For The Horde!

Well they have been making me do some work in my last week in NL so I haven't had much chance to post. Also as I am not going to be at work from now on the updates will probably get more sporadic, though I may get round to putting some pics on - that would be fun!

Being playing the Shammy a lot, managed to get to level 44. Then went into Arathi Basin (I prefer WSG but no one is using it at the moment) to keep my hnour going. Well I had a nice suprise this month, I have made Grunt, thats 3 weeks of AB twice a week at level 42-44 so not too hard. Still not in the top 1000 though :(, I was ranked 900th with about 100 kills last week. This week I have played 3 more times in AB (we won all 3) and have over 100 kills so that is OK for this week - which is pretty handy as I don't think I will be on for a week now and sporadic from then on. Well I need to do some instances with the shammy as my gear really stinks now, my axe is looking really shoddy to but I can't bring myself to buy one so I will have to bite the bullet :(

Played the warrior last night and gained a level for him, about halfway to the next as well I think, he has got his beserker stance after managing to send him some potions in the mail. Put him in STV, when he gains the next level I will go after the brutal armour in Razorfen Krawl, very difficult to get a group to go there it seems, I am probably a bit high level for it too now so would get away with a small group I think.

Well hopefully this won't be my last post!

Tried to get beserker stance for Theodread but died not long before the last mob. This was mainly because I had no healing potions, so I thought I would go and buy some - err whetre do you buy potions well I tried Ratchet, no luck, tried Xroads no luck, then Ogrimmer no luck, eventually the AH no luck - bleh. Also did another stupid thing with the warrior - I bought another slot in the stables ffs - thats going to be really handy for a warrior.
The warrior joined a new guild last night too, 'Bloodfang Warlords' it looks as though its going to be quite a good one I reckon. There are only 15 members at the moment but apparently its an old guild that has reformed after some sort of spat. Of those 15 9 were online at one point which is pretty impressive so I am hoping this is a decent one as all the others have not done much so far.

Gave up then and went back to the rogue who I haven't played much for a while. He is in StoneTalon, I had 2 quests up at the peak so wandered up there. Had a pretty easy time, I tried these quests at lvl 22 and got absolutely no where, level 24 and its all no problem. I also discovered the delights of SAP, I hadn't tried it before but it really is pretty usefull. Enables you to take 2 mobs pretty easily. Well Drogo had about half a level to go before he levelled and did this quite easy and is now probably about halfway to level 26 .... and cheap shot, yum yum. I keep playing around with his build and I reckon I am going to get into a terrible mess soon :( Also I had a load of weapons on him and some armour for higher levels but I don't have it anymore, hopefully I put them in the bank and didn't sell then.

Another 2 levels last night one for Oromebstard who is now 43, he was only 2 bars off levelleing and one for Theodread who was about halfway.
The shammy is still in STV, but not for much longer I guess, trying to do the 2nd part of the buccaneers quest, unfortunately I can't find the charts and the other bit of paper I need but having looked at thott I think I may have been looking in the wrong place. Still I am well on the way in the snuff quest now.
Sent the warrior to the shimmering flats which is easy level country, there are about 5 quests and a reasonable spread of quests. You also get follow up quests to booty bay and ratchet which is a handy boost.

Now heres the thing, I appear to have missed a trick somewhere, I can't buy beserker stance. Which means I can't get intercept a warrior essential. Can some kind sole let me know how I can get this, I presume theres some quest somewhere I have missed!

Went back eventually to STV with the shaman, having managed to get my axe usage back up to about 180 – its just amazing how much difference this makes.
I was ganked several times just outside Gadtzetown doing this – thanks again. Needless to say I then took it out on some other lowbie allies I found.
Got ganked whilst trying to get the naga explorers by a gnome mage called Munchkin. Went back to get my revenge and he got me again – not to be daunted I went back and this time managed to get him. I will have to have some duels with some mages cos I couldn’t figure this one out, I don’t use my totems enough I guess is the real problem. The air one that absorbs spells I use so seldom it takes me till I am dead to find it.
Got ganked earlier by a paladin whilst fighting 2 raptors – nice to see them living up to their code! What was most annoying about this one was that there was another Horde there who just stood and watched him kill me, I expressed my gratitude!!!
I joined a guild the other day which seems to have the most active players that I have seen in a guild – usually 6 or so on at a time. They haven’t organised anything yet and the leader is far and away the highest level their – he is 48th level and I am 2nd at 42 the next are about 3 at 38. Well I will give this a go and see how it goes, the only interaction I have had really is someone wanting me to run them through RageFire in Orgrimmer – I declined!
Well 2 bars of level 43 so I will do that tonight then move on to another char, probably the fighter.

Here is todays question, I now have 2 necklaces – which to wear.
Necklace 1. +1% Dodge +2 Agility
Necklace 2. +8 Spirit +5? Int

Played the shammy to start with, he has about 5 bars of rest bonus. Well first I needed to boost his HK's totry and move a bit closer to that pvp rank 2. Didn't do too well got caught a few times against 5 or 6 Allies and theres just no way a Shammy is going to survive that. I then respecked and thought I would try a few quests I had abondoned in Desolace, well I couldn't get then, very frustrating had long conversations with the DM's but all they came back with was that I was too high level. Well my interface is now screwed cos I had to get rid of the to W?? folders so I am pretty pissed. Also a strange thing seems to have happenned along the way, my axe skill seemed to have been reset very low, I don't know how low as I hadn't noticed until I got killed by 2 level 34's that I just wasn't hitting. The DM said he hadn't seen that happened before which was great comfort! So my axe skill is now 50 short of where it should be which is a real pain you just wouldn't believe hw much difference this makes. Its not much fun hitting for single figures of damage!
After that I ground out the mage to level 34, he had about 5 bars to go and it went pretty easy, except for someinterface issues when I was trying to get things sorted.

If anyone can help here are some of my interface issues that I haven't worked out how to resolve again yet :-
1. When typing text the text appears large (the text in the boxes is OK)
2. Icons are larger than they were
3. The time left on spells is no longer visible
4. The anount of HP and Mana is not showing

I have obviously found these once before but can't work out where they are at the moment. Answers on a postcard please.

Well not exactly it was a gallant effort but ultimately I didn’t achieve my goal, yet another plucky English loser!
I manage 2 levels for Oromebstard and Theodread but only 1 level for Drogo and Arastar. I was hampered by some internet problems, Saturday morning the whole of Utrechts internet was down. Then on Sunday morning the internet was down again, this time it was due to the wireless router powerlead coming out – you wouldn’t believe how much effort it took to persuade someone to have a look at it (they didn’t know where the antennae was and got me to look at it anyway – lol). So there’s the excuses out of the way, what happened I hear you cry. Well Friday and most of Saturday I played the Shammy probably the reason for my downfall at the end of the day. Had some good fun and got to have a run at Ulderman which wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be – it was a bit boring as I was doing the healing which was fine except out warriors were not too good at holding agg on more than 2 mobs so when I healed at one point I got mobbed by mobs. I consequently couldn’t heal so we all died – we had a warlock fortunately and he soulstoned me (I haven’t got a rez rune yet – I will have to make an investment). So I started rezzing the others and we were resting when the mage (Magicman I think) wandered back into the mobs that had just killed us, I think he must have been a bit dazed from being dead – well they came back and killed us all again for good measure. We called it a day after that, it was a reasonable team though I didn’t get very close to completing any of my quests as everyone was quicker at looting than me – I much prefer round robin.
I then had a couple of runs in Arathi Basin which was OK, though I was a bit under-powered at level 42, we lost both games badly especially the 2nd one in which we were outnumbered 15 to 9. I spent most of that one trying to get out of the graveyard. I think I was bottom of the 2nd one and about a 1/3 up from the bottom of the previous one. Anyway I got past the 25 hk I need to have something count towards my pvp ranking and I am about 1/3 of the way to the next level. I could do with a few more levels before going back in I think. Hunters are a real pain in there, they always seemed to pick on me too (boo-hoo!), there is nothing makes you panic more than having that big red arrow over your head. I tried to get into WSG but no one seems interested in that anymore which is a shame. Well he is halfway to level 43 so maybe get him up a level this week.
Next I played the warrior who is in 1kN, managed 2 levels reasonably easily and have managed to get upto skill level 125 in mining which is important as I can now mine iron. I have a bank full of bars of metal at the moment, most of which I can’t use as my blacksmithing isn’t high enough  Completed a fair few quests including Steelsnap for the first time which was great, I know now where he lives so he better look out for when my Rogue gets their.
Talking of the rogue, I was struggling finding quests I could complete at level 23 so had to grind out to level 24. I could then do the quilboar quests reasonably easily and will then go back to Stonetalon as there are a couple of quests there that I should now be able to complete which I had given up on previously. This is where things started going wrong though as I just plain ran out of rest bonus and I wasn’t going to play without rest bonus – what a waste 
On to the mage then – well he was in STV and I had done the quests which were doable at his level (32) so I decided to go to Arathi. Tried to do the rod quest near Tarren Mill but the Yeti’s just resisted most of my spells even though they are the same level so I had to give up on that and head into Arathi Basin. Managed to complete 4 quests there no thanks to the alliance ganking bastards. I was ganked 5 times, I managed to get away 3 of those times, the 2 occasions I died was against level ??, I hope they enjoyed the 0 benefit they gained! I don’t tend to gank, in fact I have even stopped attacking one char when they didn’t do anything but with all the times I have been ganked it is getting increasingly difficult to carry on with this policy. Sometimes it goes fine and you just give a wave but othertimes they just attack you, some Gnome did that to my Shammy (I had 99hp at the time) in the Badlands, he had just done the same to another Shammy near there well when he was drinking to get his mana back the Gnome came after him again, I messaged the shammy and we both came back and blew him away – then had a conversation over his body – he must have thought we were camping – lol. Anyway he materialised and made a run for it. I couldn’t catch him but must have given him a fright ( I wasn’t too bothered). Funnily enough I had wandered the otherside of this hill and he came round from the other way still running, must have given him an even bigger fright – lol

Well the only char with any rb left now is the mage so it will be him tonight.

So first of all last night - played the rogue for a while to use up some rb ready to be built up again at the weekend. Did the shredders and gizmo wrenckle(with a bit of help) and a couple of other quests I had in the area. My thief is a herbalist so I pick up any herbs that I find, unfortunately I now seem to have a bit of a problem (and I haven't checked out what) I don't appear to be able to make any potions at the moment! I must have a vital ingredient missing - I have tons of herbs (and vials) but I can't seem to make anything - something I will have to have a look at at the weekend.

After that I played the warrior - for the same reason, I haven't played him for ages so it took a while to work out where he was (Orgrimmer) and why he was there. He is level 29 so its of to 1kN and also to try and finish off the Brutal Armour Quest which is in RazorFen Krawl - there were no takers last night :( So I did a couple of the easy quests there - the Kolkars and the alien egg. Another frustrating profession thing. I have 115 mining, 1kN is full of Iron - I can't do iron till I get 125 and there is hardly any tin to get to up my skill :( Also I need the iron for the brutal armour, damn annoying especially as my skill only goes up 1 pointper load of tin. Blacksmithing is a bit tricky at the moment too - I have bundles of Tin and Bronze (made by mistake - doh), but I only have recipes for copper of which I have very little - still theres a fair bit of copper about and I have a bank account pretty much full of bars of metal and stones of various types so I should be able to get my blacksmithing up pretty fast (its at 90 at the moment). Well besides that it went pretty well, I had some ?? level ally watch me kill a cat, didn't catch his name but he was a rogue in Ace of Spades - whoever you are thanks for not honing your knives on my worthless carcass!

Now back to the title, the weekend ahead is going to be very busy on wow (connections, servers and overheating problems aside - fingers crossed). I have the whole weekend to play and not much else to do (I have to do a couple of runs and get some food but that won't take too long). So this weekends target! I want to get all of my characters up 2 levels over the weekend. Shouldn't be too bad for most of them except for the Shammy, that is who will probably take a lot of effort. So wish me luck on my mammoth task and I shall report back on Monday morning!!!

With the new release I my level 40 will go from the top of the tree to the bottom  in BG. Consequently last night I had my swansong in WSG and then it will have to be a big grind to get to a decent level to be able to go back in again. I didn’t do too well in the first game having 5 kills but dieing 6 times. We were very fragmented and the allies had some good flag runners which resulted in a lot of deaths, we only lost 3-2 but it felt a struggle all the time. The second game was far more successful we banded together much better, though not in as large a group as they were to start with we got ourselves back together well as the game progressed. We eventually won 3-0 though it was a lot closer than it sounds, I think they had the same flag rushers as last time and they got hold of the flag quite a few times and on several occasions got halfway across the field but we were generally holding the field and soon defeated the small defence and returned the flag.
Prior to that I had a really fruitless time helping someone do an impossible quest in the badlands which I didn’t even have. What a pain it was and then at the end we had to defeat 2 ?? level elites!! Some chance, so I was pretty annoyed at the wasted time in the end.
Finished up back at STV to do the pearl and fish fin quests, its quite deep for these and unfortunately I don’t have any shiny scales so I can’t breath underwater which is a real pain in the proverbial – I drowned after killing an elite down there which was particularly annoying.
What to do tonight that is the question – I still have rb on my Shaman so could do him and I have full rb on the rogue and warrior so I could do those as I have a full weekend ahead of me it would be nice to have a lot of rb left. Answers on a postcard please!

I am in the Badlands with the shammy, picked up a few quests but the drops seem pretty rare. The lag on the servers was pretty bad last night for the first hour. I thought it was a problem at my end as there had been problems with the wireless internet in the hotel. Anyway it seems OK there so I think I will grind there for a while and see if I can get into Ulderman, hopefully I can pick up a group though it was pretty quiet last night.

In STV with the mage with Helene a Warlock of the same level. We did OK but it doesn't seem as easy as it did for the shammy. We managed to gank a couple of lower level allies that were thee too which was pretty satisfying :) However we ran into huge resistnce problems later for level 37/38 mobs, the randomness of these resists seem to be flawed - the mobs seem to either resist nearlly everything or hardly anything, I had 1 mob resist about 6 spells on the trot and he had been going at a high resist ate before that anyway. Well died a few times on those and had to leave it with 2 still to kill :(

I levelled all of my chars at the weekend, though due to crap internet access I didn't get to do as much as I would have liked.

Mt chars are now
Oromebstard 40
Arastar 32
Theodread 28
Drogo 22

I also managed a first for me and that was killing someone who tried to gank me. It was in stonetalon, a level 25(may have been 23) elf hunter attacked my warrior (when he was 27th), I was just finishing off a shredder, I had seen the Hunter but because of our level difference I thought I would be OK. Anyway a ran at him and he proved as inept as me as he stood in front of me and tried to slug it - and I actually won - yippee, not by much though, still a wins a win :)

Did a couple of BG's with the Shaman and Clarissa a priest. We won both relatively easily, I think I was nearlly bottom ranked in the first (and outscored by the priest :( but top on the 2nd and I even managed a flag capture which is not like me. It was quite funny watching this thief trying to sneak up behind me whilst I was in the flag room, managed to kill him twice 1 on 1, he was lower level though! Then he brought some mates :( teach me to be on my own again in BG !

Didn't get to do a whole lot last night, I kept getting disconnected so in the end I gave up. However I ran a few errands with the shammy, got my new skills at long last - new lightening bolt which crits for 500. Also bought heavy silk bandaging and mageweave bandaging so I have now got to 225 first aid - need to go back to Arathi to get this higher now. I also got my next level of skining so that has risen to 230 (consequently I am now skint). I also managed to get some new leather patterns so I am now at about 190 leatherworking. So the night wasn't a complete loss, just not far off. I went to WSG which we won in a 5v5 but I kept getting diconnected which was a real pain.
Well I shall be playing a lot this weekend so hopefully I will make 40th and get to play some of my alts which I haven't been doing recently.

Played the shaman again last night, well I have a full rest bonus to use up! Was wandering around Arathi Highlands trying to do the first bit of freeing the princess, so I was in and out of thottbott. By the time I worked out where I was going I managed to join up with a group going to Stormgarde. I had 4 elite quests there so that was good. The group had 1 from Belgium, 1 from Denmark and 2 from Netherlands and me who is in Netherlands but is UK - amazing really. Well we blasted through Stormgarde really easily and completed all 4 quests in short order. Not a bad xp rate either, around 14k xp/hr. Nearlly 20 when I cashed in, remember I was messing about at the start trying to work out what to do. I managed to get some good drops too (no one could believe I had such crap gear), a helmet (plus another as a reward!), some gloves and a belt all with +10 ability increases which is about double what I did have. Also much of it improved my spirit so hopefully I will regenerate my mana much quicker, which has been a real pain of late. Well I haven't bought my level 28 skills yet so I need to do that at some stage and then its back to STV for me got about 5 quests yet to do there, some of which should be quite easy though there are a couple of elite ones which I will need to team up for. We killed a rogue a couple of times in Storgarde and played with a level 29 ally we found, sheeping him and bding him, it was like a cat with a mouse, but let him go in the end.
Well after all that I am now 1 bar off level 29, soooo close and thought I had better play some other characters really. Tried to play a few of them but the reception in the hotel started playing up so I didn't really get much done (except leave my dead rogue in the middle of nowhere). Also my laptop started overheating and shutting itself down, so time for sleep I thought, nighty night!

Took a friend over to show him the delights of STV last night with my mage. I died on the way to the village, and not even by an ally - lol, as they say don't stray from the path! Well after that we faired pretty well managing to complete 2 panther and 2 tiger quests which was OK. I managed to chase down another mage last night who had some very strange tactic of running into the water and then charged me, strange way to play a mage - dispatched her with suprising ease especially with my record on ganking! It was pretty quiet there I reckon all the alliance had gone to bed.
I was mainly trying to use up as much rest bonus as possible because it gets reset to maximum this morning and was 3 bars to go on the shaman and probably a level on the mage so didn't do particularly well! Still I have the weekend to play so that should be good.
My Shaman has several quests in Stormgarde, we tried to do that the night before last, 3 of us but we kept getting ganked by a larger group of alliance which was pretty annoying so we abondoned that. Must try and get a few of us together next time I am there, I have very few quests left in the area, nearlly time to head back to STV I think, must visit Kalgar 1st though and get the flightpath, though I have a quest in Hillsbrand first so the routes going to be interesting!

Well due to blizz infrastructure being pants in Europe (why did they base themselves in France! Better not have a problem at lunchtime) we are all going to get max free rest bonus. The problems have been 3 fold from what I can gather, there is a problem with there payments system which meantthat a load of accounts were disabled. There were was a reboot of all servers last Tuesday which took 2 or 3 hours and after the reboot there were severe lagging problems. As people on the forums point out its not much recompense if you are level 60! Also when crediting people they don't take into account the disruption that this has caused, most players can only play in the evenings or weekends (when the payement problem occured). They appear to believe that because it was only disrupted in the evening then this doesn't warrant a full days credit - but for most people that is a full day. However what is really riling(sp?) people is that the website is usually down when everything else is so you can't find out whats happenned. What I find irritating is that if you go to the main wow site there is no reference eo, or even lin (that I can find) to the european site so it always takes ages to find. All very frustrating, this sort of service wouldn't be tolerated anywhere else, especially for a company that must be taking by my calculations £24,000,000 a month in subscription fees, thats a fair few servers, rooters, raid systems that would make this a true high availability system as it should be and for that money could be 20 times over.

Anyway rant over, so I need to take maximum advantage of this maxed rest bonus by using up as much rest bonus on all of my characters as possible. Only got 4 bars left on the shaman but I reckon that all of the others are probably at maximum rest bonus. Therefore I am going to concentrate on the mage tonight and hopefully get onto the rogue but won't be doing any runs to up my skills as this would waste a fair bit of time. Its going to be pretty traumatic for the mage as he is going to go to STV hopefully with a mate of mine (Helene - who is off sick at the moment!!!). My Shaman made level 38 last night nearlly high enough for my mount, now only if I could find the 29g I am short!

Talking of skills can anyone tell me where there is a descent leatherworker that I can learn some more stuff from, I am about level 170 and have run out of reds to do. Also can anyone tell me where I can learn heavy silk bandaging.

Finished off the last of the quests I could be bothered with in 1kN, that was sacred flame and bumps in the road. Both times I managed to team up with someone which is good because they are pretty tough otherwise. The first team was odd, he wanted me to help him with the harpies which I did until we got a bad pull – this was caused by the usual, he was a hunter and his pet went charging off into the middle of a load of Harpies, 5 came for us and I was low on mana anyway so we both went down. Well he then shut down the party and wouldn’t return my messages – very strange. The 2nd team was with someone who was in the Croatian Inquisition – I said no one expects them and he got very confused until I explained and then he laughed but I think he was just being polite – so much for my shining wit.
I then tried to start the mage wand quest ugh not much chance there, died twice pretty rapidly so have decided to give that up as a bad job till later. So its off to STV for me as I am now level 31 and a big boy now!!
Played the warrior in AshenVale, had a couple of quests to do and decided to do them whilst queueing for WSG. Well I was just about to complete the 2nd quest when the opportunity to enter came up so I thought I would. Imagine my disappointment to find that the game had started and we were 2-1 down  Well I saw one of there blokes running for our base, but thought I would leave him and follow some of ours to their base as I thought they must know what they are doing, what a mistake to make. There was chaos round their graveyard I think we were, got a couple of kills and then the game ends, apparently they didn’t know what they were doing – so 2 kills for me great. Back to the quests, which I completed OK. Something I have noticed about the warrior is that he gets far more xp/he than any of my other chars which is odd as he does the least damage I think. I think the reason for this is that he pretty much never has to rest or bandage so there is no ‘down’ time and he hardly ever seems to die. He was hitting 22k xp / hr and I seldom get anywhere near that with the others.

Well have a good weekend another post on Monday proabably

Well I was wandering round the 1kN, with my lvl 30 Mage, going to the Wyverns when this Dwarf warrior (IronHelm - 31) ganked me whilst I was fighting a Harpy. Well I managed to get away with a frost nova and a blink, so I recovered my mana and hp and went after the little blighter. He was having some trouble with the Harpies as he had tried to run through them, I think he may have seen me coming, but I couldn't return the favour there as some came after me too. Well we finally met the far side and he quickly did some 1st aid before I could get him, then he charged me (how do you stop them doing that - its really annoying) . Well after coming out of stun I Nova'd him and then a couple more frost bolts and a fire blast then I was stunned again (another shout I presume), well I Nova's him again and another frost bolt but then on the 3rd stun he had me though I had run him very close. I should have used a blink I reckon and I got caught with a couple of swings when he was in Nova, I guess I am not using it early enough - but a good crack none the less. Well went up to the Wyverns and who should I see there, the same dwarf. Well I though it was time to get some xp so I just waved and so did he, then he hugged me which I didn't think was totally necessary but it enabled me to continue with my quest. Unluckily for him another horde player on his mount wandered through and I came across his body later.
Later I was playing my Shaman and a mate of mine was showing me round Arathi Heights, some good questing there by the look of it. Well after we had finished I saw a NE Rogue there and as he was a Rogue thought I would gank him, so I hit him with 2 lightening bolts before he got to me (1 before he had noticed me!) then right in front of me he just vanished, how annoying and wtf did he do – he can’t have been more than a few pixels away – answers on a postcard please.