/Yawn – A World of Warcraft Blog

Graduate school barely leaves me time to play WoW, so updating this blog has kind of been put on the back burner. A few things have happened since my last postings:

- I changed my rogue (Zaleria) from a female blood elf to a female orc (now named Zela) and got her to 80. Thanks to the new LFG system, she is now fairly geared and pretty fun to play, though I don’t consider myself to know much about rogue yet.

- Our guild on Burning Blade (War Council) reformed as The Phalanx – still not REALLY sure why, since 95% of us are still in it. I think maybe we just needed a fresh start. Anyway, we have been focusing almost primarily on 10 mans and have downed the first 6 bosses in ICC10 (everything up to Putricide). I’ll post some of the videos below.

- I am currently leveling my DK, Freon, though I’m not really sure what I want to do with her. I had initially thought I wanted to tank but now I’m having doubts after listening to some of the drama that guildies have gone through gearing tank alts using the LFG (things like kicks for a gear score that is ‘too low’). I guess we’ll see!

Either way, I’m in kind of a strange place at the moment, since I still don’t know how much free time I’ll really have this semester… I hope it’s more than last semester!

Anyway, here are the videos:

So before I even start, I just want to say this entire post is my (Nick Fox’s) opinion ONLY!  Mariana has other opinions and I’ll let her post them.

Blizzcon 2009 was last Friday and Saturday, and we saw the offical announcement of the third expansion set “World of Warcraft: Cataclysm”.  I’m very excited about this.  Now, I didn’t attend blizzcon nor did I buy the $40 direcTV or online stream of the convention, but I did follow a few live blogs from the convention floor and I have been watching the panels for free on youtube now.

My first impression of this expansion set: AWESOME.

My second impression of this expansion set: WOW I’M NOT IMPRESSED WITH GOBLINS.

Seriously blizzard…Goblins?  The one dimentional new yorker rip was funny for the occasional blimp ride or vendor in booty bay…but now I have to share my cities with them?  Yuck.  Now, I think their lore is okay, and I know some people don’t like the “there are neutral goblins and now there are Horde only goblins” and I know there are also Deathwing only goblins (they’re there, read “War of the Ancients” trilogy), but I can look past all of that and see these poor, islandless islanders looking for a home.  And c’mon, they’re green, orcs are green, some undead have green hues in their skin, and some trolls are also green…they fit right in!

Worgens on the other hand….completely awesome.  Between the old timey Jekyll and Hyde feeling of Gilneas (fitting) and the ability to switch between human and worgen form out of combat…it’s all great.  Alliance get a sweet new city, and Horde possibly get a ruined Undermine, but probably not, since the Isle of Kezan isn’t even one of the zones being introduced…sigh.

Now when it comes to old world Azeroth getting offically messed up, I’m very happy.  There are only a few portions of a few zones that I really like…and even if I don’t like the new cataclysm’ed zones, I’m really happy Blizzard is taking a bold step in terms of map reforging.  MMO’s by definition are an evolving world, so things you knew five years ago, shouldn’t stay the same just to stay the same.  Sometimes, a huge, angry, black dragon aspect rips through the very fabric of your mortal plane and tears the world asunder.  It happens, and if you don’t like it, play single player and don’t get the downloadable content!  I am especially happy as a Horde member to finally take Southshore for ourselves (see our pre-Blizzcon wishlist) and that the Alliance town in Darkshore gets completely ruined.  My Horde heart swells with joy!  Plus, Orgrimmar gets steel!

Better get Loremaster and The Explorer titles now before everything changes!

Currently posting from the less-exotic-than-it-sounds Guarulhos airport in Sao Paulo, Brasil during a short layover before my flight to Rio de Janeiro.  Killing time, I looked at our blog stats page and we hit 500 views for the month of July, the first time we’ve hit 500 since we created this blog.  It might not sound like much, but I am proud of us!  Keep reading and let us know if there’s anything you want to hear more (or less) about! 

So the summer has been in full swing and the blog posts have become few and far between.  Sorry!  Since the last post, I have gotten a new Windows PC (Vista [grumble], 8gig RAM, GeForce 9800 GTX x2 SLI’ed, intel quad core) and settled into my new apartment here in Tucson, AZ.  Things have been good in WoW as well…my Orc Shaman is now level 73 and going on strong to 74 tonight.

What this post really is about, however, is the lack of thought that goes into our game.  Take this as a prime example:  As I was questing in south-central Dragonblight, I noticed a strange thing…a big, battered, mostly destroyed Titan bridge.  It is the very southern tip of the Path of the Titans.  So why is this so strange?  I mean, it looks cool and all, but here is the problem:  The titans built all their shit over 10,000 years ago, before The Sundering, when the world had one big Pangea-like land mass.  At the end of the War of the Ancients, the Well of Eternity exploded and destroyed most of the central land mass of Azeroth.  What was left was 3 main land masses – Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, and Northrend, with various other islands dotted about.

So…why is there a titan bridge extending south when, at the time the titans built their road, there was a land mass there and no need for a bridge?  Now okay, I can write it off as “I guess there was a big lake or something that was the very northern edge of The Sundering’s damage, and so, since there was a big lake, the titans built a bridge over it”….  C’mon Blizzard…you should think of your timelines when creating this stuff!  Surely someone had to have known about this in the creation of this titan bridge!

I had two screenshots all set up for this small development annoyance, but when I went to go find them, the SS’s were nowhere to be found.  After searching the internet for a few moments, I came to the answer.  Apparently, Windows Vista needs you to right click the WoW icon, and ‘run as administrator’ in order to take and save screenshots.  What the heck is that?  Are the screenshots going to implant the Conflicker virus into my system and eventually blow up my motherboard?  -=sigh=-  Windows Vista, you never cease to amaze me.

However, all of this can be overlooked due to the blinding red aura that has been seeping out of my fridge the past few hours.  Aganist all better judgement, I went and bought my first MTN DEW GAME FUEL today.  For the Horde flavor, as I bet you would suspect.  Here is a picture of its intoxicating presence:

I haven’t tried it yet, but if its unnatural color is any indication of its flavor, I suspect I am in for the time of my life!

That is all for now, go out and enjoy your lore!

Sick of giving Blizzard my money and wanting to show, once again, my deep love of all things troll, I created Caille (the troll hunter) on Burning Blade instead of transfering Arco (the blood elf hunter) from Eonar.  I know this is going to be a long-ish grind (or maybe it won’t…  it IS a hunter afterall), but I miss those big ugly blue feet damnit!

Posts obsessing over pets probably to follow shortly.

In other news, I continue to be impressed by my mage Eau and how few upgrades add so much DPS.  Looking back on the blog a few weeks ago, I was happy to be pulling 3k on bosses in Naxxramas.  Now that I have a mainhand, offhand, belt, and -something else I can’t remember- from 10-man Ulduar, I did almost 5k on Patchwerk the last time I ran 25-man Naxx!  (She also became Eau the Seeker recently…  still can’t decide if Loremaster Eau is a better title though…)  Plus I am super excited about the news that living bomb will be able to be applied to multiple targets with the next patch, so it’ll be a big boost to AoE DPS and function probably a little more like seed of corruption.  Speaking of the patch, when the hell is it going to come out?  I have heard rumors of early August, and I’m not sure that the druid I made can stand being level 1 much longer!

Anyway, I haven’t been playing much lately because I am currently in Hawaii for a family vacation! 

Things have been pretty hectic recently: I relocated to Arizona from New York, built all the furnature in my new apartment thanks to Ikea, etc.  Now the shaman bug has hit me in a big way, but as I stared at the back of my level 80 tauren, I couldn’t help but feel bad.  I just absolutely hate Tauren.  I hate having to look at a hairy mound of a head, and not having closed shoes, and walking like i’m on the moon, and having huge ugly shields, and sitting off center on dragon mounts…its just all so terrible.

So now I have rerolled a shaman, to be leveled to 80 and spec’ed to Restoration.  Just like my tauren shaman, but a lot less ugly.

There’s the ol’ Vargroth!

I am so happy that I made the change to orc…and I am also happy I have 2 weeks of Midsummer Fire Festival summer pole xp bonus coming up…currently I am level 22, but with some help from Eau running me through SM Cath a few times every day, I think i’ll be 80 pretty quick!

~Nick Fox

I am now the proud owner of a new iMac (2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM).  It makes everything run beautifully!  I have all of the settings on ultra (except for shadows) and it only lags a little bit in Dalaran…  Suddenly, I feel the urge to screenshot every part of WoW.  Tonight was the first time that I ran 25-man Naxxramas on this computer and it was a completely different experience (I didn’t even need to pull away from the group for Patchwerk!).  I also was able to get my 7.5 shoulders finally using the emblems, since I can never roll anything more than a 25 on them.  Now I am wearing the full set!  Woo!  I was also pulling around 3.5k dps today in Naxx (including all my AoE damage), and hitting 3.0k somewhat reliably on bosses.

In other news, I transfered my paladin from Eonar to Burning Blade, since I wanted to do something other than dps for a little bit.  Because the name Acalarra was already taken, I named her Jour (to keep with the Frenchie names, heh).

So I caved.  I rolled my third priest.  This time, it is a Blood Elf named Vellem (US-Burning Blade).  He is only level 13 but I am leveling him with some nice heirloom items (shoulders and mace) and the intent to be a healer.  I am still up in the air between disipline and holy, but we’ll see as I get towards endgame.  I plan to level shadow just to make things easier and hopefully with the shoulders, I will make it to 80 soon.

There he is.  The heirloom shoulders give a 10% experience increase from monster kills, so that is a nice bonus.  Plus, the stats on both the shoulders and mace increase as I level. Heirloom weapons and armor can be purchased with emblems of honor in Dalaran or with stone keeper’s shards in Wintergrasp if your faction owns it.

Well, making a big blog post = less time to level priest, so off I go!  You can catch me in the Ghostlands if you need me!

~Nick

Fool For Love is the Valentine’s Day meta holiday achivement.  The fun thing about this holiday is that it literally lasts for 1 week.  Now, the meta achievement has a lot of achievements in it, along with a mechanic that makes you have to wait around for an hour (think trick or treat, or kissing under the misletoe)

I think it sucks a lot.  This weekend I was in Tucson, Arizona interviewing for a graduate school program.  I was also with my girlfriend (Mariana, the other blogger) celebrating Valentine’s Day irl.  Now i’m sick with a fever and a terrible cough and have a day to do all of the achievements.  I don’t think I’m going to do them as school work comes first, and I’d probably waste my time and get one or two achievements short of the meta achievement.

Frankly Blizzard, give us more than a week to do meta achievements.  Sometimes RL things come up and come before the game.  I’m kind of pissed this sets my holiday meta achievement back a whole year…but whatever, real life comes first.

~Nick

**Edit: since this post seems to get a lot of hits, here is a guide I wrote to frostfire mage.**

Today was my first run in Naxx with my mage and the first time that our guild (MAN THE HARPOONS) went into Naxx.  Most of the people have very little or no experience raiding, so it’s very impressive that we were able to down the first two bosses in the spider wing relatively painlessly and got the third to 8% (couldn’t get through the damage spike of the enrage).  We’re running it again tomorrow and I think that with some tweaking we can up the dps just a little to get the third boss down and have a shot at the fourth.  I had tons of fun and everyone was super chill!

I got lucky and from the second boss (Grand Widow Faerlina) the Grieving Spellblade dropped for me (I rolled 100 on it!).  I’ve been running tons of heroics, so I already have the badge offhand (Ward of the Violet Citadel) for casters.  This was a huge upgrade over the blue-quality blade I had from Kirin-tor revered reputation.

I also respecced Eau from deep frost to the cookie cutter frostfire spec  – 0/53/18.  The spec is fun and also raised my dps from around 1500 to around 2500 with ony some minor gear upgrades/tweaks (whoa!).  Being a fire-heavy frostfire specced mage means that my play style is very different now from how it was before.  For one, this spec is heavily crit dependent and when things proc, my damage goes nuts.  For once I’m finding myself in that stereotypical mage ‘place’ of not being able to control my own aggro when everything starts criting.  When I run heroics, I usually keep one finger on ice block!  Haha!  I don’t quite like this spec as much as frost for soloing purposes, but it’s not as bad as pure fire since the frostfire bolt has a slowing effect like frostbolt.  For those of you who want to try it out, the rotation that I find works best for bosses is stack improved scorch (only needs two casts with the improved scorch glyph) –> apply living bomb –> between 3 and 5 frostfire bolts depending on the fight and how much haste I have (I try to get it so that the last bolt is going off when my living bomb just finished) –> use pyroblast if hot streak procs, reapply one scorch if needed –> rinse, repeat.  I’m still messing around with a good roation for trash, but what I’ve been doing is just stacking one hit of scorch (which again is actually 3 stacks because of the glyph) and frostfire bolting.  I don’t think this is the best rotation, and this is reflected in my dps – while I can pull 2.5k dps on bosses, I’m usually hovering around 1.7-1.8k for the overall instance.  Anyone have any suggestions?  I feel like the length of the frostfire bolt is kind of a hinderance…  In melee-heavy groups, it’s hard to get more than one or two out before the mob dies.

Enough about mage though!  I will leave you now with this gem:

I’m still completely baffled about how this guy guessed that I (1) am a real girl, (2) am in college…  Especially since so many dudes play female blood elves!

**Edit: since this post seems to get a lot of hits, here is a guide I wrote to frostfire mage.**