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.

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.

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.

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.