Sunday, February 10, 2008

My Alt Project:- "You're Hired!"

Recently I had the idea to re-establish for my main on Thaurissan what I'd already had to a degree on Jubei'Thos before the transfer; an economic support infrastructure of alts of the kind that I'm told is fairly standard for most dedicated WoW players these days. My most pressing need to do this at the moment is in order to save for a flying mount, which I still don't have yet, as shameful as that is to admit.

So yesterday I made an alt Forsaken Mage, which incidentally is also what my second (and previous main) character on Thaurissan had been before this Hunter. The Mage is not being made primarily for the purpose of being played as such, but to provide gathered herbs for sale to generate additional revenue and locally produced potions such as health, mana, and major agility for the use of this character, my Hunter. Although the main other reason for attempting to reroll a Mage was sentimental, the two other practical reasons were the class's tremendous potential as a high level courier due to its' teleport spells, and also the amazing videos I have seen showing the practice of AoE farming.

To give some background for this post, the main reason why I gave up on the Mage as my primary character class was due to its' excessive fragility; while levelling I died constantly, even to mobs in friendly territory. Given that at the time I was on a PvP server, when I started reaching contested areas, that only became worse to the point where the character became largely unplayable.

At some point earlier today, with one of the Agamand Mills quests, having died repeatedly while attempting it on my own, I began to experience the same problem. After resurrecting for the second time, I paused in Brill to analyze the situation. I didn't feel that an investment in better gear at that level alone was likely to solve the problem; what I needed was the assistance of more robust classes.

So I put a message in General; "Requesting assistance for the Family Crypt quest," waited a few minutes, and got no response. On performing a /who Tirisfal query I discovered that there seemed to be an unusually large number of higher level characters in the zone at the time, so I decided to try a different approach. My new message in General was:-

"Offering 2 gold as a fee to anyone willing to help me complete the Family Crypts quest."

A few moments later I had a whisper from a level 21 Priest offering her assistance, and the quest was completed fairly rapidly after that.

Several hours afterwards, in the Barrens, I again had the same problem with the Echeyakee quest, due to its' associated adds. On trying the same approach in Barrens general, I was literally flooded with whispered offers of assistance in response.

I'm not pretending to have come up with a new idea here; I know it's customary for twinks to buy runs through the Wailing Caverns or the Deadmines in order to get items they're seeking, but what I haven't heard of too often is people being hired for more general work as bodyguards outside instances.

I suspect, however, that there is a high level player somewhere on Thaurissan who is going to be offered a fairly regular bodyguard job as I seek to level this Mage as rapidly as possible. I'm thinking that with a level 70 (or close to) Warrior at my side, levelling this Mage isn't going to be anywhere near as problematic as attempting to level my first Mage was, particularly in contested areas. ;-)

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