FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU Turkey

I am a horrible blogger. I will not stand the test of time with this, I can almost guarantee that as a fact.

I mentioned it in a prior post, but never actually posted anything about it. So I'm going to pretend that this is on time and type it up as quick as possible, despite having just written a novel over patch 4.0.3a. Here goes!

Pilgrim's Bounty is based off of the American holiday of Thanksgiving. The main idea behind this holiday is to get your Pilgrim gear and do certain things. It's also one of the best holidays in the game if you need to level up your cooking. You can level your cooking profession from level 1 all the way to level 355 with just the five recipes made available to you from the holiday and the ingredients are only available during the holiday, so it's kinda retarded to NOT do it if you're participating.

As per my norm..

Warrior: Pilgrim of '09. Completed 7/9on Day 1, 8/9 on Day 2, and 9/9 on Day 4.

Paladin: Pilgrim of '09. Completed 6/9 on Day 2 and 9/9 on Day 4.

Druid: Not a Pilgrim. Completed 5/9 on Day 3, 7/9 on Day 6, and 8/9 after th holiday ended. Did not complete the final achievement last year or this year, because I'm an incompetent retard and forget to check and make sure she had finished all of them. ><

Death Knight: Pilgrim of '09. Completed 2/9 on Day 1, 6/9 on Day 2, 8/9 on Day 4, and 9/9 on Day 7.

Mage: Pilgrim of '10, Completed 5/9 on Day 7 of '09, 6/9 on Day 0 of '10, and 9/9 on Day 6 of '10.

Rogue: Pilgrim of '09. Completed 5/9 on Day 3, 6/9 on Day 7, and 9/9 before resets removed the holiday.

Stupid Druid..

The Official Shattering: Cause A Retard Labeled The Wrong Patch As Such

So the Shattering finally hit the servers on the 23rd of November. A little too early for my tastes, but that's just due to my lack of poor time managing skills when it came to making sure I had everything finished before Cataclysm came out.

With this patch, of mighty 4.0.3a, the continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms were torn asunder. Where once was wasteland, now there is life. Where once was desert, now there is water. Where once was Booty Bay, now there.. Is still Booty Bay. How did it survive a freakin' tidal wave? Moving on..

Patch 4.0.3a took all of the Cataclysm information that had been released with 4.0.1 and 4.0.3 and activated the landscape changes that will be the standard for all newcomers to WoW when it comes to Azeroth. Still some things are going to be packaged into Cataclysm's release, we only received a small portion of the goodies to come with this expansion.

All of the effects for Cataclysm itself have been added in.. Login screen change, the Cataclysm intro cinematic, the new loading screens for Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Outlands, and Northrend, and the new music.

Aside from the new races of Worgen and Goblins, all new class combinations are currently available to all players. Human Hunters, Tauren Paladins, Dwarf Shaman, the works. All ready and waiting to be used. Race changes are also available for all of these new classes as well, and will continue to be so even with the release of Cataclysm. So, yes, you're (possibly) favorite class will be able to be race/faction changed into a Worgen/Goblin on the 7th of December.

One of the biggest uproars with the patch hitting two weeks before the release of the game was the removal of the capital city portals from Shattrath and Dalaran, the quest hubs for Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions respectively. Those portals were the lifeline for players to return to Azeroth as needed and now they are gone. Two weeks before they actually needed to be. Magi are going to be making a killing for awhile with their portal spells, probably for quite some time. The portals were replaced with class trainers, so people leveling through Outlands and Northrend will be able to train at their quest-hub central for the expansion content they are working on.

Gnomes and Trolls, with their pre-Cataclysm events, have been removed from their prior starting locations into their own little phased zones for beginning their long journey down the road of becoming a hero. With the pre-Cataclysm event of Operation: Gnomeregan; the gnomes now start in New Tinkertown, which is located right outside of the tunnel leading down into Gnomeregan proper. From what I've seen, the quests here are phased to be gnome only, because my fresh dwarf warrior and my level 80 human warrior were not able to communicate with any of the NPCs in a questing manner. For the Horde, the event of Zalazane's Fall moves trolls out of the Valley of Trials and over to the Echo Isles. I'm going to just go ahead and make the assumption that non-trolls will not be able to quest here just as non-gnomes can't quest in New Tinkertown. I haven't explored this opportunity on my Horde just yet.

Hunters get more pets to tame, bumping their pet-types from 32 to 37 with Cataclysm's release. I really don't have anything to say on this subject because my hunter is too low level to give a damn about new pets just yet. Though, I will say this.. With the release of these awesome new pets, I ventured over to www.wow-petopia.com and went through the pet possibilities that will be available to my huntard when she finally gets the ability to have 5 pets at once, and gets the Beast Mastery talent to tame Exotic pets.

Two more things to go with the patch changes before I stop talking..

With the coming of the Cataclysm, Blizzard took the "championing" tool that they used in Wrath of the Lich King for gaining rep with certain factions and gave this unique utility to the player-race factions. Stormwind, Darnassus, Ironforge, Gnomeregan, Exodar, Gilneas, Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, Darkspear, Undercity, Silvermoon City, and Bilgewater Cartel all have corresponding tabards with the ability to "champion." All dungeons now reward rep toward the currently worn tabard, sans the Outlands dungeons because of the unique way they were structured toward giving rep toward the faction involved in their questlines. I honestly find this new feature to be one of the best things that Blizzard has come up with in the way of reputation gains and wish that they would continue to use this method for further reputations. It would be neat to see them restructure the old factions from vanilla in the same way as well. I'd love a Hydraxian Waterlords tabard, even though I'm already exalted with them.

And my final note for this hellacious long blog post.. Experience necessary to level from 71 to 80 has been reduced. Casuals, get busy and hit 80 before Cataclysm is released. You're running out of time, but you have the means. Maybe this means I should level one of my alts too..

Again, Cataclysm comes out next week. I, hopefully, should be able to release another blog post over it within the first week of its release. And then I'll have another coming out soon after that since it's going to be Winter's Veil. I'll probably wait until Winter's Veil is over to post over it, since my usual holiday procedure is to post how much of it I actually got done. I honestly don't see many people trying to participate in this holiday as much as the others, since it's going to be opening up during the very beginning of Cataclysm's launch.

I'll Get Back To You

This just in, I'm behind on my random WoW bloggings..

I'll get around to blogging about The Shattering. Hopefully before Cataclysm comes out this Tuesday. We'll see how good I am with timeframes and stuff of that nature.

Oh, and I'll make a quick update for Cataclysm, before delving in and disappearing. And be back a week or so later to hit you with a Winter's Veil blog. See, I'm planning ahead now.

Phase 4 and the Elemental Invasion

The majority of the current subscribers to WoW probably remember, at least, the event precluding the arrival of Wrath of the Lich King (the third expansion to World of Warcraft), and how the zombie invasion was one of the most epic, yet annoyingly redundant events after created by a gaming company within its own gaming world.

While exciting, the event itself became nothing more than a giant gankfest for the majority of players on almost all of the realms that Blizzard currently had at the time of its manifestation. The idea of destroying the scourge while avoiding the plague itself was simple enough. The only problem with this design were players who purposely got corrupted and didn't get cleansed by the Argent Dawn. And then proceeded to go to lower level areas and infest the players who didn't know any better. Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Well, it couldn't have been that bad, there are a lot of areas in the game." I wish it were so..

I was playing my rogue down in Duskwood. Running from Raven Hill back to Darkshire with some quests.. When out of nowhere, a mob of ghouls ransack the town. And chase me around the landscape. There was no chance, I eventually died and joined their ranks. At first, this event was intense and fun. Really fun. Defending the cities, fighting back the scourge, getting infected and finding an Argent Dawn member to cleanse you, rinse repeat. But once the event kept going for more than a week, it was a giant gankfest griefing match. Ugh..

With the event starting pre-Cataclysm, it's more of a giant waste of time then it is anything else. But, let's do a little background before we get into the final phase..

PHASE 1: Stop the Twilight Cultists from defecting innocent citizens of Stormwind/Orgrimmar. While also heading to random areas and taking down rifts in "space" where elementals are spawning from.
-- Cultist quests take about 5-10 minutes. It's really just a lot of running and talking to people, nothing fancy.
-- Rifts spawn once an hour. For.. 15-20 minutes. You have to down rifts of all four types to get a Feat of Strength called 'Tripping the Rifts'.

PHASE 2: Get the tablet from the dwarf/orc at the harbor/zeppelin and help Ironforge/Orgrimmar was some angry minor-elementals.
-- I will admit, the tablet fights are pretty cool. You use a crystal to gain elemental powers and then blast away elementals with their polar opposites.
-- Running around dropping a totem on mini-elementals is kinda dull. Especially since the CD is longer than it takes to come upon more of them.

PHASE 3: Go mess with the cultists again, who think you were captured, and then go to Outlands.
-- Screwing with the altars was pretty amusing, especially the things the cultists say.
-- Talk to Thrall on the Elemental Plateau. Only good part about this part is PvPing on the Plateau. Cause you have to avoid getting one-shotted by the elemental giants while you're at it. >.>

PHASE 4: Stop the Elemental Invasions of Stormwind and Ironforge/Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff.
-- This is where the event gets retarded and boring. The invasion itself happens every 2-3 hours, woo wait time. After that, you have a 5 minute window prior to the event to start reinforcing the towns. I don't know about Horde-side, but in Stormwind you throw down sandbags and in Ironforge, you set up wall barricades. When the window is over, whether you've finished reinforcing or not, BOOM Rifts with Elementals. This is where it gets dumb. In Stormwind, the rifts are your primary problem, and they are definitely a problem. They're elites and they hurt. In Ironforge? Elementals are pansies. You also have to save citizens from crumbling rocks using a totem. I'm guessing since they added in that little extra feature, the mobs got to be weaker.

Here's the kicker. When that 5-minute window ends and the rifts finally do spawn. You have an hour. Whether you complete the event or not. You have an hour. You also have only what's left of that hour to fight the four elemental bosses you were protecting the cities to actually get to.

Not sure if Blizzard's intention was to piss people off with crappy timer events, but it needs to either be extended or be over with. Cause this stuff is retarded.

Oh, and before I forget.. Pilgrim's Bounty starts Sunday. Get your turkey.

Happy Halloween/Samhain/Hallow's End/INSERT HOLIDAY HERE

And with today comes the end of Hallow's End. Even though it was supposed to end today at 2AM on the servers, it's currently still active, so I did in fact get more attempts in on all of my 80s at acquiring more mounts/helms/swords/whatever. Much like I did a list-off with Brewfest, I'm now going to proceed with one for Hallow's End.. (Totally going to do this with every holiday event, just so you know.)

Hallow's End 2010!

Warrior: Hallowed of '08, finally received the mount, had the 70 and 80 helm, had the 80 sword, had the pet, had the pumpkin hat, 17/20 on the Masks for All Occasions. [Male Blood Elf, Male Goat, Male Human]

Paladin: Hallowed of '09, no mount, no helmet, had the sword, had the pet, had the pumpkin hat, 18/20 on the Masks for All Occasions. [Male Blood Elf, Female Gnome]

Druid: Hallowed of '09, no mount, got the helm, got the sword, had the pet, had the pumpkin hat, 19/20 on the Masks for All Occasions. [Female Draenei]

Death Knight: Hallowed of '10, received the mount, got the helm, had the sword, finally received the Squashling (all I was missing from last year), had the pumpkin hat, 19/20 on Masks for All Occasions. [Female Blood Elf]

And introducing the newest of my 80s..
Mage: Hallowed of '10, no mount, no helmet, got the sword, had the pet, had the pumpkin hat, 19/20 on Masks for All Occasions. [Female Blood Elf]

Honorable Mention..
Level 65 Rogue: Didn't complete the Outland Candy Bucket run, I was slacking pretty hardcore on that one. Since he's not 80; no mount, no helm, no sword, had the pet, got the pumpkin hat. 11/20 on the Masks for All Occasions. [Male and Female Blood Elf, Male and Female Gnome, Male and Female Undead, Female Draenei, Female Dwarf, Female Troll]. He should be a Hallowed of '11.

And while I'm still trick or treating every hour, until work, and then hopefully after work, to possibly complete MFAO on multiple characters, I don't think it's going to happen this year again. My druid was the only one close last year, I've obviously boosted those numbers quite a bit this year in hopes of clearing off one of the most annoying achievements ever.

Day of the Dead begins tomorrow, it's a short two-day holiday with little to no long-time value. If only the pet would stick around.. I want a haliscan hat wearing skeleton wielding maracas. And three weeks from today is Pilgrim's Bounty. Two weeks after that, roughly, is the release of Cata and then Winter's Veil starts the next week after that.

I really never get anything productive done when Holidays are around in WoW.. I spend too much time doing them. But it's alright, I usually get quite a bit of experience on my alts that I wouldn't get otherwise. Not this year though, I slacked a bit. I actually spent more time leveling my rogue through quests and dungeons, instead of farming for the buckets. >.<

Retraction

I'd like to retract my earlier statement about rogues being stupid..

They are actually quite enjoyable. After twink 19 dueling with a friend of mine, I decided to give my level 60 some much needed attention. And have proceeded to level him repeated throughout the last few days. He's currently level 65, out of rest, and using dungeons and the Hallow's End candy buckets as a boost for his experience gain.
Oh, and he's Combat. So I don't give a damn what my weapons are, mwahaha.

On a note that wasn't addressed.. I used to hate hunters too. The change to Focus over Mana has, for some reason, made me want to put some time into my hunter as well. I ran a random on her earlier today and while the group I was stuck with was rather idiotically decent, I was proud of how well I handled my hunter's rotation and abilities.

Maybe I'll finally level that Warlock and Priest that I hate so much with a passion?

Blogovision

I'm going to be customizing my blogger/blogspot/whatever it's called to be more WoW related in nature.

My tumblr, on the other hand/foot, will stay my normal blog and I'll post it with relevant real-life information. Relatively relevant.

On that note.. WoW stuff..

Fury Warrior threat is insane.
-----200% threat increase for tanks DOES NOT HELP.
Ret Paladin rotation is awkward.
Arcane Mages have shitty damage.
Fire Mages are KABOOM
Frost Mages are viable in PvE.
Rogues are still stupid.
Balance Druids are amusingly fun.
Unholy DKs are pretty much the same.

The Shattering

Patch 4.0.1 hits today. Lots of people are excited, lots of people are less so. I'm more in between than anything.

I've been playing for 5 1/2 years now..
Learned how to rock the charts with Fury and be "decent" with Protection on my Warrior..
Learned the ways of facerolling with Retribution, how to throw out heals with Holy, and own everything with Protection on my Paladin..
Learned the ways of the now null Blood DPS spec, taught myself to enjoy a pet with Unholy, and even attempted to learn the ways around proc-spec of Frost on my Death Knight..
Learned how to spam spells for repetitious procs with DoTs through Balance and how efficient Swipe-Spam is for Feral (Bear) on my Druid..
Leveled with the critical mass of pewpew that is Fire, ignored Frost, and came to enjoy Arcane with my Mage..

And now everything that I've learned is out the window and I have to start to re-learn the classes I already figured out how to play, once again. I know that this is what Blizzard was working toward achieving when they decided to go back to Azeroth and revamp the landscape. It's pretty much a new beginning to the game.

New talants, redone trees, new abilities, new rotations, stat updates and changes..

It's all about starting over, really. Or that's how I see it to be. But I don't want to have to start over again. I already did that once.

I know that in the end my opinion doesn't matter and that this is going to turn out to be wonderful for the Blizzard gaming market and that this, for all intents and purposes, actually makes it very easy for Blizzard to keep pumping out expansions for World of Warcraft without having to pull an Everquest and make a II.

Continuation of the First

Malygos Needs To Die!

Man, I love it when it's this weekly. I get to prove my superiority over the rest of the Lotharian community during Weekly PuGs.

Eye of Eternity truly is a fail for pugs. It's kind of like Anub'arak in Trial of the Crusader 25, PuGs can get to him, but they rarely ever get him down. Now, Malygos isn't on that scale of failure for PuGs, but it's definitely up there.

First off, you need a key. A key from Naxx 10, or 25 depending on the version of EoE you're doing. Unless you actually did Naxx pre-Uld, no one knows where to get this key. I raided Naxx, I have the key on my warrior main. It's cool, none of my alts have it, no biggy, someone usually does. Sadly, people don't know that it requires a key, and set up a PuG, and never ask. So you have 10 people sitting in Eye of Eternity.. With no key. Waste of time, Raid Leader is an idiot.

Now.. Phase 1 is easy. Burn him, keep sparks out of his mouth (I love it when DKs and/or Ranged fail to take care of this and a melee ends up downing it)

Phase 2.. Ugh. Everyone can be bad here. I've seen melee on disks fly down into the bubbles before deep breaths, when they aren't can't be hurt by it. I've seen melee NOT get on disks when they drop. And I've even seen ranged not shoot at the Scions. How does this work. It's the EASIEST idea. Kill things dead and move on.

Phase 3. Oh boy. My favorite part. No sarcasm, it really is. My friend can attest to this.. I've been in Phase 3 with a PuG to where I was the only person alive and was spam-healing myself, shielding, and hitting him with the fireball+flame burst combo. For.. About.. Five minutes? Maybe less, now that I realize how short the Berserk timer is at this point. So maybe three and a half minutes. The group had to demand I kill myself so we could try again. And then I got put in charge of leading everyone during Phase 3 due to how well I handle myself.

Now the part that irks me about Phase 3.. The Flame Burst DoT stacks. Most people try to enforce the three combo point DoT stack; so 1+1+1+2. I do a five combo point stack; 1+1+1+1+1+2. So how is it I can get my stack alone to 17+ stacks of the DoT on a five point combo, while people only doing three points can only get to 8.. 10.. 13? I'm wasting more time on my fireballs and ending up further ahead in the end.

How can people be so horrible at Phase 3 that a single person's damage can out-do everyone else's? I can even heal Phase 3 and get my Fireball stacks higher than the people that are supposed to be DPSing. Oy oy oy..

Battle of Wills

Player of World of Warcraft, friend and co-worker of mine, as well as fellow guildie; Trever Beets.

He's been playing for quite a few months now, could be considered a massive altoholic, has been put to the test. When he was past level 70, but not level 75, I challenged him to a race to 80. I would take my level 60 Arcane Mage, with his Bind-to-Account shoulders and chest heirlooms and race him. To level 80.

As of today, as of this night.. I am level 76. And he is level 78.

Time is running short, the finish line is in sight, but who is ahead.. I have the experience gain bonus, but he has the head start. 

Will I win? Can I beat him?

YOU BETTER FUCKING BELIEVE I CAN! >:O

Spontaneous Creation

Because I wanna quote my Tumblr.

STALK ME ON FACEBOOK!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000947075440
DROOL OVER MY TWEETS!
http://twitter.com/Andehshun
TICKLE MY TUMBLR!
http://paragonallychallenged.tumblr.com/

Stalk me, follow me, just DON'T TOUCH ME.

Officially First

Like I said.. Posting things I did that day. With some oddities mixed within when I decide to branch off into a random rant/tangent on something slightly related, but not related.

[I had to edit this in.. I play a bit of WoW. A lot of WoW in fact. So expect a lot of posts to be filled with WoW-related crap. If you don't get it.. Well.. Uhh.. Go away?]

First off.. Brewfest 2010 ends today. (2AM on the 6th, not counting, dailies don't reset.)
Warrior: Brewmaster of '08, had the kodo, had the ram, had the remote, got nothing this year.
Paladin: Brewmaster of '09, no kodo, no ram, got the remote, cried QQ tears of QQ.
Druid: Brewmaster of '10, got the ram, no kodo, no remote, is okay, got EVERY EFFIN TRINKET.
Death Knight: Brewmaster of '10, got the kodo, no ram, got the remote, is better.

Downloaded a new addon called Altaholic, it does.. I'm sure.. Exactly what you think it does. It's a tracker addon. Let's me know who's saved to what, how much gold they have, what their skills are, what's in their bags, what's in their bank, what's in their GUILD bank (haha this is awesome), their talents, their glyphs, and just about anything else alt related you can think of.

Questing on the mage.. Killed a "Two Large Pincers" mob, when she only really had one large pincer, the other was rather small and dainty in comparison. And a "He Who Plays With Food", who got three-shotted to death. Arcane Blast pewpew.

Weekly is Eye of Eternity. MAAAAAAAALYYYYYGOOOOOOOOOOOOS. I'm a master of Phase 3. A MASTER. I could solo him, swear to you, SOLO HIM. Not really, but it'd be neat to watch. I kept a group going for FIVE MINUTES before someone complained that I needed to just die. NOT THIS WEEK THOUGH, no way. Druid died.. In Phase 2. In a dome. To a normal arcane shot. Not even a Deep Breath, just an arcane shot. Inside a dome. /sigh

Radiant Crusade is officially recruiting. This is my new raiding guild with my wife and one of my friends. We're going to powerhouse through the last bit of ICC/RS content and set ourselves up for Cataclysm, bumrush the content there, hit 85, and plow the raids. Be a top raiding guild during the new expansion.

On the Cataclysm note.. TWO MONTHS BLIZZARD. It's all you give me to farm ZG. 21 more attempts at the mounts to go. 21 more attempts. And 10 more attempts in MC at the Thunderfury bindings, since you're probably getting rid of that quest NPC too. Oh, and the AQ Scepter questline. Damn goblins hating me, can't finish that questline off either.

... Till later, cause I have ALL day to post this crap.

Blog-ginings

I've had a MySpace, I didn't use it much and let it die.
I've got a Facebook, it sees some use, but never anything worthwhile.
I've got a Twitter, I tweet.. Once or twice a week on it?

This is a blog. I might use it. I might not. I'm kinda planning on use it to go over all of the wonderful crap that I did for the day, like a after-the-fact daily planner, y'know? Who knows.

Only problem is.. I decided to make this thing when a new day has just started. So that really doesn't work.. Guess the first REAL blog will be at the beginning and end of the day, TODAY. Holy crap, we have a schedule.