How did I get here? This isn't my beautiful wife?

In other news I have found renewed joy in leveling my very first toon. When I first started playing WoW in November 2005 I looked over the character selection screen. I selected Warrior, because that was one of my favorite classes in PnP D&D. I soon reached level 10. Got my first talent point and put it in the protection tree. All points earned from that day forward were put in the protection tree.

You see I didn't know you could respec, nor did I know you could put points in more than one tree. So I leveled in Classic from 10-60 as Prot. It was slow. I think it took me something like 22 days /played. But it was fun. I got to 60 in the closing weeks of Classic. I think I was 60 for about 3 months before BC was released. I got to tank my share of Classic End-Game raids. It was fun. When BC came out I briefly switched to furry to get from level 60-65, when I switched back to Prot. I tanked a lot of level 80 Heroics, but my then guild had some pretty ridiculous gear requirements just to step into Kara. They basically wanted a tank geared to tank Prince, just to step into Kara. So I farmed, I farmed, I farmed heroics. It was slow going. Then one day I was invited to a PuG, but they wanted me to DPS as they already had a Pally tank. I walked into Shatered Halls, fearing our lack of CC and watched the Pally walk into a 6 pack, and tank every damned one of them. I was disgusted with the state of warrior tanking, and hung up my breastplate, never to tank again.

That is until just last week. My son who is still hanging around level 73 asked me to hop on my warrior and tank UK. I begrudgingly obliged, and warned the group it had been a LONG time since I had tanked and to cut me some slack. I had put a little time into this character and got him to level 73, so I had atleast played around with the new talents and abilities.

Tanking was FUN again! I could run into a pack, Thunder Clap, Shockwave, and improved/glyphed Revenge, with glyphed Sunder and multi-mob tank. It was Awesome. Now a little more than a week later and I am at 78, I am a veteran of the Wrathgate (btw the most epic quest chain in all of WoW) and I am pressing hard to get to 80.

What a long strange trip it has been...Well not really

Yesterday after a long and painful trip to the dentist I decided I had had enough of work and took the rest of the day off sick leave. I went home, had some chicken noodle soup and napped for a bit. When I was woken up from pain after the Novocain wore off, I took some Motrin and sat down to WoW for a bit. I soon found a group for Headless Horseman. Now as I have said before I hate the RNG. I killed HH at least 5 times every day last year, and so fat this year I have killed him close to 10 times per day. So that is close to 100 kills this year. Well yesterday on our last summons for the day he finally drops. I select need, one other person in the group rolls need. I see Skraps rolls need...2 Other guy Rolls need...67. GAH!!! This is the first time it has dropped for me this year and I roll a 2! See that damned RNG.

Due too a Epic act of Charity my trade window pops open, and I see the Squashling in the trade. So an act of pity grants me...

Quick Geek Moment...

Linus Torvalds Mocking the Windows 7 guy at the Japan Linux Symposium.

Fare thee well, Shagger of Rats!

I just want to wish a fond farewell to one of my all time favorite bloggers. Ratshag, of Need More Rage. For whatever reason he has moved on from this silly world of the blogosphere and he will be missed. Ratshag is one of the reasons I started to write this blog. I knew I could never come close to the entertainment value of his RP posts, but I hope I can give 1/10th of the entertainment I have received.

I wish you luck and happiness in whatever endeavors you embark on.

BLOOD AND THUNDER, RATSHAG!

How I hate the RNG.

Today is Wednesday. Five days after the launch of the Hallows End event. I have been part of no less than 45 Headless Horseman kills. I have trick-or-treated once per hour every non-working hour, including getting out of bed in the middle of the night, and hearthing away from raids to trick-or-treat then be summoned back to complete the raid. I have not seen a single drop of the Sinister Squashling. I did much the same last year. In two years, my relationship with the RNG has not improved. I fear I will finish this years event with still no pet. I never really tried for the What a long strange trip it has been achievement, mostly because I planed a romantic get-away with the wife during duration of one of the in-game holidays (I know, why oh why did real life trump a game?) that made the achievement impossible last year, but this year I want to complete it.

Every day when I am online, I see 3-5 guild members with the achievement pop up exclaiming they received the squashling, as well as completing Hallowed Be Thy Name meta achievement. Including one group that I just missed out on joining who saw 4 out of 5 Headless Horseman kills yield a Squashling.

That is why I hate the RNG.

I guess I should L2P and STFU.

So my wife whom I love very much hates WoW with the fiery passion of one passion of 1000 burning suns. She just doesn't understand why I enjoy it so much. She also has a fair bit of OCD, so is afraid to try it for fear of getting sucked in and never seeing the sun again. She goes out of her way to avoid WoW, "Leet Speak" and most anything related to gaming culture. I was explaining to my son the other day how angry I am about the Reincarnation Cool Down, while my wife was on the couch watching *shudder* "So You Think You Can Dance". She paused the Tivo, looked at me as says "QQ MOAR Nub" unpaused the Tivo and went back to her show as if nothing had happened.

I was briefly in Bizzaro World there.

Just a little bit of QQ.

I am going to sit here and QQ a little bit. Looking over the patch notes for 3.3 I feel it is necessary to whine here. THE signature ability of the shaman is Reincarnation. The problem is it is on a SIXTY MINUTE cool down! With two points into improved reincarnation you can drop that down to 40 minutes. Ridiculous.

With the new patch notes today I read with much excitement the following line:

Reincarnation: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 60 minutes down to...EXCITEMENT BUILDING...50 minutes. WTF? Even with the 2 points in it it is still 30 minutes. Two talent points is incredibly expensive for an ability that is wipe prevention at best, wipe recovery at worst.

The same patch notes drops the warlock soulstone down to 15 minutes. So a Warlock soloing can cast a self resurrect on themselves and "pop" just like a shaman every 15 minutes. This same soulstone has way more utility in raid than Reincarnation. The druid's battle resurrection in on a 20 minute cool down, an ability I argue has more utility than Reincarnation.

Why is it that shaman get the short shrift on their prime ability? I would like to see Reincarnation dropped to 40 minute cooldown, that might make 2 points more palatable for the improved version dropping it to 20 minutes. Or maybe 30 minutes base, and 20 minutes improved with more health and mana after popping.

What do you think? Should us shaman band together and start a massive QQ campaign on the official forums?

Oh yes I am now Undying

Or not. With ExOb no longer raiding on Friday nights I found myself home alone with no wife, no kid, no father-in-law. If only there was a raid it would have been a perfect Friday night. I logged in and within minutes I had a friend pst me and ask if I wanted to heal or DPS a emblem run in Naxx. I said sure. We got the group together, I started checking everyone's gear and achievements. Everybody was pretty much over geared for Naxx with a few exceptions. We had all been there a number of times. So I suggested we make it an "Undying" run. Everyone thought it was a great idea. We cleared the trash to Anub'rekhan where I promptly and epically AFK walked right into Anub'rekhan and died.

Hmmmm.....

I just got a Facebook friend request from my biological father, whom I have not seen since I was 3. What to do?

Aion Review

(click the picture for high res version)

I spent a long 3 day weekend in a seedy motel doing secret dirty things behind the back of my first love. While it was a great experience I have decided to come clean and confess my sins. I have not logged in to WoW since Friday and I have stories to tell.

One sentence review: Aion is not a WoW killer.

Long review: While Aion is a beautiful game it will not replace WoW for me. I am going to break this down into two sections, what I liked and what I did not like. Now mind you I have not played this to End Game. In 3 days I was only able to make it to level 15, and did not see any dungeons or group quests.

What I liked:
NC Soft is the king of character creation. My first MMO was City of Heroes. A game that allowed for huge character customization. Aion takes what City of Heroes did and expands it exponential, and the models both male and female are down right gorgeous. One of the features that I thought was neat was Titles that you earn grant buffs to skills. Like "Tree Hugger" grants +20 magic protection. The starting zones are well laid out, and quests flow quite well from quest hub to quest hub. The trade/gathering skill system is quite nice too. As near as I can tell you can select every trade skill and there is just one "Gather" skill that allows you to collect any resource. When you choose a profession you are given two quests to introduce you to the skill one with mats provided and one where you have to gather and process the mats. It is quite nice, although I am not sure how this affects server economy with everyone being able to gather all materials.

I will hide my shame no longer:
I am also going to come clean and admit something I have never told anyone. I am a gold buyer. What can I say I was young I needed the gold pieces. I only did it once, way back when I first started and did not understand the implications of gold buying/selling. I bought 100g back in the olden days when I hit 40 to buy my first mount. If I could take it back I would. The only thing I can say in defense was it was in the early days of WoW and long before the malicious hacking/spamming that occurs today.

Not a problem with the game per se, but a serious problem.
Spam. Holy dog in heaven there is a severe spam issue. All the gold sellers that left WoW when Blizz struck entire IP ranges with the Ban Hammer have jumped to Aion. Some of the spam looks a lot like system messages directing you to sites with key loggers that were one letter off from the actual NC Soft account management page. A character that I grouped with to complete some kill x numbers of y an hour before came back on and spammed trade as a bot. NC Soft needs to get control of the spam problem.

What I did not like:
Quests: Aion breaks no new ground here. Basic FedEx, kill x of y etc. etc. some of the quests felt down right "grindy". I know the RNG hates me, and I will never get luck and have a quest item drop from the first kill, but I spent 45 minutes today killing thieves trying to find a journal for a quest.

Classes/Abilities: There really is only 4 classes with 2 specs each. I started as a Priest as I really like playing healing classes. From level 1-10 every priest is just a priest. At level 10 you "Ascend" and become a Deava and get your wings. You also get to choose your "spec". For the priest the choices were Cleric (healing class) and Chanter (similar to Enhancement Shaman). I accidentally chose Chanter, and am stuck with that decision. There is no option for a respec what ever you choose you own.

One of the much hyped aspects of Aion is flight. I hear there is in flight combat, the only in flight combat I experienced was a quest to destroy 3 floating rocks. It was kind of a "this is how you do it" quest, not really enough to get you into combat. So far at this low level the flight is just a gimmick. Not even on par with a regular ground mount in WoW much less a flying mount.

I have 27 more days of my initial Aion subscription, and I will continue playing. Hopefully I will be able to level enough to experience some dungeons. I am not sure if I will be able to make it to "End Game" content before the end of my subscription, but I will write another review at the end of the month.

I have done the unthinkable

With ExOb cutting raids down to just two nights per week, and me being available for only one of those. Today at lunch I went out and purchased Aion. I will let you all know what I think next week. Oh yeah. I switch up my schedule this week so I am working Tuesday-Saturday for the next month. Posting will be on an alternative schedule for the next month.