The Right Class

About 10 hours of play and we’re up to level 45 on Smetana and her leveling companion Nychaareht.  Yes, that’s right, my friend named his toon after an anti-smoking gum.  Awesome.  I guess not everyone has such classy tastes in names as me. 

We’re flying along though!  I’ve done recruit a friend 3 times now?  4 times?  I can’t even remember.  But I had forgotten how quickly you level and as a result how horrible your gear is.  When I hit level 31 I was still using both weapons I got in the start zone.  Yeah, I was rocking two maces…one did 6 and the other 9 DPS.  AMAZING!! 

Admittedly I looked up quests where I could get new axes since I’m leveling as enhancement again.  And so I might have been favoring myself a little, but heck, he’s playing a paladin, they don’t need any help with all their awesomeness, he pretty much kills things with exorcism and avengers shield before they reach him anyways. 

Things seem to be going pretty smoothly, and I think class choice has made a difference for him.  Whenever I introduce new players to the game, I always try to encourage them to try out different classes.  Sometimes the description of a class isn’t how you imagine it.  So instead I try to focus on what the classes can do.  Are they ranged, magical, melee?  Do they tank, DPS, or heal…or all three?  After they try a new class I try to pay attention to what it is they have trouble with or succeed at.  For my friend that I’m playing with now, he had tried the game as a hunter previously.  It was…difficult.  He seems to have trouble with depth perception in the game so was ending up with mobs up in his grill, which is bad for a hunter.  He also struggled with shot rotation and would burn focus by spamming serpent sting, either failing to understand how it worked or just feeling like if he was hitting special shots, it must do more damage.  He started with a hunter again this time around, but instead we tried beast mastery, that seemed to work much better for him!  But still I wasn’t convinced hunter or even a ranged or DoT class was right for him.

I suggested that since he sometimes has trouble with depth perception and how close he is to monsters that if he played a melee toon there would be less threat when one is really close to him.  Melee like that, they need it, so it seemed like a good fit for him.  After reviewing the melee classes he went with paladin.  I was a little worried because there are lots of “weird” things with paladins – holy power, seals, hands, blessings…it’s enough to make your head spin.  But then I thought about my paladin…I use one seal, one blessing, and the last time I used a hand was…well before they were called hands.  I could be a bad paladin, but I can get things done for the most part and sometimes even tank dungeons!  

By far the hardest part to teach about this game is gear.  I swear that every person I have introduced to this game gets hung up on one stat.  Armor.  Yes, armor.  If I had a quarter for every time I heard “Do I want to equip this?  It has 30 more armor.”  Seriously, Blizzard, please just remove the ‘stat’ armor from the game.  Just make it hidden and passive or something.  It’s very hard to convince people that armor is ignorable (for most classes) especially when it’s the first stat on an item.  This is not the first person I’ve had to explain this to.  I remind them that there are three main stats in the game:  Intellect, Agility, and Strength.  All the others are minor stats and will ‘naturally’ come with the gear.  For leveling purposes, choosing the item with the greater amount of your classes primary stat is the safest way to go when choosing gear.  Second stats are considered if that stat has a tie. 

The paladin is working out very well for him, aside from remembering to refresh the stupid seals and blessings he’s doing well and can hold his own.  He’s better at figuring out when to use heals on himself, but holy power still is a mystery.  There is only one ability that consumes holy power until past level 40+ and that is a healing spell.  So it’s hard to know the purpose of holy power if you’re not healing.  For a prot pally, they really should give that shield bash thing at a much lower level so that a paladin understands the purpose of holy power a bit earlier in the game.

Still, he’s doing well.  There are quests that we’ve done where I say “you know, you died doing that on your hunter” and this time he did it perfectly.  I know that it’s partly the experience he’s gained and the skill set with the game, but I think a lot of it has to do with class.  Finding the right class for your play style is important to your success.  This is why all my spell casters make it to max level before any of my melee.  For me, it’s a better fit. 

Long post is long, but as a chronic altoholic with now two accounts and 20 characters on the same server, I do recommend that people try different classes and specs.  It may take some time to find the one that is just for you.  Or…maybe you never do and you have 20 characters on one server.  ;)

Verdi and Smetana

As if I didn’t have enough toons already…my friend who played on my second account to try the game has decided to get his own account and we’re going to “recruit-a-friend”.

So let me introduce to you my two newest additions:

Verdi, druid.

Boobs. I mean, Smetana, shaman.

Verdi and Smetana.  These are actually the first two female characters I have ever rolled.  You’re saying, but Troutwort, what about Floy?  Well Floy wasn’t created by me…nor was Kittykat…nor was Tygerlily…nor Monona.  Those were all created by other people.  I have only rolled male toons.  Because I know when I see a male character I assume a man plays it.  I know this is far from reality, but still…it’s the way my mind works, so I’ve always rolled male toons.

For whatever reason though, I made not one, but TWO new toons and made them both female.  I think though it had to do with the names.  Sticking with my classical composer names, I made a list of composers that I haven’t used yet.  This included Verdi and Smetana.  Verdi sounded like a druid name…a druid with green hair…a female druid with green hair.  It just seemed to fit.  And Smetana sounded like a Draenei name, 100% Draenei.  And sounded more like a woman’s name than a man’s name to me, so there she is.  But holy crap, I have never noticed how much boobage the female Draenei have.  I never looked. 

I can see now why so many teenage and college boys made female shaman.  Pervs.  Of course…I’m the one that posted the screenshot of her sideways on the internet…so I guess we’ll call it even.

Anyways, these are the two new additions.  Verdi is level 20 and Smetana is level 17.  My friend is still on the starter account and is limited to level 20.  So we left them there for now.  You might see more of them as time goes on…but I have no intentions of them being much more than leveling buddies for him.

Alt Time!

As the patch breathed new life into the game, Elgar saw more play time this last week than he ever has.  A result of the new Darkmoon Faire and the new dungeons as only he and Sousa were capable of queuing up for them. 

But Saturday my friend came over and he played on his hunter of level 36 and me on my warrior of level 39.  After he did his Faire things, I ran him through all the Scarlet Monastery instances to get him to level 38 and hopefully some new gear.  I was hoping we’d get some of the Darkmoon artifacts as well, but no dice.  We did a few more dungeons, but for him, I think he enjoys questing better as it’s more dependant on his pace rather than the pace of an heirloom geared tank who is all “go go go!” 

We did some quests in Western Plaguelands and then headed over to Eastern as we both dinged 40 and got our fast mounts.  The mobs there were more appropriate level and leveling went much quicker.  We stopped for herbs and ore along the way.  There are so many since Cataclysm that I had a full 28 slot bag of herbs before I knew it! 

I also did a few archaeology dig sites on the warrior and after his first completed artifact (fossil) my next one is the fossilized raptor pet, awesome.  So it looks like at least one other toon will do some archaeology.  It is amazing how much faster it goes now.  One dig site now can provide as many parts as 3 did before! 

While end game is fun, I’ve always enjoyed leveling up alts, doing the dungeons again, getting new gear and talent points.  Trying out new classes and new quests. 

The nice thing about having that second account up and running is that I have the ability to play more alts over there on the same server and get the perks of the guild.  Since I have 10 toons already on Winterhoof and apparently 10 is not enough.  I mean the GM should make up 10% of the total population of his whole guild, right?

Anyways, on that account there’s a druid and mage (71), hunters (63 and 41), priests (36 and 21), warlock (14) and a couple of level 1 alts that were used mostly for holiday achievements.  Many of these toons haven’t been logged in on in a very long time so last night I decided to see if they still needed any respecs or whatever.  I decided to log in as Linus, the level 35 priest last night, assuming he’d need to respec talent points or something.  But as it turned out he was ready to go, already in shadowform.  I never leveled a priest shadowform so he was my experiment.  I queued up for a dungeon and in about 1 minute it popped up, awesome.  I did two dungeons and leveled up to almost level 37.  Good times. 

The character names on this second account are more hap-hazard that the ones on my account which are almost exclusively named after composers (save Troutwort and Floy–though I’ve been tempted to change Floy).  While playing Linus a guild member pointed out… “so now you have a toon named after someone who obsesses over a dead composer?”  It never dawned on me.  But yes, yes I do.  It couldn’t have been more fitting.

Probably more alts in the future, like I said, you can never have enough!

You Look Familiar…

I briefly mentioned that I was back into healing again, well sorta.  I really like it and though killing crap fast is awesome, I do really miss the glory days for Elgar and when I felt like an awesome healer.  Though I’m feeling better about him with his non-smite spec, I really have been focusing on Sousa the shaman.  I had collected quite a set of gear from heroics as a DPS and no one would take the mail, healy gear, so I have been healing some non-heroics to just get a feel for things.

I healed a bunch last Thursday and got enough JP to get a T11 healing piece, it was a huge upgrade.  And though his iLevel is something like 351 in his healing set, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to run heroics just yet–even though Blizz thinks I’m even good for Troll-heroics.  Ha!

I queued up for a non-heroic.  Thinking that I would get a practice one in and then maybe try a heroic.  At about 12 minutes into my 13 minute wait for a non-heroic, I get disconnected.  Dropping me from the queue.  I think to myself, well, I guess I should just go to bed.  But I figure, well what the heck.  And I queue for a heroic.  About two minutes later my dungeon pops.

Load-in screen….

FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Stonecore.

Seriously?  My first heroic to heal and it’s Stonecore?  I’m in and about to start frantically typing about how this is my first heroic and please use CC and go slowly and to access the tank when I see some people start talking in party chat laughing and saying how we’re dead now.  It’s Mightymoe and Chandrilea, current and former guild members, respectively.  I talked a bit before about how when I’m not feeling confident in my healing I queue alone because then I don’t have to face the shame of someone seeing me perform poorly.  But given that this is Stonecore, I couldn’t have asked for two better people to be helping me along!  Funny how random dungeon-finder put us together.

Moe is a tank and Chan was on his boomkin.  There was a huge sigh of relief on my end because Moe is an awesome pally tank.  One of the best I’ve seen.  I knew this would provide some wiggle room for my spastic healing.  It took me to about the first boss to really get in the groove and then it was smooth sailing from there.  I had one death at the beginning because I was flailing around yet and forgot to drop totems and stood in a whirlwind…whoops.  But the best part of my death is that I died and I see in party chat an e-mote that Chan is battlerezzing me, but before he can get the spell off, he dies too.  Ha!  I don’t know why, it made me laugh.

The whole thing went great and though I still am using weapon of the green-random, I did manage to get enough rep with Wildhammer to get the mail healing helm, which replaced my other green.  I really need to get a weapon or else start saving my truegold to have one made.

So there we go, my first heroic as a healing shaman, it was awesome especially with Moe and Chan.  Thanks!  I’m not sure a Stonecore will ever go so well again.  Ha!

More Vashir

Occasionally I head over to a guild mates house and we work on our toons together.  So last night was one of those nights and Jenda the mage and Sibelius (my druid) worked on more of Vashir together.  We made sure to keep them at the same point in the zone so that there wouldn’t be any weird phasing and even so, there were a few times we lost each other.  I had forgotten how big the zone was and really we only finished the middle third of it.  But without doing a dungeon we both managed to gain about 2/3 of a level and dinged near the end to Jenda @ 83 and Sibelius @ 82.  We both also got honored with Earthen Ring so she was able to get the creepy helm and equip it. 

The boomkin/frost mage combo worked out really well for us, rooting mobs and then nuking them was no trouble and all the “difficult” mobs were pretty much a walk in the park, and all kill quests go pretty fast.  There were also several quests where we both got credit for something that seemed like we each would have to do, such as reading the plates on the statue or collecting scent from the annenomae.  So that was cool at least.

Speaking of the druid, I hear that boomkin/resto gear is pretty much inter-changeable so I have been toying with the idea of heading back to a healing spec on a second sped.  Once upon a time, Sibelius did heal.  He’s actually had the most diverse talent tree history of any of my toons, he leveled from 10 to 55 as feral DPS, then 55-72 as resto, and 72+ as boomkin.  I should check to make sure I got rid of all of his feral gear he had in the bank.  Ha! 

As for my other toons, none have had such a history.  Only Elgar, Schubert, and Kalinnikov ever actually went back and forth between different specs, and now recently Troutwort got another spec so that he could tame King Krush.  But he really hasn’t used his second spec.  And though Sibelius doesn’t have dual spec now, he’s the only one that tried different ones while leveling.  Usually I just picked something and went with it.

Anyways, off topic.  So all that Vashir bumped him up to 82.  That puts him on par with Bizet and now that makes 3 @ 85 and 2 @ 82 and still 2 @80.  It’s amazing how quickly the levels go.  I still have to go back and do zones on the others, but I guess for now, when I feel like questing, I feel like I want to be gaining XP from it too.  At least, for now…

I promise screenshots for Monday, because I have a “You’re So Vain” topic coming on about outfits!  Until then, Happy Noblesgarden!

I’ll Level Your Toon…For a Butter Burger

Before I start in on my ramblings for the day, I want to give thanks to those over at WoWInsider for giving a link to one of my posts on Monday.  I was completely surprised and honored to have been mentioned by one of their writers.  Thank you for your continued support of all of us out here in the Blogosphere!  Thank you again!

As for the usual shenanigans, last night the kid that I mentor wanted to play WoW.  This isn’t something that has happened for a long time, in fact the account with his toons was suspended.  He asked if he could just play one of my toons and decide if he wanted to again.  So he played the DK he created, Floy–the pink haired gnome.  I had transferred her to my account before freezing his account because I had leveled her blacksmithing and wasn’t about to let that go to waste!  She’s level 71 so he ran around Borean Tundra killing some things.  He’s all, “I’m awesome!”  Well buddy, DKs are faceroll but whatever.    So he’s looting and is all the sudden screaming “Oh dang!  Oh dang!!”  It seems he found a random blue drop.  Nice.  So he’s like is it worth lots?  It’s a level 69 blue caster’s shield.  Of course he’s like, “Where’s the nearest auction house?!?”  So we send Floy on a flight to Dalaran and post the shield for 70g.  I don’t know if it will sell for that much, but it’s worth a try I guess.  He was so excited.  Then he took his flying mount and started exploring a bit–in the direction of Icecrown.  I said, you’re not going to want to go that way.  He’d be fine he thought.  Then out of no where, I see his toon plummeting from the sky toward Crystalsong Forest.  I’m like what are you doing?  He tries to remount, can’t.  Starts screaming then….SPLAT!  I am laughing my butt off! 

Me: “What was that all about?” 
Him:  “I thought I could get back on or fall safely.”
Me:  “Like slow fall?  That’s your mage.”
Him:  “Oh yeah…  But I thought you could fly again when falling?”
Me:  “That’s your druid.” 
Him:  “Oh dang.”

I am laughing this whole time.  I can’t believe he dismounted to his death.  I guess in her statistics Floy will have 1 death from falling.  Poor little gnome.

By this time, I’ve forked over my $15 bucks to Blizzard to reactivate his account and tell him he should get on Monona, his mage.  He can’t log out fast enough!  And on to his beloved mage.  His main objective is to get her some better clothes.  Outland clothing makes you look like some sort of techno-colored hobo.  He said his green pants with purple stripes and openings along the side made her look like a hooker.  Nice.  So I said, “Well let’s go to some dungeons and see if we can’t find better robes.” 

I knew in my head there were robes in Blood Furnace, but I didn’t want to waste time there since it was below his level.  So we went to Slave Pens and Underbog in attempts to find something there.  He didn’t get any robes but we found some new pants that looked like a skirt so at least she has the illusion of robes now.

I was on my level 85 warlock Rossini, and I can understand how that for him it was terribly boring to watch a warlock burn his way through the mobs before you can even cast your 3.36 second pyroblast (I told him to use faster spells, but he wanted to use pyroblast because it’s a massive fireball–oh teenage boys…).  So he follows along and somewhere in the middle of Underbog, he says “Hey, I want some Culvers, can I just go on follow while I go get some?”  I just start laughing.  Basically, he wants me to level up his character while he goes to get a butter burger or cement mixer?  Nice.  He just got his driver’s license earlier this month, so I mostly think he just wanted to drive.  I don’t understand that since I never really got a “kick” from driving.  But whatever, if it means I can get a delicious custard and Oreo treat while burning through nagas in Underbog, I’m in.  So he goes on follow, get’s the treat and away we go.  We finish up, and head to Mana Tombs, but then his mother called, time to come home.  We were about halfway through so I told him I’d finish up. 

Well I finished up escorting him through Mana Tombs and then logged out of Rossini and threw Monona in the random queue.  I did two more (Mana Tombs and Slave Pens) as random groups and did a few quests and by the end of the night she had gone from just barely 64 to over 66.  Woot!  Her professions are horrible and one day I’ll work on them for him so that he can use the stuff he finds to craft stuff. 

Part of me can’t believe that I even spent so much time playing on Monona.  But at the same time it was probably just enough different from everything I’ve done in the last 2 years that it felt good.  And besides he’ll be way excited since she’s leveling quickly.  I’m not sure mage is the best class for him, I still think warlock or hunter would have been better, something ranged with a little more survivability (and a pet), but oh well.  I was impressed by his ability to focus as long as he did last night and his desire to actually play the game rather than just find the fastest way to get rich…I told him the fastest way to get rich is to beg Ado for gold.  I don’t think that will work though.

I don’t mind helping him out with his toons to get their professions up and levels too, he probably will only play when he hangs with me, so I get he doesn’t have much time.  Besides, if there’s a butter burger or frozen custard in it for me, I’ll sell out in no time.

Teaching WoW

I have a friend that was considering buying WoW.  I thought that perhaps they should just try it out first, instead of buying it.  I had two accounts at one point, so for $15 I reactivated the old account so we could both play at the same time.  Besides the kid I used to volunteer with had all his characters on that account, so he might get some use out of it for the next month before I cancel again. 

So the last time my friend played, he decided he liked rogue.  I’m okay with rogues, I like them, but I don’t think they are the easiest character to get into from the start.  That whole explaining combos thing, and people who are figuring out the control almost always have trouble with stealth if they have trouble just turning around.  He seemed to really like it, but this was before the Shattering, so it was still the crappy old quests that were kinda disorganized and all.  And because you can run through things, if you aren’t very finessed at movement you can run through your target and get lots of “Your target needs to be in front of you.” or “You are facing the wrong way.”  Which can be really frustrating.

So last night we tried again, this time I rolled with him.  This time I suggested a ranged class since it would make targeting a little easier.  Hunter was chosen, that seemed good since it’s ranged and you have that little pet to help you out.  So we played NE hunter and though I thought about rolling a priest or druid to ensure survival, I thought, no, we should be okay, we’re not going to get that far, and so I rolled a mage.  So we went around, the quests in Teldrassil were arranged SO much better than before.  No more running back and forth all over like crazy.  The quests were on par with all the other new zones and arranged very well so you could make smooth round trips.  And a few green items as rewards for quests.  There weren’t any “stand out” quests like I’ve seen in a few other zones, but they did fix up a few annoying things that I remember from the last time I leveled a NE. 

The Baren’thal Burrow or whatever it’s called (that’s sorta close I guess) was redone so that the quests are easier to follow.  Also, when you get inside, a Sentinel will assist you (I died a million times in there previously), and she will even help you find the quest items you need, because let’s face it, that place is a maze.  Once you collect what you need the quest turn in and following quest are close together so you don’t have to run all over getting lost again!  It’s been thought out much better.  The fill the Phial quests follow much better and quests that take you to that moonwell are given at the same time, again so you’re not running all over. 

Anyways, so we did well moving along.  When I show someone new the game, I try to explain just what they need to know at the moment.  I don’t want to overwhelm them all at once with opening all the tabs, etc.  The new leveling experience does a decent job at that as well.  I think the hardest thing to explain to people or for them to catch on to is using both mouse buttons for different reasons and movement.  I always try to remind them, left is for select, right is for ‘interact’ including attacking.  But movement is much harder.  There are several movement options in the game, basically mouse, keyboard, or a hybrid system.  I tend to use both, depending what I’m doing, I do more keyboard movement during combat, but more mouse turning during times of lesser activity.  So trying to explain to someone that they have options and to try different things usually leaves them kinda confused it seems.  The thing is I want them to do what feel comfortable.  But having the camera and movement on the mouse usually ends with them running into a tree while either staring at the ground or into the sky.  I think that the tendency for people is to do things in BIG SWOOPING motions rather than small movements.  They usually end up spinning around 180 or 360.  Of course it’s frustrating to me, but I try to help straighten out the camera again so they can ‘start over’.  But it’s a little slow going. 

Other than that, the new spells and abilities really give a good indication as to how and when to use them, so props to Blizzard for giving clearer descriptions of why and when to use spells and abilities. 

This is about the 5th person that I’ve introduced to WoW now.  It’s always interesting to me how people start playing differently, what classes they want to play, and how quickly they do or do not learn things.  It’s always a good time for me and I love playing along to help them out.  We’ll see if this one sticks.  It’s too bad I don’t have anymore room for recruit a friend!  Ha!

Simpler Times

I haven’t been on my regular WoW schedule lately due to a busy personal schedule.  Community band concerts, a visit from the parents, volunteering, and hanging out with peeps left my last few days with very little WoW.  Oh yeah, and there was that patch which seemed to take forever to load.  So I played some Civ 4 while that was going on.

What was kinda cool is that Monday night I showed a friend WoW.  They had seen some advertisements for Cataclysm and so I packed up the laptop to let them take a drive at it. 

I realized that it has been a LONG time since I rolled a new character.  Part of that is because I have 7 level 80s.  So I’d have to make room for other toons.  I can always roll again on another server, but bleh, my peeps are on Winterhoof.  The other part is that once Cataclysm was announced I really stopped leveling any toons and told myself that I would wait to level up so that I could experience more of the new content. 

So there I was explaining the classes, their roles, which weren’t going to be too important at levels 1-10 anyways (if we even made it that far), and the races.  I suggested reading the descriptions on classes first and then choosing from there.  It was decided rogue would be the class and they liked the idea of Night Elf.  So there is was the NE Rogue.

So we start with the basics, how to move, change the camera, select and interact with targets, etc.  It’s time for a quest.  So kill some boars and cats.  Easy enough.  Run up to them.  You are too far away.  You are too far away.  You are facing the wrong direction.  You are too far away.  I could tell this was going to be a long night.  Ha ha, then the camera was over the top of the character, underneath, in a bush…  Oy!  But as time went on, it started to get under control.  I think actually that stealth helped slow things down.  Though stealth totally isn’t required to kill level 6 spiders, it did seem to help control where they were around the target. 

It was really funny to me seeing the NE questing area again.  It has been SO long since I looked at it.  Troutwort was my first toon, a NE, and I remember dying endlessly in that cave to spiders.  I remember falling off that stupid tree just trying to get to the dumb hunter trainer.  Seriously, who puts trainers in a tree?

The quests are the same, but everything is neutral now, you can run right past everything, get your quests and get out.  But that area has terribly quests in general.  When it was time to fill the first Phial, I was reminded how annoying it was to collect moonwell water from them all.  Bleh. 

What was awesome about it all though was to see someone new learning the game and watching them have a good time doing it!  It’s awesome to see that simple joy and excitement as they are figuring out the game, it reminded me of that simple time back when I started playing the game.  I was so terrible, but I was having the time of my life.

I have a feeling that with Cataclysm, I’m gonna want to see how all those starting zones have changed, get that excitement back, because it will all be new to me again.

WoW Board Game

Every once in a while we nerd it up and whip out the WoW Board Game and sit for 5-8 hours running around Southshore and the Alterac Mountains and then burn through Outlands to try to defeat Lady Vashj, Kael’thas, or Illidan.  Yesterday was one of those days. 

For those of you unfamiliar, the board game is massive.  It takes two leaves in our table just to have enough room for everything and we keep some stuff on the kitchen counter.  Teams are either in 2 or 3, one Horde and one Alliance.  Yesterday, I was Alliance, and for the first time, I played the priest character.  In the board game, she’s a female dwarf.  And knowing how we’d have to face Kael’thas at the end and he has a terribly nasty effect in the game, I specc’d holy in preparation.  I had a dwarf hunter and a female night elf warrior on my side.  The horde team was an orc shaman, troll rogue, and blood elf paladin.  Unfortunately they reached Kael’thas before we did, though we were just one turn behind them.  We still fought him just to see if we could.  Priest healing is OP in the board game, I only wish it was so in the video game. 

Anyways, more about the game play, basically you move your parties around the board out to complete quests.  Each team has 5 quests available, and rewards of gold, experience, and random items are listed on the card.  Spells, talents and abilities all have level requirements, so leveling your character is important.  To defeat monsters, you roll dice.  8-sided dice in blue (for ranged attacks), red (for melee), and green (for defense) are rolled based on the abilities you choose to use and your items.  Characters have health pools and energy levels.  Ironically, the only person that died yesterday was the blood elf paladin. 

You can choose to do PvP, but we generally don’t do that because we’re all good friends and hope to still be good friends at the end of the game. 

This baby can't take any more WoW Board Game!

The game took longer than usual, mostly due to the fact that we had to entertain a baby on the side, and we just seemed to get going slower than usual, it had been over a year since many of us had last played it, so remember the rules and “how to” took a little while.  For dinner though we had chili and a cornbread bake, it was awesome.  The Horde ended up winning, but since they go first, we’ll use that as our excuse why we didn’t win.  Next time, I win.

Fun with Friends and Food

So our guild members headed over to AQ20 on Saturday.  We had a few less than anticipated but ended up with about 10 there for the final boss.  It was so grand.  None of us had ever been to AQ20 before and so it was quite the adventure.  We didn’t quite know the way around, and I’m not sure if we went the correct way, but the part where most people died was jumping into the water before the bug boss that you use the eggs to kill (sorry I never remember their names, as a healer I never have them targeted). 

We did wipe once on the flying wasp boss too because we pulled before the fight was explained and when I said, “kill the maggots” a few people ran around killing the near by maggots not the ones that spawned.  Ha ha.  We had a ball though and laughed about it.  We managed to down the final boss as well, though after some confusion about the “crystals” that spawn–we couldn’t find any!  And even at level 80, that boss hits like a Mack truck, you really have to use those crystals.  He hit my priest twice for 8k.  Ouch.  But a quick battle rez and figuring out where the crystals were and we had him down. 

After that we quickly hopped a portal to Theramore, repaired and ran down to Onyxia.  We had a level 62 pally with us who got his T2 head piece, which is fun, if for no other reason than to have it, and two Onyxia hide bags for people as well.  We hung up the head and found that the buff worked for that pally as well.  Good times.  It was fun just to run around with everyone though.  The raids went smooth and being a guild run for the achievement we had a good time screwing around and laughing.  At one point a druid died from a poison debuff (which he could have cleansed from himself) and his wife (a mage) laughed at him about it.  Literally the second she stopped typing she died as well–she claims not from the poison.

After Onyxia the raid disbanded as people went about their business.  Since Irstfay (67) and Falahla (69) had come over for the day for WoW and grilling out, we decided to hopefully knock out one more level for them by doing dungeons.  Theanna (78) and Elgar (80) went with to ensure things went smoothly since we’d be four-manning them.  We knocked out all of the Auchiduon (poor spelling?) instances.  Starting with Mana Tombs, we completed that one, followed by Crypts, Sethekk Halls, and Shadow Labs.  We weren’t sure we’d be able to do Shadow Labs, but we did.  We had so much fun and laughed our way through it.  I was explaining Murmur to Irstfay, a rogue, and how she’d need to run in and out of the fight based on his “drawing energy” move.  She didn’t make it out of the circle a single time.  Then got Murmur’s touch and exploded next to our mage, and then ran into the circle once when he was drawing energy.  We never laughed so hard.  We might have to practice that one again.  There also seemed to be lots of screaming and panic when fighting the last boss in Sethekk Halls where you have to hide behind the pillars.  That was awesome as well.  The ended up with some really nice loot and somehow Falahla dinged 70 but Irstfay didn’t hit 68.  We think it was quests that Irst wasn’t eligible for yet.

WoW is definitely more fun when you know people playing the game, it’s only compounded when you’re all in one room and don’t have to type to communicate but can just talk and laugh.  We grilled out some delicious bratwurst (hey, this is Wisconsin afterall) and just had an awesome Saturday.  Too bad it’s Monday now, and back to the grind.