A Small Introduction

Even more changes have been made to the blog in the past few days, and even though some minor color changes will probably happen, it's pretty set for the most part.

If you're reading at the site and not through a reader, you'll notice a shiny new header with 4 mysterious characters up there. Who are they? What are they wearing?

Listen well little grasshopper, and I will tell you.

 

Starting on the left, the female druid is Khilana.  She was my main from the time I started playing WoW till the end of BC, tree all the way. In the image, she's wearing the Tier 5 set (SSC/TK stuff), with a pretty staff out of Hyjal. She never had the entire T5 set, and would never have gotten the staff, but they're pretty. And purpley. <3

Beside her is Khite, my dps Death Knight. She's pictured in the Tier 10 tank set, just because I like the look of the red better than the blue dps set. She may never get the entire T10 set, but she'll end up with several pieces eventually. And yes, the weapon is Shadowmourne. No way in hell she'll ever get it, but it's nice and shiny, right?

Moving over to the other side of the tree, you'll see my main tree Khiow. He actually looks exactly like he does in that picture, with one exception. He's currently got the green version of that staff, but the red went better with the rest of the image ^.^

And last but not least, there's little Dex on the end. Even though she's no longer the cute little pink pigtailed gnome that she once was (see below), Dex still holds a special place in my heart and she has almost as many raiding stories from BC as Khilana. She's not 80 yet, but I sat down earlier this week and dug thorugh EJ, figured out how to spec as 3.3 frost, and her and Squirtle have been tearing it up. I mean, 14k crits are yum. In the header she's wearing the full Arcanist set, which she actually has a large chunk of. Our poor tank is never going to get Thunderfury =\

And now, I finish packing and run out the door for a fun little road trip. I'll be in touch on Twitter through my phone, but not likely to be able to get on a computer till we get back Sunday night. Keep shooting me links for the Elder event, I'll collect them when I get back Monday and add to my list =) You've still got over a week, so no rush.

Forget the Roses, I'll be Stalking Someone

While the in game Valentines event has been going on for a bit, and in the real world, we've been overwhelmed with candy hearts for a month, the coolest Valentines event in the blogging world was started up by Dristanel over at The Physician's Log and supported by Blog Azeroth.

Basically, interested people could all go sign up by a certain deadline, and then yesterday she sent out assignments. Each of us has been assigned a blog to go stalk, and someone has been given our's. *gulps nervously*

At the end of a few days, they'll reveal themselves, and we'll have an amazing party and live happily ever after.

Okay, I might be making up that last bit >.>

But hey, this will be fun =) Keep an eye out on your fellow blogger's posts, might see some entertaining comments. And next year you can always sign up if you missed it this time around ^.~

Love is in the Air: SFK Boss and You

Getting Started: 

You probably want to form the group before you head to the instance, as most people already in the zone seem to have already used their summon. As with other such daily summons, the liars seem to come out of their hiding places, so if you want to guarantee that everyone actually has their summon, I'd recommend grouping with friends.

Even for a well geared group, having a second tanking type makes the encounter so much easier. A real tank would be best, but even a leather or mail wearing DPS could fake-tank one of the mobs and make the fight go smoothly, and save your healer a good bit of stress.

You don't have to do anything before going to the instance. Summon, zone in, the guy by the inner door offers the daily quest and the bag. Open the bag, and have all melee but your fake-tank use the purple potion (Perfume Neutralizer). Have your last member drink the green potion (Cologne Neutralizer.) Healer and ranged can drink either, they'll just have to move out of the other color puddles on the ground.

Elaborating more on this: The Perfume Neutralizer (purple) will make you not take most damage from the boss with the purple bubble and the purple puddles on the ground. The Cologne Neutralizer does the same for the green equivalents.

The Fight:
Once you turn in the quest, there's some chat from the head apothecary, and then the fight begins. Be careful not to turn in the quest until your group is all ready.

The purple mob, Apothecary Hummel (marked Skull in the picture), will become active first. His bubble will do significant damage to anyone within a few yards of him, unless they are using the purple potion. The tank needs to try and turn him so that his spray will not hit the ranged. Tank him where he stands, and DPS him down.

After Hummel is dead, your main group should then swap to the third baddy, Apothecary Fyre (marked triangle). After the quest is turned in, he'll run to where the triangle is very artistically drawn on the SS. It takes a few seconds, but once he activates, he'll be running haywire everywhere and generally pissing off your tank and melee, but kill him as best you can, while avoiding the pink and green puddles he leaves on the ground. He does some minor melee damage, but his main attacks are the puddles he throws. As long as your group can move out of the ones that are doing damage to them, he's fairly easy.

During this, the second mob, Apothecary Baxter (X in the SS), will become active. He'll have run over to the X on the picture, and should be 'tanked' where he stands by your green dps. Your fake-tank will want to keep Baxter facing away and at distance from the main group, as his aura and spray will do lots of damage to anyone that's not immune to it. Once the main group has killed Fyre, they can come over and help kill Baxter. The melee may want to swap to the green potion as they're running in.

Once they're all dead, head back over to loot the shinies. Good luck on the mount =)

Notes:
For a very well geared group, it is possible to power through the encounter without a second tank. It's hard on the tank and healer though, and you shouldn't have too much trouble finding a fake-tank. My dps geared, specced, and presenced DK took care of Baxter with no problem. It really depends on your gear level and the amount of melee/ranged dps you have as to if tanking them separately is vital or not. Use your best judgement =)

There are little adds that run around during the encounter, but their damage is unnoticeable.

You'll probably need to refresh your potion between each kill, but you may have to cancel the buff first in order to get the timer to restart. It's been acting odd, and hasn't been fixed as far as I'm aware.


I wouldn't suggest doing this with less than 3, as at least one healer, and dps are probably needed to kill the group before you healer starts going OOM. You could fake tank the entire thing, but a real tank makes your life easier. And you will need a healer. Because healer's are sexy.

Got questions? Ask! I'll do my best to reply =)

Low Level LFD

It sometimes rocks. It's a different way to level. At times, it's almost instant queues, no matter what role.

But let's face it. People are still learning their classes for the most part, and it sucks.

You've all seen the melee hunter.

You may have heard of the warrior that rolls on +int gear.

But I have found something so special, so unique, I'd bet my hat it's something you've not come across before.

Yes, yes I am indeed speaking of the ranged rogue.

Daggers and swords are too lowly for this fine fellow. Instead, he turns to his weapons of choice: the white vendor throwing knives!

With these trusty blades in hand, he can relax back by the (non-melee thank you very much) hunter and the healer, and casually toss the (slighly less dangerous than baby rabbits) razors of death.

From this positioning, he's just in the right place to be out of immediate danger, has a lovely view of the fight, and can be just lazy enough to enjoy a beer, a cig, or other less mentionable out of game leisure activities.

Boss fight after boss fight, this creative dwarf looks combat in the eye and knows no fear. (He'll also never know the joy of being above the healer on the dps meters, but meh, what's that worth?)

A word of caution though... If you are indeed planning to go out and employ this clever instancing strategy, beware: for some reason, the other people in your party often become increasingly hostile, and often resort to drastic measures to prevent you from showing off your epic throwing skills. I heard a rumor that once such a rogue even got kicked from the group =(

*toddles off to queue again*

Don't let the sarcasm bite you on the way out!

Armory Character Feed for Twitter

With all of the shiny changes to the armory, one of the best things Blizzard added was a customizable RSS feed for your characters' recent activity. With the right settings, this can be a cool thing to add to your Twitter (or other sites if you wish), but with the wrong settings it can be a bit of a mess.

To start setting up your character's RSS feed, go to the armory and log into your BNet account, and then find the character that you'd like to start with.

Now, down on the right hand side of the page you'll see a box of Recent Activity, with the RSS icon in the top right corner. Click that icon, and we're moving on.

 

First, you need to select which items you'd like to update your feed with. For something that's posting to Twitter, instead of just sitting non-intrusively on a blog for example, there are things you may want to uncheck.

• Exploration:  I'm sorry, but most of us really don't care that you've explored Borean Tundra on the 6th character. And to be honest, you probably don't really care either, except for the big milestones, such as exploring Northrend.
• Quests: This is kinda an iffy one. Unlike Exploration, it's not likely to be very spammy, but at the same time, it is kinda... Boring. Think about it, keep or discard as you want.
• Professions: On a leveling character, this would get old really fast. On an 80, you're much less likely to see updates, and do you really care that you just caught your 1000th fish?
• World Events: They sit there looking innocent for most of the year, and then one week SPAAAAAM. Again, up to you. If you want the only thing your followers see to be updates about the holiday for it's entire duration, keep it. If you want to update them about other things as well, scrap it.
• Dungeons and Raids/Player vs. Player: If you're a raider, keep D&R and consider dropping PvP. If you're a PvP'er, keep PvP and consider dropping D&R. If you do both, keep both and live with the fact that some of your successes will not be posted.
• Achievement Criteria: Please please please for the love of all that is good and chocolaty please uncheck this. Updates about the fact that you've successfully killed a rat are just sad, and can get annoying. 
• Boss Kills: Again, a situational one. As someone who regularly runs 5mans, I'd rather not spam ya'll with "Khiow has killed King Ymiron... again." That said, someone who only raids on their character may want to keep this, and update their followers on their progress in ICC.

Last on point #1 is the Loot settings. I suggest keeping this, but making some adjustments. We probably don't need to see every time that you win an epic in a heroic and there's no enchanter to zap it. At the same time, if you just won a totally amazing badass cloak out of ICC 25, share it! Pick a minimum item level that you think works for what you're doing, and it will only update about items that level or higher. I've got mine set to 245 atm I believe, 232 was getting me updates out of the heroic Frozen Halls, which I didn't want.

Moving on, #2. Here, you can add up to 4 different characters (for a total of 5) and have them be updated in the same feed with the same settings. To add a character, just type CharacterName@Realm and click the plus sign to the right. It'll add that one, and open the box for you to add another.

And last but not least, once you have the feed configured how you'd like it, click the copy to clipboard down at the bottom. It should automatically add the link for the RSS feed to your clipboard, and you can paste it in where you like.


Once you have your link, head over to your automatic feed updater. Most of us seem to use TwitterFeed, and as that's the only one I've messed with, that's the only directions I'll be giving. Use something else? You're screwed <3

Log into your account (Or create one if you like) and click the Create New Feed button. It should be towards the upper right of the screen.

On the first page, name the feed and paste in the link. Go ahead and test the feed with the button at the end of the line. If it says you're good, then click the "Advanced Settings" link at the bottom of the page. You can fiddle with lots of things here, but the only one we're going to worry about is the Update Frequency. For a typical armory feed, checking for updates every 30 minutes and posting 2 updates at a time seems to work best. If you find yourself wanting longer between updates, or more/less posted at a time, feel free to adjust. A word of warning though, I strongly suggest not going over 3 updates at a time. It gets spammy very very fast, and followers don't like that and become not-followers =\

Once you're done with that, click Continue to Step 2.

Here, select the Twitter link, and follow the steps to authenticate your account. If you've used this for Twitter before, you should be able to find your Twitter account in the drop down list. If not, go ahead and click the shiny blue "Authenticate Twitter" button, and obey their every command. Including the one to mail caffeine to me.  After that, click the Create Service link at the bottom, and you're all set.

More questions? Check out Blizzard's FAQ about this service.

Play around with this. There are plenty of settings, and lots of ways to customize. You may find that you don't want to have the feed updating to Twitter after all. And no pressure: You can always go back and make a new feed, and change anything you don't like.

Have fun =)

OMFG There's a Chick in Vent!

-.-

While most things related to being a female and playing online games have been covered in blog posts over and over, the one I've found to be the most annoying and frequent seems to be a little underwritten.

If you're a girl raider, you probably have experienced something similar. You're in a raid, getting ready to (or in the process of) kicking ass. For some reason or another though, you find it necessary to speak up in vent. If you're in a good guild run, not a big deal normally. In a PuG... Oh dear =(

A recent example perhaps. Was doing ToC 25 on the little druid this past week with a PuG I joined at Twins. We downed them and moved onto Anub. As we were charging in, tank starting to throw things at the boss, I realized no one had mentioned ice. Here, I was faced with two choices:

1. Assume the raid all knows what they're doing, and a ranged dps or three is already planning to take care of that little problem. 
2. Assume that this is in fact a Stonemaul PuG, and that we're all going to die horrible deaths screaming in agony. 

Pretty obvious choice eh? So little old me speaks up in vent. "Who's knocking down the ice?" A few seconds of silence, then: "Are you a white chick?" "Um, maybe?" "Oh good. I've been trying to find one on WoW all day."

First of all, come on. We're in a raid fight, and I'm asking an important question. Secondly, WTF? If you were going for hitting sexist and racist in one sentence, you might have made it there. And I had to ask my question again -.-

And for the record, we did die horrible deaths screaming in agony. Ever seen a tree scream? I't's not pretty.

To be fair, the blame isn't always on the 12 year old boys that freak out in vent when they hear a voice that's higher than theirs. The girl that spends the entire raid flirting with various people in vent? Yeah, you've probably encountered her too.

In yet another 25 ToC pug, this one a few months back, there was such a woman girl. From the moment she logged into vent, she was giggling at every 'amusing' comment one of the boys made, and dropping flirtatious lines left and right. It was obviously annoying some, but enough of the group found her entertaining, and so she kept on.

For the unaware, this type of girl is often bad. And not good bad, I mean bad like dying to fire on Gormok. And then poison on the worms. AND trample on Icehowl. (And yes, she did get 2 battlerezzes. Did you know it was possible for someone to bat their eyelashes verbally? I'm pretty sure that's what happened.)

At this point, I was so ashamed of my gender that I was considering a sex change. Not really. But there was no way in hell I was going to talk in vent after everyone being subjected to this stunning example of the fairer sex. I mean, it would take alot. Such as no one doing interrupts on JarJar. >.>

If there's one good thing about being a woman in voice chat, it's that everyone shuts up when you start talking.

So got JarJar interrupts handled, and I retreat back to my little silent hidey spot. Except when people were calling out different and just plain wrong orders on Faction Champs. So again little Khi steps up and starts doing what I do best: Ordering people around. FC died, and I managed to stay silent for the rest of the run.

After the raid, one of the pugs sent me a tell remarking on the fact that I was such a different example of a female raider than the one that had taken up most of the attention that night. But what he didn't seem to get is that the majority of the women that play WoW are normal players. Anyone that tries to say that girls are worse/better at this game is pretty full of it. Or trying to start something.

That said, the girl players that seem to get the most attention are those like our little pug damsel of my distress. Making a bad name for all us kick ass ladies =(


TL;DR
The boys and the girls need to grow up a bit sometimes.


Mini-rambling-not-quite-rant-done.

And yes Koris, that is the girl you're thinking of. Good news she seems to have disappeared since them =)

'Twas a Few Weeks Before Christmas...

'Twas a few weeks before Christmas, and all through Northrend,

The players were waiting for 3.3 to begin.

Arthas was waiting, high in his cold castle,

Preparing things to cause adventurers hassle.

His lieutenants were waiting, his guards were ready,

Against the Ashen Verdict they'd be holding steady.

Tirion and Darion were marshaling their troops

When a small voice high in the citadel called "Oops!"

"My lord and master, I hate to remind you,

But you still need to write a villainous speech to

Strike fear into the hearts of those who attack

And send them running with our swords at their back."

Arthas frowned in thought, and with inspiration stood

"How about 'None may challenge the Brotherhood?"

Blood-Queen Lana'thel sighed and shook her head.

"I'm afraid, dear Lich King, that one's already been said."

"Now for you, insects! Boldly you sought the power..."

Arthas shook his head and thought for an hour.

"You face not Arthas alone, but the legions I command?"

Sindragosa stepped up. "Perhaps you don't understand.

"Sir, your speech must be original and unique to you.

Not something in the past lesser villains have used."

The Lich King glared and stomped from his room.

"Just wait, I'll think of something full of evil and doom!"

As Arthas chugged egg nog, feeling sad for himself,

Professor Putricide stepped up to the shelf.

"Have you thought, perhaps, instead of darkness and evil,

Making your speech about something more seasonal?"

The Lich King thought and thought, and gave a great sigh,

And there might have been a tear that escaped from his eye.

"I love Winter Veil, with all the colorsh and ice,

And presents and songs and shnowballs are nice.

"But I'm the evil they try to shweep under the rug.

And bad guysh don't get cookies and a kiss and a hug."

Putricide shouted back as he left with a grin,

"If you want that to change, you know how to begin."

Arthas made up his mind, and got really busy,

Making presents and costumes and a sled in a tizzy.

He called up his men, and said "Here'sh the plan!

We're going to shpread winter cheer throughout the land."

"Sho put on the hats, you can pick one of red or of green,

And get ready to have the best Winter Veil you've sheen.

With frostwyrms in front, and a flying shleigh behind,

We'll give a try to being cheerful and kind."

Though scared and uneasy, his Scourge forces agreed.

And they loaded the sled with things they might need.

The gifts were included, some chocolate in cups,

A few blankets tossed in for the kittens and pups.

"The children of Azeroth will get presentsh in bulk,

And in the name of all evil, Marwyn, enough with the shulk.

We're doing this my way, even if you aren't happy.

Now get in the damn sleigh and better make it shnappy."

With more egg nog in reach, and reins in his hand,

A fairly drunk Arthas flew over the land.

Leaning over the edge and shouting, he shared

"For thish year's Winter'sh Veil, you are not prepared!"

5 Years Later...

Well, it's the 5th Anniversary of the World of Warcraft. Some of us have been around since the beginning, some of us have been here just a few short months.

The game itself has changed, grown, and evolved into something that at times barely resembles the original game that so many started to play. One of the main draws to WoW has always been it's dungeon and raid system. A baby character can begin their journey into instances before they even hit level 10, and characters at max level can spend hours upon hours combating the powerful evils that plague Azeroth.

Levels 1 - 30 

The early stages of Vanilla WoW have always been more about learning your character's class and abilities, and about the world itself. My favorite instance early on would probably be Deadmines. The instance is easy enough that characters can complete it on level, but it still encourages players to make cautious pulls at times, and work together as a team in order to overcome the encounters. For any Alliance character that's taken the time, the quest chains that end in Deadmines reveal some fascinating lore that continues to be relevant to the game for a long long time.


Levels 31-60

This was honestly a difficult choice... I really love some of the instances and raids in here, but there are several true stand outs. Scarlet Monastery is an amazing place for a character to level, and the different wings allows a group to choose where they next adventure. Maraudon is still the most beautiful instance in the game, and the length of it truly makes a group feel they have accomplished something great when finally killing Princess.

However, even with all of that, Blackrock Depths is the most epic 5 man instance in the game. Even now, it is the longest 5 man in the entire game, and has more bosses than most raids. You are here, in the empire of the Dark Iron dwarves, trudging your way to their leader to attempt to end some of the corruption. It's a long, hard, frustrating instance, but with a group that's willing to work for it and stick around, probably still my favorite instance in the entire game.

Outland

With the release of Blizzard's first expansion for the World of Warcraft, in addition to new races, a new profession, and 10 more levels for a character to gain, an entire new world and it's dungeon's was made available. The Tempest Keep instances were all fun, but challenging in their own ways. Magister's Terrace and Sunwell, even after they were nerfed, were designed well to challenge those that tried to take them on. Kara is still an amazing instance, with a great storyline and variety of encounters. Nearly all raids of the Burning Crusade expansion are epic in their proportions, and by introducing the 25 and 10 player raiding, Blizzard made it so that more than just a tiny portion of the playerbase was able to step foot inside.

All of that said, the Caverns of Time instances, with the method they introduced of letting players witness and participate in historical events, were some of the best dungeons we've seen in the game so far. The 5 mans were interesting, challenging, but still fun for anyone that was prepared to tackle their evils. The Battle for Mount Hyjal was just amazing, and so different than anything most players had encountered before. And, love it or hate it, the attunement process did limit those able to venture inside to the select elite that were able to defeat the very worst of the tier beforehand, making them believe that they had fully earned their right to take on the evils of the past.

Northrend and Beyond


Now, it's your turn! What is your favorite instance or raid of the current expansion? What are some things you'd be excited to see introduced in Cataclysm? What makes a dungeon amazing, or terrible, in your opinion?

All images here were borrowed from WoWWiki =)

Why Yogg is Still Hard When I Outgear him by a Ton

So, for anyone who's not done Yogg before, he has several phases that are all decently complicated, and that's without hardmode.

However, even though I've killed him several times over, I find phase 1 to be very very very hard sometimes.

Main goal in phase 1, don't hit the clouds. There are evil green clouds that float their way sinisterly around the room. When you touch one, it spawns an add that attempts to slaughter your raid. One probably won't be successful. If two clouds are bumped, most raids are gonna be making a corpse run.

Now, for a player that's done the fight several times, avoiding the clouds becomes fairly simple. Unless you've got a special computer.

This is where a screenshot would be great, but I'll do my best...

The clouds lie.

The clouds that show up on my screen are not in the same places that they really are. So I'll be running through empty space and causing adds to spawn, all while seeing other people running through 3-4 clouds and nothing happening.

Makes for a great attempt. >.<

Luckily, if I realize it at the beginning of the fight (IE, when I see the tank running through 3 clouds on his way to Sara) I can just hide by the door and do nothing for all of phase 1.

And really, I need to find better things to do when I've sat myself for a raid >.>

3.2 Incoming! Part 3: Fun Stuffs!

And now we head back to the tournament. For those that have reached their Crusader title (Exalted Champion of the Horde/Alliance), a new vendor will become available. Dame Evniki Kapsalis has many new and exciting items that just to happen to cost a branch and a root in Champion's Seals.

Perhaps the most interesting item she offers is the Argent Pony Bridle. This allows your little squire to be very helpful once every 4 hours... He can open your bank, a vendor, or your mailbox. MMOChampion currently reports that he can also provide access to the AH, but that is not currently what the PTR shows. Would be great if that is available as well though =)

Screenshots

3 of my favorite screenshots, since servers are down and I have nothing better to do =)

Work's been a pain this week, so no actually informative stuffs atm, but hopefully this will be fun.

And no laughing at my UI! >.>

'Twas the night before 3.0, and all through Azeroth, not a creature was stirring, not even... Oh, wait. Wrong season >.< The Last Gruul kill before all of the big changes. Yes, I'm dead. No, I'm not the only one. That's 15 seconds left before shutdown. Tank is nearly dead. Gruul's at 1%.

We got our loot in the mail a week later ^.^

Some people got bored... and kited half of SMV to Shat. Most of them got taken down very (very) quickly, but there was one little hitch in the genocide...

One quest out in SMV has you kill Varedis. He has the fun little ability of going completely immune at 50%, until you use the quest item.

Completely immune to the point where A'dal is not able to pwn his face }=D

Anyone who was a BC herbalist likely knew the agony... Kazzak and his blasted Nightmare Vine that's RIGHT THERE!!!

So, with a bit of planning, and a rogue sacrifice, we ninja'd it.

He still got both of us, but not until I had gotten that stupid herb. We were both giggling in vent the entire time, and rather proud of our little accomplishment ^.^