Me and the Bull

This huge tauren warrior whose named started with Bull and myself went head to head last night over and over again. I was out in Nagrand trying to secure the last few Halaa tokens I need for the 100 token count to buy the +10 resilience gem.

There were only 3 horde to fight for most of the night. The hunter was easy sauce as he never played his traps well at all. I was always able to secure a token from him. But then they would take me 2v1 and I'd get one of them down but couldn't keep myself up for the other kill.

It was some good fights against the warrior though. For most of the early part of the night, I was able to secure his death before my own. However, as the night wore on, he got a lot smarter. He started going all out and blowing all of his cool downs on me.

Warriors and rogues still prove to be my toughest battles but it was actually fun going head to head with a good opponent. hahaha.. just as the spartans... it's nice to have a worthy opponent to die by. :)

PLEASE MOM!

Mom Tells Kid No More World Of Warcraft - Watch more free videos

"Oh God is it back?!"

hahahahhaha...

You need good mates

I read a lot of shadow priest forums always looking for ways to improve my game. I constantly stalk zizek on the armory but unfortunately I have no access to his play style. He's also undead and an engineer so he has more tricks up his sleeve than myself.

Today as I made my way through some shadow priest googles I came across some stupid xfire debate about viable arena classes. Man. I can't believe they host some of that stuff. As someone who is always looking for good information to learn from, it annoys me when I run across a bunch of non-palyers mouthing off general remarks based off of little facts.

First and foremost, you can't simply judge a class by its core abilities for PvP. This isn't 1v1. It's 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5. Class compliments count more in arenas than anything.
Yes, it's true, Shadow Priests have quite an uphill battle when you move from 2v2 to 5v5. But as my super star god Zizek proves, it's about running with a group that not only compliments your DPS and abilities BUT also can help your survivability.

Some of the most necessary things to my survivability I take with me in our Arena battles don't come from my class talents. Hamstring, Wingclip, Frost trap, BOP, Blessing of Freedom, Prayer of Mending all come from my fellow arena mates. As we have come up from practice, they are learning how to keep me alive...and I in turn, suck up all their healing mana. hahahahha.. Okay. that's laughable but sometimes true.

But my strengths and what I feel I bring to the team come from my ability to weaken the opposing team through dispels, DOTs and to finish off kills fast. I'd kill to be able to watch the top shadow priests in action. If only they would offer spectator mode...

Arena HO!

I think we've played more 5v5 games in the first two weeks of Season Two than we did in all of Season one. We're definitely still finding our rythm though. It's been tough simply because we've been marching right along side the top rated teams of last year.

I'm not sure but I think less people are doing arenas this season than last. I don't blame most teams who couldn't break out. It's a horrible up hill battle.

I thought they would not release the season 2 gear until next season 3 to allow people to catch up to the top rated teams. But now we're all just playing a gear war much like the old days of BGs.

It's certainly tough when you not only have to fight your way through skill but also gear. We're talking about some pretty large discrpencies in armor and weapons that probably not even the best teams could overcome.

One of our biggest changes is adding a lock to our line up. Felix respecced his lock to DEMO. So now he's one of those damn tank locks that just won't die. lol. At first we weren't sure how it would effect our 2v2 team. But Connect the DOTS is actually liking having a tank-lock.

He basically controls one opponent while I DPS down another. If I happen to die, he can pretty much solo the final guy himself. Rogue/Druid team is still our hardest combo to beat although we have finally figured out how to handle the rogue/rogue combo. mwahahahha.. Cloak of Shadows this baby!

Someone is Lucky in AB

...but it's not me!

hahaha. AB weekend is probably one of my least favorite BG weekends. It tends to drag on the longest and alliance pugs shine dullest here as well. :)

While being four capped, I found this cute little dog in his dog house near the Blacksmith. He runs out of his house and chases a little cat. His name is Lucky. I thought it was ironic. hehe.

Strange Bird

I saw this blood elf parked outside while waiting for arena ques the other night.
What is this bird and who do I have to kill to get it? :D

HD 4 Me!

I went walking/running with my dog today and when I got back, what do I find on my door step!?? The Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player I ordered on Monday! Can you believe it. Amazon said it wouldn't come in until next Tuesday.

I'm so excited! Now I just have to borrow some HD movies to test it out. I might go out and buy one tomorrow. I'm hooking it up to my projector tonight.

I just love my projector. It's the best present I ever got. I wanted one so badly ever since Flipmax and I snuck in movies at the ENDG computer lab we used to work at in College. We'd load up the classroom projector on the huge screen. It was awesome. I never fell out of love with watching movies on a projector ever since.

I was thinking Batman Begins, that's a good HD starter right? OOOhhh. or The Mummy!

woot!!!

Angel of Death

Got my new gear. 1 Veteran BG belt, 1 Merciless Gladiator Headpiece, and 1 Merciless Gladiator Leggings. The helm wasn't designed right and my hair sticks out the back. I also never understand why WoW never actually uses "black" as a color. It's supposed to be black but then it looks grey instead. Oh well.
Everyone was making fun of my helm so I kept it on display. hehehe.

It was quite fun buying all the new gear after so dilegently saving for so long. We were all like kids in a candy store!

I found out later that they spawned an Arena vendor in Stormwind because of the massive PvP carnage that was going on in Netherstorm. It was really messing people's purchases up and probably overwhelming the GM ticket line.

Anyhow. We PvPed our 5v5 games tonight to see how we'd do. We did fairly well. Like 17-9. For the first several matches we were going against fairly new teams and we dominated them. Then as we almost hit 1658 rating, we hit a ton of 2000k rated teams from last season. It was harsh. You just know when you're being out played. It sucks...just like the same way when you know you're out playing another team. Complete and utter domination.

Some teams just know their sh*t inside and out. Who to go after first, who to CC, when to CC. And not only do they know these things, they perform them flawlessly.
That's the level of play you strive for as team of course.

Also, here's another tip. Don't play past a certain time. Create a cut off point. Playing when people are tired even though you want to keep playing actually hurts. Nerves start to snap.. people start playing the blame game..etc..

It's better to play when everyone is still fresh and more accepting of constructive critcism. Because everyone needs to improve but some people have attitude problems regarding hearing it. I have my limits as well of course but for the most part I'm pretty open to suggestions.

I'm not sure what our line up is going to be this season. I think we have one of the other Arena teams in our guild merging with us because they lost people. Not sure how that will work out but we'll see.

More than anything, I just want to play.

Practice Arena and GRIND BG HONOR.. that's my goal for the next couple of weeks.

Season 2 Starts with a BANG

So I'm flying to Netherstorm to pick up my new Arena 2 gear and get to the little hut to find a freaking sh*t storm! There is so much lag from the gankage that it causes someone from our guild to actually pick the wrong arena weapon!! So I step into the room and lag my way forward to the back. By the time I get to the quartermaster, I'm almost dead so I shield up and run back out. I think decide...I think I'll go get my BG gear first. hahahaha...

Hopefully it'll die down over the next few hours. I can't decide if the people ganking are Arena goers or people who are trying to just stop people from buying arena gear??? Ah what conspiracy theories my follow :)

Here's one. New teams are paying people horde and alliance to prevent teams with massive points to spend from getting their Season 2 upgrades so they have a spotting chance at climbing the ladder this first week and getting points. Not a bad plan I say! hahah...

Anyhow, all I know is that hardly anyone can even open up the merchant dialogue before they get blown to holy hell.

good times!

EDIT: THERE IS AN ARENA VENDOR IN STORMWIND, CHAMPIONS HALL NOW.

1903

And Season One ends for team JAE!! 1903 rating tonight.
Yeah! We broke the 1900 ceiling. Hopefully we can crack the 2000 ceiling next season.

With the new upgrades, it should be interesting to see how we can do. I will have 4.3k arena points ready to spend for tomorrow and 30,000 bg honor points as well.

I think that will get me like 3 pieces. lol.. hahaha. yeah. that crap is so expensive.

Anyhow. See you guys in Season Two! glhf!

Last Day of Season One

Today is the last day of Arena Season One.
It's been a fun experience, about the only challenging thing for me I find in WoW anymore to be honest. It pushes your character skills to the max and what I love the most about it is that it really makes you learn other classes and races as well. It's the most I've ever paid attention to the horde for sure :)

And I must say the lack of loot drama from Arenas and BG honor is quite a nice change of attitude from PvE drama. And besides the occasional complete arse hats, most of the competition has been full of sportsman like conduct...which is nice because you know how emotional competitions can get... you're already pissed off at yourself for losing and you always suspect your teammates have some things to say...it's nice not to have to deal with a-holes on top of it. hehehe.

I'm looking forward to the start of Season 2 tomorrow where every team will be reset to 1500 again. I haven't decided if it would be more advantageous to play in a larger pool or more diluted pool of level players. You have a chance of going up against poor teams as well as top rated teams at the start of reset. I think it will take about 3-4 days for it to begin to level out again after the rest. So to play right away or to wait....that is the question :)

yarrrr!!! Here we go again!

Dusk at Westfall

(My current desktop wallpaper)

RAOK Bumper Sticker

I was behind a car today who had this bumper sticker.
I was like... WOW. sweet! Right on!

9 freaking points

We weren't sure if we'd get our 10 games in tonight for our 5v5 matches.
Sadin and Taint are both on a really harsh deadline at work and have been working til' 1am every night.

So I asked Terrer to sub in to play his warrior for our matches this week. We did very well. We kept seeing the same combo of classes over and over again. Pally, Shammy, Warrior, Warrior, Priest. OR Mage, Mage, Priest, Pally, Warrior.

It was the double warrior team that seriously blew us up. They'd just zone in on me and KABOOOM!!! splat! hahaha. But for the times I went untouched, we did fairly well. Never leave me to my devices. :) mwhahahah.

So we got to 1890...we were going to play one more game to break the 1900 ceiling. We are winning our last game when Terrer says "Watch, we're only going ot get 9 points"..

...we got 9 points.

LMAO.

He said he had to log but I made him play one more game to make up for his jinx. But we lost to the double warrior team again and lost like 15 points and called it a night. hehe... go figure!

1800 before 15:00

My 2v2 and 3v3 teams did well this week. Last Saturday, Taint and I decided to 2v2 after running a couple of AV BGs. We ended up playing close to 30 games. Just as we hit a 1790 rating, the server message pops up saying [SERVER RESET] 15:00

So we que-ed up hoping for another game before the server went down. It took awhile but the Arena finally popped. It was a tough game against a warlock/shammy but we won the game and hit above an 1800 rating with 5 minutes to spare! :)

Tonight, my 3v3 team, This is for Mathilda, did well and for the first time reached above an 1800 rating.

What I'm finding with practice is that you have to become pretty keen about spotting different talents of classes. For example, a felguard means you're dealing with a demo warlock. Save him for last if you can as he will have insane amouts of HP and survivability. Felhunter usually means Affliction lock however some DEMO locks will pull this pet out to confuse you at times. Affliction locks are paper....but are deadly, deadly if you allow them to start casting. Don't give them the 1.5 seconds they need to cast affliction.

Good druids are easy to spot from bad druids. Bad druids stay in cat form...good druids will always be shape shifting depending on the weather. :D If I see a bad druid, I usually just dot/fear and move to a more deadly target. Good druids are tough stuff. I find myself trying to time fears for when they come out of feral form to cyclone or heal. They have instant heals so it's very important to stop them before they can spam the button. This task is super difficult and I haven't timed it right much yet. Cyclone is a mother f-ing biotch. 6 seconds of you not doing anything and no one can get you out of it. If you ever see a druid cast this once, you gotta start thinking about how to kill or cc him. It's a 1.5 second cast so hard to stop.

Resto shamans almost always have earth shield up... and it looks like a swirling ball going around them like a hula hoop. Dispel this if you are focusing down the shammy!! It heals the shaman for 270 as you attack him and makes his casts 30% uninteruptable! It sucks arse. And I've seen a good shaman heal himself in 1.5 seconds for close to 2.5k each time.

I can't wait for the Season 2 arena and BG gear to come out so I can finally spend my points and get upgrades. I've been holding off ever since they announced new gear was coming out June 19th.

It shall be a day wreckoning! :)

I ain't got any money, no problem!

Friday night was very nice. I was so busy farming copper in Fargodeep mine and helping solo level 6 players kill Goldtooth, that I completely forgot about AV weekend.

So far, I have made 5 gold which to me is just amazing considering I started with 0 copper the day before. I was able to buy 16 bags with the money I made Friday and then made my way to Elwynn Forest at the end of the night. I watched up the road as level 5-6s made the trek from the Abbey to Elwynn and offered them bags.

"Hello, x, Could you use some bags to help you on your way?"

It surprised me how many people replied "I ain't got any money"

I then would say "no problem!" and then trade them the bags.

Interesting how people are very suspicious of acts of kindness.. actually, it doesn't surprise me at all. We're all bred in this society to believe that "nothing comes for free".. not even acts of kindness.

As I was heading out of Stormwind, I passed a level 70 warrior and used my macro to greet him. "Hello, x! Happy Hunting!"

He /r to say "is this 'bob' or 'fred' playing trying to trick me? or is this actually some nice person saying hello"

LOL. Sad right? How jaded we've all become.

But kindness and good will seems to be infectious so I'm optimistic (which is not normal for me). People seem to really enjoy when you greet them with a hearty hello. I get many well wishes in return. Although I suspect there will be times when we get negative feedback. To be expected but not to deter for sure.




(this is a response I got in RP form to giving someone bags and also a nice reply I got from greeting someone)

(a sweet response I got from a mom)

http://groups.google.com/group/theraokgroup

The RAOK Group

When I was in college, I really wanted to form this group called RAOK. Random Acts of Kindness.

A random act of kindness is a selfless act performed by a person or persons wishing to either assist or cheer up a stranger. There will generally be no reason other than to make people smile, or be happier. RAOK is either spontaneous or planned in advance.

For example, offering to pay for the person in line after you's meal at McDonald's. Offering to help someone when they seem burdened by what they are carrying. Holding the door open after a large event. Smiling at strangers. Complimenting someone at random.

These things can be small and even un-noticable by most. Most importantly, they are random and therefore have no bearing on the personality of the person bestowed upon. The only goal is to make someone's day better.

Of course, I could never do this in RL. I'm way to shy to engage with total strangers no matter how good the intent.

So I got to thinking about applying these RAOK in WoW instead. I always talk about the beauty of the Metaverse. How it's a place to socialy interact and be a place to engage where adults would otherwise not be able to....

But WoW is not such a pretty picture always. If you look closely at the concept of PUGs these days, it has become apparent of our player base's jadedness, greed, rudeness, and elitism.

There aren't many guilds around anymore that dedicate time to helping new players out like they were in the old days. Veteran players don't often spend any time helping out lower players because they're too busy raiding and getting their phat loots..etc.(myself included)
It's not all grim but there is a certain quality of friendliness and goodwill that seems lacking.

SO.. I thought, why not create a group of players who are willing and motivated to engage in RAOK in WoW. I actually intend to try and make this work so I'm only seeking people who truly believe they have an interest in this. The guild will have a lot of requirements such as obtaining level caps, helping to fund projects, and encouraging friendly emotes and macros.

Some of the first RAOK goals are....(all directed at random players)
1. Help to fund bags to low level players
2. Give pets, flowers
3. Spend time around leveling areas giving blessings, water, food, heals, and rezzes
4. Saying Hello and Goodbye to solo players
5. Wishing People well
6. Offering to help low level players with direction to trainers, professions, banks, AH, and quests

again.. all small little things that can help to make someone's day a little better.

if you're interested, please e-mail me at wowcast@wowcast.net (subject: raok) and I'll send you the server/faction info.

So far, I have two standard emotes
/s Hello, %t, Happy Hunting (usually followed by a blessing)
and
/s Thank you! You're Random Act of Kindness is appreciated. :) (for when RAOK is acted upon me)

I've gotten several thank you's and /cheers for giving out blessings and saying hello.

I leveled up a Paladin to level 12 so I can give out rezzes as well. The goal of this week is centered around levels 1-10. I've asked the people involved so far to get to level 10 by Sunday.

I've set up a google group: http://groups.google.com/group/theraokgroup

Meta Consciousness

I got an email awhile back about the idea of uploading your consciousness onto the net as way of preserving your life. The idea struck me as very ghost in the shell and also reminded me a lot about the fourth ambit audio story.

The idea that you can upload your consciousness tackles a lot of theories but mostly it really celebrates the idea of the Meta.. How we all are in actuality, Metazins, slowly uploading our collective consciousness to the void...Metaspace.

And there is floats without anything to quantify its impact on individuals or the world but you get the feeling that it must and that it does.

There are two common ideas regarding the ideas of consciousness.
Dualsim and Materialsm. Dualist tend to see the idea of consciousness as a mental state that is non-physical in some sense. The mind is NOT necesarily the brain so to speak. Materialist see the consciousness mind as a material object, basically just neural activity. The mind is the brain.

My hope is in tonight's Meta Talk, to discuss the idea of consciousnes uploaded from both of these perspectives. What is the esesnce of a consciousness that we'd want to become part of a collective? What are the moral implications? What kind of regulations would need to be put in place? Is it even possible for humans to grasp the ideas of a collective conscious?

June 07 Thursday
Scarlet Crusade US/Stormwind The Park
8pm central
/w MetaTalk

upload yourself! see you there :)

Practice makes....

...you realize you need more pracice. :D

I got in about 24 games on Connect the DOTs (my 2v2) yesterday. Not bad..

It's a lot less stressful trying to get better at Arenas once you've accepted that you have to practice to get better.

I looked at most of the top teams out there... this season, most have played more than 600 games. Some of them are in the upwards of 1000 games. And you realize that most of these teams have lost more games than you have played. Practice, practice practice.

Sure, there are some people out there who with their class matrix and background of PvP, hit it out of the park on their first try. But it's not the case for everyone else... not matter how many elistis braggards say so.

We average-joe's... gotta practice. No special juice we can take to make ourselves better overnight. I take comfort in that fact actually.

And here's the thing, it's not just your own skills you have to work on... it's knowing all of the other classes by heart as well.. which takes a lot of time. How to spot a demo warlock from an affliction.. How to tell a resto shammy from an elemental...How to spot a hunter's trap... Knowing when to neutralize an arc powered mage... Memorizing the standard subtelty rogue's general attack routine so you can learn to counter it..perdicting a pally shield or a mage's iceblock...etc..

Also, there's no shame in losing. You always learn more from losing than from winning. So unless you're at the top, you can assume you still have a lot to learn.
Not to say it can't be demoralizing and make you feel like total sh*t. That's part of PvP and Arenas. I really like the challenge.

It's interesting to us that our easiest matches are actually against one of the hardest class combos out there. The top rated 2v2 teams are warrior/pally and warlock/pally.

When we see warrior/pally, we're like "YES!!!"

But rogue/rogue or rogue/druid... gah.. we have yet to be able to find a good method of defeating this combo. Generally what happens is that I get sapped for 12 seconds. Then the rogue comes back for me at the end of the 12 seconds to blind me for 8 seconds. In the meantime, they are stunlocking Felix's warlock and beating focus firing him for 20 full seconds while I'm helpless.

We've tried rank 1 AOE's, popping perception...etc.. but the increased sap range makes it even harder now to stop the initial sap.

Our only strategy at this point is to stay far away from each other during the opening of the arena battle. This makes it harder for the rogue to run back in time before my sap wears off and he can blind me again.

Other than that, we're kind of still researching. I think the first step is for the both of us to become really good at dueling rogues and druids. LFM! Bastard Rogues to duel! hehehe. I still get pretty nervous about dueling. I don't do it often enough unfortunately. It's on my list of things to start doing to help improve my PvP game.

Oh yeah.. something I noticed recently...Listening to light and breezy classical music or soundtracks while you PvP helps keep you calm and collected. I used to listen to techno or dance tracks but noticed they made me jumpy and excited which doesn't help your game despite most button mashing theories. lol. I've been listening to the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack. I know... I know.. whatever.. shut up.

Save the Murlocs

So I finally came across the Save the Murloc video from the last Blizzcon.
Here's hoping the next Blizzcon is as entertaining....if they ever put the tickets on sale that is. :)

No Monkey Business

(BlodMonkey, I named him after Blodgruv who gave me the monkey. My new personal funky monkey!)

This weekend has been no monkey-ing around. I've done a shit ton of research for my shadow priest. Plus, I've been trying to practice as much as I can with 2v2s and 3v3s. Taint says the best way to get better with your 5v5s is to do more dueling and 2v2 and 3v3s.

I posted most of what I have learned on my guild forums.

I thought it would be better if I started compiling all my findings into one place so I could reference myself. It's definitely been a battle of patience and trial and error. Frustrating battles after frustrating battles. I absolutely warn people not to seek shadow priest pvp out if they don't have the stomach for dying repeatedly.

Anyhow, all my teams are doing a lot better. We played 63 games this week with our 5v5. I'm hoping to do more on my 3v3 and 2v2 this coming week. My small, much needed break cut into a lot of my practice time.

Ideally, I want to get in about 40-50 games per team per week.

One of the hugest lessons I learned is about self-preservation. Shadowform is a luxury that can be afforded to lose so you can win. I used to resist the temptation to pop out of shadow to flash heal and renew myself and desperate prayer...but now I'm learning to self-preserve a lot more naturally.

Two things I've noticed that are great about the Shadowpriest is the ability to heal and dps..and of course, to finish off targets... Power Word Death ftw. If you can work thos two things in while staying alive and getting the timing right, you'll do all right.. at least this is my hope. :)

Anyhow..to all you clothies out there. Keep trekkin'!! Perhaps the Blizzgods will reward us someday for all of our suffering. heheh.

Who Won the Race?

hehehe. Good fun last night! Thanks guys for coming!

I need some help figuring out 2nd and 3rd place of the great Tram Race.

It's pretty clear from both pictures that Xelaere got 1st place.
This first photo it appears 2nd place Jemimus and 3rd place Merivel.



But you see in the actualy finish line crossing photo, it appears it's a tie between Ligon and Jemimus for 2nd. and Merivel 3rd.



If my stupid avatar wasn't in the way of the photo, I could measure the foot distance of both. :)