Captain Vilethorn

I liked the story in Vashj'ir. I particularly like some of the Horde and Earthen Ring NPCs you get to meet.

My favorite is Captain Vilethorn. He's one of the orc legionaries you initially get pulled off the ship with, though you don't know his name until you encounter him in Nespirah, after he's broken free from the Naga.



He is Angry at having been enslaved, and is ready to do whatever is necessary to get his revenge upon the Naga.



He is perfectly happy to have you help him in whatever way you can. There are far too many Naga not to get some help.



Captain Vilethorn leads his men well, and never forgives the Naga. He eventually falls in a rearguard action so that the rest of his troop can escape.



Your sacrifice will not be forgotten Captain Vilethorn. /salute

Fashion Victim

During Burning Crusade I half joked that Blizzard put a lot of work into making the leveling gear look like shit. Mostly I was serious. I still think that it takes a lot of work to make sure that every single piece of gear in Outland clashes horribly with every single other piece of gear. You'd think that at least two of them would match, but no, I never did find two pieces of Outland gear that didn't look terrible together.

Wrath of the Lich King had a much more cohesive look to all their gear. The managed this by only having a couple of sets for each armor type while leveling. If you mixed and matched sets it didn't look great, but they didn't clash horribly like every thing from Outland did.

Sadly Cataclysm seems to have taken a step back from Wrath towards BC. Mornara looks like some sort of colorblind escapee from Outland:



I took this picture after she had finally hit exalted with the Dragonmaw clan. Her reward was the Boots of Sullen Rock, which will eventually match her raiding gear, but for now clash terribly with the rest of her heroic gear.

Random Moment of Hilarity/Awesome

Kuan and Mornara were in a heroic Grim Batol last night.

Well technically two of them, but I'm talking about the second. The first was so painful all I am saying is that I am repressing it.

Anyway, Grim Batol. It was us, Ildiavolo, a holy pally who had queued specifically for it, and a mage.

These pugs, both this one and the first GB of the night, make me weep for mages. As I asked in guild chat: is every mage not in Darkfall a blithering idiot? The response seemed to be mostly yes, aside from examples of a few DF mages who have moved on and Talaitha. I weep.

With just a few wipes, we made it through the first two bosses, despite the mage breaking his own sheeps at the wrongest possible times. We're on the third boss, and the adds just aren't dying fast enough. Because I do occasionally have Situational Awareness(tm), I see that both Volo and Kuan are trying to kill the adds, but most of the time one of them has to kite. The mage, is just staying on the boss, except for when he dies to dragon flame....

Well after our 2nd wipe the mage bugs out and drops group with not a word.

As the rest of us are running in the pally pipes up:
"Darn..."
"Who will die to easily avoidable mechanics now?"
Hotfries of Nazgrel, you are my hero.

We all laugh, and a new mage pops into our group. The new mage assures us that he is able to not stand in fire, and can kill things. He knows the fights, and with a small amount of division of labor we proceed to one shot both of the remaining bosses of Grim Batol.

Grim Batol Heroic

Last night DraNgNon and I decided that we wanted to have Mornara and Kuanchichi finish up the Cataclysm Dungeon Hero achieve. This was not a trivial undertaking because the only heroic we had left was Grim Batol. Grim Batol was the first heroic we'd ever gotten from the random dungeon finder. And just barely meeting the requirements to do a heroic was not actually enough for us to get the first boss down then. We're better geared now, so we thought it was time.

I asked around in guild if anyone wanted to join us, sadly people were busy or needed their daily random heroic. So, with more than a little trepidation, I queued just the two of us for Heroic Grim Batol.

Roughly 2.3 seconds later the dungeon popped. I guess tanks really are the missing link these days...

We zoned in with a hunter, a fury warrior, and a pally healer. With the hunter and Kuanchichi that meant we had good crowd control options. I was upfront about never having done the dungeon on heroic. And then off we went!

The first pulls were a bit rough. I didn't die, but it was clear the pally was struggling to keep me alive. I was mentally buckling down to pop every cooldown as it came up every fight.

Then the hunter says "brb", and when he gets back mentions having smoked a bowl. Inwardly, perhaps even outwardly, I wince. Here we go, I think, time for Huntard and The PUG From Fail. The hunter's guild name was even <THAT Guy>.

But before I can say anything in party the dialog box for requeueing after a member has left pops up. The pally has abandoned ship. I requeue and someone (the warrior I think?) says the pally must not like smoking. The new healer joins us and zones in.

It's a troll druid.

Named Ganjja.

Kuan laughs and points out that Ganjja isn't likely to have that issue. We all laugh, and tell Ganjja what had happened. He laughs too. And then off we go again, but this time with much stronger heals. I certainly wasn't afraid of dying on the trash pulls unless I did something very dumb.

Side note: I'm really loving having a druid healer behind me in heroics. I've heard that druids are not doing so hot (pun not intended), but every one I've run a five man with has been super. I really like how the constant stream of heals from their hots mean I rarely plunge in health.

Back to Grim Batol: we oneshot the first boss, and wiped only once on the second boss. The third boss took us 6 or so tries to get down. The fourth boss took about 10 tries to kill. Stupid faceless dudes are a pain in the ass. The grand total of deaths for the instance was 15 for the two lowest people and 18 for the highest person. Through it all the group as a whole discussed strategy prior to every boss pull, and updated that strategy if it proved to not work. There were no recriminations and people admitted it when they messed up thought there was something they could have done better.

And when we finally killed Erudax the achieve popped up for all of us. No one in the group had completed Heroic Grim Batol before. There were cheers and congratulations and compliments all around.



It was a pretty excellent pug. Maybe I am having phenomenal luck. Or maybe I just don't pug all that much. Regardless I want to give a big round of applause to Ganjja, Faragorn and Pez. They were awesome and a pleasure to run with.

Felkix

During the first Hallows' End in Wow, I ran Dire Maul with a guild group, and Kuanchichi spent most of that time as a pirate. A Goblin pirate. It was at that point I decided I really wanted to have a Goblin Warrior. Yah, yah, goblins were NPCs.

Well, now, more than 5 years later, Cataclysm has made that possible. Felkix is my new goblin warrior. He's Arms and just hit level 20.


Getting there wasn't the easiest, however. For example, here he is, rescuing 5 baby raptors from a fire.




I must say the Goblin starting area quests are amazingly well done. I loved it, even though I don't particularly like how they have defined Bilgewater "culture" and shaped the Goblins to have such gansta attitudes. I don't have to like it totally to realize it was well done.

Two Things

First:


Mornara is now an officer of Darkfall. I don't know if I'm tank officer or what, but I volunteered to help with setting up EPGP. And immediately after taking this pic I went through every single character's officer note to get it ready for EPGP.

Tomorrow I will put the actual EPGP info in the notes and the guild info. DraNgNon and I have been tossing a bunch of ideas for it back and forth. The specific details of it should be worked out soon, but it can be changed after the initial setup, so no real problem.

Second:


Kuanchichi and Mornara's random heroic of today was Stonecore. I don't like Stonecore. Actually that isn't true, I think it has beautiful art, but the bosses are excruciating. They are so easy to mess up with just a little bit of lag. Or maybe on the second boss, you don't actually line of sight the crystal storm, despite being behind a pillar.

However, my least favorite part of Stonecore is Ozruk. I can't seem to get out of his shatter. Just total fail on my part. But tonight we oneshot him! Booyah! So maybe I don't hate him quite os much anymore. Funny how him being dead at my feet does that.

Campfires

Eeyan and Telt went to Mt Hyjal to map the entrance to Black Rock Caverns. (Via way of Finkel's mole machine.)

There might have been some sillyness with lighting a fire under the world tree.



Cenarion Circle druids are so wierd.