The Snows of Icecrown

So...fanfic. Because I've run out of interesting things to write. It was just thrown together this evening, but it was fun to write. I'm sure I'll be writing more, but feel free to skip them since it's all about me and my characters and other characters I know in game.

Wee, Ceraan, and Shavra are all mine. Borin is used by permission. Yay!


Something To Prove

Part One - The Snows of Icecrown

"We shall triumph!"

It was a phrase Auregwyn heard more than once used by Tirion Fordring, while doing various missions at his command. The words gave her a thrill, as if he were talking specifically to her, proclaiming her eventual success.

"It's because of my nickname," she explained, wrapping tiny hands around flint and striking sparks into the kindling. She was adept at making camp fires by now, though setting one up in the cold clime of Icecrown, where she was hard pressed to find a spot without snow, provided a new challenge.

"You have a nickname?" One of her companions stirred, showing interest.

"Yes. It's Wee Insanity. I thought you knew that by now, Shavra."

Shavra turned a deeper shade of blue, ducking her head. "I thought that was your real name," the draenei said. "What? I still don't know that much about gnomes. Or death knights. I heard that some had lost their memories is all."

She shut up when the druid dropped a blanket over her head. "Her name is Auregwyn."

Wee nodded, smiling a bit. "That's right, Ceraan. My mother named me after Magna Aegwynn. Though, not exact, of course. If I walked around named Aegwynn it would have been confusing at the time, and presumptuous, and a lot to live up to. Too much to live up to, really, since I didn't inherit a shred of my mother's abilities with magic."

"You met Magna Aegwynn?" asked the druid Ceraan in her soft voice. "What an honor that must have been."

"No, no," Wee shook her head quickly. "A lot of my mother's colleagues did though. See, I grew up in Dalaran."

"You?" Both of her companions expressed their shock. It seemed like the least likely origin for a gnomish death knight.

"My mother was one of their most talented mages, before the war." She smiled triumphantly, finally building the fire up enough to warm them and their supper. "Hand me that fish."

"I'll cook it," Ceraan insisted, sitting down next to the fire and opening her pack.

"Nuh-uh!" the gnome protested. "I've seen how some of you druids fish!"

"I'm the one who did the fishing," Shavra said, shaking her head in amusement, long white pigtails brushing her shoulders.

"Shaman shapeshift too," Wee said, crossing her arms.

"You're half dead," Ceraan pointed out. "Now let me cook, since I've the most talent at it."

"I do my best," Wee said. Still, she backed away and let the druid prepare the meal, watching and learning from what she did. "Not all of us can be billions of years old."

"Only a few thousand," Ceraan said. "Not that it matters. Shavra is older."

"I am not!" the draenei stood quickly, holding her hands out in protest. "I'm a very young draenei. See the pigtails? Young!"

"Right," Wee snorted, holding back a giggle. "You talk about Argus in your sleep. When I walked around that crashed ship of yours, they said your people fled that place way over 20,000 years ago. You're ancient. Your hair isn't white, it's totally gray."

"And I don't even remember the Sundering," Ceraan added, flipping the fish over.

"My grandmother, before she was viciously slaughtered by orcs, told me of the homeworld. She gave me visions of what it was like. I may, possibly, be a bit older than Ceraan. I do not remember how old I am, however. Time, day and night, the length of a year; these things are all different from planet to planet. And I was not born on Draenor."

The trio fell into silence. Shavra was brooding, Ceraan was making sure the food was thoroughly cooked, and Wee was trying to calculate just how many Azerothian years it had been since the draenei arrived on Draenor so she could start actually figuring out how old Shavra was. "My uncle Gyrofob said he could figure out the original circumference of Draenor if he could measure the curvature of the horizon, and the distance from the--"

"Let it go, Wee. I don't need to know," Shavra said softly, putting a hand on on the gnome's frigid shoulder. "We should eat quickly and sleep soundly, for tomorrow's journey shall be long and arduous in the terrain ahead."

"I don't understand why we can't just fly," Wee muttered.

"With that noisy contraption you built?" Ceraan shuddered, handing out portions of the meal she'd prepared, setting one aside. "Just thinking about it, I can hear it all over again."

"What?" Wee perked up, looking up toward the sky. "That's not mine, and that's not a memory." She jumped to her feet and started waving. "It's him! I'll bet he's got news!"

The propeller of the mechanical contraption nearly extinguished the fire as it landed. A dwarf climbed out, grabbing his mace and shield from beside the seat as his feet touched the ground. He left his heavy pack in his vehicle though, and hurried over. Ceraan silently handed him a portion of food.

"What news, Borin?" Shavra brightened a bit.

"Been all over the place, playing messenger," he grumbled, sitting down and resting his shield and weapon handily at his side. "It's as we feared." He took a large bite of his food and then looked around expectantly. "What? None of ye lasses have some brew to spare? If we're stormin' Ulduar on the morrow, I'll not spend tonight sober."

"It seems I'll be taking first watch," Ceraan sighed, pouring Borin a mug of mulled mead. It's what she had on her, and what she'd had heated for herself to aid her sleep that night.

Wee pouted. "Blightbender, or whatever I'm calling him today, can handle it. He's not all that bright, but he's loyal and he can warn us if anything foul is afoot."

"I won't be havin' a blasted undead as our only protection against, well, the undead!" Borin shook his head, scowling. "Light bless it, but I don't know a paladin alive that will stand for that. I keep better watch with a drink or two in me anyhow. Any dwarf worth his salt does."

"Aw, but he's so cute and all alone out there. Poor little guy, bits of him freezing to the ground...."

Shavra cringed, setting her food down for a moment. "He is far from little. You reanimated him from that vrykul we killed earlier. He is five times as tall as you, at least. How is that little, I ask you?"

"Whatever," Wee said around the last bite of her fish. "He's loyal, he doesn't need sleep any more than I do, and the three of you DO need sleep. I've been dead once, just like him, and that's quite enough sleep for me."

"You still need rest, though," Ceraan tried to forestall an argument between death knight and paladin. "Call it sleep or no, we all work better with rest and we'll all of us need rest if we're to be of any use to your guild tomorrow."

"Aye, that's as true as any," Borin said. "I'll take the first watch, 'an wake Wee in a few hours. And ye' best be stayin' awake so ye can wake Ceraan for watch. None of us'll be happy if we wake up to Bonenibbler--"

"Blightbender," Wee corrected.

"Whatever. None of us want the ghoul invitin' a few friends o' your old master in for a light snack."

Wee sighed and crawled into her tent.

"Thank you," Ceraan murmured.

"I hope I din't offend the wee lass. Better her and her friend on our side than his after all. Her and her kind are about the toughest fighters, an' I know it's not a life they chose, but I--"

"I know what you mean," Shavra agreed. "It's like there is an absence of Light, where they stand. They've proven their worth, and their loyalty, many times over. Still, there's something about the death knights."

Wee rolled over in her sleeping bag, tuning out the voices outside. She knew they were right. She knew it more than they did. But, it seemed that the death knights would always have something to prove.

It's Monday...

...so I think I'll start this up again. My eyesight is still a bit fuzzy, but I'm not sick anymore!

What have I been doing this whole time? Mostly busywork, and until last week all my game time was spent soloing. I couldn't see well enough to heal, and mostly did some leveling on my paladin by remembering quests or squinting at the screen for five minutes.

Remember. Don't mess around when it comes to your eyes. Learn from my mistake.

Anyway! Before I start sounding like a public service announcement, I had some exciting times in Ulduar last week! We skipped Ignius entirely and tried to make a mad dash toward Mimiron for some actual progression. Thursday we tore through the place and left a scant few bosses behind. We rocked Flame Leviathan with one tower up, and we're planning on hitting him harder next time. We took longer than we wanted to on Thorim and Hodir, so we finished off Iron Council and left Freya as a warm up act for Saturday.

Saturday went well, too. I'm still not in top form, and our favorite pally tank was gone for the day, but despite that we poked our head in on Mimiron and made some good progress. First phase is a healer's nightmare, though I got the easy part with healing through napalm. Second phase we started out with a few too many people clumped together, so we'd be targeted too long to heal through. That was fixed by moving one of our healers between the two ranged groups all by himself, and that got us through to phase three.

Phase three Mimiron sucks. The adds hated us. The bomb bots loved to oneshot me. We ended up moving further away and had a ret pally grab the bomb bots. Something tells me that'll be my job when we're finally able to bring Wee in there for more than just Flame Leviathan. But, if the adds get taken care of right, we've got phase three.

Not so much phase four. We got to phase four with eight people up on our last attempt, and that's where we lost it. Oh boy, did we ever lose it. It was glorious, though! All three healers were still up, and we did our best. But, at that point it was just total chaos as everyone was just so happy to be to phase four that we weren't sure what to do next.

I'm worried about this week, though. Our main tank was away, so we had a DK tank. His cooldowns were a bit more forgiving than our pally tank's cooldowns, for mitigating the instakill in phase one. I'm sure we'll work something out, but we're a bit worried that we're going to have a bit of trouble with it. We need more dps before that's not an issue, I think. And, since I got all of Freya's loot Saturday that means we didn't get dps upgrades from her. Yeah, I was excited about that, but embarrassed, but we need more dps upgrades now for people who will be here every raid day.

Maybe I'm worrying about nothing. Maybe we've got this in the bag, and the loot from the other bosses, as well as the loot we'll get this week, will be enough. Maybe our tank will get upgrades so he isn't going to die horribly in a oneshot of doom. Or, maybe it'll take us a few more weeks as we continue to get the same shaman drops every week that are getting sharded.

Enough speculation for now. Mimiron will go down, and we'll move on to the real meat and potatoes of the raid. Yoggy must die. And then? More hard modes than just Flame Leviathan.

So, I'll leave you with a banner. Hope springs eternal, and I want to win some of the drawings they've got going on. Specifically the trip to Blizzcon, because that would just rock.

Attack of the Real Life

I'm so sorry for abandoning my blog for so long. It's not that I haven't had anything to write about. Far from it! I've just had a hard time mustering the energy.

I've been sick for the last couple of weeks, and life is conspiring to keep me in just enough of a stressed out state that recovering is taking forever and ever and ever. The details are unimportant, stupid, and anticlimactic, but they're still kicking my ass.

I will be back, but that time is not now. It is hopefully "soon" and I mean that in as non-Blizzard a way as possible.

In the mean time, go give extra hugs to your loved ones, and take care of yourself. You never know when the little things will pile up and pull you down. And you never know what new disasters tomorrow may bring.

Good luck to you all.

For the Alliance!

Actually, at 9:30 pm on a Monday night, it was more like, "Give us our bears, now."

The Night Crew, Honored Exiles, and a few of our friends finally got tired of trying to PuG this achievement with random strangers, so we banded together and tore through the Horde leaders like they were made of tissue paper. We're all experienced PvPers and raiders, so any resistance we met was easily dealt with and crushed. We suffered a handful of deaths in the process, but for the most part it was easy as pie.

Mmmm...pie....

It was hilarious, afterward. Sindorella had a horde guildie defending, and when she came back from playing her DK with us I watched over her shoulder as she apologized to him for ganking him. They both laughed it up, and a good time was had by all. I hope he gets his 10 more Alliance kills for City Defender soon. Good luck to him!

p.s.
The screenshot above only shows a few of us who were there for our city raids. Some of our group had logged off immediately, one stayed in UC to kill more hordies, and some just didn't want to bother. Also, some people who ARE in the screenie just happened to be there and couldn't resist showing off their bears for no other reason than to show off.

Down they go...

So, I don't think I mentioned it before. Our group raids on Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons. So, today was our second day of the week...and boy did we get some progression done!

First we went after Ignius on a vengeance run. It felt good, smacking him around. We got him killed after a few tries, and all was right in the world. I got the hot pocket achievement, too. Thank goodness I can heal myself in that thing!

Next we went on to Auriaya and hit her with a grand oneshot, and a leather healer helm dropped. (It's shaped like a moon. My druid is mooning the raid, now. haha) The next bosses were a bit on the tougher side, though. Thorim was a bit tricky for our stay behind group. I did the gauntlet, and it was pretty easy to heal, but that doesn't matter when the other group doesn't stay alive. We finally got it sorted out, though. Something about dispelling something that was making our shaman healer cast times ridiculous. It was a pretty fun enounter. I won the roll for the T8 shoulders, but since I'd already won something I happily passed on it for our mage. I'm just stoked I would have won it. We then went in and said hi to Freya...and took her down on our third attempt. The trash in that room is, uh, interesting. But, I got to sleep things for the first time since Sunken Temple! Go go druid CC!

Freya's room is full of herbs, including two near the door that aren't pickable. They're underground or something. It would have been all well and good, but the rogue kept getting all the herbs before me or the mage could get to them! And, instead of handling it like an adult, I went all passive-aggressive and snarky. I was just so exasperated! It's not even that I needed the herbs that bad, I was just frustrated that I wasn't taken into consideration. So, we need to find a better way to handle that.

I won the Alchemists's Cache tonight, and we were all a bit surprised by what it all contained. I sent some of the potions and mixtures on to other members of the raid, because it really seems like a ridiculous amount of stuff to go to one person. I kept the herbs and the vials and the eternals, though. I hope we all bring the same characters each week, so the other two alchemists in the raid get the bag in turns. We'd probably guild bank the items, but the three alchemists in the raid a) aren't in the guild on these characters, and b) nobody ever gets stuff like that out of the guild bank anyway. It's like this black hole or something. There's a few things in the first tab that the common folk like me can take one of each day, but I have yet to learn the secret to gaining access to any of the rest of the stuff. Even asking for a heart of darkness for Shavra to make new shoulders way back when was a bit of an ordeal. Sure, we've been burned before, but at the same time if we can't do anything useful with the useful stuff, what's the point in having the guild bank? I don't even want the shit in there, but it feels a little off that it's ALL off limits.

Meh. That's a rant for a different day.

All in all, today's trip to Ulduar was a raving success! I think we need to iron out some kinks and stuff, both in the raiding and in the picking of the herbs, but we got the job done and we learned a lot. Barring disaster, next week will go a lot faster and we'll get to see more bosses! Yay!

Mostly rambles

First topic on the table. Does my priest want to heal you?

I don't know. Let me mind flay you and see how well that works.

For the last year and a half, my priest has been a pretty dedicated shadow priest. I have other healers. I MIGHT dual spec her at some point in the future, but I doubt it. I'm just not all that great at priesting these days. I brush her off about once a week, do the jewelcrafting daily, and fly around Icecrown looking for saronite.

It's not that I hate holy or disc, I just never got the hang of them. I "grew up" a three-button healer, so all the options on my priest gave me the centipede's dilemma in the worst way. Now that I'm used to healing on a druid, with many more healing options than I thought I'd ever get used to, I might give priest heals a try. I might not. But, no matter what, no. I don't want to heal your PuG.

---

Secondly, yesterday morning I helped my sis-in-law get her baby mage her "the Noble" title. At level 10. Well, okay, she wasn't 10 when she got the title, and that makes us all sad. She made a discovery ding before she got the actual title, but she did all of the work at 10, so we think it counts.

It was pretty fun, escorting her on my paladin while my brother escorted her on his hunter. He'd hit things that might be a problem, and I saved her life more than once from something that had snuck up on her. We got her all the way through Tanaris, Un'goro Crater, and Silithus without a single death. Go team us!

I've seen a screenshot of a tauren actually at level 10 with the title, and that made me a bit sad. We could have done it, if we hadn't insisted on killing things while she was in our party! Oh well. I'm still pleased with my level 38 hunter with the title, so I'm sure she's happy with her level 11 as well.

---

And, on the raiding front, XT nerfs saved the day. In one night we downed Flame Leviathan (duh), Razorscale (oneshot), XT (twoshot), Assembly (took forever, but we got them down), and the bridge boss (oneshot on our first attempt). We're not hardcore, so we're all pretty pleased with this, but I know I'm not the only one who feels a bit cheated that we couldn't get this far without the XT nerfs. I really like a good challenge. The tantrums were a bitch to heal through, but we had it if our dps had just been a bit better geared and we'd all known what we were doing.

Oh well. I beat the other healers on dps when XT dropped his heart. That gives me a lot more smug satisfaction than perhaps it should.

Also, finally, I enjoyed healing last night for the first time in a long time. I felt like I was on my game for once. I'm looking forward to healing tomorrow. It's back to being my comfort zone, and I need my comfort zone more than I need things changed up. I go back and forth, and I'm sorry to anyone who has to put up with me like this, but that's just how I am sometimes.

I'm taking a bit of a break from the game today, but I can't play all the time! Next up, leveling my paladin from 70-80. Maybe I'll try to see just how fast I can go. Wish me luck!

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.