Yay on Sarah Palin

As a former resident of Alaska, I'm very encouraged by McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin for his V.P. Yay on her!

In WoW news, we got our Horde toons to level 12, have collected all the Ragefire Chasm quests, and are primed to three man RFC.

But tonight is Kara on the Alliance side, so I reckon it'll have to wait.

For the Horde, part II

With apologies to Deathrender, we decided to roll Horde toons on Ravencrest because I already have a small Dax army over there. So, last night we got things rolling -

- We got up to level 7.
- We picked up our professions.
- We got a guild together - The Wolfpack

Tonight, I'm not sure how far we'll get due to RL stuff, but Thursday night we might be able to get a little RFC in! I really am hoping that we can three man most of the instances to maximize our drops and XP, but we'll just have to see.

For the Horde!

I logged onto my Horde toons yesterday just to see how they were doing, and I was surprised to find myself guildless. It appears that Kruel was disbanded (I couldn't find it on the armory at all). I guess that not logging in for 140 some odd days took its toll on the guild, and they couldn't handle life without me. OH THE HUMANITY!!!!

One of the reasons I logged on was that Teurion, VA, and I are thinking about leveling alts together on that server just for giggles and it helps to have a sugar daddy around (thanks Rysteranch!).

In other news, Smoochie hit 33, and one of our guild leaders quit the guild. I'm pretty sure the two aren't related because the guy quit BEFORE Smoochie dinged, so you all can stop worrying that I'm causing undue drama....again....

On the rise

My little alchemist turned 32 over the weekend. Smoochie doesn't care about taking her time and enjoying the ride...she has a goal of 340 alchemy. Of course that requires level 50 in order to train the Master level, so she's burning through the levels as quick as she can. Currently, both Herbalism and Alchemy are over 200, so she's sittin' pretty for level 35 and the Artisan level.

One thing that I've done differently on Smoochie is that I swapped out PuddyTats! I let go my starting level black tiger striped cat and tamed an orange one from Stranglethorn. And...Ohhhhhh, she's sooooooo purdy!

Last week (Tue/Thu) in Kara, Teurion solo tanked the entire thing! Good ole PuddyTat (Rysteranch's, not DV's or Smoochie's...) got to Growl as a Hateful Bolt soaker and Gouge recipient. Rysteranch did top the Damage meter both Tue and Thu, although he took his time getting there on Thu. He got the Fiend Slayer Boots for his troubles, oh, and a number of badges. His total is 73 (maybe 72) and is saving up for his 100 badge pants.

Interesting....

Hmmmm....looks like BRK left AC.

Not making any implications, just noting some news.

EDIT: Got an email from Stephi. She says the Armory is acting wonky and that BRK is still part of AC. So, false alarm!

On raiding

So, I've taken up raiding on Tue/Thu nights with the blessing of my wife. I'm really trying to put the game into it's proper place on the priority list, while still accomplishing what I'd like to do in game.

Currently, Blood for Blood (B4B) has two teams in Kara and is working its way toward 25 mans. We took on Gruul's lair last week, but didn't make it past High King. Also, there are a couple of people who have a toon in each of the two Kara raids, so we still don't have the bodies to fully fill out the 25 man raids. So, right now, we're still in the building/gearing phase of progressing out of Kara and into the big leagues.

This week was the first time that we've done the Tue/Thu Kara thing. We're shooting for 2.5 hour sessions with an end time of 9 server, which is very firm. The start time is a bit soft due to people not logging on or forgetting about the raid, so it takes some time to form up. Once we get formed up, though, we kick some serious tail!

On Tue, we cleared Lower Kara (Attunmen to Opera) in about 1.5 hours, and last night cleared from the back door all the way through to Prince (skipped the two dragons) in about 1.5 hours. We then had about an hour to work on Nightbane, which resulted in 4 wipes.

Hopefully, once people get committed to the schedule, we can clear to Curator or Shade on Tue and finish up the rest of the bosses on Thu. At the very least this sort of time table will allow us quite a bit of time to work on the two dragons for progression kills.

And, it is my hope that once we have Kara on farm, we can switch the raid on those days to either ZA or 25 mans. Personally, I'd rather go with the 25 mans because there is so much more content down that road, but of course that depends on making 24 best friends that don't mind repair bills, wipes, and discouraging fights.....oh fun!

Nuttin'

DV cranked out the last XP required for level 66 and has all of this level stored up in rest XP.

Smoochie finished up her starting areas and has moved on to Redridge. She's level 22. Today, after work, I believe Teurion will be running me through WC for drops. Yay!

Rysteranch went to Gruul's and Kara - had a great time, didn't get any drops. Did see Legacy, but lost the roll for it.

Daxie healed Kara on Saturday night but could only stay through Opera. No drops.

Dax and his son went to GenCon on Saturday. We saw the largest collection of geeks, nerds, and wasteoids that we've ever seen. I met up with Deathrender, and he showed me how to play Magic: The Gathering. Good times!

Gruul's Lair

On Friday night, my wife went scrapbooking with her mom, so I got to go to Gruul's Lair! We are still trying to get our stuff together as a raid, so expectations weren't very high. And it turned out that we couldn't make it past the second guy in the kill order. But, each attempt went a bit smoother, and we did progress a little bit even if we didn't down the High King.

Oh, and I was very happy with the DPS meter.

Reckon I'll need a /ginvite

I like hunters for the gathering professions. I also like to pair up the complementary professions on a single toon instead of splitting them up.

So, instead of jackin' around with my current 'toon's professions, I made a Draenai Hunter Herbalist/Alchemist. Smoochie is 10 and will get her PuddyTat today after work.

The plan is to balance her and DV's rest xp to make the most of it, but we'll see. As always, the new toon is like a breath of fresh air and motivation to play her is high. Whereas the older toon is in a harder area, and the grind is a bit more daunting. Add to that the desire to level my Herb/Alch and poor DV gets extra drinking time in the inn. /shrug.

Oh, and yes....this one is definitely an alt.....

I've been thinking...uh oh....

So, while everyone else has their panties in a bunch about the plethora of information that is swirling around regarding Wrath of the Lich King some of which will not make the final cut, other of which will be nerfed heavily after player outcry, and most of which I could care less about, (How is THAT for an introductory sentence!!), I am not through with the game as it is right now.

I like being self sufficient. As a three year veteran of Runescape, I had trained every skill/profession into a decently high level on my one character. When I started playing WoW, I was very disappointed that I was limited to two primary professions, and almost immediately created alts to pick up all the other ones. It was the Ryster team, Horde side, on Spinebreaker.

When I rerolled Alliance on Baelgun, I decided to level just a couple of toons (a priest and a hunter) that I really enjoyed playing. Of course, this limited my options for professions, and I had to choose what I thought would be most useful. Eventually, though, I started rolling alts to cover the other primary professions.

Then I transferred to Kael'thas. Once again, I had to choose which toons (and professions) to transfer and which ones would get left behind. I ended up transferring my three 70's and along with them tailoring, mining, skinning, leatherworking, and jewelcrafting. I switched my little hunter alt to Engineering from skinning and had 6 professions covered.

The only other professions that I really cared about were Herbalism and Alchemy, so I created a druid to cover those. But I am having a very hard time leveling her due to my dislike of melee fighting.

And FINALLY, I get to my point. I thinking about rolling another hunter...to be my Herbalist/Alchemist. We'll see....lol

Oh Lordy

I just realized that my blog turned one year old this week. I think it was Sunday the 10th. Well....Happy Freakin' Birthday to me!

EDIT: Uh, I really need to check my facts...it was the 9th....

The weekend that was

I'm running out of wrap up titles. Just remember, this is not only a drama laama blog, but also a personal record of what the heck I've been up to in game.

So, DV hit 65 and 375 mining.

Rysteranch went to Kara on Saturday and topped the damage meters by a good amount (21% of the damage done for the Raid). We did Attunmen, Moroes, Maiden, Opera (Oz), Curator, Shade, and Prince.

Daxie helped out in Kara on Friday for Curator, Shade, and Chess. We tried Prince a couple of times, but couldn't get it done.

And, yes, Rysteranch and Daxie have different Raid ID's, but both went in mostly all guild (Blood For Blood) runs. Unfortunately, there were at least two of us that had toons in both runs, so it's not like we have 20 unique people, just 20 available toons. So, 25 man Raids aren't as close as they may appear. Once Teurion gets back, we'll be looking into getting a Tue/Thu Kara clear together with a possible transition to 25 mans on those days. The Mrs. is ok with two nights of raiding; it's just when it seems to be all the time is when she feels like I'm sucked into the computer.

And speaking of.....the Mrs. and I went dancing Sunday evening. The band was ok, but tended to play way too many Foxtrots (which I don't like) and Swings (which are ok), and didn't play enough Rumbas (Oh....YEAH!) or Cha-Cha's (I like them too!). They did play two Tangos, but we don't know that dance yet...sad for us. On the upside, we did get to wear our new dance shoes. They're definitely better than the regular shoes we've been wearing, but I think they'll take a bit of time to get broken in.

And Kyle Busch won another race. Personally, I don't like the guy (arrogant and snot-nosed IMO), but I will give him props for gettin' it done.

Oh

...and DV hit 64 yesterday, ran SP, UB, Ramps, and BF, and was sick all day with stomach cramps.

I learned'd something

I finally got around to putting a meta gem in DV's goggles. I figured I'd get at least the socket bonus (+4 agi) even if I didn't have the combination of gems for it to work.

Now, I had four gems socketed in various parts of my clothing:
2 purple
1 yellow
1 red

In order for my meta gem to work, it requires at least:
2 red
2 blue
2 yellow

So, I wasn't too surprised that when I looked at my goggles, I needed 2 yellow.....wait a minute! The reds and blues were already covered! That meant that one of the purples was being counted for both a red AND a blue! So all I had to do was replace my red one with an orange one.....yes, that's right, I could make my meta work with just 4 gems socketed!

I switched over to Daxie, cut up an orange gem (and another red one just in case my theory fell through), sent them to DV, and socketed it. Sure enough, that +12 agi/+ 3% crit gem lit up! /hampsterdance.

So, it turns out that dual color gems (orange, green, purple) count as BOTH colors for meta gem requirements, while they count as EITHER color for socket placement. Stop the presses!

Leveling in Outlands

Yesterday, DV hit the big six three. I'm trying to do several things, regarding rep grinds, with him to make end game easier but have to balance that with making the trip palatable as well.

So, I didn't start questing in Outlands until I was Friendly with Honor Hold; I also happened to hit 60 before I started questing.

One of the keys to easier leveling is to start the next area well before you are done with the current area. I did a number of Honor Hold quests, and when they started to get to the more difficult ones that involved lvl 61 & 62 mobs, I ran over to Zangarmarsh to pick up the lower level quests there.

I had collected quite a number of plant parts, so DV was able to hit Honored with CE right off the bat. And, for some reason, a level 61 in Zangar seems to be easier to kill than a level 61 in Hellfire, so the quests in the marsh seemed to go quicker than their counterparts in the peninsula.

At level 62, I ventured into Terokkar Forest to investigate what was going on with the druids. I completed all of the quest chain up to getting the box from Tuurem.

So, that made three active zones that I had quests in that were all appropriate level. I don't know about you, but I think that Oldlands trains a person to finish a zone before moving on. Ok, that might just be my hang up - I like to finish a zone before I move on. But, I'm finding the going much easier by seeking out the beginning quests for the next zone when the current zone's quests start getting harder - even if it means I have things to do in three different zones.

After I dinged 63, I went ahead and finished up all of my Hellfire quests (and dropped one that I really wasn't interested in). I'm back down to just Zangar and Terokkar for my current zones, but when I hit 64, I might just have to see what Nesingwary is up to....

/shrug

I know that it's probably not healthy, but I tend to cut things off after a certain point. The situation with Sidhe Devils, Pox Arcanum, and the like being the case in point. After I saw that I was in a no win situation, I chose, last Friday, to be done with the whole thing - there is only so much grief that I'll put up with.

So, I've moved on. My new guild, Blood for Blood, who picked up Teurion and VA last week when they quit SD has been great to play with. I've been in on a couple of runs with them - even went to ZA on Daxie on Sat. evening. So far, we're getting along and getting to know each other.

Dwarfvader got some play over the weekend as well; he's almost up to 63. Teurion is over in Ohio for the next couple of weeks or so and has terrible lag at his hotel. So, we probably won't be running anything together. One of my new guildies, Cam, also is an awesome pally tank, so I've been getting my fix from him...lol.

Doing the right thing

After digesting the fact that my Pox Arcanum group would not be running because Nas would not play with me, I fired off an email to my fellow Purple Poxers to ask them to kick me.

I made a personal plea to Nas to reconsider her involvement so that the group would not be punished due to my actions, and I will make that plea again here. There really is no reason why anyone else but me should be made to pay for what is my responsibility.

I will miss our time together and wish you good luck with my replacement and Godspeed.

More dominos fall

...and now the tank for my poxer group refuses to run with me.

2 days later

....I am out of Sidhe Devils.

In short, I caused drama and hurt feelings by stating that I would choose to run with Teurion over my own guildies. I would not back away from, retract, or apologize for that statement. I chose a real life friend over my online guildies.

I am bitter about the way the whole thing was handled and am sorely tempted to regurgitate it here for you all to eat. Yummy...vomit.

But, I realize that posting my side of the story (and Teurion's as well) will resolve nothing, and that I must let....it.....go. On the plus side, I really have had no desire to play the game as of late, so I spent that time with my wife, so I owe some thanks to my former guildies....so, THANKS!