Catching Up

Well, it's been a week or so since the Wrath install and I have no posted anything about what I've been doing, so it's time to catch up.

Okole - Level 74. The Shaman has been my main so far in Wrath and is now at level 74 and making good steady progress. I'm not beating any speed records in leveling, but that is the way I play. I've done all of Howling Fjord, a beautiful place to level. I'm about half way the way through Borean Tundra, focusing on the Coldarra quests.

I have run Utgarde Keep a number of times and The Nexus only once. Both instances were pretty fun, not too much trash and the boss fights had some challenges, but not insanely difficult. I still have not upgraded a lot of gear, a few sidegrades here and there but nothing major. Some of the crew I usually run with have started to replace gear and I hope to soon - I really like the look of the Northrend armor.

I have been healing most of the runs, I have come up with a hybrid build that still allows me to do decent solo damage to quest and be viable in the instances - currently 40/0/25, working to 41/0/30 - this seems to be working okay for me and I will tweak as necessary. I really hope they deliver on the dual spec idea so I can go a little deeper in Resto for heroics and raids at 80.

Bumwaller - Level 70. Parked in Warsong Hold gathering rest. I should get him going so I can get Alchemy/Herb up and make some potions and elixirs for the guild.

Namenivob - Level 60. Parked in Shattrath. Just not having a lot of fun playing him right now.

Badhoof - Level 55 Death Knight. Parked in Ebon Hold gathering rest. Ya, I made one. I haven't done anything with it, but I might if I get bored.

The day has come!

So, it's just pat midnight and I am installing the Lich King expansion. There were quite a number of people standing around in the rain at our local GameStop, but we were all in good spirits and talking the talk that always happens when a bunch of WoW addicts get together. It's always interesting to see the different people that show up for these releases. Kids, adults, geeks, nerds, profesionals, you name it.

The GameStop had pizza and soda that they were giving away to all the people waiting in line and had a few drawings for gift cards, which was pretty cool.

YAY! Install is done...see ya in Northrend.

Servers are borked

The servers have not come back up yet from the scheduled Tuesday maintenance. It's 7:50 pm EST and they have been down since about 8:00 am. Apparently there is some problem with the mail. I hope this all gets resolved soon - tomorrow is a big day!

As someone who works in IT in my real life and has a responsibility for communications servers, I definitely do not envy them. It's bad enough when you miss an expected maintenance period and have 400 users - I can't imagine having 11 million wanting to know when the server will be up.

Good Luck guys!

Just killing time...and Onyxia

What else is there to do as we wait out the last few days until Wrath? Narandia and I headed off to Blackrock Depths to get the Shadowforge key, BRD Achievement, and Molten Core attunement. We duoed they whole place and got the achievement and attunement for Narandia - I already had them.

Then we got a couple of guildies together and killed the Broodmother of the Black Dragonflight to gain the achievement. The Onyxia fight was fun, but I kinda wish I could have seen when it was still a big deal. As it is now, I turned in the head to Overlord Runthak about 10 seconds after another group turned in theirs. Still, it was fun and a first for me and most of the others.

That was kinda fun

So yesterday we decided to take a break from farming rep and doing low level achievements to run some level appropriate instances.

We ran Shattered Halls with a gorillidan (where did that word come from?) as the main tank. Claz brought his trusty Marv to do the aggro job and it went pretty well actually. There were a few wipes, but overall it was pretty darn smooth and Claz and Marv did an absolutley great job.

Then we decided to do Magisters Terrace. That place is tough for me for some reason. We did not use Marv for that one - instead Greatjohn was bear tanking the place. We had a lot of wipes while figuring out the pulls and fights and which mob to sheep/mind contol/etc and trying some different stategies. We made it through, dropped Kael'thas Jr. and I even got...a Phoenix Hatchling.

I was disappointed with the number of wipes and my number of deaths, but it wasn't horrible healing coming from an Elemental Shaman - I have to occasionaly remind myself that I'm not Resto. I really hope they come along with the dual-spec idea.