The Big Dog Cometh

I had heard that Wolves were largely considered the "best" non-elite pet for Hunters. Their howl buffed the Hunter, while they did plenty of damage on their own. Being that kind of schmuck who has to see things for himself, Ruk dismissed his 79 cat and tamed himself an 80 Wolf. Back to Silvermoon City, and back to the Heroic Training Dummy. Ten minutes later, the numbers came in.



Wait, what?





Not only does the Wolf beat the Spirit Beast's numbers, it comes in just barely behind the Devilsaur.

Let that be a lesson to us all - Corehounds might be large, but the Wolf is the real Big Dog.

Don't mess with the Big Dog.

Veteran Snowflakes

Over at the Rawrcast website, Kenny D posted a story regarding the fifth year anniversary pet and how many long-time players were bitter about it. More specifically, the fact that anyone can log on during the given time and receive the pet. There was no reward being given to players who had been around for the five years.

I read as much of the original post over on the WoW forum as I could stand. Apparently, the longer you play World of Warcraft, the more credibility you have. On what, forum boards? I try to avoid the WoW Forum Boards if I can, but the odd time I've had to delve into that sewer I've seen people trying to prove their point by laying out their resume - What do you know! I've been playing since Beta!

I've got a news flash for these Five Year Players (or FYP) - the game you play today has changed quite a bit from the one you played in Year One. Mechanics have changed. Talents have changed. So while you might know a thing or two about a thing or two, you've been learning and re-learning just like people who have been playing for two, three, or four years. However, FYP's want to be given something in-game so that they can stand out from the riff-raff "newbie" players. They want to be special, unique snowflakes.

Bullshit. Just because you've played this game for five years doesn't exempt you from being any less of a mouth-breathing yutz than a six-month player.

Get. Over. Yourself.

Should long-term players be rewarded for their support? Sure, why not. But does that reward have to hang off your shoulder like the Medal of Honor? Why not make it something that benefits the player's character rather than his/her ego?

Since Blizzard seem to have no problem borrowing game mechanics from other games, I think they should use something like the Veteran Rewards that Everquest uses. Every year that the account is active, they receive another reward. EQ has been going for ten years, and this is the lineup they currently have:

1st year – Lesson of the Devoted: The player is surrounded by a beautiful blue/white glow as they gain double experience for half an hour every 20 hours.

2nd year - Infusion of the Faithful: The player enjoys maximum resistances and statistics and a faster run speed for 15 minutes while he glows brightly with power. Usable once every 20 hours.

3rd year – Chaotic Jester: Summons a Bristlebane puppet that persists for 15 minutes and will randomly cast various spells that provide benefits or minor penalties. Usable once every 20 hours.

4th year- Expedient Recovery: All the player’s corpses are summoned to their feet and given 100% experience resurrection if they are still eligible. Usable once per week.

5th year – Steadfast Servant: Summons a creature that casts healing spells upon the player and others nearby. Lasts for half an hour or until you zone. Usable once every 20 hours.

6th year – Staunch Recovery: The player is healed with health, mana, and endurance fully restored. Usable once every 3 days.

7th year - Intensity of the Resolute: Surrounds the player in a glow of energy and increases the power of the player’s melee abilities, spells and heals substantially for 1 minute. Usable once every 4 hours.

8th year – Throne of Heroes: The player is teleported to the Throne of Heroes in the Guild Lobby. Usable every 72 minutes.

9th Year – Armor of Experience: The player is granted several layers of protection from harm for 90 seconds or 10 strikes. This protection lessens as you take more damage. Usable once every 20 hours.

10th Year – Resupply Agent: Summons a mechanical merchant to the player’s side who sells supplies and buys loot. He will stay up for 10 minutes or until dismissed by the player. Usable once every 20 hours.

Nothing game-breaking there. Some of the rewards aren't exactly earth-shattering, but double xp for half an hour a day sounds reasonable to me. Of course, this won't get a /bow in-game or on a forum board because, hey, everyone can't see the FYP'e ePenis. But for those who are above that kind of silliness, it's a nod to their support.

Elite Fight Club

Rukgut now has two elite Ferocity pets. That's not necessarily a problem, but should Ruk decide to get his group on, or maybe step up to raids and such, he's gotta bring the pain. Pain, in this case, via a pet. Beast Mastery 4 Lyfe, bitches!

To determine the pecking order, Ruk put his two prized scrappers - T-Rex and Spirit Beast - to the test. In this case, test being the Heroic Testing Dummy in Silvermoon City. Nobody goes to Silvermoon City.

Both rounds of testing would be the same. Both sets of pets would run with everything they'd be running with out in the World (maybe not in a group setting, so Growl stayed on for both... okay, I forgot to turn it off. Bite me.) Ruk would lead with a Hunter's Mark, Serpent Sting, and then simply auto fire. Ten minute rounds for each.

Nord, the T-Rex of Pain, stepped up first. Ten minutes later, he had his numbers.







Next, Spirit Beast who happens to also be named Rukgut. Fun fact, you can name your pets after yourself. Who knew? WTB Pet name change! Ten minutes later...







A clear-cut winner. Will that matter? Hard to say. Some folks don't like the Devilsaur in a group because he tends to eat up alot of real estate. Time will tell the tale on this one, but I've got a hunch both of these wicked beasts will see plenty of action.

Fail

Bored + Internet Surfing = Redesign Blog Template.

Pros: Looks better, feels better.
Cons: Graphics editing needed. Photoshop is not my strong suit, Paint Shop Pro is what I was a whiz at. What worked before doesn't work now, and using a different computer to edit images and such, with one arm, is very frustrating.

If the realms do not come up soon, I will probably end up having some kind of breakdown. Interwebs, save me from myself!

Taurens Rule - The GM Said So

Patch Tuesday, arm still on the med, and I'm bored. Luckily, I happened upon wowbash.com, which definitely helped take the edge off.

The pills helped more.

('''\(O.o)/''') - Scary Bear!

Interesting Spawns

The Rokk grouped up with some guildies and took the hurt to Drak'Tharon Keep. It was our first instance, first real guild grouping, and it was great experience. Of course, The Lich King showed up at the end of our run and talked a whole lot of trash. Regardless, the run went so well we took a spin through Gundrak for dessert!

In other (Hunter) news...



Skoll. Mine.

We just happened to be flying by one of the spawn points and decided to manually click the rare mob macro I'd set up. Suddenly popped up. Frantically I tried to find him on the map, since there were plenty of yellow neutral dots on Rukgut's map.

I quickly set down and instantly noticed a drake mount was nearby. A quick icon sweep over it revealed it to be an 80 Dranei paladin. I was worried. Why was he just sitting there? Oh crap, he wants to kill it for the Achievement!
(Turns out Skoll wasn't part of the achievement, but I didn't know that at the time.)

Where the Hell was my Frost Trap? C'mon c'mon, dismiss the old wolf pet! Tame, frozen... Skoll is going to be mine!

It was right about then, while I watched the seconds tick down, that I saw movement to my left. Two Alliance Hunters stood there and watched. Were they there the whole time? Or did they just show up? Didn't know, but once the taming was over one of them came up and pet my new pet. Got a cheer after that, but of course I had no idea what they were really saying -



There was no gloating on our part. We simply took our new pet out for a walk, while I stood up from behind my keyboard and rode out the adrenaline dump from taming a rare pet that I'd spent months looking for (Spirit Beast, not necessarily this one.)

Don't Make Me Get My Main

Winner of the Blizzcon 2009 Movie Contest.

Cataclysm - For All The Wrong Reasons

Well it's official - Blizzard has announced their new expansion. But I don't think they chose the right title. I think a more accurate name would be something like "Cash-aclysm" or "Cat-Alt-clism".

"Cash-aclysm" comes from the fact that they increased the race/class matrix to be more all-emcompassing.



This change simply encourages those people who want to do the upcoming "Paid Faction Change" to do so, by giving them more options, lore be damned. I don't care about lore myself, but I'm pretty sure the Night Elf Mage kinda goes against that sort of thing. Blood Elf Warrior? Really?

So for all you Hunters who want to switch to Alliance, you can pull out your wolf pet and be a wolf-man yourself! All you Pallies that didn't want to be a froofy Blood Elf, well saddle up with a slab of Tauren awesomeness! Just give Blizzard your monies and you have more selection of cute or crass, whatever floats your boat.

Now for the "Cat-Alt-clysm" name, I think that one has some legs. First, most of the changes coming in this expansion encourages people to play alts. They introduce two new races, with phased starter zones like the DK's starter zones. A nice gimmick, mentioned in their FAQ:

Yes, we are creating all-new level 1 to 15 starting zones for both races. Players will start their adventures with the worgen in Gilneas, which was sealed off behind the Greymane Wall. Goblin players will start on the Isle of Kezan and then head to the Lost Isles in the South Seas before joining the mainland. Each starting experience will be presented in a fashion similar to the death knight starting area in Wrath of the Lich King, and these starting zones will make extensive use of our new phased-terrain technology.

Next, the revamp the 1-60 zones. Why, when they've spent so much time and effort to get people to blitz through that content in the past to reach the level cap? Again, from their FAQ:

As we developed new content and expansions, we learned a lot of techniques to provide players with a better game experience--but the majority of the new content we were creating was for high-level characters only. We felt we could apply the lessons of Outland and Northrend to improve the gameplay experience while leveling in the original two continents. Imagine revisiting a familiar zone like Darkshore only to find Auberdine destroyed by the cataclysm--and then discovering entirely new towns and quests in other parts of the zone.

Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms are central to World of Warcraft lore, and we want those areas to remain an important part of the game, not just a place to train or auction. Our goal is to make questing, leveling, and the overall story more fun for new, returning, and existing players. By redesigning areas of the original continents and introducing new content that matches or exceeds the quality of Wrath of the Lich King, we can revitalize the nostalgia and coolness of Azeroth.

So they want you to make alts. They introduce the new races, hook you with the gimmicked phasing intro, then show you all the pretty new zones they've made. Know what would help the leveling process even more? Flying.

Yes. While the original Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor weren’t designed for flying mounts, we’re redesigning the continents with flying mounts in mind. However, we’re still determining whether there will be any restrictions on where you will be able to fly, at what level flying will become available, or whether you’ll need to do anything to unlock it. We’ll share more details about this in the future.

Changing flying levels again? Guess if it helped getting those DK's through the Outlands, it'll help the new number of Alts that will be starting out in the old leveling zones.

Now granted, many of these changes will affect players whether they get the expansion or not - old content changes will happen regardless. Buying the expansion unlocks the new races, new zones, and new level cap. Doesn't seem like all that much, does it? In fact, given all the changes that will be happening game-wide, the expansion itself only provides what seems like a fraction of the new content that is coming.

Rest assured, whether you buy the expansion or not, one thing will be certain: you will be a victim of the upcoming CatALTclysm whether you like it or not.

Blizzcon

Blizzcon weekend is upon us, and I'm already training for Blizzcon '10. That's right, training. I'm going to stand longer, binge harder, and probably out-funk any gamer nearby, baby.

Also, I've got to be in peak condition when I come face-to-face with this guy:



Ghostcrawler is dangerous. Yes, dangerous. He comes from a fighting people.

C'mon, don't tell me he doesn't look like Fedor Emelianenko:



Ghostcrawler lays a beating on people on the forums, Fedor does it in the ring. They're both capable of KO power, one of them with his wits, one with his mitts.

The Video

... and yes, yes I do. Or at least Maurissa Tancharoen.

50 DKP Minus!

In honour of the return of Onyxia, the one and only Skeleton Jack posted this youtube video. It's an oldie but a goodie, the birth of many catch-phrases such as... ah screw it, you'll know 'em when you see 'em.

The Wall - Part The Second

That's a good looking sword right there. A steal at only 25 Champion's Seals!



Most DK's swing the Titansteel Destroyer once they hit 80. We can make one if we wanted to. But since we're not buying pets or mounts with our Seals, might as well get something out of the jousting efforts.

This is the second toon I've taken to 80, and I've found the same thing happened. Ding 80, and the enthusiasm fizzles out. I thought that, with my hunter, it was just burnout on the class. After all, between all the servers I've had characters on I've probably gone through over 200 levels of Hunter. Hecksticks, Rukgut even got the rare Proto-Drake from the Oracle's Egg and even that wasn't enough to get me psyched up to play him.

Maybe running Rokk through some instances might help. Problem there is that I'm running WoW on my laptop, and I've found that my system bogs right down during Chillmaw fights. I can't imagine what it'd do during a raid, or a heroic for that matter. Wonderful.

Feeling a bid dejected, we decided it was time to round out some skills. Well, fishing had fallen behind and it had the potential to be a good money-maker. Why not?

Mid-cast, someone runs up to me out of the blue - I shit you not - and they feel the need to let me in on the server's worst-kept secret:



Fantastic.

New Races in WoW? Prove it.

Hey! Did you hear about the new races that are being introduced in the new expansion?

I haven't, and neither have you. There's been speculation, but not a single official post has come out on the subject.

Not. One.

Some data miner on the PTR found Halloween masks for Worgens and Goblins. Someone else ran through the formula that, since only playable races have been made into Halloween masks in the past, Worgens and Goblins MUST be playable races in the future!

Any facts to back this up? Not really. Is there any proof that these masks have even gone live? Doesn't matter anymore. Now that WoW.com has broken the story WIDE OPEN by simply stating that the next expansion will be called Cataclysm, and the two new races are Worgen and Goblins.

Ballsy, unless they have proof.

Why sure they do. They link to two websites that offer theories, not facts, to back up these races. They then say they have "sources close to the situation" which confirm the theories.

I call Bullshit on all of this until a) there's a Blue Post to confirm it, or b) word comes down at Blizzcon.

Watch The Guild

For all you XBox 360 folks, go to XBox Live and download The Guild's new music video - "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar". It rocks, and I'm sure there's a few of you nerds out there who probably touched yourself while scoping out the Nelf Mailbox Dancers.

I'm not judging, I'm just sayin'

http://www.watchtheguild.com

Busy Day

Know your Role, giant Jabroni!



Damn it, you kids play nice or I'll slap the frosty blue off of you.



Ding 80. Phew. Now we can start playing this bitch!

Bent But Not Broken... Okay, Maybe a Little Broken

Sometimes it's a little embarrassing when you admit to people that you play World of Warcraft. You get a look like you just admitted to rampant buggering of livestock. In my case, the look of disbelief that I get comes from the fact that I don't look like someone who plays WoW. I'm not obese, therefore I keep myself in above average shape as far as gamers go. I practice personal hygiene; no gamer funk for this guy. Mrs Rokk was worried I'd let myself go once we got married. "I can't," I told her. "I have a stereotype to break."

Fast forward to last weekend, when I hopped on the wife's mountain bike and began my 6K trek to the gym. Knowing what little regard traffic has for pedal-pushers, I opted to take a bike path. There were signs up for this particular path, making sure both pedestrians and bikers alike knew the other was on the path.

I'm progressing down a hill at a rapid pace, knowing I have a long incline waiting for me around the blind corner ahead. So I wasn't expecting to have to slow down anytime soon. Of course, that was until I rounded that corner and came face to faces with a line of senior citizens who happened to be taking their pet grandson out for a walk.

The Rokk Says: When approaching a blind corner, always stay on the right so that people can get by you. DO NOT WALK SIDE BY SIDE LIKE YOU'RE LEADING THE PRIDE PARADE!

I knew I couldn't get by them, and there were trees on either side of the path. Oh yeah, I wasn't wearing a helmet either.

Apply front and back breaks. Hard.

Sadly, the front brakes held a little more.

Rokk-et into the dirt.

I will take partial blame for the accident. I should have slowed down a little more when approaching the corner. I had slowed down to the point where, if I could have, I would have been able to hug the right hand side of the path and whistled by the Old Train.

They were fine. I ended up with my right elbow fractured, and a few cracked ribs.

While it is possible to play WoW with one hand, I haven't tried jousting or any of the major daily quests. I'm typing this whole mess with one hand. Until I find out if I'll be in a cast or needing surgery to repair my busted wing, I know one thing for sure - I won't bitch about my situation. I won't bitch about my game play.

Once again, I'm breaking the stereotype of the average WoW player.

"QQ" my ass.

Patch 3.2 Drops Today

Huzzah... I guess.

Well here's some of the changes coming up for Death Knights -

* Due to significant talent changes, all death knight talents will be reset for players.
* Blood Plague: Damage done increased by 15%.
* Chains of Ice: Now reduces movement by 95% instead of 100%. The main effect of this change will be that targets of Chains of Ice will not have to re-issue a movement command to continue moving.
* Frost Fever: Damage done increased by 15%.
* Frost Presence: 10% bonus health reduced to 6% bonus stamina.
* Frost Strike: This ability can now be dodged, parried, or blocked. Weapon damage bonus reduced to 55%, down from 60%.
* Icebound Fortitude: Cooldown increased to 2 minutes.
* Talents
o Blood
+ Bloody Strikes: This talent now provides 5/10/15% increased damage to Blood Strike instead of 15/30/45%.
+ Dancing Rune Weapon: This ability now has a fixed duration of 12 seconds (which can still be modified by its glyph) and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.
+ Veteran of the Third War: Stamina bonus reduced to 1/2/3%.
o Frost
+ Blood of the North: Reduced to a 3-point talent. Increases Blood Strike and Frost Strike damage by 3/6/10%. There is now a 33/66/100% chance whenever you hit with Blood Strike or Pestilence that the Blood Rune will become a Death Rune when it activates.
+ Lichborne: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 2 minutes.
+ Threat of Thassarian: New 3-point talent. When dual-wielding, your Death Strikes, Obliterates, Plague Strikes, Blood Strikes and Frost Strikes have a 30/60/100% chance to also deal damage with your off-hand weapon. Off-hand strikes are roughly one half the effect of the original strike.
+ Toughness: This talent now grants 2/4/6/8/10% armor instead of 3/6/9/12/15%, placing it in line with similar abilities of other classes.
o Unholy
+ Desecration: This talent has been reduced to 2 points for 25/50% snare and no longer increases damage done by the death knight. It has also been moved one tier earlier in the tree and its spell effect has been made more transparent.
+ Desolation: New talent. This talent is in the position formerly occupied by Desecration. It causes Blood Strikes to increase all damage the death knight deals by 1/2/3/4/5% for 12 seconds.
+ Scourge Strike: Weapon damage bonus reduced to 40%, down from 45%. Damage increased by 10% per disease on the target, down from 11%.
+ Summon Gargoyle: The gargoyle now flies lower to the ground, making it susceptible to melee attacks. This ability now has a fixed duration of 30 seconds and a fixed cost of 60 runic power.
+ Unholy Blight: This talent has been redesigned. It no longer deals damage to nearby targets. Instead, when you deal damage with Death Coil, the target will take periodic damage for 10 seconds equal to 20% of the damage done by Death Coil. This damage accumulates in the same way as Ignite and Deep Wounds.

Even better... BUG FIXES!!

* Anti-Magic Shell: The tooltip for this ability will now reflect modifications from the Magic Suppression talent.
* Blood-Caked Blade: The damage from this talent is no longer normalized to weapon speed.
* Chilblains: Icy Clutch can no longer miss when Frost Fever hits, however, when Frost Fever is dispelled Icy Clutch will also be dispelled.
* Dancing Rune Weapon: The rune weapon will no longer cast Corpse Explosion.
* Desecration: No longer causes unnecessary combat logging.
* Horn of Winter: Learning rank 2 of this ability caused players to unlearn rank 1, such that it no longer appears in their spellbook. It is now possible to relearn that rank, and death knights will no longer "forget" rank 1 when they learn rank 2.
* Lichborne: The buff from this ability can now be cancelled.
* Raise Ally: Using the Gnaw ability while under the effects of this spell will now initiate auto-attack. In addition, the damage done has been changed from a flat value to a percentage of weapon damage.
* Raise Dead: This spell will no longer give two errors when the casting player lacks the reagent to cast it.
* Rune of Razorice: Each death knight can now have his or her own copy of this debuff on the target.
* Rune of Spellbreaking: Tooltip now indicates the effect from this enchantment does not stack with other effects which reduce the duration of Silence effects (including not stacking with a second copy of this enchantment). In addition, now reduces damage from Holy spells.
* Rune of Spellshattering: Now reduces damage from Holy spells.
* Summon Gargoyle: Corrected the inaccurate tooltip which claimed a Gargoyle could last up to 40 seconds, when in fact 30 seconds has always been the maximum.
* Rune of Razorice: Corrected a bug where this applied to frost damage done by others.

Edit: the maintenance time has been extended to 3pm PST.

The People's Champ

Finally the Rokk has laid the Smack Down on the biggest Jabroni walking around the Argent Tournament!

Okay, so not really. However there was much smack that was laid down in ample quantities. The Black Knight was just the first. Once we qualified for Champion status, and had already beat the rest of the Horde representatives, it was time for the Alliance to get theirs.



Ding!

And then, once the smoke had cleared and the dust had settled, we proved what we'd already known, and the good Tauren of Thunder Bluff came to realise -



We are the People's Champ. You're welcome.