A rant

/Rant on

Alright, so I'm probably going to get a 3-hour suspension or something, but oh well. I'm pissed.

So I'm pugging ZF, as I have been doing a lot lately. Normally I have excellent groups, but tonight there was this asshole warrior in the group. He repeatedly got tons of crap on him and then got pissed when I couldn't keep him alive. Mind you, I'm sole healing this instance, and as a shadow priest my heals aren't exactly mana efficient. So yeah...I was running out of mana. And he was dying. He only died twice the entire run...but as we were heading to the last boss (the one after the pyramid stairs, not Gahzrilla), he pulls 4 things on him while I'm at half mana. He dies...and then starts laying into me. His comments "Did you dot? Did you dps? That's mana you could have used for healing."

Now FYI, no I didn't dot, and I didn't dps, I spent my mana trying to keep his fat ass alive. There was more said, and I called him some choice words by the end (hence the likelihood of the ban), and then I promptly hearthed and I hope they had to abandon that instance after I left.

What I really hate in this game are a bunch of loser people who think that it's ALWAYS the healers fault when A) Anything goes wrong, and B) When anyone dies.

Learn to play your class, and stop blaming the healers.

/Rant off

Thought I'd give a quick update on what we've been up to!

Our alts hit 40 and we got our mounts! I'm stuck with that damn "chicken" again, but at least Sev got a pally mount. We each then hit 41 but unfortunately Sev seems to have completely lost interest in playing the game. He's gone back to playing our Wii, and just finished Zelda (which we've had for months).

My alt is now 42 and I find soloing with a priest to be excruciating. I've been trying to run instances instead, but I'm now too high for SM and too low for anything else. I think my leveling progress is going to slow waaay down. Oh well.

I did log into my old character yesterday to find that our guild was disbanded. No real loss there for me, as we were only in the guild because a RL friend was in it. I have no idea why they disbanded though....the guild always seemed very laid back and no real drama. Perhaps the whole casual vs. wanting to raid thing was an issue in the guild; I was never around enough to really find out the dynamics of the guild.

I do hope to one day hit 70 with my priest. That's looking to be an incredibly tedious process.

I look like a whore....

Welcome to my alt! I'm hoping she will eventually become my main. I really miss healing; playing a priest is my true-calling. Let me introduce you to some of her wardrobe changes....

I've always been annoyed with the way armor is displayed on female characters. I don't always want to look like a whore running around...

So around level 16 or so I got some new armor....check me out.


Now that outfit isn't that bad. Despite the J-Lo "cut-down-to-there" plunge in the front. Some little 12-year old whispered me "Your char is soooo hot." I whispered him back and said "FYI, I play this game with my HUSBAND." Needless to say, he didn't say anything else to me! :P

So I got an armor upgrade and I put it on thinking, "maybe it won't be so revealing." HA! This one is even worse....far, far worse! This outfit leaves almost nothing to the imagination!


I've since upgraded again, and this outfit isn't so bad. I'm really not sure how the top keeps my boobs in though....there's no support. Maybe they have double-sided tape in WoW....

UI Mods

I imagine most WoW players have messed around with UI Mods at some point or another. I decided to try redesigning my interface since I have not kept up with the latest mods since about November sometime last year. I was pleasantly surprised by how much they have improved since that time. In particular, the mods based on Ace2 are very impressive. Any mod based on Ace2 automatically has profile support, GUI configuration, extensive command-line interface, etc.

So, after messing around and trying a bunch of different mods, here are the mods I decided to use. Note that about 80% of them are Ace2 mods (www.wowace.com).

Atlas
AtlasLoot
Bongos2
Buffalo2
Decursive
eePanels
FuBar and FuBar accessories
PitBull
Prat
Quartz
SCT
simpleMinimap
SW Stats
TinyTip

First Raid

Serenia and I participated in our first raid since we hit level 70. Gruul's Lair!

I have to admit it was a little strange raiding again. The last time instance either of us had raided was one of the original 40 mans (BWL, AQ40, NAXX). Remember those?

On top of that, I was a primary tank during those raids. So, switching to a DPS class has been an interesting experience. I found it rather surprising how boring an instance can be when you are not working strategies, setting up targets, or one of the many other jobs that come along with a guild sponsored instance run. Anyways, the run was the first time the guild had attempted a 25-man instance since the Burning Crusade was released. So, suffice to say, everyone was probably a bit rusty. However, we did manage to defeat the first boss, High King Mulgar, and a few people picked up some Tier 4.

In some ways we feel left out since neither of us are a primary raiding class (i.e. healer/tank). But, at the same time, the lack of responsibilities is very refreshing. When you are just a DPS class, the guild does not depend on you quite as heavily. Though, my point of view only knows how raiding in the original game worked. Maybe things have changed...

The Last of the Dings

Yeah, you guessed it, we finally hit level 70 after 5 and a half months of playing these characters. We have levelled characters faster in the past, but so many real life things came up lately that we just did not have the time to dedicate like before. But, alas, we have maxed out another set of characters. So...now what?

I am sure other people have experienced this problem. You reach level 70. You do all the quick fun things you get to do when you hit a level cap like buy flying mounts and purchase your last skills. You get congratulations from your guild and friends. But...then what? Your primary goal for the last 10+ days of played time is complete! All your efforts have come to fruition...and you don't know what to do next.

Well, that has happened to us again. We reached level 70 a few days ago and for the last couple days the desire to play has sadly diminished a bit. But, on a positive note, I think the desire is already coming back because we started thinking about all the things we want to complete:

Kharzhan Key
Epic Flying Mounts (Netherdrake FTW!)
Kick Ass Equipment
Professions
...

Anyways, on that note, it's time to experience the new World of Warcraft endgame.

New Mounts

We managed to finally hit exalted with the Mag'har (after a decent amount of ogre grinding in Nagrand). So, that means we bought our epic Talbuk mounts! I have to admit it was surprising to experience epic mounts again, they speed difference is definitely noticeable. I put a few screen shots below.

On another note, I have not had a great deal of experience with reputations in the Burning Crusade, but so far my impression has been that they are a great deal easier to grind than the original reputations. Cenarion Hold or Thorium Brotherhood anyone? You know what I mean. This just increases my belief that Blizzard is listening to their players even though the forums do not reflect that.

Mag'har

If you have ever ventured into Garadar in Nagrand, you have probably met some of the Mag'har. Serenia and I have been working on our reputation with them for quite a while because we wanted to get Talbuk mounts. If you happen to finish all the Garadar quests and some other various quests in Nagrand, you gain access to a special questline. The questline involves quite a bit of lore and revolves around Thrall's family.

Anyways, at the end of the quest line, Thrall himself visits Nagrand and a rather long cut seen is shown (including a reenactment of a scene from Warcraft III). If you have the time, I would recommend doing the quest line just to see a bit of warcraft lore. Enjoy a couple of screenshots and a little of background info here :)

Update: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Sorry for the lack of posts. We've been really busy with real life and have not had much time to play or at least update the site.

So, where are we now? Outland! We finally reached some new content and it has been really exciting. Exploring the new zones, running new dungeons, and completing new quests have really revitalized the game for us. We hit level 64 last night and I went to Shattrath for the first time. The city is amazing. Almost everything you could possibly need is there with a few exceptions (i.e. class trainers and auction house).

Anyways, thats the good, we are alive and still playing. As for the bad and the ugly, well my current outfit will certainly explain that. Check out these screenshots.

March update

We haven't updated the blog in a loong time...but we haven't really been playing all that much lately either.

The most exciting thing is that we're up to level 52 now. We did AV as soon as we hit 51 so we could get the wand and polearm upgrade. Other than that...nothing that exciting.

We haven't been playing that much lately due to our house search...and I'm happy to report that we found a house! We just had the inspection yesterday, and in a couple weeks we should get our keys!

So...while our WoW life is slow and boring right now, our real life is happily moving along!

With that said...we still can't wait to hit 58 and head into some new content!