I am sure this topic has been covered, but among all my other fails I fail at searching.
I have noticed a string of my recent posts covered how I fail, often epically. I would like to see how others fail.
I think it is very good for newer players to see how those of us make dumb mistakes, even though we have been at this for quite a while.

Never let it be said I’m not a resource to others. Let’s see how badly I’ve failed, shall we?

• After the Great Talent Reset of 3.0, I spent 20 minutes wondering why I couldn’t summon my Felguard. At least I wasn’t alone in the confusion.
• You know, I’m noticing a trend. Just last week I took a long time trying to figure out what was missing from my bars when I respecced Unholy, then once I figured out it was Unholy Blight, I couldn’t figure out where the button was. Did they change it so badly that I needed to return to a trainer? Only after several rounds of the “open spellbook, open talent sheet” dance did I actually mouse over the now-passive talent.
• My ghoul was once a continuous source of fail for me. I used to have a pet attack macroed into most of my strikes. That is, until I figured out that if I didn’t have a target (say, because my current target had died), and I was aimed towards the next pack of trash, my ghoul would promptly leap into the next pack of trash with a sort of glee.
• I also used to do this with my felguard in Kara constantly. I remain amazed that my guild at the time didn’t hunt me down and kill me.
• Speaking of that guild, my recruitment story was a fail. Y’see, leveling up, I had actually completely skipped Hellfire Ramparts (which is really not hard to do at all). So when I got invited to do Heroic Ramparts with the people who would later be my future guildmates, I of course didn’t know about Omor the Unscarred’s Bane of Treachery. So I may have sorta-kinda caused a wipe by getting it cast on me and standing directly in front of the tree druid. To be fair, no one told me not to stand in front of the tree.
• There were also a few times in Kara that I failed to watch where I was going and fell off ledges, usually into the library. Whoops.

However, I never – ever – moved in a Flame Wreath. That, after all, would blow up the raid.

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Shared Topic: Fails

I’m not entirely able to explain why I hate this, but I think it’s the same thing as why I don’t play on PvP servers: if I want to PvP, I’ll go PvP. If I don’t, I don’t. By throwing in these achievements, in order to receive two tangible in-game rewards (the title and, eventually, the mount), Blizzard is essentially saying “suck it up: you have to go do PvP, no matter how much you hate it.” Yeah, I know, no one is forced to do them, but no one is forced to get a 2200 arena rating either: arena people arena because they enjoy that, and I hunt achievements because I enjoy that, but when my achievements force me to do meaningless PvP-based sub-achievements? Screw it. Holidays can piss off.

On top of that, I don’t even think Blizzard has completely thought through how these holiday PvP achievements work. I wouldn’t want to be a battleground-runner this week. I had a feeling that hundreds of non-PvPers struggling to complete objectives that more or less pit them against their own team and the other team would be an… inhospitable environment. Apparently I was right. Euripedes has a plea from the PvP side of the fence for Blizzard to please, stop this nonsense:

So here’s a suggestion, Blizzard:

Stop it.

Seriously.

Nobody likes it this way.

The people who want to PvP are frustrated because their battlegrounds are filling up with these incompetent morons who haven’t the slightest idea what to do and have absolutely no will to change that.

The people who don’t want to PvP are frustrated because they have to participate in something that, at best, has no interest to them and, at worst, is akin to smashing their face into mirrors and then stabbing themselves in the legs with the shards.

You want to have these people participate in PvP for an achievement? Fine. Then do it this way:

• Win all five battlegrounds with your orphan out!

Shazam. You still force them to do something they don’t want to do, but at least this time they don’t have to completely screw up the battleground to do so.

Let me clarify: I’m not totally against PvP achievements. I think forcing them into the meta-achievement is a stupid idea, but I can understand maybe they’re there to give the event a more well-rounded flavor. Fine. What I am against is poorly-designed PvP achievements. Here’s a few examples of what I consider good and bad PvP achievement design:

• Well-Designed
• G.N.E.R.D. Rage. Neither side is negatively-impacted by the G.N.E.R.D.S. buff. If you die, applying the G.N.E.R.D.s buff is super-easy, because you get them out of every damn candy bucket in Azeroth, and you can trade them between people – so if you’re out, but your buddy has a ton, just let him give you some before you queue up. In fact, this one has the bonus that you can do it anywhere – world PvP, Wintergrasp, Battlegrounds, maybe Arenas even. You name it, if you can get an HK, you can finish G.N.E.R.D. Rage.
• Rotten Hallow (H). This is the Horde PvP Hallows’ End achievement, and it’s really only PvP in the loosest sense of the term. It’s quick, it’s fun, and on some servers (Feathermoon, looking at you) it’s not even going to get you flagged or attacked.
• Elders of the Alliance / Elders of the Horde. It might not be the easiest achievement for some people (heck, you might have spent some time running around the city as a ghost looking for the elder), but at the very least, you could strip naked and corpse-run your way to victory. It may not be easy or enjoyable, but it’s sure as hell not going to run anyone else’s day.
• All the Midsummer events: Desecration of the Horde / Desecration of the Alliance and King of the Fire Festival. I did these before there was an achievement for them on Queklain (well, I think I missed a few fires in Outland), and I look forward to doing them again as Zulfon. Stomping out fires is quick and easy and earns you a skirmish here and there from dedicated defenders (unlike Rotten Hallow, stomping out the fires does flag you), and as for the city fire retrieval… these things are a lot easier to find than the elders (well, except for Orgrimmar’s, because we have bonfires everywhere all the time – but in, say, Stormwind, a bonfire in the park really sticks out), and sneaking from spot to spot as a non-stealth class? Hell, it was like Metal Gear Solid meets World of Warcraft. One of my fondest memories was riding into Stormwind on my dreadsteed, stealing the fire of Stormwind, sprinting north, and jumping into the canals; the guards gave up, though an intrepid hunter didn’t. Deep underwater, I died, then self-rezzed… then, sneaking through the canal system of an unfamiliar city, I made my way nearly all the way to the castle itself without ever drowning. Finally, I found a boat next to a low section of the wall… leaping out, I mounted up my dreadsteed again and rode like a bat out of Hell to the tram, /cackle’ing all the way IRL. It was awesome, and I look forward to doing it again (and finishing it as Queklain – Flame Keeper Queklain seems apropos for a warlock!).
• Poorly-Designed
• Rotten Hallow (A). The Alliance side of the Rotten Hallow achievement is at least partially like the Horde one, in that they have a “crash the party” achievement, and the wickerman area well outside of Undercity is arguably even easier to get to than the Southshore Inn. The issue is the other half of the achievement: the Alliance is relying on being around the Inn when someone from the Horde does their Hallows’ End thing to get this finished. This is ultimately unfair, and if this is the design Blizzard truly wanted, than the Horde should have been forced to clean up the mess at the wickerman as well.
• With a Little Helper from My Friends. This would have been a lot better if there was a Winter Wondervolt machine in the battlegrounds and in Wintergrasp, or if the buff didn’t wear off after death. I tried doing this one: tons of gnomes show up, swarm out, get a few HKs, die, lose the buff, and /afk out to get a new one rather than wasting their time. Great job on this one, Blizzard. </sarcasm>
• And lastly, the inspiration for this, School of Hard Knocks. I don’t curse often, so when I do, you know I mean it: Blizzard Entertainment World Event Designers, what the fuck were you thinking? I entirely agree with ‘rip: if this had been “win once in each Battleground with your orphan out,” this would have been (1) entertaining, (2) possibly enjoyable, and (3) at least contributing to the point of the battleground, i.e., to win. As it is? Let’s take Eye of the Storm: not only does your average PvE achievement hunter not bother taking any towers this week, you also end up with a giant clusterfuck around the center flag, with no one doing any kind of D and eventually a win is achieved (for the other team, of course) via the towers because there were only 2 people on your team who weren’t chasing the flag and only the flag. Alterac Valley and Arathi Basin are even worse, I’m sure: I don’t dare poke my head in to find out.

So no, you won’t see me in Alterac Valley with an orcish orphan trying to keep up, or letting the Alliance cap farm so I can take it back and get a quarter of an achievement. That’s not my style. Brewfest? Midsummer Fire Festival? I’m all over those. But as for my orphan… all he gets is a day away from the orphanage, and I get a pig and a beholder.

Sorry Blizzard: maybe next year, if you’ve started thinking these things through.

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Orphans? Bah

Yeah, that sums up 3.1 pretty nicely, for me. I won’t lie, there’s good parts to it – I’m liking my death knight and warlock (yes, you read that right, warlock) better than ever, and love the new options available to most of my toons. The Argent Tournament is fantastic – I absolutely love it. But everything else? Frustrating.

Last night, it came in threes:

1. I ran into a delightful bug with the dual spec feature. Mild compared to others, but consistent. Non-spellcasters who have abilities in their talent trees where rank 1 is bought with talents and every rank afterwards is bought from a trainer will find that often switching between trees removes the lowest such talent and anything below it. This means that every time I switch to my DPS spec, I have to reapply 7 points into the Blood tree; when I switch to tank, everything between Frost Strike and Howling Blast needs to be retalented. I can only imagine how annoying this would be for Unholy DKs; if I’m wrong and it’s the highest, not the lowest, everything between Corpse Explosion and the bottom of the tree could potentially get removed.
2. I’ve been trying for a while to get a spot in a 25-man team with members of The Aftermath. Unfortunately my contact guy and I have been missing each other. Last night we finally got in touch and he says “hey, you want to come do 25-man Emalon with us?” New boss? Of course I want to go! So I hearthed from Outland, where I had been working on Loremaster stuff, to Northrend and notice we don’t have Wintergrasp. Wuh-oh. We fielded maybe 40-ish people in our group, with a few more besides… and still had from 3 to 7 stacks of Tenacity at all times. In short, it was an enormous lagfest that we lost through sheer numbers. So, no Emalon.
• Also? I doubt we’d have been able to go to Emalon if we’d won. The instance servers had been down for going on four hours at that point and showed no signs of recovery.
3. Oh, and then I disconnected, and the B.net login servers were fried, so I couldn’t get back on for at least an hour, maybe more, by which time my desire to log on had completely waned. Instead, I watched the debut episode of Pitchmen (Billy Mays is awesome) and played … incoming blasphemy… City of Heroes.

So yeah, that’s how 3.1 is for me: so good, it drove me to another MMO. Parts of it are good, but much like when 3.0.8 came out, the game is in a largely unplayable state at the moment. So how’re things for you?

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3.1: The Frustration of Ulduar

1. What is your name and where did it come from?
• Zulfon’s name is fairly adequately explained in this earlier post.
• Queklain’s name… well, there you go.
• I’m feeling generous, so here’s some more alt names. Valmafra, my blood elf hunter, is from the same source material. She used to be called Eladhon, which was generated by the random name generator in WoW and had the unfortunate side effect of my guildmates referring to him as ‘Aladdin.’
• Xajek, my troll priest, is another random name. In this case the generator generated ‘Xaj’ and I added ‘ek’ pretty much by tapping a random vowel and a random consonant.
• Galehorn and Whitebough, tauren shaman and tauren druid respectively, got their names by being modeled vaguely after existing tauren names.
2. How old are you and what is your birthday?
• Queklain: “Time is meaningless to the dead. My birthday is every day, as far as I’m concerned, since I’m still alive. Undead. Whatever. Flee, mortal, you’re beginning to bother me…”
• Zulfon: “I was mebbe 20, 21 years old. Jus’ a few years as an adult. Now dat I’m like dis, though… I’m as ageless as he is.” She jerks a thumb to indicate Queklain, who is nodding off in a chair. “Birthday, though, is August sevent’. And don’ you forget!” She grins a little bit, exposing her small tusks.
3. Are you in love and with whom?
• Queklain and Zulfon (in unison): “Hah!”
4. What is your favorite mount and why?
• Queklain: “My Frostwolf Howler. It was truly an honor,” he says, his voice dry, “to help our Horde brethren in Alterac Valley, for which they bestowed upon me this wolf.” Under his breath, he mutters, “They sure as hell wouldn’t have made it on their own.”
• Zulfon: “Malfas, mah purple nethawing drake. ‘S a sign of my pact with de Nether Flight, and mah work underminin’ Illidan. And a far deal comfier than dem bony birds mah brethren ride.”
5. Do you prefer a certain type of Azerothian meal and where do you get it from?
• Queklain: “Gnome.”
• Zulfon: “Dat’s disgustin’.”
• Queklain: “Don’t knock it till you’ve feasted upon its freshly-slain corpse.”
• Zulfon gags a little. “Food don’ quite taste like it used ta, so I go for de more exotic flavahs. Spiced wyrm burgers, that kin’ of ting.”
• Queklain: “Gnome’s kind of exotic.”
6. You know those giant mushrooms in Zangarmarsh? What is your theory on how they came to be and why are they so huge?
• Queklain: “You know how mushrooms grow on dead things, right? Well, look at Draenor. I rest my case.”
• Zulfon: “Ain’t nothin’ right about Outland. I worry less ‘bout de giant mushrooms and more ‘bout de ones walkin’ about.”
7. If you saw the Lich King walking towards you, what would you do?
• Queklain: “Oh, doubtlessly flee in abject terror. I’m surely no match for a man who – oh, wait, who can be wounded by a single apothecary with a batch of blight. Bah.” Queklain waves his hand dismissively. “Lich King, Bitch King.”
• Zulfon: “Well, it’s not like it’d be de first time, now is it?” She grins again, this one a bit more predatory. “Dere’s always a price to pay for betrayal, and we bot’ done betrayed each otha, so dere’d be hell to pay all around.”

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Fine, fine, since you asked

I saw a thread over on my realm forum which I really enjoyed, thought I’d mention the same over here.

High level fishermen (or fisherorcs, fisherbulls, etc) can fish in the Dalaran Eventide fountain and catch, occasionally, coins that figures from WoW history have thrown in, complete with the wish they made when they did so etched on the coin. My favorite is Landro Longshot, who wished "I wish i still had that coin." Amusing from the purveyor of TCG loot items.

With that in mind, if someone caught your coin from the fountain in Dalaran, what would it say on it? I’ll start.

Palehoof Geargrinder’s Shiny Silver Coin:

"I wish I knew how to make a Mechanostrider!"

http://usera.imagecave.com/Palehoof/Portraits/Pinktoque%20Palehoof.jpg

Bornakk later chimes in:

Bornakk’s copper coin: There are so many cool coins and you got mine, poor you!

As for me… hmmmm. We could go serious:

Zulfon’s Gold Coin: I wish to hear the spirits again… and for them to hear me too.

Or silly:

Queklain’s Shiny Copper Coin: They keep telling me not to stand in stuff. I wish the ground wasn’t so dangerous.

Or both:

Whitebough’s Silver Coin: I wish I could muster up the energy to wander out of town!

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What would your fountain coin say?

Well, I had two. Twin unicorns? I tried, tried, and tried again to get the Hex-Shrunken Head and Amani Divining Staff time and time again. The Hex-Shrunken Head only dropped once, and one of our shadow priests beat me by 1 on a roll for it… grr. As for the divining staff? Well, let me just sum up our loot mojo like this: we had six Tuskbreakers in a row. Six. SIX. SIX FREAKIN’ TUSKBREAKERS. We don’t even have six actively-raiding gun users! The last week we ran Zul’aman? Rage.

The last week we ran Zul’aman, though, I guess the game was feeling sorry for me: it finally let me replace my crappy main-hand non-heroic dungeon blue with Wub’s Cursed Hexblade. When I finally get around to leveling Queklain, that’s what he’ll be swinging into Wrath with.

So what’s your unicorn?

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What’s your unicorn?

My blacksmithing lags behind, at 277. Oh, sure, I could go pick up Master Blacksmithing too, but there’s really no point: none of the Outland blacksmithing plans are available until 300, so it’s a few more hours of running around Silithus. Silithus really is my new favorite place, especially when compared to my old favorite (Winterspring, which was remarkably devoid of nodes the last two nights) and my old old favorite (Burning Steppes). Three major “sets” of locations, usually 2-3 nodes per location, 4-5 ores per node? Yes, please! Sign me up. And if it means slaughtering the occasional bug, so much the better.

It’s been a thoroughly un-WoW weekend. Yes, I ran in circles mining and making blacksmithing stuff. I also stopped at one point to run Blackrock Depths by myself, which was quite a feat on my netbook (I was playing on my Acer Aspire One while watching the Colts game). For bonus points, if you’re soloing BRD: don’t kill anything in the room with Emperor Thaurissan before attacking him. It’s fun, I promise! And hey, I came out of it with a piece of gear I can actually use. Shut up, shirts are gear.

Sadly, I have no new information for aspiring Death Knights today. I did do one bit of experimenting lately: I tried out Skeleton Jack’s dual-wield build. For the first few minutes, it was mostly me bringing up my sword skill, and after that… well, I wasn’t terribly impressed. Me plus a ghoul with that build, puts out less than me by myself in my currently 17/54/0 build. I changed back after an instance run or two. #1? I don’t think so. Maybe once Howling Blast comes off cooldown and is truly spammable when you have the ability to use it. Of course, there’s rumors Blizz might nerf the thing anyway, as they don’t want dual wield to dominate for Death Knights; part of me wonders if they’re regretting making that an option now. One benefit of dual-wielding, though: if both weapons have Rune of the Fallen Crusader on them, the effect of it is up all the time. Of course, it feels like it’s up on every fight now, so who knows.

I did log on several of my alts, fix their UIs, and mess with their spec a bit, then I played them to make sure they’re playable. Valmafra (née Eladhon) is now Survival-spec, which I’m not sure is ideal for leveling but is definitely where I want to take her eventually… so far, it works exactly like a BM Hunter without Bestial Wrath, which honestly I never used all that much anyway. Thunderfist the Gorilla still holds aggro while I shoot things, so that’s that. I do feel a touch more mana-efficient. I suspect things’ll speed up a bit once I get Steady Shot.

Xajek went Disc/Holy to Shadow, which I figured was appropriate since he was no longer following a hunter around, and… holy crap. I do not have the first clue how to play a shadow priest. I just kind of flail mindlessly at the Mind Flay, Vampiric Embrace, Shadow Word: Pain, and Mind Blast buttons until things die. Occasionally I remember that I can cast Power Word: Shield in Shadowform and do that too. My mana constantly hovers at about 50%, and my health… well, my health constantly hovers at about 100%. I need to find some good guides on shadowpriesting, if only so I can get Xajek some more levels. Eventually he’ll be healy!

I have this sneaking suspicion that part of my wants to heal: I’ve now started (and gotten to the mid-40s, at highest) a priest, a shaman, and a druid all with the intention to make them resto or holy, as appropriate, at the highest level. If I find myself starting a paladin too, then I’ll just conclude that apparently I’d like to make the health bars go right, too.

Happy new year to you all. What’ve you been up to lately?

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Running in circles, banging on rocks

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!

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Wrath: The To-Do List

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.

How to get there

The Farm at the End of the World (hereafter “The Farm”) is considerably easier to get to than, say, Old Ironforge, the pre-crater Dalaran, or even the Wetlands farm. Here’s a basic diagram (click to embiggen):

Step 0: Go to Tanaris.
Step 1: Go to the location above marked 1, swim to 2. (Or Water Walk + mount, for you shamans.)
Step 2: Keep going west until you get to the Farm.

Here’s a nice shot of area 2 (which actually is part of Land’s End Beach, which is part of the Explore Tanaris Desert achievement):

That’s actually facing out towards an island… I have no idea what it’s supposed to be. Undermine, perhaps? If you’re doing this below level 70, you’ll want to be careful on the beach – it’s full of nothing but aggressive level 50 Surf Gliders.

You’ll go past Un’goro (at least on the map) and zone into Silithus. You’ll know you’re making progress when you see the cliffs become a bit less sandy…

… and a bit more green.

Eventually, you’ll reach the most important landmark, and the #1 sign that you’ve reached the Farm: The Tree at the Edge of the Farm™. Trust me, you’ll be glad to see it.

And now you’re here! The Farm actually consists of two parts. One is a very deep cave that seems to differ slightly from the “standard WoW caves” you might see elsewhere:

It’s reminiscent of the yeti cave in Hillsbrad Foothills, but doesn’t go up nearly as far and is much deeper, with a few weird tunnels here and there. Here’s a screenshot looking down into the cave; I explored the whole thing, but it’s really nothing to look at – just rocks and human bones.

And the other half, which gives the Farm its name, is – of course – the farm. Initially I’d heard it was an orcish farm, and certainly the spiked fang fence would seem to give that impression, but upon closer inspection it’s actually a tauren farm! The windmills are a dead giveaway, of course, as is the fact that there’s a couple canoes parked onshore and – if you walk into the small farmhouse – the tauren “indoor” music starts playing.

It’s kind of an eerie place, much like the Wetlands farm, or the elf ruins you can get to by swimming from the Plaguelands around through where the Ghostlands should be. (Haven’t seen that one? I’ll make a post about it in the near future, too.) It’s worth a look, though, for any explorer worth their salt.

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The Farm at the End of the World

Now I’m related to Breana!

Sunday night I logged on to find 4 guildies pummeling LBRS out of existence; I asked if I could hop into their instances so I didn’t have to deal with the (admittedly) two pulls before Vaelen so that I could finish up the Seal of Ascension; they said yes. I revealed this would let us into UBRS and up we went!

And then I reminded them this is where we could get Leeeeeeeeeeeeeroy!, which we did handily. The Jenkins Clan continue to grow! We also went up and killed Rend Blackhand for good measure (I even did the thing with the seal and summoned Vaelastrasz) as well as General Drakkisath, at which point I picked up his brand.

Imbecile,

I hold very little faith in your ability to prevent outsiders from accessing the master’s lair. In the very likely event of your death, this orb has its own failsafe built in to prevent outsiders from teleporting directly into Blackwing.

Only those with the Mark of Drakkisath branded upon their hand may make use of this orb. Thankfully, Drakkisath is not nearly as incompetent as you, Quartermaster. He guards the brand himself!

-Warchief Rend Blackhand

P.S. Destroy this letter, idiot.

That is one stupid orc.

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Growing the family tree, 50 whelps at a time