It may have taken us a couple hours, but we killed Ony woot!

Our group got together last night to take down Ony last night and since we had never been there as a group we had some learning to do on the mechanics of the fight, or how to avoid deep breaths lol. It's always funny how it works out where you struggle and struggle and then when you get it everybody is alive at the end. Some loot was passed out and fun was had by all or at least by me I guess I can't speak for everyone.

Weekend Update: Not much WOW actually

I actually spent the greater part of my weekend reading and catching up some TV (by the way TV on DVD and streamed on the Internet is the only way to watch TV. The only thing I actually watch on TV when its on is football and even that's very rare lately). I did play my horde toon on Friday night that my friend and I are leveling together. We are both 70 now and pushing hard through Howling Fjord. I did play a little Saturday morning but just a few dailies. I think I actually played Gears of War 2 more on Sunday then I did WOW this weekend. I felt like getting on the XBOX a bit after my friend brought his copy of Assassins Creed 2 over. I wish I wasn't broke because that game looks like a lot of fun. Maybe I'll ask my folks to get it for me for Christmas hahaha. Actually I'd rather they get me a microwave since the buttons on mine are going out(Do you know how annoying it is when you can't press the 1 on your microwave.) I didn't mention yet though that we made some really good progress on Ulduar last week. We finally killed that jerk Ignis and also got Auriya down to. We did kind of a peek at the Hodir fight which didn't go too bad actually I think with a little practice we should be able to take him out with a few more tries. So thats going well. I probably should have gone into Naxx this weekend with them I just was not really into WOW and needed to recharge the batteries. I have been pushing hard at WOW since the big server move and while its definitely been awesome I am now for the first time feeling the stress of being a raider. Its just something to get used to. I do think though that this move has given me the best chance I could ever get at killing Arthas and that's really going to be awesome. I may be the only guy on the Internet who is not pissed about the gating thing they are doing in Icecrown but this actually gives our guild a shot at going into Icecrown Citadel and keeping up with everyone else. I think we are basically geared enough to go in when it comes out, and while we might take longer to get the fights down with it being slowly released we will actually have a good shot at keeping up on our limited raid schedule. So hooray for false barriers I guess. I do understand what the other people are complaining about though and I don't think they are wrong in their opinions either. I am just trying to enjoy the game for what it is rather than what it used to be.
Wow I really need to watch it or all my posts will be giant walls of text.
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K Out!

The Tick is 80 woot!

He was even lucky enough to get a Spirit Beast thanks to ESN Rare, a handy little mod that will put out a warning when it scans a rare mod in the area. I also did some planning ahead and thanks to the Tournament and 2 runs through reg Toc at 79 had him one trinket away from the Superior Achievement and with 7 epics. I really missed having my hunter maxed out and I had a real debate when the expansion came out who was gonna be my first 80 my Hunter or my Pally, well then the great BM nerfbat came out that really turned me away from my hunter for a while. He is really fun though and I am really glad I got him leveled up. I guess the question I need to ask is what do I do with him now?

My Road to WOW

Jaded Alt did a post last week about what their road to WOW was and I thought I would give it a whirl myself.

I can remember the first video game I ever remember seeing, it had a plumber and he kept running to his right to try to save a princess. Yes Super Mario Bros. was the first video game I remember ever seeing when Nintendo first came out my cousin got one for Christmas which was at our house that year and we hooked it up and the whole family squished goombas and picked flowers for a couple hours. I myself didn't get a Nintendo until I bought one myself which by that time my cousin had gotten his genesis and they had gotten the Sega channel but thats neither here nor there. My first video game machine was a Commodore 64. It had a place to stick cartridges in the back and a disk drive. I had like 7-8 games I think but the ones that got the most play were Centipede because my Mom was good at it and I played a very deep RPG called Mars Saga. You could create all kinds of characters and you walked around maps exploring areas and you would combat random groups of bad guys, It also used a casino as a way to help you make money in game (I think that's why I don't like slot machines because I used to play the slots in that game all the time) If all of your group died you basically had to start over and begin from scratch it was kind of hardcore You had all kinds of skills and equipment and weapons. It was a really entertaining game and I understand now why I have always liked RPG's so much after getting into that game so much. Eventually between my cousin's my own and the neighbor I played a bunch of Nintendo games Castlevania, Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear, Super Mario Bros 3 being the most memorable, and I played a ton of Tetris, don't know why just really liked it.

When we got a PC I played a couple of strategy games I think came from the same company Masters of Orion and Masters of Magic which were very similar to original Warcraft in that they were build up groups of troops and buildings and go clear the map of everyone else type of games. They did have alot more race options and there was even diplomatic options, but it usually came down to destruction. I don't really remember too much about them actually, although I did play them quite a bit. A couple of my friends had Warcraft 2 and Starcraft so I played them a little bit but mostly just custom modes. When I moved out to go to college I really wasn't playing any video games, my roommate had Warcraft 2 and would make custom maps as hard as he could and see how long it took me to beat them but that was really rare. But my other roommate had a friend who needed a place to crash for a couple weeks and he brought his PlayStation over with him and had Final Fantasy 7. Now this was a totally new experince for me. I saw that first cutscene in FF7 and I was blown away. Well I was officially turned back into a video game junky at that point. I bought a used PlayStation and started accumulating games as I could afford them. I must have put in over 300 some hours on FF7 that game was on so much at my house that even still a bunch of my friends know the music you hear after winning a battle (dunna duh na dun dun-na, either you know what I mean or you now think I'm a crazy person). I was also a huge fan of Resident Evil 2, Castlevania Symphony of the Night and Gran Turismo. I ended up playing a ton of FF8 through FF10. I was a huge Final Fantasy geek. Moving up the video game food chain I had preordered my PS2 and got it right away although I ended up going through 2 of them before it was all said and done (I never thought of it before but that means I had more of those break than Xbox 360's which I've only had one Red Ring Of Death on). I actually ended up having an Xbox, a PS2 and a Gamecube (hey mariokart and super smash bros were awesome party games and were 4 player right out of the box, and well everybody I knew had Halo so if I wanted to join in the fun I had to get it, I think I had 3 Xbox games total compared to the 30-40 games on PS2) like I said junky. I think I tried almost every RPG that came out on PS2, but I gave up on Final Fantasy when 11 came out. I just didn't think it was right to pay a monthly fee to play a video game (hahaha that sure changed) Well when it was time to decide what was next I sold all three of those systems on Ebay to pay for my Xbox 360 and although now all I have it for is to watch instant Netflix I still think I made the right call (I sure am glad I didn't buy one of those HD-DVD addons though, lol, I was waiting that out to see who won). Well I guess that about gets me to my WOW story.

I had known a few of my friends who played WOW over the years and I had watched them play a bit and I never really thought I would like it the graphics didn't impress and I had become such a console fanatic that all those buttons and keyboard shortcuts just looked like too much work. Well my neighbor (who coincidentally was my also my roommate back when I was introduced to the PS) had gotten talked into doing the free trial by one of our friends and was having fun and a bunch of our friends were all playing together leveling up and stuff so he was like just do the free trial if you don't like it just quit. Well I thought alright I can handle a free trial so I loaded it up and this was about a month after TBC came out and I started an alliance pally (which was probably a good thing looking back as they have so few buttons to push as you level up) on the server they were all on and well of course got really into it, the on rails design of the quests and the constant reinforcement you get from leveling up was really fun and having people to hang out with and talk to on vent while we played was really cool. What got me into the WOW bloggosphere actually was looking something up on Thottbot and not finding it so I googled it and found WowInsider (WOW.com now) All of the sudden I was hooked and started reading it everyday and when BRK said he had his own blog I started reading it too well then I started reading a ton of different blogs and now I have people who actually read my little blog about WOW. It seems so weird and I never could have predicted it but here I am and I don't see the end in sight anytime soon.
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K Out!

Invasion

Well Swan was nice enough to say I could invite some of my old guild members over to the new server if they wanted to come and wouldn't you know it I have a few who are already on the way and my roommate ran the H daily with them last night. We may even have enough people to start running 2 10 man teams or a 25man team. I know that Swan would like that because she hates leaving people behind. I totally understand that. It will be interesting to see how things progress from here but I'm sure everyone will get along great my new guild is full of awesome people and I have been having a blast raiding with them.

You may have noticed..

I didn't post a glorious post of our awesome defeat of Malygos. Well theres a good reason for that. We spent almost 2 hours cruising through phase 1+2 and then wiping in horrible fashion on phase 3. I am all for trying to learn a new challenge and I was hopeful a couple times but I am starting to not be a very big fan of that fight. I am hopeful though that sometime soon we will go back and get lucky and kill the big blue dragon. I guess tonight we will have to go into Ulduar and blow up some bosses in there. That should be fun.

Faction Champs Explained

There is a great post up at Maintankadin (great resource for pally tanks). It explains the basic mechanics behind the faction champs fight. Check it out here.

So how was Maly you ask? Well

Actually not too bad we got to phase 3 on every try and we got him down to 10-11% on a couple tries but we really just need to work out phase 3 but I think we are close to getting it down. We just need to stick together better and move out of the lightning balls faster. Except for one try we made it to phase 3 with everyone still standing every time (I tried pulling Maly away from a spark and killed my raid leader on the other one, sorry Swan). We are going to go back tonight and finish him off. I am confidant we'll get him down first or second try actually as long as we get everybody back. It was actually a pretty fun raid even if we didn't kill him.

So I'm gonna tank Maly tonight

This will be new. I have never been in yet and haven't even watched a vid on it in a long time because my old guild quit raiding, so tonight I will watch a refresher. I do know the basics of the encounter with the 3 phases and all the movement and the dragon riding at the end. I usually do pretty good in the vehicle fights (lets not mention that FL from a couple weeks ago alright). I am pretty excited actually and hopefully we'll get a bunch of people their Champion of the Frozen wastes titles tonight (better late then never right). I didn't actually get in very much gaming over the weekend as Saturday had my uncles birthday and Sunday helped a buddy move. I have gotten my long forgotten hunter about halfway through 78 and I am really enjoying it. It took leveling one hordeside to make me remember how much fun playing my hunter really was. Its really weird because he was my second 70 and now he'll end up being my sixth 80 (hey remember laid off over the summer played alot of wow). I don't know what I'll do with him at 80 but I'll figure that out. I am starting to level a few alts on my new server but I am starting to consider maybe transferring a couple of my 80's over because it would be nice to have some full grown alts to help me out. I just am not sure what I want to do honestly. I guess I'll just see how it goes.

I missed last nights raid

It was about 15 min before I got out of work that I started getting a headache. I went home and it wasn't getting any better. I took a couple Tylenol and went to bed for a couple hours. I really enjoy raiding with my new guild and they really are a great bunch so I hope they got going good without me I just wasn't up to it last night. I don't even know what the plan is for this weekend yet so I may not have any good Wow stories to tell next week (quiet back there, I know where to find you, OK not really but it sounds better if you say that.) I am really looking forward to getting back into Ulduar and making some progress. I think we can probably get Hodir and Auriya with some practice. Maybe even start working on keepers.

I don't know anything about Enhance Shaman's but..

If you do or are curious about the mechanics behind them I just read a very interesting post over at Big Hit Box about weapons that was really surprising to me.

In other news, we finished our Naxx from Thursday last night and steamrolled through the last wing and Saph and KT like nobodys business. I couldn't get enough people interested in a Voa though so I called it a night after that. There was a group of people going through Gnomer instead for the lowbies.

It's Monday again??

I'm tired, but that's not that unusual. We ran a couple of raids this weekend. We did an aborted Ulduar on Saturday which with a bunch of Halloween stuff going on involved just 3 bosses, but I just have to say I suck driving the siege engine. I have been driving demolisher's the last few weeks which is no big deal and I think I have a pretty good handle on that. Well trying to be bait for the boss is a whole new ball game and I don't know what to do I get targeted and I try to run away but I get blown up in super fast time. I can't get away from him I am just getting destroyed super fast. I died all three times in very short order. Luckily the rest of raid knew what they were doing without me so on the third try they got it down no thanks to me. I may have to watch some vids on that because I r failboat at that part. XT and Razorscale seemed to go pretty smoothly on my end but somebody else may have had another opinion. Sundays ToC was a exercise in slow learning. I had watched the vids through Faction champs because I was pretty sure that's as far as we would get because that's the kind of fight I usually would say is a struggle to learn. Well I was right we made it that far and thats where we got stuck. Unfortunately it took us a ton of tries on Northrend Beasts and a couple wipes on Jarraxus to get that far. I was a little disappointed actually because since I had switched over we had really done a good job on most fights and making good progress on stuff we were trying to learn. Well Northrend beasts really took the heart out of us I think. We had to make some roster changes early and went to a 3 healer setup and we made incremental progress. It was a very slow learning progress but we finally got them down. I'm glad we got in though because at least now a bunch of people have seen it and we should have a much easier time the next time we go.