Friday 20 December 2013

War stories : Return to Ogrimmar

It seemed like a lifetime ago she set foot in the city. She was barely of age when she joined the warriors of the Horde. She remembered it well, her first mission was to the other side of the world, the siege of Zul'Aman. How long was that ago? Three, or four years, and now she was back, but back to what?

She walked through the gate-buildings an looked out over the Valley of Strength. In the middle was a big pile of rubble, still smouldering of the fire it was destroyed by. She didn't remember the bank of Ogrimmar to be that big, so much had changed. She walked on, some of her people where scurrying along, but not many Orcs where around.

She had seen destruction before, and death of course. In the Zul'Aman campaign she didn't see much of the front, but after that, she was stationed at the Wrath Gate. She was their the day Arthas confronted the combined might of The Horde and the Alliance. She was their the day that the Forsaken betrayed The Horde, and she barely survived that ordeal.

Ogrimmar looked like it was completely sacked. The Alliance swarm had not shown much mercy to the Orcs who tried to defend their homes.She already knew what she was going to see, but still she walked through the valley towards the drag, towards her birthplace, towards where her family used to live.

There was some screaming coming from the Valley of Spirits, where the Trolls used to live. She heard reports the Trolls took back their islands a few years ago, and that most of them relocated there,  maybe the heart of The Horde would now be relocated there with her new Warchief. She didn't know if she was still part of The Horde, time would tell. A few Blood Elf guards halted her.

She had met Blood Elfs before, at Zul'Aman. They seemed a little fragile, but where not afraid to lead the battles fought, and now they where here in Ogrimmar, the remnants of the Regent's Army who fought in the rebellion against Garrosh, the deposed war chief. She gave her credentials to the guards.

They where written in the Sindorei-language, which she knew enough off to know what the letters said. This one has not fought for Garrosh, but also not against, she was not here when that all happened. She was on a ship, sailing from Northrend to Kalimdor when the Alliance and the Rebels defeated Garrosh. Why where they still called rebels?

Her batallion was stationed at Wyrmrest Temple after Deathwing assaulted the Dragons. They were there to guard, and to rebuild. She had worked with some dwarves there to secure the surroundings, and then the news came that a new Island was found, and that old wounds where torn open. They all had one more evening of comradery, the Orcs, Dwarves, Trolls, Draenai. Even the Gnomes where having fun, but the next day we all would be enemies again.

The guards let her continue into the Drag. It was completely ravaged and burned out. Everything had to be rebuild. All the houses, all the stores, everything gone. The Alliance really sacked this place. She headed towards the Valley of Honor, one of the places the Alliance didn't breached she heard. Maybe it was better there.

She was not sure if Garrosh was making the right decisions, but he was the Warchief, he should be followed. Like Thrall before him, the Orcs went where their Warchief went, no questions asked. But although Wyrmrest was far from the new Island, rumours started dripping in. The biggest shock was news that the Troll leader was openly revolting against his Warchief, and that both the noble Tauren and the Blood Elves seemed to join Vol'Jin, was this the end of the Horde?

Skirmishes broke out between the different races around Wyrmrest, and she and her kin seemed to be standing alone. One night a big brawl ended with several deaths, and the Horde commanders decided that it was best for the Orcs to leave. She was put on a ship towards Ogrimmar, under command of a Blood Elf Regiment. Or was that as prisoner?

She looked out over the Valley of Honor. It was always crowded there, but now there where tents everywhere. The stench of people packed up to close to each other was overwhelming. Near the gate was a tent where medics where doing their job, while dead orcs where still being taken away. A little bit further, children where playing in the water, while Orc warriors sat around campfires.

She looked back to the gate, a number of Tauren Warriors stood guard, both to keep people out and in. So, this is what her people were now, refugees in their own city.



Thursday 19 December 2013

WoD: Wait..what now?

I have been pointed out that my postwriting was down again...  and there is a simple reason for that, too much information which is actually no infarmation at all.  I have several unfinished posts now, something that has not happened before.

Normally I start writing, and I have a post, now I have several starts (including a RP-story even) but no endings. And I figured out why, every post is connected to each other (well, except the RP- story then). So, lets start with something..  the news that WoD heroics will be more heroic again maybe?  Time for a confession:

I liked the TBC-heroic concept.

Think about it. Before you could run heroics, you had to do the normals. You needed to be revered with the dungeon-faction to actually do the heroic version, which meant you had to run the dungeon several times before doing the heroic version, so everyone who could do it, actually knew what was going on.

Now the whole rep-thing was tiresome, but back then they didn't do in Ilvl-gating. The problem with Ilvl-gating is that you can 'fake' your Ilvl, especially if you are a Plate-user. Every item in your bags which you can equip counts towards your Ilvl, so a 522-coth belt would count higher as a 450-platebelt for a plate-user...  seems odd, but that's how it is.

Maybe they should include the MagT-idea again, no doing heroic dungeons, before you do the normal one, and you have to have a certain Ilv.

And there seems to be another little problem, the length of heroics, Shadow Labs Heroic anyone?

I liked Shadow Lab heroics....  I loathed magister terrace though..

A common thing I read and hear that no one wants that again, because it takes to much time...so, don't do them I would say. This idea that everyone seems to have, that even the most casual player who can only play 2 hours a week should be able to do the same as a hardcore player who plays 20 hours a week is ridiculous.

Oh wait, they actually can...  just not in the same time period. In my opinion normal dungeons and LFR's should be short and quick, for the casuals with not much time. Heroics/Flex etcetera for people with more time. I want more longer BRD-kinda dungeons to explore, which take time to do...

Oh, and I see Mythical dungeons coming, heroics scaled up in a later patch, so we cannot steamroll them.

Monday 9 December 2013

Sssh... they are listening.

Well, well, well, the NSA is listening into us?  Panic, no, run, stop...STOP

Apart from the fact that this was already known, what did you expect?

I think of myself as a reasonable person who does not go into panic mode easily, so the moment all that snowden-stuff started to pour out, I was like...meh, what did you expect?

And now the snowden-files leaked that the NSA is in World of Warcraft.. so what?

I never really understood all the Rukus about this. The only thing that changed is that there is evidence now, it's like everyone just had their eyes closed for years, and is now starting to see. I don't get that, I already suspected for years that everything on the internet is being watched, and with suspecting, I mean 99% sure.

I can see that it might be a problem...  actually I can't. There is no way I will start to freak out because some dude somewhere in the US, or for that matter the Netherlands knows what I did last saturday on the web  (hint, it was probably killing internet dragons), I have enough other things in my head, so I don't want to start worrying about that, have fun with that knowledge.. as if that guy..or girl...  would remember that...

...and if they did, well, they can't say it, can't they...  and every time I see a news message about the NSA spying on Merkel, or the BBC, be sure that your government either knows about it, or is also spying on the US.

And for the NSA-employees that are assigned to play this World of Warcraft game in search of potential hazards to the United States of America or her Allies, have fun...  and what is your progress by the way... on raids, not on finding terrorists...

Tuesday 19 November 2013

WoD: The Loot is dropping differently.

One raid-dungeon should not drop different I-llv stuff all over the place.
-Mardah

That's what I said late august in my post about loot-forged stuff. And now this tweet-stuff came up:
Ghostcrawler on some loot-stuff

Basically what he says is that a piece of loot can drop, lets call it the Sword of Uberness. Now what normally happened before all the forged stuff, that you had 3 versions of it. Every raid-difficulty dropped a slightly different one. But now, Throne of Thunder comes along, and suddenly forged stuff, so the Sword of Uberness now has 5 different forms.

But wait, it gets better, we besiege a flex, and one more form is added, so now we have 6, hurray. Wait, you want more then 6? No problem, just wait till Warlords of Draenor, and, to quote Amelia Pond, now it gets interesting.

About to send a shadow that blots out the sun.


In WoD every piece of gear has chance to get either a special, or a gem-slot, or be forged. Now, I suppose this will not be for LFR, but it will probably be for Normal Raids? So, our Sword of Uberness now has 4 different forms in one difficulty? No wait, it can actually double-proc?  Or Triple??  WHAAAAT.... that means, per difficulty-level, mmm, our nice Sword of Uberness has EIGHT different configurations?

Didn't I wrote that two different Ilvl was already a blast to handle in normal raids? Now you have 2 different Ilvl's in a total of 8 different forms....  and everybody wants the Sword of Headaches  (Sword of Uberness with Gem and a special, and forged).

So, if Normal raids will drop all this, we have an amazing 25 different forms of one and the same weapon? And if Normals will not, it's still 18 different forms...  yeesh...  I am pretty sure no one is going to bid on loot without something extra anymore....

But, good news for Mr Robot, with all these new options, people want to know what is better, more Ilvls, or a gemslot...  or is that Lifestealing actually better?  Can I please have defense back...that seemed simpler.


Monday 18 November 2013

Musings

Verulani's image after receiving her gift.


So, I got my third legendary last week. My Shaman Alt also got her legendary cloak, and I was not even going for it. It just, sort of happened. And that is probably THE reason I don't really like this Legendary. You just get it, while playing, you don't have to do really strange things.

The only thing that could be hard is the part where you have to fight Wrathion, that was a real problem on Mardah (I eventually did the healing version), but on Verulani, it was a cake-walk. I failed once, remembered that I had a Plethora of spells (totems) that Moonkins do not have, and went to town.

Verulani now has an Ilvl of 540..which actually makes her ready for normals I guess, considering that is the Ilvl for flex. But there's only so many times I can see the same raid in a week, and my baby-warlock is growing up fast, reaching 501 last weekend, after I remembered that I can buy a cheap 522-necklace somewhere. And I started completing the road on my Orc Hunter.

The problem here is for me, that this patch will probably last for another 6 months....  and that will probably mean, I will end with all spots on 90... oh my. What to do...and then the next thing happened, although I was forewarned, it really put me in a mood to think back to the 'old' TBC-raiding days, oh well.

Jorky goes offline, for the last time?
(Jorky is my Real Life brother)

Thursday 14 November 2013

WoD: The Headache Edition

So... yeah, time to travel in time.....
Just in time before saturday :)
Time travel is always interesting, and the idea of different timelines, which WoD seem to be, has been around. For every action you take, another timeline is created where you took another action. So, the number of timelines is infinite.

The big question is always, if you go back in time, and have the chance to kill Hitler, would you? And people use that as an argument that time travel does not exists... well, with time-lines, you can only say, not in this timeline, but in the other. And because there are infinite time-lines, Hitler has been killed an infinite times... aaargh...maths.

Now luckily we have some nice stories about timelines. The whole of the Marvel Comics happens on Earth615.  or 515..it has a number at least, especially pointing towards timelines. We also have Back to the Future and Doctor Who of course. But both those shows are more linear, where an action in the past, has an effect on the future.

And then we have Star Trek, with the original Kirk at least having 47 time-incursions. But their Mirror Universe and their Reboot-Trek actually are different Timelines. Somewhere in the past, someone made a different decision, and another timeline happened. Heck, in the Trek-reboot, someone from the know timeline, actually goes back in time, and is responsible for the new timeline, Garrosh=Nemo (not the fish).

So, in Warlords of Draenor, Garrosh escapes to the past. In my mind wandering yesterday I was speculating if Malchezaar had something to do with that, because he does drop that axe. (After that the little phasing-news of Kara came thru (I have witnesses  :p)). So, tinfoil hat; Malchezaar throws Garrosh in the past, and a few days later the Portal goes red. Garrosh of course, has several years on Draenor then.

We jump in the portal, and go fight this new 'Iron Horde'. This all has no effect on our 'Prime' timeline's past. But now the real headache starts....  what of the other timelines Azeroth? Because Illidan couldn't run to Outlands he may still be alive? Heck, the Alliance may not even exist, because there are no orcs on that Azeroth? So many possibilities, let's steal The Exodar and find out? Does it even exist, or is it completely overrun by undead and Deathwing, because there was no Horde to battle them?

And also interesting is the end.... yes that may be very early.... but we will of course take down the bad guys, but then. Go back to our own Timeline? And what about the other timeline? It's never a good idea to have a constant link between to timelines... bad stuff multiplies with that, literally..

You know, I'll just stick to the line below..and think: Time will tell.

"I always get a headache from time travel." -  Captain Janeway, U.S.S. Voyager

Tuesday 12 November 2013

WoD: 20 people it is.

The biggest news for the raiding community is the new raid-size of course. Blizzard just killed of 10's and 25's, and made one size: TWENTY

Yes, yes, they actually renamed some difficulties, and made the flex-system the standard with 3 difficulties, but for every guild who knows they are going to do hero..rrr...mythical, their default size should be 20.

First up, I should mention that, Yes, I see a problem for 10-man guilds. They are really screwed over after most of them gone down from 25 the last 3-4 years. The fact that Innovation during Firelands had a real problem getting 3-4 people,  makes recruiting 10 people at least, a horrific thing. BUT, I do not raid 10s, I actually like 25s. So my reaction to the 10-guild problem is basically; I don't care, maybe a little harsh, but that's the way it is.

For 25s the drop is not that big of a problem.Everyone who has raided in the past, knows that at the end of expansions, people disappear, so going down a notch is not that bad. And with the flex system, you can actually go 25 if more people sign up. But here comes the first problem. Apparantly every difficulty will have their own lock-out...


Innovation doing Firelands with 22 people.
That means you can go out and kill the same boss 4 times a week, and get loot 4 times. That really worked well during Wrath....if you want burn-out. The problem here is the tier-pieces and the trinkets. Getting that trinket, even if lower Ilvl, maybe an upgrade, and everyone knows how much an upgrade 4pTier can be, even if one or two are considerable lower Ilvl.

For a guild like Innovation, that would mean, normal on wednesday/saturday  (current flex-runs for fun), and one of the three raid-evenings should be reserved to try Mythical....  My mind has to do some more work on that, but I don't like the separate heroic/mythical lockout.

An other thing I read somewhere, and heard (fatboss), is that the new fixed 20-man will actually allow Blizzard to bring back some gimmick fights with, for example, mind control. The reasoning behind this is, that with 10s, you cannot expect every class to be present (even impossible), but with 20 you can.....wait...wut?  Innovation is 25, and there are some days we don't have a hunter or a mage, because they are doing something else.

In my experience, the number here is three. If you have three of every class, then you can actually expect to have a certain class present....  anyone for 40man raids? So, unless mind control also becomes a mage-ability or something, I don't think you can actually expect every class to be present. Although being Mythical, you can say that would be the guild's problem,  which I am actually content with...

Innovation taking down Sha with 25
So, basically, the current raiding-guilds should focus their size on 20, instead of 25. This does not seem that big of a problem. Even the social aspect with 5 raiders less is probably barely noticeable. You still want to have a decent raid group. Actually, with 3 raids/week, that makes 60 raidslots. And if you have a 66% attendance rule, that means 30 raiders, instead of the current...37-40...oh.

Ok... I didn't see the 7-10 difference number coming up for the current 25-man guilds....

Back to the hard calculations. I expect a standard-raid seize of 2 tanks, 5 healers and 13 DPS (6 melee/7ranged). So doing the same maths I did in August and September, that leads to a standard guild-size of:

3 tanks, 8 healers, 9 melee, 10 ranged.

So, some changes will be coming....but not yet.

Monday 11 November 2013

Post 300 : A short evening with Garrosh

So, apparently this is my 300th post. And keeping with tradition I have some nice pictures from this weeks Sunday raid.
Achievement-spam

The key in the end was to focus killing our teammates in the last 20%, and forget about adds...oh, and look, I got myself a heirloom.

One of the many after-kill-pictures.

Mardah hangin' with Vol'Jin, mon.


....  come on, everybody made on like this..didn't they?  :)

Innovation showing off their new mounts.


Good words in a Blizzcon-weekend... but that's next.


I do feel this tier was easier then the previous two. We didn't had any major problems, well, maybe with the Dinosaur, but most fights seemed to be over very fast. Heck, we even managed some genuine one-shots along the way.

The problem I see is the next expansion, Warlords of Draenor. The Beta hasn't started for it, and an expansion-Beta takes about 6 months normally?  So, even if the manage to start it up this month, we will not see Outlands part 0.5 before June...  that's a long time do take down Garrosh on Mythi...rrr...  Heroic I guess.  Oh well, at least there are some speculation-posts coming up, and I have a nice title:

  Mardah, Conquerer of Ogrimmar

Thursday 7 November 2013

Bad planning

So, the weekend that Blizzcon is happening, when we finally will know what the future brings, and even at reasonable times to watch in Europe...  I am offline till sunday...well..mostly, I may sneak some peeks in...

What is also a mystery, is how 'easy' this tier seems to earlier. I am now airing for raid start in some minutes, and as far as I know, we are extending the lockout, to kill Garrosh this week.  We had 2 pulls orso last week, and about ten tuesday evening. I do expect him to fall around pul 35, so probably sunday.

Although knowing Innovation, the next guess would be: First pull of today......

Sunday 3 November 2013

Alt Appreciation: Warrior

And wrapping up the Alt Appreciation started by World of Lae.  This week:  Warriors

Warriors, the bane of levelling for a long while. And the only acceptable tanks during Vanilla WoW. For a long while I actually didn't had a warrior above lvl 20, why? Because they died to easily. At low level, they could tear down one enemy without problem, shredding them to pieces, but if you managed to accidentally pull two, to *gasp* even more, you'd better run.

It wasn't until me and 2 friends levelled a little together. I created Whiteheart, a dwarves Warrior-Tank. Somewhere during the ICC-summer, I made him a Troll called Whiteyyama, and just before Cata hit, he reached 80.

When I joined Innovation, a lot of my alts followed, so the troll became a dwarf again, this time called Stoneheart. He has been my main-alchemist for the last tree years now, although he has been joined by two others now to have all 3 masteries.

Stoneheart between golden flowers...

I do like playing him, but there is a little problem, he is melee. I really don't like all the hugging up, you almost can't see you character anymore. That, and the fact that you can hardly see what is bad stuff, and what is spell-stuff from your teammates, well, don't expect me to do 25man with a melee often.

This concludes the Alt Appreciation-posts. Not only did I wrote 11 posts, I also started blogging...  again... lets see how long I can keep the two posts per week up .

Thanks Lae for the idea, and no, this is by far not the last post on alts  :p

Saturday 2 November 2013

Warlords of the dark and stormy below heroic Draenor?

So, yeah, now it is Warlords of Draenor, a few weeks ago it was Heroes of the Storm (although very briefly) and before that the Dark Below, I think we are being trolled...

Blizzcon is next week, and everyone is expecting an announcement for the new expansion, actually we need it by now, considering Garrosh is being killed all over the World. But there is no news.

Nothing.

The only thing we have is that the new level cap may be 100, because of the heirlooms that drop of Garrosh, but that's not even sure.

So, now all these trademarks are popping up. And we just want to speculate... well ok.

Warlords of Draenor.

The first thing I though of: 'What a nice name for an expansion of that card game, Hearthstone.' That's all, and I'll keep it with that. The name just doesn't sound expansion-y-like enough for World of Warcraft.

On the other hand, The dark Below does, although most sites see that as a fake name... oh well, let's see in a week.

Thursday 31 October 2013

Two servers become one?

So, it is already happening for a time, but I didn't really had any thoughts about it, and when I though about writing something about it, with intend to gather more alts, I wrote down the title, and suddenly the post I wanted to write changed.

It would have been about the fact that a merged server actually means more place for alts, but that bigger servers probably wouldn't be merged, so people on a larger server will have less alts.

But then I wrote down the title, and now I am questioning myself if some servers actually can be merged, and I am not talking technical, more psychological.

Mardah and her army of alts lives on Argent Dawn. AD is a Role Playing Server. Now that doesn't mean everyone does role play. There are enough pure-PVE and pure-PvP players on the server, but there's also a lot of roleplaying going on....well..at least I think there is.

Fact is, I am not that a big role-player. I did participate in some random roleplaying, mostly by being a random bystander. But in those cases, I was remembered that I was on a RP-server, some random stuff can happen suddenly, enjoy it I would say...well..unless you go to Goldshire.

Now I don't really know if merging another server with AD would work. Blizzard already stated that RP-servers wouldn't be mixed with non-RP-servers, but still, merging two different societies can have some problems.

Players will have different opinions, and instead of 3 blood-elf guilds trying to run Silvermoon, you will 6 I guess (Side-note: why are there still Kael-Thas statues there).

Oh wait, reads before the side-note, It may actually be more interesting I guess, a larger influx of role-plays with slightly different ideas may actually spice things up  :0

But back to my original idea for this blog now, Argent Dawn is a pretty huge server, so I actually have no idea if it will be merged, and at the moment my gold would go to 'No'. Which means I will not have access to more alt-spots.

Lorinthe trying to breach the dimensions between worlds.


Remember they said the two servers would works as one. So basically, if you live on one of those servers, you suddenly would get access too 22 character-slots (or 33, if it's tri-joined).

Now, to be honest, I haven't...and actually can't test if you can actually make 22 characters on two merged servers, but as far as I know, they didn't said it wouldn't be possible.

So, now I am going to throw a card, I hardly play...the 'I pay the same as everyone else, so I should be able to do the same' .  Do min, I did use 'able', and at this moment I think everyone is able to do everything gamewise, although for some it may take a little longer, the option is there.

Now if AD wouldn't be merged, I actually will have 11 character-slots less then someone on a merged server, and for me, with only 17 levels to go for 11 level 90's on Argent Dawn, that is a big deal...

I actually like playing lower levels, but I also like them to be in Innovation (or their channel). In the past I did actually transferred high level characters of to other servers, to play lower level again. But that has just become to expensive.

So, yeah, one solution is, something that Blizzard has mentioned before, just scrapping the limit on characters on servers (although the total-limit would remain 50). But I would love to actually increase the size of my army of alts...and maybe start a lower level Horde again with Single Abstract Noun.




Sunday 27 October 2013

Alt Appreciation : Warlocks

Continuing the Alt Appreciation started by World of Lae.  This week:  Warlocks

So, yeah, warlocks. I played one during the ICC-summer. An Orc Affliction Warlock named Cymar. No idea how I came by with that name. But, being three years ago, I have no memory of playing him. But I did reach levelcap back then, so here he is..  (for own reference, maybe it is time I actually started tagging posts so I can find stuff)
Cymar looking gloomy in Thunderbluff 


Somewhere the last 3 years, I also made another Warlock on Argent Dawn. If this happened before Cymar was send of, or after, no idea. But this one became a human female. She was put into the guild 'When Elekks Fly'. This guild is used by me and a friend of mine to store various materials sometimes needed to level up professions.

So I played her a little bit, especially to look at some of the new zones during cataclysm. She was never heirloomed out, although I had access to those, and very slowly she levelled up. Being played sometimes when I felt to it, but mostly as Bank/AH-alt.

About a month or two ago she reached Outlands. Now because I know those zones very, very well, I went dungeoning with her, but that totally blew me off, so I finally heirloomed her out, so she...ell not sure actually..  no professions, no goal.. until I figured out I could use a third Alchemist in my Alt-army for making flasks (already having a transmute and a pot-master)

Lorinthe sans Heirlooms
@Dalaran

Last wednesday I wrote about her being 69, so that is probably her level in the picture above, and then I started doing the halloween stuff. Travelling with her all over Azeroth. And after a lot of travelling...and gaining a level through exploring/opening pumpkins, I got myself a title wordy of a Warlock.
 

After that, I just went on, I levelled her up, found some masks, and levelled her to 83 to get the deepholm and vashjir pumpkins. But 83 to 85 doesn't seem that much... actually, the levels between 70 and 85 costed me about 1 hour to 90 minutes. So 4 hours later, Lorinthe was on her way to Pandaria, for the last Pumpkins

I was worried that I could not get into all areas, but that was actually not the problem. There is a wall-acces in Kun-Lai, the Shado-Pan Fallback, where you can get up the wall, and then jump into Valley of the four Winds. So, I was going to get all the achievements for this Halloween...  I got to the Klaxxi, the temple of the Ox, the invasion of Trolls, all pumpkins where mine...except for Westwind Rest...

Westwind Rest is the little town you unlock after several quests in Kun-Lai, before that it is a burning hell hole...  without pumpkin. So now I had to reach level 87 to actually get those quest. So I set off, and surely enough within two hours I reached 86, hurray, 2 more and I can get that last pumpkin....well..no.. that took about 5 hours... oh well.

Lorinthes bank after Halloween

It will probably take me a few more weekends to reach level 90 with her, but then she will be my eight level 90 character, and happily joining my army of manufacturing alts.

(oh, btw, I had a vacation last week, that's why I could level her that fast)

Next week, the masters of Rage, the Warriors....

Wednesday 23 October 2013

Is levelling still 'fun'

So, in my trek around the web, I read this post old-time-raiding from Dacheng. In it he talks about his experiences in a lvl70-group going for Outland-raids. He tells about an easy Karazhan, and actually taking out Maghteridon...with 7/8 people...at level 70.

I recently levelled a warlock through Outlands, and as always I went for the dungeons.  But before I logged in, the tank already pulled boss two, with all the adds...or something like that, I may be over exaggerating, but that is how it felt like.

Also, the recent resurge of Innovations Class-act, also shows that lower level dungeons, are a pushover. You can easily brute-force them, and they don't take that long.

For myself, there is also another factor, especially pre-Cata dungeons, I tanked all of those, and I remember them that way. Which means I actually expect dungeons to go a certain way, but they don't anymore...just pull everything and AoE them down...

After the first try on a dungeon with Lorinthe, I just left them, and actually levelled through quests through Outlands... and although I opted to not take heirlooms on her journey, I grew tired, and heirloomed her out.

She is now 69...and I am actually not looking forward to another 20 levels....

The problem is, which Dacheng also points to, is the amount of differences between back then and now, considering talents, dps and what more. And for me personal, it just seems all very..well..like a choir (is that a correct english expression?).

There is hardly any danger levelling up, so why actually level up I say, it's mostly turning in 20 quests per zone, before outlevelling it.

I actually cannot think about a solution, a possible solution would be to toughen up the mobs, make them all harder to kill (do keep in mind that I levelled Lorinthe w/o heirlooms till 61, so heirlooms are not the sole problem) or maybe give the option for for free levels if you have maxed out alts already.

Fact is, at this moment, I do not like levelling as I used to. There are multiple reasons for that, but the most important for me is the lack of danger, the most dangerous mob while levelling is yourself, do not run of Aldor's Tier.....

Sunday 20 October 2013

Alt Appreciation: Shaman

Continuing the Alt Appreciation started by World of Lae.  This week:  Shamans

Shamans, totem-throwers, master of the elements, and I even levelled two of them to the (then) max level. First up, the one I levelled during the now infamous ICC-summer, in Single Abstract Noun.

Cloudcaller

I may be mistaken, but as far as I recall, this was actually the character with which I first joined Single Abstract Noun. I have no idea what his spec was, but I do know I did some Role Playing with him. Listening to tales of the Loa, visiting a fight-tournament in the STV-arena.

I also remember that during Cataclysm, I actually walked with him from Ogrimmar to his birthplace in Feralas...yes walked... and got horrible stuck when he fell into the chasm between north and south barrens.  The pictures are somewhere on my hard-drive, one of the projects never finished.

But this character is for me how I played in Single Abstract Noun, a little levelling, a little Roleplaying, and a lot of talking...  the catchphrase for the guild was '... the guild where nothing gets done, because everyone is talking'

My second Shaman is alliance, and currently my best geared alt:

Verulani

I have no idea where she came from, it is probably buried somewhere in my blog-history, but she may actually been one of my earliest alts. She is now my enchanter/tailor, supporting Mardah. She is also my best geared alt, and I actually did Heroic Stone MSV with her.

She was one of my characters that started my transmog-sets. Although the set is fairly well know, and often seen, my transmog has some nice oddities mostly not seen in combination with the rest. First is the shield, which actually made me do this transmog. It's a reward from the north-western-plaguelands quest in the alliance city.

Th shoulders are from the bug-bosses in AQ40, this on from the one easiest killed...so hardest to get. Try keeping that one alive...I also have a set for weapon transmogs, shown is the dagger of Julie or something. I also have a big axe, and a hammer.

She was enhancement until she killed the LFR-Deathwing enough times for two of his axes, and then went Elemental. I actually considered making her my main starting Pandaria, but it is a little bit hazy why that didn't happen. And in the months to come, she will probably be played more, while we wait on the next expansion.

Next week, the dark arts...


Tuesday 15 October 2013

Finally?

So, yes, after 6 years orso, I finally played Star Trek Online...

I find it amusing, and there seems to be a lot under the surface to handle,

but one thing...

The Romulans are the ST:O panda's?

When you reach (cough) level 10, you need to make a choice to either join the Federation (Blue, read Alliance) or the Klingon (Red, read Horde).

Now I know this takes place after the destruction of Romulus, but still.. Romulans in the Federation or the Klingo Empirem, pfff

And there where some nice characters I encountered, Miral Paris, Naomi De Wilde and D'Tan as head of the romulan resistance or Non Tal Shiar-romulans.  D'Tan is one of Spocks disciples back in the TNG-episodes Reunification..

It does take a lot of time, but I did get the one-more-misson-syndrome...

Sunday 13 October 2013

Alt Appreciation: Rogues

Continuing the Alt Appreciation started by World of Lae.  This week:  Rogues

So..yeah..rogues, I did mentioned I didn't like Holy Power... because I don't like Combo-point actually. And rogues are also in the middle of all the stuff around a boss, so, yeah, not my favourite class to play with, although low-level PvP is fun. I am pretty sure I got some achievements by guarding flag rooms.

My first rogue was a Krid. We where levelling with 5 friends, we all rolled orcs, that all looked the same, and named them Kridek,Kridok,Kridik,Kridek and Kridak..... but that was a long time ago on Ghostlands.

The other two rogue are both from AD, although one is been stationed somehwere else.  Lamars was levelled during wrath, and I actually did a weekly raid with him. Actually, I think I levelled that one when I was in a depression...  depression-rogue...


One of my current farmers is Tiramuria. Happily providing some scribe-functions to my characters. I levvelled her, and put her on sun song...  although she has some timeless stuff now. It's just that I am not really a rogue-person....  well, I always have the pictures:

Saturday 12 October 2013

No more LFR

Sometimes, someone remembers something you said. My Guildleader reminded me last week of something I said before Dragon Soul came out. It was something like: "The moment the raiders stop using LFR, LFR will be horrible"...  and behold...

Now I don't have much experience with LFR in 5.4...  I lasted 10 minutes last night on my shaman (including one wipe) before I left in disgust. I play this game for fun, not to see a lot of cursing and flaming being tossed around. And may Mardah didn't even do ONE LFR since SoO came out...which maybe says it all.

Now the last three tiers, I went LFR-ing with Mardah, it was a decent source for the oh-so handy valour points, and you could get tier-gear to complement your set, or get gear for your offset (which I don't really have). But 5.4 brought us something new, called Flex.

Also the last three tiers, Innovation had a LFR-run on Wednesday, which means a group of around 15 would go together into LFR, making it very do-able, now the wednesday-run is for Flex. And I have no idea how many of my guildmates do LFR on their mains, although I suspect not that many.

Now if what happens with me, also happens with other people, you can see that the amount of people running LFR, will become less. Even worse, the people no longer doing LFR now are the people who are normal raiders. Now I suspect Heroic toons didn't do much LFR after the first week, but the normal raiders still did, but now...

The gear is not the incentive for normal raiders, it is only a low Ilvl-increase, and also, would you really want to see the same bosses a third time this week? So, I, as a normal raider, do not want to to LFR on my main, so I bring my alts, which do less damage...  but at least I go LFR...  maybe.

In normal weeks, I never did that many LFR's, time is limited, and as mentioned before, seeing the same bosses to often is not that fun. So I am not running LFR's every week, and if I do, it is alone, not with a group of 15 guildies. And it seems that is happening more..

The more experienced players do not take their geared mains into LFR anymore using guild groups.

That sentence just said it all.. LFR is becoming less and less appealing for normal raiders due to that fact.

But how to fix that? Well, it seems the direct reason is Flex it seems, but is it?  I think the problem does not lie with flex itself, but with the fact that there are now 3 different raid-lockouts  (Normal and Heroic use the same), and that added with the gear difference is getting to high. Is completing your tier-set with a LFR-item really better, then keeping your normal WF-helm?

I don't really have a solution and luckily I do not have to make those  :), and there seems to be only two options, either remove LFR...or remove Heroic Raids.....wait...what did I just typed???

Actually, why do we have Heroic Raids again?

What I remember from Innovation's Dragon Soul, Heroic was mostly just more damage dealt, added with a few new mechanics. There is a part of me that just thinks, why?  Why not just scrap Heroics, make the normals a little harder, and just have LFR,Flex and Normal.....  and sometimes and activated ability to make the fight harder and get some better loot, don't hit the big red button please....

Sunday 6 October 2013

Alt Appreciation : Priests

Continuing the Alt Appreciation started by World of Lae.  This week:  Priests

..and back on track..barely... today we take a look at Ezrila, the only priest I ever levelled high enough to even mention, and actually (together with warriors) the class I had the most difficulty with getting to level 80 back in Wrath. This probably was due to the low-survavibility, priest do have healing spells, but at low level, their spells used to be 'lacking'...

Now where did the name Ezrila came from. It is a name I used before. The female Bloodelf paladin at level 70 from last post was the first I called that. I am pretty sure some other paladins from me are also called that, although these days I tend to find new names, rather then re-uisng existing alt-names. But Ezrila, named after Ezri Dax... I did tell I was a Star Trek Fan?  Ezri was taken, so I added La...and apparently not many use that name.

I don't know for sure, but I think Ezrila was one of my 'ICC-Summer'-alts in Single Abstract Noun. As far as I remember I levelled her as a Disco-priest. I do know that before the 4th of november 2010 she reached level 80, and was trying to make a ROFL-copter, she is an engineer, so she needs one.

How do I know that specific date, well..  I am (still) playing with a MacBook Pro, and World of Warcraft has a build-in movie-maker in the Mac-version, so I was experimenting with that, and behold:


But this was the end of ICC-summer, and within 2 months after this video, Single Abstract Noun emptied..  and my Alliance-days started in Innovation. Somehwere during Cataclysm, I transferred her over to the Alliance-side, did some DS-LFR with her. And with a twitch, after having so much trouble actually levelling her, she was my third or fourth to reach 90. She now spends most of her days farming ore, although I sometimes take her shadow-ing in an LFR or dungeon....


Next week, it is time for Tiramuria and Lamars, my rouges...rrr...rogues.

Wednesday 2 October 2013

Alt Appreciation: Paladins

Continuing the Alt Appreciation started by World of Lae.  This week:  Paladins

Well.. and suddenly I miss a week, so I also have to do Priests somewhere this week, but here are my Paladins...well... most of them.



First of course, my still most played character, Gowron, the Tankadin...  still played sometimes, but mostly for Lore-reasons. As you see above, he has some of the timeless gear, mostly because I am swimming in those.


Here is on of my farmers, literally. Timicin the Holydin...although he is in Retri-gear on this pic...mm..  why did I do that. Timicin is a BS/JC, and I actually made him two years back, because I saw myself healing in MoP....well..that didn't happen. He is now farming ore, making trillium ingots and making gems for Mardah...a lot.

I also used to have a lvl70 Retridin during TBC, but that was on a different account, which I don't have anymore...  but I did find a picture of here, together with Gowron.... yes, I even used two PC's back then.

As a bonus, because I maybe just liked Paladins that much, here are some more alts, running around in 20-30 bracket.


Monday 23 September 2013

Alt Appreciation : Monks

Continuing the Alt Appreciation started by World of Lae.  This week:  Monks...

Oh-o..Monks, so, yeah, now I have a little problem. Looking through all my alts, I encountered 2 Monks. One lvl-12 Horde Panda, and one Tauren. The Panda was made to see the panda-start-zone. The Tauren because I wanted to see a Tauren roll.

Some months ago, I actually had a Dwarf Monk on Argent Dawn. That one made it to level 50-something, but I grew tired of the hit-to-heal mechanic, so he was deleted. But now, how to make a post about monks, when you don't have a monk.

So, here is the story of Doiral. Her first ten levels. Yes, Doiral, I actually wanted to name her Dorial, but I misspelled...  but Do-iral doesn't sound that bad. I made her a Draenai, mostly because it has been a while I was in that starting zone...  and the idea is that I eventually take her through the Alliance level 20-30 zones to see what happens there (in kalimdor). So...  logging in...  some story about the 'current' state of events, and tadaa..there she is.


Oh, yeah...Add-on-clutter all over the screen... so some clicks later, Doiral is ready to take her first quests.


Her second quest is killing some Vale Moths, here she is, hitting the moth for 15, wow. And after setting the loot on auto-loot...  (why isn't that standard), she is murdering the local wildlife.


Oh, look, new NPC here, a Panda:


And here comes the moment my memory is catching up, the Blood Elves are not hostile....  so the named mob can be pulled alone...


It is not, until I reach the second quest-hub, that Doiral encounters her first Hostile Mob...which is turned into some leather scraps quickly.


Ahem..../blush... that's what you get when you don't look around... I stumbled upon a pack of nightstalkers...  and they outnumbered me 3 to 1..


And tadaa, here she is, level 10, ready for more killing...and she didn't even do the furlborg-quests...


I did find questing with the monk fairly pleasant. I have no idea if a mist weaver actually gets healing spells later on, haven't seen them yet. Now, I am hoping Argent Dawn will be teamed up with another realm (which remains to be seen). Because then I can make more alts...


Next week...  My paladins will storm you all, remember the former subtitle of this blog:

Tankadin at Heart


Wednesday 18 September 2013

First week in 5.4

One week of raiding past us, in a few hours the servers will be up, and the second week will start. And Innovation had a little strange raiding week, so what happened you ask, well..a LOT.


Innovation's first normal raid-day was thursday. As mentioned last pots, we already had a full guild-flexraid on wednesday, and behold, that did help us. It seems so far that the mechanics are the same on flex and normal, only doing less damage on flex.

So before we knew it we killed Immerseus. It seems this is a typical first-boss-loot-pinhata-boss. So, we gathered up our purples, and went outside to the Fallen Protectors. Now, I think we wiped once on them in flex, new mechanics and such, so I was expecting the normal version to be a little harder...  which it was...  it took us 1 wipe more and they where down.


So, after some trash stuff, we encountered another Titan-construct, Norushen. This one only wanted to test us, because it thinks we are full of Pride. Well, maybe we where...  because this one kept us occupied the rest of the night.

On sunday we returned, and make short work of Norushen's Pride-test. We entered the next room, where half of the raid died to irritating trash. After that, we went to work on Sha of Pride... and yes, I am still half expecting a Sha of Happiness...  This Sha had a lot of stuff going, stacking up, freeing prisoners, little adds, big adds, pride-meter, different boss-abilities on different pride-levels, and a nasty DoT.

But, through wiping, you learn, and the longer the night lasted, the lower Sha's Health went. We ended the night with the last two wipes below 10%, one 3.9 and one 4.something if I remeber correctly. So, we knew this one would go down on tuesday.

Tuesday rolled along, and behold, the first wipe was at 4%. So basically where we left Sha on Sunday. The next pull ended in a 0.4% wipe... really... been a while for a wipe like that. Next one he went down. Get the loot, gather up for the killshot-picture, and try not to trip over a big axe someone left behind....ask our Hunter  :)


Jaina, the homicidal priest, teleported us to a ship near the docks of Ogrimmar. And then to the actual docks. We destroyed some cannons, and then we had to shoot a dragon from the sky, while fighting some waves of orcs, and meanwhile making sure that the NPC's weren't killed. That last one was sometimes Hilarious. Our second wipe was because Varian decided to pull aggro of the Tank...  which resulted in a wipe where everyone was still alive...

The pull after that, Jaina decided stand by the towers, she really must like those, where she was out of reach..and promptly died to something. I think the fourth pull actually brought Galakras down, after which the fight was over. The road to Ogrimmar lie open before us.


Problem was, the goblins build a large scorpid-like apparatus with lasers and guns and bombs and more stuff.... we also met up with Baine and Vol'Jin. This fight was at the end of the night. I think the first pull was after 10, while we raid till 11. Basically, I think most of us where getting tired and already happy with this weeks progress, and I actually expected that the raid would be called early.

But, ok, we did had one hour left, so let's do some pulls to see how this boss goes...  two pulls later:


So, after one week raiding, Innovation is 6/14. This has been, in number of Boss Kills, the 'best' raiding week Innovation had since the start of Cataclysm. And also by far the best start of a new Tier. I cannot actually remember a second bosskill in the first week..

This also makes me wonder if these bosses are to easy, or that latter bosses will be much harder? And also the time we have left.  Keep in mind, that last tiers of expansions tend to take a little longer then previous tiers. So, we might be in Ogrimmar for a while. We are John Snow-ed about the next expansion, so I actually expect us to be here for the next 6 months at least... oh well.

Servers will be up soon, time to defeat a celestial, kill a firegod, and see what this week brings...

Friday 13 September 2013

So..we heared your alts had it though?

The timeless Isle, where Timeless refers to lag I guess...

There are so many people running around, that everything dies within seconds, see a rare, quick tag it, it will die in 10 seconds, after which it takes 40 seconds to loot the Epoch Stone....

I do like the minimap-sumbol for a rare, and I heard from a Big Butt source that it also works for all the rares in the world now.

I did get my legendary cloak fairly easy. Stand in the arena and wait till your faction tagged all four once (and get a Tier-pants in the progress), run around killing rares and opening chest and do some quests to get 5000 coins was fast enough. Get some backstory, and tadaa... Legendary with wings.

After the small story from Cho (He is out to kill us), back to the Isle, to kill the only-if-you-have-the-legendary-on-any-character-boss Ordos...Ordos... weren't they the green faction in Dune 2? I think I may have been in the first group of people that killed him on Argent Dawn. I know the group was forming for a while, like more then an hour, before I got my cloak.  The boss itself is a pushover. About the same health as the Sha of Loot, and with less strannge abilities. Some firey stuff, some exploding stuff.

Ooh..and opening chests on the Isle, I'll tell you, before the end of the wekend, when all my alts have travelled to the isle, all my alts will be near Ilvl 396. There is so much BoA-loot that drops, that I already have some gear for low-level alts, if they ever reach 90....

And then there is a thing to upgrade a token tot 535..  which I ried on a ring...  that wasn't a succes. The ring was worse then the upgraded shadopan-ring...  ala, maybe try it on a BoA-trinket later on. Having enough alts, means enough tokens to do that.

So, yeah, we heard you didn't like how all your alts didn't get enough time to get loot... well..here it is. The Lag-Island of loot.

Oh, and Innovation started to raid. So, wednesday we tested flex...with a full-blown raidgroup of 25... yeah..  well, it helped us last night..but that's another story.

Wednesday 11 September 2013

Alt Appreciation : Mage

Continuing the Alt Appreciation started by World of Lae.  This week:  Mages

I should call this the Lurche's I guess. Yes that does sound awfully familiar to the URL, and one of the two actually had that name for a long time. So let's see what happened...and where did the other Lurche came from?

Lurge
Undead Mage-Frost
Current level: 83
Reached max level in TBC and Wrath.
Born: Ghostlands
Moved to Argent Dawn, renamed Lurche, then moved to Steamweedle cartel

Lurge has been around a long time, and in my mind he will be called Lurge, not Lurche. It's a little bit unclear to me when I actually started to play him. It must have been in '07, because I remember that I actually had him in another guild then Retribution. Not that that lasted long. Somewhere he joined XII, and was my second character to reach level 40..then 50, 60 and 70. I even did a raid or two with him in Karazhan. If you notice the gear on the pic down here, you see he was a tailor.

After my raiding-days where over, he was transferred, just like most of my toons, to Single Abstract Noun on Argent dawn..where I had to Frenchify his name a little bit. I had some more fun times with him, but at the start of data, I went Alliance, and he was sort of left behind.  He had to move to another server becasue of a new Lurche, but, I did play with him later in the expansion. I just love the way undead cast frost bolts.

Here is a picture of Lurge, the undead Frost mage.


Now, to the other mage...  

Lurche
Dwarveb Mage-Frost
Current level: 77
Part of Innovation's Class Act
Born: Argent Dawn

So, yeah, the dorf Mage, where did he came from, well...from cataclysm's Class Act. There was guild-achievement to get every class/race combination to 85, and somewhere, about two years ago, we found out we missed some of then. So 5 members of the Innovation raiding team made some little alts. I apparantly went Dwarf-Mage. Gunho went Dwarf-Priest, Moreor went Dwarf-Warlock, Merrai went Gnome-Rogue and Calaron went Gnome-Warrior.

This didn't went fast, and we were overtaken by others, or even by ourselves I guess. But we had fun with them. No idea if we are going to continue with them soon, or ever. A choice that probably has to be made shortly.

Here he is, sporting the levelling-heirlooms:

I must say that I do like frost. I did try Arcane on Lurche, and one of my lower-level, and forgotten alts is a Fire Mage, but just having that big Water Elemental besides you...well...

Next week...  monks....oh my.




Monday 9 September 2013

Innovation eats Heroic Eggs

Last week of Throne, one more evening of wiping, and boy, this was an interested fight.

Ji-Kun Heroic, wipes 22 (although I missed one night), kills: 1

The whole fight revolves around watching boss cooldowns, and being on your nest in time.  I was assigned to group Green, which meant I had nest-wave 3,7,9,13,14. 

On the upper nest my Celestial Allignment was up, and with Mozzie the Shadowpriest, that would be enough, so Gestalt the Rogue could continue stabbing Ji-Kun.

On the lower nest, Gestalt would help, and here happened a fun thing. The moment we where finished with the lower nest, a 'feed young'  was about to happen.  When caught, this would give you a nice buff. One problem, the cooldown for that coincided for group Green with a Downdraft. So we where just standing for 10 seconds on a lower nest, while our teammates probably went ballistic with downdraft, flew up just in time to catch food...

Of course something hiccup during the last fight. Apparantly Henghao the Resto-shammy was killed just before Mozzie and me jumped down to nest 9...  I noticed it a split second to late, and boom, both of us hit the dust. But at 20% only 4 people where down...  


This thursday, Siege of Ogrimmar is on, let's see what the orcs bring us.


Thursday 5 September 2013

Innovation vs. Throne of Thunder, the recap.

Somewhere during the vacation, Innovation took down Lei Shen Normal. It was on a Sunday-evening (which made the tuesday a free day that week), and I was playing on my Laptop. But how did we get there?

We didn't actually started right away with ToT when 5.4 hit. We did kill Jin'rokh of course, but we still had to finish 5.2. According to my post "end of 14th tier" we really started one month after 5.2 came out, and it took us around 3.5 months to clear ToT after that.

But most of this post is from memory, so let's go... (dates are from the screenshots on our website)

11-3 Jin'rokh the Breaker

Not much to say about this one, we had some problems with dead melee at the start, but once we figured out that they died because a ball was pulled through them after a storm he went down fast. Fun part is that we actually never steered him to regulate the tank-drop until we started doing the heroic version.

12-4 Horridon

Oh god, a so called ON-Boss, we had roadblocks with ElegON and GaralON this expansion, and this was the same. A big dinosaur, adds with nasty mechanics everywhere, so a lot of mayhem. But, it is one of those bosses with lots of mechanics that most of the time matter for other roles, so when we found out or path, he went down easily.

25-4 Council of Elders

Looking at the dates, it seems we had problems with this boss, but iirc, we were still doing some T14 for the tier sets during the first month after killing Sha. Actually I only remember one night of wiping. we figured out what was our biggest problem, i.e. Sul, made sure he became empowered second and never again. After that it was just making sure you didn't kill yourself on Mankirk... or something like that  :p

15-5 Megaera

Now Tortos that was...wait Megaera, what happened? Well, there was a guild-meet, so not enough people to raid. So they decided to do a 10 man and plower through Tortos, next raid was full again so we slaughtered the three-headed dragon. This was quickly done, just changing some colors around, think we went with BRBRGRB or something.  Green was 5th...

22-5 Tortos

The turtle on 25 took another week. According to the ten people who killed it, the 25-version was a little harder, mostly due to less adds on 10. Oh well, he went down.

28-5 Ji-Kun

A week later, the Bird was up.. I am seeing almost the same trend in T15 as T14, it takes us about one week for every boss, but after that, not much wiping. This was a fun boss, fly around, kill some birds and move on. The trick is for everyone to follow their path, and don't die..now on heroic..this is a complete different fight....

12-6 Durumu the Forgotten

Eye-boss. Don't move when blue, run to rd, run in circles, do not stand in unseeable blue stuff, follow green, dont get pushed of platform.  Seem hectic,  but once we got the purply swirly stuff under control, it was fairly easy.

18-6 Primordius

I have no idea, and still have no idea how we do this boss. Heroism always comes to early for me, and for me it is mostly getting buffs ASAP, staying out of bad... trying to get no debuff..and then figuring out there's only 3% left...

23-6 Dark Animus

Thumbwrestling for 6 minutes and then OMGWTFKill it quickly. On 25 normal, you can actually do it without the fire running around. So, get aggro on your mob, wait till it gets eaten by the tank, then kill everything the tank pulls, and then kill Dark Animus, again ignoring big adds.  It took us 6 pulls or so. Finetuning the walking was all that was done.

27-6 Iron Qon

Fire (or whatever) tracks around, group up, tornadoes, shields are up captain. A lot is happening, but just as with Horridon in phases. So Learn one phase, then the next. Four days after Animus, so not that hard.

27-6 Twin Consorts

This was a very hard fight, a lot of wipes until we mastered it..well..  remember Lei Shi...  this was easier. Innovation went in, pew-pewee, and we had ourselves a real one-shot. So only one boss left....

28-7 Lei Shen

....which took us a little longer. Which is not that bad, it's the end-boss, it should be harder. There was a lot of changing tactics, when to pull a boss away, and of course, he getting-into-the-groove when Lei Shen stood in the middle. We extended once or twice, and it was vacation of course, which also took some raiders away, myself included. But, in the middle of Summer, he, a little unexpected, went down.

After that.

In the last Month, Innovation also took down Jin'Rokh on Heroic, and we are trying that with Ji'kun, but next week Ogrimmar awaits. In conclusion, we did well. We started a little late, but progressed nicely through the tier.

Now we have to face Hellscream and the flex-raids...oh my....wait, 4 different raid-levels with 6 different I-levels, are they mad?  But that's another post I guess....

Tuesday 3 September 2013

Alt Appreciation : Hunters

It is Hunter Week , following the alt appreciation-theme of World of Lae

Hasn't everyone played a hunter? That's what I sometimes ask myself. My very first character, called Mendak, was a Dwarf hunter, he had a pet-bear from Ashenvale called Ursa, and boy, was I a newbie. I remember loggin on him once, with some more knowledge, and I just was laughing at my equipment. Everything was hunter-gear, wasn't it?

Alas, poor Mendak, he was on the Ghostland server, and in my Horde-only empire there, he had to go. He was replaced by, and I quote a friend; "The ugliest female orc I have ever seen." She was called Miriani. Miriani reached level 70 during the fun-patch just before Wrath of the Lich King, but she did a quick Zul'Aman raid.

She was my third character to reach 70, and was (still is) a miner/jewelcrafter. After XII she was put into our friends-guild, and she stayed their a while, up until the ICC-summer. She was then transfered with a lot of stuff to Argent Dawn, had to be renamed to Luaran, and was turned into a Draenai for a short while.

She is now an Orc again, level 85 and made her first steps onto Pandaria. However, I don't know how long she (and her companion Gowron) will be on AD. those are two spots I could use for Alliance Alts, maybe the new merging of servers will help.

And here she is, with her pet Miriani...


In the meanwhile, during Cataclysm, I levelled an Alliance Hunter on Argent Dawn, called Forak. He was actually my third character to reach 90. And he is a real farmer. Mining and Herbalism, although mining may be axed soon to make him a flask or potion master. I am not doing much with him, he is now actaully farming ore on his farm, so here have a picture of him, with his pet Picard, on the farm.


Now I do have more hunters, a undead one somewhere, a Troll Hunter called Jimi, with a pet called Hendrix, but I haven't played those in ages. And there are a plethora of hunters deleted, or way-low-level. But it is always nice to play a Hunter, Scatter shot, send in pet, and feign death....


Wednesday 28 August 2013

Market time


  • Cooking
    • Players who have learned the first recipe in each of “the ways” can discover a questline that starts on the Timeless Isle: “Noodle Secrets Long Forgotten.” Heroes will search for a long-lost pandaren recipe allowing them to build and run their own noodle cart. The all-new questline will revisit some old zones and dungeons, culminating in a solo scenario with a unique time-management mini-game.
    • The noodle cart allows a player to set themselves up as a vendor and distribute powerful noodle soups to their faction.

So, now get people shouting, buy noodles here, only five-five-ninety-five, fresh noodles...  I have visions of twenty-five noodle carts during boss fights...

Monday 26 August 2013

Alt Appreciation : Druid

Alt Apprecation, Druid week (started by World of Lae)

So, yeah, druids. Well, my current main is a druid, but do I have alt-druids? There are some low-level druids running around, but they were made for short-time fun mostly. The only druid I played to level 60 or so is long gone, that was a kitty iirc.

What is an alt exactly? Let's go with two simple rules:

1. A character I once played till the level cap of an expansion.
2. A character I am currently playing.

Simple rules, so that means Tamarian of last week was a real alt btw, levelled to 85 during Cata, and... that means Mardah also falls into this category, levelled to 80 during Wrath when this was still more a Tankadin-blog.

As mentioned some years ago, Mardah actually started on another server, and for a long time was a level 3 sitting in the Night Elf start zone. After I stopped raiding I levelled her up, I remember a Sunken Temple run where I healed, dps-ed and tanked, this was back when ST was Big. Somewhere along the line I brought her to Argent Dawn to play with some friends. I actually did a PuG-raid of ICC with her, as a Tree.... back when tree-form was needed for healing.

There was this heroic moment when I solo-healed 10-man Saurfang from 80% down, because the Shaman-healer got the omg-healme-debuff, and died to it....  reincarnated, and died again...  Do mind, I was not really raiding so my gear was meh... but I managed it...

At the start of cataclysm, after my paladin levelled up, I levelled Mardah. Disgusted by the fact that my beloved tree-form was gone, I went Balance, and I liked the lightshows. So much, that I actually applied to a guild, and started raiding again. Now with Mardah as main.


So, keep up acting all, some day, it may become your main...