Thursday, September 27

Grinding vs Luck

I hate grinding... as probably 80% of the players do. Luckily i havent had much need to make grinding a part of my playtime yet, i allways had money enough due to a lucky drop now and then. I was one of the very first on the server to own an Epic Mount for example when i had a much sought after Epic drop for me while questing at level 59... i've never had so many indecent proposals as that evening!
After that i still had a good drop every now and then, even more Epics. Think i've experienced 8 Epic BOE drops (before TBC), 3 of them while solo... the other 3 while with a m8 or my GF, which rolls i all lost... the other 2 we split the cash. I guess my luck rubs off a bit aswell ;)
I'm a crappy roller actually but on when it really mathers i seem to win.

As i am dutch im a tight bastard aswell so when equipping an alt i always invented "projects" to grind the needed items to get an Epic crafted.
Grinding still wasn't fun but i had set short term goals and something to reward me at the end.
At the moment i have just started on the first new project since TBC came out, an Epic helm for my tank;
[Helm of the Stalwart Defender]. (no worries.. helm graphics will go off)
So far this has been an unpleasent grind and i still can't get it 100% free as i will need to find someone to supply the Nether and more importantly; who can craft it aswell.
What is so unpleasent is running around Nagrand on my Druid alt which is still just level 64 and only has a regular mount.
Not only does it take me forever to run around that zone, i also get ganked quite abit by mobs... but that aint the worst.
I spot a vein on my map and try to get there as fast as possible, trying to avoid mobs as much as i can.. but often i'll have to clear at least 1 at the vein itsself and then it happens: a jerk comes flying down and without giving me a look takes the bloody vein!
When people dont even bother to answer a whisper ("Thanks loads m8") i'm sure they know they are doing something that is nót acceptable!
Damn that pisses me off beyond believe, i hope they apply at our guild sometime in the near future... i'll be sure to take their apply and mess with them good, how sweet my revenge will be! /chuckle
Maybe not that nice and not very likely to happen but it's the only thing that can give me some slight hope to teach them a lesson.
Ok.. i'm okay now, relax... breathe..

Wish i had a lucky drop again so i just could buy the needed adamantite, seems my luck has stayed behind in Azeroth >.>

Wednesday, September 26

Ow noes!

Busy at work so i haven't been able to blog much sofar... didn't even have much time to browse forums or read up on the new patch (2.2).
What i dó know is that The level 70 Ravagers are tameable now which might be a nice alternative to my Cat. The Scorpid is useless so that frees up a stableslot to try that one out, or i could go for a Raptor but i still have to check out Petopia on what skills they have.
I seem to remember they were "jack of all trades" so medium health, armor and dps so if that is (still) the fact he won't get a spot in my compfy stables sadly enough.

By the way, for a change this Wow addict is planning to NOT play Wow tonight... i was at home during lunch and had a nice little package ready for me containing Halo 3 for my xbox360. I wasnt too impressed by the graphix tbh (which i could blame on my HD LCD tv being repaired >.> ) and i need to get used to using a controller again, but it still has that playability Halo is so well known for, can't wait to team up with a couple of mates and play it coop. (i'll tank kk?)

Maybe i should ask my GF to write some WoW stuff the next few days while i go boost Masterchief to level 70 ^^

Monday, September 24

Help, my GF is an wow addict

Probably the dream of every guy... to have a girlfriend/wife who plays World of Warcraft aswell. I must say i welcome this most of the time, certainly in the beginning of WoW where liked to spend each and every minute playing thát game.
But when looking back at it, we went kind of over the top.

You're playing WoW, running an instance or something else which "can't" be interupted... your GF is making dinner already and you fear you will be in trouble soon, either upsetting her or disappointing your party with some "my ass got powned by the wife" excuse.
Dark clouds seem to gather as the smell of a ready meal approuch you... but suddenly those clouds spread, a beam of light shines down from above and you hear an Angelic voice speak: "Do you want your dinner behind the PC?"
Pretty great huh? I consider myself blessed with this ofcourse ;) Who hasn't had his meal behind a PC before, but your GF suggesting it?
But the reason is not her unending love for me, it's her love for the game... she will surely join me on the PC beside me with her own plate, beating on mobs with the mouse in one hand and a fork in the other.
Ofcourse it's not the reason that matters.. it's the result ;)

On the other hand i kinda wish (very quietly) that she didnt like this game that much, not because i don't like her ingame company.. we do most things separately anyway apart from the raids.. No, it's because my addiction would be alot less then it is now. (was worse before tho)
It was me who canceled our Internet subscription a month early so i would be sure we would started packing before we got our new house, i'm quite sure we would have been raiding on the very last day before we got the new key. I admit.. it was a brief moment where my willpower was stronger the my need for a wow-fix, but that was enough. :)
The day we got internet in the new house was the first day we booted WoW again, even tho it was for a brief moment as we had many chours to be done.
We're pretty much settled now and picked up the game nicely, we're playing a bit less then we did before (altho not much) which is still enough to be called an addict. But at least i'm not the only WoW addict in my house... Kalli is the other :D

Friday, September 21

Ow it's On!

A raiding night once again... to kill time the Paladins and Hunters start lovingly insulting each other again. I die on a pull as i managed to misclick my misdirection button and get aggro myself and after i'm back from a reboot (sounds was messed up) a Paladin (the infamous Big gay Al as i will call him again) comes rez me.. or so it seems. He takes a seat on my head so i have no choice but whisper him some fresh insults.
We end our destination and the Pala-Hunter discussions continue: They call us smelly, we call them gay and compliment them once more on their dashing Pink shoulders.
Insults and mockery go back and forth till i say: "before this night is over my kitty will use you for a litterbin!" That might not have been a smart thing to say... "Ow, its On"
So we start on a boss-event: The Lurker Below in SSC. We've killed this guy before, one-shotted even but we have some new people today and are low on healers. At 60% or something some healers pay a bit too much attention to people's healthbars and get killed by a spout or something. I prepare for the kitty-litter action, dismiss my pet and find myself a good spot to Feign Dead. All of the sudden i see a shitload of mobs comming my way lead by a bubbled pala who starts dancing on my now fresh corpse.. the bastard!
Quite a challenge i've gotten myself into.. i do appreciatte his creativity tho. He manages to do this the next 2 wipes aswell (yeah we had a crappy night for some reason /blush) and tells me he has won the bet on which i replied: The night aint over yet!

We go to Magtheridon and we get some bad luck and a tank gets feared a looong way and pulls another pack and most of the raid meets it's end (the next pull we manage to pull a second pack again but deal with it without losing too many btw).. a few of us make a run for it and heavily dotted and low on health i reach the outside. I start eating food quickly and manage to stay alive for two more ticks but the next one was surely gonna kill me.. when all of the sudden i get a huge heal, i'm alive! It was a Paladin who healed me, not Big gay Al but still quite funny as he was gonna help me achieve my promiss.
I walk in and it takes me a minute before i remembered the oath i had taken, a quick /target Big Gay Al shows me that i'm the one who is still standing this time. I start searching among the corpses and time runs short as i see he already released and is running back.
But then i find him and park my kitty on top of him and take a screenshot, just seconds before the body turns into a Skelleton as he enters the instance.
[Exanimo]: I got such a niiiice screenshot ^^
[Big Gay Al] Fuuuuuuck! :(


Ofcourse i had to post this highlight on our Guildforum eventho he threatned to post a simular one.. but i've held my end of the bargain ;)

Wednesday, September 19

Todays n00b: The raidleader!

Our raidleader is often the target of our raids mockery... not because people disrespect him, think he's a geek (erm, he probably is anyway but who isnt?), dislike him or that he doesn't play his class correctly. (on the contrary imo)
He's one of those people who wants to do éverything, instruct each and every person personally and explain tactics till our ears start bleeding.
While he is so busy he often misses a few kB of attention which results in a noobaction, which resulted in death to himself or often even for the complete raid.
Strangly he has this most of the time with Giant type creatures/mobs, so it's not like it's easy to miss them. This resulted in us blaming him to have a Giant fettish, him being a Gnome makes that a unlikely match at least. It began with a Golemag affair where he managed to pull it from top of the stone bridge in MC, (multiple times i believe) but he had multiple experiences with other Giants after that.. he even experimented with a Dragon (blinked into Vaelstraz) but that ended in a 1-time affair.
But it's a cheeky little gnome who likes to experiment it seems so just this week he went for a gangbang and pulled a whole pack in SSC while visually explaining tactics. (beasts in that pack aswell btw o.O)

Do we blame him? Sure we do.. but not in a bad way. He'll surely hear about it many many times but it's just for the tease.
Anyone who does that much does for the rest of the guild is afforded to fuck things up every now and then, however stupid it is.
The fact that he laughs at our (often over the top) jokes and insults makes it only more fun, the added selfmockery makes the show complete.. he knows it's all play and no harm is ever intended.
I must say he tends to find new creative ways to wipe us quite often and that alone is worth those repairs. (altho i do try to Feign Dead in a safe spot when possible ^.^ ) Doesn't every guild need a n00b? Even if it's your raidleader... (okay, okay i admit.. we have quite a few, some Guilds just have a bit more luck it seems :P )

Tuesday, September 18

Invest and thy will receive!

Monday is Alt Karazhan run nowadays which offers most people a welcome change from playing their usual toon and some it gives a second chance to get their main some loot from there.
I can imagen it's a real pain running with a bunch of alts as progress is alot slower and the chance on death quite a bit higher.

Last week we died quite a bit, healers had trouble keeping the tanks up (me being one of those highly armored tincans) and a wipe would often follow shortly. We still managed to reach Maiden which we downed (i offered my spot for some range dps so i didnt see her go down myself).
I spend some of my week running my warrior through some instances hoping for some good drops but i wasn't too lucky, i did get myself a nice new cloak crafted
[Cloak Of Eternity] and fitted myself with a few more enchants and gems. This combined with some more tanking experience (i was a bit rusty as i hadnt tanked much for quite a few months) resulted in very few deaths, also for my fellow tank who also worked had on his gear (and had a bit more luck getting drops).
Smoothly we cleared to the Huntsman, the Huntsman himself, the adds to Moroes and then Moroes himself. I don't remember dieing there once, think we did lose someone at Moroes which was soulstoned tho. Moroes was kind enough to drop a plate belt and since my tank "buddy" stepped out for a main to get some loot (which dropped for him the lucky git) i got myself
[Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable], quite an upgrade even without gems.

We were on a roll so we steamed on and shortly we were in front of Maiden, even pulling some double packs by mistake here and there which we downed flawlessly. It didnt take long as Maiden was down aswell, we lost a few people along the way but managed still.
Again some nice plate loot on which i passed for the re-entered tank as i already got some Epic loving that evening.
It was still early and we went on to the Opera, we got one of the more simple events: The Big Bad Wolf, but for some reason we managed to wipe twice on him. The tank didnt manage to get enough aggro on him while chasing him, chasing Red Riding Hood and DPS kept on going strong... so Wolfie ate a few people before the tank got him again. Same problem second try so we decided to step a bit back on dps to get more control which seemed to work, aswell that people got better in the running bit. I myself focus on threat instead of debuffing + some damage so i would be 2nd on the aggro list in case the tank died, which he did as he got himself a nice little red cloak.
Things were under control that time even after that and we downed him dropping a nice healer trinket. :)

Because of some people investing in their gear things went alot smoother this run, even had some time to spare (not enough to reach Curator tho). So it shows that a little bit of effort (or in my case spending quite a bit of cash on gear, gems and enchants) can pay off.
I'm happy spending more money on my new belt's gems and looking forward to next weeks alt-Kara run.

Monday, September 17

A RL/WoW mate

When i started World of Warcraft i wasn't alone, one of my best Reallife friends (a true gamer aswell) started with it the same time as i did.
Ofcourse my Girlfriend started WoW aswell (2 days later as i bougth her a WoW copy... the sollution to all possible problems i could have had playing too much games ;) ) but this friend was there from the very start.
We leveled together (i was often 4-5 levels ahead so i did most quests twice) and probably did 98% of the instances together.. even the raid instances with our Guild(s).
When i left my guild we grew up in he quit it at the same time and we joined the same new guild, my girlfriend was in the same guild aswell but she stayed in the previous guild for a couple of weeks longer as she knew so many people there (in RL aswell as it was a total Dutch guild which has RL meetings). She joined us later as it was a bit difficult that she had different raidnights as i had.
Doing an instance was often easy for us as we already had 3people to a 5man; a Tank, a Lock and a Hunter in case you want to know.

But then this mate got a GF which did not play WoW (Oh the horror!) and he went completely out of sight. Not just in WoW but also in RL. (talking about cold turkey..) But recently he got some free time all of the sudden and he gets time from his GF to do his own things aswell, often because she's doing stuff of her own at that time but let's not get picky right?
So we had some gaming sessions again (on 360) and last week he suggested to play some WoW together again... it seemed he had re-enabled his WoW account aswell. He managed to get to level 64 before he logged out for the last time and we planned to pick that up again on a Sunday. He brought his PC over (which he used to do at an average two full weekends a month before he got into the mating thing) and i ran him through a bunch of instances using my Warrior if we needed a tank or my Moonkin (level 63, dinged 64 that day) when we needed a healer. (a crappy one i might add)

Zeven hours later our time was up and it was over within a blink of the eye it seemed in which we managed to do 4 instanceruns. Not thát much xp or loot but i didnt push him through a 7 hours xp-grind just yet fearing he might be bored with WoW too fast again.
Eventho i did not gain much that day when looking at virtual gain, (some xp + some loot for my inactive druid and repairs for my warrior) i did gain a serious dose of RL reputation and had fun while doing it.
It's nice to have a m8 who shares your passion for a certain game doesnt it? Sure hope he can clear up some evenings again and can play the game he loved so much before, maybe even join us on a raid once in a while... time will tell.

Friday, September 14

/Target talent points /Cast Blender

Last monday was Karazhan Alt run (bit late report but i had soo much other interesting things to tell :) ) and this time there were just two warriors, my toon was one of them. I had the better gear so i was supposed to be Main Tank. Great... could be fun... íf i can keep aggro on those damn DPS machines..
So for the first time in my warriors carreer i went full Protection, always had some points in Prot but never all the way down.
All of the sudden i lost some usefull skills, a shitload of dps but i gained some health, stamina and a couple of new nifty skills.
I am one of those people who reads up on different classes aswell, quite helpfull when i need(ed) to lead raids... so i read about most skills and i know how they can be used. Still, which skill gives the most aggro? When i was armes and i tanked i used Sunder and Revenge and when i had rage to spare Heroic Strike, while sunder only stacks to 5 times it still gives its threat when maxed so i'd spam that if Revenge wasnt up as it has a better Threat/rage ratio then Heroic Strike.
Now i had Shield Slam and Devastate all of the sudden aswell and i had no idea how a good threat rotation would be, sure i read about it and played with threat rotation but i didn't have these skills before.. and i have the memory of a drunk hamster.

How did i tank then? Sunder the mob 5 times (revenge when up) and then start tapping Devastate. When i had enough rage i'd use Heroic Strike aswell. I had no good idea where to use Shieldslam and it seems its a superior threat builder compared to Devastate.. at least i know now and looking forward to try again next Alt-run/5-man.
Despite of me not fully using my rage to it's fullest potential i still feel i did pretty good, i was able to stay ahead of most people most of the time (had a Epic geared lock along who could be a bit of a pain at times but at least the DPS-happy Hunter found the threatmeter on his screen as he proudly told me afterwards).
I guess the 300g on gems i spend just before we started helped keeping me alive aswell... good thing this alt farms me herbs in return so my Main can pot up cheaper.
This weekend i'll have to take that dreaded blender once again i suppose if i want to achieve anything in the Arena. :S

Changing guilds

I'm defo not planning to as i have a great guild but i thought it would be an interesting subject. I myself am a very loyal guy i suppose, i started in the open beta and have only been a member of two guilds in my whole (mains) carreer.
Every time i start an alt tho i stay unguilded for awhile, sooner or later the quietness drives me mad and then i ask for an invite from a random noob spamming in General. Most of the time these are Guilds run by a 14year old, proud of the 3 level 70-players they have in the guild.
In guilds like this there are often a few good players hiding on their alt with which you can run an instance later on.
Often i find myself quiting in 2-3 days and going on solo again, sometimes because of the silence, other times because of an overdose of n00bness or players with too much testosterone.
After a while, mostly somewhere between level 20-30, i join my own guild again.. which helps me appreciate them more once again.

Now hopping guilds like this aint neccesarly a bad thing i suppose, i did ran into some nice people like this and my Druid alt was actually hidding in a guild from which later my current guild was created. Hopping guilds with an alt can be a great laugh, you'll meet some noobs beyond believe while other guilds will have some refreshing people in it with a whole different look on the game.
I ran into a beginning player into Westfall once which had no idea how everything worked in Wow and i had fun helping him out a bit as he almost talked to me in a roleplaying way. He was trying to sell some gear using /say, adressing me politely (and with no clue about /w) explaining how good the gear was he had crafted. I went along with it and bought some white items of him just for fun (vendored for the same price as he sold them :P) and made him some green items which he insisted to pay for, so i sold them for half the vendor price.
He wasnt in a guild i joined so i'm going a bit offtopic here but hey, it's my blog aint it? ;)

Back to the changing guilds topic then.. surely everyone thinks about how it would be in a different guild sometimes? When things go a bit bad, you want to change your own playstyle/time, want to be with (ingame) friends, plenty of reasons i'd say.
What makes me wonder is my curiosity i suppose. I just changed guilds once on my Main and i don't see a second time coming any time soon. Sure i've been thinking "what if i joined a Hardcore raidguild", i could see the new content much faster then i do now... but at what price? No flexibility, people who get recruited because of skill not because of personality (that seems a great way to meet some jerks), a strict hand on my raidtime, nothing to say about how things go. Well i'm happy where we are, above average raidprogress.. sometimes a bit slower (Holidays seem to slow us each year again) but even wipe-nights are fun, i'm sure not many guilds have that. :)

Do i dare asking a question yet? Ah let's go crazy... what makes you consider/dream about changing guilds?

Thursday, September 13

Buff my pet please!


Being a Beastmaster Hunter my pet is even more important then for a Survival or Marksman Hunter, i'm sure most people heared that discussion before. The first Hunter in the guild that went BM (i believe he tried it for a bit pre-TBC even) was always asking people to buff which was a quite new happening for most people. Since pets have been buffed by Blizz they are alot more valuable, even for non-BM Hunters. Still Hunters often need to ask for petbuffs and we get often mocked for it.
Now in my guild we are at that point that we still need to ask now and then (altho Fortitude and MotW is often done nicely) and the mockery is
more to pester us.
It's not that i ask for buffs all of the time, often my pet just runs around with just a Fortitude (if it's lucky) only to get buffed to the max at boss events. (again my buff-bot buddies need some guideance at that time often ;) )

This week in Serpentshrine Caverns my pet was missing some buffs again so i asked for them. Teamspeak was used to mock us again (or more a poor attempt at) and after the paladins had their little fun they went serious and asked which buff my pet would like to receive.
"Hmmm... how about that Devine Intervention buff?" "That aint a buff!!!""Well, i'll beg to differ ;)".
Ok that shut them up for now :P

A few trashmobs further my pet managed to die as i sicked him on a Murloc who was looking for some affection from a Resto Druid.
No mockery this time... at least my silly little comment prooved to have effect, or did it?
It took me a second before i noticed i couldnt move (as we NE hunters obviously need to keep jumping around the raid, thats in our guidebook) and saw something shiny around my character, LOL... i''ve been DI'd :P
Good to see the paladins had enough balls to follow through, i suppose that makes them truely a good buff-bot when they think the customer is always right.. even when the customer is wrong.
Too bad DI doesnt cost them durability, would have been even sweeter. ^.^

Wednesday, September 12

My on-line me

You often hear that people are a different person online, an office clerk during the day but at night he saves the world and is praised by all. (Fair maidens swoon when i pass them ^^)
But are you realy a different person online? Jerks in real life are often jerks ingame aswell and people who have a leading function in the game often do this in real life aswell. So while we try to be someone else online, i myself see alot of myself in my online alterego. No i'm not talking those pointy ears or that blue ponytail (can't wait till they implent changeable hairstyles) but personality.
I consider myself a good guy, not much people can't deal with me i think... i did met with a few explosive/incompatible personalities and i let them know i didn't like them quite clearly so thats the only exception.
Otherwise i work hard to build and preserve my good name. I sometimes wonder if i could just be a big asshole and out all my daily frustrations on random people.. as soon as i quit wow there won't be a single soul that knows who i am or where i live.

From another point of view; some people are a lot more outcoming when they can hide behind a virtual character. Someone who is a bit shy can be a real chatter-head all of the sudden... until he's forced to use teamspeak perhaps ;)
I guess a game like Wow can actually help grow people, never expected this post would get an educational twist all of the sudden...
Might be a nice question to ask yourself to end this post with: Is your Azerothian Hero anything like you?

Ow btw... that picture aint me, i'm more like a Dicaprio/Clooney looking guy. Honest!

Tuesday, September 11

Your Ultimate WoW goal - part 1

My first personal goal in WoW was having fun ofcourse but when i still was a level 15 Hunter (or something around that level) i already read about [Rhok'delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers], the proof for a Hunter that you could play your class pretty damn good imo.
As a young little Nightelf i couldnt dare dreaming of ever owning an Epic, let alone thé ultimate bow! Ofcourse i knew that i needed to do Molten Core to make a slim chance on starting the quest, something else i never dreamed to believe.
A loooong time later i actually stepped foot in the Molten Core with my casual guild and it took us quite a while but we finally reached Major Domo. I made it up to Raidleader in the meantime and using my tactic we managed to kill the dude ánd the quest item for the Epic Hunter quest dropped.... i used about all my DKP (we use a bidding system) which didnt bother me much as i had my full T2 set together anyway.

I was so enthousiastic and determined that i completed this quest within the following weekend.
The quest wanted you to kill 4 Elite demons without help of anyone, not even your pet... which was unlike anything i had done so far and perhaps still. When you failed you wouldnt be able to spawn the demon again for 4 hours and there would be just one (for 30mins) so if an other Hunter spawned him before you, tough luck!
Lucky for me most demons were there when i wanted to try them, i tried 4 of them unpotted to test the water and killed one on the first spawn.
The other three were done a bit later that weekend.

This was my personal Ultimate Goal in WoW and while i've killed the demons a couple of times more for some Hunterfriends who tried and tried but failed, it was never a challenge like it was back then. Still great fun and it was quite back-patting one shotting those Demons after a friend/guildy did 2-4 attempts just before that and were close to dispair.
Another question is if i should have helped others with this and while i have my own doubts, thats a subject for a different post. ;)
Anyway, i haven't had a personal high like that in WoW anymore and i can only pray the game will offer me a fresh goal soon.

Monday, September 10

Camera.. action!


One of my previous post was actually inspired by this post.. i just didnt write it yet ;) And this post is inspired by something i read on wowinsider.com, a post about machinima. I was looking around which special programs Myndflame used for example and all i found was some reference to a program that wasnt available anymore. This wowinsider post showed me most machinima creators didnt use anything really special afterall. Yeah i made a clip once (mocking a Raidleader who has a thing with looting killed Boss's near their back-end, i guess when you are a gnome you are easily focused on asses) but i was wondering what more options were around.
Wowmodelviewer is often uses in the bit more advanced machinima (blue screen stuff etc) and when going beyond that people import their own 3D models aswell.
Hopefully i'll get my new PC in a week or 2, i was so sick of my PC crashing i decided to order one, and i might give filming a shot once again.
Maybe a themed film or something would be fun to do.. or making a clip for a song, something basic like that.
It would also allow me to finally get Wowmodelviewer to work and make a decent titlebar for this blog ;)

For your entertainment i've stolen one of Sparky's films again which was about Utopía. (That guild turned in Elysium when TBC started bringing along 95% of the previous members.) Hopefully i'll get my PC soon so i can make me one of my own, altho... Halo 3 for the Xbox360 will be out soon aswell ;)

Weekend's report

A fairly slow weekend for a Wow addict i guess, Fridaynight we started out clearing out a few leftovers in Karazhan as we messed up RaidID's so the second Kara group didnt have a swing at a fresh instance anyway. Ah well, we've been running Kara for quite a while already anyway and some have had it with that instance anyway.
To give myself something to do on Sathurday i tried the Arena's with my level 70 Warrior. I found myself a Resto Shammy who was dumb/kind enough to team up with an alt. I must say i learned alot that day.. mostly how to cope with defeat ;)
Well it wasn't thát bad, we managed to win 4 out of 6 but some matches were over before i could blink twice. And the sad thing is i think it could be mostly blamed on me... after a few tries i got into my warrior a bit more so things went better but i found out my burst damage just wasnt enough to kill people fast enough, with a decent healer against us we were pretty much screwed even with Mortal Strike on it.
A good thing was we did the arena's during daytime as i feel the more mature arena groups will be playing late at night.
This way we met up with some pretty bad groups/players or maybe we just weren't as bad as we thought we were. :P
Later i did some more instance runs with my Warrior alt (can i really call it an alt just because i don't raid with it? playtimes might be almost the same as my main) which resulted in some rep-gain.

Unexpectedly the Guildbank offered me a LW pattern which dropped in SSC earlier... it was pattern which created a BoP item which was some sort of upgrade to me and for just 20DKP it seemed like it would be worth the trouble. The "trouble" in this story were the 10 Primal Air's, the 2 Primal Nethers in it and the special scales + leather i still had on stock.
This kind of made me wish i didnt use those 4 Airs i had for a Cobrascale armorkit for on my warriors pants earlier that day.
Good thing i found me a good grindspot and about 2,5 hours later i had 70 motes of Air. Tired of grinding i bought the last 3 Primal Airs on the AH so now i'm the proud owner of [Boots of the Crimson Hawk].
Just need to compensate for some hit loss with a hit-gem in some other item and i'll be okay.
My Theorycraft addon showed the improvement on damage already and i still need to enchant them with +12 agi, but this addon doesn't take hit-loss in account as long as i'm not targeting a level 72+ so i'd better not consider myself richer just yet.

Friday, September 7

A Raidleaders life is Hell... every freaking minute of an instance. Well maybe thats a bit over the top but as soon as combat starts you try to keep an eye on every single thing of the battlefield. Even worse, before battle even starts you'll try to think of every possible thing that could happen and how to anticipate that.
Our guild has a Raidleader, more then one actually but when this guy is online (95% of the time) hé is thé Raidleader. I'm not sure if he would like a break and wishes one of the other Raidleaders would take over but he never complains. I try to support him the best i can; setting MT windows if i know how he wants them, reminding him of things that need to be explained, warn him if someone doesnt seem to know what he's doing so he can explain it once more, etc. Loads of those things are things i or any of the other raidleaders could do as well i suppose but nothing as confusing as several people giving directions at once.

Still.. unexpected things will happen and it depends on your group how well it is being coped with. The raidleader tries to prepare us on all possible events but sometimes the unexpected happens... it may be a bug, it may be dumb luck, it may be a DC, you name it.
A good group can adapt, we shouldnt be like sheep waiting for the Raidleader to shout the new instructions. (roll over, play dead, sit... hey, stop playing dead! ow.. ffs) For example a few days back we did Karazhan and we got the Wizard of Oz in the Opera, a DPS warrior was gonna kite Tinman but he didn’t do that before so tripped over his own dwarven beard and got killed. Since kiting is part of the Hunterbasics i took over right away.. not waiting for Raidleader instructions, if they had a better idea then that i could adapt once more but for that moment we needed a fast solution. (easiest thing i ever kited ánd in such a small space btw) The Crow went down shortly after that.

Another example: Yesterday we did the Lurker Below in SSC. When the Lurker dove down during an earlier attempt, the tanks needed to pick up their adds but right at the moment they became aggro'able some Heals over Time from a Druid ticked and one add ran off. The weird thing was there was actually a taunt on the mob (couldn’t check myself as i was misdirecting another mob onto that tank) but for some reason that didn’t work as it should.
The Raidleader shouted some instructions on Teamspeak to several people which were misunderstood and adaption went poorly, resulting in a few people lost. Was it a bug, did the tank not do his task correctly and/or wrongly interperted the RL's instructions or was it simply bad luck?
We try to think of the most unexpected and prepare for that.. this situation is of course added to the list of expected unexpected "things", coming soon to a raid explanation near you! ;)

Thursday, September 6

Hate-love relationships

No i'm not talking about my me and my GF here.. i'm talking about those weird connection some people have, often a result of some twisted humour. In the past we had a player in the guild who loved to herass Hunters for some reason... sure i can take a joke, i can take two, i can take three... but this guy was roleplaying his hate for Hunters to perfection.
It wasn't just me, three of our Hunters (had 6 at that time) even had this guy on ignore when not raiding with him. This guy was probably just having fun with us, not noticing that he went a bit too far with it.

But with some people you have more then just a Hate-relation, there is some "love" involved aswell.
We have quite a few people in our guild with a twisted sense of humour and quite a couple of those have a sharp tongue which results in quite amusing chats in Guild-, Raid- or Partychat... often going on till someone bows down to the others over the top remark, mostly ended by the "loser" by ROFL instead of another witty reply.
We have several returning themes (sex and twisted games for example, 'pegging' is used on a daily basis) and people who are often the target of the assault but don't seem to mind the abuse and have a great lauch about it.. after all, it goes that far over the top that is sooo clear its not true. Even the most simple action/question often results in a twisted wordgame.

As an example i'll take a conversation i had with someone i'll call Big Gay Al to hide his real name. :P
[Me]: Would you mind making me a few gems plz?
[Big Gay Al]: What a stupid question is that, you know bloody well i do mind!
[Me]: But you make them anyway right? :P
[Big Gay Al]: Only if you hug my Squirrel
(he ment his Mechanical Squirrel pet btw.. at least i assume)
Exanimo steps on Mechanical Squirrel. Clank!
[Me]: How's that?
So i trade the gems and he accepts.
Big Gay Al takes the Enduring Talasite and chucks them up Exanimo's ass.
Anyway.. he makes the Gems and trades them, not pressing accept yet.
[Big Gay Al]: Say please.
Exanimo gives Mechanical Squirrel oral pleasure.
[Big Gay Al]: Good boy.


It's an interaction which could take 20 seconds but things like this stretch it to several minutes.
Personaly for me these nonsence discussions add something to online play, i guess you either Love that.. or Hate it

Unbalanced Party


Everyone has been in an unbalanced party before, a party where you ran with too many healers.. a pettank instead of a "real" tank, three Hunters.. various other options are possible. But thats not what i wanted to discuss at this moment. ;)
Pre Burning Crusade my guild was raiding MC, BWL and AQ40. MC was mostly an alt run with a couple of mains still hoping for that one (legendary?) drop. Every had done Stratholme for the bazillionth time on non-raid nights and we were pretty much outfitting in Epics, making those instances kind of trivial.
So our Huntercommunity came up with a interesting idea: How about doing an instance with all Hunters? People might have done it before, more likely on lower level in lower instances but i hadnt heard about it before and i was thrilled about the idea.
Playing with only Hunters would create some interesting situations, more interesting then when playing with just Druids who could fill every role by themselves. (even make it a stealthrun).
No we Hunters would have to do without a tank and healers. We discussed some tactics pre-run like which pet would be the best tank, demoting its master to the tank healer. As we planned to do a Tribute run in Diremaul North, which was one of the harder 5-man instances back then, we thought about how setting the Icetrap for the 3nd boss, how to kill the endboss and that sort of things.

The planned evening arrived and 5 Hunters (4 mains and 1 alt) set their way to Diremaul North... Sparky, Babyhunter, Tasic, Gakochun's Hunter alt and myself; Exanimo. It was fun i can tell you and after we succesfully done it other classes speculated on how they could pull of a run like this. Druids came even close to actually leaving on this trip determined to beat our time (which they surely would have) but for some reason never got the 5man together. (i was even planning to come along on my Druid alt :) )
Sparky made a nice video with some highlights in it which is shown below for your enjoyment.



Seeing this video back again it makes me wanna do another run like this but this time in one of the Outland instances. Hunter pets have been greatly buffed since those days so it may be a walk in the park.. 5 traps will help alot aswell. ;)
While its no longer the days of 40man raids and each class is less presented in most guilds, with some alts or class-mates from other Guilds it is probably still possible to arrange. I'm getting exited again al ready :P

Monday, September 3

Twinky

You ever twinked? You know, getting the most amazing stuff for your low level alt and fill him/her up with expensive, over the top enchants so you could do some serious ganking in the Battlegrounds? Well.. i did sorta.
I liked to call my Twink, semi-twinked as i didnt have Crusader on my weapons (had a Rogue which seemed one of the best twink options) or any other absurd enchants either. I did buy some nice blues and leveled him with Engineering so i could have some handy dandy stunning grenades and other stuff like that [Net Throwing Thingie] which helped alot when trying to stop the flag, even when it backfired alot. (Gnome Engineering at its finest!)
So i was happily grinding reputation Pre-TBC so i could buy some sweet gear once i got some higher rep. The bitch was i couldnt turn in those damn tokens as i was afraid to level and i wanted to stick at level 29.
Being hacked kinda spoiled this all as my Semi-twink got stripped up until his underwear. :(

After a while (when i got my other toons back in shape and could afford gearing my not-close-to-semi-twink up again i decided to go for it.
I lost some items i couldnt replace (Questrewards like the Triprunners from Gnomeregan) and to make up for that i slapped a Cobra Scale Armorpatch on my new patch... and while i was add it, put a libram on that headpiece. Ow and i have an orb left... let's do a Crusader :)
I didnt go all out and there are still some items missing from my wishlist but i do okay now i guess. There were still more twinked people out there (it seemed i was often one of the few twinked ones on my side while the Horde had a small army of twinks)
but at least i could give them a good fight for their money.

With the new system i was gathering Honor and Tokens (which had use for a change) and i was able to get some nice gear. I just needed to go to the Silverwing Sentinels near Auberdine but to my surprise i didnt have that flightpatch yet.
So i started on the journey and avoided killing mobs so i wouldnt get any XP, still i got some small ammounts of discovery XP and when i was finaly there i got one final dose of XP and... DING! 30 :((
No longer was i the highest in my league as Battlegrounds are from 20-29 en 30-39. That small ammount of XP made lots of my gear instantly worthless.. well, sub-par anyway compared to level 39 twinks.
I began the grind to level 39 and i think i got stuck around 37 now... not really stuck actually as i got past the most horrible bit of Stranglethorn Vale (30-35 imho) but lost interest in my Rogue for awhile anyway. I could level it easily to 40 now and do some serious leveling but do i really need another level 70 character?
Best i wait till i made up my mind. Till then my Rogue is parked in the inn in Booty Bay, ready for any pvp-enabled Horde that enters my room.

Raaaah!!

How frustrating is that? You plan to go play some World of Warcraft (or any game actually) and then you find out your PC is messed up.
So you try to patch it with some tape so it holds for a little while but you know you will have to find a proper sollution sooner or later anyway.
Besides that, that tape doesnt really give the right effect and while it allows you to play it doesnt quite fully do the job.

I had that last two weeks where i couldnt get near to Shattrah so i just avoided that place making me dependend on summons to the various places. In the meantime i looked for a better sollution from running Spybusters, Memory scans, replacing my Graphix Card to Defragmentating my drive. As a last resort i reinstalled Windows which was quite a pain with 1 bazillion updates.
That didnt work either so the rly rly last resort was reinstalling WoW which was even a bigger pain and took me most of my free Sunday, luckily i could still play WoW as i was installing it to a different drive. Finally i was able to enter Shattrah again and i was joining that nights raid with full confidence again and with much hope of not crashing. Due to 1gig of memory still on my desk instead of the PC it was bit laggish but my PC held out. :)

All and all this addict had a good WoW day last Sunday, i played my Warrior alt and did several runs which got me some nice reputation from various factions. Even got me a nice DPS chest which will be better then my current once gemmed.
Normally i need to tank as a DPS warrior but this day i actually had 1 run where i could do damage for a change. I was surprised my dps gear missed a few enchants and even gems so there is still room for improvement but i managed to get 2nd on the meters behind a mage and just above an Enhancement Shammy (he healed now and then but i tanked so that about evens out i guess).
Most importantly i had fun, even in the Caverns of time where we escorted Thrall and every dps managed to get aggro from different mobs.. i'm still surprised no one died (maybe the gnome mage once but he had one comming ;) ).

Ow and did i mention i got my Warrior keyed to Karazhan aswell? My main still needs some stuff in there due to a 2 month break but when saved it might be fun to test my skills in there with my warrior.