Now playing

WOW is not the only game I am playing right now. Actually I think I've never played as many games simultaneously as I do now. About a month ago we purchased a PS3 - and I am growing more and more fond of it. The games I am most looking forward to are no longer PC titles, but PS3 titles.

Now Playing:

Assassin's Creed (PS3)- My wife has almost beat it and I am up next. Actually I had a sneak preview last night playing to the first city (Damascus). The animations are amazing and the visuals are stunning. I am not so sure about the gameplay yet though. I am not a big fan of open world games. We'll see as I go deeper into the game.

Resistance Fall of Man (PS3)- My first FPS game on a console! Initially I had some serious problems with the controller but I've almost ironed them out. I still feel that the PC has a superior control system but when a game is slower paced and "developed" for a console it doesn't really matter that much. I am almost complete with the game and I am having a blast so far. I especially like the weapon designs...

Vegas 2 (PS3) - I am a huge fan of the Rainbow Six games. I do think that the Vegas series is less fun than the previous - much less tactical and strategical choices but more in the action department. I've just begun playing but am enjoying it so far.

Call of Duty 4 (PC) - This game is amazing. The single player experience is like a movie (and just about as interactive) and well executed. The multiplayer is the best FPS action since the original Counter Strike.

Soon playing (backlog):

Genji (PS3) - While I've heard that this game is utter crap, I bought it cheap on Tradera (swedish equalent of E-bay). I am going to try it...

Heavenly Sword (PS3) - It looks amazing and it has a cool redhead as main character.

 

Wish list:

Condemned 2 - The first one was an amazing horror survival FPS which gave me the creeps. Last one I played that I really loved was Silent Hill 2. I have high hopes for this game!

Dynasty Warrior 6 - Me and my wife have played the previous titles together so this is naturally something we look forward to on the PS3.

 

What are you playing besides WOW?

Stay with me forever...or at least 10 levels

Today I tamed a new pet... 

My first pet was an Elder Springpaw and I swore I was going to keep it to 70. It lasted until the early twenties where I found new love in a tranclucent Ghost Saber. This cat was surly staying with me all the way. It wasn't until 10 levels later in the deep jungles outside of Grom'gol where I forgot all about my ghastly cat and tamed a blood red raptor. I loved my raptor and said to myself that this is the one. It would be the one because raptors themselves were so rare as pets. Cats can be seen everywhere. Most Hunters go for the black kitty Humar or the white striped tiger from Winterspring but I've also seen alot of Ghost Sabers on my realm. Then... during a long quest grind killing coyotes in the Badlands (ten levels later) I suddenly found myself drawn to the wolf... I shrugged it off. My red raptor "Fury" was going to stay with me... all the way!

I managed to keep my Raptor happy for 2 more levels... and then halfway into 46 while fishing Glossy Mightfish in Tanaris I could no longer resist the urge. I made haste to the Badlands, waved bye bye to my Raptor and promptly put him into the stable and then rode to the far north-east of the zone. That's where I found him... my new love - a Rabbid Crag Coyote. While I want to keep him all the way to 70, I am probably going to find a new pet when I reach 55-57...

Did you keep your pet all the way to 70?

WOW patch 2.4 is here!

Today the European realms were updated with patch 2.4... Now the fun of updating all mods begins. Each time a major update hits I am reminded that I use way to many mods...

New blogs on the blogroll

I've added a few more blogs to the wow blogroll that I usually read.

• Big Bear Butt Blogger - Life through the eyes of a bear... druid.
  

• Cricital QQ - Pee-vee-pee through a mage's perspective. It is actually much more than just a squishy's take on battlegrounds. So get over there.

• Gun Lovin' Dwarf Chick - A hunter oriented blog that brings up all kinds of WOW topics.
  

• Too Many Annas - Shaman galore together with other general WOW stuff. Good read!

In addition you really should take a look at the "Looking for players in all the wrong places" by Big Bear Butt Blogger. One of the best wow articles I've read so far. It does also have that "he is writing about me feeling" too...

Patch 2.4 hunter notes

With the advent of patch 2.4 soon upon us I took some time to check out what it has in store for specifically for hunters.

It seems to me that the biggest change to hunters in this patch is the class becoming even more easy to play.

So lets look at each of the hunter specific changes in turn shall we.

 

• Equipping a thrown weapon while in the middle of an Auto-Shot will no longer cause animation issues.

Eh? I am not sure what the point is to equip a throwing weapon during combat but I guess exploiters have their ways of confusing their opponents.

• Casting Flare while in any way not visible, will no longer cause your flare to be invisible to other players.

Never tried this myself but I guess it is a viable exploit in the battlegrounds. Always good to get rid of these.

• Hunter’s Mark: Hunters with Improved Hunter’s Mark will now properly overwrite Hunter’s Mark cast by Hunters without the talent.

Simple bugfix but this was previously sometimes very annoying in raid situation with eager hunters without IHM.

• Improved Mend Pet now has a 50/100% chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.

This little improvement for BM hunters is nice, now you can be certain to dispel those nasty debuffs from your pet. Arguably you can now move one point in the BM tree from IMP to somewhere else. Personally I love to have 100% dispel chance.

• Multi-Shot: This ability will no longer strike any secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.

Now here is the big thing for casual and new hunters.. no need to have multi-shot break crowd controlled mobs. Personally I think this is slightly sad as it was at least a small challenge in instances not to fling the usual multi-shot all the time. Still it will make it harder to detect Huntards quickly.

• The stamina tooltip for hunter pets will now display the proper health increase.

Always good to have proper tooltips.

• Track spells will now persist after death.

For those of you that hang around in the battlegrounds - this is good stuff! Its simply annoying to turn on all the tracking every time you die.

• Hunters will no longer spin around if they cast Aimed Shot or Steady Shot while facing away from their target.

Nothing more than a minor bugfix.

 

So all in all we get a few bugfixes and with the change to multi-shot - easier life in instances. Cheers!

Goals Updated

Time to update my goals:

 

My Short-term goals:

• Get Engineering up to 300
• Get Mining up to 300 before level 58 (I want to be able to mine as soon as entering the Outlands)
• Level to 47-49 before starting next round of glorious battleground PVP
• Earn enough gold to buy a mount at level 40
• Level up to 40 once the PVP badges are collected
• Earn 20 Warsong Gulch badges to buy Forest Wind Bracers before levelling past 39
• Earn 20 Arathi Basin badges to purchase the mail boots before leveling past 39

Long-term goals:

• Get the hunter up to level 70 before next expansion (40/70)
• Max out Engineering (235/350)
• Max out Mining (185/350)
• Get fishing up to 300 before going through the outlands portal (180/300)
• Get full PVP gear

Yesterday I reached the number of WSG badges needed for the epic Windtalker's Wristguards and the AB badges required for Defiler's Mail Greaves. With those complete I run around and explored Ashenvale and boom! My hunter turned 40 when discovering The Warsong Lumber camp. A hearthstone later my hunter left Silvermoon with a new black Hawkstrider and all the mail he could wear...

I've now left battleground mode and returned to leveling again. I already miss WSG! I'll level up as quickly as possible to return to the battlegrounds around 46-48 for the next batch of PVP gear.

What are your goals?

I feel it is just as important to have goals in WOW as it is in life. Without them you'll risk advancing at the pace of a restoration druid or worse wobble around like a rogue high on his own flash powder.  Personally I have a few goals, both short term and long term goals. When you’ve defined your goals you can break them down into more detailed tasks - and then start working on them.

My Short-term goals:

* Get Engineering up to 300
* Earn 20 Warsong Gulch badges to buy Forest Wind Bracers before levelling past 39 (13/20)
* Earn 20 Arathi Basin badges to purchase the mail boots before leveling past 39 (completed)
* Get Mining up to 300 before level 58 (I want to be able to mine as soon as entering the Outlands)
* Earn enough gold to buy a mount at level 40 (completed)
* Level to 47-49 before starting next round of glorious battleground PVP
* Level up to 40 once the PVP badges are collected

Long-term goals:

* Get the hunter up to level 70 before next expansion (39/70)
* Max out Engineering (235/350)
* Max out Mining (180/350)
* Get fishing up to 300 before going through the outlands portal (180(300)
* Get full PVP gear

So right now I am spending all online time in Thunderbluff signing up for WSG games. With my limited play time I can usually manage to get around 20 badges over the course of a week. I’ve had about 50% wins so far in WSG and 75% in AB. Between games I usually craft deadly blunderbuses and accurate scopes to put on AH. Obviously the goals change as I level up.. I imagine that once I’ve reached Outlands I’ll add a few reputation goals.

What are your goals?

Sick with flu

I have been out of comission for almost a week. I've finally regained my health and then my little kid gets sick. Its a bad omen since he was the first one to get it meaning we are already in the next cycle. I hope we won't catch it again.

Quaranteene protocol initiated.

Action in the Needles

So the other day my hunter finally reached Thousan Needles. I did get there a bit late so most quest where very easy for me. Now at 1k needles is usually where I start to bump into higher level opposing toons... and this time was no different. There is an escort quest up in the Highperch and alliance have a quest to collect poison sacks or something similar from that area. Anyway I was happily killing my way out of the area with the tauren escort when I spot a mounted dwarf warrior... and of course his level was ???.

At that time my hunter was 32.. and mounted meant that the dwarf was at least 40. The dwarf charged me and managed to chip away almost 50% health in the first round. However.. I did manage to wingclip him and gain distance and lay a trap... of course I managed to plop down the wrong one and the dwarf was incinerated (fiery trap). Both my pet and the escorted tauren started to bash at the little dwarf while I ran away for some distance... and then promptly started to kite him. I was sure I was going to eat an intercept - but none came.

The dwarf must have paniced, realizing that he was himself at 50% health. He started to target my pet. Big mistake. It allowed me to focus all DPS back on him... and voila - a dead dwarf! I checked him up on the armory afterwards and he appeared to have been level 47. Poor dwarf.

In the end I did not suffer one death in 1K needles... a new record for me.

My hunter is now 34 and questing away in Hillsbrad. Still very little PVP...

Earning gold through engineering

I've always loved the engineering profession but I've always felt that it was more for fun and a helpful for PVP (remember the glory days of the iron grenade?). When I started anew with my hunter I went engineering for the ability to craft ammo and other cool trinkets and relying on money generation to come from ore harvesting.

When training up engineering I made a large number a number of Deadly Blunderbusses , a semi-crappy rifle. I went to the AH to sell the stuff I made figuring that I get at least a few silvers worth out of it. There was already a couple of deadlies in AH - with the price tag set to 5 gold. Interesting. So I listed a few at 4.5 gold a piece. Two hours later I had sold 5 of them.... I have a feeling that it has something to do with a horde quest in Ashenvale, where a NPC requests a Deadly Blunderbuss as part of a quest objective. For alliance you could probably make a gold or two on Bronze tubes which is required for a quest in Duskwood.

I've been making these guns like crazy and sells about 3-4 each day. I have made a lot of gold in very short time for a new character that doesn't have a main to support it.

I've also discovered that an accurate scope sells for about 5-6 gold on my server. Not bad. So all you engineers out there - go make some gold!

Warsong Gulch & Arathi Basin

 

Around level 26 I started getting serious about WSG and AB. Besides getting a "DING" going up against real people in the battlegrounds is what I really love in WOW.

I prefer WSG since I really think the fast paced capture-the-flag mode is exciting and calls for interesting strategies. However in WOW the matches in WSG often turns into honor grind somewhere in the middle. This is not what I sign up for. Those games can drag out for ages. Therefore I usually sign up for AB at the same time... By the time an AB opens up you can usually tell if the WSG game is a deadend or a great one. I've read somewhere that in an upcoming patch there will be a time factor in Warsong. I can't wait. Right now fighting to collect the 20 or so WSG tokens you need for a PVP reward takes too much time.

Going into Arathi Basin at 29 is a whole other ballgame. It is fun, fast and interesting as people still have no mount or tier 4 talents. I had great fun defending the Gold Mine together with two other hunters (Slampan & Hottopic). Unfortunately they came from another realm so the odds of us three defending the GM again is slime to none. Needless to say nothing could get through our defenses letting our team focus on other nodes.

After a day and some odd hours in Arathi Basin I had enough tokens to purchase the AB boots. They are amazing for the level with an added bonus of increased movement speed! Nothing beats increasing movement speed before having a mount to royally transport you around.

My hunter has now turned 30... and while I gained the valuable hunter skill Feign Death it also means being the lowest of the low in the next BG bracket. I might stay away from the BGs until at least getting to level 35-36.