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Alliance: Sometimes I wish I was Horde

Gaming

Ishiro loves him some Alterac Valley.

Now, for those who don’t understand, let me explain. In World of Warcraft, if you wish to engage in PvP but do not wish to engage in open PvP out in the wild where you can get ganked, outnumbered 5 to 1, there are Battlegrounds. Warsong Gulch is Capture the Flag: each team has a base that holds a flag and a field between the bases, and your team tries to get the other team’s flag and bring it back home. Arathi Basin is Control Points: there are 5 control point locations on the map you have to assault and hold, while holding them you earn points (10 at a time), and the first team to 2000 wins. Alterac Valley is a Campaign: huge map, with a home base, towers, control points, and other stuff, if you hold a control point that gives you access to a graveyard which allows you to better hold the battle lines, the winner is the one who defeats the other teams general.

I like Alterac Valley for a number of reasons. One, there is lots to do. You can capture rams to equip your NPC ram riders. You can gather minerals from the mine. You can PvP and collect armor fragments to upgrade your NPC guards. And more. Because the war is usually long (5+ hours) people learn to organize and play together and leaders emerge. Two, the Alliance wins fairly often at this. Mostly we win because after 6 hours, the Horde team usually goes for an end run, we defend it, and they start quitting. I’ve heard its different on other servers.

But that doesn’t explain the title… see, in Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch I have never been on the winning team. The Alliance sucks. People spend too much time going for individual kills, no one ever wants to play defence (less honorable kills to be had), and the Horde just rolls right over us. I’ve actually been involved in an Arathi match that ended 2000 to 80. That’s right, we managed to hold one control point for 8 ticks. And most Warsongs end with a 3-0 loss, usually because I, a priest, am the only one on defence no matter how much I ask for help.

Another thing… the Alliance on my server just blow at organization. They don’t form up groups, they don’t listen, and generally they just don’t play well together. We win Alterac because its a long haul campaign, were Arathi and Warsong usually take less than 30 minutes (especially at the rate we allow the Horde to get points). The other team, however, always seems to move together in groups, defend each other, play well… it makes me envious.

I keep trying Arathi and Warsong in hopes I can find people who are good at it… until I do, though, most of my efforts will be in Alterac where more often than not we can win.

A Dirty Job

Random Thoughts

Christopher Moore does it again. I just finished reading through his latest book, A Dirty Job, and I have to say that it is excellent. The cast of characters is full of new interesting faces, as well as a handful of familiar faces from his other books.

Charles Asher is a new father, his daughter Sohpie just being born. While still in the hospital, his wife dies and Charlie is a bit unnerved by the presence of a very tall black man in a mint green suit in her room that appearantly no one else can see. It isn’t long before Charlie learns that he has become Death… or rather a Death… or at least someone who goes around collecting souls from people recently deceased or soon to die and assisting in passing those souls on to their new homes. And then there are the dark monsters in the sewers…

As with many of his books before, Chris Moore had me laughing out loud quite often (and getting stares from people on public transportation, as I have mentioned here a time or two before). I highly recommend this, or any of Christopher Moore’s books. I’m only sad that now having finished his most recent book I don’t have another one to read.

Practical Demonkeeping

Reviews

Okay, remember how I said in my reviews of Coyote Blue and Island of the Sequined Love Nun that those books were not as laugh out loud funny and you could clearly see the development of Christopher Moore’s writing style? Well, I may have been a bit off. Having just finished Practical Demonkeeping, his first book during the reading of which I bellowed with laughter a great number of times, I’d say that, yes, his writing style has sharpened, but also the setting of Pine Cove (in Practical Demonkeeping as well as The Love Lizard of Melancholy Cove and The Stupidest Angel) is just fantastic. Of course, and I speak with no authority here, most writers tend to spend alot of time crafting that first book, much like music groups whose first album breaks chart records but their second, being that much less time was spent on it, can be good but does not sail quite as high.

Practical Demonkeeping is about a guy who has had a demon bound to him for the past seventy years. During which time he has tried very hard to keep it from wantonly eating people and destroying things. He’s also been searching for a way to send the demon back to where it came from and this is what brings him to Pine Cove. Hilarity ensues.

Now, having read all of Christopher Moore’s other books, I come to the most recent, the just released, A Dirty Job…

Alliance: 60

Gaming

And Silithus was as good as I expected it to be. Lorilai gonged 60 and a few moments later Ishiro did as well.

Then I spent the rest of the night telling people that “No, I don’t want to join your raiding guild.” Do these people just sit around doing a /who on level 60 priests? Some of them were even kind enough to inform me that if I was interested I would need to respec as a Holy Priest. Hmm… lemme think about it… No.

Seriously, it was really irritating and it probably is not going to stop.

The night was very cool other than that, and was a perfect example of why I love these games. There is this quest chain in Silithus, Noggle has been poisoned and the person helping him needs to find a cure. So first we go get samples of certain spiders and scorpions. No luck. So we try some other spiders and scorpions. Ah-ha! He’s cured, but in all his confusion of running away from a nest of scorpions he stumbled into he’s lost his pack and would like it back. It turns out there is also a wanted poster for proof of the defeat of Deathclasp, a scorpion who has been doing alot of killing. So, Lori and Ishiro head down to Bronzebeard’s camp (we’d been there before) and looked around for this nest of scorpions. When we find them we also find Deathclasp. So, we prepare for battle… charge in… and everything is going well, until it goes horribly wrong and both of our spirits are wisked away to the graveyard. Hmm… new plan. See, Deathclasp is a level 60 elite, and he’s got a 58 guard and a 57 guard. And at this point we are still level 59. Having been messing around in Winterspring before coming to Silithus, we both have mechanical yetis. I blew mine in the previous fight when things started to go wrong thinking the extra damage might help out. It didn’t, and its going to be a while for it to refresh. But Lori has her yeti, and I have my mechanical dragonling (yay engineering!). Last time, we foolishly tried to fight Deathclasp first because I forgot the basic rule: If the elite is a caster and the guards are not, kill the caster, but if the elite is not a caster, kill the guards first. Essentially, casters always have less hit points, and a caster elite will tear you up with spells and mostly you can ignore non-elite guards for a little until you finish. An elite warrior, however, is just going to take too long to kill, so the tank should get aggro, kill the guards, then fight the elite. And with a yeti and a dragonling, the second time we were easily victorious. Booyah.

I love single group and duo play, because its extremely dynamic, often chaotic (unless you are methodically pulling single mobs and snoozing away the exp), and almost always satisfying. And the paladin/shadowpriest combo that I’ve seen a number of people shun works very well for us. Other things might work better, but so what? And then to have this brilliant night of duoing sullied by the spam of guild invitations looking for heal-bot number X to raid Molten Core… ugh. Even worse was having to hear back the responces when I would tell them “No, I don’t plan on doing any raiding. Single group and PvP are what I’m into.” Genius replies like “LOL” and “No raiding? What’s the point of playing then?” and “Loozer”, and lets not forget “U just ding? Wait a week and gimme tell when u bored. U change mind.” Whatever…

Fluke

Reviews

Another Christopher Moore book down, and once again he had me laughing out loud. Soon I’ll simply be known as “the crazy reading guy” on public transportation.

So, Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings, is about guys who study humpback whales trying to understand why they sing. They don’t know why, only someone must think they are getting close because their office gets trashed. But their work continues on… and things get wierd.

Its a good book. Nice message in it too, sort of the same way I felt after reading Lamb. Now on to Practical Demonkeeping…

Alliance: Silithus and Tradeskills

Gaming

The land of Silithus has been very good to Ishiro, as he is pleasantly making his way through level 59, well on his way to never needing experience again… until they raise the level cap that is. Its exciting. I’ve never been at the level cap of an original game before.

But, Silithus is a very dreary land. I guess it is a testament to the art skills of the guys at Blizzard that this desert wasteland actually depresses me. Or maybe its that the Hive bugs are a constant reminder that I actually sat through Starship Troopers 2… on purpose.

Besides the levelling, I have been doing what I can to work on Ishiro’s tailoring and engineering. Since I’m not rich enough to buy felcloth from the market, nor bored enough to farm it, my tailoring these days consists of making mooncloths when I can, which is one every 4 days. I can usually find 2 felcloth in 4 days. Engineering on the other hand is going even slower. Lorilai is an armor smith, and her skilling up is using all the materials, and since she’s the miner she gets first dibs. I did manage to make myself a mechanical dragonling which should be a fun toy once an hour.

I really want to spend more time in the PvP battlegrounds, but I think getting 60 first will be a good thing, because as much as I love the BGs, I’ve always felt like a runt. Well, soon, runt no longer.

The Upside of Being Non-competative

Random Thoughts

Throughout the course of my life, I have been fairly uncompetative. That does not mean that I did not play sports or participate in things, but largely I never cared how I did. There is a huge upside to this: If I lose, I don’t care.

Ultimately, its that attitude that has gotten me through a large amount of various crappy things I have dealt with in my life. Most things I can just shrug off and move on. Even if something crushes my spirit, I never fail to get up, dust myself off, and get back on. I’ve written here before about the many way in which life has kicked me in the teeth while I was down, and yet, here I am, still breathing, still moving along, and pretty happy.

There is a major downside to all this, while the upside is that nothing really truly gets me down, there is the issue that I also never really win. Have you ever been a part of something, a sports team perhaps, that wins it all? I haven’t. Not once. Not because I couldn’t, I’ve certainly got the talent for a good deal of things, but I just have never had the drive. Yesterday, I watched the season finale of Rollergirls on A&E. It was the championship game, and when it came down to the end, an extremely close game, and the Rhinestone Cowgirls won, and when they showed the girls taking their victory lap and cheering and hugging and all that, I felt a wave of excitement and sadness. It was fun to watch people win something they tried so very hard at, and it was sad because I know I have never tried that hard.

So the question is, do I give up a lifestyle of a good level of happiness to risk deep crushing sadness in pursuit of ultimate victory? I almost think I would, but at the age of 32, what could I start now that has a chance of leading to that kind of a win?

Alliance: Making My Way to 60

Gaming

Ishiro of the Holy Order of Come Get Some Mutha Fu… I mean, the Shadow Priest has been palling around with his Paladin buddy Lorilai. Its funny, but when you don’t play for like 2 or 3 months, it seems like the 200% experience bonus just never ends. We’ve gone from 56 to almost 59 over the course of a couple of 3-4 hour game sessions. Of course, all those quests worth 4,000 – 6,000 exp each don’t hurt. If this keeps up, I expect us to hit level 60 within the next week, maybe two, all depending on Jodi’s work schedule.

One thing I can’t stand though is all the damn Horde. One of my pet peeves in WoW is really appearant right now. We are messing around with in Silithus and Winterspring, two places where either the Devs got lazy or just ran out of time because its neutral towns and both Alliance and Horde get the same quests. I suppose we could play on a PvP server where I could do something about that, but open PvP just grates my nerves. As it is, I had to repeat a quest 4 times the other night because it was an escort quest and a group of bored Horde kept killing the NPC. We could have fought back, but 5 level 60 Horde would have wiped the two of us at 56 all over the mountain side. Anyway… 60 will come soon enough for us, and then maybe we can level the playing field a bit.