Email

I love email. It makes it really easy to tell people stuff that you don't really want to tell them, and forget to tell them what you really should tell them. So, I got an email from my ISP informing me that my download speed had been increased by 50%! The email had instructions for how to enable this, which I actually read and followed. Afterwards, I really didn't think I was noticing much difference, but as time went on, I was getting disconnected from the internet more and more frequently. To be fair, I had great service up until this time... disconnects were rare. Well, a few days later, I got another email informing me that I wasn't supposed to have gotten that email - my speeds have not been increased. And all the while, my disconnects are becoming even more frequent, until now, when it seems as if I am disconnected once an hour, or perhaps more. Which makes me wonder... where is the email apologizing for all the disconnects, or even explaining them? AND... HOW DO I GET ON THE "A" LIST TO GET MY SERVICE UPGRADED LIKE WHOMEVER IT WAS THAT WAS ACTUALLY SUPPOSED TO GET THAT FIRST EMAIL???

WoW experiment (Fillaz)

I ran out of time on my last post, but, being level 12, I have so far spent 3 talents in the combat tree on dual wield specialization. I noticed he misses an awful lot, so I figured I needed to make the actual hits really count, and this talent increases his damage dealt. I definitely need to get his hit rating raised still, though.

On a positive note, while I was at work, most, if not all of the stuff I had on the auction house sold; consequently, his total gold is now 101g 27s 35c! I may need to go shopping again.

WoW experiment (Fillaz)

Since I finally leveled a toon to 80 in World of Warcraft, and experienced a lot of problems and annoyances while doing it, I wanted to try leveling a toon to see if I could overcome the issues I had and wind up with a well-geared, experienced level 80.

Now, I could have overcome some of the problems by using my 80 to get BoA gear, but I really wanted to see if it could even be done without that kind of help. I'm also not planning to join a guild, although my experience with guilds hasn't really helped me anyway. I usually put more into the guild than I get out of it.

So, with that in mind, I started (actually restarted) a troll rogue named Fillaz on the Tortheldrin realm. Yes, I deleted the toon, then recreated another with the same name. I don't have much experience with rogues or melee dps in general, so I thought it would make a nice change from what I was used to.

The plan is to avoid learning any manufacturing professions, which mostly cost gold while leveling, and instead just have two collecting professions. Of course, I also plan to keep the secondary skills up, and so far, it's worked fairly well. I chose skinning and mining as my primary professions, mostly because I think the buffs from those are going to be the most useful.

As I'm writing this, it is my second day of playing this toon, and here is where I stand in terms of gold and inventory space:

· 46 gold, 43silver, 59 copper

· 48 total bag slots

· My bank may be about one quarter full, but I can't check for sure right now

· I actually have about 20 gold more worth of stuff on the auction house

In terms of gear, I'm not great at this point. Mostly white quest items, and a couple of greens. In fact, according to WTF is my Gear Score, his score is a fail at only 4, 9 below average for his level. I did purchase a level 15 dagger from the auction house (I figured I wasn't likely to get 2 really good daggers before then) in preparation for the next part of the plan, which is to start doing battlegrounds and random dungeons on a regular basis. I leveled my 80 mostly doing battlegrounds, which made leveling fast, but left him broke and without enough high level gear when he got to 80. It also left me sadly inexperienced in doing dungeons, since I stopped doing them around level 30 in favor of battlegrounds.

Another website that I found, MaxDPS reports his total dps as 252. I actually think it's more like 20, and that the calculations may be incorrect at low levels. And of course, it's really dependent on who he is fighting. Still, I think it will give me some idea of how much damage I should be able to generate, and hopefully will help make sure I'm heading in the right direction.

Okay, I'm off to work!

WoW gear score is a joke

After finally making level 80 with Wilburpost, I was disappointed, to say the least, in other players reactions to my "gear score." I couldn't do a battleground without someone commenting on my low gear score. FYI, my gear score was 2502 according to this website. Also, according to the same website, my gear score does indeed suck, as the average gear score for level 80s on Shattered Halls is around 5200, give or take. But... how does one get a better gear score? Well, for PvP gear, you have to do PvP. It appears that there are plenty of people around who just can't remember what it was like trying to get better gear when they had just made level 80... or maybe they were lucky enough to be doing that when there weren't an abundance of people who had already gotten better gear.

Regardless of the feeling that they need to comment, the real reason for this post is that I have also discovered just how meaningless gear score can be. I also have a level 65 druid on the Tortheldrin realm, and while I don't remember what his gear score is, I do remember that his gear was rated a "win" by the same website. But, I can honestly say that his gear is terrible because I originally specced his talents for feral combat, but recently changed that to a hybrid of balance and restoration. Clearly specs that require totally different gear.

Finally, to make the whole gear score thing totally pointless, I just upgraded one piece of gear on Wilburpost so that his stats were MARGINALLY better... and actually raised his gear score by MORE THAN 100! I really didn't think it would make much difference as I actually traded down some stats for the increase in some stats that I thought were more important for that toon.

At any rate, I had an idea that gear score was just an elitist joke before all this... but there are plenty of knuckleheads that are so engrossed by this single stat that they actually check everyone's gear score... and feel the need to insult people on that basis. Disappointing.

Incidentally, it's not like Wilburpost is a noob in battlegrounds, with just over 12,000 honorable kills.