Saturday

Ironic? Funny? Infuriating? You be the judge.

(Note: The 3d models below can be turned, zoomed in and just generally manipulated with your mouse, have fun!)
This has been quite the week for Kate and myself, as far as World of Warcraft is concerned. Now that we're both doing a good bit of raiding, we've both seen quite a bit of payoff. The loot's been dropping for the two of us like nothing. Funny story, though, about her current gun. As you may or may not know, a Hunter's bow, gun or crossbow is extremely vital to their usefulness. They got a crappy one, they don't do crap. They got a good one, they do good. Simple equation. Kate's been lamenting her bow, Valanos' Longbow. Found this cool 3d model somebody made of it even, on thottbot.com.

Here's a fun little way to view it. It's an okay weapon, y'know, if you aren't raiding. But she's been jonesin' for something better mighty fierce. So one day, while we're out questing, somebody shouts out their luck at getting Don Santos' Famous Rifle to drop for themselves. It's definitely an upgrade, so after a few minutes haggling she buys it from the gentleman for 1,000 gold. Not a small investment, but well worth it for an upgrade of that stature, she says. She's extremely excited about her new gun, and in the Karazhan raid she's so happy, plugging away bullets like crazy, practically squealing with joy each time its bonus procs. Finally we're up to Prince Malchezzar, the final boss, and we take him down easily, we've got quite a good group with us, and lo and behold, what should drop but the Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix.

Now, this bow here is much, much better than the gun that she just bought. After we finish in Karazhan we head out for Zul'Aman, a jungle dungeon with many nasty trolls. So we're ripping through the place, doing rather well, making good time, we even get the bonuses for killing the first two bosses within the time limits! Nothing really stellar drops for us, except off the second bosses' extra treasure chest dropped the Tuskbreaker, a gun that's even better than the Sunfury bow of the Phoenix that she was using before! Just in that little span of time, she bought an epic gun, and then won an even better bow and a gun that's still better than before! I even got to say "I told you so," when she said she was kinda sad she'd dropped the 1000g for the first gun.

Impressions of madness and sanity

I've had a few opportunities to play Warhammer Online. I've tried a varities of archetypes and sides. I must say, I prefer to play Chaos as a Zealot. The Lord of Change, Tzeentch, holds my soul! Unfortunately for me, my beloved plays an Empire Bright Wizard. She channels the primal powers of fire for the Sigmar and the Emperor. A few things I like about Warhammer online; although it takes many tips from World of Warcraft, it doesn't do it in such a way that makes it feel like a clone; it feels like a completely separate game, albeit in the same genre. The professions in some cases is not exactly intuitive, Scavenging for example is hard to grasp how to salvage some of the wrecked items which (theoretically) can be repaired for use, but is very simple to see which enemies have extra loot that only Salvagers can acquire, but Cultivation is rather entertaining although more time-consuming. The seeds drop very frequently, and it is apparently the supply profession for alchemy, or chemistry, or whatever they call it, I dunno. More than that I haven't found trainers for, we'll see what's available in later portions, thus far Rank 5 is the limit of my accomplishments.

The UI would be my biggest complaint. Sometimes it feels very crowded and busy, with notifications sometimes occupying important parts of the screen. However, the ability to choose a defensive target is very nice, allowing simultaneous support through healing and buffing as well as continuing a stream of damaging abilities, which is useful for when you're with only one buddy. This came into sharp relief when I was working with some people I met online, three Marauders, the close-range damage class, were attacking groups of well-armed refugees. They were close to dying when I came along and managed to keep them alive long enough to dispatch the remaining few, so they invited me into their party. At first, they had difficulty with groups of enemies, engaging one or two at a time, but a few pushing through to attack me, who has fewer defensive capabilities. But later on we found a Chosen, the tank class for Chaos (tank = heavy armor, many abilities to keep the enemies focused on himself), and things went much easier, I'd keep him as a defensive target, keeping a steady stream of healing spells going on him while being able to use my offensive spells to weaken and chip away at the enemy, while the Marauders just went wild, and if one started getting low, I'd just switch defensive targets to heal them, while still keeping an eye on our Chosen friend. Quite successful.

My goal for this post was to make it easy for people to understand who don't have much of a background in video gaming. Feel free to ask for clarification. So that's all I can think of right now, I'll post more about my experience as an Imperial Warrior-Priest and also on my World of Warcraft guild's progression and my never-ending quest to get better and better gear.

Tuesday

Another weird pet incident, and Molten Core

Jon was on his hunter helping me finish up some quests (stupid escort quest npcs loooove to make those things impossible to solo) when I noticed that his pet was a LOT bigger than it should be--it was another of those weird things only one of us could see, of course, so I took a screenshot. I don't have one for comparison, so all I can tell you about its normal size is that it comes up to about his character's knee. Yeah. So, this is much, much bigger.



We were going to go to the library afterward, but the guild had other plans....apparently, they wanted to raid Molten Core. (Of course we went along!)

Most of us had never been there, or completed the attunement quest, so we had a warlock summon us in. I think we started out with about 18-20 people, four groups, though when we stopped we were down to 15 or so. We had no trouble with most of the fights, although the last two we did were a bit tricky--on Baron Geddon, the Ignite Mana wasn't dispelled, and I think most of the DPS ended up having to auto-shot or wand him. I know I didn't even have enough mana left to feign death when he aggroed to me (and if I hadn't brought bandages, I wouldn't have lasted that long, since I think the healers were oom too). Then on Shazzrah, only a couple people knew what to do (myself not one of them) and the tank had a bit of trouble getting aggro back after he blinked. Apparently we were supposed to run toward the tank...who was also running around...yeah. If we go in there again, I am going to suggest that we mark the tank so we can actually tell where he is--everyone looks pretty much the same when you don't know them very well, and we had a bunch of alts and people I'd never met before in there.

We stopped after that--it would have taken a lot of time to finish the run, since only one person had the item to extinguish the runes, and people were getting hungry and a bit sleepy. It was really, really fun to finally be in there though--I never thought I'd have the chance, since no one runs MC anymore--and I did well enough to be very proud of myself. 8th on DPS, passed a level 70 hunter on damage a couple of times, and I'd retrained my pet with extra stamina and as much fire resistance as I could get. Plus Jon showed me how to pull Baron Geddon as a hunter (Eyes of the Beast and run away!), which was very neat.

Anyway, a few screenshots:

Waiting to get started...





Fighting the core hound boss, Magmadar:



The whole raid, clearing out some mobs so Jon could pull Shazzrah:



--

I got WAR installed but it runs painfully slow even on minimal settings (which probably aren't very minimal, since they're not particularly customizable, from what I can figure out. I've been playing it on Jon's instead. Fun, lots of story, and the quests are not hard to figure out how to do. And I LOVE public quests (I'll let Jon explain those). The world isn't as, well, there as in WoW--there's not the feel of some huge place with its own history and mythology and stuff going on that doesn't involve you--but I've only reached level 5, and maybe it gets more absorbing later on. And there are a huge variety of different things to do, so getting bored is unlikely--RvR scenarios, quests, public quests, kill collectors, crafting (which is strange and difficult to figure out at the moment), just exploring, etc. If only it ran properly on my computer. :(

Sunday

Warhammer Online

Still waiting for my download to finish. Had to pay for the stupid download site because it messed with the files the first couple times we tried the free download and we were not going to sit through another 12-hour queue. Blarrgh. They'd better not be using that site to distribute patches...

Jon's playing right now, and it looks fun. I had trouble getting him away from the computer to eat so it must be good. Heh.

Not sure what class I'm going to try out first, maybe Witch Elf or Sorceress. If the download ever finishes; it's been at 88% downloaded for the past hour, and I am getting impatient.

Oh well, I can use Jon's copy while he's at work tomorrow :)

Thursday

My pet is elite!

Had something weird happen earlier where Jon could see my unnamed wind serpent as an elite Son of Hakkar, despite the fact that taming a pet makes it lose its elite status and any name besides its pet type. Once he logged out and logged in again it was back to normal. Still, very cool. :)

Whoa! Where am I? How did I get here?

Well it would seem that after having dated for a few months, and getting married too, my wife thinks our relationship has finally developed far enough to allow me to post on her blog. I hope it's now our blog, cuz that's more fun. Hmm, I think I'll probably take a while after this post here to play around with what I can do. Test my limits, so to speak. As surprises nobody whatsoever, the bulk of my posts will likely be updates on the various video games that I'm playing or the D&D campaigns that I'm engrossed in. I shall also use this to give updates on any stories I may be writing. As for my love, I'm going to bug her until she starts to work more on her writing. This is kinda weird, I dunno if there's any way to get feedback or anything; I've always been better at writing dialogue than monologues. Anyway, it's raid time for me, Karazhan FTW. I feel like every time I start raiding and get 2 steps forward, something happens and I get knocked 4 steps back. Progress is difficult, but hey, at least I can say I've cleared most of the 25-man raids. Till next time, always remember not to stick the paperclip into the light socket.

I melted the toaster.

Yup.

Not much more to say about that, except that we could really use some more counter space here. I mean, a double sink is nice, but if I have to put appliances on the oven because there's no where else...

eh. I was careless.

Jon wants to start posting entries here now too, make it kind of our gaming blog I guess. Which should be fun, since we've pre-ordered copies of Warhammer Online, meaning we get to test out fun stuff in open beta (starting on the 7th) and start leveling early. I just hope it runs on my computer--seeing how groups work will be half the fun, after all.

And, at long last, pictures of my Night Elf hunter. I don't actually have any with Macavity in them, since I have most recently been working on training a red wind serpent for when I hit 70 and start raids and such. (I'm level 65 right now.) So these are just Izsera and her currently unnamed pet--I'm not sure quite what to call him, though I have a couple ideas so far. If anyone's wondering, he's a Son of Hakkar from Zul'Gurub.

(Screenies were taken in a very pretty part of Stormwind, the human capitol, with all my settings turned up.)