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.