The Proof is in the Pudding

After slaughtering 50,000 damage worth of lvl 22-24 Ogres (being approx. 75 Ogres @ 650hp each) in Duskwood's Vul'Gol Ogre Mound, my level 20 Arms Warrior armed with the 2H Reef Axe from Blackfathom Deeps averaged 82.5dps, as seen in the below screenshot. (Yes, I cut & pasted the Recount Window into a second screenshot.)

After repeating the experiment and terrorizing the Ogres a second time, this time as a Fury Warrior but still with the exact same gear, I averaged 94.6dps. As you can see from the second screenshot the passive buff from the Fury Tree's "Precision" skill, being +3% to Hit and +40% to Autoattack, provides a significant boost to my base/white Damage, and definitely helps to explain the almost 15% increase in overall DPS.

I ran Shadowfang Keep as an Arms Warrior in between the two attacks on the Vul'Gol Ogres, and with all of the group buffs and the passive buff from using the Random LFG Tool I managed to pull 100dps, being the same as what I managed on my own as a Fury Warrior.

After respec'ing Fury, traditionally a dual-wield Build, I first equipped two Baron's Scepters and slaughtered a dozen or so Ogres, just to see how well Fury worked when dual-wielding. In short, it didn't. Using what are probably the best two 1H weapons a level 20 Fury Warrior can get my DPS averaged in the mid-70s. It did jump into the low 80s when I got in a string of Crits, but would just as quickly slide back into the mid-70 range when my Gnome went nose-to-kneecap with the Ogres for longer than a few seconds, which as a dual-wielding Fury Warrior it usually did.

In fact fighting the Ogres as a dual-wielding Fury Warrior felt almost exactly like fighting them as an Arms Warrior, with combat usually lasting at least 5-6 seconds. I noticed I missed many attacks, and also got Parried a lot. Even with the combined +4 to Hit buff from wielding two Baron's Scepters, the lower damage output meant I was still in combat for a lot longer than when I equipped the Reef Axe (as Fury). The bonus to Hit from not dual-wielding meant a lot less of my attacks got Parried, and thus a lot more of my attacks landed, and when you're hitting Mobs with the Reef Axe they know they've been HIT!!! As a Fury Warrior wielding the Reef Axe it was not uncommon to rush into combat and lay out an Ogre within 2-3 hits, and with the first three attacks being Victory Rush, Autoattack, and Bloodthirst, those 3 attacks could all land within 2-3 seconds. If even one of them was a Crit it was usually lights out, but if the Ogre was still standing and Execute hadn't lit up I'd throw in a Heroic Strike and that would inevitably get the job done.

The end result from terrorizing the Vul'Gul Ogres is what I've argued all along, that at lower levels Arms is a sub-par DPS build to Fury, and that even if you have two of the best one-handed weapons available for your level you're still better off using a comparable 2H weapon instead of dual-wielding. In my case, 15% better off.

Raiding in WoW at Level 20

Is there any real, major difference to "Raiding" at 20 vs the End Game?

You're still running Instances over, and over, and over again looking for that elusive drop that is barely an upgrade to what you already have. You still get Rogues rolling on Tank/Warrior Gear, like Silverlaine's Family Seal, a ring with +5 Strength and +3 Stamina. You still get Hunters rolling on everything, such as SFK's Haunting Blade, a 2H sword with +8 Strength...okay, and +6 to Hit. And you still get Know-It-Alls telling you to Learn2Play.

I decided to roll a Warrior because there's the option to Tank PUGs if one is feeling particularly masochistic or just desires shorter queues. But good Tanking gear is hard to come by in the game world, so you need to run as DPS then decide whether or not it's acceptable to Need Roll on a Shield if the Tank just Greed Rolls. Logic would dictate that if the Tank doesn't "Need" it, then it should be okay for you, as a wannabe Tank, to Need Roll. But there's the stigma of being seen as a Ninja if you do so, despite the fact that you've passed on every other thing that dropped so far. Plus most people think that if you want to Need Roll Tank gear you should queue up as a Tank while conveniently ignoring the fact that it's kind of hard for a Warrior to Tank without a Shield.

Now some items like the SFK Ring are no brainers. It's clearly a ring for anyone who can benefit from Strength & Stamina, whether that be a Paladin, Druid, or Warrior. Yes, like most classes a Rogue can also benefit from the +3Stamina (not sure how Strength affects a Rogue's AP though), but a Rogue who Need Rolls on a +Stamina Ring before the Tank rolls, or who Need Rolls after the Tank Need Rolls is just being a douche. (IMNSHO)

Likewise a Hunter Need Rolling on a 2H Sword with +8 Str just because it also has +6 To Hit is...okay, that's sort of understandable. Although I confess that when I saw the Hunter had Need Rolled I decided to hit Need myself, even though it probably wasn't an upgrade. And I won it, too, so take that, stupid Hunter! Almost 7 years on and Hunters still think everything is a Hunter Weapon :P So what if it turned out I was right and it wasn't really an upgrade. How was I to know how it would affect my DPS until I had it in my greedy little paws? Besides, it's a pretty cool looking sword :D

Speaking of DPS, I'm a tad miffed that there are no mid-level Target Dummies, at least none that I can find. There are lvl 1 Dummies in the Lowbie area but a level 20 demolishes them with a couple of whacks. This means aside from the Character Sheet, the only way I can verify my DPS is by actually running the same Instance twice, once with each weapon, and comparing my Recount stats after the two Runs. This also means if I want to compare Arms DPS and Fury DPS I have to put up with scrubs in PUGs telling me "2H Fury Warrior = Fail LOL".

That's why I got Recount, to verify what I suspected. That the combined +3% To Hit, +5% to ALL physical damage, and the +40% Autoattack Damage buff from the Fury Tree, more than offset the +15% 2H Dmg from the Arms Tree. Even with the two Blue 1H Maces from Shadowfang Keep it was clear that for a level 20 DPS Warrior the Cold Iron Pick is king. Which also sucks. Because it looks like a Mining Pick. That's great if you're a Dwarf, but for aesthetics (& humor value) I prefer Gnome and Tauren Warriors. So now I have a 10' tall Tauren Warrior running around clobbering things with a Mining Pick while Know-it-all Mages are telling me to Lrn2Play because I'm spec'd Fury and wielding a 2H Weapon. Never mind that it's arguably the best level 20 melee weapon in the game and that Fury at 20 pwns the crap out of Arms.

That's why I really got Recount. So I could throw that back in their face.

Hey, Mr. Know-it-all Mage, see the Damage Meter? You just got pwned by a Nub Warrior with the wrong spec wielding a fucking Mining Pick!!! How does that feel?

With nothing but Quest Rewards and Dungeon Drops I'm pulling 100dps, which doesn't sound like much but at lvl 20 I'm second only to Heirloom-equipped characters, and even then I'm giving them a run for their money.

Hey, Mr. Know-it-all Heirloom-wearing Mage, see the Damage Meter? Yeah, that's right. PWNED!!!

Yeah, "Raiding" at 20 really isn't that different from End Game. You still have to put up with people like me. Happy Hunting ;)

Blizzard ban themselves from WoW

Over at Two & Two Half Paws, Dammerung said:
"Speaking of Horde. I'm liking how realID has freed me from having to play alliance to chat with my friends who are allies. It is nice to be able to play whatever faction I want and still talk to my buddies when they get on."

From WoW's Terms of Use,
9. Code of Conduct
B.) Rules Related to "Chat" and Interaction With Other Users.
Communicating in-game with other Users and Blizzard representatives, whether by text, voice or any other method, is an integral part of the Game and the Service and is referred to here as "Chat." When engaging in Chat, you may not:
(viii) Communicate directly with players who are playing characters aligned with the opposite faction (e.g. Horde communicating with Alliance or vice versa);

Is it just me, or are Blizzard saying their own Terms of Use aren't worth the pixels they're not printed on?

How much time, part II

Continuing from last week's post.

On Sunday, July 11th, I played for three sessions of 130 minutes, 184 minutes, and 177 minutes, or for the mathematically-challenged 8 hours and 11 minutes. With the next day being a work day I logged out at 10:35pm.

I didn't play at all on Monday and on Tuesday put in just 70 minutes, logging out at 8:30pm when my attempt at Tanking Utgarde Keep on my properly spec'd, def-capped Death Knight crashed & burned. That was also the end of my week's WoW time.

So this past week I played for a shade under 9 1/2 hours, with almost all of that time being on Sunday. Compared to last week's 41 hours this is also not really an example of my regular playing habits, rather an average of the two is more realistic, or it would be if I hadn't canceled my subscription.

Tuesday

Liz picked me up from the Bus Station, I dropped her and the boy at basketball practice, took the Bunny to the MIL's (who would take her to piano practice then keep her for the night), then returned to Liz and the boy with time to spare to watch him run a few drills and even sink a few baskets. Not bad for a kid who has only played a handful of games. After practice we went to the market and got a few things for dinner (and the next couple of days' dinners) before returning home.

After dinner I logged into WoW and decided to try Tanking Utgarde Keep on my Death Knight. Like my Paladin I'd Tanked my way through the Burning Crusade's Instances on my Frost-spec'd DK, but unlike with my Paladin (who bombed in UK) I'd picked up my DK a complete set of lvl 70 Cobalt Armor, so with a few +Defense enchants I was now Def Capped for UK (490@70) with a shade over 500 Defense. After party Buffs I also had over 14,000HP, which should have been more than enough to successfully Tank UK.

On the first Pull we managed to grab both the left and right packs at the same time. I didn't intend to do that (and I'm not sure I did) but I quickly picked up all the Mobs and held Aggro. My Health went down a spot, then back up to full, Mobs were dying and I thought we were doing alright, then I died. One second I had a full Health bar, the next second I was dead on the floor. Followed seconds later by the rest of the Group.

WTF??? was the general sentiment expressed as we ran back in.

The Healer was copping some flack from the DPS but as they were a Druid Healer (my favorite) I stuck up for him. To their credit everyone laughed it off as we ran back in, rebuffed and continued on.

"Pull more," someone said. (There's always one Go! Go! Go! More! More! More! Faster! Faster! Faster! person in every group)

"Like that first Pull?" I asked.

"More than that :D" was the reply

Other than the two almost side-by-side packs, for the most part the first few packs in UK are spread out, so I decided to pull one group deeper into the Instance in search of the next Pack.

"Stop moving them!" came the indignant cry, probably from DPS channeling an AoE spell on the spot we'd just vacated.

"I was looking for another group," I said.

"Finish off the ones you have first," was the response. Some people are never happy.

We got to the first Boss who is preceded by 4 linked Mobs. No problem. I ran in, picked up Aggro, and as I saw someone say, "Pull them back!"...I died.

Naturally we wiped again.

As we ran back in it was stated that this pack Bombs, a lot, so with only one ranged DPS I needed to pull them back to the doorway and Tank them there, away from the Boss.

We got back to the pack, rebuffed, and I pulled and began moving towards the doorway. I didn't make it. Somehow I died yet again. Even though I'd come in more prepared than I had with my Paladin this was still turning into a repeat of my first attempt at Tanking UK. Seriously. WTF?!

Before we could regroup and try again the Druid dropped group, as did two of the DPS. The Hunter took his chances and stuck with me. Wise man. The Instance queue is shorter for Tanks. We requeued but it would still be several minutes before we would get another group.

I took the time to look through the DPS meter, which includes Damage taken as well as that dished out. As expected, being a Tank I'd taken the brunt of the damage. The Paladin and Warrior DPS had each taken around 15,000 which really isn't much (and could be explained away by damage taken during the Wipes), while the Hunter had barely been scratched. IMO that meant I'd done a pretty good job of holding Aggro, which meant maybe, just maybe, the Healer had not done his job properly.

It's not that I was looking for someone else to blame; I was trying to work out why we had wiped, if it was something I'd done (or not done), and if so, how could I prevent it from happening again.

So with the available evidence appearing to point to the Healer (and thus out of my control) I was somewhat mollified, although I still didn't like having Wiped three times before we even got to the first Boss.

After waiting for several minutes we finally got a new Healer (another Druid! Hooray!), and two more DPS, including a 72 Warrior who had signed up to be Tank or DPS, and expressed surprise to find himself assigned to DPS rather than Tank.

"I'll Tank," I said, "I'm spec'd Frost so my DPS sucks."

Back in we went, up to the first Boss's room where 3 of the 4 Mobs still remained. We rebuffed, went in, I pulled the group back towards the door, and died. Again.

You have got to be fucking JOKING!!!

I wasn't pissed off; I was just very, very confused. I had more than enough Health. I was Def Capped, and although DK's can't wield Shields my combined avoidance, dodge, parry, etc., is pushing 40%. I'd been backed up by Druid Healers (my favorite flavor), and in spite of all this we'd just wiped for the fourth time.

Fail once, shame on the Healer. Fail twice (well, four times), shame on me.

I just didn't understand what I'd done wrong. I wasn't a Noob. I'd successfully Tanked my way through BC's Instances so I knew what I was doing. I'd picked up a full set of Tank Armor and was Crit Immune. I had plenty of Health, or thought I did. And yet I'd still bombed in a spectacularly horrible way.

As we went back in, without saying a word, the 72 Warrior switched to Sword & Board, made the pull on the 3 Mobs and began Tanking them. In his Tank gear he had 15K Health, which not that much more than my own, and yet he did fine. He not only did fine but before the 3 Mobs were down he'd also pulled the Boss and was Tanking him, too! And with that I was relegated to DPS for the rest of the Run.

It was very demoralizing. I wanted to Tank not just because Tanks have shorter queues, but because there is a shortage of Tanks and I've always played DPS. Not wanting a repeat of my Paladin's first foray into UK I'd taken all the steps I thought necessary to successfully Tank the Run, and yet I'd still not been able to do it.

With the Run over I was not in the mood to play so I logged out and actually turned off my PC. Before 8:30 even! Incredible! With the boy almost finished his homework (from summer school) I decided to watch Shaun of the Dead. Sure it's Rated R, but he's seen Zombieland and Ninja Assassin, and by now he's probably heard all the curse words at school (although it is an English movie so there were probably a couple of new ones ;)

After the opening scene I kept trying to place Kate Ashfield, who plays Shaun's girlfriend Liz. It wasn't because I've watched Shaun of the Dead a few times before. I knew I'd seen Kate in something else, but what?

It wasn't until after the Zombie outbreak, when Shaun has gathered together his Mum, his Step-dad, and Liz and her two friends, that I finally realized where I'd seen Kate before. Kate plays Mzzz Hardy (as Richie Twat, aka Rik Mayall, refers to her) in Guest House Paradiso. When I finally realized this I was even more amused to recall that Bill Nighy, who plays Philip, Shaun's Step-dad - but you probably know him better as Davy Jones from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, or Viktor from Underworld - is also in Guest House Paradiso where he plays Mr. Johnson, aka, Mz. Hardy's boyfriend.

In other words the actors who play Shaun's girlfriend and Shaun's Step-dad are a couple in Guest House Paradiso. Small world :)

Once more unto the breach

Or...here we go again.

The reason given?

WoW's Terms of Use, S10 "Security of Login Information" makes me "responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of the Login Information". I stated that as RealID was an Opt-Out program and not Opt-In, I felt this amounted to unauthorized disclosure of the Login Information for which Blizzard had made me responsible, and so I no longer wished to continue my subscription.

I now have a few more weeks to play, until August 7th, and then my WoW subscription will once more lapse.

How much time???

Part of becoming my own parent through WoW's parental controls was being able to request a copy of the amount of time played/signed in to my WoW account.

I know I play a lot, especially when I have days off/weekends and I don't need to do any Dailies (Weeklies?) to grind Spousal Rep. Today I got confirmation of how much I play, being a record of the amount of time I'd played on my account last week, the number of minutes logged in, and what time I'd logged out.

On the 4th of July (the first day of my report) we joined friends for barbecue dinner and fireworks so I logged off at 3:50pm after playing for just 85 minutes. After we got home I logged in again and played for 160 minutes before calling it a night/morning at 1:50am. Because the 4th was a Sunday and I get all the Federal Holidays I was off on Monday the 5th, so logging off at ten-to-two on this particular Sunday night/Monday morning is not that big of a deal.

What's funny about my play time on Monday is I had 3 session that each lasted almost exactly 100 minutes. Two at 99 and one at 98. Combined with the evening's play session I racked up a little over 7 hours for the day.

Tuesday I played a much more moderate 2 hours (literally. The report says 121 minutes. Ok, 2 hours and 1 minute. Happy now?), logging out at 11:25pm. Wednesday I played just 1 hour (or 61 minutes for you nit-pickers) and logged off at 10:43pm.

But Thursday?

The wife called me on my way home and said the boy had basketball practice, the bunny had gymnastics, and afterward she was going to the Gym and wouldn't be home until after 6pm. She confirmed that the kids would be staying with her parents (no need to make dinner) so I rode the bus all the way home (instead of her picking me up at the Bus Station) where I emptied the dish washer then reloaded it, picked up dog poop (from the backyard!), took out the trash, vacuumed the stairs, then sat down to play at approx. 4:30, logging out 110 mins later at 6:20 (probably when the wife got home). I wouldn't log in again for another 3 hours, but when I did I racked up another 200 minutes between 9:30pm and 1am when I called it a night (or the wife called me to bed ;) So between 4:30pm and 1am, a period of 8 1/2 hours, I played for 310 minutes, being 5 hours, 10 minutes (for the mathematically challenged).

Friday was another day off (yes, I worked just 3 days last week, flanked by two 3-day weekends) but the kids stayed with their grandparents while Liz and I spent a lazy day at home. I actually only played twice this day. I logged off at 7:07pm after playing for just 572 minutes, (a little over 9 1/2 hours :P), but it was clearly an idle-out while grabbing something to eat because I logged in again just minutes later and would stay logged in until quarter-to-one, Saturday morning. Two sessions, one at 572 minutes, one at 333 minutes, for fifteen fucking hours.

I got up Saturday and despite attending my son's basketball game, among other activities (such as shopping with the wife), racked up another 7 hours in-game.

Total time played for the week (thanks in no small part to Friday's 15-hour marathon session)? 2,498 minutes, or 41 hours, 38 minutes.

With the extra days off and the kids spending much of their time with their grandparents this was not a typical week, but I'd still expect to play for at least 20 hours in any given week. Let's see what this week brings. Will I let this inordinate amount of in-game time affect this week's play time? Or will I still play for 20 hours, if not more?

AFK Fun in the Blood Furnace

I've been leveling up a Death Knight Tank (just for something to do) and this weekend I did numerous Ramparts and Blood Furnace Runs trying to get either Hellreaver or the Warsong Howling Axe, but neither of them would drop. (Which is a blessing in disguise, because it also meant I didn't have to lose them to a Ninja Hunter). There are a couple of other low 60s weapons which are more easily obtainable, but none that could really be considered an upgrade as far as Tanking goes.

For the most part the PUGs have gone reasonably smoothly. There have been few (if any) cases of Go! Go! Go! and while I'm still getting the hang of DK Tanking, learning what I can (and cannot) safely Pull, the Runs are also going reasonably quickly. While I'm not doubtful of my Healer's ability to keep my alive, I do want to keep the Pulls to a size with which I'm comfortable holding Aggro. Which would you rather: The Tank play it safe & take 20-25 minutes for a Wipe-free Run? Or you drop out because they're going too slow, then have to endure the 30-minute debuff? (Sure, you could hang in there for 15 minutes to avoid the Deserter Debuff, but in just 5-10 more minutes the Run will be over so why not stick it out? DPS are easily replaced anyway. It's no skin off our nose if you bail on us, first 15-minutes or not.)

On this one particular Blood Furnace Run we lost one of our DPS on the wave of Orcs preceding Broggok (or perhaps between Wave #4 and Broggok). No problem, DPS are easily replaced. A Hunter zoned in as I grabbed Aggro on WoW's equivalent of a Beholder and 20 seconds later he went down, dropping the Legion Blunderbuss. Everyone Greed rolled except the Hunter...who didn't roll at all.

I was in the middle of typing "Hunter, Need roll on the Gun if it's an upgrade" when our Priest said, "WTF Why is the Hunter following me?"

I stopped typing and brought up Recount. The Hunter's name was conspicuously absent. He'd zoned in (something you can't do without clicking 'Accept' and immediately AFK-Followed the Priest). I deleted what I'd just typed and replaced it with "No sign of Hunter in Recount". Someone else threw up their Recount showing it wasn't just me; the Hunter was AFK-Following the Priest, and had been AFK throughout that entire Boss fight. (With all due respect, he was a NElf Hunter)

Right-Click Hunter. Vote to Kick. And? This player cannot be kicked for 12 more minutes.

I announced this to the group.

"Just keeping going and we'll kick before the Boss," someone said. That appeared to be the general consensus so off we went, 4-manning Blood Furnace. Fortunately Death Knights are OP so it's not like we were wanting for DPS.

In the room immediately before Keli'dan we decided to try and get the still-AFK Hunter killed. It should have been easy as the Felguard Annihilators in this room often ignore the Aggro table and attack party members at random. It was working too, and I was silently cheering as the Hunter's lifebar started dropping, and then...he Potted. Or Feigned to drop Aggro then Bandaged, or something. But his Health shot back up and just like that he was running all over the place and no longer AFK-Following the Priest, who in an ironic turn of events was the only casualty of the fight.

WTF? Did the Hunter Heal? someone asked.

He's pulling the Boss!!! someone else yelled.

And indeed he was.

The Hunter had run into Keli'dan's room and aggroed the Warlocks, starting the encounter.

Well sure, you can do that, I said to myself, as I watched the Hunter run back out of Keli'dan's room, Warlocks in tow, but good luck taking the Boss down with no Healer or Tank. (I'd moved back to the far wall and was having no part of this fight.)

The Hunter was also not stopping to finish what he'd started and was running back the way we'd come. With no additional incoming damage the Warlocks eventually reset and ran back into Keli'dan's room.

Idea!

"Running back to the start to pick up our Healer," I announced in Party chat. "Don't want to risk stray Pats or respawns."

Also need 5 more minutes until we can kick this bastard Hunter, I whispered the Priest.

The Timer was ticking down but the Priest hadn't zoned back in. I wondered if he was delaying, hanging around outside. I decided to give him a valid excuse for 'wasting time'.

"We're in the top Instance," I typed. "The one up the ramp and along the wall."

"Oh. Never mind," I added, as the Priest laughed and zoned in beside me.

As we passed through Broggok's room the Hunter's 15-minute Immunity Timer finally expired and within seconds he was Kicked and almost as quickly replaced...by another Hunter! No!

This one was a Dwarf though, so that was alright ;) He also responded when I mentioned we were on the final Boss, thus confirming he wasn't AFK-Following us. I did a quick Inspection of his gear and he had my Axe! :( Actually that was a good thing, if it would just drop already! (Side note. An earlier Inspection of the AFK-Leech had revealed he was wielding the Heirloom Bow Feel free to interpret that how you will.)

Into Keli'dan's room we went. The Warlocks went down. Keli'dan went down. And...still no Axe :( That made five Blood Furnace Runs, and Orion only knows how many Ramparts Runs, and still no weapon upgrade.

But after all that (& questing to boot) I'm now also 65 and thus able to attempt the Ring of Blood chain in Nagrand, completion of which will reward me with the Honed Voidaxe. Finally! A(nother) weapon fit for a Death Knight! I just need a group, or a couple of über friends, and the Honed Voidaxe will be mine. Oh yes! It will.

WoW: Food for thought

Raid-geared players spend their downtime running Heroics on their Mains so they can get Badges to buy Heirloom gear for their Alts so they don't have to spend as much time playing their Alts. I know, I know. Leveling their Alts, it's the same thing.

Here are some questions to ponder.

How many Heroics do you need to run to obtain enough Badges to buy the Heirloom +XP pieces? How long does that take? Factor in not being a Tank (or being able to queue with one) and spending time in queues.

If your Alt changes Armor at 40 (Leather to Mail, or Mail to Plate), factor in enough Runs to buy multiple sets. Actually I just read that Mail Heirloom Gear apparently reverts to Leather when worn by sub-40 Hunters and Shamans, while Plate Heirloom gear does the same for sub-40 Warriors and Paladins. That's a nice touch but you'll want to buy a set of Leather Heirloom gear anyway for your Rogue and Druid (two Sets if you're leveling a Caster Druid), and don't forget a set of Cloth Heirloom gear for your Squishies. How many Badges is that? 8-10 pieces at 40 each, or 320-400 Badges. And don't forget Weapons for everyone. At 65 Badges per weapon that's another 300+ Badges.

How many Runs will it take to acquire 600-700 (or more) Badges?

What about one Alt? How many Runs will it take to collect just 145 Badges?

And how much time does Heirloom gear really save while leveling Alts?

A level 1 character needs 24,067,200 XP to get to level 80. Whether you run to the nearest Mailbox at level 1 or just complete the starting area quests and get there in due time is a moot point. You need 7600xp to get from level 1 to level 5 (the average point at which a character reaches their first Inn & mailbox) and so a 20% bonus to XP by that point has netted you just 1520 extra XP, or a little more than 1/3 of the 3600 needed to get from level 5 to level 6. It takes approx. 20-30 minutes to get from level 5 to 6 so taking 5 minutes (or so) to run to the nearest Mailbox to get your Heirloom gear at level 1 saves you about 10 minutes.

But we're looking at The Big Picture® and in the grand scheme of things a 20% bonus to XP means you don't need the full 24,067,200XP to go from 1 to 80 but rather 83.3% (recurring decimal) of that. That's 20,056,000 XP, an amount which would put you a little over halfway into 77 if you didn't have Heirloom gear. That's what your 20% Heirloom gear really saves you: that last grind from 77 to 80 which would probably take an experienced Player (and if you have Heirloom gear, that's you) about 2-3 days/evenings questing, running PUGs, etc. Naturally a more casual-paced player is going to take longer to do that last 77-80 grind, but they'll also take longer to gather the 80 Badges for the Heirloom gear, so it all evens out in the end.

Email Headers: Internet Detectiving 101

Time for some gibberish (for most of us, but not for some).
This is the full header of a recent Phishing email I received.

From wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com Thu Apr 15 07:49:15 2010
X-Apparently-To: me@yahoo.com via 67.195.8.205; Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:49:33 -0700
Return-Path: sylve@hotmail.fr
X-YahooFilteredBulk: 65.55.111.76
X-Originating-IP: [65.55.111.76]
Authentication-Results: mta1059.mail.sp2.yahoo.com from=hotmail.fr; domainkeys=neutral (no sig); from=blizzard.com; dkim=neutral (no sig)
Received: from 127.0.0.1 (EHLO blu0-omc2-s1.blu0.hotmail.com) (65.55.111.76)
by mta1059.mail.sp2.yahoo.com with SMTP; Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:49:33 -0700
Received: from BLU0-SMTP93 ([65.55.111.71]) by blu0-omc2-s1.blu0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959);
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X-Originating-IP: [222.94.32.217]
X-Originating-Email: [sylve@hotmail.fr]
Message-ID: BLU0-SMTP9322D8F095F0D27C44F50ECF0F0@phx.gbl
Return-Path: sylve@hotmail.fr
Received: from vlpxfrcn ([222.94.32.217]) by BLU0-SMTP93.blu0.hotmail.com over TLS secured channel with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675);
Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:49:10 -0700
Sender: sylve@hotmail.fr
From: "wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com" wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com
To: me@yahoo.com
Subject: World Of Warcraft-Account Instructions
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:49:15 +0800
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0E74_01A76424.11700BC0"
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At first glance it looks like the email came from wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com but then you notice the Return Path has a different email address, from France. Sourges to be precise (I found the guy on Facebook via his email). But did Sylvain Borreda really send this email? Or did someone hack his email account?

The earliest and most reliable record of the email entering cyberspace is the bolded line, Received: from vlpxfrcn ([222.94.32.217]). Googling this IP brings up a couple of pages, almost all being reverse IP Lookup pages...except for one, a non-existent page at: http://nj.livingchina.cn (A Chinese website. How cliché.)

If you're following along at home and you clicked the actual link on your Google search page you'll see that the specific page at livingchina.cn no longer exists/cannot be found, etc.

But back on the Google search results page we can see that along with the IP there is additional identifying information. There's a phone number and an email address, and if we now Google gftaiyq@163.com we discover the apparently true identity of Mr. 222.94.32.217 aka Guofang Tao, a Real Estate broker in Nanjing, China. (Go figure.) But is Guofang Tao really our Phisher? He is Chinese, but that doesn't automatically make him a Chinese Gold Farmer/Phisherman. He's like a Tootsie Roll Pop: the world may never know, because this is as far as my Internet sleuthing skills can take us.

Can you Ninja with a Greed Roll?

After getting all my gear back (some time really early Monday morning, according to the emails in my Inbox), I reinstalled WoW, BC, & Wrath, then commenced patching, and after about 4-5 hours I was logging in to play. (Despite having DSL my WoW patch DL speeds are not terribly fast. "Why, you seem to be behind a Firewall!" the Downloader will report, as if that's a bad thing)

My first Heroic on Monday night brought my Emblem of Frost total to 30 (I got all my badges & emblems back, praise Orion!) and I promptly spent them all on the i264 Libram of Three Truths.

Tonight I queued up for another random Heroic and found myself in the rather fun (at least I think so) Culling of Stratholme. I've done this one a few times on Heroic and seen a couple of Reins of the Bronze Drake drop. Some people Pass while others gleefully Roll, so I take my queue from those who do. When people roll Need I roll Need. Other times they'll roll Greed so I'll follow suit. On tonight's Run the Drake was mentioned just once as we ran through, with someone asking if we planned to do it. (Barring running out of time I wasn't aware it was optional, but apparently it is.)

We got to the Corruptor and killed him within the 25 minutes so naturally he dropped the Drake. Someone said Gratz and the first three rolls were Passes. I sat there watching the screen for a few seconds. I didn't need the Drake. I wanted it, but I didn't Need it. The fourth player rolled Greed so I followed his lead and hit Greed as well. He rolled low, I rolled high, and with that I had myself a new Epic Flying Mount.

As the group moved on to Mal'Ganis I was almost expecting to be booted from the party for being a Ninja, but it didn't happen. The player who lost the Roll never said anything, neither in Party Chat nor Tells, and if he had I was prepared to hand it over to him, even though I'd won the Roll. Not because I didn't care to be labeled a Ninja, simply because I didn't really need the Mount. But nothing more was said and we moved on and defeated Mal'Ganis.

The first time I got the Culling of Time achievement BIL and Steve congratulated me and asked if I'd won the Drake. When I told them I'd rolled Greed like the others they were stunned. "Dude! You Need Roll that!" they said to me, but I didn't feel right Need rolling on a Vanity item when others were just Greed Rolling.

Now I'd won the Vanity item with a Greed Roll and I still wondered if I'd done the right thing. Sometimes I think I'm a little too much like Melvin Smiley.

Hacked

More than once I've tried to log into WoW and got the 'incorrect password' message, and a chill always runs up my spine at seeing that, but when I re-type my password slowly (and correctly) I always get in.

This time I fired up WoW to log in and instead of 'incorrect password' I see 'Please enter your authenticator key'.

My what now? But I don't have an Authenticator!

And that's how I knew I'd been hacked.

I immediately retrieved the two emails I'd just deleted which, like the ones I've been getting every day for a month or two now, tried to warn me that I'd been hacked. When I moused over the URL in one of them it showed Blizzard's real URL. I actually had been hacked.

I called Blizzard and got "We're experiencing a high volume of calls right now. All operators are busy and we cannot take your call. Please try again later. *click*"

What the fuck???

They're so busy taking calls I can't even wait On Hold for the next available Operator?

To me that says they've got a majorly serious problem.

Here's the rub.

The password I use is not one I've used for anything but World of Warcraft.

The only person who has access to my WoW account is my wife and my 9 y/old son, and that's via my PC.

My PC is also pretty much used for nothing but WoW. Ok, there's the checking of email, Facebook activities, reading Blogs, etc, but for the most part I play WoW and that's about it.

I do visit sites like WoWWiki, WoWHead, Thotbott (or however it's spelled) but I'm also a security freak and have numerous anti-spyware programs like NoScript, AdBlock, AVG, Spybot S&D, etc.

I also doubt anyone could call Blizzard pretending to be me and satisfactorily answer my Security questions, not unless they're someone who knows me really, really well. And no, my wife wouldn't do this. That's not her style. She'd just log in on my account and Delete my characters. And she wouldn't clean out my sister's Guild Bank like this person did.

I don't have a keylogger on my computer because the software I listed above is not all that's in my arsenal, I have others, some specifically designed to find keyloggers, and all scans came up blank.

This means it was not someone close to me who hacked my account, and it (most likely) wasn't a case of me being hacked/keylogged.

In my opinion this was an inside job from someone inside Blizzard, and this is apparently what many people who have been hacked have claimed for a long time. Of course nobody has any proof because the only proof is an absence of proof (as in once you eliminate the impossible, all that remains, no matter how improbable, etc etc etc...) and that's not good enough. Not for court. It's good enough for me and for those who have been hacked but it still brings you no satisfaction. If anything it makes you wonder what's the point of playing Blizzard's game when they can't protect you from themselves.

After calling back numerous times I finally got into their automated help line and was able, eventually, to talk to someone who removed the Authenticator from my account and got me back into my account. The Rep also informed me that the hacker apparently had access to my email account, so when I got in I not only changed my password but I created a brand new email account and linked my WoW/Bnet account to it, rather than my old email.

I will be very curious to see if this email account receives any sort of Phishing emails and if so, how? If it's a brand new email account, not used for anything but accessing WoW, and so the only record of it being a WoW-related email is within Blizzard's own database...how do the Phishers know to target it? We'll see if that that happens.

Finally I logged into WoW, and this is what I saw...


That's a far cry from the character model I displayed a week or so ago...those Spaulders are the Heroic badge-bought shoulders. They're worthless as far as vendoring which is why I still had them. I also had the badge-bought necklace I'd picked up literally a day or two before but everything else was gone, including most of my badges (& I was 2 Frost badges or one Heroic away from getting my new Libram!).

I logged in and my Pally immediately began falling, falling, falling. A window popped up with Accept or Cancel but there was no message accompanying it. I wasn't going to Accept anything without knowing what I was accepting. I fell for several seconds until being automatically zoned out and re-appearing on a ledge in Sholazar Basin, naked. Well not quite naked. I still had my Badge-acquired Shoulders and a Mining Pick. As a Miner/Skinner I used to carry a Gnomish Army Knife which the Hacker vendored (for 22-silver. Wow.) opting for the cheaper Pick. They then went Mining, on my character. They sold all of my bags bar my original Pack and one other, and both were almost full of Ore & Gems. When my character raided their Guild Bank my sister put in a ticket to a GM that I'd been hacked, and eventually my account was closed down. The hacker had been caught in the middle of Mining run.

Fortunately, with Pets and Mounts now being built into the paper doll and not carried like inventory, I was able to fly back to Dalaran where I checked my bank and saw it had been stripped, too. I put in a ticket to a GM to (hopefully) get my gear restored, then with trepidation logged out to check my other characters. My old toons on Kilrog (Kwazimoto & Co.) had also been stripped. I returned to my sister's server and clicked my Bank Toon. He was still clothed but none of the Auctions I'd listed before going to bed last night were up, nor was there any Gold waiting in the Mailbox for me...or in my inventory. And every other character was the same. Many still had random items in their packs but practically no Gold to their name.

I am willing to start all over again but I'd rather not if I don't have to. Naturally I'd like to get my gear restored and get my sister's stuff back, but I have no idea how long that will take. Do I just play a low level Alt for a week until Blizzard do something? What if it takes them several weeks to restore my gear. What if they won't restore it, or only partially restore it?

And then my own security measures got the best of me. I forgot my new WoW password. And I forgot the password to my new email WoW-only email account. And to be ultra security conscious I'd used my work email as the secondary email and I can't access that until Monday. So this weekend has been a sad, WoW-less weekend.

Fortunately! The kids and I went to Dave & Busters on Friday and I ended up cashing in 10,000 points (the boy and I save them up for the BIG prizes) and getting MySims Agents for the Wii. You can apparently buy it for $20 but it's not likely we'll save up our points for the 85,000 X-Box, so why not spend some of the points on a game for a system we already have.

It's a cute, point & click-style adventure game with a bunch of mini-games (puzzles) to play as your Sim Agent gathers evidence to crack each case. There's also things to find if you're prepared to look around, like new outfits and decorations for your HQ. It's a fairly typical MySims game with lots of customization available, but the way it's presented with you as a Special Agent solving cases means you need to actually think as you play. And I like that. I'm giving it an 8/10. It's not the perfect game but it's well done and is a lot of fun :)

LFD PUG Tool

I hit 80 on the weekend and after running random PUG Normals most every night for the last couple of weeks I had a decent set of pre-Heroic Blue Gear, while self-buffed I had close to 20K Health. On a decent Run I was pulling over 1500dps but occasionally would drop down to 1200-1300 if I was having Mana issues, or running all over the place and spending a lot of time in combat without actually hitting anything.

Being an 80 with reasonable Gear I decided to do some Heroics, and that's where the beauty of the LFD Tool comes in handy. No more do you need to send a tell to someone trying to get into their PUG Heroic, only to be rejected due to a too low Gear Score (or some other prejudice). Now you just sign up and Shazam! In you go. Oddly enough I found the Heroic queue to be shorter than a regular non-Heroic PUG, or maybe it just seems like it.

I ran several Heroics and noticed that my 20K Health (24K Group Buffed) was a bit on the low side, with some of my fellow party members having 40-50K. I've fought Instance Boss Mobs with less Health than that. It was not even uncommon to see Squishy Casters with 30K+ Health. I became curious. Just what was my Gear Score? I found a website that trawled the Armory and calculated my GS. It was in the mid 2000s. That actually didn't help me because I had no idea what was considered a decent Gear Score. I turned to Curse.com and the GS Add-On which came with a bunch of stuff that I didn't think was relevant. But if you don't want all this extra crap, it said, try GS Lite.

Hmm, I think I might, I said, downloading it and installing. It wasn't as invasive as my encounter with Dominos, in fact it was so non-invasive that initially I wasn't even sure it was working. Finally I noticed my GS was on my Character's Paper Doll screen, while if I moused over other characters their GS sometimes came up, and sometimes didn't. Perhaps those with no GS didn't have a GS Add-On.

I discovered that knowing the GS of others now gave me a sense of inferior inadequacy. Woah! That guy has a 5K+ GS. HOLY CRAP! That guy has 6K+! And here I am with my mid 2000s GS running a Heroic with them.

The good thing, as I mentioned, is I can actually run Heroics via the LFD Tool, and while I don't do the insane 4Kdps of the 5K+ GS player, I am doing close to 2K+ so I'm at least doing my bit, even if it's a small bit.

And by being able to get into Heroics I'm experiencing a whole lot more of the game than I did at 60 & 70 in the pre-Wrath days. Sure, I ventured into MC and Onyxia, then later Kara, but that was just dabbling. Being able to run Heroics now means I can actually gear up and loot Epic items rather than craft them (or buy them).

I figured the first thing on the agenda was acquiring a new weapon so I started looking through Atlas to see which Bosses in what Instances dropped Epic 2H weapons and discovered Loken in the Halls of Lightning dropped a Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver. A wicked looking axe that someone clearly felt needed MORE AXES!!!

I signed up for a Heroic Halls of Lightning, ran the Instance but didn't see my Axe drop. I then ran several more Random Heroics before lucking out and getting into a random Halls of Lightning with a Warrior Tank and a DK DPS. They were the two that concerned me because either one of them could legitimately Need roll on the Cleaver if it dropped. But then I noticed they both had a 5K+ Gear Score, and when I inspected the DK he already had an Epic 2H Weapon. And here I was, tagging along with them, practically leeching off them as I tried to get Epics and upgrade my Gear.

My feeling of inadequacy was only increased when, while clearing Trash Mobs, General Bjarngrim ran in and suddenly I was dead. And so was the other DPS.

But the Warrior and the Death Knight survived, as did the Healer. And they continued to survive. This was a Heroic Boss with a couple of Adds and they were 3-manning him. At first I thought they'd only be able to survive for a little while but the Healer's HUGE Mana bar never even looked in danger of being depleted. The Adds dropped then the Warrior and Death Knight slowly but steadily chipped away at the General's 300,000 Health Bar. I've seen some cool stuff in WoW, and done some cool stuff of my own, but this was seriously impressive stuff. All I could do was look on from my place on the floor in amazement, and when they finally killed him and the loot dropped I didn't roll on it, not even a Greed roll. I felt like I hadn't contributed to the fight at all and so I didn't deserve to even get some vendor trash out of it.

After that the rest of the Run was practically anti-climactic, right up until we got to Loken. This stay we all survived. All of us except Loken of course, who went down so fast it was like he tripped over trying to get to us. I looked at what he'd dropped on his death. "Bother. No axe," I thought to myself, as I moused over the Epic item he'd dropped...and stared in disbelief.

The icon didn't really look like an axe but there it was. My Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver. Mine! I hit Need and it became Mine, uncontested. I had my Axe. My Epic Axe. My Epic Axe with extra Axes was mine. ALL MINE!

And here's a picture :D


The Armor is rather dull looking, and I don't exactly look Paladin'ish, but the Axe is pretty damn cool, even if I do say so myself :D

WoW Addons & guitars

I don't use many Addons, my UI is the default UI. I have Recount, Titan and Atlas, along with a few of their components that came packaged with them, and that's about it.

When I read the Tankadin 969 Guide the fellow who wrote it gushed about Dominos and how it allowed him to create his own Hotkey Bars and set them up where ever he wanted, and it sounded cool and looked great on his screen so I downloaded & installed it. When I logged into WoW ALL of my Hotkey bars had been shrunk to about 1/4 the width of the screen and were now stacked one above the other beneath my character, while the XP bar had been moved to the top of the screen and was now a big blue bar with big blue numbers *shudder* Not prepared to spend time trying to set up and get used to Dominos I immediately disabled it. I still have it installed but I liken it to playing Guitar, specifically, playing the G-chord, more specifically changing how I fingered the G-chord.

A G-chord is played by holding down the 5th string at the 2nd Fret, and the 1st & 6th string at the 3rd Fret, and here's a picture for the mentally visually challenged.
The finger position in that picture is the traditional method of playing the G-chord, and as such is how I first learned to play it.

But there's a problem with playing it that way, as illustrated by another picture, this time of a C-chord:
From that picture you should be able to see that a C is played by holding down the 2nd string at the first Fret, the 4th string at the 2nd Fret, and the 5th string at the 3rd Fret.

Yes, this is going somewhere :P

Many popular songs are written in the same key and as such use the same basic chords, A, C, G, D, & E, or variants thereof. I'm not going to get into finger positions for A, D & E, suffice to say that switching between A, C, D, & E is usually quick & easy because of somewhat similar finger positions. My point here is that switching between C and G is somewhat more complex because the fingers need to go through very drastic position changes, especially the 3rd/ring finger which needs to move from the 6th string down to the 1st string. The 1st/index finger must move from the 2nd string/1st fret up to the 5th string/2nd fret while the middle finger has it slightly easier with a shift from the 4th string/2nd fret to the 6th string/3rd fret. If that made your brain hurt then just look at the pictures and see for yourself the position change each finger needs to make.

I was getting pretty good at playing most of the songs with my Church's Youth group, except the finger change between G and pretty much every other Chord still tripped me up. As I studied the chords, particularly G and G7, I wondered why there was such a drastic change between the finger position for the two, especially as the difference between most chords and their Minor or 7th versions required little more than changing the position of a single finger, whereas switching between a G and G7 was like going from a G to a taller C, and here's one last picture, this time of the G7 chord:
You can see how the G7 more closely resembles a C than a G, and yet to go from a C to a C7 you need do nothing more than plop your pinky onto the 3rd string at the 3rd fret. That's it. To change between a C and a C7 all you have to do is add a pinky finger, whereas to change between a traditionally played G and a G7 requires total rearrangement of the fingers akin to changing between G and C.

And that was when I realized the traditional method of playing a G-chord on a guitar is wrong. The books are wrong. The teachers are wrong. And if you're fingering a G-chord in the traditional manner then you're doing it wrong (and now I know how Galileo felt when he went against the system.)

Yes, I said it. If your guitar teacher is teaching you to finger a G-chord as in the above picture then they're teaching you the wrong way. Of course they'll never admit it because almost everyone does it like that so it's widely accepted as the correct way to finger a G-chord, but it's not. It's wrong. (It was also widely accepted that the earth was flat and the center of the universe, but the people who believed that and called Galileo crazy and placed him under house arrest were wrong, too).

Why is it wrong?

It's wrong because the difference between almost every chord and their minor and 7th variants is almost always the addition or subtraction of one single finger, whereas switching between a traditional G and a G7 requires a complete change of the hand position.

The correct way to finger a G-chord (IMHO) is not by using the 1st, 2nd & 3rd fingers, but by using the 2nd, 3rd & 4th fingers. Why do I believe this is the correct method? Because it follows the same principle of switching between G and G7 as switching between all of the other chords and their respective 7ths.

Using the 2nd, 3rd & 4th fingers to play a G, switching between the G and G7 does not require a large change in the position and shape of your hand. It requires nothing more than lifting your pinky off the 1st string/3rd fret while putting down your index finger on the 1st string/3rd fret. The middle finger and ring finger stay in the same position, on the same strings, on the same frets. And because they don't move your hand shape remains practically the same. All you've done is lifted off one finger, and put down another. And that means this is the correct way to play a G because it makes the transition between the G, G7, and all the other chords a whole lot smoother. At least it does when you finally get the hang of playing a G using your 2nd, 3rd & 4th fingers.

If you already know how to play guitar, getting used to fingering a G a new way is like learning how to touch type using the Home Keys. After a lot of practice my fingers finally realized I wanted to play the G my way and not the traditional way (but it took them a while to learn that), and it did make switching between chords a lot easier. For what it's worth I can touch type and relatively quickly, but I never did manage to teach my fingers to use the Home Keys.

Coming full circle, I liken this to learning to use Dominos or some other Addon which totally changes the layout of your UI. With change comes a rebellion, a reluctance to learn the new method. You like the old method just fine, so why change it? If it ain't broke, why fix it? I liked what I read about Dominos but when I installed it it was too different; I preferred the appearance of the default UI. Why should I learn to use a completely new UI, one that needed customizing before I'd find it aesthetically pleasing, when the current one worked just fine?

And so I didn't. Daunted by what was required to return WoW to what I perceived as a playable state I disabled Dominos and went back to the default UI. While it may not be as pretty as some of the custom UIs I've seen (and some I've seen are just amazing) the default UI serves its purpose and allows me to play the game but more importantly, enjoy it now.

I recently ran a few Instances with Paaco tanking on his DK, and as we pulled the first Trash Mobs in the first Instance and I started on my Retadin rotation, my Chat log exploded with whispers. They all came from the same character, the Healer, and they were being generated by a Macro he had installed called RankWatch. What RankWatch does is monitor the spells being used by yourself and your party members and it can alert you and/or them when you and/or they use downranked versions of spells. Without realizing it that's what I'd been doing, even though I'd been to the Trainer and had the most up-to-date levels of my abilities/spells, because a bug exists with characters with dual-spec where not all of their abilities/spells on their Hotkey bars get updated. In my case, for example, I'd learned Exorcism(8) at 73, but my Hotkey bar still had Exorcism(7), and I would quickly discover it was not the only downranked spell I'd been using. About 4-5 of my Abilities were downranked.

Up until then I'd been pulling approx. 1,100dps, with bursts up to 1,200, but unfortunately I'd also sometimes drop embarrassingly below 1K. (Noob!)

After updating my Hotkey bar with the most powerful of my abilities my DPS skyrocketed and peaked at over 1,600dps. Now the Shaman in my party may have had a little to do with that, but IMO (even though I'm a Noob and always will be) I very much doubt he can take credit for a 33% increase in my DPS. I'm sure his Totems were partially responsible, but a large part of my DPS increase still came from upgrading my previously downranked abilities. And with an increase in DPS came newfound enjoyment in what had been a gradual stagnation of Ret. I'd actually contemplated going back to Prot for questing/grinding because Ret was just not doing it for me. But now, once again, it was.

After the first run the group stayed together to run a second Random, and my Retadin DPS was still crazy high (or more correctly, no longer noobishly low). When Paaco logged for the night I visited my Paladin trainer and learned my new level 74 Abilities (I'd actually dinged 74 the night before then Noobishly logged almost straight away). I then switched to Prot and made sure my Prot Hotkey Bar had the highest ranked abilities, just in case.

With renewed faith in my ability to provide MQOSDPS I switched back to Ret then hit up the DF Tool for one last Instance. Not normally running PUGs without Paaco Tanking it was a somewhat new experience for me, and either Paaco is a good Tank (which he is), or the NElf DK sucked as a Tank (which is equally possible) because initially I suspected I was in for the typical PUG from Hell with a Tank who couldn't. After a couple of Trash Pulls the Tank blamed Lag for her inability to Tank then DC'd on us, and I stepped up to the plate, switched to Prot and offered to Tank the rest of the Instance. While my first experience as a Tank in Wrath had been a painful affair this Run was fairly smooth. There were a few chaotic moments when the Shaman used the horrible "let's throw all the Mobs far away" ability, but not one wipe, or even anything like a Near Wipe. I already knew I could bring the Pain as a Retadin, but now my faith in my ability to Tank had also been restored.

Was it that I'd noobishly been using downranked abilities to Tank in Wrath? Was it the gear upgrades I'd acquired between 70 and 74? Was it a combination of both? (Probably ;) In any case I was now, once again, an Indestructible Tankadin! and once again enjoying the game, all thanks to an AddOn called Rankwatch that I didn't even have installed.

Awesome PUGs

Working together, can achieve awesome things.

After acquiring the Shadowforge Key then getting lost I decided to research BRD before my next attempt, and discovered there's a short cut you can take that omits about 75% of the Instance. You just need to go for a swim, in lava. If you don't unlock the Shadowforge Lock the gate on the Dark Iron Highway stays open and you can go straight through to Lord Incendius and the Black Anvil, which is where you leap off and start swimming. This is also the short & fast way to complete Attunement to the Core, which I did at the same time. I'm not sure it's required any more, but either way I still have it :)

Going this way brought me out in the Dark Iron Dwarf-infested room between Doom'rel and Magmus, and as Magmus is the last Boss before Emperor Thaurissan's room you can see how much of the Instance it cuts out. After finding the torch bearing Dark Iron Dwarves, defeating Magmus, and clearing the Mobs in the Emperor's room I decided that while I didn't have the quest I would still leave Moira alive. I don't know why, because not killing her first just prolonged the fight as she healed and buffed the Emperor, but he still went down and with his death I got both the BRD Achievement AND the Classic Dungeonmaster Achievement.

And a Gratz from Paaco who'd logged on without my noticing.

He was now 66 and with my Classic Dungeons now out of the way I joined him in Nagrand where we tackled the Ring of Blood quests. We were able to get to the final Boss before getting our faces melted, so we called for help. A 67 Hunter responded, along with a 65 Pally who offered to Tank. No offense, I told him, but I think I better do it ;)

Even with 4 of us Mogor was still not a push over, in fact he ended up killing not just the 65 Pally but myself as well. The Pally wisely didn't release, and he said he got the Quest Complete message, but after running back to his body and Rezzing the Quest now showed as Failed. So we did it again. This time we all survived.

I'd told my son that after I'd completed BRD he could play but with him now on his computer and Paaco wanting to run an Instance I decided the boy could wait a little while longer, and that's how we found ourselves in the Auchenai Crypts. The Run went smoothly enough except for one Wipe when someone got Feared into two packs and we suddenly had a whole lot more Mobs than we were prepared for. Then after returning to the Instance one of the DPS had Rez sickness. I don't know how they had it, they just did, and then they dropped group. But one DPS is quick & easy to replace and we were back up & running in no time. Paaco was a shade on the low side for Auchenai Crypts, so this, combined with completing the two quests I had for the Instance which I'd shared with him meant that by the time the Run was over he was just a couple of bars from dinging 67.

With that I handed my PC over to my boy, bid Paaco adieu, and went off to make dinner. I let the boy keep playing after dinner but kicked him off at 8pm (time for him to get ready for bed anyway :P) Paaco and I again joined forces but after talking once more to Behsten, regaining my XP bar, and turning in several quests I was now 70 and so our choice of Instances in the DF Tool were rather limited.

We wound up in Shadow Labs with a 68 Druid Healer and two other Death Knights (Paaco is also a DK). Now I lurve me a Druid Healer, so I was happy to see her, and I was even more pleased when after the initial exchange of pleasantries (Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi) the Druid announced, "Great. Shadow Labs. Probably my least favorite of all the Instances in this game."

Was that a complete sentence? Oh...my...god! Someone in a Random PUG actually typed a complete sentence!

I quickly responded with, "I'm actually glad to hear that because that seems to indicate you know this Instance quite well, whereas I do not."

"I supposed that's one way of looking at it," she replied, and with that, we were off. Paaco knows what he's doing, and the other two DKs also seemed to know what they were doing. I'm really getting the hang of being a Tankadin and the Druid knew what she was doing, and was quite chatty to boot, and not just with instructions on what to do, tricky encounters, etc.

It was a very good group considering it was a Random PUG. Quite possibly the best I've been in to date. I've had some good experiences so far but this one was literally the very antithesis of the PUG from Hell. I won't say we didn't encounter problems because we did, every Run has them, even if it's just a random stealthed Mob that jumps the Healer. But we prevailed and when it was all done and we'd all earned the SLabs Achievement, nobody was in a hurry to drop group and everyone had only positive things to say about our time together.

"Anyone up for another Run?" asked someone, and everyone was. Nobody wanted to leave, and why would they? We were working well together, we were enjoying ourselves, and those kinds of PUGs are hard to come by.

It was quickly agreed that we'd Take 5 for bio, drink, smoke, etc, and when everyone returned we jumped back into the queue. Not that we were actually queued, it was more the Druid selected an assortment of Instances and let the DF Tool pick one at Random. And it chose Shadow Labs again :P

Somehow the Druid canceled the selection (not sure how) but we were given another choice, this time Botanica.

"I love Botanica!" squealed the Druid (go figure ;), and that clinched it.

By the time the Run was over I'd decided I liked it, too. But I also enjoyed Shadow Labs because the Boss fights in both Instances were more than just your standard Tank & Spank, they had variety. They threw a few curveballs to keep things interesting.

And did Warp Splinter, Bot's final Boss, really make things interesting?

Did he what! For a Tank his fight is business as usual, but for our three DKs they were running all over the place trying to bring down the Treants the Boss kept Summoning before they could get in to Heal him. Unfortunately quite a few made it in, and just as it seemed we were wearing the big guy down...pop! He'd get Healed, for as much as 25-40K at a time, every 45-60 seconds. That's a tough barrier to overcome for a group a little on the low side. And we didn't. We wiped.

That was when we discovered a neat trick with the DF Tool when you're in a group and have been assigned an Instance. You can click the Eye on your Minimap and an option comes up "Teleport to Instance" and it takes you straight back in. I don't know if it works if you're dead or not, but as you actually get GY Rez'd sans Rez Sickness) after dying inside Tempest Keep it definitely worked in our favor. That was a good thing for Paaco because at 67 the slack bastard (that's an Aussie term of endearment ;) still does not yet have his Flying Mount :P

Back inside we rebuffed, discussed strategies, and decided that when the Treants spawned all three DKs needed to lay off the Boss DPS and go hunting. That worked for a while (and this was a loooong fight) but with Warp Splinter at around 30K the Druid went OOM, and yet somehow I stayed alive. At about 20K I was crossing my fingers (not literally. Hard to Tank like that.) until some Treants got through and delivered a 25K Heal. On top of an earlier 40K Heal this can be rather demoralizing. And yet we still stayed in the game and I still stayed alive.

Slowly we wore the big guy down while Treants spawned, and got picked off. With Warp Splinter at about 20K again one of the DKs rushed in and started laying into him and his health started dropping faster. Keep in mind this is a 72 Elite Boss and my DPS were 67 & 68. Being 4-5 levels lower means a lot of their swings were missing. Down to 10K. The end was in sight. Stay on those Treants, I whispered, not daring to even type. Like the Druid I'd been OOM myself for a while now and was relying on my Blessing of Sanctuary to top it back up enough for a Holy Shield or a Hammer of the Righteousness.

Tank OOM. Healer OOM. Three Deathknight DPS 5 levels lower than the Boss, being diverted from DPS to stop him from getting Heals.

It may not sounds like it, but this was actually a really fun fight.

I'm not saying it was relaxing and a walk in the park, far from it. This was the balls to the wall fight where you have a chance at winning, not necessarily a good chance, but it's there and you know it's possible but you need to go all out to make it happen. Is it really a game if you have to work for your rewards? Is it really fun? Hell yeah, it is!

I've killed the four Hunter Demons. I remember each fight, or more specifically, I remember each successful attempt. I remember some of the Raid Boss encounters in which I've taken part. Not all of them, they weren't all memorable. But standing there victorious with the toppled Ancient lying in front of us? Knowing it only happened because 5 people were able to work together to overcome not an impossible task but a difficult one. This is a good memory, and this is why we play. For moments like this. The rewards are nothing but bits & bytes. All we defeated was a computer program. But the memories are real. The feelings are real, and the elation and rush from 'winning' is real. Even if we did nothing more than 'beat' a computer program, it still felt good.

"Anyone up for another Run?" someone asked.

If the group consensus was 'Yes' I was prepared to call in sick (and I actually am fighting off a cold, and my Boss knows it) but the replies came back. Got work in 6 hours, 4 hours, etc., and with that we all parted ways, knowing if we ever do Run together again it will be pure luck, for while the DF Tool allows Cross-server grouping, the ability to add Cross-server Friends to your List is not yet in the game.

WoW,...now available offline

A spin-off discussion from Tobold's Blog re: Ubisoft's DRM which allegedly prevents you from playing Assassin's Creed 2 if you don't have an active internet connection.

What if you could play WoW offline, then when you went back online the server brought your server character into par with your locally stored character?

Now obviously there would be limitations to what you could do offline. Clearly you couldn't Raid while you were offline, or do BGs, or even Solo an Instance, and the Farming of Mats, etc, would also be off limits. Basically your character would be restricted to in-City activities only, again with a few exceptions such as no buying items from the Auction House.

But why couldn't you access your Bank? Or use any Mats you happen to have on-hand to craft some items, or level your First Aid or cooking skill? Maybe you could even do a spot of Fishing. Those are all activities that would be hard pressed to be considered game breaking if you could perform them while off-line, such as...Tuesday mornings, during maintenance.

Your Boss has given you the day off but it's Tuesday! The cunning bastard knows it's Patch Day, and he's still not happy he caught his daughter hitting on you at the office Christmas Party (and thank God that's all he caught her doing. Nudge nudge, wink wink. Saaaaay no more!) and normally you would be forced to spend your day doing something else, except now you can play offline. (And no, you can't. I'm just making this shit up.)

Now you can level Fishing like you'd always planned to, with no annoying /Trade chatter in the background to distract you.

And when the server comes back online your game detects this and there's a brief period of downtime (or however long it takes to download the patch, and upload & synch your offline and online characters) and now you're playing the online game.

Could it work? Would it work? Would it still be prone to people cheating?

We know people will cheat any chance they get, and having your character stored on your local PC instead of on a server in Irvine (or where ever they are) would only make things easier. Which is why the server side program would need to verify any changes between your offline character and online character, and any changes that seem unlikely or impossible would be erased. Epics do not come in Titanium Lockboxes, you know. And for that very reason, just like accessing the Auction House, the offline opening of Lockboxes or any other containers would also be verboten.

So, could WoW be played offline in a very limited capacity? And would Blizzard, or any MMO developer for that matter, be willing to implement some form of offline play in their game, for when their servers are down, or you just can't get online?

I've played WoW...

it was called DDO.

Is it just me, or does the Dungeon Finder Tool make WoW very much a DDO-like experience? Forget flying 5 zones, catching a boat, flying another 5 zones, then riding halfway across the 6th zone to the Instance. (You kids these days! You don't know how easy you have it! Now git orfa mah lawn!)

Now you just sign up for a Random Instance (or one of your choosing), and kick back in town while the group is formed. And when you get a group, forget flying! Shazam! Just like that, you're teleported straight to the Instance.

Ok, so in DDO you have to walk to the Instance, but they're often located within seconds (maybe a minute or two) of the town gate, if not within the town itself.

Now I'm not begrudging WoW's DF Tool, if anything I probably really have run more PUGs in the past couple of months than I did in 3 years of playing. But while you lament the disappearing social side of WoW, were PUGs where you really got that? Isn't/wasn't your Guild the social part of the game, while PUGs were just a necessary evil?

It used to be that you got Instance-related quests and you'd try to scrape together a group from among your Guildmates, try to get a PUG together, or eventually drop the damn thing when you realized you were never going to get a Maraudon group together, while the Quest Reward that looked so great 5 levels ago would just be vendor trash now.

Now you grab all the Instance quests you can get, sign up, and within minutes (in my case, being a Tank) you're up and running.

I don't know why the 80 Hunter was bitching in /Trade the other night. So what if it takes you 30 minutes to get into a Random group? That's what you get for rolling pure DPS. And who says you have to sit there in Dalaran on your arse for 30 minutes doing nothing anyway? Get out and do some Dailies while you're waiting and before you know it your queue will have popped.

But if you're sitting in town twiddling your thumbs, instead of getting out and playing the game you paid to play, you've got nobody to blame but yourself if you're bored. He was your typical teenager. You know the one. It's a glorious summer day and what's he doing? Siting on the couch, staring at the TV, complaining: "I'm bored. There's nothing on. There's nothing to do."

Then get outside and play! But stay orfa mah lawn!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Steve's Healer blew past, dinged 80, and left me eating dust at 69. (Don't go there. Do NOT go there!)

Paaco, my old Guildie who rolled a Death Knight, started a new job this week and hasn't been playing as much, so like Steve did to me I flew past him and when he logged on he was still 60 but I was now (then) 65. Now he's 65 and I'm 69, but I've been taking it slow these past few days giving him a chance to catch up.

A couple of times over the weekend we had all five Guildies logged in and when my sister said we should do an Instance I suggested Shattered Halls (which I needed for the two Honor Hold quests) but she really wanted to do a Heroic and felt I was too low for that (I was still 68 at the time). I didn't care to do SH on Heroic either but saw no reason why we couldn't blow through a regular Shattered Halls, but that wasn't going to happen either. Instead my sis told me to hurry up and level to 70. Instead I hit 69 then decided as Paaco and I would probably see each other in-game more than I would my sister & her hubby, I would delay my progress to let Paaco catch up. I'm not in a hurry to hit 70, or even 80, it's going to happen so why not enjoy the journey along the way?

Dire Maul was an Instance I'd only ventured into a couple of times over the past years, so I decided to make my way to Feralas and get reacquainted with it. I will say that while Atlas is not perfect it's still a great tool for finding your way around unfamiliar Instances.

I acquired the Crescent Key from the Imp Pusillin and slowly worked my way through DM East, then North. DM West had to wait another day as despite being 10 levels higher than the DM Ogres they still hit pretty freaking hard so both DM East & North had consumed a lot of my play time. When I got into DM West the next night it took almost as long again as both East and North, but eventually I killed both the required Bosses and got my Dire Maul Achievement.

Scholomance was next on the agenda and after running through the WPL cemetery and buffing the druid farming there I was glad I didn't invite him on my Scholo Run because I made the same mistake I recalled making a long time ago: I didn't have Scholo's Skeleton Key. As I was walking away an 80 Blood Elf came running up but either he didn't have the key or he wasn't opening the door with me standing there, so I still couldn't get in. One visit to WoWWiki and I was off on my quest to add yet another almost useless key to my key ring. Fortunately gold is easy to come by, and I'm a Miner, so the 2 Thorium Bars and 15g fee to forge the Skeleton key in Un'goro Crater's volcano were a mere drop in the ocean.

Like DM, Scholo also took some time to clear although I probably could have skipped many of the Mobs that I chose to kill. A catch to killing Scholo's final boss and earning the Achievement is the Boss will not spawn unless you kill all 6 of the mini Bosses, but they were nothing compared to the might of the Indestructible Tankadin and they were soon all defeated. Darkmaster Gandling was not a tough fight, and his Shadow Portal spell were more annoyances than anything else, so while it took some time the result was still inevitable. With Scholo out of the way that left just three Instances on the checklist: BRD, LBRS, & Stratholme.

During this time I'd also done several Terrokar Forest quests, as well as upgrading my gear via some Northrend quests, so I was now dangerously close to hitting 70. I hadn't seen Paaco on for a couple of days and I didn't want him to log on and see me at 70, but I also wanted to Tank Shattered Halls (I had two quests for there) and so I felt a visit to Stormwind Keep's Behsten was in order. Money changed hands, he did a little 'something'...and my XP bar disappeared.

And with that I signed up and jumped into Shattered Halls. It wasn't necessarily a fast run but it was problem free, except for the DK dropping out after the first Boss, and the Huntard pulling about 500dps as I found out later when I reviewed Recount. FWIW I did around 850 as a Pally Tank while #1 & #2, a Frost Mage and a Boomkin, pulled around 1450 and 1200 respectively. For my troubles I wound up with a pair of green boots that were actually upgrades to the Blue pair I was wearing from Ramparts, along with a pair of new pants I can't equip until I hit 70 (which won't happen until I visit Behsten again).

LBRS was next on the Menu, and with it being an Instance I had done many times (enough to get the UBRS Key) it didn't take long for me to work my way through it. In fact except for a few Pulls I skipped much of the Instance and Bosses. When I saw the door to UBRS was opened I didn't even bother keeping the Gems for the UBRS key (which isn't really a real key, so it's not like I need it for my collection). Of all the old 60 Instances I think LBRS was probably the easiest by far.

Stratholme, on the other hand, was a lesson in humility, for it contained my one weakness. Casters. In large numbers. Casters in large numbers who never use Melee, or only when silenced, and usually that's not for very long. And so I died. Here I was thinking I'd run through the place, tear it apart, maybe even do the 45-minute Baron Run, and instead I got my face melted. Several times. Just lovely. I did get the Key to the City, as well as the Mailbox keys, and eventually I made it to the Baron. I was a little concerned because with his large Mana bar I was expecting a very tough fight, but the Baron uses Melee a lot and that just tickles my Tankadin. I was a little puzzled when he finally went down and I didn't get the Stratholme Achivement, so I opened the Tab and checked and...Stratholme has another Boss, and I need to kill both to get the Achievement.

Strath was not challenging. It was time-consuming, and it was fatal if I didn't take it carefully, but as long as I went slowly and carefully there were very few problems. And it was a good learning experience of what my Tankadin can, but more importantly cannot, handle. I'd found my Kryptonite, so to speak.

With Strath finally down that left BRD. I'd tried to Solo BRD on my 70 Rogue and failed but in spite of the humbling Strath experience I was confident my Pally could handle BRD. First on the agenda was getting the key, and that meant dying so I could get the Quest (tricky bastards, Blizzard), which I did by dropping off the top chain in Blackrock Mountain and splatting into the lava below. Coincidentally this puts you right next to the tunnel entrance to BRD, so after spirit running back and getting the quest I was able to Rez in a very convenient spot and be on my way. And I was right about my Paladin. Being both 69, and a Plate-wearing AoE machine, I quickly retrieved Ironfel then replaced the mystical Hammer and received the Shadowforge Key in return. Yet one more key added to the keyring. I don't know how we coped years ago when we had to carry all these keys around in our pack, or leave them in the Bank.

But with the key to BRD finally in my pocket it was getting late, and so the Emperor, the BRD Achievement, and the Classic Dungeonmaster Achievement have to wait for another day.

Why do you hate Gnomer?

If you ran it in Vanilla, was it the level disparity between the start and end? Because (IIRC) originally it was close to a 10-level difference between the first Mobs and Thermaplugg (or maybe I'm just misremembering).

Was it that you couldn't do the Punchcard quest w/o getting that very first White Punch Card? (And why didn't Blizzard have Castpipe just give the player a White Punch Card when they accepted the Quest?) Was it that you often missed a Punchograph machine, and would get to Punchograph D and find yourself short a Red Punch Card?

Was it the confusing layout of the Instance? That you could get turned around (or just plain lost) without even realizing it?

Was it the large number of Mobs per Pull, which required a party to really work well together? Was it the Alarm Bots which wandered into your Party mid-fight, raised the alarm, and pulled two more Packs?

When you think about it, Gnomeregan actually has a lot more in common with the 50-60+ Instances, than it does with Blackfathom Deeps and Razorfen Kraul (also high 20s/low 30s Instances).

And is that actually the real problem? Was Gnomeregan originally meant to be on par with Scholo, Strath, and the Blackrock Instances?

Blizzard would never admit it, but given the complexity of the Instance, the large Pulls, and that completing all of the Gnomer Quest often required multiple attempts, it's actually possible Gnomeregan was originally designed with level 60 Players in mind (at least until some Blizzard Big Wig said, "Horde have RFK, and SM right outside the Undercity. We need something for Alliance.")

I actually enjoy going to Gnomeregan, and not just for the Achievement at the end. It's a very colorful, very well designed (if somewhat confusing) Instance into which someone put a lot of thought and attention. I would even argue that Gnomer has more character than Scarlet Monastry, which isn't saying much because there's not a whole lot to SM. Well there probably is, if you were paying attention, but all you see are walls and doors as you rush through. RFK has it's little piggy huts and the Crone's House on Stilts. RFD has a rocking out Skeleton Boss. Dead Mines comes with the awesomeness of Pirates, complete with Pirate Ship, while BFD has Naga, Cultists, and a battle with a 3-headed Hydra. And Gnomer? Gnomer has Planes being worked on by teams of Gnomes. It has Robots and Mechs. It has Radiated Gnomes. It has Radiated Gnomes in Mechs! The final Boss is a Gnome in a giant Mech!

Come on! Tell me this is NOT an awesomely cool Boss that someone clearly put a lot of time into creating.

Some of the best 29 Twink gear can be found in Gnomer, but can you get any Guildies willing to run you through? Many players harbor so much animosity for Gnomer that they'll refuse to set foot inside, not even on a capped Toon who could tear the place apart. Why is that? Why is there so much hatred for what is one of vanilla WoW's coolest Instances?

Why do you hate Gnomeregan?

Tanking vs DPS

I tanked Ramparts a couple more times without seeing a single upgrade or the Hellreaver Polearm. I also had a go at Tanking Blood Furnace and the first time was not quite a PUG from Hell, but it did include a pushy Healer who berated me for drinking. "If you're standing still you're wasting my fucking time!" he said. Yep, he actually said that, and so I Pulled. Massive pulls, pulls when I was OOM, I just kept running and pulling all the way to the The Maker's Room where I rushed in and pretty much Aggroed the entire room. And we wiped on the bombs that those Mobs dropped. Now the Healer wasn't so happy with the constant Pulling and wanted to take it slow. There's just no pleasing some people.

This weekend I've been running PUGs not quite non-stop but I kid you not, I've almost run more PUGs these past few days than I did during my previous 3 years playing. I've run PUGs so much I was actually starting to get a little tired of Tanking.

That was when the BIL logged on so I asked if he wanted to run me through Ramparts once or twice to see if we could get Hellreaver, and it finally dropped. I think that was close to the 10th time I'd been in there. He also ran me through Blood Furnace again to see if we could get anything and I'm not sure I did, at least nothing memorable.

With Hellreaver in my hands I switched back to Ret, then to level my Polearm skill (& relearn how to be a Retadin) I ran Stockades a couple of times. It was quite fun tearing through Stockades and I was pulling around 650DPS by the time I got my Polearm skill up, so I queued up for a Ramparts Run as DPS. It took several minutes to get in, not a terribly long time but definitely a little longer than queuing up as a Tank.

And now that I had Hellreaver I started to see it everywhere. It didn't drop again, but after running a couple more Ramparts and two more Blood Furnaces I was now seeing it in other players' hands, too.

The PUG Moment of the weekend was after the second Pull in Ramparts when the Tank said "sorry gtg dinner time", then stood around for a minute or two chatting before DCing. He didn't leave the party, he just DCd.

One of the DPS dropped out, then the other, leaving me, the Healer, and the DC'd Tank.

As the Healer berated the Tank for being an ass and not quitting the game properly I donned my Tank gear and began switching to my Prot Spec. "I guess I'll Tank," I said.

I right-clicked the DC'd Tanks profile and Orion be praised I was able to initiate a Vote Kick! Naturally the Healer agreed to Kick so with 2 of 3 Votes against him our DC'd Tank was gone. The Healer then re-queued us, and if you're wondering how long it takes a Healer and a Tank to get three DPS, it is not long, not at all. I think I'd barely agreed to Tank when we had our new group.

We breezed through Ramparts (as well we should, I know the damn place like the back of my hand now) then the Healer asked if we wanted to requeue for another run. I think one of the DPS stuck around, I agreed to Tank again, and with our group already having both Tank and Healer we literally went from Ramparts to our...random Dungeon? The Healer signed us up for a Random Dungeon? Oh boy.

We landed in Slave Pens, which I was sort of familiar with but hadn't been in for over 2 years, so I made sure to let our group know that, and said any tips/advice would be appreciated.

Just pull and we'll kill them, was the reply, and so we did, and in spite of the random Fears used by the Naga guards it was a smooth, wipe-free Run. I didn't get any Loot that I could use, other than a Priest/Holy Pally mace, and while it seems good for Mana Regen it's otherwise inferior to my Rampart's Shadowrend Longblade.

And after those numerous Ramparts and Blood Furnace Runs I finally hit Honored with Honor Hold, but I'm now 65 and still doing Hellfire Peninsula quests. I'll probably end up missing half the Outland zones (if not more) and going straight into Northrend, but as I've already leveling multiple characters into their 60s, as well as two 70s, I won't be missing anything. In fact I'd actually be missing out by NOT hitting Northrend as soon as possible.

And if you're wondering how I got in so much WoW this Valentine's Day weekend, it's not been the only thing I've done. I was off Friday and took the family to Universal Studios. We were there pretty much all day until the early hours of the evening, then Saturday we visited Leroy's in Monrovia for a too fattening but oh so good breakfast. Prices are easily comparable to Denny's but taste-wise they're beyond compare. Leroy's does amazing tater tots, which are simply heaven, and which I get with a veggie omelet so I can kid myself I'm eating somewhat healthy. It's not so healthy when I polish off the boy's pancakes because he couldn't finish them ;)

After breakfast we dropped the kids with the in-laws and the wife and I headed to a nearby outdoor mall where she hit Nordstrom Rack while I popped into Best Buy and almost bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner. Not for the wife! For me! Duh! She does the laundry, I do the vacuuming. That baby would be mine! Yeah, how many guys do you know that get excited over vacuum cleaners? Sure, there's Kryten, but he doesn't count ;)

And so what if I get excited over a vacuum cleaner? It's not like there's anything wrong with that. It's not like I'm taking double Polaroids and showing them to my mates ;)