Wizard Oils Be Gone!!!

Ardent Defender pointed me to the official blue post that states that there will be no more Mana/Wizard Oils and Sharpening stones in Wrath. I'm not sure where WowInsider is getting their information, but an update to a post they had on this says that these items will not work on items post level 70. Hmm... All these reductions in raiding mats means that I'm gonna have a heck of a lot more bag space. Woot!

Halloween Eve

I used some of my WoW time to create a "scary" fruit dish for a work potluck. Behold, my fruit brain. Made entirely from a melon.

Props to Family Fun Magazine for the idea. And I kind of feel like Shelby from The Bronze Kettle for being all creative and stuff. Go me. lol. Happy Halloween everyone. And be safe.

Start of Aoe Farming

I'm guessing that mainly because of the short notice of last night's raid, we didn't have enough to go in and take on Kael. We were short a few healers, and I didn't really feel like pugging them, so we had a group head off to ZA while I went and did more achievement exploring. I ended up in EPL hanging out with Kurt (who's a minor celebrity on our realm forums, but I'm sure he doesn't know me). Then since I was there decided that I should go do some Necrotic Rune collecting.

Now, in case you hadn't heard or I neglected to mention it, Leiandra is now full frost. That's right, all 61 points dumped into the frost tree. I'm enjoying the spec. I'll probably use it to level, but just not 100% sure after that. (It's kind of important to the point of my story.)

After putzing around and capturing the towers in EPL, the attack there was over, so I headed down to the Burning Steppes. I started Frostbolting the undead and 1-by-1 killing them off. Then I remembered what spec I now am. I'm the king of Aoe farming spec. There is none that can kill more faster than a frost mage. I'm sure the other people around hated me for doing it, but here's some of the things that I did to get 22 Necrotic Runes in a very short amount of time. (I'm not saying this is the best way to do it, it's just what seemed to work for me.)

• I start off by casting Ice Barrier and then wait almost the full 24 seconds of the cooldown (Cold as Ice) before running in to collect the mobs.
• With 2/2 in Shattered Barrier, I can sit in the middle of the mobs to help gather them up nice and tight and then intentionally let them destroy my Ice Barrier and freeze them into place.
• Cast Ice Barrier again as I'm running away from them to get in position to start Blizzard.
• Of note: I have 3/3 in Improved Blizzard, 5/5 Chilled to the Bone, and 2/2 Arctic Reach, so I can hit them from much further and then the 75% reduction (or is it 65% x 10% = 71.5%?) in speed means it takes them forever to get to me.
• Not to mention that if they do get to me, I have another Shattered Barrier, a Frost Nova, and the Freeze from my Water Elemental. And if things really go bad, I have a Cold Snap to reset all my cooldowns anyway.
• Blizzard in itself has become an extremely damaging spell in that it can now crit, and coupled with Ice Shards, Shatter, and Winter's Chill, it's going to do some major damage.

Damage. Control. Survivability. Yeah... why wouldn't you Aoe kill melee mobs?

FeedBurner

Since Google bought FeedBurner, and it's mostly integrated into Blogger, I thought I'd try out some of the "FeedFlare". (I mostly like to see how many comments are there.) So, if you do follow my blog through a RSS Reader (such as Google Reader), make sure you're pointing to http://feeds.feedburner.com/ZanderfinsWowcasualRaiding.

And yes, this is partially a test on my end to make sure it works.

Lady Vashj Down - p.s.

Ret pallies are so over powered, it's not even funny.

Check out our WWS from last night here. Something's so wrong with a paladin out-DPS'ing everyone.

I'm not sure if I mentioned how a friend and I were on our pre-made level 80's in beta. Me, a mage, and him, a hunter, started chasing down this paladin. It took us nearly forever to kill him, and that was even with us pulling out all the stops. I agree with Ghostwalker. "NERF THEM TO THE GROUND!!!"

Lady Vashj Down

The Burning Crusade content past 3.0.2 patch is kind of a joke. Don't get me wrong, it still takes some coordination, but mostly the break-neck speed in which bosses die is just silly. We killed Lurker on our way to Lady Vashj, and he was at 50% before his first dive. The trash mobs that we used to solo kill are now all rounded up and Aoe'd.

Lady Vashj herself was a little bit of a challenge, but it was really more of a communication thing. Who's picking up this strider? Who's got the core? Where do I pass it? On our 3rd attempt last night, she was dead. Great job to Faytlynn for leading that one. I'm proud of our kill, but at the same time, saddened that we didn't get in more attempts before patch 3.0.2. (I think this is only our second night of attempts.) It's almost like I want to put it back on Heroic mode so that we could have the honorable kill, and not the easy mode. I know we could have done it. Oh well... at least she's dead and 1/2 of my Vials of Eternity quest is done.

It's kind of along the same lines as when a week ago, an ex-guildie whispered me to tell me that he had just downed Illidan. "So what?" I thought. First of all, I didn't care (he left on semi-bad terms, but also hadn't whispered me once since he left), and secondly, I knew it was less of an accomplishment.

The guild's pumped to be raiding again, so we'll see how far we can push in content before November 13th. Who knows.. maybe we'll be killing Illidan shortly. lol.

Retraction - Guild Calendar

Just a quick note... I wrote about the Guild Calendar and how it was showing up blank for me. The issue was later resolved, and I now get a full calendar of all our events. I knew it would get fixed eventually. I still wish there were more features in Armory, but things are getting better.

And more specifically, with the Guild Events... it's nicer than I thought it would be. Not only can I see my events that I created in game, but I can also see who's invited, declined, and accepted the event. Like I said, there's still things that could happen to make it better, but it's getting there.

Tanking Krosh Firehand

I think I've mentioned that Primogeniture has kind of taken a break from raiding. We just weren't getting the numbers, people signing up and not showing up, too many people wanting to do other things... so we decided to stop. Turns out, the members of our raiding guild actually like to raid though, as we have a pretty big sign up list for tonight's SSC run. The plan is to kill Lady Vashj, so we'll see how that goes.

But last night, we had about 20 people online, so I quickly threw together another Mag run (cake walk) with a follow up Gruul's Lair run. We had to Pug a few people, but that's how you make friends, right? lol. The only hiccup with Mag was that a lag spike caused him to get off most of his Blast Wave, but he was at about 10% when he started that, so we still downed him without a problem on our first try, albeit number of deaths though.

Then the majority wanted to go to Gruul's. Since I was the only mage, I figured I should stick around. We got another mage when a few people left after Mag, but he was still wearing Bloody Surgeon's Mitts, so not exactly up to par. He wasn't on Vent, so when I died the first time and I told him to try to pick up Krosh, he didn't do it. The second time I died, somebody had relayed the message to him, and he was trying to tank Krosh, and stole his shield before I could. He claims he didn't, but since I was on vent, and he wasn't... and I was leading the raid, I blamed him for that wipe. To be completely fair though... it was an alt toon. I'm just saying.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is to glorify me in that this is the first time that I've tanked Krosh Firehand. Had a few pieces of PvP gear to get my stamina up. Got handed some Chewy Fel Taffy (which I didn't realize can stack up to 4 times) to make sure my Spell Steal wasn't resisted. And after a few times of awkward positioning, we killed High King Maulgar and his buddies.

We finished it off by slaughtering Gruul in like 4 growths or something like that. Yeah... the boss nerf bat hit hard.

Tailoring Decisions in Wrath

With the launch of The Burning Crusade about a year and a half ago, Tailors from all walks of life (classes) were gently guided into choosing a specialization for Tailoring. Healing Priests were enticed to Primal Mooncloth for the Primal Mooncloth set, such as the robes, that used to be BoP and were strictly a + healing item. Shadow Priests, non-Destro Warlocks, and Frost Mages (were there any true PvE Frost Mages in TBC?) were drawn to Shadowcloth and Frozen Shadoweave Set. Most of the mages and Destro Warlocks wanted the + fire and + arcane that came from the Spellfire Set. But I'm a little confused about what to choose as a mage in Wrath.

Let's take a look at the 3 specializations and what they can craft. Things so far are very similiar to their level 70 counterparts. You need imbued cloth along with some level 80 Primals to make the special cloth. Each special cloth makes some really good armor, a bag, and this time some thread for your back and a flying carpet. As far as I can tell, the flying carpets are purely aesthetics, so I will not discuss them in each group. Also, the bags need multiple cloths, but there is a predominate cloth for each. None of these patterns are BoP, so that makes things even more questionable.

Spellweave Specialization
At first glance, I thought this was the one that I do. It worked for me as a fire mage in TBC, why wouldn't the level 80 equivalent be the same, right? Well... not exactly. The Spellweave Robe and Spellweave Gloves have nice haste on them, but no stamina (I like to be able to survive something), and chaulked full of Spirit. Seems almost more like a healing piece.

Spellweave is the predominate cloth for the 32-slot enchanting bag, also requring 2 Moonshroud, but not really being class-specific there.

The thread for the back piece from Spellweave is actually for a melee class: Swordguard Embroidery. Not really sure where Blizzard is going on this one. Only tailors can do embroidery on their own cloaks, and last I checked, melee wearers don't wear cloth. So, this belongs to... umm???

Moonshroud Specialization
Again, from the level 70 version of, I thought this was more for a healing Priest. Let's take a look at the armor you can make: Moonshroud Robe and Moonshroud Gloves. Well.. there's good all around stats there. This could really go for any of the three clothies, I suppose. No + crit or hit or haste, but has a good amount of all the major stats.

Glacial Bags are made with 4 parts Moonshroud and 4 parts Ebonweave. So.. umm... have two tailors so you can make lots of bags? I don't know here, but big bags are cool.

But the Lightweave Embroidery is really one of the best things for DPS casters. I still don't think there's any armor that is + holy resist, so there's almost no chance it will get resisted. (Okay, might be a small exageration.) At any rate, extra damage every once in awhile is a good thing, okay?

Ebonweave Specialization
Ah, the Warlock Specialization. Finally something I know. Wait. Or is it? You can make the Ebonweave Robe and Gloves with this cloth. The + hit is beneficial to all DPS casters, arguably more needed for a warlock, but Mages and, to a lesser extent, Shadow Priests need some too. So, again... could be for pretty much any DPS caster.

The Abbysal Bag has Warlock written all over it. But since you'll only buy one, this factor alone shouldn't dictate which route you go. As mentioned before, this is also the other 1/2 of the 22-slot bags.

And finally the Darkglow Embroidery is for mana regen. That would mean it's for... healers and arcane mages? /shrug.

Summary
After looking at all the different options, I have no idea what I'm going to specialize in. If I wanted to make a profit, I guess I'd go for Ebonweave or Moonshroud, since that has the potential to make a lot of bags for people. Other than that... well.. Wrath is still technically in Beta, so there could always be changes.

Commited to Professions

In truth, since Wow 3.0 (or 3.02 if you want to get technical), I haven't been on Beta and in Northrend much. I've been too busy doing achievements, trick or treating, killing the Headless Horseman, and battling the scourge. I even went and killed Prince Tenris Mirkblood in Karazhan. (Had never walked up those steps past Attuman before.) And it was kind of fun because it was learning a new boss, not just your standard tank and spank, and it made me think more about all of the instances that I will need to start learning in just a few short weeks.

Then there was an incentive to skill up my Tailoring a bit more since a guildie had sent me a whole bunch of Frostweave Cloth. I burned through it in no time flat, and didn't even hit 400. It got me thinking about how much cloth will be used to hit 450. Furthermore, how much cloth did I use to get to 375?

If you look at Highlander's post on leveling professions over on the EU boards, you'll see that in order to get your Tailoring from 300 to 375, you'll need, roughly, the following materials:

• 2,880 Netherweave cloth
• 210 Arcane Dust
• 30 Netherweb Spider Silk
• 45 Rune Thread
• 20 Knothide Leather

Now, looking over at the Guide forum post by Thinkpad, to get from 375 to 450 it will take the following materials:

• 7,225 Frostweave Cloth
• 780 Infinite Dust
• 175 Eternium Thread

I doubt I'll follow those materials exactly. For the 405-415 section, I don't think that 5 Duskweave Wristwraps will net you 10 skill points. Thinkpad also has you skilling up your last 10 points creating 50 Frostweave Bags. If you create the other bags instead of those, you might save 600 or so cloth, but you'd also have to worry about cooldowns and a few other mats such as Eternal Fire.

But regardless of which path you take. That's a lot of materials. I had forgotten how much cloth I had "spent" skilling up to 375... twice. (Once on my wife's toon... I took care of all of her professions.) And now it will be almost 3 times the mats to get to 450. With no reputation discount, that will be 525 gold in thread alone! Not to mention all the money it will cost to learn the new spells. Wow... I better figure out how to make a profit out of this somehow. lol.

Wow Miniatures - Highlord Bolvar Fordragon

Today's Wow Miniature wasn't all that impressive to me when I first saw him. The miniature itself just looks like your average, human paladin. Then I looked at his cards. Yeah, he packs a lot of punch. No wonder that Highlord Bolvar Fordragon is actually of epic quality.

Fordragon is so unique, the he actually has an Action Card that can only be used by him. The rest of them you can mix and match (like a druid can use any other druid card). I actually haven't played with him, because he just sounded too overpowered (not unlike the current post 3.0.1 paladins) against the 2 starting Horde miniatures I have. So, that's it until November 11th, when I hopefully get my hands on another booster or two.

Wow Miniatures - Grumpherys

Today's Wow Miniature is the Alliance hunger, Grumpherys. He is of rare quality.

It's kind of cool that he has a pet for an action card, but I'm not exactly sure how to use it. I mean... you would think that it would be it's own separate miniature, but Bloodclaw is not on the list of miniatures. I don't know... maybe I just use a marker or something. /sigh. But still a very cool collectible.

Wow Miniatures - Moonshadow

Today I'll be showing off the common Miniature that I got in the booster pack. I'll only apologize this once: these are not professional photographs, and the cards I mass-scanned didn't all come out exactly straight, but I think it's good enough to give you a good idea of what everything looks like. Just don't go out and buy all the booster packs that I want on November 11. And if you're in Southern California... maybe you shouldn't buy any booster packs at all... you know... just in case. :)

So, without further ado, may I present Moonshadow, the Alliance Resto Druid:
They each come with come with two Action Cards and the character card themselves. See images below.

WoW Miniatures Game - Intro

So, I'll admit that I'm not really a huge fan all things Wow. Just because something puts World of Warcraft on it, doesn't make it an instant hit in my book. There's actually even a few things I ignore out there. (Okay... not much, but there's got to be something, right?)

Well, there were so many things that I could have spent money on at BlizzCon. I had no desire to spend 5 hours in line for the BlizzCon store. It just didn't seem worth it to me. I walked by the vendors for 2 days, and had pretty much decided that I wasn't going to spend money at all. Then during one of my ear drum breaks during L70ETC, I walked by the Upper Deck booth again. Looked at the miniatures again. Saw the detail (for the first time), and actually got interested in them.

"Well, if they're not too much, maybe I'll buy some," I thought. Oh wait! It's a game too? Well... I don't have anyone that would want to play it with me. It would probably end up like the TCG packs that I have. Cool game. Lots of fun. Nobody that lives close enough to me that I would play it with. But then my justification mode set in: Well... they are cool figures. And I could keep them at work if nothing else. $25 for the starter set and then $15 for 3 more. Since I didn't spend much money (even the food I brought a ton from the grocery store), I guess I can justify it.

I hummed and hawed, and as we were leaving, my last possible chance, I decided to wait in the short line to buy a starter set and a booster set. $40 out the door. The starter set comes with Ruby Gemsparkle, Vindicator Hodoon, Gorebelly, and Lotherin. I'll take the next few days to show off the other 3 miniatures I got with my booster pack. As far as I can tell, these will be exclusive: I haven't been able to find pictures of them anywhere else out on the web. So, stay tuned to get a sneak peak of a common, rare, and epic miniature.

Guild Calendar in Armory

I am so glad that The Armory (Beta) is around. It's really a nice tool that should have been implemented from the beginning of Wow. Oh sure it's buggy... and sometimes slow. And it even used to crash Firefox (the browser it was supposedly optimized for) when it was first launched, but hey... it's still in Beta, right?

Then there's the fact that Sony has had something like this since launch of Everquest 2. Look here. You can see everything (stats and all) about Leiandra and Streamsong (the guild I was in). Included is also a guild web site that will allow you to make announcements and you can even point to external web sites if you want. I believe the guild leader has full control of all of these things. (I was never a guild leader there, so I don't know for sure.) But there's also forums and images and... and... Well.. why would you even need to pay for hosting? (Except, of course, if you wanted customization.) You can even chat with your guild while not in game. And all of these things always seemed to work.

But at least World of Warcraft is slowing getting all those things, right? (Except for maybe the out of game chat, and the guild forums, and all the guild achievements.) And now they finally have something that EQ2 doesn't. And that's an in-game calendar system that you can also see through Armory. And it works so wonderfully. Look how all of Primogeniture's events show up on the picture on the left. You can log in, and magically see all of the events that are going on. It's like magic. (If you didn't sense the sarcasm, please click on the picture to get the joke.)

Well... in defense, it is still in Beta. And they are developing a new expansion. Then again, they'll always be developing something. How about going back and fixing this tool that a lot of people use? Maybe even bringing it up to Sony standards. (Oh no I didn't. Yep... I did.)

First Thoughts: Achievements

I think that there’s already a love/hate relationship that I'm feeling towards Achievements. Like most of my guild, I seem to be scurrying around trying to complete achievements. Who knows... maybe it's something that feels substantial while we're all waiting for Wrath to come out. It's kind of that checklist of things we want to have done, or in the case of many of the dungeons, it's the checklist of things we've already done, but didn't get credit for since they weren't tracking it at the time. (/phew... that was a mouthful)

But that's just it: it has the feeling of something substantial. It's new. It's something to do. But you don't really get anything for it. Oh sure... there a lot of new titles, and I think those are a great addition to the game. And I could be wrong here, but I don't think that all achievements track to a given title. And some of them involve so many steps, that the only reward is really just the fact that you got 10 points (or whatever) from that achievement.

I know there was a lessons learned from Blizzard as far as World PvP. They've incorporated many of those things in to the new Lake Wintergrasp PvP zone in Northrend. One of the big things they learned was that you had to have meaningful rewards from a World PvP zone. One of the reasons that people didn't really care about Eastern Plaguelands or Silithus was because the reward was just dumb. Very little honor, and that's about it. It's not like guilds had 40 people in Naxx while there were 20 outside making sure they had the damage buff in Eastern Plaguelands. (well... maybe they were, but still.)

So, what do you get from Achievements? Again, the titles are cool. Good job there. Other than that? Nothing. That's why I'm officially going to boycott getting any achievements... for now... well... at least until I get on and play tonight.

See? I hate these addictive Achievements. It's the curse of "just one more" that always sucks me in for WoW, but now it's even more trackable. I have to get just one more Honor Kill before I run out of G.N.E.R.D.S. before the Halloween event is over. Or run the Headless Horseman one more time to hope a little pet drops. (It's only for the achievement.. I'm still semi-anti pets.) Yep... once again, there's only one true way to win the game, and that's to quit.

Yep, that's right. So, I'm going to quit playing Wow... just after this last quest. Oh.. and I need another achievement. And I should probably hit 80 first. Oh and... :)

p.s. Anyone else have a high skill in fishing, but yet didn't get credit for even 25 fish caught?

Fast Friday

Bah.. like 15 posts in my head and many written and ready to go just need pictures to help explain. And here I am with 40 minutes before going home with a report that will take me about an hour. So... you lucky readers... you get nothing today. lol.

Besides... I have to spend too much time working out my new UI. Too bad I can't do that at work.

Fixing Your UI

I had another sort of follow-up to BlizzCon stuff, but with the amount of time I spent putting my UI back together last night, I thought I'd mention that more. So, first off... Altitis has a great post on some tips to putting your UI back together. I wish I had seen it yesterday.

Secondly, I'm not really happy at how my UI turned out. I would love to see some other UI's with what mods you use. But before I hand out and post an e-mail address for you, I have a couple restrictions.

1. I want to see your screenshots in a full 25-man raid. As the GM, I want to be able to see who's alive and what amount of mana they have, etc.
2. The screenshots must be recent and the mods compatible with Wrath. I don't want to see the best UI ever with mods that have been retired for 2 years.

Also, in the e-mail, let me know if you are willing to have me post your UI. I may or may not do it. It sounds kind of too close to WowInsider's column, but there's never (or rarely) show full raid screens. Just some toon out in some random area or something. So, go ahead and send them to Leiandra AT Primogeniture DOT org. Dazzle me with your creativity, and let me know how I can contact you to configure it all. If it helps, and you aren't aware, I do play a Mage. (Not that that would necessarily be the best UI or anything.)

Friends and Family Alpha

I recently moved a bit further away from Anaheim. I could still get there in probably an hour and a half without traffic, but traffic is they key here in Southern California. So, for last weekend, I hung out with my best friend, Elinor, at his brother's house. Thursday night, after we got in from waiting in line to pick up our tickets for BlizzCon, we jumped on his brother's computers to play around in the beta a bit.

Elinor launched the first WoW icon he saw, and the "typical" EULA or whatever popped up. (He hadn't patched the beta for a bit, so this wasn't surprising, and we had him do it for our arrival. Out of the 7 Wow players in the house that night, 5 of us have beta keys.) But then the title of the EULA caught my eye: "Friends and Family". WHAT??!!?? You were in Alpha? Elinor's brother wasn't in the room, so I didn't fly off the handle or anything. But I asked Elinor if he knew that. Nope. And I certainly didn't know.

When he did come in and I asked him. It was kind of a casual, oh yeah... we were in alpha. He eventually explained who he knew and how they knew him, etc. But yeah... kind of a shocker. Was he ever going to tell us? I warned him that he was going in my blog. So, yes... some people in Alpha do actually abide by the non-disclosure agreement. And I now understand why his wife (also in Alpha) was so upset when I got BlizzCon tickets and she didn't. (By the way, she had pushed to get us in Alpha too, but it obviously never happened.)

Background Downloader Failing on My Computer

I think I've mentioned this before, but I can't find the post. For some reason, my computers always have a problem with the Background Downloader. And it fools me because every time the downloader kicks in, it appears that my computer is downloading everything just fine. Then I go and install the new patch on patch day, and I have to download the whole thing.

True to form, it happened again last night. I thought everything was downloading correctly via the background downloader. All of the settings were set to download while playing. I was certainly on the game long enough for it to download everything. And then when I went to go install the patch last night right after I got home, it starts the downloader to download 1.2gb at 0%. /sigh

On the brighter side though, since it was patch day, I hear that it was a dozy. Lots of restarts, mods not working, etc. So, I guess it was a good thing that I sat and downloaded the patch for the evening. And then my two machines weren't seeing each other on the network. One is xp and the other is vista. I had them playing nicely before, but they didn't want to play last night, so I set the other one to download the patch for a second time while I'm at work. Yes, wasteful, I know, but I don't have a thumb drive large enough, and that computer doesn't have a DVD burner. So, that's my cheapest option.

Wow... that was kind of a boring post. I'll make a second post to make up for it. :)

BlizzCon Day 2 Thoughts

First thing: I posted my gallery of photos just to the upper right. You can also see them here. You can see all the pictures I took on Saturday.

Looking back at BlizzCon, I'm really glad I went. It was a lot of fun. I got to play some StarCraft II, got to talk about World of Warcraft a lot, and even played a session of Diablo 3 (not really my cup of tea, but sorta fun nonetheless).

There's not a lot of new WoW things from BlizzCon. A little bits of information here and there. The new raids will be fun. Sounds like they will continue to do something like ZA, where there's insentive to go back to master "easy" dungeons with either faster times (like ZA) or taking on more parts of it at once. There's some neat technology that will go on behind the scenes for that as well.

The one major thing that I heard (and can now remember) about Saturday was that "soon", mounts won't dismount in water. Finally! Horses that can get wet. Thank the developers there, folks.

But, I have to say that Saturday was a pretty big dissappointment. Friday night with Jay Mohr MC'ing was pure comedy. Saturday night was pretty much a disaster. The two comedians that they had were "meh" at best. Kyle Kinane was the first guy. And he was admitedly 31 years old, he looked like he was 45 or so. His whole routine was basically how much of a waste his life is. Umm... ok. And then Patton Oswalt's routine was basically his highlights on how he's not very popular, and then a bunch of geek jokes.

Ok, I don't get it. Does Blizzard think that little of the attendees that they thought they could all relate to these two geeks? While I may not be the "typical" BlizzCon atendee, I consider myself a professional at what I do, and not a "waste of life" as these two guys seemed to profess. Furthermore, looking around at a lot of the people there, there were some other very successful people, that certainly couldn't relate either. WoW is pretty main stream... you might not want to put down your "typical" player as a geek. Just a thought, Blizzard.

My other "favorite" part was when Patton decided that he should start bashing Bush and McCain. What in the world does politics have to do with World of Warcraft anyway? And he admitted that he doesn't even play video games anymore because after 6 hours of Sonic, he couldn't get up to answer the phone. Sorry buddy, but even though you've had some successes in your life, those stories can all be labeled as a big, giant "L" for loser. And shame on Blizzard for thinking that was a good idea.

Moving on in the night. We had pretty good seats since 2 of our group (not me) sat up close for the Diablo 3 Lore and Art. So, we didn't want to abandon the seats. I think we were all interested to see the Video Games Live, which was an amazing show. And as dorky as it sounds, it was neat to see the songs performed live. A full orchestra of some of the music that I've listened to for the past few years... it was just cool. But to get to that part in the show, we had to suffer through Level 70 Elite Tauren Cheiftan. /sigh.

Maybe I'm just getting too old. Maybe I actually care about my hearing and what may become of it. But it was just too loud. Even with my ears plugged, it was still plenty loud, and I could feel the bass throughout my entire body. I'm sure the effect is worsened because I'm not a fan of the music. I like the lyrics, but the heavy metal has just become unpleasant. There are so many great songs that could be performed at BlizzCon (Big Blue Dress, NPC, Hazzyrd and Moonxtal, to name a few songs and bands), but instead all the Blizzard Boys get to prance around on stage.

Oh well... at least the rest of it was good.

BlizzCon Day 1 Thoughts

It was a really long, fun day at Blizzcon. (Wow... how's that for the worst opening sentence ever?) There were a ton of people. I got to avoid most of the crowds because I didn't care to purchase over-priced T-shirts and Steins. I'm just not that much of a memorabilia person. Then again, the customized figures (Figure Prints) are freakin' awesome in person.

They had 3 groups of computers (maybe a couple hundred each) where you could play Diablo III, Starcraft II, or the Wrath Beta. Wasn't too concerned about the Wrath Beta since I can play that from my own home. We played Diablo III once. It was okay. It's a hack and slash. While I own the other two, I'm not really a huge fan. Very cool graphics. Some cool spells. Just too... demonic for me. If you're interested, the "big announcement" from BlizzCon 2008 is the new Wizard class for Diablo III. Also kind of neat that you can play a male or female or each class. (No more having to be stuck with the female Amazon.)

Starcraft II didn't have much of a line, so we did that a number of times between panels. They've done a great job with updating the game. It's the great same game, just updated from 1998. And for attending BlizzCon, that means I get beta access to SCII, woo-hoo! There's not really much breaking news there except the game itself is pretty much done. It's just Blizzard working on maps and stories now. I'll let Elinor beat up a couple more times today as we play a bit more. :)

Also, I'll get some more pictures of some freaks... err... people today. :)

Thrall

This was a very impressive costume. The guy was from Singapore. (I think.) I didn't get a picture of the winner of the costume contest; I'm sure you can see it on the wow website soon (if not already). It was this girl that created a turtle mount. Jay Mohr even took liberty to ride "Speedy" for a little bit.

Main Hall

This was the main hall where the more popular panels were held (also the contests and whatnot). We tried to sit up front for the first one, but then decided that the big screens were good enough, and sitting in the back allowed us to escape easily (beat the crowds) after it was over. We'll probably sit in the back again today.

One of Many Preists

Here's one of the very cool costumes that we saw. Maybe I'll have to put together an actual gallery if I get too many pictures to post. We'll see.

Dranei Scuptural

Just thought this was pretty cool.

Ghostcrawler

He's not a hot chick like everyone thought.

Edit: I guess the picture didn't come through. I'll get it posted later. But he came out on stage saying something to the effect of, "There's a rumor going around the Internet that I'm a hot chick."

First Hour

This is what we faced the first hour.

Greed Before Honor

First thing: I finally got a group together to kill Magtheridon last night, so I finally got that title. It was mostly a guild effort, but I had to Pug a number of people as well. I tried my best to only use "guild contact", people that we knew or guilds we trusted, etc, but it just didn't work out. So, there I was spamming the LFG and trade channels.

I'd thank a number of people that helped out, but I'm sure I'd leave out names, so suffice it to give my public thanks... you know who you are.

At one point in my recruitment, we were a bit light on healers. A non-guild Ret Paladin by the name of Tenacioust told me that he had a healing set of 1900, but he didn't want to pay for a respec. Fine, whatever. If it means that I finally get my title, then I'll pay. So, I told him I'd give him 1/2 now and 1/2 after the raid. I knew I was taking a gamble. After he got the first 1/2, the guy says he has to restart his modem. Yeah... I knew he wasn't coming back. And sure enough, he didn't. I didn't bother saying anything over vent, I just didn't care. But publicly calling him out in cyberspace on my blog seemed about right. I also wrote him an in-game message telling him that that wasn't cool, and that he should send me the gold back. No, I don't expect he'll respond... too much of a snake. But still, I tried. Hopefully Karma will bite him in the butt. It's only 50g. Geesh, dude.

The run itself was pretty much flawless. Had a couple deaths here and there, but no wipes. 1-shotted Mag. It was a big success.

Then this morning while getting ready (both for the day and finishing packing for BlizzCon), I remembered what I was doing at this time before the last expansion. Wish I could remember the guys name, but I was running in pick-up raids with a few people, but I was following. Now I'm on the other side that I'm the one leading them. It's fun... putting my knowledge together to help put raids together. I had to explain how we do things. And it was fun that I knew the raids so well. (At one point, somebody asked if we needed more tanks because we didn't have 6 to take on all of the channelers. Umm... there's 5. And we had 3 tanks that at our gear level, was more than enough to hold the channelers.)

At any rate... the sucky part about pug raids is generally just the time it takes to get the number of people together. If you have a core group (our guild in this case), and get Pug's that are willing to listen, then you really just make them follow along and it's "easy". At least... Mag is easy. :)

Last note: taking off after work and heading straight over to Anaheim Convention center to pick up my BlizzCon pass. I'll see what I can do to steal Elinor's iPhone as much as possible to send lots of pics. I'm really a people watcher, so be prepared for that. lol.

What Do You Accomplish Before...

This past weekend, I got my alt druid to level 60. For some strange reason, I decided to level all the way to 60 in the Azeroth before heading to Outlands. I think part of me wanted to make the quests/mobs just a little bit easier, even though the xp bonus would out weigh the risk. Furthermore, since you pretty much have to have 300 mining before heading to Outlands, I needed to finish up some mining rounds as well.

So, here in a couple of short weeks, we'll have 2 expansions out. People may be eventually be telling the same levling stories of, "Yeah, I hit Northrend at 68 for the incresaed xp and gold," and skipping Shadowmoon Valley and the like.

But here's the curiosity: What do you do before you head to Outlands on an alt? And what will you do if you're leveling another toon to 80 that isn't 70 when Wrath hits? (DK maybe?)

I think the void from 58-60 is actually much better spend going to Outlands. Blizzard finally started "getting it" with quests in the first expansion. We don't want to have to run for 15 minutes to complete this quest. We don't want to have to kill 2000 gophers. We want a sense of accomplishment much sooner than that. Oh, and some of us would like a good story to go along with it as well.

From 68-70, it's not quite as bad, but some of the quests in Northrend are a lot of fun. (It could be partly because they're new.) And it's not quite the jump in rewards that Outlands was from Azeroth. So, I'm guessing that I'll probably stay in Outlands until 70, and then move along to the frozen North.

As for other things I do. In the case of my toons that have gathering professions, I make sure they have those to at least 300 (in the case of skinning, I probably could have been to about 375 before I even left Azeroth). And I empty my quest log of the unwanted/old/not completed quests. Other than that, I don't look back.

Mag Title

Primogeniture stopped killing Magtheridon a long time ago. I can still remember the first night we killed him when I agreed with an officer that we should skip it that night. Oh, then there was the rebellion from another officer (how had gotten online late) and the rest of the guild that we should try it again. I don't know if it was the motivation factor or what, but that was the night we first took down Mag.

I never really got around to doing the rest of the quest chain for the quest to kill Mag while we were killing him. Lacked motivation. Had too many bad memories about normal Shadow Labs.... I don't know. But I eventually completed everything except for killing Mag.

Now that Wow 3.0.1 (or whatever number it will be) is staring us in the face, I'd really like to get that done. I feel a lot like Tatia, I guess. If it's anything like my pvp title... I'll probably never display it. But still... just the chance to have it. Just 1 Mag kill in a non-pug group. Is that too much to ask for? Well, time is running out. We'll see if we can get enough people online to get it done. Yeah... it's the pre-Wrath Blues.

Help! Where's the Zero?

I guess this is me getting old? It starts off with something simple, and then pretty soon I'm having to call my great, great grandson over to ask him how to dial the phone. But here's my question:

How do I enter a 0 (that's a zero) in a text message?

My phone is the Nokia 6555 phone. When I press the 0 key, it makes a space. I tried to "Insert symbol", and the 0 isn't there. Do I just cheat and use a capital Oh? Just wondering if anyone out there has any suggestions.

(And if your suggestion is "Buy another phone", then my response is: buy me another phone. I went for free, so maybe that's just what I get.)

Crash Course in Mobile Blogging: Blogger

So, my last message was completely from my phone. I learned a couple of things.

1. When taking pictures for BlizzCon this weekend, I can't turn the camera/phone on it's side or else I get funny-looking pictures.
2. Blogger's "Blogger Mobile" kind of sucks.

The first point is kind of obvious. I should have thought about that when I was taking the picture. Today's second post (this one) has everything to do with the second point.

There is a help article here that explains how to use Blogger Mobile. Sounds kind of simple, huh? Well, for somebody that didn't grow up texting, it was a bit more of a challenge. First, I had to figure out how to include something other than numbers in the text message To: box. (There's probably another way, but I just added an e-mail address on a contact, and then I could add the address.) But I didn't figure that out at first. So, at the bottom of that page, they say you can send the keyword HELP to BLOGGER (256447), to which I did. And got this response:

Welcome to Blogger Mobile! Text a post to BLOGGER (256447) then claim your blog at go.blogger.com. To cancel mobile bloggging, text STOP. Other charges may apply.

Great! I tried that, hoping to get a claim token that I can enter here. Nothing. So, I work on trying to figure out the go@blogger.com bit on my phone, to which I did. And so I got this response:

You have not yet registered. Send the word REGISTER in an MMS or email to go@blogger.com. By sending REGISTER you are agreeing to the Blogger TOS (www.blogger.com/tos).

I think the link is humorous because you get an Error 404, Page Not Found. Oh, and I didn't mention that these were the successful messages. Meanwhile, I was getting multiple bounce backs from Postgateway@blogger.com. The final message I get is this:

By registering your device, you have agreed to the Blogger TOS (www.blogger.com/tos).

(Again with the bad address.) So, great! I'm registered! But where's my token? I started searching around on the Internet and found this page. The third and final post is what I ended up doing. Basically... blog by e-mail. Which is something I started doing almost a year ago when I couldn't get to my blog directly anyway. So... while I am grateful for all that Blogger does. Fix your links and text messaging capabilities. Or at least fix the page that explains how to do it.

First Mobile Post

Mainly a test. BlizzCon swag from last year.

Activities When Your ISP Fails

Once again, Time Warner (or Road Runner) had their "lines cut" in my area causing me to lose Internet connection. So, I didn't do anything WoW related last night. I'm still rather baffled that there aren't redundancies in their system, unless they were all cut... twice... in a span of about two weeks.

Furthermore, I'm rather frustrated with all of the dropped connections I get and how I have to reset either my router or modem about 4 times per week. That translates into me having no desire to close my On-Q enclosure in my closet. So... I'm looking into Fios even though it's more expensive, and I don't really care about the speed... simply for the reason that it couldn't possibly be any less reliable.

So, my wife and I were trying to figure out what we wanted to do. Quest in Beta? Out. Shop online? Out. What did people do before the Internet?

We ended up being unimpressed with a couple board games (we tend to like party games like Cranium or Apples to Apples more, which don't do very well with just 2 people). And then calling it a relatively early night. So... yeah. I'm addicted to the Internet.