Tuesday, September 23, 2008

WoW Update - 23 Sept 2008: Introducing Sei, A Raider's Interface

I'll be trying to make this blog a bit more friendly to people who aren't me over the course of the next few months. Posting about what I did and what I looted gets terribly boring after a while. I think I like posting screenshots, though, so expect more of those.

First up - a week and a half ago I started a new character, a Draenei hunter named Sei. I was intent on leveling her to 70 as quickly as possible, and indeed she's done quite well so far. As of yesterday, her eighth day of existence, she was at level 26, with nearly 26 hours in her /played. I'd have levelled her faster but I wanted to work on tradeskills as well. At the moment she has 135 Enchanting and 130 Jewelcrafting, helped along by generous donations of gold, gear and crafting materials from Avierra and Froufrou.

Introducing Sei

For her first pet, she has Mangeclaw, the white bear from Dun Morogh. I kind of like the white motif so I'm thinking of taming a white owl or thunderhawk for instancing or raiding. I also like traveling with a Hawk Owl I purchased in Darnassus - it's fun to see the bear and the owl running along behind me while I'm running around questing.

This is the first time I've had a hunter since my third character on Bleeding Hollow, Ungrinn, a dwarf hunter I created to level with Froufrou, then my wife's low-level rogue. I didn't get far on Ungrinn, but the experience left me very impressed with how quickly a hunter can level.

The other day, though, I found that I was running low on funds. In six days of play I had gone through nearly 200g for gear and trade materials, so I decided to make gold farming my first priority over leveling Sei. I'll be trying to get some game time on Sei over the course of the next two months, though.

Over the last few months, Malago's famous Asian Invasion has been creeping up the level ladder on Bloodhoof. My officemates Romola (human fire mage) and Hotohori (night elf cat druid), as well as Hotohori's RL boyfriend Jarvisius (human demonology warlock) are well over level 60 and are closing in on level 70. Not far behind them is Gabgab (gnome arcane mage), also an officemate of ours, who is currently in her mid-50s struggling through Un'goro Crater. We've been watching them with no small amount of excitement as we prepare for WotLK. At the moment there are five of us 70's on Asian time - Malago, Amihan, Damasso, myself, and Obispo (human destro warlock). We also have some guildmates on Australian time, which overlaps our regular play schedules by a couple of hours. We've got three more recruits with some distance to go - Thunderstick (draenei enh shammy), another officemate, in his early 30s, Muertas (human demo warlock), also an officemate, and Silverwisp (night elf hunter), a drinking buddy of mine, both in their mid-20s.

In the interest of showing off my new interface, allow me now to present a screenshot with comments on which addons I'm currently using. Not listed on the SS are Deadly Boss Mods which gives me boss timers, Auctioneer which gives me AH data and analyses, and GatherMate, which tracks mining nodes and treasure boxes for me. I also quest using BetterQuest and bless on Avierra using PallyPower.

Monday, September 15, 2008

WoW Update - 18 Sept 2008: Updates Coming... /sigh

I've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft without blogging about it. Generally life's been good, although our raiding has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. After a brief visit to Tempest Keep, GoV finds itself unable to down Magtheridon. As a result, any future sojourns to Tier 5 raid instances have been curtailed by the need to bring down the big, bad demon in Hellfire Peninsula.

We're still doing 5-mans when we can (they're rare now, though). Here's a screenie from our recent Shadow Labs run. We finally got Murmur down after around 8 or 9 wipes.


And here's Froufrou in Zul'Aman. Our ZA efforts have finally gotten better, we're able to down the first boss at least within the timer. Our attempt at the second boss came within a hair of the timer, but we ultimately wiped and had to take him down without any bonus loot.
Incidentally, this is the furthest Frou's ever gotten in ZA - to Hex Lord Malacrass. This run and the Kara run following this got her enough badges for her Tunic of the Dark Hour. Finally!


Lately, lag has gotten terrible - I blame the weird weather. Despite this, four of us managed to head to the Caverns of Time for our own Don Carlos' Famous Hat. We had ourselves a little dance party in Gadgetzan, and a Tauren Druid joined in the fun.