How do I get to Ironforge from Darnassus? Why can’t I mind control this npc? How did I get flagged for pvp? This trainer won’t teach me anymore, where do I continue to train first aid? Why did my first pet have bite but my new one has screech?

I know we have all seen these questions in general chat. Sometimes it’s a very simple thing that someone is looking for, knows they must be close and are simply frustrated. More often than not the question can be answered by reading quest text, looking at a talent tooltip, checking your character pane or perhaps checking the zone maps (when they fill in).

However, some of these questions do not have simple answers. And if you are like me, you like to be able to find the answers yourself, but when you are new its hard to know where to look. So where do you look?

**Before this post got too carried away and became a novel I decided it would be a series of posts. Later I will escalate the types of sites for the more power oriented. For now, the simple stuff.**

Since the inception of the MMO genre there have been sites dedicated to collecting and holding such info. While these typically have followed the pattern of being fan created then being comerciallized and eventually falling out of general use due to overflow of adds and mal-ware *cough* allakaz *cough*…ahem, in recent years there have been a few that have seemed to be able to avoid this pattern to an extent.

Wowhead is likely the most well known and is a site that I easily hit on a (nearly) daily basis. I play with specs for whatever class I am researching using their talent tool (which to me seems faster than the one provided by Blizz) or check for item drops. One great boon we have from Wowhead is the provided code for hover-over tooltips of items and spells.

Likely my personal favorite as a repository for all things WoW, including lore behind most anything there is lore provided for, is WowWiki. Researching an instance in preparation for tanking it the first time? WowWiki is the tool you want. Not always needing a walk through guide for the instance, it is always helpful to know what tricks the trash mobs have up their respective sleeves .

Last but not least in this list of the simple stuff is one that is fairly new, WoWDB. Here we have a site that is hosted by the addon site (goodness there is another topic waiting right there) Curse Gaming. And while I would like to go into a little more detail on it, the links over at wowdb are currently down or at least for me all seem to be redirecting to the front page.

In conclusion, you can either go here, here or here to find out where murloc eyes come from…or the EgoCorp will simply tell you they come from Aensu’s pants.

This…was not quite the post I had planned for today.

Instead of what I will be writing here, I had intended to write a long how-to post on using the new Blizzard Combat Log as a healer. How to configure and set it up, and why a healer might want to do so.

Instead, I found myself frustrated at every turn, unable to accomplish the simplest of goals.

So instead, I offer a letter to Blizzard.

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I hate to admit it but I’ve been cheating on my Rogue… Yep. Cheating.

I know, I know, “but Zasp aren’t Rogues your favorite?”.

Well If this keeps up it’s going to be hard to make that claim. Maybe I’m spoiled by playing with the rest of the Ego team, but I’d like to hope there’s other players out there that would just make our jaws drop in awe at how awesome they are. A couple have come close, but unless I haven’t been part of the conversation, no one’s made us go “ooooh!”.

I’m sure very few tanks have ever been yelled at (by the healer no less!) for not pulling enough mobs in an instance. I know I never did when I played a healer, it meant I got to slack off a bit. Take it easy. Well with Ego at the healing helm, if she’s not healing she’s yelling “More mobs!”.

My little Prot Paladin, Nyisa, is starting to grow on me more and more. And I’m starting to look forward to playing the Paladin more than the Rogue. Not a good sign. It usually means the old main goes completely back burner, save to make money to support the new main. I haven’t reached that point yet but to be completely honest its damn near close.

The scary part? She is only level 55.

That’s 15 levels of things I’ve still yet to experience as a tank. I look forward to the day where I’m level 70 and we are seeing just how quick we can do an instance, with as much chain pulling as Ego can handle. While I would love to get into the position where I could someday raid on Nyisa, I sadly do not see that happening. Starting over this late in the game isn’t going to be an easy task, when it comes to finding a home that happens to need a tank. Or even create a home where people could come to raid, as I am far too selective in who I’d want to run with.

Don’t get me wrong, I do loves me some 5 mans and I look forward to seeing them from the final perspective the game has to offer.

Every time I throw my Avenger’s Shield, I giggle. Every time it misses and looks like its flying clear across the room, I panic just a little, because I fear the next four pulls are coming instead of the two or three I wanted.

My eyes still need training in noticing when someone has pulled aggro in melee range. With a caster it’s a bit more noticeable of course, as the mob will peel off and what not.

As it stands, I’m pretty much learning this game all over again. Being at the 3 years and 6 months mark, its breathing new life into it. While maybe I didn’t need it. It’s got me re-hooked and that I enjoy logging in after all this time is a rather impressive fact, I’d like to think.

So as my Paladin starts to hit outland instances expect to see some posts of me “oohing and awing” of how much fun I’m having. Maybe even some theorycrafting, maybe it be waxing over how to generate even more threat for my DPS. Because I know how much it sucks to be limited by the tank when you shouldn’t be.

P.S - Blizzard please fix the low level plate on female toons, I don’t look like I should be tanking anything in my current gear. See the example screenshot below:

Short* post today - I got caught mid-post on the one I’d planned on posting today, so I’ll whip this one up, and you can expect a more involved entry on Thursday.

The Setup
This is a neat little trick that I didn’t realize could be done. It was actually Kwane who suggested it to me, but all’s fair in love and blogging - if he wanted to post it, he’d have started a draft on it by now!

This tip is for anyone who mashes buttons while waiting for cooldowns to be up. For every shaman who has to put down more than one totem. For every person who casts a spell or uses an ability and then KNOWS exactly what spell or ability they’re going to use as soon as the global cooldown allows.

This tip is for anyone who has ever snarled, “I KNOW I cast that spell! I know I did!”

This is the Official Button Tip.

Want to know the secret?

*beckons closer, voice becomes quiet and hushed*

The secret’s all in the release, my friends.

You see, the server doesn’t respond to your button push until you let go. Until you release that button, the server will not react.

This works for users with Nostromos or other “extra button” gizmos, for users who just keybind their keyboard, and for users who use their mouse to click on spells to cast them. In short - everyone.

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As a follow-up for my previous post on the Seaspray Albatross visuals compared to the Talasite Owl, I whipped up some screenshots for your viewing pleasure.

Well, the warlock has been semi-shelved again and again I have picked up a toon that is a class/spec combination I have attempted to play a few times in the past. This go round I have little choice but to stick with it. Also, as I started said character from scratch just last Thursday and with a whopping amount of help (read that as ‘he did most of the work’) from Aensu, said character is now level 48.

That’s right. From diapers to level 48 in 8 days.

I imagine that over the course of the next few weeks I shall choose to share my insights and convoluted thoughts on this class (yes I am purposefully keeping it a mystery for the time being). For this weeks post I shall simply leave a thank you to Vonya.

Thank you for keeping this site going strong, thank you for pushing the rest of the EgoCorp to keep blogging with you and thank you for the new avatars and sidebar images.

As a side note I think my avatar looks like Might Guy in the “Nice Guy” pose. I should totally have a word bubble so with “Yosh!” in it.

I haven’t been a member of Aetherial Circle for long, but I have met and laughed with Lamaa.

In remembrance of that, I am spreading the rallying cry begun by TJ, like signal fires being lit along a path.

If you can think of anything to help Lamaa’s situation of being falsely banned for using a bot, please share it.

Read the whole story here.

This is about a small thing, to be sure. A genuine QQ post, though I do try to minimize those.

In general, I tend to find myself pleased with the graphics decisions made by blizzard.

Especially with the advent of the Burning Crusade, I would say there have been more delightful things to look at than not, far more things to applaud than to complain about.

Nagrand is gorgeous. Plain and simple.

The new Jolly Rancher Raptors are adorable, and even those who hate ravagers LOVE to hate them.

I absolutely love the new Children’s Week pets, as well as the beerbunny.

The new carrion bird model looks incredible, regardless of color.

The OLD carrion bird looked…well…like a carrion bird. A turkey vulture. You can give it bright plumage all you want - that bald head and staring eye is just flat out creepy. I never did like the old carrion birds, and it had nothing to do with annoying wingspan.

As a Jewelcrafter/healer, I have been using (and loving) the “green bird” trinkets. Until relatively recently, the pinnacle of the “green bird” jc trinkets has been the Talasite Owl.

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Far be it from me to ignore an excellent idea.

Egotistical Reader Cynra commented on my previous post about how to identify the author of an entry here on Ego.

The suggestion was a good one - to make an image for each blogger and include it inside the post.

The revelation was the fact that I could have the image dynamically chosen using the php code, so that we never have to remember to include the image - the code does it all by itself.

I was inspired, and we now have four shiny* new avatars that should be included on every post to help identify its author.

Thank you for the excellent suggestion, Cynra!

UPDATE : Apparently you can’t see the image in the feed reader. Hmm.

_{* And I mean shiny the way artist people use it, not the way Firefly uses it. There’s enough outer glow in those images to direct air traffic.}

Recently, the Ego team decided to transfer our oldest toons to Drenden and play with the good folks over at Aetherial Circle. (That would be the “Bloggingest Guild in WoW”, according to the Pretty-Much-Always-Right TJ)

We did it partially for the possible opportunity to raid, but mostly because that’s a pretty concentrated mixture of awesome folks. People create alts just to hang out with these people, and with good reason.

However, when I transferred Vonya across, I found that someone already had her name.

“Peanuts*!” I thought.

But fair is fair, so I did a fair bit of mental acrobatics and renamed her Vonyari. She can still be called Vonya, and it has the additional benefit of sounding exceptionally Centauri, satisfying my inner geek.

All was well until I spent my badges to get my hammer upgrade.

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