14/10/2010

Of tabards and tiger lilies

Patch day bugs can be very annoying, but they can also be funny. In case you haven't heard, there's currently a bug that can cause characters to appear as if they are wearing a guild tabard even though they actually aren't. If you're the kind of person who wears a guild tabard on occasion, but not always, this can seriously mess with your mind.

Seeing my priest wear a guild tabard on the character selection screen initially only made me frown ever so slightly, since I last remembered her wearing her Green Trophy Tabard of the Illidari. Had I swapped it out for the guild tabard by accident or without remembering? Nope, in game she still wears the trophy tabard. I shrugged it off as a display error or maybe even an intentional change to emphasise guild allegiance and moved on.

Later I was doing some business on my death knight and as I looked at her I found myself thinking: "Good thing she's wearing that guild tabard now, it finally covers up that ugly chest piece that's been bugging me for a while... wait, when did I get her a guild tabard?" Turns out she wasn't actually wearing one, but nonetheless appeared to do so, even in-game. In the end I decided to just get her one for real so that the illusion would actually match the reality and to make my brain stop hurting.

Speaking of my death knight, I've been running around picking flowers with her like mad, because there's never been a better time to get off your butt and max out your inscription than now. During this activity I got to experience one of the patch changes that hasn't been advertised much as far as I'm aware - that you get experience for herbing and mining now.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think that's a pretty cool idea in principle; I'm all for alternate levelling paths, but the current numbers definitely feel a bit off to me. On my death knight, killing a mob three levels higher than her, while fully rested, nets me about 2000 XP. Bending down to pick the flower at its feet afterwards (which shows up as green in regards to my herbalism skill level) nets me more than 4000 XP. Sorry, but that just feels wrong.

My boyfriend had a similar experience when he logged on his low-level warrior alt who was questing in the Arathi Highlands - he pretty much got more XP for picking flowers than killing the mobs in his way. In fact, he even kept getting experience for herbs that had gone grey and weren't actually giving him profession skill-ups anymore... madness, I tell you.

Though I'm now tempted to make an alt with mining and herbalism and level it purely by gathering...

2 comments:

  1. "Though I'm now tempted to make an alt with mining and herbalism and level it purely by gathering... "

    That will help the pacifist players! Surely that wasn't the actual intention, though... Wonder if we'll see the XP tweaked after the initial rush to level professions?

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  2. Well, I was thinking it's a reward for a relative lowbie taking their life in their hands and wandering into areas that are 5+ levels higher than them.

    Or for pausing and actually mining/flower gathering in a PvP server. (If you've ever been ganked while leveling a gathering skill, you know what I mean.)

    My long neglected priest was leveling Herbalism in areas of Hillsbrad that he had no business being in, but I was risking it anyway so I could level the skill before the AH returned to normal.

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