Whirly: good to go

Wailing Caverns was a cakewalk, all except for the wipeout. Mark and I snuck in yesterday with two 60 characters to track down the final Boss. Mark lead us right to him tonight while I still don’t know where he is. We avoided fights, when possible, and arrived at the Boss after an hour and a half.

Just as we were about to start clearing the area the message, “Server restarting in 15 minutes,” popped up. While it added some urgency to our operation, it didn’t change the outcome. Mark cleared the area cleanly and we took out the Boss with no trouble, completing the quest.

Afterwards, we thought we’d take the huge guy off to the side. That was the wipeout. We didn’t even get close. We had time to return for our corpses, gate to town, and camp. Mike and I dinged 21, Mark had last time.

We called it an early night with the WC quests done except one, we must pick up a few more skins or something. I was hopeful we could hit Blackfathom depths Monday, I’ve never been there, but it looks like Monday will be one final visit to Wailing Caverns.

Ok, I’m starting to get pissed. I like to think I’m patient and understanding about server outages and weirdness, but isn’t this a bit much? A year and a half after launch and still having connection problems. Not occasionally, but continually. A day of server outage is no big thing if it’s an anomaly in a long period of quiet competence. Blizzard is famous for not releasing a game until it’s right. Their methodical, exacting process may be biting them in the ass this time. All right, time to calm down. I got that off my chest.

It’s been a hard week for making money. Sure, I was the stupid one to put my full inventory at auction the day the servers were going to be patched and down for most of the auction-day. I guess I should be paying more attention to my surroundings and not just to making money. The auction house dragon killed me this week. I’m down 70 gold from Monday nights high.

It’s not all that bad. I’m having fun with this new part of the game. It’s just pretend money. Sometimes you win, sometimes the servers are down all day and you don’t. I’ve taken up enchanting with my Priest. My enchanting skills are only in the 40s, so far, but I’m breaking even, maybe even making a little cash.

Oh, big embarrassment. Mark and I took two 60 level characters into Wailing Caverns to locate the last Boss we need for our level 20 horde toons. We eventually found him, but weren’t sure the best way to him. We decided to jump down and try again. Um, that jump is a little high even for 60s. I’m glad nobody saw us running back, while dead.

Two hours spend in Wailing Caverns with only two challenges. Well, one actually. It took us two attempts to get it right. We took out Lord Pythas for the first time. What a fight. Pythas, a Druid, some “thing”, plus an add on our first try.

The plan, sheep the Druid and take Lord Pythas first. That didn’t work. The add didn’t help, but it wasn’t going well even before that. Pythas had two of us sleeped at once. Two thirds of our group out for 15 seconds, not good. Our second attempt worked much better. Sheep Pythas and do the Druid first. Mark had us move behind the mobs to eliminate walking adds. The Druid and “thing” took all of my healing mana, but Mike kept Pythas sheeped till I was full mana. He wasn’t special without his friends. We were with friends and special.

It felt like quite an accomplishment taking that group. Mark and I worked them for a couple of weeks with, 24ish characters, while Mike was on vacation, and never succeeded. Doing it with three level 20s felt, might I say, uber? No?

We’ve one boss left, Lord Serpentis. He’s deep in the instance. I’m not sure we can get to him within our two-hour limit. Although the normal mobs aren’t much of a challenge, they are still work and require time to best. Higher level will allow us to work through faster. If I had a crystal ball, I’d see Wailing Caverns in our future. Or a fortune cookie, You will travel underground soon.

Druid/Pally combo continues to work well as Mike and I proved Saturday. I was getting tired of the Stranglethorn area; we’ve been playing there for months, a couple of hours a week. I suggested we move our 36ish toons to Desolace for some grinding. It’s a long trip just for different scenery.

Outside the Mauradon instance is a horse-guy camp that works well at that level. We hunted for a couple of hours until the boredom ran us off. There are plenty of horses and not many players. The horses will run if you let them, but that caused us no problem. Both the Pally and Druid have ways to stop runners. The big tents often have chests full of useless junk.

Our biggest trouble was with stormers casting whirlwind, which removes you from the fight for 15 seconds. It was only an annoyance. We were never at risk. On reflection, it wasn’t much of an adventure, just a grinding opportunity. I guess we should go back to quests next week; we seem to get into plenty trouble that way.

Friday - back to Wailing Caverns. Now that my Priest has dispel magic, things are much easier against those evil, evil druids and their sleep spell. It seems the druids sleep the nearest, other than the tank, so I hide behind the Mage whom I dispel when sleeped.

Mark came up with a list of quests we needed, so we went prepared and are working through the list. We killed three of the named before running out of time and we are completely done with the left part of the instance.

My Priest dinged 20 Saturday and received some nice spell upgrades and a surprise. The trainer had a quest for me that I completed by clicking. The reward was a spell I didn’t know anything about. I’d assumed the Horde players with the ball of light circling them were Shamans. Some are, but some are Troll Priests with Shadowguard. “The caster is surrounded by shadows. When a spell, melee or ranged attack hits the caster, the attacker will be struck for 20 Shadow damage. Attackers can only be damaged once every few seconds. 3 charges. Lasts 10 min.”

As of today, I have 302 gold with another 100 or so in items for sale. I’ve decided what rich in WoW means to me, 2000 gold. It’s unclear how easy that will be on a newer server, Horde side. Plus, I’ll be gone most of April. Anyway, that’s my goal. I’m a big believer in goals. It doesn’t matter if you achieve them. As long as you have a target and are moving forward.

I received two new toys this week. One is a folding keyboard for my Palm TX. I’ve had this Palm, my third, for a few months and it’s just the greatest thing. Music, movies, pictures, books, email, web surfing, along with all the normal Palm stuff like contacts and calendar. It’s become the tool my previous two never were.

Its biggest weakness has been text entry. Graffiti, its hand writing recognition, isn’t that easy to use. After fighting Graffiti for years, I recently started poking the on-screen keyboard instead. I find both methods detract from the flow of ideas into text. The new keyboard, when folded, is about 1 and a half the size of the Palm.

I’m traveling on vacation soon. I’ve never taken technology, other than a camera, with me on such trips. Choosing instead to vacation from technology as well. I’m planning to take the Palm this time so I can write, check email and surf on the road.

I’m hoping to use the palm for a diary, a day book. I’m not sure it’s a good idea. I have a pile of paper notebooks full of musings from past vacations. Do I add the Palm to the stack? It’s the same question I ask comparing digital pictures to prints or slides. I haven’t resolved the question, but I continue to move to the future and hope for the best.

Mark and I were able to play a couple of hours of EQII this evening with his 10 Templar (healer) and my newly 10 Monk. I had just dinged when he logged in. After two hours he was level 12 and I was level 11. We don’t know why he was able to go through a level and a third while I only went through one. It might have been rest bonus.

Mostly we simply cruised the qeynos hills looking for trouble. At this low level you can’t do anything very exciting. Still, we were able to get killed a few times and have some fun.

I always thought EQII was a very good upgrade to EQ, but WoW came along and our interest went there instead. Some people say EQII attracts a more hard-core gamer and the population tends to be a little more mature than the easier WoW.

We are down to playing only four hours a week as a full group. We can’t jump between games as easily as we once did when WE were hard-core. Plus, WoW is still much fun. I love that you can always log in and do something. Even if you have only 15 minutes.

Mark has enjoyed a little EQII recently. He doesn’t intend to continue his subscription after this month so we are trying to arrange a time to play as a duo. Neither of us have much free time, it’s unclear if we’ll succeed.

For some reason Mark doesn’t like Freeport, it’s too evil for him I guess. He has a level 10 healer in Qeynos so I’ve got to bring up a toon there quickly. I tried a straight Warrior, but I just didn’t like him and his take forever killing ways. He also clanked when he ran, very annoying. After 6 levels, I started over as a Monk. His bare feet make a slapping sound when he runs.

A Warrior/Priest isn’t a great duo anyway. Their taunt-tank shield-heal is short on damage output, flexibility and fun. They scale well thought. You start adding other group members and you’ve got yourself an army. Warrior/Priest is the core of any group up to raid size, but as a duo they are more like a movable wall and about as enjoyable.

For a duo, a light tank and secondary healer work well. A Ranger or Beserker paired with a Druid or Shaman make a good team. While they would never be the core of a raid they could tear through mobs without breaking a sweat as a pair.

We’ve found odd combinations to be fun as well. Mark and I played two pet classes recently. Mike and I have played two Bards. I don’t think we’ve ever found a combo that doesn’t work somehow. You do what you can with what you have. Discovering new ways to work together is fun. Not in Freeport though /shrug.

Surprisingly, I did a little time traveling this morning. I woke up an hour and a half early and couldn’t get back to sleep. Returning from the latrine, I decided to check the news with my wireless Palm TX.

My Palm politely explained, it had changed the time because of day light savings. Odd, I hadn’t heard anything about that, but I haven’t been paying attention. What do I know? I’ll check my local online news paper. The top story? People in my state complaining about the time change. Hmmm.

My cell phone said the time hadn’t changed, but those people can’t even make a phone call, I’m not trusting them. Who, in my home, to believe with the time? I chose my digital cable box. I know they have a top-end billing department, so they probably know what time it is. Bingo, I got that one right. Still, I was tired all day. It might have been one of them paradox things with me waking myself up and all.

Our first visit to Wailing Caverns and we died a bunch of times. Lady Anacondra was our first trouble. We’d forgotten how hard those damn Druids and their sleep spell are. Mark mentioned dispel magic, but, um, I don’t get that until 18. I’ve since rectified the problem. A couple of our deaths were because of that. Hopefully things will go better next time.

We took her down, after a couple of tries, and moved much further into the Cavern. Not much in the way of drops, Mark found a new belt. It looks like we’ll be able to work there until our mid 20s if we wish. It will most likely get too boring before then. We’ll probably sneak over and do Deadmines before then.

Mike was 18, Mark dinged 18 in the instance and I ran around outside later and dinged 18 as well. I got an upgrade to Power Word: Shield, I use that *all* the time, and Power Word: Pain. It would have been nice to get Desperate Prayer or Starshards but those things are for Alliance. My special is Hex of Weakness. It will have to do.