Undying

Last week we finally got [The Undying] which is the 10man achievement of running Naxxramas without anyone in the raid dying during any of the bosses for that entire raid lockout.

It's actually not a very hard achievement as the first time we ever tried it, we almost one shot it. One of our guys just didn't move out of the fissure far enough when KT was at like 20%. It was a real heart breaker. Since then, most of our failed attempts have been due to lag issue or accidental agro negligence.

The night we got undying was no acception at all. During Thadius's first polarity charge, Flipmax disconnected and he was the lone "positive" charge in our "negative" group. Luckily, Taint was able to notice it immediately and we spammed heals on him while the rest of the group ran away from him. That was one of those major "OH SH1T!" moments.

The next one was during Saph right as we started to pull him, we had someone disconnect at the starting area. Luckily, I noticed he wasn't moving right away and called it. Taint was able to reposition his entire group and still heal Saph. It just took a little extra longer to down him but we somehow managed. Also one of our dps had a momentary lag spike during the "block" phase and almost didn't make it behind the blocked person.

It's sort of funny. The hardest thing about that achievement is guaranteeing a stable connection...lame.

Now our only achievement left is Twilight Zone.....the bane of my raiding existence right now. It's also the one wall I look forward to slamming myself against every night. I haven't had a challenge like this since Vanilla WoW raiding days!

Video Games Live Austin

This was my second time at Video Games Live Concert, the last time being in Houston. I have to say I enjoyed the second showing but mostly because I appreciate the sound of live music a lot.

They never play the same show twice but have about 60 pieces they pick and choose from for each showing. About 2/3 of the show was a repeat of what I had seen in Houston including Metal Gear Solid, Mario Brothers, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Civilization, World of Warcraft, and Kingdom Hearts. The new stuff I enjoyed a lot was the music from Myst and Halo.

More than anything, it's just so exciting to see other gamers so appreciative of the music and arts. It was also a huge treat to see Jack Wall's daughter performing, she's only twelve but sings like she's decades old. It's amazing.

I will say one thing, these kids today love their Halo. I thought the group of kids next to me were going to have a heart attack when the Halo music qued in. They were clutching each other for dear life....there were almost tears. lol.

There were two highlighst of the show. One was the live skype call to Jason Hayes right after they played Legends of Azeroth. The orchestra and choir was so dead on with the piece that it literally sounded like I was loading up the game.


The second highlight you would have thought would be the concert pianist who played a suite of Final Fantasy songs plus a variety of Mario Brother themes. Nope. It was the 16 year old kid they brought up on stage to play Guitar Hero Aerosmith "Sweet Emotions" on expert mode to win a AMD Dell Laptop. He had to score 200k points in order to win...the catch being obvious projector/game sync discrepancy and the music was played LIVE from stage by the orchestra. When he hit 200k, the audience went wild!

I mentioned the absurdity that a kid playing guitar hero would get more applause than a concert pianist to my friends after the concert. Morgan's boyfriend then pointed out something very true. As far as piano goes, a lot of people have no practical gauge of the difficulty because they've never played before. Guitar Hero, however, more people would have an actual appreciation and understanding as they have all played it before. Interesting, no?

My only critique of the show was that I felt they could have done the video portion of the show more justice. If you're going to use footage of the games as sort of a focal point of the performance, I'd expect the video quality to be a lot better than just a low quality projected image. Cheaply displayed videos sort of detracts from the music, I think I'd rather just watch the orchestra at that point.

Otherwise, great show. I'm glad I was able to catch it again.

She shoots! She scores!

(Woot! Flipmax overslept for our 10man raids tonight so I got to play my hunter)

She shoots! She scores! hehehe. That's right folks, I have not yet caved in and started dual boxing for my hunter leveling yet. I'm honestly just having too much fun doing things on my own with my gorilla. It just feels so empowering having my own personal tank everywhere I go. 

I was thinking I'd need to get Felix to help me run through the Altar of Zul to do the Save Sharkbeak quest but I somehow managed up and DOWN the altar by myself. 

I didn't like the idea of fighting my way back down the altar so I decided to jump off the cliff and hope for the best. I survived iwth 133 HP and got an achievement to boot! lol. 

I also got some account bound gear on her so it's really refreshing to not have to worry about some of the gear. Plus, the shoulder stats are pimp for the [Champion Herod's Shoulder]. 

Currently, the hunter is 52 and is questing in Felwood but also rocketing around Azeroth for all those spacial quests. One thing I hate a lot about questing in the old world is the quests take you all over the damn place and then back again. Outlands and Northrend were really good about consolidating the questing into succinct zones. So far my longest flightpath has been 11minutes 38 seconds. :P

WoW 'Hammer on the 'Head!

"Desperately trying to hang on to its fading grasp on the fallen WoW community."

What is Warhammer?

"That is correct!"-Alex Trebek

"Can't Compare" for 800 please.

Tabard, Gnomes, Eggs, and Milkshake

Back to wearing my [Sporeggar Tabard]. I have finished my four tabard reputation grinds for Northrend. Wyrmrest, Kir'Tor, Ebon Blade, and Argent Crusade exalted if that gives you any indication of how many heroics I have run. lol.

Last night we were trying to catch Tivi up on the Glory of the Hero achievement. She's only missing the easysauce ones now so it's pretty easy. Having a static six group does have it's drawbacks like having to do everything twice but having the flexibility of an extra member has also been nice. Plus, she's awesome. My favorite little thing to do to her now is to pull out a noncombat pet and feed it the biscuits to make it larger and put it next to her. "MY pet is bigger than you!" lol. It's cute.

Also this weekend I finally got revered with the Oracles. So I am not the proud owner of a baby [Reins of the Green Proto-Drake] which will hatch in seven days. I got my first [Mysterious Egg] last night and can't wait for it hatch. The Drake is supposed to be a 1% drop rate of course though.

Last week, a guildy got his first egg and said "It's going to be so awesome when I get my green proto drake" and we all said "keep dreaming" and "enjoy your yolk". Seven days rolled around and his egg hatches and out comes a GREEN PROTO DRAKE! gah!! lucky SOB! He called it and it happened!


I picked up my alt hunter a few weeks ago. HELLO LOVER! I absolutely love this class but to be more specific, I <3 my Gorilla. I named him BabyJae but I think I will be renaming him to Milkshake soon. So I can spam a macro going "My Milkshake brings all the horde to the yard! Damn right! It's better than yours! I'd feign death but I'd have to charge!"

Having a pet is so OVER POWERED. I feel invisible at times. I'm almost sure I'm not even playing the hunter right. I'm spec'd BM but am pumping out only 80dps right now at level 44. Something seems off. However, my gorilla has been making up for it.

It's bloody brilliant. I sit there collecting quest items while he just is bangin' at the mobs for me. I love it! Sometimes I'm checking over my shoulder because I'm like "how is this not an exploit!"

I've decided I wanted to roll her up to 80 to become my ultimate farming toon..just so I never have to quest alone again. It's weird. It's the first character I actually have quite a delight in playing. I look forward to roaming around Azeroth meh pet. The only downside right now is dealing with no flight paths and having crappy gear. This is the first pet class I've actually taken on for realz and I'm sort of glad or else I would never have given up my gorilla to become a healbot. lol.

Dusk at Dustwallow

(Wallpaper-Dustwallow Marsh)

I wish it weren't so long because then it'd be perfect. (TWSS!) Dustwallow Marsh is definitely one of my favorite places to go now while leveling.

Sometimes after the dust settles and I'm getting play my alt in my own little world, I head off to Dustwallow which I have never tackled before since they added all the quests. It's amazingly huge and filled with a crap ton of quests! LOADS! I've been doing the quest since I was level 37 and am now 41 and it seems like I have a lot left! That's quite unusual for a zone I think except for maybe STV.

The only drawback to the zone is that it's shaped oddly long and requires you to ride a great distances to get back to town. I feel like I might be missing a new flightpath or something. However, it's really nice leveling in another swamp like land, a great precursor to Un'Goro which I can't wait to get back to again.

Also, from the wallpaper picture, you can tell how beautiful it is to see dusk from Theramore.

You Don't Have an Eternity...

...that's the damn truth. we only have till' 3.1 comes out!

This week we set out to do [The Undying] again. We cleared Construct wing fine and Military. Then we got to Heigan the Unclean which we normally NEVER have anyone die but for some reason this week it went downhill.

It was one of those series of events that just avalanched into total failure. First right before his teleport and the main dance, our rogue had a huge lag spike. His character started jetting out straight for the fissure. We were spamming him with heals to recover as he got hit with a wall. As the dance began, his lag issue seemed fine.

However, just as we were making it to one side of the room, one of our mages got hit and panicked. He slammed his iceblock key which confused the healers. Once you start a healing rotation up that's not just for minor spike ends, you can get easily thrown from your dance rhythm. Suddenly, everyone was sort of in a panic and people weren't moving at their normal pace trying to spot heal everyone who was spiking. Eventually, someone totally lost count and died. It was a panic snowball attack.

It's so frustrating too because this isn't a boss we normally ever have an issue with...just lost control somehow. lol. the plus side is that once we die, we don't have to continue with Naxx since we don't need anything out of there anymore.

So we headed over the Flying Dragon Game of Suck to hit up our [You Don't Have An Eternity] Achievement. We went with 1 healer (disc priest), 1 tank (Prot pally), and 8 DPS. I respecced elemental and only healed after the first vortex drop in phase 1 and right before Malygos breath in phase 2.

It took us 9 attempts but we got it with 6 seconds left to go! So glad to not have to go back there again. Now we're just down to Undying and 3D Sarth, Twilight Zone. Good times.

Serenity

(walllpaper-borean tundra)

With about five or six people whispering me during raids, people being late, people leaving early, and O-chat blowin' up, I'm always usually mentally tossed by the end of raid nights. It's nothing much to complain about in terms of dealing with the usual blah blah blah.

So it's always refreshing to find a mindless task to do after the raid to wind down. Sometimes I'm super productive and get in a good run of daily quests. I always try to avoid stagnating around Dalaran because then I end up hopping around the bank for several hours being entirely useless.

The other night I was quite productive though. I went on a daily quest run in three different zones with two other guild mates. Afterwards I got it in my head to have Flipmax craft a [Deathchill Cloak] for me. I wanted to give it to a friend as a surprise pressy.

One of the reagents for the tailor crafted cloak is a [Siren's Tear] which I could buy from a murloc vendor in Borean Tundra for 100 Winterfin Clams. So I spent a good portion of the night gathering clams and slaughtering murlocs. And as mundane as that sounds, it was actually really cathartic.

I love the feeling of soloing. It gives me a real sense of freedom I don't normally get throughout the normal WoW hours. I'm free to go where I want, kill what I want, quest as I want, and screenshot all I want. lol.

Episode 43 Supplemental

(dam right next to Grim Batol)

Episode 43

or subscribe at itunes!

This one is another one of those late night ramblings from the crazyhead mouth of me, Alachia.

Things mentioned:
karass

Eyes of the Beast

Grim Batol

Video Games Live


(anvil spinning in IF)

Do it Right or Die

I'm not sure how I did it but somehow I pulled off [Gonna Go When the Volcano Blows] the hard way. Apparently, some genius designer thought it'd be awesome to throw these meteors into the fight which you have to dodge while healing/dpsing/tanking and avoiding waves. The most common way people get this achievement is by suiciding at the start of the fights.
Dead toons don't have to dodge. :D

The best method for dodging the meteors is to set your camera distance using:
/console cameradistancemaxfactor 5


scroll all they way out and then angle your view straight vertical like you're playing Warcraft III. lol. You can then see the direction and angle of the meteors a lot better. The only tricky part after that is the last stage of the fight when the meteor shower goes nuts. My advice is to never stop moving. Never stay in one place for more than 2 seconds.

Out there Forever

Just because you throw stuff out into the void, doesn't mean it's going to stay nested in your personal bubble. One of the hardest lessons I've learned from the past is that once you put it out on the internet, it's there forever. Even after you think you've deleted content, there are these little remnants of your data still floating out there.

Data isn't static online. It's constantly moving and shifting and particles of your data get left behind long after the actual data is gone. If you've never heard of the concept, next time you hit a broken link, hit the cache button next to the actual link. (web cache)

In addition to you leaving your digital eyelashes and skin particle all over the place, you should know that archives are constantly being created of websites. You may not know it but you might already be cloned. There's this whole process going on out there to archive the internet for historical purposes, research, and to preserve for the public. (web archive)

So you may think you have deleted your blog, picture, or website but is it really gone? "But I'm a nobody and no one would care about reading my stuff." It doesn't really matter what your site is about or how little it's visited, if the information is out there, it can be archived or cached.

While the internet is mostly text based communication currently, micro-blogging, blogging, and chatting are all considered public domain. Just because it says "Sally Smith's Personal Blog" doesn't mean the information you put out there deserves lock and key confidentiality. The same goes for instant messaging, micro-blogging services, and community chat tools like Twitter, Facebook, and Bindpoint. All of that information can be logged and re-posted without your permission.

I came across this article about a teenage worker who was fired for posting negative comments about her job on Facebook. "Teenage office worker sacked for moaning on Facebook about her 'totally boring' job" posted at Mail Online.

In the state of Texas, you can pretty much be fired for any reason at all other than discrimination. I actually have two office mates who follow me on Facebook which I'm not too happy about but knowing this has kept my comments completely generic. In fact, I'm very keen to not post anything during the day time hours incase they want to use my timepost stamp on a facebook comment to accuse me of surfing the net during work hours etc.

I do think it's a shame we can't achieve a level of transparency where people just accept that we all have varying degrees of @sshole in us. The problem is you have employers or potential employers out there who aren't going to care to factor in the complexity of social interactions on the internet. In their mind, if you're dumb enough to post a picture of yourself with a bong then you're not worth hiring. Or if you're dumb enough to joke about taking out the company servers through IM, you deserve to get fired.

I suppose if were were all allowed to be explicitly honest, everyone around us would be hurt. Just a good rule of thumb is don't save ANY IM chat histories at work, don't email anything personal from your work email, and don't use your RL name to post things regarding illegal activities or social deviances. And that's if you care about your job. Otherwise, link naked pics right away. :D

Al Gore of the Metaverse

Someone's gotta think I'm an asshole or else this world stops turning apparently. I can already tell March is gonna suck.

So I'd like to address this comment left on the How I WoW: http://www.howiwow.org/?p=123#comments by Octav regarding my claim to fame being that I invented the Metaverse.

"I took issue with Alachia’s characterization of her relationship to the term Metaverse. She did not make this word up and I felt she very carefully spoke about it in an ambiguous way in order to claim credit for it or at least leave open the idea that she was it’s originator."

And as much as I'd love to be the Al Gore of the Metaverse, I think I shall pass. The reason this claim struck me as totally off-putting is that it goes against pretty much everything I hold of value in the metaverse. The thing that really upsets me is feeling that I might have come across like I'd have an ego large enough to make a claim like that.

Perhaps I misunderstood Patrick's questions to me regarding the idea of the Metaverse. I thought they were asking me what my understanding of the term meant and how I apply it. I am very particular about how I interpret the concept of a modern metaverse.

I actually only became aware of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash after I started mentioning the idea of the Metaverse on my podcast in Episode 13: The Metaverse called WoW and its Inhabitants (meta)

I got an email from Kitch with a recommendation to read it which I did. The term Metaverse was definitely coined by Neal Stephenson's in my mind but his idea of the metaverse is not what I consider what we currently occupy. His concept was a fiction-based universe much like the Matrix with a lot of sci-fi sensationalism as in the Neo-construct. 

My particular view is one that separates Sci-Fi from the reality of social and cultural interactions. We're talking about real life people and real life day-t0-day interpretations of reality as it plays out in simple micro and macro levels online. I wanted to be sure to separate that out from the idea of flying around on hover boards and wearing laser-beam goggles and stopping bullets mid-flight.

Octav is right though, I should have re-interated where I did actually get the term from as I sure has hell did not come up with it myself. The full credit for my interpretation comes from David Wong (my personal hero) and his article "A World of Warcraft World: 10 Ways Online Gaming Will Change the Future." His article completely changed my perspective on online gaming and how MMO games could transend beyond a simplified mechanism of entertainment. David Wong's is my orginator what the Metaverse means to me and the reason why I chose to use that terminology.

"when I say ‘Metaverse’ I mean…” This tells me she is fully aware she did not create the word but is purposely obscurring her answers in order to create the impression she did."

I guess the point is I shouldn't have approached the interview with this idea that people sort of know my history. I did sort of assume that everyone knew where I was coming from and apparently that was a huge mistake. So I'll take this opportunity to disclaim that I had anything to do with the construct of the terminology of the metaverse. 

I will however give EVERYONE credit for its creation because that's what it means to me.

Post Raid Activities

(Malygos Wallpaper)

Some weeks you'll just have the crappiest raids ever and you know a lot of it beyond your control so you have to figure out how to just let it go. One of my largest frustrations is trying to balance out running a semi-decent 25man group while also gaining perspective of how everyone wants to raid.  Like this week, one of the college students decided to show up seriously drunk. He was late, he was plastered, and he was obnoxious as all hell. 

A part of me wanted to throw him out immediately. A part of me wanted to just gkick him out for showing so little respect for the rest of the guild. Then a part of me wonders if I should just try to see things from his perspective. He's a kid, young, and prone to make stupid mistakes. He's at a time of his life where he wants to have fun and probably won't get to seeing things my way for another 5 or 6 years. 
Then I have to think about the rest of the guild as well. How do they feel about a sect of the guild who is only showing up to raids to gear for PvP Arenas. Should I care why people show up so long as they show up? Or should it bother me that they don't really give a damn about the rest of us that much aside from using us to get gear? Does it matter why people chose to play with us? I'm not sure what the correct answer is supposed to be anymore. There are times I think I'm fully aware of what the guild wants and then something will happen that will throw me off completely. 

I have people whispering me from the guild trying to tell me who deserves loot and who deserves to be invited. I have people wanting to raid earlier and those who want to raid later. I've got a group who want to push things to a more serious degree and those who want to keep our 25man raids super casual.  I have people who want to already start gearing out their alts and those who want to keep it mains only. 

So after a few Malygos attempts Friday, people had to leave early. I didn't take the portal back to Dalaran. I just stayed behind with Flipmax. I sort of just sighed. Then I turned to Flip and said, "let's race around this place." So we came up with this game where we had to run around the circle until we hit the portal and then mount and do a cycle mounted and then one more round while running. 

I SOOOOOO was winning too but then the bastard cheated at the last minute and blinked to the finish line. I swear, you'll never get a fair racing game with a mage. lol.  We then played tag for awhile and got tired of running around. So then we stared at the stars for a long time while talking about mage specs. 

I then logged out to upload the combatlogs to wow web stats. When I got back in, we ended up on this crazy errand run through the old world. We ran LBRS so I could get my worg pup and spider pet since my shaman had never gotten it. Then we were gonna run heroic Magister's Terrace because I wanted my phoenix pet (I've gotten two on my other toons). 

When we got there though, I wasn't attuned!! GAHHH! DAMN ALTS! So we set in non-heroic to get me attuned. We cleared the whole thing only to find out I forgot to talk to some sleeping dude! DOH! So we ran it again and bam, the phoenix pet dropped! LOL! Holy cow! I didn't even have to run it heroic to get the pet! WOOT! 

Afterwards, Flip went off to go do Strat runs for the baron mount and I set off to level fishing. I never thought I'd be in STV again casting my fishing rod but there I was. I went from like 130-225. Now I'm on the fishing quest. gag. 

So it turned out that Friday night wasn't so bad after all. Racing, star gazing, pet rounding, and fishing FTW. :D