Archive for 2010

Back to pre-85 Gavelier

Gav_DieDammit

Instead of leading off my first level 85 post with my latest hijinks, I’m instead going to fill in some gaps from my trip to the top. First off, there needs to a be a freaking warning sign next to the guy above. No, not Gav (him too, though). Caimas the (damned) Pit Master. I didn’t know he was a gimmick fight. I knew nothing of leading him through eggs to slow him down. Nope, I just stood toe to toe with him – for about three minutes. Damn was he tough! I had to keep healing, and hitting, and healing, casting Divine Shield,  and healing, and hitting, and waiting for Forbearance to wear off, hitting some more, casting Lay on Hands, using Avenging Wrath twice, hurling an inordinate amount of Hammers of Wrath, healing yet more, and finally living to see him die. I never want to fight him again.

Gav_OhNo

Oh no. No, no, no. I am NOT working with Flintlocke. There is absolutely no way. Have you seen what he’s done to rogues? And trees? I don’t even want to mention his use of the Chuck-Shot. Hopefully he’s not going to….

Gav_What

God dammit. There is no freaking way. This Paladin-Shot sounds far worse then the Chuck-Shot, the Remote Backstab, the Beaverstick, or even the Beaverchucks, mostly because it involves me getting in a cannon that Flintlocke is firing. That just sounds like it will hurt like hell.

Gav_Shot

AAAAGHH!! Yeah, I let him shoot me out of a cannon. I’m trusting, ok? The problem was, I was shot out into the middle of the freaking bay. I had to swim back, come back into the fort, and – get this – let him shoot me a second time. That’s not trust, people. That’s insanity.

And I didn’t even get a title for my work.

As a side note, I was a huge fan of Flintelocke’s Guide to Azeroth long before I played World of Warcraft. It actually inspired me to write my own web comic on Gavelier’s misadventures, Gavelier’s World of Warcraft (my favorite comic is this one, because it was so true). Dave “Fargo” Kosak, writer of the Flintlocke series on Gamespy was nice enough to read my comic and gave me some nice compliments on my work and some pointers to go by. Thanks again, dude!

I may one day either continue or reboot Gav’s comic, but it’s not likely at the moment – my hand-drawn comic is more important to me right now and it’s been in hibernation for a few weeks itself.

Ding 85

Gav_85

I was first to 81 in my guild. You all saw that. Unfortunately, I was third to 82, 83 and 84. Dammit. I came on on Saturday morning and was one of three or four level 84s. I was only about 12% through, so I opted to go to Hyjal, since I’d not been there and level my mining skill to 500. I ultimately got Coming Down the Mountain in the process and was over 70% of the way to 85. During all this I’d accumulated over 4k gold so I picked up Master Riding on my way to back to the Twilight Highlands. Finally I got there and picked up where I’d left off (after the beach quests with a certain dwarf who I’ll write about later). I quested like crazy and finally, at last, ding.

I had hit 85 first of all of my guild mates! I was so happy, and my guild master complimented me on it. So I got a completionist achievement in Hyjal, a Masters Flyers License, and I hit 85 first in my guild.

I’m all happy now.

Fire from the Skies

Gav_DW1

That’s…. not a good thing, right? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Gav was in the middle of a two-hour archeology marathon and was on his way to Duskwood from the Western Plaguelands, where he hoped to ding 83 by digging up useless junk (just for the record, he did). I was just coming south out of the Searing Gorge when I espied a large wing in the skies above the Burning Steppes. I thought, stupidly enough, “Hey, maybe it’s a rare I can kill for kicks!” I got just a little closer and saw what you see above. Nope, can’t kill that.

Gav_DW2

Long story short, I Stood in the Fire.  Deathwing – 1, Gav – 0.

Dammit.

Proto-Drake Day

Gav-GPD

Gav was in Northrend on Monday for a while. He mined up almost 90 pieces of Saronite Ore – with not a single Titanium Ore among them – and generally stopped by a few places he’d not been for a while and may never come back to. One of those stops was Sholazar Basin and the Oracles camp. I bought one last egg from them, for old time’s sake. It cracked open this morning and voila! Instant Green Proto-Drake! Times like this make it feel like the game doesn’t hate me personally.

Then I get screwed on quest drops for an hour and remember, oh yeah – it hates me. Bad.

Meet Wormachine

Wor-Human

I mentioned my “Wor” Machine last post. This is him. Wormachine is my worgen hunter (yes, Ernest was taken and yes, I know this because I tried). Here’s a quick pic of Wormachine as a worgen.

Wor-Worgen

He’s pretty cool. The dog’s named Maggie, after my own mutt. A quick side note: I ran into a guildie of Gav’s in Darnassus after leaving the worgen zones and introduced myself. I asked if Wormachine could join, but alas he could not. Not because of any rules, but because the guildie wasn’t of rank to invite me, and no one who was was on. Darn. I’ll have to ask again later when an officer or other higher-ranked player is on. Too bad I can’t have Gav on at the same time: Gav’s got the ability to invite. Anyway, Wormachine is pretty fun, but it’s mostly like leveling Lug again – just with a wicked-cool new race. Wor is here!

81 and Counting

VJ-81

Woo hoo! Guild first to 81! I’m not going to hit 85 first, so this was a nice moment in the sun. I also reached the Friendly rep level with my guild. Yay!

VJ-NoTalk

They’re not in this picture, but there was this cow (Tauren) dude who was trying to talk to the brain on the right of the screen. No, I’m not kidding. It was hard to see him with the crowd he gathered but I swear it looked like he was throwing rocks at the thing’s brain while saying, “talk! Talk damn you!” Uhm, I’m no scientist but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. You don’t just chuck stuff and something’s brain and it gets chatty. I came through a few times and he was usually hurling stuff and telling it to talk to him. Dumb cow. Eventually he made a crab the intermediary between the two, and guess what? It worked, probably because the crab DIDNT’ TOSS JUNK AT HIS BRAIN LIKE A DUMBASS! Proof that your average crab his smarter then a Tauren.

Wor-MeanThing

I joined forces with a  priest at one point and helped her take this big mean thing down. Really. I don’t care if this pic caught me with my axe on my back and my hands at my sides. Seriously, I helped! I naturally led us two in DPS (she was a shadow priest), so yes, I did pitch in. This picture lies.

That’s all for now with Gav. Now I’m going to  go hop on my Wor Machine.

Into the Depths

VJ-Arch

It’s Cataclysm time! Here’s where I waited out the last few minutes until 3:00 AM EST. I ultimately had to log out, spend five minutes logging back in, find out that I had to restart to enable Cataclysm, spend 25 minutes logging back in, and finally now, after 3:30  I could get started. Phew! I trained archeology, engineering, mining, first aid, old-world flying and then followed a quest line that threw me on a boat.

VJ-Bunch

An absolute ton of us headed off to Vashj’ir. Seriously, I don’t know how this boat sailed under this load.

VJ-WTF1

Oh, that’s right. It didn’t. We got sunk.

VJ-WTF2

Uh, that’s not good. I don’t have to fight that, do I? Turns out I didn’t. What I did have to fight, though, was over a hundred other players.

VJ-Wow

It was over an hour I spent in the entrance area for Vashj’ir, just trying to get the simple goods needed to move on because everyone else wanted them too. On top of that the mobs were spawning at a furious rate. You wouldn’t kill a mob before it’s replacement would show up. You had to pick a fight and lead the baddie away from it’s spawning ground to avoid getting mobbed. In just over an hour here I accumulated almost 3g in repairs, and I never got killed. Holy crap.

VJ-Help

Aaaaaahhhh! Help!  Help Help Help Help Help Help Help Help Help Help!! I’ve been hijacked! The Earthen Ring saved me, thank goodness. Oh, and y’know how I mentioned having almost 3g in repairs? I couldn’t find anyone to repair my gear! I finally found one in a cavern (following a quest line) and I learned that I had also accumulated over 11g in vendor trash. Wow!

So that’s how I spent my first few hours in Cataclysm. I had to bid farewell to a few of my epics, including my beloved Tyrannical Beheader. I’ll never forget you! My new green Barnacle Covered Greataxe is nice, though, with 46 DPS, 48 Stamina, 40 Strength and  99 hit improvements that ol’ battle axe. Yay!

Getting Ready for the Cataclysm

WoWScrnShot_120610_053839

The above pic is obviously of the Plants vs. Zombies knockoff in Hillsbrad. I didn’t do so well so I quit for a while at the pumpkin bomb quest. Dammit.

More importantly, though, is that Cataclysm will hit the U.S. shores at 12:00 AM PST, and I’m going to be there. I’ve decided that my first goal (unless there’s some guild pressure to do otherwise) is to take Gav to Vashj’ir. Hyjal doesn’t intrigue me, lore-based or not. I’m also set on my new race classes: a worgen hunter and a goblin shaman. We’ll see how it goes from there.  I don’t have big plans for my goblin but there’s no way in blue blazes I’m skipping the chance to play through Kazan and the Lost Isles. They look like way too much fun.

I’m playing with worgen names, and coming up with stuff like Worgone, Worpt, Worrynot, and other stupid crap like that. If I could get Ernest I’d take it. Think about it: Ernest P. Worgen. Yeah! My goblin’s name is probably going to be a spur-of-the-moment thing combined with whatever the hell I can get. You just know there’s going to be an absolute overload of the little green freaks.

While I’m here, I’m going to rattle off some more stuff I’m excited about, and why.

13 hours. That’s all that stands between all of us and Cataclysm. I’m ready!

WG for Old Times Sake

WG_Empty

Finally. It had been too long. Absence, as they say, can make the heart grow fonder. I had to do it.

I had to hit up Wintergrasp one last time.

I’ll likely never got back after Cataclysm launches on Tuesday so I wanted to go back and have one more great match. What I got started out abysmally slow, but ended up being perhaps my favorite match ever.

Blizzard now regulates the number of participants to create even matches, and at the start there were exactly four Alliance players, with me playing Raid Leader. We took everything that was able to be captured in the first five minutes, and then stood around and stared at each other. Finally we got organized and I led the most coordinated, communicative, and well-organized Wintergrasp defense I’d ever seen. Everyone was in touch, and we had all our bases covered, so to speak. Now, if only there was someone to fight.

I was running through the Broken Temple factory (seen above) when I noticed our control had gone down to 50%. A Draenei priest tipped me off that there was a hidden rogue near  by. We smoked out the undead rogue and killed him. Finally some action! Not long after things picked up with an Orc hunter, a troll shaman, a blood elf mage, an Orc Death Knight and some others joining the fray. It was time to put out organization to the test. We pinged our foes on the mini map to keep tabs on them. I was once under assault by the death knight, hunter and mage all at once at the Broken Temple (where most of the action took place) when my allies rode to my rescue. I did the same later, bailing out our Draenei priest buddy who called for help since he was specced for healing.

At one point I caught a troll shaman in the open and began to attack her. It turned out she was a restoration-specced shammy.

WG_DieDammit

Kudos to you, Sisstah – you were (to be blunt) a freaking pain in the ass to kill. My saving grace was having my Draenei priest buddy (God, I wish I knew his name, I think it was Judgeandjury but don’t quote me on that) along for the ride. He healed me some and kept her fire elemental busy while I finally laid the smack down. This was a long and tedious freaking fight. She didn’t do allot of damage but she’d keep healing her stupid ass. Finally, two-on-one was too much and she fell. My big ‘hoorah’ moment came when I tried to take a siege engine down to one of the towers.

WG_BadIdea

This dumb, apparently suicidal Orc hunter kept attacking my ride! I tried to tell him to stop but he wouldn’t listen. I warned him that it was in his best interest to leave me in the tank – I was much more dangerous to him on foot. He ultimately broke my ride, at which point he and his crocolisk assailed me. I was down to 15% health so I bubbled, healed to 80% and proceeded to beat the ever loving tar out of him. Ha! Gav: 1, stupid-ass Orc: 0.

We ultimately won with 45 seconds left to server restart. Go team!

The Big, Big Whoa-My-God Big Post

Wrain-Beach

I’ve been gone for a long time, so to make up for it here’s one of those “holy crap this is too way freaking long why don’t you have a life” posts. I’ve been leveling alts, obviously, and one is my level 16 feral-specced night elf druid Wrain (I’ll be referring to my alts by their current level, not necessarily the one shown in the included picture). He’s seen above in cat-form along Darkshore’s coastline, slaying water elementals.

Budm-Drink

Next we check in on Budman, my level 25 frost-specced human mage.  Budman’s working his way through the Wetlands right now but it’s been slow going.

Budm-Rapt

Here, his water elemental tries to engulf a raptor. Budman isn’t real tough, and his elemental is even softer so I have to be careful with these two.

Crane-Shore

Here we see my level 31 demonology-specced human warlock and his Fel Guard minion Okiash… Okinasa… Okisaki… Oki-SOMETHING. Whatever, I just call him Oki. Crane and Oki are lethal while running through the (admittedly lower-level ) Northern Stranglethorn.  They got here at level 29 and are just cruising.

Crane-Pet

Hey, here’s a pic of Crane’s new buddy, a lashtail hatchling. This little guy followed me around as I killed Basilisks for him to feast upon. I was only too happy to kill critters for his consumption.

Crane-Cave

I eventually drug Buddy (I named the little red raptor Buddy) into a cave to kill… someone. Or four someones. In any event, everyone I saw died and I completed the quest. Yay!

Lug-HolyHell

What the HELL?! I was taking Lug, my level 33 beast mastery-specced Tauren hunter from Mulgore to Desolace and I came across a FRICKING RABBIT WITH A GOD DAMN AXE IN HIS EFFING MOUTH! I repeat, for emphasis: WHAT THE HELL?!

Lug_Satyr

Once I dropped down into Desolace, I was smack-dab in the middle of Satyr Central. I had only one tip here (a quest I got from the Warlord’s Post or whatever that signboard in Thunder Bluff was called) so I just knew I had to keep walking and killing while following an arrow on my map. Yay for immersion!

Lug-BB

I was eventually sent with Pig (yay for Pig!) to a huge fortress to kill baddies. We went in, killed left and right, and then pig had some kind of Fel fit.

Lug-PurplePig

Yeah, Pig! You go! You go with your… giant… black… two-legged… purple winged… self… OK, seriously –WTF?? Getting splattered enough times with these punks blood upon killing them turned both Pig and I into freakish demon-things. It didn’t seem to bother us, so we kept on killing.

That’s all for now. I’m doing my alt-leveling now because they’ll likely go on the back-burner again on Tuesday as Gav grinds to 85. We’ll see.

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