Point of No Escape

Catching up

2010-01-19T09:06:00.000-08:00

Hiredgun, Hornlove, and Failsauce have been working on getting their gear caught up. All three of them were in mostly Naxx-25 items when I resumed play, and most of that has been replaced by Tier-9 thanks to the Triumph badges from heroic dungeons.

Hiredgun also was able to get the Felglacier Bolter, which came only about 30 minutes after he scored the True-Aim Long Rifle. For a short while the Dwarf hunter was happy to be using a gun again. He really didn't want to go back to a bow, despite the upgrade in DPS. He'll survive.

Hornlove, who would rather have a bow anyways, has not recieved any such upgrade to her weapon during this new campaign. Still rockin the Arrowsong until something drops. Keep runnin the Pit of Sauron girl!

Both hunters are now specced as per Elitist Jerks suggestion for maximum dps as well as having a Wolf pet. Their gear is not good enough to switch to MM yet, but they're getting there.

Failsauce has been somewhat neglected. I did spend some triumph on T9 head, gloves, and a sigil for DPS. After a viewer of my justin.tv stream commented something like "why don't you tank yourself if you are always complaining about the tanks you pug with", I then decided to bite the bullet and make a tank spec. Failsauce had already been carrying around tank gear (more than a few blues, but 540+ defense worthy). Her very first heroic tanking was... Forge of Souls. Wow. Way to throw the gnome into the fire! I'll talk about this in another post, it was fun.

Well that's about it. Just wanted to give an update on my characters, nothing exciting. I'm hoping to get things ramped up to the point where I can do some raiding again soon.

Altaholic, really?

2010-01-11T09:29:00.000-08:00

Hi, I'm Riff. I play World of Warcraft and I'm an altaholic.

Or am I? Just because I have about 25 characters at level 60+ now does that mean I'm an altaholic? Perhaps I just wanted to make the most of the Recruit-a-friend benefeits while the accounts were linked and active. Maybe I just wanted a priest or two for those insta-queues into the LFD.

Perhaps I'm just in denial, and really have turned into an altaholic. It may be why I haven't posted in the last few weeks despite playing WoW almost every day. In any case, I do have a new 80 to announce.

Prinnyraid hit 80 more than a couple weeks ago, at which point she got busy doing Heroics non-stop until completely geared with T9 as well as some of the ICC-5 gear. Having all DPS until now, I never thought I'd be able to level a priest up because of the slow killing. Instance boosting from friends and the new LFD solved that. Now I'm having a good time with the healing role.

Slumpbuster (another priest) had RAF levels granted and is now level 60. I will take her to 80 at some point. Why another priest? For one thing she's on my "main" account and could heal for characters on Prinnyraid's account. And did I mention the whole insta-queue thing with the LFDs?

Some other works in progress are Gratzdude (Tank Pally, yes I realize it's a horrible name.. I rushed it), a 5-man Shaman team, 5-man druid team, and 4 new hunters to go with Hornlove or Hiredgun for a hunter team. Because I had so many levels to grant, I also made a 60 rogue, another 60 shaman, and a 60 mage which I'll get to 80 someday.

But no, there isn't a problem. I can stop making alts anytime I like. Really I can.

Fail tank is Fail.

2009-12-15T08:57:00.000-08:00

This is probably not news to most of you, but having a good tank makes a world of difference. I've noticed this especially when leveling my Priest though the 60's using the Looking-for-dungeon tool for the BC instances. Many of the players using this tool (especially in this level) have probably never done an instance, or are at least using an unfamiliar character class.

When that unfamiliar class is a tank, look out. Agrro control? Ha! Paying attention to party health/mana before pulling? Not likely. What should be a walk in the park through these BC instances turns into lots of frustration. Here's an excerpt from one DK tank who kept telling the group how good he was (until some of us mentioned that he was not). Perhaps I should have brought up his lack of DnD use (at all) earlier...

As a healer it's probably most obvious to me when a tank is failing. Usually it means I'm healing myself more than the tank. Maybe I can learn enough by watching the bad ones compared with the good ones so that when I play the tank myself I won't be terribad from the start.

As a side-thought, DK's in general seem to be enjoying the Looking-for-dungeon option. Often they won't find a role in a normal pug. The skill level of these players varies widely. Some will death-grip mobs away from the tank and soak up tons of healing, others will play so well you hardly even know they're there.

Prinnyraid is closing in on doing Northrend instances. Looking forward to it!

Like a virgin

2009-12-11T11:34:00.000-08:00

3.3 is out and so far has been well received. One of the most popular new features is the "Looking for Dungeon" feature which makes it so much easier for groups to get formed to any level of instance. Although this is a mixed bag of blessings, most of it is quite good.

I decide to try and do my first instance as a healer (Prinnyraid/level 63 disc. priest). Armed with healbot, I actually had a lot of confidence that I'd be able to do my job well. (to be honest, with healbot, a monkey could do a good job). The LFD interface enabled, my role defined, I just now have wait for a gr... POOF instantly I'm in a group, transported inside Blood Furnace along with 4 other eager adventurers. The group consists of myself, a mage, a pally, a death knight, and a melee shaman. I also just realize that I've never done Blood Furnace before.

Things start off ok but I soon notice all 3 melee classes are going from full health to 40% in a heartbeat. Still unaware of Prayer of Healing (yes, noob healer) I scramble to do the whack-a-mole using healbot. It's hectic but nobody dies. I find out from a friend that what's going on is all of the melee are standing on mines and that's why so much damage is being taken. Doesn't seem to bother them tho, they just keep taking massive amounts of damage doing the same thing over and over. I keep healing my ass off. This continues until we get to the big floaty eye-thing behind the door with the giant lever in front of it. Nobody pulls the lever and we're standing there for a good while.

It's becoming quite obvious that perhaps nobody in this group has done this instance before. Someone finally pulls the lever.. and orcs start charging the group from their cages. After the first wave, I'm the primary target of these orcs as my healing efforts from previous waves is giving me the healing aggro. The rest of the group seems oblivious to this fact as I'm 1/2 dead each wave before the rest of them start attacking. During the final wave it was too much and I die. At the time I thought this might have been normal, but after seeing it done with a proper group later, I now look back and realize how fail this group was. With the short dirt nap behind me, the rest of the instance went well enough and we completed it with without incident.

My pally friend (lvl 66) joined me and we went on to do many more dungeons, having quite a good time. The new LFD is quite good, and one of the best features Blizzard has implemented. It definitely will get people to start instancing who haven't done it before, which is a good thing.

This also makes me look back on how I played the game when Burning Crusade came out. I basically just quested to 69 or so, then farmed the hell out of Legion Hold demons in Shadowmoon Valley. It was a profitable and relatively quickly way to 70.. but I did miss out on all of the instances BC had to offer. Now looks like a good time to revisit them.

Right now everyone's checking out the new Ice Crown 5-mans and raids. I notice that some people (BBB, Larisa, and others) have gone into them not wanting to know exactly how to do the fights. No guides read up before-hand, no PTR practice fights. Just figure out the stuff on your own and have a good time. Sure you'll wipe a few more times but experiencing the fights without having your hand held telling you what to do is good fun. There will be plenty of time to mindlessly run this stuff while waiting for Cataclysm. =)

They pulled me back in

2009-12-10T11:17:00.000-08:00

It's safe to come back now, I believe. This blog has been inactive so long it's surely been removed by any blog rolls that once had it listed. I was gone from WoW for about 6 months, now back with vengeance. Got suckered into multiboxing, opening up 4 more accounts for such nonsense, and cracked open 2 more WoTLK Collector Editions. (The battle chests being on sale for $20 each didn't hurt, along with Recruit-a-friend boons.. thanks Blizzard)

I haven't done any of the recent content yet (not since before Ulduar was released). So my gear is mostly Naxx-25 stuff. The 3 level-80's are Hornlove (hunter), HiredGun (hunter), and Failsauce (Death Knight) all on the Cenarius server. The only thing I've done with these characters since returning is allocate talents and do the fishing and cooking quests. I need to do some research on the content I missed before jumping into some Ulduar group. Oh, and as reported.. Failsauce finally got the Chef title which had eluded her forever.

That doesn't sound too exciting so far but I have been doing some other stuff in WoW. A few of my friends from Justin.tv have decided to roll on/transfer to Cenarius so we could play together. In turn, I leveled up some new characters using the Recruit-a-friend. So far I've got these new level 60+ guys to mess around with now:

Prinnyraid, Discipline Priest
Senile, Fire Mage
Asspuncher, Enhancement Shaman
Failbiscuit, Blood DK (multibox?)
Failstorm, Blood DK (multibox?)

I also have a 5-man shaman team being worked on slowly, they're up to level 25 or so. That will take a back-seat to getting my friend's character to 80 and running some heroics. I've been dual-boxing the priest and mage with decent success, questing through Hellfire Penninsula, and now Zangamarsh quests. It's a little clunky so far, as I'm very new to multiboxing, but so far they are both almost level 63.

In any case, that's what I've been doing during my 2 weeks back in WoW. Now with some friends to play with again, I'll probably stick around for a bit. =)

Chef Failsauce

2009-12-08T08:23:00.000-08:00

Well it was inevitable, Failsauce was going to get the Chef title sooner or later. Not much else to comment on here, just thought I'd post it. 3.3 is out today and all hell is about to break loose.

Watch live video from Point of No Escape on Justin.tv

Whatcha been doing?

2009-12-01T12:38:00.000-08:00

Hello, it's been a while!

I recently have been logging into WoW thanks to the 7-day freebie Blizzard sent me and a refer-a-friend which started me on a second account. I've been leveling a priest with my wow friend and we're almost to level 60 which should happen tonight. Not bad for 1 day, 18 hours played. The RAF deal is really a fast way to level. It's unclear now if I'm back in wow now or not. Time will tell!

Since I've posted last I've been busy with other games:

Eve Online (11-boxing)
PS3 Minna No Golf 5 (once in a while)
Aion (Really fun to start out, got old before the 2nd month was done)
Borderlands
Torchlight
Dragon Age Origins
Plants vs Zombies
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

All fine and dandy. I've also snagged many of the deals over the Thanksgiving day weekend from Steam. Looking forward to playing some of those.

So just wanted to say Hi! I'll probably make some more WoW related posts soon.

Justin.tv, live streaming video.. and WoW!

2009-09-16T03:52:00.000-07:00

A lot of you already know about this site but it's relatively new to me. It's a site for posting videos, but instead of pre-recorded stuff the emphasis is on live feeds. In terms of WoW, this is technology being used in a cool way as you can watch someone else play WoW live, right now on some server somewhere. You can also interact with the "broadcaster" by typing into a chat box. As part of the deal the "broadcaster" can (and usually does) add audio commentary on what he/she is doing in the game or responds to what you type to them via the chat box. I thought it was pretty cool in any case, and created a channel. So here it is, in case you are interested:

http://www.justin.tv/riffraffgames

I probably wont have any interesting content for a bit but there are plenty of others that do. So if you're bored, need a WoW fix but can't get in the game, go and watch some other people play.

Too many chefs in the kitchen

2009-08-20T00:22:00.000-07:00

My WoW account is currently turned off. I had not been playing much and money has been very tight. It's only temporary, I know I'll be back.. just a matter of when.

One of the things that I was working towards while my account was active was the "Chef" title for Failsauce. I had everything done for the meta-achievement that awarded this title except for getting the final recipie from the Shat cooking quest (Kibbler's Bits was the one I was after). I was not in an active raiding guild at the time so the only real thing I did was log in, do a few dailies, and go on to play something else. The persuit of the Chef title was enough for me. Doing the Shat cooking quest was pretty boring but I wanted the payout, so I kept at it.

So patch 3.2 comes along. Mass amount of things easier now. A lot of them I agree with, the ability to get mounts sooner for all characters was a good move. But with the cooking, WHAT THE HELL? They now significantly increase the drop rate of the rare recipies for the daily quests. *sigh* .. just when I was down to the last one I need, they made it much easier to obtain. It's too easy now. *grr* I was looking forward to accomplishing this goal... this change they made has sort of ruined it for me tho.

Maybe when I regain steady income I'll think about re-opening the WoW account.

As for EvE, there's the option of paying for your monthly subscription fee by using in-game currency, which is what I'm doing. It's been a month since I re-activated the accounts and things are going quite well for me. Mining operations have increased, missions thrown in here and there. Here's a neat looking planet I saw a few weeks back:

See ya soon!

There's a new G0 in town

2009-07-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

This won't mean much to most of you but...

G0 (stands for Grade zero) is the highest rank of tournament competition in Minna No Golf 5. I never thought I'd have the honor to join this rank. Now if I could stop missing short putts... (miss 2.5m and 3.0m or I'd have won the last tourny). Ahh well, celebration for me ^^

Tiger Woods aint got nothin' on this game.

2009-06-18T08:28:00.000-07:00

For more than 2 years now, PS3 owners have been blessed with having the option to play the best game ever made. No, not MSG4, Little Big Planet, or Gran Turismo 5.. but Minna No Golf 5. Released last year internationally as Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds (USA) and Everybody's Golf: World Tour (Euro).

I basically bought my PS3 with this game in mind, so July, 2007 when the JP version came out, I was in heaven. Originally the online features were not that great, but after a couple patches in the following months it supported game rooms (basically games made on the fly), scheduled tournaments, and match/stroke play. This is a great online game because connection speed/lag play no part in the outcome. (data doesn't need to constantly be sent between clients to keep things moving)

I've taken several long breaks from the game, mostly due to WoW/Eve-Online/Other additicions. The JP server is still going strong. The international one, not so much. I really think people see the game and it's cutsie anime-style characters, and write it off as not much of a serious game. There is actually a lot more skill and depth in this game than Tiger Woods. Unfortunately, TW gets more of the mainstream attention and sales.

Won a GF tourny the other day, which does not give any prizes, but it still was rewarding =)

Pimp your priest!

2009-06-13T02:49:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's time to introduce my priest, Slumpbuster. She's been gaining around 2 levels per month and has just made it to level 20! Really I have to hand it to the folk who level a priest all the way, it's so incredibly slow. I've been just logging in when rest exp is full and buying runs thru stockades. I'll probably be a horrible priest if I ever get her leveled up since I don't know what half of her spells do. In any case she's looking quite pimp.

Other tiny progress: Fazilsauce is down to needing just 1 more recipie from the Shat cooking quest, Kibler's Bits. So close to getting the Chef title now!

Still no ulduar action. Everyone having fun there?

Cross Edge for the PS3 has been sucking most of my time lately. It's a terrific game, despite some bad reviews. A Japanese RPG that has a steep learning curve, but rewarding once you figure it out.

How to win a roll and feel bad

2009-06-07T00:48:00.000-07:00

Someone needed a Ranged DPS for Naxx Saph + KT. Hiredgun, still using a bow was quick to jump on the offer. For some reason the group wiped many times on Saph (not a good sign). Finally did take the thing down, and we were told that the "Key" was a free-roll. Murder, a nice rogue dagger was on the corpse, but not over any rogue that wanted it. I saw there were 2 rogues and they showed interest, so I didn't contest it.

The raid-wide rolls for the key began, and I didn't notice what I rolled, but I thought it was low, like single-digit low. Then the raid leader said "Hiredgun roll again, you tied for top".. I had rolled an 85 and somehow that was tops vs 20 other ppl. woot.. I won the roll-off, and the key. (Starts a quest, for the Malygos raid which you probably already know). So that was pretty cool. Next time I get invited to a 25-man Eye of Eternity I can grab that cool necklace.

So we go in to kill KT. I figured we would probably fail altogether, or at least struggle alot based on what happened with Saph. To my surprise we were able to 1-shot KT, this with the main tank disconnecting about the time the adds spawned. I have no idea how it happened, but we did it. I hear over vent "*grumble* hunter loot"... could it be? Could the KT gun really have dropped?

It was Calamity's Grasp. A nice melee weapon for a hunter but really it needed to be rogue/shaman priority. I won't pretend I didn't know any better, it's not my first time in naxx. But there were 3 other ppl rolling on it, other hunters included. I listened to the voices in my head (well they were from vent being pumped thru the headset) and decided to roll on it. I won it, and there was a brief discussion (like someone saying "no way.. hunter loot" and the raid leader saying "Yeah, it's definitely hunter loot") So I didn't argue too much, took the Fist weapon and the pug raid was over.

I then explained to the raid leader why it wasn't hunter priority loot (maybe I should have explained this better before accepting it). Yeah it has nice stats for a hunter and would certainly be better than just about anything else in the slot for a dual-hander (sans Ulduar stuff), but that is no excuse, as it's a melee based weapon and hunters do DPS with ranged. It would be the same as if a Rogue rolled on the KT gun.. sure it has nice stats for his ranged slot but that would make the poor Hunters want to do a little backstabbing themselves.

Oh well so I ended up joining the guild who was running the Pug, called "Clean Slate". Seems really laid-back, no formal schedule as of yet.

Still trying to get the Chef title with Failsauce. Not much luck as I still need 2 more recipies from the BC cooking quest rewards.

Sacred 2, Titan Quest, Impressions & Comparisons

2009-05-26T15:22:00.000-07:00

(note: this is very long, read at your own risk)

Over the long weekend I grabbed Sacred 2 for the PS3 and put 10+ hours into it. I actually waited to get the PS3 version instead of the PC one as I heard the PC one had bugs and it's multiplayer community was small. Of course this is taking a huge leap of faith that the PS3 version wasn't going to have more bugs than the PC one ;) So far it seems to be OK.

Some thoughts on PS3 version vs PC version:

Pros of PS3 version of Sacred 2:
- Big-Screen TV. Plasma 16:9 HD looks great.
- PS3 controller vs. Keyboard/Mouse (this may be viewed to some as a CON). Using the controller seems a lot better for long gaming sessions, which Sacred 2 is going to offer alot.
- "Couch CO-OP*. Although I won't be making use of this feature :cry: it's a huge selling point for a lot of people. Play co-op on the same console, in the same room. Right now there's a missing "feature" of this mode where you can't trade items between each other. We're promised it's to be fixed in a future patch.
- PSN Friend List: Yay .. I have some ppl to play with that I know already. Now I just need them to get a copy of the game.
- Leaderboard: Shows the top player's by level, xp/level, filtered by all classes or by a particular class. Pretty cool stuff, shows number of deaths too. Now how hard is it to cheat this list? Not sure yet.

Cons of PS3 version of Sacred 2:
- PS3 Controller. Yeah I put this as a PRO too as I think it's more comfortable playing this way for a long time, but it's a bit more clunky when navigating menus, casting spells on the ground, or generally selecting the enemy you are attacking.
- No Movies to share with others. I love this about TQ playing on the PC, being able to fraps up some cool stuff that happens and share it. I think you can save PS3 screenshots but I'm not sure how yet.
- No Hardcore mode. I didn't even know the game had this mode until I started looking at Sacred 2's forums. Oh well, just like TQ we can all make our own version of the HC mode and delete our char if we want to apon death.
- No Full HD install. Argh. My poor PS3 HD is pretty full as it is, but there are certain towns when you go running thru and the game just waits while trying to catch up, steaming new data from the blue-ray player, putting a spinning disc icon at the top of the screen. I hear the PC version has(had?) some of these same kind of issues.
- Only 4 player online. (PC allows 16 at once I believe)
- $10 higher price on average than PC version.

...

Now to compare the game to Titan Quest a bit.

Performance: Winner by a large margin: Titan Quest.
Sacred 2 runs slower than Titan Quest. Chunky movements and scrolling of the screen make it seem like the PS3 is just barely keeping up, even when you are just running along the road with no monsters or anything else nearby. Combat sequences are also "chunky" where your attacks don't always look like they're hitting or you're swinging on the other side of your enemy. Titan Quest is awesome about making everything feel "right" when it comes to collision between weapons and the enemy. I'm sure it depends on your computer power but on mine, TQ performs wonderfully. Both games offer rag-doll physics of enemies rolling down hills, flying off walls, etc. S2 suffers from not being able to move over simple obstacles or change in elevation of terrain. It can be very frustrating.

Monster AI: Winner by a slight margin: Sacred 2.
Both games have some issues when it comes to AI. Monsters will seem to not want to fight you, stand still at times even when fairly close. It's not so bad that it gets in the way of gameplay, but it's noticeable. Sacred 2 does have monsters fighting amongst themselves at times, which is pretty cool. Kobolds fighting undead, for example.

Graphics: Winner by good margin: Titan Quest.
It's a bit hard for me to do a good comparison on the graphics. Although I have a nice HDTV to play Sacred 2 on, it still is only 720p and at times the objects of the game mesh together all too much. The poly count on S2 seems a bit lower as well. S2 does allow you to rotate the camera so the scenes don't have to be designed with a static camera angle in mind. TQ is just beautiful, however, and wins this battle fairly easily.

Loot: Winner by a good margin: Sacred 2.
Titan Quest has a lot of loot. A LOT. Sacred 2 seems to have more. This is just a perception from just getting to know the game, but it looks like a lot more mods and combinations are possible on S2 loot. Most people know that in TQ a Hale Eurubean Mace of Annihilation will do you well, and that the set and purple items typically fall short of the greens. This quickly makes a lot of the loot you find in TQ not very interesting. Depending on how much you know about the loot, the affixes, and what you're looking for, this may not be as obvious at first, when you're jaw is dropping at all the wonderful shiny loot dropping.

Quests: Winner by a good margin: Sacred 2.
TQ has a good amount of quests. Most of them are just there to move things along. There are some side-quests that give you additional gold, experience, items, and sometimes extra skills and stats. A lot of players will just do the side-quests if they give extra skills or stats. For some reason these other quests just "get in the way", although I tend to try and do all of them. Sacred 2 has an insane number of quests. It seems like running one quest will bring you to a new area where you grab 4-5 more quests, and so-on. They tend to be focuses on just giving you extra EXP and gold, which seems worthwhile so far. Variety does lack a bit, it's usually the same as any other quests, kill X number of these monsters, collect X number of this. Some are quite funny tho, if you can be bothered to read the text that accompanies them. Sacred 2 wins this category just because of it's sheer volume of quests it offers which looks like to me to be about 10x as many as TQ.

Longevity: Winner by a slight margin: Sacred 2.
Both of these games you could easily sink 1000's of hours into. They're both made that way. Even if you clear all 3 difficulties in TQ, you can start one of the other 35 class combinations and have at it again. You can play the XmaX or Uber mods to give yourself even more challenge. There is Lilith, a complete game in a TQ mod format. There's a lot to do in TQ! There are tools out there that can lessen the lifespan as well, at least for me anyways.

TQ Vault helps keep all the stuff you've found on any character, and easily trade it to another. You can even make duplicates of the item, modify them, or create the "perfect" version of an item. For example, the Archmage's Clasp can give -45% recharge or -47% recharge. Many builds will need that extra 2% to reach 100%. Of course you can just ignore the "cheating" features of TQ Vault, and that's entirely possible.. but if you are playing with others that don't ignore them, you are being affected by it indirectly. Want to know why nobody else is picking up the runes/charms that are dropping? Probably because they have a vault full of them and dupe a new one whenever they need it for a artifact or to socket a green item. So by them doing that, you are getting far more relics and charms then you would by having to split them up.. your game is tainted. THX GG ;)

And then there's defiler.. which allows you to do just about anything to your character. I haven't tried defiler personally, but it's a cheating tool to the extreme. Without using it, I can only go by what I see ppl saying about it on the forums, but there doesn't seem to be many limits. Players who use this to cheat on a constant basis must grow bored and quit the game very quickly.

Now to Sacred 2. There are 5 difficulties instead of 3. The land is just gigantic. It's not uncommon to be playing for 15 hours and only have 2% of the land discovered. A lot of this is simply because it can be difficult to move over terrain in S2. A simple change of 2 feet in elevation may be enough to deem an area impassible. It's a vast area which looks like it will take a very long time to explore. The level of your character can reach several hundred, opposed to a max of 75 on TQ. Now characters in each game do not level at the same speed, so this is not a great comparison. Right now the highest level on the PS3 S2 leaderboard is only 150 or so, and the game has been out a week or so, if this gives you any idea.

It may be because I haven't played the game enough, but I don't beleive you farm bosses for loot in S2 the same way you would with Diablo II (mephisto, etc.) or TQ (Hydra, Typhon, Hades, SP, etc). I think this is a good thing. Farming bosses gives you good loot too fast, and makes the game boring too quickly.

Overall Winner: Titan Quest by a slight margin
Both of these games are worthy as placeholders for a diablo-type game until Diablo III is released. They are definitely going to be worth the money you spend ($20 for Titan Quest + expansion, $50-$60 for Sacred 2). Titan quest is a much cleaner and more polished game. It's a sandbox that's been tweaked and catered to with a core gameplay that's extremely rewarding. Looking back at the original reviews of the game, I saw one of them where the guy actually said he thought the game was too long. (This was before the expansion, Immortal Throne). I can't help to think that this wasn't that reviewer's type of game. It's not that TQ is short, it's just that if you are having fun playing the game, wouldn't you want it to keep going instead of it just suddenly ending with a "You Win" screen?

These games need to be fun at the core so you want to play to level 300 or farm a boss 100 times in a row for some special loot. They need to be long, offering reasons to play the same content more than once with more challenges, more rewards. Sacred 2 has more stuff to do, but the game is not quite as good at the basic gameplay. You wont have dramatically different builds in a single class. Instead of making 6-7 characters and playing them to level 65 in TQ, you will probably stick with 2-3 and level them a lot longer in S2.

That's about it I guess. I wrote a lot of stuff, sorry if anyone suffered by reading it all =) The last thing I'd like to say about these games is: Play them multiplayer. They were made for MP and are a lot more fun that way.

Spirit Beast Within

2009-05-24T22:50:00.001-07:00

I'd like to write a story about how I flew around Zul'Drak for hours and hours, day after day, for weeks, months, etc. and finally found a Spirit Beast, but it wouldn't be true. I had just logged in for doing the cooking and fishing dailies, about to log off in Dalaran when someone messaged they had the location of a Spirit Beast for sale.

After a brief negotiation I took him up on the offer to grab Gondria, a level 77 Elite Rare Spirit Beast on the easternmost part of the zone. Sometimes he's a bit hard to see (yeah, I know to turn off his prowl!) but other times he's quite amazing looking. The dual-spec I had invested in for HiredGun has paid off. I had been trying for a long time to tame Loque'nahak, offered several bounties as well... No such luck with that beast!

I'm not dead yet

2009-05-21T12:38:00.000-07:00

I've been logging on WoW.. yeah, I said it. Basically just to run dailies and try to find a guild to raid with. The game quite isn't the same once you are raiding like a lunatic every week, and then are solo once again. I did start leveling my Priest, who looks like a pimp... She's at level 18. When I say I'm leveling her, I mean I'm mooching Stockade runs, hanging back and watching the exp bar move. I'm pretty sure I'll be doing this more, except I'll start shelling out the 15g per run or so to move things along. I really can't stand playing the character solo, but I'd like to have a healer at some point.

Saw Terminator-Salvation last night. Excellent movie! Without going into any spoilers/details I thought it had a good balance of action and story. I highly reccomend it.

Steam weekend Deal: Call of Duty World at War

2009-05-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

I don't have any first-person shooters on my PC. I generally play those on the Playstation 3. For the first time in a month I checked the Steam weekend deal (too bad, as I would have gobbled up Orange Box and Left4Dead which were available in the past weeks.) and it happend to be Call of Duty: World at War for 50% off ($25).

I picked it up and so far am very pleased. It runs at a great frame rate at full resolution on my PC. Aiming with the mouse is very accurate and is a good reminder why FPS's are usually better on the PC. The cut-scenes are very well done, intros to the missions accompanied by authentic WWII images and video.

I've only played the game for a few hours but so far it seems very polished. AI is quite scripted but doesn't disappoint. Besides controlling just your usual USA or Russian foot soldier, there are missions where you control a tank, several guns of airships, and who knows what else.

I don't know anyone else who has this game but would enjoy playing this co-op. Send me a note if you want to play!

TQ: Nymph Lover build in action

2009-05-11T14:47:00.000-07:00

Finished my latest Titan Quest project, Nymph Lover (currently lvl 65 Ritualist)

Fun stuff!

Time out

2009-05-04T14:58:00.000-07:00

~~I've not been playing much WoW, so I'm going to take a break from this blog as well. (yeah, it's pretty much happened already for the last month or two).~~ (Edit: I'm trying to hang in there! =) Ulduar is here, but I haven't been motivated to find a guild to start running it, or even log on to do the simple dailies as of late.

I've been completely enthralled with Titan Quest (aka Diablo 2.5). This has got to be the best game nobody knows about. If you haven't played it, and you like Diablo II at all, you owe it to yourself to nab it. ($20 for the game+expansion at D2D or Steam)

I may make a random post from time to time but it may not be WoW related.

TItan Quest is gnarly.

2009-04-22T01:16:00.000-07:00

Yeah I know another non-WoW post. I'm still looking for a guild =)

Typhon getting a beat-down!

~~Hmm I tried to embed the video, it worked but it was way too wide. Damn blogspot and it's super-narrow format.~~ Video fixed! =) The HD version is better, this link.

If anyone wants to play some Titan Quest, let me know!

Fishing quest.. what what?

2009-04-15T17:09:00.000-07:00

Well hello, there! Runic Potion, Deviate Fish, 10g, and this nice little grey item that went directly to the vendor! New fishing quests are good so far!

Update: 2nd reward from the same quest:Not bad.. and with the 3rd try at this quest got another grey "Whale statue" that sold for 11g. Looks like this particular fishing quest that has you fishing the sewers of Dalaran is fairly profitable.

3.1 commeth

2009-04-13T21:59:00.000-07:00

Probably old news by now but... 3.1 arrives tonight with some extended maintenance. Anyone looking for a hunter or 2? =D I'll check monster.com, and if that doesn't work, the usual channels.

The honeymoon is over

2009-04-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

I've been posting about Steam lately and excited to get some new games to play while waiting for Ulduar to roll out. I've had a mostly positive experience with the service and recommended it so far. Over the last couple days tho, my opinion of the service is starting to lessen.

First of all, I haven't been able to get Sacred to work multiplayer at all. I get distinct errors when trying to join and create multiplayer games, and so far have had zero response from anyone at Steam reguarding this issue (using the forums). Now this game I got for $5 and it was released in 2004, so I am not going to throw a hissy-fit. This is pretty lame to start with. I will probably head over to the forums of the developer, but last time I was there it was a bunch of ppl complaining about Sacred 2 problems.

Now Sacred 2 is out, but for some reason the good people who bought this game from Steam have yet to recieve the latest patch for the game, which came out nearly 3 weeks ago now. I beleive this patch is neccessary for multiplayer to work in this game too, although I haven't read the details. In any case there has been no real response from Steam to it's customers reguarding this issue, except there was one post about a week ago that said that the "guy" (yeah one dude) who is responsible for doing the patches at Steam was out of the office or something and wouldn't be able to address this until the 14th (tomorrow). Yikes. (steam Sacred forum here)

Then there's Titan Quest. The game Sacred has been compared to, and it's another Diablo II clone. The "Gold" edition has been on Steam for $19.95 and this was going to be the next game I got, however guess what.. more problems here too. Apparently both the original game and expansion play fine (both included in "GOLD"), but the CD-KEY is invalid for the expansion. So you can play these single-player, but multi-player is a no-go. This has recieved almost no recognition from Steam, they keep selling the product, and every CD-KEY they give (for the expansion part of it anyways) is invalid. /facepalm. (steam Titan Quest forum here) I have heard that the Direct2Drive version works ok, so that's where I'll pick this one up from.

Looking over some of the other steam forums, there are more problems like these with other games. The biggest negatives I can see is lack of communication and support from Valve on their forums. Another is that you can't really take any action on your own (if you do a charge-back, for example, because you didn't get what you paid for then your steam account may be banned and the games you purchased held for ransom) Sound like fun? Not to me.

At this point the only games I'll get from Steam are ones I'm fairly positive don't have any technical problems, and/or those on the weekend deals. You can see what games they've had on their weekend deals and typically they're pretty good stuff. This past weekend it was Peggle Deluxe/Peggle Nights combo-pack. Fantastic games, $10 was a great price. Now if they would put The Witcher up on sale.. I'm there!

Just be careful. Before purchasing any game check the forums and see if others are having problems first. I'm glad I checked out Titan Quest's forum or I'd be another unhappy customer.

Steam is addictive.

2009-04-10T14:59:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm easily addicted to stuff. I've been sifting over all Steam's warez lately to see if I could find some more goodies to try out. Here's what I've managed to nab:

Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor. $30. This is a brand new release (April 9th) , a stand-alone expansion to CoH. There are new scenarios, new multiplayer maps and game modes, and a few new units to mess around with. This expansion is probably overpriced a bit but damn, the original game is so good I don't mind. Again, if you haven't got into the CoH game yet, do it. They have a complete-pack out now which is all 3 CoH's for $40.

Now for some older, cheaper games. Not like, c-64 old but damn some of these don't let you change resolution or even run in a window. In any case...

Games on Sale! woo! All of these are 1/2 price until Apr 13th.
Sacred Gold. $5. Comes with Sacred, Sacred Plus (fan pack?), and Sacred Underworld (expansion). Game plays like Diablo II, with a bit more exploring and open-world. This means I love it! =) Kill Kill Kill, Loot Loot Loot... fun stuff! Now they released a sequal in December but I will probably wait for the console (PS3) version of that. Up to 16-players online (although I'm having difficulty getting that to work right now on Vista 64) In any case if you somehow missed this game like I did, pay the $5 and have a blast.

Jagged Alliance 2 Gold /Disciples II Gold Combo. $15. JA2 Gold comes with the original game plus the expansion, JA2 Unfinished Business. If you played any Sir-Tech games in the past (Wizardry.. any of them) you know that they don't mess around. JA2 is a turn-based role-playing strategy game where you run a group of Mercs and do missions for cash. It's very involved and has a lot of depth. It's great.. will just leave it there. Disciples II comes with the game plus 2 expansions. It's a strategy game with a fantasy theme. Some people absolutely love the game, although I didn't like it that much at first impression. Both of these games I need to read the manual for (comes with the game in electronic format). 5 titles for $15, and 2 of them are Sir-Tech? Win.

Log in, get a prize!

2009-04-05T19:28:00.000-07:00

Without a guild or any real progress to be made I haven't been logging in much. I did, however, crack open an oracle egg and got a nice surprise for Failsauce. Woot! I suppose it's time to find a new guild and hopefully get a spot for the upcoming Ulduar stuff. I've been sidetracked by some other PC games lately. Since getting the new PC I got a steam account and had to find out what I'd missed over the last few years.

Company of Heroes is just fantastic. I'm sure a lot of you have played this. I purchased the "Gold" version at Best Buy for $30 (which included the expansion, Opposing Fronts) but now I wish I had got the "relic pack" from Steam which included CoH Gold and also Dawn of War platnium (the original DoW game plus it's 2 expansions) for only $50.

The amazing quality of CoH made me want to try some other Relic stuff. I picked up Dawn of War II and was very impressed. It's a bit watered down as an rts but it does take every advantage of my PC and is extremely well polished. The single-player campaign (you can actually play it co-op as well) is more like a cross between Diablo and an RTS, with loot drops, leveling up, and skill point allocation.

Lastly, based on amazing reviews, I nabbed Empire: Total War. I've only had it for a day so it's a little hard to give it a fair shake but so far it's extremely slow and I'm missing why the reviewers think it's so great. Trying to put armies in place is sloooooow and their pathfinding frustrating. I'll have to give it more of a chance but right now I wouldn't reccomend it.

Big thumbs up for Steam tho. No sales tax, great weekend specials, and no discs/manuals to keep track of, it's all electronic.

Lack of posting

2009-03-24T19:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the lack of posting over the last month. I've lost a bit of steam when it comes to playing WoW and the blog follows right along. For some reason Hornlove's guild which was running so well one day fell apart the next. I haven't had the energy to try and find another yet. Eve Online has been good for a bit. If you're reading this then you probably want to hear about WoW-related stuff so I won't start posting Eve junk.

The last 5 days have been spent doing work in a feeble attempt to get a demo out for our booth at the game developer's conference which started this week. It's been forever since I programmed stuff for the PC and never for windows, so I'm afraid even with the huge push to get the demo out I still came up short. There just wasn't enough time. It was quite depressing.

Well lets try and get something WoW-related here.. Failsauce got exalted with the Kalu'ak, so that makes all 3 of my 80's with a fishing pole. Yay! Just in time for them to nerf the hell out of fishing, making it easier to level up. She also was able to get into a Naxx group last week *gasp, I know!* and pulled some decent upgrades, including the T7.5 chest. It was nice to finally get Failsauce some Naxx-action. Most of the time there are no spots available for DK-DPS.

Ulduar can't be far away. I should try and get into a new guild soon. Things will pick up.

New computer, yeah baby!

2009-03-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday I bought a new computer, mostly for playing WoW and EVE Online. Previously I had been using a Dell that had worked very admirably for over 5 years. (I also bought that one for playing WoW at the time of release). It was certainly time for an upgrade! What I ended up with was another Dell, the XPS Studio with a 24-inch 1900x1080 screen. What a difference! Now running at 60FPS in Naxx, Dalaran, anywhere. It's certainly going to breathe more life into computer gaming for me.

I also have the power to run Fraps and hope to have some movies up here soon. Messing around with the Vista movie editor was a bit frustrating. I wanted to add multiple sound channels (one for music, one for narration, etc) but it was incapable of doing that. Also, uploading movies to YouTube really destroys their quality as they're reprocessed for low bandwidth. I'm not sure how people keep the quality high when sharing the movies online. It will be a learning process.

Anyways just thought I'd share my good fortune. I had been saving for a couple months to get this upgrade. Now if I can still pay next month's rent I'll be just fine. ;)

The shelf-life of a Twink

2009-03-11T15:35:00.000-07:00

I read an interesting post about how Twinks will be losing a lot of enchants come 3.1 on General today. It seems a lot of people actually really hate Twinks! Although I don't have a twink myself, I always liked the idea of maxxing out a char at level 19 or maybe 29.. get all the best gear and enchants. One thing I like about it is you won't have to do a lot of work on them when a new expansion hits. Another thing is, nobody should have you outgeared (by much anyways), so that's one less factor to worry about when testing your meddle.

Some twink-backers in the thread say that the enchants, which are mostly stamina-boosting, help the battles last a bit longer and help people from getting 2-shot by the burst damage. Without much low-level BG experience I can't say one way or the other but that claim does seem to make a lot of sense. In any case I still think I'll get a twink made and see how it is. I planned to get my Banker-guy rogue up to level 18 for those "sprints" from the mailbox to the AH and back. One more level isn't going to hurt. =)

Blizzard hates dwarves.

2009-03-09T10:59:00.000-07:00

First they completely neglect to give Find Treasure a use in all of Northrend. Now they are nerfing the hell out of Stoneform, getting rid of the 8-second immunity to poison, disease, etc. What gives? Is there any reason to choose a Dwarf anymore?

I haven't played much WoW lately I'm afraid. I went from 2 guilds to 0 in the span of 3 days. I quit Hiredgun's guild. It was getting quite full and I was unable to make one of the raid days (Thursday). Hornlove's guild (Chaotic) sort of imploded overnight. Some drama between the guildmaster and his girlfriend caused all sorts of havok. Our 25-man naxx (with 16 pug members) failed to kill KT for the first time, well.. ever! Chaotic may reform in some way, we'll have to see where it goes.

One thing that amuses me about CCP (eve online) is how non-corprate the company is. Check out this "blue" response to a player who is speculating about a coming feature in the game. Can you imagine a Blizzard representative telling a player to "Cry some more?" /lol

A weekend without WoW.

2009-03-02T10:24:00.000-08:00

Most of the time when I don't post over the weekend it's because I'm playing WoW instead. This weekend I was busy with other games. Killzone 2 for the Playstation 3 is amazing. I completed the single-player campaign and had my ass handed to me online. I also was busy getting my Eve Online accounts in order after reactivating them. I didn't even have time to play with this new toy.

So if posts here are a little slow here lately, you know why.

Dual-Spec, Tri-Spec, Quad-Spec.. argh

2009-02-26T11:34:00.001-08:00

I usually don't write about other blog posts. Maybe I will do more of that, however, since I often can't think of original things to talk about. BigBearButt talked about how some Noob ranted about Dual Spec. The rant was very good and certainly made me think about it. Without going into detail, I'll just say that I'm starting to like the idea of dual-spec less and less. Miss Elf found some people complaining about dual-spec as well.. except this conversation begins with crying about the 1000g price tag for the privilege. *rolls eyes* Taffybag, Stompalina, and Half briefly discuss Dual-Spec in the RawrBitchRawr podcast which they did live for the first time (grats!). Floramel at Grimmtooth's Troops had something to say about Dual-Spec, as did Santyn from Lethal Shots. Now Hunters, Mages, Rogues, and Warlocks are single-purpose (DPS) classes, but that doesn't stop Perzyx (Crooked Bow) from writing about how he may use Dual-Spec to switch to and from a Survival build and Lassirra giving us her take on Wow Insider.

Ok, I think I got it out of my system. I'm feeling a tug in another direction. BTW, Eve Online players... after years and years of asking for it, we're finally going to get a skill queue. Might be time to fire up those inactive accounts.

Loot Rules

2009-02-25T11:04:00.001-08:00

It's Tuesday and that means a naxx run with HiredGun. This run was supposed to be the group's first full clear in one night. Before it gets started tho, there's an announcement that loot rules are changed. Basically there are 2 tiers of members coming. "Raiders" and "Other". If you are of "Raider" status, you get 120 "loot points" to spend on items, "Other" get 100. When an item comes up for distribution, you private message the raid leader with your bid (minimum 10 loot points). Right away, you can see this isn't completely fair. Why should certain people start with more points? Because they show up every week? I dunno maybe this is normal procedure for most people, but I am of the beleif that when running a raid, everyone should have an equal shake.

Only main-specs can bid on an item. It's a blind auction, nobody knows what anyone else is bidding. Naturally, whoever makes the highest bid gets the item and the "loot points" are deducted from them. If there is a tie for the highest bids, those people roll to determine a winner. If nobody makes a bid on an item, it then directly goes to Off-spec, and people roll on the item. Whoever wins the off-spec roll gets the item without spending ANY loot points. Now here's the thing that annoys me about the off-spec thing... During this off-spec roll, if the item would have been good for your main-spec, YOU AREN'T ALLOWED TO ROLL ON IT. So if I'm a hunter, a mage, or a rogue, basically you'll never get an off-spec roll "free" item. Very unfair to the single purpose class I say. There were MANY off-spec rolls last night. Raid leader's response "oh well, if you let main-spec roll on it they'd never use their loot points." So f'in what? If someone is going to let off-spec roll with them on an item, they're taking a big chance that they're going to lose it rather then spend the 10 points they'd need with a bid. Just let them roll if that's what they want to do.

So why was this system put into place? Apparently last week there was some complaints about a somewhat-scrub mage taking 4 greed items and then winning his need roll on the KT mage ring. *shrug* I've personally never had a problem with the 1 Need, 1 T7 need, unlimited main-spec greed system. I guess some people do not like it tho when someone gets 3-4 items and then scores the nice KT loot as well. What does it really matter tho? The stuff the guy won with his greed items couldn't have set anyone back really that much? They always had the option to use their need on any of that stuff. Besides that, there are going to be days when the mage can't win anything on a roll. It all evens out.

What's happening is this... The very well-geared members of the raid (that perhaps only need an item from KT) don't want to have to roll against scrubs who still need stuff from the rest of the raid. So if you go into naxx knowing you need a drop from KT and nothing else, I can see why you like this system. Btw there was still a Pally last night who won *5* items in the run using these new rules, including an off-spec piece and a T7.5 item. Weren't the new rules supposed to prevent such a thing? Was this unfair? Guess not, since it wasn't competing with anything the raid leader was rolling on, and this Pally didn't have any points to spend on KT.

Is this system one you've seen before? It's not DKP, the points don't carry over to the next raid. Any thoughts?

Remember Find Treasure?

2009-02-24T11:32:00.000-08:00

That quirky little dwarf racial ability... It could be used to show semi-rare spawned world treasure chests or quest items on the mini-map. It still exists in the game, but for some reason Blizzard has neglected to have it detect anything in Northrend. There are no world treasure chests to find. There are no quest items that it will detect. It's useless. Did the designers think it was OP? Did they just forget to tag certain quest items as "treasure?" I wonder if there are other racial abilities that became obsolete in WotLK.

Retro Friday - A much better game

2009-02-21T01:41:00.000-08:00

Happy New Years 2006 from a the Demon Temple! =) This was me wielding my Demon Slayer sword quite effectively. The "best Demon graphics" were actually an older version of the demon graphics that they had put back in. Imagine that, going backwards to an older version of art because it was actually better. Yeah most of you probably look at this and think "man, the other demon graphics must have been REALLY bad" .. lol

Ultima Online was never really about it's graphic prowess. It was about meaningful online gameplay, of which it had no equal. Everything you did in the game seemed meaningful. Consdering it was the pioneer for popular online RPGs, it's amazing the game is still going. I miss it.

There are mounts, and then ...

2009-02-17T01:55:00.000-08:00

There's this mount:

The Ashes of Al'ar is one of those mounts most people in the game never even see! The other day when we were doing Malygos I caught a glimse of this amazing bird-mount. It's owner, Lichshock was in the process of moving his guild to Cenarius. *shakes fist angrily at the Queue*

I'd love to get this mount but realistically will never be able to get one. Getting the people together to do it every week would be one thing, winning the roll the 1 or 2 times it dropped a year would be another.

Edit: I'm actually pleased that there are still items like this in the game. Everything should not be easily obtainable by anyone who thinks "I want one!" Things that are near impossible to get still have that "epic" quality about them, and this magnificent mount is certainly in that category.

The Heartmender Meta-Game

2009-02-17T01:53:00.001-08:00

Yes, Love is no longer in the air. If you tried to get the "Fool for Love" meta-achievement you will probably remember the Heartmender part:

You basically had to use your Unbestowed Friendship Bracelets on other people who had their heart broken during a token of love turn-in. If you did this early on in the 5-day event, you'd probably have good success as many people were turning in their tokens. It was a target-rich environment for the menders. Near the end of the event, however, the game changed. Not as many people were turning their tokens in, but lots still had to get this achivement.

One strategy was to camp the guards near heavily populated areas like Ironforge bank/auction house. If you click on the picture to the right you can see that's exactly what people started to do. These aren't people turning in their tokens, they're waiting for a chance to mend someone's heart. This quickly turned somewhat ugly as many competed to get the "mend" in before the others who were camping. Chances to do so were becoming more and more rare.

Another strategy people started to employ was to have a friend help them. They'd both ride around on fast mounts, turning in massive amounts of tokens just to try and get heartbroken so their friend could do the mending. Fair enough, but I was going to try and get a piece of this as well. I started following around, weither I knew them or not, and started to mend them. When it came to someone helping out a friend, they didn't want me to be mending them, so once I did mend them they'd just stop for a bit, wait for me to leave, then continue on.

Time was running out on the event. 6AM on Monday was when things turned off, and if I didn't have the achivement done by then, I wasn't going to be able to complete it for another year. It became kind of a cat & mouse game. I ended up having to hide behind pillars and walls etc, then dashing in to mend before their friend could. I was at a disadvantage near the end, as they could usually get their mend in first. Once they ran into the King's chambers where there were many guards available, I was on equal footing. Spamming the friendship ring to mend was fine since we were already dismounted. (+15% run speed from Failsauce's unholy aura didn't hurt either) I got my last couple mends, thanked the person and went on my way.

I'm sure there was a little "hate" in the air, but hey I needed my achievements!!

5 days was not nearly enough time for this event. Besides a couple naxx's and work, I was basically humping this thing all weekend and was just barely able to get it done for my 3 level 80's. There was too much randomness., too much stress trying to get it done in time. At least there's a couple months before the next holiday event.

Retro Friday - Pre-TBC Elite Pet!

2009-02-14T03:10:00.001-08:00

King Bangalash Tamed on 10/31/06?

This is an unedited picture taken on 10/31/06 of Darn seemingly owning King Bangalash as a real, elite pet. It was his pet, but this was some kind of display bug that happened at the Flight Path apon landing. It's interesting that the game knew what the original pet's name was even after it had been tamed.

Is that a love rocket in your pocket?

2009-02-12T09:46:00.000-08:00

...or are you just happy to see me?

If you haven't noticed (how could you not) the "Love is in the Air" world event is apon us. The main cities all have scenes that look like this:

...And my backpacks are starting to look like this:

I have to admit I haven't done any of these world events before. In years past they came when I was taking a break from WoW or just too busy to notice. Now that the achievements are all tied in with them, I have more interest. Want to learn about the current event? Lets see...

There's the WoW Insider guide to Fool for Love.
Jaximus posted a Guide on the Official Forums.
WowWiki's Guide to Love is in the Air.

There are many other guides but I'm sure you can get the idea by checking out those. I received 2 romantic picnic baskets on one bank-alt (that's his backpack pictured above). I've also scored 1 perma-peddlefeet and 1 Lovely Black Dress. I now actually have a reason to log on to my toons before heading into work each day. I could wake up 15 minutes earlier...zzzzzz hmm? Oh sorry I dozed off there for a second.

Dragon Wars EXTREME!
Chaotic ran a mostly-guild 25-man Malyos last night. We wiped 6 or 7 times but finally brought the beast down. I have to say this is one case where the 25-man version is probably harder than the 10-man version. Maybe it's because a lot of people still haven't done this fight before. Perhaps once everyone knows the encounter better, it will become as easy as the other 25-man fights. During each run back to my corpse I kept wondering if I was having as much fun as Larisa had on her Malygos "wipe night"... I can't say that I was. But I still had a good time overall and hope to be able to do this every week.

Tuesday is for Phat Lewts!

2009-02-11T10:45:00.000-08:00

An upgrade for a hunter's ranged weapon slot is usually reason for great celebration. With a dwarf hunter, however, it is somewhat shameful when it comes time to trade in his gun for a "better dps" bow. This is what happened last night when HiredGun picked up Final Voyage during his trek through Naxx. Having only 1 skill point in Crossbows was something he was actually proud of. Let the fruity night elves use the bows, damnit! A dwarf needs the smell of gunpowder and a loud BANG BANG sound to make him feel as if he's doing his job. (The racial +1% crit when using guns doesn't hurt either) Unfortunately, in terms of dps, the only guns available as an upgrade were from KT (normal and heroic). So a quiver was made and arrows purchased. HiredGun flew down to Crystalsong Forest to shoot some wolves, trees, and dryads. In less than an hour his crowssbow skill had reached 400. *sigh*

But some more mad hunter loot dropped last night, some monster upgrades actually. Shoulderpads of Secret Arts and Torn Web Wrapping replaced blues on HiredGun. That was pretty awesome. At least now I don't have to contemplate spending 4000g on the belt! =) Hunter loot continued to fall... Arrowsong dropped, a Warrior won it with an uncontested greed roll. Grim Toll fell and was nabbed by some other dps, as was the more common Aged Winter Cloak.

Tonight should be lots of Vault and OS running. I didn't even know that there was a rare mount from the Vault. BigBearButt got one from 10-man, so run that thing.. even if the T7 stuff is kinda junky lookin after a while.

Monday is for the desperate.

2009-02-10T12:32:00.000-08:00

It seems to be a theme every Monday night. The desperate people are trying to get their Naxx, Vault, and OS in before the Tuesday reset. The guildless, the undergeared, the lazy, the procrastinators... basically the opposite of what you'd find on Tuesday afternoon's groups for doing raids. You don't want to wait until the last minute to get these done whatever the reason.

This being said, Failsauce had not done either naxx 10 or 25. What gives? Well the 10-man naxx for her guild Chaotic was scheduled for Friday night but was then rescheduled for Monday. No big deal, I was told by the GM that Failsauce would "probably" be able to go, but would only get loot if any of the "mains" that were going didn't need it. Sounded just fine to me, at this point anyone who was a main was unlikely to need much from 10-man naxx.

I show up 15 minutes prior to invites and start hovering outside of the giant necropolis, patiently waiting. I mention on vent that I was hoping that Failsauce was going to get a spot when an officer spoke up "I don't really want to be running other people's alts through, gearing them up." ??? Wanker. I reminded the GM with a tell that I was there and waiting. Start time +10 minutes go past, no word, nothing. I ask again about it and get "We need ranged DPS." Which I guess meant I didn't have a spot. No biggie, but being as this was Monday it wasn't looking too promising for getting in another group. Oh yeah, the GM was running the raid with his fresh 80 paladin alt. Funny, I didn't hear the officer complain about it.

I remain on vent to hear how things are going. The other (holy) paladin is having extreme connection problems. Disconnected nearly 10 times in the first wing. Eventually he didn't return. After they were unsuccessful filling his spot, I spoke up.. "Failsauce still isn't saved.. I could join you for some more DPS". I got no response. Nothing. Then someone spoke up "I guess we'll just do this with 9 then." !!!11!!!ONE!1! WHAT?? They would rather go shorthanded then have my alt go? WTF!?!

So now I'm steamed. I look around for a spot in another raid with no luck. I speak up in vent once in a while between battles but nobody seems to acknowledge anything I say. Is this some sort of prank? I leave the vent server and rejoin just in case something is bugged. Still nobody seems to respond to anything I say. Oh well.. assholes!!

I run some instances, and by the time I'm done with those the guild raid is nearly finished. A couple wipes on KT but they finally get it done. Post-raid chatter fills vent. One guy is asking where to get the cooking recipe for Northern Stew. I mention, "You get it from a quest. Go to the cooking trainer in either BT or HF". Someone else says "You just get it from the cooking trainer." Hmm if this was a prank they certainly are being very disciplined about pretending not to be able to hear me. I continue to respond to conversation, hoping someone will slip up and respond to something, anything I say. No luck. What the heck? Something must be wrong. I completely shut down vent, rejoin the server, and I still apparently can't be heard.

Then I noticed the red light on my headset. It had been muted.

/facepalm

Weekend Update - Jane, you ignorant slut.

2009-02-09T10:10:00.000-08:00

I played WoW all weekend but feel like not much was accomplished. I'm talking about in-game accomplishments... anything outside of game went to hell, nothing new there.

With three characters now at 80, I need some kind of schedule or to-do list for each of them to plan out activities for each day. HiredGun needs to work on is Frenzyheart Tribe dailies. Both he and Failsauce must keep up the grind with Sons of Hodir as well as the Kalu'ak. Make sure everyone does their cooking quest. Try and remember to use the Titansteel cooldowns. Who's saved to what raid? Which raids am I not joining with what toon because I'm going to do them with guildies later? Do I want to try the fishing contest this week? How many days left on the Lunar Festival? Is it too late to make some of those trinkets at the Darkmoon Faire? Argh.

Breathe. Relax.

I joined several PUG raids and heroics over the weekend with less-than-stelar results. "Heroic HoL?" Hell Yeah! HiredGun still had the Sons of Hodir quests for this instance. I zone in, get saved, wait just inside the instance. "Oh, btw we're on the 3rd boss." Awesome. Way to wait til I'm saved before serving up that little nugget. Two of the party members yammered on and on about some "stupid druid" who had just left the group. I did my best to /ignore it, but had to wonder if the said druid was actually the smart one.

We immediately have 2 near wipes on just trash. My well-timed feign death combined with Jumper Cables (er, knife) saved the priest a long run back. Ionar is not a difficult boss but you wouldn't know it by watching this group in action. Twice in a row the priest died very quickly, causing wipes. Both times she was unable to get away from the nasty spark-things on the ground. The group broke up shortly after that. Momma told me there would be pugs like this.

Then a guy named "TheJuice" was putting together a 25-man OS. Everyone loves OS! Great loot, short fight, even a nice 22-slot bag at the end. Chock-full of win! It wasn't until everyone zoned in that we noticed: "Hey, where's the dragon?" Mother f... TheJuice you are now on "The List." Blizzard, please...please...please just put up some kind of warning the first time you try and enter a saved instance/raid with a group? "Entering this portal will save you to RAID: 6951233.. do you wish to continue?" Would that be too hard?

2AM Sunday night, about to wrap it up.. "LF2M DPS for 25-naxx, 1/2 of Military left plus Construct, Saph, KT". Sleep could wait for this! HiredGun had much room for gear improvement so I joined their vent and caught a summon right away. Gothik the Harvester peered down at me from his balcony. I could see the fear in his eyes, as HiredGun had arrived. Apparently not everyone was on vent, or something, because the fight started with only 5 or so other people with me on the dead side. GG. After everyone got back we tried again, this time with a proper number of folk on each side. We got it done this time and were on to the Four Horseman. Despite good dps, the raid wiped several times as healers/tanks/whoever didn't know their duties. After the 4th try we downed the quartet. I was actually a bit surprised to get past this fight; most unorganized groups don't have a chance.

We then met up with Patchwerk. I'll save you a lot of time here and just say it was horrible. People were dying within seconds of the fight starting, and this happened over and over. From the confusion on vent it was clear that the proper tanking/healing strategy was eluding them. As ranged DPS, I haven't really learned a lot about how these roles function for this fight. I just know there's nasty attacks and healers have to be spamming heals. Besides steady DPS, I could only contribute ScrapBots to help move things along. Around 4am people were dropping and the raid was called. "No More Play", indeed.

Is the game too easy or are players just better now? Both, however I think it's more of the latter. The game still feels very difficult when you're grouping with clowns. My role as DPS is usually one that doesn't take much thought (pew pew!). Is it unfair for me to judge when tanks/healers/raid leaders fail at their jobs? Probably, but clearly people can do much better.

DPS need to do better also. At least put an enchant on that 2-hander you got at level 75. Yes, other hunter in the raid.. I'm talking to you!

Retro Friday - Onyxia raid

2009-02-06T09:32:00.000-08:00

Hornlove got a minor upgrade to her bow last night, Arrowsong. Here's hoping KT stops being stingy next week =) After the raid a few of us went to farm some Onyxia Scales and it brought back some memories. Here's Darn on Dec 1st, 2006:

Click for larger image

Dragon Wars!

2009-02-05T09:57:00.000-08:00

Hornlove is in there somewhere

Hornlove got her chance vs Malygos last night. Fortunately the other members of the 10-man raid had done this fight at least once before. It was a nice experience, doing combat from the back of dragons! (and not in an Occulus nobody-wants-to-be-there kind of way). The first attempt started with a couple early deaths and we got wiped by his enrage in phase 3. The 2nd attempt went great except I stood still inside a cloud while using my "5" shield key and died. No matter, the rest of the party finished the Dragon off and we had our victory!

Hornlove's raiding prowess authenticated by a title!

It's an interesting fight, I can't wait to do it again. (especially since Black Ice didn't drop)

Earlier in the night we did some vaults and 25OS+1 drake. Survival seems to be doing well.

25-Man Vault

10-Man Vault

I'm happy to report that my connection nightmare from tuesday night was history. HiredGun also joined a 25-man OS (pug) and did OK. The goofballs wanted to try it with 1-drake. Of course it took a few wipes to make everyone realize it wasn't going to happen. You know the raid is going to have problems when you get a ready check accompanied by "Press No for 1 drake, press Yes for No".. wait, what?

You have been disconnected from the server.

2009-02-04T09:46:00.001-08:00

It was HiredGun's turn to do some raids. The only thing I felt was sub-par about his gear for being 80 for less than a day was his pet. However as a survival hunter, the pet does such a small amount of damage. Bringing a level 76 cat wasn't going to bother me too much, and it wasn't going to be the difference between success and failure.

First up, it was time for 10-man Naxx. This should be fun! Also it was the first raid I'd be doing as survival. The first couple trash pulls. "Anyone else seeing spikey lag?" Nope, I was the only one. Shortly after that I was disconnected. Hmm.. Ok, log back in. Disconnected again after the next trash pull. Wow. This is going to make it hard to see where I stand in the damage meters. We got to the first boss in the Spider wing, I made it thru the fight this time. Hiregun getting his "First Heroic badge" achievement was a bit embarassing, but oh well =) My DPS was 200+ higher than the other hunter which had been joining this raid for several weeks now. Not bad for being a day-old 80 I thought!

It went steeply downhill from there. Disconnected over and over and over. What the hell was going on? Did they move the "bad router" to my corner of Blizzard's server room during the morning's rolling restarts? Since I moved to this city 7 months ago I've never had any problems with my ISP. The disconnecting problems continued. We got thru the Spider Wing. A *explitive deleted* pally took my Wraith Spear to boot. This trip had not gone at all like I had hoped.

We then did the Military quarter. Struggled a bit but did down all the bosses until the Four Hourseman. These guys pwned us over and over. The raid DPS was seriously lacking (me disconnecting twice on average on Thane alone didn't help). I offered to be replaced because I wasn't doing the raid much good. After a couple guys had had enuf, the raid was called. I doubt if anyone felt satisfied with how it turned out.

After that I joined a 25-Man pug vault run. How bad could this be? It's one friggin fight. The group had a massive amount of DPS and healing, as is typical on Tuesday raid pugs. (The ones on Monday people seem to come in greens and 70's gear) More of the same, I disconnected twice on trash. At this point I just wanted to finish this raid and go to sleep. Start of the vault boss fight (which has to be done in less than 5 minutes). I disconnect no less than 4 times during the fight, getting reconnected the last time just as the boss fell. I sheepishly looted my badge of valor. What a nightmare. The uber-pug was going on to 25-man OS which would have been awesome to join if I wasn't in DC hell. I let the group know that I was useless and that they needed to replace me.

I always hear others complain about days like this. It's easier for me to relate now. I can only hope this was a one-night thing and when tonight things will be back to normal. It's easy to take a stable connection for granted.

Edit: Drotara from LessQQMorePewPew also had some problems with connection last night. He also is a comcast customer. Apparently comcast was doing some maintenance last night so hopfully thats the reason why my service was crap.

And then there were three

2009-02-03T01:23:00.000-08:00

HiredGun hits 80

I finished off HiredGun's last 6 bars, yay! Pictured with his pet, Pitch.. er, I mean BadCat. Burned some saronite to get Engineering to 450 and made a gun. Gemmed, enchanted, scoped, all the fancy new gear. Ran more quests after that for the Sons of Hodir rep. More later...

It's a copy-cat league...

2009-02-02T13:36:00.000-08:00

Jan 25th, Seabrat writes about PowerAuras.
Jan 26th, Drotara writes about PowerAuras.
Feb 1st, BRK writes about PowerAuras, makes a movie, and crashes his server.

I'll refrain... although this mod is great and is certainly going to help out my hunters and DK.

Super Weekend

2009-02-02T11:04:00.000-08:00

Did everyone watch the Superbowl? Well, this is the WoW community, so probably not. If you didn't see it, you missed a very entertaining game. I watched it but at the same time powerleveled HiredGun to 6 bars short of 80. Considering he was only 75 at the start of the weekend, that's not bad at all! There was some serious quest grinding going on. Hiredgun has done every single quest for Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Howling Fjord, and Sholizar Basin... in that order. He's currently burning thru Storm Peaks right now and has his ScrapBot plans learned. Mining has reached 450 as well (hello Titanium nodes!). He is leveling as a survival spec to get some practice so that it would become second nature for the upcoming raids.

Some things I've noticed about leveling as Survival:

1. Pet can't hold aggro. At all. The pet is just doing a way smaller portion of the damage, and if you lead off with a SS/ES, you'll have that mob bearing down on you most of the time. Trying to do any Volley with the Gorilladin was very frustrating. Even throwing a Kill Command to the pet, waiting for 2 Thunderstomps (zzzzzzz....) My volleys would still draw aggro at times. I also miss longevity which would keep those thunderstomps happening more often.

2. Pet can't tank. No buffed HP or Armor. No improved Mend Pet. No Improved Revive Pet (missed this one more than I thought I would). Even a tenacity pet like the Gorilla can't stand up to the elites I used to solo with no problem like the large green bird in southern Dragonblight. I blink and .. dead gorilla.

3. Even in normal dungeons, some people got annoyed at me dropping traps. Maybe they don't understand survival. /shrug

4. There are a lot of really bad tanks out there. Ok, this one has nothing to do with leveling as survival.. but how hard is it to tank the mobs at the f'in portals instead of the center of the room in VH? My god... Normal instance PUGs are not alot of fun.

I've got some gear for HiredGun's level 80 party tonight. Hornlove will craft him up some bracers and legs too. Now if I can only get another 3 points in Engineering so he can make his own gun. Can we get something other than these damned knives to level it please? =)

2/18/51. No, I'm not gonna say fo'shizzle!

2009-01-30T10:05:00.000-08:00

I didn't get much sleep last night. First a 5+ hour naxx raid, then a long session on respeccing, trying out this survival thing. 2/18/51 is the new flavor of the month. I know a lot of hunters don't like the idea of respeccing away from Beast Mastery, but for me.. BM isn't getting it done since the nerf. I don't have best in slot items but my equipment is very good overall. If I can't at least get my DPS up above the off-tanks, my spot in the raid may be in jeopardy.

This may have been done before but I'm going to go over the talents and briefly explain why I think they're good for a raid SV hunter.

SURVIVAL TREE
Improved Tracking (5/5) - 5% ranged damage on Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin, Elementals, Giants, Humanoids, and Undead as long as I'm tracking any one of them. This seems like a no-brainer to me. Moar Damage!!

Hawk Eye (3/3) - 6 more yards of distance on my shots. Normally I wouldn't think this is a worthwhile talent for PvE. Most of the time I'd just need to get between 5-30 yards and pew pew. With the SV talent Sniper Training, however, I'll need the extra distance as you will see later.

Survival Instincts (2/2) - 4% better chance to crit on Steady Shot and Explosive shot. (SV won't be using Arcane shot since it share's it's cooldown with Explosive)

Survivalist (5/5) - 10% more stamina. You need 5 points here to be able to get Hunter vs Wild.

Hunter vs Wild (3/3) - Increases you and your pet's AP by 30% of your stamina. This is going to help with the Attack Power quite a bit. Plus those leathery rogue type items don't look as bad with all that extra stamina.

T.N.T. (3/3) - Ignoring the pvp/stun part of this, Explosive shot gains another 9% chance to crit. Hmm this crit is really starting to stack up.

Lock 'n Load (3/3) - I'll just copy the tool-tip text: "You have a 100% chance when you trap a target and a 10% chance when you deal periodic damage with your Serpent Sting to cause your next 2 Arcane Shot or Explosive Shot spells to trigger no cooldown, cost no mana and consume no ammo. 30 second cooldown." I haven't done the trap-dancing thing yet, but even Serpent Sting seems to make this proc often. This is just an awesome talent and vital to any SV build.

Killer Instinct (3/3) - Increases crit chance of all attacks by 3%. As Lienna pointed out, this bonus applies to any damage you do that can crit. (Ranged, Melee, Immo trap) Again, more crit is where it's at!

Lightning Reflexes (5/5) - Agility increased by 15%. As we know, AGI = AP and CRIT% (and other junk like Dodge, armor rating etc). Must-have talent as we'll soon see.

Expose Weakness (2/3) - 66% chance on ranged crits to increase AGI by 25% for 7 seconds. Because of the 7 second duration, 2 points in this talent are plenty to keep this going.

Thrill of the Hunt (3/3) - 100% of your ranged crits will return 40% mana. Again, another skill tying into boosting crit really high. This will really help keep me out of viper.

Wyvern Shot (1/1) - This will be not used at all for boss fights, but it does open up the next skill, which is great.

Noxious Stings (3/3) - "...increases all damage done by you on targets afflicted by your Serpent Sting by 3%". Serpent Sting will be up on my targets all the time, so pew pew some more!

Master Tactician (4/5) - With 4/5 points here, it increases my crit chance by 8% for 10 seconds 10% of the time (for 8 seconds). I guess I could put 5/5 points in here to increase the crit bonus to 10% but I'm going to use that talent point elsewhere.

Sniper Training (3/3) - Increases damage by Steady, Aimed, and explosive shots by 6% when standing beyond 30 yards from the target. Also increases Kill Shot crit by 15%. If the boss isn't going to stand still for trap dancing, I'll be working at getting in the 30-36 yard range. WTB: good range-finder mod!

Hunting Party (2/5) - This gives a 40% chance per Steady/Explosive crit to buff up to 10 party members with mana-regen equal to 0.25% of their max. mana per second for 15 seconds. What? only 2 points here? Yep, it's a great skill but it last 15 seconds and I'm going to be critting like a madman. 40% chance to proc will be plenty to keep this going.

Explosive Shot (1/1) - Here's a 51-point talent that's going to be the most used shot for a SV hunter. It recently got a buff and it's damage is quite good now. You can follow the link for more details but it basically does damage 3 times, 1 second apart. Each of these damages can crit, and they all count towards refilling your mana when Aspect of the Viper is on. Bind this key wisely! =)

MARKSMANSHIP TREE
Lethal Shots (5/5) - Gives 5% better chance to crit on ranged attacks. If you have read this far then you know how important it is to get your crit as high as possible.

Mortal Shots (5/5) - Gives 30% more damage to the crit portion of ranged attacks (including Explosive shot). Big. Huge. Crits.

Careful Aim (3/3) - Increases ranged attack power by 100% of my intellect. This is an AP boost of nearly 400 with my current gear.

Go for the Throat (1/2) - Ranged crits give my pet 25 instant focus. I'll be critting a lot. 1 point is fine.

Aimed Shot (1/1) - This is the skill that had me standing in front of the trainer for far too long. There are several choices to make at this point. Aimed shot is good for shooting on the run (insta-cast), besides that I'm still trying to figure out why I'm taking this over a point in Rapid Killing. In any case, I want the next skill.. so I had to choose one of them to advance down the tree.

Improved Stings (3/3) - It does other stuff but mainly I'm interested in the 30% extra damage to Serpent Sting. Since this sting will be up all the time, I want to make it work a bit harder. In the near future I may have to experiment to see if these points could be better spent elsewhere.

BEAST MASTERY TREE
Improved Aspect of the Hawk (2/5) - Normal ranged attacks will proc this, increasing my ranged attack speed by 6% for 12 seconds. I'd put more than 2 points here but.. there are no more talent points to spend.

And that's the build. I'm anxious to see what my DPS looks like in the next raid. The numbers on the paper-doll look amazing. (Nearly 4700 AP/35% crit unbuffed)

Darn is now known as Hiredgun

2009-01-29T09:03:00.000-08:00

Ok, "so who's Darn?" you may be asking. Oh yeah, that's right... I haven't introduced you yet. He's the very first character I made on WoW, a couple weeks after the game launched. His name was randomly generated. I never thought he would be my main character when I created him on Warsong. Darn had many fine adventures on Warsong, up to and including the start of Burning Crusade.

Recently Darn hasn't seen much action at all, however. Warsong (PvP) has achieved such a state of imbalance between hoarde and alliance that it was nearly impossible for me to level him. As soon as I'd start questing in the Borean Tundra, packs of level 80 hoarde would swoop down with their flying mounts, gank, camp the corpse, rinse, repeat. I finally got fed up with it and just stopped playing him. Cenarius was on the "Can't-transfer-to" list, so things looked bad for Darn being able to expierience the wonders of Northrend and leveling up to 80.

Then transfers to the server suddenly became available again...

Run, Darn, Run!

Happy time for Darn! Except, of course, the name Darn was taken on Cenarius. So I had to give him a new name. "Hiredgun" was the best I could come up with. (Well actually, I liked "Triggerman" better, but for some reason the game wouldn't let me choose that one) Darn, *cough*, I mean HiredGun had some catching up to do. For one thing, his engineering was hovering around a meager 345. It was time to put all those materials Failsauce mined up to use. One powerleveling session had HiredGun's engineering to 446. He now has his nice Truesight Ice Goggles (what a treat to be able to use these at level 72!), a ton of bullets and arrows, plus plenty of bombs! Creeping up on level 75, things are looking up for him.

Ahh.. back in action!

So why two hunters? To be honest, when I created Hornlove it was because I wanted to level another character but couldn't stand leveling any other class. At the time I had level 40 Warlock, Mage, and Rogue, with level 20-27 Warrior, Palladin, and Priest. To me none were as fun or quick to level as the hunter. Also, I wanted to make Hornlove Beastmaster while keeping Darn Marksmanship spec. Finally, when the Ilse of Quel'Danas opened up with it's nice gold-spewing dailies I wanted to have another character I could run them with. So those are the reasons for having two hunters. What? None of these are good enough for you? Bite me! =)

So that's the story of Darn, now known as Hiredgun on the Cenarius server. Hopefully some of his adventures in Northrend will be worth writing about.

Alts in a different guild

2009-01-28T11:54:00.000-08:00

"GET OVER HERE!" is the classic catchphrase Scorpion would say as he pulled his victim close with his roped kunai. Last night Failsauce felt the same tug from the guild master after she left Chaotic to return to her previous guild.

Failsauce: /gquit. "You have been invited to the guild Asylum.. accept? -yes-"

GM's Alt: "?"

Failsauce: "Ahh don't worry I'm just taking this alt out to rejoin her old guild. Amb said Chaotic had too many DKs and that she probably would not ever see any raid time."

GM's Alt: "This is Amb."

*pause*

Failsauce: "Ok, so just to be clear, Hornlove is staying in Chaotic."

GM's Alt: "We don't like having player's alts in different guilds."

Failsauce: "Oh, um, no raid nights would be missed or anything.. this is more or less for off-nights when I want to play the DK."

GM's Alt: "Officer A, Officer B, and myself have discussed it and decided it is not a good idea and would only create conflict."

Failsauce: "Hmm. So you want my alt to remain guildless even tho she's never going to raid with Chaotic?"

GM's Alt: "A lot of guilds feel this way."

Failsauce: Ok, I just wanted to be clear on that.
Failsauce: /g Don't ask guys.. =(
Failsauce: /gquit. "You have been invited to the guild Chaotic.. accept? -yes-"
*Failsauce feels like shit*

I really feel like an ass right about now. I've been a solo player for most of the time playing WoW. Before BC I was in a MC raiding guild, and in Asylum for a couple months. I have a lot to learn about being in guilds I guess.

Things I've learned over the last few days:

1. When joining a new guild, take your time to get to know them a little bit first. Spend some time on vent and see if you are going to enjoy yourself there.
2. When joining a new guild, do not bring any of your alts at first. In fact, don't even mention you have alts. (or just find out ahead of time what their policy is on alts)
3. No matter what, it seems that when other people get involved, there will end up being some kind of drama eventually.

Hopefully this is the last of my Adventures in Guilding type posts for a while. Moar WoW, less drama.

Moving forward?

2009-01-27T12:30:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend I switched guilds. I've had very mixed feelings about it since then. Asylum has been very good to me. The people there are friendly, helpful, and very pleasant. I was always invited to come on any heroics and raids. Conversations on vent were always enjoyable. I felt at home in the guild.

So why did I leave? I have to ask myself this question. I wanted to do more raiding content, specifically more 25-man naxx and Malygos raids. Things in Asylum were moving at a glacier pace towards doing these things as a guild. Our 10-mans were canceled more and more. I had semi-serious thoughts of joining Chaotic, the guild who I've been joining for their 25-man naxx's every Thursday. As I've said in earlier posts, I like the way the raids were run and enjoyed the fact that the raids were so successful. But I didn't really know the people there except for a couple times in vent. I wasn't really ready to make such a blind jump into a new guild.

Then, without warning or any explanation, the guy I got along with most in Asylum left the guild. I didn't know what to make of it or what was going to happen next. I think I sort of panicked a little and made the jump and switched guilds.

So how has it been? Ok I guess. If it sounds like I might have some regrets, I do. So far as part of the guild, I've been a part of 1 night worth of raiding, and that was yesterday when we did 10-man OS w/1 drake, 25-man OS, both 10 and 25-man Vault. I was not invited to go to the 10-man Malygos. Everything seemed ok there, pretty much as I expected.

So what's the problem? The other days of the week, when we're not raiding, I feel like an outsider. I know I'm new to the guild and things take time, but it just feels like the guildies don't really get me. When I converse with them on vent, the same connection doesn't seem to be there like with Asylum. I'm not sure if it's because it's a less mature bunch, or what. I won't go into details but the way some people in this guild act and talk just bug the hell out of me. This is unusual since I get along with most everyone I meet. On top of these irritations, I've been informed that the likelihood of Failsauce being invited to raid is very small because the guild is already loaded with DKs. No big deal I guess, but why even have Failsauce in the guild if that's going to be the case. *shrug*

I will continue to give it a shot. I regret acting so quickly, not putting more thought into it or spending time to get to know more people in the new guild. In any case, I will be content as long as I have a spot in the 25-man raids and eventually get to participate in Malygos and future content. I still miss the cool peeps at Asylum tho.

I'd rather be fishing...

2009-01-26T09:04:00.000-08:00

No updates on the weekend but certainly a lot of WoW was played. The daily fishing quest in Shat yielded a nice new pet for Hornlove:

Failsauce had some Outland fishing luck too. While trying to fish up the Weather Beaten Journal in the hour leading up to the weekly Fishing Contest she pulled up Mr. Pinchy! And with her first wish, a pet was granted...

Just thought I'd share my good fortune and remind everyone there are still some reasons to continue fishing in Outland. One last note, the fishing quests have become "un-nerfed".. which is to say, you won't get your quest fish on the 1st cast anymore. Something changed in the recent patch to make it so you are likely to have to cast 10 times or so to get what you're looking for.

The one that got away

2009-01-23T11:53:00.000-08:00

It's been a week since the 25-Naxx SUPERPUG and I was hoping to have a repeat performance. I caught an invite, my guildie did not (they had too many DKs). And here we go again on another 6 hour tour.

Everyone know what to do?

Nothing needed to be explained this time. Everyone in the group had a good understanding of all the fights. We systematically tore down Naxx, wing by wing. The only thing that gave us any trouble at all was the horrendus lag we encountered for the first hour or so of the raid. Several people including myself took turns at disconnecting, typically in the middle of a boss fight.

Delicious and nutricious!

The fish feast was a great hit! Everyone seemed to love it. I used all that I had cooked during the raid, so I have to set aside some time for fishing in the future. If my DPS doesn't get me invited back, my cooking might.

Things to do in KT's crib when you're dead.

After the lag died down it was smooth sailing. A few wipes overall but nothing that slowed us down much. By Midnight server time we were battling KT again (I feel close enough to call him that now). I was watching half of this battle from above my corpse since an Ice Tomb did me in. KT fell.. and this time I took a screenshot. (Told you it was not impressive)

That's how *I* roll!

I did end up getting a few upgrades. Shoulderpads of Secret Arts, Torn Web Wrapping, and Boots of the great Construct. I only won 1 contested roll. T7.5 eludes me yet. It was fun, I'll hopefully get another chance next week!

Gorilladin ... check!

2009-01-21T19:37:00.001-08:00

I finally stopped killing the poor gorilla long enough to tame him. Of course I wouldn't have had to sit in a stinky cave for 3 days if I had been more careful. Horn hasn't seen much of the new patch yet so I don't have much to say about it. I do think some people are overreacting a bit tho.

Failsauce did get a little taste of 3.0.8. I respecced/reglyphed her to match Skeleton Jack's build. I'm also still adjusting to using keyboard macros for the rotations. It's a bit clunky now but I'm sure I'll be kicking ass once I get the hang of it. At some point I'll get her into a tanking role.. I guess I just wanted to first see how badly this patch is going to affect my hunter. So far I haven't seen much of a problem with 3.0.8 for a DPS DK... at least where unholy is concerned. They did a number on our Gargoyle, but everything else seems pretty much the same. They did make the ghoul's Gnaw autocast by default. Which is good for me.. since I never used it before, at it works really well! *embarrassed look*

Oh, and those 1200 Relic of Ulduars I had sitting on Horn's bank.. they became suddenly useful when they stopped being Souldbound and started being turn-ins for Sons of Hodir rep. Most of these went to getting Failsauce Revered with them, and the rest sold for a ton of gold on the AH. Super!

And of course, I've been waiting for Fish Feast for over a month. I gots some fishin' to do!

Upgrade with a glowy red enchant!

2009-01-20T01:26:00.001-08:00

No it's not a Wraith Spear with Massacre. Thanks to Kestrel showing off his new toy, I suddenly had to have one too. I've been playing WoW with my dell pack-in keyboard since the game came out. It was time for an upgrade. So far I really like it. *edit: its the Microsoft Sidewinder X6.

There are 30 settable macros, x3 banks. The macros are a bit odd in that it seems to record the pauses you make between keypresses. I haven't figured out how to turn that feature off. There are 2 different colors for the glow.. a red for the main keyboard and an amber for the number pad which switches to 18 more macros when you're in game mode.

Speaking of it's "game mode"... You know that damned windows key that always get hit by mistake (usually at the worst possible time)? That key gets disabled when it's in this mode. *much rejoicing*

There's a "cruise" feature which lets you "hold down" a key automatically. It doesn't work with macro keys and just acts as "holding down" the key instead of tapping it. So far I can't think of any good use for that in WoW but I'm sure something will come up.

I'll get to play around more with this keyboard tomorrow after the patch.

Huntard.

2009-01-18T16:50:00.001-08:00

Epic Fail.

What's in a name?

2009-01-18T06:09:00.001-08:00

Rilgon Arcsinh at Stabilized Effort Scope was kind enough to not only add me to his Blogroll but also made a post about doing so asking people to come check it out. One of the comments left on his post said:

"Call me petty or maybe I spend too much time on Rp servers, but one look at those character names and I sort of zoned out and closed the window.

Failsauce? Seriously?"

So it got me thinking, how much importance do you place on your character's names on WoW?

For me, going back to Ultima Online, I've always named my characters based on this criteria:

1. No Permutations/numbers. Yeah, I could have named my main RiffRafff or R1ffRaff but that would have bugged me every time I saw him.

2. Easy to spell/type. My friend's first character on Warsong I still have a hard time spelling. Asylynn? Ayslnn? bah screw it.

3. Something that may reflect the character's makeup in some aspect. IMHO, Failsauce was a good name for a Gnome DK (the worst choice for DK race). Twobitpunk seemed appropriate for my rogue, and last I checked it was also unique.

4. In the case of a crafter, I'd want a name that looks good/funny/interesting on the maker's mark. My main crafter on UO made armor and weapons with the "crafted by Little Girl" mark. They actually sold pretty well to other players.

I've never been one to get that immersed in MMO's. Even with P&P D&D my character names were not stuff like Brock Ironbeard or Willow the Nymph. I understand there are more strict naming policies on the RP servers, which is totally fine. I really do enjoy roleplaying in online RPGs beleive it or not. Still, I still would not pick Tolkien-type names on an RP server. /shrug

25-Naxx SUPERPUG!

2009-01-16T11:00:00.000-08:00

Full clear of 25-man Naxx sounded really good. I actually did not believe we'd do it. What are the odds you can get 25 mostly-random people to pound the thing out for 5+ hours, especially on a Thursday Night?

Loot Rolling Strategy?
The loot rules were interesting. 1 "Need" roll for the whole thing. As many "greed" rolls as you want, however the "greed" rolls were for main-spec only. Because of this setup, it was curious to see people not using their "need" roll on items, even on moderate upgrades. Of course items like the Grim Toll would not get past this need stage. There was a bit of strategy involved for me, with only *1* other hunter in the raid. I was anxious for an upgrade of some kind, but what to shoot for?

The first boss dropped Crippled Treads, a decent upgrade to Hornlove's Dragon Slayer's Sabatons. The raid warning popped up, it was decision time. The other hunter rolled need, and I passed, thinking with this only being the first boss, there would be many more chances for drops and I'd still have my Need roll. I didn't have to wait long. The second boss dropped a Aged Winter Cloak, which by my calculations was the 2nd best cloak in the game for Horn. I rolled a 63 to beat two others and the cloak was mine! *claps hands together, rubbing them greedily* Much loot was to be had for everyone in this run. I missed winning T7.5 Shoulders, Legs, and Chest that dropped, but was able to out-roll the other hunter on the Cult's Chestguard and Pauldrons of the Abandoned! It was a great night for loot.

The Final Wing
A few replacements were needed after the 3rd wing went down, one being a guidie druid who respec'd to help us heal. The abomination wing was the last one left. I had never succeeded in getting past Patchwerk in a 25-man, much less clear the whole wing. We had 6 healers and very good DPS and it showed. The abomination fell easily. More people ended up dying to frogger! The remaining bosses were all new to me. We ended up wiping a few times before clearing the wing. Everyone was a bit tired at this point as the raid had been going on for over 5 hours.

1-shotting Sapphiron?
Many in the group had not got this far and the fight was explained well over vent. Everything seemed to be going good until some crankiness erupted over vent. "So-in-so is standing in the blizzard! Get out of it!" ... "I have the resist gear to be standing in the blizzard!! Worry about yourself!" It was not that polite, but you get the idea. Then later (still during the fight) the healers were arguing loudly, telling each other how to play their class. The raid leader did a good job of trying to "CLEAR VENT!!". Oh, the boss? One-shot. It was very close, just as the dragon had tore thru the main tank and started doing the same to the rest of the raid, it fell. Not the most difficult boss in the game but I thought 1-shotting this guy with a PUG was very impressive.

We Meet Again, KT!
Was this group capable of downing the head honcho? After the last week's battle with him I knew what we were in for at least. About 8 people in the raid did not know the fight so it was explained in detail. We wiped after a couple good efforts (one of which we had him down to 4%). The raid was waning a bit. "Last try for me guys..." "Me too I need to get to sleep." Argh! We've come all this way, and sleep is an issue? It's only 2AM server time. Suck it up! At this point I didn't really think we were going to finish the job, despite the good raid makeup, leadership, and abundance of DPS. After 6 hours people were losing focus. I even msg'd my guildie "Oh well at least it was a good learning expierience and we both got some nice loot" And then we did it...just like that Kel Thu'Zad was down!! YES!!! His crumpled corpse was so weak looking I didn't bother to take a screenshot, although I should have anyways.

In summary...
This was a really fun time. It took me back to the days of raiding MC in that a complete clear of a high-level instance can be a nice achievement, especially doing it in one sitting. Despite the raid consisting of 1/2 PUG, the guild "Chaotic" was running the thing and did a fantastic job. The MT and Raid Leader "Ambitions" kept cool throughout and steered us successfully to the end. I hope to be lucky enough to join them when they run this again next week.

Pre-Raid DK Tanking Gear list

2009-01-15T11:42:00.000-08:00

It's not a new thread, but it was stickied and has gathered many positive replies. I'm talking about the DK preraid Itemization for Tanks: a gear guide, written by Ragnarok on the official Blizzard forums. I'm going to summarize what's been said there. The goal is to get enough Defense Rating on your gear to become uncritable. (For the DK this means you need 540 defense skill, or a total of 689 defense rating.) Without sacrificing that, get as much stamina and strength in the gear as you can. Here are the items to achieve this as suggested by Ragnarok:

Head: Ground Tremor Helm, Drops in Gundrak(H).
--> enchant with: Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector (Argent Crusade-Revered)
Neck: Chained Military Gorget, 25 Emblems of Heroism in Dalaran
Shoulder: Iron Dwarf Smith Pauldrons, Drops in Halls of Lightning(H)
-->enchant with: Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle (Sons of Hodir - Exalted)
Back: Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions, 20g from Wyrmrest Accord at Honored.
-->enchant with: Enchant Cloak - Titanweave
Chest: Breastplate of the Solemn Council, 52g from Wyrmrest Accord at Revered.
-->enchant with: Enchant Chest - Greater Defense
Wrist: Bindings of Dark Will, Drops in CoT: Stratholme(H)
-->enchant with: Enchant Bracer - Fortitude
Hands: Gauntlets of Vigilance, Reward from The Reckoning in Storm Peaks
-->enchant with: Enchant Gloves - Armsman
Waist: Waistguard of the Risen Knight, BOE Drop in Drak'Tharon Keep(N)
-->Add a belt buckle, throw in a +16 STR (or something else if you like).
Legs: Daunting Legplates, Crafted by Blacksmithing (sells for 30g on my server)
-->enchant with: Frosthide Leg Armor
Feet: Sabatons of Draconic Vigor, 37g from Wyrmrest Accord at Revered
-->enchant with: Enchant Boots - Greater Fortitude
Ring 1: Gal'darah's Signet, Drops in Gundrak(N)
Ring 2: Dragonflight Great-Ring, Drops in Nexus(N)
Trinket 1: Essence of Gossamer, Drops in Azjol-Nerub(N)
Trinket 2: Seal of the Pantheon, Drops in Halls of Lightning(N)
Weapon: Titansteel Destroyer, Crafted by Blacksmithing.
-->(as of next patch) Put the +25 Defense runeforge on.
Relic: Sigil of Haunted Dreams, 15 Emblem of Heroism in Dalaran

So now I have something to shoot for, I'll have a suggestion for an instance to go when someone asks "where do we want to go now?" Will keep this updated with Failsauce's progress towards becoming uncritable.

For the Naru! For the Light!

2009-01-14T19:31:00.001-08:00

I'm not into PVP, I think it's a very boring aspect of WoW. Without a real sense of loss or gain from the battles, it remains pointless. I much more enjoy advancing in the game somehow instead of repeatedly running back to my corpse/making someone else do the same thing.

Today, however, Hornlove found her way into a 25-man which had just finished OS and was wanting to do vault. One problem, the horde owned Wintergrasp and the battle was about to begin. I tried it out, and could see why a lot of non-pvpers could get into it. The battle of Wintergrasp involves more strategy, the use of siege weapons, and other things besides just numbers/gear.

But in the end, it was still just numbers. The avalanche of Alliance came down on the Keep with a commanding thud. The battle couldn't have lasted much more than 10 minutes. A few achievements earned, good enuf for me.

And of course I got nothing from either raid except the Emblems of Valor. I did end up with enough saved emblems to get this:

I'm Invincible Now!!!

Where's the beef?

2009-01-14T11:14:00.000-08:00

I posted an introduction to myself and this blog on Blog Azeroth, a site that tracks WoW-related blogs. Since this is really the only place so far I've linked the blog, if you are reading this chances are you came from there. Oh and I was excited to see what I thought was my first comment but it ended up being just another one from the bot "Gooooooooood girl" or whatever it is advertising FullTiltPoker. /pout

In an attempt to help me gain focus here, it was suggested to me that I write about Failsauce and her quest to become a useful tank. I thought that was a good idea and will certainly do that. I've much to learn about how to play a tank correctly, and I beleive the Death Knight may be one of the more challenging classes to do it with.

Hornlove did not find herself going to any 25-man raids last night (booo!). But my guild did have scheduled a 10-man Obsidian Sanctim and 10-man Vault. Both of these raids went off without a hitch! Nothing fell for Horn but I was glad to see everything go so smoothly. It's always a bit tricky when you schedule a guild raid for the Vault, as it's not certain your faction will have control of Wintergrasp.

Failsauce then joined some guildies for Heroics as DK-DPS. Since her gear is fairly weak at this point, many chances for upgrades are to be had. We started with Gundrak. I had on my DK-tanking-gear laundry-list (I'll get to this list in a future post) an item I wanted from here: The Ground Tremor Helm. This did not fall for me but I did win a roll on the Offering of Sacrifice! It was some tanking gear, even though it wasn't on my list. After that we headed to Halls of Lightning where I nabbed The General's Steel Girdle for the DPS-set. Before heading to bed I nabbed a Cloak of Bloodied Waters from the AH and had a Spiked Titansteel Helm made. DPS is looking up! Still a long road to travel for proper tanking gear. More on that later...

Monday was Meh

2009-01-13T10:11:00.000-08:00

Not much happened yesterday Logged on Hornlove to try and get some Heroics in, but nobody needed DPS. For 30-40 minutes I kept watching the "LF Tank [insert Heroic here]" scroll by on the LFM channel.

I got bored of waiting. Logged on Failsauce (DK), half-jokingly typed "/4 Tank LF Heroic!" to see what kind of spam I'd get. Well the smart people asked "What's your HP?" or "What's your DEF?". My poorly-geared fresh 80 replied with "22k", "550 def rating" and got the expected results "nm".

One group decided to take me on, shooting for heroic Gundrak. I explained as we entered that my gear was not that great and we should take it slow. There were no objections. We entered via the Snake side. I pleaded with them to start on the other side so we could do the kiting technique on this boss, but I could not convince them. A couple quick wipes and it was over. Oh well, did I expect anything different? All I really accomplished is helping to reinforce the notion that there are a lot of bad DK's out there.

Besides gear I need to really learn how to play as a tank. It's a lot harder than it looks. I'm not sure heroic Gundrak is where I should be starting either. At least there should be some juicy 25-man raids to bang out tonight!

An elusive trinket

2009-01-11T13:16:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to say, I've been trying to get this trinket for quite some time. It finally dropped off the oversized dinosaur for Hornlove...

Horray for DPS! =D

Epic Failsauce!

2009-01-11T12:59:00.001-08:00

Doing a metric ass-ton of Heroics with Hornlove for the day should have been enough for me, but when the group finally broke up, I still had some play in me. Failsauce had rest exp until 80, so might as well do the Sons of Hodir quest line to try and close the gap.

Don't look down!

Doing this quest line again was pretty fun. The quests are really well done in this zone, like all of Northrend. The Epic quest Drakkensryd was *WAY* easier with a death knight (compared with doing it as a hunter). Its really cool how you help build the different parts of Dun Niffelem, watching the city change as you progress. I think everyone likes this phasing scheme, making you feel like you're changing the world as you play.

Place nice, boys!

I was cruisin' along so quickly, I almost missed the big moment...

There was a brief fireworks display outside a mailbox in Dalaran. =D

And now for something completely different.

2009-01-10T01:49:00.001-08:00

25-Man Naxx lf DPS it said... Sounded great to me! It wasn't until after I had joined the group with Hornlove that I realized it was for the last two bosses only. "Fine by me!" I thought.. I honestly didn't think I'd see the last couple bosses in this instance for several weeks at least. The opportunity to kill them and get some loot could not be passed up. If nothing else it would be a fine learning experience. The first boss, Sapphiron was explained well over vent. (I also viewed Tankspot's Guide to learn more) After a wipe or two, we got him (her?) down. No good loot dropped for me, and we moved on to the top dog, Kel'Thuzad... the final boss of Naxx!

The encounter was again explained in detail via vent. It spans several stages, which were easy to learn after a try or two. We came very close (2% once) but could not finish the job. Kel'Thuzad is a bad-ass! In the end we wiped 9 or 10 times, and the group had enough. I'd love to try again tho. Some special stuff can drop from this creep!

Yeah, you're a bad-ass!

Revisiting quests at 80

2009-01-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

Hornlove finally got around to trying out some of those quests she skipped over on the way to 80, which were practically all of the ones in Zul'Drak. These quests are very entertaining, and very rewarding! Thousands in gold sits dormant in these little green quests. I'd suggest to everyone to go back and complete ones you skipped over, no matter where in Northrend they may be. Not only are they quick, fun, and profitable, you'll open up more dalies.

Need more mana!

2009-01-08T02:50:00.000-08:00

Once I was satisfied with Hornlove having enough Hit Rating in her overall gear options I dropped Focused Aim to try to use those 3 points in something more useful for improving DPS. What did I put them in? Pathfinding. Since I'm always lagging behind by skinning or drinking, I thought the extra bit of speed would help me catch up to the rest of the group. GG, thx for playing, enjoy your parting gifts. Ok, scrap that. I then decided to copy some other huntard by throwing points into Invigoration. Instead of putting that last point into Hawk Eye, I decided Efficiency would serve me better. Here's the 55/16/0 build I ended up with. Hopefully this will keep me out of Aspect of the Viper and more into serious Pwnage!

Also in before the nerf...

2009-01-06T16:06:00.000-08:00

Hunters do great DPS. We get to buy an epic weapon as soon as we ding 80. It's relatively easy to configure a hunter's gear to maximize their DPS. It's my beleif that when other classes get geared up, hunters are not overpowered. During a 25-man Vault earlier today, Hornlove went all-out for the top spot. AP-boosting food, AGI/Crit booting elixir, the best ammo, even quaffed a potion of speed to see what I could do on this burst-damage-fight. I was able to stand still thru entire fight, all cooldowns blown as soon they came up, kept the pet alive the whole fight. The results:

As other classes catch up in gear/maximizing gear, it becomes clear that the Hunters are not far-and-away doing too much damage. Yet we are still slated to get a horrific nerf next patch. At least it wasn't today.. another 7 days of "OP" to enjoy.

On another note:

In before the nerf

2009-01-04T19:06:00.000-08:00

Sure it was burst damage for 1 boss, but it was a heroic boss and 4k DPS! Enjoying it while I can before hunters get blasted with the nerf stick next patch. Not much going on today. No guild naxx this weekend. Spent some time getting Failsauce's cooking and fishing over 350 so she can at least start doing the Dalaran Cooking Quests. More Northern Spices is always good.

Would you hit that?

2009-01-04T00:05:00.001-08:00

Finally, I was able to get the Emblems of Herosim together for the off-hand weapon I wanted. The idea was to throw the Accuracy enchant on it and have a nice set of fist weapons for running Naxx. The amount of hit% bonus hunters need for Naxx is either 8% or 9%, depending on who you believe. I'm trying to get over 8%, and will check the damage meters for misses the next time I get into a 25-man Naxx. Hornlove's racial passive Heroic Presence is great for helping to reach this, btw! Now to the weapons I've chosen for their Hit Rating:

Crimson Steel can be had from 10-man Obsidian Sanctum, and Pride is purchased from a vendor in Dalaran for 50 Emblems of Heroism. Accuracy gives +25 Hit Rating and +25 Crit Rating which is ideal, since I'm only going to be equipping these when I need to get naxx-hit-capped. There are other weapons I'd rather have if I didn't need so much Hit Rating.

Anyone need a squishy pet?

2009-01-03T17:44:00.000-08:00

In case you didn't know... The Spirit of Koosu is tameable. I felt obligated to give Hornlove her very own pet slime. Awwww =)

WoW Karma - Proof!

2009-01-03T17:15:00.000-08:00

We head out to do some guild heroics last night. Hornlove is a couple Emblem of Heroism's short of the new off-hand for naxx I want. The second Heroic we did, Gundrak, went ok with only 1 wipe. Mr. Gal'darah dropped a Hemorrhaging Circle. This is a nice ring for a hunter, and a minor upgrade for Horn. Two guild mates were rolling on it. Since it came with expertise, I ended up passing.

This morning I remember that my Mysterious Egg was ready to hatch. I eagerly logged in to pop it open. *channels Proto Drake energy* Woah! Reins of the Proto drake! Wheeeeeeee!

After visiting BRK's site this morning, I noticed he actually took the ring, but got no drake! Scientific proof that WoW Karma is real! =D

The end of Winter Veil

2009-01-02T01:23:00.000-08:00

Winter's Veil is over in a couple hours, did you get the Merrymaker title? Not me! Maybe next year. I did cram some Fishing and Cooking on Failsauce, which was time consuming.

Hornlove did find her way into a couple 25-man PUGs which were successful but no hunter loot was to be had! There was much hunter-hate to go around, however, when the raid was wiped by an inadvertant pull by one of the other Hunters in the group. Was fun in any case.

A busy New Years Eve!

2009-01-01T02:33:00.000-08:00

No parties this New Years Eve for me. Instead some WoW. At least I got some stuff done. Well, in the way you get stuff done in the game, and not in real-life ;)

For Hornlove, the grind of dalies is over with Sons of Hodir, arguably one of the most important reputations in Wrath of the Lich King. Being exalted with them gives her the option to use use The Greater Inscription of the Axe on shoulders. (Still trying to figure out how to show those cool WowHead desciptions by just hovering the mouse over the link).

Earlier in the day I jumped into an Azjol-Nerub Heroic PUG but Hornlove's Crossbow skill was only 330 or so. I had just replaced my bullets with arrows the night before to start using the Drake Mounted Crossbow. I was worried that my misses would be often and obvious, but it didn't take too long for me to get the Weapon skill maxxed, somewhere around the 2nd boss.

Ninja-weapon training in Heroic PUGs 4tw =)

Later in the day our guild ran a bunch of Heroics, Nexus being the last one. The Final boss was nice enough to drop this for Hornlove:

Whew! Quite a lot for one day, and one post! *stares at bed*

Where do they find the time?

2009-01-01T02:10:00.001-08:00

Oooh, oooh, I want to do a blog too! Oh really? As soon as I come home from work the first thing I want to do is log in and start playing some WoW. Many of these WoW blog sites seem to pump out massive amounts of content every day, some several times a day. I just think it's amazing how much is written by active players. As this is just something I'm messing around with at the moment, updates may be scarce. We'll see how it goes.

Oh, and by the way...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Who let the Riff Raff in?

2008-12-30T15:26:00.000-08:00

Well for everything there must be a beginning. This is the first post of this Blog. In fact, it's my first blog. Will anyone ever read it? I don't know. In any case I'm going to write here about experiences in the World of Warcraft game by Blizzard. Many other WoW blogs have surfaced over the last few years. I hope I can find something interesting to add to what's already out there.