Occupy Stormwind!

Yes, that's right, the "Occupy" movement has reached the fortress city of Stormwind!  I'm here in Stormwind as my level 75 human hunter reporting from the mob at Stormwind's entry gates.  I'm now talking to Ella Anderson of Gilneas, one of the founding members of the Occupy Stormwind Movement (OSM).  So Ella, what are you and your group protesting?

Ella:  The fact that the Alliance has been leading our good men and women into many battles costing us untold numbers of lives and taking a severe drain on the economy!  Our military forces are in the Outlands, at Northrend, in the various battlegrounds across Azeroth, and now we're sending our soldiers to fight in the Firelands!  When does it end?  Why can't we make peace with the Horde and all work together?

Me:  The leader of the Horde, Garrosh Hellscream is not exactly a peaceable man - in fact, he hates the Alliance equally as much as King Varian Wrynn of Stormwind hates the Horde.  How could peace be made between two equally hot-tempered leaders?

Ella: That I can't say, except to ask: Are they even trying?  It's like all the citizens of Azeroth are pawns in their little game of enormous egos!  But we are pawns only so long as we allow ourselves to be pawns!  We now want more control over what happens to our lives!  (turns to the crowd behind her):  Free Azeroth!  Free the people!  The citizens of the world demand to be heard! (roar of approval).

Me:  But what about the recent actions of the dragon Deathwing, and of the mysterious Twilight Cult?  How can King Wrynn deal with these problems while trying to satisfy the demands of OSM?

Ella:  That's just it!  The answer's always the same!  Throw our lives away so as to protect the pocketbooks of the Alliance's robber barons!  Who needs the Horde's greedy goblin cartels when we got our own greedy owners of the war industries?  Do you know how many orphans our constant wars create?  Do you know how much less life and coin we would be using up if we could at least work with the Horde?

Me:  So the answer is...

Ella: The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind - the answer my friend is in the winds of change!  And that change is that the people won't stand for being used and abused by its leaders any longer!  No more "For the Alliance" or "For the Horde"!  It's now "For the people of Azeroth!"

Me:  So what are you going to do if an invading Horde force comes down the road here?

(Voice from the crowd):  You know, we should totally connect with members of the Horde so that they can start an Occupy Orgrimmar movement!

(Another voice):  Yeah!  I bet they're even more pissed at Garrosh than we are at the king!

(Yet another voice):  Ella, you should totally get with Jaina Proudmoore about this!  She knows Thrall, and I bet she can convince Thrall to join our cause!

Me: Wait, so Jaina is part of this?

Ella:  Not officially, of course, but she keeps up with our cause. 

Me: Anything else you want to mention before I log off?

Ella:  Yeah!  We also want to protest the utter unoriginality of all the "mom" jokes in Trade Chat!  Dudes, can't you come up with better insults than to constantly be ragging on the moms?  And rape isn't funny, no matter what context you try to put it in!  Don't refer being wiped in a battleground as being raped - just say that you got your asses kicked!  And last, no more [Anal] jokes in Trade!  Damn, that's so juvenile!

Me:  Well, good luck with that.  Trade Chat is pretty much a subculture.  I'll report more on this story as it develops.  Now to log off and go back to reality - by logging on to Facebook!  See you there!

This has been Andromeda the level 75 hunter reporting from the gates of Stormwind!

Avatar contest rules to come Thursday instead

Hey gang.

I wasn't able to get in touch with the boss before today's blog entry came out, so I'm going to push back posting of the rules to Thursday instead. My apologies for the delay.

In the meantime, check out this video! I love it!



I would have LOVED seeing the night elf woman fight a blood elf woman, but hey, at least they showed WoW characters rendered to look realistic. It was awesome!

WoW update: Fun Hunter stuff

I had planned on discussing something else, but... it's not ready yet. :-P

So with that, today will be a WoW update, since I've been a good little girl and not discuss it so much lately. :-D

I first want to relate probably the coolest thing to happen to my level 80 hunter since she started going to Wintergrasp (WG). On our server, it's said that the Alliance - or allys for short - outnumber the Horde by 3 to 1. Most of the time you see this most starkly in the WG battleground. In the mornings and afternoons when many of the ally kiddies (most of the allys are middle school to high school students), we - the Horde - often win WG. But in the afternoons and early evenings, the allys win, since they're out of school.

On this particular day, though - this past Monday in fact, it looks like the ally kiddies are out of school for the summer and have not yet gone to summer camp - so there were TONS of allys in WG! So many in fact that they overtook all the workshops where we get our tanks so that we were not able to make a one. It was a huge rout, in other words. Totally, completely owned. Worst WG loss I have ever been in.

Except for one shining moment!

During this fiasco, I was being tag-teamed by a draeni paladin and a night elf hunter. They got my health way down low, so I did something that shouldn't work in WG: I feigned death (FD). Now for those of you who are not familiar with WoW hunter's FD, what you basically do is play possum; that is, you pretend you're dead. Normally FD is for monsters or other hunter's pets so that they will "buy" the fake and stop attacking you. But any player who has had any experience dealing with hunters *should not* be faked by FD. It's easy to know when the hunter is FDing. If the hunter is truly dead, then his or her pet disappears with him or her. But if the hunter is FDing, then the pet is still around and attacking. It's easy as that.

However, for this palandin and hunter, they totally bought my FD, because they stopped attacking me. Meanwhile my sabretooth cat is clawing the paladin's health way down. I rose up and began shooting the hunter so that I could bring his health way down. They both resumed tag teaming me again. Now my health is dangerously low, so I ran a short distance and...

FDed again! And...

... they bought it again, because they stopped attacking again! LOL

I then rose up, shot the paladin dead whom my kitty had gotten his health down to nearly zero, then I turned and shot the hunter dead. Ha! It was awesome! I then went to take their insignias as trophies of my unexpected win.

Hunters hate paladins because they can heal themselves so rapidly, so whenever I can beat a paladin it's an accomplishment. Hunters also hate rogues because they are so darned sneaky. Rogues are also able to slink away if they don't kill me right away, because if I start shooting them, they'll die quickly due to their lower quality armor. However, one time a rogue was sneaking into the WG fort after a Horde win so that he could take out individual Hordies as they isolated themselves from others.

However, my humanoid tracker spotted him, so I used my hunter's mark to point him out for everyone to see. A hunter's mark is a huge, bobbing arrow that points out a hunter's target. It looks like this:

















See? It's huge, so it can be seen from a distance. Not only that, once a hunter marks you with it, you can't pull a slink-away and hide out of sight. In this particular instance, once I marked the rogue, nearby Hordies swarmed him and took him out faster than it takes to read this sentence. Sigh... there are times I love being a hunter. :-D

One last thing: Something I've discovered since hitting the big 8-0 is the sometimes snotty attitude that other 80s will have when it comes to putting together raiding groups. They will put any volunteers through "gear check" just to make sure they're up to snuff, and I've known others to be kicked out of guilds just because they weren't geared enough.

Well, hell! How are these people going to get geared unless they are taken to the dungeons where the better gear is located? It's exactly like when you go looking for a job and they want you to have previous experience. Well, you need the job to get the experience! I am not shy about letting gear snobs know what I think of them, and as a result I am not popular with some people. Fortunately, my guild is not the kind that will pull the gear snobbery, and we invite low-geared 80s to join our guild. We've gotten some pretty decent players as a result.

Lots of life lessons to be learned from this game! Is it no wonder I enjoy playing it?

See you next week!

Oh what the hell... WoW update!

I've been at level 80 for a few weeks now, and in that time I've been getting my gear upgraded by questing in Wintergrasp (or WG, as it is often known as) to accumulate the three forms of currency that can be had there and spent with a vendor in the fort as well as in the capital city of Ogrimmar. It's from my earnings that I've been gearing up to purple level gear for the best non-dungeon stuff that can be had for hunters. For those of you not on WoW, the dungeons tend to produce the top items - they just tend to drop infrequently or even very rarely, so you can't depend on it dropping even if you quest there. And even if it did drop, you are also going to be contending with the other members of your group who also want the same item.

It's also in WG that I've learned the difference that being on the right talent tree can make. For most of my hunter's career, she's been a Beast Master (BM), which means that her pet is her tank - that is, it takes the brunt of the damage that the monsters inflict on her while she concentrates on using her ranged weaponry. That is fine for soloing on quests, but for PvP areas such as WG, it's much better to use the Survival (SV) tree. The reason is this: The BM's main weakness is that when her pet dies, then she is vulnerable - basically a glorified "squishy" (slang for a toon with low armor or poor self-defense skills). However, while the SV may not have the kinds of pets that a BM has, she makes up for it by having much cooler arrows. Under a SV talent tree, she has arrows worthy of DC's Green Arrow (but not the boxing glove arrow, doggonit!). :-D

The differences in hunter talent trees is most clearly demonstrated in my duel-outs with other hunters in WG. I am betting that the vast majority of hunters are BMs, because they believe that it's the best talent tree for a hunter to have - and again, that's normally true in other circumstances - but not in this one. I would say that I have won probably a good 85-90% of my duel-outs with hunters because of the difference in talent trees. Here what nearly always happens with my duel-outs with other hunters.

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1.) Hunter spots me, and starts shooting me (hunters tend to be sought-out targets because of our annoying ranged weapon talents that allows us to strike targets from far away while keeping ourselves out of harm's way).

2.) Hunter sends beast to attack me. I command my beast to attack their beast.

3.) Hunter responds by commanding their beast to attack my beast.

Now here is the fatal flaw in their reasoning. By taking their pet away from attacking me, they remove the one thing that could help them win their duel-out with me, because their beast is better than mine. All I was doing with my beast attacking their beast is precisely to lure the other hunter into attacking my beast with their beast. It's amazing how often this tactic works.

4.) With the two beasts fighting each other, it is now down to a duel-out between the hunters, and thus here is when the difference between the talent trees is most stark.

5.) As hunters, we can have the same types of armor, so in theory, we are equally "squishy". However, my arrows are better! I have all types of arrows that a BM does not! So while the other hunter is pelting me with run-of-the-mill arrows, I am pelting them with stuff like - oh, explosive arrows that inflict lots of damage upon impact.

6. ) Even though we can shoot at each other equally fast, my arrows still does more damage to them than their arrows do to me. Still, I do take on a lot of damage, but almost always not as much as they take from me.

7.) Other hunter goes down, and I go collect their insignia as a sign of respect to a fellow hunter - and as a way of saying, "I PWNED ya, pal!"

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In addition to WG, there is a new area created since the recent WoW patch in the territory of Icecrown that has jousting tournaments. Cool gear can be had there as well. While I think they are pretty cool, I also can't joust worth crap. In fact, if I did joust worth crap, that'd be an improvement! LOL However, it doesn't mean that I don't enjoy it - I just can't master it! I can throw the shields, I can joust, and I can melee with the shield - I just can't do all of it well enough and fast enough to have at least some semi-consistency to win once in a while. In fact, if it weren't for the other, non-jousting dailies, I'd still be at the lowbie aspirant level!

The benefit of jousting here is that you can now grind rep with some of the other capital cities, and if I can get my reputation with the Undercity up to Exalted, I can finally get their undead horse mount that I've wanted for forever! I'm not so eager to get the orcs' raptor mount or the tauren's kodo mount, but I might work on those as well - but AFTER I get the undead horse! I GOTTA have it! IwantitIwantitIwantit!

I've been told what works in jousting and some swear that their success rate is close to 100%. It's just that the other guy won't cooperate and die already! LOL All I can say is, I'll keep working on it, and then maybe I'll finally get the hang of what I need to do to win jousts on a consistent basis. Right now, though, I'd settle for winning on a semi-consistent basis. :-P

That's it for now, kiddies! Have a great weekend!

Future WoW t-shirts?

The boss asked me to post these here so that his idea for some WoW t-shirts exist SOMEwhere. He plans to present his ideas to Blizzard Entertainment, which runs WoW. He got these ideas because he reads my blog (I would hope so!), and because I talk about Wintergrasp so much in person. Yeah, I'm a WoW chick - but you all know that by now as well. ;-)

Anyway, I love these, and I definitely want one (Horde, of course!) if he ever manages to get them made.

Cool costume idea for a WoW party

This is SO cool, because I could use these to play a draenei at a WoW costume party! 'Course, they're also going to make me taller than I already am....

WoW Update: Why I enjoy playing WoW

A comment to my most recent blog entry has gotten me thinking that perhaps I should bring up why I enjoy playing WoW so much. Certainly the crew at the office notices how much I am playing in between gigs in which I am beating up the bad guys.

I guess mostly that I am absolutely fascinated by the social aspect of the game. The communication and the interaction with other players is a social phenomenon that can only happen in our day and age. In other words, with WoW, we have a means of social interaction and communication that is unprecedented in human history. I can't help but enjoy being a part of that.

In WoW, there are life lessons that can be learned; particularly in how important it is to be able to get along with others - especially if you are to achieve some personal goals. Alone, you can get some nice gear, but if you team up with others (for example, running an instance set to heroic mode), you can get even better gear. If you play nice, you'll be asked to join again, and you might possibly get even better gear.

However, if you don't play nice, then they will remember you and won't ask you back. If you develop a reputation for being a selfish jerk, soon no one will play with you. The lesson you learn in WoW also can apply in life: Play nice with others and they'll ask you to join them again, and you may gain more with a group that you can alone. See? Life lessons. Another life lesson is that the Alliance sucks and the Horde rules, and that gnomes make good doorstops and speedbumps! LOL

Another fascinating aspect of WoW is the lessons of gender studies that it often provides. For one, there are many women who play WoW. Yes, real women. Women I know personally. And they play as aggressively as the men. But let me just as quickly add that there are also men who play female characters. In fact, I'm willing to bet that the number of men who play female characters is far greater than women who play male characters. I don't have proof of that; let's just call it women's intuition.

Still, I think a psychological study of playing on WoW can produce some fruitful insights into the human psyche. For one, there's WoW's addictive nature. There's a reason it's often called World of Warcrack. For another, there is the group psychology aspect of it. Some players are "ninjas"; that is, they will cheat when it comes to looting by selecting Need instead of Greed (if you don't know what I'm talking about - trust me, it's a WoW thing) even though the group previously agreed to selecting only Greed or Pass. Or they can be the kind that does stupid time-wasting crap like intentionally causing an instance wipe. Why do such people do such things when they know that the others won't approve?

There is also the driven types that is constantly yelling at the others for real or imagined errors. Tyrants, in other words. Then there's "ganking"; that is, the practice of a high level player staking out a graveyard and constantly killing a low level player over and over just for the hell of it. And of course, there can be studies done as to why male players will play female characters and female players play male characters. Last, there is the question on how WoW play affects the relationships of those players who know each other in real life. Can playing WoW help improve your relationships with others in real life, or does it hinder it?

So as you can see, WoW is a social and psychological phenomenon that won't be going away anytime soon. However, I will ask if you guys are tired of my WoW updates. I'm hoping that my enjoyment of the game shows through, but if many of you don't play WoW, then I don't want to bore you. Please let me know.

WoW Update: Level 80!

Today was supposed to be my review of the graphic novel, The Watchmen, but - I'm still reading it! :-D

(brief spoiler ahead. Stop reading now if you don't want to know what comes up)

Right now I am at the point where the Silk Spectre and Nite Owl help break Rorschach from prison. But I don't want to reveal too much here in case you haven't read the story, so I'll stop here.

(end spoiler)

I'll try very hard to finish reading the Watchmen so that I can give my review of it. Unfortunately, though, it messes up my theme of Review Week! LOL

So instead, I'll discuss my latest WoW news: Level 80, baby!

Yep, my main toon - the hunter - has hit the ceiling for which all WoW players strive for: Level 80! Thing is, though, I still get killed! :-D I thought getting to level 80 would make me like a god or something!

Now, however, I can finally get all that cool armor and weaponry that had been out of reach for what seemed like forever. I can now wear and use that cool stuff, and it's awesome! The recent patch from this week kinda slowed things down for me - especially downloading the darn upgrade! - and I actually didn't play WoW for almost a full 48 hours! WoW withdrawl! Urrk.... urrk... urrk....

Once I got back on, I discovered that I couldn't summon my corehound, because my Beast Master talent tree had been taken down. The talent tree points had been removed because the upgrade included some new skills in all the talent trees, so WoW basically rebooted our talent trees so that we could rebuild them to include the new skills.

At the suggestion of a fellow hunter, I rebuilt my talent tree for Survival instead of Beast Master. The main effect this has is that I can no longer use my corehound until such time that I can use the new dual spec feature. I had to get another pet, in other words, and I got a sabretooth cat. Not as mean or cool as the corehound, but it's still fun to watch it in action.

The Survival talent tree will take some getting used to, because I had been using Beast Master all this time. Since my cat is not as durable as my corehound, it dies faster, which puts more work on me to kill the monsters faster before my cat dies. Also, because my cat can't kill the monsters as quickly as my corehound, it accumulates extra monsters to kill while still working on the monsters that it's still attacking.

This won't be as much of a problem in dungeons and raids, however, because my pet usually dies pretty quickly anyway. As a BM, when your pet dies, then you're pretty vulnerable, especially with weak melee skills. But with Survival, while my pet is weaker, my hunter is a little more durable, and with more different types of magic arrows, to boot.

And it's funny - when you get close to 80, then your fellow guildies are telling you to hurry up and get to 80! Once you get there, they tell you to hurry up and get better gear for raiding! LOL They're never happy! Next time I'll discuss what I've learned since hitting level 80, including "dps", which nearly all of my guildies and their mothers (some of whom are guildies! LOL) tell me that a hunter needs for raids. Apparently, it's not enough to be told who to punch, I also have to be told how hard to punch them! :-D

See you next week!

WoW update: Dragon riding!

Last night my main toon was riding on the backs of dragons! Or drakes, as they are called for this quest - which basically are smaller and not fully matured dragons.

The whole idea for this quest was to use a harpoon to hop from drake to drake until you've knocked off ten riders to finish the quest. Not an easy thing to do, since I had to rely on my melee skills to knock off the other riders. For those of you not on WoW, hunters have mediocre battle melee skills, which is why they rely instead on their pets (in my case, a rhino-sized two-headed, radiation leaking, drooling and spewing corehound, which looks more like a mutant rhino rather than a dog) and their ranged weaponry skills instead.

My melee skills were just enough to get the job done the first time around, thanks mainly to my two awesome Savage Cobalt Slicers, which helped me to slice and dice the other riders like those cooks in Japanese restaurants slice up vegetables. Despite them, I still suffered due to my weak melee skills, and about 4 of those ten nearly took my health bar down to zero before I knocked them off. I think someone like a paladin or a warrior would probably have a much easier time of knocking off riders. Fortunately I'm at level 450 for First Aid, as I had to go through several Heavy Frostweave Bandages in between battles.

Here's some images of what I went through for this battle:

First I went hopping from drake to drake using a harpoon with a chain attached...





















Then once I hopped over to a drake, I did battle with its rider like so...













...using my Savage Cobalt Slicers, which look as big on me as they do on this night elf.












As a blood elf woman, I'm pretty small compared to the other races on WoW. However, during my time in this area, I was disguised as a giant viking woman like the ones in the pictures above. That was pretty cool. Oh, and one of these quests involved rescuing some small goblin men being held hostage in a village of these giant viking women. I couldn't help but think of that "snuu-snuu" episode of Futurama. :-)

It made me wonder if any of those goblin men wanted to be rescued. :-D

In WoW, even librarians kick ass!

Whoa! Check out what I found while doing some WoW research!

If real librarians ever got these, overdue books would be a thing of the past! LOL

Be sure to check out the two screen shots to see the blades.