Luck o' teh Rogue

I've been slammed with work, so Kuan and Morn have sorta been chillin' in the new Garrison for a few days sending out missions.  But we see how the Garrison Resources build up, and decided Eeyan and Telt must get there sooner than later!

Tonight we got them there.  And what happens to Eeyan?  Epic Olin Umberhide and Ka'la, of course.

"Screenshot or it didn't happen" so here they are:

A Slice of Guild Chat from the Release of Warlords of Draenor

Darkfall guild chat this evening:

Warlords of Draenor is live!

<Me finishes off a Pandaria Master Pet Tamer.>

Rogue: I'm gonna level so fast!
<Rogue gets achieve for turning in Shado-Pan quests>

Warlock: I've never seen a new expansion on release day. I'm gonna go see it!
Me: I plan to avoid spawn camping ridiculousness, and just hang out here in Pandaria pet battling for a bit.

<Me finishes off Thundering Pandaren Spirit Pet Tamer.>

Rogue: The first quest giver is bugged.
Rogue: Blizz has had 3 months to beta test this. I can't believe it is so broken.
Warlock: I can't move.
Me: LOL
Warlock: I can't even hearth.
Me: Welcome to the new Expansion, same as the old expansion. Shit be broken.

<Me finishes off another Pandaria Master Pet Tamer.>

<Warlock logs off and logs on an alt in Org.>

Rogue: Whoa, this place is so crowded.
<Rogue goes offline.>
Warlock-alt: I think the EK server went down. The Blasted Lands was super lagged.

World Server is Down.

Ruins

I look at my draft posts, and all I can think of is the Indiana Jones movies. My draft folder is some sort of jungle ruins situation. Half written posts that are overgrown with twice re-written posts. Watch out for those old posts about tanking or Timeless Isle, those poison darts are still potent. Is that a giant image post of the legendary cloak questline, but with only half of the captions done, rolling towards me like a giant boulder of doom?

Perhaps my analogy falters.

Regardless, I keep thinking that if I can just rescue a few of them, and start posting some WoW stuff again maybe I'll have any sort of motivation to play again. I suspect my cause and effect is reversed though.

I do know that if I look at all those half written drafts I can see when and why I stopped caring about WoW. It mostly boils down to the stress of trying to lead a guild and a raid, the tension between flex and having to cut down to a normal raid, Timeless Isle, the horrible thought of trying to get on the gear treadmill with my alts (let alone the new boosted 90, which *still* doesn't feel like a real character), and just not feeling like Blizz actually wanted me as a customer.

I know the new expansion is coming up soon. I know the next major patch is really soon. But I'm only feeling an obligation to log on, no actual desire.


Maybe it'd be better to leave those ruins buried under the jungle.

Rob Pardo: More of a Sexist Asshole than I Thought.

The more I think about Rob Pardo's words the angrier I am. I tried to wait a week before I posted my thoughts to see if I cooled down, but I've actually only gotten more angry.

I really can not emphasize how FURIOUSLY ANGRY I am about Rob Pardo's attitude on workplace hiring: Yet in discussing this workplace gender imbalance, he notes "It's not because we don't want more women developers, it's just what the industry is," but then follows this up by arguing that when it comes to hiring women game designers, "I just don't get the applications."

I want to give a big FUCK YOU to Rob Pardo. As a woman who has been in software development for 11 years, this attitude almost seems designed to enrage me. Yes, there are fewer women than men in game development. There are fewer women in general in software development, and where the fuck does he thing they are going to come from if he spouts of sexist shit like that?!?

I am so amazingly angry I am almost in tears. There are very few things that make me angrier than someone telling me I DON'T EXIST. I'm not in the gaming industry, but I still write code for a goddamn living. I look at the Blizzard software job descriptions and there are a bunch in SF that I could qualify for. I wouldn't apply because it's absolutely clear to me that they have a toxic work environment if their Chief Creatice Officer is such a sexist asshole.

"However... today's gaming industry is not very diverse. I see hope with all the students in game programs" -- @Rob_Pardo

Fuck you asshole. How about you try to recognize the existing talent and make some effort to attract them? You know, instead of making the vast majority of women (and men who enjoy diversity) not want to touch your company with a ten ft pole.

Rob Pardo is a sexist asshole

It's not a secret that I'm more than a little burned out on WoW. I haven't really raided since mid-March. Being a woman, I'm only vaguely looking forward to the boy's trip (look at Fan #16) of the next expansion.

However there is a big disturbance going on in the internet. Rob Pardo made a presentation at MIT Media Lab. In this talk, Pardo noted that Blizzard games aren't a place for "real world issues", and because they are all boys who grew up reading comic books their representations of women are "offensive to, I think, some women".

He thinks it is offensive for some women!

Just think of Noblegarden and it's terrible Shake Your Bunny-Maker achievement. Think of all the armor that is actual armor on males and bra and panty sets on females. Think of how even though Tyrande is allegedly the leader of the Night Elves Malfurion seems to entirely sideline and ignore her whenever he is present. Think of the quest in Valley of Four Winds where a Pandaren woman is forced to dance for the virmen ogler. I could go on and on and on.

A number of people have pointed out how Pardo's words are sexist and homophobic. Kurn is displeased. Cynwise is quitting. Rades is unhappy. Matthew Rossi at joystiq has an extremely eloquent write up that points out that including diversity doesn't mean you have to make it a focus and doesn't mean you can't keep the story fun. His point that including more people in a MULTIPLAYER game just increases the fun for everyone really resonated with me.

I would like to make the point that Pardo's insistence that "We're not trying to bring in serious stuff, or socially relevant stuff, or actively trying to preach for diversity or do things like that" is perhaps something that Blizzard needs to reconsider.

Something they need to strongly reconsider.

More than a week ago Friday some asshole, who hadn't gotten laid, murdered a bunch of people in Southern California. He played WoW. The juxtaposition of Pardo's remarks about Blizzard's disregard for women and lack of care for "real world" issues with this shooting looks really bad for Blizzard. The shooter this Friday was a racist and sexist and homophobic asshole. However, I have to wonder: if his primary leisure activity (marathon sessions playing....World of Warcraft, "The only thing I have left to live for") hadn't been as sexist in it's representation of women, would he have been quite so likely to go on a murderous rampage?

And this isn't the only mass-murderer to be called out for playing WoW. The Newtown school shooter played WoW. And Anders Breivik, the racist who went on a murderous rampage in Norway, played a lot of WoW as well. I don't think that WoW turned these men into murderers, but I do think it could have helped them not be murderers.

I'm sure that people will jump up to say that there are 7 million people currently playing WoW, so of course there are some people who go on to do bad things among them. To that I'd like to point out that A) there used to be 12 million people playing WoW and B) a lot of the quests that included and empowered women were removed with the revamp of the world during Cata and replaced with ones that didn't include women. Coincidentally Cata was the expansion where Blizzard's subscriber numbers really started to trend downwards.

So perhaps Pardo and the other sexist leadership at Blizzard could get their heads out of their asses and treat women and other minorities like people.

I am seriously considering canceling my own WoW subscription. I engage in a story when I can identify or at least like the characters in it. I'm no longer confident that that characters and story of Warcraft is something that I want to interact with.

Thoughts on my Boosted 90

 

I pre-ordered the Warlords of Draenor. I even got the collectors edition so I could get the upgraded Dread Raven Lord mount and Dread Raven Hatchling battle pet. The pre-order also included a free boost to level 90.

I decided to use the boost on Sucan, my brewmaster monk.  I'd been haphazardly leveling him up with the dungeon finder since Mists came out. So he had reached level 58 already.  I ran him through a last few 5mans so he would be 60 when I put the boost on him.

By waiting until Sucan was 60 to boost him I got the added bonus of boosting his professions. So for just another run or two through LBRS I was able to immediately have both Engineering and Blacksmithing at 600 skill.  Of course I'd learned none of the recipes, but I didn't have to go through the pain of getting all the intermediate materials and skilling him up.

As a level 90, my Brewmaster started out with a full set of 489 greens. I pretty quickly upgraded his gear with a bunch of stuff from Timeless Isle.  It's not the best gear, but 496 purples are much better than 489 greens. And I've got so much leather crap from Timeless Isle that I've saved almost a full set of gear in case I get a Burden to upgrade it. 

I also ran through a few scenarios and 5-mans with Sucan tanking and Faebane as damage.  It wasn't hard, because even with 489 greens we massively out-level the heroics, but it was challenging to hold aggro against the raid geared mains who were in the 5mans. It was also very odd to compare the quite different monk tanking to my usual DK tanking. I do have to remember that not only am I less geared with Sucan than Morn is but I do not know the button sequence or cooldowns nearly as well.  So I doubly need to be careful and not over-pull.  Not that it is a serious concern in a 5man, but still it's something to keep in mind.  

I've also had to embark upon a couple of personal quests with Sucan. His Blacksmithing and Engineering skills were boosted to 600, but as I already noted that came without any recipes. So I've taken some time and gone back to get Jeeves and make what I can for the Engineering mounts.   I should have Sucan run through MC and BWL and SSC and TK to get the recipes from there.  Perhaps there are even some nice transmog items.  

Ordos

 

After Kuan and Morn got their fabulous cloaks we were wandering around exploring the bits of the Timeless Isle we'd been unable to reach.  Specifically we were exploring the Ordon Sanctuary. 

We cloaked over there and slaughtered angry fiery Yaungol.  We looted altars and ate fire flowers. We looted that last Blazing Chest. We were just about bored of killing Yaungol when someone asked for more for Ordos. I asked and they claimed that their group would be full soon.  This was a lie, but eventually we had a full raid and were ready to kill Ordos, Fire God of the Yaungol. 

While we were waiting for the raid to fill I perused the Dungeon Journal for Ordos.  Turns out that the Fire God of the Yaungol has a lot of fire attacks! He sets people on fire. He puts pools of fire on the ground. He puts fire trees down that attack the closest people. Oh and there is a pretty limited space to fight him, so be careful with his placement so you don't run out of room before he runs out of health.

Anyway I was hoping that the other tank had some sort of clue, since I'd not pulled him before.  I'd just gotten my cloak a couple of hours before! But no, the other tank was someone's alt. He or she wasn't all that sure about how to tank, let alone how to tank Ordos.

Okay then. Time for some basic crap-on-the-ground tanking.  We'll start him in one corner and work around the outside edge of the room. Hopefully that gives enough space to work in. 

Pull and death by BBQ.

It turns out that when Ordos sets people on fire, they also burn the people around them. So if they don't run away the rest of the raid gets toasted in a fairly fatal fashion, because he sets three or four people on fire at the same time. At least, despite my not having any clue about how much he needed to move, the wipe wasn't Morn's fault.  And since DraNgNon is fully capable of listening when DBM is all "RUN THE FUCK AWAY" it wasn't Kuan's fault either.

Anyway we rezzed and ran back. Feasts were dropped and harsh words were said about "RUN THE FUCK AWAY" or we all die. We lined back up and I pulled Ordos again.  This time I had a better idea of how and where to pull him, so the movement and placement was a bit more smooth. People ran away when then needed to and we slaughtered Ordos with glee and only a few burns. 

Morn even got a fabulous new belt out of it: Greatbelt of the Crendor Who, incidentally makes some amusing WoW videos.

Battle Pet Obsession

I really don't think I'd have done nearly as many pet battles if I didn't have the addon PetBattle Teams. Being able to make teams for every occasion is super handy. I currently have 50 teams. I've got carry teams set up for every Pandaria tamer. I've got teams to quickly kill the various Beasts of Fable. I have teams for each of the battles in the Celestial Tournament. I usually have six or seven PvP teams set up, but those evolve over time. I have a bunch of leveling teams set up as well, both for carrying a pet in Pandaria, and for lowbie leveling in cities and the rest of the world. In short I have far too many teams set up, but I do use all of them pretty regularly.

However, the most important teams are the Pandaria Master Tamers. Each of the teams for the Pandaria tamers and Spirit tamers consists of two level 25s and an empty slot for a lowbie that is getting XP. I'll use a Lesser Pet Treat and then follow a route from the Pandaren Earth Spirit west to Courageous Yon, then South through Townlong and Dread Wastes. The East and North through Krasarang and Jade Forest before heading West again to go to Grand Master Aki and then South to finish up at Farmer Nishi. From there I'll also do a quick blast through Beasts of Fable 2: Lucky Yi, Greyhoof, and Skitter Xi. That route will get the equivalent XP of 2 pets from 1 to 25. And doing Beasts of Fable 2 will get a Lesser Pet Treat to use for the next day.

I'm not actually sure how many unique pets I own at the moment. I think I've got 537, but Hyjal armory has been messed up since the server merge. Last I was able to upload to WarcraftPets I also only had 30 pets left that weren't blue. All of the non-blue pets are also only available through pet battles. So I'm trying to speed up my pet blue-ing by doing a bit of wild capturing as well. Of course the non-blue pets I have left are the ones that are only available in one zone, and often in one sub-area of that zone.

My goal is to have all my pets blue and level 25 by the time that Warlords of Draenor comes out. I've heard that the pet max level will still be 25 in the new expansion. I'm not sure if I trust that, but I'll be ready either way. I'm hoping that they don't bump the max pet level. I'd really like to be able to have all my pets leveled up and only need to level up new pets that I get or capture in Draenor. I'd also like to buildup a stockpile of flawless battle stones, so that I have extras when I capture new pets or when I get a pet that isn't from battles that only starts out as green rarity.

Once I have all my pets to 25 and blue, I might go even more obsessive. I'm currently trying very hard not to obsess on the "best" breed for each pet. Mostly because with 18 different moths with the same set of abilities I don't need them all to be the 'best' breed, if I have one of each breed and can choose the breed for the occasion. I do admit that when I started getting extra dragonkin battlestones I couldn't resist and went to get myself a destruction emerald protodrake whelp.

Even if I manage to restrain myself from going full on OCD with pet breeds I'm not going to try to stop myself from trying to acquire all the different pets. I've been working steadily on the various pets that I'm missing. In fact most of my gold this expansion has gone straight into buying pets that I don't have. Sadly I'm still missing a lot of pets, but most of them are from the later parts of this expansion. I'm missing most of the pets that drop from Throne of Thunder and Siege of Orgrimmar. I am also missing several pets from Timeless Isle. There are also various pets that I need from archaeology, and a few older scattered achieves here and there.

I am really wondering how the pet stable in the garrison will work. I think the current plan is that you're able to breed two pets of the same family to be able to pick the breed and get a chance at an epic pet. Who knows if that will be the plan by the time the expansion is released. However, given that is a possibility I am sticking with my plan to make sure I've got all my pets blue and leveled up.

Current Progression

 

This past week we had a pretty good set of raids. I decided to pug even though we only had 5 people online. We actually had heals and tanks so we just needed to get some dps. It worked out, we had different pugs every day of our three raid nights, but they were all pretty good. Oddly, the pugs we picked up on Sunday night were better quality, both gear and skill, then the ones that we had on Tuesday. I can't tell if that was because people weren't busy on Sunday night, or if better people respond when I say we're starting on Malkorok.

Either way, after a rough start on Tuesday we killed Nazgrim on Thursday. On Sunday night we got some pretty well geared people who were done with their guild raids for the week. It took us a bunch of wipes to get the coordination to cover all the purple puddles, but once everyone knew the plan we were good.

We also had a really easy time killing Spoils of Pandaria. It took us one wipe and then we annihilated it. I think a big part of that was that I and the other tank had practiced it when we ran it on Flex three the week before. Both of us had the crate opening rhythm down. Despite that I was still afraid that it would be a wipe when I had trouble opening the first couple of crates on the Mogu side. Fortunately we were able to recover and get everything opened up and then dead in time.

We headed to Thok after knocking over Spoils, and had a couple of good pulls on him. I am confident that we'd have gotten him the next pull, but we ran out of raid time and people had to go to sleep. Sadly our last wipe was my over-aggro fault. Turns out that I'm really looking forward to the removal of Vengeance in the Warlords expansion. Right now it's a bit of a clunky mechanic that can make tank swaps, especially the initial tank swap, really hairy.

It was a pretty good raid. I know that several Darkfall people hadn't been there when we first killed Malkorok, so they got a new kill for that. I was lucky enough to get the nice tanking boots that Malk drops: the Malkorok's Giant Stompers, but warforged for extra awesomeness. And I remain pleased with our speedy kill of Spoils. 

Burnout? Not Today!

 

I had been feeling more than a bit burned out lately. It's the end of the expansion, and it felt like Darkfall was falling apart like it did at the end of Wrath. A bunch of people have stopped logging on and other people have gquit or stealth server transferred. I'd been super stressed and worrying about attrition and progression and generally dreading logging on to raid.

At the end of Wrath of the Lich King, Darkfall had a lot of attrition and turnover and, both personally and as a guild, didn't end up killing the Lich King until much later. It was pretty rough, but DraNgNon and I ended up having a good time by pugging our way through Ulduar to get the achieves and fast protodrake. That was a tremendous amount of fun. It also facilitated the swap of my main to Mornara and polishing my tanking skills. Additionally I honed my raid leading skills, by getting us and a half-regular merry band through Ulduar.

Fortunately I was recently reminded that despite the guild issues the end of Wrath was a lot of fun. I still have many fond memories of Ulduar. And I actually don't mind pugging, even if every so often there is someone who is all "zomg a female tank!!!" I'm pretty good at shrugging that off as long as there are no sexist comments following on to it.  

So I'm feeling revitalized and ready to raid. I'd prefer to have a full Darkfall raid to run with, however, if people aren't going to be around I'm cool with pugging and killing bosses. 

Transmog

As much as I adore the Valorous Scourgeborne look, with all it's black spikes and red accents, it was time for a new transmog for Morn. However I was unpleased with all my options. A lot of the DK sets are far too monochromatic: all blue or rusty red or horrible poisonous green. I was considering the heroic set from Dragon Soul, but I am missing the matching boots, and don't have a pair that wouldn't clash horribly. I was sad and resigned myself to keeping my Valorous Scourgeborne, which wasn't really such a bad thought.

Fortunately I was running DraNgNon's not-so-little-anymore boomkin through the ICC 5mans and I picked up the Pauldrons of the Souleater from the last boss in Forge of Souls. They are pretty striking shoulders. The understated spikes and fiery runes look pretty awesome. So I took a look through Wowhead and the looked at the loot drops from the various ICC 5man bosses, and eventually figured out that the set I now wanted was the Scourgelords's Frigid Battleplate recolor. I went with the Sollerets of Suffering rather than the boots suggested on that page and I think it looks pretty spiffy:

For a weapon I went with the Pit Lord's Destroyer, from the final pair of bosses in the Well of Eternity.

Rascal-Bot

I was chatting with a few people in guild the other day and one of them was asking for suggestions of things to do. Honestly I don't know how anyone gets bored in WoW, there are so many different things to do. So I suggested a few options, but mostly I suggested he try out pet battles!

He was dubious at first, about the fun value in pet battles, and worried that he didn't have enough pets to battle with. I gave a few basic tips and suggestions, and then he was worried that he'd get too addicted to pet battles. So score one for pet battles!

Anyway after he logged off for the evening I sent him a present. I had a couple extra Sunfur and Snowy Pandas so I sent him one of each. I also shipped over a Pandaren Water Spirit. I get so many of the Panda and Pandaren Spirit pets from my daily rounds of the Pandaria Master Tamers, it can be hard to sell them all.

Imagine my surprise when I logged in the next day and had a mail in return from him! A mail containing a Rascal Bot!

After leveling him I took a closer look at the little guy and his abilities. And then immediately renamed him Bad Robot.

All these abilities are awesome references to JJ Abrahams works. Having just recently rewatched Star Trek Into Darkness, I'm most amused by Phaser, Lens Flare and Reboot.

I was doing a bit of WoW Insider reading this morning while I ate breakfast and I happened to see this article about probable changes to Warlords of Draenor racial abilities. Mixed in with all the news about nerfs and buffs was a tidbit about what is happening for Night Elves racials:

Night elves see a bonus to Quickness that adds a 2% passive buff to movement speed and a completely new racial, Touch of Elune, which adds 1% haste at night and 1% crit during the day. Shadowmeld is unchanged.

I was trying to come up with something pithy about a buff that changes based on time of day and how that would be a pain to try to get haste breakpoints correct, but the first comment I read said it so very concisely:

I think raid leaders should be able to make whoever came up with Touch of Elune take a drink whenever someone asks them if they can move the raid forward or backward an hour to get the better buff. Let the true min/maxing begin!

Let me just take a moment and be thankful that I am part of the Horde, and all raids I lead are Horde raids.

Thoughts On Tanking and Role Models

 

For most of this expansion I've been tanking with a pally co-tank. It has been pretty nice. My pally co-tank is excellent and fun to tank beside. We've been tanking together long enough that we only need a minimum of vent communication to deal with most issues that arise.

However, the other night the pally was out and our dps warrior was convinced to strap on a sword and board. It was odd, but not in a bad way. It was odd because this warrior used to be the main tank of Darkfall back in Burning Crusade.  

When I first started tanking, there were several tanks that I really looked up to. I watched these tanks to try to learn how they were so awesome.  At that time in BC and early Wrath they were warriors and a few bears. At that time Ironspike was a big burly Tauren Warrior.  He's since changed race and gender (and character name) and is a little Blood Elf girl. It's odd that not only is Morn more burly, but since he does dps most of the time now Morn's tanking gear is better, too.  

It was odd and gratifying to be tanking next to Iron. I'd looked up to him a lot in BC and now I was tanking next to him.  It was really weird though, because we hadn't tanked together before.  We both knew the boss fights and did perfectly fine with the mechanics. However, the flow wasn't there. He is currently used to tanking with his monk, and we don't know each other's rhythm.  

Yes, there is a rhythm to tanking. Making sure your CDs are used at the right times for the boss abilities is basic. Rhythm is more about choosing when to use minor defensive abilities vs threat abilities. If you've not tanked with your co-tank before you don't know how much relative threat they put out. Or just when they will taunt, so you have to save an extra CD or threat ability in case they taunt early or late or in case they drop lots of threat at the start of the fight. It's nothing serious, but it is a learning curve.  

More recently our warlock's pally has been filling in for our missing OT. It's interesting to tank with a different pally. It's also fun to watch someone relearn the fights with a different class and spec. I was amused when he did Norushen for the first time on normal; he had an unpleasant surprise with how much stronger normal Norushen purity test realm is than flex. Fortunately I had a battle rez ready for just that situation. 

I've also been tanking next to Hellbovine, and have been having fun with that too. Warrior charge is so annoyingly OP for getting initial aggro on trash packs. It's sometimes hard to not feel useless when he has all the Vengeance. Still it's a lot of fun to tank with him, though.

Once Upon a Time: Mornara

 

Follow on to Shadow's Edge
 

~~~***~~~

The sun was just peeking above the horizon as Mornara made her way to the Trade District of Dalaran. Most of the streets were still in shadow, but various merchants were opening their doors or pulling back shutters.  She got a dark look from someone sweeping off his doorstep, but other than that most people are still too sleepy to pay much attention to her.  

"You stumble about in darkness. There is no light here. No mercy! Icecrown has claimed the souls of better heroes that you."

Mornara trips over the edge of a cobblestone that was hidden by a building's shadow.  She almost falls, but manages to catch herself on a nearby wall.

Mornara pivots so her back is pressed against the cool stone wall. She isn't sure where the voice in her head came from, which worries her. Oh, she knows whose voice it is. The Lich King has a very memorable voice. She just doesn't know why it was in her head right then. 

It wouldn't have been a surprise if she were still in Icecrown Citadel. She would actually expect it there. Ever since the forging of Shadow's Edge she's been hearing his whispers while in the citadel. And if she were still asleep it could quite easily be a nightmare. But hearing voices while you're awake? That's either crazy or about to get enslaved by the Lich King.

Again. 

After a while her breathing levels out and she continues on to the Jewelry shop. They always have extra work, even for Death Knights. Mornara picks up a work order for the day. Some of the parts she needs are not in stock so she heads out of Dalaran to get them. At Krasus' Landing Mornara mounts her drake. The drake surges in to the air with several strong wing beats and Mornara directs him towards the mountains to the north. 

One of the components she needs is a Vrykul Amulet.  However the Vrykul aren't exactly friendly with either the Horde or the Alliance, so their amulets aren't easy to come by.  The closest place to find Vrykul will be in Ymrheim, where the strongest of the Lich King's Vrykul warriors train and live. 
 

~*~

 
Mornara uses the ever present snow to wipe the blood off of Shadow's Edge and then slings the axe onto her back.  Weapon properly cared for, she pulls on one of the runes to heal herself slightly.  Only then does she inspect the bodies in front of her.  The third one has an amulet, which she roughly pulls off his neck and stuffs into her pack.  She still checks the fourth corpse, and grabs several silver from the caster's pockets. 
 

"Never have I had cause to regret sparing your life, mortal. Always, you continue to amuse me."

For a moment the face of the last Vrykul she had killed shimmers. It solidifies as a familiar troll shape. Mornara gasps and starts to reach for her axe. Before she finishes the motion the Vrykul's face is back to it's original shape. Mornara watches the Vrykul corpse closely for another minute.

She shakes her head and then lets out an ear-splitting whistle. Her drake dives down through the clouds and then backwings to a gentle landing. Gentle for a drake, but the breeze blows flurries of snow in her face and tosses her pigtails around. Mornara shields her eyes and then mounts up to head back to Dalaran. 
 

~~~***~~~

At the head of the group Mornara hacked and slashed. Shadow's edge cut a swathe through abominations, geists, and plague doctors. Behind and beside her the rest of the group fought with their own weapons and spells. 

Poison gas and toxic slime had been defeated.  The horrific giant abominations Rotface and Festergut lay dead in their respective chambers. The Professor was still to be fought, and who knew what foul concoctions he had brewed in his laboratory.

The group gathered and then charged up the ramp to the lab.  As the last tauren thundered into the hallway the doors behind them snapped shut.  Mornara and the other tank, another orc, rammed into the doors ahead of them. However, those doors stayed firmly shut. 

"You can't come in here all dirty like that! You need that nasty flesh scrubbed off first!"  The voice came from above and ahead of them, from in the laboratory.

The hallway started to fill with giant beetles. 

 

~*~

The bloated and plague-ridden body of Professor Putricide lay dead in front of the group. 

Underneath the gore and slime that coated Shadow's Edge Mornara could feel a change in the axe she held.  It pulsed with an feel similar to the unholy runes already etched on it. As Mornara watched, the unholy plague slime that coated it was pulled into the blade and only the gore was left on the blade.

~*~

Darion Mograine had inspected the axe after it was infused with the unholy slime of Putricide's death.  He told her that the axe would next need to be fed on blood.  His glowing blue eyes met and held Mornara's own as he informed her that it would require her own blood and her companions' blood.

The way to correctly feed the blade involved being bitten by Blood Queen Lanathel, and then biting the rest of the group. Mornara wasn't too keen on this idea. Lanathel's bites tended to turn you into a ravening vampire.

~*~

The final infusion required for the axe was frost.  Even better than the Lich King was the frost wyrm Sindragosa.  Her frozen breath on the axe and then her death would infuse the final magic into the blade. 

~*~

The axe was infused with unholy, blood, and frost.  The runes etched upon it glowed with the magics contained within.  They pulsed and flared at random. The axe was strong, but needed a way to store the power that the infusions had created.  Thus Darion Mograine sent Mornara back into Ice Crown Citadel to gather crystals from the various leaders that Arthas had favored. 

Love is in the Air

Love is in the air and I want to barf. I have said it before, but I really hate the Fistful of Love achieve and this WoW Holiday in general.

I logged in this evening and before the world had fully rendered around Mornara she had rose petals falling on her. It wasn't even five seconds before Morn was coated in rose petals. Rose petals! Argh!

What if I don't want to avoid cities for the next two weeks? And even if I try to avoid cities I can't avoid my raid; members of whom were already snickering at me for being covered in pink petals...

That Sinking Feeling

 

When I picked up the quest from Wrathion to bring him the Thunder King's heart I had a bit of a bad feeling about it.  That feeling did not decrease in the slightest when he ate the heart and then had some sort of vision. 

Best case with that vision is that he is seeing a Titan influenced danger directed at Azeroth.

Far more likely in my opinion is that the players have once again unleashed Bad Shit (tm) upon the world. 

Remember back in Vanilla, there was that nice troll at the harbor in Tanaris?  We helped him, and he gave us loot and then Hakkar was alive again. So sorry, Troll Priests in Zul'Gurub, you got corrupted by Hakkar and then got executed.

Oh oh, and remember that nice human at Light's Hope Chapel? He promised to get rid of that pesky phylactery from Naxx. Yeah, Father Inigo Montoy, who helped Kel'thuzad come back to life, and then eventually ended up turning into a lich himself.

And don't forget that time that we helped that crazy gnome Millhouse Manastorm get out of prison and then he helped the Twilight's Hammer destroy stuff in Deepholm.

My favorite of course is when players helped Drakuru kill all the trolls in Drak'theron Keep so that he could become a Death Knight.  He then repaid the players by trying to coerce us into slavery for the Lich King (again for Morn) as well as slaughtering a large portion of the Drakkari Trolls, and leading to them killing off their own Loas. Oops.

But the thing that really tickles my memory is when we helped Loken trap Thorim. It was good that we got Thorim back on friendly terms with the Sons of Hodir. But all our actions doing that that just resulted in Thorim getting tentacle raped by Yogg-Saron. We ended up having to fight both Thorim and Loken. Thorim at least we could beat back into his right state of mind. Sadly we killed Loken which brought Algalon to Azeroth and almost led to the destruction of the entire planet. 

Loken/Thunder King is the parallel I'm really seeing here.  We killed someone and brought his body part back to prove death for a quest giver. But that someone, while now bad, wasn't necessarily bad to start with. Both Loken and the Mogu were servants of the Titans. They both seemed to get corrupted, but that point I suspect will be lost upon the Titans who will descend upon Azeroth with re-origination in their overly orderly hearts...

Darkmoon Eye!

This past week the Darkmoon Faire was in town. Well, their portal was in town. The island I assume doesn't actually move, but is closed to the public for 3/4 of the time. Anyway, I parked my little monk, Sucan, at the faire for the week and faithfully logged him in to battle Jeremy Feasel every day.

I had almost given up for another month yesterday, but the fight is a tidy chunk of XP for Sucan so I logged him in to send the pets forth to battle Saturday morning. The last day of the faire, and I get the eye in the Darkmoon Pet Supplies. I am not embarrassed to admit that I did a small dance when I saw the eye in the bag.

Why, yes, I did name my Darkmoon Eye Sauron. Really, what else could I have possibly named it?

DraNgNon saw and heard my Dance of Joy, and remembered to log in her own parked Faire alt. Thranba, the little troll hunter soundly trounced Mr Jeremy Feasel, so much so that he gave out a second Eye.

Mornara Profile

Full Name: Mornara
Race: Orc
Homeland: Durotar, maybe? Acherus in memory.
Age:  Physicaly she is a young adult. However, she doesn't seem to age since she was turned into a DK, and she isn't sure how long she was under the LK's control.
Height: Average female orc height. Slightly over 6ft.
Build: Stocky and muscular.
Hair: Black, slightly longer than shoulder length, but always up in two pigtails.
Eyes: Glowing blue.

Philosophy: "If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell."

Personality: Calm, cool, and patient, with a hatred of the Lich King that underlies everything she does. 

Job: Getting hit in the face professionally.  Mornara is a heavily armored adventurer and uses her Blood Death Knight abilities and skills to lead groups that plunder and defeat the enemies of the Horde and Azeroth.

Hobbies: Making beautiful jewelry. Capturing and fighting her battle pets.

Bio: Mornara has been able to piece together bits of her life. She has vague memories of controlling demons before she was captured by the Lich King's forces. After that she's tried to forget what she remembers of days of torture in the cells of the Lich King. She only barely remembers becoming a Death Knight, but after that everything is all too clear.  She vividly remembers slaughtering the Scarlet Crusade and villagers while under the command of the Lich King. Since breaking free of the Lich King Mornara has participated in campaigns in Northrend in Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel, against the Twilight Hammer cultists, elementals and Deathwing himself, and in Pandaria against the Mogu, Mantid, and Zandalari Trolls.

Currently Resides:
Summer's Rest Inn in Shrine of the Two Moons in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

 

Death Knight Love Story

I was looking at WoW Insider a couple of days ago and saw an article about Death Knight Love Story. Seeing as I am a big fan of DKs I took a look. As the title suggests this machinanima is a love story with Death Knights. It was only part 1, but was 15 minutes long. Sadly there is no real ETA on part 2, other than roughly six months and no guarantee there.

I was pretty impressed with DKLS. I'm biased because I just adore the DK lore and story, as you can tell from my main and my own fan fics. DKLS had an excellent story and the filming/acting was done with a combo of motion capture and a variety of expensive animation software.

I honestly could have been more impressed with the animation. I can see where they started from the WoW models and tried to upgrade them with more polygons and motion capture. However, for a number of the spell animations and fighting moves I think the film would have been better served by actually using WoW's animations. In particular the animation for Death Grip was kinda jarring. It took me a couple of times seeing it to actually figure out that it was supposed to be Death Grip. Possibly my gripes with the animation are due to the Vimeo playback being abysmal; it was both slow and choppy. I frequently had to pause and wait for the stream to catch up, even when it appeared to have buffer available.

The story, however, was quite intriguing. I am very much looking forward to the second part. It shines an interesting spotlight on Sir Zeliek from Naxxramas. And its yet another take on the process of becoming a Death Knight, and the effect of the Lich King's mind control on those he enslaves.

I strongly recommend everyone watch DKLS. It's got a good story and some decent animation. It makes me want to play through the DK starter area again.

Timeless Isle Explorations

 

DraNgNon and I have been exploring the Timeless Isle.  It kind of reminds me of Vanilla.  There are wandering elites, and mobs can really hurt you if you're not careful.  And by not careful I mean the Ordos Yaungol are brutal, if you so much as take your eyes off their ground effects for a second you're going to be dead. Anyway, we have romped over the island with all of our level 90s, exploring cool stuff and hopping here there and everywhere. 

I also took some time while running around to tame a few pets.  I have three new moths, and hopefully can get more new pets from the rares. It's quite a pain in the ass to get in on a rare kill though.  I'm not really interested in tracking spawn timers or waiting around for a spawn.  So I generally just run over when I see a skull on the minimap.  Most of the time I can get a hit on the mob and get credit for the kill, but sometimes I ride up just as the rare dies.  Annoying, but not unexpected with such a large population on the island slaughtering things.

Timeless Isle also restricts flying. This is super annoying, but does give you a more present feeling of danger.  You can't just hop on your Cloud Serpent and fly up a bit to be safe while you afk for a bit. It also has several areas that you can't get to unless you can fly.  There are a couple of mechanics to get around this restriction. One of them is the gleaming crane statue which tosses you up and gives you a slow fall.  Another is the Legendary Cloak, which takes you (and your alts) across the broken bridge to the Ordon Sanctuary. Note that the Cloak ONLY takes you TOWARD the sanctuary.  If you want to get back, you need to do something so you don't hit the ground at terminal velocity. The third mechanic is the Highwind Albatross. These giant seagulls fly loops around the island. If you hit one it will swoop down and pick you up. Let it carry you around and when you're over where you want, hit it again.  That will stop it, and then you have to kill it to get it to drop you.  You can visit the two mountain tops near the Horde and Alliance flight points this way to get the Sturdy Chests you are missing. You can also hold on for a long ride and be taken up to the Ordon Sanctuary high high up where Garnia spawns. In fact the area where Garnia is can only be reached via Albatross, even if you have a cloak you can't get up that last sheer cliff with out the birdy ride.

Legendary Pet Battler & WarcraftPets.com

Two things happened last night related to pet battles.

The first is that I have won 5000 pet battles. That number includes battles with wild pets, pvp pet battles, and tamer battles. Regardless of what it counts it's a ridiculously large number of pet battles won.

The other thing was that someone sent me a whisper during Darkfall's Siege raid. They had the good timing to send it during a bio break or I'd likely be much less amused. This was apparently someone who had seen my profile on WarcraftPets.com and wanted to know if I'd like to buy the Spectral Tiger Cub. I would love to buy that pet, however, the quite reasonable price they were charging was more gold than I currently have.