Yeah, I know.  It’s been a while since my last confession…er,  blog post.    It’s been nearly three weeks since my last post.  So, I guess I should fill you all in on the latest.

Yesterday, Theshat and I attended a 10man normal on The Eye of Eternity .  Unfortunately that ended up in an epic fail, but it’s ok.  It was still a good learning experience.  It was almost all but one person’s first time there.  What made it so fail though is that after we wiped, the healer who had the key decided to leave,  and then both tanks left.    Well after finding another couple of people, we ended up 9 manning Karazhan .  That also was our first time there, but we did that one easily, and had a lot of fun doing it.  Part of it was these two guys that Theshat and I met a couple weeks ago.  We’ve been running randoms with them whenever we could.  Anyway,  we finished Kara and got the [Karazhan].  After that, everyone but our two friends bailed, and we decided to do Molten Core , mainly for shits and giggles, but also I wanted Theshat and I to get the achievement [Molten Core] before Cataclysm comes out and that raid is no more.  So, yeah, we 4 manned MC:  Myself and Theshat as the only DPS, our lock friend using his little brother’s DK for tanking, and our other friend as heals.  Amazingly, nobody died once.  We had no clue what we were doing, just winging it the entire time.  A couple times I thought we might end up losing a fight, but somehow, we pulled through.  Some of the other fights were harder than Ragnaros.  We killed him so fast, he never got a chance to submerge the first time.    Yeah, I’ve heard stories of prot pallies soloing the raid, but hey, we’re not pallies, and I still think it was a pretty good accomplishment for 4 guys who’ve never been to MC to finish the raid together all in one sitting and not die once.  I never got the chance to run MC back in the old days, because every time one of my guildies got to 60, they’d leave the guild for one of the huge guilds, rather than help our others get to 60 so we could run MC together.

Ok, let’s see.  What else?  In the last 3 weeks, Theshat and I racked up a nice amount of achievements.  In one night and all at once, we got [Northrend Dungeonmaster], [Northrend Dungeon Hero], [Looking For Multitudes] (and got our [Perky Pug]s to boot!).   We got a bunch done for [Glory of the Hero] (I’m not going to list them all here, we have done so many). We’re about 50% done with that.   We also have only 2 to go for [Champion of the Frozen Wastes] (Sartharion and Malygos).    Theshat got his [Noble Gardener] done in less than 24 hours total.  I did mine last year, but took me a couple of days to get it done.  Gratz on a speedy achievement dude! Well that’s all for now.  Gotta get some shuteye.  Not sure yet, but the guys and I might try to do another old school 40 man raid later tonight.

/logout

By no means am I an expert audiophile, nor a sound engineer.  I am a gamer and entertainment enthusiast who likes the most realism he can get in sound.   This review is written as such.   If you’re looking for a professional reviewer, look elsewhere.  I will be as objective as possible.

Ever since it was announced last August, I’ve been anticipating the availability of the Creative Labs WoW headset.  Today, I finally received mine.      I ordered mine through Amazon.com on Thursday for a retail of $159.99, and after overnight shipping, it came to $181.95.  Your shipping cost may vary and tax of course, depending on where you live. Continue Reading »

Ok, I saw this today on WoW.com and had to post it.  Too funny.  Great parody of Good Eats.

I got a twitter on this today.  I just had to share it.

If you’re not familiar with Boom De Yada, it’s a lyric from a song called I love the world that the Discovery Channel made and used for their advertising campaign in 2008 and 2009.   People all over started making and posting their own versions on YouTube, and the Discovery Channel encouraged more, and even asked people to post theirs as a video response to their original.

Yesterday was the official start of the Lunar Festival. All across Azeroth are the Elders that are to be honored, from the Horde to Alliance, Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Northrend, and various dungeons. Tonight I heard on [2:Trade] someone ask why there are elders in Northrend, but none in Outland? Well it’s simple really. The Elders are all from Azeroth, and Outland is not Azeroth, it’s Draenor. The Lunar Festival is an Azerothian festival.

So, tonight Theshat and I got a few of the achievements done. [Elders Of The Alliance] (both of us), [Elune's Blessing] (both of us), [50 Coins Of Ancestry] (me), [25 Coins Of Ancestry] (him), [Elders Of The Horde] (him), [Elders Of Kalimdor] (him), and the ones for the fireworks. I had done some of them already last year.

Tomorrow we’re going to try to knock out as many of the rest as we can. Some of the Northrend dungeon ones we’ll have to group for with others, but the old world ones we can do ourselves.

Well, that’s all for now. More tomorrow

Well, it’s that time of year again.  Love is in the air!  For the past week I’ve been working with my best friend on the latest world event.  We finished the meta-achievement [Fool For Love] yesterday.  We still haven’t had time to go after the holiday bosses due to some PC issues, but we’ll try soon.  Tomorrow starts yet another world event, overlapping for a week with Love is in the Air, called The Lunar Festival.  That will run for 3 weeks, and we’ll need it.  There’s a lot to do for the meta.  Getting all of the Elders honored is hard enough considering how many there are, but then to have to go into enemy territory to honor theirs is going to be a pain.

So, as you may (or may not) have noticed, I’ve redone the site, and on the sidebar over there, I’ve added an armory feed of my latest achievements.  Last night,  I finally got the next step in [Got My Mind On My Money], at the 10,000 gold level.  It’s going to be one hell of a grind up to 25,000 gold.

Well, that’s all I have for the moment.  It’s time for some coffee.

Well today as anticipated, 3.3.2 has dropped!    Season 8 of Arena has started, Frostwing Halls have opened in Icecrown Citadel, a few buffs and nerfs have been added, and a few bug fixes.  The patch was about 170Mb.  Not too bad.  Took about 8 minutes total to download and install on my connection.

Season 8 of Arena:  As most of you who PvP know, once a new season opens, the last season’s gear becomes available for sale without requiring Arena Rating.  This is good for those of us who like to PvP in battlegrounds, but don’t do arena much.   There’s controversy though about it.  Some say it’s “welfare epics”.  You know what, screw that.  I still work hard for those honor points to buy the gear.  I’m not a raider,  I am casual.  I rarely do dungeons.  I don’t have time to raid every night like some do.  I enjoy the battlegrounds, and so the gear I can get is a good reward for all the time I do put into BG.

Icecrown Citadel:  Recently I did do a random dungeon and landed in Forge of Souls, and had a lot of fun.  I’m really going to try this year to do more dungeons and maybe even some raids.  Now that the final wing of ICC is open maybe I will start doing more randoms and see what happens.  I need to gear up though.

Buffs and nerfs: Lots there, I’ll let you read the notes about that.

The official patch notes are as follows:

——————————————————————————–
- World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.3.2
——————————————————————————–

The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

The latest patch notes can always be found at

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

Dungeons & Raids

-  Halls of Stone
Brann Bronzebeard has been getting into shape and now feels comfortable walking faster when escorted.

-  The Forge of Souls
The Devourer of Souls will now cast Mirrored Souls less often.
The Spell Reflect ability has been altered on several creatures. It now has a cast time, only has 2 charges, and has a 75% chance of reflecting spells.

-  The Nexus
Anomalus will now use the Create Rift ability only once, down from 3 times.

-  The Old Kingdom
Elder Nadox now only gets one Ahn’Kahar Guardian during the encounter.
Jadoga Shadowseeker now only ascends once during the encounter.
Several enemies between the Befouled Terrace and The Desecrated Altar have been removed or had their pathing altered.

-  Pit of Saron
Players can now zone back into the instance if they are dead while encounters with Krick and Ick or Forgemaster Garfrost are in progress.

-  Utgarde Pinnacle
Skadi the Ruthless can now be removed from his drake with 3 harpoon strikes, down from 5.
Svala Sorrowgrave now casts Ritual of the Sword 1 time during the encounter, down from 3.

-  Vault of Archavon
Toravon, the latest boss to join the Vault’s giants and masters of the elements, is now accepting challengers in 10- and 25-player formats.
-  The Violet Hold
The time between a boss being defeated and a new portal opening has been decreased.

PvP

-  Arenas
Season 8 has officially begun featuring all-new rewards!

Druids

-  Talents
-  Balance
Earth and Moon: This talent now increases the druid’s spell damage by 2/4/6%, up from 1/2/3%.

Shamans

-  Talents
-  Elemental Combat
Shamanism: This talent now provides 4/8/12/16/20% extra spell damage to Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning, up from 3/6/9/12/15%, and 5/10/15/20/25% to Lava Burst, up from 4/8/12/16/20%.

Warlocks

-  Talents
-  Affliction
Shadow Embrace: This effect can now stack up to 3 times, up from 2. However, the periodic healing reduction effect has been reduced from 3/6/9/12/15% to 2/4/6/8/10% per application.
-  Demonology
Demonic Pact: The damage bonus granted the warlock by this talent has been increased from 1/2/3/4/5% to 2/4/6/8/10%. The buff granted to a raid or party by this talent remains unchanged.
-  Destruction
Conflagrate: The damage-over-time effect of Conflagrate has been increased to 40% of the spell’s total damage, up from 20%.
Empowered Imp: The pet bonus damage provided by this talent has been increased to 10/20/30%, up from 5/10/15%.
Improved Shadow Bolt: Damage done by Shadow Bolt increased by 2/4/6/8/10%, up from 1/2/3/4/5%.

Warriors

-  Talents
-  Protection
Shield Slam: The damage scaling from block value for this ability now diminishes faster and diminishes starting at a lower block value. The difference should be negligible for players in high-end tanking armor. In addition, the threat caused by Shield Slam has been increased by 30%.
Warbringer: This talent no longer allows Charge and Intercept to break roots or snares. Intervene remains unaffected.

User Interface

-  The party leader is now referred to as Guide in chat when a group is formed via the Dungeon Finder.
-  Fixed a bug where players with Raid Assist capabilities were unable to perform a Ready Check.
-  Fixed a bug where the first couple of tutorials were not displaying upon logging into the game.

Items

- New strength-based melee DPS rings are now available from representatives of the Ashen Verdict.
- Tier-9 Sets: The Aspirant vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds have worked out a deal with merchants in Dalaran so that all item level 232 set pieces will now be available on armor vendors in the city. Set pieces which require trophies will still be available for purchase only from vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds.
- Tier-10 Balance Druid 4-Piece Bonus: Fixed a bug to allow for this bonus to properly trigger.
- Tier-10 Elemental Shaman 4-Piece Set Bonus: Redesigned. Successful Lava Burst casts now increase the duration of Flame Shock on the target by 6 seconds.
- Tier-10 Tank Sets: The gloves and chest pieces for warrior, death knight, and paladin tanks have had their stats adjusted slightly to provide additional armor value.
- Tier-10 Warlock 4-Piece Bonus: This bonus should now correctly be applied to the warlock’s pet.

Technical Support

- The cvar ‘processAffinityMask’ controls which CPU cores are available for the World of Warcraft client to use. Previously the game client was limited to 2 cores as a default which players could override in the configuration file. In the past this provided a performance boost on some CPUs and operating systems. We have identified several systems that are experiencing severe performance issues with this restriction and have removed it. Players who would like to restore the old behavior can do so by updating the Config.WTF file by adding: SET processAffinityMask “3″.

Well, It’s day 1 of Blizzcon.  Yesterday I arrived at my hotel, got settled in and went down to the convention center to get my goodie bag and my badge.  There are some really cool items in the goodie bag.  I’ll post pics of it all later.  I’m staying at the Anabella Hotel, which is about a 5 – 10 minute walk to the convention center.   The working out I’ve been doing has been paying off, as the walk got me less winded like it usually would.

Right now I’m just waiting for my breakfast order (coffee, oj, and oatmeal), before I go down to the convention itself.  The opening ceremonies are at 11:30, so I have time to get in line right away for the store and then buy some loot.   There’s also a quest that was in the goodie bag.

“Catch Me If You Can”

Any Northrend angler worth their salt knows about lures, bait, and bobbers.  I bet you didn’t know that a set of lures exist that can help you catch treasure.  It’s true.

Go to Brady Mercantile located in the Merchant’s Quarter.  Marcia Chase has left instructions with some of the workers there:  they will give you a bag and a map.  Follow the instructions carefully; find and bring together the complete set of mysterious lures – but be warned, the only appear at defined times in specific locations.

If you are able to gather them all, return in the evening, when Marcia visits the shop…perhaps she will have a reward for your due diligence.

DESCRIPTION
Marcia Chase seeks your help.  She has left instructions with a local merchant – Brady Mercantile.  She needs heroes to collect a set of 5 mysterious treasure-fishing lures.  Brady Mercantile can be found in the Merchant’s Quarter.

REWARDS
Lure bag
Map

I’ll attempt it today.  Who knows?  It could be something interesting.

I also realized this morning after looking at the goodie bag, I’m going to have to do some creative repacking to get everything into my suitcase and laptop bag to take things home.  Oiy.

Well, gonna sign out for now.  I’ll take lots of pictures.

Today I logged into WoW for a few minutes, and when I logged out, I noticed the background downloader had started, and it says it is indeed for 3.2.   Generally I’ve noticed that the background downloader starts up about 1 – 2 weeks before a major patch.  Could it be soon?  Let’s hope.  The patch so far looks to be about 273mb.  I’m guessing that’s new graphics and model information.  Actual code won’t appear until the real patch goes live.