MH and BT Zerg

Oh yeah baby. 27 minutes into Mount Hyjal and the first 2 bosses were down.

In less than 1.5 hours Archimonde was down with a 1-shot on every boss again. The T6 helm dropped which I really wanted but was outbid. Guess I'll have to stick with the T4 helm until next week.

So, with an hour of raid time left we headed over to the Black Temple and 1-shotted Naj, Superman and Shade.

OMG!!

2.5 hours for a full MH clear and 1st 3 bosses in BT!!

Sunday should see a full clear of Black Temple and then Tuesday should be some Sunwell Plateau fun :)

Sunwell Plateau and 3.0.2 Pally Healing

Tonight we entered Mount Hyjal at around 20:40.

After 30 minutes the 1st 2 bosses were dead. By 22:10 Archimonde was dead. All 5 MH bosses one-shotted in 1.5 hours - WooHoo!!

OK, this is post patch 3.0.2 and we have already cleared MH several times pre patch 3.0.2 but still; 1.5 hours!!!

Season 4 or Tier 6?
Only one T6 dropping boss dropped pally T6 loot and my Brutal Gladiators Handguards are better so I didn't bid.

I was throwing out massive 10K heals and getting into the swing of throwing out Holy Shocks and watching for the proc to get a quick Holy Light onto the tank.

I also had the Holy Light and Spiritual Attunement glyphs attached so was loving the splash healing numbers popping up. I ended the night on 3rd healing spot only beaten by 2 priests. I didn't really notice much from the SA glyph. I also have a Flash Heal glyph but am not sure that fits with my healing style.

Into the Sunwell
After this we went and killed some Sunwell Trash. We had our first wipes of the evening but it was great to finally see the inside of Sunwell.

We hadn't got to the first boss by raid finish time and a few of us had to go. The rest said they were going to carry on with 20 people. I am yet to find out what happened.

Refer a Friend Power Levelling Tip.

Mark and Sven are storming through the old world. They are up to level 55 now and this has been boosted by the Halloween event.

At level 50-ish they get 11-12K XP for each pumpkin quest they do, so I have spent quite some time this weekend touring Azeroth doing the pumpkin quests and also making sure to explore most regions for the Explorer achievement.

If I'd simply flown to each location and done the quest I would have finished a lot quicker. Hopefully they'll be high enough on level before Friday to do the Outlands one without having to 3 box escort them with EvilBastard.

ILLIDAN DEAD!!!

I was not there. Our server is suffering major queues to logon nowadays, probably due to people coming back to the game and doing achievements and levelling inscription for WotLK.

By the time I logged on the raid was already full and people were being rotated out. This is probably due to people seeing that Illidan is on the cards and want a shot at him so have decided to start raiding more regularly.

So, I didn't get to raid tonight. Black Temple was already 8 out of 9 bosses down just from Thursday night's raid. Bastards!! So it was straight up to Illidan... and 2 hours later he was dead.

I am gutted, but pleased for the guild.

Gazban and Curse of the Tides Still Bugged

Blizzard are fucking useless.

The Curse of the Tides quest can randomly getted bugged; reportedly if someone dies trying to kill Gazban.

Well, he has been bugged since last Wednesday or Thursday and I have had repeated tickets in about it. GMs never answer me when I am online and simply send me an in-game mail once I have logged off saying that devs are aware of the problem.

The rolling restart at the weekend didn't fix it and the Tuesday night maintenance did not reset him either.

Tonight a GM actually answered my ticket and said there is a fix: "kind of". He said to abandon the quest and wait for him to despawn on the island near the Vile Reef and then retake the quest.

Well I tried that and it didn't fucking work. I wasn't that hopeful, I think he was on drugs, he kept saying awesome!!

I know it's not game breaking and it's only a level 40-ish quest, but come on Blizz - it's been bugged for 2 years. Pull your frigging fingers out.

It's grey to me now and I wanted to finish the quest chain but screw it, time to abandon.

Black Temple Zerg!!

I have already mentioned that in Sunday's raid that I missed my guild took down Bloodboil and Reliquary.

We had a further expedition planned into the Temple last night to pay Mother Shiraz a visit.

How Much Shadow Gear?
We had lots of discussion in the guild forums during the day about getting the Shadow Res gear sorted. I had collected most of the mats for the Shadesteel set a few months ago. Turns out I was still missing 6 primal shadows and a primal life, but I got all the HoDs from the guild bank so I would only be short one piece.

Oopsy...
Unfortunately real life got in the way again and I couldn't get logged on till raid invite time. So no chance of getting my SR set crafted and I still hadn't set up any addons or spent my talent points. So a quick rush to SW and purchased the judgements and then got a summon to SMV after I remembered to grab my shadow res cloak and medallion from the bank.

And off we go.
Not many people had managed to get any shadow res gear together and all I had was my Night's End cloak (enchanted with shadow res) and my Medallion of the Karabor. The raid had already moved into Black Tenmple and I was stood at the summoning stone assigning my talent points and fixing my UI. LOL. I went 46/3/12 or something in the end.

I then got a summon up into the temple and I had no idea where we were but we were slicing through trash like a hot knife through butter!

And then Mother Shiraz was standing in front of us.

We stood around chatting about it for 15 minutes and then gave her a shot. We wiped, but she was hurt.

Then we gave it another shot and killed her!!!!!! WOOOT!!!

Shadow Res gear? Not a lot. She went down so fast it really wasn't needed!!

Shiraz Strategy.
She is a bit like Solarion. If you get teleported (with 2 other people) you need to run away from the raid and more importantly from each other. Once your all 25 yards away from anyone you lose the de-buff. Other than that, kill the bitch.

Oh My God
So after no loot for me we moved on up to the Council. I could not believe I was actually standing in front of the Council. I never thought I'd ever see this. So what if it's nerfed post patch 3.0.2!!

So in goes TiceNits and pulls. Hectic. Wipe

TiceNit's again. Dies quickly. Wipe.

Imp in first and TiceNit's pulls from the imp. Better. Wipe.

Another good pull, going well. TiceNits dies. Wipe.

Ressing up. NoobMage body pulls. Wipe.

Good pull. I die at about 50%. TiceNits stays up. 5 or 6 people dead. More people dieing. The Council are down to 10,000 HPs and get a heal. ARGGGHHHH!!! Wipe.

Res up. All goes well. AND THE COUNCIL GOES DOWN!!!!!

Another 2 new bosses down in Black Temple!!

You are not Prepared.
Well, after the loot is distributed we have to go at least have a look at Illidan. So up we go, get set and pull.

We burned him through phase 1 super quick and then all collapsed into the middle and got our asses royally handed to us only a few seconds into phase 2.

It wasn't a serious attempt as we didn't ave the fire res tanks. But we got to fight Illidan. Oh Yes. We were NOT prepared. He was right!!

Refer a Friend Level Granting to be Fixed

When I got home last night I was able to do some more research on this.

Turns out that patch 3.0.2 wiped all the levels that you could grant to your referrer that you had not yet used. Arggg that was 20+ levels for me :(

Originally Blizzard said that they were sorry that they were lost, but any levels earned after patch 3.0.2 would be accrued correctly.

Oh great, well done Blizz!!

After the obvious outcry Blizz finally came back a week later and said that it would be fixed in this weeks maintenance.

So I guess we'll find out in 35 minutes if they are true to their word!!

WoW Vista - Confusing?

One thing I forgot to mention about patch 3.0.2 was that on my Vista machine (GODDAM I really must format and install XP) It moved the WoW directory to stop any patching problems.

I now have my addons in 3 different places. Or do I? All the addons would download to the Virtual Store. That was bloody annoying to start with, but I eventually dealt with that and copy them over to the actual WoW installation directory.

But now I have to copy them to something like C:/Users/Public Documents blah blah blah.

Or do I?

I have resorted to downloading the addon. Extracting it. And then pasting them into any directory that has other addons in it. They are all over the place :(

WTF?? Refer a Friend Broken?

I am at work, I can't check it out but the rumour is that WoWInsider is reporting that if you signed up for Refer-a-Friend before patch 3.0.2 and have been saving your grant-a-level's up then it is broken.

Anyone else hear this. I am scared and am going to be really pissed off.

OH MY GOD!!!

I take one night off raiding because of stupid real life and the guild take down Bloodboil and Reliquary.

/sadpanda

Sprite Darter and Curse of the Tides

Mark and Sven are storming through the levels.

There was one point where Mark the Hunter kept getting ahead in XP and I could not figure it out. Was there a hunter talent that gave you more XP for killing things that you are tracking? Is it still there? Mark seems to have shot ahead again :S

Switching in RaFs
Anyway, so M&S caught up with BitchSlapper my warrior, so I swapped from Mark to BitchSlapper and caught up Sven's XP and got the RaF quest hand in bonus for a lot of quests for BitchSlapper and powered her up to level 50!!

Lots of Travelling
Then I finished off STV with M&S and then took them on a little trip round the continents a few times doing various Feralas/Darnassus/Tanaris/Hinterlands quests, including the Sprite Darter and Cortelo's Riddle quests.

How to Get You Sprite Darter
I always forget when you have handed in the ring to the bird in Darnassus that you have to go back to Feralas and talk to the elfs again to get the quest to get you Sprite Darter pet, so was wondering why there was no follow up. Doh!! Just head back and they have a new quest for you! Of course after that the quest chain is pretty straight forward, just follow the steps.

Tip: Before going to see Quentin in Shimmering Flats remember to buy/make 2 x [Elixir of Fortitude].

They have now finished Hinterlands, what I could be bothered with, and are now going to go and finish off Tanaris and head down into the Crater.

Blizzard - Fix This Frigging Bug
The Curse of the Tides quest is bugged again. The part where you have to take [Catelyn's Blade] and use it on the Altar in the Vile Reef. It's been bugged for practically 2 years.

If someone starts the summons him and fails to kill Gazban, either they run off or die, then he gets bugged, he's tied to them or just simply bugged. He goes green (friendly) and there is nothing you can do except petition a GM and hope the lazy fuckers will do something.

Last time this happened to me, probably with HotPants the Shammy I managed to get a GM to reset Gazban and was able to kill him and loot the Stone successfully. I put in many many tickets asking for him to be reset but they never got back to me. Conveniently answering my petition once I had gone offline. They would answer that the devs were aware of this problem and would fix it soon.

Yeah!! 2 years and counting you useless fucks!!

I even put in the petition (nicely) that I was aware that the devs were aware of it, I knew the GMs can reset him because they have done it before for me. I would just like you to reset Gazban please Mr Nice GM!!

Nope. Even after a rolling server restart he was still bugged. The quest is grey to me now but I am going to plonk M&S on top of the altar on Tuesday night and go straight there after Wednesday maintenance and see what happens.

53 Tomorrow?
M&S are currently sat in Booty Bay. I was too tired to carry on handing in quests. They are a hair's breadth away from 52 and I have lots of quests to hand in. So just with a little travelling and quest hand-ins level 53 should be within reach.

Patch 3.0.2

So, Wednesday was fun.

My vista machine had spectacularly failed to pre-download much at all of the patches giving me a 6-7 hour estimate for patch 2.4->3.0 to download. Then there would be another 6 hours of patch 3.0.1 -> 3.0.2

Luckliy my XP machine at my Dads had faired a lot better. The first night it had downloaded the first 968MB or whatever it was.

Getting the Patch the Cheating Way.
Over the course of the next few weeks it had downloaded most of the rest.

I booted that up and it went straight to 1.59GB out of 1.62GB in about 9 minutes.

Install that and it's time to download 3.0.1 -> 3.0.2 That went from 549MB to 561MB in super fast time.

What took the most time was transferring >2GB over the wireless network to my laptop. That took about half an hour, and then another half hour in reverse getting it on the Vista-piece-of-crap at home!!

Realms up at 13:00 my Fat Hairy BBB.
So with that all done it was time to try and logon. It was around 12:30 Server time. OK that was a bit optimistic, but 2 PvP realms were active. That didn't last long.

The posted maintenance end time of 13:00 came and went and a few realms started coming online. None of mine though :(

The 13:00 was extended to 15:00 and come 14:30 one of my realms was up. I tried to logon "Retrieving Characters"

Yawn.

And We're in...Kind of!
Once I finally got to the Character select screen and tried to log onto my mage it got to 100% loaded and hung there. Yawn.

Eventually I got logged on, tried to mount, and I kept getting errors. Oops, the mounts are now in your character sheet.

The mount was learnt but the icon was still in my bags :S Not only that but there were no NPCs, post boxes or anything.

"World Server Down" (again)

...and again...

...Retrieving Characters...

... 100% loaded and stuck...

.. IN!! ...

"World Server Down"

Screw this, do a bit of work and come back a little later.

All My Addons Still Work ... Not!
Late evening and all was a lot more stable. I got online with Mark the Hunter and most addons were FUBAR.

OK, rather than sort each one out individually I renamed the Addons folder and started downloading all WotLK compliant addons afresh.

All but grid, simpleminimap,doublewide,lightheaded and elephant were available although Trinity2.0 has ceased to be an is now Macaroon and light-headed and doublewide were just because wowinterface was overwhelmed!

So with all the addons installed and Macaroon being a comparable alternative to Trinity2.0 I was online. That took about an hour to get fully sorted and grid still works although the minimap and DW and Lightheaded addons just do not work but do not error.

I then loaded up Sven the Druid and got him sorted out in about 5-10 minutes and I was off dual-boxing again.

Don't Forget to Reallocate Your Talent Points.
After a while I realised that spending my re-imbursed talent points might be a good idea and the new trees look pretty cool, especially the hunter pet trees - looks like charge is available for all pets!! Seeing a Crocolisk flying across the screen to a mob is fun!

I had a good few hours levelling yesterday and got them up to level 46. Nice!!

My first plan when I get them to 59-60 is to grant some levels to my warrior.

Now when I do this I am going to get my warrior as close to dinging as possible so she gets a boost to 60 (from 49) and then only has to grind a little to hit 61.

Now I want to know what will happen here. Say she is at 19 bubbles into level 49 with say 81,000 XP and I grant her levels up to level 60. Will she be 81,000XP into level 60 or 19 bubbles into level 60?

My Highlights so far of Patch 3.0.2:

• Hunter's Pet's talent trees and the fact the pets don't desert you
• Clams stack in your bags - no more bags full of clams when grinding naga!
• Mounts and Pets no longer taking space in your bags - more empty bag goodness.
• You can mount up and ride around Booty Bay!!
• Ships have NPCs and you can stay mounted onboard!
• Smooth energy/rage/mana/hp regen - whose idea was ticking regen? Crap. Most useful on kitty form so far, but BBB form and rogues will be just as excited!

I really must go check out the Pally talents and get the addons and UI sorted for HolyWarrior, luckily I cannot raid Sunday so I have 4 days to sort that out, if I can drag myself away from Mark and Sven.

Raiding in 3.0.2
I though that just Sunwell, Black Temple and SSC bosses were being nerfed. But my guild 5-manned all the way up to Opera in KZ on Wednesday. Maybe it was just the re-aligned classes, but that still ain't bad!

Casters are complaining, especially shadow priests, that they have been nerfed through the floor. Hunter's on the other hand are pwning ass!!

Oh ... and I just spotted some training dummies in IF that you can interact with, presumably allowing you to train up weapon skills while AFK!! That's better than a trip to Blasted lands and whacking down the servants!! Which incidentally you can't do anymore anyway.

Oh ... and I love the new logon screen :)

Oh ... and will Blizz please fucking kill all the level 70s farming low level herbs. How many people are complaining about clearing mobs around their level to get at some herbs and a level 70 comes flying in on their epic mount and snatches them. Tossers!

Have fun everybody!

ArchiMonkey Down Again!

Quick update: We went to MH for the last time before patch 3.0.2 last night.

We were hoping for a quick kill to prove the last kill wasn't a fluke. Oh NO!!! The first attempt we got him down to about 50%, then we had 10 wipes.

The raid leader calls the last try of the night. We are getting him down and people are dying, but with 10 healers we manage to keep the chain reaction from happening.

For most of the night I was down in 7th or 8th healing but on this attempt I was the best pally and the 3rd best.

Somewhere between 15 and 11% I died, I was totally consumed by the fire and could not bubble out. Dead Pally.

We were down to 5 or 6 people as he dipped into 10% and IMMUNE!!!

He got down to 5% (due to our low DPS) and dropped dead, just going to prove that you can sit back an watch as he will die anyway, rather than having 1 minute or whatever to DPS him down.

No Loot for me but 3 more badges! What use are they going to be in 4 weeks?

Can't be Bothered

The guild went to Mount Hyjal to clear the four bosses so I can be the saviour on Tuesday and we can kill ArchiMonkey again.

I didn't go as I had a birthday dinner to go to. Lucky Really cos I frigging hate MH trash.

All 4 bosses went down easy and they even got a try on Archi!!

A Quick BT

A Quick 3 boss Black Temple tonight.

One shotting Naj, Supre and Shade.

Nice. Goodnight.

5/5 Mount Hyjal

WoooHooo Yippeee Hooray!!! I got to go on the Mount Hyjal raid last night. On Sunday they took out the first 4 bosses and had 1 try on ArchiMonkey with the usual wipe!!

Tonight we went straight to ArchiMonkey. Our best try ever had been 42% in the past. Our first try tonight and he was down to 31%!!

This was boding very well until we tried again and got a couple of 70-80% wipes in. Then we got him down below 50% again.

Then suddenly on the 5th or 6th try he was down to 30% and no-one had died.

20% and we're getting excited.

15% TeamSpeak ramps up.

11% so close...

10% IMMUNE!!! Here we go...

ARCHIMONKEY IS DEAD - WE ARE 5/5 MOUNT HYJAL - CHEER!!!

2 Helm of the Protectors(Warrior, Hunter,Shaman), 1 Helm of the Conquerer(Pally,Priest,Lock), Tempest of Chaos and Savior's Grasp. Plus some badgers dropped.

I bid all my DKP on the T6 Helm token but was out bid by a good 300 :(

But I did win the chest piece - Savior's Grasp for a 3rd of my DKP.

Slacking

I haven't been to a raid in weeks.

The only WoW I've really done is levelling Max and Sven up to level 40.

Hopefully I'll be going to Archimonde tonight and that would be good to kill him before the patch 3.0.2 boss nerf happens in 1 week.

Apart from that, there doesn't seem much point in doing anything else!!

Patch 3.0.2 15th October 2008

That's my latest guess

Giving us 4 weeks of hellish raiding with new stats and talents that Black Temple and Mount Hyjal are not tuned for.

Or will they retune bosses for new class mechanics?

Stop

Breaking News: Honour and BG Marks Safe for Wrath

No citation, no proof. That's a job for more conscientious bloggers. But the rumour I have just heard is that all your stockpiled honour and marks of honour are NOT GOING TO BE RESET!!

Yep, your honour and marks are safe!! (Arena points will still be reset when you hit level 71 or whatever). Seems Blizzard are worried about the backlash caused when half their customers claim not to have heard about the reset!!

Of course this may all be a vicious lie, so if you have any citations please let me know.

This is what a guildie just told me:

"We had hoped that the introduction of some new Honor rewards in the upcoming patch would give players a great opportunity to spend any of their remaining Honor. However, many players would still be surprised by an Honor and token reset as it isn’t something we’ve done in the past. As such, we've decided to not reset Honor or tokens upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King. Players who save their Honor will be able to spend it on level 80 rewards, although those rewards will be significantly more expensive than their level 70 counterparts."