Ummm, hi.

Yeah, I’m alive. It’s been a fairly lousy last couple months. The good part is the new place is going very well. The downside is real life has been incredibly hellish, financially and especially with work, and unfortunately I’m no closer to returning to WoW than I was the last time I updated.

I’ve heard that with WoW, among many other things, it’s harder and harder to return the longer you’ve been away and I agree. I really, really want to come back, but unfortunately (and as stated before, reinstalling the game on this dinosaur of a laptop would probably cause it to melt.

For now, I will leave you with this amusing entry from my realm forums, a guildie’s friend had her account stolen, so they attempted to make friends with the Chinese(?) farmer. It appears to have worked.

Happy endings give me warm fuzzies.

Keep tradition alive!

A change that was allegedly in the works for 2.4.2 (what’s with the extra dot? 2.42 is fine), but didn’t make it onto the PTR was making things like Carrot on a Stick and Riding Crop into enchants for mounts.

This change would suck.

Why?

Because it would remove a time-honored tradition of raiding.

In Shuffle’s Karazhan runs, at some point, typically after Attumen has died, a random raid member would say over Vent “Riding Crop Check!” And we’d realize that at least two people (typically our main tank and a random dps) had their Crop equipped instead of a trinket that was actually useful in raiding.
And sometimes, we’d go even further into the raid before this would happen.

It would be very sad if Blizzard took this away from us.

Stay tuned!

While it took a mite longer than expected, the move was finally made official this weekend and internet will be hooked up at the end of the week. And then…who knows? I’m starting to get the itch to press the 8 key over and over again.

(Yes, Flash of Light is the 8 key. No, I don’t know why. I’m more of a clicker anyway. Is this a bad thing? Discuss!)

Doofy’s Podcast Reviews: World of Warcast

Podcast: World of Warcast
Website: http://www.worldofwarcast.com/
Podcasting since: July 2005
Frequency: Sporadic (one episode in January and February of this year, but there were two March episodes about a week apart)

Doofy’s Review: Starman and Renata offer one of the longest running and more entertaining World of Warcraft podcasts out there. For a long time, they provided a very unique perspective; not he said/she said, but Alliance said/Horde said. Starman’s main was a human mage, while Renata’s is an orc warlock. Recently, Starman succumbed to the dark side and rolled a Horde mage due to a lack of endgame options with his Alliance characters.

World of Warcast is not as heavily news driven as other podcasts (though major news and patch notes are frequently mentioned), and tends to be more feature based, which is the show’s big strength. They had a three-episode series on guild management from last summer that was very good. In the most recent episode, Renata explained how, when levelling a draenei alt, she didn’t want to ride an elephant, so she reached Exalted with Darnassus, Ironforge and Stormwind, well before level 40. Now she has her choice of mounts (horse, cat, ram). Fascinating!

In the previous episode, they also began a new feature, Class Roundtables. They talked with some druids they knew (two feral, one resto) to understand why they play their class, what they like about it, how the roles of the classes have changed since the release of the expansion. (When you guys get to the paladin one, I’m totally available!) Again, it’s something different, informative and entertaining, and that’s what sets it apart from the other podcasts.

Production is minimal, a generic guitar rock riff (is this from somewhere? Let me know.) leads into and out of the show and there is no background music. But to me, audio quality (which is great) and production values aren’t as important as long as you can be entertaining during work commutes, and World of Warcast is at the top of the list among WoW podcasts.

Doofy’s Rating:

5 Triptych Shields of the Ancients (out of a possible five)

Doofy’s Podcast Reviews: The Instance

What to do when I want to write but can’t write about playing World of Warcraft? Write about people who talk about playing World of Warcraft!

In a new series (brought about by the fact that I’d like to keep active with writing here, and also by the fact that my iPod doesn’t want to play about half of my music collection*), I’ll be giving my completely unsolicited opinions on the numerous WoW podcasts that are out there. Let me know what you guys think of my opinions and of the idea of these posts.

Podcast: The Instance
Website: http://www.myextralife.com/wow/
Podcasting since: January 2006
Frequency: Weekly

Doofy’s Review: The most popular WoW podcast according to iTunes recently celebrated its 100th episode (congrats!), but I’m not that big a fan of it. Hosts Scott Johnson and Randydeluxe review the week in World of Warcraft news, both within the game (patch notes, world events) and out of the game (stuff about the WoW TCG). The analysis (largely provided by Randydeluxe) isn’t bad, but I feel they could get a little more in depth. I do have to say I very much enjoyed the interview with the creator and cast of The Guild. More like that, please!

The podcast is heavily dependent on listener input as heard in their Town Crier segment. Listener e-mails and phone calls are played/read and answered here and it’s the weakest part of the show. The show has clearly attracted a large following, but the questions asked are so basic and so puzzling you wonder why people felt the need to write in and ask rather than do a Google search, as a guildie, or heck, even ask some other random player on their server before e-mailing this podcast. This segment is complimented by an Addon of the Week, which is a good idea, but it’s followed by a PVP Tip of the Week, which often isn’t. Unless you’ve never done it before, in which case you might get something out of it. The show also closes with listener submissions, ranging from more questions to in-game lore.

The Instance probably has the highest production values of any WoW podcast that’s not part of the WoW Radio network. I can completely understand why it’s so popular, but if you’re an experienced WoW player, it’s just not the podcast for you. I’d like to see them embrace the fact that they’re quite popular with the *very* newer, casual player.

Doofy’s Rating:

3 Shards of the Virtuous (out of a possible 5)

(*This probably has something to do with me dropping it.)

It figures

So patch 2.4 came out today, and of course I miss WoW a little bit more now.

On the other hand, considering I have an incredibly low threshold for stupidity, from early reports, the Isle of Quel’Danas is so packed and the chat is the same five questions over and over again (”OMG WERES THE BADGE VENDOR?”) that perhaps I’m glad I’m not able to log on at the moment.

Blessing of Freedom

So, it’s been nearly two weeks since my account has expired and it’s been weird. Not that I was logging in much as of late, anyway (either only to go do Karazhan or just for the sake of logging in, something I vowed I wouldn’t do).

Since the recurring theme as of late has been that I was rather bored with WoW, I don’t quite miss it yet.

For the first time in a year and eleven months, I’m free.

Nobody bugging me to run them through instances.

No, “crap, I gotta go log in and do these stupid dailies.”

No more waiting for a tank while waiting to heal an instance.

No more getting dumber by sitting there and reading Alliance trade chat.

No begging for ports or water on my mage.

The freedom to get home and not have to log in is a refreshing feeling and definitely one I recommend if WoW is your first MMO and you’ve never been a slave to one before and you’re starting to feel a mild bit of burnout.

I haven’t 100% withdrawn from the game during my semi-forced hiatus. I’m still lurking the realm forums (why? I don’t know, Thrall’s is almost as bad as trade chat.), WoW Insider and more than a few of you folks out there (*wave*). And of course, I’m still writing here. I plan to be back at the soonest possible moment. The bug to want to log in will bite again (especially when 2.4 finally hits) and I’ll be back with a vengeance (Doofy 2: Electric Boogaloo!)

Last Karathon (for a while) Highlight of the Evening

A raid member mentions that he really should’ve gone to bed, like, half an hour ago. We’re about to pull Illhoof. It’s an awfully long walk from that room to get outside to summon our replacement. What to do?

Have both paladins Divine Intervention. Easy!

Vent has never laughed so hard before.

WTB more Karazhans!

Ahhh, Karazhan. We all know it, we all love it (unless that damned Terestrian Illhoof won’t drop the !$&*^! chest I need!), we’re all really freakin’ sick of it.

More, please.

While we’re nearing the end of it, we’re still presently in the “We’re All Just Guessing Here” stage of Wrath of the Lich King info. While a few shreds of info have been thrown our way, the rest is just idle speculation, so hopefully this ends up being wrong.

There are presently five “known” raid encounters so far in Wrath according to WoWWiki, and most currently are the raid encounters of the various winged instances. All of them are designated as 25 mans. No 10-man raids are currently planned at this point in time.

This is a huge mistake and I hope it’s just because we don’t have complete info yet.

Karazhan saved raiding. It let people who had never raided before realize that, hey, this was kind of fun. I know of three people off the top of my head who were playing prior to the release of BC, but had never raided before. After doing some Karazhan, they decided they liked it and joined hardcore progression guilds. Karazhan created the next generation of raiders, the ones who were in Gruul’s, SSC, TK and beyond after your top tier of raiders had all of them cleared by mid-summer.

Also, it’s much easier to get ten people together as opposed to 25. One of the big stumbling blocks for Shuffle was after having Kara on a one night clear (Karathons, woot!), we did want to dip our toes in the 25-man pool, but found it impossible to go from casual raiding guild with about fifteen or so steady regulars to the full 25. We came close, but then lost a couple people due to other commitments and/or burnout (plus myself in a week or so due to real life stuff mentioned below!) and that was pretty much the last nail in the coffin. We did get HKM and Gruul down twice thanks to the help of a lot of friends, though we were reduced to having our friends ask friends “Hey, wanna do Gruul?” It shouldn’t come to that. A level 80 ten man raid? No problem at all.

My dream for WotLK’s endgame is two level 80 10 man’s consecutive in progression then however many 25 mans, followed by one more 10 man right before the raid that Arthas is waiting in. I know it’s a pipe dream, but really, Blizzard needs to take a look at the runaway success of Karazhan and base the Wrath end game off of it.

AFKing in RL

This is the entry I knew I’d have to write eventually when I started this blog just over two months ago, I just wasn’t quite sure when I’d have to write it. I really hate to mix real life and my WoW life, but the situation calls for it, so here goes.

Tomorrow, I’ll be closing on a condominium, which, by the way, is totally a real life “Ding!” moment, along with getting your driver’s license, high school and college graduations, getting married and what not. (Alternately, maybe buying property is the equivalent of getting your epic flyer. If your 5,000 gold mount came with mortgage payments.)

For multiple reasons, mostly financial, this is the temporary end of my World of Warcraft career. Completely unnecessary details follow.

WoW went from interesting curiosity (I’d only been playing a few weeks) to all-consuming entity (rolled Doofy and got him to 60) two summers ago when I lived out of a hotel room for four months because of my job. It was with my trusty and then only two-year-old laptop. Kudos to Blizzard for letting WoW run on average to below-average computer specs. It ran, barely. Graphic settings were turned way down and peak nights in Ironforge were not very fun. If I wanted to Thottbot something, I’d minimize, get up and stretch for a couple minutes, and maybe I’d be able to open Firefox when I got back.

Upon finishing my work on location, plans to return to my previous living arrangement fell through and I moved back in with the ‘rents. WoW immediately got installed on the house desktop, and it was like discovering the game all over again. Lots of little things I never noticed before. And hey, I can Alt-Tab out in seconds! I couldn’t run the uninstaller on the laptop fast enough.

So, now that I’m being thrown out striking out on my own, I’m back to the old, now really crappy, three-and-a-half year old laptop. It’s still good for web surfing, iTunes and writing (in fact, I’m writing this on it right now), but I can’t go back to playing WoW on it. I think putting the Burning Crusade install disc in the CD drive would make the thing cry itself to sleep mode (note: joke totally stolen from those “Get a Mac” ads.)

So yeah, I’m just a little bit spoiled in having a decent computer available to play WoW on. And since I’m about to complete a major purchase and am so completely convinced I won’t be able to afford things like food anymore, a new computer just isn’t in the cards at the moment. Sometime early next month, my account will expire and that will be that for the time being.

Keep in mind I never said anything about not blogging anymore, though. I’ll still be here and there commenting when I see fit and seeing if I can ever come close to duplicating my two most popular entries. While I previously mentioned that I was a little bored and had nothing much to accomplish right now, as patch 2.4 gets closer I know I’ll miss WoW more and more and am aiming to be back as soon as I can.

So that’s all there is for now. AFKing in real life. It’s the thing that’s got me the most sad about this major life moment, but I know Doofy will be bringing the heals again in the not too distant future.