green fire fail...again

Josh and I spent the first half of the weekend killing rares to try to get Nyckole's tome so she could get green fire too.  When it finally dropped (wayy more kills than it took Loihi) it was my loot, and I couldn't trade it with her because she was on a different realm, even though she was in my group! We were both so mad, and Josh ended up just buying the dang thing off the AH.

Finally it was time to attempt Infiltrate the Black Temple once more. I figured out it was my pet that was giving me so much trouble in getting through the traps. Once I dismissed him, I moved through the maze quickly and easily (though I did use my demongate too just to be safe.) My first attempt at killing Essence of Order went miserably. The second attempt went better, but at the rate I was going, I thought I'd run out of money for repairs before I killed him. On the third attempt, however, I got my strategy down pat, and I killed him. It was just Immolate/Incinerate/Conflagrate. Keep Rain of Fire up any time there are adds out, and save all burning embers for Ember Tap. Of, and of course, I sacrificed my felpuppy and interrupted the hellfires. That's super important. It took a little while because my gear isn't great (ilvl 491) but I did it! I was so excited.

The next stage, however...oh man. There's an objective to loot as much as you can, and the other objective is to reach the end of the Den of Mortal Delights. I think there is a big assumption that anyone doing this has done the Black Temple raid because there's a lot of "just go here" and no indication of where that place might be. I had no idea what the Den of Mortal Delights was or how long it was, so I was taking my time, picking up all the loot on the floor. When I got down to a minute left on the timer, I realized I'd better start moving to the end. I just ran through all the mobs, and by the time I died, I hadn't even gotten to where I could see the end. With each attempt I picked up less loot and figured out ways to avoid more mobs until, on my last try, I didn't pick up any loot until the very end and only had to kill a small number of mobs. I still just barely made it. I wish I had better gear so I could have killed stuff faster so I could have gotten more loot, but it is what it is.

I finally got to the last boss, and oh man. I hadn't done any research, but after I did, I only learned one thing: I need better gear. It seems all of the strategies are from patches and patches ago, and things no longer work the same way. So I guess they nerfed locks but didn't change the fight? This is the first time since like...October 2012 that I've played seriously, so I know nothing of the changes that have happened. I've pretty much had to relearn how to play. I did give him two attempts, but I knew that I didn't have the patience to sit there for hours of trial and error. I'm going to attempt to obtain some better gear from raid finder and pray that they wait a few weeks to drop the patch.

green fire fail

So as I mentioned in my survey a few weeks ago, my first character was my human warlock, Loihi. One day I will have to tell you all about her history and her adventures, but today is not that day! Hahah. I've checked out most of my characters on beta, and I'm pretty satisfied with the changes. But Loihi...oh man, it makes me want to cry. She is my one character who truly holds a piece of my heart. I feel like I've been through so much with her, and she is a part of me. And I hate her new face.

It just looks so...derp. I also don't like the way they "fixed" her hair. I liked those pieces sticking out. But this character...I once got her hair cut, and after having it that way for a week, I just couldn't deal with it. I had to put it back to the original. So I am hoping and praying that they will give us at least one free re-customization. Because I don't want to spend money to fix her, but I really can't live with that face.

My second main is a blood elf (paladin), so I don't know yet if I'll like those changes. I have a feeling, though, that she's going to look hot no matter what they do to her.

Next is my druid, Gastbie. (Side note: The Great Gatsby has been my favorite book since...2003? I've had the character for...awhile. And then when the movie came out, people started giving my all kinds of crap for my name. So lame! I also have a hunter named Katniss who I've never played seriously, but I made her way before the Hunger Games craze started, and people gave me SO much crap about her name that I just don't even play her at all anymore.) So here's Gatsbie:

She looks so mean! Her old face was so friendly and nice, and now, she looks like someone I wouldn't want to mess with. But I'm okay with it. She's a total badass, and I like it. Plus she's a cat or a bear most of the time anyway.

I wasn't going to show my undead Loihi in this post, but I accidentally captured this super cute face. 

Hahahaha. I think they made the undead look too pretty (look at that skin!) but I absolutely love them.

So the actual point of this post was....green fire. I renewed my account on Sunday, and I have been working with Loihi (human) to get her green fire ever since. It took a few days and a lot of rare kills to get the tome, but my husband was helping me, so it wasn't so bad. 

I got the tome and got started on the quest chain while he went to start leveling up his warlock (from 87) so that he could do it when I got done. I really enjoyed the storyline, gathering the soulstones, and seeing the memories. It's one of the most enjoyable quest chains I've ever done.

Then I got to the Black Temple scenario. I couldn't even get past the third stage where you have to use your eye of kilrogg to see traps and then you have to get around them. I knew I should probably try to utilize my demon gate, but I'm so bad with that thing. It seems like every time I need to use it, I panic and end up dead. Don't get me wrong; I'm good at playing a warlock. Specifically a destro class. It might be my strongest class/spec. (Maybe my second strongest.) But I am just awful with demon gates.

So I got Josh to get me through that stage, and he continued playing until he got to the boss. He tried to kill the boss until Loihi's armor was broken and didn't even get him down to 50%. I was looking up strategies and trying to guide him through it, but nothing was helping. I wouldn't say that warlock is one of his strongest classes, but he does know how to play one. Loihi's item level is 490, which from what I've read, is sufficient to complete it, but I did read that there are some specific talents that will really help you out (so much for talent choices not being important!) that I didn't have. So I'll do some reworking tonight and try to kill that dang boss! It just really sucks that you have to start the scenario from the very beginning if you log out.

(If you're wondering why I got these from wowhead and not from the game, it's because I'm at work xD)

release date

So we have a release date!! I never thought I'd see the day when Blizzard would release a game earlier than initially expected. It's not as early as I like, but I can definitely live with it.

My plan to get everyone to 90/600 before my account expired totally failed. I don't even know what happened, to be honest. There was that day when they were having all those issues and no one could log on. Other than that, I just don't know. It just didn't happen.

I'm going out of town for 4 days at Labor Day, and I've decided I'll renew my account when I get back. It's silly to renew it now because I wasn't really doing anything anyway, and I know I won't have time to play for a few days even before we leave, so I'd lose a whole week, which I hate to do.

In the meantime maybe I'll play beta? I'm not gonna lie; I completely forgot I had a beta key! I've had it for awhile now, but after they did the first character wipe after I got it, I was done. I had a key for Cataclysm beta, and I don't remember them doing that. Then again, I didn't play it much either because I didn't want to spoil anything. Maybe I'll give it another go, though. If I do, I'll be back here to let you know how that goes. Otherwise, I'll be back after Labor Day!

10 Years 10 Questions

I saw this over at Plenty of Paladins, and it looked like fun!

1. Why did you start playing Warcraft?

I went home for the summer after my sophomore college, and when I came back, I found that my boyfriend was playing WoW. He had played before but hadn't played since I'd known him. I didn't even know what WoW was. He wanted me to play, but I wasn't a gamer, and I thought it looked ridiculous. I resisted for a long time. Fast forward to later in the year when the BC trailer was released. I saw it, and I was intrigued, but I didn't let on that I might want to play. I went home for Christmas break, and as a way to "hang out" with Josh, I decided to get a trial account. I asked for the full game for Christmas, and the rest is history.

2. What was the first ever character you rolled?

The very first character I rolled was an undead warlock named Kilauea. I hadn't told Josh that I'd made an account, and I spent a couple of hours getting to level two (seriously). My sister (who was 9 and had been playing on Josh's account over the summer) then informed me that Josh was alliance and I wouldn't be able to play with him if I was horde. So I deleted her and rolled my human warlock, Loihi. When I was level 24 (after playing for months and months) they were offering free server transfers for high pop servers, and Josh decided to take it. I was stubborn and didn't want to go. Then the window closed, and I was stuck by myself on Scarlet Crusade. I ended up abandoning her and rolling a new Loihi on The Scryers. She ended up being the first one that I leveled to cap, and she was my only level 70 until WotLK came out.

3. Which factors determined your faction choice in game?

The last question pretty much explains that. I wanted to roll horde, but my boyfriend was alliance because the friend that got him into it was alliance. Eventually we ended up rolling horde. I prefer pretty much everything about the horde. I even have a horde insignia tattoo in real life. Loihi will always have a special place in my heart, though, and I tolerate the alliance for her :P

4. What has been your most memorable moment in Warcraft and why?

Dang, there are so many, but I'll just share one.

There was one time we were in ICC 25, we had just pulled Sindragosa, and some of our guildies in California started saying in vent that they were having an earthquake. They were all very nonchalant about it, while those of us who don't live in earthquake country were kind of freaking out. We were all, "Are you okay?! Do we need to just wipe it?!" We ended up killing Sindy with hardly any issues, and if I remember correctly, it was our first Sindy 25 kill. Apparently earthquakes are good luck.

5. What is your favourite aspect of the game and has this always been the case?

I'm always happiest when I'm in a guild with people that I like and we can do things together. I've been in KoT for many, many years, but their roster has changed a lot, and we've had a lot of periods of inactivity, but we've always been able to come back and make new friends and have a blast with them. Unfortunately (for the sake of the guild), Josh and I finally have grown-up jobs. KoT is a west coast guild, so they don't finish their raids until around 1am our time. That just doesn't work for us. Hopefully we'll be able to find a guild home on our horde characters soon.

6. Do you have an area in game that you always return to?

Not really. I typically hang out in Orgrimmar/Stormwind, but only for convenience reasons.

7. How long have you /played and has that been continuous?

I'm not at home, so I can't check my /played. However, it wouldn't be accurate anyway because there are a lot of hours that were *cough* not me playing... Before I started having "my friend" play on my account (Cataclysm) I think I had 100 days on Loihi (not to mention Amayaa and Adelaide). I have played on and off since December 2006 (more off than on) with my longest continuous span being December 2007 to October 2010. In most "off" times, I only took one or two months, but my longest off time was December 2012 to December 2013. I renewed my account for December and January and then let it ago again until July.

8. Admit it: do you read quest text or not?

No. I'm too impatient. Even when I first started playing, I would only skim it enough to find out what I needed to do. Still today, I only read it if I'm stuck.

9. Are there any regrets from your time in game?

My biggest regret was bringing some real life acquaintances into our guild. For the first time, Josh and I had a pretty successful guild running Naxx (WotLK). All of our RL friends had quit playing, and when we met some people who had quit but were looking to get back into the game, we invited them to roll on our server and join our guild. To make a long and painful story very short, they destroyed our guild. It broke my heart, and I'm still not over it five years later.

10. What effect has Warcraft had on your life outside gaming?

It has affected it in a lot of negative ways from time to time, but it has also affected it in positive ways. I have made some very good friends in game, two of whom I've met in real life. One has now traveled from Michigan to South Carolina to hang out with us 3 times - one of which was for our wedding. It can be a good stress reliever, but it can also be a stress inducer. It's just really important to find a balance between WoW and real life. I'm going to be honest; I struggled with that for awhile. I think I have a good handle on it now, though.

i'm back

I can't believe it's been three years since I posted here. I didn't love Cataclysm and never played seriously. I did raid finder a little towards the end, but I was never in a guild and never saw a non-raid-finder raid. Then there was MoP, aka the worst thing that ever happened to WoW. I honestly can't even remember who I leveled first - human Loihi or Amayaa. I want to say it was Loihi. Josh and I leveled together and we ran a few heroics, and then we were done. Over it. At some point I came back and leveled whichever one I hadn't leveled first, as well as Gatsbie. After about two months, though, I lost interest again. This expansion just sucks.

I am really looking forward to Warlords of Draenor, however. I'm super excited about it, and I really hope they do this one right. So right now, I'm preparing. I'm getting all of my characters leveled up to 90 so that I have choices. I'm leveling all my professions to 600. And I'm trying my best to stockpile gold. Maybe I just haven't found the right strategy yet, but I think it's always pretty difficult to make money at the end of an expansion. No one really needs anything, so you might sell mats to people like me who are getting their professions leveled up, but other than that, it's hard to really pinpoint something that is going to make you money.

So right now I have:
Amayaa - Blood Elf Paladin - Level 90
Gatsbie - Troll Druid - Level 90
Loihi - Undead Warlock - Level 90
Katniss - Orc Hunter - Level 90
Loihi - Human Warlock - Level 90
Adelaide - Draenei Shaman - Level 89
Ladella - Undead Priest - Level 89
Avena - Blood Elf Warrior - Level 88
Liora - Tauren Shaman - Level 87
Whimsy - Gnome Warrior - Level 87

Needless to say, I have lots of choices. I probably won't play Whimsy or Adelaide at all because they're on a server where my guild and pretty much everyone I knew left. I transferred my main off that server, and there just isn't really anything left for me there. Luckily, I have both another shaman and a warrior. I hope to have Ladella, Avena, and Liora to 90 by the end of this week.

I don't even remember leveling my professions, but somehow I already have jewelcrafting, enchanting, alchemy, inscription, engineering, herbalism, and mining at 600. I don't have all the fancy schmancy new recipes, but again, it doesn't really matter at this point. At least I won't have to worry about doing leveling any of that when WoD comes out; it will be ready to go for the new stuff. Today I was working on blacksmithing. I think I got to 530 or something. I just need to farm a ton of ghost iron and I'll be finished with that. I've been debating leveling a tailor. Human Loihi's tailoring is maxed, and I leveled that as I went with her. (She was my first character and has been around since vanilla.) It was a nightmare even leveling it that way, so I don't know if I will pick it up on my horde server or not. Josh does have a max level tailor, so I don't necessarily need it.

Once they announce the release date, I'll be able to come up with a better plan. If it does end up being December (or even November) I'll probably just unsubscribe until they drop the patch. If it is coming sooner, then I may spend my time PvPing until that patch drops. I have no interest in trying to get into anything PvE-wise at this time, though.

So I guess we'll see where everything is on Thursday.

hacked round three.

I got hacked again.

This new thing that they're doing with the authenticators is really nice and really annoying at the same time. I have a laptop, and when I go places, sometimes I like to log on to WoW on my laptop. Well, twice now, I've been locked out of my account for "unusual access patterns" or some such thing. So today I took off my authenticator. I guess I took it off around 3pm. Josh and I were out tonight. We came back around 9:30pm. He logged onto WoW first and saw that I was online. I had just changed my password back to an old one too, so I thought maybe it was Todd. I went to log on, and the hacker hadn't changed my password, so that cemented my thought of it being Todd. I was logged into battle.net at that time, so I went to change my password, and in the time that I had taken to login to WoW, they had gone and changed it. They sold all of my stuff before Josh's eyes.

Luckily, they've made it super easy to recover your account now. I just wish I'd reacted faster and I'd thought of all the necessary steps to take. I didn't take any of them (putting my authenticator back, changing my password, going to the hacked support site) until it was too late. I guess it was mostly because I stupidly thought it was someone I knew.

So anyway, there's some advice for you. If you catch yourself being hacked, go to battle.net/recover as fast as you can.

My only annoyance about it all is that the last time I got hacked, I talked to a GM about it and got my stuff back, all within 20 minutes of opening the ticket. Now with the new recovery system, it says it's going to take 10-12 hours.

Oh well. I had other stuff I needed to do tonight. But I had just finally gotten my item level high enough to do troll instances on Adelaide before I left tonight. Ugh.

cataclysmic failure

So it's been forever. I'm so far behind in blogging and in game.

Josh and I didn't get Cataclysm right when it came out, so we took a break for awhile. Eventually we bought it, and we each moved a character to Lothar to play with our coworkers: Matt, Joel, and Chris. I took Loihi and he took Popkorn. We played there a little bit, but then we sort of took another break.

So we came back and started playing on The Scryers again. Joel transferred his DK to play with us. I leveled Whimsy to 85, while Josh leveled Egg, his mage. It took me forever and a day to be geared to run heroics, and I'm still a little iffy about it, so I started leveling Adelaide.

I hit 85 three days ago? I think so. Within a day, I was geared for heroics. Josh leveled Vare at the same time. I'm not sure how well it would go if he tanked and I healed, so I've been letting him tank while I dps.

I bought the crafted epic chest. The only other piece of gear I've picked up was the relic out of Vortex Pinnacle. I'm gonna keep farming heroics, but I'm not gonna buy any JP gear since everything is getting converted on Tuesday. If I get close to cap, I will, but I don't think that will happen before Tuesday. Hopefully I'll be raiding by next week at the latest.

There are a lot of terrible, annoying, horrible cunts in the guild now. Well, there always are, but it's always the worst when you come back from a break to see a whole new group of cunts. Threnoidia is at the top of my shitlist at the moment. She's just so dumb, and she argues with everyone about everything. But she's real life friends with Ren, so we'll never get rid of her. I hate her almost as much as I hate Tiny. Tiny got banned, by the way. Love it. Of course she's back with a new account, but just the fact that she got banned is win.