The Lazy Grinder

So in flies this Warlock, of course, Alliance, of course, on a Netherwing Drake.

And he just sits there, waiting.

Waiting for what?  For me to kiss enough frogs to spawn the lady to give us our sword.

Maybe if he got off his mount and joined me and the hunter, the lady would spawn sooner.  Nope.  He just sat there until we’d done the work.

Next time I’ll resort to fishing.

C’mon.  This person ground out a Netherwing Drake but can’t be bothered to apply a little lip balm and kiss a few frogs?

Everytime I’m surprised at how shocked I am at human nature I should remember nothing is surprising when dealing with other folks.  Alliance Warlock on a Netherdrake.  It’s all about THEM THEM THEM.  It’s players like this that seem to define the class.  Just the other day an Alliance Warlock ninjas the emberlord for the other sword quest while the wife and I waited our turn for him.  I guess lines are for suckas, and horde, heck, people, are there to be spit on for lolz.

Players with Alliance Warlocks without a conscience, without a modicum of respect for others?  Kindly DIAF.

This has been a public service announcement.  Thank you.

 

Me of There. Tag Team hardly chivalric.

Hard to believe, but I’m not Exalted with any of my home cities on any of my characters.

In fact, I’m not Exalted with any city with anyone.  (Shattrath aside, but that doesn’t really count for this exercise.)

How does this happen?  Doing every quest you come across for the life of your character, and you reach level 80, and you’re nowhere near Exalted with your own home town even.

I’ve got a level 56 Rogue, Darkhand, who is running around Kharanos at the moment.  No, he is not doing the Noblegarden stuff.  He’s simply doing every noob quest he can find in order to get the Reputation.  Some quests gain reputation with all the Alliance, others just one particular faction.  He’s after a Gnomish Mechanostrider.  Being an Engineer, how could he not?  Next steps will be flying machines and then a chopper.  In another four years perhaps.

But, back to the original point.  How could I not be Exalted with any city on any of my 80′s?  It seems I must either 1) Turn in 1,000′s of stacks of Runecloth, and/or 2) Do every quest in every 1-20 area for every faction.  Any of those 3 options sounds outright stupid.  Some Blizzard Design Exec is thinking to himself: “The players, they absolutely love the fruitless grind?”

But it’s not fruitless.  Now that I have three Champions, each of them has to turn in commendation writs in order to become Exalted with their home cities.  And then claim their titles, Greenclaw of Darnassus, Stormsoul of Thunderbluff, and Msaker of Orgrimmar.

Msaker, actually, is after a riding raptor, and if he gets Exalted with the Darkspear turning in writs, he’ll be their Champion, and maybe he’ll be Msaker of Sen’Jin (and Thrall and Orgrimmar can go pound sand because they’re a touch too tough to please).  (See, with a riding raptor, he’ll have a “dinosaur” dragon for a flying mount, and a “dinosaur” raptor for his land mount, and he’s already green and rather brutish…  Style points.  Grind out the three factions to become “The Diplomat” and we’ve got a plate full of irony.)

Tag Teaming the Champion at the “Enemy at the Gates” daily (or the Champion version of it actually), is hardly chivalric.  But then do the scourge really deserve our chivalry?  We reserve that for folks like us.  Honor bound.  That’s the same principle behind Thrall and Jaina being friends and showing each other respect.  Thrall is the honorable brute, Varian Wrynn the hot-headed human who’ll see victory without worrying about the honor behind it.  (So the bad are good, and the good are bad, and you’ve got yourself a game that either side can claim a higher moral ground, allowing you to play either side in good conscience.)

Dang, jumped the tracks again!  (I was actually trying to remember which philosopher talked about “Noble Brutes.”  Was it Thoreau?)  Tag Teaming the Champion in the Enemy at the Gates, Champion version, of the daily, makes the encounter MUCH easier.  One person holds him, the other just reduces his shields and charges him.  If he changes targets, you change roles.  Easy peasy.

 

A tale of Noblegarden.

Or, how to keep hundreds of overachievers busy.

Was it just my server, or is every server’s newbie area overrun with a peculiar affair?

That of hundreds of rabbits, all level 80, simply sitting in place, not moving, waiting,

waiting, …

waiting for the egg that, apparently, will spawn in front of them to spawn in front of them.

These rabbits all over the place.  Quietly parked at every building edge, every feature of Azure Watch…

waiting.

Because the Overachievers MUST HAVE the Violet Proto-Drake, THIS YEAR, BY GUM!, they’re going to sit in place for … hours? and wait for the egg to respawn directly in front of them.  (Violet Prot0-drake the reward for achieving all seasonal events.)

Sorry, dumb me, I was running around, in rabbit form, (for some reason), and I took the eggs where I saw them.  I turned the quests in, and then  I left a lot of rabbits parked where I first saw them, waiting, and waiting.

I’m not sure if this event is working as intended.  Or they’re just there to  collect the required 10,250 eggs, with the absolute least amount of effort, and be done with it today.  Then it’s back to … raiding?  (Minimize effort to maximum effect.)

Or, it’s like that old idiom:

How do you keep an idiot busy?  See next sentence.

How do you keep an idiot busy?  See previous paragraph.

Anyway, it’s back to the tournament for me.    (Two Champions now.)

P.S. The wife checked out Goldshire.  Same thing.  Rabbits lining the all walls, immobile, twitching, waiting for the egg to spawn in front of their little whiskers.  Hundreds.  She’ll try some other time.

 

The Argent Tournament

I’m really enjoying the Argent Tournament.

Flying into the site, with the medieval music playing, and the castle under construction, and the tournament fields… really cool.

The daily exercise in mounted warfare.  Amusing.  I’m a little ahead of the wife, so I’m holding off turning in the Aspirant tokens until she can turn in her 15 and we move up to the next level.  When I first heard “Tournament” I automatically assumed “PvP,” but it’s not.  At least not at my level yet.

Stealing wood and construction materials.   My Druid thinks it sucks that the Goblins are in charge of raping more of the environment by “jacking lumber” and “blowing up ruins.”  C’mon, surely we’ve got quarries we can pull stone out of, and renewable forests??  The oaks grow back, but do I have to kill a guardian spirit every time??

The ladies in the lakes.  Cute.  Very Arthurian that.

The “Mystery of the Black Knight.”  I’m waiting to see how the story continues.  I’m speculating it’s really Arthas.

The gold is good.  These dailies are easier than any yet.  Maybe the Oracles dailies are easier, but you have to kill an Elite boss to get at them.  The Tournament you join by simply arriving.

The gear.  Nice.  My Orc Warrior has a tanking axe to look forward to.  And a two-handed sword.  (That sword, with the Titansteel Destroyer may mean I go Titan’s Grip Fury rather than Arms as my 2nd spec.  Though Arms has been satisfactory for me so far.  (I’m not worrying about DPS meters, after all.))  My Shaman is getting in on it.  Dual wielding twin Grimhoof Crushers (I think that’s what they’re called) as Enhancement might make me dual spec him as well, Enhancement and Restoration perhaps.  They look too cool to pass up using them on somebody.  The Alliance staff doesn’t look as crazy wicked as the Horde staff, but it’s still an improvement in a couple areas for my Druid over the Titansteel Destroyer.  And there’s some necklaces and trinkets, so the gear offerings look promising.  Oh, and tabards, pets, mounts, faction with other cities, etc.

So far I have 3 characters participating in the tournament, the wife 2.  (And her level 77 Druid can gain substantial XP and gold while doing it.)

It’s fun, well done, and I look forward to watching that castle/church go up on the tournament site.

All that’s missing is those Free Credit Report dot Com guys singing about it being the only place they can survive without credit.

 

78 is the new 80, for this non-raider.

If you’re a Raider, you are never done.

Yes, you may have dinged 80, but are those still quest greens you’re wearing?

Oh yes, nice, you’re decked out in blues.  Lots of dungeons and such.  But you’re not ready for Naxx, are you?

You’re in the blues and purples out of the Heroics.  Well, that’s a nice start for raiding.  Welcome to Raiding 101. Benchwarmers will wait in their home inns until called.

So you’re finally in some iLevel 200 purple epics.  Not bad.  Not to start with.  Maybe you’re ready for Heroic Naxxramas.  Can you keep up in the DPS race with folks who’ve majored in pwnage?  If you aren’t all pushing 3,000 DPS some fights aren’t even possible to win.   You’re not a slacker, are you?

If you were 80 and had heroic Naxxramas on farm, and you were doing the dragons, Sartheron, whoever, with more dragons up (I have no idea, not interested in that aspect of the game at the moment), welcome to the next step.  Ulduar.  Then Heroic Ulduar.  Then we’ll see Arthas.  And Heroic Arthas.  And then, at long last, the gates will swing wide with a new expansion.  You’ll replace most everything you have by level 88, and so it begins again.

Me?  I’m not raiding and PUGs are peopled with useless goons.  I tried a few PUGs and damn, if every one wasn’t pretty much a failure.  Your level 80 DK tank isn’t going to overcome you, level 77, bringing your level 76 guildie to Utgarde Pinnacle.  (Pay no mind to the Shaman scooping his RL eyeballs out with a spoon for some relief from the pain.)

Having a Blacksmith, and, as of today, a Leatherworker in Dalaran, means I have access to full ilevel 187 gear sets.  Savage Saronite sets for my Warrior, the wife and I’s Death Knights, ready in the bank for when the day comes they ding 78.  Today, with Arcarius entering Dalaran for the first time, I learned all the Eviscerator patterns and crafted five pieces until I ran out of leather.  Greenclaw is the beneficiary of that. 78 is the level all the not-half-bad ilevel 187 crafted gear becomes available.  And there isn’t anything outside of an instance, in a PvE world, that can’t be done in it.

So at 80 I get the icing.  Greenclaw, dinging 80 while out farming leather and Eternal Airs, is now wielding an epic Titansteel Destroyer until he can get his paws on a Silvery Sylvan Stave from the Argent Tournament.  Msaker is wielding one too, taking Arms as his new secondary spec.  Itarilde will have her set ready when she’s level 78, (once I get cracking on farming up all that leather!!) and she’s already got a Titansteel Guardian in the bank waiting for her to ding 80.  Droonda, already 80, has her Titansteel Bonecrusher.  Honorus will get a Destroyer, and Effilda a Spellblade.  The DK’s are OP and will wield butter knives runeforged with leetsauce.

At 78, for the non-raider, non-pugger, you’ve got a gear set.  At 80 you pretty much have got a weapon.

All we need now is the next Expansion.

And in the meantime, the Argent Tournament and the next activities to find.

Which reminds me, time to go look for the Dalaran fishing dailies.

And in all that resiliance gear, maybe I should investigate what this “Wintergrasp, invite plz” is all about.

P.S. Druid Flight Form can finally sit.  It’s nice to finally be still for a change while in flight form.  The better to admire the swift flight form’s great plumage with.

 

A Tale of Two Eggs

Droonda and Msaker have gone into the animal husbandry business.  Into the egg hatching business in particular.

The Oracles give a nifty reward at Revered with them.  They’ll sell you eggs you can spend a week keeping warm and hatching.  You might get a rotten yolk, a pet, or a flying protodrake out of it.

So there we were, our first ever eggs about to hatch.

“Now remember it’s all random,” I tell the lovely Orc Shaman Princess Droonda.  “It might be the first egg, it might be the thousandth.”  We’re after the green protodrakes.  I thought they looked very Orcish, being green and armor plated and brutal and all.  And they don’t make that “swooshing” sound the Netherdrakes make.  I have a Netherdrake, and Droonda isn’t that many dailies away from getting her own.  But she chose not to.  “Too loud.”  And she liked her swift windrider.

But I thought the protodrakes looked cool, she agreed, and we set off getting into the good graces of the Oracles.  It was no more than a week after saving Jaloot from Artruis the Heartless, and doing the dailies every day, that we arrived at Revered with them.  And our first eggs were purchased.

On that sixth day we readied ourselves.  The lovely Droonda counted down as her egg hatched.  5-4-3-2-1.

You know how you want to undo Time sometimes?  Kind of take back stuff, maybe have the opportunity to swap some stuff around, and then return and get a different outcome?  That was me, that was my wish.

Her first egg produced an Aged Yolk.

My first reaction was thinking to myself “Ah.  It’s going to take some time after all.”  And to my wife, “It’s all random.”

And if I could have swapped stuff around, gotten some different outcomes, I would have.

Because I’ve got a Netherwing.  I didn’t need a protodrake.

My first egg produced the reins of the Green Proto-Drake.

But it’s random, and we’ll be back at it.  Six days from now our next eggs hatch and she’ll have hers.

 

Will the last sane person please close the hatch?

Freaks.

Arrogant American Organization view of Canadians.

Alliance are the pure hearts, Horde are blood caked baby seal slaughterers, supposedly Canadians with accents from the American South.

Just all around insulting to everyone.

Gamers, activitists, Canadians, Southerners, fur wearers, you name it.

Can you freaks over at PETA just stay the heck out of our games?

You know where the real fur is sold.  Go protest there.

P.S. For those thinking of trying this, the name “NgridNewkirk” is already taken over on Whisperwind.  >:/

 

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

So there we were. 

Cenotaph and Ombria, the wife’s and mine Deathknights, in the Bone Wastes, at Auchindoun, looking at a quest giver.

The only living beings we’d come across were a Forsaken and another Blood Elf Death Knight. 

There was a Gnome Mage out fighting spiders in the lost corner, but they don’t really count as full living beings, do they?

Anyway, we’d just collected some bone piles for some mad Draenei standing near the entrance to an instance, and there was the shimmering portal.  I forget which instance he actually stands in front of.  Shadow Labyrinth required a key, so that was out.  Maybe the Auchenai Crypts.

The point being is nobody new is going to see those places, and that’s sad.

All that effort gone into designing places, and they’re left behind, in the virtual dust bowl that the Outlands have become, serving only as a pass through location to get 10 levels while you cruise to the end-game back on the world of Azeroth in Northrend.

 

Hunters do the craziest things.

The Ancient Gaming Noob has a new post up today, about Swimming to Silvermoon.

See, his daughter wanted a Dragonhawk, and being only level 26, there was only one place to get them.  Eversong Woods.  Oh, and they’re Night Elves.

That so reminded me of the wife and I’s run to Teldrassil a long time ago.  I wanted us to have Owls.  And at our level, barely Level 10 if I remember right, the only place to do that was to go to Teldrassil.  Did I mention we were Taurens?  (See end of post for the screenshot of us with our Owls in the Crossroads.)

That was pretty much just what we did, again, with our Draenei Hunters.  Eh?  That’s right, we ran them, couldn’t have been much more than Level 10 either, to the Eastern Plaguelands and got ourselves Dragonhawks.  I picked a “Hunter of Worlds, C.J. Cherryh” name for the character, Iduve, and named my Dragonhawk, Vaikka, a name meaning “Pride,” or something like that, in the Iduve language.

And with the release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, or that big patch just prior, we had a totally revamped Hunter pet system.  No longer did you you have to level up something waaaaaaay below you to enjoy it as a pet.  Any pet tamed would be at least within 5 levels of the Hunter doing  the taming.  So I went on a white pet binge.

First stop was to Azuremyst Isle where I tamed the two headed white frost hound named Kurken.  What was annoying was there was a Blood Elf Hunter there that was interrupting all attempts to tame.  (It is absolutely a given that every gamer you meet in the game is an absolute moron, cretin, psychopath, cross dresser.  And if you meet someone that is truly decent, and you aren’t being deceived into letting your guard down, you’ve been fortunate.  Well, maybe it’s not that bad.  But, man, I’ve been made aware that the cream of humanity does not play video games so many times it’s not funny.)  But, I logged out, logged back in later on, helped a Dwarf Hunter tame his Kurken, and then I got mine.  Named him Frostfire.

Then I spent about a week in a cave in the Ungoro Crater, waiting for the white ape Uhk’loc to spawn.  I’d log in, look around, check the radar for the name, wave to the other waiting hunters, then log back out.  I eventually got him and named him Urbane.  (Urbane Gorilla.)  Because that’s what Apes are, right?  Polished and polite?

Then I returned to Darkshore and tamed a Ghost Saber.  Named her Frostbite.  But she’s just a stand-in for when I can track down and tame Loque out of Sholazar Basin.  Of course my Hunter is a level shy before even attempting a taming, and it might be difficult for another couple more before he get’s flight.

I tamed one of the Rhino’s of the Borean Tundra, as white as I could get one, to enjoy the massive size and huge thomping footsteps and his name, Nosejob.  I had one earlier named Rhinoplasty, but I like Nosejob better.

I tamed a Ravager in Hellfire Penninsula and named her Darkense.  It’s an incredibly dark name, based on her shape and an Iain M. Banks story.

I had a Hunter track down Takk the Leaper, after he got nerfed, just to have him.

I spent too much time in the Badlands looking for Broken Tooth, pre pet nerf.

I spent no small amount of time trying to level up an earlier Ghost Saber before the “within 5 levels of the hunter” rule was created.

I tried to level up an armored pig out of Razorfen Kraul.  I named him Parma.  You can call him Porkchops now.

Anyway, I’m starting to wander in my reminiscing.

The point was, Hunters tend to do the craziest of things in the pursuit of, and caring for, their pets.

You think Warrior’s name their maces or crafted gear like this?  Make those “Have to do it, just because” journies across the world?

Hunters are unique in their craziness.  The hunt never ends.

 

Stumblin’ In

Suzi Quatro and Chris Norman sang:

Wherever you go,
Whatever you do
You know these reckless thoughts
Of mine are followin’ you
I’ve fallen for you,
Whatever you do
’cause baby you’ve shown me
So many things
That I never knew.
Whatever it takes,
Baby, I’ll do it for you.

That’d be the wife and I heading into the hot sands of Tanaris, knocking out quests for the goblins of Gadgetzan.

Night One, I was a 45 Holy and she was a 45 Affliction.

Night Two, I was 46 Shadow and she was 45 Destruction.  (She ended 46.)

Boy, when you don’t play a character for over a year, it seems like you’ve never played them at all.

All quests we accomplished were without deaths, even the ones that were Orange in difficulty for us.  So, not a bad performance.

We did our spec switch because Night One we thought we were killing a little too slowly.

Night Two, though, wasn’t necessarily easier.  Unfamiliarity with any of it is to blame.

I picked a raid spec for Shadow, and simply filled in the Shadow Tree until I ran out of points.  Vampiric Touch, Shadow Form, some odds and ends.  I’d open with Vampiric Touch, then a Mind Blast, and then Mind Flay.  She’d shadow bolt and rain destruction down on them.  (And didn’t Shadow Priests get a +shadow damage debuff they used to apply?  Stacked like 3 or 5 times on a target?)  The raid spec I had didn’t include threat reduction.  And I figured her Void Walker, her not being Demonology, wasn’t going to be able to keep aggro off me anyway, so we switched to a Succubus.  (The Succubus has a much better attitude than the Voidwalker, from what I observed.  The blueberry is constantly just complaining. )

I figure once she reaches level 50, she’d go Demonology and get a Fel Guard.  Me, I’d stay Shadow and keep us all tapped off with health.  (When does the “mana battery” deal kick in?)

It was fun, though, just stumblin’ in like that.  Fifty, here we come!

Our love is alive
And so we begin
Foolishly layin’ our hearts
On the table,
Stumblin’ in