Peter's Blog

I Can't Resist an Interesting Project

M and M

Yeah I did it, I signed up for a second account to cheat take advantage of Blizzard's new refer-a-friend scheme. After five minutes deliberation I set up a draino priest (Mayzyn) and a gnome warrior (Mayxyn). I corpse-ran the priest to the gnome noob area and I had two level 1's to play with. I multi-boxed (or rather ran two instances of wow on one pc) and in the space of a weekend got the warrior to level 18 and the priest to level 17. Because of the refer-a-friend thing, the rate at which they levelled was very fast, they were level 14 before they left dun morogh (spelling?), the experience bar is permanently blue while they are partying. For a long time they were equal in level, dinging on the same quest turnin, but the warrior had two warrior quests to do and just that put her a whole level ahead.

I set the pc up using KDE so that I can switch between the two players just by moving the mouse from one app to the other, no need to click. I haven't cheated in that I don't have the keyboard set up to send key presses to one character or the other, I have to switch apps to control each character. I have set up some macros for the priest: I set up the whole of the bottom left action bar to duplicate the normal action bar but with macros that work on the focus (the warrior) or the focus target. In a nutshell, this means that pressing 2 causes the priest to smite her target, pressing F2 causes the priest to smite the warriors target. For the warrior I set up F2 to deal a Heroic Strike so I don't have to change keys in a fight. Hence, a vanilla kill attack is:

• Warrior: Charge
• Warrior: Rend (a DoT and nice agro draw)
• Priest: Mind Blast
• Warrior: Herioc Strike
• Priest: Smite
• Warrior: Herioc Strike
• Priest: Smite etc till death ensues.

This was quite easy with a little practise, and most things died in under ten seconds. At level 10 they found a level 11 elite to kill and this again was easy, just swap some of the smites for healing.

Tackling groups was harder. I was trying gnoll camps in westfall, tanking with the warrior and healing/blasting with the priest. It was all ok until the priest drew agro, then it would fall apart big time. I would try Fade with the priest but inevitably she would still have some agro and taking it off with the warrior wasn't easy (in hindsight I should have a macro set up on the warrior to assist her and taunt). The priest kept dying which was a bugger as she had to do the corpse runs and she was the rezzer Also in hindsight, keep the rezzer alive at all costs, let the tank die!

These fights are very tricky, it is too much for my tiny brain, silly things happen like the warrior kills one mob then stops and stands doing nothing while I am fiddling with the priest. If anyone thinks multi-boxing is an easy cheat, they really need to try in. Two multi-boxed characters are not equal to two seperate characters.

It doesn't help that I only got Sissle (priest) to level 13 and that was ages ago so I've forgotten priest play, and I've never played a Warrior. I'm having to learn two classes at once and I'm also having to worry about agro/threat a lot more. In the tricky fights above, I was forgetting about the priest shadow word: shield and I've only ever used it once, so that the two of them could jump down a cliff. For reasons I don't understand this macro:

/cast [target=focustarget] shadow word: pain

refused to work although

/cast shadow word: pain

did and other target=focustarget macros worked fine.

The warrior is very tough, in a way it is nice to be playing a tough character again. I've had two wipes and in both cases the warrior was last to die.

Talent-wise, I waited till about level 15 before deciding what would be most useful and put the Warrior into Arms (which seems to be a compromise between protection and dps) and the priest into shadow for more damage and lower threat. I could make the Warrior protection and the priest holy and the two would be extremely tough to kill but I do want them to be able to kill things quickly too, especially if they ever split up and solo.

The refer-a-friend gives a VERY handy summon-a-friend feature that has a one hour cooldown. I did the run to Westfall by grouping the warrior with Maevyn and using her Aspect of the Pack to run them both at +40% speed. Once there Maevyn was replaced in the party with the Priest and the warrior summoned her to Westfall. Very easy and so many possibilities. I could have flown Maevyn there, got her to summon the warrior, logged out for an hour (or played another alt), then got the warrior to summon the priest.

When it comes to Kalimdor, I can have each hearthed in a different continent.

Really, the possibilities of this Refer-a-friend and the power it gives are op (overpowered).

Maysyn

Refer-a-friend gives the friend the option to say thanks by granting one of the referrer's other alts a level, but only to lower level alts. I created a Draino Shaman (the last class I haven't played) and was able to immediately level her up to level 5. I have a level five Shaman that has never even moved! I'm going to save the grant levels from now on, I'll see if I can get them past Maecyn so she can have some levels granted and also I'd love to team a fire mage with a warrior: AoE fun galore.

Professions

I've made the priest a tailor and the warrior is a miner. I may make the warrior an engineer too: goblin jumper leads would be very handy! I made the priest a tailor as the greens are still scanty and overpriced on the auction house and the two of them are reaping in linen quite nicely. I may train the warrior in first aid but not the priest, not enough cloth in the game for that. The priest's second profession slot is empty and I can't think of anything to do with it. Maybe a third alchemist for another cooldown and more income. I'm sick of skinning and herbing.

Ma??yn

The Ma??yn thing is getting much too confusing, especially in the blog so I'll try to bung in the class names as much as possible. It's even more confusing in-game when I have to remember which one I am mailing something to.

Zhevra

If I sign the second account up for two months I get a free Zhevra mount. If I decide it's worth the expense then I'll give it to Maexyn. I may transfer Pooky to the new account where he can help the other girls out, possibly levelling with Maezyn.

I didn't realise that now you can pay to change a characters name, £6. I may change pookypoo's name if I can think of a suitable masculine variant of may-sin. So far I've come up with ray-sin but it doesn't make sense for a paladin to be named after dried grapes. Hey Blizz, how about a paid sex change service? You can call it the blizz-snip.

Guilds

Someone was at the gnome/dwarf noob area hassling people to sign a guild charter so I signed it twice. Hum, good place for it, level 1's aren't normally guilded and maybe welcome a 1g tip for their first class training. I might just set up a solo guild now that I have a character that can invite the others to join it.

Need a good guild name:

• Team Ma??yn
• petersblog dot org
• Alt Mighty
• what raisins can do (geddit? amazing <what raisins can do> You have to be familiar with obscure 70's chocolate bar adverts).
• multi-boxers AREN'T cheating