Saturday, May 31, 2008

Bada-ding!

First Stroeb, then Paxmortis, both made 70 on Thursday night. Stroeb's final chosen victim was to be Durn the Hungerer, scourge of Nagrand.

Durn for 70 ftl

However, with the rest of the Elder in tow, 46XP for the kill didn't quite cut it, so a random wandering Ogre ended up with the honour!

Ogre for 70 ftw

The group then proceeded to a wipeless rampage through Sethekk Halls. Stroeb's newfound level went a bit to her head, leaving Neit and Pax to cut her down to size temporarily.

They're bigger

But all was well that ended well, as she was rewarded by a very nice set of shoulders.

Assassinating Shoulders

GM Paxmortis, in typical imperial fashion, swatted aside an unknown foe to make it, barely pausing for celebration before continuing on his chosen path. Alliance Lords beware, Paxmortis and His Elder have arrived...

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Blood Elf Skins

Not content with trying on Humanity, Stroeb & Paxmortis attempted a little Blood Elf action over the weekend...

Blackheathen stares in horror at BE Stroeb & Pax

Stroeb's BE Mage and her bodyguards

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Flesh!

The Elder had a very weird experience last run - through the wonders of The Caverns of Time, we once again became...Human! Alliance scum!!

Look at all that...flesh!

Fittingly, no-one but Stroeb seemed to be improved. Blackheathen sported a rude flat-top, Paxmortis a mullet, and Neitzsche was his same charming self. As for Fugg...

Fuggly

Stroeb on the other hand had metamorphised into a great beauty, which was to come to her aid at the end of the night.

Stroeb feels the wind in her hair

The Caverns sent us to Old Hillsbrad Foothills, back in time, before the Forsaken were spawned. Our mission was to release current day Horde leader Thrall from his captivity in Durnholde Keep. We wreaked savage fury on the keep for imprisoning mighty Thrall, setting their hovel alight. Alas poor Thrall, still behind bars, had to put up with a spontaneous display of what the human's call "dancing", while we waited for Paxmortis to overcome a bout of arcane disconnectivity.

What humans do

Once again we had completely worthless boss loot, though we did work out that based on our drops to date, we would have the best equipped Druid or Pally in the game if they were with us.

Blackheathen unveiled a genius Engineering tool - the Field Repair Bot 110G, which allowed us to repair on the fly, and even purchase some nice reagents mid instance.

Repairbot FtW

And, a romance thought long impossible was rekindled, as Stroeb bashfully presented her true self to her once and future love.

Reacquainted

This was the only time they could be together, human to human. A long night of fishing lay ahead...

Monday, May 5, 2008

RodB

On Sunday 4 May, in memory of a guild member who passed away IRL, the legendary Hunter BigRedKitty, in tandem with Ratshag, held the inaugural Running of Da Bulls. An epic first level Tauren herd assembled at Camp Narache to commemorate BRK's fallen comrade, and to run all the way to Hammerfall! It was incredible. Sprinthammer (CMcG), Meatax (CW), and Neitzsche (MM) all partook. The screenshots pretty much tell the story...



The Barren's had never seen anything like it. No time for Chuck chat, though there was one legendary "LF800M WC" callout as we ran through.



The Zeppelin was ridiculous. Despite missing the first Zep, the later runners all managed to pretty much catch up as the early wave (including Meatax and Sprinthammer) were wiped by the Silverpine Wolves.



At this stage of the race, Meatax was actually in with a chance of winning. He'd taken a strategic veer to the left through the lake surrounding Fenris Isle. Alas, the splitting of the herd into smaller subherds meant that the natives managed to finish solo runners off pretty fast, so we were drawn back into the main herd - which was much more entertaining than running point!



It was hilarious seeing questing toons stand completely stunned by what they were seeing. Note the Ally in the shot below...



That same Ally decided to take matters into his own hands in Hammerfall...and somehow 500 level 2's (most had levelled on the trip) managed to wear him down to 50% before he was polished off by a friendly Horde protector.


The original plan had been to port to Shatt - but when the Mages failed to show, the cry went out - to Ironforge!





Of course the Ironforge natives finally overwhelmed the majority of the herd, but the ghost herd that formed was just as xool.


Alas Sprinthammer found her final resting place in the halls of Ironforge, not quite able to make it to the tram for the trip to deepest darkest Alliance territory, Stormwind.


But apparently some did indeed make it - For the Herd!

Big thanks to BRK and Ratshag for organising. And sounds like the next event is already being planned...

Cryptic

After several runs through the Mana Tombs, culminating in successfully escorting Cryo-Engineer Sha'heen for Blackheathen's tanking boots, the Elder moved to the next stage of the Auchindoun chain - Auchenai Crypts.

The Crypts are a much more straightforward run, with only two bosses and a host of Burning Legion minions. Having three 70's now, the mobs didn't pose many threats, and we got to the first boss without wiping (which for the Elder is quite an accomplishment, the trash always seem to get us at least once!). On the way Fugg picked up a nice set of plans for Felsteel Gloves, and Paxmortis scooped up a formula for +12 Agil to boots. Nice drops from trash!

There were a few interesting moments too when first Stroeb and then Blackheathen were mind controlled and started wailing in on our own party. Some quick thinking from Pax meant that we were soon baaa-ing merrily as sheep - much to the joy of Fugg who was both bearing the brunt of the infighting and also our nominated sheep breaker...

So we cleared the mobs, but Shirrak the Dead Watcher was a different story. A vast floating eye, he has a couple of nasty effects - namely slowing down all casting, and an AoE/bomb that wipes the melee DPS pretty fast. Still, on our first attempt, we got within 5% of having him down before running out of options. On our next couple, early wipes by Fugg and Stroeb left the rest of the team fighting a losing battle. But we finally nailed him thanks to a particularly brilliant Heal from Neit on Blackie at the 100hp mark, and Fugg's strategic bandaging retreats. Stroeb was, of course, dead, ftl.


As we moved on, the cry went out for Stroeb to have another attempt at her "sap without stealth" method, but alas she was a bit stroppy on the night and refused point blank. Thankfully. More mobs were polished off before we reached boss two, the shapeshifting Dranai Exarch Maladaar. This guy posed no problems - tank 'n' spank, with a few diversions when he summoned his pseudo "Blackheathen" and, later, a ghostly version of himself.

Not much of a drop from him, though Neit managed to upgrade her helm twice on the night - first lifting the Collar of Command from Shirrak, then looting a Raven Heart-Headress from a chest ftw!

Sunday, May 4, 2008

The Early Days

(Having recently upgraded to some +int gear, our legendary tank Blackheathen has learnt to write, and put pen to paper to create a brilliant early history of his WoW experience...)

First words that come to mind are L2P NOOB. We were the epitome of noobs when we first started WOW all those months ago. After many lunchroom discussions Michelle and Wayne (Dierdron) eventually managed to convince Fugg and Myself to enter into our first MMORPG. I must admit to taking more convincing than the others to join up lol, what did I do with all my time back then???

My first night on was unfortunately a Tuesday, server shutdown FTL. I still managed to get out and ding a few lvls, get pwned in a duel by a mage 2 lvls below lol and start gearing up with a few fantastic white, unsoulbound items WOOOT. At the end of my second night online I reached the dizzying heights of lvl 6 thanks to the help of our other mighty warrior, Fugg.

Thursday night, our first night meeting up the tavern at Brill, all the excitement during the workday building up to it (some of which even started viscous office rumours as I yelled out to Michelle before heading home, "Hey, see at the tavern at Brill at about 8:00 ok?")

Finally we all meet up, just the 4 of us at that stage, Fugg, Blacky, Helouise (Niet's mage main in the early days) and Dierdron. This was the first time I had ever ventured out of Deathnell and seeing Helouise at lvl 10, a full 4 lvls above, I must admit to being more than a little intimidated. Finally we managed to group up, hours later I learned how to use party chat, FTL.

So, off for our first little adventure as a party. Murlocs were on the menu as we continued on our first of many many many apocothery quest chains. As you can imagine, party tactics, any tactics, aggro etc, were all things we would learn about much later. Needless to say, Blacky and Fugg made their way back from the graveyard in good time. Not something that would always be the case. Fugg had one particularly humorous episode where he was running around lost as a ghost for a considerable length of time before learning how to use the minimap and the arrow to guide you back to your corpse. Starting an alt much later I can't quite figure out some of the paths we used to take getting back to our beaten corpses at the infamous Agamand Mills. They really aren't very far but somehow we managed to make it into a 5 min round trip lol.

We slowly progressed through the Tirisfall glades, moving with WASD and mouse clicking lol FTL. We also began finding bits and pieces of info on the net and learnt a little about how to play our classes and roles in groups etc. We also started hearing rumours of the mighty RFC, an instance??

It was around this point that our Mage, the mighty Paxmortis arrived on the scene and Helouse left us to be replaced by Neitzsche, the ugliest, deadest, baldest headed priest ever. Now with a full party of 5 we were ready for an assault on the Scarlet Monastary, at lvl 12 lol. Sure we were getting one or two shotted but hey come on guys, one more try?

After a few weeks came our first trips into Silverpine Forest, "man you have to go check out Silverpine, have you been? there are like lvl 12 Wolves in there LVL 12!!!!!!!!!". So began our progression away from our birthplace of the Deathnell. Somehow we managed to get ourselves up to the Sepulchre and wtf there are bats? There is some quest to go to a place called Undercity, where the hell is that? So off we go on our first bat ride, WOOOOOT what a rad experience. But then hey what is this place?, how am I ever going to find my way out of here? Ok don't wander too far, just hand quest in and jump on the bat back to the safety of the Sepulchre, phew.

Silverpine was also the home to our first nemsis, Son of Arugal. A roaming lvl 24 elite (nerfed to 20 elite in patch 2.3, this game used to be hard lol) that killed us all, over and over, as a group or individually.

A few memorable moments in Silverpine include Dierdron, down at the wreck, drowning inside the wrecked boat unable to figure out how to swim up. Paxmortis blowing up Moonrage Whitescalps (werewolf type mobs) with exploding sheep, oh the irony lol. As well as action packed group fishing sessions. After finishing up a few quests at the Sepulchre one night we all jumped on a bat to head to UC much to the dismay of Fugg who was left standing at the bat handler unable to fork out the 10 copper for the bat ride.

Around this time that we also began to get rolling with our professions and skinning, mining and making dynamite, armour, bags out of all the copper, stones, cloth and beasties we came across. Helouise and Paxmortis even started making gold, GOLD!!!!!!!!!!

Some of us, Dierdron was the first I believe, discovered Zeppelins and a whole new continent. Soon enough we began to venture into the infamous Barrens, the land of CHUCK NORRIS. This was the scene of my first meeting with the mighty Beastheart, until about lvl 60, always this almighty being of godly power, sooo many lvls above.

Apart from a little adventuring into the Barrens we continued to work our way through Silverpine and edge ever closer to the magic lvl 20. We soon began talking up our chances of getting some revenge on Son of Arugal. Our first few attempts ended in dismal failure but finally, after a few more lvls we got him. Ok guys, lets take him out, buffed, everyone ready, CHARGE. It still took us a while and I think I may have even died the first kill but he was down and we got to feast on his bloodied flesh. WOOOOOT, what a moment. Maybe not to be surpassed until Nazan in Hellfire Ramparts.

Finishing all the group quests in Silverpine was a great moment and one that would very rarely be repeated. We were soon to learn that there are just too many areas and too many quests to do them all. This was also the end of questing in Horde territory. A whole new world of getting ganked by ?? allies awaited us, especially as we took our first few innocent steps into the notorius Killsbrad I mean Hillsbrad Hills.

More to follow.

Blackheathen