Help a Noob day! October the 2nd 2010

WoW
Finally tested the new AMD X6 rig properly, went through Old Strat, clocked 59 degrees on the GPU, and I'm told this is OK, but I can't shake the smell of melting plastic, so further tests are required. On another note, levelling Jimbelle, my 'lock next.

Help a Noob day, 2nd of October. Saw this on ZUG gaming, and am quite keen to endorse this. When I first started, my new shiny Nelf Huntard. I couldn't tell my arse from a hole in the ground, wow-wise. Luckily a very nice hunter called Brunhilda took me on a tour of Azeroth, where I levelled quickly and got an understanding of playing WoW far sharper in that day than I had in a week of wandering around Teldrassil like a fart in a breeze. I was level 10 and in Gadgetzan, FFS. Brunhilda of Moonglade, wherever you are, thank you, and because of that I'll give people boosts and stuff, and pass on my 5 years of accumulated knowledge, which I never would have got without your help.

(I)Travel to level. It's not tricky, just takes a little bravery, and hey, it's not like you can permanently die! (FYI - Never played a Hordie, so no idea what they do for this type of thing)
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1. eg. If you start in the Nelf area, run to Darnassus, through the portal thingy, grab the Flight Path (Get these whenever you can) get the boat to Darkshore
2. Get a boat to Azuremyst, have a wander around the Exodar (The Dranny City) get back out, grab the Flight path, get the boat back to Darkshore, grab the flight path, come back out to the boats, find the one to Stormwind, go there. Get the flight path
3. At Stormwind, go to the tram (It's in the dwarf section) get the tram to Ironforge.
4. By now you should be at least level 5. If you're feeling really brave*, run east out of Dun Morogh (Get the flight path, see a pattern here?), north through Loch Modan, north and then west through Wetlands, and get to Menethil Harbour. Get the...? yep, flight path.
5. Then get on the boat to Theramore. Get the Flight path, (FP is an often used acronym) Swim all the way north to Ratchet (Get some water walking potions if you can) FP, etc etc. Then get the boat to Stranglethorne (Booty Bay). Once you have the FP there, you should be able to fly back to Stormwind.
6. Go back to Ironforge through flight paths and the tram (It's free), fly to Menethil again, and swim pretty much directly north to Southshore.
7. From there, run west and then north up to Silverpine Forest and Tirisfal Glades (And come Cataclysm you can visit the Worgen start zone).
8. Once you've done that, go back to each of the starting areas and do all the starter quests. By now they should be easy, and you'll get loads of rep with the home factions (useful when you do the Argent Tournament much later) and because of your efforts, you can visit all sorts of places if you get bored doing starter quest chains.

(II)Also, get the Carbonite add-on (like GPS for quests, because you WILL get lost) and grab every quest in a given area, they tend to cross over saving you time and effort for later.

(III) Be polite, others may not be, but these early days shape your experience of WoW, and you'll get out what you put in.

Bognor Regis - It's actually quite nice

IRL
Coming to you live from a challet in Butlins, Bognor Regis, it's....well, me!

Yes, I'm on holiday with the chief, the boy and the Sortof-Mother in Law (SMiL)

I come from a background taught to sneer at Butlins, mainly because my Mum aspired to leave the social bracket that has kept it in business for so many years (And drag my Dad along for the ride) I, however am here, and enjoying it thoroughly. It has entertained my son and the chief for over a day. I sang Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus at Karaoke last night, and went out for a pint, due to SMiL's presence as baby sitter. We're all here due to a very generous moment from SMiL paying for the whole affair, which is great what with my 3 year wage freeze and everything else going up in spite of it.

The other thing that is going up is my estimation of the SMiL. This is a hard-won battle with me. She still can't park. She still puts her 3 hectare handbag in the narrowest section of my hallway. She is still prone to potentially life threatening outburst (Criticising a large chap with some sort of cage-fighter logo on his huge chest about his parenting skills, when I'm obviously the bloke (And therefore duty bound to defend her) in her group. It's part of her charm (Keep saying it over and over and it becomes true) - Just kidding, she's been good to the clan since Mum and Dad can't be about, what with being in a foreign country and all that. Anyway, enough blowing smoke up her ass, the holiday is great so far. I have a gut full of salty pretzels and a couple of cold Heinekens, and have no work burdens, the Chief and the SMiL are out having a mother-daughter drinky, the boy is asleep and snoring lightly. Life is sweet!

WoW
Due to having to rely on an OK laptop, and a pesh-poor 3G dongle. I'm doing the 3 Kalu'ak Dailies only this week. lame, but the bandwidth blows. Live long and prosper, but still do a week in Butlins.

Meh!

IRL
New games rig!! Hoorah! Trying for another child! Hoorah! Kick-Ass DVD! hoorah! (Loved it!) Olecranon Bursitis! not so good :( I had no idea what it was either. Turns out it's an infected elbow tip. I'll tell you what I do know though, it hurts like feck! And no, I can't put my left elbow on the desk.

WoW:
Hit a bit of an impasse, did the tournament thing, got Northrend Dungeonmaster, got exalted with everyone except Kalu'ak and yes, looks like I'll be fishing this Saturday, and the Ashen Verdict. The latter though is due to not really being geared for ICC yet, never did Ulduar or Naxx, so kinda 'legacy un-geared' however this does make me a bit of a chicken. The other downside is every time I get to roll on a decent bit of tank gear, someone else wins it. I still have my Red Sword of Courage and my Titansteel Shield Wall from back in the day I decided to go tank.

I'm really looking forward to the expansion now. I have the hardware to run it (Phenom II X6!!! ATI HD 4750GS!) and I copied WoW to it last night. Once I've checked I'm not melting cables on the GPU heat pipe, I'll fire it up and crank all the video settings :D

See you out there

:)

Lethergy and Justin Bieber

IRL:
It turns out Justin Beiber can perform a great track. Unsurprisingly, it requires a lot of production. Click the link for a classic stoner tune.

I seem to have been infected with some sort of OpenSource parasite. Suddenly I'm installing 'X'Buntu on everything (Substitute X with your Ubuntu derivative of choice) and I have to say, so far so good. This means I've spent very little time on WoW

WoW:
Apart from running the weekly last week (Lord Marrowgar must die) and finally breaking Marrowgar, Deathwhisper and then lootship, I've been mainly away from WoW of late. However, did finally start sorting my gear out, the latest decent addition being Breastplate of the White Knight. The gems suck at the moment, but more to follow on that score :)

SO looking forward to cataclysm. Judging by the mood I'm perceiving on the server, so's everyone else. When are they going to announce the relase date and collector's edition?

Ich bin eine Panzer!!

WoW:
I am a tank, and it rules!! - I recently rerolled (Rick rolled?) my ret pally
I am loving being a tank. 5 second random waits are a special favourite. It's a tough learning curve, and I had trouble with crap gear to start with. This meant I took a lot of abuse, especially from rude Greeks on Trollbane EU. I am reliably informed that this is a server almost solely for immature, stupid and angry people (And in some groups I've been in, all three.) Obviously apologies to the one brilliant, supportive person on Trollbane who I grouped with recently. You seriously rock.

Now I have all ilevel 200+ gear (Barring one crap trinket) and I will be randoming every night I can. Being a tank means that when +Def gear drops, no one argues when you roll need on it.

IRL:
Charlie's training rolls on. This means I'm solely in charge of our son while she trains. This is good when he sleeps (Which he's getting better at) but friction when he doesn't. Summer seems to have taken a nosedive here in Britain, where I am in The City is overcast and foreboding. It's good for the lawn back home, so I can't complain too much.

Payday and the weekend beckon. Not long now.....

Time and Tanking

IRL:
Charlie's training for this job (Training my peachy ...! 8 weeks unpaid work) is becoming a grind. We've been 'upgraded' to unlimited broadband with Sky, which in real terms means LOADS of reconnects. Turns out the numpties set us to half a meg broadband. Half a meg!! FFS I play games, and Charlie does online support. Half a MEG!! Now this has been put back to a pesh-poor 4Megabits per second (I hate living in the country sometimes) I might be able to play games, or even see Google in under 5 minutes.

WoW:
I tanked. Not like Dollhouse. I respecced to a Prot Pally and tanked my first instance. I wish I'd read this first. Big repect to Captn's Blog which should be compulsory reading for all pally tanks, preferably before they do their first instance.

Tonight I shall play WoW like I haven't played in a week. Because I practically haven't. Meh!

Seany's fantastic party

IRL:
Not been WoWing much this weekend after a fantastic party practically free of drama, but certainly not free of fun. The Mrs and I went to our dear friend Sean's 22nd birthday party and were greeted by a very obviously Irish young man in shiny red hot pants, a denim shirt tied around his midrif and a pair of spike stillettos (How he can walk in those? I have no idea!) with a ciggy dangling from his mouth and a can of Fosters in his paw. That was our beloved host, half changed into this alter ego, Noleen Colon. Laugh? I nearly shat.... (To quote Pete and Dud)

Sean was in fine fettle despite his more fickle friends not attending, but this only enforced that his good friends did attend, amongst them, Fiona (An old mate from Walthamstow, where Sean, Fiona and I lived at one point). My Charlie made him a lovely cake, which I think delighted him beyond words, especially as the sponge was green (something to do with a Donna summer song about a cake in the rain) and of course we got the live rendition by Donna Summer about 10 minutes later. I'm delighted that Sean has a good other half and circle of supporting friends.

Thanks for a fun party Sean/Noleen

Apart from a distinct lack of sleep, and a fuzzy head the next day, it was a fantastic evening, bolted onto a day including a smidge of overtime (Which is always nice) and followed by a lovely lunch in the country.

WoW:
Finally respecced my Rogue, seems like an improvement, will have to see how he handles in a live test (Randoms, anyone?) See you all out there.