037: More Horde affairs II

I'm going to continue writing about my adventures with my Undead buddies, because it's more interesting than me whining about how there's no raids cause everyone's having exams these days, or how boring farming for mats is, etc. Also, I'm going to start using proper names on some people cause by now there's simply too many Bears, Paladins and Warlocks to keep them apart.

(Randomly, if you can figure out why the font changes after the first image, I'll give you a cookie. I can't figure it out for the life of me and things like that really bug me :/)

It's Wednesday afternoon and I'm hanging out in Stormwind. Got nothing to do so I'm talking to Chiwi, the Warlock that adopted me a while ago, and Tammi, the female guild leader I mentioned recently. Tammi's DJing on vent, Chiwi's tapping his feet for his arena partners to log on and occasionally I alt-tab to surf a little. After about 45 minutes of relaxed idling, I finally hear what I'm waiting for: Stormwind City is under attack!

I hurry over to the flight path and sure enough: it's my favorite Undead Priest! No longer Holy, but as the Draenei say: Eh, details. I /greet and /hug and jump up and down, he /hugs and /loves and wants me to follow. I nod. We don't even make it down the FP ramp before two Rogues stunlock him and kill him.

There's an interlude where I sit by his corpse and wait for him to return, while wondering where exactly Horde pop up as ghosts after being killed in an Alliance capital. It can't be that graveyard by Goldshire cause they take way longer. Raven Hill possibly? No idea. Eventually he spawns, I /pat, we mount up and continue. Through the trade district, past the Stockades and into the Canal. He kills a couple guards offhandedly (and underwater) to get them off his back while I keep posting in /3 to say he means no harm and to leave him alone. Then it's through the Cathedral district and over the Canal to the Dwarven corner. He's got about fourteen guards after him by the time we hit the Tram portal and again he motions for me to follow. Again, I nod.

Neas the Undead Priest and myself, waiting for the Tram.
On the other side of the Tram Tammi is waiting for us, wanting to know what Neas is up to. To my surprise, four other Hordies, a random lowbie Alliance and a guildie of Tammi's are waiting with her. It was like walking straight into an unexpected party.

Coming out into Ironforge, the raggedy band of Hordies attract quite a lot of attention so we all jump into the lava canals and speed through towards the Commons until they've all been murdered. Some Alliance are quicker than MC & druid healing, obviously.

Tammi takes the opportunity to do what
Druids do best on poor Neas' corpse.
(you're all perverts, I tell you!)
After some waiting they all respawn, and we make it to the open area in front of the bank and AH before they're dead again. Tammi squeals and points to the roof of the Armorsmith - it's Rhêa, the other Undead Holy Priest! We love Rhêa! Rhêa is probably even more commonly known among Alliance than Neas is - he's not just a ganker, he's the ganker. This guy spent more time on top of the Inn in Darkshire pre-BC than Alliance spent time in Ironforge. Now I'll admit I've killed both Neas and Rhêa before, and probably been killed by Rhêa a handful of times while leveling up in Duskwood, but that's all in the past.

Tammi is an exploit terrain champion just like the Horde crew and is up on the roof within a minute. I on the other hand, need a little more time. I /beg Rhêa to help me without realising I haven't got my PvP turned on, but eventually I manage to get up on my own.

We immediatly sit down for some casual discussion of the Dark Tower books.
The others soon respawn and it's time for them to celebrate what they came for, which I found out later: Neas had been banned on the official forums due to his obnoxious, spammy posts, but the ban had finally lifted and they'd all come to Ironforge to gank themselves silly in celebration. Not the most noble of purposes, but hey, don't I look cool up there with all the Undead? :)


My pet Horde, Lâncer, is unhappy and needs to be fed :(
Also, can't imagine why they think Neas and I are having an affair!
There was lots of Mind Control'ing going on to give them all Druid buffs and to help Rhêa heal them all up (the other Hordies kept jumping down to give the Alliance a fair game at killing them off - which they did over and over - then Rhêa would ress them back onto the roof), and there was at one point a little Priest coffeebreak too. I think I sat up on that roof with them for two hours, constantly being whispered by people who wanted me to kill all 5 of them on my own. Errr, no. Tammi and I were also called out in yells that we were Horde spies. No, we told them, we're not spying - just sleeping with the enemy!

Horde do it better, I tell you.

036: More Horde affairs I

The crazy Undead Priest came back for an Ironforge pow-wow! Unfortunatly not all the Alliance were as friendly, so I had to mind control him a couple times to save his life. There's a WoW movie being made on my server these days (parody of Lord of the Rings) that involve both Horde and Alliance and it's made by (among others) the standing Paladin in that screenshot. He's taken several trips to Orgrimmar to shoot scenes and the Undead Priest have MC'ed him in return to save him.

035: Busy busy!

Been super busy lately and slacking with blogposts. I've started this course and it isn't that it's demanding a lot of my time and energy, it's the exact opposite. It's mind-numbingly boring and leaves me drained every day when I come home, even if it's still fairly early in the day. Also, I have a toothache and a week to go still before I can have it fixed. :/

In WoW-news, I was adopted by a batshit Warlock from the most progressed Alliance guild on the server the other day. We'd talked briefly a couple times, mainly just exchanging hellos, when one night he was bored enough to drag me through all the Ogrila prequests just so I could accompany him for the dailies. Needless to say my epic riding skill fund has benefited nicely! It's made me think about the social networking of WoW and how it really is important to have friends in the game outside your own guild. I can't count how many times I've wanted to do a heroic but haven't had enough people on, or I've wanted to grind something but no one else was interested in coming along. The more people you know the less likely you are to ever log off cause there was nothing to do but idle in Shattrah.

(I don't like to grind or quest on my own. I'm a clothie and a carebear and I stink at PvP - bodyguards are the way to go!)

After making friends with this insane Warlock though, I was invited to join his guilds vent for some daily heroic runs late at night. Now this is a guild with at least 3 females in it already, of which I think two talk frequently on vent. That didn't stop people from going 'WHO WAS THAT?!' as soon as I spoke and whispering the Warlock to find out more. Which is cool, I get that I was a stranger and all, but I doubt they'd have been terribly interested if my voice had been male. Later there were some whispers (that were copied to me by others) regarding my voice and what it sounded like. I'll spare you the details, heh. I thought of TJs posts (here and here) about the girls that complain about the attention they get when they don't lift a finger to try and stop it. I actually did stop talking on their vent unless necessary and told my friends there why. While I didn't really care what people were saying, I don't want to feed that kind of stuff and find myself some day down the line caring about something else they said.

I find the whole hoopla over females on vent/in the game fascinating though. Like TJ said in her posts, it's not exactly a rarity. There are thousands of girls out there playing WoW - There are female guild leaders (I'm the GM of my guild and the GM of the guild I was on vent with is also female), female raid leaders, really awesome female PvPers, etc. It's not a new concept at all, so why is it still treated as a big deal by some? That said, and again TJ pointed this out as well, it doesn't happen often. I can only think of once in the previous 8 months or so (that it happened to me), so that plus the fact that they had other girls in the guild is probably why it threw me for a loop.

Anyway, I've been planning to post this here but it never seemed to fit:

Tieryn tanked Durn the Hungerer in Nagrand several weeks ago, with a Warlock for DPS and two healers. Now he's not exactly the toughest of elites but still people get bug-eyed when I mention that I tanked him as Shadow Priest. Face it people, anyone that can build and maintain decent aggro can tank elites and bosses with enough healers on them :)

034: Alicia's Poem

I posted this on wow_ladies just now, but I figure I'll post it here too in case someone out there knows. And in case you haven't seen it yourself and would want to.

I randomly swung by that little park in Stormwind Keep today (where you have to kill those noblemen for the Missing Diplomat chain as a lowbie). To my surprise I saw that huge honking yellow exclamation point on my minimap and quickly located this little girl wandering around the park with a quest for me. Her name is Alicia and she wants me to deliver a letter to someone named Caylee on the Aldor tier in Shattrah. Okay, I think to myself, must be the start of some shiny new quest chain or whatever.

Head to Shattrah and sure enough, opposite the Mark of Sargeras dude there's a new NPC: Caylee Dak the NE Hunter and her Nightsaber, Dusky. I'm surprised, however, when I hand her the envelope, get my 3-4 gold and.... don't get a follow up? Wait, that was it? I discover that I can talk to Caylee again and when I do the only option is to ask her to read me Alicias poem - the one that was in the envelope.

And it's sad :/

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am in a thousand winds that blow,
across Northrend's bright and shining snow.

I am the gentle showers of rain,
on Westfall's fields of golden grain.

I am in the morning hush,
of Stranglethon's jungle, green and lush.

I am in the drums loud and grand,
the hunderous hooves across Nagrand.

I am the stars warmly gleaming,
over Darnassus softly dreaming.

I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.

(screenshot)

It reminded me of that toombstone in Hillsbrad Foothills (read about it on wowinsider I think) that was put into the game in memory of a person close to a Blizzard employee or something that had died. Is this something like that? Was this put into the game with patch 2.3 or has it been there longer and I just never noticed? Does anyone know what the story is? And is this only for Alliance Aldor people, or does Alicia ask you to deliver it at the Scryers tier if you're Scryer?

Sad panda :(

Edited: A lovely poster on WoW_ ladies found out. Awwww :/

033: Horde in Stormwind

Not how I expected to spend my day.

On my server there's this crazy Undead holy Priest that stops by Ironforge and Stormwind almost daily. If you attack him he'll kill you, but if you don't... he'll mind control you and bring you up the mountain alongside Valley of Heroes. You get a fantastic view from up there!

This time he brought a Rogue with him for company. Unfortunatly once they'd managed to MC me all the way up to the top (I stink at exploiting terrain, obviously) the Priest jumped off and slowfalled, effectively missing out on the screenshot. More pics: one two three

(I'd wanted to remove the UI, but names and guilds no longer show up when I alt-z. Boo!)

032: Winterspring Winterspring Winterspring

Was a rolling restart. Can't sleep. Have to quest more. 20 more turnins to go and I'm done. Exalted. Finished.

Things I will not miss about Winterspring:
* The Winterfall Runners
* Rak'Whatever, the rare purple kitty
* Grizzle the elite furbolg
* Princess Tempestria shouting at me
* Lvl 70 Hordies with nothing better to do than ganking in Winterspring
* Not having enough Shamans and being forced to wait for respawn
* The distance between Winterfall Village and Frostsaber Rock
* People stealing my mobs!

This grind has given me:
* More than 5 random blue world-drops
* 5-6 different Darkmoon Cards
* Enough Runecloth to cover all the walls in Stormwind
* An Orb of Deception
* Migraines
* Revered status with Timbermaw Hold
* Countless green items
* An obscene amoutn of Frostsaber Leatherworking recipes

With patch 2.3 I should be getting a 20% discount on the mount, right? What with being exalted with the faction? How much does the mount cost anyway? It always seemed so far off so I never actually checked. I still can't quite grasp that it's almost over. Whatever will I do now?

His name is gonna be Frost.



Edited to add:

031: Pet Hordelings

This post is for Doom.

Zul'Aman last night didn't go terribly well. That said, it went a lot better than I'd expected, so I guess we came out of it alright! The trash wasn't an issue except for that 4 (6) mob pull right before the first boss. Took a couple tries before the healers figured out that this was srs bsns and the DPSers woke up from their snorefest. The boss himself was unfortunatly too tough a cookie for us. We've only ever downed Prince once and never Nightbane or Netherspite so our gear isn't the best ever. We were doing a champion job at it though! Yours truly died many many many times (3rd in aggro all the time and no chance in hell to reach the reset point before he'd eaten my face) for the cause.

Our main issue is healing, being as how our main healer, the Healadin of previous posts fame, is on a mini-WoW break. His replacment is the sexy female Healadin (one of my best friends IRL) and while she's an awesome healer she was running around in half Shaman loot and half not that great Paladin loot. Once respawn hit us the first time we decided to close up shop and headed to karazhan instead. There, we proceeded to clear out Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Opera and Curator in 2 hours, effectively gearing up the sexy Healadin a little bit. It'll probably take some more work, but we'll get there. We had him down to 60% on our best try and I'm pretty confident that we'll pick him off without much trouble next time.

Boring boss and trash talk aside - Zul'Aman is pretty! I love the fact that it's outdoors and I got strong Zul'Gurub vibes when we first entered, even though I've only been in ZG a couple times before. Had a whole bunch of hex stick things drop btw, so half the raid are getting pet frogs soon. I didn't realise it was gonna be that common, but hey, as long as I get one of 'em!

In Winterspring news, I've been slightly sidetracked today. My goal was to clear 9k rep and I managed around 7500 when the Rogue and the Feral Druid came by to keep me company. By 'keeping me company' I mean 'distract me entirely from what I'm supposed to be doing'. Then this Hordeling Warlock showed up and we spent some time attacking him only to mind-control-heal him back to full health again and buffing him, then attacking him again. He repaid us by attacking the Druid. Bad move!

It was fun when he AFK'ed in the middle of the 3 of us though (we even set up a campfire), we were plotting to MC move him to an entirely different location for shtis and giggles when he suddenly logged out on us. Hordelings that don't want to play makes us sad pandas :(

We found another one AFK'ing outside Everlook, but after I'd MC moved him about 50 yards he came back to his computer, got scared and ran away. We were gonna bring him to Frostsaber Rock for a picnic damnit! :(

Sidenote: I run several addons and one of them - a hunter addon I'm guessing - shows the pet's name in red along with a sad face whenever the pet is unhappy and needs food. The creators haven't been able to make it tell mind control victims apart from pets though, so whenever I MC a Horde the addon warns me that they're unhappy and need to be fed. It's the most adorable thing ever.

Then the server shut down abruptly (probably fixing the Shaman loot, eh?) and there was no more Wintersaber Trainer rep (or Hordeling pets) for me.

030: Patch 2.3 so far

Word on the forums was that if you grabbed the new FP at the STV Rebel Camp and flew to Booty Bay, you'd cross directly over the Gurubashi Arena and get flagged if you weren't already. The fun thing is that apparantly you could be attacked by Alliance too, once you landed in BB. Of course we ran through Duskwood to test it - who doesn't want to kill their own guildies once in a while? - but sadly it didn't work for us. Might be a PvE realm thing, since we're always flagged in STV and thus nothing changes for us when flying over the Arena. For those of you on PvE realms, did you test it out and go Alliance killing? And if you did, how did the guards react to it?

Besides that slight dissappointment in what could be a super fun glitch, I'm very happy with 2.3. I don't like that the Wintersaber rep gain is so much easier, but hey, at least I'll get my purple kitty sooner than expected. I'm also very happy with the auto-leave-shadowform when I hit a holy spell. It's gonna cut down that precious GCD second during PvP which might save my sorry ass every now and then! Noticed also that quests you haven't yet picked up show up on the minimap now. That comes off as a wee bit lazy to me, but hey, whatever.

Beyond that I haven't really tested things out yet. Haven't even bothered to pick up Fear Ward. I went straight to Winterspring this morning and I plan to stay here until we head for Zul'Aman tonight (provided that the server lives). There's already another Priest grinding Wintersaber rep and I expect there'll be several more as the days go by. I want to finish asap to avoid the crowd :[

ETA: ding! Revered.

029: On being human

As a sidenote in his comment to my previous post, Dammerung snarks a little on the fact that I play a filthy Human. (Then he promptly goes back to his blog and throws flattery at me to make up for it - at least he's a smart Orc.) It reminded me of the times I've browsed my realm forum and seen people with their panties in a knot use this as an insult in arguments. "Well I'm not the person who bought a fantasy game and rolled a human" type thing. I've never bothered to get involved in pointless arguments like that but you know how you sometimes read something you take offense to in whatever way and you know it's futile to reply so you compose a scalding response in your head for your own satisfaction/entertaintment? Orrrrrr maybe that's just me. Anyway! I've done that re: playing a human and will now treat you to my (tl;dr) point of view on the matter:

When I began playing, I was in the (probably very small) group of people who've never played it before and have never seen anyone else play it, but who have read through an entire official guidebook multiple times. See, I decided I wanted to play this Warcraft thing but knew my computer wouldn't be able to handle it. Not having a video card at all was merely one of the clues. However I'm a practical girl when it comes to money, and the next time I had plenty of the stuff I picked up a copy. It'd take me a few months to put aside enough for that shiny new computer and I didn't want to find myself having just bought it... and not having enough left over to buy the actual game. I also picked up the official Bradygames guidebook (with the awesome Penny Arcade comic strips in it) so that I could figure out the very basics of the game before buying the new PC and installing it.

It took some 4-5 months (my savings fund got distracted by this thing called Christmas), but finally the new PC arrived and the game was installed. I'd had plenty of quality time with the guide and had a fair idea of what the different races and classes were like. I'm not ashamed to admit that I immediatly went for the Hunter class. Quite typical, I know, but the reason I'm not ashamed is because I never actually did join the legions of not-all-that-great-players-who-rolled-a-night-elf-hunter. See, for some obscure reason that I don't even understand myself I romanticised the idea of the Night Elf race and I romanticised the idea of the Hunter class, but point blank refused to combine the two. Don't ask me why cause I honestly have no idea. I wanted a human hunter. Not a Night Elf, not a Dwarf, and certainly not a Horde (I was too much of a good girl to play the 'bad' side).

What do you do when the combination of race and class that you want don't exist? You roll a Human Warrior. It made sense at the time. I think I remember having picked up on the fact that Night Elves were the typical choice of female players and I wanted to avoid being like everyone else. How I'd picked up on that I don't know. To this day the only races I haven't touched are Dwarves and Trolls (and Trolls only cause the Horde in general doesn't seem to work for me - I can never get past level 10ish) so for whatever reason Dwarves have never appealed to me at all. I liked the idea of a Gnome Warlock, seeing it as a sort of tiny pack of pure dynamite, but realised that this too was quite a common thing when someone mentioned to me that they were drawn to that class/race combo for the exact same reason. Having exhausted all the (then) options, the only race left for me to roll was Human. I couldn't think of any good reason not to and the race wasn't unappealing, so off I went.

The reason it was a Warrior was simply that I couldn't be a Hunter and it seemed to me as an 'easy' class to start with. You bang stuff over the head with a weapon, right? How hard could it be? Everything else seemed so technical with spells and healing and summoned demons and all these fancy abilities. Warriors, I decided, couldn't possibly be that complex. Give me a sword and a shield and I'll go around killing things until I've figured this Azeroth world out enough to brave something tougher!

Some 42 levels later I only had my Warrior and one other character, a level 6 Undead Rogue that I never quite figured out how to play and thus abandoned. Friends happened and OMG roll on my friends server! She'll help us out! and shortly after I had started fresh with a human Warlock on a PvP realm. Human because I still hadn't gotten over not wanting to do anything common.

(Mind you the actual numbers might show that there were and are more Human Warlocks than there are Gnome Warlocks. I have no idea, to be quite honest. Not to mention that Human in general is probably the most common class of all. This was all about what I believed in my head to be common and not, you know, actual facts. Afte rall, what I roll is 100% about what I feel happy playing and once I'd latched on to the idea that something was typical it'd take some time to let go of that.)

Around level 20ish my friends and I realised that our combo of Warrior, Warlock and Warlock weren't optimal for getting PUGs to instances and group quests. It seemed at the time that there were hardly any healers at all on our realm and since I hadn't fallen in love with the Warlock class I volunteered to re-roll Priest. Human, again, because I had good experience with the race and because my friend fully supported my belief that 'Night Elf = Stupid 12 yearold' was pretty much fact. (This was confirmed over and over with every single PUG group we ever touched.) I have now graciously adapted this belief to 'Night Elf = Stupid person that will wipe your group UNLESS it is someone you know not to be an idiot, or is level 70 and in a respectable guild'. And even then there are exceptions.

It took some time to catch up with my friends, obviously, and when I finally did the 'Lock died off on us (too busy with his raiding Druid on a different server) and the Warrior went SQUEEE DRAENEI and re-rolled Shaman the moment the expansion was out. I ended up leveling my budding Shadow Priest alone through most of her levels but didn't really mind. The first time I ever touched any other Alliance race was when I created my Gnome bank and when I, very guiltily, rolled Night Elf just to try some class. Probably Druid, but I really can't remember. As the months have gone by I've gotten over my dislike for the other races though, and I now operate a small army of Humans, Draenei and Night Elves. There will probably never be any Dwarves in it, but maybe some day I'll try something with a Gnome. It's unlikely though, as the only classes I lack are Shaman and Paladin, and as far as I can remember Gnomes can't be either.

Anyway, to get to the point of most Human insults out there: I really don't see why it's a not-cool thing to roll a Human in a fantasy game. I bought this game to play in a medieval-ish fantasy world and I'm quite content to play a Human living in this world. It's still very much a fantasy to me since this Human wanders around with Elves and Gnomes and Spacegoats, which obviously doesn't exist in real life. She travels through landscapes we'd never see here on Earth and battles magnificent monsters. To me the game is more than fantasy enough and I see no need to play a made-up race to make it a proper 'valid' fantasy. The argument that if you want to play a fantasy game you shouldn't play the race you actually are in real life is moot in my opinion. It's still pretty damn fantastic.

Then again, if I'd known then what I know now, I'd have re-rolled Draenei Priest when the expansion came purely for the racials. I mean, come on, Desperate Prayer? Crit heals me for around 600hp. What the hell is that about? At least I'll get Fear Ward tomorrow. Now that's a 'common' I'll whole-heartedly embrace!

028: The non-WoW'er and you

I'm emergency backup for Karazhan this Sunday, and thus I felt I should warn my guest prehand just in case a crisis happens and they call me. She wanted to know what this Warcraft thing was. Highlights include:


MBB: A raid means that ten people from different parts of Europe all log on at the same time, and their characters are all in this castle, fighting together to kill bosses. These bosses are so hard you need ten people to manage it.
Alex: Okay. Not like Super Mario then.
MBB: No, not like Super Mario.


MBB: *explains briefly about there being lots of lore behind the game*
Alex: Oooh, you should get all the books and read it all.


Alex (looking at the newly purchased WoW 2008 calendar): So which one is you then?
MBB: Uhm, I don't see any humans here, it's all Orcs and Night Elves. Wtf. Oh, wait, that one's a human. I think. Mage, looks like.
Alex: Nice cleavage.
MBB: I should show you the female Orc on the loading screen, she's like Victoria Beckham. Completely flat chest with two footballs attatched.
Alex: Ooo, show me!


MBB: And this is my Rogue.
Alex: She looks like a human!
MBB: She is a human.
Alex: I didn't think you played any humans.
MBB: Actually the Priest and the Warlock are both humans too, they just wear so much gear you can't really tell.


Alex: OMG that one is so cute!
MBB: That's a gnome.
Alex: Why don't you play her?
MBB: She's just my bank.
Alex: But she's so cute! She's got pink hair!
MBB: She's a gnome.

027: The disease known as alts

Fair warning: guests are coming to stay this weekend and I might not have the time to blog each day. Will make a valiant try though.

I enjoy these WoW music videos a lot, so I'm spreading the link for those who haven't seen them yet.

Alts! (It's TJ prompt time!) I'm sure you know someone or have someone in your guild or have heard of someone crazy enough to level one of each class. It's great, they say, it really teaches you how to play the classes better. But have you heard of the guy that took it one step further and set off to create not just one of each class, but one of each class in each race? Yeah, that's some quality batshit there. I can't remember where I read about him anymore, but apparantly he'd finished with priests (meaning he had leveled a priest of each race that can have a priest to 70 - both horde and alliance) and was on his second warlock. Or he'd finished with warlocks and had started priests. Either way. If he manages to finish one day, that's a lot of alts. At least Shamans and Druids won't take him too long.

I like this story, it makes people that settle for one of each class look a lot less crazy. Like me.

Currently I'm lacking a Shaman and a Paladin, but I'll get to them eventually. I've got a baby Druid and a baby Rogue, both around 11-12, and a Mage at 19. My Hunter (BM of course) is at level 22, my Warrior dinged 34 the other day and the Warlock is 41. Then there's my lvl 70 Shadow Priest of course. Some of these have banners at the bottom of the blog, but not all.

(Remember the Druid I mentioned starting back when my guild was lacking tanks? Yeah I'm not really feeling the Druid class, so I rolled a Warrior instead and it feels like coming home.)

There's nothing I love more than to be able to log out of my priest after a day of heavy raiding and heroic-ing and go wandering around Elwynn Forrest with my Rogue. No stress, just enjoying the game. Or log on my Warrior and hit up a guildie for yet antoher boost in Cathedral, in the hopes that the Scarlet chestpiece will drop (5/6 Scarlet set! Though she needs the tabard, too). Or log on my Hunter and let her wolf eat some mobs for breakfast. Sometimes it just gets old playing the same character for hours and hours. I even find myself avoiding my Warlock because she's just too similar to a Shadow Priest. When I'm tired of Tieryn I want something radically different. Usually I don't want to play a caster at all.

More than one person have told me that I'm spreading myself too thin. I disagree! The beautiful thing about alts is that there's no stress. You have a level 70 already so you can take your sweet time with the rest of your chars. Play them whenever you feel like it. Muck around at one level for months or speed through them every time you hit max rested.

I'm not saying it works for everyone. I have people in my guild who only have one character that they play (and they tend to be insanely good at it, too), and who never manage to get into this whole alt business. For me though, the variation is key to not getting tired of the game.

With 2.3, I expect we'll see a lot more alt-playing. In my guild there's several people who have rolled a different class and played them up to around 20ish and parked them there, waiting for the patch. Others have mentioned brushing off their old abandoned alts once the patch is here. Personally I have no patience to sit and wait like that, but I'm excited to see just how much of a difference the increased experience will make. If I dare bet on which one of my little ones that'll reach 70 first, I'll have to go with the Warrior. She's so much fun to play and I know she'll be needed. Dentarg is still a realm with only 1% tanks, after all.

I'll probably never get to the point where each of my alts are level 70, but that's not my goal either. I play them to learn the other classes. To do something other than face-melting for a while. To explore the zones I ignored with Tieryn. To try out the other races. Some people say they want to reach Black Temple to get their money's worth from this game. I feel they're underestimating the vast expanse of game that exist before level 60, or level 70. There's tons of fun to be had there, too.

026: Naxxaramas

Today I got myself attuned to Naxx. Dunno if we'll actually get enough people with us to go there but it's nice to simply be attuned. You never know when the chance will pop up, after all! Only two days ago I got dragged along for a random Ony run with a friends guild and ended up walking away alive and with the backpack I'd wanted.

Speaking of Naxxaramas, some guildies have been spamming these on our forums and I thought I'd share them for those of you who haven't heard them before:

/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_01.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_02.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_03.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_04.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_05.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_06.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_07.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_08.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_09.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_10.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_11.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\Ashbringer\\ASH_SPEAK_12.wav")

Copy these one at a time and paste them into the game. The Corrupted Ashbringer is a sword that drops from Mograine in Naxx I believe, and if you have it equipped it'll randomly whisper to you as you play. Quite creepy. Some of the coolest lore in the game too, in my opinion. If you have the sword equipped and enter Scarlet Monestary's Cathedral, all the Crusaders will be friendly and kneel to you. If you go all the way to Scarlet Commander Mograine (Junior), a scripted event takes place to reveal the story behind the corruption of the Scarlet Crusade and why Highlord Mograine (Senior) ended up as a Death Knight boss in Naxx.

However equipping it also makes you hated by the Argent Dawn faction.

Ashbringer isn't the only creepy whispering thing though:

/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\CThunDeathIsClose.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\CThunYouAreAlready.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\CThunYouWillBetray.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\CThunYouWillDIe.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\CThunYourCourage.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\CThunYourFriends.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\YourHeartWill.wav")
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\YouAreWeak.wav")

C'Thun whispers randomly to everyone in the raid inside AQ40, intending to break you before you've even reached him.

The list has hundreds and hundreds of sounds, so go have fun!

025: Gone fishin'

When I posted yesterday I realised that bloggers clock is entirely different from mine. Normally that doesn't matter, but I've signed up for NaBloPoMo and should be getting up one blog each day. Fair warning: I'm not even going to try and figure out what bloggers day rhytm is, and definitely not adjust myself to it. Too many other and more important things to do. So expect there to be some inconsistencies in the blog dates here in Mana Battery land - two posts in one day and none the next, etc. Regardless, I will make a fair try at having 30 reasonably spaced apart blogposts up at the end of November, which is the most important thing.

DING! 375 fishing!

Yes, I ding in tradeskills too, because gosh darnit it deserves some recognition to finally finish leveling things like tailoring and fishing. The ding itself happened rather quietly in the middle of my first appearance in the Stranglethon Fishing Extravaganza. A couple of weeks ago we got a new mid-level guildie who then promptly brought in his lvl 70 Tree because we were just that awesome. Turns out he's a fisher! Up until that point, I'd been pretty much the only person in the guild that seemed to care about reaching 375 fishing and obsessing over those Pure Water pools in Nagrand. Now we were two! Last weekend was supposed to be my debut in the fishing contest but life happened, as it does, and I went to bed about an hour before the contest started so I could have some precious five hours of sleep before the raid that night. The new Tree won and got a shiny new fishing rod.

(I really need to come up with some better nicknames, we have an awful lot of Bears and Trees now. Unfortunatly this Trees awesome existing nickname is untranslatable.)

Fishing is slow. Skilling up happens every 10-12 catches or so once you get past 300, which means you need close to one thousand catches before you see 375. It sounds like an awful lot but it wasn't really that boring. I fished whenever I felt like it and skilled my cooking on the side. The key really is to not push yourself, as fishing two-three hours in a row will get pretty damn dull. (Unless you've parked yourself by the Stormwind canals with a guildie and he's running back and forth to the AH to model different tailored RPG-costumes for you, inbetween trick or treating and explaining to people where you got your sexy red dress.) I also made it a rule to fish whenever I was waiting for a boat to arrive.

The Fishing Extravaganza contest occurs every Sunday in STV between 2pm and 4pm server time. It's announced in a yell and everyone starts roaming the western coast up and down, hunting for fishing nodes. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect so I'd brought along the mini-mage (currently a Buccaneer, which makes flying to and from Booty Bay really interesting) as a bodyguard to handle self-confident mobs and any possible gankers. The new Tree was there too, hoping to catch one of the rare fish he didn't already have and ready to answer all my questions.

I'll spare you from a play-by-play cause a fishing contest isn't all that thrilling. Suffice to say that I almost won - I had 38 Tastyfish when the winner was annoucned and got the remaining two within a minute - and that we all stayed until the end of the Extravaganza in the hopes of some rare fish consolation prizes. The Tree caught two (bastard!) and I caught one, earning myself some shiny new +5 fishing boots. That might sound like a tombola prize, but in fishing every single skillpoint counts. There are waters out there were you need an insanely high amount of fishing skill in order to avoid the tiresome 'Your fish got away!' messages, and lures just don't provide enough boost. Ideally, a serious fisher should have the Extravaganza fishing rod (+35), the hard-to-get rare fish prizes of eternium line (+5), boots (+5) and hat (+5), a separate pair of gloves with a fishing enchant on them (+5) and a decent lure attatched to the pole.

Sounds extreme, I know, but simply to fish in certain lakes in Terokkar, you need a base fishing skill of 405. That's 375 fishing skill and lure. However 'just' 405 will mean that several of your catches will get away and be a waste of time. To fully stop any fish from getting away, you need to pack 500 fishing skill. 500! With your core 375 skill and a +100 lure, you still need 25 points. If you use the rod you get from the Shattrah quest, you've got an extra +20. You still need either the enchant or one of the Extravaganza prizes to climb the last points, and that's skipping the fact that +100 lures aren't the easiest to come by. At least I don't think they are. Limited supply at some vendors and engineer made only, I believe. Thankfully I have some engineering hookups I can abuse.

Why do we bother? Cause there's money to be made selling you our tasty catches, of course. You want food buffs? We can whip up +20stam/+8mp5, +44heal/+20spi, +20agi/+20spi, +23spelldmg/+23spi and +30stam/+20spi.

Love the fish. Love your fishers.

024: Noobs

I've met many silly people in WoW, but to be quite honest none of them have really stood out as a Noob with a capital N. Perhaps I've been lucky? The only ones I can really remember are the level less-than-10 in Tirisfal Glades that decided hitting my friends level 60 human mage was a good idea (she hugged him & one-shot him into oblivion) and the silly person that kicked me from a Botanica PUG because I mind-controlled the Mender. You know, the one that can give an insane half-hour +spelldmg buff? He didn't approve of the casters in the group getting that buff.

Neither of those were terribly noob-ish though. The less-than-10 was more than likely a newbie to the game and had no idea that flagging yourself in the kiddie pool area is a bad idea (especially around the Scarlet Monestary) and the Botanica-jerk later half-apologised by saying he didn't realise the buff lasted that long. What makes me remember them isn't so much what they did as making fun of them in guildchat for several days after each incident occured.

To me, being a noob is more when you know something isn't right and people keep telling you something isn't right but you keep right on doing it anyway. Like a melee hunter, to use a cliché. Thankfully, I have yet to run into a noob like that. Knock on wood!

023: He's a Rogue, what did you expect?

I've never had as much fun on vent as last night, when - in the middle of a Karazhan raid - the Rogue and Warlock disconnected. Shortly after the Druid offtank goes 'Uhm, the Rogue called me and said they can't get back online cause some guys came into their room, stole their router and ran away with it'.

After a while they did return, however, and let us know that everything was fine cause not only did they get their router back, they also stole these guys' Xbox 360.