The Future Looks Bright

So Blizzcon is winding down as write this. Once again I didn’t get to go to Anaheim,  so I got the Virtual Ticket again. I’m not complaining, I enjoy being able to watch all the parts when I want to.
So the big news is the new expansion for Warcraft,  Warlords of Draenor.
Holy crap! That’s all I have to say. It looks like Blizz is finally listening to what the players want. So where do I begin. Housing,  new collections, stat squish, changes to armor, and so much more.

The new housing feature, garrisons, lets start there. Blizzard knows how to do things bigger and better than most other game companies do. We are getting more than just a little house, or a dimension. We are getting a towm, or a garrison to grow and stay in. Followers and professions all there for us. Our followers can go on quests, raids, and so much more.

We are going to be going through the big stat squish also. Don’t panic though, while our stats and damage will be smaller,  it will still stay the same in terms of effect.

Armor is going to go through some major changes. No more agility verses wisdom mail. It will juat be mail…or cloth…or plate…or leather. That’s right, the armor will automatically adjust to your current spec. It doesn’t matter if you go from being an elemental to an enhancement shaman, the gear will adjust. This auto adjustment will happen with tier gear also based on your spec. The stats are changing also. Hit, expertise, dodge and parry all gone. Reforging is going away too.

There’s more to come, I juat haven’t had a chance to watch the rest of Blizzcon yet, so keep an eye out for more of what I think of WoD and the rest of all the new things that Blizzard is doing.

The “New” Virtual Community

Things change. We all know this.
I’m sure we’ve all heard the saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
I want you to think back to a time when you had to actually look for a group.  Think back to the days of yore, back when there wasn’t a button you could press to find a raid or an instance group.
Back then, you were responsible for your actions. You had to communicate with others to get a group, also you were held responsible for your actions. If you acted like a jackass, you would start to get a bad reputation. That reputation would follow you, and haunt you for years to come. People would talk about you in Trade chat for years. Even to this day, I still hear people bad mouth jackasses that have either quit, name changed, or transferred off of the Argent Dawn server years ago.

Then we were given the ability to press one button and be put in a group with random strangers from our own servers.

It gave people a little less personal responsibility for their actions. It lowered the amount of communications needed to find a group, which lowered the amount of communications that went on in the group. You could still get a bad reputation, but it didn’t matter as much, since all you had to do was just re-queue for another group.

That all changed again, when the LFG tool started putting groups together from multiple servers. You were given free reign to do what you wanted to do, without any social repercussions. People stopped talking in group, people started acting worse and worse. They would drop the group if they thought you were bad, if you didn’t do what they said, or just to be a douche-bag. You could do what you wanted, you could say whatever you wanted to say. Gone were the days when if someone didn’t know the instance they could ask questions, and everyone else would explain it to them. Now they get laughed at, or kicked because they’ve never been there before.

The griefing got even worse when Blizz released the LFR tool. Now instead of being a jackass to just 4 other people, you could be a jackass to 24 other people. All you have to do is go on YouTube, and you can find examples of this.

But that is all about to change.

Blizz is introducing a new concept.

Virtual Realms.

New Feature: Virtual Realms

• Virtual Realms are sets of realms that are fused together, and will behave exactly as if they were one cohesive realm. Players on the same Virtual Realm will be able to join guilds, access a single Auction House, join arena teams and raids, as well run dungeons or group up to complete quests.

• Players belonging to the same Virtual Realm will have a (#) symbol next to their name.

Yep.  

That’s right, now if you act like a jackass in an LFR or LFG or a Scenario, all you have to do is look for the #. If you see that happy little symbol, then feel free to let everyone know how that person thinks that they are so special, that they can wreck any group they get in to.

Help them spread their reputation as a buffoon and spread tales of their jackassery. Let everyone know. This is not a smear campaign you’re running against them, it’s spreading the word of what they do, and how they act. If everyone does this, we can take back our groups. We can start to self-police ourselves again. We will start to see a return to players starting to respect each other more again.

So remember when 5.4 hits, and you’re running LFR, think before you speak and act. All of the community will be watching. They will know what you’re doing. You never know if they will pass on the tales of your actions, and in the process make it that much harder for you in all that you do in game.

Back Again

It’s been awhile vsince the last time I popped over and wrote anything. My life has gone through some changes recently. I lost my job at Comcast. Mixed feelings about that. My stress levels have dropped significantly for starters. Wife and I are now running our online business full time, and started selling at flea markets again.
Oh, and did I mention that I also had a birthday earlier this month? It was also the 3 year anniversary of my blog.
In other news, Wife started playing WoW again. That started as a birthday gift, she knows I love playing WoW with her.
So in short work we got both her hunter, Gweninuu, and my shammy, Gwenanu to level 90 in no to me at all.
I was also able to hit 90 on my warrior Fuzzbaal with one kill, after they lowered the amount of XP needed to level.
Next on the list to 90 is Gweni, my demo lock. So everything has been moving rather smoothly for the both of us.
Oh, and Wife got her first taste of raiding in MoP also. We went after Sha and Galleon. She also got her first taste of a squishy tank.
So have a great week all, and I hope to be writing more from now on.

Back in the Saddle Again

I know it’s been awhile, but things have been changing for me over the past month or so. Wife and I are slowing down our online shops, we started to lose sight of what was important to us. Since then we’ve stopped fighting, I’ve been sleeping more, and I’ve had more down time, which leads to more time to get things done in WoW.
I’ve maxed out my Cloud Serpent, Tillers, and Killaxi factions, and I’ve had time to start raiding again through the LFR.
That’s right, I finally got to raid again this weekend. It was a blast.
Galleon was up, and I got to take him down. He’s a bit harder than Shanger, more target switching.
Then I finally got a chance to hit up Mushgan Vaults also.
I had a blast, and for being in mainly 450 blues, I didn’t do too badly either. I didn’t die, and I wasn’t at the bottom of the meters either.
After hitting up both halves I walked away with a new back and piece, along with 4 out of the 10 sigils of power that I needed.
So slowly but surely, I’m getting the gear that I need to hit HoF and TotES.
Give it a few more runs, and I’ll be ready for them in no time.

Back In Action

What a glorious weekend it was. I can honestly say that this last weekend was the best in a long time. We started Thursday by spending the day finishing up the last seven of our day of the dead bracelets, and soldering several tile necklaces. Now all I have to do is get the pictures taken so we can get them up and listed. So hopefully we will have them up next weekend. From there it got better.

She’s Back
Then Friday came. Now Wife has been hinting to me that she might want to start playing WoW again. Needless to say, I was thrilled with the idea. Then it happened. While we were packing up the orders I had to run up to the post office, she said that when I got back, she wanted to hop on WoW and start playing again.
That’s right. She wanted to hit 85 on her toon, Gweninuu, before MoP came out.
I don’t think I ever packed that many packages and made it to the post office that fast. So after getting her up and going we set up her talents and off we went. We were gonna head to BWL but when we got there turns out you still need to be attuned to it. So off we went to UBRS. Burned through it as fast as two hunter can. Killed the General. Lo and behold… I forget to have her pick up the quest from the Quartermaster outside… So out we go, find and the Quartermaster, run back to the orb, and she’s finally attuned. Needless to say we still didn’t get past Razorgore.
So we stopped doing BWL for now. So she decided she wanted to start leveling from 80 to 85. In less than a day we got Wife and my shaman from 80 to 82, and got the achievement for 115 quests in Mt. Hyjal.
So now we’re working on Deepholme, and having a blast doing it. We set up Mumble on her computer, so while I’m at lunch, we can knock out a few quests each day I’m at work.
All I can say is it’s great to hop on the game with her again, and that she’s having fun playing WoW again.
So off we go, getting our toons to 85 so we can be ready for MoP to land on the 25th. So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

Putting It Together

So happy Labor Day weekend to those of us in the US. It’s hot sticky and rainy right now, but not much you can do about that.
We’ve been busy this weekend, we spent most of it working on 10 new Day of the Dead bracelets, and all that’s left is just getting pictures of them. Once that’s done, and they’re listed, I will let all you crafty types know in a new post.
I finally got a chance to play around with the new specs and talents this weekend, and I am really enjoying them. BM is a hella fun spec, with tons of focus and damage out the wahoo. Fuzzbaal the furry warrior finally 80 this weekend also. Now I have to say, fury warriors have changed… a lot. I’m still getting used to the new rotation and abilities. Things like wild swing instead of slam are very ummm different than they used to be. Oh, and I forgot how much of a pain Hyjal was at level 80.

Brick by Brick
So Wife and I were at Walmart the other night picking up stuff to make cheeseburger soup. Yes I know, it sounds crazy, but trust me it’s awesome, I’ll have to post the recipe sometime. While there we there, we had to resupply our dominos stash. I looked up and saw they had gotten the Mega Blok Warcraft sets back in stock. So after grabbing the dominos, I walked over and started browsing through the sets. Wife comes over and asks me what I’m looking at. I tell her about the WoW sets, and how I was thinking of picking up one, and deciding between the Worgen on a griffin, or the Gnome on the flying machine. Wife just looked at me and said, “why not both.”
Yep the woman who rolls her eyes at me when I start to geek out over stuff, has given me her blessings to buy more desk top goodies.
God I love this woman….
So with out further ado, here they are.

So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

So Far, So Good…

So the patch landed yesterday. Everything is different. Account wide pets, mounts, and achievements. I haven’t gotten much of a chance to play around with it, I mean I’m still trying to get everyone’s talent points set.
One thing I have noticed, that I am kinda disappointed in, is that we hunters can no longer display a melee weapon. I mean I understand we don’t use them any more, but come on, I have some pretty bad ass weapon mogs.
The other big thing right now, is it seems that aspects will be taken off of the GCD Ghostcrawler said. It seems that the outcry by the hunter community was enough that the devs took notice, and it seems that will be going back to the old way until they can find a better way.
Oh, and one more thing. If you got the digital deluxe version, you got the pet and the mount today. Which reminds me, I need to get around to ordering it.
So until next time, don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

An End to an Era

So are you ready?
5.0 lands tomorrow.
No melee.
No minimum range.
No pet talents.
Any pet, any spec.
New talent trees.
Huge patch… I mean 21 GB.
Queues… Big ones.
Server crashes, restarts, and lost of other tomfoolery.
Can’t wait.!

Starting Anew

So it’s been awhile. I know I said
I was going to start posting more often back in June, and I haven’t. It’s been a busy and rough summer for me. Between eBay, and Etsy, and spending a week in the hospital, I didn’t get much time to hop on WoW, or do the beta thing.

However, time passes, and things change. Our business has expanded this year, now we sell on eBay and Etsy. This has taken up a huge chunk of my time. Unfortunately, that extra time had to come from somewhere, and that just so happened to be my game time.

But fear not, with MoP coming out on September 25th, I am hoping to get more game time back in my life. I’ve been trying to finish things up in WoW before the new expansion hits, I’ve even been pushing to try to get things done before 5.0 comes out. Running TB dailies until my eyes bleed. Looking for that lil guy Pebbles, farming JP to convert to Honor to buy the PvP mounts, running heroic MT for the white chicken mount. These are what I’ve been filling up the end of Cata with. Ph and hitting up the LFR when time permits. Oh, and I almost forgot, try to get Fuzzbaal to 85 also.

So that about covers everything that’s been happening in my world as of late. Not much beyond work, and trying to squeeze in some game time. So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

Patch Day 4.3

It’s patch day! Oh boy it’s a big one too. The death of Deathwing is finally here, and it’s a big one. Transmogrification, void storage, new 5 mans, new raid, new gear, raid finder, and all kinds of goodies, and issues, arrive today.

4.3 was the reason I returned to WoW. The new raid looks awesome, and I love the look for the new tier armor sets.
I am hoping to get more time to hop on to the game, but with the holidays here, and eBay picking up, time is short. But, meh we’ll see, anything is possible.

On a lighter note thou, I’ll finally be able to redeem my throwing star fish, and puffer fish pet finally. Had to wait for 4.3 for them to pit them in the game.

Speaking of pets, the new Darkmoon Faire is coming out too. That means new pets and mounts! That’s right 2 new mounts and 5 new pets. The new mounts and the all but one of the new pets are bought using Faire tokens, while the new seahorse pet, you have to fish up from the Faire island.

So have fun with all the new stuff that comes out today, play safe, and enjoy the new PuGs. So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.