Moving! All merchandise must go!

Ok, it's been a LOOOOOONG while since I posted here and that's because we took sort of a blogging hiatus while my fiance and I worked on a joint blog for us. So much has changed since I did this blog that looking back at it is just funny. HMech being hard and my "pointy end goes in the other man" theory among those amusing things. I've learned so much it's amusing to look back at how I started. STILL, I am a very new WoW player and I'm sure there's so much else out there to learn.

Meanwhile, we've moved over to "RaidedM, Adult Situations and Brief Nerdity". If you want to see how things have changed, what new alts we're rolling up and the rest of our amusing and sometimes argumentative collaboration, check there!

PvP and Me

So, not only did I give in and go ahead and start PvPing, but I now think I might be a full-fledged PvP addict. Yes, I get angry when I'm not winning and yes it can be frustrating when people are being stupid, but all in all, I've been having fun with it! No one is more surprised than I am.

Not only that, but I have my Gladiator's Quickblade and, after long and arduous AH farming, I have my Vindicator's Brand. Of course, right after I get those, Edge of the Cosmos drops out of Mech and THREE Blinkstrikes show up on the AH.

I haven't hit up Arathi Basin or Eye of the Storm since getting them, but I'm thinking it can only be an improvement. I've decided that I hate, hate, hate Warsong Gulch, because of a horrible match in which the other team simply refused to cap the flag and farmed kills instead. I didn't think we'd ever get out of there. Alterac Valley just takes forever to wait for. I only attempted one 2v2 Arena with Martin and we got killed in record time. I think, after some gearing, we'll try 3v3 with our Pally pal.

Meanwhile, I've made a comprehensive list of all of the pre-Kara upgrades I want to get and where to get them. This just means finding people willing to run things like Old Hillsbrad repeatedly until I get what I want. At least that one's easy. (Heh. Easy. I never thought I'd say that of an instance.) Not like running Heroic Mech. That...sucked.

Shattered Halls Sucketh

It started out bad. I don't know why I didn't expect it to just keep going downhill.

Firstly, we had to PUG one of our members because we didn't have enough from the guild. No big, it's just one person, right? So, we snagged a mage. We already had me, Martin, a Druid healer from the guild that we like and our enhancement Shammy friend. I'm game, I'm fired up, it's the daily, I'm ready to tackle it.

We fly over to the Citadel, ready for action. "Go pick the door." "Uh, I can't. I'm four skill off of max and, evidently, it takes max." So we have no key and no picking of the door. I instantly feel like n00b roguetard! Dur! Ok, calm. Even though none of us guildie types has the key, the PUGged mage does! Awesome. PUGs don't look so bad, now. So, we get inside, and the Mage is like "I thought we were doing Heroic." So, already she's disappointed. You can see how things began to slide, can't you? (It was also discovered that I couldn't pick the door inside and we had to take the sewer to the first boss. No one was excited about this.)

In the end, Martin had never been there and neither had I. Pulls went wrong, aggro-stealing happened, wiping happened repeatedly. It was nasty. Finally, Martin decided to send me out to sap in a room absolutely saturated with mobs. We didn't know what to pull first. Three times I attempted to sap, three times I got seen and beaten down. Eventually the group was laughing so hard no one could speak. It was just that funny. It was Wipefest '08.

We ended up giving up and going to do the quest that gets you your key to Shattered Halls. Hey, at least I got to kill a Fel Reaver, finally. THAT tasted sweet.

Meanwhile, I've since realized...I should've distracted while trying to sap. It might not have worked, but it might have. And I feel like an idiot. Martin said "You should always distract when you sap". Here I've been relying on blind luck. This really goes back to what I'm having a problem with right now. I'm gear-stressed, yes, but more I've been feeling like I just don't know what I'm doing. If I knew what I was doing, I'd have already known to use distract. What else am I not doing that is going to drive people nuts or cause problems down the road?

I think I'm going to have to accept the fact that, if I ever do become one of those really accomplished, smooth rogues that everyone expects (which is looking unlikely), that it's going to be FAR down the road.

In the meantime, I'm fiddling with a new mage character to take the edge off. That's right. When too stressed from playing WoW, just play more WoW.

The pointy end goes into the other man!

Today I was talking with a guildmate who was attempting to choose a helm for his shadow priest. I told him I couldn't be much help, as casters completely confound me. He said that rogues confound him. Now, personally, I don't see much confounding about rogues. Ok, maybe there's stealth and finesse and timing, but really I think it boils down to that quote from Zorro. "You know how to use a sword, don't you?" "Yes, the pointy end goes into the other man!" I mean, c'mon, it's that simple. Put your blade where it's supposed to go and try not to get tagged by the bad thingie. Try to say it ain't so!

I've almost assembled most of the mats for my Shadowprowler's Chestguard. I've seen some discussions about this with people saying it's not good for rogue's at all, that druids should have it, ha ha you stupid rogues wearing gear that's not for you! Well, thhhhpppttt. Bite me. It has the stats I need right now and the list starts at Stamina. My AP is currently almost 1400, but my hit and health need help to reach the point where I can hit some heroics, start collecting badges and start working towards getting better weapons which is a huge thing for me right now.

So huge, in fact, that Martin and I have decided to switch to Aldor. Me, so I can get the Vindicator's Brand and him for...I don't know, something or other. Other than that, I've finally given in on the whole PvP thing. Yes, I hate it. After trying it, I can't stand it, it's no fun and it gives me a headache. But there are swords. I figure if I just keep going and hope everyone else doesn't suck as much as I do, I'll eventually grind the honor/marks to get a decent offhand weapon.

Meantime, instances, instances, instances. That part of the game I love. I like the shared experience, the teamwork aspect and the general laughter and talk that goes on during them. Even when I die six times (like in Mech the other night), I still have a good time. Plus, there's loots. I like loots.

Respeccing and Flying High

I finally figured out that I don't get to have my cake and eat it too. I can't have the DPS and energy regen talents and have the stealth talents that I've come to love so much for leveling with Martin. I have to make a choice and, well, since we're coming up to lots and lots of instance running, I'm going with the uber-DPS. Especially since Martin and I have decided to get that Fel Leather gear made, I should be able to slice through bad guys like they were made of cream cheese, just like in my dreams! No, really, I have those dreams. It's so sad.

Enter the respec. I'm tweaking the standard combat rogue 20/41/0 spec just a bit, because I want to have more deflection, so I'm going with a 19/42/0. I don't know if this is optimal or right, but it's what I'm going to try for now. If it tanks, well, back to the drawing board and all of that. I'm hoping that this respec will do what I'm looking for it to do, though. We'll see! I don't really have a combat swords friendly mentor to give me any noteworthy input, as the only other regularly-on rogue in the guild is dagger specced and does a ton of PvP, which I'm currently avoiding. I'd actually also like to know from someone's firsthand experience what PvP as a combat swords rogue is like.

In other news, I finally broke down and let someone lend me the money for my epic flyer, as did Martin. This friend, yes, has tons of money on his other character, but I still hate borrowing cash. He doesn't care when we pay it back, but I do feel compelled to try to do it as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, though, I can fly! I can fly fast! I did a turn around Nagrand hunting for Adamantite today and, man, was it a ball. Then Wot and I practiced some silly flying tricks like loops and barrel rolls. Stupid, but fun! I can see that having a flier is going to spoil me rotten. Which is just how it should be.

Farming Bunny

That's me. Farmer Allysera. Bourg and I both need a ton of Primal Shadow for gear we want to have made and guess who gets to farm it, because I'm home with the time? That's right!

Turns out, I have the right temperment for this sort of thing. I set a goal of, like, 3 or 4 in a session, and then bang away until I have enough motes. I get tired, go do something else for a while, then I'm ready to do it all again. Unfortunately, this has given Bourg ideas. He thinks that we can make scads of cash if I just farm my heart out. He even volunteered to do all the backlogged housecleaning if I just spend my time farming. Dunno about that one, myself.

70! ...wait, what?

So...70. Wow. I'd say it's been a long haul, but it doesn't seem like it's been that long at all. In fact, I don't feel ready to be 70 in any way, shape, form or fashion. My gear isn't up to snuff and I'm not entirely sure on where to go from here. Everyone says "Arena! PvP! It's awesome" and others, who I'm inclined to listen to because I don't think I like PvP very much say that PvP gear is good for short fights, but not good for the sustained DPS that I like. Honestly, I'm not sure that I feel like I know how to play the damned class anyway. I thought that, at 70, I'd be comfortable with what I was doing and have all kinds of awesome gear. My gear is semi-alright and I still feel like I'm banging away in the dark. I don't want to be known as a "Noob Roguetard", which what I'm deathly afraid of.

I have decided to try out the more conventional sword specs, maybe with slight tweaking, and see how I like those. However, I need spiffy new weapons. You get those from instances and whatnot and there have been precious few of those. Move on to Martin's post about wanting to run instances and....there ya go. I guess I have to start banging out those instances we missed if I want to have a chance at the phat lootz, as they say. Of course, that could mean multiple runs and I hope everyone's ready for THAT, because I want some specific items. I have another friend who swears we should start churning out heroics as soon as possible, because THAT is the way to get awesome gear. Meanwhile, I'll keep farming up the 40 primal shadows Martin and I need to get some interim gear made. (And, ohmygod, do I HATE Collapsing Voidwalkers.)

In other news, I have my flier. The regular one, so it's painfully slow, but at least I can get up high now. We did some stuff in Skettis (Skeksies, anyone?) and I managed to only get dismounted and killed once. I think I might get the hang of this flying thing. If I can only get together the rest of the dough for my epic. And then special rep-based mounts. And, oh, farming rep for enchanting formulas, don't forget that.

Hey...I DO have stuff to do at 70 after all!

Dude Looks Like a Lady!

While Bourg was looking pimptastic in his Valentine's Day gear, this guy cracked me up. And he was completely proud of himself, too, stating that he was the sexiest guy around. I'm starting to think Martin might be right about male Blood Elf sexuality.

Brass Tacks

I guess it's finally time to get down to them. I've been avoiding this. Really I have.

A week ago, maybe, Martin sent me an email containing links to Rogue-centric blogs, intending that I should start looking them over for end-game information. Builds and gear and that sort of thing. I balked. Who wants a hobby that you have to work that hard on? Math? Are you serious? I wasn't good at math in school. I even hated doing pro-rate calculations and making change at my dad's office. Now I'm going to try to figure out what makes the best DPS and damage meters and I don't know what all? I don't even know where to begin, honestly. I sorta snapped at him and he snapped back and it was never spoken of again...until now. And now we shall speak of that part of it no more. Shhh.

Anyway, the last couple of days, after some disasterous PvP I decided that maybe I will put some minimal effort into this. In other words, I'll find someone who has already done the work and copy them! Genius! I am Brain and all others are Pinky or below!

One problem, though. When we first started playing, and really up until now, I've counted on Martin to tell me where to spend my talent points. Now, he's never leveled a rogue and I've never leveled a...well, anything, so we were sort of flying blind, popping points in willy nilly. That worked well enough for a while, but I'm starting to think that it won't cut the mustard at 70. Two things I DO know, however. One, I want to stay combat sword specced, but the issue I see there is that everyone says it's a bad PvP build and Martin wants us to start doing some PvP (plus I hear the reward gear is awesomeness). Two, we plopped 14 points into Subtlety with Master of Deception, Camouflage and Initiative and I don't really want to lose those. I really like the extra combo points and the better Stealth. However, from what I can see, those are better for a combat dagger specced rogue who PvPs.

Gah, I'm all messed up and unsure of where to go from here. I don't know if I should just go ahead and try one or two of the "standard" combat sword builds and see how they go, or try to customize my own build and risk screwing it all up like crazy. To make matters MORE complicated, I picked up the Ceremonial Warmaul Blood-Blade last night and, since it outstripped my offhand sword, I switched to it, which makes my sword speccing a bit useless at the moment. I'm going to wait until I pick up another sword to replace it to try experimenting with builds, but I'd like to know a place to start, for Pete's sake!

Ideas, suggestions, complaints, tar and feathers?

Pimps and Ho's, Y'all!

Martin and I decided to do the Love is in the Air quests this morning, just for fun. We were rewarded with these foine looking outfits here. Possibly THE sluttiest female clothing in the game. Martin wanted matching outfits, however, and don't we look splendiferous?

Meanwhile, he brought to my attention that I haven't put up a current picture of Ally since level 63, so I'll have that up later. I'm also trying to convince Martin that we would be much more effective, blog-wise, if we combined our efforts into one uberblog of his experience and my newbiness. He's thinking it over. I think that's guy-speak for "I don't really want to, but I still want to get laid, so I'll pretend I'm considering it." You tell me!

Phew!

This morning I logged into WoW and found my character in a place I didn't leave her...in the bank. I checked the bank and "Whaaaa?" there's a ton of stuff I don't recognize. My inventory is filled with 158 adamantite and 158 Arcane Dust. I freaked and called Martin while he was driving in to work, absolutely certain I'd caught the hackers in my account again, only this time in the process. However, while I was talking to Martin, I hit my mail and realized that it was Blizzard Staff that had done it, and had also filled my mail up with the rest of the things I was missing. Relief!

I didn't get things back precisely as they were, but near enough that I'm happy about it. They seem to have given me all of the things the hackers mined with my character, like the ore and a ton of gems I didn't have before. I also got a bunch of BoE blues that the hacker had picked up. I used one (it was nice) and the others will be given to my leveling partners or will be DE'd for shards. I got back my Mojo and my horsie, so I'm happy, even if miscellaneous shit is still missing. It's only stuff that's super-common an easily gotten. I got back all my enchant formulas I hadn't learned and even the quest items that had been deleted. The only thing I was miffed about was that only two of my bags were returned. I went and bought a bunch more on the AH and filled out my bank, including going ahead and buying up the last two slots because, oh my god, I have too much stuff.

In other news, Martin and I ran Black Rock Depths about 6 times last night until we got the Fiery Weapon Enchant to drop. That took a while, but now I have a nice glowy firefly ass again, thanks to my sword being all firey. We also got a ton of Dark Iron Ale so we could get jubling eggs. Next up, Outland instances!

...hacked...

So, yeah. If you read my fiance's blog, Dire Aquatic Form, then you already know. I logged at around midnight Friday, watched Buffy with Martin and then crashed, all happy with the world...woke up Saturday morning to a character that had been raped and pillaged quite thoroughly. And my alts deleted, including the awesome new Mage I was working on.

My bank, including all of my bags, was pretty much emptied. My inventory was reamed. Even my brand new skeletal warhorse was gone. Thankfully, they left me in the gear I had on, even though they'd changed out my rings. Friends said they saw me popping in and out of Slave Pens all night and, when they tried to talk to "me", they were told to "fuck off" and other interesting things. I think they got an idea it wasn't me. The hackers left me in Coilfang Reservoir with about a millisecond of breath left, so that was fun. They'd been mining on my character all night, too, as my mining was up to 375 (from about 330) and there was a stack of 10 adamantite in my bag. My XP was up by about 100,000, my gear was worn and needing repair and my bag had 89 flash powders in it. Obviously some hijinx had ensued.

We regained control of the account and scanned this computer six ways from Sunday with, like, three different programs and came up with nothing. No keyloggers, no Trojans...zip. I'm the picture of internet safety. I visit the same five or six news, blogs and comic sites a day, nothing shady. I don't even open attachments on my sister's emails, for goodness sake! No idea how they managed to do this to me, I just hope like hell that it doesn't happen again.

Now the thing to do is wait to see what, if anything, Blizzard restores to me. I've talked to account services, I've talked to GMs, I've got emails in. Everyone says I have to just wait. Meanwhile, though I was told it was fine to play, I have nowhere to keep all of my stuff. My bags are full, my bank space is nil since those bags are gone and I'm concerned that, if I buy temporary bags, they just won't put back in my former BIG bags. And if I put my new stuff in the bank, where will the old stuff go? My guild and friends have been great in trying to lend me money and give me items until it gets sorted, but until I know what I'm getting back, I don't want to take anything from anyone. I'm starting to think I should just stop playing...for a while, anyway.

Yes, I feel violated, I feel nervous and paranoid and I have no trust anymore. Blah, blah, blah, whine, whine and all that. Since the idiot made a banker alt, that he left friended on my account until he got sick of my saying "HI!" all the time and deleted it, I know he plays somewhere. I keep wondering, as I run around playing, if people I pass could be the guy, laughing up his sleeve at me. A Night Elf passed me yesterday and, inexplicably, stopped and waved and gave hugs and things and, while it could have been someone I know on an ally alt, I couldn't help thinking, what if it's him?

Blah, at least the weather matches my mood. Crappy. I need chocolate.

Exalted With the Dead

I've decided that my thunder chicken was just too bouncy a ride. Plus, it's silly. It squawks and preens itself and just doesn't look dignified enough for my newfound stature as a level 63 bringer of death. What to do?

Grind rep with the Undercity, of course, and get myself possibly the coolest ride in the game, a skelatal warhorse. It glows and leaves a ghostly flaming trail behind while I ride. It whinnies and bucks and screams spectrally whenever I get attacked while riding. It's just plain awesomeness. So, after two days of doing all of the starting quests in Deathknell, Brill and Silverpine, I gave up Giblet and got myself this, yet to be named, wonderhorse.

Super awesomeness all wrapped up in one glowingly good package. Of course, I stuck with the purple. Purple is nice and gives it that feminine touch.

Oh, and while I was snapping pictures last night, I just had to grab this one of Wot and his toreador outfit. High-leee-larious. He has a smokin' pimp-daddyness that just won't quit. I think, with as tight as those pants are, he must stow his soul shards in his shoulderpads.

Blood Elf Loan Shark

In the last three days I have been asked, no less than three times, to lend money to a complete and total stranger. The first offense wasn't so egregious. A teen-ish leveled player asked to borrow a few silver. I politely informed him that he shouldn't go around asking complete strangers for money and told him that, no, I wasn't going to lend him any. The second offense bothered me a bit more as he was in his 30s level-wise so I asked him, quite reasonably, what sort of interest rate he wanted to agree upon. He laughed it off and withdrew the request.

The THIRD one, however, absolutely blew my mind and drove me right off of the deep end. A level 70 asked to borrow 35g from me. Now, I've made it all the way to 62, bought an epic mount by selling every Enchanting mat I had built up from the beginning and I'm barely scraping 60g right now. I also know that 70s have daily quests that they can do to make about 100g every single day if they just make the effort that, I'm told, takes all of about 30 minutes a day. I went off on the guy. I started by offering an interest rate of 25% a day, provided he had collateral, of course. Then, I admit, I harangued him for the next ten minutes about how unbelievable I found it that a 70 would sink so low as to come to a level 62 he didn't even know to try to bum money when he could be doing dailies that I don't EVEN HAVE ACCESS TO. As far as I'm concerned, he should try sitting next to the cockroach seller in Undercity and hold a "Will quest for food" sign. Needless to say, he eventually put me on ignore with a "kthxbai". I hate that crap. I hope he learned something, but somehow I doubt it.

I'm curious exactly how common this is. Amusingly enough, I was warned by various sources when I first started playing WoW, that as a female player and a female character I would be given all kinds of special treatment and "free gear" from male players. Now, I wouldn't even begin to exploit that (No, really!), but I haven't seen a single bit of evidence to support this. Not one slavering, sex-starved nerdboy has come up and tried to hand me a BoE Blue just to see me in my elfy skivvies. Yet, here I am, having freeloaders slither all up against me to try to borrow money. Do I look like a soft touch or something? NO, I won't be your mommy just because I have tits!

A guildie suggested that I set up a loansharking business. Start lending money for desperate Epic-seekers at outrageous rates. I could get a few Ogres to act as knee-breakers for me. A few goblins shylocks. Whaddaya think?

Ms. Mojo Ridin'

So, Bourg gave me directions from Big Bear Butt Blog and I got myself a free Mojo! Check me out, all frogified!

Helping Hands

Lately we've been trying to help a couple of friends level their characters up to catch up with ours and Wot's. They're coming along quickly, a Shaman at 59 and a Paladin at 57, and will hopefully be joining us in Outland soon. To that end, though, we did a couple of instance runs this week. Sunken Temple, again, which went fairly well, all things considered, and Dire Maul, which had a moment or two of clusterfuck, a few moments of outright hilarity and one moment of steaming anger, but otherwise also went favorably. Of course, now that we're in Outland gear, all the nice leather starts dropping. Go figure. Also, now that I've changed to sword spec, all the nice daggers start dropping.

If I had to name one thing I learned this week...hrm...I think it's that Warlocks should not drink blue martinis before instance runs. Yeah. That'd be it.

Ramparts

So we ran Ramparts tonight with a group from our guild. Really odd thing, since we had people playing alts, but I think I got lucky because the Rogue that was going with us had to play his alt Shaman for heals...which freed up the awesome Rogue gear drops for me! I managed to get Bracers of Finesse, Shifting Sash of Midnight, and Sure-Step Boots from the actual quest turn in. Not a bad haul for the evening. And the belt (eeeeeeee, the belt the belt!) is my very first actual piece of socketed gear!! I got two beeeeeeeyutiful shiny red baubles to go in it and I'm so excited! I even picked up a couple of other items to Disenchant and I can start throwing some Enchants around again.

I didn't think the run went that badly, except for two things. One, Martin's video card overheated (still not entirely sure why, we think it was power supply) and started beeping and flickering his monitor. Made it hard to finish, since he was tanking. Second, the last boss, Vazruden and his mount, was a hard fight. The first time we wiped and the healer, who didn't seem to have healed anybody during the fight, tried to take him on by himself. It went poorly. The second time, though, we managed to get our shit together and take his ass down. Score belt. Awwww, yeah.

The Grind

I spent most of yesterday running around Un'Goro trying to find small thorium veins so that I could work my way up to rich thorium veins so that I could work my way up to all of the fel iron that I keep seeing just lying around in Hellfire, taunting me with its money-making potential. I'm starting to see why Martin says they're going to address mining not scaling well with the new leveling speeds. I would have thought that the metals I needed would, naturally, show up around the level-appropriate areas that I'm exploring. Thing is, I'm in Outland, which is level-appropriate (61), and all I have are 300-level metals I can't get. So now I have to make mining trips back to Azeroth. Long, tedius, running-around trips that annoy the crap out of me that have the sole purpose of getting me to 300.

On the other trade note, I'm starting to think that Disenchanting for just mats really is more profitable. Especially since I can't sell my metals because Martin needs them for jewelcrafting. Unfortunately I still have to skill it up, or I can't DE the higher level greens/blues/epics. So many hard choices!

494,000 XP???

Usually I don't pay attention to that little XP bar until it's almost full. Then I'll take a glance at it to see how far I have left to go. Last night, however, I noticed that, after all of my (admittedly mostly entertaining) questing in Hellfire Peninsula, that I was only about halfway through 60. I glanced at the bar and saw 494,000....whaaaaat? The XP needed between 59 and 60 was only, like, 175,000. Martin had said they'd made it much easier to level between 20 and 60, but apparently I didn't realize just how much so. Man, the push for 70 is going to be brutal at this rate.

Also, rare elites that need a full fuggin' group to take them and who just pop up randomly in the midst of a bunch of peaceful (ish) Helboars...hurt my brain. Fulgorge must've come around on us about five times last night. Martin and I couldn't take him and we tried again when Wot got there, but no go. Too bad, too, because he apparently drops some nice BoE blues. Unfortunately, he squishied us.

Epic Chicken

Or, as I like to call him, Giblet 2.0. With the auction of my banked enchanting mats (now I get to start collecting all over again), auctions of metal, Martin's contribution and, I later today found out, the contribution of our Warlock, I managed to buy my new chicken. I just wish they had them in black, but Martin says it's a PvP reward and I'd have to actually work for that. I settled for purple.

Do the Fel Reaver Stomp

I had my first close encounter with a Fel Reaver last night. I'm told it happens to everybody, but when it was said it sounded a lot like what you tell an impotent guy to make him feel better. Martin and I were killing orcs and managed to get ganged and killed. The second I get back and rezzed, a Fel Reaver stomps directly on my head. Squash, like a grape.

I don't even HAVE 6592 health!

Outland! Now with more Blood Elf!

So we finally made 58. I thought Martin was going to pop he was so excited. He actually seemed giddy about it. I believe the direct quote was "I'm back, bitches!". We made the dash to Outland directly after dinging in Eastern Plaguelands, talking Wot, the Warlock, into reluctantly coming with us. I don't think he digs Outland much before flying mount-time.

I picked up my first piece of Outland gear, which does far outstrip what I had previously been wearing. I also picked up my first items to be Disenchanted and got my first Lesser Planar Essence. Personally though, after a look around Outland to see that it's basically the same as the rest of the place, I'm more excited about 60 and finally getting my epic chicken. Giblet II, here I come! Ok, so I'm only 360g towards it, but I'll make it. I just skilled to small thorium, after all. After I supply Martin's jewel crafting, I'm free to go on selling on the AH and making that cash.

One thing I did like in Outland? The view.

Scholo Run

Last night we decided that we'd better do an instance run if we wanted to have a chance of busting out 58. Martin's been hot to hit Outland since he got me playing, so hitting 58 is huge for him. After some deliberation, Martin and the Warlock decided that Scholomance, though a tad high, was our best bet for quest XP stacking. I just go where I'm told, so I agreed, if we could find some more people. Some poking at the guild channel netted us the guild leader's alt 66 Pally to do heals and a level 70 Hunter with a pet to tank. No sweat, right?

It wasn't as easy as that, turns out. From the outset we had problems with aggro and pulling too many mobs at once. Our Warlock must've died ten times, but then he does have a sort of kamikaze tendency to dash in and see what happens. It can be hilarious. Like shooting the rat running directly in front of a group of mobs we've yet to pull. He's definitely our Leroy Jenkins of the group. Martin's Druid died about three times, but then he was tanking when the Hunter pet wasn't, so that's about par, I guess. I think I croaked it three times or so, too. One I know wasn't remotely my fault and one I know was completely me. I managed to stand in a green gas cloud until I died, not understanding the annoyed calls of "Get out of the cloud!". Very newbie mistake. I don't know the count on the Pally and Hunter's deaths, but I'm pretty sure everyone got offed at some point.

Still, it got me 10k off of 58 and I did get some awfully nice gear, like Silent Fang and Mirah's Song, and a whole ton of stuff to Disenchant. I ended up with a collection of Large Brilliants. Now I just need some Large Radiant to do the enchants on the new swords.

Next stop, Outland! I'm told there's gold in them there hills. (There are hills, right?)

Newbie...or Noob?

I'm a long-time gamer, I suppose you could say. I've been RPing off and on for about 12 years now. Is that a long time? Anyway, it has introduced me to a lot of interesting people (my fiance, for instance) and a lot of somewhat scary and annoying types, as well. For the most part, though, I would say that I've had fun.

But for all my time spent playing those games, I never touched an RPG vidoe game, much less even thought of playing an MMORPG. I never had a computer or a connection that could hold up to the strain. I knew that my fiance played a game called World of Warcraft before I met him and I also knew that, at times, it drove me nuts that he was so wrapped up in it. He said I'd understand once he got me to play it, something I laughed off at the time. I wasn't going near the thing.

Two years down the road, though, and we're living together, and I get a good look at this thing called WoW. It's pretty. It's engaging. It's...bloody! Be still my heart! So, I agree to give it a test-run on a 14 day trial account. Long story short, fourteen days has turned into two months of play and still going strong.

My Blood Elf Rogue, now a level 56, is gratifyingly hacky-slashy with plenty of battle grunts and screams and spurts of blood when she gets going. My fiance, after a quick trip through Blood Elfiness with a Priest, decided to roll a Tauren Druid (you can find his comments on the game at Dire Aquatic Form ). We've found a fun, helpful guild in Dominus Nihil and a nice group of very quirky people to level with. I've found a new hobby so absorbing that occasionally laundry goes un-folded and dinner is late to the table.

So, hereafter, I shall transcribe all of my game-related experiences, thoughts and feelings and we'll all get to see what it is to go from the absolutely greenest of greens to, hopefully, ripe with the fullness of experience...and pwnage.