Leveling Triggers

Decided some of my pre-patch boredom is going to be consumed by leveling a Void Elf Warlock. Currently have two 110 boosts and two 100 boosts, but I opted for the pain.

Every spec in Warlock is currently performing well. I'm fine with Affliction and Destruction but Demonology remains awkward. So might as well learn from the ground up plus get a pretty Void Elf along with heritage armor.

I mix in some questing but it gets boring fast. The only ones I do consistently are dailys and pet battles so running dungeons are a mainstay. In between queues I stay busy with work, researching, Netflix, etc

The people you meet in random dungeons certainly run the gamut. The most enjoyable are the old hands like me, that have seen them all, done them all, tear shit up. The other end of the spectrum has the new people, either to the instance, their role, or MMOs in general. I admit I get impatient. Usually I can calm myself with thoughts like "It's just this one instance, then you can spin the wheel and get a whole new set of people." Doesn't always work.

Sometimes I get lippy. Or I pull extras. Good tanks handle it with no problem. And my lip either amuses people or they ignore me. But sometimes it all goes wrong. Like the Vortex Pinnacle group I was just in.

I got bored so I pulled once. I asked a pointed question. Before each boss we sat there for 25-30sec doing nothing. Nobody moved, said anything, did anything. I swear the tank would wait until my 5 shards reset to 3 and all my Demonic Core and Demonic Calling procs expired. So I started watching Silence of the Lambs to keep myself awake.

Not sure what ended up offended who but the fuckers waited until the final boss. They were doing another 30sec pause, so I said, "la la la" then did the /sleep emote. Then I was booted from the group. Which denied me both the quest and completion experience. *sigh*

Normally I'm tanking so it doesn't matter. But late night queues for DPS take anywhere from 20-45 minutes. Unfortunately I don't have meters up for leveling, so I didn't have the group list. The priest healer was awful and silent. Don't recall the other DPS. But the monk said something and the tank set a few targets.

Sadly the default interface only allows you to ignore characters that are on your server. You have to right click them if they're from another server. Was able to tag the monk and got the tank to respond to a whisper:

Hoping that having them on ignore will keep them out of future group but I don't know if that functionality still exists. Those types of mechanics are kept quiet and out of patch notes. Still typing all this helped un-trigger me and now I'm ready for another pug!

One More in the Stables

Really liking this secret mount I picked up last night, Riddler's Mind Worm. Reminds me of the Spawn of G'nathus Battle Pet.

Of course I really didn't get this myself. Apparently there's a team of nerds looking for this type stuff. Sometime yesterday evening it was solved. The instructions for finding each note were exceptionally well done. The only difficulty in finishing was the usual griefing:

Really get tired of these kids. What was refreshing about this hunt was the instances. There were a number of times you had your own space and above kids couldn't get in the way. Was really missing the F10 Hide All PCs functionality from Revelation Online.

Did discover a few tricks about getting around these assholes. There were a couple of people from low pop servers running an auto-invite group. You'd apply, eventually get an invite, then get shifted to their CRZ, Just drop the group fast so other could get in.

The other solution was ... invisibility potions! Can't believe I haven't thought of that before. Invis will make PCs and most NPCs disappear. Once you click on whatever you need, you pop back into the crowd and /lol.

Initial World Hall of Fame Games

Just noticed a press release and subsequent hype for "2015 World Video Game Hall of Fame Inductees." Apparently "The Strong® welcomed six games into the inaugural class of its World Video Game Hall of Fame™"

• DOOM
• Pac-Man
• Pong
• Super Mario Bros.
• Tetris
• World of Warcraft

I completely agree with the recognition of all of these games except the final one. *lol* Despite my love of WoW it should not be the MMO representative. Ultima Online and EverQuest are far more deserving.

On a side note… who the hell is "The Strong®" and why are they qualified to hand out world titles?

The Definition of Botting

Yesterday the ban-hammer was brought down on a number of accounts. I've heard numbers as high as 600,000. Also heard that some are temporary six-month bans while others are permanent. Blizzard themselves didn't release actual numbers or violators so I'm not sure how accurate they are.

Apparently is was largely prompted by abuse from a botting program called HonorBuddy:

I admit I have used a botting program before. It must have been five or six years ago now, but it was fun. A program called Glider. You could write fairly detailed programs to kill mobs, harvest reagents, etc. As a coder I found it amusing—yet I did get caught and lost two accounts. Glider was pretty underground though. Something as brazen as this Honor Buddy was bound to get busted.

Yesterday afternoon Bashiok tweeted something that caught my eye:

Botting is defined as automation of any action, not just character movement. If a program is pressing keys for you, you've violated the ToU.

— Bashiok (@Bashiok) May 13, 2015

Now that's interesting. That is not the publicly accepted definition of botting. Even recently I have loaded up two instances of WoW and uses AutoHotKey to do things. This is not botting. I am not leaving the computer unattended to automate activity in Azeroth. Yet from Bashiok's terse summary apparently I am—according to Blizzard.

Interesting. And they are apparently enforcing it this narrowly as the crazy boxer PreparedWOW has been banned...

I'm guessing Blizzard wants to make it look like they're serious about maintaining the integrity of their online world. Personally I think pushing content faster would be more effective.

Warcraft Fan Art

I've seen a number of exceptional fan renditions of game art. But never something like this...

hey twitterverse, thought I'd come share my latest @Warcraft fanart - a redesign of the badass Alexstrasza! pic.twitter.com/sS6izF665J
— Sam Hogg (@Zephyri) March 13, 2015

Vanity Pet Ladder, Continued

After a week I've somehow managed to maintain my lead on the dreaded Ravenlight. *snicker* Was chatting with her over the weekend. She hasn't had a chance to level new things so I've widened the gap further. In fact, thanks to almost 1000 Pet Charms I'm now up to 6th on the server.

That set of charms I used to level. Buying Mystery Bags ended up getting me nearly twice the number of levels Flawless Battle-Training Stones would have. Still have over 2000 charms left which I intend to use on Rare Stones. Warcraft Pets says I have 17 Poor, 23 Common, and 54 Uncommon Pets. Ninety-four stones will cost 1410 Charms. That will be a lot of clicking. *sigh* 

Once done all that's left is the leveling from daily rewards. Wonder where I will peak.

Vanity Pet Ladder, Redux

Had to capture this immediately since it won't last. It's been a week since I gleefully reported passing Shian on the PvE Pet Ladder. Now, thanks to Raiding with Leashes III: Drinkin' From the Sunwell, I have passed Ravenlight!

It's only a five point lead so it won't last. Raven hasn't had time to hit the old instances and her daughter always helps. But at least I'll have a couple of days in the sun. *snicker* Sadly I was only able to get six on my own. Had to blow over 30k on the Auction House to round it out:

Gave up after exceptionally bad luck in Black Temple... thanks Auction House! #Warcraft pic.twitter.com/lmSwUT5J1I
— Aenara (@aegamer) February 26, 2015

Will be getting a few more points. I had just over 3700 Pet Charms so I'm going through all the highest level unique pets and getting them upgraded to Rare. If there enough charms left I'll buy level stones to get them all to 20. Should be a good baseline.

Not sure the push was worth it… but K'ute is damn cute…

Vanity Pet Ladder

Since Warlords hit I've put many, many hours into leveling Battle Pets yet only yesterday did I finally pass my first rival, Shian. Sadly my second rival, Ravenlight, remains a killer.

My lead over Shian is tenuous at best. She has a lot more pets than I do and could easily pass me with some leveling. Catching Raven is more realistic yet I have many sub-Rare quality pets to upgrade.

Yet the bulk of the work is complete. My average unique pet level is now 20.7—thanks to the fantastic menagerie XP. Only one month ago that number was down around 13. Thankfully I managed this big push since 6.1 comes out next week and the massive XP will be nerfed.

From here on out the free level stones from the daily Big Bag of Pet Supplies will raise that average. I will use the Pet Charms to buy Rare conversion stones since they no longer de-level your pet in 6.1. Slow process but a natural one.

Happy 10th Anniversary

Blizzard really put some effort into this anniversary. Brilliantly done. And what a mount!

World of Warcraft Patch 6.0.2: The Iron Tide

Finally time for some new content. While Mists of Pandaria was an enjoyable expansion it went on far too long. I assume it will happen with Warlords so this will likely be the last expansion I play World of Warcraft.

Recorded a quick video of parking my Hunter out by the Dark Portal. In retrospect that may not have been a good idea. It will be lag city so I may not be able to log into her first.

I should log into some of my other characters anyway. As I mentioned in the video I am most excited about the Toy Box. Silly as that sounds it's going to save me TONS of bag space and most of the awesome rare trinkets I've collected over the last decade are now available to all my toons.

Of course the removal of hit/expertise/reforging is a close second. Having more than fifteen characters across the two servers has been exhausting. It's going to be a lot easier to maintain raid-ready alts.

I'm concerned most about the tradeskills changes; seems like Blizzard trivializing all of them. Removing their bonuses along with giving all the basics to the garrison is strange. The only benefit to having a profession is the ability to make high-end crafted pieces. But there is so much competition and they're so easily replaced by raid drops... how is this going to work out? Guess I'll find out over the next few months.

The real dread is unavoidable: addons. *sigh* Many of the ones I use have been updated in the last week so hopefully the authors can keep up with whatever get actually released. I suppose the only critical addon I need is WeakAuras. If it dies there's are other addons out there but none with it's power and flexibility.

As to raiding, I'm not sure what's going on. I don't think I'll make the 20-cut on the top-tier team. Little ego damage but I'll get over it. I already have the mount anyway so I should be helping out the second team. Or third. Or whatever ends up happening. I do enjoy Eternal Kingdom but, as usual, I am certain I'll be hedging and raiding elsewhere.

Still Denied Moore Pride

Looks like my Warcraft problems persist...

Still doing the same thing. Shows that message for twenty seconds then disappears. Haven't gotten any replies on my forum post. There's another post with players having the same problem that I've commented on. It has two blue notes but it's the usual front-line techs suggesting a modem reset.

Pretty frustrating when I can see friends on my Battle.Net list that are logged in and doing things. Blizzard's twitter response this morning didn't help:

Naturally I had to respond and I even got a response back:

Not sure what is happening on Mal'Ganis specifically. Makes me wonder how their issues are tracked. And if one solution can help address other similar issues. Sure happy I don't work on the Blizzard Infrastructure Team but sure not happy I can't play the game. *snicker*

No You Will Not Proudmoore!

Would like to get some leveling done and a few of the Brewfest quests, but no!

Really annoying how the client doesn't say anything; it just tries for twenty seconds then gives up. I was annoyed enough to make a nuisance of myself. Posted on the forums then tweeted at Customer Service. Even tweeted another general bit of crying…

Ugh. Can log onto some #Warcraft servers but not the one I want. Client waits 20sec then gives up. :( http://t.co/x5nOpkVf6X
— Aenara (@aegamer) October 3, 2014

That's An Angry Mount

The group I've been killing Heroic Garrosh with gives one of the Kor'kron Juggernauts out via loot council and the second as open roll. Last time I rolled a 7. The time before that I rolled a 13. But not last night...

I really don't deserve it. But I didn't protest and right-clicked on it in my bags as quick as I could. *snicker*

Poking Around Draenor

Got a beta invite a while back but it was impossible to stay logged in very long so I gave up. Trying again today. Actually got a hunter leveled up to 91. Got my base started. And tamed my first new pet...

General Down Quickly

Joined a guild on a different, higher population server. They got Heroic Garrosh down two weeks ago and are already looking towards WoD. One way they're trying to ramp-up recruitment is to work on ranking strats to attract new bodies. It was a little rough but we did get a server top time on a Nazgrim kill. Looking forward to pushing other fights...

Mainly for the Murloc

Got a few more games in with my 3v3 team last night but they haven't appeared on the ladder yet. So as of last week the team was at #262 of 559:

Not exactly a proud showing I know but frankly rather beyond out expectations. We only signed up to get the 50 games in for the Murloc. Each of us has a mildly competitive streak so we didn't want to just roll over. Surely there are a few pet-only teams we could dispatch. And it felt good to do so.

Unfortunately the rankings go up fast when winning so we quickly faced some of the more serious players. Once we neared a 1000 last night it got rough. Even in the struggle we still did okay. There was one team of a Warrior, Monk, and Hunter that beat us twice:

Yet the third time we faced them we won:

That felt pretty good. The recognition of potential as we learn to work as a team. Even though none of us even do Battlegrounds. So tonight I'm going to ask my teammates if they'd join me in a 3v3 back on Live. Nothing to serious, but just get in the ten games a week. Add a little spice to each lock out for now. Next season... maybe the title?

Secretly I'm sure all three of us wouldn't mind the Vanquisher title but … yeah. Little late now with zero preparation—which shows. We have yet to break 1000 and we have 40 games in. See what it's like after the 10 tonight. *snicker*

Muffle the Elemental

Trolling the forums I came across someone crying about the water elemental idle "glug glug" sound. A blue responded with steps on creating an empty override file:

Here's a way I just tested and it seems to work fine. I found it on an addon site but it doesn't require you to download anything. I have to warn you though to use it at your own risk of course. Here's what you do:

1. Open your World of Warcraft folder
2. Open the Data folder
3. Create a new folder inside called Sound
4. Open the Sound folder now
5. Create a new folder inside called Creature
6. Open the Creature folder
7. Create a new folder called Waterelemental
8. Open the Waterelemental folder
9. Create a new file called WaterElementalLoop.ogg and save it. It needs to be empty, 0 bytes
10. Play the game and test

Thought it was interesting that an official agent would pass on something from "an addon site" but I suppose this is pretty innocuous. If there's a way of mapping out contents of MPQ files this would work for a lot of things.

Unwanted Dubstep

For the past few days Warcraft has been giving me cycling latency spikes. As a tank this makes timed actions and active mitigation very difficult. Wiped my progression raid a few times and have been voluntarily (though annoyedly) sitting since.

Figured it was something on my provider's end that would clear up eventually but it persists. Decided to hit the forums and immediately saw others having the same issue, so I added my two cents:

At first it really pissed me off as suddenly the game would catch up to what I thought was happening five seconds earlier. Now I treat it as a mini-game to see if I can anticipate bullshit. *sigh* Need to figure this out soon.

Almost Done in There

Fairly productive week. Got the first nine bosses down on Wednesday, and Thursday with Tortos and Durumu being the only bother. Managed to get Iron Quon down tonight along with the Twin Consorts. This means we'll have a good four hours or so on Lei Shen tomorrow. Should be no problem. *snicker* The kills bumped us into 2nd on the server:

Iron Quon was kind enough to drop Shoulders of the Crackling Vanquisher so I now have the 2pc going. Might have to find a transmog that works with the shoulders… that tongue is pretty amusing:

Brought me up four iLevels so now I'm back in the top 10:

Good times!

Unwanted Membership

Players on Balnazzar must feel pretty special to get a client announcement all to themselves…