First Time In Naxx

Heroes went into Naxx last night and I was glad to be able to to tag along as Fury. I'd hadn't tried it out the spec before (I defnitely need to work on my dps set) and it was pretty fun. In any case we downed the first boss in the wing with the slime walk of doom, and the spider wing. I'm not sure what the wings name was but I do know I hate the slime walk of death with a passion. All those little harmless looking goopies just sliding side to side, and then BOOOM! You touch one, you dead. Apparently I was the only one stupid enough to die, but at least I set an example of what not to do :). The first boss was Patchwork and we killed him no prob, but damn does he have a lot of health! The second boss we tried was the creepy dude with the needle and after a couple attempts we decided to move onto another wing. The Spider wing was really awesome, definitely fun and not too hard really. I got some nice dps bracers in the process so that will really help my dps set. All in all it was a great first raid for me, besides my dps lol.

Sadness

Well today sucks. I found out that one of my really good friends is leaving Heroes Inc. I dunno, what else to say but, "this really sucks". She was one of the people i could really talk to and now I feel more out of the loop then ever, which is partially just me being disappointed that shes leaving. She will still be playing though, which is great so all hope is not lost!

On another note:

Last night I did my first heroic, was fun. Utgarde wasn't bad at all, although it made me realize that gearing up a second time will be just a frustrating as the first. After our success in Utgarde we decided to reform later on to tackle something else. We tried Gun'drak...and failed. The first boss completely fucked our group over, and at about 50% every time the snake man killed everyone . I can't help but blame my gear and if only i had some more 80 lvl pieces we would have been better off.

Wintergrasp is really fun, I enjoy the catapult vehicle the most hehe. Its tiny, fast and long range. I've almost maxed out Blacksmithing, and made my new shield. Now only 3 more frozen orbs till my new 1 hander! I have to say I'm pretty disappointed in Blacksmithing, the only things i need are the one hander and maybe the helmet. Otherwise my ZA gear still tops the charts stats wise. I'm honestly not sure what I should do, sacrifice my current gear for the new def rating stuff-stats aren't great on most of the def pieces. Anyways I'm rambling now, more to come later.

Last minute goals.

Well Wrath of the Lich King is only a couple more days away! I'm terribly excited, so much so it's affecting my real life lol. My friends think I'm obsessed, but who cares really? I will be treading through a traitorous new wilderness full of obstacles of great power and knowledge! My friends will be sitting at home doing no such thing. Therefore I win. :)


Goals-Last minute, it makes it better if I make a list...lol

1. Get as much gold as possible before Thursday. 4.6k left.
2. Finish leveling Fishing to 375 before Thursday.
3. Get more then 10 quests completed before Thursday.
4.Grind honor.


Woot I cannot wait to get my hands on WotLK. I've decided I'm going to be starting off in the Borean Tundra and move to the Howling Fjords then after that its any ones choice really. I know some people are hating the fact that we have to go back to leveling, but I absolutely cannot wait to have something other than dailys and BGs to do! Wooooot Nothrend here I come!

WotLK on the horizon.

With the patch closing in on everyone in less then 5 days, it beginning to make our blood boil with anticipation! I cannot wait to get a new freakin' haircut! Aleks will no longer have to hide his face behind a large piece of metal! Think of it as a remake to the classic The Man in the Iron Mask, except much more interesting :). Oh ya I almost forgot, the new talents! Now this is a big one, everyone talents are being refunded to implement the changes to the classes and talent trees. I'm a very excited about the Protection Tree, it looks polished enough and at 80 I hope it will really shine its brightest. And thank you Blizzard for actually moving Imp. Thunder clap to the protection tree haha, bought freakin' time! Im really hoping Heroes gets to venture into ZA to test out everyones abilities. It will definitely be a night of ," Whoa! WTF was that?" followed by many "lol's".

As I mentioned this patch pretty much marks a month before WotLK hits the stores, so thats only one more month I have to reach my precious gold goal for the new Traveler's Tundra Mammoth. I'm currently half way there, so I figure one more month of hardcore dailys should get me a decent amount. And then I have to worry about leveling 10 levels which will also yield precious moneyz, so all in all i think I'll have my new mammoth mount by Christmas! Mwahahah!

High Tide, High Tempers and the road to recovery.

Well this is purely a RL rant. From watching the news almost constantly it is profoundly clear that the after this Hurricane tempers are starting to flare. My prediction for the next week is utter chaos... literally.

Residents of the Island are not being allowed to enter their homes, obviously the city is unlivable-no water, sewage system, or electricity. So unless you have a lot of bottled water, don't have problems shitting in bag, and lots of candles then this doesn't apply to you. Anyways the city officials admit they made a mistake in allowing some people to view their homes yesterday with hardly any restriction.

Yesterday: The day starts off with the announcement that only emergency personal would be allowed on the island, then at 12 a 'look and leave' policy was accepted and a FLOOD of people from all over the South East TX area rushed to the island to see their homes. Effectively clogging up the only means of entry on the island, the causeway. So this line lasted well into the night and people were turned away eventually and told to come back at 6 am. Well... this is where the city majorly screwed itself. Stick to your plan and don't be flakey. Either tell people they can come or can't. Its that simple. Don't tell people to come and check on their homes and then cancel that decision halfway through. Much less tell them to come back the next morning when you decide to not allow people on the island indefinitely. This undoubtedly angered an already frustrated group of thousands.

However, during a disaster of this magnitude no one can expect the city, county, state, or federal government to automatically poop out a solution of perfection. Frankly I believe they are doing all they can do, but the line of communication is definitely broken. People all over the news are saying one thing, then its canceled by another official and hour later. So I blame the media!

Today: Tempers are running on an all time high. The seemingly organized, and hopeful county press conferences have turned into a yelling match fueled by heated debates over the policies of the city and the way they are dealing with the problem of allowing citizens to return. I was shocked and disappointed to see how low people can sink. Arguing whose right and whose wrong doesn't matter at all and gets us no where. After all the Hurricane wasn't the city's fault and a lot of people are searching for someone to blame for their losses. Who better then the 'officials' who are now dictating the place where they used to call home?

I feel VERY uneasy about the future week or so. If this continues in it's current direction I can picture a flood of angered, irrational Galvestonians pushing their way through the police barricades and flooding the city turning it into a pit of utter chaos. Honestly i doubt that would happen, but they way people are acting I wouldn't be that surprised. What I am worried about is lodging. When questioned, city officials say FEMA will pay for every ones hotel for a month for the people of Galveston, since no one is allowed to their homes. However, once you go to the FEMA website and look at the list of hotels for TX, most DO NOT allow pets and are ALL booked. Out of the places I called, i didn't speak to one real person. The repetitive message I kept hearing was, "All rooms are occupied by rescue officials, indefinitely."

Sooooooooooooo where exactly are people without a home supposed to go if a shelter is not an option(most are already full). Especially all those people who left their hotels to see their homes, spent hours in line, and were turned away without any consideration? It just seems like so many people are falling through the cracks.

I realize that everyone who is working on picking up the pieces is probably doing their best. However, you can't evacuate 57, 000 people, tell them that they can come home to assess damages, turn them away and expect them to all find a place to stay. Like I said earlier, communication is the biggest problem and if everything was clearly defined there would be less of a problem in my eyes. At least people would know what was going on. Although I don't think any one person knows the whole story...

Granted this is only the problem with Galveston, where I live. I'm not even sure I can process the other problems that are running rampant at the moment in Houston, and surrounding areas. Currently 1.5 million people are still without power, however water is returning to places in Houston. I think...

A fresh start... well kinda.

Lol...ya soo I'm dumb.

Aleks will just have to keep his helmet on until the Barbershops open up. And then!!!! Oh my !!! The beauty will be released unto the world !!!!!

The re-roll would have been great, but shitty without everyone in Heroes. Time to get back to dailys and save up for my pimp'n new haircut. I'll be first in line bitches!!!!!!!

Doh!...dumb humans.

Well these last couple days have been filled with yes/no battling it out inside my brain. Should I leave the best guild I've come across to switch factions and start completely over, with little to no friends and hope I find something worthwhile? Or should I stop being a whiny baby, suck it up and stay on the Alliance side?

Well... honestly my biggest issue is how my character looks. I mean BGs suck, and ppl tend to be stupid on AoS but that doesn't bother me as much since the people I tend to associate with(Heroes Inc) aren't those things. But...unfortunately Blizzard has yet to offer support to those few players who fucked up early on and now hate their choices. Time Machine, yes please! Wheres my race change option?!!!! I'll pay 25 bucks to do it! I promise!

Anyways here's my main problem in short:
Humans look fucking stupid... give me Blizzards animation technology and I would be able to produce a better looking model<--guaranteed... Hell I think a fucking chimpanzee could do it. The nose is too bulbous, the jaw line is messed up. I don't even know where to begin with the mouth... I mean? I'm not a fucking blue whale, it doesn't have to be that big... And...oh wait, the whole face looks fucking retarded!!!!!!!! Solution?!?!?!?!!?!?: Anyways in my hectic mental battle I came across the idea to level another Alliance warrior on AoS... this would solve the problem of being Human. I would roll a Draenai Warrior named HumansrUgly. Well j/k about the name, but it would be funny no? My biggest concern is how the people in Heroes would feel about it, I mean... I'd still have all my gold, but the gear everyone worked so hard to get for me as a tank would be wasted... Then again if I up and left for Horde it would be just as wasted. I dunno....I wanna stay with Heroes really bad, I just wish I hadn't made the mistake of picking up Aleks and not rolling a Draenai with Wichita and Brambles when we x-ferred back to AoS a year and a half ago. This calls for a true Simpson, "DOH!!!!"

If anyone happens to read this, put in some feedback. I want to know if this re rolling another warrior thing is viable or would just piss everyone off to no end?


Update: I've decided to reroll a Draenai Warrior named Jipsi. Leveling him will be no problem and I hope this will fix the problems I have with the way Aleks looked. The thing that kept me from going Horde was the fact that the people in Heroes Inc are just too awesome. Like sparkletastic awesome...lol. Well I better get to leveling my new warrior. Factions are going to suck, but at least I have alllllll my precious gold. I'll probably use Aleks as a Mine/Blacksmith bitch and level jewlcrafting/egineering on Jipsi.

Interesting question.

Well an interesting question has been brought to my attention, which to tell you the truth has been looming there for quite some time. Horde or Alliance?! They have their major differences, that is for sure. I've been both factions for quite some time and I originally started my first year of playing WoW as Horde, bouncing around different servers finding my class and play style. I eventually settled for Alliance because I found a great group of people which I stuck with for some time, until we went our separate ways and soon after I joined Heroes Inc. I've just been kind of sitting on the Alliance side since then. The people I have found on AoS have been absolutely great and its really the only thing keeping me on that side. I believe I've said it before, if Heroes Inc disbanded I would reroll horde for sure. Anyways I'm always thinking about how it would be to be on the Horde side and I'd like to make a personal pro/cons list of the factions. These are just the things I don't particularly like about my characters individually and the Alliance on AoS.

Alliance Pros-
Great guild
Being the underdog
"pretty" races

Alliance cons-
Lack of Cooperation in BGs
Ugly Male Human characters
General Player Attitude(mainly in BG)

Horde Pros-
Better looking races
better BGs
Depending on server-Better progression
The right to say your 'evil'.

Horde Cons-
New server, having to level all over


I have to cut this post short in the event of keeping my life from the grasp of my parental unit!

Real Life returns!

Well today was the first day of the end of summer..such a sad thing it is. My class line up consists of American Literature, Ceramics, Cultural Anthropology and Federal Government. Not too bad really, its enough hours with a part time job in my opinion. I'm kind of glad that WotLK isn't out just yet, because I know I wouldn't be able to enjoy it as much as I would like too. This post is just really in memoriam to the deceased Summer '08. But hopefully this semester wont be too bad! YAY LEARNING!










Aleks is critically hit by Knowledge.
Aleks dies.

Stuff, Stuff, and more Stuff

Well WoW has been pretty slow lately, and I know that everyone feels pretty much the same way. We all want the expansion to arrive A.S.A.P, but until then i have pretty much focused my WoW time on BGs and dailys. I want at least 10k gold before the Expansion. I'm hearing all sorts of expensive things will be available when Nothrend opens up. I've heard of a couple things, but I really hope that Bliz is able to surprise me.

On another note, I've pretty much dumped my druid. She was awesome, and I had fun playing her for a good while. But arenas really made me hate being the healer, I realize I could respec her to a dps balance spec, which would work great for WotLK, but I really haven't decided her fate yet to be completely honest.

Oh I almost forgot, in the 4 weeks I haven't posted, I've always FINALLY leveled up Blacksmithing to 370 currently. I figured I could mine all my mats since I'm not in a hurry to level it. So far so good, I've got a lovely little circle in Nagrand as well as Blades Edge and Hellfire that makes it pretty easy to get what I need in a reasonable amount of time.
Blacksmithing in WotLK seems to have moderately improved. I'm really exicted that Blacksmiths will be able to add sockets to certain items gloves and bracers I think. Which will be awesome!


There are a lot of BS pieces that seem would fit a Prot or Arms/Fury Warrior, so I'm happy about that. On top of that Blacksmithers will be able to make shields! yay! It better look fucking cool though, cause I just know those mats will be a bitch. I hope the expansion comes out sooner then everyone expects, but I still think it will be November sometime.

Secret Blogging

Some how fate has allowed me Internet access for a brief moment while my good friend is out at some comedy club for an hour and left her laptop in my hands!!

It saddens me to say that I'm away from WoW until Tuesday the 22nd, its been a little over a week since I last logged on and I am dreaming of smashing some nasty little 5 year olds in BGs. In any case I've been really thinking about the expansion and what it will bring for Aleks. I've been protection spec'd for at least a year and just recently started respec'ing about 3-5 times a week for BGs and raiding. Its going really well and I am really excited about getting Aleks geared with those sexy purple BG pieces. After all how could I expect to level effectively to 80 with less than mediocre DPS gear, so BGs were the natural answer. Anyways I've also been thinking about what I will do once Aleks gets to 80 and goes back to a steady protection build. I have my druid alt, Alaszune, who is spec'd resto for Arenas. I feel a bit constricted with my druid since arenas seems to be the only thing I enjoy doing on that toon. I just can't picture healing a raid or a 5 man for that matter especially when I'm used to having my face deep in the monsters crotch. That sounded dirty and it made me giggle...

Anyways a couple months ago I picked up leveling a warlock secretly, it brought me back to my days as horde when I was in a small guild known as The Blessed Empire(which started on Altar of Storms and moved about 3-4 servers until we ended back on AoS and finally dissolved). I think Wichita and his brother are the only ones that would remember that crazy horde adventure we took and where I leveled a lock up to 64 and then faced the decision to move servers with the guild once again. Beware here comes the sappy Shakespearean bit. I felt a deep void in my heart ever since I left that little booty shaking' orc warlock behind and have wanted a 70 warlock ever since. So this brings me to the question... should I try and level that warlock to 70 for the expansion or just forget about it and focus on my Warrior and Druid... I know some people can manage more then 2 toons, but I tend to focus in on one character and only use the second when I need a change of scenery. Hence Aleks for PvE/PvP and Alaszune for Arenas only. I can't really see where that warlock would fit in... at all. I guess time is the only answer...

Time to build a time machine.

Drop the shield, pick up a huge massive crazy looking axe that kills people!

So I've decided to do some major PvP, Aleks needs some PvP gear badly. I started out by researching some fury specs and went with the cookie cutter PvP build, however I think today I will try out the Arms tree. PvP is pretty enjoyable, I just target the squishies and most of the time they die. Running a that sweet PvP group last night with Wichita, Daro, Blue, Des was awesome. I racked up about 4k and nice marks from our runs. Although I always get smacked around by those damn elemental shamans with that chain lightning! Ouch!

Once I get my resilience up from its depressing 148, I'll be able to take some hits and hopefully dish some out as well. I know most Arms warriors use the 2handed sword but like a noob I always have had a soft spot for pole arms. So hopefully today I'll finally get to use that Glaive of the Pit that dropped from Mag Fire Crotch. Any who this is going to be a fairly short entry, I should go check the World of Warcrack realm status page to see if I can start PvPing woot woot.

Down a familiar road...

Well I hate to say it, but I seem to be getting quite burned out while playing WoW, more specifically my warrior. Not sure the reason, although I know part of the problem is complete and utter boredom whenever I log on. I'm not sure if this burn out is directed at WoW in general or just that character, I have yet to really figure that out. In any case I'm trying to take a break and distance myself from the game in some ways to possibly renew that lost spark I had a couple months ago. I'm hoping this is just a sort of 'dry spell' which everyone seems to be going through.

Since the expansion is still months away a lot of people I know on AoS have stopped playing for now only to rejoin when the expansion hits, but I dont think I'd be able to just stop playing until then. Knowing that I could be doing professions, raising moneyzzzz, killing critters and all that jazz within that gap between now and WotLK. I dont really know though, its all up right now.

HELP ME DR. PHIL! Whats wrong with me!?

Completely dumb

So I feel absolutely dumb about my performance last night. The night started out like a normal night on WoW. I was doing all the Shattered Sun dailies and somewhere between the bombing runs and turning in some quests I completely passed out. I'm talking about completely slumped over my laptop, passed out. Not a big deal you say? Well it wouldn't have been a problem normally but the fact that I had promised Wichita to run some heroic Magister's an hour before. I'm not sure what happened because the last thing i remember is running to one of the buildings, but there's no doubt that I caused some frustration. So in short I feel extremely stupid and I hope there aren't any ill feelings toward this jet lagged warrior. I definitely owe some guildies now. I'm not even sure who was in the group since I passed out before it was formed, but I'd like to apologize to them all. Hopefully it was more humorous then anything. I'm sure my toon just sat there for a couple hours, because when i woke up at 3 am I was already disconnected. I plan on taking some naps and drinking coffee tonight and hopefully I wont embarrass myself again.

Hope for the best

With my vacation coming to a close, only a 2 days left, I've had a lot of extra time to browse the Heroes Inc forums among other WoW related articles. I've been thinking a lot about the expansion and the issues that it might cause the guild. Some of those are sparsely being talked about now but I'm afraid that might get worse as the expansion gets closer. Granted this is all coming from a perspective which has no access to the in game side and only to blogs and forums, so I could be completely wrong in me saying there might be issues. There could be no real problem, it all comes off a little more harsh in text after all. Anyways I really do hope for the best. Heroes is the best guild I've been in as far as progression goes and while former members might disagree; I haven't experienced anything beyond what we've accomplished. So it's all wonderful coming from my eyes. Hell if Heroes splits up completely I'll go back to being an orc ;P.

It seems that the raiding night is set on Wednesday now, which is fine for me. However, I was really looking forward to continuing 25 mans. I know it was an extremely tedious process for the guild admin to put together those groups, plus we almost never had a full 25, which hinders our over all chances for success. But I loved them just the same, perhaps I'll take Ferth's suggestion and put together a daring group of heroes to kill Gruul the potty pusher or Mag fire crotch. BTW those are my names for Gruul and Magtheridon. Here are the reasons why:

Gruul the Potty Pusher- When tanking a boss you always get a nice view of their crotch, feet and muscly legs. When tanking Gruul he often casts cave in and from my view the big brown boulders fall right between his legs giving the impression that well...he is pushing some potty. Another reason for this name is because before the pull Gruul definitiely looks like he is having some trouble getting those brown boulders out. A little immature I know, but these are for my enjoyment only :P.

Magtheridon Fire Crotch- Pretty simple, all I see is flames and big lizard crotch.

ANYWAYS back to the subject of raiding and such. Like I said I loved 25 mans, more so then anything I've seen in the game so far. I guess it's because they're all new to me and the mechanics are more challenging then most 10 mans. Although Zul'Aman is definitely a kicker, and it's pretty high on my list of my favorites instances. The problem I have with leading groups is that I'm often too quite(which I am trying to fix by screaming at inanimate objects daily) and tend to be too nice or not as aggressive as a leader should be in order to push his/her group forward. I know some of you are saying, "What the hell are you a warrior for? Much less a tanking spec'd one?" Well my answer to that is that I don't think you need to have an aggressive attitude to be a tank. Yes, you need to be aggressive in picking up mobs, knowing who is controlling what, whose the most likely to steal aggro(Ferth) and any many other details, but that doesn't include being aggressive in terms of the way I act on vent. I guess everyone has their own ways of doing things but I've definitely heard some very aggressive tanks on vent in a couple Horde guilds I was in long ago. Yelling and screaming, lots of swearing, and the like. It might have gotten the job done, but I'm sure someone other than me just wanted to let the tank crash burn with no heals or any support. In any case hopefully I'll get my foot in the door and start being more assertive.

Meat shield...with spikes?

First off here is a little rant about stress!!! The real post is below that.

Stress is preceived as something unwanted and unneccesary. However, before I begin my rant about WoW I'd like to state how I feel about stress(at least the kind stemming from things your passionate about). The reason behind this paragraph being that I see a lot of people getting so stressed out about things they love to do and the end result being quitting all together. Being an artist I often experience the feeling of stress whenever a sketch doesn't come out exactly how I'd like it, or when the ceramic piece just happens to blow up into a million bits. In any case that stress is normal, and acts like the rising action within a novel. In this case the novel is life(what a big ass book) and the rising action is meant to make us anxious(and sometimes furious) about what is to come. So how in the hell does this relate to anything? Well in the passed couple months, before I took a much needed vacation, I was experiencing just this. Lets just say the chapters in my book consisted of too much 'rising action'. So here I am now about to return home from my vacation, to the place where stress seems to run rampant within the things I love as well as the things I strongly dislike. I would just like to remind myself that stress is just like anything else, if you think of it negatively then its impact will be just the same. However, if you think of stress as a sort of bump in the road, rather then a wall, then it's much easier to get around.

--Meat Shield with SPIKES! OUCH!--

Okay anyways! Something I love very much consists of swords, shiny plate, and crude jokes such as, "Cover for me! I gotta wiz behind a tree!" This would be gaming. More specifically WoW or World of Warcraft. Currently the captivator of millions of people world wide. Some social specialist in a fancy office may say that this is one of many addictions that hinder young people today, but how can I be sure he wasn't paid off by the Horde?

At any rate I love playing WoW and my love for it mainly stems from the fact that I'm an artist and after all WoW is full of pretty colors. That may not be the full reason, but it definitely helps! Being a tank in WoW is nothing easy, just the same as any other class out there, Im sure. And if I may say so it's an extremely rewarding class if accompanied with the right group of gamers coupled with the right classes. In addition Tanks seems to be in urgent need, and with the upcoming expansion the introduction of the Death Knight will possibly lessen that need.

However, as a Protection Warrior the integration of the Death Knight, which is said to be a sort of dps tank doesn't reflect to well with me. One of the many concerns I have is that the warrior class will be pushed the back of the bus so to speak. Specifically the Protection Warrior. After all if a Death Knight can tank as well as do decent damage then why not have 4 Death Knights fighting for aggro on a boss rather then a prot warrior who has minimal damage but takes damage very well? I also realize that some fights call for a prot warrior specifically, however I feel that people will find alternate ways around this.

I have some faith that Blizzard will try to maintain the balance between damage taking and damage making although I can just see the problem to come if they over look this issue. Protection Warriors are the meatshield of WoW, nothing more. If you introduce a meat shield with spikes whose going to need the former? Perhaps this is just me thinking of the worst case scenario, but I guess we wont know for sure until the The Wrath of the Lich King is realeased!