Whirly: good to go

We took down Wolf Master Nandos in Shadowfang Keep. We knew he would come once we killed the dogs, so we paced ourselves using as little mana as possible. Then, when Nandos came, we gave him everything we had. It wasn’t completely smooth, but we completely won.

The Arugal fight, at the end, didn’t go as well. Our memory of the last time wasn’t very clear. Our plan wasn’t either. We didn’t expect him to change Mark into something other than our friendly Tauren Warrior. I didn’t expect him to take me out in three booms. Mike’s Priest went down next, quickly. It was rather embarrassing.

I don’t think anybody felt we could do Arugal next time, so off we go to Blackfathom Deeps where we will kick butt. I’m fairly sure.

Two new games in my life. Mike and I play online for a few hours, most weeks, on Saturday. We’ve played many different games, but for the last couple years we’ve played WoW with two alternative toons. We’ve picked up a new racing game, GTR2. It’s not our first racing game. Mike accuses me of quitting the other because he was getting good. I maintain it was boring going around in a circle (oval) for hours every week.

We played GTR2 this weekend and it’s good. We aren’t, but it was entertaining. We play with fancy joy sticks Mike came up with some time back. It would be better with steering wheels. Have you looked at the price of steering wheels lately? They are on the expensive side. I’m not sure we’ll be playing the game long enough for the investment. Just long enough for Mike to get good, probably.

Mike is going away on a long vacation soon. I’ve talked Mark into trying Guild Wars – Nightfall during the interim. We’d probably have played WoW if Mark hadn’t lost his account recently. Starting two new WoW toons isn’t as much fun as it once was.

I’ve poked around in Nightfall a little and they have made some changes. No longer do you feel like you are on a rail moving from one encounter to the next. You are free to roam. I’m not sure it’s better. You knew which way you were supposed to go before.

I’m not sure if I like the Hero thing. I’m supposed to equip and run multiple toons? I have enough trouble keeping my guy equipped. So far, I’ve just let him do his thing. He seems happy with that. Except when I got him killed. He re-popped when I entered town.

I started a Ranger. I like to stand over here while the fight’s going on over there. I picked up the skill to tame and control a pet, but I haven’t ran into anything I could tame yet. In the original game, taming your pet was one of the rails a young Ranger would ride as the game took you to the future pet and pointed him out to you. Having a pet, a Hero, a couple of henchmen and myself to run sounds a little busy anyway.

Back into Shadowfang Keep, for the second time. We are all level 24 and didn’t have much trouble until we reached Wolf Master Nandos who seems to have an unlimited supply of dogs we couldn’t get through. I guess the trick is to take him out before he calls his dogs. Wait, that’s not true. We did wipe once when we got a couple Sons of Arugal and a pack or two of dogs. I’d forgotten because when the Warrior went down I jumped to the courtyard and exited the instance.

By then we’d lost our Team Speak. Mike and I have a strong and long electronics background, so Microphones and sound systems are trivial. Living in Alaska, you must learn Microphone handling or the bears will eat you. Everybody who has survived in Alaska knows Microphones.

Mark, on the other hand, is from a place no one has ever gone. It’s not that people think, “I don’t want to go there.” It’s more like the question has never come up. It’s not on the way to anyplace so the only way you could possibly end up there is, well I have no idea. I’m not sure they have phones or TVs or any of that modern stuff. Anyway, he can’t keep his Team Speak working for two weeks in a row.

Without TS we rely on typing which, in the excitement of battle, can look like, “poiyfa thp ypoaiu.” Oddly, Mark can decipher battle gobldy gook just fine. I guess they have some skills over there.

Perhaps we can get through next time. I’m more concerned with Arugal at the end. We’ve only gone up against him twice before and didn’t win either time. He moves around and it was difficult keeping the Warrior in line of sight. You don’t always get a second chance to throw a heal.

I am completely frustrated. My ATCsimulator2 hasn’t worked for a while. I just spent an hour trying to get it working. Including re-reinstall, regedit, manually copying files, I’m done. Brad has made a nice program, but I’m not going to wipe my computer to run it, or what ever hoop I’ve yet to discover. Screw it.

I can not find a way to get my Guild Wars working again. Once logged in, it displays “Your account is not currently authorized to play Guild Wars.” I’ve looked and looked on PlayNC’s site and though it shows Guild Wars on my account it says nothing about activating or deactivating. It’s another pisser for the night.

EQ2 doesn’t work either. I stupidly re-activated that thing, but the program doesn’t run. Great! And, I can’t cancel it online because, according to the stupid website, I don’t know where I was born.

I should get a life. One of the real kind. Or maybe I should go down and buy one of those Wii game consoles. They go on sale tonight at 12:01, sigh.

Our last trip into Wailing Caverns. We headed to the left and made the crawl to Lord Cobralm. It’s a long walk, but he wasn’t much once we got there. We backtracked and made the trek to Lord Pythas and killed his ass too. Lord Pythas 2, us 1.

It was getting late, but I kind of wanted to do Verdan as we probably won’t be coming back this way. Another uneventful walk, we took Lord Serpentis for fun, then it was Verdan’s turn. He died, no big thing. I swear, level is king in WoW. One level and the impossible becomes trivial.

All done, we thought. Now Mark mentions some mob that pops if you kill all 4 bosses. We’d by-passed Lady Anacondra (across from the entrance) because we’d done her so many times before. We jumped down the shortcut, behind Verdan, to the first level, intending to make a quick run to pick her off. Um, unknown to us, and our sleepy Warrior, we had a re-pop down there. Mark pulled 4 ish, Mike aggroed 2 more and another 2 showed up from I don’t know where. It was an interesting death simply because of the size of the crowd at the end.

Mike dinged 23 inside and Mark and I dinged finishing quests. Next stop, Shadowfang Keep. I wonder how much damage three level 23s can do in there?

Wailing Caverns again. It was much the same as last time except we bypassed Lord pythas and his friends. Our plan was to continue until Mark and I dinged 22 and come back for them, Mike dinged earlier. Instead, we got involved in killing Verdas and never got back.

Lord Serpentis went down easy enough. It was the end of the night and we decided we had to try Verdan; he was standing right there. We’ve only gone up against him once before, he’s a major under-con at level 21. We were surprised, that time, and died terribly. This time we knew what to expect. It was looking good about 3/4s into the fight though we were running out of mana fast. Then Verdan criticaled on Mark’s Warrior and Mark went from half health to dead. We lost.

That was the end of the night. We’ll try again, but next time we’ll have our new level 22 spells and skills, and a few more potions. I hope we can finish Wailing Caverns Friday. It’s never been my favorite and I’m tired of the place. Shadow Fang is up next, I believe.

Mike and I had a discussion this weekend about Honor in the battlegrounds. He’s decided that going for the flag is a waste, most of the time, and that racking up kills was the way to go. I maintained that capturing the flag IS the game.

I’m talking about level 19 battlegrounds here. I’ll admit that it’s most fun to go for the kills mid-field, but I wasn’t sure, honor wise, if kills or wins gained more. I did the math.

Saturday I got 52 kills with no wins. The next day I checked my honor and I’d received 263 which is a little more than 5 honor per kill. I’m going from memory here, but don’t you get 188 honor for winning? That would be the equivalent of over 37 kills

True, sometimes you get 37 kills but that’s not often, at least not for me. And your honor for winning would be the 188 plus 5 per kill and that’s not counting any flag captures or returns.

I’m a super twink. One on one with a non-twink isn’t much fun for either of us. I try not to feed my ego by focusing on that. I score my personal battleground experiences differently. I’m trying to move the flag. It doesn’t matter if we win or I get any kills. My score is marked by how I’ve done moving or protecting the flag. My score doesn’t appear on the battle ground wrap-up screen, but I know how I’ve done.

We visited the Deadmines last night. On the blimp ride from Orgrimmar to Grom’gol Basecamp we saw a level 60, lieutant-General Shaman. His armor and weapons were dripping fire and bubbling, it was quite a sight, very impressive. I’m sure he is proud of his accomplishments. We will never reach that level. The time commitment to play, at that level, is beyond us. Still, we take pride in what we do.

The run to Deadmines is dangerous for three level 20 horde. Right outside Basecamp are high level 30s more than willing to chase you as far as necessary. Our Mage and Priest died before reaching the road. The rest of the run through Stranglethorn Vale was harrowing, we stopped on bridges to heal, but we got through.

Our entrance to Deadmines was easy. The alliance players we pass usually /wave or /rude. Low level Alliance players don’t see many Horde around those parts. We gave them a thrill. More so the Tauren Warrior than the Undead casters I suppose. We pay them no mind. We are a killing machine and they are not. They probably don’t realize the contempt we feel for them Much as the Shaman on the blimp felt for us, if he noticed us at all.

I like Deadmines. Pulls are clean, the only traps are the walkers and you can anticipate them. There is just enough chaos to keep everybody awake, not enough to get everybody killed. We did die once though. Three elite “anticipated” walkers showed up early, just as Mark pulled two other elite walkers. I foolishly aggroed two more non-elite and we were hosed. Everything else was great. We didn’t quite make it to the boss at the end, the one with the 4 friends, because we ran out of time. We’d planned on camping outside and running the instance again next fight-night, but there wasn’t much challenge for us and we have no quests in there so we hearthstoned home.

I’m starting to like playing Mage. I did the math on my nukes – calculating mana efficiency. Recent upgrades changed my spell lineup somewhat. I want to do as much damage as I can with as little mana cost as possible. I’m also starting to appreciate the nuance of when and where to use different spells. Mark was holding great aggro last night so I was able to do constant damage without attracting attention. I also tried some underused spells to see where they fit.

We all dinged 21. Mark picked up some new shoes and legs, Mike got some + healing wrists and I upgraded my back and gloves. It was a good night for loot and experience. A good time was had by all. Here’s to many more of the same.

Well, Mark’s Warrior died twice going into Wailing Caverns. Just past the sea monster pool we decided to run for the instance. Mark didn’t make it. There were a couple of higher level players around and Mark got a rez from one of them. He died again /sigh. We were just able to rez him again and zone.

We died twice more inside, but that was from getting over-run. I think we had six on us at one point, shortly before we died. And it wasn’t as if we were expecting them. We were doing one guy, another showed up, then a bunch more.

With voice chat we were able to change the plan mid-fight a couple of times because of changing situations. It’s fun when we have to adjust quickly. It can get repetitive otherwise. Without voice we had to read each others minds. It didn’t always work.

Mark got the shield drop from the big turtle. Mike and I didn’t get any keeper drops that I remember. It was another leather drop kind of evening. It always seems we get mostly leather drops. I’m not sure that’s true though. The non leather drops are usually lower than what we already have so they don’t register as anything important. That’s my un-scientific theory.

I’m finding the Mage life a bit simple most of the time. Nuke, nuke, nuke, nuke, nuke, drink. I suppose it will change with the higher instances and the multi-mobs they bring.

I built my new computer and am quite happy with it. Initially, I installed Linux ubuntu 6.06, but everything ran slow. I tried a few other distros then installed ubuntu 6.10, the newest and greatest. It’s plenty snappy now.

I spent a couple hours trying to get it to play DVD’s without success. I found many helpful, “do this and it will work”, walk-through on the web. None of them solved my problem. Eventually I wondered why the file system was calling the empty drive “CD-Rom.” A quick check on the box confirmed it is a CD Drive and not the DVD I’d intended to buy.

It’s not so bad. The CD in my main box has been flaky lately anyway. It’s from two computers ago. I purchased a DVD drive today and expect that will solve everything.

Another excitement is the arrival of my new iPod shuffle. It’s even smaller than I expected. I think it will be easily lost. I’ve not put any music on it yet. That’s for after we trash Wailing Caverns in World of Warcraft tonight.