Random Screenshot Night

I think I need to show that our guild is caring and thinks of everyone... so here, have a few random screenshots.

Exhibit the number one: A sock puppet.

See, I get to play adds tank on the lich king fight. So I'm all alone in my corner of the platform with just stinking horrors and a ghoul or two. So my lovely guild put a sock puppet down next to me to keep me company. *snif* I really appreciate it, guys.

Exhibit the number two: Our deathknight tank.

He always looks big and mean and scary, so to cheer him up on the Algalon fight - he got shiny bunny ears. Doesn't he look lovely with them?

Exhibit the number three: Our warlock for the day.

He told the lich king (in a stern voice, I might add) that he'd be draining his soul as punishment for his misdeeds. Well done, says I!

If I were bored...

I'd probably play and blow something up with fireballs - but as both Pilf and Jakkru grabbed the list from Sorry Caps, I felt compelled to play, too.

So without further rambling (in the preamble anyway), the list:

1. Raider, farmer, PvPer, or altoholic?

A little bit of raider and altoholic, I suppose. Unlike my wife, I do have a proper "main" which I enjoy playing. And I tend to do all. I did all the quests, tried to play all the raids (since I play seriously - Molten Core was not my time of gaming) and rather enjoy the warrior tanking. I also have a vast variety of alts. Deathknight, Paladin, Druid, Shaman, Mage, Warlock, and Rogue at maximum level, several others lagging behind. I do just enjoy the leveling experience as well - although not in a healthy and sane fashion (read: playing for the quests), but rather for the success rate. Oh look! Another level!

2. Favorite raid or dungeon?

Used to be Karazhan, but I would by now shift that to Ulduar. Icecrown Citadel is actually quite fun as well, but Ulduar combines masterfully the comedy of Brann Bronzebeard with the tentacled horror from the past. The variety of ways to get into a hard-mode fight is also just brilliant - some are easy to start (beat a timer, press the red button), some require planning (so we're beating up the little guys first today, right?) and some are just flashing laser fun with fire and smoke and bombs and wheeeee....
3. Number one choice for a new playable race?

I'm not terribly bothered with new races, I have to admit. I'd like to see Murlocs, though. Nothing like charging the enemy with a fearless Mrgllbrgllhrgllll.

4. Class you suck the most at?

Difficult question again. From the leveling experience it would apparently be hunter. I find it slow and boring and cumbersome. From a raiding perspective it would have to be anything healerish. I am okay as long as nothing unexpected happens, but loose my cool when dps start blowing up and there is raidwide damage and fire and smoke and bombs and whaaaaaa....
5. Original UI or modded UI?

Slightly modded. I am personally actually a fan of Blizzards attempts to bring everything into the fold - but some things I cannot live without. My current version has more room at the top and bottom for bars and boxes and information and the game is a little compressed in the middle. Still - the layout is pretty close to the original.
6. Profession you've never levelled past 200?

None, I have to say. My lowest currently is enchanting at only 430, gaining slowly. I never found much use for it maxxed in the guild - someone is always around. I did want it high enough to disenchant my own green drops, so now is the time to get it up to Cataclysm levels, while dust is cheap and plentyful.

7. Favorite flying mount?

Hmm. I like the blue dragonhawk and the purple dragon. I love the red protodrake because of all the work that went into it. My favourite would still be one I do not have: The Ironbound Protodrake from Ulduar 25 achievements. Working on it, I'm sure. Well... if I can find another 25 mad people. Our server actually runs a weekly weekend run for those achievements, but it's always booked!
8. Nozdormu -- friend or foe, you figure?

Double answer. Personally I think the cooler storyline would be him to be evil. Using us (that's the heroesTM) to steer history into a direction he deems right towards a goal that might spell the apocalypse for the world. The bronze dragonflight is not exactly known for their gentle treatment of Azeroth. I mean... we get hired to help the orcs invade Azeroth and the Lich King become the Lich King.

However, in game lore I have to grudgingly accept that Blizzard probably intends Nozdormu to be good. As with all (harebrained) plots lately, we were shown the Lich King actually needs to be present (and there always has to be one - oh yes!) and such.

So I suppose I'd like him to be foe, I suspect he'll be friend.
9. Useless item you have in your bank that you'll never get rid of?

Never is a long time. I currently hang on to several vanity items - tabards and trinkets, mainly. I still have my voodoo gnomes and my housekeeping army, for instance. If bank space ever were truly rare, I'd be quite willing to get rid of them, though.
10. Most expensive thing you've ever bought?

I think two single items are almost tied there. The Tundra Travellers Mammoth and the Pillars of Might. The pants cost me 9 saronite + fluff (at a time when the saronites were still going around 1800 gold or so?), the mammoth just money. Overall, the Blue Dragonhawk comes out easily on top, though. I mean - this little flappy is the reason I bought 100 mounts in the first place.
11. Favorite starting area?

Bloodelfie area by far. I prefer it to the Draenei actually - and the two new ones are just better designed, better streamlined and a more pleasant experience than the old world ones. I am really looking forward to the new starting areas with Cataclysm, however.

12. Inane goal you worked hardest to achieve?

Did I mention the blue dragonhawk? Yeah? Well I personally think Loremaster is actually worse. So Loremaster wins the race.

13. Darion Mograine VS Tirion Fordring, gloves off -- winner is?

It would have to be good old Mograine. Tirion rambles too much (should I learn something from this sentence?). Sure - he can break iceblocks and shatter swords, but by the time he actually stopped talking and got around to working, Darion would have beaten him soundly.
14. Game music or your own playlist?

Game music actually - and not turned up very much. I actually rely a lot on audio clues during gaming and I need to hear when an opponent parries or when I miss my smash-in-the-face. I get ridiculed for that a lot - feel free to join in *grin*.
15. Particular option or setting that you always toggle on a new alt/server?

All quickbars set to show, profanity filter to off and auto-self-cast on. Then we go from there. Usually the next steps are setting up the mess of addons that has piled up in the centre of the screen and sort them around a little.
16. Highest amount of levels gained in one play session?

I couldn't say, but more than 10. Of course - playing from 1 to 11 only takes about 2 hours, so a new alt can probably reach level 16 to 20 in one play session. I can't say I kept track, though.
17. Thing you'd most like to experience or see in-game?

I'd love to be there for a server-first raid kill. Going in without knowing the tactics in advance, making them up on the fly and getting a boss down. However, I am well aware of the limitations to my reflexes and skill, so that'll stay a dream.

18. Worst PuG moment?

Nothing truly memorable. I do leave PUGs now and then, usually when I'm in a bad mood anyway and someone manages to upset me. It's not worth the pain and I'd rather wait for 30 minutes or do something else. However, I don't hold grudges for long and I can't really remember anything truly horrid.
19. Best dungeon/raid moment?

At the moment our second Lich King kill. We had worked for a long while, the first kill was a bit lucky (2 people dead, I think) and I wasn't sure we'd be able to repeat that. We got the bugger again with only three wipes and always ended up in the last phase (well.. the one with the vile spirits anyway) every attempt. It just shows that we actually do understand that encounter now and it was not just a lucky fluke.
20. Worst quest ever that you totally hate doing?

If I hate it, I won't do it. There are no quests that are required to be done any more. However, there were a few I did not enjoy much. In no particular order:

- The escort following the "Flute of Xavaric" drop in Felwood used to be a lot longer - and the tree was pvp flagged. Try escorting a helpless NPC for 20 minutes through a "contested" area? Bleh. Made much simpler lately.
- The Margol the Rager questline for the key to the Searing Gorge. This one was practially required in the olden days (when SG had no flightpoint) and it was a lot of senseless running back and forth.
- The necklace in Uldaman. Allegedly my bile for Uldaman is never unfunny, and this is one of the bloody reasons!

21. First thing you do when you hit 80?

Hearth to town and get my training usually. Not like those weird people who just log off.
22. Character (of yours) you would RP as if you had to?

Probably Snack, my fine warrior. However, I find that a quest/raid based game is not as well designed for roleplaying as a more open (sandbox) game - I never particularily felt like roleplaying in WoW. Ultima Online and Star Wars: Galaxies were better suited for that.
23. Keyboard, mouse, or both for using abilities?

Both. Movement and important abilities are keyboard (because it's quicker), but the sheer amount of buttons my warrior needs cannot be fit in reach of my left hand. I have to click a few of the rare abilities and I also use the mouse for targetting (click-targetting and mouseover).

24. Thottbot or WoWhead?

Wowhead since it became available. Back in the days I used to use Thottbot (rarely) and Allakhazam (more frequently). Both are slow and horrible compared to the newer databases on the market, I thought.
25. Acronym you've seen in chat but don't understand?

Several. My favourite being IDD (and yes, Jakkru thankfully explained that to me today). I also had trouble with PMSL.
26. Plot point you'd like to see resolved someday?

Without reading a book you mean? Why does King Varian the horribly annoying have such a burning hatered for the horde? The same horde that was incredibly supportive in driving the demonic minions out of Azeroth. The guys we are at war against for no good reason. Actually: the war between Horde and Alliance would be even more interesting. Why?
27. Biggest thing you're looking forward to in Cataclysm?

I'm easy to please: New stuff! I want to be able to leap at my enemies and smite their heads with thunder, I want to fly my horse around Kalimdor and rain fire and devastation down on unsuspecting zevrah and I am really looking forward to more quests.

The overhaul of the graphics system is also a nice thing to look forward to. It's beginning to look a bit old-fashioned by now.
28. Guild event you'd like to see?

Chicken. All druids meet up on the flight platform in Dalaran and leap off the edge. Whoever deploys flight form closest to the ground wins. Bonus points for Boomkins who switch into owl-shape before going splat.

Most amusing anecdote to the above: When I suggested this in guild I got a lot of positive feedback. Two people tried it at once. One of them forgot she was on her Deathknight at the time, the other flew to the Violet Citadel spire and jumped. Know what you get close to the ground in Dalaran when you want to switch into flight form? "You cannot use that here" *evil grin*

2-0 for the floor so far.
29. Level range you hate being in?

1-20 because it's slow, you can't access half the abilities and some classes are just horrid in that range. I extend this to -40 for enhancement shamans. 78-79 is also not a big favourite of mine.
30. Favorite map to quest in?
 
I've seen that reply twice already, but yes. Nagrand is great. Although the starter areas in Lord of the Rings are rather amazing too.
 

Is that a good looking dwarf tree or what?

The Frost Lord Cometh!

As you probably all remember, Fire Festival has started tonight at midnight. Now I'm luckily done with the torch juggling, but there are still lots of other things to do. I'm sure some of the more well-known pages will have a guide up (edit: yes they do.), so I'll just throw in a quick photo.

Remember that it is now possible to choose Ahune the Frost Lord (Slave Pens in Zangarmarsh) from the Dungeon Finder.

In case you wipe - the entrance to the graveyard is in the centre of the lake, dive down between the three pipes going under water, swim through the open pipe, turn left inside and follow the lefthand wall until you are back in the Slave Pens.

I may be a dirty old man...

There is a lot more to be said about „understanding things differently“ than it first may appear. However, I do not question the validity of Tams recent post. What I might want to add to the discussion is that _my own_ dirty mind sometimes causes a misunderstanding or two.


I should probably add that the following conversation was largely held over vent, where I make a lot more language mistakes … meh… too much explanation, not enough fun. Let me start again with less rambling.

The setting: Obsidian Sanctum on a Thursday night around 10 minutes past midnight. The guild had just finished their day in ICC and decided to quickly mop up the weekly raid quest. We zoned in, walked around and killed some trash and did Sartharion 25 with three drakes up the proper way. Three tanks, lots of healers, killing the drakes (each before the next one landed), mopping up the adds, heading into portals and finally kicking a dragon into the lava. All went smoothly and we didn’t even have any deaths at the end.

Loot dropped and was merrily disenchanted. And of course there was a drake. Rolling commenced and two raiders both got a 96. At which point our lovely guildmaster and raidleader said “Okay, one of them will get head, the other one will get tail and we’re done!”

Now, I know I’m a dirty old man, but did that sound like she just offered an “a mount for a mount” deal to you?

Of course a part of my dirty mind knew there was a titanium seal involved in there, but still…

I think I need to get out more. Or go to Silvermoon City more or something.

Spellpower Deathknight Update

Well. Seeing as it was ages since I last posted, why not start with something useless to get back into the swing of things.

I posted about my mini-project of leveling a deathknight in spellpower robes (and with spellpower trinkets) for fun and profit, didn't I? Turns out that now I am level 62, I actually found the nerve to go in to a few random instances.

Note 1: So far, each group has actually noticed my cloth robes and shoulders.

Note 2: No one has even bothered checking the trinkets - which is a shame, I could have used the haste ones instead.

The comments were not as bad as I thought, though. I'll post a few pictures below. I hope I edited out all the names - didn't mean to actually make anyone look bad *grin*.

The resulting dps-checking actually lead to .. err.. the second deathknight being happy about winning an all-greed roll on spellpower gear. We got a convert to the cult of spellpower DKs! (And before there are heart attacks - no, he didn't actually equip it).

The second group was more on the "WTF" side of things (thanks Calli for that Image). Not so much into the "you're a noob" line of reasoning.

I actually felt bad by that time, so I did explain the whole "I want to see how many comments I get" concept to them. And they also missed the trinkets. Shesh!

Still got to say, Frost Dual Wield Spec rocketh in outland instances.

Screenshots and Lyrics

Late to the party - I wish I could say "like always"... but even that presumes a certain style. However, seeing as most about everyone is done with their screenshots by now, so I thought - why not join in.

This one is for Aneas game. She has linked to many, many more.

Never said anything about quiet - but this glorious pickup group did indeed go through the sewer entrance.

Thanks for a difficulty tuned perfectly, Blizzard

So .. after all the success we had yesterday (and a good bit of sleep, and a sandwich and a cup of tea) it's time for a thoughtful post. Which basically means a long one, where you'll be wondering what the hell I was talking about at the end. So there.

I expect we've all seen the occasional "this is too easy" or "this is too hard" posts / [2] chatlines in the past months of playing. There are rebuttals bouncing around blogs, there is shouting and rage and all sorts of amusing things going on.

I think I'll go ahead and just post my own thoughts on the subject, instead of trying to argue around someone elses argument (Note the cunning passive agression in the link right there?)

After killing the Lich King, I feel that the difficulty of WotLK was actually perfect (Note: I'll be talking about raid10 content unless otherwise specified).

It started comparatively easy in Naxxramas - possibly too easy, as no one really goes there any more. At the time, though, it was sometimes rather challenging. We had our share of wipes - not many on each boss, admittedly, but they were there. I seem to remember even giving up on Kel'thuzad once in frustration, because we just could not get him down. Overall, a good instance difficulty to aim for after the leveling rush of the early days.

It was (and still is) my feeling that people forget how to raid - even if they were doing well in TBC raid groups, the working-together and the instinctual-knowledge-of-what-the-tank-is-going-to-do-now was gone.

The fight mechanics, even, were new to many of us (I'm tempted to say all of us in my guild, but I never really asked at the time). Some of them (the tactics, not neccessarily the fights) were rather old-fashioned (Patchwerk) or easy (Maexxna), but there was things we had not done before (Iceblocks to break LoS on Sapphiron? I can't remember a fight like that from before).

Ulduar was exciting when it came out. Hard, for many of us. We still had not gotten used to vehicle fights properly (Eye of Eternity being too short for a full raid night and too hard for a quick "let's do this before we do the real raid" - we only raided one night a week). Flame Leviathan was a new mechanic (I liked it - some people in the raid group didn't - some of them hated it with a passion *waves to Stereotype*).

We had to actually work on the dragon and I remember giving up many weeks on Ignis because he just was too hard. The tankspot tactics at that time (here) were too difficult - and I still think that ... a three spot tanking pattern with no movement of the ranged dps is much easier. We were slowly making progress through the instance - weeks after the top raiding guilds, obviously, but somehow each week a new boss fell.

I seem to remember that around that time the raid-lock extension also came out. It made a hell of a lot of difference to a guild like ours (I mentioned the one raid a week already, didn't I?). Suddenly we could concentrate on doing something new, without having to slog through the same old stuff again.

Historical Interlude:
Do you have any idea what I would have given for that in Mount Hyjal back at 70? We'd use our four hours to learn the first two fights, get to boss number three and then have to give up for lack of time. Next week - same fights, slightly different people, some wiping and the exact same result.

Unfortunately we didn't quite manage to finish Ulduar. The new "One Room Raid" came out - and we had learnt by then that better gear covers for our lack of "perfect gaming skills". I'm not worried about admitting that more healing power, more health and armour and higher damage stats make our raid group able to overcome individual mistakes. Someone trundled into a fire? Happens - but with enough gear we can heal them up and shout at them until they are out of the green and the raid does not collapse at this point.

Onyxia was another one of those - a quick gearup raid with no exceptional difficulty but very good gear. I like how they came in to allow raiders a quick gear-up when they have to fill a hole in a raiding roster now near the end of the expansion. Some people don't play any more, others want breaks, others play alts - if you need a healer quickly there are now options to get them onto a comparable gear level for ICC without too much hassle.

Not that I liked Ony and ToC. I just appreciate the forward planning here - and even saying the one room raid was bland (which it was) - the first time round those fights were actually quite fun. Three bosses in a row without breaks? Haven't had that before. Faction Champions? All the whining about pvp notwithstanding, that fight is actually quite interesting. Or at least it was, once I figured out they were normal monsters (and could be taunted, for instance) just with diminished returns on CC. A good bit like the Val'kyr, really. Preparation for the Lich King fight? Maybe. The dark and light twins were a nightmare - until we had grasped the concept of what aura to pick, what orbs to dodge and what to do when they did a special ability. For our group this was a fight that took repeated attempts - but once we mastered it, it was actually consistently repeatable.

And then there is Icecrown Citadel. Of course we were there right at the start. Going into laggy hell from hell in the first week and getting more disconnects than ever. The first fight we actually won - which surprised us all a bit, I think. We struggled on the following ones for a bit (although my wife and I managed to sneak off on christmas holidays and let everyone else work for it) - I distinctly recall wiping on the Gunship battle at least twice. And yet again - those fights worked after a while. The mechanics were predictable and manageable.

We needed gearing up before we killed Festergut. There was a dps race there. We needed practise on ooze kiting - and whenever our favourite bear was not there and we had to replace a tank we struggled.

Through it all, I think each fight made us wipe a few times (some more, some less) before we completed it. That is - from the start of WotLK raiding up to the end. Personally I feel like the difficulty was tuned perfectly. The majority was not too easy, some of the fights were downright hard, but it all got entirely possible over time.

Historical Interlude 2:
Surprisingly this was not the case with TBC. If you didn't have 25 people, some raids were inaccessible. If your 25 people were not all very very good, you didn't see the last instance. Our guild managed 3/4 in Tempert Keep, 2/6 in Serpentshrine Cavern, 2/5 in Mount Hyjal and 5/9 in Black Temple. Some of that is certainly due to the raid lockout mentioned before. Probably not all. Notice that we never even set foot into Sunwell Plateau? Well ... we didn't. Not even just before WotLK came out and talent trees got buffed and it all got easier. It took me until the 1st of May 2010 to actually finish SPLAT.

Now the final steps are still open. The Lich King instance is getting a stacking buff each week. And it's a bloody good thing. Did I mention it took us 93 attempts to kill him? Those random elements can be lethal. We all know the fight by now (practising for more than all kills in Ulduar combined does that - I have 98 total boss kills in Ulduar) but just a little mismanagement can kill the raid. Especially in raid10, where a single missing person usually does doom the raid.

In the coming weeks more people will get up there - raid guilds that are a little slower than us, near the end of the expansion probably even very casual players.

Well played, Blizzard. I, for one, am very grateful I actually got to see it all for once. And for the better players there are the hardmodes. Which are harder. Oh yes they are.