It's Like I'm Doing Arenas In A Movie Theater.

"I'm sorry I didn't see that guy attacking us... my monitor is too big. I had to look way over there to the right."

That's basically something I had to say the other day. See my wonderful wife Rytes decided that because I'm one of the most handsome men on the planet, not to mention an awesome dad, I deserve something nice for Christmas. So just as the snow was starting to come down here in Portland I got a ride to a store and brought home a 24' widescreen monitor. Now I know there are some people who have larger, I could have bought a larger one, but for the price and features they didn't have what I was looking for. I'm glad I didn't though because honestly if this were any bigger, it would be too big.

The first couple of days that I sat down in front of this monster, the glow being bright enough to light the room behind me, I actually had trouble playing WoW. Not just because my eyes kind of hurt due to not having adjusted to so much... stuff... being in front of me, but because now everything is in a different spot. The fine muscle memory I had developed for moving the mouse to click things like my bags or certain spells was useless. I also had to turn up the sensitivity of my mouse so that it didn't require large sweeping motions to move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other. The biggest problem was that the health bars, minimap, and chat logs were all spread out. Before on my 17" monitor I could fix my eyes to the center of the screen and basically see everything at once... now I have to actually look around the screen. It might sound like a pain but after a couple of days I'm used to it, my eyes no longer hurt and my clicking skills are back... besides... it's worth it... it's 24" widescreen.

WoW business has been the usual, running heroics to gear up, except now a guildmate of mine, Lilim, has reached level 80 on his Death Knight. We've been running them together and he's doing great, especially since he's cruising around in quest greens and blues. Then we got bored and decided to start a 2v2 arena team... this has been interesting to say the least.

Our first couple of matches we were completely destroyed within a minute. Usually everyone would target me being the clothie and with the difficulty of kiting two characters, especially like a warlock/pally or rogue/hunter combo, things didn't work out well. I got fed up and decided to leave behind the badge gear I was rocking, drop around 1800g and buy the mats for a full Frostsavage set. I'm convinced that tailoring is punishment as well, because I only gained 9 skill points off using all this stuff. This is what 1800g in tailoring mats looks like (plus a few extras I didn't feel like moving out of the picture).

Using this set I've lots a LOT of haste, about 2k int, and 200 spellpower. I did however gain 2.5k health, 300 resilience, and around 9% crit. I've got to say I am really disappointed that it doesn't look cooler. In fact most of the high end cloth gear seems to have basically the same look as random quest rewards. I'm sure part of it is because I'm Undead and so everything is tattered and has bones sticking out, but I I mean come on... where are my crazy looking outfits... I want some spikey shoulders... even if casters have no use for spikes.

A respec was also required. The first few matches I was rocking my pure 71 point frost build, which I destroy 5-mans and heroics with, but I needed to dip into arcane. I took out some points in improved water elemental, improved blizzard, and I don't remember what else. I then did the standard frost pvp build which took me down into the arcane tree to get counterspell with the 4 second silence. I then had to redo my keybindings which I'm still getting used to and has honestly cost us a couple of matches (WHERE THE HELL IS MY WATER ELEMENTAL!? DOH! THAT'S ICY VEINS NOT COLD SNAP!).

So forget the theorycrafting behind the frost mage/DK combo. It just doesn't work out the way people think. We are two dps classes going up against combos that make much more sense. Basically every fight starts with both of the opponents charging at me, I don't care if it's a warrior and a holy priest, even the priest is smiting me. This left me running, blowing my CD's and basically trying to stay alive for very long, which I ended up failing at. They would ignore Lilim and whatever death knighty stuff he was doing and focus completely on me.

Now it's not as if either of us are new to PvP. We've both been PvPing since before there was an honor system... we've just never done arenas. It also didn't help that Lilim was playing a Death Knight, which means less play time than any other class he's had and was wearing those quest reward items I mentioned earlier. Gear was an obvious problem, especially since I could identify some of the pieces our opponents were using... they were armed to the teeth.

We were getting frustrated with our losing streak, trying to figure out what we were doing wrong aside from our class combo not being optimal. We did come up against a bunch of gimmick teams, for instance we got completely destroyed by two tree druids and their army of little trees... some combos we couldn't figure out how to handle... especially a certain priest/hunter combo we kept facing.

As we sat complaining about how we've PvP'd for years and world PvP being much different from arenas we began for formulate a strategy that worked for us. Both of us being more than seasoned PvP veterans who can hold their own against most opponents we began turning every match into two 1v1 matches instead of a 2v2. We would select our targets, I'd use my tricks to kite and otherwise incapacitate one of them while he finished off the other, then we had a 2v1. It may seem like basic strategy to seasoned arena veterans but to the two of us it was a new concept. We had completely re-worked our thinking of the fights.

After about 12 fights with scattered wins, we began performing much better. Even against teams we had already faced who had destroyed us... like the priest/hunter duo. I was surprised at how well we did in some cases. There was a druid/warrior combo which we completely wrecked every time we faced them. I would fly my warrior kite, keep him away from Lilim while I helped counterspell and spellsteal the druid... then we'd finish the warrior. The best match was when we faced another frost mage/DK team. The mage and I died first having basically killed each other with the help of our DK partners, then it was left to Lilim and the other DK. Lilim was a small percentage of health above the other DK and killed him, at which point the DK turned into his zombie thing... and ended up killing Lilim. That's when my teammate came back as his zombie and ended up winning us the match with 12% health if I remember correctly. After that match every time we faced that combo they would isntantly leave the arena once they realized who we were.

As it stands now we're on a mission to get Lilim some gear, get our rogue Stiletto to 80 for 3v3's, and keep working on our arena skills. It was nice to see an obvious improvement over the course of 30 or so matches. It's like leveling up but without an xp bar. I'm completely addicted to arenas and I can't see myself ever not doing them in the future... especially if I keep getting better.

Oh and I little shout out to Besnell, the 80 mage on The Venture Co who messaged me in game after reading my blog. Hope work wasn't too boring and sorry I didn't post this earlier... you could have had something to read.

The Blue Proto-Drake... and other less awesome things.

It's been a busy week of playing WoW. Chopping away at the heroics and saving my emblems has gotten me some nice purple upgrades. I've noticed an improvement in my performance since doing so, despite some of them only being slight upgrades. I guess I just need to get over the idea of huge gear upgrades and realize it's only going to come in small percentages at this point.

My guild had another get together last week. A nice potluck dinner which pretty much ended up being a hot wing buffet with homemade fudge on the side. I'm not complaining though, I took home enough food to feed myself for three days. As always it's awesome getting together with people in real life and talking about WoW. You get to see people actually get excited instead of exclamation points being tossed behind what they say.

The biggest day I've had so far has been today. I was running heroic UP, totally not even thinking about anything but the threat and dps meters when suddenly the blue proto-drake dropped. I got excited for a moment, but I have notoriously bad luck when it comes to rolls so I just hit need and looked away. Next thing I know I'm the proud owner of one of the coolest looking mounts in the game... not only that but one of the rarest. This is especially cool considering I was complaining a few days before about how the epic flyers you buy in SMV don't come in blue and I like keeping with my whole frost theme. Everyone is jealous and I'm the coolest kid on the block now.


I also managed to finally reach exhalted with Kirin Tor, which could have happened much sooner if I hadn't switched back and forth between them and Wyrmrest. I bought the epic robe from the KT vendor, which should suit me fine until I get tailoring up to make my Ebonweave or I happen to score an instance epic. Now only about 20k rep to go before I hit exhalted with Wyrmrest... sigh.

The funniest thing that happened today was when myself and Redstone (guildmember/GM of the guild) headed into Ironforge to get red winter clothes pattern for me. Before we ran in I took off all my gear, sticking it in my backpack, having heard that both it will prevent item damage and not... I figured might as well give it a shot. What I didn't realize was that doing this had filled my bag compeltely. When I got the vendor I was first confused by the offer of the Metzen quest, which I had already done... so we died.

Our second trip in was more amusing. Upon coming back to life I was attacked by guards, I ice blocked, opened the vendor, opened my bag... then I clicked an item in my bag, the very nice 81+ spell power ones to equip them and free up a slot. I then bought the recipe and died soon after. Then I realized that I hadn't equiped the pants, I had sold them to the vendor. So we ran back in.

The third and final trip I repeated the above process except I bought my pants back and began blinking towards the door. Two guards cornered me, I killed them and then restored myself to full health and mana. While I was doing this Redstone informed me that a level 13 warlock had attacked him on our previous run and had just rezed. I couldn't resist. I ran back in, set a single frostbolt at the warlock and dropped him. Then I was killed by everyone standing around.

All in all it was a pretty awesome day in WoW.

Getting A Bit Discouraged.

I'm getting to that point. The point when you're max level and the only thing to do is grind for rep and gear. The point where you only see improvement in tiny increments instead of leaps and bounds as you level and obtain new spell ranks and loads of available gear. The point where the grass on the other side of every fence is looking a bit greener.

I see the videos and hear the stories of different classes soloing old school raids and bosses, meanwhile I have to find groups for mobs that are immune to my frost snares that are in the low 70's. I see hunters and DK's doing AoE pulls that rival and sometimes surpass my own. In heroics I often fall behind other classes in the DPS ranks. While gear is a factor it seems to be much more than that.

I've played many different classes and each seemed to have their own "thing". Those one or two things that made them stick out and seem to perform amazingly in various situations. As a class who is designed to do raw DPS and nothing else it stings a bit to see other classes right along side me while still retaining versatility.

I'm not asking for nerfs to be dished out to other classes and I'm not crying for buffs for my own. I'm not giving up playing a mage and I'm not switching to an alt. I'm just saying that sometimes it feels like I'm a one trick pony whose trick isn't as impressive as the others.

Funeral - Savior of The Meek

It's normally against my gaming style, not to mention the nature of my in game character, to really care about the NPC's I deal with in the game. I traditionally take a mercenary approach to things, pay me to perform a service of collecting something or killing your enemies and I'll get the job done. As a Forsaken mage wielding the power of the elements at my finger tips the petty squabbles of the scattered tribes I interact with are below me... all except those poor little Oracles.

As I ran around Sholazar Basin attempting to free the captured Oracles I was actually mad. These little guys are the most pathetic and adorable creatures I've come across. My heart was almost broken every time I was unable to rescue on of them from their horrible fate. The cries of pain and sadness coming from them was enough to get a few beats from my black rotting heart.

I don't understand it either little guy... no you didn't do anything bad. Don't worry, the scary corpse of a mage is here to save you.

Aside from carrying out my own Bronson-esque style revenge on those jerks hurting the Oracles I've been busy getting rep. I had two days of failed heroics, which was made worse by the fact that it made me unable to complete the dailies which would have put me a good deal closer to exhalted with the Kirin Tor. Finally today I landed in a great group and we stormed through Utgarde Pinnacle, Drak, and HoL. The Emblems of Heroism are stacking up and I'm on my way to getting something other than Northrend quest rewards to wear.

After the heroics my guild teamed up with another small guild and we pulled off a ten man Kara run. Full clear in a little over an hour. No one got any upgrades but we mainly went because a large majority of people had never even been inside. I've got to say it was pretty cool.

Other than rep and emblems it's all about saving every last copper I can to finally get my epic flying. I also need to level up tailoring so I can use the epic speed magic carpet. I'm using the regular one that Rytes bought for me now and there is no way I could go back to flying on a dragon or some weird scorpid-lion... the magic carpet is where it's at.

Almost 80... Like, Really Almost.

There it is. Level 80 sitting just ahead, a simple 129xp before I reach it. I was going to level last night before I went to bed but I decided not to. I want to do something interesting for this, my final ding (until we get another expansion or something anyway). The timing just didn't feel right, there weren't any guild members online and honestly I didn't want level 80 to come off of some random Scourge mob. The problem is that I can't think of how I want to ding 80.

My first thought was doing it by running through the gates of an Alliance city, discovering the territory and leveling. Then I remembered that I've already discovered the major cities in the Black War Bear mount raid. Scratch that. There were suggestions about timing the level with an achievement for a super double ding, but the reality is that I couldn't time that right now if I wanted, basically anything is going to cause me to level.

At this point it looks like I'm going to just head to Icecrown and fly as high as I can. Once I've reach the top of the sky I'll point myself towards the Scourge armies and start flying. Upon reaching the back corners of the Lich King's domain I'll ding level 80 and hopefully get a nice screenshot to go along with it.

If anyone reads this and has a suggestion you've got about four hours before I long on and do it. Give me an idea, please...

For Once I'm A Hero Instead of An Errand Boy.

The desire for lore and the urge to level have always pulled me apart in WoW. I completely enjoy the deeper parts of the lore to the point that I've spent hours clicking through WoWWiki discovering the story lines of characters around the world. My problem is that while questing I tend to focus on experience gain and reaching the next level, tending to just skim or sometimes entirely skip the quest text in an attempt to finish as soon as possible. In the past I've tried to make an effort to slow down but it doesn't work for me. Perhaps it's because a majority of the quests don't feel important to me, I just feel like I'm running an errand. Working a job to simply obtain a paycheck at the end of the week, the paycheck in this case being experience points.

That has changed somewhat with the release of Wrath. I've actually encountered a couple of quests that drew me in and made me feel like I was participating in something beyond killing a set number of mobs. Granted, many of these quests I've enjoyed were the same setup as before, but they did it in an interesting way. One is a quest where you have to defend an hourglass, only your future self shows up and helps you out. The first thing I thought of when I saw my future self was that it sucks I don't have better gear in the future. I'd hate to think I was still wearing the same stuff.

The best part of this quest is that after you've completed it your future self sends you a few whispers. It's funny for me to see that Blizzard acknowledged that the "I don't have better gear in the future" thought would be one of the first to go through players heads.

The real gem started with the completion of the Dragonblight quests when my screen darkened and I was shown the Wrathgate cinematic. I've seen it before, even posted about it, but having it actually be a part of the game was awesome. Following that I was informed that my home city had been overrun. It was the first time I had an actual emotional reaction to a quest. The home city of my race, my people, the place where I banked and used the auction house was now gone. Not only was it gone but I was tasked with helping reclaim it. It's one of the few times in WoW were I was put in a position of being an actual hero, I had a purpose beyond collecting or killing... the future of the Forsaken was in my hands.


As I stood before Varimathras I knew that Wrath was different. That the future of The Horde and The Alliance would never be the same. In the life of the character Funeral, this was an epic moment.

Riding In Style And Death To The Alliance.

Faced with shoddy internet service in Alaska and a crazy work schedule, Rytes managed to hit level 70. After which we headed out and got her a flying mount. We spent about an hour just flying around Outlands and exploring. We made the mistake of accidentally flying over an Alliance town which got us shot out of the sky and having to make a complicated corpse run. Other than that things went pretty smoothly. During the week I reached 77 and bought the cold weather flying skill. It's been really nice being able to avoid the pesky mobs I don't feel like bothering with and just go to where I need. It's also made exploration a bit easier.

As I was looking through my achievements I noticed that I hadn't earned the ones for completing the set number of quests in Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra despite having done every quest I came across. I knew I had to be missing some central hubs somewhere so I set out flying and sure enough I found them. Somehow I missed the entire D.E.H.T.A encampment in the Tundra and the ice islands off the coast of Howling Fjord. I finished up the tundra and have been working on finishing up the last twenty quests I need for the Fjord (man... 20 quests).

Yesterday afternoon as I was about to go to bed (my wife and I are night people and have both worked night shifts for years) I signed on my bank alt to check my auctions. As I was about to sign off I saw someone in trade chat say they were looking for a couple more people for a raid on the Alliance leaders. Figuring it would probably fall apart I told myself it wouldn't hurt to stay on for another half hour and see how it turned out. Well, it turned out that this PUG actually did clear all of the Alliance bosses and now I've got an awesome Black War Bear to ride around on, not to mention another five achievements checked off the list.

We hit Ironforge first and I was assigned to the one group tasked with killing and keeping the Alliance busy. Everything went off without a hitch at all four bosses except Stormwind, which was because half of us got left behind on the tram and so there was a wipe. Once we all rezed and pulled him things went smoothly.

The funniest part of the day is I have an addon that keeps track of my kos list. If I add someone to the list and they come on my screen the addon displays their name and the reason I've added them to the list. Well two days ago I got jumped by a pally while I was out questing. When I rezed and came back we literally had a five minute fight, which I won... but five minutes of 1v1 combat is crazy. We each had to use every trick in the book, but luckily I was better than him =). So as I'm standing in the doorway of the king of Stormwind there are no Alliance in view, but the group hunter says he sees some dots heading out way. Suddenly my addon displays "*pallys name* - The pally I fought for 5 minutes". What are the odds? Needless to say he died again.

We did Exodar last and someone noted that World Defense was saying that Silvermoon was under attack. As soon as we downed the space goat leader I opened a port to SM and all forty of us stormed through completely ruining the Alliance counter-raid. After that we made an ill-fated attempted at Sunwell, which was fun, but unsuccessful. Not bad for PUGin' it though.

OMG I'm WoW Famous!

I was listening to the newest episode of the WoW Insider podcast and before the interview with Felicia Day the host started reading some listener emails. The second one read is from me! Yes, not only did my guild get to hear a nice shout out from their favorite mage, but possibly people living in Portland who may listen will get a heads up about our guild.

In WoW I dropped herbalism for skinning. My herbing skill has been sitting at 130 since I was around level 40 and I just didn't have it in me to go back and level it up. Instead I ended up leveling skinning from 0-450 in about an hour and a half. It was a good idea. With the amount of things I can pull and bring down with blizzard I'm making some nice change in the AH on Borean Leather and managing to supply one of our guild leatherworker's with some mats.

An interesting thing was that in the first twenty minutes outside of Warsong Hold I managed to get four Arctic Fur. I haven't gotten any since then. It does confuse me a bit why with such a low drop rate these are only selling for about the same price as a stack of Borean Leather. I'm debating on if I should stop selling them and see if their market value increases as fewer people are leveling/farming leather or if it will drop because there are more of them about. Choices, choices.

Zuramat The Annoyanator

The Violet Hold is driving me insane. I really enjoy the instance for the most part, having the same general style as BM, but it's really getting old that if my PUG wipes we've got to reset and do the whole thing from the beginning. It's not that I'm getting myself in bad groups or anything, perhaps a few people have been slightly under-leveled, but it's nothing we shouldn't be able to compensate for. The main reason I've yet to complete The Violet Hold is because of this jerk right here:

His name is Zuramat The Obliterator and he deserves that name. I've had a constant string of bad luck involving this guy. The first problem is that while in The Violet Hold you're randomly assigned some bosses to fight... we'll I've "randomly" had to encounter this guy every single time. The reason this guy is so tough is that he spawns these void orb things which AoE everyone in the party every single second. The only way to stop them is that one person in the party get a debuff which allows them to see the creatures holding the voids and kill them. That debuff lasts 15 seconds. Now the icing on the cake here is that not only have I had to deal with this fellow every time but that the debuff has gone to the healer in our group every time as well... which leads to us wiping.

If I got myself into some groups with higher level folks I'm sure we could DPS him down regardless of the AoE, but now it's a matter of principle. He must be destroyed.

Other than that I'm level 75 and kind of burnt on questing. I've done most of everything in the Tundra and the Fjord and am now settled in Dragonblight. Doing the instances instead of questing has slowed my progress but it's a nice change of pace. Hopefully my wife gets online tonight in Alaska and I can quest with her to get her caught up.

How WoW Made Me Love My Wife.

Since the release of Wrath playing WoW just hasn't been the same. The quests in Northrend are great, I've made great progress, the rewards are also pretty good, but I haven't been satisfied. The reason is that I've been playing alone. My wife, the Rytes/Rites to my Funeral, the heals to my dps, has been away in Alaska for work. The internet connection there is so bad WoW has pretty much been unplayable for her, which means I've been going at it alone.

At first it was a nice break to only worry about my quest objectives or where I wanted to go. There was freedom in being a lone wolf. Once I painfully adjusted to not having a priest with me all the time I was doing well and working my way up to 80. Then things just got lonely. Everyone in the guild was off doing different things, each little group of them leveling up and I was alone. I missed my wife.

Today she was actually able to log in and play for the first time since she left. It was the most fun I've had playing WoW since she has been gone. Yes, I was just helping her redo all the quests I've already completed but somehow it was different than before, I had a real understanding of why I liked playing this game with her to begin with... healz. =)

Made it to 70, gotta keep on trucking.

So much finished in so little time. Rytes left for Alaska so I haven't had much to do except hang out with our son and play WoW. I finally got my mage to 70, which was completely unexpected. It actually happened inside Ramparts, I was running some people through and didn't eve notice I was close to leveling and suddenly the achievement popped up. From there I headed out and got my flying mount, which is kind of disappointing. Not only because my gold savings took a significant hit, but because now I'll mostly be in Northrend where I can't use the mount anyway. I could have skipped buying it but it's one of those things you just HAVE to do when you hit 70.

Northrend is awesome and Howling Fjord is by far my favorite out of the two new starting areas. For the first time in nearly forever I'm actually reading the quests and getting into the story. Being on the front lines with my fellow Forsaken is great, I love getting to see the continuation of the whole new plague storyline that started way back in Brill.

I ended up getting invited to take a stab at Utgarde Keep about thirty minutes after I hit level 70. We ended up wiping about ten times, but that was mostly due to random puggers rotating through our group. None of us had ever been inside the instance before and had NO idea what the boss strategies were. While it was frustrating it was actually pretty cool. A nice change from knowing everything like the back of my hand, knowing when to stand where and so on. Having to actually learn the fights was fun, despite 15 gold in repair costs.

It is strange and kind of frustrating hitting 70 as the expansion comes out. Everything I've known or read about being 70, the rep grinds, the gear I should go for, the dailies... it's all changed for the most part. It's just ten more levels before I get to settle in and fine tune my character. I also have to start playing my wife's character so it doesn't end up too far behind, I hope I'm good at healing.

In My Hands Is The Future of My Social Life...

It is mine! Yesssss! Miiiiiiine! Well, mine and a lot of other peoples. At first I was going to wait for the weekend or the following week to get my hands on WotLK, I figured I'd skip all the insanity and just be able to work my way through everything without being mobbed by people. Then last night the bug got me. I knew there were people out there about to head home with the expansion. Even the day before that I was running into people in 7-11's near my house looking for it because they read on WoW Insider that they were being sold early.

So shortly after midnight I began driving all over town looking for a copy with no luck. Everywhere was sold out or hadn't received their shipments yet. Finally I found a Walmart (ewww I know, trust me, I HATE Walmart) which was not open at midnight and opened at 7am. I knew that was my shot, they wouldn't be sold out and most people wouldn't be sitting outside at 7 am trying to get a copy. I headed up there and picked up two copies, one for me and one for Rytes.

We got home and installed and rolled up a couple of Death Knights. Having read almost nothing about DK's we still aren't used to the plays style, talents, or really where we're going with the classes. What I can say is that the DK starting area is amazing. It's simply brutal. At one point when we were instructed to kill peasants who screamed for mercy my wife commented that "she didn't like it"... which is awesome. Not that she wasn't enjoying playing, but that quest was just a bit too much for her.

We'll be playing a bit more today, but things need to get finished as she boards a plane for Alaska tomorrow at 3 pm. She'll be gone for three months for work and I'll be home alone with our son who is one year old. I'm either going to go insane from being lonely or I'm going to end up with 10 or so level 80's in all epics. We'll see.

What was funny is that during my search for WotLK I found myself attempting to recruit Portland locals for our guild. I explained to the guy working at Walmart that we have a good guild of all local people, gave him the server and our name. We'll see if word spreads, we need to get some more members... especially now that we're losing our main healer to the RL Northrend (Alaska) for an unknown period of time until she gets decent internet access and her computer shipped up there.

I'm going to miss you Ashley.

Portland Pot Stickers & UBRS

I love my guild, I really do. It's not because we've worked our way through end game content, it's not that we have a killer arena team, it's because we do things like get together in real life and make pot stickers. We did that last night and it was a really good time. Not only did everyone get to meet three of our newer guild members but we also made enough pot stickers to take home that I'll be able to survive off them while my wife is in Alaska. They are really good, but I haven't decided if that's because of the recipe or that our main tank cooked them well... I'll chalk it up to a group effort =).

What I like best about this guild is that everyone is cool in their own way. We're all very different to one degree or another, be it lifestyle or profession, but this one common interest and physical location brings together this group of people who spend hours laughing and talking.

As the party started to wind down it was decided that we should all run something together when we each got home. We decided on UBRS because it would hold ten people and the level range allowed for everyone to come along. We then realized that we didn't actually have the key to UBRS so we'd have to do LBRS first and get me the final gem I needed for the Seal of Ascension quest (because I already had the three other pieces).

What this process requires is that one person obtains four BoP items from inside LBRS, then takes them to an NPC inside the instance. At that point you must go to Dustwallow and beat up a dragon, place one of the pieces the NPC gives you on the ground, then use this orb he gives you to mind control the dragon and breathe fire on the item you've placed on the ground. We had a little bit of a problem here because when I finally got the dragon mind controlled there was no pet bar on my screen, meaning I couldn't breathe the fire. We tried again after I adjusted my UI and still no pet bar, finally I just had to disable all of my addons and gave it a shot. I got the dragon MC'd, breathed the fire but it didn't complete the quest. With only one charge left on the orb I was a bit worried and we couldn't figure out what was going wrong until I realized the process couldn't be completed if you were in a raid group... DOH!

With that all cleared up and the key (actually a ring) to UBRS in my inventory, the doors opened and we headed inside. Our full ten man raid group had everyone who was at the pot sticker party. Even our two level 45's who kept Rytes busy with rezing and the rest of us on our toes with their huge circle of aggro. As we got further through UBRS we talked on vent and and were all having a good time. At around 1am we started losing people due to the physical need for sleep. We ended up downing General Drakkisath with a six person group.

Hat's off to Redstone for tanking an instance he's never stepped foot inside. I'm looking forward to the next guild meet up (maybe bowling?) and now that we're all hitting the same level range, working our way through the BC and Wrath content coming our way.

Dual Boxing And Bound For Alaska.

My mage is currently sitting at level 65, about 150k xp from hitting 66. I easily could have leveled but Rytes and I have been a bit distracted. A couple of days ago we were running Strat with our guild, cleared everything up to the very end of the Scarlet side when we wiped without a soulstone. Not a big deal until we realized that there had been a full respawn. There was no way we were going to clear everything again just to kill the last boss.

Since then everyone has seemed a little burnt and not actually played much, except me. Last night I took the plunge and finally took the time to setup a dual box setup. There have been many times I've had Rytes auto follow me while I have her character running in my second monitor, but this is a real dual box setup. When I hit a key it registers to both characters, that kind of thing. It's pretty intense.

I rolled a double warlock setup, Firstlock and Secondlock. It took me about three hours to get my script working properly but now it's pretty much without flaw. I'm looking forward to leveling them with the RAF bonus. I'll be posting more about that as things get more interesting, although I can already say that I could easily see myself being a 5-boxer, if the accounts didn't cost so much.

In real life news my wife (Rytes) has received an offer to take a contract job at a hospital in the middle of Alaska. This means good money, but it also means that she'll be gone for 13 weeks. Gone for 13 weeks in the middle of Alaska... during the winter. Hopefully she will get internet access setup and be playing WoW again once she arrives. It will probably end up being our primary method of communication since our cell phone service doesn't work where she is going. I will probably end up going there with our son after she is settled. I can't really imagine us being apart for that long and her not seeing the baby. She just needs to go test the waters to see how much winter gear we must bring for our son to not freeze =).

Busy WoW Weekend With Much Accomplished.

Hallow's End is coming to a close and I'm honestly kind of glad. It's not that I didn't enjoy myself, it's just that I think I'd get sick of any holiday that lasted for two weeks. The tedium of putting out fires in Brill got to the point that I dreaded doing it, but yet I couldn't turn down the experience and the chance of a nifty gift. I also grew to hate the speech that Ol' Headless gave every time he set the town ablaze.

One thing I'm happy about is that Rytes and I managed to complete every one of the Hallow's End achievements aside from collecting all the masks. In the end I needed four more masks, which kind of bugs me, but there is always next year. The awesome part is that unless Blizzard is playing a trick on us we will get the title reward from the achievements. "The Hallowed" alongside the name Funeral and Rytes is going to be great.

We also got our hands on the "Jenkins" title this weekend, which we turned off before heading back into town. There is just something about that title that rubs me the wrong way. When I see someone sporting it I try to avoid them. It could be that I've just seen the original video so many times it annoys me, I'm not really sure.

Our static four man group of guildies also went and got our hands on the two pets from LBRS, which is a nice addition to our collections. It's funny that it wasn't until the achievements came out that I ever did those quests, but hey the pet collecting achievement combined with the LBRS completion achievement were too much to pass up.

As it stands now there is ten days until WotLK comes out. I'm sitting 1/3 of the way through level 64. Not sure if I'll make it to 70 before release or not but we'll see. Not that it really matters as I don't have a copy of the expansion on reserve but it's just a personal goal of mine. The question is really if I'll continue to push past 70 on Funeral or roll a Death Knight and get him leveled up.

Fun Times Doing Forgotten Content.

One of the biggest things my guild wants to accomplish is completing all of the old world content. Most of us have left behind high level characters, some with years of work put into them, to join up and play with other locals. Many of us never got a chance to finish the pre-BC content, but we've all agreed we want to. We aren't concerned with the loot that drops or even the new achievements, just that we want to taste every flavor of this game that has helped create virtual and real life friendships.

With myself and Rytes (my wife) hitting level 60 this weekend we wanted to start things off right. We headed into BRD and it took us several tried over the weekend to complete the instance. Last night would have been the end except that upon reaching The Lyceum and making it to the braziers Rytes and I noticed that our two guildies lost connection. They called our house a few minutes later to tell us their connection had died and Comcast reported there was an outage in their area and they were going to bed.

Tonight we picked it back up and dove back in. We had our strats down and nothing really posed a problem. It was pretty cool to see the entire instance and it really got us excited about getting through more of the forgotten content.

We even formed up a Zul'Gurub raid but only made it to Bloodlord Mandokir before our main tank had to go. Not bad considering that we only had two 70's, three 60's and the ten people in their mid-50's. I don't think any of the people in our guild had ever actually seen ZG before so it was awesome despite our many (yes many) wipes.

Other than that I've been hitting Outlands and enjoying the epic greens. It's crazy how much of a difference they are making when I do head back into Azeroth. I'm glad that Rytes is getting into the Outland content and we're actually reading the quest lines instead of hammering out way through to level. All in all it's been a fun couple of days in WoW.

WoW Is An Escape.

There is no doubt that in some form WoW is an escape mechanism. We use this game to get away from some part of our life that we don't like. That doesn't mean that we're running from relationships or real life responsibilities. It just means that WoW can be a way to step away from things like boredom or some things that are more serious. Last night WoW was a needed escape for me.

I received a call Thursday morning informing me that a good friend of mine had died in his sleep at age 38. He went out the night before, hung out with friends, came home and ate dinner. He told his fiance the food was good and that he was going to sleep on the couch. That morning she found him dead. I didn't know what to say.

He and I worked in the same bar and that means we know lots of people around town. Within an hour word had spread to everyone and there was a get together planned for 4pm that day. The bar he was working at would be closed for only those of us who were good friends of his. When I arrived there were easily 100 people inside. Half of us were in tears, the other half laughing as we thought about the good times... then we would switch roles.

After two hours I couldn't take it anymore. There was too much going on, too many memories that I couldn't sort out, too many regrets, too many questions. I started driving home and received a phone call informing me that my guild was about to run BRD and wanted to know if I could make it. I said I'd be there.

I walked in my house, sat down at the computer and spent the next few hours running through BRD with my guild. Every time the sadness crept back in my head there was something to be done, a mob to be taken down, some water to drink, a buff to re-apply. By the time we were finished I was tired and headed to bed.

Now it's a day later and the initial shock has passed, I can wrap my head around the situation. I can make plans with friends for a memorial service and so on without letting it hit me too hard. For a little bit of time during a tragedy I was able to take a breather, I was able to escape and gather myself. So people can say what they want about WoW removing you from reality, but sometimes people need it.

Stupid Achievements Distracting Me From Leveling.

The tenacious grip the achievement system has on myself and members of my guild is astounding. Normally during the prime-time we group together and try to bang out quests as fast as possible. It's all part of the rush to hit 70 before WotLK comes out and we have a lot of work to do seeing as most of us re-rolled on The Venture Co. to form this guild and we're starting from scratch.

Last night was different though. Instead of spending our valuable time earning experience and getting one step closer to end game we decided to turn back the clocks to a time when we were lower level... and a different faction. It was decided that we'd run the low level dungeons, but only the ones we hadn't yet, which meant Alliance territory dungeons, like Stockades in Stormwind.

While we stormed through Stockades and got our achievement in around four minutes it took us much longer to get there. Over an hour of running through the city, getting guard whacked, and corpse running was needed to pull it off. Now if you haven't done this let me tell you that the worst part is that the graveyard you're sent to as a Horde player is the Eastvale Logging Camp... which is practically on the border of Redridge. It's a long run... that we did about ten times.

After Stockades we did Deadmines, which was fun because I got to pull the entire ship. Then we did Gnomer which wasn't nearly as annoying as I remembered it, mainly because nothing aggro'd on us.

The plan today is for myself and Rytes to start chipping away at BG marks in preparation for our mounts at 60, which we are fast approaching. Sitting at level 56 for a day or two and letting guildies catch up goes against my usually "MORE MORE MORE!" philosophy, but it's for the best. Two levels from Outlands and our epic greens, four levels from 60 and the end of our recruit a friend triple experience bonus. Hopefully we can push through the final ten levels to 70 in the next two weeks.

It's Like Christmas For Dead People... Well Undead People Anyway.

Hallow's End is here and I've been pretty busy trying to get those achievements checked off the list. Sadly I won't be able to get the "Hallowed" title because the new characters my wife and I are playing are only level 52 at the moment. We can't exactly spend our days farming the Headless Horseman. That little disappointment aside I've been having a lot of fun.

The best part so far has been the candy buckets. Funeral and Rytes started off at level 48 and after getting all the buckets in The Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor we hit level 52. This recruit a friend bonus xp is awesome, giving us between 9300 and 10500xp for each one we did. We've been doing the dailies but haven't had a chance to check out the wickerman or do the rotten egg quest yet. We'll probably get to it tonight.

It's pretty cool running around all over the world and seeing the decorations and people populating areas that are usually ghost towns. It's a pretty massive celebration for what is essentially the Forsaken independence day, which makes me wonder why any race of Alliance would celebrate it. Heck, it doesn't even seem like the rest of the Horde would, but the Alliance? Yeah sure, I know it's your traditional "harvest festival" but let's be serious... jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, the trouble coming out of Scarlet Monastery... it's all about us Forsaken baby. Remember to thank us the next time you're gobbling up some treats.

"Greed is, for lack of a better word, good"

The latest patch has been a financial dream for me. A lot of people have been making hefty amounts of gold since the patch. Most of what I've seen are folks who realized in pre-release that inscription would be popular and would cause a staggering demand for herbs. They were smart and stockpiled the herbs and sold them. My guild mate made a 1500 gold profit in one day, that's pretty nuts, but it also took the effort of getting all the herbs. I wanted something easier.

The achievement system also provided for an increased demand in items, I'm mainly talking about vanity pets. Suddenly the non-combat pets in game are like Pokemon, everyone wants to get as many as they can. This is where I come in, as soon as I could log in I went to every horde city and bought the snakes, cockroaches, and whistles. After that I went to the neutral auction house and took a look at the market. A member of the Alliance had the same idea and was posting their pets for 15 to 20 gold. I did the same. Within an hour I had made 150 gold and by the end of the day I had made 587 gold... all from just re-selling pets.

I figured the profits would die out pretty quickly but they haven't. I'm re-stocking every few hours and selling out at 15 gold a pet. There wasn't a problem until another seller came along and undercut my prices. Now I'm all for competition, however there is a difference between competition and market sabotage. All the Alliance pets were 15-20g a piece, I was easily selling mine at the same price, then someone comes along and puts his up for 8 gold. This started a pricing war which lead to me dropping my prices to 2g for a couple of hours. I had the advantage due to being a mage and porting around to resupply. After a bit his sales stopped showing up.

Maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot by posting this, possibly inspiring other people to get in on my racket, but I like competition.

I Love The BlizzCon Polar Bear Mount.

I knew I wanted the mount from the time it was announced. The plan was to go to BlizzCon and get my hands on one, then that fell through. I still figured I'd have my shot by ordering the BlizzCon PPV on DirectTV though, but no, that too didn't pan out. Since BlizzCon I've been trying to convince myself that I didn't miss much and that listening to the audio of the panels is just as good... then I saw someone on the mount.

There I was heading to Wailing Caverns to work on fishing (damn those new achievements!) when the notice flew up that Crossroads was under attack. Nothing new there, but I figured if I joined in the fight I'd have a chance to /hug a corpse and mark off another achievement. I arrive and frostbolt a rogue, then I see this beautiful specimen go bounding past me. What distracted me more was that she was riding the BlizzCon mount. I mean how can you not love that? You've got a Murloc sitting there like a bobblehead on your dash.

As an avid pet/rarity collector in game things like this just make me think about all the items I'll never be able to get. Grrrr.

The Patch Broke My Firefly

Alright Blizzard, I can deal with the addons being screwed up. I can deal with having to respec and learn new talents. I can deal with the horrible lag and crashes on patch day. What I can not deal with is taking my favorite pet and deleting one of the coolest parts about it.

The Capture Firefly pet is my favorite. Not only am I fond of it because of the rarity and just the way it looks, but the fact that the tooltip used to say "Still flying..." a quote in reference to one of my favorite shows of all time. Now that is gone. You've removed some of the magic of this pet and it's really annoying me. Put it back, pretty please. It may seem petty or foolish, but it seriously was one of those things that made me smile every time I saw it.

Can't we just change this:

Back into this:

Not only that but it doesn't even fly anymore... just just hops along the ground on it's butt. It looks dumb now... this sucks.

Portland Guild Musings

The guild that I'm a member of consists primarily of local people (living in or around Portland Oregon). In most cases when a guild is full of people who live near one another it's a case where people who worked together or knew each other in some way decided to form a guild. Ours is different in that we didn't know each other in the real world until after joining the guild.

Since we've formed we have had a couple of meet ups and each one has been great. Last night we met at a bar and spent several hours having refreshing face to face conversations in game. We've exchanged invitations to parties, offered assistance with babysitters, and even made plans to get together for dinner. After having experienced how great it is to be a part of a guild like this I don't think I could go back to anything else. There are some unique challenges in this type of situation though, the biggest at the moment is recruitment.

Being that we are a Portland WoW guild our recruitment options are limited in many ways. For instance while other guilds can just spam the trade channel and grab whoever responds, we can't. Our success would depend on whatever small amount of people on The Venture Co. server who happen to live in Portland being online and in the Horde trade chat. Our best bet is recruiting outside of the game, which can be difficult for a few reasons.

One of those reasons is the breakdown of an online persona. Everyone takes part in creating and acting out a version of themselves online that may not reflect the real world reality. Some people are very secure in their online identity and keep close to it, the thought of then being involved with people who they will most likely encounter in the real world can cause a bit of anxiety. The people who are most comfortable with this separation of the physical and meta worlds will not be very likely to join regardless of how much fun our BBQ's are. This doesn't only apply to people who are insecure for some reason or another but to people who are just jerks. If you've spent the majority of your time in game being an abrasive jerk, insulting people, and generally being a pain in the butt you may think twice about having to face people you play with face to face.

The second tallest hurdle appears to be the discomfort of starting a new character. A lot of people don't feel like spending the money to transfer a character to our server, some have only played Alliance and couldn't transfer if they wanted. This leaves their only option being to leave behind the progress they have made on their character, the gold they've save, the rare items they've obtained and starting out as a lowbie killing animals for various parts. I myself was wary of starting all over, but once I met everyone and had a good time it's become more than worth my time. For others it may just be too much "work".

Hopefully we'll come up with some solutions for these issues or at least a way to better target people who would be willing to join our guild.

Now I'm off to read patch notes and try logging in once again.

What It Means To Be Forsaken And What Not To Do.

David Bowers over at WoW Insider posted a nifty introductory article on RPing an Undead. Reading it got me thinking about my history and current choices when it comes to roleplaying in WoW. It's safe to say that the only race which captures my interest beyond aesthetics in WoW is The Forsaken. It's a mixture of their (our?) painful history bringing about a powerful thirst for revenge as well as a desire for the destruction of all living things that really tugs at my heartstrings.

There are some that say Undead are the Horde version of Night Elves. What that implies is that people who take little interest in lore and just want a character that "looks cool" or fits into some typical fantasy archetype (although you'll encounter a lot less Undead erotic roleplaying than Night Elf). I won't sit here and deny that The Forsaken does draw in a certain type of person that tends to annoy the crap out of me. The people I'm talking about tend to be freshly out of puberty who select this race for a couple for either the hair, the fact that they are "lol zombies", and the "rocking out" dance.

First off this hair is out of control. The fact the spiked hair seems to be modeled after a member of a horrible band like Mudvayne makes it even worse. I mean come on, we're undead, soulless rotting shells of our former humanity (actually kind of like Mudvayne). I'm not sure if people realize it or not but haircuts like this and the mohawk take a lot of effort and upkeep to stay looking foolish. It's just not the kind of thing a member of The Forsaken should be concerned with. Every time I see an Undead with either one of these hairstyles I instantly dismiss them as being those kids that hang out at the mall being obnoxious and begging their parents for money to buy more stupid clothing from Hot Topic.

Then we have the "lol zombies" factor. In the past few years there has been a surge of zombie fandom. I recognize that there have been some great horror movies, of which I'm a fan, and the concept of becoming re-animated after death is pretty interesting. However having the detailed history of origins of The Forsaken reduced to someone walking around saying "braaaaaaains" gets on my nerves. I'm not the RP/lore police by any means. You can play however you wish, but that means I can also criticize you as I wish. Maybe it's that it was funny the first fifty times I saw someone doing it like four years ago and now it's more worn out that any Chuck Norris joke you can think of (are those even jokes?).

Finally I come to that horrible dance. I need to clarify that I'm speaking about the male Undead dance. The one where you hop around like an idiot throwing up the horns more often than Ronnie James Dio. The female dance is actually kind of pretty and seems to fit with the characters just fine. The male dance though is just out of place within the lore and setting. Overall it just adds to this general image that is available and annoying when creating an Undead character. I mean as Forsaken we've been recently freed from the grasp of the Lich King, we're bound to a curse which prevents us from enjoying the world as we did our entire lives, and our lands are corrupted and we've been forced to move into the sewers of our former city. Sounds like a perfect time to act like a spazz and hop around head banging... or not.

Although after looking at it... Dio does kind of look like an Undead Priest:

All I'm really saying is that The Forsaken (in my opinion) have one of the most interesting storylines in the WoW universe. We even have a leader that people take actual pride in (have you ever seen how tenaciously people from all Horde races will rush to defend The Dark Lady), and a wonderful opportunity to enjoy the game as a character who doesn't really fit with The Alliance or The Horde. Please take advantage of these things, for all of us, I don't want to see another mohawk.

WoTLK Bonus Footage From BlizzCon

The wonderful folks over at WoW Radio have uploaded some bonus footage from BlizzCon. I have tried to keep my head out of the spoiler/rumor mill when it comes to WoTLK for the most part, but considering how close we are to release and all the public announcements by Blizzard I figure I can start diving in. I don't want to ruin my experience, but there are a few spoilers that are just too good not to look at.

This video is getting me excited. I've recently upgraded my video card and I'm hoping that these new areas are actually going to take advantage of it beyond just increasing my FPS. That said, here is the video:

Live coverage of the BlizzCon panels starts in a few hours. I'm debating on if I'm going to actually stay awake and listen to them or just catch the archived audio later. No matter what I decide to do I should probably wear headphones because I think my wife is getting tired of hearing all the WoW talk.

BlizzKhaaan!

All week long I've been annoyed that I'm not attending BlizzCon. Earlier this year I had serious plans to, but life got in the way. It probably wouldn't be bugging me so much if I was still living in Chicago because I could convince myself that it's just too far to travel. Now that I'm sitting in Portland Oregon I'm teased by the fact that while BlizzCon is still far away, it's only a straight drive south.

Being the podcast addict that I am I spent part of yesterday listening to Gnomewise and Grail from WoW Radio's Casually Hardcore as they broadcast live from their car. That's right, I listened to two guys on a road trip. I don't know if that makes me a pathetic individual or not, but I don't care. I enjoyed it. Although I did keep having strange ideas about finding them on the road and yelling at them from a car with a megaphone.

Today I'm listening to the live stream of the panels at BlizzCon thanks, once again, to the folks over at WoW Radio. I haven't heard anything groundbreaking or stunning yet, but it's been solid entertainment and discussion. I must say that some of the Blizzard art design team really know how to work a crowd, a few of the comments made were hilarious. I think my favorite was when a little kid asked about different skins for Druids and one of them responded with a deep growling voice "NEEEEVEEER!".

The Diablo III Gameplay panel just started so I'm going listen to that and go check on the roast I have in the slow-cooker.