Slash Two

Late to my own blogs birthday ftw!

2011-05-06T19:34:00.005+01:00

I've not done much in Patch 4.1 so I was bored this afternoon and while thinking of ideas for a post I decided to take a look through some of my oldest blog entries when I stumbled across my first post. After reading through my eyes fell onto the date it was published - 28/11/2010. Which makes Slash Two more than a year old...I talk about getting to 'parties' late but this one takes the piss!

But yeah, it's been an interesting one year of blogging. I've read some fantastic blogs, met some great people, joined a guild made by bloggers for bloggers (which sadly, isn't as active as it once was anymore...), got a lot of support from people in the blogosphere through a pretty bad few weeks and had some cracking times online!

Thanks to everyone that has read and commented on the blog so far, hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it - see you in Azeroth!

omgwtfbbq personal post lulwut?

2011-04-22T11:06:00.003+01:00

Personal post Incoming, if you were expecting WoW related I think I mention it about once ^^

I'm some what of a hidden nerd and have suddenly come to the realisation that I need to find some 'nerdy' RL friends. I love the friends I've made up in Newcastle to bits but I really need to find some folks up in Newcastle that like gaming, be it shooting each other on the 360, or running around in Warcraft or something...

What's brought this all on? Well, this morning I watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (which I LOVED btw, amazing film) for the first time. I remember wanting to watch it in the cinema for ages when it was out but I didn't know anyone else who'd want to go with me, in WoW all of /g was banging on about how good it was but none of my mates would get it, especially the geeky references. It's lonely being the only nerd in the village (or city...)

Now if I was to sit and think about it, the guys I'm friends with all love sports - I'm not the exception, I've played rugby for most of my life, I like a kick-around with the boys and there's almost nothing better than sitting in the pub with a pint, going mental with your mates when your team score.

Now, notice I said 'almost nothing', my friends would have said 'nothing' seeing as they've never killed a raid boss after a night of wiping on the last try before calling it, headshot two guys with one bullet or got that weapon you've been farming that instance for about a month (which I got yesterday! wooo!).

I don't hide the fact I like gaming with my friends. Infact, one of the girls that hangs round with us that does Art was drawing us based on what we do and I got drawn in rugby kit but with thick rimmed 'nerdy' gigs and a gameboy in hand. (It's actually a pretty freakin' good drawing, I'll see if I can get a hold of a digital copy of it...) It's also something I get a bit of stick for...I've had to mute/deafen myself on vent during raids before because there's been a dog pile in my room of people.

Sometimes, a few of the guys will join me if I'm playing Call of Duty of Bad Company 2 but the only game they really like is Fifa and I fucking HATE Fifa. I'm sorry, but if I wanted to play football with my mates, I'd get a ball and go down the park...I know you could say that about any game but I really don't like sports video games...

I can't really complain, I like having both sides of it. I like going for a drink and talking about how good X's goal/try was against Y but sometimes, just sometimes, I'd love to chat to someone about how annoying it is to wipe on the same boss all night and not get anywhere, or how annoying pugging is without there being a computer screen and a keyboard infront of me...

My two cents: Call to Arms.

2011-04-18T18:14:00.003+01:00

Okay so there's been a lot of chatter about the new Call to Arms designed around dungeons. I'm sure you've all seen numerous blog posts about it, each with it's own views on the positives or (mainly) negatives.

Now, before I start I must remind you that my level 85 characters are all dps. Granted, my shammy can heal but his gear is pretty crappy and is ungemmed and unenchanted, so I'm currently not healing and I dont fancy spending money on getting it sorted seeing as I like melee.

I'm a bit late to this here party so I'm sure you're all well aware of what the Call to Arms gives as an incentive to make queues shorter by giving rewards to people choosing to tank instead of dps, etc.

My opinion of this is extremely simple. I'm totally against this for two reasons - people should tank because they enjoy it, not because someone's waving a mount shaped carrot infront of their greedy little faces and two, some people just need to stop being spoilt.

Y'see, before the Looking For Drama tool was introduced getting a group meant having friends, (which in turn required you to be a nice person towards other players - something with LFD has pretty much destroyed, and with it, part of my happy-go-lucky soul) or spending a while advertising in trade.

My first point about friends - 50% of the time, I'd run in an all guild group but the other half, I'd be with a group of friends I had, be it old guild members, old friends from vanilla or just people I'd grouped with randomly who knew how to play their class and were friendly.

The second, is self explainatory, infact you still get people doing that to find more members to speed up their queue time - which I'm all for, lets get a bit of human interaction when getting our daily valor points instead of entering a group with Arthás the DK 'tank' who doesn't know his arse from his elbow. The latter part of this also doesn't fill me with confidence for the new system, seeing as you'll probably get everyone that's class can tank or heal attempting to tank and heal without a) adequate gear or b) experience.

In all fairness, the wait on some servers can be ridiculous and I feel for those people that have to wait an hour or so if they're a pure DPS class but if you're queuing do something else while you wait instead of moaning about the wait time. Do some dailies, go gather some stuff, duel outside Orgrimmar, play the AH or even read a book and wait for the dungeon to pop. Just don't moan about the queue because it could like the old LFD system, where you didn't just click a button and wait, you had to go find the group - which would either accept you or not, which then had a 60% chance of collapsing before it was even fully formed.

Now that my rant's over, I'd like to share this little gem I found on Youtube before, it's not WoW related but it's very...Eastery (if that's a word!)

Battlefield Heroes: Easter Treat

I live!

2011-04-11T15:17:00.002+01:00

Why, hello there strangers!

It's been far too long but what can I say - I've generally had a slump in WoW time. A few good friends stopped playing, or had a mini-break so I decided I'd get some school work done ahead of time (I know, le gasp or wut?!). I've also been playing a tonne more Xbox than before but now I'm back home, where I've left my work and 360 behind so I'll be getting back to WoW and blogging as there's nothing to do in the arse-end of no-where, that is known as my hometown!

One question...how bad is it for melee?

2011-02-15T12:01:00.003Z

So after a few months of Cataclysm, 3 different mains all geared for raiding and a tonne of Uni work, I've -finally- signed up for a raid. Infact, I've signed up for anything I can get my grubby little mits on for the next week and a bit.

I've really missed it, actually. I sometimes log onto Mumble and catch some of the guild raiding and it really makes me miss everything about it, they always seem to be having a right good time.

However, I'm a little aprehensive...just how bad are some encounters for melee? I've heard many a thing from "loleasy" to "omfgvietnamflashbacks." So yeah...just how bad is it?

20 days of... Day 4: Best WoW memory

2011-02-14T12:20:00.002Z

I have two 'bestest' memories in WoW. The first was reaching the level cap on my first ever character and the second was an extra special Karazhan run.

My first memory, as said, is reaching the level cap. Now, I did get Vanilla™ but my memories of the "good old days" dont stem past level 24, seeing as TBC came out about 2 weeks after I got the game, so level 60 technically wasn't my level cap. If you get what I mean.

So I spent months and months slaving away, questing - as a protection warrior /facepalm. Tanking - as a protection warrior /cheer and just generally having a great time with my guild.

Now, going to Outland at 58 was HUGE for me. I'd had enough of Azeroth but that was due to me picking the single worse specc to level as a warrior and since then, I've always looked forward to Outland, infact, I still really really like it.

I spent around a month getting to 70 but my memory stems from the last half of 69 to 70. The officer core in Absolution back then was pretty small, as the guild wasn't too big, but the (at the time) GM, and 3 other officers decided they'd take me to some of the level 70 normal dungeons to give me a kickstart on loot and stuff.

Now back then, Abso had started to raid Kara and these guys were pretty well geared compared to me, in my quest greens/blues so I was just along for the ride but I'll remember the moment one of them went over Teamspeak, "fancy tanking for a bit?" Now, at the time, I shit myself. I was scared, this mobs hurt on the well geared people and I wasn't anywhere near their gear level but I said yes anyways and tanked the last trash and boss in Steamvaults. The support I got from the guys was amazing and it was then I knew I'd found a WoW home. (Yeah, I know - pass that sick bucket).

My second memory is from Karazhan. Infact, it was from one of the first times I led a raid. I was pretty well geared at this point and I actually knew the entire run off by heart as I'd done everything in there at least once. I'd volunteered to lead what was fondly known as "nug night" in which people that didn't usually get the chance to raid went into Kara to get a few bosses down and generally have a laugh. We'd been a bit late due to waiting for one of our healers to get their kid sorted and I had to pull in a more experienced raider but everything was going smoothly until we zoned in and found that none of the bosses were there...none but the last boss - the Prince! *legasp*

Now, only two of our raid had ever done the last boss in Kara before and I'd openly said "We'll give it a few goes but I dont think we'll get him tonight." Oh how they made me eat my words.

In a fantastic encounter, we killed him first time, with only 1 member dying, with /g cheering us on and people joining TS in excitement.

Now, looking back at this makes me a bit sad, seeing as only 2 out of 10 people in that raid are still in Absolution but only 3/10 still play but remembering TS erupt and me sitting there in stunned silence and then giving loot to guys that had only seen the first 4 bosses in there from the last boss was one of the best feelings I've had. Maybe better than getting the guild first LK kill last year, I dunno. It was different, because we were the definition of casual raiders back then. Plus, I didn't have to eat my words afterwards...

20 days of... Day 3: First time playing WoW

2011-02-10T19:43:00.002Z

Been a little bit busy the past week, deadlines to meet, groups to work with, things to get stressed over so I thought, after handing everything in on time (just...) and having the day off tomorrow due to cancelled lectures I'll do a bit more of this crackin' meme!

The title says it all and I remember my first playthrough as if it were yesterday, but first, some backstory! Because everyone loves a bit of backstory!

I'd played Guild Wars for years before I got Warcraft. I was a young 'un back then and my parents didn't really like it, so it being free to play made it easier - as they didn't have to fork up any cash.

I was 16 when I got Warcraft, my girlfriend at the time bought it me one christmas because she thought it was something to do with Guild Wars. All I'll say is, that Warcraft was the best thing to come outta that relationship.

I remember installing it eagerly and then doing all the stuff that comes with starting a new game. My mum was happy because I was sat gleefully, chatting to her while she was cooking Christmas dinner and I was literally excited about it and was chatting about what some of the guys I knew via Guild Wars had said about it. My dad on the other hand, didn't quite understand how excited one could get over a game.

The login page was amazing. I remember shouting to my mum to come and look, to which she just smiled and nodded in agreement to everything I said - poor soul didn't have a clue what the Guild Wars login page looked like and how it looked so much better than that but bless her, she humoured me.

I was logged in and creating a character within seconds, I had a look through all the races and was intrigued by the Horde - they looked like the bad guys and the description on the creation page painted them out to be brutal and merciless. I was a bit put off by that, I've always been a fan of the good guy but after playing the same looking character for so long in Guild Wars and always wondering why you couldn't be the angrylioncatpeople (called Charr in game...) I decided I was going to see what all the fuss was about and rolled an Orc warrior.

I tried to get the name Jorg. I had a thing back then where all my character names had to start with a J and that was when Jakkru was created. However, Jorg was taken and I didn't want a different name. Luckily, I had some algerba homework next to me and decided that Jorgx was decent enough - I'm not even kidding.

I logged into Durotar and my god...it was orange. Amazingly beautiful but wildly orange. I decide to take a look at all the stuff I could do in the manual but got bored after about 20 seconds and just went about my ways. I got to level 5 soonish - I wasn't an "MMO noob" but I wasn't prepared for WoW, the starter area, I could handle but I thought that was it, I thought that I'd be zoned somewhere else. It was only when I was asked to go to Razor Hill I realised that the starter area was only, well...for starters.

I was amazed by the size of the world, the colours...everything. I was amazed by the amount of people playing and I tried to get into a guild, seeing as that's what I knew from Guild Wars - guilds mean help, help means levels and levels means more stuff to see and do.

I asked in trade and this is where I made friends with my oldest online buddy, I have him on Real ID now and I chat to him nearly everyday still. He answered my noobish question, told me to hit R to reply to a whisper and then boosted me through Ragefire Chasm - which then and there got me hooked. I remained guildless until level 25, where I found Absolution. My home.

My first playthrough was amazing and it got me hooked. I loved the differences from guild wars. I especially liked the difficulty and I'm quite annoyed they made everything a cake-walk now because the first 10 levels really did seperate those that continue to play and enjoy the game for those that will just give up.

Looking back on it and it's been 4, nearly 5 years since I started playing and, even though some aspects of the game bore me, some still make me feel like a 16 year old, who wants his mum to take a look at how awesome this green guy looks. Oh and I still love shoulder items more than anything in the game.

20 days of... Day 2: Why I started blogging

2011-02-06T13:06:00.003Z

So it's the second day of the new 20 days meme. Upon further inspection it would appear this person came up with the topics - for which, I thank you!

I actually started blogging because my good friend Erc (R.I.P pal) started his own little blog and he asked me to take a look at it, see if the English was good and if it wasn't boring. I took a look and while reading his first post I was thinking about what he said and decided to write a reply.

This continued for a few weeks until one day Erc logged in and heard me complaining about something and just went "blog about it!" So I did. Because I was bored.

I did a few posts and then I stopped completely, I can't remember why but I just didn't blog anymore. I didn't do a post for months, actually and then Erc asked if I was gonna write again and I blamed lack of inspiration to which he told me to take a look at his blogroll and read a few of the blogs on there.

After a few days of looking through peoples blogs, I decided I was going to start again and made Slash-Two and I haven't really looked back since.

Looking back, it's amazing what a little advice and pushing in the right direction can lead you to - blogging, a community and friendships.

I started blogging because I was bored and I'm so very glad I did!

20 days of... Day 1: Introductions

2011-02-05T20:03:00.003Z

So there's a new 20 days thing floating around. I started the last one but didn't finish it due to Cata being released and all that jazz.

I know these people are in on it so far and as I'm struggling for blogging topics - I'm gonna get stuck in and without further a-do, I give you the first days topic!

Introductions

I'm Jakk, Jakkru, J or to a few members of SAN, hellfire boi. I've got no problems getting personal and chatting about myself or things I like which is probably why these meme really does appeal to me!

In the online world, I'm known as Jakkru, Kinkz, Plugz or whatever alt I'm on. I've a love for melee and setting things on fire as a mage or warlock. I hate tanking due to getting some serious burnout in TBC and I dabble in healing when needed/bored. My current main is an enhancement shaman.

I'm an avid raider, although my playtime at Uni is limited (see below)

When afk, I'm a 20 year old Newcastle University student. I study geography and I'm interested in international development, political boundaries and borders and cultures.

I play rugby and have done for the past 12 years - with a break last year to recover from a knee and then (through a drunken first year accident) an ankle injury. I'm also a pretty regular visitor at the local gym, even more so as I've been trying to get back into shape for the rugby - and the ladies ;)

Since moving to Uni, I've spent less time on WoW and have cut down on the time I've spent raiding. So far this expansion, I've not set foot in a raid and that's mainly due to spending time with my mates, drinking too much or generally watching really, really bad TV - Take me Out, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and (against my will) the X-Factor.

What else...

Oh yeah, I adore music. I've played the drums for 4 years, although it's been months since I've picked up some drumsticks. No room in the house for my drumkit and I dont think my housemates would approve.

I'll listen to pretty much anything, from screamo to 90's pop music. It all depends on what mood I'm in.

And here's some random quickfacts

- I'm terrible at Fifa.
- I can strawpedo a bottle of VK in less than 2 seconds.
- My favourite colour is blue
- My favourite movie is Die Hard
- My favourite tv show is Firefly and I would give a non-vital organ to see it brought back.
- I like chick-flicks and really terrible American Drama series.
- I have a man-crush on Leonardo Di Caprio.
- My handwriting is apparently "girly"
- I miss my dogs when at Uni but hate them when at home.
- I know the entire script to Anchorman
- I like Ice cream

And that's that.

r?

2011-02-04T11:01:00.003Z

I've been struggling to find topics to blog on recently. What with changing my raiding main (again!) to an enhancement shaman - I'm going back to my melee routes, show those young whippersnappers how it's done!

But, from running heroics with mainly pugged groups due to people not having any real reason to do more than 1 heroic a day, I've found that if a tank does this:

r?

And anyone responds he will pull. With (usually) disasterous results.

I've had tanks pulling when the healer's gone afk, even putting in chat that they're "brb, 2 min" but with a tank just going "r?" and have a dps answer with, for some reason one letter, "y" or "r."

But then again, I did do a pug with a full group from AD and we managed to clear Stonecore with only 2 wipes on Ozruk because the tank had never got that far before. 'Spose I should just take the good with the bad, get my JP and stfu really...

Trapzlol

2011-01-19T12:50:00.003Z

I rolled my hunter halfway through TBC. I'd just started properly raiding and doing heroics on my rogue and I was actually fascinated by trapping. We had a hunter in guild at the time who was ridiculously good at it: Double trapping, Chain Traps, Kiting mobs to traps, Trapping a mob then kiting another. It was amazing to watch and so, after a Steamvaults run, I fired up the Create New Character page to make my hunter.

I levelled him very quickly. Much faster than a rogue or warrior and I actually had a lot of fun doing so. People say hunter levelling was/is boring but I really liked it. I changed my pets a lot and would go and explore Azeroth to find different, interesting looking beasts to tame.

I got to level 60 and entered Outland and this is where I got good at trapping. I dont want to toot my own horn but. Toot toot. I was pretty fuckin' good and it was great fun, much better than sapping or using the good ol' warrior CC - kill it faster than it kills you.

But now...trapping has become a joke. With a mage as a main (recently decided, no regrets) trapping feels like a polymorph but...without the sheep/pig/penguin/cat/monkey or my personal favourite, turtle. It's gone soft, the cooldown is shorter than the actual trap which means you dont have to kite it like you used to and with the new launchers, you just trap as soon as the tank tells you to.

Looking at the changes to CC, it seems blizzard wants us to use them which I'm all for but at the same time, they're just giving each class almost the same CC, it's like a little kid, seeing his older sibling with a new toy and going "I want that one." and Blizzard, is the soft-touch mother that buys it something similar the next day and it's getting pretty boring.

I mean, if you look at it, multiple classes have similar CC.

-Sap is still sap.
-Repentance is a much better version of sap, seeing as it can be re-applied.
-Polymorph is still polymorph
-Fear, when glyphed or talented or whatever the fuck it is, is a lot less unpredictable and is almost like a Warlock sheep - damage breaks it, etc.
-Hex is a shaman polymorph, on a longer CD and can take a few hits but if it doesn't get touched, it's just like sheep except, it's a frog.
-Trapping is a cold, ice-cube like version of polymorph.

Now, for some classes, the new CC's work. Hex is good, I like it actually as it fits a shaman but did they have to make it just another polymorph? It used to be an emergancy CC, with a short duration and long CD. I also dont mind Bind Elemental (and in all honesty, it should have been added since the start) for Shamans as it fits but the change to fear? I liked the idea of a warlock making things run in fear, not cower and shit it's pants waiting for you to kill Skull, Cross and whatever you want before it. The unpredictability of it made it risky to use but if you had to pull about 7 mobs, you'd use it because the risk could pay off.

But I suppose it's not just CC that's getting this done to it, a lot of spells are becoming the same across classes and it's more than likely just the evolution of a MMO.

Gone are the glory days of being good at trapping was the difference between Hunter and Huntard and for this, I /mourn.

Grinds my Gears

2011-01-08T16:39:00.003Z

Do you know what really grinds my gears? Do you?!

Well, many things do but recently there's been one thing that's grinding my gears more than anything else in Warcraft...

Tanks. Not all of them, just the ones that leave a group during a pull, because it's not gone the way they liked.

This has happened so many times, as I'm usually part pugging groups during the day and there seems to be a shortage of guild tanks online then.

And the majority of the time, it's actually the tanks fault. Poor marking can lead to wipes now-a-days. Sure there's common sense but that's so common it's considered a god damned super-power.

Put your mark for roots on a caster? Well done, that's not CC'ing ANYTHING. It's actually about as much use as Anne Franks drumkit. It's still going to stand there, casting chain lightning on everyone and everything.

I've even had a sensible druid say this to the tank, who ignored the druid, pulled and then left as the healer had died from aggro'ing the mob that was rooted.

Now, at the start of every instance, I tell the tank that if he or she is going to be CC mobs, they should pull any un-CC'd mobs away, as I'm a fire mage and Living Bomb fucks shit up. I've had one tank who did this and he was from the same server as me and had a bit of sense about him. Every other tank hasn't done this, which means no Living Bomb for me and no fucking shit up. All makes Jakk a sad, sad panda.

Now, when a tank leaves mid-pull that usually means the other 4 people are scrambling for the "Leave party" button, to save themselves a repair bill because chances are, there's a fair few mobs pretty hungry for your blood now bearing down on you. This then means you either have to wait for your dungeon deserter debuff or queue again, which as a DPS takes FOR EVER. Just because you can get into a dungeon in the time it takes to say "haha, 5 second queue" doesn't mean you should drop a group at the first sign of trouble to save yourself a few gold. Take the hit, man up and stop being a little bitch...especially if the wipe was your fault.

And there, rant over.

Here's something more cheerful...

My vicious wolf-man-thing, when not ripping limbs from his enemies and snarling like a bad-ass...likes to pick flowers.

CSI: Worgen

2011-01-05T12:34:00.006Z

So while everyone is frantically gearing their mains for raiding, I've been playing my alts. My Mage, Kinkz is now 85 and I've levelled my priest to 37 doing dungeons. Both are really fun and the mage is getting more playtime than Jakkru at the moment.

One character I've been levelling is my Worgen warrior, over on Terenas. I'm in a smallish guild with a fellow blogger and I have no high level characters on the server, which means no heirlooms etc.

I decided I wanted to see the new world and without heirlooms or the increased XP from the guild perks, the Worgen is a perfect chance for me to do that and so far, I've been loving it.

I've been quite confused, however, about how to get anywhere since The Shattering. I found myself in Westfall, after taking care of the "Hogger Situation" of course. Running in, I was expecting to be greated by Ol' Blancy and her owners...not this

They'd been murdered and Horatio Lane had been brought in to solve the crime. His equipped with black sunglasses and terrible one liners, which is possibly one of Blizzards most un-subtle pop-culture references to date...

But after getting to now these poor people and feeling even more sorry for Ol' Blancy, I decided I was going to get to the bottom of this. Horatio sent me to question the nearby homeless, vagabonds and drifters to see if I could get any information.

Now, I wasn't going to part with a bribe, seeing as I'm a bit cheap like that so I decided that the homeless citizens of Stormwind would be kind enough to tell me but no, for about 10 minutes all they did was call me a rich, posh bastard and attack me. Not a clever idea really, seeing as I'm a GIANT WOLF MAN with a fucking MINING PICK. I will not take kindly to being attacked and I didn't.

I did notice one thing while slaughtering the homeless. When Worgens get crit, they sound like my dog if you accidently stand on it's tail, they yelp and sounds quite pathetic. I'm a huge wolfmanthing and should roar with hatred if I get critcally hit, not tuck my tail between my legs and hide under the bloody dining room tail...

A few quests down the line and I was asked to go to and eavesdrop on some Thuggish looking characters behind a barn. Obviously a very secret meeting. I'd have to use all my cunning to hear what they're saying...

This is me eavesdropping. Notice the dance moves to disguse myself as a Wandering Westfall Body-Popper...

Every Cloud has a Silver...Camel?

2010-12-31T12:36:00.004Z

So there I was, 250 rep off Exalted with Rahmakhen, all filled with false hope about my first epic of the expansion. I did the awesome daily quest, to pwn Pygmy's with a mallet and BOOM, Exalted. Queue me silently fist-pumping in celebration behind my computer and a few "gz!" in /g.

As I rushed to the quartermaster, I thought what to enchant my gloves with. Expertise? Agility? Mastery? OMGTHECHOICES!

I landed on the quartermaster, quite literally on him. I was in a rush so there was no time for me to apologise. I frantically clicked to the latter reputation rewards for I had no time for the pittiful honoured items, for I was exalted and I wanted my gloves!

But there weren't any. I was shocked, I wouldn't believe it. I was going through the six stages of "I dun fucked up!"

1. Shock - OMFG WHERE'S MAH LEWTS!
2. Denial - I dont believe you, Quartermaster...
3. Anger - WHY ARE YOU HIDING THEM FROM ME YOU STUPID LIONMONKEYCATTHINGMAN?!
4. Blame - Fuck you atlas loot
5. Self blame - omfg, Jakk, you absolute n00000b, you looked at the wrong faction
6. Acceptance - fuck it. *Puts Dragonmaw tabard on*

So yeah, I'd got my factions mixed up. Wasn't a happy bunny until I saw that I could buy this...

And I forgot all about my gloves and spent the next 20 minutes running around Orgrimmar going "camelololololololololololololololololol!"

Seasons greetings!

2010-12-22T21:45:00.000Z

Merry Christmas from Slash-Two! Have a crackin' christmas and New Year, I know I will!

catches breath

2010-12-16T12:30:00.002Z

So I've been a bit quiet recently. I bet you can't guess why!

That's right, Cata is out and I've been knee deep in dragons, pygmys, goblins and worgens. My first impressions where as follows...

*Log in after digital download was complete*
Argent Dawn is full
Your position in the queue: 2833
Estimated Time Remaining: Calculating...

Fuck that for a bag of chips, off to Terenas I go!
*Logs straight in to Terenas - Medium pop servers ftw!*

Mhmm, mess about on the priest or roll a worg-

*Character creation page*

Rolls Worgen warrior, tempted to call it Edworgcullen/Jaycub but resisted, also tempted to create a guild called "Team Jacob".

Mess around on Worgen, everythings pretty grim but at the same time aweeeesome!
Get bored around level 7.

*Log back to Argent Dawn*
NO QUEUE! God bless the little kids mothers, forcing them to go to bed!

*Log in Jakkru, purchase Azeroth flying, explore*

And that's about it, I got Jakkru to 85, faction transferred my mage (he's now a goblin and amazingly cool!) and have been taming pretty looking pets on my hunter for a bit, just being a bit too in awe of how pretty this expansion is to do anything else really!

However, I've not given up on the 20 days of warcraft meme and while queuing for heroics shall be churning those posts out. I loved Pilf's little "where I'd be without Warcraft" post, even if it is soppy and romantic ^^

Oh and if you haven't already, follow me on Twitter ^^

20 days of Warcraft: Suggestions

2010-12-01T20:59:00.002Z

So, if I could suggest something that Blizzard could include in game, what would it be? I was thinking about this earlier and found it hard to actually think of anything.

First off, I was thinking of addon-type things but realised that either Blizzard would try and make it their own and ruin it or it just wouldn't work in the game. Plus, I'm a huge fan of addons and love having a different variety of them that I can full customize. If I had to pick anything that comes from an addon to be incorporated into the game it'd be DPS meters, you can either have them on or turn them off via the Interface menu or something.

Secondly, I thought about something along the lines of Real ID, that just shows if someone is online and not what server or character they're on. There's plenty of folks I'd love to chat to much more in game but they dont like the idea of people knowing what character they're on and when - a few ex-guild members, members of the blogging community and even some people I know IRL would rather use MSN and the likes to keep in contact.

But my last one definitly has to be - MORE CHARACTER SLOTS.

I have no idea if they're adding this with the release of cataclysm but I've been crying out for more slots since early TBC and it's heartbreaking having to delete a character (even if it is a level 13 bank alt that really only gets a log in once a week or so...) and I'm gonna end up having to get rid of one that's a decent level if I want a goblin and Worgen.

So yeah - as an altoholic in need of his fix, I'd definintly nag someone to let me get more character slots!

20 days of Warcraft: Holidays

2010-11-29T16:55:00.002Z

I dont really have a favourite in-game holiday. I rarely take part in the little quest things and I've only completed one of them fully (Jakkru the Love Fool, had to be done...)

However, I do appreciate when all the major cities are decked out.

So I guess my favourite in-game holiday is probably the same as my favourite RL holiday - Christmas. I love it and the fact that Blizzard stick wreaths, tinsel and x-mas trees everywhere is awesome. The big tree in Orgrimmar is fantastic and I love running around in Undercity, home of the undead to see sprinkles of Christmas cheers, they're the WoW version of the Grinches.

20 Days of Warcraft: Gold Sellers

2010-11-28T20:30:00.002Z

Todays topic is - How do you reply to a gold sellers whisper?

They're one of the most annoying things in the entire game. If they're not spamming trade, using hacks to spell out their website in some strange, mass-suicide kinda way they're whispering you.

We've all had one, "Hi, are you busy?"

On my alliance alts, I can automatically put them on Ignore - but on my Horde toons, I cant. I'm an officer in my guild so I can, at times get whispers off people who want an alt inviting to the guild. I'd make a bit of a tit out of myself if I went "Fuck off" to a prospective guild member who only wanted to get in on a bit of /g while levelling.

So, I've devised a method, which is almost fool-proof!

Mystery whisper: Hi, are you busy?
Me: No but if you're a gold seller, fuck off.

That generally works. They'll either be all...

Mystery whisper: lol, no it's me X, can I get a guild invite?
Me: Sure!

or...

Mystery whisper: Are you interested in buying go-
and that's as far as I get, as I've stuck them on ignore.

Some of them are a bit more annoying and dont leave you alone, the persistant little buggers. So I have a backup plan, of only 2 words.

"Free sample?"

Say that to a gold seller and I guarantee, you'll be on ignore quicker than you can put them on.

20 Days of Warcraft: Real life Class/Race

2010-11-27T16:54:00.002Z

Today's topic for the 20 days meme is what class and race are you most like in real life?

I quite like todays topic, as it's given me something to think about while I've been lying hungover after my birthday celebrations last night. It's also pretty personal, which is quite new ground for my little WoW blog :D

I'd have to say the class I relate to the most is the Taurens. I'm a big guy in real life, almost 6ft4 and I've played Rugby Union for almost 13 years (as a prop - if you're not sure, google it), so I'm a hefty bugger. At the same time, I'm a 'gentle giant' and actually like to get out into nature, especially on holidays with the family - The Lakes, Scottish Highlands, Ireland etc. However, the sagely wisdom part, I dont have :p Or the deep, awesome sounding voice.

Class wise, I'd have to go with a protection warrior. I'm not one to start fights but if a friend is in one, I'm the first to step in and help. I'm also very protective of people who're close to me.

But at the same time, I dont think I'd be one of the guys risking life and limb in dungeons and raids. I'd be more of an explorer as it's what I loved doing back when I first got the game, I actually spent a lot of time running around Azeroth and not levelling at all - making it to Tanaris at level 15 is pretty impressive for your first character. I'd probably be the friendly chap you ran past while levelling, who's meandering around, with a tent in a bag and generally getting lost in it all.

20 days of Warcraft: 2 days rolled into one! (Pets & Guild names)

2010-11-26T15:20:00.003Z

With yesterday being taken up (mostly) by my Uni work and levelling Jujin, my Troll Druid, I didn't really have time to get a 20 days post out, which is a shame, so I'm gonna roll the one I missed yesterday into today.

So yesterday was all about vanity pets, which is your favourite and all that jazz. Now in all honesty, I really dont collect them. I dont go out of my way to buy them and I usually just get the ones you're given. I'm not a big vanity pet fan, mainly because I always forget to get them out.

But! That doesn't stop me having a favourite and it has to be the Perky Pug. I love it, it's a right little comical pet. There's nothing better than seeing it wiping it's arse in your fish feast during a raid. Infact, I always stand a bit closer to the fish just to get it to do it, brings a smile to my face everytime I see it. I'm such a big kid...

Now today is all about favourite guild names. Of which I have a few.

Much like Pilf, I love a guild name with a bit of wit or a stupidly bad pun and with the introduction of the LFG system in Wrath, it's increased the amount of guild names that you're exposed to. One of my favourites has to be 'Nananananananana Batman' , which I keep on seeing in randoms when levelling my alts.

However, my favourite guild name is an Alliance all PvP guild called 'Atleast We Have Stables' which I smile at everytime I see it :D

Now, this is a very brief post as I'm taking a break from writing my annoying Uni report and thought I'd bash out a blog post in that time!

20 Days of Warcraft: Dungeons

2010-11-24T21:00:00.003Z

Today's question in the "20 days of" meme is 'What's your favourite dungeon and why?'

This is going to be stupidly hard, because I like most of the dungeons in the game. Infact, it'd be a lot easier if I was asked which dungeons I dont like.

However, I do have a few dungeons that I have more of a soft-spot for when compared with the others. Here's my top three.

Zul'farrak - I love this place. I remember when it was pretty difficult actually, instead of the laughable thing it's become now. I'll always remember how hard, and jaw-droppingly amazing the staircase section was. Hordes of trolls, charging at you and the freed prisoners? Fan-bloody-tastic. Now? You just pull the entire of them in one go and AoE them down - doing that back in the day was suicide.

Scarlet Dungeons (minus Graveyard) - I've always been a fan of these instances. They're where I first learnt about CC on my rogue and I really enjoyed sneaking around unlocking the chests they have hidden while my comrades where busy fighting, great fun! It's where I truely fell in love with the rogue class which makes it that little bit special. (1-2-3: AWWWWWH)

Shattered Halls - This is a favourite because it's so very hard. Hard with a capital OMFGOUCHOUCHOUCH. The gauntlet for this was a fantastic challenge and I bonded with some new (now veteren) members of the guild over our hatred for the place when we were stuck in there one time.

For me, what makes an dungeon is the memories you create in there, with the people you run it. Sure, it helps if the layout is nice, it's pretty and there's interesting monsters but you could say that about the Northrend instances, and I really dont like those due to bad memories with bad players via the LFDungeon tool.

20 days of Warcraft - Names

2010-11-23T21:04:00.002Z

So, a new day brings a new topic - The meaning behind your mains name.

Now, my main is Jakkru and the meaning behind his name is pretty dull... (TL;DR version below :p)

Back before I played WoW, I was an avid Guild Wars fan. For those of you that haven't played it, your name must be two words or something like that, for example "Jakkru lol" would count as a name, whereas "Jakkrulol" wouldn't.

When I first rolled a character, I had a theme, I'd name any character I had after something associated with the class and add my name at the end. For example:

My first character was initially going to be called Warmaster Jack. Until I realised that it sucked.

So off I went to trust google to find a translation for my name in a different language and found (I later found out this isn't actually correct...) that Jack in Japanese is Jakku! Awesome, I thought and I rolled my first Guild Wars character - Warmaster Jakku!

When I made the transition to Warcraft, I inititally rolled an Orc, for which Jakku didn't quite fit so the name was forgotten until I was trying to think of a name for my Undead rogue, it popped back in my head!

I don't know why but when typing Jakku under my character I felt strange, like it didn't fit how he looked. I spent about 10 minutes thinking of a variation then came up with Jakkru and to me, it fitted.

So, the TL;DR version of that is - I thought it meant Jack (my actual name) in Japanese with an R added.

However, it's not my favourite named character, that'd have to be Coggins, my gnome warrior ^^

20 Days of Warcraft: Favourite Emote

2010-11-22T15:34:00.002Z

This is a tough one, mainly because I use a wide range of emotes. When I first thought about it, I came up with these...

/point, followed by a /laugh
/hug
/love
/tickle
/dance
/poke

Before Real ID was introduced, emotes were the main way I could communicate to my Horde friends if I was running around on Krinkal. If I was on Vent and they weren't, /talk was my way of telling them to get on Vent, because I was bored and wanted to chat.

When running around Dalaran (which seems to be not just my past time but a large amount of level 80's on Argent Dawn as well) I'll bump into people I know - long time friends, new acquantances, guildies or people I know on a different faction. Depending on who they are and how well I know them, I use a different emote. It's like a social heirarchy of emotes, with the people I've known the longest, or see as close-close friends get a /love, where-as people I dont know much get a /poke. People in the middle get /hug or /tickle and if I'm bored, I'll /dance with anyone! (I know, I'm such a slut...)

/point followed by /laugh is my long winded way of going "lol" but as an Undead, it's great to watch them /point, which for anyone who's never played an UD male, looks like you're calling them out for a fight followed by a /laugh which is the complete opposite, as his ribcage collapses and you can just imagine him weezing his little, lifeless lungs out in hysterics.

However, I'd missed one of the list and it's the one I like the most - /silly. I could literally spend an entire 10 minute raid break just spamming it, laughing at the bad puns, daft jokes or pop-culture references that all the different races have.

Now you know mine, what's your favourite emote?

20 Days of Warcraft: Favourite NPC

2010-11-21T13:04:00.003Z

Now, out of the first three days this is by far the easiest question for me to answer.

My favourite NPC will forever be, High Overlord Saurfang. I know, it sounds generic but I have my reasons.

On my first every character, when I was but a level 9 newb, running around killing Boars in Durotar, I stumbled upon this MASSIVE city. Later, I would realise this was the home of the Orcs but back then, I saw that the guys with the spikey shoulderguards were Green, so I wandered in.

Now, I'd been pottering around there for a good 30 minutes, amazed by the size and scale of the place. I had also stumbled upon Saurfang as I entered and thought he just looked so very cool, with his spikey shoulders. (I was actually a little obsessed with shoulderguards from level 1-17, I think I might very well be as the Shoulders are the first thing I'll upgrade if possible...). I continued my little self-given tour when something I hadn't seen before popped up in my chat box.

Orgrimmar is under attack!
Orgrimmar is under attack!

Oh no! I thought, I must save the Orcs! So I ran out of the Auction House, which I was currently checking out, to kill whatever was attacking the city (I was hoping it was boars, I had plenty of experience doing that)

But instead, it was a decently sized Alliance raid. Now, I'm not stupid (sometimes) and decided that I would just watch, as the higher level people battled it out. I was watching for about 2 minutes until Saurfang stepped in. Someone must have managed to lure one of the alliance toons into his aggro radius (or he just tired of their foolishness, I like to think it's this one) but he just charged straight at them and in about 30 seconds they were dead. I was shocked and amazed in equal measure.

And that's why he's my favourite NPC, when I got to fight by his side in Northrend, I had the same reaction as the undead NPC that you go with, I was honoured and amazed. In Icecrown, when he's on the gunship, cleaving away it's awesome and even when I'm against him on my alliance characters, I'm secretly rooting for him.

Oh and in Soviet Russia, Saurfang still cleaves you.

Tweet, tweet.

2010-11-21T11:47:00.002Z

So, I created my twitter account today. I was a bit bored, sick of doing work and decided that another website to visit during procrastination time was required.

My thingy is Jakkru (oh yeah, how original?) and I've already got two 'followers' and by followers, I mean bots that are supposebly hot women who really, really like guys who's bio confesses they're a geek - I must be in luck!

However, I have no idea how to use it. Literally, no idea. So...can someone like...show me?

Oh and the 3rd part of the 20 Days of Warcraft will be up later today, if/when I get my work done!

20 days of Warcraft: Favourite Race

2010-11-20T12:13:00.003Z

Unlike the favourite class, my favourite race is pretty easy to decide. Undeads are the clear winner in my eyes. Their animations, emotes and voices are just a cut above the rest.

Want to do a backflip in melee? Just roll a female Undead. Wanna spin while you win? Just roll a male undead. Want to look like you're too fucking cool for school while casting a spell? Roll a male undead! Want to look like you're ripping magic out of the air? Female undead is for you. In my opinion, the Undeads combat animations are the best.

Their animations? Are pretty creepy - an Undead male throwing a kiss at you? Yeah, that's weird but the noise that goes with it makes it more comically creepy. I also love the dance, it suites the class extremely well as do the /silly, they're very Jack Dee and by that, I mean morbidly humorous.

Their lore ain't too bad either, using the Horde for their own means? Ohhhh yeah. Selfish bastards the lot of them but at the same time, they seem to have a resemblence of a 'heart' in that (on occasion) they have gone out of their way to help someone, with no actual gain to themselves.

Their capital city is stupidly easy to navigate and granted, it could do with a bit of colour on the walls but come on! They're undead, it's not gonna be pink and orange but more, grey on grey. It's also home to Sylvannas, who in recent times has stop being a stupid little banshee that did naff all and is actually a bad-ass shadow-hunter-sarcastic-bitch.

However, I'm not die-hard Undead, my character sheet is actually quite varied. I wont do as Issy did and get a graph on the go but I try to get a male and female of each race, just because I like the variety. The only exception to this is my two gnomes, who are both male, with pink hair and great big bushy beards!

I've got to admit, that I actually have a soft-spot for gnomes, it's nice to view the world from a shorter perspective, mainly because I'm quite tall in the real-world. Oh and they can have pink hair and still look pretty damned cool and I feel the same form of 'comfort' (so to speak) when playing them as I do when running, hunch-backed around on my Undeads. Still, the gnomes fall short (har-har, height pun!) in my racial-affections.

So then, what's your favourite race and why?

20 days of Warcraft: Favourite Class

2010-11-19T17:56:00.003Z

So, I've never properly done one of these before and I saw Pilf's post pop up on my feed. Aparently she yoinked it from this blog, which is a new one to me and yet another to add to my reading list (which I spend more time reading than the one for my university course...)

As the title suggests, it's all about your favourite class in Warcraft, which is actually a pretty hard question for me to answer. I'm an altoholic, with a bunch of different classes at level 80 and I enjoy playing all of them.

My main since the middle of TBC has been my rogue, Jakkru, but he wasn't my first character. That was my warrior (who's name/faction and race have changed many a time) who I spent almost a year levelling, running around as a protection specced noob, taking an hour to kill one mob and attempting to learn how to tank in a variety of instances. For that time, warrior was my favourite class, as it was all I knew. I got bored when I was struggling through the Plaguelands while levelling my warrior so decided to roll a few alts, one of them being a rogue. I got him to around level 20 before returning to the warrior and didn't play him again until I was level 70 and had been tanking for a few months.

That's pretty much what happened whenever I rolled a new alt, I played it for a bit, went back to playing my rogue and then levelled the alt again when I got bored, which makes putting a favourite label on it pretty difficult.

However, I think they'll always be a place in my heart for rogues. I've done so many things with them, be it raiding, PvPing or soloing and there was a time when I had such a thirst for the class mechanics I was constantly reading about them. I've never really had that for any other class, even though I do enjoy playing them all it's my rogue that I return to when I want to feel 'normal' and just do something that's second nature.

Oh and sneaking around is just made of win. That's definintly a positive.

On a different note, I'm quite excited by this little meme, I've been playing WoW for a while now and I've really not stopped to think about these things. It'll give me something to think about, take my mind of things that are/have happened and give me a good excuse to procrastinate from University work.

Rest in Peace, brother.

2010-11-17T22:14:00.005Z

Today has been a tough day. I, among many others, have lost a dear friend and guild member and the world has lost one of the very few genuinely nice people.

Mats Hålimoen, otherwise known as Erc passed away after a fight against cancer, yesterday. Wulfy, who shared The Barrens Chat with him wrote a beautiful post.

I saw him as one of my best friends, even though I'd never met him face to face. We'd spend hours talking complete rubbish, but it never felt like hours, more like minutes.

We shared the good and the bad times, he was always there to listen to my rants, talk to me when needed and to correct my English. He was one of the most kindest human beings I've had the pleasure to know and I'm proud to have called him my friend.

I hope Erc, where-ever you are, you know how many people you affected in a good way. You where the reason I started my blog, you encouraged me to express my feelings towards a game we both shared a passion for and which will not be the same without you in it.

I never got to say goodbye, Mats. So here it is - goodbye, I'm glad you're at peace and I know where-ever you are, the people around you are better for you being there.

Warcraft, curing your fears 1 by 1.

2010-11-08T18:04:00.002Z

Okay. Before I go on, I have to stress, no laughing - okay?

Seriously.

I'm serious.

Cereal.

I've had a fear for as long as I can remember of anything (be it a film, game or a picture) that has a zombie in it.

I SAID NO LAUGHING, A'IGHT?

I will openly admit to being soft and this is definitly backed up by the fact for the first year of my WoW 'career' I avoided any areas that had zombies, even something that looked like a zombie in it. I even had to read up on Undead lore to find out that they were, as I told myself so I could roll Jakkru, 'cured' of their zombie-ness.

Now, once I got to level 50, I really didn't know where to go in levelling places, and was told by some kind person in guild that the Plaguelands were a decent choice so I skipped my way there, thinking "awesome sauce, time to PWN some slimes and stuff to level 60!" Oh how wrong I was. It was like my worse nightmare, I was num-locking my way through while talking to one of my parents and suddenly looked back to find my poor, Orcish self getting mauled by zombies. I was terrified. Absolutely. Not even kidding. I'm being cereal. I was repeating "no, no, no, no." and as this was my first character in WoW, I'd died MANY a time but this was by zombies, which was waaaaaaay worse.

So I died and I was at the spirit thingy and I was a little shaken, I'll admit, I'd just saw my poor Orc pwn'd by zombies and what did I want to do? Curl up into the featol position? No! I wanted to go and fuck some zombie shit up. They'd cost me repair bills, I had, after about 9-10 years of everyone just telling me "they're no real," realised that there was nothing to fear.

However, I still couldn't watch zombie movies. I'll admit, I'd forced myself to watch Shaun of the Dead because I saw the word "comedy" but I spent half my time hiding behind my hands and the other half laughing. That was until Wrath hit and I had no choice but to kill undead/zombies/whateverthefuckyouwannacallthem. I had to kill LOTS and in doing so, I kinda just didn't give a shit anymore, I mean maybe it's because I'm nearly 20 (I said at the start - no laughing, m'kay?!) and have finally grown-the-fuck-up but I like to think that from going to avoiding areas with undead in them to literally plowing through them to get to 80 has definintly made my silly fear less.

Why am I writing this? Cuz I just finished watching the first two episodes of this new american tv show (I think it was a comic before that...) with that guy from teachers in it. The Walking Dead is awesome-sauce and I like to think I owe Warcraft something for helping get over my fear of the shuffling, groaning things.

Pre-expansion blues and me.

2010-10-26T14:16:00.003+01:00

I've hardly been on Warcraft in the past 2 weeks. I've logged in now and then to have a bit of a chat with the guilides and some friends but other than that, I've just been running round in circles in Dalaran. So it's not surprising that I came to the conclusion that I am bored of the game currently.

The patch, with all it's new changes and stuff was supposed to inspire me, or something. Many of the people in guild have started to play more due to the changes to their class etc but I've found it less of an incentive to play.

Don't get me wrong, I dont mind the changes at all, they were fun for a 2 day lets-have-a-look-at-what's-new binge but now, I really dont know what to think.

I liked to hop between my alts, level my Paladin for a bit, do a random on the forever stuck at 74 warlock or maybe a few heroics on an 80 if I got -that- bored but now, I dont.

I dont know why but the recent changes have made me feel like everything is getting a little too similar. I dont level my paladin anymore, as she feels like a cross between a rogue and warrior, my two oldest characters and ones I've got the most played time on.

Forever stuck at 74 warlock feels to much like an old school hunter and my hunter after about 2 randoms starts to feel like a really, really broken rogue. Which is a shame because I was looking forward to the focus change the most out of all the changes.

I've, however, been liking the mage the most, because frost is 'cool' (har har, a pun!) and I like the pretty floating procc things that Blizzard have put in. The warrior is same-old, same-old but with a angry version of mutilate and the DK is weird but the kind of weird that you like. However, being a stones throw from Cataclysm, the perfectionist in my has kinda turned that robot off Hitchikers Guide - "Oh what's the point!" seeing as they'd just be collecting shiney gear that will be sold, destroyed or disenchanted as soon as I reach level 82.

Ah well, roll on Cata, roll on Goblins and roll on something that's new. Jakk's had enough of this expansion, it's too fucking cold and I've done nothing but kill undead for the past few months.

something?

2010-10-21T10:16:00.002+01:00

Since moving back up to Newcastle and getting back into the swing of things at University, I've not had that much time for WoW and when I have it's mainly been to log in, chat and log back out again.

I'd also had no time to read up about the changes in the patch, so when, one boring Wednesday afternoon I attempted to log in to find that 4.0.1 had been dropped on my face, I was like "ohhhh shiiii-"

I'm still pretty confused, having spent 90% of my time attempting to kill the training dummies on my characters and the other 10% was running around trying to tame new pets on Korgah. I have however realised one thing - I dont need a big-fuck-off-glowing-thing around Frostbolts, Blizzard, I kinda know what my main filler is for a Frost mage...

More to come when I finally get to do something other than go "How much for a glyph?!"

Deathtank

2010-09-15T16:23:00.003+01:00

I took a longer look than usual at my character selection sheet the other day and came to the sudden realisation that I'm a massive melee whore, of my level 80's, 3 of them are melee. I like playing all three, as they've all got different play styles but at the same time, I feel like a rogue when playing my Frost DK, I dunno why, I just do.

So I thought it was time for a change and respecced my 2handed "OS" to Bloodtonk. This was my first roadblock, as I really had no idea about DK tanking. I quickly armouried Abso's main DK tank and grabbed his specc, then respecced, as I'd just specced blood DPS by accident *facepalm*

After the tank specc was sorted, I decided to grab whatever tank gear I might have accumulated over the few months I've been at 80. So off I trot to the bank, to be greeted by a bank vault with a pink dress, some stupid Halaa battlemarks and buff food in it. I obviously hadn't collected any tank gear.

I did a few randoms and in time, had some blues with defense on from some dungeon or other and the T9 gloves. At this point, I'd be queuing as dps, waiting 10-15 minutes and then doing the dungeon. I'd had enough and thought I'd learn by diving into the deep end. Except, this deep end was full of big, fuck-off crocodiles.

I get a healer friend from guild to come along and in we go, me with my 470 defense, 28k hp unbuffed and 5/13 peices of tank gear.

BOOM

Pit of Saron heroic. I almost shit my pants. My healer friend actually did. It wasn't gonna be a nice dungeon run for him and as a first time DK tank, I was pretty damned scared but we actually did it, something happened, stars alligned, moons did something that astronomers say they do to sound "intelligent" when infact, they're just writing bollocks in a paper and we got through the entire dungeon without 1 wipe!

I put it down to awesome cooldown management, of course but in all truth it was my healer friends awesome healing that stopped me from looking like a massive fool. We even ran a few more heroics and I got a bit more tank gear, increasing my health and defense by tiny, tiny amounts.

I really did enjoy myself, it was kinda like dps except I'm y'know, getting twatted in the face by angry monsters/humans/undead/things and I liked dictating the pace of the pulls, instead of having the hang around waiting for senoir slow or almost die trying to keep up with speedy gonzales.

It's also gave me something to work on in the end of expansion bordem, as the perfectionist inside me is screaming out for me to get my arse up to 40k unbuffed and start tanking ICC10. Should be fun for me but it'll be hell for those unlucky enough to find themselves stuck with my tanking! *evil, tank like laugh*

who said that?

2010-09-12T22:09:00.002+01:00

Bad things tend to happen when I get bored. I jump at chances to get un-bored so when a friend of mine Alliance side asked me if I was free to help them take on the Lich King, I jumped at the chance. 9/10 of the members where from my mates guild, so I thought it'd be a nice easy night, they had a Kingslayer and apparently their best attempt was P3. So with that, I got the vent details and hopped in. Now, not people able to match voices to names because I dont use the retarded Overlay, I was apparently in a group with...

a soft-spoken scotsman.
a posh fella
someone with a very thick eastern-european accent
a monotinous german
a silent shadowpriest
fanboy of the monotinous german
someone who'd learnt english from american films
a silent tank
and someone who could barely be heard

We gave him a shot, and was almost into P3 when there was a huge mess up. Our silent SP wasn't paying attention and after dropping his defile, didn't move fast enough, which caused it to chain. I dusted my little Gnomish knees off and got ready for another attempt.

It's quite depressing that our first attempt was also our best. Our monotinous german wanted to twat anything in sight, regardless of how much aggro a tank had on it, causing in adds running wild during the Transition phase. This didn't help the fact our silent shadowpriest was more than likely silent due to being a retard than not having a working microphone, as he just couldn't stop making useless mistakes - not moving when he got the plague? oh yeah. mind searing the Lich King for shits and giggles? hell yes! and last but not least, not dps'ing the frozen orbs resulting in the entire raid going BOOM-AARRRRrrrrrrrrr--*splat*

Now, after about 5 more attempts, our monotinous german started, from as far as I could tell (it's a bit difficult when a guys voice sounds like he's in a perma-state of "meh) get angry. First it was the Silent SP's fault, then the tanks, then the healers, then the tanks, then the healers, then the SP and then the tanks again.

This anger spread, mainly due to his fanboi getting in on the act, gleefully pointing out that everyone elses dps was lower than the monotinous germans! Which was like throwing fire on a monotinous bonfire! "Yes, they all lack the skill to do LK" he said.

I snapped...a little bit. I actually managed to hold my tongue but for the attempt afterwards, I didn't single target dps, instead, I put Living Bomb on anything that moved and used Flamestrike as soon as it was up. To which I went "oh look, I can AoE too" in /ra after our wipe from a terribly placed defile.

A few wipes later and it just fell apart, I've never heard so much negativity on my life. The word "Fail" was wrote/spoke for times than when A level papers are marked and with that much negativity flying around, it was as if the Lich King had a new ability, something that affects you after death and keeps going, like Ressurection Sickness but it only affects dickheads, the voices on vent had turned to...

the soft-spoken scot was still soft-spoken and scottish
the posh fella sounded like he was complaining over the phone, to a foreign phone operater - he did a lot of shouting and repeated himself about 20 times.
the thick accented eastern european was stuck on the words "omg how are we failing?"
the german was still monotinous.
shadowpriest was still silent
the monotinous germans fanboy was following in his "heros" footsteps and just being a dickhead
our american film fella had turned into a whiny camp sounding american with a terrible accent
our tank was no longer silent and was correcting anything that was said by the monotinous german using combat logs
and the guy who couldn't be heard now could and all he was doing was swearing.

Needless to say, the so called "raid leader" who in all honesty only held that title because it said [RL] next to his name in the combat logs, called the raid almost an hour a fifteen minutes before the end time. Much to my relief.

It really did make me appreciate my guild(s). Both present and past, mainly because I've so far not found one that has more than 1 dickhead, who usually gets booted in a few hours because they've been found out to be a...dickhead. It also made me appreciate knowing who's talking, so you can tell them to shut the fuck up if needed.

The "lesser" of two evils is actually quite fun

2010-09-07T09:25:00.002+01:00

My Alliance characters on Argent Dawn are stupidly poor, and no one's to blame but me. I'm lazy, when it comes to dailies and levelling my (rather poor gold making) professions. I recently got in a guild with an old friend Alliance side (until other plans come into affect!), he actually helped the process a lot actually and they seem like a very nice bunch of people. They also raid 25 mans, which I did say I wasn't too keen on but at the same time, I'll try anything once except incest and morris dancing.

I've been trying to get rid of all my blue quality gems and at the same time, regem for fire and with my lack of cash, I either had to queue for dungeons or PvP. I'm impatient so I chose PvP.

Now, I've never really PvP'd anything other than a hunter or rogue, so mage was a very, very steep learning curve but I find out pretty damned fast that...

-I need PvP gear.
- Keep the hell away from anything with a big-fuck-off axe/mace/sword and an angry look on their face.
- Living Bombing pets is a bad idea.
- I need PvP gear.
- I dont like warriors.
- I need PvP gear.

Now, I dont have the badges and/or the honour to spend on PvP gear, so I thought I'd attempt to make do with running around with 18k hp, being a massive target to anything that wants an easy honour kill and spamming Living Bomb on everyfuckingthingthatmoves™ (except for pets! BAD IDEA!) I also decided on doing the following...

- Stayed with a group. On my own, I'm about as useful as a cat in a bin. In a group, I can be that little guy that stands behind the big one going "Yeaaaah!" But in this case, instead of going "Yeaaaaah!" I'm actually THROWING FIRE IN YOUR FACE!
- Ice Block is the universal sign for "Arrrrrrgh! I'm dyyyyyying! Heal meeee!"
- Ice Block is also a very big Warrior/Rogue/DK magnet, meaning that while you're iceblocked, they're hitting you and not your friends!
- He who runs, often finds a friend who's bigger and badder that what's chasing you.

After that, it got fun. I farmed 36k honour in about 3 hours and got a bunch of achievements, I'm in love with Warsong Gulch and Isle of Conquest but I still hate Eye of the Storm with a passion but I hate it slightly less than running in circles in Dalaran waiting for the dungeon timer...

Trial by fire

2010-09-03T10:11:00.002+01:00

The Alliance side has ground to a halt. The guild I'm in is going through some management changes, lost some of it's main raiders and hasn't fielded a full, competent team for almost a month now. I've decided it's time to start looking around for a new guild, which is something I'm really not used to doing.

I've got a few friends Alliance side and I mentioned this to one, who offered me a trial raid right then and there. If I liked it and they liked me I could pop on the forums and put up an application. I got invited, summoned and was stood, infront of this 61 million HP monster - the Lich King. I have to admit, I was a little scared.

I was then told, it was a "wipe night" and that they were trying to master controlling the Valkyrs and Defiles, which is apparently quite difficult on 25 man. I said I didn't mind, while I quickly sold some un-used epics to front the repair bills.

First thing I noticed, was that I was significantly out geared. There were 3 other mages, all in Sanctified gear, 264 weapons and trinkets etc etc. The second thing I noticed was that I was the 5th lowest dps.

I'm used to being 1st or 2nd in most of my alliance side raids but here, I didn't even get a say in the top 10 the majority of the time. These guys knew how to dps and from our first try (55%) they also had a basic grasp of tactics. The best attempt of the night was a 37% wipe and it became apparent that a few people were making the same mistakes over and over, which was costing the raid group.

After the raid ended, I was mulling over applying, my friend said he'd link me their site the day after as he had to log quickly and it gave me the night to think it over. I was on the fence for a while, I mean, it could definitly give me a boost in gear as the majority of the casters didn't need anything from normal 25 man anymore but at the same time...25 man raiding just doesn't suite me. I like 10 man raids, there was no friendly banter on their voice chat (still using TS! lol) and it all got a little bit too serious at times, with the raid leaders blood pressure rising as fast as the decibels of his voice.

I've still got some other options which I might find better suited for me and I'm always up for a cheeky server transfer or something if need be but looking for a new guild is harder than I thought it would be...

Ironically named guilds.

2010-08-22T11:03:00.004+01:00

I've been getting bored recently. Spending more time on my lower level alts than I have on my 80's but yesterday, I was running around in circles in Dalaran on Coggins (my recently transferred warrior...gnomes, ftw) and saw a guild advertising that they needed a dps for a quick ICC10 run. They'd already killed Sindragosa and had Plague and Blood left to do before taking on the LK.

My first thoughts? Crackin'! I'll have a bit of that! So off I went, sending a /w, telling them I had experience of all bosses and that my rogue and shaman were Kingslayers. I then had to go for a gear inspection, while one of their members took a look on the armoury at Jakkru and Kranan. This reinforced my feelings that this would be good, I mean...they'd killed Sindragosa and finding a dps was very srs bizniss.

I got my invite and myself and the two advertisers were summoned to ICC, outside Festergut, all ready and raring. Awesome. We killed him right quick, Rotface too. Infact, I got a new kill record on both and finally reached 11k dps as fury! /cheer

There was a quick break before Putri, as one of the healers so subetly put, needed a shit. After his return, we made tracks to Putricide. Quick and easy kill, I thought and got into position under the green slime pump. This is where it kinda got a little weird.

Where is everyone? Was my first reaction. I took a quick look around and they're all over the other side of the room. Apparently, they dont believe the hugging tactic works and instead, like to do the highly-fucking-annoying-ring-around-a-fucking-rosie-tactic.

I'll cut about 13 wipes short and tell you that if they hadn't been using that retarded tactic, they'd have killed him the 2nd attempt. The time spent for all the dps to run from one side of the room back into the range of Putri, caused him to spawn another gas before P3, which we had to kill and he wiped us with around 100k health, which would have been what we'd have got off him if we didn't have to kill the gas cloud if we didn't have to run across the fucking room to fucking kill in the-ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.

Now, I was a little pissed off, I mean, I had high expectations of this run, it'd seemed perfect - guild run, check. Sindragosa already dead? Well, I wouldn't get the frostwing halls achievement but fuck it, check. Decently geared people? Check.

After the Putricide fiasco, we moved onto Blood quarter, where the raid was called before we even got to the Princes, as they were wiping so hard on trash.

So I got my ress and hearthstoned, thinking "retards" but saying "thanks for the raid, was just unlucky!" The icing on this specific fail-cake was that the guild called Progress didn't make any. This shit writes itself sometimes.

bordem in pit of saron...

2010-08-05T14:38:00.004+01:00

Jaina = J
Sylvanas = S

I got bored :D

---------------

Jakk: So, you two spend a lot of time in Pit of Saron, how're you both finding it?

J: I hate it! All those innocent people dying, it's terrible!
S: Well, I quite like it. For the same reason Jaina stated.

Jakk: All the time you're in there, ever cross each others paths?

S: Jaina keeps trying to get me to join her book club, they just read My Sisters Keeper over and over and cry...
J: It's a very good book!
S: I'm sure it is but do you really have to cry after your 20th read through?
J: I'm a very emotional person, Sylvanas!

Jakk: Well, people from both factions are well aware of that...Jaina.

J: And they're also aware that Sylvanas is a right heartless bitch!
S: Since when have you been from the North of England, Jaina? Last time I looked you had a pretty terrible American Accent going on.
J: And you sound like a prostitute.
S: Oh no. Your hateful words cut me deep...I may just cry.
J: Dont mock me!
S: You mock yourself!
J: Dont!
S: Do!
J: DONT!

Jakk: Ladies, ladies. Let's not fight, we know the Horde and Alliance relationship is very fragile at the moment...

S: Maybe if they didn't cry all the time...
J: And maybe if they didn't have long, boring talks before boss fights.
S: I'd rather have one before a boss fight than after. Especially if it's going on when the group of 10 or 25 heros have already killed that big ugly thing that Professor Putricide has created. Yeah I've heard. About 20 minutes of that is you sobbing like a baby because your "King" as you so obidently call him lets someone past him.
J: Oh shut up...
S: Seriously, how do you manage if visiting a hotel. Do you just stand in the lobby crying...
J: Shut up.
S: What if someone's just being plain polite, do you shed a single-solitary-tear?
J: I hate you.
S: Go read My Sisters Keeper again.
J: Maybe I will!
S: Fine.
J: Fine.

*Jaina teleports out*

Jakk: Well...

S: What? She annoys me...

Jakk: Fair enough.

I'ma chargin' mah healzor! (Literally...)

2010-07-30T13:43:00.004+01:00

Absolution recently won 10 beta keys via that competition thing that Blizzard had. I wasn't part of the screen shot and I was quite glad actually as I'm not a fan of betas. I've done one in the past and I actually stopped playing the game because it kinda ruined it for me.

I like opening the box like a little kid of christmas day, waiting so very impatiently, as the thing installs and then being "Oooooooh! New and Shiny and shiny and new!" while playing it.

I've been shying away from anything they've been saying. When they talk about it on mumble, I mute the person or take my headphones out and it's going well but I actually listen to what's being said when they talk about class changes.

I dont mind hearing about those, just little bits - how talents are working etc and I've got to say, from taking a look at stuff on WowHead and all that and at the moment other classes have started to take my fancy a little bit more than my rogue.

I suppose having a fair few 80's (6, working on my 7th) will help as I'll have a lot to choose from but at the moment I've been drawn to the idea of a goblin priest.

I've reserved the name and everything and I'm genuinely excited about rolling it. I can see it now in a PuG, when I'm up for being a bit of an annoying bastard...

Tank: h33l m3! omfffffffffffg 1m dy1ng
Me: 100g please.
Others: wuuuuuuuuuuuut? omfg (gogogogogogogogogogogogo)
Me: I'm a goblin. Time is money, friend. 100g per heal.
Others: omffffffffffg *votekick*

Either that or I go shadow and charge 10g per DoT and 5g per Mind Flay tick...

I'd suggested this in /g when I'd first thought about being a goblin healer and Wulfy had said he was thinking of a goblin tank. We could go into business, be right little greedy gobbos!

yeaaaaah boiiiiiii

2010-07-27T09:18:00.004+01:00

It's been a long time coming but after only 5 attempts...

and with that, of course...

Mumble was full of woops, I think a few people might have got a bit too 'excited' and I was grinning ear to ear. Absolution may have been a little late to the party but we're there now and we're downing a bottle of anything we can get our grubby little hands on!

Now that's done, I've got to thinking, what next?

I'm sure there's Hardmodes to be attempting but I was thinking more of what else can I do this expansion. My only real goal was the kill the Lich King before Cataclysm hit and I've done that. Buff or not, he's dead and I'm gloriously happy.

I guess I'll stick to alting around, getting my characters some better gear, levelling my warlock and paladin and waiting for cataclysm just like everyone else. I've got my Goblin priests name all lined up and everything!

Oh yeah, did I mention...

SQUEEEEEEEEEE

Yeah, that's right. I squee'd. Sue me.

Just because it says RP doesn't mean you have to

2010-07-14T12:53:00.005+01:00

Everyone seems to think of RP realms as being these strange places inhabited by weird people that talk like they live in something Chaucer wrote.

We've had a few applications at Absolution recently from people that have server transferred from PvP and Normal realms to these RP realms and all of them have commented on how they believe the people on RP realms to be more mature. Sometimes I cant believe they're applying to join us if they believe there's more mature people on Argent Dawn...

Anyways. People who roll on RP realms are either:

a) Looking to RP.
b) Have friends on the server that have told them that it's not all Shakespearian and shit.
c) Are noobs and thought that RP stands for Really Powerful
d) Got the name mixed up with something said on Die Hard

(I fit category d, if you're wondering...)

But with people transfering from different servers to join more "mature" raiding guilds, I have to agree with Ereios that there's been a shift from RP to a more...PvE feel. Trade is now filled with LFG spam, trolls and just general chit-chat between players. Gone are the days you'd have people in Silvermoon going ((Keep Trade IC please)) when someone was spamming it with LFG messages.

I've been on an RP server for most of my WoW playing days and I've never once RP'd "properly." I truely cant. I had an "RP" set, which consisted of a pink dress, a really, really over-sized mace and a bouquet of flowers - I really dont take it seriously at all.

This is because RP servers are what you make of them. You can PvP until your hearts content, raid until your eyes hurt or you get wankers cramp from button bashing or, you can find others with an RP'ing interest and just enjoy yourself.

The RP on the server page is more of a huge banner saying "You can RP here! Seriously...you're not going to get ganked, we cant guarantee you're not going to get asked to cyb0r though..."

RP realms aren't full of mature people, every realm has about the same amount, you've just got to look hard enough. The only difference between an RP server and others is you can report the stupid bastards who're called "Arthazz" and "Lickkhing"

and now for something completely different...

2010-07-09T13:09:00.005+01:00

With the internets currently turning a firey red, looking at Blizzard like it would very much like to reach through their screens and beat seven shades into them I could write a post about RealID. About how I dont mind the in-game features, as it lets me keep in contact with cross-realm, cross-faction friends but how I feel they've crossed a massive line with all this RealID on the forums bollocks.But I'm not. Like Tam did, I'm gonna have a tea and biccy break from it all. I mean, I've read everyone elses views, saw the forum petitions and heard folk even talking about it in game. My views are basically the same but would be shown without a solid arguement and a lot more uses of the words "fuck" "bellends" and "seriously Blizzard, you're all twats sometimes."

*ahem*

I love little things that Developers put into games. References to famous people, films, books and the like. I found myself smiling when, in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, a guy pulls out a shotgun while quoting Aliens. The developers must have loved that film, because they've stuck the cat in there as well.
My favourite is most definintley this one:

Found in Booty Bay, he ends up giving you something so you can use the transporter to get to Gnomeregan.

When you pop out on the other side, you find this guy...

First saw this when I was levelling Jakkru and it put a massive smile on my face. I love these kind of Easter Eggs!

If you've got any favourites either link them in the comments or stick a blog post up :) Just poke me to let me know they're there!

Guild meetups are AWESOME!

2010-07-07T10:51:00.006+01:00

I've just spent a fantastic two days back in my "new home" up in Newcastle. After a weekend of trying to sort out bills and being generally bored because of lack of TV, lack of internet and lack of House-mates it was a fantastic relief to get to Monday which was the day I'd planned to meet some close friends for a bit of a piss up. The only difference between this and any other piss up was I'd never talked to any of them face to face.

We all got on like a house on fire, all of us.We were all of student age and 5 of the 6 were English but our 6th guildy had come all the way from Switzerland and boy did he get a shock at the English binge drinking activities.

Highlights of the two days:

-Getting lost in a city I've lived in for almost a year
-Ring of Fire
-Drinking from a Wok
-Never have I ever (Lexor you filthy bastard)
-Jedmend/Jizbar/Jesfron
-Frrrrrieeeeennnnnnndddddddddd
-Tactical Chunders at 12 o'clock
-"Ohhhh, I've got heartburn me" "Drink this" "Okay"
-Accidental doubles
-Kaldraith giving it large on the dance-floor
-Tatters the pizza Vigilanty part 1
-Tatters the pizza Vigilanty part 2
-Brain/Batwing/Goats
-Arthas tactics at 9am, hanging like bastards
-Putting things in the bin...down a flight of stairs
-The search for breakfast
-The further search for breakfast
-Giving up on breakfast and getting a burger
-Drinks at 1pm
-That girl outside WHSmith
-The train ride to Leeds
-Train ride to Dewsbury
-Finally going to fucking sleep

It was a fantastic night out and will definitly be happening again.
Thanks to Bisson, Lexor, Kaldraith, Tatters/Curdle and Yelnasha for a bangin' time! WoW Friiiieeeennnddssss! *thumbs up*

A little late to the party...

2010-06-30T13:21:00.004+01:00

I've been hitting my head against the Lich King shaped wall for around 7 hours now. It's a fantastically frantic fight which you cannot truely understand while watching a TankSpot video - for one, they make it all look so bloody simple.

We're currently getting some work in on Phase 2 and it's paying off, with our best attempt last night ending at 48%.

Now, Arthas in all his evil wickedness has decided that during Phase two, he's gonna let his little winged minions come in, pick up a raid member and really, really slowly carry them off the edge of the platform. Classic bond villan style. He could order it to fly really fast up and away from us but no, it's gotta move towards the edge in a "hahahahahahahahahaahha-ohshitstunned" kinda way and it's the juggling of Valkyr hitting, Defile dodging, Infest healing that's got us a little bit stuck. But only a little bit.

Highlights of the night for me was jumping off the platform while trying to save my melee partner-in-crime. I was there, dpsing my little heart out, it was all very - "Kirky! Nooooo!" and I completely ignored the edge of the platform. I was all "One more enveno-Oh shit, fell off! ARRRRRRGH!" and a very sheepish "Sorry guys" over Mumble. Having a Shambling Horror jump off after us when we'd decided to wipe it but instead of falling to its doom, decided to pull a very dramatic death mid air and "technically" killing Arthas when he jumped off after our Tank. I demand loot and badges! (Although it was funny watching him falling trying to melee poor Raggy.)

I'm truely enjoying these attempts, I mean, wiping isn't fun but when you get a little bit better after a few wipes and you're either shaving an extra 10% off a boss or doing the first phase and transition flawlessly it really does make you feel like you're getting somewhere. I just hope it doesn't take too long for us to get him to the golden 10%.

The Battle for Warsong Gulch, part 2

2010-06-25T13:48:00.006+01:00

Been a while since my last one of these, wasn't really motivated due to the end of exams but I woke up this morning and, mainly through extreme bordem decided to get the next part done. Enjoy! Oh and The font is being really annoying on Blogger at the moment, so I apologise if it looks a little weird

Nalria grunted and braced herself as two walls of shields collided. She could feel Jakkru’s thin fingers holding onto a peice of cloth that the Lieutenant had ordered them to strap round their waists. “HOOOOLD!” the Lieutent bellowed, “Come on, you motherless dogs!” With this, the Horde line surged forward. The solider infront of Nalria backed slightly and she thrust her shield out more, knocking him backward, he clattered into the woman next to him and his shield dropped. In a flash of leather, she saw the slight figure of Jakkru plunge a dagger in the gap between his breastplate and arm. He was behind her once again as they surged forward. Two more humans fell over the man, who was writhing in agony and their frontal attack was broken. “SLAY THEM ALL!” the Lieutenant screamed, as he chopped away at the Humans infront of him.

Juljin was quickly running out of arrows but the flank was holding well. The hunters had dwindled the incomings numbers and the piling bodies and bloody slope made it difficult for them to move. He looked to his right to see the middle of the line locked in combat with humans, night elves and dwarves. He turned back and saw the enemy had stopped trying to get up the slope but instead, had moved to attack the middle of the Hordes thin but resistant line. “Hunters! Support those warriors!” cried the Orc he’d met briefly back at the camp. Juljin ran swiftly, loosing an arrow on the move, it wasn’t as accurate but did hit flesh. A night elf in leather fell to the ground, clutching at the shaft of the arrow, agony engraved all over his face. He let out a slight grin as he steadied himself, the Alliance were playing into the Hordes trap. To his left he could see warriors still fighting but the Hordes numbers were greater than the Alliances on the left hand flank.

“BACK YOU FOOLS! BACK!” Kranan cried. Watching four Warriors breaking from the line, axes in hand. A nearby shaman had wipped them into a Bloodlust and they had dropped their shields, grabbed anything that looked pointed and heavy and ran straight towards the alliance. For a second, the attackers had stopped, in surprise at the two trolls and two orcs which were charging them down. The damage they did was massive, men screamed and bodies flew around but it was over in less than twenty seconds, when, exhausted the Alliance hacked them down and turned to the flank. More warriors had run out to aid the first four and were met by a wave of Alliance Soliders. “GET BACK!” Kranan cried in vain, the Lieutenants plan was falling apart on the right flank. He grabbed a small wooden object from his belt and muttered to himself, he glanced up to see the Alliance advancing quickly. “Earthern spirits, I call on you, I call on you, I CALL ON YOU!” he yelled, ramming the wooden object into the floor with great force. The alliance continued to advance and Kranan felt weakened, his mace felt heavy and the battle cries seemed distant. He was brought back to his senses by the ground shaking.

Nalria and Jakkru worked together, she would create an opening and he would exploit it, they’d drove the attackers down the slope slightly until those from the left flank had joined. Since then, they’d stopped, warriors who were in the second and third ranks had gone to meet the incoming, bloodied alliance and the Lieutenant had ordered them to hold. Jakkru glanced to his right but saw nothing but the other Shadowstalkers and a huge troll who was screaming, his eyes wild with a thirst for blood. The arrows started to pour over them, into the alliance ranks. Screams were heard from the back of the alliance attack. The hunters had been ordered to focus on mages, warlocks and the few hunters the alliance had brought with them. As predicted by the Lieutenant, the Alliance would have relied on their numbers and sent men into the melee, keeping their ranged at the back. His counter to this was to lure the ranged into distance of his hunters bows and cut them down with arrows, it seemed to be working. The arrows stopped and a battle cry was heard, this was the Hordes signal, Nalria shunted her shield into the night elf infront of her repeatably, one of the spikes in her shield must have caught the attacker because he howled and wretched to his side, she hamstringed him and he fell, she thrust her sword into the female solider behind him and she let out a cry of pain, all along the line the other warriors were doing the same and the alliance started to move backward, towards the flatter ground.

The shaking ground had halted the alliance as both sides attempted to steady themselves. With a huge scraping sound, two boulders appeared from the earth. The alliance watched and laughed but stopped immediately as a sound like gravel grinding together pieced the air. The head of a huge Earth elemental had appeared from the ground and the two boulders were its hands, which it was currently pulling itself up with. Two mages behind Kranan had used the distraction as an oppotunitiy to attack and dwarf clad in plate armour had flown backwards and was screaming in agony, his plate glowing molten red, his screams almost drowned out the sound of the elemental as he was burnt alive inside his armour. They continued to cast as the elemental brought itself to a great high and drove it’s fists down, one night elf who had stood still was crushed under one of them, a fleeing human had been caught on the legs and was screaming. The elemental slowly picked his stone fists up and charged, much faster than you would think something made of stone and earth would. The alliance turned tail and ran, with cheers and insults from the remaining Horde soliders on the right flank.

A list! Yoink

2010-06-20T19:24:00.004+01:00

I do believe I'm a little like Nick Hornby. No, I'm not a widely known author, I like lists. So, when I saw this little list over as Sorry Caps (which is a wicked name for a wicked blog I've started looking at) I couldn't resist!

1. Raider, farmer, PvPer, or altoholic?

I'd class myself as a raiding altoholic. Seeing as I try to raid as much as possible on all my level 80 characters.

2. Favorite raid or dungeon?

Oooooh, hard one...A toss up between Karazhan, Zul'Aman and Zul'Farrak.

3. Number one choice for a new playable race?

Ogres! If only for their wicked dance moves.

4. Class you suck the most at?

It's got to be a druid, mainly because I truely dont have to patience to level one to 20.

5. Original UI or modded UI?

Modded, all the way. I spend many hours tweaking my UI to make sure everything is in place and that I have to fullest view of what's happening.

6. Profession you've never levelled past 200?

Blacksmithing and Inscription, currently working on both.

7. Favorite flying mount?

Flying carpet, without a doubt.

8. Nozdormu -- friend or foe, you figure?

I have no idea :p

9. Useless item you have in your bank that you'll never get rid of?

The rod from the quest in Mara. It used to teleport you but now it's a staff. I have it on my warrior and it'll be there forever. Was the first instance I did with an all guild group in which I tanked. It took us bloody hours, had many wipes but I've got a lot of memories.

10. Most expensive thing you've ever bought?

Epic flying on my Rogue. I saved for months for that back in TBC, was so happy when I got it.

11. Favorite starting area?

The Deathknight one. I really do love the whole changing environment through what you're doing and the battle at the end was epic the first time you saw it. Espeically with 20 other people trying to level DK's pitching in.

12. Inane goal you worked hardest to achieve?

Mhmmm, this is kinda hard. I'd guess To all the Squirrels I've loved before achievement (/love to different critters around Azeroth etc).

13. Darion Mograine VS Tirion Fordring, gloves off -- winner is?

Mograine. Fordring would spend the entire time talking while Mograine walks up and twats him in the face.

14. Game music or your own playlist?

Own playlist. I have certain bands I'll play while raiding/pvping or levelling.

15. Particular option or setting that you always toggle on a new alt/server?

Mhmm... I always set my XPerl frames to that of my rogue, that's about it really.

16. Highest amount of levels gained in one play session?

8. 50-58 in a day on my shaman alt.

17. Thing you'd most like to experience or see in-game?

I'd like to get the Lich King down before the expansion is over. It's been my goal for this expansion and I'd love to get it done.

18. Worst PuG moment?

Constant abuse from a trigger happy mage while I was trying to tank my first ever instance on my warrior, I'd been playing about a week...

19. Best dungeon/raid moment?

Having one of the best geared dps on the server, in one of the best guilds on the server /w me telling me my dps was nice. I'd put getting to the Lich King in a pug up there too but it was more a group of friends than a pug.

20. Worst quest ever that you totally hate doing?

The one in Tanaris where you've got to get that Dew Gland. Jesus, I hate that quest.

21. First thing you do when you hit 80?

/g THANK FUCK FOR THAT. Log off, have a break.

22. Character (of yours) you would RP as if you had to?

Jakkru.

23. Keyboard, mouse, or both for using abilities?

Both. Mainly my keyboard but when bashing buttons with my left hand, I like to be able to click stuff that's out of reach of a priority keybind with my mouse.

24. Thottbot or WoWhead?

WoWhead all the way.

25. Acronym you've seen in chat but don't understand?

I didn't know what "idd" meant for about 3 years until a week a go. I also saw some people advertising for Deadmines but calling it VC which confused me.

26. Plot point you'd like to see resolved someday?

Just why the fuck is Sartharion there?

27. Biggest thing you're looking forward to in Cataclysm?

Seeing the world that I've gotten so used to change in the blink of an eye. It's gonna be so awesome.

28. Guild event you'd like to see?

I'd quite like another game of Marco, Polo in Absolution in all honesty :D

29. Level range you hate being in?

50-58 :(

30. Favorite map to quest in?

Nagrand, it's so pretty!

An obviously lying Warlock and a not-skilled-enough to play Arms warrior

2010-06-17T21:03:00.002+01:00

It's amazing how a long disconnection and someone being asked to not get saved to a raid so they could help their guild out later in the day can seriously make a kick-ass group into a completely average one.

This morning, myself and a few guildies thought we'd do ICC10 so we started a group. With the strength of the healing team (myself, a paladin healer and a shaman healer) and the dps we had, I started to advertise as being able to take 9-10 bosses, which was definintly do-able if we got the tanks and other dps as experienced as we were.

It took around 45 minutes to fill the group, which consisted of a 25 man kingslayer, an very well geared alt of a friend and some other people who had the achievement up to Sindragosa. Things looked awesome.

However, one of the tanks disconnected and wasn't back for almost 10 minutes - in an attempt to keep things ticking over I decided to replace them. A DPS then had to drop out, admittable after we'd found the other tank due to their guild wanting to keep them unsaved for a run later in the week. Which is perfectly acceptable to me. I replaced them. A mage then left, for undisclosed reasons, I didn't look too much into it and replaced them.

We got through Marrowgar and Deathwhisper with relative ease and I felt pretty confident of the groups ability. That was until Gunship - I unfortunatley disconnected and had to restart my laptop, meanwhile in game, someone decided to start the event, without even checking that both tanks where there and equipped with rocket packs.

From there, it went downhill. Saurfang was terribly messy. One of the replacement ranged decided they were better than DPS'ing the blood beasts and stood in melee, leaving a hunter and shadowpriest to deal with the adds. This lead to healers getting beaten on and the person with the mark dying which prolonged the fight. That's not happened in a group I've been in since the progression runs.

After that, I had to go afk for what turned into 20 minutes, which could have definintly unfocused the group. However, I really dont care as I'd have happily left the raid due to the afk being a family related matter.

During my afk, the same person that ninja-started gunship had apparently wiped the group. Most of the people in the raid had used a bit of common sense and gone and made lunch, had a smoke, used the toilet or cracked one out (I really hope that person was joking) during my AFK. However, this one person got impatient and pulled Stinky. This really did signal the decline of the group.

We did Rotface first as I wanted to see the co-ordination of my band of minor-misfits. People didn't do too bad, I was quite glad my AFK hadn't affected peoples focus. We then went onto Fester, who was once again, ninja-pulled. I'd stated after the Gunship fiasco that pulls would only be made when I said so. However, said warlock and warrior had decided that they should pull when they wanted to and a round of "gogogogo" was heard like a retarded war cry before the boss is pulled, all hell breaks loose, a hunters locked out and we wipe in a matter of seconds due to people not knowing where to move.

After checking the dps on Festergut and actually finding it pretty...bad on some people who's gear was extremely good, I decided to try Blood Quarter instead of Putri. For some reason, the warlock and warrior (what the fuck is it with classes that start with "W" attracting retards?) thought it'd be a walk in the park because; Warrior - "our guild does alt runs to putri and we're in PvP gear" and Warlock - "im in hc frming gild on other srver. fester is ez lol." It's around that time 3 of the members who were first invited tell me (after about 2 hours, mind you) that they had a raid in about an hour.

With this information in mind and knowing that finding a dps willing to come after the first 6 bosses are dead is like rocking horse shit, I gave it a few goes on Princes but apparently, our "hc frming gild" warlock didn't have a fucking clue. With around 30 minutes left, I thought it best to get everyone 3 badges and a chance on some loot. Not that bad? I mean, if the raid was going to fall apart I'd rather end it on a high than bashing my forehead repeatable into a Putricide shaped wall.

This didn't sit well with our warrior. Who first of all, started out arguing a valid point. 9-10 bosses was our aim. However, our aim was changing, with people having to go and our excellently balanced group at the beginning crumbling and being repaired with liberal amounts of duck tape and a fucking prayer. The warrior then started insulting my raid leading. I didn't care, you get one of these pricks in every few pugs that couldn't lead a raid to save their sorry lives but at the same time, will piss and moan about how they think you should be doing better. Then they insulted the guild, with (and I quote): "Looks like Absolution done like it when the loot isn't dropping."

I didn't even need to say anything. It was a huge mistake saying that, especially with half the raid being from the guild they just insulted. We had a druid being so sarcastic it was untrue. A deathknight being about as subtle in his insults as a SPAS-12 blast to the face and a paladin who just wanted to tell the warrior that she was shit. I told them to shut up but the warrior truely would not drop it. Eventually, it got to the stage where I called it, thanking the warrior for letting everyone in the group miss out on 2 badges from Valithria.

I'd have felt bad if I didn't get a whisper from one of the tanks, the priest and the other DK about how they were glad for the invite and it was a shame more couldn't have been done.

I was quite disappointed, not in the abrupt ending, or the insults from not-skilled-enough-to-play-arms-warrior but from how the first group, that I spent around 45 minutes having to tell people they couldn't come, check people out on the armoury and finally getting it all together to crumble. Oh well, that's pugging it's why people love it and it's why (more commonly) people hate it.

Azerothian Diamonds aren't forever...

2010-06-14T11:17:00.002+01:00

My little warlock, Darju might be my Jewelcrafter. I say might because I'm currently getting stupidly annoyed with the profession as I'm stuck at 260/300 and level 64. Meaning I have to go back to Azeroth instead of pwning red faced orcs in their stupid red faces while mining Fel Ore to prospect and find gems.

I've got 1 of every gather maxed out and even though mining was a little bit annoying (running laps of Plaguelands to find out a week later that Blizzard have now changed the spawning on Thorium in Un'goro) on Kranan. Skinning was stupidly easy on Jakkru and Herbing was only annoying because I couldn't track Humanoids on Jath!

I also have a fair few maxed crafting professions. Leatherworking was also pretty easy, Alchemy was a breeze and engineering isn't hard, I just dont have it maxxed because I'm a lazy bastard, I'm only about 200 points into Blacksmithing on my paladin and Tailoring/Enchanting on the mage is making me a decent profit. However, Jewelcrafting has actually been a right ball ache from the start. I keep being told it'll be worth it in the long run and I'm not arguing that it wont but I am truely lazy and therefore, losing patience with trying to find Vanilla gems.

I've been wanting to make the final push into Northrend on the old Warlock so that his loving demon, Jeff, can get some scourge blood on his over-sized cleaving machine but with me wanting my Jewelcrafting at the level you can talk to the trainers in Warsong and that Undead place in Howling Fjord whose name escapes me is holding me back.

When I'm 80 and maxed out with Jewelcrafting, I'll be really glad I stuck with it, even if I want to go "fuck it, Jeff, let's go pwn" to which he'll just reply "Why dont you fight your own battles?" or something sarcastic in that deep, demon-ie voice of is.

Thinking "out-loud" is the way to go.

2010-06-12T22:28:00.005+01:00

I used to have a theory about pugging. I imagined it a little like those examples you got given in High School about probability, with the bag of different colour things but instead of the bag, it's a server and instead of colour things, there's the people you can find in a pug.

I thought that the bigger the server, the more chance of finding a terrible pugs were. As there was more people to "pick" but after moving to Darkmoon Faire this isn't true. It's the same probability in both servers. I never was any good at maths.

However, this little, admittible pretty shit theory, doesn't really fit Argent Dawn. For some reason, I haven't had a bad pug on there for months. I'm not even kidding, killing 7+ bosses everytime I'm going in on 10 man and up to 5-6 bosses on 25 man. This is both Horde and Alliance side.

Darkmoon Faire however, hasn't yielded a good pug since the one I led which did 8/12 in ICC and that was back when the buff was only at 15%. This is quite sad actually because the motivation required for me to put a group together, empty that metaphorical bag onto the metaphorical table and seperate the noobs from the not-so-noobs is a lot and quite frankly, with my alliegence firmly in Argent Dawn, Darkmoon Faire has completely taken a back seat and I'm truely not enjoying my characters on there anymore. Jath gets logged in to do his daily transmute, Nads gets log in to queue for a random, get bored about 10 minutes before logging back to Argent Dawn.

I keep thinking, what keeps drawing me back? I mean, I have a tonne of characters on there so that's definitly a plus, right? But then again, I have two lvl 80 toons on Darkmoon Faire, one which needs gearing. I then started thinking along the lines of guilds? Nope, both are fantastic. The general level of guild chat is good, many jokes flying around, little stories, sometimes some srs biznizz but always fun, even if Absolution is much more active during the day.

I have to say, it's the pugs that are actually swinging it. I really have started to like it, especially as I keep 2 characters unsaved for guild runs (Horde, working on Lich King and Alliance, starting heroics and getting me Kingslayer) but the rest I pug. More than often with guildies which usually involves myself and a few good friends getting on Mumble (srsly, better than Vent by a country mile), having a cracking laugh and it's a little bit like a surrogate raid. Plus, there's always people willing to log on and chat while I'm playing pug-roulette, which is always a plus.

Quite funny really, I'm sure if I took a gander through my previous posts, I'd find many of them bitching about how annoying a PuG was. Oh well, times change. It's either that, or I'm getting stupidly lucky and that luck is about to run out. Let's not hope for that, eh?

Gear score is about as useful as Anne Franks' drumkit...

2010-06-10T13:53:00.002+01:00

(If I offended anyone by the title of this post. Harden the fuck up)

I do believe it is my turn to rant about gear score having in the past two days had two annoying experiences with it on Argent Dawn and Darkmoon Faire (which seems impossible to find a good pug on, much to my annoyance...)

Case 1 - ICC25 PuG.

The person putting it together instructed everyone to come to the centre of Dalaran, near the pretty fountain so that he could check the people who didn't have a GS addon. The raid filled up nicely and there was about 8-9 members from Absolution there.

We steam-roll through Trash and pull Marrowgar. I was healing and I'm not even kidding, it felt like an age before he was dead. So bad was the majority of the dps (the people from Absolution, even though we had 2 members who'd never been to ICC25 and out of that 2, 1 had never set foot in ICC where all pulling 6k +) that our tank healer died from being bone spiked. I had to take over tank healing, something I dont like doing because if a tank drops to 10% health I tend to scream like a girl and nearly have a heart attack (I know, I'm a freakin' AWESOME healer...)

Marrowgar eventually dies and the wonderful Axe drops! One of our guildies is squeeee'ing with joy. It's a fantastic axe. However, someone I'm going to refer to as Cleopatra's Love Child rolls a 98 and wins it. Said Cleo's LC was pulling, wait for it, 3.2k dps on the fight. His rotation was terrible, checking his gear, he was gemming for AP and Stamina. I don't claim to be a master of the Deathknight class but I could even tell he was actually a complete retard. The reason he got in the raid? 5.8k gearscore due to wearing tank gear with an ilvl264. Cleo's Love Child also won a token from Saurfang. Sometimes, people dont deserve loot. Thanks a fucking lot, gear score.

Case 2 - Attempting to find an ICC10 pug.

I love playing my hunter but recently, I've been raiding more and more on Argent Dawn. It's been great fun but it's come at the cost of limited time raiding on Jath, because he's on a different server. This wouldn't be a problem, I could pug happily but Darkmoon Faire seems to have the population of Chenobyl, it's kinda getting me down really as Jath is really, really fun to play. The same could be said about my Deathknight too, who I've neglected gearing because of the fun being had on Argent Dawn. Anyways, I finally find someone trying to put a group together and get invited.

"GS?" the leader asks.
"I dont have the addon, I could come for a gear check." I reply.
"Sorry, no GS addon means noob" he says, then kicks me.

Well done, you lost yourself an 8k hunter. You absolute prick. Thanks a fucking lot gear score.

In which Jakk likes Pugging...

2010-06-06T12:19:00.002+01:00

The past few months at Uni have really made me appreciate a good pug.

I can rarely raid when my guilds do, which sucks. The main thing I miss when pugging is, for want of a better word, banter. I can sit on Mumble (which is a fantastic alternative to Ventrilo, equiped with Microsoft Sally all for about £7 less...) and moan about the puggers. The Toms, Dicks and Harrys to anyone on it but it's not the same.

However, I've really started to enjoy pugging. I tend to have a good nose for them - or they have for me if you want to think about it that way. I'm nicely geared on all my 80's apart from my DK who I still think could hold her own in the first wing of ICC10. I can stick my music on really loud and get into the boss fights.

I've been extremely luck to have found a few "all guild" pugs and been called back to help if they were short of another dps/healer. This has happened about 3 times and I've been asked if I wanted to help another 5 times. It's been great fun as I get to see how other guilds handle boss fights and stuff.

On the other hand, you can get some really shit pugs. We all know this and that's the reason people truely dont like them. Personality classes, carrying people so far into a raid that you actually get back-ache IRL. You know the drill. I've had pugs where the person with the highest gear score thought he was amazing but only did 3.2k dps on Festergut. My idea with gear score is that it's bascially hand cream for e-peen stroking and this guy was applying it generously due to the fact to boost his magical GS he'd been using 3 peices of tank look with iLvl 264 instead of dps gear. What a prick.

These bad experiences have actually encouraged me to form my own groups, which is actually very enjoyable. I dont really like bossing people around, I'm mainly there to steer them in the right direction and re-cap tactics. I explain how it's going to be done and it just does, I like to think of myself as a decent raid leader and not one of those "OMFG NOT DOING 9K /KICK"

I just hope that I keep getting decent pugs. Going to ICC and not doing Festergut and Rotface (especially with the introduction of the 20% buff) now-a-days leaves me feel a little cheated.

I want your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle.

2010-05-24T22:55:00.002+01:00

Getting hacked isn't a very nice experience. Getting hacked after failing an Exam? Fucking terrible experience.

I come back from pretty much failing, attempt to log on but first, decide to check Facebook. Some friends had been trying in vain to get a hold of me. I'd been hacked. After running a scan, I found nothing on there. Scanned again using different stuff, nothing. I changed the password, stuff like that. Got on.

Everything was naked. All gear had been sold, the stuff that couldn't be sold was in my bank, my bags had been sold. Absolute bastards. They'd also nicely grabbed a fucking tonne of stuff from 3 of the guilds my characters are in. Which makes me feel like a right wanker (thankfully, 2/3 have gotten the stuff back so far).

I got my gear, gold and badges pretty quickly on Argent Dawn but I'm still waiting on stuff on my characters on Darkmoon Faire. I'm also ordering an Authenticator.

There isn't a point to this post. People that do this are complete pricks. It's stealing, granted, it's not exactly something material but the amount of time I spent on my characters made looking at them in ruin made me a little bit sick. Infact, it's completely drained my will to play - atleast until I get an Authenticator. I'd highly suggest anyone that actually reads this blog (yeah, I know - lol!) and doesn't have an authenticator gets one. It's quite brutal getting hacked. Fucking wankers.

In other, more light hearted news, with the end of exams comes more time for blogging! Expect an RP post up pretty soon, I mean, I know people are 'dying' (once again, LOL - yeah right) to find out how the Battle for Warsong Gulch goes. I've also got a few thoughts on Heroic ICC10 (which was really, really fun but at the same time, kinda hard) and just my general pugging from the past month or so. It'll be good to get back but it'll be better once all my stuff has been restored.

Sorry to anyone affected by it - Members of Absolution, Enthusiasm and those awesome folk at SAN. Sorry <3

Good News Everyone (Rogue-out GONE!)

2010-05-07T14:52:00.004+01:00

Last night was a good night. Absolution downed Putricide after a Tuesday night raid which didn't even see us get him into the third phase. However, last night, with a few tweaks to the line up things were going well. It took a few tries to get everyone woken up but after that, things were going well. Really, really well. We were hitting Phase 2 after the first green slime went down. Raid damage was minimalised to hell and everyone's dps was brilliant.

However, 3 times in a row we got (as our hunter for the evening so 'elegantly' put it) the definintion of a kick in the balls. Wipes on 4%, 3% and 0.9%. This guy is one tough cookie. He's the equivalent of putting a Maryland cookie in a freezer.

After out 10 minute break, we came back and killed him. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't stylish and as far as kills go it was like a drunken brawl outside a club, were both parties get fucked up but one less so. Our tanks were the only one's left alive - one of them had 256hp when he was killed. This time it was Putricide who got his scrotum introduced to our raids trainers.

So this first part, is basically just a big shout out to the guys at Absolution. Thanks for the fun, thanks for the positive attitudes and thanks for the banter on Mumble. For the first time in a long while I've enjoyed playing my rogue. I've missed it a lot <3

The Battle for Warsong Gulch, pt 1

2010-05-04T18:02:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I posted the next part of my RP thingy. I've been really busy with work and not really had to motivation to proof read and make it into parts. Enjoy!

The line was spread thin. Everyone there know this but they had the advantage of the higher ground, if you could call the slight slope leading to the Horde armies line. Nalria and Jakkru were stood together the middle, 4 men from the Horde Lieutenant, the Horde Standard flying behind him. Juljin was on the left flank, it was spread very thin but then again, so was everywhere else. Kranan was on the right, in the very front of the line he seemed to be the only one without a shield. They’d been there for around an hour, many warriors had taken their helmets and shoulder guards off and were sat on the grass. They’d been waiting for the arrival of the Alliance and for the past 10 minutes the Humans and their allies had slowly formed ranks, under numerous banners about 400 yards in front of them.

“They know we’ve got the high ground! They want us to attack them!” the Lieutenant was bellowing, cheers came at the sound of attack but he wasn’t finished yet. “But we will not!” Silence fell around him. ‘Pretty smart for an Orc’ Jakkru thought to himself. “We will let them come to us! We will kill them where WE stand. For the glory of battle, for the warchief, FOR THE HORDE!” he screamed. The sound that followed was deafening to Nalria but she could still hear her own heart beating. She was terrified but wouldn’t let anyone see it. She joined in, screaming until her lungs hurt. Bashing her sword against her shield to add to the sound.
The sound brought memories flooding back to Juljin, he breathed in the air deeply and reached into his belt-pack, picking out a fresh string for his bow, which he quickly restrung. He looked at the sky, the conditions were good. Rain could destroy their chances of victory, their main advantage other than the ground they held was their bows and as he had quickly scanned the Alliance ranks he could see their archers and gunmen were few.

Kranan was first to see the drums moving forward, huge even in comparison of the giant Tauren which carried them, they walked slowly and the line parted, leaving a huge gap for them to get through. The three Tauren bellowed and this incited the Horde even more. The sound was deafening as the drums sounded out. With the sound, men round out but not to attack. They taunted the Alliance, rude gestures flew back and forth between the two sides as if it were a battle a Hunter ran from the line and let loose an arrow which fell short. The Alliance jeered to which the hunter replied by running further forward and loosing another arrow. This one landed true and a dwarf fell from the line, clutching at his throat.
The Lieutenant had saw the dwarf fall and the screams of anger from the alliance could be heard, they’d been slowly advancing to what they thought was a safe range. “HUNTERS!” he bellowed, “FORWARD AND LOOSE!”

Juljin turned to Dehyo, “Stay ee-ah” he said as he ran forward, drawing his bow. He aimed into a group of soilders without shields and let fly. Loosing 2 more arrows before the first had landed. He saw men fall as arrows thudded through their weak leather armour. “LOOSE!” came the cry from the Orc he’d first met at the camp. “COME ON YOU MOTHERLESS DOGS!” he screamed, but this time at the Alliance troops. The screams of men being hit could be heard. The Alliance had made their first mistake and would either have to retreat back or attack.

“Steady yourselfs.” The Lieutenant yelled around him. “Stand strong! FOR THE HORDE!” again, the warriors around him were whipped into a frenzy, screaming at every Alliance solider that fell, yelling with joy at the bloodshed. “The FOOLS!” the Lieutenant cried again. Just as he’d said this, a cry came from the Alliance and their soliders started to charge. The Lieutenant smiled to himself and 4 men away, Jakkru was grinning too. “HOLD STEADY! FOR THE HORDE!” more shouts heard as Nalria pulled the visor of her helmet down to protect her face.

Juljin noticed the line break and let loose a final arrow, not even checking to see if it landed he turned and ran. He saw others following and others standing, one Hunter had drew a giant axe and was charging at the wall of Alliance by himself. Juljin made it back to the line and ducked through a gap which the warriors had made. He could see over the top of the Orc infront of him and could see Hunters running back still. “HOLD!” he heard someone shout. The Alliance were closing in, this was it. He drew his bow again and let loose, aiming at groups and men in weaker armours. They were close now, 20 meters, they’d started to slow, the slope was taking it’s toll on their legs, 10 meters, 5 meters. The sound of the shield on shield was deafening, followed by the screams of the men who’s been stuck with swords would break the hardest of men but Juljin continued to shoot behind the line, as the warriors but 5 meters infront of him hacked and slashed, blocked and parried attacks. An orc fell, blood spurting from his neck but another took his place in the line. In the distance, drums sounded again.

Kranan moved out of the way as the Tauren carrying the drums moved as fast as they could to the back of the line. He whispered some words to the spirits, asking for protection and their fury. He could see the faces of the men charging him already and picked a dwarf. “EARTHERN SPIRITS, I COMMAND YOUR FURY!” he bellowed, and the dwarf flew backwards, knocking two men behind him over, blood poured from his face. The men were closing now. Kranan swung his mace, connecting with an unfortunate human, who was flung to the left as Kranan kicked the spikes free from the man’s side, blood poured everywhere and the scream was deafening. He swung again, as if they mace weighed nothing in his hands, connecting once again with someone. Kicking the weapon out again he parried an attack with the shaft of the axe, before ramming it into the attackers face. He turned to see the warrior next to him headbutting a screaming Human because he’d lost his axe. Men screamed all around but their line was holding.

Conqueror of Chilled Things

2010-05-02T17:44:00.005+01:00

After many months of praying, the weekly was finally Malygos! Why Malygos? Because he's the last boss I need to be a Champion of all things Frozen.

I thought it would be fantastic, everyone would be looking for people to do it, just like they do when it's any other weekly. Yeah, get fucking real Jakk...

I spent 4 days looking for a group. I missed out on the guild run because of a conflict in my schedule (that's right, schedule!) so I was left with the only other option - pugging Malygos.

I really dont see what all the fuss is about. I really dont. I'm not trying to get my wowcock out or anything, I'm not calling people who find Malygos difficult noobs or anything, this is just my opinion - I dont find Malygos hard. Infact, I find him one of the most fun bosses in the game. Phase 1 and 2? Yeah, they're good, something for everyone - you've got your tank and spank/dps your heart out. You've got your adds phase, with different jobs for melee and ranged and you've got your not standing in the (arcane) fire™ but it's Phase 3 which throws people and this is the part I dont understand. Infact, it's one of the easier of the vechile fights in the game, this is just my opinion, once again, not trying to helicopter the wowpeen or call anyone retarded or anything. I'm also not intending to offend smokers, either. (Just covering my tracks, dont want to offend anyone...)

I mean, you group up. Every 10 or so seconds, you all move to the left or right. DPS and the tank press 1 until X combo points, then press 2. If the big, obvious, yellow /rw pops up that Malygos is staring you out, you press 5. The healers, instead of doing damage, heal and the same counts for it Malygos is starting to get rowdy. You do that for the last 1.8 or so million HP and Bobs your aunties uncle or something along them lines.

So anyways, after deciding that looking for a pug wasn't really getting me anywhere I decided on forming my own and we downed him after 1 wipe. I was a happy bunny, 9 others were happy bunnies and 1 of those 9 was very happy because he got himself a nice looking shield for his RP set. I even got a few /w's informing me of peoples happiness and thanks for leading the group, which is actually a first and I've lead a few pugs in my time...

Anyways, without further-a-do, I introduce to you...

All work and no play makes Jakk a dull boy

2010-04-27T19:09:00.005+01:00

Deadlines fuck with WoW, which fucks with WoW-related matters, which fuck with blogging. Jakkru is a sad panda, look here's a sad face - :'(

However, things are looking up, after around 7 Uni deadlines in the past two weeks, I finally only have 1 more to do! Which'll mean I get to play WoW more often! Yay!

I've not had much drive to blog mainly because I've been stuck behind my laptop almost everyday, trying to make things that really didn't make any sense at the time, y'know, make sense. It kinda sucks really, I'd have liked to get more of my RP posts up but I really haven't found the motivation to proof read them... I have been reading blogs though, anything that keeps me a little bit in the Warcraft loop or as many of the blogs do, give me a much needed laugh when I'm so very lost in a book talking about Economics I'd consider papercutting myself to death...

However, as well as reading blogs when I've had the chance, I've been thinking about things WoW orientated - mainly about how much I want to level my little Night Elf rogue over on Darkmoon Faire. I mean, yeah, I have a rogue already but he's Undead, I could roll a blood elf or troll (not an Orc, no no no. Orc rogue? Fuck that!) and wouldn't have as much fun - Why? Easy. It's NEW.

I've never, ever, ever levelled from 1 onwards as Alliance. Sure, I've levelled from 72-80 but it's not very different. Yeah, Wrathgate is fucking terrible as the Alliance but you're in Northrend and from 76-80 you're pretty much questing in Neutral zones.

Tenan (that's the name of my nelf, y'see), the lanky bugger that he is, is currently running around Westfall. It's very yellow and many people want to use me as an oportunity to try out their freshly sharpened blades...Not the thrilling stuff you see in The Bourne films, no, but still, it's rather fun and has a nice sense of scale, stuff is big. Not Barrens bit but...it's big to my little rogue. Took me an Hour to find poor Old Blanchy some feckin' oats! Bitch was starvin' by the time I got back, almost kicked me in the face!

This isn't going to stop me pwning faces Horde side though. I've been missing my shaman a lot. Healing is fun and with his Offspecc freshly changed to Enhancement, I have entirely new set of gear to collect, specc to get used to and rotation to get annoyed with, then ultimatley be able to do in my sleep.

The Camp

2010-04-18T20:11:00.002+01:00

They left Orgrimmar at first light with around 20 others. Some of them fresh recruits to the Orgrimmar Guard, others seasoned warriors and hunters. There was a small group of Shadowstalkers, which as Jakkru had found out during their march, had been sent from Undercity as a sign of faith by Sylvanus Windrunner. It didn’t take too long to get there, arriving sometime after noon. The sight that greeted them took Nalria by surprise, huge numbers of Horde soliders were camped around 100 meters from a small hill, behind it was an area rich in forest and mineral deposits, huge mines could be opened, lumbermills built and, even though the four of them had no idea what or where this mysterious “Outlands” was, victory here was the first step in the Horde making a footing there. The place was dubbed Warsong Gulch.

The camp was protected by huge pikes dug into the ground and although they’d been hastily put up were sturdy, rows of tents had been put up and even then, people still slept outside. Fires burnt and the soldiers there seemed in good enough spirits. A small yet broad Orc met them, “Is this all they could send?!” he said, looking at the Captain that had brought them. “Yes sir.” Came the reply. The Orc in charge sighed, “We’re still outnumbered.” He said. “Warriors, you report to me. Hunters, tent at the far West end of the camp, anyone else, to the Tauren in the central tent.” People moved, Juljin nodded at Nalria before setting off across the camp, Dehyo faithfully following him. The Captain turned to his superior, “Sir, the Undercity has sent some of it’s Shadowstalkers.” He said, “Ah good!” the captain replied, “They can report to me also.” Jakkru, who was about to follow Kranan stopped. “Go on, I’m gonna stay here.” He told the shaman, who nodded before setting off towards the centre of the camp.

Juljin arrived at the far tent, it was pretty obvious it was the right place, due to the number of Big cats, wolves, Raptors and Birds that were in the makeshift stable area to the left. An Orc burst from the flap in the tent as Juljin approached. “For the gods sake!” he bellowed, a troll and Tauren followed him out “We’re spread too damned thin already and he wants us to re-inforce the left flank MORE?!” the Orc, noticing Juljin stood there, looked at him, before snapping “What do you want?” “I wa’ told to repor’ ‘e-ah” the Orc saw the bow strapped to his back. “Ah, well. Find somewhere to set up a rack. Get some food. Nothing is happening now, we don’t expect the Alliance to show up until tomorrow.” The troll nodded, “A’reet,” he hesitated for a second, finally asking, “ ‘ow many huntahs we got?” “No were near enough,” came the reply, “Around 100.” Juljin nodded before walking away. The Orc turned to his companions and continued to complain while Juljin attempted to find somewhere among the hundreds of fellow hunters to sit. The camp was far bigger than first he’d first thought but from everyone’s reaction so far, the Alliance army was going to be huge.

Kranan found the tent with relative ease. Priests were outside, tending to the sick. A Troll, who’d come from many miles away was having his feet looked at by another troll, who was muttering strange words under his breath while moving his hands over the trolls feet, the pained expression on the trolls face disappeared and the cuts on his feet slowly began to shrink. Kranan was amazed, he could stop bleeding, reduce swelling and momentarily increase the protection from armour but he’d never really been all too interested in that, he much preferred swinging his mace and getting in the thick of it. He was greeted by a female Tauren, who told him that he should get some rest and help out anywhere he could. He nodded before setting off through the camp, he too thought the camp was larger than it looked. People were packed in and the small number of tents had made it look much smaller. He walked around for a bit, a group of warlocks and mages were arguing while sat round a table, a small number of trolls were drunk, singing something in their strange language, many were sleeping or talking and a few were writing letters.

“You can forget them poncy magic users, or them lot that use bows and hide behind their bloody pets.” He small, broad Orc said. Nalria felt a small pang of anger, was he calling Juljin a coward? It quickly passed as he continued to pace infront of them. “We’ll be the ones winning this battle. Scouts have reported that those Alliance dogs will be here tomorrow. Yes, they outnumber us but we will beat them. For they have no pride and no honour!” The warriors grunted in approval. “Get some rest! Sharpen you blades and eat well brothers and sisters.” The orc said. Before turning on his heel and marching back to his tent. “Well, that was inspiring...” Jakkru said sarcastically to Nalria. He’d seen she hadn’t grunted with the rest of them and wasn’t surprised, she didn’t seem as stupid as most warriors he’d met before. Nalria didn’t respond but instead asked “How are you going to be any use in the line?” “I’m not,” the rogue replied, grinning. “But when the line breaks, I’m very useful.” Nalria couldn’t deny it, she knew that most lines broke and it just became a mess of melee and the rogue had a point, it would be were he would be most useful. “I’m going to find Juljin,” she said to him. He nodded and she wandered off through the camp. The only thing she’d be doing tonight was sharpening her sword, she had no idea how anyone could rest or eat before a battle...

Sods law, innit!

2010-04-16T16:48:00.002+01:00

After my last post, I jumped at the chance of two healing ToC10. I still need the bloody shield from BigDeadBug so I crossed my fingers, said "Hi" to my paladin healer for the run and Earth Shielded a tank.

Now, I dont see myself as a bad healer. People dont usually die when I heal, if they're doing the right thing and only taking damage that is unavoidable, I can usually see them through. However, myself and the randompaladin I was grouped with could have been Jesus Christ, Dougie Houzer or Greg House for this run and we still couldn't have kept the dps alive.

2 healing things works because the raid only takes unavoidable damage but not this one. This little HMS Failboat took the Raiding 101 handbook and wiped their arses with it. We had it all, Standing in the Fire™ DPSing infront of the boss, which shoots fire, slime and some very harsh fucking language at everyone infront of it and finally, not moving out of the way of the HUGE YETI charging at you with the same look a Woodsman gives the first female he sees after being in the wild for 15 years, with a chastity belt on which he's just been given the key too. Fucking sods law.

I gave up after bashing my head against the Faction Champ shaped Wall for about an hour - a lot longer than I usually would but I really want that shield. I said my goodbyes, was very polite about it and left. Just before I did, one of the DPS (a paladin - would you believe it!) said "lol, noob." Usually, I'd have told him/her that they were infact, no better at playing this game than my Grandmother is at remember how to record something on Sky+ but my phone started to ring and instead, I logged out and answered.

Y'see, there's a risk of 2 healing PuG raids, infact the risk is apparent in anything that you do as a healer - if it goes wrong, it's very easy to blame the healers. When two healing, no one mentions the lack of the 3rd healer which makes everything more comfortable but instead, just see 2 healers which are working their arses off and seem to not be able to pull it off.

Many people before me have talked about how Tanks/Healers/DPS all need to be pulling their weight or it makes someone elses job harder. Tanks keep mobs on them, making healing easier for the healers and leave the DPS to do their jobs without the fear of a mob turning round and making them into their prison bitch. Healers keep people alive, which is simple. If they dont do their job, the raid doesn't work (which is the reason why healers can be so easily blamed) and dps need to be pulling decent numbers, so that the tanks dont take so much damage that the healers run out of mana (which isn't the case in Lich King really but back in the day, it definintly was) and the tank dies. The dps and tanks also need to avoid taking un-necessary damage, so that the healers mana isn't wasted.

A guy in on my guild forums has his forum Signature as "I heal damage, not laziness." and this is so very true. In this pug I was in, the dps were making mine and the paladin's job HARD. Try keeping ranged alive who've been hit with Burning Bile while attempting to keep a melee alive who cannot run about a yard forward to get the hell out of the fire™ on the floor. I decided the heal those taking the NECESSARY damage and let the melee die. Plus, he/she was a prick and it made my decision a lot easier.

Three's a crowd

2010-04-12T13:10:00.002+01:00

When on my shaman, I normally pug raids. I might tempt a few unsaved guild members into some of them but usually, I go down the Pugging Path. Now, the usual raid set up for PuGs is this - 2 tanks, 3 healers, rest dps. But not yesterday! Yesterday, I two healed ICC10 man in a pug and had the most fun I've had healing since doing ToC10 with undergeared tanks and with only two healers. Both tanks I knew and I knew the healer, making me trust their abilities.

So why, if it's possible, do pugs usually run with three healers? It's pretty simple, it makes it so much easier. Usually, the healers dont know each other, the raid leader doesn't know the healers and therefore, you bring 3 to be on the safe side. On easier fights one might go into their dps offspecc but for the majority of it, the tank healer (usually a paladin or a priest) will be doing most of the work and the other two will be fighting for raid heals.

However, yesterday was different. I'd been recommended to the raid leader by one of the members who I'd pugged with in the past. I got invited, asked who my fellow healers were and the answer I got from our Boomkin Raid Leader was; "Our paladin and I'll go into Resto for Dreamwalker." "Fun!" I replied, but on the other side of the screen, I secretly went "Uh-oh." I'd never two man healed ICC, so I really didn't know what to expect.

Trash wasn't too hard, our paladin was very good and knew what he/she was doing. I was firing Chain Heals into the melee when them mobs that go "BOOM!" went, y'know, "BOOM!" We got to Marrowgar and it was all nice and smily until the paladin gets bone spiked. This is were it got fun, they'd been spiked running back into position and weren't hugging the melee, it took about 7 seconds for them to be freed. In those 7 seconds, I had fun, like, proper fun, seat of yer pants fun, omfg I dont have anyone else to rely on kinda fun. That kinda fun. I had to switch between healing the paladin and the tanks, Grid was going mental, health dropping up and down, I'd blown Cooldowns and stuff and after what seemed like an age but was in fact about three casts and a Riptide, I was back to Chain Healing stuff in the face. 3 healers might be SAFE but 2 healers is more FUN.

The rest of the first wing went nicely, I found myself prioritising more and more, an unfortunate rogue died because it was either I cast Riptide on myself, or him. If there was another healer, he probably wouldn't have died but I didn't mind and neither did he - "It happens," he said after we'd killed Deathwhisper after the second set of adds. That was the other thing, with one less healer, we had one more dps and with the 10% buff and people knowing what to do, we were ripping through at a terrifying pace.

Now, after doing fuck all on Saurfang other than Riptiding about 4 times and doing some restomental dps we moved into Plague and bloody hell, Festergut with two healers is pant shittingly scary stuff but still, it was harder, it was more fun and it was faster. We got him down with almost 2 minutes left until Enrage and then went and one shot Rotface, who, as everything else was harder with 2 healers, especially when the Mutated thing really did like our Paladin healer who I had to keep alive, while healing anyone who took raid damage, the main tank and the tank that was kiting, it was fast and frantic, but I found myself liking it more and more.

Our Leader went into tree form for Dreamwalker, which was a fun fight, even if I was only healing the raid and never got to use those portals which I still have no fucking idea what they do but the times when I was on my own, healing two tanks and the raid while they were doing something or other in a green portal, were fun. It was down to me to keep everything alive, if a tank died it was either because he got naked or because I'd failed and the pressure was definintly a rush. It took a few goes, mainly because I messed up monumentally the first time and our paladin disconnected mid fight the second but we got her do- I mean, healed her up.

I can definintly see myself 2 healing more stuff in the future, especially ICC, with this buff, you really dont need three healers anymore, take a DPS with offspecc gear and kill stuff faster. It'll make it more fun for everyone, especially those people standing at the the back, sometimes in sissy robes, keeping your sorry arses alive.

Apparently, we've been drafted...

2010-04-08T00:32:00.001+01:00

The Orc was short yet broad; he was stood in a captain’s jerkin, the Horde emblem shining in the middle. He looked at the four before saying, “You’ve been drafted.” Jakkru looked at him with a look of distinct confusion. Juljin looked at Nalria and she looked back. “What?” Kranan finally spoke out. “You’ve been drafted,” the Orc repeated. “We’ve been recruiting anyone who came to gather rewards for anything that was considered Dangerous.” Jakkru snorted and it was the shamans turn to look confused. “Listen, we’ve not had the usual numbers recently. People are running off to Outlands, others are making a push in the Northern Lands and others are just avoiding it, if we want to get further into the Outlands and other places, we need the resources this area controls.” The Orc said, moving towards the table in the centre of the room, Nalria and Juljin followed him, Kranan looked at the map on the table, the Orc was pointing at Warsong Gulch. Jakkru stood still, it wasn’t his fight he told himself but he knew Kranan had already made his mind up about going. “Bloody Tauren”, he thought to himself,” honourable buggers the lot of ‘em...”

Nalria and Juljin had accepted their draft papers quickly, Nalria was always keen to do military service, to follow in her fathers footsteps and Juljin was keen to relive the old days and to keep Nalria safe. Kranan had taken his too as Jakkru had snatched his reluctantly when told it was either the dungeons or 1000 gold to get out of it. The upside, they all thought was the new armour and weapons they would get, free of charge. With that thought, they headed across the city towards the Blacksmith.

As they entered the small shop, it looked empty, Jakkru considered checking for money behind the counter for a second when a shout came from the back, “Make sure you don’t let it go out this time, you usless oafs!” it sounded female and almost regal, the rogue cocked his head and looked at the door as a petite blood elf walked into the room backwards, still yelling outside, she was wiping her small hands on a cloth as she turned to greet them, “Greetings!” she said, beaming at them. She was pretty, even under the soot that covered her face, “You lot been sent by that gloomy Orc?” she said, looking at the four of them, grinning at Kranan, who had to hunch over in the small room, he looked very awkward. “Aye,” Juljin answered, he too had been surprised by how pretty the little elf was that stood before him, blacksmiths and armourers weren’t the easiest on his eye, or so he’d found in his experience and this one really looked out of place. “Come through,” she said, her green eyes glowing brightly as she motioned them through to the back.

The back of the shop contained the forge, anvil and all the tools needed to craft armour. It even had a section where hides were currently being cured. Two Forsaken were tending to the forge while a very large Orc was wielding a skinning knife which looked like a toothpick in comparison to his hands. He carefully cut into hides before disappearing into a shed like building. “You first,” the young blood elf said, pointing to Nalria, “I’m guessing from the look of you, you pretty much need everything?” “Well, it might not look like much but it gets the job done...” she replied, her voice steeped in defence for her armour, it was mixed with a tiny amount of jealously.

Nalria was quickly sorted, her rusted battleworn armour replaced with new, well made platemail. It was as if any part of it could be used as a weapon, she had thought as the Elf, who she’d learnt was called Thrina had picked it from the rack of completed sets. The helm had two semi-circular blades on the top, and two very small but sharp spikes on the ridge which would cover her forehead. The shoulderguards had sharped spikes in them and her gauntlets had the same spikes, which as Thrina had demonstrated were perfect for catching a blade in. Her new shield was good and heavy, a good heavy was vital, in Nalria’s opinion. It could stop arrows with ease and would be used as an excellent heavy weapon. The ‘smith must have shared her sentiments as more deadly spikes were attached to the shield, as well as a curved sharp peice of iron which was at the bottom. Her weapon was a sword, which was short and sharp, perfect to stab and hack with while not having to leave the safety of her shield.

Juljin had been thrown two axes, after refusing to use a sword. He preferred axes, axes could be thrown and if he got into a melee fight, he much preferred using his speed to get behind people and chop at them, instead of having to waste valuable time to get a distance enough to stab someone. Thrina had also insisted on him having a mail jerkin that fitted his shoulders and broad chest, as his other was, as she put it “really restricting your movement,” with an added “and it doesn’t look that good either.” The last part was said with a grin. His bow had past her test and even got a compliment on how strong it was, despite the obvious wear and tear. The troll had definitely underestimated the little elf, she knew her stuff, as was evident with her picking of Nalria’s armour and weapons, with the Orc admiring her platemail and weapon while Thrina was tending to everyone else.

Kranan had been given a new mace, he’d muttered a few words when first picking it up and it seemed to become as light as the air itself. He swung and twirled it around and seemed happy, the elf grinned at him and passed him some armour to replace his, she’d noted that the stuff he was wearing was well made and he seemed to keep quiet about where he’d acquired it.

Jakkru’s armour needed as much attention as Nalria had, both their armour had been old and almost useless. He’d been kitted out in leather, which the Orc had been making, his huge hands holding up different boots, gauntlets and jerkins. Belts were added and modifications made by the rogue himself who’s skill with a blade didn’t just end with death, he made sheaths and attatched them to the waistguards, leggings and shoulder pads he was given, adding daggers to them once Thrina had made them. It was getting dark and the others had drifted off into a sleep but Thrina and Jakkru continued to work. She’d given him two swords, short and light, as well as a collection of daggers. He was getting his worth, if was to be roped into a battle, he was going to get as much out of it as possible. They finally finished and Thrina yawned, stretched and went back into her little shop.

Jakkru looked around, the others sleeping, the blacksmiths yard only illuminated by the now smouldering embers of the forge which was being let die after it’s hard days work. For now, it was peaceful and Jakkru sat with his back to the wall but tomorrow, tomorrow would most definitely not. With that thought, he reached into his pack and pulled out the carving from that morning, stroking it before finally drifting into an uneasy sleep.

Server Transfers: How NOT to do it.

2010-04-05T12:04:00.002+01:00

Juljin recently became a dorf (whos beard is FAR superior to yours, no matter how many plaits you have, how good your moustache looks or how "fabulous" your hair is). He also switched servers, something I've never done before so as you may be able to tell, my server transfer was full of schoolboy errors.

1. Before you transfer, check the technical support forums - if there's complaints about characters taking days to become playable again leave it for a few days longer. You can spend some time getting your character prepared for their move.
2. Money, dont transfer with 19s 38c like I did. It just gets annoying, get on yer bank alt and take a few thousand over with you.
3. Repair before you go! Especially if you're transfering with only 19s 38c...
4. If you've made stuff for the character you're going to be moving (in my case, this was 20,000 arrows) make sure you actually send them to the character before you move them. My rogue is not gonna run outta ammo for his stupid stat-bow anytime soon but little beardy is running low!
5. Be a little patient, although if you're like me, this wont happen and you'll want it to happen like NOW!

Also, for those of you considering a faction transfer, remember you're hearthstone sets to the capital city of the faction you choose - it explains why I was like "what the fuck" everytime I hearthed and was stood in Ironforge with a very confused look on poor beardy's face...

The Flight to Orgrimmar

2010-04-02T21:47:00.004+01:00

The four wyverns stood there, their saddles large, with two huge handles on the front. They didn’t require reins; they knew exactly where they were going. Straps for a passengers legs hung from their side as well as a thin, extremely strong piece of rope designed to keep the passenger from plummeting to their death if they slipped off during a “bumpier” ride. Or so Grok had told them, to Kranan, a peice of rope wasn’t going to the job. His wyvern was bigger, Grok had shouted to his young apprentice to get the “Big bastard out,” while winking at Kranan. Jakkru had jumped on his wyvern already and was getting his legs strapped in correctly by the apprentice. Kranan shot a glance at Nalria and Juljin, who were making their way to their Wyverns. The shaman walked slowly to his and petted it on the head. He climbed slowly into the saddle before Grok tied his legs in. “Spirits Protect me.” He said out loud.

Nalria noticed the shamans discomfort and turned to Juljin as he climbed on, they exchanged a grin and waited as the apprentice and Grok strapped them in. “All set?” the flabby Orc asked, with a huge grin on his face. He was enjoying the Taurens discomfort. It must have been a rhetorical question because he bellowed “Fly!” and the Wyvern took off.

Kranan let out a cry as the large, muscular legs of his mount launched him into the air. Its huge wings beating at the air, powering it up further and further. His stomach lurged with every beat and he found himself closing his eyes. He could hear, over the beating of the wings and the rushing of the wind Jakkru howling in enjoyment as well as Nalria laughing. He screwed his eyes up again and gripped the handles on the saddle until his knuckles hurt.

Juljin hated the take off, his stomach had lurched and he heard the shaman cry out, if he could have, he would have laughed. He could hear the playful laughter of Nalria and the shouts of the rogue. He stared upwards, checking their height. It seemed like an age before the wyverns hovered in the air, he glanced a look down, not afraid of heights. They were hovering hundreds of meters above the town they had been in not even a minute ago.

Jakkru looked to his left and right as the Wyvern hovered above the town. He saw a huge smile on Nalria’s face and he almost grinned back. Turning in Kranan’s direction, he grinned, the shaman hated flying. The hunter was looking down at the town and Jakkru did the same. His Wyvern let out a large cry and surged forward with a beat of its wings. He turned his head to see the others falling into a V formation behind him. The one beat of the wings had carried his Wyvern forward and it was gliding through the air. He loved flying, maybe because it was the closest he got to being “alive” if that could be true in an Undeads case. It reminded him of when he was alive, one of the few memories he kept and liked.

The scenery was beautiful, Kranan had opened his eyes as the Wyverns hovered and was now looking around him, the huge mountains in the distance and the forests that lay before them. He was still gripping onto the handles for dear life, and kept telling himself not to look down. He could see Jakkru’s Wyvern at the front, Nalria in front of him and Juljin was parallel to Nalria. The Wyvern were gliding effortlessly through the air and Kranan relaxed a little.

Juljin was watching the ground, everything seemed so small. He could see animals running along the plains as they approached the river of Durotar. Azeroth was truely beautiful, he though to himself. He turned to see Nalria smiling, she too was looking around, taking in the scenery. This was the part he liked about flights, they reminded him of different times, some of them good and others bad, he looked at Nalria and imagined what her father would have said to him, he loved to fly and liked to poke fun at the fact the troll hated what he called "the best part".

Nalria’s wyvern took the front of the V as Jakkru’s fell back, they had been flying for about 20 minutes but to her, it seemed like seconds. She could see for miles in any direction and found herself twisting in her seat to try and see everything. She felt like a child again, when her father would show her maps of what lay beyond their town. She wanted to explore it all. She could see the large City of Orgrimmar in the distance, they weren’t far now.

Kranan screwed his eyes shut again as the Wyvern made their descent into Orgrimmar. He gripped at the handles of his saddle again and sent a message to the spirits. The rush of the air filled his ears, he didn’t dare open his eyes as he felt the Wyvern slow. He felt himself slipping slightly as the mount changed it’s position to land.

Nalria landed first, closely followed by Kranan, Juljin and then Jakkru. The Wyvern landed softly and roared, she patted it’s neck in thanks as the numerous wind riders took to un strapping her and the others. She grinned at Juljin, who smiled back.

“What’s the matter, Kran?” Jakkru jibed at the shaman as he dropped from his mount, not making a sound as he hit the wooden floor of the Riders tower. “Taurens were not built for air travel.” He answered, slowly lowering himself onto the floor. Juljin patted the shaman on the shoulder as he walked past him. “C’mon mon, we best find dis Orc.” He said as they walked down the staircase of the Wind riders tower. Kranans legs felt like jelly but he wouldn’t let it show, he was back on land and extremely thankful.

I'm a firestarter, twisted firestarter

2010-04-01T11:29:00.003+01:00

I did it, I gave my perfectionist side the middle finger. Krinkal is now a firemage!

Since the little buff that fire got in 3.3.3, I've been looking at it more and more. I rolled a mage because they had fireball and pyroblast. I rolled a mage because that's what they do - set things on fire, however, with all my characters there's this little voice in the back of my head going - "but fire doesn't do the most dps in a raiding environment..." So for the past few months, I've been in Arcane Town, wearing down numbers 1, 2 and 3 on my poor keyboard but not anymore!

I ran ICC10 last night in my alliance side guild, tonnes of fun as usual. I was using it as a test run, if I dropped sharply to, say, 3k dps, I'd have respecced before getting to the other wings. If I was running at 5-6k, I'd keep going.

First thing I noticed, my tab button is gonna break - on trash, Living Bomb is the order of the day and oh my god is it fun. I may actually be in love with it. Blizzard and Flamestrike still get a decent look in when I've finished tab dancing but still, Living Bomb...HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!

Second thing - mana consumption. It's a tonne less than Arcane, I only had to pop a gem and my stupid trinket once on the entire trash pulls. Granted, I had to evocate on Marrowgar, but that's because I died.

The last thing I noticed, was that my dps hadn't taken that much of a hit. I noticed my burst was a little bit...lacking, especially on Saurfang (in the first 30 seconds) and his Bloodbeasts. I was still rocking 5-6k, which wasn't that bad, considering it was 10man, we didn't have a paladin, boomkin or anything else that could boost my dps.

We called it after a few attempts on Dreamwalker. we had a brand new tank and were testing him - he did alright, actually. We were also carrying (which was an understatement, to say the least) another mage dps - Arcane Barrage doing more damage than Blast? It was a shame they won the trinket on Gunship. That crit would have been tasty for fire...

Overall, I'm glad I bit the bullet and respecced, I had a lot of fun, mainly due to the nice new rotation oh, and instant Pyroblasts, I mean, c'mon. INSTANT. PYROBLAST.

It's never just a simple job anymore.

2010-03-31T12:25:00.003+01:00

Another RP post. I'm really enjoying writing these, althought this little installment is a LOT shorter than the beginning.

Juljin awoke, stirring from an uneasy sleep, his eyes drifted from opening to closing and he squinted the remaining tiredness from them. It was daylight, and sun was pouring in from in-between the trees. Jakkru was squatted against a tree, carving a peice of wood with a knife. The troll let out a sharp sigh, half in surprise and the other in relief – the rogue hadn’t killed them in their sleep. It would see the shaman had a small amount of control over him. Juljin sat up and stretched his long arms. Dehyo was curled up a few meters away, as was Nalria, using her shield as a makeshift pillow. He could hear the sound of the groups mounts, tethered to a tree. Kranan was fast asleep, the shaman needed his rest, and he’d taken a harsh beating. Getting to his feet, he stretched again; Jakkru didn’t even look up from his carving. Juljin walked over to his War Raptor, jet black with white markings on it’s haunches and face. It made a clicking noise as he approached and screeched quietly. He petted its nose and opened the saddlebag, taking out some bread. Tearing a chunk off and tossing it in the air, the raptor caught it with a snapping motion of its jaws. His raptor tilted it’s head after tasting bread instead of meat, “It all I got,” he replied, stroking it’s nose again. His companion’s mounts looked at him hungrily, he fed Nalria’s wolf and walked off, back to the camp.

Jakkru saw the hunter get up and walk to his mount, even letting a little grin out when he noticed he didn’t feed his Dreadsteed or Kranan’s Kodo. He finished carving the figure of the woman and placed it in his pack. He heard Kranan groan as he awoke, lifting himself up and winching in pain, “Are you sure you’re not a female?” Jakkru said, the shaman didn’t respond with words but aimed a rude gesture at the rogue. He stood up and walked to the shaman, pulling a vial of purple liquid from his pack. “C’mere...” he said, grabbing the Taurens chin, his hand dwarfed by it.

Nalria only awoke because of Juljin kicking her shoulder lightly with his foot. “Ge’ up” he said, and passed some bread to her. She looked around, half expecting to see the other two gone but saw the Rogue tending to the Shamans wounds, almost in a friendly way. “How far is the town?” she asked sleepily, whilst rubbing her eyes. “A few hours.” Juljin answered.

The four arrived at the town in the early afternoon, collecting their bounty from the head of the town, who quickly left the room. Nalria split the money into 4 and handed Kranan and Jakkru their share, the rogue opening the pouch and emptying the contents onto a table and counted. Kranan, a little more trusting placed the money in his pack. Juljin nodded at him, and Nalria said goodbye and they headed for the door, Jakkru still counting and not even responding. Juljin and Nalria walked to the door leading out of the room when it opened. A large, muscular Orc stood there, with the head of the town behind him. “These four?” he growled, motioning towards them. The Town’s Head nodded. He pulled a rolled scroll from his belt and handed it to Juljin, it bore the seal of Orgrimmar. The Orc turned had gone, leaving the head of the town in the doorway, smiling awkwardly. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I was under orders to tell him when someone had killed the bandits.” He scurried off, leaving the four of them in the room.

Juljin opened the scroll, and read it quickly. “We’re too report to Sergeant Zortha in Orgrimmar.” He said, looking at Nalria, then at Kranan. “Too hell we are.” Jakkru hissed, “I did this for the money, not for someone to pat me on the back.” “It say he has mo’ work fo’ us...” Juljin said, in quiet agreement with the rogue, “We ge’ 30 gold each for just goin’ dere...” That was all the persuasion Jakkru needed, “I’ll go.” He said. “30 gold is 30 gold, if I don’t like it, I can leave.” The others seemed to be thinking exactly what he just said. “Apparently,” Nalria said, after attempting to read over the tall Trolls shoulder, “We’re to report to someone called Grok, outside.”

After asking a townsfolk, they were pointed in the direction of the Wind Rider Stables. Kranan hadn’t spoken since finding this out, they rounded a corner and saw the stables the Wyrven were kept in. Outside it stood a fat, ageing Orc. His hair whitening and chin full of silver stubble, he greeted them with a grin and slapped them on the back, “So you’re the buggers that got rid of ‘em bastardin’ bandits then!” he bellowed, “Been waiting a while for ‘em to get whats comin’ to ‘em. Bastards.” He explained that their passage had been paid by the Orc that had thrust the scroll at Juljin and that he needed 5 minutes to get the Wyrven ready. Kranan’s stomach felt sick, he hated flying. Jakkru, on the other hand, had a huge grin on his face, “Glad I agreed to come along now.”

Tom, Dick and Harry

2010-03-30T13:54:00.003+01:00

I've been thinking, it's quite ironic that the vast majority of my posts here at /2 actually come from me answering advertisements for dps, healers and even the occasional tank in Trade chat, hell sometimes I'm even doing the advertising.

I've come to find, that leading a pug is a skill, whereas being in one really isn't. As you can see from the vast majority of peoples blogs, that any Tom, Dick and Harry can end up in them.

Take Tom for example, Tom is (usually, but not always) a member of a guild on your server that you know has downed the Lich King. He doesn't have the Kingslayer title, so you can tell he either isn't in the progress team or is an alt of someone that just mightwell be. He's a good, safe bet for a prospective pug leader, knows what he's doing and can bring a decent dps/healer/tank to your group, he's also a nice, mature and considerate bloke. He knows he's pugging, he knows that the group might not very well be world beaters, he knows it's hit and miss.

Then you've got Dick. There's a fine line between Tom and Dick, Dick may be from the same guild that Tom's are from, he'll also be a good player, but he'll something else - a dick. Dick is the guy that thinks that a pug should be able to down the Lich King in about 20 minutes, and if you're not then it's someone in the groups fault. He'll be picking apart peoples dps - "omfg, your dps is so low." Critisicing healers - "omfg, why no heals?" and blaming the tanks for anything he wants - "omfg, why lose aggro?!" Toms can turn into Dicks, but not the other way round. It's kinda like toast.

Hanging at the back of Tom and Dick is Harry. He means well, can often be a cheerful little soul, will be the one going "guys, we can do this!" but there's one thing about Harry - he's not ready for the place. He might have passed the gear check, he might have the achievement but he'll be the one doing the least damage. Harry means well, but in the end, he's just no Tom. However, Harry can be like Dick, but instead, blaming people to hide the fact that Harry shouldn't really be there.

I've been pugging a lot recently and at the moment, I've mainly be surrounded by Toms. Pure Toms, not the DickToms that can often be mistaken for Tom's until the shit really hits the fan, then Dick comes out to play, it's like Jekyll and Hyde but in finger pointing and recount linking terms.

Same Target, Different Methods

2010-03-28T21:09:00.004+01:00

I enjoyed writing my last RP post, infact, I really enjoyed it. I always loved creative writing at school and combining it with Warcraft was very fun. After a little chat with Ercles yesterday, I decided to revive a little project I had been planning to do since summer last year but never found the time to actually do it. Basically, I want to write about my alts, as if they were a group of adventurers. I've created a new page (you can see it in the side bar over there --->) which will have the links to them in order, so that you can access them, or read any that you might have missed.

Ripping the parchment from the noticeboard, the Orc saw nothing but “100 gold reward.” Her armour was in desperate need of repair or better still, replacement. The rusting plate gauntlets, protecting her once soft delicate hands were covered in dents, the lavish colour was scraped away, left on the blades that had struck at them. Her shoulder guards, once glorious, where now dull and her helmet, which hung from the lapel on her Riding Wolf, could easily be used as a household bucket. Her shield, dented, notched and riddled with Crossbow holes was more of a weapon than protection and her sword could have been easily replaced with a sharp stick and some extremely harsh language. She walked to her wolf, scratching it’s large ears as she stowed the parchment in the saddlebag, which contained dozens of unopened letters, all addressed to her – Nalria. She grunted as she pulled herself onto her Wolf. She couldn’t do this on her own, and she knew just the person who would help.

Juljin was knelt over his fire, his loyal cat sat next to him, licking its lips, drooling in anticipation. The Troll grinned at the wolf, as he turned the flank of Boar meat over, “Soon, Dehyo, soon.” He said, petting its matted head. He started to sharpen his knife, while scanning the Horizon. He was a bit too close to an Alliance camp for his liking and wouldn’t let himself get too comfortable, unlike Dehyo, who’d curled up next to the fire. He checked his meal, as his stomach groaned in anticipation, Dehyo wasn’t the only one looking forward to his first meal in what felt like weeks but had only been days. He turned the meat over again and grinning, plunged his knife into it and greedily started to eat. He was nearly finished when Dehyo shot up straight, “You’ll be gettin’ yours soon enough” he said, tossing the left overs at the cat. Dehyo didn’t move, put sat completely still, looking into the distance, the meat flew past it and landed on the ground. He moved, faster than one could think for a troll of his age, he grabbed his bow and two arrows, stringing one and holding the other in his teeth. He looked at the horizon, a rider approached. He recognised the lumbering run of a riding Wolf and relaxed, only a bit. Even races of the Horde could still be enemies but after looking at the rider, he un-drew his bow and placed it over his back, grinning.

“I’ll ‘elp ya,” the troll said, grabbing his pack and bow. Nalria looked at him surprised; it’d taken less persuasion that she’d thought. “Don’ ya look at me like that,” he said, “I can’t let ya go on ya own, som’ one gotta look afta ya” he said, smiling. He’d knew she’d come to ask for help, she didn’t ask it of anyone else. He’d known her all her life and knew if her father was still alive, he would have killed him on the spot for refusing to help her and for turning down the chance to kill some humans. “Tha be a village som’ mile dat way,” he pointed in the direction. “I left ma rapta there, it’s on da way.” He climbed onto the back of Nalria’s wolf and whistled, Dehyo ran off ahead of them. Nalria turned her head to look at the troll, “Thank you, Juljin.”

Kranan’s face stung, his left eye was closing up with swelling. Never trust a rogue, he thought, even one you'd known for many years. A fist ploughed into his face again. “What are you doing here?!” the voice shouted. He’d been poisoned, his strength had left him and he could barely get himself to his feet. A hand grasped his horn and tilted his neck. Looking directly at him was a bearded human, “Your race disgusts me.” He said, before ramming the Taurens’ head into the wall. White lights flashed, never trust a rogue, he thought, as the man kicked him in the ribs. He looked round, only his right eye was of any use to him now, four men were in the room, two of the three guards that had spotted him and the rogue, a large stupid looking human and the bearded man. Never trust a rogue, he thought again as the humans laughed at him. He saw his mace lying on the table, in the corner of the room, as well as the rogues daggers. The coward had run, vanished into the shadows leaving him to be beaten and more than likely killed. The poison they’d used had made him drowsy, they obviously didn’t like it when he ripped the arm off one the guards that had spotted him, he stayed silent as the men taunted him. Never trust a rogue, he thought, as the man with the bearded face opened the door, turning to the guards, “kill him” he said.

The door opened, Jakkru clung to the shadows as a man turned round, “kill him” he heard. The rogue cursed the shaman, fat bastard, he thought, getting spotted. He moved quickly, from the shadows, the man still wasn’t looking at him. With a deafening crack he broke his neck before barging into the man closest to the door, his armour clattered against the stone wall as he lost his footing and fell to the ground, the man next to him turned sharply. The rogue slapped at the man’s left ear with his palm open, connecting, he sent a fist at his throat. He heard the man choke; the man he’d barged was getting to his feet, as the man currently gasping for air fell to his knees. The two men advancing on the tauren, who was lay there turned to see the rogue launching his elbow into the plated man’s face, two, three, four times, the man dropped to the ground with a groan, blood flowing from his face. The rogue moved swiftly to the table his daggers were on, as the two men advanced. He snatched his daggers from the table and turned, while reaching into his pack, he drew a small knife which he flicked at the gap between the man on the lefts helmet and his plate chestpeice, it connected and ripped into his neck, spurting blood onto the man next to him, who turned to see what had covered him to see his friend clutching at his neck, trying in vain to stem the blood flow. He turned back to the rogue in rage but he was no longer there, he felt the light arm of the rogue under his arm, as his rotting fingers grasped his helmet. Jakkru plunged his dagger into the man’s neck, swiftly pulling it out and jabbing it back into the man, sending blood everywhere. He finally stopped and ripped the dagger and turned to the shaman, grinning.

Juljin and Nalria arrived at the camp later that night, a few tents around a house next to the woods, the house had obviously been raided earlier that day. The men had been drinking and a few were sitting round a fire, eating whatever they’d found in the house. They’d found a casualty in the woods, one of the men was dead, missing an arm. “We’ll attack later,” Nalria said, to which Juljin nodded in agreement, “When they’ve gone to sleep the booze off.”

Jakkru poured a vial of anti-poison down Kranan’s throat. “You could have helped.” He said sarcastically. The shaman felt his strength return immediately and got to his feet. “Right, now I thi-‘’ the rogue was interrupted by the Tauren’s hand wrapped around his throat.

“I...came...bac-‘’ the rogue gasped, his ribcage visible between gaps in his hardened leather jerkin. “For you damned Daggers!” The shaman hissed, tightening his grip before letting go, the rogue fell to the ground gasping for air. Kranan picked his mace up and muttered something about spirits, the swelling around his eye faded and he breathed more freely.

The camp had gone silent, one of the drunks must have fallen over because Juljin heard a clattering in the basement as they skirted past it in the darkness. He had an arrow fixed in his bow and Dehyo was prowling 10 meters infront. Nalria had her bow out, Juljin had taught her how to fire a bow many moons ago although she was no were as good as the troll. They treaded carefully and could hear snores coming from the nearest tents. The man they had been sent to kill was a leader of a group of bandits that had been plaguing the area, he’d be sleeping in the house. Nalria loosened the string of her bow, placing it down on the ground quietly. She drew her blade and carefully moved the shield that was strapped to her back onto her arm. Juljin peered around the corner of the house, the front door had been ripped off in the raid. He sent his cat in first and motioned for Nalria to move in as he peered in the darkness, nothing but the smoldering embers of the fire moved so he followed her inside.

Kranan went first, his mace in one hand, his back against the stone wall. He was far too large for creeping he thought, Jakkru seemed to share the sentiment and passed him silently, moving up the stairs into the kitchen, two guards stood talking, “I’m sick of this, nothing was in here, they’d packed up and gone. Useless. Anything good, Johnny kept, bastard.” One of them said. Kranan who hadn’t noticed Jakkru stop, bumped into the rogue, sending him toppling from his crouched position into the kitchen. The two guards, surprised to see an Undead roll out into the kitchen floor stared at him for a second, the one on the left reacted first “INTRUDER!” he bellowed.

“Move, mon!” Juljin yelled, as Nalria raised her shield and headed for were the shout had come from. She heard a crack of thunder and a man flew into the wall before she entered the door, his hair standing on end and singed. She looked to her right and saw a large shaman looking at them, she heard a scream as a rogue plunged his knife into the thin armour of another bandit on the kitchen floor. “Who are you?!” the shaman yelled, “Who are you?!” Nalria replied, gripping her sword. The shamans face had some bruising on it and the rogue was an Undead, her skin crawled looking at him, his eyes darted from her to Juljin, who’d entered the room and had an arrow trained on Kranan.

The introductions were cut short by footsteps on the stairs, Juljin spun round and let his arrow fly the short distance into the man who’d just stepped into the corridor. It landed true, square in his chest and he feel backwards sharply. Nalria rushed to the other door, as another bandit appeared, driving her shield into his body with a grunt she parried an attack from a second bandit who was in the hallway leading to the kitchen, she recovered quickly and jabbed her sword into his belly. The rogue had appeared behind her and was driving his dagger into the mans neck, the man screamed and the rogue withdrew his dagger, covering Nalria and himself in blood. “Move!” Kranan yelled, asking the Spirits for protection and aiming them in the warriors direction. Jakkru was killing the man Nalria had knocked over and Nalria was running down the hallway to the stairs, an attack came from behind her, but didn’t fully connect, it bounced off her armour, which had been infused with stone briefly. Kranan appeared behind the attacker and rammed the shaft of his mace into the back of his head, then rammed the spiked tip into his back as he fell to the ground. The corridor was too small for him to swing his weapon. They moved back into the first room Nalria and Juljin had just moved through to see Dehyo ripping into a bandit’s neck, who was screaming loudly, in his leg was an arrow and two dead bandits lay before him, arrows in their chests. Juljin came from the corridor the bodies were lay in and Jakkru appeared behind Kranan and Nalria. “It would seem we are after the same man.” Kranan said.

The noise from inside the house had woken the men in the tents outside and they were running towards the door, the first one their fell backwards sharply having been struck by an arrow, as he fell a cat jumped at the next man, claws slashing through his shirt and into his chest. He screamed and the others backed away in fear. Another arrow came from inside the house, striking a man in the neck, he too screamed and fell to the ground. Two men turned and ran, they were without armour and weapons, the others followed suit, another arrow flew out and caught a man in the back of the thigh. Dehyo pounced on him and went for his throat. Juljin called his pet back, “Get up dem stairs!” he told Nalria, Kranan and Jakkru followed.

Nalria burst through a door, she raised her shield and a sword glanced off it, Jakkru had slipped past her and was digging his dagger into their bounty’s stomach, Nalria hacked at the mans shoulder and he screamed loudly. Kranan, still unable to swing his giant mace jabbed him in the face. Jakkru plunged his dagger into the mans throat and turned to Nalria as he pulled the blade out, the man gasping for air and choking on his own blood. “Dont even think about it” she said, raising her shield, Jakkru just grinned at her. She moved into the room and Juljin appeared at the door, “dey be gone, cow’ads ran for it” he said. The four of them stood in silence, staring back and forth. Kranan finally spoke, “We can share the reward. 25 gold is better than death.” Jakkru shot him a dirty look. “Agreed,” said Nalria. “Aye, mon.” Juljin said. The rogue sighed, “Fine.”

The Stormwind Job

2010-03-27T10:04:00.000Z

I was gonna do an RP post waaaay back but thought I'd combine it a little with Jaedia's little idea. I took my Undead Rogue to Stormwind, to get some description in my little story. Somethings in the game need a little dramatisation, see if you can spot them. I'll give you a clue, one bit is where I fucked up big style and the others are skills which I think are a little silly and needed to be more "realistic." Oh and spot the film reference!

You wouldn't think an Undeads heart could pound but as Jakkru approached the gates of Stormwind he felt as though his would come tearing through his rotting, exposed ribcage. He was tired, having moved in the shadows for the past 2 miles to avoid the risk of a local, or worse, a drunken city guard returning to his post after a night in the Goldshire tavern but he didn't let that affect his judgement, it was 2 in the morning, or around that, the moon was dim tonight, which made for perfect conditions.

His first challenge, was getting past the night guard. Their night vision impared by the torches they held made it a little easier but these guys were paranoid and Jakkru knew it, he'd dealt with them in the past, back before his death.

Hugging the keeps wall as he made his way into the city, he took a small round stone from his pocket, skillfully tossing it behind the guard on the left with the flick of his wrist. The paranoid guard turned sharply and Jakkru skirted past him. He continued over the bridge, dangerously close to the edge, the guards must have been rotating as he couldn't see any on the bridge, or at the posts near it. He breathed a sigh of relief, he hated the Stormwind Guards, having run into them twice back when he was "living." Almost losing his life the second time.

Jakkru's relief left him as quickly as it had come, he rounded a corner to be met by two senior guards, "Intruder!" they bellowed. Jakkru moved from the shadows and dodged the incoming sword, aimed skillfully at his neck. The next attack, was unavoidable, after dodging the first the rogues body had been off balance and he felt the cold steel pierce his side, slicing easily through his leather tunic. "Ahhh!" he screamed, before drawing his daggers, using the hilt of his right hand dagger, he drove it hard into fore-most guards throat, he heard a yelp as the air left the mans lungs and he clutched at his throat. The second guard used his shield to ram the rogue, who side stepped out of the way before throwing a powder in the direction of the guards face. The guard fell backwards, the clang of his armour on the cobbles of Stormwind to Jakkru, was the loudest thing ever. He was but 100 meters in the city and already had the guards alerted. He could hear footsteps rapidly moving toward him and disappeared into the shadows of the alley way. The reinforcements arrived and ran to the downed guards aid, Jakkru took his chance and ducked past into the main city itself.

He was in, and had to act fast. The guards would be swarming the city in a second. He didn't rush though. Rushing made you clumsy, and clumsy got you killed. He used the alleyways to his advantage, no one used them at night, even a great city as Stormwind had it's underworld. Hiding in the shadows, he fashioned what could be called a bandage from a strip of cloth he drew from his pack. He plugged his wound, it wasn't as deep as feared but it pained him something awful. He shook it off and continued through the alleyways.

His target would be near the Stockade, where the criminals of Stormwind were kept and Jakkru had once spent a night before disembowling the guard and escaping. The client had arranged a meeting which of course wouldn't happen, it was a trap to lure the target out at night. He crossed another bridge and made his way to the area, were the target would be. He couldn't see anyone, so ducked behind some crates and barrels left outside a shop.

He didn't know the target, not even a name. He didn't need to know names, just a description and a price. The usual thinking was the higher the price, the bigger the risk and the price for this job had been very high. The client had thrown the gold at him as if it were pocket change. Look where greed gets you, Jakkru thought. He had to stop himself from chuckling, greed was the reason he was here. He couldn't resist a price like that.

The target arrived ten minutes later, with a guard. Jakkru hated guards. They made things complicated and he didn't like complicated.

"He's always bloody late." the target yawned, sleepily. "Time is it?"
"Around 3 in the morn." the guard answered, wide awake. He was big, in full plate armour. Obviously used as a scare tactic for whatever this man dealed with and for protection, for the same reason.

Jakkru crept from his hiding place and was stood a meter from the guard, he moved swiftly, finding the gap between the breastplate and the plate leggings, he grove three fingers between the gap and twisted, he felt the muscles in the mans back tighten and cramp up, he went stiff and wobbled, letting out a groaning noise the target turned to him, "What is i-"

Before the target could finish his sentence, Jakkru's rotting fingers were over his mouth and his dagger deep in his throat. He heard a gurgle come from the man as he choked on his own blood, the guard, helpless let out a muffled groan as Jakkru smiled at him. He dropped the man who fell limp to the floor, in a pool of his own blood. He looked at the guard and winked, before disappearing into the shadows.

I'm sorry, you'll have to repeat that

2010-03-25T13:14:00.000Z

Ever forgotten a name in warcraft? Like, a skill, a place, a boss and then decided that you're going to have a stab in the dark and attempt to rename it?

This is a post inspired by Issy, we were in Maraudon and she was on her little druid (which, if you refer to her as "druid" in a party, will earn you a place on "the list"). We were clearing trash and over vent, Issy innocently asks "Are we going to Landscape?" A few seconds pass, when Erc, who was our little bubbleton for the run goes, "What?" I burst out laughing and Issy goes "I couldn't remember the name, I knew it had "Land" in it!" She's never going to live it down, ever.

This brought back flash back after flash back of times when myself and others have attempted to name something in the Warcraft universe and failed.

Erc actually does this to me on a regular basis. With his alt names getting more and more complex I end up calling them different things - Misfatnachos, Titty and Wabbawhat? I'm terrible at pronouncing things for example, I cannot say "statistic" in any form. My mouth gets to about statis and then my tongue attempts to throttle me.

Back when Ulduar was first released, I must have called it about 50 different things but never Ulduar. I remember it had U's and D's and an A so I ended up making my own names up for it, much to the annoyance of a guild member who actually kicked off. The same happened for Glyph's, which I could spell but couldn't pronounce (much like Jaedia's rogue alt - Jaedi, which will forever be called Jay-dee over vent). Gly-n-ph was what I said, I dont know where the fuck the N came from but I still have to think twice before talking about them over vent.

My best one, was asking in a pug back when Karazhan was the weekly badge grind, "We doing Illaran?" and the pug people asked "Is there a new boss?" I got their expectations up and in a second dashed them by going "Sorry, the demon guy, I cant remember his name."

3 priests, 1 warlock (and the token paladin)

2010-03-21T14:08:00.000Z

I've spent the majority of my time levelling solo on my warlock, which is in the bloggers guild Single Abstract Noun. This is probably because there was a large difference in level - everyone had started level 1 alts and there I was, the big cheese, with my level 36 warlock.

I'd been using the LFG tool and found it to be hit and miss on groups, some times being awesome others being complete boats of the fail variety.

So when some guys in S.A.N had caught up with me level wise (which was bloody fast, I may add!) I had someone to do a random with and I tell you this, my god it was a breathe of fresh air.

The group consisted of 3 priests, two of which spent the first 5 minutes of the run politely going "You can heal if you want." "No, you can if you want." "Seriously, you can heal." - I've never seen that before, EVER. It was great, if a little confusing when it came to applying a soulstone. We had the token paladin tank in there too, who was pretty much awesome. Even when I decided I was pulling a mob so I could go mine some precious mithril. Then there was me, who made everyone else look 20 times better.

I recently have gotten the reputation of being "Hellfire boi" (thanks Issy, it's spread through the guild!) mainly due to me being a bit silly and hellfiring myself to death while I was trying to find my book. I also have it because I use that as my main form of AoE (I wont do at end level, but while I'm grinding away in instances, I'm gonna do what I want!). It's a wonderful warlocky spell - damaging yourself a little to harm the enemy for loads? Check. Got the word "Hell" and "fire" in it? Check. Looks uber cool? Check.

It took 3 priests spamming Holy Nova to keep me alive on some AoE pulls but it was definintly worth it. I even got a "calm it down, hellfire boy!" over vent - inbetween Ercles playing some jazzy tunes after finding how to stream stuff on Ventrilo! All in all, random dungeons have never been as fun (or as jazzy!)

Whiny Post Day: ...and when you cant do that anymore, you get someone to carry you.

2010-03-17T11:34:00.000Z

Other than today be St. Patricks day, other than me finishing my 2,000 word essay on Globalisation in 2 hours and 10 minutes, other than the fact there's a crate of Strongbow with my name on it in the kitchen and other than the fact I really need to run to the University office to hand said awesome essay in, I can still find time to whine.

Ahem, so on the theme of Whiny Post Day - which was this guys brain child. I shall have a little bit of a winge.

Carrying.

You know what I mean, that guy in the raid that is pretty much...crap, but you bring them along on the off chance that amazing gear you've gotten them by carrying them through all these instances might just make them into a better player.

Now, you cannot carry a tank. Unless in ToC10, where you can, kinda...You can carry a healer, but it's not easy so the majority of the time - you're carrying dps.

Dont get me wrong, I dont mind carrying undergeared people through, who when geared will be melting my face on the dps meters, will get better tanking/healing gear and be a valuable asset to raids. Hell, I've been carried through ToC10 on my warrior, I couldn't tank it, so I went in as loldps and was pretty much a spectator for the majority of it.

I dont even mind carrying the occasional guild member, infact, guild alts get carried a lot during the gearing stage. One shaman healer almost solo healed ToC10 when I was gearing Kranan, I pretty much healed him (when he took what little damage he did), myself (when I took large amounts of damage because standing in the fire is something I'm guilty of) or, shitting myself when it went tits up on Anub and he died and I had to heal the last 3%.

What I do kinda mind, is during PuGs. The whole "Link achievement and gearscore lol" is done, so that less people get carried. When I lead pugs, I prefer a good ol' inspection, rather than getting a number which pretty much means you can use the LFG tool effectivley.

Take yesterday for example. I went to ICC10 on Jakkru, as I missed the guild run this week. It was a partly another guilds run, but they lacked 3 dps. So I went as the token rogue and a mage joined.

He was in decent gear and I'd raided with him before and I knew, then and there, we'd be carrying him and anything that wasn't red would get rolled on before you could say "needers roll now." He was obsessed with gearscore, which didn't do him any favours as the elemental shaman who was 1.6k lower than him in gearscore, destroyed him on dps. It's these kinds of people that really annoy me when they win loot over someone who'll get more out of it. But what you gonna do, it happens everywhere.

People get carried. Be it in a rugby game, when one of the props you play with insists he's actually a thin person on the inside and decides he'll stand out of a ruck/maul with the backs. Or that guy who's late to all the group work for a seminar. They'll get carried and get their share of the glory, marks or in WoW, loot. It's life and as Forest Gump so gormlessly said it - Shit happens.

Fanboi

2010-03-16T21:37:00.001Z

You're doing it right.

Good ol' loot QQ and a rant

2010-03-13T13:38:00.000Z

This post is actually me being a little whiny about loot. I dont usually get annoyed by loot distribution, it's just pixels, in a game but sometimes...sometimes I get annoyed with who gets the loot. If you get what I mean...anyways, I've been meaning to write about this but really didn't get it until yesterday.

If in a pug, all's fair in love and war. Rolls come and go, sometimes high, sometimes low. I can accept that pretty much. I have this little philosophy about loot - if it goes to someone who deserves it and is going to use that peice of loot to it's maximum potential, I have no problems with that. However, recently I've been losing a lot of loot and not to people who are going to use it as well as I am - A neck in a ICC10 pug on my rogue, lost. To someone who was in better gear than I am but pulling 2.5k less dps. A new sissy robe in a ToC25 pug on my mage, to someone who was below the tanks in damage AND dps - hopefully you can see what I'm getting at here, it's kinda a kick in the balls when you know that peice of loot is going to improve your dps but you're denied by a random number generater, which seems to (in my case) like folk that have been carried through content, dont have that much of a clue when it comes to their class dynamics and are just plain...bad. I cant be the only one, right? (If I am, please tell me and I'll attempt to stop being a dick :p)

Anyways, on to my rant. Which comes from the same ToC25 pug in which my 2 foot cannon was denied a nice, new sissy robe.

We'd just downed beasts, only just, the dps wasn't up to much. The tanks under-geared and paladin healer seemed to be healing the entire raid on his own. The raid leader then announced a "smoke break" for himself, the main tank, a healer and a rogue.

Excuse me, can you kill yourself on your own fucking time?

Smoking, in my opinion, is a filthy habbit. It's terrible, it's not big, it's not clever and you dont look sexy. At. ALL. And for myself and 21 other people to get held up for 3-5 minutes while you commit slow, slow, slow suicide using a cigarette? Well, that's just not on.

I took the time to get my, as Larisa would call it - favourite raid snack. Some blackcurrant juice. We killed Lord J after a few wipes and the actually kill... it was very close to a wipe. That 5 minutes had definintly unfocused our group. But I sacked it off and I got ready for a small wipefest on Champs, before the raid would eventually sink like the little fail boat it was.

"5 min smoke break" goes out in /rw. I kick off.

"Excuse me, can you kill yourself in your own time?"
"Is this your time?" the rogue answers.
"Yes, it is, as well as 21 other peoples."
"Well, tough." Rogue replies.

And they go afk. The following event, made me feel like I'd started a revolution. This was me, tearing down the metaphorical WoW Berlin Wall. I was like that guy in Cuba or something or other...

"Screw this guys, I've got the weekly done. I cant be bothered to have 20 minutes added on so people can smoke after every boss we kill." I said, in /ra.
"Me too" replies someone. Who then leaves.
Followed by another, then another, then another, then another. Quickly, the raid had actually disbanded to have what was 25 people turn into 14. Then 10, then 5. Myself and the smokers.

"Wtf?" the rogue says, as he comes back from suicide sticking
"I told you." I reply, before leaving the party and casting a portal. I then said in /s - "This is a no smoking portal, I'm sorry."

I'm that fucking cool.

Okay, you lost me.

2010-03-11T13:08:00.000Z

The Deathbringer Saurfang fight confuses me. Well, the Horde side of it does. The Alliance side just has some terrible voice acting and a crying girl.

Basically, what I dont get is this - Saurfang (the older, not the one you're meant to fight) is hard as nails, right? He's so 'ard, his nightmares are scared of him. Thrall's pet name for him is "Mohammed-I'm 'ard-Bruce Lee." He's the cock of the Horde. How come, he gets so subdued so easily but a boss that's basically become a cake walk?

The /e of Saurfang charges made me think, the first time I did it anyway, that he was going to Cleave the undead right out of his son. I wouldn't have to do anything, wicked. But no. He gets choked, by some ability the Lich King has bestowed on Saurfang the Younger. The same ability he neglects to use against the 10 (or 25) people that then proceed to kill him, take his loot and let his daddy cry over his body.

This is one thing that has got to me over my time in Warcraft. The bad guys doing stuff to NPC's and completely leaving you alone.

Case 1
Saurfang vs. His Son - Choking ability, completely fucks up the Kor'kron and Saurfang for the entire fight. Does it get used on us? Nope. He calls some blood beasts and marks someone, that's about it.

Case 2
The Lich King vs. Trial of the Crusader - Seriously, the Lich King has had SO many chances to kill us, yet he doesn't. Trial of the Crusader? Arthas strolls in, doesn't touch the raid, that Argent Crusade paladin, the Alliance king or that really Angry Orc.

Case 3
The Lich King vs. Drakuru - We kill the evil troll (mon!) that has basically given Arthas a new army of undead voodoo. Instead of pwning us? He lets us live because he can find a use for us - yep, we can kill you and get a nice title and a really gay fountain in Dalaran.

Back on point to the Saurfang thing - I'm not asking for the boss to be undefeatable. That'd be pretty shit. I just think that fighting alongside Saurfang while he's trying to kill his own son would be 40 times more epic than letting him slowly choke to death. Imagine it...

Saurfang: Taunt him off me champions, he has weakened me!
Tank 1: Okay! *Taunts*
Tank 2: I'll go DPS then, shall I?
Saurfang: No! You are needed champion! Taunt him off Tank 1, for he is also weakened!
Tank 2: Oh! Right, yeah! *Taunt misses*
Saurfang: You dont have the taunt glyph? What the hell?! I cant work under these conditions! Fuckin' noobs!

That'd be well cooler than...

/e Saurfang gasps for breath and attempts to hide his Hangman's erection
Saurfang: Thanks...*splutters*...guys...would have been fight fucked if it wasn't for you!
Raid: It's okay, mind if we grab your sons worldly possessions to use as gear?
Saurfang: Sure, sure...
Raid: Thanks. Oh wait!
Saurfang: What?
Raid: Can we quickly screenshot this? Y'know, to show we killed him?
Saurfang: *Sighs* Be quick
Raid Leader: Okay, guys, get round his body. Rogue 1 - no gang signs!
Rogue 1: Awwwwh
Raid Leader: I'm kidding throw it up ther- Mage 1! Stop making dumbass faces, seriously!
Mage 1: Sorry!
Raid Leader: Okay on 3, everyone say "Saurfang's dead so-" TANK 1! Why do you have Saurfang the Younger posed like he's giving Tank 2 a blowj-
Saurfang: ENOUGH! Blah blah blah, honour, blah blah blah, remember, blah blah blah, regeants and repairs now available blah blah blah *cry*

But it isn't like that, so I'll have to make do and just get my 2 badges every week from a boss which will forever have me thinking two things, "Saurfang has gone soft with age" and "This is like Star Wars but...backwards."

On a lighter note...

2010-03-09T19:01:00.000Z

After my post yesterday which was (unusual for my blog) quite doom and gloomy, I thought I'd lighten the mood with a massive...

FUCK. YOU. BLIZZARD. *Flips the bird*

Yesterday, I finally got my axe. After months of grinding for an axe, any axe, ANYTHING AT ALL. I finally get one. Oh and it equips across the back and is therefore, more awesome than any other axe. (I realise, I said "axe" a lot in this little paragraph but fuck it. Axe axe, axey AXE)

An axe, ZOMG!

"I'm a Lumber-Jakkru and I'm okay!" - Thanks Issy for the axe, brought a smile to my day when I logged in :D

So yes, I got my axe. My hunter has two of them (by the way Blizzard, thanks for that. Pricks) but this was more special, it was well and truely earnt and I had a good time, even if I did piss and moan about it, grinding instances for it. All I need now is new boots and I'll be the happiest rogue ever!

I Don't Feel Very Receptive Today

2010-03-08T23:06:00.000Z

Ever had something happen in game that has actually made you angry? Actually angry, not the "RNG has fucked me over and I'm a little upset but oh well it's a game and I'll get over it li- Oh, look another raid!"

The stuff that actually makes you angry in this game are pretty much caused by one thing; the people playing the game. Today, I witnessed internet bullying.

Bullying is pretty close to my heart, seeing as I've been at the recieving end of it before. Not in a game but in real life. High school - it's a bastard of a place, a place where you start playing rugby and get massive, so that people dont pick on you anymore.

Anyway, I was doing the Random daily on my shaman. I'd finally got my elemental set to reasonable level (hit capped, good amount of crit/haste/sp etc) so I decided to wait an extra 15 minutes and queue as a dps instead of a healer. Our group consisted of a well gear tank, had around 51k after getting Kings, a well geared paladin healer, a (again, well geared) hunter, a DK and myself.

I dont bother inspecting people when I get into randoms anymore, there's no point. Most people are in decent gear and I dont mind carrying the ones that aren't but as we got through some trash mobs, it was apparent this DK didn't have the greatest gear, so I gave him a quick /inspect and saw he was in mainly starter tanking gear (y'know, the stuff you wear when you're starting to tank heroics). He wasn't doing much dps, seeing as his "tanking" gear wasn't up to scratch and he obviously didn't have a dps set yet.

This poor DK (who was from Crushridge and obviously had extremely limited English, due to fact he hardly talked and when he did, it was hard to understand what he was on about) was the target of the hatred of the paladin and hunter.

The paladin and hunter, were guilded together and after around 2 minutes it started.

"Omfg, look at his gear. What a noob!" the paladin states in /p.
"hahahaha, ye, noob!" the hunter retorts
The tank questions them, simply with a "?"
"that dk look at his gear, noob."
"I hate people like this," the paladin says "I hate carrying noobs through instances. Wasting my time, I'm going to let him die. Doesn't deserve to live."
"yeah, look at him, he's in tanking gear. too shit to tank so he comes and wastes our time as dps. fucking noob." the hunter says, piping up with his guild mate.

At this point, I'd had enough. I'm all about protecting the little guys, the ones that cant stick up for themselves. The DK had try to ask what was wrong, simply by going "what?" and "sorry, i dont understand. my english bad" and yet, they kept going, getting progressivly worse and worse.

"He's not a noob," I said, "he's being sensible. He'd waste more time tanking the place and dying than he is now. Get off his back"
"lol, stfu. he's wasting my time. dont heal him or ress him" the paladin replied.

I decided that it wasn't worth my time to argue with him, until it got worse.

"can you understand us, [DK name]?" the hunter asked
"ofc he cant, he's fucking foreign" the paladin said

I could see the direction it was going in. Racism. My most hated thing in the world after walking behind someone who's going so slow that they interupt your walking pace and you cant pass them. That and people who have no business in shorts.

"Guys, shut up. Stop being pricks. We're almost done and you can go back to being elitist pricks" I piped up.
"No, I'm sick of carrying these crushridge pricks, they dont even know english and they're all shit players, look at him, he's getting a free ride."
"I bet you were carried at some point," I pointed out "So leave off him, he's obviously just starting out.
"I dont care, he's wasting my time. I hate people that waste my time. Shitty foreign DK."
"hahahahaha" goes the little prick of a hunter.

I was reaching for the Vote to kick button, when I realised, it was definintly a Mexican Standoff situation. I voted him out, his guild mate voted me out and I've been jibbed out of 2 frost about a minute away from the last boss.

I decided to grit my teeth and bare it, I had no idea how to report someone cross server. So as soon as the last boss was dead, I had my frost badges, I laid into them both. I wasn't having this.

"You're an embarrassment to English people," I lashed, "and an embarrassment to your server and guild. You've spent 15 minutes bullying a person who doesn't have a clue what you're on about. You've been racist and complete pricks. How can you have such a problem with someone in a game?"

The reply? - "whatever, gay." and they left.

I sat at my laptop after I'd ported out back to the saftey of my own realm and just thought about what had happened and if I had ever been such a prick to someone - thankfully I couldn't think of a time I'd been like this, yeah, I might have commented on someone's gear but I usually always (if I can) give people some tips on ways to improve.

It was the first time I'd really seen this, I'd heard of people bullying others over the internet, or via text but I'd never seen it. I'm pretty sure it was made worse because the DK didn't understand. He might have understood a little but didn't have a clue how to reply to it. That would have been much worse.

People getting so angry at someone who was actually doing the right thing? I remember when first gearing my warrior for tanking. I tagged along with a guild member who needed badges for his retribution gear and needed nothing from heroics. I did shit dps but atleast I wasn't getting smacked upside the head, in nothing more than a paper bag with a little bit of defence on it.

I was more than likely being over protective as it's a subject close to heart but still, it made me think of the people that play this game. As soon as someone is behind a screen and there's no face to face confrontation, there's no stopping them. People who could be nice in the real world, are pricks to total strangers and openly racist infront of other people. People have been blogging recently on being Anoymous and Ercles has a post from a while a go about people being pricks when behind an avatar.

I got a little laugh at the end of it, after explaining it to a friend of mine on the alliance side, he simply went "little dicks, innit." Explains it all. The insecure wankers.

The Invasion of Argent Dawn, EU.

2010-03-06T17:55:00.001Z

It's been a pretty wicked week, in terms of Warcraft.

Firstly, after wiping my group on Saurfang by accidently sending a whisper instead of casting Frost Nova. I decided to re-bind R (which is default to reply) onto Blink. So, as you might be able to guess, was a little silly. We're all buffed up infront of Marrowgar, I get a whisper, so I hit R. *Poof* my little 2 foot cannon goes. Straight into the room, pulling the 4 headed, axe whirling badass. What happens? He misses his first attack, gets charged by the tank and I live!

So if that wasn't cool enough, after the raid I logged onto the Horde side, catch up on the days events when I notice I have mail. It's from Tam's alt, Kumquat. It was an invitiation, which I quickly replied to by logging onto my long lost, yet very loved, warlock alt.

I was quickly invited to, Single Abstract Noun, a bloggers and blog readers guild which is situated on Argent Dawn (EU) and there's one knocking around over the pond too! It's a fantastic idea and anyone who keeps even the smallest little WoW blog, or reads a few when the servers are down for maintenance should definintly look it up. Great atmosphere to level in, /g never stops (I'm not even kidding...bloggers can TALK) and Chas's deaths never stop happening.

Introducing Darju! My level 41 warlock! There's his imp, looking in the wrong direction (pretty much sums him up in general, useless wanker...) and my awesome hat. The Tabard was designed by Tam - who's alt Kumquat likes Orange...just a little bit too much.

So yeah, my first impressions of the guild are wicked. We've got a wonderful mix of people, some bloggers, some blog readers. Male, female. European and even some token Americans/Canadians! Bloggers cant half mobilise. When called, or they see the special Blog-symbol (like the Bat-symbol but y'know, more awesome) they're there in a flash, armed to the teeth with conversation, witty character names and puns about Tauren.

Racials: Srs Bizniss

2010-03-04T11:34:00.000Z

I've been getting a little bored of my warrior lately, so to inject some life into poor ol' Nalria I've been considering a faction or race change.So instead of dressing different races up in the gear she has, I've been looking at Racials.

First thing I saw - they've CHANGED. I have a troll hunter and was actually surprised to see Beserking was a flat haste buff and didn't scale with lost health. Quite frankly, I'm not impressed! If there was a stupidly annoying Facebook page called "The Change to the troll racial Beserking" I would not be a fan of it. I used to love my little dips in the fire™ to lower my health a bit before hitting Beserking. It was risky and if it paid off, you'd do more dps. My arrows would block out the sun they'd be going that fast. If it didn't pay off, you looked like a right fool infront of a pug or even worse, your fellow guildies! It fitted a Horde race aswell, you're backed into a corner. Maybe you've lost a limb (dont worry, it'll regenerate later - maybe even longer ;)), you're out numbered. What do you do? You turn green, nasty and start windmilling like a motherfucker.

I'd known about the change to the Orc racial back when it was made, mainly because I wasn't getting a debuff when I popped it. I wasn't impressed with that either - seeing as the racial fitted the Orc so well, especially as a warrior. You start swinging madly, taking no regard for your health but pwning extra hard? Yeah, that's proper Orcish. You can almost hear the "RUUUUUUUUUUUUUWR!" in the name - Blood Fury.

I certainly wasn't a fan of the Will of the Forsaken change - sharing cooldowns with trinkets? Screw you Blizzard.

Blood Elves get their silence/mana restoration thingy, which is pretty useful in OOM situations but I really do feel Taurens got the short end of the racial stick - 5% health is really useful, granted but going "Cow SMASH!" and being awesome at picking flowers? Not really that good. If any race deserves something that increases Strength or something, it's a massive, muscular freakin' cowmanbeast.

With thoughts of a faction change I started looking at the alliance Racials and it's pretty easy to see who Blizzards golden child is - Humans. They've got fucking everything! Racial which gets rid of movement imparing effects and fear and stuff? Check. Reputation bonuses? Check. Passive Stealth detection? Check. Increased Spirit? Check. And to cap it off, Expertise with not one but TWO weapons. Wankers.

Dwarves have that Stoneform, which is pretty nifty for a tank. Night elves have Shadowmeld and something that makes them harder to hit (okay, I kinda skipped over the nelf racials because I dont like them...) and Spacegoats are good with gems, have a little self heal and more importantly require 1% less hit, which is cool.

But then again, after all this, I'd decided that if I were to faction change. I'd be a dwarf, because they're awesome, their combat animations rock, they look good in most kinds of armour, they Riverdance, are about 4 feet tall and love to get drunk. The only down side is the terrible Scottish accents.

Looking back, I didn't really care about the racials at all. No one really does, except for the "elite." I always used to get asked - "Why didn't you roll and Orc or Troll rogue?" and my answer was simple - Undeads are cool, their combat animations rock and while you're running around getting feared in a raid, I'm stood there, hacking at whatever is in front of me.

A tale of Two Hunters, in which I am neither!

2010-03-01T16:16:00.000Z

I've just finished a ToC10 pug, still aiming to get my shield on the shaman. Blizzard mocks me once again by dropping the axe. Wankers.

But that didn't phase me, because today I met a player who was genuinely skilled. He was a random hunter, in a guild that I cant pronounce. I'm gonna call him Mr.Neeson - because he has a certain set of skills.

He was the unconventional Beast Master specc. Which is renowned for being super for levelling but pretty terrible at end game (well not terrible but when compared with Survival or Marksmanship speccs in the same gear, it gets left eating their metaphorical dust).

There was another Random hunter in the group, who I'm going to Mr.Arrogant. He was in 3 parts T10 and thought he was gods gift to all things hunter. He was a cookie cutter Survival build.

The gear difference between the two hunters wasn't that much. Mr.Neeson was sporting 4 parts T9, some ICC10 epics and the 264 bow from ICC25. Mr.Arrogant as said before was in 3T10 and some ICC/ToC10 epics. Pretty even.

We had a wipe on beasts, our tank disconnected and the other tank ended up on 13 stacks. Not nice to heal. The second attempt was much better and what I saw was something very surprising, Mr.Neeson was pwning. I automatically thought "Mr.Arrogant is utterly terrible, getting beaten by a BM hunter..." but no, Mr.Arrogant was a close second, a few dps behind Mr.Neeson and around 1% damage. I was quite shocked, I was in a party with someone who was skilled...

Mr.Arrogant spotted this and asked - "lol, why you bm? go surv or mm and you'll do more dps." I had to stop myself pointing out that Mr.Neeson was beating Mr.Arrogant but the self-proclaimed gods gift to hunters had a valid point.

Now, this next bit. Made me smile as this is pretty much my view on the whole game.

Mr.Neesons response was simply "I like playing BM, it's more fun and I play for fun. I've been BM for a while and I've got good at it..."

Hats off to you! I used to love BM back in the old 1:1 or 3:2 macro days. Cooldown management, micro-managing your pet so it was alive on even some of the hardest bosses. Trying to keep your mana topped up without wasting a global cooldown and generally having tonnes of fun. I was miffed when they changed it a little and luckily on my Hunter I gave Survival a go and it was amazing fun and also good dps.

I started thinking about what Mr.Neeson said while I was spam healing on Twins and I had to admit, this game is definitly more fun when you're doing stuff the way you like to.

I'm pretty skint in game but that's because I dont do dailys or grind - why? Because it's too much like work. When I come in from a day of lectures, the last thing I want to do is spend an hour repeativly killing mobs. I'll more than likely sit in Dalaran and catch up on the days events with my guildies, run a few instances or generally mess around.

I was also thinking of the downside to this. Cookie cutter speccs are cookie cutter for a reason - they're good. They make raids better, progress further and therefore increase enjoyment. I suppose if you're playing the specc you like AND have the skills to pull it off, then it's fair do's but if everyone was playing the game how they wanted to, it could definintly get messy, especially with some of the speccs I've seen on some people...

I'm tellin' ya, wipin' ain't easy.

2010-02-26T01:15:00.000Z

I marched fearlessly into ICC10 the other day on my mage. I was with my Alliance side guild so I was pretty confident on everyone's ability - They're not hardcore raiders but they've got Blood council down before and we regularly do Festergut before our somewhat very little time is over (they only raid for around 3 hours. 7pm-10pm GMT!)

Everything was nice and smooth, Marrowgar - One shot. Deathwhisper - One shot. Gunship - One shot.

Now it's time for my little confession. We wiped on Saurfang because of me. It was all on me, I noobed out.

We were running melee heavy, only myself and a warlock were ranged. So we took one side each, not too hard, especially with the awesome burst that Arcane has. Everything was going amazingly well, he was at around 40% and hadn't popped his mark on anyone yet. Beasts spawn and BOOM. I die. Beast kills healer, other healer, warlock. Tanks die, melee die, lots more death, Saurfang laughs a little and it's a wipe.

"What happened there, Krinkal?" I was asked.
"Sorry guys! Lag spike" I lied.

It wasn't a lag spike...

On my action bars, Frost Nova is Number 4. Number 4 is directly over R, which is a reply to a tell. In my haste to stop getting hit by a blood beast, I had stabbed wildly in the direction of the number 4 but instead hit R. The tell I sent to my friend who'd recently transfered his hunter to the alliance side was epic.

"444444444444weqeqweqweqwewqeqweqwe======2222222323123123qweqeqweqeqwe============"

I actually laughed to myself. My friend laughed at me but I couldn't admit it to the guild, no matter how epic my whisper had been.

After doing this, I immediatly remembered some of my best wipes Horde side. My favourite has to be wiping a group in Pit of Saron while on my healer because I was too busy fanboying all over guild chat.

Someone had mentioned Firefly and I couldn't help myself. I dove in and was waist deep in a discussion about why Jayne Cobb is the best character in the show when people started to die. That 8-10g repair bill was worth every penny although my group didn't agree and when it happened a second time when I telling another guildie that I only started watching Chuck because Adam Baldwin was in it, I was swiftly kicked. Once again, worth it.

Some wipes in guild have become famous - A healer too busy eating toast to heal? Check. Hunter leaving aspect of the taxi on? Check. Tank too busy saving his curry he'd dropped on the floor? Check. Someone hitting numlock instead of push to talk and hearing them squeel as they hopeleslly run to their doom? Yep, that's there too.

But hands down, my favourite wipe has to be a story that I was told by a fellow guildy (I cant actually remember who it was...shame, really). Apparently, they wiped because their healer had to go afk, to get to cover due to incoming mortar strikes. That's right, the guy was playing Warcraft in an actual Warzone. Dedication, you sir/madam, have it.

The Ballad of the Failing Elitists in which Blizzard mocks me, using axes.

2010-02-24T18:56:00.000Z

Sitting in Dalaran, talking crap in /g and checking Trade and Looking for Group every now and then while on my hunter and I see this...

"Looking for more for ICC10 - Aiming for Plagueworks bosses, good group so far. Gear check required aswell as Achievement. Need a hunter, mage and Elemental Shaman."

Awesome! I thought, whispered the advertiser, got invited after a quick gear check and greeted with a "Hi there!" - "Welcome!" - "Yay a hunter! :)" I had a good feeling about this PuG, I had a better feeling after inspecting the other members in Dalaran - 44k unbuffed tank, nice little paladin and druid healers.

We get the other members pretty fast and off we went. Me with my good feeling, a bag full of arrows and some buff food.

Trash went down without a single death, reassuring my good feeling. I could definintly see us cruising to Festergut. We set up infront of Marrowgaw, buffed up and off we went.

40 seconds in, we wipe. I couldn't believe it. I mean, how?! This group had promise, the gear, the achievements! What was going wrong?! I looked through Skada, damage was good, people doing 5k+ so we definitly had the dps, plus it hadn't been a lack of dps that had killed us. A tank died first. Did he mess up? I looked at the healing done, everything was good, paladin healer with a tonne of healing and a tonne of overheal. I put it down to fluke, ran back in and got buffed. Ready for round two.

Another wipe. What?!

"lol, sorry guys. Forgot my rings..." goes the tank.

Double You. Tea. Eff?

That's right, our tank hadn't been defence capped for the first two attempts. We hadn't noticed on trash because he'd been afk for a lot of it, picking someone up from somewhere in some kind of car.

We tried again and downed him. An axe I've wanted on my rogue for as long as ICC has been out dropped and I get it on my hunter...god damn you Blizzard. We move on and head to Deathwhisper (who was also the weekly, yay!).

We wiped 5 times on Deathwhisper, 3 of those came from people killing Darnavan, which caused the raid leader to tell us to wipe or loose a chance at 5 badges. The other two, were blatently through lack of healing.

"Sorry [Paladin], but you're not healing enough for this fight, you've got a low gearscore and I dont think you've got the skills to do this." says out leader, after which he/she swiftly kicks our poor paladin who'd been doing a bang up job, in my opinion.

Paladins are fantastic tank healers, if they dont have to move much. Our raid leader had the paladin running from the front of the room to the back to heal the tank who was keeping Darnavan busy and to heal the tank who was tanking the adds. And they wondered why the paladin was struggling...

In comes another paladin, who wouldn't come unless his "imba warlock dps" friend could to. Our leader then KICKS our lowest dps, who wasn't doing too badly - sitting at around 4k total and was last on Marrowgar by a matter of 25dps...

I knew I'd judged this book by it's cover and really, it was a terrible, terrible, group. We wiped twice more on Marrowgar because our trigger happy warlock killed Darnavan and our "awesome pala healer" disconnected. Wonderful.

After getting the weekly done, in a pretty smooth kill (even if it pains me to admit it) we moved on Gunship. Around this time, it became apparent that the "imba warlock dps" was actually shit. Utterly shit. He was in good gear, some ICC10/25 stuff, 2T10 and was doing around 3k...imba dps my arse.

We wiped on Gunship, because the paladin healer was too busy telling a dps in the group that "blue gems in ICC gear is fail." "you fail." "omfg, fail rogue..." and numerous other ways of saying the world "fail."

I gritted my teeth and bared it, vowing the do Saurfang and leave when the "imba warlock dps" started. He was like the little kid, standing at the side of the massive kid who was currently bullying the nerdy kid. Repeating everything he said "omfg, failrogue." I lost it.

"Shut up. I have blue gems in my gear and I'm wiping the floor with you, [imba warlock dps]. Stop repeating everything your retarded paladin friend is saying, you annoying little child."

The reply?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Anyways, I noticed that what they were both saying looked a lot like some of the stuff you see at Elitist Jerks. People (sometimes quite harshly) critising others because of gem, spec and gear choices. Except, these guys were all talk and no action. Failing Elitist wankers. This became apparent when they started critising another warlocks gem choice and specc, even though he was doing the second most dps.

I left after 2 attempts on Saurfang, in which the paladin swore he could solo heal and failed every single time. So, like any respecting person would do. I started HS'ing, dropped group and just before I went "FWOOOOSH." Used /s to put "fail paladin."

I then logged off, to see my hunter using the two axes I have so desperatly wanted to use on my rogue for weeks...Blizzard you pricks.

Anyways, I guess the old saying of "Doing judge a pug by the gear, initial welcome you get when invited or composition, because they could all be drooling failing elitist wankers." Heh.

Twilight Vanquisher my arse.

2010-02-21T14:02:00.000Z

Over at The Barrens Chat Wulfy blogged on the old Halls of Reflection bug where you could just let the Lich King walk past you and fight his undead minions without worrying about him walking up to you and pwning your little face. I recently got the Twilight Vanquisher title on my 2 foot cannon and I've got to say, I definitly think that this is more of an exploit now than it used to be...

Isn't he just adorable? Anyways, we did it the Zerging method. Which is basically you go in with 2 tanks (1 on 10 man) 2-3 healers (1 on 10 man) and a bucket load of 6,000+ dps. Now, Blizzard had said in the past that they didn't class this as an exploit and actually liked the fact people were trying new things to down bosses but come on Blizzard, with everyone and their bloody grandma's rocking 232-251 iLvl gear, this is beyond a joke.

On the attempt at which we downed him, I topped out at 14.8k dps. I'll admit right now, there was no skill involved in that number. I basically just spammed Arcane Blast for 60 seconds, popped a mana gem and spammed a bit more. One of my friends that has never played Warcraft could have done that easily. It's one button, I didn't even have to move!

I remember back when Sarth3D was the hardest content in the game. It was so damned hard, that people with the Twlight Vanquisher (and of the Nightfall) titles were looked at going "Wow, you're in an organised, well geared guild." The Nightfall title was considered harder to get, as with 10 people the fight is a lot harder.

When Ulduar was released and people started to get to higher levels of dps, some clever bugger found out that you can Zerg poor Sarthy and basically get the title (and the mount) for not much work. Hell, we went and did it with my Rogue and he's been Jakkru of the Nightfall for a while now.

Now that people are rocking higher iLvl gear and pwning the Lich King in his frozen face, I definitly think that they (Blizzard) should stop the Zerg method, get it fixed and back to the way it should have been. I'd love the challenge that it would give and it wouldn't be as hard as it used to be due to gear being easier to obtain. It'd actually mean those people with the Mounts would have worked for them, instead of just slapping the poor dragon round the face for 90 seconds or less. Maybe even give Sarthy an upgrade in drops for people that down him with three drakes up?

Anyways, speaking of Dragons, I cannot wait for this. It's going to be amazing and hopefully, if Blizzard are doing what they did with the release of the Lich King, stuff like this will make that little period where no one can be arsed doing anything because the expansion is a few weeks away a little less boring and a whole lot more fun.

I still remember the Scourge events fondly. Running around trying to start a little zombie army outside Silvermoon City only to be foiled at the last minute by a paladin in uber-RP mode, smiting the minions of the Lich King before they could infect the population. I also got into the RP "spirit," quoting Aliens to my hunter friend everytime I got infected. ("Kill...me...") but if the battle for Gnomeregan does happen, I might actually loregasm while Arcane Blasting things in the face on my 2 foot cannon!

I could insert an Oasis lyric but I wont because I hate them...

2010-02-19T14:16:00.000Z

Ever heard someone complaining about how WoW was so much better back in Vanilla?

"Contents too easy!" is the first cry, followed usually by sometime to do with how easy it is to get loot, and/or how classes are becoming too similar.

This is true but after reading a book (1. Yeah, I can read. 2. The book was actually on environmentalism but still...) that gave me the idea of looking back at how things used to be, comparing them with how they are and you can usually find that we're a lot better off now than we were, I thought I'd give it a crack using Warcraft.

Firstly, I cannot comment personally on end game content in Vanilla, so I asked in guild and two people answered. Ercles and an officer, who'd raided on another server.

A little bit of background first; Ercles raided as a paladin and a hunter, saw most of the content and even had a crack at Naxxramas-that-was. The other officer raided as a hunter and as a healer priest and some ZG, AQ20, MC and Onyxia. Both raided around 3-4 times a week and the raids were quite lengthy, 4-6 hours. Both of them said that 40 man raids were a huge pain in the arse organisationally but Ercles pointed out that it meant people could go afk and it wouldn't hold a raid up as their dps/healing wouldn't be missed due to sheer numbers.

Looking at it, a lot of trust was placed into a lot of people and seems like there was an awful amount of effort required by only a few to get these raids off the group. Also, as Erc nicely put it - "buffing was hell."

The officer I asked raided in a community, then as part of a guild which was lucky enough to see most end-raid bosses. However, a lot of people that raided, didn't get to fully experience everything Blizzard had given us. Only the "hardcore" got to down Kelly in Naxx-that-was, most people were happy getting a few peices of T0 from easier bosses and calling it quits. Kind of negates the fact people buy games to see and do all that's to be seen and done, with only the elite downing and experiencing everything it's no surprise that Blizzard changed to 10 man raids in TBC they definitly realised that 40 people is a hell of a number to gather, organise, buff and keep focused for more than 20 minutes.

Moving onto TBC, which I can comment about and I've got to say, I enjoyed raiding Karazhan thoroughly back when it was the only 10 man content in TBC. It was great, you could have a laugh but at the same time, you had to get serious when it counted because the place was still lethal. More and more guilds started popping up, raiding in-guild only, not having to rely on people they didn't know from PuG's or communities, it created a more friendly raiding atmosphere. Which was fantastic and something that Blizzard had got spot on. Raids were still long, Karazhan took around 3 days to clear back when it was at its hardest. Guilds that could get through it in 2 were see as being amazing and to get to Curator in one night was something people dreamed of. The ease of accessibility that was introduced by Blizzard started to get them more monthly subscribers and as a business, it's something they wanted to keep a hold of.

25 man raids were then introduced, for the guild seeking a harder challenge. Some steam-rolled their way through them, gearing up to go hit the emo-elf himself. They were well designed, with interesting mechanics, graphics and cool looking loot. The people that saw the content loved it, those that didn't, moaned. Once sunwell came out and Muru so fucking hard his nightmares were scared of him, the guilds that were seeing current content started to moan. Blizzard had to listen, they wanted to keep their subscribers and therefore money rolling in and made everything a little bit easier and yet, everyone moaned about that.

I didn't mind the changes. It meant that the guild I'm in could see more stuff, I loved raided and it actually gave others interest in it. By the end of TBC, after being a 10 man Karazhan farming/Zul'Aman pooning guild, we'd started fielding regular trips into 25 mans, such as Tempest Keep, Serpentshrine Cavern and even Black Temple. Yeah, we hadn't downed the end bosses but still, we'd had a great time and couldn't wait to get started in Lich King.

Naxx-that-is was at first, a little bit hard - fresh faced 80's in their heroic epics/blues against massive spiders and pissed off women. But soon, the loot came in thick and fast and Naxxramas wasn't a challenge anymore. The gamers demanded more content but we were impatient, with only a few raids to keep us entertained we wanted something new and Blizzard were under pressure to deliver. Ulduar came out and it was awesome...once all the glitches were fixed.

People pissed and moaned about the Ulduar glitches but what can you expect? It's like moaning to a waiter in a restaurant that your food isn't there yet - you'll get it faster but you cant guarentee that he wont have spat in the soup just to piss you off.

Now-a-days, Blizzard have started to introduce faster raids, splitting things into wings and making heroics and the like more and more accessible, people the people playing the game are growing more and more impatient of waiting and Blizzard has to develop to keep it's MMORPG crown. Loot is easier than ever to get and it's pissing a few people off - hell, it annoys me that some folk that clearly dont deserve the gear get it and make fools out of themselves thinking their gearscore automatically means they have skills.

When I was asking Ercles questions, he ended with "I like stuff better now but I'm not happy." Blizzard definitly aren't doing bad but they could do so much better. Heroic modes were made for the more adventurous but have become unused, as they're not needed to progress - why carry a sledgehammer up a hill to hit in a peg when you can put a hammer in your pocket and do the same job?

Blizzard wont change things drastically in cataclysm, they wont make having intelligence to raid a requirement (although, I wish they would...). Let's just hope that our own impatience wont be Blizzards downfall.

Edit: 10 points who can tell me what god-awful Oasis lyric would be the title! :)

Do you wanna be in my gang, my gang, my gang?

2010-02-15T14:30:00.000Z

My last post was pretty much three mini posts in one about events that have happened over the past few days on my numerous alts and one of the things mentioned was that of "Tardraid." Which is made of awesome. Now, over at Righteous Orbs, Tamarind raised an issue about Cliques in their post about Tardraid and how awesome it is.

Cliques pop up everywhere, just looking at the lecture I was just in about Fieldwork in Geography - You've got the "Blarckberry" crew, at the back, in their body warmers and messy hair. You've got the locals, who know each other from school down at the front, all in their "09 Leavers" hoodies. You've got the girls who make far too much of an effort just for a lecture and then those that make no effort what so ever. You've got the lonely people, sitting on their own and then you've got "the lads" sitting in the middle, messing around and not really listening (I'm one of those...).

So, it's just natural that they'd appear in Warcraft. It's not a bad thing, I remember back when we first started doing Naxx-25, when the roles of melee/tank/ranged/healer's where governed by the leaders. We all had our seperate channels. Absotanko, Absowhackit, Absohealo and I dont know the ranged one because back then I couldn't of cared. There was competition, banter of sorts in these channels - "Haha, I pwnd you on Patchwerk!" - "Yeah! I forgot to add poisons!" - "Nooob, least you did better than most of the ranged!" - "Yeah, the wankers." (Dramatised...just a little...)

There was also a channel, which a few of us, who knew the tactics pretty well and liked to have a chit-chat while they were explained - Absoalphawolves. We'd have a giggle in the channel, while the raid leader was explaining what people should be doing. It kept /ra clear of useless shit like; "I wish I was like Optimus Prime, that'd be awesome!" or "I wanna be known as Blackhawk" or just typing lyrics to songs we were listening to. It was a little clique, sort of and this became apparent when there was a little bit of loot drama.

An old rogue in the guild (who has since left) won an item over me. For myself, it was a massive upgrade, a 213 weapon going from a 200, crafted dagger. Back then, biggest upgrade you could get. I was, of course, annoyed. The melee had all congratulated me in our little channel, aswell as those in the Absoalphawolves. I was chuffed but no, I lost it. So, I was venting to my little "clique." I got over it and moved onto Kel'thuzad, where the whirling fist of death dropped. I was mutilate back then and the rogue that had won the dagger was combat, the only combat rogue in the guild. In absoalphawolves, I was told to roll on it - "Go combat, you might aswell, it's an awesome weapon." - "Yeah, and you'll really piss [X] off!" So I did and I won it.

That's a case of where cliques are bad, it was even commented on by the other rogue but I didn't feel bad at the time (I had a fucking chainsaw, how can you feel bad when you have a chainsaw!) but looking back on it, I feel guilty.

However, there are good cliques in WoW and Tardraid is definitly one of them. It's like greenpeace or Oxfam in clique-terms. A clique that helps people develop their raiding skills so maybe one day they can see the current content? [sarcasm] Oh my god, it's terrible! [/sarcasm]

I mean, the raid to Ulduar usually consists of a similar set up, I try to grab a spot whenever I can, our tanks usually swap around but 9/10 times there's Ercles, our fearless leader, Tam there providing bubbles and after-raid blogs, our hunting cows, a bubbly Austrailian and our overgeared enhancement shaman but the great thing is, it's open to anyone and we get a nice mix. New members, old members, members who are bored, peoples alts looking for a way to practice their new class in a raid and maybe get some gear, it's pretty good the variety we get.

A guild is bound to have its Cliques and I know ours do. For example, the officers and guild leader that's a clique right there (granted, we're actually pretty cool). There's also the old timers, people who have been there for so long they actually know what the sentence "I blame Eli" means after we wipe. People who bring more than one real life friend into the guild start a sort of mini-clique right then and their, they know each other and chat like they do if they were down the pub (sometimes it gets a little offensive but mainly it's just harmless).

I'd noticed this back when I joined my new guild alliance side and was planning to slap a post together about it at some point, just so happens someone else had some views on it and gave me a little bit of inspiration.

A pretty eventful past two days...

2010-02-14T00:08:00.000Z

Seeing as it's Valentines Day, I'll start with my favourite poem this year:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
This is a knife,
now get in the fucking van.

Aaaah, so sweet.

The week, I mostly be being busy

So anyways, over the past two days I've been doing a lot of alt playing. I've tanked a few heroics on my warrior, done a few heroics and Ulduar (which was AWESOME - more on that later tho!) on the shaman and have done a few raids (not so awesome - more on that later too) on the rogue. I've also been messing around on some lower level alts, taking in the sights, dressing them up in end game gear to see how cool they'd look if I actually had to motivation to level yet another character...y'know, the usual stuff.

So my trips into heroics on my warrior have been largely un-eventful, mainly because they were with guildies. Which was cool, although I'm kinda worried about where Wulfy learnt to heal using only one hand...

My weekly trip to the land of free loot, often called VoA was a little eventful, some people really dont understand the simplist of loot systems. I shall explain.

I almost lost my T10 resto shaman gloves to someone who's main specc was elemental - why? Because "he needed them for offspecc." I was a little pissed off at the raid leader for not setting it to master looter, but it's not hard for people to understand how it works - If it's for your class and there's no one else there of the same class as you, hit "Need," if it's for your class and there's someone there also of the same class as you, see what specc they are, if the peice of loot is for your specc, hit "need" if it isn't, and it is for their specc, pass. If it's for neither of your speccs, (after asking before doing so) hit "need." It's pretty much common sense, although I am well aware the way I just explained it then doesn't really make it sound it. This shaman didn't do that, and followed the "If the hat isn't red, it belongs on your head" rule.

The other members of the raid started to kick off - I actually remained calm. The other shaman wasn't very good with english and for me to start insulting him in my broad, northern tones would only confuse him and with confusion comes anger and with anger comes raid quits and that doesn't solve anything. So, after everyone else whined, I just told him nicely, he traded me the item and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Hardmodes are still hard

The almost weekly trip into Ulduar was fantastic. I'm getting the hang of this healing lark now and was quite confident to say that myself and the other healer could take on the challenge, and boy did we! Flame Leviathon went off without a hitch and we confidently strolled onwards to XT. I wasn't exactly aware we were going to do hardmode, so as per usual, I validated my raid spot by making everyone massive and roar and proceeded to heal. I only became aware of this hardmode plan when I saw the "heart has severed from his body." I have to admit, I paniced, just a little. It was a wonderful challenge. The tanks were at the same level of gear as the guilds main tanks were back when we attempted Hardmodes for the first time - they were squishy, but not TOO squishy. The dps were a little over-geared and my disco-dancin' priest partner in healin' crime is vastly more geared than my little noob-aman but we managed, and what a feeling it was! The Ulduar raids that get run have been christaned "Tardraid" but everytime I go in there, we do better, go further and die a lot less, it's great to see people who hadn't raided before improve, in both dps and spacial awareness and it's wonderful to see the raid leader improve as a leader and try harder things, pushing the members of the raid. We cleared up to Mimiron last night and had a few solid attempts, each time getting him well into Phase 4.

The only downside to these raids is that I cant join people on Vent, due to the stupid universities internet. Makes me feel like a prick whenever I suggest things after a wipe as I sound like I'm nit-picking and probably repeating whatever's been said over vent.

Where have all the axes gone?

So since Vorla made me a red lumberjack t-shirt, I've been after an axe.

My rogueout is getting less and less, which is wicked, I'm enjoying raiding again but I cant bring myself to do heroics until I've got combat as my dual specc and before that can happen, I need to get myself a nice, slow, main hand weapon. Preferably an axe, so I can wear my lovely red flanal t-shirt.

So yesterday, I had a poke around in ICC10 to get the last 7 emblems for my new shoulders (which are AWESOME) and we did quite well, no axe dropped from the Gunship event but I didn't hold out for much, I mean, it'll never drop when I'm on my rogue but will (and has) dropped everytime I've set foot in there on my 3ft cannon. We had an attempt on Festergut, where our best attempt was a 2% wipe. Which we'd prolly had done if our hunter hadn't pulled aggro (seriously, how do you do that as a hunter, they have this special button and everything...). We carried on but realised, after a stupid wipe that our non-guilded tank was a complete tool, who didn't think it was good enough to have the Taunt glyph when main tanking in ICC10. Y'know, the glyph that stops you needing 11-million-trillion-gazillion hit to make your hits not miss and something manageable, like 150 something or other. She also used annoying smilies. Bitch.

Then today, I tried ToC10, where I had to kick a shaman because they were so annoying I had people spamming some pretty imaginiative macro's to tell him just how annoying he was. So, in the end, I asked him if he knew what Karate was, to which he replied "What?" - Thanks a fucking lot for spoiling my amazing way of kicking you - I asked him again and got the same answer...
"Kung fu?" I say
"YEAH" says he, with added caps lock to show he actually knew.
"Dodge this kick then" I reply, a smirk spreading over my behind-keyboard face
BAM one less annoyance.

I grabbed me another dps and we "smoothly" cleared ToC10. No axe from Anub. QQ.

However, having my new found love from shamans, I took a look at the shaman healer we had in the raid, I said "smoothly" above because the two healers struggled and after looking at this shamans healing, I could definitly see why...75% of his healing was from Chain heal. It doesn't work that way, you've got more than one ability...He'd use Earth Shield about 4 times, it was terrible. The poor priest had effectivly solo healed up until the last boss. Poor bugger...

I definitly think that having a tank, healer and many a dps in this game has opened up more doors. I can help out a lot more, especially since people are usually short a tank or healer, organise more stuff and understand the game a lot better having looked at it from all three view-points. Even if it's made me a right synical bastard when people are completely crap :D

Silence! I wipe you!

2010-02-08T17:58:00.000Z

After playing a mage and now a healer, I have come to hate something more than a knockback and the dreaded whirlwind. Silence affects, getting spell locked or locked out of a certain set of spells. I hate them.

I mean, it's not that bad when I'm on my mage - I get spell locked on the big skeleton guys in ICC if I'm not paying attention to when they're casting their annoying Shout, so I use Frostfire bolt, and it's become a noticeable thing, usually followed by "Krinkal, did you get locked out again?" in /ra.

But on my shaman, being a healer... it's like a mini-panic attack.

For example, on Ignis, I completely forgot I wasn't a rogue and kept casting even after the big fuck off warning I get across my screen to tell me to stop casting. I got locked out and actually had a mild heart-attack.

I mean, it's something you've got to be on your toes about. Not only do you have to keep people alive, react to the amount of damage they're currently taking and at the same time, worry about yourself you've also got to pay attention to your surroundings. I'm telling you, when I was raiding as DPS the healers made this shit look easy but actually doing it is a whole different story...

So, after my mild panic attack and my abilities had come back to me, I blew my Oh shits and topped the add tank, the melee and myself up. Panic attack over, lesson learnt you'd think...

No. I wasn't. I didn't learn until the third Flame Jets. It's a bloody good job the other healer was on their game or we'd have wiped.

Fast forward to today. ICC25 failboat of a PuG. I wasn't expecting much but the reputation was good and I got some practice in on healing a 25 man raid, which is pretty damned fun as a shaman. We get those big annoying skellys out and the tanks do well, grab them, turn them away from the melee etc. I've learnt from my mistakes, I'd unconsiouslly decided I was going to look after this particular warrior tank during this fight and was healing away, when I noticed my warning, I immediatly got a Riptide and a Lesser Healing Wave off and stopped. Let him cast and continued. The other healers, however, didn't. So while they were having a mild panic attack while I was shitting myself trying to keep the tanks up.

It's definitly getting some used to and at times it can be damned hard but I'm loving every second of this healing lark!

H for Heroic

2010-02-05T14:40:00.000Z

I'm not necessarily afraid to PuG a raid. Infact, being at University the only time I really get to raid now-a-days is via a PuG, or if a raid is up on a night when it's a little bit more expensive for a lot of vodka and a little bit of coke. However, I was a little apprehensive saying "Yes" when asked if I'd like to PuG Trial of the Grand Crusader.

For those of you that dont know, Trial of the Grand Crusader is what Blizzard would have probably made TotC, if they weren't making everything so god damn easy. Let's face it, TotC is a joke, a really unfunny one, told by that prick who knows one of your friends somehow and always insists on coming round when they're not exactly welcome.

Anyways, I was currently bored, sat in Dalaran watching Guild chat so I thought "what the hell, if they wipe on beasts I'll use my "Sorry, booty call" excuse (which by the way, is an awesome excuse) and went for my gear check. I passed and hopped on my Dragon and flew to the Tournament grounds.

After the usual round of buffs, a quick run over the Beasts fight and how it differs (only slightly, mind you) from the normal version we talked to Tirion Boringlongspeechesring. What was surprising, was the level of dps we had - these people weren't the customary heroic farmers in T9 I've come to expect from PuGs, they actually knew what the hell they were doing. I was mutilating away while the Snowbolds got raped in a matter of seconds. So, we one Shot the beasts. It got a little messy on the Worms, someone had to be Combat Rezzed but a kill is a kill. I even got some nice Leatherworking patterns out of it, which was great.

So we moved on, to Lord J. Who was pretty much the same execpt the portals had to be killed or they'd keep spawning those damned-whorish-women that spin people around. We had a few wipes, mainly because everything hits so damned hard but after around 2 tries we killed him, smoothly. Another Leatherworking pattern for me, some loot for a very greatful hunter and we moved on the Faction Champs.

*Gulp*

Faction Champs is a raid breaker. People can wipe on them if they dont know what they're doing. I've seen it happen, it's not fun either. So what happened next was a bit of a shock. We one shot them, I was surprised. The fight is a lot different - the Champs aren't tauntable, which means the tanks actually have to do some work, chase them around, stun them. Because stuns have cooldowns it means DPS have to be on their toes, if you see the warrior running at you with that "I'm gonna make you wear a dress and hurt you" look in his eyes, you get the fuck outta Dodge, real fast. The healers, I've got to admit where absolutley fantastic. They hadn't messed up so far, the deaths on Lord J were entirely the DPS's fault for not obeying Raiding Rule number 1 and it showed how good they were on Faction Champs. It restored a tiny bit of faith in humanity to myself and my friend.

Next was Twins, which proved a little bit more difficult. The fight is exactly the same but the Orbs are deadly and they occasionally cast a dot which really stings if you dont change to the correct Essence to cancel it out. We had about 5 wipes, which usually would make a group fall apart. But no, instead, this PuG was, wait for it, infact...I want a fucking drumroll for this...

We discussed where we'd gone wrong and how to improve/avoid doing it again on the next attempt.

There were no cries of "FFS HEALERS." or "Omg, l2p." Only constructive critism, which every member of the raid took onboard and with a good attitude. After a few more attempts, we smoothly killed them, resulting in another Leatherworking pattern for me!

Now, Anub'arak was the next guy on our list. He'd get us the achievement and some bonus loot because we'd only died around 11 times, I'd liked the difficulty so far, it was interesting and was definitly helping with my rogue-out as I actually had to pay attention and not mindlessly bash my face against the keyboard.

After being the laughable last boss in TotC, I wasn't holding much hope out for poor Anub, I dont know why I was being Naive, I mean he's the last boss in Trial of the Grand Crusader (which so far had been getting increasingly more and more difficult) for fucks sake! So when our PuG raid leader started to explain the tactics, I was more than taken a back by how damned complex it was.

We all know normal mode is easy, get ice on floor, tank adds on ice, kill adds, faceroll boss. Repeat after avoiding spikes when he submerges etc etc. Well, Heroic is a whole different story, infact, a whole different genre.

You have 6 Orbs, which dont respawn (that's right, you did read it correctly. 6 Orbs). You get 4 adds instead of two and in addition, someones been putting a little something extra in Mr. 'Arak's morning protein shake because he hits so fucking hard the tank almost shit himself on the first pull.

Needless to say, we ran into a bit of an obstacle. It was difficult to co-ordinate where the Ice was going to drop after our hunter killed it and where the adds were going to be tanked. Sometimes it was next to the boss, others it was on the other side of his little burrow. Meaning melee having to run all around the place and loosing valuable dps on the boss.

The hardest part was not dying on his Submereged phase. It was terribly, terribly hard. 6 orbs and you can only use 2 per phase (3 in total, as one goes down at the start for the adds to be tanked on). He's deceptivley fast, starting out like a fat man running to his car in the rain and suddenly becomes Usain-fucking-Bolt. You've got to kite him for long enough that he'll only choose 2-3 people to chase. Which is difficult for people who cant speed up. At the same time, you've got to be killing the adds, which actually hurt on Heroic.

After about 8 tries, we called it a day. We'd been in there for coming on 4 hours and people were getting tired but those 8 tries were some of the most fun I've had in a raid in a long time, content wise. It was a proper challenge and I actually would love to go back again with the guild if they ever decide to come out of ICC.

I was a fan of the Hard modes in Ulduar, it kept the game a challenge for those looking for one. Blizzards way of "balancing" between accessible raiding and the more "hardcore" side.

Bar go down, Bar go up!

2010-02-03T01:28:00.000Z

Earlier is evening I did the weekly on my shaman and popped my head a little further into Ulduar for a few more badges and a chance at some loot, as he's only been level 80 for about a day now. It was great fun, doing the Unbroken and Shutout achievements all in one when taking on the now laughable excuse for a first boss, Flame Leviathon.

Now, due to lack of interest, I was healing, mainly in my currently collected Elemental gear, which felt a little bit weird but still, I'd done a few heroics before hand and got some stuff for mp5 on and was feeling quite safe in my ability to heal the raid, especially with our usual priest and a vastly overgeared Resto shaman to carry me every step of the way.

So after getting a few tips from the lovely Tam. I plopped my Earth Shield on a tank and got ready for healing!

Now, the tips were quite simple.
1. Bar go up, Bar go down
2. Priorities - If two people are getting twatted, make sure the one who benefits the raid more lives
3. Have fun

I felt a little bit like I was playing god. Especially with the whole deciding who lives and who dies but lets face it, it's kinda true. I'd healed some 5 man dungeons while levelling and I'd been doing it then, letting the weaker dps die if it was a toss up between him and someone else.

So we went ahead and took on Ignis, who was the weekly raid boss, everything was going smoothly. I was healing the adds tank, not too hard, even found the time to toss a few heals round the raid and take a dip in the Crotch Pot for the achievement. So I'm there there, nicely spamming Chain Heal into a group of casters that had taken some damage from the Flame Jets when BAM - Tam dies. "Ahhh, shit." I think, I fucked something up! BAM - Overgeared Resto shaman dies. Now, two things popped into my head at that moment in time.

1. Oh fuck, I've messed up healing the raid. Two folks are dead an-
2. AHHHHH SHIT THE TANNNNNK!

So, I panic. I wet my pants, shit the bed and have a heart attack at the same time. I frantically run into range of the main tank after sticking a Riptide and Earth Shield on add-tank. I hit my "Oh shit" macro and get a decent crit on an instant healing wave. Tank goes from 8% to a good 16-18%, I spam a few more heals before realising - add tank is slowly dieing! Back over there, Riptide, Lesser Healing Wave, BOLLOCKS! Main tank is getting fisted again...oh and look there's someone in the crotch pot.

I smelt a wipe, I tried my hardest, I ran around, I hit Chain Heal and suddenly - Main tank is back at full health. Thankfully, Blizzard had seen fit to create Soulstones to stop new healers shitting themselves completely when the "main healers" have bought it.

But through my little panic, I'd had a TONNE of fun. I was reacting to things happening, having to balance cooldowns and intensity of heals, all the while thinking about my rather crappy mana pool. I may have solo-healed Ignis for around 15 seconds but still, it was a fantastic feeling. Better than topping a Recount meter as a rogue and different to successfully main tanking a boss on a warrior.

So we trudged on to XT, which was chain heal heaven. Much fun was had during the tantrums, I actually felt like I was pulling my weight on that fight. Like I'd actually contributed to keeping people alive and making the other two healers life a whole bunch easier.

After an attempt on Iron Council, which had me healing a pant wettingly high amount of damage, the Disconnection demon got us and claimed the first victim of the night, our mage. We decided to down Kologarn with 9 - with me Riptiding and chain healing my little heart out, while trying to dodge them bloody annoying eye beams. After that, more disconnects forced the raid to come to an abrupt end, which was a shame but couldn't really be avoided.

I've been dps'ing in raids for a while now and I just take it as a given that if I take damage, some kind-soul will heal my sorry arse when/if I decide to stand in the fire but fter the raid, Tam said something quite interesting to me, pointing out that healers dont brag about it, dont broadcast it to the party/raid but often or not, they will bring someone back from the brink of character-death. Often saving the raid. It's a very humble job, the majority of the time. You can still get those who are determined to tell you everytime they save your pitiful character-life.

I recently blogged about having a tough time choosing a spec for my shaman but I think that after healing a raid (and having a tonne of fun while doing so) the end of my (brief) time as an Elemental shaman could very well be over.

Choices, so many Choices!

2010-02-01T12:22:00.000Z

So my shaman finally dinged 80 yesterday, after the Basin -> Icecrown -> Storm Peaks two level grind which only took me a day and a bit to do. Not bad. So I learnt my new skills, smelted the 100+ Saronite Ore I'd collected from the days exploration and sat down to decide what spec. 20 minutes, three discussions, one "Who are you and what have you done with Jakkru?" later I still couldn't decide.

Hybrids are hard. I mean, there's SO much choice.

I love melee but having raided as melee and suffering (although a little bit less than when I blogged about it) from Rogue-out I was a little warey of that. Plus I'd levelled as enhancement, which was alright but I couldn't imagine it getting anymore exciting.

My mage is fun as hell, so I was looking towards elemental. The rotation is pretty easy which was attractive but also put me off, as it could get quite boring, quite fast.

I've never raided as a healer, so I decided whatever I was going to do, I'd take Resto as an offspecc. I wouldn't main specc into it as my gear is terrible and I'd be that healer in the pug that other people blog about because he was so shit.

So, in the end and after another three discussions, two pints of beer, a pub quiz and a packet of crisps I decided to do two trial heroics to see what Enhancement and Elemental were like at 80.

First off was enhancement, so I didn't have to respecc straight away. It was pretty similar to when I was doing random dungeons, I hit a little bit harder and could turn things into a frog, which I was doing a lot because it was a new skill and seeing a mob jumping round in frog-form makes me laugh but other than that, not much difference.

So then I tried elemental, which was AWESOME. I love seeing big numbers, lots of crits and generally casting MASSIVE BOULDERS OF LAVA. So it was right up my street. My dps was terrible as I only had 12 hit rating but I'd made my mind up. For the next week, I would testing my sanity in the LFG system as an elemental shaman and who knows, maybe a resto one when I'm geared for Elemental and have some badges floating around.

All Rogued Out

2010-01-29T11:33:00.000Z

I've been playing my rogue solidly for the past 2 years now, always trying to push that extra little bit of dps out, which to a competitive person like myself is awesome. I've played all three speccs and have currently been Mutilate since Naxx-10 AND IT'S GETTING SO FUCKING BORING.

I'm not even kidding, I'm bored. So very, very, bored. I'm stick of jabbing my finger on the Mutilate button, sick of having to Envenom if at 4CP, Rupture if at 3. Sick of randomly pressing Hunger for blood every minute and sick and bloody tired of having to vanish and do it all over again. It's not even challenging anymore. So, in the spirit of being bored out of my mind, I've turned to my alts.

Nalria, part time tank, part time fury warrior is now no longer claiming benefits but still working on the side. She's become a full time fury warrior. The gear is crap and definitly needs work, the specc is good and I'm learning a new rotation, it's breathed new life into the mess that is melee plus, it fits me more. Being of square build in the life away from keyboard, if I was to happen myself in a fight to the death with a choice of weapons, I would grab the two biggest, heaviest, meanest motherfuckers available and whirlwind my way through. I'd probably die horrifically but still, I'd look super cool in the process.

I've also been playing my shaman more, he's still stuck at level 77 (and a half!) but I'm staying in the LFG tool a little longer to go in as Enhancement instead of Resto and it's so much fun! I have so much to do, I have different things for different situations, I can pewpew lazors when Maelstrom weapon proccs, or help the healer out if the fight has been raging for a while and they're low on mana by tossing some instant chain heals around my fellow facerollers. It's all good fun and has spurned me on to level my shaman to 80!

On the alliance side, I've been running around spreading diseases. Not in THAT way, you dirty bugger you. I've been playing my Deathtard. Which is a nice change of pace, granted it's still rotation based but it's more loose, I dont have a set rotation, depending on the situation I can spend my runes differently depending on which way I want to beat the living shit out of whatever I'm currently killing.

I was wondering why I was having more fun, I mean, I'm still face deep in melee, I'm still basically doing the same thing - dps'ing while avoiding flames/blades of death but I'm liking it more. I dont actually have any combat weapons, I'm missing a big, nasty main hand weapon with which to bring the pain and that's limited me to Mutilate for a long time now. I have one cooldown, which I use almost off the bat and has a 3 minute cooldown and it's not exactly the most exciting either - 100% guarenteed crit, oh wow, fun...not. With the other classes, I have options; On the warrior, I can pop Death wish and start pwning things really hard while having to avoid the flames/blades of death even more because they'll poon me twice as hard due to the extra damage I'll take. On the shaman, I can summon two wolves of awesome and just rip shit up. I have to manage my mana with Shamanistic Rage and I have the wonderful joy of making everyone fucking massive with the push of one button, I'm talking about the oh so awesome Bloodlust. On the deathtard, I have the option to get my ghoul out for the lads, summon an extra weapon for 12 seconds to deal punishment to the unfortunate soul that happens to be against me and I can make myself hysterical. No, not dramatically "OMGOMGOMGOMG" hysterical. I'm talking about Hysteria, which just pwns. Both the mob I'm killing and myself...

It's probably the main reason I've been playing my 3 foot cannon more and more, there's so many cooldowns in Arcane, it's damned fun.

I'm hoping my love for the stealthed kind will return after a little rest but in the meantime, you'll find me smashing faces with a different kind of weapon to daggers.

Jakkru and Ercles most excellent adventure

2010-01-22T16:24:00.000Z

So the other day, I was pottering around on my shaman, doing a bit of mining and questing when Ercles of the Barrens chat, yes, that is his offical title (look in the blogroll, his blawg is there, good stuff!) asks me "Do you want to see what's under Orgrimmar?"

Now, that's not a question you can easily go "No thanks, I'd rather mine and quest instead" too. It's a question where you go "OMFG YES!" While logging in your rogue so fast you actually realise you haven't given a reply but instead created a character called "gyes" I'm a fan of glitches in Warcraft, because sometimes they have cool stuff involved. Sometimes they look cool and other times they're funny for a little bit but then really annoying.

So there we are, Jakkru and Erc's mage (mis-fat-nachos) who's name I cannot actually spell but means something fancy in latin, about to set off on an epic adventure.

So, we meet up in Orgrimmar and head to the Valley of Honour (or as it's known in game, the Valley of Americanisms). I should have really screenshotted how we did it, but instead I shall use my epic paint skills!

So yeah, while Ercles was faffing around for 15 minutes trying to jump over the wall, I was doing a bit of exploring.

The large crater behind me is actually Ragefire Chasm. You can jump down and you get shoved right into the middle of RFC but with little blue bits sticking out which you can jump back out of and you're back under Orgrimmar. You can see the distinctive entrance behind me, you can run up to it and there's little inlets where the large wooden planks are in the tunnel leading in and out of Orgrimmar.

The proof that Erc actually made it! Standing under the Valley of Spirits, near the entrance that bridges over the Ashenvale/Durotar river.

We then moved onto Silvermoon City, where Erc said we'd be mingling with rockstars.

While we were running around, Erc was telling me about an addon which he's been using to make his video's (check his blog!) documenting Azeroth before it gets torn apart. Apparently he's seen what's under Hyjal and other places and there's vast expanses of the game that aren't even used!

I remember when I first started playing World of Warcraft, I thought the starting area was pretty much it. It was huge. Durotar was the biggest place on the planet, to my noobish Orc warrior brain. I didn't have a clue there was an entire other land across the swirly water! When I finally got used to the size of Azeroth, which took around 50 odd levels to do, out came TBC and then Lich King after that. The game keeps growing and growing and for that Blizzard, I cannot thank you enough. Offering new, exciting places to explore (or hate, depending on experiences there). I just cant believe there's stuff they dont use! I really think Blizzard should allow access to the top of Silvermoon, for this single reason:

Look at it, the effort that's gone into making it, amazing. The same could be said for the other areas, like those underneath Mount Hyjal. Seems a waste not to let people interact with those places more and more, considering the time and money spent. Maybe in the future, who knows but for now Blizzard, keep it coming and I dont know about you lot but I'm definitly looking forward to the changes coming in Cataclysm!

All aboard the failboat!

2010-01-22T12:26:00.001Z

So I've been seeing all these posts about people's terrible experiences using the new LFG system and I was preparing to write a little "I've not found it that bad, true there's been a few dicks but they've been bareable etc" until earlier this week.

As usual, I was doing a daily normal on my level 77 shaman, I'd ticked the healer box and as per-ususal I was in a group as soon as you could say some quote from old-skool batman films. The instance was Gun'drak, not bad. Nice and fast and some decent loot knocking around.

So, as I usually do when healing, I spot the guy who's the tank, it's usually the one with the shield or the larger health pool. In this case it was a death knight, which was cool. I slap my earth shield on, set my totems up to support the casters as the DK had imp. Icy Talons and let everyone know I'm ready.

What happened next, can only be described as fail. The DK runs into the middle of the first room, pulling all 9 snakes and the boss. For 5 seconds, he didn't take any damage. Then for 2 and a half he did. Dead tank. Dead melee dps, dead warlock then dead me.

"omfg shit heler" is the cry from the retribution paladin.

"ffs" from a fury warrior, who actually proved for the rest of the instance that the only three phrases he knew where "ffs" "gogogo" and "sorry bb"

"???/" from the warlock

and all the tank could say, "sorry lol thought i was on my main"

Turns out his main is a paladin tank with eleventybillion health who looks like he's body popping when tanking mobs because he has that much avoidance.

So, we get back in and the "omfg"-adin decides he's going to go holy. I didn't mind, if he thought he could do better then let him try and I love to dps. So, we buff up and in charges out tank, this time only grabbing the first 3 snakes. 5 seconds, 6, 7, dead tank.

Turns out the healers idea of "going holy" was to wear a shield, a spellpower mace and to put on the heirloom cloth shoulders, he didn't even change specc.

And thus ended the grouping with the tank, ???/ and ffs-or. Leaving me with omfg-din. We'd been in there for 5 minutes, I wasn't leaving without my 2 badges, 30k XP and 20 something gold. I stuck us back in the LFG as two dps and within 15 minutes three other people came and restored my faith in humanity, even if it was just a tiny bit.

Now, one experience isn't that bad for me to start ranting and raving, sometimes shit happens but what happened two days ago on my Mage really did show the ugly side to the LFG.

I needed 5 more badges for my T9 helm, so I could get my T10 shoulder and keep the 4 set bonus. I'd done the daily already and was going to go for one more heroic before Icecrown, which was later that evening. I popped myself in the LFG system, grabbed a drink of water and I was in.

Ever heard the saying "It's like waiting for a bus then 3 come along at once?" It was like that, but with epic, epic fail. Not only did I try and do a random heroic, I tried to do it 8 times. And 8 times I failed. Either the tank sucked, the dps were terribad or the healer turned out to have the IQ of a carrot, all the time Italian was flying left right and fucking centre.

In the end, some guildies took pity on me, and we did a heroic in 15 minutes. I got my T10 later that night, kept my 4 set T9 bonus and got a kick arse staff off Festergut aswell. Which perked me up, a little.

The List

2010-01-10T18:09:00.000Z

After running through Karazhan for shits and giggles on my level 76 shaman the other night, I got to thinking about how awesome it used to be, back in the day. I remembered all the things what had made is so damned good.

While I was healing a Shadow priest that had stated "Fuck it, I'll tank Nightbane!" after our Tank disconnected I was thinking about some of the other places I'd raided and started to put them into a little list. That little list looks a little something like this:

1 - Ulduar
2 - Zul'Aman
3 - Serpentshrine Cavern
4 - Karazhan
5 - Icecrown Citadel

I only got Warcraft about 2 months before TBC, so didn't get to see any of the endgame content from Vanilla, which is a shame because I had a look during TBC and they looked damned awesome.

So yeah, let me explain my reasoning behind that little list, some of the choices you might agree with others you might not.

Icecrown Citadel
It's in 5th place because so far, it's pretty damned good. It's restored my faith in Blizzard's abilities to make a challenging raid for both 10 and 25 people and the bosses mechanics are difficult yet do-able. Downing Deathbringer Saurfang on my Gnome mage brought back the same feelings I had when I first downed Prince in Karazhan. You knew you'd accomplished something. Having a feeling like that 4 bosses into a raid makes me happy and then attempting a boss that announces he's "Done a nasty poo-poo!" makes me have high hopes for the rest of the place!

Karazhan
My first ever raid, and still it remains one of my favourites. It was a massive challenge back in the day and a guild that had Curator on farm where considered to be close to god. It introduced me to hard hitting bosses, all with different tactics which made the instances and herocis I'd done so far like a day at the beach.

Serpentshrine Cavern
Setting foot into a 25 man raid after only doing 10 mans was a huge step up, both in organisation and difficulty. The first trash pull, I still remember every mage in the raid yelling "STOP HITTING THE DAMNED SHEEPS" over Ventrilo. Lurker below was the first boss we attempted in there and I crapped myself the first time he popped out to thank us for all the fish.

Zul'Aman
Blizzard kept true to form after Karazhan and released this place. Trolls are awesome. Trolls that turn into animals and try and stumpfuck you? Even more awesome. The loot looked stupidly cool and the bosses voices are so far the best in the game. Not to mention, it was a proper challenge, with the tactics taking time to learn, with having often a night of wiping to finally crack the tactics to a boss. This was the last raid where people in guild chat used to cheer us on because after we'd finally downed Zul'jin, they quickly nerfed most of TBC and everything became stupidly easy, mainly due to boss nerfs and easier access to high level gear but I still went to this place, because it was a brilliant raid.

Ulduar
Blizzard's promise of awesome-sauce on awesome-loaf with awesome-filling. The first day it came out, I had my reservations, lag and bugs made it impossible but a week after I realised they'd kept true. It visually looks stunning, it's absolutley MASSIVE and the bosses are so well designed that they're still a challenge even in some of the best gear in game so far. Yogg-Saron doing his mind-link-thingy on two people, then casting skull-over-head on one of them leads to two men screaming like little girls on vent; "WHAT DO WE DO?!" "I HAVE NO IDEA!" "AAAAAH!" "HOLD MEEE!" and watching a resilient Resto shaman keep himself alive for 6 minutes after a wipe on Yogg-Saron is something in itself...

For me. A good raid is somewhere, even though you've had it on farm for months, you can enjoy going back to. My top 5 are just that and I'd love Blizzard to recreate some older raids (especially the Vanilla ones which I'm totally gutted I missed) for max level, maybe my top 5 would change if that were to happen, who knows. Hopefully with the new expansion coming out, I'll have a few more raids to consider, might even make it to a top 10 one day!

Looking for Levels

2010-01-05T11:39:00.000Z

A little discussion on Ventrilo last night got me thinking. On my dual-specced, Resto/Enhancement shaman I have not done a quest since level 72 and am currently well into level 75. I've been, of course, abusing this new random dungeon system. Can you blame me? If I sign up as a healer I'm in within minutes, usually in a good group and usually done in less than 30 minutes of so. It's a less boring and easier way to get that precious XP and a good way for me to practice my healing.

Now, with Cataclysm on the end of everyone's tongue at the moment (speaking of which, check out Ercles' little video he's stuck on his blog, very good!) it got me thinking, are people going to actually quest? I mean, those that want to be level 85 in like, a day, will be questing like mad but if you think about it. Every level 80 will want to check the new instances out, they'll want to take a looksie and when they find out that there's a good amount of XP involved they might just stop question, which would be a damned shame cuz I'm pretty sure there's going to be some AWESOME questlines.

I for one plan on questing my little heart out, I loved the Lich King quests (except for some reason, I hate Howling Fjord and love Borean Tundra). The chains where epic, I mean, dressing up as a Ghoul to get back at the Troll that tricked you in Drak'tharon Keep? AWESOME! Wrathgate (both cutscene and the fight for the undercity) AWESOME! The stupidly long, stupidly good Sons of Hodir quest chain? AWWWWWWWESOME! You can see where I'm getting at?

I've got pretty high hopes for Cataclysm, even if I still think a Tauren paladin is wrong. Only time will tell I 'spose.

It's like Romeo and Juliet but completely different...

2009-12-30T22:17:00.000Z

So, I've been playing WoW for 3 and a bit years and for all that time I've been on the Horde side of things. I've hated dwarfs with a burning passion, felt disgusted when looking at those space-goat-squid-things called Draenai and laughed out loud at Gnomes. I always thought I was Horde through and through. That was, until I got bored and did one of those wonderful ways Blizzard has thought to make even more money from their overly addicted fanbase, a Faction change.

I took a character (my mage) which I loved to play but just couldn't bring myself to do the same quests in Northrend for the 4th time and turned him into...a GNOME! *Dramatic music/Drop Jaw/"SAY WHAAAT?!"*

So this Romeo and Juliet style hatred for the other side which I had harboured for 3 years, killed other players in Battleground to prove my love for the horde was shattered by a 3ft dude in a dress. It's as if he's my Juliet.

So, this little scraggly haired, highpitched halfling has melted my heart after 3 years of hatred. I logged into my Horde side guild and getting asked where'd I'd been for a few days by some guild members, who I hadn't told over Ventrilo where I currently was, and I proudly answered "Levelling my Gnome mage." This was greeted with a few "lol," "omg" and a couple of "traitors!" If I didn't have my Gnome, I'd probably have done the same when finding out a fellow guild member had started levelling an alliance character. Now, after that I thought I'd leave it. I wasn't going to go as far as running off to fake my own death or anything so I got around to doing my Horde-ish things when I got a few whispers, "What's it's name?" "What level is it?" "Didn't know you played alliance." I replied and then, thinking I'd get the reply of "lol gonna gank you!" I got "Oh cool, I'll add you on my 'toon then."

Thinking about it, in a game which you can't actually win, which seems is currently being steered into a much more casual direction people start to get bored on their characters, especially if they cant get better gear without new content being released, and start looking for something new, seeing as doing the same quests over and over gets very boring, extremely fast. That was my main excuse for transfering anyways, to see new stuff.

So, in this case, my "For the Horde!" attitude has been reduced and with the introduction of a new Night elf druid to let me take a look at low level quests on the Alliance side of things it's like the happy ending of a Bill Shakespeare classic. Y'know without the whole faking of death/confusing and suicide. That'd just be weird.

Drumroll pur-LEEZ

2009-12-28T12:54:00.000Z

That's right, another World of Warcraft related blog! After a little bit of thought, a lack of sleep and, possibly the contributer to 90% if not more of the blogs in the world, bordem I've decided to give this blogging lark a bit of a go.

As you can see, the name is Slash two (/2 as it shall be known henchforth as it is easier to type and stuffs) is the default trade channel in the World of Warcraft. As anyone that plays WoW will know, /2 is full of anything BUT trade. So that's what this blog will be full of, basically. If you're on an RP server (which, the majority of my characters are...), I will not be keeping trade chat IC, I will not be using the double brackets of wankyness.

So, this blog will be full of stuff like - QQ about nerfs/other classes being better than the currently class I was playing when I got owned by said class because I suck and I don't want to admit i- because they're overpowered. Stuff that has nothing to do with World of Warcraft (I'm a self confessed geek, there-fore other games may make an appearance from time to time). Stuff about raids. Bragging rights, etc etc. Hopefully it'll be the "good" parts of trade chat and not those fucking gold sellers which, if they're going to attempt to sell me gold might aswell learn english or get a better online translater...

Sometimes, they go to pretty impressive lengths

So anyways, WoW was the second MMORPG I ever played, with a brief run in with Guild Wars. My old main was a Warrior tank but after rolling an Undead Rogue I switched mains and haven't looked back since. I'm a self-proclaimed altaholic, with a Warrior, Hunter and Mage all at level 80 and a shaman and Death knight in the 70's.

I currently raid everything I can get my hands on, with all my level 80 characters. Some of it is in my guild, which I've been in from almost the start of my WoW life-time and some of it is in PuG's.

So yeah, that's pretty much is. WoW blog. Blogging will be of the WoW flavour the majority of the time. If that's your thing, take a looksie!