My WOW year in review

Wow a lot has happened in the last year in WOW. I only wrote 39 posts in 08 but this year I've already done 116 posts. It almost seems like a different game at this point being in a new guild and raiding and thinking I've got a real shot at killing Arthas. I'm gonna break it up into sections and see where the last year took me.

January: I had only been 80 a short time and I was still running the regular instances to help gear up for heroics (right, who does that anymore, lol). I had my one 80 and was running with some of my friends who were still leveling up their toons to 80. Mostly January was me running regular Halls of Lightning and not getting the defense trinket.

February: I finally got that stupid trinket on my 16th try of Halls of Lightning that was probably the highlight of my month. I started running heroics with some guildies and worked on leveling a bunch of my alts (who now mostly sit on my old server abandoned). I was also deciding what my dual-specs were going to be for my toons.

March: This month was a really weird one for me as my account got hacked and that was an awesome experience, I also joined up with some friends to do the Arena Tournament which was actually alot of fun. Other than that I just leveled alts as my guild wasn't really doing much

April: The Corsairs finally stepped into a raid as a guild even if it was to 9man Voa and Sarth but at least it was something. We also started working on Naxx a little bit and got through Spider Wing and I thought we were on our way to start raiding, finally.

May: We mostly spent May wiping on Heigan. He was our nemesis and not being able to consistently down him was the beginning of the end of our raiding team. We did finally bring in a ringer to get us through Heigan but it was the beginning of the end. I also got layed off at the end of the month.

June, July, August: I'm lumping these together as I didn't really do much during this time but level my alts. We tried Gluth a couple of times as a guild but couldn't get him and a few people just decided they didn't want to raid anymore, or at least that's what it seemed like. I was layed off all summer so I basically just searched for jobs and played WOW when I could. A group of my guildies at the time had started leveling up horde toons on a different server and so our guild never seemed to have anybody on.

September: This was my triumphant return to blogging and working. The Brewfest event was going on so we killed ol' Coren Direbrew til I couldn't stand it anymore. I debated dual-speccing my priest Holy/Disc which I did and worked out well. This is also when I found out you can't skin low level rabbits anymore. I am still very perturbed by this.

October: My new beginning, as I joined my new guild. I was raiding, for real, I finally saw the inside of Ulduar and ToC. I learned alot and started having fun in game again and have been making a ton of new friends. We downed Sarth +1 a couple of times. We cleared through Naxx in record time a couple of times. Our most frustrating fight was Ignis because we trying to find a strategy that worked for us.

Novemeber: This was a month of learning new encounters as we failed on Malygos a couple of nights but had a victory over Onyxia on a different night so at least we keep working together and having fun while doing it. I also got my 6th 80 (mostly thanks to a summer of being layed off much easier to level alts in short amounts of time).

December: Its been a blur mostly with the holidays and seeing old friends and the new LFD giving me so many emblems they burn a hole in my pocket. We had a interesting first go against a overpowered Marrowgar and made even more progress through Ulduar. We did have on failboat night on Ony but you can't win them all. I even missed last nights run because a friend of mine from California was in town this week and it was the only night we were going to be able to hang out at all. I should be sporting my 4piece t9 for tanking tonight so maybe we'll see what we can do and kill some more raid bosses. I have also been running with a friend of mine on a different server and we have been running horde as of now we have 2 72 toons working on Northrend and being really tired of UK it seems to come up alot in LFD at level 71.


So there you have it another glorious wall of text from yours truly. I am so looking forward to the new year and having a lot more fun in game and meeting even more friends and writing more blog posts to entertain and amuse.

K Out!

I hope everybody had a Merry Christmas

Mine turned out pretty good except for having to shovel part of my parents driveway so everybody could get in to park. Iowa has been having a really fun winter this year, not. I also went to see Avatar over the weekend with my cousin and have to say it is pretty good. I would definitely recommend it if you're curious. I did get in some WOW time as well and am slowly but surely building up a collection of Frost Emblems with which to start upgrading my gear. Hopefully we'll have some luck in ICC10 this week and maybe get some of those bosses down. We haven't had a chance to get back over there since our first trip so I am looking forward to dishing out some payback. We went after some of the Heroic achievements this weekend and I am down to 14 left for my Red Drake. A bunch of those are Occulus though mostly because I hate the place. It has been fun and I have been having a lot of fun in WOW lately and it is nice to see so many people on. Gotta say the LFD tool sure has been good to the game in that respect. I have to say the Anomuls achievement in Nexus kind of sucks so I am glad we got that one done.

LFD: Tank vs. Dps

Last night I logged on long enough to do a random dungeon for some emblems and thought since I was still in my dps spec I'd just queue up as dps. Well if you have done this already you know there is a huge difference in wait times for a tank vs. a dps. Its not like it took forever or anything and I did get to do a little mining during the wait which was good as I hadn't done any for a while. I also was in a run with some uber geared dps, it doesn't take much to knock you down a few pegs when you think your doing alright and thought you pulled some good numbers on a fight and look at yourself in third on recount. I was pushing between 3.5 to 4k on some pulls and these guys were way ahead of me like 5-6k every fight. I really tried to buckle down and push it as hard as I could and I may have done some of my best dps ever but those guys just stomped me. so any illusions of me being super dps went away real quick. Thankfully I do a pretty good job of tanking and don't need to worry about it. I did get to see how other people handle certain pulls and groups so that was definitely a valuable experience to have. I hope we get a good weekly raid quest tonight and can push into some other stuff afterwards. This post has a lot of random thoughts, sorry.

I used to like the holidays

My Mom goes crazy around the holidays and so every year I get guilted into helping her decorate and wrap presents. She is a fanatic and does hundreds of little stocking stuffers from the dollar stores and clearance sales from throughout the year. So I have had the great pleasure of wrapping a ton of that stuff. My WOW time has taken a hit. I think I logged on for a little while Friday night but that was about it. I will just be happy when it is all over honestly. I don't even know whats going on this week in our guild. I should be able to run Tuesday and Wednesday so hopefully we'll be running something on those days. At least this only happens once a year :).

I brought my dps gear out of the bag for the first time in weeks last night.

When you are a tank its nice to have a dual-spec but if your like me you really don't use it very often. because rarely if ever do you get asked to go anywhere as dps and running dailies is usually faster in tank spec because you can just grab more bad guys and take down large groups of mobs to speed up the process. Well last night we went into Ulduar to work on some of the bosses we hadn't done yet and we took out Hodir and Thorim which was pretty cool. Our raid leader had brought in another tank to help show us the ropes and since Hodir is a 1 tank fight I got to go ret and even rocking the 4 piece t7.0 set and an assortment of 200-219 level epics I had gotten randomly I pushed out 3500 on our Hodir kill which surprised me since I don't usually do well on movement fights and that fight is all over the place. I actually upgraded 4 pieces of gear last night for my dps set and got them gemmed and enchanted so I am kind of curious what I might be able to do now. I might just cue up some random dungeons as dps to give it a try and be one of the random faceless pew-pewers in the crowd.

What day is it?

I have been working like crazy since Friday. We moved our company to a new building this weekend. We got smacked around by Ol' Marrowgar last week. We may need a bit more gear to get by that guy and then go with 3 dedicated healers from the get go. I do have to say the trash in there is crazy. I half want to go in and just farm some trash so I can get enough rep for my ring. I have only been on long enough to do one random heroic since then because I have been too tired to do anything when I get home from work. I haven't read any blogs, I haven't even checked my email since Friday. I feel very cut off from the world. Hopefully now that we have everything moved things should be much more calm and I may not be so tired by the end of the week. Sorry I wasn't on Friday to run heroics boss I put in 14 hours at work that day and I was done. I will probably log on tomorrow night for a little bit at least get a couple frost emblems.

OK tonight we go into Icecrown

Well I know we were going to go Tuesday but that didn't work out with the servers not being friendly to everyone. I am in the Midwest and have been dealing with the blizzard here so I didn't have work yesterday and got to play a lot more WOW than normal. I have gotten into the new 5 mans and I like them but as a tank I think there are way to many casters (We may unretire crowd control on a couple of pulls). I also think they may get a little tedious with the monologues but other than that some fun and interesting fights. I am pretty happy with everything I've seen from the new patch I even got rid of some of my addons (mainly Cartographer and Questhelper) because now the game covers what I wanted from them. I didn't really have any issues with my other addons although I did have to adjust some of my game settings which was weird why was my camera control changed and my loot window location was different too, just kind of odd. So anyways tonight we are going to go into ICC and take our first shot at the new raid. I have watched the vids and read the strats and I feel like we are going to do great. I am really looking forward to it. I hope everyone else is having as much fun as I am with all the new stuff.

The Ashen Verdict Quartermasters Location

He is inside the Raid Instance, Just go to the right once you are inside he is next to the tier vendors.
K Out!

I'm on

I finally got to log on. Now I can check out some of the new stuff :)

Looks like I'll be tanking Lord Marrowgar tonight!!

Well as long as the servers are up anyways :). I am hopeful though and I have been doing my research and I think I am ready for the fight. As long as we can work together I think we stand a good chance at taking him down. I do want to try out the new 5mans too sometime soon so if the raid doesn't work out maybe we'll jump in those. Also have to do the random dungeon daily and find out what the raid weekly quest is. Wow there is a lot of stuff to do. I am really looking forward to this and I think we are going to have a blast tonight. I hope everyone else is as excited as I am to try out all the new stuff and good luck on whatever you are working on.

Getting in that comfort zone

When I'm tanking I have different mindsets depending on what I'm tanking. I am also a bit of a perfectionist so if I screw up a pull or somebody dies on my watch I can get a bit frustrated. Tanking in a raid is different from tanking a heroic. When I am raid tanking I am prepared for wipes and dieing and frustration and repair bills, I expect these things and try to keep an even keel and come back from every wipe focused and ready to kill the boss. On the other hand I sometimes get a little lackadaisical in heroics because I've "been there, done that" and I don't really need anything from them. Now that's not to say I don't enjoy blowing through one once and a while, and I am always willing to run if some of our guildies need to go. Now last night we ran a couple heroics and I was finally in my zone where I felt comfortable and just rolled through ready to blow stuff up. It may have helped that we did CoS first as I really like that one because the timer is there to keep me on the ball and focused. I made a point to learn how to destroy that place with my old guild and was able to get everyone in our guild a Bronze Drake. It was something I really wanted to help them accomplish and was glad to do it. It doesn't hurt that the place is full of undead and as a pally I am well equipped to handle the undead. We destroyed the Nexus after that too. I had a lot of fun even though we didn't get to raid and I can always get some more Boa gear for my new army of alts because its a little to expensive to transfer all my toons to the new server and I really do like leveling. I got my new hunter to 12 last night before we started the heroics up. Leveling is so much more fun than dailies

Question: If the patch is next week what do we do?

Now I am not in charge of our guild (thankfully, Swan is way better at it than I would be) so its not my decision to make, but I am curious as to what you think our guild should do if ICC comes out next week. We are not a hardcore guild but we do have a regular raiding schedule and we do a pretty good job for where we are in my opinion. We haven't killed Yogg yet (in fact we are still working on the keepers) and we got, I think the word is roflstomped, by Faction Champs the one time we went to the big room of raiding. Now I am a big fan of Ulduar actually (except Ignis that fight is dumb in my opinion), and I would like to finish it out, but it would be cool to be raiding the actual current raid tier with everyone else, as I have never had a chance to really do that before in game. We do have some well geared quality members in our guild and raid team and I think I do pretty good job as a tank so I think we could actually put in some legitimate attempts on the new raid almost right away, especially since everything will be dropping triumph badges and everyone in your raid can be in tier9 gear in a week or two with a little heroic grinding, and the crazy new gear out of the new 5mans. For me, honestly I am good either way because I just want to kill bosses and have fun with my guild. There aare a couple ways of going about it that seem to make the most sense to me. The new gear will help us push through what we are working on now even faster, and would give us all good feelings of moving through content or we could try bashing our head against the new raid for a couple hours a week and fall back to other stuff if that doesn't work out. So faithful viewers what do you think we should do? Either way I will defer to our fearless leader I was just curious of your opinion

So yes we killed Ony last night and 6 bosses Ulduar tonight!

Happy post is happy. It took us a little while but we did down the dragon last night and tonight we did some good work through Ulduar and are going to punch through some more tomorrow. Woot!!

One of my best friends quit WOW

I haven't posted for a while because I wasn't sure what to write. My friend is having some money issues and had to cancel his account. Its weird because he's been playing since vanilla and was one of the main conspirators that convinced me to sign-up. Lately we have even been leveling up a couple of horde toons in our spare time to see the storyline from that side of things. We just got our Warrior/DK combo to 70 2 weeks ago and were plowing through the Howling Fjord. Now I don't know if I want to wait until he comes back to level that toon up because depending on certain things he may not come back at all as he's got a new house and a new girlfriend and his family life keeps him busy. Now I'll still get to hang out with him and we'll play games over xbox live and stuff so its not like we won't be friends anymore but after 2+ years of playing WOW together its now something we don't have in common anymore. It will be something to get used to for sure because it was something we have spent alot of time doing together. I still enjoy the game and my new guild has been great so I don't see myself quitting anytime soon, but I can tell I don't play nearly as much as I used to. I hardly logged in at all over the holiday weekend just getting a level on my warrior alt and another on my shaman alt. I really haven't felt like logging in nearly as much lately at all. I thought it was just because I was waiting for the new patch to come out because I am really excited for the new dungeons and raids, but it may be because I am not spending as much time with my friends as I used too. Being in a small guild of friends where everybody knows everybody and talking in vent all night and going over to each others houses and just hanging out kept us all logging in almost every night I've noticed, now that some of us have kind of splintered off, that my old guild has really fell off where there's usually only 1 or 2 people on at all. I know its not all my fault but I knew that there would be some fallout because I used to basically drag alot of them through stuff and without me there to "drive the boat" so to speak it seems like nothing is going on there anymore. I am very driven most of the time and I like to accomplish goals and in WOW that makes me want to tackle more difficult encounters. That's what led me to transfer to my new server and its what makes wiping on boss fights not such a pain because I can see how everybody is trying to work together to reach that goal. Well this was kind of a downer post so tomorrow I'll have a much more cheerful post about our much smoother Ony kill tonight and whatever other adventures that come our way.
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K Out!