20121219, mercredi

A. My warlock made it to level 90.

   http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/uldum/Chronoslock/advanced

With average iLevel 447, the lock has moved up to number 2 in strength, passing my lycan DK,

   http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/uldum/chronoslycan/advanced

whose effective average iLevel is 443.  Both have a number of runs in heroic dungeons, and have benefited in terms of armour enhancement.  Coming up next is my shadow priest,

   http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/uldum/kronospriest/advanced

whose average iLevel is 421, and character level is 88.

B. My lead character is still the mistweaver monk,

   http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/uldum/Chronospanda/advanced

whose average iLevel is 470, despite the link; that app seems not to honour armour upgrades.  (The bracers were upgraded to 466; the staff to 480.)  This character has a number of LFR runs, and has hit the weekly limit of 1000 valor points the last two weeks.  Armour pieces from the raids has been big pluses.

C. Antonidas realm.

This last week my total time in Uldum characters passed my total time in Antonidas characters.  Antonidas was my main realm from January 2007 until January 2011, when I started playing in the Uldum realm, and joined the guild Dungeon Crusaders.

When I cruise through the Antonidas characters to try to apply what I've learned in the guild, I see that I just don't have enough time.  My to do lists in Uldum are lengthy for the time I have on hand.  Further, the game discriminates very strongly in favour of guild members over individuals.  There is no catching up, which makes me sad.

D. For various historical reasons, in other realms I have characters that are

1. all PvP, or
2. all Horde, or
3. death knights (experiments).

 I'll likely not get back to these.

E. Guild Wars.

I played Guild Wars from mid-2005 to January, 2007 plus off and on (mostly off) after that.  I still have all my characters...GW is subscription free.  During the years that I played WoW, GW introduced a number of changes which allow the player much more ability to configure characters and game play.

This is the direct opposite of the trends in WoW, where configuration has been steadily eroded and the dumbing down of the game has been relentless.  Recently I've spent a number of hours on advancing the setups of my GW characters, in increments, and have been pleased at seeing resulting improvements in game play.  In MoP, one can obey the Noxxic strictures about armour and find the correct spell rotation for your class and spec.  Then one is likely to succeed; otherwise, failure at some level is very likely.

Guild Wars 2 has more flexibility than GW1, and keeps the subscription free model.  Its initial cost is less than the subscription to WoW for 6 months.