I’ve changed the tagline of this blog in acknowledgement of the fact that I have been drawn away from WoW in recent times. Doesn’t mean I’ve given up entirely on it — in fact, I fully intend to start leveling a holy priest to the cap this week. I promised I would, so should at least make the effort. But in the meantime, I’ve been drawn into a couple of browser-based self-limiting games that are mindless fun and also run out of time often enough that I can effectively do my errands and chores in between playing. One of these happens to be Facebook-based Oregon Trail.
Ah, Oregon Trail. This was one of my earliest video game obsessions, dating back to computer lab in elementary school. Yes, the good ol’ days of Apple IIEs and floppy disks that were actually floppy. And hunting buffalo with that old game was actually HARD! So great was my fondness for this game that I ordered the fancified 5th edition for my PC not so long ago. A really nice version, btw, that I keep on meaning to play again when I get around to digging up the disks from wherever they ended up after our big move last year.
Anyways, all this is to say that I got really excited when news of a Facebook-based version of OT came around. I’ve been playing it for 2 weeks now and am currently at level 79, aiming to clear out all the achievements. I’ve also taken a few notes, both for my own sake and for anybody else who might be interested in getting in on some wacky bear-shootin’, river fordin’, oxen drivin’ fun.
You’ve probably seen The Guild, a wildly popular web series about a group of MMORPG players that play a game similar to WoW. If you haven’t and you play any sort of game in the genre, you really should. They started doing little music videos as bonus features in the past year, probably as a result of their getting more budget and having better equipment/sets/costumes/crew/etc. The writing has always been hilarious, though, and the lyrics for this video are no exception.
I like Gaga. She makes sparkly, bouncy music and knows the value of elaborate and sometimes garish costumes. I also like WoW. It is sparkly and bouncy in its own special way, and the whole point of the game is to play through content so you can wear increasingly elaborate and garish costumes. This music video parody is the mating of two of  my favorite things into one wacky video of awesome. I dare you not to end up humming this all day after watching it.
So after years of prodding, my good friend Sassy has started playing WoW again! She had a trial account that previously expired, but hopefully it’ll stick this time around. We started her off as a paladin, figuring it was the most versatile and durable for a beginner. And because we’ll hopefully be able to train her as a raid healer as time goes by Took her for a tour through Eastern Kingdoms on my flying rocket this morning and managed to ding her from just exploration and picking up flight points. Will try to get through most of Kalimdor tomorrow, then get into some questing. I’ve always liked leveling new characters, so this should be pretty fun. I wonder who I should take along? I’ve got a level 11 gnome warlock who’s currently serving as my banker. Or maybe it’s time to take that new nelf mage out for a spin…?
Well, there we go again. Galena’s been packed and sent along her way to Silver Hand. The only 80 I have left on Terokkar now is my little DK. She’ll probably follow later in the year… we’ll see.
…in which my nelf druid’s skin got mapped to my human mage’s body. And, erm, it’s not very pretty. However, I’m sure my nelf will be delighted to know that they apparently wear the same size robe, despite a huge height difference. What’s a bit of wardrobe swapping amongst friends?
The boy pointed this out to me earlier today and it really is one of the most hilarious WoW-related skits I’ve seen in a while. Dating n00bs is dangerous territory, yo.
Hmm. If the above embed doesn’t work, it is up on Youtube here.
So after having the boy ceaselessly badger me to write WoW posts despite my greatly reduced playtime in recent months, I finally asked him, “Why the heck don’t YOU do it?”
To which he blinked, went “Hmmm.” and thus came into creation this little place:
The boy pointed me to this page after having to listen to my repeated whining over the chore of disenchanting his multiple pages of craftycrap every few days. Because really, there’s nothing more tedious than toiling over a hot mailbox for upwards of half an hour, waving your hands repeatedly like some spastic jazz dancer for all to see. And not even getting to keep the spoils! It’s a good thing I like him. (And that he bought my epic flight training, but that’s another thing entirely…)
Anyway, this page here from elitist-jerks has some cool macros near the bottom to make DEing just a bit easier. They’re specialized right now for jewelcrafting, but one can change out the names to make them suitable for any item that they frequently turn to dust. It’s a bit more specific than the macro I’d been mulling over in my head for a while (which would have targeted specific bag slots instead), but is also probably safer for those that keep valuable disenchantable raid gear in their bags alongside their craftycrap.
Whatever shall I do with all the free time this has saved me? ;-P
The internet is a great place for making friends. And sometimes more than friends. Even the really nice ones you don’t have to pay for! Don’t know how? That’s okay, because you can Google a guide for that, too!
Need more help? Two undead guys even wrote a really awesome guide, divided into three levels of increasing difficulty. Ignore the stupider comments — no thread can be all win, I suppose.
I’ve had this awesome animated guild application bookmarked for a while, since it first popped up on WoWInsider, and it’s still as hilarious now as it was then. I hope this guy never takes it down from his site. It’s got music, animation, and lasts for about six minutes with lots of wacky text, so be prepared.
Well, you all know I use a lot of addons. Occasionally, I have to download things WoW-related besides addons, though. These end up usually being related to addons, however. I’ve been using two non-addon programs lately, and promised I’d put up links for a few people. So here we go!
Curse Client, to replace the hole left by WoWMatrix for those of you that have far too many addons to update them all manually on a regular basis. I have mixed feelings about the official Curse Client — I tried it out a long time ago and quickly ditched it for WM because of a few things which continue to be annoying. More so, even, now that I’m forced to put up with them. First, it’s slowish and only offers the faster service to those who pay. WM might have had tacky looking banners, but they didn’t ask for money that brazenly. Second, you are not allowed to use the “Update All” feature unless you have the “premium” version, so have to go through and still click “update” individually on all the addons that are highlighted as needing updates. Third, it only updates those addons that are hosted on Curse. Which is a majority of them, but there’s still at least ten that I have to go and do manually because they’re hosted either on WoWInterface or their own specific sites. These are fairly big-name addons, too. So to wrap it up… eh. The current version of Curse Client is kinda like, say, a hospital dressing gown. It covers you, to a point, but it’s kinda flimsy and you can’t help feeling a draft trying to get at your butt. It’s not necessary, but who wants to go naked, right? WoWMatrix was, perhaps, a cheap polyester bathrobe from the gym. Not fancy, kinda tacky, but very good at doing what it did in an efficient manner, despite its shortfalls. Now, if somebody would make the plush chenille spa robe version of an addon installer…
Rawr is something that I tried out late last week because I was working on maxing my boomkin’s DPS. There weren’t really any DPS spreadsheets available for balance druids, so I wandered further afield and ended up finding this little gem of a program. It’s basically a fancy spreadsheet with a huge attached database. It can download your info straight from armory and do all the calculations and tweaks you want, with bonus pictures and shiny visuals! You can also tell it to optimize your gear or scan for upgrades, and it’ll give you all that info in nice, neat XML files for later usage. Just a fun little tool to play with, for those of you that like planning and running simulations on your character with the hypothetical gear your wishful heart desires. This program does not annoy me. In fact, it even heals some of the hurt that Curse Client inflicts whenever I have to use it. Bless you, Rawr.
So in the middle of our first run in Ulduar, a guildie throws down a Sandbox Spectral Tiger ride as a bit of side entertainment between wipes. Obviously, there was a rush for it. Sometimes, being the largest, fluffiest kid (with antler-goring capabilities) in the crowd has its uses.
Notice the glaring kitty druid standing in front of her. Now stop making snide remarks about weight limits and wait your turn
Yeah, this is quite a bit late. But like any good party, it takes a while to get over the hangover
On Monday, April 20th, the good members of Breakaway gathered at the Temple of Storms to celebrate their first anniversary. Cupcakes and cider were enjoyed by all, naked duels were staged, Pablo found his new calling as a club DJ, the first annual Guildie Awards were held, and many a guild photo was snapped.
There are many good reasons not to play hide-and-go-seek with your favorite pet war mammoth. Large fines from the city for having to unlodge said mammoth from the places it managed to squeeze itself into? Definitely one of them. Or perhaps, like in this picture, having to call out all of the combined fire brigades from Stormwind, Westfall and surrounding towns to get the damn thing back down from the tree once it realized it couldn’t climb. Mental note, we’re just buying Jumbo here a bag of peanuts to keep him amused next time.
So there we were Tuesday night, eagerly logging into find out what surprises awaited us in the new Ulduar patch. Only to find horrors confronting us even from the character selection screen.
The boy’s shaman was sporting a bizarre silent movie villain’s mustache, as imagined by a teenage graffiti artist with a black magic marker.
And then, there was my mage:
Apparently, she is now into eating the souls of babies and pandas. And sometimes baby pandas. Her spell power is 666. But hey, her cute tabard still shows so at least she’s stylin’.
Welcome to patch 3.1, everybody. Everybody buckle in for a bumpy ride.
Took her for a tour through Eastern Kingdoms on my flying rocket this morning and managed to ding her from just exploration and picking up flight points. Will try to get through most of Kalimdor tomorrow, then get into some questing. I’ve always liked leveling new characters, so this should be pretty fun. I wonder who I should take along? I’ve got a level 11 gnome warlock who’s currently serving as my banker. Or maybe it’s time to take that new nelf mage out for a spin…?
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