Comments now moderated

After several "Buy WOW Gold" comments I've turned on comment moderation. I just can't stand MMO gold sellers. 

EVE online soon available on STEAM

CCP & Valve recently announced that the MMO EVE online is coming to Steam. Very interesting. I personally started using Steam about a year ago and just like iTunes I has me buying games like never before. I am at the point where I first check Steam for games before even considering buying it in a store. Steamed games can be accessed from any computer and at a relatively good price. I am just waiting for them to allow your save games to be stored on steam as well.

When EVE online comes to Steam I am sure it will entice a lot of new players.

By the way... the last steam game I bought was the old 2004 release Manhunt. A really good stealth game. I've made it about half-way through the game and it is getting a lot tougher. It is very casual unfriendly... you can only save at certain points and if you quit and return you are likely to replay a lot of the level again before reaching your previous last checkpoint. I expect Manhunt 2 to have a more friendly save system. I am too inpatient these days to replay levels.

New artist - Emilie Autumn

  Since the day I installed iTunes I've increased the amount of new music I listen too. Almost every month I buy a new album from an artist I haven't heard before. The pricing on iTunes is perfect and quite frankly I am no longer interested in the CDs themselves. I play all music at home through my computer or my iPod.

Last night with the latest paycheck on the bank I flipped through Orkus, an alternative music magazine I usually read and found an article about Emilie Autumn. She plays the violin (both classical and an electo version) together with suggestive lyrics combined with a gothic backdrop. Sounds like something for me so I went ahead and purchased the album Opheliac.

I've just started to listen to it so I am not quite ready to lay down the verdict. So far I like what I hear...

I also managed to add a few tracks from various artists. Gotta love the "just for you feature" on iTunes. It takes a while before the suggested tracks becomes relevant but it learns for each new purchase.

Reset, rename and restart

A new name on the blog and voila it has been resurrected from the place of abandoned blogs. With Hexapuma's World I am no longer covering WOW since I don't play it anymore. However there is a ton of other things I do and obsess over.

One of the games I currently enjoy is EVE-Online and I am in the process of launching into a full pirate career. EVE is one of those fantastic open ended type of MMO where you can actually become anything you fancy. Play the game your own way. Of course this means that it is full of roads leading to very bad situations that can be very hard if not time consuming to get out of. Going pirate is one of those roads...

Looking at the important fixes for the 2.3 patch

I always find it interesting to look at the patches to see what the developers fix... sometimes it is annoying bugs, balancing issues and then sometimes you find such important issues such as:

Fishing

• You can now fish in Ironforge again.

It does show though that they have a solid bug reporting tool and that they do tick these smaller issues of the list. I imagine that these fixes are quite small and painless. I imagine that alliance rogues are now happy fishing away outside the rogue trainer in Ironforge.

How to maintain stealth...

One of our defining characteristics as rogues are to keep out of sight and attack at our own leisure. Monty Python gives us a lecture in the art of "How not to be seen":

Farming gold - Cobra scales

So in order to get cash for my epic mount I've retorted to killing cobras in Shadowmoon Valley around the Coilscar. They don't drop in huge numbers but for an hour of farming them I can usually get about 4, and they sell for 30-40g at the AH. In addition to the other drops and skin I make pretty good profit. Especially since I really loathe the daily quests. Not my cup of tea...

Also a little shoutout to my warrior friend who has started up his own warrior blog... visit him at Blood Fury. He is a bit confused but hey what can you expect from an orc wearing plate. All that metal cooks his brain...

Taking Un'goro crater by force

Yesterday I took a break from Bioshock and returned to Azeroth with my orc warrior. At level 53 he was getting ready for the Un'goro grind. I don't know what to make of that zone - part of me hate it and part of me enjoy it. Back in the day when people were still racing to 60 the crater was a dangerous place where you had to go in pairs or you would be killed and camped. Yesterday I felt very lonely with the exception of an orc hunter I bumped into in the cave of apes.

No matter if it is a fun zone or not it is a very exp rich zone. The quests gives a lot and all the grinding adds up as well. By the end of the night with all quests completed I had gained 1 1/5 level. Btw.. I could not find any elite quests in Un'goro... strange since most other zones have at least one or two.

One thing with un'goro... the Silithid Pox disease sucks to get as a warrior ... 40-50% extra damage from physical attacks. It hurts. Lots of extra rage though.

Bioshocked...

... WOW is in a temporary holding pattern. Just got Bioshock. Amazing soundscape!

This week in Warcraft

So another week is nearing its end. What have I been up to... well like the last weeks I've been busy levelling and PVPing with my orc Warrior. This week I've gone from 45-51 and managed to get myself a few cool PVP items as well. From Arathi Basin I've secured the Defiler's Plate Greaves and from Warsong Gulch I first saved up for the Rune of Duty but at the very last minute changed to the Berserker Bracers which do have one slight oddity - they can be equipped at 50 (most other pvp rewards are equippable at 38, 48, 58). Just as I dinged 51 I quickly flew to Alterac Valley, got the AV quest and popped into the queue. After 25 minutes of AV the horde ended up victorious and I claimed the Ice Barbed Spear. Now back in the day when I played an alliance warrior I tried to get this weapon for ever and ever... at first you had to kill the Ice Lord but it was later changed to simply winning the battleground.

Lastly I've done alot of tanking.. especially in Uldaman. I hate the instance mainly because it is soo time consuming. Tanking can be hard but practice and practice will make it smoother. I mainly play with PUG so you can imagine that I do party with a lot of huntards and warlocks that can't keep their dps in check or even worse start pulling at their own leisure.

My other alt, a Blood Elf Warlock, turned 20 and also managed to get enchanting up to 235. To get higher I need to level him to 35 which will take awhile. Maby never.

I didn't completely forget my rogue. Dear Warspike was brought out a few times to instance a wee bit. We did Shadow Labs but with no interesting drops for me.

I am putting more and more effort into my orc warrior at the moment. I love to play the warrior class and it really suits my type of play - rushdown galore! You put everything on the table and either you outdps your target or you don't. No fancy stuff.

I am really thinking about getting the Grandmaster Axe before proceeding beyond level 60. A long grind for nothing?

Battleground faces

After reading about Eye Of the Storm tips and tricks on both Out of Mana and Massive Multiplayer PK and having a blast playing alot myself this weekend I figured that there are many different types of BG players.

First you have the Fearless Commanders trying to give a few orders to the ragtag PUG that plays. I've tried this a few times but I don't really have the patience to shout out all the commands nor the thick skin to take the shit from all the puggies who just want to assault stable over and over at the sacrifice of the other nodes.

The Suicidal Solo Maniac - running around alone on the bg and usually dying to the defense. Sometimes they manage to ninja a flag in AB. If you have too many of these it is game-over. Winning is done in groups. If an attack is called out by the commander to the gold mine, you can be sure that the SSM is heading to the stables...

The Stalwart Defender - They dig down at one of the flags or the flag room in WSG and defend it. Usually I end up as a defender in AB and EOTS. The most important thing is calling out incoming attacks early. I am usually alone at the nodes I defend so I won't be able to hold out long against a large group. My main tactic is stalling the flag cap until reinforcements arrive.


The Bored Defender - This guys starts out defending but after no action he moves - usually the node is captured right after he leaves. Patient rogues for the win...

The Big-Mouthed-PVPer - There is always one guy that has the best tactics and makes sure everyone else know they need to L2P. These guys are always the first to call out that the enemy team is a premade... even when they come from different servers.


I actually had a really good discussion with an experienced commander the other day about which nodes to capture... as a horde player I am a strong believer in capturing (and holding) Farm, Gold Mine and the Lumber Mill. That way you can have a strong force at Mine and Lumber Mill and only one at Farm. Lumber Mill should be strong enough to ride down and defend Farm when ever needed. Small diversionary attacks against BS and Stables to keep the enemy afraid of attacking. My rationale is that too many places to much importance in holding the Blacksmith - avoid it and you're enemy will have to fear loosing it instead.
What kind of battleground fighter are you?

Making gold the expensive way

I recently found one of my old IRL friends in WOW... but on a different server than me. After some consideration I decided to move a few character to his server. After all playing with IRL friends is so much more fun than with random puggies.

My first action was to create a new character on that server and check out the AH prices. I discovered that epics and certain trade goods were horribly overpriced compared to what exists on my own server.

So back on my original server I invested about 1500g in mats and various epics. At my server Ravencrest you can find epics for around 20-40g during the weekdays. Thats Stockade Pauldrons, Destiny etc. With a backpack full of ore and epics I transferred my first char.

I've already made tripple that amount of gold and I still have lots more to sell. I am also going to transfer 2 more characters in the next two months. But it isn't completely free... I do have to pay real cash for the transfer charge. But since I was going to move the character anyway =)

Now take a moment and think about how much money blizzard makes on character transfers.. how many characters do you think transfers each day on both EU and US? Its a lot of cash... and it is more than the monthly fee. Think about that.

Advantages and disadvantages of alts in PVP

For the last couple of weeks I've been focusing alot on my little sidekick warrior. I am having a blast. In PVE I have somewhat hard of running certain quests that I know was easy as pie with my rogue... in PVP I am learning that the warrior is all about offence. There is no room to hesitate or play cautiously. When it comes to rogue PVP you often have a lot of tricks that allows you to reset the fight, restealth and escape. Vanish, Blind, Sprint etc.. so many opportunities to really change the fight. Where as a warrior your options are much more limited. (Let me remind you that my warrior recently dinged 42 so not all talents/skills are available yet I assume somethings change when you have all the goodies such as spell reflect etc). My tactics as a warrior is usually based around charging in as quick as possible to get first strike and then land a hamstring before starting to seriously pound the target. I am also switching stances like crazy. I must to defeat warlocks or priests. A rend is worth gold against rogues... but a well timed Thunder Clap or Demoralizing shout is worth even more... A rogue affected by a TC/DC often behave like a deer staring down the headlights of an onrushing car.

Anyway my real issue is that after playing my warrior I am loosing alot of rogue reflexes. I assume this goes for all players going with two or more characters. If they aren't the same class they risk loosing that edge (which I am sure doesn't really impact PVE at all).

However you do gain a lot of insight into other classes which is invaluable... I would strongly suggest to seriously try to play any class that you find is a bitch to fight against with your main. My personal arch-enemy is the shadow-priest. Granted I haven't encountered that many of them the last couple of months.. but back in the days they were my nightmare.

New gear and a subtlety build

While I haven't been playing Warspike very extensively the last week I have gotten myself some new gear... a few trips to the battlegrounds have payed off and I've bought the Veteran's Leather Bracers. I did thought about buying the Veteran's Leather Gloves first but the bracers was stats-wise a better upgrade for me. The gloves will be next though...

I've also picked up an expensive piece of head armor: The Night Watchman. The armor itself is not that über BUT its special effect - improved stealth detection - makes me a very happy rogue. Currently I am spending most of my time in various battlegrounds and being able to detect stealthed opponents is helping me alot!

In addition to the new gear I've respecced to a subteltly build, and with even more stealth detection. I still haven't gotten the new combos and skills into muscle memory so I am having slight trouble right now of downing my opponents efficiently (i keep forgetting premeditation and preparation for example).

While the sub build offer mediocre dps compared to mutilate or a fullblown combat build it does add alot of versatility... I find myself using rupture and garrote ALOT more in certain situations where I am not the target.

It is not the size that matters....

One of my many alts just happens to be a proud axe wielding orc warrior and for the last couple of weeks he has been running around with tiny shoulder armor. At first it was kind of funny to see all the brutish orcs with dimnished shoulders. Now it is just plain irritating. Gief big shoulders back!

Apparently this is a bug glitch that came from something completely different during the last client patch... and we have to be nice and wait for the next client patch to get brutish shoulders again. Hopefully the patch is just around the corner and if I am not mistaken already on the test servers.

When it comes to orcs - Size DOES matter!

While both june and july has rained away here in the south of sweden August now shows promising weather! Today I took the famly out to the beach for the first time this vaccation... I expect to be able to farm the beach all week...

Short stop in Arathi...

So I took a short stop in Arathi to turn in one of the AB quests (capture all nodes)... I figure since I am grinding the battlegrounds for better PVP armor I might as well do the quests associated with them. Arriving in Arathi I find Hammerfall besieged by a hunter and his friend... the hunter, a level 69 night elf and a level 33 warrior. They had apparantly been playing tough guys with our friendly hordes in the neighbourhood.

I got into stealth, sapped the hunter and killed the little one in two strikes.. before he would break the sap (obviously not wearing his PVP trinket) I could reset the fight... I hate fighting against hunters and part of me just wanted to vanish and be happy with the lowbie kill. But I went in and after a short fight the hunter lay dead at my feet. A lot of hordes praised my name with /yell and I had become hero for a day...

It wasn't much but I had great timing... and I love taking out bullies.

First 2vs2 arena experience

So I just finished my first arena game... a 2vs2 with an IRL friend playing a resto druid. A rogue and resto druid feels strong. However in our first match we got defeated. The opposing team was a Warlock and a Paladin. Man.. I hate paladins. They seem to last forever. In this particular match we went for the warlock first. Didn't really feel good. While I pounded on the warlock, and tried to blind/gouge the paladin at all possible times the warlock did burn down my druid. In the end I was alone against them both... and it went quick downhill from there.

Next time I rather go with my gut feeling of trying to burn down the paladin first..

For our next game the server crashed... bah... so I probably started my arena career with a loss and another loss due to disconnects. It is mainenance day tomorrow so that might be the reason.

New patch notes on PTR for 2.2.0

Well a big PVP oriented patch is on its way to PTR. For the full specs check out http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

There are alot of small fixes and changes to all classes as well as instances and items. My biggest concern are those affecting us rogues:

• Blade Flurry: This ability will now do damage to secondary targets when the primary target takes no damage due to a damage shield (such as Power Word: Shield).
• Elusiveness now reduces the cooldown of Blind by 8/15 seconds.
• Master of Subtlety: The bonus damage from this talent is now properly removed when a Rogue loses stealth from zoning.
• Sap: It is no longer sometimes possible to Sap two targets at the same time in the outdoor world.
• Sap duration against PvP targets has been reduced to 10 seconds.
• Sword Specialization: This talent’s free extra attacks can no longer trigger additional extra attacks.

The new blind seems very sexy... and while sap is now reduced to 10 seconds of CC so is the mage's polymorph!

Death from above

Finally I've gotten Warspike airborne! A green mount seemed to be the perfect candidate for my future aerial maneuvers. Flying is amazingly fun... although with the initial flying mount it is kind of slow. I have started to grind the money for the epic mount... It will take me quite some time.

I've also managed to get exhalted with Aldor! YAY! My first faction at exhalted. Everyone keeps telling me that the Aldor/Scryer faction is the fastest one. It did net me a great 1h sword... so I am back to Combat Swords for the time being. I didn't really like mutilate for PVE and it looks like I am going to do a bit of grinding for gold...

NEWS: Planned Resilience Change...

Just spotted this on www.worldofwarcraft.com:

"In the next major content patch, the combat rating, resilience, will also reduce the damage dealt by damage over time (DoT) effects. As it currently stands, each new tier of equipment adds to the amount of damage DoT abilities have, yet that damage is not mitigated through combat ratings found on typical equipment. This change will help ensure that DoT effects do not scale too well compared to other damage mechanics.

The amount of damage reduced will be equal to the critical chance reduction effect that resilience grants."

Right now there are quite a lot of shadowpriest/warlock teams that are relying on dots to take down gladiators with full resillience gear. Some teams have begun stacking shadow resist gear that they switch to during the games...

This seems like a great thing. All damage should be covered with resilience!