Yesterday I tried the pet battle system and it just wasn’t working for me. Beta is beta, I said, and moved on. This morning I tried it again and not only was it working, it was working great. So I took a video of me fighting a few pet battles, and added annotations to (hopefully) make it more obvious what I was doing.
Without further ado, here’s the video, which shows Aobozu the monk and Gobbles the Plump Turkey wreaking havoc on Durotar.
I’ll freely admit: I love addons. I use a shit ton of addons. Even for things you can’t see in the picture above. Being on a computer where I don’t have my addons is like playing a wholly unfamiliar game. (Some of that is probably due to not having my n52te, which is the source of my weird actionbar layout, but I digress.) Yet in the Mists beta, I haven’t been playing with any addons, despite them being enabled for a few builds now. It would be easy to toss my entire addon directory into the beta folder, point the Curse Client at it, and hit update, but I haven’t yet.
And now for something no one cares about: a list of things I’m prepping for my monk in Mists. Mostly for my own benefit but I figure, hey, maybe someone else is thinking about it too.
As an aficionado of video game sound, I was extremely pleased to see an article on Massively today regarding the sound of The Secret World - specifically, bringing one of the big nasties from the first ‘dungeon’ to life, the Ur-Draug. It’s a neat little glimpse into the howtos and the direction of voicing a Lovecraftian godlike creature from the deepest darkest seas.
The Secret World actually has some pretty nice sound design. The voices sound a little less ridiculous than in early betas (where I was not very impressed with the game), and the music and ambient sound set the Weird Reality theme without overpowering it. Not a game to be played on mute. (Then again, I think playing most games on mute is a travesty.)
Oh, and if you want to find me in-game, I’m actually pretty easy for once - for some reason, no one jumped on the nickname StoppableForce. Go figure. Extra bonus points if you correctly nail source of the first and last name (and no, they’re not my first and last name).
(image: Ten Ton Hammer)
Well, we all know my fashion sense is a little lacking (in-game as much as out, perhaps), but I do love a challenge. That’s why I signed up for the Transmogolympics over on Amateur Azerothian. It seems like it’d pretty fun if you like mogging - creating nine outfits for the “medal events,” plus a flagbearer sporting the tabard of the faction you’ve been randomly assigned (for me, that’s Thunder Bluff!). No repeating race/sex combinations, either. Time to spend some quality time with MogIt and Model Viewer to produce outfits for:
After spending time with it, I’m more certain than ever that my initial impression of the monk class was correct: it’s like Blizzard came to me and ask me what I wanted in a class. Even down to the little things like “what weapons should they be able to equip?” - the monk is like the aspects of other classes that I like, but without most of the stuff that I don’t.
Due to the fact that some of the damage abilities are actually part of the healing rotation in times of low damage, it’s actually amazingly easy to level as a mistweaver monk compared to some healing specs. (You wouldn’t catch me dead trying to level as a holy paladin outside of instances, for example. I know it can be done, but it’s more aggravation than I intend to put up with.) It’s a little dull compared to the others, but it’s doable.
If you want to find me on the beta, look on the US PvE server (Lost Isles?) for Headstoned or Maztroz.
I spent a while out of the beta, letting things stabilize and hunting achievements on my live character - it didn’t help that I got into the beta around the same time that no one could do anything because CRASHES CRASHES CRASHES. It’s a lot better now, although - haha - I still haven’t seen Jade Forest as a result.
Here’s an odd quirk from account-wide-everything: on the beta, I have Mountain o’ Mounts - I don’t have this on live, on any character. I’m a little skeptical† - Zulfon has 62 mounts, and even being generous and discounting the two mounts added to every premade’s mount collection (Raven Lord and Crimson Pandaren Phoenix), that’s 38 mounts on some other character (namely my warlock, my only other live character that I’ve copied to the beta) that I don’t have on my death knight. Oh well. Beta weirdness! Maybe they just give it to everybody!
I think I could run around forever marveling at how pretty Pandaria is. My screenshots folder
seems to agree. Here, have another screenshot.
†So I punched it into Warcraft Mounts and was surprised to find that, well - my mounts don’t really overlap at all, but I have a little ways to go before hitting 100. (That number should be accurate for any of my current 85s, each of which has 2 class mounts.) I also found that every one of my 85s owns a White Kodo, for some reason.
Picking up the two Netherwing Drakes I haven’t bought for some reason will take me to 88, then goblin trikes will put me at 90. I’ve been working on Tol Barad; when I finish it, and pick up the drake and ghost wolf, there’s two more, for 92. Three easily-accessible mounts at the tournament - 95. After that, well… PvP mounts?
First off, I blame Rades.
After seeing his post about Goblinventory I couldn’t very well not give it a try, so that’s just what I did. It’s quick enough - especially now that they have a ‘show/hide all’ button so I was able to just hide my entire duplicate bank and inventory - and produces a really nice-looking page of your inventory. In fact, here’s Zulfon’s.
The Bloodsail Sash is listed as a consumable for some reason. It doesn’t even have an on-use effect… But this isn’t Goblinventory’s fault - it’s actually categorized as a consumable by Wowhead, andb the reason for that is because that’s what WoW thinks it is. I don’t even know sometimes.
† If you’ve never seen the Acherus Knight’s Girdle in action: it takes the texture of the top portion of whatever leg-piece you’re using. It does produce a very, very faint line which you can usually only see on armor with no waist, like in this screenshot; for all intents and purposes, the Acherus Knight’s Girdle is an invisible belt. This is a godsend for transmogrification.
†† Why yes, I do have two bags no longer available in the game, thanks for noticing.
I seriously need new bags. Netherweave? Really? I have a 525 tailor - this is just sad.
Not much to say here. I’m sure some people will point out I didn’t “really” achieve it since I didn’t get it before Shen’dralar went away as a faction, or before Darkmoon Faire became a once-a-month reputation-palooza, but… well… good for them. I’m still proud of my shiny new title, and happy to be done with it. (In case you’re keeping track, I started it sometime in the fall of 2009).
Big ups to @gakochun, who basically did the whole Ravenholdt part by himself and helped grind pirates to death for hours on end due to an abnormally high tolerance for things that are boring and grindy; without him, I would likely have had to level a rogue, and that never would have gone well.
And now… I think I’m going to level something for a while instead. My only other major goal on Zulfon is finishing Sulfuras, and that can wait for a little bit. Leveling: that sounds relaxing. I have several level 80+ alts and a few sub-80s asking for some quality time.
I don’t have any internet access at home at the moment, having just moved, so you get this instead: replace the Rookery with a bank and Leeroy’s fried chicken with a hot dog stand, and you get this re-imagining of the now-tired WoW gag video as a short heist film.
In case this is your first exposure to Leeroy Jenkins somehow - first off, let me say hello, and welcome to the internet - and after that, here’s KYM’s explanation of where exactly this whole Leeroy thing came from.
Last night as I was laying down to sleep, it came to me - the perfect name. This was a name I could use across multiple MMOs for my first character, a name which people would gradually come to associate (usually) with me, in the same way that some variant of ‘stop’ or ‘stoppableforce’ has. And then, like an idiot, I didn’t write it down, and instead I went to sleep.
At least I can get a blog post out of it. This is kind of a disjointed series of thoughts, and it all has to do with names.
