The Return of BD

It's been about seven months after my last post - and that is mind-boggling. It's like having a seven-months gap in your diary, or memory... or in this case, your adventures. All those excitement, the highlights and achievements missing. Sigh... that'll teach you not to slack off, BD.

Anyways, I'm back (in blogging, at least). To be honest, I didn't stop playing WoW all this time - on the contrary, Aenur, Aelyra and Aerhandor has dinged 85 with Aergor, Aedruyn and Aerdread following not far behind. My toon priority's been shifted around, but currently it looks like all the mains will remain as mains. Only the question of which alts deserve a better position and attention remains.

To be honest, Cata is a bit of a let down for me, and maybe for a lot of casual players out there. With instances being an intensive time-consuming activity with random strangers who may or may not be friendly and helpful, and with barriers all around epic gears and achievements, we are reduced to spectators and minor participants of the so-called "hardcore" and "elites". Do I mind? Not so much. It rankles a bit at times, though.

That did not stop me from trying though. I've reluctantly entered PvP with Aenur, trying to get better gear through honor and PvP instead of instances and PvE. It's working, but the stress of all those matches is horrible - like trying to eat a whole, unopened durian. Thankfully, once patch 4.2 hits I should be able to get some nice T11 gear due to Blizzard's new honor-to-Justice arrangement and due to T11 now available with Justice points instead of Valor points. Which then would mean the same grind with Aelyra... =(

As for the alts... I've been spending a lot of time with Aedruyn, making him go through the Argent Tournament so he can get his Argent Charger and Hippogryph - it's easier now that he's level 81 and armed with Cata greens, gems and enchants (he 3-shots most mobs now). Aergor is now level 82 and is doing the Org's Cooking dailies as well as daily Truegold/Living Elements transmutes. And Aerdread is level 82, doing the Org's Fishing and JC dailies. I will push Aedruyn out to 85 once he finishes the Argent Tourney objectives... if the others doesn't ding 85 first.

The rest of my alts are the level 37 Shadow Priest Aerjin, who I recently become fond of, and the level 20 deleted-then-rerolled Combat Rogue Aerlyn (previously known as Aeyrin). Not doing much with them other than the Org's Cooking dailies, which is a slow but steady way of leveling them.

So, that is in short my progress in WoW. With this post, I hope to kickstart my weekly updates as well as putting my thoughts and opinions of my adventures back into the blog. With a few bloggers already deciding not to continue their blogging forth, I feel compelled to at least light up my own candle against the night.

Impending Cataclysm

First off, I would like to apologize for the long delay in getting a post up since my last update. A combination of several factors plus my own laziness has conspired to prevent this post (or any other post for that matter) from materielizing, and for that I believe an apology is in order.

Usually, whenever I had some spare time to play games I'd fire up WoW and get busy with alts or tend to my mains' pet projects. But early last month, I got a copy of Civilization V and since then has been lost in border disputes and resource wars - dang you, Gandhi and Bismarck! >=( And I've also been a victim of Facebook's Bejeweled Blitz, which almost everyone in my family being attracted to it. So, having to divert my time to these games have impacted my WoW time a bit.

Aside from that, the humongous Patch 4.0 also took almost three days to download thank to lousy local 'Net. And even after I managed to log in, the lag is still there occasionally and I still need to re-talent, re-gem, re-learn and re-evaluate all my toons... which costs me an additional two days. By the time I'm settling in, it's time to go off chasing achieves as Hallow's End dawns.

On RL, my baby boy Adam is fast learning to talk, explore and ask for stuffs he finds interesting - usually food and plastic bottles, though he's moving on to handphones and laptops quickly. Keeping up with him is becoming a full-time job, so I can only sneak in a couple hours of WoW when he's fast asleep during his afternoon nap. Also, a major reshuffling is in order where I'm working so I need to focus on jobs at hand for now.

As far as WoW is concerned though, I guess I'm almost at the maximum limit of pre-expac preparedness - both my mains are doing well, with about 95% of their main objectives completed, and the alts are nearing theirs. I'll detail them as follows:-

Aenur - Has almost completed her T10 set, with only the legguards remaining. I plan to run heroics for the points and also do VoA and see if I can get it from the pinata boss. Also, she's saving some gold for the Dal bear mount - I wanted the mount and the achieve before Cata hits. Aside from that, she has nothing else to work for - any further upgrades she obtains from now onwards will pretty much become obsolete in a month.

Aelyra - Is currently doing nothing except Fishing and Cooking dailies, which she started prior to Hallow's End. If she can get enough gold, I'll buy her the Dal bear mount for the achieves too.

Aerhandor - Is almost at the 150 Champion's Seal mark, at which point he'll be able to buy that Argent Pony and be done with WotLK. I've thought about trying to get the epic staff from Devourer of Souls in normal FoS, but so far no luck (it dropped once, but I lost the roll). Also, like Aenur and Aelyra, he's saving for the bear mount.

Aerdread - I originally planned for him to bear the title of Ambassador, but starting the Argent Tourney dailies so late in the expac he hasn't managed to get even a single Exalted home faction at the moment (only Revered with TB and Org, and the rest at Honored). To top it off, he's only got 3 out of the 5 pieces of DK's T9 and will have to work like mad if he wants the rest of the pieces. I'm pretty sure both would not be possible before Cata =( But I'm making him do it anyway - the gold and the rep may help come the expac.

Aergor - Stuck at level 75 in Borean Tundra, because I need to give more attention to Aerdread. I don't mind, since he's already established (with a complete Swiftarrow set waiting for him plus some nice weapon). I'll probably continue leveling him after the others have made it to 85.

Aeyrin - Is now level 51, and is waiting for Cata at SMC. Unlike Aergor, she'll be able to experience the new Azeroth's level 50-60 quests. I'm just not sure what to do after I hit Outland, though.

Aerander & Aezurin - Both bank alts will probably be stationed at their current location - Aerander in SMC and Aezurin in TB. I've read Tam's post the other day about getting his bank alt a mount to facilitate travel between AH and banks, and may just level Aerander to 20 to get his Charger and Blood Knight tabard.

Without access to the Cata beta like some WoW players, I cannot make any future plans for my toons. I'll be stepping into new Azeroth in the dark, like I did when WotLK arrives and I took my first few steps into Northrend. I don't have any worries about Cata though, but I do have one regret - I will regret not having the time, opportunity and skill to get the Paladin's T2 Judgement armor and Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros.

With Great Brewfest Comes Great Latency

It's been one week since Brewfest began, and the lag I mentioned in my previous post has shown no signs of abating. I have been forced to run the Direbrew boss under 3k latency, do some of the easier dailies with 1.5k to 2.5k latency, and stare at the screen as the latency hits 5k at times. I wonder if the server's borked again...

I can only regret all those wasted Frosts from all those random heroics, weekly raid and VoA I've missed, and all those lost golds from dailies I can't reclaim.

On the other hand, I managed to complete the Brewmaster achievement on both Aenur and Aerhandor (with both of them obtaining the Swift Brewfest Ram from the daily keg) and net them the title. Also, after some debate I've relented and bought a couple of Primordial Saronite from the AH - Aenur used one to purchase Plans: Hellfrozen Bonegrinders. She still needs another 4 Primordial Saronite before she can craft one, though.

To while away the time until the lag goes away (I can't see that happening until Brewfest is over, though), I've re-rolled a few alts over on another server. Unlike a normal re-roll, I've created toons in the same order and looks as my main server - a Belf Paladin bank alt, a Belf Hunter and a Belf Paladin... with the same names too! Well, it's just for a temporary amusement I tell myself. I've levelled both the Hunter and Paladin up a bit, and tell myself if the situation with the main server isn't improving I might as well focus on these two until the end of the festivities. Also, whenever lag hits I can just switch to this alternative version of my toons.

And yes - no updates this time. Like I mentioned - bad laggy =(

Connecting... ... ... Connected!

I was back in WoW yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, there was no welcoming party or the like waiting for me when I logged on - just a simply "Heya" from a guildmate.

I feel so sad =,(

My good friend Red Latency is there though, smiling through all that 3k m/s of hers.

So, long story cut short - I'm back. Took Aergor out for a spin and ended up with leveling him from level 69.1 (9% XP) all the way up to level 70 and moved him to Isle of Quel'Danas. Did some dailies with Aenur, Aelyra and Aerhandor and re-initiated some assets arrangements between my bank toons. Thinking of seriously deleting another toon that I don't use much - either the Hunter bank alt or the Rogue. Maybe even the DK, if worse came to worse.

But first - I have definitely got to make a priority list >.<

Return of BD

Yes, I'm not dead yet (although I suspect most of you thought otherwise).

Since my game time ended somewhere around April 17th, I've not bothered to renew because of two reasons:-

1) The local game shop is simply atrocious in supplying WoW game cards. There'll be a few in stock when I've already bought one, however when I need one they just don't have any available. I've done some scouting and found another game shop in the area that sells it, but their record of supplying WoW game cards is similar to the first shop. So meh...

2) I've been cheating on WoW with another MMORPG. And her name is EVE Online. I've been playing the 14-days trial just after my WoW sub ended and was eventually hooked - I registered an account and am now on my way to making millions of ISK. The abundance of PvP however did get on my nerve, so I'm thinking of tuning it down until I can afford enough ISK to sustain a PvP lifestyle.

Two months without the company of my guildies is now beginning to gnaw at me. How are they doing? Did they down LK yet? Are they preparing for Cataclysm? How many alts did Shadow have now? And is Rage working on his 12th alt to level 80?

So, I decided to come back to WoW by the end of July, and maybe put EVE on autopilot for a while (training skills).

Azeroth, look out - (in best Terminator impersonation) "I'LL BE BACK".

Would You Pay to Play With A Girl?

Apparently there's a new topic flying around the WoW blogosphere, and it all seems to start from Pugnacious Priest's post here.

Out of curiosity (and a lot of boredom, since I'm at work and work is boring) I took a peek at her blog to see what the hullabaloo is all about - Klepsacovic was on the confession stand, Larisa was musing about her deadly curves - and after reading it, just can't understand it all.

I mean, here's a service being launched by a company, where players can sign up and for a fee play with a girl. I went, "Huh? Why do I have to pay for such a thing?"

Is it indicative of a sign of desperation among boy gamers? Is the stigma that boy gamers cannot bond with a girl that serious a corporation can come in and take advantage of it? Is this issue so dire that BD must step in and save the universe? Okay, maybe not that last part. But still, if you want to look between the lines, this speaks volume of the power of gaming industry - basically anything can be turned into profit.

Speaking for myself - I'm not signing up. I have a wife, a beautiful woman whom I courted and took to dinner and wooed under the moonlight (and sunlight) just to persuade her to spend the rest of her life with me. A wife, who for better or worse, still sat next to me when I'm doing my dailies and ask about the game sincerely even though her knowledge of WoW is equal to her knowledge in quantum slipstream technology (which is nil). That sincerity, to me, is worth more than knowing that someone is playing with you just because you paid her to.

Look at it strictly from a Goblin's point of view next: You pay real money for the experience of playing WoW with a girl. What did you spend? Real money. What did you get in return? Up to a couple of hours (depending on the money invested) of experience playing with a girl. Is there a tangible profit? If you're not raiding, you get some XP, a few tens of gold and some green items. Which is far more inferior than doing a single random heroic for half an hour or an hour of Tourney dailies. Gevlon would weep at this new foolishness of socials... maybe not, he'd probably set up the same service and milk those socials dry.

Now I would admit that there will be a few gamers out there who would purchase the service just to have fun with it. Maybe they'll giggle and laugh, have a few hours of fun and remember it as an episode in their life. But those that go back again and again and again just because they crave that sense of 'attachment' to someone definitely needs help.

Joining Single Abstract Noun (SAN-US)

While browsing through the blogs over in PPI, a post over in Righteous Orb caught my eyes. Tamarind (affectionally known as Tam) is starting up a guild - Single Abstract Noun, also known as SAN - in Argent Dawn-EU for bloggers and blog readers to join, to meet each other in-game, and to provide a common platform on which all of them can enjoy outside their other WoW life. It was a good idea, but since I'm not on EU side server, I did not pay much attention to it.

A couple of days later something else caught my eyes - there is a SAN on the US side server too! Apparently Miss Medicina had also started the guild with the same name on US side, not wanting the US server players/bloggers to be left out.

Just as a note - SAN-EU is a Horde guild, while the US version is Alliance. Being a primarily Horde player, this presents an opportunity for me to experience mid-to-high level Alliance content.

So, after a brief thought, I made a couple of alts over on Argent Dawn-US. One was a Night Elf bank alt, which I ran over to Darnassus and parked him. The second will be my main on the server - a Dwarf Hunter by the name of Aethrain. I have not started leveling him yet, he's still a level 1 toon - so give me a few days at him before I start including him in my weekly updates, ya?

And that presents me with another issue - how on earth do I find the time to log on to him?

The Good, The Bad... and teh darn Ugly

WoW-wise, there are days when you queue for randoms and got into a wonderful PuG, where everyone is nice and courteous and the run went smooth as silk, and by the end of the run everyone would be saying "Thanks for the awesome run" and "Excellent healing" or "Appreciate the run guys, see you later" and you'd be transported out with your loot, emblems and a warm feeling in your heart. Hell, maybe it's a commando run - silent, deadly, efficient, and you'd still leave with your sanity intact.

Then there are days when you seem to get the worst PuG. Tank or healer or someone bailed at instance start. Mismanagement of target priority and lost of aggro. The DPS who just wouldn't consider what he's doing when he jumps off the platform and dies, leaving the healer confused on how to rez him when we can't even see the body. And my personal favorite - "U dont noe wat ur doin!" from a scrub wearing blues and greens.

Yesterday however, I had the rare opportunity and misfortune to be in both a good PuG and an ugly PuG in one sitting.

Ugly PuG - I queued Aelyra up for a random heroic. It was her second or third random for the night after a successful previous run. As usual, right in the middle of her dailies the confirmation screen pops up, so she moved quickly to a safe location and hit Enter. Up came the loading screen for H HoS.

There was Aelyra the Hunter, a DK tank, a Mage and our healer (can't recall class, my bad). Then there's this Troll Rogue, let's call him Mr. D. So, after the initial hi and hello, DK tank asks if we're ready, then pulls when we've given him the green light. Trash packs went down nice and easy. Soon we were at the first boss, Krystallus. Now, in my experience I tend to die in about 75% of my encounters with him , due to his Shatter. So I was slightly apprehensive, but willing to give it a shot. We start, I pew-pewed, Krystallus roared, I pew-pe-KNOCKBACKSTUN SHATTER and I was dead besides our healer. Yeah, you heard me right - both me and healer was K.O-ed, leaving our DK tank, the Mage and Mr.D having a party with the boss man.

Amazingly, despite no heals (or maybe that's what I think) the DK tank continues to beat Krystallus down. Second Shatter, Mr. D bites the dust and I could only watch in growing horror at the unfolding carnage... wait, the DK is still at it!

Between him and the Mage, they managed to down Krystallus and saved the group from a complete disaster. By this time, the healer had run back and is starting to rez both me and Mr. D. (I hadn't released, yes I know it's bad, but I would've missed seeing our tank won the match). And immediately after being rezzed, Mr. D proclaimed, loudly and in caps - "STUPID DK USE UR DEATHSTRIKE U FAIL AT BEING TANK" or something very close to that. A moment of silence while Aelyra's recovering. Then Mr. D spoke up again - "Sry tat was my friend he thinks ur a fail tank and I do too".

Interesting - someone thinks the tank, who has successfully tanked the boss without the support of his healer and two of his DPS members, is being called a fail tank because of one DK skill? Then the DK spoke up: "I'm a Frost tank bub, I don't use Death Strike".

Mr. D apparently is not convinced. As the group moves towards the next trash pack he kept saying in party chat how the tank is a noob (actually he claimed his 'friend' is saying that, but he's concurring with every word the 'friend' says) and the tank kept defending himself. After hearing this going on for a few minutes, I spoke up, defending the tank and asking the now worked-up Mr. D to lay off. The argument actually escalated until we're right before the Maiden of Grief. Then the Mage DC'ed.

DK tank explains that he wants to wait a couple of minutes for the Mage, see if she's coming back or not. So to fill in the waiting gap, I typed a joking emote indicating Aelyra's charging like a mad Belf at the boss - and subsequently there was chaos as someone actually aggroed Maiden. The tank bailed during this period, we wiped... and Mr. D said to me, in perfect satisfaction - "Told u hes a fail tank". To be honest, I'm thinking my joke emote was wrongly interpreted by the tank as an actual attempt and being incensed by Mr. D's earlier picking on him, had decided this group is not worth it and bailed, leaving us to wipe. But seriously, I too had enough of Mr. D and dropped the group immediately - but not before saying to him: "He's a competent enough tank to live when some of us are eating the floor, matey."

Good PuG - It was quite late in the night, Aelyra had finished a few random heroics and by this time had enough Triumphs to buy her next T9 item. I was looking over the trade window, evaluating each gear and wondering which set piece I should prioritise when Rage (one of my guildie) asks in gchat if anyone is interested in running some heroics. I figured I may sign up for one so I can start stacking more emblems towards the next T9 item and said yes. Another guildie, Devastatior, also said yes. So there we are - two Hunters, a DPS DK, queued in Dungeon Finder.

Pretty soon (if you can call an average waiting period of 15 minutes 'soon') we were joined by a tank and healer, and got H DTK as our heroic. Initial buffing, a few short exchange, the Pally tank asks - the only time he's ever spoken in party chat, I found out later - "Rdy?". We said yes. So he starts the pull.

I was at first amused, then grew amazed, and finally was outright speechless when he pulls the first trash pack in that hallway, then move to the next (mind you, first pack is not yet dead) then the next, and the next... until we found that he's tanking the entire hallway's trash in one go. I had to resort to AoE-ing the whole group, then when he's done the same thing happened - chain-pulling the entire trash pack along the way and AoE-ing them down. Me and Rage were by this time full of amazement at this display of speed run. Managed to choke out a few strangled line in gchat too.

The only snag came during King Dred - I wasn't sure what happened, but Mr. Amazing Tank died during the fight and subsequently the group wiped. I think during the fear, he took serious beating and healer couldn't recover in time. It was at this time we discovered that he's only got 24k unbuffed health - only 2k more than Aenur. But again, he's shown that he can so tank - on the next try, King Dred goes down and the group continues the lightning run up to Tha'ronja. And win.

Mr. Amazing Tank leaves immediately after the boss dies, not even waiting for loot to be distributed. Since Rage wanted to do the Dra'kuru event, me and Devast waited until the end and had a quick discourse about that run. Rage was more contemplative than amazed, wondering if he could pull that stunt with his Druid tank.

Me? Well, I got the Triumphs out of this run - and not having any proper tank to work on, feel comfortable enough recording Mr. Amazing Tank (Poffa's was his name I think, can't recall his server) most memorable run with Aelyra.

Oh, and also - I got the T9 chest piece for Aelyra. Enchant it, gem it, and boom! Instant 100+ AP increase. I are happy nao =)

2010: Year of Achievements

First things first - A very (albeit belated) Happy New Year to everyone and may you have the opportunity and conviction to accomplish all that you wish for this year.

I should've post the new year greeting and well-wishing a couple of days back, but since the 'Net connection was so stable I just had to take advantage of it =D

Anyways, I will leave adventurers' update to a later post. Today, I'd like to muse over the thing almost everyone would be doing come a new year - New Year Resolution.

I know most people just love to make New Year Resolution - "I wanna lose weight!", "I wanna travel and see the world!" or "I wanna buy a BMW M3 GTR with blue background and silver stripes!". The thing is, I also make resolutions. I'm not going to hide the facts - sometimes I'm good at keeping 'em, at other times I just fail at it. But it's one way that I use to keep track of my progress throughout the year and at the end of it, judge myself whether the year has been a successful one for me or not.

In case of WoW, the weekly updates of my adventurers is my way of tracking their progress, or lack of it. At the end of every week, I can evaluate whether the week is very successful/profitable/enjoyable or vice versa. It's my way of actually seeing for myself whether my RM120 per 2 months is worth it or not.

So, 2010 is the start of a benchmarking process. I have a few targets that I need to achieve in this year, and only one or two are a tad on the impossible side. Nevertheless, here they are in no particular order:

1) Getting the Black Drake from OS +3 10-man
This would be the goal for Aenur. I've always been partial to dragon mounts and have gone to great efforts to try to procure Netherdrakes for all my level 70 toons pre-WotLK. And in WotLK, both my Pally and Hunter have either the Red or Bronze Drake as their primary flight mount. This year, I'm set on slipping Aenur inside one of the OS raids and winning that Black Drake. I've been wanting that drake color ever since they announce it O_O

2) T9 (at least) for everyone
At the moment I'm writing this, Aenur has 4/5 T9 and Aelyra has 1/5 T9 equipped. At my best estimates, Aenur should be fully tiered by the weekend and Aelyra will follow in about 2-3 weeks time. That leaves Aerhandor and Aerdread, and frankly speaking both of them still has a long way to go (Aerdread is not even close to Heroic standards!). I got Aerhandor started on some reg ToC 5-man to gear up, but I still need to prep a gear list requirement for him. I hope to be able to accomplish this goal by June/July, regardless whether Cataclysm hits or not.

3) Level Aergor and Aeyrin to 80
Aergor is at level 55 and Aeyrin the Rogue is at level 34. I've done a look-over on both of them and may decide to push Aeyrin first since she has the advantage of having Heirloom pieces with her. That, and the fact that I desperately need a high level Alchemist for transmutation purposes. I'm waiting until Aelyra can snag enough Champion's Seal to get the Heirloom haste trinket before starting to level her. As for Aergor, I'm doing him the old-fashioned way: Double XP and craftable gears... unless I change my mind =)

4) Make a Tauren Paladin and level him to 80
I have 3 Hunters on my active list and 2 Paladins. Taking out the bank alts, that would leave me with 2 Hunters vs one Paladin. And since I prefer playing a Paladin than a Hunter, the fact that I have more Hunter than Paladin leave me with no choice but to roll another Paladin alt (justifying altaholicism - I should write a book on this). But since my in-game character logistics are quite well-established, I'm planning to purchase a few Heirlooms in preparation as well as crafting items at certain levels for his use. By the time Cataclysm arrives I should have all the necessary resource to powerlevel him to 60 by year end. I'm still trying to decide on a name though... maybe Aeryastrasz? Aeradin? Aer-something?

Let see how much of these I can actually accomplish, ya? ^_^