This just in!

Yesterday, I was the only DK in a 25-man PuG of Emalon!

Actually, considering how we ended up in a wipefest after replacing too many people, that may not make me the smartest DK in the world. Our first three attempts were awesome, but one person after another dropped for one reason or another...and finally the attempts became total crapola. We ended up replacing about 10 people from what I'd stepped in on, and the last attempt showed it totally wasn't worth it.

Wee's string of bad luck continues. I think I'm afraid to touch her for a while. It's because I got the Super Simian Sphere, isn't it? Curses!

So...Noblegarden

All my blog time yesterday was spent hunting eggs.

In fact, all my WoW time yesterday was spent hunting eggs.

My shaman and my druid both have their holiday titles, and I still have my horde hunter to go. I kinda doubt she'll get the title, since she's level 37 and the mobs in Un'goro will make her a light snack, but that doesn't mean I won't get as much done as I can.

On Shavra, my shaman, I had all of the items I needed drop within my first 100 eggs. I ended up with three of the pets, and it made me sad to have to delete two of them.

On Ceraan, my druid, my luck was a bit worse. I had to buy a few things, and I ended up not bothering with 50 more chocolates for the circlet since I didn't need it for the achievement. A nice death knight went to the starting zones with me so our bunnies could get their spring fever out of the way together.

I might or might not do any of it on my death knight. She's having a bad week, with Maly bugging on her and not being able to find a spot to grab eggs every time I've taken her to a hunting spot. I'm also leaning toward being just sick and tired of clicking on eggs right now.

If anything amazing or amazingly frustrating happens, I'll mention it. Otherwise, I'm just waiting for Children's Week. I've always had a soft spot for that particular holiday, and it'll be just that much more fun with the achievements in place.

For reals, this time...

Now that's more like it.

We've got Flame Leviathan and Razorscale down, on our first regular week. (Our raid leader was gone last week, so we didn't put in any real effort into Ulduar. Or anything, for that matter.)

Not bad for the "B" group, but I'm not sure I'm entirely happy. We just plain didn't have the dps for XT-002. With three healers, we hit the enrage timer. With two healers, we died too much. I was second on dps when I brought in Wee, but Wee's dps doesn't matter when the rest of the dps are taking dirt naps from bad tantrums. We've got the mechanics of the fight down. We just need better geared people tagging along. I think we'd have started with more of our better geared regulars if we hadn't switched to Thursdays...but that's another tale entirely.

We two-shotted Razorscale. Again, the first wipe could be pretty much attributed to me. I was the first healer down, because I didn't notice I was standing in a patch of pretty blue flames until it was too late, and instead of getting out of it like a normal person would, I hit the wrong button and died. Trees really don't like fire. Our second attempt was pretty messy, too. Both of our tanks were dead at the end, a third dps had just gotten munched, and we barely killed it before I was next on the menu.

That was NOTHING next to the chaos and confusion we faced trying to take a screenshot of our kill, though! We couldn't agree which end was the tail and which was the head. I was jumping up and down, pointing out that I was in her dead mouth and there were teeth and her glowing blue eyes, and people were still insisting we were at the wrong end.

Can I say we got roflpwned by the screenshot boss? Our raid leader had to finally tell everyone it doesn't matter what THEY see, get over here and stand where the screenie will look right on his computer. (Which, incidentally, agreed with mine.)

Trying to juggle two characters in Ulduar is giving me a headache. The rust is flaking off my healing skill, but I'm still not at the top of my game. I was third on heals, out of our three healers. I was second on dps, when I brought Wee. You can kinda tell where my heart is, in all this. But, I can't complain. Bringing Ceraan is VASTLY more fun than sitting at the summoning stone and then calling it a night because nobody wants to heal.

So, that's Ulduar in a nutshell. And, since I don't want to be wiping to that stupid whiny robot every week for the next ten years, everybody had better bring their A game tomorrow. Either that, or we should get our asses back in Naxx.

When I grow up...

I was at a loss about what to write about today. I came across the Shared Topic: What Class Would You Be in Real Life and my brain started working on it.

Before coffee. It's a miracle.

I've stumbled upon a few interesting ideas. Mages sound awesome at first glance, but it's just not for me. Sure, I love the idea of teleporting wherever I want, whenever I want. But, think of all the scenery you'll miss.

Priests and paladins appeal to me in their own ways, but I'm just not a religious person. That, and I realized many years ago that if undead were real, and I had the faith-based skills to combat them, then I'd kinda be forced to, you know, combat them. Ew.

When all is said and done, there's a reason that first tauren of mine will never be deleted. There's a reason Shavra was my main for so very long. If there's a class in the game I'd truly want to be, it's shaman.

Like I said, I'm not religious, but I'm very deeply spiritual. I don't agree with shoving my beliefs in anyone's face, but I do think that people could do well to show a little more respect for nature and the world we live in.

I love the idea of tapping into the earth directly for support, and setting up helpful totems as I go. I've had dreams where I'm up against someone truly vile, and I turn the raw energy of lightning upon them, and it feels great. The raw coursing energy of the wild, or the gentle nurturing growth...

Most of all, there's the ghost wolf dance. Who wouldn't want to do that in real life???

Super Monkey Balls!

A friend of mine asked me to do heroic HoL with him this morning. I dragged my feet a little. It was early. It's HoL. And I hadn't had my coffee yet.

I'm glad I went. I got a Super Simian Sphere out of the deal!

I just hope Teeny forgives me, eventually, for beating him on the roll. He got the axe he was after, at least...

Ulduar and more

First of all, a random statement. This game, and the whole world, need more random acts of kindness.



Now, to Ulduar. We, in HE, seem to love doing things in a unique way called "ass-backwards". Now, now, everyone in guild don't start telling Stout to kick me. Everyone out of guild, don't start pointing and laughing. I mean that in the best way possible.

Due to epic timing fail, our group didn't get to see Ulduar until Sunday. We DID finally get in, and we downed Flame Leviathan in no time.

Well...I wiped us on our first attempt. See, when people said something about shooting passengers so they could do stuff to towers or whatnot, I was thinking TOWERS. Like, towering over people. Like, I had to aim high and get my passenger up at the top where all those flying things were. There was no concept for me to, I don't know, throw my passenger on top of the boss to shut down something-or-other that was actually on it. And when I asked where I was supposed to throw my raid leader, he said just hit the button...

Yeah. Our wipe? Totally my fault. Because I just didn't get it. I do, now. I only make the really dumb mistakes once, unless it's on Thaddius. But, we won't talk about Thaddius.

So. First easysauce boss down. And, what do we decide to do?

We say hello to Ignus.

Ignus trash sucks. It took us a bit, but we figured it out. We were all so complacent from running Naxx that we forgot how "fun" trash could actually get. Remember TK, back in the day, when CC was necessary and you had to kill certain mobs in a certain way or things could go very badly? Ignus is like that. Only, the trash mobs come two at a time, so you'd think it's easysauce, right?

The big guys at the front door in my screen shot are interesting. They hit pretty hard, and they do an AOE silence. Even with hots, it's easy for a tank to go down in that silence. But, the silence can be LOSed. It only took us a couple of wipes to figure that out. /facepalm And then a couple more to get the positioning right.

That's when the real fun begins.

First, you get a traveling debuff when those two die. It deals a nice amount of damage and then hops to the next person at random. The only way to get rid of it is to die or go down to the water in the boss's room to put it out. There are two golem packs and four or five revnant packs wandering around the room. The golems are easy. They hit hard, do fire damage in a cone in front of them. Face them away from the raid, tank them together, no problem. They go down pretty easily. The revnants wiped the floor with us, however. They cast flaming cyclones of doom that like to toss the melee into the air and throw them to the ground at 10% health or less. If you're lucky, they throw you out of their path. Otherwise, you die. Poor little Wee died. A lot. I finally had to err on the side of cowardice. I never saw a casting bar on those things, but other people did, so I'm playing with my mods before next attempt...but they seem to get brighter about two or three seconds before they cast the cyclones of fiery doom. Or, maybe I was just chicken. Either way, on the last pull I ran away when I suspected they even might be casting it, and that was the only time I survived. If you're ranged you can just run away and all is good. They follow one person at random. So, if it's not after you, sidestep it and keep casting.

And then we made four or five attempts on the boss himself. Having a DK to chain the adds into the scorches is awesome. Our problem was that we were taking too much damage and dying before we could even hope to get one molten and then brittle and then shattered. I think part of it was the add tank taking a lot of damage when kiting them into the scorches. Once the add tank went down, it was over.

It got late, we called it, and Thursday the real attempts begin. We'll start with Razorscale this time, instead of Ignus. You know...the right way? I'm hoping we'll have our A game. We'd had to bring a few "warm bodies" because our regular raiders weren't all on. Even still, it went well, we learned, and we had fun.

This was my first time attempting new raid content the same week it came out. Always before, I've been trying to catch up. Catch up on leveling, catch up on gear... I repaired as I went most of the time, so I didn't pay attention to how much it all cost. 150g or so? On trash. And it was totally worth it. I feel like I'm finally where I wanted to be in the game.

Special Weekend Edition

There are so many bugs, annoyances, and blahs, that I just had to post on a Saturday.

I'll keep it small.

First of all, my death knight should be Weeinsanity Jenkins, Champion of the Frozen Wastes by now. Should be. I ran heroic HoL last night, had a lot of fun, and then I looked down and noticed that the achievement didn't show up. In fact, it had one grayed out name on the list.

Mal'Ganis.

I'm beginning to see why Arthas thought it was totally worth going evil to hunt after that bastard.

Well, that's okay. One of the shaman healers who helped me so kindly to get my bronze drake last week still needs hers. So, she asks me and I'm all over it. A chance to finally get my title AND help a friend? WOOHOO!

But, nobody's on.

Disappointing healers is bad karma, guys.

The icing on the cake, of course, is one minor annoyance that I just don't want to deal with today. The shaman spec I'm least familiar with, enhance, had all my talent points refunded at random! Noooo! I actually have to look up my spec again to fix it, instead of knowing what I'm doing. Ugh. Why couldn't it have been elemental that got messed up?

Let the Bodies Hit the Floor

Sure, they're dying, but am I doing it right?

Yesterday my sister-in-law and I cut a swath of destruction through Blade's Edge Mountains and the opening zones of Northrend. She hasn't seen much of the high level zones from an Alliance perspective, but I was there to make sure she didn't run into the wrong town or something. And I fully expect the same treatment when my belf hunter starts hitting the iffy areas.

So, Dinkydeath and Jerasha went wandering, an unholy DK and a ret pally, from level 67 to almost 70. We were plate-wearing machines, tearing through anything else like tissue paper.

At some point she yelled at me from the other room. "Every time your spells go off, I keep thinking they're mine!"

This made me laugh. She's the one with the death knight, but her main is a blood elf paladin. My, uh, prefered character is my death knight. So, for about a half our before she said something, I was reminding myself that no, I was not the one casting Icy Touch. (And no, I shouldn't expect my little judgment hammer to reach that far.)

This brings me to my point. We were killing things easily, but I haven't spent much time on my paladin since the whole class was completely revamped. On single targets I'm doing my little judgment of light, hitting them with a crusader strike, and... Well, Dinky finishes them off before crusader strike is off cooldown. If I'm really bored, I'll cast my divine storm, but that's a little bit of a waste. It makes life interesting when it turns a single pull into a multiple pull, though. Gotta love those passive shoveltusk...

At level 69, is that really it? Is that all there is for a ret paladin? I've got my seal of the martyr up, I pop myself with a flash heal when art of war procs or between fights if I need it, and...

And...

Do all ret pallies just sit there and autoattack while they wait for cooldowns? This feels really weird after playing my DK for so long. I suppose it's an improvment over making myself a sandwich as a prot pally at the height of BC, back when I hit the Plaguelands, but it still feels like I'm not doing enough.

Let me tell you, though. Two dps in plate questing together make short work of everything. Even between cooldowns, it was a hell of a lot of fun.

I got pwned by Ulduar

Actually, our whole server did.

In our guild there are two regular raid leaders. Stout and Cian. We don't have an "A" group and "B" group. We have "Stout's group" and "Cian's group". But, if we went by "A" and "B", I'd be in "B" group.

Our "A" group has been trying to do Ulduar for the last two nights. They got pwned by the Loading Screen Boss more than a few times. They got roflstomped by the Instance Server Crash boss a lot. And, finally, they were defeated by the Retrieving Character List boss and called it a night.

Our "B" group, missing a few key members (like me, who was eating cake when the call to form group went out), decided to hang out, try heroics, and poke at the new Argent Tournament area. But, when I got on an hour and a half late, our heroic group met the same fate as the "A" group. We got pwned by the same bosses!

Our guild is awesome like that. If we're going down, we're going down together.

I did get to see the inside of Ulduar last night, for about a minute and a half. We converted our doomed heroic group to a raid, and two of us went in to check things out, and to see if it would stay stable enough for us to try to light up the warlock Bat Signal and call in group "B". Before I thought to take screen shots, though, a dwarf who shall remain nameless suggested that we step outside and see if we can get back in.

We didn't get back in.

Our raid leader will be unavailable the rest of the week, so I'll start babbling about Ulduar, and how much I hate healing post-patch, next week. Stay tuned, I'm sure it'll be a thrill a minute and it won't be covered ANYWHERE else (by me).

Once upon a time...

...there were two gamers. They geeked out together mostly over their love of Star Wars, but the most miraculous part of all was that one was male and the other was female. So, in typical geek fashion, they jumped in feet first and explored their differences, thoroughly. Nine months later, a little gamer joined them, and started demanding his own computer and copy of Star Wars. (Okay, he was demanding milk and diaper changes, and the occasional burp, but his tastes have refined since then.)

Yes, that's right. Nine years ago today (in the oh-my-gods-awful bright and early morning, at a time when all good gamers are passing out and drooling on their keyboards or resting their joysticks somewhere embarrassing) our son was born. Our house is going to be filled with cake and singing and celebration today...which means I'm going to have to cram in all the Argent Tournament poking I can while he's in school.

No time for blogging! We're having a birthday!

The Great Addon Debate

I know, I know. Everyone is excited right now about the patch coming out today. For weeks now, people have been anticipating Uduar, the new dual spec system, and the Argent Tournament. I'm all downloaded and squared away, waiting for Blizz to release the flood gates and let us back in.

What's the first thing you'll be doing? If you're anything like me, the first thing you'll be doing is asking, "What happened to all my addons?" Not a patch goes by where I am not too excited to see content to remember to check the status of my addons. I have to log out, check the box to load out of date addons, and head back in.

This time, though, we might be seeing a larger number of broken and out of date addons. A lot of addon authors have gone "on strike" in protest of Blizzard's recently established policy, stating that you cannot charge for premium mod service, and you cannot advertize or ask for donations within the mod itself. Many of you, I'm sure, have heard of this already. It's been debated before. And now that there's a date set for compliance a lot of people have renewed their protests.

Allow me a tangent for a moment. About ten years ago, I started writing fanfiction. I used it as a tool to hone my skills as a writer, and it was especially effective online because feedback is relatively instantaneous. I put a lot of work into the fanfic I wrote, because otherwise it would be a waste of my time. I'd never learn anything if I threw just anything out there and demanded praise. I wanted to see what worked, so I put in my best efforts. I know many other fanfiction authors who do the same. Is that to say that all fanfiction authors are like that? Of course not. For every fanfic author writing something worth reading, there are a hundred others who are posting pure garbage. For every fanfic author writing something truly artistic and worth paying for, there are a thousand who are merely passable.

The legality of fanfiction is a huge gray area of intellectual property rights and fair use. As long as fanfiction authors, no matter how much they've put into what they've written, don't charge for what they do, they're largely ignored. They're fans doing what fans do--being fannish. But, I've read some fanfiction of novel length and publishable quality. If it hadn't been fanfiction, I'd have gladly paid to have that book on my shelf.

This is where I get my attitude about WoW addons. It boggles my mind that some addon authors can't see how they're playing merry with Blizz's intellectual property, and the moment Blizz says they're crossing a line they throw an open revolt. I'm not belittling the time and effort and skill that goes into making a great addon, especially something as complex as Questhelper or Carbonite. I do, however, think it's crossing a line when certain addon authors can make a living off of producing them. This is Blizzard's cash cow, not yours. It is NOT the same as Microsoft demanding you stop writing programs. I've heard that argument over and over, and it doesn't float with me. If you are writing an addon that only works in that particular game, and they own the rights to that game, you're violating their rights by demanding money for it. If you don't agree, perhaps you should take them to court and see how that pans out. If you can get a judge to rule in your favor, I'll withdraw my stance that you're still playing in their playground, like a fanfiction author making Arthas and Jaina live happily ever after.

The Friendly Skies

My first special mount. I never got the ZA bear. The RNG doesn't love me enough to have given me even a chance at the Baron's mount or either of the mounts Prince Kael'thas can drop (in MgT or TK). But, I finally got my bronze drake. It makes me happy that it's on my gnome, too, in homage of Chromie.

I don't know if I can explain just how happy it makes me, or how amused that even after doing CoS for a week straight with mostly the same group, I still lost the roll every time.

I'm going back. There are two people who still deserve their drakes for helping me as often as they were able to: Ravendream and Melissande. I want to help other friends get it on their alts as well. If I get the mount on alts, I'll be happy. Of course. Who wouldn't? But, that's not a huge motivating factor. It's a fun instance, even after doing it every day for a week straight.

So, I'd like to thank Borin, Cassindra, Ciandros, Melissande, Falgoran, Ravendream, Stoutheart, Teenytanky, Pamathas, Kola, and Abnet for helping me and running with me. (I'm forgetting some other members of The Night Crew, and I'm sorry. Still, thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I still love you all.)

Abnet gets huge thanks, for passing on the mount even though he didn't have it, so that I would get it on Saturday. You killed my complaining rights, but you're good at that. /hug

Wait. This wasn't my Academy Award! Oops!

Moving on...I'm one heroic away from my "Champion of the Frozen Wastes" title! Wish me luck on Halls of Lightning. Oh, and be afraid. I've never set foot in the place before. Hell, I don't know where the instance portal is....

My Ghoulfriend's Ghoulfriend

Last night in Naxx we were giving people an afk break about half way through, and our vent conversation turned to ghoul names. They're obviously randomly generated from two lists, a creepy noun and another creepy noun ending in -er. (It sounds a lot better than RandomPetName, which is what they all started out with on beta. See?)

Sometimes when you put two creepy words like that together, you end up with something creepy. I had a cool ghoul name the other week when Corpsegobbler popped up. More often than not, it comes up pretty silly. I've had the name "Eyeleaper" come up a few times, and it makes me giggle quite a bit. "Mudbender" was another one of those silly names that I think only Avatar fans could find cool. In fact, the one ghoul I've had that ended up with the name Mudbender got me killed in short order. I'm sure it's happened to just about anyone with a pet class, where you'll set your pet on something and they chase each other half way across the zone for some reason. This one ran into the middle of the cultist's camp in Terokkar Forest before I could try to call him back, and pulled about ten mobs with him. I was never so happy to see a pet die, and I'll curse that random name forever.

If you play a death knight, or you've just been looking at other people's pets, what's your favorite random ghoul name? Has something particularly funny caught your eye? Or, how about a ghoul name that would actually be appropriate for a ghoul?

Sneaky, sneaky

The first time I took my shaman into arenas--wait. Let me rephrase. The only time I set foot in arenas was on my shaman. We died horribly, quickly, and frustratingly. I was resto at the time, and I'd heard that was one of the best arena spec/class combos out back then. So, how was I roflstomped so easily?

I mean, aside from inexperience, since I just admitted I was a total noob.

Stealth and stuns.

In all of the opposing teams, we had rogues or druids or both coming up and taking me out before my team mates could blink. I had no idea what totems were helpful or not at the time, and I became the easiest target they'd ever seen.

PvP is a skill you have to cultivate, but at the time it seemed that stealth classes were easy-mode. I'll still get completely dismantled by a good rogue in PvP, even with a little more experience under my belt. It has nothing to do with being a noob, though. Rogue PvP seems to be a game of patience, and luck. Once those are both on the rogue's side, it's time to say hello to your friendly neighborhood graveyard.

I could be wrong, though. My rogue is still in her mid-20s. And, while I love her to death, I'm a long way from mastering rogue PvP skills. Okay, I'm still a noob. But some day, when you least expect it, she'll be 80 and lurking in Wintergrasp. While my paladin and mage friends are distracting you, looking like easy honor kills, I'll be patient.

I'll be lucky.

And you'll be dead.

A Girl And Her Pets

I have two hunters; one draenei, one blood elf, both on Moonrunner. I've had an orc hunter on an RP server, and my first hunter was a tauren I named Cowvin. (I was going to give him a tiger named Hobbes, of course.) Pet classes and I didn't click, at first. When I was first learning to play, it was actually more of a hinderance for me to have to keep track of a pet. That probably seems backward for most people, since pets add to your survivability, but it's what happened for me.

How many hunters I've gone through, or how many I have now, or how I learned to love the class? Not the subject. This one's all about the pets.

As you may have gathered from me mentioning Cowvin, the names are kinda important to me. I'm a big ol' geek when it comes to names, especially for hunters. For example, my draenei may seem like a mild mannered, normal, almost RP kind of girl with the name of Aislen. Again, I stole it from writing/RPing in the past. (I picked it from a family tree I wrote for the background of my first novel. The character will probably never see the light of print. But, I still needed a name.) Pets were where I could express my fannish side. Her first pet was a crab named JayneCobb. I took her to Westfall and picked up a coyote packleader and named him MalReynolds. There was a bird from Arathi somewhere in there, and I may or may not have at one point owned a ravager. (Every draenei does.) Right now, her pets are a dragonhawk she's had since 18 named RiverTam, a shadowmaw panther named Zoe (that won't be lasting much longer, sadly), and a turtle named Soup.

Yes, Soup.

There are only so many Firefly characters, damn it!

My blood elf, on the other hand, was unabashedly named in a fannish manner. I don't do it often, but my family finally convinced me to watch the new Doctor Who series, which sent me on a nostalgia kick for the old Doctor Who, and I couldn't help myself. Romanaii was born, and her first pet was one of those little white piggies in Durotar named TheDoctor. She just picked up an elder cloud serpent and it's running around being called JackHarkness. Next up, an ape named TheMaster. So far she hasn't garnered as much recognition as Aislen's Firefly pets, but that doesn't matter. It amuses me, and I'm sure some day someone smart enough will stop me and cheer.

Not every hunter indulges in their geek side. (We're playing a video game. Face it. We're all at least a little bit geek.) Some people name their pets to be crass and see how much they can get away with. (My hunter friend with a cat named Pussee...that some of us girls love to lick and hug and other stuff. We're bad! haha) Some people pick pair names like my Cowvin and proposed Hobbes, or the combo of TheCaptain and Tennille I ran into a while back. And, there's the ever popular (and maddening) former fad of naming your pet after a guild healer, or (especially) the main tank.

The pet names hunters pick say a lot about the players behind them. Do you have a "dream name" for a hunter pet you plan on having? What inspires you to name your own pets? What hunters and pets have stuck in your mind over time?