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!!!

Game Stop Out of Pre-Orders

So apparently, I needed to get an extra copy of Wrath for my second account as well as another copy for Taint's new friend (*wink*).

I went to Game Stop yesterday to see if I could score two more pre-orders of Wrath of the Lich King but they said they're out and won't have but the exact amount of copies they ordered! Rats. So I called the Super Walmart right next to that Game Stop and it seems like they're gonna have copies available without pre-order at midnight. So I'll have to try and make two stops tomorrow night!

So exciting! Almost time!

FOB Winner

Gratz to Casetel!
Winner of the WoW Authenticator key!


I have six level 70 toons.
Druid. Mage. Priest. Rogue. Paladin. Shaman.

Get protected!
US Authenticator
Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America Authenticator

Digital Screening

CNN Article Today:
Social networking sites dos and don'ts

"Employers are checking job applicants' profiles on sites like Facebook, Brightfuse and LinkedIn, according to a recent CareerBuilder.com survey."

"Twenty-two percent of employers say they use social networking sites when evaluating job candidates, and an additional 9 percent intend to do the same soon."

"We can also learn a little about the candidate's culture fit and professionalism," says Kelly Vergara, executive director of human resources at digital marketing agency Resource Interactive. "We screen for culture above all else, so this is important."

"Get rid of your digital dirt," says Rutledge. "A large percentage of recruiters 'Google' potential candidates to see what they can find out about them -- both the good and the bad. Be sure that you don't have any information on social networks or other sites that could make a recruiter decide to pass on you as a job candidate."

----------------------------------------

ha ha! I was right!

The digital age of mainstreaming internet technology and web 2.0 tools is quite like giving people access to your bedroom good drawer. Just imagine if your potential employer could scope out your home and car while considering hiring you?

That's what most social networking sites and google allows the "official" side of your life to do. It's also why I'm extremely adamant about keeping my RL official identity away from my more true meta identity which is Alachia.

The last thing I want to have to do is go through my facebook account and delete people simply because association with them or their groups could hurt me economically. That would be the suck.

Also, certain co-workers or what not don't really need to have free access to what I do on the weekends or read my tweet about how much I hate my job etc. Back in the good ol' days, personal information was given voluntarily not involuntarily! heheh.

I'm thinking more than ever that my decision to separate identities is a really good one...especially for someone whose greater part of life is purely meta.

Let them have "Sally Smith's" shell. I can make it all nice and proper. And that way Alachia doesn't have to get too censored. It's far too ignorant as a metazen to ignore the now ever more merging of RL and meta. This is not your black background html groupie cultural hide out anymore. Everything, including sub cultures are becoming mainstream and everything is about instant access to information.

I think it's a great thing actually. Heck, the president-elect just today launched a website solely for a dialogue with the American people. You know when the President of the US chooses to reach out to his nation via meta that this is no longer a cultural quirk. lol.

So if you do have a more private and established meta life, be careful as the article reads. Main stream is moving to your bedroom folks!

Shroom Tabard

Now that the rest of the crew has 70s, I was able to get back on my new main toon... the shammy. She's been in Paid Character Transfer limbo for 3 weeks! It was finally resolved yesterday.

So today I cleared out her bags and bank and then reconfigured all my buttons. Then I decided I really wanted to get her the [Sporregar Tabard]. I just love the blue coloring and the psychedelic mushroom!

So I went out to do the Now that We're Friends quest to kill 12 Bloodscale Slavedrivers and 6 Bloodscale Enchantresses for reputation. However, as it turned out, everyone and their mother was trying to get rep cuz of the achievement stuff. All the mobs were dead.

It then occurred to me, I would be better off taking my druid into Underbog and gathering [Sanguine Hibiscus] for rep turn in instead. So I started to do stealth runs over and over again. At first I kept dying so Felix helped me do a few runs on his druid. Then once I knew where the nodes were it was a lot easier. Plus the new Night Elf Shadowmeld "vanish" ability is awesome.

Afterwards, I hung out with Flipmax for a few hours looking to replenish this toon with cool pets. I love the red moth! it's so cute!! Then we went to Booty Bay where he collected this pet biscuit that made our pets huge! SO awesome looking. I had my own short circuit!

Ready Set Green!

(friend of taint-mage, taint-priest, sad-pally)

Well we did it. Dinged 3 new 70s in time for the expansion.

After they hit 70, we went in with the "green" crew to see how we would fair in Heroic Ramps. I was actually surprised we made it through. It was kind of weird having to take it slow again and watch our pulls. Old school baby!


It took us approximately 4 days played to level, minus the time it took to level herbalism and mining to 375. Not bad but I can say for sure that I'm exhausted and my head needs a rest!

Okay Blizzard, we're ready for WoTLK! Hopefully your greens will be better than ours!

You are Not Prepared

(Agathelos the Raging, Razorfen Kraul)

This is becoming quite the tradition in the jae clan. We level up 2-6 characters each during the span of an expansion and then one month before the expansion decide what we have isn't what we want!

Sad has a warrior and warlock. Taint has a druid, mage, hunter, and shaman. We've already decided I'm going shaman as a dedicated healer for 10 man progression and Felix is going bear tank. Then we debated for awhile and chose Pally Tank for Sad and Holy Priest for Taint. Two classes neither of them have.


So on October 19th, twenty-four days before the release of WoTLK (6 days of which we were out on vacation), we rolled new toons for them. Luckily we had my 70 paladin to aoe grind the crap out of instances. GRIND. GRIND. GRIND.

Deadmines-->Stockades-->Razorfen Kraul-->Gnomeregan-->Scarlet Monestary-->Uldaman-->Zul Furak-->Mauradon-->Sunken Temple-->BRD-->Scholo-->Strat-->Ramparts-->Underbog-->Shattered Halls

ZOMG. grind till I die. Some people would advice questing at some point in the game. The problem is the second we poked our heads in open world, we would waste an hour being ganked. So it was back to the instances.

It was the first time I got to see Razorfen Kraul though. It's quite a large instance. I had no idea how big it was (that's what she said). First time I saw Agathelos the Raging I was like HOLY SH!T! That boar is massive.


Currently, Sad's pally and Taint's priest are 68. We're gonna hit up Old Hillsbrad and BM for the instance quests then try our luck once more in open world at the Kirin'Var Village in Netherstorm. If it gets bad, we'll finish out the grinding in Shattered Halls.

The end is in sight! So much for full epics in WoTLK. Greens it is!

BBL Cruise

going on a cruise to Mexico today. I get back on Thursday. If I had known when WoTLK was coming out I wouldn't have taken this vacation when I did. I probably would have taken a day or two off of work for Wrath instead but oh well.

And when I get back to the US, there will be a new President selected. lol.

Episode 38: 13 Nodes of TBC

Episode 38 is out. This episode takes a look back where I go over my 13 nodes of The Burning Crusade Expansion.

Progress Meter

(while pure dps meters don't always tell the full story, you can learn a lot from them)

I'm a really big fan of DPS meters. I usually run recount and also post wow webstats after every major raid or instance.

A lot of people think I do this in the spirit of competition or some way to flaunt status of certain characters. However, my main reason for keeping track of meters is to check progress and also current ability of toons.

If you constantly play without meters then you have now to gauge progress or loss of progress or no change. Also, meters can help you understand what's going on with a certain toon as well. Like if a mage has a lot of epic gear but is constantly dipping below 1000dps perhaps they're not spec'd right or they simply don't have enough crit and hit rating.

One example where meters really helped is with a hunter friend of mine. We were doing our ZA bear runs and I noticed his DPS dipped 100-200 points below 1000 damage per second. SO I talked to him about it. It turned out that while he had "upgrade" epic gear from 25 mans and BOJs, it all actually hurt his DPS a lot because it had little hit rating. Once he switched back to his old gear, his DPS spiked.

"Just play for fun" - yeah. I agree. I do. I've heard that argument before and I 100% agree with it but it's all about perspective. Some people LOVE just hanging out and they don't care if they wipe a million times or if they don't finish an instance. My hunter friend said that on his last server, they had fun wiping on animal boss over and over again in Karazhan.

If people enjoy their play style, that's good. My play style however is maximizing everyone to the best of their ability and in my experience, if you don't push people to be better and challenge them, they'll never know how good they can be. And excelling and maximizing efficiency in the game is what really gets my jollies. :)

I usually try to help people out with improving their character. However, if they start to get easily offended or don't show interest in pushing or simply say it's impossible, I usually let it go. Pushing people's buttons is something I only reserve for my real friends. hehehee.

Just ask Flipmax and Felix how much crap I give them when I think they're DPS is slipping. lol. JUST KIDDING!

My recommended DPS mod (also shows a lot of other great data) is Recount.

Bring back the Zombies!

Saturday saw the height of the zombie take over on my server. Every major city was completely ravaged by zombies. All bank toons dared not log in! Stormwind looked like the under city! Everyone was infected and all the guards were dead.

It was quite annoying for sure but at the same time there was something amazing about this little virtual disease. As a guild mate pointed out, it was the best cure for Gold Farm Spamming toons. All the little level one toons that love to sit idle in Stormwind spamming their gold macros were all dead. lol.

In addition to gold farmers being killed off, people who sit idle in IF and Shat who love to troll Trade Channel had to flee for their lives as well! hehehe. It was quite the little reprieve from the normal epeen slapping, hate spam we usually get in our chat channels.

Bring back the disease Blizzard! lol. I'll just never be able to retrieve anything from my bank toons but it's a sacrifice I'll make! :D

Re-AQ?

Anyone know why the AQ event reset? Is this some lame attempt at a world event?
Or is this a major wow server glitch? I heard some rumor about people trying to redo sceptor quest to get the Black Resonating Crystal. I wonder if anyone was able to do this before the event started.

Also, the mobs are way smaller than they were in the original opening of the gates. NOT the same awe factor! LAME!

I kept getting ganked trying to take a pic with these new mini giants! damn horde all over my server.

Fastest Server Shutdown

Something is up for sure. Just experienced the fastest server shut down known to all of Azeroth. 15:00 to reset, two seconds later, 3:00, 1 second later 2:45, 3 seconds later 1:50, 2 seconds after that 15 seconds still shut down.

They really, really wanted to fix something. I heard there might be a bug with AQ where the server restart exploited the AQ instance to make it think the event was happening again. Therefore, you could actually recreate the scepter to get the black resonating crystal. Would that warrant a shot gun server restart??? Seems doubtful.

R.I.P WoWAce

WoWAce announced it's demise October 15, 2008

"Today has marked the day where this page has been officially discontinued in favor of the newer systems that have recently been deployed."

"A little over a year ago Curse.com started subsidizing our servers, and for a time that was enough to get us through the worst of it. But we just kept growing.

Things reached a critical mass during 2.4. We filled up the entirety of the 1 gigabit connection we where using and ended up pushing out more than 300GB an hour. With more than 500k users downloading updates for every small change things just couldn't keep up financially."

"We encourage all users who are looking for updates for their addons to head over to Curse.com and look around. "

As a user of many, many mods, this is very sad news. I've always really enjoyed the service WoWAce provided. Their mods were always extremely reliable and most importantly, perceived safety! Maybe it's all propaganda but curse gaming mods and the curse gaming site in my circle has an extremely bad reputation for being super PHISHY.

I have taken extra precaution by running extra spyware and protection software on my computers but nothing creeps me out more than having to dip back down into the curse gaming cesspool on a regular basis. The goods look attractive all the time, no doubt, but are they safe? I guess I'll find out. I suppose I can also look at wowinterface.com, ctmod, and wowmatrix for updaters and more mods. It just sucks that my staple is gone.

They said to stay tuned for what's next and that they needed to take one step back to take two steps forward. I hope we see their return in the future or at least an incantation of it.

Anyhow, THANKS WoWAce! I'll miss you.

The Two Real Choices for US

and by US, I mean "us wow players", not the United States. heh.

I've been very excited about the opportunities of end game PvE for with 10 man raiding in the expansion. I've started going into pre-planning mode trying to ensure the success of our future raids. The real dilemma becomes what is the 10 man raiding content going to require?

What two tanks? What two healers? With Karazhan and Zul'Aman, we saw the rise of the Protection paladin and it's amazing nature to mutli-mob tank. Obviously with the changes to warriors, the options for tanks opens up...as well as with the new Death Knight class. I just don't want us to end up in a position we were in with Zul'Aman, having to find a protection paladin and resto shammy at the eleventh hour.

Druid/Pally tank worked out really well for us. The versatility of the pally tank with being able to heal in interims we found extremely valuable as a raid. The druid over warrior was based on ability absorb extremely large spikes of damage. When you have only two healers in your raid, you're banking on not having to gamble with healing. Druid tanks offer solid reliability with their high percentage of dodge and dmg soaking.

As for 10 man healing, the shaman is a solid choice for very effective and extremely fast HPS raid wide.

So those are the known variables. I'm obviously making huge assumptions here. I'm assuming tank/offtank standards and that two-healer tandem will work for the upcoming 10 man raids.

So is druid necessarily the better main tank or should I make another assumption that Death Knights will make a strong debut in raids that are built to showcase them in WoTLK? Also, will rage starvation trump mana dependancy in the warrior vs pally tank debate? Will multi-mob tanking needs outweigh pure damage soakers?

At this point, it seems like we're going to make a gamble and hope it pans out when we hit 80.

And what about the second healer? Sure Shaman seems like a solid choice for our group. The power behind Chain Heal is unprecedented with raid wide healing followed closely by Priest's Circle of Healing. But what about the power of the priest spirit regeneration as well or the sheer healing strength of Greater Heals and Prayer of Mending? Then of course you can't ignore the sheer speed, strength, and longevity of Paladin Flash Heals??? And what if the raid fights call for sustained healing over time for unique fight cc's and crazy silences that only a Druid could offer best??

AGH! I just don't know. I wish we could just level up all our healers and tanks so we'll have the full arsenal ready to go for whatever WoTLK throws at us. I mean, I know we'll make whatever we have work. It can always work but I don't want it just to work. I'm huge on efficiency and don't just want it to be doable but rather optimal.

Oh well, a girl can dream.

Game Stop Midnight, I'll be there!

I went to Game Stop today and pre-ordered my copy of WoTLK for Taint, Sad, and myself. I walked into the shop and they guy was like "What can I do for ya?"

I was like. "stutter...stutter.. wrath of the lchhhhh.. king pre-order" yeah. I was nervous because there were like 5 other people in this tiny store. I should really be over my awkward shyness by now.

He was like "NOT the collector's edition right?"

I was like "no.. mumble..just the normal.. I mean regular"

Then this other customer who was standing near the counter was like "So, you think the expansion is going to be good?"

I was like "I think so, um, yeah" and as I was saying yeah, he knocked down a rack of game cards but kind of caught them before they tumbled all over the counter. I was so embarrassed I didn't really finish my statement. He didn't say anything either and left the store.

Awkward! I suck at RL human interaction. This is probably why I only have like 2 RL friends.

Later, I asked the clerk if he asked me about the CE because he had some or that he wanted to make sure I wasn't asking for something they didn't have... cuz I was gonna be like, sign me up buddy! hehehe. But no, he was just verifying I didn't meant the CE because they were long gone just like I read about a few weeks ago.

Anyhow, I verified with the him that the store was gonna be open at Midnight. WOoooot! They shall be open for a midnight release and I'll be there...freaked out by all the people but I'll be there! The things I do for WoW. lol.

Stormwind Harbor

Well, I got very little work done this afternoon. Patch days are hard to work through. In any case, I got into my RP vacation home server as it was the first to go live. A fellow guildy kept going crazy in Bindpoint about how awesome the scenery looked and how they must have changed the graphics cuz everything is so much more 3D!

So I logged in.. and OMG!!! The graphics look so cool and everything is so much more 3D!! And there's a new shadow effect thing etc.

We went to the harbor first. WOW!!! Crazy! Beautiful open into this huge harbor. It goes to make Stormwind feel THAT much more epic. And just when you think you're down there and you've kind of got the feeling of space, you look back up to Stormwind and WOW! It just looks so legendary from that angle. He also discovered there's now a boat that takes you directly from Ashenvale to Stormwind.

Next, we went to visit the king but because I don't know any Lore, I'm not sure what was different except this guy had some cool outfit and there's now a huge wall statue behind him. Also, in Stormwind Keep I saw my first gnomehawk. very cool!

After a quick server crash, we were rounding the corner to the Barber Shop! woot! My first achievement on that toon. She got a new hairdo. Also. we tried out the /cower emote and it's the funniest sh*t ever. /cower /cower /cower

I imagine for the next few days Stormwind will be the place to be!

Patch 3.0.2 Highlights

(new login screen)

Things that I noticed in the patch notes:

*The Barber Shop- Finally my druid gets some redemption.

*Spell casting and spell channeling pushback has been changed
When casting a spell: The first and second hit will add .5 secs each to the cast time. All hits after the second will have no effect.

When channeling a spell: The first and second hit reduces current duration by 25% of total duration each. All hits after the second will have no effect.

Spellpower: All items and effects which grant bonus to spell damage and spell healing are being consolidated into a single stat, Spellpower. This state will appear with the same values found on items which grant "increased spell damage and healing" such as on typical Mage and Warlock itemization

*Druids:
Entangling roots can now be used indoors!
Feral Charge can now be used in cat form.
Hurricane no longer has a cooldown.
Tree of Life form, can now cast all healing spell and decurse in form

*Mage: Conjured mana gems no longer disappear from your backpack after being logged out for more than 15 minutes. Higher ranks of Conjure Mana Gem will recharge an existing mana gem to maximum charges.

*Lame! Blessing of Salvation renamed Hand of Salvation, now reduces total threat on the target by 2% per second for 10 seconds while also reducing all damage and healing done by 10%.

*The Sunwell Plateau, Black Temple, and Serpentshrine Cavern Raid Dungeons have all had their mobs and bosses adjusted and now have less health points.

*New Calendar feature

*New Vanity Pet and Mount changes! wohoo. I have bag space again!!!

*Macros and keybinding are now saved server-side. AH yeah. no more copying over my WTF folder everywhere I go!

*Nothing said about nurfing the ZA Bear Mount reward!

Texas Renaissance Festival 2008

View Album

Get your own

Flip, Sadd, Morgan, Morgan's spawn, and myself went to the Texas Renaissance Fesitval this past weekend. It was a very beautiful day. I consumed a sausage on a stick, a funnel cake, and an apple dumpling. I was mad at myself for not being able to eat the corn on the cobb. Disappointing indeed.

I spent a lot of the time there searching for the elusive chain mail chick. hehe. Check out the album to see if I found her. :)

Flipmax's Ball

So, is it just our crazy mage who does this or is this a standard for most raiding mages? You pretty much have to jump through the shat portal as soon as he opens it up or else you play spin the portal and never know where you're gonna land.

That pic is a portal of Shat, Stormwind, Ironforge, Theramore, and Dranassus. I took it and landed in Stormwind where there was a horde trying to gank lowbies. hehehee.

Stormwind Blows

Came across these construction workers in Stormwind while on the RP server doing some fishing. Looks like they're building up some serious TnT to blow this wall sky high. I love coming across stuff like this in the game.

It's that kind of "stumble upon" aspect of WoW that's so great. I know people probably already know all about this from reading wow forums and being in beta etc.. but again, I love the discovery factor of WoW. I admit I did a double take at first and wondered to myself if I actually just never noticed it before. hehe.

So can't wait to see Stormwind get blown up!!! KABOOM!!! DY NO MITE!!

Adventures in RP Land

I'll say the one great thing about the PvE to PvP transfers is that it has allowed me the freedom of opting to roll on a PvE server. If I do actually get it to 70, I can transfer it back to my home realm etc.

Actually, specifically, it's an ROLE PLAYING server. It's quite a cultural change for me and I have found the first 13 levels to be quite unique because of it. For instance, as Flipmax and I were running to kill Goldtooth in Goldshire, we saw two level 70 male human toons off to the side of the mountain just standing next to each other.

We paused for a few seconds and were like "OKAY! movin' on!!! Nothing to see here!"
lol.

Then when I was fishing in Stormwind (what happens when you tandem level, you gotta fish when your buddy isn't online), it wasn't long before a human warrior started fishing next to me. Then he started chatting me up in /say. It was so weird. Just this friendly sort of banter back and forth while we sat there casting out into the moat.

He then offered to take me to Goldshire to learn the cooking profession. I tried to tell him that you could learn it in Stormwind in Old Town as well but he didn't hear me or something in the /say and then he ran off.

Later, while I was still fishing, this player in fish form from the Fishing Tournament Trinket [Hook of the Master Angler] started swimming by. I was so surprised, it freaked me out actually at first. At first I had thought they must have brought back the Croc in the Stormwind moat.

Then he does a /say
You's look tasty
Careful where you swims

hahahahahahahaha. RP servers are awesome.

Brooke Marks does Azeroth

NSFW!!!!! (Thanks Boozefort for the link)
"made me laugh almost right off the bat. I was thinking, you should dumb your podcast down, make it a vlog, and wear a bra. Then you too could be very very popular" -Booze

tempting...but no.

CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO (decided the video embed was annoying for peeps at work as it screamed I'm a perv)

CLASSIC STUFF!
"Open a trade window so I can give you my boner."

I'm not sure a wow vblog could get any worse than this nor am I sure if one could get any more entertaining for my Monday. lol.

Double Trouble

(I'm on the right)

So out of shear boredom and not wanting to deal with guild shit, Flipmax and I flirted with the idea of rolling on another server. (like for realz this time). Just for fun so that we have a place to escape and just sort of play on our own terms. A lot of other people in our guild have done something similar.

So we decided to do twin characters because we thought it'd be the best way to throw people off. Twin warlocks it was. At first we were on the RPPvP server I started the RAOK guild on..and then we were like "WTF are we doing?!! we can roll on a PvE server now! LoL."
So we ended up rolling two human locks on the MetaTalks server instead.

Two locks together, OMG, Over Power to the 10th power! I can not believe how many mobs we were able to take on at like level six! hahahaah.

And what's even funnier is that we kept talking about how we would be able to deal with a lot of the horde situations in Redridge cuz of our OP.. then were like OH YEAH!!!! no ganking on a PvE server!! hahahaha. easy sauce!! straight to the top!

I will say though that being on a server with NO resources is pretty harsh coming from a place where I normally start all my new alts with 18 slot bags and enchanted gear. I'm not sure what's easier, PvP server with resources or PvE server with no resources. :)

We also named our toons almost idential. Liee and Liey. So hopefully people will always be confused. Since this is an RP server, I'm supposed to come up with our background story but am having writer's block.

So far, we're trying to even have synchronized casting times. lol. okay okay, maybe that's going too far. hehehe. Actually our plan is for me to go demonology and him to go affliction and see if that provides a good balance.

ZA Bear Run

We decided, obviously, pretty late to make real attempts at this. We started about 2 weeks ago with a half geared paladin tank. We decided it would be too difficult with a warrior/druid (not impossible but a lot harder). So we spent about two weeks grinding rep and farming badges to get the paladin geared for real runs.

In the meantime, we did practice runs. I was actually surprised how well we did on our first two attempts. The pally tank had never pally tanked before and I had never healed with a shammy in ZA before. On our third attempt, we got to the fourth boss with 1 minute to go. (you have about 45 mins to do 4 bosses)

So once we got our first real group together, we did all four bosses and lost the timer at one minute due to TWO accidental pulls.

Last Wednesday though, we made our second real attempt and downed the final timed boss with 2/3minutes to spare. WOHOO! So now JAE can finally say it did the bear mount run. Doing it with a prot pally is sooooooo much easier than with a warrior.

Of course, now they're going to give warrior unlimited-target thunder clap and deadly shield so I'm not seeing much a difference anymore in prot paladins and prot warriors. :/ Go figure. (wotlk stuff of course)

So now according to most forum posts, we have about four more attempts to get the bear mount before patch takes it out. I did it for the achievement (passed on the mount) but would have loved to get everyone the bear mount. Unfortunately we have run out of time. Don't leave everything to the last minute as my mom would say!

Our make up: Prot pally/Fear Tank/Resto Shammy/Holy Pally/ArcFrost Mage/2xBM Hunter/Combat Swords Rogue/Fury Warrior/Shadow Priest

Bindpoint Convo: History Class

So we were talking in Bindpoint about US History class and the lore came up. It became quite clear how uneducated we were about Warcraft Lore. I thought to myself how much I miss taking history classes (basically learning really cool stories that happen to be true). It'd be really neat if we could hold a Lore class in WoW. I'd definitely attend. It would be a great interactive thing for wow-zens to do to further immerse us into the game. Any Lore experts out there?? :)


***Bindpoint***
***WoWast: Metatalks Channel***
***Scroll Mouse over text box to pause scrolling***
[Alachia] social studies is history right?
[celticlucas] Sure is :)
[Martin] Pretty much. Incorporates some political science and civics, if I remember right.
[Alachia] I USED to be great at history.
[Alachia] all that thas slipped out of my brain
[Alachia] replaced instead with mp5 and spirit calculations and boss strats in Black Temple
[Alachia] oh well.
[celticlucas] I can tell you my +spell damage, but the 15th president? yeah, no. lmao
[[Alachia] I can tell you what major accomplishments Thrall did, but wtf is John Locke?
[Alachia] lol
[Martin] He's a character on Lost.
[Alachia] LMAO!!!!!
[Kitch] ok...what are Thrall's major accomplishments
[celticlucas] ... damn, was too slow lol
[Alachia] Thrall's accomplishments: banging Jane Proudmore and getting her head cut off
[Alachia] that guy was awesome
[Alachia] all right kitch got me, my lore history needs some brushing up too
[Alachia] do you teach a class on Horde Lore, Ms. Morgan?
[Kitch] Thrall is horde, you know.
[Alachia] yes. I know
[Kitch] j/k
[Alachia] He's the ugly orc I follow around in Durnholde instance
[Martin] Thrall is the greatest hero in WoW.
[Alachia] he goes blah blah blah and then I get to kill this really cool dragon.
[Kitch] if the instance isn't bugged, yeah
[Alachia] you see, this is what happens when TC stops doing wow lore episodes
[Martin] Heh.
[Morgan] i could if you needed...lol
[celticlucas] there's an idea... WoW University
[Alachia] I only know wow lore up to Sargeras
[Morgan] thrall is also the budding center of eastern williamson county academia as well...lol
[NewKetchup] Yep Alachia, Thrall's a noob - always breaking cc
[Alachia] I'd take the class
[Alachia] we could hold it in a neutral town
[Alachia] like the thunderdome in gadget
[Alachia] lol
[Morgan] lol
[Alachia] not a bad idea
[Alachia] just need to find a lore expert
[celticlucas] the only lore expert I ever knew is now off in Warhammer land pretending to not like WoW anymore lol
[Alachia] :(

(mouse over the chat box to stop text from scrolling up)

Kodo Waddle

On the 19th and final attempt of my group, my kodo mount fell tonight! I really love the bongos on the back of the saddle or are those beer jugs? lol. Who knows. But I really love how fast they waddle from side to side. They're a lot like Elekks but without the fear of heights involved. heh.

Each boss kill for us is usually around 45 seconds but summoning and inviting alts takes like 5 minutes, not to mention having someone configure buttons. :P So I'm glad to be finally done with Adventures of Drunk Dwarf Slaughtering.

Now onto a new mount! mwahahaha. We've made two solid attempts to get the bear boss in ZA (the timed chest event). Last Friday, we had our paladin DC three times during the attempt. Tonight, we had one stray add group pull and a bad positioning on Phoenix boss otherwise we would have had it! We were less than one minute off from getting it! So close...so close.

It is rather nice though to have a new goal before the expansion. Also, it'd be great for to be able to get this achievement as it won't be available once the expansion comes out. Someone said they might take the bear mount reward away in an upcoming patch. I hope not. We need more time!

Episode 37: Bindpoint

This episode is all about my favorite new meta tool, Bindpoint :)
Finally, I get to share with everyone what Bindpoint actually is and what we hope it will do to change the landscape of our meta community.

Related Links:
*Bindpoint Community Feedback Site
*AOEware.com



Click Here to Listen or Subscribe to WoWcast Episodes

Bindpoint Convo: Cyber Bullying

Good conversation we had in Bindpoint-Metatalks channel about cyber-bullying these days. (in reference to the My Space controversy discussed in Episode 36)


***Bindpoint***
***WoWast: Metatalks Channel***
***Scroll Mouse over text box to pause scrolling***
[Cyber] Hello everyone. It is I, the Meta Moonknight
[Alachia] hola moon!
[Cyber] It has been a long time since my Meta form has been able to chat with you Alachia.
[Alachia] like a year!
[Cyber] wow
[Cyber] I have been meaning to post a response to the last episode.
[Cyber] Been listening on my trip to work and it has been excellent
[Jemimus] Heya Cyber
[Cyber] Hello
[Cyber] BTW, that case that you mentioned Jemimus. The girl's name was Megan Meier. That all happened near my city
[Cyber] Kinda surreal hearing someone speaking about it that was not on our local news broadcasts
[Alachia] yeah, I posted a wikepedia link to her page on my blog.
[Alachia] really sad story there
[Alachia] emotional abuse should really be a crime
[Jemimus] well I think they passed a law in the state that made it a crime now, did they not?
[Cyber] Yes it is now a crime
[Jemimus] I dont think those people ever showed remorse for that they did
[Alachia] I'm not sure they thought it was wrong
[Cyber] No, it was really hard dealing with it around St. Louis for a while
[Cyber] Then some guy posted a really evil blog about her
[Cyber] it was titled "Megan Had It Coming"
[Cyber] He later claimed that he was trying to prove a point but I never found out what the point was
[Alachia] the point being he's an asshole?
[Cyber] That was my take
[Cyber] The case really hit home with me. Made me wonder about a lot of things
[Jemimus] to me it says that we get a lot from the narrow aperture if online personal exposure, but we pay a price too
[Cyber] I want to only be angry about what the woman did but then I also feel a lot of anger towards Megan's parents
[Jemimus] I cant remember the specifcs of the case, what was the issue with her parents?
[Cyber] Well my issue with her parents and many others is that I do not think that young teenagers need to be allowed to have access to social networking sites like MySpace.
[Jemimus] I am not sure of I would agree with that one
[Cyber] Right before she hung herself, her mother had an argument with her regarding the language she used in response to the messages she was receiving
[Cyber] Well let me rephrase
[Cyber] I should not say that we need to isolate teens from online social networking, I just do not know where the line should be when it comes to allowing teens exposure to this environment.
[Cyber] Not to say that people are not cruel in RL, but somehow the written word has the ability to hurt more than the spoken one.
[Alachia] I think it's the actual accessability to broadcast cruelty that makes social networks and online media so dagnerous during that phase of adolecense
[Jemimus] I am not sure we are able to draw a line. Once you let someone on the internet, tne sky is the limit. Technical blocks are useless against the curiousity of a teenager. Only good advise and guidence can help, but in the end, you cant control what hey do, and you cant check it.
[Alachia] you can block sites, you can lock down computers but acutally shielding kids from kid cruelty is impossible.
[Cyber] this is true
[Alachia] I dread ever having a daughter for fear of knowing the type of horrible things I endured emotionally at school.
[Cyber] which is what scares me
[Cyber] I remember how difficult it was for me
[Alachia] there are even types of bullying that involve taking pics of girls in the locker room or bathroom with their cell phones and posting it on myspace or youtube
[Alachia] cyber bullying is the new wave of teenage angst
[Jemimus] I too, do not considder school to have been a happy time. However, here is nothing I can do about it. All I can do is advise my kids well, explain to them what they are going to encounter, both online and offline
[Alachia] even befriending girls as bestfriends and getting them to do stupid things just so they can post it to boost their own popularity
[Alachia] yeah. open communication and support is probably the best you can do
[Alachia] and of course, not turning your back to the technology and exposure you allow your kids
[Cyber] That is what I think I get angry about. I am not sure that we have enough parents familiar with what is possible online.
[Jemimus] I think guidance is key. We are in the position our own parents where not in.. where we can understand the technology aswell as our kids. But here is a really practical example of what I would do: Computer in the livingroom, with the screen facing the room...
[Alachia] aye, very wise tip for parents these days

(mouse over the chat box to stop text from scrolling up)

Bindpoint Open Beta

Come join open beta please!
Let's start pioneering the infrastructure of how want to engage and communicate in the meta!




You'll be hearing me talk about Bindpoint more very soon. It's like the answer to my prayers about how we interact online outside of MMORPGs. But for now, give it a go. Let me know what you think.

0/18 Attempts, No Kodo

So last night, 5 of us attempted to get the [Great Brewfest Kodo Mount]. It's an extremely easy Brewfest holiday boss, Coren Direbrew, in BRD that takes less than 40 seconds to kill.
I used all six of my characters to summon the boss, Taint used 6, Flipmax used 3, Sad used 2, and Scrub Lock used 1. (LOL. inside joke. i <3 you Morgan)

EIGHTEEN attempts! And not one mount dropped. Another group in our guild did it 7 times and got 3 Kodo mounts!!! WTF? lol. So needless to say, we shall attempt it again until one of us gets a Kodo mount anyhow.

The Fat Lady Sings

I ended the joint raiding today. I'm so happy. It was like trying to break up with someone honestly, very awkward and uncomfortable. In the end though, it was for the best. A few of our guys aren't interested anymore and he's constantly bringing new people.. so we've really lost our core.

Without a core group, progression raiding is worthless. And he asked me if we wanted to go back and do SSC instead, I was like what for?? This wasn't about hanging out together, it was about progressing.

He was not happy and I'm sure he made sure his entire guild hated us for it..but I'm not really phased. He told me I should skull-f..k my guys and get a hold of my guild. LOL. It was like talking in circles.

I'm just so happy though. We had a good run, we accomplished a lot. I'm proud of my guys and I'm sorry he didn't take the same thing out of it. I guess that's the difference between raiding for the experience and raiding for bragging rights.

I'm really looking forward to the expansion and am not sure what I'm going to do to prepare for it. I kind of wanted to keep everything fresh for the launch date but now I'm thinking it won't hurt to take a peak. :)

No Rush to 80

Thank you Sayomara for linking this article to me.
http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/09/04/realm-first-level-80-titles-removed/

Hopefully Blizzard does something to notify the masses that the race for no-sleep/all-play is off. hehehe. So according to this wowinsider article, they are taking away the "first" titles in the game, including professions.

They're concerned for their player's health and of course people rushing through the content. This is a great load off my mind as now I get to kick back and enjoy questing again. :D

We haven't had a static 5 since ....the dawn of time! LoL. I look forward to it a lot. Warrior, Mage, Lock, Shaman, Druid??? Maybe...

Feats of Strength or Stamina?

With the Expansion will come Achievement tallies. The first of which will belong to the category of Feats of Strength which are more unique than the others.

I'd love to get the First of Something on the Server but I'm not sure what that is going to take. I imagine it will take A LOT of preparation, research, and planning. And as much as I'd love to stake claim on being the First Druid or First Engineer, I also kind of want to enjoy my leveling experience.

To be honest, one of the best parts of the game for me is just questing and leveling up my toons with friends. The rest if just personal bonus. I'd hate to let a little merit badge spoil me of that unique experience in the game. :D

We'll see. I'm thinking I'd have to take off work, research all the quests, and get the rest of my group to play with me for 48 hours straight to win First Class or First Race achievements. :) And who has that kind of stamina!!

Learn2Tank

That statement is directed at me actually. We keep having issues with the main tank of cykos dropping like a rock. It's almost as if he's a paper tank sometimes. And I go back and look at the stats, it's hard to tell what went wrong.

I wish I had learned to tank so I could offer up advice. I SHOULD learn to tank. I just never enjoyed it much so I never studied it much. Now I'm realizing that a raid leader probably should know as much they can about every aspect of the game. I have the healing, dps part covered but I need 2learn2 tank. :)

So here's the break down of last night's raid. Once again, cykos brings ENTIRELY new peeps to the raid. They have yet to bring a consistent group since the first day we started to raid with them. (nov13, nov13, nov13). Anyhoo, the healers were new, not incompetent but just new.

We got to Azgalor and about 25% left on the bosses health, the tank drops like a rock. (me, being dead from getting curse of doom *The target dies after 20 seconds and spawns a Lesser Doomguard*, can only watch as this happens. doubt I'd been able to help anyhow)

Oh yeah, one more thing about this fight, he does a Howl of Azgalor, 5sec aoe silence on a 15sec cooldown.

so here's the last 5 seconds of the tank's life:
Azgalor melee swing hits the Tank for 8077 Physical. (666 Blocked)
Tank gains 841 health from Druid Lifebloom.
Azgalor melee swing hits the Tank for 6374 Physical. (536 Blocked)
Paladin Flash of Light heals Tank for 1723.
Tank gains 841 health from Druid Lifebloom.
Tank gains 512 health from Druid Regrowth.
Tank gains 1038 health from Druid Rejuvenation.
Tank gains 841 health from Druid Lifebloom.
Azgalor melee swing hits the Tank for 8486 Physical. (536 Blocked)
Tank gains 840 health from Druid Lifebloom.
Paladin Flash of Light heals Tank for 1716.
Azgalor melee swing hits the Tank for 7460 Physical. (536 Blocked)
Tank gains 841 health from Druid Lifebloom.
Tank gains Shield Block.
Tank gains Reinforced Shield.
Lifebloom heals Tank for 1728
Tank Dies

DMG TAKEN by TANK: 30,397
HEALS on TANK: 11,762

So I can only assume the two resto shamans, two holy priests, and the other paladin left on him were silenced during that time.
I also see no Healthstone or Healing pot used by the tank.
Also, it appears the tank took no crushing blows.

It seems like this is a two part problem. One, not enough HOTs on the tank and two, how did the tank take that much damage in 5 seconds? Normally he avgs about 10k per 5 seconds of time.

Case of bad luck or what? It's hard for me to tell. I need to get a tank to look at the date for me.

Christmas comes early!

Wrath to be released November 13th
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/splash-wrathdate.htm

I for one have been begging for this day to come since May whenever I found out about the 10 man raiding content. Although I had wished it was more like 15 man content, I'm fine with anything less than 20.

What this means? NOT having to BEG people to raid with us anymore. NOT having to settle for complete jerks and scrubs to help you progress. Finally being able to see new content at a reasonable pace. I am SOOO very excited.

Finally being able to prove to everyone that you don't need gear or an a-hole jacktard yelling at you to be a kick @ss player.

Also, getting to explore new content again is something I've longed for ever since I first came across Nagrand for the first time. It really took my breath away. I have no doubt Northrend will do the same.

Thank you Santa for bringing Wrath early this year. It could not have come sooner.

When I Collide with Myself

Blogger chalice said...
So in your experience, what happens when the meta 'you' and the lifeworld 'you' collide? Do you ever find yourself in situations where your meta ID is incompatible with your RL ID? Clearly, there is some of 'you' in both, but you stated you were more identified with your meta ID and felt it was closer to the authentic you, I think? So does that ever put you in situations or relationships in the meta that are not workable in or transferable to the lifeworld, due to people's expectations and perceptions of you there?

There are usually two times that the two are in conflict and it happens frequently.

One being when people I meet purely on a wowcast-meta basis get to know me really well and privacy barriers need to come down. It becomes a sort of trust issue. Although I don't mind it so much. It always feels natural to slowly let people in as you get to know them better. I think this is true for most people regardless of if they had any walls up in the first place.

The second is when I realize that all the people who do know me only from the RL aspect don't/won't/can't get the meta side at all... It's like speaking a foreign language. All they want to engage with me are standard RL social archetypes.

So what usually happens is personality by omission. I don't lie about myself but I just don't engage openly in personal stuff with pure meta-associates and I don't engage in meta stuff with my personal friends....etc. But as people get to know me better they start to see parts of each for sure, it's just that one isn't focused as much as the other.

F-king aye. I will say that it can be mentally exhausting sometimes though. It honestly would have been better I think if I had just started out with full disclosure. Of course, back then, that wasn't the culture of the podcasting community.

I actually had someone link me a picture once asking me if it was me. They said if it was me, it would change everything. I remember thinking to myself, "really? seriously?" It was kind of insulting actually but I brushed it off.

Sure there are a lot more people out there who aren't afraid to flash their RL pics and videos left and right. But there are some who still felt like the meta would be a great escape from that type of social norm. I like the idea of a place where you are judged first on your persona then on social prejudices/standards of physical appearance. I mean, that's just not possible in the real world. It's a shame the meta is getting saturated again with the very social shackles that made me want to escape the RL in the first place.

Episode 36: Meta Identities Supplemental

Episode 36 began as a question a long time ago when I discovered the background story of the virtual band, Gorillaz. It just fascinated me that this virtual rock band had so much weight and significance to it. And people just widely accepted the "entity" as it was presented, not really regarding the reality behind it at all.

And as I started to unravel the walls I built up to present WoWcast as a specific entity, I wondered if Alachia, me, could be taken as seriously. Or does there need to be a hard link between RL self and meta-Alachia.

I actually had a lengthy talk with Starman one night about his decision to go public with his main identity and asked him if he thought it was possible to be taken seriously without revealing your RL profile. We both ended up agreeing that it'd be very difficult in the culture of Web 2.0 where everything is all about micro-caching all aspects of your life. Very few people are just interested in the vague aspects of a person when they're so used to blatant transparency.

My talk with Jemimus helped me flush out a lot of my concerns and contemplations on the subject. I was so adamant about people's acceptance of virtual constructs that I kind of lost site of the landscape around me. It's not all black and white. There is no longer a clear separation of VIRTUAL worlds and REAL worlds.

We've come to a very exciting point as meta pioneers. A great merge has begun, creating a new landscape where there is no clear line anymore between RL and Meta. You're just as accepted to post your profile on GAX online as you are My Space. And it's just as valid to post screenshots of Nagrand as it is pictures of your best friend's birthday.

It's far less and less today about what you post so much as how often you post and how often you are caching every aspect of your life..... but that discussion is for another episode! :D

Related Links:
Face book scandal: Suicide of Megan Meier
Open ID: How Does Open-ID Work?
Web 2.0:"the term encapsulates the idea of the proliferation of inter connectivity and social interactions on the Web"
Facebook: Social Networking Site
Twitter: Micro Blogging Site (alachia's tweets)
Tad Williams: Otherland Series
Internet Meme: Thanks to Jemimus for this terminology. The actual term was never used in the podcast but it widely describes the cultural shifts we were describing.

Digital Abstinence vs Digital Protection

"One interesting and fast-growing species of Internet fraud is phishing. Phishing attacks use email messages and web sites designed to look as if they come from a known and legitimate organization, in order to deceive users into disclosing personal, financial, or computer account information. The attacker can then use this information for criminal purposes, such as identity theft, larceny, or fraud. Users are tricked into disclosing their information either by providing it through a web form or by downloading and installing hostile software.

A phishing attack succeeds when a user is tricked into forming an inaccurate mental model of an online interaction and thus takes actions that have effects contrary to the user's intentions. Because inferring a user's intentions can be difficult, building an automated system to protect users from phishing attacks is a challenging problem." -http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2005/10/25/what-is-phishing.html

I just got this gigantic lecture/scolding from Taint(my brother) about Data Abstinence. Apparently, when I was trying to test out a new networking site, I added his email address to my friends list.

In hindsight, I realize how dangerous and wrong this was. You're never supposed to give a 3rd party your account info or primary email address. And it's extremely bad etiquette to give away your friends or family's email address even if it's to invite them to the new application. You should always ask first.

According to him, a lot of these sites pop up under the guise of a new web 2.0 application. Once they become popular and rally a lot of user networks, they get bought out because they already have set focus groups established. Their database is worth more than their company. That's why you usually want to always have three email addresses: spam email, semi legit, and primary email address.

And while you may have spyware terminators, AVG, Norton etc set up to act as protection, sometimes that's not enough. Especially with the growing number of new applications and social networking sites, you might want to just practice digital abstinence...Stick with known sites. Or if you want to pioneer new applications, make sure you use spam email.

When I was trying out Digsby for the first time, I realized I was pretty much giving the software access to my email account through msn/gtalk etc. I ended up setting up a completely separate account just for chatting. It's amazing how easily you want to trust these sites and applications. Just be careful.

Twit Expand: What Constitutes Contributing

So I asked this in Twitter:
Does anyone really enjoy gearing out people who don't contribute anything to the raid?

nofax1 replied: F-CK NO!

obiwanadobe replied: I would say no except I know at some point I was that guy. I guess the question would be what constitutes a contribution

celticlucas replied: they won't be able to contribute until they get geared... Catch 22.

Thanks for the replies. I really throw this question out there from being frustrated with the repeated abuse of good guilds. Too many times there are established guilds who bring up characters into a cushy silver-spoon existence. They never have to experience progression, they never have to bother learning their class, they never have to bother with flasks or consumables.

They just simply show up and stand there until loot falls. Of course, they always do it under the guise of "hanging out with friends and family"...
So yeah, it's hard to be critical when your guild supports that attitude of community and friendship..etc.

However, at some point, you just feel so sponged and used, you just want to scream, "NO MORE! HELP YOURSELF FOR ONCE!"

And it's not like I don't want to help people because I really do. I enjoy seeing people grow in this game. I love being able to share their experiences from total awe at new content to total pwnage on the dps charts.

What really gets under my skin though is people who take established raids for granted. Those who feel like they need to only come for two or three runs until they get their loot and then don't bother to help out the rest of the raid. And even one step further, ask to bring their next alt in for loot knowing full well they have no intention to help progression.

Yes, I understand having loot is nice and dandy but do you really need it just to have it? Isn't it okay to take a step back and say "I'm obviously only here to hang out every once in awhile, let me do the best I can with what I have" ???

I guess there's this general alt theory going around that as long as you kind of can play each class, you should roll as many alts as possible. That somehow, the priority isn't in perfecting and really maximizing your class but rather getting as much loot on it as possible and moving to the next.

It's a shame too because just a little bit of time and practice (with OR without the gear), I believe MOST people can do really, really well with a little direction and a lot of motivation.