meet Grysh

Grysh is our newest entry into our alt collection. so new, in fact, that she doesn't even show up in the armory, yet (else we'd link her). Grysh is a BE death knight, which we rolled on Elune (pve server where we had our first 60 way back in classic WoW). spoiler alert, we're going to wax poetic about what it's like to start up a death knight. if you don't want to know, stop reading now.

first off, it is an AWESOME experience! blizzard did a really nice job with the death knight starting area.

you start off at level 55 with no talents and 6 abilities. it's a bit of a mystery how the whole rune/runic power system works and we think that's one of the areas where the starting zone failed a bit. a couple quests that helped demonstrate your abilities would have been helpful. anyway, it's a very manageable skill set to open up with.

you start out in green-quality gear (which looks awesome, btw. very similar to Sylvannus' old look before the 3.0.2 patch) and you're standing next to Arthas in a floating necropolis in EPL. yes, *the* Arthas. after chatting with him, you start a series of quests that have you leading the assault to destroy the scarlet crusade. over the course of a very epic quest line, which includes events like using siege weapons and piloting an undead frost dragon to massacre scarlet crusaders from above you gain blue-quality gear and talent points as quest rewards. it took us a few quests before we realized we were gaining talent points as quest rewards; it's a brilliant system.

by the time you finish the starting zone (after an epic battle between the lich king himself and tirion fordring at light's hope chapel) you've hit level 58, are decked out in full blue gear and have all your talent points. after a quick stop at a capital city for your final starting quest, you could walk right into outlands without ever setting foot in the rest of azeroth.

where it really shines, though, is in all the little details that blizzard took care of for you:

• you automatically learn all flight points on both continents


• you automatically have artisan first aid up to heavy runecloth bandages


• you start out with several weapon skills at 270


• you leave the starting zone with about 20g in cash from quest rewards and selling off old gear


• you start with 4 12 slot bags in addition to your backpack


• you leave the starting zone with your mount, which is an epic land mount (even though you're only level 58), which was free


• one of the trinkets you get as a quest reward is comparable to the standard pvp trinket that frees you from all roots and snares

every time we thought to ourselves "oh, we're going to have to go train that" it turned out we already knew what we needed to know. the only thing you have to train yourself are professions.

we can't even do justice to the quests in the starting zone. they're just very well done. what really makes it feel special is that the zone actually changes appearance *just for you* based on the quests you've completed. this is what blizzard is calling phasing. it's kind of like an instance, except that anyone that's met a certain set of requirements will see the same thing you do without having to pass through an instance entrance or anything. in the case of the DK starting zone, it changes over time (buildings are destroyed, NPCs change locations, etc.) and those changes are permanent (i.e., they don't revert after 5 minutes for the next guy in line). it's pretty cool and hard to visualize until you experience it yourself. we'll be very interested to see where this gets applied in northrend.

so, for now we're going to focus on Grysh for a bit and let all the hubbub in northrend die down a bit before we go back. we're running around the noob lands leveling up skinning and herbalism (no cash cows on this server, so Grysh will have to fund herself), but we'll be back in outlands soon enough. we can't wait!

Continue reading "meet Grysh"...

feel our wrath!

wrath is here! yay! we managed to score a collector's edition at the store thursday morning and joined the hordes in the borean tundra to see what northrend was all about. our feelings are a bit mixed so far.

the good:

• new lands to explore


• new mobs to see


• getting xp from quests and feeling a real sense of advancement again

the not so good:

• way, way too many named mobs that need killing in the early quests which require to you compete not only against the other faction (pvp server, remember) but also against your *own* faction. this is our biggest complaint. standing around for 5-10 minutes and then having to basically kill-steal from everyone else around you to get your quest done.


• most of the quest rewards aren't gear upgrades. to be fair, we're wearing mostly purples so that's not a big surprise but to only find 1 item from lvl 70 to lvl 71 that was a clear upgrade was a little disappointing


• too crowded! everyone and their dog is in the borean tundra right now and the buildings are tiny, so it's really tough to see what you're doing through the sea of bodies and floating green text

we took Harl over and quested until we hit lvl 71. the new area is awesome, the quests are generally fun and so far it seems like there's less running around (no big fedex-style quests that we can recall) then old-world quests. everything seems pretty easy so far, even killing elite quest mobs, but that's probably because most of us 70s are over-powered due to all the purple we're wearing. people are a bit douchy in their efforts to get their quests completed (kill-stealing, etc.), but that wasn't a huge surprise.

overall we had fun, but once we got to 71 we decided we would wait for a while before going back for more. it's just too crowded to really enjoy the new content. plus, we got a little sick of being on a pvp server (getting fear bombed or nuked while talking to a quest giver gets old after the 6th time). so, we hopped back over to our old pve server, Elune, and rolled a BE death knight. more on that later.

Continue reading "feel our wrath!"...

we live!

pardon our absence; we were on vacation in vietnam until last sunday eve, hence the lack of updates recently. vacation is all kinds of awesome. we highly recommend it!

today's topic? patience.

today is maintenance day and, like many maintenance days in the past, it's run overtime because blizzard ran into a snag of some sort. we managed to get on for a bit around 10:30am PST (technically before the maintenance window was scheduled to complete), but then the servers were shutdown about 15 minutes later. boo, but at least we got a few quests done.

we pinged the realm status page a few minutes later to see if the servers were back up... no response. we checked the realm status forum... down. we checked the general forum... request timed out. uh oh, that's going to be bad... sure enough, realms have been down all day. someone at blizzard is having a very bad day, we think.

cruising through the forums (when they worked) made us realize that an awful lot of people have far too much time on their hands and no idea what to do with it. so, here are a few suggestions for things to do (or not) when the servers are down:

• don't get your panties in a twist. life exists beyond WoW.


• play another game.


• read a book.


• go outside (ok, so winter's coming and maybe this isn't the best idea...).


• talk to your friends... in person.


• call your mom.


• talk to recruiters all day (we're in the midst of job hunting. yay us.)


• don't think you know more about how the game works than the blizzard staff and wax poetic about what they should be doing to fix things.


• don't harass the the forum moderators demanding answers, refunds, heads on platters or lollipops; first of all, they're the messengers and not the engineers working on the problem. second of all, it makes you look like a complete ass to berate someone that has no more control over the situation than you do regardless of who they happen to work for.


• do understand that wow is a hugely complex piece of software and no one person at blizzard or anywhere else knows how all of it works. applications this size are developed by tens if not hundreds of engineers. it's often a miracle they work at all, let alone work well. we're in the business; we know. there are lots of places for issues to creep in and slip through testing and that's not even accounting for the production environment where the software actually runs, which is managed by yet another group of 10s of people.


• don't clutter up the forums whining and moaning about how blizzard has ruined your entire day because you couldn't log into WoW. if your life is that dull, now's a great time to pick up a back-up hobby. you know, just in case the power goes out or something...


• do realize that as a customer you have the right to express your displeasure with the service up to and including canceling your subscription. if you're really that upset about 1 day of downtime then make good on all your threats to quit and do it. the WoW community will not miss you.

by all that's unholy, enough with the bitching! WoW has exceptional uptime for a service that doesn't have lives on the line (and even those still have bugs). I'd be willing to bet that the servers are up at least 95% of the time outside of scheduled downtime. facebook and twitter don't even have uptime numbers that good! all you folks complaining have no idea how lucky you are that the servers and the client run as smoothly as they do. instead of ranting about how blizzard has ruined your day due to extended downtime, maybe you should be thankful that you're even able to play the game at all. you could be much, much worse off...

Continue reading "we live!"...

the right stuff

we haz it! the best part? the [Headless Horseman's Reins] scale with riding skill, so it automatically becomes an epic flying mount once you buy the Artisan Riding skill. /glee

Continue reading "the right stuff"...

Hallow's End

it's that time of year again; hallow's end. the time where hordes of 70s make a mad dash for the Scarlet Monastery and lay waste to a certain special someone in the graveyard wing... the Headless Horseman. we kinda feel bad for him, but that didn't stop us from beating him down like the loot pinata he is!

it was like christmas for us... our first run we picked up [The Horseman's Blade] (had to leave it in the bank for a while because we were only lvl 67 at the time) and our second run we nabbed the [Hallowed Helm] and the [Ring of Ghoulish Delight]. around about our fifth run we lucked out and won the roll for [The Horseman's Reins] as well as a [Magic Broom]. on our last run, we picked up [The Horseman's Helm] (thanks again, Bell). the ol' Horseman was generous indeed, this year. the only thing we didn't get from him that we wanted was the [Sinister Squashling] pet, but we lucked out and got one in one of our trick or treat bags.

we hit every single candy bucket in azeroth and outlands, did all the hallow's end quests and have completed all the hallow's end achievements available with the exception of The Mask Task, which we've heard is going to be removed (acquire 20 items based on blind luck? ouch...). now if only there were a t-shirt or something...

Continue reading "Hallow's End"...

over achiever

patch 3.0.2 introduced the concept of achievements. when we first heard about them we didn't think much of it, but now that they're actually here we find that they're rather addicting. we started small at first (yes, we got this one by accident...), but soon we had to have more and more. after a while we got to the point where we'd do anything for a fix. the gods only know where it will all end...

Continue reading "over achiever"...

Ding!

Daelan hit 70 monday. he marks our 6th entry in the level 70 club. total played was about 9 days, 6 hours. we mentioned previously that we weren't going to follow our usual power-leveling plan and that we'd be taking time out for other things (crafting, in-game holidays, etc.). despite that, it still felt like we leveled pretty fast. the 60-70 part especially so. makes us wonder if blizz quietly tweaked the xp required per level so more people will be 70 when wrath rolls out...

when we first rolled a warrior, we had a protection spec in mind. swords, shields, heavy armor... that's what a warrior was all about, we thought. everything we read said to level as anything but prot, however. leveling prot was like leveling as a healer: slow and painful. so we went arms for a while (2-handed goodness!) and then fury after that (dual wield betterness!), thinking that we'd let prot wait until we were 70 or nearly so. all that changed with the new talents in patch 3.0.2.

we are happy to report that as of the patch, leveling as prot is no longer painful in any way. it's actually a lot of fun! we changed to a full protection build at 60, when the patch came out, and we have been extremely happy with it. our dps actually went *up* by almost 20% when we changed from our old fury build to our new prot build! now, we're sure our dps isn't anywhere near what a true dps build can churn out with the new talents, but we still mow down mobs nice and fast so we're happy. with our stuns, silences, abilities to break roots (the new human racial is a huge bonus here) and overall durability we do fairly well in pvp (rogues especially hate us) even with so-so gear. questing is cake; even soloing 2-man quests is easy now. tanking, of course, is much smoother. it wasn't too bad for us with just a few points in prot, but with a true prot build our threat ceiling is much, much higher; at level 69 we were holding agro on mobs easily even with another 70 warrior pumping out 1200+ dps. and can we just say how much being able to charge, in any stance, in or out of combat, breaking roots, 5 yards further and 20% more often rocks? it does!

Continue reading "Ding!"...

world first!

we were in IF training up (66, woohoo!) and doing some shopping when an urgent call went out in /1 for everyone to come to the military ward. "horde?", we thought? we mounted up and rode over to check it out. the scene we arrived upon was epic. a raid and a half worth of valiant heroes banded together to battle the greatest foe IronForge has ever faced. naturally, we charged right in to do our part. it was a long and hard fight, but in the end the might of the Alliance prevailed and the dreaded Heroic Training Dummy was beaten down. obligatory kill shot below.



world first! you saw it here...

Continue reading "world first!"...

saved!

a few hours after we submitted our ticket, we were contacted by a GM:



she got us fixed up (plunked Daelan down outside the gates of IF) and then left us with this:



gotta love GMs that role play /grin

Continue reading "saved!"...

teething woes

we're in the software biz, so naturally we expect a few rough edges on patch day. what we are experiencing now is a bit beyond our expectations, though...







so, here's what happened... we hearthed form IF to Shatt and noticed that no one was around. as in, no players, no NPCs, no critters... nothing. Shatt was a ghost town. there was no general chat channel (though we could still whisper people), we couldn't mount... we could run around and use abilities, though. so, we ran out of shatt thinking that maybe a zone change would reset things. got into terrokar forest and things were still borked. so we logged out and logged back in... and here we are.

we tried taking a step, full expecting to fall endlessly to our death, and instead ended up just running in place... without a way to stop. our next thought was to try the auto-unstuck feature (since our hearth is in cooldown), but that didn't seem to do anything. we are so hosed...

Continue reading "teething woes"...

/facepalm

things not to do while instancing:

- do not show up drunk.

- do not proclaim to the group, loudly and repeatedly, how drunk you are. also, see above.

- do not get out-dps'd by a tank who's 3 levels lower than you (yes mr. 65 warrior, we're looking at you).

- do not turn party chat into a cyber session. if you must cyber, confine it to whispers. bonus points for amusing mis-tells. btw, that "hot" female drae priest is most likely played by a guy...

- do not whirlwind next to the sapped/repentanced mob.

- if the tank tells you not to stand in the green shit, do not stand in the green shit.

- if the tank tells you he's going to corner pull, do not stand in the doorway and swing at every mob that passes you.

- if the pull goes bad, take it like a man and DI the healer. do not bubble and run like the sissy we all know you are.

- if you see a land mine, do not feel compelled to step on it.

Continue reading "/facepalm"...

the price of progress

back when we started Daelan we joked about how we should have named him "Moneypit" due to his taking up two crafting professions instead of the usual crafting & gathering profession combo. we didn't realize just how true that was until we got deeper into blacksmithing. now, we've leveled other profs before - tailoring to 375 twice (mmm... frozen shadoweave!), engineering to 375 once, alchemy and enchanting to 300 (back when that was the cap). it's an expensive process, especially if you don't farm your own materials. none of those experiences prepared us for leveling blacksmithing, however.

horrendously expensive doesn't begin to do blacksmithing justice. we assumed that the costs would be similar to leveling engineering since they use most of the same materials. naturally, we were very wrong. the mithril stage wasn't too bad; only needed a couple hundred bars for that. once we got to thorium we hit a wall, though. to get from 265 to 300 blacksmithing you need on the order of 500 thorium bars. five hundred! a stack of 20 thorium bars averages about 26g on our server (ore is even more expensive). so, for just the thorium alone, that's about 650g to get to 300 blacksmithing; we haven't even started using outlands materials, which is where the really expensive part of the leveling process begins. a good chunk of those bars (150ish) goes to buying blacksmithing plans from the thorium brotherhood. this makes it that much harder to recoup some of your costs as you have fewer crafted items at the end of it to show for your investment.

luckily for us, we have a few 70s in our stable who are miners. we went out and did some thorium farming this past sunday. for 4+ hours we did nothing but run a mining circuit around WPL and EPL. we ended up with 320 bars plus a bunch of odds and ends (gems, arcane crystals, tons of dense stone and a handful of greens from mobs that got in the way). we can't imagine what it must have been like for blacksmiths back in the pre-TBC days when all the mobs were the same level as they were. definitely would slow the process down having to fight your way to every thorium vein... anyway, 320 bars for 4+ hours work (and let's be clear: it was work, not play) seemed a bit tedious so we bought the rest of the thorium we needed to get to 300 blacksmithing off the AH.

next up, getting engineering to 300 (we're at 280-something now).

money. pit.

Continue reading "the price of progress"...

new (old) content

Daelan reached 55 seasons last night, but it was not a pretty process. we found a quest line in the blast lands that we'd never done before. we'd seen it, but back in the day it was a group quest (parts of it, at least) and since we hardly ever travel with a group we'd never bothered to do it. however, since patch 2.3 a lot of former "group" quests are now solo-able content (elites aren't elite anymore, etc.). so, we decided to give it a whirl this time. besides, it fit in nicely with the 2nd stage of our lvl 50 warrior quest (killing mobs in the same area).

so, we go around merrily killing mobs... and get ganked by a warlock (70; in full merciless glad gear, naturally). ok, fair enough. we were close to the road leading to the dark portal and it was an opportunity gank. meh. we rez and get back to killing and a short while later get ganked again. belf hunter this time. we had two mobs on us when she walked up, watched us work the mobs for a bit and then decided that we weren't dying fast enough or something. in goes the pet, we give the hunter a couple of token whacks and we're back having tea with the spirit healer. wonder if there's a frequent dier program we could sign up for... once again, rez and get back to killing (lots of mobs to kill) and we get a visit from a lvl 63 prot warrior. death by devastate spam. curse you cruel world! at this point we're just happy that the blasted lands is a fairly small zone; makes for shorter corpse runs.

we finally wrapped up that quest line only to learn that there's another one right after it (and one after that, too, according to wowhead). so we accepted, 'cause it was new content for us, and that's where the real fun began. back to where we were killing mobs, only now we had to carve a path right through the middle of them and into a cave they've taken up residence in. hmm, this is going to hurt. we make it about 1/2 way into the cave and then get an unlucky 3-pull (one was hiding behind a rock). we almost get things under control when a patrol catches us in the arse, we run out of health potions and we go down. meh, bad luck. run back, rez and clear the rest of the way into the cave and we find our quest mob and 2 guards. switch over to tanking gear and in we go! ... and down we go. quest mob has a 75% armor pierce ability and we picked up an add. ok, crappy start but we can do this. we run back, find a safe spot to rez and try focusing on the guards first this time instead of our quest mob (most of the damage seemed to come from them last time). our plan didn't quite go down the way we'd hoped and we took another visit to dead-ville. run back, rez and ZOMG RESPAWNS ON TOP OF U... dead. crap. we needed a break (and health potions), so we spirit rez and hop over to IF to train (we'd hit 54 earlier). quick stop in the AH for health potions and to look for gear upgrades (why in the name of all that's unholy is plate so gods-forsaken expensive on our server?! 150g for a green, level 50 chest piece?! ugh.) and we're back on the bird to the blasted lands.

we battle our way back into the cave, slice and dice the patrols (yes, we see you mr. I'm-hiding-behind-a-rock-waiting-to-eat-your-face-when-you-turn-around mob) and get to our quest mob; our decomposing skeletons still on the ground as a reminder of our less-then-stellar earlier attempts. tanking gear... check. defensive stance... check. houston, we are go! we go for the guards first and ignore the boss, use a health potion half way through the 2nd guard and then it's just us and ugly. it got hairy towards the end and we were down to 5% life with 1 minute to go on our health potion cooldown, so we popped our intimidating shout/bandage macro and prayed... "oh crap, he's immune to fear! ... but we're still bandaging ourself... ?!" we got a lucky break; ugly decided to try to repeatedly cast mana burn on us instead of ripping our head off and we got a full bandage in. smacked him around a bit more and VICTORY... and that was step one of that quest line. next few steps have us running off to azshara to go swimming or something. we're not sure if it was worth the aggravation and 1.5g repair bill, but it is new content for us and we got a war story out of it.

Continue reading "new (old) content"...

"Daelan died"

we saw that message a lot on sunday. more times than we can count, really. first, there were the gankers in swamp of sorrows... the 70 mage near the green whelpings, then the 70 warrior, then the 70 warlock and finally an entire horde kara raid. then there was another 70 warlock on the way into blasted lands. then there was that 70 priest in stv... now, we expect to take our licks living on a pvp server and all, but great googly moogly! that was a bit much.

between all the gankings and deaths caused by silly mistakes, bad luck and learning the fine art of playing a warrior, we may well have set a new personal record.

in the past we've taken great pride in our ability to avoid death while questing, even when soloing content that many players would find difficult. looking back on it, we realize that a large part of our past longevity was due to taking full advantage of the survival abilities of whatever class we were playing at the time. warriors, though... yeesh. no pets to sacrifice, no haul-yer-ass-outta-dodge abilities, no insta-hide or play-dead skills, no healing abilities (draenei aside) and no real crowd control other than a short fear that requires 1/4 of your rage bar. you pretty much just have to sit there and take it or run like a sissy and pray you don't get dazed before the mobs leash. or at least that's how we've been rolling so far... we're pretty sure we have a lot to learn, though.

in other news, we hit 45 and finally had enough arms talents to pick up mortal strike. wow. we're sure it's due in large part to the big axe were swinging, but mortal strike crits are just... juicy! 700+ on a soft target (poor imp). mmm, mmm, good!

speaking of big axes, we're also about to replace ours. being human (racial bonus to swords and maces) and also having talent points in sword specialization, we've been waiting to get our hands on a good two-handed sword to replace our axe. one more level (47) and the wait is over... we just finished crafting a [Truesilver Champion]. it's not as slow as we'd like, but it's good enough and it allows us to start taking full advantage of our spec and racial bonuses. we also cooked up a [Light Earthforged Blade] for when we have to go sword & board. the only downside to all this sharp-edged, shiny goodness is that our weapon skill with any kind of sword blows right now. we'll be spending a lot of time laying waste to deadmines in our to work on that.

Continue reading ""Daelan died""...

stance dancing

read any warrior forums or guides and such and you're likely to see the phrase, "stance dance." the general idea is to change from whatever stance you're currently in to another stance so you can use a stance-specific skill and then quickly change back to your original stance. you dance from stance to stance.

now, we'd heard the term before and knew the general concept, but as part of our continuing education efforts we thought we should read up on it a bit... learn the finer points and such. while we found many a mention of *when* to stance dance (specific boss fights, etc.) in the various warrior guides out there, we were surprised to not find a guide that explained stance dancing in any detail. so, we thought we'd do that here.

first, a disclaimer; we have not played a warrior to 70 (yet) and aren't yet familiar with the various warrior-specific bonuses available from all that shiny, end-game raiding and pvp gear. so, we're going to gloss over that bit and stick to general theory that's not gear-specific.

The Stances

warriors have three stances to choose from when in combat; battle, defensive and berserker. warriors begin their careers with battle stance, which offers no bonuses or penalties in terms of damage in or out. it has a passive 20% threat reduction built-in. at level 10, warriors can learn defensive stance from a quest. defensive stance reduces all incoming damage by 10% and all damage you do by 10%. this stance increases all threat you generate by 30%. at level 30, warriors can learn berserker stance (again, via a quest). this stance increases damage taken by 10%, increases your crit chance by 3% and reduces all threat generated by 20%.

many warrior skills require the use of a particular stance. charge, for example, may only be used in battle stance whereas intercept may only be used in berserker stance. here's a list of some of the more important, stance-specific warrior skills

battle stance: retaliation, charge, mocking blow

defensive stance: shield block, shield wall, taunt, intervene

berserker stance: whirlwind, berserker rage, pummel, intercept, recklessness

gaining access to key skills that are spread across stances when you need them is what stance dancing is all about.

The Dance

changing stances is an instant action and doesn't trigger the GCD (technically, it triggers a GCD that only applies to changing stances; so there's a 1.5 second delay before you can change stances again. all other abilities are on a separate GCD timer). so, with quick fingers or a macro you can change to another stance and use a stance-specific skill all at once. this flexibility comes at a hefty price, however: any time a warrior changes stances, he loses all accumulated rage. due to this rage loss, you don't want to be dancing through stances willy-nilly; a warrior's rage is his life. dance when you must, but always remember the cost.

fortunately, the rage loss from changing stances can be mitigated somewhat by other abilities the warrior has. at level 20, warriors learn the passive skill, stance mastery, which lets them keep up to 10 rage when they change stances. there's also the first-tier protection tree talent, tactical mastery, which let's you keep another 15 rage (with 3 points in it). so, at best a warrior can keep up to 25 rage when changing stances.

now, you want to be changing stances quickly so this means one of two things: hot keys or macros (bound to hot keys, naturally). the stance buttons for warriors are listed as Special Action Button 1 (battle), Special Action Button 2 (defensive) and Special Action Button 3 (berserker) in the key bindings menu. by default, they're not bound to any keys so have to click with the mouse to change stances; not ideal. we bound our stance buttons to R (battle), F (defensive) and V (berserker), which are right next to our movement keys, so they're easy to reach.

on the macro side of things, there are all kinds of possibilities. a spell reflection macro, popular for pvp, usually involves changing from berserker to battle stance, equipping a shield and casting spell reflection, all with a single click/key press. fancier macros change you back to berserker stance and re-equip your 2h weapon with a second click/key press. a charge macro for tanks (starting in battle stance) would have them cast charge (gaining 15 rage), change to defensive stance (no rage loss due to tactical mastery and stance mastery, so still at 15) and then cast bloodrage (for another 10 rage instantly) so they wind up with 25 rage to immediately start sundering and shield blocking with. any stance-specific ability that requires 25 rage or less (assuming you have points in tactical mastery) is fair game for a stance dancing macro.

When and Why

now that we know how to stance dance and what the costs (and how to mitigate them) are, all that's left is to understand when and why to dance. we'll wrap up this post with some common examples:

- as dps in an instance/raid, you accidentally pull agro from the tank on a hard-hitting boss. you need to survive long enough for the tank to regain agro. quick as you can you dance from berserker stance to defensive stance, equip a shield (you *do* always carry a shield, right?) and pop shield wall (a little prayer to the gods of mercy might not hurt, either).

- when tanking a boss that uses fear, if you know it's coming you can quickly dance from defensive stance over to berserker stance, pop berserker rage and then switch back to defensive stance to avoid the fear (not as wise to do this as dps because that means you're gaining threat on the boss while the tank isn't). it's important to note that this dance has to be done fast!. changing from defensive stance to berserker stance results in a net 20% increase in damage you're going to take until you get back into defensive stance. no lollygagging!
also, remember that berserker rage lasts 10 seconds, so you can still use this particular dance even if you don't know exactly when the boss is going to cast fear (e.g., it's an instant-cast fear). just try to pop it a second or two before you think the boss will cast fear.

- when tanking, another class pulls agro and the boss resists your taunt. stance dance from defensive to battle, use mocking blow and dance back to defensive.

- when out grinding (most likely in berserker stance), you accidentally pull more mobs then you'd planned on. dance over to battle stance and pop retaliation and thunder clap.

Continue reading "stance dancing"...

name change

after giving it some thought, we've decided that a blog name-change was in order. we were looking for a name that offered up a little more about what we're all about, and "Elvis Does Wow" just really wasn't making that happen. and what are we all about, you ask? Alts, and lots of them.

coming up with a meaningful name was a bit tricky for us. there are some great class-specific blog names out there, such as Need More Rage (warrior) and Starshards FTW (priest). we don't stick to any one class for long, though, so that route's out for us. same reasoning applies to blog names focused around a character name (e.g., World of Matticus or Picklemonkey the Shaman). what made the process even more challenging is that the blogging community has grown quite large over the years. many folks have already laid claim to blog names that we were considering.

we played around with a lot of name variations that had "alt" in them somehow; "Legion of Alts", "Altoholic" (taken), "Altoholism" (sounds like a support group), "Alt Legion", etc. in the end, we settled on "Alts for One" as a play on The Three Musketeers motto; "one for all, and all for one." we thought it summed things up fairly well: one guy with lots of characters who all support each other (through crafting, farming, etc.). we'll see if it sticks...

Continue reading "name change"...

updates and such

apologies for the slow updates; we've been a wee bit busy of late. despite that, Daelan has now reached the ripe old age of 37 seasons. after giving it some thought, we've decided we're going to go with an arms/fury build and become a master swordsmith rather than a prot build and armorsmithing. prot's fun and all, but it really boils down to the fact that we like killing things. while fury is arguably the highest individual dps spec, it didn't appeal to us on an aesthetic level because it just seemed a little too rogue-ish (and we've already done that before). so, an arms/fury build and a (very big and scary) two-handed weapon is in our future.

since our last post we've become an official, card-carry goblin engineer. we've done gnomish engineering a couple times before, so thought we'd give goblin a try this time 'round. besides, the [Goblin Rocket Launcher] is just too much fun to pass up. though we may lack some of the toys that our gnomish engineering brethren enjoy we will be very, very good at blowing things up (see above re: killing things). and yes, we fully realize that one of those "things" may well be us. such is the life of a goblin engineer.

we are now mounted! words cannot describe what a pleasure it is to ride through all the lvl 30-40 quest zones that we used to run through. that initial foray into STV, trekking from one end of duskwood to the other (again and again and... well, you get the point), running from the bank to the forge... all faster now. /glee!

speaking of being mounted (no, not like that)... let it be known that riding a ram in a straight line while smashed is really hard.

one of the things we've been enjoying about the warrior class are the class-specific quests, which are all new to us. Bell was kind enough to help us with part of our whirlwind quest (two words: big. axe.) and with that completed, we switched over from our early fury build to an arms-heavy build. we're still trying to get used to the whole slam rotation thing. we're also trying to figure out the whole "stance dance" thing... as in, when and why to do it, how to do it efficiently, etc. we experimented a bit with berserker stance once we first got it, but battle stance seems a better choice for us at the moment. a chat with a certain orc may be in order; we have much to learn...

another thing bell helped us with was a quick run-through of SM, where we had the great pleasure of meeting Bellezza. she's new to the blogging scene and we're looking forward to seeing what's she got. go over and say hi; she's very sweet.

Continue reading "updates and such"...

meet the new guy (again)

no, not that new guy; this new guy. yes, we're back. many thanks to all the folks we spoke with both here and online for helping us think things through. we decided to go back to DI rather than roll on a new server; the chance to play with Bell again was just too irresistible for us!

so, meet Daelan.



Daelan is the latest addition to our ever-expanding stable of characters (#25, we think) and is our current "main". we thought we'd try out a warrior since we've never taken one past the low 20s. it also gives us a chance to try out a prof we've never leveled before; Blacksmithing. the list of firsts continues as D is also our first character (since we knew what we were doing, anyway) to not have at least one gathering profession. between Engineering, Blacksmithing and all the general care and feeding that goes into a warrior (staying on top of the gear curve, repair bills, band-aids, etc.) we probably should have named him Moneypit... it'd be a bit closer to the truth.

D's got some choices to make. originally, we were thinking we'd go prot once we hit outlands because we were enjoying our (limited) tanking experiences on Varynth. however, we keep having this beautiful mental image of roaming the virtual countryside handing out beat-downs with something like the [Lionheart Executioner] that just makes us all warm and fuzzy inside. so, we'll have to see about that.

secondary to that decision, we also have to figure out which way to specialize in blacksmithing. this one we need to research a bit as we haven't looked at what sorts of end-game recipes are available for each specialty and how they compare with available rep gear and such. we're guessing our talent spec will heavily influence this choice, though.

for now, though, we're just having fun leveling up a new character. we've decided not to follow our usual power-leveling race to 70, but rather to just take our time getting there, work on our crafting profs along the way and take the liberty of skipping over some of the crappier questing zones (*cough* blasted lands *cough*) that we'd normally suffer through. you know, stop and smell the roses and all that.

it's good to be back.

Continue reading "meet the new guy (again)"...

decisions, decisions...

>.>

<.<

yeah... so, we're back. sorta. well, not really. we're thinking about coming back, though. we're having a really hard time deciding if we should or not.

see, life in the real world has been going pretty well... we've gotten back in touch with old friends and made some awesome new ones. we've had the great fortune to meet a wonderful woman. we've done some international travel. we've caught up on some hobbies. we've started learning a new language. we've gotten back into our gym routine. we're probably out doing something at least 3 times a week. all good stuff and exactly what we wanted to reclaim by way of leaving wow a few months back.

of course, we still have times where we don't have anything going on. maybe we don't have plans that night or friends are out of town over the weekend or whatever. naturally, being a gamer we've been filling this time playing games; half-life 2, a little diablo II (seeing the DIII trailer got us excited), nwn2, dawn of war (and all the xpacks) and other random stuff. great games and all, but they just aren't giving us the same satisfaction that wow did (to be fair, they aren't giving us the same moments of frustration either).

there are elements missing that we didn't think we cared about so much before we started playing wow. the sense of being a part of something larger is a big one... being able to interact with other people in-game that have shared the same experiences you have. when you gain a level in nwn, for example, you don't really have anyone to share your "Ding!" moment with. we haven't found that same sense of accomplishment and satisfaction in other games that we have in wow, either. getting our first mount was a memorable moment for us, as was hitting 60 the first time, seeing a new instance boss, etc. part of why those moments were so big was that there were others there to share them with us. another missing part is the whole social aspect. we miss being able to talk with other people while we're playing; chatting with friends, asking someone for advice about a quest or item, etc. we have to admit that we don't miss trade chat, though (or barrens chat, for that matter...).

now, for the sake of completeness we acknowledge that we could side step this whole dilemma by simply finding something else to do with our free time. watch tv, take up gardening, critique porn, wear funny underwear and save the world, etc. we're a gamer at heart, though, and this is how we enjoy spending our free time.

so, that leads us to the big question: should we go back or not. since we're in a rambling mood, we thought we'd lay out some pros and cons from our perspective, listed in no particular order.

cons:

• our biggest issue with wow in the past was being able to maintain a good balance between wow and our social life. being aware of this, we hope it would be less of an issue if we were to go back, but it's something we worry about


• until WotLK comes out, there isn't a lot in wow that we haven't already done. there are a couple classes we haven't delved into deeply, yet, but most of the content we've seen numerous times before


• once we hit 70, we're likely to get bored again. we don't want to commit the time to raiding and pvp's never been much of a focus for us... so what are we going to do when we hit the level cap again?


• we're not sure where we'd want to roll a char again. pvp servers were annoying us last time, but that's also where we still have a few friends. do we roll on a new server and start from scratch or go back to our old server where we know some good people?

pros:

• it's fun!


• it's fun?


• we haven't found another game that's been able to entertain and engross us the way wow has. obviously that's good and bad, but since this is under the "pros" section let's just consider the good part here


• we made some good friends playing wow


• we like the social interaction side of MMOs; being able to share the experiences with like-minded players


• we really enjoy the leveling process, mastering the nuances of a new class and being able to share that knowledge with others. it's something that we think we're good at and that's important to us

this is obviously not an exhaustive list, but it's all we can come up with off the top of our head. our two biggest worries are that we're going to get sucked in again or that we're going to be bored out of our minds once we hit 70 again (a month or two at the rate we level). the bored part is less of an issue; WotLK will probably be out in a few months and if we get bored we simply find something more entertaining to do. as for getting sucked in, we *think* we can maintain a reasonable balance... but we don't know for sure.

so, yeah... we've been thinking about signing back up and rolling a warrior. just for the hell of it. no guilds, no raids, play when we feel like it and we've got nothing better going on.

thoughts?

Continue reading "decisions, decisions..."...

Game over, man! Game over!

so... yeah. title kinda says it all; we've decided to quit WoW. it's partly due to boredom (we hit the level cap several times back when it was 60 and we hit it 5 more times since it was raised to 70), but mostly due to us wanting our social life back.

way back in the day, before evercrack or dark age of camelot or any of those games saw the light of day, we stumbled into a beta tester position for an online game (this was before the term MMO started getting tossed around) that ended up never seeing the light of day.

long story short, we ended up getting very involved in that game. involved to the point where one could argue that it was a bit too much. as it happened, the game never got off the ground, the developers went their separate ways and we got busy with other stuff (school, mostly).

fast forward a bit and the wonderful world of online gaming that we know today began to take shape. we were fascinated by it, read all the reviews in the gaming mags, talked to friends who played, drooled over the fancy new graphics and cool ways to interact with other players... and we avoided every single one of them like the plague. see, based on our previous experience with that little beta tester gig and knowing that we have an addictive personality, we were a bit worried that we'd get sucked into one of them if we gave it a taste.

UO, EQ & EQ2, DAOC, SWG and many more all went unplayed. we did pretty well avoiding them over the years until WoW was released and a few of our co-workers, most of whom were old hands at EQ, convinced us to try it out. three years later and we were still playing... and not doing much else.

that's where the real issue lies for us. depsite our best efforts, we were never able to strike a good balance between WoW and everything else. it was just too easy to get into WoW and our social life suffered as a result. while we were making new friends on WoW that all lived thousands of miles away, we were losing touch with our local real-life friends. we'd get home from work, fire up WoW and play until the wee hours of the night. the weekend would roll around and we were far more likely to be playing WoW then doing anything else. it got to the point where when we did make time to hook up with old friends, we really didn't have much to say when people asked us what we'd been up to for the last few months; we'd played a lot of WoW and that was about it.

now, don't think that we didn't enjoy our time in WoW. sure, there were crappy moments but the reason we've been playing for three years is because it's fun! every time we hit the level cap was a magical moment for us. nabbing that drop we'd ground away forever for, hitting each new level, killing a new boss for the first time, meeting awesome people through the game, rolling yet another alt... these are all things we've enjoyed and things that we'll definitely miss.

however, since we don't trust ourselves to balance WoW with real life, it's time we parted ways with the World of Warcraft. we did not, of course, go full-on /emo, shard our purples and delete all our characters, but we did terminate our WoW account. so, while we don't have any plans to come back to WoW, never say never and all that.

in the meantime, good luck to all of you and thanks for reading :)

Continue reading "Game over, man! Game over!"...

meet the "new" guy

we're home sick today so we figured it'd be a good time to update the blog. as we mentioned last post, we've been playing a lot less WoW lately. most of what little time we do play has been spent on Varynth, our fledgling blood elf protection paladin.

before we started our prot career we were, of course, using a two-hander. we didn't do much tanking in our ret days so our one-handed weapon skills were fairly feeble. that was something we had to fix right away if we wanted to be a worthy tank. how do you improve your weapon skill? you hit things. repeatedly. for a really long time. sound boring? you're right, it is.

you have some choices in how to go about this tedious process, though.

you can skill up by attacking mobs your own level (i.e., over the normal course of questing). the downside here is that your low weapon skill level relative to the mob's level means you're going to miss or be dodged/parried a lot. this, in turn, means it's going to take you forever to kill mobs and they will be gleefully beating the snot out of you in the process. maybe this is a reasonable option if you're only 15 points or so behind on your weapon skill, but if you've got 100+ points to make up this ain't the way to go about it.

if you happen to be a warlock or have a (very bored) warlock friend, you can chain-banish a demon or elemental and just auto-attack it while it's banished. we're not sure if this still works, but you used to be able to skill up weapons this way. same goes for beating on an evade-bugged mob, though those are a bit harder to come by when you actually want one (plenty around when you *don't* want one, of course).

if you're a class that can heal yourself, even if it's not your spec, you can find a mob that heals itself but doesn't hit very hard and go to town on it. some of the mobs outside the scarlet monastery are great for this. by the time they're gray to you, they won't be hurting you much but they last a good, long time. toss a heal on yourself every once in a while and auto-attack away. bring a book or something; it's a dull process.

our favorite method by far is to clear out low-level instances. if you're a squishy, this probably means running deadmines. if you can take a bit more of a beating, pay a visit to the scarlet monastery. as a prot pally, we love running SM. we gather up 8-12 mobs and burn them down with little to no downtime between groups and we pick up weapon skill points along the way. the cloth, BoE greens (and shards, if you happen to be an enchanter) and vendor trash you pick up are a nice bonus, too. it's a pretty efficient weapon skill training plan. plus, it's just damn cool to be standing in a pile of sparkling bodies when all the smoke clears...

Continue reading "meet the "new" guy"...

we're not dead, yet

no, we're not dead or kidnapped or caught in a time warp or anything else like that. we are, however, taking a bit of a break from our usual WoW routine. we've taken 5 characters up to level 70 now, all alliance and all on the same server. frankly, we're a bit bored. our two "main"s, harl and zhered, are about as well geared as they can get short of doing 25-man content and while we *would* like to see that content, we're not sure we want to sign up for a heavy raid calendar right now. plus, we'd have to go guild shopping... we hate, hate, *hate* leaving a guild once we've decided to join one, so the "try before you buy" model that a few folks have suggested to us just doesn't really fly. we're one of those "get it right the first time" types, so selecting the right guild takes a lot of time and work. time and work that we don't feel like putting in right now because our interest is waning a bit.

we haven't completely given up WoW, of course. we just needed a change of pace. back in the mists of time, we rolled a blood elf paladin so we could see the new horde starting zone that came along with TBC. we ended up leveling him up to 58, but never got around to taking him into outlands before we shifted back over to playing alliance again on Dark Iron. since we'd been itching to play horde again anyway, we decided to pick him back up, re-spec to protection (he was ret back before ret was FOTM) and go hit outlands as a tank.

it's been fun! totally different play style from what we're used to. we've played every dps class out there and we're used to killing single targets fairly fast and being able to take 2 mobs (maybe 3 if we're playing a class with good CC) without it being too scary. as a pally tank, it's a whole different ball game. now we take 4-6 melee mobs at once and it's actually *easier* for us than doing a single mob at a time. casters, though... casters just suck. we can't mitigate magic damage worth beans and it *does* take us a while to kill stuff. that's the downside of life as a pally tank (no spell reflection). pretty nifty overall, though.

hellfire peninsula feels like a totally new place what with all the horde-flavored quests and some new twists to areas we thought we knew inside out (we had no idea that the orcs near the pools of aggonar were actually a horde-friendly faction!). we've been running around picking up tanking gear from quests and the AH, trying to gear ourselves up for the big show - Hellfire Ramparts. that'll be our first real test of tanking to see if we like it or not. if nothing else, we're looking forward to getting into groups a hell of a lot easier (LF1M, tank! PST).

Continue reading "we're not dead, yet"...

it's that time again

meet Yarzill the Merc. ain't he pretty? when you hit exalted with the Netherwing faction Lord Illidan pops over for a little chat and reveals you for the traitorous wretch you really are. Yarzill here swoops in to rescue you from certain death and dismemberment at the hands of a very upset orc overlord. he then flies you off to shat in a victory lap of sorts and drops you off in front of all the netherwing drakes in lower city. you get your shiny new drake for free by talking to the one you want (you can buy the other colors later from a vendor back at the dragonmaw camp for the usual 200g fee).


we went with [Reins of the Violet Netherwing Drake]; thought it matched up nicely with shadowform. took us 11 days this time around (opened up the dailies on mar 1, hit exalted last night on mar 11), which is about 3 days faster than it took harl. the human Diplomacy racial definitely makes a big difference when it comes to rep grinding (25 to 55 more rep for each quest). the rest of the difference is probably due to better luck with finding [Netherwing Egg]s; we found at least 1 and as many as 5 each time we were doing the dailies.

we'll probably continue to do a few of the less tedious netherwing dailies as they're a great source of cash. we made 100-150g a day doing just the dailies, not counting any drops or herbs we picked up along the way. we're back up to about 3400g now and much of that can be credited to dailies. now we just have to figure out what to do next... it feels weird to not have a specific goal we're working towards.

Continue reading "it's that time again"...

Kara!

Z finally got his kara key saturday and we had a chance to go play in KZ last night with our old guild. it was a last minute "hey, we think we're going to raid tonight. wanna come?" kinda thing, so it was a little rough around the edges. we made a mad dash to the AH on the way to the meeting stone to stock up on consumables and realized that we'd never really thought about caster consumables before. ended up buying some [Elixir Major Mageblood] (which was a mistake, but Harl can use 'em later), the [Schematic: Mana Potion Injector] for Harl (finally!), some [Superior Wizard Oil] (thought about going for [Superior Mana Oil] instead, but thought we'd try it without first and see what the mana situation was like) and a couple old-school [Flask of Supreme Power]s (they were way cheap compared with [Flash of Pure Death] and it's only a 10 point difference in spell damage). once we were fully raid buffed we were looking at +918 shadow dmg. mmmm, tasty. was even better when we brought in a shaman later on and had a Wrath of Air Totem at our disposal; zomg +1019 shadow damage! we wish that's what our stats looked like normally...

as far as the run went, it wasn't bad. they had cleared through morose on a previous night, so we started with maiden and then went on to opera (wizard of oz), curator, shade & chess; they all went down on the first shot. it wasn't always pretty, but we got the job done. prince was a different story. we made four attempts and never got him below about 40%. not really sure why he was so much trouble, but last night was just not our night for prince pwnage.

but what about "teh phat lewtz"?! we thought we'd be sitting pretty, being the only dps clothie in the raid (no mages or warlocks), but the loot gods decreed that it would be all healie gear, all the time. meh. we ended up with a couple bits of it anyway; the [Blue Diamond Witchwand] because none of the other healers needed it and the [Ribbon of Sacrifice] due to a very unfortunate error by the master looter. we still feel pretty bad about that, but at least it'll come in handy if we end up having to heal our way through the arcatraz again. we also picked up our first 10 [Badge of Justice]s. now we have to figure out what to save up for...

speaking of healing arc... never. again. we ended up going in as a healer because we really, really wanted our 3rd kara key fragment and putting together a group was like pulling teeth. we ended up with a prot warrior, 2 rogues, an elemental shaman and a shadow priest in healing gear (a little over +900 heals at the time). it actually went better than we expected it to, partly because the tank was awesome and also due to the shammie backing me up with a couple extra heals when pulls got hairy (that guy was on top of his shit. we love playing with people like that!). we did have one wipe right before the 2nd boss (damn you, aoe silence!), but all the bosses went down on the first try. that said, it was ZOMG STRESSFUL!!!1! we don't know how you full-time healers do it. we spent the entire run staring at health bars; praying they would stop going down and start going back up. one of our resto druids friends told us that she doesn't even know what the inside of most instances look like because all she does is watch health bars. bleh. major props to all you healers out there, but it's definitely not our bag.

Continue reading "Kara!"...

slow and steady

Z's steadily making progress in the gear department. last night we picked up [Sage of Terokk] (finally found a seth group), got our 2nd kara key fragment from steamvault and picked up a few more bits of healing gear along the way; we broke +900 healing at long last (+773 shadow dmg, on the face-melting side of things).

on the rep front, we broke revered with Netherwing after last night's dailies. the netherwing dailies are pure awesome. we do 8-9 each day we have time and pull in about 3500 rep and 150g at a time. our sparkly new drake is just around the corner! on the other rep fronts... well, we've got a lot of work to do. 4-5 runs of shattered halls will push us into revered territory with honor hold, which will grant us access to the +healing head enchant (yay, healing gear! /sarcasm). sha'tar-wise, we've got a long, long way to go before we can pick up our +spell dmg head enchant. sad, because our nifty [Spellstrike Hood] really deserves that finishing touch! we've got a fair ways to go in lower city rep as well (only about 25% into honored), but that only grants us access to some additional healing gear so no rush there. we turned in 7040 rep worth of aldor odds and ends last night, which brings us about 2/3 of the way through honored. still have a long grind ahead just to get the upgraded inscription. this isn't a priority for us, though, so we'll just turn in rep items as we find 'em.

our focus for the next few days will be netherwing rep, getting our 3rd kara key fragment (hello, arcatraz!), farming mats for our [Spellstrike Pants] and farming sha'tar rep (hello, botanica :( ).

Continue reading "slow and steady"...

enough already

nerfs suck. there's just no two ways about it. the nerf bat leaves a long and broken trail of crocodile tears and sad pandas in it's wake. we get that. we've been on the receiving end of more nerfs than we can remember over the years we've played. we feel your pain. however, for the love of all that's holy (or unholy, for all you demon-hugging warlocks out there) quit with the whining already!

so, you got (or are expecting to get) nerfed. it sucks. what are you going to do now? is complaining about it ad nauseum really going to fix things? unlikely. you've expressed your displeasure and it's most certainly been noted by those who wield the mighty nerf bat (yes, they really *do* listen to what you have to say. that doesn't mean they're going to give you what you want, though).

you have three constructive choices available to you:

1. you can decide that this most recent nerf is the absolute last straw and go find a new game.
2. you can decide that this most recent nerf has made your current spec/class "unplayable" and go find a new spec/class to play.
3. you can decide to adapt to the new mechanic that this most recent nerf has/will put into place and continue playing.

pick one and be done with it.

contrary to popular belief, game developers do not make changes to game mechanics in a vacuum. every single change is made for a reason. you have every right to disagree with that reason, but don't fall into the habit of thinking game developers are stupid or don't think these changes through. developers don't just wake up one morning and think "you know, I think warlocks are regenerating too much mana. I'll just change that when I get into the office this afternoon..." while scratching themselves on the way to the bathroom.

every change to a game mechanic goes through a proposal process where the desired outcome is clearly stated and potential impacts are modeled and examined. then it goes through an internal testing process where the change is implemented and tested in-house and the results are checked against the desired outcome. then the change will go through a more public testing process where the results are yet again reviewed and examined to make sure the desired outcome is being achieved. then and only then does a change to a game mechanic get slated for a future release.

changing the game is not a trivial process. a lot of thought goes into it and changes are made for reasons the game developers feel are important, not simply "because they can". the next time you're picking yourself up off the floor after your latest visit from nerf bat fairy consider that maybe the developers really *do* know what they're doing and try focusing your energy on adapting to the change instead of screaming about how unfair or retarded it is.

in the immortal words of someone far more clever than we are, "less QQ, more PewPew".

Continue reading "enough already"...

These are the People in your Raid

courtesy of the WoW forums: everything you need to know about the types of people you'll be raiding with.

Continue reading "These are the People in your Raid"...

Karazhan, the Destroyer of Guilds

raiding changes guilds. some guilds ride out the changes just fine, others get torn apart by the stresses and challenges that raiding introduces.

why? what's so hard about raiding? it's just like doing an instance with more people, right? let's start by looking at what it means to raid. in this post-TBC era raiding is a 10 to 25 man affair (it was 20-40 in the pre-TBC era). much like running 5-man instances, not just any 10 to 25 folks will do. you need a certain number of healers, a certain number of tanks, a certain mix of dps and utility and so on.

take a minute and think about how hard it can be some nights to put together a 5-man pug. sometimes finding a tank is a nightmare, other times you have to beg and plead to get a healer to come along and you might even have trouble finding dps! now take it up a level and imagine putting together a 5-man heroic run. things like gear and skill start to matter when the trash can 2-shot you. that guy in all greens? yeah, not gonna happen. that hunter that always leaves growl on? pass, thanks. you necessarily have to be a bit more picky about who you bring into your group if you want to have a good chance of success.

combine two of those heroic instance groups, shake well and you get close to what you need as a bare minimum to start raiding. a couple of tanks, 2-3 healers, some mix of dps/cc/utility, a base level of player skill, mostly blue (or better) gear and, most importantly, enough schedule overlap to be able to play together for a few hours at a time.

all this work to gather people together merely grants you the ability to set foot inside the raid instance. if you want to actually succeed, you still have to provide leadership, learn to work as a team, work out strategies for all the bosses and trash pulls and set up raiding policies (are consumables expected/required? how is loot being distributed? it's cool if I go afk for 15 minutes after the first pull, right?). building and managing a raiding team is not a small task.

problems arise when not everyone on the team views raiding the same way. some people are just there for loot. some are just there to see the content and don't really care about getting a boss on farm status. some people just want to raid when they feel like it and not be locked into a schedule. some are more dedicated than others. some players, especially the early members of a raiding team, will put in a lot of time and effort to make sure they have the best gear they can get (farming instances for that one drop, grinding rep for that one piece of gear, etc.), are stocked up on consumables before each run and are always at the meeting stone on time, if not early. others might show up late because they're "just seconds away from winning AV", forget to bring water, demand a summon because they didn't log in in time to fly to the instance or whatever.

while admittedly a gross over-simplification you can divide these people into two groups; the serious raiders and the casual raiders. you have one group that wants to establish gear requirements, set schedules, expects raiders to be on time and prepared. they are determined to see content cleared, bosses farmed, loot distributed to benefit the raid over the individual. progression is the goal and they accept that it will take work to get there. then, you have another group that maybe shares the same goals but doesn't want to (or can't due to schedule issues, etc.) work as hard to realize them. they aren't lesser players, but for various reasons they don't share the same level of commitment as the serious raiders. maybe they have scheduling issues or can only play for an hour at a time. maybe the thought of killing the same bosses at the same time every week bores them to tears. maybe they bristle at the idea of being asked to pass an item that's a clear upgrade for them because it will benefit the raid as a whole by going to someone else. whatever the reasons, raiding isn't as important to them as it is to the "serious" raiders.

a guild's initial raiding team will generally be the serious raider types. they'll get the gear they need, do all the attunement quests, farm up consumables and be the first to kill bosses in guild's name. the raiding team roster will change over time, however. old raiders may move on to other guilds and games, new guild members join or are recruited with the intent to raid, guild members that were still leveling when raiding began will want to join in on all the raiding goodness. if the guild's lucky, these new members will share the same outlook that the older raiders do and everything works out. more often that not, though, at least some of these new raiders are going to fall into the casual group. this is where raiding starts to introduce guild drama. how do you keep everyone happy?

what you tend to see is the serious types looking down on the casuals because they aren't... well, "serious" about raiding and the casual types looking down on the serious folks because they're become elitist. both groups begin to resent each other. maybe it's a poor loot call, maybe it's a dumb mistake that a new raider makes (flame wreath, anyone?). sometimes that's all it takes for this resentment to escalate into a full-blown screaming match over vent. we've seen it (heard it?) more than once and it ain't pretty.

unfortunately, there are no magic fixes. it really comes down to the personalities involved and the leadership and mediation abilities of the guild officers. some guilds end up with multiple raiding teams (there's still drama about who's on the "progression" team vs. the "training" team, though), some guilds simply stop raiding and sometimes things are bad enough that guild members leave for other guilds.

this sort of drama is what lead us to leave our last guild, (for the record, we're in the "serious raider" camp). prior to raiding things were very casual and we loved it. there was a core group that leveled together, instanced together and eventually began raiding together. we started off raiding by pugging in folks to fill spots that the guild couldn't yet fill. it was when we started recruiting new guild members and inviting freshly-minted level 70 guildies to fill out the raiding roster that the drama began. the officers (us included) were never able to "fix" things to the point that we were happy, so we moved on.

we keep in touch with the many friends we made in our old guild, of course, and that's how we learned that things had come to a head in NIIA. after what sounds like a particularly nasty exchange over vent, the guild split. many of the original members have formed a new guild called . we wish them all the best as they pick up the pieces and ready themselves to re-enter kara.

Continue reading "Karazhan, the Destroyer of Guilds"...

busy weekend

funny what a little car trouble will lead to. we'd originally planned to go play in the snow last weekend, but ended up staying home and playing a lot of WoW instead. and we were productive! we started our kara key quest and got our first fragment from Shadow Labs. in preparation for the last step of that quest line, we finally ran Caverns of Time: Durnholde. aside from just being a fun instance to begin with, this also got us some of the best pre-raid shadow priest gloves, [Tempest's Touch], available as a quest reward. a couple of gems later and these lovelies are worth 45 spell damage!

next up, we finally whacked Zuluhed and opened up the Netherwing dailies. you know the old saying, "it takes money to make money"? the Netherwing dailies could be the poster child for that expression. it takes 5000g (plus assorted repair bills) to open up them up. however, the money pours in once you start doing them. each daily quest is worth at least 12g. the vendor trash you pick up along the way, especially from the quests in the mines, also sells quite well; 2-3g per stack of things like broken fangs or slime. it's pretty easy to bring in 100g just by doing a handful of these quests.

after our second round of dailies and a couple lucky [Netherwing Egg] drops we hit friendly rep and opened up what is, quite possibly, the best daily quest ever: The Booterang: A Cure For The Common Worthless Peon. teh [Booterang], we haz it. we lovez teh [Booterang]. true story.

anyway, from there we went and joined up with a Shattered Halls group. we had 3 quests for SH in our log still and wanted to clean 'em out. conveniently for us, no one in the group had the key but we were on the last stage of the key quest! so, we went off and spanked hellfire's resident Fel Reaver and we got our [Shattered Halls Key]. the run itself went pretty well, except for a 15 minute pause mid-way through where we had to find a replacement tank. picked up some new healing gear from quest rewards, the [Runesong Dagger] off the ogre boss (nice boost for us, since we were still using our [Battle Mage's Baton]) and [Pattern: Spellstrike Hood] off the first boss. the pattern is especially timely as we were planning on having this item made for us this week. now we have to decide if we want to farm the primal nether ourselves (we were sooo close to winning the roll for one last night) or buy someone else's.

all in all, not a bad weekend.

Continue reading "busy weekend"...

DING!

say hello to our newest 70. Zhered ding'd last night with a total /played of 9 days, 16 hours. conveniently, Z was questing in shadowmoon valley at the time so he hot-footed it over to wildhammer stronghold and sat patiently in front of the mailbox while we moved funds around.

remember that post we did a while back about making money? well, here's proof that it works: Z went first class and bought his epic flying mount, [Swift Blue Gryphon], within minutes of hitting 70. we didn't even bother buying the regular flying mount first. that's 6000g (800 to train expert riding + 5000 to train artisan riding + 200 for the mount). we also had to train our level 70 spells and gem out our new duds (pictured above). after all was said and done, we still have about 500g in the bank.

and now, we're off to start our kara key adventures...

Continue reading "DING!"...

screenies!

we finally got photoshop installed (CS3 Web Premium Edition, oh how we love thee! /swoon), so here are the promised screen shots.


here we have the ever-popular [Festive Suit] in traditional red. perfect for those formal occasions or anytime a bit of flare is required. Zhered can now make these (for a small fee, of course).


and here we see our lovely model wearing the dashing [Festive Blue Pant Suit]. so cool it's hawt!

Continue reading "screenies!"...

would tour

last night saw Z embark on an epic world tour across azeroth in search of [Coins of Ancestry]. we usually don't do much of the holiday content, partly because we've seen most of it before and partly because we tend to be goal oriented and the holiday content is a distraction from whatever we're focusing on at the time (i.e., leveling up to 70... again.). the lunar festival offers up some pretty sexy tailoring patterns, though, and since Z's a tailor we thought we'd take some time out of our busy leveling grind and go pick them up.

due to a minor misunderstanding in a conversation we had with bell (our fault, not hers), we thought that we could get patterns for all of the different lunar festival outfits. at 5 coins per pattern we were looking at collecting 40 coins out of a total 50 possible. lucky for us, wowwiki just happened to have a travel plan for visiting all the elders.

some of the elders are tucked away in instances so we skipped a few for the sake of convenience. a few more are standing in the middle of horde towns, but the only really challenging one was in Org. we managed to pick up all the coins from horde cities without getting ourselves killed, but we weren't so lucky with the coin outside ZG. someone at bliz thought it would be funny to plant the elder in the midst of 3 60 elites with a knockdown ability. we probably would have made it if not for that stun, but as it happened we got eated.

about the time we were picking up our 39th coin, it occured to us that we should go look up what mats were required for these patterns so we could craft some of them up for a few friends. this is where we realized that our evening's quest was a bit... misguided. there are actually only two patterns that you can buy with coins (the red dress and the red pant suit). the rest of the dresses and suits can be bought with coins directly, but not the patterns for them. so, we really only needed 10 coins instead of 40. /sigh

we got our two patterns and made ourselves a suit and a few red dresses that we sent out as valentine's day gifts. we also picked up the blue suit for ourselves because it just looks damn good; we even happened to have matching boots (from our healing set)! bell was kind enough to point out that the patterns aren't BoP, so we'll go back to moonglade tonight and spend the rest of our coins on patterns for the AH.

and yes, we did take screenshots of our fancy new duds but we won't be able to post them until later this weekend. we're finally getting a new version of photoshop this weekend (/cheer), so cutting up screenies and such for the blog should be a much more pleasant experience now.

Continue reading "would tour"...

just in time!

hot on the heels of us recently becoming guildless, we stumble across this treasure trove of tips and tricks for how to get ourselves through the interview process of a top-notch raiding guild. with the expert advice and practical demonstrations of the techniques involved shown here, we can't possibly go wrong!

Continue reading "just in time!"...

PTR patch notes

patch notes for version 2.4 on the PTR have been posted. no exciting changes for any of our classes in store; no real nerfs either, though, so yay for that. as always, a few random tweaks as well. my favorite of the bunch:

Saber/Tiger Mounts will now make footprints when walking backwards in snow.

seriously, who reports this stuff?

Continue reading "PTR patch notes"...

guildless

we left our guild last night. left a brief farewell post in the public forums and a bit more explanation in the officer forums. logged into WoW on our officer char, went through the guild roster and friended folks we wanted to stay in touch with, gkicked our alts and then gquit. a sad moment for us, but we think it's the right decision and it's one that we thought about long and hard.

we'll be looking for a new guild to raid with at some point, but it's not an immediate concern. our next few weeks will be devoted to bringing Z (64 and going strong!) up to 70 and pimping him out a bit, gear-wise.

Continue reading "guildless"...

getting there

Z is now 62 and we're just about done with hellfire. took a quick break to catch up on our tailoring... got up to 344. now it starts to get expensive ;)

Continue reading "getting there"...

Into the Dark Portal

as we mentioned previously, our shadowpriest, Zhered, finally hit level 60 (61, now... yes, we're that behind on posting). perhaps the best part was that it was an exploration ding and it caught us completely by surprise.






we've read different accounts regarding whether it's faster to do 58-60 in outlands vs. the old world. some folks swear by hitting outlands at 58 and grinding your way to 60, some say go at 58 just to gear up from the first few quests in hellfire and then finish leveling to 60 back in azeroth, some say just stick it out in azeroth until 60. we're firmly in the latter camp (especially since the xp changes that went in with patch 2.3) so we kept Z questing in the plaguelands until he hit 60, wrapped up the few quests that we had in progress, dumped the ones we hadn't started yet and headed off to outlands with a new mount and an empty quest log.



so far, outlands has been treating us well. only ganked twice in the time it took us to hit level 61 (would have been 3 times, but the 70 hunter that tried it failed epically and we made it back into honor hold before he could seal the deal. /golfclap), our spell damage has more then doubled just from the first round of gear upgrades (from +100 even to a hair over +200) and we picked up our first dps trinket (we've macro'd it to our Vampiric Touch key so we 'remember' to use it all the time).

remember that little side-trip to outlands we took at level 56 to train master herbalism? it's paid off big-time. by the time we made it into outlands, our herbalism skill was already up to 357. that means we can herb pretty much anything we're likely to come across from now on. this is a much nicer position to be in than we've been in with mining in the past, where we entered outlands with 300 skill and had to pass up things like adamantite veins for several levels because we didn't have the skill, yet. if we level another alt up (gods have mercy!), we'll definitely use this strategy again.

Continue reading "Into the Dark Portal"...