Category: WoW Updates
You know, the rewards program is tempting me to sign-up for a second account so that I can two-box level my alts atop a glorious zhevra mount. Blacksmithing finally gets some love in the form of Blacksmith exlusive patterns that add a socket to armor pieces. Tailors also get love in the form of Flying Carpets. Why no Blacksmithing toys? Why am I not allowed to craft a flying magic anvil? QQ.
I've made up my mind on mining: I'm not going to drop it. Last night I skilled from 115 to 190; I'll finish off mithril this week (a skill fo 245 is needed to poke at the small thorium veins), and hopefully be mining in the Outlands next week and onwards. Skilling mining is so damn painful because I've done it on my paladin. The same mining circuits over and over....The new areas should be mildly more interesting.
I would like to have 5k gold by the time the expansion rolls around. My original goal was 10k, but fat chance I'm going to get that unless a couple more Sunmotes roll my way. Oh by the way: Players can now be reported for both raid ID theft and guild bank theft according to Belfaire, a blue poster.
"People whose raid IDs have been "stolen" are encouraged to contact the Game Master department with an in-game ticket explaining the situation. We'll examine the case and see what we can do.
Preemptively: Yes, regulars, this is a new policy."
Another blue post in the same thread:
"Sure. We're also asking any victims of mass guild bank theft, regardless of permissions the person may have had, to report it to our Game Masters for review.
We won't be able to help all victims, but there should be an increasing number of actions against those who abuse their withdrawal privileges to hinder guild progress."
Awesome, it's nice seeing Blizzard taking action against asses who intentionally try to steal another guild's progressed instance. I've had the misfortune of dealing with both issues in the past. To be fair though, the theft occurred way way long ago when "guild banks" were pretty much level 1 officer alts.
That was actually the incident that lead to Guild Master being passed down to me. I should post about my guild history one day. I think I did that already, but nuked the post when I dumped my old database.
Oh by the way: lol, comic of the day.
I'm hearing about raid attrition hitting a lot of guilds on my server. I wonder if it is a local issue or if it pre-expansion anxiety. One of the problems with my server is that when drama happens, instead of merging or joining into a pre-existing guild, the general thought is to branch off into a start-up raiding guild. So consequently, there are probably 50 guilds all at the same tier of progression and all fishing from the same pool of recruits.
So the expansion pack! Word on the street is that it is going to be released sometime late Q4 of this year. I wouldn't hold my breath on that, my personal bet is on it being delayed to early Q1 of 2009. I'm actually hoping that they delay it so that I can squeeze a few more titles into my fall game budget *Fallout3Rockband2etc*. Blizzard works on Blizzard time lol!
Keiya will of course, will remain a protection specced tank upon hitting the serious level 80 content. Until then, I haven't decided what I want to level as. You know, I haven't leveled as a prot spec before; I specced protection a month or two after hitting level 70 out of guild need (and never looked back since!). Retribution is actually a pretty fun leveling spec. I might end up going lolret for the sake of pure novelty (I have a reasonable crit set in the bank, we shit spare plate DPS gear).
My hunter, well, he needs to get off of his ass and finish off his last one and a half levels. I'll replace his mining profession with inscribing. Keiya will remain blacksmithing and enchanting, I've soaked way too much gold and time to ever change my professions (in addition to being the official guild armorsmither and one of the official guild raid enchanters). One of these days I'll have to take a look at the WotLK profession materials so that I can get a better idea regarding what I need to start stocking. That's what we all did pre-BC and it worked out well.
I might give Heroic Magister's Terrace trinket/pet farming another go this week since I'm that "busy" during the weeknights. I need to replenish by badge stash anyways, I used a lot of it on my gem spree this weekend, to swap out some of my crap blue gems.
It's been a good month for guild progression. After kind of a lull in 25-man progression, we are coming into our stride and downing bosses at a good place. Having a fairly consistent team of raiders helps immensely. I spent a fortune chanting and gemming my new tanking gear and my healing set. I replaced half of it within the past month or so but never bothered gemming or chanting it properly.
Oh, Zul'Aman is finally on clear; we blasted through the entire instance last Wednesday and got our first full clear. Zul'jin died on the 3rd try (2% on the first attempt lol). In the middle of phase 3 we collectively realized that no one knew what the hell to do for phases 4 and 5. So there we were mid-fight, fast as hell googling strats and reading off of WoWWiki on vent, LOL.
I got the Battleworn Tuskguard off of Malacrass to replace my Tier-4 helm and another 2-hander toy off of ZJ to play with/dump in the bank. We were a couple minutes off from making the 3rd chest, close!
The HMgT tanking trinket apparently only drops when I am not in the run /boo.
Magister's Terrace, the new 5-man instance is fun. We ran it a few times this weekend, on both normal and heroic. On normal, the difficulty and loot are roughly equivalent to a low end heroic. On heroic, the difficulty and loot is roughly equivalent to Karazhan (opinion might change once we run it a few more times). There's a very nice tanking trinket: Commendation of Kael'Thas.
At exalted with the new faction, two nice tanking shields are available. One being a marginal upgrade to the one that drops off of Nightbane (but way prettier). I am hoping though that at least one of the raid shields will drop before then -_-...
2.4 broke a good chunk of my add-ons, including Omen, Recount, and some of my boss mods. Omen 2 is utter crap, it doesn't show anything half of the time. When it does, it is grossly inaccurate. The new combat log is neat, but annoying. Why does it have to scroll through every piece of information every time I rezone? Oh: Did you know that you can now display the lucky charms in chat? The format is: {name}. So, to display the square: {square}. Awesome!
We got dumped on by the instance server this weekend: It kept booting our entire raid and resetting all of the trash. Getting lag dumped right before a victory kill is especially lame. I took my gimpy 68 hunter through Attumen in Kara yesterday afternoon. lol, he picked up his very first badge of justice and epic. Time to level him to 70 so that he can equip it (and so that I have a secondary character to farm daily quest gold).
It's been nearly a month since I was supposedly going to fix the site theme and errors, bah. Busy and "busy" with various items lol. Oh, I know that the footer isn't a very glorious spot for all of my favorite WoW blogs, must fix that and the links as well (half of which are broken and out of date).
The forums have changed yet again. Toying with new software.
I've picked up quiet a few items since the last time I've posted: The Pauldons of Stone Resolve from the timed chest event in Zul'Aman, the tanking boots from the first boss in ZA, the badge reward tanking coal, the badge reward tanking belt (not the spell one), tons of ZA crit gear, and the healing mace from Maiden in KZ. I'm at around 15277 HP unbuffed; Just need to chant my healing crap now (boo, expensive).
Observations: I've pretty much outgeared all of Karazhan. I've been having to swap into spell damage gear on most of the fights otherwise I go out of mana too fast (which is fine with me pew pew pew). Also noticing that tankadins are especially nice on some of the fast attacking ZA boss encounters because of Improved Holy Shield's 8 charges. I think Shield Wall is being proc'd off too fast on some of the warriors, who are getting crushed.
Oh, the mini-patch added a neat feature: When you perform a readycheck, marks will appear next to the names in the raid screen showing who is ready and who is AFK. Some of the custom UI's have integrated this feature as well. That is super duper handy.
I'll get to responding to people and what not within the next day or two, after I tend to guild administrative stuff, which I am also behind in lol. Last week was hectic: I had to evacuate my residence on Monday and Tuesday of last week because of the wildfire situation in Southern California. Everyone and everything is okay thankfully, but ugh...
I've been putting off the Halloween events and finally had a chance to do the Headless Horseman event (by do I mean farm) last night in Scarlet Monastery. Picked up a spell damage ring, a healing ring, and a neat looking pumpkin hat (will post screenshot later, I don't have them at my work machine). Fashion > All.
My WoW playtime has been somewhat reduced as of late because Fall marks the start of game season. Game season means that I am distracted by the multitude of triple-A releases between October and Christmas. As a consequence, my 2.3 badge farming endeavor is going rather slowly. I want my legs and I want them the very second 2.3 goes live (whenever that is)!
So the Crysis demo: I had an eyegasm. You won't find a more visually stunning game anywhere, it's beautiful. Hell, it even looks great set at medium on a low ass resolution (WTB new video card). Everything is interactive including the trees and buildings and the AI is reasonably smart. I wasn't really blown away by the storyline or the gameplay, but that's an unfair evaluation given that it's just a short demo.
Beyond the graphics and amusing myself with the physics engine, I am very interested in seeing how the plot, pacing, and gameplay size up to some of my old standbys (ultimately, I like well rounded games). Depending on how well executed those elements are, I smell a possible new contender for 2007 game of the year. I think I am going to need a new video card in order to enjoy the game properly.
Look, I'm blogging again. Haven't been in the mood to write long articles lately, so I have gone into a state of update dormancy while I goof off with other things :P (My attention shifts between various spare time activities). I kind of want to re-theme this site again, but haven't found the time to create a custom Drupal template. Oh, and I have assloads more space and bandwidth now, so I don't have to super chop the images down.
- The stupid breastplate finally dropped last night off of Nightbane! I swear that every guild is cursed differently drop wise. For us, it's tanking plate: Healing crap drops by the droves, tanking gear is really damn rare.
- Guild wise: I think we're at the point where Gruul is now a gear wall rather than an organizing and strategy challenge. Shatter deaths were minimal last Saturday.
- Noticed that a lot of guilds tend to do Netherspite dead last progression wise and was somewhat surprised. It's a very different encounter, but I've never really considered it to be a difficult or taxing fight o_O.
- I need to start doing the Netherwing quests, after exalted Consortium that is my next rep goal. Would also one day like to finish off my rep for Argent Dawn and Cenarion Circle...I stopped at mid way revered for both. I don't really need anything from either faction, it is just to feed my rep obsession.
- I just need one more Furies card before I can get my trinket: The elusive 7 of Furies.
- The Karazhan guide will be updated and finalized..one day. Might add a page for Gruul's Lair.
- Is it just me or are there just not very many good epic tanking cloaks for plate classes? The next upgrade above the heroic blues seems to be one that drops in Tempest Keep.
I am trying very hard to resist the urge to pre-order and obsess over Orange Box (TF2)! But it's slowly chipping away at whatever gaming willpower that I have left. Oh and, Bioshock was very fun: I actually played through and finished it! Even if you aren't into first person shooters or role playing games, it's worth picking up.
