Thanks to blog Azeroth, I’ve been thinking about the old days.  When Vanilla WoW was all we had, and 60 was the level to reach.  They got me thinking about the pro’s and con’s from back then.   Below is the shared topic and my take on it.

So what do you guys remember about the older days of WoW? Was it vanilla or BC? Do you miss it or are you glad that it’s gone? Post an entry telling the world you’re memories!

Instead of thinking of the things I hated about Vanilla WoW, yes I decided to go way back, I’m going to talk about my favorite moments.  I know there are plenty of things I’m glad have changed, but this about things I wish I could do again.

Most notably, the 45 minute Strat run!  Created solely to mock me, I’m sure!  I was a druid back then (and Alliance) and I didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time raiding.  Of course, I really wasn’t fond of raiding back then either, so it was a win/win to me, but that’s another story.  I spent so much time doing instances back then that I could have setup a room in Strat to call home.

I remember farming mats for flasks and wizards oils in preparation for this 45 minute run.  We even had a practice run setup.  We were the ratshag group with a plan!  S’ok, the pally would dps (back before retadin’s existed) and backup heal, the rogue would try not to die, the warrior was gonna tank it, the mage was going to sheep…AOE everything that moved, and I was going to heal.

So off we went on our practice run!

And wouldn’t you know it, we beat it in under 45 minutes!  All the cash we had spent for nothing!  Of course, we were so excited that it didn’t make much difference.  And as it turns out, we were the first group in our guild to do that 45 minute run.  And that also gave the paladin his full set of .5 if I’m not mistaken.

Would have been nice if the druid pants would have dropped, but that’s another story.

The site has been quiet lately purely because of a lack of free time to sit and write posts that i would want to read myself but there is some good news, here is a preview of some of the drafts waiting to be finished;

Configuring Grid+Clique – similar to the Pitbull configuration post this will cover the basics of setting up Grid to display the most useful information and will hopefully provide a good base to allow people new to the addon to customise it to their tastes.

Starting to heal at 80 – having leveled Stevecow by dual boxing him with Marvn, his primary button was a /follow macro. I have recently started to play him in his own right as both an Elemental Shaman and Resto, having played a tank i didn’t think much about having a group depend on my performance but wow healing is a whole different game.

Raiding 101 – If you’re in a raiding guild it’s easy to forget that not everyone is as comfortable playing in that environment so this post will aim to guide people on their first steps into a raid instance with confidence.

I am playing with the idea of talking about guild life on the blog, being a raid leader in a guild does provide plenty of material but will provide challenges when it comes to anonymity and not upsetting people i play the game with if i say something they don’t necessarily agree with.

So today’s topic is privacy.  It’s been a hot topic all over the WoW blog-o-sphere due to Ferraro’s actions and admissions.  And because of this, I have been thinking a lot about it.  How much information should one give about themselves on a public blog?

On the one hand, being personal and relating personal stories are a key staple of good writing.  Take any writing course and I’m sure the first thing you’ll hear from the instructor is “write what you know”.  It’s a very valid point.  If you are not writing from your own personal knowledge, it comes across.  People can tell when you’re making things up.  Maybe not today.  Maybe not tomorrow.  But someone, somewhere, will figure you out.  It’s also a great way to relate to your readers.  They can sense your true stake in what you are writing and they are more empathetic towards what you are saying.

On the other hand, in a world where anything/anyone can be learned, do you really want complete strangers knowing personal details about yourself or your life?  In a world where anyone can search for anything and if you’re determined enough you can find out where someone is, it is prudent to keep your personal details out of open publication.

Thing is, people are curious.  We grow attached to what we perceive as like-minded people.  And when we read a blog, especially one that’s been around as long as Ferraro’s, we do feel like we know a person.  Ferraro and her acclaimed multiple writers deceived us.  They didn’t just withhold information, which most people will forgive, they out-right lied at the expense of another person.  I do not agree with her actions, nor do I really see her post as showing any true regret for her actions.

To be honest, that gets under my skin a little.  Plagiarism is wrong.  And did she truly man-up to her actions?  Not really.  She blamed the unknown previous writers.  However when she chose to take on the blog and all that came along with it, she openly accepted the deceptions she was continuing on with.  What ever happened to morality and honesty?  I’m certain she knew that the falsehood was wrong.  No ethical person can be given that scenario and think “yea I’m ok with that.”

Withholding personal information about yourself as BBB admits he does, is one thing.  That is completely acceptable and reasonable.  Heck, I do that myself.  I write under my pseudonym (ie character name) for a reason.  I don’t often refer to personal details about myself.  I would also never ever involve my children in the blog.  In this day and age, it’s perfectly insane to assume that people won’t “hunt you down”.  BBB’s given perfect examples for why we should withhold information about ourselves and those we love, so I’m not going to bore you with more examples.

I guess it’s the assuming of someone else’s identity that is what really gets to me.  No, it doesn’t make a difference what the reasons were.  There is never a good reason to steal anything, especially someone’s identity.  They openly posted things they took from both professional and personal sources and that is wrong.

They used stalkers as an excuse to hide themselves, when in truth they were the ones stalking.  They were not just looking to hide behind an image of a person, they were stealing bits of her life.

In the end, it’s all just a bunch of he said, she said.  And I agree with Matticus, make up your own mind with the given evidence.  I just felt the need to put out my opinion on the subject since it seems to be a hot subject for the day.

I have been using Pitbull4 for a while now and talking about it to anyone that will listen but that’s usually where it stops without any further advice or information on how to configure the addon itself and the biggest problem with Pitbull is also it’s biggest advantage – it is by far one of the most configurable addons you can install which can easily overwhelm someone that has just installed it without knowing too much about what it can do.

Here is  a screenshot of a fresh Pitbull4 installation:

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So I’m all excited, the new guild has invited me to run 10-man Naxx, and what do I do?

I stand in big red swirly junk on the floor while fighting KT and die a shameful death.

On a plus note, I did get my tier 7 helm so I now have the four piece bonus

But still, lern2play nub!

I am sooo embarrassed!

I would like to rescind my last post as it would appear that I misled myself.

After much thought about my options, I decided to move on to a more raid friendly guild!

And I am so excited I can hardly contain myself!

Not only was I accepted, but on my first day in guild I was invited to raid!

Granted, Blizzard ensured that I couldn’t raid as we couldn’t find any instance that was available, but that’s besides the point!  I was invited!

It looks like we may be trying to do a couple of 10-man raids into Ulduar tonight and in anticipation of viewing new content, I am actually reading strats.

I’ve re-speced thanks to 3.1 and I’m locked and loaded.

Well as locked and loaded as a simplified spell rotation Affliction ‘lock can be.

Have I mentioned it feels strange not to have my complicated spell rotation any more?  It feels like I’m missing something…oh well, I’m sure in a month I won’t even remember how complicated we used to be.

I’m on vacation.

Yup that’s right, I’m taking some Skryla time off.

Why?  You ask.

Easy, I’m getting grumpy.

I’m getting so grumpy that now that our guild is FINALLY trying to do some 10-man content, I find myself just despising the entire event.  Which is ironic really.  I have wanted to do the 10-man’s since WotLK came out.  There was that small hitch of getting to 80 on a new server, but I have been more than ready to do this.

So why “teh grumpiness”?  You ask.

I have no patience for lack of knowledge.  As in, “no healer-person, you can not just stand in one spot and spam heal when the boss silences if you’re close” or, “When the RL says all ranged DPS spread apart, does that translate into stand next to me so I blow up?”

I get that we aren’t going to be downing things left and right, really I do.  But srsly, if a gynormous wall of lava is heading your way, why are you just staring at it?

Green crap under your feet?  Move the hell out of it.  These are fundamental things that seriously don’t require reading strats to know.  Or so I thought.

Back on my old server, I was a RL for 10-Kara.  We had a team name, we took the time to learn the strats, and we were the underdogs.  I started that venture because I was told I wasn’t good enough.  So I gathered everyone that couldn’t get into a run and made my own group.

The Misfiteers kicked some serious Kara-ass!  And it was a blast!  We joked on teamspeak, we rarely had any loot rules, we respected the RL/tanks when they were talking strats, and above all else we made progress. We learned from every wipe.  We didn’t really make the same mistake over and over and over.

And now, we do.  So yea, I’m on vacation.  Until I can either learn to accept the things I can not change, or there is some sort of progress.

It’s ok though, I’m leveling alts!  In a single weekend (thank you Blizzard for the RAF program) I have managed to get a hunter AND a druid to level 57.  I’d been neglecting them for some time and my RAF is about to expire so I wanted to make sure to work on them before I lost my triple xp bonus.

And now that I’m not pushing myself into raids because I know they need me, it’s been very peaceful in my brain.

So, for now, I will not be posting much about the warlock condition, and instead you may just get some “I r tree-healer!” posts instead.

It seems to happen to the best of them – BRK is taking a break from WoW and his blog (www.bigredkitty.net), I obviously understand his reasoning and agree that things happening in life should always take priority over WoW when the two start interfering with each other, the post on his blog is here.

I’m lucky because I have a partner that plays WoW at least as much as I do and understands when I ask her to wait another 20 minutes for dinner because the group didn’t quite finish the heroic or I need 5 more points in fishing.

I found BRK’s site at the same time I came back to WoW a few weeks before WotLK was released and was in the process of leveling Schrank and Stevecow to 60, my first character was a Dwarf Hunter who I really enjoyed playing and BRK’s movies made me miss the mechanics, pets, traps, crazy DPS and quirks of huntering so once Schrank hit 80 I decided to create a new Hunter and Marvn was created and leveled.

I tamed Loque’Nahak because of all the information I saw about it on BRKs site.
I tested several Beast Master talent specs and more recently Survival talent specs based on information I read there.

I wish BRK all the best in life and all the important things it entails.

Let’s get this out of the way early, I play with a lot of addons, probably more than I really need but if I sit down and think about it I could probably justify all of them, in this post I basically want to share that thought process and hopefully expose people to addons they haven’t encountered before.

Because of the different needs of a Healer, DPS, and Tank each of the cows has a different set of addons although some do end up in the “must have” list of other characters because they end up being so useful (Grid).

Resized screenshot with addon names:

My ‘must have’ addons are all listed here with something of a description of each and maybe an explanation of why i use each. In no particular order: (continue reading…)

A quick video i made to demonstrate how to complete what can be a tricky quest.

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