Saturday, September 29, 2007

bored --> BRD

Thursday night right before bedtime, Viljo and Kuan were doing dailies, when the power-leveling now-55 warlock in Darkfall announced he was bored. Bored! Bored? How can you be bored, playing WoW? Tired of soloing, he said. Bored. BRD!

I said BRD! Why, we can run you through BRD. I will bring out Eeyan. So just like that, we had a group for BRD, with Eeyan, Teltanara, the warlock, Dotdeath, and a guildie's pally alt, Addiea. We did the easy part, which meant probably 4 or 5 wipes since there was only 4 of us.

BRD is so fun. I like it a lot, although nobody else does and thus the plethora of quests for it that Horde requires just sit there, rotting, in the quest log. Eeyan still has the Emperor! Teltanara has so many quests I cannot even say; she was missing some, too, and will have to go back again... And again, since she was missing parts of chains.

We lost track of time and played until after 4am. Yikes...! Eeyan managed to gain 1.8% of level even though it was the easy part and the vast majority of mobs were grey. Teltanara cleared a bunch of quests, and leveled to 58; Addiea got a bunch of gear drops; and Dotdeath, who had drunk more caffiene than was healthy, was happily un-bored. in BRD!

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Patch Woes

Patch 2.2 came out two days ago. We were supposed to raid Kara that evening. Now the patch does have some nice stuff, but for us it mostly had UI, sound, and threat problems.

Our raid started at least half an hour last because Kuan, the MT and the MH couldn't move one of their group frames out of the center of the screen. Kuan finally figured it out and helped the others fix theirs too. Of course the MT had already deleted all his addons and repaired WoW in an effort to fix it. After we got that and other things sorted out we went in and tried the first few bosses.

Once we actually got started Attumen wasn't too bad. Despite the fact that Midnight fought our OT half in the ground and I died near the beginning of the mounted phase we still got him down. However it just wasn't happening for either Moroes or Maiden. People were having threat issues, we didn't have enough CC for the adds in Moroes, and the Maiden would randomly run over and kill our MH. So we called the run, which was punctuated by people having to relog pretty regularly to fix addons and ui issues.

Monday, September 24, 2007

draNgNon progress 9/24

I haven't posted progress in a while! I went on vacation, and somewhere in there had a large guild swap. So, I will try to list progress based on the last post I made about it, but am not so sure it will look as good as I'm thinking it is.


Kuanchichi
• run Heroic Auchidoun-something...
• mats for riding crop
• battlegrounds
• clear Dukes in Silithus, damn it
• turn in the wingman quest in AV
• pick up Violet Signet
• spellthread for new healy pants
• mats for another healy weapon enchant
• nope, been running CF and HC
• need 9 motes: 2 earth, 7 air
• nope
• nope
• nope
• got the Honored one
• got it
• need 1 more primal water
instead: got 41 badges
Eeyan
• Onyxia key.
• mats for next 0.5 quest
• Hellfire Ramparts run
• bodyguard for Teltanara.
• nope
• got it
• nope
• in Silithus & EPL now, earning xp...
more: broke 600g on his own...!
Trismestigus
• quests in Silithus
• Honor Hold for profession training
• herbing for dollars, er, gold
no progress on any of this stuff
Vhaas
• clear Fallen Hero of the Horde questline
• clear Everlook quests
• clear outdoor Eastern Plaguelands quests
• 300 cooking
• neutral with Timbermaw Hold
• friendly with Thorium Brotherhood
• run BRD again...!
• no progress
• need to turn in Yeti
• some progress, not cleared
• stuck at 298
• 2500/3000
• no progress
• nope
more: started on Silithus
and: level 61!


So, hm, let me try to get a list for next week. Despite having Kuan in Karazhan, I see a lot of BRD in my future...

Kuanchichi Lower City rep, mount money, primals, and practice w/heroics
• run Heroic Auchidoun-something...
• clear one "Trial of the Naaru" quest
• advance on "Medivh's Journal" questline
• mats for riding crop
• battlegrounds
• clear Dukes in Silithus, damn it
• turn in the wingman quest in AV
• mats for another healy weapon enchant

Eeyan Ony key, 0.5 quests, blacksmithing, questing with Teltanara
• Onyxia key.
• turn in next 0.5 quest
• Hellfire Ramparts run
• bodyguard for Teltanara. it's so hard, soloing a holy priest
• ...including a BRD, LBRS, or DM E run

Trismestigus epic ground mount
• quests in Silithus
• Honor Hold for profession training
• herbing for dollars, er, gold

Vhaas mount money, and Dranei rep for Elekk:
• clear Fallen Hero of the Horde questline
• Honor Hold for leatherworking training
• clear outdoor Eastern Plaguelands quests
• 300 cooking
• neutral with Timbermaw Hold, OMG!
• friendly with Thorium Brotherhood
• run BRD again...

Aran and Nethersprite

We went into Karazhan again tonight. It was, once again, tons of fun. Though a little more work this time. After clearing through Curator last Tuesday we headed to Aran with plans for Nethersprite afterwards.

So we wiped on Aran, and then wiped some more. The first two times Viljo died almost immediately. Aran apparently decided that I was annoying and, well, swatted me with a set of arcane missiles or two. After that we kept dying to the water eles, it was especially bad when they happened at the same time as the sheep/pyroblast. After a couple of hours of this we gave up for the night. We had already rezed and repaired and were just not feeling the love, even though we'd get him down a bit more each time.

So we went on to Nethersprite. After a lengthy discussion of how to deal with the beams and a rotation for the blue beam (whee blue beam!) we dropped Nethersprite's ass. Oh yeah, one shotted the big ugly dragon. The dps warrior got a nice ring, and Kuan got some enhance pants. (The enhance gear always seems to drop for Kuan :( )

Dropping Nethersprite, after hours of Aran wiping the floor with us, made us quite happy. So we decided to give Aran one more try. Figuring that worst case we'd at least all rez at the entrance and be ready for tomorrow night. But lo, we have prevailed! With the addition of a new strategy, holding dps so that sheep/pyro happens and is done with before water eles, we were able to take him down easily. Sadly Drangnon had proposed that previously and not been heard, but at least once it was finally tried we got him.

Anyway earlier today, Kuan and Viljo ran heroic Slave Pens so that Kuan could get the last 3 badges for Icon of the Silver Crescent. I was very sad when Boots of Blasphemy dropped and the warlock we were with outrolled Viljo. But all is well! The loot gods have smiled upon me, for: Boots of the Infernal Coven dropped, and apparently Viljo's boots were the crappiest out of the people who could use them, and so the RL decided that Viljo got new boots. :)

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Restoration Shaman spec

Kuanchichi's healy gear will be more than +1100 heals, once he gets his mace enchanted.

I don't particularly want to play a restoration shaman, but if I did, I've bothered to work out a resto spec earlier this week.

I have some coworkers who feel that for druid and shaman, one should gear up for both specs and the maxxed out 50g respec cost is merely an expense that goes along with playing a hybrid. But, we'll see.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Armour and vanity

Kuanchichi got his shoulders last night!

Well, OK. There is a lot of loot in Wow and that statement might not mean much to someone who doesn't track shaman gear over the last couple years, or who plays mostly Alliance. But, it goes like this. The shaman T0 (Elements) and 0.5 (Five Thunders) gear (known to Blizzard as "Dungeon Set 1 and 2", as shown on their Armor Sets page, which will make following the rest of the paragraph easier), has shoulders known in common Horde palance as "coatracks" because, well, that's what they look like. These are so incredibly ugly on a male troll that to avoid them, I deliberately assembled a hybrid gear set that was 4xT0, and the full Blue Dragon Mail, just so Kuan could match and not have the ugly shoulders, which were even worse when he jumped and they got all tangled. This also kept him from having to wear a skirt (or maybe not, as that thing never has dropped for Kuan off of Rivendare).

The next set up was Tier 1 (Earthfury) from Molten Core. That set is all lavalike; it does have better-looking shoulders, although the hat is awful. Kuan not only has some of those pieces, but also some Outland gear that reuses that model. But really, for the longest time in the game, the top set was Tier 2: Ten Storms. And once Blizzard remodeled the set, with patch 1.9, Ten Storms has got to have been the prettiest armor set in the game, and honestly, still is.

In my opinion, of course. But, a shaman wearing the gear will usually turn heads and cause others to Inspect. The higher level gear just isn't as interesting looking. And also in my opinion, the best two pieces are the head, which is sort of a circlet with sideburns and thus still shows the toon's hair; and shoulders, which have animated lightning playing around the wolf heads. The head model was used as the basis for the Shamanistic Helm of Second Sight, and SMV quest reward Kuan has; and the shoulders pretty much duplicated in what Kuan got last night, the Pauldrons of Wild Magic.

So very pretty.

Of course, the bonuses ain't so bad either...

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Purveyors Of Order

Our Night Elves, Vhaas and Khyrie, were rolled to play with our friends on Argent Dawn. We were tired of having no guild tag and so convinced them to make a guild for us and their alts. Thus Purveyors Of Order was born. It was a nice vanity guild and home for wayward alts. Yay! No more random guild invites while in major cities.

Meanwhile our friends' mains were in a Kara raiding guild. There was some drama but they kept at it. They tried to fix the drama and were promoted to officers. Then there was more drama but still they persisted. Finally one day they logged in and there was no raiding guild. The guild leader had disbanded it and he and several of the other officers had joined a bigger raiding guild enmasse.

So our friends pulled their toons into the ready made guild. They also pulled some of their former guildies in as well. And started trying to organize their own raiding guild, or at least their own heroic running guild. There is still drama because it really seems that there is no way to get away from it on Argent Dawn Alliance side.

And because this happened at roughly the same time as Viljo and Kuan were pulled into Darkfall both our Horde and Alliance mains were suddenly in raiding guilds at the same time. Of course our night elves are only level 60 and haven't been to outland for more than professions, but still they are in a raiding guild.

Gearing up in Karazhan

So, we are back from our vacation, which was nice and includes lots of pictures of Azeroth. Perhaps we will post them some time in the next week, when we are more motivated. Last night we cycled through our alts - I'll let Clara tell the story in a separate post how Vhaas and Khyrie are almost sort of in a real raiding guild now.

Tonight it was Kuanchichi and Viljo and we hit a reset Karazhan with our new guild, Darkfall. I was nervous about going, my DPS in Kara is still somewhat inexplicably lower than it is in heroics. So first I got Hellzuub to put Major Spellpower on Kuan's Earth Mantle Handwraps. That's how one gets drops to happen right? Put an expensive enchant.

We were short on heals and a good priest friend of ours was hanging out so we convinced her to come along. The guild MT swapped in his resto shaman, and off we went...!

At Attumen... Kuan got Bracers of the White Stag. Leather, but finally, caster bracers that are an upgrade from T1. Then we skipped to Moroes, and Brooch of Unquenchable Fury dropped. An absolute first: Kuan rolled a 99 on spec- and level- appropriate loot. But Moroes also dropped Nethershard Girdle, and Viljo won the roll for that!

We went back to the Maiden, who dropped Totem of Healing Rains... and the Resto shammy with us already had it! So Kuan got that too. She also dropped Bands of Nefarious Deeds, which was apparently not as good as what Woonie, the other mage along with us had, so Viljo got those. Somewhere in there Viljo also hit honored with Violet Eye, and got the nice ring upgrade.

After that it was Opera time, and we ran the Big Bad Wolf. Kuan died early on in the fight but we downed him as well. Once past that, I started to get nervous again, as we headed to the Curator and the last time we'd tried it we didn't do so hot. But we downed him at first try... and Kuan didn't even run out of mana...! The Curator dropped Dragon-Quake Shoulderguards, which were inferior to our resto shammy's, so Kuan got those as well. Yay he no longer has to be leafy to heal! And let's not disregard the Gloves of the Fallen Hero, which Viljo won the roll for against the hunter, who is now grimly convinced that he has to wait until all the guild mages have T4 gloves.

We punched through to the chess event, and cleared that as well. I am still a little confused by that sequence of events, but it didn't seem a problem.

I've been on vacation, so needed to rummage around Kuan's bank. I remembered picking up some healy gear, and got a guildie to make me healy spellthread for Kuan's Molten Earth Kilt. He has Hammer of the Penitent now as well, but is too low on mats for the healy enchant on it. For the curious, I have logged Kuanchichi out in his healy gear.

No more raiding until Sunday, where we pick up where we left off. Whew! There'll be time to farm for mats and gold and Badges. And maybe work on alts, and photos of Azeroth.

Monday, September 3, 2007

draNgNon progress 9/3

Well, gee, circumstances sort of affected me and I made hardly any progress at all on last week's list. I guess really, my list sort of changed. I'm not going to bother with the little table I normally put. Here is about all I got done:

Kuanchichi
• ran Heroic Mech a couple times - now has 30 badges
• ran AV enough to get his chest
• reguilded with Darkfall
• Friendly with Violet Eye!
• Honored with Ogri'la and Skyguard
• broke +1000 heals on healy gear

Eeyan
• 18-slot AD bag (for a visual distinction)
• ducked into BRD with Teltanara for her first kill-quests.
• Teltanara Andorhal beacons
• helped Teltanara clear Burning Steppes...
• ...mining all the way, selling the bars

That's about it. Doesn't sound like much, but that was a lot of AV, and running around with Teltanara. Actually she got big enough that now Eeyan is starting to generate XP and has gone up a few percent of level, now.

Ok, so, bad timing wrt new guild goodness but we are taking a vacation starting this week! The vacation dates overlap badly with my progress ones; there won't be an update for two weeks. So over the next two weeks, I wonder what I can get done... here's a focus/todo list.

Kuanchichi Lower City rep, mount money, primals, and practice w/heroics
• run Heroic Auchidoun-something...
• mats for riding crop
• battlegrounds
• clear Dukes in Silithus, damn it
• turn in the wingman quest in AV
• pick up Violet Signet
• spellthread for new healy pants
• mats for another healy weapon enchant

Eeyan Ony key, 0.5 quests, blacksmithing, questing with Teltanara
• Onyxia key.
• mats for next 0.5 quest
• Hellfire Ramparts run
• bodyguard for Teltanara. it's so hard, soloing a holy priest

These two are the same as before. However, my playtime being limited I doubt I will get anything done...

Trismestigus epic ground mount
• quests in Silithus
• Honor Hold for profession training
• herbing for dollars, er, gold

Vhaas mount money, and Dranei rep for Elekk:
• clear Fallen Hero of the Horde questline
• clear Everlook quests
• clear outdoor Eastern Plaguelands quests
• 300 cooking
• neutral with Timbermaw Hold
• friendly with Thorium Brotherhood
• run BRD again...!

Darkfall

I am pleased! Very very pleased! Viljo and Kuan just got out of Karazhan. They are now friendly with the Violet Eye. The group had cleared all the necessary bosses previously, so we cleared trash and made our way to the Prince. It wasn't a bad group, our first attempt, with Kuan locked out, we got the Prince to 47%, but then we had an unfortunate knockback into infernals of the tank. The second attempt an infernal landed on all the enfeebled people. *sigh* And then our healer had to go to bed. But Kara! We've run it!

All of this has happened because last Tuesday Viljo was whispered by Hazemaker, a priest we'd run heroic Bot with. Out of the blue, as Viljo and Kuan were breaking eggs in Skettis, Hazemaker asked if I wanted to join a late night raiding guild. I asked what time and days, and we talked to their raid leader. I told him that Kuan and Viljo came as a pair. Dracon found out that Leif (a former NI member) was there, we mentioned his name and he vouched for us. (He's an excellent player, and happens to be their Kara off-tank.) This took a little too long so by the time we'd figured out that we might as well, because worst case they are asses and we go back to Ancestor Cult, the people who could invite had logged off.

So for the rest of the week we farmed up some gear improvements. Mystic spellthread for both of us. A battleground chestpiece for Kuan, and a badge of justice neck for Viljo.

Yesterday the guild leader was on and invited us in, at Leif's reminder. So we joined Darkfall. We ran a part guild pug of BM yesterday, and then a very very smooth guild run of Heroic Mech today before the Kara run. I'd not previously had the pleasure of running Mech with a priest and warlock. The fears just make Pathaleon go down so smoothly, despite the fact that our tank hadn't run heroic mech at all previously.

So whee! new guild!

Saturday, September 1, 2007

On the Value of Roleplaying

Roleplaying means different things to different people. Some people think that when playing, they don't talk in a chat window about real life. Some people think they need to talk like they were out of Shakespeare or Jamaica. I always took it to mean that the character one plays should have a history, a personality, and from there the decisions all make sense.

The Wow characters I've spent time with, all had their personalities form by experience. Part of it was my own experience online, part of it by the characters experiences in game, or what they are. Kuan is a shaman, and early on when first entering Stonetalon was told to appreciate nature as shaman and druids are related. So, he appreciates nature, and does not take poison quests. He started out not liking the undead, and not trusting them, and a couple times now he's been tricked into doing poison quests. Also, he dislikes dwarves, hates elves, and likes to pick flowers; he appreciates humid jungles, being a jungle troll. So he ended up wending a path through STV, Tanaris, Ferelas, Un'Goro, Hinterlands, Zangarmarsh... he skipped a lot of quests in there; the poison ones in Tarren Mill, the Bloodelf quests in Falcon Watch. He PvPs. He's Aldor.

Eeyan is an undead, and likes to fight. A street thug. He resents being undead and appreciates what Sylvanas did to free them. He will do whatever he can to promote Undercity, as long as it doesn't involve hot steamy jungles. That hot steam - not good for the undead complexion. Also, he tends to think trolls are stupid. He mines. So, Eeyan skipped all those dumb quests in the marshes and jungles. He goes to the arid places, the cold places, and mines and mines. He fights without thinking, he's impatient and overreactive. And he ignored PvP, becuase there is no honor among thieves. He's Scryer; he relates to the chip on their shoulder attitude they have, the we-got-the-short-end-of-the-stick resentment.

As a result I have two high-level Horde characters with very different personalities and experiences. They took two different paths to get where they are. I got double the fun to play. And it's all based on RP. I am impressed with the design in Wow, sometimes. Kuan and Eeyan picked their Shatt sides based on RP - and look, the inscriptions and reputation rewards are apropos for what they are.