I am paid up for only 2 more days

I decided since I had only logged in once in the last month it wasn't worth it to keep paying for WOW. I don't know if this is a permanent goodbye or just a temporary leave of absence. I find I have been spending more time reading and catching up on things from Netflix and playing games on the Xbox. I logged in today thinking I would do some of the stuff I always said I wanted to do before I stopped playing. I lasted about 45 min before I got bored. After having been a Raider and pushing to topple bosses and then burning out I just can't get into the casual play style of WOW. I also have no ambition to push myself to get geared up to do any Raiding, as I get so frustrated with randoms and very few of my friends play any more and are all spread out over different servers. I will probably log in a couple times in the next couple days to see if I can catch anybody online to update contact info but after that I don't know what my gaming plans will be. ToR has had me curious for a long time so I might give it a try when it comes out. I may try some of the free-to-play MMO's out there now see if something grabs me. Any good ideas?

Youbethca is 82!

Its been a long time since I did a ding post. I am slowly working my Shammy up to 85 over with the Effers. They had a Jeopardy Fishing Party yesterday which was pretty funny. I forgot how much fun just hanging out in vent with the guild can be. The bunnies only get into vent during raids, and when I was in the Corsairs we were in vent all the time whenever we were online, sometimes even when were not in Wow. It was good to here Grimm again he had been gone from the Bunnies for a while I'm glad he invited me over to their guild, everyone has been great. I hope I can contribute more than a few fish to the cause someday.

Wow 6 posts in a month I must be enjoying the scenery again

I haven't posted this much in a month since last July. I would like to say its because I have something to say finally, but mostly I think its just I am having fun again and the game kind of feels new again and I am taking my time to explore it rather than just speed through everything and miss out on the little things. I find myself reading quests and taking my time to get things done. I am jumping between characters frequently as well. I also am having a blast hanging with the Effers they know how to keep it fun and it sounds like they are making a little progress too. I am not focused on that right now so its not something I am paying a lot of attention to. But much fun is being had by most as far as I can tell :)

Team 2 rocks Ulduar!!

We started a second raid team this week working some undergeared toons and alts in Ulduar. It was a ton of fun. Seeing some of the fights in there from the dps side is way different. I think everybody had a good time and we pushed through the first 2 sections and the crazy cat lady in one night. I think our team 2 may do something our team one never got to do finish Ulduar. Which would be awesome because I would really like a chance to see the Yogg fight. I've heard that it is an insane fight and I am actually looking forward to seeing if we can do it. Tomorrow ICC and another chance to kill Rotface!!

Updated rollcall: My toons or Critting you with a Walloftext

JuI thought I would start off with my Nath toons. My 80's Chowyunfat, Iamthetick, Newguy, Psychostick, Septictank. I barely log in on any of them anymore. Maybe once a month or so mostly out of nostalgia. I also have a 78 warrior Warriorbarbi, and a 71 mage Happymadison. I do plan to get them to 80 (or 85 depending on how long it takes, lol) just to know what every class besides rogue plays like at endgame (My highest rogue was 18 I just don't enjoy the playstyle). I think it helps to know what the other classes are capable of and gives me a better idea what they can bring to an encounter. I also really like leveling, it is one of my favorite parts of the game exploring and questing and sometimes just mindlessly killing for xp. When my employment situation gets more settled I intend to transfer Newguy, Psychostick, Warriorbabri, and Happymadison over to Alleria. I really don't want to level another priest and I miss having a higher level mage, and warlock, I also wouldn't mind having a tailor and an engineer since leveling those is kind of a pain.

Okay, so on to the real toons.
Mistrk: My tank, my original toon, the one who gets the majority of my attention. He is ready to kill Deathbringer Saurfang, my gear is right where I want it. the number of upgrades I am really looking for is very small, just the necklace off of Marrowgar, the bracers from the
aforementioned roadblock and just getting the 95 frost emblems for my next piece of t10 and farming primordial saronite on my other toons to craft the boots(1 down 4 to go). I have worked really hard to get to where I am with him now and I can't honestly think of an encounter I couldn't tank if given the chance.

Youbetcha: Formerly Surething on Nath my shammy is getting decently geared pushing some solid 3k+ dps for an alt, and is also a lot of fun, Lava burst crits can put a smile on your face when they go for 12k, he is my primary primordial saronite farmer right now since he is my only other 80 on Alleria but hopefully that won't be for too much longer.

Iamthetick: Version 2.0(I know fail on originality but I just like then name and I was sure I wasn't going to transfer the other one so) He is now level 70, I have started working him through Northrend but its going slower than I would like because I am really tired of leveling through Northrend. randoms help but at the low 70's you are stuck doing UK over and over again, ughh.

Lilangrydude: My DK is 71 and I am slowly leveling him as my second tank(third if you count warriorbabri, but she's on hiatus right now, lol). He is also my JC so I do get that daily done every day, he already has three epic patterns so that is going well. I am enjoying tanking with him right now because its pretty easy and most people appreciate seeing a good DK tank because they are the primary bad tank out there. Not that they are all bad it just seems more bad tank situations turn out to be DK's who just want a faster queue time but don't really know what they are doing.

Rootandnuke: My druid is moving fast (heirloom gear is crazy at the lower levels, 5 levels in a day is easy without really trying. Honestly I just like druids, they offer so many different options they just are fun. I only really enjoy being a boomkin though so hopefully I can get to that level quickly and get to the point where I am not oom all the time.

Septicktank: The only other toons I play at all are on Bloodscalp. I don't put a ton of time in over there but occasionally my friend Tom and I will level our High level horde toons together. we are both 74 and really looking forward to finishing the Wrathgate questline from the Horde perspective. My DK over here is purely damage as my friend has a warrior tank. makes for clearing content ultra quick with both of us.

Ibeatarse: My 44 horde hunter is an anomaly I wanted to level a horde toon and I am a big fan of hunters so he is a lot of fun. One thing about playing him though is I don't know where anything is on the hordeside so its way slower leveling. I go in spurts with him, but eventually he'll get leveled up because I am crazy.

Well thats the 14 toons I have put any real effort into. I have 40 created toons between 10 servers most of the others range from 1 to 10 as bank alts or toons to check out other servers. A couple are for when my other servers are down but that is a lot more rare than it used to be. Thinking about it the realms are way more stable then they used to be a couple years ago, looking at it I have a 14 on a server that used to up when Nath was down. I totally forgot about him. Its interesting to really look at all the toons you have out there when you have crazy altitis like I do.

Well that was extensive and a good look back. We are taking a shot at the roadblock tonight. I watched a couple videos to see some strategy's and so hopefully there will be a post tomorrow of our awesome victory (Yes and SS or it didn't happen lol).
/endwalloftext
K Out!!

I am going to do better this time

I just thought I would post that I am in between contracts with my employer right now. During the summer when I wasn't working I really didn't post at all and I don't want to do that this time. I don't expect to not be working nearly as long this time but I can't say for sure. I have been playing sporadically. I played a ton right as the new year kicked off. I was on all the time for almost a week. I kind of burned myself out. I took a couple days away from WOW and it was good, reading and watching movies. I even downloaded the trial to Fallen Earth. It has some really entertaining parts and I can see that it is a pretty fun game. Its nowhere near as polished as WOW but how could it be being a new game and WOW has been out for 5+ years. It is easy to get into the storyline. I felt the controls were a little goofy but I changed some of the key binds and that made it a lot more familiar. I don't know if I'll play it much beyond the trial if at all but it was definitely interesting to play a different game since I barely play anything besides WOW anymore. The only thing I turn my xbox on for is instant view Netflix movies, which is awesome but I used to play a ton of console games, I have barely played any of them at all in the last 2 years. Mostly in WOW I've just been leveling alts. I am just so tired of dailies and I ran a ton of the random heroics I was just looking for something different. I do like running the low level dungeons with my alts although its probably 50-50 on whether you'll finish the dungeon or not.Well this got longer than I thought it would but I hadn't been on for a while so I guess that makes sense.
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.

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.

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.

I'm on

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

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

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.
endwalloftext
K Out!

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.
/endwalloftext
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?

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.

Last nights raid and the Icecrown Radiance thing

First off last nights raid was kind of a pushover. We rolled through 3 wings of Naxx like we know what were doing, well because we kinda do. My favorite part was tanking the adds on Gluth because I'd never done that before and rounding up Zombie Chow is actually pretty fun. My least favorite part was missing the jump on Thaddius 3 TIMES!! (grrrr). I felt like such an idiot. Luckily we were coasting through and I was lucky enough to get the jump finally and not wipe us all on a polarity shift but still. We DE'd a ton of stuff because not very many people really need anything out of there anymore and we might need to think about making Thursday an Ulduar night and leave Naxx as an offnight raiding thing for alts and fun runs or achievements. But I'll leave that up to the higher ups. I just go where they point and smash my shield into monsters. It is good to run though to get some raiding experience for and good practice so who knows. I really like the progress we are making and I think with a good push we could really start banging Ulduar out and run through it just like we do Naxx. We also ran the H daily which was H Toc and I don't think our raid leader knew that when she brought her priest in because she didn't seem confidant about it but other than a couple wipes on Paletress (which without a shaman can happen to anybody because of that stupid fear) we moved through it pretty good and got some upgrades for people which is always nice.
OK, Icecrown Radiance or whatever the chill thing is called. I actually am going to be in the minority on this one and say its probably a good thing. Obviously its an artificial factor to make the encounters harder but I think it has even more to do with the changes they are going to be making with stat allocations in the next expac and I think if you know what your doing its not going to effect the outcomes its just a debuff and I hope it makes the encounters easier to balance and so they are fun and exciting. Its not going to keep anybody from trying to kill Arthas so might as well just get over it and keep gearing up for the showdown.
K Out!

Old April fools patch notes are hilarious

I was reading Righteous Defenses reaction to the latest Patch Notes and he had a link to some old April fools patch notes. They are still funny even now.
3 of my favorites:
Scholomance is now spelled "Sko-lo-mance" to alleviate confusion about its pronunciation. In addition, a sound file has been added outside the instance portal which will phonetically sound out the name upon zoning.
Edwin Vancleef will occasionally shout "Hey you guys!" as players fight their way through Deadmines.
Additional grass areas have been added to the enemy faction's zones. This grass is exceptionally green

Iron Council down! Ignis still kicks my butt?

We did our now weekly run into Ulduar this week. Got through the first 4 bosses we know in 1 shot. We did have some deaths and we are still learning a little bit but mostly we have them down pretty good. We gave Ignis a few tries but it is a frustrating fight for us and we gave up on him and moved on to Iron Council or Assembly of Iron or whatever lol. This fight took us a few rounds to get the hang of but unlike Ignis we made steady progress each try (except for the next to last attempt where I mistargeted and wiped us in fifteen second, grrr). We are really moving through and I think next week will be even better!

Sarth +1 is down, progress is good

Yes, I know again I'm way behind the curve, but I don't care because its new and fun to me so there. Well it took us a few wipes and some reconfiguration of duties but we got the +1 down. we ended up using a 3 tank config to get it done because I was really having a hard time getting the drake and all the adds and avoiding the flame wall. Once our dps warrior switched to tank and he took the Drake I gathered up all the adds we took it done easily with no deaths. Its funny how you can got from total wipe to easy clear with a slightly different strategy. I think I have couple ideas to get it done with only 2 tanks I'll have to talk to Swan about it though to see what she thinks. We also took a couple groups to HHM and Shima was lucky enough to get the mount so gratz Shima!! Looks like were going to Naxx on Thursday again and we are starting Ulduar early on Saturday so we can try to make good progress on some new bosses. We should be able to clear to Ignis pretty quickly and hopefully make quick work of him this time. We think we have a good strategy in place. I am looking forward to it and am really glad to have found a group that is so fun to work with.