The Making of a Junkie

Hi, everyone!  I know, who is this? Right?  Well, I am Mike's wife and playing partner.  I am probably the last person you would ever expect to play WoW.  I never thought I would play computer games myself.  I started playing WoW in order to have more in common with Mike.  He has always been into computing and computer games, and I felt that I needed to at least understand what he was talking about. :) At first, I mostly played just with Mike and enjoyed the time I spent with him, although I can't say I fully enjoyed the game at first.  For various reasons, I quit playing for a time.  When I returned, I retired my hunter and rolled a Draenei prot paladin instead.  I enjoyed playing her as I leveled.  I liked the durability and healing skills that allowed me to solo very well.  I was beginning to enjoy the game for itself, and even found myself playing at times while Mike was away.  I met some good friends that I looked forward to chatting with and the addiction began. 

Then I hit 70.  Suddenly, I found myself bored in the game.  I found out the hard way that, although I liked my prot pally for soloing, I did not really enjoy tanking instances with her.  I was not confident enough in my own skills to be able to lead a group.  It just was not my personality.  So I rolled a human mage.  After playing my very durable prot pally, I was frustrated initially with the squishiness of my clothie.  In time, I learned to keep my distance, use my crowd control skills and stay alive.  Before I knew it, Tatiaana was 70 also and I was hooked for good.

Now we are in Northrend. I still mostly play with Valimonde, although I have become a little more social with time.  I also rolled a Death Knight (a rerolling of my prot pally who is now retired on another server), but I am not sure if I will enjoy playing her as much as I enjoy my mage.  Val and I make a great team as we work to save Northrend.  With his strength and my DPS, we are a nearly unstoppable force!  (That is until we get cocky and take on a few too many mobs :)).  I love the look of Howling Fjords and am really enjoying the stories in the quest lines.  To date, my favorite part of the expansion was the achievement for killing 15 turkeys in 3 minutes.  Val and I were doing this together, so we had killed lots of turkeys.  Once I got the achievement and the turkeys became aggro to me, all those many that we had just killed respawned at the same time!  I was suddenly being attacked by a wave of like 20 angry turkeys!!! After I quickly arcane exploded them to bits, another group of about 20 attacked me!  I have not laughed so hard in a long time. While I still do not play as much as many people, I have definitely been bitten by the WoW bug.  I look forward to the times that I can play.  I am even beginning to enjoy raiding, but I think is partly due to the great guild that we have found.

Well, now you all know how the quiet, bookworm teacher became a frostbolt-shooting WoW addict.  Just remember, it can happen to the best of us. :)

79 Around the Corner and Other Fun

Tatiaana, aka Tanya, reminded me this morning while I was grumbling about server maintenance getting in the way of leveling, that I had not written on the blog for some time.  So . . .  *smile*  For all our wow readers, a wow update.

We have both been rather busy since the release of Wrath of the Lich King.  Bethany and I waited at Gamestop at midnight on the 12th in anticipation of going home with the 2 pre ordered copies we had purchased.  Unlike reports from some on well known podcasts, who obviously live in some strange places, we had over 300 people at our little Gamestop in Yuba City California.  It is always intrusting to see the people who share a hobby with you, even one as involved as World of Warcraft.

Tatiaana was already asleep when Bethany and I got home, and Bethany headed right to bed.  I cracked open the box, inserted the DVD and upgraded my account.  Blizzard put in some great lore facts and story background in the installer.  It was finished and I was ready.  But what to do?

Who do I log in?  Do I get Paravel into Northrend and start questing?  Do I get Valimonde in position with Tatiaana?  No that was out of the question as I decided that Valimonde and Tatiaana will level together.  Or do I roll my Death Knight?

I had run the DK starter zone while in the beta so . . .Digory, my 70 frost mage, had been rerolled and has become my Death Knight.  Now, for those wondering, no, you do not have to delete a toon to make a death knight. You simply must have a character that is at least level 55 on the server you start your death knight. You may only have one death knight per server.  Digory, my mage on another server, has been retired, Jadís is my new mage that I am leveling with Bethany's Shaman Benniah.

I began the quests and hit level 58 in just a little over two hours.  Was time to go to sleep.

Tatiaana and Val started questing the next day in Borean Tundra but did not like the zone.  It was drab and . . well. . blah.  Tatiaana ported us to Iron Forge and we then set of for Howling Fjord and oh we where so happy to do so!  HF is BEAUTIFUL!  The quest lines are so lore filled it is. . .amazing.  We where loving the progression and flow. 

When Tatiaana is at work I have been able to work on Paravel.  I decided to go ahead and work on the BT zone with her to give me more of a mix of things.  Leveling as a solo resto druid in the old game had issues, but I have found that I am able to survive and move along at a pretty steady pace.  Considering I am half a level away from 79 I think that Blizzard has done a good job with the reworking of talents and builds.  Just wish they would add more mana regen gear :(

I am working on getting Tatiaana to write on the blog in the next few days.  She has really enjoyed the expansion, and the two of us are having the time of our lives just spending time together.  Some may look at the two of us as strange or wierd, but when we are spending time playing a game together, communicating, talking to others, working together, we come away with a sense of accomplishment that we would never get from sitting in the livingroom watching hours of television.  If you play wow, or any other game, and your spouse does not. . even if they are not interested let them sit down and try it with you some time. . Use the guest pass. . They may not take to it but you will be surprised at how great a time you can have playing with your significant other.  I will make sure to poke her about putting in her thoughts on this topic since I am the "gamer" in the couple.

WARNING Fake Blizzard Phishing Scam!

Please pass this along!

I just received this email as well as others in my guild.  This is NOT from blizzard.  It is a Phishing attack trying to get you to log into a system which will provide your username and password to them to log in and clean your account out.

The email claims you are trying to sell your account and wants you to log in to verify you own it.  When you follow the link it does not take you to Blizzard but instead to an off shore server where they will capture your information.

 

Steps to resolve following the email.  It looks like this (URLS have been altered to prevent anyone from linking to them.)

Blizzard@ic04.XXXXXXXX
to gcfsmeagol
show details 9:54 AM (4 hours ago)
Reply
from    Blizzard@ic04.XXXXXXX
reply-to    Blizzard@ic04.XXXXXXXX,
Account@ic04.ic.cz,
"Services <acc"@blizzard.com
to    gcfsmeagol@hotmail.XXXXXXX
date    Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 9:54 AM

subject    Account Notification

Greetings,

It has come to our attention that you are trying to sell/trade your personal World of Warcraft account.
As you may or may not be aware of, this conflicts with the EULA and Terms of Agreement of Blizzard Entertainment and World of Warcraft.
If upon further investigation you are indeed attempting to obtain monetary profit against the terms of the user agreement, your account can and will be disabled. Blizzard has the right to consider legal action if necesarry, based on the severety of the action.

If you hope to avoid account suspention you should verify your personal possession of the account in question.
We at Blizzard Entertainment take infractions of the user agreement quite seriously, and we must confirm the original ownership of the account.

Please Complete the information in  http://worldofwarcraft.XXXXXXXX..XXXXXXXXX/en/manage/loginservice.html this form to verify you are the owner of the account in question.

If you ignore this mail your account can and will be closed permanently due to suspicions of alternative ownership.
We ask that during the time of the investigation you give approximately twenty-four hours of inactivity after sending a response email. This should provide enough time for Blizzard to confirm your identity and that the terms of agreement are being followed as is necesarry.

Blizzard Entertainment Inc
Account Administration Team
P.O. Box 18979, Irvine, CA 92623

Regards,

Account Administration Team
Blizzard Entertainment Inc.

This is NOT from blizzard and is very dangerous. 

If you fell for it please log into the official warcraft account site and change your password right away. If you find you are locked out contact blizzard.  Also report this to blizzard so they can follow up.

QQ More Noob – WoW and Church

A friend asked me last night. "So, you don't like emo do you?"  My answer was, "No, is it to much to want people to learn how to adjust to real life and not expect everything on a plate?"  And it got me thinking.  Right now is an example of lots of over privileged people crying that the world is ending because something they "CHOOSE" to do is being impacted by REAL WORLD issues beyond the control of the programmers.

For those of my readers who do not know what is happening, well, World of Warcraft is launching its second major expansion tonight.  In the process of getting ready a lot of changes have been made to the game system, a system that I think far to many people take for granted.  You know, the same people who have no idea the work that goes into that Hot Mocha they just ordered at Starbucks.  The same people that if you ask them where milk comes from they will answer, "the store."

In a game with over 11 million subscribers it becomes a hotbed of whiners and QQers (For those not up on the lingo, just isolate the QQ and tell me what you see.  *smile* )  Not only does Blizzard have to balance the customer support nightmare but they have to make sure things go smooth tonight with the launch. 

Ok, so some hiccups nailed them when they applied whatever implantations of the software server side yesterday.  Ok they spent all day, and even part of today with the servers down to make sure people end up happy.  I would HATE to be in the shoes of the technician who are trying to get things back up.  Especially when EMO kids are complaining.

I had a little spar with someone on the official forums.  I made a simple comment about how I would rather have the down time when it happen than come home from Gamestop tonight, load the game and not be able to enter Northrend.  The reply I got was, and I paraphrase:

"OMG Blizzard SUCKS!.  I pay $14.95 a month to play this game.  I expect my cell phone, cable TV . . . blah blah blah.  to work. . .Blizzard is the worst!"   

I would have laughed but this attitude just struck a raw nerve.  Here is a person, who thinks the world owes them something, complaining because their life is impacted for a short time.  The feeling is that his "INTITLEMENT" gives them the right to make over reaching over generalizations.  And we wont even talk about the laps of common sense.  Ok maybe a little.. . Just that morning our Comcast Cable went out. Had no Internet for the first 6 hours of the day   O.o  IT WAS THE END OF THE WORLD   /slit

But I digress. 

The issue is not that Blizzard has failed.  heh, I dare anyone to show us that they could run things any better.   .  .  . *still waiting*

The issue is that people need to relax, enjoy life, go outside some times, and enjoy what is around them.  Realize that things happen and we just have to deal.  Do we always like it when a storm comes through and knocks out power for 2 days?  Heck no. . But do we look back at the quality time we had with our family when we could not hide in a corner with a T.V. or computer or . . . Oh yea.

So, to all the emo QQ'ers who are going to quit the game over this.  I have one thing to say.

There's the door. 

*smile*  I know. . mean. . But serious!

And now for those expecting something about the church, after all, I did put it in the title.  Well, just reread the article, replace the word Blizzard with your churches name and wala. . . .

Let's not be emo QQing noobs anymore!

/rant

Grr, I lied, Turning Rant back on after talking to a guild mate in Gtalk Dori, before posting this.

One thing that REALY disappoints me is that some of the very same people who where yelling the sky was falling and they where going to quit took advantage of a glitch when the servers did come up.

Once servers rolled online apparently you could purchase select PvP gear that used to require a high personal rating.  The price was messed up, most likely from a careless oversight in the rush to restore databases.  So when people found out they did they told Blizzard about it so it could be fixed.  WRONG

The took a virtual ROCK and tossed it through the window of the department store and walked off with the item, all the time justifying it by saying Blizzard sucked and made them wait to get back online.

ARGGG.  Ok. . I'm going to finish now before this becomes a novel on the social ills of idiots.

Love you all. . .its going to be a good day no matter what :)

Can't Level Past 70 without WotLK

While reading blue posts I got a conformation that you will NOT be able to level past 70 without the expansion.

Taar asks:

Will I be able to start leveling past 70 at midnight on Thursday, even if I do not have the expansion yet?
- Taar

Nethaera responds:

Unpossible.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/12454631457-level-to-80-without-wotlk.html

Midnight WoTLK Release - Ill Be There

For those of you in the WoW universe you know that Wrath of the Lich King is coming out tomorrow at midnight.  Bethany and I will be at the Gamestop in Yuba City at 10 PM 1070 Harter Rd # 102.  If you happen to be in Northern California, and by chance going to be in Yuba City, come say hi.

Thank You

As a young boy I would play games in the back yard with my brother and childhood friends.  One of our favorite games to play was war.  My mother was never to thrilled with us playing this game, but we did it anyway.  With scenes right from a John Wayne movie in our head we would storm the beach, with assorted objects serving as our cover.

Later on in my life I became an avid gamer, as most of you know by now *smile*.  I have to admit my favorite genera of games where war based games.  I spent many years in clan's that played Day of Defeat, Battle Field 1942 and other mod's of these games that allowed us to experience what others went through without putting ourselves in harms way.

Some would make the mistake of thinking people who like to play or simulate war campaigns as twisted or sick.  Lovers of war.  But on the contrary.  I am a huge history buff, firmly believing in the old adage that if we do not learn from history we will relive it over and over and over. 

After my grandfather passed away in 2002 I discovered a lot about his part in World War II.  As I was preparing his service I spent time going through his belongings, looking for more clues to use when speaking about him.  My grandmother gave me a box that contained some documents and papers from his service.  Patches, nick knacks, all completely trivial or useless to someone else, but to me . . . it was gold.  It gave me a chance to appreciate my grandfather that much more.  Why?

Because my grandfather was one of the millions of men and women over the past two centuries who put themselves in harms way to secure the rights that we all take for granted. 

I want to take this time today to thank my grandfather, George Delano Hall and all the other men and women past and present who stand to protect us and our way of life, a salute.

Thank you . . .

Related

Big Bear Butt: For All Who Serve This Country, Thank You
Big Red Kitty: Happy Veterans Day

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2008-11-09

• Loving, Guild, Patch, Kara, Coffee, Vent, Tanking, A Certain Mage . . .: Last night I ventured into the .. http://tinyurl.com/5lnqzw #


• Morning world. #


• Reading: "Big Bear Butt Blogger » Sharing a special education" ( http://tinyurl.com/65kbeb ) #


• Trying out Live Writer for my blog posting. . hmm. . So far. . I am likeing it. #


• The Prot Paladin and You!: I know I have written a lot about Paravel and her lovely, wonderful, active t.. http://tinyurl.com/6d6rfw #


• Heading out to vote. #


• Home from voiting.. Heading into WoW and IGNORING the news. Time to level and get ready for Northrend. #


• *sigh* #


• Fixing Bob's computer. Man its messed up. :) #


• home and playing wow with @tanyanorton, my beloved mage :) #


• Reading: "Big Bear Butt Blogger » Child’s Play is in da House!" ( http://tinyurl.com/5k66q4 ) #


• I hate Healbot. . It criples good healers :( #


• Paravel is moving back home! The Scryers her she comes. #


• got haircut. At walmart with the girls and most of Yuba City it would seem. #

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Is Arthas Closer? Extended Maintenance Time

Blizzards has posted a note on the log on screen.

We encountered some issues and need to extend the maintenance.  We currently estimate that all realms will be playable by approximately 1:00pm PST.  Thank you for your patience.

I am speculating that we will see the next large pre expansion event.  It only makes since after the popular plague.  I do hope so. . I'm getting bored. . Need more fun story line driven fun.

Please Vote

Please take the privilege, NO, responsibility you have as a citizen of the United States and get out and vote today.  I will not discuss, nor indorse any candidate, but you do need to excesses your rights.

VOTE!

The Prot Paladin and You!

I know I have written a lot about Paravel and her lovely, wonderful, active tree form lately.  I also know that you might be wondering just what has happen to all the news about Resto Druids.  Well that will all still come.  BUT. . .I have recently dusted off my shield and mace, and brought Valimonde back into action since patch 3.0.2.  And right from the start I have to say.

I FREAKING LOVE PROT PALLADINS AND TANKING AGAIN!!!!!

Blizzards has finally given protection speced paladins the tools needed to do everything we have always dreamed of.  They have given us at least two new talents that have turned the tables on all those old stuck in the mud, this is how it has always been done, warriors out there who say Paladins can tank 5 mans but never a raid. 

One of the bigest concern and arguments used against paladin tanks on larger raids has been that. . you use mana.  A tanking situation is a careful dance of agro managment and mitigation.  In order for a paladin prior to the patch to stay ontop of the threat list he had to do holy damage.  To do holy damage he had to use his skills which would use mana, lot's and lots of mana.  When you run out of mana you are unable to do your spells and before long that mage in the back starts to overtake your threat.  If you are unfamilure with what happens when a mage, or any other class, over takes your threat on a boss, well, lets just say it looks a lot like the floor.

It was because of the mana issue that many old school raiders would never allow a paladin to tank raid bosses.  To some extent they had a valid point, however, I have seen some fantastic tankadins prior to the patch porve the sceptics wrong. 

So, what to do about mana?  Blizzard answerd our issue with this.  Greater Blessing of Sanctuary

This new spell, which is only in the protection tree, offers a wonderful solution.  What does it do?

1. Reduces damage taken by 3%.  This may not sound like a lot of damage mitigation, but every bit helps, and frankly, this is not the reason it will be the only blessing I use.  This is:
2. Gain 10 rage, 20 runic power, or 2% maximum mana whenever the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack.

O.o  Let me put this in real world terms.  The new guild I am in just did our first Kara run Saturday night.  I seldom had to drink.  When we got to Prince on the roof we had one slight misshap.  Many of our team had NEVER been in Kara and did not know the dance with the enfeble.  We ended up loosing half the raid, BUT, we 5 maned prince and got him in one shot.  I tanked him with only 5 members for more than 3/4 of the fight.  When he died I looked at my mana bar.  It was full! 

This allowed me to keep at least 1K TPS (Threat Per Second) on the boss at all times.  So mana is no longer an issue for a tankadin.  It should also be noted that Warriors, Druids, and Death Knights will also benifit from this blessing when they are off tanking to us paladins.  :)

The next tool that Blizzard has given us is our 51 point talent *drum roll*

Hammer of the Righteous

Oh how I LOVE this new talent.  This is a new AOE, err. . well 3 target Melee atack that gives the paladin up to 4 times (NOTE, tool tip is being changed to reflect the real 4 times damage with 3.0.4 as I write this) your main hand damage per second as Holy damage. This attack causes HIGH treat. 

Perfect!  What we have always needed!  In normal situations a tankadin would use his Avengers Shield to get a head start on frontloading threat.  Only issue with the old method is a very long cool down on Avengers Shield makeing it nearly useless to climb back on top of the threat list once you started to slip.  With HotR we simply nail the mob every 6 seconds to not only build threat on them, but on the mobs next to them then you are AOE tanking.

I have to admit I am aprensive to write about HotR.  I am so fearful of others crying about it. You see. . I belive this little gem has made the prot spec fun again in more areas than just tanking.  It has helped to increase tankadins over all DPS.

In our Kara run I was 4th on the DPS chart!  I have NEVER been above another DPS class no matter how bad their gear was before patch. It was just not my build or skill set.  Now I am wraking up 2.5K avenger shield pulls, 1.5K to a whopping 3K HotR crit.  Its. . its. . just AMAZING!

And then!  PVP!  OH MY WORD!  Forget how over powered Ret Paladins are in BG's.  In previous days I would take Val into BG.  I could live a long long time, but kill nothing!  Now. . .Arms and Fury warriors run from Prot Paladins.  Ret Paladins end up screaming WTF when a prot nails them into the ground with HoTR and a few avenger shield tosses.   ITS AMAZING!

In conclusion, (You know, I was taught to never end a message or post like that :P )  I am so excited to play my tankadin again.  It is so much fun.  We are still having the OH WOW factor.  Just last night we took a 65 fury warrior, and a 66 Enhacment shaman into Underbog.  It was cake.  We planed to do Slave pens as well to get the quest done for them.  We where done in no time.  Tatiaana, my wifes mage, had to go at this point, but Mel, my healer and I said, why not do Steam Vaults.  When all was said and done, even with under level DPS, we did all three colfaing instances in under 2.5 hours!  WOW!  I can not wait to hit Northrend.

Here is to all the protection paladins out in the world.  Education will prevail and we will be given the chance to do what we always knew we could, or always wanted to do.

Loving, Guild, Patch, Kara, Coffee, Vent, Tanking, A Certain Mage . . .

Last night I ventured into the musty spooky halls of Karazahn for the first time since patch 3.0.2 was released with my new guild.  A little over a quarter of our raid had NEVER been in Kara up to this point.  Besides the completely new people to what many call the “entry level” raid instance, about three of our other members where on classes that they had never brought to Kara.  Typically one would hunker down for a long night, or at least a split day run of Kara when running with new players or classes that had not got their raiding legs under them yet.  But not tonight.

I am not going to take up page after page rehashing each and every boss.  However I will say that we one-shotted every boss, with the exception of Mirkblood, the new boss that is only in game for a couple more days.  It took us 2 attempts to figure out the rhythm.  When we did take him down on the second try it was a thing of beauty.  Instead I want to talk a little about the discussions and perspectives that players have concerning the expansion, and what the game will be like.

Blizzard has nerfed boss health and damage output as well as buffing player/class skill sets.  After the first pull of horses on the bottom floor a smile crept across my face.  I have dusted off Valimonde, my protection paladin, and transferred him over to be with this guild. I will be leveling him before I level Paravel, my resto druid.  As a tank with new groups I often pull the mobs to myself and zoom out my camera so I can get a feel as to how the group works and thinks.  In past experience on the simple trash pulls many a pug or new group will wipe once or twice just getting to the first boss.  Not this time.  After we cleared to Midnight, I had confidence in the abilities of our guild.  Each person filled their roll as if they where champions.  Thank you Blizzard.

I am completely in favor of the new philosophy, or at least the newly publicized philosophy to make the game about the player and not the class.  Many of us know of that guy decked out in T5/T6 gear but could not DPS/Tank/Heal a fencepost to save his life.  He may have been a charity case or carried by a guild/raid with people who just took over for his lack of skill.  We also know those players who excel at playing, have a good grasp on how the mechanics of a fight play out, but might not have the greatest gear, mainly because of that little thing called, LIFE.  If last nights run with the ease of care we cleared Kara is an indication, we will be unstoppable in our pursuit of fun and joy in a game that, frankly, sometimes can suck the fun and joy out of you when you are pushing to hard to hit that ubber skill mark.

We have 10 days until we can set foot on the shores of Northrend and begin our leveling and questing to hunt down the Lich King.  In these 10 days I plan to continue to get to know my new guild mates, learn more about the changes to my class (I WILL be posting an article on Prot Pallies soon!  THEY ROCK!) and ramping up for more fun.  Oh, and also leveling an alt or two to help with professions.

To all my guildies on The Scryers in Thought and Memory I tip my hat. Job well done friends, job well done.  Now let’s go kick Arthas’s tail!