Twitter. This particular Twitter feed will only contain stuff related to the site and the occasional retweet of good content created by others, so if you’re tired of GamerGaz filling up your tweetstream, here’s an alternative for you. Of course, while you can update your bookmarks there’s no rush – the old one will work just as well for the time being. If you subscribe to the RSS feed, you should be changed over automatically.

I’ve also started seeking out mage strategies and guides from across the interwebs for inclusion in the Mage Resources Guide. There are a ton of really good mage bloggers and writers out there pumping out some really good content, but it never sees the light of day or gets shared around. Rather than trying to rewrite everything, I’m just trying to catalogue and archive links to it, to try and point people in the right direction.  If you see something that you think would help mages or if you’ve written something you’d like to share, drop me note and I’ll add it to the guide.

In fact, the guide is part of the reason why I’m doing a spot of tinkering. There’s some features that I’d like to add to the site, but none of them seem to be sitting smoothly. As a result I’m going to be working away in my underground lair, trying to work out better ways of sharing everything here. It’s possibly going to mean fewer blogposts while I’m breaking and fixing things in my test chamber, but I hope the results will be worth it.

Talking about site work, I’ve been asked to take a look at rebuilding an old realm website and get it fit for Cataclysm. This is a much larger job that’s going to have me working for several weeks, rebuilding a forum, wiki, gallery and other fun stuff for people to use. It’s going to be complicated as the software hasn’t been updated for yonks, but it’s hopefully going to be worth it for them.

So there you have it. A little bit of librarian work, a little bit of tinkering. Still, it’s enough to keep me busy for a few weeks at least. Don’t worry though, I’ll keep you posted on how things progress. And if things seem a little quiet, don’t worry. I’m probably just working inside a machine somewhere, swapping around a few cogs and gears.

My Diamond Shoes are Too Tight

Posted on by Gazimoff

Yesterday was fantastic. I’d successfully travelled halfway across the country, got home and managed to get settled in front of the computer. For the first time in a few days I was planning on helping myself to a nice portion of Warcraft goodness. I figured that since the raid lockouts had just reset that there’d be a wide variety of choices available, even at the late hour I logged on. As luck would have it, there definitely was.

I managed to get get myself into an ICC25 PuG being organised by a few people from some of the leading guilds on the server. Everything filled up nicely, we marched in and managed to take down the first four bosses as well as the mini random quest encounter. Thirteen badges in the bag, twenty achievement points and a fair chunk of fun for the evening. We’d have progressed further too if it wasn’t for the double-maintenance whammy we’ve had this week.

The awesome thing that came out of the run though was that I picked up Nibelung from Lady Detahwhisper. I’d heard some great things about this staff, particularly how the Val’kyr that it summons can really ramp up your DPS. The trouble with procs like these though is that you never really know if they’ll be worth it until you gem and enchant the thing and give it a go.

I’m also building up an armoury of weapons that I think I should really start cutting down.  But the stats, procs and so on make it very hard to choose which combo is better. I must have spent about three hours at one point trying to work out which was mathematically superior until I realised I was no longer playing World of Warcraft and instead had somehow logged into MetaCraft: Spreadsheet Theory. It was not a fun place.

Currently I have the following taking up room in my bags:

I know it’s a bit like moaning I have too many pairs of shoes, or that the menu at a restaurant I’m visiting has too many tempting options, but it’s a pain nonetheless. And I really don’t want to go back to spreadsheets and searching forums for definitive answers on the best weapon to get. Sometimes I wish itemisation was easy.

So here’s the plan – go to the target dummies and test each weapon in turn to see which gives the biggest answer. Of course, if you reckon you have an answer for me then feel free to pipe up. If we had a unified Mage resource site, I’d post it there, but we currently don’t.

I’m keeping Nibelung though – being able to have Val’kyr proc from by Blizzard AoE (about all I do in heroics these days) should mean I have a harem of these things following me around…

The Jigsaw Man

Posted on by Gazimoff

Every so often, I see a concept or idea spread across the Warcraft blogsphere that just makes me smile. A great example of this is Sven’s Greater Internet Romantic Hero Theory. If you haven’t read it, go there now! Don’t worry about me, I’ll still be here when you get back. Sven’s idea was itself inspired by Pilfkin’s own theories about the Virtual Me, which is also a great read.

For me though the story doesn’t end here. Although I have a main character who I love playing, I also have an army of alts to care for and nurture. Each of them started off as an idea to explore a different idea, a different personality. I’ve got the traditional family man who still goes off adventuring occasionally, just to prove to himself he’s still alive. I’ve got the genius engineer who struggles to live in a world that doesn’t understand or respect him. I’ve got the suave young rapscallion who has a girl in every port and has trouble choosing whether to think with his brain or his balls. I have the bitter, lonely old man who’s angry with the world and everything in it, who would give anything just to see it all consumed in an inferno.

The MMO genre doesn’t just mean that I have one character that I explore and empathise with, it means I have a pile of jigsaw pieces. It’s like someone has taken a hammer to my mind and taken each shattered piece of personality to make a character out of. I don’t think that I’m unique in all of this – I reckon it happens to a great number of people. As soon as we’re presented with choices, we choose them all!

Just like Sven and Pilfkin suggest though, a character is a two-way street and it’s no different with a collection of alts. Sometimes I don’t feel in the mood to play a character. It’s not a case of  “oh no, not the Warlock again” but more something like “I’ve had a crap day at work and want to tell people to go die in a fire”. There are other times when I want to cheer myself up, so I’ll log on as the mad as a trouser full of ferrets Roffles and randomly roleplay at people. Being silly and making other people laugh makes me laugh as well. It’s weird and I guess highlights a ton of approval seeking personality flaws in me, but you play the cards you’re dealt with.

I think that the characters we play tend to affect our feelings more than we give them credit for. Even if it’s just a case of feeling that the character you’re playing is cool and interesting, those feelings tend to reflect back on you. If you feel that a character is dull, plain or boring he’ll probably get relegated to the sock drawer of obscurity.

Meanwhile I’m not going to even try and put together the jigsaw in my head. Besides, I’m probably missing a few pieces anyway.

Getting Ready for Cataclysm

Posted on by Gazimoff

At the moment there’s this imaginary calendar inside my head. It’s telling me that sometime before the end of the year, Cataclysm will be released. It’s the kind of thought that brings a smile to my face, like remembering that I’m going to have steak for dinner tonight. It’s not quite up there with the feeling I’d get if I had… say two tickets to see Ramnstein, but it’s in that rough ball park.

I have this kind of ritual that I go through when preparing for an expansion and Cataclysm is no exception. It’s also something that came up with Blog Azeroth’s shared topic this week. Going through three phases of preparation for a computer game expansion is probably a bit extreme, bud didn’t you hear that Warcraft is Serious Business?

The first one always starts with me trawling round the computer game stores twice a week, asking if they’re taking preorders. This goes on until they’re either sick of the sight of me or they’re finally taking them. And not just any order – I want to lay my hands on the Collector’s Edition. I’m not happy until I have the piece of paper in my hand telling me that it’s preordered. I also make sure I have preorders with about three or four different stores, just so that I can improve my chances of getting a copy.

As soon as a release date is announced, I book time off from work. The expansion is serious business, and I want to make sure I can enjoy it without interruptions! It also means that I can be one of the first to have the expansion installed, patched and running. At least that’s the theory.

The second phase starts around six months before the expansion when I realise that my bank is full to the seams with crafting materials that I’m never going to need or use. I’ll make some kind of noise about having a bank clearout, but it never happens until everyone else has done it and the prices have fallen through the floor. Anyone for a Frozen Orb, stack of twenty for five gold?  How about frostweave, fifty silver a stack? Maybe a few eternals?

I’ll also start looking at my characters, thinking about which one I want to get to level cap first (my mage) and get all the new recipes (also my mage). I’ll be taking a look at which characters would give me a good range of abilities on each server that I play (or which ones will help my mage the most) and make sure they’re prepped and ready. If there’s any gear that I can pick up for the alts, I’ll have a look at creating it. This’ll usually happen just after I’ve had my bank clearout, so I’ll end up buying it back and making a huge loss.

I’ll also make plans to clear out my PC and make sure it’s running smoothly as my third phase. I’ll promise to uninstall some games, delete some crap and maybe do a system reinstall in order to make sure everything’s sweet. I’m even thinking about picking up a copy of Windows 7 this time just to get off the concrete boot that is Vista. Of course none of this happens until the day of release when I’m holding the shiny disc in my hand and it’s telling me I don’t have enough space. Cue swearing, shuffling things around, more swearing and finally getting the thing installed. It’s then that I find out that it runs like a slug because of all the new effects and I end up playing it in 16-bit Sega Mega Drive mode until I fork out for a computer upgrade.

The upgrades also sting me. They’re never on sale, even though I’ve been browsing and passed up on a ton of special offers. I also have to choose the “ship it to me by rocket car or faster” delivery option. It usually costs me almost as much as the upgrade, but I tick it because I’m an impatient sod who has to see these crazy new effects immediately. This is also accompanied by comments from the Significant Other who’s still making do with the same machine she had five years ago and is wondering when it’s going to be her turn to upgrade.

So yes, I *am* getting ready for Cataclysm, just like I was getting ready for the previous expansions. But I’m also realistic – I’m lazy and easily distracted and will probably be cursing again sometime near the end of the year.

(Photograph of Palermo Airport’s luggage carousel by Bjs)

Getting The Most from Refer-A-Friend

Posted on by Gazimoff

If you’re a heavy raider or arena junkie there’s a fair chance that you’ve hit burnout at least once since you started playing Warcraft. Playing the same character, doing the same content week in and week out can make the game feel repetitive and stale. Boredom sets in and enthusiasm wanes. Luckily help is at hand in the form of Blizzard’s Refer-a-Friend system. If you’ve ever fancied having an army of alts, trying out different classes or creating new roleplay characters, RaF might be ideal for you. But when should you use it and how do you get the most out of it?

First, a bit of background. The Refer-a-Friend or RaF system is designed for players to get their friends to try out the game. It offers a range of perks to make the levelling process easier and a couple of bonuses if the friend sticks to the game for a while. Simple enough so far, right? The other great thing is that it’s a great way for players to “buddy up” and work on new alts together. This does mean that either you or your friend will need to open a second Warcraft account, but you may find that the bonuses outweigh the costs.

So what are these bonuses?

  • 300% XP bonus for everything including mob kills, quest completion and even zone discovery. The bonus lasts until you both hit level 60, plus you both have to be grouped and “in range” (about 40 yards or so) for the bonus to be applied.
  • Summon Friend ability – this is great if you’re playing characters of different races, or if one of you wants to sell up junk or get training. Once per hour you can summon your friend (or they can summon you).
  • Bonus Levels – the player on the new account can gift levels to the player that reffered him. Those levels must be to a character on the same realm and in the same faction. You accumulate one gift-able level for every two that you gain normally. It means that if you level a character to 60, you get 30 levels to gift. The character receiving the levels must be a lower level than the one giving them.
  • Free Gametime – if your friend buys the game and pays for a month of play, you get a month’s play free of charge.
  • Bonus Mount – when your friend has paid for two months of gametime, you get a free mount. This mount recently changed to the only two-seater flying mount currently in-game – the X-53 Touring Rocket!

Know The Limits

There are some limitations to the Refer-a-Friend system. It’s worth keeping these in mind, as it’ll have an affect on how you plan to use it and potentially on how you spend your time in-game.

The big one is that it’s only good for getting characters to 60 – after then you’re running on your own steam. This isn’t as bad as it sounds as the quest hubs and paths in both Outland and Northrend are much tighter. There are also many more opportunities to PuG instances when you hit Outland, as you’ll not only find players who’ve emerged from RaF but you’ll also have Deathknights to lend a hand.

The second issue is that the RaF process only lasts for three months. After the time is up, the bonuses vanish. As a result, it’s probably best to avoid starting a RaF account until after any major holidays or other plans that are going to take you offline for more than a week.

The third is that it requires someone to create a new Warcraft account from the RaF invite, upgrade it to a standard account through buying another copy of the game and buy two additional months of gametime once the first month runs out. Keep an eye out for copies of the game being sold off cheaply in your local videogame store, particularly if it’s the Battlechest that also contains the Burning Crusade expansion. For the gametime you might want to pick up a 60-day gametime voucher, and while you can buy this on the Blizzard store you can sometimes find them for sale cheaper at places like Wootloots.

Choose Your Friends Carefully

If you’re still contemplating setting up a RaF partnership, make sure that you choose who you do it with carefully. You’re after someone who will stick with it for the three months that you’re going to be tied together. You also want someone who’s online at the same times that you are and has the same level of commitment to other in-game stuff that you do. The last thing you want is to set up a partnership with a hardcore raider that can’t play with you because he’s in Icecrown 25 every night.

A great way to test it is set up a 10-day free trial. See how your partnership fares over a short time period and get a feel for levelling with someone again. If it all works out then go ahead and shell out for the upgrades. If not you might want to contemplate looking around again.

Real-life friends, family members and so on make a great RaF partner because of the mutual friendship that you have. Just be sure to keep the friendship going when you’re not logged into Warcraft, otherwise the friend might feel that you only want them for their XP bonus.

Plan Your Characters

The RaF system is a great chance for you to try out a new class that you’ve never played before. It also provides a great way of getting around server transfer fees – if you’re thinking of trying out a new server then roll an alt there with a friend.

Before starting your RaF partnership, it’s worth planning out what characters you want to have, and which faction and server you want them in. Try to create a priority list – you might really want to try out a Troll Shaman but aren’t really fussed about another Gnomish Mage. Make sure your friend can work with your list as well – levelling two warrior tanks or holy priests side by side is going to be tricky.

Aim to have about three or four pairs planned when you start to give you plenty to do. Although it only takes about two days of gametime to get to 60 with the bonuses, you want to allow enough time to do your other ingame activities like raiding. You also need to think about who you’re going to give your donated levels to, with four pairs giving you two extra characters that you can get to 60 instantly.

Map Your Routes

If you’re going to be doing a lot of levelling, it’s important to make sure that you mix things up sufficiently. The last thing you need is to be swapping repetitive raiding for repetitive questing, as it’s just swapping out one boredom for another. Try and choose different zones to quest in so that you avoid duplication as much as possible. Swapping factions is also possible, although you’ll find that some quests are repeated on both Horde and Alliance side.

It’s also important to be fairly ruthless with your quest log. You will munch through quests at an incredible rate, with quests dropping from red through to green very quickly. If a quest goes grey and you haven’t completed it, drop it from your log. If there aren’t many quests for your level in an area then look at moving on. You want to make sure you’re in places where there are large amounts of closely packed quests that you can chomp through quickly.

Getting the Gear

A side-effect from the fast pace of levelling is that your characters will rapidly outstrip any gear that they accumulate. Heirloom gear is an option, but it’s not available to the person that created the new account. Plus, because of the XP bonuses on some heirloom gear you’ll end up levelling at slightly different rates.

If you can, try to plan ahead by obtaining gear beforehand. If you can craft suitable gear-sets for certain level milestones then go for it. If not, try to periodically run the larger instances such as Scarlet Monastery and Blackrock Depths in order to pick up new gear. A third person to help boost you through these instances is invaluble, particularly if you plan ahead and pick up all the instance quests beforehand. BRD itself is worth about four levels from both the mob XP and the available quests.

A great way of getting a good gear baseline is to do the last few levels (58-60) in Outland. The quest rewards there are fairly substantial upgrades on the stuff available in Vanilla WoW and should provide you with a solid starting point for life after RaF.

Still Interested?

I’ve used the RaF system a couple of times, and love the freedom it’s given me. I’m pleased with the range of characters I’ve got, especially considering that I’d have really struggled to motivate myself to getting some of them past level 20. I’m now in the position where I have lots of options going into Cataclysm and have characters that can fulfil any role. If you’ve struggled with levelling alts in the past you might find this is the boost you need.