Friday, December 21, 2007

Alone again.

Well it finally happened.

I have left my guild.

Well it’s not MY guild any more. Honor. That was the name of the guild. I’m not sire if I have ever talked about it on here before. Prolly have in passing but not specifically. Now I will.

I joined a guild some few months after I started playing wow. That guild was called Kaos. It was a guild on Duskwood server. I joined because my wife was in it and she recommended it to me. Besides I wanted to play with the wife and being in the same guild would facilitate that easier. Now Kaos had a lot of good people and players. Those 2 things not being mutually inclusive either. Yet enough of them in the guild were both to make it a nice place to hang. Or so I thought. A few months (or days, can’t remember) after I joined that guild it imploded.

Several of the good ones started another guild for the other good ones. This guild was named Honor. I joined them around the 3rd day of Honor’s life. The GM was an older guy named Ressager. This guy really knew how to treat people. He was a GM people would defend and listen to. Yet he wasn’t a domineering kind of guy. He led us by example and it seemed to work. People differed to him when disputes arose over anything. He made it clear that Honor was a casual guild that was looking to raid, but not jam ass into hardcore.

So we didn’t advance as fast as the other guilds. Yet we advanced at a steady pace. The guild did all the pre-bc raids and were quite successful. We never had a guild only Rag kill, mostly due to the pre-reqs, but we could go in there and smash it up pretty good. We advanced enough to tackle ZG, AQ20, and even dipped into BWL and Ony. I think a few even made it into Naxx. All this was pre-BC of course. When BC was about to hit we lost a lot of members due to the fact that we were laying off raids and only doin impromptu attempts at the higher dungeons. Most came back after BC and joined the run to 70.

It then came to pass that our leader, Ressager, had to take some indefinite off time to do some moving and house building. We all understood and wished him well. Most assumed he would be back after a few months. During the time he was away, many left the guild due to having no direction or solid leadership. The guild deteriorated into almost a feeder guild or a guild just for alts. A lot of the key players took their “mains” out to join raiding guilds for gear and experience. No one seemed willing to make the big decisions that would turn around the guild and bring it back to the Pre-Ressager’sleaveofabsence. The attitude of the guild slumped and many rules that were enforced before were let slide. The guild became, in my opinion, a swampy shadow of its former self.

After a period of time when we didn’t hear from him, he was contacted by other means. It was decided by him and his Vice GM that he would give up control of the guild to the Vice GM, Borvoh. This guy was the right hand and a proper choice for a replacement GM. So no one thought anything of it. In fact most heartily endorsed it. Now Bor set about returning the guild to its former glory, hell at one time people were clamoring to get into Honor since our rep for fairness and fun were renown across the server. He re-enforced the rules and listened to the officers to institute others. Oh yeah did I mention that at some point I became an officer or equivalent. Hell I was up for Class leader just before those positions were removed. Since I was an officer and interested in the guilds long life, I helped out where I could. With pride and fairness I helped police the guild for idiots. Never abusing my powers, and I had some decent ones too. There was plenty of friction when we started to raid Kara. We lost a few more due to misunderstandings and friction.

The guild weathered the trials that Kara presented. After a period of unsettling conflict we pulled through and became a guild that could field a successful Kara group. It wasn’t long after we started having weekly success in Kara that a lot of the old guard returned from their wanderings. Soon we suddenly had enough members to realistically run 2 Kara groups and expect them to perform well. And they did, and it was good. Well not so much for me.

Due to time differences and actually having a life (yeah kids do need tending sometimes) I was unable to run with group 1. Also at the time my only 70 was my Rogue. Dps wasn’t a big need so he was very rarely needed; besides there were plenty of DPS that hit harder then him. So I started a pally just to see how it plays. I loved it of course. It wasn’t long after I got to around 40 on Gawds that I decided that he would be a raider, DPS of course as I cant stand to be in the background healing. I should have realized at it was a pipe dream. Not only is DPS not hard to come by, it is in overabundance. While healers and tanks are still scarce.

Soon after Gawds reached 70 there was a call for a second group for Kara. I was excited. Here was my chance to break in and do some damage in Kara. I didn’t know at the time that there really isn’t all that much gear in there for a ret pally. (Turns out that heroics is prolly the best place for decent ret pally gear, if you can stomach wearing mail. Ick!) Yeah I say. I was still willing to go an help other get some goodies. My first attempt to get into group to failed miserable. The time it was set to go was almost an hour before I could realistically get home from work. Dayam. Next attempt was tolerable better only because it was delayed until key players logged on to give the group a chance to work. I watched as the group slammed through the first few bosses and then failed to get past Curator. Why? DPS wasn’t high enough. Since ret pallys don’t have fast ass DPS, I bowed out and let a mage come wail. That was the last time Gawds went into Kara. That was prolly 3 weeks ago, maybe more, I’d have to check.

After ZA was introduced the guild set up a progression group, whether it was set I don’t know, I was never asked for participation. So I have yet to see the inside of ZA. Shrugs.

I left Honor for various reasons. Some I have yet to state some I may never state, but the bottom line is: I no longer felt my presence in the guild amounted to anything. I couldn’t raid, wasn’t included in heroics when I expressed interest(mostly due to preplanned excursions), was flat out ignored when I asked to get in on a ZA run and generally left to twiddle my thumbs. I was excluded from playing with the people I had come to love playing with. I rarely saw any of the people I enjoyed playing with face to face (in game). All I have had for the past few weeks is reading in /gchat all the guilds exploits in Kara and ZA. Yeah. I’m happy. Shit. I will miss the guild a lot. Hell Honor, for me, was my only guild. Nothing will come close to it I think. No. I know nothing will come close to it. Yet I find that leaving wasn’t as hard as it should have been, coupled with the fact that when I left I got all of 2 people asking why I left. So yeah I quietly disappeared from everyone it seemed. I considered goin to the wife’s guild, but the chance even though the chance to raid is there, the chance at gear is slim to none based on the rules they have about raiding/loot.

There have been slim opportunities for me to raid, shit, same thing happened pre-bc. I have been tinkering with a prot warrior. After 2.3 it has become disgustingly easy to level, and with 2 high level characters to finance, I can afford the best gear to make it even easier. I started this game solo, so it seems I have come full circle. I’m solo again. I don’t know how long I will stomach playing solo or whether I will keep playing till WoTK graces us with its presence.


So with a heavy heart, yeah it does hurt a bit, I bid farewell to Honor. I will miss alot of people. Can’t say if I’ll ever go back. Future is uncertain.


Mindkiller
Gawdsicon
Darstar

Monday, December 10, 2007

More Altism, I have it in spades.

I was a little premature in thinking that I would be raid lots and lots on Gawds. Seems even though Ret pallys have increased in utility, they are not all that wanted in raids. Or perhaps its just this persons pally that is not welcome. I’m being bitter, the one time I have gone to Kara on Gawds we can’t kill Curator. I bowed out so they could bring in another dps. They get him down and what drops? T4 pally gloves , with no one there who could use them or need them. Yeah. I have been unable to get into any other raids due to the time slot they seem to shoot for. It is just as I get home if I don’t make any stops. If traffic is heavy, I’ll be late. We don’t get penalized for not showing up on time, but it means they have to look for some one else and maybe that person needs stuff in there. Couple this with the fact that I have been told that the gear in Kara is not a big draw for Ret pallys, yeah again. So in order for me to get gear I have to do Heroics for drops and badges. Well after the long haul to 70, I find myself with out purpose. I can spend time in heroics for a small chance something good will drop, or just farm badges to make a nice epic set out of that. I have yet to decide what to do.

I still get a lot of tells asking me to heal or tank on Gawds. I see a lot of players assuming Ret is a broken and worthless tree. I’m glad they are wrong. Our damage is based on crits and procs, but both are tied and can be enhanced easily. Well easily within the games mechanics, ie farming for drops and badges. Same as most characters. The only thing I see as what they are complaining about is that to be truly effective you need to stick almost soley to the ret tree. Not like healing or prot where you can diddle in and out of 2 or 3 of the trees. Myself I went with 10/0/51 to gain the maximum amount of dps per swing as well as the nice boost to stats from the 10% to str and int. It means I can’t heal heroics or the harder dungeons for more that a few heals. Yet I didn’t roll pally to heal. I made him to get those insane crits I see in all the PVP videos where a pally rolls through 20 guys before the screen goes blank. Can a rogue do that? Sure, but you damn well better have some beastly equipment. Mindkiller doesn’t, and won’t. He just does not have the utility people look for in raids. I am disappointed that a character I really loved leveling to 70 turned out to be only worth using as a farmer. Maybe I’m playing him wrong. I don’t know, and I’m tired of tryin.

I have also taken a break from Gawds. I’m really thinking about moving him to my wife’s guild. If they will have me, not sure as I have not applied yet. I have started and leveled to 26 a brand new Human Warrior named Darstar. I decided finally to make a tank. My luck will be such that when ever he reaches 70, the tanks will all be druids or Prot pallys. It will also give me a slim chance of playing side by side with my wifes preist. If only I can get her to play at all with me instead of raiding. I can burn oast her so fast due to my ability to smash through areas and their quests in no time at all. Coupled with tha fact of my memory retention of all the quests I have done for various reasons. Hell I have done the human, gnome/dwarf, Night elf, and Drani quests on a few characters. Some just for rep at 60 or 70. I know where I need to go for this or that quest. She has limited herself to playing only NE for so long she only knows those quests, whil I prefer the gnomes and dwarves. Still I have ploughed through the Teldrassil and darkshore stuff a few times just for the beefy rep you get. An ill do it again on Darstar sos he can have a cat at 60. We will see if we can meet up for some play time. Might not be for a bit though as packing will have to come first. My time for the next few weeks will be at a premium as I have to move me and the family out of the apartment we are in.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Numer Two 70, But #1 Character

Well Gawds has been 70 for 5 weeks now. The final push was real quick. I just finished out some of the easier quests in BEM befor heading into Netherstorm for the 68-70 quests. I knocked out a few of the quests. I’ll edit this with the specific area I dinged in someday.

I entered 70 well ahead of the game. I had been trolling the AH for an upgrade to my Helreaver. It was getting much harder to kill things quickly, that usually means its time for a weapon upgrade. I was purusing the AH for a suitable replacement and was decided on the Oathkeeper for the 68+ questing and to take me into Heroics and Kara. Hell a 70 pally guildy had his until last week when he got Gorehowl off of Prince. He’s been 70 since a month after BC….or less. Well I was at 65 when I decided on the upgrade shopping. So into the AH I go and I see a lot of good things…cept they are for 66-68 and not gonna help me. I finally decide to go with a pole arm that had some very nice stats. I asked my guildies for some advice and the concesus was to go with OathKeeper. A guildy even offered to give me one at a tremendous discount. (Yeah for something like that I have no problem paying a guildy.) As I was deciding wether to take him up on the offer I see a spam in /2 for the Hammer of Destiny. Guy wanted 1.2k. So I asked the guild if it was worth that much. Most agreed it was worth more like 800. So I messaged him with the 800g and he said he would take that price if I traded other things for it. (It seems to me now that this guy was an ex-Diablo 2 Player. A lot of transactions in that game revolved around trading items as gold was so easy to come by and items were not soul bound. Lots of times it was gold + item trades. This was the first time I had seen it as an option in WOW. Item for Item, sure. Money for Item sure. Just not both.) Where ever this guy came from it didn’t change the fact that I only had 924g on that character ( yeah others had more) But I was not gonna pay more then 800. I could walk away and not be upset. He would be out 800 he didn’t have. So I tell him I only have the gold and no tradable items as I have been saving for an epic. (True but the real money is elsewhere). He says he will keep me in mind. He spasm his ad 2 more times, I suspect now that some guildes messaged him and offered him an amount lower then the 800, yeah they would do that, cuz in less then 5 minutes he msgs me back. He says he’s having a good day so he was gonna pass on the joy. (If he had giving it to me for 500 that would have been some serious joy). We meet and I hand over the cash, he hands over the Hammer. I then had an epic that is widely said to be the best pre-raid epic weapon. Tell you what, I think they are right. See my priority here? I have a 3 sentence paragraph stating how I got from 65-70, in 3 days mind you, while the weapon gets a huge chunk o space. I am not a lewt whore really, but I am jazzed that I got the hammer. I slapped Savagery on that bad boy as soon as I found a chanter with it learned.

It languished in the bank till I neared 70 then was immediately equipped once I dinged. 114g later I trained all the skills for 69 and 70. I was ready for dungeons…um no. I still needed rep in a few places for the heroic keys.

I spent a great deal of time in Nagrand farming the Obsidian Beads for Consortium rep till I had over 100 of them. I then headed to Netherstorm to crank out the consortium quests that would put me close to honored. It took a bit but after tuning in the beads and quests I managed to earn my key. I also had to work on my Shatar rep but the only way for that was to run TK instances. So I placed that on hold while started my Kara attunement. It took me over the course of a week to get it all done. By the time I was keyed I was honored with KOT(1 Durn FC + BM FC) and pretty well into friendly with Shatar. I still need a few more runs to get me to honored. But one problem, no one wanted to run them. I had the shitiest time putting together a run to any of the TK dungeons.

I was screwing around in Shat when I decided to turn in some signets and tomes to the Scryer people. It turns out that turning in those signets, tomes, fel armaments, and marks of Keal/Sarg, also gives Sha’tar rep. Well shit I didn’t know that. I spent some time farming some up and looked for deals on the AH and /2. Got some major steals from people looking to make some quick cash. After all my wheelin and dealing I got enough signets and tome to make a huge dent in my Scryer and Sha’tar rep. In fact I got my Sha’tar rep to 5999/6000 with all the turnins. That’s where it stopped. Shit. Still needed a rep run. I then decided to put that on hold for a short time so I could run through the quest chain for the arcatraz key which would take a character into Bot and Mech. After I ran through the quests (Btw I soloed the elite demon who held the shard in Netrherstorm, took 3 times though) I put out a call again for a run into Bot and maybe Mech. This was last Saturday and luckily there were guildies about and looking to run some Shar’tar rep up. We blasted through Bot before everyone had to run over to kill Kara. It was cool I dinged honored with the first kill in Bot. I had to wait till Sunday to run Mech. Sunday comes and I get a tell from a group already in Mech. They were at the last boss and needed DPS.

“Are you ret?”
“Fuck yeah I’m a Skull Cracker,” me replies.
“Wanna kill the last boss in mech?”
“Hell fucking yeah!”

We wipe on him the first time but destroy him the second. I got the second frag and made my key at Shat.

I am fucking Keyed for everywhere and all levels. I have run UB and SV heroic. I’ve run Bot and Mech on heroic. I’ve even been in on a disastrous SL heroic. I am loving the heroics on Gawds. Mindkiller has never seen the inside of a heroic. Mindkiller has now become a support character as I grow deeper into the Paladin. I will raid with Gawds like I never did wit Mindkiller. Oh well they both are money makers, and with my one-man guild banker I have no problem storing and selling all the stuff these two can acquire. I think I will have my epic mount money in about a week if I just put a bit of effort into it. It took me 4 months or so on Mindkiller to do that. It will prolly be a total of 2-3 weeks on Gawds.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Getting there.

I have managed to make it to Nagrand and be well into level 65. I layed the smack down on the remaining Zangar quests up to and including a few rep quest for Sporragar. They had a nice shield I was willing to grind for. It was a bit repetitive but in the end worth it for a blue shield that only cost 15 Glowcaps.

I managed to hit honored with CE while messing around in Zangar and after getting to 64 moved on into Terrokar. I remember all the quests here and picked the ones with the best rewards and exp coupled with the easiest. I also knocked out the Shat welcome quests and picked Scryers just for convienience. Not much to be had from either faction really for a Ret pally. People seem to think the grind to exalted is worth the shoulder enchants, I do not. I chose Scryer cuz you can jump off the top tier and not die, as well as its closer to the FP and I have gotton used to goin to the their bank on Mindkiller. I usually just sell any rep items I get for either faction on Mindkiller. I see me doin the same on Gawds.

I managed to plow my way through the Terrokar quests before heading into Nagrand. Now the real grind begins. I want to clear out the quests here before rolling over to Blades Edge. I had forgotten the grind that is the Nessinwary quests. I’ll still do them since they are good exp and some nice DE stuff. I decided to grind out the ogre chain quests in order to get me a new weapon. Turns out the new weapon has higher dps but isn’t much of an upgrade. Pity, it looks spiffy. I’m not sure I want to waste the mats to slam Savagery onto it to see if it is a true upgrade. I may have to do another search for an upgrade an see what I can find.

As I was questing in Nagrand a call went out over general chat for people to group up and raid Halaa and take it back from the Horde. I ignored it since I was only 65. Then a guildy happened to be in Nagrand, heard the call and asked if any in the guild wanted to come join the fracus. Seems they already had like 20 people in raid waiting to make a move. I sent a wsp and got an invite. I headed over to see whas shaking. By the time I got to Halaa there were 30 people in the raid facing off against 20-25 horde. All the allys were unflagged and the town guards had all been killed. The leader called for everyone to flag in 5 minutes and start the melee. All the horde were just waiting for a fight. Five minutes roll by an we all flag and go to town. I died in 2.3 secs and spent 2.3 minutes walking back. I shoulda just bubbled. I get back and we have pretty much smashed the defence. The battle rages for almost 15 minutes with the horde getting filleted, I managed to hit a few in the few seconds they were live. I got a nice 22 battle tokens. I may actually use them to get some gear too. I saw some decent stoof on the quarter master. No weapons though. I don’t want the mount, not into the horned goat thingy. Some day I’ll spring for the epic flyer on Gawds and start the 12 day march for the Drake. I’m certain I may be able to shave off one day if I get some lucky egg drops. That’s all in the distant future.

I actually logged onto Mindkiller a few times this week to help a guildy with his epic mount quest. The warlock mount quest simply rocks for intencity. The final fight in Dire Maul was chaos, even with 3 level 70s assisting. I can’t imagine 5 level 60’s doing this fight an not failing a few times. We killed everything and the locks were able to keep the artifacts active most of the time. After a bit of a rest the deamon horse spawned and we bitch slapped it. Its owner came after wards and was mighty pissed off that we had kilt his prized equine. We rocked his ass and made him beg for death which, as compassionate people we are, we granted. We had dragged a second lock with in order for him to get his mount quest done too. So both got some nice fiery horses to play with and I got to help out a guildy, and get what used to be some decent lewt for the level. It more then covered the repair bill with a nice little profit.

I have been using another character for AHn stoof from Gawds. It is working real well. I can send shit to him and have him collect then post it. He has already made back the opening allowance I sent him for mail and postin, I might spend a bit of time on Mindkiller mining and send the stuff over for posting as well.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Month of busy, Enjoy.

I’m looking at the dates on my posts and realize I’m not very prolific. Most times I write anything it’s in response to something some one else has said. If it’s about my in game adventures I lag like a mug in getting it all down. So unfortunately it makes for long posts and missed stories. So I’ll get to the meat.

When last I posted I was a mere 52 Paladin, now I’m 62 ½. How you say? Well let’s see if I can remember a bit of the last 25 days in game. ….ah yes I was pissed about losing out on Sul Thraze, or at least the chance at Sul, and consoling myself with Destiny. Well I never used Destiny, I had forgotten about the level 51 AV quest where you can get this awesome pole arm. The Icebarbed Spear. Very nice. I got this one easy and slapped crusader on it. Very cool. I used this bad boy all the way up till I got me an upgrade in the Outlands, more on that later. Any who, after several times trying to resell the Destiny blade I just sent it off to a mule for storage until I need it for a character or find a buyer. Soon after I got my new spear I went off to WPL and smashed through a few quests there. At some point my guildies decided it was a good time for a Strat run to farm some Righteous Orbs, and they dragged my happy level 53 ass with.

Now I had only been to a few strat runs…most times I had to leave or the group would fail after 2 pulls. This time I was with 2 70 pallys, a 70 hunter and a 70 warrior. Cake doesn’t even come close to the ease. We wiped a few times only cuz the pallys got bored and wanted a challenge…..an then had to work to make it so then shot themselves in the foot. Oh well. I got some decent exp, drops and a mess of stones for AD rep, oh yeah they boosted rep gains in Strat to at least 10 per kill. After 1 Strat run and Sholo run after I was half way through Honored with AD, and had enough stones to push me to revered easy. So we blast through the undead side in less then 45 minutes then go to the live side. We kilt the guy that goes to warn the baron of our arrival and I got my key to the city…at 52. It is then decided to try for a 45 minute baron run. No one needs it we just wanted to see how long it would take us.

We roll through the gate and the timer starts. Our pallys spread out and grab like 4 groups. They get most of them down. The spiders seem to like casting silence on the pallys. We wipe spectacularly and have to run back. Now in the old days this would be a scrap, but not with 4 70s. We roll back sans handy timer, and proceed to get serious. We blast through everything, well they do I’m just along for the exp and rep. We roll to the final room with the 20 Patchwork wannabes, and the 10 minute warning sound. Oh shit. Will we have enough time I ask? They say yeah no problem. So I watch as they pull 2-3 of the brutes at a time till none are left. We all trump back to the gates to wait the next wave, smash them and roll in for the fight. About this time we hear the timer expire and the baron offs the chick. Too bad. One pally runs in and aggros the boss while most are still out side. A pally, the warrior, and the hunter make it in before the door closes. Leaving me and the other pally outside to sit and listen. They smash him for his crimes and we roll out, 2 orbs richer.

After we get out another group of guildies decide to run sholo and want to take me along. I ask if they want me to take Mindkiller for dps, they reply no. They want to drag Gawds through Sholo. Hells yeah I’ll go. We tore through sholo, even the chick in the basement that no on wants to fight cuz she’s such a bitch. We did the whole place in like 40 minutes. I got my freaking lightforge helm and some decant gloves…too bad their both 57. So they go in to the bank. By now I have a huge stack of all 3 types of stones for AD rep. I go to the AH after and pull the mats for the rep quests in Light hope, 30 of this 30 of that. They had to sit in the bank till I was hig enough to get those quests but when I turned them in finally it gave me like 45k exp for just a few quests. I spent a lot of time in WPL and EPL over the next few levels with a quick jaunt to Felwood and Winterspring to do a few of the easy stuff in those two areas. I got to roll on a few BRD runs that were a real waste of time. Not much exp and no rewards to speak of. I blasted through some Burning Steps quests also, man I look forward to leveling my next alt after 2.3 hits. The march from 52 to 58 had some spurts an stops but I got there about a week and a half ago. Me an another guildy hit 58 at the same time so we met up at the portal and marched through together and started the first few quests. He had to log after an hour but I kept on rollin. I didn’t touch any of the real meat quests till I ran Ramparts a few times…like 15 times. Most times I was with guildies so only a few were pugs. I got some decent gear but what I was really looking for was the rep. I got it too.

My guildies kept dragging me through till I got to 59 ½, and I got all the gear I could use from there. I had 6 pieces I couldn’t use till level 60 sittin in my bags. We did one more run mid week last week and my new pole arm dropped. Hellreaver. Very cool . I slapped Savagery onto the bad boy. It is one of the most awesome looking blades. I am very happy to have it and thanked the guys who ran me profusely for there help and patients. Next I’ll need to bug them for Underbog runs, not yet though I still got a few things to do first.

After I got the blade I saw that I was very near honored so I went ahead and started to blast through the Hellfire quests, I had most of them done in a day. Yeah all Saturday last weekend, I finished up a few group quests Sunday morning and decided to dip into Zangarmarsh. I picked up a mess of quests an proceeded to wail on them. I’m almost done with all the Refuge and Telredor quests. I was gona finish them up before goin to the Haborage and the chick near sporragar. I’ll have to check if it’s gonna be worth it to farm sporragar rep. CE has a nice head enchant I want so Ill defiantly be crankin some rep there. I have noticed a marked change in how easy it is to kill things. There was the same thing on Mindkiller when he moved into Zangar fro Hellfire. Another thing is some of the more obnoxious kill/collection quests seem to go a lot smoother with a plate wearer, basic, but still it’s nice to know plate is worth having. I also had a “Holy Shit!” moment when I took down bog lash solo, hell I had an add too. The add killed me but not until after I rolled Boglash.

That about rolls it all up to now, I haven’t done crap on Mindkiller cept gather mats for his epic flyer when ever 2.3 rolls out. He has been shelved until I hit 70 on Gawds. I just don’t get that excited like I used to about him. It probably the lack of progression and rewards. Spending 4+ hours every few nights in Kara just don’t blow up my skirts. The rewards are spotty and only moderate upgrades for the work it requires. If you team is decently geared and experienced then you can fly through the place, but group 2s usually have the lighter geared people with less exp. Even splitting the elites into the 2 groups make for a long run, with a minimal hope of reward. Is it bad of me to want a new shiny for my efforts all the time? I don’t think so really, but I try not to say it out loud. That would piss some people off. I’m not really a lewt whore, I like upgrades and working toward them. However the stuff in Kara is not exiting enough for me, and to make it really snap you need to get a few of the pieces or it just doesn’t have a great impact on character power. I know they are not sets, but I went head to head with the wife’s rogue, who is decked out in no less the 7 Kara Epix. We have the exact same build. I have all quest blues an greens with very few dungeon drops. We did a few tests on regular mobs solo with 2 damage meters running to catch all the goodness. I was about even with hers for most of the fights. A few times I went over her in damage, and on mobs we duo’d I pulled aggro. I do not see me needing a damn thing from Kara before WoTLK hits. I may get into it with another guild, or mine, but what I really and only want from Kara are 2 new weapons. Ill take the Ripper off Moroes and the weird named dagger off of prince. I need to figure out if I really want to go and make the time to go. I tried to get into group 2 last week. I was excited to go, even prepared by getting all my shit straight. I log on and realize I read the start time wrong. I was 45 minutes late for the start. No one cared, doesn’t make me any happier. The wife offered up a spot on her guild’s Kara runs, she has no authority to do that so I’m not holding my breath. She also keeps trying to get me to move my pally over to her guild. Maybe some day….prolly not. I’m a lump. I think I’m real close to becoming guildless. I don’t bring anything to my current guild but a few bits of humor. As dps I am ok, not fantastic, could be blamed on gear but I’m not sure that’s all that’s lacking. As a pally I do not do what is needed to make me an asset to a raid, and I will not respect to healadin or tankadin. I’ll stay a ret noob. Wow this got really depressing.

Gawdsicon;

OUT.

Friday, October 05, 2007

Just some update on a Friday.

I haven’t posted anything for awhile. Mostly due to just not having the will power to put anything down. SO I will try to get something written here now. It’s a slow day with not much going on so I can spend a few hours typing and it will look good to the outside observer.

I have not been playing Gnome Mindkiller all that much. He’s been to a few Kara raids but has received nothing but a repair bill, I’m not complaining, I got to see some neat fights and Kara is gorgeous. I did notice a lack of fun there though. I remember my first time into ZG or AQ20. ZG was a blast, even if it was hard it was still a blast. AQ20 was a lot harder and we had to be on our toes, but it was still fun. Kara seems a lot like work, maybe that’s what it was supposed to be. I don’t know. I am obviously not a “Raider” in the smallest of definition. I go, if I go, for the content. I don’t see me getting much loot out of the place. Yeah there’s stuff I could use, but they drop so little or when I chose to not go. The only way to upgrade I see is to grind rep and get me some ok gear form KOT or Consortium. I really see little use in going to Kara except to see stuff I haven’t seen. I still have never seen all of MC and just recently went through a full Strat run. We even did the 45 min Baron run in like 30 minutes. I would rather see a full ZG run then a full Kara. Pretty sad I know. Never seen Naxx and prolly never will. Very depressed about my rogue. He seems to have reached a plateau and I see no reason to push him farther. I got him an epic drake mount, so what. He has one epic piece, helmet/crafted, and a long road for any replacement daggers.

So enough depressing stuff. I started a paladin awhile ago mainly as a bank character. I had so much fun that I decided to go back to him and level him up. After a few weeks I have gotten him up to 50. With some monetary backing from Mindkiller; Gawdsicon (God’s Icon) has become Retribution pally with, more often the not, an epic weapon. Which reminds me: I need to make some time to do dailies on Mind.

The last few levels went by real fast. I was in Searing Gorge when a bored 70 guildy and friend decided to help me smash through several quest…ok 14 of them. They gave me a full level, so that pushed me from 48 ½ to 49 ½. That rocked ass let me tell you. I did a bit of questing on my own then got invited back into ZF for a mostly guild run. 3 Guild 2 PUG. 1 of the pugs was a friend of the guildy who put together the run. This guy tuned out to be a dickhead.

Group make up was as follows:
Gawdsicon, 49 Ret Pally wearing all plate.
Guildy 51 Holy Pally wearing a lot of cloth.
Guildy ~44Enhancement Shaman decent gear if a lower level then me or the other guildy.
Pug 47 Prot Pally, Shaman’s “friend”
Pug 45 Pally, no idea what spec.

Now we started ok, summons for me as I was all the way in WPL just about to lay the smack down on some undead. We go through the first 5 pulls when the Prot pally makes a comment about the Guildy Pally wearing cloth instead of plate. He spouts some shit about how HIS brother is the BESTEST PALLY IN THE WHOLE WORLD and he only wears plate. Well that’s just fanfuckingtastic and shit. Cept plate at the lower levels, pre-BC, has very little if any + to spell, healing or what ever. Cloth, however, can be found in plenty with those bonuses that make a 1.2 crit heal into a 3k crit heal, and makes them come out more often. Now the Shaman new this guy had his head up his ass and says so after this comment was tossed off. She even said to him in /pchat to just drop it or “Oh here we go again.” Some shit like that. Now I am new to playing a pally, it true I know it hard to believe an all, but I know that pallys are played by all types and with desires that we can only fathom. I started one be cause some of the best players I know play them and dish out some mad DPS, sure they have some bad ass weapons and equip but they also know how to play the class. These are my teachers. Some are even straight holy and kick some major ass on the healing charts. These are the guys that don't give a damn what you are wearing as long as you do you chosen job. No compulsory respects here dude. Play your shit the way you want to, end of story good bye and fuck all you haters.

Now back to the story, this asshole pops off with this comment and I just can’t seem to let it go so I lay into his ass with my best ‘defending a Guildy self righteousness’ and I laid into him hard. Talking about how no one gives a fuck if his bro is anything other then his fucking imagination and shit, despite the fact that he was commenting on a guildy that happens to be one of those players that can take a class and master it out the ass. This holy pally guildy was enough to later help us 4 man ZF with just him healing…so yeah cloth is ok. If the tank is doing his job the healer won’t get hit. After I give this ass the “come to jesus burn down of his illusions” he starts saying he will not protect any one but his friend (the Shaman), and how he will let us all die……..now I’m more then pissed so we (myself, the healadin, and the other pugged pally) decide to sit the next battle out and let the assholdin take on 3-4 44 elite mobs all by hissself. The shaman was healing…so he managed to pull of the fight. The shaman gets the hint and says good bye an rolls, with the protassdin in tow. Just before he leaves the party I make sure he has no misconceptions of how I feel about his brain case. I call him a dick head just before he leaves party. So yeah that better be the last I see of that idiot.

The shaman apologized to both of us guildys in /gchat for the moron’s offences. Seems this guy may have once considered applying to our guild, small favors and gods grace kept that asshat out of our hair.

We picked up a rogue and a warrior, but the warrior dropped to help out guildys so we 4 manned most of the rest of ZF including the stairs, which was a blast. It usually is for me, always loved the absolute chaos of the stair event. We had this rogue that seemed to not know how to respond to simple commands like “roll for shards”, don’t need on BOE items without asking first, and shit like that. I was for kicking him the next time he need on a BOE, but he kept his rolls to the right things, even though I needed on shit just for the sharding as the plate shit wasn’t needed by any and a shard would be worth more then the item any way.

We demolish the stairs and Bly and have the little goblin break down the walls for us sos we can kill the chief. Here's where some shit happens:
I have been farming ZF since level 40 with the help of guildys, my wife, the occasional pug, and dual-boxing while the wife was at work. The whole purpose? Sul’Thraze. In all those levels and like 40 runs, I had never seen even one half of the blade. The haves being Jang’Thraze and Sang’Thraze. Guess what dropped off the chief? Jang’Thraze. I tell the group I’m gonna need on it. I tell them it was my purpose of coming besides helping a guildy. My Guildy has it already so its cool, the pug pally has no interest in it…they both pass and congratulate me.

The rogue…need’s on it.

…..
…..
…..

I need on it….the rogue wins the roll, leaves party and hearths.

The only thing keeping me from tracking this asshole down, murdering his family, and making him watch as I do it and as I delete what ever this asshole has for characters on WOW, before I feed him slowly into a chipper shredder: I had been scouring the AH for an alternative to Sul for a week before this dropped. I found the alternative I had been looking for and got it for a measly 250g, that morning. Destiny. Yeah, I can’t use it till 52, but its more juicy then Sul. If the proc on it is even slightly nice it will make some nice slice and dice Ret pally action. Plus I think crusader will go nice with it. Not sure if it will stack, but even if it don’t they may setup a chain reaction where one goes of and process the other and back and forth till a battle is over. I can’t wait to see if it will work that way. I got the mats for crusader a while back at a huge discount so I’m not out muck in the way of money.

After this idiot ninjad, what else would you call it?, he won’t even get the full benefit out of it. Couple that with him getting a hold of Widowmaker when it dropped. Dude went away with some gear he can’t even use, did I mention he was 43; yeah asshole won’t even be able to use the sword yet. Anyway after he left I was so pissed I just fucking left, after apologies to my guildy for leaving him hanging I just turned off the game and went to bed. Early. Very fucking early for me. I hope I can help him get his gahz kill later this weekend. Hell I’ll take my rogue and burn through the place in 30 minutes.

I logged on the day after and saw that I was less the 1000 exp away from 50 so I scoured the nearby area for green level mobs and kilt a few till I dinged…yeah 50 and I never got hold of Sul. Shitty.

I feel my climb to 70 has gone into overdrive. It is time for me to head to Ungoro and knock out a few quests there before I head to WPL and kick some undead ass there.

I was in fact in Un'goro for abit last night be fore a warrior guildy decided to round up keyed members and hit Kara again…there was a run there earlier so we picked up a few that went then and hauled ass over there for a few attempts on the prince. We did the chess event, I thing this was an after though on Blizz’s part i.e. keep um coming back for free epics and shit. We plowed through the trash like butter with only one wipe due to a bad pull on the tanks part. Well not a complete wipe as I and a mage friend survived with our asses intact. We get to prince and this is the first time I have even been in this fight. Seemed pretty straight forward to me and instructions were concise and to the point. I think we did well even though we didn’t manage to get him down after 4 tries. The first 3 times we had a bad infernal spawn right along our enfeeble route that kept us from getting back to prince. Also on those attempts our tanks got critted so fast and hard that even constant healing couldn’t keep him up. He was confused as to how that could happen. Pissed actually cuz it shouldn’t have happened that way and hadn’t before.

The forth attempt was prolly the closest we came to being perfect. We all kept our head and had some lucky infernal spawns till the 6th or 7th. We had to sit out a bit near the end of the fight as an infernal spawned right next to the prince and blocked us again at like 15%. So we held of and just did ranged. We got him below 10% when some one got the idea of all running in and going balls out to try and burn him down, my wife was watching the fight over my shoulder and counseled me to not do it. We just didn’t have the dps to burn him down in the few seconds it would take for the infernal to kill us all. I held my tongue as it was my first time in this fight. We all rush in and…die…wipe…at 8%...last attempt before respawns. Night over. There are plans to go back in there tonight and get him down…if I’m invited I’ll go. I can only hope I get me the dagger, it will make the whole hour and a half fight worth it. Plus I need an upgrade badly. I haven’t had any new gear worth shit for along time. If I’m not invited I’ll be spending a lot of time this weekend (4 DAYS BABY!!) leveling my pally to how ever high I can achieve. It’s too much to hope that I get him to 58 this weekend. That would be sick. Then the shit will really pick up, this time I’m gonna do it right. All instances before any of the quests, with guildys willing to help me blast though dungeons I can get me some decent gear and rep…but not yet of course. It will come…soon.

Monday, August 06, 2007

Hirelings for WOW?

I was checking out Gitr’s latest post where he asks an interesting question. I post it here in full for effect. My response to this post grew so large I decided to post here. This seems to happen a lot and I thank Gitr for inspiring me to be overly verbose. Hell I need content just like the next guy. My response follows the article. All in quotes is Gitr's. I bolded it for clarity:

“Single-Player Mode
August 3, 2007 at 12:57 pm

Pursuant to my discussions with Lassira about private servers, I finally came up with an original content idea. Original, at least in that, as well-read as I am in WoW, I have yet to see this idea.
For those of us who have always played RTS, FPS, and the various FPS/strategy games like Rainbow Six, I have a desire to see the entire game. Obviously there are thousands, if not a million people willing or able to put the time into the game to get attuned, geared, and learned in the end-game instances to play them through to the end of Blizzard’s content.
What I propose is a single-player mode. You get a crew of 4, 9, or 19 computer-controlled players, just as you do when you assault the subway in Rainbow Six. That would enable someone who gets off work and eats dinner and puts the kids to bed to play for an hour per night to get somewhere. We don’t all have a bunch of guild whores that can drop everything they are doing to help us out whenever we log in, do we? You do!? You suck!
There would be no need for acquiring the loot directly, as you would need to take control of another player should your main die in combat. Bosses would drop tokens that represent a particular piece for your given class, which you would then obtain when you rez and take control of your main again.
The only thing missing at that point would be a save game feature for your progress through a long instance. Granted, instances don’t take 3-6 hours any more, but they are still longer when starting off than many people have. Even playing on private servers to experience end-game content won’t alleviate everyday time crunches.
Would you like to see a Single-Player mode? What things have I missed here? Would you consider playing on a private server just to have an instant 70 to see end-game content with a new class that you’ve never tried? Are you even remotely as busy as I am?
I love WoW as much as the next guy, so let me see it all. Sound off.”


Nice idea. Let’s poke some holes shall we.

The first thing to think about when making this sort of “single player” game is AI. (Big deal here) Second would be balance, encounters and rewards. How much worth would you get out of this type of game play?

How will the mobs interact with your party? How will the party interact with each other? Sure it is easy to have a set number of rules governing actions, but when does it become ‘easy mode’? You have several NPCs under you helping you along. This makes the game less MMOG; in fact it turns it into a single player game.

Working with 4-19 computer controlled NPCs means that all the encounters will have to be tuned to account for the lack of real people governing the actions of the participants of a particular instance. How high an AI will be needed and can that be regulated for zone or level? Will all levels be able to field several bodyguards? Will they be able to use them in PVP situations? Will characters be relegated to their own private instance while using NPC groups? Will these instances encompass the world or just a dungeon? How will gear and progression be affected? Can you take a +9 NPC group into Kara and expect some lewt? Will you have to level and gear your ‘special’ friends? Will you be able to use what you earn during these forays with the NPCs in the real world with other people (MMOG Style)? How will this affect balance among people who put in the time? Will raiders and the leet be able to skyrocket to the tops of DPS Meters and arena rankings using this part of the game?

This game was built on the premise of co-operation among several parties. Yeah there is single player content and the best stuff requires a team of people who know what they are doing and can adapt to changes. Does this leave out a lot of people? You damn skippy. So what? I have never seen Rag, or Strat (either) and have never even figured out where Naxx is. I may never go to AQ40. How ever I have been to Kara, will likely go to Black Temple in a few months, and someday I don’t doubt I will see Hyjal. I may even get some Phat lewts on the way.

To make a single player option like you are proposing in this here game we play will seriously undermine all that has come before to make this game as accessible as it is. Some day when the developers are in a quirky mood they will give us the tools to go back and see the content we have missed due to the requirements of needing large numbers of live bodies. I hope to hell that it does not ever come in the form of a tag-a-long team of NPCs. If you played Diable2 you know the AI involved with an NPC bodyguard is pretty limited, as it should be. No reason for you dummy to have more brains then you in any given situation. Can you imagine trying to govern +4 to +19 or +39 for the older stuff? It would be a nightmare, when would you get to see anything when you are busy micromanaging every thing from heals to dropping aggro on the hunters or laying off on the DPS from your rogues/mages/locks? Tank switching for key fights? You would have to have a degree level knowledge for every class that goes into the raid/group.

I would love this idea if I didn’t think it would destroy this game. It has so many issues involved with the implementation of it that they developers would spend more time trying to fix what this screws up then making new stuff for us to rompe through. This would be a game changing event of monumental proportions. Armageddon for WOW. Game over, the Scourge win. Thank you and good night. People will be reading about the big WOW crash of 09 or 10 or when ever this would theoretical be pushed out to the, conceivably 12million by then, players world wide. I see a lot of suicides and killings, even outside the game world. People would long for the days when it took 10-40 people to raid a dungeon. There will be guilds of NPCs just sitting in SW waiting for their Overlord GM to wake them for the evenings dungeon kill. Upside would be the decrease in gold sellers, trade spam and Barrens chat. All would be a waste land of NPCs following one lonely player on his way to raid Black Temple. Nameplates saying things like ‘Main Healer’ or ‘Off Tank2’, the only unique name plate you see is: ‘Gitr’


PS. I will note that most times when Gitr posts something that gets a responce from me, it sends me off on a rant. This is the case here. Props to Gitr for getting me out of a writing laze.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

A PVP Gem of a Match.

I have to make this post as an addendum to my rant against the arenas.

It surrounds my statement of never having fun in WSG except with guildies. I now have to take that back. Last Friday I was feeling up to a little pvp. I didn’t have a lot of time or more truthfully didn’t wanna be at it all night. So I picked a WSG BG for a quick match. They usually run anywhere from 9 to 25 minutes. The longer the match the more likely it’s a horde pre-made farmin kills.

I played 1 WSG……for an HOUR AND TEN MINUTES!

I will say bar none that was the best match of any of the PVP BGs I have been a part of. This includes all WSG, AB, AV, and EOS. I love AV, still do, but I never had this much fun there. Both sides seem to be matched almost perfectly, even with people afkin out or just plain leavin. There was never at any time an imbalance that led to an easy victory.

It was a close match through out the entire hour and change play time. I didn’t see any uber weapons of death, I saw stuff from quests and drops from normal dungeons. Tactics were used on both sides and both sides seemed to be communicating with their teams the way its supposed to be. Occasionally after a stalemate we would meet in the middle and just wail on each other till enough were dead for one side to make a grab for the flag. I did not top the damage done or kills made, but damn I got 60 kills and 48 killing blows.

I was the bane of one poor hunter that seemed to think he could solo 2 level 70 rogues working together. He was wrong. While he would be occupied by one of us, the other would sneak around, disarm his freezing trap, and the stun locking would commence. Also a level 70 warrior got rolled several times by yours truly. He seemed to think cuz he could limit my run speed that it would help him…..cept I was using crippling and mind numbing poisons this time. Yeah, no getting to charge range for you baby.

I also finally got back into using gouge, haven’t used it much for a long time…never really needed it. It helps a lot in PVP though. If I feel I need more CC I’ll see about incorporating Blind back into my action bar, never used that much either. We will see. As the match progressed it seemed more likely that it would last awhile longer. I kept seeing a few people afk out yet, another would replace and get right into the action.

At about 1 hour 5 minutes we took each other’s flags, theres made it out with some heavy help from their side…ours got smooshed midfield. We ended up losing the match, I didn’t care I had a BLAST!

I didn’t go into any other BGs that night. Hell I haven’t doen any PVP since that match. I’m sure I’ll get back in there, I need 10 more marks before im through with WSG. Then comes the real nasty AB for token. Meh. EOS will be a nice change after ward. Then AV for honor.

If all WSGs were like that, more people would play them for fun….instead of marks.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

I have the wings to prove it.

Might as well spill the beans.

Last night I achieved a mile stone in my WOW playing. I hit 5000 gold. With a little questing before heading to Shadowmoon I had pushed that to 5025 gold. A quick money transfer form the wife’s account an I have enough cashe to buy my EPIC TRAINING & FLYER.

I opted, after careful consideration and advice from the wife, to go with the blue griffon. This thing hauls 10 kinds of ass. Now I can fly anywhere in style and speed. Rockin baby!!! After I took a spin around the world to stretch out my new ride, I looked up the opening quest giver for the Netherdrake quest lines. After about 10 minutes I finally find him and begin the journey. I killed the rock flayers for their goblets and carcasses. Props to blizzard for making a collection quest actually fun and quick. I had 8 whole carcasses in about 15 minutes as I learned the fights with the flayers. I fed the drakes which seemed very appreciative. I went on to killing some dragonmaws, which was cake being the uber rogue I am. After collecting the crystals I was told to free some drakes. Now this one was a cool quest. You fire this sparkly thing at the drakes in the dragonmaw’s camp, they snap out of their funk and attack the nearest dragonmaw. You have to help them kill the orc guarding them and then they go free. Again props to blizzard they could have made this part a drag ass kill quest. Instead you only have to kill maybe 5 orcs to free the 5 drakes, more if one wanders too close and aggros the drake. I did all these quests in under an hour, mainly cuz I kept having this urge to buzz the wandering mobs with my uber fast griffon.

I got all the way to the quest to free the dragon-in-the-sky’s wife. I had to end the night at that point as there was no one around for helping. Maybe tonight or this weekend I can advance to where you open up the daily quests. Those seem to be cake as well. I didn’t see too many people around doing them, maybe the 5000 gold threshold is keeping them away or at least down to a trickle. I might have to enlist my guildies for the group quests.

I took a screen shot when I hit the big 5k mark. I may never get there again anytime soon. I have been grinding out the cash and scrimpin for almost….hell I don’t know, awhile at least. Some weeks I pulled in 800g while others it was a measly 50. I did it even though it took 2 characters. I have been funneling netherweave and nettherweb silk to my wife’s character. Not to mention all the DE’d equipment turned into arcane dusts and planar essences. All this in order to level her tailoring high enough to make the Imbued Netherweave Bags. Since I did all the farming for the mats we were able to under cut anyone and get our bags sold. Though this route we have made a good 500g on hers and that’s just half assed. Theres no telling how much we could make if we could put more then 5 bags up per week.

But that will wait at least a week. I’m done on the farmin for now. I will concentrate on some quests to build up a bit of cash. Also see about completing the Netherstorm quests I still have. I don’t want to start on the Shadowmoon quests, excluding the Netherdrake stuff, until the other areas are done with. I still see a lot of yellow exclamation marks in Shadow moon so I know money will still come easy. I didn’t want to reach a point where I couldn’t bang out a quest and get some cash. Though now with the daily quests that’s prolly not an issue. Still it will be nice to get back to knocking out quests primarily for the questing and not money makin.


I finally got my third key fragment, now I just need to get into Durnhold then Black Morass. After them it’s on to Kara.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Me an PVP....not so much.

I wonder if I can squeeze out a post with just random things about my time in game with out a theme of sorts. Here goes.

I have been playing Gnome Mindkiller heavily. I really want to get the need amount of money to get and train an epic flyng mount. I have been scrimping and saving all I can. I have been doing the daily quests religiously for the skettis, and if I could get a group for the last in the series of 5-mans for the ogres I would crank out their dailies too. I don’t want anything from either of these faction so its all about the money. I don’t even care if I get to kill the large beasties you need for one item drops for their faction. You can have that shit. I do want to try out the bombing quests for the ogres, the idea of being shot at by AA guns would be cool. After I get me an epic flyer it would prolly be cake, not sure though yet.

I spent the better part of the last week mining and just plain screwing around. I got an invite from a former guildie to check out the arena. We made a team with just us and tried it out last night. I will say it here now: 1 on 1 pvp and I do not like each other. I suck big time. I’m ok when there are a few more team mates around to help me out, but solo or 2 v 2, nope no dice. I’m not specced for it is a nice excuse but I just don’t have the skills for pvp. I have never used blinding powder, I rarely use gouge, and its hit and miss with stun locking people. Some of it can be attributed to lag but not enough that I can use it as a crutch. I liked the arenas for the scenery even though I barley got a look before I got smeared, they had a nice look about them, but not near enough to get me to go back. I have read about all the little details for each arena where you can do this or do that to help you and screw your opponent. Yeah, I never got a chance to even think about that crap when I’m fighting to stay alive long enough to actually hit my opponent.

The “matches” went pretty quickly. None lasting more then 30 seconds I would say. We got rolled. I was usually the last on our side standing…only because they seemed it think he was the greater threat and Focues Fire on him……yeah I’m not even insulted cuz its more then true. We got owned first by a lock/pally, then a rogue/priest then a hunter/shaman. After the first battle I knew I was not long for the arenas. After one fight I had done maybe 2k damage. That’s shit compared to any classes health at level 70specially any PVPrs. At the same time I was getting 4-5 shotted by a rogue wearing t4s. Yeah the matching system blows. I have one piece of D3, the rest aren’t even close to that level. If it was by rating…fuck it I don’t care. Just another aspect of this game I will fail to see to any degree. My team mate decided 3 losses was enough for the night. I agreed and added that I thought 3 losses in a row basicly told me I was not cut out for the arenas. He explained that after awhile we could get better gear and get better. Yeah nice wish. I am not into self flagellation, I need advancement even if its just the accumulation of virtual wealth. Getting butt raped by PVPrs is not my idea of a fun time. Why would I pay to play a an aspect of a game that rewards the narrow minded pursuit of making a fight so one-sided that the opponent has no room what so ever squeeze out a surprise victory. There was no point in the three battles that I had and thought that we could win. Not because I knew I sucked at PVP either. It was because I knew what classes are most often in the matches and what builds they prolly are and what combos are pretty much an ass kicking waiting to happen. I know I can take out a……shit I can’t take out anything since I suck so bad. That’s what pisses me off: I can’t seem to translate my ease with PVE into any thing resembling an decent showing in a PVP setting. (I told him I wasn’t gonna take this shit for weeks on end to build up enough point for piece of gear that wont increase my chance of beating the next opponents enough time to get more points for the purchase of more equipment. Naw I got some repeat/daily quests already thank you, I’ll stick with those. At least I will get gold and items from that and a better chance at weapons and armor after gaining rep with those quests,)I have even thought of respeccing and learning a new build as an alternative. I don’t think it will work though. Any spec of any class I will encounter in PVP will be catered to PVP and as such I am screwed. I hate dying, I hate it even more when it is some asshole on the other side who just 2 shotted me with a nice “Kill-Rogue” macro. I know how to use my rogue to stun lock casters in PVE but that wont work for human target since they have all kinds of nifty gadgets an then there is the twitch factor that is disastrous to the mediocre PVPr that I am. I told my guild that the next time I even consider doin arena I will quit WOW. I’m pretty sure it would happen to. I have never gotten that mad at this game since….hell never really. I quit the arena team after 3 battles and losing 40pts in standing. Fuck you arenas!

So I go to get my “free epics” from the BGs instead. At least there I can get in a few actual kills. I had assumed I would never go back here again, yet I did the crawl once to get my dagger and Knight rank so it seems to me better investment then the arenas. Plus I’m not going to be forced to play “X” amount of battles to ensure I get points.

I had farmed up a ton of marks from the different BGs pre-BC. I ended up trashing them after since they had not released the lvl 70 BG stuff yet, or if they had I didn’t see them. I plan on working toward the 3 non set epics from the BGs the honor is within reason and the marks are just a matter of showing up and getting the required amount.

I need approximately 35000 Honor Points and
40 marks from EOS
40 marks from AB
20 marks form WSG

These will get me the bracers gloves and boot. Or is it bracers, boots, belt? Crap who cares? It will be 3 non set epics that are damn nice and better then I could hope for since I have only one Heroic Key and have yet to finish the Kara Attunement crap. (I remember when I first saw the attunments for the BC, I was floored, now it don’t seem all that bad even with all the dungeon time needed. The Heroic keys are a walk in the park if you have a decent group to run theose needed lvl70 instance for rep. 1000+ per most of the time is not bad. Though I’m still behind on that too.)

I digress, I zoned into a WSG last night to get another mark toward my goal of 20, I have 8 now btw, all from losses. I look at the horde side and see……10 players from the same server…..same freaking guild, and all obviously on vent. Not that it mattered since most of the alliance afked out right at the start. How bad was it? Let’s see I did almost 3000 damage total in 10 minutes. The only reason it lasted 10 was they horde were there to farm HKs. They took the flag and capped it 2 times, then grabbed the flag and held it while massacring the alliance in the center of the BG. Just like lambs we all went there and waited to be killed. I do not understand how they can be consistently more coordinated in WSG and AB time after time. If I could figure it out I could at least find a way to beat them.

The only fun I have ever had in WSG is when 5 guildies joined me there and we just stood at the ally’s tunnel and killed anything that came near. We got 45+ kills in one match. We lost but we got the kills so we could give a shit. It looks like I will spend another 12 matches there unless we pull off a miracle. I am not looking forward to the 40 ABs, those matches cam go one for ever. I like the 5 minute Abs where the pre-made take all 5 nodes and the resources just skyrocket. Three and a half hours of five minute Abs would get me all the tokens needed.

I know I will like the EOS BG. I have been there a few times and it seems ok with several things goin on so you can just DO something at least, not like AV where there is a ton of shit to do. I think AV is much more fun then any of the others. Not because the ally’s win these more then the others but because there are actual points where team work just falls into place with out any one needing to try an wrangle everyone into the right path. A few times yeah it all falls apart but for time/reward my moneys on AV all the way. If you don’t want to fight you can farm shit there for rep with out screwing around with anyone.

Not that I need AV rep anymore. Exalted had some nice rewards….now? Not a fucking thing. I still have my lobotomizer. I just can’t seem to get rid of it. I can sell it or shard it so the only way to get rid of it is to destroy it. I’m not sure I can just toss a dagger that took me that long to grind for, money and rep wise. So in my bank it stays, along with my PVP trinket and AV trinket that I never use anymore. I prolly will use the AV one when I go back the to farm honor. Since I wont have to care about wining or loosing AV it will be a nice fun time where I can contribute my damage to a kill at certain choke points and most time get some bonus honor just for showing up. If I manage to get my ass into Kara or some Heroics and get some drop that will negate the awesomeness of the PVP stuff, then I will have to reprioritize my plans. Yet as soon as I have 20 tokens I will prolly have enough honor for my first piece of PVP gear: The bracers.
Wow for random thoughts I created a monster post. Here you got Gitr, chew on this for an update

Thursday, June 07, 2007

I grew as a person because of games.

This is a response to a friend’s statement of growth as a person. It became too long to put into a comment so I decided to make a post that is very non-WOW related.

Responding to Peterson:
Glad to see someone evacuated the cylinder of plant matter out of your posterior extricator.

Growing as a person is something I can understand. I was a wall holder for most of my high school years. I had many friends that knew me as a quiet yet imposing figure. Many stories were made up about my 'legendary' anger that had no basis in reality. The stories kept me out of trouble since no one wished to challenge the voracity of those claims. I kept that image in line by being fiercely loyal to my friends and defending them when needed.

I still had this aura around me even after I graduated. Kind of a suppressed violence about me. I had always felt I was alone and would stay that way forever. I looked at people as rivals for living. Not that I attacked or did anything really. Yet I didn't let anyone come close either. I created a bubble around me that was a deterrent to others. I was always polite but not overly so. I never allowed the slightest interest in anything other then a passing familiarity to show to people I interacted with.

I can remember the exact time and place when I realized that it was time to slough off that mode of existing without living. Course the realization was after the implementation. Sometimes my body runs ahead of my mind. Turns out this time it worked for the better.

It was 1999, prolly around March or so, at a Denny’s near where I still live. I walked into the place like I had for the few months at pretty late hour. I had quit a security job yet had some funds still available. There were these to guys there, twins yet very different personalities. They were having a discussion about a video game, a game which I was very familiar with and loved a great deal. I wanted to join the conversation, yet the old high school clique mode of interacting kept me from saying anything. They were gamers, but at the time I had not thought of my self as a gamer and that we are a community. Sure I played but I was a solo by geography and not choice. I kept my mouth shut listening to them discuss a game I felt in my blood was the greatest game ever, that is until I heard them giving false info out to some one who would not know it was false. After I heard the one say it, I was compelled by some force to correct them, these strangers that knew no what they dood. (Did. Yeah, but dood sounded better.) I corrected them and they paused, for a second I thought they would disregard my statement and dismiss me from a discussion I had no place in. Instead there passed a moment of synergy, a pulse of like to like, they recognized that which was there that I had not seen.

I was a Gamer.

Introductions were made, food was ordered, and a relationship with these 2 amazing people began. I was welcomed into their inner circle of friends and gained new ones as our friendship grew. We became a normal fixture at that Denny’s so much so that people when looking for us would look there first. People would arrive to catch a few words then leave just as the next group would arrive. Looking back I see that I had been allowed into their ‘court’. First I was just a visitor; soon however I was one of the few, the diehards that stayed there well past the midnight hours and sometimes deep into the next morning. For over 1 year I spent most of my waking time when not working or sleeping (and sometimes sleeping there to) at that Denny’s. As the months passed I became more of the person I am today. Perhaps it was the variety of people I was exposed to or the camaraderie I felt with these 2 men. My self worth grew in tandem with my confidence. I met intellectuals, Goths, college students, aspiring actors, and workers. We were there when the place had to shut down do to lack of food because of a screw up with the ordering. We helped clean the place before a very important inspection that would determine the longevity of the restaurant. I helped people by being there. Me. Some how I became a something other then a person not wanting to be around other people. I became a human with all the emotional baggage that goes with it. I would not change that for anything. Because of that single piece of misinformation about a video game I was opened up to the world. Confidence, in my right to say and have opinions that I would have kept to myself in school, became a permanent fixture in who I am. I also gave up placation. I stopped telling people what they wanted to hear and told them what I wanted to say. People listened to me. Very weird.

It comes as no surprise to me now that I met my wife at that Denny’s. No she wasn’t working there, though she had in the past. In fact she had quit or got fired from there only a few months before I started going there at night. Might have turned out differently if she had still worked there…perhaps.

I look at the person I am today and I see the steps I took to get here. I made mistakes, most often with money, but there were times when the relationships I wished I had nurtured were let whither due to callousness or distance. Most often distance lead to the dissolution of a friendship. I recently took the time to find 2 friends I was very close to in high school. Perhaps it was my love of RPGs that always lead me back to searching for them. Side quests for the win.

I have attempted to track them down a few times in the past 10 years with little success. After my newest child was born I had a week off to help the wife. I spent nap times on the computer digging through the muck of the intertubes. It took me 2 days of search engines and white pages. I found one of them through his mom and dad. The other I found through Myspace. Yeah I have one, doesn’t get much love but its there. I speak with one a few times a week through IM and the other through emails. One has had a rough time of it yet is thriving, while the other seems to have given up on life. I wish they didn’t live so damn far away. I’m a guy who even in my introverted high school days knew the power of a hug. I spread that to my friends then and still do to this day.

Finding these guys makes me realize how much has happened to me since I received that piece of paper telling me I’m done with being a kid. Although I held on to being one for a few more years. Through all this time one thing has let me into more circles, video game. I look back and still see the kid I was. High school kid, yeah not a young adult. Nothing about me in those last few years was adult, except maybe the drive to make up for the mistakes I made academically. I was 16 years old for at least 5 years. That 16 year old is still here. He is more verbose and eloquent when it comes to expressing his feelings and even expresses those feelings. He stands up for what he believes. Still plays way too many video games. (Not really, GAMER FOR LIFE!) Games are a part of who I am and helped shape me into the well adjusted dashing man meat that I am. Without the knowledge of a certain game who knows how long I would have maitained the distance, placed by me, between me and other humans.
I’m not really sure how to end this strange piece of verbage, or if it is really a response to what Peterson wrote. I can not bring myself to hit the delete button. So now I end it without having any idea as to how to end it. Perhaps a critique of my self to show there is still room for improvement:

I do not take criticism well. No joke there and no remorse. Don’t be hating. I’m always right and righteous. That’s just how I roll.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Busy week, gold grows when tended.

I started to play my Gnome some more since I can't really play with the wife all that much on Velen. I finally started the Kara chain. I now need the first Fragment, course it seems to be the hardest to acquire. A few more runs and I will be revered with CE and can start to run that Heroic there. Looking to get me a primal nether for my Epic Goggles of DOOM! I cleared out a whole lot of quests and started in on the Netherstorm quests as well. I have made over 300g just from quests and a few instances. I'm only half way done with the quests in Netherstorm. I still have yet to go to Shadowmoon and start the quests there. Plus all the instance quests I have neglected are waiting for completion. There are a few scattered quests in Nagrand, Terrokar and Blade’s Edge that I have not touched yet. With the new daily quests it won’t be hard to get a constant income of cash. I tried out the Skyguard quests and started the Ogre’s chain but dropped them to go and run with the wife for an hour or so. With all the quests now available to me I don’t see me having trouble getting to 5k gold. Might be able to afford to start the Netherdrake quest chains for the mount. I want one o them. I just have to pick the right times to tackle the tight quests so I can have support.

Last weekend I spent 4 hours farming netherweave cloth for my wife’s character. I shot for and got 16 stacks of 20 plus several green items and a mess of Marks of Kejadeen or what ever. Also picked all kinds of pockets and made 40g just from drops and pockets. Landed 4 stacks of Super Healing potions for use in making a Healing potion Injector. I had to return to sell and repair about the same time as getting all the cloth and running out of space. After transferring all that cloth and the Arcane Dust from the green items Snow started to make all the Imbued Netherweave bags she could. Turned out we had enough mats for 3 bags. She made them and posted them for a price I recommended. All three sold in less then 2 hours. 30g a pop. I’m leaving the gold she makes form my farming on Snow. If I can gather enough cloth to keep making the bags I can make enough money from quests and bag making to afford Mindkiller the epic flyer training and buy Snow an epic ground mount.


I checked Joly last night since I haven’t played him in 9 days. I forgot I had put some bags up n the AH. They had all sold. Walked away with 14g in me bags. Bag making is defiantly lucrative in any server population. Only downside is getting to where you can make them and farm/buy the mats cheap. Meh, still worth it.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

WC PUG...LF....a clue.

A few nights ago I found myself playing Jolygreen with Shurshot tagging along for some pre-Stonetalon leather farming. I was helping in the killing while she did all the skinning, being the skinner. I see a call out for a group needing more to venture into Wailing Caverns. Now I LIKE WC. I think it is what all the dungeons at the lower levels should be.

Level Appropriate, between levels 19-23 a balanced group can have a cake walk.
Decent loot, Lots of greens and stackable grey for cash. Blues on most of the minibosses. Decent hunter/rogue loots.
Plenty of skinnable creatures, very good place for skinner.
Elite mobs, nice cash on the humanoids and excellent exp for level appropriate.
Winged structure, you get in and can go left or right depending on time constraints and what investment you are willing to give.
Quests, of a sort. A few kill quests and collections. The pinnacle being the druid awakening after killing all the bosses, very cool since it gives meaning to clearing the place.

Now I will admit to being confused the first few times I came here. It’s just like anything else. I cared about it enough to learn the layout. Hell I still get lost in BRD and I have run that place numerous times. (Though I have yet to kill Bael or the Emporer. Sad I know)

Anywho. I see the call for a group to go to WC so I ask the wife if she would be up to a quick run in there. We are at 21 at this point. Midrange for this place. (With a 3rd person, tank or healer, we could blast through it ourselves. Hell with pots and enough ammo we could take it duo, more on that later.) She agrees to go for it. I msg the guy recruiting and he sends out the invites, sorta. He can’t seem to get the spelling of Shurshot right. Takes him 5 times to figure it out. Then I had to explain how to do the /invite command. We happened to be right next to the caverns as we were killing the lions for skins. We sauntered on over.

The leader, who shall remain nameless, was just chilling near the summoning stone waiting for us. That’s cool we all are to assemble there before heading in. One of the group says he will be afk for 2 minutes….ok I guess. So wee cool our heels for a few minutes. Seeing as one other had not made I to the caverns it really was not a big deal waiting. After the minutes pass the afk’r rolls on in thanking us for waiting. There we are chillin at the entrance to the cavern…without the leader. He is still waiting at the stone. So we ask what’s up and he chats with fer a bit. He stays at the stone, for 5 more minutes.

Finally he runs over and we dive into the cave, at this point the afk’r states he hates WC cuz he can never find his way back after dying. Day yam. I am of course speaking to my wife since she is just across the room from me. She states she is not sure this group will be worth our time. I was thinking the same thing but willing to give it a try.

Group break down:

Level 25 warrior
Level 25 hunter
Level 23….er something unmemorable…
2 level 21 hunters. Me and the wife.

No healing but a butt load of dps. I feel we can do this. I ran SFK with 4 dps and 1 pally no problem. We would just need to burn things down fast without taking aggro from the tank. We get to the instance and I mention to the wife that she needs to tell them she is a skinner. She does, 2 others are as well. Skin rotation?….nope not even a discussion about it. Ended up being whoeverrememberedtodoit’s turn throughout the run.

We fight our way through to the central cavern before I realized something: the tank is pulling by either running at the mobs or throwing an axe. Oh boy we in for a long fight. The afk’r then yells out that we need to be prepared for a 2 hour instance here. 2 hours? Um…yeah sure if you take an hour nap. With the levels we had it would have lasted maybe 45-50 minutes. Even with out a healer. I also noticed that our level 25 hunter was not using his hunters mark with any frequency. It was me or the wife who kept the marks up on target, and some how I manage to out dps the hunter, without pulling aggro btw. I got this sinking feeling that this group didn’t know dick about playing their classes or the game. Newbs or noobs I don’t care it was that bad. At one point I had to explain what DPS meant! Yeah! Though since I was not the leader I kept my mouth shut on all the mistakes we encountered. Like the tanking of the raptors so close to the other raptors that the screams would pull the other groups. We cleared the entire upper ring before heading down into the water to choose which way to go.

We decided to go left since it was the shorter route. We roll through the crocs and kill Kresh (Fast for a turtle). As we head up the ramps with the snakes I decide I have had enough of this group and the wife has had all her energy sapped by the incompetence of this group. She put her char onto follow mine and I ran us out of the instance as fast as possible. We quit the party as soon as we left the portal. I did not say goodbye, tell them why, say thanks, or anything I usually do in situations such as these, they did not deserve any kind of warning or words of advice. Nothing can help those idiots except perhaps for them to uninstall WOW and crank out LOTR. Go over there and learn to play in a group before ever returning here.

I have had some awesome pugs where the actual value of the group was way more then the sum of the parts. Groups where we stuck together long after the quest or dungeon was over just to maintain the synergy we had found and help each other progress. Some have even joined my main guild.

How can you get to 25 without learning you basic class skills and how to group with other players? There are plenty of low level quests for all the races that need a group to finish. I see the folks I grouped with in WC going on to making a living hell for those needing a group for that ever important elite quest with the phat lewts all the way to what ever level they finally cap out on. I have their names burned into my mind so I will never group with them again. Hopefully they will get bored real quick and get out of the world.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Farming for leather and ore.

No real progress for the hunters. What time we spent playing together was in the Barrens killing things for Shurshot to skin. Got her some serious light leathers and a nice chunk of mediums. We plan on taking the fight to Stonetalon for some easy leveling an quests

Ravenkiller is poised to take on the harpies in Stonetalon, it will be a short fight. I'll prolly plant some trees there too.


I did make about 25g between my 2 characters. I also spent a little time on Gnome Mindkiller, mining thorium. Hell it goes for 20+ g a stack on Duskwood. I cranked out 2 stacks before the farmers really got started in my chosen area. They both sold within 2 hours.


The ore on valen seems to be on the rise as well as the enchanting mats. I havent had a chance to get a proper read on them yet though. It is a reality that copper is up to 50s median now , Tin is doing well, iron ok, mithril is 2x what it really should be so will prolly fall in a week or two. All the rest of the metals are just.....wierd.

Interesting note. Snow noticed that in our old Guild on our old server....just doesnt have the same atmosphere that it did pre-BC. Now everyone that can is gearing up for Kara and Heroics. It doesnt feel the same anymore. I never thought i would ever consider transfering Gnome Mindkiller, but if i were to pool all the money on my characters into Mindkiller he would have over 2500g. Money that would be easliy transfered using the neutral AHs. Something more to think about now.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Paladin Paladr's Preposterous Production

Tuesday last week I logged on and got a tell from our GM of Buttered Monkeys. Seems he needed some assistance with his pally’s level 22+ weapon quest. I logged onto Ravenkiller who BTW is halfway through 25, and met up with him at Ragefire Caverns. We blew through most of it till the final room with its honeycomb design. Multiple pulls almost did us in but we managed to win through to the end. We summoned the quest mob and kilt him ded. Blood was taken and we started the long haul to Black Fathom Deeps. I had not been in the area as yet so it was a long run for me. Got both FPs in the area so no big whoop.

We entered BFD, killed 3 mobs. On the 3rd mob the quest item dropped……F’n Yeah!

We leave the area just as anther guildy logs on. It’s our priest friend Nynave. “you wanna come run SFK to the stables for the GM?” Sure he says, and he’s already in UC. Don’t get no better then that. I ported to UC…no wait I was out of runes…..I Hearthed to TM and flew to UC. I met up with the priest at SFK’s stone and we summoned the GM.

We ploughed through to the stables. Only a few times were we in jeopardy due to some of the mobs having Anti magic shields. Pretty much made me have to melee. We get to the stables and the GM pulls the single mob guarding the box he needs. He used an AOE to grab aggro…unfortunately it pulled the horse he was next to, which pissed it and his buddies off. They attack and we are goin down. The priest keeps up the heals while we try to take down the guard. GM goes down and they turn on me. I manage to burn the guard down before I hightail it outta there. I’m talking assholes and elbows people. I was using every thing I had to keep them from catching me. I jumped down the entrance and zoned out…the priest wasn’t so lucky. I think they smooshed him. Survival…that what I do especially as a squishy. They ran back and rezzed inside. We approached the stables and see the horses peacefully glaring at us but they don’t attack. The GM gets his goods and we all go to meet up with him at Silvermoon for the forging of the blade.

I DC’d before I could get 2 steps inside SM. Thankfully they waited. I got to see the little blacksmith crank out a beautiful piece or the GM.
(Picture here)

After the forging the GM called it a night and I stuck around long enough to do some shopping and AH work on Ravenkiller and Jolygreen. Might have some decent cash waiting when I log on tonight.

*I really need to get me into the mode of adding pictures to some of these.

Questing for pets.

It turns out there is not a big demand for the white lion. So I give up on that for now. Maybe in a few months there will be a better market for it. As such I abandoned that quest so I don’t have to see it.

I logged on last weekend and helped the wife power level her Pally through a few quests using Ravenkiller for some Mage AOE goodness. We managed to push her to 16 from 13 or so before we decided to crank out a few quests with our hunters. We have made a bit of progress, little due to time available and stuff, but got them to 18 most recently.

We went to the Barrens at 16 for to get us some new pets. She picked up a purple raptor but then had to have a red one. So we hoofed it over into Durotar and she got herself a level 9 red raptor which she named Trogdar. After feeding him we started the quest chain that leads up to summoning Echeyakee. We burned through the quests pretty easily it also had the added benefit of helping the raptor become more loyal. He wasn’t getting any exp though but that would come soon. After I summoned the White lion he…..um…he ate me. My tame failed and I didn’t have the heart to kill him. I tried to tame again but didn’t have the life for a second try. I died and the wife ran so she wouldn’t aggro. I got back 2 seconds after he de-spawned. I was pissed. Lucky we were both on the quest. She summoned her Lion and I started to tame him while she kept the huntresses off of me.

4……3…..2…..1..WOOSH!! He is MINE!! I got him. I didn’t have a name for him then so he was cat for a day or so. We hearthed back to Tranq since neither of us were interested in Barrens questing. I do think we will go straight to Stonetalon when we leave the starting area.

We cranked out prolly 5-6 quests in Ghostlands while our pets leveled loyalty and hers gained actual levels. Her raptor got to 16 just as her, The Lion and I got to 18. No doubt her pet will catch up to us no problem. After some searching around I figured out a decent name for a cat of such blinding White and beauty. I was going to go with a few names that mean power or Fury:

Riddick
Furian
White Fury

The first one was not allowed for stupid reasons and the others are more titles then names.

I did some more digging and got some inspiration from my own name and came up with:

Aslan
Formerly Echeyakee of the Barrens
White Lion
Level 18 Cat
Growl, Claw, Bite
Natural Armor 3
Greater Stamina 3
Loyalty level 5 (soon to be 6)

This kitty is staying with me for awhile. My hunters tend to bond with their pets for life. I don’t think any of my hunters has ever had more then one pet for anything other then training purposes. I hope to play tonight with the wife’s character. Since her time has gotten more limited I may be able to devote more time to Ravenkiller.
Ravenkiller is starting to se some profit from Dis-enchanting items for the AH. Didn’t do too badly over the past few days. Jolygreen went with Tailoring for the bag making. Lucrative it is. He made 9 silk bags and they all sold made back all the money spent to make them plus a nice little profit. Now I just need to get him to 20 so he can learn the next level of the profession and can get points. Being able to make my own bags always seems to come in handy for the hunters with their limited bag space due to the ammo/quiver pouches taking up a whole slot. Maybe some day I can afford a HUGE quiver for those long grind sessions.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

A Simple Plan

I logged onto Ravenkiller monday night for a little while.

I wanted to see what would entail in the chain to get the white lion to appear. I started by teleporting to Oggrimmar. (love the teleport). I then headed down to Razor Hill. I found the orc that sends you into the Barrens and thus started the chain. I could have prolly started it from the Mulgore side since in seems to be a progression mechanic in the game. I took the walk to the border or Durotar and Barrens and talked the orc there who sent me to the NPC in the Crossroads that starts the chain to kill some of every type of mob in the Barrens. I cranked out the first 2 quests, the beaks(I can believe the 3% drop rate) and zebra hoofs(bout 25%drop rate), before loggin for the night. I picked up again this morning and went after the cat claws(these seemed to be 100% drop rate). After I cleared all the cats I went off to get a good look at the white tiger. Notes on the area he spawns in are true, the other prowlers spawn super fast after being killed. I must have killed the same cat 4 times in the time it took me to blow the horn and get a good long look at the Lion. He is B E A U T I F U L. I didn’t kill him….not yet. I may save him for sale or something. Hmmm I wonder if I could do that. Get money to spawn him for alliance hunters just for the purpose taming him. Gonna have to check that out later. Might be able to make some cash.*

*Update: I logged into Ravenkiller to restart the Lion kill quest then decided to check if the Alliance might provide a limited market for the animal. Granted I logged on pretty late so I was not expecting a great response.

I made a grunt character; a human warlock by the name of Vultar. Might even play him eventually. Great name. Any way I ran his ass to Stormwind the have access to the trade channel, created a /macro for the /2 channel only. I’ll add the general chat next time I log in. I actually got a response from a curious new hunter. I’m thinking I will charge 50s for the summon to start.

I may raise it to 1g but defiantly no higher. It’s not out of reach for level 16 players and a steal for anything higher then 20. I can always transfer the money easily later. I have been wanting to try something different for awhile. Now that I have small packets of time to devote to a weird project I’m gonna see if I can get this to work.

A Simple Plan…er sort of.

I will advertise in the alliance areas that I have Echeyakee ready to summon in the barrens.
Perspective hunters contact me.
Money is sent vial in game mail. *
Money confirmed. Meet up in the barrens to summon.
I will provide support until the taming is complete (Ie keep all mobs off of hunter taming.)
If need be I will re-summon until the taming is successful.
*If proof is asked for before the money is transferred, I will arrange meeting to show them the beast. I can always control who tames by the simple fact that attacking the beast will void the taming. I will have plenty of time to abandon the quest before I kill it to not get the quest completed.
If anything it will be a neat way to make money. If I see a bigger market I may devote time to this endeavor for a bit. Plus I can always raise the price if it looks like a higher demand develops.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

2 New Hunters For The Horde!!

After we moved the Monkeys to Velen we managed to dig up enough of us to start the guild…after many a days of making enough money to buy the charter. Through all this I was leveling Ravenkiller. Now I love the mage, but playing solo with him just wasn’t cutting it. I will still play him just not when the wife is around. He will make a good farmer someday. The wife couldn’t play as often due to being someone’s primary food source, so I out leveled her to the point she got bored “playing alone”. SO we decided to roll 2 new characters to run together….completly together…like joined at the hip together. So we debated and discussed the available class/race/side to play. We settled on:


DUH DUH DUUUUUN.

Blood Elf Hunters.

Yeah we went there. Belfs are the new Nelfs. We love the new starting area and since we have rolled at least 5 Belf characters across 4 servers, we knew we could blast up to 20 and catch up to the other Monkeys in level easily. We have a /played time of somewhere near 10 hours and are deep into level 14. We blast through all quests like it was melted butter. We only run from the elites in Ghostlands….until we are 18 or so. Then they will go down. We are also going to do almost the exact spec.

Mine:
Jolygreen /w Sprout (Elder Eversong Kitty)
BRK’s BM Spec

The wife’s
Shurshot /w Jellopudding (Elder Eversong Kitty)
BRK’s BM Spec

We most likely wont need to train the level 14 skills, or want to, until we hit level 16. Then we will head back to SM for the training. I have a feeling we will ding pretty quickly with the next few quests. It is cool when we turn in a quest and have dual ding animation. People stop and stare when it happens. Our cats are almost in sync as well though for some reason hers got to likin her faster then mine did me. Weird since we tamed them at the same time. Oh well. Our cats will get an upgraded skill and a new one once we hit 16 and can tame Ghostclaw Ravager in the Ghostland for Bite 3 and Claw 3. I think I might also make the trek to the barrens for the white lion there. It will involve a chain but after researchin it I have made up my mind. Echeyakee will be mine. Just need to convince the wife to tag along for the long ride to this ego pet. Maybe we can get her one too if she likes it…..

Friday, April 27, 2007

Ravenkiller slogging along and something else.......

It has been slow going for Ravenkiller. The lack of a partner has slowed me considerably. The wife rolled a paladin on Velen but has little time to play. Some of that is my fault some not. I did of course help in causing us to have 3 kids now. For some reason they flock to her for every day stuff like food and drink or snacks and attention. She blames me for them coming to her….is it my fault she is home all day? No it is not. Is it my fault they go to her out of habit, having done this all day while I was NOT there? No.

I have however neglected to say a few things to her over the last few weeks. So in good blogshere tradition (is it even right to call it that yet?) I will bear all right here right now. Er or when ever I can post this after some heavy editing.

Dearest Snowstormer/Suprhero,

I do appreciate every thing you do. This includes all the little things like giving me 2 handsome sons and a beautiful daughter that will keep me up nights when she hits puberty and there after. I thank you for the support you give me when I have had a bad or trying day at work. I thank you for making sure I have clean cloths to wear for that job. I thank you for feeding me at my desk when I just don’t want to leave the group (rare but it happens). I thank you for bringing me luch to work when I just don’t wanna leave or forget to bring anything. I thank you for all the wacky meal ideas that seemed to work. I thank you for being able to make a cake with out messing it up (Like a friend of yours that can’t bake her way out of a paper bag). I thank you for toiling over the sink trying to make all the dishes go away and be clean. I thank you for understanding my frustration at not being able to help you that first week back form the hospital after hurting my stupid self. I am still very irritated that you wouldn’t let some one else take me to the hospital. But I do understand why. I thank you for trying to bring order to our chaotic house. It did really go down hill the weeks leading up to the surgery. My fault I got lazy. I promise to do better. Perhaps I have been depressed, or just under a bit of stress I hadn’t noticed. Perhaps the slow time at work gave me too much time to sit and do nothing. Maybe now that it will pick up will help me stay motivated when I get home and be able to help more.

I’m sorry you had to give me a day of the silent treatment to get your point across. However I point out that I am a man and subtle hints won’t work…it’s a racial trait. In fact un-subtle hints have a good chance of failure too…go figure.

I do appreciate all you have done in spite of your still recovering body. I do appreciate the work you have put into making our house presentable. I do appreciate that our children are happy and healthy (disgustingly healthy can’t we skip a few meals so they aren’t so…bouncy?).

I
Am
Sorry.

I do appreciate you.
I do love you.


-----Mindkiller