Redwolf's Journal (continued)

The fight against the Legion continues! With an extended weekend, I didn't have too much trouble getting my paladin to the new level cap of 110 and get into Suramar (though I haven't finished out Stormheim yet). Suramar quests start dropping artifact power like candy. Just like candy, however, it's not very fulfilling to get 100-300 power when your next artifact trait is 7000 points away. Pretty much all my quest chains at this point (class hall, professions, etc.) involve delving into dungeons for various things. That's a little bit of a roadblock to me until guildmates are ready, though I might try to dust off my Retribution skills and PUG as DPS. We'll see there. Technically, this has been a pretty darn smooth expansion launch. I had some disconnection issues one evening, but no queue times logging in. There have been crowds in a few places, but I never felt overwhelmed and rarely have had to wait for target spawns. That's all good. Also, though Blizzard ...

So far, so smooth? I got in about an hour of play before work today. There were no login queues, and only a moderate amount of PC-bunching at quest givers. A fair bit of that latter parts is because the first real quest chain urges players toward picking up their artifact weapons and establishing their order hall, which divides players out by spec/class for the first 30-60 minutes of the expansion, including a solo scenario for part of that time. That feels bizarrely ingenius. And with a choice of four zones to start in on the main continental questing, players should remain not-totally-concentrated. Previous expansions usually funneled players into one of two zones to start. With level-scaling technology, a lot more doors are opened. I'm not exactly thrilled that my artifact weapon as a protection paladin is a Titan Watcher's sword-and-shield combo, but there weren't any real legendary shields in the lore, so... what can ya do? It's not bad or anything. The scenario...

Well, let's see... Offline roleplaying has been stalled since our regular GM left town. I don't really have any expectation of that changing in the foreseeable future - folks have plenty of other things to do these days. Online roleplaying is still fairly limited to small groups, though I'd say I've been in more scenes of late than just a month or so ago. The online Lords of Gossamer and Shadow game has been sort of hit-and-miss as far as attendance. In theory, characters were supposed to be able to slip in and out as players were busy or not, but in practice... eh... that just doesn't work so well, at least in my view. I think my interests lean toward 1) action and accomplishment (the doing of things and overcoming of challenges) and 2) interplay and development between characters. The latter is unavoidably hamstrung when you don't get a solid "party" together for any length of time (or when people don't play to that and their characters are j...

Oh, how I wish I could remember more of this dream, because I acknowledged it as awesome even while in progress. I was in some sort of Warcraft-based LARP with a bunch of people I've RP'd with over the years, and a number of strangers. I get the feeling it was a multi-day event, and being run in a mall after hours, with lots of space and multiple wings on two levels, and anachronistic shops all around. I spent most of my time traveling with one old friend, but saw others around all the time. The overall goal seems to be to destroy Frostmourne while it was vulnerable, as it had somehow been stripped from Arthas' hands. I forget a lot of the middle, though I know there was more there. There was a second runeblade involved for a while. I remember talking with several people in a store that was open, and passing friends back and forth over the course of the event. What really struck me was the end. Coming down to the wire, Arthas got his sword back. With the Lich King whole ...

So... Firelands tier 12 armor has been mostly revealed . The Firelands theme shows through on most, if not all, sets. I like some better than others, but there are none of them that I actually dislike. I think it's been a while since that happened. Of course, I focus on the paladin set as that's my main character. I think this sums it up in general pretty well. For plate armor, it looks heavy on the cloth - but there are plate-ish elements. I prefer pants to robes/dresses, but I'm okay with that style for paladins. Shoulders are flashy, but kinda cool. The masked look still seems a little unpaladinly to me, but it harkens back to the very memorable/distinctive tier 2 Justicar armor . All-in-all, 'tis fine. It is however, sad that the most distinctive parts (shoulders and headgear) are alwasy the hardest to come by anyway. If I could change one thing about the visual style, though, it would be to add some specifically-paladinly element to the design (of this set a...

I was enjoying above-freezing weather and seeing grass in some places. 'course, last night I went to be to a light dusting of snow and woke to a couple inches of fresh powder on everything. The road in to downtown was slick as . It's still cloudy/snowy/breezy out. I'm tired. I can't say that I slept well over the weekend... or much of last week really. Last week the 8 am phone calls for the culprit. Over the weekend, I'm less sure. Stuck on my night-shift schedule? I wasn't really able to get to sleep much before 4, and just didn't feel rested when I got up. Ugh. It looks like we'll try getting folks together to play Magic next Saturday. Social activity is good, yes? Though I've grown accustomed to having weekends to rest and relax rather than "doing" something. Ah well, we'll see how it goes. My paladin hit level 80 and underwent a transformation. Titansteel this, titanium that... poof, over 540 defense, around 25k health - pret...

I've been asked (repeatedly) is I have plans for Memorial Day, cryptic as that has been. Memorial Day? Sheesh. I don't have any notable plans this year at this point. There aren't any trips on my schedule. I blew a fair chunk of vacation time going to Florida, after all. I still haven't "recovered" from last Estrella, so I've no plans to go this time. And, of course, there's the financial aspect. I'm fairly certain my job is stable, but the economy is sucking and there's no telling that that's going to do all around. I would like to get an HDTV soon (amusingly, more to have clearer small type in PS3 games than for movie quality). I'm approaching the level of "need" as far as a new bed - oh, I can still sleep on the one I have, but it's ten years old or so, been used heavily as extra seating, sags seriously in the middle, and actually has a hole in it I discovered a few weeks back. That's at least a few hundred dollar...

When I had a character visit the auction house in Stormwind, I wasn't surprised to find an Argent Dawn healer standing there. I had read they were out and about as part of a world event leading up to the release of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion next month. When another character found a quest-giver in Shattrath city gone, and only respawning after a couple minutes, I thought it very strange. Maybe it had something to do with the server difficulties lately? Or maybe, I concluded, someone killed the NPC. But why would anyone do that? I had a character out bombing fel cannon ammo stacks when other word started trickling in. A guildmember was reporting having picked up a disease somewhere that said something like "You had better find a cure soon" with a ten-minute countdown timer. From other quarters I hear about mysterious crate in the neutral port city of Booty Bay that are infectious if examined. And, apparently, this disease turns you into a zombie when it counts...

We delved back into Karazhan yesterday. We got to Attumen fairly quickly this time. After a couple unfortunate waves a death, we took him down and were already farther along than last time after about an hour. We slowed down a lot after that. Several attempts and Moroes finally died, though only after we got a second priest in our group to do more shackling of undead - making me wonder how critical that may be. Up, around, and to the Maiden of Virtue we went. We died a couple times there due to touchy aggro radius and pulling her before we were ready. When we actually were prepared, we managed to slog through that fight, though we had lost a few people by the time we finished, including both tanks as I recall. Then on to the opera: Romulo and Julianne. We only got one real good attempt at that, hindered to a small degree by two of us suffering connection failure in phase 2 (but getting back in time to continue). So we'll pick up fighting our way back through that last section to th...

... some of it the hard way. Went through Shattered Halls and Caverns of Time: Old Hillsbrad recently. Both were cake walks compared to previous times. Honestly, I was surprised and wondered when we'd gotten that much better. But suspicion of some "easy" mode having been set on the game would fade later. Oh. My. God. I'm not going to call it the most difficult dungeon I've done or anything. We wiped once, got back on our feet, and got through it the second time. But... it's not so much a dungeon as defending a point against wave after wave of continuous enemies. No chance to rest, and I'm still confused over not running out of mana. I think I would have liked to see a little more in the DPS department to help kill the constant stream of dragony things. Two tanks was less than ideal. But it did work. We did get through it. And, for once, my priest stayed in shadow form most of the time and left the healing to our paladin. It was tense from my point...

Got out for a couple hours yesterday and went for a nice walk. I even have the radiation damage (sounds so much more dramatic than "sunburn") to prove it. Yay me. Or something. Yesterday evening also marked my first experience with seriously tanking for a party. In theory, my level 65 protection-specced paladin is pretty well suited to this role. And yet, in world combat, my two rogue partners dish out enough damage that "standard" party dynamics don't really apply and anytime we've run a dungeon it seems we've had another guildmate (usually higher level) acting the part. I understand the concepts of tanking, healing, threat-management and such in an academic sense. Practical experience does make a difference. I think I did a fair job, though others may have a different perspective, and I gained a heightened appreciation for having a dedicated party healer - in this case, another paladin who joined us for the run. Juggling spells to dish out holy da...