Cut scenes, plans, moving forward

I finally did the Wyrmrest quest that triggers the cut scene and takes you to the battle of UC… I won’t give anything away but this was quite amazing, great story telling by Blizz.

Last night was a night of no runs but I did get some of my to-do’s done. I replaced my chest peice but chose the Aviary Guardsman’s Hauberk instead as the stats were better. I also picked up the Fang of Truth swords so my hit rating is back at a respectable 140. I got my cooking up a little and also my engineering, made a bunch of Mammoth Cutter bullets and look forward to using them once my supply of Timeless bullets is used up.

This weekend I won’t get to play as much as I like as there’s Christmas decorations to put up, gifts to buy and a family supper to attend. I’ll run what I can, hopefully a heroic or two, and grind some reputation.

There are three groups I need to grind reputation with at the start. Knights of the Ebon Blade for the Spaulders of the Black Arrow and the Arcanum of Torment head enchant. Sons of Hodir for the Lesser Inscription of the Axe and at exalted the Greater Inscription of the Axe shoulder enchants. The Wyrmrest accord is a must for many people I think as, well flying dragon mount, say no more.

Northrend rocks!

Mintaka is 4 bars away from 75 after an exciting four days of leveling. I love the new areas, I love the quest progressions, I love the new types of quests and Dalaran is amazing.

I’ve replaced an epic trinket with a green and my Kara shoulders with a blue but that’s about it so far. Watching my crit chance drop to 17% has been the most frustrating, I’m looking forward to some new gear in the late 70’s and 80.

Blizzard has outdone themselves.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s shit to kill.

Disk Crash, ftl!

Yesterday my hard drive started making some odd noises and packed it in. It’s a 150Gb 10k rpm drive and it’s only 6months old but apparently this is normal as they run so hot. I replaced it and thanked all I hold dear that I keep all my data on secondary drives. Didn’t take long to get it back up and running and I was even able to get WoW running without reinstalling so that was cool.

The silver lining to this is huge, it could of happened Thursday morning…

Friday night we ran ZA with some guildies coming back to the fold. Nice to have a female voice or two in vent for a change too, no more masturbation and “…your mum…” comments, well less of them anyway.

I’ve decided to level cooking on Mintaka as well as he’ll probably be on his own in the high levels for a while, I went from 7-344 over the course of the weekend and only bought a few mats. With the achievements being listed in guild chat as you get them I got many comments about making people sandwiches, an added bonus to achievements.

Saturday I ran Kara twice on 2 different toons. Lots of cloth caster gear dropped on the run with Mintaka but when I ran my warlock through as the only clothy nothing friggin dropped, typical. I want to give a huge shout out to my wife for putting up with me gaming for 14hours Sat. and even brought me a plate of food. She’s the best, really she is.

Saturday night I got an achievement I’m the most proud of so far, completion of The Battle of Mount Hyjal. Nothing dropped and I was unhappy with my performance but still very cool.The elitist teenage bastards we ran with took great pleasure in the failure of the “bads” as they called those of us they pugged, even though our guild had 7 people in the raid so without us nobody would get loot.

Although I didn’t get any drops on the weekend I did get exalted with the violet eye so I’ve got the top ring of theirs and I got enough rep with the Scale of the Sands that I can now buy Mysterious Arrows. Expensive (1G80S) but worth it I think, they provide 53 extra dps. In our ZA run I was averaging 1750 dps on one boss, badass!

So, with 3ish days to go I’m hoping for 2 more ZA runs, maybe a Gruuls run and probaly one or two kara runs. Hopefully the servers are back up soon tomorrow as I’m off work.

The trolls, they be mockin’ me mon

The guild needed a body for a ZA last night but my hunter was saved so I dragged my squishy ‘lock into trollville and proceeded to die at an alarming rate and missed Mintaka greatly. The first smack upside of the heed came when the bear boss dropped the hunter shoulders I’ve been drooling over for weeks. These babies are better than T5 and look friggin’ awesome. I sobbed, I cried, I stomped my feet and threw my mouse….

Well no, but I was mightily vexed. Yes, you read that correctly, there was vexing.

Then a lovely cloth head piece dropped, a real upgrade to my blue one. A leather wearer rolled need on it also and won. Now I was vexed and perturbed.

I chatted with the roller and GM after and while I think it was a mistake for them to go to a leather wearer I understand no harm was intended.

But also know that I will be watching how things go in the next few months as I’m serious about raiding in Wrath and don’t want this to colour my experiences.

One week to go, one week of PUGing the cool instances and then it’s back to the grind of 5-mans and leveling. I’m looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time.

More raiding, no loots, hellza fun

So a quick Gruuls before supper even last night, my T4 shoulders didn’t even drop and that’s fine as the roll spirits are not looking at me with any favour of late anyway, I’d rather something not drop than have it drop and roll an 11, again. Unfortunately 11 is not one louder.

After a quick bite and a peck on the cheek to my very understanding and wonderful wife I went on a guild run of ZA. one and a half hours later and 6 bosses one-shotted and I’ve got a few more badges but no more loot. Which is fine as it’s just fun to raid right now. We even dragged two people through who’d never seen it before. Oh, I did get the trinket that summons the 3 witch doctor guys but that’s really just a novelty.

Tonight, who knows, perhaps a Mags, Kara… hell I’d even stay up all night and do a BT if I could, lol. This all ends in less than 8 days and the painful grind to 80 begins, I’m enjoying it as much as I can.

So I did get some new gloves from badges last night after the run, the Gauntlets of Rapidity, threw a nice +5 crit, +10 AP gem in them, added a +15 hit enchant so I’m back over 140 without food and I’m a killing machine!

More T4, Achievements and HH

Got to run Gruul’s for the first time last night in a PUG. Got off to a shaky start as we wiped 3 times on the first part but we got it together and downed the big Gron. Very cool fight. I rolled a 99 on the legs and won them so a very successful raid imho

Been having a lot of fun with the achievements as well. In fact I spent a large chunk of time visiting every candy barrel. Now all I need is for the head to drop and to get transformed by all wands and I’ll get the title or whatever it is. I must admit I quite like the sinister squashling pet.

Speaking of pets, I’ve even been looking at getting some of the other vanity ones just for that achievement also.

I think the achievements are pure genius by Blizz, three or four ties now I’ve gotten the Onyxia buff while in Org., not seen that in many moons. And it’s making people run old content I’ve missed so I’m looking forward to that.

Well, off to PUG for HH, hopefully that fine mount will drop… please, please

Level 70…. again

Well my Shammy hit 70 this weekend. This is bitter sweet for me as my 4th 70 will probably be my last. I don’t see the point in starting a new toon before Wrath, nor do I have the time, plus I’ve already got 4 70’s I’ll need to level to 80, and I do intend on leveling them all. My little 70 warrior will be Fury specced tonight so that should be an interesting leveling experience.

Tonight will be spent respeccing and testing, always a fun thing. I’ll post more tomorrow and let you know how that goes.

So, life at 70 again is more of the same. trying to find groups to run whatever and getting faction up with someone.

T4, ftw!

My regular playing partner wasn’t around last night so I decided to do a few things on alts. I got Saphorias enchanting to 340 and her tailoring to 370. I took Mintaka to Netherstorm to get the recipe for the Khorium scope.

Funny story that. Whenever I wanted to grind out scryer rep I’d take him to Netherstorn and grind around Sunfury hold. Got a load of cloth for Saphoria off of the Sunfury archers and figured that one day the recipe would drop. I’ve killed literally hundreds of them and no drop, but I’m exalted with Scryers now and Saph. got a ton of cloth. Last night I decide to look up the scope again and read a little more…. drop rate is low…. drops off of Sunfiry Bowmen…. back up a minute…. Bowmen!!! Argh, I’ve been looking at it to drop off of the archers and all this time I needed bowmen. Killed about 50 bowmen and it dropped, doh! You gotta laugh.

Once I’d done that I decide to farm motes of air for Hellz’ leathermaker recipes. 10 minutes into that a guildy posts that he’s in a Kara run and needs DPS for the last 3 bosses. I figure why not, I’ve not run Kara in months and so I join. We wipe on Netherspite 3 times and abandon him, finish chess and then head for Prince.

Easiest Prince fight ever. We stayed in the doorway, tanked him on our right, infernals all dropped way to the left, less than 5 minutes he was down and dropped a dagger I passed on, the Farstrider Wildercloak that  I needed as I was still wearing a blue, and the T4 helm for hunter et al. I hit need on that too and got both of them, woot! My first piece of T4 gear.

Not sure I’ll get a chance to get any more pieces before the expansion but I did enjoy the run and want more!

Ding, what next, the ugly quester, support

We dinged 69 within 5 minutes of each other last night. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it but my alt-aholic friend (more on her many alts in another post) and I made a pact to level these two toons together. This may seem like an easy thing to do but there’s a two hour time difference, a vast discrepancy in available play time and schedules, some differences in play style, professions and material gathering, significant others and many other factors involved. I think this is a great accomplishment on our part so props to us, we get gold stars. it’s not anywhere near good as a simultaneous….. er well let’s just leave it at that, lol.

Not sure what’s next for us, maybe a few dungeons for gear before Wrath. I’ll write a whole blog on that sometime soon I think. I’m a planner, it’s what I do. The plans never happen, but I plan. Don’t ask.

I’m Canadian (for all you Americans, that’s the big chunk of land to your north, inhabited by eskimos and moose) and throughout my travels I’ve met many of the stereo-typical “ugly Americans”. I’ve also met many wonderful Americans, don’t get me wrong, nor is this confined to any country really, I’ve met my fair share of Canadian jerks too. Anyway, my point is that they’re not confined to the real world and we met one last night. Let me give you some background. We’re doing the “Capture the Weapons” in Shadowmoon valley. We down the first level 68 elite and then proceed to attack and kill the level 69 elite, with a little help from a hunter nearby. Turn in and head for Eclipse Point and realise that one of us hasn’t looted one of the weapons, doh! Coincidentally, within minutes a general chat pops up for help with the quest. Bonus, we group up with the guy.

It starts immediately… “Let’s go! Are you guys gonna hearth here? Are you close? Follow me! I know the way!” Now, we have similar toon names but we’re not related, we’ve never met and we don’t have intimate knowledge of each other, we just play together. He notices our names “Are you guys related? Are you brother and sister? Are you married? Are you dating? Where are you from?” By this time we’re fighting a frakking level 68 elite, hello! Anyway, we down it, thank him and prepare to head out…. but no…. “Hey, can you help me with a quest? What are you doing now? Can I come? What’s better…. (links two items)?” OMG! Well the biggest downfall to us both is we’re too nice with idiots. We tell him where we’re headed and off we go, pick up quests, go see the ghost guy for the Gorefiend quests, do the first two of those “Let’s do the next one”, “It’s on Netherwing ledge, we need a flying mount”, “Oh,that’s gay”. Gah! We try the big doggie, it owns us (mainly due to his pet, a netherray, being the worst pet in the world and totally unable to hold aggro), so we go and do the diemetradon one and then tablets as it’s close. Whenever we pull 2 or 3 mobs my friend and I end up doing all the fighting while hunter-boy is off getting the tablets. I have 3 and my friend 1 when he announces “I gotta go guys, seeya”, oddly enough, he has all his tablets. Jerk.

Lastly, I wanna give a huge shout out to my wonderful wife for putting up with my two-year addiction to this silly game. Luckily she knew I had an addictive personality beforehand, lol. Anyway, work has been very stressful as an 18 month project of mine goes live tomorrow and immersing myself in another world helps me handle that stress, so I thank her with all my heart. I love you honey.

Blades Edge, PUGs that work but shouldn’t

My friend and I are questing our level 68 Shammies in Blades Edge right now and neither of us are feeling the love for this zone. I don’t know exactly what it is but it just seems so fractured to me. There’s three flight paths and three semi-distinct areas and they all overlap and have you running around and flying about. As horde some of the quests are just annoying (go over to the Alliance camp and collect something that rarely drops while being ganked repeatedly, oh what fun) and some are just a lot of running around or flying.

Well the good news is we’re almost done the area and are both about 5 bars away from 69.

What next? Well we have a choice of either Shadowmoon Valley or Netherstorm. Personally I like SMV, partly because it’s closer to Shatt but also the quests seem to be more lore-driven. Netherstorm just seems like an exotic afterthought somehow.

We had an impromptu PUG last night for the Forge Camp: Anger quests. Mainly due to there being very few mobs and two other people doing the quests. One we kinda new (a hunter with an Asian sounding name and oddly named pet, who’s leveled incredibly fast since we saw him last, can you say Gold Farmer?) and one was a 1337 speaking kid, but it worked and we got them all done, not that the two Shammies couldn’t do them but the company was OK. It’s always kinda odd to be playing with a friend and voice chatting over Xfire but having to suddenly keep an eye on party chat too.

After those quests we got the Deaths door quests and the 1337 speaker rattled off something about “killing sheesat” or something so we took off (at a pace we’re not usually known for I might add). The gold farmer was stoically silent. Getting the gold farmer to fire his flare was the only real issue throughout the quests and we charged through them at incredible speed. Note to self: Write tomorrow on speed of dual Shammy leveling . Anyway, it was a case of an odd PUG just working. My friend and I are both “mature” players and we usually don’t put up with kiddies too well but he knew his class and played it OK.

This will be my forth 70 and I’m not sure quite what we’ll do once we’ve dinged, I would like to try and coax my friend through some of the 70 level dungeons just because I’ve done them all many times on my main and quite like most of the them. My friend doesn’t raid, but I’m hopeful for some 5-mans. Although she only tolerates PUGs on rare occasions and has a hard time playing nice with others. Yes, she IS  alot like me in the playing with others category, perhaps that’s why I enjoy playing with her so much Mind you, we’ve had some interesting PUGs in the past, so you can understand our trepidation. The priest in Wailing Caverns who didn’t heal and tried to DPS was an interesting experience, and yes, we asked for a healer beforehand. Or the Pally who refused to run back after a wipe…

Hm, more on bad PUGs later.