Craft of WAR: Blind

I've just seen this video posted on Grimtooths Troops. (Another blog I read quite regularly).
And it's very impressive, defintely worth the few minutes to watch, and the author is obviously very good at what he does.


The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.

Edit: Just to add, that whoever Percula is, he / she is bloody good. Just watched it for the second time, and the Blizz personnel department should be on the phone right now.

Wnt2 Me Tup? 1'm n0t @ PsYcHo... H0n3st!!!

As happens from time to time, the BBC here in the UK come up with a completely off the wall story, and start quoting facts and figures that just don't seem to match up with my idea of reality.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7789494.stm

According to them, 40% of UK internet users have met up in real life with someone they've only met via the internet / online.

Now call me a sceptic, but "Who the hell are they?!?"

As most of the Munquis will know, some of us have met up in real life. And some of us more than once.
But the general reaction from every single person I know, or who even heard about my plans to meet some strange people from foreign lands was total disbelief, or even horror. I'm talking about 100 people who knew that I was doing it. And not one would have done it themselves, and almost all are regular internet users.

I consider the people I met up with, and some that couldn't make it 'Freinds'... that's 'Freinds' with a capital 'F'. Because I don't see any reason to treat them as anything but true freinds.
On average, I spend more time with them than I do with the majority of my real life ones. They help me out, I help them out, we share social occasions, and obviously have similar interests. So why shouldn't I.

I'd love to agree with the BBC on this one, and if it was true that 40% of the UK's online people were meeting up in real life, it would be a great thing. But I can't help getting the impression that the surveying company only took a small sample and it's made those stats appear to be abnormally high.

On the flip side, I can understand the UK's general disbelief of what's printed in the papers. I think that's quite an old-fashioned view now. Those in the older generations, whom I know, tend to believe every word thats written in the paper, or broadcast on the news, no matter how over the top or sensationalist.

I think Terry Pratchett summed it up nicely in "The Truth";

'It says here fifty-six people were hurt in a brawl,' said Mr Mackleduff, who by dint of being the longest-surviving lodger acted as a kind of president at mealtimes. He had bought a copy of the Times on his way home from the bakery, where he was night-shift foreman.
'Fancy,' said Mrs Arcanum.
'I think it must have been five or six,' said William.
'Says fifty-six here,' said Mr Mackleduff sternly. 'In black and white.'
'It must be right,' said Mrs Arcanum, to general agreement, 'otherwise they wouldn't let them put it in.'
'I wonder who's doing it?' said Mr Prone, who travelled in wholesale boots and shoes.
'Oh, they'd be special people for doing this,' said Mr Mackleduff.
'Really?' said William.
'Oh, yes,' said Mr Mackleduff, who was one of those large men who were instantly expert on anything. 'They wouldn't allow just anyone to write what they like. That stands to reason.'

Mistletoe and Whine

Well, Christmas is almost over. (Merry Christmas to anyone that I haven't already said that to).

I've been off on a family holiday for the festive season, and, as usual at this time of year, I won't have much free time until after the new year. I'm missing the Munquis but just don't really have the definite time to invest in playing a MMORPG for the next week or so.
Instead I'm killing my time playing Fable II (much better than I expected it to be), which I can pick up and put down in short stints. But I should be back to WoW as normal either this weekend or by early next week.

Before the Christmas period I managed to pick up my worg pet (and the spider one as a bonus), Vind also tagged along with his DK and picked them up too.
For info, LBRS is quite easily soloable with a level 80 Hunter. I brought my Cat with me, when really I should have used my Gorilla, but still didn't really have any problems. And the run for the worg pups only took 10-15 minutes. I had to clear a little more trash than was really neccesary due to Vinds lower level toon still having a little aggro, but I could almost walk past the majority of the mobs unless they were standing right in my way.

P.S. I'm assuming Brast already knows about it, but the tribe forums seem to be down. Maybe his subscription has just expired again, and there's much more important thigns to pay for at this time of year. (We really should all contribute to that cost).

New Years Resolution: Buy a MunquiWear item, or send Brast a donation to help with the costs?

The Wolfman of Azeroth

I've decided that one of the first things i'm going to do as a proud, and bewildered, level 80. Is get myself a worg-pup pet. I've always meant to get one, but never gotten round to it.

This quest provides one: http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=4729

...and comes with a bonus Spider pet: http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=4862

I'm pretty sure I could easily solo LBRS, but if anyone wants to join in the fun, they're welcome to tag along. Just give me a whisper in-game.

FEAR ME! For I am 80!

OK, I hit level 80 on Tuesday, and I have to say that I barely felt level 79, it went by so fast.

So.......................... What do I do now?

I had the same feeeling I did when I first reached lvl 70 with my Paladin. After all those weeks / months of progression, and feeling liek I'm striving towards something, suddenly, it's over... I'm there, and it feels.... exactly like it did at level 75, 76, 77, 78 and 79 only without a clear goal to aspire to.

I want to raid with my Hunter, but I hate PUG's, and most of the Munquis are still a little bit behind yet, so there's no chance of doing anything too exciting any time soon.

While wandering around aimlessly trying to decide what to do, I spent myself 1.5k gold in the AH, kitting myself in full blues, (I already had a couple anyway) and bought some nice enchants and gems to go with them.

http://be.imba.hu/?zone=EU&realm=Darkspear&character=Smythy

So I'm now the proud owner of about 3000 AP (unbuffed), 15k HP, 11k Mana, and a crit rate of over 20%.
My haste is also good, meaning I'm usually unleashing at least 100 arrows per minute, around 1 crit every 3 seconds. When I crit, my pet crits for the next 3 hits, and when my pet crits the whole party gets a DPS buff, so this means that buff is now semi-permanent.
A bit of testing showed I can now pull off about 1.1 - 1.4k DPS regular damage (just using my rotations), and between 1.6-1.8k DPS when I pop my trinkets and CoolDowns etc...

I'm no expert but I'd say that's pretty good for solo mode. Add in a set of team / raid buffs to that, plus potions / elixirs and raid food, and I wouldn't want to get in my way.

I'm sure a little of my DPS will be affected from the new patch, but generally speaking I should still be kicking ass.

Now, BeImba only rates me as suitable for heroics, but after asking around to some freinds who've been doing 10 and 25 man Naxx, they appear to think I'm qualified enough for at least entry level raiding. Certainly, when their guilds started to raid, they had people lower geared than myself along with them. And, I like to think, that my skill would count for something too.

Also, when I check for gear upgrades for what I currently have, the vast majority is already shown as the highest level of blue available, so epics are the next step up.

I was VERY tempted to replace my Green bow with an Epic gun that was on the AH for 1900g, but decided the money would be better spent on overall upgrades instead.

So I come back to my first question................. What do I do now?

I can't do heroics alone, raiding is out of the question, my herbalism and skinning skills are already maxed. I've still got 2k gold, and don't fancy grinding just to get myself another mount (although a drake would be nice).

I really fancy using Engineering on my Hunter, but that would mean dropping one of my other profs, both of which make me large amounts of money, and the passive buff from skinning improves my crit nicely, so i wouldn't want to lose that. Even if I dropped my Herbalism I'd still have to spend fortunes on mats to level up my engineering.

Do I grind rep, for items that aren't really that impressive? Or maybe I should just spend my time boosting other guildies to get them up to my level quicker... after all the Munqui Tribe is supposed to be 'Social'. Hmmmm, maybe I've found my own answer.

Any other suggestions?

EDIT: Just came across this - http://www.thehuntersmark.net/2008/11/25/your-wish-list-for-wrath-dude-wheres-my-upgrade/ looks like a good tip-off to start doing the heroics.

Can I really do TOO MUCH damage?

Patch 3.0.8 is on it s way, and the notes are now on WoWWiki.
Having a read this morning, it seems that there's going to be quite a few changes to the classes.
There's a nice long list of tweaks for pretty much every class in the game.

One that does worry me though is this: (The Hunter Nerf)

All Hunter pet abilities with a cooldown of 30 seconds or more are no longer
on the global cooldown.
Aspect of the
Wild - This aspect is now raid-wide.
Call
of the Wild: The benefit from this pet talent now applies to only
the Hunter and their own pet.
Deterrence: Design
changed to grant 100% parry and 100% chance to
"deflect" spells coming
from the front, but prevents the Hunter from attacking.
Lasts 5 sec. 60 sec. cooldown.
Improved
Tracking (Survival): This talent has been slightly re-designed. Now
reads: While tracking Beasts, Demons, Dragonkin, Elementals, Giants, Humanoids
and Undead, all ranged damage done to those types is increased by 1/2/3/4/5%.
Kill
Shot – Cooldown reduced to 15 seconds, down from 35 sec.
Kindred
Spirits: This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
The coefficient of Rake (Cat) and Scorpid
Venom (Scorpid) has been lowered.
Readiness: No longer
resets the cooldown on Bestial Wrath.
Steady Shot: Now
gains 10% of attack power as damage instead of 20%.
Serpent's
Swiftness: This talent now grants only 2/4/6/8/10% bonus attack
speed to pet. The hunter attack speed bonus is unchanged.
Unleashed Fury:
This talent now grants only 3/6/9/12/15% pet damage.
Viper
Sting: Now drains a percentage of maximum mana.
Volley: The
damage has been reduced on all ranks by approximately 30% (including attack
power scaling).

Overall that's a pretty big Nerf, and it concerns me. Not for the reason you might expect, yes I love doing major DPS, and I'll certainly miss 30% off my Volley ability.
When I'm in a dungeon with a good Pally tank, Volley has been known to put out up to 10k DPS on its own.

But most other Hunters I've teamed with can't seem to pull off the same level of damage that I can. And most often they've been at least a couple of steps further down the rankings. I'm not particularly well geared, but I use macros, and tweaks, and haste ratings and all sorts of little tips and tricks to ensure that my DPS is as high as it can possibly be. So why should Blizz care if a couple of Hunters like me can pull off impressive DPS, when the average Hunter is usually no better or worse than anyone else?

My build and play-style has it's disadvantages too. I'm almost always top of the rankings in PvE, but I suck totally at PvP. Anyone who's ever duelled me will back me up on that. Its not just that I'm not a PvP'er, my build is designed around doing the maximum amount of DPS from a distance, while my pet, or a helpful tank takes all the punishment.
The few times that I get aggro, and can't get rid of it, I drop like a fat-girl on bungee. Feign Death and Shadowmeld are my only reasons for survival in cases like this. And anything with enough intelligence to ignore my pet and come straight for me is going to own my arse in seconds.

Why is this any different to other DPS classes?

I've seen others who play their non-Hunter class with alot of skill, and despite being undergeared can still keep up with the crowd.

Losing a % point here and there isn't going to cause me much of a problem, I'm probably still going to out DPS many others, and I'll more than likely be level 80 by the time the patch hits, so it's not going to slow down my levelling speed. But I don't really see the need for such a big nerf.

Is the average Hunter really doing that much damage, or is it just a well-played few?

On the Level

Last week, I read one of Tobold's Blogs 'Approaching 80' about levelling speed, and found it interesting. But at the time I was a little sceptical about just how much faster it would be the closer you get to 80.

But he's more than right. Particularly since reaching level 77 and being able to fly again.

I've spent more time fiddling around since hitting 77, just investigating places, finding new pets and maxing my Herbalism skills.
But, already, I'm about to Ding 78. And Vedd, who I was teamed up with last night, is in almost the same position and hit 77 later than myself.

According to my Titan XP addon, my levelling speed is now at around 3.5 hours per level. When I'm not messing about. So If I can get a good solid 3-4 hours of play, I can easily level.
Before flight, this was more like 6-8 Hours.

I'm not complaining, but to anyone out there who is currently hanging aroudn the Mid 70's, thinking they've got ages to go before they're leet again. You haven't. Cold Weather Flying is a must, and Epic flight obviously helps, but you'll be flying through the last 3 levels in no time.

Munqui Boss Notes

OK, anyone who reads this blog, who's not a Munqui, or who joined us after we'd finished our Karazhan phase probably has no idea what this is, so I'll summarise:

The NotesUNeed addon is useful anyway, and it's very minimalistic, doesn't take up much screen estate, low memory usage etc...
My plugin for it adds notes on all the TBC and Northrend Instances, Dungeons, Raids, and World Bosses. Providing strategies and tactics for all of them, mainly taken from WoWWiki.

Now if you're an Ub3r 1337 raider, you're probably not going to need this. But if like most Munquis, you're more of a casual player, who occasionally dips his toe into the world of raiding, this is great.

So here's how you use it:

1) Download NotesUNeed from here:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/notes-uneed.aspx

2) Download my Munqui Boss Notes plugin
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=05a4921c768fb35b91b20cc0d07ba4d2307f94ccec315957

3) Copy my Plugin into your NotesUNeed folder (inside your addons folder) - It might overwrite one thats already there. That's fine.

4) Load the game, open the NotesUneed options, and click 'Import'...

5) All done, the notes are now in your list

You now have all the info you need in-game to down the badass bosses, and can broadcast the notes to party / raid etc.. so that there's no excuse for people not knowing the strategy before the attack begins.

I'll try and keep the strategy info updated, and will post updates on this page.

Big Thanks to Vedd, for finding my old version, so it now includes all the TBC instances and Raids, rather than me wasting time re-entering all the details.

All credit for NotesUNeed goes to it's author 'Telic'. I was going to try and write my Own addon just for this purpose, but his works fine, and has other advantages too.
Originally I did modify a previous version to accept larger notes but, as of now, Telics official version works fine, so any auto-updaters, like WoWMatrix / Curse Client etc... will no longer break things.

Credit for the Strategies goes to the editors and contributors of WoWWiki. I haven't written any of the strategies myself, although I may have added a few additional notes as I've fought the bosses.

There's still a few missing strategies for Northrend, simply because WoWWiki didn't have any at the time of my last update. But these will be filled in later.

If you have any feedback on the NotesUNeed addon, please direct it to Telic. If you have any feedback on the Boss Notes themselves, direct them to me.

Enjoy.

Flights and Fancies

I managed to hit level 77 on my Hunter this weekend.

And since the money gained in Northrend is pretty epic, and I had bought my epic flying before hand, I'm now flapping around the place at epic speeds, and still have plenty of cash left over... Nice.

I also decided it was time for a change of pet. But which to choose?

The obvious choice is going to be Loque'nahak:

But he's a pain to find, and supposedly doesn't pull off the DPS that he's supposed to, just at the moment. Some glitch about his debuff not stacking. If I come across him though, I'll still pick him up obviously. And Gratz to HunterBabe for finally getting him.

So in the mean-time I decided to go for a Wolf and a Gorilla (for DPS / Tanking respectively).

So..... introducing;

Knyghtmare

(Knightmare was a prohibited name for some reason)

And his new freind Munqui

Now here's a strange thing - I haven't done much grinding / any quests since hitting 77, I've mainly just been prancing around looking at new places, and choosing pets. But I've noticed something strange.
Knyghtmare is a Ferocity pet, and therefore all about the DPS. Munqui is a Tenacity pet, and should be mostly about Tanking, and threat generation.

My own personal DPS is quite good, even if I do say so myself... and I do.

Firstly, if I use Knyghtmare, my overall DPS should be higher than when I'm using Munqui... But it isn't.
I barely noticed any significant change when I switched from my old Cat to Knyghtmare (which was expected), but saw a pretty big jump when I switched over to Munqui... Weird... Maybe it needs a bit more testing, but I'm pretty sure that my stats were right. Knyghtmare is still a level or two below me, so maybe things will improve a little once he catches up... but I don't think so.

Secondly, when using my old cat, I could pull the aggro off him if I got a bit over-eager, or got a good crit chain going. But since my pets crit pretty regularly anyway, 99% of the time they got all of the attention.
Knyghtmare seems to be able to maintain this tradition, with the mobs focusing totally on him, and leaving me free to nuke the sh*t out of them. Munqui doesn't.
Almost all of Munquis talent point are spent on improving tanking stats and in threat generation, yet I seem to constantly pull the aggro from him. (He's level 77, so that isn't an issue).

So I've now got a tanking pet that can't hold aggro, but for some reason is improving my DPS.
And a DPS pet that can hold the aggro, but seems to be doing less overall damage than the tank.

Any ideas?

I'd also like to whinge about the amount that Knyghtmare shrank when I tamed him... He looks impressive in the wild, but shrinks massively once he's owned.

A Christmas Carol?

Name that Tune?

You'd better watch out, you might start to cry
But you'd better not pout, I'm telling you why
The Lich King is coming to town.

He's not got a list, and he won't think twice
He already knows who's naughty or nice
The Lich King is coming to town.

Arthas is a'coming to town
Arthas is a'coming to town
Arthas is a'coming to towwwwwn

He'll kill you while you're sleeping,
Or while you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
And your soul, his sword, will take.

So you'd better watch out, you might start to cry
But try not to pout I'm telling you why
The Lich King is coming to town.

Arthas is a'coming to town
Arthas is a'coming to town
Arthas is a'coming to towwwwwn

'Twas the Fight before Christmas

'Twas the weeks before Christmas, and all through the house
Not a sound could be heard, but the click of a mouse
Father Blizzard had come early, or late, I suppose
But all of the big kids were awake with the crows
All of the Munquis had opened their box,
And this was one present, that wasn't going to be socks

So while children were nestled, all snug in their beds
With visions of evil, that danced in their heads
Their mothers and fathers gave up all their naps
To begin the big race, to the new level caps
With new mobs to kill, and achievements to shatter
They were aching and tired, but that didn't matter

Off in to Northrend, they flew like a flash
Wiped out the Vrykul, and found loads of cash
The moon over Northrend, and it's new fallen snow
Looked improved, the new graphics engine, started to show
When what, to our bleeding eyes should appear
But a land full of people living in fear

Arthas was rising, with his legions of dead.
And the dragons were rising, to rip off his head.
On Horses, On Tigers, On Talbuks and Rams
On Dragons and Gryphons to ruin his plans.
The armies of Azeroth rose up to the fight
And among them were outcasts, the converted DeathKnight

The armies united to meet the old foe
But some of the tensions still started to show
In the middle of Northrend stands Lake Wintergrasp
Where battles are fought, to kick the hordes ass.
But after it's done, and the battle is lost
They resume their attack on the kingdom of frost

Before this war's over the evil must be found
Down from the north comes Arthas the Lich-Bound
Dressed in plate armor from his head to his foot
And his gear all tarnished with dried blood and guts.
His eyes.. How they flared, with evil so merry
And lands flowed with blood as bright as fresh cherry.

His evil smile was drawn up like a bow
And the colour of his skin was as white as the snow
He had a broad face, and no sign of a belly
And carried an aura that some would call smelly
He was tall and looked strong, in the pinnacle of health
But I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself

With a wink of his eye and a twist of his head
He soon gave us to know, we had plenty to dread
He spoke lots of words, and then went to work
And in an opening scene, made Mograine a jerk.
With barely a flinch, he stepped out of sight
Saying "Merry Christmas to all, and to all my DeathKnights!"

Phase Two

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post (Vinds Comment does mention it though) about phasing is the, unfortunate, comedy value of the effect too.
A knock on effect of this same mechanic, is that you can't neccesarily see the same mobs / players that others (even in your team) can.

While in a Munqui group a few days ago, doing the "WANTED" elite quests in Dragonblight, one of our team was a step behind in the quest chains than the rest of us, but offered to help out anyway.
He could see the same elites that we could, but he could also see some other mobs that we had already completed the quest to rid the world of.
This meant that when we rode through a 'clear' area to reach the next boss, he was actually riding through the centre of a big group of undead. Which obviously started attacking him. To us it just appeared as if he was fighting thin-air. Besides a bit of healing, we couldn't help out, because we couldn't even see the mobs.

This seems to be an unfortunate, although sometimes funny, side effect of the phasing system.
But at the end of the day I still give the new effect a MASSIVE thumbs up.

Big Brother is Watching You

I've been reading Tobolds blog for a long time now, and usually his posts are all about WoW.
But recently, he posted something a little bit different, and I think it's well worth discussing.
If you haven't already seen it, read it here;

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2008/11/you-can-go-to-jail-for-lying-on.html

Phasers on Stun

"He's dead Jim, but not as we know it!"

As spoken by the venerable Dr McCoy (at least in the song). And with the new expansion, that was never true-er.

Phasing has to be the single greatest change in WotLK. But most people I've spoken to haven't even realised it was happening... exactly the way it should be.

For those of you out there who don't know, here's how it works;

Pre-WotLK, when you completed a quest, the world around you stayed the same. Even if you'd just killed the biggest bad-ass boss in a zone, 5 minutes later the same NPC will be standing there harking on about how this boss really has to go. And the Boss will be back where he always was, just as if all your efforts were in vain.

Post-WotLK, that same boss might stay dead. And the NPC would have thanked you, and probably moved on to go and whinge about something else, in some other location..... but only for you.

For you, the boss dissapears. For you, the NPC moves on. For you, the world has changed.
For everyone else, that hasn't done that same quest, it hasn't... the NPC is still there, the boss is alive, etc...

Anyone who has doen the DeathKnight starting area will have seen this in action, even if you didn't realise it. How else do you think Ebon Hold becomes a Haven for you, while still being a Scourge area for those rolling new characters?
You both use the same area, but you see different things, and you probably don't even see each other. You could be stood on top of a newborn level 55 DeathKnight, or even Arthas himself, and not know it.

I've noticed this more and more, but last night I saw an epic version of this in action:

A long, and nicely rewarded, quest chain in Dragonblight ended in a video cutscene (another new experience). In it, the Allies and Horde teamed up to fight Arthas, and everyone was wiped out by a rogue Forsaken who killed everyone. He tried to kill Arthas too, but that didn't work.
High Lord Bolvar died during this scene, and when it ended the whole area around me had changed. Bolvar was still dead, the Dragons that had purged the area were still there, and the whole place was on fire.... But it didn't stop there.

The Dragons then sent me off to see King Wrynn in StormWind, and he set me off on another epic journey, involving me travelling to Ogrimmar and Undercity, and kicking major ass there, with the help of the King Himself, and Jaina Proudmoore. An utterly brilliant storyline, well thought out, nicely done, and very out of the ordinary "kill ten X" type quests.
(The quest rewards were also excellent, as should be expected from a quest of that magnitude).
For me, the world has now changed, Arthas knows I'm coming, Bolvar is dead and I've gained the trust of the Dragons.

The entire quest chain tooko an hour or two to complete, but it's broken into lot's of smaller quests, so there's plenty of scope for completing others at the same time.

Anyone who hasn't done it yet, really should. It starts with a "Strange Device" that drops from a mob you kill, from a quest in Stars Rest. I was level 73 at the time, and had no problem with it.

I'd like to take this opportunity to give Blizz a standing ovation for this feature. It wasn't expected (at least by me), and has added massive potential to the game.

Rather than the next expansion needing an entire new continent, what if they just re-used the Old Azeroth areas? Some of those areas are beautifully designed, and it's a shame they are going to be more and more wasted.

Imagine:

Sargeras returns to Azeroth, and lays waste to the whole place. StormWind is burning? The DeadMines has now been taken over by Sargeras minions? The whole of the Old World zones have been taken over by lvl 81+ Mobs.
To you, the world is destroyed. And all this could happen at the same time as level 1 noobs are still begging "1g Plz!" and level 19's are doing their PvP thing in Goldshire.
Because, to them, things are the same as they always were. And if you want to prove it to yourself, you'd just have to roll a new toon, and go and take a look.

Surely this would speed up the time it takes to release a new expansion too? Which can only be a good thing.

The Show MUST Go On

In case you hadn't noticed, I haven't posted anything on my blog for the last few days. That's mainly because of real life getting in the way of my online time, but not in a bad way.

Things I've achieved in the past few days;

1) Spent some time with my Son
2) Spent some time with my Fiance
3) Cleaned my House
4) Put my Christmas Tree up (Yes, I know it's only November, but it's only 4 weeks away)
5) Cleaned my House again, after all the mess of putting the Christmas tree up.
6) Spent 30 minutes re-wiring the Christmas lights, so that they don't flash.
7) Watched the end of season 3 of Prison Break (I needed to catch up)
8) Spent another 30 minutes re-wiring the Christmas light, because they were still flashing.
9) Planned my budget for Christmas, and decided on the few remaining presents I have to buy.
10) Gave up on the Christmas lights... Yes... they are STILL flashing.

Suprisingly though, one thing I didn't do, was miss playing World of Warcraft. It's strange though, I usually do.
I did log on once, to finish off some input into a Boss Strategy addon, and to re-post some things on the AH, but that was it. I had a quick chat to Bolle, and a 'Hello' to a few guildies, and that was pretty much it.
I have a feeling that tonight will be a gaming night though, especially since I don't have to get up early in the morning, straight to a meeting at 10am, instead of crawling out of bed at 6am.. woo hoo!

So may aim for the night is to hit level 73, or maybe even 74, and to definitely not play on my DeathKnight.

Repeat after me: "I will not play on my DeathKnight and leave my main(s) to rot in level 70-80 limbo... I will not play my DeathKnight and leave my main(s) to rot... I will not play my DeathKnight... I will not play my DeathKnight for too long... dammit!"

Back to the grindstone

My playtime is 'probably' going to be much more limited over the next few days, simply because of real life commitments, but I'll no doubt manage to get a few hours in here and there.
But will it make any difference?

I reached level 71, with myHunter, on the day of release. And I was quite pleased with the levelling speed. However, 71-72 seemed to take me forever, probably almost twice what it took me to get from 70-71. Yet I'm now already a third of the way to 73.
I'm not complaining, and I think I've sussed what the problem was.

I was trying to complete all the quests in one area before moving on to the next. So I think I've finished all but a small handful of quests in the Howling Fjords. But the travelling time, and all the to'ing and fro'ing cost me alot of time.

I've now moved on to Dragonblight, and I'm picking up quests in batches again, and my XP bar is filling up nicely. In future, I think I'll skip to the next area as soon as the quests start to thin out.
Any quests that I miss out on I can either come back to do later or will catch them next time, probably when I level my DeathKnight.

I've noticed though, that most of my guildies are still no higher than level 71. (The vast majority are 'social' players and don't spend massive amounts of time online though).

So what do you think?
Is the levelling speed about right?

Nexus Point

Several Munquis decided to run the new Nexus instance last night.
I'd done most of Utgarde Keep a few days before, so was expecting more of the same Tank'n'Spank style play, boy was I suprised.
I loved style of the place, and the boss encounters were much more 'raid-style' then before, with a couple of them requiring a more tactical approach.

Grand Magus Telestra - Took us a few attempts at this one, it basically came down to a DPS race between how fast we could bring her down, and how many times she could throw us around the room, but my Pet came inhandy here, as for some reason, her magic tentacles ignored it, so it kept up some DPS while we were mostly useless. My hunter was the only man standing by the end of the fight.

Omorok the Tree Shaper - This was almost a straight Tank'n'Spank, but we realised too late that the shards of ice he sends out erupt causing quite high damage, and throwing you into the air. I realised when I saw it happen to my pet and the tank, but while I was typing the message for everyone to avoid it, it happened again, killing our healer (Knicks), and then everyone else. Luckily, I side-stepped it and popped my pets super-rez and spanked him into oblivion. Last man standing, again, and boss killed in 1 shot.

Anomalus - Despite Bronzes (our tank) assurance that this would be a straight Tank'n'Spank, it became obvious it wasn't, when he suddenly became immune after summoning a rift. Logic kicked in, and everyone recognized the Headless Horseman style, and switched all DPS to the rifts. Even so, it took it's toll, and only Bronze and Myself lived through it. 1 Shotted though.

Keristraza - Sounds like a Russian mobster, and is about as freindly as one. This took a few attempts, and mastering the 'hit and run' tactics was not easy. Particularly for the casters, where healing and moving does not go hand in hand. But after a few dry runs, we put her down, and for some reason Knicks (who had often been dead before the fights had gotten half way through) was still standing at the end, although she did die a few seconds later while celebrating, after forgetting to debuff herself. So, again, Hunters rule, And me and my pet sat patiently and waited for the rest of them to corpse run.

Honorable mention also goes out to Hedgerick, DM, and Banak (6 of us because Banak replaced DM mid-run).

I've got to say though, I loved the new tactical stlye of the dungeon. It felt much more like a mini Karazhan than just a higher level of Tank'n'Spank elites. And the learning curve was just right, we were on the verge of giving up on a couple of the bosses, when we finally downed them. That's the way it should be.

EDIT: If it sounds like I'm bragging about never dying in this run, I'm not. I also got my ass handed to me several times.

Fjord Focus

The expansion was released a few days ago, and I took the afternoon off work on the 13th to enjoy the opening day fun.
As my previous post said, I reached level 71 with my Hunter on the first night, but since then my play time has been more limited, due to real life activities.
I did manage to play for a little while, and rolled myself a DeathKnight (SmythKnight) to see what all the fuss is about.

I was very impressed, especially with the opening quests and the abilities. Coinceidentally, I managed to share most of the opening quests with Vindikator (a long-time Munqui, who had rolled a DeathKnight after transferring his main toon to another realm).

It did feel a little awkward at first, given that when you start at level 1 you slowly gain more and more spells, usually giving you time to master one before moving on to the next.
With a DeathKnight, at level 55, you don't really get that luxury, you get a handful of spells to start with, and within 2 levels, you've got a full actionbar, and more spells to spare. But I eventually got my head around it.

What helped, was realising that something wasn't right with my display.
I was struggling to work out why some runes were on cooldown sometimes, and not others. Turns out that Xperl (one of my Ui addons) was preventing me seeing the default blizzard rune bars. I couldn't manage to re-enable them either, but after a very small download, problem solved. And the system makes perfect sense.
So much so, that my level 58 UnHoly-DeathKnight managed to get up to 500DPS (albeit on multi mobs). Mastering the whole 'disease' thing was a breakthrough.
And the correct use of 'Pestilence' means that the potential for DPS with this spec is awesome.

Initially I'd said that the DeathKnight wasn't too overpowered, but if those abilities scale in the same way that other classes do, that's going to make for an immense amount of spell damage by the time the character hits level 70, let alone 80! (And the melee damage on top of that).

I'll probably shelve SmythKnight for now, and go back to levelling my Hunter (Smythy). Returning to the Fjords to finish off the last few quests before moving on to DragonBlight.
I need to catch up with Bolle (another Munqui), who has managed to reach the lofty heights of level 78 already.
I'm assuming he's currently playing while sat on a comode, and with a months supply of military ration packs next to his PC, because he can't have moved far from that screen for a while. :P

"Gz Bolle"

On a side note: I also maxed my Skinning skill and didn't get an achievement for it (although you do just for learning the next level from the trainer). But on the plus side the, new, added crit rating from mastering the profession will come in handy.

Lich Banner

Feel free to steal / edit this, made it up myself out of the official stuff, but it's been flipped and tweaked to fit the style of my blog.

Addiction Affliction

While reading my usual daily intake of World News I came across this article from the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/11/addicted_to_warcraft.html#comment152

The BBC has been covering the launch of WotLK for the past few days, and their views about online gaming always seemed to be a bit one-sided to me. Particularly always raising the issue of addiction. And generally leaning very heavily towards the 'Games are Bad' side of the argument.

Usually, I just read these things, and scoff at the stupid arguments that people use to try and flame the game itself, and all gaming in general. But this time I decided to post a reply of my own (see the link).

Maybe we're just pioneers of the gaming nations. Because I'm pretty sure that everyone currently between the age of 5 and 25 won't share the same feelings. And it won't be long before the news agencies in general (not just the BBC) will be reporting on in-game events almost as often as real-world ones.

BBC HEADLINE NEWS: November 13th 2020
Darkspear(EU); StockMarket Crashes as Smyth undercuts every item on the AH.
Munqui Tribe leader says; "I love kids, but I couldn't eat another one just yet".
Age of Conan; Final player found locked in a broom closet, medics say he may never play again.
Warhammer; Agrees deal with Activision. World of Warhammer due out tomorrow.
GuildWars; "Honestly! We ARE an MMORPG", exec denies mis-leading advertising complaints.

Or maybe that's just my vision of the future?