Recently in Ameland Category

I have two hunters. I know, I know, one of them I barely mention in these pages. I kinda left him hanging at 41 when the leveling bump hit and I favored my new Paladin, Telaan, who is not happily propped up at level 70. While Ameland, my main hunter, is great and all, sitting with a perfected Marksmanship spec that I love dearly, I do so wish I could find a reason to level Traluun up. Then I just finished watching Big Red Kitty's Devilsaur video from the beta realms. Like in cartoons from days of old, a light bulb went on.

So here's my plan. I will still do my profession stuff and questing, what ever I have left of them, on Telaan, but then I will work when I can on Traluun. I did some quick math, and the point when Traluun can get the final Beast Mastery talent point would be level 60. That means that at Level 60, he can run over to Un'Goro crater and tame him a Devilsaur. I am pretty sure I can do 20 levels in a month or two, even on a boring hunter type like Traluun is now, and be ready for that lovely talent point when the 3.0 patch hits pre Wrath.

Have you ever rolled a second character of a class you already have, just to try out a new spec? Is there a spec you haven't tried that you plan to when Wrath hits? Let me know in the comments!

After my recent time off from game, I have found it harder and harder to play the characters I have. My Paladin isn't hot enough my druid too thin and with racials that suck, and my hunter has just horribly boring speech patterns. I am sad to announce that effective immediately, I will be liquidating all of my current characters across most realms and making Horde versions with the same names. Arita will become a Tauren Druid, Medros a Blood Elf Paladin, and Ameland a Troll Hunter.

I will miss my friends on the Alliance side and invite every one of them to join me in the abandonment of the Alliance to the kids who have made the faction unplayable. The Alliance is filled with noobs who can't play their classes, can't PvP worth a damn, and can't follow the rules no matter how clear they are. Hope many times do you need to ask the same moron to not be talk about raid progression, his latest pnwage, or whatever in Say channel before you just want the chance to force him to stfu at the end of a gun?

On that note, it is almost time for work, 2.4.1 has just downloaded, and the realms are offline for an extended maintenance, so I am going to go get ready for work. Ishnu-dal-dieb.

If have spent any appreciable time in the Outlands, especially in Shattrath City, you have likely seen them alongside a hunter. If you have spent time in Dustwallow Marsh since patch 2.3, you have likely fought them. The Grimtotem Spirit Guides, also known as the Ghost Wolf, was discovered post 2.3 to be tameable if you could get your tame beast spell down so it took less than the 7.5 seconds they lasted for. Blizzard was asked if this was within the scope of acceptable behaviour, and a CM replied that yes, it was fine, the Devs had talked it over and found it to be acceptable, and as well a fun and ingenious way to get a unique pet. To quote my fellow hunters: They lied.

The reaction around the WoW Blogosphere has been plentiful, fast, furious and accusatory on this topic. There have been some posts that have been purely informational, most have been full of anger, suspicion, and frustration at the decision Blizzard made. To me, this looks like a CM said it was all fine, so that hunters would not be making a land rush to the marsh, while Blizzard tried to decide if this was really ok. A couple of bloggers pointed out a few definitive side effects this controversy will have. 1. Do not trust the CMs, for they have no true information, cannot speak to or for the developers, and have no authority. 2. Do not trust Blizzard, because "it's fine, it won't change" has now been proven to be a lie, and if they will lie repeatedly(remember all, the Serpent taming lies of 2006) how can we possibly trust them now?

Here is what I think Blizzard needs to do, right now, and as quickly as they can. They need to acknowledge the hunter community with something other than placating and 'you're SOL' type responses. They need to bring back the spirit guide as tameable, even if they remove it in a later patch *with forewarning* so that hunters will not have spent hundreds of gold to get one only to be left in the dark. They need to have a respected person, who has not been shown to have lied blatantly to the community in the past, to address the community and make guarantees about what will happen in the future in regards to issues that are in discussion, instead of feeding us lies like we had here. They also need to guarantee the model of the ghost wolf will not be removed or changed.

As a Hunter, I was not planning to get a Ghost Wolf. They look cool, but I do not play my hunter enough to justify the cost, and I am already leveling one lower level pet(the white owl in Felwood) and do not need another. As the point has been made, though, they are a unique way to express your hunter dedication and whenever someone saw a player with one, they would know that hunter spent a lot of time and money to get that pet, not to mention the effort required to get their pet to level 70. If Blizzard does not do these things now, then I see no or little chance that their CMs, Devs, or representatives will be trusted for a very long time. These are the kinds of mistakes that will give an opening to other games to steal away huge chunks of the playerbase.

Ameland, Level 70 Night Elf Hunter
Traluun, Level 41 Draenei Hunter

Today I finally got my last 70 up to Ogri'la, the Ogre heaven, and had Ameland proclaimed an Ogre king. Due to the quest chain to get this, I made a nice 350g today just from a few dailies and the Ogri'la chain, I already have my 2 lowbies up to 300 in their crafting professions, only Telaan's mining needs to get to 300, but that is more of a time based thing. I am trying to decide what to do with my money now. I have the 1600g for my hippogryph, whenever I get the rep for it, and the only 70 without 375 in a primary profession is Ameland, who has 370 Leatherworking. I may need to go to the AH and get a rough guess of the mats needed to get those last 5 points...