The Boozsha Chronicles

Doing it again.

2010-11-10T11:44:00.004-06:00

Yep, I guess I've seen enough talk around the blogosphere to get interest peeked to re-install wow.

Now why couldn't the Blizzard art team make the orc in game characters look as awesome as the one in this picture.

ME2

2010-03-12T04:26:00.004-06:00

I haven't logged into WoW in over a month now. I've been strictly Mass Effect since then. I finished my first run thru on ME1, and instead of running through a couple more times like I had intended I went out and bought ME2. The story line is that good. I had to see what happens next. Not the mention it is fun to play as well. ME2 is a little different in a lot of ways from character advancement to gathering resources. Each game is great in their own right though. I really can't put one over the other. One thing that I have noticed is that the cut scenes in ME2 are blended in very well and seem to come more often. They are also coming at the right time to take the game to that next level.

I was able to import my character from ME1 to ME2. I changed it up this time with the infiltrator class. This is a combat/tech oriented class. They get a special ability that cloaks them, which makes you invisible and drops aggro. This class is kind of rogue I guess, only you don't that to positional attacks. The reason for switching it up was towards the end of ME1 my solider class had finally gotten enough points in sniper rifles that it became very fun. Towards the end I was using sniper rifle a lot.

I'm almost finished with my first play through with ME2. Once I've finished it I'm thinking about going trying out hard mode on ME1 and get a toon to max level and see more of the content. I still have plenty of achievements to unlock.

For those that haven't seen the trailer for ME2, I thought I would embed it in this post here. Enjoy, this trailer got me hooked on the game series.

Mass Effect

2010-02-14T17:28:00.003-06:00

I had been only logging into Wow to do the daily transmute, but the past two days I haven't even done that. My morning ritual has moved to spanning the traverse of the galaxy following the story of John Shepard, commander of the SSV Normandy. This is absolutely one of the best games I have played. I don't normally care for the science fiction games, but the story is so great that I'm hooked. I'll definitely be playing part two and will most likely be playing through several times. I really wish I would have picked up that copy that I stared at for about fifteen minutes in Bestbuy during Christmas. I would have saved myself six months in WoW subscription. Oh well.

Right now I'm playing the default male Shepard character. I may change it up a bit on the next run through. There are also different classes to choose from as well. Being that I went with the default I'm playing the soldier class. I'm guessing it is more of a tankish class.

Bioware did some great work on the music and voice overs. The night before last I got to Shepard's speech, which I was about to log, but after getting a peep talk by this captain...I had to go on for a few more hours.

It is in the air

2010-02-03T20:37:00.002-06:00

It is definitely in the air. I finally pulled up the google reader and started going through blogs and noticed that the first two blogs I looked at where talking about WoW burnouts. In fact one was written the same day has my previous post. The second blog I check out is Tobold's, pretty much related to burnouts.

Incoming! ((((Burnout)))))))

2010-01-28T05:14:00.002-06:00

I'm starting to hit that point in WoW were I'm really getting bored. Basically I'm logging in to do the daily transmute and running Heroic for the frost emblem and a Wintergrasp if it is close to starting. This all started suddenly when it seems I've maxed out my gear without moving forward and raiding. I can keep strolling along slowly gaining those two frost emblems a day. At that rate the next expansion will be out before I could get the next tier armor. And rightly so. I don't have a beef with that. The fault is with me not wanting to raid. At least not yet. It other games I've always had negative experiences with raids.

I could work on another alt, but I really don't want to go through any of the content again. PVP is still an option, but I really don't see much on Resto shaman pvp. Enhancement is not good for pvp and elemental is not style.

So this six months subscription may be the last one for me till the expansion. My interest in console games is starting to raise up again. I've been perusing the web for something that is fantasy RPG, but not limited to fantasy. A Sci/Fi rpg would work as well. I have Call of Duty 4, but can't get through the campaigns because of the modern theme. Modern really doesn't appeal to me, and the online aspect....well lets just say, I'm not very good with a controller.

I could pick up Fallout3 again. When I started up playing MMO's again last summer, I got away from playing Fallout 3. Also they have the game of the year edition out with all DLC wrapped into one package. I'm sure if I went to go see The Book of Eli that would get my interest peeked to suck me back into this post apocalyptic world.

Speaking of movies, I'm looking forward to Clash of the Titans. I have been hoping ever since they made Lord of the Rings they would go back and remake some of the old fantasy genres. I would still like to see a well done Dungeons and Dragons movie along with a Master of the Universe: He Man movie.

AOE Fest

2010-01-05T11:36:00.008-06:00

With the last patch I've finally started to see some of the dungeon content, and to be quite truthful I've been disappointed. What I'm talking about is that it seems that everything is one big AOE fest. Run in, grab aggro and nuke it down. Really? Is that all we have to do? You mean there is no real crowd control? Maybe this changes with raids, I'm not sure as I haven't seen any raid content in WoW. So as it is going now, yeah I'm seeing some dungeons and different encounters that do have some strategies like don't stand in purple stuff, don't dps mob at this point, hop around so you don't take damage, and stand behind this rock. Over all it seems that there is no need for any sort of crowd control.

If raid encounters do require a form of crowd control, wouldn't it make since to have some of that in the 5 man dungeons. In Everquest crowd control was a dedicated full time job. There was even a dedicated class to crowd control and others that had some variations of crowd control. As a shaman in EQ I could grab aggro on any mob pull it out of the way and root it. "Yeah you sit there Mr. Mob nice and helpless while we take care of your buddy." Here in Wow I was really disappointed to find out that my Hex spell is fairly useless in dungeons. Even on my hunter there seemed to never be a need to frost trap any mobs. It has always been go in gather up the mobs and let us all nuke with our AoE spells.

This is the one thing I would love to see added to the game. Can they make encounters to where we are actively involve and each doing a specific task besides healing, aggro, and damage. I would like to see something a little more involved than just having a kill order. I know some of this use to be in there, as I've seen the old videos where hunters use to chain trap.

Oh well, I guess for now I will join the crowd and spam away with the AOE damage as well.

Last post....of 2009!

2009-12-29T18:26:00.002-06:00

With my posting frequency this year I this will be my last post for the year. Not going to be too much different from the others. Unlike Pike, went had a very neat end of the year post reviewing highlights from each month. It was a very fun read and you should check it out if you haven't already.

A lot has happened since I last posted, were I touched on some of my preparations for 3.3. I'm happy to say that my investment in the Borean Leathers was a very nice one. Between the borean leathers, transmutes, and herbs I was able to pad my bank with plenty of gold. I think I made about 9k gold in the two days after the patch. That has been a nice boost to helping my gear out my shaman for running some heroics.

For some reason after the patch I started messing with my dwarf hunter again. Well this really excited me and made me realize how much I liked playing on the Alliance side. One thing lead to another and getting ganked a few times in Wintergrasp by them Horde dogs, lead me to switching my loyalties. The only issue was that I really liked playing my shaman. So it happened. I treated myself to a race change on my troll shaman to becoming a BIG BLUE BAD ARSE DRAENEI! His new name is Boozjha. I must say that the draenei aliens have never really appealed to me because the are a large race. However the big lugs have started to grow on me. I'm very much enjoying playing it, so much that I may not even race change him to a dwarf when Cataclysm comes out.

I've been having loads of fun with the LFG tool. This is by far the greatest thing that Blizzard has introduced to the game. It has opened up a whole new part of the game that for some reason I have always seemed to avoid. I'm wish now that I would have pursued grouping more intensely all these years. I use to love grouping in Everquest and this patch makes me remember the days of grinding out the LDoNs. Only thing is this is easy. No work required to searching for the group.

I was able to pick up my "the Patient" title and got my Perky Pug as well. Butt rub on the floor FTW! Then sniff it? Blizzard does have a good since of humor. Opening up to this new aspect of the game has also made more aware of some many other things. Mainly GEAR! I really have not paid that much attention to gear over the past years. Sure I realized there was a difference, but I didn't actively go after that gear like I am now. Gear score? Really? Seriously? I was a little offended. Thinking you freaking elitist jerk! I really didn't realize there was that much difference from a heroic and a regular dungeon. I didn't want to run those regulars, they didn't give the emblems each time. The I loaded the Recount addon and saw that I was doing less damage than the tank.

The first thing I did was get over to MMO champion Shaman forums stickies. I also perused the Elitist Jerks class/spec pages. I have them all saved now so I can quickly pull them up when I alt tab. Next thing I did was used some of that gold I made and bought some better gear, enchants, and gems. I even spent some of those long saved pvp honor points and bough a three pieces of the Dreadful Gladiator Gear. Which I was laughed out very quickly, but in my defense it was way better than wearing a green quest item. As of right now I'm still wearing the chest, but I haven't gotten anything to replace it yet in the dungeons. As of now I'm going in the right direction and starting to wrap my mind around this aspect of the game. I still have a ways to go, but I'm getting there. I'd like to get comfortable enough to try a pick up raid, but I'm not going to even try till I have some more pieces upgraded. Namely the blue head piece and pvp chest. I'll be getting the T9 head piece soon as it will be the biggest upgrade.

This biggest thing is learning all the dungeons and different fights. Being that I have a very bad memory (this has really become an issue this year) it is sometimes hard to keep the different encounters straight. I think I'm going to need to pick up a recorder so I can speak and take notes while I'm playing. I simply can't remember all the details once the dungeon is done. Repetition is helping though.

So yeah, the year is almost over with. Where did 2009 go? 2010 will be here soon and gone as well. 8-p

My very thoughtful wife got me a well thought out gift this Christmas. TWO....Count'em....TWO Tankards O Terror. They are freaking huge. I don't look as good as my Draenei weilding these things, but if some one every tries breaking into the house. You can betcha that I'll be grabbing these suckers if the guns are not very close. Yeah, i know there ceramic, but they will still knock you a good one.

She also got me the Horde Stein. I kept wondering why she was asking a week before Christmas "I thought you played FOR the HORDE!" She is awesome and I couldn't ask for anyone better. I hope the rest of you out there had a great holiday this year and please be very safe this weekend. Whatever you do make sure you do it safely. You have all of next year to look forward.

My 3.3 Preparations

2009-12-05T14:49:00.004-06:00

I've been reading what lot of others have been doing to get prepared for the 3.3 patch. Compared to some of you my preparations would look like nothing. More of what I've been doing is mostly saving for the Auction House price increases. At least I'm hoping there will be a increase prices where I have made preparations.

Them Thar Hides

About a month ago I started buying up borean leathers and heavy borean leathers for exptremely low prices. When I saw them at 6 gold per stack and lower, I snatched them up. I have one private guild bank tab filled with full stacks of borean leathers. My reasoning for this is that when 3.3 hits Braeg Stoutbeard is supposed to be selling Arctic Furs for 60 Borean Leathers or 10 of the heavy. One of two things will happen. Either borean leathers will jump in price or arctic furs will plummet. Either way I wouldn't be stock piling arctic furs if you have them. Being that I bought my hides at 50 and 60 percent of the market price I'm confident that I can make my coin back. I'm hoping to make a few coins here though.

A herb by any other name is still a herb.

Unless it is a freaking FROST LOTUS! This has been the best reasons for picking up herbalism. I've made more coin on selling these in singles. The past few weeks I've been holding my findings and saving these to post after 3.3. Not just frost lotus though. Any of the herbs needed to make flask and potions. I've aloud myself to sell off 10 percent of my holdings and this week because it is the Darkmoon Fair, but other than that I've been stock piling. With new content coming out people will be needing the mats to make all their consumables.

Daily transmute....what proc?

I wish I could say I've been saving these for the past few weeks, but I haven't. I have been saving them though, but only for about a week now. This character is transmute mastery, but the extra proc hasn't really come through for me in some time. Being that I wasn't selling flask on a massive level, I picked up the transmute spec. It seems to work better for me since most of what I was doing was selling my transmutes. Plus when I can sell the herbs I gather for more than I can sell the flask, it only made since to do so.

There you have it, the meager preparations of lazy gnome/dwarf/troll. After reading about some of your ant-ish labors, I feel like a grasshopper in my endeavors.

On a Pale Horse

2009-12-04T17:11:00.003-06:00

So I've reached 80 on my shaman, started messing around more with the battlegrounds, and I'm getting rolled. I thought as soon as I got to 80 I would start doing some more instances, but I haven't had the time to give my undivided attention to a group. It seems I'm constantly having to go afk while online. My last ToC experience really opened my eyes to how poorly geared my character is at this time.

I've been mainly farming wintergrasp for frost lotus and herbs selling those on the AH along with my daily transmute. I did splurge and threw down the coin for two Tankards O' Terro r. I got them for 800 gold a piece. This got me to thinking how cool it would be to have a dwarf shaman wielding two of these.

So in steps the newest Boozsha Project. He comes riding in on a pale horse. This beast of a terror rips through mobs like no ones bees wax. He is a unholy terror and strikes fear into the heart of his opponent by his shear size? He is a gnome death knight. This little unholy yoda in plate has a wonderful two hander sword play. I have been cracking up at this little guy, and haven't had this much fun from just watching a characters animation in a long time.

Utimately his main purpose will be my little DK farmer. He has mining and herbalism as his skills, which took pretty much all week and the majority of that time sink was leveling through thorium ore. Oh how I loathe thorium ore. I farmed for it in Tanaris, Un'Goro, and Silithus. Even at 4am those nodes where very scanty. But that is over with and I won't worry about thorium till I need thorium for the dwarf hunter's jewelcraft. Which will be much later.

The focus for now is to get this DK farmer to 80 with his Artisan flying skill and cold weather flying. That way I can farm herbs and ore as quickly as possible. I want to get some gold saved up for the expansion next year and be ready to either level a dwarf shaman or I might spend the money to faction change him over. I haven't decided and it really depends on the activity of my guild on the horde side at the time of expansion.

Once I have him to 80 I'll start working on the dwarf hunters professions, he will be an alchemist/jeweler. I'll start gearing them to do some instances, which I will try out more when 3.3 comes out. In fact I have plans to try and level a gnome or dwarf class in nothing but instances. We will see if getting a lower level instance will be much easier to pick up with the addition servers.

I haven't really decided on a final spec for this little guy, but it really doesn't matter. The main thing he has to have is the On a Pale Horse talent. That 20 percent mount speed is huge right now. I'll most likely do some searches for a pvp oriented specs and try out some battle grounds with him and the Wintergrasp fights. I'll save up the honor and get him some gear that way.

Blog Roll

2009-11-21T09:00:00.003-06:00

Updated my blog roll. This is by no means all the blogs I peruse throughout the week. I do most of my reading through Google Reader, so most of the time I don't see the site and some of the adds that are on there.

I went with mostly my WoW blogs in the blog roll and most are shaman related. I'm guessing this shows where my focus is on the game at this point.

80 again

2009-11-15T15:39:00.003-06:00

So I hit 80 just before the weekend. This is my second 80 character, neither have experienced any major end game content. I'm glad the grind is over with, but now a new grind is in place and that is the one for better gear and hopefully seeing more of the dungeons.

I was able to get my Artisan Flying skill this week as well. Mainly selling flask and my daily transmutes for the past 2 weeks. It feels good to be moving along at faster speeds once again. Now the herb farming and daily runs go by so much faster.

I had a guildie ask me to come and heal for the group he put together for Trials of the Champion. This didn't go good. First thing I didn't have a clue of what was going one being that this was my first run. Second my make shift healing gear has was saved quest greens that I had been gather since I hit Northrend. Maybe one or two blues. Third this was the second time ever to use the Resto spec (the first time wasn't just as horrible). Lastly, I have mainly solo'ed 95% from 1 to 80, my grouping skills are sorely out of shape. I quickly realized that I need to take some time to start spending some coin on what ever BoE epics that I can find on the auction house. So over the next few weeks I'll be spending my coin on pieces I can find and sockets needed.

I stuck it out till they finally got another healer that could do the job. That allowed me to go to the enhancement spec. I at least was able to function a little better in that role. Again due to lack of attention on my part on gearing my toon properly I wasn't able to bring any decent DPS.

Another thing I noticed was that I'm really not comfortable in a melee combat unless I'm tanking while grouping. When in a group I'd much rather be at a distance doing damage or healing. This lead me to rethink my enhancement spec and move it over to elemental. I'm thinking I'll enjoy this more and I'll be able to sit back to bring the rain. Whether be dps or healing.

So now I have two specs I need to learn, which there is plenty of info out there for me to peruse and soak up. But this has also made me realize how important it is to level as what you plan to play at the end game. I don't have any plans to level up another alt at the moment, but if I do I will think very hard about which spec I bring them up as. I've also decided that I need to do more dungeons on the way up. I'll definitely wait till 3.3 before doing so, maybe the new LFG system will make it easier to get those done.

I went ahead and picked up the pandaren pet. I wasn't going to do this at first, but seeing that half the proceeds went to the Make a Wish Foundation, I quickly changed my mind. I guess it helped me feel better about paying for some pixel. I'm not a pet freak that has to have everyone of them, but for the cool ones that I like, I don't have an issue paying for them. The little guy still cracks me up every time he does his kung fu routine even though I've seen several times.

Another update

2009-11-04T18:35:00.003-06:00

I guess I pretty much fell off the cliff on keeping a regular update on my blog. I'm either working, playing or reader all the other blogs out there. So there really hasn't been anytime to put anything down.

Currently right now I'm still leveling the shaman. I don't see myself quiting this toon any time soon. I'm looking for to getting 80 and getting him geared up. Our very small guild/group will do our best to see what content we can see. We are by no means raiders, but we will do our best and have the best fun doing it. We understand our numbers will have to grow, but with 3.3 LFR system, that may open up something for us.

I dropped skinning once I hit 65 and picked up Alchemy. I'm currently at 428 and have stalled out on getting further without spending major amounts of gold to get further. I also seem to have a very hard time selling what potions I can make at this point.

I finally finished up my Venomhide Ravasaur quest, yeah!!!! No more making daily trips to Gadetzan. I don't see myself doing this quest for any other toons.

Maybe if I get a character with goblin engineering, I might think about it. But this time is enough for now.

Forever!

2009-10-15T11:29:00.002-05:00

Leveling from 55 to 58 always seems like FOREVER!

Scorpid Scales

2009-10-11T04:29:00.017-05:00

The troll landed a flame imbued mace into the beast's skull. The blow would be critically fatal for the beast, as it would draw it's last breathe. Pulling out his skinning knife the troll started to carve out the hide.

"I don't know why you waste your time with such things" said the blood elf " It is only going be worth a few silver."

The troll didn't care he knew he was honing his skills for later prey that would be of value, plus it helped him to understand the anatomy of his prey. Skinning hides has always been an interest to him and he didn't like anything going to waste. Plus he was curious and liked to look at the entrails move with that last bit of life. He also had a strong interest in plants and herbs that grew across the lands. Plus it gave him a source of income when he went into the cities. There was always an alchemist in need of herbs. As of lately many have sought out these herbs to create special inks to inscribe powerful glyphs.

In the back ground he could hear the haughty blood elf complaining about everything. The troll remained silent threw out a devious grin. "What are we even still doing in this area? We should have left days ago, but you insist on running these menial task that are a waste of time" The blood elf looked at his soiled and wet rob. "I hate this forsaken wetland, I want to be able to sit somewhere that is dry!"

The troll looked into his pack and pulled out a pouch of dried kings blood leaves, which he packed into carved bone pipe. He murmured a weak incantation of flame shock with his finger and lit the dried leaf. This was often a ritual of his when he needed to think.

As he drew in the smoke from his pipe he withdrew into deep thought. Before he knew it he was on a vision quest. He retreated into a state of mind in which he was in communion with his ancestors.

The blood elf most annoyed with the troll's archaic habits and addiction to such barbaric practices. "Why do you even waste your time with such things, you should be focusing on your magic!" After a few minutes of the blood elf complaining he exclaimed. "Are you listening too me?"

The troll rose up with his eyes still closed walking towards the boisterous companion and his sacrifice. An impressive figure that towered over any race save the tauren. He raises his hand as if he were going to grab the shocked blood elf, but his hand past his head to grab a frog buried in the embankment behind the blood elf.

The troll opened his eyes and grinned at the blood elf. He impaled the frog's belly with the end of his long sharp tusk. The blood elf looked away in disgust. As the frog let out one last croak, blood spilled out to the wet muddy ground.

The toll cleaned the blood from his tusk and dropped the frog down to the muddy earth. He walked back to his pack and pulled out a leathery parchment. He unrolled it and smeared the blood upon the parchment. He took another draw on his bone pipe, and blew the smoke onto the bloody leathery parchment.

The blood elf was not amused at all by his ritual asking. "Now what are you doing?"

"Find'in out where we be go'in nexx" answered the troll.

"I hope it is somewhere that is dry. I hate being wet."

The troll looked up and gave another grin.

Impatient the blood elf question. "So where is it?"

"Tanaris!" Laughed the troll.

"Where is that and what can I find of value there?" The blood elf was trying to hold back his interest.

"Fur joo it is not wet! Ha ha ha ha!" The troll was laughing and packing up his gear for the trip. "
"Fur meeee! Scorpid scales!"

He walks over to pick up the dead frog from the muddy water and stowed in the pack. The blood elf rolled his eyes.

Seeing his disgust the troll explained "Dis migh be da last fishy tastie ting till we hit da coast."

-continued later, maybe, we will see.

So yeah, I've been questing in Tanaris and was able to pick up enough of the scorpid scales. I had a guildie make me a set of the tough scorpid armor, save the hands and bracers. I'll have those after today. Lots of nice agility.

Hitting 46 and I've completed most of the quest there so I will be moving on soon enough. It won't be long and I'll be hitting the outlands soon enough.

Found the Mojo!

2009-10-01T10:45:00.005-05:00

Dinged 40 with the shaman on Sunday. I think I found the mojo for now. This has been a very fun class to play and once I hit 30 the totem juggle was no longer an issue. Call of the Elements and Totemic Recall made things so much easier. Plus getting a portion of the mana back has made it to were I would bring out the totems a lot more. It also didn't require as much thought into set up. Before 30 I would be looking at to where I could maximize my effects from my totems for the longest. Getting Call of the Ancestors at 40 is nice. Currently I have it set up as a Stonelcaw and Magma Totem, this is what I use if I get some crazy adds. As of this morning I dinged 43. Cool link! I saw this over at Pikes latest post. Thanks for sharing.

You can't talk about hitting 40 on an enhancement shaman without saying something about dual wield. All I can really say is...Finally and I'm looking forward to getting some nice weapons for him. Which I haven't done yet. I'm not wanting to drop a whole bunch of gold for something that is not going to be used for very long. I should be hitting the Outlands soon, and there will be plenty of drop and quested upgrades there. It is also nice to see the dual wielding animation while fighting. Single weapon and shield was getting boring.

Macros
I'm on a never ending search for macros to make my gaming play a little more simpler. I'm not looking for easy mode, but if I can get away with only having to hit one key for Flameshock and Earthshock I'm doing it. I'll be creating a separate post for the Macros I'm using so far, all macros have been gathered from various places.

First Aid, Cooking and Fishing
I noticed that the need for the quest to advance in First Aid had been removed the other day. I went and did the quest anyways just for nostalgia sake. It was kind of a right of passage, and I wish they had left it in there. I'm guessing it would have been removed sooner or later. Also it looks as though all the training for Cooking and Fishing in before the Outlands is sold at the trainers.

Nerf Realization!

2009-09-14T20:31:00.004-05:00

So I jump into playing the pally last night only to find out that Exorcism is not on insta cast anymore. Which really was disappointing, because now I am reduced to only hitting one button again during the fight and waiting for the cool down. At least before I had at least one button to push during the fight. Now when I'm soloing it seems that exorcism has been reduced to only pulling the mob.

I hit 42 last night and went a head and took my first talent point in Art of War. That helped a little, but it is still feels like I'm waiting for the cool down again, like the older days of when he was created when BC was released. Yes, I've had this paladin for that long, and I'm still only level 42. I've had other interest during those times and still do.

So today I thought I would come home and do a little research on leveling as Protection. I head on over to Ardent Defender only to find his post about another nerf to the class. /sigh

I have my DK that has been a lot of fun to play. Especially since I specced him a Unholy. Perma pet rocks among other things. I can easily level him to the 80 and start banking up some gold and supplies for the expansion. I have every intention of playing a goblin . The problem is goblin DK sounds cool as well. I've seen some mention on the forums about switching race, but I haven't been able to find anything official on this yet. If this is the case then there is no worries, I can level away without feeling like I might be wasting my time. I do not no want to spend time leveling a class that I may really want to play as a goblin when the expansion comes out. That is my hesitation on leveling up say a shaman, warrior, or rogue.

I've been trying to level a shaman. Reading over at Ardent Defender, has recently spurred the interest. I seem to always get side tracked at some point. Maybe I'll pull out the troll shaman and see if I can find my mojo!

Re-installing WoW

2009-09-04T19:57:00.006-05:00

Yep...I've stayed away as long as I could. Been from CoH to beta testing in Champions Online.

I had uninstalled it couple of months ago to free up some hard drive space and that includes all my add on programs.

I haven't decided where I'll focus my efforts yet, as I really want to play a goblin in the next expansion. Most likely paladin since I've gotten JC maxed and enchanting is almost there.

I'll level him and see if I can figure out how to collect these heirlooms everyone is talking about for the anticipated goblin (shaman/hunter/priest/warrior/rogue...yeah I'm a little undecided) that I'll be leveling.

8-/

2009-08-28T20:20:00.003-05:00

Dang you Blizzard, you are trying to pull me back! I've always said that I wanted me a small horde race and now they are going to bring it into being. I also wanted to be able to play a troll druid.

I've been trying to say no to MMO's, but Blizzard might pull me in on this one. The only thing that would fo sho seal the deal is a life time subscription?

Ever since WAR first released the Squid Herder, I've always wanted to try a goblin hunter. Goblin shaman and rogue sound fun as well.

I'm wondering what they will do for the troll and worgen shape shift skins?

I would have rather seen gnome hunter or paladins though.

Game Trailers CO Interview

2009-07-20T20:09:00.002-05:00

I can't wait till this comes out. Good thing is I don't think I will have to wait till Sept 1st to try it out. I was able to get a Beta key through Gamerzine starting August 5th. I got this email from them on Sunday stating that I will be receiving one of the keys.

Video Games | Champions Online | Emmert & Roper Interview HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Champions Online

2009-07-18T12:43:00.003-05:00

Yeah, I know it has been a while, but there really has not been much for me to blog about. Well actually that is not true, I'm sure I could start up several rants on politics, but I don't think I want to go there with the blog.

My next MMO that I'm looking forward to is Champions Online. I have high hopes for this game as Cryptic the same ones that developed City of Heroes. Being that I've been anticipating the release of Champions Online, I decided to check out some of the changes in CoH. I have been completely surprised. They have added so many power sets and so many options. I kinda wished I would have reativated this before I bought Fallout 3. I could have held off till the Game of the Year edition came out, because I haven't played since I reactivated CoH.

I've had a 49 tanker, named General Freedom. Think Patriotic Superman themed hero. He was a cross between Captain America and Superman. Now that they have added a Shield power set to the tankers and scrappers I'm finally able to build me a Capt. America superhero. His name is the 13th Patriot.

Below is a link to the Character Creation in Champions Online. Now City of Heroes when it first released probably had the most customizations of any MMO just creating a character. I remember the first night I never played. I literally spent several hours creating my first character. Cryptic has kept that, but looks like they have expanded on it.

I've applied for the Champions Online beta, but with my past experiences with beta attempts, I don't see me getting an invite. It probably has a lot to do with my mobo specs. Still running with a P4 3.0Ghz and 3 gigs or ram. I'm planning to upgrade this fall with at least a duo core processor and motherboard and 4 gigs of ram. Waiting on Windows 7 64 bit, and will probably do it all at once.

Character Creation

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I'm up, he sees me, I'm down!

2009-06-20T15:14:00.008-05:00

I'm still having loads of fun in Fallout 3. I went ahead and registered and set up a Games for Windows LIVE account. In doing so I had to start over with a new character. I can still play the other character, but I have to log out of GFW LIVE. It really didn't bother me to do so, because there were several things I wanted to change from the first time. Number one thing was getting more strength in my SPECIAL. Getting over loaded so quickly was very annoying. I also have a better idea of how the Skills and Perks work. Just like with most MMO's going through a newbie area is always easier the second time. Well it is the same way with Fallout 3. I knew quickly where I needed to go to get my bottle caps (which is the currency for the game). This second time around I tagged speech for skill and have put more points into it. This opened up a few extra avenues starting out and gave me more options with some of the quest.

I had found a video on youtube showing where to find a hidden cache with a sniper rifle. Being able to scope in and rain down death from afar rocks. It makes you fill more covert. Plus if something goes wrong you've got that extra distance handle your enemy. One draw back that I ran into was when picking up the sniper rifle it was already very low on durability and needed to be repared very quickly. The first time it took me a long time to find more enemies with sniper rifles to get it repaired. Last night I had headed North West of Megaton and found a group of raiders that were encamped on an old over pass. This is where I discovered there was a sniper among them. I was easily able work through them with a sniper rifle. Once I had taken out the sniper I was able to repair my newly looted rifle and hopefully give me a better run this time.

Being that I invested a little more points in Strength this time and have spent more points in Melee weapons skills. I seem to do a lot better with close quarters combat. I've been using a combat knife and bat to save ammo.

For the most part the over all story line has stayed the same. But I'm getting information differently this time. I plan on playing through and working on all the side quest that I can. I've already read enough to know that once you do the final quest then the game is over.

The one thing I've loved about playing is that I don't feel like I have to rush through content to have fun or get cool abilities. In most MMO's it feels like you have to rush to get to a certain level before you can really have fun with a class. That definitely doesn't seem to be the case with Fallout 3. I've been enjoying going out and searching old buildings for supplies and running in to the random encounters. It was sheer excitement when I ran across my first Talon Mercs trying to fullfill their bounty.

I had posted previously that I was thinking of getting a console. As of now that can wait. Being that I've finally opened up to a whole different side of PC gaming, and not just limiting myself to MMO's. I think I can wait on the Xbox. There are plenty of first person shooters that I want to try on PC. Geez I can't believe I waited this long to try something that wasn't an MMO.

Shifting Directions in Gaming

2009-06-16T11:34:00.004-05:00

I canceled my WoW account this Saturday. I have been a little bored for sometime with playing. Nothing against WoW, but I think I'm bored with MMO's in general. I haven't stopped playing games though. This weekend I went out and bought Fallout 3. A co-worker has been going on about it for about the past two weeks. I had already been browsing the internet and reading about different games. When I came across the link to the Brotherhood of Steel Faction on the Fallout 3's web sight I was hooked. Basically they are post apocalyptic Knights Templars. I've alwasy loved the lore about paladins and knights. That is why I've always been drawn to fantasy genre, but when it was tied to furturistic sci/fi I became extremely interested. This actually opened up my mind to a sci/fi genre and a way I hadn't ever really thought about before.

So yeah, I'm hooked on Fallout 3. This is a great game, and I never knew I could enjoy a RPG this much. Really and truly these kinds of game fit my play style a lot better, I just didn't realize till I tried it. From what I've read these game has several endings, and you can play it differently each time. For right now this game is going to hold my attention for a log time.

So for now I'll be giving the MMO's a break, and expanding my PC gaming to different types. Eventually I want to try a first person shooter game. Crysis is one title that I've been reading a lot about and F.E.A.R.

Keeping An Eye Out for Ninjas!

2009-06-09T21:40:00.008-05:00

In my mind when something unexpected happens it's NINJAS! Or those little rogue squirrels that roam the neighborhood. That is just what happened. Ninjas!

I get home from a long day of work today. As I come into the door I grab my freehand cob pipe and load it with some Early Darkness that I laid out this morning to dry out some. I set the pipe down to go and change into some shorts and t-shirt. At my closet I discover water dripping all over my closes. I look up and see the ceiling dripping. I immediately knew the suspect was a drain pan for the ac unit. I sets right above that location. I mumble a few explicative words cursing those little ninjas that ruined my evening and immediately head into the attic. My suspicions were proven to be correct. It was full to the brim and slowly dripping water out. No doubt caused by these willey rogues hiding in the attic playing havoc on my free time.

So once I snap back to reality and realize that his is real world stuff and it going to take real world mentality to fix this shit. I try to get back into my installer mode, from my days of working in the field long ago. I it is different mind set. Something I would always tell my self when everything seemed it could not get any worse. "Well this is what separates the men from the boys" something my coach in highschool would always yell out and it has stuck with me my whole life. Now I am by no means a handy man, I don't have the tools for this kind of stuff. But hey, I've mastered getting a second OS running on my PC. (In my best fat bastard voice) I can do thas!!!! So four hours later I have the repairs made and will check tomorrow to see if my handy worth is good. I started out trying to mess with it and see if I could flush out the gunk build up, but as with anything else I figured I could cut everything out and rerun a new drain line a lot faster. We will see.

Ok let's see. Nothing for me to talk about with WoW. Most of my guild has been AFK for some time. Summer time everyone is really busy doing real life things. I can't say that I've spent too much time playing lately either. Most of the last week has been messing with Ubuntu.

I am downloading the free trial for Final Fantasy XI. I've been wanting to try this game for some time. To be honest I think it was some the reviews that I have read that talked about it being a huge grind. I figured what the heck it is a free trial it won't matter. If I don't like it no harm done.

Another thing I've been itching to get for some time is a console. I'm mostly leaning towards the Xbox 360, but the PS3 has a good selection of games. From what I've been told it has very good backwards compatibility with previous generation Playstation games. There are several that I work with that play the Xbox and FPS games, and they always seem to have a good time. In some way I think I might be missing out by not giving them a try. Plus I may find that I really like it.

Ok so a little update on my progress with the Lapband. I've lost 91 pounds so far. BIG difference in the way I feel. No more hearburn and the sleep apnea has gone away. I have 77 pounds to go, but I'm in no rush. I already feel a 91 times better than I did before.

And now I've noticed that my download canceled for FFXI.....damn Ninjas are back!

I guess I'll go and enjoy that pipe.

RTFM

2009-06-06T21:49:00.002-05:00

When I got home last night I tried to install a different version of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS in hopes I would have better chance of keeping WoW from crashing. Well that was a disaster as I started installing the drivers from ATI and missed a step. Once I rebooted I stayed in low graphics mode and couldn't do anything to fix it. It doesn't help that I didn't realize at the time the difference between the open-source and proprietary drivers. Hey I'm learning. I upgraded to 8.10 hoping that it would pull down the correct drivers that I needed. That didn't work. I went to a white screen every time.

So Saturday morning, I put 9.04 the Jaunty Jackalope back on. For now I installed the proprietary drivers from Ubuntu. I haven't installed WoW back on it yet, I'm actually going to wait I think. I'm planning on getting an external hard drive for us to back up all our pics, music, and all the other stuffs. Once I do that I plan on wiping everything out again. I have a 500 Gb and 98 Gb hard drives in my PC. I'm thinking of going with something like this:

98Gb with Windows XP loaded with WoW only
500Gb partitioned: 400Gb for Ubuntu 9.04 and 100Gb for testing other versions or distros.

The prices on a 500Gb hard drives have dropped tremendously since I bought mine. I maybe picking up another one of those as well.

I still haven't decided whether I'll load the latest drivers from ATI yet. I'm a little hesitant with my last go around. I really want to because I want to make it work like I've read that others have done.

Yeah....

2009-06-05T23:45:00.002-05:00

I screw up something. I removed the petition that 9.04 was on and installed 8.04 LTS. Everything was cool, but it didn't look like the drivers were installed to take advantage of the video card. So I go and install the drivers from ATI. Now it is all screwed up! There seems to be NOTHING on the internet or in the forums on how to get it fixed. GEEZZZZ!!!

Crash!

2009-06-03T23:33:00.004-05:00

I was playing with the graphics tonight and when I booted up WoW played for about 15 minutes then crashed. I'm pretty sure though, that the graphics card is not being used to it's fullest potential. I don't even hear the fan ramp up like I do when playing in Windows. So I have a little work to do still.

To day I received my book I ordered Ubuntu Kung Fu. I'll be spending some time this weekend reading through it. Maybe I'll pick up something I'm missing.

I'm hoping this will get better. Right now I'm wondering if I should have gone with one of the earlier versions of Ubuntu. I had talked with a friend at work and he suggested that I should have gone with Fedora.

Any who, I made my choice and I'm sticking with it.

Woot to the New Tauren Cat Skins

2009-06-02T18:56:00.006-05:00

As I posted it previously I wasn't impressed with the bear changes and my main concern was with the new cat skins. Well I was checking out some of the blogs and I noticed that BBB already has a post up about the new skins.

I was pleasantly surprised. Actually I was over joyed. I let out a big WOOT and did a fist punch to the floor. The wife that doesn't play WoW or have any interest even agreed that it was a definite improvement.

I'm rather happy though, because I have always hated the original cat skin. Good job Blizzard Design Team!

Cutting ties with iTunes

2009-06-01T12:26:00.006-05:00

After much reading and sifting through the plethora of links on the internet about iTunes and Linux, it looks as though I might be saving myself some headache by moving on to other ways of getting my music again, other than duel boot to Windows.

First and foremost for me it has to be legal. I'm not into ripping and getting music I haven't bought. I feel that if I'm enjoying the song and going to keep it I'll gladly pay the artist their due so that I can keep a copy for myself.

It looks as though I'll go back to buying CD's again. Which is not a bad thing, it will give me a reason to go into the second hand CD stores again. I use to go all the time, but with the convenience of iTunes I rarely ever had a reason to go out and buy music.

Another option is the Amazon.com music store. Really before this weekend I hadn't ever thought about downloading from there. I'm still researching customer reviews on how they have enjoyed the service. There is also a Amazon downloader, it would be nice to not have to have another software other than the actual player that could handle doing both.

Currently right now I have Rythmbox that was installed with the Ubuntu package. I've been reading about Banshee, this program looks a little more fancier than Rythmbox. Also available is Exaile. Lastly there is Amarok that I've heard so many good things about, and it seems to be the favorite of most everyone. Thanks to this handy guide I'm running Amarok 1.4 which from what I've read is the most stable with Ubuntu 9.04 in Gnome environment. So I have the music player. Now on to the hardware.

At some point I"m going to have to replace the nano, because well the goal is to eventually be off of windows. Sandisk seems to have some nice MP3 Players. The Sansa fuze and Creative Zen look to be really nice options. I'll have to keep looking, because I WANT THE BEST!!!!

I needz it

2009-05-31T23:05:00.002-05:00

I saw the advertisement on WoW's website for Jinx t shirts. I'm definitely ordering one of these. My wife will agree that this probably fits my attitudes some days. Bless her heart for having to deal with me.

Gnomeswife or Pure Randomness?

2009-05-31T11:34:00.006-05:00

I'd like to introduce Mrs. Boozsha to the blogosphere. Well not the WoW blogosphere, but just blogosphere in general. My wife has been jotting done some of her thoughts. She is a much better writer than what I am. No telling what will be on there from political views to everyday life. It looks as though right now it will be Pure Randomness. I hope you enjoy. The blog is called gnomeswife at blog spot, but the title is Pure Randomness. We will see what it evolves into as the days go. I'll be adding to my blogroll as well.

Ubuntu Kung Fu!

2009-05-31T09:16:00.006-05:00

My Linux experience so far has been challenging and rewarding. I've learned so much in the past couple of days, mostly been copy and pasting command code, but I'm starting to catch on how Linux grooves.

What I've really enjoyed was learning how to get the latest graphics cards drivers from ATI installed. ATI had a 9.5 version for my card and I was still using the preloaded drivers that Ubuntu had packaged with the OS. I probably could have waited, but I also figured this was causing some of my graphics glitches and low frame rates while playing.

At first I had read in several different places that ATI didn't have very good support for Linux drivers. Most of these seem to be old information. I had finally found a Ubuntu Jaunty Wiki that had all the commands that I needed to get the installation completed. Once I got the lastest drivers installed I loaded up WoW without any of my addons disabled. I could tell a difference this time. I still have a graphics glitch where my character freezes while moving, but it doesn't happen very often like it was doing with the other drivers. I'll keep look to see if I can tweak to make things work. For now it is doable and only happens once every 5 to 10 minutes. Quickly changing direction or jumping makes it go away. (Kinda wondering if it could be an issue with wireless/keyboard mouse)

I found a good book that was free online to download a copy of called Ubuntu Pocket Guide by Keir Thomas. It is a very good beginners guide and reference. It is on my desktop screen for easy access. I also have on order Ubuntu Kung Fu it is by the same author. I love the kitten on the front it looks as though he is saying "I getz u".

For someone that doesn't know anything about Linux, which I would be in that category, Ubuntu is the way to go. It comes loaded with all the needs and wants of any human that is technology dependant. From photo editor to messenger client. Real quickly about messenger client. It comes preloaded with pidgin which works well, and no complaints on my part. I had been using Digsby which I really liked. It was an all in one communication/network client. You were able to twitter,social network, check email, and IM from this one client. Currently right now they do not have a Mac or Linux version. I'm hoping to find something like that out there for linux. If you do find that please comment here with the link. I would appreciate it.

Lastly I'd like to say from all my readings I have been very fortunate with my Linux/Ubuntu experience. Largely this is due to the Ubuntu community. Their dedication to putting out such an unbelievable quality of linux OS package is by far top notch. Also there is a huge community out there that is working constantly and is very willing to help out. I hope at some point I'll be able to be a part of those future contributions. Also I think I may have had some excellent luck with good hardware. So far all my hardware is working properly. Still need to check out the iPod nano, but I'm willing to move to another device if I do have issues. I can honestly see myself moving away from Windows fully a year from now. Once I'm good enough with the command line that I know and understand what I'm copy and pasting from someone else, I'll be able to move on. First I need to develop my knowledge.

Well it is done...

2009-05-30T01:51:00.002-05:00

My brain hurts. I've got WoW working, and everything seems to be fine. Every so often I get some graphics glitches where my legs stop moving. Also I'm not able to alt tab out to the desktop and stay there. I seems to pop out then take me straight back to the game.

I went with copying the folders over from my windows install. I think I have a better understanding now of how to do a installation through wine, and I still may go back and redo it.

Also I may need to go in there and disable all my add ons and see if that might be causing any of the issues.

Ubuntu 9

2009-05-29T19:10:00.008-05:00

Well reading Mirsh's post lately has gotten me interested in Linux again. Pike started the interest and I've been holding off for some time. So I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu and created an image on a cd. I went in and changed the bios settings to boot from cd, and I'm compressed.

It automatically detected my usb keyboard and mouse, so no issues with that. Even though it is only booted from the cd, I can see a difference in browsing the internet. I am very tempted to log out back up all my important stuff and move to full ubuntu.

I can't believe I'm this excited over an OS.

This is my first blog from a Linux OS.

~~My only reservation is the drivers for my ATI card. Although everything is working here I'd hate to have issues with it once I had loaded WoW.~~

Just googled everything. My Sapphire HD 4870 seems to have good support from the open source community.

So far no change.....

2009-05-28T00:42:00.004-05:00

About the new druid changes for the skins. So far the biggest thing I wanted changed was the model of the tauren cat, to look something more like the night elfs. Not the same but at least something that looked cool. As far as I can tell they are recoloring the skins and adding some hair, tatoos/warpaint, and some trinkets to the skins. Nothing really different. Don't get me wrong I appreciate the change, something is better than nothing. Bears have never been an issue for me. The tauren cats are so freaking ugly though. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, as I've been spending more time on the druid lately while the pally racks up rest experience.

I wonder if Moonkin and Tree forms will get the same upgrades as well?

300

2009-05-25T22:11:00.003-05:00

Woot! I was able to hit 300 in Jewelcraft on my 38 Paladin. I know this is not a major acheivement, but now I can start leveling him up instead of parking him for the rest xp. For some reason I wanted to max out his Jewelcraft before moving on. I've also got enchanting on this toon as well. I figured that covers the most bases at once when trying to gear a toon. I've always that both are decent money makers as well.

Ok it is time to get the paladin to the outlands and beyond!

/SALUTE

2009-05-25T16:43:00.003-05:00

I woke up this morning and really didn't think about today. Why I was off today? It was a holiday, but then I remembered the actual reason for the holiday. I hate to think that I've gotten so busy and apathetic in my day to day live that I would forget the actual reason behind the day. I felt somewhat ashamed of my self especially since I was once a soldier long ago. I'd like to think I'm still just as patriotic as I once was. I don't want to ever forget though.

I hope everyone has a safe and wonderful Memorial Day. I'd like to say thanks to all those that serve and have served to protect our country. Also thanks to the families of the soldiers that serve our country. To those that have suffered a loss over these past years, my deepest sympathy and regret, may you find peace.

Finally Three Columns!

2009-05-24T14:24:00.006-05:00

I've always wanted to add in a third column, but the last time I tried it wasn't very successful. Plus I've grown attached to my Rounders 3 template. It is by far my favorite one. I found this helpful site that showed me how to get the 3 column added in. It hasn't been updated in some time, but everything worked. Only problem was I couldn't get the links colors and visited links colors adjusted to the same as the right side column. So far I fixed that by not putting anything on that side with links. I'll keep searching on that when I have the time.

I went yesterday to see Star Trek. It was great! I'm no trekky, and I don't get into all the lore behind that so whether or not that was all followed I wouldn't know. The way they wrote the story though, if they did miss something like that it could be explained away. At least in my mind anyways. I'm really looking forward to seeing the next and hopefully more Star Trek movies.

I'm hoping to see the season finale for Legend of the Seeker sometime today. I found this series last week when I was searching for a missed season finale for another show. Doing so I found this gem of entertainment. I'm glad I did. I spent the first 2 days of my 4 day weekend watching the past episodes. I really enjoyed it. I'm hoping it keeps going to a next season. The series is base off the Sword of Truth books by Terry Goodkind. Before last Wednesday night I really knew nothing about this series. Once I finish with my current read, I plan on adding that to the list. Right now the list is growing, but one of my new years resolution was to read more books. I've haven't kept up with that resolution very well. So this week was a renewed committment to sit down and read a little everyday. I figured eventually I will get through the book. Then I can get on to the others.

I'm so glad I still have one more day left before having to go back to work. I don't know what I will do, but I'm sure reading and playing a little WoW is on the list. Sitting on the front porch smoking my favorite pipe is also on the todo list. And lastly no Honey Dos, if I can help it. I've done pretty good this four day weekend avoiding those. So far so good.
<<Crosses fingers>>>

Legend of the Seeker

2009-05-21T13:51:00.003-05:00

I found this one last night while trying to find the Mentalist season finale. I like anything that is fantasy and this one is nicely done. Not corny and has some decent graphics. I'll be watching the rest of them over this weekend.

Oldie, but goodie!

2009-05-21T09:00:00.003-05:00

~~Sorry guys I got nothing.~~

I've been playing WoW, but mainly still messing with horde alts. I'm finding that hunter really is easy mode when it comes to solo leveling. It takes a little thought when going in and soloing multi mobs with my shaman and druid. Maybe I'm just a noob at these classes, but I seem to die a lot. Priest surprisingly solos better than the shaman and druid. Kills slower, but he is able to solo multi mobs. Now I understand that these are not solo classes, but I don't set there and spam LFG in the chat channels. I log on and get after it. I learned a long time ago from my days of EQ that you can spend 45 minutes looking for a group or I could spend 45 mintues getting some xp. It may be slower, but some xp is better than none at all.

My paladin is setting at 38 gathering some good rest xp, while I level up his enchanting/jewelcraft. Enchanting is at 232 and Jewelcraft is at 217. I need to get my two double gatherers out and mine some ore, and finish the Jewelcraft out to 300. Right now the 217 Jewelcraft has been a pretty tough range, because the most efficient thing to make at this point requires citrine and mithril bars. Those two mats are pretty scare when it comes to mining. No biggy though, I only need to set aside some time to farm it. I have every intention of taking the paladin to 80 and using him as main for lack of better words. I've lost some love for my horde hunter being that he is not a dwarf slinging a gun. I'll still take him to 80 eventually, but we have enough hunters in our small guild. With the dual spec options I can fit him in as a healer, DPS, or tank depending on what we will need. Right now I'm leaning more towards Holy/Ret dual spec, since we have another paladin that is focusing on prot. This is always subject to change, because who knows what will be happening in the months to come. And now I've rambled on, and if anyone reads this you are probably thinking , "geez you are all over the place".

I didn't think I had anything to talk about, but I guess I had a little more to say than what I thought. I had originally was going to post this below video that I came across while showing my wife what the Herculoids were on Youtube. She was....compressed. She stated "that is eight minutes of my life that I cannot get back."
Anyways if you by some chance have not seen the Heman singing 4 Non Blondes then enjoy.

Finally!!!!

2009-04-30T21:09:00.004-05:00

Finally hit 300 on mining for my deathknight, I don't remember it being so painful to get to 300 on my dwarf hunter. Time to take the deathknight into the Outlands.

Tribe of Boozsha

2009-04-30T18:34:00.003-05:00

Tribe of Boozsha is born! I created me a personal guild bank so I would have some place to store some extra stuff. I created it on my warlock, I figured he would mostly be a solo class for me.

I've also been working on all my toons lately. Basically one runs out of rest experience then I move on to the other. In doing so I finally decided to start on the deathknight class. I had initially created a gnome deathknight, but since my guildies mainly play horde I deleted the gnome and started a blood elf. Once I figured out my rotation of spells I actually started to like the class a lot. As of now he is a double gatherer, with skinning and minning. Raising that mining high enough for the Outlands has been a pain. I will most likely drop skinning later for jewel craft.

I've also dusted off the paladin and started to level him up. I picked up jewelcraft and enchanting for him being that I have deathknight that can supply him with ore and greens to disenchant. When I first started playing my paladin I had started leveling him as protection. We already have an higher level protection paladin in the guild so I opted for retribution. I've been reading on the retribution boards about some of the discussion about the class tree. There seems to be some good points of views from boths sides, but I really don't won't to get into that here. I really don't have enough knowledge and experience about the tree to do so.

Rogue started out nicely for me, but I haven't logged into for a few since the rest experience ran out. Towards the end it start to loose some of its luster. I'm a little undecided if I want to keep with it.

My troll hunter has pretty much been reduced to a double gather toon. I've respecced him to BM and have been working on leveling him up in the rest experience rotation. I've done the same on my dwarf hunter as well, but haven't played him much at all.

There are other toons I've been working on, but I'll leave them for later post.

To gather or not to gather!

2009-04-19T19:08:00.002-05:00

Lately I've been concerning myself with different blogs and post on making gold in WoW. Normally I've gone the double gatherer route. That works well when leveling another toon, because getting those resources while questing only makes since. That only gets you some much though. There comes a time when you have to start farming and taking time out to do so. Pluse there doesn't seem much accomplishment in double gathering

Break over!

2009-04-09T19:51:00.006-05:00

Well my break is over, I've reactivate the WoW account. Although I haven't logged into my hunter since I've been back. I've been spending time on the horde side where most of my guild spend their time. I'm also not really playing my troll hunter either.

So what class has been holding my attention for now? It's been the rogue class. Actually I've been playing all races and leveling them to level 10 and 12, and seeing which one I liked the best. I had every intention of making either a troll or orc rogue, because they seemed less common. But I wanted to try them all out and the last one I came to was the undead rogue. Playing an undead seemed the most roguish to me.I've been perusing the rogue blogs here lately. I'm trying to figure out whether I want to level as a Combat spec or Subtlety spec. I definitely have no plans to rush to 80, I plan on hitting the BG's along the way taking my time. We will see how long this last.

So on a personal blog related note, I noticed this week that I have had 50 page view this week. Most these referrals are from Lienna's Log tag for the Honest Weblog Award. I greatly appreciate the tag. Who doesn't like to see the site meter go up. My only regret that there wasn't any great content for those readers. I'm sorry if you were disappointed with your click. Those that link to me are far better writers and wordsmiths than I will ever be. I'm only concerned with jotting down a couple of my thoughts here and there. It is also a place for me to collect links to guides, forums and other blogs. I guess I could do the same thing with a my bookmarks, but I'm not always at my desktop computer to get to these links. So when I'm out an about I can pull up my laptop and go to my blog to find what I want to do some reading.

On a real personal note, I had mentioned in an earlier post that I had the lap band procedure done. I'm happy to report that everything has been going great with it. Since I first started on this journey I've lost 44 pounds. Now 22 of that was before the surgery doing pre-op diet which was a combo of Atkins and protein shakes. The other 22 has been after the surgery. I've had to change a lot of things in how I eat, but it hasn't been hard. The amazing thing is how easy it is. Another great thing is the low grocery bill. That is a plus. Below is a ticker showing the results.

Well I'm sure I've said too much now. I'll let you alone.

Honest Weblog Award

2009-04-08T18:09:00.005-05:00

So I want to thank the lovely Lienna for bestowing this very prestigious award. I humbly except this award as it couldn't have gone to a better person. I'm sure others are very much jealous with envy, but their time will come. <<<<pulls back the paper weight on the desk>>>>>SO BACK AWAY!!!!!

So in accepting this Honest Weblog Award, I give you 10 honest things about me.

You can probably stop reading here, because I am a very boring person.

1. I am a husband to the most beautiful woman in the world, and this year will be our 15th year anniversary. I am also a father to a wonderful little girl.
2. I am the oldest of three brothers. My younger brothers are twins, so that was interesting growing up with them. Still is at times.
3. I have two dogs. One named Bob and the other one is Barney.
4. Growing up I never stayed for more than 2 years in one place. Parents moved a lot. I tend to call home a place in West Texas. That was my last 2 years in high school and where my Dad lives. This was a very small town right off the interstate. If you blinked while driving through, you would miss the town. I had 34 in my graduating class.
5. I was in the United States Army. Infantry..... hooaaah! Either lead, follow, or get the hell out of my way!!!!

I told you that you would be bored.

6. My wife and I only dated for 6 months, then we were married. I met her for the first time before I left to go to basic training. After I came back from basic training, she thought I was hot. It was the uniform. <<does a manly Barney Fife sniff>>>>
7. I work for a cable company. I've been there for 9 years now and I'm a installation supervisor.
8. I've never done any kind of illegal drugs. But if they ever legalize marijuana, I will smoke a joint.
9. I very much a homebody. I love being at home and hate "running the roads" as I refer to it on my days off. In fact I always look forward to vacations and knowing that I can sit at home all day.
10. I've only been out of the country once and that was to go into Mexico for less than 30 minutes. I'll never go back. This would actually be very interesting story, but I think that would be best suited for another post.

So there you have it those are 10 honest things about me.

Pretty much every one I read has already been tagged for this. So I will take the easy way out on this and tag any one that reads this that hasn't already been tagged.

Odds and Ends

2009-04-04T20:23:00.004-05:00

As I stated in the last post I upgraded my graphics card to a SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit. It helped out a lot with LoTRO, however I still don't have enough under the hood to get rid of the lag and studder. At the same time I had to upgrade the power supply.

Back in LoTRO. Everything is ok, but I can tell I'm already starting to loose interest. Some of it has to do with the lag and studder that I'm experiencing. I can not stand lag. It really takes away from the gaming experience. Most of my time has been spent playing either the new warden class or burglar, and both are hobbits.

On April 1st, LoTRO was down for most of the day. At least it was down everytime I tried logging in that evening. So during that time I did a lot of browsing and reading blogs. I happened across a link to Runes of Magic website. This is a free to download and free to play MMO. It features a dual class system. Which is very interesting to me. I ended up downloading it last night. The game's UI reminded me a lot of WoW's UI. There are even addons at Curse for the game. The graphics remind me of Guild Wars. I was really suprised at how well the game looked and played. Right now I'm still in the newbie zones so I haven't seen any major content. You can play all the way to end game without having to spend any money. However it seems you will be doing without certain things if you did so. They sell diamonds at the online shop. You use these to purchase thinks such as mounts and other items that will enhance you character.

Another MMO that I ran across was Darkfall. At this time it looks as though it is in the early stages of beta. There is no leveling in this game. It is all skill based, and you are not locked into one skill set. If you wanted to be a combat melee and also take up some magic then you are free to do so. On that same note if you decide you didn't like the skills that you have taken up, there is a way to retrain those skills with some penalty. They also will have Prestige classes, which lay out a path for you in a certain skill sets, such as Paladin, Assassin, Gladiator, and Enchanter. These classes will get special skills and spells that others wouldn't receive. But choosing this path would come with a price, such as the Paladin has to give half his earnings to the church. I'll be keeping my eye on this MMO. If they have anymore openings in beta I will definitely apply for it.

On a non gaming related front, and more of a personal note. March 25th I went to San Antonio and had the Lap Band procedure done. I've been dealing with my weight for the past 10 years. Going up and down, but usually putting on 5 to 10 pounds by the end of each year. I had researched it for a year and finally made up my mind. I wanted to do this mostly for myself, but I also was thinking of the future. I didn't want my wife to have to take care of me when I get older. My wife and I also have a special needs daughter, so I need to be heathly in the future to help take care of her.

It is awesome not being hungry, and I have had to change a lot of my eating habits. The lap band has made making the adjustments super easy though. I can see it happening this time. I've had some really good weight loss so far. I'm also walking every day as well, and working in the garden has been giving me plenty of exercise.

That is all for now.

The Tribe of Boozsha

2009-04-01T15:03:00.010-05:00

Horde
Bloodknight (Paladin)

DeathKnight

Druid

Hunter

Priest
Boozyah Blood Elf - still waiting on the armory to be created.

Mage
Boozshadar Blood Elf - same thing no armory yet.
Shaman

Warlock

Warrior
Boozshido Troll - no armory

My Lonely Alliance Toon

Still here!

2009-03-24T10:20:00.003-05:00

Quick update on where I am MMO wise. I canceled my WoW subscription probably about a month ago. I kinda lost interest in it when I started working in my garden. As of now when I do want to escape into the MMO world it is in Middle Earth. When the game first came out I started playing and decided to get the lifetime subscription. The reseason I quite playing the first time was due to computer performance. I recently had a video card go out, so this time I decided to get something that had a little more meat on it's bones. The game plays very nicely now on "Very High Settings". I could play it at maxed settings, but my processor and motherboard still hold be back for the best results.

So now I have to decide to I keep my blog as a strickly WoW record of my time in Azeroth. Who knows I may eventually be back for more adventures with my dwarf hunter. Or do I mix it up and start blogging about my Middle Earth experiences.

AFK

2009-01-20T20:13:00.004-06:00

Yep it has been a few for me. I haven't played in almost two weeks, maybe longer. I've been working in the yard and trying to get ready to plant a garden. I came across the video below a couple of months ago and I told myself I was gonna plant a garden. I've pulled out all my old books on gardening and pulling up all the information I can from the internet.

So nothing for me to report about on the WoW front about my adventures. Eventually I'll get back to playing. Maybe. Right now I'm staying busy with being outside.

Anyways for those two to three readers that have been dropping by, I thought I would give you an update on what is happening. I'm still around, but my focus has changed from gaming to gardening.

I do miss blogging though and having something to write about. So I created another blog for my gardening endeavors to record my little path to freedom. So feel free to check me out if your interested in that kind of thing at http://texasgardengnome.blogspot.com/ nothing is there yet, but it will be.

IRL Taking Up My WoW Time

2009-01-02T09:51:00.003-06:00

I hope everyone had a grand New Year's Day. I know I did. I spent most of the day horseback riding and with the family. I haven't been playing much other than logging in to check the AH. I finally picked up the 5k riding skill. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, it is time to finally finish up the rest of those quest and hitting those dailies.

As stated I haven't played near as much as I expected I would on my two week vacation. I've been pretty busy with IRL stuffs. First was spending some days changing out ceiling light fixtures. We live in a house built in the 50's and some of the fixtures are still the original. I also installed a wireless fence to keep that cunning little beagle (Barney) of mine in the yard. He had been digging out and finally had learned how to climb the fence in a corner spot. It was real amazing to watch the first time. So I dropped the cash to get a radio fence and the shock collar. He learned real fast that the beeps mean you can't get close to the fence any more. It may seem cruel to some, but it is better than him getting hit by a car.

The other activity that has been consuming my time is horseback riding. My little brother bought two horses about a year ago. I've been going out with him to feed and mess around with the horses lately. I've always liked horses, and use to do ranch work in my younger days. I was mainly a fence builder and feeder for a rancher in my home town. I lived for those few days a month that we got to saddle up and work cattle by horse back. I quickly found out though that if it rained I didn't get paid. So I moved on to other things.

The other thing taking up my time is my little girl. I feel real bad logging on to play WoW and her setting in the other room. The way I see it I have all year in the evenings to play after she has gone to bed in the evenings.

I missed my anniversary post for one year of blogging. It was on December 30th. I had 2159 views for the year and 116 post. Actually there were a 120, but four of those were drafts that I never published. Actually not bad considering that my content is mainly about my dull hunter experience. I have several ideas for guides, but I really can't bring myself to write them up considering the talent of the other blogger guides out there. Hence 4 drafts that were never published.

On the list for this year in 2009. I'm not really certain what the new year will hold. I have several goals in IRL that I have set, but none I've really set for in game. I want to get in some heroics and try those out, but more than anything I'd like to do more PvP in the BG's and eventually in the arenas. So we will see were things lead. For now I'm working on maxing out the secondary professions. All my weapons skills. Bringing up 5 pets to 80, geez this has been a slow one.

That is all for now. Here is looking at 2009, and hoping for a great year!

/em Raises up a tankard of dwarven ale.

Merry Christmas All!

2008-12-24T08:34:00.003-06:00

I hope each of you have a safe and wonderful Christmas.

Being that I'm a cowboy at heart and from Texas. I'll leave you with one of my favorite depictions of Santa.
Merry Christmas to everyone!

Well I lost something

2008-12-22T13:32:00.006-06:00

It was my experience bar. I dinged 80 last night.

On the to do list.

Start farming leather and ore to finish getting the coin I need for 5k gold riding skill.

Get my eagle and gorilla to 80.

Find a pet for PVP that I like and get it to 80.

Decide on a instance pet and get it to 80.

Rework my spec.

Get cooking and fishing maxed out.

Finish running all the quest and hopefully PUG through the dungeons.

That should keep me busy for some time.

At 79 now.

2008-12-17T18:12:00.002-06:00

I'm actually at 79 right now, but haven't had much time to play the past couple of days. I've got to get through this on call week and then I'm on vacation for the next two weeks. Yes I plan on playing some WoW, but not every minute. No I'm hoping to do a little horseback riding with my brother, maybe even do some actual hunting. Both my brothers were able to get deers this year, and one got two. I'm very much behind.

Well that is all for now.

Boozsha out!

Tuskarrmagedon!!!

2008-12-14T12:08:00.005-06:00

Exalted with the Tuskar. Woot! I was able to get me a Pengu.

I've never been much of a companion collector, due to the fact that they use to take up a bag spot. Now that they don't I've started collecting them. I really far behind on this toon, but will have plenty of time to round them up shortly.

As of now I'm 3/4 of the way through 78.

I also finished most of the quest in Grizzly Hills save the dungeons and got the following achievement. I wonder if the dev writers that named this achievement reads a lot of BRK.

Ding 78!

2008-12-12T07:17:00.002-06:00

Dinged 78 last night! Woot!

Feels awesome, also I'm very close to being exalted with the Tuskar faction.

When I went to go pickup my new upgrades for my spells last night I realized I had TWO ranks of Explosive Shot available to me. /bonks forehead
That's one way to get around not being able to down rank your abilities....just don't train them!

No plans on making 80 this weekend, if it happens it happens.

Here is a little something that I have captured while playing in Grizzly Hills. It seems that potty humor has no boundaries, and will always find it's way into any and everything.

Back to Survival

2008-12-09T17:19:00.005-06:00

I think I respecced back to full BM last Thursday. I played most of Friday and Saturday morning and quickly realized I was actually having more fun with my Survival build. It was probably when I read Mirshalk's post on Saturday that made me realize that I am more of a Survival hunter. I also re-read the Basic Training post to make sure I was up on my technique. As of now I'm going with this spec. I like having those points in the BM tree to help out my pet tankage ability. Once I hit 80 and see where my focus is going to be I'll see where those points could better be placed.

Well most already know that there is an incoming nerf that is going through the forums and blogosphere. I've read some on the different blogs and as of now I really don't have an opinion. To be honest it really doesn't surprise me, especially with the volley. I noticed that I was mainly using volley when I was specced as BM and running with my gorilla. I'll be waiting to see what everyone has to say about it over the next couple of days. If I was a raider and was having to compete for a raid spot, I'm sure I would have more concerns with this. But for me as a casual gamer, that will most likely not raid ever, it just means I will kill things a little slower.

I do have a gripe though. I'm really dissatisfied with the cunning pets. Aesthetically speaking the birds of prey are my most favorite of all pets. Having an eagle is so freaking cool, but there special ability sucks for pve. Really and truly I'm not sure how great it will be for pvp. I would think there would be other more desirable pets for pvp like the Wasp with sting. Plus your getting more damage. Cunning tree really got all of the ugly and boring pets. I really hope they will add some more pets to the cunning tree in the future. Why does this bother me, just pick one of those sexah pets from another tree. Roar of Recovery is my reason for liking this tree so much. I can pop this ability and go to viper and be topped off with full mana before I can kill one mob. There are good things about the other trees, but to me this one ability rocks them all.

That is all for now.

Boozsha out!

Back to BM

2008-12-05T19:41:00.002-06:00

Yeah so, if you saw my last post I had tried out Survival. I tried out MM for a while as well, but have gone back to BM for the duration to 80. With Survival and MM I was definitely having aggro problems with the pet. I'm sure it didn't help with me going balls to the wall on the shots, but hey I was messing around with the specs. As of now BM is what feels good to me. Plus Kill Command and Bestial Wrath rocks on the gorilla thunder stomp.

Still at 76, but I'm hoping that I will push to 77 sometime on Saturday morning. I'm looking forward to picking up the cold weather flying and seeing what kind of mount I'll be able to find.

I still haven't done any instances. I'm kind of hesitant as I haven't really grouped in an instance at upper levels. All of my gear is quest reward stuff, but at some point I'll going to have to do so, if I plan on progressing my character.

Now that I've dinged 76, I'd like to tame some cats at my level. There are two that I'd like to try out and see how I like the skins. One is Pitch, which I really know nothing about him yet except he is in Sholazar Basin. The other cat of interest to me is the Dreadsaber which is also in Sholazar Basin. I like my Frostsaber Pride Watcher, but he quickly fell behind in levels. I'd like to see what the damage is like with a cat at my level.

Have you seen Who's the Tank? I'm a big fan of Who's on First by Abbot and Castello. I found this yesterday on WoW insider. This is a real good one, and to me it is up there with Jimmy: The World of Warcraft Story. Enjoy if you haven't already seen it.

Boozsha out!

Ding 75!

2008-12-01T18:55:00.004-06:00

Good stuff, as the title stats I dinged 75 now. I also became exalted with my first faction. That was funny I became exalted with the Valiance Expedition before Ironforge. Don't tell my dwarf brethren.
I've changed my spec for a little while, I'm not sure for how long though. I think BM has spoiled me with having a more stoic pet. As of right now I'm running with this survival spec. Explosive shot is cool, but I don't know if it is worth loosing my 4 extra points for my gorilla. Plus the gorilla is not holding aggro near as well as he us to. It must be from the crits. Below is a movie I through together when I saw how cool explosive shot looked on an Arcane Serpent in Transitus Shield, Coldarra. Just a note, I'm not wearing anything except for quest only items, so my damage will be laughable compared to most of you. Also I noticed after I had finished making the movie that I had called it an Arcane Worm. Same difference.

Bah!!!

2008-11-24T18:17:00.005-06:00

So Pike was having a contest to see who could catch a snapshot of the 100,000 view. I was off today from my on call weekend. I figured I would pull it up and see about where it was at. Cool it was at 99,680. Cool I can quest and alt tab to check it during the day.

Played around most of the morning doing various quest, frequently checking to see where the count was at.

Finally it was up to 99,990. Well it was time to start watching more closely, if I was going to obtain me a Pike made avatar.

I kept refreshing for some time.

Refresh.....

Almost there......

Refresh.....

WTF.......

Oh well, I snapped the screen shot anyways and submitted thinking that maybe that no one had caught 100,000.

As I was reading some of the other blogs, I found that sneaking hunter that sabotaged my plans of obtaining my avatar.

Bah!!!!!!

Congo Rats Pike on breaking 100,000 views.

Skin them thar hides!

2008-11-24T07:52:00.005-06:00

After much thought about dropping engineering for skinning I went through with it. I really wasn't seeing anything from engineering that I could use or did use a whole lot. Skinning before was always nice as it brought in some extra coin. I think it took me about 4 hours from the time I started to the time I hit 375. Now that wasn't 4 hours none stop kill and skin. I would normally hit the auction house or mailbox when I needed to train up. There were several AFKs in there as well. The slowest part was when I went to the Outlands. From about 300 to 340 I didn't get a skill up every time. It went from about every 4 to 7 skins, but by then I was able to round up several at a time and volley them down with the help of the gorilla. At about 350 I went to Howling Fjord to do a couple of the dailies and was able to quickly hit 375.

I also did not realize how much crap I was saving in the bank that I thought I might use later with engineering. I quickly had a close out sell last night, anything that was setting in the engineering box got sold at a deep discount. Sorry if I undercut you! Which most of it sold, I probably made 300 gold on that odd and end stuff.

It was also nice being able to clear my bag slots fast without a bank visit. Normally I would need save a portion that would be saved for later use with engineering. This time I would mail it all to my banker/auction house alt, and then sell the vendor trash.

Once I hit Grandmaster skinner, I quickly noticed the achievement for being Grandmaster in two professions. Also having the extra crit from Master of Anatomy is nice as well.

I only wished I would have been a skinner the day the expansion came out. All of Howling Fjord was littered with corpses waiting to be had. I could not complain last night though. There were still plenty of dead animals laying waiting for me to profit from.

I like to think of skinning as being one of the greenest professions in WoW. You get to help keep the world a little cleaner and unclutered.

Sunday Post!

2008-11-23T12:45:00.009-06:00

Sunday update and to do list.

Lets see.....

Dinged 72.....I think on Thursday

/slash boggle at the price for 4 extra bag slots.

Logged in on most of my toons to get anniversary acheivement and cute little bear.

Catch up on blog and forum reading.

Waiting on BRK's podcast.

Waiting for the last of oncall to be over with so I can really enjoy playing.

Go enjoy bowl of Cherry Cavendish in my favorite pipe.

Freedom!!!!!

2008-11-19T18:12:00.007-06:00

I finished all the quest in Howling Fjord this weekend except for the quest in Utgrade Keep. I'm still waiting on getting a group for these. I've spent most of my time LFG with no luck of getting a group. While LFG I've been questing in Borean Tundra.

I specced to BM around 60 or so, and so far I have stayed with it. Those extra 4 points seem to make a big difference. The only exotic I've kept after trying so far is the Tundra Crawler. I named him Dune. I'm sure most of you will know where that comes from, if not you can Google it. The worm has proven to be a great tank. I think I like the animation of the Tundra Crawler most of all. I think it is funny how he looks side to side as if he has eyes.

I finally picked up my eagle and named him Freedom. I haven't really had a bird of prey my level since 3.0. I've been really happy with his performance. I was able to solo "The Jig is Up" him. Which I thought was good with my gear. The truth though it didn't really surprise me though. So far most of the content has been very easy to solo. I'm wondering if others feel the same way. It is still fun, but I haven't had any situations that have been extremely tough.

I was glad they finally fixed the bugged flying machine quest. It opened up another daily quest for me. Dailies are something that is new for me. I didn't really do any of the dailys in BC, I've only read about them. These have been a good source of experience and the gold is nice too.

Speaking of gold I've finally broken 1000 gold. I've never had this much at one time. I'll be needing all the gold I can get with all the riding skills and mounts that I will have to purchase later.

Mining and First Aid are the only two professions that I have messed with leveling up to this point. I'm still undecided on whether to continue taking up engineering or to pick skinning back up again. Engineering has been fun, but these gathering skills are so much easier to deal with and to level.

Right now I'm about 50% of the way through 71. I definitely don't feel the need to be leveling any faster. I'm very much enjoying all the quest stories lines so I want to savor it. Reading what Pike wrote about being able to level again made me really realize that I need to enjoy it on this toon, because I will eventually be at 80. Then the real insanity will begin. Or so I suspect. I've never been at the level cap in WoW, but I have been at level cap in other MMO's.

Well that is all for now, time to get back to it.

First level 80 paladin on Kilrogg

2008-11-15T19:08:00.004-06:00

I was astonished when I saw the achievement come up showing the first server level 80 paladin.

He is also a dwarf.

Congo Rats Te!

Have any of you seen any level 80 hunters?

Made some changes

2008-11-15T09:41:00.004-06:00

Yep! It is time to change it up again. I got tired of looking that the old layout. One of these days I'm gonna have to get in there and learn to mess with the code to make my own customer layout. I've got something in my head, but I don't have the time to deal with it. For now this works.

I think the harpoon ride pic in the title looks cool. I'll be updating that as I find more pics along the way.

8-/ ding..... 70

2008-11-15T07:57:00.006-06:00

Dinging 70 just not as big a deal when a new expansion is released. Especially with all the eye candy that Blizzard gave us.

It was kinda like "Cool 70!"

/em starts to do a little dance, then I notice

"Upgrade! Even more cool."

Speaking of upgrades, I'm wondering what the deal is with the lack of agility in most gear. I'm seeing mainly stamina with a lot of plus haste and AP. I'll have to admit this is one of my weaker points with WoW.

I'm hoping to finish out most of the Howling Fjord quest and then head over to Borean Tundra and see what kind of gear I can get there.

Coming here at 68 worked out nice.

Bah!!!!

2008-11-14T21:21:00.006-06:00

Either my computer crashed or the game client crashed. After I restart to get back on I find that I've got to wait in queue. Only thing I can say is BAH!!!! Or MAZZZAAFAAZZZAAAGHH!!!!
I dinged 68 this morning and instead of heading back the the Outlands, I went to Howling Fjord. I dinged 69 sometime this afternoon, and I really like the content better in WotLK compared to the Burning Crusade content. Fighting giants is much more fun than demons. If I was playing a paladin I think I could enjoy the demon slaying a little more.

So far my favorite was getting to ride the harpoon. I thought it looked cool, and also seemed very much what Boozsha would do in that situation.

The tuskar have quickly become one of my favorite races. If they made them a playable race I'd definitely try a tuskar hunter. I'm hoping to see more of these guys in Northrend.

Here I am getting chummy with one of the guards.

I got it!

2008-11-13T10:40:00.002-06:00

I was able to pick up the collector's edition. I don't know why I'm a sucker for the CE's, but I fill like I'm missing out on something if I don't have it. I'm installing the DVD now.

I didn't make it to 70 before the expansion, but that is ok. I'm sure there will be some content I can take advantage of, if nothing else it is only 5 levels away.

Pre WoTLK Post

2008-11-11T18:48:00.003-06:00

Well server is down right now, which this really puts a hamper in my plans of getting some levels in. I was hoping to get a post together late tomorrow night. Hopefully reporting that I have finally leveled a toon to 70. There is still time to do so, being that I'm off all day tomorrow.

As of right now my dwarf on Kilrogg is setting at 63. Right now I'm working on every quest I can get my little stout hand on. I say hand because the other hand is holding a tankard of ale.

Even though I haven't posted anything in weeks, I've still be getting decent traffic to the blog. I've had several from Google searches. Most have been from WotLK reviews. Sorry to disappoint those that clicked hoping to get a review. Another Google search that I noticed was best leveling pet. For a more in depth details and varied opinions I would have that Googler go to the Pets forum of BRK's forum. If you want my personal opinion, get whatever you think is the coolest. That is it. Easy enough, with all the cool changes that came to pets in 3.0, you really can't go wrong. Once you hit 40 though you have to try out the gorilla. Gorilla has be come a quick favorite out there among most hunters, and for good reason. My suggestion is to try it out all pets.

So yes, Gorilla is the favorite here at the Chronicles. The aoe tanking is awesome and not having to worry about adds is nice. The Boozsha Gonga team simply takes on the adds and burns them down. I've been trying other pets, but as of right now the gorilla is the favorite for now.

The pet that has come in second for now is cat. I was able to finally get me the covetted Winterspring Pride Watcher. In some cases he has tanked better than the gorilla. For now these are the two pets I've been rolling with. I'll have more updates as I try them out.

(/em fumbles through notes on desk)

I'm toying with the thought of dropping Engineering to pick up skinning. As of now leveling to 70 and leveling engineering hasn't been terribly difficult. However most of the items I can make at the time are usually not relevant to my level at the time. Most of the ammo that I can make is usually too low for me. This would require me to go make and do a whole lot of mindless skinning. That would also cut into my leveling time. For now I'll let the thought simmer on the pot.

Some may have noticed the Entrecard. I thought I would try it out. I still need to come up with a cool avatar for my Entrecard. As of now I only have a end game picture. I need to figure a way to get my name on it. I've tried messing around with paintbrush, but none of the ones I could come up with looked good. Paintbrush is the only software I have available to edit pictures. So I'm very limited. I wish I had some artistic ability then I would draw my own, but alas my abilities are limited. Untill I can come up with a better avatar I don't really want to buy up advertisement on other blogs.

For now that is all I have. I most likely will not be posting anything till after WotLK has released. I sure hope these servers come up soon!

No Time to Post

2008-10-19T13:18:00.002-05:00

I'm taking a long flight from Auberdine to Feathermoon in Feralas, so I thought I would squeeze in a quick post. First thing I guess, is I've been sporting a gorilla lately. At first I wasn't going to do this, and the owl seemed to be doing well for me. While going through a trying out some different pets he ended up growing on me. He has some much personality and tanks so well. I was planning on going with a bear or a croc, but I like how the thunderstomp doesn't fire unless there is more than one mob attacking the gorilla. This kinda got me sold on him.

I've been messing around with some different specs and right now I've been I'm going with this. I get all the stuff I want from BM and MM. Plus I can start on up in my Survival. I had Lock and Load in an earlier build and I really liked it. I'll be working on picking it up again. I won't know what I'll be doing in the future till I can try out some of the different abilities. As of now this is what is working for me.

Aspect of the Viper rocks! I very seldom sit to drink any more. I've got me a macro set up so that I can quickly switch back and forth between viper and hawk with a middle mouse click. When I get rolling it is none stop gun firing.

Well it looks like I landed it that will do it for now.

Patch Tuesday Pet Tryouts

2008-10-11T20:12:00.004-05:00

This Tuesday most will be trying out exotics, and that will be cool to see all these new pets lumbering around. I myself will not have the levels to do so yet, and to tell you the truth not many exotics are really doing it for me. But if I was at 60 I'm sure I'd try something out that was exotic. I think the first pets I'll be trying out come Tuesday will be in the tenacity tree.

The first thing I'll do is see if I have the gold to get an extra stable slot. Then I'll be trying out the owl, boar and cat since I already have these tamed. Once I've messed with these, I think I will move onto a bear. I've always liked the dwarf/bear combo. I'm guessing it goes back to the cinematic that it was burned into my mind. Next I want to see how wolfs fair compared to the cats. Once those are done I will have to check out the gorilra(wedding scene from Norbit). BRK has been going on about how cool these are so I will try it out. I'm thinking these will go better with my troll hunter as it matches his jungle theme. After that is done I'll be trying out the turtle. If the turtle is a keeper, I'll name him Sherman.

Those are my plans for patch Tuesday. I'm really looking forward to reading all the different blogs that week. Probably looking forward to reading the blogs more than playing.

Thanks!

2008-10-11T08:01:00.002-05:00

Huge thanks to Mirshalak for the link and very kind post. While reading I was wondering if it was really my blog that she was referring to. I definitely don't see my post in that light, but it is always nice to see you get linked by some of the well established bloggers.

While I'm here I guess I'll throw out an update on my Main of the Week. Boozjah is now 42 and I've picked up a cat. I'm not really new to cats as I have a 34 blood elf that I was leveling for a while on Garona, before I decided to pursue my dwarven hunter path. I had tamed Eheyakee for him as the white lion really matches the blood elf theme. I started to see then why cats were so popular. A couple of nights ago, I tamed Bhag'thera in Stranglethorn Vale. I can definitely tell the difference in the damage from the boar. Right now the two of us are ripping through mobs like butter. We will see how much this all changes when the patch comes out Tuesday.

Speaking of patch Tuesday, I given some thought as to some of the different pets I will try out. As of yet I'm sold on any one thing yet. I have my favorites now, but if these pets fail to perform for me they may loose their place with me. I'm hopefull with all that I've read from the beta and PTR testers that I will not be disappointed with them though.

Update to earlier post on Next Question. I went Gnomish enigneering. I'm a gnome at heart. Ever since I created my gnome mage in Everquest, I've been a gnome at heart. If I could be a gnome hunter I would be one in a second. The next combo that would pull me away from a the dwarf hunter is a gnome paladin. None of the WoW gnome class combos really appeal to me. I will be trying out the gnome death knight when the expansion hits, but I don't see it lasting for me. I've never really gotten into that kind of class. You know the death, ghouls, and all that icky stuff. /shudders

That is all for now. Later!

Next Question

2008-10-07T23:22:00.002-05:00

Goblin or Gnomish, I'm leaning heavily towards Gnomish just because they are my favorite race in any MMO.

Baby Crit!

2008-10-07T21:12:00.003-05:00

I know it is nothing like you level 70's are doing, but I'm enjoying Rapid Killing and Aim Shot. I also went out and tamed me a boar he has almost caught up to me now. He was one level lower then me here. He did loose aggro, but quickly regained from me. For single targets he seems to hold aggro better than my owl even though they were nerf a while back. I was thinking that they couldn't hold aggro anymore, but so far he is doing very good job. I'm wishing I would have picked up one from Razor Kraul though. I love the armored boars. Maybe after the expansion comes out.

Build Work

2008-10-07T12:01:00.003-05:00

I went to go work out this morning being that I took a vacation day today. I normally go in the evening after work, but thought I would get it out of the way. Plus having the after work out endorphins for the rest of the day would be better than during the end of the day. Since I couldn't log into the servers when I got home after working out and I was still grundgy from my work out, I worked on some things around the house this morning. First thing was the bathroom sink. Apparently the was broke and stuck in the down position. So I had to fiddle with that, and I while I was in there I cleaned out all the gunk that was causing a slow draining water.

At this point I was real nasty, so I decided to run a new cable line so I could move my cable modem and router back into the computer room. A while back I had mounted a TV on the wall, and being lazy at the time I split my cable outlet in that room. That eventually caused some problems as in the summer times return signal for the modem jumps up. To temporarily fix this I moved my cable modem into another room that had a cable outlet with a wireless router. This was ok, but at times the wireless signal seemed to cause a lot of disconnects. So I finally decided to run another dedicated line so I could have the modem and router in same room with the PC's. That way I could connect them both with network cables.

Now for something WoW related build work. Still leveling the dwarf on Kilrogg for now. I had switched him to full survival about 3 weeks ago after reading some of Mirshalak's post on leveing survival. I thought I would try something different than BM. I was working with this build at the time. It was working out pretty good for me. I would lay down an immolation trap pull the mob with serpent sting then haul arse the other direction. Usually about a 2 sec count I would send in my pet and hunters mark the mob. Most of the time my owl would keep aggro with the mob and I would be able to turn and auto shoot him down. This was very mana efficient way to level. I was able to immediately move on to the next mob. If I pulled adds I definitely had to either start burning down the mobs, heal pet or if traps were refreshed I was able to freeze trap one of them. There were times that it really got ugly and felt that had I been speced BM I would have been able to pull through.

Last night I tried respeccing to something to this. So far I really like this build. I like having aimed shot and I really love being able to pull some of those crits with Rapid Killing. Unless it is one of those huge crits the owl is holding aggro. I also like having a pet that is a little more stoic.

I need to get over to the PTR and mess around with some of the different builds there. With the way things are going I may not be at 70 before the expansion hits. I'm sure I could be there if I really set down and made my self play, but life gets in the way of my play time on a regular basis.

Looks like most of the realms are starting to pop up and it is after noon. So I'll be grabbing a beer and logging on as soon as I finish up with this post.

Success

2008-10-03T20:34:00.002-05:00

New hard drive has been installed with no issues so far. With the old hard drive plus the new one I have 500 plus Gigs of goodness to save more stuffs! I desperately needed more space if I was going to install the expansion. I would have had to delete LoTRO, and I still log into it every now and then.

With all this extra storage space I can finally try out linux. I'm downloading Kubuntu now as I'm typing this. I never had much space before to try this out. So we will see if I can make it work.

Next on the pc upgrades list with be a bigger power supply, then I'll be able to get a decent video card. Once those are out of the way I think I'll be getting another Gig of ram. That should last me for a while and then I'll most likely have to get a brand new system. I'm really leaning towards an iMac.

I'm on call again this weekend so I've had very little play time this week. Once I get through the weekend I'll be back to questing and leveling again. I've also got some vacation days to burn so I decided I'd throw them in with my Monday comp day. I'll have three days of picking up some levels. Now if I can avoid the honey do's that seem to come with vacation and time off from work.

New Hard Drive

2008-10-02T12:21:00.002-05:00

Well I finally broke down and bought a new hard drive. I figure I'm gonna need for WotLK. I haven't installed a new hard since my Windows 98 days. Lets hope it is as easy as it reads in the instructions.

Running and staying busy!

2008-09-26T21:54:00.004-05:00

Picture pretty much describes the way things have been going lately. Staying so busy, but things should be slowing down at work soon. I hope!

Found a new blog that has had a lot of work put into it. I hope to see many more post from the Big Red Rhino.

Bear Cavalry!

2008-09-18T19:59:00.003-05:00

Your a cruel, cruel dwarf BRK. Details! The Chronicle demands details!

I will so be getting one of these. I will get to live out my dream of being in the Bear Cavalry. There is no way I was ever going to be able to obtain an Amani Bear mount. I hope this one is not rare. Bear mount and bear pet. This will rock. Ok back to BRK to see if there are any DETAILS!!!!!!!

Release date Nov 13th

2008-09-15T16:06:00.005-05:00

Macworld has an article with a release date of November 13th for WotLK. I've been saving some time off for the expansion release date. How lame is that? I save vacation for an expansion.

I posted earlier that one of my goals was to get a toon to 70 before the expansion came out. Well that hasn't happened yet due to me switching every month to a different hunter race. I had been spending about a month playing my dwarf on Lightninghoof a PVP server. Getting ganked and compiling a rather large kill on site list for the future. Getting ganked while leveling is one thing, but then I realized this is not going to stop once I hit 70. I'll have to continue to defend myself even when trying to farm mats or do dailies. So as of now I've let my toon on Lightninghoof set for a while. I can come back to him later when I get the urge for some punishment.

Last week I started messing with my hunter on Kilrogg, trying to leveling him up. One thing I noticed was that the difference between these two servers economies. On Lightninghoof I had over 200 gold by the time my toon hit 30. Kilrogg things don't sell as good. Especially the leather from skinning. Leather sold really fast on Lightninghoof and I had issues getting rid of the ore most of the time. It has been the opposite on Kilrogg. So being that I've basically been giving the leather away I decided to drop skinning.

I picked up engineering to replace the skinning. I have to tell you that I haven't had so much fun so far with a trade skill. I really haven't made anything great yet, but I was enjoying it. I wish I would have started sooner. I made my hunter some goggles, a gun (which was an upgrade) and several bombs.

I'm looking forward to logging on, but not to go leveling. Nope I need to go farm some mats so I can raise my skill. Also I'm going to have to farm extra to make some cash.

Well that is all for now. I'm really trying to post more, but it has been tough lately with all that is going on. I'm hoping I can find something with engineering proffession to post about on a more regular basis.

On call week and pvp frustrations

2008-09-03T20:22:00.000-05:00

Last week was my on call week so I have very little play time. I spent most of my comp day off on Tuesday doing chores around the house. I did squeeze in some time to play.

Being that this is my first alliance toon, I'm not to familiar with the quest flows from zone to zone. At 40 I seem to hit a slow down in where to go. I've had a quest that took me to Booty Bay that I had been avoiding, because I figured surely I would be ganked there. Well I thought I would chance it.

I rolled into Stranglethorn via the north end. I picked up the Raptor quest from Hemet and was questing along. It didn't take long and I was immediately ganked. Another name added to my little book. My wife strolls in to see me dead and writing in my book. She makes a comment to the effect that my list seems to be growing these days. This went on for about an hour in which was killed 10 plus times. I had stopped counting after ten. Shortly after that I logged.

Later that evening I logged in was working on the part of Raptor quest that involved killing a named behind the arena area. I was killing raptors in the area waiting for a him and came across two Horde rogues. One was orange and the over was red to me. Well I still didn't have too much of a chance with them. I mounted up and left out, but not before they had spotted me. They mounted up and started running after me. I'm not sure what skill the rogue has but they seem to have a ranged attack that stuns you. Firstly that is not fair, they should have no ranged utility. They were able to catch me and it was over from there.

I didn't think they would be there when I got back, but they were stealthed camping my corpse. I logged out ghosted a little frustrated at my day in world pvp.

I switched over to my dwarf on Kilrogg and messed around for the night there. I had fun, but the whole time I was really wanting to play on Lightninghoof. I wonder sometimes if my time spent on Lightninghoof is a waste, as I don't have any real goal other than trying to solo to 70 on a pvp server. I guess I have to ask myself is that enough.

Most of my guild that was playing strickly Horde have been messing around with Alliance for the past few weeks. So now it seems I have more of an incentive to log in on Kilrogg to mess around with old friends. I say old because some of these gaming friends go back five or more years to our EQ days.

Ok that is enough blabbering for now. Time to get to play'in!

Spirit of Competition

2008-08-24T08:01:00.008-05:00

I got it for my dwarf and troll last night. It was a painful experience logging in to my troll for several reasons. One was the hot buttons were laid out so differently. I haven't logged into him in some time and I was use to the way I had it on my dwarf.

Second I was specced survivial, which I was getting my lunch handed to me. After the first BG, I went to respec BM and I lasted a lot longer that time. Having the Beast Within was awesome. Being able to break those stuns was priceless. Being that I don't have any kind of speed modifier, and I think everyone else does, I have a hard time keeping my distance from the melees. I'm hoping I'll get better.

Thirdly, being that I have been playing a dwarf on a pvp server lately I've really begun to loathe Horde. Seriously, I've been ganked so many times by the upper levels (which I'm keeping a list). Also I've had several jump me when I was in combat with a mob. Which I expected this on a pvp server, it has raised my awareness of my suroundings. I've also used Eye's of the Hawk more than I ever have.

That's it for now. Time to get back to leveling my dwarf hunter.

WoTLK

2008-08-18T16:02:00.005-05:00

Ever since I stumbled across my favorite hunter blogs, I've been reading about level 70's blogging about their experiences at level 70. All have given very useful guides for the newbie hunter.

Well when WoTLK these 70 blogger hunter masters will have to start leveling(most likely). It is going to be great to read these post about them leveling again. Also the question will remain who will hit 70 first. I know it is not a race, but still wonder who will be the fastest to level.

I've been watching all the new juicy videos over at BRK and constantly scouring Petopia for the newest and latest pets to be added. Also if you haven't seen it Mania has a new forum up. I love forums! Blizzard is giving use quite the menargerie this expansion. Hopefully there will be true variety of pets come next expansion and not just a bunch of devilsaurs running around.

I hit 34 last night. I didn't have much play time last week due to work. I saw a t shirt once that said "I don't mind going to work, but that 8 hours till I have to go home is a bitch." That describes it for me lately only it has been more like 10 hours. Next week I'm on call and I don't forsee loads of play time there either. Enough of work!

Another level 30!

2008-08-15T09:10:00.006-05:00

Hit 30 last night and got my mount. My goal was to get to 30 then stop for a few and max out some skills and secondary professions. I'd like to get my fishing and cooking up to par, so I can start doing something with all the meat I loot on the way up. I don't know if there is much of a market in selling foods on the way up, but I'll try it out.

I severely need to find a crossbow. I have yet find another one since I looted one at level 11 or maybe I bought it off a vendor. Either way my skill is falling behind and I sold that one a while back to conserve on bag space. I figured by now I would have run a cross one in a quest or looted another one. I guess it is time to hit Thottbot to see if there is a quest I need to be focusing on to obtain one.

On the Boozsha world pvp front, all is actually quite. No ganks since last reported. One troll hunter actually had a chance to gank me, but he acted kindly and bowed. We exchanged a couple of emotes and he was on his way. I guess he recognized he was in the presence of a noble heroic race.

I stated that all is quite and it was, but I did have one encounter with a undead mage. He was 30 at the time and I was 28. Now I have decided that I'm going with the "first blood" motto. I'll leave you be, if you leave me alone. I'm not going to mess with you until you strike first. I'm trying to quest and get to my next level, and I feel that you are probably doing the same thing. I saw him in front of me and I needed to get to the other side of were he was. If I can avoid you and take another route I will, but it was were I needed to be. Well he came up and encased me and my pet in ice. I then turned around with a /em becomes fighting mad, and let loose all that I have. He didn't last long. Once my pet broke free it was definitely over with.

My world pvp idealology is definitely evovling and I suspect it will continue. For now I'm sticking with the "first blood" motto. I know that will put me at a great disadvantage with the rogues, but I'm already the underdog in that fight.

No ganking. I'm not going to be particpating in this kind of activity. I don't see the point. Do I waste my time and slaughter greys when I get nothing from it. No. So I've decided I will not be ganking lower level player. There is no honor, so why do it.

Odds and Ends

2008-08-11T21:31:00.006-05:00

I dinged 27 on my dwarf hunter on Lightninghoof. So far not much world pvp action has taken place. I did run across a 30 undead warlock while running some quest tonight. We seemed to be killing in the same area. I kept a close eye on her, and as long as she let me be we were good. She ran by me and nothing happened so I figured we were good. I kept using my eye's of the hawk making sure she didn't decide to double back on me.

Last night was a different story I had a mage that I guess was feeling frisky and wanted some action. It was nice little fight, but he should have taken his first thought and kept on going. That was Tuscadero's first kill. Shortly after that I was ganked by a level 70 druid.

Later in the evening in Astranaar that same druid showed up and about three more horde and began to gank and lay way most of the npc's in Astranaar. I did get some practice at kiting the druid, however I think they were just playing with me. I kept getting a lot of /em giggles at me.

I've been giving a lot of thought as to what other pet I will eventually want once the expansion hits. On this server with my dwarf I'll be keeping my owl and tallstrider for sure. I turns out that the tallstrider looks to be going from a middle of the road pet to a more of a dps pet in WoTLK. That will be nice. My owl will have the cunning tree covered. What I will need is something from the tenacity tree. I'm leaning heavily towards a blue skinned turtle and calling him Sherman.

That will leave me two spots open. Right now I'm not too impressed with any of the exotic pets. I do really like the new wolves that I've seen over at Petopia. I would also like to have one of those bald eagles, now those really rock. I'm sure it has already be done, but I'd name mine Freedom.

Lightninghoof buyers are doing me ok as well. Seems there is a decent economy there. I've got plenty to by my level 30 mount when that rolls around here soon. Ore seems to sell for more, but the leather moves a lot faster right now. I've probably made more from selling the leather.

Pinky Tuscadero

2008-08-09T07:10:00.006-05:00

The wife was commenting on my pink tallstrider. When she asked what it's name was, I had to reply still don't know. I was torn between something funny and yet something that sounded a little tough. I popped off saying probably just name it Pinky. Her reply was "you could name it Pinky Tuscadero." So it was done. In a way. I think it satisfies both of what I was torn between.

I'm trying!

2008-08-08T21:37:00.006-05:00

I really know nothing about RP, the unwritten rules, but I'm trying to do my best at it.

/shrug

Oh well. I'll keep on practicing at it.

I got bored, and had a little dwarf envy.

2008-08-05T23:15:00.004-05:00

Well I couldn't help it. Being in the BG's last weekend before last. I kept seeing all those dwarfs hunters. Made me want to get on my dwarf on Kilrogg. Only thing was it just didn't feel right. His name wasn't Boozsha(my 58 troll hunter has that name on Kilrogg), didn't like the beard that was selected on him. So I figured I'll reroll on another server, heck others do it. Plus I'd thought this time I would try out some PvP action for a change in pace.

So I finally find a PvP server that is in my time zone, which was Lightninghoof. Actually it is RP-PvP, don't know why probably it was the first one I had come across that showed up as being the same time zone, plus I was hoping there would be a somewhat higher maturity level. Being that it was RP at first concerned me, because I've never played anything in RP before. My main concern was doing something that wasn't RP and annoying others. Well I have nothing to worry about, because at the moment it seems to be the same as a regular server. Except for the PvP aspect.

So I finally get to level 10 and tamed me a boar, bear, cat, and even tried the spider. "Meh!!! Wasn't fit'in with me dwarf! Couldn't duit!" (<<heh roleplaying, watch out now) I needed something that would strike fear in those that try to vanquish me in my adventures. Also not something you see every day, maybe even get a double take. Well my choice was made. I'm looking forward to the day when I can win a few fights with him. Because it is going to hurt there egoes even more when it is my a pink flamingo.

I only died twice getting there and was jumped by a couple of level 8's twice, they added to my honor points. I'm still trying to figure out where I stand on when and if I'll attack. I'll have to come up with a code, but I see myself be very neutral. Most likely not attacking unless they attack first.

I still need to name him/her and I need to name my owl. I was thinking of Pinky and Blue, or Pinky and Brain.

So now when I want to be Legolas, I can log into my care bear server and play my Blood Elf hunter. Fer adventures and excitement I have my rugged and hearty dwarf.

BG's this weekend, Stay-in a live, Stay-in a live!

2008-07-28T19:04:00.005-05:00

I took some time out of leveling this weekend and did a few BG's. It was very painful the first few. I remembered why I hate rogues so much. I topped the charts the first few in the most number of deaths. That would be my deaths, but as I played on and re-arranged some skills on the key board things got a little better.

Damage Done

Killing Blows

So I quickly got that out of my system, and continued leveling on to 32. I spent most of the night seeing if I could get a level 32 carrion bird to spawn in Thousand Nettles with screech rank 2. Didn't happen. As much time as I spent I probably could have gotten another level doing quest. Oh well, I'll stop back at 34 and Blue will get his upgrades.

So now I'm at the level range that I normally get tired of an alt and decide to pick up something else. That has not happened yet with this one. I have a feeling I'll actually take this on up to 70 this time. I like playing the blood elf a lot more than I did the troll. That being said if Blizzard makes some kind of huge change and gnomes or dwarfs can roll horde. Well I'm starting over again with a shorty. Or if by some strange reason my guild decides to roll back to Alliance, then I'm all over the dwarf hunter.

Hunter breaks free!

2008-07-19T08:18:00.004-05:00

I got my pally to level 18 and was at a stopping point. Pretty much wasn't able to finish the last two quest without help. No one was in the zone at the time that could help or at least didn't want to anyways. So I had a newly created blood elf hunter that was setting at level 6. I figured well I can level him some more and maybe get my first pet. Well that was a mistake, because once I got my pet it was over. The hunter bug is on me again and it is big! I really like the animations of a blood elf. Being that all the quest in Ghostlands were newly on the brain, I was zipping through things extremely fast. Even faster because I was on a hunter.

So I was zipping along with my lynx, that was meh! I'm just not a cat person. If I could get Humar or Rak'Shiri, I think I might be a cat guy. Back to the thought, zipping along and I decided. I really miss Blue my owl on Kilrogg. You see I didn't get introduced to owls with my troll till much later with my first hunter, before that I was an all boar hunter. Well in my mind, a boar doesn't really go with the bloodelf. I had read on Pikes blog about her owl and that is what lead me to taming one. So it was decided. I need my owl, but the Horde is not able to get one easily till around 48. So at 14 I went to Teldrassil to tame me a new Blue! Now this wasn't an easy task....well it wasn't hard either....it just takes time and knowing where to dye.

So know I'm feeling even better about my new hunter, and having Blue is a very nice addition. He really completes the theme. The blood elf and owl combo really looks good. So much when I saw LFM's in the chat to do the final two quest I needed on my pally I ignored them and kept trucking along with my dynamic duo. Last night I made quick work of the rest of the Ghostlands zone and finished up all my quest there. I dinged 22 last night with the final turn in and picked up the Sin'dorei Warblade. It seemed to be the best choice as most of the other items I will be able to upgrade quickly.

While leveling up in the Ghostlands I had noticed that Blue was always low on focus. Right now I have him running Growl, Claw, and Screech. I'm thinking about repeccing to get Go for the Throat in MM. As of now I don't have any plans to take any one talent tree to the top. I think this time I'm going to go with a BM/MM mix. I want to try a downstairs mix up with the lower part of these two trees. My thinking and it maybe totally wrong, I'd rather have the core abilities of these two trees all the time. Not having to wait on a cooldown for only one ability. Keep it mind the highest I've leveled a hunter is 58.

Well that is all for now. I need to get Blue an upgraded claw talent that I missed.

iPhone Is the Weapon of a Jedi!

2008-07-17T20:26:00.004-05:00

Well we downloaded the new update to our iPhone, and I haven't had much time at to mess around with the new features. Well a buddy of mine at work found what I think is the greatest of all the features. They added the App Store. There are lots of free apps that can be downloaded and some that you can pay for, but the GREATEST OF ALL is the Phonesaber. Phonesaber turns you iPhone into a lightsaber, except for the beam that is hotter than a 1000 suns. It gives you all the sound effects of a lightsaber. It is sensitive to the rate at which you move the phone as well. So when I'm casually just moving around the phone, you hear a vooommmvvv voooomvvv. And when I go crazy it sounds like I'm really in a fight with Darth Vader. That's right we can all be jedi's as we are waiting in the waiting rooms now. If someone in traffic is really pissing you off, pull out the iPhone and go to town on them. I can't wait to use for the first time in public on someone. I might get some weird stares, but I will feel much better.

Leveling Guides

2008-07-08T18:58:00.003-05:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post I'm back playing a paladin again. So I've pulled out some of the old reads and some that are new. Honor's Hammer has a great guide on leveling a paladin. At Blessings of Kings there is a good guide about the different paladin blessings. Coriel goes into describing each of the blessing and gives suggestion in which class they are best for the current situation. The guide I'm using at the moment and following fairly closely is at RetLOL-The Guide.

This time I'm planning on leveling retribution all the way to 70. That is the plan. I think you may already know how finicky I am with plans. Things change with me. Who knows I may get this toon to 30 and then start on new hunter. I don't have a hunter on Garona yet. The blood elf graphic really is growing on me. I could definitely get into a blood elf hunter with those cool ghostland cats. Riding his peacock out in the wilds slaying monsters. I GOTTA STOP! That is how my indecisiveness starts.

Time to get back to the paladin and turn in some quest. If there are any NPC's up. That reminds me, what is the deal with the Alliance on Garona. You will have them camp the quest NPCs in different areas and keep them killed. Usually if that happend on Killrogg it didn't happen for very long as there would be a few galiant Horde show up and spank them. I'm guessing the upper levels of Garona have better things to do to keep this in check.

Really bored.

2008-07-06T12:54:00.000-05:00

Well the wife dragged me out of the house to go shopping. I was in the mood to go look for some new shoes, but that quickly faded after being in a women's department store for 20 minutes. Now I'm setting in the truck ready to get home.

More forums!

2008-07-04T17:10:00.003-05:00

I found me another forum to get lost in over at Retpaladin.com. I've been playing a paladin I started a couple of days ago. So right now finding blogs and forums related to paladins have my attention now. I'm still reading my usual blogs, but finding a new forum (well new to me) is like coming upon hidden treasure. I've also been reading a lot at Maintankadin as well.

Actually I haven't played much in the past month. I've spending most of my time working out at the gym. I joined a gym about 3 months ago and so fair have gone pretty much every day after work. I've lost about 20 pounds and I'm starting to were some of those old clothes again. So once I finally make is home from the gym, eat, and browse blogs/forums it is usually time to get ready for bed. When I have been playing though, I've been messing with my paladin. I'll eventually get around to changing my main of the week to paladin and link the armory. Not that it will be impressive. But if you are on Garona you can send a whisper to Boozshadin the blood elf paladin.

INCONCEIVABLE!!!!!

2008-06-22T12:09:00.003-05:00

Princess Bride Game

Someone posted a link to this game on my guild forums. I laughed and it spurred a two page thread of us posting our favorite quotes from the movie. Below was mine. I still crack up when I see this part.

"Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam... And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva... So tweasure your wuv...Have you the wing? "

Mounts at 30!

2008-06-19T21:47:00.004-05:00

Well I didn't expect this. Looks like I have a few toons to outfit with mounts now.

Patch Notes
Quote from Blizzard staff
General

* Dispel effects will no longer attempt to remove effects that have 100% dispel resistance.
* Parry Rating, Defense Rating, and Block Rating: Low-level players will now convert these ratings into their corresponding defensive stats at the same rate as level 34 players.
* Haris Pilton has launched a new line of bags and jewelry. Check her out in the World’s End Tavern!
* Mounts at 30?! Yes, it’s true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold.
* Blood Elf flightmasters outside of Silvermoon City and Tranquillien have traded in their bats for glorious fire-breathing dragonhawks.
* Alcohol cooldowns have been rolled into Drinks: All 10-second cooldowns have been removed and replaced with the 1-second Drink cooldown.
* Numerous flying non-combat pets have had their flight height modified to no longer skim along the ground: captured firefly, dragonhawk hatchlings, moths, owls, parrots, phoenix hatchling, spirit of summer, sprite darter, and tiny sporebat.
* Nether Ray Fry (a non-combat pet) is now available from the Skyguard Quartermaster. This requires an Exalted reputation with Sha’tari Skyguard.
* Equipping an item will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress.
* Placing an item in your bank will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress if the spell was cast by that item.
* You can no longer move backwards to stop racing rams.
* When a stun wears off, the creature that was stunned will prefer the last target with the highest threat, versus the current target.

Druid

* Barkskin: The cost of this spell is now reduced by Tree of Life Form.

Hunter

* Growl: Pets will no longer generate additional threat from this ability based on attack power buffs cast on them. Attack power buffs on their master will still indirectly increase the threat generated by the pet’s Growl.
* Pet Aggro: Pets will no longer generate threat immediately from being summoned.
* Scare Beast: This spell will now be limited correctly to one target.

Paladin

* Greater Blessing of Light Rank 1: This spell will no longer overwrite Greater Blessing of Light Rank 2.
* Summon Warhorse is now available at level 30.

Priest

* Mind Vision: This effect will now be cancelled immediately on targets who use an Invisibility Potion or Gnomish Cloaking Device.
* Spiritual Healing: Ranks 2-5 of this talent will no longer prevent refreshing Prayer of Mending.

Rogue

* Cheat Death: This talent has been rebalanced significantly. Killing blows are no longer 100% absorbed. If the Rogue is below 10% health, the killing blow is still completely absorbed; if the Rogue is over 10% health, enough damage will be absorbed to reduce the Rogue’s health down to 10%. For the following 3 seconds, damage is not always reduced by 90%; it is now reduced by a maximum of 90%, depending on how much resilience the Rogue has. The damage reduction will be four times the damage reduction resilience causes against critical strikes.

Shaman

* Earth Elemental: This pet will now leash back to its totem when pulled beyond 50 yards away.
* Lightning Overload: This talent will no longer do excessive damage when used with Lightning Bolt Ranks 2-10.

Warlock

* Curse of Shadows: This spell has been removed.
* Curse of Elements: This spell now applies to Arcane and Shadow damage, as well as Frost and Fire.
* Demonic Sacrifice: This ability will now interact correctly with the Spirit Guide resurrection system in battlegrounds. A sacrificed pet will not be resummoned on death, and will not prevent keeping a record of the most recently created pet.
* Health Funnel: This ability will now cancel channeling when the target pet is Banished.
* Ritual of Summoning: The mana cost of this spell will now be properly deducted when cast.
* Summon Felsteed is now available at level 30.

Warrior

* Revenge: Ranks 1-5 of this ability now have damage ranges instead of fixed damage values (like ranks 6-8.)

PvP

* The Warsong Gulch flag can no longer be picked up at the same time as a flag is capped.

Professions
Alchemy

* Philosopher’s Stone now requires 200 Alchemy.

Cooking

* Juicy Bear Burgers now correctly increase healing as well as spell damage.

Jewelcrafting

* Activated beneficial effects from jewelcrafting trinkets can no longer be dispelled.

Mining

* Green quality gems can be found in mining nodes again. The drop rate of blue gems from mining nodes remains unchanged.

Tailoring

* Removed the cooldown from regular Mooncloth.
* Herb bags can now hold Un’goro Soil and Evergreen Pouches.
* Mycah of Sporeggar has discovered how to create 28 slot herb bags.
* New Tailoring patterns are available from Haughty Modiste in Steamwheedle Port, Tanaris: Haliscan Jacket and Haliscan Pantaloons.

Quests

* Bhag’thera now spawns at a normal quest spawn rate.
* For the quests, Intercepting the Mana Cells and Maintaining the Sunwell Portal, phased characters will not be able to see non-phased character AoE effects and vice-versa.
* For the quests, Intercepting the Mana Cells and Maintaining the Sunwell Portal, pets gaining/losing phase status will now properly break off combat from unphased/phased opponents.

Dungeons and Raids

* Players can now be summoned to raid instances from heroic dungeons.

Magister’s Terrace

* The Stun component to the Sunblade Mage Guard Glaive Throw has been removed and the Bounce range reduced.
* Vexallus and Kael’thas are now tauntable in Heroic mode.
* Vexallus’ damage caused by Pure Energy has been decreased.
* Kael’thas’ Arcane Sphere has had its visual size increased. His Arcane Sphere attack has had its range decreased and the damage/second of Phase two on Normal mode has been decreased. (Heroic mode remains unchanged.)
* Sunblade Warlocks have had their damage reduced slightly.
* Fel Crystals in the Selin Fireheart encounter have had their health reduced slightly.
* Warlord Salaris and Kagani Nightstrike have had their damage output reduced slightly.

Sunwell Plateau

* Creatures in the area around Grand Warlock Alythess and Lady Sacrolash will no longer spawn while the twins are in combat.
* Nether Protection will now correctly trigger from Kil’jaeden’s Shield Orb Shadow Bolts.
* Vanish now correctly wipes threat on Kil’jaeden.

Items

* Bow of the Verdant Keeper’s Aim: This item’s triggered effect no longer breaks the effect of Scatter Shot.
* Brutal Gladiator’s Pummeler has had its Stamina value increased to the appropriate value.
* Clockwork Robot Bots fight amongst themselves again...without attacking people in the arena. Well... they’ll blow up other Bots in the arena, but you know what we mean.
* The Eredar Twins will now award the same items regardless of which order they are killed in.
* Invisibility Potions: These potions now are on the same cooldown as other combat consumable potions (such as mana potions.)
* Pendant of the Violet Eye: This item will again work correctly with Holy Light and Flash of Light.
* Shattered Sun Pendant of Acumen: The triggered effect from this Item can now occur on periodic damage ticks.
* Thori’dal, the Star’s Fury is now Unique as intended.
* Vengeful Gladiator’s Baton of Light: This item now appears in the correct position on the vendor list.

User Interface

* The help interface has been simplified dramatically. Players will no longer be required to select a category when opening a GM ticket. In addition, players can use the “Talk to a GM” button to fill out a ticket that requires a GM response or the “Report Issue” button to fill out a ticket that does not require a GM response.
* Target buff/debuff timers that appear when you cast a spell are now more visible.
* Time Management features have been implemented! These features include an alarm clock, stopwatch, and viewing your computer’s local time.
* The new stopwatch feature can be accessed via the /stopwatch, /sw, or /timer slash commands. Inputting a time into the slash command will make the stopwatch count down. For example, /stopwatch 1:0:0 will make the stopwatch count down from an hour, /stopwatch 1:30 will make it count down from 1 minute, 30 seconds, and /stopwatch 30 will make it count down from 30 seconds.
* Added the following macro commands: /targetenemyplayer, /targetfriendplayer.
* Added key bindings for tab targeting players.
* Ctrl-Tab and other target nearest friend functions will no longer target you.
* Targeting using /target will prefer live targets over dead ones.
* You can no longer click the minimap to cast ground targeted spells.
* Invisible players with Hunter’s Mark can see the hunter that put the mark on them.
* Vendor items now show their Duration in Inventory.
* For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros Forum.

World Environment

* Winterspring Ice Thistle Matriarchs and Patriarchs may now drop Thick Yeti Fur.
* Skinning any Winterspring Ice Thistle yetis may now result in Thick Yeti Fur.
* Increased the drop rate of Pristine Yeti Horns from Winterspring Ice Thistle Matriarchs and Patriarchs.
* Goblin Weather Machine- Prototype 01-B weather changes will no longer force the affected character to stand.
* Collector’s Edition Pet Redemption NPCs/items/quests have been relocated/modified to/for towns with mailboxes (Goldshire, Razor Hill, etc.).
* Young Sporebats and Greater Sporebats in Zangarmarsh now drop Sporebat Eyes for the quest Gathering the Reagents.
* Blacksmithing Supplies vendor and repairer, Blazzle, in Area 52 is now next to the forge and anvil outside the inn.
* Banker Meeda, in Area 52 is now in the...well...the bank, along with a guild vault and guards. The other three Area 52 bankers are still located in the auction-house-turned-bank.
* Wastewander Bandits and Rogues should be more plentiful in the northern parts of Tanaris.

Bug Fixes

* The mage spell, Counterspell now shows in the combat log.
* Gan’arg Analyzers will no longer occasionally become friendly to players.
* Talented abilities that cost a percentage of base mana will no longer display an incorrect mana cost when inspected by a player of a different class or level.
* Guild leaders should now be able to properly promote a new guild leader regardless of their range.
* Druids: Mangle will no longer incorrectly indicate a 100-yard range on the tooltip.
* Hunters: Using an instant ability after Steady Shot will no longer lock out auto shot.
* Hunter Snake Trap will no longer break players out of stealth if the snakes pass near the stealthed character.
* Hunters: Concussive shot will now properly have a chance to proc Bow of Searing Arrows.
* Rogues: The talent Heightened Senses, Rank 1 and Rank 2 will now affect attacks from wands.
* Using Jewelcrafting figurines will no longer cause scrolling combat text to appear twice.
* Fixed an issue in which shadows were not appearing properly for users with GF4 video chipsets in Open GL mode.
* Corrected an issue in which users with Creative X-FI sound cards would sometimes here a slight popping noise when running.
* Players will now correctly receive a Battleground Mark message for the marks that are received at the end of a battle.
* Corrected an issue where the initial trigger or activation sounds for Immolation Trap and Explosive Trap could not be heard by some players.
* Smelt Hardened Khorium will now properly require a forge instead of an anvil and hammer.
* Corrected a typo in the tooltip for the Druid spell Rip (Rank 4).
* Looting a Nightmare Vine will now properly no longer apply poison when the node is looted.
* The Figurine- Seaspray Albatross ability will now properly restore the correct amount of mana.
* First Aid bandages can no longer be applied to a player with the Recently Bandaged debuff. An error message of, "Could not activate more than one bandage" will be displayed.
* Corrected the tooltips to read properly for the flight paths from The Stormspire, Toshley’s Station, Blade’s Edge, and Area 52.
* Greater Elementals summoned by a shaman will now properly have a combat log entry.
* Players will no longer become stuck on the Nimboya’s Laden Pike when driving it into the ground.
* The quest, "Going Going, Guano!" will now have a more consistent level requirement for the dungeon.
* The quest, "Into The Scarlet Monastery" is now available to players of the appropriate level for the instance.
* Blueleaf Tubers can now be properly looted.
* The quest turn-ins for the Ahn’Qiraj war effort now give the appropriate amount of credit for each successful quest turn-in.
* Cloak of Shadows will now properly remove Shrink.
* Nightbane will no longer become unresponsive and unkillable during his air phase.
* Several items sold by the Consortium reputation vendor Paulsta’ats are now bind on pick-up: Formula: Enchant Weapon- Major Striking, Design: Delicate Blood Garnet, Design: Shifting Shadow Draenite, Design: Lustrous Azure Moonstone, Design:Thick Golden Draenite.
* It is no longer possible to delete a character that is an arena team captain without first promoting another player to captain.
* Taunts will now properly stick when a target is stunned while being taunted.

World of World of Warcraft

2008-06-14T09:38:00.002-05:00

'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

Just a few highlights.

2008-06-09T19:24:00.003-05:00

Not much has been happening here lately. I really haven't played much, which I really need to do if I every plan to hit 70 with this toon.

Some interesting possible changes with Wrath of the Lich King. Over at Resto4Life she talks about the possible elimination of +Healing and +Damage Gear. Some interesting thoughts in her blog.

Over at WoW Insider, it looks as though WoW may be getting an achievement points system. It seems as though it may be close to LotRO Deed system. I really like the Deed system in LotRO. Also at WoW Insider a post on how gamers can save money this summer.

He Man

2008-06-04T20:03:00.002-05:00

If this is a live action movie this will rock! I hope it is.

Grayskull: Masters of the Universe Script Review

Pre WotLK Goals

2008-05-29T19:04:00.004-05:00

Galo had a post about Pre WotLK Goals. I've never been one for setting and keeping goals, but I'll give it a try. My first goal that I've had since I came back to WoW was to get a toon to 70. I've had a very hard time trying to find a class that I want to stick with. I went from paladin, hunter, priest, and finally now to my druid. For now that is where my interest lies. Time is running out if I plan on making this initial goal, so I need to stay the course and keep my interest in the druid.

The second goal is to both flying forms. That will include the big heafty cost of the level 70 riding skill.

With my limited play time that will be enough for me. Of course I'll be hitting some 5 mans once I hit 70 and messing around with the guild.

So those are my two goals. I told you I wasn't much for setting goals. Anyways there you have it.

World of Wifecraft

2008-05-24T10:14:00.001-05:00

Yeah this one rocks.

Got travel form? The gnomish kind.

2008-05-21T20:37:00.005-05:00

I couldn't resist. It is the new gnomish travel form. >>>>>>>>>>>

I finally dinged 30 with my druid on Garona on Monday. I haven't had much time to log back in since Monday since my vacation ended. I've been a little busy being back to work. Mainly mentally exhausted.

While leveling I've been going the feral route, and having the plans of respecing at 40 to try out the balance tree for the moonkin. That has been my plans, but I've really been enjoying the feral tree. Mainly the cat form, which is what I've been in since 20. I'm not sure what I'll do now once I hit 40. I could continue my course with the feral tree to 70, or branch out and try the moonkin.

On the PvP front with the druid, I have yet to get into a battleground yet. I'm most certain with the gear I have I will get a neutered in the BG's. I'd rather not loose any zeal I have for this toon as of now. I'd like to have a toon to 70 before the new expansion comes out, and that won't happen if I keep rerolling alts. I'd also like to get flight forms and get geared up. Our upper level toons in the guild have an invitation to raid with a casual raiding guild. So I would like to experience this as well before the made rush to 80 starts.