Vacation... and a little about trapping

Tomorrow my vacation starts, that means I can no longer play on the PC for two weeks, and only have Ye Ole Mac.... that means I can do Garrisons...and that's it. To maximize my output, both Mardah and Verulani went elite-hunting today for bloods.  Both have a lvl3-barn.

Now there is a fun thing with trapping beasts...  the trap has a CD of 15 seconds, but lasts 30 seconds. You can actually time it to have two traps activated...and surprise, a beast can be captured twice then. But wait there is more....  it does not have to be your beast...

Now keep in mind, do not place your trap anywhere else then ON the same place as someone else trap...I had a 'kill' stolen today because a Hordie placed the trap just behind mine, so my trap missed. I do not know how many times this can stack...  at least 3 times I saw today, so..  how many beasts can be caged from one beast?

But, my army of alts is ready. Although I may be low on fur cloth. The idea is, that after these two weeks vacation, I have so much materials, that I can make a educated guess about which gear to upgrade/make. My current count is 18 bloods, and another 25 from Primal Spirits. I am guessing that I will have enough to upgrade two pieces of gear to 665, considering it costs 30 to do that.

Cya all in 2015.

Blook hanging around.

More changes...

In between all the hype of new stuff, and having so much to do, something keeps creeping up. But first a little recap.

I got enough orders this week to start farming for blood....  but the I figured out, that I may really need my 5minCD on Verulani for that, the earth elemental. Those elites in Nagrand do have a lot of health.

Mardah, is about to start building her Barn. Her Mill is almost out of wood, and will be replaced. I was thinking about changing the enchanting building to storehouse, but you can d/e purples with a level 3, so I'll keep it for the moment.

I also got my first raid-mission. I need to Ilvl-up two followers first though. I did a LFR yesterday, as healer, considering waiting times, and it was easy... really easy. Got 5 Abr-stones from Kargath..nice.

THEY MADE ME HEAL. Because of lack of healers, tuesday's poke at normal put me in tree-form. Now, do mind, the moment I heard that, I had to completely figure out tree-healing in WoD within 10 minutes. Wild Growth has a casting cost??  We did down another boss... Twin Ogres methinks. Official raiding starts in Januar, so the Ilvl of our raid was from 615 to 650 I guess.

But what really irks me, is the huge amount of changes. It seems every day a new batch of little changes comes along. Today it is about fish and alchemy. Yesterday it was about the Trading Post lvl3-requirement. Last week we had changes to almost everything that seems to look like a time-sink, less pet battles, less gold, less this, less that.

Now, I have no problem with the fact that Blizzard didn't expect 3 million players to return, which made the first week 'unstable'. That was unexpected, and they did fix that quite well, but all these little changes, couldn't that have been predicted? And I find it frustrating. I finally know what to gather for one profession, and suddenly they change it. Or for one building, and suddenly it's less.

Now less is not always better. I do see why they lowered gold on Storehouse, but less pet-battles? Why? That should be grindy. And down to one exalted, three may have been much, but one is just silly. It isn't BAD that some aspects of this game are grindy, don't make eveything free please...

Pet Battle : Diablo??

So, I found this today in my garrison's pet arena.....

....yeah, Diablo in my Garrison.

Time to slow down...

It's just too much, or it was too much. Last friday, I figured out I had to level 20 followers to 100 to get a better bunker, which I really wanted that week for the free seal. I had only 11 of the 20. And to make things worse, I didn't even had 9 below-100 on Mardah. Luckily the barracks where about to finish, giving me the oppurtunity to reactivate some, but still... it seemed impossible.

Of course, with all the info, I missed a clue, which I luckily figured out the next day. A lot of those lvl3-building achievements are account-wide. Including this one...so I went Alt-mad. All my alts armies went on a rampage all through Draenor, doing as many quests as possible. Even quests with 51% chance to succeed where accepted, there is still base-xp.

To speed things up, I found it logical to get one of my alts closer to 100, like 96 to make another herb-garden, and to pick up some higher level followers.... I overshot a little, and my Shaman Verulani hit 100 somewhere on Sunday, ending with nagrand berries...

On Monday, I logged in after work, and did all my alts followers for the whole evening. This meant keeping check when to get back on an alt for finished missions. The first round, just logging in on every alt in Draenor, now 5 (excluding the Horde-Paladin), concluding missions, sending followers away, doing daily cooldowns, mining, sometimes herbing, took me a full hour. At which point the first missions where complete again....

At the end of the evening, I was 4 folloowers raised short, but I also had 1 lvl100 on Mardah, and a full party on Verulani who had a big chance to ding next morning...which they did. The completed Bunker gave me my first seal in the afternoon...  and I had made one thing clear to myself...I was not going to keep this up.

So, basically, I decided for myself that the micro-managing was over. I will be sending alt followers on mission once a day, and maybe check around 10 if I have time. Verulani may be a little more managed, but she first has to conclude Nagrand. With Verulani having a herbgarden, the seed-achievement went a lot quicker...and at this moment, my two lvl3-herb gardens are being built.

With the time i save, I also finished the Draenor Angling Achievement, and Mardah is on the quest to get Nat Pagle. I also did Drov yesterday..but because he drops gear 5 Ilvl's below Highmaul, I opted not to use any of my 4 seals I had at that time. Tonight Innovation will poke that raid.

Some things I noticed in my garrisons last weeks;
-NPC's do not walk through you.
-If you send out followers, they will actually walk out of the front gate.
-Followers run away like chickens when an Invasion starts
-There's an NPC in your main building who lets you view the cinematics you have encountered before.
-Seal-missions for followers can appear on non-lvl100 characters

The Alting has started.

After last post, I had to work a lot, so I did not do much besides garrison-stuff. Friday-evening I was set to do more. Specifically, follower-hunting...and when I was in Frostfire, my blocks electricity went awry...which took about 15 hours to fix....

So, with a Molten Core planned in the evening, I still needed to find 4 Ilvl's somehwere. And I hadn't done even any normal dungeons yet. But, luckily, after some PuGs, and some with guildies, my Ilvl reached 414.5, which is just enough to enter MC.

Oh, those dungeons went fairly fine. Some wipes due to adjustments, as in CC and Corner-pulls, but nothing new for a TBC-veteran like me....  oooh, did I saw a soulpriest? Ah yes, MC.....  But Molten Core... Innovation went in with 24 or so people, so 16 other people. Until the third boss, it was a disaster...  over-pulling, butt-pulling, trolling I guess..and a lot of skeletons. But after that, it was fine...just very long. At the end, I got myself a firey helmet, and a mount-in-thr-mail.

Sunday was alt-day. I already had my inscription-rogue Tiramuria at level 91. My Tailor/enchanter-shaman Verulani was also walking around in her Garrison. But I started with my Blacksmith/jewelcrafter Timicin. I had so much ore....  At the end of the day, all three where lvl92, and had their profession-buildings running, including a lvl2-mine for even more ore....

Q

Q - Ominipotent person in the Star Trek episodes from 1997 till 2004, played by John deLancie

QQ - Shortwriting for someone who is crying, a Q, representing a tear coming from an eye.

Queue - The place where half the World of Warcraft Players have been around 16-Nov-2015.

My last post made it clear, the Queue was there. Now, I was expecting queues. The last few weeks it sometimes popped up on Argent Dawn. But I was not expecting what would happen with Warlords. So, here is my recap of the first days of Warlords of Draenor.

The not-so black Temple

Day 1 - launch day (thursday)

I was home at around 15:33, and I hit the queue. More then 1500 before me, and it took me about 90 minutes to get in. Not that bad actually, a little longer then I expected, but not that bad. Later on I heard horror-stories of the queue, but well, I was in.

I did the normal thing, building garrisons, doing quests, around 21:00 the game couldn't handle it anymore. Before that, there where some problems with the garrisons, but at the end of the night, there was no NPC to be seen in the whole of Shadowmoon valley. I ended the night at around 91.7 level.

I did log in on all Alliance characters to start the rested-buff.


Day 2 - Halfing the servers (friday)

I logged in before work, to do some garrison stuff. I returned from work around 17:00 that day, and I entered the Horror-Queue. Argent Dawn already had a 2-hour queue before the servers max was halfed, so I was now looking at 2600 orso people in front of me, with an estimate of 12 hours....

The queue dropped rather quickly to around 1300 people (2 hours in), but after that..well... about 1 per minute was the droprate....   around 22:00 I quit, and went to bed.

Moons over Draenor

Day 3 - No WoW for me (saturday)

I again tried to log in early, before I had to go do some moving-stuff. But I hit the maintenance, so no garrsion-updates for me. When I returned in the evening, well.... I did put myself in...  but I stopped somewhere.

Day 4 - Finally (sunday)

I was an early bird, at around 6 in the morning I logged on, and didn't leave before 22:00, when I fell sleeping of my chair. Because of lost time, and all the alts that will follow, my mind entered levelling-stage. I did register what the Lore was about, but mostly it was about orcs, and shadowcouncil stuff. At the end of the day, Mardah was 98-something, about to enter Nagrand.

Mental Note: Do not skip SMV-quests, else you will sometimes not reach next level later on. Unless you do some of the random-quests that pop-up, which I almost didn't do. I also got my garrsion a long way, including a lvl2-mine (so much ore), a lvl2 tannery and a lvl2 Mill (more resources). At the end of the day, I had 1800 resources pooled for the lvl3-garrison...planning ahead

During one of the many hickup, I got my Scribe, Tiramuria the Rogue, her own garrison, including a level, and a scribe-building.

Day 5 - Normalising? (monday)

Again, a pre-work-garrison-thingie... I returned at around 16:00, had a queue of 20 minutes!! ans started the last bit in Nagrand. Around 20:00 the server borked with garrisons, so I got my tailor/enchanter, Verulani the Shaman, her garrison, sans the buildings though. The idea for this is that the passive resource-gathering from your chest is happening.

At around 22:30, Mardah was done, reaching level 100. The next two hours where clean-up time. Lvl3-garrison was founded, some new buildings, a quick trip to the Proving Grounds, where Mardah got silver without much hassle, and off to bed.

Mardah reaches level 100

Day 6 - ???? (today)

Log in before work, do garison-stuff...yeah..I am seeing a Trend here...back at 17:00...in the queue...wait no queue..allright....

Warlords of Draenor : The Argent Queue

Yes, at home, let's play the levelling game again....

..oh..

Countdown to Warlords : Goodbye Pandaria

If you have been here last two days, you may have noticed something new on the right. Yes, ...through wiping, we learn. now has a stream. I will probably be streaming a lot, although maybe not with sound at first. I am still figuring stuff out, and I do have to level up tomorrow, so it may take a while before I can really dive into stream.

The main reason for the stream, is for my guild. With the new raid-sizes, I foresee more people on the bench, then the normal 1 or 2 that we used to have. At least now they can watch the rest fail..with a 20-25 second delay though.

I will probably log on today for a while. But my Mists of Pandaria is already done. Tuesday we took down Mythic Garrosh. within 5 pulls even. That is including the two double-star-wipes we had on phase 1, and a 1% wipe as number 3.

Tonight, at midnight, Warlords start..I will be sleeping then. Tomorrow around 1700 hours I will start. And I do not have many weekends free coming up. I expect some people at 100 before I logon tomorrow, ah well, I hope i am behind the masses, although, I do expect an Argent Que. My bags are clear, more than 100 free spaces, tomorrow, I will build my Garrison. 

Goodbye Pandaria

Countdown to Warlords : The Cloak(s)

This cloak, this legendary cloak. 

The mists pivotal gear.

Your character needed it.

This precious cloak...

At the moment, I have completed the quest-line on 5 characters. I could have gone for a sixth, or maybe even more, but I decided enough is enough. I just got bored with it, and having so many, really didn't feel legendary anymore.

My last cloak.

My cloak-carriers are Mardah, Verulani, Gwaednerth, Lorinthe and Timicin. Yes, I completed the cloak on two different paladins. What I heard, they will be handy till about I enter heroic dungeons at lvl100. So, not a complete waste of time, considering I mostly stopped playing them after the cloak. And then they can start on a questline for a ring...

Is it really a Legendary Item, if everyone has it? That's s remark I read a lot, and I tend to be in that camp. I do like the idea of a long questline for an overpowered piece of gear, but if, in the end, everyone has it..it does not feel legendary, maybe they should just make it another class of gear.

So far, WoW has three different kinds of legendary items. The aforementioned long questline is one. Then we have the static drop, like the warglaives from Illidan. And then we have the gathering-Legendary, where one member of the raid has to gather a lot of stuff, like the staff from cata.

With the latter two, the amount of legendaries is not that high during current content I must add. But Blizzard is steering WoW more and more towards everyone can get everything. And that's a completely different discussion,

Kristenveldt, healing-leader, gets the cloak.

For now, I am actually looking forward to replace the cloak. It may be nice and all, but that graphic display of wings.. that is really starting to annoy me, especially when it sometimes conflicts with things on the ground. I am looking at you Malkorok's Bubble-spawn. Now hoping that the ring does not do lensflares.

Countdown to Warlords : Cho.

I have no real memory what I thought the first time I heard about Mists, I can not even find that on my blog. I do know that I was partially indifferent about Panda's, although I didn't like that there would be no Panda-Druids (Come on, they are already beers...)

Thinking back over the last two years, I did enjoy Mists. Most of the quests where nice, some patch-stories where very good. The raids where mostly entertaining...except for the bugs. The Boss mechanics were mostly quite interesting. All in all I rather enjoyed this Expansion.

There is just one Panda, that just keeps pushing all the wrong buttons. I think he is personally responsible for us getting in trouble with half of the raidbosses. He is also THE NPC, that in my humble opinion, is the embodiement of Mists of Pandaria.

Lorewalker Cho

Keep on writing Cho, of all the things we did. I do not expect us to sea each other soon, considering you are so bound to that island in the mist. Have a good life, so long, and thank you for the words.

Countdown to Warlords : Blogging

This is a blog, and sometimes it is time to look back at what you have done... so, let's look at the last two years on this Blog. Through wiping, we learn... during Mists of Pandaria

On the 18th of september, I wrote my cataclysm farewell post. The next post I would write would be about Mists of Pandaria, this took a while, my driving-urge was very, very low apparantly. Almost FIVE months later I wrote a post about what I had done sofar in Mists. But my blogging was still very low. After April, another FOUR months went by, without me writing anything.

I think there where a lot of reasons why my writing was down. I wrote some down in my first august post. There were probably more reasons, but after this my postcount went up again. This was mostly fueled by World of Lae. She started an Alt:Apprecation theme which I completed.

In November, my 300th post on this blog coincided with Innovations Garrosh-kill. I wrote something about timetravel, warlords and Orgrimmar after the siege, but starting in december, my postcount went down, sometimes dipping to zero, but there were no longer really big gaps between posts. I also did some Blogazeroth Posts.

On the first of April I wrote 'A word for reforging' which I still stand by. What also happened was that I got a better computer, and I started to make movies again. The rest of the year was writing about killed bosses, and what is to come. This week probably ups my count a lot.

In the end, I am just not one of the people who writes a blog almost every day. I have respect for bloggers that do that, it´s just not me. If something really bothers me, or if something irks me, I'll write, not because I need to write because I have a blog to fill, but because I want to.

And for that matter, this blog was mostly written on Friday. The same day as Overpowered, sometimes I just keep typing..... and I actually used the post-on-that-time option for this one.

My goal for Warlords is to write two pieces a week. I once tried a screenshot-friday-series, maybe that's an idea gain. But to be honest, I had that 2 post-per-week idea before...and it felt through a little bit. Lets see what happens....

Countdown to Warlords : Blizzcon Tournament

Last night, I watched some Blizzcon, most notably, I watched the PvP-tournament. Two teams of three people slugging it out in an arena. I got a beer, and just watched the stream. This stream is free, although the finale may not be?

Just to give it some background, I suck at PvP...or at least I think, because I never actually do it. For me, PvP is like a LFR-raid, only with more people just minding their own business, once in a while you may get a good team, but mostly, it's everyone for themselves.

All my honorpoints on Argent Dawn.

So, last night I watched the matches, and I found it mildly entertaining. There is one huge problem, without the commentators, I had no idea what was going on. And I have a reasonable understanding of most classes, being an altoholic and all.

But just looking at the screen, with the sound of, most of the time stuff happens so fast. And it all comes down to cooldowns. Now some of them you could see coming. Manatea-stacks you can count, the trinket-cooldwon was on screen. But to really fathom what was going on, as a spectator, you really need to see all the cooldowns.  Luckily the commentators apparantly had that info.

With that in mind, half of the kills, came completely sudden. In playback, you could see what was going on, and most of the time it was because the commentators where talking about another player, and suddenly, boom, dead player.

It's like in football, when a player just kicks the ball towards the goal from midfield, and it miraculously finds the goal. There was no real attack play, it just happened. Now, if we, as spectators had all the information, we oursleves probably could see it coming, although so much is happening.

I wonder if it is really feasible as an e-sport. Even with my knowledge of classes, I lost track. And most of the times, I was actually looking more at the health-bars, then at the screenplay.

What I mostly remember from last night was Lore. The community/manager from Blizzard, sitting in the middle of the commentators. Now, I have known Lore for a long time. He once had a blog, which is still buried deep down in my follow/list, which concerned Paladins. He stopped blogging, and starting to do ´The Weekly Marmot´, him ranting about stuff. In about three years, he made a lot of show, also combining with gamebreaker, doing stuff, and then he went to work for Blizzard.

At the beginning he seemed a little bit flustered, but he came into the groove later on, but really, that working for Blizzard really exploded the hair....

Countdown to Warlords : Overpowdered

Rouges are Overpowdered. - Nagkeen

That was the forumsignature of an officer in my first raidingguild. He played a Rogue, which was considered overpowered back then by most. OP-classes, or specs, is something akin to MMO's. Sometimes a class will do things the makers didn't consider, and be stronger then any other.

These classes are also very likely to be the so-called 'flavor-of-the-month' class. Players, and people in general, have the tendecy to flock to the strongest. And we have all seen OP-stuff. Last few months I thought it was mostly Warlocks, although I may be mistaken.

You always find OP DPS at the top of the lists, and not on just one fight, but on all the fights. The last few years, Blizzard has dwindled it down, the player is more important than the class. How bossfights are is also very important. If I look back at the last months, Innovation always had the same 6 people in the top 10, but almost never the same player on top all the fights.

Having one player on top all the time...  and sometimes with a pretty big margin, that is overpowered.

So yeah, nerf Moonkins I guess, On 7 of the 8 first Mythic bosses I came in at 1. The only exception was Galakras, but I am not doing stuff there often, waiting on adds. I am also not on the towerteam. Sha als may be skewed because of different phases. But this is ridiculous, how did that happen?

So, yeah...that Starfall-buff is a little over the top at the moment, lets see what it does with 10 more levels. Juggernaut is as close as you can get to a patchwork style fight, one target, so almost no Starfall. Both Sha en Nazgrim but Starfire on top, probably because adds are not up all the time, and you can focus boss much more.

I do think I have the new Balance-stuff under control now, only thing is that I will get instant Starsurges somewhere on my way to lvl100. And that level100 probably will end my overpowdered status.

Countdown to Warlords : Innovation Raiding

Tonight, Innovation will start its farewell Pandaria Raid. If we make it till the end remains to be seen, but that does not matter much anymore. Next week, we will be knee-deep in the blood of Iron Horde Orcs, instead of normal Orcs...

As Mardah, I have now done two whole expansions with Innovation. On the first day of winter, 2010, I joined Innovation, two weeks into the Cataclyms Expansion. Both expansion somewhat followed the same timestamps.

Innovation preparing for heroic Malkorok

Innovation did the first tier of raiding 'almost' in the time provided. In the second tier we did some heroics (now mythics), and the last tier was completed on the most difficult setting... in the nick of time. Halfway the expansion there seems to be a problem with the number of raiders, although Innovation didn't went back to 10-mans, like we had to do in Firelands. So we have a good pace.

This weekend we will hear more about the future, if there will be 2 or 3 tiers of raiding. Will Blizzard finally up the speed, could we actually be having a patch 7.0 before december 2015? There is also a lot of studying new bosses and raids coming up, although some old names will come along (Hello Gruul).

Innovation will probably resume raiding in januar after this week. Give people time to level up, have a nice christmas vacation. There are less bosses in the first tier of raids then last expansion, so we may be able to do it in time, we'll see.

What remains after this week are the memories of endless wiping on some bosses, I am looking at you ElegON, GaralON, HorridON. The quick and sudden kills of some bosses, like the Thunderkings Wifes, the Shamans of Orgrimmar on Mythic... That watery dude on the terrace. And of course the seemingly endless summer in Orgrimmar it self.

Luckily, we still have the pictures and videos.... 

Hellscream's Downfall

A lot has happened last week for me in raiding land. After taking down Thok, Innovation went on. Next target was Siegecrafter, that took a while.  There is just so much fire, and stuff happening. You have to run around sometimes, with no idea if you can actually get back. But, the moment our raidleader put the ranged dps on a spot inside the second fire-circle, it was game over for Siegecrafter.

Next up: Paragons. I always found this fight easy, and normal...mm..heroic, our first kill was the second pull, and I was not really expecting a very long wipefest on Mythic. So, we took them down on our first pull...with a catch. Halfway the last paragon, only our DK-tank, two retridins and a warrior where left alive. The warrior didn't made it to the end, but the selfhealing of those last three was enough to take the last one down, took a while, but the road to Garrie was open.

Now, Mythic Garrie... an extra Phase, with circles, dots, fire from the sky and big iron balls. That was new for us, never seen that before, and you had to go through all the normal phases to actually see what was happening. So, this took a while, and after one thursday-evening of wiping, Garrie was still up, sunday was next. But I had made a Video for everyone to see what was happening.

Friday came, and I logged on to my Blood Elf paladin to partake in a heroic Garrosh run. There where some problems, but once Beyond redemptions RaidLeader figured out that only 3 of the 6 healers were actually healing, Garrosh went down, and Gwaednerth got his guaranteed heirloom, a 2H strength axe, and the title: Liberator of Orgrimmar.

On Saturday I did someting new, I used the new Blizzard Premade group Finder to join a HC Garrosh run on Lorinthe, my Warlock. Why Lorinthe, well, I either would get the OH or the Staff, and because I already had one spellmace, both would be usefull. Lorinthe's Ilvl is also in the 560's, so I applied to a group, and got a direct invite. This group pulled quickly, and together with my green fire, killed Garrie in one pull, and I got the Staff, probably my togoto weapon for levelling Mardah.

And then Sunday came around. I had some pre-raid remarks for our RL (always do them pre-raid, not during), and Innovation went in again. We had a little different tactic on P4. The Malice-target had to run between groups, instead of people with blast running out, And because the Bombardment seemed partially targetting players, the tanks didn't pull Garrie to spot 2 during that.

The first few pulls brought us without much problems in P4, where the learning started. During the third or fourth try, everyone was alive after bombardment, and with one Iron Ball up [re: apparantly two where up], when someone got malice..and ran out..yeah, I think we forgot to specify what to with malice after bombardment... so everyone bit the dust again...

...almost everyone, with a little more than 1% left on Garrosh, our Death Dorf Knight Tank Moreor refused to die....

[I was actually taping, but becasue I died, I was trying to type, some hotkeys popped up character screen and spellbook, so that video was ruined...]

Starfalling

After every patch the last four years, it was the same question, what is Starfall doing today?

Starfall is the Moonkin AoE spells that drops those nice stars from the sky, doing nice damage, and always associated with trash-wipes. I remember that in one of my first raids with Innovation, I pulled the boss because I accidentally hit Starfall.

Now Starfall is not a targetted spell..it just blankets a 40-yard circle-area, with the moonkin at his center with stars, but, it was not supposed to hit out-of-combat targets...  it was supposed to... So, since that incident I have been very carefull with this spell, but the last half year it seemed working perfectly.

It worked so good, that it even didn't hit CC-ed targets anymore. It still hit everything that was in combat though.. a real Healer-saver for that matter on trash, especially if an extra pack of mobs was 'butt'-pulled.

In solo-ing it was a little worse, because it does not make a difference with whom a target was in combat, hitting Starfall on the Timeless Isle was a sort of gamble, lucky there was a glyph so it would only hit targets you dotted. This was important, because Starfall was a big part of the rotation, even on single-target-fights.

I actually had Starfall glyphed for Garrosh, because the adds all aggro-ed me, for a while, until I was placed in the melee-group for Typhoon.

Now, with 6.0, Starfall seemed to be less important for our wonky rotation, you have to choose between Starfall or Starsurge, the latter increasing damage on starfire/wrath. Considering single-target fights, Starsurge is way better then some falling stars, but as I found out last week in Mythic Siege, most fights have adds somewhere, and on 3 or more, Starfall does better damage then Starsurge.

Thok-barbeque with Innovation

On Thok last night, I found another use, a filler for when you running out of range towards something. You may loose some stars, but some will hit after you are in range again.

I am liking this spell-choice between Surge and Fall more and more...but.. using it on Trash is most of the time a big No-No. Not because of the damage, but because of something irritating. Starting with 6.0, Starfall lost the 'only targets in combat'-component. And most Trash packs are closer together than 40 yards, which may result in some accidentally pulling.

Siegecrafter Blackfuse ready to kill an Innovation trash-pack

It's not even feasible on Frogs. The Timeless isle frogs, as most of you know, are now heavily farmed for charms. So, I thought nice, I stand there hit Starfall and every frog gets damaged by me, which is right..but I was most of the time not the one who tagged the frog.

Apparantly the stars in Starfall need to come from another galaxy, that long does it take to reach earth. I also heard horrostories from dungeons, where everything is even closer together. There Starfall seems to be 'press-here-to-wipe'.

I can actually not see the reason behind the removal of the 'only-in-combat' part, maybe there is some strange PvP-reason, maybe they found it to difficult to actually implement, I have no idea. But everytime I want to hit Starfall, I know have to be very carefull.

Transition

This time of the WoW-years are always strange. So much new information, all add-ons need updating, spells disappera, or re-appear. And sometimes you have to relearn your class completely. I have seen this before, and it's always the same.

There seems to be a very high number of people coming back to the game with this latest lol-patch. Doing a lot of things, they couldn't do last months, mostly because of not being there. And for me, and players like me, it's all...meh...

Does it say something that on Patchday, I was bored so fast, that I actually played my Frosty DK through her last 2 levels, making her my 11th max-level char on Argent Dawn? Actually, most time on patch-day was spent cleaning up bags... and waiting for the add-on Althoholic to update. I really can't play without that add-on anymore it seems... and it's not even for raiding.

The day before massive plastic surgery

The barbershop

Another thing that had to be done, was going to the barber on several characters. My Paladin was completely off, so he needed a new head-cut... I am also not liking the gnome when they just stand around, but because I don't like any of the other faces, nothing changed for them. My Trio of Draenai didn't need a change, and the only change to my Dwarves, was a new beard for Stonehear, Lorinthe changed hairstyles, and Mardah, well..  Mardah.  There was something wrong with her new face...

The not well done plastic surgery

Statsquishy

To be honest, I hardly notice it. It takes a little time to get used to smaller health-pools, but everything dies so fast.. I actually killed Attuman so fast he was not able to mount his horse..and dropped no loot. Innovation did a norma...rrr...heroic raid last week, and everything died so fast..  which is normal in lolpatches. But stat-squish combined with new power... well..  we skipped a lot of phases during this clear. Although we still had a wipe-call at garrosh, because our melee where testing if the bomb does less damage...  which it probably does, but still enough to splat the melee.

Wicked Mardah

Balancing Eclipse

The new Moonkin-rotation-thingy is strange. I trained to get the patchwork-style in my head, but on trash and bosses I can hardly do that. Either becasue trash is dead before I can cast two spells, or because of movement. Because of the fluidic eclipsebar I can not start moving with an idea what to cast when I stop. If I have to move a little.. well.. that measn I just skip a spell probably, but longer movement, means one of my eyes is continously on the eclipse-bar..where am I, what to cast...  And 15k instead of 300k DPS is amazing...

Food for thought; our dps went down with a factor 20, our health with a factor 5..

Tonight, we will start Mythical..with a max of 20 people....

It is... green?

Data and Scotty drinking..  green?

With patch 6.0 fast approaching, I am finishing things up on different characters. And this one has been on my mind a lot. I tried it before, and miserably failed, but now I went in with macro's blazing, and faster then I expected:

Lorinthe is now no longer green of envy.

I'll raise one Aldebaran Whiskey on me.

Heroic Shamans and Malkorok down.

Sunday evening, Innovation started at Juggernaut HC as a warm up before we would try the Shamans for the first time. We had the peptalks, the new things that would happen, and then the timer went of. the pull was a little bit messy, and we had some things to get used to, so we wiped... at 20%.


Wiping on a first try is nothing new and/or strange, but at 20%?? We went in again, everyone now attuned to the new things happening, and they went down with almost no problems, a little anti-climax I would say. As one of us said; "Maybe we should have done this a few weeks earlier."


After this sudden kill, we made quick work of the Orc, and looked our second not-yet-killed boss in the eye, Malkorok. We already had one week of wiping on him before, and after all the excitement on sunday evening, well, nope, would not happen.


Tuesday was another sparring-night with him, and we did get him under the 20%, but little mistakes kept crawling in. And with Malkorok, it doesn't matter if the mistake is early or late in the fight, you can just see the raid crumbling under too much pressure after that. This one is really in the catagory: Frustrating Boss fights.


The raid was extended to thursday, and luckily after 5 wipes, the mistakes were not big enough, and we had a second P2 with 90% alive (at least), so after 68 wipes orso, Malkorok went down, bringing Innovation one heroic boss further then last end-tier  ;)

Innovation : A Year in Orgrimmar

Leave your guilds now?

Innovation's last raiding week can be explained with one Picture:

Heroic Malkorok - finally with 25 men.

A whole week of trying to get Malkorok down on Heroic. To be honest, only tuesday with a full team. The fact that we didn't got a full team till tuesday is strange, but more strange is the amount of new names. last week Innovations website started to produce several potential recruits. How did that happen?

Well, our raid started a little late last Thursday, about 20 minutes, something to do with that date we all have now, 13th November. And suddenly the whole World of Warcraft had a deadline. Whatever you are doing now, everything changes on that date, better prepare.

And for some, that means leaving their old 10-man guild, and try to find a 25-man guild. One of the recruits even stated that was the main reason behind looking for a new guild. They don't believe their current guild will recruit enough people before WoD, or not enough able people. While Innovation already has a working and running modus operandi.

If that pays of for them, or for us, is a question for the future. At the moment Innovation has more cannon-fodder to throw at bosses, and with Malky close to death, we are on track to do the same as last expansion, ending 8 heroic bosses in. Although last expansion only had 8 in the last tier.

I am wondering though, how many guilds have problems now, either the 10's for loosing members, and seeing their guilds dissolve, and for the 25's, who struggled the last few years to keep 25, and now suddenly everyone wants to join?

Also, malky close to death may seem strange, considering we didn't get him below 40%, but, to cath a phrase, through wiping, we learn. The moment we have no deaths first three minutes, it will be done. Rince and repeat-boss.

I also decided that I will continue playing boomkin for now. That glyph of flapping wings is hilarious. And on the alt-front, well, I now have Five cloaks, so legendary....

Timicin has his cloak.

10 Years/ 10 Questions

One thing about the summer is vacations. I am working at a school, so I really have a long summer-vacation. And this one has been busy. 2 weeks I was in South-Wales, and 2 weeks where spend on the Innovation-Guildmeet.


I missed a lot.


I missed a lot of the Malasian Airplane that went down over the Ukrain. Although some of that emotion did reach me, not as huge as it was in the Netherlands though. I also did not raid for 5 weeks (well, except one night). I was also not able to participate in Beta as much as I wanted. And now I am back, my blogroll is full of 10/10 things.

Alt:ernative over at www.alternative-blog.net is asking players to fill in 10 questions for a series of podcasts. It is WoW's 10th anniversary soon, so this seemed a good time to do that, and here are my answers.

1. Why did you start playing Warcraft?

There were two reasons I started playing World of Warcraft. I had started a new Job in januar which meant that instead of a 60+ hours/week working at irregular hours, I now only had to work 32 hours, on very regurlar hours. So I had some time left. Second, there where rumors of a Star Trek MMO:RPG coming, and I had hardly any experience with RPG's or MMO's, so in febraur 2007, in my first vacation working at a school, I started playing World of Warcraft try-out version.

2. What was the first ever character you rolled?

Mendak, Dwarf Hunter with his bear Ursa. I played this character in my first week of try-out, no idea what I was doing. But I did like the game, and after a week I bought it. At that point I also made my second character, a Blood Elf Tankadin named Gowron.

3. Which factors determined your faction choice in game?

I have no idea anymore why I started with Alliance. maybe the trailer I saw with the dwarf hunter in the snow influenced me. After a week playing, and doing some more research, I thought I would like the paladin class, and because I already did some Alliance, I opted for Horde, to see what was on the other side.

4. What has been your most memorable moment in Warcraft and why?

This has me thinking. I have enough memories of won fights due to actions I did (wrong trinket on Hydross ; solohealing an ICC-boss), and enough memories of close bosskills. I could go for the moment I actually hit the wow-download button, but to be honest, I don't remember that. I think the most memorable moment in WoW, is when I really stepped into raiding Hardcore.

The fun part is, it was outside the game. I was at my friends house (Kemwer/Gunho) and we where both part of XII. Both of us where officers, and we where talking about the lack of focus and direction or something. At the end of the evening we decided on a radical step. I opened the calendar, and put a raid in on every day for the next month. At that moment, XII became a 'Hard-Core', as did I...

5. What is your favourite aspect of the game and has this always been the case?

Overcoming obstacles, and it really doesn't matter if that means killing that Elite-bird in Winterspring, doing some Black Prince related quest, or a Raidboss after 50 wipes. Just that feeling of  'I/We did this'. And with an obstacle I mean something that does not go down on the first tries, ...through wiping, we learn.

6. Do you have an area in game that you always return to?

Thunderbluf would be my first instinct, but then..it has been a long time since I was there. I think this really depends on the expansion. There is not really a place where I would go to just do nothing.

7. How long have you /played and has that been continuous?

Since I started playing in februar 2007, I have never unsubbed. At this moment I don't even have to add time, it is all automatically, no mid-raid end-of-subscription moments for me.

According to Althoholic, my current time played of a characters still existing is 539 days, 10 hours and 56 minutes. Although during checking I removed at least 14 hours of gameplay, and I now I have deleted characters before...  so my estimate would be upwards 560 days played at the moment.

Which, is a about 5 hours a day since I started playing.....

8. Admit it: do you read quest text or not?

Yes, I think. I am a fast reader, so I scan the text for big clues, and fill in the gaps of the story the first time around. My raiding character must reach max level... With the next few alts that pass the quests, I will read it more thoroughly, after that I skip it.

9. Are there any regrets from your time in game?

Not really, considering where I am now, regretting something that happened, which may change where you are now feels a little strange. Your successes and your mistakes make you what you are today. The only thing I may regret, considering it would not change much, is disenchanting all old gear on my Paladin, because I could never use that again..  damn you Transmog.

10. What effect has Warcraft had on your life outside gaming?

A lot. I am one of those people that will try no to plan anything on the raiding-evenings. I see it the same way when I was playing a sport. Three times a week I go to that sport, either to train, or to play a match. So I try to plan non-WoW stuff on the other four nights, does not always work, but most of my friends now that Su-Tu-Th is taken for me. And this is not even the biggest Impact WoW has on my life.

Somewhere during a guildmeet 2 years ago, I fell in love with Innovations Healing Lead.
So yeah... that has some effect on my life.

First steps into Beta

Spoilers ahead

Although I don't have much time ahead next weeks, something about a Guildmeet coming up, and the fact that I still raid (Sha-HC down, so now 7/14HC), I managed some time on the Beta...between servers disconnects, and world servers down.

First of, I needed to make a lvl90-template, the european transfer is not working, so what did I choose? One of my personal goals in beta is to figure out if I like the new Moonkin game-play, also, I didn't want to spoil the alliance side, so at least I have something new to look forward to, so Morshando, a Troll Boomk came onto the Beta.

Morshando had no idea what to do, really... there was no quest that pointed me somewhere, but I did find my way to Draenor, there is a portal at the cata-portals.

The first thing you do is to build your garrison, you run around doing some quests, and tada, your own town is there. There are some well know characters there, of which the next one made me shuckle.

I hope he tells it takes a while......

So far I encountered some loose quests, some rare spawns, some phased questhubs, and Thrall is running around.. Of course there is the quest where you have to release NPC's... with a spawn-time around 5 minutes...  and 500 people running around...

Considering the boomk-gameplay...  I don't know. 

The biggest problem I have is the eclipsebar. Starting a fight is not a problem, just go hit starfire, but if you are clearing mobs, you continually have to look out if you have to cast either SF or Wrath. Even the sleightest delay because of, say, moving, you have to rethink your whole plan.

But, at the moment, for levelling, that's not a real big problem, mobs die fast enough, and I sometimes see crits of 13k, wow.... but 3-sec Starfires being pushbacked because somethings hitting you... pfff, luckily my first perk was an increase of 20% to starfire.

Flying over Frostridge

We are still in Pandaria

The amount of Alpha chatter is very high, people are excited, and it fills almost every channel. And after today, it will be even more.. Beta will start at 21:00 GMT+1.

This does bring us closer to patch 6.0 I hope. Innovation already is feeling the effects of the long wait. A few raids have been cancelled, a lot where undermanned. And that did slow us down, both the cancelling, and getting new members in the fold.

But, we did manage to down Nazgrim-HC. We did skip Shamans, and Sha is also not yet down, but having an unsure roster, we do need to have two targets, else more raids will not happen. Last night, on our first serious attempt on Sha-HC since I don't know-when, we reached P2, so no problem there.

One problem I do have is gear at the moment. As everyone knows, Blizzard ghost-nerfed the current content  by giving us the option to upgrade 4 times. Before that happened, I had almost all WF-normal gear two times upgraded towards Ilvl 567. In theory I can still upgrade those twice more (which I did with some like weapons/trinkets).

But I am not swimming in Valorpoints, and I now have three Heroic pieces of gear in my bags, their Ilvl is 566, one below the WF-normal-2/4. Because they are in my bags, they are from bosses we already downed, and apart from Nagrim, jave on farm, so a WF-HC version is waiting to drop for me. So, atm I am very reluctant to use the HC-gear, which I have to upgrade first to be better then the gear I am currently wearing. Which goes against the new Blizz-thingie, equip your new gear immediately.

Further personal news, is that both my Paladins are past the PvP-part of the legendary, and are now collecting some coins before the buff works off... it seems my 4th and 5th legendary cloak are not far off.... but...

I did get an e-mail today, so I am going to test this new sinus-eclipse curve for Boomk's this weekend.. if the servers are not down or whatever else happens on Beta.

The Day I Rage Quit XII

I was wondering if any of you were Nozdormu and could control time, what would you change in your WoW history? Did you leave a guild you wish you had stayed for, did you transfer servers or faction but regretted it later? Have you lost an item you can never get back or deleted something that is now gone forever?

What have you regretted?

Dragonray from Azerothian Life

This is this biweekly shared topic from Blog Azeroth, and here in lies more a philosophical question. Regretting something is normal for humans, but are you really regretting something that happened years ago, because if you could change that, wouldn't your current life change?

Of course there are things I did in World of Warcraft that I regret doing. Not doing Classic is one. But now that I am in 2014, an look back, I am happy I didn't do it, I would not be where I am now... especially concerning meeting my girlfriend in my current guild. If I would have done a different thing somewhere, I probably wouldn't be here.

Saying that, let's talk about the time I rage-quit a guild...yes, I did that stupid thing. And I don't think I actually wrote this down on this blog, that probably says something about how I felt about it back then, now lets' go back to the late summer of 2008 (insert Wayne's World sound here).

I was playing the maintankadin Gowron back then. I also did a lot more, like raid leading, loot master, class leader, and the voice of XII on the realm-forums, but starting september, I was moving, so I had to let go of a lot of those functions. Biggest thing I gave up was raid leading, I had no idea how long it would take for me to get back, so I handed that task to a co-tank-officer.

At this moment we had about 5 tanks, remember you needed a lot of tanks on some fights. By far the best where the now raidleader, another warrior, and me. The other two where lesser geared, and not that good. Further more, the other warrior was on a one-week-raid for a few weeks because of his work. That gave him a certain spot the day he was on.

Myself had missed one week, but I was able to sign up for a raid, and probably not the next few ones. At this moment XII had been wiping on Vashj for a few weeks, sofar that I even went in hours before the raid to actually figure out new tactics. Now you probably can see whats's coming.

For this evening, all 5 tanks signed up, and you only needed 2. The raid leader being one, I was expecting either me or the warrior to be the second tank. I think we actually talked about it that one of us was missing the raid. Considering how much we two did together, even being in Retribution, that would not be a problem, we where both good. But the new RL opted for going in with the same team as last two days, and bench the two well geared good tanks over the newer lesser geared one.

In /o I tried to discuss with the RL, be his was 'not to be swayed'. What really hurt me was that I actually didn't get that much support from fellow officers. Between all this, the other Tank went into a guild channel and starting arguing, and now it gets hazy, but I suppose it got to a wild discussion with me and the other tank leaving the guild.

As far as I know, if one of us would have been taken, which would have been logical considering all things, that is gear, experience, and seniority...  and us not being in the raids before (we had a rotation in XII at that moment), nothing would have happened.

But trying to remember that moment, I really regretted giving up the reigns, to someone who apparently was doing something I found against what the raid stood for. I did rejoin, but XII would never be the same for me again.

In hindsight I was partially to blame. I could have seen this coming, and the way XII was going, becoming a more hardcore mindset then I always wanted, was probably because how I lead raids, and who I left the reigns to.

But if I could go back, I wouldn't do it. Because of this I stopped raiding somewhere early 2009, started levelling a druid called Mardah, and joined Innovation late 2009, but yeah, this was the day I rage quit a raiding guild called XII

New gameplay form Boomk's... not again....

Now, to be honest, in th time I played Moonkin, the gameplay didn't change that much. Of course there where some spells lost (like Insect Swarm) and some spells added, but the gameplay didn't change much. You had this eclipse bar which moved left/right when casting either Starfire or Wrath. And now Blizzard seems to be changing that.

On other characters I already know how that feels. Going from TBC to WotLK, the complete gameplay of tankadins was changed. Most notably going from Spellpower to Strength gear. There where also a gazillion spellchanges. Going into Cataclysm they added Holy Power, which was one of the main reasons I actually stopped playing Paladin for a while.

I also had a lot of problems with hunters after they lost mana, and gained focus. You get so used to a certain gameplay, that heavy changes really hurt your joy when playing a character. I still have troubles using all the bigger cooldowns on my hunters, they have a lot of them.

Last week, Blizzard released the new Alpha patch notes, with lots of changes for the Moonkin. If you want to read them, go Google it, or visit the patchnotes somehwere. I am not going into a lengthy rant about them. What I did have was a gut-feeling that I don't like them. There is something amiss it seems, and it took me 5 days to actually find what I didn't like.

The problem is two-fold. The first one is that all DoT's will become 'fluid'. At this moment DoT's are 'snapshotting' the stats when being cast, and keep that for their whole duration. In WoD, the DoT's will look at your stats everytime they tick..... except the Moonkins eclipse-bonus, that is still a snapshot. Which means you still want to cast Moonfire/Sunfire at the highest amount of eclipse possible.

The other factor is the new eclipse-bar. At this moment it is moved by casting spells, in WoD it will move automatically on a 30 second interval. That means you no longer have control over the eclipsebar, it just keeps moving while you are in combat. And there is the problem, your spells have the biggest oomph when eclipse is high, same as now, so what's the problem? Well let's look at the start of (almost) every fight I do (It starts around 1 sec before pull);

Pot-Starfall-Wrath (to hit lunar)-Sunfire-Treant-Moonfire-4 time Starfire-Starfall-Starfire-Celestial Alignment-Moonfire-Starfirex3-Starfall-Treants in between, and always Starsurging and...  now the problem is movement here. If I have to move in that first 45 seconds of the fight, it will be a huge dps-loss.

 Luckily most fight have a fairly static beginning, but now imagine having a big cool down every 15 seconds...that activates automatically, and you have only a 4.5 second window to cast the big spells. That's how I see the new eclipse-system. If for whatever reason you have to move during that top-eclipse-phase, you will loose a lot of dps.

Now, we don't know what kind off fights we will have in WoD, they may be more static then now, but the fact that RNG can heavily influence boomkin-dps seems silly. And that's I see the system....  which may not be implemented. Maybe it will actually work..  but we need to wait for that.

Interface and Addons (Blog Azeroth)

This dualweeks shared topic on Blog Azeroth is Interface and addons. Now I do have alot of addons, and they are all downloadable from Curse. But which addons do I use?  Well, first up, here's a screenshot of Lorinthe in an LFR.

A lot of things look different here then in a normal UI, but one of the most profound things to notice is the bottom-centre. There are 12 buttons larger, comparing to the rest. This is because I actually do not use the keyboard for raiding, but a Belkin N52TE gamepad. And because of the layout, and how my owns hands work, I use 11 hot keys, and the joystick on the side for movement.

I know it has a lot more functions, but I normally don't seem to need them. Because I use this, all my alts have the same basic layout, using Bartender, I also made 2 12-blocks both side of the centreblock for cooldowns, buffs, and other frequently used spells, while the big strings that go to both corners are mostly for mounts/professions and other stuff.

Now looking at a Mardah-screenshot, you immediately see the similarities, but because Mardah is my main raiding character, there are some things better positioned, and some more addons. Still the centre-block, with all the mainspells stays the same.

List of addons I see during raids.

• Skada (Top left)
• Damage meter, but also more important a where-did-I-die-from-section.
•  Deadly Boss Mobs (Middle left and center)
• Boss timers and cooldowns, sometimes the only thing I see.....
• Bartender (Lower-screen)
• More shuffling around with bars then the original one.
• X-perl (raidframes and character-info-blocs)
• Mainly because I like it more that my own info is closer to the center, and under my feet.
• Affdot-Druid (above char-bloc)
• Reminder to recast Moon/Sunfire if there's a huge difference in power (like here for Moonfire)
• Weakauras (above char-bloc)
• Various cooldowntimers that are important, so i don't have to find them in the mess near the map. Some are not shown at the moment, because they are Buff-Duration-timers.
• Balance Power Tracker (under character-bloc)
• Replacement of the default, this one is set to the new eclipse state the moment I play a spell.

Now if you look closely, all the important information for me is centered, and a little bit under my feet (depends on zoom-factor). This way I can both see my own health, which button to push, boss-cooldowns, and whatever is happening under my feet.

The other info, like Skada, rest of raid,chat and debuffs on me are more away from the centre. I do look at them, but more like every 10 seconds. It's information I don't need to know all the time.  Important buffs I can extrapolate from the Affdot timers, and boss-stuff is always warned in DBM. The big Gap under the boss-info-bloc is used by my petclasses. Their targets and toolbars are there. It's also the place for my ExtraActionButton1

I also like the fact that both left and right is rather free of stuff, so I can see what's coming from that side.

As you can see above, my Gwaednerth-raid-UI has a lot less info, but there's another thing. If you look closely around the map, you see more buttons then normal. There are also the Addons I dont use during Bossfights, so here is that list;

• Althoholic
• Well..  it's very easy to loose stuff with all those alts I Have.
• Atlasloot
• Besides the handy what-does-the-boss-drop-list, it has many more lists.
• NPC-scan
• Most of the time turned off. I do sometimes go on a rare-hunt.
• Auctioneer
• Easier use of the Auction House, but I don't use all the options.
• Decursive
• In case I go healing
• Enchantrix
• Because I always forget which dust/ink is going to appear.
• Healbot
• See decursive, fun part, this actually puts a second raidlist on my screen (Right-lower)
• Postal
• Easier use of the postboxes (open all)

The main-layout of my UI hasn't been changed much since I got the Belkin, and was tanking Malygos, way back when that was current content. That's about five years ago??  So this UI really works for me. Some little changes will be made when Warlords of Draenor comes around, I'll probably loose the Dot-timer (Dot's will become fluid), and I may try the default raidframes. But as long as I have the belkin, the general layout will not change much.

And for fun, my layout during 2008. Gwaednerth (then Gowron) tanking Leotheras the Blind;

Raiding on the other side

Yes, so far my vacation, and other things. And a lot of things have happened last month. More news from alpha, and more news from alpha, and more news...wait.. ALPHA, where is the freaking Beta??

But, for myself, the most important news is that Argent Dawn is now completely Alliance for me. Somehwere last month my last two Horde Characters left Single Abstract Noun, and went to the Sha'Tar. SAN has been dead for a while, and with the absence of Rasout, I really lost any reason to log in there. So, I transferred both Gowron and Luaran of to that Sha'Tar guild I joined a few months ago.

Beyond Redemption Friday-Flex team

Luaran was Lucky enough to keep her name, Gowron had to be changed. A part of me was sad about that. The name was with me for more than 7 years, but no longer for this paladin character. His new name is Gwaednerth, wich is Welsh for blood-strength. Don't ask me how to pronounce it though, and in beyond redemption the name G-man has already been opted.

Why is the pronounciation important?  Well, I have joined Beyond Redemptions Friday-Flex. Actually, they just started that, but I couldn't attend the first run. The next two I did join, and it is fun. Do mind, that most characters are undergeared, or at flex-gear. And we even have some people raiding for the first time...and there's a mumble-account.

The Mumble is strange. In Innovation we don't use something like that, all things are discussed in /raid or /instance... or one of the other dedicated channels. One of the reasons is that everyone is in raidchannel, as with the 2 flexruns, not everyone was in Mumble... but at least I experience the laughter when people try to pronounce Gwaednerth.

This Horde-expedition does not interfere with my Alliance raiding. But I do wish that new 20 man-raids would be introduced tomorrow. Especially with the late release of Warlords of Draenor, now estimated after Blizzcon, people stop playing, and go on a break. I think we have 15 people on a break now....

Oh, yeah, I mentioned AD being completely Alliance now. So, the two new faces to my army of alts are Doiral, Draenai Monk  (different one then the one I played for Alt:Appreciation) and Jinnowhaen, Dwarf Death Knight, to finish off all the classes. One of these two will be boosted, and at the moment I am betting it will be the Death Knight. Doiral is running up the levels at the moment.

Strange encounters of the Third Cloak.

The character that reached level 90 as tenth, somewhere last december, has finished her quest. The long waits on all the random drops is finally over. Her battle with the Black Prince was quickly over (one-shot). The only problem was a saturday-evening hunt on four different Celestials, I think it took me three hours, but after that it was of to Cho and the little dragon;

Fiery Lorinthe hovering.

So, I now have cloaks, and since this weekend, also 11 level 90's. Although I was expecting my mage to be there next, last two weekends, I went full with an old Death Knight of me. I did all the Jade Forest and Kun-Lai quests, and reached level 89.6, so some quick Klaxxi-quest later, this traveler on Sha'Tar/Moonglade joined my other level 90's

I am actually in the same guild on that server, as an old friend of mine, by pure coincidence. I did noticed that he was playing around a little on The Sha'Tar, which probably, unconsiously let me made a priest there. Ynyr was happy leveling, and I had me normal share of random guild-invites. Then I got a guild-invite from a guild with a name which didn't put me off right away, so I did a /who, saw 15 online and thought, why not.

 A few days later, I was playing him again, or rather learning some professions, when the next thing happened;

So, after a big laugh, I gathered myself together, it seems we always end up in each others guilds.