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.