Filed under: Breakfast Topics

Now that the battleground blacklist feature has been around for some time, most of us have probably settled into a routine of picking out our two least favorite places. So I'm wondering, a while down the line, which battlegrounds do you blacklist? This feature has returned to the spotlight of late, with a little note from the systems design team in the recent PvP Q&A, suggesting, perhaps teasing, that Blizzard might consider cutting a battleground from the game. They mentioned that they had more information about the most and least popular BGs, and we had a good time postulating about which might be cut.

So which do I blacklist? I switch it around a lot, some days it'll be Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest, but a few days later I'll be fine with those and it'll be Warsong Gulch and Twin Peaks, usually as a result of a bad loss which wound up with the faction I was playing being camped at the graveyard. Maybe it's better to ask which battlegrounds I never blacklist, and the answer to that would be Eye of the Storm. I love that place. I can't put my finger on why exactly, perhaps it's the long sight lines, perhaps it's the mixed mechanics, meaning there's a lot of varied tasks to be done. I'm not sure if the chicken came before the egg, but it's also by far my most won random battleground. Positive reinforcement!

But what about you? Which battlegrounds do you blacklist, or, if you're a more changeable sort like me, which do you never blacklist?

It occurred to me earlier this week, as I was doing another round of dailies on the Isle of Thunder, that I really had no reason to be doing them at all. I've been exalted with the Sunreaver Onslaught for quite some time now. There's nothing I need from the vendor. But something keeps me going back to this particular set of dailies over any other, even though I don't really need them anymore. Of course there's the weekly quest that's a pretty easy 150 valor, and the Treasure Vault to plunder, and of course there's the raid itself -- I really think the Throne of Thunder is the best raid we've had this expansion so far.

But there's also just something about that mysterious island. I love the saurok dailies, stomping bugs and jumping around like a maniac. I like going on the odd binge of rare-killing. I like the atmosphere of the area, which is odd in and of itself because the island is frankly, pretty gloomy -- but every time lightning hits a tree, I kind of have to marvel at how pretty it looks. As for the dailies themselves, they're pretty easy to complete, they send me on a circuit of the island, and they don't take very long. The dailies make it easy to rack up a quick 400-450g or so in a half hour, and I'm not going to complain about that.

I do wonder, though, if anyone else has a peculiar fascination with the Isle of Thunder. Are you exalted with your respective faction? Do you still do the dailies? Do you find yourself hunting for rares every week, or diligently making sure you get the Key to the Palace of Lei Shen? Or do you just head to the island for the raid? Will you head to the Isle after patch 5.3 arrives? Is there something on the island with enough of a draw to keep you coming back? And just because I'm curious -- what did you think of the Isle of Thunder dailies? Were they better than the ones offered in patch 5.1?

It's really easy, both in life and in WoW, to rush by without taking a moment to smell the roses, to survey the beauty that's all around us. I'm as guilty of this as the next person, always hurrying in-game, always trying to get to the next spot, the next level, the next piece of gear, the next round rating number.

So I was on an alt in the Alliance base on Thunder Isle, when I had to alt-tab out to respond to an IM. I then put my laptop down and afk'd, and on my return I was looking at the library you see in the header image. What you might not be able to see is the scholars in the alcoves, reading away. I'd never noticed it before, because all I usually do there is hearthstone and then run straight out the door.

It took me ages to even notice the amazing swirling sky in parts of Pandaria, with its sha-styled tendrils. But what about you, do you look up? You really should. And what are your favorite bits of sky in the game? Your favorite treasures, indoor or out, that you'll miss if you're not glancing occasionally towards the heavens?

A little while back, someone asked me why I ended up playing a shaman. I'll give you a brief run-down of the events that led me to a little red-headed dwarf... and the other shaman!

My first character was a paladin. I'd been told to play one by the people who talked me into playing WoW in the first place, and I kind of liked it. As much as anything, it was a sentimental attachment. My friend Chris had made the character for me, and named it, and my friend Mark had taught me roughly how to play it. I was still kind of a noob, when I was leveling my way through a zone and saw what I now know was a shaman. I'd been trying to kill some mobs, and having a hard time, partly because I was new to the game, and partly because I was specced into holy.

This shaman planted their totems and unleashed a torrent of lightning bolts into one of these tricky mobs, and it died before it even got to them. I was impressed! I didn't even know, at the time, what that class was, but a brief description to my guild-mates soon clarified it. I decided at that point that my next class would be one of those, and rolled one the same day. And somewhere along the way I lost the bug for massive DPS and started healing.

That's me, but what about you? What made you choose your class? Was it seeing another? A feeling of personal identity? A preference from previous games?

You'll probably say I'm being paid off by Blizzard or something (I wish I was), that I'm a sell-out and shouldn't be trusted, and should be thrown to the dogs and such, but I love WoW. Of all the games I've played in my life, WoW is the one that's become an obsession. It's become a career even, it's now not just what I do in my spare time, but what I do in my work time, too. And I love it.

I was chatting with my friend Missy, a huge lover of lore, and we were discussing how different our gameplay experiences were. I rush through content, I'm all about the end-game, and getting there was quickly as possible. In scenarios, I get distracted by the killing, I just want to make with the stabby or the zappy or the choppy, and use my character's abilities in the most efficient and intelligent way I can to get the job done. I miss huge chunks of story because I'm just not looking out for it. And Missy plays completely differently, always with an eye on the story, always with an eye on the quest text and the NPC dialog and all the rest. I haven't watched a skippable cutscene in a really long time. And our own lore lovers here at WoW Insider are just the same, I'm sure Sally despairs of me. I know Anne does.

But we all love this game. There's something there for all of us, and for the hardcore raiders, the RPers, the people who never have max-level characters at all, the pet battlers, the people who only have an hour or two every third wednesday, they've all got a place in Azeroth.

And that's why WoW is a great game, in my book. But that's my book. What do you think?