Keeping it in the family

It's all change in Munqui-Land, one of our longest serving officers is taking a break from the game for a while. Although I'm sure he'll be back in time for the release of WotLK, hurry back Bolle. And on top of that, the munquis are forever becoming more of a family affair:

Brast & Piri

Lewt & Tins

Bronze & Knicks

Babe & Lemming

Ebs & Freud

Vedd & Funk

Forty - Piri's Cousin

Jutvardur - Knicks Brother

Tomoy - My Brother (Soon to return, if he hasn't already)

MiniArn - Arns Mini-Me

Roisin - NOT Tins Sister

and

RetriDPS - Vinds Closest Freind

And tales of the Munqui-Exploits TM must be have spread, because, on top of that we have old freinds returning to the guild, and in some cases to the game, in anticipation of the new expansion. So welcome back Hedgerick, and the rest of you too.

Edit: It turns out Roisin is NOT Tins sister (unless there's something her father never told her about), so apologies to Roisin for demeaning her in such a way.

Flights of Fancy

My goals are being reached, my character is getting much more uber, my style of play is finally being perfected, it can only mean one thing... The Lich King is coming, and soon.

I've managed to get my Herbalism skill up to 375, which was much easier than i thought, once I stopped trying to follow these so called 'guides' from the net. In the end, it only took me about 4.5 hours to get from 203 to 375 skill, and my bank balance is now reaping the rewards.
I'm up to 4500g, and with more than 300g worth of items on the AH, it shouldn't be long before I'm soaring through the skies on an epic gryphon, at lightning speed.

Or will it?

My problem can be summued up in one word - WotLK
Ok, technically, that's 5 words, but you get the point.

Since I won't be able to fly in Northrend until level 77, buying an epic flyer now, seems like a waste. By the time I reach 77 I'd probably have earned a fortune anyway.
As far as I know, there's no speed boost from learning Epic riding, for ground mounts, which is a big shame. If there was, I'd have no problems handing over my hard earned gold, to be able to get around much quicker.

I'm babbling really... I'll amost definitely be buying an epic flyer, regardless of whether I end up using it or not.

Recyling

I'm not sure if anyone else feels the same way, but I really miss the old dungeons of Azeroth.
OL instances are fun, and the option to play them in Heroic mode obviously keeps them fresh for longer, but they just don't have the same atmosphere as places like the Deadmines.

And with the level cap being raised even further, and the speed of levelling new characters being constantly nerfed or even skipped, with the Death Knights, these places are going to get less and less use.
And it's such a shame. I spent many happy hours working my way through those mines, and was amazed the first time I saw the hughe pirate ship hidden inside the end area. And it wasn't easy.
Even if your group was slightly above the level requirements, they had to play it carefully or else they'd be making the long run back from the Sentinel Hill graveyard.

I suggest that Blizz should bring them back...
All they'd have to do is give them a 'Heroic' mode option, increase the level of the mobs, and make the bosses drop something nice. Rather than creating all new weapons / armour or using badges of justice, they could make them drop Old-World Tokens or something along those lines, that can be used to buy nice new toys.
Maybe nothing 'Useful', just stuff that's nice to have, like exotic mounts or armour dyes?
And it would open up the possibility of Heroic Dailies that use the old dungeons.
And imagine picking up a level 80 Heroic Daily in StormWind for you to kill an epic version of Bazil Thredd.
This would regenerate the old areas a bit, and, in theory, shouldn't be too hard to implement.

Also, I'm assuming Blizz might have already thought of this one, a 'Level 80 Heroic' mode should be brought in for all the OL dungeons too. Otherwise they'll just go the way of the DeadMines and never see life again.

...........Smyth Out............

Bling Ding

Mission successful... My quest not to play WoW for a day was pulled off perfectly (despite the date on the posts - That's just due to my unhealthy obssesion with playing when everyone else is in bed).

Also, I completed my uber-secret mission to ask my GF to marry me, another success!
So it's all good.

Weeding the garden

Today I intended to max out my herbalism skill, with the hope of making cash for my mount quicker than I currently am.
It sort of worked, and it sort of didn't. Following several of the guides on the net, which all said exactly the same thing, it took me ages just to find herbs that were within my level range.
Unfortunately it took me most of the day to figure out that they were just wrong, and had wasted alotof time.

Top Tip: Screw always trying to gather at the top end of your skill level, find the area 1 lvl below that, and gather twice / three-times as many greens and yellows, as well as the occasional orange and not only will you make more cash from all the extra pickings, but you'l level up more often than not.

Despite my intentions, I obviously got side-tracked as usual, and ended up doing some dungeon runs with the Munquis: Bolle, Komatai, Flowerz, Zuchi and Myself cleared non-heroic Old Hillsbrad, Black Morass and Shadow Labs, just for the fun, and for the sake of getting our heroic keys for future runs.

With a full team of Munquis the Caverns of Time instances were a breeze. They used to be quite difficult, but Munqui-Power won through and we spent most of the time in the instances waiting for the next bosses to appear / do their thing. As is now usual, I topped the dmg meter most of the time.. although Bolle out did me in the Shadow Labs. Kudos to him, tanking as a retadin.

But in Shadow Labs, things didn't go as smoothly. Firstly, flowerz had to leave, so we picked up a PUG healer 'DPSadin' (maybe the name was a bad sign). He seemed to be trying his best, but he just couldnt keep up with our speed of attacks.
With Flowerz we were literally jumping from one mob to the next with no breaks in combat, only 1 or 2 deaths overall, and those due to slight overaggro or a mis-timed shot. Speed was king in CoT, and we absolutely owned the place.
For anyone familiar with Black Morass, it's normal practice to clear the trash first, so Bolle dove in, aggro'd the entire instance (apart from medihv) and brought them back to us.
The dmg meter went wild, and after a couple of volleys from me, and a couple of consecrations from Bolle I'd done 5000DPS and he'd done 3500DPS (yeah 5k and 3k). True, it was only on trash, but it looked cool. :)

Secondly, in Shadow Labs, I screwed up twice... once mis-understanding an instruction and aggroing a boss early, and second time was a nooby mistake of my pet aggroing the boss un-intentionally.. apologies guys.
But apart from thos snags we still cleared the place no problem.

Handily, one of the mobs also dropped a blue helm that matches my Epic set, and has decent stats, so even though WotLK is only 11 days away, it's still nice to have.

Tomorrows mission: Try not to play WoW.

:Munqui Conquest Screenshots

I thought it was about time I posted the screenies of some of the recent Munqui conquests, so here's a few:

Zul'Jin didn't stand a chance... *cough* note the dmg meter *cough* fully green geared *cough*

Lethon - Before... And after - he pawn'd about 10 of us... badly, and the 15 min debuff put us off trying again. Oh well, you win some you lose some.

Ever wondered what it's like to ride on a zepplin.. wonder no more.

Getting home was a little more difficult. Luckily, Bolle has a Baldrick style 'Cunning Plan' of how we can rez without being ganked. From now on, this technique shall be known as 'Ded-Zepplin'

Magtheridon - Before and After

Everybody was LootFu fighting - HA!

Yes Rummy, I stole that word (LootFu) from you, I'd never heard it before, but like the sound of it, and can see it becoming a regular phrase for me.

But back to the point. After my whinge about the servers not coming back up, I decided to check, just once more. And, amazingly, the realm was up and running. By this point it was 1:20am (GMT)though and having to get up for work at 6am I was torn between a desire to play, and a desire not to feel like one of the Lich Kings advanced attack party tomorrow.
But thinking that gave me an idea... The server had only just come back up, which meant that there was only handful of people online, if I ran to one of the, Argent Dawn event, attack points I could have a quick look for any rares that have spawned, and maybe pick myself up another welfare epic for 5 minutes work. And still be tucked up in bed quickly. Win - Win.

So off I head to Blasted Lands, on the way chatting to a couple of guildies, and letting them know my plans. Komatai, in particular, likes the sound of the idea and asks to tag along.
I arrive and, I'm right, the place is deserted, there isn't another player in sight, and all the crystals and swarms of mobs are standing there just waiting to be slaughtered. I check out all the zones looking for any unusual looking ones, and eventually decide I might have to kill a few of the regular ones before the rares spawn. Guessing that they're on a random % every time one of the mobs spawns in that area.
Komatai turns up, and luckily enough he's a Pally so not interested in my Mail pants. Fingers crossed, we start laying heavily into the mobs.

A few minutes in, and a rare spawned. Dropped him with no more difficulty than the regular mobs and he's got pants.. but they're leather. A quick check of the stats, and it turns out that they're identical to the mail ones apart from the armor rating, and I'll miss out on the 1% increased damage against undead. So I obviously 'Need' on them and carry on the slaughter satisfied, but hoping for Komatais Plate legs to drop next.
Several minutes later and a second rare spawns. Down he goes, and the loot screen appears. They're legs... they're mail... they're the final piece of my set. I 'Need' again, but feel guilty for doing so. By this point the crystal is almost down, so despite the clock ticking, and my bed calling, I decide to stick around hoping that another will spawn.
Eventually the crystal is drained and it's time for the shades, we've cleared an area around one side of the crystal to allow a clean pull, but it all goes horribly wrong.

As I'm spamming all my talents and trinkets mobs respawn, Komatai dies, followed by my pet, followed by my pet again, followed almost by me, feign death sends the shade running after another warrior who's turned up at the scene, rez the pet, fire once at the shade to pull it back before it gets to the unfortunate warrior, mend pet while it goes running back towards the Shade, spam all my trinkets and talents again and down goes the shade, just in time for Komatai to return to his corpse. It was a very close one, and if it hadn't been for the shade heading for the warrior when I feigned I doubt I'd have killed it.

Unfortunately, no more rares spawn and by this point its 2:30am, Komatai teams up with the warrior, who turns out to be in full T5 epic, and is just there to grind weapon skill. I've no idea if Komatai ever got his legs, but I hope so.

So I'm back in Shatt and I've got around 80 necrotic runes, which aren't alot of use to be honest as I've already got nearly every item the vendors sell. Maybe they'll increase the Argent Dawn vendor options in WotLK?
But I'm now wearing the full set of Epic Argent Dawn gear:

[Blessed HandGuards of Undead Slaying]
[Blessed Pauldrons of Undead Slaying]
[Blessed Greaves of Undead Slaying]
[Blessed Hauberk of Undead Slaying]
[Tabard of the Argent Dawn]

So now I just need a hat, boots and bracers (and maybe a ring and a couple of trinkets) and I'm all set for winter.
With the next expansion being about an army of undead, the set bonus will probably come in handy too.

Isn't a 'Restart' where you turn something off and back on again?

As those of you with late night gaming tendancies will know, I spend more time online lat eat night than I do during normal hours.
This usually serves me pretty well, as it's easier to grind the dailies with fewer people claim jumping the mobs.

You'd think that 11pm on a Thursday night (GMT), would be a pretty safe time to assume the servers would be up. But no sooner had I logged on, than I start seeing the system warnings about a "Restart in 5 mins".
'No problem', I thought. Let Blizz pull the plug for a few minutes, maybe even 15-20 mins reboot their servers, and I can get back into action and earn some gold.
Well... It's now 1:10am (GMT) and the servers still wont let me back in, even though they're showing as active. So that's another nights work on my epic mount wasted.

On the plus side, I took the time to do a slight re-design of the blog layout, and figured out how to use the WoWHead pop-ups for item links (which is almost laughably simple - Example), so the time wasn't completely wasted.

To buy or not to buy?

Be.Imba lists my hunter as a nooby green geared wannabe, who should stick to struggling at heroics.
But (post-patch at least) he's more than capable of holding his own in T4 raids, and has made one T5 attempt.
Since then I've picked up a couple of the welfare epics from the Argent Dawn event, but only as a side effect. Grouped with some other Munquis I picked up 3 epics, a new tabard, a couple of trinkets and alot of fun, all within about an hour.
We also carried on to do the HeadlessHorseman, who dropped me a usable epic ring too [Ring of Ghoulish Delight]. Stingy git wouldn't give up his horse though.

Last night, after getting bored with just grinding money for my epic flyer (am I really going to need it, since you can't fly in Northrend until later levels anyway?) I decided to check out what my rep rewards could buy me.
I spotted a pair of nice blue [Bombadier's Dagger] from the SSO vendor to replace my 'Green' [Legend's Glaive of the Bandit], 80g later and I check my stats to find that they're worse in every way apart from a, just under, 1% increased crit chance. No thanks.
Sold them back to the vendor for 9g each... Ouch! and went back to my good-old green.

Be.Imba can tell me that my gear sucks, for all I care. I'm not planning on jumping ship to a raiding guild, and my freinds and Guildies know they can rely on me to deliver the DPS needed.
If I'm doing something for the fun of it, I might pick up the odd epic, but I'm happy with what I've got, although it does make me wonder just how much DPS I could squeeze out of him if he was epic'd.

Maybe I'll just try and pick up the pants to go with my Argent Dawn set. And maybe a new helm.... and a set of gloves... Hmmmm.

Pre-Lich Playing

With the Wrath of the Lich King due out soon, for the last few weeks I've been wondering what to do with my time in-game.
I don't want to waste it, but I'm not interested in collecting Epic's that will be worthless soon either.

The Munquis are a non-hardcore guild, but we do plenty of raids so there's plenty of choice for me when I'm online, but my game-time is a bit hit and miss at the moment, so I decided to do a couple of things:

1 - Level my Hunter to 70, and learn to play it properly. (Making it only my 2nd lvl 70)
2 - Save money and buy myself an Epic Flyer (For the first time ever)
3 - Maybe level my gathering skills

Well I've reached lvl 70 with Smythy and I'd say I'm pretty good at playing the character, I'm a PvE player by the way. As an indicator, the day after I dinged 70 I was invited to Zul'Aman, despite having entirely lvl 65ish green gear. I was 3rd in the damage meters, behind only Vind and Bolle (who are both extremely good players, and seriously epic'd), my DPS averaging 1k per second. Pleased with my performance, things only got better when the final boss dropped an Epic Bow for me. Kachiing! (Easiest 5 minutes work I've ever done).

So I'll count number 1 as completed, onto number 2.

This is taking ages, I'm currently upto 2.7k Gold but with limited play time, I'm restricted to the SSO dailies and whatever I can make from the AH. It's looking doubtful that I'll be flying anything faster until WotLK.
So number 2 is ongoing, and number 3 is at a standstill, my Leatherworking maxed itself out on the way to 70, but my herbalism is currently stuck at 203. Oh well, as Meatloaf should have said "1 out of 3 aint bad".

The Blog Begins

"Hi" to anyone who decides to read this.
To be honest, I'm starting to wonder why I didn't start a blog sooner.
I'd consider myself to be extremely computer literate, and have been using forums, chatrooms, myspace, facebook, blah blah blah etc etc etc... since back in the day. But anyway, that's not the point, the point is now I AM blogging, what's it all about?

Well, for a while now I've been reading a blog by another Warcraft guildy of mine and started to think that maybe I should do something similar. So here's my blog, it'll be mainly based around my adventures and experiences in World of Warcraft, although I make no promises that I'll keep my rants just about that.
If you've no idea what Warcraft is (maybe you live under a rock?), or you know exactly what that is, but can't stand it - Click the little 'X' in the top right hand corner of your screen now.

So let's set the scene:

I'm a 28 year old guy who lives in the NorthWest of England, I have a decent job, a long-time girlfriend, a son, a house, a car and all the other things that the world expects of you. But for some reason I chooses to spend quite a few hours each week playing an MMORPG... Hey 11 Million people can't be wrong, even if 9.9 Million of them are Chinese and another 1 Million of them are gold sellers.

I've always been a gamer, and have played pretty much every type of game at some point or other. Loving RPG's in general I eventually moved onto Guild Wars, which filled my time for several months, but inevitably I moved on to bigge rand better things - World of Warcraft (WoW).

I've been playing WoW for quite a few years now, and luckily for me, only a few weeks into playing the game I met a couple of great guys, even if they were Danish, who helped me out, and invited me to join their guild the 'Munqui Tribe'. The guild grew, and became quite well known on the Nordrassil(EU) realm, with it's main ethos being 'Fun First'.
So a big thanks to Brastfield and Cyrick (Now known as Vindikator) for starting off my addiction.

The rest is history. I stopped playing for a while, when I moved house and had no internet, and when I returned, to my horror, I found that the Tribe had gone!
There was no trace of any of the members, and I went guild hopping trying to find another one that lived up to the quality of the Tribe. There wasn't one.

Sitting at work one day, bored. I decided to google "Munqui Tribe" just out of curiosity, it paid off http://www.munquitribe.dk/ was too much of a coincidence. Click the link and it tells me how there was a mass exodus from Nordrassil to Darkspear and pretty much all the core guild members had transferred. Later that night, I log on, switch my realm to DarkSpear and do a quick 'Who?' on the word "Munqui"... Bingo!
Guess who's online, a guy named "BrastFelt" a whisper later, and several comments along the lines of "OMFG!"and I'm back in the guild, abandoning my Nordy toons forever, and starting again from scratch. The Tribe is worth it.

Anyway, that's enough about that, like I said, it's history, what's important is the future. And the future is Lich-Shaped.