Draco's Deep Thoughts

Operation: Gnomeregan

2010-09-08T09:42:00.000-04:00

I did the quest chain last night on my Death Knight.

And I came away very disappointed. The event is well scripted and fun, but I thought I was atleast going to be earning reputation with Gnomeregan for helping the Gnomes :(

The gold rewards were nice for such a short time period of doing quests (estimate about 120g for 30mintues of effort).

Wrath Bucket list: Update

2010-08-26T13:29:00.000-04:00

My Bucket list for the WoW xpack: Wrath of the Lich King was something like this (couple of months ago - I cannot even find the post):

Level all characters to max level
Obtain Loremaster achievement on 1 character
Clean out bags and bank vaults on all characters
Stock up on consumables for leveling in the new xpack (Cataclysm)

To date I got all my characters to max level. That is done.
Gave up on the Loremaster, as I set a new goal of rather getting epic flying training for all my characters (Only 2 out of 9 have it now). This meant a new focus on generating gold via questing and AH business.

I cleaned out the bags and bank vaults of I think 2 or 3 of the characters. Its slow going to decide which old item I still attach value enough to keep. The gold it generates in selling the items to vendors are not to shabby either (200-400 gold per character).

I am also working on getting all my characters gear slots to at least the item level 200 zone. All but my Rogue, Hunter and Mage meet this criteria. I'm still debating if I want to push to 232 level for all.... But I think my epic flying has a higher priority...

Otherwise, I am still enjoying the game, relaxing, raiding when needed, and working on being a gold-hording goblin!

Cataclysm Beta: Worgen

2010-08-04T08:39:00.000-04:00

After finishing up the huge 13gb install, and then a 108mb patch, I finally got to play.

I immediately rolled a Worgen Warlock. In two sessions I reached level 7. The new starter area and quests and much more streamlined (almost feels like you are on rails).

I need to explore Gilthaens is bit more. I still do not know where most of the trainers, shops, professions etc are.

But the quests are very well done. Only the male Worgen model has been implemented and it looks great running around as a huge Wolf.

I had a couple of minor bugs that I reported:
On 1 quest you get a mastiff dog as a pet - it immediately despawned my imp!
Further when you are in the inn... the icon on your character portrait do not appear to show that you are "resting".

If I have time, I plan to look at the Human starter area next to see how the quest got changed there.

Primordial Saronite shuffle

2010-04-26T11:13:00.000-04:00

Been running all my level 80s through heroics as much as possible to obtain Frost badges to convert to saronite.

This past weekend i had enough to make the BOE legs for my Priest. She is all set other than 10/25man raid drops.

Next up is my paladin.

Very very interesting read and analysis

2010-03-15T15:45:00.000-04:00

Wow Insider on the Gear explosion

The scaling in gear in this expansion is huge. I recently felt the effects very keenly on my new level 80 Warrior, that attempted to tank some random heroics.

My Warrior is in quested green/blues, some BOE drops (blues) and some crafted epics (ilvl 200 level). Some of the raid-geared DPS had to scale back their DPS and it slowed down the heroic tremendously. Together with a Warrior that struggles maintaining AE threat, DPS was not able to AE to their MAX DPS.

I am queueing my warrior now as Arms-DPS for gear.

Saurfang dies again on 25man!

2010-03-12T10:37:00.000-05:00

Last night my guild joined our alliance partner Expire for a 25man raid on ICC. I had not planned to attend, but a shortage of healers convinced me to go help.

And was it a great experience. The two groups worked together flawlessly. Morrogar downed 1st try. Lady D needed 2 attempts, battlehsip in 1.

Saurfang needed 2 attempots, and then we got stuck on Fester... Had 2 solid attempts and 2 learning attempts. The last attempt we missed his anreage times while he was less than 10% and wiped the raid. We need to lift our average DPS (raid-wide) by maybe .5K DPS (across 15 DPSers) to down him.

I am sure that 1 or 2 upgrades per person, will lift our raid wide DPS during the next week to down the bad boy.

Buyah! Saurfang down for the first time

2010-03-11T08:55:00.000-05:00

My intrepid group of guildies hit the ICC 10man instance last night to continue our assault on Arthas' last hiding place.

Before we hit the first boss Morrogar, my Priest had enough reputation to upgrade her ring to the honored version. We then proceeded to 1shot the big ugly. The new Fury warrior in our team began getting loot like a Bandit.. :D

Lady D's 1st attempt was a wipe. My fault for being really rusty at raiding and standing too close to the tanks, and I got cleaved. More Fury warrior gear!

Battleship event was fun as always, and we got a mail drop and more DPS warrior gear. See a trend?

Then Saurfang. I gotten to him twice before, and the one night we wiped 5 or 6 times. Our first attempt, I switched to Shadow, to help DPS, but we wiped on around 10%. My DPS for the fight was around 2.7K DPS. Our Resto shammie said maybe he should DPS and I heal, as he does about 3.5-3.8k DPS in his elemental set.

And Bingo! Saurfang toppled! Nice cloth DPS item dropped, that went to our mage, and surprisingly.. a DPS 1h sword, that got sharded.

We moved on to the next section, and made it all the way to Festergut. We had 1 try on him, resulting in a wipe.

All in all a satisfying raid.

Scattered playtime

2010-02-22T12:52:00.000-05:00

Between work, getting ready for a daughter's birthday party, and various household stuff.. My warrior dinged 80 over the weekend.

It continues to amaze me how doing a quick quest here and there over the span of day adds up to a bunch of experience over time.

All that remains are my mage, prior to Cataclysm.

Wow, just WOW!

2010-02-17T14:59:00.000-05:00

Blizzard's plan to sell virtual mini-pets for real money paid off.

The Pandaren Monk Pet is sold on Blizzard's website, but they offered to donate half of the proceeds to Make-A-Wish foundation.

Today the check was delivered for $1.1 million. That is a big MOUNTAIN of pets!

Kudos to Blizzard for supporting the community.

Read more at WoW Insider.

Wow status check

2010-02-17T09:29:00.001-05:00

Based on Tobold's World of Warcraft Personal Status Report I decided to do a similar one.

My only problem is I have much more alts. So sit back, and enjoy the fun/misfortune of an Altoholic.

I currently have seven level 80 characters, a Warrior close to 80 and a mage in the low 60s.
My Priest is my main progression raider. My paladin is my other non-progression raider. My other 80s, are used to fill raid holes, or assist guild members with whatever they need help with. My Hunter and Rogue are not even geared for heroics yet.

My Priest's gear is good - she just needs Frost emblems for her heal set, and more Triumph for her Shadow set. Paladin has a great tank set, but could use a shield upgrade. Her heal set also needs some Triumph badge loving.

The Druid has heal set from Triumph badges, but her tank set needs work. Death Knight's both sets (Tank and DPS) needs Triumph upgrades, similar the Shammie. All of these three can fill both their main and off-spec roles in non-progression raids.

My Hunter and Rogue just both have some BOE new level 80 epics, and quested blue/green gear. My Warrior will have the same when she hit 80 (which should be in the next couple of weeks). I spend over 1,200 gold last night to have a guild blacksmith craft some of the Titansteel BOE epics for her (as he needed the skill-ups). Mage is too far of to really have a good idea of how her level 80 gear will look.

So what's my plans? Previously I thought to get Loremaster on at least on of my characters, but that lost its appeal. I love questing as my army of alts demonstrate... So I think, once all of them are 80, is to start by having all of them complete all the Northrend quests for the zone quests achievements. That should provide me with enough gold in the bank for Cataclysm (and I might even get epic flying on more characters).

Other than that - just keep queuing in either Dungeon Finder or LookingForRaid to collect emblems for T9 upgrades.

RL trumps game time

2010-02-12T13:46:00.000-05:00

Due to the recent heavy snow in my area, my work load has fallen behind and that cut significantly into my game time.

Just had time for a quick log in, play the AH for gold, and do a quick couple of quests.

My bedtime reading for the past couple of months have been to re-read the entire Honor Harrington series written by David Weber. I bought the latest book in the series over Christmas, and it came with a CD, that included electronic copies of all the books!

I loaded them all into my Kindle, and have been enjoying it tremendously following her adventures again.

Love Festival boss encounter

2010-02-11T16:24:00.000-05:00

Two more nights of multiple attempts with my army.. only netted us 1 more pet. Very unhappy. 1st night had 12 attempts, and the second night 10.

No mount drop either. And the Lunar festival starts soon. I'm guessing the doggie is see my alt-army regularly as guildies need the encounter. Since it's a simple tank and spank fight - a tank and healer can kill him.

Blizzard incoming! Level 80 Alts are useless?

2010-02-09T15:43:00.000-05:00

And no, not the developers.

My North-East state is schedule to get a visit from Old Man Winter, and his coat of 12+ inches of snow...

At least my snowblower is repaired and ready for the avalanche.

Last night was an interesting WOW game night. I am not big into the festival events, but I am willing to help my guildies that are fanatic about it.

Back to last night, I logged on to just do a quick frostie run, but got asked to help out with the new seasonal boss, since my guild members wanted the pet and/or mount drop. None of us really needed the gear that dropped.

So between the 5 of us, we cycled through all our level 80 characters. One person only had their Warrior, another had a Warrior & Rogue, 3rd person - DK, Paladin, Shammie and Mage, 4th person had Lock, Shammie & Druid.... And me with Paladin, Priest, Shammie, Druid, Hunter, DK and Rogue...

Out of 17 attempts, we had 2 wipes, and 1 pet drop. A couple of the characters got either main spec or off spec upgrades, but most were disenchanted.

all of mine remained parked just outside of the instance at ShadowFang Keep. To assist with each days attempts to farm up either the pet or the mount.

And who said alts were useless?

Snowy weekend

2010-02-08T14:04:00.000-05:00

Spending the weekend dealing with youngest daughter being sick and snow-locked on Saturday with 8-9inches of snow.

This resulted in a down-tick of WOW game time. Together with my promise to drop the game if my family needs me, locked my out of raiding and 5mans for the weekend. So my alts got plenty of game time. My mage's restedbonus XP got fully consumed, and my warrior's dipped to under 80%.

It was interesting saying good bye to the classic world with my last character moving to the Outlands (before cataclysm). I am still considering working on the Loremaster achievement on my Death Knight.

My other observation from the weekend was, how "twitchy" a protection Warrior plays in style vs a protection paladin. When tanking multiple mobs, I was always switching targets, stunning, or shield-slamming casters, etc. It made for a more frantic pace of combat. Definitely not Paladin easy-mode tanking.

But the strategy to mount up your horse, pick up agro from 4-8 mobs and beat them down works very effective. Just had to watch my health more carefully since I do not have self-heals except for a healing potion.

My mage and her pyromania is a boatload of fun. Yes, I know Ice-spec is faster to level. But nothing warms my heart than saying "Hello" to a mob with critical Pyroblast, critical Fireball and a scorch to finish them off.
But her survival once things get in melee range is numbered in hits: 1! Especially if I am in the Alterac valley battleground.

Still it was a pleasant weekend's gaming.

On Sunday night we did do my "training" raid, and we had a brand-new solo-all-way Druid in the raid. He struggled to break 800DPS... His gear was not even end-game quest green/blues. Some items were still from the Outlands! But we got him a couple of upgrades, as we cleared Spider and Plague wing in 2 hours. But I advised him to run random instances and heroics to improve his gear (either with guildies or PUG - depending on his level of comfort).

Some of the encounters in Naxx10 are trivial now with characters being over geared for it. On most boss fights we did not lose a single person due to 2 ICC raid geared healers, althought our single tank was only in average ilvl 213-228 gear. Our Off-tank was a DPS spec and geared DK (when needed).

But still we had 3 new raider running with us. And we took the time to explain the strategies, tactics and plans that will allow them to grow as raiders in the guild.

When RealLife calls...

2010-02-05T10:44:00.000-05:00

Last night was one of those nights that we gamer-parents dread.

Youngest got sent home early from school with an ear infection, and she was just miserable. I relieved my wife from care-taker duties when I got home, got kids fed and in bed.

Once everyone settled down in sleep, finished my household chores and fired up WoW. I started a quick frosty heroic run on my tank, and got Halls of Stone. We made quick fast progress. Cleared the crystal boss and Maiden.

Then during the scripted encounter with the waves of adds, youngest one woke up bawling. We had 45seconds let on the encounter. I threw down consecrate, typed /p AFK - kid crying and ran to the room.

Got the little one calmed down. Gave her some medicine, and she was quickly back to sleep. Walked back to my computer expecting to be in Dalaran vote-kicked. Mmm, nope... Had 20seconds left to roll on the chest drop from the encounter. Clicked greed and started running to the entrance for the last boss.

Type /p back. And received cheers form the group. The DK switched to his tanks et and they cleared the trash, but his gear was not up to snuff for the boss. They decided to give me 5 minutes, before kicking me.

I was humbled by the kind consideration 4 strangers showed me, in allowing real life to take preference over the game.

Once we were done, I thanked them. Once back in Dalaran, I informed our raid leader that I could not attend the raid as a result of RL-home expectations. And was I glad I did, the little one was up every hour or so. I think she slept most of the night being held in my or mommy's arms.

It feels great holding on to that precious little one. Sleep is overrated.

Skill vs Gear: Intelligent analysis

2010-02-04T13:42:00.000-05:00

Wow.com Hunter
Brian Wood, over on the Wow.com Hunter discussion performed a very good analysis of how gear increases would scale with the various ilvls.

However, his startling conclusion was that raid buffs contribute even more to your DPS than gear upgrades.

But his conclusions is Skill > Raid buffs > Gear.

So why are people so fascinated by gear scores?

Heavy-handed: Ensidia suspended for 72 Hours (updated)

2010-02-04T11:26:00.001-05:00

Update: Apparently you can only damage the tower if targetted, not as part of normal DPS rotation on the boss or adds. Still, in my mind as a raid team, they analyzed the encounter and found a method that would ensure success. Great analytical thinking, and then superb execution. I do not think the punishment fit the "crime".

MMO-Champ article

Dear Blizzard

Now that is extremely heavy-handed of you. Your premier global raiding guild defeated your final raid boss... Due to an glitch, bad coding, unforeseen use of special items made by an Engineer..

That is just not acceptable. Yep, apply the hot-fix to prevent it from happening in the future, but removing the achievement, items AND banning them... That is too much.

I think you over reacted and used a 10ton hammer, instead of a more dignified approach.

Yes, its terrible that your premier, showcased final boss are defeated more hours after it became available to the the players. Yes, it was a mistake on your part for allowing saronite bombs to assist with the ease of the default. But were has your Q&A and design teams been? Have they not kept up with the players' theorycrafting to maximize DPS for each class and talent build?

However, banning the entire raid for the use on a item, that is a common craftable item from one of your crafting professions - is egg in your face. Not Ensidia.

I applaud the players and raiders in their guild. I wish them the best on the next time they face the Lich King and that the "fixed" encounter pose no additional problems for them.

Blizzard - go take a chill pill and rethink how you will handle situations like this in the future, when players, using the tools you provided them, destroy your carefully crafted plans in a short time period.

Draco

Satisfying newbie raid

2010-02-01T10:15:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I kicked of my "training" raid for WoW. It was a commitment I made to our guild leadership, that I would continue to help develop and train any member that is new to raiding or want to learn how to improve their characters as well as skill to join our progression raiding teams.

We started off with a easy raid: Naxxramus. We had 3-4 people that never raided before and that were interested to learn. The remaining 7 raiders were old hands - either on their main characters to help, or on alts they wanted to gear up.

First off, thank you to the new people - without you, this would have been boring :D. Ed/Black, Kristie/Garsindrea, Chance/Meetloaf and Lex/Iceelatte - thank you for allowing us to teach you. Black was tanking, the rest were doing melee or ranged DPS.

Friday night we started in the spider wing and after a rough start on the first boss (2 wipes before we took him down), we 1 shotted the next 2 in the Spider wing. In Plague wing, Noth was a pushover but Heigan's dance caused 3 wipes. Rather than beat our heads against him, I opted to switch to Construct wing, and we took down Patchwork and the next boss pretty quickly. We called it a night - and I was well pleased how the new people learned.

Thanks to the experienced people that was willing to swap their characters, talent specs and assignments in the raid around as needed to be successful.

On Sunday night we continued. Icelatte did not join us, but Adam/Gracefulfury joined us on his rogue. The experienced people once again had to swap some characters and talent specs around, but we started off with a wipe on Gluth, then downed him next attempt. Thaddius was 1shotted with only 1 raider being killed.

On to the DK wing. The instructor caused a wipe due to our new tank not clearly understanding the use of the bone shield from the trainee, but next time we got him down very smoothly. The trash to the next boss continues to be a problem, but we 1shot the next boss even with us losing the healer on the Dead side. The 4 Horseman suffered a similar fate, although we lost 3 people (including myself - watch your stacks! :D ).

At this time, rather than go back and finish plague wing, we headed to Sapphiron. We had a very good 1 st attempt, that failed due to our Druid healer DCing twice during the fight. But on the next attempt the big undead wyrm bit the dust.

I unfortunately could not stay longer, but the raid planned to proceed to KT without me.

All in all, a very successful first training raid. We had 5 new raiders came and learn. I hope to speak to them individually through the week, to discuss their performance, lessons learned and plans for the next raid.

But why spend this effort if very little of the gear is off use to the characters? 1) Due to most raiders having much better gear than what the encounters were designed for - they are much more forgiving, and allows for a "safe" training environment for new raiders. Almost like Karazhan was towards the end of the Burning Crusade.
Secondly, it introduces basic raiding concepts to new raiders. The value of raid buffs and consumables, tactics and strategies, as well as the need for voice communications.
And lastly, it allows the experienced raiders to share their knowledge, wisdom and experience playing with the new people to make them better gamers, and future participants in our progression raids.
It allows creates a larger pool of skilled, experienced players to fill holes in the progression raid roster, if a raider is absent on a given night.

Disapointing 25man raid

2010-01-29T13:41:00.000-05:00

Last night, was a guild-alliance reunion raid event.

But it turned into a disappointment for me. We were not able to down the Northrend Beasts. :(

Yes it was great seeing all the old names from months past again. Everyone is shiny new gear, purpled-hued. But for some reason, we just coulf not get the cohesiveness going and after 7 wipes in 2 hours called it a night.

We had two very close attempts were we got Icehowl to within his last 10%, but just could not finish him off.

In the morning after, I think going with 5 healers instead of 6 was what made us unsuccessful. Most of us are geared for 10man raids. The 25man is a step up and losing 2 or even 3 healers out of 5, left us gasping for mana to raid heal.

Lesson learned. When doing progression raids, bring more healers to allow for a more forgiving run.

/Salute to our Partner in Raids, the Legion of Heroes (Arygos)

The Battered Hilt adventure

2010-01-27T11:38:00.000-05:00

During my various PUG adventures on my army of alts, I experienced a trill that I thought would be denied me for a long time.... in Heroic Pit of Saron, a trash undead mob dropped the Battered Hilt... This starts a quest that reward you with a ilvl 251 weapon of your choice... and a truly epic store/lore to go with it.

After a couple of weeks of internal debate, I decided to use the quest to upgrade my Druid's weaponry. I initially thought of getting her the tank/DPS staff, but ended up pursuing the caster/healer main hand mace. (I found I could tank as a Druid, I just preferred to heal with her - exactly the opposite of my paladin).

So over the past couple of weeks, I slowly but steadily advanced the quest line, until I hit the two big roadblocks. Having to -reforge the weapon in Pit of Saron, and then temper it in Forge of Souls instances... My Druid has never done them. Well well...

I put my self up as healer looking ONLY to run Forge of Souls (since that is required to unlocked Pit of Saron), and found a quick running PUG team. I was able to heal it pretty easily on Heroic (much to my surprise). Biggest trouble was the huge 5 pull packs and the AE ghosts near the final boss. Boss fights were easy.

Success.

Couple of nights later I once again braved the PUG line using DF tool for Pit of Saron. I only needed the 1st boss to forge the weapon, and had both tanked and healed the fight with my Paladin and Priest - so I was well educated on the fight). Still some how, I died, but we took him down. After a rezz from the tanking paladin, I was able to reforge Quel-Deran. Now to get it tempered... (We did complete the run and I got a caster staff from the final boss... talk about adding insult to an injury! I'm got to replace it soon! :( )

Over the weekend, I got a guild group to run Forge of Souls with me to get the blade tempered. The team breezed through the instance, and I was able to temper the blade in the chamber with the final boss.

The last steps of the quest line took my back to the Sunwell instance. After defending/assisting a long dead Sun Elf, I got permission to throw the blade into the Sunwell. After an interesting scripted piece, I got my reward: Hammer of Purified Flame

Not as imposing the the sword versions of the quest rewards, but its mine. :D

/cheer

Saurfang is a pain.

2010-01-15T10:40:00.000-05:00

Our guild's 10man team assaulted Icecrown Citadel last night for my second run with the raid group. The group is 3 healers (Priest, Shammie, Paladin), 2 tanks, 5 DPS (3 melee, 2 ranged).

My 1st attempt at healing the 1st boss Morrogar, went off without a hitch. I think we lost 1 DPS, but downed him pretty quickly. The 2nd boss Lady Deathwhisperer was also 1shotted with 2 deaths in the raid, and we rolled the battleship event without any problems.

People got a couple of upgrades.. and then we hit the final boss of the 1st wing, Saurfang. BAM! We had a good hour left on our schedule, and feeling confident after our success with the 1st three...

Wow.. we had 5 or 6 attempts - each with a wipe. But we learned a lot about the encounter. Definitely need to fine tune our strategy a bit, and makes sure nobody gives him any runic power, because that debuff of him is a killer.

But my Priest's gear is doing very well. Only have a couple of ilvl 200 pieces left I need to get rid off. I have 2 Triumph emblem pieces to get and then 2 Frost emblem pieces, and 2 craftable pieces (that is going to cost a boatload of gold due to the orbs needed). I just hope to win some upgrades that will preclude spending crazy amount of gold. :D

Cataclysm - Plans?

2010-01-14T14:32:00.000-05:00

Considering the success I had at predicting what patch 3.3 would force on the Wow playing community, lets see what I can do for Cataclysm.

Patch 3.3: My prediction that tanks and healers were going to be kings of the Dungeon Finder tool, was spot-on. On my battlegroup, I am experiencing almost insta-queues on my tanks, about 1-5minutes with Healers and did not even try to queue as DPS (through guild chat - it appeared to be 10-30minutes depending on time of day).

So my decision to respec some of my toons to tanks and heals - up my playtime vs sitting in dalaran waiting.

So Cataclysm... What impact will it have on playstyle?
I suspect the race up to max level (85) will dominate most players initially. But then the question on how master levels and the various paths work? I think these might "force" altoholics like myself, to focus on a single character or maximum 3 characters for development. Just gearing up is not going to be enough - you'll need to have certain role specific master level abilities as well.

However, playing alts is going to assist with guild leveling, far more than end-game raiding will (I think). But, until the mechanics of how guild level, and how members contribute are not explained in more detail, we can only guess and assume.

The reason why I think that alts will drive guild leveling, is that it is much easier to earn achievements on a low-level atls, vs a max-level character.. Aka there is much more un-explored achievements to get for a new toon vs a max-level.

My personal plans?
I definitely plan to roll a Worgen Warlock (my only class I have not played over level 20). I might even pay to get my druid race changed to a Worgen...
But getting atleast my paladin and priest to max level 1st will be my priorities. Instances and raid need to be tanked and healed :D

And I aim to capitalized on the shortage to maximize my playtime.

I found a new Hero!

2010-01-08T13:05:00.000-05:00

Kalon over at Thinktank made the following post a while ago:
http://wowthinktank.blogspot.com/2009/12/druid-lfg-system-and-being-elitist-tank.html

Yes yes and YES! On my paladin tank I agree (although I am not quite at his top-gear level), but crappy, complaining DPS gets the kick-vote very very quickly.

Hunter Pet envy: Arcturis, the Spirit Best Bear

2009-12-17T15:31:00.000-05:00

Ah bears are my Hunter's favorite beast pets. If only Blizzard would give them a knock-back or knock-down attack...

My Hunter's current bear pet has been her tank since level 11 (currently level 75), when she tamed Bjorn in Dun Morogh. Bjorn was the only low level white-skinned bear, until level 54 when you could tame the bear in Winterspring. (almost typed Wintergrasp!)

But this new looking bear is to die for...

My Hunter has been camping his one and only known spawn spot together with the rest of the server, in the hope of getting lucky and taming this magnificent monster...

RL interruption

2009-12-11T07:01:00.000-05:00

Work dropped an interruption in my gaming the past couple of days, but I atleast did 1 random heroic to get the quest rewards.

Last night I got DTK as my random heroic. I was once again the Paladin tank, DK, Mage, Elemental Shammie was DPS and a Shammie healer. We Breezed through the dungeon. The lowest DPS was clocked at 4K DPS... eep. Which my characters were that well geared. :D

But it was tough keeping multi-mob agro when all hell broke lose during a fight. I unfortunately took one for the team on King Dread the big dino (darn fears). But nothing serious, as he was at 1% health left.

But I am seeing very similar interaction as what other bloggers are noticing. People see hello, check if everyone is ready, and then nothing until the last boss is down for a "thanks for the run". Done.

If you are new to heroics, and do not know the tactic/strategies for each - you are going to be in trouble...

Holy 3.3 Happiness!

2009-12-09T17:57:00.000-05:00

/huge big HUG to Blizzard!

The new Looking for Group/Instance tool is amazing. I tried it for 3 random dungeons last night (before doing all 3 new 5mans in sequence). And it just WORKED.

I used my paladin, flagged her for both tank and heals, and waited.... less than 5 seconds for a group to form.

1st instance was Halls of Stone, no big deal, except for some reason after we downed the Maiden-boss, our instance ID reset itself, and we were told this is not our instance and ported out. :(

Next up, was a Heroic ToC. What was funny here, we had a mage die during the 2nd boss, and when he ran in - he was in a reset instance... We had to use our lock to summon him to get him into our instance.

Last run, AZN. Had an amazing 3 DPS members, blew through the instance in just over 15minutes - with me as healer and a DK as tank.

The new 5mans was interesting. We started a guild group, but healer had to go, so we hit LFG and found a great Shammie healer that has ran it before. The instances are not long, couple of trash , run to the boss and take them down. The gauntlet, fight where Frostmourne rested, and the chase by Arthas was some unique encounters in my mind.

Total upgrades for the night, 3 tank items, 2 heal and 3 DPS (not that I use them). Used my badges to upgrade my tank necklace.

Then flew to the Sons of Hodir and Argent Crusade quartermasters to buy the BOA shoulder and head enchants for my DK and Druid tanks.

I am so amazed by this patch - made my playstyle fun again!

RL Post: I hate being locked into a vendor

2009-12-09T17:56:00.000-05:00

Over the past weekend, I upgraded our entire AV cabinet. It started with our 10year old TV degrading - having this big green corner in the screen.

So upgrade to a new HDTV, which meant upgrade Tivo to HD, as well as our cheapo DVD player to Blu-ray.

No problem so far.

But when I started put the Ticvo and Blu-Ray player onto my wireless network... I could not get the %^&%@#&% devices to recognize my USB wireless network card...

After how many reboots, firmware updates... nothing.

I dug into their manuals, read the entire sections on wireless networking, troubleshooting, etc. Could not get it to work.

The Tivo unit say on wireless adapter: "If you prefer wireless networking, the TiVo wireless adapter is all you need for any TiVo DVR."
Mmmm

Put a call to Tivo.. Yep, the Tivo unit is locked down to ONLY recognize the Tivo branded USB network adapter and nothing else.. WTF? Is it seriously that complicated to get a LINUX based dedicated device to be compatible with an open network specification?

The Blu-Ray player was even better: "Wireless Ready ( Wireless Lan Adapter not included)".

Ok... So why is my USB network adapter not being recognized?

Aha! From their How to connect Wirelessly guide: "Samsung Wireless USB Adapter WIS09ABGN.
IMPORTANT: Only the Samsung WIS09ABGN Wireless USB adapter may be used."

WTF people? Its an open network communication protocol. Its like Electricity from the wall adapter!

Why the hell do I need to buy your $15 more expensive, but feature-void product to get your dumb-ass product on my wireless network?

sulk

I get the branded products, but are planning on running a couple of 100' Cat cables through my roof, to connect to the devices.

color my one very unhappy customer.

Arthas arrives

2009-12-08T09:01:00.000-05:00

Patch 3.3 lands today.

What will I do? My plan is to alternate between gearing up a tank and a healer. Since you need 210 emblems to buy the ilvl 232 set completely.

My plan (at the momenent):
Paladin - tank
Priest - heals
DK - tank
Druid - Heals
Druid - tank
Shaman - heals
Paladin - heals
Priest - DPS
DK - DPS
Shaman - DPS

That should keep me busy until the next Xpack - Cataclysm.

In between the heroics, I plan to utilize the Raid tool as well to get some 10/25man raid gear as well, which should cut down on my need to run heroics.

I am looking forward to it.

Gear and its inflation in WOW

2009-12-06T09:44:00.000-05:00

Recently read this article and it got me thinking how much easier it has become to gear a character.

In Vanilla WOW, you had to run the same end-game 5man instances a LOT, before you had the minimum gear to even consider raiding.

Now, all you need is a bit of patience. Do your heroic dailies, TOC and crafted a couple of epics - BOOM! raid-ready in 2-3 weeks.

I think its an excellent design decision by Blizzard to let everyone keep up, but slightly behind the best of the best of gear. It makes the gear-reset with each major content patch much easier to accommodate by casual and non-raid players.

DK tank hits 540 Defense

2009-12-04T09:18:00.000-05:00

Well that was surprisingly fast...

Just yesterday I was reviewing the list of items I need to get to 540 defense to become crit-immune for raid bosses, and today my Death Knight is there.

First, thanks to my friend Kevin for spotting I did not have the tank chest piece from Wyrmrest. That was a quick purchase and enchant to boost my defense rating.

Then I visited the Emblem vendors and picked up a new tanking sigil with my Conquest emblems. This put the Dk at over 500 Defense, but not close to 540 I need for raid bosses.

I joined a guild run on the daily Heroic - Halls of Stone, and then tanked a PUG for the daily normal dungeon Halls of Lightning.

The HOL run is healed by an raid geared paladin (who just switched to Holy-spec), and my 1st time tanking an instance with the DK. But we had a couple of deaths of the lvl 78 Shaman, but noone else.

My critical analysis of my tanking performance: fair to good. I did not rush off without the healer having mana. I grabbed agro when adds were running all over the place, and did not allow mobs to get behind me were I could not parry or dodge their attacks.

And I was reward with the tanking trinket of Loken at the end! That pushed my over the 540 defense rating. I could swap out my defense necklace, for my higher item level DPS necklace, and still be crit immune. I won the need roll with a 1!

But the DK is now ready for any heroic. Her health and armor is nice and high, and her defense skill is where it needs to be. After patch 3.3 (when I hope Titansteel's prices drop), I plan to get the titansteel tank gear (neck, ring, helm and boots for DK, and ring + neck for Druid).
Defense: 540
Dodge: 19.60%
Parry: 12.92%

For my Druid, I joined 1 Wintergrasp offensive game, and we won and I collected 3 badges. Under 20 badges to go for her new tanking helm.

Also had a long chat on the way home with my friend Doug on his plans for the holiday season in the game.

Dk tank pre-raid gear

2009-12-03T10:52:00.000-05:00

With my DK in tank spec, and the best "tank" gear her DPS set allows, I started collecting all the true tank gear I could get my hands on easily.

Using this EJ list I got all the reputation gear, as well as non-epic gear purchased, gemmed and enchanted. And landed with just over 500 defense. Mmmm :(

Need 40 more to get defense capped to be un-critable by bosses. I'll need to run some heroics for badges, and hit HOL for the trinket!

On a related note, my Druid is doing every effort to join the Wintergrasp battles each time they occur, to get 40 badges she needs for her tank head piece.

A DK tank rises to the challenge

2009-12-02T08:55:00.000-05:00

With my Druid's tank and heal sets close to where I want it to be, I last night got dual-spec for my Death Knight and made her into a Unholy-tank (for multi-mob agro generation). Since my primary DPS spec is a Blood single target spec, I could continue to use that on easy bosses (while in Frost presence).

My Druid has not tanked a heroic yet. I'm waiting for one of the easy heroics to be the daily to give it a try.

For my DK, it was shocking to see how little tank gear I had. I have a good weapon, and 1 tank ring - everything else is DPS. So I hit the Auction house as well as the guild bank, and got some late 70s blues to help get close to the 540 defense rating (sitting at 450 at the moment).

I also got the new set of glyps, but not sure if my minor glyphs are the right ones. Will have to play the DK a bit as a tank tog et a better feel for it.

My my Druid last night I did Vault of Archeron raid for the first time. Had a solid raid and we took down all 3 bosses. I got 1 heal upgrade, so I was happy.

Pilgrim event

2009-11-30T09:13:00.000-05:00

The Thanksgiving Pilgrim event was great for boosting all my alts' cooking that were under 300. But I only leveled my Druid's cooking to 350 (go go 80+ turkeys!).

But it was quick and cheap. I loved it.

Otherwise, my druid's gearing up is starting to hit a wall. Unless I get lucky with a heroic drop, its now waiting for enough badges to buy items from the conquest vendor. Her heal set is almost 2000, and her tank set is closing in on 1900 gear score.

Once both her sets hit 2000, it will be time to get cracking the Death Knight's tanking set.

Most fun instance of the week? Mmm. I think the UP, where we had a Paladin that was just chain pulling all the way. The only places we stopped was the 3rd and last boss. everything else, as soon as the last mob dropped, he would run off and pull the next group. Made for a very fast run - maybe lass than 30minutes.

Real-world.
Had a great weekend with my brother visiting, although most of the weekend was spent planning for our parent's visit in 2 weeks time. Really looking forward to seeing our entire family together for the first time in almost 12 years, as my youngest brother is making the trip to the US for the first time.

The kids got some new toys as well. The eldest already finished a new computer game we got her. And we put up loads of Christmas lights. Swag/drape lights along the front gutters of the house, and icicle lights along the garage roof's edge. Also added stake lights tot he pathway to the front door, with the kids' deer statues on the lawn.

Inside in the playroom, we hung LED rope lights all along the ceiling. My wife will be erecting the tree inside during the week I am sure.

The Holiday spirit is very excited in our house :D

Bear tanking gear

2009-11-25T09:15:00.000-05:00

Well my Druid-bear is get a piece or two upgraded every night (which is usual for a "new 80" character".

Got 1 tank upgrade last night doing Heroic UP. According to Wow-heroes my tank gear score is almost 1600.

Sounds about ready to try tanking some normal level 70+ instances. I have been practicing my Druid tanking techniques while questing. Ranged pulling, Feral charge pulling, etc. All to make sure my head is learning which buttons to push to a) keep aggro, b) do damage, 3) keep myself alive if needed.

I was able to solo the level 74-76 elites in Dragonblight without any issues.

Bearing up!

2009-11-24T12:37:00.000-05:00

After getting distracted on Sunday night doing the cooking quests for the WoW Pilgrim's event (5 of my 8 characters leveled up their cooking to 300+), my Bear-druid got her playtime.

I started her off by just doing Wyrmrest reputation quests to get her head caster enchant. Played as a bear and started practicing the new key lay-out, tactics and strategies (as compared to Cat-druiding).

It was an interesting experience, and in short order I landed in instance groups doing the heroic daily, as well as Trail of the Crusader. Both I healed. I got the Black Knight's trinket for my tank gear on the 1st try!! /celebrate

In the Heroic, I got another tank upgrade the ring of the final boss in DTK.

I am pleased with my first nights of attempting to create a bear-set. I was also able to get some rare-BOE gear from our guildbank, that helped with a solid starter bear-gear set.

Bear gearing

2009-11-20T15:44:00.001-05:00

Last night I started to review what I needed to do to convert my Cat Druid to a Bear tank.

I researched a couple of popular Bear blogs (Thank you BigBearButt) and selected a talent spec. 10g and 30 minutes of respecs later, I have a good 5man to early raid spec.

I also spent some time learning how Bear's generate agro, and creating some macros to work with my bear (Initial pull, Battle Rez, Oh crap-self-heal, etc).

Then I started research my gear (Thank you Shifting Perspectives from Wow.com). I first took stock of what gear I had using the Equivalence Points UImod, to see what combination of gear that I already owned can start a bear-set. It was UGLY :D

But I had 2 or 3 decent pieces.

Then back to researching upgrades to get raid ready. With my current gear - I would be concerned tanking anything but sub-80 instances - never mind heroics!

But my gear research give me a good list (see below) of BOE gear to hunt for on the AH, as well as Heroics to run (as well-geared Healer) to collect some tank gear.

The big priorities will be run UP, OK and HoL heroics as often as possible, as it has the largest number of drops that I can use for upgrades.

AH hunting will very slow, as I just spent the past month gearing up my Shammie, and gold funds have been drained.

As excited I am about working on my Bear, and learning how to tank as a bear, this weekend is AV bonus weekend, which means my Hunter will crawl out from under her rock, and attempt to gain a couple of levels gunning down the Horde and running to the Relief Hut!

The List
Helm
Titan-Forged Leather Helm of Triumph 40 Wintergrasp marks
Quest: Headguard of Retaliation, from the quest Vengeance Be Mine! in Utgarde Pinnacle.
Eviscerator's Facemask, a Leatherworking BoE.
Enchant: revered with the Argent Crusade
Meta: Austere Earthsiege Diamond

Neck
Titanium Earthguard Chain, a Jewelcrafting BoE.
Chained Military Gorget, available for 25 emblems of heroism.
Torta's Oversized Choker. BOE

Shoulders
Trollwoven Spaulders, a Leatherworking BoE.
Spaulders of Egotism. BOE Naxx25 drop
SoH enchant

Cloak
Durable Nerubhide Cape, a Leatherworking BoE.
Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions, available at honored with the Wyrmrest Accord.
Cloak of Tormented Skies, a Leatherworking BoE.
Enchant: Enchant Cloak - Major Agility.

Chest
Heroes' Dreamwalker Raiments, available for 80 emblems of heroism.
Darkheart Chestguard, available at exalted with the Ebon Blade.
Enchant: Enchant Chest - Powerful Stats

Wrist:
Bindings of the Tunneler, off Skarvald the Constructor in heroic Utgarde Keep.
Dragonfriend Bracers, available at exalted with the Wyrmrest Accord.
Drake-Champion's Bracers, a BoE trash drop in Oculus
Eviscerator's Bindings, a Leatherworking BoE
Enchant: Enchant Bracer - Major Stamina.

Gloves:
Heroes' Dreamwalker Handgrips, available for 60 emblems of heroism.
Gloves of Fast Reactions. NAxx25 BOE
Enchant: Enchant Gloves -- Major Agility, Enchant Gloves -- Expertise, Enchant Gloves -- Precision, or a Heavy Borean Armor Kit

Belt:
Sharp-Barbed Leather Belt, off Ingvar the Plunderer in heroic Utgarde Keep.
Trollwoven Girdle Leatherworking BOE
Ley-Whelphide Belt. Occulus BOE
Eviscerator's Waistguard, Leatherworking BoE

Pants:
Savage Gladiator's Dragonhide Legguards, available for 60,000 honor or 45 emblems of heroism.
Mind-Expanding Leggings, available at revered with the Kirin Tor.
Enchant: Frosthide Leg Armor.

Feet:
Titan-forged Boots of Triumph, available for 15 Wintergrasp marks.
Boots of the Neverending Path, available at exalted with the Argent Crusade.
Boots of Captain Ellis, available for 40 emblems.
Enchant: Tuskarr's Vitality, but you may want to use Enchant Boots - Superior Agility, Enchant Boots - Greater Fortitude, or Enchant Boots - Icewalker

Rings:
Keystone Great-Ring, from the Prophet Tharon'ja in heroic Drak'tharon Keep.
Titanium Earthguard Ring, a Jewelcrafting BoE
Ring of Earthen Might, another Jewelcrafting BoE.

Trinket:
Darkmoon Card: Greatness.
Valor Medal of the First War, available for 40 emblems of heroism

Weapon:
Enraged Feral Staff off Ingvar the Plunderer in heroic Utgarde Keep.
Enchant:Enchant Weapon - Mongoose or Enchant 2H Weapon - Major Agility,

Where to get drops:
H Occulus (Helm, Ring)
H VH (Helm, Cloak)
H OK (Neck, Shoulders, Legs, Ring)
H HoS (Neck, Boots)
H Nexus (Shoulders, Chest)
H HoL (Cloak, Gloves, Boots)
H UP (Chest, Wrist, Belt, Legs, Staff)
H CoS (Gloves)
H DTK (Belt, Ring)
H Gundrak (Belt, Boots)
H AZN (Trinket)

R CoS (Cloak)

WoW Patch 3.3 - LFG thoughts

2009-11-19T10:19:00.003-05:00

With the next WoW patch on the horizon, I started thinking about how this will affect my playstyle and army of characters.

Characters (level 80):
Paladin - Tank/Healer
Priest - Healer/Ranged DPS
Druid - Healer/Melee DPS
Shaman - Healer/Melee DPS
Death Knight - Melee DPS
Rogue - Melee DPS

In total I have 1 tank, 4 healers, 1 Ranged DPS and 4 Melee DPS.

Patch
What patch 3.3 will introduce is a new Looking-for-Group (LFG) and Looking-for-Raid (LFR) tools. This will allow you to find groups or raid groups for each character faster. But you can only use one of these tools at a time.

So LFG for 5man instances or 5man heroics, or raids (10 or 25man). But the LFG tool will also have a "join random" group feature. Meaning it will automatically match you with a group that needs your function (Tank, Heal or DPS).

So what am I getting at?
Based on my own (and other's) observations, you ALWAYS struggle to find tanks and healers. In each 5man group you need 1 tank, 1 healer and 3 DPS. In 10man raids, 1-2 tanks, 2-3 healers, rest DPS. 25man raids 2-4 Tanks, 3-6 Healers, rest DPS.

So if you look at the group function each character can perform - the 2 key ones are healing and tanking. A group cannot start a raid or an instance if those slots are not filled. Yes, you can start with less DPS - it will just take longer to kill stuff (as long as your healer can keep the tank alive).

So back to my thoughts for my characters.
I think my paladin is already in the best of position - she has both specs right - heal & tank - to fill either role.
My druid is Feral-cat geared and talent specced. I plan to change her talents to bear, and start changing our some of the feral-cat gear for feral-bear gear. Once again to fill both key roles (tank and healer).
My Death Knight needs to get a tank talent spec, and has no tank gear - so I will need to work on building a basic tanking set for her.
My Shaman, Priest and fine with how they are specceed and geared, and the same with my rogue.

But why?
To enable my characters to getting into groups/raids quicker. I do not want to "hang out" LFG/LFR for hours (or even 15 minutes).

I want to log in, join LFG/LFR, and be able to start running the instances within a couple of minutes. By talent speccing and gearing for those key, in-demand roles in groups/raids, I aim to keep my down time (waiting around) to a minimum.

Remember the Goblin saying: "Time is money, friend!"

Holy Torchlight!

2009-11-06T09:20:00.002-05:00

After dinner and my daily AH duties in WoW, I fired up Torchlight (Diablo clone game).

Looked with mild interest at the very cartoony characters, and started with the Warrior. An hour later I switcher to the Vanquisher/archer, and another hour later the Mage/Alchemist.

After Midnight, I shut down my computer thinking.. OMG! Diablo Addiction is back.

What a fun fun fun game. Took all the best elements of Diablo, got rid of some of the annoying problem (no shared stash between characters), and made a very easy to play fun game.

Highly recommended.

Torchlight

2009-11-05T14:07:00.001-05:00

After reading some good to great reviews of the game, I got it this morning from Valve's Steam service.

It will be nice playing a Diablo-clone, even if it just have single-player.

/afk from WoW for a couple of days.

Shammie and the Jesus-beam

2009-11-03T12:44:00.003-05:00

Last night my Shammie joined a guildy for a run through regular Halls of Lightning. We both wanted the daily reward to get the Sons of Hodir rep token.

Joined by a DK tank, mage and undergeared Hunter, we made short work of the instance. Only deaths were twice the mage for some reason. On the second and last boss. Second boss, the AE damage got ahead of me and I just could not keep him and the tank up with Chain-heal spam.

On Loken, he went AFK and we pulled, and Loken's AE damage took him down. However we 4 manned Loken, while not running our of his Lightning AE damage attack. I was able to successfully heal through it.

I felt very pleased when all 4 group members thanked me for a great job healing. Who said healers get no recognition?

Well that was great!

2009-10-30T10:00:00.002-04:00

My friend Mike got his Sinister pet from the WoW Halloween event last night! Considering that we have been doing the event together for more than a week, its about bloody high time!

It allowed him to complete the event's meta achievement and get a title "The Hallowed". Too bad he never got the mount. /grins

I'm not sure if I will do more Headless Horseman runs. All my level 80 characters got the rings they needed for upgrades, my Death Knight got the DPS plate helm and the Paladin got the sword and mount. Druid and Shaman both got the pets. So I am content (compared to last year were my Warrior just did not win the DPS plate helm).

My Shaman run the regular ToC twice and got 4 upgrades, 2 to the heal set and 2 DPS upgrades.

My Hunter joined an AV game just to see how she would do, and we actually won the game (I was shocked). My usual tactic with the hunter is to play Defense, and it looked like it worked again. Nothing stalls a Horde charge better than dead healers. :D

Weekend plans: Some more ToC runs and heroics for my Shammie, some AV and questing on the Hunter, and helping out with whatever is needed in the guild (example I did the Anguish quest in Zuldrak for 3 level 77s last night for their weapon upgrades).

Ding 80 #6 - Shaman

2009-10-29T05:44:00.001-04:00

Shammie made it to 80. Unable to sleep due to work and sick young child, let the ding happen at 4am in the morning.

Now to figure out final talent specs, gear upgrade paths, and who to level next?

Little time

2009-10-28T10:40:00.002-04:00

Once I arrived home last night and booted up the gaming rig, I immediately used Blizzard's new service and changed my Paladin's race from Dwarf to Human. No more ugly!
/cheer

Thank you Blizzard for allowing me to correct that 5 year-old mistake!

Other than that, I just dabbled a bit with my AH business, and did the Hodir dailies with my Shammie. later we did a quick Headless Horseman run, and my Shaman now has all 3 the rings from him - both caster and 1 melee DPS, for when she reached level 80.

I also studied a couple of level 80 talent builds to see where I went wrong in her Enhance and Resto specs. Will have to respec her when she hits 80. Then the tough choice... Level the Hunter or Warrior 1st? I'm leaning towards the Hunter.

No more Dwarf!

2009-10-27T15:12:00.003-04:00

At last! My Dwarven mistake will haunt me no more! Human Paladin! /cheer

Creeping closer

2009-10-27T09:37:00.002-04:00

As a result of a busy work schedule, my Shaman have been receiving little attention, other than quick 20-30 minutes breaks. But she is creeping closer to 80.

My aim is to have all my characters at max level by the time Cataclysm hits. So on the to do list: Hunter - 70, Warrior - 70, and Mage - 51.

The heirloom items are amazing for people like me that love to play alts. +20% XP allows you to breeze through the levels. In a good gaming session of 2-3 hours you can easily knock out 1 level (with restedbonus XP).

My AH "game-within-a-game" is keeping the gold flowing on a steady basis. My buy-cheap gear, disenchant and sell enchanting materials, nets me 100+g per day for 5-10minutes of effort. Its enough to pay the cost of leveling and buying gear for future use/end-game, as well as the mounts/riding skills.

Weekend WoW Wrapup

2009-10-26T15:34:00.002-04:00

Win7 was stable all weekend long. Only complaint was the network did not reactivate after computer returning from sleep mode. Recommendations are to replace the device driver. I plan to give that a try tonight.

Weekend gaming:
It was a little bit of everything. almost all of my top level characters saw some time in Scarlet Monestry - chasing the Headless Horseman. After my paladin's lucky break last week, I was not planning on getting anything.

But in the one group I ran with, we saw 4 Sinister pets drop! (I passed, since I have no love for pets), but lo and behold! After that run, I switched to my Shaman, did the Trick or Treat with the innkeeper... and got the Sinister pet.. Well well.

My Shaman also reached level 78 and was asked to heal a regular ToC instance. Took us 3 tries to get the Black Knight down, and I walked away with 2 level 80 healer items. I also joined regular Utgarde Pinacle run as DPS, and got 2 gear upgrades from the quest rewards.

She also did a couple of Alterac Valley runs for experience, but most of the runs were just a mess. However, when you find a good team that knocks over Drek in 12 minutes or less - its tough to go to bed.

In conclusion - PUGing is a win and a miss scenario. You NEVER know what you are going to get.

Halloween Fever in WoW

2009-10-23T08:55:00.002-04:00

Every year since Blizzard introduced the Halloween event my characters have participated in the event.

And last night, after 3 years and I cannot count how many Headless Horseman kills, one of mine, finally got the Headless Horseman's mount!

My paladin is the lucky character.

Considering last year, when I tried to get the Plate DPS helm for my Warrior, where my warrior participated in 86 kills of the Headless Horseman - without ever winning the roll for the helm! (Of course this year, my Death Knight got it... go figure...).

Windows 7:

I continue to play around with tweaking some settings, but its been very stable. Only irritation I noticed was that it took a long time to re-establish the network connect when it wakes from sleep mode.

I remain very impressed with how stable and bug-free the install has been for me.

Getting started on Windows 7

2009-10-22T10:43:00.000-04:00

My copy of Windows 7 arrived a day early.

Never one to say "No thank you" to Lady Luck, I rolled the dice and start up my re-format, install and patching process last night.

I was shocked when I completed the new install in less than 1 hour. Patching is was less than 12mb and my machine only had 3 device drivers than did not came on the DVD...

I was able to start playing WoW after spending 15 or so minutes twiddling some settings.

Microsoft.. color me impressed. Been using every OS you created since Windows 3.1, and this was the easiest install ever.

Of course later in the evening I "broke" something and lost my visible mouse cursor and had to reformat, reinstall when a repair did not fix it. But once again the entire process took less than 45 minutes.

Time to buy that 2nd copy and install in on my wive's computer.