Wrathin’ It Up, and a Hardware Question

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Wrathin’ it up: Queklain has not gotten far past level 70 (in Howling Fjord) (FOR THE FJORD!!), maybe half the bar, because for the most part I’ve been

  1. playing my baby Death Knight, and

  2. moving into my new apartment

The downside of the new apartment thing is that I’ve got no internet access until Friday, thus leaving me Wrathless. Alas!

Hardware question: Right now, my graphics card natively supports dual monitors (both DVI). I think I’d like to upgrade to 3. I’m wondering if the Matrox DualHead2Go would work, because I don’t really want to install a new motherboard, new second graphics card, and so on and so forth. I’m quite content with all the hardware inside my computer, I’m just looking to screw around with the hardware outside my computer. Anyone know?

(This desire to screw with hardware is why I’m also thinking of getting a Belkin n52, after reading Phae’s article. A lot of the shortcomings of my keyboard setup could be fixed by the n52, but I worry I wouldn’t adapt to it and then I’d have an expensive blue glowing paperweight.)

(RP) Life, Death, and Rebirth(?)

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“Wake up, zufli.” I had hoped ta never hear dat word again.

I was once one a’ you - a proud member of da Horde. Darkspear by birth, mon, and dey named me Shi when I was a baby. I grew up hearin’ da voices of da spirits. Da Earth, da wind, and da fire. All my life dey spoke to me, and when I came of age, I got a new name. Zulshi.

Yet no matta how strong a troll woman be, when it come to de witch doctors, dere’s still the laughs behind my back. “Zufli,” dey called me when dey thought my ears were too far from dere words. Or “Zuflishi,” mockin’ my very name! A shaman’s ears are never too far, though, and many paid for callin’ me a baby witch.

Da life of a troll is war, mon. My mojo be strong… or it was. Many seasons I fought for da Horde - against da Alliance, against da Burning Crusade, you name it. Best believe I sent many, man and woman alike, to dere graves. And all through dis, the spirits spoke to me; and all through dis, I was still a zufli to many. No more dan a child, dey think. Mebbe it was da rage that kept me fightin’, but whateva’ it was, I met my match in da Plaguelands.

The next thing I rememba’, was not hearin’ da spirits. For da first time in my life, I heard silence. Then I heard dat voice. “Wake up, zufli,” it said. Sometin’ unnatural, dat voice, and it thought it was funny. I did what comes natural, of course - I tried to call on da storm, send a bolt into da speaker… and nothin’. Da spirits had abandoned me.

But death had not. Bad juju, dis fella had - skin like a corpse and eyes like ice. He chilled me to da bone - or woulda, if I could feel cold. All I felt was da rage.

He instructed me, now dat I was dead. Said I was one a’ his Death Knights. At first I rememba’ thinkin’ - do I wanna turn my back on da spirit world? Think, Zulshi! But da spirit world nevah gave me nothin’ but trouble. Trouble and anger. At least I can put dis to constructive use. His words made a lot of sense, it seemed ta me.

He told me I would have my revenge - just a few days now. I like de sound a’ dat. He said I could call ma’self Zulshi again if I want; no one gonna mess wit’ me anymore. But new lives bring new names.

Don’ sleep too soundly, Azeroth. Horde and Alliance alike, Zulfon be comin’ for ya! Each death, each soul will only make me stronga’!

Azzaga choogo zinn!

Thinking Out Loud: A Death Knight To-do List

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I’m big on lists, can you tell? Here’s my current running to-do list for my Death Knight, but first I need your help: leave me a comment to tell me which shirt you think my Death Knight (a troll female) should be sporting. This can include pretty much any of the shirts save for ones I’d have to go into an instance to get, or ones that are sold in Dalaran.

This is, of course, the most serious of serious businesses.

Without further ado, on to the list:

  1. Bags. Death Knights start with four Deathweave Bags, for a total of 48 bag slots. I know I have the netherweave to upgrade that to at least four Netherweave Bags (going from 48 to 64) right off the bat. The mats for Frostweave Bags are a little prohibitive, but if I ask around I might be able to get up to Imbued Netherweave Bags (grand total of 72 slots). This’ll actually be one of my only active alts with four bags (the other being my priest). Huh.

  2. Check the Auction House for Death Knight glyphs (note to self: do this before Death Knights are rollable, as prices may shoot through the roof soon). Currently thinking Glyph of Chains of Ice (major), Glyph of Frost Strike (major), Glyph of Blood Tap (minor), Glyph of Death’s Embrace (minor), and Glyph of Horn of Winter (minor). That last major slot that I’ll gain while leveling can wait.

  3. Give more thought to a build. Definitely know I want to go Frost. Leaning towards something like this.

  4. Find a shirt!

  5. Mail bags and shirt to new Death Knight, whose name I still need to pick (never fear; I have a list).

In theory I could also farm up items for the Light’s Hope Chapel repeatable turn-in quests… but I’m just not that concerned about my Death Knight making friends with the Argent Dawn, ya dig?

See You on the Other Side!

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That to-do list I made yesterday? It’s amazing how a day can change things, isn’t it?

  • I won’t be getting Scourge Invasion epics for the wonder twins because the Scourge Invasion rather abruptly ended - or rather, stepped up a bit. I kind of felt sorry for Vandersloot; he picked up the quest Light’s Hope Chapel on his pally the day before, but the quest endpoint vanished before he had a chance to get the quest or get any epics for his pally. Alas - but I’m sure I won’t miss it too much at 68.

  • I won’t be doing dailies because I’ll be moving! I don’t think it had hit me exactly how close to Wrath Day we really were.

  • 2 down, 3 to go: I hit exalted with Orgrimmar last night. They join Undercity as a faction I no longer have to grind rep for. I also got my wolves, as well as my Frostwolf Howler, and because of that pesky moving thing, I won’t be getting a PvP mount - as I had hoped to do.

  • On the other hand, I can pretty much put all my marks towards that - I don’t need the spellblade quite so much, because I picked up Wub’s Cursed Hexblade in Z’A last night.

So, yes. A great deal of this is from the unfortunate fact that moving week coincides with Wrath Week (Wrath Day, Wrath Week, they’re both holidays in my book). I doubt I will be seen much on the game itself, though I do have a post to make later (with screenshots) - the lovely Anna - one of them, anyway - took me on a tour of a portion of Elwynn Forest I’d never seen.

Which, in turn, resulted in a short trip to Stormwind to fish up a mud snapper. You wouldn’t think those guards would be so touchy!

TL;DR: I’ll be blogging, but as far as actual playing goes? I’ll see you in Wrath!

WHad Libs, Vol. 2

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Back on 9/11/08, Rhoelyn at PoC posted a fun little activity spawned from BA itself: WHad Libs. (That’s WH as in Wowhead, natch.) The idea is simple: a piece of text is posted, not necessarily WoW-related in the least (heck, it’s funnier if it’s not), with various pieces of text underlined. Your job, fellow blogger (or commenter, if you don’t have a blog) is to fill in the underlined portions with links to Wowhead - preferably items, quests, spells, or achievements, so that we get the nice hovering tooltips.

Well, round 2 never appeared, so I figure what the heck - let’s throw something out there and see who (or what) bites. I’ll go with a real classic this time; from the works of Charles Dickens comes a passage that pretty much everyone except Matt will know.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

– from “A Tale of Two Cities”

Wrath: The To-Do List

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Things to do before Wrath:

  1. Dailies, religiously

  2. Scourge Invasion epics for Eladhon and Xajek

  3. Grind Horde city rep with Queklain (no way I’ll hit exalted with all 5 by the 13th, but I can at least get Orgrimmar)

  4. Level Eladhon and Xajek

  5. Nail down a name for my DK and reserve it for good

  6. PVP for any of the following: Merciless Gladiator’s Spellblade, Horn of the Frostwolf Howler, PVP mount (any) (edit: got my howler!)

Things to do before Wrath, in real life:

  1. Pack

  2. Move at least a couple loads of stuff to the new apartment per night

  3. Get an oil change that morning, since I have the day off

I’m not the only one making to-do lists, but mine seems to be shortest. For people with far more drive than me, check out what Anna and Chris are doing, and as long as you’re absorbing things in list form, check out BRK’s Alliance-based top ten reasons for starting in each half of Northrend!

The Farm at the End of the World

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As some of you are probably aware, I like exploring in WoW. I find it pretty neat to wander off to places that maybe have been forgotten, lost, unfinished, closed-off, you name it. (Which is the reason that one of my random banner pics has a picture of me atop Ironforge - way, way atop Ironforge.)

Well, last night, I decided I was going to go visit a place I’d only heard about, but not seen with my own two eyes - the Farm at the End of the World.

Come along, my friends, for a three-hour tour… well, okay, it was a lot less than three hours.

/follow

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Has anyone else noticed any weirdness with autofollow lately? I posted about it on the forums here (let the flaming and trolling ensue, I’m sure), but I’ll repost here to see if anyone else has noticed this behavior:

The reason I ask about autofollow is this.

Pre-3.0.2: I started dual-boxing two characters (thanks Recruit-a-Friend) by running two instances of WoW on the same computer. Autofollow seemed to have a problem where if I ran too far ahead of the secondary character with the primary one, he’d lag behind, take stupid paths by attempting to follow a straight line, and eventually would break autofollow by falling too far behind.

Post-3.0.2, pre-3.0.3: Suddenly, in Echoes of Doom, autofollow worked like magic. Nothing I did could cause my secondary character to break autofollow - he would even follow me around corners. I could run at top speed through cities like Silvermoon City or Orgrimmar without him getting stuck on barriers or trying to run through a corner in a hallway. I could take narrow paths in instances and out in elevated areas without any problems. No changes in my hardware or network connection were made during this time - in fact, it worked even through the lagstorms of Echoes of Doom.

Post-3.0.3: Autofollow is back to its pre-3.0.2 behavior. No changes in my hardware or network again, but now autofollow is back to ‘stuttering,’ lagging, and eventually breaking autofollow. The ‘pathing’ behavior I saw seems to have been borked too - whereas before I could follow a twisting road with no difficulties, last night my secondary character fell off a cliff in Feralas because he decided to run straight across a curve in the road. Whoops.

I guess what I want to know is - was the behavior I witnessed during 3.0.2, prior to 3.0.3 just a coincidence? Considering I didn’t change any the resources on my end at all, it feels like a bug, but if a blue confirms there were no changes to autofollowing, I’m willing to accept that it probably was just sheer luck that it worked marvelously for a couple weeks.

It’s kind of a pain in the ass dualboxing when one of my characters continually falls off cliffs or gets left behind in instances. At least he lets me know when it happens.

The Patch, It Is A-comin’

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(To the tune of The Times They Are A-Changin’ by the esteemed Mr. Dylan)

Come gather ‘round players, from every realm come
And admit that maintenance day has begun
And accept it that soon you’ll be nerfed to the ground
If your class is worth playin’, then you better start whinin’
Or you’ll lose a raid spot
For the patch, it is a-comin’

Come players under 50, who need mana too
And easier mounts, for the lazier noobs
Don’t taunt the warlock, they’ve got Infernals indoors
But up against rogues we’ll still get to eat floor
Pity the paladins - bubblewings no more
Oh wait, that was a hotfix

Cats got nerfed again, you can kiss them goodbye
Aspect of the Viper can’t make up its mind
Don’t expect more weird omens, no more potent shivs,
But more fury warriors will be rockin’ kung-fu grips
Hope you’re prepared for more night elves on stealth
Bears’re going slightly berserk - maybe they miss the health
Blizzard keeps changing spells we don’t have yet
With the patch that is a-comin’

Divine Plea’s no longer affected by haste
At least Judgements of the Wise won’t go to waste
Even if you don’t get back more of your own
Your three-target taunt’s more often cooled down
But hey, let’s be honest: we know what’s up with this
Ghostcrawler forgot non-ret pallies exist
In this patch that is a-comin’

Someone at Blizzard finally turned on spellcheck
And someone else stabbed Glyph of Souls in the neck
We’ll have more ’the Halloweds’ than Murlocs or gnomes
It almost makes me want to just keep Jenkins on
So let’s QQ and move on in our MMO plights
‘Cause let’s face it, in one week we’ll all roll Death Knights
But for the now - the patch is a-comin’

New Addon: ViperWatch 1.0

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What is ViperWatch?

ViperWatch is an addon for hunters (written by yours truly, and inspired by Fimlys). If you are in any Aspect other than Aspect of the Viper and your mana falls below a certain percentage (defined by you), a message will appear along with a sound, alerting you to switch into Aspect of the Viper.

More importantly, however, if you are in Aspect of the Viper and your mana goes to or above a certain percentage - say, full - ViperWatch will remind you to switch out of Aspect of the Viper, using the same mechanism.

Either of these alerts, as well as the sound effect, can be turned on or off individually.

You can download ViperWatch from Curse or WoW Interface.

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