If you didn’t catch it the first time, the relevant post is here. Go. Read. I’ll wait.

:: sharpens axe, plays fetch with the dino ::

Back? Great.  As you can see, Hanners is a little torqued at DKs right now. And with good reason.

I’ve seen people who know damn well better than that – turn into doucheknights. ‘

Crowd control? It’s OK, I’m a DK. YOINK.

AoE? No need! I’m a DK!  YOINK.

Don’t worry about the mana, healerz – I don’t need it – I’m a DK! lawz

So, listen up, guys.

You can’t have it.

The hat is mine. It belongs to us, the Huntards. Every stupid, silly thing in this game centers around huntards. We’re the ones that accidentally tab-targeted the whole room. Bounced off of three elevators to aggro an instance onto the party. Forgot to dismiss the pet when taking the balcony short cut. Pulled aggro off the MT and messed up everyone’s careful positioning as a result. Us, ME. GET IT??

We don’t need a bunch of newbs coming in and stealing our thunder. We’re the ones. Get it? Not you.

You … go figure out a way to play in a group.

Leave the comedy to us.

Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.

I had noticed the other night – to my guildies – that there didn’t appear to be but one flight point on Sholazar Basin. Turns out I was wrong.

The 2nd flight point appears once you help out with a quest line that start with [Need an engine, take an engine].  The 2nd quest of that line concludes it, at which point a flight master in a biplane appears.

While no big deal in the great scheme of things, it’s a nice detail. Well done, Blizz.

As noted, in Meta’s land it’s a time to give thanks, so we’ll play along.  I’ll go first.

Grimmtooth: I am thankful that, like BRK, I’m a Dwarf. What’s not to like about being part of a race of people that has a holiday just for celebrating ale?

Floramel: I am thankful for my fel Reaver what’s-his-name. The axeman rocks my world, and of just about anything else he touches, too.

Illume: I am thankful for the Mad Achemist’s Potion. It’s the side effects they don’t tell you about that makes it so much fun.

Jasra: Reflective Shield. The look on their face is priceless:

Slithmere: Pockets.

Kutath: The kind people of Azeroth for letting us keep that island. Yes, our lovely, desolate, abandoned home. Good times.

Orlee: Mutable laws of physics.

Amusmoses: Scourge. It’s nice to know I won’t be out of a job for some time to come.

Yarley: Grubs. I mean … oh, kittens.

Faiella: …

Some meta stuff first.

First of all, note that today in Meta’s land is a holiday in which we give thanks for what we have. We are all very grateful in that regard. The fact that meta has a job that allows him to indulge in this sort of thing is great, and his understanding spouse that not only tolerates it, but also participates. What a woman. Also, while we’d like to say we’re going to be grinding like it’s going out of style, we’re in fact going to be cooking up the traditional feast – because, thankfully, we can feast. Not everybody is so fortunate.

Second of all, a note to my friends in the spammer community: it is most kind of you to provide a link for me to use to remove myself from your list. It’s very grown-up of you to admit that it is spam. I can remember a time when spammers sued people that called it spam.  So I do appreciate your efforts to meet me halfway. But, as a hunter, the law of the wild prevails. I take comfort instead in knowing that every spam you send my way saps your resources just a little bit. It all goes to the bit bucket. Give up. Really.

Finally … anyone seen Fiaella lately? She said she was going to work on some exploration achievements to the north, but we haven’t seen her since then, and she didn’t make the team meetup in Southshore.

Okay, so moving on!

I’ve moved on from the Grizzly Hills to Zul’Drak, where you might recall I learned how to make heavy frostweave bandages. This is a dreary place in dire need of dressing up or a fresh coat of paint, but mostly that’s because it’s being overrun by Scourge, and we all know they are a monotonic sort.

There are some things that I could read up on but I am going to set aside and just experience as they come along, such as this guy.  He has the look and bearing of a Titan or one of thier creations. Puts Ironya to shame. Sorry, toots.

A very interesting quest line from the Ebon Watch. Yes, working for Death Knights, isn’t that special. One of the death knights had an interesting name. Really, she should have been a gnome. But I can’t help but believe that this a reference to a certain overachieving mage.

The reason for the questline was the fact that I was apparently being personally targeted for undeath by the Scourge. So our DK friend decided to take advantage of the situation and fake my undeath.

The quest line involved a disguise as a zombie and reporting to a former troll in the necropolis overhead, carrying out quests for the Scourge and reporting back to the Death Knight.  This eventually lead to a confrontation and showdown between myself and the zombie troll. I didn’t kill him though.

Instead, the Lich King did.

Yep, just as we were about to take him down, Arthas shows up and talks a little trash, then strikes him down for being such a screw-up who apparently can’t guard against a mere dwarf such as myself – thankyouverymuch. After taking a few moments to threaten me personally, he heads off.

Let me tell you, he’s a lot taller than I expected. And, incidentally, Frostmourne isn’t quite the badass-looking blade I was lead to expect, either.  In this guy’s mitt, it looks like a dagger. On the other hand, the 13,000,000+ hit points kinda gives him some badass cred.

The ultimate quest reward was my first clear-cut upgrade. Up until now I’ve replaced a couple of rings, but the Choker of the Betrayer is a clear-cut winner. Well. Took me to level 75 to get a quest reward that rewarded. I guess the concerns of the min/maxxers was a bit unwaranted.

Oops, right after I post something about hacked accounts, this site goes dark!

Not related. Turns out our ISP had an old credit card number that has since been cancelled. They pulled the plug on account we didn’t pay them.

All better now.

One of our officers got hacked this week, via a phishing scam. All his stuff was sold off for gold, except that which could not be sold. Fortunately, our GL had the wisdom to limit officers to 10 stacks in the guild bank, and our friend must have gotten paranoid when that happened because he only did it on one toon.

As a service to you, let me explain how this worked.

The e-mail

You get an email. It’s “from” support@blizzard.com. It says “thanks for signing up for email notifications. Please log in and update your password. Here is the link to the password page.”

The Link

The link, of course, doesn’t go to anything on Blizzard’s website.  It goes to a website that looks just like Blizzard’s, but it isn’t. It’s hooked to a server that will accept your user name and password, and store them as “good” ones. Eventually, one of the professional thieves will come along, log in to your account, sell your stuff, and send the gold to someone that sells gold for a living.

Gold farmers don’t care

I’ve heard that all gold farmers are not alike. That is most certainly true. But I think that I am safe in saying that few, if any, gold sellers care about where the gold came from. As long as they can sell 1000 gold for 29.99 US dollars, they’re content.

How to protect yourself

The scam thus described is called a “phishing” scam. It is not limited to WoW accounts. The same methods apply to all such cases, whether it is WoW, Pay Pal, Amazon, or whatever.

To protect yourself, never click on a link in an email that appears to be from e.g. support@blizzard.com, support@paypal.com, etc. Look at where the link says it is sending you. If it says you are being sent to the user admin page, then open a browser and go there yourself. Bypass the email link completely. Remember, unless you review the source code of the email, you may not notice that it says it’s sending you one place, but actually sending you to another.

How’d they get my address, anyway?

They didn’t. Phishing scams rely on mass quantities – the shotgun effect. What they do is they harvest email addresses. They have no idea who’s address it is. But they will use it over and over again in mass mailings. 500,000 emails are sent to all hotmail accounts in a file. 2000 have WoW accounts. 20 respond. They haul in 50,000 gold to sell at $29.99 per 1000, or 50 x 30 = roughly $1,500 USD.

It’s plain old doo-dah luck. They will use the same 50,000 addresse for a paypal scam, e-trade, WaMu … etc. They aren’t smart. But they are efficient. Brute force + efficient == profit!

I better get an authenticator!

Don’t bank on that working. At least one person has reported getting the authenticator decoupled from an account without permission from the legitimate owner. With the user password and access to the Blizzard user account page gained from a phishing email, it’s possible that something could be faked up to sell over the phone. Once the authenticator is gone, your toons are forfeit.

No, technology does not relieve you of your responsibility to be prudent. You are still on the hook.

But, seriously? I think the authenticator is a great idea. It’s just not the answer to all your security woes. You have to stay alert and watch what you do. Don’t get lazy. They are depending on you being lazy. Don’t.

And now for something different

Word has it that [Manual: Heavy Frostweave Bandage] only drops in instances. It does not. Running my very first Zul’Drak quest tonight, it dropped from a trash mob outside of any instance. So be advised: it’s out there.

This here’s my bear.

Ain’t he got flair?

It’s mah bear.

Yes, somebody made it to Daleran yesterday, and after mugging Flora for some change, I purchased my new favorite transportation medium. Oh, she can gripe all she wants, but when all is said and done, she’ll get a flying carpet. For me, this is it without some serious faction grinding.

I’ve completed the Nexus quests now, so I can move on if needed. Last night we went with a pally tank so I broke out my new trick – Hunter AoE. I was able to stay on top of the charts against one of our heavier damage mages when AoE was on the menu – a least, for a while. We were pretty much neck and neck for the whole thing. Even though she’s 3 levels lower, she still has been the DPS queen, so even getting close is an achievement. And I haven’t even tweaked for my final build.

The cooking dailies look very interesting and I look forward to trying the new system out.

Flora got a new polar bear cub to celebrate the 4th year anniversary of WoW. I had understood that it would only be awarded to four year vets, which none of us are, but apparently everyone is getting one. It’s a shame, those that have stuck with the game for four years should be recognized.

My sweetie suggests that next year, a spectral tiger cub would be ideal.

I want to drop a quick plug for the Mandigo Wordpress theme, which is what I use here. It’s had the best options available thus far, and it’s really well done in many ways.

The most recent thing that makes me happy is the header image. You may not notice this if you use RSS readers, but the header pic now changes every time you reload. This makes it far more fun to grab screen caps of the wonderful scenery one finds in this game. From van Cleef’s super-destroyer to a panorama of Utgarde keep, it’s all fodder for the header now.

And NONE of this required any PHP hacking skills on my part. That is something that one can only be grateful for.

Sorry if you encountered a site error. I’ve just updated the site, template, and addons in one long agonizing stretch. Hopefully everything’s fine now.

Well, it didn’t take Grimm long to tucker himself out and head for a nice room in the B&B at Boring Tundra or whatever. Since he’s been hogging all the glory in the Tundra, I went for the road less travelled. We do have a strategy here. He’s scouted out what I’ll need to get Nexus quests done, and I’m scouting Utgard for him. It’s a fair trade.

I have 4500 gold in the bank – that close to getting the epic flyer – and I am at an impasse about what to do about it. At 77 I’ll get to fly again, but it almost seems silly to fuss about it now. I’ll probably go ahead and get it, but it’s such a tough call.

Crafting! My first frostweave items have minor upgrades to my current T4 mitts and badge belt. Or they at least have higher damage. I have to see how it all comes together. Oh, but it’s going to be such a long grind to 450. I am all of two points in. You don’t even get credit for frostweave bolts now.  I don’t have the chops to take on master enchanting yet, unfortunately. Fortunately I did for cooking.

While this zone is largely linear and offers magnificent vistas, the main quest hubs are spread out and sometimes difficult to get to. I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to get out of the fjord.  And some of the quests … well, there are two harpoon guns and a bunch of people queuing up. It’s anyone’s guess if the guy in front of you is smarter than the harpoon gun. Light knows I wasn’t, the first time. On the flip side: riding a harpoon across the valley is a blast, so to speak.

Aside from a few setbacks, so far so good. Demon is still an excellent grinding build. I’m looking forward to a raid to guage myself so I can then move on to full Destro and test it out too.

I’ve come across a couple of Utgard quests but need to get them all. We’ll see how that goes.

Finally … during a spirit journey, I got snagged by the Lich King himself. He showed the angels there how to properly handle such as myself. He squished me like a bug. He says I’m not ripe, though, so I have that going for me.

OK, I admit it, we went a little crazy this weekend, but it was the fun sort, mostly. So, where to begin?

First of all – Borean Tundra is almost cleaned out now. I have the Overcharged Capacitor one to finish¹ and the Nexus:Nexus ones, and some of the DHETA ones to finish up. Plus one or two miscellaneous ones. However, the upshot is that I’ve gotten most of this place done. It’s funny, the one that points me to the next zone must be in what’s left.

I have obtained level 72 and maxxed out my rested XP status, so I am turning over to Flora as I tire out. That is an unusual thing.

To date, I still haven’t found anything other than that ring as an upgrade, though GHETA came close until I saw the base DPS.

Random has been retired to Head of Security at Casa de Grimmtooth, and has taken to retirement with gusto. Long naps, warm sunspots, roaring fires, and tummy rubs when he’s not busy chewing up intruders. In his place, we now have Saiph², the Gorilladin of my dreams.

Seriously, who knew that Hunters would be able to AoE grind? He’s still two levels below me and is almost unstoppable with regards to aggro generation. He’s an amazing beastie. Couple that with the fact that Volley no longer has a cooldown and can crit, and you have the recipe for lots of lovely XP. I am very pleased. The only down side is that BRK will become a jot more smug, since I’m sure he gets a jolt every time someone acknowledges that he was right about this.

Tonight I should be close to done with the Tundra and on to the Basin. Later!

1. Waiting for a price break [↩]
2. Also known as kappa Ori [↩]

Meta took an early day to get us started on the road to Northrend – got the next to last copy of Wrath from the local Target, and headed home to install. The wife was much amused at the twitter-off between me and our GM as we both tweeted our progress. Best moment: she tweets “Not enough space on my HD to install!”  Insert the Sound of Ultimate Suffering there. That probably gave me the edge I needed, though, as I managed to log in¹ before she did. For once, I win in the geek-off between me and her².

The choice of toon was not really that difficult to make. I did ask if there was a preference from the GM. She responded “Whatever is the most fun.”³ I responded that all 4 of my 70s roxxor, so I had no preference, to which crickets responded. Choice made by default – I am my own favorite.

Since I started so early, I was able to get a good amount of work done, but only on those quests that didn’t require access to very scarce resources, such as unique mobs and the like. The first days of Quel’danas come to mind, where every Blood Elf mana-head and confused sentry drone was pounced by multiple attackers every time one spawned. As one person put it, “Imagine Wal-Mart on the day after Thanksgiving”.

My starting area of choice was the Borean Tundra, because it has Rhinos!⁴

Some of the quests just shine with stupidity, though. One of the “infiltrators” you have to kill is also a vendor, which means that when you go for this guy, you not only have to compete against others wanting to ninja him, but also you risk cheesing some poor huntard trying to buy meat for his pet.

Pets – All of mine are up to 70 now – Rigel the stompasaurus, Random the white kitty, and Coral the orange kitty. Now I have to decide which cat to keep. I went through an awfully long training cycle with Coral, but Random has been my faithful companion ever since I was 50-ish.  One of them has to go to make room for as-yet-unnamed-gorilladin. I’m thinking Random will be retired, given the task of guarding the Grimmtooth estate from pillagers⁵ And, finally, I have a new pal, Bellatrix the Rhino.  Yes, I can haz Rhino Bowling now.  Bel is just getting her feed under her, as it were, but I look forward with great anticipation as mobs fly through the air at her behest.

Quests – We gots ‘em. I dropped almost all of my quest log as no longer relvant, though I would sincerely like to finish off my Nightbane quest line. It’s just lame not being able to start that quest myself. That aside, at this point my quest log is almost full again. I’ve found most of the quest hubs in the Borean Tundra, an done or two have been cleaned out. The Murlock one is just priceless. If it weren’t for the fierce competition I’d've gotten some screen shots, but there was no time to dilly-dally around.  Rescuing Murloc tadpoles is just about the most fun you can have with a murloc – with or without armor – that is possible, is all I’m saying.

Trade Skills – Oh my, the cost of Grand Master training is a killer! Unfortunately, one of my favorite addons – Advanced Trade Skill Window – totally locks up the game now, so I’ve had to get rid of it for now.  I’ll be watching for updates.⁶

Instances – Late in the night, our GM pulled together a final run into The Nexus (this was her third), with one warlock on a PuG who was competent enough but unable to outshine our mighty DPS (our GM of course pwned my arse). We wiped twice, once on the 2nd and once on the final boss, but now we understand the fights and may be able to deal better in the future.

Gear – So far I’ve vendored everything I’ve gotten, except for one ring⁷. Anomalus does drop a nice pair of boots that I’d like a crack at, though.

At this point I am around 2/3 of the way to 71. Sure, I’m no power-leveller. But I’m enjoying the scenery, that’s for sure.

1. And out, and back in – as recommended by Blizzard [↩]
2. Not to worry, she has me on so many fronts this is at most a form of ceremonial parity [↩]
3. Ouch. I so deserved that. [↩]
4. More on that later. [↩]
5. Surprisibus! Surprisibus! – that so slayed me the first time I saw it (around 3:08 for the relevant gag). [↩]
6. Hmmm… on the link, the author explains the issue and recommends a workaround. OK, I’ll give it a shot. [↩]
7. Is this a homage to The Scout Report? That would be cool. [↩]

Well, I was online running what is probably my final set of dailies for a while when the server ticked over to midnight. Northrend appeared in the map, but the world did not come to an end. Take that, doomsayers!

We’ll see what it looks like tommorrow. I’ll be picking up the expansion from Beast Buy on my way home. Probably awful. C’este la vie! So long for now – Grimm’s going to be hogging the CPU cycles until we get a pecking order established.

Two nights ago, I tendered my resignation as an officer in our guild, on behalf of the whole team.  I had been contemplating this as one route to getting the fun back into the game, but it wasn’t until I dreamed of doing it three nights in a row that I realized just how badly I needed to.

I have not quit the game. I have not left the guild. I may – now that I don’t have to listen to the profane and petty bitchings often present in officer’s chat – resume raiding and instances again. I may possibly even buy the expansion on LK-day; I still haven’t decided on that.

What does leaving as an officer do for me, anyway?

First and foremost, I am now able to – without guilt – mute anyone that is taking away from the game. So if one of our two star whiners start wailing in guild chat about how they’ve been nerfed to the ground¹, I can simply put them on a time-out.  Granted, the need for doing so will annoy me as well, but I have to have something.

Second of all, those same people tend to pollute officer’s chat with toxic comments about everybody else, and of course they use officer’s chat as a place to whine – about specs and other players – as well. The actual start of the downward spiral, as far as I am concerned, was when I called one of them on it² and he responded that since he had been playing for so long he was “entitled to it.”  I swear on the Light itself, those words actually passed his … lips. Fingertips.

Our GM has asked if she can do the demotes late at night, and I agee to that – I don’t want to cause more drama. They will all eventually realize what is happening but hopefully it will be a done deal for several days or weeks.

She did ask me why. I was blunt, but truthful. I named names. I knew nothing would come of it not because I have no faith, but because the main culprit is a RL friend, and sometimes you have to put up with your friends. I know how it goes. But he’s not mine and I don’t have to put up with him, bottom line. So the air’s cleared there.

In other news …

Saturday the guild ran Kara, as is the guild’s nature to do so, and completed it in two hours, even with all the servers coming down in the middle of it. I wasn’t on at the time, but found about this after the fact.  The GM called for me for a second run after they took a brief break. I was a little nervous, not having a whole lot of healing practice and certainly none in a raiding environment.

Well, we cleared it again. I got several nice items, including the Mindblade³, lots of Violet faction, and the achievements associated. Also a Batling.  I did blow it – massively – on Maiden, but the other priest (the GM) managed to keep everyone up.  We did lose our Ret palli a lot, but I have to say that maybe that’s because he wasn’t watching his aggro more than anything else. When he drops 80% in 2 seconds, there’s probably a reason.

I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop in Northrend when I hit some real healing challenges.

1. See previous comments about cookie-cutter players. [↩]
2. ”You can’t stand V**** in guild chat so you start doing the same thing in officer chat and this helps ME how?”" [↩]
3. Flora is weeping. [↩]

I’m sure I could come up with any number of excuses, but the fact is that I’ve been loathe to blog about what is going on in Azeroth with regards to myself and the troops. The upshot is that it has largely ceased to be fun. I log in to carry out maintenance, keep everyone fresh, but that’s all. There is no sense of anticipation of enjoyment associated with the game at this point in time.

I’ve basically given up on raiding at this point. For some people it’s all about the lewt, whether its theirs or somebody else’s, and if they don’t see things go thier way in that regard, everybody hears about it in tedious, neverending, whining, pedantic detail. They suck all the fun out of raiding, or instances in general. I can’t even enjoy the world events because of the very same people.

We’re also tending to log in and play less because of another faction of people that seem to enjoy whining and griping in obscenity-laced detail about every single terrible injustice that Blizz has done to their class(es). OK, guys, Blizz nerfed half the classes in the game¹ . You are not a special and unique snowflake. Get over yourselves and please allow the rest of us to have a little fun, OK?²

It’s so bad right now that I haven’t even gone out and ordered the expansion. Whether it would be used is seriously in question. I’ve got the Morrowind CD sitting on my desk right now, along with RRT3 and Civ4, and ever day I get closer to installing them. If that happens, this blog will go on hiatus.

So that’s what’s on my mind. Sorry for the lack of posting, but really – do you need an emo dwarf?

No. No, you don’t.

1. I do not lie. Palli, Frost Mage, Warlock, Druid. [↩]
2. Side note: why is it that people that know how to adapt and overcome obstacles aren’t crying? Maybe it’s becasuse they don’t follow cookie-cutter character templates and learn why things work instead of how to blindly follow instructions on the back of a cereal box. Food for thought. [↩]