Crusade is Calling

"The Call of the Crusade" is not a part of bloody Christian history but merely the new Patch that has hit World of Warcraft players everywhere.

"Has hit" is a good term, because there was a brief window that let me log into the game and have a look at my Druid and her new Cat/Bear form. (awwwwww!)
But now the Login server seems to be down, it tries to load my characters but than it disconnects me again.

Well, gnaaa.

I have been catching up on all the changes and it is a lot. Deathknights had their talent points refunded... again. They are doing so much to the class, that you can barely keep up.

You can barely keep up with anything that is in this. It is frustrating to update almost every addon again, I just got it as I wanted it to be. It's as if they won't let you catch your breath, and it seems with the ability for more people to raid more people get bored with content really fast.

I do love the idea of the tournament, it's just that I hate hate hate jousting. And I don't really like the dailies there at all. So sorry that I'm not thrilled to have a patch mainly for giving us more... jousting.

Well, gnaaa.

I'll go and shut off the computer now and get some fresh air. :)

Cascade Swans? WTF?

Yesterday was our bi-weekly Magic: The Gathering night and I have played with my very first deck again, well the first deck I made for playing with Michael.

It is a white deck that relies heavily on flying creatures and absorbing damage dealt to creatures and the player. The strategy was really simple: survive until you have a flying armada, and then hit very hard.

It wouldn't be tournament worthy and we always agreed in our round that we wouldn't simply make decks to win fast and furious - but to have fun trying new twists and turns with decks all the time.

Yesterday we played 2vs2 and the guys broke out their Slivers and tried to kill us hard and furious. They did. We were too mana-screwed and had no aggro at all. I was beginning to get pissed. Slivers in 2vs2? *sigh* too much too fast. No fun. Then I broke out my red elemental deck that has killed most of the decks it was up against (say hallo to my War Elemental!). So I was really confident. Bettina got out a big Angel deck, I think it was the wrong choice, we should have played with at least one deck where no mana problem would get the better of us.

And it happened again, I was short on mana - could not get my War Elemental out and in no time they had 2x Might Slivers out and about and it was way too late. They killed the Angels and when Dirk brought out the 3rd Might Sliver I folded. I couldn't kill them fast enough. Not with only 3 mana.

So I was thinking: 'Time for revenge.' and had a look at some tournament decks and what the hip kids play these days and found out I had almost missed a whole cycle... excuse me? Did I fall in a pit or something? Apparently.

Oh and there are some nice turns now, with Cascade the new mechanic and there are a lot of nice cards in the game at the moment. And so I will try and play around with some of those decks and thoughts. I'll postpone my Wizard deck for a while and go for Red/Black aggro again, which I wanted to do after the Elemental Deck anyway. And of course I'll throw Cascade Swans at Michael the next time around. Talk about fast and furious.

Har har!

Ding! Nysir!

Last night Nysir, my noble deathknight and loveable frostitroll finally dinged 80!
/cheer



Sorry to the person I leveled with - it was late, I was cranky and just too tired. Will make it up to you, promise!

I have been looking at where I need to go and what factions I need reputation with... there is a really short answer to this: all of them.

So if you need a tank (fresh 80) on Die Todeskrallen (EU) - let me know.

:)

The Ultimate List

... part 2.

I already made a list of my (then) characters I play in WoW over on LJ: "Checklist: WoW chars". This was back in August 2008. A lot has changed - a whole lot and I'm thinking about an own website for the list, with screenshots of the characters.

In other news: my DK has hit 79 yesterday. Just about 60% left to 80. Yay!
Which means I need to pick the next alt to level, hehe!

So I'll update this with the link to the page as soon as it is finished.

Old content

Many moons ago when I had not a single character that was of the highest level (at the time that was 60) and I made my rounds through Badlands and killed Elementals to farm my first mount (60% mount, I didn't even dream of an Epic landmount then) I promised myself to never do this again - to level like that by grinding.

Well, I did it once more for another char, just because for certain levels it was hard to find quests. It was really early vanilla WoW and well, we didn't know any better. Of course there were quests. But nearly all of them were leading into instances. And of course I hated grouping back then.

I have no clue how I got to 60 (my Tauren hunter) - I do know that I dinged in Silithus, before there was Ahn'Qirai or Cenarion Hold, there were only some NPCs with one lousy questline (who are still standing at the entrance to the zone). There wasn't much to do at 60. You weren't getting extra gold for quests, so why bother? I only grinded reputation after AQ opened in Silithus for some new designs for leatherworking or running Scholomance for people who wanted their epic cloak crafted. I know I bought the design for a lot of gold from the auction house and it got me into a lot of groups for Scholo. :)

And then I leveled my Priest and got into the whole healing thing. I abandoned my hunter and really got into a different kind of game. Molten Core was the thing. I spent months in there. Zul'Gurub was next, and even a short but painful visit to Blackwing Lair. I learned a lot about aggro in there and about getting the last bit out of the gear. Then did my priest epic quest, Benediction/Anathema were nice companions deep into the Burning Crusade.

Burning Crusade changed a lot of the game for me. It was simply painful for a Priest to heal heroics. Being one-hitted by trash mobs was not fun. Being always the one to run back all the way through an instance for the x-th time - no fun at all. So I leveled my druid who was stuck in her 50ties forever. Got her up and into Karazhan before I broke away from my guild and was looking for something really different.

The server I played on was (and is) a nightmare for Horde. It is very much an Alliance server and grouping is hell. So I went to look for a different server. And started from scratch. Repeated everything again, including the breaking away from a guild that had occupied my gaming time for most of the time on that server.
The game changed again, it's now capped at 80 levels. It's not hard to level from 1 to 60 anymore. It has become pretty much a joke compared to vanilla WoW. But isn't that something to be glad about?

The old content is still there, you can still roam around Eastern Plaguelands if that is your thing. You can still get frustrated by grinding Argent Dawn reputation - but you can do it in so much less time. Just the focus has shifted. Nowadays you will grind Argent Dawn rep for a title, not for a being able to enchant manareg on bracers or get cheap entry to Naxxramas (40).

Old content is not dead only because people are more interested in raiding Ulduar. Old content is still there and people still play it. I will go back to old content on my Deathknight, he has a lot of things to do. I really want to do that for him. And WoW Wiki is a great source for people who don't know what the Timbermaw are... or do you know who the Shen'dralar were and what you could get there? Yes, enchants for your legs... before leatherworking fixed that.

Ziral is back! (kind of)

I got some new impressions of Priest healing yesterday when I took my Priest to heal Azjol. She is 72 at the moment and the last thing I remember healing was our last visit to the Shrine and attempting Vashj.

So this was a long time ago. I think I have not healed with her in almost 10 months. So it was kind of a first for me, again. I think the tank thought I was a total noob, one time I had to cast the Spirit on him, or he would have been dead. But I think that was just because I was like "oh what does this button do again?" - no seriously, I had almost no clue what I was doing. I skilled her weeks ago, and have been in Shadow most of the time I level her. So I really have no clue what kind of procs I'll get and what they do. I just thought that Surge of Light was up a lot. :)

And of course being a cloth-wearer I'm totally squishy again, which reminded me why I had switched to Paladin and then Shaman in the first place.
Well, I enjoyed it immensely and at the end of the short instance I think I know how to play her again as a healer.

For now she is questing in Borean Tundra, having finished Fjord yesterday and I do have a lot of fun with her at the moment. No one being able to gank me is a plus as well. Playing on a PvE server feels like vacation sometimes...

Like a Ghost

Well, Duh means ghost doesn't it? And over the last weeks and months he really acts like one. He is someone I played a lot with on my old server and which I said my farewell to in November or December, I can't really remember, but it was last year.

I have been absent from my old server for about 4 months but now that my mom has bought Lich King and is still playing on my old server - well, let's just say I have a reason to dust off the old chars again. Which of course brings up older memories, good and bad.

So a while ago I see Duh pop up on his hunter once in a while on my new server. He leveled some toons there as well when I was still playing much more on my old server. As a kind of retreat when things got too boring.

Of course I've been curious as to why he is popping up on "my" server. Of course he can play where he wants to but I had forgotten that he is still on my friends list on some chars, so I was surprised to see him log on with his little hunter. And of course said "hi". And not only that. But you really cannot call it a conversation, not really. It was more me chatting at him not with him.

Yesterday it was really late and I wanted to have the bunny you get through the eggs and Noblegarden at the moment - for my priest on my old server. It was kind of an odd feeling, but since I gave her dual spec already and through that somehow opened up the chance to enjoy leveling her a bit as a Shadow - I could as well go for it.

So I make my rounds in Brill, get transformed into a bunny and hop here and there opening about 100 eggs - and yes the bunny was in it - and I cross to the forge and suddenly I see a Shadow priest stand there - I mouse over him and it is Duh's alt priest-

Well, after the really great conversations we had lately (yes, sarcasm incoming) I don't have him on my friendslist anymore so I didn't even know he was online at all. So I hop on over to him and well, play around him a bit, like sniffing his robe and hiding under his robe and laying an egg under his robe - just silly stuff like that. And suddenly I wish that it could be like really old times, like before Burning Crusade when we still had fun and I could make him laugh.

But he just ran past me and to the mailbox and waved hi. I said nothing, I just emoted that I pat him gently and then he waved good bye and went into the Inn, and I guess offline. I just went on hopping around and collecting more eggs until I had them all to eat 100 of them.

Clearly out of frustration. :)

Well, what it was I cannot say. Maybe it was purely coincidence. Maybe not, either way - I know that he'll always be a ghost for me. I can remember things that meant a lot to me, but now I'm not sure they ever exsisted. Maybe it was all in my head and I'm slowly going crazy.