Flood Survival

Well, the *rains and flood* effects seem to have subsided around here for now. Yea! Comp issues have settled down to a workable state. Though, I might be looking for a new one this summer. Even those nasty virus bugs (the rl un-healthy kind) have decided to go on their way, finally.


Aygaren was getting frustrated with his adventureing interrupts and kept missing his Mt. Hyjal partner, Sasche. They finally did manage to meet up though, and finish off all the necessary shrine/ancient openings. They are quite the team in a way. Nothing stands a chance at survival when they drop in. I mean, really. If you're in some cultist encampment or holed up in some cave in force, and suddenly this Tauren prot pally and Undead demo lock w/void pet come calling....you may as well pack it in and go home. Death has come to clean house. The only real question is "Who's going to kill you first?" As you can expect, two short trips by this team and Hyjal was cleared for safe passage. At least for now.

Sad to say, but Birzak and Gizzel have departed from the great Horde project. They were replaced by Olmer, an Undead level 3 hunter camped out in Undercity waiting assignment. The two departees were not the only fatalities. Several servers also saw major clean-outs. I guess spring cleaning came a bit early to Azeroth.

Aygaren and Dufit still have their little contest going on with killing rares. Aygaren has taken a large lead though, ever since his tactical move to include the Northrend hunting grounds. The last I checked in on their progress, Ay had twice as many kills listed. By the way, their little contest is being screenshoted and collected in the Fenris Rares Picasa web album here, if you would like to take a peek. I try to keep them labeled as to who killed by. And the map in upper right will give you co-ords of where.


Old Crystalbark

The other day I found Aygaren cleaning up his bank mess, grumbling and still itching that pesky bug under his plate armor. So I took a quick peek over his shoulder to see what he was hiding out. Nothing too amazing in there. Some low level armor pieces he thought might look good for mogging later on. Several plain letters from who knows who. Let's see, a virtual ton of ore and bars to feed his blacksmithy habits. Bunches of motes and volitiles that might come in handy. Spare food stuffs to cook, maybe. Old Crafty. And what's that in the bottom corner hiding out? Hmmmm? Four (yes, 4) extra fishing poles. Now, why on Azeroth Ay decided to keep all these fishing poles is a mystery. Really. He can only use one at any given moment. His backpack isn't large enough to allow carrying an interchangeable set on the road. Oh, and he's not talking about all those tabards laying around here and there. I foresee an intervention coming on here. Aygaren is going to learn about Void Storage. Soon, very soon.

Aygaren rushed through Northrend, he wanted to be lvl 80. Then he wants to be 85 for Firelands. Then he wants to be geared for the coming Pandas. Then he wants to still master tanking. Then he wants....well, you get the picture. Like a little kid in the corner penny candy store, Ay just wants everything. I hate to burst his bubble, but the likelihood of everything coming about just isn't possible. Something will have to give. He keeps telling me all is good. I have my doubts though, as he was mumbleing something about Call to Arms weekend. Hurmph! He doesn't realize that he's got like zero (0) pvp gear.
 
Anyway, I'm off to see what the boys are up to today.  "Victory or Death", is the word of the day.
Happy days everyone!

Rumbles and Grumbles, w/pics

Like the post title says, this is a rumble, (it's very early morn here and my tummy hasn't had it's dose of coffee just yet), grumble, (ah-cause I just might grumble *rant* a bit), and in keeping with Blizzards move to balance everything, I'll supply some pics to balance out the aforementioned rumble-grumbles.


The eagerly awaited 4.3 patch is live. There's been a healthy dose of reactions over it around the community, mostly from the pve raiders perspective. Leading up to this, there's been plenty of amazing vids to watch as well. All well and good. I'm quite happy for everyone who's able to raid, and experience this portion of end-game. Okay, long time readers have already guessed the next part.



Khrox enjoying IF.

 I am both jealous and saddened that I have yet to raise up a viable raider. Sol never did quite make the cut and semi-retired himself to parts unknown. Khrox blasted his way to 85 through quests and late life bg's. He's fully pvp geared with no dungeon experience worth a hoot. He opened up his LFR toolbox. It told him he didn't have the qualifacations to use it. Kaimara is currently pvp geared with very little bg experience. She has some minor pve dungeon experience, but alas, no where near achieving entry raid level. Yet another end of expansion big baddie raid available, and here my alter-selves sit, twiddleing their thumbs. Tapping fingers on the desk asking me "WHY?" "Why haven't you got us THERE yet?" It's just like kids, always wanting more. And I haven't quite been able to give them the world, as much as I would like to.



Kaimara

 It is this part of end-game which constantly haunts me. It is also one of the several reasons for the birth of The Great Horde Project. This is an open-ended self project I started a few weeks ago. I may have mentioned it a time or two here. It began rather simplistically minded, experience the lore and story from the other side of the fence through the eyes of various races within the faction. It's been great. Each character thus far has provided experiences greatly appreciated by the button masher.

It was all good through level 12, then some difficulties started to rise. They suddenly became Hellscreams' minions, fighting his war, like it or not. Then there's the part where they're really all alone traveling through this new world. Traveling expenses became an issue, along with training fees to survive in Hellscreams' War. You get the picture. No sugar-daddys, no heirlooms, it's survival one day at a time. Can you remember those times from way back when? Although the project birthed itself on several likely servers, it is now apparently focused on one realm. I gather these kids, have decided to it home.





Level 11 Gizzel got excited during an Alliance raid on Hellscream,
yep, he died.

 It's AB battleground weekend. I love AB. Birzak was level 19, he que'd for AB. It told him he should probably expect to wait at least 10 minutes and probably more. Birzak dropped from que. Did I mention that the crew is on a PvE server? Obviously, bg's aren't going to be much help. /facepalm Well, I really need to concentrate on the main goal. Focus button-masher, FOCUS! There's two hunters, a mage, and a wanna-be tank pally. Get with the program kids. Dungeons. You want DUNGEONS! Jump in and go for it. Ignor the chat box and all the pve jerk-twads. Just get in now while you're still young enough to grow in these ways. Maybe by the time the Panda's arrive, you'll finally be ready. BTW- I'm lousy terri-bad at melee. Always been a ranged caster. The wanna-be pally tank is going to be a real challenge.


Gizzel-goblin hunter



Gandom-Orc mage

Have fun in game everyone! LOL, in spite of momentary doldrum attacks, I am. And beware Alliance! The goys are off to dungeons for now, but the day will come, your reckoning will be at hand. MAWHAHAHAHA!!!!

The Night Before

'Twas the night before the patch. The day's game play is over, the nightly reading done. Soooo,


all things look like a go for Tuesday maintenance to be the long awaited 4.3 patch. It's been coming for some time now, and players everywhere have had opportunities to prepare for it in each of their ways. There's even been a number of blog posts around the community with very sound advice as to how to prepare for this patch release. It's all good, dear reader.

I, like many others, sorted through all this advice gleeming what I thought useful for my several level capped characters (and those close to cap). This time around though, I've taken a somewhat different approach. Such as: Khrox (the BM hunter/pvp'er) really should have spent some time capping out his honor/conquest points in preperation. Smart thing to do, which he didn't do. Instead, he just lazed around the past several weeks doing nothing more than /gquit the pvp guild he was in. Oh, he has a chunk of hp's, and a handful of conquest (which will end up converted) stored up. Any extra effort though seemed worthless for him. We'll get to why in a minute or so.

Cle was also in that same guild, key word, was. He's not quite level capped yet though so he's not really at any loss. Kaimara is in a different guild, though hasn't been active enough with them, or even with them that long. Her stance is one of those, "let's wait and see how it goes." The core of this matter with the three of them is this: the server they call home.

I've been on that server since about the beginning of time (my time). I've seen it's up's and down's. You can actually feel the differences each time the population rises and falls. The server is in a down-trend at this time. IMO, a very deep down-trend, and it's been going on for some time. I won't bore you with all my personal thoughts on this. Suffice it to say, that for me, the server just hasn't been a fun place to play for months. Character transfer is not an option, so everyone justs sits and waits it out.

No problem really. I do have characters spread across enough servers to stay active and enjoy the game. None of them though, are any where near end-game content, and that's okay as well. Plenty to do, lots of options. Enter from stage left, the Great Horde Project!

Being an Alliance player for so long prompted me to spread wings and see things from the opposite factions' eyes. Yep, more story and lore time, YAY! After several server hit and runs, I finally settled on one which seems to viable enough for this project. Started out with a Troll hunter, since I've already got a good dose of Undead somewhere else. Troll hunter didn't really like being all alone though, so after a bit of leveling, he aquired a Tauren pally companion (I also wanted to try tanking). Things are going good so far, I can now see through Tauren eyes. Then, along came this stray Goblin hunter. While not too far behind, there followed an Orc mage. Strange though, the Orc is the only one who don't seem to have some form of dislike/distrust for Garrosh.

So that's where I'm at in game. I would really like to raise several of these Horde characters to cap and experience their full story. I'm sure that after the patch has been out for a few days and the initial dust settles, Khrox and company will jump into their battlegrounds for a bit. In the meantime, the young Horde's are at the beginning of their journey.

Almost a day off!

Monday night and the usual. I'm checking the service forum to see about schedualed maintenance. Rolling restarts, again.


What with the current PvP season close to an end now, and the Deathwing patch release most likely as soon or nearby, my Alliance mains have been resting up. I've been off for a time playing some Horde characters, learning about lore and things from their perspective. This isn't just some little whim or such. I fully intend to level cap a couple of "Hordies." I'm also going through several realm servers to see which will work out the best for this project. And if that's not enough to do, I really should take a look and clean house a bit on my regular servers. You guessed it, bank alts all over the place, about to be out of work.

Back to my new Horde project though. So far, on one PvE/neutral server, there are three. Two Undead (spriest and mage), and one Troll hunter. In the beginning of this I did the usual scientific stuff for selecting which races to play, wholly based upon what I thought I liked or disliked after fighting so many of them on PvP servers. Belfs, no way, ever. Orcs, maybe after I've been everywhere else. DK's of any sort, no, I like leveling. Goblins, tried one once, gone at level 8. Tauren, a pretty fair possibility, may yet happen. Anyway, the lore and the history behind Undead and Troll won out as starters. That's about as scientific as I get anymore.

About the server choices. Mostly shots in the dark on those picks. I did take some time to check out various realm populations and activity ratios. Recalled a few server names I've seen floating around the WoW blog community, and picked three to start with. One is already down, just didn't seem to be a compatable fit with me. My other choice for now has a lone Troll hunter started, he just made level 11 today.

There are a lot of choices to make with this little project of mine. And it seems like there is always something that needs to be done. Trying to level new characters on unknown servers with no mains to watch over or help them out, sheeeze!! How the heck did I ever get through all this waaay back when I first came into this game? A six-slot bag drops from a mob and I practically squee with delight! And that really great NPC over there actually gave me a silver piece for killing 20 tallstriders to collect 6 beaks. He was so nice about it. Even provided me with another repetitive kill quest. Good thing though, I can skin all these beasties for my own use. He's just gonna have to up the payment though. . . I NEED TRAINING!!!

Decisions, decisions. /sigh It's been quite interesting so far, and fun. I really enjoyed the Undead starter quests. Lots of story line going on there. The Troll starter quests, well, they just seemed to be a bit of a let down after doing the Undead. You get shoved off into "For the Horde" quests rather quickly, to quick in my opinion. I'm hoping more of their history and lore shows up pretty soon. I would like to have seen a little more involvement with Vol'jin, than there was. Probably just me though. I'm sure the two little Troll hunters will find their way soon enough.

That about wraps up this Monday night of random thoughts. If you're feeling a bit helpful though and would like to suggest a realm server for my little project, please, feel free to do so in the comments. My thoughts about a server are simple. Either Eastern or Central US time zones (I'm eastern), PvE/neutral (so I can flag for PvP at will). Relatively faction balance/activity. My general play time, is day time, along with scattered opportunities of late afternoons and weekends. Okay, TMI. lol. But if you happen to have a suggestion go ahead and mention it.

Enjoy your game! ~Sol

Eveania

Although Esie had been granted wise counsel and training from the Banshee Queen herself, there was no holding her back. The Forsaken had tenitively aligned with the warring Horde nation. Garrosh, their warchief, wanted to rule over many worlds and was more than willing to take them by spilling the blood of their inhabitants. This was a familar train of thought which Esie had experienced before. Lady Sylvanas had expressed the same ruthlessness over Silverpine and Lordredon belonging to the Forsaken.


Sorting out political stuff really isn't Esies' cup of Moonberry juice, at this point she could care less. She does remember from the time she was raisen from death being told she had free will, and could go her own way as she wished. Numerous other feelings and thoughts have come to her over that time since. And though she does not trust Hellscream, much less like him, war and killing pulsates over her bones with a warmth she has taken to. She likes killing, leaving trails of splattered blood in her wake. The Dark Lady and Hellscream apparently rather enjoy killing as well. Between them, Esie has been provided an unlimited supply of targets awaiting death. All seems rather good these days.

It was morning, again. Esie had taken refuge last night in a village called Thunderbluff. The Tauran peoples here were different from the Orcs she had the displeasure of meeting in Orgrimmar several nights back. The Taurans' village was peaceful, untouched by worldly destruction. They welcomed Esie without question, providing her with food and drink. In Org, (as they call it), she was treated as "an instrument of Hellscreams army". Here, she was welcomed as an individual. It was here where Esie learned from the Tauran Shamans, that there was so much more going on in the world other than Hellscreams' war. Last night was filled with conversations so new and disturbing to Esie. Even though, she felt an aura of peace within the village and knew she would be returning often.

After the mornings' raw fish meal and friendly greetings from the Taurans, Esie wandered about the village shops restocking her backpack. Someone had mentioned that the postalcarrier was holding a letter for her. Esie had no family known to her, so could not imagine who would send her mail. True enough, the letter box contained a sealed note with her name scratched across its' front.

The handwriting in the note itself wasn't much better. The signature was a singular name, much like her own. "Eveania." It was the content of the note that took Esie by surprise. Apparently a very young Undead mage practioner claimed to be Esies' sister. She was asking for advice, and quite naturally, some assistance. Sitting down with the note, Esie had some doubts about the sister claim. How could it be so?

Thoughts of visiting the Caretaker for proof wandered about her mind. Esie had traveled her own way to reach this point in her own undeath. Although she saw no reason for anyone else not to be able to do the same, she did feel for this young mage, she knew that the times ahead for her were going to be hard. So, in all this thought, Esie composed a polite note back to this Eveania. She included an extra small pouch she looted yesterday, and a few pieces of gold to travel on. "That should do it," she mumbled. I'll probably never hear from her again anyways.

Esie

There is so much to do in this game, that I never really tire or lose interest in playing. I cannot count the number of distractions and side-trips I've taken over the coarse of nearly six years now. The number of alts created, the number deleted, all that remain at various levels on numerous realms, has long past the length of current memory conditions. Perhaps due to the ways I was introduced into this game and the odd conditions prevailing at the time, I"ve been a long time alliance player. Sure, I've tried horde characters now and then. Although, none ever seemed to last longer than level 10 or 12, and all attempts were long before The Shattering of Azeroth. Well, lo and behold, that time rolled around once again. It is my pleasure and honor to introduce, Esie.




One must always have a good night's rest

Esie is an Undead Priest (female). Rather attractive in a dark sort of way, in spite of various dried up bones protruding here and there. And, quite thin for the wear and tear. All in all though, she has potential and desire, albeit questionable at times.

Esie's beginnings ran along the usual lines, kill so many of this and that, collect X-amounts of this and that. Soon enough, she was deemed ready for war and sent along to Silverpine. The Forsaken want their land back. The war stratagy seems simple enough. Kill anything/anybody that gets in the way. Rid the land of all intruders. After a few "proving" quests are under her belt, ( a much needed accessory to hold her pants up over the bones), she was honored with an introduction to the Dark Lady herself, Lady Sylvanas Windrunner. It was at this point where things got very interesting, real sudden like.



Esie and The Dark Lady

The amount of story quest lines and cut scenes burst open. History behind the Forsaken beginnings, the Dark Lady's meaningful intents, etc. Like a child in a penny candy store, I would rush from quest to quest, excited and wanting to know (see) more. At one point, I forget how it came about, but Esie was doing so well she was asked to stand beside the Dark Lady and join in on a meeting with Warchief Hellscream. A meeting which the Dark Lady said he would probably give us commendations for our successes'. Perhaps needless to say, the meeting did not go well. There was a noticable rift between Hellscream and Esie's leader. No commendations came from it, but rather strong words from Hellscream about Lady Sylvanas days becoming rather shorter in number. Surely, not a good sign of things to come.



Risen from death

Then came the war against the Worgens, the battle at Gilenas and of coarse, treachery within the ranks. Esie stood by at the Greymane Wall and witnessed her beloved leader get shot to death in the back. And then had to stand by and watch as her favorite battle companion, Agatha (a Vykrul), gave her life along with her two companions to raise the Dark Lady from death. These were sad times indeed, and Esie will dearly miss Agatha. It was parting time for now, as the Dark Lady gave Esie orders to proceed into Hillsbrad territory. With some regrets, Esie packed her bags with what little she possessed, and began her journeys.



Finally! A horse to ride instead of walking.

Esie is considerably older and wiser since I started this post, in fact, she has dominated game play for a couple of weeks now. lol, I've actually become quite fond of her and her antics. I think though that I should attribute some of her success to realm choice. I chose Medivh for her home. A neutral server where you can create characters of both factions, and pvp only if you flag yourself. I think some of the hardcore and eliteists call this a "care-bear" server, but that's fine with me. I can wander about with all my distractions and explore all the quirks as they appear. She only got hacked to death once so far, by a level capped Nelf rogue. And that was because she weaved her way from Stranglethorn to Stormwind to douse the alliance wickerman. Her gleeful success in doing so flagged her for combat, and instant death.



Traveling in style, with vending machines no less!

Obviously, Hallows End has broadened her travels in Azeroth, as she has aged several times just collecting candy for nourishment. Not to mention two really cool companion pets and an assortment of masks to play with. Esie has learned a lot though in her travels and dealings along the way. And should you ever run into her, she'll stand her ground proudly and tell you, "I am Forsaken."

Death to the Moonkin

Everyone enjoys relating their adventures and accomplishments in World of Warcraft, including Sol. At times, these high points consumed either a great amount of play time and/or expertise in playstyle. Whatever the accomplishment, it should be proudly announced and even talked about from the successors perspective. After all, it's YOUR accomplishment, YOUR success. It don't matter if amidst the 11 million or so other characters perhaps 30 or 40% of them also succeeded in doing whatever. The fact remains that YOU succeeded. The glory now belongs to YOU! And if you happen to be within Sols' world at the time, even if he don't know you, (which he probably don't), you've recieved his whisper of "Gratz!" as well.


Today though, Sol desires to talk about another little discussed statistic amidst his achievements, the one called Deaths. Not the funny ones like falling off the ledge, inadvertantly running into mobs hiding around a corner, or that sneaky dragon-??-elite that suddenly appears and proceeds to chew you up for an appitizer. Nope, today belongs to those more common everyday type world deaths from the opposite faction.

From Sol's current stat listings we have the following: 1,138 total deaths. Let's see, subtract the BG's, dungeons, falling-drowning-fire-lava deaths-duels, that leaves 1,026 deaths. Now here is where the math gets a bit confusing. "Deaths from other players"--826. Hmmmm? 200 unaccounted for deaths? /shrugs

Sol does get killed a lot, a whole bunch of times actually, from the Horde. He recalls being consistantly ganked throughout his leveling to 80. And so, the 1,026 figure seems about right to him.

So, what is it about these particular deaths that is worth talking about? I mean, so what? Everybody goes through spells where the opposite faction is out for your blood. Right? Sol is no different I guess, he dies just the same and rezs just the same. Maybe a little more or less than others, who knows. At this point though, Sol is going to toss the preverbial monkey wrench into this mess, and the name of that monkey wrench is "Honor". We can now subtract another 1,024 deaths from the list of ganker joys. That leaves a mere two (2) honorable deaths. These deaths are noteable to Sol, he remembers them well, although sometimes the why escapes him.

We must make note here that the 1,024 deaths came from 30 or so yards behind Sol, unexpected, and generally multiple times by the same enemy. (Guess once just wasn't enough for them) Sol don't see any real Honor in those. If you wish to be honorable in your killing, you go against your enemy head on. That is the difference in Sol's two memorable deaths.

The first came from the familure ?? level player who dropped down in front of me, bowed graciously, then one-shot killed me. Patted me on the back and sobbed before I could release, then went about his/her business. My attacker probably did'nt get any official honor points, but gained my respect for at least coming at me from the front offering a slight chance for honorable battle.

Number two was a bit more ingenious. I was fishing (farming) a small creek in the Basin and this guy on his drake dropped down and hovered in front of me. No signs of aggression, so I gave him a wave, he waves back, and continues to just hover there and watch me. Then I notice some little orange text come up in the chat pane. *insert player name- "comptemplates your early demise". I no sooner got this read and boom! Sudden death. One-shot, quick and painless. Still a bit sneaky in his tacticsl, but I gave him a point for coming from the front side.

For whatever reasons may be, these two deaths stand out in my considerably less than normal memory banks. What odd deaths to you recall? What stands out in your memory of general world pvp deaths?

Alliance-Horde Ratios...

I'm sure that by now, most readers know I play on the US-Spinebreaker PVP realm server. Amidst this particular community, there is a noteable sense of thoughts that this server is for the most part either dead or near death, in so far as a community is concerned. It is also known that at this point in time, the server has a rather Horde heavy population. It didn't always used to be this way and we can attribute much of the cause to the onslaught of server transfers and faction changes implemented by Blizz. Another line of growing thought is that this server will perhaps undergo another shift in faction ratios once Cataclysm is out. Many think that it will become more population balanced. We shall see when the time comes.


Being an Ally on Spinebreaker, I can personally attest to the realities of a horde heavy server. The exact ratios I believe though, are not really known. The experiences of many players live in-game place the ratio somewhere between 1:4 and 1:16, depending upon time of day and locations. Example being, WG would lend itself towards the latter mentioned ratio during my regular play time. Quite often, I myself have thought about server transfer, but then again I do enjoy the good challenge of playing the 'underdog'.

Any way, all these thoughts lead me to looking for actual stats on faction ratios across US servers. One website name came up more often than others in this area:  Warcraft Realms. I should make a DISCLAIMER note here though: even this website clearly states that it needs much more information from players in game, that many stats are out-dated and need revision. With that said, I did learn a few things worth mentioning.


My search was on US servers only: The greater majority of servers were horde heavy. Of these servers, all were PVP servers. The ratios ranged from 1:1.3--to--1:13.8. (my sympathy to Mal'ganis allys) Only one PVP server had an opposing ratio of 2.5:1. (Darrowmere, if interested) Just as I noticed that the PVP servers were mostly horde sided, it was the opposite truth for the PVE and RP servers, whereas the imbalance favored Alliance, as much as 3.5:1.

All this was an interesting little FYI journey for me, nothing more. My main managed to journey through 80 levels on Spinebreaker, and I still have 3 (down from 8) playable alts I'm nurturing along.(not counting the bank/ah alt) My 'kids', I call them. For better or worse, Spinebreaker is "home", and I take pride in my toons there.