May 2008 Archives

Firstly, I apologise for the lack of posting recently.  I just started a new job and it's cut out a lot of the time I used to have.  I'm still playing and reading, though!

One quick piece of news: We changed <Stop Whining> to a more RPish and less controversial guild name.  We're now <Agents of Stromgarde> and I'll try and get the background story up and written soon.

In the meantime, here's a quick video I threw together about what it's like being a restoration druid.

Wow.  From there being not much information about Wrath of the Lich King, it's suddenly exploded into a wealth of it.  I'm not going to respost everything, just talk about some of my favourite things.

Death Knights

I'm really looking forward to making a Death Knight, and it sounds like the class will be a blast to play.  I think my poor warrior is going to get neglected as the DK may replace her as my tank.

This is an interesting snippet, saying you may be able to make a Death Knight of either faction.  This means that if you have all Alliance characters you could potentially have a level 55 Horde without having to reroll.  The question in the post is more for PVP realms, I think, as you can only have characters of one faction on a PVP server, but it opens up all sorts of possibilities.  If you have Horde friends on the same server you could make a Horde Death Knight and play them up to the new level cap with a lot less work than starting over.  Of course, with the limit being one DK per server, you then couldn't have an alliance one.

Factions

Here is the main article with all the snippets.  The most interesting thing for me is that Hemet Nesingwary will have a rival faction.  Wow.  Hemet would have to offer something pretty dang special to avoid me trying to kill him for all of those hunting quests he made me do.  The "Wolvar" sound like they might be a worgen faction, perhaps some that are a little smarter and have broken away from Arugal or whomever is controlling them?

That also brings me nicely to my next topic;

Lore

Wow oh wow is there a lot of stuff to cover.  I love the Azerothian stories.  Don't get me wrong, some of the Outland stuff is entertaining, but after having levelled several characters through Ashenvale and Duskwood I have come to love the Worgen tales and legends, such as those covered in the Scythe of Elune quest.  It sounds like the worgen lore will be developed further and I can't WAIT. 

There's also some dragon lore that I'm looking forward to as well, but I really do have an unhealthy obsession with the Worgen.

There's a very good reason why my cursor moves to hover over my Skyguard Drape key when I use my Gadgetzan teleporter.  Today I was again proven right as I popped into the sky and began to fall, then slowed to a nice floating glide.

Looks like some other people weren't quite as prepared, though...

Giant orphan wants to crush the island!  Run for your lives!

With this challenge from Big Bear Butt Blogger, I'm gonna try and get some fun screenshots of my orphan over the weekend.  With Gruul and maybe SSC tonight, that should be fun.  Buahaha.

For now, this;

For a little while now, I've not been quite happy in my guild.

Seems to be going around at the moment, huh?  I think it may be part of the pre-expansion lull (more on that in a moment).

The guild leader is a much-liked and respected friend of mine, but he's (rightly) been taking time off for health reasons.  Unfortunately, it just isn't the same without him and there doesn't really seem anyone willing/able to take the toughest job of all.  With a new job starting next week, I just won't have time to do it myself.  I can't be worrying about making WoW fun for 20-some other people when I might not even have time to make it fun for myself.

So last night I left the guild I've been in for the past couple of years.  They took me in when I was a little new 60, and I saw some of the old-world instances with them.  From going to MC for the first time and getting to pull the mobs after Baron Geddon to learning Karazhan and leading my first runs, I've done a lot with these people.  They are my friends and my family and it's very very strange to be leaving that.  And more than a little sad.

I've just not felt a part of it lately.  When I log on there are only a few people who I might not even know.  I played with the same group of friends all the time, and we're in a multi-guild raiding group that we're going to 25-mans with. There's also the pre-expansion lull I mentioned, where a lot of people are off playing other games, or taking a break.

So I took the plunge, made my own guild and <Stop Whining> was born.

A little background behind the name.  Our little group of friends has a habit of yelling Arnie quotes when we go into bosses.  I'm not even sure how it started, it might have been me, because I had friends on SWG that would randomly quote him too.  However it started, it became a habit to yell "Get to da choppa!" or "I'm a cop!" and so on when we're on Vent together. 

So when I was sat in Ironforge at the guild guy trying to decide on the name, I discovered that <Come with me if you want to live> didn't quite fit.  So I tried <Stop Whining> and it worked. 

"Stop Whining" is an Arnie quote from the Terminator 3D "ride" at Universal Studios.  How's that for obscure?  Myself and two of my good WoW friends met up in Orlando this year and went on it, and after that whenever anyone was starting to whine, we'd yell "Stop whining" in an Arnie-esque voice.

So now it's a guild name.  It also helps that most of us are fairly unforgiving when it comes to people whining.

A few other people from the Shadow Walkers came with me, and a few more still might.  I'm not going to recruit or try and poach people, there's no point.  I'm the guild master game mechanics-wise, but everyone else is the highest officer rank you can be and have all the same abilities as far as it's possible.  It's a commitee guild, nothing more than a bunch of friends sharing a tag. 

Maybe on day we'll re-join the Shadows, but for now we're running around and telling people to stop whining!

We also found the perfect tabard icon.