stoopid maintenance

Well, since maint is killing my Catagasm, I'll use this time to talk a bit about my expanded stable of alts. The roster looks like this. I've got my brand new tauren paladin, Leto (currently the highest of the newbies at 46), my goblin rogue Stiltzkin (41), my Forsaken hunter Murbella (30), my troll druid Ghanima (25), my orc mage Milesteg (about 7), my goblin shaman Scytale (also about 7), my worgen warrior Roccloh (1oish) and my worgen hunter Magdalena (7ish). Three of those names are blasts from WoW past. Roccloh was the name of my very first toon, a tauren druid named after my childhood dog Rocco. Magdalena was the name of my first serious toon, a Forsaken priest who I raided with in vanilla days. And Murbella is the name of my 80 draenei warrior who I will most likely never play again. If I see any of the 80+ content alliance side, it will be with one of my worgen. Leto is currently specced prot and holy, which with the rebirth of shockadins makes it very easy to queue as all 3 rolls (moreso than with a feral/resto dual spec druid). And Stiltzkin is specced combat for solo leveling, and subtlety for dungeons. Subt is an interesting spec i've never played with before, but im getting to enjoy it, even though i know assassination would be better dps for dungeons. Being able to stealth teleport behind mobs is super convenient, and I've generally been topping the meters in most dungeons. With Leto I'm mostly tanking thus far as I'm not confident in my healing abilities, and my holy gear is definitely not as good as my prot. But, I plan to try it out soon. Plus, I can usually single handedly carry a group through a 5man as a pally tank with wog and loh if the heals suck. Pally tanks (at least at these low levels) are so OP. In the old crew, the only person I've taken into the 80+ content is my orc shaman Cid, who is now 82. I've gotten about halfway through both Hyjal and Vash'jir, and run Blackrock Caverns and Throne of Tides once each. ToT is a very cool instance, BRC is ok, but definitely found ToT more fun. And finally, RIP to the orc warrior Tifa, who was sacrificed to the race change gods, to replace Claude, who was server and appearance transfered into Alia the belf rogue. Tifa is now Claude, the belf warrior, and leader of AVERLANCHE, my alt guild on Dragonmaw. Leto is the leader of Fedaykin, my alt guild on Area 52. So, the stable has 6 belfs, 2 orcs, 2 tauren, 2 goblins, 2 worgen, 2 forsaken, 2 trolls, 1 draenei, and yet, i don't even like belfs much, they just fit my theme. I might consider race changing some at some point, but its too expensive to do willy nilly (possibly would change my belf hunter to goblin, maybe my lock to orc). Side note, I really hope female belfs get some of the female goblin haircuts at some point, they are awesome. I love the female goblin models in general, think they are the best of the four new ones. Male worgen are nice too. Female worgen and male goblin... meh... male goblins have very little options, all tend to look similar, and just can't get into the female worgen look, guess I'm not a furry. lol

ZOMFG!!!!

Cataclysm is here! Why are you reading this?! Go level your goblin! (or Worgen, I guess) Go hit Mount Hyjal. Its here people!

Deathwing Cometh! (And the Perils of IRL Aggro)

Been a while. Much has changed since I last posted. My computer had to be formatted and I'm in the process of downloading all the patches, so I thought I'd take the time to get a post in. So, in case you live under a rock, you've probably heard that the Cataclysm expansion finally has an official release date, December 7th, 2010... a mere 2 months away. Will I be in line at GameStop at midnight? You betcha!

Anywho... so last I wrote to you all, I had just got back on to WoW, to find my account hacked, much of my gear and all of my gold and bank items gone. I am pleased to say the Blizzard was extremely helpful and was able to restore ALMOST all of my lost gear and gold and items. And over the last few months, I've made up (and then some) whatever I lost. But yea, props to Blizzard. Before this happened though, I spent some time leveling my draenei warrior, and have since gotten even a stinking Alliance to the level cap.

But most of the last few months was spent continuing to gear up my hordies, getting different achievments I was interested in, farming rare mounts, leveling fishing, and most recently, really beginning to plan for the future alts that will come in Cataclysm. Some of the highlights of this time was getting my orc shaman Cid a netherdrake and nether ray (the nether drake quests are especially fun, if you never experienced that), getting my Tauren druid Barret the Guardian of Cenarius title and the Cenarion Hippogryph, and finally getting some WotLK raiding experience. I've done at least some of the bosses in every raid except EoE and RS, even getting Cid (whos up to a GS of about 5200) into ICC 10 (did Gunship, Saurfang, and Rotface). I am hoping to at least get a Lich King kill on normal 10 man before Cata hits, but we'll see. I realized though that all this gear I'm collecting will soon be replaced by quest greens or at least by dungeon blues, so, mayhap my frost and triumph badges would be better spent on heirlooms for the new alts, so I set about farming heroics to get all the heirlooms I could, and even leveled fishing for a chance at the heirloom ring. My planned new alts are Stiltzkin, a female goblin rogue, Leto, a male tauren paladin, Scytale, a male goblin shaman, and yet un named female forsaken hunter, male troll druid, and male worgen warrior. Now, as you know, I've already got 10 80s on my main server (and now an 80 alliance on another server), so, no room for all these alts... so, to get heirlooms to them, I decided to server transfer my 80 BE rogue, Claude, to a new server. I will replace him with Stiltzkin on my main server so I will still have one of each class, and on the new server I'll make the rest of my horde alts, and maybe my worgen too... or maybe the worgen on the server with my ally 80, depends how much stuff i can send in the mail cross faction (heirlooms can be sent, not sure about gold). Also, since I need a Claude on my main server to fit with the theme of my characters there, and since Claude does not fit with the theme of my new characters, I also recustomized Claude into a female BE named Alia. When Cata hits, I will be race changing my currently female orc warrior Tifa into a male BE warrior Claude. The theme of my new alts is Frank Herbert's Dune in case you didn't catch it. So the heirloom farm is what I'm working on now. I've got everything I need on my main server and on Alia's server but I still need more for my worgen if I do it on my alliance server, I might need more if I do it on Alia's server too, I'll have to check.

In other news, I have indeed found myself deep into the WoW addiction that once gripped me so strong. When I came back to WoW after a hiatus it was only with the promise that it wouldn't interfere with my real life, but its done just that once again... my roommate and best friend has told me she feels like she lives alone or with someone who completely ignores her in favor of a game. So, I need to try to cut back, at least a little. But, I can't stop now... I've still yet to have the expansion launch experience, and I am NOT missing it this time. Till next time guys.

Disaster!!

So, a few days ago I finally logged back into WoW for the first time in months. Now, I knew my account had been hacked, but Blizzard had told me they investigated and were able to restore my accounts to what they had been when I last played. Sadly, this was untrue. I logged in to find MOST of my 10 80s in the gear that I had left them in... however, their bags and banks were empty other than a few quest items and hearthstones (all of my toons are dual specced and had at least two gear sets, my pally who is the best geared of my toons was in her off spec gear when I logged her out, so her good gear is gone), almost all of my gold is gone (between my ten alts I had about 10-15k gold), and a few of them are even still missing some of the stuff they were equipped with when I last logged out. I opened a GM ticket of course, and they are investigating again, so we'll see what happens... but if I don't at LEAST get all my good gear back I might commit WoW suicide (I can live without the gold if I have to). Anyways, I'm going to go log in and see if I can help Blizz with the investigation by figuring out exactly what gear I'm missing... then I'll go back to playing with my now level 71 draenei warrior who I've been playing cuz they didnt fuck with her and I'm too broken up over my hordies to try to play with them.

Best. Quests. Ever.

Its been awhile since I've posted. I've been working overtime and have had limited internet access. The good news is, starting next week I'll be living in a hotel for 7 weeks and as long as the hotel has WiFi, it will be the perfect time to end the long dark tea time of my WoW soul. Hopefully, I'll be back into WoW within three weeks, if not sooner.

So, we left off heading into the frozen wastes of Dragonblight, one of my favorite zones in Northrend. The look of the zone is exactly what I pictured for Northrend, big and epic with mountains, valleys, gorges, weird bones sticking out of the snow covered wastes, etc. And there are some great questlines. Hunting the several name elite mobs around the zone is a good way to make new friends in Northrend. The magnataur quests are fun. The Scarlet Onslaught quests are innovative and loads of fun, even if a bit frustrating at times. We get introduced to the Wyrmcrest Accord and the different flights, do their dirty work, and start fighting the blues. And of course, the most epic questline in WoW, the Wrathgate event that then leads to the amazing Battle for Undercity phased event. Blizzard really WOWed me with that (no pun intended). Seriously amazing stuff, and I get to go kick demon and apothecary ass with Thrall and Sylvannas. Golbez was a happy camper. And then we get a choice of zones again.... if you do most of the quests in Dragonblight, you'll end up with a quest that leads you towards Grizzly Hills, and another towards Zul'Drak. Now, in later play throughs, for effective leveling, I only dipped into Grizzly Hills to unlock the DTK quests there, but, with Golbez, I didn't know any better, and as Grizzly Hills seemed a bit lower leveled than Zul'Drak, I went there first.

Welcome to the Big Show Kids

No more tropical paradises like STV. No more verdant rolling hills of Mulgore. No more exotic veldt of Nagrand. No kids, welcome to the frozen wastes. This is Northrend, and it is NOT a nice place to visit.

With a tear in my eye, I waved goodbye to my friends in Tirisfal Glades, took one last look at the Undercity, and braced myself for the cold.... luckily, as a Forsaken death knight, I probably won't feel it. As the zepplin pulls into Vengeance Landing, I see something new and interesting right away... Forsaken architecture. All we've seen of Forsaken towns before have been old human ruins, but this was a town built by the undead... and it suits us perfectly. I started questing and was pleased that with a few exceptions, the quests were mainly objective based rather than "Kill 30 of X or collect 20 of Y." There are some really enjoyable quest lines in Howling Fjord which is kinda sad because these days my leveling route mostly avoids Howling Fjord other than a few of the early quests out of Vengeance Landing.. its simply more efficient and rewarding to level in Borean Tundra. After taking 10 characters through Northrend, I got my leveling route down to a science. I met the Tanuka for the first time shortly after my arrival, and was a bit let down that they were really just Tauren with new faces (for the males, the females are lamely just Tauren clones). I knew they were related to Tauren but I was hoping they'd be a bit more unique. The Tuskaar filled that role though. And there are some really fun Tanuka quests, especially the one where the Tanuka brave accompanies you into the vyrkul place. There's also alot of twisted mischief going on with my fellow Forsaken, which is always a good time. But, before long, I got back on the zepplin and headed to Borean Tundra via Org.

Borean is where you start seeing the difficulty level bump up a bit (not that anything in WoW is really hard). It can be easy to get overwhelmed in the early quests here fighting the nerubians outside of Warsong Hold (especially if you come here at 68), they repop fast, have long pat routes and big aggro range. But, it was still early enough in the expansion cycle that there were alot of people leveling here and alot of us helped each other out. It is also here that us Hordies got our first real taste of Garrosh Hellscream and his douchiness. Sure, he was in Nagrand, but he was a fairly minor character at the time, no one paid him much attention other than maybe some Warcraft III Grom fanboys. But now, hes in charge of the Horde Expedition, and has turned into a giant D-bag, starkly in contrast to Saurfang the Elder who is ridiculously awesome. I'm trying to think of someone equally repellent on the Alliance side (besides all the players... kidding) to try to explain to you Allies how you'd feel if someone said he'd be the next King of Stormwind... then again, Varian IS pretty bad... but, yea, not as bad as Garrosh. Damn you Blizzard! I was glad to be rid of him when they sent me off to the Tanuka village, especially since I got an awesome blue 2H axe just for walking in the door. Borean is really a great place to level, theres tons of quests (I think maybe only Dragonblight and Icecrown have more) and alot of the quest rewards are really good. And it was cool when for the last quest in the zone, they have you escort a refuge Tanuka into the next zone, the first place that really looks like you'd expect Northrend to look, Dragonblight.

DK Tank, DK Healer, DK DPS

Leveling a death knight through Outland right after WotLK launched was pretty weird. Hellfire was once again a giant gankfest, with everyone Death Gripping everyone all over the place. There were also a few level 80s (who must have power leveled to the cap, then got bored waiting for enough other people to be 80 to share endgame content with) just griefing all the poor nooby DKs.

And then there were the 5 man all DK instance runs... cuz pretty much everyone doing the leveling game 60-70 at that time was a DK. The one frost, one unholy, three blood group was very common. The strength of the DK starting blues helped us getting through the first few instances, but it did get a little harder as time went on. After Hellfire Citadel, I didn't really bother with instances anymore, I really just did it for the novelty of doing an all one class instance run that wasn't with pallies or druids. As I progressed through Outland, I found it wasn't just Hellfire that was a gankfest, and the longer it took me, the more bored 80s there were griefing. I actually decided to go to Shadowmoon as soon as I hit 67, as I had never quested there before, and figured it was usually a less traveled zone and would have less ganking. The amount of "group" quests I was able to EASILY solo as a DK, both in Shadowmoon and other zones, was ridonkulous. I hit 68 and decided to say fuck Outland, and headed for the frozen wastes of Northrend, home to Arthas Menethil, AKA, the Lich King.