Its a hard knock life

From browsing around I’ve noticed a certain amount of panic about how squishy non pvpers are meant to achieve The School of Hard Knocks. So being a practical little priest with 100 resilience max I thought I would share my tips for completing this.

1. Capture a Flag in Eye of the Storm: There are two possible practical approaches to this one and they both require friends. However its likely that most of your guildmates will want this too, so teaming up helps both of you. They get healing, you get flagrunning opportunitys so its a win/win.

A. Get a guild premade going. The main aim would naturally be to capture the flag, but extra honor/tokens would be the icing on the cake.

B. My prefered option however is to enter with a friend. In my case a prot warrior with a stupid amount of health who makes an excellent flag carrier. He collects the flag from the centre and proceeds to the tower of your choice where he drops the flag before handing in, you pick it up and cross the line. Anyone with PvP gear or tanking gear would work.

Alternatively you could just try at quiet times, late at night/early in the morning, when if you are lucky the opposing side in your battlegroup are outnumbered.

Assault a flag in Arathi Basin: This to my mind is the easiest of all. Enter Arathi Basin, make sure your orphan is shortcutted on your interface and mount up. If alliance you want to head for either the stables or the lumber mill, horde the farm or the blacksmith. Before the gates open pick your destination and ride. It might take you a few games to get the feel for which side tends to go where first so you can plan accordingly.

Assault a tower in Alterac Valley: This again will require teammates and a bit of planning with the exact circumstances depending on how your battlegroup play AV. My personal prefered towers will be the base ones, if you head there as soon as the gates start its unlikely you will face many of the opposing side. Tag quickly and either /afk if you are there simply for the achievement or hope you get more company if you plan on hanging around.

Return a Flag in WSG: Stay on defense and spam click whenever an enemy flag carrier goes down. This is probably going to be hardest as everyone will be diving for that flag.

All in all, all 4 will be done easiest in groups/premades but regardless of your gear they shouldn’t be that hard to do.

Tentacles vanquished, again

Its been an interesting week. We went from this

to

to

(have to love NPCs who whisper abuse)

to

I’m the sleeping white puppy at the front cuddled up with the spring rabbit (dinner). All in all, its a completely awesome fight, especially when all the pieces fall into place and people stop taking it in turns to do stupid things randomly. A slight feeling of sadness though, two weeks worth of raids and thats all the easily accessable bosses down plus one fragment thingie to summon the final one. Was hoping the new content would last slightly longer than that, but got hardmodes, alts and the tournament to play around with so won’t be getting bored just yet.

Easy egg hunting in Terokkar Forest

Here is my gathermate map showing all the egg spawns in Terokkar forest.

There are a few more around the edge of Shattrah that don’t show up on that map, but if you include flying along the city wall they should be easily spottable.

Pluses

• You get to use your epic flying mount.
• There are no annoying people dressed as bunnies zooming around
• Its pretty quiet

Minuses

• The seeds under the trees do look fairly similiar from the air
• You are PvP enabled and thus can be ganked by enemy egg hunters
• The eggs are much more spread out in Terokkar requiring more travel

In conclusion having checked out Azuremyst and Goldshire as well, its definately my favourite egg hunting zone.

Edit: Whilst this was great for 2009, in 2010 there are no eggs in Terokkar.

Happy Noblegarden

Having mixed feelings about Noblegarden. On the one hand, its great that its finally a proper festival rather than one often missed day.

However, most of the egg spawns are being camped 24/7 which is one of the pitfalls of a high/full population server. Having a few more spawn points/a few more up at the same time would be nice though.

Also the sheer quantity of eggs you need is scary. I’m currently at 45 but if my maths is correct I need another 205 to purchase all the random bits and pieces I want. That means that doing any of it on any alts is pretty much out of the window.

The final thing that is bugging me is, and I know this sounds weird, but I’m slightly uncomfortable with the whole ear thing. I studied literature at University and intermingled with all the classics, I read a lot of feminist stuff and this just doesnt sit happily for me. There has been a lot of talk about ugly words in WoW around the blogsphere recently and I can’t help but think this objectification of females (the fact that most female characters are played by males is irrelevent) helps foster a gaming culture where abusive behaviour towards women is acceptable. Some of the scenes in Dalaran where upwards of 10 horde were chasing a lone female dwarf into the sewers were faintly unsettling.

Its nothing more than a fertility rite in a computer game, when people think of rabbits/spring especially in literary terms, its usually sex that comes to mind. Add in the fact that Blizzard specifically added an age (level) limit, use Spring Flowers to place rabbit ears upon females of at least 18th level and I can’t help wondering if these sexual and sexist undertones have any place in a game like this one. In fact I find this sexual discrimmination and objectification far more dangerous than some random person going on about raping the horde at the farm in Arathi Basin. Rape in its original meaning comes from the latin means to take by force, to seize.. think Poussin’s painting “The Rape of the Sabine Women” which depicts lots of Romans abducting women. Obviously I’m sure we can all guess what happened to said women but the painting itself is fairly innocent as is the fact that you can take the farm by force in Arathi Basin. On the other hand, objectification and discrimmination are always dangerous. The word rape used in a game where sex is impossible can be open to interpretation, its likely albeit still fairly disturbing that they mean that they won in a forceful/dominant fashion. However there is no other interpretation for the sexism in this festival. Whichever way you choose to look at it, its turning us all into bunnygirls shaking our “bunnymakers”. You can even go as far as to argue that in forcing the bunny ears onto random female characters, you are literally raping them in the sense that we universally acknowledge today. In that screenshot I didn’t have a choice, I came back to my computer and found I had grown another set of large ears which as an nightelf is upsetting by itself.

On the other hand, I accept sex finds its way everywhere. I’m not a prude at all, but I feel very strongily about women’s rights partly because I was in an abusive relationship for 10 months and partly because of some of the stuff I got to read at University. Yet, I can’t help feeling that Blizzard have a responsibility to all the people that play their game to create a world that doesn’t foster divides, doesn’t objectify either gender and doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable regardless of their gender, age, race or sexual orientation. What also bothers me is objectifying women seems to the last bastion of acceptable discrimmation and that in the 21st century is frightening. Although its less than 100 years ago that my Great Grandmother chained herself to railings to win us the vote, so I guess we still have a long way to go, which is really sad.

Rant over, normal service will be resumed tomorrow with something more upbeat and probably a lot of screenshots.

However if you are taking part in egg hunting, don’t forget that Terrokar forest harbours plenty and its usually fairly quite.

My Kingdom for a Horse

My slightly late answers to this week’s Friday Five.

• Is your character participating in the Tourney? (If no, are you doing it OOC?)

Most definately. Erinys didn’t expect to like it, let alone enjoy it. Too much sawdust and sweat for her liking, yet once she found herself saddled up with a lance in hand it was suprisingly good fun. Besides, secretly after years of war, she has found a sudden and slightly uncomfortable lust for blood lurks inside her. The tournament provides a safe and fairly harmless way to relieve that aggression.

• If asked “What is your home city”, how would your character respond?  If the answer is not their “Faction Capitol” – why not?

Darnassus. Whilst Erinys doesn’t always agree with every decree and decision coming out of Darnassus, heritage and home are important to her. Sure, she spent many a happy day hanging out in both Stormwind and Ironforge, but she just doesn’t feel she belongs there. Even after many years of fighting for the Alliance, there is something alien about those cities, especially Ironforge. Erinys prefers outdoors and open spaces, to her Ironforge is claustrophobic. Stormwind on the other hand is too bustling, too full of humans running about their business.

• There are rumors in Dalaran that a Dwarven Expedition has unearthed an Old God – how will your character react?

Excitement tinged with fear. Having fought her way through the tunnels and passageways of the Ahn’Qiraj, hearing all the while “your friends will abandon you” and “your courage will fail” whispering on the desert winds and stared an Old God in the eye, she is afraid. Yet, there is always that frisson of excitement, somewhere new to explore, perhaps new books to pour over, new things to learn. Besides, how many people actually get to meet two Gods in their lifetime? even if they end up killing them.

• Does your character side more with Varian/Garrosh, or with Thrall/Jaina?

Thrall/Jaina. Whilst bloodshed bothers her less each passing day, she is still practical. Too much blood has already been shed on the shores of Northrend and there are greater, more dangerous enemies to be bested rather than wasting resources and troops on each other. After all that is a war neither side will ever win. Besides having spent time in Theramore as well as fighting in the past alongside Jaina at Mount Hyjal, she respects Jaina’s opinions far more than this hotheaded human who is allowing his desire for revenge to formulate his policies.

• Meta Question: Are there things you do with your character that are OOC, but have IC rewards? (Reputation for a Faction Item, farming for a non-combat pet, or Dailies/Quests for a title like Loremaster, for example?)  Do you have an IC explanation?

Yes. For someone who professes to be a lover not a fighter, Erinys does a rather large amount of slaughtering for financial reward, as well as wiping out whole populations of baby dragons in search of finding her very own, or not only turning a blind eye to the Oracles egg stealing business, but even purchasing from them. As for an IC explanation, Erinys prefers to believe that sometimes in order to do the right thing, you have to stretch the boundaries of what you are comfortable with. In order to fight the good fight in Ulduar, she needs gold. Potions and repairs do not come cheap and sometimes you have to take whatever work you can find on the side. Although there is no excuse for the eggstealing… that was just a moment of moral weakness brought on by the desire for something shiny and new in a world of blood and pain.

All this talk of jousting makes me want to go and watch Camelot now.

Haunted Azeroth

I’ve always had a thing for ghost stories, the scarier the better. One christmas my uncle bought me a book entitled “Haunted Britain” that comprised of a series of black and white photographs of haunted buildings, castles mainly alongside a few lines of text describing the nature of the haunting.

So when I was riding around Arathi trying to level herbalism on my warlock, the first thing that came to mind I saw this, was that book.

There is something slightly chilling about this run down graveyard in the rain. I could easily imagine seeing a spectre slinking between the headstones or spotting a shadow resting against a wall where no shadow should fall.

Stained Glass > Loot

Definately the best looking instance ingame. Its been a case of careful what you wish for this week so far. Remember I had been complaining that Ulduar was too easy? Well we meet a rather annoying little mechanical guy who goes by the name of Mimiron who soon had us rethinking the easy bit. Although doing it with a mostly melee raid was akin to doing it with one hand behind our backs. However despite many people blowing each other up, getting lasered and generally dying to all kinds of stupid things, we end the first week of Ulduar at 11/14 on heroic, not too bad considering the server blips and our lack of test realm practise.

Ulduar – the best looking instance?

One good thing about wiping on new content is the fact that you get plenty of time to have a good look at your surroundings.

Most of Vanilla WoW’s instances were dark, dank and full of either orcs or bugs. Neither of which are a particularly attractive species.

TBC brought us neon pink Bloodelf decorations, more dark dank stuff in the Black Temple and Naga. Although I have to admit a slight fondness for troll related instances and karazhan. BT, SSC and TK I loathed with a passion I usually reserve for Brussel Sprouts.

Ulduar on the other hand is diverse. Different zones with different types of ornamentation, trash mobs and a completely different feel. Light airy zones intermingle with darker more mechanical ones. There is a feeling of space, of openness and the impression you could easily get lost whilst exploring.

Given that raiders will be spending a large amount of time in a new instance, its look and feel are important. Personally after my very first Tempest Keep raid I would have been happy never to return so to find Ulduar is for  the most part easy on the eye helps take some of the pain out of corpse running.

Another reason to hate achievements

So the other night we killed the Iron Council in Ulduar. For some unknown reason I didn’t get the kill achievement ticked off, but I did however get:

I ticketed a GM explaining the problem and asking to be awarded the kill so the achievement for clearing that particular area of the instance would display with the correct date. My response, after they scared the living daylights out of me by logging my character was this:

My boyfriend was out mining this morning whilst I was in bed and woke me up to the shocking news that my character was online. For a couple of horrific minutes I thought I had been hacked. Turns out it was just some Blizzard employee trying to discover if I was telling the truth.

Despite the fact that I got the achievement for the Stormcaller, despite the fact that I have one more token than I have boss kills… they can’t prove I was there. Makes you wonder exactly what they do log.

As for why it annoys me, I hate things being inaccurate. I have been to every one of our Ulduar first kills and I understandably wish my achievements to correctly reflect this.

Under the Sea

Or more accurately under a lake in Nagrand.  I can’t help thinking this is taking swimming mounts to a whole new extreme though and why isn’t my flaming horse heating up the lake and killing all the plant life?