Wednesday 29 December 2010

Know where to run

IRL
Yes, it's an Orbital tune, but what a blinder it is too. It also seques in nicely to my Archaeology post in the WoW section. Christmas is over, unless you work for Epic Fail and National Disgrace, as they're still running a revised schedule meaning a somewhat Spartan one (without the 300 sausagefest or the activity for that matter) so I'm on my train in after the Chrimbo break. It's dragging it's fat bleeding jacksie along like it's not sure whether hiding or flight is the best way to survive. Anyhoo, Christmas was a blast, my Mum and Dad came back from France, and had some quality time with my son, and the rest of us. It was brilliant. Sort-of Mother-in-law, or SMiL for short, was on good form. All in all, best Christmas yet. Daniel got spoiled rotten, surprise!, but was a pretty good boy.

WoW
It's been fairly intense this holiday period, I've been driven to get my Worgen Druid to 60 and the much cheaper flight form. So cheap, in fact, I bought flight master's license and can now fly in Azeroth and Outland. Which is brilliant for Archaeology, I have taken this new profession and am literally running with it. It's been awesome, but so far I've been turning up rubbish. Like all professions this should change as I progress. I'll look it up when I can get to proper Internet. I'm on my iPhone but this might be more to do with T-Mobile's patchy at best 3G coverage of my train route. Believe me, 'patchy at best' is me being generous, and polite. Anyway, back off me soapbox, back to the topic at hand: archaeology. The title is linked to this by the little shovels you see on the map. These shovels and my beloved Carbonite add-on mean I can place a 'Goto' on the site and fly there. I discovered one thing though, the dwarf keystones sell for about 80G on my server, I kept two and auctioned two, so that's another 160G my Druid has for training and gear. Niiiiice! Loving the flight form. To be able to swoop down and skin carcasses without aggroing the local fauna is awesome.

In other news my Frost Mage is now my auction bunny, and has made hundreds of gold buying cheap items and selling them again at more acceptable prices. Throw in the suddenly very valuable leather, stone and ores she sells and you get the idea. These are gathered by Gwyllt, my new Worgen Druid, so everyone's a winner! I did this using tips from Zuggy's Dominate WoW gold and suggest you could do a lot worse than to look at his guides.

Remember - if you came here looking for gold tips, then I have a hand full, but get them 'from the horse's mouth' -See Zuggy's guide to making your own gold. Follow his link on the right to buy his guide-->

Wednesday 22 December 2010

I'm sorry

IRL
Dear readers, I'm sorry I have been neglecting you. The Christmas thing, Cataclysm dropping and work commitments, fitting in quality blogging has been tricky, line this up with my iPhone blogging app wiping every time I take a phone call, which is the icing on the cake as the train ride to and from work is the only real time I get to think and write. Meh!

Woooooooooow!
Yep, I rolled a Worgen. Those who know me well were not asking if I would roll one or would it be from day one but simply which kind. I went with my one major gap in my line up, bear tank. Or is it fat bottomed dog now? Hmmm... Anyway, Gwyllt (Welsh for feral) is an absolute blast. I level as a cat and instance as a bear. We pugged the newly revamped main gates Stratholme last night, all went smoothly. Got some nice boots and a nice cloak into the bargain and completed all the quests given to me at the front gate. Looking forward to hitting 58 and loading myself up with the crafted sets for casters and rogues as my bear tank is also specced as Resto because Dual spec is 30 not 1K gold.

One day fast flight will be cheap too. One day.....

I did have a quick stab at taking my ickle 'lock to Vash'jir, whilst fun, it will be better once I can use my manatee torpedo of death.

Also, big shout out to bigbearbutt for helping me understand the concept of bear tanking, which would explain why I was such a singular failure at it before doing my research.

Which brings me onto my next point, there is loads of info out there, although thottbot has been shitcanned, more's the pity, the database search tool in Thottbot was intuitive, the wowhead one is not. Wowhead's info is good, but the search tool should be resurrected from the Thottbot site, but with the gloss of the wowhead site. Best of both worlds.

Anyway, keep an eye out in January for another Zuggy blog carnival, and of course, please go and buy his brilliant gold guide ( see link on the right --> )

Have a lovely Christmas or Winter Solstice and I'll see you soon.

Sunday 12 December 2010

Coming up for air

IRL
Chores. Meh! I know they need doing, but didn't Blizzard think of this when they released Cataclysm only a handful of weeks before Christmas? Oh well, most gamers will be happily missed by their families, but when you're the Beta male to and Alpha female in the pack, what do you do? The simple answer is you do what she asks of you, of course, it's the group dynamic and it works in all our favours. This is a problem when you're trying to level a Worgen Druid to 85. I hope to have him raid ready for Christmas day, when it's the least likely time I'll get him out to play, of course.

Weather, that great British obsession. When other country's public transport is as vulnerable to minor changes in weather as ours, we'll watch other countries get twitchy about it too. The temperature plummeted and it snowed for a couple of days. The snow has now gone, but it's been fairly hard work not knowing if you'll get to work and again if you'll get home afterwards. It fair puts a dampener on your day. The trains basically went to hell in a hand basket. The roads were terrible, and due to fear of litigation, they don't grit the pavements. (For those across the pond, they grit the road and not the sidewalks) This is because if you slip on a gritted section, the council are liable. So people walked in the roads instead. /facepalm

I wrote a delightful and pithy diatribe on the subject and then the phone rang, wiping my iPhone's blog entry. Witty and pithy became blank, and sarcastic me became seriously narked me.

WoW
Wow! I love my Worgen Druid. I went Feral on the name and the role. Gwyllt means wild or feral in Welsh, which is appropriate due to my heritage and him being a druid. Also, decked him out in Heirloom leather from my rogue and the balanced heartseeker and he's good to go. So far, he's 27 and has done the new SFK and DM, he has his first lot of Glyphs, and once he gets to 30 I'll dual spec him as either Feral/Resto or Feral/Balance.

He's been highly enjoyable and playable, apart from one thing - rested. He never seems to show a blue bar apart from the first 10 minutes I use him. Meh! However this does point to the fact I've used him non stop for 4 days - lol

Zuggy's Dominate WoW gold
I've had a good look through the guide, and I must say I'm impressed. He explains simple principles in a clear manner, no patronising, and clearly stated. This is refreshing. Head on over now and pick up a copy. At the time of release, there were still some discounted copies available.

As per usual, you can click on the picture below to go to the brilliant Zuggy's WoW Domiate Gold to get a copy of his great guide.

Wednesday 8 December 2010

Cataclysm: Day 1

WoW
The first day of swimming around Vashj'ir is over. Got the seahorse, all the flight paths, explored the area, got a little freaked out by the things down there (The Whale Shark being one of them. I have always feared large bodies of water and the sensation transfers to Vashj'ir. This says a lot about the immersive quality of the place.) but generally loved it. The scenery is pretty, but still WoW familiar. Was surprised to see undead vrykul chaps wandering around, but I suppose the Naga have competition there then.

The giant limpet creatures were a little unnerving, especially as I thought they were Old Gods.

Got the Making History Achievement for the guild last night. Looking forward to grinding the guild up to Level 5. More to follow

Monday 6 December 2010

Cer Cer cold



IRL
Iesu Grist it's cold. I love cold, but when my toecaps are still frozen 20 minutes after I get on the train, then we've cruised past my comfort zone into the 'holy crap' section

What adds insult to injury is that the boiler's not running the heating, again. We have hot water, but no heating.

It's not all doom and gloom, had a brilliant day out with Charlie, boy free, at the 'Taste of Christmas' show on Sunday. We have chocolate wine! It tastes as good as it sounds. There was also a dazzling array of spicy things, many of which I bought. Charlie got to see her 'other man', a man who, thankfully, never heeded warnings about playing with food - Heston Blumenthal. What a nice chap. Not as tall as I imagined, but I want that blue velvet jacket - damn I hate being broke all the time.

WoW
On the subject of food - I'm loving the new cooking and fishing dailies, and can't wait for the full gamut of Cataclysm gold. Why can't we involve alchemists in our food quests, then we could capture some of the Blumenthal spirit.

Blizzard, if you're listening, why don't all professions have dailies? Tailoring clothes for the king and prince could be valid Alliance tailoring quests. Making swords for the front line, or parts for a submarine, or fertiliser for Nordrassil could be feasible for blacksmithing, engineering, or alchemy respectively.

I'm going to buy one of Zuggy's gold guide for two very good reasons: firstly, I should be able to recommend what I'm selling; secondly, I could use the help with accruing gold, and it would appear this guy's an expert in this field. I'll feedback more about them once I know. What I do know is 10 alts need a lot of gold-related love.

My huntard is progressing up 71 nicely, looking forward to later on when the choice of dungeons will be better.

Only mere hours to Cataclysm, hoping my collector's box will arrive today.

Have fun, but watch out for ice on the pavements

Thursday 2 December 2010

Come get yer gold!

WoW and IRL
Due to an offer I can't refuse (No, I'm not in FIFA) I'm going to be placing a link to Dominate WoW gold (As brought to you by the brilliant Zuggy) and acting as his affiliate.

Please (feel free to) buy his gold guide!


Bored with now

IRL
As the regular calendar year winds down to massive shopping, organising feeding the fifty thousand (My family, my sister's family and Charlie's family all around one table) and close, I'm wandering what's left to do. With Charlie being pregnant, we're both very much looking forward to May, with my job changing in March I'm looking forward to that, and with the Cataclysm launch I'm looking forward to next Tuesday. This however leaves me in a vacuum. I'm looking forward to, counting down the days to, etc etc. Nothing seems to be happening now. Yes I have the weekend, a Saturday without the boy (Over at his Nan's) and a trip to Taste Of Christmas.

I just really want Cataclysm to come quicker, and I'm nervous that Amazon won't deliver to my building on the 7th due to snow, or a credit card screw up or something.

WoW
Really just logging on and tooling around. I rolled a Troll Druid last night, and I must say the experience was....alright. The starter zone was more polished than the old Troll and Orc crater. There is always going to be one issue here though, I'm not Horde. I like their moxy, their logo is superior, they have the most varied members and complex politics. However I'm not feeling it. I'm all about the more stable, and yes a bit duller, Alliance. Largely this is because I like playing Gnomes, Dwarves and Night Elves. Even humans are fun! I don't like the Forsaken, Orcs strike me as two dimensional, Trolls feel like a caricature, and Blood Elves feel like a cheesy slice of Manga. Taurens I do like, I have time for a race with Shammies, Pallies, Druids and Hunters in, and I like their generally less stupidly warlike stance. This could also explain why I dislike Wrynn the Chin. Vengeance blows, it eats away at your soul, and in the case of most of the Horde (Except the Tauren) and the Alliance's current leader, it eats your credibility with me. I'm probably not alone here.

I'm hoping the Human King can start acting more like a real King, warfare follows failed diplomacy, and so you try to avoid failing the diplomacy part. As a boy groomed in statecraft and swordsmanship you would expect the man to not just get angry and get his people killed engaging in foolhardy jingoism to cover for a personal vendetta against Orcs. I notice in the post cataclysm Azeroth there seems to be more visible clashes between the Horde and the Alliance. I know with the change of leadership, there could be a different attitude prevalent in the Horde, or just more of the same one I dislike.

We will soon see. See you next Tuesday