Weekend (11 Jul) - Mery "Litlbotm" Owns

Weekend (11 Jul) - Mery "Litlbotm" Owns

Quick Real ID Update: New security problems with Real ID are already starting to crop up. Using Real ID, only players who have been granted permission will see that player's real first and last name in game. However, User Inferface (UI) addon authors have discovered that a very simple script can be used to collect the real names of any Real ID player without their permission. The malicious script could be buried in an addon without the player even being aware of it.

Breaking Real ID News: Blizzard announced over the weekend that they have heard the voice of their customers and WILL NOT implement the use of real names on their forums. The in game Real ID system stays but will remain a voluntary feature. All it took was about 50,000 complaints (and then they locked the forum thread on the subject).

Warning - grab a cup of coffee, a beer, or whatever your favored drink is and settle in. This is a long one.

Merylitlbotm is not sensitive about her name. She's quite proud of her derriere, thank you. And from a Tauren's point of view, the prominent feature is quite attractive. That doesn't mean that she won't rip your face off if you make fun of her. But unless you really want to risk your life and not just your face, I'd suggest not teasing her about her "sensitive" side. More on that later.

Mery is a merry cow now that she has a new gun to tote around. Her new [Precisely Calibrated Boomstick] with it's +5 damage scope carries a much bigger punch than her older gun and shoots twice as fast. Mery laid waste to much of Feralas over a couple of days, reaching level 46 - and discovering that she'd better stock up on ammo at the rate she is now going through boxes of mithril slugs.

Mery wasn't done yet, though. She took a page out of Naithipe's book and did some research on melee weapons. Her current weapons, Steelclaw Reavers, were still a fine pair of matching axes, but they were getting a little old and looked more and more out of place next to the new Boomstick.

One of the best weapon upgrades she could get at her level was the [Scout's Blade], which is a pvp dagger that can be purchased with pvp honor points. Mery still had a bag full of pvp Marks that could no longer be used for anything except to exchange them for - yep, honor points. Mery decided to convert those marks to honor and go shopping. Wow, did she hit paydirt! Not only did she have enough honor points to buy the dagger, she was able to upgrade her pvp stamina trinket, and even bought a new pair of bracers.

Mery had an idea where she could get her other weapon upgrade to go with the new dagger, too. Once she can corner Wild and get him to enchant her bag of new goodies, she'll be heading back to Feralas to try them out. And then she'll be in the hunt for some flying creatures called hippogryphs.

Later . . . Wild rendezvoused with Mery in Orgrimmar after Wild had passed along to Happy what enchanting mats he needed and Happy then sent them via in game mail to Mery. The Steeclaw Reavers had been enchanted with +15 agility, agility being one of the most important stats for hunters. The Scout's Blade was a higher level weapon, and Wild was able to use a higher level enchant on it, giving the blade +20 agi.

Mery gathered up her new toys and headed back to Feralas. Arriving at the horde town of Camp Mojache, Mery sought out the witch doctor Uzer'i. Uzer'i collects beasts, but he has a unique way of capturing them. The witch doctor fashioned what he called a "beast muisek vessel" that when cast on a subdued beast shrinks them down and stores them in the vessel. Uzer'i sent Mery off of on many quests to capture so many beasts that Mery soon lost count.

Her final task was to capture mountain giants that live in the far northern tip of Feralas. It was Mery's first trip to that region, and the level of beasts, mostly bears, gorillas and wolves, were 2-3 levels higher than Mery. Mery had her own gorilla, though, Sassy, and had no trouble navigating through the mobs and/or killing them when required.

Mery found the camp of the mountain giants. They were all level 49 elites. Elites? Oh boy. Wild had a very vague recollection of this particular task from his own boyhood days. What he recalled was that the giants could be shrunken down into normal giants and then subdued for storage in the muisek vessel. So level 46 Mery decided to try that.

Mery and Sassy approached a large, wide shouldered mountain giant, targeted it, and tried to shrink the giant down to palatable size. It didn't work. The irritated elite giant lumbered after Mery, and Sassy had to engage. We didn't see the level 50 gorilla behind the giant, but it saw us, and soon Mery had a hostile gorilla in her face even as Sassy was trying to stay alive against the giant. Mery ignored the gorilla, focusing on ensuring that Sassy had a firm grip on the elite giant and keeping her healed until Mery felt she had some measure of control over the fight. Mery then changed Sassy's target to the gorilla, and backed out of the way as Sassy charged the gorilla, the giant stomping after her.

As soon as Sassy grappled the gorilla Mery changed her pet's target back to the giant. Sassy was now tanking both mobs, and Mery was free to blast the giant with everything she had. It was close, but the giant fell and then shortly after that so did the hostile gorilla.

Mery and Sassy were more careful after that, making sure any nearby mobs were killed before tackling one of the giants. The pair of adventurers killed/subdued six more elite mountain giants, and then shrunk them down for the witch doctor. All in a days work.

The reward for all that effort was a new main hand axe called [Force of the Hippogryph], with it's very nice +12 agi stats to go along with the +20 agi enchant Wild provided. The additional benefit was that along with the new axe, the series of quests also helped get Mery to level 47.

Later still . . . Mery loves her combat pets. She had her intrepid tanking gorilla, Sassy, and her diving bombing, screeching DPS predator bird, Fleshrypper. Sassy was level 46 and got most of Mery's time. Fleshrypper kept lagging behind, though, and was at level 43. It wasn't the bird's fault; Mery only used Fleshrypper for pvp. Lao suggested that Mery do more dungeon runs where a DPSing bird like Fleshrypper would be right at home. At Mery's level, though, her choice of random dungeons was very slim - Mauradon, Zul-Farrak, and Sunken Temple. Not a lot of choice there. Mery will never let Fleshrypper go, though, since she had to brave Alliance neighorhoods to hunt her bird down, one found only on Alliance territory. She wanted her next pet to be just as special.

Her next pet?

Maybe Mery should share what her current pets look like:




Once Mery got it into her head that she wanted another pet, she put in her research to find just the right one. She wanted one that would be the polar opposite of Fleshrypper who, when you get right down to it, is a flesh eating vulture. Her next pet would show a softer side. That's a clue to start tip-toeing carefully around Mery.

Mery happened to be in Thunder Bluff thinking over this new idea, visions of a new adventure starting to take shape. She was interrupted- and I swear this really happened - by a level 13 rogue who whispered her this catchy pick up line, "i thin ku r ugly but ur myk inda cow."

That rogue's carcass, what's left of it, will never be found.

Mery had made up her mind. She parked both Fleshrypper and Sassy at the Stables and took along a level 30 combat bear cleverly named Bareon. Bareon, poor thing, became expendable when Sassy came along, and he has been languishing in the Stables since then. Bareon was insurance, should there be problems with the trip. Ultimately, Bareon would have to be adandoned back into the wild once Mery was ready to tame a new combat pet.

Mery packed a lunch and took the Thunder Bluff flight path as far north as she could go - to the small horde outpost of Zoram'gar in Ashenvale. Few go there, unless you are headed to Blackfathom Deeps. Mery would pass by the Deeps, but continued north into Darkshore, a low level Alliance zone. Mery followed the coastline from the southern tip of Darkshore almost to it's northern border, staying mounted all the way, and avoiding hostiles easily. She reached her destination - the town of Auberdine.

Auberdine is an alliance town, with numerous alliance npc guards of around level 40. Mery could kill them easily enough, but that would flag her for pvp, and leave her open to attack by every alliance player in town. Auberdine is small, though, a waterfront town with only one real attraction - a network of piers that was a major hub for the alliance fleet of boats.

Mery saw no one as she made her way to the shoreline next to the long, multi-berth pier. She splashed into the water, still on her kodo mount, and rode the swimming beast to the very end of the longest section of pier. Having reached her destination, Mery quietly submerged completely - and waited.




If you didn't check out the pics before reading onward, go back and look at them now.

What happened there? Well, Mery intentionally drowned herself.

Now dead, Mery released and her ghost appeared at the graveyard. Mery made her ghostly way back to he pier and walked to the end. Well, almost to the end. A level 32 alliance paladin was standing all by his lonesome at the end of the pier. The boat was gone, so we both waited for it to come back. Mery stood a few feet behind the paladin. I don't think the alliance could see Mery as a ghost, but he kept looking behind him almost as if he could sense her standing there. Mery was sooooo tempted to rez right there on the pier and dare the allie to flag. But that would upset her plans.



When the boat arrived, Mery and the paladin boarded. Mery moved to the front of the ship, climbed up onto the rail, and stepped to the end of the pointed prow. I was a little afraid I'd fall off as it was pretty narrow and I had to jump a bit. Mery was in range of her corpse, and would have to rez before the boat left or it would take her out of range. Mery was certain that if the alliance npcs on the boat sighted her that she could kill them, but that would flag her for pvp and complicate things at the other end of her journey.

Mery rezzed. She would be clearly visible to the alliance paladin that had also boarded. I wonder what he thought, seeing a horde hunter on his ship.



Just a few steps behind Mery, standing on the deck, was an alliance npc. Mery checked the npc's level. The npc was not level 40, as Mery had assumed. The npc was level ??, which meant the npc was at least ten levels higher than Mery. Some past patch must have upgraded the guards on these boats. If Mery got caught she was dead. The npc did nothing, though, probably because the prow of the boat was not part of his aggro radius.

The boat sailed serenely to it's destination, Mery feeling a bit like that scene in Titanic. As the ship slowed to anchor, Mery jumped into the water and swam the last few feet to the shore. Mery was now on Azuremyst Isle, the starting zone for the alliance Draenei. Here Mery made a mistake. This is a very low level zone with very little danger to Mery as long as she did not get flagged for pvp. The small island does have one major feature - the city of Exodar. Javajoo lived there, but Mery had no plans to meet with her alliance cousin. Mery circled around the city, avoiding the guards, but she came too close to the city borders.

"You are in Alliance territory!" was not what Mery wanted to hear. She was now flagged for pvp, and would stay that way until it wore off in five minutes or until someone spotted her and called for her head. Mery headed away from the city, working her way to the north side of the island. Far from prying alliance eyes, Mery waited out the flag. She then got wet again swimming across a narrow channel of water to Bloodmyst Isle.

According to the map Mery's targeted prize roamed all over Bloodmyst Isle, but in fact while they roamed far and wide, there were not really that many of them. It took Mery traversing two-thirds of the island (without seeing a single alliance) before she found what she was looking.

It was a Royal Blue Flutterer. It's a moth. Moths that can be combat pets are relatively new. There are only twelve species of moths that can be tamed, and nine of them start at level 59 or higher, far beyond Mery's ability to tame them at her level. The Royal Blue Flutterer, however, is only level 14, and can only be found on Bloodmyst Isle. They are a common enough pet for the alliance, but they are rare among the horde.

Mery released Bareon back to the wild, and tamed her moth. Mery hearthed off the Isle and back to Thunder Bluff. A new pet is automatically adjusted to within five levels of the hunter, so Mery's moth arrived at Thunder Bluff as a level 42. Mery named her BlueWitch, after a moth called a White Witch that has the largest wingspan of any moth on earth, up to 12 inches.

Mery proudly shows off BlueWitch:


Even later still . . . There is yet one more tale for Mery to tell. But perhaps that should be saved for another time. Ok, forget that. Here goes:

Mery is not really an "accessories" person, or at least we didn't think she was. So, when she asked her alliance cousin, Javajoo, to get her a Blue Moth non-combat pet so that BlueWitch would have some company, there were a few carefully hidden astonished blinks. Blue Moth eggs are only sold in the alliance city of Exodar. They don't cost much - about 50 silver - so young Java, who as mentioned before resided in Exodar, could afford to own one of his own. Hearing the no-nonsense tone in Mery's voice, one that did not brook any answer but one, Java agreed to buy her one as well.

A method to move "stuff" between horde and alliance was already in place via the neutral Auction House in Booty Bay, the seaport town in Stranglethorn Vale. Java bought a Blue Moth egg and sent it in the mail to Rakta, his sister, who was already in Booty Bay. Rakta was joined in Booty Bay by Melasahnd, her horde cousin. The two met in a small room off the main path, where a twitchy looking goblin managed the neutral Auction House. Rakta could hear water lapping outside, and the air in the room was dank and smelled of rotting wood. The whole business of making transactions between the warring factions has an unsavory aspect to it, even when it is for good cause. Rakta's combat owl and Mela's ghoul were restless and starting to size each other up. Best to get this business over with quickly.

Both Rakta and Mela opened the Auction House window and checked for moth eggs. There were yellow and white moths for sale there already for as much as 25g. Apparently that is what some horde would pay to get one. The main concern with transacting business through the neutral AH is that someone might buy your item before the transaction was complete. Rakta was a bit nervous making the transaction. When she went to put the Blue Moth egg up for sale, she accidentally caused the egg to hatch. "Don't . . . !" Mela yelled out frantically, seeing what was about to happen. But it was too late. Rakta now owned a pretty little blue moth. Mery's moth.

Rakta and Mela decided it was best not to tell Mery about that. Mery was already impatient to get her moth, and this was going to cause a delay. Java, too, swore secrecy and bought another Blue Moth egg. Once the egg had reached Rakta (again) through the mail, a successful transaction through the neutral AH was made. Mela took the egg and carefully placed it in the guild bank, and an eager Mery plucked it out of the bank minutes after Mel put it there.

Mery now has a matching pair of combat and non-combat pets. And if a cow could glow, that would be Mery.


This morning Mery said something about needing a blue dress. I'm just not going there. Nope. Not gonna.

Wednesday (7 Jul) - Valithria Dreamwalker

Wednesday (7 Jul) - Valithria Dreamwalker

For the second night of our ICC10 raid we chose as our first target the green dragon Valithria Dreamwalker. In an FS guild ICC25 some months ago Wild had got to experience this battle, which is quite a bit different than most of the encounters in ICC, or anywhere else. Wild was assigned to raid heal, which was a challenging but pretty straightforward task, but not anything like what some of the other healers in the raid were doing. We beat the encounter, so Wild can say that he has experience winning it, but frankly I had no clue even after the fight about what all was going on.

The only other raider in our current ten man group who'd ever seen Dreamwalker was Bf, Wild's shaman friend and FS guildie, who was playing the hunter alt he has in the MM guild. The other eight raiders would be seeing it for the first time, and Wild was going to get to learn how this fight really worked - for the first time.

Valithria Dreamwalker is the first boss in the third wing of ICC, called Frostwing Halls. The main wrinkle in this fight is that Dreamwalker is not the enemy. She had been captured, and it was conjectured she was used in experiments having to do with the spectral world of the Emerald Dream. Our task in this encounter is to save Dreamwalker. Dreamwalker begins with 50% health. Winning the fight requires us to heal her up to 100%. Of course, if that is all that we had to do, it would be easy. However, Dreamwalker's keepers don't take kindly to having us trying to free their pet dragon, and they do everything they can to stop us.

Valithria Dreamwalker

There are five different kinds of attackers, all with different and nasty abilities, and they come in wave after wave throughout the fight. It took more than ten minutes to describe all of the abilities and the rather complex kill order. Sh, our shaman healer, was assigned to heal the entire raid on his own. Wild and Ch, our holy priest, had a different role. Our job was to concentrate all our healing on Dreamwalker. By ourselves, it would take far too long to do that, as the dragon needs about six million in healing to get her to 100%. But Dreamwalker can help a bit. Regularly, throughout the fight, Dreamwalker opens a portal to a part of the Emerald Dream. Raiders entering this place can fly. Floating yellow clouds surround Dreamwalker, and when flown through provide powerful healing buffs that stack as you fly through more clouds. The trip only lasts a few seconds, and the raiders are returned to the real world again, but with those stacked buffs our healing output is monstrously enhanced.

We were excited and restless. Let's get this underway! We began.

We figured to need only one tank, and Mf got the call. The other tank, Bd, opted to switch to fury spec and do DPS. In front of Dreamwalker were four hostiles. Mf engaged them, and the DPS brought them down. Wild waited until the four mobs fell before running in to take up position to the right of Dreamwalker's head. Ch took up her position on the left side of the dragon's head. The rest of the raiders spread out and began tackling incoming mobs. Wild's heal reflexes twitched every time someone took damage, but I tried to focus on my single goal - heals on Dreamwalker. We had one minute of healing before the first portal opened and Wild tried to make the best of it, stacking all his HoTs on the dragon and then spamming my best large heal, Nourish. I was a bit cautious, not sure how the mana would last with that kind of non-stop heavy healing. Dreamwalker's health began sputtering upward from 50% to 52%.

A raid warning announced that a portal would soon open. Wild looked around and noticed the appearance of a number of small, green, eggshaped things floating about waist high to Wild. I tried to interact with one of them, then remembered that it took a few seconds before the eggshape opened into a portal. Wild has seen a lot of different kinds of portals, in all shapes and sizes and ways of opening them. The eggshape began morphing into a circular swirl of green light about three times the size of the eggshape. Wild tried running through it, jumping through it, coming in from one side and the other, but nothing worked. The portal closed, and Wild had not gotten the buffs. The battle around Wild raged on, and on this first attempt the lone tank went down quickly as raiders worked to figure out the fight. Ch had made it into the portal, and her 7k healing vs Wild's 4k healing showed how much those buffs helped healing. Wild asked for clarification on how to get into the portals, and I was told that they didn't really work like the portals we were familiar with, they worked more like vehicles. There is a special bar the game uses to display vehicle commands, the most common being an arrow bent into a half circle used to mount and dismount the vehicle. Wild made sure that bar was active for our second attempt.

We didn't get much farther on our second attempt. Raiders were still learning. Wild failed again to find a way to enter a portal, as his vehicle bar never displayed anything. After another discussion with Ch, she said that the half-circle arrow would show on the swirling portal itself when the mouse hovered over it. Ok, Wild said he'd give that a try on the next attempt.

On our third try Wild successfully entered a portal. What a relief! The first time Wild entered, it took a second to realize anything had changed. Dreamalker was still exactly where he was in the "outside" world. But all of the other raiders were gone. And floating some twenty feet above Wild's head were a ring of floating yellowish clouds that shifted this way and that, as if in response to some unfelt wind. Wild made a move like he was in his flying form, and sure enough, he could fly. A flying tree! Ch had also told Wild that she had learned that when she flew through one of the clouds, it was best to hang inside it a second to catch the soundless, harmless explosion from it. That explosion is what provides the buffs, and if she flew through it too quickly she'd miss the explosion and the buff. Wild had a brief bout of panic when he first tried to fly through one of the moving clouds, with visions of his ineptitude in other flying encounters like the hated Occulus dungeon. Wild started getting buffs, though, and from there on he was a demon flying through the air, pricking clouds, and getting his buffs.

The portal closed and Wild found himself twenty feet in the air. It was a hard landing, but only a pittance of health lost. One buff enhanced rejuv got Wild back to full health and pouring heals into Dreamwalker. After the first portal, new portals came up pretty quickly. Wild had barely started spamming Nourish after dropping his Hots than a new portal was announced as incoming. Mana regen was a completely non-issue with the buffs. Wild spammed his entire arsenal of heals and never dropped his mana below 95%. What power! But things went south soon after that, raiders started dying, with Wild and Ch having to divert healing to try to keep the raid alive, and we wiped.

One tank was just not enough, so Bd switched back into tanking spec for the next attempt. Our fourth attempt went much better, but it was another wipe. Wild had almost caught up with Ch in dragon healing, her with 7.6k healing and Wild at 7.3k. We should be able to do much better, and needed to be quicker in getting the maximum buffs we could.

Our fifth attempt was our best yet, and we got Dreamwalker to 88% health before wiping.

We slipped a bit on attempt #6, although Wild and Ch both had gotten our healing per second (hps) up over 9.5k. The goal, I think, is to get total hps on the dragon up above 20k. We were close to that.

On our 7th attempt Wild missed the second portal. I don't know how. I just couldn't find the handle and it went away before I could enter. All those stacks of healing buffs dropped off and Wild's healing fell dramatically until I could start building them back with the next portal. That proved fatal. The fight went longer than any of our previous attempts, and as the pressure mounted we suddenly saw Dreamwalker start to stir. She spoke words of encouragement to us and warning to her captors. She was getting stronger. She was at 92% when we wiped. Boy, does Wild wish he'd not missed that portal!

We never got any closer to winning her freedom. We made a total of 11 attempts, trying a number of different things, all "learning encounters," ie, failures. Wild and Ch both were able to break over 10k hps, but we would need to either squeeze out even more dragon healing or find a way to keep the rest of the raid alive longer.

Next week we'll hope for another six boss kill night so we can get back at her again. Despite the cost in consumables and repair bills, and the absence of loot, I really do love learning new encounters!

Hot Topic - Strike 2 For Real ID

Hot Topic - Strike 2 For Real ID

Blizzard has just announced that they will be implementing Real ID on their official Forums site. Once it goes live anyone posting on the site will have their real first and last name displayed.

The first comment on the "Blue" thread (blue threads are official Blizzard communications) was "This is possibly the worst thing I've ever read in blue. "

The idea is that by requiring the use of real names, it will cut down on "flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness" but it has already led to a change in Blizzard policy. After a Blizzard representative voluntarily used his real name, he was almost immediately hacked and Blizzard was forced to change their employee policy, exempting them from using their last names due to "security risks." Apparently, they don't care about security risks to their customers. I don't use the official forums much anyway, as I much prefer the wowhead site instead. I will stop using official forums all together if they really put this in place.

There are already tens of thousands of responses to this one thread. Random perusing did highlight one in game issue that has nothing to do with security but would almost certainly create a lot of in game trouble. By using real names players will know if the toon is being played by a male or female. I can't even imagine the number of women that would be mercilessly harassed in this game once Blizzard "outed" them. Not to mention that this would give out the real names of minors who play the game. How many mothers or fathers would want their child's real name available on the internet?

This is a very bad idea, but Blizzard seems determined to make themselves into the Facebook for gamers. Ugh.

Tuesday Night (7 Jul) - Rawr!

Tuesday Night (7 Jul) - Rawr!

Wild didn't bother to log in early for the Tuesday night ICC10 run, given how late that run always starts. Wild logged in right at 6pm, and got his invite within five minutes. Of course, we didn't actually get started until 6:45pm, so maybe I'll log in at 6:15pm next week. The MM guild came up short on getting two raids together again, so our group was a very potent mix from both with many of our best raiders. That included our two best tanks and our three best healers. Also, for the first time in several weeks Wild was in a raid with Bd. When we split into two raids several weeks ago, Wild and Bd ended up in different raids. I like raiding with the group I'm in and Mf is a good raid leader, too, but I love being in a raid with Bd not only because be's very good but also because he is always so excited to be playing that his enthusiasm tends to rub off on everyone else.

Bd assigned Wild to be his healer. He lavished praise on his three healers,and was about to name his favorite, and then thought better of it, deciding to say that we were all so good he couldn't pick between us.

"Wild and I go way back back together," Bd said, "and Sh (our shaman healer) is just awesome, and Ch (our main priest healer) is great both in game and in bed" - which had us all laughing and posting ROFL! in chat. Ch chimed in with some ribald comments of her own, but you could hear the pleased embarrassment in her voice. Yes, the two do live together, which is one reason Wild ended up in that other raid group (so Bd and Ch could raid together), which is a perfectly good reason in my book.

We started on the trash and got through two-thirds of it when Bd got a call from work and we waited almost twenty minutes for him to get back. Everyone waited patiently. Ch took over Bd's computer and ran around on Bd's toon making choo choo noises and dancing with everyone. Wild got into the act, slipping into his murloc costume and dancing as well.

Murloc Wild

When we at last got down to business, we really got down to business.

We tackled the first boss, Lord Marrowgar, and you could have video'ed the fight and used it for training other raiders. It went that smoothly, with Marrowgar dying without knowing what had hit him.

Bd moved us on quickly, and we started on the next set of trash before the blood had dried and before the loot master finished distributing loot. We put Deathwhisperer in our sights, and she too fell on our first try with no deaths. We were rolling.

The gunship battle had it's little quirks. There are two shipboard rail guns that have to be manned to take out specific mobs on the other ship. We had two warlocks in the group and, when asked who should man the guns, Bd made the quick decision that the warlocks would man them. One of them had never manned the shipboard guns before, but didn't tell Bd, and during the battle things got a little dicey when he didn't shoot at the right targets. Secondly, since Mf had been the tank assigned to board the enemy ship, I figured that Ch would be healing him (even though I was usually the healer assigned to the tank that does the boarding) and that I didn't need to stand at the rail to heal. We almost lost Mf during the first boarding because Ch got confused about who she should be healing. I saw what was happening and got to the rail to help out, and then took over that job for the rest of the fight. The confusion was because we had mushed the two groups together into one, and so our "usual" assignments didn't always match what we were used to doing in our own groups. It didn't matter, though, no one died and we won the Gunship battle.

Next up was Saurfang, and Wild's group has had ongoing problems with this boss, including some bad luck with Marks on the healers, which is difficult to overcome. Wild and the shaman Sh were the healers for Saurfang on this night, while Ch switched to shadow spec for the extra DPS. Things went pretty much like clockwork, just like the rest of our night was going. Late in the fight Sh was Marked, but with Wild's help he stayed alive. Saurfang went down on our first try. We had cleared the first wing. This was becoming an awesome night.

There are two mini-bosses to fight in between the first and second wings, called Precious and Stinky. Yes, that is their real names. They are not hard, once you know the mechanics of the fight. We breezed through the Precious fight and then quickly grabbed Stinky. The tank, Bd, made the odd call to pull Stinky in the opposite direction we had taken on Precious, and that put many raiders out of position. Both mini-bosses have an ability called Decimate, which drops every raider down to almost no health. To combat that, everyone stays grouped up close to the tank during the fight so that when Decimate hits everyone is in range of the mass AoE healing required to survive Decimate. But we were too spread out and raiders started dying. Wiping on a mini-boss is not only embarrassing, it can also be funny. The shocked laughter started when the first raiders went down, and grew as more died and it looked like Stinky was going to get the better of us. When the second tank died that left only Wild and Sh, the two healers, alive, and by that time everyone was screaming at us to finish him off! Sh died, leaving only Wild. I got off one moonfire before I died (which would continue to do damage after I died), but I didn't think it would be enough to kill him. At this point it's a wipe - we're all dead. Clever Sh, though, who as a shaman has an instant self rez, popped his rez. He knew he'd have almost no time before Stinky wacked him again, so Sh dropped an explosive totem just before Stinky killed him a second time. The totem exploded, and Stinky died. Sure, we all had to release and rez at the graveyard, but hey, if the monster dies, it's a win! And credit to the two healers who made DPS moves to make it happen. :-)

We had our choice of Rotface or Festergut at the start of the second wing. Festergut is the usual first choice as he is a bit easier than Rotface. But for that reason Bd talked us into going after Rotface first. "We've got Rotface on farm now, so let's get him down and that will give us an easy start on Festgergut tomorrow." Rotface is on farm? I'm sure that was on the mind of everyone in the raid that raided with Mf. I don't think we'd killed him even once yet in our group. But Bd's raid had killed Rotface two weeks in a row, and he was sure we could do it with this group, given our successes on the night so far.

Rotface it was. Wild does not like this fight. Wild is always nervous about the role he is almost always assigned, which is to heal the off tank, who spends the whole fight running in a circle around the outer edge of the chamber being chased by oozes, because if they catch him they can two-shot kill him. Ok, so the off tank has the worst assignment in this fight - but Wild is the guy that has to keep him alive. And he's often out of range of Wild, which makes Wild have to maneuver a whole lot more than I like to on this fight. Wild is trying to keep an eye on where the off tank is, is watching Rotface to avoid his regular streams of vomit, avoiding pools of rank green burning slime that spills across the floor, and, most importantly, hoping against hope that I don't get an ooze on me, and that if I do, I'll notice the raid warning telling me I've been targeted. Once targeted, Wild has to start running as well, hopefully in the direction of the off tank, in order that the off tank can add my little ooze to the bigger ooze that is chasing him around the room. Oh yea, and remember to hightail it away when that big ooze decides to explode. I really don't like this fight.

We wiped on our first attempt, breaking our string of perfect kills. We got Rotface to 25% though, which was pretty good. It was getting close to 9pm, when our raid ends, and Bd asked if we wanted to give it another try. We did, and on our second attempt Rotface fell. From some in the raid it was their first Rotface kill.

We hardly needed to debate sticking around a little longer to take on Festergut. He died easily on our first attempt. Six bosses down in a single night. "Hey," asked one raider, "anyone want to stay around long enough to get one more frost badge? There's a mini-boss in the third wing we could get to that would clear trash to speed up tomorrow?" Yep, there was enough gas left in our raid for one more challenge.

Sister Svalna is a level 82 elite. Getting to her meant getting through a whole bunch of mobs staged on the floor in front of us, on the stairs behind those, and on the platform at the top of the stairs where the winged Sister hovers above all of them.



Wild has seen this fight in ICC25, but not many others had reached this point before. I couldn't really remember which mob groups to aggro in what order or how many would attack when we started, so we guessed. The first couple of groups went well. On the stairs, however, our lone hunter let his combat pet get a little too aggressive, and suddenly we had about ten elite mobs in our midst. That was both scary and exciting. The two tanks gathered them up, the healers kept the tanks alive, and the DPS started dropping AoEs on everything in the room. That also brought Sister Svalna into the fight, and things got even more interesting. Our measured, step by step approach had become a full scale war.

Which we survived, bringing down the Sister as the priority target and them cleaning up the rest of the mobs that we hadn't already killed. It was a fitting conclusion to a fine night of raiding. RAWR!

Wild didn't get any loot, having lost the roll on the one item I wanted. It was an i251 healing ring, which reminded Wild that I was still wearing an i245 ring, the worst piece of gear Wild owns now on his healing set.

Wednesday night's raid should be really fun and challenging. I don't think anyone but Wild and maybe a couple of others have ever seen the fights we could choose from - Professor Putricide (please, NO!), the Blood Prince Council (that would be my choice), or Dreamwalker (which even Wild has encountered only once). All will test this group to the max.

Tuesday (6 Jul) - "Normal" Maintenance Today

Tuesday (6 Jul) - "Normal" Maintenance Today

After three weeks of long, brutal maintenance Tuesday mornings (extending into the afternoons and even into the evenings), today's maintenance is expected to be a normal 5am to 11am downtime. We'll see.

The beta test server for the Cataclysm expansion went live last week. I signed up to be a beta tester, but so far have not gotten an invite from Blizzard. The start of beta is one more step closer to release planned for sometime toward the end of the year.

There were only three things in the last patch, Patch 3.3.5 - the Ruby Sanctum dungeon, Real ID, and an overhaul of the in game text chat system.

I've already talked about why I will not be using REAL ID.

Wild has not been around enough to get into a Ruby Sanctum (RS) run yet, which makes one wonder just how interested in playing Wild is these days. Wild is signed up for the regular raids with MM on Tuesday and Wednesday, and still hopes that the group will attempt RS on one of those nights. Wild could get into any number of PUG raids that always seem to be forming, but he just hasn't been around. Wild lost a bit of enthusiasm for the new dungeon when he checked out the rewards (ie, the loot). In RS 25 man the loot ilevel is 271, which is nice as it is higher than "top end" i264 of current gear (except for Heroic raids). However, neither guild that Wild is involved with has any interest in running RS25. RS10 man loot is ilevel 258, which was a bit of a disappointment, since the last time I looked i258 is lower than i264. There are 12 drops in RS10, but only four of them are usable by a druid. Those four are a cape, gloves, a +hit cloth belt, and a +hit ring. Wild already has a better cape and gloves, so that leaves just two items that Wild would like to have out of RS, both of which would be offspec for Wild and therefore less likely for him to get. It's just hard to get real excited about it.

So, that leaves the overhauled chat system as the only new feature that I haven't talked about yet. Well, it fails. Strike three.

The new chat box is bigger than the old one, and can't be resized as well as the old one. I like to have two chat boxes visible on my screen. One is the usual box where everything said in chat - open channels, party channels, whisper channels, raid channels, everything - appear, and then a smaller second chat box for guild chat and whispers so that I won't miss those in the crowd of other stuff that washes through the main box. Both of those chat boxes fit quite nicely beneath the 25 box raid screen and tank assist boxes and the decurse boxes on the left side of the screen. Not any more. After patch 3.3.5 they no longer fit. The chat boxes overlap the raid screen no matter how much I reduced the size and no matter how much I fussed with it. Frustrating!

So once more Blizzard has made something worse than it was before. That has forced me to go to yet another third party addon. I tested out an addon called Chatter, which completely replaces the current chat box and provides a lot more flexibility - and allows me to fit it into a smaller space. Problem solved. To give you an idea of what I mean, here are a some before and after shots:

Before the patch both chat boxes fit neatly at the bottom left of the screen:


After the patch look at how the chat boxes overlap the raid screen even after I adjusted it as well as I could:


This is what the chat boxes look like now using the addon Chatter. I'm learning to like Chatter a lot.


Lao, level 46, has been bugging Mery to catch up with her level-wise for our Monday night pvp, particularly since Ando is on haitus for a few weeks. Mery managed to get herself in game early on Monday, taking a flight to Feralas to battle the many denizens there and complete a few quests. It was grueling work - not for Mery, but for me. I never have a hangover (really?), but, let's just say it was a rough morning. At least for most of the quests I didn't have to think much and just killed things. Mery made it from level 43 to level 44, and I figured that was pretty good considering how my head kept exploding.

Mery likes to use Sassy as her pet when she solos/quests because the big gorilla is a great tank and Mery rarely has to fend off mobs and can just stand a few feet from the fight and pop away with her big gun. But for pvp she switches to her high damage predator bird, Fleshrypper. Mery swapped out to Fleshrypper to have her pet ready for pvp night, and was shocked to discover that Fleshrypper was only level 39! That's what I get for using Sassy so much. So, it was back to the grind. Mery took Fleshrypper with her into the wild's of Dustwallow Marsh, where the mobs are high enough level that Fleshrypper would get experience but low enough that the bird could hold aggro and save my aching head from having to deal with angry mobs in my face. Pets level pretty fast when their level is below that of their master, but it still took quite awhile to get Fleshrypper all the way from 39 to 43. I figured she'll level to 44 during the pvp night.

I then slept away the rest of the morning (ok, ok, the afternoon, too) and was ready to go Monday night. Lao and Mery lost our first match in Warsong Gulch. We scored the first flag cap, but after that we could not muster up enough offense to retake the alliance flag and lost 3-1. An Arathi Basin match came up after that and, like last week's AB match, the alliance didn't seem to have their heart in it. Lao called for an assault on the Mine when the match first started, and a group of five of us waged a pitched battle with an equal number of alliance also trying to take the mine. We beat them back and then killed them all. Lao and Mery stayed to defend the mine, and ended up dancing with each other when no alliance tried to take it back. The horde soon held all five resource areas and won easily.

Naithipe got her soul essences and had them delivered to Wild, along with some even more rare primal nethers. Wild let it slip that netherweave, heavy knothide, and primal shadows were also involved. When pressed by JB, Wild said Naithipe wanted him to make soulcloth. It turned out that Wild had never learned to make it, and had to go all the way to Silvermoon City to find the recipe for it. No, Wild told JB, he didn't know what she wanted it for.

Sunday (4 Jul) - JB's Naithipe Obsession

Sunday (4 Jul) - JB's Naithipe Obsession

[Note: Taking a step away from the daily grind, the secretive Naithipe gets a little blog time, thanks to JB's own brand of relentless curiosity]

Naithipe has few friends, JB would have to admit. JB could not say that even she was counted as a friend by Naithipe, although Naithipe most often comes to JB when she must ask for the help of others. JB does admit that she is strangely fascinated by Naithipe, and has become somewhat obsessed herself in learning what it is that's driving her so hard. Each new request for some odd bit of material, each new expedition to go rummaging around in some forgotten out of the way place, has further fueled JB's curiosity.

It is pretty clear that Naithipe knows what she is after, even if she refuses to spell it out. JB could assume that Naithipe wants what all adventurers want - to explore the world, to accomplish great deeds, to learn things and to acquire things that would aid her. JB isn't sure those are the things that drive Naithipe, but if they are, she seems to be going about it in very odd ways.

JB and Philly talk about Naithipe sometimes. Philly has her own secrets and a long prior history before she found her family and Wild took her in. She and Naithipe may be more alike than either want to admit, and that, strangely enough, is a barrier between them that neither seems very interested in bringing down. Perhaps they are both afraid that too much would be revealed. Still, JB talks with Philly, hoping to learn more about Naithipe.

The sense JB has about Naithipe is that despite her seemingly single minded approach and very purposeful assault on her goals, she in truth moves unhurriedly through her world, savoring in her own private way each accomplishment she has set for herself. While there is little that could bend her away from a goal she has set her sights on, she does to not rush to finish, but takes the time to fully experience the effort to reach that goal.

JB notes that gear continues to flow between Naithipe and Happy, so whatever Naithipe is doing to acquire it is still in full flourish. Happy is delighted, of course, to be Naithipe's middle man and doesn't care how she gets it, so long as he gets his cut of the profits. There is nothing mysterious about Happy, that's for sure. Although, like most successful bankers, Happy has kept silent whatever he has learned from Naithipe's transactions in the interest of keeping his own profits coming. So JB has had to ferret out what information she has learned through her own observation, deduction, and what little she can wrest out of Naithipe herself. JB thinks that Happy knows a few things, though. She also vaguely recalls a past scandal that Happy was once embroiled in. Hmm, JB thought that perhaps she should do a little research on that. Scandals are bad for business, and maybe a little pressure on Happy would get him to talking.

Now, if only JB could figure out why Naithipe is suddenly and intensely interested soul essences?

Thursday (1 Jul) - Now, Where Was I?

Thursday (1 Jul) - Now, Where Was I?

Ok, so I haven't popped up in here since early Tuesday, but I have my excuses all lined up - the Mrs birthday on Wednesday; our wedding anniversary on Thursday; having to suddenly hunt up a new refrigerator, only to have that derailed when our car broke down; two and a half hours in the dentist chair; and of course getting ready for our July 4th party.

Despite my oh so full (of it) schedule, there were a few things accomplished in game this week.

Wild did get into ICC10 on Tuesday night. The plan was to clear the first four bosses in ICC and then go explore the new raid dungeon, Ruby Sanctum. The turn out was light for the raid, and the MM guild only fielded one raid instead of the two we have been able to put together for the last few weeks. We managed to get through Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, and the Gunship without too much trouble, but Saurfang was again a problem for us. I think we get too wound up for this fight. The group we had was clearly geared and experienced enough to beat Saurfang, but we struggled. Part of the problem was simple bad luck on our first attempt. We were sailing along quite well when Wild got Marked. Being Marked means taking constant heavy damage that can't be debuffed in any way. Wild was main tank healing already, so Wild had to pick up healing himself at the same high level that he was healing the tank, plus keep up a large amount of raid healing since we were using just two healers. Wild was managing that just fine and we started getting excited that we would take Saurfang down on our first shot. Then our other healer, a priest, was also Marked. Very bad luck, for now the priest had to maintain heavy healing on herself and on her tank target as well. As we got Saurfang closer and closer to dying, the healing pressure got worse and worse. Both of us, Wild and the priest, started getting behind. Wild even used his innervate on the priest to help her out, but the damage kept growing and both of us were in full chain healing mode. The priest went down first, then her tank, and we unraveled and wiped. We tried three more times but botched things up every time. It just wasn't our night. We never got a chance to hit up Ruby Sanctum as we had run late.

Wild learned something interesting during the raid. The warlock in the raid had about 100 frost badges and was talking about what gear he should buy with it. He planned to spend 95 of them on a pair of boots. However, the upgrade was only a minor one and he was grousing about having to use all those badges for such little return. What else could he buy with them? Well, remember those boots Wild tried to talk Happy into spending 8,000 gold on? Well, read on. One of the other DPS casters suggested to the warlock that instead of buying the frost badge boots, he should consider having a much better pair of boots crafted. Those boots are called [Deathfrost Boots] and those boots are the ones Wild wanted to buy. Wild had never bothered to find out that those boots weren't a drop in ICC, but were crafted by Tailors from a recipe that came from ICC. Wild got excited that an MM guild tailor would be able to craft the very boots Wild lusted after.

Wild looked up the recipe to find out what materials were required to craft them. The materials started with 6 ebonweave and 6 spellweave cloth. Wild could make those himself with mats he already had. So far so good. The other mat needed was 5 primordial saronite. Now we know why those boots cost so much. Primordial saronite is hard to come by. The warlock was happy, though, because he could use frost badges to buy the primordial saronite to make the boots he really wanted. Wild, however, did not have enough frost badges to buy one primordial saronite, much less five of them. Wild turned to Happy.

Without even opening up the AH Happy started complaining. Primordial saronite sells for 800g plus each on the AH! That's 4,000 gold! Wild applied pressure. Well, it's a lot less than 8,000 gold, Wild told him. Buy me the saronite, or buy me the boots. Happy bought the saronite. Wild learned later that Happy made a good deal on them, too, getting all five for 650g each.

Wild packaged up all the mats and sent them via in game mail to the raider that had suggested the boots be crafted. Wild even included a 100g tip to have them crafted. A day later he got email back from the raider. Wild opened it up to get his new boots - but all he got back were his mats and his 100g. "I'm sorry," the raider friend wrote Wild, "but I don't have the recipe for the boots, I was just making a suggestion that the warlock have someone make them." Wild wanted to have a tantrum, but it was his own fault for not clarifying things up front. And no, the raider friend told him, he didn't know if anyone in the MM guild had the recipe.

With his anticipation now completely deflated, and wondering what he would do with all those expensive primordial saronite, Wild decided to check on just how rare that recipe was, and whether he could find a guildie in either guild that might have it. Imagine Wild's surprise when he learned that the recipe could be purchased from a vendor inside ICC - for one primordial saronite. It's a tailoring recipe. Have I mentioned that Wild is a tailor? For one primordial saronite and the mats Wild already had, he could make those [Deathfrost Boots] himself. Which is exactly what Wild went out and did, saving himself some 4-6k gold in the process. This morning those same boots Wild is now wearing were listed at 12,000 gold on the AH. Wild is considering making another pair - to sell.

Wild also got another pleasant chore accomplished. Remember Sethekk Halls and the Raven Lord? The quest chain that Wild botched up for a good friend because I hadn't finished the quest chain? When Wild got around to really researching where things went wrong, I learned that he had in fact completed all of the quests required to face that special boss in heroic Sethekk Halls, Anzu. All that Wild was missing was an item called an Essence-Infused Moonstone. Wild needed that moonstone in order to Summon Anzu. By all accounts Wild should have had that moonstone on his keychain. He didn't. So I visited the quest giver that handled all the quests in this chain to see where things were broken. When Wild talked to the quest giver, the quest giver's first question was, "Did you lose your moonstone? If so, ask me for another one." It was that simple. Wild had his moonstone. No, Wild hasn't gone back to Sethekk Halls to Summon Anzu yet, but as soon as I hook up with my shaman friend we are going to do just that.

Philly found her way into her first Wintergrasp battle early Friday morning in what seems like two weeks. We were on offense, but things looked really bleak with less than 15 raiders in what is usually 40 or more. Attacking the fortress with those small numbers was probably fruitless. Philly was specced for pvp healing, but in several skirmishes she found herself DPSing nearly as much as healing because of the small numbers. We worried at the alliance defenders, but weren't making much progress in breaching the fortress's defenses. Nobody had bothered to start making vehicles, so Philly built herself a catapult to harry the alliance with. I'd wanted a siege engine, but we could not make those yet. The catapult was fun, but I didn't have much support and the allies destroyed it. While most of the horde pvpers continued to mix it up outside the fortress walls with the alliance, Philly rode back to the vehicle shop. A siege engine was just emerging from the shop with a horde pvper behind the wheel. Philly jumped on and took over the gunner controls. The smart driver took the siege engine to the western walls as all the allies were occupied on the east side. Our single siege engine pounded and pounded on the walls while Philly killed the few npc hostiles around and destroyed the pair of enemy cannons so they couldn't be used against us. When we burst through the outer walls there were only a couple of allies in view, and they both died under Philly's assault with the siege engine's mighty guns. We needed to bring down another wall to get to the central area where we needed to be. We started blasting down that wall and were finally joined by additional horde pvpers on foot and mount. We were still the only vehicle. The wall went down, and as we crashed through we led in most of the horde team. Our siege engine ground it's giant tracks up the stairs to the massive door that protected the heart of the fortress. The engine slammed repeatedly against the door and Philly blasted the allies all around us. We were taking damage, but the doors went down, and behind that door was our final target. Both the siege engine rams and Philly's guns trained on that target and destroyed it. The Horde had won using only a single siege engine.

This was the first time in numberless dozens of battles that any of the Wild family had been in on that ultimate kill. Philly was ecstatic over the special win and went out and bought an i264 pvp ring with the honor points she'd won.

The in game action is still going to be slow as the next real life adventure is our annual trip with the RV to visit relatives on the east coast. But there should be a good bit of action in July before we go, so stay "tooned"!