Category: ramblings

Day 10 – Blog/Website favourites

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Oh man. Blog and website favourites? This is not going to be easy.

I guess we’ll start with a couple of blogs that I always read ASAP when a new post pops up in my feed reader.

Blessing of Kings – this is one of the blogs I was reading back when I started blogging. Anytime Rohan writes something, I read it.

Righteous Defense – one of my more recent additions to the ol’ feed reader, sometime back in Wrath, Rhidach’s blog is where I like to keep mostly up to date on prot pally stuff. Protection is really my preference for an offspec on Madrana. Despite the fact I’m currently holy/holy (no joke), I occasionally enjoy tanking on Madrana. I haven’t actually tanked on her since 4.0 dropped, so I’m fondly remembering how OP I was in Wrath heroics wearing T10 tank gear… but I really feel like a failure of a hybrid if I don’t at least know the basics of another spec. I’ve never really liked retribution, although I did use it to level up in Cata’s beta and in live, too. It just made questing that much faster.

The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon – Ophelie is pretty awesome. I met up with her IRL back in January and I really enjoy reading all her posts. :)

I really do read a lot of blogs, but those are the three paladin-related blogs I run to read as soon as they’re updated.

For news sites:

MMO-Champion – Boubouille keeps MMO-Champion up to date on everything. This site is priceless.

Wowhead – I love Wowhead as an item database, obviously. Who doesn’t? But its news is getting to be competitive with MMO-Champion’s, especially with their relatively new blue post tracker. The amount of advertising is getting pretty obnoxious, though, which is a bummer.

For research, resources and help apart from the above:

Wowpedia – Everyone and their brother used to go to WoWWiki, but the Wikia hosting caused some major changes and most people involved with WoWWiki went to Wowpedia. Wowpedia is my choice of research sites when it comes to in-game information (lore, history and a lot of boss fight info).

Learn to Raid – A great new strat site with awesome videos. Some background: Learn to Raid was founded by two members of vodka, Killars (a rogue) and Kinaesthesia (a priest). Their videos are great and have been really helpful in forming our own strat variations in Apotheosis.

RaidBS – Raid Boss Strategies is an awesome site with images, written strats and generally high-quality info for the whole raid and each role within the raid (tank/heals/DPS). Not sure if it’s still being updated, though. I had to start going elsewhere (like L2R) for strats when Apotheosis hit Nefarian and the Raid BS info wasn’t up yet. (It still isn’t.) Still, some very helpful information here.

TankSpot – Ah, TankSpot. Sort of known as “the” site for raid strat videos. I used to really like the site. A lot. Ciderhelm was awesome. I still like some of the movies — Papapaint’s Heroic Chimaeron video, for example. But I can’t deal with Aliena’s voice. Drives me up the wall. I know her first language is not English and I’m sure she’s a great player, but I can’t stand to listen to her narration. Still, if you don’t have an issue with her narrating the vast majority of the videos, you may prefer TankSpot to L2R. There’s still good information, and plenty of it, it’s just not a “favourite” of mine. I list it here because of how good some of the information is, though. I wouldn’t ever go into a fight without having watched the TankSpot video at least once.

PlusHeal – A great resource for healers. There’s also a healer exchange forum if you’re seeking a new healer or if you’re a healer looking for a new guild.

Elitist Jerks – I don’t always agree with what EJ is saying, but it’s always good to be up to date with what the theorycrafters are muttering about.

WoWLemmings – Great site for recruitment!

Nothing to do with WoW:

MetaFilter – Great community blog site that is an integral part of my day. I visit it 4-5 times a day for sure.

xkcd – Awesome web comic. This one is my favourite strip because my best friend is a doctor and she was AMAZING at the “blow into the cartridge until it works” trick. I sent her this in an email and added “how on earth are you allowed into a hospital, much less an OR?” and her response was something along the lines of “hehehehehe”.

Ctrl-Alt-Del – Another awesome web comic.

And that’s enough for the time being!

Yesterday – Your First Blog Post
Tomorrow – Bad Habits and Flaws

Day 09 – Your First Blog Post

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, apotheosis, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

On April 4th, 2008 (I really need to edit the template to include the year on my posts) I posted my very first post to this blog.

Boring. It’s an intro. Hi, this is me, etc.

It’s kind of funny, though, because if you read it now versus what you read on my blog today, you would think that very little has changed in the intervening three years. There’s very little that’s actually terribly different between the facts I give in that intro post versus the facts I would give out today.

So I figured that today, I’d talk a bit about those facts I volunteer and examine the differences (or similarities) between them. :)

– I say that I’ve been playing WoW for over two years. Well, that’s over five, now. Still going, just like the Energizer Bunny. ;)

– I say I have 3 70s. I currently have 3 85s. At the time, my 70s were Kurn (the hunter), Madrana (the paladin) and Holyfog, the priest I had rescued from my brother. Today, my 85s are Kurn, Madrana and my shaman, who I got to 84 doing nothing but mining and herbing and then got impatient so I started healing on him and dinged him 85. (My brother has long-since recovered his priest and Gneiss, as he was previously and is now currently known, is an 85 PVP disc healer.)

– I say I’m the guild master of Apotheosis on the US PVE/ET realm, Eldre’Thalas. Uh, yep! Of course, there’s more to it than that. I can’t imagine having been the GM of Apotheosis for all the intervening time. I would have missed out on so many experiences and so many people!

Basically, I would be the GM for about another 11 months after my first blog post, then we stopped raiding officially, just a few months into Wrath of the Lich King, due to lack of progression/recruitment/attendance. So I moved to Bronzebeard for six months (becoming a freaking officer again way too quickly) and then to Proudmoore for almost a year (and yet again, took on healing lead duties, albeit unofficially, for about 3 months) before going to Skywall, where, at long last, I was “just” a raider. Granted, I was constantly bothering the raid leaders and the guild master with comments and such about our raids and info from the logs, but they didn’t seem to mind too much. ;) Still, it was remarkably nice to just have to focus on my job of healing again.

About six months after going to Skywall, though, it was time to come back to Eldre’Thalas and reform Apotheosis. I’d had the wheels in motion for almost a year by the time 4.0 hit and, had there been no interest in rekindling Apotheosis, I could have happily stayed with my Skywall guild for ages.

Having said that, I’m extremely happy being the GM of Apotheosis. 12/12 and 1/13 as I write this and it’s with my old crew. Daey, Dayden, Fog, Toga and Majik were all officers in the BC-era version of Apotheosis (at various times) and it’s SO good to be working with them again. And then Darista became an officer with us, too, and MAN, I wish she’d been an officer with us sooner! :) The leadership team is working out nicely and the raiders are some fantastic people and great players, many of whom I met during my travels throughout Wrath of the Lich King or through this blog. :)

(Seriously, any opportunity to talk about my guild and I’ll take it. I’m stupidly proud of this group of people.)

– I say that I want to start up a resource that will address things I wish more people knew about. I like to think I’ve been fairly successful at that. Most things I learn in this game that aren’t completely obvious do tend to get shared here, somewhere, including strats and obviously holy paladin stuff. (I do need to get back to doing more of that.)

– I say that I “might” also gripe about the game, share my victories and the like. Well, I’ve done a LOT more griping and sharing of everything game-related than I originally intended, but it’s good to have a place to rant. My blogging (and griping!) helped me through the rough time that was me doubling as the healing lead in my Proudmoore guild when my RL Friend the Resto Druid (who had been my healing lead) had to suddenly take some steps back and stop playing for a couple of months. It was because of my blogging that I was able to realize exactly how unhappy I was where I was and even when my RL Friend came back into the mix, it was too much for me.

– I say “pull up a chair, sit back, relax and get ready for some long reads. ;)” Well, you can’t say I never warned you. ;)

Yesterday – 10 Things We Don’t Know About You
Tomorrow – Blog/Website Favourites

Day 08 – 10 Things We Don’t Know About You

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Truth be told, I’m a private person. I know, kind of silly, when you think about it, right? A blogger who posts fairly often who then claims to be a private person? Well, it’s true. I’ll talk about WoW until the cows come home — and I often do! — but I don’t talk about myself very much. At least, not about myself in a non-WoW context.

So, here’s my attempt to be a little more forthcoming.

1) My Keirsey Temperament Type is ESFJ – Guardian Provider.

2) I’m very good at remembering lyrics to songs, enough so that it drives me NUTS when others can’t. The problem? I can’t carry a tune.

3) I can, however, muster my way through some piano and clarinet playing, although I don’t get a chance to play much piano and my poor clarinet is in terrible shape and needs repairing.

4) I’ve been an online content provider, a web designer, a web coder, a marketing co-ordinator, a community moderator and a technical support/customer support specialist (at a local ISP) over the last 15 years. Also, a student. I’m just a couple of classes away from my BA in Sociology.

5) I love to write and I take part in National Novel Writing Month every year. In fact, two of my current guildies (and raiders!) are people I’ve known for years through NaNoWriMo. Having said that, I’ve only ever written 50k in November once and that was in 2003 — way before I discovered World of Warcraft. Curse you, WoW! <shakes fist>

6) I have blue eyes, like my brother, my father and my late paternal grandmother. Unfortunately, unlike my brother, my father and my late paternal grandmother, my blue eyes lean more towards various shades of grey/blue, rather than the piercing blue they all share. I am, occasionally, very jealous that my brother got the awesome!blue eyes in the family. (Shut up, Fog. Gloating doesn’t become you! :P)

7) Je suis plus ou moins bilingue. Mon français n’est pas tellement fantastique, mais je me débrouille assez bien dans des situations où je dois le parler. (Anche, parlo un po’ d’italiano. Ho preso tre anni all’università.)

8) Blessing of Frost started out as a recruitment avenue for Apotheosis, but it’s really evolved into its own little bit of fun. The hardest part about producing an episode of Blessing of Frost is not yelling at Majik as much as I’d like and, in fact, having to be nice to him. (We like each other quite a bit, but we prefer to show each other that affection by swearing at each other at length.) Still, I do quite enjoy it and it reminds me of working at my college radio station. Good times!

9) I’m fiercely loyal. Pretty much to a fault. One time, we were in Mount Hyjal, and one of the guildies was telling me, in a panicked whisper, she couldn’t find her vial from Lady Vashj. So I opened a ticket and started chatting with a GM through Kaz’rogal trash, saying “no, look, SHE WAS THERE. Do you want to see the logs?!” and stuff.

Here’s an image.

Can you guess what happened next? If you guessed “Kurn didn’t realize the boss was incoming and facepulled the boss and got ruined because she was debating fiercely with the GM”, you’re right!

One of these days, they’re going to close my account just because they’re tired of all the tickets I submit. :P

Yeah, my loyalty has its unfortunate downsides, but I care about my friends and my guildies. I don’t think I could ever be another way.

10) I have a pretty good sense of humour and can take some teasing, but when it comes to Canada, my sense of humour usually goes riiiiight out the window. I am passionate about my love for my country, which probably comes from living pretty much my whole life in Quebec and living through two separate referendums, and that’s basically where my sense of humour stops. I am proud to be a Canadian. I am proud to be a Quebecoise whose maternal side of the family has been here since the 1630s. I am proud to be a Montrealer. Those of you who have never had to live in fear of your country splitting up — you’re so very fortunate. At the same time, however, I wonder if those who haven’t had to live through that (and live through the constant threat, still!) don’t take for granted the peace and security they have. So take a moment. Appreciate your local, provincial/state and national governments if they’re democratic, if they’re reflective of your ideas and ideals. And if they’re NOT democratic, if they’re NOT reflective of what you believe, then work towards making sure your voice is heard in your government.

Uh. Right. Yes. I’m not really political. It’s just a Quebec thing. :) And dealing with the “Quebec thing” is what’s made me recognize how passionate I am about Canada, which is why the sense of humour that is normally pretty evident, just vanishes into thin air, if people start ragging on Canada. (And don’t get me started about people ragging on Quebec! I love my province too, you know!)

Yesterday – The Reason Behind Your Blog’s Name
Tomorrow – Your first blog post

Defender of a Shattered World

Kurn / / achievements, apotheosis, guild, raiding, ramblings, throne of the four winds

It’s almost 7am as I start to write this. Apotheosis killed Al’Akir almost 8 hours ago. I went to sleep and woke up at about 6:30 just because I couldn’t stop thinking “Holy crap, we killed Al’Akir!”. Most of my guildies in the raid, myself included, got the Defender of a Shattered World title. Apotheosis is now 12/12 on normal modes to go with our pretty, shiny, 1/13 heroic modes.

That is one hell of a fight. And I don’t mean it in a good way, either. Hands down, my least-favourite fight in Tier 11 content. That said, I do feel pretty smug after having beaten this guy. :)

It was on our 59th attempt that we killed him, although, to be fair, 16 of those attempts were in February. Our work on Al’Akir really feels like it started in the last couple of weeks.

This brings us to 12/12 normal modes, as I’ve mentioned. I know, it’s just like clearing T7 and getting Champion of the Frozen Wastes, right? But it’s doing it at the proper, that’s to say “intended”, gear level. We’ve done it in 346 and 359 gear, not in T12 or T13 or T14. We’ve cleared the normal modes of entry-level raiding in this expansion with a group of people who largely didn’t know one another six months ago.

And then, there’s me. I just posted a long-winded, sappy post on my guild forums about how I basically love everyone, but something I didn’t say there (but will obviously get back to the guildies — and that’s okay) is that I’m relieved. I am SO relieved. I almost can’t even put it into words.

So many people who joined the guild did so because of me. I’m the one who started asking around if people wanted to come back to Apotheosis for Cataclysm. I’m the one who was talking excitedly about her old guild on her blog and, for some unknown reason, got a lot of responses and applications because of it. Really, if Apotheosis didn’t make it out of T11, it was almost certainly going to be my fault. I would have let down my old crew, I would have let down the people I’d drawn in, I would have let down the people who had, collectively, paid hundreds of dollars to transfer. And, of course, its success has very little to do with me — it’s a lot more to do with everyone I’ve assembled here. I would take all the blame if things hadn’t worked out, but the credit for it working out goes to the ladies and gentlemen of Apotheosis.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that Apotheosis is through T11 normals. The pressure is off me. I’ve put together a team and the team is performing. The guild has a personality, it has a life of its own, now. If things go to hell now, chances are, it wasn’t my bad. ;)

It’s still intimidating, though. While I’m not terribly concerned about everything falling apart, this is the most progressed I’ve been in my own guild, ever.

In Burning Crusade, we cleared Black Temple, but only ever pulled Kalecgos in Sunwell Plateau three times before calling it an expansion. We also only formed on June 1st, 2008 and the expansion had come out back in January, so we were constantly working our way through content that had already been nerfed and used the 3.0 patch to steamroll our way past Reliquary of Souls, Mother Shahraz up to the Council and Illidan himself. (Much less steamrolling when we hit the Illidari Council.)

In Wrath, Apotheosis didn’t even kill Thaddius on 25-man. Attendance was awful, people were unhappy, progression was bad due to attendance and recruitment was bad due to progression. We had the potential to kick some ass, but it just didn’t pan out.

So now, my guild is the #2 25-man raiding guild on Eldre’Thalas. Overall, we’re still something like #11, if you take all the 10-man guilds into consideration, but… well, I don’t. It’s not that I don’t take 10s seriously (really!), but I really think 10 and 25-man raiding are very different beasts and so I don’t think of us as the #11 guild on ET. I see our 10-man guilds on the server as doing their thing and the 25s are doing our thing.

And, to my utter shock and delight, Apotheosis is doing WELL at “our thing”! We finished at #9 guild progressed guild in Burning Crusade, #6 Alliance guild, and that was with a 5 month delay on anything guild-related. We farmed Karazhan for three months before we got Maulgar and Gruul down. And even with that, we finished pretty well.

This time, we had our shit together. This time, we had a team ready to go. This time, we are SO much smarter than we were in Burning Crusade. (Seriously, who puts a moonkin in the tank group, back when the 5% crit buff they brought was party-wide only?) And this time, we don’t have the progression or attendance issues we had in Wrath.

Rank doesn’t mean a lot to me, truly, whether it’s server rank or US/world rank, but it’s always nice to see where you fit in. GuildOx says we’re the 706th ranked 25-man guild on US servers. So we’re not vodka or Premonition or Midwinter or Edge. We’re still here, we’re still kicking and we’ve cleared 12/12 normal modes, ready to add to our heroic Halfus kill with more heroic kills.

So freaking relieved. And so freaking proud of my peeps.

Day 07 – The Reason Behind Your Blog's Name

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

When I started my blog, I knew I wanted a fun name. Blogs I read at the time were named Blessing of Kings and Banana Shoulders and the like.

I knew, though, that I didn’t want to focus just on paladin stuff. Sure, I was playing my paladin in raids, but my guildies still (mostly) called my Kurn and that was still very much my in-game identity (and still is).

I knew I wanted to talk about hunter stuff, about how I hated that Beast Mastery was all the rage and all you needed was to spam-click a macro to get stupidly good DPS.

I knew I wanted to talk about raiding and the trials a raid group goes through while pushing through bosses and progression.

I knew I wanted to talk about guild stuff and what my guild was doing, both inside of raids and out.

I knew I wanted to talk about dailies and pally stuff and healing and alts.

It was going to be conglomeration of whatever I wanted to talk about. The only thing tying everything together was that these were going to be my thoughts, my ideas, my opinions.

Kurn’s Corner seemed right. There was alliteration (which I do love) and there was a broad sense to it. I’ve never felt trapped by my blog’s name — this is where I write whatever the heck I want to write. No constraints in terms of expectations apart from “this is what Kurn is thinking about today”. While I’ve done a lot of posting about raiding and healing and paladins, I know that I don’t have to limit myself to these topics, and that suits me just fine.

So Kurn’s Corner is a collection of Kurn’s thoughts about the World of Warcraft and that’s why the name has stuck since Day 1. :)

Yesterday – Your Workplace/Desk
Tomorrow – 10 things we don’t know about you

Day 06 – Your Workplace/Desk

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Before I started playing WoW, I sat at my desk and had a 19″ CRT monitor and a comfy office chair and a keyboard tray and speakers and everything.

I got a laptop. I started playing WoW. The laptop was miles beyond my desktop computer. The desktop wouldn’t even let me install WoW.

Thus began the era of Kurn-on-the-Couch.

I generally sit on my couch with my laptop on my coffee table. I also have a lapdesk that I use frequently if I want to sit back to relax or if I want to play from my bed (which I do, sometimes!).

I looked around for a picture of my desk at the height of my “this is my workspace” time, but I cannot, for the life of me, find it.

It’s all moot anyways — whole new setup coming in the first week of May. New computer, dual monitors, new speakers, everything. I will definitely have to do something about the TV situation, though. I’ve gotten used to watching hockey games (among other things) over the top of my laptop screen!

So tune back in then for a pretty picture of my new setup. :)

Yesterday – Favourite Items in the Game
Tomorrow – The reason behind your blog’s name

Why Bribery Won't Help — Much

Kurn / / dungeons, facepalm, lfg, ramblings, tanks

Today, Blizzard announced that they would essentially be bribing tanks and healers to queue up for random, heroic dungeons in the 4.1 patch, by rewarding the least-represented role with special rewards, which may include rare mounts and rare non-combat pets.

(I won’t even talk about how one of those rare mounts is the Baron’s mount out of Stratholme. That’s someone else’s QQ fodder, but I can imagine people are going to be pissed if they’ve done 500 runs over the years and not gotten one, but some random tank gets it for running heroic Vortex Pinnacle.)

Tanks and, to a lesser extent, healers, are the least-represented roles when queuing up for a random heroic dungeon at 85. You can tell because DPS has the longest queue (30+ minutes for me on my hunter, typically), healers have a much shorter queue (about 8 minutes) and tanks have a damn near instant queue.

In a dungeon group, you have 20% of the group that heals, 20% of the group that tanks and 60% of the group that’s DPS, right? 1 and 1 and 3 makes 5.

In a 10-man raid group, you generally have 30% of the group that heals, 20% of the group that tanks and 50% of the group that does damage. (This can also be 20/20/60, so your mileage may vary.)

So far, that all seems pretty logical, right? The dungeon group percentages mostly match up to the raid group percentages.

Then we have 25-man raids. In a 25-man raid group, you drop from 20% of the group being comprised of tanks to, in most situations, 2 people tanking. That’s 8%. On some occasions, you get 3 tanks, that’s 12%. It is a lot less than the 20% in your standard random groups. You also generally go up from 20% healers to around 25% healers (6 or 7, up from 5, one per group.).

My hypothesis: Tanks are in high demand in dungeon situations because there are not enough tanks needed in raid situations.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not asking for 5 tanks, 5 healers and 15 DPS for every encounter. Or even ANY encounter. But my theory is that there are more healers than tanks and more DPS than healers because there are more spots required of DPS and healers than there are of tanks. Yes, having death knights be able to tank since last expansion has added to the number of possible tanks. Yes, more raid groups (thanks to the legitimacy of 10-man raiding in Cataclysm) will mean more geared and skilled tanks who are available.

However, what will bribing tanks (and, to a lesser extent, healers) into solo-queuing do to the random dungeon finder system?

Fox Van Allen tweeted: “you’ll wind up seeing a lot more bad, unready tanks,” although he rather likes the idea apart from that.

I tend to agree — tanks are going to be awful. This isn’t going to convince the good/experienced/geared tanks to go out and start pugging. Since they don’t need much out of heroics (once they farm ZG and ZA with mostly guild groups, at any rate), the only added incentive is this “Call to Arms” reward. Why do your daily random (or seven weekly randoms) with not one but four puggers if you can easily do it with at least a partial guild group?

I don’t think the experienced, good tanks will do this very often.

What I think this will do more of is convince that idiot ret paladin to choose prot as his dual spec and fail miserably. Or convince the moonkin that he doesn’t need ALL feral gear to use in a bear spec; after all, who’s going to actually take the time to inspect the bear?

I did a lot of daily dungeons runs in Wrath on a lot of different toons. I did them on my pally as a tank and a healer, I did them on my druid as a tank and a healer, I did them on my mage and hunter as a DPS and I did them on my priest and shaman as a healer.

Oh, the failure I saw, the lack of knowledge I witnessed, the common sense that I realized was not remotely common at all. I KNOW I’ve blogged about these experiences on this very blog before.

Oh, look. April 9th, 2010, “Yet another fail ‘tank'”.

April 6th, 2010, “OMG.”

There are more, but I digress yet again.

I have no reason to believe that Cataclysm random heroics are any different from Wrath random heroics except that they’re longer and more difficult to begin with than the Wrath ones were. Thus, based on my WotLK dungeon finder experiences, I do not foresee a lot of experienced tanks solo-queuing to get these rewards; I see a lot of DPS posing as tanks who solo-queue for the rewards, without any kind of real understanding of how the encounters work.

That’s going to translate into more groups being formed, yes — but will they be more successful? I’m sure some will be, but I would imagine that the success rate will drop, overall, at least after the initial ZA/ZG farm fest.

I really believe that the key to alleviating the dreaded DPS queue problem is to make tanks more needed at the higher levels of content. More demand for tanks should lead to more tanks being rolled, no? That said, I don’t have a good idea as to how to make tanks more needed without requiring 5 tanks on all 25-man raid encounters. I just don’t think this is the way to go about fixing the queue problem. I am actually afraid to see those DPSers in “tank” specs who will probably spec 41 points in their tanking tree and still miss out on six crucial points…

Time will tell, I suppose!

Day 05 – Favourite Item(s) in Game

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, podcast, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Oh geez. My favourite items in the game?

My bank is littered with mementos. Stacked full of memories. Here are a few of the things I hang on to because of the memories attached to them.

There’s my Royal Seal of Eldre’Thalas, which I loved because, at the time, it was a great trinket AND it was the name of “my” server.

There’s the Briarwood Reed, which I got on my paladin, even though, at the time, it was +damage/healing. I loved it because it was still an upgrade for poor little Madrana but also because I snagged it from this one guy’s mage alt. And just the satisfaction of knowing I outrolled him on it is totally worth it. (I really didn’t, and still don’t, like that guy.)

Of course, there’s the Rhok’delar and Lok’delar, too.

And I can’t forget about the Lightforge Spaulders, which actually made me feel like a real paladin, when I first equipped them. Similarly, Lightbringer Pauldrons look bad-ass.

Happy Fun Rock and I had a bunch of good times together back in Dire Maul.

And then there’s Zod’s Repeating Longbow, which I got about 11 months ago, after drooling over it for several months.

But I think that my favourite items are really things that no longer really exist. Keys. I’m talking about dungeon keys. Most keys no longer exist, but, by golly, I had all of them on Kurn. Except the Arcatraz. And screw Arcatraz. I had the Scarlet Key (SM and Strat Live), the Key to the City (Strat Undead), the Crescent Key (Dire Maul), the Skeleton Key (Scholomance), the Shadowforge Key (BRD) and more. I LOVED getting keys. And I remember a time when you didn’t HAVE a keychain and you’d make it alllllll the way up to Strat Live or Scholomance and someone didn’t HAVE the key because it was in their bank.

Relatedly, though, I do still love my Blessed Medallion of Karabor.

(Also, totally unrelated, Episode 15 of Blessing of Frost came out Tuesday!)

Yesterday – Your Best WoW Memory
Tomorrow – Your workplace/desk (photo and/or description)

Day 04 – Your Best WoW Memory

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, apotheosis, blogging, raiding, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Day 04 – Your Best WoW Memory

There is no way I can narrow it down to just one memory or one moment of elation or one moment of pride or one moment of accomplishment. I’ve been playing for over five years, fairly regularly, fairly steadily. That’s a lot of time and that’s a lot of memories accumulated.

What I’ll do here is narrow it down to two memories from each expansion. That still doesn’t seem “right”, but it’ll have to do.

Vanilla WoW Memory #1: The one that tops the list here is everything I went through to get my Rhok’delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers. My guild at the time wasn’t clearing MC. We hadn’t even actually killed Onyxia, as a guild. So one day, there I am in Trade, and someone is SELLING the Ancient Petrified Leaf. They had killed Majordomo and looked in his chest and there was a leaf that no one could use. So they sent someone out to Ironforge and they started spamming Trade.

500 gold later, I was being summoned to Molten Core and I looted my leaf. I’d already gotten the Mature Black Sinew from Onyxia from a pug as I was the only hunter there who hadn’t gotten it yet. So I was well on my way and could start killing some demons.

I found Nelson the Nice and Simone pretty easy, but it was Franklin the Friendly (the first one I engaged — repeatedly) who kicked my ass all over Burning Steppes, much to the amusement of my guildies who would camp out and watch my miserable attempts. To this day, he is still my nemesis. Artorius also gave me a bit of trouble. Had Majik not been there on his priest to rez me (the demon and I killed each other at the same time), the demon probably would have despawned.

All those things together make up one of the best memories in WoW for me.

Vanilla WoW Memory #2: The Tier 0.5 questline. Yep, 45-minute Baron run and all (thank you very much, we once did it in 39 minutes with my cat, Whisper, “tanking”, plus Crypt healing, Majik, Tia, Tan and myself DPSing!), this is still a favourite memory of mine. It was three years AFTER I’d done everything for the questline that I finally got the Beaststalker Tunic from General Drakkisath in Upper Blackrock Spire and got my full Beastmaster’s Armor set. The five of us basically did this questline without a tank. The only time we needed an actual tank to help us out was the extra boss in Ras Frostwhisper’s room in Scholomance and the last boss, Lord Valthalak (aka, Lord Whatshisnuts) in Upper Blackrock Spire. The rest of it was easily done on our own or with the five of us. It was during this time that Majik lagged out on Vent and we actually thought he was high on some really potent drug.

I don’t think I had laughed that hard in my life, up until that night in Dire Maul, and probably not since then, either. It was one of the best times in this game for me.

Burning Crusade Memory #1: Killing Vashj. We have a copy of the kill video over on YouTube. This was the best kill of any boss probably ever, for me. I knew every detail of the fight, micromanaged it and after a LOT of time on this, we got her down, thanks in part to my 15k crit Lay on Hands when Dayden was the last tank left. Woot!

Burning Crusade Memory #2: Probably getting Kael down and getting my Hand of A’dal title. Killing Illidan was awesome, but it was post-3.0 so it wasn’t quite the same as getting Hand of A’dal, which is the title I still prefer to wear.

Wrath of the Lich King Memory #1: My different guilds in Wrath, all of them. Even the one with the crazy, abusive raid leader. Resurgence of Bronzebeard, the Proudmoore one and Choice of Skywall. After being in my own guild for two years, I was nervous and scared and not remotely confident about my abilities and value as a player. But Resurgence and Choice welcomed me with open arms. My Proudmoore guild, though less warm-and-fuzzy, allowed me to raid with my RL Friend the Resto Druid for several months and got me my ICC 25-man drake and, for the first (and last) time, allowed my friend and I to earn a title together — Astral Walker. So I’m indebted to all three of the guilds I spent time in during Wrath.

Wrath of the Lich King Memory #2: Killing the Lich King with Apotheosis on 10-man with Kurn and on 25-man with, well, 24 other members of Apotheosis. (Although this 10-man LK kill was pretty epic as well.) This happened at the tail end of Wrath of the Lich King, after the 4.0 drop, I believe, and honestly, seeing this team of people working together to successfully defeat the Lich King was great. When you take into consideration that a lot of them hadn’t ever seen the fight, it really makes me proud.

Cataclysm Memory #1: Just one memory so far for Cata — the fact that, three months into raiding, my guild is still alive and kicking. We’re still doing 25s. We’ve still never had to cancel a raid (although we moved the raid from Superbowl Sunday to the Monday). We’ve never had to drop into 10-mans. We’ve gone 11/12 normal modes and 1/13 heroic modes all on 25-man. We’ve lost a lot of people who originally threw their hats in, but we’ve recovered and gained some valuable members as well. Despite the stress and frustration and aggravation I’ve experienced so far, the best part about this expansion, for me, is that I’m raiding with people I know and love and, if I don’t love them, I at least respect them. We’re quite an interesting crew. And I love that we’re still together, conquering content, one boss at a time.

Looking over my answers, boss kills are generally my big moments of “YES!!!” in this game, followed closely by guild-related things. Amazing how much my favourite memories really rely on other people. I’m glad I’ve got a group of folks I really can rely on.

Yesterday – Your First Day Playing WoW
Tomorrow – Favourite item(s) in game

Day 03 – Your First Day Playing WoW

Kurn / / 20 days challenge, blogging, ramblings

This post is part of Saga’s 20 Days of WoW Blogging Challenge!

Day 03 – Your First Day Playing WoW

What’s funny about this is I kind of have two “first days” of playing WoW. Somehow, before I went out and bought a copy, I had found an online copy of WoW with a private server attached. Of course, I had absolutely no idea what a private server was, no idea what I was doing. I just followed the instructions with the download and found myself at the character creation screen.

I created a human male warrior and then logged in to the world.

So there I am, level 1, standing in Elwynn, completely amazed at the graphics and level of detail and everything.

And then I decided to go exploring.

There weren’t any NPCs, no mobs, not a soul. It was crazy. I ran, I actually RAN, from Elwynn, over to Redridge, up through Burning Steppes and then I saw Blackrock Mountain.

I went into Blackrock Mountain from the south side and I have this very strong memory of running up the spiraling ramp and running up and down the chains.

But, there was no one there. At all. It then dawned on me that I was on a local server, not an online server, so I went digging around and discovered I needed to buy the game to connect to the real game servers.

It was over Canadian Thanksgiving that I did so, so that’s mid-October of 2005, and showed my brother the game. I had elected to roll a male night elf hunter, because I was trying to keep a low profile. As a woman, I’ve been harrassed a LOT in online communities by creepy guys, so I was prepared for that happening and decided to fly under the radar with a male night elf.

So my first day of playing WoW for real was me running around Aldrassil and Shadowglen, playing like a scrub. I’d shoot something once, it would come at me, another autoshot might get off and then I’d melee the mob down. Somewhere in all of this, I convinced my brother to start playing and he quickly went out and bought the game and rolled a druid. (He beat me to 60.)

My first real day of WoW play was pretty awesome. I loved dinging. I knew I wanted to do more of it. I really felt like a hunter, too, stalking my prey. I had no idea what it meant that a mob was red or yellow or green to me (both in terms of friendliness and level) and I was constantly getting lost by the spider tunnels.

I also remember that Shadowmeld got a lot of use from me right from the start and I was SO sad that I couldn’t move while stealthed!

Honestly, though, what I remember most about my first day of playing WoW is how gorgeous Aldrassil was. This lush, green place, a huge tree… it was really amazing. I was blown away by the graphics and I loved running around Shadowglen. And jumping. I loved (and still love!) the male night elf jump. Somersaults!

Yesterday – Why You Decided to Start a Blog
Tomorrow – Your best WoW memory