Purple and Shiny

I had my 10man raid do wish list for me so I could compile a loot list for all the bosses. I figured we’d have a couple of bosses we could start to skip after a few more rounds and then be able to concentrate on the super hard mode bosses.

Turns out, the list is a lot larger than I thought it would be which means EVERYONE is in need of upgrades from Ulduar hard modes. Several still need normal mode loot.

I tried out the site http://gear-wishlist.appspot.com/ and chugged in my toon. I don’t agree with all their best in slot choices but my playstyle is probably different from the general play of 25man shaman heals since I only do 10mans.

It’s interesting just how much of the upgrades are NOT obtainable for me just from running 10man Ulduar. Just looking at my weapon…I can only hope for a side grade of sorts. Nothing about the Ulduar loot table was drool worthy from being fully decked in 25man Naxx gear.

I’m beginning to think this was not intended because I heard they are changing this in the new 10man content. Hopefully we’ll start seeing some decent upgrades.

Onyxia Revisited

This past weekend, Flipmax and I were wondering if Onyxia was doable with two people. The last time we had tried to take the dragon out was nearly a year ago when all we had attempted it with a level 70 mage and a level 70 druid. It did not go so well.

 

Curiosity satisfied, it is more than easy to take her out with two people. In fact, I’d she’s easily soloable for a good portion of the classes. Sadly, it was my shamans first time downing Onyxia! And of course the first thing we said as soon as we got into the instance was “odds left! evens right!” and after we downed Onyxia we killed every whelp in the caves. “like one if a F0000uuu***ing Million!” good times.

 

  As we were skipping out of the cave, we noticed a pit of lava below the path out of the instance. I decided to jump in and of course, Flipmax follows thus answer the famous question (if your friends jumped off, would you?). In any case, we got stuck in the lava with no way out!

 

Turns out, if you get qued into a BG from a pit of lava, you can AFK out and you’ll be transported ALIVE and well at the graveyard. :D

Rusted Proto for Keeps

After further discussion, we decided not to remove the rusted and ironbound proto-drake rewards for the normal and heroic Glory of the Ulduar Raider meta achievements when patch 3.2, Call of the Crusade, launches, and currently have no plans to remove them in the foreseeable future. However, we will continue to evaluate the situation and if a decision is made to remove these rewards at any point in the future, we'll provide a one month warning so players will have time to make some final attempts.- Blue post from Eyonix

This of course is supposed to be great news for me and my 10man crew who have been chasing the clock ever since they dangled the possibility of 3.2 over our heads. With 3.2, the Rusted and Iron Proto Drake were to be taken out of the game. Now, it looks like we not only do we have plenty of time, we have an eternity.

What this means for us is that we can now go back to concentrating on getting gear for the team instead of pushing the Glory of the Ulduar Raider curriculum.

However, this also means, I’m not sure I give a sh1t about the drake anymore either. It’s sort of a double edged, this news. On the one hand, great news we have more time… on the other hand, who cares about the achievement anymore?

Would the Armani War Bear mean much if it was still attainable? Would the Plague or Black Proto Drake mean anything if you could still grind OS, Maly, and Naxx to get it post 3.1? Not really. Sometimes I really don’t understand the motivations behind Blizzard’s actions.

Chillmaw

Chillmaw
Originally uploaded by alachia
I've been working on my Argent Tournament dailies for the past week or so trying to get enough tokens to move up to the larger ring to do even MORE dailies.

I finally got to the big tent and came across the daily called Threat from Above. It's a suggested 3 Players daily quest that requires you to kill 1x Chainmaw and 3x Cultist Bombardiers.

I flew out there thinking I was going to be able to easily solo it despite the player suggestion and nuke the hell out of this dragon and be done with it.... Flame shock! Lava Burst, Lightning Bo----- *SMACK* *SMACK*-- the Cultist spawn and boom, I'm dead.

I tried this about 3 times using all my cooldowns including heroism. I was very frustrated. I sat there for a bit trying to figure out how I could solo him and his ads when a horde orc DK came flying down. He pulled Chillmaw down and immediately started dropping down in health.

I must admit I was sort of delighted thinking I was going to get to watch this horde die to this mob that had been kicking my @ss. NO SUCH LUCK. While he hovered at 50% health, he never went below that and proceeded to pwn all the mobs down completing his quest.

This made me extremely pissed off... (you know qq class imbalance and all that). Finally after thinking on it for awhile, I decided to switch my spec back to resto and put on my healing gear.

Sure enough, with a combination of rotating Earth Shield and Water Shield on myself and using Flame Shock and FlameStrike Totem kiting, I was able to down them all by myself. It took me much longer than the DK but I was just happy that I could actually do it.

The next night, I ended up tanking Chillmaw for two horde clothies who cheered me on. /flex Shammy power! yeah, I dunno, sometimes I'm good to horde and sometimes I hate them.

One Toon to Rule them All

Snarly
Originally uploaded by alachia

After declaring my shaman as my main for WoTLK, I've been extremely satisfied with the results. Yes, I miss my druid a lot and yes I miss the aspect of playing other classes at end game.

However, there has been nothing worse than having to start at ground zero with a character's history for me. Especially when it comes to having keys for instances or not having a flightpath or my favorite unique pets. There are so many things about the history of your character and gameplay that you would have liked to carry with you.


For example, on my shaman, I don't even have the bloody Karazhan key although I have it on FOUR other toons! It is also frustrating as all hell knowing I have two AWESOME unique pets on my priest that I can't pull out while I'm playing now. I even had to go back and kill trash in ZA just so I could get mojo AGAIN!

Needless to say, I'm all for the idea of having one character now that has ONE history. Yes, it comes at the great sacrifice of not being able to play classes you might like on a regular basis. But if it means I don't have to go get attuned to some daily quest in the Outlands just to complete a holiday quest, it might be worth it.

Another great perk to having ONE main toon is that your gold becomes more concentrated so you can splurge on things like a mekgineer chopper :D

And yesterday, I was doing the fishing daily from Shat (trying to get find fish) and I got Snarly from the quest reward!! I was so excited as it was a pet I really wanted back in TBC. A baby croc is just the cutest thing ever...almost as cute as the baby panda.

I guess I'm just going to have to learn to love being a space goat shammy forever. Losing yet another adorable pet would be heart breaking. It still pangs me a ton I never get to see my baby gorilla and baby hippogryph. *sniff*

Crazy Cat Lady

Crazy Cat Lady
Originally uploaded by alachia

Our 10man is slowly getting its stride back which is great. However, in the next week or two we're going to have another flux due to vacations. Win some, lose some.

We're trying to work down the list for Glory of the Ulduar Raider and after tonight, we have about 5/13 achievements with about four super tough ones left.

Tonight we knocked out another easy one, Crazy Cat Lady which was to defeat Auriaya with her kitty cats alive throughout the fight. Aside from some extra poundage on the OT, it wasn't bad at all.

Then we moved to Thorim hard mode. It's a two part hard mode process for that fight, one being a timed gauntlet run and the other surviving a psychotically horrific lightning/blizzard storm show! We didn't down Thorim HM tonight but we got really close. I have a feeling we'll be getting our first sigil by tomorrow. *crosses fingers*

Episode 45 Supplemental

Episode 45 is up.

Once again, I fail at doing an intro and outro to the show. I’m still getting used to the new format. I will say I am thoroughly enjoying my sit downs with @eljeppy. I always imagine I have tea and biscuits in front of me while we chat. :)

So this episode was spawned a few weeks ago after I had read this warlock blog: jagoex.blogspot.com about a Paladin Blogger, Ferraro, being exposed as using a fake photograph and claiming to be someone they weren’t.

This of course piqued my interest as to doing with how we perceive meta identities and then lead into a discussion about WoW information blogs in general which then lead into a discussion about elites and casual who use such tools.

What is really interesting is that several weeks after we recorded this episode, the Paladin Blog is back up and seemingly going strong. It laid low for awhile and is now simply chugging along…which sort of confirms one the theories we discussed about how there are no “real” consequences in the Meta.

Anyhow, apologies for the delayed release. hope you enjoy.

The Celestial Planetarium

Brann Bronzebeard says: Now, this is what we call a nice find!

After we downed Iron Council Hardmode, the Archivum Data Disc dropped which I picked up. I went back this weekend to turn it in in hopes that we’ll start the quest line in Ulduar to unlock Algalon.

So I turned in the disc to Brann Bronzebeard and then he told me to find the doorway to the Celestial Planetarium which I had never been to before. It was in one those sections of Ulduar you never head towards.

I circled around for a good 15 minutes not understanding why I hadn’t “discovered” the entrance yet. I got as close the doorway as I could but it was guarded by Chamber Overseer. Finally, I decided to just make a go for the door and sure enough it completed the quest, just as the mob pwned my ass. lol.

Now, we’re set to try to get Hodir, Thorim, Freya, and Mim’s Sigil to get a Celestial Planetarium Key which will unlock Algalon. dun dun dun. I’ll be happy if we even get half of the hardmode bosses down at this point. :D

IC Hardmode Down

Iron Council Hard mode has been our latest challenge in progression. Every time we thought we would make a good go at the encounter, something would unfortunate would happen. We’d lose a player that week to work or someone would quit raiding due to blah blah blah.

It’s like every time we take a step forward, we end up taking two steps back. Anyhow, that’s pretty much how my raiding experience has been going this summer. It’s very frustrating always feeling like you’re starting over again.

Tonight we downed IC hardmode. It took longer for us to get all of our raiders in WoW due to Authentication Server Failures for two hours than it took to do our 18 attempts.

We used Prot Pally, DK Tank, Resto Shammy, Holy Priest, and DPS Mage x 2, DK, Hunter, Boomkin, and Rogue. I was actually impressed we had the DPS to pull it off because our new DK is poorly geared as he just started.

I remember the days of 40mans when we used to moan how much easier it would be to find 25 dedicated raiders. Then I remember whining about how much easier it’d be to find 10 committed raiders than 25….. and now, I can’t even keep a static 10man group consistent. GAH!!! If only 5mans raids… hehehe.

Rilletoo Gets a Gig

Rilletoo gets Paid
Originally uploaded by alachia

Tough economic times in Azeroth. However, Rilletoo was able to find a gig from Grimand Elmore in Ironforge to deliver a crafted weapon to Mountaineer Stormpike in Loch Modan.

He set out of Ironforge and headed north in the snow, definitely regretting he chose to wear sandals. Being sort of a lost soul, he wondered around aimlessly and was easily distracted. For some reason he was compelled to collect every peacebloom and silversage along the way.

About midway to the Northgate Pass, he happened upon Amberstill ranch where he ran into a young female dwarf named Yarlyn Amberstill. Apparently the ranch was down on its luck and she was selling off her pet rabbits to try to earn money to buy feed for the rams.

Rilletoo was not in need of another companion as Thoggak (his voidwalker) was already a hassle to take care of. However, he felt sorry for the lady and scrounged his pockets for the 18 silver pieces to buy a snowshoe rabbit.

A few wondering sandal prints later and a lot more peaceblooms, Rilletoo finally arrived with the package and delivered it to Mountaineer Stormpike. He was paid 7 silver pieces! DOH! The whole trip ended up costing 11 silver!

Outraged, Rilletoo carted around Loch Modan raging curses among the living creatures.

Silly gnome he is...

Negativity

There are few things that annoy me more than poor attitude while raiding. I’ve been around the block with raiding and have been doing so off and on for years now. Nothing will suck the life out of you or drain you more than poor players and poor attitudes.

The worst of it comes from those who mistake progression for failure. Lately, we’ve been hitting up hard modes in Ulduar which is sort of our first real blocks of progression for this patch. I admit, it hasn’t been all that fun but definitely feels doable. The learning curve is much greater than anything we’ve encountered since Black Temple in my opinion (Naxx, OS, EOE were extremely easy to learn).

Because my 10man group has sort of become fluid due to RL stuff, we’ve have quite a number of alternates now. One of them in particular has been starting to gnaw at my nerves. Every turn we make, there’s a new negative comment.

“we can’t do this with this group”.. “we don’t have the gear for this”..”this isn’t the right make up”…”we don’t have enough people”….”maybe we aren’t ready for this”… blah blah blah. I’m sick of hearing it.

All I want to hear is the sound of people rezzing and running the f*ck back to rebuff and go again. In my experience when it comes to raiding, the people who think they are good enough usually end up becoming good enough. And when you’re hitting up a particularly hard wall, for f*ck’s sake, don’t bring moral down even further with BS negativity. Start pwning or GTFO.

Ahune

Ahune
Originally uploaded by alachia

This year was my first time with Ahune which means he was easy sauce for me as it's only a 73 elite boss. I heard back in the day it was quite a challenge when the level cap was 70.

I have to say he was an impressive beast.... I haven't been this impressed by a boss since Ragnaros which is ironic because according to the lore, he was designed to take out Ragnaros.

They don't make giants like this anymore in the game...even the bosses in Ulduar don't compare graphically to his epic size and grandeur.

Lucky for me, he is easily two-mannable. I haven't gotten the pet scorchling everyone farms him for yet but I actually like visiting this boss now for the hell of it.

Pole Dancing for XP

Pole Dancing
Originally uploaded by alachia

Midsummer Festival is probably one of the most useful holiday events of the year. I went around all Saturday pissing on horde bonfires and honoring alliance once. This yielded me a great deal of gold.

Today, I realized you can pole dance to gain the Ribbon Dance buff increasing my alts XP by 10%. The more I danced around the pole the more the buff would stack in time until it reached the max 60mins.

The buff stays as long as you don't die so it's pretty uber.. now is definitely the time to level alts... not to mention all the bonfire nodes give pretty darn good XP.

Broom Broom

END Northrend Road Trip: Borean Tundra
Originally uploaded by alachia

Got a little pissed off in the real world today...so I decided to buy myself a chopper this evening (which did make me feel a lot better).

It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be considering they nurfed the falling ability. It's still just cool as hell being able to ride around with your friend.

Flipmax and I decided to ride throughout the southern lands of Northrend from Howling Fjord to Borean Tundra with a slight detour up through Sholazar Basin to do some Thelma and Louise action.

It was actually nice riding through a lot of the wowscapes again...most of them I had only seen from the aerial view. Also, we stopped for horde. mwahhaha. Ran a few "cows" over...road kill ftw. I wouldn't mind taking a few more road trips around the older parts of Azeroth as well. I have to convince Flipmax to get one or the Mammoth so I get to call shotgun next.

here's a video of our roadtrip:

Ice Crown Camp

Ice Crown Camp
Originally uploaded by alachia

I love when you are on a quest and find some obscure added element on the banks of a border. I finally got around to doing the Argent Tournament quest lines and one of them landed me on the northern cliffs of Ice Crown.

The Black Knight is a threat to the tournament or such from what I gathered. My quest was to discover his mater's plan for murdering other tourney players. I snuck into this tent to take back the stolen Tournament invitation as well as the Black Knight's orders.

His plan intercepted, I pwned the Black Knight and now we can all relax and do our dailies. lol.

Looming Date

 

Now that we have the in-game calendar, all the holidays loom before us like a ticking time bomb. I was pretty gung ho about the holiday events (everyone wants their violet proto) but ever since the Children’s Holiday, I start to bite my nails when I see an upcoming holiday.

Will I get it done? How long will it take? Will there be the annoying RNG factor to fear like the V-day holiday event? Terrible, no? That something that should be considered a sort of fun thing to do would turn into a bout of anxiousness.

I mostly think they don’t interest me as much because I end up missing the first spree of achievement rallies and end up having to do the quests solo. Hopefully, it’s like last year though and you get to go around pissing on horde bonfires. hehehe.

Yogg Brain Zapped

Last weekend we downed Yogg. Kind of an interesting fight. Being the last non-heroic bosses in Ulduar, I expected us to be stumped on it for awhile. As it turns out, it was a lot easier than both Mim and General. I was quite happy because this means we can now start to delve into the hard mode aspects of the meta achievements.

The fight was quite fun though. I imagine it’s a lot more fun for the melee than the casters. First phase is avoiding gaseous clouds that spawn mobs. Second phase you kill tentacles as casters while the melee warp into Yogg’s innards and nuke his brain down. Third phase you nuke yogg down while killing his ads.

I can’t say I’m all that enthusiastic about full clear being part of a hard mode set. It’d be nice if hard mode was only tied to the meta achievement but in order to see Algalon, hard mode is a must. They say in 3.2 the meta achievement reward and title will go away. Here’s hoping we’re not in for another rush.

Rille II does Westfall

Rille got entangled in the business of the SI:7 and some conspiracy involving Van Cleef and the Defias. Rille did not care much about the conflict other than he was promised gold and the opportunity to decapitate someone’s head.

Along his journey, he came across a camp of Gnolls responsible for helping out the thieves of Dead Mines. He had no problems taking on three to four at a time. Rille is awesome like that.

However, a pesky and stinky human priest came through and tried to battle the Gnolls himself. Unable to keep himself alive, the priest fled in a panic thus leading the entire camp to Rille.

Rille was able to battle two more before falling. Rille has a distaste for weakling priests. Silly little human, PWNing is for gnomes.

Rille II

I fell in love with a gnome named Rille. He’s a gnome warlock on the Fenris server. I first met him through a little Viddler video when all the guys in Bindpoint where introducing their WoW toons.

I don’t even like gnomes! Anyhow, I was so infatuated with this gnome that I made a clone of him on my server and have started to level him up.

I thought for fun maybe I’d make him an RP gnome on a PvP server. I figure his backstory will go something like this….

Gnomish transporter gone awry. Evil twin was created from Rille and thus Rille II was born. He is now roaming all of Azeroth with a vague memory of another half. All he knows is he wants to eat souls and pick flowers.

For Gnomeregan!

Episode 44 Supplemental

Episode 44: Starman Portals is up.
You can download it here or subscribe to WoWcast on itunes.

I had a really great time picking Starman's brain last Sunday night. He's one of those meta peeps who has opened up portals in the meta in all different realms. The most prominent one being World of Warcast Podcast. It was actually interesting to hear his approach to podcasting and what he's trying to accomplish with his media outlets.

Everyone has their opinions about fragmentations. Lately, I've come to understand that people are very particular about how they culturally integrate in the meta. Some use it as an outlet, some as a media soap box, some as teaching tool, and others to realize themselves or to become something different all together, an evolution per se.

Few things are harder to grin and bear than the feeling of repression. When we can't be who we want to be to the people we care about is much like living in your own personal prison. To tie this in with WoW, go listen to a group of raiders who aren't familiar with each other vs a group of RL friends raiding together. It's night and day really.

I think it takes time to find where you want to be in the meta. I've encountered quite a few people who just can't except this state of living as valid or don't know how to feel comfortable integrating.

Just think about it, how often 10yrs ago would have posted your diary to strangers or been comfortable showing your family album to anyone in the entire world? As Jemimus said last week, "Make no mistake, we are in the middle of a revolution." I totally agree with him, that we do not see the full profound implication of what is happening around us. It will be talked about and studied for years and years to come for sure.

This is definitely a cultural revolution. As we refine how we define ourselves online, it'll become clearer just how we should engage with each other.....right now, you have to realize that most of the proper tools don't even exist yet.

Starman's Push My Follow podcast definitely delves into a lot of the new media tools of today. It's a round table discussion podcast from people who are pretty versed in new media formats of the meta.

Also be sure to check out geekistry.com for more of Starman's mind dumps. It'll be interesting to see what is to come.