The NuGen Blog

the Beta Post

2010-08-22T08:44:00.001+01:00

You’ve got to be kidding me!

Like a lot of people that play World of Warcraft I registered for the Beta when it was announced. I didn't really expect to get picked, even if it was a totally random chance, I'd never been in a Beta before and in a sense I would be quite happy if I didn't get picked. Unlike a lot of players I still had a lot of things I wanted to do in Wrath of the Lich King before Cataclysm launched.
So the Beta launched and I didn’t give it much thought, I logged onto the account management page the Saturday after the launch to check on something and saw a new button there. It said Cataclysm Beta, I went off to check my email and sure enough there was an email confirming the fact. Nervously I downloaded the Beta client, always the suspicion at the back of my mind that this was some kind of hack attempt on my account. I spent much of the rest of Saturday morning into the afternoon downloading and installing the patches (I think the whole thing came to 32gb). After a few false starts I was ready to go, the login screen came up and then I had 4 realms to select from one of which was Mekkatorque (EU), the others were Korean and two in the US (one PvE the other PvP).

Goblin Ingenuity

Being a Hordie I rolled a Goblin first off, this would be the character I posted on the Beta forums as, you can find my posts there under the name of Zandlin. People in the guild know me as Zand from my first character (in the Alliance NuGen) Zandathor so I followed this naming convention with most of my alts in the Beta.

Zandlin is a Goblin Hunter, as a hunter you start with a pet but no pet action bar so it attacks whatever you are in combat with. I have levelled a few hunters so I would be able to make a few comparisions, in fact in the month before the Beta I had levelled a Hunter from 5-50 so it was pretty fresh in my memory.
The spell book is now laid out to show you what level you get your spells at, spells will automatically rank up as you level. Also you now get spells at other than every two levels, the first new spell is earned at level 3 and you get a quest that shows you how to get and use it. Each time you level up a message display’s on the screen and also tells you any new spells that are available, because spells auto rank-up this is less intrusive than you might think.

The low level zone quests require you complete them all to move onto the next phase much as the Death Knight start area did. The difference being that the phasing seems more organic than in WotLK. The quests are quite fun and involve some mini games which don't suck, this is a good idea as it makes the experience much more fun from the kill 10 of those, collect 6 of these quests. As a result the whole experience feels much more like a RPG. I enjoyed the zone and it had some nice humour in it to boot.

The RPG style continues in the next zone that you encounter, you cannot get to the rest of Azeroth until you complete this zone and once completed you cannot go back to this zone. Once again phasing is used, which can be a problem if you use your Hearthstone at certain points in the story (the same is true of the Worgen zones). Once again the quests feel varied enough to keep it interesting, with only one grindy quest that I encountered involving collecting items with low drop rates. However things are constantly being changed and some of the grinding has been eliminated since I played through these zones. There are some quest that have an epic feel to them as well without resorting to boosting your stats in the way the DK final quest did. After you complete this zone you will find yourself in Orgrimmar.
Orgimmar
The city has changed a lot in Cataclysm, so much so that at first I got lost many times, there is now another gate which leads straight into the first new zone, Azshara. This is very much a Goblin themed zone and the quests are pretty varied and not too much of a grindfest. The zone still seems incomplete with some areas inaccessible, that said it should take you up to level 20+ without any XP bonuses just by doing the quests.

While I was levelling in these zones some significant changes became apparent;
The find function on the mini-map has now been changed to a tick box system so you can look for Herbs and Ore at the same time.

Herbalist gives lifeblood at skill 1, however lifeblood has been significantly changed giving you a small heal and a temporary boost to Haste. There is a discussion thread for this on the Beta forums but it hasn’t been particularly productive. I’m unsure about this change but it just means adapting to the new spell.

Hunters now use Focus and not Mana, focus works the same as it does for Rogues. The focus regen rate is being tweaked and a number of Hunter spells have no focus cost as well. For example Concussive shot had a focus cost which has now been dropped, instead it has a 5 sec cooldown and a 4 sec duration. Prior to this it was next to impossible to kite at low levels.
The new 31 point talent trees are in use but are constantly being changed so I’ll not say much about them yet. What I will say is that getting an old style talent from the old specs at level 10 is pretty cool, and some of the bonuses for selecting a particular tree can be very useful for levelling. At the moment I would say Hunters are not the fastest class to level (hint: pick a class that begins with ‘W’ ...any class).

Casual Crafting - For Profit

2010-02-03T05:41:00.003Z

What follows is a series of guides to making a ‘reasonable’ amount of gold without using gathering professions (Mining/Herbalist/Skinning). The quickest way to make gold while levelling are still the gathering professions. It isn’t a guide to making thousands of gold a day, however when you do reach the end level content you should have a character with level 425-450 skills in a couple of crafting professions without having a huge hole in your gold. It is primarily aimed at the more time restricted player for whom the option of spending a couple of hours a day gathering isn’t really an option.
With recent changes to WoW, taking gathering professions to make gold as you level is no longer as time effective as it used to be. Using gathering professions if you are levelling through questing makes a lot of sense because it is something you can do without putting in too much extra time. However if you choose to level mainly through instances/battlegrounds you won’t be able to level those skills very quickly let alone gather enough ore/herbs to make an acceptable amount of gold.
For those that are looking to make thousands of gold a day they should check out these sites, but be warned they are largely aimed at L80 characters with level 450 professions;
http://justmytwocopper.blogspot.com/
http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/

Basic Principles
I have made around 900g a character on my level 35 characters without doing much farming of materials. At the moment I am doing an experiment on a high population realm using just Inscription, at level 12 I am making around 30-60g a day despite tough competition and spending around 30-45 minutes a day online overjust a couple of sessions. In order to do this you need to understand some basic principles behind the Auction House(AH).

Knowing the value of an item – I use Auctioneer, it is mainly useful in giving an idea of what the average selling price of an item should be. This is important when it comes to deciding what to craft and what to avoid. Simply put the cost of the materials to make the item should be less than the average selling price of the crafted item.
For Example, a leatherworker can make 3 Ruined Leather Scraps into Light Leather, if the average price on the AH of the scraps is 3 silver and the average selling price of Light Leather is 12 silver then you can make an extra 3 silver (less 5% charged by the AH) on each Ruined Leather Scrap. Not only this but if you buy the scraps on the AH for less than the average price you make a larger profit. While these are small amounts of money the principle should be applied to anything you craft.

Know what you can sell – It is no good making lots of items with a good profit margin if no one wants to buy them, I learned this the hard way. Make a few of an item and get a feel for how many you can sell over a week or so. I know I can sell 2-4 Strange Dust during each week day, and probably twice as many at the weekend.

Buy Low Sell High – Commonly known as flipping. Simply put buy any items that you know there is a demand for when they are sufficiently below the market price that you can make an acceptable profit. I buy all my materials below the market value; all you need is a little patience. Here is a good example on a high population realm I wanted to make golden pigments which needs particular herbs to make. For a whole week I noticed the price of these herbs was very high (2g each) however eventually I was able to buy several stacks for just 50s each.
If materials are overpriced sell materials – Don’t turn all your materials into crafted items straight away, if you sell 2-4 items you don’t need a lot sitting in your bank crafted. I have over a thousand herbs of various types (some of which I have no use for) in my bank. However if there is a rise in their value I can sell them for a nice profit.

Don’t flood the market – It’s better to sell 2-4 of 5 items than to list 20 of one item, you will sell more items and have less gold tied up in stock this way.

Invest in your business - While you can start from almost nothing and make money, it is better to have some gold to start with, this will allow you to buy mats when they are cheap as well flipping items that are underpriced. 200-250g is good but you can start with less. Bottom line is the more gold you start with the quicker your progress will be. To this end try levelling some gathering professions up to level 10-15 and you will soon have enough gold to start with. You can then drop the gathering professions and switch to crafting. If you are levelling mainly through the LFG tool (which my bank alts are doing), you will have to get to L15 first anyway.

Personally I have a couple of questing characters with gathering skills (for the bonuses they give) and bank alts that I level crafting professions on.

Next time I’ll look at Tailoring (up to level 150) including some items that have sold well for me.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

2010-01-09T12:36:00.003Z

Alright, so there's been quite a lot of hoo-hah going on in the NuGeniverse since the back end of last year. Let's see if we can't get you fine people up to speed.

First off, The NuGen Continues (the guild Riande and I originally made as a solution to people leaving The NuGen Alliance at level 80 to join a real raiding guild) has been disbanded.

There was a mass of confusion about this, discussion of hacked accounts and whatnot, but the long and short of it is: the Guild Master of The NuGen Continues took the money and contents of the bank (I could have told him that he didn't need to empty the bank, that by disbanding the guild, all the contents of said bank automatically go to the GM anyway, but whatever, I'm nitpicking) before disbanding it and (possibly/probably) changing servers with some friends. I'm not going to go into my thoughts on this. I will simply say that I think it's sad.

Anyway, boo-hooing aside, those who remained guildless over the Christmas/New Year period picked themselves up, and now have their own guild established, Compromised, which they are hoping to have up and running by the end of January. As the guild is now fully out of NuGen control, we simply wish them the very best of luck with their future endeavours (and hopefully a spare DPS spot for Catrinna once in a while!).

Which brings me onto The NuGen Alliance, the first guild I had my hand at actually running (before I chickened out and handed it over to Riande to deal with all the complainers). With Riande now following in my footsteps over to the horde, hence giving up her post as alliance GM, it was assumed that the alliance guild was to be closed. However, a few of the members offered one another up as replacement GM, as they did not want to see the guild disappear. This guild is now also still up and running, with Sayal at the wheel, and the others offering their support. Again, as it's now out of my hands, I wish you all well!

And finally, onto me, myself and I, and my fellow hordies.
This is my current "collection" of characters. Aren't they pretty? So I've maxed out my character limit on Hellfire now. The only way I'll be able to make a new character (looking for a goblin in Cataclysm) is to delete one. Punctuation, currently my bank character, is looking the most likely to bite the bullet. Sorry love, but you're just too damn orcish.

The NuGen Horde is plodding on its merry way. We have recently seen the return of a few old faces, such as Fuzzyfelt, who has brought his shaman over to us (still not sure why he had to go and make an Orc Shaman, but meh, to each his own), and the fabled healer extraordinaire, Tzix. Also, we've had an influx of Warlocks joining us recently. I'm not sure why; maybe it's Warlock season, I don't know. But at any rate the guild is going strong; our 80s have had to date one successful run of the Spider Quarter in Naxxramas, and we went to Karazhan the other day, just for poops and giggles.

The guild continues...

PuGs - Don't be that Guy!

2010-01-06T06:24:00.002Z

Since the launch of Patch 3.3 and the new LFG tool, instances (especially pre-TBC content) has seen a resurgence of interest. I was initially cautious about going back into the Pick up Group (PuG) environment. However I am delighted that despite being time-limited during the week I can do 2-3 instances a day. I am far from an uber player, but I make up for that by not being a liability. What follows is based on my experiences in low level instances (RFC to RFK) but should provide some guidance to all players that want to make their PuG experiences less stressful. At the very least it should help you avoid being ‘that’ guy in the PuG.

Be Prepared
Before you hit the LFG button it’s worth checking you are ready, on a most basic level it means having enough ammo if you are a hunter. On a recent Gnomeregan run my Hunter won a Bow which was an improvement over the gun he was using. Fortunately I always carry at least 1,000 ammo for my alternate weapon. What I didn’t realise until later was I actually only had 32 shots left for my gun! This was despite starting with over 1,600 rounds for my prime weapon. However this applies to all the classes, for example a Tank had to leave an instance to repair his armor And I’m guessing it wasn’t 100% when he joined!
I have a mental check-list that I go through before I hit the button;
• Repaired?
• At least 1 stack of drinks if I use mana
• Stack of bandages
• Stack of buff food
• Stack of mana/healing potions
• Elixirs
• Scrolls
• Consumable weapon buffs

This leads nicely to...

Bring your own Buffs
Healing and Mana potions are really cheap from the Auction House (AH) most of the time, there is no excuse not to have a few of these potions. Don’t be like the Mage who told everyone ‘why should I have mana potions?’, he was pretty indignant about it too.
Elixirs can be a bit more expensive, but it is worth finding a friendly Alchemist who will make you some if you provide the mats. Check out what elixirs are best for you at your current level and remember you can have a Guardian and Battle elixir active at the same time, they generally last for 30-60 minutes provided you don’t die.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Elixir
Certain food will increase your Stamina (Health) and Spirit (Mana regen) for 15 minutes so bring at least 4-6 of the best you can.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Well_Fed
There is also food that boosts your pet’s stats; it works on Warlock pets as well. However you need to be at least level 55 as far as I know.
Scrolls often stack with Elixirs and so it is worth considering bringing a couple, once again they are often quite cheap on the AH, but if not someone with inscription can make them for you.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Scroll

Sharpening Stones and Weightstones increase melee damage and are made by Blacksmiths.

Understand your Role
I use the standard User Interface (UI), however it does allow you to have different versions of the main bar. I have 3 versions usually, one of these is just for Instances. This is because rotations are different when you are in a group and it’s worth being able to mash keys as opposed to clicking on buttons. The main benefit is I can actually watch what is happening on my screen rather than focusing on my action bar. As a result I’ll notice that patrol (Pat) that has wandered along while everyone is focused on a fight, or I can see the healer has drawn aggro and can intervene before they die.
• Tank - you are not there to top the Damage Meters, you are there to take all the damage the mobs are doing and make sure they focus their attacks on you. As a result you have to be watching the other players portraits to see if they are getting aggro (especially the healer). Know all your getting aggro abilities and use them as often as possible, this allows the DPs in your group to use their most damaging spells/abilities. While DPS like to top the damage meter, you should be thinking total damage done minus damage done to others in my group. Check everyones mana before moving on to the next group of mobs, you’ll die less often that way.
• Healer – be intelligent with your heals, this means making efficient use of your mana not spamming your biggest heal from the first second of the fight. So adapt to the situation, it’s okay to not heal unless it’s needed. I’ve been healing on my Shaman so I won’t comment on the other healing classes. However I often stand around in fights doing very little, on the other hand on occasion I will be spamming heals like crazy. Learn to know at what point you should start healing, heal DPS when it is practical with special attention on Warlocks, they convert their health into mana.
• DPS – Damage meters are largely irrelevant until you start raiding, before that you main role is to do as much damage without pulling aggro as you can. Be aware of any aggro dumping spells you have and use them when you pull aggro. The main thing you have to do is ‘learn’ how much aggro your tank can hold and then DPS accordingly. As a result I change my rotation from group to group (I DPS on a Warlock, Hunter and Mage). That is the real challenge of DPS in instances. To be Honest you can probably get away with being carried in many groups without anyone worrying too much.
Don’t be ‘that’ guy;
• Like the Druid tank who didn’t have bear form and thought tanking involved standing behind a mob and hitting it with a slow 2 handed weapon. That is one way to get booted and ignored. Yes we booted a tank, they aren’t untouchable.
• Like the healer that was always out of mana half-way through every fight.
• Like the DPS that spams Go!Go!Go! And thinks that topping the damage meter = winning.

Use macros for quick party instructions
/p Patrol!
/p I have Aggro!
/p Out of Mana
/p Healer has Aggro!
Put them on an action bar and use when required, people will notice that you helped the group not wipe and that is always good!

So yeah, then I made it into a blog...

2009-12-31T18:26:00.002Z

Hello Hordingtons!

Good to see you on the dark side!

Hi, I'm Riande and i'm an altoholic :)

You all know Cat, and if you don't then there's something wrong with you! Well Cat and I have been running guilds together for a couple of years now (all with NuGen somewhere in the title) to date we have 'The NuGen' <------BEST GUILD EVA!! in that it when was cat and i first started wow and we were too scared to talk to ppl in the game (yes, its true) so that consisted of only mine and Cat's first ever horde chars on the Aggrammar server. and its still there as we've not deleted those characters as of yet.

After that we decided it was time for a 'proper' guild with acutal ppl in it and everything. So we rerolled and then came 'The NuGen Alliance' 'The NuGen Mooners' 'The NuGen Continues' 'The NuGen Continuez' <---lasted a day the z was a no no, 'The NuGen Horde' <---thats you!! and also 'NuRF', which is NuGen Reformed. A lot of these lovely....names that dont appear on the website's main page were because of us trying to expand and finding a GM to lead the way with raiding, as frankly Cat and I were total noobies (still are, really) when it came to raiding.

Anyhoo last couple of months have been pretty hectic in the NuGen life, what with Cat and me decidind to reroll, me chickening out, cat rerolling, the GM of the raiding guild getting hacked, getting the raiding guild and the GM back, then the GM of the raiding guild getting hacked AGAIN, and finally me not being able to live without my wow life partner. (thats you, Cat, btw)

Those of you from the very early days of NuGen Horde might remember a hunter called Daerwin, well that was me :) I came over in the beginning for little bit to help recruit a few ppl and see if my rerolling would actually stick. Alas no, my little gnome warlock demanded more of my attention so i continued to play on Darkspear.

anyhoo, now the GM team is back together and we are whole again! Yeay! So i'll be seeing you all in game. I dont have a regular 9-5 job so ill be on at random times frequently and infrequently, RL stuff has been demanding a lot from me lately and the voices in my head are telling me to cut back on wow so thats what i'll be attempting to (she says as she types on a wow forum...) so in my role as the other half of the GM cru i'll be doing...well pretty much sweet FA really.

Those rerolling with me might be surprised or not knowing how much little wow time i've had recently and i'm here to pretty much chillax and answer questions/queries/comments like everyone else.

My areas of expertise include

1) Addons
2) The AH
3) Locks (tho only end game mainly as im lvling a lock for the first time again in like a year)
4) Raids (done most, and can give tactics for the really easy ones especially from a ranged dps POV as we all know Locks RULE, but mages, hunters, priests all smell)
5) erm...i can tell you what wines go really well with what foods...
6) and i can tell you how NOT to burn your hand on your new portable heater

So with that bit over with here's a few additional things

Cat and I spent a lot of time sorting the website (ie, she makes it look pretty and i applaud) and we try and make it useful for you. Remember the forums are here for you guys to help each other out and share questions and information outside of the actual game. Cat and I love the social apsect of WoW, it's what kept us going for so long and we love it when a project gets utilised.

So take the time to check out some of the topics your fellow guildies have posted. Feel free to post pretty much whatever you want in the Offtopic section (lets keep it clean guys).

Want to know more about your class if you're just getting started or are starting a whole other one. The class specific forums are a great place to learn and ask as all of NuGen can share their knowledge.

We currently have a MUGSHOT thread where you can post pics and finally put faces to names!

And NuGen are very lucky in that we have (atm) a free vent server where you can chat if you're fingers get sore from typing. You'll most likely find ppl in it from darkpsear but we also have plenty of channels designed to give ppl some privacy. There are rules to go along with using the vent server and we've not had a single problem yet. BUT i must warn you, it's mainly dull :) If you want sparkling conversation about the outside world around you then go outside! It's mainly a bunch of ppl chatting about WoW or other such scintilating topics or they'll be five ppl on and once every 20mins someone will say something.

But along with all this, as there are changes to the NuGen, so there will be changes to the website (Cat is not one to stick with the same picture for long :) ). We'l be giving you more information on the above topics now that I'm here to nag Cat and give her a kick up the bum. (We're STILL waiting for a new bit on the raiding guild section and its only been oh i dont know, a few MONTHS) Needless to say (so i guess i'll say it) we'll be working hard to make thing a little easier, and hopefully, more fun for you in and out of WoW.

So with the new year rolling in, I raise my glass and salute you fellow NuGenites, wishing you a happy New Year and plenty of WoWing

Rx

Like Buses

2009-12-14T10:41:00.008Z

You wait for ages for a blog post then TWO come along at once!

And there will be more. I still have many thoughts and feelings towards the 3.3 patch, and in particular the new LFG system, with its pros and its eye-popping cons. But I'll talk about that later. Right now, I want to talk about me. Me, me, me.

So on Saturday, my hunter Catrinna dinged 80 after what seemed like a lifetime. While the NuGen Horde guild has only been running since August this year, I have had Catrinna in some form or other pretty much since I started playing almost 2 years ago (Wow, I've wasted almost 2 years of my life). This was a very special moment for me. I'd like to thank everyone who supported me through this journey; Jesus, my cats, etc.

This one time, in Shattrath, the server reset while I was logged in and I didn't get logged out...

In other news, Christmas is coming in case you didn't know, and the hordies have (mostly) embraced the funtime Christmas tabard (and those who haven't can suck it - I hate Christmas as much as the next miserable cow, but you can't say that watching a Tauren run around brandishing a Christmas tree on their chests isn't funny).

Hordies in Icecrown

2009-12-14T09:28:00.006Z

OK, so at some point in my altoholism, I forgot that I actually have a level 80 healing druid (and healing is about all I can do on it - cat Dee Pee Ess is just far too complimacated to get my head around, and tanking? LOOOOOL, no). So when Omg and Divad were asking about attempting a run through Icecrown Citadel, I leapt at the chance at being able to heal with people I know instead of the LFG "OMG NOOB HEALZ0R NOOOOOOB".

The group was made up of Divad (on Mor) tanking, me treeing it up, with Omgnametaken, Kharren and Paragus bringing up the rear with the pewpews.

The run went steadily for the most part. I think I died at some point. But then I tend to do that a lot anyway. Thank goodness for 3 druids with battle rezzes and innervates in their arsenal.

In the end, there wasn't enough Dee Pee Ess to escape from the Lich King and he kept reaching us by the third wall block [fail pics to follow], so we called it off as a bad job. Still, not a half bad attempt all around.

Afterwards, we had some fun with Arthas:

No hard feelings, eh, Arthy? We'll come back for you, eventually.

You just watch this space.

Log Flume FTW plus other crap

2009-12-01T21:39:00.011Z

Pretty moon

I pity the fool

Yeah Baby. Talk to an NPC in Blue Sky Logging Grounds to play!

More log flume fun

Must have been one of our first naxx kills /cry

Yeah I shot bambi's mum

Optional croc surfing

Fireworks in SW on Bonfire Night.

I'm in January I'll have less work and plenty of wow time!

For now, keep on trucking

NuGen - With added Tentacles.

2009-11-29T11:09:00.003Z

Glory to the Sindorei!

On this fateful day, 10 brave souls entered the Titan complex of Ulduar, not knowing the horrors they would face in its bowels. But face it they did. And conquer, they did.

The NuGen Way.

(Click to Enlarge)

Line-Up

Aiv,
Cookie,
Modhesh
Sparkus,
Nerdrage
Nympho,
Krytain
Vannova
Algumby
Alkazarus

Big Congratulations to the guild as a whole - We've come so far, but done it together!

Once More into the Instance!

2009-11-25T06:28:00.001Z

To Instance or not to instance that is the question? In the last couple of years I have noted the decline of the popularity in people doing instances. This is especially true of the original (and the Burning Crusade) content. Even finding people who want to run level appropriate content in Northrend is a task only for the patient. Based on what people actually run Blizzard would be forgiven for just creating new instances for the first couple of levels and end game. This is certainly a shame as well as being a cause of many a frustrating wipe-fest as people are simply unprepared for the mechanics that the instances in-between teach.

Now I have to confess that I haven’t run many instances in the last year. A couple of years ago I could join LFG for Wailing Caverns (WC) and have a group in 15-30 mins, often in 5-10 mins. Compare that with more recently where when eventually I got a group. Six times I tried to run WC and six times the group fell apart after the first encounter, not the first boss but the trash mobs! There was no drama just people insta-leaving leaving me into the all too familiar situation of being left with one other person discussing the difficulty in getting a group of people willing to take the time to learn this aspect of the game.

When I started playing WoW I learned the hard way how to defeat each of the instances and each time I learned a new aspect to successful instancing. Unfortunately the culture now is rush to end level and then think you are prepared for end level instances. This hasn’t been helped by Blizzard to be honest as they have made the need to instance increasing irrelevant. Whereas maybe 3% of players were able to raid before WotLK, I would guess that only a small percentage of players now run instances (other than RFC/DM, Hellfire Citadel, Utgarde Keep and L80 instances).

Some of the things that have made instanced content irrelevant;
• Quicker levelling 1-70 – why try to get better items in instances that you will discard quickly?
• Boosting – Welfare blues plz, just count the number of requests for boosts, enough for people to make a group and actually ‘earn’ those BoP items
• Heirloom Items - Alts no longer need to run instances provided you have a L80 and no need to teach people how to run instances successfully
• Instances are perceived as a chore to get through rather than a fun way to spend an hour or so

That said I have decided to venture back into instancing, even to the point of doing Pick-up Groups (PuGs). Even within a guild it is very difficult to make planned runs for ‘level appropriate’ content. To be honest I have done 90% of my instance runs with PuGs and have few bad experiences. Maybe this is because I enjoy running the content and see the item rewards as a bonus.

An improved LFG scheme is planned for patch 3.3 and this will probably be make or break for instances. Here is a breakdown of the new features;

I have taken this information from
http://projectlore.com/blog/patch-33-lfg-overhaul-detailed/
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/3p3/newdungeonsystem.xml

• Join as a group - if you have a few friends you can join together
• Cross-Realm Instances/Grouping – A big feature which should make getting a group for the less popular instances a lot easier, there are some concerns that people will take advantage to ‘ninja’ items
• Daily Random Dungeons – replaces the Daily Dungeon quest, instead there will be a Weekly Raid Quest. Also applies topre-The system even applies to pre- WotLK dungeons, handing out level appropriate rewards for levelling runs
• Repeat Random Dungeons – though the rewards for doing so will be less after the first successful run
• Choose Multiple Dungeons – more than the current 3?
• Vote Kick system – The loot option is fixed to the updated Need Before Greed option (and unalterable by any member) and players can vote to remove another party member from the group. It will take four votes in order to remove someone, however, so consider this newfound power carefully.
• Lovin’ the PUG Bonuses - Players who take part in groups with one or more members who have been matched with them randomly from within the dungeon system will receive extra rewards
• Need Before Greed Updated - class must be able to equip the item, pure melee will be unable to roll on spellpower items, and classes are limited to their dominant armor type, although if no one needs the normal roll procedure applies.
• Group Disenchanting – provided you have an enchanter in the group it just automates the process

The changes seem to have addressed most of my concerns about instances, but only time will tell if instancing will survive into Cataclysm

Obsidian Sanctum now in 3D!

2009-11-23T06:20:00.007Z

Yes, that's right.

The NuGen has notched another "Elite" kill on our bedposts. Err .. or our belts. Whichever way makes it sound less gay.

It took about 15 attempts, spanning over 2 days to kill Sartharion with the aid of his 3 Drakes. 100's of gold in repairs, but a chance at obtaining a rare mount was worth it.. wasn't it?

Oh, and not to mention .. yesterday we get our 10. This time, deciding to take only 2 healers for the trash. It's not that hard, right?

We set off, clearing. But something's amiss. People are taking a lot of damage and I'm actually being forced to heal..shocking. I dismiss it as laziness on my part and we continue. We travel round the Sanctum in a circle, slaying dragons left and right until our goal stands ahead of us. After steeling our nerves and readying ourselves, we engage.

95%

90%

85%

80%

Then something horrific and unimaginable happens .. we all start to die one by three.

"What is this madness?!" one asked. We were baffled. Bemused. How had we dented so little of the health, when on previous days we'd surpassed that in seconds..

It wasn't until one lone voice rang out did it dawn on us ..

"Guys.. this is set to 25-man.."

Oh how we cried. Yes, we had attempted to zerg Sartharion+3D on 25man. With 10 people. After we laughed it off as the best wipe some of us had ever done, I sheepishly set the raid to 10-man, and we entered once again.

The ever elusive Black Drake awaited.. but for 9 people, the title alone would have to suffice, as the conniving, dastardly, most devious member of our group rolled the highest for the Black Drake.

....Aiv of the Nightfall.

(Click to Enlarge)

That's what I'm talking about.

Edit : Here's the youtube video (Strong Language)

The Casual Altaholic – a different approach

2009-11-18T06:33:00.004Z

There are many definitions of what a casual player in WoW is, over the last year this has become even more fragmented. Casual is even used in the same way as the word ‘noob’ is and according to some the root of all the ‘bad’ changes to the game. Am I a casual? I play around 25-30 hours in a week but often for less than 2 hours a session.

The urban dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=altaholic) defines an altaholic as; someone who cannot focus on just one character in an online game, usually known as their main. These people have many "alt"ernate characters.

Because of my ‘free-time’ schedule I often find myself online during the quieter times and so I’ve had to define different in-game goals for myself. When I moved to the NuGen Horde I set myself the goals of levelling a couple of classes I hadn’t really played much before (< level 20) a Paladin and a Shaman. I wanted to level them without dying too often and also to get the Loremaster and Seeker titles. In addition I wanted to make gold without farming. Both of these goals were new for me and ones that fit well with a casual approach. Not only that but pursuing the titles mentioned above actually helped with the, ‘trying not to die too often’ goal.

The suggested approach to the game is to level as quickly as possible to level 80, usually by using some kind of questhelper add on. However there are some quests that are very challenging depending on your class and level. Instead I decided to put my priority on completing as many quests as possible first. To do this I visited all the starting zones until the quests turned ‘grey’ on my main as a result as was probably a level or two higher than would normally be the case when I moved to the next higher level zones. I’m taking this to the next level on my alt by trying to do all the starting zone quests first, which means doing all quests that are grey first, obviously this means slower levelling which is fine because I’m not trying to get to level 80 quickly.

At the same time I have been ‘playing’ the Auction House with crafting low level items (Tailoring & Leatherworking skill level 150) without farming too many of that mats, but that is for another blogpost.

So how to increase my survival chances, well from the start I picked a class that had a reputation for being difficult to kill, the Paladin, by the time I reached L48 I had only died twice and both of those were due to forgetting to use an ability that would have restored all my health. However any character can improve their chances by taking full advantage of profession and food bonuses. Gear is also important, especially early on.
• Mining; gives a bonus to your health, especially important for classes with poor armor
• Herbalism; gives a free heal which is more useful for melee classes as a form of damage mitigation
• Food buffs; even at low levels you can get a +2 to +4 bonus to Stamina (i.e. +20 to +40 health)
• Gear; doesn’t need to be best in slot but initially try to max out armour and stamina so you have time to get away when outnumbered or attacked by high level mobs. Crafted low level items can serve you well early on.
• Avoiding indoor encounters; these have a much higher chance of getting you killed. For example Tiragarde Keep in Durotar is best avoided until you can handle 2-3 mobs at once.
• Buffing other players; if they get flagged for PvP so do you
• Groups; people in groups do strange (e.g. stupid) things especially when they are in a group, it’s another variable that you have no control over.
• Always be aware of what is around you; when I enter fight I constantly check my six (look behind me). Mobs have a nasty habit of re-spawning in blind spots
• Avoid overconfidence; remember mobs can have a run of good luck and it can coincide with you having a run of bad luck.

Only experience can tell you what quests to avoid, but either looking at a site like WoWhead http://www.wowhead.com/ or using the equivalent add on http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info7017-LightHeaded.html will help with this.

So back to my altaholicism, I have a main, 3 bank characters and one alt at the moment on Hellfire. It might seem like less than expected but I do expect to add another bank and 3 more alts in the coming weeks. My Shaman just hit level 15 and came close to dying a couple of times (once when I got too close to a mob +6 levels) swimming away and a minor healing potion helped me survive.

The route I’ve got planned for Cowherd (Shaman) is doing quests in Mulgore (which is pretty much completed), I moved on to Durotar and did all the grey and green quests there and have recently arrived in Tirisfal Glades only taking a detour to do the Call of Fire quest chain to get my fire totem at level 12-14 (did a couple of quests in the Barrens at the same time). Why am I doing grey and greens first? Mainly to maximise on the xp earned to be honest, though by the time I reach Eversong Woods I would imagine all the quests will be grey. From there I’ll probably move on to Ghostlands/Silverpine Forest/the Barrens which should take me into the 25-30 bracket.

Time is Money, Friend

2009-11-12T19:56:00.009Z

So we've got a bit of a conversation striking up on our forum, as well as the buzz around the rest of the wow community at the mo, about these new vanity pets Blizzard have released, where you pay real money for a virtual item.

Surely we're only an epic handout and gold-buying feature away from totally throwing this game into the bin with all the other games that have sold out, right?

Well, no, not really.

Much in the same way that the achievement system was introduced, offering "non-combat rewards" for putting in the extra time/effort to certain things, the new bells and whistles that have appeared in the game (the character customisation, faction and race change options, and more recently the new Pet Store) provide the player with no benefit other than to their own gaming experience.

I, for example, am a total sucker for all things shiny. A good example is how at the minute I'm levelling Tailoring on Cattrina, my DK bank/mule character on Hellfire. Surely Tailoring is a crappy profession to have on a DK? You're right. So why am I doing it? Because I want to be able to make the Tuxedo and the Haliscan outfit. I've spent about 500g so far in levelling it alongside enchanting. Just so I can make myself a tux. True story.

This is just the kind of person I am, which is the really good thing about MMOs, especially one as versatile as World of Warcraft. If I want to spend eight hours repeatedly killing pirates to farm Mageweave cloth, to turn into a snazzy jacket to match my Diamon-Tipped cane and Battered Jungle Hat, then damn it, that's what I'll do! Same that if I want to spend WEEKS repeatedly powerhousing through Stratholme so get a fucking skeleton horse, then I will!

This is who I am in life. I see something I want, and I have to have it. I have a pile of shoes and clothes in my wardrobe that I saw because they looked pretty, only to find out that they don't fit. Do I return them? No. No, I keep them, look at them occasionally and admire their unattainable beauty.

And it's the same with WoW.

Let me put into perspective how much money I have spent on WoW since I started playing.

The average person who has played like I have since opening their account will have spent the following:

£10 Vanilla WoW (Prices may vary dependant on time of purchase)
£10 Burning Crusade (Prices may vary dependant on time of purchase)
£25 WotLK (Prices may vary dependant on time of purchase)
£200 Game Time (See Below)
TOTAL £245

Sound like a lot? Read on.

My Version

The game I ended up buying two copies of, the original name and then the battle chest as well. I don't remember exactly why; I think I wanted the guides that came in the battle chest. So take £10 for the game, add another £15 for the battle chest.

Running Total = £25

Subscription from January 2008 - November 2009 @ £8.99 per month, which I kept even over the summer of '08 when I wasn't really playing. Forgot I had it. That's £197.98. Let's go nuts and round that up to £200.

Running Total = £225

Add to that the second account I got when they introduced the recruit-a-friend concept and became interested in dual-boxing. I had to buy the game again, so let's say £10. I also had to buy the Keyclone software (well, didn't HAVE to, but it made it easier, and after all, I'm all about the easy) for another £10. That lasted about 3 months, with 1 month free, so add say £16 to that. I transferred one of my characters (40 warlock) from my old account to the new one, so that's another £15. I then closed this account.

Running Total = £276

I then got another second account for about another 2 months (with 1 free), which is where my Rasco & Disotto duo came about. So another game £10, plus I wanted to dual box two dranei, so stick the expansion in there, as well, another £10. Once I had a new level 60, I stopped that account, as well. So just say £9 there for subscription.

Running Total = £305

When WotLK was released (£25), and Riande and I rerolled on Darkspear, I transferred my belf hunter from Aggramar to Darkspear just so that I could roll a Death Knight. Add £15. I don't even like Death Knights! I also transferred my Draenei hunter (the other Catrinna) from Aggramar (£15).

Running Total = £360

I moved Disotto from the 2nd account back to the original account so I could keep her. £15. I recustomised a character I don't even use now, Maestermin, from a female to male Draenei. £15. I changed the name of my hunter from Catriná to Catrinaa (£15), later to Catrinna during the aforementioned server transfer to Darkspear (included in transfer). I moved Reggina (most of you won't even remember that character) to my other other account, before it exired. I don't remember why I moved her (£15).

Running Total = £420

When rolling out the NuGen Horde, I transferred level 30 Tauren Druid from Aggramar into Hellfire in order for us to have some gold to buy guild tabs straight away (£15). Since then, I've also transferred Disotto over to the Horde (£20).

Running Total = £455

Then there's the pets. I bought the BlizzCon virtual ticket, let's face it, just for the pet. £25. And, of course, I've bought the two new controversial pets from the Pet Store, totalling £20.

Running Total = £500

Nice even number to round up with there.

So, let's take off the original game prices (£45), and average it out over the 22 months I've been paying/playing, I'm paying about £20.68 a month to play this game. That's £11 more than your average player. If I was still smoking, I'd have spent about £1,650 within the same space of time on cigarettes (22 months on 10 a day, £2.50 for 10, which is how much they were once).

It's all relative.

Twitter and other crap...(I mean...)

2009-11-10T11:24:00.002Z

Good Morning All!

As I sit here eating my eggs benedict and looking out over the wonderful view of the grey rainy city, I felt compelled to stay inside for some reason. I imagine many of the boys will be now playing COD: Modern Warfare if the vent conversations from last night are anything to go by (though good luck finding a copy) but raid wise the Continues are finally on the last boss of Ulduar! For some previous nights now Yoggie has proved to be a proverbial pain in the arse. The RLeaders decided to take pretty well geared ppl on the progression run and it's still proving difficult so something for us all to bear in mind when we start approaching the alst Ulduar bosses.

That being said, those of you in Continues should note we are now trying to get TWO Ulduar groups going. We have MORE THAN ENOUGH ppl (according to Wowheroes.com) that are ready for Ulduar, the last boss notwithstanding. So have a look on wowheroes and check your instance lvl, if you're Ulduar geared then sign up and show up! We can only do raids if you guys take part in them!

The Naxx 25 semi pugs are going well for the last two weeks we've gotten a little farther each time and we can't always have 25 of you online we've teamed up with the guilds and , and will prob be seeing more of those guys but don't worry, guildies get first pick of the places :)

We will also be having a new dkp system in place so I suggest you raiders sign up to the forums so you can follow the news as we post it. The forums are a great source of information from your guildies and about what's happening in the guilds.

For the Alliance guild we have finally purchased our 6th and final bank tab and will be entitling this one Quest/Rep. And as the title suggests you will most likely find it full of OL rep gear as well as lost of STV pages.

For my part I will be attempting to focus on my new shammy Jaego, (the name may be familiar to some of you...) for however long it lasts. I'll be lvling elemental til 40 then most likely switch to enhancement for those I mercilessly questioned the other day. I cant seem to find an alt I like lvling at the moment but as luck would have it Riande grinds enough hcs to get plenty of emblems for heirloom gear, that should ease the process a bit.

Rightyho, eggs benedict over but the rain still pouring down I shall most likely get cracking on the Shammington :)

Rx

Aion in a Nutshell

2009-10-29T09:58:00.003Z

OK, so this is a bit overdue, considering I haven't played Aion for about two weeks, and how I've already decided (like most who gave it a try) that I'm not going to be renewing my subscription. But I figured I'd share my thoughts on the latest MMO to hit us. This isn't a review as such, since I didn't play it for long enough to get a full picture (I didn't even reach 25, where the Abyss PvP "adventure" kicks in).

WoW is the only online game I've played (with the exception of a handful of drunken Gears of War matches, which - of course - I ~~got~~ owned). Unlike many players, I didn't have any other games (such as EVE Online, EverQuest, and Ultima Online...never touched them) to compare WoW to, either when I first got it, or ever since. Therefore, it's all I've known, and I've never expected anything more.

That said, of course, I am easily distracted. So when I saw the adverts for Aion on the Curse web site, I was intruiged. When I later saw it had been released, I got out my card and ordered it right away

The Story

So, there's these two factions within Aion, the Elyos and the Asmodians. The world used to be whole, but through whatever reason I didn't bother to listen to, it split, with the Elyos getting the upper half, bathed in sunlight and butterflies and happy thoughts, and the Asmodians getting left in the cold, dark world beneath. Then there's this third faction who I assume must be the really bad guys, because both sides are fighting against them, as well. No, I don't remember their names; I'd stopped paying attention by this point. This was about as much as I got from the story, before I stopped caring.

You choose your faction, then you choose a class to play. There are four basic classes to start with: Warrior, Scout, Mage and Priest. At level 9, you get a quest to become a Daeva (get your wings), and at the end of this chain, you get to choose a speciality for your chosen class (Scouts can become Assassins or Rogues, Warriors become Gladiators or Templars, etc).

First Impressions

After, and I'm not kidding here, TWO HOURS spent in a queue trying to get onto the server of choice (I watched a couple of episodes of Dark Angel while I waited, so it wasn't that noticable), I finally got into the character creation screen. And then I was gone for another hour trying to get my little hairy-backed heroine looking just right. I got into the game and ran about a bit, amazed by the sights and graphic spendour, and did maybe a handful of quests. By this point, it was about 2am on a Sunday morning, and bleary eyed, I had to go to bed. The next night, I went back on for another two hour wait. Frustrated at this point, I went onto another server, and spent yet another hour creating another perfect character. So anyway, eventually I get into the game, and the adventure started from there.

Levelling

Levelling in the early stages is actually quite easy, with a few simple questchains. I found that after the ascention quests, everything suddenly took a leap into more grinding. Level 10 - 20 took significantly longer than 1 - 10, and I know that's the way it should be, but I mean significantly. And from what I've heard, 20 - 25 is pretty much a grindfest nightmare.

So you pick a class and level it through a variety of quests with the addition of a lot of grinding (I didn't get far enough to see this first hand, having stopped my subscription by the time my highest character was at level 20). This has been a talking point on a lot of the Aion forums, since this game has been live in Korea for a year already, and they haven't complained once about the amount of repetitive grinding just to get anywhere. Whereas us, the pampered WoW-sters that we are, had the game for a handful of days before deciding it wasn't good enough and had to much grinding.

Is it Like WoW?

Now obviously I can't say "They stole XYZ from WoW!", because that would be small-minded. The entire MMO empire is built on ideas borrowed from one another. Much in the same way as RPG's, there's a formula to MMO's that works, so why deviate from it?

But of course there are a lot of similiarities, which I guess is another reason I don't see a reason to continue. I have a game already that I'm used to, and that I'm (marginally) good at. If I want a game where you level through various quests, choose various classes to suit different roles, find groups for harder obsticles, level professions, sell your items to other players for a profit, and fly in some places...I'll renew my WoW subscription.

One thing I really did like about Aion was how your class is designed to fit a specific role within a group, and that's it. This means that a cleric will only ever come into a group to heal. You won't get one QQing that their DPS is better than the gladiator's so they should be able to DPS. The class just isn't designed that way.

This however brings me to a less liked (absent) feature within Aion, which is mob tagging (or lack thereof). For the class I rolled (spiritmaster) it wasn't such a big deal, but if you're a slow damage class, you would really struggle with claiming mobs as yours. Basically, the way that it works is this: Cleric McHealor starts attacking a mob. Because he's a healing class, his DPS is quite low. Ranger McDickhead jumps in at 75% mob health, thwacking it down in a few moves. Mr Ranger would have earned 75% of the XP from that mob. And, because he did the majority of damage, he also gets the loot. Even though Mr Cleric hit it first.

Did You Enjoy it at All?

Sounds like a lot of moaning so far, doesn't it? That's not my intention. I did enjoy it for a while. It was something different, it was visually stunning, and there were some differences that I would love to see implemented into World of Warcraft, such as:

You can setup a private store for when you're AFK. This is basically like the auction house, but you don't pay a fee for listing, and you can't move while this shop is active. This meant that you could setup a little shop while you go make a cup of tea, and while you're gone someone could pass by and need just that item, buy it from you, and ta da!

You could customise your outfits through dyes. Don't like the hideous lime green tunic you've just looted? Dye it black!

Of course, the character customisation is immense.

Will You Play it Again?

Probably not, no. It was more like one of the usual PS3/X-Box games that I buy; I play with great enthusiasm for a few days/weeks, but eventually I always go back to WoW. It's familiar, it's safe, and for all it's flaws, it's still a superior MMO

The Money Shots

Here's a small collection of screenies I took while playing:

Catrina in the starting area.

L2R: Toydoll (Spybabe), Catrina (Catrinna), Aiv (Aiv)

Running the first instance-style area.

Nice wings!

Old Skool!

2009-10-28T16:01:00.003Z

Check out the original banner I made for Ye Olde NuGen Site, waaaaaaaaaaay back in early October 2008. This does mean that at some point The NuGen have had their first birthday. And everyone missed it. Good job, guyths!

Old Skool!

\m/

Re-re-repeat!

2009-10-26T15:56:00.004Z

I do imagine most of you don't read my other blog, because it's not that interesting. But Riande told me off for updating my own blog and not ours, so therefore I'm doing the ~~lazy~~ intelligent thing and re-posting the same update from my site:

Now in a handy, bite-sized link, for your pleasure!

So, there you go. Nice post for you to read. What does it have to do with WoW? Sod all. How does it affect you? Hardly at all, considering I intend to do this at 5am for 2 - 3 hours before I go to work, so I'll probably still be playing like normal in the evenings. But still, it's an update for you, it's something to read for a few minutes while waiting for WoW to load (or on the toilet if you have an iPhone).

Be thankful! And now Riande won't beat me with a stick.

Don't worry.

2009-10-20T19:02:00.000+01:00

I didn't die.

More blogz to come soon.

2009-10-19T13:02:00.002+01:00

Hey All,

Well, I know it's been a while and I've been meaning to post a few bits inbetween but real life workstuff and attempting to get one of those career things has been getting in the way. So I guess I'll try to summarise things here.

First off, we've had a new flux of ppl dinging 80 and joining Continues such as Xilith, Narwhal, Evilkenny and Nightmares. (though I don't imagine the dk to be doing much...ever). As well as a few new ads for the raiding guild which have managed to pull in some brand new NuGenites that have never had the pleasure of the Alliance guild. So I say to you Good Luck!

And for all these new members I urge you to get an Addon called Guild2guild, which enables both guilds to communicate with each other. Now it only requires one person in each guild to have it, but ofc the more ppl online in both that do will make it easier. Also having the addon willl stop the [Guild] [Riande] [Aiv] ...Sup blud... double naming that you see. All you need to do is install the addon and when you log on type /g2g on. And that's it.

While I'm on the subject of addons, I might as well share a few more.

Spotter - Want to have more than on gathering profession at a time and not worry about tracking them?

Addon Control Panel (ACP) - Chatting with on vent the other night with some of the raiding guildies made me realise a few of them need this addon. But its great for everyone with a fair number of addons. Basically, it means you dont need to log out to disable or enable addons. This adds a new button in the ingame menu (when you press Esc) called Addons and you can sort them from there. I've had it so long I have to admit I thought it was part of the game. I highly recommend it.

Doc's Lazy Bags - Quite simply opens all your bags when visiting an auction house, bank, guild bank, mailbox, merchant, or trading with another player. It then closes all your bags when you are finished. Invaluable to those (me) who have never gotten their head around merging all your bags into one massive (ugly and confusing) bag. And also lazy and great. Again, I've had it so long that whenever a patch comes along which manages to disrupt it, I curse, press Esc, curse again because ACP isnt there, logout, click load out of date addons, log back in and do a dance.

We also use a ventrilo server to communicate. The details of which can be found when you join the forum (which you should all do) but we usually can provide them in guild chat. Bear in mind there are rules that accompany using using our vent and these too can be found on the forum. And with vent guildies can chat with one another and the latest addition is the creation of the Sound Station channel. This is where guildies can play music, podcasts or pretty much anything) over vent to share. You can listen to the Sound Station without leaving your channel very easily.

Right click on Sound Station > miscellaneous > Add/Remove Phantom. Ta daa, you're done.

If you want to know about how to stream music over vent so that you can still chat with your guildies...well then look it up. You'll want to start with googling 'Having two vents open' or something along those lines.

And that's all folks.

Look Who I Found!

2009-09-29T10:46:00.007+01:00

/Dodgy RP Mode On

Catrinna edged into the Ramparts. The smell of orc sweat and blood filled her nostrils. She quickly took out the guards at the bridge. They came too close to let any arrows fly; she hacked away at them with the heavy sword she carried on her back. Her lithe frame could hardly lift the thing, but it still had the same effect when she swung it into their faces.

Across the bridge, she spotted her reason for being there. Lumbering alongside one of the Bonechewer orcs was a very familiar-looking wolf.

I'd know that face of fur and fangs anywhere.

Uneasy on her feet with the huge sword weighing her down, the wolf's master heard her coming.

"Get her!" he roared, and the wolf bolted forwards, its cyan eyes gleaming with bloodlust.

Catrinna threw down a trap, catching the wolf as it leapt for her throat.

She took out her bow and sent arrows into some choice locations in the wolfmaster's torso.

The trap had started to give way by the time the body had hit the floor. The wolf, disoriented from the ice, stared up at her. She thought for a moment he might have known who she was. But in this new body, she couldn't have expected it. Ears pinned back, teeth bared, the wolf growled.

Amidst the angry snarls and snapping jaws, she cried out: "Bigwig, it's me! It's Catrinna!"

The snarls became low growls. She edged forwards, offering her hand. "Remember me?"

The wolf sniffed at the air around her, eyes still aglow. Ears pricking back up, the huge mound of fur at his rear wagged. He licked her fingers before falling in alongside her, ready and waiting for their next challenge.

/Dodgy RP Mode Off

So that was a very long way of saying I got a Bigwig for my blood elf hunter. I never did explain her, did I? Well, briefly, she was my first main character, originally Catriná on the Aggramar server. She was my first 70. She has been passed from Aggramar to Darkspear (transferred her over initially when WotLK hit, because back then you needed a character of at least level 55 on the server you wanted to roll a DK on, and I wanted to roll a DK), and now she's come over to Hellfire, because - let's face it - I love my hunters. I haven't used her yet, other than for the aforementioned Venomhide Ravasaur quest chain (of which I'm 17/20 on the baby teeth now, go me). She's waiting.

A collection of screenshots from the past few days.

2009-09-24T03:05:00.004+01:00

A few of us raiding Crossraids dressed .. strangely.

Yes, that IS a wedding dress..

Us flagging dreanie after casting Tricks of the Trade and pulling Ignis onto him, while he was AFK. He wasn't impressed, and proceded to walk -extremely- slowly back after a corpse run. :(

Our Iron Council kill.

My week on the dark side

2009-09-21T13:46:00.002+01:00

Hi Guildlings!

Well, I've had an interesting week. I said I'd be spending a hell of a lot of time on the horde side and it turns out I spent more time at work! However I did manage to sprinkle a bit of the Riande magic while I was there.

First off, I tried my hand at a shammy called Scrabblor. (For any Russel Howard fans, the name has meaning). And I managed to get up to lvl 13 - woohoo! I thought as a shammy I would be able at a higher lvl to heal and/or dps. But as I have found with the majority of my alts that they must all get better above lvl 20. I have tried a priest, a rogue, and a shammy and failed to get them above 20 so for those of you thinking about rolling another alt all I can suggest is struggling through the teens and then deciding after 20 whether or not to keep on going.

It seems Cat has had more success with this as all her alts seem to be in the thirties so I guess she can give a greater account of the pros and cons of different classes.

So for this week I shall back with my Alliance buddies and may even attempt to drag my druid Athenaide through that last half a lvl to 80. What then? Well, Vuhdu awaits as I've been too chicken to use it so far I can't imagine how utterly useless my healing ability will be.

Big gratz on Continues for pwning their way through Ulduar. It shows you what a 'casual' raiding guild can do with some pretty skilled members! For those of you that have dinged 80 and want to join in some end game content, send Aiv a whisper or a mail, as you'll most likely have to switch guilds and with lose the Alliance priviledges you have gained. (though there will be some good stuff in Continues to make up for it) I have, for my part, not been able to raid with the leet 80s for a while, this week being a hordie and before that being summoned to slavery which some also call a job :( Alas also why I haven't blogged or posted as much as recently.

Now with Zandathor/Holycrepe back to help Cat run the hordie side and get more leet peeps over there I'm returning to Riande and all my other alts in the hope I can raid a bit more and maybe even pick an alt I can stick with over here.

Any suggestions for classes I might try? I'm sure I will have attempted them at some point but stick a response in the forums about how uber leet your char is, and I'll give it a whirl.

For now, I bid you pip pip.

How Funky Is Your Chicken Now?

2009-09-20T20:41:00.002+01:00

Not very. Hit 40, hit exalted with Undercity, and will never be seeing that thing again. Score.

Oh Dear.

2009-09-18T13:41:00.002+01:00

7/14 Ulduar.

A simple guide to recruiting new members. Click image for legible version.

2009-09-07T08:26:00.000+01:00

Another day, another retarded decision by Blizzard.

2009-09-04T14:05:00.000+01:00

Greetings,

We are writing to inform you that we have, unfortunately,
had to cancel your World of Warcraft account:

Account Name:  
Type of Violation: Involvement in online trading activities
Investigation Concluded: 04/09/2009
Consequences for Account: Account Cancellation

It is with regret that we take this type of action, however,
it is in the best interest of the World of Warcraft community as a whole,
and for the integrity of the game, that your access to the
World of Warcraft servers be cancelled.

Online trading refers to the exchange of in-game content for real world money,
and includes, but is not limited to, the sale or purchase of gold, the sale or
purchase of experience in the form of powerlevelling, and the
sale or purchase of honor points, reputation or items.

Account access is the responsibility of the account owner and
account sharing is against our Terms of Use
(http://www.wow-europe.com/en/legal/termsofuse.html).

Therefore, should you believe someone other than yourself
(the account owner) has committed this violation of the
Terms of Use with your account, these sanctions would still
apply, as our action is taken against the account, not the individual.

If you wish to review our current Rules and Polices,
they can be found at:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/policy/

Regards,

Account Administration Team
Blizzard Entertainment Europe

They unbanned me.

Aiv : 1
Blizzard : 0

Progression update.

2009-09-03T21:46:00.001+01:00

Oh yeah. She loved it.

Ulduar10 = 6/14

Back on track.

2009-09-03T10:24:00.000+01:00

Hi guys.

-So-, with all the hoo-haaa over the last few days with my account getting rickrolled and losing all my stuff / removing everyone from guild, we decided last night that a small band of Hardcore Elite Awesomesauce© members decided that we would go into that old instance "Ulduar" and shoot some stuff.

Well, shoot we did ladies and gentlemen. Shoot we did.

We jumped into our vehicles, and rolled out in a formation so amazing, that I had steven spielberg phoning me up this morning asking if he could use it for one of his films.. Oh yeah.

So, in true NuGen fashion we're lined up at Flame Leviathan shooting down barrels while I explain tactics to the new players in the raid. Then we notice we're in Combat! Oh damn .. He's bugged, and angry. :( So I have everyone retreat. There's no sense losing good men for a lost cause, so I saddled up alone and strode into the arena to face that yellow Behemoth.

I died.
-10% Durability.
He reset.
Job done.

So, again we're lined up - shooting pyrite. No bug this time, joy! So we all charge. Completely disregarding or remembering that we have to run away. More of a "Oh, what the hell?" kind of thing. Buuut, with 10 stacks of pyrite, his HP was going down quicker than Haris Pilton.

Bang.
Thwack!

Flame Leviathan down. Ok, dish out the phat loot and move onto XT-002. Who has been "Fixed". Oh god, I though. This is going to end in true NuGen Stylez© but we again lined up while I explained to our new members (One of who would be tanking for us) and we cleared the initial trash. [Which is like a bloody boss fight itself. Stupid shields.)

"More toys, for me!" bellowed out across the area and I quickly shifted into my sexy tree form. That fight is a bit monononononotonous after the first few tries.

Heal.
Heal Light bomb person.
Heal Gravity bomb person.
Heal raid.

Needless to say, we came through the other end unscathed. Another robot was dead. I'm dreading fighting anymore because I've heard if you keep killing robots, eventually robocop comes for you. :(

So we went to the dragon.

[ RP on ]

Razorscale soared high above the ground, her dark eyes fixed on an unknown target.. She was once a proud dragon by the name of Veranus. Her master, the frost lord Thorim was captured making his assault on his power-hungry brother, Loken. They were enslaved and brought to Ulduar where Ignis used his terrible knowledge of blacksmithing to forge her, torture her, change her.

What was once a powerful broodmother of the proto-dragons of Storm Peaks, was now a twisted reflection of her former glory. Her metal-infused skin glistening like the pools of the Sunwell itself. A magnificent drake of un-fathomable power, whose mind was now enslaved and warped by the unwavering corruption of Yogg-Saron.

The young band of adventurer's gathered at the entrance to her pit. She had been prewarned of such an incursion however she knew that these puny mortals would be fodder. She flew, knowing this would incense them, luring them further into her domain where she could then strike with relentless fury.

A Night Elf female stood at the forefront of the pack, giving orders to the others. Razorscale's eyes lingered for a moment on this druid of the grove. She had encountered very little of their kind, but knew enough to be wary. Druids were a formidible opponent - if they had enough sense. Then her obsidian eyes sighted something else. Harpoons!

She had not noticed these previously. "Curse those gnomes", she thought bitterly. They had to be using some sort of cloaking device. "Futile" she whispered.. and with that, she reared her head and inhaled. Two bolts of jet-blue flame thundered out of the sky; hitting the harpoons directly and rendering them un-usable. She snorted, they would not be using such methods to ground her.

The band of adventurer's moved swiftly as one. "My group, stay to the left" yelled Aiv. The druid was cunning. Splitting her forces into two made it harder to target them. "The rest of you move over to the right", she motioned to her second in command. A tall Draenei nodded his acknowledgement. A Paladin of the Naaru. Aptly named "Dreanie" as a ploy on his race.

"My group with me!" bellowed Dreanie.

Aiv motioned to the commander of the Allied troops. "Fix those damn harpoons, and do it fast!" she called out. He nodded and turned to his troops - A rag-tag band of poorly-armed soldiers. The group of Dwarven Engineers at the back raced forward and began tinkering with the contraptions. Aiv smiled and nodded her approval, the smile lingered for only a few second, however.

The floor began to rumble and shake. "What's happening?" yelled Mercurius, another Paladin. The ground beneath his feet was splitting, a pointed metal surface was boring out from underneath us.. "Move out of the way!" ordered Aiv, however the young Paladin was a shade too slow and was almost knocked clear from the ledge. Regaining his footing, Mercurius charged back into formation and stood with anticipation - waiting.. for now three of these tunnelers stood before them. No movement.

It was excellently co-ordinated, Aiv thought. A perfect strategy. She knew the dragon was wise - but she never expected this. Iron Dwarves charged out of the tunnelers.

"Stay in formation! Control your fire, focus!" rang out across the newly-created battlefield. Dreanie's voice was commanding, unwavering. His orders heard by everyone. Aiv moved quickly, shifting herself into an elemental tree. her eyes gazed over to the second group and she was happy to see her fellow druid, Cookie, mirroring her actions. Another gifted druid, she was proud to serve by him.

As her mind drifted, Razorscale noticed the lack of movement from the druid. She snorted, and blew a bolt of the same jet-blue fire towards her. Aiv looked upwards, she wasn't sure why but it seemed like the thing to do. She faltered. She had lapsed.. and now she had paid the price. The flames were bearing down on her, too quickly for her to fully avoid. An unfortunate loss.

She was pushed roughly to the side, falling hard. Her face twisted to see where she was standing, watching the molten ball hit the ground with a dull thud she looked up and laughed. "Stay out of the fire" winked Spybabe and with that he sprinted back to the fray to resume his assault on the Dwarves. She would thank the rogue later, when it was over.

"Harpoons are ready, missy!" rang out across the plain. A stout dwarf stood proudly, waving his hands as though he was guided a gnomish flying-machine into docking.

"Gnomeaeth! Fire those harpoons!" she ordered, however, the young magi was distracted as an Iron Dwarf threw his hand-axe at him. Should the gnome have stood but a foot higher, his head would have been cleaved in two. "I've got it!" shouted Nerdrage, their group's second Magi. And he raced towards the harpoons, using his knowledge of the arcane to phase through the air and appear right beside them. With a cheeky grin, he casually flipped the lever and the spear embedded within shot out with immense speed. It arced gracefully through the air, before impaling itself in the great Drake. She roared her anger but it was no use..

The second spear flew through the air as gracefully and fast as the first - and slammed into Razorscale's thick hide.

[[ To be continued! ]]

Guide: How to Get the Venomhide Ravasaur Mount

2009-09-03T09:13:00.000+01:00

A long time ago, back before I played WoW, there was a thing about this mount and the trainer Mor'vek in the game. Alliance players might know about the mount considered this one's equal, the Winterspring Frostsabre, which to get players used to need to do an obscene amount of farming to get their hands on. This has been nerfed (or is it buffed?) numerous times since its inception, making the grind slightly more bearable, and so they've been popping up here and there. With patch 3.2, Blizzard re-introduced Mor'vek in Un'Goro Crater, and his quest to let horde players get their grubby mitts on a Venomhide Ravasaur. Some people - mostly Alliance, I assume - have already complained that these quests do not compare to the grindfest they have to endure to get themselves their version of this mount. But if you think about it, the Frostsabre has been available since Vanilla WoW, so the hordies have been waiting quite a long time already!

Anyhoo, I started this quest chain on my hunter (Huh? I'll explain in another post...) three days ago. Just FYI, you can pick up this quest from level 48, but it's recommended mid 50's because of some of the high level places you need to go for the dailies.

1/ Travel to Un'goro and find Mor'vek, who gives you the quest Toxic Tolerance. The basic idea behind this story is that the Venomhides have...well...venomous hides. If you tried to ride one, the poison would sink through your skin and kill you! Gasp! So he says you have to go and get splashed by their poison 20 times to build up a resistance. Considering that venomhides are pretty rare spawns, that may seem unfair, but since in the PTR for 3.2 they were suggesting that you got splashed 2,000 times, it's doesn't seem so bad. So head out around the raptor areas looking for venomhides. Get splashed 20 times and go hand in for the next quest.
Hints: For high levels, you can't just stand there and take a beating and hope to get the 20 you need. You need to do damage to the raptor for it to poison you. For this reason, take off all your armour, and put on a very low damage weapon (I used my [Skinning Knife]), so you can give and take the most beats before it dies. Extra hint for hunters/warlocks: You obviously need to have more aggro than you pet to get poisoned, so if you're doing it at the right level, watch your health. Extra extra hint for hunters: If you're doing it as a high level hunter, the easiest way by far is to dismiss your pet, equip some kind of low level stabbing stick, poke the raptor a few times, then once it's almost dead, feign death. The mob will reset, allowing you to run back and poke it some more. And who says hunters don't get it easy?

2/ Mor'vek then gives you Venomhide Eggs, where basically you go to pick up your baby raptor, ready for raising as a fierce...mount. They're found around the same places you should have spotted the raptors. The eggs in question are light coloured, where the normal ones are purplish. So you bring him three. You get to keep one. I'm not sure what he's going to do with the other two, but anyway... (I like mine fried or poached.)

3/ Mor'vek gives you the quest The Grow Up So Fast, whereby you need to take care of your little bundle of scales and claws until it's big enough to become a mount. This consists of 20 days worth of dailies, given at random by the baby Venomhide (If you're a high level, it will not show the ! unless you turn on "Low Level Quests" from the minimap search, but of course you can still take the quest off it). For each quest to turn in, the raptor will give you one of its baby teeth. Ew.

4/ Each day, you will get given one of four possible dailies to trade in for one tooth:

Searing Roc Feathers - Your Ravasaur wants to decorate itself with tribal feathers. Go kill some birds and rip out the plumage so your little one can be happy!
TIP: There are Rocs all over Tanaris, but it's only the Searing Rocs found in the south that drop the feathers.

The others, Gorishi Grub, Hungry, Hungry Hatchling, and Poached,Scrambled or Raw? are all basically "Feed my Fat Face" quests, scattered in Tanaris, Un'goro and Sithilus. It's no wonder it grows into a full-sized beast in 20 days if it keeps eating like that!

5/ While I haven't got this far myself yet (only had 2 dailies, both the feathers one), after 20 days of toiling, you will have your 20 baby teeth, and you can go back to Mor'vek with a big smile to get your mount. Oh, you'll also need the following:

20 x Rugged Leather (for your saddle)
20 x Runecloth (for your saddle)
80g (because Mor'vek charges an extortionate amount to make you the saddle)

Et voila! A shiny new mount for joo! Don't forget you can pick this quest up from level 48 (though you may have issues getting poisoned without simultaneously getting squished), so pick it up while levelling and you'll have an awesome cool mount to shimmy off Outland with!

Here's the Venomhide as it looks to me on Day 2:
Awwwwwwwwwww.

Leet Monkeys VS V.I.P

2009-09-01T12:41:00.000+01:00

Apparently Leet Monkeys isnt a cool enough rank name over on the horde side so Cat picked the much better name of....V.I.P....yes I know. If we ever wondered who had the coolest guild, she just totally forfeited her place with that lame ass title.

So News this week?

Quite a bit actually, though whether you'll ifnd it interesting remains to be seen.

I've been playing on the horde side for a few levels with some of the deserters and I have a few point that that I've just noticed while switching between the two. For one thing, Hellfire is a newer server but it just seems so much quieter than Dramaspear. Not just the guild, though obviously they all rejoice when I log onto provide them with much needed entertainment. Wther it's just that I've settled into my bank character in exodar or what, but my bank (Riande) (yes i know a pally, but I'll never never never level her) in silvermoon is totally alone! at least I see a few people running around in exodar but I see NO ONE on the hordie side. Another point is that their trade chat is almost normal (dare I say it) with people actually wanting things and to TRADE?? stuff, but then there's still not a lot of trade action going on anyway. Though there was a nice incident of anal spamming the other day that made everyone feel right at home.

I know I was keeping the hordies up to date with my creation of an empire over there so less interesting and hard work than I thought. I sent my bank char some linen/wool cloth and other random bits o' crap my huntard had picked up and was delighted to find my very first gold in my mailbox the other day. So slowly does it, and much to my utter delight and dismay when I logged in this morning I was up to 39g. So, it seems, an empire over there is easy to build as much of the lower level items and mats are beautifully expensive.

Some of you might have noticed my severly antisocial behaviour of the last few days when I just have not had the will to log onto vent and strike up conversations. This is mainly due to my being lazy at the moment and it takes time and energy being witty and hilarious and an all round amazing person! Also due to some speaker issues so I've had to choose between vent and music (sorry guys, cranking up the music won) and obviously I'm bearing towards the end of my Taverncast saga, only a few episodes to go til I'm uptodate.

In other news;

Twix is gone! Time for the man to buckle down and take a break from WoW. Good plan, thought you had only just starting speaking Silent Bob.

Aiv is back! For those who hadn't heard. (nice farewell post for Twix ;) )

So to sum up; Making money is easy. Hellfire freaks me out and will continue to do so until we all move over eventually. Cat is crap at picking names. Taverncast rules. I'm totally rad and awesome and uber cool and you all love me. Aiv is back. Twix is gone.

All of this can be boiled down to one tiny but hugely significant point.

NuGen Rocks. True story.

Group Etiquette

2009-08-31T00:51:00.000+01:00

(a.k.a. Why You Should Check Who Has Just Left the Group Before You Start Talking About the Person Who Has Just Left the Group)

So while questing my Paladin (that's right!) in the south of Ghostlands, I come across another Paladin (I'm going to call him Winkle...his name was something along that line) questing on what seemed to be the same thing. As hesitiant as I always am about interacting with other players (WoW is a social game, what?), I gave over a Blessing of Might which got a "ty", and then went on to group up and do some quests together.

Riveting as this was, after about a quest or two, I started to tire of the company. Not that anything was wrong with Winkle, he seemed perfectly fine. But there's only so much of WoW that I can take with other people before I want to just get back to being alone.

My problem has always been that I never know how to say "Right, it's been a good 30 minutes, we've had some laughs and some drama, but I'm going to go now, so BB", disbanding the group and completely abandoning said player.

But I'm deviating. Back to the story. So anyway, I'm still stuck with this guy, who's insistent on doing some more quests together. I'm trying to be irritating to put him off staying in the group, but it's not working. When who should I spot but Ultimatehunk also in the Ghostlands. So I think, huzzah! And invite him to the group. Now it's an awkward threesome. Winkle still isn't getting the hint. Long story short, eventually it comes down to a time where Winkle says he has to go. So all nicey nicey I say "bb" etc.

Then he leaves the group.

I then say to Hunky "Damn it! Oh well, at least now it's just the two of us."

Hunky should have laughed at this point. He didn't. At which point I realise that it was Hunky that left the group. To make it worse, instead of leaving the group, Winkle said "Oh dear" and I had to leave to get out of there.

So that was one of the more awkward moments in my WoW life, and that's also one way to leave a group!

Unusual Social Interaction

2009-08-31T00:33:00.000+01:00

I'm just pottering along in Ghostlands questing when a whisper pops up at the bottom of my screen.

'Hi, great name. I am new to the horde.'

That's what it says. Terror fills my heart. There are two reasons for this.

1. Anyone who compliments a character with the name 'UltimateHunk' is a weirdo as far as I am concerned.
2. I can think of no response to this statement which will not provoke further conversation; It's not a question, so I can't just answer it and get on with my life - it's a statement which demands a response and also for me to ask a question, which will almost definitely lead to further awkward social interaction.

So, I try and be clever. I say,

'Thanks. I am new to this server.'

I haven't asked a question, showing that maybe I am indifferent to this persons chatter, but I have responded in a polite way.

'Oh great I have like 5 chars on alliance couple 80s are you new to wow?'

Oh god. Maybe it's just me, but I kind of hate this interaction. If I were to respond I will definitely have to have a proper conversation with this person. I don't want to do that. So I basically ignore this person from now on. I can't handle it.

But there is a problem. We are questing in the same zone. We are questing on the same quest chain. This is hell. We are running alongside each other ignoring each other, both knowing that I, Mr.Rudepants, have ignored her. And it lasts ages. Absolutely ages.

And the worst thing? Cat is there. Questing with me. Laughing in my face.

Eventually I relent and invite the person to join us. She doesn't want to.

So we go on questing next to each other until I curl up into a ball of embarrassment and eat my computer.

Aiv... Aiv... I'm back again.. (Redux)

2009-08-29T07:40:00.001+01:00

First and foremost I want to thank the whole guild for getting behind me (ooh-err again) and helping me with the unfortunate situation that befelled me. As was explained in the blog before this, I was victim to a hack-attack, and they merged my WoW account with a Battle.net account (A mistake I will never make again. I've merged ALL my wow accounts, and I urge others to do the same)

It takes 3~ minutes, and will save you

- Heartache
- Frustration/Anger
- Losing your account

When I logged in, or attempted to log in, and it said "Please use your battle.net account", my stomach dropped. I thought, what the hell? Is this a new implemented feature? So I tried to log into my account via the website, which told me the same. I immediately tried to retrieve my password, and was told "That email/account name does not match our records".

At this point, I was devastated. When you play for as long as I have, you become "attached" to your character. I felt as though I had lost a friend, seriously. However gay that sounds .. it's true, and I don't wish it upon anyone. So immediately I submitted a webform (As guided on the email I receieved "thanking" me for merging my account. (( No verification? wtf.)) )

I received a reply quite quickly, stating the information was incorrect, so I replied, this time with what information I could remember.. and again a similar message. So I spent a good hour, trawling through my drawers, trying to find my WoW box.. I found a few of my old pre-paid gamecards, which I added the serial-numbers into the webform, I also found my TBC/Wotlk CD-Keys and put them in aswell.

It was a mash of information, and I don't pity whichever person had to read through it.

Alas, I waited. Frustratingly for a reply. It took longer, 1 hour, 2 hours, 5 hours, 9 hours. A day. Still nothing. I put another month on Cuie's account to try to petition a GM, but after 30 minutes of being logged in, I was disconeccted. I tried to log back in to receieve a "This account has been suspended" message. The email I got was stating a "Precautionary action", after the 24 hour suspension was lifted, I logged in again.. and 30 minutes later was suspended again. This is where I hit rock bottom, I was -so- frustrated. to top it off, I had a shitty night at work last night, I come home, go to check my email and I had 2 emails from "noreplyeu@blizzard.com" the first was a phishing email (You can always tell by mousing-over the link. You'll usually see www.dodgysite.com/wow.html) and the second was a password reset email.

I believe it was the whole guild that helped. But Dreanie was the catalyst. It seemed that him speaking to GM "Draxxiag" worked magics. Draxxiag apparently shifted all my information back to what it was originally and sent me a temporary password.

So, if you ever have dealings with " Draxxiag" then tell him you love him.

And merge your WoW account with your Battle.net account - So you don't have this happen to you, too!

The NuGen Continues...Don't Continue?

2009-08-28T10:45:00.000+01:00

On a rather sombre note, we have to report that the NuGen Continues guild has been struck with tragedy. Aiv, our resident GM for Continues, has had his account hacked. In the process, his characters (including Aiv) and everyone else's in the guild were removed. We have no idea of the NuGen Continues' fate as a guild, other than it is still showing on the armory with 5 members, all of which are below level 10 so we cannot see the details of these characters. As for its members, they were to login to find themselves guildless as a result. No doubt some of the less core group will have already been snatched up by other raiding guilds, but here's hoping that those who have stayed and soldiered through will still be able to salvage a raiding guild through this.

On the day it happened, I logged into Facebook and the game to find panicked messages from guildies about what had happened. But there was nothing I could do, other than remove Aiv's alts from the NuGen Alliance so a similar something didn't happen there. Logging into Vent found more members than have ever been online there before. People banded together to seek out one of the hackers as they speed/terrain hacked underneath Icecrown on one of Aiv's characters. A number of us opened tickets to report the attack. I don't know if anything happened as a direct result of this.

From Aiv's standpoint, he has found himself in an unfortunate situation. The hackers merged his existing account (one of the standard WoW accounts) with a Battle.net account, giving them the opportunity to change all the registration details on the account. So Aiv can't prove anymore that the account is or ever was his. To compound the issue, he no longer has the CD Key he originally registered with (it was 4 years ago, and that's easily enough time to misplace a DVD case), so he can't prove the account is his by that method, either. Blizzard have also suspended his brother Cuie's account, which they are calling a "precautionary measure" due to suspicious activity.

It's not so much a matter of losing the guild or the bank and all the epix within it. You can replace those quite easily (Nymphó, formerly of the Alliance and now of Carnage Kings, has already lent a hand going around to create The NuNuGen Continues - which he's called The NuGen Continuez...that's right, with a "Z"). It is that possibly as a result of this situation, if Aiv cannot get his account restored, we may lose one of our best players. He has already mentioned through various frustrated chats that he is not happy with the way Blizzard have handled his problem, and who can blame him, really?

Aiv is an integral part to our GM threesome (oo er!), and he's also just a joy to have around. I hope he manages to get everything restored, or at the very least get his account back. I don't care about the guild. You can farm new items. You can't farm new friends. And I'm assuming everyone else will be crossing their fingers, toes, and everything else that crosses, that he manages to get it sorted.

NOTE: If you have been in a similar situation to Aiv, let us know what you did, who you spoke to, the steps you took, and - provided you got your account back, of course - how long you had to wait for things to go back to normal on the NuGen Alliance/Continues Forum

The rise of a babelicious ultra-priest.

2009-08-26T10:57:00.000+01:00

It’s so difficult, being beautiful.

Women throw themselves at me constantly, urging me to fulfil their every twisted desire. Men weep tears of jealous rage as they pass me in the street, before committing bloody suicide as they realise that whenever they look in the mirror, they will never see my face beaming back.

What’s even more difficult is that I am a priest, sworn to celibacy, and that my parents decided to name me ‘UltimateHunk’.

Why would they name me ‘UltimateHunk’ and then send me to study the ways of the light? It seems like a perverse punishment for a crime I never committed.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t keep my vow of celibacy and I couldn’t follow the light. How could I keep something so beautiful from the women of this world? I may be a priest, but I’m no saint.

How Funky is Your Chicken?

2009-08-25T20:34:00.000+01:00

Turns out, not very. While I do adore the ~~chocobo~~ hawkstriders, I may have been biased in the past, in that all my blood elf characters have been female, looking strangely elegant and graceful with it guddering and gittering about with some kind of poultry OCD. With a male blood elf (I've asked before, but if I find a male blood elf attractive, does that in fact make me bisexual?), they don't look quite so good.

It was for this reason that I tried my damnedest to get my reputation up with another faction (namely Undercity) in time for the mount, so that I could avoid this. Unfortuately, despite my best efforts, I only managed to get into 10,131/12,000 Honoured, shy 22,869 rep from Exalted.

I have now reached the point where I have to come to a decision. I have two characters ready to roll with (three if you count Jaego, but I won't mention him yet...), and I am trying to work out whether Maegan or Deakin will be my first choice when it comes to levelling.

Here's what I've come to work out so far:

Meagan is a healer, therefore it'll be easier to get a place for her as either healer or DPS while levelling, and at 80, when that happens.
Meagan has a cool mount, looks cool and sounds hilarious.
Deakin has a poo mount and looks like a div riding it, but he looks so pretty and also sounds hilarious, for different reasons.
I've never levelled a rogue beyond mid 30's.
I've never levelled a priest.
I would like to be able to pick locks.
More people seem to be levelling priests than rogues in the guild.

Does that help me decide? No, not at all. But I will be thinking on it as time goes on, and failing all else, I'll alternate them, like a child with joint custody. So they're...my parents. Does that work?

I Am Addon (like I Am Robot)

2009-08-25T11:38:00.000+01:00

Well, for those who know me, I am a big, wait, HUGE addon fan and user. As Bubble pointed out the other day 'Riande IS an addon'. which is nice.

yes I am the Riande addon, God of all things extra and here to help you with random and sometimes useless but fun things to add to your WoW experience. So I shall aim as I have done in the past to try and keep you up to date with any changes that might be happening and to post any addons I think you might like for fun or for their ability to help me slack off in WoW and yet make me seem cool.

A brief intro and opinion

As I handle so many I also have to keep track of them all and use addon updaters to do that. The two I use are WowMatrix and Curse Client. Both are simple and easy to use. CurseClient is a must. I usually browse curse.com for mine as I'm far too lazy nowadays to search several different websites, but bear in mind there are a few out there such as Wowinterface and WoWAce. Which is why I also ans still use Wowmatrix. For those addons users who were following the curse versus wowmatrix discussion a few months ago it was not a happy time.

So quite an easy and simple way of keeping all your addons up to date. So I have a few for you this week. One useful and the rest...well...because I'm a gnome. (most of the time)

Squire

Very simple and little or in fact no configuration. For those of you with numerous mounts who might like the game to pick one for you at random instead of having all your mount macros taking up space. It's very intelligent, I notice this more and more when on my druid it chooses travel form for when I'm just running and aquatic form if I ever go in the water. Anyhoo, check the link for the full info but I havent found a fault with it yet.

Gnome sage
Ask and he shall answer!

Gnome dust
Who wants a fairy?

And finally, perhaps the greatest addon of them all if watching Gnomey and Alka raid is anything to go by!

Gnome Licker
Could it do exactly what it says on the tin?

So kids, thats it for this week. I'll leave you with the brevity of all things gnome-like.

About Last Week

2009-08-25T11:21:00.000+01:00

Morning All,

I know last week was a bit weird for the majority of you, especially those in Continues. But we're chaling it to a bad week. What with Cat being preoccupied with Horde, Aiv being at work, and my general slacking off and drinking binge leaving me hungover most days, (what's that you say? AA, isnt that to do with cars?) we were not at our best. For that we apologise, but sometimes we GMs like to drop the ball too.

But needless to say, we're back on track now. Cat has finally and fully left/abandoned us and I'm back at glorious work after my two weeks.

So a few new things Alliance wise, what with ALL my officers absconding, I'm in desperate need of new slaves to boss around and delegate my workload to. I sent out a few mails and got a few back from guildies, some I thought would not want to do the oh so mighty anf glorious officer work (yes, I call it work as that's what it is) saying they might be interested. So over the next few days I'll be getting in touch with a few of you and your trial period will commence.

As to my crossing over to the Horde, well, my non sexual life partner is making new friends without me and I'm not sure I approve. So all I can say on that matter is there will come a time for me to go and join her. For now I want to try and secure the Alliance and Continues guilds firmly over here.

Remember Hordelings, keep us up to date and don't be a stranger. Use the Ally forum from time to time so we know you are not lost. And for the favoured few, keep on blogging!

What A Difference A Day Makes

2009-08-22T18:33:00.001+01:00

So, in admist the small matter of the new World of Warcraft Expansion being announced, The NuGen began their adventure into Horde territory.

Eight WHOLE people online! No wai!

It was a fairly quiet night, no major drama. We welcomed some brand new NuGenites into our weird little world and everyone else just got on with levelling.

I myself pushed Maegan on through the early teen levels. Levelling a priest doesn't seem to be as difficult as some would have me believe. I am levelling Maegan (Undead) in the Ghostlands, which is Blood Elf "territory", but I don't care. With the exception of Deakin, who I'm doing a different experiment with, I will probably level all my lowbie characters through here.

So that was about it. The guild didn't fall flat on its face in the first 24 hours, we have a steady stream of levellers and full timers, and we're almost ready for our first instance!

Vampires Are Cool, Y'all

2009-08-21T15:35:00.000+01:00

Hijacking the forum to tell you all about the new edition of my book, which is only about 12 months late!

All the cool kids are buying it. If you don't want to be mocked in the playground and called a loser, you should buy it, as well.

Click Here To Buy It, M'kay!

OMG it's Elvis!

2009-08-19T21:57:00.000+01:00

So I've changed my mind. Already. That's right. I've decided to remove the warlock from my list and instead go for a rogue. So I've made a beautiful male blood elf.

He's so dashing. Debonair.

And then he hearths. It's rather unattractive. Let's just look at this up-close.

Oh my God! Elvis lives!

Not even a remotely insightful post, admittedly, but Hell, it made me smile.

Anyhoo, everyone welcome Deakin, ~~Queen~~ King of the Rogues!

Aiv... Aiv... I'm back again..

2009-08-19T07:05:00.000+01:00

So, I havn't wrote a blog in a few days. Oh my God, do I hear you say? Yes that's right.

It's a complete injustice.

Blame my work. They made me add 2 hours onto each of my shifts because "Oh, we think it might be busy". Well, Mr. Bossman. Do you THINK or do you KNOW? Idiot.

Anyhoooooo babes,

News on the mire for Continues hasn't changed much except that I've promoted two upstanding raiders to officers. With the big switchover to Horde, and Riande going to be manhandling Alliance, I decided that I need to hire more ~~slaves~~ assistants for the less enjoyable tasks that I have to perform.

The two people I chose were Alkazarus and Kedarii. These two have been possibly the 2 most annoying people I have ever had the misfortune to meet! No, I jest. I'd like to copy riande a bit and make a little story for each one!

Alkazarus
My other half. Not literally, RE: Riande's blog, no I'm not gay. Calling another man "Babes" for the sake of affection should not be condemned as being gay! It's just guy love. But, Alka is a solid guy and he's always up for helping people out which is why he was chosen to be one of my ~~minions~~ Officers.

Kedarii
She's a girl, and she has a girlfriend. Enough said.

So, those two, alongside Dreanie will make up the new heirarchy of NuGen Continues, (I've no doubt Riande will stick her nose in as often as she can.. women...) so if you have any problems, please do either speak to one of them, or if you just want my awesome attention, send me an ingame mail. I'll see if I have time to reply while I'm sifting through my 1000's of gold from the auction house. Oh yeah.

Our progression has been pretty much stumped as far as I know, at the Iron Council. (This is probably due to a lack of my presence, and even more so : A lack of my [Beat Stick]). But never fear guys, we're burning through Ulduar like we're on some sort of Crusade. (Oh! See what I did there?) So I've no doubt I'm going to have to write more of these to revitalize the ePeen of our more hardcore raiders. (Just me..?)

Alas, It's getting a bit late and I should be heading to bed.

Look out for my other blogs, which I promise will be soon!

Ciao babes,

Back to the Horde, one more time?

2009-08-19T06:45:00.000+01:00

I started playing WoW in January 2008, it was as a result of an email I got from a fellow Civ III player. After trialling on the US realms (I did not know there were EU realms) I signed up and picked the less numerous Horde. I rolled on the recommended PvE realm of Aerie Peak and picked the least popular class at the time, Druid. That was my first learning experience and it included joining a ‘good’ guild and even getting made an officer in it. Unfortunately I wanted to play with all the toys and as a result ended up with 4 level 40s and got left behind when everyone else was gearing up for raiding.

I re-rolled on another realm, this time my main was a Hunter. Joined another guild, but this one was a bit fragmented so I was soloing most of the time. Then came the NuGen Alliance, a chance to get in at the same level as others without feeling the pressure to race to end content. It was also an opportunity to see if the Alliance were as bad as players on the Horde said. I have still yet to encounter anything matching the Barrens chat to be honest. I still rolled alts, but never got too far behind. I got my first L80 with the NuGen Alliance. This time it was when I could play that got in the way of being able to join in as much as would have liked.
Wow has changed a lot in the year and a half I have been playing, finding groups for classic content is a major problem so when the chance to re-roll and try to recapture the fun of the classic group content I jumped at the chance.

I will be trying to keep my main (Holycrepe - Paladin) up with the rest of the group so I can do more groups, I will be around at least one evening during the week. In addition I have an alt Shaman, both of these are classes I have not levelled beyond 20 before so I will be learning as I go. In addition I have a little project to see if I can turn 10 Linen Cloth into 1,000g by playing the auction house. I hope to keep everyone updated on how that goes as the weeks roll by. My main will be going for the Loremaster title from the start so I will probably be doing a lot of low level zones at the start.
Those who know me (Zandathor on the Nugen Alliance) will know I am an early riser so you can catch me online between 4 and 6 most mornings. In addition I will probably be around 4-6 most evenings from September onwards.

Big Smiles, Everyone!

2009-08-18T22:16:00.000+01:00

The NuGen Horde launch approaches. I know that those re-rolling from The NuGen Alliance are currently twiddling their thumbs quite irritably waiting to go, while I'm running about trying to "tidy up" the guild ready for the new arrivals. Friday can't come along quick enough. We now have 17 individual players in the guild, and something ridiculous like 30 characters in total.

It's not like the old days, where you had 1 character in a guild and flopped about on it for a while, then got booted out and joined with another. Now we all have a good solid following of a bank character, a Death Knight to bring us in the funds, and at least 2 other characters than you think might be your next main, once you've tried it out a little bit.

It is entertaining at the moment to log on and see nothing but Death Knights in various low level instances. But it's still the easiest way to get some lowbie greens to stick in the guild bank. It was doing this that netted Ravenmind one of the Deviate Hatchlings from Wailing Caverns. While being an avid pet collector, I was distraught that the game hadn't blessed me with a pet, I handled the news in a mature and calm manner:

The countdown continues. Patience, little ones. Good things this way come.

Keeping in Touch

2009-08-18T09:50:00.000+01:00

With The NuGen Horde's arrival quickly approaching, we shall lose some long standing and intregal members of our little community. I think that the Darkspear guilds will be changed greatly and it might take us some time to get used to their absence.

But never fear, they still have a way to show their undying love and appreciation for us.

Some of you have already discovered the joys/pains of our ventrillo server. For those unsure as to what it is, its a voice communication software that enables guildies to physcially chat with each other into the late night.

Here's a little taste of some of the regulars; the ppl you shall come to know and love/hate if you ever log on to spy. The following unfortunate people are the unlucky ones that have simply been floating around the same vent channels as me at the same times as me. And all I have to go off is their voices and their laughter, so for your amusement, I give you a few words for some of the poor souls who were the first to discover vent with us. You may know them by other names so they shall be added as well ;)

Dreanie - I have come to find that Dreanie or Dr. Dre/Dr. Eanie/DJ Dreanie is the resident member of vent. Whenever I have logged on he is already there before me. If there is a SFX or music to be played then Dreanie is the one who plays it. He is best known for this PTT (thats Push to Talk to you, ladies and gents) echo, due to his utterly crap mic you might that you hear yourself rather than him if you choose to speak. The conversations are longer and louder and repeated back to you, which is always a pleasure/pain in the arse I assure you.
Catrinna - Ah yes, the other GM, the most I have say about Cat is that in guild I shall lose my sparring partner and we shall lose a GM who works tirelessly to ensure your needs are met in game (oh wait, thats me, Cat is the one who sits around and corrects everyone's grammar). Vent wise, it's the high pitched squeaky yet hilarious and highly infectious laugh she has that we hear most often.
Alka - Why bother to type his full name? Some occasional useful information about pallys spouts from his mouth, though half the time it is simply the words 'Go Pally Power'. The rest of the time, he and Cat have indepth discussion in their own private language called 'Mehmehmehmehmeh'. You get used to it.
Aiv - The effective tripod (what?) of GM conspiracy. The bringer of the spam 'Babes' into the vent world, (no ladies he's not gay....I think). Numerous attempts to beat the world record for explaining boss kills. An acerbic (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/acerbic) wit and charm that makes him the Yang to our Ying, the fool to our kingly court, the homeless person we step over in the street. His low tolerance for idiots makes us wonder why he is still with us... (Aivy baby we love you really).
Koru/Eikin - A voice as calming as having your own babbling brooke which makes you think of a young white James Earl Jones. Officers chatted once about how nice and soothing it was to listen to him...only without the obscenities. Mufasa would never swear. (No other actual benefits I'm afraid, he's just there as the voice candy).
Kedarii - Again, another high pitched squeak from our third resident female (yes we have girls on Vent). Alas whenever I'm online with her, all I can hear is her complaining about her crap DPS (which it is) and mainly yelling at her gf down vent with 'Omg, you noob' 'C'mon you idiot' 'God, you're so crap'. (I'm taking bets to see how long that relationship will last if anyone is interested ;) ).
Ulreazj/Ultake - The man has a scary shift between 'C'mon you f***ing noobs' while raiding to 'Awwww, Muffin died'. Though I will let him off as some of his end game knowledge is informative (on occasion, as some of us are uber raiders anyway ;P) but I feel we should get more ppl on vent to entertain him as he makes his way through some of the more timeconsuming and dull achievements in game. And he'll make sure we know about them. Nuff said.
Riande - aka God/Spawn of Satan/the dominiant to Satan's submissive/your favourite GM. Kind of sits in the background waiting to pass judgement on all of you. Little know fact; is actually nicer on vent than in guild (marginally).

There are many more of you that have the pleasure of entertaining/boring me on vent, some I only hear when raiding, the rest; you were simply not funny or interesting enough to make the above cut. So a challenge I put before you! (I jest...honest) . In truth there are too many of you to all fit in one blog and in future I'm sure I'll do a little wink and nod in your direction.

Previous Highlights of Vent

1. Koru singing the theme tune to Gummi Bears in Dutch/Swedish/French/Albanian was it? ;P Who can tell, you continentals all sound the same.
2. When a late night guild run cba to move into a private channel and you hear the randomness of their conversation. e.g. I assume Cat was either healing or tanking which was why it was sooo abysmal. 5 of us in Violet Hold heroic and suddenly the frantic cries of 'I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying!' and my all time favourite for that night 'Oh my God, his balls!' 'He has exploding balls!' and 'His giant balls are coming after me!' Good times.
3. The musical stylings of Cat and myself durnk on a raid night and singing down vent. We take full credit for the new lyrics to Freres Jacques as our raid song. Ergo 'Here I am now, here I am now. Here I am, here I am. Don't start the raid without me, dont start the raid without me'. (Shamefully we couldnt think of anything to replace Ding Dang Dong). True story.

Alas with the good times come the bad.

Lowlights of Vent

1. The Silence. Yes folks, sometimes it does happen. There might be a million of us on vent, but sometimes, even we, the hilarious guild you would gladly give up your other half for, have nothing to say.
2. The burping. Yes. Mainly boys. (notice I put boys, not men)
3. The football. Yes. Again. Mainly men. (notice the handy reverse)

So ladies I beg you, with Cat, Kedarii and myself as the 'resident' women, please join us and we can fight back with talk of shoes and make up and clothes (as at the moment it is simply Cat and I advising Keds to wear make up and her advising us about the best dungarees to get and what crew cut would go well with them).

So you can see what you are missing out on. A mic is never needed, you dont need to speak to enjoy the wonderful world of vent. I give you a warning though. Sometimes....we are dull. Sometimes? Well yes, ok then all the time.

We/Beef/Cat/Koru have placed a lovely step by step guide (with pictures and everything) on the forum to aid you in becoming our audience. This direct link is all you need, though if you havent checked out the forum yet, do it. There is a whole world of wit and laughter The NuGen try to share with you outside of the actual game itself. Remember, we do all this out of love...and too much free time.

http://www.vampyrsnyper.com/thenugen_a/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=447&view=unread#unread

Cattrina's Horde Following

2009-08-16T13:27:00.000+01:00

So I've gone through the epically confusing business of creating some hordie characters. In preparation for the reroll and guild creation, I have brought over my druid from Aggramar to bring over some funds. We now have a guild bank (yay!), and a super tabard. Yes, it's just like the Continues tabard. But this one's red.

I now have a very good idea about what I want to roll, and why.

Link

1/ Undead Priest - Maegan - One of the reasons for rerolling is that I wanted a change. I have never had the patience to level a priest to 80. And I know level 80 priests exist; I've seen them in Dalaran. If others can do it, so can I. I intend* to level her as Holy until 40, when I will switch to Shadow. I intend* to go to as many instances the guild can get together to level, and I intend* to heal with her.

2/ Tauren Druid - Jaego - Sitting in the background is a druid. The only thing putting me off levelling this instead of the priest is because I already have a level 80 druid. Of course, I didn't level Disotto properly (she was RaF'd to 60) so I may switch later. I intend* to reattempt tanking, in the hope that starting from early on may net me more experience as opposed to what I did on Disotto, which was levelling to 80, buying some epics and charging straight into heroics. I think we all know how well it went. I may also heal with Jaego, but I will be saving up dual spec for Maegan first.

3/ Blood Elf Warlock - Maramay - At the back of the queue is another warlock, also called Maramay. I'm seeing a pattern here. I will level this when I'm bored with the other two, as it has less to offer help wise (DPS only class). Never had a high level warlock, either, so will be interested to see the benefits, other than of course the "Gief portal nao plz".

I think three characters should be more than enough to keep me busy. I am still very much looking forward to getting started on the re-roll.

* Actual intention may vary due to laziness or procrastination.

Much Ado about Nothing...oh really

2009-08-16T11:03:00.000+01:00

Morning All,

I guess this shall be the first official post for the Alliance, though you will be disappointed if you expect in depth news about our guild progression :)

This blog will be different in many ways to the others as Horde and Continues have progression to record. Alliance on the other hand, is slowly approaching its 1st birthday! (awww) So dont be surpised if from time to time I post absolute bolox which might not have a huge relevant to anything much.

For content in these blogs I'll be putting in an Addons FTW post, which will essentially be my sharing of the wonderful experience I have with addons on a daily basis. I won't mention the f-ing and blinding I did at the screen yesterday when in a fit of God knows what I thought I would remove my WTF (aptly named, Blizz) folder and start with a clean slate and no saved variables.

CUT TO:

4 hours later. Me crying infront of the PC and replacing my original WTF folder, yelling more at the screen and to punish it, I logged off. (yes, i know, i punished the pc).

Also I'll post whatever guild news we might have, or any new ideas I/we might come up with to keep the guild/playing WoW as fresh as possible for the old timers. There'll be shout outs to guildies who might have caught my attention and hideous amounts of name dropping (that's right, YOU could be featured in a NuGen Blog, OMG. I promise I write this without laughing...much). As well general musings and wonderings I might have over the course of this with the leveling of all my alts and what your fellow guildies might be up to or have said. (Last night's musical vent shall be one if I can be tempted to cover a vent topic at some point)

So for the moment I'll finish with letting you know if there is anything (whatever it might be, I have no idea) you think you want me to mention, stick it in a mail to Banktella and we'll figure something out. It's your guild too peeps, so any ideas or thoughts are welcome.

Gratz to Alka and Kedarii for their new officer postions. A welcome basket is on its way, so lets hope you past the trial period where much hazing and flaying of the body will occur. I shall say no more for now, as Aiv will mos likely cover their rise in the world in another Continues Blog, and if he doesn't....well I shall see that he does.

Rx

You know you love me XOXO <--------For the Gossip Girl fans out then (Beef I'm looking at you).

Raids, Rage and Automobiles.

2009-08-15T13:13:00.000+01:00

So! Here it is, the first blog of Aiv.

Firstly I'll start off by saying how awesome Continues is!

In only one week we've gone from 2/14 Ulduar, to 5/14 Ulduar! Won't be long til we're yapping at the heels of every other so-called "Amagad RAID NAO" guild. And we're "Casual". Oh yeah.

The bosses arent too tough in there, it's a lot more focused on precision, tactics and making sure everyone knows what to do! There's a lot of "Oh god" moments, too. Such as being dropped into Ignis' pot, or having Kologarn man-handle you. Vent times are funny times.

Aiv : Ok guys, nicely done. Just keep moving him.
Random1 : Oh god!
Everyone : What?
Random1 : I'm in a pot!
Everyone : What??
Random1 : I'm in his pot! What the hell?
Everyone :
Random1 has earned the achivement : [Hot Pocket (10 Player)].

So yeah, this will be updated pretty much after every night spent ~~wiping~~ progressing in Ulduar!

With love,

Wayhay, Another test

2009-08-15T13:02:00.000+01:00

I won't write anything interesting. I promise.

Hey hey, I might as well do a test too!

2009-08-15T11:58:00.000+01:00

Here's hoping this bad boy works! I'll assume as Cat held my hand through the process it must have done! if not I can blame her.

For now this might be a moo (yes, moo, like a cow's opinion it doesn't count. Points for those who guess the TV show ;) ) point. And this blog format might change slightly after I've spoken to Cat who is after all the God of all things techincal in The NuGen.

So for now, I shall say pip pip and fare thee well

Rx

A NuGuild is Born

2009-08-15T10:40:00.000+01:00

So ~~we've~~ I've decided to re-roll the NuGen on the horde side, and on a new server. Fresh start, something new, and all that. It was a bold decision, lots of talking and planning and whatnot. There are a few people who have said they'll come along, which I'm really looking forward to. So I should start from the very beginning.

I created a Death Knight, which I intend to use as my bank/mule character (I don't find any appeal in Death Knights, and I doubt I will ever have the drive to level one to 80), and called her Cattrina. I then ~~begged~~ asked people from the alliance guild to make some toons and login with them so I could get signatures for the guild charter. How very exciting.

Dreanie (now known as Leetmonkey...his decision) didn't make the charter signing that easy. Typically, his was the last signature I needed, and in typical Dreanie-style, when I came to find him, he had his character (a level3 rogue, if I recall) out in Borean Tundra. That's right. So I, level 58 Death Knight, had to go find him, and get a window between him being alive and me being alive at the same time long enough to get a signature. I have a picture of this somewhere, which I will post when I root it out.

We had an interesting few hours shortly after creating the new guild, spent primarily asking in guild chat "So who are you?". Tzix made a priest, called Tzix. Dreanie doesn't like it; says it isn't right. I have to agree. He wanted Twix, but unfortunately, it was taken.

Being in Orgrimmar, I wanted Cattrina, who is a blood elf, to have what I am steadily thinking is actually the best mount in the game, the ~~chocobo~~ hawkstrider. So off I went, forgetting most of the time that I actually have a Death Knight, and as such has access to an epic speed mount.

I then parked my blood elf and her ~~chocobo~~ hawkstrider in Undercity, where she will probably stay for the rest of the guild's life.

Fun times ahead.

I also saw a few people "LF friendly Guild" in trade chat, so there is promise that we will be able to create a new fantabulous community of dead things, egocentric things, cow things, fugly things, and trolls.

The re-roll officially launches on the 31st August 2009. Hope to see some of you there.