Archive for January, 2008

First off, let me apologize if anything breaks, looks odd, or otherwise blows up here. I’m doing some experimenting, and while the majority of my changes are taking place in a safe location, some changes I test here. Usually it turns into a “GAH! BAD! GO AWAY BAD THING!” moment, and quickly vanishes, but just in case, you’ve been warned.

Last night, we proved that we have the Tidewalker fight down. As long as The Boyfriend stays alive, the whole thing is pretty much a cakewalk for us. I have to give major kudos to the healers, as they were on top of things last night. A couple of healers got sent to the Watery Graves right when it could have gotten bad, but quick communication and even faster reflexes kept the tanks alive with barely a bobble. Go team!

The Leo fight still is being learned. Last night was my first night there after our very first single attempt at him. Last week while I was out of town, they got a good couple of hours worth of work in on him. We get to work on him this weekend more for I think a good 3 hour stretch, which will either let us get into the groove of the fight and really learn it, or actually see him downed.

I really regret missing out on those learning nights, because I always feel like I missed out on the process, that I’m somehow behind in “getting” the fight, no matter how much I read up on it or watch other people’s movies. It just takes me back to when I first started raiding with these guys, and they’d been doing the instances for weeks. Then me and my total noob-to-raiding self wandered in with an absolute paranoid fear that I will Screw Things Up and kept muttering to myself “oh pleasepleasepleasedon’tkickmeIswearI’mtryingtolearn.” My Class Leader still laughs at me over those memories, and thank heavens she didn’t think that me asking 500 questions over the night was a bad thing (okay it felt like 500, but was probably more like 10-15). I told her later that I’d tried to keep them as intelligent as I could. Apparently, they were reasonable questions, cos they kept inviting me back.

But it kinda makes me wonder: how many people out there have this problem? That tiny niggling fear in the back of your head that says “Omg wth am I doing here? Please don’t let me get everyone killed.” Or is it just me and my paranoia? (Which is highly possible.)

From NyteTyger (aka Aerye), a good friend that I’d “persuaded” to join WoW, comes a little tale of a hunter gaining a new friend…

… I … am a hunter… born of a family of hunters. I am night elf, of course, of good breeding. As expected, when younger, I cared for the animals living about the house. Sadly, a bear became irritated when I tried to give it a bath, and so I hide my scars under this mask of pure white. The bear wears no mask– a hunter knows well how to care for those things which maul them…

But the time has come… I must gain my OWN pet… and travel the wide world of Azeroth to gain my fame….

In my wandering, I have spied a gallant creature. He is fierce, but I have a secret– my family carries a special inheritance… the “Grippe KungFoo” and with that I shall prevail! And so, I began my taming, knowing the wounds this beast hath done to my body would be forgotten once my taming was done…

Nearly fainting with my injuries, finally it has happened… in in our joining, my pain is no more. My mighty beast and I will begin our adventures… the first being… finding a name….

… I am thinking this mighty beast looks to be… Orang-o… but only time will see what he is to be named….

I have a love/hate relationship with my service provider. When it works, it works very, very well. When it doesn’t work, all hell breaks loose.

The past few days, I’ve noticed an odd slowdown to my wired computer. The laptop running wirelessly has been fine, but the wired computer, my main computer, has been running oddly. It’s been having delays connecting to websites, etc. Once it’s connected, it’s fine. I figured the Mac needed to be cleaned up, so I started backing stuff up, repairing permissions, etc. No big deal. Then last night happened.

It started off with the same weird slowdown. I didn’t bother messing with any of it, and after getting myself prepped for raid later in the evening, I headed offline for a little supper. When it came time to log in, I was faced with even more slowdowns beyond what I’d had before and a 500+ queue that bounced between 10 minutes and 35 minutes. Once I was finally in, I saw the call go out for raid invites, so I sent my tell to the raid leader. Nothing. Sent it again. Nothing. Then it hit me: no one on the screen is moving. Cue the reboot router/modem/computer dance. Too bad that it didn’t work, because 10 minutes later, I had ripped my router out of the loop and plugged straight in to the modem, rebooted everything again, and was frantically IMing the Hunter Class Lead to let her know I was on the way in.

Once I was finally in, I ran to SSC, caught up with everyone, had a ton of manna biscuits tossed at me along with buffs and joined in the killing spree. Hydross and Lurker both got one-shot kills, and I managed to pick up a Nether Vortex along the way. About halfway through the trash to Tidewalker, everyone froze on my screen. Yep, internet fall down and go boom. Another 10 minutes later, still no internet, and I now have a headache from swearing. Why yes, I did call it a night at that point. At least all the raid was doing then was Tidewalker trash runs without actually killing him.

This morning, I plugged everything back in. Yep! Everything’s working fine like nothing happened! Arrrrrrrrgh…

No, I swear I’ll keep this brief. ::shifty eyes::

I’ve been gaming my whole life, or at least a large chunk of it. Having a mother that was a Star Trek and Tolkien fan and who took me to Star Wars opening day (and for weeks thereafter) meant that I could happily explore the “geek” side of life all I wanted. When I asked for “a game thing called Dungeons and Dragons”, she got it for me. I spent insane amounts of time reading fantasy and scifi novels, most of them hers. (And I was always amused hearing her explain to other adults “Yes, my 7 year old daughter is quite capable of understanding the Asimov book she is reading. Now quit bothering her.”) Then there was the added interests in art, which meant I got a ton of paper, pencils, watercolors, etc. for gifts, which was fine by me. My stepmother introduced me to computers via a cradle modem dialed into the Cray supercomputers that she worked on so I could play endless games of Othello while visiting her and my father. Needless to say, at some point all of these interests were going to collide.

Once home computers became all the rage, Mom went off and got one. I learned to program BASIC and did horrible, horrible things in the name of “coding” (ever had to draw art by plotting and then programming vector lines? ewwwww). At the same time, consoles were taking off, then crashing, then taking off again, and I played over at friends’ houses. Finally Zelda came around and I cheered.

Over the years, I watched the game industry’s progress and growth, while going to two colleges and finally ending up a graphic designer with a degree in Computer Art. I got my own Mac for home/work, lost my mind over Myst, and started collecting what RPG games I could find for the Mac. I finally got my hands on a Playstation, lost a ton of time to playing games on it, always tending towards RPGs. Blizzard made one of the new non-RPG games that I played, a little game called “Warcraft.” Then they made Diablo and I lost of couple of months playing it. Oops.

Eventually Sony decided to try Everquest out on the PS2, I got a Beta 1 invite, went back for Betas 2 and 3, helped write a guide for all us totally lost beta testers then went on to run two guilds when it went live. When beta invites went out for Final Fantasy 11 on the PS2, I was lucky enough to get into it, went to the live game when it came out, then The Boyfriend said “So Blizzard’s coming out with ‘World of Warcraft’ on Tuesday…”

That’s when I lost the next few years of my life. Whoops.

So now you know a little more about me. Lifelong gamer, computer artist/designer (although that’s changing soon), avid reader, and happy NE Hunter.

Last week, right before I scooted out of town for family duties, I joined the Blog Azeroth community of bloggers. Much has been written on it by now, so I’ll refrain from pages of glowing words over what a wonderful community it is, and just say, if you’re a blogger that writes about WoW, it’s a really good idea for you to join it. Great people, good times, and tons of helpful info.

Siha over at Banana Shoulders posted a suggested shared blog topic to the members of Blog Azeroth: What do you enjoy about the class you play the most? So here’s my bit on why I love hunters.

When The Boyfriend first said “So I’ll be picking up WoW when it comes out this Tuesday…” and I looked at getting it, I pretty much knew I was going to pick Hunter for my main. Through all the other games I’d played, I’d always been an archer/hunter-type character. Diablo 2, my biggest time-suck on my computer pre-MMO, I’d played the Amazon, with her specced as a bow user (Frost Maiden Bowazon for those that remember what that is). So when WoW came out, Hunter was a natural fit for me. And then I dinged 10 and got this pet… and it fought for me… I came with a TANK?! Awesome!

That’s how I got started being a hunter. Why do I keep being a hunter? It suits me. I have to solo a lot (yey weird work schedules), so having a built-in meat shield is a Good Thing. I liked being able to survive past one hit if something got too close to me (I’ve since gotten better about clothie survivability on my mage). I liked standing at the back of a fight and turning something into a pincushion. I like being able to use my class and spec to the best of my ability to help the raid, while still being able to play the way that suits me best. And I have to say, laying down a snake trap in an instance just to wait for that moment that the boss fears the snakes after they’ve been chewing on him a while, it probably one of the more giggle worthy moments I get these days. (Hey, I’m easily amused. What can I say?)

Being able to have a pretty pretty teal tiger as a pet. Being able to have other cool looking animals as pets. Survivability, utility, sheer fun and chaos. Oh yes, I love being a hunter. Frustrating moments? Oh sure. I have those. But overall, I can’t imagine not being a hunter for any time in the foreseeable future. I’m too addicted.

I just love to travel. Nothing completely sucks the urge to play WoW or do anything productive with any aspect of your life like driving for 6 hours after staying up too late talking to friends you haven’t seen in years, after working a full day in a relative’s store. -.-

Tonight, I’m so not logging in. I need the sleep, dangit!

Headed out of town. See everyone Sunday night/Monday!

I usually wait to call a boss as “down for good” til we get it down twice in a relatively short time, such as two weeks in a row. Last night, we went in to smack Tidewalker around for our raid time. We cleared trash after having one or two issues, but figured out a couple of strategies for aggro and not getting the raid killed. Every raid group is different, and my guild has it’s own raiding quirks (such as one-shotting a boss, cheering, then going to the next boss and getting owned by the first group of trash). So adjustments are always needed til we get that perfect sync in damage/heals/tankage.

The first couple of rounds on Tidewalker were rough, with everyone working on getting settled down. With a 13% and 8% wipe, we knew we’d get him down. It was just a matter of timing. Where we were having issues was in the transition from the ramp to the tunnel when Tidewalker reaches 25% and the globs start spawning. A few moments discussion, a checking of plans, and we started the last attempt. The transition went well, the pally tank did wonders with adds, and we got Tidewalker down for the second week in a row. Go team!

The most amusing point of the whole night was right after the first wipe on Tidewalker when one of the guys said “Hey wait a sec. All 3 hunters feigned death and lived! Not fair!” Then the rest of the guild chimed in, with the guild leader (and lead hunter’s husband) saying “Who wants to see the hunters die next time?” We hunters were all laughing and shaking our heads as people start saying “Me! Me!” Then The Boyfriend (also a raid leader and Main Tank), wise man that he is, says “In the interest of self-preservation, I’m going to have to vote no.” He got a “good boy” from me, and comments of whips being cracked from the GL.

The hunters jokingly discussed not actually fighting the next fight and doing /sit or /sleep instead, but we wanted to get the kill. Although I do wish one of us had Engineering to have jumper cables to help get people up. I’m not giving up my Leatherworking tho. Too much time and money invested, and I picked up Pattern: Belt of the Black Eagle last night, something that one of the hunters had just been asking about on the boards if any of us had.

Overall a good night. I think we all have a good grasp of the fight now, and how we can best do it. At this point, it’s just going to be working on him to get it fine-tuned and conquer Leo. Man, I love new content!

We’ve been downing Lurker and Hydross in SSC for a while. But it’s seemed like the past couple of weeks, we’ve been having issues with them both, invariably the nights I’ve had to miss because of work or whatever. Spending over an hour flinging myself at a boss I KNOW we’ve spanked every other week for what seems like ages is just highly annoying to me.

So last night, I went into SSC expecting that we’d have issues yet again. Sure enough, I had a couple of moments that I found out exactly how red my face could turn while we were killing trash. Nothing BIG, and one moment where a bunch of us all messed up at once so we wiped, but still enough to get me angry and frustrated at myself. Once everyone regrouped, rebuffed, and bounced to Hydross tho, I’d settled down into my hunter groove and was merrily committing carnage with everyone else. Then it came time for the boss fight…

We pwned him.

One of the smoother fights we’d ever had on him, and by far the best one in weeks. The transitions went smoothly, no one pulled aggro from the tanks, and the adds were killed quickly. The guild cheered, the loot was divided and we raced off to start on Lurker trash. That went pretty well, including the one accidental pull by The Boyfriend who was trying to mark the groups. He got just a litttttle too close and boom, aggro. We picked it up and recovered from it decently, and before we knew it, we were ready to smack around Lurker.

Once again, we pwned him.

I’ve found myself stuck on the island that everyone hates, the one with the hole in the center. I’ve been there for weeks, working with our uber pally tank and whoever else is in the group with us, and honestly, it’s never bothered me being on that island. He and I have got a good rhythm going on, so he never worries about me, and I never worry about him. We killed our adds in record time and were prepped and ready for the Lurker each time he popped up.

So go team, we win at the beginning of SSC. Great one-shots of both the bosses. Tonight is Tidewalker, and with any luck, starting the learning of Leo the Blind. The one attempt we made at him after our Tidewalker kill last week was amusing as hell, and we’re eager to get going on him.

Last night was an “off” night, meaning no raids, no set plans, nothing. I’d been thinking about logging in on Siana and getting some daily quests done, since I’m getting a little low in the gold department again. But a guildie put out a call, asking for help running a Heroic so he could get a Primal Nether to make some goggles for his warrior. No sweat! Sign me up!

So I took my mage in for some Heroic Ramparts goodness. Much to my glee, I’d forgotten that Omor has a chance to drop the Mana-Etched Gloves, and he did in fact drop them. It was a nice boost to my poor, all over the place geared mage. The Boyfriend checked the rest of my gear and was horrified to see I was still wearing green pants. But I pointed out that my farming has lacked as of late with my work schedule running me into the ground, so farming for anything has been laughable. One day…

Tonight is SSC Night #1 for the week. Here’s hoping we drop Hydross and Lurker tonight so we can concentrate on making sure we have the Tidewalker fight down to where he’s on farm status.