March 2008 Archives

I was handing in quests at the island today when a gigantic wolf caught my eye.  I ran to catch up and snap some screenshots.

I spoke to Ontbach and she said that the wolf had been like that since the patch, she tamed her a long time ago.  I went out to BEM myself and tamed the same wolf, but she shrank down to normal size.  I'm thinking it's something to do with her keeping the tag of <The Den Mother> that's made her stay huge. 

Whatever it is, it's really cool!

Update: I just spoke to Ontbach again, and she said the wolf appears normal to her and is actually called something different.  It's even stranger than I thought!  I'll have to see if my tamed one appears different to other people... Hmmmm!

Me and some buddies went into Magister's Terrace last night, to do a quick run on normal and get a friend attuned to heroic.  We had a prot pally, a holy pally, an affliction warlock, a destruction/demo warlock and a combat rogue.  Once we worked out some kinks in the system, the run went nice and smoothly.  I discovered that using my felhunter and solo'ing any of the spellcasters is fun!  DoTs and drain life, wohoo.

The problem occured when we got to Kael'thas.  We were at the hell-pull before him, and we were using fear as a CC.  I've done it before, and none of them have ever run far enough to aggo Kael'thas.  Apparently, they can, they just hadn't before.

So the prince of the blood elves yells and comes running towards us.  Three of the group are in the corridor, so they book it.  Myself and Megawatt are stuck in his room, because the door has shut.  We die horribly.  (Of course, the pull mobs have no trouble getting through the door.)

We release.  We run back.  Smack into the closed door.

So after all that, we couldn't finish the instance.  Sigh.

I put in a ticket and the GM contacted me about two hours later.  She was very nice but I was OTing Karazhan at the time, so I couldn't talk to her properly.  She said they're aware of the issue and are working on it.  Bleh.  In the meantime, if it happens you should put in a ticket and stay in the instance, somebody should be there to fix it quickly.

WoW insider already beat me to the punch but it's so funny, I'm going to post it anyway.

The new dailys up on the Throne of Kil'jaeden have become more exciting (and hilarious, if you're like me) with Doom Lord Kazzak spawning up there.  He has an AOE shadowbolt ability that hits for a fair amount, and every time somebody dies, he gets stronger.  Of course, he was resetting enough for this not to be an issue, but it was still funny to see peoples' names get shouted across the zone.  Basically, Kazzak is telling you you're a big noob.

Not only are you dead, but everyone knows what you did.  Lawls. 

I did my dailys and completely avoided making him mad, so it can be done. 

This stems from a discussion I was having with some friends about women/girls in WoW and other MMOs.  I came to the conclusion that there are several types, and while not every woman playing an online game falls into one of these categories, some do, and I feel it's my duty to make the public aware of this.

The Stereotypes/Archetypes of Woman in Gaming.

Name: The Girly Girl  

Habitat: Trade or General Chat

Most Likely to Say: "I just need 2000 more gold for my epic flying mount but I can't farm it myself :( :( ;_;"

Traits: The Girly Girl is the one that spends a lot of time talking on general or trade chat wherever she is.  She uses a lot of emoticons like :), :(, ;_; ^^ ^_^ and so on.  She's the one that can always get groups because she's a girl, but may not be a very good player.  She uses the fact that she's a girl to get all sorts of things, from money to items to a spot in a raid.

Risk Level: High.  Stay away from this one.

How to Handle: Just don't pay her any attention.  She'll get fed up, throw a drama fit, and leave.

Name: The Cyb0r Wh0re

Habitat: Goldshire (Or Horde equivelant)

Most Likely to Say: "Hi baby ^^  You want to RP with me somewhere private?"

Traits: Do I really have to go into this?  She's the level 5 human standing in Northshire in just a tabard, sometimes with others and sometimes alone.  She could be a good player, but who knows.  She never actually plays the game. 

Risk Level: High.  High chance of being a guy.

How to Handle: /ignore.  That's pretty much the only way.  Either that or you could play along if you're into that kind of thing, but make sure you get a cleanse afterwards.  Never know what you might catch.

Name: The Tough Chick 

Habitat: Karazhan, SSC, TK, MtH, BT.        

Most Likely to Say: "Okay, tank go in, healers spread out.  Keep me topped off and don't screw up."

Traits: This is the girl that is probably an officer in a guild that's raiding.  She knows her stuff, and she doesn't take any crap.  Probably doesn't put up with any flirting.  She could be another type of girl when not in raids but once it's time for business, she doesn't mess around.  Slightly intimidating, but she's the one you want main tanking Kael'thas.  Knows her class, knows the rest of them and still somehow finds time to do all of her RL chores as well.

Risk Level: Low.  This is one of the ones you want to keep around

How to Handle:  Don't treat her any differently than anyone else, because she'll probably just get annoyed and kick you out of the raid.

Name: The Mother

Habitat: Guildchat

Most Likely to Say: "Don't worry hon, I'll help you."

Traits: She's always the first one to welcome new guildmembers, or to respond when somebody asks for help.  She has a fair knowledge of the game and probably plays a healing class (priest, paladin or druid.  Possibly shaman but not as likely).  She'll do anything to help people out, and she's probably one of the ones that keeps the group together.  Likely not interested much in PVP or raiding, but if she does come she'll spend most of the time talking to people in whispers if they're upset about something and trying to make them feel better.

Risk Level: Low.  A nice person, if a little annoying at times.

How to Handle: Thank her a lot, just don't take her anywhere out of her depth.

Name: The Hidden Girl

Habitat: Anywhere

Most Likely to Say: "Hey bro."

Traits: This is the girl that stays below the radar.  May or may not be playing a male character.  Never talks on voice chat.  Might use some smilies :) but not a lot.  Everyone just assumes it's a guy, and she never corrects them.  May be hidden because she's sick of the way girls can be reacted to, because she doesn't want to get hit on, or she just wants to see if she gets treated differently.

Risk Level: Very Low.  You'll probably never find her.

How to Handle: You can't, because you won't know.  If you find out she's a girl somehow, keep it to yourself.

Name: The Ambiguous Girl

Habitat: Any of the Above

Most Likely to Say: "Hi! :)"

Traits: This is the one nobody is sure about.  May or may not be a girl.  Plays a girl character, claims to be a girl, but some of the things "she" says are a little... odd.  Never talks on voice chat, claims to have a broken microphone, or just can't get it working.  Possibly claims to be a lesbian and hits on the other girls around.

Risk Level: Medium.  Probably a guy.

How to Handle: If it matters to you, seek proof.  If it doesn't, treat her like anyone else.

A lot of the girls you'll come across will be a mix of the above, or completely different.  This is just a field guild to the most obvious ones.

Disclaimer: I don't take responsibility for the girls really being guys.  Even I can't tell sometimes.  If in doubt, just treat everyone the same.

Last night, me and some friends joined a group in killing Gruul.  High King Maulgar went down first try, although we lost a lot of the raid.  I ended up helping to heal the main tank while the shaman was throwing lightning bolts at me.  Yay for trees! 

It took us three tries for Gruul, but we got him to go splat.  The raid was far from perfect, but it was a LOT of fun and I was impressed with everyone.  Here's hoping it happens again and I get my leggings.  ;)

I'm the tree in the back.

I am reeeaaally liking this patch.  I went out for about an hour and a half and did the new dailys on Aly. 

That is: The two from Shattrath, two on the island, two up at the throne of Kil'jaeden and the fishing daily.  Between the quest kills and turnins I got a nice amount of gold, the water walking pot (from the fishing daily), about six green items, some cloth and ... TWO badges of justice!  Holy carp.

The island spawns are insane right now though.  There weren't as many people there as last night, I was getting jumped all over!

I also noticed that they've changed the animation for the engineering mote gatherer, but I need to get a screenie of that before I post properly on it.

Now I need to go run new dailys on my other characters.  *scurries*

Well, the patch has dropped!

I waited for the usual extra downtime, then hopped on good ol' Argent Dawn.  First thing I did was log onto Emelyn to see if I'd got enough honour for my new gloves.  I had, but what was waiting for me on my character sheet made me boggle.

I WISH I'd got that much in one day.  I actually got around 5k.  I hopped into AV later on with Nax before I went to bed, and the new instant honour thing is really nice.  So is the join as group feature.  Putting the Horde staring area a whole three feet further back hasn't changed a whole lot from what I could see, though.

After that I hopped on Aly and did the new daily fishing quest, which sent me to Stormwind.  Took me about 15 casts but I caught a baby crocolisk from the canals and handed it in for my reward, which was some gold, a grey, and some fishing lures.  Woot!

Then I pottered around a bit, fending off "come heal for me at Sunwell" requests until Mega got online.  We formed up a group consisting of Maxinos (warrior), Autumntail (rogue), Kertatha (mage), Raecrister (healing-type pally) and myself on Emelyn.

The new instance is fun!  We purposefully went in there without having read any strats.  Kertatha had done the first two bosses on test, so he kept quiet except for when we had some trouble.

The room above was a lot of fun.  The first couple of pulls involved me and Kert giggling madly as we AOE'd and then died horribly.

Kael'thas was a challenge, took us about five tries to get him down.  The next-to-last try was exciting, I was the only one alive when he got to about 13%.  Between my DoTs and life siphon/life drain, I managed to get him down to 1% when I misjudged one of the arcane spheres and died, with a howl of "NOOOOOOO!".  We got him down the time after that.

Then me and Mega did some of the dailys, then gave up on them because there were just toooooo many people.  It's all pretty good fun though, and I'm looking forward to trying all the rest of the new stuff.

I did make some brilliant glass on Eledith, and got a dawnstone out of it.  It's on a cooldown though.

I'm loving the new mana regen.  Intellect now gives you extra regen, the more int you have - the more regen you get per point of spirit.  That coupled with the mana-cost reduction of regrowth ... oh man.  I was in tree form, spamming regrowth on Mega to test it, and I felt like a paladin.  I think with full raid buffs, I'll be able to spam regrowth all day without my mana going down much at all.

1. Eggs in Dun Morogh are camoflagued by the snow.

2. Eggs in Elwynn forest are camoflagued by murlocs.

3. Eggs in Teldrassil are camoflagued by ... everything. 

4. When you've been hunting eggs for hours, you may get paranoid delusions that the critters are there just to pretend to be eggs.

5. While there seem to be more eggs in Elwynn (and not many people check the islands), there are less people looking for them in Teldrassil.  Also general chat does not make me want to dig out my eyes with a rusty spoon.

6. There are no eggs in Alterac Valley.  However, killing Horde and getting 500+ honour is a great way to get out egg frustrations.

7. Harpy eggs are not brightly coloured eggs.

8. Just because you've opened a bajillion eggs, it does not mean you will get a dress.  You may, however, get a tuxedo shirt that you can already make yourself.

9. Unlike in RL, a bagful of candy does nothing but give you less bag space.

10. Nothing has changed since last year.

Dear Alliance,

Listen up.  It's not rocket science.

In AV - If you capture something and nobody else stays, you need to stay.  Because chances are as soon as you leave, the Horde will come back and capture it.  I don't care if all their offense is currently making our defense bend over and scream like a girl - one of them WILL double back when you least expect it.  And if you get overrun by a big group, you have time to type it while they are pwning your face.

There's no point in rushing the RH if we don't have a graveyard further south than Stonehearth.  Why?  Because as soon as somebody dies, they get kicked all the way back up and might not be able to get back down.  Grab Snowfall on the way past at least, PLEASE. 

And bottlenecks?  It's no good screaming at people to "just run through" when you're a warrior in plate armour and I'm a warlock in the equivelant of wet paper tissues.  I'm talking to you, dude who trash talked that one match last week. 

Speaking of bottlenecks - WTF Blizz?  Why is the Allance bottleneck right up by Dun Bald-whatsit, and the first Horde one right after Galv?  At least they can take Iceblood and Stonehearth before we get them trapped.  We can barely kill the orc. 

And then there's the way that Horde seem to often use addons to join as a group.  Ugh.  At least in the next patch everyone will be able to do that without using an outside program.  I can't believe they left it so that it was possible. 

Back to you, Alliance.  Don't think I've forgotten you.

Is it so hard to fight on the objective, not the road?  I'm talking about AB as well here.  I don't care if you have a hero complex and you want to go and try taking the farm.  While you're messing around there, that mage and rogue are taking the lumber mill back, and then you're going to get your face kicked in and we lose with only 1 flag.  Take three bases and then hold them.  Don't chase people, don't run away from the flag so it can be capped while you're being sapped.  Come on now.

The saving grace for AV is that usually we get more honour for a loss than we do for a win in other BGs.  Don't just stand at Galv with your tongue hanging out.  Go capture Iceblood Tower at least.

Sigh.

Love and kisses,

Eme.

Here's a strange thing.  We'd been doing some PVP and decided to spend some time sorting out bags when Mega calls to me to come up to the Scryer's tier, because some characters are acting really strangely.  At first he thought it was a bug because they all look exactly the same, but I noticed that they had slightly different names. 

View image

If you look, the one with the skirt was the leader.  The others are all identical, all shamans (Which makes the guild name kinda clever, as 5 shaman = twenty totems). 

What struck me as strange was not that they were all following the leader, but when they landed they all dismounted at the same time, and then fanned out like some sort of military manouver.  Even if somebody was using a multi-rig setup, is that possible?  They all moved and stopped at the same time in a precise pattern.

I tried to Fraps it, but by the time I opened Fraps, they stopped moving.

Every time I level a character to 70, I swear I'll never do it again.

Psh.

So now I have a level 70 warlock.  After an extremely "interesting" Shadow Lab run (three level 69s in there is kinda tough) and a little questing in Nagrand, Emelyn dinged her final ding (until the expansion).  Nax (Mega's druid) was just a little way ahead, and Taerlyx (Admosmori's prot pally) is just behind.  Although the patch is coming and it's removing Kara attument, we're still working on it together.

I put on my shiny frozen shadoweave set, hugged my felguard goodbye, and respec'd to affliction/destruction.  Oh my gosh it's fun.  You know when you're in a battleground, running along, and suddenly you're slowed and have a bazillion DoTs on you?  That's what I do now.  Muahahaha.

Hoping to start raiding with her soon.

As I've said before, I hate wiping because of random events.  I also hate wiping because of bugs.  It's different if you wipe because of a silly mistake (Let's not talk about our paladin wiping us at 1% on Prince because he accidently bubbled the tank) but when you wipe because of a bug... ugh.

We've been hit by this bug fairly reguarly in Karazhan.  And in different places, too.  It usually consists of "Oh look, where did that shade come from?  OH HOLY GOD MY FACE!"  It seems to consist of one of the shades from right up towards Netherspite's room pathing down, aggroing on somebody and then bringing all of his friends.  Usually every single shade between where you are, and where he should be.

This is the room before Illhoof.  We were finishing off the mobs there and the single shade came in, and I picked him up.  We killed him and one other before we wiped thanks to lots more (five in that picture, and we killed two and I think some wandered off before I got the screenshot).  Later on when we were heading to Netherspite, we were getting ready to pull the shades at the top of the ramp ... and there were only two there.  Proof that it's where the bugged ones come from.

WTF, Karazhan?

What is the Lifebloom nerf?

The HoT portion (that we keep up on tanks to stop them from going ker-splat) is being nerfed, so that we don't get as much benefit from +healing gear.  Lifebloom is used a lot in PVP, but I find that I let it tick out for the end heal rather than worry about keep it stacked, so this is going to hurt the PVE game much more than making druids less "uber" in PVP.  Which, let's face it, this is probably about.

How will this affect my game?  Well, if lifebloom doesn't tick for as much, it's gonna be harder to keep multiple tanks up or even one.  Less lifebloom = more swiftmen and regrowth needed to keep topping up the tank = more mana usage.  The big appeal for playing or raiding with a druid are their HoTs.  We can't even out-of-combat rez!  If our HoTs are nerfed, we cry!

Lifebloom nerf on Resto4Life  

And on Lifebloomer

Bloggers against the lifebloom nerf! 

Update:  New WoW Insider article on this issue by one of our fellow druid bloggers:

Community Speaks on Lifebloom Nerf 

A guildmate of mine, Verlena, made me this one.  It's juuuuust a little (a lot) better than my effort.  I love it!