Flashlight

The culmination of waiting for a validation to Engineers since they gave us repair bots and goggle equivalents to tier 6 gear, is here!

Folks after waiting nearly a year and a half for the glorious engineering buff, that validation that we didn't just level the most worthless profession in the game has arrived!

[High-powered Flashlight]
Binds when equipped
Unique-Equipped
Trinket
Requires Level 49
Equip: Improves hit rating by 24 (3.04% @ L49).
Use: Summon a ring of light on a specific location that lasts for 3 min. (1 Hour Cooldown)

And it's a good thing they put that 1 hour cooldown timer on the "ring of light" usage because seriously, casting light on the ground in under a 1 hour lockout is just too much OP.

I mean we see what happens with people who have stacks of [Elune Stone], *shudder*, that's just too much power for one person honestly.

:P

Flying Dragon Game of Suck

So we were talking in Bindpoint the other night about great quotes from forums and Master Phayte had the best one by far. It was in regards to these siege weapon type battles now included in progression raiding.

"If I wanted to play The Flying Dragon Game of Suck, I would have bought The Flying Dragon Game of Suck. I want to play my priest."

Seriously, whoever posted that. AMEN. You ROCK.

And I love a good dragon ride, for sure. It's fun to be able to fly around on them and use them to nuke down things. However, the mechanics of these dragons have nothing to do with skill and nothing to do with any character stats you have spent a TON of progression getting. You can be NAKED and still pwn or suck on these things.

This is all good and well if it weren't for the fact that these Flying Dragon Games of Suck or two of the largest hurdles in Heroic Titles and Achievements which I DO consider as part of progression these days.

I am definitely dismayed that Ulduar is already boasting more of these encounters. And while it'd be great if these were just part of small dungeons and not required for specific achievements, I'd feel they'd find their place in World of Warcraft more welcomed.

I might of course change my mind when they put me in a mech warrior suit one day. hehehe.

By the way, tonight we were off our 6 minute Malygos attempt by 7 seconds and yes, that did suck considering that was our best attempt and we had given it 28 attempts. We were always off by seconds. Things did start to get better towards the end when we went with 8 dps, 1 tank, and 1 healer (holy priest). I went elemental and then healed after vortex and phase 2. I have no doubt if we had 2 more attempts, we would have nailed it.

On a positive note, during our many botched attempts, we were all able to pick up [Denyin' the Scion]! It was fun getting to surf on those discs!

Tivi tastes like Awesomesauce

Monday night we resumed getting everyone else their completion of [Glory of the Hero]. All three of them needed was something simple from Gun'Drak but Flipmax still needed the [Emerald Void] and the [Amber Void] which if you want to get on the same day, you have to defeat Ley-Guardian Eregos with everyone only on Bronze Drakes.

This is teh uber suckage! And it only took us 2 hours to finally decide to read the actual DPS mechanics of the damn Bronze Drake. We were doing our channeling and burst spells sooo wrong. It got to a point where we had channeling rifts and Shock Lance down to a science. And even to avoid vent lag, I called Taint over the phone to call out when to switch channeling.

The whole premise is to get those channels stacked and then burst at 10 and keep a full rotation of 10 at all times so you're hitting for 100k dmg. In the meantime, you have to approximate a 14 second counter to use Time Stop to prevent him from spawning whelps which will eat your group inside out.

On top of that, you have to do this in stages. It's not just straight fly up their and nuke. You have to run away when he goes transparent and run away from giant pink orbs that follow you before they explode. Then it's back to channeling calls and time stop rotations.

Easy enough aye? Well, in the mean time he's blowing big chunks of WTF breaths on you and at any given agro rotation, you might be less than 13% by the time phase 2 starts and there are NO HEALS.

Well we were going at this for like 3 hours or so and then Felix had to call it cuz his work schedule has him starting work at 6am. Ouch. And as luck would have it, our 6th man (well actually girl) logged in just at that time. We begged her to come and so she offered to help us out. We figured out the channeling rotations after that and had several really, really good attempts. About 40 minutes later though we were on our last leg.

We somehow get a great first phase! We nuke the boss down to like 50% before the orbs spawned. After he respawned, we had the most perfectly timed Time Stop and got our channel rotations going. However, just at that moment, he nuked down Taint and Flipmax! By this time we had him below 20%. Sad, myself, and Tivi were left as we headed into another round of orb explosions and we managed to survive those.

By this time though, the time stops were only being cast as soon as they came up from cooldown so we had whelps spawn. They ended up blowing out Sad when the boss was around 6%.

At 3%, the boss turned to me and his breath took my drake out too.
At this point it was just Tivi left and the boss had just a few stacks of the channel debuff left on him.
2%, I'm falling from the sky out of my drake
1%, we're all screaming "SHE CAN DO IT!"
By the time my body hits the platform, she finishes off the boss!!!

And I exclaim, "YOU ARE AWESOME TIVI! YOU ARE FUCKING AWESOME SAUCE!!!!"
she then typed, "it was the m&ms"
lol

So yeah, that fight is the suck and I am so glad I never have to do that encounter again. We had already done it once a few weeks ago and it took about 3 hrs to learn it the first time and another 3 hrs to get it this second time.

It ranks as the most annoying achievement out of the entire list if you decide to take the all Bronze Drake approach. We're just masochistic so it was only natural we'd find a way to torture ourselves.

Before we did those attempts, I actually stated, "Less Rabi was the worst, followed by this one, and the third being Watch Him Die" but by the end of the night the double Amber/Ember Void made it to rank number #1 Ultimate Suckage.

Glory of the Hero

Well second time was a charm. We didn't have any major hickups and were able to pick up more achievements for the other mage in our carass. No one spec'd healing but both the shadow priest and myself traded out during different boss fights. It worked out fine.
[Share the Love] didn't foil us again this time as we were sure not to pop treants or mirrors while nuking the boss down after we all had been impaled. The GM who told us tough-sh1t said that might be a reason why we didn't get credit the first time. Major BS poor achievement credit programming if you ask me. Who knows though, they probably added something like that in to avoid exploit??

[Make it Count] attmept was flawless. We straight up nuked every boss down in less that 40 seconds and didn't have any deaths during transitions or trash clears. By the time we got to The Flying Dragon Game of Suck, we had 12 minutes left so we had plenty of time to be careful to be sure to do it right. We went with two ruby drakes, one amber drake, and two emerald. It's one of the safest combinations of dragons to take. 

And while I really, really appreciate my [Red Proto-Drake] and am grateful we get that as an award, I'm a little confused as to why yo don't get a title of any sort. I mean you get a title for opening up candy and flying around picking up coins around Azeroth but you don't get a title for [Glory of the Hero]?? lol. Nice Blizzard, nice.

Tomorrow we're going to try and get the rest of our group the title. Three of them are still missing one or two of the random crap. 

Less this and More of That

Yesterday was one of those Saturdays you just roll out of bed, brush your teeth, wash your face, grab a soda from the fridge, plop yourself in front of the computer, and just play WoW all day. It was great.

My group set off to knock out more of our Heroic Dungeon Achievements. I must admit it has take us a lot longer to complete than I thought it would although I think we've only dedicated 3 full days to it. A few of the achievements require you to get lucky with the bosses you get like in Heroic Violet Hold for [Lockdown!]. Another one that takes multiple days is the [Experienced Drake Rider] which requires you to have used each of the different mounts during the final boss.

The four left we had that I was a little concerned about out of all of them was [Volazj's Quick Demise], [Less-Rabi], [Share the Love], and [Make it Count].

We changed our make up a little for Saturday's attempts. We had Felix switch to boomkin instead of feral tank and had Sad stay Prot instead of going retadin. Since the other two dps is myself, elemental shammy, and Flipmax, frostfire mage, it made the msot sense to add a boomkin. It's really good synergy between the three, the mage benefiting the most of course. We also had Taint, disc priest, respec shadow and just put on healing gear during the tougher boss fights.

Because of this, Volazj ended up being pretty easy as we had the DPS to nuke the mother living sh1t out of him. I dropped healing stream to heal the group, popped heroism and we burned him down.

(the dps meters for our Volazj kill)

The reason the numbers are skewed so high is because of the short amount of burst time. It's the same reason some people show 5kdps even though they died right at the pull. Our normal numbers for heroics are usually between 2k-5k depending on the fight.

We then went to Drak'Thuran Keep and picked up those easy heroics for Sad who was missing them. After that we had to go to Gun'Drak and then the question came: To try Less-Rabi again?
"I think we can do it, let's do it!" -Taint
"nooooooooooo...memories...bad memories" -Me
"We have Sad now in the group, he'll show you guys how to do it" -Sad
"Sad, I'll pay you 1000g if we can do it in less than 2 hours" -Felix
"You're on" -Sad

It took us about an hour though but we finally got lucky with latency and simply predicting the exact moment to interrupt his transformation. That achievement is the total suck as it has nothing to do with real player skill. I was elated though to have it done with and yes, Sad is now 1000g richer. lol.

We then got totally cheated out of Share the Love. We have screenshots showing all five of us getting impaled by the final boss but we didn't get credit. We petitioned a GM but all they replied back was "try again tomorrow". grrr! Otherwise, I'd only have one achievement left!

However, Make it Count achievement attempt was messy as hell and we all were using different drakes than we normally do for Occulus. I think we were off by a good 3 minutes including deaths. I have a feeling that one will take a night or so more of practice to get down in 20 minutes.

The quad dps and one tank with the priest switching gear to heal was actually a really great move for us because it allowed us the flexibility of more DPS whenever we needed it. I only recommend this for others if they're tank is really strong and their healer is very smart and knows the fights.

We're hopefully going to try again today after everyone gets through doing Sunday business.

Undying Heartbreak

SOoooooooooooooooo close! We were just a few seconds away from getting [Undying]!
We had managed to stay alive as a raid not only through the Naxxramas bosses but even ALL of the trash. ZERO deaths.

When we finished Sapphiron, I was like, YES! We have this made! KT is a joke, we got this! We sooo got this! And after sitting upright at my computer super diligently for like 2hrs, I was sort of dancing in my seat with anticipation of that glorious DONG!!! achievement sound.

I even made myself stop poofing in and out of the Bindpoint channel so that I could concentrate on making sure there were no accidental mishaps. Okay okay.. I didn't make myself, my raid mentor Phayte made me do it but I listened! I was soo good! I even had my music turned off and my WoW sounds turned up. I was like on lock down!

Well so we get to Kel'Thuzad and are all set to finally pick up our Undying Achievement and knock our Glory of The Raider list down to 5 achievements. KT is one of the easiest bosses in Naxx IMO so I wasn't even worried at this point. We blew through phase 1 no problem. Phase 2 came along and we were picking up Frost Blasts and Blizzards no problem. Easysauce.

Then I look over to my right and see one of our dps get a Shadow Fissure spawn underneath him. (The fissure will stay inactive for about 3 seconds, after which it will become a beam of purple energy, instantly killing the player if they remain in it.) Just like with everyone in the raid, if I see someone not move in one second while they've got one underneath them, I call it out on vent for them to get out of it.

Well, I don't even really look back at him because he moves right away out of the Fissure to the back of it like we asked all the DPS to do. Only an instant later, I see a grey box appear appear on my grid! I had to sort of muffle my scream. lol. KT was at less than 20%!!!!!!

Apparently he had moved out of the circle but was just enough still on the graphic edge that it counted and he was insta-gibbed.

It was so heartbreaking. And we all knew he felt SOOOOO bad. The first thing he typed in raid chat after that was /shoots self in face. Poor guy. I felt so bad for him. GAH! oh well. Next week it is!

How I WoW

I had the pleasure of being invited to talk with Shawn and Patrick from HoW I WoW Podcast on V-day.

What was really interesting about it was finally getting to voice chat with someone I've been following on twitter for quite some time. @shawncoons and I had developed this completely twitter-based friendship over the past few months. We even had at one point talked about meeting up with his chainmail wearing wife (total inside twitter joke) at the Texas Renaissance Festival.

That's the completely amazing thing about meta relationships though, they don't require that huge a degree of your time to connect with other people and particularly, unique connections.

So as I was talking to them, I was definitely very nervous to be speaking with Patrick for the first time but for some reason I felt very easy speaking to Shawn. As if we were old friends and he was introducing me to this hip, new cool French friend he'd met. Seriously though, I found it extremely intriguing to sort of experience that dynamic between having a familiarity and connection with someone almost exclusively through twitter and a kodo mount dance incident in Bindpoint LOL vs. only voyeured knowledge of @notPatrick.

In any case, I was very pleased to have had the pleasure of talking to them both. And as podcaster myself, I kept wanting to turn the interview on them and ask them a boat load of questions but I had to keep myself in check. hehehe.

(one minor self correction: highest rating I ever got was 1995 not 1900. I remembered that while listening because I recall it was right before Season 3 started and we hit it the day before the Arenas reset! DOH!)

be sure to check out How I WoW at howiwow.org and subscribe to their podcast to listen for future episodes about how people wow. :D

Charter Flight to Ice Crown

Now that I'm not obligated to do dailies out in Storm Peaks for Sons of Hodir rep anymore, I'm free to fly about the country. My favorite place is still Scholozar Basin at the moment but for awhile it was Ice Crown. I love doing the flying dailies and of course my favorite daily, King of the Mountain, is out there.

It's really not that far out to get it Ice Crown from Dalaran but Flipmax showed me this neat trick for being lazy if you want to head out in that direction. Go to the landing pad of Dalaran and speak to Officer Van Rossem if you're alliance. He'll charter you a plane right there to the Alliance air ship. I believe there's a similar guy for the horde on the other side of the platform. I just like it because it gives me another opportunity to ride in a plane. hehe.

Twilight Torment

We got the [Dedicated Few] down this week which means we're down to 6 more achievements till we get of the Nightfall title for our 10 man crew.

The only two left that scare the living shit out of me are [You Don't Have an Eternity] as our fastest time so far has been 8 minutes to clear Malygos. Somehow we're going to have to shave off another two minutes.

BUT nothing "TORMENTS" my thoughts like [Twilight Zone] 10 man. Everything is totally doable until we get to [Twilight Torment] debuff ticking at the 3rd portal. Close to 2k dmg a tick so massive raid healing while also trying to keep the secondary tank up. bleh.... We're gonna have our disc priest respec holy for our next attempt to see if helps.

Another thing we noticed is that none of us has gotten the [Epic] Achievement which means there's still a lot of room for gear improvement. I definitely think we're getting closer but it's gonna take way more practice and a little bit more luck with gearing up.

Who's the Real Fool?

Saturday I spent all day staring at guards and NPCs watching my Adoration debuff timer go off so I could insert my next love token. Soooo tedious and sooo boring. The worst holiday achievement ever....or so I thought. Apparently the Noble Garden one is going to be quite the suck as well. RNG easter eggs. yay! Looking forward to that.

It took me four bags of candy but I finally got the last piece of candy I needed to get "I'll follow you all around Azeroth"...the rarest candy piece for me. I got about a billion "You're Mine" candies. I never got the Lovely Black Dress or the Peedlefeet pet but I guess that's a given knowing how my luck tends to run. At least I got my Love Fool title and I guess they give you the title of "fool" for a reason. lol.

Twilight Zone Attempts x 40

We made our first real Twilight Zone (3Drake Sarth) attempt last night with our 10man team.

Druid Tank - 50k raid buffed HP to tank Sarth
Pally Tank- Drake, whelp, lava blaze tank
Resto Shammy - Group healer
Disc Priest - MT Healer
Arcane Mage
FF Mage
Marks Hunter
Crit Chicken
Fury Warrior
Ass Rogue (hehehe <3 couldn't resist)

I think we must have done well over 42 attempts last night. I wouldn't really count the last 15 though because people were hella tired and lost their motivation. (why they claim they're ass-tired and can't go on and wanna quit but then stay on doing Valentine's shit for the next 4 hrs after we call the raid...that's another story. lol)

The basic strat was to have the druid pull Sarth to the front of the square island and the rest of the raid move behind him so that the pally tank had a lot of room to move around to pick up the drakes, lava blazes, whelps, and the next drake. We then had 80% of the island to move around as we needed.

I think the whole night, we sort of kept trying to adjust healing and tanking. How to keep the prot pally with 5 lava blazes on him, 6 whelps, and two drakes. After sleeping on it last night and then going over the wws stats of the 40+ attempts, I'm thinking it's actually the dps output. And it's definitely not about performance either because these guys are chiseled to their craft.

My best guess is that it's gear. The WWS shows our best attemtps and longest attempts occured when the max dps pushed 3500 and minimum pushed well over 2500. All other attempts, I noticed the dps top and bottom was only averaging between 2000-2500.

One thing to note here is that this DPS avg is not your standard tank and spank fight. It's normally higher pushing 4k. There is a ton of movement and repositioning though, so avg DPS is highly effected by this: lava walls, void zones, running to the tank when shit is on you.

In any case, I think a little more gearing and boosting of DPS so that everyone can hit a solid 3k+ every attempt will make all the difference. We got the first drake down several times so I know it's possible. Once you get the first drake down and all the whelps in check, the raid group is pretty much set. After that point, it all goes back to keeping the MT alive with the third portal spawn making breaths hit for 30k. SOOOO can do it.

What I definitely took from last night though is that 25man 3 drake is 100% doable with our group. I'm looking forward to trying that out this coming week.

Sgt. First Class Druid

Sad just got back from a base upstate helping to support the software training of their latest release in hopes to secure its success in being sent to the field. One of the guys there was in charge of training organization, testing the software and putting it through the ringer for the integration.

He was apparently a hardcore military looking guy. You know the type, rugged pure military looking bloke. He was a Sgt of some sort and was past the retirement age so he had to have been over 37. One of those who are dedicated to the service.

He was the LAST guy in the room Sad expected to play World of Warcraft. Turns out the guy was all into raiding and playing a feral druid. Crazy huh? It's always the people you least expect. Anyhow, after that they hit it off, he said it helped with him being more open to Sad's discussion about integration. So who knew WoW would help with some random associate in the army. lol.

Sgt. Druid, we salute you!

Episode 42 back up

(with Godzilla's approval)

After my last post, I took down Episode 42 and put this note up on the Episode page: This Episode has been removed due to the ethical controversy of its nature. It shall forever be known as the LOST episode.

But soon after taking it down and right as I was about to start recording a "explanation filler mp3 to replace the full episode", I logged into the game for my hourly trip to get adored (Love is in the Air Achievement task) and got messaged by Godzilla.

Apparently he thought the whole episode was funny and he wanted me to keep it up. The screenshot I posted here is the 2nd out of the 3rd time he said he wanted me to put it back up. I had to ask him several times to assure myself that he meant it and wasn't just saying it.

We talked about the the nature of the episode but mostly it was me being frank to him about his mental instability. He claims I'm mistaking insanity for severely traumatized but I told him I was still 50/50 on the probability of his stories. Possible yes, Probable dunno. No one but he will really know the truth.

I asked him why he thought he was associated with so much drama but he sort of laughed and said he didn't know. He doesn't seem to mind beratement and says he can handle all sort of grief just fine. I forgot to ask him if he really felt that way then why he bothered coming to me at all about his issues with my guild. I guess to let me know my flock had strayed?

Regarding that issue, he said he hadn't had any issues with us since that conversation. So I guess that's good..wether it was a reality or not I'm glad it's no longer plaguing him.

I don't think I'll ever know him well enough to say if he or I was right. I'm glad I took the episode down and I'm glad he gave me permission to put it back up. I added a small blip to the end of the episode to clarify for future listens that I did receive his permission to relaunch the episode.

Mr. Infamy is back.

Godzilla Backlash

I sort of knew in the back of my mind that posting that vent conversation would stir some controversy. And yes, I have enough self-awareness to know that it is probably morally wrong to record someone and post without their permission.

I'd like to clarify that I had ZERO intention of using this episode to get back at him. I had no intention of using this episode to make fun of him although I surely had every opportunity. I may have come across as harsh by calling him mentally unstable but I HONESTLY believe he is.

For those of you who came away thinking that he's this innocent, lonely guy who just is trying to find acceptance and attention... this guy wasn't crushing on me in any sense at all. He has carried on conversations like this with a multitude of people on the server, especially guild leaders etc trying to wiggle his way into a space he can slowly implode later on.

His examples and outright lies to me were in hopes to have me buy into his drama which I don't because the only drama I can seriously deal with is my own guild drama. I have no time or care for stuff that goes on outside of jae.

And there is a lot of flaming, hating, and loathing that does go on in my server from other competing raiding guilds. There's slim pickings on my server for mature, dedicated raiders so you can imagine the bullying and stealing that goes on from raid guild to raid guild. I believe that's where a lot of the hatred stems from.

What he was trying to do for nearly an hour was to get me to buy into that. He either wanted me to come out hating him or sympathizing with him but I remained indifferent. I wasn't indifferent out of spite either but that I TRULY don't care about what happens on the outside of my guild. It wasn't even personal.

Then why publish an episode about him? It wasn't supposed to be about him as much as it was to vocalize the absurdity with which most guild leaders and the MAJORITY of pvp, alliance guilds have to deal with on a regular basis.

He's just one of the most extreme cases although most servers have a Godzilla. He's actually listed on a Gamespot forum as one of the most infamous people on my server. He can actually be googled with an overwhelming amount of posts about the type of harassment he offers to the general server as well as specific personal offenses.

I personally didn't recall when I made the episode about "why people hate him"...but after the episode aired, I logged onto my server and got a flood of whispers

People on my server thanking me for putting out the episode and others telling me their personal Godzilla horror story. He was even more infamous apparently than I even thought he was. It's only now that I'm coming to the full realization how he treated fellow wow players. And yes, most of these people say they can even offer up screenshots of their accusation. I could publish them here as proof but I won't. The point is moot.

He's not some typical, akward nerd who was crushing on me and I smashed him into obvlivion just for my own amusement. (my response to the email comment: It's like when the pretty cheerleader gets some embarrassing secret love letter from the fat dorky kid in school, and rather than ignoring it she goes and reads it to all the other kids at their lunch table so everyone can point and laugh.)

BUT I think people who don't know the reality of Godzilla have every right to think that. And perhaps I should have put things more in context in the episode. While we were raiding with cykos, I was always kind to him. I always listened to his concerns no matter how bizzare because I did want him to be settled as I want all raiders. When he first came to me with the accusations that my guildies were berrating him, I took it seriously. Even without proof, I told my guildmates to NOT engage him for any reason at all. If they had any concerns, they should go through me.

So am I sorry I published this. Sort of. I should have actually asked him for his permission first. I'm sure he would have given it to me actually. He's infamous for a reason. And if he does come across it and confronts me and wants me to take it down, I will. I'm actually considering taking to down now just because I know it's circulating on my server like crazy.

Getting Elder All the Time

That's what I would have called the Achievement if I had named it instead of To Honor One's Elders. hehehe.

Today, Kitch and I got our last coin from Elder Brightspear in Winterspring and dinged the Elder achievement. And yes, I'm wearing the pantsuit instead of the Festival dress. I think it shows off my hooves better. lol.

We had started the long journey together in Northrend and crossed the seas to The Eastern Kingdoms. We each did our own journey through Kalimdor but met up again for the final coin in Winterspring. I was on to celebrate the LONG, TEDIOUS achievement when Kitch reminded me the Valentine holiday had started. DOH!

Oh well, at least this one has me bumming around Stormwind begging for adoration instead of chartering across the world. I think I can handle that. :D

WoW Weekend

I had one of those weekends where I intended to chill out on my couch or work on the podcast but instead got sucked into the black hole of wow. And this hole was vast.

Back when we were leveling Sad's new Draenei paladin up right before WoTLK, we also brought up a paladin for Taint as well. But when we hit 53, he had a choice to make. Keep leveling his paladin or stop and pick up his 53 priest.

I told him to stick with the paladin because they're more verasatile in terms of being able to do all three degrees of game play. That was my mistake as he almost always does the OPPOSITE of what I tell him to do....brothers..

So now that he's got his priest to 80 and hates using it for dps, he picked his paladin up to 80. And now he's wanting to get it geared etc so he's asking us to run heroics all the time. Unfortunately in WoLK I'm not as patient as I was about alts anymore.

But I obliged on Saturday because I do like hanging out with him and our crew. We started out with heroic Culling of Stratholme so he could get the drake. After we finished that, we decided to go ahead and do heroic Violet Hold since it was in the city.

It sort of just continued from there. We'd finish one and then decide to hit up another one. I think we started around 5pm and finished around 1am with a break for dinner and a few dps changes.

I got to play my elemental shaman spec so I had fun testing out different rotations. I still don't think I'm maximizing it at all so I'll have to do more research.

By the end of the run, I had gotten several more Heroic Achievments and finally got to run Heroic Drak'Tharon which finished me out to get the title [Champion of the Frozen Wastes]. Although that title makes me think of frozen poop so not sure how I feel about it. hehe.

I also got exalted with another faction, Argent Crusade. I'm now on my last tabard, Knights of the Ebon Blade which is really pretty dark purple so it's rather nice. I was glad to vendor my Argent Crusade tabard. By the end of the night, we had done every level 80 Heroic Dungeon in the game.


And to top my weekend off, I was determined to finally sit my booty down and knock out the Elder title. There is nothing that fun about travleing all over the World of Warcraft looking for old people to get coins from. At least that's what I thought until I discovered a few new places while doing it. I came across this really nifty camp site in Grizzly Hills. It's so detailed that I sort of wish I could have set my hearthstone there. :)

And I was able to convince my friend Kitch to tag along for the Elder coin collection extravaganza. It's always nice when you can share the experience of sheer travel montony with someone else. lol. so you can look back and say "Yeah, remember that time we went to visit that Elder in Sholozar? He was lame" "Yeah, he was an ass. He only gave me one coin!" hehe.

With the help of Felix, we actually were able to clear all the Northrend dungeons to the Elders with just the three of us...including Heroic Gun'drak which you have to clear on heroic to get to the guy. I was elemental spec in healing gear and it turned out to quite easy. It does help if your tank is stacked though. :)

We actually thought we were going to have a lot of trouble getting the Elder in Ogrimmar. We charged in prepared to die, rez, die, rez, claim coin. When we charged in we passed several horde on their mounts and I thought for sure they would turn on us but they ignored us and kept riding away. We got to Elder outside of Thrall's chamber and clicked on the guy going "uhhh..that's it? that was easy"

I think we were very fortunate with the timing and I sure as heck can't complain!
I'm supposed to pick up my final coin tonight and claim the Elder title. Not sure if I like being an Elder but it's better than Merrymaker Alachia, Champion of the Frozen Poop. hehehe.

Empathy Online

Jemimus forwarded me this newsletter he got from a guy named Jason Calacanis entitled "We Live in Public (and the end of empathy)"

From the body of the text which was quite substantive, he talked about the many accounts in which this emerging web 2.0 culture was breeding a pervasive attitude which could be almost be categorized as de-humanizing. At the heart of his argument was that notion of anonymity being a major factor.

Follows is my Bindpoint convo with Jemimus regarding the ideas of anonymity and content which fosters this behavior. We mostly agreed on the point but from two different perspectives..mine from the content provider, his from the content receivers


***Bindpoint***
***WoWast: General Channel***
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[Alachia] so Jemimus, do you believe as Jason does that anonymity creates these sub-human environments online?
[Jemimus] Alachia, yes I do
[Alachia] I think he's right to an extent of the community that never really belonged online in the first place...and I don't mean that in a sense of "get off my turf"
[Alachia] but rather referring to those who never got the vision of the online world..and instead seeked to apply the rules of the RL to the meta once they were online and then exploit it
[Jemimus] I dont know about that. I think he is talking about 2 different things. The first is the dehumanising that people do through lack of the other "social" contexts.. the kind of stuff you DO have when you are face to face. The other issue is he discusses is the corruption that occurs when people use other people online as a means to an end
[Alachia] aka. quasi-celeb bloggers, youtube 2secs of fame for doing the same shit that would have gotten a few laughs at school, and attention whores who can behind pseudo names and push the limitations of our tolerance
[Alachia] well he attributes most of the dehumanising through the filter of anonymity
[Alachia] that people behave in the way they do on MULTIPLE accounts simply because they can and because they're not bound to their behavior
[Alachia] sort of like Lord of the Flies via Meta
[Jemimus] well there is a difference with the youtube guys.. they at least are putting themselves out there. They are, in fact, contributing (the merit is a seperate discussion) .. what the main problem here is, is the people who -comment- on those, and all videos on youtube, and without any shame tear people apart
[Alachia] but where do these comments arise? because of the nature of the videos I believe.
[Alachia] you have extremely personal videos online now...things you'd only want to share with people you know in RL...ie..2 eleven year old girls dancing and singing...or a family of friends acting up and playing rockband
[Alachia] these are personal moments
[Alachia] they are not objective forms of entertainment for the public because they are real.. and yet they are presented as something far less personal once they arrive on youtube
[Alachia] it's no longer two little girls dancing and playing.
[Jemimus] I think the lord of the flies analogy works only on 1 level: The fact that people in crowds tend to loose sense of personal responsibility.. this is certainly true online to an extent, but I think there is more going on there. There are other factors that are causing the "fucktards", as John Gabriel would put it
[Alachia] it's no longer a family just having a good friday night together
[Alachia] it's now presented as a form of entertainment.. just as we'd have no issues balking at a stupid tv series or the latest character annoyance...
[Alachia] we treat it as such
[Jemimus] I am not so sure the content is an important factor. Too often i have seen the exact same behaviour on forums, where a perfectly intelligent discussion will degenerate in the same way
[Alachia] I see it far less in professional context or even art related than I do personal exhibition
[Alachia] I mean people make some bizzare comments regarding politics or news or idealogy. but most comments don't turn personally biting unless they're trying to tear someone down personally. that's when I've seen it at its worst
[Alachia] the part that scared me the most about his analysis was the conclusion that if we can't change the culture of the ongoing web2.0 world, that it will eventually be abandoned for the real world.
[Alachia] and that all the vision and hope of the meta being the colossal forum for a new level of human progression.
[Alachia] will be lost because people can't retain their humanity online.
[Jemimus] The kind of comments you see on youtube or forums, reminds me a lot of how you see teenagers behave in groups. They are roudy, the humor is extremely base and simple, the behaviour is childish, based on trying to mutually impress and going down quickly to a very low common demoninator. Adolescents behave like this in public, because during those years they loose the ability to interpret social queues.. they "loose" all shame and start to act out , their internal dialog is unfiltered. Aspergers and Autism are similar in nature. This is what Jason was referring to. Remove the social queus, and you end up with people who appear unable to behave socially. They are missing the normal queues that would filter their behaviour: shame, embarressement no longer come into it.
[Alachia] these types of behaviors are also found in adults that run in the same crowd. They take no issue in tearing other down simply because they have the herd backing them. and they only exist in their own small culture so everything they believe, seems like an absolute to them.
[Alachia] the real question is how do you stop it? what can you do to bring things out of the dark ages? into web transparency?
[Alachia] brb. conf call
[Jemimus] Well I think Jason has a point about the very concept of annonimity. Take that out of the picture, and you force people to take some messure of social responsibilty again.
[Morganefay] true, but then you are saddled with the privacy issues
[Jemimus] exactly
[Jemimus] I could imagine some strategies of dealing with it... say you wanted to do a blog, you could keep the commenters to a very select group, of people that you individually vet , perhaps even requiring some personal information, or a small video interview, to allow them to register to comment.
[Jemimus] Jason mentioned these south korean social networks requiring social security numbers to register. This is very strong, because it binds that social identity to a real-life, verifiable and trusted identity
[Morganefay] i have a weird q for alachia...you are very much about privacy, and yet you blog...why?
[Morganefay] Jem--how do you make sure those numbers are not being exploited?
[Jemimus] I dont think they are made public
[Morganefay] but by that company i mean
[Jemimus] they are known to the site owners... makes banning more effective, or in extreme cases tracing, in the case of criminal behaviour..
[Morganefay] ah
[Jemimus] I think though, its the IDEA of it that is probably the most effective. Just -knowing- that your online identity is in some way connected to your rl identity may keep some of those unsocial behaviours in check

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Creepy Rogues

(T8 Models: Death Knight, Hunter, Mage, Warlock, Rogue, and Priest)

Most of the models of the Tier 8 class sets are kind of dull like the Death Knight and Hunter. The mages, once again, look retarded. I feel like like Blizzard will always and forever punish mages for their dps power with the silliest looking gear sets ever. Poor, poor mages. This time they get a glowing fishing lure strapped to their head. hahahah.

Rogue sets however, I'm looking forward to seeing on our one rogue in the guild. Their T8 model looks both freaky, creepy, and disturbing at the same time. It's soo cool. It's like a face on top of their head plate with only your toons eyes peaking out of the helm. And to top it off, their shoulders have skulls with glowing mouths opened on them and neat graphic holo-blades that slice across the shoulders from front to back. Not very stealthy and something I'd more expect to find on a DK or Warlock. It's quite interesting they decided to make the rogues look the most scary this time around. Of course, we haven't seen the lock, warrior, pally, or shammy set models yet either. Usually, nothing is more scarier than the pally Tier models. lol. Captain America anyone?

But whoever did the T8 Rogue set design and the Sons of Hodir, I want them to design the Shaman set. The sheer creepyness is awseome. Have you ever looked closely at the Sons of Hodir Titans? First, if you're flying around in that area, it'll seem like they're not that huge but if you actually stand next to them, you notice that they're f-ing gigantic (TWSS!). Check out their leg plates and you'll notice they have arrows sticking out of them, whole shield chained to their ankles, and skeletons on the bottom of their boots. The best part is their arms. Check it out! They have a polar bear strapped and tied to their arm! Not even a skinned polar bear but a whole f-ing polar bear!! It's awesome.

Starman at Blizzcon

BlizzCon - Kat interviews Mike Gaines and Molly from Kat Hunter on Vimeo.

woot woot! check it out.. fellow wow player and podcaster representin' at Blizzcon! go go Starman!
Thanks Kathunter for making this available to our community!

Malygos

Tonight jae got to attempt Malygos for the first time and we downed him after the 4 full tries. It was great. It's always awesome to clear content but even nicer when you can do it in the time frame you plan.

We only had two bosses left from Naxx from Tuesday's raid and we were lucky and one shot Saph and KT in Naxx and moved on to Obsidian Sanctum. I made a bad wave call though and so we actually wiped once but quickly rezzed and downed him. I can't wait to start doing Drake attempts with him. Those are so much fun.

We had about an hour before raid end to attempt Malygos. What's great about raiding with the type of people we have in our guild is that they're extremely smart. They pick up things very quickly and can adapt well. That was one of my largest frustrations with raiding with a sister guild. There was never anything I could do about people who just never learned or didn't care.

I'm mostly just excited to be raiding as a guild. Ever since we were doing 15 man Zul'Grub runs in TBC, I've always wanted to see the full potential of a full raid. hehe. I guess I'm quite grateful to WoTLK to afford us the ability to start raiding together.

I especially like the fact that I can run a 10 man group through first and learn the fights so that it's easier to figure out the 25 mans. Normally, I'd have to post strats so we could all figure it out as we go. With the 10 man preview, I'm more aware of what needs to happen which is nice. It takes the edge off the anxiety of not knowing.

For the Malygos fight though, it was the first time I'd ever had a DK in the raid to deathgrip the Power Sparks to us during phase 1. It was really nice. It's always great to have some OP in your pocket. lol.

Here's the info I put in my guild forums for the fight, I thought I'd share:
Phase 1:
*Nuke Malygos
*Collect Sparks that float into the platform and kill on top of raid. Never let a spark reach the boss
*Death Knights!!!! please be able to:
/tar Power spark
/cast Death Grip
*Vortex throws everyone in the air. Insta heals only apply during the vortex until everyone lands. Repeat NUKE, Spark Grab, and Vortex until Phase 2

Phase2:
*Malygos goes into the air and two sets of adds are released
*Nexus Lords are on the ground, Scions are on platforms floating above
*Tanks and Spank Nexus Lords then nuke down Scions
*When Scions fall, their floating discs may be used by a raid member, we will assign an order for the discs

Phase 3:
* Cluster together near the tank at all times.
* Keep your macros going (aka combo points before burst)
* When Malygos casts his gaze on you, you can /cast Flame Shield however with our clumping strat we might get away with no shields. (to be tested) You have time to build two combo points and cast shield before he hits you.
* When the tank calls movement away from arcane ball, you can use /cast blazing speed to catch up (we will always move in a counter clockwise direction)

Macros:
--- DPS ---
/tar mal
/castsequence reset=target Flame Spike, Flame Spike, Engulf in Flames

--- Healing ---
/tar pet
/castsequence [target=pet] Revivify, Revivify, Life Burst

Video of 25man Malygos: PLEASE WATCH if you haven't done this fight before


Practice Phase3:
You can practice phase 3 of the Malygos fight by doing the daily quest in Coldarra called [Aces High]
This is highly, highly recommended for anyone who has not attempted phase 3 of this fight before. If everyone can master this phase, Malygos will go down easily.

Sholozar

(current wallpaper: Sholazar Basin)

I was a bad little wow player today. After our 10man raids, I was supposed to go do my daily Sons of Hodir quests but instead opted to head out to Sholazar Basin and do the Oracles Dailies. I just love the zone so much more. I get really immersed into this zone for some reason. It just suits me a lot.

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that one of my favorite places to quest pre-TBC was Un'Goro Crater. Loved, loved that place. And now I have an upgraded version with Sholazar. Marshy, lush green, swamps, with trickling water and gushing streams.

And now I think I've found my new favorite daily questing zone. I can't wait to be done with Sons of Hodir so I can spend more time out in Sholazar guilt free. :)

One Night, Two Mounts

(Bronze Drake and Black War Mammoth)

I know, I know. That's like the perfect title for porn you find in your dad's closet. However, last night I did get two mounts!

After our raid, I respec'd back to Elemental and Sad respec'd back to Retribution. We hit up our usual two heroics, The Culling of Stratholme and Violet Hold. We continue to do the [Culling of Time] Achievement, (4 times now) to get everyone their Reins of the Bronze Drake. Last night was our best time with 5 minutes to spare on the timer. Once we do one more to get Flipmax his drake we can move on to the [Zombiefest!] Achievement and be done with that instance.

The other one we usually try to hit up as much as possible is Violet Hold because one of the achievements requires you to have downed ALL of the bosses available. We've been quite unlucky and have only gotten the same 3 bosses four times in a row.

After, finishing up the Achievement runs though, I noticed I finally had over 300 Stone Keeper Shards which you mainly get by defeating bosses in instances while owning Wintergrasp. I could finally by my [Reins of the Black War Mammoth] which is a beast of a mount! The best part about this mount is that it doesn't cost 1200g or any gold...unless you count the amount of gold I've spent trying some of these heroic achievements. heheh.

I'm now 14 more Achievements away from getting [Glory of the Hero]. I'm still terrified of [Less-Rabi] which I have vowed NOT to go back and do again until it's the last achievement we need. I'm hoping they fix the issue by the time we get back to it again. A part of me visualizes these devs coming up with this achievement while beta testing on local servers. Latency? What latency? lol.