Whirly: good to go

We’ve been discussing what to do when we reach 60, as if that’ll ever happen. Mark has dibs on Warrior if we decide to start over, pthhh, like he has any chance of being a Warrior. He’s been playing healer so long the only things he knows how to do is heal and die. Warriors have to do lots of stuff. I can’t think what they are right now, but be assured there are lots.

Mike and I are still trying to figure out what to play. We need healer, crowd control and DPS. The obvious choices would be Priest and Mage. Mike doesn’t’ seem interested in playing primary healer. What does that leave, Mage? He’s playing that now.  We need somebody to play figure-outer.

I accepted an invitation to join a pick-up group with my 26 Priest tonight. I was with the group for half an hour before I camped and played EVE. It was the worst experience, the group not EVE. I’ll never group again.

There are a lot of dragons in Sunken Temple. We killed every one of them. That’s all there is to say about that.

One hour of cash-grinding in Zul’Farrak. I’ve been twinking a couple of my alts from my Hunter. His account is just over 100 gold and it’s time for him to get a part-time job.

I’ve mentioned before the hunters technique of working the graveyard in Zul’Farrak. Ride in without pet, feign death in the graveyard, pause because they are coming, rise when they are gone, call pet and get to work on the graves. I make 12 to 18 gold, in the hour required, depending on if I want to work the Auction House after.

I can’t imagine doing this for my epic mount, it would take a couple of months. I wonder how much 12 gold costs in real money? Maybe I could just buy the gold and take a nap instead.

I’ve returned to my 26 Priest on our regular server. The greatest thing about WoW is its solo ability. I’m amazed how well the Priest solos. I suppose it changes at higher level, but it’s working for me now. In many ways the Priest feels more indestructible than my other toons.

At 26 I received spell upgrades on darn-near all the spells I use soloing. It’s a bit costly on mana, but I’m learning not to spend all my mana every fight. With the upgrades, it’s not needed. I can really pack a wallop when I cast everything on a mob. If the mob is below ¼ after the initial “hello” casts, I’ve over did it.

I tried the new linked Auction House in Darnassus. It’s a nice change from Iron Forge and makes Darnassus a working city for the first time as people are there buying and trading.

We returned to Blackrock Depths, but headed down a different tunnel. We reached an empty round room. Stepping on the center grate triggered a fellow who called down the Hounds of Hell, or something like that. A Gate opened and two waves of bugs showed up to punish us. On our return from the graveyard we found the room empty. I didn’t feel the need to step on the center grate again.

It’s called “Ring of Law.” Apparently, you can get spiders, worms, bats or raptors. After killing them, you get a boss. I don’t know what the reward is.

We continued down the hall to a different round room, below the first, full of dogs. We had another wipeout clearing this room when our Priest mysteriously died. We found nothing of interest and decided to make it our guild hall if we could get the dog smell out. We ended on that happy note. No wait. We should have ended there, but instead we tried some more hijinks that went badly when our Mage exploded. It was a 1 gold, 60 silver repair night for me. Good fun.

Ahh, the planets are aligned, Mike and Mark are back, all is now right with the world.

We were able to get together, for the first time this year, last night. We were twenty minutes late because of the queue. I guess the queue is our new reality. We either live with it or start over. Starting over and running into the same problem a year from now isn’t very attractive.

We decided to take it easy and try outside Dire Maul. It was a good warm-up, the experience was poor, we went inside. There isn’t much three 57s can do in Dire Maul , but we did 10 mobs before running out of time. That’s about 8 more than I would have thought.

I’m one happy camper.

I’ve been playing my PvP server Priest the last few days. I’ve not been ganked or any of the horrors told about PvP yet. I do have two small things…

At level 9 I was killing pigs for experience and skins, just trying to make a living, when a 60 comes along and laughs at me, twice. Life at 60 is so boring they stop to laugh at poor newbies? I have a level 60. I don’t remember the last time I even noticed a level 9. Taunting one has never crossed my mind.

I’m trying to fish. I’ve not fished since before WoW was released. I’m standing on the dock in Orgrimmar fishing my little Troll butt off. I even purchased a shiny bauble for my fishing pole. A Tauren Hunter shows up and starts jumping up and down between me and my hook. It’s impossible to catch fish. I cast again and he moves to do the same thing again. I tried three times, he kept doing it. I walked away and left my Priest standing there. I have no idea what he did. When I came back he was gone.

I believe the worst thing you can do is to give them anything. Calling them names or any response is a reward for bad behavior, it’s what they want. I choose to give them nothing.

Since Christmas my regular server has had a queue, something that never happened before. I figure there may be two factors; the new Christmas players and Blizzard might be artificially reducing the maximum players allowed to force new accounts to log onto newer servers, they’ve done it before.

Tonight, Saturday prime time, I had a 30 minute wait. Not a major problem yet, but I usually solo in 30 minute segments. I don’t know how it will affect that. When I play with the boys, we play for 2 hours. A half hour subtracted from our fight night will hurt.

There is a new restaurant in town. You fill your bowl with stuff then wait in line for 20 minutes to get it cooked on a large grill. I’ve tried it three times, I won’t be back. They don’t call me Patience for nothing.

I didn’t post yesterday because I’m a little embarrassed. I’ve been on a self imposed vacation from WoW, but that ended Wednesday, patch day. After the patch, while I was unable to log into my regular server, I visited a forgotten level 2 Horde Priest I’d created on a PvP server in the past. I’ve been playing that Priest since.

The people I’ve met, on this low population PvP server, have been very nice, maybe a touch hyper, and friendly. A stranger even chased me down to give me 2 bags he’d made, just exactly what I needed. Ever notice with some new characters you get lots of bag drops and others none? The store bags start at 5 silver. That’s a lot of cash when you aren’t twinked. The thought of begging crossed my mind.

I’ve seen no Alliance players yet even when I ran to Thunderbluff from Orgimmar for weapons training. At level 9 my PvP plan is to run like a bunny. Hours later I realized I’d forgotten to get the flight path in Thunderbluff. How dumb is that?

Luckily, I received email from Mark last night, he’s back, and Mike is due on Saturday. My life should be back in the groove soon.

Although I’m taking a break from WoW, it was patch day, I had to go for a run. The new patch includes a 20 slot shard bag for Warlocks. I have a 24 Warlock, I need one.

My Warlock was parked in Ratchet, so a run to Gadgetzan wouldn’t be too far. I have higher characters that could get to Gadgetzan with no risk, what fun would that be? The Barrens was easy enough. I even stopped to pick up some shards from level 20 animals along the way. The first challenge was The Great Lift and its level 31 guard.

The lift cycle is about 20 seconds. At 15 I started running. The guard stunned me which I hadn’t planned for, but I made the lift just in time, clicking the follow me button my pet and I made it to the bottom saftely. The first thing I saw down there was a 27 cat. Oh Great.

Most of Thousand Needles was easy, I can take a 27 cat, but I had to go around the ?? Guards at Free Wind Post and that ment sneaking through the half-horse guy camp. I was able to do the 4 or so, horse guys, required with no trouble. I ran into a Hyena on the way out of camp and got jumped by another. I tried fearing number 2, but I wasn’t going to keep my pet alive and number 2 feared so I did what any self respecting Warlock would do, I ran.

Once passed the fight I started clicking the follow me button again. It worked, though my pet wasn’t in very good shape. You’ve got to love the Gather Shadows spell. The pet can heal himself once the fight is over. The rest of the run to Gadgetzan was un-eventful. I now have the flight path.

I found the 20 slot shard bag at the vendor. It requires a Tailoring skill of 260. Mike is our Tailor, but I don’t know that he has a skill of 260. I may end up having to pay some crazy price in the Auction House.