Zhero Tolerance

Insane in the membrame

2010-04-14T09:50:00.005+02:00

Druid, priest, priest, druid. I am not sure what i am playing at the moment, cause like the true reroller I am, i change on a daily basis. Though I am currently enjoying both, i did something irreversable.

I started with "the Insane" achievement.

AND...
...WHY...
...THE...
...FUCK...
...WOULD...
...YOU...
...DO...
...THIS...
...?

I am not sure, but it is certainly something that i do not recommend to other people.

Maybe I want to stand out in a certain way. God knows I suck too much to get any arenaratings going (not even after 4 years of trying so), I am not the hardcore raider, cause I have a hard time meeting time-requirements, so no outstanding Gearscore to be standing still in Dalaran while getting whispered 'Nice Gear' by random players. Or maybe i am just a little Insane in the Membrame. Possibly a combination of all those above.

Possibly i want to be this guy:

or maybe not :D

Anyway:
- Done with Bloodsail Admiral (4 hours of killing gnomes in Booty Bay)
- Done with exalted with all gnomes (running approx. 120 DM North runs and doing the rescue quest)
- Done with exalted Shendralar (yes, those are the night elves in Dire Maul). Pretty expensive this one.
- Closing in on Darkmoon exalted (delivering 100+ decks, still 14 to go for me) REALLY EXPENSIVE
- Have to start pickpocketing 1400 lockboxes to get exalted with Ravenholdt (grinded to revered, that is the easy, really boring, part) NOT looking forward to this.

So i will finish it, cause i started it. I don't know why. Probably I will never know why.

-- Zhero (insane in the membrane, should put it in my Curriculum Vitae!)

PS: Artanias is back in the game. Again, 4th time or so? That dude is a bad quitter.

Arena, Nimra and Goldsellers

2009-06-03T16:04:00.003+02:00

Arena
I’ve been playing with High Faillord Sarabelle (elemental shaman) and Nimra (destruction warlock) with Maro (disc priest with satin(=crit)set and gems). I used to pack 980 resilience but cut back to 780 (now 854 with furious. Hooray for free upgrades) in favor of spellpower since i was lacking that. Now I run at 2100 sp selfbuffed and 19% crit.

I use a 57/14 build with divine aegis (shield on person when i crit with a heal) and inspiration (25% extra armor when i critheal people). With 19% base crit and all my talents I crit a lot and have those shields and extra armor up all the time. As you can imagine, I severly lack regen, but that is because when I am oom and my partners don’t have something down yet, stuff is going in the wrong direction anyway. This is working out ok, I can keep my guys alive through double dps and glyph of painsuppression makes sure I can do it while CC-ed as well. These guys nuke very very hard and 25k warriors can go down in 2 gcd’s. With hex, fear, aoefear and seduce we have ‘ok’ cc.

Tuesdaynight we were at 1648 rating, 2 points short of furious ring (i was honorcapped, so waiting for this baby) and decided to do 10 games. It were the only games of the week since all kinds of festivities made it hard to get online with the 3 of us earlier that week. While we reeched this rating with 80-70 stats (so a bit over 50%) we now started very well. We took down 5 in a row and the system started pairing us with high teams (2k +). This is where it really was strange, because we kept a clean winning rate against teams with projected (and some real) ratings between 1850-2200 and quit after being up 14-5 and being on 1790. It went real smooth. Maybe the lots of games were paying off or maybe it is just the fun we have while playing. There is no bitching, no pointing, just remarks and new plans which we try to carry out. We laugh whether we win or lose and keep a positive attitude all the time and it seems to work (or maybe we were just lucky that evening :D). I can find the buttons more fluently, don’t feel so vulnerable anymore and have a better feel for the damage being dealt to Nimra and Sarabelle, so let them die less frequent.

Ofcourse it is no high-level arena, but I feel at least very good about getting this comp towards 1800. Nice, very nice.

Nimra is a girl?
Talking about Nimra, I found out something disturbing. We were playing late and talking on Skype when he mentioned it was time to quit. He logged out and while i was landing in Ratchet I noticed this in general.
Disturbing to say the least. So Nimra logs out, lies to me about going to sleep and logs in his bloodelf paladin, asking people to join his guild which misleadingly is called “I AM A GIRL” trying to get some cybering going with the male population. I ofcourse did not respond ingame as I think we all are allowed to have some secrets. I quietly logged out and let him have his fun.

It is still disturbing though…

Goldsellers annoying, annoy them back!

-- Zhero/Maro/Maix (learning feral atm)

HI, I Am Stupid

2009-06-02T17:28:00.004+02:00

Hi I Am Stupid.

Is it just me or do others have this problem as well. I was fanatically playing my priest for the last weeks without bothering to login any others. Well, i levelled my lock a bit, i quested some JC-dailies for gold with my druid a bit and i logged my paladin to play some arena to help out someone. But that was all very insignificant. And then the following happened:

My priest was honorcapped (72k, waiting to get rating to buy stuff) and I saw myself logging in my druid. Somehow I checked his achievementpoints and noticed that I had 4k (which is 1k more than my priest) and I ran through the list to see what I had. 20 exalted reputations….nice! (that saves time a devilish voice in my head said) and without any resistance my druid moved to felwood.

Devil: “They love you in that tunnel, dude”
- me: No, please no.
Devil “Well ok, they don’t now, but they are going to….
- me: No man, leave me alone. Please
Devil: “You want it. you want that awesome trinket. You want your name mentioned by Thrall. YOU WANT TO SLAY THOSE FURBOLGS. YOU’RE THE MAN!

“They love you in that tunnel”
“They love you in that tunnel”
“They love you in that tunnel”

- me: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOT ME!!!!!!!!! TAKE NIMP AGAIN!!!!!!!

But it was a done deal. My mind had no control over my hands and I took the flightpath to Felwood and started to mow them down. 1600/3000 lol, this is going to take a while.

“They love you in that tunnel”
“They love you in that tunnel”
“They love you in that tunnel”

4 hours later

So, is this a reroll? -- yes, probably
Again? – yes
You stupid? – arghhh

To make things worse, i respecced feral and since i had no gear, i auctionhoused for up to 2k and got myself a blue, bad set and was noobing in AB with it.

Hi, I Am Stupid

-- Zhero/Maro/Maix (seems they made this grind A LOT easier. You need to farm 350 feathers while going to revered at 20points/mob. Not that hard)

PS: I have some more shit, but it will have to wait till tomorrow since I have no time left here :D (stay tuned, i discovered a deeply hidden secret about my arenapartner Nimra. Since the people should know, i can do nothing other than bring it out in the open)

The thruth must and shall be told.

Back again, like the true reroller I am

2009-05-26T12:07:00.002+02:00

Last update oktober 28th 2008. That is a long time ago and I wonder who will be the first (10 gold for you, just write a comment) who will notice that I am back. For how long? Nobody knows, not even me.

Achievements are a pain for rerollers like myself. I've rerolled from druid to paladin to a priest now. Yes, I made a priest (because it is actually one of the few classes (warrior/shaman/dk are the others) which I did not play at endgamelevel. I levelled it together with my friend Sorcia (he on a hunter which he has abandoned already, then levelled his priest which he abandoned as well and now back on his paladin. But that aside) and the powerlevellinghelp of High Warlord Sarabelle. Now each time i reroll i promise myself not to achievementwhore anymore, but everytime after a few weeks i go discover all those fricking places all over again. They should make me uber-explorer or give me a "Columbus"-title for doing it again. When Blizzard finally figures that achievements should be account-bound, I bet they would see a hefty increase in people that try to get them.

Fishing and Cooking
Instead of running round like a headless chicken, or headless owl as you prefer since i did that last time on my druid, I decided to do it otherwise this time. I normally run from achievement to achievement ending up in doing all of them half and completing some I did not know even existed cause they pass my path. Now I choose Cooking+Fishing to go for first, without worriyng about other achievements. Ofcourse I take them when they come along, but i do not go out of my way. I levelled cooking and fishing to 400 in the mean time, am busy with their dailies (outland and wotlk) and try to get as many realistically reachable achievements before moving on to another achievement-area (which will be quests, since they net gold which is always good, even when i reroll).

Arena
Only playing 1 comp which is destrolock (Nimp), ele shammy (Sarabelle) and disc priest (me, with satin-set cause of the burst). We're at 1650, very slowly climbing. The reason for being disc with critgear is a slightly different build which gives extra armor and an extra shield when i crit. This is needed to keep the 2 guys alive against double melee to gain extra time. I do not have lasting power (regen is non existent), but people should be dead against 2 casters. I downgraded my resilience from 1000- to 780 in favor of some extra sp+ crit (2000+ now and 20% crit) so my heals mean something. Positive side to all this is that it is actually a nice pve-spec when you have manabatteries going for you. And I can safely dual-spec to shadow and my gear is instantly good. (I actually own in bg's as shadow)...

let me rephrase that: I actually own.

-- Zhero/Maro

Patchday

2008-10-15T10:50:00.003+02:00

I took the day off, so was already patching. Lovely new loginscreen

Looking forward (or not?) to 1 month of mages and pala's 2-shotting everything. Haha, and now Art quits. o_O

-- Zhero

Exalted! and Art has left the building.

2008-10-07T16:00:00.001+02:00

I am exalted with Shatari Skyguard! A good session with the help of Milkstalker, Lightyears, Daymare and Tool gave me some Terokk kills (500 rep) and some 10 subbosses (100 rep) together with a massive slaughter of birds in Skettis. Scarymary helped me with the last rep as I used my last 30 scrolls. It feels good to close something.

On to the next faction!

I have been doing the lowby quests so i am exalted with Orgrimmar atm and closing in on exalted with Undercity and the Darkspear Trolls. I am still far away from exalted with the Blood Elves, so I might not finish that before WotlK. Other factions that I might do are Mag’har and Consortium since those can be easily solo grinded. (warbeads and zaxxis insignia’s + prison keys). More grindfun in those moments I am able to play. Grinding is relaxing for me, so no worries there.

I bought the moonkinbelt from my last honorpoints and marks, so no more action needed in that area. I got the Nathrazim Mindblade from the Prince in Karazhan which is very good for moonkins due to the crit that it has, so I have no more need for the Merciless Gladiator Staff.

Artanias quit
Long time member Artanias quit the game. He ended his subscription and announced his leave last night. He came to Ravens early in the game as a resto shaman who was focussed on mp/5 (which was ‘kinda’ new at that point) then deleted his shaman in the end to create an alliance druid with the same name on our server. We kinda lost touch there, besides the few times we met him in battlegrounds (I might still have that frapsmoment and will link it later where Nimpie on his hunter kills Art on his feral druid). I will ask Nimpie if I don’t have it. It belongs here. Art on his druid was actually a pretty good ganker and pvp-er. That was even before feral was buffed and considered a valid spec. Then he deleted his druid, rerolled Horde again with an undead mage and became one of our best pvp-ers in the guild after it took him ages to get to 70.

I got to know Art when he was 16 and saw him grow as a person till 19. I liked the player and the person and enjoyed it when he went all crazy on Skype when he died playing on his ps3 or was killed by a hunter or a warlock.

Cya Art!

My guess is that you will be back, but to be able to come back you need to go away first and explore your other interests.

-- Zhero (looking forward to WotLK)

7 weeks and what to do?

2008-09-30T14:21:00.002+02:00

It is 7 weeks till WotlK (and where the f*ck stays that patch?)! I think they will bring in the patch rather late, because it will fuck up the balance so much that they can not let that last for 7 more weeks. On the other hand they should keep people interested enough for them not to move to warhammer where 7 weeks is still enough time to go from let’s-Try-this-game-till-WotLK-hits-the-stores to zomg-i-already-closed-my-account-cause-i-am-addicted-to-Warhammer. Must be nasty to make such decisions. Personally I would throw in the patch in 2-3 weeks and announce it now. 3-5 weeks of total imbalance is still doable i guess.

What am I doing in the meantime? Basicly I am not doing any arena or battlegrounding (I have 14k honor, I wonder if grinding an extra 13 is still worth it and buy the boomkinstaff or I just buy some boomkinbracers and leave it at that), but spend my time doing things which still are usefull in 7 weeks.

Repgrinding
It’s not my factionsheet here, but I am busy grinding rep when I am online and this picture is a motivator. Since knowing about achievements (and my possible addiction to them) I was thinking if I could do things so that my time is not thrown away. Reputation it is. I am not exalted with Orgrimmar, Trolls, Thunder Bluff or Undercity, so I am working on that. Since my IQ sometimes drops 100 points and it can take 30 minutes for it to come back, I was grinding runecloth in Tyr’s Hand (of all places) to deliver for 75 reputation per stack. After 30 mins (and 100 cloth) I alt-tabbed and realized that the reputation you get from lowby quests is very high. I ported, took the road through Razor Hill all the way to ‘The Den” aka starting area for Trolls and Orcs. I killed 10 mottled boars -à 350 rep, I collected 10 apples -à 500 rep. I think you got it now? This is absolutely insane and works wonders. I got like 9k Orgrimmar + Darkspear Trolls reputation from doing the quests in Razor Hill, The Den and Crossroads. Not to mention the hidden reputation you gain for the other Horde factions.

In the mean time, I am working in Skettis to gain Shatari Skyguard reputation (almost revered now) and me and Nimp are working on the Onyxia questline (the good old days). We did LBRS in 20 minutes with all bosses down and a fully gemmed key for UBRS. Amazing how fast you can go when you stealth through everything and just kill the boss.

I remember a 7 hour visit to LBRS back in the days when the documents randomly spawned at a boss and only 1 could loot it. Then you had to go back to another boss (respawns all over) to see if it was there and so on untill all in the group had it. And this was before any nerfs, so loads of mobs, very hard pulls and wipes only to discover that, at 03:30 on a weekday, 1 member of the group still needed the documents….

So still enough to do and if you are interested in fulfilling the 3000 quest done achievement don’t forget to do one of the coolest questlines in the game: The questline (23 quests) of the Fallen Hero of the Horde. It all starts with this quest: http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=2784
I did it on my warlock at 60 and while the first quests are pretty easy, the end was pretty hard (because we did it with 2 people including fighting the demon at the end). The quest now suggests 2 people but that is at lvl 70 :D

-- Zhero (never bored, never out of stuff to do)

Reset is coming

2008-09-24T16:14:00.003+02:00

Contrary to what i thought (and read), it seems honor WILL be reset. Deadpool sent me the news just a few seconds ago.

"As many of you know we will be featuring a new Battleground, a dedicated world PvP zone and all new PvP items in Wrath of the Lich King. In order to make the transition from The Burning Crusade to Wrath of the Lich King flow as smoothly as possible, all accrued honor points will be reset at the launch of the expansion. We do this to ensure select players do not have an unfair advantage at level 80 from stockpiling honor to instantly purchase the newest Wrath of the Lich King PvP rewards. For those with unspent honor points prior to the release of the expansion, we will be offering a few upgrades and special rewards in next content patch solely for purchase via the honor system.

All Honor Tokens will be wiped as well. This reset should happen right before the launch of Wrath of the Lich King."

It seems we need to stockpile honor till the patch and then spend it! I wonder which overpowered goodies are coming...

-- Zhero (I just spend 40k on my trinket goddamnit!)

edit: these seem to be the items to buy:
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?items&filter=maxrl=70;cr=131:93;crs=1:1;crv=0:0
trinkets are 35k and 40 av
cloaks are 20k and 20 ab

Boomkinning

2008-09-24T13:49:00.004+02:00

After spending 40k on the epic version of Medaillon of the Horde i was done with my feral set. Not done in a way that I did not like it anymore, but done in the sense that I had no idea how to optimize it more. The only way would be arena, but since I am not playing arena that much anymore atm, i decided not to try and push it.

Instead I went for a new challenge (gotta keep ourself challenged one way or the other) and specced full moonkin (not restokin). No other gear than my healing gear, but after doing a few BG’s I get the idea that crit is what makes the boomkin dangerous. Ofcourse there is no crit on the healparts, so I am slowly changing my gear and it already feels very good.

Boomkins can hurt you. Like any caster that you leave alone, he/she is dangerous. In BG’s it is about positioning now (went 22-1, 20-2 and 9-0 (5-0 game) in a row yesterday with most damage done in all games). I can’t do damage if they hit me, so choose your position and nuke. Lovely! I still need a lot of practise in 1v1 i noticed, but that will be something to work on.

I bought wyrmhide gloves yesterday and regemmed all my healing gear. It only adds up to a lousy 18% crit (when you are used to almost 50% crit in feral that feels kinda low), but I am not sure how high you can get it. I’ll keep you posted :D (arenapoints will be lost, so better spend them, honor will stay, but since we don’t know what marks we need etc. I would not aim at 4x100 marks and 75k honor too hard).

It sure feels good to starfire for 4200k and do 2 wraths for 2300 and a 1200 moonfire ender in a few seconds. (lucky streak on a mage yesterday)!

Brewfest
As with most people I hardly win anything special in these events (like a mount), but now the first time there the kodo dropped and I won. Lovely!

I have no screenshot with me but here is a link to the kodo ingame. Looks really awesome.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37828#screenshots:id=97763

I picked up all the trinkets as well (feral/heal/moonkin) as well as the roleplay 45 stamina thing where you have to wave to the female brewmaster. Nice stuff those free epix.

Since I will continue with this druid, I will level the cooking. I noticed I did not even train it. Levelling professions is more difficult from 200-300 than from 300-375 (and that will probably be the case as well when we go to 80). To make it a bit easier it is a nice target to set for the 8 weeks we will still have to wait for WotLK to get that to 375. After all who knows what WotLK will bring in terms of food that enhances abilities. Better to be max level then.

Grinded some in Skettis as well. I can summon Terokk 3 times now. Nimp and I thought it would be fun to kite him to Shattrah. We did not try it yet, but i’ll be sure to fraps it might we do it.

Stay tuned.

Not happy with your char? Try a different spec. This shaman did.

-- Zhero (thinks they should make a female version of the moonkin)

Island Fun

2008-09-16T13:37:00.004+02:00

Maix is fully epic gemmed now (the feral set that is). I made the last gem this morning after buying all the recepies of the vendor. (wtf 50g each, that was a lot of gold. 1500 or so?). I collect gold by doing the Island-dailies. If you do them all, it is easily 200g, greenies, lots of cloth and sometimes a badge plus 4k rep. I am exalted for some time now, but the gold is still good and nothing farms as quick as a feral druid thanks to improved Leader of the Pack.

I did all Netherstorm quests as well for gold (lots of gold if you put some time in it. Rep is the extra bonus) and I was doing Skettis as well. Nice quest where you get to be a birdy! That would make a nice new druid form.

But I am doing dailies with Nimp when this appears

Now I am not really interested in sucking someone’s cock, but this ofcourse has some backgroundstory to it though it might have been a genuine gesture as well if it is an honor to suck this guy’s cock. Too bad I never heard of the guy nor seen his cock sucked by other people. I might have missed it since I am not always “in the scene” and maybe have to read in the comments that I missed an opportunity here.

Since above is unlikely, let me give you the events that lead to this.

The quest to get the 3 ore is an annoying one. Droprate (sometimes) sucks, lots of people farming them and by the time you have 3 keys, you have bombed over 200 Greengrill Slaves out of pure boredom. Nimra and myself were teaming up for the dailies and arrived at this point. Lots of people there, no male naga’s to be seen so we move to the very end of the beach in the hope we will find some. We did and I run towards him as I see this shadowpriest running as well. Tagging war it seems and instead of using shadowword death, he dots them up and I mangle for the first damage. I continue further to gather 2 more male naga’s while nimp kills them behind me leaving no naga’s for the shadowpriest.

Speed is important in farming.

It did not take long for the whisper to come in. I expected this as the average WOW-community is not hard to read. This guy reacts accordingly. I love it when I am right.

The following discussion follows and it feels like beating a puppy. Being put on ignore is like playing an online 1v1 and the other one pulls the plug, cause he knows he is beaten, but just does not want to admit it. All fine by me, the taste of victory is still sweet. Though I know it is not fun when mobs are being tagged in front of you while you wanted to tag them, it is absolutely not ok to go out like that in my opinion.

His attempt at owning me with "Jorge and last night" goes lost cause i type in between. The "12-year old" is a typical last attempt at saving face. I read one argument and that was swept away swiftly.

Putting someone on ignore is a sign of weakness.

My ignorelist is still empty…

-- Zhero (afraid of achievements and my possible addiction to them)

My Kitten Hurts

2008-09-12T15:45:00.002+02:00

Yes, I am still here. Yes, I still play WoW and yes I did not write for a long time. Reason unknown or as it pops in my head “I could not be bothered”. Hell, I might have even forgotten about this blog if it wasn’t for “Hos” a warlock on my server that asked me when I would start writing again. That actually made me feel good.

Friday afternoon at the office seems like an appropriate time to start writing again.

Quick char/gear update to cover 3 months of inactivity.

Lock Zhero:
Full s3/s4 (without shoulders and weapon cause I am a noob). 540 resilience! Lol.
I’ve had numerous discussions about this, but chance-to-be-crit still goes down, dot-damage still goes down, just the reduction from critdamage stays at –25%. Since I am the primary target in every arenamatch, it seemed like a good idea. Never bothered with the lock after I used my 75k honor and 5k arenapoints at the start of the season. He sees play a bit lately and I started regemming/respeccing him to what top-locks have (hell, i was thought years ago that it is better to ‘copy’ a good idea than to franticly trying to make it work yourself)

Druid Maix
My precioussssssss. I love this female cow and never had any regrets dumping my lvl 62 MALE (arghhh) cow druid and relevelling a female cow druid. I had s3 healing gear (without blablabla cause i suck blablabla. Old news) and decided to go feral for S4. Not only did I go feral, but decided to really max her out as much as I could. So epic gems all over the place. Still got some S2 parts, but i got points and honor, just no rating. BUT SHE IS AMAZINGLY MUCH FUN TO PLAY. Why bother with other classes if you have a char which can change into something else for 50g? I respecced her healing now to get 1600/1650/1700 with my Lockfriend Nimra to be able to buy the gear. We did not manage any yet, but that will come. YES: CYCLONE IS THAT HARD!

I grinded 5k in 3 days for my epic flightform. Sometimes I think I was a goldfarmer before i reincarnated in a not so succesful arenaplayer. Epic flightform is awesome. I bought 3 epic flying mounts before, but this gave a lot of satisfaction. Even the quests for it are fun to do.

Levelled enchanting to 375 and jewelcrafting to 375 (do you guys have any idea how expensive it is to level from 200 to 300. I think I spend 2k gold on that. No joke L )

My preciousssssssssssss. She will be the first to 80 as it stands now. (and maybe the only one? o_O?!!)

Hunter Jasmina
Made her 70, grinded some honorstuff, levelled a stupid scorpion to best friend (how stupidly long does that take btw) and put her back on hold.

Rogue Kirosta
Full S3 without blablabla. You know. Doing nothing with him besides filling up teams for 10 games and grinding primal airs.

Paladin Soni
Auctionwhore and transmutebot. Good part about having her 70 is that i get a discount cause i am revered with Orgrimmar while depositing unsellable stuff in the auction house.

Mage Sonia
Levelled her to 68,5 for reasons unknown. She will get 70 somewhere before WotlK.

Let’s leave it at this and talk more about my hurting kitty next time. I’ll leave you with some random stuff

- feral druids are hard in arena, cause we can not cause a healing debuff (our damage is fine there)
- when i played with nimkin with my rogue 2v2. (Nimkin as in Nimkin of the Bandit) we went down very low and walked into full s3 war/pala at 1400 rating (THANK YOU CYCLONE, CAN I HAVE SOME MORE?)
- I ravaged a mage for 4290 in BG’s.
- I messed up a 37 minute druid/hunter vs. druid/lock (us) fight by letting our pet die 5 times. I am still rusty at healing (read: I suck, but this explanation is plausible).
- I am still in Ravens but not PvE-ing at all (though I need 150 badges for the staff. I had 90 and then spend 60 on the cloak. I am like a woman with money in her pocket. It won’t be there when the shops close)
- I bought a PS3 and busy with hard on Guitar Hero III in between.

-- Zhero

A day to remember

2008-06-05T12:08:00.002+02:00

I like festivals. I am not sure what I exactly like about them as I usually end up in extreme situations, but they seem to satisfy me in one way or another. Last Sunday I went to Pinkpop. It is the second largest festival in Holland and it lasts three full days. I bought a ticket for the last day Sunday and went down there (2,5 hour drive and YES it is on the other side of Holland. I actually think it is the furthest I can drive without leaving Holland. Thankgod for a small country!) with some friends.

All week we were watching the weather (hey Roskilde is still fresh in our minds) praying for it to be dry.

Well, it was dry

Not only that

It was a clear blue sky, no wind at all and 30 degrees or something. Now I am your average gamer, which means I like it behind my PC. I am not very fond of the sun and my skin turns from pale white, to red, to loose skin all over my burned body, to pale white again. There are hardly places to hide and those few places are crowded with lots and lots of people. 65k people there on Sunday i read later. In the morning it wasn’t very hot, so after an easy drive (we left at 06:00) and a small breakfast we enter the terrain to get us some beers. One of the 24-year old girls we brought with us, would drive us back. Lovely!

We started the festival at 11:00 or so with Fiction Plane. This is a band with the son of Sting (The Police (for those over 30)) as their lead singer. If you were not watching, you would actually think it was Sting himself. I considered Fiction Plane an ‘OK Band’ which means it is all fine if you leave the scene to get beer in between and miss a song or two.

Next band was ‘The Wombats’. This is really a refreshing band with happy melodies. Beer + Wombats = good times. So I sat this one out and made a mental note to download some of their stuff.

‘The Hives’ was next. These guys rock. A nice show with hardly any time to get beer, cause we enjoyed them so much. Their podiumskills were undeniable as well and good interaction with the public. But wtf is that burning sensation on my arms, in my neck and on my face?

We grabbed some food, and drank some more and discovered the sun owned us bigtime, but it was too late already. I started protecting my neck with my sweater which I brought along for unknown reasons as it was really hot. My neck survived but my arms and face were glowing and with each second the sun got me, i burned more.
I started throwing down glasses of water to make sure I did not dry out and we sat down to enjoy some food.
A new act was coming on. Serj Tankian. No clue on what he was, I listened and was suprised in a very pleasant way. I recognized his voice immediatly. He is the lead singer of System of A Down. ZOMG! W000000t. Now make sure to download some of his stuff, cause this guy is amazing.

We continued to Queens of A Stone Age, which is just good music and clearly made for live performances. It was cooling down and I started on beer again while waiting for the main act.

Rage Against The Machine
Wow, I was more than surprised. These guys broke up 7-8 years ago, came back last year to perform live again and are here now. AND THEY ARE AWESOME LIVE. You know: some bands just don’t have it live, but these guys are playing cd-quality live on stage with a good podium act. What more do you want? It was the perfect closure of a festival-day. I loved their intro. Here it is.

The trip back took us 2hours extra because of traffic jam and I was home at 04:00 or so, completely broke, completely burned (out) and with feet that were killing me, but I felt great. This was another day I did enjoy to the fullest. Then I remembered I had to bring my daughter to school the next day. I put my alarm on 07:30 and still went to sleep with a smile.
Life is great

-- Zhero (more festivals to come, more great days ahead!)

Hi, I am mr. Stupid!

2008-05-28T12:23:00.003+02:00

Two months ago or so I had to reinstall my PC due to some viruses which f*cked it up beyond repair. And since reinstalling is so much easier than trying to fix the problems (while never knowing if you fixed it all) I decided to do that. Ofcourse I was too lazy to look for any antivirusprogram and install it because i would take better care and not be unlucky this time. Yeah right!

So last night I reinstalled my PC again after looking for subtitles to ‘Zombie Strippers’ which should be a horrible movie, but 2 of my friends insisted on seeing it. I was already too far in it, before I realized I was exposed and vulnerable. Viruses came from all corners and struck powerfully (subtitlesites and my security suck. And using IE sucks as well ofcourse). They got me. Again. 2-0. Game, set and match.

I suck so hard sometimes.

-- Zhero (waiting for S4 as I am reaching 5k arenapoints)

Back to my Roots

2008-05-22T14:47:00.003+02:00

So half the guild is looking into AoC (I will as well, check it out and see if I like it. Necromancer, here I come), the other half is still in WoW (as I am). The first WOTLK info is coming in and I have dreams about my first hero-love.

Arthas!

When I first got into PC-gaming (rather late) I played diablo and UT, followed by Warcraft III. That was the game that got me hooked (though I played A LOT of D2 as well). I tried all races and fell in love with the undead, always picking the deathknight as my 1st hero and creeping the first mobs with some ghouls and the amazing deadcoil spell. I played the game for 3 years or so, never being a top contender, but good enough to play in the midfield. I watched replays of UD players and once got 4K.Grubby (me and my ex-wife knew him and invited him to a LAN at our place) to play UD in ladder while watching him (I never ever saw somebody that fast. Really unbelievable and really fun to have one of the world’s best in your house at your pc) defeating opponent after opponent. The good old times.

I read the supposed DK talent tree
http://war-tools.com/t52360.html

and I like it. Sounds like a char I would play and my state of mind currently is to level a DK (as will a lot of people I suppose) once WOTLK comes out. He is good and bad, he is strong, he is Arthas the deathknight. There is no doubt it will be an undead-deathknight as, in my opinion, there is no other suitable race.

Arthas will rule again!

…and I will play him to perfection.

-- Zhero (currently scoring with rogue/lock/paladin, lovely setup)

Feral Madness

2008-05-16T15:44:00.007+02:00

Since I am de-la-suck in staying with one character, I decided (for now. Lol) to continue in the feral business with my druid for season IV. I respecced, found 2 karazhan-epix in my bank and bought the blue pvp-set while grabbing a green ring and a green staff from the auctionhouse. I gemmed them with green gems (i do have the gold for blue gems, but am saving for a lot of time for epic flight form now and can’t seem to get above 2k gold), put on some cheap enchants and am ready to go.

Much to my surprise I noticed:
Attackpower: 2049
Critchance: 30.18%

hehe, there's nothing like a big bear in your face!

Holy shit! Seems like high numbers to me with such gear. This ofourse was done with a rogue-view on them, so after some bg’s I view them now correctly. It’s ok, but nothing special. Shredding sometimes gives high numbers and I already had my 3k ferocious bite, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

Best thing about feral:

15% speed bonus again!!!

Who cares about 1,5 second cast scare beast with 30 yard range (it’s funny in bg’s though where you get feared all over the map by happy hunters) when you can run fast again. I get the most out of it in Orgrimmar where I am significally faster when I do my mailbox to auction-house runs.

I love it.

As we all know, i can’t break 1850, but still play for the points (and the wellfare epix. I hate that term especially since I think that I am a good PvE-er, better than a lot of others who walk in PvE epix. Wellfare my ass!) My druid/warrior team dropped another 50 points to something like 1675 or so, while my rogue/paladin went 12-1 and won a whopping 150 points. From 1600 to 1750. We only encountered 1 warrior/druid team and managed to beat that one. I made a mistake against a retridin/rogue team and let the paladin drink back up that is what costed us that 1 match. We slaughtered them next match though, but it was nice for a change to see how fluent it went. It at least puts us in a range where some lucky lineups can bring us to 1850. Best of all my buddy Szwok plays like a madman as a healer (something he used to be very sucky at).

Ganking
The Island is gankparadise. Last time i got 1100 honor in 1 hour with ganking (do you even realise how much nicer that is compared to BG’s and yes I know I get more honor in BG’s). Too bad all the PvE-ers that are farming there now, will be gone soon. It’s like a fishingspot where you know it ends once a certain season starts. All this ganking results in a lot of whines (on the forum you only see alliance whine though) but in game also Horde does not like it. (but don’t stop plx)

For my fellow skullcrusherians. I managed to kill an AFK Effectivity. Hooray me!

Weird guildname (on a hunter, it figures)

Nowadays you see them a lot, but I screened this one the first time i saw it. Lovely.

-- Zhero (bought the new pvptrinket and has 519 resilience now. what 519? yes 519!)

Bearform = Fearform

2008-04-25T14:16:00.005+02:00

I noticed this in the patchnotes (2.4.2)

Hunter:
Scare Beast: The range on this spell has been increased to 30 yards and it is now instant cast.

hohoho, normally i am not paying that much attention to other classes, just briefly glancing through it, but this is a BIG BIG nerf for my beloved druid. Bearform = Fearform and 30 yards is ridiculous. Manadrained while feared in travelform. hmmmm, manadrain while feared.

We'll soon have dead bears all over the place

Someone call WNF!!

Or am i overreacting?

-- Zhero (fixed the engineering epic gun on my hunter, still need more upgrades)

Old news, but funny

2008-04-24T11:51:00.003+02:00

Artanias (our beloved pvp-mage who is chatting with girls like 95% of the time while he is raiding) is well known. Even Alliance honors him now with 'his' own guild.

It is already a week old, but I only noticed it today. Putting it here for the other guildies which might not read the forums.

-- Zhero (working atm, or physically at the office, but mentally in Azeroth)

Maix, dreamstatedestrokin

2008-04-21T13:52:00.002+02:00

After my last blog, I had a small conversation with Artanias. He ‘advised’ me to go with 2 chars: druid and rogue. I decided to follow it up a little and focus now on the druid. What does this mean?

- If i go sit down to play, I start with my druid.
- I do daily BG with my druid first
- I do the new dailies for Shattered Sun rep with my druid first
- I do repgrinds for my druid.

After the daily and rep is done, i can do things with my other chars. (respecced my lock to destruction for some fun in BG’s). I randomly do things with my other chars now without feeling ‘guilty’ for not spending the time with my main.

There were still some things to do on the druid. I still needed Aldor exalted, Thrallmar revered for the healingheadenchant, my First Aid was on lvl 175, my enchanting was on 370.

What I achieved so far:
- Levelled FA to 375
- Levelled Enchanting to 375 (need sha’tar rep voor the healingenchant though)
- Made myself exalted with Aldor (i did this by logging my rogue from time to time and grinding for 40 marks of sargeras (1000 rep) and quitting when i got them. It would net me 2-3 fel armaments as well, so 1700-2000 rep per session. I did7 or 8 of those sessions which made me exalted this morning (after the last session gave me 7 fel armaments :D). This grind felt not much like a grind this way.
- Close to honored with doing the 6 quests on the island with Shattered Sun, without ever seeing the inside of the instance.

To be able to do the Shattered Sun quests I respecced to a “Dreamstate”-build and that is a lot of fun (not in arena so far, but certainly in bg’s). This was from the AV-daily. Most healing done, good damage done, good kills and having fun while doing it!

Maix, MVP of AV

I tend to play like this until my goals are reached. Then It is only waiting for arenapoints (and rating lol) to get more items. In the meantime my honor (30k now or so) will go on till 75k and I will be ready for the new season right from the start.

Zhero gets known it seems. Whole guilds are inspired by me.

-- Zhero (destruction IS fun, especially unsuspecting warriors drop like little flies)

How much I power do you have?

2008-04-18T17:00:00.002+02:00

I was looking for Athene (the best paladin in the world) while browsing at work (to kill time) and noticed these guys are actually more than just funny moviemakers.

I post it here, because I strongly believe in it.

copy/pasted from movielol

===================================================
I Power
'I Power' refers to the power that each individual has to change and to take control of his own life.

It is a lifestyle based on 3 fundamental principles:

1. Being open-minded
Being open to all ideas and approaching them without prejudice.
2. Active thinking
Thinking about all the ideas that matter to you.
3. Putting your vision into practice
Actively making changes to your life as you reach new conclusions.

Beyond these 3 basic principles, there are no rules or restrictions attached to I Power. The I Power lifestyle is simply about actively thinking and making changes to make sure that you are exactly who you want to be, that your actions and your thoughts are aligned while always having an open mind.

The more you actively think about things and put your views into practice, the more I Power you have. Because I Power refers to the power you have to change things and take control over your own life
====================================================

-- Zhero (not being emo here, just seeing some people with the same view)

Help me out here!!

2008-04-16T12:30:00.002+02:00

I just was informed about the 2200 rating required for S4 shoulders. That seems very high to me (i never ever broke 1850, yes I am that bad). And somewhere else I read a lot of gear will get requirements. (head/chest 1850 needed etc.). I am not really sure if it is true, but I am wondering if that is a good thing.

My chars are typical examples of a lot of chars. 4/5 S3 with S2 weapons. My druid/lock and rogue have this. That is not something special, at this point in the season everyone has this who picked up his point every week. It is the typical sign of a character who picks up points by playing 10 games a week. The funny part is that I do not think of myself as an average pvp-er, but my gear proves otherwise.

It’s a nasty situation to be in.

I wonder if it is because i try to play too many character (already picking up points with my hunter as well) and I do not focus on completing others (aldor/scryer not exalted for example on some). And I keep telling myself that it does not matter if you can’t break 1850 anyway, but maybe it does matter in a different sense then.

If I was able to focus on 1 character, I would be ‘better’ at it as well. I admire people like Xinco (Naked) and Artanias who have 1 char. Those guys already probably have 5k arenapoints and 75k honor points waiting for them as well as Sunwell-exalted. Why can’t I stick to 1 char? I know I would be exalted with all important factions then. I know I would have had a bizillion badges in the bank. Now I have 30 badges on all my chars, instead of 150 on one. Now I am halfway to exalted with aldor/scryer with all my chars, instead of fully on one. Now I am halfway to exalted in all BG’s (not that it matters, but still) instead of exalted with all BG’s on 1 char.

The good side is that after I have been healing for 2-3 hours, I can take my rogue and kill stuff. We all know it feels good to change mains from time to time. My problem seems to be that I have 5 mains. Yesterday I even caught myself in WSG with my paladin (in greens and blues) and even enjoyed that, while we all know that a paladin can’t keep you satisfied for larger amounts of time.

So what to do?

Focus on 1 char? Optimize it (with professions as well, do you have any idea how expensive it is to level 10 professions to 375) and maybe reach 1850+ ratings as well with the risc of getting burned out on wow and that char. But getting real good at it (maybe even in pve) will satisfy some needs as well. (but which char is it then?)

Stay with multiple mains and try and be good with multiple less-optimal chars. Be annoyed by the fact you can’t reach higher ratings, but happy with the fact there is always something to do?

Please give me an answer as I have not been able to answer it in 3 years.

Fuck me!

-- Zhero (thinking about destructiongear for fun in S4)

PvP char, the beginning

2008-04-10T14:55:00.001+02:00

I forgot how it felt to be 1- and 2-shotted, but I know now again. A warrior charges me, as I have no trinket yet, I can’t free myself and i get slain pretty fast. Same with a rogue on me. But then again, that is the fate of new fresh 70’s. I know I’ve slain a lot with my rogue, now it is my time to suffer.

But I have my first epic!

Bought the Vindicator Chain Bracers and put a 8 hit rating gem in it as I seem to be missing a lot. Slammed 26 AP on it as well, so onto the next. AV weekend is coming weekend, so hopefully I can get another armor piece this weekend. The big gameplan is to save up arenapoints (a thrilling 300 a week) and buy S3 bow when S4 starts. In the meantime I grind vindicator armor. Besides that I might put in some effort to get more blue pvp-rewards which you get from being honored with different factions.

On a more common note. I see lots of people grinding the S1 gear on new chars. I am not sure why they do that. When I started my druid, i bought vindicator for honor and vengefull with arenapoints. Now I am 4/5 S3 with all vindicator which seems to me is a lot better than S1 gear and does not feel as a waste at all. It takes a bit longer ofcourse, but why settle for less? Why spend honorpoints (unless you had 75k stacked or something) on S1 when you can spend it on S3 honorepix?

Me (Maix, druid), Vin (Thentvaen, rogue) and Jur (Karma, warrior) jumped on the double melee bandwagon and reached 1700 rating yesterday. We rolled all RMP, but had problems with hunter/warrior/druid. We basicly rolled every team with a clothie. 5 points expose armor (talented) from the start and then double melee whacking away on a clothie leaves no time for their healer to do anything else but healing. It dies anyway sometimes even before I could cyclone their healer. World of Meleecraft atm.

I am glad I am no mage in this time of WoW (mine is lvl 64 though :D).

-- Zhero (probably respeccing the hunter to 0/41/20 or something like that. Surefooted ftw!?)

Jasmina is 70

2008-04-07T16:23:00.005+02:00

She finally made it to 70. It was one of my oldest characters (originally played by my, then 5 year old, daughter (check one of my older articles on her.). I levelled it to 70 in a about 3 weeks time.

I still wonder where that '29 minutes played on this level comes from' as I screened about 30 seconds after I dinged 70.

That brings my chars as follows
- Zhero (70 lock, full PvP gear 492 res, 13k hp)
- Kirosta (70 rogue, full PvP gear. Hits hard! 400 res)
- Maix (70 druid, full PvP gear, PvE mace, 420 res)
- Soni (70 paladin, healing blues with 1 or 2 epix)
- Jasmina (70 hunter, greens mostly with an AH-blue-bow)

I always admire people who can play 1 character. They are able to grind the rep on that one (reputation is a big downside of multiple chars) and even collect offspec gear. I am not even sure why i am doing it, but ofcourse you can find me on the hunter in the BG's as I want PvP gear on this one as well. I will regret it afterwards when I realize I could have had 75k honor waiting for S4 on my main (whichever that is, as I myself am not sure at this moment).

Doing arena and the opposing paladin is bringing a smile to my face. These are nice names.

An alliance WITH humor! Always nice to see they can be normal as well (seen so many /spits that I lost count while ganking on the Sunwell Isle).

-- Zhero (walking around with a free honor hunter atm)

back in WoW, back in the game, back in blogging

2008-04-03T19:27:00.006+02:00

I reinstalled my pc, lost my passwords in the process and it took me some time to regain access here. But here I am. I had a post ready at work, but could not post it due to not knowing my accountname/password, so I will post 2 pix I took the last day. I respecced my rogue, regemmed my rogue, re-enchanted my rogue (1000g down the drain, zomg) and kill everything now. It's not even fair anymore. 2 BG's yesterday, see for yourself

Ranged classes rule in AV? LOL! They die quick you mean.

EOTS

One thing keeps annoying me though. It's been like this what? from day 1? I pop cloak to be able to vanish and get auto-attacked out of it. 2 seconds immune after vanish would solve this i guess.

-- Zhero (back in blogland)

Wazzzappp?

2008-01-16T15:47:00.000+01:00

Not much here. My 2v2 partner Krexxor found a girlfriend IRL. Not that I believe him, but he is not online. You wonder how long it takes before the plastic doll gets boring.
Nimp hasn’t been online for a week either. There’s this rumor that he is playing on the PS3, which could very well be. That left all my chars without a team this week (and points). It’s ok, i don’t force people into playing. I know very well there are times when you play a lot and there are times where you do not play a lot, because other things got your interest. Still I had to do something.

My rogue (pretty good geared atm I would say) teamed up with Daymare/Zekro (“drunkmare” actually as he changed his name for 8 euros) in the team with the original name “two rogues”. Yiehaaaaaaaaa, how much fun it is. Awesome! So much different to play 2 dps classes instead of the dps/heal I always played. We played 10 games due to timeconstraints, but hopefully continue doing so. I had a blast and Daymare (who calls himself the-best-geared-worst-rogue of this server) is awesome to play with.

I invited altwhore Vinnie (yes our GM) on his rogue and together with my warlock we continued in the 1650-1700 bracket where me and Krex were residing. Vinnie respecced shadowstep and off we went. He had fun with it, I had fun with it. They would typically go for me and Vin dps-ed one (together with my dots) to see how fast we could get them down. We played 5-5, not bad considering Vin had new keybindings and it was our first time together. We continue this setup in the next week.

My druid had no team (could have switched it in, but did not do it), so no points for her this week. Too bad, but not the end of the world. Gearing her is a slow process. I find myself after some bg’s relog to my rogue to continue the ganking in Nagrand. I fly rounds there for primal air and mines and alliance (honor) while trying to keep elemental plateau a non farming place. It’s a busy job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Guildnames:
I found 2 funny ones. Too bad I was too late with screening (and did not see it anymore) this alliance guildname

< 2 GNOMES 1 CUP >

that made me giggle as did the next:

LegolaszXXAnd I always wonder why people would go for misspelled names because the original is taken (or worse, because they do not know how to spell it). We’ve all seen Legolaazx, Furiouzzzs, BigBatTauren and awesoemmage. The misspelled name is somehow a tag which I would never want to have (silly, dumb, non skilled or whatever) for me, but opinions differ ofcourse. Feel free to disagree and call your next alliance hunter Leegoolaasz. Or admire our GM “Nevermore” and call yourself:

AV has barrenslike chat, but this one stood out for me

Some guildchat to close this post
Do you know the times you ask something in guildchat and nobody reacts? Our lovely Mary found a solution for that:
Nimpie can’t stand the looks of female orcs.
Veritha/eleutherios left our guild, but is back. So is his guildchattalk about licking balls this time.

-- Zhero (playing some poker in between, but no winning player yet)

TPS report (yes, i read the memo!)

2007-12-31T14:13:00.001+01:00

I am not the hardest grinder ever, though always looking for ways to make money without putting in much effort. I was reading somewhere and looking for engineering-recipies (somehow I wanted to level engineering on Kirosta. It was stuck at 367 or so) when I stumbled upon the Zaptrottle Mote Extractor. It seemed you had to do a quest to get the recipy, then make the device and you could extract motes from the gasclouds which are sometimes running around in Nagrand, Zangarmarsh and Netherstorm.

I must be stupid to put it here (but have faith in people not reading this), but boy oh boy: THIS DEVICE IS AWESOME. Since the gasclouds appear on the minimap (if you have the goggles), it is very easy to spot them and each and every one of them gives you 3-5 motes. Motes of air in Nagrand, motes of water in Zangarmarsh, motes of mana in Netherstorm. One round flying in Nagrand gives me on average 3 clouds which give on average 4 motes. That is on 1,2 Primal Air each round I fly there. The same goes for Zangarmarsh and Netherstorm. I am actually mining on those rounds and these come with them. Since I discovered this, i pressed my gold for an epic flying mount (indeed my 3th (paladin and lock have one) and lend 1400 gold from Milker to get me it 2 weeks earlier. I am farming a little extra now to get him his gold back sooner. Lovely! Tnx Milk.

Zhero (warlock)
Last week I bought my vengefull legs and had 500 resilience! Since the soft cap is 492,5, I replaced two 8 resilience gems, with 4 resilience + 6 stamina gems. I had to do it like that else I did not make my setbonus by simply replacing one 8 resilince with one 12 stamina. My lock is VERY HARD TO KILL. I end up in BG’s with 200k more damage than anyone else, simply cause i can keep dotting. I do my 2v2 with Krexxor (lamer, where the f*ck are ya atm?) and was invited to a 5v5. All people got my kind of gear there, but we’re still working on being a team. I like the people though, so it’s easy to stick around. Not doing much with Zhero in terms of playingtime. A daily every now and then, some herbing+ganking (those 2 i always combine) and I ALWAYS GANK. This keeps herbing interesting. Got a few vindicator-items to go, but at 12.9k hp, 492 resilience I am fine really.

Kirosta (rogue)
Since the start of season III, i have been playing him frequently. I had 2 merciless maces and had 3k arenapoints on him which i used to replace some blues. He is fully epic and fully enchanted (mongoose for offhand still being worked on, first I have to pay back Milker) except for 1 ring and the gun/throwing weapon slot. Close to 300 resilience (packing some Kara-items). I respecced him shadowstep (18/0/43) and have a blast really. It is so much fun to play. Premeditate, shadowstep, cheapshot, 5 pt. Evis (on cloth). BOOOM HEADSHOT! Ok, warriors are less fun, but even with a good rupture/vanish start i come a long way. With ghostly strike and evasion I get 90% dodge, so i give warriors a run for their money. My record eviscerate is 3900 on some lowby alliance scum. I hope he read his combatlog :D A lot of fun, playing 2v2 with Nimroth in our combined druid/lock—priest/rogue team which is actually doing very good (the lock/druid that is :D). Will keep playing this one, but currently focussing on…

…Maix (druid)
Healing in BG’s is fun when you are with friends in there, it is not much fun with all strangers and nobody to look out for you. To make sure I do the necessary BG-grind (i am not going fast at all with the gear) I respecced. I follow all the 1337-blogs, so ofcourse I am aware of the Deep-spec (34/0/27) which I took as well. To make a long story short. My gear is severely lacking for it to do real damage, but it is a lot of fun to play. When Nimroth (priest) is with us, i don’t watch others too much, but else i keep my healing-eye open and jump into healing when needed. This makes it a lot easier to sologrind those BG’s. My healing (+100) and manaregen (40/5) went up a lot with this spec as well as rejuve and regrowth being cheaper. You miss swiftmend (and i do indeed) and the feral charge/longer bash/more armor (i don’t), but that’s it. I might respec back when doing arena, but since Nimra is my warlockpartner (and on holiday for the coming 5 days), I have plenty of time to enjoy it. Mainly playing this one 2v2 with Nimra. Now Nimra has full S2-gear and I can see how overpowered this combo is. I wait (especially against no-burst teams) till he is halflife before i even show myself. Since I do not have the survivability yet, I am playing very defensive. Whenever they go for me, i try and kite them around while Nimp is killing them. Whenever they go for him, I hassle them and keep him alive. Our rogue/priest combo keeps running into warriors (bad bad bad), but our lock/druid combo can handle them it seems (this bracket that is). I don’t want to know what happens when i have 4-set bonus and a lot more hp/resilience. It should make for higher ranking than 1667 (but only playing 10 a week now)

Soni (paladin)
Somehow I transferred some gold to Soni, respecced her to shockadin (40/0/21) and did a few bg’s (in healing gear). It makes it more bearable, but a battleground here and there is it for the moment. Being able to play something else when you want, is very nice.

Coming targets:
- Getting Milker his 1k gold back
- Gearing the druid (belt and legs this Wednesday! Epic healinglegenchant already bought)
- Getting someone on 1850+ * (i gear a lot, but can’t seem to get high. I blame the common factor of all my teams: me :D), but I can live with that.

-- Zhero (happy newyear and remember: if you quit because of RL, you are a failure to begin with)

PS: I have this all the time: I watch a clock and it says: 13:37! It must be a sign!

A lot of "stuff"

2007-12-17T16:47:00.000+01:00

It’s been a while. I don’t know why, but time just flies. Quicker than you would want. At least: quicker than I would want. I turned 38. Depressingly old, especially when I play a game which is filled with 16-25 year old guys/girls (ok, I don’t mind the girls). And I am not depressed either.

But somehow when I was 18, I saw people my age now and thought they were boringly old. Now I am here, and all I can say I still think the same as I did back then. I still see those people as boringly old, though I am as old as them. Somehow they went ‘on’ in life (whatever that may be) and don’t spend time on kiddie-stuff anymore, but on serious stuff only. Let’s analyze that a little:

Uh…..serious stuff would be…?
- Mortgage? Your fault that you went in over your head because you wanted to live big. Now you’re stuck, but hey! You have a big house! Gratz with what I call: ‘irrelevant stuff’ and make sure to mow that mega-lawn of yours on your free saturdays.
- Kids? I have 1 too. She is eight years old and awesome. The difference is that you take your kid to the ‘kermis’ (dutch word for ‘fair’) as an adult being responsible and all (1 icecream! No more) while Serra, yes she is called Serra and yes: I’ve played competetive MTG for over 10 years, and I go with the 2 of us as 2 kids, but the good part is: 1 has money! Haha, we spend it all on stuff we like, eat too much, go in every machine…twice! and leave with over 10 teddybears. It’s not called spoiling, it’s called: having a good time!
- Caring about the looks of your car, cellphone, suit etc? I am a manager in a telecom-company. I lead a department which is responsible for all automated workflow related stuff (interfaces and such). Most of my colleague-managers don’t understand what I do and my interests. I am about the only one who does not care about his car (bmw), his phone (nokia, 3 year old model) or the price of his suits (cheap) and don't forget status. I gamble, watch movies, go out, play games and (before all else) enjoy time with my daughter. Those are things that matter to me. I’m fine with you caring about your car and phone, now let me care about what I care about. Not that difficult.

Serious stuff. Aha, it doesn't exist. It only exists in one's mind, so it can have multiple meanings and my serious stuff is as good as yours.

“Aren’t you too old for that stuff?”. Uh….no. You might be, but I am not. Not gaming and qualifying it as ‘something that you can be too old for’ actually tells me you’re jealous and wish you were me. I can understand that. I wanna be me as well.

Enough ranting about age and stuff. General message is: be what you want to be and enjoy it. Let others be what they want to be (sheep? o_O) and let them enjoy it. And remember: if there were no sheep, you would never be outstanding…

More on Maix, Kirosta and Zhero next time

-- Zhero (played his rogue extensively over the last few days)

Nat Pagle came in my life.

2007-12-04T16:12:00.000+01:00

I did some digging, as I have been levelling my fishing (on Zhero) lately, on the fishing subject and got some nice stuff:

Nat Pagle (who is believed to be Pat Nagle, a game-designer for WOW and TBC) is the man you should see when you want to train your fishing from 225 to 300 (I am at 235 now, started at 171 where I left it long ago)
Not only is Nat standing on an island somewhere in Dustwallow Marsh, he also is to be seen in Old Hillsbrad where he has the following conversation (copied from wowhead):

Nat Pagle: Hal...
Hal McAllister: Yea, Nat?
Nat: Had that dream again last night...
Hal: Which one?
Nat: In this dream, I was fishin' master of the world. I moved to some place called Kalimdor...
Nat: And people from all over the world come to me to pay homage... and learn to fish.
Nat: I'm like some kind of fishing god...
Hal: Nat, I've heard a whopper or two in my day but that one takes the cake."

Funny guys there at Blizzard. Must be a good laugh when developing this game. But back to the subject: I decided to level my fishing (and cooking) on Zhero. I know that rises some questions as I already have 375 cooking on my paladin and my rogue, but here is the answer:

I feel Zhero is reaching completeness (is that even a word?). My gear and stats reach heights that I have never seen before. Whenever I play with him, I feel like a true warlock….a real master of demons, top of the foodchain, the great dark leader of Azeroth. You can’t imagine the power I feel when playing with him. To make that picture as perfect as I can, I have to level those 2 professions. I just have to. I really have to. It’s just something I must do…can’t really explain it. Forgive me...

...maybe...

...dark powers...

...possess...

...me.

-- Zhero ()

Warlock + healer = Chuck Norris?

2007-12-03T16:43:00.000+01:00

Nimra is back and not only on his lock, but on his priest as well. Grinding honor with a healclass is one of the most frustrating things to do when you have no partner to do it with (most frustrating must be a partnerless warrior imo), because they never ever pay attention to you or communicate with you, besides the standard ‘Healme’ and ‘Randomretard is low on health’ macro’s that they are running.

I used to run with szwok (on his imba warrior) and Dier (very good geared paladin) and myself in EOTS and AB. Really working like a team, which does not mean run into 12 alliance and hope the paladin can keep up and resist the counterspells thrown. No, when Dier was in trouble we used to take a step back and fear, intercept the adds off her. Worked like a charm, we got scores of 25-0, 33-1 etc. with 80-110 HK’s and this really adds up to the honor.

I forgot how nice that was until Nimroth (lovely 0 resilience blue-instance geared priest) healed my ass in AB last night. Not only did we win all but 1, but we got some very nice HK’s out of it while doing massive damage. He remembered me to rebuff my fel armor and threw heals while I tried to fear, CoeX the adds of him. It worked pretty well and we got some good honor in the games we did.

I just wanted to post this next pic(s), because I don’t really see difference with 2.3. Locks are not dead, we are more than ever alive! I am doing lots of damage, I am harder to kill than before, we only have rogues now which kill us but that is fine with me. I’ve played that way for more than a year from the beginning, I can handle it. At least they have to work for it now.

Anyone ever got more damage than this in 1 AB? (tnx to Nimroth for imbahealing)

Haha, we all need whispers like this sometimes because it makes you feel good. At least, that was what it did for me.

-- Zhero (flying back to earth now)

Christmas is early this year!

2007-11-29T11:13:00.000+01:00

I had to work for and pay them myself, but it felt like christmas.

As a little kid I was counting the hours at work before I could go home and get my presents. I logged into wow and stared at a queue. Wow, that was long ago. Ah..it is Al’Akir server where my RL friend Sorciah migrated to (to play in a casual PvP guild with his brother and friends) and I have a hunter which I use to talk to him. I switch to good old Skullcrusher, queueless ofcourse and first spend my honor points. I had approx. 40k honor assembled (I am not THAT hardcore), so bought the new bracers and belt. (I forgot how expensive that bracer-enchant was. Auch!)
Then I flew to Area52 where I noticed lots of bodies laying around. Always good to see PvP is going on. I bought the S3 head and S3 wand there. Both were upgrades from the last 2 blue items I had (apart from the pvp-trinket), so extra resilience was coming in. I gemmed the head with the 18stam/5 stunresist gem. (now that mystical gem has a hidden 45 second cooldown). Not sure if it is the right call, but being the tank in my 2v2, makes the 18stam/5stun a better choice imo.

I am now at 456 resilience with 12.6k life. Last resilienceupgrade will come from my pants, where I still use battlecastpants. Then I will be close to the 492-max and beginning to be the powerhouse that I am in my dreams! Next upgrade will be the new ring to replace seal of the exorcist! (finally getting rid of that thing). I am still debating if the 1750 life trinket will be better than talisman of the horde. 34 resilience is a lot, but so is 1750 life (and passive damage), but no need to make that decision now since I don’t have the points anyway.

S3 for locks has a nice blue look. (pic stolen from wowhead)

Some lockhaters already came up with this pic with ‘stiking resemblance’ for warlock T6-looks

Whatever…

:D

Maix was still too low in points (1150 arenapoints) to get anything usefull. I have epic craftable gloves and will upgrade them later. It’s not like the 0.1 second on cyclone will not get me 2-shotted, so better save those points for head/pants/chest/shoulders. Shoulders will come later when (and if) we break 1850.

So we have work to do. All ratings at 1500. Let’s see if I can get some action tonight.

PS: And I will respec to a 1 point different spec this evening as well. Last time somehow I managed not to put a point in shadowembrace and left it like that (when I discovered) because I am a cheap bastard who doesn’t want to spend 50g on a respec for 1 point. In the mean time we might have lost some matches against dispell-classes because they don’t have that extra debuff to dispell. It’s S3 now, time to do it right!

PS2: Did I mention Nimra is back? o_O.

-- Zhero (feeling reborn with S3 and ready to rumble!)

Patch 2.3.2 ==> more whagelove wtf!

2007-11-22T11:36:00.000+01:00

Patch 2.3.2 looks nice for a lot of classes. Buffs left and right for druids/rogues/shamans, a significant buff for hunters it seems and megamajorbuffs for mages!

The biggest lockhaters, or 'whages' as some people call them, are buffed again in patch 2.3.2. Fresh from the patchnotes:
- Cold Snap (Frost) cooldown reduced
- Conjure Mana Gem (Rank 6 - Emerald) now restores 1800 to 3000 mana and has three charges
- Ice Block (Frost) is now available on the trainer to all mages at level 30.
- Icy Veins (NEW Frost Talent) decreases casting time of all spells by 20% and increases the chance your chilling effects will freeze the target by 25%. Lasts 20 sec. 3 min cooldown. It is now in the Cold Snap position in the talent tree.

So those whages (popular term amongst locks. It stands for ‘whining mages’ but saves you the trouble of typing 2 words) somehow got in Blizz’s pants and got more. I sure must ask them how they do that, but I’m actually fine with it. The more they buff mages, the more I will enjoy killing them. AND I WILL.

I can understand the iceblock-thing, even the new talent (though totally not needed it seems, those icelances weren't overpowered or anything), but what pisses me off most is the managem.
"Yeah, but we need it, we can't kill people, we don't have enough mana to take 3 people down"
Well buddy, i have news for you: I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH LIFE TO TAKE DOWN 3 PEOPLE EITHER. What mana is for mages, is hitpoints for warlocks. So, I demand a healthstone with 3 charges (warlock only) as well. Small thing and all fair imo.

But to make sure not all warlocks will reroll, blizz decided to give a daily warlock-only quest as well in 2.3.2.

the 'any level' was added after several locks did not manage to get the quest done within 24 hours on the testrealm.

-- Zhero (wonders if destruction or full affliction will ever get this kind of love)

10 minute queue weirdness

2007-11-21T17:38:00.000+01:00

Last night me (Zhero) and Krexxor (resto shaman) still needed to play 4 games to get our weekly 10 games together. With an average waiting time of 10 minutes (hello!! playing on tuesday-evening...zomg) it took us a small hour to get them done. But boy oh boy, what a strange games that were.

Now we are not that high (it is an old team that Krexxor still had), so we started on 1650 or so and went 5-1 so far this week (losing to warrior/paladin, that is kinda nasty though it was a close one). So the first 6 rounds were interesting, fun and (some) tense games. But then comes...

...Round 7:
After 10 minutes there is our 1st match of the evening. Shaman+priest. Seems enhancement-shammy with a priest. The enhancement shammy runs towards Krexxor who kites him round a pillar with both of them frostshocking eachother. I put 3 dots on him and concentrate on the priest and try to fear/manadrain him. When I look again, I see that shaman on 10% or so (from my dots and some shocks). I quickly deathcoil him, start drainlife and spell lock the priest. An extra shock from Krex does the job. WTF: he did not heal, nor did he walked towards his priest, nor was a single dot dispelled. Whatever, easiest match ever. 3 dots+shocks = dead enhancement shammy. Lol.

Round 8:
Shaman+lock. Mirror match: it takes a while, but since I do twice the damage of the other lock (I totally have no idea what he was doing) and drain more mana from his shaman, we take this one in the end. Nothing strange here.

Round 9:
Shaman+mage. Wassup with all the shammies? A resto shaman with a firemage?!?! Strange combo, but ok. The mage comes out (as am I) and starts a fireball?! I pack 140 resist with a totem from Krexx, but decide to spell-lock it anyway. At first I tried to kill the mage with dots while controlling the other shaman, but that took too long. The firemage was switching between me and Krexxor and I decide to manadrain him which gave us a wanding mage after some drains and a restoshaman still trying to kill us (me on full life, Krex on 80% mana. Lol?). It was too funny, so we mess around some more and finish them off while telling eachother that THIS had to be the easiest match ever (with never a dangerous moment). That would have been the easiest match of the evening if it wasn’t for …

…Round 10:
Shaman+mage. Elementalshaman + firemage can pack some serious burst I can imagine, but Krexx is our pillar-line-of-sight-abuser-champ so while I was standing still and putting on dots, Krexx was running around the pillar with both of them chasing him, but unable to cast anything. A silly sight if you just looked at it (as I did, I was standing still after all, but they ignored me). They both died from the dots I applied without a single heal/sheep/cs/purge/decurse. I think the shaman managed to cast 1 NS/chainlightning on me right before died. He probably had the idea that he had to do ‘some’ damage, else it would look real foolish. To add insult to injury, I resisted it. Strangest match ever. Really. I wonder how they reached 1750.

I just wanted to put it down here, cause it were strange games. All opponents looked really bad, while the first 6 games which we did earlier that week (so lower opponents), were hard fights here and there. Maybe it’s because it’s tuesdaynight and people still need to play the games and invite randoms to complete their matches? I don’t know, but at least it made us laugh.

9-1 for the week and funny matches, what more do you want from arena on tuesdayevening!

-- Zhero (looking forward to serious drinking. It’s been 2 weeks…)

Maix's first arenapoints!

2007-11-20T14:46:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I witnessed something great. Something I really enjoyed. I saw 2 players in arena coherent like Tango&Cash. Always bashing eachother, but showing great finesse (ok, that’s not Tango&Cash like) in killing the opponents.

I am talking about Artanias and Nakedsnake.

Now before you start laughing, let me bring you the story.

Yesterdayevening I logged on to Maix to do the daily pvp-quest. That single BG (or 4 EOTS as I had to do) nets a nice amount of extra honor so I try to do it every day. When I finished that, I logged Zhero to do some more EOTS and Artanias starts whispering me as he is doing so often when he is doing arena. He whines some about overpowered locks, I tease him and then he tells me about the teams they beat. This can go on for like half an hour or so. “WTF man, we had a mirror, but it was against 2 humans, so they caught Nakedsnake with perception before he could spot their rogue. Man, racials fuck us over”. This is the standard conversation, but I like it. As I am always cheering inside when our raids get a boss down (though I am not raiding myself), I like it as much when we have high PvP-teams, though I am not in it. So I enjoy it when Artanias and Nakedsnake (current rating: 2130!!) do arena and do well.

I teasingly asked Art if they need a druid for a nice 3v3 and much to my surprise he said they were done with 2v2 anyway and wanted to try it out. I tell them about my green gear, but that’s fine and Naked has a team (inactive I guess?), so I get an invite on Maix. My 7.2K selfbuffed health and 18 resilience are pale compared to those 400+ resilience guys, but hey let’s see. I now notice the team has 20-3 score and a 1750 rating already. Somehow I would have liked to start lower. First time arena on this druid, so anxious to try it out. And here is where I come back to my early statement. These dudes rock! It’s amazing how well they play together and while I throw random heals, cyclones, roots and try to escape from a bazillion dots, these guys launch coordinated attacks with sheeps and blinds at all the right times. You can see they have played a lot of games together. They down locks, priests, shamans, druids and even warriors within a couple of seconds with well timed kicks and counterspells and a random cyclone tossed in from me on the other team’s healing. We play 11 games, go 8-3 (losing to a double hunterteam. o_O) and reach 1835. We win against druidteams with much better geared dudes, but these guys make up for it. I loved playing with them. No (real) whines, no blaming after some mistakes, the way it should be in my opinion. Just healthy, nice arena. I had a blast and get my first points on Maix. Now I know these guys really are looking for a 400 resilience priest, but since they can’t find one up till now, I hope I can enjoy the points some more weeks.

Did I mention the double hunterteam? Now imagine that those 2 hunters and 2 bigass pets are standing on top of the tomb ready to kill anything in sight and Art runs in the arena while me and Naked are stealthed.
Art: sap that rogue, naked!’ while running within range and getting downed pretty fast.
Me: Uhhh…sap that rogue’?
Naked: ‘wassup art’?
Art: ‘Ah sorry guys, my mistake, I thought it were 2 rogues…”

Art, don’t do drugs and arena at the same time man.

-- Zhero (pvp-ing feels good. I like 2.3)

2.3 rulezzzz (when you’re no whine-kiddie)

2007-11-15T11:44:00.000+01:00

Season III:
Season III is postphoned 1 week and now will start november 27th (www.worldofraids.com)

Patch 2.3 Roxxorz…
…at least, that was my impression after last night. I first helped out a friend who still wants to collect 0.5 set for his lock for roleplayreasons. We had to go LBRS and kill orcs there. o_O. But after that:
- I enjoyed the daily PvP-quest collecting in total 750 honor and 11g on both Maix and Zhero for winning 1 AB
- I picked up the new alchemy recipy, ran to the bank to get the 100 Ragveil that I thought were in there, only to remember I vendored them a month-and-a-half ago, because they seemed so useless and having 48 free spaces in your bank is SO MUCH better than having 43 free spaces. AH-prices on a stack are 30g+ atm. I already knew that would happen, but was too lazy to act on it. Still enjoyed the recipy by looking at it.
- One of our tanks called out for heroic ramparts. His group fell apart, while all that was left were the last 2 bosses. Quickly picked up the quest and got 4 badges (2 from quest, 2 from bosses), epic gem, prismatic shard, 25g, 350 rep for Thrallmar/Consortium for 30 mins of work. Flying there was the hardest job.

Do I like this patch? So far I do, I just think I go level my fishing and cooking on Zhero. Never did that, cause my paladin was at 375 cooking, but with all the daily quests flying around even a PvP-er like me has something usefull to do besides BG’s.

Do my fellow locks enjoy the patch? Haha, let me show you their thoughts. What better place to do a little research than the warlockforums. Might you miss that extra motivation to kill yourself? Go to the warlockforum! It is said there are people in this world with REAL problems like starvation etc, but they seem little whining bastards compared to the European (did not bother to check US though the average mental age is normally even lower there) locks who have it REALLY REALLY hard.

I just put a yellow sticky on my monitor not to look at the forums anymore with the idea of getting some real info. It’s a fine place if you are suicidal, have mental issues or are blessed with an IQ below 80 (after all: “Ignorance is peace”), but for all others I must advise you to stay out.

So with this knowledge I went into AB. Killed 5 or 6 pvp-geared warriors one on one with 30-50% life left, killed 5 hunters one on one, ended the BG with a 23-3 score and had 300k damage done, which was 75k more than #2. Nothing out of the ordinary for your average lock. I did shit like that pre 2.3 as well, but maybe I just ran into 1 very strange AB and were locks killed all over the place in all the other AB’s. Could be so, could be so…

So ofcourse I need to do more PvP to get a good picture, but so far I did not notice a big difference compared to pre-2.3.

Maix
I noticed the nice change to Natural Perfection with my druid. Good thing I have 0 resilience, it just means I get critted all over the place and can enjoy it to the fullest :D A quick browse through the druid forum gave me the other side of the spectrum: happy druids for extra manaregen and the cool swiftshift abilities now.
Druids give you that little warm feeling from time to time :D

Conclusion
Besides the extra week for season III, I am enjoying 2.3 and hopefully can go into ZA tonight for the first time to see the new content.

-- Zhero (enjoying 2.3 and life in general)

Patch 2.3 and season III

2007-11-14T13:57:00.000+01:00

Patch 2.3
Everybody is aware that patch 2.3 is installed atm and I bet everyone knows now what the patchnotes are as you will probably have looked them up for your class(es). Here a line that caught my interest:

“The latest patch of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade shows a benefit on today's popular multicore processors like the Intel(r) Core(tm)2 Duo processor family. The enhanced patch has demonstrated higher frame rates by spreading the work across both processor cores”.

Now this is interesting as I am about to receive a new PC (my works give you a new one every 3 years for personal use) and was already worried about the dual core shit. Most games only use 1, so in my case that would mean no upgrade in terms of gaming. I was in doubt already what to do, but this gets my hope up and I will jump on the dual core bandwagon as well now.

Another interesting thing:
“Client spell cast requests are now sent to the server even if your player is already casting another spell. This eliminates the need for /stopcasting in macros to compensate for latency.”

Then as I am an alchemist, there’s this thingy:

“Added a new potion to alchemy trainers: Mad Alchemist's Potion. This new potion requires Alchemy to consume”

The cost are very low, using the herb nobody uses

So basicly a superrejuvepotion for nowhere like the costs. Hooray for me for discovering that one 2 nights ago…
But here is the good part. Alchemists get a nice buff on top of it. It will be a random elixir effect and you will only gain it when such an effect(guardian etc.) is not in effect yet. Nice for in BG’s where I will swallow these like there’s no tomorrow. Here a pic as prove (stolen from somewhere around the net)

Season III (not this week, but next week so save for 1 week more)
Zhero
- has 25k honor
- has 2300 arenapoints
- will purchase the S3-head (next week) and slowly upgrade the honor items
- is sexy as hell
- just got himself epic flying mount, so is broke (very good thinking, doing that right before SII ends, so I have no gold for enchants and stuff. It’s incredible how stupid I am sometimes while being so brilliant. Must be to preserve balance in my head or something like that)
- Herbs actively now as herbing with a slow mount was like having sex with Lindsay Lohan. It sounds good, but never actually happens.
- Will (I hope) to continue to play with Krexxor and Daymare/Zekro in 3v3. Not that we score that high (yet), I just like playing with them.

Maix
- has 10.5k honor
- has 0 arenapoints
- will purchase the S3-bracers (next week) and even more slowly upgrade (though I might go pve for a bit with this one).
- Needs an arenateam as sexy healbovine (2v2 or 3v3. I decided I don’t like 5v5), but has questgear, 1 or 2 blues and 1 epic.

Another small thing
“Removed the casting time from the Drums of Battle, Drums of Restoration, Drums of Speed, and Drums of War.”
Aren’t these things good for raiding? (just a question from a pve-noob)

So that’s about it, let’s download, refresh those addons and check out all new things.

-- Zhero (ready for SIII and hoping to break 1800 somewhere).

Maix is 70 and Ravens roleplay

2007-11-08T13:20:00.001+01:00

Maix
So finally this female druid is 70. Was it worth it? YES SIR! Whenever I see a male cow I giggle and think it was worth it. I specced her resto and are trying to get some honor and blue gear to get things started. I dinged 70 (thanks Ghostt, Szwok and Daymare (amongst others) for helping me out along the way) last week, but RL prevented me from posting because...

...A new house
I made it out of my parent's basement! (well attic it was, but let's keep to the stereotype) and moved to my own place. I bought a small house in Beverwijk, The Netherlands. Moved the stuff last weekend and have been busy getting all kinds of administration done, while putting all stuff in place. It feels good (though my cooking skill is seriously low) and I am looking for a blonde female cooking trainer atm. I upgraded my line to 8Mbit as well, so pron is coming in even faster now.

Hellgate Londen
I downloaded the demo. It's from Bill Roper's team (the big man behind Diablo) and that showed. Though the environment and creatures look different, the slaying and items you could get (5% chanche to proc blablabla-lightning) reminded me very much of Diablo. I finished all the quests you could do and was a bit undecided in the end. It looks fine, but I wanted to play some more to get a good feeling. (or maybe I could, but I just did not know). Well, download the demo. It at least gives a good impression of the graphics you can expect.

Roleplay
We had a wedding in the guild!

The "treasure" we call night elves breasts. A whine about dwarfs.

Artanias made it to ROTM (Retard of the Month). This is what we call 'adding insult to injury'

Whatever the disfunction, Ravens is your home.

-- Zhero (getting some honor in preparation of S3)

Zhero & Maix

2007-10-30T15:18:00.000+01:00

Maix
Maix is lvl 69,93. Yes, so accurate is it! Why not 70? Don’t worry, by the time you read this, she will be, but this is the (small story). Mondaynight = pokernight at a friends house, so normally i do not play on mondays. I was home rather early (23:00), but had to get up at 06:45 (and this is nightmare for me) so did not want to play too long. I had 7 bubbles to go till 70 and was questing in Netherstorm. That really is the area where experience is top notch. I did some quests from 23:00 on, but then my arena partners were on as well. An heroic instance was cancelled and Krexxor (shaman), Zekro/Acacia/Daymare (rogue) and myself (lock) were ready to do 10 games. We went 6-5 in the end losing 3 in a row to the same warrior/paladin/shaman, losing 1 to a discing Zekro and 1 to Abdi and Lovedeath (they simply outplayed us). I have to add I really like playing with those 2 and we are closing in on 1800 so the points are not that bad either.
After this session, i continued grinding quests and Sad helped me out with some groupquests. It was 02:20 when i noticed i had a little more than 1 bar to go, but it really was too late. I regretted it bigtime this morning. Tonight Maix will ding 70 and then another question arises.

What to do?

I had planned to go full pvp with Zhero and Maix (Zhero still being my main, but besides arena nothing to gain for him), but wonder if I should not PvE some with Maix. Can this be combined? I would love to have a pvp-spec which still is good enough to heal with. Zhero does ‘ok’ damage in PvE, but far from optimal with 8 resilience/12 stamina gems all over the place and a full PvP spec. I wonder if not the same will happen with Maix, who will be an average healer in PvE with all the PvP-goodies.
I still plan on pvp-ing with her, but i’ll mix it up with instancing (if possible). For now she is in questgear, so whatever upgrades is welcome, whether it be PvE or PvP. It will take time anyway, so i just postphone this problem.

Zhero
Szwok told me yesterday that I should not count on him coming back. That means my lock is 2v2 teamless, which is no big thing cause we have a 3v3 running, but i like the 2v2 a lot (except for the long waitingtimes). Hopefully Krexxor wants to team up and else I think i go look for a healingdruid or maybe a shadowpriest.

2.3 patch
Everyone seems to be waiting for 2.3. They said the new arenaseason will start when 2.3 goes live (or close to that date) and we will get 2 weeks prior notice. With only a few weeks to go for 2.3 as it looks now, I will go grind some BG’s and just save the points. Now I have 2 chars, so I can switch whenever I feel like it. Ofcourse I still have a 70 paladin (transmutebot) and a 70 rogue (AH-whore), but those are just fillers in my charscreen atm. With all classes, except warlocks, receiving buffs, I might as well level another char to 70. I still have a mage and a hunter on 60+ (and another druid, but he is male so that is a no go). To complete my idiotic actions, I created a warrior (female orc), a shaman (female tauren) and a priest (female troll) as these are the only classes that i do not have atm. It is said experience for questing after level 20 is increased and the experience needed to gain a level decreased by 25%. Adding those 2, I come to the conclusion that levelling might go close to twice as fast with the 2.3 patch. I plan on rested-playing them once in a while and see if i can get them a little higher. Though it is low on my prioritylist, i will get them close to 20 in the coming weeks to find out if 2.3 makes it indeed so much easier.

In the end the advantage of having 9 lvl 70 chars is, that it is easy to choose from whenever you want to switch mains :D

RL
I am moving to my own house (again :D) in 2 days. No internet for the coming weekend it seems, they come mondaymorning and the next week I have the week off to fix administration-stuff and buying all kinds of things i need for in my new house (like a plasma-tv, nintendo wii, senseo coffeemachine etc.: the primairy things you need in life), but don’t have already as well as game a lot. Looking forward to it A LOT (understatement) as I need a break from the job as well. It bores me too much atm.

Ravens
Still fun, still a lot of erectiontalk, still problems with raiding, still cosy, still awesome, still Eleutherios talking silly stuff, still Lima fucking with little boy’s minds, still Hood being Hood, still Artanias being a good target for telling ‘frostmages are lollancers’ and getting him upset, still Jonez being awesome with his hunter, still Daymare being up there or down there, still Muda for president, still Aloran on his shammy (awesome you hang in there), still Kipucka changing specs every week. Well, I think you see where I am heading.

Ravens are awesome.

-- Zhero (nothing to add this time)

PS: I talked to Nimra. He said he would be back with 2.3. Ofcourse you never know with this dude, but let’s see if I can get him crazy enough to go 2v2 with my druid then.

Hallow's End and Ravens Raiding

2007-10-18T13:58:00.001+02:00

Maix
It's Hallow's End in Azeroth which means we can have fun again with masks. I am not much of a roleplayer, but when I saw my female cow like this, i had to smile anyway.
Maix is 64 atm. Yesterdayevening we were doing Karazhan and I saw Muda in his PvPhealing-gear. Drool... My .... female .... cow ..... needs ..... that ..... badly!! And I probably look better in it than him as well (ok, a bit of a roleplayer then).

More merciless
For my lock I got the merciless gladiator offhand, which puts my resilience close to 400 with 1000 damage and 11.7k HP unbuffed. I still wear Oblivion Hood and netherwing wand as the only blues. But I might save the points as well for S3. We'll just see how hard it is not to spend them when I have enough for an item.

Friends quitting
The people I used to play with the most seem to have quit the game. Nimp disappeared as only he can. No sign of life to be seen. Szwok only logs on for arena. Sorcia went back to DAOC. That leaves me without my standard pattern. But as I tend to look on the bright side of situations, it gives me more time to raid a little and my lock will be IN YOUR FACE with daymare/zekro/acacia and his RL friend. A new 3v3 team we are planning and which I am looking forward to. I only briefly talked it over with daymare, so let's not hope i talk too much here.

Ravens raiding
Raiding with Ravens is tough. It takes dedication and total selfcontrol to survive our raiding. Not all people are suited for that. Our requirements are pretty stiff actually. Failing them results in serious action from officers. Veritha/Eleutherios explains a disciplinary action to the other guildies:

-- Zhero (2 weeks till movingday!)

Maix is 60 & "TASTE THE PAIN"

2007-10-11T13:16:00.001+02:00

Small update, because yesterday I finally hit 60. Ofcourse the last 2 levels go quick in Outlands, but it is always a good feeling. I walked to Shattrah, portalled to Thunder Bluff, bought my spells and an epic Kodo.

One thing I wonder though. I think I did it very quick (mucho kudos to Szwok who did a lot of powerlevelling. Tnx dude, I bet SM and BRD are 2 instances which are not going to see you in a while). But here is the strange thing. I dinged 60 and took the screenshot a few seconds after. It still claims I've been on this level for 6 minutes and 12 seconds. Anyone got an explanation for this?

I am still feral, picked up some pieces in Ramparts and plan on doing a lot of quests to get exp.

Hood was online yesterday, so dirty talk all over when I said female cows are the new thing.

Ofcourse he went even further, give him a finger, he'll take your hand and goes beyond.
but what got me all laughing behind my pc was Eleutherios/Veritha. He came online at 23:30 after being in a nightmare for 4 hours.

-- Zhero (still laughing about Veritha)

Random shizzleshuzzle

2007-10-10T14:57:00.000+02:00

Random info:
- Maix = 59,4
- Palinda left the guild in search of a better raiding guild.
- Sorcia stopped playing wow and now plays DAOC again
- Nimra is nowhere to be seen. It is rumored he quit as well.

Now for something more funny: I found these guildnames in the BG's:

Ravens guild chat. It is (why am i repeating myself?) about penises and boobs.

Here is Artanias, telling us he knows nothing about boobs. o_O.

Hood being smart

Being honest is what it is in Ravens:

and here Milker being honest again on his alt

Daymare/Zekro telling us how swedish girls are

And quote of the week from Senbonzakura

PvP is not for weak people.
This is what i got when we lost in arena.
Makes you wonder what a 'fudkin noob' is. I can only imagine it is something real, real bad. A quick Google gave me a man who's last name was Fadkin and who did a backgroundcheck on his name. He believed Fudkin was also changed to Fadkin over a couple of centuries. This Fadkin guy is probably a very very noob WoW-player and therefor being called a fudkin noob is a reference to you being as bad as this Fadkin guy. So ofcourse I armoried (not as well knows as googled, but i think you know what i mean) fudkin and fadkin. Fadkin does not exist, but fudkin gives me 3 players, lvl 31, 31 and 41 AND ALL GNOME. So what I really believe is that he told me that I am a low-level-gnome noob, which makes sense in the end.

But this was the hardest of all: My daughter's name is Serra. It's an uncommon name in Holland. But Blizzard made me kill my own flesh and blood 'For The Horde'. I should get extra points for being dedicated.

-- Zhero (is looking at boobs more since he is in Ravens)

Maix Reaches Outlands

2007-10-09T13:32:00.000+02:00

I hit lvl 58 yesterday-evening (4days, 22 hours) and although I wanted to update with pix (put them on my mp3-player and forgot to take it with me today), I still wanted to let you know. I had 0,75 level to go and was doing quests in Winterspring and Western/Eastern Plaguelands to finish the last 3/4 of a bar. I came home after a pokernight and logged in only to be sorry this morning when I had to get up, because levelling till 02:30 is not good when you have to go to work the next morning. But never mind that. I can enter outlands, so I'll respec healing and will ramparts/furnace myself to the next levels!

I checked the first instances and the questrewards. It seems it's feral-gear all over and while I probably will be feral for questing and levelling later on, the plan still stands to be healing at 70.

So if you happen to run into Maix, be sure to roleplay some treehugging!

-- Zhero (has the feeling to take the day off for gaming. I bet you think the same)

Ho, ho, ho. Marry Christmas!

2007-10-04T11:53:00.000+02:00

It really felt like a presence yesterday when my final points were added to my arenatotal. Happy lock here!

So, next is the offhand, which should take me 2 weeks as I had not much points left.

By the way:
- I heard Vinnie (our altwhore GM) is rerolling to paladin (unconfirmed)
- I heard my druid is lvl 54,5 now (fact)
- I heard patch 2.3 seems to rock hard! (fact)
- I heard doing an instance with Eleutherios is better than sex (confirmed by some)

-- Zhero (happily levelling his druid, while randomly playing his lock)

Statuscheck on Zhero

2007-09-28T14:24:00.000+02:00

So where are we after all these weeks.

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Skullcrusher&n=Zhero

Warlock still feels good. The point is that I am done now. I can’t PvP for more items as I have them all (except for the belt which I find a too low upgrade) so basicly it is playing some arena to get some points and that is it. I could bank honorpoints for season III, but I notice it is hard to PvP for ‘something in the future’. Nevertheless I do some BG’s every now and then when we have a small team (it is just so much more fun playing with 3-4 people than doing BG’s alone) we play for some hours while having fun on Teamspeak. There are ofcourse still a lot of PvE things I could do, like farming for an epic mount (which you don’t need when you pvp), or farming for reputation items (which is useless because 99% of the pvp-items is better), but like I say: it is hard to ‘work’ for something which you do not need.

Coming Wednesday I have enough points to get the Spellblade . I choose to get the MH first instead of my 4th armor item (and the bonus), because the requierement for rating for the weapons in next season. It will give me 100 damage (and some resilience) exta, which will be very usefull. After the MH, I will get the offhand (major upgrade) and wand and then continue with the armor. Still to get
- MH: getting this coming Wednesday (got the 40 spellpower ready)
- Offhand 2 weeks
- Wand 1 week
- Head 3 weeks
- Legs (got battlecast pants, so not sure if I will spend the points)
So basicly in 6 weeks, I am totally done for the season and ready for season III. I think I did that rather quick for a char that is not even lvl 70 that long.

Arena is still not going well (well enough for points, but it seems hard to get a steady team going).
2v2:
Hardcore Potential.
Nimpie made this team for his priest. His (fully) blue geared priest with 0 resilience wants some points as well, so we play our 10 games during the week. Sorcia joined with his priest as well, because we do not always get the 3v3 or 5v5 going. We’re at 1775 now with positive sessions each week. We’re facing teams now where the 0 resilience is becoming a problem, but sometimes we can outsmart them.

3v3
Cruel Bunnies.
We had something good going here with Szwok on his mage/warrior and Dier healing on her paladin. Dier got hacked 3 times in a row and is inactive because of this for the last weeks losing all her gear in the process. Me and Szwok have been messing around with some other teams, but Szwok’s motivation went down a couple of hunderd percent because of the constant attacks on Dier’s account (totally understandable).
We’re still on 1724 coming from 1800 or so, but I hope this will continue to come.

5v5
After a good start we got some hard weeks where not everyone was available and with the hacks on Dier’s account gave us some hard last weeks as well. 1697 it is after Sorcia joined this week to complete the games.

All in all it seems hard to get steady teams going for different reasons. I still love to do it, but getting more than the obliged 10 games/week is not happening for several weeks in a row (and several reasons).

I considered getting a 2nd character for pvp and eventually decided to do it. Now I already have a rogue (which I play in arena every now and then) and a paladin (same) on 70. I really don’t like the paladin in arena. Obviously I suck hard with the class, but you are very cc-able and 1 well timed counterspell gives you 10 seconds of nothing. Add to that the fact all your heals have casting time (not counthing holy shock) and there will be a time you just HAVE to cast one. All in all I don’t feel like bringing enough to the team. (but I suck hard with it, I see other paladins do it, I just can’t do it myself).
The rogue is nice, but I want a healclass, not another dps. Priest is just not my thing, so either shaman or druid. Now I always loved the druidclass, just back then with my old druid (Maro lvl 61) I had T1 healing gear and had really good feral gear, but could not make a difference in feral. Things have obviously changed since then and seeing druids in arena, I felt that was the class I needed to play as my 2nd class to pvp with. (no reroll, lock is still #1. Just to be clear about it).

So I started a new druid (since Maro is a male druid and I just can’t justify it to myself watching male cows. I want those boobs to bounce!), so I made Maix, the female cow. Maix is 49,5 atm and I am really pushing it, because I want to be in outlands asap since levelling the old content is boring as hell. A big tnx here for Szwok and Nimra who helped me a lot with some powerlevelsessions (as did Veritha btw, his paladin rox).

So those will be my 2 active chars. Zhero and Maix. And since Maix will be a full healer, I might even run some PvE stuff for gear :D

I even am browsing the net again for good info on druid and found this one.
www.resto4life.com or http://resto4life.blogspot.com (very enjoyable reading if you ask me)

-- Zhero (will be out of his parents basement in 5 weeks. o_O)

Nerf me? L2P!

2007-09-24T16:59:00.000+02:00

So I am browsing the forums at work and already regret it when I come to the PvP-section of the forum. All on the front page:

While there is a clear sticky from Blizz that they do not tolerate nerf posts, these just stand there and get more entries every minute. Nerf posts in disguise I call them.

Being FOTM isn’t always nice. Ofcourse having a class (or I rather should say spec) that is better by default has it’s moments, but being called OP all the time or if you win a duel, you did not win, but “your class and spec” did, gets old fast as well. When do people learn that there will always be 1 class which performs better on average than all others? We’ve started with rogues as the OP class, then it were shamans, then it were shadowpriests, then it were warriors etc. etc. Now it is warlock (or 1 spec I should say: the infamous 27/34/0 spec which gives high damage and high survivability).

And because complaining is easier than finding solutions, we keep bashing those locks till the nerfbat hits them. The only reason I would like that is because a bazillion people are rolling and levelling warlocks atm because they are OP. They would slowly disappear and I would be one of the few warlocks around again. Like old times. Like the times when every class could just stop by, demount, kill us and mount again with 75% HP. The times when I actually called a friend to tell him I killed someone fair and square! The times Mute (WorldOfRoguecraft episode III) was our hero and kept our hopes up. But those times are gone, and what’s left are haters on the forums and more and more locks everyday.

Well I got one message for all you haters: L2P NOOBS! (haha, that felt good)

-- Zhero (Owning people never gets old. Haha I’ll enjoy it while it lasts:D)

My movies

2007-09-13T15:17:00.000+02:00

I cleaned up my PC a few weeks ago and threw away a lot of warcraftmovies to free some space. When I looked again yesterday I noticed the ones that I saved. I’ve seen all of them multiple times and share with you the ones I have still on my PC (some are real old).

Vurtne
Vurtne III: http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=30148
Vurtne I: http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=21974
I still have Vurtne II, IV and V as well, but these 2 are my favourites. V is the only one from TBC, the rest is pre-TBC. I am not sure how I got onto him. I was on my lock already when I watched him the first time, but every time I watch him, I question that choice and wonder if I should level my mage any further. This movies are about immense skill, it is fast paced and has duels and shows some unbelievable stuff which no other magemovie had. I think I watched Vurtne III 25+ times. (I think I watched Vurtne I 60-70 times btw). I am/was a Vurtne fanboi.

Daimyo
Then this one is still on my PC. It was posted may-2005!!!! On warcraftmovies.com and survived all my cleanups.
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=1933
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1971809363889588695
Check the google-video to hear the song. THIS MUST BE VIEWED WITH SOUND to understand why there’s 300 hours of editing in this movie. Yep, you read it right: 300. It was one of the first movies I had and it was so much better than all the others back then. It is more a music-videoclip and was released when dal-rend was the ownage and WSG was first introduced. Old times, but oh so a pleasure (or not, you’ll see what I mean) to watch/listen.

Otherguy
The first one to make impressive clips! He is the creator of the Sorrow Hill series which was the first movie that showed what a mage really could do. After SH4 (or 5 not sure anymore) it was rumoured he was killed in a carcrash, which he with SH6 denied. Mageforums went berserk. He was back! I used to call Szwok (or he would call me) whenever a new SH was posted.
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=841
This is Sorrow Hill III. The first clip I watched over a 100 times I guess, cause back then it was absurd. Nowadays there would be more people who could do that, but back then this guy was lightyears ahead and he has kept me on my mage for a very very long time. Each movie inspired me to continue with it. He has made up till SH9 and there are better (better vids at least) mages now, but these are here for old times sake. Add to that, that I like his music a lot and you know why all 9 vids are still in my directory.

Unknown
Don’t know what this is? Want to see true art? Gogogo download. He made 3 movies, made a trailor of the 4th, but that one never came. I only have 1 and II on my PC, but I will sure add the 3th as well.
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=3660
This is the 1st movie. We meet the then level 54? (not sure) mage who was owning up lvl 60’s. But his movies are not really about the pvp (arcane power/pompyro specced), though he is very very skilled. This is editing beyond. This is scary shit actually. Hidden messages all over the place. This is ‘The Ring” in WOW. Don’t watch in the dark. Well, actually do. Turn of all your lights, put your headphone on, turn up that volume and see how music + images can get to you. Whether you like it or not, an experience it will be. (I don’t want to give to much away)

World of Roguecraft
It is THE most downloaded pvp-movie on warcraftmovies. And sure you’re in for a treat. This is from back in the days when rogues could kill anyone and warlocks were cannonfodder for each and every class. If you have never seen this, you MUST DOWNLOAD it. Why? Because this movie is funny, superwell done and has great, great stuff in it. Mute is a lvl 60 warlock who is sick of being owned by rogues who tell him to L2P. He levels a rogue to 60 to prove it is an overpowered class that any retard can play and beat people with for the sole purpose of making a movie of it. Did he succeed? Most downloaded for a reason.
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=6140
It is a ton better than whatever random comedy on tv nowadays. Believe me. Since when am I wrong? After episode III, he made episode II and episode I. If you really want to go into it, you can download them all and have fun for 1,5 hours.

Chromed
I already wrote about this movie in one of my last entries. He made the I can only beat noobs serie.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3001054377073600001
I like his style and how well the music matches the video. Funny roguemovie. Too bad there does not seem to be a downloadable version (I have it though, so if you really want it in good quality, just tell me)

Never
If you play a druid and never saw this one, shame on you. Awesome editing, really awesome. Awesome fights from druids back when feral and balance were trees which were obsolete (patch 1.5/1.6). You either was resto or a guildless druid. These guys were topgeared back then and did the unthinkable. They killed other players. Druids killing other players? Now druids are used to watching Azgaz-owning-vids (which are nice as well), but this is something special.
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=9569
These guys know editing. I like the fight in the beginning with the rogue the best as it’s on awesome SystemOfADown music and so so fitting. Ah, I should shut up and you should watch.

Grim
He is #2 on the most downloaded movies-list and for a good reason. Even if you don’t like rogues, you will like this. He always claimed this movie was not for showing off skill (which he obviously has), but for entertainment. And goddamn entertaining it is. This is the 2nd from his series, which I like best. Editing, beating 2 warriors with sulfuras at once, 2 shotting people. It’s all in here. Very very very entertaining to say the least.
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=27354
Rumours are that he is working on Grim III. He seems to be still playing on Al Akir (eu).

Most are rogue- and magemovies. That has to do with 2 classes which can do very interesting things in PvP. Dotting up people is not really fun to watch. This is the list which is on my PC. I am wellaware of the fact that taste differs and that there are lots of movies out there which are as good (or even better) than these, but this is my list.

-- Zhero (wishes he had some editing skills)

Duelling is no fun

2007-09-05T10:53:00.000+02:00

[MASSIVE WHINE]
What is it with people? Why is it hard to say ‘gg’ when you lost a duel. It does not seem hard to me, but when I was duelling a little yesterdayevening (I am not much of a dueller, though I have a lock so people die automaticly) I noticed it again. Excuses, whine or even the remark that you suck after you beat people. Telling someone that he played well, seems impossible.

Even on lower levels this happens. Now that I have all BG-items with Zhero, I don’t HAVE to BG anymore so I was flying around Terrokar/Skettis (I do the shatari skyguard quests every now and then) looking for a gank. Somehow no alliance showed up apart from a lonely 63 hunter (I killed him anyway. Honor=honor), so I logged onto my 33 female druid to get some quests done. While I am waiting at the zeppelin, this 37 priest wants to duel me. I accept and off we go. While he is throwing shadow word:pain and mindblasting me, I am doing a few attacks in catform and when on 60% health I shift and heal myself full. Now I am not sure at what level priests can dispel (ah fuck it: let’s look it up…..done: lvl 18 it is) but all my HOT’s stayed up as well as my MOTW. He goes oom after some time and I finish him up. Awaiting the ‘well played’ cause I had the idea I did it all well, he spoke some other words.

“I only played with you a little”

Now what is that supposed to mean? You mean you were not duelling seriously? And did you make that up before or after you started the duel, before or after you saw that you were going to lose? Pfff, how hard can it be to just say ‘gg’? Being the mean bastard that I am I responded with:

“That is ok, I had a phonecall anyway and had to play with one hand”

I guess it is human nature just to search for explanations as why we lost. Just stand outside Orgrimmar (I bet Ironforge is the same) and watch a little. You’ll find the following sentences:
- “You resisted my counterspell”
- “I had 5 seconds lag”
- “Without that pet, you are so dead”
- “Duh, with your gear and still I got you on 30%. Owned!”
- “Roflcoil and fear, pfff try to win with skill”
- “With that noobspec, everyone can win”

I hate that last one the most. I am 27/34 spec which happens to be the easiest spec for 1v1 (as well as fitting in my arenateam, that’s why I have it) and full frost mages accuse me of having the easymodespec. So what do you mean? Casting frostnovas and icelances requires more skill? You’re the better player, cause I use an overpowered class and an overpowered spec. Why duel me in the first place then? The answer is simple. They want to duel you, cause they have nothing to lose. If they win, it shows how awesome they are. If they lose, it means nothing, cause they are meant to lose. They will say something because it must show for everyone (and especially themselves) that your win was meaningless.

Szwok told me he duelled on his rogue some time and was beating up a warrior time after time. That guy started with “you can’t use vanish” and after “you can’t use poisons”, “you can’t use blind” , “you can’t restealth” and “you can’t use stunlock” was left with daggering him from the front while taking overpowers and mortal strikes.

Try and say ‘gg, well played”. It’s not hard, really. Special mention of Aurinko here. I was duelling this retribution paladin on my rogue and lost. Awaiting the ‘noobrogue’-remark he came with: ‘thanks for duelling, well played’. He made me walk away with my head up and my back straight. Thanks for that! A true paladin.
[/MASSIVE WHINE]

-- Zhero (at work and bored. stuff to do, but no lust to do it)

I Am Good Looking

2007-08-30T11:37:00.001+02:00

I know you wish you were me. There are even more reasons now as I finally got my last fashionupgrade! I finally look like unbeatable now. When I first laid eyes on this armor, it was always something I wanted. Now I have it. Alliance start running! Horde start admiring!

Mega-pix (Last time, I forgot my pix, so I just post them now)
Coming weekend is AV-weekend (one of the or maybe the best bg for farming honor as long as you kill all those lieutenants). Last AV-weekend I was there, I witnessed something unique in the series of enter-av-kill-lieutenants-and-loose. They summoned LOKHOLAR. Yiehaaaa. Alliance was for unknown reasons not walking to our easy to take base and were pushed back as if we all went 18 months back in time. Lots of cheers and a few questions from people who’d never been to 20 hour+ epic battles there. All of a sudden we all went back in the role we knew so good. Protecting LOK, and let him win the game for us. In terms of honor a bad game, in terms of fun one of the better games. I was glad I was there.

Uh…huh?
You be the judge, but it sounded all too fishy and reminded me of the commando’s you can give to have your gold be shown in a different factor. Not sure if that was the one he meant though.

No-clUeAE

Guildchat
So I am making some elixirs in orgrimmar when I catch one of our guildies harrassing Zire! Yes, ofcourse it is Veri/Eleu!

I am not the only one thinking warlocks are the shIt.

Emo-art
Uh? wtf. Muda dude, you can get better man!
more emo-art about arena-queue’s.

And new guildmembers get a welcome by Eleutherios

-- Zhero (cursing work and youtubewatching Derren Brown)

Insert Random Title

2007-08-27T14:46:00.000+02:00

It’s been 2 weeks. 1 Week due to the Lowlands festival (it is a big festival in Holland, I’ll throw some impressions down here) and 1 week because I am lazy as we all know. And now I forgot my pix from my home comp, so no pix today. But first things first;

Our GM is famous!
The biggest altwhore in the history of this game is our GM. His RL name is Vinnie and I’ve known him IRL for several years now. This guys rolls, rerolls, rererolls and rerererolls every month, because he can’t make up his mind. The result is a lot of chars in semi-decent gear between 60 and 70 that all have been his main for as long as 1 day to several months and yesterday I saw him on his new main: a lvl 12 paladin named Palavin (plz gank him and send me the screenies). Besides that he is now famous in Holland for appearing on a website (and yes, this is the real Vinnie, I am not joking). It’s the site of a big supermarketconcern in Holland and the company he works for had to make the website for it and they might have run out of budget, but then again I think he is the perfect man for the job.

www.superdeboerbingo.nl

It is him…ZOMG

Hahahaha, I love it tbh.

Lowlands 2007
This is a festival in Holland where booze, drugs (we allow 5 grams a person) and music go side by side for 3 days. We arrived there Thursday and in an orgy of beer, bacardi-coke, pills (taking all of them at once is not good), good-looking women and awesome music, we managed to survive till mondaymorning. I don’t know how, but we did. Small recap of the bands I saw:

Friday
The Rakes: Listened to 3-4 songs and they dissapointed me so I left.
Editors: Awesome voice, they lack podium skills however. Let’s hope that will grow, because this band rocks. English emo-rock.
Kasabian: can’t remember much, except that we were drinking.
The Killers: wanted to see it, but due to being drunk, I missed it I believe.

Saturday:
Games in Concert: Did not see it, but people told me it was an orchestra playing videogamesmusic. I just write it down here so you guys remember it.
The Rifles: this is my favourite band atm. I like their music a lot and so I liked their performance. More podiumskills needed though.
Moke: These guys are from Amsterdam and are the new thing. Gogo download and surprise yourself.
Saybia: My friends wanted to see this one. I thought it was ‘ok’.
Jimmy Eat World: GODDAMN F*CK. I now realize I missed this one now I see the schedule again. I know I planned on seeing them. I should drink less.
Kaiser Chiefs: Not sure if I saw them. Last act of the day was mostly when I was f*cked up the most. I’ll check with my friends if I saw this one and what I thought of it.

Sunday:
Alpha Blondy: Was good enough for an opener. Rastaman!
Lacuna Coil: I told my friends I wanted to see this one, because she looks SO AMAZING that the music does not matter anymore. I ended up missing this.
Nine Inch Nails: I loved it. I do not know their songs that well, but when “The Hand that Feeds” was played, the crowd went berserk.
[intermezzo]
I don’t know how it is with you guys, but I download a lot of warcraftmovies and get amazed more than once by the music which I end up downloading and playing in my car for several weeks in a row until I find some new music I like. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3001054377073600001 is one of my favourite roguemovies of all times (yeah, Grim is super as well, blablabla, just check this one out ok?) and there the “The Hand that Feeds” is so amazingly good with the images you get. I love stuff like this. Just go to 5:36 minutes. The song starts there. Or just watch it all if your job is real boring.
[/intermezzo]
Motorhead: Impressive live performance even though I am not really into their music
Tool: OK, I wrote all this crap down just for this one. It was the closing act and what an act it was. Amazing sounds with amazing images. It had me (and some others I could tell from their bodylanguage) just caught in a spell. It all was right. I was tired, drunk and exhausted from 3 days of drinking and walking but I felt no pain. This was the cure. This performance was better than all others due to the amazing videoshow which added to the great music as they were twins. It was a perfect fit and made a real impression on me.
The Illusionist: After Tool I sat down this outside movie theater and watched this movie. I’d already seen it, but Edward Norton is always worth watching. Or maybe I was just happy I could sit.

Furthermore I remember I lack a lot of spell penetration as all women resisted my seduction.

Arena
Let me give you an update on my gear/rankings etc.
I have all the battleground items now (except for the belt, I use unyielding girdle and Talisman of the Horde http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24551 ). I have 10k, so the talisman will be there somewhere next week. I think the talisman I better for locks than damagetrinkets.
I got merciless gladiator gloves and shoulders and will have the robe this wednesday putting my resilience over 300 and finally getting somewhere.

2v2
I started playing this with Nimra’s fresh lvl 70 priest to get him some weekly points. We played for 2 weeks now scoring 8-2 and 6-4 and a 1600- rating.

3v3
After our amazing start (some articles down) it went down from there. The priest specced holy/disc and we started to lose and lose some more to the point we got fed up with it. We lost to all kinds of setups without really knowing the reason. This will come, it’s on 16xx, but we have not played last week. We should revisit a little here (again). It is strange how it can go.

5v5
After megaproblems with our team and trying to keep it steady, we ended up 3 weeks in a row playing on Tuesday to get the points and inviting whoever we could get to play the 10 damn games. We mostly would start 0-5 and then come back to 5-5 or 4-6 which brought us on 1620 rating or so. We got Sankaman (fresh 70 warrior who got his thunder in 2 days) now and with mage/warrior/lock/paladin/shammy we started playing games in the weekend and made a nice score that put us on 1720 with more potential as I see it. The warrior still got lots to gain as do I.

Maix
Ok, tell me if this is strange. I have a 61 male druid. When I was levelling that one (and it was 35 or so) I told my friends I’d rather have a female cow. I just hate it how big those males are. They told me I should do it immediately else I would never do that again the further I came. And indeed I never did. I did Molten Core, got full T1 healing gear and did my share of healing. I always liked the druid, just not my male druid. So now I am levelling a female druid in between (lvl 30 now) with the intention of PvP-ing with it. They all say I am crazy, cause I have a 61 druid blablabla. But I just like the female tauren that much more.
No I am not rerolling or something, just when I have my trinket, I did all the bg-honor stuff I had to do on my lock (and I don’t feel like saving up points), so this gives me something to do in between. I plan on PvP-healing, but let’s see how it goes.

-- Zhero (will look l33t this Wednesday!)

Demotivators!

2007-08-14T15:47:00.000+02:00

Now this is where I got the subtitle above my blog from (I notice now I did not quote it right). You know all those annoying sayings that are on the walls inside large companies. The real pretentious ones. I really dislike them. And with me a company who makes those beautifull pictures as well, but just puts some other sayings beneath it. I find thruth in all of them, but then I am not a dreamer but more of a realistic dude, who tends to see things as they are without the curtain of deception directors like to put up when they are presenting the annual figures.

This is the site: http://www.despair.com/viewall.html

And here some examples I like best:

I so agree with those pics it’s not even funny. I actually consider ordering some of these for in my new house (ok, i am still looking for it). I might even order some of them for in my room at work (got my own room, a manager's faith...) so people know what they are in for when they enter.

Ofcourse they have followers and I found this one on the net:

I deteste emo, I find it emotional blackmail and never ever want to go with it. It’s people who cry and hide and blame others for their problems and don’t want to come out to face a problem and solve it even when you help them. F*ck them and may they diaf and make this world a little bit better.

-- Zhero (almost went emo here)

Zhero is here to stay

2007-08-01T17:29:00.000+02:00

I’m back! Zhero is in dah house! Back where he belongs. ZOMG.

It’s true, after wasting time levelling a paladin to 70, levelling a rogue (still fun) to 70, I am back on my warlock and can’t even take my own advise of sticking to 1 character. I levelled it to 69, Nimpie levelled the last level for me while I was drowning in Roskilde and we were off to arena with double lock actions. But more about arena further down the line, first check me and my biatches!

Haha! Roleplay ftw and no I am not going into detail what we did there at the throne in BRD, but it was goooooood :D

Why back on the lock?
It is strange, but this is what happened. While I was doing bg’s and arena’s with my 70’s, you log an alt here and there to take down some rested exp. Mostly I log it in, walk out of the inn, check my questlog, see that the first quest is far away, regret logging it in and run back to the inn and logout. This happens once or twice a week (remind you I have a 61 druid, 61 mage, 61 hunter, 62 lock at that time). I did this with Zhero as well. I just didn’t feel like playing it. But one day, I click Zhero and start to do quests. It felt good, it all felt fluent and there we go again! I already know it...

...a reroll is coming up.

“Hey dude, back on your lock again” (in guildchat)
--- “No, just grinding some rested exp”

A lie, I already know it, but are afraid to admit it. I am a Vinnie, an altwhore, who keeps changing his mind. Ah whatever!

So, I speedlevelled it to 69, Nimpie did the last level and put it back with starting clothes in the place where you start as a lvl 1 (deathknell). That was funny and tnx Nimp. Had me lol-ling behind my pc. So I started in quest greens and blues and grinded my way up to 3 verteran-pvp-epix in bg’s and had unyielding girdle and battlecastpants crafted and enchanted/gemmed it with the most expensive stuff. I feel when you reach your end-item for that spot, it should be enchanted/gemmed with the best enchants/gems. That ofcourse costed me all my gold and I had to lend gold from Nimpie and Szwok. They helped me out a lot with it and donated some as well (all for the team!). Tnx dudes! I grinded a lot of quests to do some paybacks. That’s the problem with new 70’s. Gearing up is expensive.

I am back owning up the BG’s with Dier, Szwok and Nimra as well (shameless ownage pix inc.). Warlocks rule!

In the mean time Sorcia (a RL friend of me, Dier and Szwok who migrated to Emeriss with Fusion long ago) started levelling his priest as well and yesterday we started a new 3v3 team (1 day after he hit 70) as lock, mage, shadowpriest to get him some points. We made an impressive (at least I find it impressive and am very happy with the result) 21-1 run which left us at 1800 (Midgard is a term from DAOC which they played together for a long time).

Our 5v5 suffered a lot. We tried some different setups with 2 shadowpriests from outside the guild. Both good players with very good gear and the games we did went alright, but the first moved to Thailand and stopped his char (without telling us) and the other migrated to another server (without telling us), so we have our problems getting all 5 online and ready to play, so we basicly try to get 10 games in a week. We made 5-5 last week and stayed round 1730 which still gives a lot of points.

I found this one in my pics-folder as well. Some warrior who was the last one standing against our last man standing Nimra. Haha, he wasn’t too happy. Stormscale elitists gets owned. Eat that!

Ravens
Happening a lot here. A lot of people left for various reasons. Some wanted to play in a friend’s guild, most left over too slow progress and easy epix in another guild and some left over misunderstandings and emo-talk (and our GM left for building up a RL as well as Uglyone. I do miss you, Dieter & Mike). A lot of people gone, but the guys downed Maulgar (great great job) and made another progress. Lovely! We closed recruitment as well (some exceptions on needed classes or old players coming back) to try and get a more Ravens-feeling instead of a guild you can hop in and out when you’re moody or get free epix elsewhere. Hopefully we can get the guild smaller and with more dedicated people for both PvE and PvP. Ravens are forever! Remember that.

The guildchat is what it always is. About penises and their size in erection. But first let me show you this. Puffie is one of the characters in our guild with a mystical status. Some have seen him talk, others not once in 1,5 years. Here proof that he CAN talk. It is dutch chitchat, so don’t bother asking for a translate.

Some guildies teasing our own ‘very hawt’ Hedrich.

People getting blackmailed to join an instance

Hood telling us how it is (about erections)

Artanias come online…

and quote of the week is from Veritha

-- Zhero (happily grinding BG’s for more epix)

Mudkilde, the story

2007-07-13T11:42:00.000+02:00

I was stuck in traffic on my way to the airport.
Then I was stuck at the airport.
Then I got stuck in the traffic on our way here.
BUT YOU, YOU ARE STUCK IN THE MUD.
YOU ARE THE TRUE HEROES HERE!
-- Anders Fridén, lead singer of In Flames

And with those sentences and an awesome performance he opened our Roskildefestival. Three warlocks from Holland going there for the first time, but I get ahead of myself. Let's go back a few days.

Tuesday, 03-07
I get up at 10:30 hours. Tonight we drive off to Roskilde. Sad, Smutty and myself (Zhero) will jump in the car and enjoy 4 days of bands. Yiehaaa, I was really looking forward to that and meeting up with Jonez and Daymare. 2 dudes that I have been gaming with for the last 2 years. I pick the other locks up at 21:00 and 22:00 and we're off for an uneventfull, easy ride through empty german roads with rain from time to time and bad looking overaged germans passing us in big, expensive cars.

Wednesday, 04-07
We arrive at 09:00 or so in Roskilde. It is filled with cars, people in red coats (festival service) and zombies walking from left to right and right to left. I am not kidding you. If you ever levelled an undead, you know the Deathknell starting area where you have to kill some wondering zombies. That's exactly the scenery here.
The red coats we ask where we can park send us from north to south to west to east to north, only for us to discover we checked all parkinglots now and are back where we started. Small detail: Almost all of them can see our car has dutch licenseplates, but still they decide to talk to us in Danish. Finally we find a red coat capable of speaking english (do all swedes and norwegian dudes understand Danish? Just a question) and she actually does a little more than send us to the next full spot and finds us a parkingspace a few miles from the east-entrance. We park, unload and start the long walk. All this time rain is pooring down.

We enter the camping area and see mud, mud and mud and no free space. People tell us we should move to S or P spot. We get the map and see it's not even on it so far away is it and we decide to put down our tents near the entrance to have a small walk. Yes, it was outside the lines. Now why the F*ck would they make lines here on this muddy grass? We managed to put down our tents and went off for some well deserved sleep after being awake 24 hours. 90 minutes later we are rudely awoken by redcoats and the head of security.
'You got to move your tent!'
'You got to move your tent!'
-- 'uh....why?'
'You got to move your tent!'
Head of security does not mean got-any-knowledge-of-english, so one of the redcoats explains that it is fire-regulations. HAHAHAHA, I tell him I like the joke and wish him luck starting a fire with this weather and want to go back in the tent.
'You got to move your tent!' (the chief gnome again).
-- 'yeah dude, I got that the first time, but if you don't mind we wait till it's dry'
The chief gnome looks angry. One of the redcoats says we have to move now or we will be removed by force. ("festival service" obviously has a different meaning in Denmark than in Holland). We start moving in the rain, but where the f*ck do we have to go to? All is full. They tell us in there are spots on the most-south part of the camping and ofcourse we do not believe them. We move the other way and put down our tents again outside the lines wellaware of the fact that we will have to move soon again, but we really needed some sleep and did not want to walk through that rain for another hour. In the evening (and more rain) we have to move again and in the middle of the night, Smutty has to move his tent again half a meter. (I am not kidding, festival service to the max).

thursday, 05-07
They created some extra lines we can stand in, so we have spots now. Tired, stuff is wet and it is still raining. We wonder around a little looking around for some food and discover they have a movietheather as well. We decide to go see the movie 'svid neger' due to the description of it being a very sucky movie and that's just what we need. Rest and a place to sit dry for 90 minutes. We went there through the biggest pile of mud i have ever seen only to discover that electricity broke down and there is no movie. It probably was real bad anyway. We go back to the tent and install ourselves on 1 square meter in Smutty;s tent with the chairs we bought. All is wet, my shoes are wet, my socks are wet, my sweater is wet. Damn this place. We pass the day in Smutty's tent, a relatively dry place and drink vieux-cola and smoke weed. We do this for the rest of the day, because going out was not an option. We decide to take a small nap at 20:00 to go see Bjork afterwards, but we all knew we were not going. I went to my tent and found 20 centimers of not wet-space and tried to lay down there. "Why am I here?", "Why would I stay here?", "Why are Daymare and Jonez not answering their phones? maybe they have dry spots! (i read friday they both left already and had it even worse)". I sleep for periods of 10 minutes and then realize i have to get my arm out of the water. I hear Bjork far away.....is she hot?, i wouldn't know....it rains...what time is it? It's 22:00, it's 23:15, it's 00:11, it's 01:50, it's 02:02, it's 04:20!! it's 05:10, it's 05:56, it's 08:07.

friday, 06-07
It is dry! What? IT IS FUCKING DRY!! YIEHAAAAAAAA. I change clothes, saved some dry ones in a plastic bag. put on my wet boots and go to the guys. Yes, i am tired, but no rain is awesome. We buy some boots, pancakes and check the forum on vin99.net for messages from Jonez and Daymare while we sip some coffee there. Oh man....no rain is so awesome. I buy a sweater, change socks, put on the dry boots and all of a sudden i am there again. I can smile again. I feel great again! We go to the festival and see In Flames, which really is one of the best bands ever! We enjoy the day, see great looking girls and drink all day long while checking some bands left and right. At 01:00 we go to sleep, drunk, high and happy we are still there.

saturday, 07-07
Bands all day long. We started with Strike Anywhere (awesome oldschool punk. Really great performance for 300 people) at 11:00 and ended with the Chili Peppers (sucked bigtime for 50k?/60k? people) at 01:00. We left after a few songs. Walking all day on rubber boots which are a bit too small is really killing my feet the hard way. It feels like permenant damage is conflicted. Again we go to sleep relatively early, but then i think we never managed to get fit from the first 2 days.

sunday, 08-07
We decide to pack early, bring the stuff to the car and go back to see Arctic Monkeys. Then we can leave any time we like. We put on the boots of agony again and start the long walk to the car with all our stuff. When we finally arrive there i can no longer take it. The fucking boots are killing me. Another 5-6 hours of walking on them will cause severe damage i am afraid. I suggest to start riding now and Sad and Smutty agree. I throw the boots away and run them over while leaving. 11 hours later i am home and taking my 1st shower in 5 days. I am tired, but log in and do 3 arathi basin's on my warlock. It feels good again.

I remember reading this on a t-shirt while whatching Strike Anywhere.

We burned down your houses
and pissed in your well
we leave you with nothing
but a story to tell

Well, this is my story...

-- Zhero (fully back on his lock owning up the BG's)

ROSKILDE YIEHAAAAAAAAA

2007-07-03T12:04:00.001+02:00

I am off to Roskilde for a couple of days and will be returning the 9th or 10th. ZOMG, awesome bands coming. Daymare and Jonez coming (let's hope i can meat them) and 75k people coming. Should be a blast.

I've been levelling my lock for a new setup in our 5v5 team which took a good beating this week. He is currently lvl 69 and Nimra promised me he would level the last level in the coming days. That is what I call a nice offer.

Bunnies
Bunnies did not do too well this week. Our 5v5 lost 8-2. Whenever we do the 4dps, 1 healer setup things seem to go smooth. When we go warrior/rogue/lock and 2 healers it all goes bad. We really have no staying power then. Krexxor still does not want to go elemental. Now we plan on 2 mage/2 lock/1 paladin. For that cause i am levelling my lock (and because i like it)
Our 3v3 gained a few points but nothing really out of the ordinary. I put on mongoose on my main hand (500g auch) and notice that it procs pretty often).
Szwok and Nimra played A LOT on their 2v2 with big swings up and down. They keep losing to Line-Of-Sight teams with a priest which are well represented in the high areas. I think they are back on 1800 now, but that changes by the day.

Zhero
Nimra helped me 2 evenings with questing/ganking and we ran through all the quests pretty quick while ganking every alliance in sight. Pretty funny if you ask me.

More when i come back. Beer, music and blond girls are awaiting me.

-- Zhero (making a return? who knows)

Bunnies taking over Skullcrusher

2007-06-27T10:54:00.000+02:00

Small update after some more arenamatches.

Brutal Bunnies (2v2)
Szwok and Nimra quickly climb the ladder and currently are the highest ranked 2v2team on skullcrusher while participating in the top of the battlegroup as well. Szwok told me they met the #1 warrior/druid team and managed to beat them due to losing 3 in a row to another warrior/druid team and finding a good strategy. Being in top 5 in de battlegroup at a certain date in july will get you invites for a european finals, so that would be some awesome exposure for Ravens!

Cruel Bunnies (3v3)
A nice session put us on 20-7, but we could not manage more games. The 1700 rating is good for 7th position on Skull, but we should be able to up that in the coming week as we're still putting in positive sessions.

Big Bad Bunnies (5v5)
We had a very good 11-2 session last night with the 4dps/1healer combo, losing twice to a 2warrior/3healer setup (we took them once as well, that was kinda a surprise) with several games where we were all still standing. It was very enjoyable to play to say the least. After our 9-8 last time which had us still on 1500, we now speeded to 1600+. The ranking is not updated yet, so no idea where it puts us.

Bunnies doing well! I love it.

-- Zhero (close to lvl 66 atm)

First week in season II

2007-06-25T14:14:00.000+02:00

2v2 (brutal bunnies)
So, the first week is almost done and we got the first games under our belt and with good succes I would say. But let me first give you the result of Nimra and Szwok who arena-ed themselves to the 2nd place on Skullcrusher with a 1782 rating (first had 1785) and a top 20 in the battlegroup. Now ofcourse it is way too early in the season to make anything out of it, but still with their 20-2 record they made a very nice start! Keep up the good work! Szwok even told me he has people whispering him and asking if they could join their team.

3v3 (cruel bunnies)
Szwok, Nimra and myself started the 3v3 as well and booked a 12-6 score on Thursday which put us on 1600 rating and added a 8-1 score yesterday which put us a little over 1700. We faced some hard teams but had good tactics. I had a real good feeling about those matches. I played well, but still feel I (and we) can do more (for example better coordination from my side about using blind. Blind/sheep on the same target still happens). We took 22 points from a warrior/priest/mage team which heavily outgeared us by just playing better and that felt good. Our gear can still get a lot better with all the new stuff out, but we’re closing that gap. I am real anxious to see where we can end.

5v5 (big bad bunnies)
A struggling start with 9-8. We got owned a couple of times and won easily other times. There’s a little discussion going on as we would like a 4 dps setup. 3 dps + 2 healers is ofcourse good as well, but that requires a whole different approach (a more controlled one), while we feel we have the upperhand in rushdown strategies. If Krexxor is willing to go elemental, it might be interesting to see how it will work out. He, on the other hand, feels we will be off worse and does not want to respec. So we will continue here with the warrior (karma), rogue, lock, shammie, paladin (3dps, 2 heal) AND the mage, rogue, lock, mage, paladin setup (4dps, 1 heal). Hopefully we can up that rating a bit in the coming weeks.

Yesterday there were more people busy in arena. It’s good to see a lot of people wanna try and go there. I believe 2 more 5v5 ravensteams met in arena as well. Must have been a tense match :D It would be nice if we got some Ravens-exposure from the pvp-side as well.

Zhero
I dunno why exactly, but saturdaymorning I decided to log in Zhero. This lvl 62.9 warlock had been standing in Thrallmar for a long time and I remember I did most quests in Hellfire, but lost interest along the way. You know the feeling: you log in an alt, walk outside, walk back and log out again. Happens to me with most alts.
Now I logged him in and did some quests. And here comes the ‘bad’ part: I enjoyed it. I found all the buttons without looking and the fluent moves were still there. It was as if he was never away. So to make a long story short: Nimra asked me if I needed help and we ended up playing a lot together and I did a lot of quests in Nagrind which saw Zhero on lvl 65 on sundayevening, while ganking every single alliance we saw (kinda easy with a lvl 70 lock walking behind you :D).

And I liked it… (a lot)

I decided to join a PUG for underbog as well (they asked me) and here is where the fun starts. I saw some familiar guildnames so assumed they were alts and knew how to play this game. The mage and paladin were good players, the warrior was constantly 10 seconds behind the group with his actions (“I thought I first kill that healer before getting on to the other mobs”…I forgot to screen this one, but yes he actually said that), but the enhancementshaman was the best.

While I am walking away from the group to pick a herb (I was the only herbalist), I see this:

I lol-led behind my pc and walked towards him.

Hahaha, I love pugs.
Then he asked the paladin for a buff and a seal.

I hardly saw totems and had to ask several times for poison cleansing totem with mobs which shoot manadrain arrows. And let’s not forget the “Does anyone have damagemeters?”. Well, I think you recognize the type :D
Ah…it could have been worse. Experience = experience.

Let’s just end the day with some true Ravens-leadership I was able to witness in Arathi Basin. It is impossible not to like this guy.

-- Zhero (yes, Zhero will be back…and faster than you think).

Season I recap

2007-06-21T10:07:00.000+02:00

So, arena season 1 is over. We entered halfway and tried to get our gear updated, which came out ok. I personally went from 7500 HP to 9884 now unbuffed. I started in all brackets but soon left the 2v2 behind me as szwok and nimra did so well there (didnt want to take down their score). They ended the season with a little over 2100 rating which gave 800 points, a nice title and an armored netherdrake. The last thing was a big surprise. (i heard Artanias had one in the mailbox as well, but can't use it yet because he did not pay the 5k gold yet. Gzzz Art anyway! Knowing how much he like farming, it could take a while :D. 2v2 is in my opinion a bracket where casters rule. On top you see all kinds of combo's priest/lock/mage with little melee mixed in it.

Our 3v3 was 1854 highest and went a little down after that, it was more something we played in between while we tried to get the 5v5 running.

our 5v5 ended a little over 1700 (good for 640 points a week) and there is more coming there. We are experimenting with a 4 dps setup and a setup with 2 healers and a warrior. Hopefully we can get more games in instead of trying to play the games on tuesday and running in a team that farms you for 5-6 games in a row. (the more you play, the more that factor is irrelevant).

I saved points the last week to get a fresh start for season II and decided that maces would be the way to go, so i got myself the season II main hand mace.

We did some 3v3 yesterday and goddamn this thing hits hard. 2-3 weeks to get the matching mainhand and then i can finally start getting some armor. We ended 9-4 yesterday in 3v3 while szwok and nimp had a 12-0 session. gogo guys! (and had an awesome match against daymare(zekro) and senbon.

They upgraded the honoritems as well, so all can start grinding those bg's again.

I finally paid of Nimpie as well, so that is over with. But i bought new shoulders, needed gems for that and needed to respec, so now i need to pay back 100+ gold to szwok. Well, sh!t happens :D

Women....can't live with them....can't shoot them.

I entered AB and saw this guildname. Made me smile.

We all love Artanias!

-- Zhero (is thinking about levelling his lock as well)

Back from the dead

2007-06-11T17:36:00.000+02:00

I’m back! At work they made me IT-projectleader of some big project for a couple of weeks which took almost all my time during the day. You know: that time you need for browsing forums, making specs on wowhead and reading the latest news. At home I only play, play and play some more. So there is my excuse for not updating. That and the fact I am lazy by nature. Tnx for forgiving me :D

Rogue?/Paladin?/some other class?
No, I am still with my rogue. I did not even bother to grind some experience on my other classes besides one or two rampartsruns with alts. As I am still paying back Nimpie for that epic mount (I even lend gold for respeccing daggers and buying 2 blue daggers in AH. A 400g experience which lasted 2 days) I did some tailoringlevelling on my mage to be able to make primal mooncloth every 4 days with the sole purpose of making some gold and parked my 61 druid outside Scarlet Monastery (library) to farm the fadeleaf in the first field. I do believe it is quicker than pickpocketing. I make 9-11 fadeleaf in 5 minutes and can do that every hour. So every once in a while I log my druid, pick some fadeleaf and when I am out of blinding powders I send 80-100 fadeleaf to my rogue. Blindingpowderproblem solved. The good part is that I am so used to using blind that I do not ‘save’ it for a rainy day, but spam it when it is up like every rogue should.

Spec
I am combat sword specced with all the pvp-goodies (nerves of steel/imp. Sprint etc.) and plan on staying it. They fixed swordspec last patch (no more resetting of main hand swingtimer, but a yellow attack that can proc all your specials) and nerfed it again by making it a white attack (suffering all the bad stuff from DW-attacks. Glancing blows and missrate). Well ofcourse this is a PvE nerf, so who cares anyway! and it is still a lot better than it was. I saved my arenapoints for some weeks now and plan on getting the ‘new’ arena-MH-sword immediately when season II will start (I believe half of june). I got the mongoose enchant (almost) ready in my bank as well.

Engineering
I dropped skinning and levelled engineering to 350 for the imba Goggles! I have them now, made the earthstormdiamond which was converted to a powerfull earthstormdiamond and am done for a long time with my headitem now. A shitload of AP is on it and I think it is what you need as a PvP combatsword rogue. Crit is nerfed with all the resilience people are wearing, so constant high whitedamage is your friend as the game is leaning towards less burstdamage anyway with each patch. At least in PvP this is true.

Except stupid warriors. They somehow crit me for bazillions all the time while having me mace-stunlocked for 12 straight seconds. Since every warrior has that mace, it’s getting harder and harder to avoid them. (haha, you didn’t really think I was actually fighting them at free will?)

I remember now I run around with grenades as well. I should l2use them…have them keybinded, but never throw them.

Raiding
I am not doing it. PvP is so much more fun for me. We went with some pvp-ing guildies to Karazhan and killed 3 bosses. I even got the dagger from Moroes which sits in my bank, doing nothing. It was ok, but killing alliance is more fun :D

PvP
3v3: We're ok at 1850 or something like that and i feel we can go even higher.
5v5: Just started that and are around 1700 trying different setups.
2v2: My paladin and nimpie's rogue are making sure we get 10 games to make sure no points are lost in between without a clue on what to go for.

Screenies
Still found some screenies. (I am never paying attention to screenshots. I noticed I was dead in most screenshots, but then it came to me. While I am waiting for the timer to rez in BG, ofcourse on 2 seconds we lose the node I was respawning and I am ported to the next GY we control with a fresh 30 seconds to wait, I read the guildchat and take my screenies). Well: enjoy what I found:

Eleutherios (aka ‘Veritha’ aka ‘the Gadzetstan Slut’) with a confession (and Milker? wtf? got experience with that as well?):

aha, and this nice reaction from Kauft. Motivation is in words! Tnx bro! (btw, I now start seeing the profit of staying with 1 char. I still learn! And get better with it! And my gear is starting to look decent as well!). Hang on in there.

Trade-, General- and BGchannel are sometimes nice as well.

Guildtalk
Mudaseki stating the obvious

Nimpie is confused

and we see how difficult it is playing his ‘wanna duel?’-warlock when he accidently whispers me.

Then this story where crapslock (holyvirgin) gets to know the joys of being an officer. Someone is whispering him because he has a complaint about one of our members. The term ninjabird was never so true for Ljung.

Then in the “Artanias gets owned”-category. I might make it a special section from now on

Quote of the Week (also from the Art-gets-owned category)

-- Zhero (having major problems with hunters who know what to do btw)

Arena debute

2007-05-15T11:54:00.000+02:00

What do you do when you are 70? For me it is PvP. I like it, I love it, I enjoy it most of the times whether it’s zerging in AB/AV, flagstealing in WSG or getting owned by hard hitting warriors in EOTS. Never mind about the hard hitting warriors, that happens all the time....damn bastards!

And Arena ofcourse. We finally got teams going. Last week we hurried and got some games to get points. This week is already more serious.

Our 2v2 team consists of
- Szwok (mage)
- Nimra (warlock)
- Kirosta (rogue)
- Artanias (mage)

While our 3v3 team is with
- Szwok (mage)
- Nimra (warlock)
- Kirosta (rogue)
- Krexxor (shaman)

We did some 5v5 games as well and that was fun, but I think you really need at least a blessing-of-freedommed warrior there who hits hard. We do not have such a warrior at the moment, but that might come later. (currently Kipucka joined a few games, but he’s (temporarily?) quitting the game this week I believe. It’s no problem, as soon as we find a good warrior (hopefully Sad can play some more), I will go on Soni the paladin and with krexxor, nimra and szwok we have a nice team I guess.

My experience so far
1. It is hard.
A lot harder than you think to actually make sure you are playing optimal. So far it is not about winning or losing, but more about nmaking sure you press your buttons, use your cooldowns and play as optimal as you can. I know I learned A LOT. First 10 games, I came out with most of my cooldowns either unused because I was dead already or unused because I just forgot to use them. Krexxor had the same when starting (he was elemental, but respecced full healing later) and after 5 games we saw our first heroism :D

2. Gear is important
This seems a no brainer, but I had the feeling some games were unwinnable because we got outgeared badly. On the other hand, we took a 3-man Kersto Demonai team with impressive gear after losing first and then adjusting our strategy when we met them again. Gear is not everything, but it makes life easier when you go up in the stamina/resilience department. I have zero (0) pieces of PvP gear atm and are working on that. Szwok has some, Krexxor still has 7.3k life. There is a lot we can change for the better and it will be fun to work on that.

3. Positioning is really important!
I did some games with my paladin and having a good position really can make or break a battle. Make sure to be in line, make sure to have the right blessing ready for those who have warriors/rogues on them. Make sure to stand out of line of their mages/priests/locks. As a rogue it’s my duty to fuck up the healing and it took me several games to realize I had to use different poisons and I should stealth a little longer if that would bring me behind their healing instead of sapping the first one I see.

4. It is so much fun and there is so much to learn.
I noticed I still did not have the optimal pvp-spec and will put 2 points differently tonight. We have a lot to upgrade gearwise and a lot to learn teamwise. The teams did around 200 arenagames over the weekend (not all with me) and all the participants liked it a lot. For the time being we’re just collecting points and making the best of it, while trying to get a good 5v5 team together.

5. Spec?
I am a bit unsure here. I am currently combatsword-specced and would really like to stay it as I like it (and it gets better with the extra-attack fix: it will be a ‘real’ extra attack instead of a MH-swingtimer reset). Then again I have no experience whatsoever with daggers and hope I can pick up 2 reasonable daggers to try it out for a few weeks (it might even suit me better!)
Swords > Fists > Daggers in terms of looks! (hihi, there I said it, I’ll transfer myself to a RP-server rightaway). Well testing/testing/testing will tell me everything I need to know about spec and weapons. Hopefully I will know the answer before I can 'buy' my first weapon with arenapoints.

Ratings:
2v2 (Brutal Bunnies): 1913. This is very high I think. Nimra and Szwok did this. I only played the first few games, but don’t want to rob them from their points by trying to get my 30% piece. Those guys can come higher as Szwok stated he did not feel they were beaten badly at that level, though the gear difference became very noticeable.

3v3 (Cruel Bunnies): 1714. I played the first part, the last points they got with Krexxor healing them. I feel we can a lot higher here. In 3v3 all kinds of setups are possible. 3 dps, 2 dps/1healer or hybrid. Anything will do really and therefor I think we can get very far here.

5v5 (Big Bad Bunnies): 1492. We did somewhat like 20 games and had a blast. Results were not that good, but that will come. I tried both with rogue and paladin, just to try it out.

Our first week of Arena pvp went very well I think. We all had a blast and are looking forward to better results next week. I gained 500 HP and 80 AP over the weekend by upgrading some gear. I know me and Krexxor still can gain a lot there while we all can still learn a lot. In the meantime I will be pvp-ing to get some of the other pvp-rewards.

If you're not in Arena yet, make sure to just join a random team even. Even if you loose your 10 games, you still get points which will get you a nice weapon/armor in a week or 10-15.

-- Zhero (PvP is fun)

Kirosta

2007-05-08T11:15:00.000+02:00

So, my rogue is lvl 70 now. I started it at 26, which was where I left him several months ago and did not look back. To summarize it: I love my rogue. I love the tricks he has, I love the fact you can pick your fights. I really enjoy playing him and after we did some arena’s realize I have lots to learn and lots of specs to try.

Those were my times at 60 and 70. Nothing out of the ordinary. A rogue is a fast leveller though, because he kills quick and you can stealth and pass some content for other quests to kill 1 mob and grab the questitem. You can’t however solo the stuff you can with a warlock or a paladin. But, that is a fair trade off in my opinion.

This will be my new main.

I tried some ganking and like it. I had some nice fights along the way. An incredible nice fight with a 67 druid when I was 64, which I lost after popping all cooldowns and using a pot. A good number of /spits filled my screen which confirmed for me the joy the other person had. I had a blast as well. A good fight is always worth respect, no matter what the outcome is.

First thing I saw when I entered outlands btw: (I just thought it was funny)

I am currently combat-sword specced, already grinded my way to exalted with Aldor on 68-69. I find it less a grind, because then you still get experience from it. With the gold I made from grinding there (Legion Hold, shadowmoon valley. All casters and way better than Death’s Door in BEM) I bought the last 10k rep and the aldor sword to have a nice start. I will now search for some blue daggers to try out 30/0/31 daggers, the spec everyone seems to use for pvp. Well, just turned 70, so lots of stuff to do. I find this the best time as you’re still looking where to get gearupgrades and every 5man instanceboss can drop something nice for you. A very rewarding time always.

Now let’s hope I can stick to this one, instead of moving on to a next char…

Mudaseki
This old Raven has always been a bastard! I remember duelling him on my mage on 60 only to discover he was wearing 300 fire res or something similar to that. I remember us being in the arena in Dire Maul fighting a boss and he was ganking us (which pissed me off back then, but makes me laugh today. He has a very healthy attitude towards this game which we can all learn from).
Now me and Zekro/Daymare were in Shadowmoon when Fogg (warlock alt of mudaseki) arrives there. Zekro requests a duel and this is what he said:

Other pet? A warlock? I did not hit me at that time, but after 2 minutes he was back with something HUUUGGGEEEE!

I could not follow the duel, because I was laughing so hard behind my screen and I know Zekro had the same. I believe Zekro won, but that really was irrelevant. Muda, you rock dude! (especially after I heard you beat Artanias the same way :D)

Some random screenies:

Centril stays in our minds.

gnomes, what to do with it

A scary moment

Crapslock/Domitor/Holyvirgin (yep, all the same person)

Hood, nuff said.

Quote of the week.
Also Hood, there’s no beating this dude.

-- Zhero (enjoying his rogue a lot and is a happy ganker/pvp-er atm)

RL lessons for all of you

2007-04-27T14:15:00.000+02:00

Since I am playing my rogue extensively (and yes I like it, close to lvl 67 now), I started to read about them as well as I did with all other classes I played. I like to read about the class, I like to understand the class and want to know how the mechanics of that class work. While reading, I stumbled upon www.worldofming.com . This is a guy who plays a rogue and writes lots of nice articles about it from a technical as well as a pvp- and personal perspective. This is drawn from his last article.

------
As for people who believe they need to quit WOW completely to get anywhere in life. I thought so too when I retired 10 months ago. But to be honest, I didn’t get anything done during the time I was away. If you lack the self-control to prevent a game from ruining your life, it is unlikely you will get very far to begin with. Do what makes you happy, and everyone will move on when the time comes. I will play this game until Blizzard forces you to raid to be competitive in PVP. I learned the hard way that quitting this game without a real purpose only makes you waste time elsewhere.
------

This is exactly how I think about it and I could not have said it better. WOW does not destroy you or your life, You do!

I know a lot of people think they play too much and somehow feel guilty about it and feel they should quit the game to do ‘real important stuff’, while they are actually having a good time while playing. Now why on earth would that be a bad thing? How can ‘having a good time’ be a bad thing? How can social interaction with friends or just a place to chill be a bad thing? The answer is: it isn’t a bad thing!

The fact that you are playing WOW instead of doing homework (as an example) has nothing to do with the game WOW. If WOW wasn’t there, you would still delay it and do other things, because that is who you are as a person. I delay stuff at work because I am reading WOW-related stuff, but before WOW, I was delaying workstuff by reading MTG-related articles and tourneyreports and before that I was reading chess-/snooker-/pool-/comedy-/etc./etc.stuff. Before I wasted worktime on my blog, I was writing articles for a dutch website.

It is me as a person who is doing that.

And I feel good about it as well.

Do you?

------
“Do what makes you happy, and everyone will move on when the time comes.”
------
Thanks Ming, that is indeed what I will do.

-- Zhero

PS: As this might be heavy for a friday, let me add this content which I received from Milker for a lighter note. (Hood gets owned)

Awesome game

2007-04-20T14:39:00.000+02:00

Don't we all remember the good old tower defense from warcraft III? Here we go! Let's spill some work hours (and believe me, it's easily done :D)

-- Zhero (admits he sucked at TD)

Small contestupdate

2007-04-06T02:15:00.000+02:00

10g for the first that can tell me where this place is. It was actually the first time I've ever been there. (and this is my 6th char to 60, so you would think i've seen them all)

Eternity
Kipucka, our fresh lvl 70 paladin defines eternity:

-- Zhero (just wanted to share the 1st pic :D)

Kirosta is in dah house!

2007-04-02T16:05:00.000+02:00

Rogue? ZOMG!
It’s been a while. Mostly because of RL soaking up time, busy at work (where I mostly write) and because I am levelling an alt (Kirosta) like a madman.

“Now why the f*ck would you level an alt as an idiot while you still need to pay off Nimpie for lending you 3k gold for an epic flying mount and get gear on your pally?”

“It’s me on the left! and Domitor on the right”

I dunno, I really don’t, but I had a 26 UD-rogue and started playing it. I started to like it and after some more play started to love it. I am now at the point of dedicating half my day at work figuring out builds, watching roguemovies and reading about the class. It’s that bad. I don’t know why, maybe I had to play the light before seeing it. Haha, how’s that for poetry!

Let me tell you some background. Nimpie was powerlevelling his priest and came with the “Anyone has an alt 25+ that he wants to drag along in RFK? I am powerlevelling my priest”. This is what started it. I still had a 26 rogue standing there doing nothing for several months who managed to avoid my monthly deletion of alts. So I came along and got 3 levels while sticking on Nimp for a few hours. I played some more with it and remember I had to go to Orgrimmar, so ported to Stonetalon Mountains where my HS was, so I could fly there. I came there and saw the following:

Because it may not be to clear from the pictures, here the explanation. Zechs (gnoam rogue known from the skullcrusherforum) was wrecking havoc there with a paladin friend. They killed the flightmaster (zomg no flying!) and all other npc’s it seemed as well as other people there. I got my share of corpseruns, but was impressed by the rogue. Sneaking, vanishing and utterly annoying other people (some 70’s showed up, probably mains from ganked ones), but he kept going and the paladin was very hard to get down as well. I really enjoyed the show which ofcourse ended with both of them dead and a screen of /spit, but left an image in my mind which would not go away. Big thumbs up for Zechs and his paladin friend who made it an enjoyable 15 minutes there with some outdoor action.

And so my roguelove grew…

I quested in STV and escaped a gank with vanish. I came back and ganked him back.

…and my roguelove grew…

I quested on Shimmering Flats and sapped a priest, killed his hunterfriend and vanished in the dark

…and my roguelove grew…

I quested in Badlands, escaped a ganking mage. I killed him 5 times afterwards.

…and my roguelove grew…

I came out of ZF only to escape a warrior and hunter who tried to get me. I came back and waited a while. They started a duel, the hunter won. I finished the last % on the warrior and the last 8% on the hunter. THAT FELT REALLY GOOD!

…and my roguelove grew.

To be honest the last gank was only because there was talk in guildchat about really low ganks (Daymare just ganked a 5-man alliance group busy with a quest) and Artanias responded with:
Well, this is my story so far. I don’t know if I keep liking the rogue, but I enjoy it too much at the moment to focus on getting gear for my pally.

Aloran
I need to mention this guy. Now, I am the first judging 14-year olds as they normally are annoying, greedy, bad-english spelling, boosts-asking, ninja-ing bastards. Not this guy. The exception on the rule maybe? (and I am not saying this because he gave me a few boosts)
Now count the amount of times in your guild that you get a whisper from a youngster containing these words. He might not be 14 now anymore (but was when he joined us), but he took me to SM proving enhancementshammies do a shitload of damage nowadays and wanted to thank him from here for restoring (part) of my faith in youngsters by being polite and acting mature.

DPS-A-DIN
Just posting it here to show holy specced paladins can do some damage. I am specced 40/11/10 for BOK and solo-abilities. Just some numbers I managed to make.

Ravens
Yes, yes, we raid sometimes. With the strangest setups we move into Karazhan. How about:
2 druids
3 rogues
1 shadowpriest
2 paladins
1 mage
1 shaman
and only because no more seem to want to join (or be able to join)! But we killed Moroes, so progression was made.

Some Ravens guild-/officer chat I came along:
W.C. is short for toilet in dutch

Veritha with total nonsense again

and then this one from Nakedsnake

It was quiet in guildchat for 20-30-40 seconds. We were all waiting, something big was about to come out, nobody dared to say a thing.

Hmmm, doesn’t seem funny now I see it again, but it sure was when it happened :D

Quote of the week is from Jonez. Now THIS is dedication.

-- Zhero (ganking feels good, it really does!)

Newsflash

2007-03-19T16:01:00.000+01:00

You Holy? Wanna Come?
I like being a paladin. I really do, but this is the first time I get so many whispers. I had a full t1 resto druid on 60 (Maro, just brought him to Outlands and respecced full feral), he got some whispers, but not like this. I was questing in Shadowmoon Valley with Waylanderm (more about his warlockalt ‘deadpool’ later) and I received this within 15 minutes (no, not kidding)

Deadpool
Aha, Caught!!! Waylanderm (one of our tanks) has this ud-warlock alt “deadpool”. It was the first character he levelled on this server. I did not see him online that much, but now know why. TRAITOR! I was in AV healing, it’s not like my dps is going to do anything there, and suddenly had this in my target. CAUGHT IN THE ACT!

Ofcourse I killed him and did /spit. Not only he transferred his lock to a different realm, he also transferred it to a night elf warrior!!

The Grind
Kipucka is close to 70 with his paladin. I know the feeling, I really do.

Artanias
Well, we really love him, but sometimes it’s just nice to poke him a little :D

Nimra/Nimpie/Nimpster/Nimroth
There could be an item on this dude every week! He is currently levelling a priest in a speed that is kinda unhealthy for normal human beings (so no Nimra to gank the Alliance, use this time well boys!).
Nimroth was 38 yesterday btw and Craps is not 70 yet I believe :D

Quote of the Week
Comes from Nimp as well. Can you say “PWNED”?

-- Zhero (leeched 6 levels from nimp on his rogue in 6 hours. 26-->32)

KaraKey + Epic flying Mount

2007-03-12T11:28:00.000+01:00

Karazhan key:
Done: Arcane Disturbances
Done: Restless Activity
Done: Contact from Dalaran
Done: Khadgar
Done: Entry into Karazhan (too bad Nimpie disced and did not come back, we had a good group)
Done: The second and third fragment
Done: ---Steamvaults (This was nice. Sloganizer explained Esaur that this could be done with the speed-aspect of a hunter and a invisibility potion. Esaur offered me the run. We ran twice (i fucked up the first time by taking my potion too early. The second time we were in the water in time and I got my 2nd fragment :D)
Done: ---Arcatraz (Nice group with 2 healers. Kills took a bit longer, but besides the pull in the start where we managed to get the whole chamber, no wipes at all. We only cleared till the fragment)
Done: The Master’s Touch (BM gets easier and easier. Hulkster is a fine tank who was able again to block himself out of the debuffs at the 2nd boss. I was solo healing which is not hard for a paladin)
Done: Return to Khadgar

--------------------------------

Epic Flying Mount:
08-03: 114 gold: Just bought flying mount and I am broke
11-03: 1140 gold: Sold all bankstuff from Soni and alts. Grinded herbs and sold them all.
12-03: 1094 gold!: I saw a healing plate belt in AH for 100g. It is one of the best you can get, so I bought it only to discover I already had it (ofcourse this was AFTER I equipped it. Man, I am so dumb sometimes. Regained some money from quests...
14-03: 1214 gold: from running an instance and grinding some quests.
15-03: 1542 gold: sold some herbs and shitz + questing

19-03: Now what you see above is an epic flying mount. Yes, I got one and let me tell you: IT IS AWESOME TO HAVE ONE. So, now that is out, let me tell you how I got it. Friday-evening I am chatting with Nimpie/Nimra. He suddenly asks if I want to loan 2k gold from him. The offer is almost too good, but I decline as I am still 3.7k short. He then ups his offer to 3.5k gold. ZOMG. There's no thinking about this one and I agree. He logs and relogs to send me 3.5k ("I am broke now" he says) and I quickly empty all bags/alts etc. for the last 200g. I bought it and have a 3.5k (actually 3.2k as i payed 300 already) debt now. Maybe I should have waited till I had it all myself, fact is that grinding herbs is a lot quicker on a fast flying mount.

Well, the mount is mine and my debt to Nimpie is not something for this blog :D

-- Zhero (pressuring myself with this blog might help)

Mission Impossible?

2007-03-12T11:14:00.000+01:00

Now I am 70 there are lots of goals to go for. The goal I put on first place isn’t the goal many would put there, because it seems as a hell of a job.

- Getting an epic flying mount.

When I dinged 70, I bought the flying mount and noticed I had 114g left. That was it. Some 30-40 gold on some alts, but that was really it. I started flying and loved it, but o_O, slow slow slow. On all my other chars, I always went for an epic mount first as it made a big difference in BG’s and basicly for running around. It is no different now for me. I just want to be able to transport myself as fast as possible and an epic flying mount will get me at that status. A goal that stands next to it from today is getting the Karazhan key. I deliberately did nothing so far to be honest. I got a lot of whispers “dude, get your key asap!”, ‘we need you there”, “why don’t you have your key yet” etc. To be honest it annoyed me a little and I have been questing to get gold so far. But the time has come and my mind is right. I want it! And I want it now!

I want an epic flying mount
I want that Karazhan key.

So my actions will be towards those 2. What does that mean? No gold spending on pots, enchants or any other stuff which is not needed atm. No PvP-ing (though I want to do that as well, I can’t do it all together) Ofcourse I will swallow a pot when it’s needed, but I used to pot up for every instance, just because I had them.

I started with 114 gold last Thursday and started with cleaning out my bank. I had lots of questrewards stocked there (all dps- and tankinggear). I vendored them. I put all my primal life, primal shadow, pots and herbs on the AH. I did the same with my bankchar and my alts, though there was not much on them. This brought me to 600g. I’ve been grinding quests (good gold on lvl 70) and picking up every herb on the way, while cooking all flesh I could find. I put it all on the AH. This got me to 1140 gold as from today. Even the cooked meat (23 spelldamage/20 spirit) for 30 mins sold for 1g a piece! Glad I levelled that cooking to 375 :D

Little fun story: Serra (my 7 year old daughter). She was with me this weekend and I showed her the flying mount I bought. She was totally into it and found it extremely fun to fly as high as she could and then release. She would fall down and right before she would fall on the ground, she would bubble up. And like all kids, she could do this forever. I told her she could gather herbs as well in between the 5 minutes it takes for bubble to cooldown. She did that as well and has gathered a lot of terocone/felweed in this weekend (terocone 37g a stack, felweed 10g a stack) in Terrokar forrest. She wrote it down on a paper for me whenever she found one. I wonder what people were thinking who were in Terrokar this weekend. Every 5 minutes there was a paladin falling from the sky somewhere.

Well, I will make a statusreport for my 2 goals in a new post and edit that one for progress. Epic flying mount in progress.

-- Zhero (Slow mounts do suck).

Soni is lvl 70

2007-03-09T14:44:00.000+01:00

So, it finally happened, I am lvl 70. Se-ven-ty levels...omg that is a lot. 12,5 days played is more than I anticipated at the start, but somehow I did not realize that grinding with a paladin does not go very fast. I do now.

Do I still like the class?

I can answer this with a big 'YES'. I am fully holyspecced and since I got myself some damagegear as well, it seems I found a spec which can heal very good and do moderate damage (good enough for questing and some grinding). And the gear will only get better! It's a versatile class, it's a wanted class (I get a lot of whispers), it's a challenging class with lots of options. I used to play MTG (Magic The Gathering) and always liked controll decks instead of red burn or stompy. (the latter were decks that relied on starting with heavy burn and hoping the enemy would lose after their initial burst). Everyone could play those decks. The only way to show skill was by playing a control deck. It's a great challenge! The same goes for paladins. I will train my pvp, I will figure out the counters and hopefully 1 day can be satisfied with the results. It's not sheep--> trinkets--> Fireball--> POMPyro--> CS--> fireblast--> blastwave--> Arcane explosions and let's hope we have a dead opponent. Everyone can do that (I am not dissing mages btw, I still consider Vurtne the best player I have ever seen).

Yesterday I did the questline with the gasmask in Blade Edge Mountains. After a few quests in camp: [something], you need to kill a lvl 68 elite. And damn, she is hard. I engage the first time, use all my cooldowns (including lay on hands), drink a pot and die while she is on 2%. Goddamnit! So I go in thinking mode and figure out I have more chance in full healing gear as my healing gain > damage loss so that should net me more overall damage. I engage again and kill her. THIS is really where the challenge is and luckily all classes can do that. I just feel the paladin has some more skills to work with. Kinda lika a puzzle with more pieces. More of a challenge. I see a lvl 67 warrior with a 68 rogue engage her after me. They die without a chance. I feel even better now and heal them the 2nd attempt.

Well to be short: YES I LIKE MY PALADIN A LOT

MY PALADIN IS HOT AS WELL
HAWT
REAL HAWT

DON'T CHA WISH YOUR GIRLFRIEND WAS HOT LIKE ME
DON'T CHA WISH YOUR GIRLFRIEND WAS HOT LIKE ME

-- Zhero (pixels can be hot! btw Drew has a new movie!!! ZOMG! :D)

February News

2007-03-01T16:35:00.000+01:00

ZOMG, I am lvl 68,7 or something like that. Due to having a RL (which is overrated as we all know) I only level slowly. I’m still in Nagrand with only a few quests left and have been running a lot of instances. I even got the T2-lookalike blue headpiece, which is awesome I have to add (for a healing paladin that is). So 3 more area’s to run, which is fine by me as I need to have an epic flying mount as well, so the gold is more than welcome from those quests.

What happened? We had a LAN last weekend. Lots of people showed up, too bad our Danish people could not make it due to a snowstorm at the day they were supposed to drive down. The day before we were all optimistic, but nature put a stop to it.
Besides I do think Artanias wouldn’t join anyway, because Hedrich said she would take him to the movie ‘Dreamgirls’. o_O. That would have made for some weeks of Art-bashing in /g. Too bad it didn’t happen.

Attending now were:
Hulkster, Mortui, Krexxor, Mythica, Waylanderm, Kipucka, Nimpie, Pedropress, Smutty, Soni and our 2 lovely ladies: Sinestra and Hedrich. Hedrich and Pedro: from here a big thanks for the hosting. Excellent stuff. We gamed and levelled, cursed, defeated bosses, wiped on trash and drank beer (or red bull) and had a big dip when sundaymorning around 06:30 skullcrusher went down. I personally entered a PokerStars multitable 45-people tournament and managed to finish 4th (55$). Saturdayevening we all went out for chinese food at the local restaurant. Only Nimpie was afraid to enter as he is still being hunted by chinese goldfarmers for outgrinding them and dropping AH-prices. Luckily he was not recognized though I thought I’d better be safe than sorry and didn’t take anything of the food that Nimpie took :D

Basicly: we had a very very good time and returned home on Sunday-evening, tired but satisfied. And for all you male young guns that wonder: Yes Hedrich and Sinestra are better looking than you guys can imagine and no, I have no pix, so stop whispering me!!

Ravens are going Ravens-like: steady and smooth. The early lvl 70’s already have their keys or are close to having them. The new raid-calendar (check the forum for the link) will be used for planning of future raids and heroic instances. There is still a lot to do for all of us. Make sure you get all your heroic keys (that is revered with all the factions that offer them) as that all will be needed to continue raidwise.

I don’t have much screenies to offer as I notice that I miss a lot of guildchat when grinding quests, but these were still on my harddrive.

This guy gets the price for having a cool name and having this guildname. Awesome if you ask me!
It gets worse and worse with the whispers when in Orgrimmar/Undercity it seems. Send me your responses and I will bundle them all in 1 post.
The guildchat is mainly about penises, their size and who has the biggest. Mary has her own solution for this (poor Dave)
Krexxor is single for a while now. It does seem to get to him :D

But this weeks winner is ofcourse Hood. Who else can beat this dude?
I bet even Illidan goes speechless.

-- Zhero (brought all his 60's to outland to get their professions up and running for a steady income)

Emotions

2007-02-20T15:22:00.000+01:00

Frustration
I am frustrated and while I am normally never really frustrated I can see this is getting on my nerves. I am talking about the latency-issue I (and many people like Ghostt/Sad who share the same ISP) currently have.

My latency is between 350 and 1200 EVERY SINGLE DAY for the last week now. I didn’t look into it last Tuesday when it started, but I started with that after Wednesday and Thursday were the same. The problem is the routing. My ISP delivers their traffic to Cogent Communication. Cogent Communication is a big company which handles transatlantic traffic amongs other things. The problem however is that CogentCo makes the traffic go through amsterdamàlondonàNew YorkàWashington before it gets to Telia. Now this is what is causing the constant lag.

I’ve been pretty active on the wow-forum and with calling and mailing my ISP and also Cogent to make sure pressure is applied. They aknowledged the problem already, but it is still unsure who is responsible for us having another route all of a sudden. Last news from Cogent was that ‘Telia requested this route’ though I find that hard to believe.

All this time me and Sad are kinda levelling together with lagspikes over 5 seconds and heals that take ages. I even did a some instances and only due to the imba healing that Mortui’s vampiric embrace gives, we manage to survive. But when I got ganked, I could not respond in time and that kinda sucks. This situation SUCKS HARD!

Joy
Here a nice story! Last night Hulkster, Ghostt, Mortui, Nimpie and myself decided to do Old Hillsbrad, but Mort and Nimp already got ganked once there by some lvl 70 Alliance and when I finally arrived the 3 of us (Mortui, Nimp and myself) got in combat with 4 lvl 70 alliance. Mortui took one out quickly but went down himself as well as I was too late with my heal. I concentrated on healing Nimpie who took down the hunter, but now had the paladin on him, while the 70 druid was mangling away on me. Well this DPSADIN and ROARR-I-AM-A-DRUID-SO-I-DPS kept hitting and while I could easily outheal the druids dps and the paladin’s dps, Nimpie killed them both. So there were lying 4 dead lvl 70 Alliance. That felt kinda good. 3 lvl 65/66 killing 4 lvl 70. /flex. Ravens for life!

Laughter

Here some common Ravens-thinking towards girlfriends

Milker catching Veritha, The Gadzetstan Slut, again. No further words needed.

Quithus got confronted:

What we really think of Milker

-- Zhero

This weekend

2007-02-12T16:04:00.000+01:00

Soni is lvl 60!

Well, it’s been a while, so here some background info. Last friday I dinged 58 and could finally go to Outland where I quickly managed to get the last 2 levels solo-ing a lot of quests in Hellfire Peninsula where the exp is 10k per quest. So 20 quests is a level. Saturdaynight I was planning on preparing everything for my epic mount quest, so I delivered like 400g of stuff and gold to someone in Silvermoon, killed some ghouls in Eastern Plaguelands, delivered some more and got a quest to pick up a bowl of water in Tyrs hand. I went there, could solo 2 elites at a time, but it went wrong with 3 elites (last pull before the bowl, goddamnit) at the same time. I went out for drinks (see a bit lower in this article for more drinkinginfo :D) and returned at 04:00 and Ghostt helped me in Tyrs Hand to get the bowl. I was on the final part now. Killing 5 paladins on the first square in Stratholme. I should have waited (it was like 05:45 now), but got a group consisting of Jonez, Daymare, Uglyone (on his warrior) and Tardark. That should be more than enough but Daymare fell asleep, so never made it to Stratholme and Jonez had an unexpected female visitor (at that time?) so went afk (‘to get food’) and never came back. So I decided I would start the event just to see what it was like, but it was so easy (tardark had them all down in seconds) that I think I threw only 1 heal. I picked up my tabard (blood knight paladin only so far) and my mount which you can see below. I might be the first be-paladin with paladin epic mount, but can’t say for sure. I know others were busy with it as well, but did not see one or heard of it. Not that it matters much, but it’s still nice. I had a lot of people who offered to help me with this quest. I want to thank all of them because in the end it is the thought that matters.

Currently I am lvl 61,5 as I levelled with Nimpie and Sad whole sunday and 2 dps and a healer (I respecced a little) make quick work off each and every quest out there.

Nimra
Talking about mounts and Nimpie (Nimra), here a pic of our #1 rep farmer who managed to get a Dark War Talbuk already by grinding for straight hours. I think it looks awesome. Gratz dude!

Ravens-News
So what are Ravens upto nowadays. Well, whose words are better to use for telling than Hood’s and Jonez’s.

The guildchat is very nice and makes good reading while grinding away on TBC quests. Some old stories are being retold about the great Hood and such, ofcourse mentioned by Hood himself reminding Nimra how it was back then.

There’s talk about ganking Alliance, ganking our lovely Mary…

…and people annoucing dings and their presence in outlands.

There’s late night talk about religion and the cause of why Jonez has lived in his car

And then real late, the serious chats occure. This is from last saturdaynight somewhere between 04:30 AM and 06:15 AM. I will publish it all unedited. It just shows what a happy guild we really are. (and goddamn what are all these dudes doing online at that time)

I just want to say I love Ravens and all people in it. You guys make me enjoy this game a lot. Don't ever consider leaving!

-- Zhero

edit: while I post it, I see the Dayender-enchants. So, if our guys don't have it, make sure to give Dayender a whisper.

Epic horse

2007-02-11T15:23:00.000+01:00

Yep I dinged 60 and quickly did the epic horse questline. Here it is. (more tomorrow, busy now)

-- Zhero

Random Shitz

2007-02-02T14:45:00.000+01:00

Soni
Well, she is nearly 51 now. I dinged 50 and could do the 5 times runecloth (yep, Silvermoon as well) deliveryquest for 33k experience and the aszhara tablet deliveryquests (30k) to all the cities at the same time. This combined with some easy quests gave me almost a level in 2,5 hours. 58 is only 7 levels away and I really can’t wait to enter Outlands and discover all new things myself. I like to thank people who offered me helping hands. Daymare rushed me through JA in the Hinterlands (and everyone knows that one sucks). (The Daymaredude is awesome really!) I even couldn’t finish it due to dinner and had to come back for some last kills. Myhtica helped me there as well to finish it off.

The fun part now is I finish each and every quest I see, because you really do not want to grind with a paladin. Though my killspeed is ok now (but I have bought Taran Icebreaker), it’s still nowhere close to hunter/warlock speed.

Some people cheer at me. Others gank me (skull warrior) and without any emotes from my side, give me a share of their mind. This ofcourse after kiting him through half of Searing Gorge :D

DM west
Arielext still needed to get his ‘free’ epic horse and so Zhero was logged in as he has all the materials to do so. This was the DM-west party: Nimra, Shapectre, Milker, Arielext and Zhero. 3 locks, 1 druid, 1 shaman. So with 1 lvl 70, 1 lvl 60 and 3 mid 60’s we went to Dire Maul. And suddenly I noticed flowers in the arena. Not one, but many. 3 black lotusses, mountain silversage, dreamfoil etc. Together with 1 strange mob, which I have never seen before. We went in, took the flowers and took the mob down. I just read now on Thottbot that he is a rare spawn, like Razza and the Ogre, but more rare than the other 2 which I have killed many times. He spawns those flowers and has one blue drop. It was a nice 2-h sword which I got for my paladin. Check the pic for proof :D (you can see the yellow flowerdots)

We cleaned Dm west in a record time. Bosses dropped within 10 seconds and after 30 minutes we started the event which was too easy. /wave to Arielext when he is passing by on his mount now.

Ravens
Ravens are still going strong. Six or seven people have reached 70 and others are on their way. While I read topguilds already downed the new Onyxia (some pitlord now) and cleared Karazhan, we will take things at our own speed. It seems my paladin-levelling fits right in there. Enjoy some typical Ravenschat (Hood and Nimra ofcourse):

Thanks to all the people that have send me items btw. Feralor, Tardark, Nimra, Ghostt, Daymare and Milker. I have a nice headstart thanks to you guys (let's hope I don't forget someone)

-- Zhero (still having fun on his paladin)

Soni, some stuff

2007-01-29T09:15:00.000+01:00

So, it's monday. Due to having my daughter I have hardly played this weekend (which is ofcourse the best reason of all). Yesterdayevening Kolbe was bored and offered me to help me with a few quests. So I abused him rightaway and did all the Stranglethorn-quests which were open. This brought me at lvl 43,5.

Best encounter so far was with a 42 (I was 42 as well) human paladin. My /wave was greeted with an attack and we went for it. For his sake I hope I outgeared him badly, because I was left with 75% HP and 90% mana while I was watching his dead body on the ground. I still like the class a lot. It has a lot to offer and that suits me just fine. Now running to 60 again is not my favourite hobby, but I feel the gap closing. At 58 I will step through the portal and will enjoy the content from there on. I've seen some TBC-recepies and want to level cooking now as well. I hoped I could do it from buying stuff in the Auction House and cook it, but it is not to be. AH is empty and believe me. If you would put 20 Raw Longjaw Mud Snapper in the AH for 3g, I would buy it. It might actually be worth it to fish for it as nobody puts the uncooked ones in the AH.

Ravens are still Ravens. People are slowly levelling. Nimra and Waylanderm made it to 70. They were soon joined by Uglyone and Zeppox. Others will come there as well the coming weeks and within 2 months we will be back on raiding track I suppose. 2 more days off for me then back to work, though those days are half-filled with RL. Taking 2 weeks off for gaming really does not work as RL is never far away and won't let you continuously game. I'll leave you with two Hood originals;

Really: this guy makes me speechless.

-- Zhero

No words needed

2007-01-25T22:25:00.000+01:00

-- Zhero

Soni, past 3 days

2007-01-23T15:52:00.000+01:00

So no updates in the weekend. I did continue levelling though and am lvl 35 at the moment. I trained my FA to 300 (and use it a lot, saving mana for seals and judgements), am 225/225 alchemy and 200+ herbalism. I find it important to keep the professions levelled else you will have to do it later and for the gathering professions that is a pain in the butt.

Some stuff about paladins.
- They do not 2-shot mobs (yes at lower levels they do), but it gets worse. Maybe it gets better with crusaderstrike. I keep buying blue weapons to keep my damage top and it is needed to be able to have some kind of grinding speed
- You hardly die (to mobs or adds). It's no problem to take on 3-4 mobs of the same level with all the tricks you have.
- The manasteal racial and the aoesilence racial from bloodelf are nice. The mana gained is not that big. The silence however rox ofcourse, interrupting all kinds of spells while gaining some mana back. I use it all the time to get used to it.
- Bubble is nice! It gets you out of tricky situation, it let's you jump down cliffs or walk through a camp of mobs for the shortest way. I love it.
- Waylanderm and Zeppox ran me through all of Scarlet Monastery and I run around with the 1h sword and shield from the quests (not the drops, they are too high level). I have a significant dps-improve (with 1h!!!) while wearing a shield. I now can grind forever which is a big plus in STV. (Tnx Marv & Renske!).
- I took the 8% speedincrease talents. They rock. Walking is boring, this helps. 5 more levels to mount... (did I mention that walking is boring)
- I still like the class. Though I am full retribution specced (well solo-ing 95% of the time, so it is needed), I see a lot of nice options in the other trees which I will certainly try once I group more.
- A lot of armor is handy! I am used to cloth classes (mage, lock), so this is very nice for a change. Ofcourse it did not help to the draenei lvl 40 shammy who chainlightning crit me for 600 while i was busy with 2 raptors...)
- I am anxious to see the new content as well, but when I walk into Outlands with Zhero I think I will continue playing.
- I will level this paladin to 60 first. Then continue with the pala to 70 while levelling Zhero on rested exp. That is the plan.
- I'll try to make some pics tonight. (Soni looks awesome).

edit: here a screeny from when I happened to be spectator at saddam's hanging:

Soni at Saddam's hanging

-- Zhero

Soni, part II

2007-01-18T12:34:00.000+01:00

So no play on wednesday, but a whole thursday ahead of me. I like the paladin so far. I am still doing ok-damage to be able to do all the quests solo at reasonable speed. Now Hulkster told me I could get a mount at low level already, so I am off to Silvermoon to check it out (need to train my lvl 20 skills anyway)

12:28 ding level 20. Stay tuned for more.
16:18 ding level 21. I had dinner, and levelled alchemy and first aid and did the long travel to tarren mill. Waylanderm and Zeppox just got me through Waling Caverns. That will speed it up to the next level. Appearantly the mount thing is a bug which works only for Draenei. Too bad :D
17:33 ding level 22. Went to Tarren Mill, but I was just a little too low for it. With carefull bodypulls I managed to get out of Durneholde keep. Time to go to Stonetalon and Ashenvale I guess.
22:50 ding level 23. Bad bad bad levelling. Too much running around with no good thinking. Let's keep it at this today. Tomorrow is another day and I need to get up early anyway.

Friday
Let's just continue here. I started friday at 10:30 or so.
12:40 ding level 24. Daymare helped me with my palaquest. You need to be in 3 instances (talking about timesinking) for a suboptimal weapon. That should have been done different imo. I walked into another pally as well and after I helped him, we had the following conversation:

Hehe, isn't that nice! My punjabi is not what it used to be, else I would have known ofcourse :D
14:54 took a shower, have to pick up my daughter from school and will spend the afternoon with her. After that some poker and booze at a friends house. I am close to lvl 25. Tomorrow more. Quote of the day was from Matse.

Can you say "PWNED!"

Hora Est

2007-01-16T10:13:00.000+01:00

Finally...

08:34 Jur calls me to check if I am awake already, cause the gamstore opens at 09:00
08:35 I have 2 sms, 2 msn-messages about if I am installing already
09:15 Without breakfast I drive to the gameshop and receive my copy
09:42 Installing as I type. It's going smoothly (I should not read the techforum with all the problems etc. It just gets me nervous)
10:01 Waylanderm calls me to say we are not a hardcore guild. Only 4 online from which 2 bought the game. Liandria seems to have pulled an all nighter. Damn that girl ROXX!
10:15 "Soni" the paladin is created. We have some hours to level!

---I plan on posting here during the day

10:18 ding level 2. Not much pala's created yet. I count 14 or so with 3 of them lvl 13 (playing all night i guess)
10:27 ding level 3
10:34 ding level 4 (waylanderm walked into his first gankers :D)
10:59 ding level 5 (doorbells interfering with levelling)
11:01 counting 21 paladins
11:12 ding level 6
11:15 running to a new area now. quick screeny for those interested of my new pala
Soni the bloodelf paladin
11:42 ding level 7 (vinnie was installing as well i heard :D)
12:37 So, I lost a shitload of time because my mom thought it would be handy to fuck up the copier/printer on my room. So I spend a good 40 minutes of getting out all kinds of pieces of paper. This copier should get a price for most jammed copier ever. RL happens at times you don't want it...
12:47 ding level 8. Hopefully now full speed ahead. I had 34893 msn-chats, in game, phones and shit. All good ofcourse, but it takes A LOT (understatement really) of time. Well I should not complain. Sorciah just called me. He took the afternoon off, bought the game and during installation his PC dies. Talking about bad luck. He is currently LF PC-doctor.
12:55 My 4 16slot bags arrived together with 30g for taking care of the first few levels. That should make life easier
13:45 level 9 (the chat is like barrenschat in belf starter area, so you will feel right at home and comfortable :D)
14:11 ding level 10. I could deliver some quests, that's why it went fast. gogo first talent point!
15:06 ding level 11. more than 49 pala's are online now. let's see if i can find someone who can port me to the barrens. I like the barrens.
15:39 travelled from silvermoon city through the portal to UC and from there to Orgrimmar where i got a lot of whispers and people asking if I could do emotes. Never saw so many lvl 60's gasping at a lvl 11. Omw to X-roads now.
16:33 ding level 12. Questing around X-roads atm with some people admiring me and other whispering nasty things like "fuck off to Alliance, noob". True story.
17:49 ding level 13. Annoying thing is i am questing in the barrens and my trainer is in Undercity. Outland-servers just collapses 2 times it seems by lists of guildies discing. Just the first time i type I hope it is just a fluke.

20:55 or so (blogger was kinda down) ding level 14. Still a lot of people inspecting me and asking me to dance.
21:58 ding level 15. I get buffs from all kinds of classes. Rather nice for a change! Sad pulled me through RFC and that helps a lot as well.
23:07 ding level 16. I got a lot of shammies 2-4 levels above me that want to duel me. I do that, loose and they start boasting. Makes you wanna get your lock.
00:36 ding level 17. Questing, questing, questing
01:53 ding level 18. Got a nice blue mace which hits very hard. I like this paladin
03:33 I log out. Have been chatting for the last 30 mins. Too tired to continue right now. 18,5. I picked up all the quests for WC (let's hope I find someone :D). You know you;re too tired when you finish a quest, return to X-roads and then can't deliver it because you only have 7/8 altered beings...Well more stuff like that happened, so better to get some sleep then. I can;t play tomorrow, but will continue the log friday I think. (planning on at least half a day of playtime)

Wanna roleplay?

2007-01-09T11:37:00.000+01:00

Think before getting on one of those servers, you never know what you're gonna get!

Now this is a classic and I am just posting it here for it’s unique place in WoW-history. You might have missed it if you’re not playing that long. (and besides that I had a little mail-conversation about roleplaying with Vinnie and Milker which reminded me of this one). This was posted on some guild’s forum where one of their members had experienced this back in 2005:

**********
“Out of sheer boredom and the need to do a little PvP research, I recently found myself exploring the Deeprun Tram on a local roleplaying server. With exploration under way, I trekked deep within the confines of the tram and found something rather unusual. What was this standing before me? Two naked night elves of course."

"At first the sight struck me with some skepticism. Being from a PvP realm, we don't generally see naked characters bent in front of each other in the middle of nowhere. None the less, the situation quickly revealed itself."

"I couldn't help but chuckle a moment and retreat back to the shadows from which I came. Had they seen me approach? From the looks of it...... no. So I watched intently."

"Intrigued by this fantastic "roleplaying" experience, I felt it was my duty to perpetuate the general merriment of all. So I gathered my composure and began to engage in my own "roleplaying" theatrics."

"Oh crap. Somehow they caught me. I was roleplaying hidden in the shadows... how the hell did they find me? So I did what any self respecting pervert would do. HIDE!"

"Unsuccessful with my attempt to roleplay, I figured what the hell. I might as well just start a dwarven sandwich while the getting is good. So I charge in gropes a blazing."

"Not a moment later, Inotep and Artemisa left me with a stinging remark that will be forever remembered."

"Feeling a bit perverted, I felt I would do the right thing and offer an apology."

"With my apology shot down, the feeling of urgency began to overwhelm me. Wait a minute, what a bunch of hypocritical bullshit. I was "roleplaying" hidden damn it. I moved to rebuttal."

"This concludes my wonderful adventure on a roleplaying realm. I apologize for the vulgarity that some of this post contains. I don't believe that the essence of a "roleplaying" experience would have been captured as well given censorship was taken. All in all, I suppose only one thing can be said about roleplaying realms…"
-Tactic "The Dirty Dwarf" Gedran
**********

Ofcourse I copied/pasted this from somewhere, but hell it even made me laugh again, so I feel a cheap fill of my blog is in order :D

-- Zhero

Jasmina

2007-01-04T14:05:00.000+01:00

Jasmina is lvl 60. She is a female troll hunter. Last night I grinded the last 1,25 level. Some guildies thought I had done that very quick, but the thruth is she is older than most of them.

Back when WoW came out most Ravens (Talanor, Nevermore, Tardark to name a few) moved from Ryzom to WoW. I hung on to Ryzom for 1 week longer and was digging there in the Prime Roots to level my PrimeRootsHarvesting (which was very high I might add :D). It was empty in the guildchat, a few leftovers and that was it. I was digging there for a few nights and decided I had to buy the game as well. I went to the shop, bought the game and Vin and Nevermore told me to make a tauren on skullcrusher. I made a druid (since I liked them a lot in Diablo II) without a clue on what to do. It turned out Vin (Talanor) and Dieter (Tantor) had taurens as well and I started to do a little catchup on them. Later I stopped the druid when I saw UD’s for the first time in X-roads. They looked awesome! That was something that did not seem so from the creationscreen. I stopped my 24 druid, made an ud-mage and started playing that.

By that time my daughter had joy in creating characters. She knew how it worked and sometimes when I came home I had 12 new chars (all lvl 1-3) on different servers. Gnomes, elves, humans, trolls, orcs etc. All female and all different. She liked to play with different hair, different looks etc. I came home and she took me upstairs to proudly show me the ones she made. They had the most strange names: Liakji, Fuiku, Kjhdie etc. She always asked me to pronounce the names and then had the biggest fun. While sitting there with her she made a female troll hunter. When we had to enter the name, she asked me to name it “Jasmina” and so I did. She did the standard lvl 3 and then quit. And so, Jasmina was born. And that was even before Zhero was created or Sonia was higher than lvl 20.

As Jasmina was on Skullcrusher, I didn’t delete it. I used to delete a lot of the chars she made to prevent having 8 chars on every server possible and one night I decided to surprise her and levelled Jasmina to level 10 and got a pet. The day after I showed her and she liked it a lot (ofcourse :D) and she started playing with it. I taught her to send the pet and shoot. She did that and pressed all the buttons on the bar for shooting (I removed all irrelevant buttons for her, so she could not press ‘wrong’). She started to enjoy it. I came home another day and she had been busy in the Barrens shooting everything in sight and slowly levelling Jasmina while in the mean time collecting “schatjes” (dutch for treasure). Her bank was (and to this day still is) filled with pearls and shiny stuff. The gold bar Vinnie has send to her is up till now her most valuable treasure.

I did not play with Jasmina, but she did every once in a while. Best thing was that she learned how to pick up quests (yellow exclamation mark) but could not read what to do. So she picked up all quests she could find and started to randomly kill stuff untill something like “barrens tiger 1/6” appeared. She then kept on killing them untill she completed that quest.

Nice story from back then: At lvl 22 I send her to Ashenvale and while we had visitors she had been busy there for an hour or so. When I came upstairs I noticed that she was playing in a group with someone and I just read his question in the chat. It was something along the lines of “do you have this quest as well”. I quickly jumped in and typed that he was playing with a 5-year-old and she could not read it. He was surprised and said she did real well and they had been playing together for over 45 minutes. She just jumped on the target he selected with pet and Jasmina and they killed them together. I was proud :D

It was not untill a few weeks ago when she asked me to level Jasmina to lvl 60. Jasmina was 28 at that time with 5 days /played. I did not look back and the last 2 weeks I have been powerplaying and made it to 60 in /played 9 days and 11 hours. Hunter is by far the easiest class to level. Just spec beastmastery and go. I used a levellingguide (to test it as well for my upcoming paladin, it is really really helpful) and made her 60. 2 days ago she asked me another thing, while I had in my mind to get some pvp-gear to replace the green sh1t I am using now, and made me realize she and I are playing different games: “And dad, when she is 60, will you get her some nice looking dress as well?”.

True story

-- Zhero (taking a 9 day break from levelling now)

Big Pile Of Nothing Really

2006-12-28T13:35:00.000+01:00

So here we go. A big pile of nothing I stumbled across the last few days. I will just try to put it in 1 big post. Ah, but first:

**************************************************************
Bye Ravirra (the dude)! A guildy quitting is never a nice thing, but quitting wow altogether and giving your account away seems like a no-way-back. Cya dude, hang on in there. Too bad we won’t meet in TBC.
**************************************************************

Now we have that off our chests, let’s go! I’ve been grinding the classforums (yes, all om them) to just see if anythings interesting is in there. I don’t know why I do it as basicly they all whine about how underpowered they are and how overpowered hunters and warlocks are, but you got to do something in the boss his time :D Here some that made me smile.

QUOTES
Paladinforum (question asked by a shammie)
“If a pally bubbles and no one’s around, does he still hearth?”

Warriorforum (in a thread where they’ve been told it’s not all that bad)
"This is how my standard combatlog lookes like.
- Absorbed
- Absorbed
- You cant do that while stunned
- Not enough rage
- Need more rage
- 98
- 460
- 1400
- Ability not ready yet
- Absorbed
- Absorbed
- Can't do that when you are dead”

Druidforum (stupidest things done as a druid)
“Dumbest by far was when i tried to kill a Warlock”

Hunterforum (about where are the normal hunters?)
What gives? Last I checked at character creation when selecting Hunter it doesn't say: "Play this class if you're severely mentally challenged and worship Legolas."

AN OLD FRIEND
Not all will know the name, but the older Ravens will recognize him. He and a fellowshammie tried to beat me and nimp in Arena (dual shammie vs. dual lock).

NEVERMORE
He told us he was working in Belgium at the moment, but I think he is up to something. Seems he created a new guild with high level members to totally wtfpwn the arena in TBC. Secret training did not go unnoticed.

When our I-respec-twice-a-week-GM came online and discovered that feral was very viable right now (being pushed in that direction by “I will never play druid again”-Milker: a lvl 60 druid) he knew the horror would never stop. And I feel for him.

NIMRA
“Hardcore gamer” is a too soft expression for this guy. Always ready for some spicy comments as well. He made a mage, levelled it to 26 within 12 hours and gave these comments. (keep in mind that Artanias a.k.a. “The Snail” is not known for fast levelling and keep in mind Nimp grinded to exalted with Timbermaw twice!)

Here Ravirra with some serious stuff. You know you need those Nimp-remarks to keep you going in the game!

CAVERNS OF TIME
Now if you have not been there yet, I suggest you leave PvP for a moment anf fly down to Tanaris. It looks great. I took some screenies while I was there on my hunter.

http://i12.tinypic.com/4g50ok7.jpg
http://i18.tinypic.com/2ebcxso.jpg
http://i12.tinypic.com/352q1js.jpg
http://i16.tinypic.com/4cbk5yd.jpg

-- Zhero (grinding a hunter to 60 atm to kill time)

ps: I seem to have f*cked up the page, will fix when home. (this sh1t4ss screens at work need to die! ARGFJ^#&*)

psII: fixed

PvP-mania?

2006-12-27T14:03:00.000+01:00

That’s all there is at the moment. Everyone and his mom is pvp-ing. If you do /who Molten, you will find an empty list. Guilds are not raiding, people are bored and either preparing for their new character or pvp-ing. Honor is what it is all about and most people want that fast, so they make premades. Those premades jump from BG to BG to find a PUG-group which they can steamroll very fast, so they can get honor faster. A lot of premades do this. They avoid eachother to avoid lenghty games to avoid getting not so much honor. Day in, day out, week in, week out.

And what for?

Now don’t get me wrong, I do like PvP. Just premades owning left and right is not my cup of tea. I love to battle a better geared player, I just can’t handle 5 of them at once (and I am a warlock! But don’t worry: I made a ticket for this. Warlocks should be able to handle 5 better geared players at once). I like to PvP ‘old style’ with nice 1 on 1 battles, so we went out ganking in Silithus a couple of times (which resulted in us being corpsecamped. Now THAT’s how it should be) and gained some honor in the process, but not as much as we could have made in premades. I have to be honest: I did enjoy the few times I entered our own guildpremades and won, but it just doesn’t cut it for me. It has all to do with better communication (Teamspeak vs. /BG-chat) and not so much with skill.
Arena will be different as there you will have premade vs. premade.

So I levelled my daughter’s hunter from 34 to 50 atm and trying to get it to 60 before TBC. Maybe even throw in some blue gear, so she will be ready for TBC (she does not play much anymore, she mostly plays The Frozen Throne (warcraft III) and then the custom maps) and I do it to keep myself busy. Half of january my female bloodelf paladin (with the name Soni) will be created and I will level her to 70 first. At least that is the planning.

And that’s what it is for most people I assume. They are keeping themselves busy until TBC. You CAN NOT keep yourself busy if you do not set goals, so we make our own goals.
- 2/4/6 pieces R12/R13 gear
- HWL/GM weapons
- Levelling an alt to 60
- Collecting gold
- Getting reputation
- Starting a new alt mage (uhhh...???)
It is almost impossible to keep yourself busy without goals. So people are not really pvp-ing for the gear. They know it will be obsolete soon. They are just keeping themselves busy until TBC.

3 weeks people, 3....more....weeks.

-- Zhero (almost got 2 pieces R12 gear now)

Secret of an Old God

2006-12-12T16:00:00.000+01:00

Onyxia
Finally they found something. Debated in many raids and on many forums: The Onyxia-encounter.
We all know the Onyxia-encounter and the strange aggro happening at the start of phase III. In this forum-thread it is all explained, but I’ll run it down here when you don’t want to read the whole thread.

Basicly everyone who gets fireballed in phase II, gets a complete aggroreset unless you resisted or partially resisted, then you seem to get a partial reset.

Now this explains why priests often get initial aggro in phase III. They get targeted in phase II, use their aggro reducing ability and get their turn in the start of phase III. After more than 18 months they have finally figured it out. They are still undecided though about the deep breaths though. Here it is still a discussion about positioning, average dps and just a random factor. A big gratz to Blizzard for making this so unobvious that it took this long to figure out. Awesome!

Dives
Now while I was reading about it, I came across some links. And this one caught my eye. It is good old Dives. Guildleader of “Wipe Club” and famous for his Onyxia-yelling. It seems the way he handles it, wasn’t so bad after all :D

- interview + pic from Dives
- the famous animated version of the Onyxia-wipe

GM's R evol
Ah and another interesting read on the american forum for if you are bored at work. It’s about ‘the most selfish thing a guild member has done’, mostly about GM’s that steal bankgold, items and other ways to upset and abuse the rest of the guild.

They are weird from time to time, but it seems we’re not that bad off with Nevermore and Talanar :D What's a normal officer these days anyway?

-- Zhero (sees confirmed he is not a bad guildy)

Some cheese with that whine please

2006-12-08T16:00:00.000+01:00

It’s that time again. The few days after a patch when the whole community it seems comes to the Blizz-forums and starts crying. Let’s do a small trip round the classforums. It is really entertaining.

Hunterforum (thread titles in Italic)
#1: Noob hunters critting 1k+ white crits. This is a whine about arcane shot
#2: Simply amazed…..all clothies are free kills. This is about an amazed hunter who kills every clothie in seconds
#3: This is happening more often than not. This is with a screeny from a combatlog where a mage is killed before silencing shot fades with over 4k of damage (the average mage has 3000-3500 life).

Conclusion: Hunters are nasty (I experienced this as well with my lock. I was able to beat some 1v1 anyway. I found a 1866 arcaneshot crit in my combatlog as well).

Mageforum
#1: Hunter vs. mage (new patch) ROFL. About a mage complaining about hunters
#2: READ: warlock whining about mage talents. About a mage who found a post in the warlock forum where a warlock whines about mages. O_o the irony.
#3: Mages are dead, what have you done? About a mage complaining about being 2-shotted by rogues and warriors. A warrior replies their damage is nerfed and he just got HIT by a 2.4k fireball)

Conclusion: Mages have it bad and are undecided about their spec and new talents. Not much whines about other classes.

Paladinforum
#1: Time to nerf you guys. A whine from a lowlevel alt about paladins in plate 2-shotting everything
#2: Thank you Blizzard! About a happy paladin who likes the new spells and animations.
#3: Thanks for ruining PvP. “it’s too easy now” from a paladin

Conclusion: Paladins have a general good feeling about the patch and the new talents and are comfortable in PvP.

Priestforum
#1: How many of you are quitting? About a priest who claims they get 2-shotted and claims priests are back on the bottom of the foodchain now.
#2 Anyone else feels gimped compared to others? About priest that were ‘ok’ prepatch in shadowform and now loose to most classes except warriors
#3 1-shotted. About a priest who gets one-shotted by all classes.

Conclusion: Priests have it bad and can’t believe they are not on top of the foodchain anymore. Best quote from 1 of the threads: “Get spirit of redemption and you can heal great in pvp! (think 90% of my healing done happens when dead -.-)”

The biggest thread in the warriorforum is the thread called “Retired Warrior as per 2.01 list”

Well I could go on here, but I think you get the picture. It’s been patchday again and some positions have been changed in the foodchain.

New order seems to be:
1. Hunter
2. Warlock
3. Paladin
4. Rogue
5. Druid
6. Mage
7. Priest
8. Shaman
9. Warrior

Feel free to disagree, but this seems to be the order atm. If you feel depressed, just grind some of the class-threads as it will certainly cheer you up. There’s lots of whine, you only need to bring the cheese yourself to have an entertaining evening. Have fun the coming weeks those with powers and be patient those down the chain, it will only last till TBC.

Let me end with a post from the shaman thread. It is called “HOW DOES IT FEEEEEEEEEL?"

“Today we paladins are what shamans used to be and shamans are what paladins used to be Welcome to my old chair, you may sit on it as much as you like”

Amen brother

-- Zhero (suddenly pvp-ing with his lock again :D)

PS: If you think you have problems, just think about Jonez/Farlon and how he struggles through life.

Vurtne 4

2006-12-05T21:46:00.000+01:00

I know I am a fanboi. Sorry, I just can't help it. There is nothing I enjoy so much as seeing a player with this much skill. It is smaller than normal, 'cause he wanted to release it before the talent-patch.

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=32334

And while you are at it. I see Drakedog 6. Haven't seen it yet, but downloading it now. He once was the example of many locks, beating classes with seduce nukes in the time warlocks were eaten by every class in this game.

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=32623

-- Zhero

Patchday!

2006-12-05T11:26:00.000+01:00

Wednesday we will get the PvP-patch as I see it. I think many (if not all) will PvP and get their share of warlord/marshal epix. It is rumored round the net that the honor gain will be approx. 10% of the known honor gain and that you have to get tokens from the bg’s and turn them in together for rewards. Here just a copy-paste from the forums:

********************
Rank 12 equivalents: 43875 points
Epic Pants cost 19125 honor pts & 30 WSG marks.
Epic Gloves are 12375 pts & 20 AV marks.
Epic Boots are 12375 pts & 20 AB marks.

Rank 13 equivalents: 51625 points
Epic Chest now costs 20250 pts & 30 AB marks.
Epic Helm now costs 19125 pts & 30 AV marks.
Epic Shoulders now cost 12375 pts & 20 AB marks.

Entire epic set is 95,625 pts plus 80 AB marks, 50 AV marks & 30 WSG marks.

Rank 14:
22.5k pts & 20 AB marks for epic 1-hand (ranged weap & shields)
45k pts & 40 AV marks for epic 2-hand. http://www.thottbot.com/beta?n=1109

Entire blue set: 21,520 pts
Boots 2750
Gloves 2750
Pants 4250
Chest 4500
Shoulders 2750
Helm 4250
********************

So everyone and his mother is able to get those nice looking shoulders and some heavy pvp players will even get the whole set including the rank 14 weapons (Hooray for Puffie! I bet he will get them. And well deserved if you ask me). Same goes for the epic rewards from the individual BG’s. They can be bought as well. From the same forumpost:

********************
Also, WSG epic pants are 8500 pts & 60 marks. The blue lvl 60 WSG sword is 10,000 pts. I assume the AB & AV rewards are similar requirements. I believe TuF is 24000 honor and 40 AV marks, Lobotomizer 12000 honor 40 AV marks. I havent confirmed these in a while.
********************

Don’t forget to take a look into these. You can now replace the parts which you were unhappy about with nice epix.

But is this wise?

It is nice if you are all about looks. If you want to look cool, go ahead. I think it might be more wise to save up all the points and marks (especially these) until TBC (and hope they will not be reset). Because then you will be able to buy lvl 70!!! PvP-epix. And I am not sure if you really want to grind those 30 AV marks again (not as a Horde, you don’t want that!).

Just take a look here:
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?n=1121

That is lvl 70 stuff. And ofcourse you need to turn in honor as well and yes you can grind that again when you are 70, but having a little headstart seems enough advantage for me to not turn in any marks/honor for items the coming 6 weeks. I guess there is plenty to focus on when I am 70. (new instances, new repgrinds etc.) to not want to grind bg's again for tokens.

6 weeks…come on guys…..only 6 weeks. You should be able to handle that. Your patience will be rewarded.

-- Zhero (who is actually thinking of turning in 30/30/30 marks for the black war wolf. I just love the looks so much)

Ravens LAN, Nimramaw and Farlon

2006-11-29T10:55:00.000+01:00

Ravens-LAN
We had a LAN this weekend with some Ravens in our GM’s house. It was awesome!
Attendees:
“The Evil Cow”-Nevermore
“The Lovely Hostess”-Temporan
“The Overpowered”-Krexxor
“OOM is not in my dictionary”-Mortui
“Sorry for those two extra groups”-Waylanderm
“Eat this arrow”-Zeppox
“He Who Does Damage”-Rastaman
“The Silent One”-Hedrich
“Protector of the Timermaw”-Nimra
“Frost or Fire?”-Sonia

What did we do? We drank bullet, ate snacks and chips and chinese takeout. Cleared ZG, did random stuff, killed Timbermaw, grinded gold, did some random instances and had a lot of fun. We played from saturdaymorning till late in the afternoon on Sunday. I don’t think any pics were made, but I am not sure as I was not really awake. Hedrich and Rastaman were first timers on a Ravenslan, the others did meet before. This was a little goodbye to Nevermore as well as he will have to work the coming months and could not promise us internetaccess for those months.

Timbermawmadness
Now Nimra. This dude levelled a warrior to 51 before he joined on Skullcrusher. He then went on to make a 60 rogue, 60 hunter and a 60 warlock. On his rogue he grinded exalted AB and AV back in the times when AV was taking anything from 3 to 24 hours (but were at least won by Horde) and AB-queue’s were 20-60 minutes. He changed to hunter, grinded exalted with those 2 again and went 1 step further and grinded exalted with the Timbermaw. He took a little break from WoW, gave his account away and then started again on a warlock. He is already exalted with AB and AV again and did the unthinkable.

He went to his friends the Timbermaw again and gained another exalted status. To be honest I’ve never read that anywhere. He surely is the grandmaster of grind!

Chinese farmers can’t kill him! “How Can You Kill That Which Has No Life?”

Jonez on sex and relationships
And then we have Jonez/Farlon. This dude keeps amazing me. Some random weeknight he was all loose and gave us a speech about his sexlife, his preferences and his relationship. Drugs and booze might have been involved, but this just can be his true self as well. There was more too it, but I just couldn’t screen it all.

The guildchatsubject was sex and this was Farlon’s contribution

Then he just let his thoughts hit the screen

And when someone said we would die then

He went on about his preferences and fantasies

and told us about his past relationship

and you wonder why stuff like Cyberpatrol exists? I don’t.

-- Zhero

EMO: the source of all evil

2006-11-22T17:18:00.000+01:00

Emo is short for emotional and especially meant when people react emotional on things in chat (or on the forum). Almost 90% of the last 10 incidents in our guild can be related to one or more persons being ‘emo’. Why is this such a strong factor for incidents? The more ‘emo’ people you have, the more likely it is nasty incidents will happen.

Let me give some examples of typical ‘emo’-behaviour.

1. Leaving raid or even leaving guild when things are not going your way.
2. Accusing other people’s playstyle
3. Talking back because you get accused

The main problem is that it is all text-based. We can’t see the expression on the face of the other and give our own meaning to the sentence made without taking into consideration what is possibly meant by this remark. ‘L2play noob’ can be meant very lightly but taken very heavily. This will lead to discussions which can lead to incidents.

“Jezus, don’t you huntards know how to do damage” is an emo-remark.. What answer could you give here as a hunter? A normal answer is almost not possible.

“Try to aimed shot and multishot whenever it is up, keep the sting up at all times” is a more positive way of saying the same. It’s easier to give a normal reply to this sentence and will, no doubt about it, lead to better results.

“How can we wipe here two times in a row?”. Another useless remark. The answer will always be the name of 1 or more persons and did you really wanted to know that? Did you really want their names in the chat as the cause of a wipe? Do you think that helps for the next try?

“With this group it will never work”
[randomplayer] leaves the raid
This is really the worst you can do. Not only is there one person less, your remark states that all the other players are morons who do not know how to play and you do not want to play with inferior players. Such actions give valid reasons for a guildkick in my opinion as these are not the kind of people you want in your guild.

If you are frustrated, don’t try to vent it through the chat (or teamspeak). It lowers moral and never ever is constructive. Sure, it will help you for a few seconds cause you let it all out, but it lowers moral and spirit for a much bigger amount. Try and stay positive. Try not to type what you think, but hold back and think about what you wanted to say. Is it constructive? Will it help for the rest of the raid? Or am I venting anger?

Nothing wrong with being a little emotional when raiding. Lots is wrong with bringing it out on others. Think before you speak and you will see raids will be a lot more pleasant for everyone (including yourself)

-- Zhero (emoproof)

Burn In Righteous Fire!

2006-11-21T14:18:00.000+01:00

That's right! I've been laughed at, made a fool off and been insulted by all classes in my guild for the last week. These guys think paladins can't pwn. pfff. I told them my Blood Elf Paladin will bring them to justice and they'll be watching my feet from where they are lying, but all I get is laughter and more meant-to-be-funny remarks. So what to do? I just go find an imba movie on youtube. hehe. Ok guys, this is a small movie about a TBC paladin fighting 2 rogues in arena. Remember who you are, you will be one of the 2 rogues :D

I am so going to enjoy the whispers after their defeat:
- "That shield is lame"
- "That's not fair, because my recklessness/shield wall was on cooldown"
- "I was out of healthpots"
- "You're still a noob"
- "You brought me out of stealth! That is not fair"
- "You healed yourself"
- "./spit f*ckface"
- "Your just the luckiest person I know with those crits"
- "If you didn't kill my mate, we would have gotten you, noob!"

Haha, now watch the next one as well and go cry in a corner, ktnx.

Well, looks balanced to me. Oh my god, I can't stop laughing. You guys will burn in righteous fire! Again and again and again and again.

Had enough?

Thought so.

-- Zhero (waiting for noobs to flame)

Gold and Water

2006-11-20T16:40:00.000+01:00

Not much to tell today. I had some busy RL stuff and just remembered I could collect 300 runecloth/mageweave/silk and wool for the turn-in quests for my paladin (300 yes, because I guess there will be 1 in the new BE-capital as well), so I am currently collecting that. I let my gold grow a little (close to 800 atm) as well by grinding Dire Maul, Stratholme and random grindsessions everywhere, so I am sure I will have enough to help me level my paladin. Not everyone likes to grind though and therefor have not much gold, which in the guildchat lead to this ‘quote of the week’ from Irdra.

Now as a mage you get all kinds of whispers when standing in Orgrimmar. I found a new solution to the ‘can you please boost me through RFC’-whispers.

Hehe, that left him confused :D

Now another funny one. I am standing in the Auction House when a warrior approaches me.

A warrior asks for water, so my natural response is ofcourse ‘water?’. Now here is where the fun part starts as this dude appearantly has a mod which reacts on the sentence ‘water?’.
He realizes he is caught and an explanation follows.

I make him some anyway. Some more explanation follows where he mentions he downloaded it, is testing it and his brother made it. Kinda confusing explanation, but whatever. The best thing to do with people who have such addons is just giving them the desired water and let them be the fool.

I am too good for this world, but there’s no hate in me anyway.

-- Zhero

Paladins in Panic

2006-11-15T17:08:00.000+01:00

On the Paladinboards there is only one subject at the moment. Besides the usual whines, you can find threads all over the place about one important thing: The looks of the Paladin Tier5 set. Though this will probably be something lots of players will not see for years to come, everyone and his grandma has an opinion. Here the set as it is supposed to be at the moment:

All complaints are about how freaking gay this set looks. Pink all over the place! Even the Easter Bunny looks cooler than this. Now we know humans are gay (us as being the noble Horde), but let’s not hope my evil blood elf will have to wear this! This can not be true. Here! Let me show you the warlock-T5-set!

Now THIS is what I call an awesome set! Evil all over the place as a warlock is supposed to be. A warlock running towards you with this set, has half the battle won already. The only way I can win in Paladin T5-gear is when my opponent can’t stop laughing. Let me quote one of the paladins “This is a slap in the face from Blizzard! We are laughed at in game for as long as WoW is running, but this just adds insult to injury”. Someone even took it a step further and redesigned the set. Here it is:

Which led to another paladin on the board asking: “Hey! What are the stats on the handbag?”. Well as long as the humor is there, it won’t be that bad I guess :D

-- Zhero (rethinking his paladinreroll, because looking like a Teletubby is not cool)

Random weekend shit

2006-11-13T13:44:00.000+01:00

So, where to start? I have been gaming all weekend and this morning looked through the pics I assembled. There was some nice stuff in it, so here we go.

Mount Hyjal
Let’s start with our trip to Mount Hyjal. This is a spot which is not open at the moment (rumours are you can get banned for being there) but you can get there with a lot of patience and practise. Late saturdaynight Nimra, Ghostt, Artanias and myself were killing some demons in the south of Winterspring for the doomguard-warlockquest. Nimra told us you could get to mount Hyjal from there and looked for the spot with help of a youtube video. Nevermore came as well and we started.

The fun part is you get ‘stuck’ all the time by invisible walls where you have to search for the part you can sneak through (or blink through as mages seem to be able to do that). This ended in me and Artanias (both mages) being in Hyjal after 45 mins or so and Nimra being stuck on the last wall. He threw away his heartstone, used the unstuck button, but that didn’t work. Damn. Then he made a summoningportal, which was in reach for us to click and summoned himself 1 centimeter further away. This worked! Hooray!

The rest of the guild who were online (10 people or so) were summoned quickly and we took a Ravens sight-seeing-tour through Mount Hyjal. In the middle of Mount Hyjal is the World Tree. Check the pics for the tree and some funny Blizzard stuff. Beneath the tree is a small lake where we all took a dive. It is so far down that I as an undead (3 minutes under water) could not even reach the bottom without underwater breathing buff. Deep down we gathered and summoned Puffie (yes Puffie!) and Nimra let him die (well, did he?) . O_O the joy we have with the troubles of others :D Here some pics from the World Tree and the message Blizz has left there.

http://i15.tinypic.com/2mn22ps.jpg
http://i10.tinypic.com/2rfzyno.jpg
http://i7.tinypic.com/2r4o28k.jpg
http://i10.tinypic.com/4biq1p5.jpg

Water plx
Now If this question is asked beforehand, I might consider it, but it went different. I was mailing a lot of stuff to my bank-alt with the CT-mail mod. When I am almost done, a trade window opened. WTF, that f*cked up my mail! Grrrrr, now I have to do it again. I press escape to make the window disappear and in my head I realize this is why the ‘ignore trade’-option is in the Blizzard-interface. It is there to help mages. Do you guys even realize what it is to be in Orgrimmar? If you haven’t played a lock or a mage, you really have no idea. I play both AND I am a patient man who always hands out water if asked in a normal matter. Roleplayers get extra water btw! But maybe there is hope for this one. He ofcourse whispers me when I cancel the trade:

Haha, this will teach him! Some explanation from me is in order:

Now a minute later I get this one. See, he already learned. He patiently waited (or was denied water by another mage) and now asks before opening a trade. Unsure if he will f*ck up again, he asks if he can open the trade.

And we end the discussion is normal fashion. Another 12-year old educated. Mages, thank me later for fighting this Don Quichotte battle for us.

Dead in Orgrimmar
This was just too strange. In all cities if you get fall-damage you will loose a percentage of your life, so nobody ever can die from falling. Now some programmer decided to let people die once in a while or a GM was having a bad day. But after a raid I jump down and die. Ok, I was not full health, but that should not matter (at least that is what I thought up till now. Plz someone explain to me how it works!)

http://i15.tinypic.com/43cbqyf.jpg

Random quotes and pic of the week
I found some quotes worth mentioning in the guildchat again. Now I am not sure about Hood’s preferences, but you be the judge

And the quote of the week is where Artanias gives Pedro the hard thruth (well done, Art! Let the thruth be told)

Ah and then this pic from last week. I thought it had some artistic value. It’s from our trip to Ironforge. Well, let me tell the story. We were in Stranglethorn for the chest with 6-7 Ravens and had to duel Lovedeath and friends (ex-guildies) as well as a same sized Alliancegroup. Well, most alliance are PvE-oriented frostboltspammers, so no real challenge there. They outgeared us, but we outskilled them and took the chest while killing Lovedeath in the proces. We continued our trip and cleaned Stranglethorn from alliance, rode further to Duskwood and into Stormwind. We took the tram to Ironforge where we had fun for an hour or so doing “Let’s see who lives the longest while we all mount up and run through Ironforge” and “How fun is it to kill duelling Alliance”. Yeah yeah, we’re lame, but we seek fun in this game, so live with it! The pic is where we all try to decrypt the times the tram will arrive and leave. It’s pic of the week here at zhero-tolerance :D

http://i15.tinypic.com/2q89b1l.jpg

-- Zhero

/ignore

2006-11-09T13:58:00.000+01:00

The ignorelist. Sometimes I see people talk about their ignorelist and that they don’t have enough space. This really really surprises me. My ignorelist is empty. Ah…not totally true as I put a goldsellwhisperer once in it. But besides that I never ever have put anyone on it. Why would I?

You reap what you sow!

There you have it, ignorelistfillers! This, I really believe. A full ignorelist says more about yourself than about other people and players. If you get easily upset by people’s use of words you really must talk to yourself and ask what’s wrong. Why does it upset you?

Someone spamming a few lines in Orgrimmar, you put him in your list?
Someone bothering you for a summon or water/food, you put him in your list?
Someone saying stuff you don’t agree with, you put him in your list?

Ask yourself why you get upset so fast. Ask yourself why others can so easily get to you that you feel the need to put them on the ignorelist so you don’t have to see their words. “Good luck IRL”, I want to say to those as I am sure this haunts them there as well. Lighten up! Life’s too short to be filled with negative shit!

Now I am close to 100% sure that those with an empty ignorelist aren’t on a single list themselves. See the pattern?

-- Zhero

I just had to post this

2006-11-08T16:49:00.000+01:00

This is an oldie that I just recently remembered. I've read them all again and find it very funny, so had to share it. This is a guy who has a lvl 60 Horde rogue by the name Angwe and a lvl 1 alliance called Angwespy. He is ganking always, everywhere and all levels. People know it’s him and know he has an alliance lvl 1 logged in at the same time, so they whisper him (not sure how updated this is, but damn it is funny): This is his story:
http://utterwizardry.com/angwe/quotes.htm

and on a sidenote:
When you take a look at www.thottbot.com/beta you will find a lot of stuff that is currently in the beta. I see a lot of nice loot ofcourse, but also the professions have some goodies to offer and even professions which at the moment are not very usefull (or profitable: I mean 1 mooncloth every 4 days? The days I thought mooncloth shoulders were the best shoulders in the game are far behind me) seem to have gotten a boost. TBC is going to be fun and I want it now!

-- Zhero

Razorgore is down!!!

2006-11-03T15:44:00.000+01:00

And damn, I’m proud. After many weeks of unsuccesfull attempts due to not having enough people in raid, motivation finally got boosted again with this dude down. Unfortunately I couldn’t be there and for the second time (it happened to Onyxia as well), they killed him without me for the first time. Well I was there for every single wipe before, so I feel part of it anyway. It does make you think however… :D

I believe (Ret)art-anias overnuked in an almost flawless attempt and managed to wipe the raid, before they finally got him on the next attempt. Gratz, gratz and more gratz. Awesome! Art, gratz as well, I bet the guildmessage will be adjusted accordingly with a new ‘Retard of the Week’. Hehe, just kidding dude, all in good fashion.

With the spirit back, I feel we can do more than this and hope more progress will be made in the coming weeks. When I heard it I respecced immediately to frost to be of more use in PvE. (another 50g down the drain). Taking Padia’s advice I respecced to the very PvE friendly 28/0/23. I went in AB with this spec and surprised myself with how well I was doing. Still gotta train more and get used to POM (man o man, how I love those pom-fireballs) and improved counterspell (what was it that you wanted to cast? Ah never mind, eat this!) again.

Well done guys! (and girls as we have many)

-- Zhero

Another day at the job part II

2006-11-01T19:31:00.000+01:00

Sometimes you have the feeling in this office that you’re facing premades all day long. Nothing, absolutely nothing is going your way. It feels like someone joins before the boss and ‘steals’ your loot, it feels like you’re rolling 99 while the last one is rolling 100, it’s like discing and seeing a 400 queue, it’s like people constantly opening a tradescreen and asking for water, it’s like they all say it’s your fault the raid wiped, but you know it’s the raidleader’s, it’s like you miss the raidinvite while you were in time and prepared. It’s like they tell you your damage sucks while you had been sheeping the adds at domo.

Days like these suck hard.

They suck very hard

They suck you dry till the point you just want to get some hp and mana and go on a rampage boss killing spree.

Let’s take that sucker colleague that sits across me first. BOOM HEADSHOT! He deserves it. Believe me! Then across the hall to that other colleague. He did nothing, but sucks anyway. BOOM MULTIKILL! Now down the stairs to that female manager I have to work with. She had it coming and she knows it. “Hi Zhero!”…”Hi bitch!” BOOM ULTRAKILL! Further to the right to pay the program-manager a visit. Paybacktime for all the times he wanted to interfere with my softwarereleases. As if anyone would listen to him. Lol. “Hi Noob!”….”Huh?” BOOM KILLINGSPREE! In the corner there is that trainer. She’s a bitch too. No need to let her bore more people. “Hi sweety…want some lead?”….(puzzled look on her face) BOOM RAMPAGE! Down to 1st floor. Here is where the guys-with-ties are and where the average iq matches the temperature. Let’s get that projectmanager first. They are the IT-has-to-do-what-I-say-type. Dude, if I would do what you ask, this company would have been bankrupt a long time ago! Here take some leadpills! They’ll help you figure out stuff (he is watching a MS-projectsscreen. He already lost at life, but doesn’t realize it yet). BOOM UNSTOPPABLE!. Ah, another enters. He still has the my-project-fails-but-I-managed-to-blame-IT-look on his face. BOOM MONSTERKILL! Free lead for everyone! Come and get some! While I walk towards the director’s office, I wonder if I looted the first ones. Never mind: the big loot comes from this one. I enter the room, tell him "Noobs in blues can never beat me" and finish it quickly. BOOM GODLIKE!!!! He never knew what hit him. Well, story of his life I would say. No loot ofcourse. Duh!

While I step in my car I think about what just happened in my head and I realize it makes me feel a lot better. I think I will take this tattoo. I am a badass today!

-- Zhero

Blood Elf Paladin

2006-10-30T15:34:00.000+01:00

I’ve given this a lot of thought, but I will reroll a bloodelf (probably female) paladin when TBC comes out!

I’ll give you a few seconds to let it sink in.
…
…
…
…
…
…
Really, I am serious.
…
…
…
I know and I can hear you think:
- ‘Dude, you have a 60 easymode wtfpwn-warlock, why not continue the ownage?’
- ‘Dude, you just decided to continue with your mage!’
- ‘Dude, you have a druid, that’s more fun than a paladin!’
- ‘Dude, a paladin. Are you awake?’
- ‘Dude, lolladins are gay’
- ‘Bubbleboys FTL!’
- ‘Dude, please!’

A few reasons for me:
- A new class (played a pala to lvl 14, that’s it so far)
- A new race (that should keep me happy for a few levels :D)
- I actually like the supportclass. I’ve had a warlock. I know what imba means. Been there, done that.
- I like healing
- I think paladins make a big difference in small groups and can make or break them (mages can’t do this)
- Paladins are awesome for PvP as supportclass
- I think paladins own in the right hands. I think I have those hands (we can all dream, can’t we?)
- Paladins will help the guild with the new raiding content.

Only downside so far is that I have to start from lvl 1 and while others are exploring new content, I will be slaying raptors in the Barrens. Small additional downside is that investing time now in my mage, lock or druid seems kinda pointless, but I still have fun with my mage, so I will last the last months before the expansion (we went with the tram from Stormwind to Ironforge yesterday and held who-can-last-the-longest-while-running-through-Ironforge-mounted contest with some guildies which was a lot of fun).

Well, I will level full speed and hope to be one of the first lvl 60/70 paladins on horde-side. It gives me something to do now as well. At the moment I am collecting levellinggear already to make the trip to 60 less painfull :D

-- Zhero

Huntard

2006-10-30T12:08:00.000+01:00

So there we are. In Wetlands, killing that last dragon in the Onyxia questline for 2 guildies. Me (druid) was tanking, mage, lock, rogue, priest were in it to do it for the rogue and the priest. It was late, took (as always with that line) too long and while we were standing there ready for the wetlands-dragon (forgot the name) a Horde hunter (with fitting gnome-costume) is there as well. Maybe he needs to kill it too.

Huntard yells: Invite me!
/invite huntard
huntard is already in group
To [Huntard]: your still in group
[Huntard] whispers: inv again
/invite huntard
huntard joins the raidgroup
[Party] Huntard: what are we doing here?

Now what the f*ck would we be doing here? I always wonder with those lvl 60’s these days. What did they do to get 60? When you’re in Dire Maul, whether it be east, west or north: they have no clue. They were never there, don’t know the pulls or the events. BRD: same, LBRS: same, UBRS: same. Strat and Scholo: please don’t get me started! In the early days we used to run those instances multiple times to get some nice blue gear. Nowadays they just grind to 60 with greens and apply to guilds to get their epix fast it seems. Why would some Hordes be in Wetlands watching a dragon in Alliance territory and ready to attack him?

While we start engaging I see a
[Party] Huntard: brb
We kill the dragon and while the people get their questitem I see
[Party] Huntard: back
[Party] Huntard: What did he drop?
I link my aurastone hammer and tell him I am very happy cause I was looking for it for a long time. It even came with the 55 healingspells enchant which was exactly the right one I told him. He was happy for me. Awwwwww, how cute….

[Huntard] whispers: what quest?
To [Huntard]: ?
[Huntard] whispers: what quest is this. Can you share it?
To [Huntard]: It’s for the epic rogue quest
[Huntard] whispers: what’s the reward
To [Huntard]: some big phat 2-hander
[Huntard] whispers: can I do that quest too
To [Huntard]: are you a rogue?

I continue by telling him that the rogue now has to run from Orgrimmar to Cenarion Hold in 12 minutes as the next step, but that he can use swiftness potions. He then asks if hunters have an epic quest as well. As I explain him that they have, he says “ok bya” and logs off.

Another newbie educated. Really, I am too good for this world. You do wonder though if they even understand why they are called huntards!

-- Zhero

Vurtne

2006-10-25T16:02:00.000+02:00

Calling him “God” would not justify his skill. It is something beyond that, but I’m not sure what words to use then. This mage shows what quick reactions, incredible overview and absurd timing can do to people. He has been my hero from his first video on. As all mages I worshipped Otherguy first, saw all his movies and still like them till this day, but this goes a couple of steps further.

Yes, I know we only see the winning fights.
Yes, I know he uses engineering, shadow-/fire-/frostreflect trinkets and bombs.
Yes, I know people will beat him as well and he does not show us these.
Yes, I know not all his opponents are as skilled as the people who bring up that argument.

But all these arguments really hold no ground, as it’s not about winning a duel, or succeeding in a gank or surviving a gank. It’s about control and how you play the string of events that lead to a player winning and a player dying and the strings he makes are far better than anyone I’ve ever seen.

If you don’t recognize why this guy is good (and better than other mages skillwise), plz don’t speak or whine about trinkets, opponents or whatever. Just be silent and ask someone to explain it to you. You might learn a thing or two.

Third video (just out, so only on google so far)
http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-6842193600891339580&q=vurtne

Second video
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=25525

First video
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=21974

What are you still doing here? Go download, go watch and enjoy someone better skilled than 99.99% of the players ever will be.

-- Zhero

PUG vs. Freddy vs. Jason. PUG wins!

2006-10-23T13:37:00.000+02:00

[4. LookingForGroup]: randomhunter: LF1M dps Dire Maul. Can summon.
You whisper to randomhunter: Inv me

Did you see that? Now why the f*ck do I react on that? I don’t know is my answer. I really don’t know. There are just moments in life where you wish you had done it differently. This was one of them. Brainfart-de-luxe. Inconvenient error in reality-checking procedure. Well, shit happens, so let's get it on!

They were all standing in Orgrimmar and not saying much in partychat so I continued grinding AD-rep (halfway to exalted) and after 5 minutes or so the fifth member joins. So now we have a lock, priest, tank, hunter and mage. Ideal setup it seems. I ask which DM we do and the answer is North. I ask if they will do tribute and the answer is yes. So I port to Thunder Bluff which was raided by an Alliance raid at that time, so it took me 3 corpseruns to get to the flightmaster (who luckily was still alive). I start flying and ask them if they have the mats.

Randomhunter: “For what”?
Sonia: “For doing a tribute”
Randomhunter: “We need mats for that?”
Sonia: “Any of you ever did a tribute run?”

At this point the hunter starts whispering me and telling me the priest is T1 and the warlock and himself half t1, so we will be alright. I tell him he will need materials for a tribute. I land in Feralas, port back to Orgrimmar and buy the frostoil, rugged leather, rune thread and thorium widget all the time whispertalking to the hunter who seems ok. He ends with asking me if I can lead them through. Sure no problem, I did tribute a bazillion times, so we will be fine I guess.

Now appearantly the lock and priest are uae-people (which I really don’t care about, but now it did raise some questions as they have a reputation). The tank was alright, the hunter was good enough (though no trapping from him, but that’s fine with me), but the lock and the priest sucked bigtime. Priest was aoe-healing all the time, leaving him with little mana after simple pulls. The warlock didn’t use curse of elements or shadow for that matter once, even not when I explained that it would greatly help. He seemed destruction specced, was using searing pain(?) all the time and started soul draining at 70% with a lot of mobs. No pet-usage (charm is very good in dire maul). It just seemed as 2 players who bought their account and were discovering the things it had to offer. I never actually saw players that skilless. Their gear made up for their lack of any skill however.

As always with PUGS, chests are ninja-ed. I explained the trap-encounter, but the warrior just came in range to attack him. Luckily he went into the trap before that. And yes, I explained several times why we should not kill bosses. They managed to kill the drunk dude (not sure though if that one counts as well), the first one (we needed that for the key). The third boss they managed to engage as well. “Again green loot ffs!”. “And 1 blue less” I added, but it didn’t seem to land anywhere. After we went up the stairs towards the ogre tanin. “guys, let me have it, I just used mine to make a suit” I said. In the middle of the pull, the lock saw his chance and ninja-ed the tanin (does not really matter, but how annoying to do it in the middle of a pull as if we would not notice then), so an extra mob as well. Also no problem, but I said 3 times to wait.

At this point I really did not want to play anymore and I did what I never did before. I heartstoned and wished them luck.

They want me to lead them through, but don’t trust me. I take the key (for the 2nd door) and they yell that we should roll. “Wait here, I will get it” results in them following me and pulling a group, which the priests aoe-fears, so 2 more groups add. It was all very depressing.
I whisper the hunter (he was ok) and apologize. He wants me to come back, but I just log and go to bed. PUG no more. I normally get them to listen and then we go smoothly through all pulls, but this was too much for me. I probably was tired as well.

Did I mention holy nova-ing right on my sheeps?
Did I mention corruption on sheeps?
Did I mention the warrior not attacking a sheep, cause he wants a ‘renew plz’ at 70%?
Did I mention the minute I got summoned back a trade window opens and i read (yes caps) ‘WATER”?
Did I mention I payed all the stuff (like 10g because some were only available in stack) and nobody offered to share the costs (just seems normal to me)?
Did I mention “FFS sheep that caster” while I am banished?
Did I mention walking in EVERY (yes each and every one of them) poisonous plants?
Did I mention the hunter taking the tailorrecipy from the chest (BOP) while the priest was tailor (and I for that matter)? At least he apologized.

Maybe I just set my bar too high. Or I expect that people play as I want them to. Well, it’s not that, but wearing t1 and never even seen the inside of dire maul? It does raise questions indeed.

PUG vs. Freddy vs. Jason?

PUG pwns them all!!

Bigtime!

-- Zhero