Monday, February 27, 2006

Warsong Gulch. Silverwing Sentinels. 2,543,400 reputation needed till friendly.

Ha, ha. Just kidding. Only like 2,200 needed till friendly. And that's after a whole lot of battles.

Ogresson, my Dwarf Hunter. He's a soloist, and not otherwise involved with a lady friend like my other characters on Kirin Tor are. He's out there, with his pet, earning levels and fighting in Warsong Gulch on behalf of the Silverwing Sentinels, a group of Night Elves who have sworn to not rest until every last Orc is thrown out of Warsong Gulch. (I.e. kill them and send them packing to their cemetery. Preferably over and over.)

He's level 22 now and returned to the Gulch last night for some battlegrounds action. At 22 he's also at the bottom of the level range for the battles he finds himself in. However, he's a tough s.o.b., with some mean pets, and he found himself at the top of the kills lists. Not bad for playing "D".

He did well during the 18th & 19th levels, battling without the aid of Aspect of the Cheetah to chase runners down, or Freezing Traps to protect the flag. And he scored highly in those matches as well.

All told, after 3 or so matches (and winning the last one after a long drawn out battle) last night he'd gotten 205 Honor Kills. And he was tops in the Kills list again. (Silverwings never said exactly how those Orcs were to be removed. Bodybag sounds fine to me. Scum.)

And that last battle, the one where we were tied, was a doozy. We had their flag up on our roof. And they had our flag up on theirs. Defenders of the flag on our roof were me, a Warlock, a Mage, and the Dwarf Rogue Lady who was holding the flag. I kept the entry under freeze trap lock. Very effective. (Kneeling down looks like I'm placing traps - for you sneaky types wondering if that's a trap I'm laying before you. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't.) They sent a Rogue after us. A stealth capable Druid. A low level Mage, a high level Mage. I'd gotten so many kills on these same battlegrounders that I wasn't even getting "educated honor" for them anymore. At last we got our flag back and we capped theirs. WOOT! Hard earned tastes sweetest.

But earning reputation. What's the deal with that? I have to eat and sleep and hold down a job. Exactly what's it take to get friendly with these folks? They have faction rewards for the level 10-19 Range. A nice ring, for Exalted. EXALTED! I can't even get friendly with them.

On the pet front, I've done well. I tamed Ressan the Needler, an albino bat that roams in Tirisfal Glades right outside the Undercity, when I was level 12. He's a fun pet, rather rare, moreso for an Alliance Hunter. He's learned Growl, Bite, and Screech. Last night, as he clung to the faces of our enemies like Clingwrap to a pudding, I kept hearing that piercing Screech, Screech, Screech. (Such an annoying death I'm sure. Big bat wings buffeting you, that screeching in your ears, my arrows in your back. Zounds! Pray for a quick deliverance to the cemetary!) I named him (her? You check.) Sorrow. The other pet, downgraded I'm told by Blizzards nerf-bat was Takk the Leaper. A dark green with purple mottling Raptor that I tamed north of Ratchet in the Barrens. Named him Sableclaw. He appears to be decently fast. Not overwhelming.

An armored boar out of Razorfen Kraul remains in my future I think. Till then, Sorrow and Sableclaw will see you, yes, You! Mr. Orc, in Warsong Gulch. :)

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

World of Warcrack. The game goes on. And on.

I'm sure any player can appreciate what an addiction this game could be.

It's not that there's been nothing going on, it just that so many different things are going on it's hard to catalog it here.

Darkhoof continues in the weekly raids to Molten Core. He missed last weeks Onyxia run where the guild finally took her down again.

Last night we wanted to do a little World PvP. Not PvP per se. Our plan was to raid Stormwind City. We hit the Cathedral and attempted to take down the Benedictus guy there. He was tough and the guards zerged us worse than Murlocs. We did manage to get the guards all down but then resurrected again down in the crypts below. This was in fact our initial staging area. And as we were gathering our numbers, now this is deep deep down below the Cathedral mind you, what happens? Some level 53 Dwarf Warrior just happens to wander (WANDER!!!!!) down into our midst. Since we're on his turf we can't touch him. He starts dancing, and hoping to maybe distract him, I show him a few Tauren dance moves. Like I said, Benedictus is real tough, we didn't get very far. (Our raid, a team building exercise, was kind of small. Too many feared the possibility of what getting 1 DK would do to their hard earned Honor Rank. (I heard 1 DK = 1/4 of your rank lost.) So after rezzing we left the Cathedral and moved to the Tram station.

Now, Shamans, have a nice advantage here. I was following our main tank, keeping him healed, and dropping Earthbind Totems. I was one of the first to reach the station. We took the train to Ironforge and made our attempt on the Gnome King. For a short guy he's pretty tough. And, zounds!, the guards zerged us here too. And the worst enemy was the Ironforge LAG! I zoned into Ironforge and wound up dead. I resurrected and returned to the station side. Whew. There was someone causing some trouble and I followed him, and managed to rezone back into Ironforge. When the screen appears I'm already dead. Now the tunnel is full of some high level alliance. I run back from Kharanos (I am very familiar with these places) but it seems a little strange seeing them as a dead Tauren. The snow is even whiter to a dead man's eyes. I resurrected in the Ironforge tunnel and make a run for the portal back to the Tram station. The lag is so bad that it won't zone me though I'm running against it. I'm cut down again. I didn't reach the Tram station, but instead I'm brought back to life in Elwynn Forest. Live and no rezz sickness. While the rest of the raid is attempting to recover, somewhere, I head to Redridge. I greet a few of the Alliance players I meet there. (Hello. Meet FROSTSHOCK!) Then a Mage introduces me to Polymorph and FIREBALL. I rezz in the nearby graveyard and then make my way to Darkshire. (The raid is still gathering itself somewhere.) I visit the undead crypt. Yeah, you thought those skeletons and ghouls were tough. Heh. Did you expect to find a bored 60 Tauren Shaman in there? You could have zerged me. United you stand, divided you fall.

But at last I hearth to Kargath and we reform a smaller raid group. This time we're off to find the real King of Stormwind. Apparently he's being held on an island off Theramore, protected by Hydra's, Naga's, and some Gnomes. We're an MC raid crew so we didn't have much trouble getting into the jail on the island. No King. We did give our source a hard time for it. :) And then we came across a Gnome called Weevil. How hard could he be? He was level 63. Well, our Main Tank called out "He's resiting my taunt" and then he got Mind Controlled by this Weevil. He did a Shield Slam for 999 against one of us. He one-shotted another. This is our former Main Tank! The Weevil guy was hitting us for, oh, 14k I heard one hit was. Apparently, as it turns out, this guy is designed to be taken on by BWL raiders working on getting the Scepter to open the AQ gates. We encountered him on a lark with 12 people.

With that as the evenings conclusion we returned to Orgrimmar. (Where the server shut down on us.)

So I went to Kirin Tor to do a little business.

On Kirin Tor I've already told you about Morticai, my 24 Undead Warrior, and perhaps Mortiangelo, my lvl 9 Undead Priest. (These play across from my wife's Zauberin, a level 22 Undead Mage.) We'd already made Greenclaw and Zaniah (NE Druid and Warrior) and Freewind and Itarilde (NE Warrior and Druid) there. We've now made Grimtounge and Theodora (Human Warlock and Priest), and Weisenheimer and Minkypoo (Gnome Mage and Warlock). I've also made Ogresson, a level 20 Dward Hunter. His pets include Dottir, the white bear that ate some Dwarf Pilot, Sorrow, a rare white bat I tamed outside of Brill, and Whambam, a boar that I used in Warsong Gulch because he has a nice little charge/stun move going for him. I wanted a Horde side Hunter and created a Troll Huntress, Makeda. My wife made a Troll Shaman named Nzhinga. I thought two hunters working in Tandem would be affective so she created an Orc Huntress named Amazulu. And so I created an Orc Warlock named Unkulunkulu. And, unbeknownst to me, she'd also created a Dwarf Paladin named Tapfer.

These are the twelve steps of World of Warcraft Anonymous.
1. We admit we were powerless over WoW; that our lives have become unmanageable.
2. We come to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
... Oh, wait, got to go. The guild's thinking of raiding ZG and I need to repair and get some potions made. I'll finish this later.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Onyxia Again.

In twentyfive minutes.

It used to seem impossible. Now it takes twentyfive minutes. Unbelievable! Gear matters.

No deaths.

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Onyxia down! Another first for Requiem.

The guild has done it again. On an unschedule raid, with less than a weeks notice, some 39 of us got together in Brackenwell Village in Dustwallow Marsh. Our goal was to go trouble Onyxia again.

We'd been there a few times before. I was in on two or three tries. Last weekend they tried again. But last night the stars were aligned, the gear was arranged, the potions were bought and brought, and lady luck was smiling on us.

Our first attempt we took Onyxia down to 5%. Now common to this kind of fight, our health didn't outlast the damage we were taking.

Our second attempt, maybe we got comfortable, but she took a deep breath and wiped half the group.

Our third attempt was charmed. Down to 1% felt so easy. Everything was in synch. The whelps were being handled. I was in the Main Tanks group keeping totems down and everyone healed. I didn't survive but Onyxia dropped a breath or two after I did. Excellent! This is a good guild.