Heard in Ulduar

Raider: "Do you want me to measure it?"
Raid Leader: "Yeah do a measurement"
Raider: "Let me see here..."

Me: "Do I want to know what you're measuring?"

Pause
Snickers

Raider: "Yeah, my cock is 40 yards long..."

Zully's Bi-Weekly Gear Up Raid

After the Malygos incident with the huge lack of variety in classes, I think it's time to try and gear up some of our newer 80s. I was reading a thread about it on PlusHeal and I think the best way to do it is to set up a run specifically to gear new folks, and possibly to help some of our less skilled tanks get some experience. I picked twice a month because I have Monday nights available right now. That's probably going to change in a few weeks when the work schedule switches. I wonder if I could do a mid-day Saturday run? I haven't had much luck with early runs, but some of these guys are in school so they wouldn't really be able to start at 10 server. I could try 2p-6p server, that would give a break before the high end raids start in the evening.

The only difficulty I can see here is how I'm going to tactfully tell multiple 80s man that no, he can't bring his alts unless they're going to help me pull the raid along and let them roll on the lewtz. It's also pretty dependant on whether just me healing will be enough to boost an undergeared group. I'd need a higher end DPS to come with me, and I don't know who would be willing to do it.

I can also see a problem with only doing it one night a week, but maybe someone else in the group would be willing to keep it rolling the other nights of the week. That would give some leadership opportunities as well. Oh how nice it would be if these management things of mine worked.

Weekend Notes

I wanted to flesh this post out. Really badly. But work has been kicking my ass this week, so I'm going to release the shorthand notes as is. If I get inspired I'll come back to it, but most likely something more exciting will happen and I'll forget all about it.

Same thing goes for the April Gear Post. I just haven't had the time to devote to it, as I can't do it on my iPhone properly. I think I'll just wait till May, especially since it looks like I'll be running some Ulduar with Meat.

Went to Ulduar twice, killed Auriaya and got Mantle of the Preserver, also killed Kologarn. Cancelled malygos because not enough mix of people. Tried to do malygos but left to eat sushi. Got exalted with Orgrimmar and most of the way through Tranquillen. Krom got ditched for a raid at exactly the same spot as last time. Ran Goblin from Burning Steppes to Shattrah. Krom and Tran got Twilight Assist (1 drake up). Worked on the pally, ignored the warrior. Krom confirmed I'm a terrible warrior. Handled the fears really well with fear ward and pvp trink, and maybe something else. Shaman totems group wide or raid wide?

Late and Early

I woke up at 3:30 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I logged on to wow intending to do some fishing for the raid tonight. My favorite absentee GL was online and doing BGs so I decided to join him. The games didn't go so well but I had a good time playing with my new pvp/grinding spec. We also had a good chat. I miss having him around, he's such a nice guy.

After he logged off I ended up grouping with a former guildie who happened to be in the same AB as me. Unlike some of my guildies, I have no problem with people leaving the guild. If I like them I keep in touch. I think it's an advantage that I did run with other guilds, I get a lot more opportunities keeping a network outside the guild.

I'm a fan of bring your own warrior. Maybe it's just a priest thing, but warriors are my favorite class to group up with. Nice steady incoming damage, high health, fear breaking abilities, and bloodthirsty single target focus. Hawt.

I also got into a wintergrasp battle and got the Against the Odds achievement. I also saw someone I haven't seen in a long time. Expatriate! Oh man did I have some choice words coming out of my mouth at 4am. Even if I do get destroyed every time, I have to go after him whenever I see him, I just can't help myself. One of these days Expatriate, I'll get to spit on your corpse for a change. It's funny how you pick up on the names of people that really give you a hard time in PvP. *RAGE*

Malygos tonight. I'm scared, especially since I know I'm gonna be exhausted after work now. Hopefully I can sleep on the train.

Break

I think maybe it's time I took a WoW break. A real one, not just a week with my Twitter going off all the time and checking up on WoW Insider twice a day.

I've been thinking about this since we started our raid alliance with the Meat. I think one of the reasons I was playing so much before was simple sense of obligation to my guildies. They're great people, and fun to play the game with, but as I pull back from the game a little I see that I miss my own friends, and my own family. Now that there's more healers and more people to choose from, I feel like I can step away and it won't sabatoge anyone else's fun.

I thought the patch would freshen things up for me, but it turns out there's really not any content that I'm interested in. The Argent Tournament is just annoying. I don't want to have to learn to push five buttons in the right order to get my reward. If I wanted to roll my face on the keyboard, I would have rolled a hunter or a death knight. I don't think we're going to be doing Ulduar any time soon, and I just don't have the schedule to pull off the gear up.

The last time I logged in I just stared at the screen and wondered what I was doing. I logged off Zully and went to my Shammy. I suppose I could take that route too, level up for a while, put my 80s on the shelf. But I don't know if I SHOULD, you know?

I planned a Malygos run for Friday. Four deathknights, three rogues, two paladins, two dps warriors, two hunters, and a warlock signed up. I called for 2-3 ranged and 2-3 melee. This is why I didn't send out the mass invite before. Do I do it on pure gear? Do I go with the people I know? What about the new people, if I don't invite them will they quit? We'll see if it turns into the mess I think it's going to be.

I'm going to level my shammy until my business trip is over, then see if I still want to play. Right now, I really don't know.

Casuals and Guilds

I was a true casual player once. I probably don't qualify as a casual player anymore, based on the sheer amount of blood sweat and tears I put into WoW both inside and outside the game.

I didn't know anyone when I started playing WoW. I had heard a lot about it and decided to graduate from college before I started playing (which I must say was a very smart move on my part). I rolled in as a warrior sometime before patch 1.5(I remember the battlegrounds being added and running all the way up to Northern Barrens to queue for Warsong Gulch). I did a lot of quests, but practically no instances. If I needed to do a group quest, I just randomly invited whoever happened to be standing there with a pretty good success rate.

Eventually, I had a few friends join me. We started characters together on a brand new server. We saved our pennies and created our own little guild, when all you really got was a tabard, a chat channel, and a tag under your name. We rolled around and did quests together, and ganked lowbies. We probably did a few instances here and there, since we did have a healer and a tank. That was about it. They quit playing, I inherited a vanity guild, and I realized that WoW really wasn't a single player game with a group as a convenience. Life without a guild was miserable. I'm pretty sure I was just questing and doing battlegrounds for a while, then I joined my first 'complete WoW friend' guild. It was PvP based, and only lasted for about 2 months, but it was a real turning point in my WoW experience.

That sharp transition from single-player to friends/family to player based guild seems to be what Blizzard is trying to soften with the difficulty levels of the content. Those people in the single-player phase have fun stuff to do, and new content to explore in the patch. Friends/family guilds are likely able to do 5-man hard modes and 10-man instances without too much trouble, because they can be done with a small group of people. Player based guilds can do the full range of content. Hardcore progressionists should, in my opinion, be gunning for the hard modes. I really don't understand people who say that the content is too easy, but also say that achievements are stupid. That's what they are for, to test the high end players yet still let all player based guilds have a chance to see the content.

I have a new WoW buddy at work. It's the first time I've had another RL person to talk about WoW with in over a year, to the point where it feels weird to talk about it without a headset on. That separation between WoW and RL has changed the way I play so much, that I'm having a hard time bringing it together. He's also still in the single-player phase, even though he does have his little family guild. I feel like such a raider snob when I talk to him, but when he gets frustrated by Stranglethorn Vale, I can't help but smile and think about what it was like the first time I got stomped by a Devilsaur in Un'Goro crater. If you're a big time raider, stop and look around before you hit your QQ button. Remember what it was like when you were a n00b. It will really change the way you see the World of Warcraft.

Shake your Money Maker

I wasn't much of an opportunist when the expansion came out. I was too busy hitting northrend to spend time thinking about money. I thought that my enchanting trick would still work, but it really didn't the way they changed chanting and my money source dried up. Well, this patch I'm ready to make some cash. I think my little scribe is going to be worthwhile after all, even if it's only for a few weeks.

I'm making something like 25-30g per glyph right now for herbs that cost a tenth of that. I was going to try to farm them myself, but I've been really busy this week so I haven't even been online. If they're still selling well this weekend I may just do a farming run. But damn, with just what I had sitting around in my bags I made about 800g on glyphs.

Maybe I'll get that Kirin Tor ring after all.

Downloading...

Turns out my IP address changed at some point and my port forwarding was not going through. I've been behind a firewall this whole time.

*facepalm*

My 3.1 Thoughts

As with every other WoW blogger out there on the interweb (ha, I called myself a blogger) I have a whole bunch of opinions on the 3.1 patch. Of course, I didn't print out the patch notes using a work printer, and I would never spend 45 minutes with a highlighter going through the 50 page printout on company time. That would be outrageous!

On that note, as much as I'd love to write an epic novel sized post about the patch right now, I think that's a little much for me now as I do have a crap ton of work to do today.

After I deliver a copy of the notes to my work WoW buddy as a gift of course.

The Evil is in the Goatee

I had another old world weekend. There wasn't a whole lot going being a holiday weekend. Krom and I ran five BC dungeons over the two days. The only one that gave us some trouble was the mind control boss in Shadow Lab. Essentially, having a green plate wearing ball of fury coming after me does not end well. I also knocked out 50 or so quests in Netherstorm, giving me yet another batch of dungeons to do.

Yesterday, just as we were starting the Botanica I got a tell from the Meat asking if I wanted to heal Malygos. I'm pretty sure Krom only saw a cloud of mana dust as I took off. He's pretty high on my list, but just below new raid content. To be fair he declined coming along. His loss.

We took Maly down in five attempts. I was really proud of myself. I basically went in cold only having watched the Tankspot video. Holy crap the tank takes a lot of damage. I was caught off guard the first time. The next time I was a little slow on the bubble. Well, actially the problem was I was waiting to hear the move command. I gotta be confident of my troll toes, they work real good. I made it through phase 3 twice, one of which was the kill. I'm glad I did Aces High enough to know the buttons. No loot for me, but I don't care.

I'm only short by H Oculus to get the Frozen Wastes title. Unfortunately they're taking the title out in the patch, and I'm not going to be on tonight. I was a little mad about it, but I'll deal. I should have done the Oculus a long time ago. A few months back when I was all QQ about not raiding I never dreamed I would actually finish the 10 man content. As much as I like doing 25s, I'm actually perfectly happy. As long as I get to see it. It's that moment of watching the floor shatter and fall out from under the raid that makes it worth it for me.

Shiny titles are nice though. Sigh.

No Skool like the Old Skool

We finished up the 10 man Naxx by 8p on Saturday, so I had some time to do some old world achievements this weekend. I got exalted with Argent Dawn and Sporregar, and I ran all the Heroics in Hellfire Citadel and Tempest Keep. I made a decent amount of money from disenchanting the green/blue drops, enough to toss Krom and Tran some gold for repairs this morning when I collected all the AH sales.

I did get a new purple ring from Naxx. I'm keeping the crit ring, but I was at like 20% crit raid buffed. That's just ridiculous. Swapping for a little haste was really necessary. I also got to try out my frost resist set for Sapph. It helps, but I think it would help more if everyone else was wearing it. It did make it so I could eat the blizzard if necessary. It was kinda funny, I was ignoring the blizzard and everyone was yelling at me.

We wiped on Kel about 8 times, but we did get him. Krom finally got his axe, and Swif got the healing mace this time. Still no headpiece for me. This blue one is really starting to get on my nerves.

I also got the EoE key. Wewt! I promised I would set up a run if they looted it to me, I'll jump on Wow Heroes later and get my list together. Now that I got two groups to pick from it ought to work just fine. Maybe try a Sarth +1 (or 2 if Meat's feeling up to it). I'm a little excited.

L2Ski

I had a total nerd moment while I was doing a ski lesson in Colorado last week.

The instructor was trying to teach me to keep my arms in front of me while I was turning, and had us doing this exercise where you push your arms out while you make the turn.

He mentioned that it was like martial arts or Tai Chi where you push the energy out. It looked just like "Hadoken". You know, from Street Fighter. I just thought to myself "Hadoken" every time I stretched my arms out, and apparently it was the best I did all day.

Of course I cracked up laughing as he was teaching us this, and I had to explain to two 60 year olds why. ROFL

In other, WoW related news I set up the Blizzard Mobile Authenticator on my iPhone today. That makes 2 personal and 2 work related Rotating Security Keys that I have now. It was a great idea for Bliz to do that, it should really cut back on hack jobs.

Uphill Both Ways in the Snow

The re-install seemed to do the trick, and most of my add-on settings carried over just fine. When I popped into TeamSpeak on Tuesday the guys were just moving over to the Meat's vent so I went over there. Turned out they were doing their first night of 25 man Naxx. So I let them know I was patching up and it finished up just in time.

There were 6 healers in the group, and I was healing around the middle of the pack. I was surprised that on the meters Zon was doing more heals than me. Then again, he's actually been a raid healer a lot longer than me, he just spun his tank up first this time. I kind of miss his tank, to be honest. He was really fun to heal.

It was my first time doing a serious run at a 25 man Naxx, and it was a little strange not having as much riding on my heals. I picked up a nice pair of boots, which is good since I have no idea when I'll get another chance to do a 25. Stupid mid-week raiders.

I guess they're going to finish up Thad, Saph, and Kel tonight. I hope Krom's axe drops. Then he'll have to find something else to complain about LOL.

I think there was a WoW April Fool's joke going on yesterday because I was getting some dial-up and Darth Vader noises yesterday. I wonder if the kids these days even know what modem dial-up sounds like. I can still tell the difference between different speeds. In my day...