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?