My Cataclysm prep list

by Aurdon on October 27, 2010

Much like Rhii list, there is a few things I’d like to get done both in and outside the game before we tear azeroth asunder.  Will I have time to do them?  Well yes but the question is will I lose interest in these mostly boring and mundane grinds before time is up.

Reach gold cap for one player – Well I was well on my way to getting this months ago (making 3-5k a day and sitting around 120k on my account) but I already lost interest and bought mounts for a few guildies and now I’m nowhere close.  Also with Cata right around the corner the name of the game on AH is “Dump your mats for as little loss as possible” and profit has nothing to do with it anymore.  Still I can take with me the lessons learned on how to profit off AH on into cataclysm and make more money once the market returns. 4.0 also brought about the new player level gold cap to a cool 1 mill..no way I’m hitting this now.

Complete Sorcerer’s Regalia – This one I do believe I’ll finish.  First of all I’ve never even completed Magister’s until I started this list but I had parts of it back in the day.  The few times I would run dungeon groups at level 60, there alway seemed to be a warlock who thought he needed the spirit more then me.  Farming Ubers for the chest piece took a good 10-15 runs but at least I got my runs down to about 15 minutes. I’m already 3/8 on converting it over and just need to do farm the AH a few more times for some of these mats required for this silly quest..

Farm ZG for tiger mount – This isn’t anything I can do solo on Aurdon so I’m using my DK.  My wife has called dibs on the first tiger to drop (should one even drop before ZG is gone) so I’m just hoping to see a raptor for my DK.

Farm Outland Dungeon Reps – This one is for the dungeon diplomat achievement that will ultimately result in one of the coolest mounts to come to the game.  The Horde guild Scorpion mount.  AWWWW YEAH!  Still even with my wife and I grinding, a Mage rogue combo doesn’t make a super team to take on Heroic level 70 dungeons.  A tank would be ideal here but I’m not going to sub out Aurdon for my DK just to get this done.  Aurdon is my achievement character.  As always when it comes to reps…here is the best tool:  http://www.wowjuju.com/repcalc

Wrath Reps – I’ve got every thing pretty much capped except for Kalu’ak (6 more days)  But even though it isn’t a rep, I’m grinding through Dalaran Cooking Awards to get my hat.  4 more days to go there.  I couldn’t really give a rip about the frenzy heart tribe and the oracles. Finished these two after I drafted this post.

Level another alt to 80 - I’ve got a warrior at 74 with full rested xp. He’d make my 5th 80.  I’ve been casually leveling him with the ever-so-awesome Dugi’s Guides so its been quite easy.  No need to gear him up once 80 because all bets are off when an expansion hits.

That’s about all I have planned for now.  I’m not super keen on raiding because of the time invested for it…I like to keep my wow sessions to about 1-2hours now.  I have been asked to go from the guild but always offer back that “I’ll go if you really need me, if not and someone else wants a spot go ahead and let them in.”  Part of it is I only want to experience the encounters.  Loot really has no power over me knowing I’ll be dropping it all in a month anyway.

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Heads will roll

by Aurdon on October 26, 2010

I’m not sure I’ve ever said it here but I HATE the holiday events when it comes to gaining them for achievements.  I completed the [What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been] achievement on Aurdon only for the 310% speed on the mount, not because it looked cool.  I know these are fun to some but to others its a year long series of hoops to jump through for a few more 1′s and 0′s of digital data that will make your character a tad faster or have a extra unnecessary title.  I don’t knock people who like to do these because I think this game should be played however it gives you the most fun (as long as its not at the expense of others) but I LOATH having to do a holiday event just to “get something”.

I bring this up because I still feel the need to “get something” off of the headless horseman.  I want his sweet ride.  This is where I have a bonestorm to pick with the games drop rates.  I’ve done more then my fair share of farming for this.  I’ve been at this thing since HH was introduced into the game.   But it doesn’t just break down to “it never drops”.  I’ve seen it drop 8+ times in my groups through the years but I’ve never gotten it.  I’ve even rigged things in my favor last year by forming up a farm group and doing it daily.  We reduced our numbers to an easy 4 and brought in alts to summon for more chances.  Last year we ran it (and this number is accurate within 10 attempts) over 145 times.  It dropped twice, one roll was won by my wife’s main and the other by our tank.  This year blizzard changed the game by only allowing one chance per day per character.  The first day I queued some random hunter got it in his loot bag.  Later on the other dps from our farm group last year got one (which out of us four left me the only one who doesn’t have one still).  The other night my wife was tired and asked if I wanted to still run HH with her.  I had told her that I already completed it for all my guys that day but would gladly tank-queue her and get it done quick.  She then said “well I’m really tired, would you go for me on my priest?”  Sure why not?  And then this….

How is that even possible?  THE GAME KNEW I WAS PLAYING!  Not only did the reins drop but 2 other epics and a face mask.  That is just trash.   Its even more salt in the wound that when I wanted [Frost Lord Ahune's Staff] (seen here equipped on my wife’s picture) purely because it looks awesome, it dropped 3 times for me.  Once on my pally and twice on my DK.  It dropped on 100% of my non-equipping characters and not on my Mage or Shaman.  And you can’t even sell that thing so Blizzard was essentially wiping my face in it making me destroy it three times over and having to type “Delete” each time instead of simply dropping once just because I wanted the unique item model.  I’m hoping posting this will inform the community of the prejudice against me from RNG and bring about a revolution!  VIVA LA GIMME MY STUPID MOUNT ALREADY!!!!

~the powers that be who control RNG,
most assuredly do not love me~

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Eulogy for a guildie

by Aurdon on October 19, 2010

Yesterday my guild master logged in and private messaged me saying he had some bad news.  Oh?  I figured it was about my poor raiding attendance or someone ninja’d something and we had to /gkick.  It was far far worse.  One of our long time guild members committed suicide over the weekend.

I didn’t know him on a personal level but I did on a fellow gamer and online guild member level.  In that, I’ve known him for 4-5 years now.  Many members of our guild are located in the Colorado area of the country so there were others that knew him much better than I and also on a personal level.  The reason I’m posting about this sensitive subject is because even though I didn’t know him personally, it is really impacting me.  The reason started this blog is to share my experiences inside and outside of World of Warcraft and how it affects me.  This affects me (and our guild) deeply.  None of us saw this coming.  Nobody.  I thought it might have actually been an accident but apparently the news came straight from his mother which was given to another guild member who was a close friend of his.  He was just as active in the guild as I and he participated in our voice chat like anyone else.  In fact he was on the day before with no signs that would suggest anything was wrong.  It’s an odd feeling knowing that he’ll never log in again.  None of us knew he was feeling this way.  He left behind a wife and two children.

I think that is what makes this hit close to home.  I think he was about my age and I have a wife and three children.  I can’t even begin to imagine how things were before this happened and how things are now.  I an only guess that he felt things would be better if he weren’t around.  That is why I wanted to post this.  I wanted to get this off my chest as an open message to him.

“Things are not better.  I don’t know if you felt you would be missed or not but you are.  I didn’t know you as well as I could have and I’m sure you could say the same about me.  I can’t help but imagine that you might have felt your action would not have impacted those that didn’t know you so well.  If so you were wrong.  I am saddened by your choice and wish I had the chance to know you better.  My thoughts and prayers go out to all those you left behind. You are missed.”

Our Guildmaster restructured guild ranks yesterday and set this player and his alt to the highest awarded rank of “Rest in peace”.  This is how we’ll honor his memory.

I’ve disabled commenting on this post because nothing else really needs to be said.  This post was mainly for myself and I thank you all for any condolences you might have posted on the matter.  Thank you for reading.

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So when do Druids get Elephant form?

by Aurdon on October 17, 2010

I’ve had many many wonderful times sharing WoW with the family.  I got my wife hooked on the game 3-4 years ago when she was pregnant with our first child.  I’m not sure if it was the time she spent playing or maybe its just in my blood and destined to carry on to my kin, but my son loves watching us play World of Warcraft.  Obviously when you get a 3 year old in front of a computer game you are bound to have some golden dialog that usually doesn’t happen when you are talking with adults.  I wanted to share one such conversation with you guys.  Translation is in brackets.

Son: Daddy?  Who’s that guy?

Me: Its my druid.  I don’t play him often.

Son: Oh….does he get the guys? {Do you ever take him out questing and raiding and such?}

Me: Not a whole lot, he has been my banker.  He hangs around in Thunderbluff making money.  But I have leveled him a bit and now he can do some cool stuff.  Want to see?

Son: YEAH!

Me: [Cat Form] Look now he’s a lion!

Son: Look a lion!

Me: *jumps in pond in TB* [Aquatic Form]

Son: A FISH!

Me: Well kind of, he’s more of a sea lion or seal maybe.  Look at this [Travel Form]

Son: A tiger!

Me: No tigers have stripes.  This one is a cheetah.  See his spots?

Son: Yeah a cheetah!

Me: OK now whats this? [Bear Form]

Son: A bear!

Me: And this guy is kind of like a cow! [/cancel Bear Form back to Tauren]

Son: Daddy, Daddy!?

Me: Yes?

Son: Can you do an Elephant?

Me: Yes but I’m not shelling out 16,000G on this character for one of those…

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I Sheep Things 4.0 Launches

by Aurdon on October 11, 2010

Well I’ve finally gotten tired of my “busy” look of the last version of my blog.  Can’t even remember what it looked like before then.  Decided I should pick something new now that there is an expansion coming out.  This is why it has the Oh-So-Clever name of being version 4.0.   I wasn’t really “feeling” the dark and destroyed look that most cataclysm themed blogs bring about.  For now I wanted something simple and yet “bridged” the gap from my last layout.  Invested in one of the most praised premium themes out there for its flexibility and clean code so hopefully when I decide to do another overhaul, I’ll just tweak up the code and be set.

Still there is more work to be done but its at least to a point I’m not embarrassed to put it on the web.  The site load speed needs some help though.  I’ve cleaned up the database a bit and have some ideas how to further optimize. Looking into what I can do to overcome that hurdle without having to switch hosting providers or shell out more money.

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A look back on the x.0 patches

by Aurdon on October 5, 2010

World of Warcraft Client Patch “4.0.1″

(10/12/2010?)

Patch 4 .0 is right around the corner (next Tuesday by best guesses) and with it comes a whole slew of changes to the game and how things work.  This happens each expansion.  Blizzard uses these patches as a buffer to hopefully limit the “sledge hammer to the face” effect of everything that changes once a expansion pack gets official released.  I wanted to make a post to share with you some of my past memories on these major changes and hope you share the same.

World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.0.1 “Before the Storm”

(12/5/2006)

My biggest memory of this patch was the ability to “farm up” honor points and eventually buy some PvP gear.  Before this was the PvP rank title system (which they will bring back in a better form btw) where you had to spend more time playing battle grounds then your fellow player if you wanted to progress.  In most cases it rewarded those with most time and not most skill.  These were the players that complained the loudest when the change was made.

This patch also included the first version of the looking for group tool.  I think I maybe had this work successfully once.  It was an upgrade to meeting stones (which just got “warlock like summon capabilities” this patch) but wasn’t all that great.  All it did was auto group people when they queued up this was woefully inadequate for forming up groups as you might as well just used the /lfg channel or /trade to find a group.   And it wasn’t until patch 3.3 that we got the cross realm LFG which increased your available player pool size 10x.  At best it was useful when they added daily “kill ‘x’ boss in ‘y’ dungeon” daily quests. But that wasn’t until late into The Burning Crusade that those actually existed.

Also this patch gave way to the limited disenchant capabilities based upon item level and profession level.  This put a hard stop into all the players who had level 5 alts that were simply parked by a mailbox waiting to blow up greens found in UBERS and beyond.

For mages, I think this is the patch that introduced new tier spells like [Slow], [Dragon's Breath], and [Water Elemental].

World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.0.2: Echoes of Doom

(10/15/2008)

Almost exactly 2 years prior to the expected release of 4.0.1, Echoes of Doom brought forth major changes to Azeroth and it didn’t even need a huge dragon hellbent on destroying everything to do so.  Dalaran figured the best place to stage an assault on Northrend was, well….Northrend.  And as easy as it is for us mages to pack our bags and be on our way, its so much more fun (and just as easy) to not pack at all and move an entire city.  All we had to do is get a few hundred mages to shout “Higitus Figitus” and boom, Dalaran moves to Northrend.  Stormwind Harbor was completed as well this patch as well as a couple of new Zeppelin towers outside Orgrimar and Undercity.  With all these location changes it was quite easy to overlook the most important of all….BARBER SHOPS!  We gotta look good if we’re going to start a war you know.  Achievements was another big part of this patch and gave many of us bored with TBC content something to do while we waited for the war to start.

For mages, I think this is the patch that introduced new tier spells like [Arcane Barrage], [Living Bomb], and [Deep Freeze].

World of Warcraft Client Patch 4.0.1: Something, something, something, darkside…

I’m not sure what the patch is named but there are tons of new changes coming in this next patch.  More then I care to list but as I’ve played a bit on the PTR, here are the things you’ll want to know when you log in after the patch.

  • New launcher,  its sweet and the fact it can download while you are playing and “stream” the zone you are in….its awesome.
  • Go see your class trainer. Each class has a new passive skill to train.  Mages get Wizardry which is a 5% Int increase.
  • Open up your talent screen and behold a drastic change.  Pick a tree you like and realize that you must spend 31 (of your 41) talents in that tree.  Once completed, you can spend in the other trees.
  • You can reforge your gear (even trinkets and rings and such…anything that has a forge-able stat it seems).  The NPCs that do this are located near the enchanters in major cities and charge 10g per forge.  You take 2ndary stats like hit, crit, haste, and can turn 50% of that into a new stat (this is how you get mastery pts before it starts showing up on cataclysm gear).  I converted all I could (lost a ton of crit) as a fire mage and cranked out an additional 41% fire dot damage.  Pretty sweet!
  • The new UI in combat pops up your procs much like special mods used to do.  Unlike mods blizzard has incorporated into the default UI in past, I love what they’ve done here and plan on dumping my proc mods this patch.
  • The character UI now expands to the right to display all your stats.
  • Professions are no longer in your “generic spell book” but are now found under a new tab in your spell book view.
  • Glyphs are all changed.  Hit up the AH to fill up your book or visit your favorite scribe.
  • The spell book UI has changed.  No more ranks in spells.
  • Mage Portals and Teleports are now buttons like Shaman totems.  They “fly-out” and negate the need for special mage portal addons.
  • Durability has been normalized across the board on gear so get ready to pay out as much as plate does for when our gear breaks cloth wearers. /cry
  • Flex Raid Lock System, its pretty cool (and complicated sounding) so I’ll just direct you to the blue post about it.
  • All badges are being converted into a points system.
  • PvP/BG/Arena tab UI improvements
  • Improved water rendering and sun rays have been added.  Those can be set under Video Options
  • and other stuff…

So a lot to look forward to and as I think you’ll agree, even though major changes upset a lot of players, in the end we always come out with a better game.

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Subtle Debate on my comments system

by Aurdon on September 13, 2010

Ok so this isn’t really a new topic, but it is a frustrating one

Several times now ID has desynched with my blog and made commenting …. difficult.  The latest incarnation has made it impossible.  ID’s support group has been helpful in past but its been 3days since I reached out this time and no answer.  This has been broken since Rhii’s farewell post and I feel she got the short end of the stick because nobody could really say farewell on the blog here (you can make it up to her by saying hello at her new blog: www.ohmykurenai.com).  Regardless this is my post in saying I’m going to wipe out the ID plugin, reinstall it from scratch and then see if that fixes things.  If things arn’t restored by this time tomorrow, we’re going back to the standard commenting system (which wasn’t bad in the first place) .

Do you guys even have a preference?  (although I suppose you can’t answer that really until we get this fixed lol….hit me up on twitter if the comments are down

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Drumroll Please…

by Rhii on September 7, 2010

It was nearly two years ago that I made my first blog post here. I was a very very new player — I claimed I’d been playing six months, but I’ll be darned if I can remember the truth of it. I had only managed to level to 32 though, and that seems like it’s awfully slow. But then again, I was a very new player.

I said in that first post that I was simply going to be doing some guest posts here, and that’s what I intended, but Aurdon got totally me hooked on blogging, and so I’ve been keeping you guys filled in all along whether I was achieving that first max-level ding, contemplating changing my main, or leaving a guild I’d worked so hard to run.

But there comes a time when a girl wants her own blog. So I’m moving!

You’ll find my new place all set up at OhMyKurenai.com. Mark your feedreaders or what have you if you’d like to follow me in my new home. Don’t forget of course, that Aurdon will still be here. I’ll be popping back in to do the occasional guest post as well.

So thanks everybody for making these first two years as awesome as they have been, and I hope you’ll keep reading me for the next two!

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Rhii’s Cataclysm Goals and Progress

by Rhii on August 28, 2010

Rhii is my achievement hunter and collector, so she’s got the most pre-Cata goals of my characters.

This is what I’d like to get done with her before then:

Master of Arms (FINISHED!)
Ambassador (FINISHED! with 100% less Argent Tourney.)
50 Mounts (35/50)
75 Vanity Pets (62/75)
Exalted with Oracles (Currently Honored)
Exalted with Mag’har (Currently Honored)
Exalted with Netherwings (Not started yet.)
Bloodsail Admiral (Not started yet.)
The Insane (Current progress… minimal. Streamwheedle done, Ravenholdt almost Revered. Rogue for junkboxes level 20.)
Venomhide Raptor (4 teeth collected – oh the shame.)

I’m sure there are some things I left out, but that’s what I’m looking at to keep busy until Cataclysm. It’s unbelievable how relaxing just grinding away on Syndicate thugs can be, leaning back in my desk chair listening to old cds from about 1997 (Fiona Apple) and not being stressed about raiding. It’s positively therapeutic. So yeah, Insane… bring it on.

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Why are we back to failing on Dreamwalker?

by Rhii on August 26, 2010

Man, I get so frustrated with raiding sometimes.

There are good nights, last week we had our “triumphant” first kill of Putricide. I say “triumphant” in quotes because we’d have killed him long ago if people would stop thinking about farming badges and start thinking about killing bosses.

But then this week, we wiped on Dreamwalker three times before moving on to one shot Fester and Rot. I mean, wtf?

I guess at this point, I can only just shake my head and curse under my breath. I’m having a deep sort of burnout right now, which makes me kind of resent my guild and everything about it.  I’ve been running with Zimzi, because we’re not making any progress right now, and we’re not trying hard enough to make it worthwhile to bring Myrhani when she needs literally no gear and Zim needs everything. It’s hard to stomach the idea of playing a character you’ve totally lost interest in, especially when there’s no realistic prospect of progressing that character (Myr hasn’t had an upgrade in months). It’s doubly frustrating when you’re being asked to bring that character specifically because she’s overgeared, which inspires a whole host of thoughts about how I’m compensating for the low gear/skill/commitment/attendance of others. Oh yeah, and also a pleasant thought surfaces about whether it’s a strategic move to include one or two people who won’t compete for gear with the loot-hounds who think about nothing else.  I don’t really think my guildies are doing this on purpose, but I’ve been raiding the same 4-6 bosses twice a week for nearly a year now – with the same character in the same role and with near perfect attendance. It’s hard not to feel angry with the people who are forcing me to keep doing it, even when it’s decidedly not beneficial for me anymore.

And then there’s the guild’s stance on raid lockouts. Apparently, we need the emblems still, so we can’t extend the raid lockout or we’d miss out on our weekly 8 emblems from the first wing.  With the majority of the guild’s raiders being utterly geared to the teeth, it’s hard for me to think we need the frost emblems so bad we have to sacrifice progression to get them. We only raid 10 mans, after all. We don’t need full 264 to do the freaking Blood Wing. Again, I can’t help but think that someone who controls our raid itinerary is farming a lot of primordial saronites for a personal project.

So Myr is literally drowning in frost emblems she doesn’t need, to the point where I spent three saronites worth of them and traded it to someone for an ilvl200 trinket that was an upgrade for Zimzi.

Just to continue griping, our guild raid nights have been Thursday and Monday 9pm (local) to about midnight. Well it turns out this semester, I have an unavoidable scheduling conflict… namely a night class that starts at 8pm on Monday nights and doesn’t end until 10. On Thursdays I start at 9am and go straight through until 8pm, which means I leave my house before 7am and don’t get home until 9pm. After that day the last, and I do mean the very last, thing on earth I want to do is be hustled online to raid for three hours before I’m allowed to go to bed. Maybe some people have the kind of enthusiasm and fortitude it takes to do that once a week, but after Thursdays, I just want to sleep all day Friday.

Well, I’m apparently so pivotal to the raid group that they’ve rescheduled the Monday night raid for Wednesdays. Fine, good. I can make Wednesday, I might even enjoy raiding on Wednesdays. But they’ve still got the second raid scheduled for Thursday nights, and have pushed it back a half hour so I can make it.

I like feeling needed, I like the idea that my spot is safe as the guild’s primary consistent healer. I hate the fact that I’ve said and said and said I can’t do Thursdays, and they’re still looking for a way to make me do Thursdays. I don’t care if they move the raid to 6AM before I leave for school, I have a THIRTEEN hour school day (with commute time included) and I don’t want to raid that night! I’ve said pug the spot if you can, I don’t mind. I’ve said I don’t think Thursday works for me. I’ve said it louder and more forcefully that Thursday does not work. I’ve said it in Mumble, I’ve said it in guild chat. I’ve said it to Naelian in person. I don’t know how much more I can say, I don’t like being bludgeoned with guilt. I care that the guild can’t raid without me, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to raid on Thursdays and be happy about it!

Especially if we’re just going to endlessly farm the first wing for badges I don’t want, and go back to failing on Dreamwalker.

Also, I wish we had a blog category for “long, angry, suppressed rants.” I would put this post in that category.

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