Getting Closer (and a few more details)

Looks like we’re potentially less than a week away from our first groupings with the Pox Arcanum teams. Don’t know about you guys, but I am completely stoked. We do still have some details to work out, and there’s been excellent discussions as issues have come up. I’ve thought of a few other things to consider as well…

Money

From what I gather from the last discussion, it sounds like the general feeling is that we shouldn’t bring in any outside gold for now. Is everyone comfortable with this?

My impression was that we’d tough it out for the time being, and maybe revisit the topic in the coming weeks as we’ve had a chance to play and see how things are going. I have already noted a huge difference since picking up a few cheap bags (2-3s) in the AH, and getting a few linen bags from Daxe. (Mr. Ess and I have been tossing Daxe all our linen as we go, to help make bags and also clothes for the clothies.) Also, looks like we can potentially make some good money by fishing in the offtimes, and selling our catches in the AH. (I’ve already found a few greens this way, as well.) Oily blackmouths = $weet ca$h. Mr. Ess and I already have a few gold each from this, which should easily support our training and travel for a while.

Self-Sufficience

As an extension of the thoughts on money, I floated the idea that we might want to keep the group totally self contained. This means no sugardaddies, no farmer alts. Everything you do for this character, you do with this character. We haven’t heard from everyone on this though, and I’m curious to hear what folks think. Again, I don’t want to bog us down with too many rules and restrictions, but since we’re at the beginning of all this, it is an opportunity to try such an experiment. For both this and the basics of money handling, I’d suggest we come up with our guidelines (heh, at first I type “guildlines” 😉 ) asap, as people are getting into their toons more and more, leveling crafting skills, and so forth. I want to be sure we’re all on the same page here.

When do we start (exactly)?

I’d suggested level 10, but some folks mentioned that maybe those of us with class quests should go ahead and take care of those before we meet in Orgrimmar. I don’t like the idea of people going off on their own to take care of these quests once we form our initial parties, so if folks don’t want to do these with their groups, I suppose they could go ahead. Chances are, these class quests wouldn’t level us all that much. Although, one thing I’ll point out — I noticed there are only about 7600 XP to gain from level 10 to 11. Last night, I was killing harpies in Durotar when I hit 10, and I managed to finish the quest while trying to kill my way out of there. I saw I was still getting good XP, so I ran past all the rest as not to level too much more. (Whew!) Turning in the quest would have given me about 900 XP, so I decided not to turn the quest in (even though it was done), as it would put me significantly ahead of the group, I’d wager. XP from my class quest will also put me a bit ahead of everyone else. Clearly, staying *exactly* at the same level isn’t going to happen, but we can still do what we can to keep everyone in the ballpark.

So, should we let those with class quests at 10 who’d like to complete them individually go ahead and finish them, assuming they’re still level 10? Or should folks ding 10 and stop what they’re doing and proceed to Org to keep the leveling as synched as possible? Or should people just do what they want? Let me know what you guys think about this. We still have several days to decide. The thing I feel most strongly about is that once we’re grouped, we should only quest/grind as those groups.

Chosing Quests (thinking ahead on this one)

Instances are going to be the most fun, I think, so I’m hoping my team will focus on the quests/chains for getting the instances done. I think which quests (and even instances) to be completed by any team can be determined by the whole team, however, considering what the quest rewards are (like, uh, bags) and what exactly is involved. Mr. Ess and I were talking about how painful some of the collection quests have been for our duos. For the two of us, it took quite a while to collect 20 pirate hats each, and those had a reasonable drop rate. With a group of five, can you imagine having to collect 100 pirate hats? The Undercity “field testing kit” quest was pretty much impossible for two people to complete — we’d never get it done within the two hour time limit for five folks, so when we come to that, we can just decline it! (I will throw the kit back in the little dude’s face!)

On the other hand, Mr. Ess and I killed those pirates pretty quickly with just the two of us, so I can only imagine the STEAMROLLER that five people would give them. We might be able to collect the hats very quickly, and splitting the XP across five people will mean killing many more will even things out for us. It may not actually take any longer either.

I think the trick is going to be communicating as we go along about what to do, where to travel next, and what to skip. (Raise your hand if you hate the samophlange.) We may find that we need to be more thorough in completing all the quests in the different areas, given how the XP will be divided. I’m sure we’ll get a feeling for this once we actually get started.

Thoughts? Once we’ve made decisions about stuff, it might be good to post them someplace central (even if it’s a single post here, for the time being), so everyone can see what’s been agreed upon. I think a lot of this may become more obvious once the teams are rolling, but it’s worth discussing now if folks have strong feelings about particular aspects of this project. 🙂

/gone fishin’