Wednesday, May 27, 2009

New Druid Forms: Night Elf Bear

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I think I like the new Tauren models better, but these are still new and different! I'm thinking my green hair might produce the bottom left bear, which is fine by me. Can't wait to see the cats!

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

New Druid Forms!

Breaking news from the official WoW site! New druid cat and bear forms available in the next content patch, presumably 3.2. There will be a new form with multiple textures so you can be a different colored bear and cat than other people, and the color of your hair (Night Elves) or skin (Tauren) determines the color of your cat and bear. Pretty cool! Here are what Tauren Bears will look like. I'll post more pictures as they are released.

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Monday, May 25, 2009

WoW.com

I would imagine many wow players are avid readers of Wow Insider. Wow Insider is a warcraft news blog that writes about anything and everything Warcraft. They pull information from all over the web and other blogs, and they also have featured articles that run daily or weekly. They're usually quick too, so when you're looking for the latest patch notes or class changes or new information on wow books and game changes, it's a good place to start. And they site all their sources so you can see the original information as well.

Just last week Wow Insider became WoW.com. Other than the address change, the major difference is that they now support member profiles where you can add your characters, upload pictures and blog entries and keep track of other people who sign up as well. In addition to all of that, you can download an add on that will let you upload information about your characters in game. For instance, I could run the instance and upload to my profile after a raid showing any avhievements we completed that night. It tracks a lot of different things. And you can make notes in game that will upload to your blog when you run the addon.

It's basically a Twitter/Facebook meets WoW amalgamation. And it's kind of fun. That being the case, I don't have anyone actively following me, so the information is only for myself. I'm curious if anyone else out there is using this and enjoys it? If you'd like to follow my characters, I'm using the name gmazeroth, or you can look up Elionene and the other characters I play.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Elionene And The Gun

Elionene has never really had good luck with ranged weapon drops. The first nice bow I had was the blue quest item from the Shadowmoon Valley Cipher of Damnation quest line, Lohn'goron, Bow of the Torn-heart. It was a pretty bow, and the best I could get from soloing at the time. Granted, Valanos' Longbow was out there and fairly readily available, but I never liked the look of it and didn't consider it a big enough upgrade to be worthwhile.

Beyond my wildest dreams, I was able to run Kara regularly with Veritas. We were in Kara for many months up until Wrath came out. And in Kara, Prince had on his possession, the Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix. Which not only was an awesome upgrade, but was also the same skin as my beloved quest bow. Just orange instead of blue. I only saw it drop twice. Once was when I had brought in Salthier to help our second raid team on Prince. /crai The second time was very last night in Karazhan before the week Wrath was released. After all of those months raiding in Kara, I finally got a really nice bow. Which was promptly used to level up in Northrend and replaced with a green quality bow from a quest at level 78. /sigh

Now in Naxxramas, the only good bow in Naxx-10 dropped off Instructor Razuvius, who you might remember as Guile from our discussion here. The Accursed Bow of the Elite is not a pretty bow, but it was a bow, and not a silly spiked crossbow monstrosity. It took a month or two, but at least it wasn't our last night in Naxx, and I did get the bow. Actually, I got it while raiding with Salthier, but was able to bring in Elionene for that fight because you don't need a traditional tank for most of it. Yay, bow!

Now all of this time, I avoided guns completely. I have a gun skill of 1 because I started with that, but have never shot one of those loud boom sticks. I don't like how the night elves look with them and they're loud, and it never made sense in character for Elionene to use one. Add to that that there was a plentiful supply of bows and crossbows so that I never really had to worry about it. Until I went to Northrend that is. I turned down guns and gave them to other hunters and warriors and rogues just to avoid having to use one. I managed in Naxx okay.

Entering Ulduar, there is a bow off of Hodir, who we have defeated once. And there's a random zone drop bow that is pretty nice. But have I seen either of these? No. Unfortunately, Ignis, who we defeat regularly now, dropped this new fangled ranged weapon, the Rifle of the Platinum Guard. And sadly, there were no rogues or warriors or other hunters to pawn it off to. So Elionene is now the not so proud owner of a gun. I haven't shot it yet.

It's a substantial increase in my DPS, so I can't really justify not using it as it would only benefit the raid. But if I'm going to use it, I have to write it into Elionene's character, and thus this post at Elionene's Journal. So after all of my troubles, Elionene will fire a gun for the first time this weekend in Ulduar. I wonder if she'll like it.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Game Fuel

Mountain Dew Game Fuel Alliance Banner


Yes, this is a promotion for Mountain Dew. I like Mountain Dew, and I like WoW, so it's a good combination. It's also a shameless plug to get you to sign up for the promotion, after which I'll receive a small benefit if you use the link above.
By you, I mean... well whoever decides to take the time to read this blog.

If this is the first time you're reading my blog on WoW, I promise you it's usually some solid content on lore or my characters or random things going on in the World of Warcraft with my wife and me. But today, I encourage you all to click the link above and check out the website that Mountain Dew has set up to promote their new drinks.

You get to choose Horde or Alliance and then do some real life dailies that involve clicking on various videos and web pages to learn about the Game Fuel product. Everyone who signs up will be receiving an in game "Battle-Bot" that you can load up with fuel to fight I imagine. We'll see when it's put in the game.

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And then depending on how many tokens you earn, you'll get the chance to win some cool swag. Anyway, enough advertising. Check it out if you want, or ignore this if you like. I'm fine either way and will bring you a real warcraft post in the near future.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Life On The Other Side

Time for a little confession. I've been dabbling in playing Horde toons recently.

When I first played WoW I played several toons, Alliance and Horde to level 10 of various classes. I ended up picking Night Elf Hunter because of the class and just took off from there. Elionene was born and the rest is history so they say. But there were a lot of elements of the Horde characters that I enjoyed. I just never went back to experience them. Until now.

I always thought the Tauren were a cool race. The male toons in particular were just massive. Something that screamed Warrior! But I never did create a Tauren warrior since I played Alliance toons and such, and never felt like it was worth the time to go level a brand new toon from scratch. Well with the Death Knight option available now, I decided to roll a Tauren Death Knight. Very similar to a Warrior in terms of size and gear and such, but with a slightly darker concept. And so I created Ansam.

Ansam is a Tauren Death Knight, fresh out of the DK starter area. I plan to take him into Outland soon, but for now I'm just happy to have finished the DK experience with Ebon Hold. It was a lot of fun. The character concept is fairly mundane and simple, but sometimes I like basic origins. Ansam was once a simple farmer and herbalist from the plains of Mulgore. But the times and circumstance led him to battle for his people as a Warrior against the Centaur and other enemies. Unfortunately for Ansam, he was felled in a battle against the encroaching undead of the Lich King. But his prowess as a warrior did not go unnoticed and he was raised to serve as an unwilling slave to Arthas.

He will be Frost specced, and I plan to have him be a tank. The Frost is sort of a juxtaposition of where Ansam came from. Once a warm caring person who lived off the land and cultivated it to grow, now he is a cold and dark version of his former self. He remembers his past, but knows that he cannot go back to it. Now he is driven to fight against the forces that turned him into what he is, so that perhaps he can prevent it happening to anyone else.

Aside from Ansam, I've always been very intrigued with the story of the Forsaken. Humans turned into Scourge, but who have broken away from the Lich King's power by sheer will power. Now free, they still harbor resentment towards the Scourge and the "Living." Do all Forsaken hate the living though? Do any wish to return to be alive? Or at least to leave well enough alone? So I created an Undead Priest, named Taerv. He's level 10 now, which I've gotten to before on an undead priest, but this time I'm going to continue playing him a little at a time to see some of the Forsaken stories play out in the starter zones.

Last night right before I logged off, I walked into the Inn at Brill and found it to be fairly lively with people role playing. Someone was running the bar, and others were standing around talking. I sat by the fire and tried to warm my hands, but was unable to because I was dead. A blood elf nearby offered me a substance to warm me up, and I took it, and it gave me hallucinations of my family that I lost when the scourge overran our village.

All of this was of course made up on the spot random role playing. Something that I don't do often on my alliance characters because I'm so busy preparing for raids or running dailies. It was kind of nice to break away from the grind and just do something random and fun. It wasn't long drawn out role play, which I find tedious sometimes, but it was spontaneous and enjoyable.

Of the rest of the Horde races, I enjoy the orcs the most and created an Orc Warlock. I'd like to explore playing an Orc that still follows the ways of Gul'dan and doesn't believe that the Horde should go back to the old ways of Shamanism. For some reason, the trolls never interested me. I'm not sure if it's because we're already inundated with troll stuff in questing and dungeons or what. I did make a troll Shaman though. Not sure what her story will be. And of the Blood Elves, I liked what they did with them through BC and the Sunwell, but I've not had a huge interest in playing them. The race seems to be sort of stuck up and selfish as a whole, and I already play that somewhat into Elionene, though less selfish, and just more stuck up. I did create a Blood Elf Mage though. If anything, I'd play up the addiction to the magic and a mage is a great class to do that with.

I'm not completely switching over though. These horde toons are just a once in a while chance to explore some other characters. I still need to flesh out my main toons such as Salther and Khristin as well. All in good time.

Until then, have a good morning.

Friday, May 15, 2009

WoW, It's Been Awhile

Okay, so things have started to settle down. I'm employed full time again, woot! Lal is employed full time now too, double woot for making ends meet, but not so much for playing WoW. All the same we still get in quite a bit of play time. Her paladin, Yelyena is now in Outland and still making progress. Khristin is level 74 now, though leveling has slowed to a snail's pace since I started working again.

Elionene and Veritas have been raiding Ulduar for about a month now. We've cleared the Siege area and the Antechamber and 3/4 Keepers. Mimiron is on notice! I plan to write some lore posts on the bosses similar to what I did with Naxxramas to double post here and in our guild forums. I've missed writing, so I hope to get up some stories too. Elionene is long overdue, Salthier could use some more character background, and Khristin needs a story too. I'll try and fit Lal in there as well, with the player's permission of course. :D

Veritas has hit some rough times in that we aren't retaining many new members. We have a lot of veterans now who've been here for awhile, but ever since Wrath hit, it's been harder to find quality players that stick around and support the guild. It's apparently not just our guild either. Seems to be a thing that a lot of guilds across other servers are seeing as well. Hopefully it will get better.

I really want to get back on track keeping this blog updated and building a bit of a readership. If there's anything that interests anyone happening to read this, feel free to comment and I'll see what I can do. I'd love to be a little more interactive!

Until then, have a good morning!