Where is Pookies?! August 26, 2009

Whoa! Yes, I have been MIA for a month. A couple of things have happened.
 
First of all, Trusty Rusty (my laptop from when I was still in school) finally freaked out and shut down–may he rest in piece. I am now using a computer my dad built sometime last year that has more up-to-date specs and (for some odd reason) an NVIDIA Geforce video card. I don’t ask questions. For the first time ever I have seen Dalaran while flying over Crusader’s Pinnacle. For the first time ever I have seen the Crystalsong Forest floor immediately after leaving Krasus’ Landing to search for Crystalsong Carrots. For the first time ever I have been able to see past the first set of pillar towers in Ulduar from Expedition Base Camp. I could go on, but I think you get the picture: my old computer was a real piece of shit.
 
So on top of my computer completely crapping out, I was also on vacation for most of August. I was gone for two weeks trying to help my mom settle into her new apartment in Hong Kong. While I was there we took a side trip to Beijing, which was a blast (as I had never been).
 

 
Ta-da! Here we’ve got my mom and I standing in front of a section of the Great Wall of China that we later climbed up.

 
But now I am here, back at the office. I resumed my officer duties on Monday when I got my first taste of the new 5-man TotC dungeon, and last night I was introduced to the first three bosses of the 10-man TotC raid before we killed Salt ‘n’ Pepa for the first time (and nabbed that achievement somewhat inadvertently and with only 9 raiders, TYVM).
 
It’s good to be back. We are still focusing the rest of our raid week on clearing Ulduar after all of the bosses in 10-man TotC have been downed, so hopefully we’ll have some new hard modes down soon. Especially since I read in Averna’s comments that they nerfed Freya in 3.2 …

B> Minorous Cards, Hydra Cards August 20, 2008

So yesterday I finally managed to get the cards together to card my +10 Double Titan Double Bloody Composite Bow for Raydric and Abysmal Knight hunting in Glast Heim. Oh … wait … World of Warcraft? Raiding? Yes, these sound like things I used to know of, perhaps in a past life …

Seriously though, so far we’ve had two no-go nights this calendar week. It’s a blessing in disguise, I suppose. You see, I have an old friend coming to stay with me this weekend (with a friend of his, no less). That’s right: two guys, a girl, and a three hundred square foot bachelor apartment. Hilarity is certain to ensue. I have a lot of cleaning to do before my guests arrive, and very little time in which to do it. Last night I spent scrubbing the bathtub and cutting, washing, and installing plastic cupboard lining sheets that I bought at Ikea two months ago.

Also, I’ve had more time to play Ragnarok with my brother, which is, of course, what I was referencing in the first paragraph of this post. Ragnarok is probably the most poorly tuned MMO in the history of mankind. Not to mention that gameplay and the UI are nothing short of tragic when compared to such games as WoW. But in a country where the most-played computer game is still Starcraft, I suppose just about anything goes.

On the WoW front … absolutely nothing to report! We’re still struggling with attendance and in the process of trying to recruit more. The sad thing is that attendance has been so poor that we haven’t even been able to pull our prospective recruits in for trial runs because the raids keep getting cancelled! Anyway, one of our recent applicants is a Canadian … and, on that note, I will leave you with this little nugget of wisdom:

The men and women behind the druids July 30, 2008

Yesterday morning I woke up at 05:20 to drop my parents off at the airport. It was tough watching them walk through the gate into the security area, not only because I love my parents very much and will miss them dearly, but also because my dad’s situation has been deteriorating during his stay in Canada (as expected, I suppose) and I can’t help but fear that I’ll never see him again.

I try not to include an overdose of real life-related content in what is supposed to be a WoW blog, but I think it is important to take a step back every once in a while and really dwell on the fact that, behind every toon, there is a human being.

I think that it is often far too easy to think of that awesome resto shaman as just an awesome resto shaman, or your guild’s MT as that guy who has to show up to every single raid or your raid is fucked.

Remember that behind each of your guild or raid members, there is a person that juggles WoW with his or her real life: work and/or school, family, partners, and friends.

Real life is important, and deserves priority over WoW. Now, don’t take that as my condoning flakey raid attendance. But when real life issues do come up, you should be able to opt to take time off, and your guild should be able to appreciate that. And if, for some reason, you are having trouble finding a balance between real life and WoW, then you need to get out of the game and get your priorities straight.

Anyway, /dismount soapbox.

In raiding, EoTS has reached another end-dungeon hurdle. You know the drill. All of the new bosses just fall, week after week, until you reach the boss at the end of the dungeon. I’ve seen it happen with Kael, Archie, and now Illidan.

The name of the game then becomes getting all of the trash bosses on a very familiar farm basis so they can be squished into one or two nights. The remaining time can then be spent working on the head honcho boss.

BT, like no other TBC dungeon before it, requires you to clear a whopping eight bosses in order to get to the end boss.

We are still really working on getting the first eight bosses on a fast farm. Bloodboil and Council are our biggest obstacles right now, with Gorefiend presenting a minor threat when our construct anchor doesn’t know what he’s doing. Consistency will come with time, and so will Illidan.

Onward!

Je suis très fatigue July 25, 2008

There are a bunch of us east coasters who raid with EoTS. Raiding with EoTS means that, Mondays through Thursdays, we have to stay up until 01:00 local time and then make it to school or work (or some combination thereof) the next day. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

One of our rogues will take off at 00:30 to hit the sack, unless we are on the verge of a kill or some other important breakthrough with no one to take his place.

My solution? Well, I would say, “BRB!” in raid chat, flag myself as AFK, and then go lay down and close my eyes for a couple of minutes. My bed is right beside my computer desk (oh, the joys of living in a bachelor apartment), so I would listen to Vent while I was laying down and get up to rejoin the group one or two pulls later.

Well, I tried this at about 23:30 on Wednesday night. Except, this time, I lay down to close my eyes for a few minutes, and when I woke up it was 01:10 (or 10 minutes after raid end time). Needless to say, trash naps are now strictly a thing of the past, and my new strategy for battling exhaustion involves copious amounts of Red Bull.

Fortunately, my raid was able to continue clearing without me, and killed Supremus and Shade while I just stood idly at the bottom of Supremus’ courtyard. (The first part of the night’s raid was spent in SSC since we didn’t have the numbers to go into Black Temple.)

Last night we cleared from Gorefiend to Mother. Now, I was in a serious bidding bind.

We have two loot rolling phases, the first (and more important) being the epic roll phase. Each raid member is only allotted one epic loot roll win per instance per week, and this roll is based on your guild rank. Officers and vet members roll out of 100. Active members (such as myself) roll out of 85. Lesser ranks roll out of 50 (normal member) and 25 (new member/recruit).

If no one wins an item during epic roll phase, then rolling moves on to the upgrade roll phase, where anyone may roll out of 100 and the wins do not count towards any weekly limit.

Now, I really wanted my T6 shoulders. I mean, have you seen these things? They’re full of sexy win. I’m also still wearing the 2.3 badge shoulders, so these would be a nice upgrade for me.

I also really wanted Shroud of Forgiveness from Bloodboil, which, in somewhere between four and six kills, has only dropped one other time (and I lost the roll).

I also really wanted Staff of Immaculate Recovery from Bloodboil, because, although it isn’t an upgrade for me by any stretch of the imagination, it’s just so damn cute. I call it Kristos-on-a-stick, after Kristos, EoTS’ GM, who is currently wearing the T5 helm and shoulders.

I knew that T6 pants were a very low priority for upgrade for me, since the SSO badge pants are technically better from a bonus healing standpoint, so there was no need for me to save my roll for that.

With all of this in mind, you can understand that my brain was working in overdrive when Bloodboil dropped the cloak and the staff, and what Mother was going to drop was in the air.

I decided to roll epic on the cloak. It was a huge upgrade (I was previously using Bishop’s Cloak—yes, it has been that long since I’ve gotten even the chance at a cloak upgrade). I’m not sure I would ever roll epic on the staff. It just isn’t worth it for something that will only be my Spellsurge/regen weapon.

Of course, Mother dropped a Vanquisher token later in the night, and one of our druids won it with an uncontested epic roll of 5. But that’s OK. I know that more Vanquisher tokens will eventually drop. As for Shrouds of Forgiveness, who knows how many more of those we will ever see.

Hiatus…es July 20, 2008

I meant to post about this earlier, but I ran out of time at work on Wednesday as I was trying to tie up loose ends before being away from the office for a couple of days.

For months my sister, my brother, and I have been anticipating the visit of our parents, who live in Hong Kong. We haven’t seen them since Christmas.

That visit is finally happening. My parents arrived on Wednesday night, and I had booked time off of work and raiding to spend time with them.

At the end of the weekend (tonight), my parents will move from my sister’s apartment downtown (which is a block away from me) to my grandparents’ place in the suburbs for a couple of days. This will allow them to spend some time with my grandparents as well as let the kids’ lives get back to normal for the duration of the working (and raiding!) week.

Here are a couple of family pictures we took on the second night my parents were here. L-R: Kurt (my sister’s fiancé), Genny (my sister), dad, mom, myself, and Greg (my brother).

If you’re wondering about dad’s hair, he was diagnosed with cancer and has been going through treatment since. That has added more importance to this visit, IMO, and thankfully the people at work and in my WoW guild have been very supportive of my taking time off to spend with him.

Anyway, expect things to return (pretty much) to normal this week as I’ll be in the office, and, therefore, trolling everyone’s WoW blogs!

Won’t you take me to Funkytown? June 30, 2008

This past week was Pride week, which is a huge deal in Toronto. I did not manage to make up any sleep this past weekend, as, even if I had chosen to stay in, I wouldn’t have been able to turn in early because I live in the middle of Toronto’s gay village and am therefore subject to the music blaring from the various beer gardens and stages set up around the village. Also, I was supposed to work on my résumé this weekend, but every time I tried to sit down and do that it suddenly became much more apparent to me that my entire apartment was vibrating. So I just opted to party.

And that brings us to the WoW-related portion of this post.

Last night I came home completely shit-faced, somehow managed to prepare a package of instant noodles (but not without spilling soup all over the stovetop), and logged on to find that my friend was using my horde hunter to run his druid (and a couple of tag-alongers) through Mara. I volunteered to control my hunter. I don’t remember most of the instance, much like I don’t even really remember leaving my friend’s apartment and staggering across the courtyard between our buildings to get home, but I do remember apologizing profusely for being so drunk on multiple occasions in party chat (at least, that’s what I was trying to type) and blabbering to my friend on Vent, attempting to explain to him how drunk I was (because that clearly required explaining) every time he asked me what the fuck I was doing. Shortly after downing Razorlash, and about halfway through my bowl of instant noodles, I tumbled into bed and passed out … probably much to the relief to all other parties involved with the run.

There was another time I came home from the bar, and, for reasons unknown, logged on to Pookies. As soon as I logged on, I received an invite to run heroic Underbog. At this point I was ready to go along with pretty much anything, so I accepted the invite and a summon. I only remember bits and part of the instance, but I was later told that I did a fine healing job. In fact, I was the only person who died during the entire instance run. And, apparently, I died a lot. And I was completely incoherent on Vent throughout the run. And I forgot to pick up most of the badges.

The moral of today’s post? Booze and WoW may not be a match made in heaven, but at least you get some funny stories out of it.

Pride has wound down here in Toronto, and things are returning to normal just in time for the raid week to start. Now, if only I could get this God-damned Funkytown remix out of my head.

Another week, another 16 hours of raiding June 16, 2008

It’s actually 18 hours committed to raiding each week if you consider that our presence is requested at half an hour before official raid time so we can begin putting the raid together. Not daunting at all.

I have resolved to spend my evenings and weekends doing things that don’t involve spending extended periods of time in the World of Warcraft. I tried this out for a couple of days last week, and it was … difficult. It turns out that I really don’t have much else going for me besides WoW, and I actually struggled to think of things to do between getting off of work and logging on for raid invite time.

I talked to my parents and siblings on MSN. I looked at old vacation photos on Facebook. I did some dishes. I tried not to pour myself a drink, because, FFS, I should really cut back on that, too.

On Saturday I went on my “last” weekend raid (I had already signed up weeks before). One of my guildies organized a badge extravaganza: back-to-back Karazhan and ZA.

Karazhan was sloppy as all fuck, but we managed to finish in about 2.5 hours. I actually rolled on some off set gear, as I’ll be working a little more diligently on Pookies’ damage set for when WotLK comes out. (I picked up the trash damage mace out of MH last week!)

We ran into a couple of hiccups in ZA. We wiped on eagle trash but somehow still managed to get two chests. We actually made it to Jan’alai with enough time to get the third chest, but we wiped because no one was paying attention to Jan’alai’s health and he hit 35% early.

I got the quest item off of Zul’jin, at long last, so I came out of the raids with a total of 45 badges. This brings the badge count in my bank up to 95, meaning that I’ll be able to buy the SSO healing pants (the last piece of SSO loot I need) some time this week. It also means that I’m going to have to transmute and buy a total 10 Primal Lifes. Woot. Going broke and having to start doing dailies again soon FTL.

I will be completely done with SSO badge gear upon purchasing the pants, so what am I going to do with my badges after this? I suppose I should finally pick up the two badge offhand items, Tears of Heaven and Voodoo Shaker, which will require a total of 60 badges. Then I should probably start saving my badges up for if that gem vendor ever gets unlocked …

WHEW May 26, 2008

I have been wiped. Just wiped. Getting up for work at 07:00 and then not finishing my raid until 01:00 from Monday to Thursday is just killin’ me. But I guess that’s the price of killing two bosses in one week.

That’s right.

After Kael’thas on Monday of last week, we went into Hyjal the next day to down Kazrogal’s trash and Kazrogal for the first time (we had never made it through his trash before … those gargoyles are a PITA). We also got Azgalor down to 18% on our first (and only) attempt on him. T6 gloves, here we come.

(As usual, links to a bigger version)

I believe that tonight is going to be our attempts at downing Kael’thas for the second time. I’m hoping we’ll have the attendance (today being Memorial Day in the USA). I’d like to think we cleared the rest of TK for something! …

Silly little dreamer April 4, 2008

Last night I had this weird dream that I was looking for a house. You see, there was this real estate agency which would facilitate the seeing of homes … by teleporting in through the closet, à la Sabrina the Teenage Witch. You may be asking, “Geoff, what on earth does this have to do with World of Warcraft?!” Well, bare with me here.

So, we walk into the second floor bathroom, which was gorgeous by the way, to find that there are two humans, a male and a female, already occupying the space. It turns out that they had found out about this little closet-teleport thing and were exploiting it. Well, we weren’t going to have any of that bullshit. My friend Bobby, who is my arena partner and was present in my dream as a mage, quickly sleeped the female. Don’t ask me how he managed that. Don’t ask me why he didn’t just Polymorph her. He put her to sleep, and she looked all dizzy and had the Sap animation over her head. I couldn’t sleep the male. I’m a druid after all, and Hibernate only works on beasts and dragonkin. (That was about the only part of my dream that made any sense.)

As soon as the female was sleeped, we went about trying to incapacitate the male. This probably entailed kiting him with Frostbolts or something (I don’t remember). The next thing I remember happening is the female’s sleep breaking, and her being all up in our faces again. Bobby tried to put her to sleep again by passing his hand across her eyes like you would expect him to do if he was trying to convince her that our droids were not the droids she was looking for. It didn’t work. I remember dream Geoff thinking, “Damn diminishing returns!”

After that it kinds kinda hazy. I think we won, because we continued touring the house before my dream drifted off into some other strangeness …