New Page!
Seeing as I’ve only just worked out how to make a new page, I thought I’d actually y’know, make one?
Seeing as I’ve had this blog for a few months now and with the introduction of the new laptop I’m a lot more active, I thought I’d introduce the characters I play, which provide the inspiration for some of my blog posts!
Go take a looksie, there might cookies. Although there probably isn’t…but there might be!
Oh! New blog over the weekend, aswell, so at the risk of sounding cheesy – Stay Tuned!
…
Yeah, that was cheesy.
Please Sir, can I ‘ave some more?
The other day, as I sat at my laptop, pondering some of the great things that are to be pondered; How many one pence coins can you fit into a sock; Would my CD player break if I put it in the microwave; Would my CD player fit in said microwave; Where do sheds go when they die? – Y’know, those sort of things, I got to thinking (le gasp!) about University. University led me to thinking about money. Money led me to think about what do I spend it on. That led me to Xbox LIVE, World of Warcraft and booze. I quickly ruled out booze, as it’s pretty much necessary, Xbox Live isn’t too hard, I can pick it up when I want from GAME or Gamestation, or I can pick and choose between it and WoW but, I got thinking none the less. I’m coming up to almost three years played, I’ve logged some considerable time on this game and I just thought – Why the hell do I still play?
The ol’ “Why am I still doing this?” question is asked by everyone at some point in there life. From people to dislike their work, to crack-whores. Everyone thinks this, it’s human nature. So, seeing as I was thinking of a question, I came up with a few answers!
1. My Guild.
<Absolution> is pretty much everything you’d want from a guild. It’s the funnest place EVER. I’m not even over-exagerating. It’s fan-fucking-tastic. It’s what makes me not like the normal server my Death Knight is on. It’s what makes me HATE levelling without being in it. We raid like we mean it but my god we have fun. We’re currently working on Yoggy. Not bad for a guild that’s casual, eh?
2. Guild Chat / Ventrillo
I think this deserves a seperate “reason” in itself. I could happily sit in Dalaran, chatting in guild. I really could. It’s like MSN but with a uber-cool undead guy stood infront of me, with a helm that looks like something from Spirited Away and his shoulders going “WH-TUSH!” every few minutes. Our guild chat also crosses over into Ventrillo, we have a lot of people on it. Our guild leader definitly gets his moneys worth with Ventrillo.
Guild chat is great. It’s full of friends and we have a great laugh.
3. The Friends
The people who I am lucky to call my friends are made of pure, unrefined AWESOME. Seriously. I am not kidding. I’ve seen their insides, awesome all over. Running jokes, razor-sharp wits and some of the most amazingly fun and caring people play this game, and half of them live a few thousand miles away. No one has let our healer live down the “Toast wipe.” Me and Vorla have long and pointless chats about the english language, with him, the guy who speaks it as a second language, often correcting me. Levelling with my good friend Ereios is hilarious, I’ve never heard so much profanity when someone steals his herb.
Now, with it being a game, people often leave and it’s actually saddening when they do. I’m sure y’all will agree and if you dont, then you’re heartless 
4. The Content
The content in this game is AMAZING. The raids, the instances, the battlegrounds. Everything about it is great. Granted, sometimes things get a little boring but then – BANG – a patch with new stuffz! I think I like alts so much because you get to view to content from a slightly different perspective and that just makes it fun, all over again!
I love raiding, Naxxramas was fun and all but Ulduar blew my face off. I love it. I look forward to the days we raid it, I sign up and I’m excited! The challenges are great, anywhere you can get 10-25 people, in one place, with their minds focused on one goal, is great. It’s even better when they’re only way of communication is via a headset because they all live in different countries!
5. Those cheeky little References
C’mon, they’re great. I could spend all day hunting for them, because they’re there. The references to out of game things, like television shows/characters to people within the Warcraft community are fantastic It’s even better finding one, and going “Ooooooh yeaaaah!” then having a little chuckle.
Now, while I was thinking of a few “positive reasons I still play” my mind, as any mind does, wandered towards the more “negative” reasons. I started thinking “Oooh, well, I’m not a fan of that…” but to be honest, I’m not going to list them because when put against the five, really solid reasons for me to keep playing they’re not even annoying anymore. I was going to complain about having to wait a blood elfs life-span to chat to a GM but I had guild chat to keep me company. I was gonna have a little moan about the instance servers always being fun but then I remembered, it’s worth the wait. I was going to have a moan about a lot of things but I’m not now, because in the end I keep playing this game because it’s really, really, really, REALLY, fun. It’s my purely awesome hobby and I cant see myself stopping for a while.
So then, what’s your reasons for playing? Why do you still slave away, grinding/instancing/honour kill far- “PvP’ing” all day long?
It doesn’t stand for User Interface…
…It stands for Utterly Infuriating!
With the purchase of my new laptop, with freshly installed versions of WoW it was time for me to once again take a day to get extremely annoyed and make my UI look pretty and at the same time fuction well. While I was tinkering like a gnome in a workshop, I was also thinking of how to get together a little “guide” to making the process a whole lot easier, so people dont encounter the mistakes I made.
For a lot of people, UI’s are horrible and people tend to avoid addons if they can. You dont really need to, they’re a lot simpler than you’d actually think if you just sit back and take your time with them.
First and formost, http://www.curse.com is going to be your best friend. It’s a wonderful place filled with stuff that would make candy mountain feel like it’s running low on stock!
Now, your UI is supposed to two things. Functional and Neat. There’s a guy in my guild that constantly tries to make his UI neater and neater even if it means just shaving a tiny bit off Grid that he doesn’t need, or making some of his Action Bars smaller. The neater the UI, the better it looks and there’s more space on your screen, which becomes really handy during instances/raids/PvP. You can see what’s happening a lot better. It’s also important that all addons are kept up to date, or your UI could start falling apart at the seems!
When building my UI, I went at it like a bull in a china shop, I grabbed my addons, logged in and was terrified. It was like Curse had thrown up all over my screen, little bits of addons everywhere. It was horrible, like…first world war horrible (yes, I did just compare a UI to WWI, dont hate me, it was done for “comic” effect). So, I hastly retreated back to the saftey of the character screen.
The best way to start, is not like I did. The ”best” way is to start One addon at a Time! I started with my action bars, pretty simple. Once that was done, I’d log out and enable another addon, get it sorted and repeat but with a different addon.
A good friend often tells me that Rugby has “damaged my brain”, “too many hits on the head isn’t good for you”, “oh my god, are you retarded?”…Stuff like that. When it comes to addons, I am. I am like that kid you see, in the little bus, the one who’s got his face pressed against the window, slowly licking it. So this brings me to my next point – Customization. You want something that can be Customized. You want to make it work for you. You want it to sing, dance, act and spin plates, at the same time as cooking you a roast dinner from scratch, washing the dishes and massaging your shoulders. BUT. You want it to make it do all that EASILY. I dont like addons which, when you look at a screeny of someones UI and you think “OMG! Amazing!” but when it comes to you using it, it’s like climbing Everest, with a backpack of monkeys all wanting to get out. You want something that looks good, works well and is a peice of piss to set up.
Probably the last thing really with UI’s is memory. You can see through Warcraft how much memory addons are taking up. The more memory they take up, the slower the game runs. It’s not that difficult to find good addons which take up very little memory. Take a look at the description, it should tell you there.
Anyways, those are just my thoughts on the whole User Interface, and it’s how I made my mind up which addons to choose from. Feel free to add your own thoughts! Or even a little screenshot of your UI! (If that can be done in the comment thingy…)
It’s Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door…
So then, with the (rather large) investment in a new laptop, and the rather large “STOP SLACKING!” by my fellow bloggers and friends Ercles and Vorla, I’d best get back to the old blawgz, eh?
(Plus, the servers are down during 3.2 maintenance and I dont have anything better to do…)
Anyways. From the very first day of playing World of Warcraft, I played on the EU realm Argent Dawn. It’s my home. I have a full character roster of horde ‘toons (and a Sneaky nightelf druid, but dont tell anybody, ‘kay). I picked Argent Dawn mainly because people had to name their characters properly, something that I’m very much into.
Anyways, after finding out that a friend of mine plays on the Normal EU server Kul’Tiras, I decided I’d roll a Death Knight there.
My Alliance Death Knight - Dartan.
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Now, it’s a medium sized realm, with a few hardcore raiding guilds and then a tonne of unguilded people. Now, after reading Vorlas’ little blog on the same sorter topic, I thought I’d add my own thoughts here
1. The names – OH. MY. GOD. You’d actually think that people would get embarassed walking around with their toons named “Angrypete”, wouldn’t you?! Noooooo. Seeing as he has an alt called Vryangrypete.
2. The amount of unguilded players – Trade, General and LFG are all spammed with undergeared people, wanting to go and do Ulduar 25. No wonder they’re not guilded, seeing as their grasp of english is either non-existant or extremely limited. “ROUGE LF ULDR 20″ – I shit you not, that’s what I saw the other day.
3. Peoples attitudes – Now, coming from a server where you can get a stupdily good PuG any server were after one wipe because of someone ‘effing up everyone calls each other a noob, tells everyone that they shagged their mother and that they can go and die in a fire, before leaving the group and pulling the rest of the instance onto you makes you not want to set foot into an instance ever again…It’s as if that little level 18 character they’re hid behind makes they feel big and ‘ard…
So, I bet you’re wondering, “why the hell haven’t you fucked off already, Jakk?” the answer is simple.
The guild.
It’s a wonderful little guild, full of witty banter, stupidly funny names (some guy, I shit you not, states his role then afterwards puts “Fingz” eg. Tanksfingz, Shocksfingz, Heelsfingz.) It’s a wonderful little place to level and I plan on getting to 80 so I can take part in raiding with them. I already help a lot, by teaching their rogues some simple things to boost their DPS and on the odd occasion, have had their raid leader ask me what’s the best tactic for some bosses in Ulduar. The place actually makes the server just that little bit more bareable.
So, at the end it’s time for *points out of screen at your face* YOU to tell me what you think – Do you play on a normal server? Are like me and love your first and/or only server? Or do you have ‘toons scattered all around?
Coming soon – Blawgz on UI’s, addons and a few screenshots of my new and (vastley) improved UI!
Oooh, Back in my day…
Ever heard that from your grandparents?
“Ooooh, Back in my day we had to entertain ourselves, there was none of this fancy moving-picture-box or this enterwebs”
Or maybe…
“You kids dont know you’re born!”
Well, before my laptop decided to die, I had the joy of tanking on my warrior alt. I haven’t tanked since…well, for a very long time and I have to say, I’m going to quote an old person, “back in my day things where a lot harder.” That’s right.
Now, I didn’t have to walk 50 miles in the snow up a hill with no shoes on carrying my house and my family and a cow and some water and some bread and some other heavy things including an anvil for no reason what so ever just to get to the instance so I could tank (punctuation left out on purpose). But it was definitly more challenging than the instance I tanked (which was Gun’drak, if you were wondering)
I’ve not tanked a raid yet, seeing as I’m only level 75 and three quarters so I cant compare Naxx 10 to Karazhan (the back in’t'day Karazhan, not when it got nerfed…) but I can compare dungeons.
For me, I dont feel that much of a challenge, I mean, I only just slapped my shield on and I was holding aggro pretty well, even on AoE packs and I had a DK and a rogue in the party.
Now, I remember way back when, when you had to:
Charge -> Thunderclap -> Devastate -> Tab -> Shield Slam -> Tab -> Devastate etc.
Because, Thunderclap was shit. Now-a-days…
Charge -> Shockwave -> Thunderclap -> PROFIT.
It’s definitly got a lot easier.
Single target TPS is a lot easier aswell, I remember having to fight for the aggro on Curator, constantly watching Omen hoping that the bloody mage wouldn’t get a crit-chain off. Which they usually did. Now, it’s a case of hitting stuff a few times and you’re good, not to mention MD and ToT making life oh so much easier.
Now, the biggest change for me?
It’s ten times more bloody fun. I’ve come back to tanking after a lonnnng break and it’s like a breath of fresh air. I loved every second of it, I was chain pulling because I could, trying to get more stuff to AoE tank, to push my limits. It was fantastic!
So then, as with my previous blog posts, something to ponder – Do you think that your clas/role has gotten easier? Are you liking or hating the more “casual” Warcraft?
Oh, by the way…
Anyone fancy buying me a new laptop?
Altoholics not-so Anonymous
Hi, I’m Jakkru and I’m an altoholic.
It started with me getting bored of my warrior rolling a hunter, because I wanted a pet. It led to me rolling a rogue (which is now my main) because Undeads looked so cool. It then led me to rolling a shaman, a paladin, a mage and then a warlock.
I’ve now got a full realm of characters, it’s actually quite addictive, that’s possibly the reason why I don’t have gold. EVER. I have a bank alt, which was an alt which I decided to put off levelling until…well, until priests got fun before shadow form but no matter how much money I seem to make, I seem to spend it on my alts.
In raids, I’ll get “J, why do you never have any money?!” when I’m QQ’ing that I have no cash left after a night of progress raiding. Or the fact I rarely have flasks with me, as I’d have to buy the mats off the AH then pass them to my hunter to make them (if he has the mats on him tho, I’m on them flasks like a tramp on some tossed away chips). My simple answer is alts.
Now, coupled with the amount of money you spend on new abilities/mounts/professions and gear and the fact I’m in a guild that is currently attempting to progress through Ulduar 10 and 25 man I usually don’t have that much money to spare and I don’t mind it. I play this game for fun and I get fun from playing on my alts, levelling them and their professions and throwing money at them when they hit 80 because the perfectionist in me goes “YOU CAN DO BETTER DAMMIT!” That perfectionist also forces me to go and read up about the class I am currently playing and finding out the best specc and gear for them. I then proceed to look at the gear on the character to decide if it’s pretty or not because let’s face it, everyone does that when they’re levelling.
Another thing about alts is when you’ve got them to 80 and you set foot in Naxxramas, it’s a wonderful fresh feeling. I recently went from playing my rogue (which of course, is a melee character) to playing a hunter and it was amazing. I felt great, it still does. It’s because it’s NEW. Trying different roles must be the main reason people have alts although with dual spec, this reason might become less.
In short, alts are created because, in the immortal words of someone who I don’t know; “Variety is the spice of life.”
Them’s the plus sides. Now for the not- so- plus sides.
Seeing as I’m in a guild that likes it’s progress raiding, I take my strongest character in with me – my rogue, my main and the character I have played for almost two years. I cant decide “I’m taking my hunter today” or “I’m gonna level my mage and then take him on raids with the guild.” I have to wait until “alt runs” come up which, usually don’t go ahead due to not much interest from people who don’t have alts. This forces me into the dreaded…PuG! (Pick up group, for those not down with the street sp33k). Now, Ercles has a wonderful post for surviving PuGs on his blawgs BUT he only really touches the surface of the 5 man instance…not the 25 man Naxx. You can tell from the first boss if they group is going to go far, if there’s a majority of one guild then you’re good but it’s really quite hit and miss.
Take today for example, I was in Naxxramas 25 in a PuG, we blitzed through Spider Wing because let’s face it, it’s the Spider Quarter. My dad could fight his way through spider quarter and he doesn’t even know how to use the internet properly. We then hit a small snag in Construct, as our nicely geared Main Tank had to go. Swiftly after that, the group fell apart after a few wipes and I was left with a save in Naxxramas with only one and three quarters of a wing done.
Another side which I’m sure you’ll agree on is the quests you have to do to get to your alts levelled. After doing them 4 or 5 times, they get quite boring and tedious (some don’t mind you, for example this quest will forever be epic.) and can quite literally stop you wanting to level that alt. Which in turn makes you roll another alt to cope with the boredom until you hit that same roadblock of boring quests; it’s a viscous little circle, isn’t it?
And finally, levelling alone is possibly the worse part about having an alt. The guild I’m in runs a three characters in guild at any one time policy, so the rest are pretty much unguilded. Without the hilarity that is guild chat, levelling gets boring really fast. Saying that, if you level with a friend (I’m currently levelling my Death Knight with my friend) it’s a real blast.
Anyways, they’re just my opinions, what’d you guys think? Are you an altoholic or a one character person? What’s the quest you love to do over and over again and are you a penniless alt lover just like me?
Don’t Judge me, I’m just doin’ my thaaaang!
Two days ago, ladies and gentlemen, I was Judged. No, not by Judge Dredd or Judge Judy or any other Judge for that matter. I was judged by real life PEOPLE! Now, I’m well aware that everyone judges everyone else, on their appearance etc but I was judged by my friends. Let me set the scene. (I’ll replace the names with X, Y and Z)
We’re all sat around, having a nice little time in the beer garden at the local. It’s wonderfully sunny and we’re deep in conversation (we’re actually ripping into my friend for one of his drunken mistakes which shall only be known as “hippo” and/or “sea-cow” – See, people judge other people! I’m guilty of it too) Anyways, the conversation gets on about what we’re doing later.
Now, my friends know I’m a bit of a gamer but I don’t usually go around broadcasting the games I play, dunno why but they don’t come across as the kind that would put up with me rambling on about the games I play. So, when asked what I was doing later, I just said “Gonna play some Warcraft and I might download a movie.” Now the reaction I got wasn’t the “Ah, cool” one usually expects from chatting to my mates who play Warcraft too.
The reaction I got was…
“Warcraft?! You sad bastard!” followed by a few laughs from X, Y, Z. Now, I laughed it off at the time, I mean, I’m not embarrassed by my hobby and I have no right to be but I didn’t feel like arguing my point about a game when it was gloriously sunny and I still had half a pint of Carling left. However, looking back on it. I’m surprised they can judge at all!
X reads 1400 page chemistry books/papers for fun. Can tell you everything you need to know about anything to do with Biochem and Organic Chemistry
Y enjoys comparing Laser Printers on PC world, does this for hours at a time.
Z watches CBeebies, collects cuddly toys by the thousand and can tell you everything you need to know about Hitler, Stalin and the Cold War.
Now, seeing as somewhere down the line I managed to, by pure chance, do well in a few tests, I’m deemed as smart, so I have a few smart friends. They’re great and I love ‘em to bits but their judging of me, for playing a game, got me thinking…
WoW is definitely more than a game, it’s a hobby. You put more in and get more out. Now, because of a few cases of people putting a little bit too much in, WoW players have now been stereotyped. You can deny it but we have. We’re seen as this guy, or these guys.
In truth? We’re nothing like that. WoW players tear it up with the rest of ‘em. I’ve known people who play Warcraft to drink my rugby mates under the table and tell them they’ve been pwnd.
Now, people of a certain age* usually don’t broadcast their Warcraft hobby, mainly because of how people will judge them. People are reverting to the old “On X do Y” and in this case, X is “nerds” and Y is “World of Warcraft.” It’s all very American High school isn’t it? The Jocks. The Nerds. The Band Geeks etc. All we need now is someone to start singing and dancing in a canteen.
Anyways, those are just my views – what’s yours? Do you scream and shout your love for Warcraft from the rooftops? Or do you keep it to yourself?
Oh, call this guy a nerd to his face. I double dare you.
*mainly the younger generation, older folks are more accepting.
Hai 2 u!
Welcome, one and all to what is possibly the bes- Oh who am I kidding!
Welcome to my blog, this is my first post so be gentle. I’ve actually been mulling over starting one of these since my good friend, Ercles, first started his little blog and I wanted a better way to spend the large amounts of time I have at the moment and to do something a little bit more creative.
Anyways, lets get these little formalities over and done with shall we?
I’m an 18 year old male from England. I’m also a bit of a geek, especially when it comes to gaming, of any kind. I’m extremely competitive (11 years of rugby will do that to you) and I’m a bit of a perfectionist which actually comes in handy in gaming! I like to read, watch movies, get insanely drunk with my buddies and play the shit out of the drums. Sometimes at the same time – who said men cant multi-task?
Let’s get onto the more important things in life!
I was first introduced to the game, World of Warcraft, when I received it as a gift for Christmas. My first MMORPG was actually Guild Wars and my mother thought that Warcraft was actually part of said franchise. So yeah, I ended up getting the game, setting my account up on Christmas day and I haven’t looked back since!
At first, I have to admit, I was a bit of a noob. I didn’t really know what was going on and I thought it would be just like Guild Wars. How wrong I was. My first ever character was an Orc Warrior. On the EU server Argent Dawn.
Now, back then I didn’t know what RP was so I ignored that, I actually picked the server because it reminded me of a scene from Die Hard where Hans Gruber (the amazing Alan Rickman) says he wants the members of the “Crimson Dawn” released. Somehow I got confused with Crimson and Argent and decided I was going to call that server home.
Now, to clarify how much of a noob I was, it actually took me 5 hours to get out of the starting area and at this time I was level 3. Yes. I was THAT bad.
I joined the guild at level 24 and I couldn’t think of a better place to spend my time playing WoW, it’s a fantastic guild
Anyhoo, this warrior actually made it to 70! (By the time The Burning Crusade had come out I was only level 30). He made it to 70 the manly way. That’s right, I levelled as Protection. /flex.
This warrior then went on to tank. ALOT.
Soon after hitting 70, I rolled a rogue because I wanted an Undead because they looked REALLY cool. At around level 20, I fell in love with the class and got to 70. I then switched mains, which kinda upset a few people as I was one of my guilds main tanks.
I raided most of the TBC stuff (most is if you count pulling Sunwell Trash for lulz and getting your arse handed to you) before Lich King hit.
Anyways, I’m now level 80 and currently raiding Ulduar. I have far too many alts and not enough gold.
