And We're Back...

/target Bremm's Musings
/cast Resurrection

Where we're going

I know I've not been as fastidious about getting posts up here in a timely manner. There are a couple of excuses, er I mean reasons for this.

First of all, I made a decision when the alpha leaked information started popping up on blogs everywhere that I wasn't going to write about things I couldn't actually see or verify for myself. This cut me out of a great deal of the "here is the latest cool thing about topic" posts that I could've made. When no beta invite every arrived in my mailbox, this prohibition against posts I couldn't self verify continued.

Next, the vast majority of my posts really deal with preparing yourself to do what you want to do with your toon. Is it raiding? There's lists of raiding preparation, things to do once you're 70 and preparing to do other the next thing, tricks and tips for five mans, PVP analyses, and so forth. All that stuff I wrote still applies. The foods you can cook, the potions you can bring to raiding or 5-mans still apply and are still in the game. The daily quests can still be done. None of that has changed and if I wrote about it again, I'd just be directing you to old posts.

Third, I mentioned my herniated disc a while ago. It has kept me from doing some of the things I normally do or having things take longer so I've had less time to blog. It happens. Right now, in case you all were wondering, I've not scheduled surgery because the physical therapy and epidural injections are working (for the time being). That may change in the future. I'm sort of in a wait and see mode.

So, that leaves me with a blog that doesn't get updated frequently. Here's how I plan to still be able to post until WOTLK is out and usable be mere mortals such as myself.

There are some sites that are reporting on the beta. There are new things like in game achievements and feats of strength for old world content completed. I'd like to write a couple of guides to getting things done to pre-qualify for those achievements upon launch. I plan to write a couple of guides for doing things in game now that will set you up for success later. For instance:

• Guides for collecting the non-combat pets in pursuit of the pet collection achievement
• Guides for massing and accumulating rep with old world factions
• Speculation on market prices post-launch and what durable goods you might want to hang onto for greater profits later
• Plans for staging yourself and your guilds for success upon launch.
• Hopefully, blogging from Blizzcon, since I'll be there! Hit me up in comments or email if you'd like to meet up at the function.
  

Sincc these topics all are of a higher research type, the posts will likely take longer to begin coming out. The good news, however, is that these posts may be of the longish variety that need to be split up over several days.

And looking towards the future, once the launch finally does occur I'll have a whole host of things to write about with all the new foods, potions, spells, skills and strategies.

Thanks for hanging in there with me.

For The Horde! - Blogroll Additions

No, I'm not switching sides. I'm adding a few blogs to the blogroll, and amazingly they're all horde based blogs. It makes me feel a little sad that I've gleefully killed so many hordies lately in BGs and am now highlighting them on the blog. But here we go, nonetheless.

Nalik over at Feather Duster writes from the perspective of a balance druid. I like it because we seem to be at the same stage raid-wise, it's well written and includes fun neologisms which he insists are real words. Fun!

Troll on a Powerbook is a fun read as well. Rayare is her sub-70 hunter. So I can relax about killing her in PVP battlegrounds. My guys play at 70 or recently, 19.

Finally, we have Tzia over at Have Bow Will Travel. The writing here is tight and good. And I just love the blog header. I need to get me a picture for my banner. Any artists?

Anyway, just a little quick update. Later, I'm going to talk a little about my twink project!

Didja All Miss Me?

I've taken a much needed vacation from work. Although this doesn't mean I needed to take a vacation from the blog, I did that as well.

Don't worry, I didn't take a WoW vacation as well in fact, there was hardly a day I didn't play. So, I'll have lots of WoW related goodness to catch you all up on come Monday.

In fact, there may be so much goodness that you'll be getting caught up for weeks to come.

See you all on Monday.

Caveat Emptor

I'm fulfilling my blogospheric duty. Kestrel posted this and asked that each of his cadre of elite bloggers (my words) link at least to the topic at hand.

The executive summary is that Blizzard is (too) slow to respond to reports of account hacking. There's a blog post and a Blizzard forum post linked in Kestrel's site. Go there. Follow links. Don't worry, I'll wait until you get back.

Back? Good.

I don't know the details of this incident. There is an incident that I can speak to that happened a couple months ago in my (old) guild. There was this warrior, named, uh...something like Smashy. He hadn't logged on in about 8 or 9 weeks. He's the nephew of other folks in the guild.

Suddenly he logs in out of the blue. Pleasantries are sent out to Smashy. No response. This in itself is not terrible odd, sometimes Smashy just didn't. However, quickly a conversation thread started in the guild channel. "Is that Smashy?" "Why isn't he talking?" "I didn't even know he was even playing."

Tells were sent to his aunt and/or uncle. Calls were made.

Long story short. No. This was not the Smashy we knew and um knew. Smashy contacted Blizzard about the account he'd not paid for in 3 months. To make this long story shorter, it turns out he had been hacked. Blizzard at some point (probably a week or more) locked the account for "suspicious activity." Then Smashy had to send a notarized letter claiming he was who he said he was etc. etc.

It turns out, if he was hacked, that the hacker was not very bright. He didn't sell anything, didn't strip the characters. In fact, instead of funneling money out, he went out and farmed with the characters. When Smashy finally got his account back, he had about 600 more gold. And had the nerve to be upset that the "hacker" had moved his buttons around.

But seriously, this account hacking stuff means ya gotsta be careful. You MUST! And go read and post on the forums. We rely on Blizzard to help us safeguard our inforamtions.

Hope that helped, Kestrel!

P.S. If you name is Kestrel, please send me an email. Contact informations up there in the right hand corner. I have a question for you and can't find your contact info. Maybe I'm just:

1. blind
2. an idiot
3. all of the above
   

Quick Blogroll updats

Not a major post today. I'm making a few updates to my recommended blogs and wanted to share that.

1. BRK moved! No longer at blogspot, and no longer even using blogger, he's made the move to a custom domain and wordpress. Hope you find everything you packed in your hasty move, BRK.
2. Kestrel once said, "You find the best blogs by reading comments in other blogs." I find this to be true and offer up Og's Ledger. It's all about the accounting.
3. Since young master Bremmie was dinging in at 56, I'm finding myself drawn to more roguish content. Adding Doomilias to the blog roll. (Gah. With the number of AC blogs I read, maybe I should have just transferred to Drenden and joined them instead of /gquitting and staying where I was.)
   

Questions I have

From what I've been reading about me and my blog, I'm apparently good at generating lists of things. So, today we have another list of sorts.

There are things in the game that I've accepted just because that's the way it is. But it doesn't mean that I don't wonder about them. Actually, I usually don't wonder about them right away, but instead later it strikes me that something is not quite right. For example:

1. Silverleaf and Peacebloom are well known as "starter herbs." These are the things that all beginning herbalists harvest. But exactly what kinds of herbs are these. Think about it, they grow in Durotar--an almost desert like zone. They also grow in the lush forests surrounding Stormwind. They grow in the rolling temperate hills of Mulgore. They grow in the perpetual wintry mix of Dun Murogh. They even grow in the area of an active starship crash that has mutated much of the life around it. How hardy are these plants? And are there any "real world" plants that show this kind of fortitude?
2. Dun Murogh as mentioned above is in constant winter. Granted it's located in the mountains. But if you've flown from Ironforge to Searing Gorge, the mountains don't look to be that tall. Certainly not tall enough to account for the volcanic zone right next to a permafrost zone. What kind of magical physics is going on here?
3. Just what are the Scarlet Monastery dudes doing in there. Real world monasteries would have the bulk of their residents performing some manual labor or at the very least praying. It seems to me that everyone inside the monastery is just standing around waiting to be killed. Sure, there are books and places to pray. But no one actually seems to be engaged in that. And another thing, during pulls I can clearly see the guys at the end of the hall. I have to assume they can see me and my party as well. And they must see us killing their buddies. So why is it they only object when I try to kill them DIRECTLY? Don't they care at all for their buddies? And this isn't only SM. It's just about any instance.
4. I can fly to from Skettis to Blade's Edge on the back of a nether ray (because they like me just that much). I can practically fly through a dragon doing that and the dragon pays me no mind. However, the moment I get on my own (flying) mount, the dragon takes great offense. What kind of cloaking technology are these Shatari Skyguard using. And when can I get the same kind of tech?
5. Finally, the quest for 225 cooking culminates in Gadgetzan. What kind of master chef lives in a town that doesn't even sell the needed materials for cooking? C'mon guys, give me at least a spice vendor down there!

So, that's it for today. Feel free to attempt to explain my questions or add your own.

Tagged - Part Two

Ratshag tagged me and four others to be named later to answer the five things I've learned from playing WoW.

Here they are in no particular order.

1. Be as prepared as you can. I read. Alot. That's one of the reasons that when we fight a new boss somewhere, I've read the strategy five or six times already. Then I read it again just before the fight. There is nothing like preparation to help you succeed. Whether we're talking WoW or IRL.
2. Hard work pays off. Granted this won't happen for everyone, but I worked VERY hard to get myself ready for Karazhan the first time I ventured in. And I think we managed to take down both Attumen and Moroes that first day. And I got the gloves from Attumen that made me a happy camper. Loot is sometimes the reward for hard work. And my hard work paid off that day.
3. There are bad people in the world. Our first raid leader for Karazhan (see #2 above) turns out to be one of these not nice people. In fact, he wound up leaving the guild and not only taking all the friends he came in with out, but about 1/3 of our other raid-worthy players. I honestly think that his intention was to get into a starting out guild and cherry pick what he needed. I think he had no intention of ever staying in the guild. He was a bad people. And these exist IRL too.
4. If you're too good, you get a reputation. As I said before I read alot. And I work hard at this game. These two things together have given me semi-photographic memory about places in the game. To the point where I remember quests I've not done in a LONG TIME down to the quest name and the quest giver's name. So, I've become the go-to guy to ask obscure questions. It's one of the reasons my Vent Phonetic is "Encyclopedia Bremtanica."
5. The same things don't appeal to everyone. I want raiding and progression. That's the way I test and validate myself. Others don't. They want to PVP, fart around a long time with content, just chat, give (or receive) run throughs, make money. To some degree I enjoy all of those things. But raiding is where my passion is. It's not the same for everyone. There are a good many people in my guild who LOVE to PVP. There are folks who judge how well they're doing on the size of their bankroll. This is all fine. It's just not for me. Much as my obsession with raiding prolly isn't for them.

I'm stopping here. I've fulfilled my duties as tagged by Ratshag. However, since this meme has been around for over a week and has hit many of the places I would want to tag, I'm not going to tag anyone. Except for Pelides. Since he didn't get it before!

Tagged - Part One

Pelides over at Hunter Mayhem started his own meme since he didn't get tagged in the other one that was circulating. His meme is about the five worst wipes. And believe you me, he tagged the right guy!

1. Garr in Molten Core. This is the rock elemental guy that starts with 8 adds. The general strategy is to have 4 warlocks and 5 tanks. MT gets Garr, each of the other tanks gets an add. Each warlock banishes an add. Kill the first 4, kill Garr, kill the 4 banished guys one at a time. Simple. Wipe. We're setting up for the next attempt, raid leader calls for buffs. Suddenly without warning for no apparent reason, my favorite paladin healer, Qerk, takes off at a dead run for the boss and his eight friends. Qerk dies, the other 39 of us die one by one by one. We find out later, Qerk has fallen asleep at the keyboard, finger firmly pressed on the run key!
2. High Priestess Jeklik in Zul'Gurub. Back in the day before Burning Crusade, ZG was where my guild spent a lot of time. We never had the forty people needed for other end-game stuff, so we ended up in ZG a lot. And we wiped a lot. I could likely write up 5 wipes just on this boss alone. But I'll coalesce all these wipes into one. Drawing any attention to yourself (unless you're the MT) in this encounter is a bad thing. The wipes generally started when some thoughtful healer sent me a Renew about half a second after I'd pulled her when I was tanking. I had the aggro of a single gunshot on her. The priest now had more. And died. Then the rest of the raid died.
3. Trash in Mechanar (Heroic). I was healing a heroic Mech before my gear was uber. I had enough healing that I knew I could do it. Sent the paladin tank a bunch of love as we were fighting one of the three robots at the beginning. Rogue took too much damage, sent a flash heal then back to tank. Greater Heal - No discernible change in health. Another one. Still no change in health. Another. Another. Another. Still nothing what gives. Tank dies. We run out. Then I notice that I. Have. The. Wrong. Party. Member. Targetted. At least the rogue had awesomely full health (and I did a TON of overhealing)
4. Ragnaros in Molten Core. We were on about our tenth (felt like the hundredth) attempt on old Rags. We were out of pots, out of bots, out of food. We were spent. And he'd been getting a little lower each time. We had someone hearth and pick up mana and healing pots, some food, a bot, fire resistance pots. Anything we could think of. Chipped gold together and made one last attempt. A mis-timed heal wiped our best tank out just before the sons. By the time we got him battle rez'd it was too late for the raid and way past most bedtimes. Final health of Rags somewhere about 50% greater than the best previous attempt.
5. Zul'Farak runthrough. Bremmie got a run through of ZF from a 70 lock. Apparently, when you target a far scarab with Seed of Corruption, it runs towards you bringing its buddies. Then when it detonates, you have about 9,000 level 40-ish scarabs beating on a lock. And it doesn't last long.

There. Five wipes. Maybe not the worst, but definitely bad. Who should I tag..let's see. First off, the three folks who've started blogging since I have: K, Owaru, Iron(shield|helm), Then two others Pike and Kestrel. I owe a responses to Ratshag from his tag. I was scared to tag him until I have completed that previous tag. But notice the title is part 1.

What are you all doing to me?

Didn't I just tell you all I was done with blogging for November? Why are you making me update my blogroll to include active links? And why are you all buying custom domains?

Just kidding of course. Blogroll updates:

1. Hunter Mayhem has a new web address. Gratz on your personal domain. And I hear that there's a "vanity" domain out there too. No details, but makes me wonder!
2. Kestrel's Aerie is also sporting a brand new address. Makes me think it's time for me to take the plunge as well. Congrats Kestrel.
3. Gorespike stopped publishing The Blood Fury. I'll miss you Gorespike and good luck in whatever is distracting your attention now.
4. Mania's Arcania is a blog I've been lurking on until now. Finally adding it to the blogroll as it has deserved.
   

There. I think NOW I am done.

Linkage!

I'm not really feeling a full blown blog post today. So, I'm just going to throw you a few bones here. *smile*

When I started my blog back in September, I wasn't sure I'd keep it going or that I'd even really advertise it. I shared with a very few people saying things like "Here's a little something I wrote." or "Here's my blog address, but don't put it in a feeder or anything. It may not last."

Then I wrote a post about Werenal, The Farmer God -- and had to share it with him. And then Neshura started asking good hunter questions, which I answered in the blog. And told her to check there. And then, well. I'm over one thousands hits, per SiteMeter.

To date, I know of at least three blogs that have been started either by real life friends or guildmates after reading my blog. I'm almost like Typhoid Mary!

Since I try to look at them every day, I've put two of them in my blogroll. Now I'm adding the third. So, here they are, reviewed again.

1. Can Tank, Will Travel - Ironshield just needs to focus. He has too many alts on too many servers. But I will say he's done his research on tanking and group dynamics. Irks me only slightly that he posts way less often than I do, but still has comparable hit counts.
2. You Wake It, You Tank It - Owaru impresses me with the amount of reading and research he's done. He is my information source for paladin tanking and general tank statistics. No, I don't know about uncrushable for paladins even though my Ventrilo text-to-Speech is "Encyclopedia Bremtanica." Why would I need to know--I have access to Owaru.
3. KDots - K is the raid leader in my guild. What impresses me most about K's blog is the extremely easy read. Reading the blog is essentially like talking to her. And welcome to the blogroll, K!

And I just noticed they all use Blogger too! Shouldn't I get a commission or something?

Google Me!

Ratshag asked in a post earlier this week what Google searches folks were doing to find him. It got me curious as well. I was hoping this would give me some good ideas for upcoming posts -- if they're already getting my site as a result, wouldn't it be cool if what search led them there was actually answered there. Here is the (edited) list. I've removed all searches for other blogs that returned my blog as a result:

1. wowwebstats
2. bremm - Apparently also a German town
3. karazhan pet training
4. hunter attack power food raid
5. glyph of shadow warding
6. pet trainers wowwiki
7. deadzone - Maybe for the bad Anthony Michael Hall Series?
   
8. glyph of nature warding
9. h0w to be a good raidleader

So. There's not a lot there. Maybe it'll spark an idea or two.

Blogroll Updates!

I dunno why Blogger insisted on posting my last with a post date of Thursday, but I shall endeavor to persevere -- by posting updates to the blogroll today...

The Delusional Hunter - A quite well-written blog about (you guessed it) the art of huntering. Sometimes you find good stuff in comments.

You Wake It - A co-guildies blog. Although he normally comments on my blog under "Scott" he stealth commented the other day. Only last night did I detect it was indeed someone I know.

Stormrage's Dreaming - I'm not sure where I found this one exactly. But it's a resto-druid blog that breaks the "druids use blogger; priests use wordpress" paradigm. And a good read to boot!!

Like playing a Hunter

It's funny how many real-world items have similarities to WoW. For instance, writing a blog is very much like playing a hunter. Hunters have a wide range of shots, stings & attacks at their disposal. The well-played hunter mixes up each of the shots to suit the exact needs. The well-written blog also mixes up the types of posts available to it, again to suit the exact situation. In both cases, spamming the same type of shot(post) over and over gets boring for everyone involved.

Let's look at the types of posts we have and the analogous hunter attack.

Misdirection: This can be one of the simplest posts of all. Find a good blog or website, post a link to that site (perhaps with some explanatory exposition) and hit publish. Your work here is done, effectively sending the masses off to another blog for their daily dosage. This shot is most often followed up by adding the blog to the blogroll.

Pet Attack: This is similar to misdirection. Find a good blog post. Where someone else has done all the work for you. Explain the linkage and link to the post. This can often be followed up with a post of your own either agreeing or dissenting with the original post. The difference between this and a misdirection is you're highlighting a particular post with pet attack, while a misdirect is just a good general blog.

Arcane Shot: Quick post. This is probably a quickly written post, containing mostly opinion or very trivial facts. There isn't a lot of writing or research time. Not a lot of thinking is required by the blogger for this type of post. Sometimes marked with the "rant" tag.

Stings: These are posts that give information over time. Taken together these can be quite long posts that require a lot of thinking and research. However, since they are presented over time, it is less work to both read and write on a particular day. Nearly all multi-part posts fit into this category.

Steady Shot: Medium effort posts both in terms of writing and research. In game Steady Shot has a 1.5 second cast time, thus there's a fair bit of commitment to this type of post. However, research shouldn't be excessively long and it should be fairly easy to spam this type of post. May even be re-packaging or collecting information presented elsewhere in a simpler format.

Aimed Shot: Here it is. The big mother. This post can take a very long time to research. The information is likely scattered in several places and must be painstakingly collected, collated, spindled, folded and mutilated by the poster. Even then the long time may require the poster to begin work days before the readership even knows its coming. Is sometimes broken up into several shorter posts, at which point it becomes a sting.

What post types are left off? Clearly the various hunter traps, but I don't like to write posts that execute malware scripts and highjack the reader's browser (freezing trap) and I'm not sure the various widgets that track hits and traffic on the site (track humanoid) are really blog post types.

Blogs You Need - Updated

I've finally updated my "Blogs You Need" section. I added "Aspect of the Hare" and "Need More Rage" as new discoveries of mine. I finally corrected a MASSIVE oversight and added "Big Bear Butt Blogger" to the list as well.

And I'm not removing either "Can Tank Will Travel" or "Big Red Kitty" even though I think there's some collusion there with BRK linking Can Tank before he got around to misdirecting onto my blog :-)

(Can Tank is an IRL friend and I can tease him like that)

All of 'em are good.

Thanks, Galadria for the post idea. She recently posted a /rant post on her blog that talked about excluding a class from a raid based on gear or spec. She went on to say it was the person on the other end of the internet that could make or break the deal.

I absolutely agree. I think good players are just good. I know there are some people that I know out there that I'd play with any of their characters. There's an understanding of the mechanics and knowing what a particular class can do that comes through when you've found one of these rare gems.

I know we all have alts. When you find a good (truly good) player, do yourself a favor and get a list of their alts. If the player is good, the build/spec/class of the character has very little to do with what you can accomplish.

Once, when my hunter was just barely 70, I got a comment from someone I played a lot with at the time. He said "It was cool to group with your hunter. You play him well - just like you do all of your characters." At the time, I took it as a compliment to myself. But after reading the above post, I'm beginning to see connections outside myself. Perhaps I'm one of those good players, whose good at lots of things.

(Almost) Famous

Okay. Here it is. I'm (almost) famous as a blogger. I got my first link from over at Kestrel's Aerie. Thanks for the recognition on my humble attempts at blogging. Now the pressure is really on.