Casual Huntering

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 >_<.

Its time for Friday Fiction again!! If you remember last week, Praxton was in a little bit of a bind, what with accidentally killing one of the Stormwind city guards and all. Last we left off, one of the other guards was about to take Prax out. Things were looking good, and all for some girl that Praxton had dreamed about.

Suddenly, a wall of fire flew up from the cracks of the stone directly in front of guard. With a burst of purple light, Dreth was standing behind Praxton. “Getting into trouble already are we?” Dreth laughed.

“Come, we don’t have much time” Dreth summoned a portal behind Praxton. “To safety boy! Grab your girly friend and begone! I’ll be right behind you.”

Prax blinked. ‘Um, what just happend?’, he thought. It took him a moment to gather his wits about him. Then he remember the girl, he ran and grabbed her hand, then turned to run towards the portal.

Guards began to come at them from all directions. “Now or never!” yelled Dreth. He raised his hands high in the air and the wall burned a circle around where they stood. The walls reached high into the air, and connected to form a barrier above their heads as well. An arrow whizzed by Dreth’s face, bursting into flames as it passed through the shield of fire. “NOW!” he yelled more commandingly. A second arrow came through the shield and shot clean through Dreth’s rib bones and out the other end, hitting another guard. He couldn’t help but chuckle. Am I not a member of the Horde after all?

The captive blinked in surprise, but it didn’t take her long to recover. She shook off the other guard and followed Prax through the portal.

Prax began to increase his speed, and then he tripped and fell head first through the portal.

The girl tried to jump over Prax as he fell, but missed and they tumbled through the portal together.

Dreth stepped through the portal into the open air. The sun looked white, but wasn’t bright. The sky was enveloped in veil of purple fog. He looked at Praxton and the girl he was trying to save. “I apologize for the cold. I knew you would be safe here though.”

Embarrassed as always, Prax started to attempt to get up, “I’m s- s- s- sorrry ab- about that.”

A goblin standing nearby lifted an eyebrow but said nothing.

He attempted to help the girl up as well.

“This is Everlook, run by the Steamwheedle Cartel and Thorium Brotherhood. Not many travelers frequent this area as often as they used to. It’s not much, but it’s better than flaming arrows.” Dreth handed a staff to Praxton. “You left this at the mage tower. I went looking for you at the tailoring shop. Until I saw all the commotion… now here we are. I hope she was worth it.” Dreth looked at the young woman and tilted his head inquisitively. “And you are?”

The girl accepted Prax’s hand, replying as he pulled her to her feet, “No apology necessary. I’ve always been a little clumsy.” The girl eyed Dreth and her chin rose a little, “I’m Kalende. I’m a priestess.”

Seeing this girl up close stunned Prax. There was no mistake; this was the girl from his dream without a shadow of doubt.

“I um, er, um, …” Prax couldn’t get his mouth to work at all, didn’t matter, he didn’t know what to say.

“A pleasure” Dreth bowed his head. A maggot fell from his hair onto the ground. “Blast! I was saving that for later. The name’s Dreth, high mage of the Forsaken, and enemy of the scourge. So, Praxton,” Dreth smirked, “what about this young lady compelled you to act so foolishly?”

Prax began to shiver for the cold, he finally started to look around, when he hear Dreth’s comment, where was he again? Prax looked back at Dreth with his hands in his pocket for warmth. “I d- d- dunno, I um, she was um, er..” He felt so foolish, realizing what he had done for a girl he had a dream about, but there was such a familiarity. He couldn’t put his finger on it. It went even deeper than just his dream, this was not a chance encounter. “I d- d- dunno wh- wh- came over mmmme.” Prax said. He loathed how his voice did this when he was nervous. It began to snow, everything was so bright, it hurt Praxton’s eyes, and his feet were going numb.

Kalende eyed Dreth, “Can’t you see he’s freezing? And for that matter, so am I. Perhaps we should go somewhere more hospitable.”

Dreth looked at the frost accumulating on Praxton’s nose. “Right you are. Let’s go warm up. Ho there! Guard!” Dreth yelled at a nearby goblin. “Where’s your Innkeeper?” The goblin grunted as he pointed to a building off to the west. “Come on, let’s go.” As they walked toward the inn Dreth couldn’t help but wonder why these two weren’t more talkative. Were they not just rescued from certain imprisonment and death? Were they not now free to speak open of their love to one another? Maybe they were not the young romantic couple he had supposed them to be.

Prax knew of goblins, but had never seen one before, he was a little startled, helped get his mind off his freezing toes. And freezing toes helped keep Prax’s mind off on the topic at hand. ‘What the hell am I doing???’ he thought to himself. The three of them entered the goblin town. Prax could hear the pounding of metal on metal in the background.

Kalende eyed her rescuers. The boy’s familiarness was uncanny, almost like looking in a mirror. While she was grateful to be saved, their motives worried her. And what was a human and a Forsaken doing traveling together anyway? They weren’t Cult of the Damned. She lifted the skirt of her robe and trudge across the snow into the inn, kicking the powdery accumulation off her shoes before entering.

The finally entered the inn, Prax rushed to the fire, he started warming his hands, they stung as they thawed out.

Sensing some awkwardness, Dreth decided to give the two some privacy. “These bones of mine don’t take quite as long to warm up as your fleshy frames. There are some bears in the area and I make some MEAN charred bear kabobs. I’ll return shortly”. Dreth bowed, raised one hand in the air, and in a purple flash… was gone.

Prax began to regain feeling of his toes; he wasn’t exactly dressed for winter weather. He kind of wished he was still cold. It kept his mind off of the current events, he rather enjoyed not thinking about anything. He sat down at a near by table, rubbing his hands together, wondering what he might say to this girl. Prax stood up and started to pace back and forth, he felt like he needed to do something.

Kalende watched him, quietly wondering why he seemed so damned familiar. The only people she’d ever known were the cultist who raised her. The priestess found a chair and sat in arranging her robes, “So, to whom do I owe the pleasure of my freedom?”

Praxton turned towards the girl, “p- p- praxton seamsmith.”, he sat down and looked at the fire. He turned back to the girl, “Are you ok-k-kay? Did they um, er eh hhhurt you?” Prax felt strangely comfortable around the priestess, but he didn’t know who she was or what she was about.

“I’m fine, thank you, Praxton.” she glanced to where Dreth had exited. “You two aren’t cultists, are you?”

“Cultists? I don’t um think so.”, Prax was confused, ‘what on earth was a cultist?’ he inquired himself… without much reply. “Wh- where are eh, you from?”, Praxton asked.

(Dreth wandered aimlessly through the snow. “At least… I think there are bears in Winterspring,” he mumbled to himself.)

Kalende was suddenly wary. “If you’re not cultists, who are you…?”

Praxton sensed a change in Kalende’s, “I’m P- P- Praxton Sssseamsmith.” Prax started pacing again. “I was k- k- k- kind of hoping you could ex- explain hm, why, I I saw you in m- my dream.”

Kalende blinked, taken aback, “Your dream? Who do you work for? The Ebon Blade? You don’t look like a Death Knight. The Argent Crusade?”

Prax stopped dead, looked up, blank face. “What?” He thought he had heard of some of these groups, vaguely anyways. “I’m j- just a t- t- tailor. I w- w- was surprise to ssssee you this afternoon. I’m really j- just a nobody.” Prax sat back down, he was in over his head, but he had been this whole week.

Kalende looked incredulous, “Just a tailor? You rescued me because of a dream…?” She got up, lamenting the loss of her staff. It had been left back in Stormwind, ” Well, Praxton, I thank you for your assistance. But it seems this where we part ways.”

“Wait… wh- who are you? My d- do you look so fam- familiar? Wh- why were you in my dr- dream?” Prax felt a pit in his stomach.

Kalende drew herself up and eyed him. The space around here darkened and hissed and she was enfulged in swirling shadows. “I don’t know why we seem so familiar to each other. But I am a member of the Cult of the Damned and you are an Alliance sympathizer. Because you saved my life, I will spare yours. But beware of the Cult of the Damned. We are not all so forgiving.”

Prax took a few steps backwards, not looking he stumbled over a chair, all while keeping his eyes on Kalende.

Kalende stepped over Prax and out the door into the snow.

I realize that it gets choppy at times, that mostly because we have three different writers, sometimes four all writing from their own characters’ perspective. I hope you’re able to follow it. And I hope someone out there enjoys these, there a lot of fun to create.

Well, with the Lunar Festival coming soon to a close the Elders of Azeroth come forth to bear their wisdom. The shared topic from Blog Azeroth, given by Khi, was to share some wisdom with people just starting out. I’m not sure exactly how wise I am, sometimes I can be downright immature, but I am Elder Aoirselvar, and every so often I come up with some profound.

Okay, so you decided to create a hunter. You like animals and guns? Or it was random decision and you don’t really know what you are getting yourself into. Great!

Well, welcome, you have come to the right place. Hunters are great! They are fun, great for leveling, great dpsers, and usually down right good looking (especially the dwarven types).

As Thorgas Grimson, Dwarven Hunter Trainer said,

Tamer of beasts, master marksman, proven tracker – what else ya want to accomplish in this lifetime? All those things combined takes quite a bit of intelligence and a great deal of patience.

The path of the hunter ain’t an easy one, that’s fer sure. You’re gonna need lots of training if you wanna be as good as even our lowest ranking rifleman. But that’s why I’m here.

One thing you should always remember is that you gotta respect the world you’re livin’ in. The beasts that choose to fight along side you; the shine of your weapon; the weight of your ammo; the bite of the bitter wind; all these things you need to know intimately.

Now when you start playing a hunter at level one you’ll notice something is missing. That’s right you don’t have a pet, you have to earn it. Level one through ten is often known as melee hell for hunters. As you will soon find out, we hunters aren’t so good up close and personal. We usually like to keep our big mean pets around to keep people out of our face. We have personal space issues.

But… you don’t get to do the quest chain to get yourself a pet until level 10. However, there are a few tricks to keeping mobs out of your face up to this point. And there are some very important skills to be learned at this point.

At first you’ll have next to nothing. You’ll be able to auto-shot and hit someone with your sword. Your auto-shot is the most basic range attack you have, and it is awesome. You just have to normally turn it on and forget about it. We’re the only class I believe that has a range auto attack (some people aren’t too happy about that).

You’ll see that this auto-shot range attack takes a break between shots for two seconds. So, this is what you’ll do when you attack mobs at first. Target something you want to kill, get as far away from it as possible with it still in range. Your auto-shot spell will be white when in range, red when out.

In range.

Not in range.

Then start your auto-shot, while you’re getting ready to shot again walk backwards, turn around and run, or strafe to one side or another, just for a couple of seconds then stop facing the mob again to let the auto-shot do it work (the only crappy thing about auto-shot is that you have to be holding still for it to work).

So, continue to do this, auto-shot, move, auto-shot, move, and before the mob can reach you it’ll be dead.

For some mobs all you have to do is back up for a couple of seconds, shot, and back up again. However, this doesn’t always work and some of the tougher mobs will catch up with you quickly. In these cases you’ll want to strafe shot them. That is running away with either the “Q” or “E” button, to the side, gaining distance from the mobs during your cool down on auto-shot then ever so briefly turning around, holding still for just a slight moment to get an auto-shot in, then start running again. The goal is to keep your melee weapon skills as low as possible to show just how well you did at killing stuff before they got anywhere near you. You’ll start to get the rhythm of it. It’s almost like a dance. Shoot one two shoot one two etc etc. (I had a harder time getting screen shots of the strafing because it generally requires both hands.)

If you are having a difficult time judging when you can auto shot again there are mods out there. The one I am using is called Kharthus’s Hunter Timers.

This is a good time to note that it’s probably a good idea to make sure you know what’s around you. It doesn’t do any good to walk right into a mob while backing up attacking another mob. But it shouldn’t matter, from level 1-6 all mobs are yellow, meaning they’ll only attack if you attack them first. By the time we get to mobs that are a bit more aggressive we’ll be focusing on a new tactic anyway.

Now as you start to level you’ll get some nifty shots to help you with your anti-melee quest. At level 4 you’ll get Serpent Sting, this is a DoT (damage over time) shot. You’ll want to start with this shot now and continue your auto-shot/ move /auto-shot thing. Important to note, you no longer even have to click on auto-shot. It starts automatically when you shoot your Serpent Sting at the mob. Now they’ll die even quicker. Muahahaha.

It is also important to note that Serpent Sting in an instant cast shot. That means you don’t have to be holding still to get this shot off. It’s probably best to hold still for the first shot so you can get your first auto-shot in as well.

At level 6 you’ll get Arcane Shot. This shot, like Serpent Sting, is also an instant cast. Now you’ll be able to provide extra damage while you’re moving. There are a couple of other skills we should discuss now that you have Arcane shot. (by the way, you now also have the Hunter’s Mark, a very important hunter ability that we won’t go into here – just use it all the time, very important).

Now that you have a couple of instant cast shots its time to look at a new skill, the jump shot.

This is the coolest badest thing you’ll ever learn as a hunter, but it’s a little tricky. If you are a keyboard turner, then you’ll have to stop that to figure this thing out.

Basically, when you have a mobs attention, you run away, but you jump, then using your mouse turn mid air shot an instant shot and turn back around before you land on the ground. (you’ll have to use hot keys for your shot, so if you like to use your mouse to click on your spells, well stop that as well).

Sounds difficult right? It’s not that bad. The trick is to use your mouse to do quick turning mid air. Big Red Kitty (BRK), one of the greatest hunter teachers of all time made a brilliant video on how to do this. If you seriously want to be a hunter then I highly suggest you go watch it and several of his other training videos. They are outdated in several aspects, but the basic skills remain the same.

It looks as if I’m shooting backwards, but when I actually hit the button I’m facing the mob, it just takes a second for the animation to keep up, thus the U-turn shot.

Once you figure out this jumping shot thing, then leveling without a pet become enjoyable. It becomes a game to see how far you can make the mob run after you and if you can get him down before he gets anywhere near melee range. (And if you thought strafing would be difficult to get screen shots for, try getting them for the  jump shot. I had to enlist my wife to take the screen shots for me.)

This my friend is kiting, that is pulling your mobs along like a kite on a string. It is, in my opinion, one of the most fun things you can do as a hunter. You don’t get asked to do it very often, but there use to be fights here and there where you could. I use to kite the tinman from the opera fight in Kara in BC around the room to keep him occupied while the rest of the mobs were killed. Great great fun.

Soon enough you’ll get to level 10 and you’ll get your pet. Then it’ll all change. You’ll no longer be required to run around every where, jumping and straffing and such. You’re pet will keep the mobs attention. There is something that’ll be lost. You’ll find yourself, every so often tell your pet to just chill for the moment, just so you can kite a mob here or there. My wife got really enjoyed when I did this, dragging mobs all over the place. It’s good fun. Of course these are invaluable skills in PvP. In PvP kiting is a very important skill indeed.

But it’s in the first 10 levels you learn this fun stuff. That’s why we don’t get pets right away; it forces us to learn how to fight without them. I suggest you put your pet on passive ever so often and show off how bad @ss you are.

Happy Huntering

Another lack of Tuesday maintenance means a lack of blog posts here at casual huntering. I spent Tuesday morning trying to finish off the Lunar Festival on my Death knight. I had to pug every one of the northrend dungeons, but I finally got it done. I used random dungeon finder to jump into either the heroic or normal versions of the instances. I was either the top of the dps meters or on the extreme bottom (I only recently got good enough gear on my DK to be able to do heroics at all).

Well, all of my focus and energy has been on trying to get these holidays done. This morning I got on the computer and I didn’t know what the heck what to do. I spent like 30 minutes just trying to organize my bank alt’s bags and guild bank tabs. Wow its a mess! That’s what happens when you are trying to level jewelcrafting. I have jewelry all over the place. I have 4 tabs on my guild bank and they are all packed. I threw a few things on the AH, just to create more space. I’m such a pack rat.

Yeah, I then tried to work on leveling my druid, lost focus on that in like 5 minutes. I really need to get her to level 40 so I can get her epic mount. I was too impatient so I only did one quest and then jumped on my main character, my hunter.

So, I decided the SV spec on my hunter isn’t doing it for me. I am now experimenting with a MM build. I was suppose to try it out on ToC 10 last night, but our guild raid didn’t happen. So, this morning I did a couple of randoms. I’m really enjoying this spec more, but I’ve only done 2 dungeons so far, so the verdict is still out.

Other than that, I’m feeling a little blaa. Debating about going back to my altoholic mode that I was in before February. I’ve been neglecting all characters that aren’t on Deathwing (and several that are). Mostly only my DK and Hunter have gotten any attention from me. I’ve really enjoyed dungeons on my DK in Unholy spec so maybe I’ll play around with that. But the ever approaching gear respec makes me won’t to focus on alts instead. Oh, I probably should just pick something and stick with it.

Anyway, I’m trying to get this out quickly because I need to get back to work. So, I’m sorry about the typos that will inevitably show up somewhere.

There was another Q&A twitter session recently. It was very enlightening. I wanted to talk about some of the points that we discussed, but I’m definitely not going to go over the entire session. Go here if you would like to read it in its entirety.

Hunter (Of course I have to start with the hunter stuff.)

Q. The Hunter class has many odd and situational abilities such as Mongoose Bite and Aspect of the Beast – are there any plans for changes to these types of abilities?

A. Mongoose Bite is most likely a goner. Let us weep. We think Aspect of the Beast could have some cool uses for Beastmaster hunters.

I really hope that Beastmasters will be a viable raid spec again someday. /crosses fingers

Q. Are hunters likely to see more stable slots for their pets in the future? With the current variety of pets, the amount they have right now seems too small.

A. Arm-waving here, but a model I would love to see is dramatically expanded slots (so you can store all those Spirit Beasts) but have a smaller number of “active” pets, like 3. You could summon an active pet from anywhere in the world, when outside of combat. You would swap a pet from active to the stable at the Stable Masters.

This is a great idea!! I mean really do you use more than 3 pets at a time anyway? We always have several pets that we just can’t manage to say good bye to, and … who would ever say adios to a Spiritbeast for goodness sake. I think this isn’t such a bad idea. I hope it happens.

Death Knight (My only other level 80 character is a DK at this point, I’m enjoying the class thoroughly).

Q. Two-handed (2H) frost death knights was a really fun playstyle that died when dual-wielding (DW) was introduced. Are there any plans to make using two-handed weapons more appealing?

A. We can’t make every death knight tree PvP, PvE and tanking viable and also offer both 2H and DW options for all three of those. We are currently designing Frost as a DW-only tree.

Right now my death knight is a 2 handed frost spec tank and 2 handed unholy spec dps. Why?  Because I haven’t picked up one handed weapons yet, but I totally want to dual wield with my frost tank. I won’t say more to further demonstrate my noobness when it comes to this subject.

Raids & Dungeons (I admit I have skipped a lot of the questions here.)

Q. What have you learned from this expansion’s emblem system?

A. Having that many different kind of emblems is overwhelming. In hindsight, we wish we had done maybe 2 emblems: the current tier and the previous tier (Frost and Triumph at the moment). They also felt a tad too grindy when 3.3 first came out before all of the sources of emblems were available.

I’m glad that they are simplifying this; it was a bit too overwhelming, confusing, and complicated previously. I don’t’ want them to make it so simple that its almost stupid, but I think 2 tiers are enough.

Q. Are there any plans to allow cross-realm raiding?

A. If we can solve the problems with it, we might give it a try. One of the problems is getting the group back together, especially on the longer instances. Loot drama and stuff like that is always a problem. There is also the ongoing concern about the concept of your realm having less of a sense of community.

I personally don’t see how this can end up being a good thing. Our raid group does some puging for ToC 25, but they have a “good list” and a “bad list”. With random, you get what you get. There just seems for too much coordination that needs to take place and too much time required. With that being said, I think it would make raiding more accessible to someone who doesn’t have a raiding guild or don’t have enough people to do 25 mans. I agree about the loss of the community feel though. I’m all over pugs for 5 man, but this looks like it could go sour.

Q. Will we be seeing more Caverns of Time in Cataclysm? War of the Ancients, maybe?

A. We will definitely see another trip to the Caverns of Time during Cataclsym. You are going to have to ask Chromie for more details though. =)

I love Caverns of Time dungeons, the lore, the story line, the chance to go back in time, it’s all epic in my opinion. I’m glad they are doing that in Cataclsym.

Q. Why have we not seen World Bosses in this expansion?

A. They just have problems. It’s always a race to get to them, which tends to favor larger groups who are online often, and it’s hard to discourage or even prevent players outside the raid from helping or screwing things up.

A#2. World bosses are something that we have been talking about more as of late. We really like the concept, but there are certain design problems we would like to address before we bring them back. Stay tuned.

I’ve been wondering about this myself. I thought it was cool having random world bosses in different areas. (don’t go over there if you don’t want to be eaten by a dragon **head nod**). I remember leveling and visiting the center of Darkshire only to be quickly killed by the large dragon there. I didn’t like dying much, but it was cool to see it. But I see the problem here; I wouldn’t have a chance being as casual as I am with my play time. I’m a little curious what they plan on doing.

Q. With the advent of Heroic Shadowfang Keep and Heroic Deadmines, is there any likelihood of other older instances made Heroic?

A. Yes. We are hoping to do more than just these two, but it just comes down to time. We are focusing on getting the new Cataclysm dungeons done first and then we can look into doing more old-world Heroics.

I’m so stupid; I thought that it was odd that they were only doing Shadowfang keep and Deadmines. That will be awesome; with new patches will get new old school heroic dungeons. What more could you ask for??

Cataclysm (not everything, just the questions that interested me).

Q. Regarding Cataclysm, can you reveal any of the ‘major changes’ in Blasted Lands and how this will affect the lore?

A. I love the fact that one of our first questions is in regards to the Blasted Lands! We have big plans in store for this zone in Cataclysm. We will be revamping the entire flow of the zone so you can expect an entirely new experience here. Some of the big changes include an opening to the coastline for a new play area, as well as a large new worgen area in The Tainted Scar.

You know, I don’t think I did anything in the Blasted Lands except go through the portal to the outlands, maybe I should check it out before the expansion. (I probably won’t).

Q. Should players be concerned about what gear they pickup in this expansion, because of the gear overhaul that is coming?

A. I wouldn’t stress over it. You’ll probably replace that gear pretty quickly. Since we have 5 levels, we don’t really want players getting all the way to 85 without having upgraded at all.

Yeah, of course a gear reset is coming. Kind of makes me want to work on alts instead of my main for the next few months.

Q. With the Lich King defeated, in Cataclysm, will the Plaguelands be green and beautiful again?

A. Western Plaguelands will finally be free of the plague in Cataclysm. It’s hard for the Scourge to survive without their beloved Lich King. I guess this means we need to rename the zone?

I love it; I always thought the place was kind of ugly anyway. These kinds of changes that fit with the storyline get me excited. I’m going to be tempted to roll a bunch of new characters and start over. I’m sure a lot of people will be doing that.

Q. Will we get some info about the other zones revamped in Cataclysm, like Stranglethorn Vale or Tanaris?

A. Yes, we are hoping to do a few specific web features on a few of the old world zones and exactly what is changing with them. Stranglethorn Vale is seeing a large amount of changes so it is a great candidate for this.

A#2. A. Some Tanaris goblins wisely invested in desert real estate and reaped the benefits when it became beach-front property.

Oh, do I remember the days of STV leveling on a PvP server. Can I say gank city? I remember be camped on multiple occasions. I think it’ll be good for the area to get a face lift. Them goblins are so good with money. I’d be tempted to hire one as an accountant if I didn’t think he’d rob me blind.

Q. Will there be any type of water mount, like, submarines?

A. We actually have two brand new subs that we made for Cataclysm. These submarines will be used as transports. We have one for gnomes and one for goblins. The subs are huge too! Both are about the size of the Gunships from Icecrown.

Can I just say how full of win this is? Now I think I’ll work on leveling my hunter first before making a worgen or goblin just so I can get my engineering up to make one of these. I’m very stoked about this. (update: I thought about this more and more, what was I thinking, these are just going to be like the boats or blimps for massive transport, not a mount. /fail)

Miscellaneous

Q. Where is my moose? Did you see that Ghostcrawler?

A. That was so epic. I was sure the screenshot was shopped until we saw the actual video. I guess we’re going to have to do a moose now…

Yeah, where’s our moose??

This Q&A session got me really excited for up and coming WoW stuff. I’m pretty darn excited for Cataclysm.

I’m going to make an effort to post one of my more amusing and/or interesting screen shots on Saturdays. I usually don’t put anything up on the weekends. I kind a figured this would be an easy fun thing to do when I have little time (for some reason the kids tend to wake up earlier on Saturdays, don’t know why).

So, here we go.

My wife is a tailor, she loves her flying carpet so much she decided that she’d rather stand on all mounts that she rides apparently. She is much more agile than I am so she can get away with it.

You see, she’s just showing off, I have to hold on even with a seat belt. Just another reason why my wife is cooler than I am.

Friday Fiction is back (yes I found my flash drive). And this is a good one too!

Before we get to that I gotta jabber about what I’m doing in game. My wife and I finally got our “Elder” title, took us long enough. We’d been having difficulties getting guildies together to run the 5 mans. It seems whenever we were able to get on they were raiding (we aren’t geared enough to be on the progressive raids at this point). I guess we could have puged it, but we really didn’t want to wait through the queues; it takes a while for us dpsers.

So, why we were waiting for our gear to get done with 25 man ICC we worked on leveling my wife’s death knight. She’s almost to level 64. We’d really like to catch her up to my brother and sister-in-law if we could help it (they’re both level 68 I believe).

Sadly, I still don’t have the “elder” title on my death knight. Our guildie tank specifically said that he didn’t want to swap people out. A little annoying if you ask me, but it took a lot bending arms backwards just to get that done. Us beggers should be choosy I guess. So, I get to pester guildies next week. They’ll find out just how annoying I can be (evil laugh).

I’ll be very happy to have this holiday done so I can get back to work. It’s so funny that I look forward to holidays to mix things up then look forward to finishing them so I can get back to the same old same old. I’ve been neglecting all of my many alts who are all sitting on full rest xp in random inns all over the place.

Anyway, its Friday, so lets get on with the Friday fiction.

Remember Prax’s dream about that strange girl? Well, read on, things start to get interesting (as usual, I only wrote Praxton’s part, Loreli wrote the mystery girl, and Moordeth wrote Voljub).

There was something going on in the Trade District. A crowd was forming and unfriendly shouts could be heard.

Prax heard all of this commotion. He followed the commotion, partly out of morbid curiosity.

There was a slight break in the crowd. Just enough for Prax to see through. Four city guards were escorting a hissing, spitting angry woman. She was fighting them, trying to break free. She was dressed in dark ritual robes and the crowd was shouting obscenities at her. One good look at her face revealed the girl from Prax’s dream.

Prax’s jaw dropped. He instantly recognized the woman that was flaying about at the arms of the Stormwind guard. He attempted to navigate through the crowd to get a closer look. He boots managed to find some loose cobblestone and he fell to the ground. Praxton managed to get himself up enough not to get stepped on with the growing crowd. He tried again to weave his way through to the front.

Praxton finally got to the front of the crowd to see the scene unfold.

The girl thrashed wildly, her sable locks whipping around her face. She managed to break the guards grip and whirled, hitting him with a blast of shadowy energy. Murmurs of Cult of the Damned made its way through the crowd. The captive turned to flee, but found herself blocked by a few of the braver souls in the on-looking crowd. The guards took hold of her again and someone managed a binding or silencing spell on her. They dragged her through the Trade District, obviously headed for the stockades.

Praxton was filled with strange emotions. He should have felt disgust for this woman, obviously a member of the cult of the damned. It had to be a coincidence that she had been in his dreams, but it looked just like her with his father’s eyes. Praxton followed the crowds, with growing interest and concern. He needed to help her somehow. “Pst, Voljub, what do you make of that?” Prax whispered.

Voljub spoke softly “Voljub has seen people of this kind before in Northrend with Master Volrac. Some of them are beaten prisoners and some beat the prisoners. Master Volrec wore clothes like this one often.”

Prax should have left this alone, but he kept following (forgetting why he was there to begin with). What did this woman do? The crowd dissipated as the guards got closer to the stockades, but a sizable group continued to follow out of curiosity. Prax whispered to Voljub, “I saw this woman last night…” He began to trail off, “..in my dream.”

Voljubs response was quiet and curious. “What happened in your dream master?”

They went around another corner, still trailing the guards, “Its, er, um, all kind of fuzzy.” Prax kept his eye on the girl. “There was this girl, she um, n- needed me. That’s all I can remember.”

The captive girl seemed to have sobered up slightly. She was now hissing threats at the guards, but she wasn’t fighting them.

Praxton wanted to try to get a little closer, they were going over a bridge now, a few bystanders still looked on towards the girl.

“This girl needs Master eh…mmm We follow her yes?”It was hard to stay balanced on his Masters shoulders with all the people bumping about.

Prax watched with the last bit of the crowd as they took the girl into the Stockades. Prax whispered, “I um don’t know what er to do?” Prax wasn’t thinking rationally. “Voljub, could you… um, maybe distract the guards?” He said, towards his shoulder. ‘What am I doing???’, the rational part of Prax head scream, but he pushed it aside. He couldn’t explain why he felt he had to help her, but the emotions were so strong; he continued to set aside rational thoughts.

Voljub whispered sinisterly “With pleasure my Master.” He leaped off of Praxton’s shoulders. Still invisible he hopped over to the Stockade. The guards were talking among each other. As one began to leave he saluted and said ‘For the Alliance’. Voljub spoke up mockingly with his raspy voice “For the Alliance”. Their heads began to turn in all directions. Voljub moved a closer. “For the Alliance, For the Alliance.”

“Who goes there? Show yourself!” barked a guard.

“TeeHeehee For the Alliance, For the Alliance” Voljub began running circles around a guard and slowly let himself become visible all the while chanting mockingly “For the Alliance.” When the guards noticed him he ran off down the street. Before he left the guards though he lit an Alliance flag up in flames. All three guards chased Voljub down the street as he continued to mock them. As he passed Praxton he smiled and did a little flip.

‘Now what?’ Praxton thought to himself. Then he saw that face again, that familiar face from his dreams. There were still a couple of guards; most of the onlookers were gone at this point. ‘It’s now or never’, he thought. Prax tried to act nonchalant, gave a poor attempt at whistling. He walked closer to the guards and the girl. He didn’t want to kill anybody, just get the girl away. He focused on the inner heat. Maybe he could just set the guards shoes on fire. His attempt at getting closer to the stockades did not go unnoticed by the guards whose attention were heightened.  Prax felt for the heat, he was the heat.

He heard the guard say, “Move along.” He could hardly notice, the heat was overcoming him. Prax tried to act like he was just walking by, he attempted to send the focused heat to the feet of the guard on the left of the girl. ‘Oh no’ Prax thought as he saw a stream of flames start to engulf the guard, the plate metal started to melt. Praxton was mortified; he didn’t yet have a good feel over the heat. He must have drawn too much.

The man started to scream in pain. The other guard let go of the girl and rushed towards Praxton while pulling out his sword. Prax just stood there in shock, “What have I done?” he whispered to himself.

Next Friday I’ll put up some more on this story. We’ll see what happens to Praxton and this mystery girl.

Do you ever think about real life experience as if they were a raid? I kind of was last night, silly and kind of stupid of me, but hey, why not?

So, there we were in the lair of the grocery store, with three little ones at hand, including vehicle mechanics (race car shopping cart). Well, the point was to get in and get out as fast as humanly possible without losing any of the children (yes we were going for the achievement), then of course kill the end boss. The tricky thing is that you can’t stop the shopping cart or child #3 gets out and is lost. The mechanics were tricky. Also if any of the children were upset for one reason or another you got a debuff, not very happy.

So, our 2 man team headed out. I was on collect items duty while the mage’s job (my wife) was to keep the vehicle moving at all times. As she raced about, child #1 and I rushed to find the quest items that she would call out (oh my goodness, this is just going down hill quickly). We almost failed it (maybe this is more of an escort quest than a raid, thinking thinking…). We had to stop the vehicle for a moment which stirred child #1 and #2. Realizing the threat at hand we quickly got the vehicle back into motion moving up and down the isles, not even pausing to wait for items to be put in.

Then finally the final boss (yeah, I can’t decide if it was just a quest or a raid, meh), the cashier. Right before the fight one children go AFK (potty break), thus taking out the mage, I have to do the boss fight buy myself with child #2 and the dangerous child #1. I start out with some high threat taunts; however, in the process the vehicle stopped moving, child #1 started to escape, and then child #2 start to stir. Amazingly enough the end boss helped me grapple child #1, only to her demise. Even though I now had a debuff on me (child #1 clinging to me and attacking all things within his reach – mostly the debit card machine) I was able to attack the boss with increased vigor, at which point child #3 and the mage returned. Our dps and uberness was too much for her.

What did she drop you might ask? 2% milk, pancake mix, and orange juice. No gear. What’s up with that?

Okay, I admit to all of you that I have a lousy memory. I have to give myself reminders constantly or I will forget important to-do items at work, at home, and during raiding. How many of you hunters have been guilty of forgetting to get out of Aspect of the Viper after your mana is completely replenished? I use to have a nice little addon for that called ViperWatch, but the mod writer stopped updating it. So, I tried to just remember on my own. Well, that has been a joke. The only thing that will cut down your DPS more would probably be dying early on in the raid. I don’t know how many times I would look at the dps meters and wonder why my dps was in the pits and then look up to see myself having perfectly full mana. It was a little embarrassing.

Consequently, I had to show my friend Dave that Aspect of the Viper is not the default aspect even if it’s nice because you never run out of mana. We had that discussion awhile ago. Turns out he did a lot of leveling that way. I can’t remember if I covered that in a Dave’s Hunter Guide or not.

Anyway, I always knew when to switch to viper because I couldn’t do anything but use autoshot, mana is completely gone. It’s just way too easy to keep on Viper too long… way too long. Really, you want to get back to Aspect of a Dragonhawk as fast as humanly (or dwarvenly) possible.

So, here you have it. This is the Aspect of the Viper reminder addon that I’ve found that works for Patch 3.3. It works beautifully. It’s called ViperNotify and it very simple. When your mana is back up it give an annoying “ding” sound over and over and over again until you switch it off. The last viper addon was too easy to miss, but you won’t miss this one. You’ll spend less time in Viper and more time DPSing the h3ll out of those bosses.

I’m sure many of you already have this figured out, but for those of you who don’t I hope this helps out.

Well, I’m kind of getting burned out with the holidays. I’ve gotten the Love is in the Air on both Aoirselvar and my death knight, Elliahna. All I have left of the Lunar Festival on Aoirselvar are the Northrend Dungeon Elders. Elliahna still needs to get all of the Northrend elders in and out of dungeons and she still needs to kill Omen. Hopefully we’ll get done with this soon.

I’m sure most of you were able to get all of the requirements for these things done in like what, two days? Not me, my goodness it takes me a long time. An hour or two in the morning running from one elder to the next is enough to drive me CRAZY!! But that pretty purple shiny protodrake makes it all worth it, right? I especially want it on my death knight because of her +20% mount speed ability. I know I probably should have used that for something more useful, but come on, it’s dang useful to be faster than most people, especially when you are farming.

Well, besides the holidays, my wife and I have been trying to catch her death knight up with our little family team. She’s almost level 63, very close. (Oh, I’m still mad to this day. We created her WoW account just a month or two before the “Recruit a Friend” program came out. I would have really liked that mount too. Oh well, what can you do?) Anyway, our little 5 man family team is really starting to form up, slowly. We have a few problems, okay more than a few, but we’re coming along. Our problems mostly stem from noobishness. My brother is our healer, but he doesn’t yet know how to heal (he’ll be the first to admit that to you). I’m the tank, and I don’t really know how to tank (the only reason I can do decently at this point is because I’m like 12 levels above everybody else in the group, the only 80 at this point). Our dps is fine, my sister-in-law loves it on her warlock and my wife, I think, is starting to enjoy her death knight. Our friend Dave, the other hunter, he’s doing better, but he still has the tendency to send his pet out at random mobs, just not as often now.

I didn’t play with them last time because I was with the boys doing boy stuff (which doesn’t have the same meaning when you live in Utah and you’re lds). Yeah, our guys night out consisted of us playing board games. We spent most of the time playing Axis and Allies (a very awesome game if I might add). So, I missed our last family 5 man dungeon night. They enlisted my cousin to play as a tank. Even though he was about level 75, they wiped … a lot from what I heard. Between my cousin going gun ho with his fury warrior, Dave sending his pets at random mobs, and massive AoE healing spells done by my brother to fix their mess and pulling the aggro in the process, an inevitable wipe would occur. When I’m tanking my brother said he usually gets to be in Shadow spec most of the time, but at the time I had a blood spec and I did a lot of self healing.

Since then, I’ve thrown down 1,000 gold to get dual spec on my death knight. She is now a 2 handed frost tank and 2 handed unholy dps (with +20% mount speed which I probably didn’t need, but I wanted it). I wanted the tank spec to play with my family, but at this point I don’t want to tank in random pugs, hence the dps spec. I’ll admit, I’m not confident enough to do it in randoms.

Any who, this whole 5 man team has gotten my wife excited about playing again, not that she was ever not into playing, just not as much. We worked on leveling her death knight the other night, as I said above. She was worried that I was bored and I didn’t really want to do that. Not true. Maybe I didn’t get XP or gold or whatever, but I like the fact that she wants to play more and I enjoy helping her characters out. We alternate nights to decide what to do after our kids go to bed and she’s actually been picking WoW more often than she usually does. That will happen often when there are holidays going on, but she hasn’t been only wanting to do the holiday stuff. She’s starting to get on her alts that she really likes, such as her level 31 shaman.

Can I tell you how much fun it is to play with your spouse in this game? I’ll have to go into detail on that on another day, but let me tell you, it rocks. Anyway, looks like I had better get going to work soon. I’m so proud of myself, I haven’t written on this blog at work for a while (not including replies to comments). Well, see if I can keep it out of work more so I can be a good little employee.

Sorry about the random update post. I’ll try to keep posts like this to only once a week or less.