Full clear, both dragons, one night. Shammys on top. Our raid makeup.

Grim Legion returned to Karazhan last night.  What a raid.  Warrior and Paladin shared the tanking duties.  Four, count them, four Shamans in the raid.  Two Restoration, one Enhancement, and one Elemental (yours truly).

I did pretty good.  I’ll give some credit where I think it’s due.  There’s this cloak enchant that you can get.  It reduces your threat by 2% or so.  Called Subtlety.  2% doesn’t seem like a lot.  I almost didn’t bother with it.  But… my damage output has never been higher.  Whatever it is, whether it’s just the 2% difference, or I am playing more aware of my threat generation, whatever it is, something’s working.  I used to be tied with the Enhacement Shaman in damage output.  Before I’d gotten the enchantment on the cloak I trailed most of the DPSers.  Sometimes I trailed pretty badly.  #5 in a raid of 10 was not where I wanted to me.  Oh, I’ve got utility too, like cleansing and healing and buffing and such.  Well, last night we didn’t have any Mages, Hunters, Druids, or Rogues along.  So somebody had to be up there on the chart.  I’m glad it was me.  The Enhancement Shaman just behind me.

It wasn’t a perfect run.  We did wipe on Netherspite.  We got the dragon mispositioned and then lost a tank.  We ankh’d back up and got him on the second try.  We wiped on some ghosts.  There’s a five pull you get on your way to Netherbane (Netherspite I mean).  Except all of a sudden there was a sixth.  And then a dozen more.  That’s been a recent glitch that’s been happening over and over.  This crowd of ghosts just happens to stream up as we’re fighting the crowd we expect and it’s a sure wipe.  I’ve seen it several times now.  Absolutely no way to prevent it if you aren’t expecting it.  Few are.  But for the entire run, we never once ran back from the cemetery, we never once needed to repair.  (We never needed to go back for gear, reagents, or anything.  Flawless.)  Every boss but one one-shotted, and he was two-shotted.

What did our raid look like?  I’ve already mentioned 6 of our 10.  Protection Warrior (point tank for single targets) and Paladin (AoE tank for mobs of mobs).  Two Restoration Shamans (both heal Heroics), an Enhancement and an Elemental Shaman.  We had a mana battery along, our Shadow Priest.  We had a Warlock along, obviously useful for the Illhoof fight.  We had a Holy Priest, and a slam spec DPS Warrior rounding out the team.  It was a fantastic job in that we finished in just over four hours.  Despite the little dance with the dragon, and the snafu with the ghosts, I’ve never been on a better run.

Oh, yes.  Arcane Resist gear on the Curator fight.  We did a little test.  Only the Hateful Bolt soaker was wearing it.  He kept the #2 spot on the Curator’s aggro table.  The rest of us were in our regular gear.  That worked pretty well.  But it’s imperative that you can burn down those flares quickly.  We got it to where we had a little breathing room between them.  If you aren’t killing them quickly, Arcane Resist will help you through the longer fight  by reducing the healing required.

Gearwise there’s two more things I must get from the badges vendor there in Shattrath.  My boots are my last green item (Item Level 115 Landing Boots, quest reward, and they’re VERY good Elemental boots), and my chest armor is my last blue item (the Tidefury Chestpiece).  60 badges for the boots and 75 for the chest, and I’ll be rather well equipped.  I’ve also got 49 badges towards that goal.

 

You’re never alone. Paladin Level 20 Quest, Alliance side.

I think I alluded to it earlier, but when we rescued Jordan’s wife, a quest I’d been given upon reaching level 20 with my Paladin, it wasn’t just me and my wife’s Warrior there at Ms. Jordan’s farm. There was actually already a group there, who’d helped out another up-and-coming Paladin. I started up the quest before they’d left, they laughed and made mincemeat of the attackers. (Ms. Jordan actually has a gun rack inside her house. Git r done, Ms. J.) With that rescue under my belt I’d became a hero worthy of a heroes hammer. Mr. J. happens to be a hammer crafter. And needs some components.

The first part, the wood, that was earned the old fashioned way. I made the trip out to the Deadmines there in Westfall. I pugged up a great little group and made it to the goblin woodcutters and got the wood. Getting that wood would not have been soloable. But there happened to be just the right people waiting in the Looking for Group channel.

“I do not see coincidence, I see providence.” – Morpheus.

The second part was this gem. That was easily soloable. You don’t go into the instance at all, and the satyrs are demons and you can separate them from the Priestesses with exorcism.

“You gotta keep’em separated” – Offspring

Just don’t rush through the quest text like I did, and try to recall how you did it two years earlier. You’ll need to travel to Auberdine and get a quest from a Night Elf there named Thundris Windreaver to recover a Corrupted Kor Gem. He’ll purify it for you.

The third part you need is an ore shipment. There is a guy in Thelsamar, in Loch Modan, named Bailor Stonehand. He’s inside one of the cave houses. He wants you to recover an ore shipment from the Ogres in the northeastern corner of the area. They used to be elite. They aren’t anymore. You’ll find the shipment near an overturned wagon. If you aren’t blind you’ll even notice the sparkles on it. You give that to him and he’ll give you Jordan’s Refined Ore Shipment. Three parts down, one more to go.

The fourth and last part I needed was a hammer that was left behind in Shadowfang Keep.

“Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams,
“Telling myself it’s not as hard, hard, hard as it seems.” – Led Zeppelin

I flew back to Menethil and swam to South Shore. No problem with any aquatic bad guys, and I easily reached the place. I grabbed the flight point, and checked to see who was in the area. Only a handful of folks. So I decided to simply run up to Silverpine Forest. Once there I did another /who. Nobody. No. Body. Rats. I’d been hoping that maybe somebody was going to be around to try this with. (Plan B was to clear to the hammer with my Warrior and then reenter with Shatar here, all the while grouped with my wife’s warrior.) But I’m alone. The wife is doing her own thing (healing for her guild’s assault on Illhoof. Illhoof down! ). Then it occurs to me to try a “/who Shadowfang”. Voila! Two players. Hmm. Both Paladins. HMMMM. One level 70, one level 20. This might work out. So I whisper the senior Paladin asking if he’d be so kind as to invite me for purposes of getting the hammer. “Sure.” Invited. Awright! I enter, find the hammer, give my undying gratitude, and hearth out. I take the train to Ironforge, go find Mr. J., and get him to craft me my own Verigan’s Fist.

“Stop. Hammer time.” – MC Hammer

And so, folks, just a reminder, if you’re a Paladin hoping to do this quest, and you’re having trouble finding a group, realize 1) the Looking for Group channel works, 2) mobs involved with two out of the four parts were made non-elite, and 3) if there’s nobody in Silverpine Forest, don’t forget to check Shadowfang Keep itself. You’re not alone.

 

Too many days played to still be such a noob.

The home server, Kirin Tor, was down last night when I tried to log on.  Hmmm.  Lucky me I have a crew of folks over on Steamwheedle Cartel.  So does the wife.  What are two altoholics supposed to do?

Her warrior, Nehemiah, who is male and looks like a gym teacher, is level 18.  My Paladin, Shatar, is level 19.  Just a few more bars and I’ll be level 20 and ready to undertake my Paladin class quest.  Turns out he, she, had to get a few more Defias in Westfall, and that quickly earned us the experience to both get a level.  Off to the Cathedral in Stormwind City, where I hear the story about a wife left to her own devices in an increasingly dangerous land.  (While her husband idled outside of the gates of Ironforge waiting for people to happen buy.  “Dude!  The train is free and your wife is in trouble!”)  Well, heck.  that’s why we’re heroes, and they’re NPCs.  We go to Westfall, rescue her (hurray for folks just idling in the area!), and get sent to talk to her husband.  There I pick up the quest to get the materials together for some kind of awesome hammer.  Materials found in the Deadmines, outside Blackfathom Deeps, in Loch Modan, and inside Shadowfang Keep.

Nehemiah has gone to Redridge (Rock Ridge.  Rock Ridge. Slendid.  Splendid.) where I join up with him.  Her.  And we proceed to kill the big boar.  Bellygrub.  Level 24.  She’s 19, and I’m 20.  It was amusing fight.

Anyway, it’s gotten late and she logs off.  I make my way back to Westfall.  I go to the mines and see who’s in the Looking for Group Channel.  If you can believe it: Warrior, Priest, Warlock, and Hunter.  That’s all, and that’s enough!  I quickly get the group together and we enter.  It worked out great.  At least until we got to Mr. Smite and the Warrior wanted to log.  By then the Warlock had already “Needed” the blue sword off Mr. Smite and that meant I was done too.  As I stood in the Inn in Stormwind City, I see in party chat, already short the Warrior, “Let’s see if Cookie has anything.”  That would be the Warlock.  I leave group.  No harm done in that I’d gotten the wood off the Woodcutters I needed out of there.  Then I made my way out to Kalimdor and entered the tunnels in search of the Naga Priestesses that could drop the Kor Gem I needed.  A few traverses of the tunnels and I realized this would not be trivial.  (No matter that everyone who commented on WoWhead got the gem their first try, and then solo’d Black Temple afterwards.)

Here’s where I learned a powerful little strength I hadn’t really messed around with on Honorus, my level 40-something Human Pally on Kirin Tor.  Exorcism.  It was really kind of cool to pull the Satyrs and then get to the Naga casters.  But it’s more than just a pull, isn’t it?  I’d occasionally get two on me.  A Priestess casting, and a Satyr melee.  One particularly close call I was about to go down.  So I cast Exorcism on the Satyr and killed it.  Then I did a Hand of Justice on the Naga and stunned her, then killed her.  I was so used to pulling with Exorcism to that point I was treating it like the Druids Faery Fire.  It’s a lot more than that.  (Honorus and Effilda plan to make good use of that in their cleansing of the Plaguelands.)

The next time Shatar comes back to play, he’ll collect the gem, collect the ore shipment in Loch Modan, and with some clever grouping, get the hammer out of Shadowfang Keep with Nehemiah’s help.  (It doesn’t hurt I have a level 40 Warrior on the server either.  )

 

The Chaos Theory

The wife and I are in different guilds now.  We both appreciate the structure and organization of my guild, but she kind of got sideways of their threshold to raiding.  I made it into their raiding cadre with two characters now, and it was effort.  Getting there with my Warrior Tank was particularly painful.  Getting there with my Elemental Shaman was far easier.  She’d have made it with her Elemental Shaman, but the barriers to her were something she chose not to overcome.  Her second night with a new guild found her in Karazhan.  Sadly, that guild decided not to field two Karazhan teams thereafter and instead concentrate on their “A” team.  (Their “A” team had not done a full clear yet.  They’ll get there.  She’s not in their “A” team.)  And when half that “A” team of theirs bailed and joined a guild more into raiding, she was left with a group of people who logged on and just existed in the game.  She’s willing to work towards progression.  But to sit there idling… No thanks.

We have a couple of friends, another couple, that we’ve known in-game for quite some time.  All the way back to fighting dark iron dwarves in the Cauldron.  And our first “old-style” assaults on Jintha’Alor in the Hinterlands.

They were with our first guild.  Left and joined a raiding guild that made it to Gruul’s Lair, before falling apart.  I convinced them join with the guild I wound up with, and whom I’m with now.  It was quite something to have these two along, passing on absolutely everything, since they’ve already gotten every upgrade for it.  They wound up joining some other friends (also guildies from the time of the dark iron dwarves) in a new guild.

Now my guild has very strict requirements to raiding with them.  You’re an initiate until you get six runs with the guild in.  These aren’t spur of the moment runs.  We have a calendar with runs five nights a week.  It’s got to be with the guild, to a scheduled instance, with someone of at least a certain rank in the group.  At that point you’ll then be required to run Heroics.  When I did it the requirement was for runs in 3 different zones.  Now the requirement has been raised, now that entry to Heroics has been made easy, to runs in each zone, i.e. 5 zones.  So if you’re a tank, you’ll need to successfully tank a heroic instance in every zone.  “Successful” is every boss downed in the same run.  Take your pick:  Heroic Durnholde Keep or Heroic Black Morass.  Heh.  If you’re a healer, you’ll need to heal them.  If you’re DPS, dps them.  Now you might see the burden is a lot higher on the tank and healer than on the DPS.    (Image success being a three-legged stool.  Take one leg away and you have failure.  The tank is one leg, the healer is another.  Now the 3 DPS, they share the 3rd leg.)

And that’s just the runs.  There is also the requirement to get +140 Arcane Resist.  No AR, no raiding.  This serves for the Curator fight.  Now it’s recognized that some raids never worry about it and do fine.  My guild chose to worry about it and every raider in Karazhan has that on them.  It’s helpful elsewhere (Setthik Halls) and serves as a hurdle to jump to show committment.  And gear.  At least 4 of the DS3 pieces, or their equivalent.

Farming the motes of mana for the +AR gear she’d need nowhere else, for nothing else, was one thing.  To never get that last Heroic she needed.  Nobody wants to run Heroics, do they?  You’re tanks burn out first, and the guild only needs 3 or 4, tops, for progression.

So the wife left my guild.  She joined a guild that had some old guildies from our first guild, and went to Karazhan with a group that didn’t worry about all this.  But they floundered.  Why stay around in a glorified chat channel, the folks she knew in the “A” team already having bailed, she /gquit.  Within 15 minutes of being guildless she’s whispered by another guild.  “Are you Resto?” they asked.  “No.”  “Would you be willing to respec?”  “Maybe.”  Next thing we know she’s in.  Oh, yeah, this was not prompted by her in the least.  They just invited an unguilded level 70 healer type.  (She’s got over 1000 +Healing, so her gear is decent.)  It’s also the guild where our friends wound up.  On getting invited she got a “DROOOONDA!” as greeting.  They’ve got two Karazhan raids going every week. And she’s been on one.  With my help, she’s been there for a full one-night clear.  They didn’t stop until it was done, and it got real late.

Now my own guild celebrated a bit of a milestone ourselves this week.  We had two Karazhan runs going at once.  Both teams required two nights since we do put a stop to things in accordance with our schedule.  So we feel we’re really close to starting Gruul’s with a really strong group.

Here’s where the “Chaos” comes in.  My wife’s guild uses an in-game calendar.  And they don’t follow it.  There’s Karazhan sign-ups.  Like last night for instance.  (No pun intended!)  She’s looking forward to getting back to Karazhan and learning how to heal in a raid.  So she signs up.  What do they wind up doing?  Gruul’s Lair.  I’m doing my Netherwing dailies on Msaker and she’s in Gruul’s Lair.  They don’t really explain the fight, so I tell her she’ll learn it by experiencing it.  They must have gotten King Maulgar because next thing I know she’s at Gruul himself!  I’ve never even seen him.  And she’s “raiding” him.  !!!  As they say “You’ve come a long way, Baby!”  I see two attempts to within the 30 percent point.  Not sure if they got him lower than that.  She’s got to log off and so she doesn’t see a successful Gruul’s kill.  But, who knows.  Maybe she would have if she stayed for a few more attempts.

Her guild is like Chaos.  They just go do stuff.  It looks like they get stuff done too.

My guild is like the Transit Authority.  We do stuff.  We might be late, but we’ll be on time.

We’re at about the same progression, because I know if we were actually in Gruul’s Lair, Gruul would die.

I wonder which modus operandi works best.  Those end-game guilds, the ones killing Illidian.

Are they Structured and Sure or Chaotic and Competent?

So I ask you, among my readers who are sporting T5+ gear, how does your guild do it?

Do you live by a structured approach, set and enforce high standards, be punctual to a fault.

Or, do you just get 24 of your buddies and just “git r done” because you’re all bored?

 

Endless rage.

So there I was, in the Blasted Lands, killing a Servant of Razelikh. Well, if you know the guys, you never kill them directly. You attack them until they fade, then you destroy their crystal. But until you destroy their crystal they’ll be an endless punching bag. What was I up to? Leveling up dagger skills. From 250 to 345 in the three sessions I had with them. Last session I rode to Stonard to buy a second dagger, in case the off-hand offered skill ups too. I’m Fury now and there’s an ability called Bloodthirst. It hits, hard, 1757 you’ll see in the screenshot below, and restores 150 health. Woopdeedoo. Except when your opponent isn’t really hurting you, Demoralizing Shout, and you can hit Bloodthirst every six seconds, eventually I had endless rage, and I managed to get my health back up to 100%. It wound up becoming this zen experience. Eventually, with the dagger skill up, and me at my theoritical max DPS, I let him off the hook by running away. (Too bad you can’t kite them to Stormwind City anymore.)

P.S. What was funny was that a 68 Draenei Shaman was going to town on a servant of his own. Leveling up the two-handed mace he was holding. (I swear, all Alliance Shamans are Enhancement!)

 

Aw. (Sniff.) (Honk.) Hand me another tissue.

Average wait time for Alterac Valley is now 47 minutes. For my Horde characters.  On Alterac Valley weekend.  It used to be 2-3 minutes, tops.

Why?  Something about an “Alliance Boycott.”

Why are the alliance boycotting?  Because they lose now.

Aw.  Sniffles.  Cry me a freaking river.

Did we turn the tables?  Did the Horde all of a sudden get Stormpike as a base, and the Alliance Frostwolf?  No.  Everything’s physically the same.

Did Horde all of a sudden get some Overpowered class?  No, classes are the same for both sides.  (Wasn’t always the case.)

Did the Alliance fourteen year old bully boys that got so used to playing like petulent children, and still winning, are they now getting their arses handed to them over and over because, shockers, skill and ability count for something now?

Don’t forget, I play on both sides.  An Alliance group is a lot different from a Horde group.  We also come from a long, long period of having things a certain way.  Alliance alway won AV.  Now they’re always losing.  (Exceptions granted.)

Ya know, this is Blizzard’s fault.  The Horde “boycott” of the early days was to /afk in the cave.  Blizzard took that away.  Alliance can’t simply /afk in the cave like the Horde used to.  Their solution to the problem?  Stop playing in AV altogether.

C’mon, you Alliance.  Get into the valley and try and take Frostwolf!  I dare ya!  “I don’t wanna.  I want my mommy,” isn’t good enough.

 

Uphill, in the snow, both ways.

Was wondering what I had in way of screenshots of interest.

Trouble is I had a harddrive crash on me recently.  Lost everything.  Everything, that is, except what was on my laptop.  I routinely transfer over all my music and My Documents stuff, and my geneaology database, so didn’t lose anything that I can’t replace.  Except the screenshots from World of Warcraft.  Except I have some on the laptop as well, from way back.  Not ALLLL the way back, but a few still.  And some current ones.

Msaker, then.

I think these are non-elite now.  Back when they were elite, this was kind of like exercise.

Msaker, now.

This is me with Gorehowl and the Maiden.  I never got the “Slam Build” (See Altosis’ article on it) to work for me.  An old man’s reflexes I guess.   Now I’m the “Rogue in Plate” Fury build.

Perusing the old screenshots, I found this gem.  It’s a favorite of mine.

This is a picture of 40 ghosts streaming back into the Molten Core for another shot at a boss.  Man, those were the days!

 

Two more 51′s into Alterac Valley.

I scanned the archives and back in October of 2006 Arcarius was in Alterac Valley for the first time.  There’s the picture of him with the Ice Barbed Spear and wearing the Stormpike Tabard.  It’s been so long ago, but how could he have gotten the Tabard so quickly if that was some of his first goes?  The spear you get for being in a winning game.  The tabard?  (Granted, Alliance was winning nearly all the time at that time.)

Regardless, now I have two more characters that have entered Alterac Valley.  Greenclaw and Darkhand, my Druid and Rogue Night Elves.

My reaction, after playing half a dozen games with them?  Well, for starters, I’m kind of low level to be in there.  However, if I was just going to quickly level them up, then why would wait till 60 to go enjoy some battlegrounds action?  I’d level up to 70 and go to the ultimate end-game.  However, my gear will be outright horrible at that point, they not being mains, and that wouldn’t be fun.

Now Darkhand is a mace spec Rogue.  So he’s got the stuns working for him.  He also took Blade Twisting for more daze effect.  But I’m not at all skilled in PvP with Darkhand (having come off a PvP server years ago) so I was just mucking about.  Took off a few heads, stunned a few runners and watched them taken down.  Lasted long enough to get credit for capturing a graveyard and a tower, completing those quests, snuck into the harpy cave under Stormpike and retaking the banner, *and* being there for the rare Alliance win and getting the Bloodseeker Crossbow.  (Next stop was to go to Stormwind City and train in Crossbows.  Till then I’d been a gunman (Engineer).)

Greenclaw is a Feral Druid, and I’ve directed him and his gear for cat dps.  BG’s start the same for both.  They ride to the battleline, dismount and stealth into the action.  His pounce ability is pretty cool.  Nothing more fun than starting a fight stunning the opponent, or joining a fight and stunning them mid cast.  He too got a win in, and picked up the Ice Forged Hammer.  Not that it’s worth having, since I’m using Blanchard’s Stout now.

Can I persevere with both, or either even, in order to aquire some PvP gear at level 60?  That’s probably so not worth it anymore.  When Msaker did his grind, he reached Centurian, which got him 4 of the 6 pieces of the rare (blue) PvP armor set.  They changed the honor rules, no more titles, and he simply ground the rest of the honor to get the final two pieces.   The set looked really cool (Samurai-like shoulders, etc.) and did pretty good in instances, good stamina to let me tank even though I wasn’t specced for it.  But I started replacing pieces almost immediately upon hitting Thrallmar.  He did it because there was nothing more for him.  Molten Core was out since it also wasn’t worth it on the eve of the Burning Crusade coming out.  Running the old instances for the Valor set?  Really not that much of an upgrade on the PvP set, and that PvP set stuff was guaranteed me.  (I remember a Druid running Stratholme 13 times and still no Druid legs for him.) 

It’ll be worth it in one way.  I do BG’s for fun.  And I suppose by 70 I’ll have accumulated enough to drop the honor earned on some decent gear.  Until then I do the battles for the amusement and enjoyment of it.  I’ve got my end-game Raider.  I’ve got my end-game grinders.  I’ve got my low- and mid-level alts.  And now I have two similar, yet different, battleground fighters.  And if Alliance keep mostly losing in this bracket, then I’ll really have to get my level 43 Horde Priest to level 51 and into the action, staying back, healing her little undead heart out.

 

Five years.

Pushing thru the market square
so many mothers sighing
News had just come over,
we had five years left to cry inNews guy wept and told us
earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet
then I knew he was not lying

— “Five Years”, David Bowie

Everytime I think about WoW being around “three years” that Bowie song has popped into my head. Wierd, I know.

I’m not sure how long we have. By “we” I mean we inhabitants of the world of Azeroth.

We’ve had three years now. Just a little over three. My word, what a game. What a thrilling experience. I remember that far back, over three years now, my first character, Kinless, Night Elf Hunter, struggling to get his quests done there in Shadowglen. That cave with the spiders. Whew. Just bit by bit, careful now, one spider at a time, now the next, OH NO NOT TWO!, and running away and making a second approach, a third, and finally deep in the cave, grabbing the egg, and making a break for it. And then moving on to Dolanar, meeting that odd Satyr outside of there, taming my first pets, making a saber tooth my first permanent pet. And now he’s level 68, and nothing in Azeroth can stop him. If it’s out in the world, he can get it. Patterns, leathers, etc. Last night he journeyed into the demon infested southern reaches of Winterspring, walking past all the Hodiern demons, noting the columns decorated with graphics of the Ouroboros, thinking “What the hell is this place? Who’s culture am I in the middle of?” Seriously, this is architecture that is Elven in places (like the towers down in the frozen abyss you ride over) and then this strange tribal/demon place, and these columns sporting graphics of snakes circling around eating their tails. (I should have gotten a screenshot.) Oh, yeah, I found an instance portal to Mount Hyjal down there as well. It was blocked for me. Three years later and I’m still finding things I knew nothing about, and had never seen, and I enjoyed the heck out of finding it. My original reason to be down there? To tame a bear with the brown and blue/gray hide that will be my tanking pet, and graphically similar to the brown and blue/gray wolf Ironjaw I tamed in Terrokar Forest. The wolf is named Irony (furry yet irony isn’t irony?), so the bear got named Ironside. Three years later and I’m mucking about like a kid. Great!

And I remember Darkhand, my Rogue, also starting in Shadowglen. Doing the same quests, doing them more easily, learning engineering, joining a guild, hunting horde in Darkshore because he used to be on a PvP server. Hunting horde, and then being hunted, by level 60′s that could spot me from across the zone. HUGE Tauren Shamans that blew down on me like Armageddon Omigod! Sneaking into Nesingwary’s to do quest turn-ins, running from a mob of horde 10 levels below me, gunning for the new honor points, and who hadn’t forgotten to bring along a Tauren with them, a HUGE freaking Tauren, 10 levels higher than me, to assist in stripping me of honor points for them! Woo, good times. (Folks not on a PvP server really have nooooo idea. It can be frustrating when you’re there, but in hindsight, it was fun too.) Darkhand is now 51. Farming ore for my new Warrior. Stepping into Alterac Valley and seeing the meltdown of the Alliance there. What used to be 95% Alliance wins is now 100% Alliance losses. This Rogue’s got places to go still.

Blackhoof, ah, Blackhoof. Started out as Darkhoof. That’s because he was the successor to Darkhand. New character on a new PvP server, new faction, and now I’m the HUGE Freaking Tauren. I remember those first moments. Creating my new HORDE character. I decided to forgo the nose rings. I’m a free cow! I wear no symbol of any domestication. I was a Shaman. And I was in a guild from the moment we could afford the charter and create it. (The guild Darkhand was in had moved as a group, well, eight of us, to the new server.) I remember that first jaunt into the pigmen area. My rockbiter buff on my starter mace. Shooting lightning, throwing down Earthshocks, keeping us all healed, our little party of five. And as part of that guild, merging and merging, through raids on Alliance towns, worrying about killing NPCs because the dishonor absolutely sucked, and your whole raid got dishoner if one person disobeyed. Then Blackrock Mountain, and the four instances we’d run over and over, and the big 15-man raids into Upper Blackrock Spire, killing General Drakkisith! And the first steps into Molten Core, and getting Molten Core down to a night’s labor of love. And the flow of purples such a raid would generate. The veritable wootage of it all. Then entering the Outlands with two characters at the same time, doing the quests in parallel, but seeing them done as a Shaman, and then as a Warrior too, and now Blackhoof has gotten the two pieces of T4 that the guild has access to at the moment, carrying the Nazrethim Mindblade, the Mazthoril Honor Shield, and some other vendor purchased epic gear. And Msaker, once Oddity, now with epic tanking and dps gear. And Northrend nowhere in sight even.

And all my alts.

What an absolute wild ride these last three years have been. Really, with Northrend not even on the radar screen yet, we’ve easily got two more years in Azeroth. (And all those crying newsmen from earlier? Yep, they’re back too.) And beyond that. Really, beyond that?

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Alt Number 20

Following Blackhoof’s visit to Karazhan this week, what’s there left to do?

Why, of course!  It’s time to get going with some alts over on Steamwheedle.

Samjin and Booka, Rogue (me) and Shaman (aka the lovely Princess Droonda.)

And jump and down go and move it all around
Shake your head to the sound
Put your hand on the ground
Take one step left
And one step right
One to the front and one to the side
Clap your hands once
And clap your hands twice
And if it looks like this
Then you are doing it right
—Lou Bega’s Mambo #5