Casual Huntering

Archive for the ‘Random’ Category

So, I was actually going to get on this morning and type something about my experiences running dungeons as a Disc Priest, but instead of Tuesday morning Maintenance, we had Tuesday morning rolling restarts. How could I miss the opportunity to play?? Seriously, I really write a lot more when we have long extended maintenance time.

Somethings that I’m finding interesting right now.

• Healing as a Disciple priest. My randoms didn’t actually wipe, who would have thought a hunter could learn to heal??
• Remote Auction House. Yeah, I thought I could maybe through some auctions up while I’m at work when I have a break here and there. I don’t have an iphone or an ipod touch, but I plan on getting one… soon. You could say I’m wasting my money, but really? Isn’t the whole game a waste of money?
• PvPing on my Warlock – okay I haven’t actually done this yet, but I would like to give it a try.
• Having crafting added on to the Remote Auction house. Wouldn’t that be just the bomb??? Buy your gems, cut them and throw them back on from your iphone while you are waiting in line at the store. I would love it!!

Anyway, I really don’t have time to write. So, there you go, what’s going on in my brain, I guess each of those things could be their own blog posts. Oh well. I gotta go donate some plasma, fun fun fun.

So, I woke up at 3am with one of the most annoying things in the world, heartburn hiccups. Yeah, could that sound any worse??

Just imagine a bad painful case of the hiccups that you get a little burst of indigestion with each hick. Hurts like hell. (and consequently – completely deserved – that’s what I get for eating mint Oreo cookies right before I go to bed.) So, I scrabbled half awake stumbling for the kitchen for my cure of the hiccups, a spoonful of peanut butter. Seriously, works every time for me. (well, almost – it didn’t work when I was drugged up after getting my wisdom teeth yanked out – that was a miserable day of hiccups – hopefully never to be repeated). I really need to start eating healthy and exercising, but you see the only time I have to really exercise is when I play WoW in the morning. I better figure something or buy a lot of peanut butter.

Anyway, on to something more important:

So, I was looking at the patch notes for Cataclysm Beta, wow, they still have a lot of work to do. All hunter Lock pets were deleted because of data corruption, their attempting to have people stream the game instead of downloading the new patch (must be huge), and the level cap is only 83 at this point in time among other things.

Here are some of the things that I noticed categorized by classes that I care about:

Hunters

• Five pets can now be stored with the hunter at all times. Any one of these five pets can be summoned via the Call Pet ability.

• Focus has replaced mana as a new resource.

• Hunters now start with a pet at level 1.

• The Stable will now store 20 pets. If a pet is moved into the Stable, its talents are wiped.

• Ammo has been removed from the game.

I’m so stoked. This is freakin’ awesome!!!! They said at this point, if you put a pet in the stable then it’s talents will get wiped. That’s annoying. Oh, and I’m not sad at all the ammo is leaving.  Well, that’s not entirely true, I really wish they would have did to ammo what they did to throwing weapons, make it so  you only had to buy one of them, then they could have done some cool bonuses to them, but whatever, at least I won’t ever run out in a raid again.

I’m already getting a list of pets that I’m going to go tame the second Cataclysm comes out. I’ll have to post that sometime soon.

Warlocks

• Soul Shards have been removed from the game as items. Instead, they now exist as a resource system necessary for using, or altering the mechanics of certain spells.

Warlocks everywhere will cheer out loud for this. I’m so sick of having soul shards take up so much bag space with my level 60 warlock (and yes I’m still working on getting his flower picking skills up, I’m almost to 300 – yes I know my life is boring, but what can you do?).

Death Knights

• A dedicated tanking tree has been implemented.

• The way in which runes recharge has changed.

Looks like I’m going to have to relearn how to play that Death knight with all the changes coming through there.

Paladins

• We are in the process of overhauling many paladin talents, spells and abilities. Expect updates in upcoming patches.

Okay, so I only have a baby Paladin, but I’m going to start paying more attention to the class. Apparently, everything is going to change anyway (again).

Druids

• A new Eclipse mechanic has been added for druids. The feature is functional, but the interface art is still a work in-progress.

I honestly don’t know what’s going on with druids, but I love the class. I heard they’re changing something with the tree form. I still think the tree form should change with the seasons of the year. You know have lots of leaves in the summer, have them slowly change color and fall off in the fall, look dead in the winter and start to blossom in the spring. How cool would that be!! Seriously! But really, I got my druid up to level 60, but I skipped 20 levels thanks to RAF, so I don’t have a clue as to what’s going on with that class.

So, there you have it, I really should get back to work and try to get something done here for once in my life. I’m really trying to make an effort to put more posts out there. I enjoy writing, but life just keeps getting in the way.

Someone found me with these keywords above (the words in the title?). I get a variation of this every once in awhile. I think there must be an on-going battle between kids and parents in regards to World of Warcraft (a skirmish in the larger videogame wars).

Before we start to think of how to get your parents to let you “keep World of Warcraft”, first let’s think of the reasons your parents might not want to let you play it.

1. You play too much.
2. You’re playing WoW instead of getting some wholesome exercise outside like decent kids do.
3. You’re grades are suffering because you play WoW too much.
4. You’re falling asleep at school because you play WoW too late at night.
5. You aren’t getting quality family time in because you are busy raiding.
6. Your parents have watched or read something about game addiction and the evils of games such as World of Warcraft.
7. You’re religion preaches against the occult and your parents heard about the Arthas and his followers and feel that he’s a bad influence on you (yeah, I thought that one was stretching it a bit too).
8. … hmm… your parents are jealous of your uber gear and want you to stop so they can surpass your gear score.
9. Your parents are concerned about your social life, that you don’t hang out with your friends anymore.
10. Your parents don’t speak Azerothian and thus are sick of wondering what the heck you are saying when you open your mouth these days.
11. Your parents think playing WoW is about the geekiest thing you could be doing besides table top RPG games and are embarrassed to talk to their friends now.
12. Frankly, you play too much (at least in your parents’ think so).

I think to the most part that parents want to make sure that you have a well balanced life. They don’t want to see things like grades, family interaction, sleep, or oral hygiene fall to the wayside. Can you blame them? I mean seriously, when is the last time you’ve brushed your teeth?

Well, if you’re parents are good loving parents, or at least they try, then most likely they have your best interest in mind. No seriously, I bet they do. I have kids of my own, and we really aren’t out there to try to spoil fun and bring death and misery everywhere we walk… well, there are days… but not most of the time.

I would suggest that you first identify why your parents want you to give up playing WoW. It might be one of the items listed above. It might be something else. Figure that out. Mostly likely they have a legitimate concern.

Next, get a game plan; figure out some kind of compromise. Think something out. Weather it be you cutting your playing time, having you earn WoW time by doing chores, or having you do your homework before you play. Maybe you can show them how to use the parental controls, or limit yourself to one night a week. Whatever, just think something through that would fix your parents concerns while still letting you play. Remember, restricted time playing WoW is better than it being banned altogether. And if you’re parents concerns really is the fact that they consider WoW the geekiest thing, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Okay, propose your plan to your parents. (example: “I will only play WoW after I finish my homework on Monday and Wednesday nights as well as Saturday mornings” or maybe “I’ll limit myself to only playing X amount of hours per week, if I get a 4.0 you’ll let me play X hours.”). Parents appreciate you being up front with them. They also like to see good problem solving skill (problem solving skills working with your parents, not against them). They might not understand why you play, but they’ll see you being willing to compromise and make a deal. Parents would much rather make a deal with you on good terms than take the game away from you and have there be negative feelings. I don’t really like making my kids cry (even if they do bring it on themselves sometimes).

If you’re parents agree to some kind of arrangement, then the next thing you need to do is to live up to your end of the bargain. Nothing will get WoW taken from you quicker than to do something you said that you wouldn’t do. In your parents’ eyes, they view this as lying. Yup, they see that you duped them and parents do not like to be duped.

Yes, this means you have to show some self-control. You won’t be able to play as much as you’d like. You might struggle a little bit keeping up with your guild. That’s okay. You really shouldn’t be playing too much WoW anyways. I hate to tell you this, but you’re parents are right, you do play too much WoW.

Of course if your parents don’t go for it, then I don’t know what to tell you. I will tell you this. It’s not worth it to go behind your parents back. Your relationship with your parents is far more important than this silly MMO. Oh man, there I go sounding like a parent again. Well, I guess I am a parent after all. But I’m the parent who plays WoW. Now if you can recruit your parents to playing WoW, that would solve all of your problems (and bring up a host of new ones).

And always remember, someday you’ll be an adult and you can ruin your life all you want by playing too much WoW.

Who said you wouldn’t be able to use your WoW skills in real life?? This website recently reported a boy who used his WoW skills in order to save his sisters life. Do I know anything about the validity of the site… um, no. But I love the concept so I don’t care.

Apparently a 12 year old kid in Norway and his sister ran into a not so happy Moose in the woods near their home. The moose was a little upset and this kid knew exactly what to do. To get the attention off of his sister he “taunted” the aggro away (not that hunter’s have a taunt other than their distracting shot – maybe he growled at the moose), then once his sister was safe he used his hunter skill “feign death” clearing all aggro at that point. Luckily the moose didn’t resist his spell thus preventing a wipe.

Makes me wonder what other skills we could use in real life. Man, I want to go tame some wild beast, or shoot a fireball with my hands. I think I’m going to go work on that for my Friday project…. hmm…. how could I blink like a mage? ……/lost in thought

[Nettavisen via Wired Blogs]

I’ve been meaning to write a post about some of the random keywords people have used to find my blog. Many of which aren’t addressed. So, I here I am addressing them.

“what level do you have to be to tame skoll”

Level 80

“any benefit to taming rare pets”

Yeah, they’re cool looking! What kind of hunter would have to ask this question anyways??

“at what age is it nerdy to play wow”

Depends on who you talk to, some would say it is always too nerdy to play WoW, but in my humble opinion you are never too old to be too nerdy. Oh wait, did that come out right? I actually think wow is a geeky thing, not a nerdy thing.

“can $30 internet handle world of warcraft”

When I started playing I was on a dial-up. So, it’s possible to play with slow internet, but you’re lag will be pretty bad. I don’t suggest it. Go buy yourself a WiFi card and play on your neighbor’s internet.

“can my kids use the same world of warcraft account as me?”

If you don’t ever want to play with your kid, yes. If you want to play alongside him, then no. Of course you’d then need another computer as well.

Mostly you’ll have to fight for game time, but you’re the parent, you can kick them off.

“can’t play wow at worl, how can i pas the restrictions”

Yes, Worl restrictions can be quite severe. You’ll have to jail break your worl in order to add a proxy WoW server in order to be able to bypass all of the restrictions.

“how many pets can a hunter have”

5

“how long will it take me to get to level 80 from level 40?”

However long you would like, that depends on how much you’d like to neglect real life, but its takes me way too long to do that kind of leveling.

“how to change your personal cultural bias”

Identify, examine, educate yourself, follow through. I don’t know if that really fits the scope of this blog.

“how to manage wow and real life”

Prioritize

“how to teach a child to play wow”

Throw them at a computer and let them have at it.

“i want to get my mom to play wow, what should she play as?”

A hunter

“i was in the snow for long time got fever”

Get out of the snow then.

“i wiped the raid hunter pet aggressive”

Take your pet off of aggressive /facepalm.

“ways death knights can make money”

The same way any other class makes money.

“what age kid plays mafia wars”

This depends if you are taking about the facebook app or real life mafia wars.

“what is rp & rl on twitter”

Well, for me rp=roleplay rl=real life, but I don’t know what other people are doing.

“where are the best place in nothend for hunters pets”

Well, I assume you meant northrend. And you’d be surprised to find animals to tame in every area. No really, it’s true. Depends on the pet you want.

“why teenagers shouldnt play wow”

Well, I don’t see why not, unless they are letting their play time destroy their grades. I say you should teach balance and moderation instead of complete abstinence. Now I’m referring to WoW and not other things teenagers do. Keep that in mind.

“why can’t i buy hourly game time in wow”

No, but sometimes I wish you could, cause it kills me that I pay the same amount for my 8 hours a week as my brother-in-law does for his 30+ hours. You can in Asia though.

“will expanded stables be released before cataclysm?”

I don’t think so.

So, there you have it, some of the random questions I’ve gotten in the last month. Of course since these were google searches, they probably just went to another website that did have the answers. But whatever.

So, I learned a lesson in WoW today, gratitude still exists. Who would have thought?

My wife and I were just finishing up the Nobel Garden achievements. We were on the Hard Boiled achievement, the one where you need to go out to Un’Goro Crater and lay an egg in by some hot springs.

Well, obviously Aoirselvar is not going to be doing any egg laying in his current form. You have to do it while you are a pink bunny. There are two different ways you can do this achievement, one way you can do by yourself and another way you need a buddy. If you are by yourself, then you’ll just have to get turned into a bunny when you randomly open an egg in one of the beginning areas and it explodes with little bunnies. Then you’ll be a little bunny for the next hour. You can still hearthstone and use ports as a bunny, but you can not use flight paths. So, your best option is to hearthstone to Dalaran (assuming you like most others keep your hearthstone there) then you use the port to the Caverns of time in Tanaris. At which point you hop on over to Un’Goro crater for a bit of a walk. This is doable, but not very practical.

Now if you have a buddy, then hopefully one of you have the branch that has 5 charges to turn people into bunnies. You fly over to Un’goro Crater then jump on your mount and ride over to the right spot, then turn each other into bunnies, tada! It’s a cinch this way. Very easy.

So, we get to Un’goro and we see someone in general chat ask if anybody could turn them into a bunny, I replied that I could, then added the guy into our group and met him at the designated spot. Then we all turned each other into little bunnies and viola, achievement done. I realized right before I turned this person into a bunny. OH MY GOSH, I FINALLY FOUND A FEMALE DWARF!!!! I asked to make sure (hard to tell the gender of those turned into animals. Had a heck of a time with druid night elves and Tauren). Then I promptly put bunny ears and got that achievement as well. Lots of “ty”s and “tyvm”s proceed our little bunny exchange.

Then we headed out to plant some flowers to finish that achievement (Desert Rose, I believe). We got all the way to Desolace, when we happened on someone asking us if we had the branch to turn people into bunnies. I replied that I could. Then we added him to our group and I flew back to Un’goro, hopped on to my motor bike and rode with the guy back to the spot and turned him into a bunny. It took awhile, seeing how Nijal’s point was almost on the other side of Kalimador.

Well, the guy finally laid his egg and got his achievement. Then I was about to go when he startled me by opening a trade chat. I didn’t expect that, and I wasn’t asking for any payment. Then he proceeded to give me 50 gold! I really would have been happy with a thank you, which he also gave. We then parted our ways.

I was really impressed by the gratitude shown by this individual and it changed my perspective of the game. I’ll admit, I often turn down people when they ask me to help them with this quest, or with that quest. I definitely ignore people when they beg for gold. But sometimes I help people here and there, not often enough. I realized that you can demonstrate a degree of unselfishness in the game like you can in real life. Unselfishness affects everybody around us for good, making them a little bit more unselfish.

But this wasn’t meant to be a sermon or anything. I was just completely floored when that guy gave me 50 gold. Have you ever had an experience like that before, where you helped out a stranger or they helped you out in some way?

I’m kind of caught in a conundrum as to what to do with my gaming time these days. I know we still have a little bit of time before Cataclysm comes out, but essentially we have a gear reset coming our way.  Do I focus on my level 80 characters and get them better geared? Do I focus on level my alts? Should I just turn the game off and get out more? Decision decisions decisions.

It was one of my goals to have at least 3 level 80 characters when the expansion came out. So far I got my level 80 hunter and my level 80 deathknight. New project is my druid (or actually my wife’s druid who was left on my account when we created a new account and such). Right now the druid is level 38 with very little rest XP stored up. How would my time be better spent with the few hours I play in the morning? I’ve been kind of doing whatever random fancy pops in my head, which means I’m not getting a whole lot accomplished. My brother keeps telling me how easy it is to get geared up for raiding these days. I agree with him, it would probably be easier if I did a lot more randoms, more than I’m doing now.

My little brother has a different perspective in the game than I do. I think sometimes he forgets that I have 3 kids and I have extremely limited time to get on a play. I get an hour in the morning and once or twice a week at night (should sound reasonable I’m sure). There is no way I’ll ever keep up with him. He’s single, he’s one of our best/top raiders, and he has a lot more time on his hands than I do. Plus he’s all about raiding and getting through content, which is fine, but he doesn’t understand that there are other motivations out there. He kind of scoffs at the obsession with the holiday events that my wife and I have. He definitely thinks RP is silly (as does most of my guild on Deathwing). And he thought my mount collecting habits were a little weird as well (except the rare mounts, he loves the more rare mounts).

Well, what are you guys going to do before the expansion hits? Are you going to keep raiding? Are you going to turn your focus on Alts? Are you going to take a hiatus and play Starcraft 2? I’m trying to decide what to do here in this game that we call warcraft.

I’ve been writing on here a little less lately. Well, actually, I’ve been posting less, but I’m still writing just as much. I’ve been trying to write a bigger post for non-WoW players “Should I let my kid play WoW?”. It’ll be longer than my usual, but I think people should get an objective opinion with all the facts (including the positive ones). I’m a little sick of WoW being considered immature and bad for you like drugs or something.

Anyway, this post isn’t about that though, its another ramble post of what I’m doing lately in the game. Basically, I’ve been working on leveling my deathknight’s jewel crafting. I finally hit 450 earlier this week, yay! I’m in the process of learning how to make money with this profession. So, now that its leveled that I’ve been trying to figure out what else to do.

My wife’s DK is up to level 67, and we’re about to take her to Northrend. I’m going to be starting 25 man ToC tonight with our guild. I thought that I’d be done with guild raiding since they dropped our 10 man ToC group, but we’re still up and running. My DK is to horribly ungeared, but my hunter will be able to go.

Anyway, my students just got here so I’m done with this post for today (no editing, yikes I hope I didn’t say anything stupid).

It’s funny what becomes fun for you in this game, and if you haven’t noticed, what’s fun today may quickly change from week to week. For me, it seems to change day to day. It all depends on my mood. Lately (this week at least) what’s been fun for me has been leveling my DK’s jewel crafting. I know. What gives??

How could that possibly be a rip roaring good time? I don’t know. I just honestly don’t know. I’m seeking treatment as we speak.

I’ve been trying to keep the cost down as I level the DK’s jewel crafting, mostly because I don’t really have hardly anything in the way of gold. So, no running to buy gems and such at the AH for me. I haven’t much been into farming for gold lately (even though I’m okay with farming to level JC, yeah I don’t know what my problem is either). And I’ve been very lazy about putting stuff on the auction house. It all goes in the bank, as a result my poor bank alt has no bag space left even though he has all of his bag slots in the bank purchased, and he’s the guild master of a bank alt guild with 5 bank tabs. I’m notorious for being a pack rat. I contemplated setting up a second guild bank. Yes, I’m just that crazy.

So, I’ve been running around collecting old world ore, prospecting ore left and right, hoping for Azerothian Diamonds and such. I’ve finally broken 300 so it should get easier now (especially since I have an epic flying mount and I’m Unholy spec, I couldn’t resist getting the mount speed bonus (20%) from the talent tree.

I do have to say, Un’Goro Crater is the place to farm thorium (especially in the morning). At one point yesterday, I noticed that my mines had disappeared after half an hour of farming. That was until I found the culprit, a blood elf. I won’t say what happened next, but those of you on PvP servers probably could take a guess. Let’s just say, I didn’t have any more problems after that. But that’s all beside the point.

So, at the moment while others are running randoms, battlegrounds, or raids; I’m leveling professions and just having the time of my life. Woot! Okay I don’t know if I’m exactly having the time of my life, but it’s what I want to do now. But it’ll be short lived. It can’t last forever, well, I guess with all of my alts it could.

A whole new world is on the horizon, what with the overhaul of Azeroth approaching. With this we will be given on opportunity to change redefine ourselves in our game play and game style. We’ll be able to create a new “main”, try out something new, switch servers, or maybe something else. ((I didn’t re-read this or edit it, because I have to leave to go to work in a second. I hope I don’t have any big embarrassing typos >_<))

Blog Azeroth’s shared topic this week (or maybe it was last weeks, I’m a little behind).

“It’s a new expansion, it’s a new game in many respects. How will it change YOUR game? Will you play a new class you’ve been dying to play for years? Will you play a new role you’ve never played like tanking or healing? Have you been a hardcore raider and would like to get more into the lore and questing or vice versa?”

As for me, I’ve been playing dps, and that was about it. Usually with my hunter I’m playing catch up, half heartedly, because I know deep down inside that I’ll never completely catch up.

Since the beginning of WorLK, I have changed my game play quite a bit. I have expanded to four servers. I’m up to about 30 alts. I’ve started to dabble in role playing, tanking, and …. blogging. I’ve been introduced to the community at large beyond my little guild (hence the reason I’m now on 4 different servers). I’ve chatted with you guys on twitter, google wave, google buzz, and maybe a little on facebook. You’ve kept me sane while I’m at work and my interest in the game has only risen.

With Cataclysm coming out within the next year I can only see my game expand and progress. I’ll probably continue to spread myself out too thin. It’s my nature. I was the guy in high school that everybody knew; I couldn’t bring myself to stay at one place for very long, just bounced around all over the place like Tiger.

I’m starting to already get my taste of tanking (you guys have a hard job by the way). My healer alts are still pretty low level at this point, but I’d really like to level my druid and priest (I want to get my priest leveled up partly so I can have a high level enchanter. At this point I’m always sending stuff to my brother – so much so that he got to the point where he game me his password and told me to disenchant it myself ). I would like to get a more involved with my RP guild on Feathermoon. I’ve been enjoying the RP stories with Praxton, and I would like to have him interact more in-game with the Stormwind University folks. And I would like to actually be a somewhat viable raider. I’m still not so much at this point (partly because I spread myself pretty thin, that’s my own fault, I know.)

I’m excited also because we’ve been playing more and more with my brother and his wife. I think the expansion will just give us more to do on our weekly adventures. It’s been a great way for us to hang out without children running around causing chaos. We just play when our kids are sleep. Maybe in the far future we’ll be able to do things together in RL more often, but when you have lots of kids under the age of 5 like we do, you don’t get out much.

Anyway, how do you see Cataclysm changing your gaming style? Are you planning on switching you main, or do you want to focus on a different aspect of the game? What do you plan on doing?

Oh, and I plan on putting more pictures in my blog in cataclysm so its not so boring to look at >_<.