TMNT

First time I've been on WoW for a long time this Christmas break. I'm just about done with the massive purge of my house and I think I'm now ready for visitors. :)

Tonight I was doing the daily cooking quest to gather mushrooms in the Dalaran sewers when I spotted something familiar. One rat and four turtles. Now where have I seen that before??! hehehe.

I thought it was really cute. I named the one in the back Leonardo.

Not a bad first day back in the game. We had raid tonight and cleared Nax to the Frostwyrm Lair. If it weren't for the massive ques preventing us from starting on time, we probably could have cleared the whole thing. It's funny, more and more people in our raid are beginning to realize this is the only "real" instance out there right now. lol.

I'm looking forward to attempting Naxx 25 man this Friday...although most likely we'll only have 17 people again. :( When can I start cloning my toons? hehe.

Blind

I haven't had much time to play WoW since I got back from visiting the folks for Christmas. I've been on this massive purging of my house. I'm currently on day three and about two tons of junk to give away. This is all stuff I've accumulated from pre-house days. I used to be a massive packrat. Now I'm all "tabula rasa". hehe.

I still need to get my hard drive ready for format as I'm going to be installing all the components of my new computer before raid tomorrow. fun fun fun.

Anyhow, thanks a bunch to @jemimus for linking this machinima video. I don't even know where to begin with this piece of work. Not only is it a great piece of animation, it's amazing story telling with ZERO words. It not only captures the essence of a class, in this case a rogue, but also a much deeper history in World of Warcraft (Lady Katrana Prestor).

The animation work is superb and the choreography is the absolute best in machinima I've seen so far. I've already watched this video like 5 times today. Wherever you are Percula, you're teh uber awesomesauce!! I hope there are more to come!


The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.

Happy Winter Veil

(present I got Sad and it turns out he got me the same thing only my presentation was more clever of course! :D)

Woot. We got epic lootz for xmas.
Computer upgrades for xmas. I can't wait to finally turn up all my WoW settings again.

On the flip side, xmas was marred by holiday vacation time being nixed by emergency work. I guess in the end, it matches the kind of year it's been...filled with unexpected lemons.

Anyhow, the rest of my loot box was nice as well:
[Book of the Warcraft Archive] which includes Day of the Dragon, Lord of the Clans, The Last Guardian, and Of Blood and Honor
[Day-by-Day Warcraft of the Desk Calendar]
[Mana Potion] (the energy drink)
Two [Arms of the Ergotron Monitor]

Falalalala-Ogrila!

I can Haz Fruitcake?

I was so proud of myself having gone through the Metzen and Grinch Winter Veil quests early this year. I pretty much did them as soon as they came out. Of course, after you complete them, you always get that retarded crap in the mail as a gift...[Bolt of Linen Cloth] trash, [Graccu's Mince Meat Fruitcake] delete, more [Graccu's Mince Meat Fruitcake] delete, delete. You know, you have to keep your bags and mail box tidy!

DOH!!!!! You need that food for ['Tis the Season] Achievement! I flipped out! OH NO! ALL FOR NOT! I'll have to wait until NEXT YEAR to get more!?

So I read on wowhead how some GM's will basically tell you you're SOL and other will restore the Fruitcake. So I thought I'd give it a shot:

Hi,

I recently completed the Treat's for Father Winter and also the Smokeywood Pastures quests. As a reward, I was sent Graccu's Mince Meat Fruitcake which I accidentally deleted. Unfortunately, I need this to complete the Achievement 'Tis the Season. Is there any chance I can be resent the Fruitcake?

Thanks so much,
Alachia
Boulderfist PvP
Shaman 80

So I got an in-game mail message today from Customer Support saying they were able to provide the restoration I requested! Thank you GM! Thank you! Thank you!
I'm so happy!!!!! I was able to complete the achievement and am now going to work on getting Ogrila attuned so I can do the [Fa-la-la-la-Ogri'la] one next.

One thing for sure is that after doing all of these, I doubt I'm going to be a true Merrymaker!

The Winter Veil Gourmet

[The Winter Veil Gourmet] complete!

Beatlejuice helped me out with the Sandworms from 290-315. Actually, he didn't but they weren't hard to farm up at all. Those sandworms are all over Silithus and not many people are out in the desert. I farmed enough to get to the 300 cap and a little extra for after I trained.

I then hit up Honor Hold to get the [Master Cookbook] and scored more cooking points with the extra sandworm meat. Next, I picked up the [Recipe: Ravager Dog] from the HH innkeeper and headed out to Razorthorn Hill to farm the meat up. The drop rate was hella nice.

While I was farming up the Ravager Flesh, this level 61 Undead Mage comes strolling up to me, checks me out and then dismounts. I then watch as she winds up a frost bolt at me. I turn around, hit her up with flameshock and lava burst and she explodes. I then continue to kill Ravager's as she runs back to her body. I let her mount up and head off when she rezzes..then get on my epic flyer and mow her down again to let her know resto shammy doesn't = total pvp fail. Then I went back to farming the rest of the meat.

Ravager Dogs got me to 325ish before going green. So then I flew to Allerian Stronghold and picked up [Recipe: Blackened Basilisk] and farmed baskies until I hit level 345ish. It brought back memories of the TBC days hehehe.

Flew to Nagrand after that and got [Recipe: Roasted Clefthoof] to finish myself off to 360 although I didn't reall need to.

At 350, you can begin the daily quests in Dalaran to start getting your [Northern Spices]! I can now finally contribute to the group! hehehe.

Ultimately though, I was able to make the [Hot Apple Cider] which required 325 cooking!

Success!

and then I was met with tragedy..but I'll save that post for tomorrow.

Chef Boy-R-Deez-Hard to Level!

I recently got in my head that I would attempt to do every Winterviel quest achievement this year. And no it has nothing to do with the culmination of doing every single world event in the game to get a purple proto drake.. oh wait, actually it has EVERYTHING to do with that! lol. I had no idea achievements got you cool things otherwise I would have started earlier.

So in order to finish [The Winter Veil Gourmet] Achievement, I have to actually cook my own treats! The only problem was my cooking on this toon was level 40! I have three other toons with 375+ but not the shaman. booo!!!

I got from 1-40 doing piddly things like killing wolves in Goldshire etc, it was pretty effortless. 40-75 however took a mental beating on me. I hit up Drac Roughcut in Thelsamar to get [Recipe: Smoked Bear Meat] and spent what felt like an eternity killing grizzled bears until I hit that GLORIOUS level 75!

75-125 was easy mode. I just killed murlocs and crawlers up and down the Westfall shores making [Boiled Clams] and [Crab Cake]. I just kept slaughtering them until I got the recipe for the [Recipe: Cooked Crab Claw] which I had a ton of from killing the crawlers. That took me to 125 easy and then I had to fly all the freaking way to Ashenvale to get the Expert Cookbook. It would have been nice if I had remembered I could use Astral Recall here but I didn't so I took a couple of unnecessary flight paths to get to my destination. I'm still trying to make my shaman skin fit...so far it's still only partially on.

125-200 was also fairly easy grind in Wetlands grinding Bluegill Murlocs who have a decent respawn rate to make [Goblin Deviled Clams]

200-225 I headed to Southshore and hit up the quest from Chef Jessen [Soothing Turtle Bisque] and used the recipe he rewarded to reach 225. You can either farm the turtle meat from the Southshore river, the eastern shore of Tanaris, or the AH. :)

At 225, I hit up the Ironforge cook and he gave me a quest to head to Gadget which in turn gave me the required cooking quest of [Clamlette Surprise]. At this point I'm slamming my head on the desk from the amount of boat trips I'm having to take from the Wetlands to Theramore. Luckily I was able to chat it up on vent while traveling and grinding mob meat or else I'd have gone completely insane. Another option would have been to hit up an audio book or podcast.

After completing the cooking quest, I spent the rest of my time in Felwood killing owls, wolves, and bears oh my! [Recipe: Monster Omelet], [Recipe: Tender Wolf Steak], [Juicy Bear Burger] yummy yummy!

Once I hit 290 and the Bear Burgers went green, I RODE to Silithus as I do not have the flightpath on this toon to pick up [Smoked Desert Dumplings] and now have to kill about 10-20 more Sandworms to hit 300. SANDWORMS! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!

To be continued...

Thrall Eludes Me

So 8am on a Sunday, 20 other guildmates and myself set out to kill the King of Ogrimmar, also known as the most beloved horde leader.

There is one thing I must admire about the horde, it's their dedication to protecting Thrall. They love that green guy!

I could give a crap about any of the leaders on the Alliance side except I am growing quite fond of Varian Wrynn, the King of Stormwind. His past is all dark and mysterious and he's all brooding and tainted. heheh. The more I learn about him, the cooler I think he is. However, for the last three years, we've had his kid at that thrown so I haven't fully adjusted to Varian's existence.

We actually had a shot this morning except I totally underestimated how many pre-teens are awake at 8am on a Sunday. We got Thrall down to 50% before the Horde players finally overwhelmed us.

You pretty much only have one shot at him because the longer you stay there, the more reinforcements arrive. My guess is that we'll have to plan an attack where we all log off already next to Thrall's throne the night before to decrease the amount of time the horde are aware of our presence. Riding in with a group of 20+ alliance through Ogrimmar, even through the side entrance, pretty much gives us up immediately. Those without Local Defense turned on still see us visually and come to his aid.

So the next question becomes when is the ultimate time to do the raid? We've already missed two HUGE windows to kill Thrall. The first was when everyone was leveling to 80 right after WOTLK release. The other was before Arenas began. Now we're in for a world of hurt as the horde on Boulderfist are huge Arena junkies and have probably already claimed a lot of the gear in this first week.

4am on Christmas? lol. No seriously, someone suggested it. hehe. Don't think I'm that hardcore but maybe New Year's.

Just Ain't Enough

My guild name is (pronounced jay-aye-ee) and stands for Just Ain't Enough. Which lately seems like a prominent theme for our guild. We honestly just don't have enough. We've got about 8 hardcore static players who want to beat down progression's door on a weekly basis which we've done. Then we have another 16 or so who like to hit up instances and group events on occasion.

We're all friend and family so it kind of makes sense that it works out that way. You're not going to get a set group of hardcore raiders unless you recruit for them and even then you're drawing straws.

So this post is part whine-mode and part perplexity. The first whine bit revolves around the notion that one, there isn't that much 10 man raid content out there right now thus making it hard to get people interested in progression. I mean, at least start the buzz like they did for BT and Sunwell.

If you raid, you'll know the feeling of "what's next". If you don't raid, obviously you're reading this and saying "well at least you get to see Naxx, stop your whining."

But here's the thing, for every part of this game you're on a certain step of its progression. I'm at the part where I'm looking at the 25 man groups and going "lucky SOBs have the man power" and looking at my 10 man raid group going "if I can just keep them interested long enough to keep pushing"

And here's the perplexing part. We have people in our guild who have asked to leave to go join a separate raiding guild with their friends. I'm like sure, no problem. No hard feelings etc. Obviously they are connected with casual family members so like heck if I want to hold them back from doing what they want to do. And they usually get tired of life outside the "white picket fence" within a week and come back. :P

But the thing is, I've asked everyone if they're interested in raiding. No one said anything to me. In fact, when I asked those specific guys point blank if they wanted to raid Naxx, they told me they were interested but weren't sure what days they'd be able to commit to. Not only that, when they do raid with us, they're never able to stay for the whole time (like 2 hrs).

How does someone who can't commit to any time and not honor any time committed get into a raid group? WHAT raiding guild would accept someone like that? We do it because they're sort of family but I don't really know of many raiding guilds who would.

I like raiding with my guild because we're resilient, skilled, and nice (at least the adults are for sure). And most of the people are awesome to hang out with. Some of them I wish I could group with far more often than I get to. However, I'm just honestly getting sick of being used by some of the other members of the guild who apparently were never taught the values of loyalty and friendship.

So we're here, doing what we do best. Running 25 man Naxxaramus with sixteen people (seriously rough). Running 10 man instances with nine people and doing the best we can because we're not afraid of the challenge and it is really all about just getting to do stuff together as a group.

It's just this attitude out there that drives me crazy. Like apparently, we have to keep running and going and struggling so that whenever THEY feel like they want to come a long, apparently we'll be here...as always.

And this wouldn't even be much of an issue at all except that THIS IS IT! This is it until the next expansion! I have to make this work somehow for the next one to two years?? Gone are my days of questing innocence and joy. Now it's back to scheduling, information prying, begging, organizing, drama sorting, loot grief, farming, grinding, arguing, and nonsensical lameness.

I really want to write to Blizzard and beg them to move to a dynamic party and raid system. Just adjust raid difficulty based on numbers. This would solve ALL of my problems and grief.

Never, ever enough.

Thrall Must Go Down!

I landed in Azshara flight path at around 8:45pm last night. Technically, I rode into the flight path because my shammy didn't have it. lol. She had to ride down from Felwood. Ah the joys of rookie toons. Why couldn't they have retrofit all level 70 toons with all the FPs!? They did it for DKs at level 55.

Anyhow, as I waited for the rest of my guild (only 17 of us, 5 or so who weren't 80 even) to show up, I was calculating in my head the number of horde we might encounter. Our first designation in the line of horde capital city slaughters was Ogrimmar, Mr. Thrall himself. The horde on our server not only out number us but they're also FAR more PvP oriented than the alliance. There actually used to be two major horde guilds who would always KOS alliance. They scare me to this day. :)

Needless to say, 17 wasn't enough to combat the forty plus horde who rose to Thrall's defense. We got to his chamber and had a boat load of elite mobs on us and were able to dps them down fairly quickly. However, wave after wave of horde showed up and completely annihilated us! This I think was our punishment for waiting until after Arena season started to do this raid. lol. They love their orc king lemme tell you!

So we did a rez, ninja portal to Theramore and hit up Cairne Bloodhoof in Thunder Bluff. He was far easier of course as there were only two level 80 horde who came to his defense. Then we hit up Lady Sylvanas Windrunner in Undercity and Lor'themar Theron in Silvermoon City. They all went down without much ado. Lady Sylvanas tried her best though. She has this annoying habbit of dropping target and teleporting around her platform. Neither of these guys had many horde come to their defense. Only about five horde tried to keep us off their beloved leaders. We just kept the pvp-savy players in the back to deal with them.

We were able to get the [Wrath of the Alliance] achievement though although we had to hunt for two additional horde to kill in Silvermoon City.

After we finished up in Silvermoon City, we decided to cruise LFG, Trade, and General Chat to try and gain more numbers for Thrall again. We got about 10 more players and half were 71 or 72. We seriously thought we had a shot until we rode into his chamber and even MORE HORDE showed up this time.

So now I'm using http://www.timezoneconverter.com/ to plot out the best time to raid Ogrimmar. I'm going to push 2am Australian time as a lot of Aussies play on this server. That would make it a 7am raid our time. hahaha. MAN, the things you have to do in the name of taking down Thrall on a crazy horde-ridden pvp server.

I don't even care much about the [Reins of the Black War Bear] so much as I care about having finally raided all of the horde cities. :) Victory shall be mine!

Raid Map Video

That's right, this video is the culmination of a great candy and a mousepad and my ability to find amusement in stupid things.
BTW, I love maps. I spend a good twenty to thirty minutes daily looking at that mousepad map even though it's super sparse.

I was going to do another take on the video so the sound quality would be better but I ran out of skittles. In meh belly! oh well. FYI, my favorite flavor is a tie between Lime and Strawberry!

Here it is:


When I first started out at level 80, I was very unsure of what kind of content was available. I was kind of shocked to find out it's only Naxx, Obsidium Sanctum, and The Eye of Eternity. Two of those are one boss encounters. I was all excited about getting to raid Ice Crown but guess I'll have to wait.

I hear the next installment will be in Ulduar, Storm Peaks so I'm looking forward to that as it's my favorite place in Northrend at the moment.

PS. Yes, I have fallen and died in the no-fly-zone of Wintergrasp because I was not paying attention to the debuff it puts on you giving you a few seconds to get out or land.

PPS. this is my 600th blog post! woot!

AnthonyRayStark

So I was out in Hillsbrad Foothills to complete the Winterviel quest in Alterac Valley and decided to uncover some undiscovered area. Along the coast of Southshore, I discovered this tomb that read In Loving Memory Anthony Ray Stark.

Did some research and it turned out to be a friend of a developer who also worked at Blizzard. I knew about the ones in the Barrens but didn't know about this one.

It's just so weird stumbling upon someone's memorial. It gives you pause and quite a surreal sense as you're in a virtual world at a virtual plaque honoring a RL person who died probably before his time.

/kneel

RIP.
http://www.wowwiki.com/In_Loving_Memory

Greatfather Winter Hates Me

Just hit up a bunch of Mountain Buzzard's in Loch Modan to farm 5 small eggs for the Feast of Winterveil quest [Treats for Greatfather Winter]

On the plus side, I leveled my cooking to level 10 with [Gingerbread Cookies]. On the down side, after I turned in the quest, all that bastard gave me for it was a single [Bolt of Linen Cloth]!!!

You see, this is why people stop doing idle quests like this. lol. It would have been so much cooler if he'd given me coal. WAIT A SECOND? Is Greatfather Winter trying to tell me something???

I'VE BEEN GOOD DAMNIT!! I HAVE!!

Shaman Noob

Seriously, you're an idiot. No SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY, you are a raging idiotic moron who doesn't deserve to have a level 80 shaman. YES, this is what I've been screaming at myself for the last hour.

SO FIRST, two nights ago I finally figured out that not ALL of my totems are raid-wide. BUFF type totems like Windfury or Wrath of Air effect all raid members while poison cleansing only works for my immediate 5 man party. This makes a HUGE difference when you're counting on YOUR totem to cleanse the MT during major boss encounters.

And instead, I'm standing there going "it should have ticked the poison off by now"
It made a huge difference when I finally figured it out and was able to move myself into the MT group for bosses like Maexxna where poisons reduce healing by like 90%.

SECONDLY, this entire time while we're progressing Naxxaramus I've been feeling so gimped. My best crit on a Healing Wave was like 6,300. My avg CH was only doing 3k on the initial jump. I was like, my gear isn't this bad. I have close to 1900 bonus healing with buffs and food and totems and earthliving weapon....WTF is wrong with my healing.

So I just relegated myself to raid healing mostly and we got by fine. But let me tell you how down-trodden I felt when I just couldn't do much to keep the MT down when necessary. I was like...I SUCK!

Today I was playing around with my healing and crit and checking to see the numbers.
I kept checking tool tips as well to make sure I'm always using the highest rank spell. It all shows up correctly as using max rank Chain Heal and Healing Wave.

But for some reason today I was particularly annoyed with how low my heals were hitting so I pulled out my spell book on a whim and hit CH and HW from there instead. WHAM!!! Almost 2k more on CH and 6k more healing from HW from the spell book.

So I quickly hit up my macro list and looked at my CH and HW macro to see what they say! OMFG!!!

#showtooltip
#showicon Chain Heal
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Tidal Force
/cast Chain Heal(Rank 5)

and
#showtooltip
#showicon Healing Wave
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Healing Wave(Rank 11)

The max rank CH is 7! and the max rank Healing Wave is 14!
I had actually modified my macros when I was 80 but Blizzard has been doing this crappy reset of my macros every now and then and it looks like it reverted it back to my pre-80 quest days. WTF!

Anyhow, still my fault for not double checking considering my spells seemed so weak!
I just feel like an idiot. The strain I was putting myself and the raid under this past week....all cuz I was totally gimping my healing spells!

And the hilarious part is that I sat there scolding Flipmax for using (Rank#) behind his spells in his macros. "Don't do that! Just leave it blank. It'll go to max rank for you."

I AM AN IDIOT!!!!

Sure enough, when I removed the Ranks from my macro, it hit the correct spell rank and WHAM... immediate 10k! I've never hit a 10k heal before! Taint was like, "welcome to the 10k club"

10k, 12k, 11k HW and 5-7k CH! What a difference the ranks made...like the diff of being level 75 and 80.

Anyhow, It'll take me awhile to live this one down. I think I made a similar mistake back when I was a mage or something. It only took people a few months to forgive me. lol.

WoW, I'm a moron!

EDIT: finished Naxx today and yes, healing was super easy when your Chain Heal crits for 10k on the first jump!!!! LOL. It's so nice to be normal again!

Best Quest in Northrend

*****SPOILER ALERT FOR QUESTERS IN DRAGONBLIGHT!!!*****
(also much thanks to those who refrained from telling me about this so it was a surprise. hence, I waited so long to blog about this. I figure most have seen this by now..if not, this post is a spoiler!)

Okay so I haven't done every quest in Northrend..not even close to it..but I can definitively say the Veteran of the Wrathgate is one of the coolest quest chains I've encountered in WoW...ever. It begins in Dragonblight.

I can only tell it from the Alliance side.

I was daunted by the long series of quest chains starting at Star's Rest in Dragonblight. I was like, "omg! does it ever end!!! LONGEST QUEST CHAIN EVAAAA!" lol. But once we got to Wintergarde, it all really became worth it.

The really cool quest chain sort of reaches it's starting point at [Into Hostile Territory] from High Commander Halford Wyrmbane in Wintergarde, Dragoblight. This will lead you down a 9 part quest chain which includes riding a steamtank and using a chain gun, and finally ending in the world's longest speech given by an NPC for [Finality].

I failed to listen to the NPC Lore speech because I went afk to the restroom. It's recommended that you read it as you'll be missing out on some good lore if you don't. :)

Upon completing that, ANOTHER five part quest chain starts from [An End and A Beginning]. You'd hope it was the end..but it's not. lol. This one is pretty darn easy though because it just has you riding back and forth between Fordragon Hold and Wyrmrest Temple which was easy for us cuz we had flying mounts by then (so cheating hehehe).

There is one interlude of flying back and forth called [On Ruby Wings]. Since I failed to read the quest properly, we were on the ground killing scavengers with our bare hands when we could have been riding a bloody dragon breathing fire on then!!! LOL. NOOBS!!

After we finished that, it told us to go back to Fordragon Hold which opened up [Return to Angrathar]

This is when your jaw drops open and you go "WOAHHHHHH!! OMG! CUT SCENE?!" soooo epic even for those of us who don't follow the Lore!



After we watched the cut scene, we got a BONG!!!!!! Achievement [Veteran of the Wrathgate]!!! We were like, hell yeah!! And then we talked to the dragon again and watched the cut scene a few more times hehehe.

What is sooo soooo sooo cool about Northrend is that parts of the game terrain will change for you depending on what part of the lore you've uncovered. Like before we watched the cut scene and completed Return to Angrathar, the Wrath Gate was totally covered with scourge mobs. Afterwards, it's burning ashes and flowers scattered about.

Also, after that moment, you will always hear screaming, fleeing soldiers as you fly over that area. It's totally freaky and by freaky I mean REALLY FREAKY.

Luckily a HQ version of the machinima cut scene exists on youtube so I don't have to fly out to the Wrath Gate every time I want to watch the video :D

....of course, it doesn't end there. Going to do a video blog I think of the final part of this quest chain cuz you need to be able to hear me do an impression of Flipmax when we got to The Betrayal section of the quest chain.

Naxxaramus: Arachnid

So last week I started raiding Naxxaramus with my guild. Paladin Tank, Feral Tank, Resto Shammy, and Disc/Holy Priest as our main staple and a slew of excellent DPSers.

Like I said before though, the graphical content of the instance did not impress me a bit which I thought it would. However, some of the fights are so very unique and really, really fun.

I posted in my guild forums what our group has learned from Naxxaramus. I thought I'd share the same information here as well. I also posted to wowhead so hopefully more info can be out there about these encounters. As of right now, not much has been posted from the current WoTLK version of Naxx.

This may not be the RIGHT way to do these bosses but it's how we did them. lol. Just going to add that in as a disclaimer.

Naxxaramus is currently located in Dragonblight just east of Wintergarde. It's a floating ziggurat, you just fly up to the bottom center to enter.. As someone in my guild says, "You just do it ID4 style!"

The instance is broken into four quarters and one Frostywyrm Lair.
Arcahnid Quarter
Anub'Rekhan.Grand Widow Faerlina.Maexxna

Plague Quarter
Noth the Plaguebringer.Heigan the Unclean.Loatheb

Military Quarter
Instructor Razuvious.Gothik the Harvester.The Four Horsemen

Construct Quarter
Patchwerk.Grobbulus.Gluth.Thaddius

Frostwyrm Lair
Sapphiron.Kel'Thuzad

--------------------------
I'll start with the easiest Quarter of Naxx which is the Arachnid.

Anub'Rekhan- Big beatle guy.
MT: Tanks Anub'Rekhan against back wall. We put a fearl tank on him (sprint is a great bonus). Watch for Locust Swarm. Take off running along the extreme edge of the room as Locust Swarm begins. AVOID green liquid ooze in the drains as they will gib your stats by 90%. RUN RUN RUN away during Locust Swarm. After swarm stops, drag him back to the back wall again. This is to avoid the add spawn area during your Lucust Swarm Run.

OT: Tank add spawns. We had a prot pally do this.

DPS: Spread slightly to avoid aoe dmg of impale. During impale use slow fall or levitate or cat form to lessen dmg if you can. Focus boss until adds spawn. DPS adds down and then back to the boss. Rinse and repeat.

Healers: OT will take big spikes during add waves with multi-adds on him/her. Just a warning to the OT healer.
MT healer will need to follow MT during Locust Swarm sprint to heal spike dmg from impale etc. Just stay far enough away inside the circle of the room to avoid the Locust Swarm debuff.

Grand Widow Faerlina- Humanoid with 4 humanoid like adds
MT: Tank Faerlina on the platform. Before the Frenzy timer goes off, make sure she is dragged to the first kill-target worshipper (add).

OT: Tank either all 4 adds or how many are not crowd-controlled with sheep etc. Watch the health of the first kill-target worshipper. Worshippers should NOT be killed until Faerlina goes into frenzy. Must make sure the kill target is RIGHT NEXT TO Faerlina when she is frenzied when it dies.

Assigned DPS: Help lower the HP of the kill-target worshipper then move to boss.

DPS: blast Faerlina to high hell. When she is IN frenzy, finish off the kill-target worshiper.
Move out of reign of fire.

Healers: Dispel poison. Heal.

Rise and Repeat until she's dead. Must kill the worshippers to get her out of Frenzy. And she hits like a TRUCK in frenzy = wipe.


Maexxna- big spider
MT: Tank her in the middle Call out contdown until webspray when everyone but the tank will be incapacitated for 8secs. Call stop DPS on Maexxna when she is at 34% to avoid webspray when she enrages at 30%. Be ready to pop last stand, pally shield wall, survival instincts, pots, etc before webspray during enrage. coordinate with healers.

OT: HEAL or DPS for the majority of the fight. You can tank the spider adds that spawn but they are easily aoe-d down without an OT. If OT remains in tanking gear, they can chose to taunt Maexxna during her enrage stage and pop a survival ability to get her off the MT during one of the websprays. We had the OT heal.

DPS: Stand to the far left of the lair as you're coming in with the healers.
Blast Maexxna. Kill spider adds as they spawn. Save the goods for the final 30%.

Assigned DPS: Every 20 secs she sends a player to the back wall who gets Web Wrapped. When they do, head back there and use the macro (/tar Web Wrap) to get them out immediately. Then go back to DPSing the boss. We assigned two web-patrol dps and one alternate for when one of the two main guys gets webbed.

Healers: MT healer make sure the MT is topped off and HOTted if possible before each webspray. Keep Poison cleansing totem up but also dispel immediately when tank is poisoned. It reduces healing by 90%!!! Abolish poison ftw if you have it.
Off-healer keep raid topped off during spider adds and keep the Web Wrapped people up as they take dmg when they are cocooned. Also help HOT or top off tank before webspray. After 30% enrage, don't stop healing, don't step off, keep full HOTS, and keep necrotic poison off the tank at all costs! (Pain suppression, PW shield, Hand of Sacrifice, Earth Shield, Riptide, Renew, POM, Lifeblook, Rejuv, Regrowth, NS- all key for this part of the fight)

Use heroism, drums, trinkets at the 30% marker as she is enraged the MT will take HEAVES of dmg. Get her down as fast as possible to avoid more than two websprays during this phase.

Totem Noob

Don't be a noob shaman like me and not figure out until you turn 80 that you don't have to carry around your elemental totems anymore!

hahahaah.

A relic can now takes the place of the totems. I doubt there will be a time when you don't have a relic to replace the totems you used to have to carry around. However, I'm keeping mine in the bank for now. I should delete them but haven't yet. :D

And yes, I know I should go pick up [Totem of the Bay]!

How to Make them all Fit

In our guild, we have around 13-14 hardcore type players. I define hardcore as people who have no life outside of wow and are ready and willing to play every day of the week unless something tragic happens. They have no problems staying up late to raid and have no issues with tweaking their class on a daily basis to improve.

SOOO. Again, we have around 13-14 hardcores and 10 slots for our raids. This remains to be an issue of course for us because we don't really like to leave people out. I WISH we could bring them all. We don't have enough for 25 mans and we have too many for 10 mans.

If in the future Blizzard would just adjust the difficulty of the raid according to how many people you bring, a lot of drama would go away because you'd always have room for those who want to come. Oh well. That's just a wish list.

So, we started Naxxaramus last week, the 10 man version. It's my first time in that floating pyramid ever! I was soo excited to finally get to see it. Also, I was thrilled that we would now have full control over our own progression. No more sister guild to hold us back (yeah I said that - what then!).

We scrounged up enough 80s to hit up the instance. Most of the peeps in our guild are still leveling so at the time, we barely had enough for a ten man.

The inside of Naxxaramus is old-world architecture grahpics. It's nothing to write home about. However, the boss encounters are sooo much fun (especially from a healers stand point)! We got the first two bosses down that night and got stuck on the spider boss Maexxna.

The next night we came back, some people either weren't online or couldn't make it back to the raid so we invited new people. However, as it stands, I try to invite the SAME people who came the NIGHT before in order to be fair and also consistent.

The same thing happened the following night. One person had to go to a party, so then it was first-come,first-serve. However, at this point, a few other 80s were now wanting to go but obviously we couldn't fit them in.

This was seen as being "unfair and purposefully excluding the same people from our raids"

Needless to say, we had one guy get mad because his friend couldn't get in the raid so he left the raid. And the funny thing is that I have no issues with anyone in our guild. I'd raid with all of them because I'm honestly not afraid to ask people to tweak their specs and skills... Wait, I take that back. I might have an issue with one or two who have pretty much made it obvious they don't care to learn how to play...lol.

BUT for the most part, I really enjoy playing with everyone. They all have their own unique style of raiding and game play which brings something interesting to each raid encounter.

So it's really unfair for me to toss people out of the raid for the nilly-willy reason of making sure we can rotate everyone in the guild every night. You really have to be fair to those who spent the night before progressing.

Anyhow, it's quite a headache to manage everyone's happiness. And I know the saying is that you can't make everyone happy but it sucks when people are pissed off because they don't have the whole perspective.

When Naxxaramus resets this Tuesday, I have no idea how we're going to pick and choose who gets to go. Sign-ups work to a degree but they don't solve the issue that people are going to get left out.

Never Give up, Never Surrender

So I get to level 80 knowing that the battle has just begun. I'm all decked out in my spiffy blue quest gear and haphazardly spec'd to my pleasure. And even though I have this feeling in the back of my head that I should be more aware but I'm all GO WITH THE FLOW.

So we do our first heroic run on Monday. We choose Violet Hold (first mistake) because it's the daily heroic. We go with a pally tank, arcane mage (aka OOM mage), world pvp spec'd rogue, a resto shammy spec'd for healing wave, and a feral druid who normally tanks.

This combination equaled WAKE UP CALL!

That heroic dungeon chewed me up and spit me out like an Alabama sunflower seed! pateeweee! spat! Sad, our pally tank, was taking BOAT TONS of damage and I was spamming max Healing Wave to keep him up. This of course cost me all of my mana.

To top it off, Felix had to keep coming out of feral dps to support heal and crowd control so his dps was like 600 at avg. Flipmax was spec'd arcane and he was running OOM like crazy so his dps was only hitting 1100 avg. And our rogue wasn't spec'd pve so he was only hitting up 1300 max.

And even better, we hadn't experienced some of the boss fight before because the first two boss mobs you get in Violet Hold can be random. So we were learning as we were going.

We ended up getting the first two down after trial and error but the tank just dropped on the final boss.

So we were like "WTF man, let's just go do an easy one like Utgarde Keep!"

Yeah, that instance kicked our ass too! Again, dps was shotty and tank kept dropping like a rock and I was OOM after seconds (even with a 16k mana pool). We were able to finish it but it took several wipes.

SOOOO, FRUSTRATED as all hell, I started looking up tanking and healing changes for WoTLK.

L to the f*cking O to the f*cking L!

First, PROT pallies had some major overhauls. They no longer need to stack spell power as they have a talent that gives them bonus spell power from their stamina attributes so they can start stacking Stam gear. SECOND AND MOST IMPORTANT, at level 80, defense requirement is 540 for 25 mans and 535 for heroics. Sad was only at 512 defense thinking the old 490 defense cap applied. Basically, I was healing a crittable tank. OUCH OUCH OUCH.

Significant changes to druids to note as well is they have a built in talent that makes them basically uncrittable (Survival of the Fittest 6%crit reduc. All you need is 5.6% to be uncrittable for druids) so they can forgo stacking defense and resilience and instead grab agility when they can.

As for me, I learned the hard way that spamming Healing Wave was detrimental to the raid because it ran me out of mana so fast. My old spec was more conducive to Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave spam. (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZ0x0hZtseuqeoxkrIRt (0,8,63).

After reading Elitis Jerks forums on Resto Shamans more, I learned that even for main tank healing, I'm better of spamming chain when I can because it's my most efficient HPM spell. Then I just stack crit to help boost the healing effect of Chain Heal.

I also repecc'd to boost my mana shield and got rid of Healing Way in order to put points into Thundering Strikes and Elemental Weapons which help boost my crit and healing.

(new spec: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZ0xxGZxfezVxoxkrIRt(0/15/56))
I'm still playing around with it though but I did see vast improvements.

The next day we went back and everyone had regeared and respec'd (a whole sep. post about frost mages later) and we pwd the Heroic Dungeon. I was never OOM and the tank never got crit :) and DPS was at a low end avg of 1500. Made a huge difference.

"Never Give up! Never Surrender!" -Commander Peter Quincy Taggart

I HAZ BIG BIRD!

What's better than Petey the Penguin??? BIG BIRD!

And yes, it does eat gnomes!

The True Battle Lies Ahead

(whoooop! Thar it is!)(mod-LevelRecorder auto SS's your levels)

On my venture to level to 80, I completed all the quests in Howling Fjord, Borean Tundrea, and Dragonblight. It was then clear that I was NOT going to get to experience all of the zones through leveling alone.

At 78 and change, we decided to skip Scholozar Basin, Grizzly Hills, Zul'Drak, and Storm Peaks. There are a lot of daily quest chains that start in Ice Crown for level 80s so we figured we'd get XP while knocking them out so we'd be prepared.

Ice Crown isn't the prettiest place to level but it so much fun. All of the quests have a very unique component to them. My favorite which is a daily is called [King of the Mountain]. You man this rocket man suit and jump vertically along this huge mountain until you reach the top. It's quite the adrenaline rush until you realize falling in the suit means taking zero damage. lol!

I also love the epic quality of the area. It's totally hand lifted out of Lord of the Rings but I don't care. There's even an "eye" you go to for a quest. hehehe.

I got an in-game mail from the NPC Rhonin congratulating me on my achievement of 80. I love how he adds "the true battle lies ahead." AMEN brother!

Lord knows how this is going to work for my guild. How do you fit 6 players into a 5 man heroic? How do you fit 14 people into a 10 man dungeon? WITHOUT pissing people off! Yes, if you can answer me this, I'm your friend for life!

Sealion Bait

(I guess Sealion Bait would be a bad name for my new baby penguin?)

YAY! Scored exalted with Kalu'ak today and got my darling little Pengu. He likes to chirp about and hide under my cloak. He has a special affinity for gnomes because they're eye-level with him. LOL. He also loves to be cleaned with the [Pet Grooming Kit] after we both pig out at the dessert cart in Dalaran! Flipmax got his Pengu a whole day and a half earlier than me....cuz he's a dang human! Diplomacy is awesome. Anyhow, me and Petey (good name for a penguin) will be hitting up Storm Peaks soon! I hope he likes the altitude!

Daily Quests to get exalted for Pengu are:
Planning For The Future (500 rep)
Preparing For The Worst (500 rep)
The Way To His Heart (500 rep)

Can you Say Upgrade?

(with WoW running it spikes at 99% cpu usage. The down arrow indicates shutting off WoW)

So, I've been struggling since WoTLK to balance performance and graphics. I've had to turn down all of my graphic settings to low except Distance which I kept at medium. If you know anything about WoW graphics this is the WORST way to play and enjoy the game. There is just so much detailing and distance terrain you need to take in for context.

I bought this machine 3.5 yrs ago to play WoW and back then it was the king cheese of economical gaming PCs. However, with only a single core processor and an Nvidia graphics card that goes back nearly four years, it's screaming, "WORD PROCESSING ONLY PLEASE!"

I really want 8 gigs of ram because of all the graphic and audio stuff I like to edit while simultaneously running three other misc programs. However, in order to do so, I'd have to upgrade to an OS that supports 64bit and I refuse to use Vista. So I'd have to get my hands on a new Windows XP or Windows 7 (which I'm pretty sure isn't released to the public yet).

In any case, it means more money during hard-economic times etc. And with my job security on the line (aka 5 people got laid off from my work last week), it might not be a good time to splurge.

WHICH SUCKS! lol. I need to be able to enjoy WoTLK to it's fullest potential.

(and yes, I tried shutting off the 'elephant on goat' porn downloads before playing WoW, it's still crappy! hehe)

You've Been Around

I have not been able to play most of the day time since my parents are visiting. However, at night I did some exploring since I didn't want to quest without my group.

At first, I was trying to hold off seeing all the zones until I had to quest in the area. I really like the element of surprise. The problem I've come across now though is that I'm 78.5 and have FIVE more zones to cover! There is no way two levels will extend more than one zone more ....maybe two.

I'm going to have to pick carefully the content I want to cover. After going to Storm Peaks though and discovering Ulduar, I can definitely say I've found my favorite new zone in the game. It might be my innate love of architecture but I can't tell you how much I wanted to be able to go inside the buildings and explore all the details.

Unfortunately, it's all instance and the rest is just facade. How cool though would it be if it was as vast as the Louvre? I'd spend hours exploring it for sure.

So I ended up uncovering all the major zones of Northrend and got the achievement for Northrend discovery. Today, I logged on and got an epic Tabard to celebrate how much I seem to "get around"... LOL.

It wasn't a very pretty tabard at all so I'll still be sticking with my Sporregar tabard but it was cool getting something for exploration.

Happy Thanksgiving 2008

Hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving (US Holiday)! I've mostly been hanging out with my parents so I haven't been able to play much. I did however get on today to specifically get one achievement. Friend or Fowl!

I thought it was extremely fitting for today since today is a day of Turkey dinners! However, after making 15 turkeys my dinner in under 3minutes, the rest of the Turkeys revolted and attacked me! So I had to make dinners out of them too!

Magic Carpet Ride

Flipmax got to 410 tailoring last night thanks to the last bits of my Frostweave...bastard took all my cloth!! lol.

He can now make the 20 slot bags and the [Flying Carpet] which isn't an epic flyer but still super cool. I kept wanting to jump on it! Hey there's plenty of room for a whole raid on that thing!

Roads no more

I hit 77 yesterday and picked up [Cold Weather Flying] skill. 1000g. Plus I had to buy epic flying for her as well. booo. 6k down the drain. Now I really have to pick up dailies again after 80!

It is nice though that we can use Flying to help us get to quests easier and faster. It should make questing A LOT faster for us now.

my mount macro:
/dismount [mounted,noflying]
/stopmacro [nooutdoors] [mounted]
/use [mod:alt] [noflyable] Great Purple Elekk; Swift Red Gryphon

allows me to use one key for flying and ground mount with an ALT modifier

Anniversary

(screenshot Kitch sent in with MYYYYYY panda and the new Blizzard cub)

Great to know my panda is alive and well! Kitch has been taking very good care of it.

It's always great to know people have been playing the game as long as you and still find little joys. The real question is how did he get two pets out at once?! lol.

I am glad to be celebrating WoW's 4th anniversary with fellow wow players. It's great Blizzard decided to commemorate the community it built and thank it's player base. And lots of thanks Blizz for finally getting me a tiny cub! It might not be a sleeping panda but it's still very charming.

I can't wait to see Felix's bear druid tanking with the baby cub besides him! hahaha.
too cute.

Tag Team

Today has not been productive as far as leveling. I got a late start because I went to eat Dim Sum with my brother and buy doggy food for my QTPI. Then we did the [The Champion of Anguish] quest while horde weren't around. I got my nifty [Screw-Sprung Fixer-Upper] and got to fight in a mammoth. It's the Northrend version of Ring of Blood.

Then we continued our questing in Dragonblight. That place is like the never-ending story, I tell you what! Wyrmest Temple has one of the longest quest chains known to man! hahaha. I did get to fight on a dragon so that was really cool..plus Wyrmrest Temple is soooooo gorgeous.

After dinner, I crashed for two hours. When I got back, Felix and Flipmax said they found this awesome place in Magmoth where they had been farming [Frostweave Cloth] for 45 minutes. In that time Flipmax had gotten like 64bolts of Frostweave.

It works best as a tag team. You kill [Offspring of Magmothregar] over and over again as they spawn in the Magmoth cave. They have spawn cycles so you go a short lull without them spawning but the rest of the time they practically respawn as soon as they fall.


The real trick is to have [Northern Cloth Scavenging] on a tailor out there. Go with another person and set it to group loot. You get more extra procs off of the non-tailor looting the mob first. From our experience..about 3x more cloth.

I'm probably agoing to go blind with blue furry creatures and have nightmares about this! lol. BUT we're going to get him to 410 tailoring so he can craft the [Frostweave Bag]!

So today has been a leveling FAIL day but somehow still really fun and productive!

Fall, Climb, Leap!

[Break the Blockade] daily quest requires you to get on the Zeppelin and ride around bombing pirates and cannons. I think most people are familiar with this quest.

WE seem to have a tradition among our group that Flipmax always falls off the boat or the cliff at LEAST once per day. However, today, Felix accidentally dived off the cliff just as the zeppelin arrived.

We were laughing and going "damn! oh well.. next round". But as we're laughing, Felix rounds his way back up the cliff. And just as the zeppelin is about to take off, he goes "You better get on the boat cuz I'm gonna make it!!"

So we hop on and watch as his saber mount approaches the dock just as the zeppelin is parting from the dock. He LEEEAPS!!! And we're screaming "gooo baggy go!! go baggy go!!" (nickname for his druid)

And he JUST LANDS on the boat in time!! hahahhaha.

SOOOOO, if you fall off the cliff, YOU SHOULD be able to make it back to the zeppelin in time!!!

Takin' my SWEET time

(dessert cart outside the Dalaran bank)

The new dessert cart is something I visit every time I'm in Dalaran. That 9g [Chocolate Celebration Cake]is so tempting. I always resist but it's so great to linger there and look at all the awesome bakery food pr0n. mmmm. gooooodness.

I'm doing my best this time around to enjoy my leveling process and really experiencing Northrend. No matter how many times you say you're going to go back when you're 80, something always comes up...always a raid to run or an instance to go to or farming to do. I still like going at a good pace for leveling but no need to over-do it this time. (currently 75).

I always remember the little things about leveling. The small crazy memory events that you just don't forget. People who don't delve in MMOs never fully grasp just how many adventures we have sitting at our desk. There are few times I have anything like that in the RL anymore (welcome to adulthood).

Yesterday night, we were trying to finish out Howling Fjord quest zone so we went back to Fort Wildervar which we had skipped. We were in the middle of freeing trapped animals in the forest when I get a whisper from Felix "I'll be back. Going to get some coca-cola"

He put himself on follow and after ten minutes I said to Flipmax, "uh...I think he might have passed out or he actually went to the store to get coke" lol. He gets up at like 5am for his job every day so it wouldn't be that surprising.

So we waited around for him for awhile and took a nap near the bonfire at the inn. lol. At that point it was pretty obvious he must have passed out so I dropped his toon off at the inn and we went to finish the quests in the area.

About thirty minutes later, Felix gets on vent and says he went to close his eyes for a second and passed out. lol. And that's what I'll remember most about Fort Wildervar - the time I took a virtual nap waiting while Felix took a RL nap!

When I first started WoTLK, I was totally missing my Druid who is a skinner/leatherworker. I love skinning and I LOVE DRUMS. Can you imagine a Shammy with Heroism AND Drums? Delicious!

Around level 71 when I was doing the Azjol-Nerub instance, I was thinking maybe I should drop engineering (I'm enchanting/engineering on my shammy) and go leatherworking.

But then I started to level my engineering up and remembered why like 4/6 of my toons are engineers. COOL FUN STUFF and of course the epic craftable helm and mote extractors! So yesterday, I learned how to make a [Flexweave Underlay]! It's great to have while leveling. You never know when you want to throw yourself off a cliff! And the parachute graphic is sooo cool!

And of course, if I can afford it, I definitely want to craft me a [Schematic: Mekgineer's Chopper] which I hear aren't BOP when you make them so perhaps I can open up my own auto shop! Alachi's Bikes Go Baroom Baroom!

WoTLK CE HAUL

wtf is a haul?

Anatomy of a Haul Video
1. Packaging - Box, envelope, bag
2. Product - Cosmetics, handbags, clothes, shoes - no restrictions
3. Touching - opening of packaging, product displaying, color name or number
Optional:
4. Testing of product
5. Price paid / Display of Receipt
6. Location of Purchase(s)
7. Demeanor and helpfulness (or lack of) of sales associate
8. Hopes / Desires of future purchases
9. Plans on returning or exchanging any or all of items / Possible regrets
10. Caveats to other buyers (Don't buy the Neo Sci Fi line, don't bother with the sale, etc.)
(as described by mnelson2008 on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzJUd5z3vo8)

HAUL is a totally crazy sub-culture I recently discovered on youtube. Very intriguing to watch even though I'm not into the stuff they HAUL. It mostly applies to make-up stuff but since I hardly do make-up, I thought my WoTLK Collector's Edition package would be a great excuse to do one!


(part 2 here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3pCHFpFqlQ)

BTW. As part of the anatomy of a HAUL, my CE box from newegg.com cost me $79.99 + $2.99SH = $82.98 (the second one I got was only $69.99 + tax from Walmart - another shock buy) Still unsure what to do with it. Will most likely give it as an x-mas present because having two accounts with CE just seems plain decadent!

Reclaiming the Blade

Reclaiming the Blade Trailer


"it's all those dreams you can't have anymore, cuz you've grown up"
Such a sad quote.

This documentary looks interesting. I'll have to keep an eye out for showing in Austin..doubtful though. Will most likely have to wait for dvd.

Whole new Game

Well, after playing a little more, I decided WoTLK is the suck and I'm going back to play Final Fantasy..NOT!!!

It's been QUITE AN AWESOME RIDE and it hasn't even been a full week yet since the launch of Wrath.

Blizzard did an amazing job this time around as I have said before. It's like they fired everyone who worked there before and hired extremely crazy LSD-drug induced- shamanistic artists instead. hahaha. Okay or maybe they just had more resources.

We're still split up. (sad, taint, tivi) "group GO GO GO!" and my group (alachia, flipmax, felix) the "oooooh. hang on screenshot group" LOL. Okay, I'm still pretty fast at quest leading etc but I LOVE being able to take my time this go around. We take side detours a lot to check things out or try things out but we stay pretty much on track with questing. Oh and I do my Kalu'ak daily quest every day too! Must get exalted for my [Nurtured Penguin Egg]!

On Saturday, we had time before Tivi was going to be able to play so we decided to hit up an instance since we had five of us on. The question was to do The Nexus or Ahn'Kahet?? Everyone had been doing The Nexus so I said we should try Ahn'Kahet first because I thought it sounded cooler.

I didn't realize what an awesome choice I made. Here's the thing about Wrath that makes it much more intriguing and inspiring to play than the previous WoW releases. The environment is far more advanced. There is hardly a stretch of land that goes on without a huge 3D component to it. The added depth just makes the game THAT much more immersive. You don't feel like you're just on some picture mapped over 2D terrain someone laid down. It looks and feels like a real landscape.

Northrend continues to spark my imagination and every turn, I'm literally sounding like a parrot when we enter a new zone "OMG! THAT IS SO AWESOME!"

And Ahn'Kahet (5 man dungeon in Dragonblight just a couple clicks north of Star's Rest) is something to behold. It's set in the depths of a cavern and you think you're about to go into another "rocky type MC dungeon" but you go through the new fancy portal graphic and WHAM! It's this entire civilization uncovered with bejeweled silk webs and elaborate temple zigurats.

The sister dungeon to Ahn'Kahet is Azjo-Nerub which is a more primal version of beautiful. It does have more cave-like qualities but it's so rich in glowing plant life and stalactite details that you can't help try to eye at as much of it as possible ....as you're taking on waves of spider mobs. lol.


That brings me to the game play...while yes, you're still doing very similar action-types for quests like killing X amount or gather X amount things seem different this time around. I don't read the quests much other than to find out the objective. Skim skim skim...kill X..skim...at X close log. good! let's go!

However, the grouping sequence of quests and the graphic story telling of the quests seem SO MORE pervasive in Wrath. You can't help but remember what you did for most of the quests or the adventure bundle of the quests....ie the Murloc village. hehe. You don't forget baby murloc and murloc suits, a really great homage to Blizzcon.

Hacking up bodies with a machete, making oil-covered wolves poop and sifting through them for parts, saving baby mammoths, riding in a canoe, finding dead gnome pilots, saving baby murlocs, mating seals, fighting my inner-self atop a mountain, harpooning bags of gold from an airplane.....yeah. It's been hella fun questing. I'm so glad we opted not to instance grind! I would have missed out on a lot of content.

And there's so much more content to go! I've only been to Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra so far in the quest chains. Tonight, we plan on hitting up Dragonblight. Hopefully the creamy middle is as good as it normally is (BAAAAAD oreo joke that went wrong but am not deleting it so you can grasp the serious alachi-idiocracy my group has to put up with on a daily basis). Dragonblight is the creamy white patch on the map between Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra...gah. you get it.

I'll be uploading an album of my adventures so far by tonight. You'll see Flip's mage in the screenshots a lot. He always rides in front of my camera. "DANGIT, Flip, move! Camera whore!" lol. Oh well, as my dad says, they can't all be postcard pics.

I'm currently level 74 and 4 bars. I think I'm making pretty good time for not rushing things. We've hit up Utgarde Keep, The Nexus, Ahn'Kahet, Azjol-Nerub, and Drak'Tharon Keep dungeons so far.

Oh yeah, also when we were level 71, we snuck in behind some level 75s to get into the Violet Hold Dungeon in Dalaran. We had no idea what was going on until we beat Wave 1 of the instance. lol. Only 17 more waves and we would have made it!!! Luckily once you fail a wave, the instance resets so we were able to escape!

I'm loving it a lot. Leveling for the first time in a new area is like the honeymoon. I'm going to try and enjoy it as long as it lasts!

WoTLK is ALL THAT and...

(The Lich King and I)

Ready, Set, Gnome! We had crazy weird issues going on in the guild during the release of the expansion that made things intense on the night of expansion. You'll hear about it in the podcast.

Anyhow, after we got the game and installed it, we did a few quests and attempted the 3 man the first instance. We only got to the first boss but couldn't take the Prince down.

Exhausted but excited, I went to bed and somehow managed to avoid playing all day during work. My first impression of the game was that it was different and nice.

The second night we played, I finally got to roam outside the starting area and WOWZA! Holy cow! Amazing! Amazing! Amazing! So beautiful and breathtaking. And also, something about the gamplay seemed a bit different and I'm not sure if it's only attributed to how they laid out the zones.

WoTLK is already 100x better than my experience in Hellfire during TBC!

We didn't take any time off for the expansion but I'm not too worried in terms of leveling. In fact, last night, we spent an hour getting lost before I finally installed the proper quest and mapping mods. lol.


I can't deny that I enjoyed getting lost. The more lost we got, the more I was like "ooooh!!! awesome!" hehe.

We did run into a little snag with groups. We had intended on having a 5 man group. Myself (shammy), Sad (pally), Taint (priest), Felix (druid), Flipmax (mage). But with Taint's new "friend" (mage) we suddenly had 6. WALLLAAAAA GROUP DRAMA!

So I came up with an idea to split our group up which wasn't ideal but probably the very best solution to our problem. So we split up. Felix, Flipmax, Myself in one group and Sad, Taint, and Tivi in the other. Pretty much Tank, Healer, Mage which turned out to be a great combo. And three is a really good number to keep everyone in sync for quests etc.

I've also experienced a strange sense of dejavu in the game as well but not in any relation to WoW. WoTLK has a very peculiar familiarity to playing in a RPG Diablo game! I first got the "feeling" when we were in the Utgarde Catacombs. It reminded me of running around in the sewers of Diablo II.

Also the expansive environment has the epic quality I experienced for the first time when I played Dungeon Siege (the first seamless world I ever experienced).

My character is probably the furthest behind in the guild which I find sort of ironic. The weirdest part is that I don't seem to mind like I thought I would. For some reason, I'm enjoying learning all the quests and exploring the zone. Also, this is the calm before the storm (raiding drama :D). I also have ulterior motives of course. The better I learn the quests this time around, the easier it will be to level up my next set of toons. heheheh.

So far, I can definitely say I'm not disappointed in the least! WoTLK IS all that and a bag of Soulshards!

Pre-WoTLK fix

Well as we all know, WoW was down for most of last night due to Maintenance issues. Hope no one was banking all that night for last minute leveling. I had wanted to get on to finish off some offloading of quests and bank stuff. Oh well. Tonight before I leave for Game Stop I'll take care of all that.

However, Monday night I was able to go on a Zul'Gurub run. Six other guildies wanted the achievement. I offered to come along because I really wanted to see the instance again. I haven't been in that instance in over two years! wow.

None of the nifty mounts dropped but it was fun getting to see the fights again on easy mode. Hakkar still proved to be difficult. With only seven of us to get blood of Hakkar and drained it was slow going. Also, we didn't have a boss timer for Hakkar so we had to use the built in stop watch which wasn't easy.

The biggest kicker was that Hakkar wasn't doing much to our group but the mind control was eating us up. Warrior and Rogue tearing up our clothies. hehehe. We tried to get more guildies to come but they were all off doing other achievement goals as well. You escape this time Hakkar!

I also got to see Molten Core again a few weeks ago. Taint, Felix, and myself went in and got Taint a core hound for his hunter. I don't miss that place at all. It's such an ugly instance...especially for a place called MOLTEN Core.

Then as we were power leveling Sad and Taint's toons, I got to see EVERY Azeroth and most of the Outland instances again. I think my history lesson is complete!

I'm ready for new content!!!