The Call Of The Horde

Maybe I should've called this blog "the siren's song," however I suppose it isn't really.

I've been playing WoW for several years now, and while I've max leveled 2 (almost 3) characters, they've all been Alliance side. Given the pressure that's coming up on the Horde vs. Alliance conflict in the upcoming expansion, Mists of Pandaria, I've found myself again being drawn to seeing the Horde side of things.

It isn't that I don't have any Horde characters - I do. Quite a few, actually, and a couple that I really like. I'm thinking of devoting some time and trying to get at least Ionaria, my Troll Druid, up to max level, so that when the expansion is released, I'll be able to see the escalating conflict from both sides.

Why am I drawn to Ionaria? Well, druids are essentially meant to be neutral. And in being so, I feel that perhaps Kalitri, my Night Elf-turned-Worgen druid and my troll druid might actually know each other. Playing through Pandaria's new content on both of those characters would be an interesting experience, to say the least. And as we get closer and closer to Pandaria's release, I'm feeling more and more the need to witness the other side of the coin, as it were.

For a time, I thought perhaps I was getting bored with WoW, but I had a minor epiphany today while reading a blog on WoW Insider that talked about the conflict already apparent in the beta of the new expansion, and I realized that I wasn't tired of the game - I was tired of it being one-sided. There's a whole other world in Azeroth, a whole other storyline that I've not experienced.

And I think perhaps now is the time for me to do just that. Expect future posts on differences between Alliance and Horde, as I level Ionaria up to cap, and find the truth behind the myths the Alliance have built up around their enemies - all the while discovering exactly what the counterparts are from the other side.

I'm answering the call of the Horde....

Elune, save me.

LFR Conqueror & Other Updates

I've come a long way since I was afraid of dungeons in WoW. Admittedly I haven't come far enough that the concept of going into a dungeon that I've never been in before alone isn't something that scares me, but I've still come a long way.

With the recent WoW patch, the "Endgame" portion of Cataclysm was introduced. The last three major dungeons that set up the final raid in which Deathwing meets his end and the threat he presents to Azeroth is averted. This patch also added something completely new to the game - the Looking For Raid feature. It works much like the random dungeon finder, but on a larger scale, building a group of two tanks, five healers, and seventeen DPS to create a 25 man Raid Group, and then you go through a simplifed version of the Dragon Soul raid - the Deathwing fight.

Since it came out, my brother's been running it on his awesome Mage, Skyfox.  He knew the fights, knew what we needed to do - it was just a matter of the other three of us getting proper gear from the new Heroic dungeons so we would have access.

Within the last week, Nyx, Lona, and I have all gotten enough Heroic gear that the Raid Finder would let us in. And so began my first raid.

The Dragon Soul raid is broken up into two seperate pieces - the seige of Wyrmrest Temple, and then the Fall of Deathwing. We did them in order, doing Wyrmrest first, taking down a bunch of mini-bosses, flying on drake-back between them. It was quite epic, and within the first few moments I realized I needed to down-grade my graphics settings. Everything was freezing and the lag was throwing my timing off. My computer was built to handle normal WoW at Ultra settings, but put in the high-particle density situation of a 25 man raid, the computer said "no". I put the settings down to their lowest level, and then everything was fine. In the first half of the Raid, I didn't even die.

In the second half, thanks to a miscommunication from a Raid Leader ("Hunters - taunt the drakes down!" ...but...we don't have a taunt... He was talking about using Distracting Shot to pull the flying drakes down to the tanks. But he wasn't clear, and Kata hadn't even experienced that before. The raid wiped, and people were angry - annoying because Nyx and I were two of the four hunters people were yelling at. But obviously none of us had known what to do, so we didn't feel SO stupid), we had some issues at the beginning. But after that? It was beautiful.

We parachuted onto Deathwing's back, working tirelessly to remove some of his Elementium and Titanium armor so that Thrall could take aim with the Dragon Soul and take him down. Deathwing fell into the Malestrom. Just when we thought he was defeated, he reared up - even falling apart, dying, he was still trying to destroy the world. The final phase of the raid involved forcing him to unhook from the rocks around the Maelstrom so that he could be destroyed for good. The only bit of him that made it through was a hunk of his jaw.

Now, I have a special relationship with Deathwing, of sorts. And even as we entered the raid, I made sure to pay him as much respect as possible. I /bow-ed to him, and /saluted him a few times through the course of the fight. My respect seems to have paid off, as I won the roll on my Best-In-Slot weapon that dropped from him after the fight. It made me very happy, and really the raid wasn't very much worse than a dungeon - not even a heroic. Though I admit I'm not finding Heroics nearly as frightening as I used to. Now they're a way to gain valor and level the Guild.

The awesomeness continued however, as the next day the five of us (Kata, Nyx, Lona, me, and our friend Colten) decided to see if we could 5-man Obsidian Sanctum to get the black drake mount to drop. Turns out we not only could do it, but we did it incredibly easily - we had that dragon down before his first lava wave came all the way up. We took him out in about 20 seconds, which has me wondering if we can pull off the version that's designed for 25 man, since all that's different is that his health is higher - two and a half times higher, which means we can probably take him out in about a minute. I say we try it. :P

Last weekend (so much gaming news to catch up on!) I leveled my Druid the last five levels to hit 80 and enter Cataclysm content. I prioratized her over my DK only because I've leveled her from level 1, and it seemed cheating to have my 2nd 85 be a class that starts at L55. Today (my birthday) I get to game during the day, and I plan on working her up higher - maybe even hitting 85 today. Or at least in the next couple of weeks.

Simultaniously I finished the next-to-last World Holiday that I needed for the Long Strange Trip meta achievement, and my purple proto-drake. Love Is In The Air started, and I only had six more achievements to complete in order to get my drake. As of today, that's down to 1. And I have everything I need for it. It's just a matter of actually DOING it, which I'm going to do when everyone is available to come with me (so they won't have to worry about doing this on their own when they decide to go for the holiday achievements, and so they'll be with me when my two years of work comes down), which will probably be tomorrow evening. In the mean time, I have plenty of other things to work on in-game. I'm actively "Tol-ling the Barad," as my brother says, once again working toward the two mounts that I can get that way. I'm also finally working with the Oracles in Sholazar Basin to get the Green Proto Drake (unless I get lucky with my first few Bear Tank Call To Arms rewards, that is), and spending a bit of each day farming Lovely Charms so I can do the Love Is In The Air dailies and save up to buy the Love Bird mount...AND at the SAME TIME, I'm gathering Darkmoon Faire tickets to save up for those mounts and pets.

So yeah, gaming gives me lots to do. :P And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what I do for FUN. :P You can only imagine what my work is like.

So, happy birthday to me today. I'm 29 years old. One year to 30. :D I'm excited, and I'm sure interesting things will happen over the course of the next couple of days. :D

I already got a wonderful birthday present from my mom and dad - they got me a new bike with all the accessories! Now I can exercise in a way that won't hurt me, even when I'm not at school. :D It's wonderful and I love it. Thanks mom and dad!

There'll probably be another birthday summary post at the end of the week, but considering that I started writing this blog last Friday, I think I've stalled enough. In other blog news, still working on the new series in my spare time, and I hope to post it this summer. :)

Dungeoning In Your Sleep

I’ve heard many WoW gamers say things along the lines of, “That dungeon? I could run that in my sleep.” But, while I’ve dozed off many times while playing WoW (the problem with it being the end of my day thing to do – I doze while mining in Uldum quite a lot), I’ve never actually PLAYED the game in my sleep. Continuing to fly in a straight line and ending up in Tanaris when I was trying to mine the Uldum border is a completely different thing than actively playing the game while I sleep.

I’d also like to point out that I do not play any healers – I tank (Death Knight, Bear, Warrior, and Pally), and I DPS (Hunter, Cat, Rogue, ect.), but while I’ve played classes that can heal (Pally and druid, respectfully), I’ve never been interested in actually taking on the role myself. It’s a little too much responsibility for a game I play to relax. However, my brain seems to have other ideas because this morning I healed through Deadmines on a druid healer that doesn’t exist. How is this possible? Well, we go back to my original issue – I was playing the game in my sleep. That is – I dreamed the whole thing.

I apparently know the regular Deadmines instance well enough to run it in a dream, and I know the healing spells a druid gets well enough to cast them and even have one of my gaming epiphanies while doing so. In the dream, Kata was tanking on a Worgen Warrior that looked like a combination of my warrior, Betamus, and my rogue, Jerichò. Nyx and Lona were with us, as a DPS Mage and Warlock, respectively. Looking back on the dream I realize that I don’t know which was which – both were Human and had similar builds and looks to the characters, but in the dream I knew that one was Nyx and one was Lona. There wasn’t a fifth party member with us. I don’t remember now if we’d had a random 3rd DPS and decided to dump them at some point during the instance, or if we’d come in with the intent to 4-man the dungeon. Either way, it was just the four of us, and I was healing.

Somewhere along the dungeon I had the epiphany that I needed to “heal proactively” to use what I said to them over our headsets (we were using a Google Hangout as we do when we dungeon together sometimes so even those of us in the same room have no problem hearing each other). At the start of the instance, I’d only been casting a heal after seeing the tank take damage, and casting a Heal Over Time (HoT) on him before he ran in to pull. I’d been healing reactively, for the most part. As we reached the next to last boss, I suddenly realized that I needed to be proactive. I know the boss. I know the fights. I can anticipate when the tank is going to take a lot of damage and start casting the heal before he actually takes it. The result was that Kata spent much less of that fight close to dying than he had any of the previous fights. And when it was over and we’d also taken down the last boss, he said to me, “I’m not sure what you changed in those last two fights, but keep doing that. I barely had to Victory Rush at all.”

I was happy, as I always am when Kata gives me a compliment on my gaming, and decided that the epiphany was worth the annoyance it’d taken me to get there. I thanked him, then as I was moving to drop party and log out of the call, I woke up.

I’ve had dreams like this before, but usually I’m at least playing a character or class spec that I’m familiar with. This is the first time I’ve ever dreamed a healer, and it made me wonder if perhaps my subconscious is hinting that the next character I make should be a healer. Perhaps it’s time to try out that role. Though, before I even think of that, I want to get the rest of my characters to L85. Seeing the L72 and L73 sitting there beneath my L85 Hunter is becoming annoying.

The next time I’m dozing while gaming, however, I’ll look back on this and remember a time when I not only played in my sleep, I played WELL.

Happy Thanksgiving! Virtual Venison For All!

I haven't had time to get together my thoughts and get them down on paper regarding the next 3rd of my two week roadtrip, but as today is Thanksgiving, I thought I'd just do a silly little gamer post about something I'm thankful for.

I'd been having trouble, when playing The Hunter, of only finding does. Now does are nice, and my tracking and shooting has been skilling up quite well. But... well, does aren't trophies. Not really. So I made a post on the Hunter forums asking where the heck all the bucks were. Thanks to some advice from the forum people, I finally have begun taking actual awesome trophies. Allow me to share them with you now, and be thankful for all the (virtual) venison, elk, bear, and pheasant with me!

(Can't link pictures from my site's flash gallery here, so check out the original post to see all the pretty food- ah, I mean, animals. :P )

A Bit Of (Irrational) Guilt

Might take a break from playing The Hunter again after today. However, first I have to share with all of you the beautiful pictures and live shots I took today. (Yes, even live deer! Mostly... That's where the guilt comes in. I'll explain in a bit.)



I was taking some basic shots. Something about this stump really made me happy, so I decided to take a nice shot of it and practice my Rule Of Thirds (leftover from Photography class). I like how it came out. While I was framing this picture, however, I heard several mule deer call. I responded with my imitation call, and headed toward the sound.



For the last couple of days, I've been following this herd off and on. Always too far away to see them, and by the time one comes into view, it's isolated and I usually try to take it as a trophy. Today, I managed to catch a distant picture of the herd. Two deer can be easily seen, and there were four others, however they're mostly behind trees.



Later on, again following calls rather than tracks, this lovely girl and I came face to face as she climbed over a pile of logs. She froze, I froze. I had two choices - gun, or camera. I chose camera. Right after I snapped this picture, she turned and bolted over the logs... and here came the moment of guilt.

The Hunter is an incredibly realistic hunting game - down to the fact that panicked deer can injure themselves. After this beautiful girl bolted, I went around the logs to challenge myself and pick up her trail. I wanted to see if I could track her down a second time, knowing the general direction she'd run.

On the other side of the logs, I found a trail - but not the one I'd expected. I found blood.

I hadn't fired a shot, except for the camera, but the flash had scared her. In going over the logs, she hurt herself. I started following the trail of blood spatters and hoofprints, until I found her less than half a mile from the pile of logs.



She was laying in a pool of blood that you can kind of see in this picture. I walked around and her head followed me as I walked, watching me. She was breathing in quick, shallow pants, but her eyes were bright. In my moving around her, I saw what was wrong - the hip she's laying on is a bit mangled - it isn't surprising she didn't get too far.

Like a horse, when a deer breaks a leg, there's really nothing to be done. And that I was in a hunting game and couldn't exactly call wildlife services or anything, I only had one choice.



I pulled out my rifle, whispered an apology, aimed carefully, and shot her in the head. I put her out of her misery. But the way she was staring at me... I've never had a game feel so real that I felt shaken up afterwards. I feel that way right now. I wandered for nearly half an hour after "bagging" her. I ignored tracks, I ignored calls. I spotted a Feral Hog through my binoculars, and spooked a couple of pheasants into flight.

Through my wandering, though, I found something lovely, and it's the last thing I did before logging off of the game.



This is probably modeled after a real place, but it's beauty took my breath away. I released my guilt over the doe and let it float away on the wind as I took several photos of this beautiful vista. Then I closed the game and logged out of The Hunter.

It got a touch too real today, and I'm still shaken up. My guilt is COMPLETELY unfounded - the doe was nothing but a mass of pixels with a wonderfully designed AI that mimics the behavior of a deer. I can't turn the flash off on my in-game camera, so my only other choice would've been to shoot her anyway. Either way, it turned out the same, and I got the trophy. It's only a game.

So why do I still feel just a bit sad?

Morning Stroll

I recently reread the book Merle's Door by Ted Kerasote, one of my favorite books of all time. As usual, it awakened in me a need to get out into the wild and hunt. However, despite what my taxidermic collection might say, I am not a hunter in real life. I satisfy this craving through video games for right now.

If I'm in the mood for a quick run, I play Hunting Unlimited 2009, or Deer Hunter 2005. Sometimes I'll play Carnivores or another more fanciful hunting game. But this book awakened a need for something realistic, so I went for the most realistic hunting game I know of: The Hunter.

Now, I have a free account, so all I can hunt are Mule Deer, but that's fine. It's the area and he feeling I love so much. I hunted for over an hour today, and while I spotted a doe, I was so shocked to see her that I couldn't get a shot off in time. Instead, I spent time tracking a couple of deer, and enjoyed the lovely views.



I started the hunt at six am, game time, and enjoyed the sight of the beautiful pink sunrise that greeted me.

Within an hour, I was caught in a sudden downpour that made tracking difficult. I lost the deer I'd been tracking in the resulting mud, but I was left with a gorgeous image as I looked to the sky.



I loved this image so much, it didn't matter to me that I didn't get a deer. I saw a pheasant and tried to get some pictures of it, but I couldn't get close enough for it to be defined on the camera, so I won't share those photos of fail with you. However, I feel refreshed and calm, as if I really did just go on a nature walk. I'm going back into the game now, and perhaps this time I will bag a deer. More photos to follow - I will probably edit this entry. :)

EDITING!

Went hunting again and finally got the hang of tracking. I still have yet to even see a buck, but I bagged 4 mule deer does, and managed to get a couple of good pictures of a live pheasant. :D



This was the first deer I took down. I didn't think I'd hit her at first (I forgot to hold down space when firing, which causes your character to hold their breath and therefore steady your aim), but then I found blood on the ground and tracked her a few hundred yards to where she fell. :D



The second deer I managed to hit was a stomach shot, and had it been real I would've seriously apologized to it for that. It walked a very long way, almost a mile, before it laid down and died. It took me nearly 20 minutes to find it. It looked so peaceful laying there that I aimed my camera carefully to get the best shot.



This was the only deer I hit that fell where it stood. Inspection showed I'd taken out one of it's neck vertebrae, and death was instant. I angled the shot so the entry wound could be seen.



This deer didn't walk nearly as far as the second one before it fell, but it did walk far enough that it laid down and died. Again, I angled the picture carefully so it looked to be resting.

And now for the live shots!

I'd been tracking the 4th deer in the above set, after having shot it, when something moved in my peripheral vision. "No way," I thought. "I hit that in the lung... it couldn't still be walking around." I brought up my binoculars and looked. I was shocked to see a pheasant, walking calmly in low grass. I crouched and moved closer, expecting it to flush at any moment and fly away. But it stayed, and I kept getting closer. Eventually I dropped all the way and belly crawled toward it. The following shots are what I got before it finally noticed me and flew away.







A very pretty bird and I was very happy to have seen it. I don't have a license for pheasant or it would've been a trophy for sure, as close as I got to it. However, I loved seeing it walk around. So far I haven't been able to get any photos of live deer - they're always too far away and spook before I get close enough for a good shot. But some day, I will just lay in wait and get a nice picture.

Not of the first buck I see, though. He's going in my trophy collection for sure. :P

Brewmaster of Disappointment

Wow's Ocktoberfest-alike, Brewfest, ended this past Wednesday. One of the mechanics of the holiday is that there is a "holiday boss" accessable through the Dungeon Finder. On your first kill each day of the holiday, you receive an extra "treasure" contained in a "keg-shaped treasure chest." In this chest, you can find one of five things - a dagger, a mace, two unique mounts (Brewfest Kodo and Brewfest Ram), or.... nothing. Or, rather, not nothing. But a few Brewfest tokens, the holiday currency, and around 25 Justice Points - average for killing a boss.

Being the mount-aholic I am, I dutifully went every single day of the holiday, killed the boss, collected my reward, and opened it. All but 1 day (on which I received the dagger - ironically the day after I'd gotten something better than it and so couldn't use it anymore), I received the latter prize - that is, tokens and JP.

Now, this could just be luck-of-the-draw - and in all honesty, it is. However, I'm a BIT steamed. See.... Everyone else I know got a mount once during the holiday. There were people in chat complaining of having gotten the same mount 3 days in a ROW. Lona got the Ram, Nyx got the Kodo, Kata got a Ram, my friend Enya got a Ram.. But no mount for me. Now I'm happy for Lona, who I know is working toward the 100 Mounts achievement (more feverishly than I am, honestly, as she has the Nether Rays, which I don't yet, and she will have the Tol Barad drake in another day or so)... But it just felt unfair that I didn't get a mount.

Yes, I am complaining about a random number generator that refused to generate a number in my favor. :P NO, I'm not actually angry, and I know there's always next year.

In the mean time, I look forward to this month's holiday, Hallows End, and I hope to lay my hands on the Headless Horseman's mount which will drop from HIS treasure chest (I predict "pumpkin shaped". :P). Every mount I get is one step closer to the Blue Dragonhawk that is my eventual goal. I know I'll get there eventually. But the way I'm going, Lona will be tooling around on hers months before I get there.

Then again, I only have 4 steps left on "What A Long Strange Trip...", which will reward me with something I've long sought after: a proto-drake. And I'll eventually work up the patience to camp the Time-Lost Proto-Drake for days and days until it decides to show itself to me. And I'll keep leveling Archaeology in the hopes of obtaining the fossil raptor mount (seeing Lona with hers makes me jealous - I'M the paleontologist, dangit! :P ) And I'll eventually grind up the patience to finish the dang Sha'tari Skyguard grind for the Nether Rays (at which point, I swear, I am NEVER going into Outland again if I can help it... not unless they do something to streamline it or whatever... as it is, it's my least favorite area and makes the slog from L60 to L70 absolutely intolerable for me - which is why my characters seem to get stuck there since I don't like dungeoning, and if I want to get through that 10 levels without questing, that's kind of how I have to do it).

All things said and done, I'm still making progress on that achievement... and there may be an Ancient Eyes post later this weekend, because a LOT of stuff has happened since my last post and I feel the need to catch up. But right now, I'm going to go back to my homework. Blogging was a nice break, but right now Stats has my attention and priority.

And that, at least, is a certain probability. ;)