This is it! This is my final blog post before I leave for my big trip! So I shall try to make it a good one to hold you over until Spokey starts writing guests posts which will hopefully hold you over until I get back.
I did something a little different today. I went mount farming. I did Stratholme, and then I went and soloed Garr in molten core for thunderfury bindings. Died to Baron Geddon though.Went and did some looking into if it was even possible to solo Geddon and found something interesting. Apparently it IS possible if you use a hybrid Fury/Prot spec. Fury down to Blood Thirst and the rest in Protection. So I picked up the Blood Thirst glyph and went and tried out this spec. I still couldn't kill Baron Geddon (I suspect this is something that takes some practice, and probably some Fire Resist) but I got much closer. I think I'll put a little more effort into it upon my return and eventually kill him.
From there I went to Zul'Gurub. I wasn't at all worried about Blood Lord (The raptor boss) because I've soloed him before. Never tried soloing Tiger before so I was worried about that part. Well Blood Lord didn't go as planned since I accidently aggroed some mobs at the entrance to the room which did a kind of chain knock back thing that lead to me running right into the Hakkari Speaker or whatever he's called. Which lead to Blood Lord running down the stairs. During another Knock Back the boss got stuck behind a tree and kept teleporting me to his location if I moved more than 3 steps away. That was pretty annoying. After about 10 minutes I killed him, then finished off the 2 Blood Drinkers that aggroed on to me at the start and I'm pretty sure those things are nearly impossible to kill when there is a boss teleporting you every couple seconds. No raptor mount. Boo.
Moved on to the tiger boss and encountered the most annoying trash EVER. I really think Blizzard should bring trash like this back. These mobs do an AoE knock down stun thing that lasts forever. And if you're fighting more than one, plus a couple tigers, it's not too difficult to die. >:( - Pulled the 3 "bosses" and got them all down to like 5%. Killed them all at the same time. Didn't take as long as I thought it would. Only missed one heal interrupt. Downed the boss and...no mount. Apparently I should also be able to solo the first boss in Karazhan and also Heroic Magisters' Terrace. Didn't try those but I believe it. Though I would imagine the second boss (I think it's the second one) in Magister's Terrace would be a major pain in my fluffy tauren ass. Totally going to try it when I get back though.
Now I'm in a fairly solid Naxx-25 pug on my healer alt. Wish I could go on my warrior and have a chance at Last Laugh but maybe I'll get an uber healing mace instead.
Some of my friends have recently hit level 80 and some others are working on getting to level 80, so I'm expecting to have a lot of new people to do instances and raids with when I get back. One of my friends has expressed interest in starting regular Ulduar-10 groups and that's something that I'm very interested in. Ulduar in and of itself doesn't really appeal to me, it kind of strikes me as boring to look at and I've heard lots of horror stories about it, but I do crave new content so it could be fun. Plus shiny purples. Though I guess after being away for a month or so it'll make Naxx more fun and interesting. At least that's what happened the last time I went away from the game for awhile. Though I'm not sure any amount of time away can cure the boringness that is Obsidian Sanctum.
Well! I'm off to enjoy a (hopefully) relaxing vacation! Catch you all when I get back! Have a nice july, and don't blow your fingers off on independence day if you celebrate that!
Edit: Yes, got the uber healing mace. Sadly Last Laugh dropped too. Always when I'm not on my warrior! ><; But at least I got an uber healing mace!
What an odd title for a post, no? Well it's titled that because of the short story that I'm going to start this entry off with.
Last night a friend of mine asked me if I would like to do VoA-25 with his guild. His guild is one of the top guilds on my server. Sure, why not? So I joined the group and got summoned there. The raid leader was someone that I know, or rather know of, but probably doesn't remember me. He's an enchanter that I gave a huge tip to for an enchant and then he freaked out because it was like 10x the usual tip that he got for that particular enchant. I'm convinced that he's Christopher Walken irl though. He talks and sounds just like him. It was awesome. We killed the bosses and nothing great dropped, but it was fun. And that's my short story and the reason for the post title. Fascinating isn't it? Yeah I didn't think so either.
I don't know about everyone else out there but my guild is currently in a period of inactivity. With lots of people not playing at all and some people playing alts rather than mains because of it. As well as at least one person having some serious IRL drama going on and being unable to log-in at all. I've still managed to find some time to play between vacation preparation, earning teh monies, and everything that life has thrown at me recently and when it's been fairly boring aside from gearing up that tank the other week. We've got a couple new 80s that are working the pug circuit for gear and by the time I get back we should have some new 80s and can start doing some raids again. Woo, raids!
Speaking of raids, I saw Ulduar for the first time last week. I saw bits of 10-man on my alt and then I saw the first boss of 25-man on my Warrior. Only the first boss because the raid leader, Devilsreign, decided to be a little prick and master loot all of the loot to his friends and waste everyone's time. Though apparently it was the raid's fault because there was one wipe. Which I attribute to his friends who are "totally pro" not being "totally pro" enough to click on the damn pyrite. I know that one was a passenger in my vehicle and picked up one thingy of pyrite the entire time. Yeah. Even though I drove right up to it, pointed my vehicle directly at it, and sent him a tell that said "Please pick up the pyrite! Thank you." Sigh.
At the moment I'm trying to get the last Titansteel Bar I need for my [Super Sexy Tank Belt] which I hope to have made tonight and then will most likely sit there until I get back from my trip. Such a nice belt. *drool* I'll probably get the boots made too but not until I get back. I can't farm that much gold in just 2 days! Speaking of gold making, Glyphs are interesting. The value fluctuates a LOT. Just last week I was selling one of the Death Knight glyphs for 20g and was quite happy with that. This week I've been able to sell about 5 of them for 49g each. Hot!
I've been hearing more and more about the changes coming with the patch and I have to say I'm pretty excited about some of them and pretty unsure about others.
# 0 - Faction Change Service Update - July 1, 2009, 11:26 am
Q. Will we be able to switch between the races on our own faction?
A.. No. Players will only be able to switch to a race of the opposite faction.
Q. Will I be able to choose the race on the opposite faction that I want to change to?
A.. Yes, but you will only be able to switch to a race that has your class type available to it. So if you play a human paladin, you’d only be able to change to a blood elf paladin.
Q.How much will it cost?
A.. We do not have further information on this at this point in time.
Q.Will I be able to switch back to my original faction but a different race?
A.. No. You will only be able to switch back to your originally chosen race.
Q.. How will the switch between reputation, gear, mounts, etc be handled?
A.. We’ll have more details for you at a later point in time, though we plan to keep these as close to a reflection of the other faction as much as possible.
Q.How often can you change your faction?
A..We do not have any information to share on this at this point in time, however we will have restrictions on the frequency by which players can change their faction.
Q. How will this affect the balance of Horde and Alliance on the realms?
A.. We are taking great care in how we implement this new service in order to maintain balance between the factions on the realms but do not have any further details to share.
That's pretty cool. Though I guess it means that if I were to take my alliance warrior and make it horde I would need to put a lot of thought into what race I wanted it to be. Though I imagine that if we keep heading down this road we're heading down at the moment we'll eventually get same faction race changes. We'll see what happens. Part of me hopes the cooldown is longer than the Customization/naming/server transfer cooldown. So I'm excited about that, and I'm excited about the emblem thing. Not for my main, but mostly for my alts.
Then I came across this:
"This new PTR build had its share of Tier 9 updates, the models for the Leather_ArgentHorde are available and we now have the prices for each piece. The biggest change here is the introduction of a common token for all armor parts, you can buy the Head/Hands/Chest/Legs/Shoulders of your set with a single item. (Example: Regalia of the Grand Conqueror)"
I have mixed feelings about that. I really do. On one hand it's awesome because the one piece that I really want of all of the tier sets is the shoulder piece. Why? Because I'm a warrior and warrior shoulders almost always look awesome. Yet I don't have great luck with tier shoulder pieces. So this way I can just get the piece from whatever drops it and trade it in for whatever piece of tier armor I want. This makes getting shoulders easier, and that's obviously the most important part of the game. The downside however is that you'll be rolling/bidding/rock-paper-scissoring/whatever against not only people on your token that need X slot, but all people on your token that need any slot. That could suck. Also in theory it seems to be possible to farm the easiest token dropping mob and get a full set that way. Unless only one mob drops the tokens one of them has to be easier than the rest. And if only one DID drop the new tokens, well, that seems like one baby step forward and about 9 and a half tauren steps backwards. To me at least.
For the most part I'm really really looking forward to Patch 3.2. It introduces some huuuuuuuuuge changes to the game and I really like a lot of them. With Blizzard's patch cycle though I don't expect the patch to be out before I get back, but Blizzard has surprised me before.
PS - I didn't mean to imply that Faction Change was coming with 3.2. I just kind of group things I'm excited about together. Whee.
# 0 - Faction-Change Service in the Works - June 29, 2009, 1:58 pm
We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it.
As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the faction-change service in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience on the realms, and there will be some rules involved with when and how the service can be used. The number of variables involved increases the complexity of implementing this service, but we plan to take the time needed to ensure that it lives up to expectations before officially rolling it out. We’ll go into much more detail on all of this here at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as development progresses. In the meantime, we wanted to let you know that because this type of functionality requires extensive internal testing well in advance of release, you may be seeing bits and pieces of the service in the test builds we use for the public test realms moving forward.
Woohoo! Awesome! Now for the questions I have.
1) Will we get to pick the race of our character or will it be pre-determined? By that I mean could I in theory make my level 70 Night Elf Warrior into a Level 70 horde warrior of my choosing, or would it be something like Orb of Deception where night elves turn into undead, gnomes turn into taurens, humans turn into orcs, and so on? Because if I could take my level 70 NE Warrior and turn it into say a level 70 Orc warrior...That would be pretty hot.
2) I wonder if this means eventually we'll just get race changes as well? Like being able to turn my tauren into a troll or my night elf into a dwarf and so on. That would be pretty hot too.
3) What do they mean by "Roughly Equivalent?" - Seriously what does that mean? Does that mean that the new characters aren't really our characters and get some pre-assembled gear assortment? If so that's totally uncool. I could just be odd but I'd rather just have my Swift Zulian Tiger of Sexiness and all my shiny old semi-rare purples sit there and collect dust than be vaporized soley so that I could be the opposite faction!
So the Emblem change is still going strong as far as the drama goes. It's an awful lot of drama over virtual barbies. And in the end that's exactly what we're playing with here. We grind, we raid, we farm to dress up virtual barbies with new clothes and accessories. Sorry you bunch of hardened gaming veterans, slayers of dragons, you're all playing with virtual barbies. That's what you're doing from the time you create a character until the time you stop playing. Virtual Barbie Dress-up with dragon-slaying minigames. That's it. That's all it is. The emblem change is coming, love it or hate it, and it's Blizzard's attempt to fix a broken system. They just need to find the right balance between "lol no progression at all for people that aren't serious raiders" (current system) and "lol lots of uber gear for no work!" (Old System) - And honestly a 2-tier badge system with no pre-farming capabilities (My understanding is that your current emblems will remain as they are, so pre-patch farming gives you no advantage.) is as close as they're going to get. The only thing I don't really like is that everybody is going to have the ability to (very very slowly) collect the next tier of emblems, but in the end it's not that much different from doing VoA every week eh?
Oh wait, I think I was just supposed to pick a side here and either declare that all casuals are dirty scrubs that possess no skill and always have their hands out for freebies or declare that all hardcore raiders are basement dwelling mouth-breathers that spend too much time playing WoW and possess no real life skills and thus are f#%ed in the upcoming zombie apocalypse. Or something. Because it seems that's what everybody on the forums is doing. Hmm.
Or I could just say to give it a rest because whether you love it or hate it the changes are coming and really you just need to make the most of it and learn to agree to disagree on the potential impact on the game or the state of raiding and stop the bickering and name calling.
In the first week of July I'll be leaving to go on vacation. I've been really looking forward to it for the last few months. I plan to be gone for around 6 weeks but I could be back sooner or later than that. Don't worry though, I have no intention of leaving Naissa's Rage inactive for that long. I've got 1-2 more posts scheduled before I go and my dear friend SpokeyDokes (Hey I don't know, he picked his own name.) will be making some posts while I'm gone. He's a druid, and he's totally awesome at it, but he's also a pretty good warrior and a great raid leader (and super speedy master looter.) and highly entertaining.
Look for him to introduce himself sometime in the next couple days.
Hi! You've discovered Naissa's Rage. What exactly is Naissa's Rage? Naissa's Rage is the World of Warcraft Themed Blog of... Well... Naissa. Naissa is a warrior, a protection warrior to be exact. On this website you'll find a lot of different things. You'll find tanking guides, heroic instance guides, lots of pretty screenshots, rantings, ravings, random thoughts and just about anything else that I feel like posting. You're pretty much at my mercy! Muahaha. To find out more I would suggest clicking on the "About" link.
Have a nice july, and don't blow your fingers off on independence day if you celebrate that! 
On The Rocks
The Flame Keeper
Torch Juggler 
Desecration of the Alliance
