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)

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...

Improved Moonkinform

I don't know....  it seems a little silly on some places.....

Oh, and after an hour+ trying to figure out how to reforge... it seems Crit is king now....  great.  So that nice number of 17%-ish haste is now 27%-ish crit....  goodbye haste it was good to be fast.

My Warcraft-life sofar.

How did I get into this?

So, World of Warcraft, which has been a large part of my life the last 5 years, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. How did I roll into this, and what did I do?

I am actually a quite old warcraft-player. (yes, besides age). I clearly remember playing Warcraft: Orcs and Humans way back in the 90's. When I was still studying that is.  Because the follow-ups were released when I already was working, I didn't know them that well. I did try Warcraft2 I remember, but no idea what I thought about it.

I know I was actually playing the civilization-games a lot (or Birth of the Federation).  Turn-based strategy games. I did try some RPG-games, but non of those actually stuck with me.

Now fast forward to halfway the first decennium of this millennium. There where some large things going on in my personal life. One of which was getting a job with more time to do other stuff.

Now, I heard of this World of Warcraft-game. One of my best friends (Kemwer/Gunho) was playing it, and I sometimes watched it. I clearly remember him doing something called 'tanking' on a character shaped as a female cow. (He was playing a Tauren female warrior in SFK I later learned).

So, somewhere in my first vacation as 'Teacher', I got myself one of those try-10-days-for-free thingies, and I went to Azeroth.  And I made a dwarf hunter (with a bear-pet called Ursa)....

...and well...  I completely forgot about Civ that week, so at the end, I signed up for the real deal (including The Burning Crusade), and made a Blood Elf Paladin on the server Ghostlands called Gowron.

Now this was way before the Zulaman-patch, so yes, I did it uphill in the snow.  No mount till level 40, and the level 60 mount was still pretty expensive. I actually got that mount on lvl64 (with the quest).

I levelled quite slowly, looking at current levelling-speeds.  I remember hitting level 70 somewhere late august, that's around 5 months. I met a lot of people, was in a guild, co-founded another guild (retribution) and killed Prince somewhere end december/beginning januar.

After a little break I joined a guild Gunho was playing in, called XII. And well...  most of the first 100 posts on this blog are about XII. I became Maintankadin, Raidleader, Recruiting-officer and DKP-officer....  which ofcourse was too much.

I had a nice time in XII, even meeting up with the GM who lived in slovenia or something. At the beginning of 2009 I had some problems IRL and with some in XII. So I tried out for Blood and Tears, then the best guild on Ghostland, and they accepted me. BaT and me didn't click though. I left, and played a little around on the server Khadgar with a druid called Mardah.

Although I returned for a short while to XII, doing some stuff in Ulduar and Sarth3D, I actually think I had enough of hardcore-raiding. And when the culling happened, well, I went on to do other stuff.

I levelled Mardah some more, and brought her to Argent Dawn to join Gunho, who was playing there. Not much happened. Somewhere on this blog there are probably more stories. In Januar 2010 another thing happened, Single Abstract Noun.

SAN was formed by Tam, to make a guild for bloggers, and readers, and everyone else. We had a lot of fun those months, now remember this was the ICC-summer. ICC was the Endraid for almost a year, so people got bored, and SAN was exactly what most of us needed. In the end we even did some raids in SAN, but with the start of Cataclysm, SAN was empty.

When Cata started, I started with Gowron, now also on Argent Dawn and in SAN. I reached level 85 fairly quickly, but I disliked (and still do for prot) the Holy Power system. So, instead of getting Gowron raid-ready, I turned to Mardah...  but what would I do if she hits 85?

The answer came in the raiding-community Gunho was in. I already saw some raids in ICC over his shoulder, and well, any guild that keeps him in for over a year, is probably a good one. So an application was fired at the Inno-site, and I was accepted as Boomkin.

And I liked it in Innovation, not the fastest guild, but I had, and still have fun there, some drama sometimes, some hard words, but always solved. And I even went to the guildmeet of Innovation this year, which was hosted by the healing-officer Kris.

And here I am now... well almost... considering that I am writing this in the home of Kris, where I have been the last 6 weeks....

....the road goes ever, ever on....  but watch out for little fury bears.

Mardah, Blessed Defender of Nordrassil

So...  after the trainingsession, we took 3 or 4 pokes at Heroic Morchok before he fell down, and nobody took a screenie  :(, which is probably a little hard, because, and I quote our GM, one was in Stormwind and the other in Ironforge....

But, I actually wanted to tell you another story.... about my road to a legendary...which probably completes around patch 5.2 orso.

Be warned, spoilers ahead.

I am telling this by pictures...yada yada, says more then a thousand words, yada..badoom..

Here we are killing of Volcanus, so I can get my branch of Nordrassil. As you can, maybe, see through al the clutter, I am a big Treant with lots of aggro. Yes, tanking boss in tree-form, how cool is that. I still miss the ol' Tree-form, so this was very nice.

Also, you can see my UI nicely, although I have no idea why Healbot is active, normally it is not. I have enough information flying around already.

After you have gotten the branch, you get a 2 hour title, and flowers at your feet, damn hippy-trees.... oh, and see that hatchling, it dances the moonkindance when you target it with /dance, very funny.

After flying to the Amber Ledge to talk to Kalecgos, which by the way, I had to find out on the interwebs, because the quest-text was not that clear, Tarecgosa transported me towards the Nexus. Some story about her being the prime-candidate to follow up Maelcgos, who we killed ages ago it seems. But.....

...she had to be captured. With me lying besides her in the snow, luckily Kalecgos showed up to safe me and infuse me with the essence of the now-almost-dead Tarecgosa, and he asked me to find 1000 cinders in the Firelands...great....

And after those 1000 cinders, I have to collect more stuff, so, probably 15 more clears of FL needed I guess....  well... at least I am exalted with the Avengers of Hyjal now.

Laters

Rolling on.

Remember this one?

What is it with me getting back to sometimes long forgotten alts? Oh yeah, severe case of altism. Mariandel has had a rocky road. I don't even remember which server she started on, but I do know I sent her away to another server and brought her back. Last 6 months she was my AH-alt, but...well..brewfest happened.

So, after some runs to Coren, she had two trinkets and two beerkegs to hit stuff. And because she is also a skinner/enchanter, I went looking for dust/essences and shards, completing all zones in cata. With that combination of professions she is a very good supporting character for Mardah. And the fact that Mariandel is a mail-wearer, Mardah can do something back....

Talking about Mardah,

I had a very succesfull raid last thursday. I picked up a nice looking staff, got revered with the Avengers of Hyjal, and got my tier-pants. Although I forgot to bid on a necklace.... nature called, and I didn't noticed it in the loot, probably because it is not BiS, but alas, can't have it all.

After I got the staff, we had a break, and a quick trip to the reforger, almost reforging everything to haste, and my first 'free' enchant from the guild, I was a staff-wearer Tsj-kin. Innovation wiped two times on trash... the trash before Alysrazor, yeesh, large aggro-range on those. But we managed to do the first five bosses without much hassle.

With my new pants, I broke my T11-bonus. I don't know yet if that is a good thing, or that I should keep it. It would be much easier if I got my hands on one of these new LW-recipes, but the AD-AH doesn't seem to have them, and they didn't drop for Innovation yet. And no, I am not paying 24k for the ready-made things.

I had a little break from raiding last week due to work-stuff, but Innovation did down Majordomo, and killed ragnaros on ten. So if I get to raid Sunday and Tuesday, I'll probably also see their deaths.

Oh, and let me just hit a little remark on the new patch... A lot of quests in Outlands will now be available inside the dungeon..thank god. I really was getting bored flying all over the place to get those. Now I only hope that they are going to do something about the escort-quests still present in some dungeons. It is frustrating to follow Thrall, while you are not on the quest, because someone was selfish.....

Happy May?

Yes... not dead yet. I have just been busy with a lot of things lately, so actually writing in a blog came in last. So let's do a quick recap I guess.

Mardah still raiding 2/3 nights a week, we haven't downed Nef or Cho yet, but I don't know wether that is because we lack the skill to quickly clear the first bosses, or the fact that it was really hard to get 25 man online the last month. The last week seemed better, we actually had people to sit out.

It is also a little strange that I am not in control. Both in Retribution and in XII, I was an Officer. I am now just a loyal foot-soldier, or Tsjikin for that matter. And I do like it, not the burden of having to do stuff.

On the horde-side, Gowron is retired. As is all of Single Abstract Noun it appears. There are still some players who log in often, and it seems that with the absence of the Guild Leader Tamarind, some members have formed a new guild called Single Abstract Cow. But the busy guild it was, is gone. Maybe we'll really return there if there is again a year-stop in new content....

And of course I still have altism. But I noticed something strange, I remember having a real problem leveling a priest in TBC/WotLK, it just didn't click for me it seemed. But the last two characters that I got to 80 last year, are now both 85. Although one has become a gnome (Gnome shadowpriest on a Roflcopter rocks), and the other is back to dwarf. I also transferred a shaman back, and leveled that one from 72 up.

Yes, that means some other chars where send away. I have several 70+ and 80's scattered around different servers now, just doing nothing until I call them back I guess. I got two lower-level characters left on AD. A goblin disco-priest, in support of a goblin harry-in-the-warry-warrior. And a Tankadorfadin called Yurinov, heirloomed out, and already rockin in the mid-30's.

And now it is time to see if the servers are back online, and time to think about more boomkin-nerfs incoming.....

Oh, yeah, and a need a random-blog-title-generator.

oooh, new and different?

Well... after almost three years, it maybe was time to change a little bit...

And the fact that I am committed to boomkinning at the moment, well...

It does kinda feel strange, I logged into Gowron last night, and put his ceremonial gear on (lvl60-PvP stuff). He has been my main for almost 4 years. even when I was playing around with other alts, I always returned to him. Even making him a dorf for some months. Problem is though, that ever since I left Ghostlands (as a player), Gowron has been lost. Not really bound somewhere, and all his deeds done on another server.

I always remember him as a part of Retribution. Playing with Kemwer,Sceptre, Nagkeen,Rasout and Jorky...

Now, onto my new main.

Mardah, the balance druid. Where did she came from?

Actually, Mardah is one of my oldest characters, she was made in the summer of 2005, just to see the Night Elf starting zone. But, as with a lot of my former alts, left at low level, three if I recall. This was on the server Khadgar. For those who actually followed this blog, you already know that after my raiding-time with XII, Mardah became the character I played. She levelled up, hit outlands, and was transferred of to Argent Dawn to play with friends.

I reached 80 with her, and did some ICC-raids. Nothing much. She became Crusader, played around. The amount of time you have when you are not preparing to raid is actually large. Then Cataclysm hit. And I decided, I could raid again. So I looked around, talked to a friend.... put in an application, got accepted, started preparing for raids.

Preparing for raids... I now have 3 epix. Two from the dorfs, one selfmade. At this moment, some of the BiS-equipment is found by Archeology, the BoA-epix. So that's what I am doing now..... digging.

And this all happened in the last two weeks....

And yes, this name is also Star Trek related. Mardah was the dabo-girl Jake dated on DS9, who later was accepted to the Bajor Science Academy...


edit: Oh, and happy christmas everybody....

I am no stranger to love...

Yes, we have been rick rolled... well, if you did the Vashjir-quests.

Just a quick recap.

Gowron went Hyjal(complete)-Deepholm(complete)-Uldum (till 84)-Highlands and was 85 last friday-night....

but

I find it tedious to tank, and I feel I don't have the piece of mind to do many tanking at the moment. I did level some alts up after that. My hunter to 81, and my SP to 82, but damn, do I need a lot of ore for those three.

Actually.... I find my lazer-chicken on the allie-side much more enjoying at the moment, has to do something with the Flying Form. I did some dungeons with her, and yes, the last word is not out yet, but they seem a lot more fun than mindless wrath-spamming... and now of to Uldum.