One Week After

One week without a subscription to the World of Warcraft. I miss my guildies.

It has definitely been an interesting week. I hadn't played too much for a few weeks before my subscription ran out so it's not the actual missed playtime that is weird. It's more when I find myself sitting down at my computer at the end of the day thinking, "What was I going to do again?"

Then I turn the computer off and go to bed. I've been getting more sleep which is good! (Unless I have a good book, but that's always been a problem of mine)

WoW was just THERE for me when I was 'bored' (i.e. had other things I should be doing, but would rather veg in front of a virtual fantasy world) - so now I'm trying to fill that time with other more useful things. Not that WoW isn't useful - it was a major help to me in stress reduction and winding down at the end of the day.

So what do I do now that I don't play WoW?

I have started learning some Jujitsu and playing sports weekly with coworkers.
I do the dishes and other housework more (which my wife LOVES)
I've read some great Fantasy books (my favorite genre)

Finally, I have even started another Blog - mainly on such interesting topics as Exercise, Art (My crazy drawings/doodles), and whatever else randomly pops into my head. If you'd like to check it out (and I don't blame you if you DON'T :p ) here's the link:
http://warlordblade.blogspot.com

I wasn't going to share that here but a friend thought I should, so there you have it.

Hopefully we'll see you all again soon - possibly with WOTLK!

Post #56

My 6 month subscription ends on September 23rd. I will not be renewing the subscription at this time for a number of reasons.

I looked forward to Wrath of the Lich King, but looking at my reasons for not renewing, I'm not too sure that any of them are going to change even with the new expansion.

The biggest one of these is I am missing out on a huge part of the game, and I will never experience those instances - I am talking about Raiding and the areas included therein.

As a father with 3 small children, my wife often needs my help with something involving the kids. Saying "I can't honey, if I leave the raid will die because they need me to heal/tank/whatever!" THAT doesn't fly too well. Family stuff is definitely more important. Even when it's something as silly as helping my newly potty-trained toddler to wipe himself. (Hearing him yelling, "I NEED HELP!!!!!! from the bathroom is actually quite hilarious)

I also recognize that, while this IS "just a game" and real life always come first - the time and effort people put into getting to where they are, and raiding, is valuable to all those taking part. It takes a lot of time and effort to get up to the level cap and get all that shiny gear. So it's not really fair for me to take away from their precious time while I take care of family stuff. I always felt taken advantage for when questing with a friend and having to wait and wait and wait while they were off doing who knows what. I didn't like MY time wasted, and so I won't waste YOURS.

I'd like to say thanks to the WoW blogosphere for opening my eyes about many many aspects of the game. With the information I gained I was able to share YOUR wisdom with many people in game.

I'm not completely gone though... and who knows - maybe the lure of WOTLK will bring me back.

But for now, Tigersoul is on vacation.

I wish you all the best,
Tigersoul and Co.

The Cenarion Expedition

I have a need.

Okay so it's really more of a WANT, but I went and screwed it up.

It kind of bothers me that you can screw this up so easily.

There is no warning, no way of knowing how gleefully questing your way through the outlands you can make it MUCH more difficult to get what you want later. Well, no warning if you don't read blogs or guides.

Unfortunately I didn't read too many blogs until AFTER I had reached 70 on Tigersoul.

!!DO NOT DO ANY QUESTS!! for the Cenarion Expedition until you have reached Honored with them!! It will save you lots of money and grinding later on.

Granted I am about 40% through Revered Status, so I'm getting there, but I want Exalted!

Give me that Earthwarden, Nethercleft Leg Armor, and Cenarion War Hippogryph!! (Okay so I probably won't get that mount... Too expensive!)

If you want to do it right - do what Nasirah says and you won't regret it. Unidentified Plant Parts aren't that hard to find or expensive to buy. When you are stuck at revered, the only way of getting more rep is to run Regular Steamvaults, Heroic Slave Pens, Underbog, or Steamvault, AND turning in Coilfang Armaments.

So here's a quick monetary reason why BUYING 360 plant parts is preferable to Buying MANY armaments later on.
10 Unidentified Plant Parts for Identify Plant Parts repeatable (up to Honored) quest:
Cost: 1-3g for 10 from AH. Possibly cheaper if you are lucky.
Reputation Gain: 250 CE Rep - plus a bag of junk that might have Uncatalogued Species for more rep when you reach honored.

1 Coilfang Armaments for Coilfang Armaments repeateable (up to Exalted) quest:
Cost: 10-15 g EACH from AH.
Reputataion Gain: 75 CE rep. Nothing else.

As you can see... it's a LOT more expensive to get Armaments later.
I have 8168/21000 rep. That means IF I were crazy and wanted to spend gold to get up to Exalted, I would need to turn in 172 more Coilfang Armaments which would cost me a minimum of 1,720 gold! Not to mention it would take FOREVER to turn in 172 armaments to the quest-giver!

So I will be running SV with my guild, or Heroic SP/UB in order to get this. We ran Heroic Slave Pens last week and got about 2k rep, so I only have 6 more dungeon runs to go. That might not seem so bad - but with my schedule, and my guild being mostly in an opposite Timezone, organizing dungeon runs can be a hassle.

So take it from me. Spend a couple hundred gold on Plant Parts when you are lvl 60 and get yourself to Honored that way. THEN do the quests. You'll end up richer for it in the end methinks!

August

I had a very refreshing month and a half in which I didn't play WoW for more than 1 hour total in that whole time!

It was very strange, I would log in, nobody I knew was online, nothing kept my attention, so I'd log off. My time was occupied by work, family, exercising (Forza is a lot of fun!), Naruto and Bleach.

A few weeks ago I logged in and decided to play a BG or two and got sucked in again. Nowhere NEAR the suckedinnedness of before, but I enjoyed it, and I felt like I should get more of the s2 gear, just for fun.

I wish the Feral Druids S2 pants weren't a freakin dress!!

I also spent the 1200 gold I had to make some Swiftstrike Shoulders and regem re-enchant a few pieces of my tanking set so some of the pieces would work more for tanking rather than PVP. Now to find the time to actually get into some Heroics.

As for Katryona, I love BGs as a rogue. As long as I have some support I rip through Horde like crazy. When I'm alone, Warlocks, Mages, Elemental and Enhancement Shamans, Balance Druids and other Rogues usually die pretty quickly unless they have the s4 gear. A lot of fun. Now I have the S2 Shoulders and am working on more.

So yeah. Nothing really useful here - but I'm still alive if anybody cared. ^^

It has been almost a month...

Wow time is going fast.

So is life.

It has been one week shy of a month since I last posted an entry. Since that time I have been able to accomplish my goal of getting all my alts (not including the Druid Army) to 20 (The Druids will achieve that soonish I'm sure), my Priest to level 40 (he's 42), and my Warrior to 50 (51).

Other than that though - I've had a hard time playing Tigersoul or Katryona... Tigersoul reached exalted with the Shattered Sun Offensive, got the awesome tabard and Neck piece, and haven't barely touched my 70s since (other than a few helping runs). I'm tired of dailies, tired of trying to level on a PvP server (with so many 70s it is seriously ridiculous).

Add in the very good "Is WoW Still Your Cheese?" post by BBB, the release of the Age of Conan with NEWness, and the leaving of a bundle of wow bloggers, including the very first WoW blog I ever read, Adventures in Azeroth, and it really makes you think, "Why am I playing WoW" and "Is it worth it?"

I still like WoW. I'm not leaving yet (although that day is definitely inevitable for all of us - WoW will not last forever! I am paid 'til September so we'll see what happens (if anything) with WOTLK until then!) but often I find myself logging in for a half hour or so before wondering what I'm doing and logging out.

As for the status of this blog - It's not dead yet. I just needed a break. And it was a good one I think. I think my wife appreciated it as well, and that's always a good thing!

Two Rogues in the Arena

I've been working on pvp gear and am now the owner of 2 shiny epics [Deathblow X11 Goggles] and [Gladiator's Right Ripper]. I am getting closer to the Left Ripper as well... but I kind of burned out on BGs last weekend. So I am undergeared for Arena's ... although I DO own all the Opportunist's set except the helm and shoulder because my goggles are better than the helm and I need to do Black Morass to get enough rep for the shoulders.

So how did I do in my first arena outing? I was happy that we (2 Subtlety Rogues, yeah!) went 2 wins and 5 losses - although 2 of those losses were SO ridiculously close. First close one came down to me versus another rogue - the reason I lost was totally gear differences. He was in s1, s2 and a few s3 pieces, where I have the pvp-rep-blues. At his gear level compared to mine he SHOULD have mopped me up real quick, especially since I was at half health and he was full when we were finally one on one. His higher health finally prevailed. The 2nd close match was my compatriot vs a resto druid (I died from the leftovers of a FROST SHOCK because my cloak of shadows had 5 seconds left, doh!). Somehow Deadly Throw didn't work as she cheetah'd away, and the bear outlasted the hemos.

After 7 games we finished the last three with our main chars (MM Hunter and Feral Druid) 2 wins, 1 loss. That 1 loss on our mains was ridiculous. We went up against a Hunter and Warlock team that I could NOT stay out of CC. The very next fight was a different Hunter and Warlock team that our rogues lost to quite badly earlier... we mopped them up so fast it was ridiculous. Definitely made me feel good.

Normally I am not a vengeful person. In real life, revenge really doesn't make you feel better, doesn't really bring """Closure""" (sorry I don't really like the idea of closure, but meh) - but DANG. On a PvP server in WoW... successful revenge feels SO good.

I really do enjoy Arenas. However, 10 games a week is usually more than enough to sate that hunger.

Tips for rogues (i.e. stuff I need to work on!)
Remember to use:
Kick
Blind
Trinkets! (attack boosting and escaping)
Stuns
Run away and bandage if it gets tough

Most of all have fun. Otherwise what's the point?

Happy Mothers Day!

I would like to wish a wonderful and Happy Mother's Day to all mothers out there, especially my own mother and the mother of my children.

Without you I wouldn't be here and I love you for that.

To all you mothers out there - THANK YOU - and thanks as well for putting up with us and suffering through our ineptness...

(especially where Mother's Day gifts and overall appreciation are concerned.. I really am trying!)

Eye of the Storm

I very much dislike the Eye of the Storm Battleground.

Yes I already ranted about this. I am in one as I write this trying to get enough marks for my first weapon.

Really though, it CAN be fun... but that is usually only when you are winning. Like I JUST did wow that was great we 4-capped! Funny to be writing about how much I hate this BG I go ahead and join a gropu that wastes the other team. Sweet!

There is a decent strategy posted at WoWWiki that, if followed, can win you all the EotS' you need!

If you can help take (and of course defend) 3 bases you can win! Yay!

Grinding the PvP Epics

So as I wrote in my last post - my REAL goal on my rogue is to get some good PvP gear upgrades.

Last night I started the Battleground Grind. Alterac Valley is definitely still my favorite. Eye of the Storm CAN be fun, but is probably my least favorite because the games can go forEVER if it isn't played smart. (And unfortunately it rarely is) People often say Warsong Gulch is the worst because it really can go on for a ridiculously long time - but I've NEVER been in a WSG battle that has been even half as long as my longest EotS battle.

So you can imagine my chagrin when I took a break from the madness and hopped over to the Hall of Champions to check out my first two shiny purple goals. Weapons!!
Gladiator's Right Ripper - 18,000 Honor, 20 EotS marks
Gladiator's Left Ripper - 9,000 Honor, 20 EotS marks

First: Nobody has convinced my NOT to get the fist weapons yet. And for some reason I really like them. So unless I can get a really good reason NOT to get them I'll plan for them. It's going to take a while because...

Second: WHAT!?!?! 40 EotS marks to get my Main and Off Hand PvP weapons?? That is going to take forever.

40 marks is pretty bad for EotS. Then I decided to look at the armor and other requirements. YIKES! Even MORE EotS required! NOooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

In order to get the two weapons, 4/5 armor pieces (don't need the helm with my current gear being slightly better) along with the boots, belt, bracers, neck, cloak, medallion and rings (Vindicator's AND Veterans);
We have a grand total requirement of:
Honor: 194,196
AV marks: 40
AB marks: 110 (!)
WSG marks: 50
EotS marks: 90 (!)

Welfare Epics? That's actually a LOT of work! I'm not even sure how I got most of these on Tigersoul.

Ding!

Fries are done!

I mean...

Congratulations to my SECOND level 70 Character Katryona!!

(She was quite tired when this picture was taken...BEFORE70)

She also has a nice shiny new helicopter. Okay... so it really isn't shiny and it smokes a lot. But it cost me less than the 100g Gryphon!

Next goal: Pickpocket every mob in the Outlands to find Spinesever or the Night Blade from a Strong Junkbox. That would be wonderful.

(Real goal: On a PVP server... gotta get some PVP gear upgrades!)

**Any rogue suggestions are appreciated**
***I really like subtlety and might farm then waste honor on THESE BABIES unless I am convinced otherwise!***

Easy... Almost TOO Easy...

As I've been playing my rogue, creeping ever so slowly to 70 (Dinged 69 this weekend yay!) I've been noticing a few things about questing, farming, and grinding in the World of Warcraft. Playing my level 35 Priest (shadow spec right now) is further cementing my thoughts on this as well.

Basically it all seems a heck of a lot EASIER than it was about 6 months ago when I was in a similar place with Tigersoul.

Tigersoul is my strongest character, one of the reasons he is my "Main Character".

Feral Druid if you were unaware... I kill very fast, I tank fairly well, soloing is a breeze and deaths are far and few between. But when I was questing in Netherstorm (where Katryona the rogue has been questing) at the same level as Kat - even as an early 70 - I died. A lot. Then flash back even further to questing in STV at 35, like Silverthorne my priest. I died. A LOT.

So here's my question. Has the game been made "Easier" in preparation for the new expansion? OR, have I just become a much better player. I think it is a bit of both, but unfortunately - probably more game changes than my own personal improvement.

It HAS been fun to get through areas faster with less deaths (not counting Horde gankings which are RIDICULOUSLY more common now than when Tiger was in the same spots... so I guess the actual death count is about the same. Probably not my rogue though... Subtlety spec is actually quite hard to kill - lots of avoidance and escape possibilities!), but is the game less of a game now with the "nerfing" of questing content?

I think I can appreciate how tough and strong I am now, since I went through a much tougher game a year ago. I sincerely hope that at least SOME of this toughness is because I've improved as a player...

BRK and Ratshag's Running of Da Bulls!

Fer Sharvan!!

Today was the Running of da Bulls on the Cenarion Circle RP server. The locals were quite confused. I REALLY wish I had been able to see what the alliance in Ironforge were saying... My very first character in WoW was a Tauren... so they have a special place in my heart.

"Tigersoubull" was my entrant into the race. But he died too much and did not win. I have NO idea how the winner made it there so fast! (I was almost to Hillsbrad)

I was lucky enough to see a few of the bloggers (Ratshag, BRK, Bellwether) Thanks for the fun!

And I got a purple shirt!!!

Here are LOTS of screenshots:

Just over 2 hours before the race:

BRK does it Disco-style in front of all his groupies (looks like Tigersoubull fainted)

Look at that fine piece of beef!!

Shut up and get to the starting line!!

Wow look it's Ratshag there... Orcs are kind of small!

How many bloggers can YOU find in this picture? (I think I can see five...)

Hey look! I'm running by Bellwether of 4Haelz! She has a great blog!

She also witnessed my first death of the race...

The official race is done - the Herd heads for Wetlands en route to Ironforge!

That is a LOT of Bulls. I wonder if this is a record?

Those mean dwarves picked off a few of the weak.

Good thing we have thick skins in this cold!

Storm the gates of Ironforge!!

Swarm the halls!

There were lots of ghosts present too...

The number of guards that spawned was ridiculous.

I'm sure the alliance will have nightmares caused by their cruelty.


Unfortunately shortly after spawning in Elwynn (I finally made it into the tram only to be killed by some heartless hunter who probably doesn't even like steak) I had to leave... so I missed out on the hogger fight. :(

It was a lot of fun and I thank those responsible for setting all of this up!

A Thought on PvF

Wow, two posts in one day after a dry spell of over a week?! What's going on?

I've been thinking about "PVF" (Player versus Faction) since The Big Bear Butt posted "I want /PvF!" Then today I read an answer to a different question about Group duels in my feed reader from MMO-Champion. Here's what the Blizzard staffer said (original here):

There are actually in-game locations where such events can be organized. The world arenas in Stranglethorn Vale, Nagrand and Blade's Edge Mountain come to mind as suitable locations for group "duelling" and combat practise. As for a group duel option (such as /groupduel), we have no current plans to add this."

So here's my idea for a possible solution to the problem where you are really ticked off at some jerk of your same faction who stole a node, stole a kill, or even just watched you die when they could have easily healed you with a very low cost spell. Have a big quest line that eventually leads you to discovering flaws within your own faction (i.e. not everybody you think is on your side is actually on your side, kind of like Lady Prestor) - with the reward being a trinket or usable item (like the Everlasting Underspore Frond that makes food for you every day) that will transport you and the targeted same-faction offender to one of the aforementioned Arenas with an invisible fence not allowing the other person to run away or leave. "Two players enter... one leaves..." that sort of thing. THAT would be nice.

Will this ever happen? No way. Too many variables, rules and conditions to consider and implement, not to mention jerks abusing the option just to kill others to show off their epeen.

Kind of like the 70 Gnome Rogue who flew up to Katryona (at the time 65) and challenged me to a duel in the middle of the Firewing Bloodelves. /inspect to find out she has 16 Epics and 1 Blue. For my level I'm fairly well geared - Epic Engo goggles (she also had these) a bunch of blues and a few greens. But still... really what's the point? It's pretty much impossible for a 65 to beat a fully-epicced 70 of the same class. I dueled her because it didn't hurt me any, then before she would duel the 70 rogue I was with (I was actually helping HIM get Firewing signets) she spammed in /say "How Much HP?" "How Much HP?" He ignored her so she went away. But it was interesting to me that she would land on her Netherdrake and immediately challenge me to a duel while I was in the middle of fighting some Bloodelves, but would NOT do that to a 70 Rogue... Sounded to me like she was only interested in dueling if she was sure she would win. Sorry, but that is stupid. Sorry for the sidetrack there - but that type of person would probably abuse the proposed trinket.

An Update

It's been a busy time what with a new baby and work and all. I've also been reading a lot, most recently the A Song of Ice and Fire books by George R. R. Martin. (I'm only on the 2nd book A Clash of Kings) Yes I actually found out about this through the blog of the webcomic Looking for Group. Usually I hear about good Fantasy series but somehow missed this one. I also read all the available books by Brandon Sanderson who is finishing the last book in Robert Jordan's amazing Wheel of Time series. I actually might like a lot of Brandon Sanderson's work more than Jordan's. It'll be interesting to see how the 12th book turns out. His downloadable book Warbreaker is really good too. So if you don't want to go to the library and like reading PDF books... go check it out!

Tigersoul has been on a bit of a hiatus - he really wants the Shattered Sun Pendant of Might but is seriously sick of dailies. He's getting low on cash for some reason and needs to get a group together for a Heroic Sethekk Halls run to finally get Swift Flight Form. He also needs to get back into the Arena scene. I think we need to start our teams over before the next patch fixes point buying. I haven't bough points and don't plan on it - our ratings just stink right now and so I think it'd be a good time to start over!

Katryona dinged 68 last night (which took me WAY too long but I got in a bit of tunnel vision there) and became honored with Aldor's too. Finally I can get the Aldor quests in SMV and start turning in Marks of Sargeras instead of the less available Marks of Kil'Jaeden. By the time she reaches 70 she will definitely have enough to buy the regular riding skill for flying and make a helicopter. Did I mention I think engineering is fun?

Silverthorne is finally 35 and is almost to my 275 Enchanting goal so I can disenchant all the otherwise worthless high level greens I find while farming/questing. While going from 33 to 35 I discovered the joy that is Shadow Priest (without shadowform yet) utilizing Vampiric Embrace, Power Word: Shield, Shadow Word: Pain, and Mind Flay = Pure Awesome! I was amazed at the quests I was easily completing. Oh yeah - Psychic Scream is handy too. Almost invulnerable and self healing while inflicting pain is awesome!

Soulsword is still at 46. It is hard to play him. My guild officers want me to get him up to 70 and spec Protection so we can have another Tank option other than our Feral Druids (one of which is also me). I like tanking all right... but do I want to be one of the ONLY tank options in the guild? Good thing I'm the guild leader...

The Druid Army isn't doing much lately. Too busy with other things (Mostly Rogue leveling and Shattered Sun dailies) - but they are building up some good mats for professions and Treesoul ALMOST has bear form. Yeah I know it's pretty sad. She's level 9 and it REALLY doesn't take that long.

On Fantasy

Nothing of real import here...

Like many I'm tired of the "Daily Quest" grind - but I love regular questing. So it's allowed me to get to almost 65. 5 more levels 'til I have my second 70! I'm excited.

I love books. One of the first fantasy series I read (after Lord of the Rings, which while in no way my favorite - got me hooked on Fantasy books and probably reading in general) was the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander.

Good books - if you've never read them you should. Even if you have seen the old Black Cauldron movie! (or maybe ESPECIALLY if you have seen that!) They are "Young Adult" books and fairly easy reading... but don't let that stop you!

Anyway. Mr. Alexander wrote a short little treatise "On Fantasy" that I love. I linked it there for you. Go read it.

I'll write more about books later... pretty much entirely Fantasy books. But being as this is primarily a World of Warcraft Blog... That shouldn't be too far fetched.

On to Azeroth!

Kael'Thas and Friends

I finally finished the Sunwell quest to get Kael'thas' head.

There are some MEAN pulls in there! It is VERY easy to wipe without a good team setup. And this, my friends, is why quite often you will see requests for "LFM Magister CC preferably 2 mages" Keep two mobs Baa-ing away and it makes it a lot easier. Add in a rogue or Hunter if you can't find a mage and you should be good!

A Hunter in my guild REALLY wanted to get the Hauberk of the War Bringer chest that drops off Kael, and she's been trying for days. Most of the time I log on and she's in there again hoping to GET to Kael and down him so he will drop this for her. Over and over and over. That's dedication for ya!

It's amazing how many groups this instance can kill. We made it through the very first little bit with more than one death... because of a rogue. Seriously it is amazing what one bad member can do in these instances. The guy comes in with no flash powder and no bandages, and says he's a real good rogue, but this isn't his account, he's playing a friends. And boy oh boy he was NOT good.

Anyway. We kicked him out and got another Rogue and we went very smoothly all the way up to the Priestess when the Rogue DC'd and the mage had to leave. The Pally Healer decided she needed to leave as well, so my hunter was sad. Then she was mad and wouldn't let me leave, and proceeded to grab another pally healer, a warlock, and a rogue. We breezed through the 5 man PvP fight (kind of fun!).

We then downed Kael pretty easily, losing only the rogue. Sunrage Treads dropped, so my friend wasn't happy that she wouldn't get the chest - but she got them anyway because they were actually an upgrade from what she had! So epic boots for her!

I checked out her armory earlier today and noticed she got the drop. Good for her!

Determination. It can get you what you want! So keep at it.

At Last We Greet You, Karazhan...

Last night was so much fun that I was on for about 3 hours longer than I should have been.

Which then caused me to stumble into work MUCH too late. Lovely. Not good.

So here's what went down...

FIRST - I logged onto my rogue, got all the mats necessary - and made those wonderful Deathblow X11 Goggles that I wanted, then quested and farmed more mats getting my mining up to 367, and TRYING to get to 62 so I could "Show my pride" and actually WEAR the goggles. (Thanks for the comic reminder from an anonymous commenter - Scout Report is fun!)

Then my guildies logged on, and we have been planning on finally finishing up the now not totally required Kara attunement. We were expecting to take one or two of our members through Old Hillsbrad to get ready for Black Morass. We invited a 66 Ret Pally in the guild to come along to fill our group. Good that she came too, because there were some good blue upgrades for her!

Final setup was 70 Feral Druid tank, 70 Subtle Rogue, 70 Holy Pally, 70 BM Hunter and 66 Ret Pally. Durnholde is easy now. My guildmates do an amazing job as well... although we definitely need a bit more experience getting it perfect... I have to charge down mobs going after our hunter at times because we aren't focusing on the target I'm mainly tanking (Multiple mob pulls).

"Hey lets get Black Morass out of the way too!" I say

"I don't think we can handle it... Especially not with my heals" says our better-than-he-thinks-he-is healer. (He's awesome)

"Well let's go anyway!"

CHARGE!!! 18 waves later... Ba-da-bing that was EASY - but you know what? Probably the most fun I have ever had in an instance! I think we will continue getting others through the Kara Key process just because getting through the dungeons and BM is a great learning experience. And its FUN.

We only had one death on Temporus the 2nd boss - But that was only because the Hunter was a bit trigger happy and got a bunch of aggro before I'd even engaged him! The jerk didn't even drop the Hourglass of the Unraveller for us Other than that Chrono Lord Deja and the final boss Aeonus were pushovers.

My tactic on all the rifts and bosses was to position myself between the boss and Medivh, and when a new mob spawned and headed off towards Medivh (Stubborn bums have to be physically hit to stop them from bee-lining to Medivh - so no easy Ferocious Roars or Faerie Fires :( ) I would target and swipe him or lacerate just as he got close to where the Rift-boss was. That was usually good enough to keep them on me. Swipe was especially effective in getting the attention of those little whelps that spawn in 3s. Other than that we had our hunter and rogue picking up the runaways as well as burning down the Rift-bosses to close the rifts. We did a really good job.

It was also nice to laugh at the naysayers who said we couldn't do it!

After turning in the CoT quests I am almost Revered with KoT (hit honored on the way through), so I picked up the Heroic CoT key and the pattern for Drums of Panic. I have a feeling these will be fun in AV, AND even better it allowed me to finally cap my LW! 375 yay!

So of course we had to go into Kara to see what's up in there. Even just the front area is a lot cooler than many other instances - there's just a... Aura to the place that the developers really put some thought into this one. We died a couple times - but I turned in the first quest from the outside (and died) and now I have to find some diary.

Awesome night.
- Cool goggles for my rogue (and Tigersoul is jealous)
- Maxed Leatherworking
- Karazhan Master Key obtained for 4 of my guild officers so we can now organize runs
- Began discussing changes to guild structure to allow for some very laid-back Kara runs.

We'll see how it all works out.

Engineering Is Fun and Expensive

I finally made a marathon push leveling Engineering on Katryona up to 350 so I could make my first epics, the awesome DPS machines that are the Deathblow X11 Goggles - even more exciting is that when I get to 70, I can upgrade them to the even MORE Awesomer Quad Deathblow X44 Goggles!! (provided I can find the Schematic!)

Then I looked at the mats required...
Heavy Knothide Leather (6) - Skinning on my main - this is no problem.
Khorium Power Core - 3 Khorium Bars and 1 Primal Fire - I haven't even SEEN Khorium yet. AH maybe?
Hardened Adamantite Tube (2) - I need 6 Hardened Adamantite Bars - so 60 Adamantite Bars. Yikes.
Felsteel Stabilizer (4) - 8 Felsteel Bars (16 Eternium Bars & 24 Fel Iron Bars to make the Felsteel Bars) I can farm these, but it'll take a long time I think.
Primal Nether - No problem - Tigersoul has a couple of these.
Living Ruby (2) - At 50g a pop... these will be fun.

IF I were to buy all of these, the total cost would be about 500g according to my Server's current economy. Yikes! And since I powered my Engineering from 335 to 350 by making the ridiculously cheap White Smoke Flares, I didn't have to farm a lot ores... so I have a ways to go to max my Mining. And I can't even get Khorium until I'm maxed. Eternium will probably actually be the hardest mat for me to find.

These goggles rock. So I might just steal money from Tigersoul and get them made. Woohoo!

So to outline my "Marathon" from 330 to 350 (so not quite a marathon since I only went up 20 points, instead of 26.2) I made the following items:
Adamantite Grenade - 330 - 335
White Smoke Flare - 335 - 350

WOW pretty tough huh? Nice way to quickly level through those levels. Those flares can be kind of fun too. I would love to surround the flag with a bunch of those in a WSG match...

In the middle of this leveling Outland crashed on Dragonmaw and Lag spiked to 2800 in Stormwind. I wondered why I had only made 3 Fel Iron Bolts instead of the 10 I should have... Finally I was able to get to 350.

Hopefully tonight I will get those Deathblow goggles made!!

If you want to powerlevel your engineering from 1 - 375, Tentonhammer has a good guide. It's still an expensive undertaking. I have not followed this guide too much, because I've been having fun leveling as I go! Happy crafting!

Tigersoul's Addons

In my quest to figure out what was causing my freeze, I went through a lot of my mods and deleted, changed, reinstalled, and dug around. While doing so I thought I'd talk about my addons.

I ended up removing PitBull and am now using CT_Unit Frames from CTMod instead. I really miss the enemy castbar. Anybody know of any good low-resource mods that indicate what the enemy is casting?
I liked Pitbull, but CTMod is a bit simpler to use for now. Simple is good.

Here's a list of Mods I use and like:
Ace - Since I started using this I LOVE it. Especially the WoWAceupdater!!
AllPlayed - Fun tool for Altoholics and Moneytrackers
AtlasLoot - It's nice to see what rewards are available in instances, from reputation, and pvp
AutoProfitX - Not sure if it's even supported anymore - and there are other options - sells junk.
Cartographer - Too much good to say about this one. It rocks.
FuBar - FuBar is Fun! Just a fun little thing that'll display COUNTLESS little doodads (NO not THAT Doodad!) (Hee hee hee!) to play with or just get info from.
Omen - It's Omen! I just need my guildies to get it so I can Tank more effectively.
Parrot - The Ace description is the best. "Floating Combat Text of awesomeness. Caw. It'll eat your crackers." With the 2.4 combat log update, I'm still trying to get it back to its previous level of awesomeness.
ProfessionsBook - I love professions. I love alts. This helps me see what recipes/patterns/etc in my AH browsing can be learned by my alts, or if they are too low or already know it. It also lets me browse through and link their patterns when not on that char. Very handy.
SimpleMinimap - Allows scaling and mini map placement so your map is where you want it to be.
TankPoints - Helps you determine what gear might be better for tanking. You should still use your brain. Only evaluates gear.
Auctioneer - I love Auctioneer. It's too much fun. That's all I'll say or this post will go on forever. I would love it even more if it were Ace compatible... Only problem is that it can really eat your system resources when you scan a lot.
CTMod - My first mod ever, and it's been hard to get away from. Haven't used the raid interface much yet, but I really like the bar placement and import abilities. Usually it gets my other mod info as well, so it makes setup for alts QUITE nice. There are many many other functions I haven't looked into yet... and with my lazy "Simple is good" attitude, it'll be a while before I look into them!
Deadly Boss Mods - Haven't used the raid functions yet - but the BG helps are awesome.. although I'm still half-heartedly trying to figure out how to move the dang AV timers from the CENTER of the screen. Why do I have to be so lazy?? =p
ItemRack - It has been 6 months since the last update. Still - this mod is awesome. Easy to use, easy to set up, and awesome. I tried some of the others, but this one got me hooked. We'll see if I try another again later.

Sunwell Portal Problems Fixed

The problem was an infinite loop caused by a library used by a couple of good mods. Questhelper, Gatherer and a few other mods use the library Astrolabe. Update this library and it should fix the problem.

Unfortunately for the moment I have deleted Questhelper from my Addons. It definitely was helpful in leveling Katryona up to her current level, especially teamed up with Cartographer. I'll probably reinstall it with the astrolabe library found in Gatherer since it REALLY is a useful tool. I was just happy to not get sucked into that infinite loop!

Sunwell Portal Problems

It seems that every time I try to teleport to or from the Isle of Quel'danas - World of Warcraft totally and absolutely Freezes. The casting bar goes all the way up to where I should teleport and WHAMO... everything stops. Sometimes I can Alt-Tab out and force close WoW, sometimes I can't and I have to force shutdown my computer and restart. Log back in and I'm where I wanted to be... but what a hassle.

I wonder if others have been having similar problems.

I guess it's possible that one of my addons is causing the conflict. I need to go through and revamp them anyway. I'm not sure I'm satisfied with Pitbull. There are some things I really like about it, but since installing it some simple things are missing - like the capping indicator in BGs or World objectives like capping the 3 buildings in Hellfire Peninsula isn't visible.

Anybody have any suggestions for a good Pitbull replacement?

APRIL FOOLS!!!

Wait... what?

I'm too late?

Dang. I hate when that happens.

While not WoW related - I am in LOVE with this little girl!



She's definitely too cute!

So in WoW news, it's still kind of hard for me to get through all the Sunwell quests every day - and I really want the Tabard. I also want the Neck piece they have available - but I'm not sure if I want Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve or Shattered Sun Pendant of Might. Tough choice! But... is it better than the Haramad's Bargain I've been wanting forever!?

Took my now level 60 Rogue through Ramps with some guild members... we had no tank. Having no tank was much easier when we had a 70 mage come back and help us out. It was a lot of fun, although our level 60 Shaman we had with us kept dying. Lucky for her almost every boss drop was perfect for her, so she got lots of nice loot. I was happy to get the Sure-step Boots from the quest Weaken the Ramparts. Not bad. Now to get to level 67 so I can equip the Tigersoul-made Fel Leather Gloves and 69 so I can equip the other two pieces of the Fel Skin set sitting in the break! Having a "higher level" rogue is a lot of fun. I'd better do a couple more AV's before I'm in the higher bracket!

Baby Girl and the Sunwell

We had a baby girl on Easter which is why nothing has happened here. Longest break from WoW I've had in a while too, and it was quite nice. She's a gorgeous dark haired little beauty.

We returned home with our new little baby Tuesday afternoon - so I didn't have to wait for the maintenance to be completed. I logged in, installed the patch, and got a quest to go speak with somebody on a boat at the Sunwell offensive. I must say I like the changes to Shattrath. It is definitely a more interesting place now - and I like the Sunwell Tabard! Hopefully I'll be able to get one.

The biggest thing I learned from my first excursion on the Isle was that our server has a ridiculously wide gap in the numbers of alliance players versus the number of horde players. Alliance-side Dragonmaw tops our Battlegroup in Arenas, and our top raiding guilds are quite a bit further than the Horde counterparts. But when there are 40 lvl 70 Horde running around an area where there are 10 lvl 70 Alliance... you will be ganked.

I was able to see some of Magister's Terrace - and I barely made it into the instance because of the mass of horde hanging around the summoning stone.

So. So far I think what I've seen is very cool (although nothing that new if you've played through the Blood Elf starting zones!) - but it's a somewhat small area for the number of lvl 70s running through!

Rogues are FUN!

As I've mentioned a couple of times, I've been playing my rogue Katryona a lot lately due to some slow times with where I'm at on Tigersoul right now. Basically it's hard to get my guild together for instances to get us into Kara. However we did Slabs last night and got the first key fragment for a bunch of our members. We would have done more too, but I had to go. Having sick family is no fun.

But Rogues ARE fun. Oh yah... the title already says that. Well I'll even say it again, again! Rogues are FUN!!

I love the ability to sneak around and kill things quite quickly. I thought I wouldn't survive long, and there are times I don't survive long enough sure - but with all my evasion and escape techniques, I live a LOT more than I die.

It's silly, but one of my absolute favorite places to be as a Rogue is surrounded by lots of pick pocketable humanoids. Sap-pickpocket, sap-pickpocket, Mwahahahahaaa! Do it some more!! With subtlety talents, unless I am attempting more then 2 levels higher than me they rarely resist unless I'm positioned weird. And then I Vanish and keep on going.

I have gone entirely subtlety so far. I LOVE it. In fact, both the lvl 70 rogues in my guild are Hemo/Shadowstep builds (can you tell we are a non-raiding guild on a pvp server?) but they've chosen slightly different emphasis's that somehow seem to work well for them. I don't understand not taking Cheat Death though. I LOVE that one. For a while I think I'm going to try putting all points into Subtlety just for fun. I'll respec to something more useful closer to 70.

Before I get to 60 I need to complete all the Sunken Temple quests and finish the AV quests. Sadly the last AV quest I have is the one where all you have to do is Defeat Drek'thar. I've done about 10 AVs (and got some NICE xp from those quests too!!) and my HK's went from 20 (all world-kills usually helping other allies in trouble or revenge on gankers) to over 300. AV is fun. Strange that in the 51-60 bracket I haven't won yet...

Now for some linkage!
There are some really good Rogue Blogs out there that have helped me a lot.

http://doomilias.com/ - Sure sure Doomilias talks about poo a lot, but he also has some really really good tips on playing rogues. All his early posts are Mutilate-centric, but he has tried out some of the others as well. Also has the best Nerfs ever. Picked me some up for the wife and kids just yesterday! Oh and for me too.

http://www.parrydodgespin.com/ - Valenna blogs about a multitude of topics, but my favorite so far is her pre-Kara Rogue gear guide. I'm looking forward to using it, or start picking some of those items up when I get to Outlands SOON!

Common Courtesy

Too often people are greedy jerks on the internet - especially in online games. Anonymity, much like being part of a huge mob, turns people into major idiots.

Now in MMORPGs, there are terms for such people; Loot Whores, Ninjas, Greedy SOBs, you get the picture.

Now this person I grouped with wasn't exactly one of those, not quite... but what they did was definitely inconsiderate. A guild member who I helped get attuned to Ogri'la the other day needed help with one of the group quests in Ogri'la. Guardian of the Monument

Party setup was as follows, Me the Feral Tank, Guildmate BM Hunter (party leader with lag problems to boot), Arms/Fury Warrior, Holy Pally Healer, Combat Rogue. Of the 5 members, 3 were on the quest, and those 3 were also not the most geared 70s out there. The Warrior, like me, had his Netherwing and Nether Ray mounts, and more Epic gear than me (Mostly PvP, but on a PvP server that's what you NEED). So basically he and I were helping these people new to Ogri'la.

So we get to the big Simon Says marker and I start directing people where they need to be and asking who wanted to use their shards to activate the Guardian, when the Warrior dismounts and activates it before anybody was ready. So the Simon Says game doesn't go properly because people weren't ready, and the Guardian comes. Now I'm not sure if the fight is harder if you mess up the Simon Says part, but this guardian really isn't that hard either way. Just WHY did the guy start the event before anyybody was ready? The Guardian goes down, and hey, nice! A blue Apexis Crystal! Everybody Greeds because this is a pick up group for the most part, but wait a minute - Why did the Warrior NEED it?? I'm a little annoyed but just get past it and we all head back to the Skyguard base so those who needed to could turn in the quest.

Wait a minute what's this? Why is this Warrior now walking on the ground on his dragon with me on autofollow?? I should have been mean and played a trick on him. I considered it... but I'm too nice.

Suddenly he comes back and says "Follow" and flies north to the Fel Cannon place and then says "If you provide the Shards to summon Need the blue crystal everybody else pass" Huh? Now in general that's not a bad idea - but when you've already Needed a blue crystal without telling anybody this "rule" and you also don't even give anybody else the OPTION to use their shards to summon... that's crap. If you want this to work - at least do a /roll on who uses their shards to summon and basically get the blue crystal. His method was rude and greedy, and not a good example to these new-to-Ogri'la 70s.

I am not Exalted with Ogri'la yet - I haven't done their quests for a while because I haven't needed to - I was going for Skyguard rep as Ogri'la doesn't have anything I really want (other than their Tabard, since I somewhat collect those). I still have close to 800 Apexis Shards in my bags, no idea how many I have in my bank. The Warrior claimed to have over 4k. It costs 35 to summon the Guardians. I thought the way he went about it was lame and inconsiderate.

Flu Season?!?

Yeah my family has been wiped out for almost a week by the worst sicknesses we've seen in a long time.

No fun.

Even worse - my wife is over 38 weeks pregnant... so we could be having this baby ANYTIME!! (the only reason that is "worse" is because of the sickness - we are excited for this baby)

I did play a lot, so I'll hopefully have plenty to write about before I am gone again for the baby. We have 2 boys now, so we're excited to be (possibly) finishing with a girl!

I'm looking forward to the new patch content because Tigersoul is bored with doing the same things over and over again. A rant on other annoyances forthcoming. :)

Ogri'la Attunement for everyone!!

Last night we got a bunch of our new 70s (and some of the older ones) "Attuned" to Ogri'la.

I would have rather been getting us Keyed for Kara, even though that may be obsolete VERY soon. I still want it done.

Anyway, the Big Bear Butt Blogger has some excellent guides on Daily quests, but this one here on becoming Neutral with Ogri'la is very useful.

I have killed all of the slobbering sons of Gruul; Slaag, Maggoc, and Grulloc, but when I initially did their quests (1, 2, 3) I was lucky enough to tag along with a horde group killing the three so I didn't have to fight at all. Unfortunately I didn't know that I could also tag along for the last two parts, Grim(oire) Business, and Into the Soulgrinder.

Last night I tanked them all and Slaag was the hardest part. He has some cone shaped acid breat that comes out and knocks you back quite a bit - so the best thing to do is have all the non-tanks inside while you tank him in the doorway, with your back to the wall so you don't get knocked back much. We wiped the first time because we had no idea what was going on. Other than that, these guys are all pretty tough - but easy with a good group.

Netherwing Drake and more!

Yesterday, or was it the day before yesterday...?

Argh! I hate you Daylight Savings!!

Actually I am mad at Daylight Savings Time (DST) because it has messed up my Arena schedule. My partners in doing PvP (and doing it badly, but we are improving!) are in Australia... in fact in one of the states of Australia that DOESN'T have DST, so they come online an hour later now, which makes it difficult to get the 10 Arena matches done... especially when we are starting late anyway. So instead we tried to raid Thunder Bluff with 3 people... a 62 Druid that yelled in Stormwind trying to start it all... a 70 rogue (guildmate and Arena partner) and myself. More on that later.

Most exciting news of the night - I can finally stop using that Silver Nether Ray, which just makes me nauseous now bouncing up and down like that, and have gotten myself a Black Netherwing Dragon! Okay, so technically it's "Onyx" but whatever. I think if you were to look at the Netherwing Market, over 80% is Onyx. The only one I would even consider getting is the Cobalt, but it's not as cool as the Onyx.

So here we are - pictures of the gloriousness - oh and you can see my new shoulders I talked about as well! (Thankfully... no visible flowers - at least I don't think so)

So there you have it. Definitely cool - because Dragons, are definitely awesome.

So back to the Thunder Bluff raid. We didn't have much time - my partner and I were considering trying to get our Arenas in (only an hour and a half left 'til rollover and 2v2 queues are horrid), when somebody yells they are starting a stealth raid of Druids and Rogues to Thunder Bluff and we're meeting in Theramore. So we decide that sounds fun. On the flight to Menethil I ask my rogue friend, "So... how many people do you think will be there?" He says..."3" And he was right. We probably should have spent the time helping a guildie in the Blood Furnaces, but we were already on our way when they asked, so we had fun making horde run around trying to find us.

One thing I don't understand... when we attacked NPCs in Thunder Bluff, Bluffwatchers, the lvl 65 guards popped out of nowhere and started beating on us, and as soon as we get one of them down, another shows up. I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen in Stormwind when it gets raided. Am I wrong? Or is this a Horde only effect? Interesting.

Visiting Thunder Bluff brought back some good memories. TB is quite confusing at first - but once you get to know it - I think it's one of my favorite cities.

And finally - if you are going to "stealth raid" an enemy city - you should probably do a couple of things:
a) get some of your own guildies to come with you and don't expect people to come if you just yell in a major city
b) be a level or 5 higher than the basic city guards so you can sneak by them
c) 3 people isn't a raid
d) Enjoy it no matter what - because the confusion of the opposing forces really can be a funny thing to watch! Stealth FTW! (I still wish Catform had vanish...)

Gear To The Rescue!!

What do you do to get yourself out of a funk?

Go shopping of course!!

So Tigersoul has been in a bit of a rut - but started to come out of it a bit when the strongest members of the guild decided it was time to get attuned. A little late sure, but it has gotten us running instances which is a very good thing. My guildmates aren't the best players in the world - but we just GET each other, and we work very well together. Group quests and instances fall before our might! Arena teams quake... although mostly that's just laughter... but anyway.

I had 1311 Arena points and for some reason I didn't think it was enough to get anything I wanted. I may have been saving up for later as well, but in the end - I decided I needed to spend ALL but 7 of those points and pick up the Merciless Gladiator's Dragonhide Spaulders, which I've always thought looked very cool, and have some very nice stats on them. Currently they replace the shoulders in both my tanking and DPS slots. DPS/PVP set is now at just over 250 resilience. Not bad. We'll see how it works out in Arenas this week.

So I logged into WoW today, got to the character select screen and admired my new Shoulders when I noticed something. WAaa-hay-hay-hayyyy-t a minute...?!?! Are those FLOWERS that occasionally bloom on my shoulders?! Holy moly way to ruin a really cool look, lol.

I was talking to my friend Helstrike about it - she has the same shoulders, but the resto version - and we think that each spec needs a different animation. Flowers popping out is GREAT for a Resto Druid. But a Feral or Balance druid?? Come on! I'm tough! MANLY! RAWR!! Give me some CLAWS or SPIKES or SNAKES or something. And my Boomkin friends need little explosions or lightning popping out of those babies! Yeah, THAT's the ticket!

Anyway - helping my guildies (and myself) get closer to Kara, my new shoulders, and non-PUG instances have basically gotten Tiger out of his rut. I think it also helps that Katryona is in need of some Rested XP.

Back To The Roots

What was your first character? Not the one you started on your friends account to check out the game and you got to level 5 before deciding you wanted to get this game for yourself. No and not the one you started when you got the game thinking you really wanted to be a Paladin because they get swords, plate armor AND healing (woot!) but got tired of at level 13 and a half. I mean the first REAL MAIN character that you played and loved - proudly newbying your way around Azeroth enjoying the views.

My first main was Bullfist, an Enhancement Tauren Shaman on the US Thrall PvE server. I started on that server because a coworker (who was actually my supervisor at that time) had recently started WoW on that server. Before WoW I played Final Fantasy XI and had to quit twice. That game was a lot of fun, and I have some good memories from it. Enough time had passed that I was wanting to play a MMORPG, so I convinced my wife to let me try WoW and I've enjoyed it since.

Last night I logged onto Tigersoul and tried to do some Dailies to make some cash. After being ganged up on by roving gangs of Horde (never can take me one on one the wimps) I got really tired of it. It seems lately that I really only enjoy playing Tiger when I'm helping a guildie or grouping with my guild - like when we did Ramps and Old Hillsbrad. So I decided to play Soulfist, my Draino Shaman for a while, and thought about Bullfist.

It's been a LONG time since I logged into Bullfist. I logged in, looked at my talents and thought to myself "HOLY COW! Zero points in any tree??" and fixed that putting everything into Enhancement. I guess some major changes were made to the Shaman Talents a few patches back (It's been since April of last year that I really played this char) so mine had been wiped clean. Right after finishing that (taking Dual-Wield and Advanced Dual-Wield only to realize I only had one 1-handed weapon on me, DOH) a blood elf rode up to me and said "I'll give you 10g if you help me with a quest." "What quest?" "The Mind's Eye"

"Oh sure I'll help with that, it's easy since the ogres aren't elite anymore" So a Belf Hunter and Cow Shammy ride off to the Ogres cave and take care of business. Wow I am rusty. It seems that Tauren move a bit slower than other races, or seem to. Anyway, I run out of mana REAL fast, and with only 1 weapon don't hit hard enough, but it was still easy. The blood elf had earlier given me the 10g, but really, as I don't plan on playing this char too much, after we finished, I opened a trade with him and gave him 30g, told him why, and he said "Wow, I went from broke (I guess that 10g to finish this quest with him was all he had) to rich thanks a lot!" and went on to say that he was glad to see not all WoW players are a bunch of jerks. New player - maybe now he'll stick around for a while.

Oh... I also found out that my old guild fell apart sometime ago and as the highest ranking officer - I ended up Guild Master. So now I have leadership of 3 Guilds... HA!

Finally, I would like to thank Mini Snickers and Twix for pulling me out of my lack-of-sleep-induced coma enough that my coworkers made me go home and rest to recover. If there is anything coherent or useful here... it's their fault entirely.

I specialize in incoherent uselessness. Sugar is the elixir of life. I missed my Mt. Dew this morning and I haven't recovered from that yet. Being sick stinks. Oh well it was nice to get off work early.

Ramblings of the WoW and Non-WoW Sort

Sorry for the lack of posting lately.

Kids are sick and it finally caught up with me as well. Seems like there is a lot of that going around, and then people slam up a lot of amazing posts that I barely have time to read!

On top of that I've got a possible job change going on at work that is distressing because the only reason I'd take this job is more money. Tough decisions.

For the past week or so I've also been obsessed with my Rogue Katryona - leveled her from 24 to 42 in the past little bit, and it's been fun! I've learned that while my PvP skills (regular SouthShore vs. Tarren Mill world-type pvp I mean!) are passable as a Feral druid - I need some SERIOUS work as a rogue. I should probably take her into some BGs.

One of my favorite things to do as a rogue is sap and pickpocket every humanoid possible. So I went subtlety. Some say that's not a good leveling spec but DANG! It's fun and I kill fairly quickly and survive very very well. My Talent choices might be a little strange though... any thoughts from Rogue-specialists out there?

My guild is finally starting to instance together. We "4-manned" Durnholde in the Caverns of Time - 70 Druid, 70 Rogue, 69 Paladin, 66 Druid. It was a lot of fun! For some reason my favorite fights are the ones where there are so many mobs attacking that a wipe seems imminent, then somehow, that amazing druid tank busts his way through and keeps aggro on all of them and nobody dies. Yes, it is MUCH easier to do in a lvl 66ish Caverns of Time instance, but I've had it happen in Heroic SLabs too (although unfortunately, that time 2 or 3 people died before we were safe... but it was still fun!)

Once we get more 70s and a few of us get the key - we should be about ready to get some Kara going by the beginning of next patch! When nobody else is doing Kara anymore! Can I hear a big fat "WOOT!?"

Now all I need is the 3rd fragment from Arcatraz and the Black Morass Event and I'll be good to go.

The Armory

I really like the Armory. I like being able to look at the "recommended upgrades" and check out what my guildmates and friends are up to. It breaks the monotony of work when I can use my couple of "quota-time" minutes to bypass the firewall and look at the beautiful purples that I want...

So it's sad when it doesn't work for me.

Oh yeah, I said that yesterday.

RIGHT that's what I'm here for.

PROOF that yesterday it said I had last been updated January 1st (not the 16th), 1970

Hmm... I should have changed it to my Melee stats, and been in catform. Rawr. Oh well... instead you can see that in my Mostly PvP gear I have 28 bonus damage and 80 healing yay! No wonder I heal like crap...

Alts with Professions are Too Much Fun

I love my main. Tigersoul, however, is in a bit of a rut. The only Honor purchases I might want make are the Vindicator's Band of Triumph, the Veteran's Band of Triumph (not too bad to have them both, although there are certainly better rings) and the Vindicator's Pendant of Triumph (although really I'm still holding out for Haramad's Bargain). Total Honor requirement for the 3 of them? 41,900 Honor. I currently have just over 3,000 because of my Tiger-funk. They also require 20 AV marks for the rings and 10 EOTS marks for the neck, but I've got those covered. (100 AV and 14 EOTS)

Tigersoul basically is to the point where the only real advancement he'll get is in Arenas and Heroics, and like I've mentioned before - I'm not a huge fan of PUG-anything. I did tank for a friend through the easy Steamvaults run to the 2nd key frag, so I WAS able to get one step closer to attunement. That place is quite confusing if you've never been there and are taking the back way - I could see anything through all the plants and was QUITE confused! All that's left for Kara attunement is Arcatraz, Old Hillsbrad and BM yay!

I need to get my guild to start running regular instances for a while. I think some of our almost 70s would appreciate our help.

In the meantime - I've been leveling my Rogue Katryona (28 now) and my Priest Silverthorne (32) but more importantly or rather more FUN... their professions! Katryona is a Miner/Engineer, and Silverthorne is a Tailor/Enchanter. My problem... They are both basically at 225 in their respective crafts... and they can't advance to the next level (up to 300) until they are 35. D'oh! I need to get them leveled! As a side note on rogues and druids... IF I were to advocate giving cat-form more rogue-like abilities - VANISH would be my number one request. Somebody was saying Pick Locks (?!?!?!) but uhmm..... that'd be a talented kitty I must say. Vanish I could live with. I LOVE it!

About Engineering...
I like goggles and bombs.
For a decent guide from 1-375 if you are powerlevelling Engineering - TenTonHammer has a great guide. However I will have you know that Katryona isn't following that guide because she is having WAY too much fun using her Advanced Target Dummies and wearing pretty much useless Fire Goggles because they look cool... along with all the other fun bombs and toys that come with Engineering.

Finally, I can't seem to get WoWArmory to work for me lately. That also means Warcrafter won't sync my data NOW (I'm a bit obsessive) which makes me sad. I DID get to the Armory earlier today, and I noticed something funny. In the bottom left where it says "Last updated" it said "Last Updated: January 16, 1970" Wow! That's a LONG time since it was updated!! I have a screenshot at work - and I WILL post it to prove it.

I am ANTI Gold Selling

In the World of Warcraft, Gold is a WONDERFUL thing. It is shiny. It makes me happy. I like it. I have to spend LOTS for even prettier purples and shiny enchantments for those purples.

It gets expensive. What?? 5000g for an epic flier? Almost 5000g to get five tabs in your guild bank? How in the world (of warcraft) can I afford that!?

Maybe I should spend some REAL money for FAKE money...

BAD IDEA. Don't do it. NoGold.org has a great write up of why gold selling is bad.

I personally have never considered buying gold. Was it a pain in the butt to get the five grand required for epic flight? Yes. Was it frustrating? At times, yes, which is even more annoying because this is supposed to be a GAME. Was it worth it? YES! Why? The time spent doing dailies, farming clefthoof and knothide leather, motes, etc etc actually was a lot of fun as long as I made it fun. AND now that I have the epic flight - those dailies that were a grind are actually a LOT more fun with epic flight. So yeah, it was a pain, but it was worth it.

Which brings me back to buying FAKE money, with REAL money. That doesn't make much sense. I mean would you go out and spend a hundred bucks to get 1,000,000 dollars for your Monopoly game? Of course not!

Now if there were a way to LEGALLY sell that fake money for REAL money... I'd be all over that. But it's not legal. You signed the TOS so please have some integrity and keep your word.

Blizzard over the years has been kind of quiet about the issue at first, but now they are much more active about it. Good for them I say!

Thanks to BBR for giving me something to write about today - his article is better. Go read it.

Best Comic Ever

Seriously.

As a Feral Druid I must say...

Best. Comic. Ever!

Thanks to a post by BBR at Random Ravings of Warcraft, I was able to spend WAY too much time reading Goblins! then further research made me spend WAY too much time reading webcomics. And so I finally found Dark Legacy.

Woops. I'd better log in and see how my guild is doing.

o.O


(Seriously though - I LOVE ALL Droods!)

Druid Army Fun

I leveled Treesoul to level 6 yesterday while watching "Pride and Prejudice" with my wife. (Very girly show... but quite silly and I actually did enjoy watching it so I couldn't do dailies, but I COULD do low level Night Elf Quests!).

When I got to level 5 I had a whispered conversation with a random person that went something like this:

Random Nelf - "Hey can I join your guild?"

Treesoul - "Are you a druid?"

RN - "no I'm a hunter"

Treesoul - "If you are a hunter why would you want to be a part of the Druid Army?"

RN - "Oh, um, nevermind then"

Really there isn't much point in other people joining this silly little guild. At least in its current status with nobody in it but my 2 Druid alts and a few guildies never-played Druid alts...

BUT - was I being rude? I thought it was kind of funny, but on reflection maybe I was being rude.

What do YOU think?

Blog Azeroth: How did you come up with your character names?

I'm very bad at keeping up with the Blog Azeroth Shared Topics. But I don't mind too much because I'll miss some here and there, and do some of the others. That's what works for me and I'm sticking to it.

So how did I come up with my characters names? Sit back and get ready for a big entry - not because my reasons are deep, but because I have a lot of Alts! But for the purposes of this shared topic, I will mostly constrain my explanations to my main server of Dragonmaw

Early Original Names:

Tigersoul - My Main, 70, druid, my favorite character name I am using. WAY back before I was even in High School, I created a group of adventurers who I was going to write books and/or video games about. I drew pictures of them, and even created and used them at the Inn of the Weary Traveler, a WBS RP Chat room. Tigersoul was NOT, however, the lead character in these adventures, rather the best friend and right-hand-man (or maybe left) of the main character. But since you can't have titles like General or Warlord in WoW names, and simple names like "Blade" are never available, my major character name that I use almost everywhere on the web was unusable. So Tigersoul became my main. I like Tigers, and this character had a special affinity for animals and especially characteristics of a Tiger. So a druid fits perfectly eh? I actually have a Tigersoul Rogue, Hunter, and Warrior throughout various servers, but my Druid is the REAL Tigersoul.

Silverthorne - Human Priest, lvl 31 - Silverthorne also came from the same group as Tigersoul - he was the noble-born patron and sometimes helper of the group. He was probably more a mage than a healer... but oh well, my guild needs more Priests so there you have it! Interestingly, there is a high level Silverthorn on my server, so occasionally I get high level items mistakenly mailed to me. I always mail it back because no way am I going to keep something not meant for me. (Grateful people have sent me money even though it wasn't expected! Nice!)

Katryona - Human Rogue, lvl 24 - I have a degree in Russian, we were considering naming our daughter this, but decided not to. Still, it fits my idea for this sexy dangerous spy/assassin/rogue. Engineering is fun too, so I'm looking forward to getting her closer to endgame!

Later Names derived from Tigersoul aka "The Soul Clan":

Soulsword - Human Warrior, lvl 46 - Plate wearing sword wielding member of the Soul Clan, Adopted of course since the only born members of this family are Night elves... So pretty simple deduction as to why he's Soul-Sword.

Soulfist - Draenei Shaman, lvl 23 - My first main on my first server was a Tauren Shammy named Bullfist. Some of my guild from there moved over to Dragonmaw with me, so Soulfist was born when I had a hankerin' to roll an Enhancement Shammy. I love dual wielding magic casting totem dropping shammies! (Unfortunately, I DO like cows more than blue skinned demon-like things... but for some crazy reason which I'll never understand, the honorable, spiritual, and not very violent Tauren are Horde) So Bullfist transformed into Soulfist.

Soulspark - Draenei Mage, lvl 13 - Even though mages don't really have any electrical type powers that I know of... I liked Soulspark more than Soulfire or Soulflame... so there you have it. She's kinda spunky.

Angelsoul - Night Elf Hunter, lvl 14 - Simple mix of guild name "Angels of Wrath" incorporated into the Soul clan. I like the hunter class, but for some reason I'm having a bit of a problem with her.

Moonsoul - Night Elf Druid, lvl 8 - Founding member and current acting guild leader of the Druid Army. He's a Balance Druid, (or WILL be rather - 100% no changes!) and Tigersoul's younger brother. Moonkin all the time in the future... so his name will make a lot more sense then!

Treesoul - Night Elf Druid, lvl 2 - Officer of the Druid Army, she's a bit slow right now... and isn't anywhere NEAR the tree-form that is her namesake. Oh well. She's patient.

Silversoul - Dwarf Pally, lvl 8 - My kids wanted me to create this one for them, but I don't particularly like playing him too much... We'll see. Mix of my priest's name and the Soul clan. Only non-elf that has the soul at the end too.. woops.