Ah, NaNoWriMo, convincing me to type ridiculously long titles. Sadly, that still only counts as five words. Curse you, space bar!

Raiding QQ
Raids are now so easy they’re laughable, and by ‘laughable’, I mean ‘not really much fun to heal’. You know, because nobody actually needs healing. And nobody really needs the badges anymore, so there’s really not much point to sweeping Kara, even if we can do it with six (and a half) players.

If I wanted a game this easy, I’d play Putt Putt Saves the Zoo.

Altitis Malitosis
So we rolled another set of alts.

This is the first time we’ve ever actually leveled up with a full group, and I gotta tell you, it’s WEIRD.

Three dpsers? THREE? That’s ludicrous!

You have to understand, I’ve leveled up as a three man team so many times that having a full group of dpsers just…doesn’t make sense.

Things die too quickly. It’s simple to the point of being, much like raiding, just too damn easy.

I actually look forward to the times when our shaman can’t join us, so we log on his toon and put him on autofollow. One less dpser means the dots I’m cycling actually get a chance to tick off a little. The only way I’m even coming CLOSE to the dps of the rogue and shaman is to AOE any time we get more than two mobs at once.

Tanking Love
And that brings me to another point. Thank you, Blizz, for making AOE threat exist for beartanks. I was actually going to write “non-paladin tanks” but my resident warrior tank tells me that warriors are, as always, getting shafted so hard they’re wondering whether they owe someone money or whether Blizz could go ahead and check for colon cancer while they’re at it. Not that I know this personally…

Tank favoritism aside, the beartank our little babies are driving nuts is actually able to hold threat over my little warlock through my AOEs.

Granted, I don’t toss the thing up immediately upon the pull. I cycle a few dots, bite myself, check to make sure all the mobs are missing at least a little health, and THEN I open up the gates of hell (I’m polite, for a warlock), but I know for a fact that he couldn’t have pulled it of pre-patch.

AOE tanking is king, and I am thrilled that it is no longer JUST the pervue of paladins. I can almost hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the cries of “homogenization!” and “world of hybridcraft!”.

I’m not arguing for or against either of those, I’m just sayin that it’s nice that my tank can handle AOE threat, is all.

Trick or Treat
The halloween event is finally over, and I am happy to report that Vonya actually did manage to get a Sinister Squashling (she wanted it for the pet, not the title). After days and days of my characters getting TRICKED instead of treated, 4 times out of 5, my guild took pity and did a few horseman runs to get the adorable little gourdling for me. Much love!

UI Woes
My husband did some trick or treating on my characters when I had to work late or after I’d gone to bed. We found out the hard way that somehow, blizz is actually copying and pasting information from HIS characters and computer over to MINE. The files in my Warcraft folder are physically changing, which is overwriting not only all of my KEYBINDINGS, but also my MACROS.

I have rebuilt my characters exactly five times since the patch, and I am not pleased.

If it was my addons being bizarre, that’d be one thing. But why, exactly, are my macros being deleted? My macros are stored locally! Why are my keybindings getting removed?

I am not pleased.

Not pleased at. all.

*frownyface*

THANK YOU!
Last, but definitely not least, a big thank you to ZASP, who braved the (ick, ugh, blech, bleargh) PVP walls of Orgrimmar to get my hunter the fishing achievement requirements there. He did it because I hate PVP with a purple passion, and I am very much grateful. <3

Dear Blizz,
Fewer achievements that require me to do PVP stuff, please. Or give my character some kind of “writ of good faith” or something, so that if I attack anyone, I’m screwed, but I’m otherwise just eyeballed suspiciously. I only wanted to fish! Is that a crime?!
Love, Vonya

So this week was weird.Not zombie weird, or paladins nerfed to the ground weird, or even horseman disappearing RIGHT at 4am weird.

I mean weird as in, no one had a clue what to do kind of weird.

I was settling all comfortably into my role as emissary of doom from the cult of the shadow, pewpewing and face-melting as necessary in my attempt to maybe reach outlands properly. Then I thought, hey, it’d be kind of neat to go with a group into one of them thar dungeons again. I bet I’d be fine in BRD.

So I went to my trainer in Thunderbluff. Don’t ask me why I was in Thunderbluff. I think I slurred or something when talking to the flight master. It was a long, meandering flight, and I spent most of the time wondering why the stupid scorpio-cat-bat-thing was as drunk as someone with a year’s subscription to beer-in-your-mail. Which is not me.

Anyway, poof, there went all my spells, and I tapped into that magic looking-for-meatshields thing while I poked around at new healery type spells.

And I kept poking around, and kept watching people looking for tanks for this or that. All for places in outland. Or Wailing Caverns. Why those two extremes all the time? But only for tanks. One person was looking for heals, but he was also looking for tanks and three “good dps” for Kara. These days, I don’t even know what counts for good dps. Not dying? Dying in a spectacular manner? Finally I got tired of half-heartedly poking at my healing spells and started just picking talents willy nilly. I don’t think I know what half of these things do anymore, but anything that looked to increase my super-awesome priest healing abilities would be great.

And then the world ended.

When I logged back in, all that random point-clicking had come undone. Maybe I didn’t click hard enough? Anyway, I joined back up in the looking-for-meatshields and started scowling at my trainer again. Before clicking anything, I took a closer look at who was available to be my personal meatshield. I wasn’t picky about what dungeon we molested, so that made it both easy and difficult to find people.

“Healer looking for whatever” doesn’t encourage people to join your illustrious cause, it seems. Besides, I wasn’t technically a healer at the moment. I wasn’t technically anything, and my trainer was looking impatient. As impatient as someone can look when they have leather straps bolted in an X across their face. It can be done, trust me.

So, yeah. There was no one. I don’t mean there wasn’t anyone looking for a dungeon that I wanted to visit - like I said, I wasn’t picky. I mean, there wasn’t anyone. NO ONE. I did a quick scan using powerful magics of /who 54-58.

It was me and some druid in Tanaris.  And he logged off as I watched.

Picking out all those healing abilities seemed kind of silly at that point, but with all the changes that have come down the line, recently, I wasn’t really sure where to put my pewpew-facemelting points.

Maybe I’ll just wait for Northrend and something will happen to make people pop up around looking for healinators again. Yes, I’m still nervous about running around out there by myself after the whole zombie thing. I still can’t talk to the bankers in Undercity like I used to…

/shiver

ps: ASK ME KWESTCHUNS.  Maybe I will use your innane quandries to fuel my spite-filled anecdotes another time, while I wait for some meatshields to get big enough to be deserving of my leet heals.  Or … have me along for face melting.  I have no idea.

There are a million things to be excited about with regards to the Wrath of the Lich King.

Hunters, I think everyone will agree, must have been very very good this year. Santa’s giving them almost everything on their christmas list.

Most of the other classes are getting pretty nice buffs, and there are a few classes/specs that feel they’re getting hit with a great big nerf bat.

As for me? What I’m most excited about isn’t the hairstyles. It’s not the pending dragon mounts that don’t look like sad sharks. It’s not the hunter changes (although you can bet your sweet bippy my hunter is foaming the mouth about those). It’s not the priest changes, it’s not the changes to caster stats, or even the joy of new areas to explore and new instances to crush beneath my heals (see what I did there?).

Oh no, my friends. I am MOST excited about the surge in 10-man raiding for end-game. I know from previous comments that many of you feel exactly the same way. How many of us actually saw the old 40 man content? How many of us got to see the endgame 25 man content?

How many of us spent too much time trying desperately to gather together 20+ people for a raid? Hoping, praying that we could get key players with enough brain cells to rub together to get these bosses down? The days of “bodies” needed to raid are long gone, and now we actually need “players”.

Is it hard to find 25 competent players? No. Is it hard to find 25 competent players that aren’t already spread out through the many, many raiding guilds on every server? Oh yes.

When every fight is a dance - move here, don’t stand in the fire, when it gets to phase three, make sure you change your strategy to this, STOP DPS immediately at X point or we all wipe…

…a single Leroy Jenkins could ruin a raid. Over, and over, and over again.

Getting together 10 like-minded people is less difficult. Still not easy, but certainly more doable than 25. The key there is “like-minded”. People with similar goals and ideals when it comes to raiding. Where they stand on the Hardcore-o-meter, for example.

Karazhan’s popularity was absolutely unprecedented. For the first time, raiding content (and gear) was available to a wide range of guilds, not just larger guilds. Small groups of friends could take a shot at the same content as the “big dogs”. Could see things they never thought they’d see, experience things they never thought they’d be able to experience.

Zul’Aman was, I think, a test to see if Karazhan was a fluke. The problem with ZA, in my opinion, was that you really couldn’t waltz into the instance with Kara gear and pirouette your way through the encounters. With better badge gear and more badge drops from Karazhan, that soon equalized, however.

My favorite thing about ZA is that it’s a skill check. Eagle boss is unforgiving. Every fight tests your raiders in some way. Can they listen? Can the tanks coordinate aggro? Can the dpsers handle shifting targets and always being aware of their location? Can the healers handle scattered, unpredictable AOE damage? And, test of all tests, can you do it all in a given time period to get a totally frivolous status symbol? (and the chest loot, sure, but we all know it was all about the bear)

I am so excited about the trend toward making raiding content available to more players.

It is because of this excitement that I view many of the class nerfs and buffs and the much-maligned homogenization of the classes with a sorrowful but understanding eye.

When raids have only ten players, the developers have to try and create fun, interesting, and challenging encounters for almost any raid makeup. A raid encounter that is made trivial for any team that brings a warlock is not a well-balanced encounter. If a team bringing a shadow priest is capable of remaining at full mana while an equally skilled team with only a ret paladin’s Judgment of Wisdom for mana regen is floundering - what do you do? As a developer, what do you do?

You have to make some concessions, when the raiding encounters go from 25 unique classes (and a much broader class makeup possibility) to only having 10 slots - at least two healers and two tanks, so that leaves only 6 dps slots. What abilities can they bring, and how do you keep an unfortunate raid makeup from turning a difficult encounter into a nearly impossible one?

How many of you have done the PVP Delrissa fight in Magister’s Terrace? It sucks, it’s horrible, it’s incredibly chaotic, it’s nearly impossible. Oh, but bring a mage or two, or even a single warlock, and all the sudden it’s a cake walk.

Given the magnitude of the task set before the class designers and developers, I feel they’ve done a good job of trying to balance without totally removing the originality of the various classes. Note I said ‘good’, not ‘great’. Could they have done some things differently? Absolutely. Better? Almost certainly.

But I am excited about Wrath, incredibly so. I’m looking forward to every new experience, and I hope that, in the end, the hard work to get 10 man raids fair and viable reaps incredible rewards for both Blizzard and the player base.

Heroic Karazhan
So, last night we five-manned Kara.

Well, it was more of a five and a half man. There was a gnome.

(Okay, okay, the half wasn’t REALLY because she was a gnome, it was because she had just dinged 70 and wasn’t geared out like everyone else. C’mon, it was a pretty good gnome joke. You know it was.)

We started out with more people - I think we had eight when we downed the new boss (Congratulations to Aensu for a ridiculously hilarious axe drop), but we lost two people who’d made other arrangements for the rest of the night, and the rest of us decided to just keep on truckin through the raid instance. I have to admit, I was surprised. No interrupts on Aran, one newbie to gear (poor thing didn’t even get many drops. The gods of Karazhan were not in her favor), one healer, one offtank with a bear spec (and you poor feral druids know that since the patch, that means almost no cat talents to boost cat dps), and we did it anyway, in pretty good time.

It was a lot of fun - by undermanning it, we still had at least a LITTLE bit of a challenge.

Who Needs a Full Raid, Anyway?
So, if you’re bored, and tired of how easy the raid instances are nowadays, here’s a bit of advice. Take about half the people you’d normally take and go crazy. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. But if you’ve already had the fun of tearing through instances and raids that used to be difficult, maybe you’re looking for the challenge that used to be there.

Sometimes it can be hard to pull an entire raid together, what with the expansion and burnout and various other reasons for not playing.

If you’ve got four dps, a tank, and a healer…go have some fun. Tell ‘em Ego sent ya.

28 Days Later
Also, I know the event is over, but just in case anyone wants to know my opinion on the whole Zombie Apocalypse event, it is thus :

Those who did not have a specific goal in mind that they wished to accomplish during this past weekend loved it. The zombie thing gave them something to do - whether fighting the zombies or being the zombies.

Those who actually wanted to level an alt, work an a profession, fly from one point to another, do ANYTHING or accomplish any specific goal during that time period hated it.

From my perspective, these past few days in game have been asshat heaven.

I actually stopped logging in by the time the weekend hit, and the days leading up to it were frustrating in the extreme, as my lowbie alt’s quest givers were more often trying to eat my face than allow me to do a turn in. Completely destroying a vital quest hub over and over and over again is griefing, not fun. If I hadn’t actually been trying to do something, I wouldn’t have cared. But since I was constantly thwarted in my attempts to play the game, I stopped playing it.

I don’t think it matters at this point - Blizzard has stated via blue posts that the event went off as planned, and that they wanted to try an event that would affect every single player, from lowbie to high level, and they succeeded.

However. Given the amount of complaints generated by the event, I don’t think we’ll ever see a free-for-all gankfest like this again.

Any game-wide event that keeps me from playing a game that I’m actually paying for is going to piss me off. I know a lot of people that enjoyed the event, and I’m happy for you, I truly am. (Those of you who weren’t griefing for the sake of griefing, that is. I AM aware that it was possible to enjoy the event without ruining the game for other people.) I just wish there had been some safeguards put in for the people attempting to get some goals done. And I believe that when something like this is implemented again, those safeguards will be in place.

Edit : I just thought of something that could work on that score, and would actually make it fun to be the person KILLING the zombies, instead of just the person being zombies. Remember the npcs that stood in the major cities? Why not make zombies lootable for little badges? For every…say…fifty badges that are turned in, another little camp of healer npcs would appear, further and further from the major cities. That way the players could actually affect how many healers there were - you could defend your city, and by doing so, you could actually make it easier for your fellow players. The healer npcs would keep the areas around them cleansed of zombies, but they would only spread out as the turnins were done, as proof of just how bad the zombie menace was in that area.

That way the griefers and mischiefmakers are happy - they still get to be zombies and wreak havok. The defender players are happy - their efforts to contain the zombie menace are actually rewarded by changes in-game (and lets face it, if you spent all weekend killing zombies, wouldn’t you LOVE to see the fruits of your labors?). The players just trying to get stuff done are happy because their areas are clear.

Win/Win/Win!

Chocolate
Plain, or with addatives such as coconut, berries, or nuts?

Discuss.

Postscript
Dear Blizzard,

Thanks for the new boss in Kara, that was a lot of fun. However, since the playerbase is getting (at best) only two shots at him, why did you make his neat axe drop (very cool hidden use effect on that, by the way. You totally win on that one) be a rare drop?

Rare…from a mob that people will only get to see twice?

Perhaps I’m missing something and he will be a permanent boss in Kara. But it seems kinda mean, is all I’m sayin’.

Oh, and thanks for the batling. Very cute.

Love,
Vonyari, the Egotistical Priest

(but never actually sees any Scourge, or much of anything at all, except a lot of zombies with guild tags and the npc’s they’ve converted)

“Trick or treat, Innkeeper!”
“Braaaaaains…”
“…oh dear.”

/violence

Alright, I’ll just fly over to the Sepulcher to see if -
“Braaaaaains…”
“But how did-”

/violence

Screw this, I’m porting to Shattrath. All those super-high level players will -

/violence

I’ll just go find those undead that everyone keeps talking about invading outside the city, the ones that were not formally pug-fodder, and-

/violence

I’m going to the bank, in the middle of the city, far away from these dangerous doowhoppers that keep resisting all my spells, even before they’re full-on-zombies, and I’m going to work on my tailoring while all the kiddos are out playing hero.

“Hello, banker. I’d like to withdraw- ”
“Braaaaaaaaaains…”
“Well, no, cloth, preferably. Why can I not get to my bank?”
“Brrraaaaaains!”
“Oh bugger.”

/violence

My ultimate response?

/mariobros

You rotting meat sacks have an expiration date. I’m going to hide out in my Panic Room until you all decay.

Woo, mushroom!

I thought it’d be fun to have a post where we all come up with our own Achievements, but it looks like Nekkid Cow beat me to it!

If you’ve got a great idea, swarm his blog and spread the love for some great Achievements (and rewards) that you’d love to see implemented in the game!

Nekkid Cow’s “Earned Achievements” Thread

One of the biggest features of the most recent patch is the Achievements system, and I gotta tell ya, I am entirely too enamored with the whole idea.

Money
From Blizzard’s standpoint, it’s beautiful. The only rewards that come from achievements are utterly superficial - a special colored mount, a vanity pet, a title. No gear, nothing that is actually useful from a gameplay perspective, nothing that could potentially give any player an “edge” over other players.

In return for this “nothing”, players are crawling all over the game like ants disturbed from an anthill. Never completed the Green Hills of Stranglethorn quest? Well, by golly, you will only get credit for completing the Nesingwary quest series if you do! Stranglethorn is overrun with level 70 toons, all gathering pages like crazy. What’s the reward? Not a thing.

People are eating this up, drinking the Kool-Aid, and in general going out of their way to complete these achievements. Comparing points, helping each other complete quests, selling pieces of the achievements in the trade channel (like shots with a particular wand, for example).

It’s a madhouse, and everyone’s trying to complete as many achievements as they can.

Heck, half my guild is off somewhere in Azeroth, trying to get the map discovery achievements.

And of us all, Blizz wins the most. People are interested in the game again, redoing old content again, and renewing their subscriptions before the expansion, all for…well…nothing.

Me
As for me? I can see the hilarious deception, and I flat out do not care.

I adore the Achievements system. Nobody gets hurt, nobody gets overpowered, and everyone has a grand old time. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s utterly frivolous, and I could not be more enchanted with the whole idea.

Khuu completed the cooking and fishing quests she could do on short notice (El’s Extreme Anglin’, how do I love thee, let me count the ways). Vonya’s working on getting credit for all the instances and heroics she’s already run a million times.

I am so into this whole concept that it’s just crazy. I love it. I love seeing another checkmark on a list to get an achievement done. I love completing an achievement, getting that glowing flourish and sound.

Summary
If someone tries to tell you that achievements are stupid…let them. Smile and laugh, because they’re right. You don’t gain anything that will truly make a difference in any aspect of this game (with the possible exception of RP).

It is stupid.

But I’ll tell you what, I’m having a lot more fun with this “stupid” stuff than they are bemoaning the inattendance of raiders, I’ll tell you that much!

Now if you’ll excuse me, Khuuna still has a few more critters to run up and /love.

*grins*

You people write too many awesome blogs.

I’m not even all the way through the comment list, and already my blogroll is dominating my sidebar like a devilsaur with Bestial Wrath and all three stacks of Monstrous Bite. (I’d have used a sports reference there, but the closest thing I get to sports is that old Nintendo basketball game where the announcer screams “He’s on FIRE!“)

But seriously. Chill out on the awesome blogs. I thought for sure I’d be safe. How many AWESOME blogs could there be? Mediocre blogs? Sure. But AWESOME?

The answer is “at least five more than too many”.

I AM working through the list of blog recommendations from way back when. Really and truly, I am. It’s like being given an entire bag of candy corn, though. Sure, it’s awesome, but you can only eat so many pieces before you kinda sorta start wondering whether other flavors exist in this world.

Too much awesome. You’ve been warned. I know people who do things. Nasty things, involving unpleasant stuff.

[This is the part where you imagine me doing that "point at my eyes, point at your eyes" suspicious glare thing. If there's a single word to indicate that series of actions, let me know. Whatever it is, I'm doing it. Right now. To you.]

So, as of this morning, it is T minus Too Many days till the expansion hits.

Can you feel it? The pre-expansion jitters? The sweaty palms, the shaky hands, the swiftly pumping heart?

It’s not here yet, and at this rate, it’ll be AGES before it arrives.

So what are you doing to bide your time until the expansion arrives?

The Ego crew is combating the jitters with a wide variety of activities.

Achievements

If you’ve got time to waste, there’s really no reason not to waste it on achievements! Have you explored all of Kalimdor? Have you completed the lore quests and read the books necessary for the title of Loremaster? Have you loved a squirrel? Have you fished every school, eaten every treat, drank every drink?

Have you ever eaten a Delicious Chocolate Cake? Trust me, it’s worth gathering the mats, even without the two achievements that require it.

Still bemoaning the impossibility of the “falling from a great height” achievement? Have a pally bubble you as you jump from Aldor rise.

Not sure where to find Schooner Wreckage? Check out El’s Extreme Anglin’.

There are more achievements available than we have time left to do…why not waste some fun doing something frivolous and silly?

Old World Raids

You know, I never saw Onyxia until last week? True story. We went in with our normal ten-man group and just annihilated her. It was a lot of fun. We’re thinking about tackling AQ40, just for the heck of it. Why not, right? We’ve got geared raiders who are bored, and raids that used to take a few hours are now done in record time. We might as well go experience some of the stuff that we missed the first time around.

Alts

I have, from time to time, been accused of having a nasty case of alt-itis. It’s at least partially true, as I like to know enough about every class to know why priests are better. *winks*

And with all the changes to old world and the new achievements system, why not start up an alt and see what happens?

If you happen across a little red-haired gnome warlock with the new spikey pigtails by the name of Sugarberry, that’s me.

Will she make it to 70? Unlikely, but possible. She’ll never be able to usurp the place of Vonyari and Khuuna in my heart, but maybe it’ll be fun to play a class I can roll my head around the keyboard and pwn with. All the while being incredibly adorable, I might add.

You?

So what about you guys? What are you doing in-game in the days left before the expansion hits?

The Headless Horseman is an elite level 70 ball of death.I just want to point that out before we go any further. It’s pertinent information. You may say this information is vital. Certainly, it’s something you should know before gathering a group together, making sure everyone has a quest, and heading up to Scarlet Monastery’s Cemetery.

There are two Headless Horsemen. Or as he puts it, since we’re so eager for his blood to spill, it’s actually his level 70 head we must kill.

I was distracted. Probably a little overwhelmed. A lot of changes have happened very quickly in the past week, and I’m still catching up with which of my spells does what and what monsters die easily and which ones are still stubborn about dying. So when I saw some people nearby asking for a healer for HH, I hopped on. It wasn’t entirely my fault. They could have checked me, too. We all just blithely assumed everyone else knew what was happening. I noticed there was a lot of time spent, motionless, with no group chat, while I buffed them and continued reorganizing my inventory. I haven’t had time to make it back to a bank, yet, and my outfits are still bizarre. Half of my shadow-set gear is better than my healing gear, so I’m still trading back and forth items in an attempt to get the most bang for those bucks.

Anyway, I assume, now, that they were conferring about me, and the puny buffs I was throwing out. At the beginning of the instance, before charging through all the mobs (”Wow, those things are dying fast,” I thought to myself at the time), they probably just thought I was dressed up and trying to look good for the seasonal event. When I didn’t change into my super-sparkling outland gear from Illidan or something, someone must have peered a little closer at me.

“Yur 57.”

“Yeah, so this should be cake, I’m all set. I killed him solo earlier today.”

“Wow rly?”

“Yeah, in Brill. Everyone else was busy dancing or something.”

“That’s a different guy.” Someone else said.

The tank, feeling his oats, declared “Lets do it anyway,” and suddenly began rhyming about the headless horseman having felt death before or something.

I died.

Trying again later, with a group of like-level kiddos, we discovered that you did not, in fact, get the option of summoning a horseman with a more appropriate difficulty. Thank you, rogue-whasyername, for that very helpful but incorrect suggestion.

“Hannelore The Hallowed” will have to await the coming of the Lich King and sometime beyond. Good luck to you others who are going for it, or basically already have it.

Or, as they say about the undead mount from the Baron:

Omg grats, I hate you.