She moved.

I took the night off from playing tonight. (Well, we did level up a level over on Velen on Palatine and Sunderella. The chat was driving me nuts though. Didn't hear that many uses of the F-word since Scarface. I finally turned General Chat off.)

Anyway, after the wife went to bed I decided to just browse the internet. First looking at Azerothian maps to course out a questing strategies, alternate leveling routes for those tired of the same-ol' same ol' (such as we altoholics). Doing that I loaded up my Media Player and started listening to music.

That took me to looking up Pete Townshend (of the Who) and his album All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes on Wikipedia. I love his song North Country Girl. Which apparently derives from an earler Dylan song. Which then got me to thinking along those lines, I'm using Wiki here to jump connection to connection, and I found a song I've heard several artists do. But I didn't know the lyrics.

"She Moved Through the Fair" or "She Moves Through the Fair" is based on a traditional Irish Folk song. Its original author is unknown. The song, a folk staple, has been performed by many artists, and its haunting tune and lyrics will be familiar to many.

My young love said to me my mother won't mind
And my father won't slight you for your lack of kind
And she laid her hand on me and this she did say
It will not be long now 'til our wedding Day

And she went away from me, she moved through the fair
And fondly I watched her move here and move there
And then she went onward, just one star awake
Like the swan in the evening moves over the lake

The people were saying no two e'er were wed
But one had a sorrow that never was said
And I smiled as she passed with her goods and her gear
And that was the last that I saw of my dear

Last night she came to me, my dead love came in
So softly she came her feet made no din
And she laid her hand on me and this she did say
It will not be long now 'til our wedding day

Yeah, Warcraft nerd I am I got to thinking "Forsaken backstory."

Version I know best is by B-Tribe (off their ¡Spiritual, Spiritual! album), and so then I listened to La Guapa (off B-Tribes Sensual, Sensual album).

That then leads to Gin Blossem's Hey Jealousy, and on to The Judybat's Waiting for the Rain and Liquid. Mint Royale's Little Words. Nirvana's Lithium, Smashing Pumpkins 1979. Moby's Porcelain. Chemical Brother's Surface to Air. Blind Melon's No Rain. Collective Soul's She Said that Time is Unfair. The Cure's Cut Here. Oi Va Voi's D'Ror Yikra. Adam Ant's Wonderful. 10cc's I'm Not in Love. William Shatner's (yes) Common People. Oliver Mtukudzi's Todii. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Oh What a Circus (from Evita). Four thousand, four hundred, seventy three songs to choose from. Where's the time?? :) Touch and Go's Life's a Beach.

So what's on your playlist?

Boyblue, not his name, is selling all the Thorium on Kirin Tor.

First time I ran into him, Saturday, we were up in the corner of the Eastern Plague Lands. At first glance, nothing out of the ordinary. Your run-of-the-mill Orc Hunter.

But the "BOT!" tell tales just screamed out. His pet owl was named, "Owl." And he ignored everything, working on undead. He targeted me for a bit, just standing there, and then moved on.

Where his behavious screamed BOT was that he ignored attacking mobs, why not, he's got a pet, and attempted to mine my thorium vein. Mine because I just happened to mining it at the moment.

Classic Bot, so I added him to my friends list. I use FriendswithBenefits so my Friends list is copied to all my other characters of that faction on the server. Anyway, Boyblue, not his real name, is literally on-line from 4 a.m., server time, to 4 p.m. server time. I see him Sunday morning when I log on in the morning to look for Thorium, and in the afternoon when I play a little, and at night, when I'm questing in the Outlands. Saturday he spent the entire time in the Eastern Plague land, and Sunday he's all over the map. The entire time he's level 60 so his player has not purchased the expansion.

Sunday, I'm ahead of him. Six arcane crystals already, and I've got stacks and stacks of Thorium in the bank building up for the big push to Blacksmithing 300. I've got plans to make 4 entire sets of Imperial Plate (480 some Thorium, 48 rugged leather, 4 star rubies) 1) to level up my blacksmithing, and 2) prepare some equipment for Honorus, Halcyon, Freewind, and Winkydink.

So there I was, in that little ravine with the slimes. I'm mining my Rich Thorium vein. Two loots and a slime attacks. I'm standing on this vein, fighting a slime, and this Boyblue shows up. And starts hacking. A new slime approaches and attacks him. My slime dead I resume mining. He frost traps his slime and proceeds to start mining.

Obviously a bot. Or an asshat.

I get the last of the Thorium and mount up and ride out. I see him ride out too.

So I figure, clever me, I'll follow the Bot and see what he's up to. Obviously this thing is programmed with vein refresh timers so I'm sure he's got a route planned out. So I follow him, and sure enough, he's heading to the next vein I know about. (Cartographer Mining ftw!) The vein is gone, probably due to me, so we continue on.

Then we get to Hearthglen. That's the elite Crusader camp there in the corner. And he dismounts and starts attacking a guard. Hmm. I'd never ventured in. But if it's worth this effort to him, it must be a bonanza inside. So I ride past, 4 more levels than him allowing me to aggro less.

Not a vein inside and I barely make it back out alive. But I do live.

And then I see it. In the chat box.

I got myself ROFLPWNED! The guy played me like a cheap record. I got owned!

In chat, very cute, "Blueboy waves farewell to you." Son of a biscuit! He lured me into Hearthglen, and I took it, hook, line, and sinker! ROFL!

He certainly pulled one over on me.

But, it also means this was not a bot.

This is a live player, with brains, who does nothing but farm mineral nodes across Azeroth. (I later noted him in the Barrens, Winterspring, Burning Steppes.) He does nothing but farm, and plays round the clock, and does not own the expansion. He's certainly not funding a main, or a twink, since he's got no time. And it's a live player since he played that little trick on me.

Later, I was in the Burning Steppes, looking for Thorium. At one of the veins, there's this, level, yep, 60, warrior in, yep, crap gear, mining it. 60, crap gear, Bot. So when he's done and mounts up, I do too. And I follow him, figuring I'd check out it's programming.

That is until it stopped, targeted me for a bit, untargeted me, rode on, me on his heels, targeted me, and then spit on me.

Tsk, tsk.

I returned with him to the Alliance flightpoint and we parted ways.

Apparently not bots. Apparently rude farmers.

Is it me, but wouldn't a level 70 farmer, with lower aggro range, be better able to quickly make money?

And could someone claim that they 1) enjoy farming minerals to sell in the auction house, and 2) enjoy it to the exclusion of all other activity. I guess so. Sad life though.

Because this weekend I had Msaker help out a few folks in Hillsbrad, sent Darbanville with Zauberin to STV. Had Blackhoof start on the Ogres in Blades Edge, rescuing some troll trapped in a pile of poo. Msaker probably farmed 120 thorium and 7 arcane crystals. And Sunstriker and Halcyon travelled to Stonetalon Peak for a change of pace.

It's 4 a.m.. Do you know where your Thorium is?

I don't know where it all is here on Kirin Tor. It's 4 a.m., server time, and the Plaguelands have been stripped nigh bare of the metal.

I do see one single seller is selling numerous stacks of 20 bars in the Auction House. How fortunate for him. Hats off to you, Sir, or Madam. Because I couldn't betake the mind numbing drudgery of locking out every other gatherer to secure it, all, for myself.

It puts me in a bit of a quandry since I can't level up my blacksmithing past 280 without it. I'm sitting on stacks of easily obtained Fel Iron just waiting for the day I can break past the "Locked tighter than Paris Hilton's chastity belt, not" period where Thorium, and only Thorium, is required for everything a Blacksmith does.

Does anyone, ever, manage to 1) get the plans for the Imperial Plate Set, and 2) make every piece of it, before 3) way out leveling the point where it's still useful? Well, it was a good set, I was still wearing parts of it at 60 when I started replacing it with PvP gear. Should my wife's Halcyon need tanking gear, that'll certainly be a good set for it with Stamina and Strength. And my Arcanite bars are being saved up to make enchanting rods for our enchanters. (Or, that would be pretty cool too, I equip my lovely wife's Blood Elf Paladin with an Arcanite Reaper.)

Thorium Bars! All ye, all ye, in come free!

Now for tailoring, Runecloth drops off pretty much any humanoid over level 50. It can be farmed easily by anyone. (I.e. the whole Paris Hilton thing again.)

A "Hey there," from Silvermoon on Velen.


Sunderella and Palatine moving on up in the world. The evening found us reaching level 10 and completing the Voidwalker summoning quest for her in the Ghostlands.

And this is a PvE server. So no RP required, and the chat channel was pretty good for a change. All sounded reasonable. That is, heh, until a couple folks started talking about starting up a guild. "We'll be the 'Crusaders of Velen!'" "Yeah!" "Cool guild name!"

So I, stupidly, sought to correct them. "Velen is a Dreanei Prophet found in the Exodar." "I know that. That's what makes the name cool." Uh, yeah, you knew that. You and your five 70's on another realm.

Anyway, Velen is PvE, and no PvP to worry about. Here's a snippet of some conversation overheard in Silvermoon tonight.


Yeah, I'm going to miss that. Not! Heh. And I haven't for a long time. If I want PvP I'm going to do it with 39 strangers on my side, and 40 enemies on the other. That's fun.

An evening with two altoholics suffering altism.

The servers finally up, about 7 pm our time, we begin our slow entry into the night's gaming. I’m browsing add-on sites checking out the latest creations. I run WinAceUpdater and UI Central to make sure I’m otherwise up-to-date. Looking over my shoulder I see the wife is looking at her characters over on Steamwheedle Cartel. “Dwarves are ugly,” she says. Alas, poor Grethel, her Dwarven Priestess, after having her inventory cleared out she’s smacked by the Mack truck of the delete key. Hmmm. What do *I* need a Dwarf Hunter for then if I’ve also got Iduve, my Draenei Huntress? Caelik logs on, liquidates his assets, and goes the way of the Dodo bird. We’re Dwarf free and happy with it.

While Caelik is cleaning out his bags, the wife decides she wants a priest. (Just not a Dwarf one.) And she decides Melissand, her pale human Paladin isn’t worth it. She’s already got a Paladin in Halcyon. Smack. Melissand is no more. Le Melissand est mort. Viva la Melissand. Melissand is then reborn, a human Priest this time, in that Nefertiti look that Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, made so fashionable. Dark hair, bangs, dark skin. She’s the perfect partner for my Warlock, Abdiblis, who looks like he just stepped off the subway in Baghdad. Priest and Warlock. We have some sustainability there.

But, what professions to take? Well, now that Melissand is no longer mining and smithing, she can have her Nehemiah, a Human Warrior, do that. And since he’s doing that he’s no longer the herb gathering alchemist. So the new Melissand can do that. Nehemiah was going to start in the Elven lands for the herbs. So he’s gained a reprieve and will instead return to the human lands, where ore abounds. And in his place goes Melissand. Level 2, Melissand leaves Northshire, and with the company of Level 14 Adbiblis, she makes “The Long Run”. In reverse. A couple of deaths in Wetlands and we finally reach Dolanar and get a well earned rest in the Inn.

And while Abdiblis tries to procure some linen off Furbolgs to craft bags and stuff for the new Melissand, it’s back to the character screen for the wife. Her Troll Frost Mage, Katonga. She’s ugly. And has a funny run. Doy dee doy. Smack! Katonga is no more. But, nature abhors a vacuum. Katonga is reborn. This time as white haired, male, Troll Shaman. Stretching after a hard gaming session, the wife informs me she’s going to bed. “G’night dear.” So my Troll Rogue is replaced with another Troll Rogue. Purple haired Aminijin, Rogue, is replaced with white haired, female, Rogue, named Amanijin. We’ve got to have Trolls.

And then I logged on as Blackhoof and worked off a few more quests in Nagrand. Just a couple more bars to go and I’ll be 68 with him.

Beautiful Undercity.

Because we're in it.

(Halcyon! C'mon, honey. Stand up straight. C'mon, please? I'll have Msaker make you some more armor. Pretty please? Oh, nevermind.)

Living Large, Gotta' Get Goals.

Gitr tagged me.
After he was tagged in a post in a blog by Phil Gerbyshak.
From a meme being followed by a Greg Balanko-Dickson.
And that meme begun by Alex Shalman. (This is where you'll find the rules.)

(I hope I kept that straight!)

Anyway, in short, I need to list and write about the top 5 to 10 goals that I "gotta’ get" so that I can truly say I have achieved my wildest dreams in life. These have to be my best, most exclusive, and over-the-top goals that I can pick off my goals list.

So, here goes:

1. Become a family man.

Well, I got married almost two years ago to a wonderful woman. So I'm off to a good start.

2. Go on safari. Ride in an open-top jeep through the wildlife of Kenya. Climb to the snowy peaks of Mt. Kilamanjaro in Tanzania. See Victoria Falls in Zambia.

I have been to the Sinai but have never set foot on the African continent. This would be in the something akin to being in the footsteps of the Victorian Age explorers ala the National Geographic Society of the bygone era.

3. Go on a long, slow, cruise. Round the world. West to east, and see Australia along the way.

I've been on cruises, the Inside Passage to Alaska, and the Caribbean, but this round the world trip would simply be like *living* an ocean goers life.

4. Live in a home, with my family, connected to the world, close to everything, yet private, with a view of mountains, forests, and ocean, and experience all the wonders of the changes of seasons. A stone wall with a fireplace. Heavy wood to last the ages. This would be in the Northwest, or the Northeast. Or Scotland. Who knows. Home is where the heart is, does it matter where it's geographically at?

5. Financial security. I don't want to worry, or be worried. I don't need ten homes, or exclusive country club memberships. I just want to be comfortable, have the best for my family, and have us all be "Just fine."

Towards that goal I've managed to do well at my career, I am relatively debt free, and I've invested heavily into our company's 401K program.

This is a "pass it on" kind of thing. I'll pass the baton now to three more bloggers who've shared.

DM Osbon
Tomas Rofkahr
Excalibur

Where we came from. Where we are. Where we're going.

Where did Honorus come from? He was of humble origin, a farmer originally. He and his wife, Effilda, lived a quiet existence in the sunny fields of Westfall. He counted amongst his neighbors the Furlbrows and the Jansens. But the world changed, the wars came, and he was one of the farmers driven from his land by the Defias Brotherhood.

The world didn't need farmers then as much as it needed the means to survive. Freedom isn't free, and Honorus was prepared to fight for freedom, for his land stolen by the Defias, and fight against the greater threat, that of the enslavement or destruction sought by the Scourge.

Leaving his wife behind in Stormwind, their new home, he journeyed to Elwynn Forest to enlist in the army.

Basic training went quickly, and he soon graduated from the training at the Cathedral in Northshire. Level 06 and ready for the world.



His wife Effilda followed him not long after. It's a hard enough world, and where one might make a small difference, two can make even more. She enlisted, as a mage, and he returned to Elwynn to help her. This time both left Northshire to fight the battles in the world. Effilda, a mage, and Honorus a more seasoned level 25.


And now, as soldiers for Stormwind City, Honorus and Effilda, both coming into their prime at level 40, riding in defense of the Human race against the evils of our time.

The Scarlet Monastery at last completed. Except for the detail of one small scarlet key.

But, I got my new sword, the Sword of Serenity, and a nice new shield, the Aegis of the Scarlet Commander, out of the deal.



And I've reached level 39. One more and I'll be riding in style.

Now if I could get in on a successful Library run, my day would have been made.

P.S. "Honorus" is not "Honor us." It's a bit of an uncommon spelling of the Emperor Honorius's name. And it's the proper spelling for a few Popes. Honorus III in 1216, for example. I think it's not a bad name for a Paladin. And if I manage to display some good playing skill, by all means "Honor us." ;)

It's the 3rd? I missed the 1st?

No, not really. But color me unimpressed. The Tin Hat thing? That's the best they come up with to amuse 8,000,000 customers? And the old "forum switcheroo" thing, where players are GMs and GMs are Trolls? C'mon, tell us what you really think of your customer base, Blizzard! ;)

Nothing really jumped out at me for April Fool's Day.

Things that have been keeping me busy:

Effilda and Honorus are 2 levels each from Level 40. Horses! An all-Protection Paladin partying with an all-Arcane Mage. It works.

Blackhoof has reached 67. He continues to be adequate. But I'll admit, as the only healer my group survived the Ring of Blood quests. Going back to help some other folks out, and taking a back seat to a 70 Druid for healing, we wiped. True story.

Darkhand came out to play last night. He journeyed to Strahnbrad in order to get the tailoring pattern for Black Silk Bags for Effilda. The place is mid-30's with lots of rogue-types to kill. Joy. The recipe dropped after the 15th Spy, but he continued on. Wandering into an Inn, he wound up killing a jailer, and then killing an Orc. (But of course.) That flagged him for PvP. Hmm. I'm a Rogue in a PvE world and got me thinking about the old days on a PvP server. At this point in WoW's life it must just be level 70 psychos cruising for kills. Thanks, no. He then headed south to Tanaris and went town to Ogre Town. Just a few levels below him they drop quickly and it will be a good place to grind out xp for him, and mageweave for Effilda. And in a few levels he'll be able to go into Alterac Valley. Given his current combat spec, if he waits till 55 he'll get enough points into Subtelty to get Improved Sap. I think the BG's will see good use of that.

Effilda was escorted into Uldaman by Arcarius to take care of two things. Recover a power source from some big metal thing, and to visit Annora the Enchanting Trainer. Mission accomplished.

Sunstriker is quest logged up for Shadowfang Keep and Blackfathom Deeps. Droonda, the Orc Shaman Princess is going to escort him through to acquire some (relatively) phat lewt. Rod of the Sleepwalker and Arugal's Robes will be some of the rewards. Then he and Halcyon will return to their Pally + Mage questing.

I respecced Sunstriker to Arcane now. I'm thinking the reduced threat from my Arcane spells will go well with a Paladin that's trying to hold aggro. At some point I will try out the Frost tree, for the so-called "Shatter" build.

I wish.

'Nuff said.

PUGging hasn't been too bad.

Over the last two nights Blackhoof has conquered the Ring of Blood (and got a great +Healing one-hander, Mogor's Anointing Club) and slain Durn the Hungerer (and got a fast combat one-hander, the Hungering Bone Cudgel).

For the first one I joined after being whispered by a guildie looking for some help, and was joined with three other non-guildies. The second one I was with Nachmahd killing beasts and I figured "Why not?" and announced "LFM" for Durn in /general and got three more.

I met some good folks (Masstiff was in both parties, a real good Feral Druid) and got something accomplished.

Folks don't like PUGs but I've had more positive than anything experiences with them.