“Good thing Da ain’t seein’ this.”

"Ain't natural."

“Right, lad, I hear what yer sayin’.  It’s a nice bow, ain’t denyin’ it.  I know it’s better’n me old gun.  But it’s a bow, lad.  Dwarves, we don’t use ‘ese here things, aye?  Bent sticks’o'wood w’strings onna back, ‘em’s fer poncy elves prancin’ round th’forest.  A dwarf needs th’ feel o’a boomstick in ‘is hand, boy.  ‘Sides, last time I tried t’go on campaign w’a bow, ’bout damn threw m’shoulder outta joint fer a week.”

(EDIT AFTER THE FACT):  OK, the quick story behind this, and why Beltar is the Wildfire Riders’ resident loot trashcan extraordinaire.  While on last night, the call went out for a ranged DPS to help in Ulduar because Yva’s connection crapped itself and she couldn’t get back on.  So I volunteered.  Despite his somewhat marginal gear compared to the rest of the 10-man, we got Hodir hardmode…and he got a nice cloak when the guy who won the roll saw that Beltar was still wearing a blue Cloak of Holy Extermination.  (Vent:  “BELTAR, GODDAMMIT, YOU ARE TAKING THIS CLOAK NOW.”)  Then we cleared Vezax trash…and the Golemheart Longbow dropped.  At that point, Yva got back on and I headed back out so she could take her spot back and they went on to get hardmode Vezax.

So awful, it was awesome

Everybody’s got pick-up group (“PUG”) horror stories.  If you’ve played WoW for any length of time, and grouped with total strangers to try and get a quest or instance or raid completed, you’ll quickly start building a list of tales of woe.  If nothing else, PUGs should make you feel much better about yourself, I think…after all, since you’re smart enough to be reading this fine blog, obviously you are a top-notch human being in general and WoW player in particular, and do not deserve to group with people so stupid that they have to put a sticky note on their monitor to remind themselves to breathe.

But even the best of us–and I–sometimes have to PUG.  And last night, I ran across a doozy.

I was on my hunter alt, and wanted to run the daily heroic, which was Gundrak.  Now Gundrak isn’t the easiest WotLK heroic out there, in my opinion.  Slad’ran (the poison snake boss) has wiped me more times than I care to think about; even with excellent players and a top healer in T7/T8 raid gear, his Poison Nova can throw out more damage than we can power through.  The Drakkari Colossus is a pain-in-the-ass pray-your-and-your-healer’s-latency-is-low movement fight.  Even Gal’darah, who’s pretty straightforward, will gib a strong tank if the tank has a brain fart and doesn’t get out of whirlwinds.  (Don’t ask me how I know this.  Please.)

But, against my better judgement, I joined the LFG queue for it anyway.  And a couple of minutes later, I got a whisper–”h gun?”

Let’s see.  No complete words, all lowercase, and this on an RP server.  I feel a winner of a run coming on.  Eh, toujours de l’audace, dude, what the hell…”Sure!”, I replied.  I immediately found myself in a group with the group leader (a boomchicken), a warlock, and a male human paladin–obviously the tank, since he had over 40,000 health–named…Hotbox.

Ohhhhh yeah.  The stench of quality is overpowering with this one.

I flew for Gundrak while the leader druid rustled up a healer (another druid), and the five of us headed inside.  I was immediately greeted with Blizzard’s lovely new feature…the “ZOMG are you sure you want to save to this instance??!?!?11?” dialog box.  Hmm.  That’s not supposed to happen.  Well, we were all a bit confused by this, but all of us accepted and thus saved ourselves to that heroic Gundrak instance.  And down the stairs we went toward Slad’ran’s area.

We got to the entrance, ate a Fish Feast, and the paladin “Hotbox” pulled.  Without warning.  Two groups.  Hoo boy.  A frenetic and confused fight ensued in which the warlock and tree died, but we got both the trash groups.  The resto druid popped (yay soulstones) and started rezzing the warlock…as the paladin pulled more trash without saying anything.  Ugh.  We four-manned the trash, got the warlock back in…and then the tree said, “no boss.”

We looked.  Slad’ran wasn’t in his alcove.  We walked over to the alcove and saw that the alcove bridge gizmo had been activated.  In fact, all the gizmos had been activated, the bridge to Gal’darah’s ramp was aligned, and had the trolls and rhinos in position.  That meant that Slad’ran, the Colossus, and Moorabi were all dead.

Now people started getting pissed.  The critchicken who had the “hat” denied vehemently that he’d been in Gundrak that day, as did the rest of us.  And yet somehow, we were looking at an instance where the trash was up, but the bosses weren’t, the worst possible combination.

So the rest of the party started jumping off the ledge into the water.  I was last because, of course, I had to dismiss my pet.  In that period of time, people started getting eaten by the fish.  A clusterfuck ensued, resulting eventually in us getting to the ramp with two more deaths, to which the group leader said, and I quote exactly, “lol.”

Yeeeeah.

We formed back up, buffed, and fought our way up the ramp to Gal’darah’s area…

…and he wasn’t there.  His bodyguards and their rhinos were.  But he wasn’t.

The paladin pulled the rhinos (without saying anything) anyway, and nearly died because we were all too busy going “wtf?!?” in party chat, but we got them.  A ferocious argument ensued where the boomkin protested his innocence and swore he hadn’t been in Gundrak for at least a week.  Hotbox also said he hadn’t been in Gundrak for at least a week.  The other two said it had been longer than that, and I hadn’t had my dwarf in there for literally a couple of months.

So there our tale ends.  Hotbox (!) the male paladin, plus the other four of us, all hearthed our separate ways, probably to never see each other again except amidst the bustling crowds of Dalaran…or in the LFG tool someday, God forbid.  I had a pittance of silver and a locked instance with no way to score the two Triumph badges I wanted.  Either somebody was lying their ass off, or had gotten tricked, or we had a bugged instance.  And it was 25 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back.

I balmed my wounded soul by wandering off to the Pig and Whistle in Old Town Stormwind for four hours of the best RP I’ve had in many a month…culminating in a raid by the Stormwind Guard, two near-arrests, three strained marriages, a couple of damaged friendships, and one of the Wildfire Riders’ red-haired paladins telling another of the Wildfire Riders’ red-haired paladins to go fuck themselves, while the third of the Wildfire Riders’ red-haired paladins stood there and shook her head in disbelief.

What’s two Triumph badges in comparison to that?

The Zombiepocalypse, One Year On

This time last year in WoW, we were fighting for our lives.  Or, maybe running for our lives might’ve been more appropriate.  Our towns and cities were overrun by gigantic hordes of shambling, terrifying zombies, and they only wanted one thing…braaaaaiiiinnnnss.

Yep.  Last year, in the runup to Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard decided to give us a world event we’d never forget.  Forget the 2008 recycle of the 2006 Naxxramas opening event, where you got to go out to various zones and then get camps of undead stolen from you so you couldn’t get those l33t [Jockstraps of Undead Slaying].  No, Arthas had a little more in mind this time than sitting there and waiting for us to smash up some crystals and scream at people for jacking our mobs.

Remember how it started?  Boxes of tainted food started appearing, mysteriously, in towns.  And then came the zombies…well, OK, ghouls, but they were called zombies, because zombies are cooler than ghouls.  If a zombie bit you, or you messed with a food box, or you splattered a tainted bug or rat, you got cooties.  If you didn’t get cured by the time the cootie timer ran out, you became a zombie, with a whole new set of abilities…including having to fight nearly-constantly or your health would drain away and you’d die.  Zombies aren’t exactly known for just standing around and chillaxin’, y’know?  They feel the need…the need to feed.

At first, the disease timer was 10 minutes and it was easy to cure…no worries.  Then the disease timer dropped to 5 minutes, and then two minutes, and then one minute.  By that time, it was World War Z time, baby.  There were zombies everyfrickinwhere, man.  Cities became deathtraps as guards and NPCs got zombified by the dozens.  Death and undeath were spread across Azeroth and Outland.

And just like that, it was over.  Grand Apothecary Putress came up with the cure, and the Argent Dawn delivered it…and all that was left was to clean up the streets of Orgrimmar and Stormwind, burn the bodies, and count the cost.

There’s no doubt that Blizzard absolutely swung for the fences with what we’ve termed the “Zombiepocalypse.”  This was not just another holiday, or some optional event for certain levels.  This was specifically designed to get the point across that the Lich King wants your ass dead.  Yes, you.  And he doesn’t much care about your daily quest grind or your current assignment to retrieve eight [Bear Asses] for some idiot in Thelsamar.  This is total war, son.

There’s also no doubt that the Zombiepocalypse was the most contentious and divisive world event Blizzard’s ever done.  It affected almost everyone who played during that week last October, whether you wanted to be affected or not.  The only way to “opt out” was not to play.  The potency of the disease in the last few days, plus the ease of catching and spreading it, made Hakkar’s old Corrupted Blood look like a minor sniffle.  You either loved the Zombie Invasion of 2008, or you hated it.  There was no in between.

Well, except for me.  I can find the in-between on anything.  (Yes, I am the world’s only wishy-washy tank.)

Let’s take a look at the bad, and then the good, that came out of the Zombiepocalypse, and what lessons Blizzard can hopefully take away from it for any world-shattering–literally–events they may want to try for Cataclysm’s ramp-up.  First, the bad:

- Griefing.  The Zombiepocalypse proved that there’s a population of people on every server who are nothing but raving assholes who get a good laugh out of ruining other people’s fun…but can’t handle it when their own plans get thwarted.  Stories ran rife of groups of level 70 player zombies tearing a swath through newbie towns, infecting the guards, causing level 1-5 characters to get one-shotted again and again.  Questgivers and flightmasters were dead or undead for extended periods.  Auction house bombing (run into an AH and zombie-explode, thus infecting everyone around) became an art form.  Protests from the affected parties brought forth streams of “lololol cry more noob.”  And yet, when a paladin or priest would “fight back” by actually, y’know, cleansing the disease off the zombie, oh, the four- and five- and twelve-letter bombs that flew from the newly de-zombified!  Newsflash, Griefer Boy:  If you get to run around and make life miserable for level 10s, then we get to cure you back from zombie form into douchebag form, even though your spelling and grammar is better when you’re screaming “braaaaiiiinnnnsss lol.”  Yes, I know the event was designed to force people out of a comfort zone–I get that (see below).  But like every other thing that griefers get a hold of, many times, zombiedom was turned into nothing more than an excuse to be a dong.

- Non-consensual PvP.  Here you are, Joe Noob, level 11 mage, rolling around Westfall wondering why the hell Old Blanchy can’t just graze her own oats and HAY WTF LEVEL 70 ZOMBIE ZOMG I’M DED.  Zombies, see, know not of your PvP flags.  A zombie could attack, and be attacked by, anybody, anytime.  They were, effectively, their own faction…and you were always flagged to them.  Don’t want to PvP?  Tough toenails.  If a player zombie wants to PvP with you, you can outrun him, yeah, because he’s a zombie, but other than that, you’re PvPing regardless.

- Shattrath.  Nowhere did the problems with the event loom larger than Shattrath City.  Shattrath, of course, is a Sanctuary–no PvP combat allowed.  This included zombies.  Which means that once a player turned into a zombie, they were, for all intents, immune from attack from other players.  Similarly, player zombies could not infect other players directly…but they could chain the infection among the hordes of Aldor and Scryer and refugee NPCs running around, and those NPC zombie swarms could zombify or kill a player in short order, because of the additive nature of zombie bites–the more you get hit, the more it cuts the timer down.  As long as the player zombies could find the occasional NPC to nomnomnom, there wasn’t a damned thing zombie-fighters could do to stop the root cause of the problem.  It was a gaping hole in the “ruleset” for Zombiepocalypse, if you will, and it was exploited to the utmost.

- Melee need not apply.  That week was an awesome time to be a priest, or especially a paladin.  Everybody snuggled up close to you because, hey, hordes of undead are what you live for, right?  You can heal the sick, or you can protect the innocent, or you can just ret up and kick massive zombie ass.  Well, conversely, trust me, it was a shitty time to be a warrior.  The last couple days of the plague, the infection timer was a mere one minute…and each zombie bite cut it down by something like ten seconds.  Just a few nibbles and you were a zombie, whether you wanted to be or not.  There was no place for warriors in particular (although I’m not sure shamans could clear it off themselves, or if rogues could CoS out of it).  Even if I had a paladin behind me spamming cleansing on me while fighting a zombie horde, all it’d take is one resist or one lag spike, and poof, Zombiepanzercow.  I had really wanted to play Linedan through the end of the Zombie Invasion, but it quickly became so obviously pointless that my fearless Panzercow ended up not logging on for the last two days of the fight.  Beltar, my dwarf hunter, became my primary character, and I had a much better time.

Now, all that said, do I think Zombiepocalypse was a failure?  Hell no.  Here’s the good stuff:

- Arthas wants to eat your face.  Nothing drives home the fact that Arthas is the Big Bad like having your entire city overrun by brain-eating zombies.  We, as players of WoW (especially if we never played any of the Warcraft RTS games, as I didn’t), will never really feel the despair and desperation of the Third War, of the loss of Lordaeron and Stratholme and Darrowshire, the scouring of the Ghostlands and Eversong and the desperate stand at the gates of Silvermoon.  That one week, a week of increasing disruption and violence and vicious fighting in the streets, is the closest we’ll get.  If you’re a bit of a lore nerd like I am, that alone makes putting up with the negatives a ton easier.

- The RP was awesome.  Since I ended up on my dwarf for most of the latter half of the Zombiepocalypse, I ended up fighting in Stormwind along with his guild, the Wildfire Riders.  And there was crazy fighting going on.  The zombie-lovers were constantly infecting the Trade District and Old Town.  There were pitched battles in the streets all that last night, literally for hours.  Zombies were popping out of every building as vendors got infected.  The “front” shifted constantly, from the Trade District to the Harbor to Old Town and back to the Trade District.  We gave it a name…”The Longest Night.”  And the roleplay and stories that came out of the last night of the event still resonate among us to this day, so much that we’re having a little in-game get-together soon to remember the night that the Pig and Whistle became Old Town’s last redoubt against the forces of undeath.

- You got to be a zombie!  I had a rule of thumb.  I’d fight like hell against any zombie I saw, but if they got me, they got me fair, and I proceeded to go all-out as a zombie.  (My exception was Shattrath…the situation was so screwed up there thanks to the Sanctuary rules, I’d just go off in a corner and suicide.)  Why not?  Being a zombie, if you’re reasonable about it, is hella fun.  You can control NPC zombies, you can lurch around yelling “BRAAAAAIIIIINS,” you eat tasty human fase to regain health.  What’s not to like about it?

- Beltar got to pretend he was Bruce Campbell.  Sort of.  Shooting zombies in the middle of the Trade District while ripping off one-liners in /say?  Hell yeah.

I really hope that Blizzard has something as epic as the Zombiepocalypse planned for the Cataclysm rollout.  I just hope that if they do, they take a hard look at what went wrong last year (and there was a lot) and don’t just dismiss the legitimate complaints as “a bunch of noob carebear whiners,” like a lot of the forum idiots do.  Obviously you can’t have something like this without disrupting people’s play, at least some.  But with some thought, they should be able to at least mitigate some of the griefing and make it more enjoyable for more people, of all levels.

Redemption (Beltar’s backstory)

Linedan is my main–he always has been and barring catastrophe, he always will be.  But my “Alliance main,” the dwarf hunter Beltar Forgebreaker, is probably my most fun character to roleplay.

On the surface, he looks like your typical fantasy dwarf…irascible, sarcastic, a bit on the greedy side, inordinately in love with his guns.  But dig deeper and you’ll find that Beltar’s not exactly a stout-hearted dwarven hero in the Gimli mode.  For over a hundred years, he’s wandered the Eastern Kingdoms as a gun for hire, on both sides of the law (sometimes simultaneously), not settling in any one place for long.  He’s been a mercenary, an assassin, a guard, a hitman, a bodyguard, and more.  His idea of a fair fight has always been one where he shoots his opponent in the head without ever being seen.  And now, late in his life, he’s found his calling as an adventurer and general ne’er-do-well with the Wildfire Riders.

But even anti-heroes have to start somewhere.  And in a fashion typical of the accidental nature of his wanderings, Beltar’s first steps on his wandering path didn’t happen the way you’d envision they might.

“Redemption” was a story that I wrote in late 2005, a few months after Beltar’s creation in August.  I don’t remember how this backstory came to me, really  It just popped into my head and I had to take some time out and write it right now dammit…so I did.  I always knew Beltar was oldish, and a wanderer, but until this story body-checked me out of nowhere, I had no clue as to what started him on his lifelong odyssey of the gun.

It’s below a cut, because it’s hella long–4400 words.  In case you haven’t noticed, I do tend to run on a bit.

I hope you enjoy it.

 

Monday randoms

Hi folks.  I hope everybody had a good Fourth of July (or Canada Day, or just a normal) weekend.  Welcome back to your workweek!  (No, I’m not actually this chipper.  In fact, I’m dragging like crazy.  But I read somewhere that more people read your blog if you’re happy and upbeat, so I’m faking it.  Ssshhh.  Don’t tell anyone.)

A few random notes from the weekend…

- After 8 months or so of Wrath of the Lich King, Linedan finally has himself a title:  Linedan, the Argent Champion.  All it took for the final push was two deadside Stratholme clears, each one good for about 4000 rep with the Dawn once the 14-15 different Scourgestone turn-ins were done.  The Seal of the Dawn can finally get retired to the top shelf of Lin’s bank.  Now, 57 more quests in Kalimdor and around 260 more in Eastern Kingdoms, plus 20 or so (mostly group) quests in Icecrown, and he can get Loremaster.  I’m not pushing hard for that one, though, it’s more of a long-term I’ll-do-it-as-I-have-time thing.

- Moktor, my orc death knight, hit 80 on Sunday.  She is my fourth level 80, and I celebrated by taking her to a few heroics.  I think it’s an indication of just how crazy the death nugget class is in general that I can walk into heroic Gundrak, Drak’theron, and Stratholme in a mixture of mid-70s dungeon blues, quest reward greens/blues, and one kickass piece of gear (a Titansteel Destroyer Linedan made her)…with me having very little of a clue about how to work a rotation on multiple mobs…and still pulled 1500 dps for all three runs.  And I thought beastmastery hunter was faceroll easy.

- Friday night, I was just chillin’ like a villain on my dwarf Beltar when my guildleader Tarquin whispers me:  “So, I hear your raid fell through this week.”  (The Anvil had too many people out of town for the Fourth, so we took the week off and Linedan got a bit of a rest from offtanking.)  I answered “yep.”  So Tarq says, “want to come to Ulduar with us?”

Buh.

Tarquin also runs Totally Raiding, Inc., a successful, in-character, roleplay 25-man multi-guild raid.  Want proof that you can mix roleplay and raiding?  Try a “RP raid” that’s 12/14 Ulduar, with only Yogg-Saron and Algalon to go.  And he was asking me–Beltar, in his oh-so-l33t Naxx-10 welfare epix–to head to a 25-man Ulduar not just to kill a few bosses, but to be there for TRI’s first serious pokes at The Yoggster.  I think my reply was something to the effect of “well, you know I’m undergeared liek woah, but if you’re crazy enough, HELL YEAH I’D LOVE TO GO.”

They were crazy enough, and I got to go.  So I got to see Vezax and Yoggy for the first time on my undergeared dwarf alt, not my raiding Tauren main.  Go figure.

Vezax is a fun fight to be a hunter on.  No mana regen?  No problem!  Just pop Aspect of the Viper.  OK, we’re only doing 60% damage, but that’s 60% more than the mages are doing while they’re standing around waiting for a Shadow Crash puddle to stand in.  Bang bang > pew pew, biatch.  The mechanics of the fight are interesting without being too nasty, but then again, I’d say that as a hunter because that’s a simple job–know when a Shadow Crash is incoming and get clear of it, know when to pop saronite bubbles, throw a Silencing Shot in on Vezax to help back up the interrupters on his wicked flame AOE, and otherwise, just lean on the trigger until one of you goes down.  I might have a different opinion of the fight once I see it on Linedan, either as tank or as offspec DPS.

And then, there’s the Yoggmeister.

That fight had to have been designed by a bunch of half-drunk Red-Bulled-up Blizzard developers who got together and decided, “OK, listen, we’ve got all these cool mechanics in Ulduar…let’s put all of them in one fight!  It’ll rock!”  And thus was created Yogg-Saron, god of death, insanity, and HOLYFUCKTENTACLES.

It looks so innocuous to start with.  There’s Sara the Vrykul, floating above the floor in Yoggy’s bachelor pad.  (Aside:  “Sara?”  “SARA?”  What the hell kind of Vrykul name is SARA?!?)  She is surrounded by orbiting clouds of pee, I guess because she’s been in there a really long time with no bathroom break.  Anyway, the pee clouds orbit like planets, in fixed orbits around her with a clear space in the middle where she is.  They cover maybe half the room or a little less.  It smells bad.

The trick is, if anybody touches a pee cloud, it summons a big Faceless Horror with 900k health, and he’s pretty pissed at having to clean up the Sara pee that you’ve gotten all over the floor because you bumped the cloud, you big oaf, so he starts beating people up and throwing 6k+ Shadow Bolt Volleys all over the room.  I think more of the things are summoned on a timer as well.  The only way to get to phase 2 of the fight is to kill the Faceless Horrors next to Sara 8 times; each one knocks 12.5% off her health, because they explode for a metric shitton of damage when they die, something like 20,000.

So the strategy TRI used was to have one of three tanks grab each add as they came out, and pull them to the pee-free spot near the door, where they would be beaten down to about 30%.  At that point, DPS switched to another target, and the tank would drag the wounded add–slaloming through the pee clouds so as not to summon more Faceless Janitors–over to Sarah.  There, a designated “center group” of 4 or 5 ranged DPS, including yours truly, would finish them off, all the time dodging both pee clouds and the lethal explosion when the add died.  It’s basically a “don’t stand in shit”–uh, “don’t stand in pee”–fight, except that the consequences for bad positioning are much worse than taking a little damage.  Too many adds will wipe the raid in very short order.

Assuming you blow 8 Faceless Janitors up next to her, phase 2 starts.  The pee clouds go away.  This is good.  The downside is that they’re replaced by tentacles.  LOTS of tentacles.  We’re talking a hentai fan’s wet dream here.  Yoggy pops up and starts taunting people while the tentacles go to work.  There are ones that grab people and crush them (think Kologarn’s right arm).  There are ones that cast nasty debuffs.  There are big ones with ridiculous health that crush people near them.  And they’re EVERYWHERE, man.

At some point during this madness, portals open into Yoggster’s brain.  People run into the portals and kill stuff and DPS his brain (the only way to damage him) and have to come out quickly or they’ll get mind-controlled, yadda yadda.  I didn’t get that far.  I was too busy shooting every tentacle I saw before it tried to do nasty, nasty things to me.

Our best attempt was 91% on phase 2.  Might not sound like much, but trust me, that was serious progress.  Phase 1 is much tougher than it sounds, because you need to put serious DPS on the adds but not too much or they’ll die away from Sara, which is wasted time.  Your tank and center DPS have to get the add on top of Sara and kill it, all the time dodging pee clouds, failure of which will wipe the raid under a swarm of Faceless Janitors.  (Although it’s fun to have a feral or rogue hit Dash/Sprint once you call a wipe and see how many he can spawn.  Our record was 27.)

So that was my weekend.  When I wasn’t WoWing, I was cleaning out a flooded dishwasher.  Judging by the smell, I think I’d rather have been dealing with more pee clouds.

Congrats to the Wildfire Riders

I have to give a major shout-out here…big congratulations to the Wildfire Riders, my dwarf Beltar’s guild on Feathermoon.  The Riders have been chosen as WoW Insider’s Guild of the Month, and let me tell you, they deserve it.  There aren’t that many guilds out there that can deliver great roleplay one night and then go kick Ulduar in the nuts the next, and I’m damn fortunate to be in two–the Riders on Beltar, and Noxilite on Linedan.

Meme time: Seven Questions

This one comes from Anea at Holy Discipline, a simple little meme:  Answer these seven questions about your character.  I’ll use Linedan and Beltar.

1. What is your name and where did it come from?
   OOC, Linedan was courtesy of the random name generator in Everquest, where the original Linedan existed as a barbarian warrior.  There’s no roleplay reason for it otherwise.  Beltar has a long and complicated story behind his name, detailed in this story.
2. How old are you and what is your birthday?
   Linedan is 23, Beltar is 126.  I haven’t assigned an exact birthday for either of them, although Beltar’s is in the summer sometime.
3. Are you in love and with whom?
   Nope.  Linedan is totally clueless about romantic relationships, and Beltar, being not terribly attractive and middle-aged, doesn’t get many opportunities and is more of a love-’em-and-leave-’em dwarf anyway.
4. What is your favorite mount and why?
   Linedan’s is Soh’kata, his barded kodo.  (A story about the acquisition of said kodo is here.)  Beltar’s is his sturdy, placid gray-white Loch Modan ram named Mountain.
5. Do you prefer a certain type of Azerothian meal and where do you get it from?
   Lin’s not picky about food, but he absolutely loves talbuk venison and crusty Northrend flatbread.  Beltar’s rather carnivorous, but in his time hanging out with the Kaluak, he’s taken to enjoying their orca stew.  Unfortunately, neither one of them can cook a lick.
6. You know those giant mushrooms in Zangarmarsh? What is your theory on how they came to be and why are they so huge?
   Linedan figures it was the bounty of the Earthmother for giving Zangarmarsh such rich soil and ample moisture.  Beltar would just sniff and say, “Nah, ’s prolly all’a bullshit ’bout th’Light ‘em squids up Telredor are throwin’ out.”
7. If you saw the Lich King walking toward you, what would you do?
   Beltar would run like hell.  Linedan would draw his mace and shield, give a final battle cry in Taurahe, and charge forward to die gloriously.

OK, let’s tag it forward a little bit.  Anna, Stop, Arrens, and Varenna, your turn!

Sleepy Saturday morning random thoughts

A few random thoughts tossed out while trying to wake up on a cloudy, rainy Saturday morning after plopping my daughter down in front of a Backyardigans DVD…

- You may have noticed a distinct lack of 3.1 and PTR information.  Honestly, there are a squillion places to find information from the PTR that’s a lot faster and more complete than anything I could put together, and chances are you already know where they are.  (If you don’t, try some of my blogroll.)  Plus, I try (often unsuccessfully) to avoid getting caught up in the back-and-forth hysteria from PTR build to PTR build.  Particularly this early in the cycle, things change so fast that it’s not much use freaking out over, say, the 10% “pwn tax” on Titan’s Grip damage.  Once things get closer to release, I start paying more attention and use the information to plan what I’m going to do after the patch drops.  Besides, I test software 40+ hours a week for a living.  I kind of like to leave it at work when I get home.

- Itanya Blade (one of the Anvil’s raid officers) makes a good point over here.  It applies in WoW as much as it does in the real world, because when you’re dealing with a raid, you are dealing with the real world–25+ people with real lives and real problems.  Communication is key.

- I’ve finally closed most of the gear gap between Linedan and the other tanks in our raid.  Not all, but most.  The final link was biting the bullet and dropping the 1050g on an Armor-Plated Combat Shotgun.  Expensive?  Yeah.  But since I’m working on Ebon Blade dailies now (40% of the way to Exalted), money isn’t that big an issue–at least I can break even over my repair bills, and a bit extra.  And while four digits is aspensive for sure, from what I’ve seen price-wise, it’s not all that much more expensive than gathering the needed eternals.  In the old money-vs.-time tradeoff, this time I chose money.

- I did something similar with Beltar.  He went from over 3000 gold down to 45 gold in two days after buying five pieces of armor, a Nesingwary 4000, and a scope on the AH.  It’s the curse of an alt who doesn’t get all that many cracks at instance runs.  But, now he’s doing about 1500 dps combined with his cat in heroics…maybe ready for Naxx 10?  Not sure.  I may get the chance to find out this weekend.

- In other Beltar-related news, he has a new pet for instancing, a Cursed Offspring of Har’koa that he’s named Longpaw, also called “Bigballs.”  (Don’t ask.)  I thought I was being a unique and special snowflake by grabbing the silver, spotty, glowy-eyed cat.  Uh, no.  I’ve seen nine of them in two days.  He can’t do a spirit beast since he’s marks, so at least I’m not tempted to do that endless search. 

- Now Illithanis is 51 in BM, and can tame Loque’nahak, and she’s level 76, and my wife already has one on her hunter.  Get her to 77, get her slow-flying back again, and maayyyyybe…

- Moktor’s 70.  Still wearing a purple steel bustier that she’s falling out of, and still overpowered as all hell.

Somebody call DEHTA…

…I think this qualifies as sheep abuse.  And not the kind of sheep abuse Loch Modan dwarves supposedly do on cold nights, either.

Anna’s RP Friday Five – The Three R’s

It’s Friday morning, so it must be time for another wonderful Friday Five from Too Many Annas.  This week it’s about…edumacashun.

• Can your character read and write?

Actually, all of my various characters can to one degree or another.  Maybe it’s laziness on my part, but I just can’t seem to work up the energy to play a good illiterate.  Moktor is probably the closest I’ll ever get to a functional illiterate, and hers is more just a fifth-grade education than anything else.  But it’s not like you really need to read and write so much when you can command the powers of frost, disease, and blood.

• Is he/she good with numbers and business-like things?

Linedan and Moktor, no.  They can do normal math if you give them a minute, Lin more so than Moktor.  Illithanis is a little better just because she’s brighter and has a formal education from Silvermoon (albeit nothing more than your average elven high school diploma with a 2.8 GPA).  Beltar, oddly enough, would be my best numbers guy.  He’s smarter than he looks and acts, and has hung around enough merchants and criminals for a century that he’s picked up a nose for numbers and how to manipulate them.

• Does your character have a formal (schooled) education or an informal (apprenticed/learned by experience) education? Or both?

Hard to say with Linedan…I imagine Tauren education is largely informal.  Beltar’s basically a ninth-grade dropout with a century of classes in the School of Hard Knocks on top of it.  Illithanis, as stated above, has a formal secondary-level education but her “practical” skills with bow, animal, and skinning knife are family-taught.  Moktor’s an elementary-school dropout street urchin.

• Has he/she learned another language than the one they grew up speaking (in full or in part)?

Linedan, yes because he knows Orcish in addition to Taurahe; his spoken Orcish is very precise and somewhat formal.  Beltar, yes because he knows Common in addition to Dwarven, and has also picked up a very small smattering of expressive cursewords in Darnassian, Thalassian, Orcish, and Tarquinese/Jolstraerian.  (His latest project is a Lordaeron-to-Common dictionary, entitled “The Apostrophe, Why It Is Half The Northmen’s Alphabette.”)  Illithanis, again, yes because she can speak/read/write in Orcish and Thalassian quite fluently, and in fact rather oddly likes the harsh Orcish language.  Moktor, nope, just Orcish for her.

• What does your character’s handwriting look like?

Linedan:  Block printing, very slow and precise, because that’s how he learns–not by gift of intelligence, but by sheer bloody-minded hellbent rote persistence.  Beltar:  Doctor-level semi-intelligible high-speed scribble, but the spelling is usually close to right at least.  Illithanis:  Small yet flowing, somewhat sloppy because she writes quickly (a Farstrider talent of quickly making scouting notes).  Moktor:  Ten-year-old all-over-the-page badly misspelled scrawl.