10 wipes, and lots of repairs later...

Lady Vashj - our number one fan favourite fish for many moons now, has tragically met her unfortunate end tonight.

Early reports suggest that she was attacked by a mob of around 20 people in what Azerothian NPC's (Nasty Police Characters) are calling a savage and brutal murder.

So far the Mob has yet to be apprehended and caught but the NPC's have released this photo discovered at the crime scene.

(warning the image is graphic and may frighten younger audiences)
as you can clearly see this is the handy work of the notorious group Phoenix Legion, who have been linked to a number of murders of late, the NPC Alliance does not seem to be able to stop their violent rampage.

We held an interview with a close personal friend of Lady Vashj, a (self declared) Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider, a respected member of the community of Outland

Q- Sir Kael'thas what are your feelings to the seemingly random unprovoked murder of your close personal friend lady Vashj

K- *sob* This act was commited out of sheer maliciousness, i want to see Phoenix Legion brought to justice! if the NPC alliance was any good at their jobs they would have sent Hogger after PL long ago!

Q- Well im sure you want justice. but i hear Hogger is a little busy in Northrend at the moment, something about recruiting Arthas into the NPC Alliance. We have heard some currently unconfirmed reports that Phoenix Legion have got you next on their target list, does this frighten you at all?

K- Frighten? it terrifies me! in fact i don't think Ive left my Keep in nearly a year!, and with this tragedy i intend on locking the door! Only a very few raid boss dare walk outside their own homes these days.

Q- thank you for this interview Sir Kael'thas

So there you have it folks, Phoenix Legion have downed lady Vashj, and are now setting their sights on Prince Kael.

Shade meets his maker.

Shade Of Akama Down!

Our Progress streak continues with the Shade of akama, this one wasnt easy since we really didnt have the ideal raid setup, only 1 mage for CC :<
Grats Phoenix Legion Once again for great progress! 3/9 BT!


Some people had to leave after this so we decided to clear up to Teron 22 man, Hillarity follows with the most painfull wipe i think we ever experianced, Teron is a hard nut to crack it seems. We called it a night, and most probably a week here since we are headed off to Vashj on monday and dont do 25 man raids at the weekend.

However i think that we should have no problem reaching Teron Gorefiend again next week with the little trouble the first 3 bosses gave us, so ive been reading up on the tactics Here, Also on our forums was linked an interesting little mini game designed to give the player a "mini" experiance of the ghosts on the Gorefiend encounter, it is exactly right, but it does the job of giving you a basic understanding of what needs to be done in the short time you have as a ghost. Check out this minigame Here!

Fun night, even with many many wipes included.

Progress, thy name is Phoenix legion

What a week!

Tuesday: Mount Hyjal, simple quick and clean kills on Rage and Anaetharon, nothing new there, get to the trash of Kazrogal, been here once before, NUKED THE TRASH AND THE BOSS FIRST TIME WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Wednesday: Full Clear of KZ in just over 3 hours, Niiiiice took me to 100 badges exactly, got my badge trousers

Thursday: A day to be rembered, Our first ever look inside BT - And what a night, Najentus, Downed, and not just that, DOWNED FIRST TRY.
Thursday: Not much later we were wiping on Supremus, but before long we had another notch on our already bloodstained belt
How. Awesome. Is. That.

im on a stupid high at the moment so im going to leave you and go celebrate with my guild - pheonix legion 2/9 BT :D

An Extreme AV

Hello readers,

today i bring you a story of a AV last night that was just a little bit different from the norm.

i was happily in AB, carrying on with my rep grind (80 more games to win) when a guild mate starting shouting about a AV that he was in being "bugged", and that there were no NPCs, No reinforcements, No mana/rage/energy costs and nobody could die. Of course i had to see this for myself, So after my AB was finished i joined AV29 - to play with my friend.

He was almost right. The AV had bugged with the preparation buff still active after the gates had opened, there were indeed no NPC's and no energy costs on moves, He was wrong however, about not being able to die.

People could die, they took damage, its just that their health Regen was roughly around 10,000 per 5 seconds, even in combat, making killing people a very hard thing to do.

This was the most Epic AV ever! i spent around an hour zerging around with the rest of horde on the field of strife destroying alliance, barely nobody left the game because it was the most fun anyone in there had had in ages, so after joining about 30 minutes late, and playing an hour of this AV, i checked the score board, i was pleasantly surprised.




1.25 MILLION damage, and a clear 400,000 more damage than the person below me, and even better than that (in my eyes anyway) the top alliance damage dealer was from Eonar as well, Nerf us!

Class leader

Heeeey guys.

First of all, a big sorry for not posting in the last...err...long time, I've been crazy busy with Raids, and exams that are coming up, but i promise i have 3 really big posts in the works. They should be done soon for you, but until then you will have to do with this awesome new update to my rogue life.

My Guild, being the crazy bastards that they are, Have promoted me to the rank of Rogue Class Leader! YaaaaaaY

i now have access to certain rights and privileges, and of course some extra responsibilities (but good ones)

Let's look at what i *can* do now:-

1. i now have the rights to invite, remove, promote and demote rogues
2. i now have unlimited access to the guild bank (not to be abused though)
3. i can now fully repair from the guild bank (to be abused, imo :)
4. i can now access the Officer channel on ventrillo, to bitch about members to other officers
5. i now have access to the officer chat, pretty much the same reason as above
6. i can now see all the boards available on the Phoenix Legion forums, a lot of interesting stuff gets said here, so that's great

But of course with all that comes

1. Now, like the elder rank before, i am in charge of looking after all the rogues in PL
2. this includes spec and gear advice
3. maintaining a reasonable level of active rogues in the guild
4. Helping out with any general officer stuff (raid leading, giving out stuff from the gbank, etc.)

All in all, Quincey is a happy rogue again, and i am looking forward to abusin......i mean, responsibly using my new admin powers ;)

Blogs to check out

As the more attentive of you may have noticed i have added 2 new blogs to my reading list:-

(Time to break out that good old Mspaint again)

/Hug A new Rogue Blog for you all to read - His blog covers his adventures as a dwarf (*snigger*) rogue, A well written and even better presented blog its definitely worth a look in

and i have also recently discovered The Rambling Bear! She who dares blog about what no other blogger has blogged before!...well, maybe not, but all her (I'm saying her, but we all there are no girls on the interwebz) her posts are well written and usually have a fair bit of humour about them.

In other News, My life is getting hectic again, i have coursework due in for Tuesday morning that just needs that last little *push* to get finished that i have been putting off for 2 months and i have a load of revision to get done, BUT! the end is now in sight! In exactly 1 month and 5 days i will be completely done with college, after 4 painful years. My sights will be set firmly on University (after a nice long break, of course).

Progress!

Unfortunately not on Vashj, but in the other direction, We are now one step further into mount Hyjal with a (relatively) smooth Anetheron (took me 10 attempts to spell that correctly) Kill, taking us to the respectable total of 2/6 bosses down in mount Hyjal. A big grats to my Guild, and to Moofasa and Revert for their shiny lewt drops.

All in all its been a crazy few days, we cleared up SSC (with the exception of Vashj, ma bitch, of course) and i managed to obtain myself a shiny new trinket the tsunami talisman, i have paired that up with the shard of contempt (from heroic MGT)

Now with both these trinkets and both my mongoose enchants i have:-

• Chance on hit to increase my AP by 230 for 20 seconds
• Chance on hit to Procc mongoose, 120 Agi and increased attack speed x2
• Chance on CRIT to increase my attack power by 340 for 10 seconds
  

as you can guess that's a lot of chances to procc something that increases my stats, in fact id say every mob without fail and usually more than one, so all is good on the trinket front for a while :)

Other, Even better, good news.
The Blizzard gods have finally taken action, i received this email in the week

Greetings,

We are writing to inform you that, after a careful investigation of your account warning, we have agreed to remove the warning and suspension of your account from the World of War craft servers.

This change has already been put into effect, and your account should again be available for play.

Should you have other questions or concerns, feel free to contact us again, via our web form: http://wow-europe.com/support/securitywebform/securitywebform.html?lan=en

We hope you continue to enjoy your experience in World of War craft!

If you wish to review our current Rules and Policies, they can be found at:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/policy/

Regards,

Kyhral
Account Administration Team
Blizzard Entertainment Europe
http://www.wow-europe.com/en

What a silly name to sign a official email from, but whatever

YaaaaaaY, with this i have also gotten all my gold, gear and items back, so your reading the words of one happy energizer bunny, with all this Ive had an excellent couple of days in the world of war craft i can only hope that this good streak ends soon with the downing of Vashj (or me winning the lottery tonight, either one is good).

P.S - i have assignments due in Monday morning so don't expect any more post from me until at least Tuesday night, probably later as this is my final piece of coursework in my college life, I'm looking forward to getting drunk to celebrate.

A weeks worth of reformats

gaaaaah - in the last week i have reformatted (and reinstalled ALL of warcraft + tbc) 3 times, warcraft itself takes the better part of 3 hours to install and patch that means 9 hours of staring at that installer -.-, this was due to a rather nasty piece of malware that i somehow picked up, but hurray the problem seems to now be sorted

Vashj
Vashj went well, better than i expected to honestly tell you the truth, although we haven't downed her all the attempts so far have looked promising, each time we seem to be gaining more control over that damn crazy second phase - we spent 3 nights in there wiping on her this week, Completely ignoring Mount Hyjal (despite some planned raids there). So far we haven't got passed the second phase we are working hard trying out different strategies all the time, we will eventually find one that works for us.

For those of you that know the Vashj fight ill explain briefly what we are trying at the moment if you don't know the fight then i suggest you go read up on it here, we are welcoming suggestions, hints and criticism here, i don't care i just want her down :P

time to bust out old Mspaint
Now this may look like a rainbow cookie...hmmm I'm hungry....But! this is actually a pretty simple dulled down version of our tactics. lets go over the legend..
Brown Circle = Steps
Gray circle = Middle ground
Sickly green circle = Inner circle
Bright blue dot is Vashj, she is immune to damage at this point but deals out a fir bit of raid damage.
Red dots are generators

Purple=Warlock
Green = Hunter
white = Healers
yellow = Melee
Blue= Mages
Orange= tanks

Basic really - we have the warlocks and hunters on primary elemental duty as well as killing the tainted core - these groups are split up into 3 sections covering the NE NW and South, they also are backed by a healer who stays on top of the stairs at all times.

In the middle we have the Tanks, Mages and the melee, this is to deal with 3 things, the Melee and the tanks are on generator and Elite duty, at all times there must be at least one melee stood next to a generator whenever there is a tainted core being thrown around. We (the melee) are usually only 4 people, but we seem to be killing the elites in plenty of time anyway, we have also been given the duty of elemental clean up, this is very simply any elementals that get past the warlocks and the hunters for any reason (for example they are busy with a tainted core) then we destroy them. Not a problem for the super fantastic awesome melee group(he he).

Lastly also in the middle we have the mages, this is to deal with the last type of add, and pretty much where we are falling down at the moment. Originally we had the mages at the top of the stairs helping with the elementals but this approach didn't work because the strider's just didn't die fast enough, so we have shifted the Mages from their spot at the top of the stairs to the middle so they can Nuke the strider (while controlling aggro with the kite, of course).

Ah yes the kiter i almost forgot him, we currently have an elemental shaman by the name of Oblivio Kiting the strider's around Middle ground, this keeps his fear away from harms way. Oblivio, being the aggro hungry whore that he is (love ya really man :P ) has no problems keeping aggro on the beasts, but he cannot handle having 2 on him, hence where we are currently failing.

the strider's, are just no dying fast enough, we had one *almost* success full try when we moved the mages where it died just as the next strider was coming up, but this was at the expense of a lot of elementals pounding through, more than even the overly imba melee group could deal with. leading us to a wipe.

SO any suggestions on how to deal with strider's without sacrificing dps on the elementals that leads us to a kill will win the chance to write an article for this blog on any wow subject you want (within reason of course)**

Right, next topic, the Arena server - this has been the focus point for much QQ praise and whine threads.

well i love it, from both aspects, PvE and PvP, let me explain. ever since the launch of the burning crusade The people who PvE have been whining about class changes that have followed that have affected how PvP was balanced and therefore changed the class in PvE, this is the perfect solution! keep the class (I'm changing the word changes for "tweaks") tweaks can be applied only on the arena realm, a realm with no mobs, no leveling, a server that is there for the sole purpose of doing arena content with friends - that way the pve'rs are happy because they don't have to deal with the changes to their classes and the pvpers are all on the same realm, meaning much shorter ques than before.

I personally have entered the arena tournament, not with high hopes for winning anything, but because it gives me a chance to play with friends from other realms.

But of course with it being a good thing for one person, another has to complain about it being unfair for them. this time they are complaining about the lack of leveling and gear gathering. But let me get this message through to you - Leveling, and gathering gear is PVE content - Some people don't want this so they go onto a PVP realm or in this case the ARENA realm, and we pay for the privilege.

The practise season ends today when the maintenance is over and the real tournament begins, I'm looking forward to smashing some shadow priest's face in, and i hope to see some of you there

(for anyone on the realm I'm a human rogue called tied, my Quincey was taken :( )


**I reserve the right to not post anything racist, offensive or containing excessive swearing, topics are not limited to wow but a post about wow would fit best in with the theme of the blog.
Any strategies can either be left in comments or forwarded to my email phoenixquincey@gmail.com

First Look at Mount Hyjal

And What a night! Rage Winterchill, the first boss of tier 6 content (and arguably the easiest boss of tier 6 content) Down not just first night. but very first try! WOOOOO! and evan better we have new loots!

Deadly Cuffs (http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=30863)

Yay - also the choker of serrated blades dropped twice, but that has gone to other melee DPS (and to be honest im not sure if it is that much of an upgrade to the wogen claw necklace from attunmen).

Other big news in the loot department - Quincey is now running around azeroth on a brand new shiny mount from Attunmen the huntsman, thats right, he is riding Nightmare himself! Won on a roll of 99/100 this is an awesome new mount that fits my character well :) I think i might create a new banner for the page (since wall walking is no longer allowed the banner seems a little out of place :( )using the new shiny mount.

Fiery Warhorse Riegns (http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=30480)

Wallwalking! before i forget - R.I.P wallwalking :( you were one of the most fun aspects of the game and i sure as hell hate losing you just becuase some retards used you to exploit :( talk about the minority ruining it for...err the minority that could do it :P

SSO offensive news - Over the weekend i had myself a repding Exalted with the SSO offensive, the same day as the new Anvil was made ready on Eonar, I havn't seen so many people in one place since the launch of the burning crusade, actually finding the vendor under a pile of corpses and Taurens on kodo's took a good 20 minutes. but when i finnally did manage to get there i bought myself a new set of weapons...

Blade of serration (http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=34894)
Swift blade of uncertainty (http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=34949)

So all in all its been a good week for Raids and loot, we are off to take a look at Vashj tonight, (i need to go re-read tatics i guess :P ) and we are headed back to Mount Hyjal on monday for more freeloot *ahem* i mean Rage winterchill and hopefully beyond :)


P.S - if anyone has Large pristmatic shards they dont want on Eonar i'm open to donations, them buggers are 40g a pop now and im in need of 20 :(

A New Era Dawns!

He he - didn't think id be posting here again.

Ni Hao, Welcome back to Backstab, Lets start with what has been happening in the last month and 3 days.

First off you need to read This Post , this was me quitting, including all my reasons for quitting. I lasted a grand total of 27 days and 16 hours before coming back, turns out all i needed was a break. It didn't take long at all for me to remember what i did love and enjoy ( and miss in the end) about this game.

Now my timing on my break actually has timed fairly well with what has been happening in my guild. Since i left my guild has barely raided at all, the slump they were in dipped into an all time low, they just couldn't get the numbers needed for 25 man raiding, so as i took my break so did they, from 25 man content. Now that i am back however 25 man content is up and running again (coincidence? I THINK NOT!), Big changes have come for the guild that i love in the form of the absorption of a smaller guild from our Realm. Kamadan are now proud members (at least i hope they are proud :P) of Phoenix legion, they are great people just a little bit less geared than us, but with the same Fun raiding attitude, and they are learning quickly too, this week they have fought along side us to clear TK, SSC, Karazhan, Gruul and Magtheridon (no Vashj or Kael tho) they have picked up tactics (and a fair amount of loot!) well, all in all a very successful merge that has left us with more than enough raiders to go around.

"Why!", i hear you cry, "Why are you still raiding T5 content?" That's a very good question, Our Guild leader feels (and i happen to agree) due to our slump before the break, the new(ish) members we have acquired and the time off we had, we needed to get back into content slowly instead of dive bombing straight into Mount Hyjal. Its a very good point, and we have happily accepted not going to Mount Hyjal straight away just for the return of proper raids.

So why am i back, well for one i missed my guild just that damn much, in particular my guild leader (Creamcheese) his partner (Softcheese) and a number of other people (Rogir, Rile, Thundervoice, Grimroy, Kaszaam, Zoidy-COME BACK!, the list goes on a long time). The truth is people are what this game what it is, you have to really take a step back from the game to notice it, too notice that your epics wouldn't Even be there and really nothing compares to raiding with friends.

Note! GM's are EVIL- there is a story to this btw.
A Few days after i decided to quit my Account was broken into presumably from the script that was found on wowhead, (wowhead is clean now btw - no need to boycott or anything) These bastards sold my tier 1, and a lot of the items from my bank, although curiously they didn't sell anything my character was wearing apart from my trinkets. (we assume they were going to try and sell the rogue on), And then used my bank alt to start trading on the auction house (sending gold to people who had bought it, THAT'S RIGHT I KNOW WHO HAS BOUGHT GOLD ON EONAR EU - AND THE GMS DO KNOW ;) *ahem*, now i had no idea that this was going on, i was at college when a buddy of mine who plays a warlock on my realm called me and asked if it was me on my account or someone else. They could have been at this a number of hours!. When i got home from college i went around to a friends and we posted a ticket to a GM telling them what had happened, who they had been sending gold to (via the AH) etc, etc. And i carried on my wow break.

I later received this email

Account Name: GEZZA03
Type of Violation: Involvement in online trading activities
Investigation Concluded: 10/03/2008
Consequences for Account: Account suspended for 72 hours, Password Reset and Final Warning issued.

Online trading refers to the exchange of in-game content for real world money, and includes, but is not limited to, the sale or purchase of gold, the sale or purchase of experience in the form of powerlevelling, and the sale or purchase of honor points, reputation or items.

Account access is the responsibility of the account owner and account sharing is against our Terms of Use (http://www.wow-europe.com/en/legal/termsofuse.html). Therefore, should you believe someone other than yourself (the account owner) has committed this violation of the Terms of Use with your account, these sanctions would still apply, as our action is taken against the account, not the individual.

What they are basically saying is that "we know it isn't you, but here's your final warning anyway" fair? No, but why does this make GM's gits? well they wont give me my gear back that was vendored. That's why they are gits, Full stop.

Right- talked about that that AND that- Oh yes.

In my last post before the "break" the comments left all seemed to think that i am solely obsessed with loot, maybe i worded the post wrong when i went on my rant against badge loot, I'm all for raiding for fun and what not - hell that's why I'm with the legion and not some jumped up military style hardcore guild, I dislike badge loot because it feels to me that people are cheating, like skipping levels in sonic or something - they haven't needed to see the old content, and clearly don't want to either - they are the ones raiding for loots - not myself, Ive worked from ground up and seen everything (many times :P) on the way, don't get me confused with the loot whores please - i find it rather offensive.


So - I'm back, Did ya miss me? :) Hopefully ill get back into the routine and find a creative new use for spellchecker by my next post ^.^

The End Of An Era, Or Is It?

I think, Just think, i may be done with my time in the world of warcraft.

DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUN

I love drama, cant you tell ? :)

Firstly - i know what your thinking, You cant write a warcraft blog, without playing warcraft - this has crossed my mind - i has plans, do not worry.

Secondly I havnt quit, YET. im still in debating, mostly with myself wether i should or not, now don't get me wrong, its not becuase im addicted or anything like that, I KNOW im addicted, and getting myself off warcraft will be a long slow and probably painfull proccess. i have been weighing up my options. On one hand it has been a really rough couple of warcraft months. A bad month with my guild has left me in [EPICS] but lacking the all important purple [FUN] add to that losing 5 close friends in wow, and i'm suddenly feeling rather alone in the big wide world of Azeroth.

ALSO. dont forget, i think TBC is a total failiure, and for one MAJOR reason, the culture that Blizzard seem to have adopted of giving the casuals everything that they ask for. Badge gear, specificly, i can attribute my quitting to.

Can you see where i am comming from here? i am ofcourse referring to the upcomming badge gear that is equivelent to the T6 raid set. How very VERY VERY ......silly, of them. Slapped in the face?, i feel humiliated that i evan bothered with tier 5.

So, thats why i SHOULDNT keep playing, lets take a look at why i should keep playing

1. My rogue is awesome, he has awesome gear that i am very proud of since i got it without badges
2. My bad streak with PL should end sooner or later right?
3. Soon i wont need vashj and kael and go see the t6 instances.
   

But for every point i could think of, i could think of counters to them

1. My rogues gear will be out shined soon by *RIDICULES* badge gear
2. But i'm no longer having fun, and without that i see little point in playing.
   
3. I can't no longer see the point in raiding the current level instances when badge gear will be released to outshine that soon enough.
   

I think the biggest problem with the game to date is badge gear, whatever moron thought that up needs his head looking at. SCALING badge gear as good as RAIDING gear, For repeating the SAME content.

How to nullify all effort put in by raiders, Step 1, Do the above.
The term "it's a slap in the face" doesn't cover it, "they pulled down out pants in the middle of town, pointed and laughed" is more accurate. There is absolutely no reason to raid at all anymore, we all know we shouldn'tEvan BE raiding, that time is better used doing 5 man EASY heroics, rather than difficult raids, its more efficient for getting the gear in the long run. And lets face it, anyone who says heroics are difficult needs slapping, wake up to reality, they are simple basic things that anyone with a shred of intelligence can pretty much do in quest reward blues and greens.

Tired of people better than you having great gear?
Not skilled enough for raids?
Don't really have the time to play the game?

The answer is simple, Badge gear! WOW! Its purple! its epic, and best of all, its FREE!
Thats right folks for just a simple downpayment of Heroic mechanaar 50,000 times you can be riding around in the same gear REAL raiders have! WOW! now nobody will be able to tell that you really cant play, they will be dazzled by your PURPLES!

Remeber, if its not purple, we don't want it!

*GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*

This is getting me right mad to Even just think about it! THIS person sums it up better than i could.

And that (see above) is my point, I'm getting angry and frustrated with the game, Really Really bad design choices in the expansion and add to that the loss of friends and reason to play - you can pretty much see why Warcraft is leaving a bitter aftertaste in my mouth can't you?

So what will happen to the blog if i do quit? Well, it won't be a wow blog anymore, that's for sure, but Quincey as a gamer? that is definatly for sure, maybe it will be changed, bit by bit, slowly but surely into a new gaming blog, maybe ill scrap it until i can think of something better to write about, but keep checking this space folks, you CAN rely on me being back, and soon, i haven't finished with blogging yet, hell, I'm only just getting started.

So, at least for now, Quincey - signing off.

Blizzard invitational

Umm, yeah, heres me stealing content...i mean...informing my readers of this awesome convention, heres a quick description found on Blizzard.com

"The fourth Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational is coming to Europe! The event will be held at the Porte de Versailles Exposition Center, Paris, France, over the 28th and 29th of June 2008. Open to gamers from around the world, the Worldwide Invitational will feature a wide variety of activities, including:

• Discussion panels with Blizzard Entertainment developers
• Artist and developer signings
• Professional eSport tournaments and casual tournaments for attendees
• Hands-on play with World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King and StarCraft II
• Merchandise and other products based on the Blizzard Entertainment game universes
• Silent auction
• Musical performances
• And more...

To attend the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational, you must purchase tickets in advance here on the Worldwide Invitational website. Tickets are limited and will go on sale in the next few weeks on a first-come, first-served basis until they are sold out, though Blizzard Entertainment reserves the right to sell additional tickets in the future. There will be a five-ticket limit per household. Further details on purchasing tickets will follow in the weeks ahead."

AWESOME, a blizzard event that is within my travel distance, the date tickets will be available for sale has not yet be announced but im watching the site daily. i.must.have.tickets.

So if anyone is going and wants to meet with me, just drop me an email, i will be there!

World of Jumpcraft indeed ;)

Howdy guys, this post was written in response to a whisper i got taunting me that i cannot jump as well as the guys on the world of jumpcraft . Now don't take this the wrong way, I'm not saying I'm BETTER than those guys, they are excellent at what they do, but i would like to think i can do everything they can, pretty much as good as they can.

Jumpcrafting is all about patience and practise, nothing more, there are no special skills, no sneaky hidden tricks to it - so here is a collection of some of my more favourite screenshots (bundled with a few descriptions)

Lets start with some of the older, and more obvious ones, places you have probably either seen first hand, or in some commonly seen screenshots.


This is the very top of Ironforge mountain, surprisingly enough there is an alliance patrol that goes all the way up here, but still, its a nice place to sight see once in a while. (Sexy Tier 1 :D )



This is the top of the valley of honor, i love sitting up here when i just feel like /gchatting, or just chilling out, plus its an easy one to get to.


Again, pretty bog-standard, Top of Orgrimmar wall. /yawn, i know, better ones are coming.


i actually don't see this one very much, but refuse to believe that people haven't done it before, top of Northshire Abbey.


The Greymane Wall, from the TOP of Graymane wall i may add. for those of you who don't know, open your maps, go to Silverpine forest, look in the very south, that landmass that you can't get to? thats Greymane, you cant get to it thanks to this rather big wall :P


this isn't actually one of my favourite screenshots, but this is quel'thalas, pre-tbc, I'm not sure if this dock Evan still exists.


Feralas, more specifically DM, outside, underneath, nothing more to explain really.

OKAY OKAY

i know these are the fairly bog standard jump screenshots. but here is something a little bit more special. I was saving these screenshots for a rainy day, as they are the ones i was more than a little bit proud of.


I give you, Nefarion's window. from outside the instance.

This one took me a LONG time to get, and i do mean a LONG time, much time, frustration, falling and death. But once i was here, i figured, why stop ? so i logged for that day at the top of Nefarion's window, and started again the next morning.

More than a little time later, we had....

BLACKROCK MOUNTAIN

Past the clouds, past what anyone on my server had ever done, past my draw distance to the ground (pretty facking far) This is the highest point in Azeroth, there is no way to get higher without flying, and for that you need to be a GM.

Don't believe me? This could be any old mountain? lets look down shall we?


Look carefully, can you see the start of the flow of larva? the one you see falling all the way down BRM, that's right, i was there, i has the screenshots, it did happen :)

So, can nobody else log on Eonar just to wind me up? im not a fake. I CAN do this shit.

(This post was in no way meant to embarrass, show up or put down the guys from the world of Jumpcraft videos, they are awesome, they have done stuff i haven't dreamed off, truly epic guys, and i one day i hope to do a jump video with them)

Jumping on the bandwagon

Hurray!!!

Finnally the new design is working, and i have to say, im rather proud of how it has turned out- it will probably need a new header, one that fits the top of the page properly but i want your comments / feedback, what do you like or dislike?, is there anything that doesnt work in your browser? Any comments are greatly apprechiated either by email or by comments.

So! onto the real point of the post. Jumping onboard the Patch 2.4 bandwagon that so many bloggers have.

For those azerothians who have been living under a rock for the past month and a bit Patch 2.4 is nearly upon us, The PTR is up and bosses are already being killed at an alarming rate.

Now the patch notes have changed about 7 or 8 times since they were released with bits being added and taken away, so i figure ill show you the bigger points (in my opninion), the ones that matter to me the most, and maybe give some opinions here and there.

the full patch notes can be found Here

Lets start off with a biggie

The Sunwell Isle

• The Sunwell Isle is now available for play. This area includes a new quest hub and 5-player and 25-player instances. Join the Shattered Sun Offensive in shutting down Kael’thas’ nefarious operations. This new force is comprised by both the Aldor and Scryers and is led by the Naaru. Players will take part in claiming Sun’s Reach and setting up a larger base of operation to stop Kael’thas and the Legion.

Hurray! commonly known as the last major instance of the burning crusade exspantion pack, with 2.4 i imagine we will start to see a torrent of information being to flow about Wrath of the lich king, and the big guilds get something new to brag about, since Illidan is getting a little old now :)

• Resilience: Now reduces the magnitude of mana draining effects by the same amount that it reduces critical strike damage. The Tooltip has been revised to reflect this.

Awesome! an exellent and welcome change to fixing arena that doesnt affect pve, Good Job Blizz /pat, lets continue...

Ooooooh Shiiiiit

We interupt this news broadcast to give some BREAKING NEWS
England just felt an EARTHQUAKE, i felt it as i was sat here writing this, That was ace :D, ive never felt one before, but yeah that was great :D

anyways...errr. yes, ive lost my train of thought now, this post might have to wait till the morning folks

Quincey - signing off to see if there is any damage

Something funny :)

This thread has sprung up on my Guild's forums, thought i would share

Before and after screenshots

here's my contribution

BEFORE AFTER

Damage meters are killing my guild.

First off, Shhhhhh, I'm posting this post from my college computer, I’m bored and bogging is a good distraction from work, but I've had this planned for sometime, something that is annoying me greatly.

Damage meters, I used to love them, in fact I still do, they are an excellent source of information for a dps class to know if he is getting the most out of his character, and since I’m usually in the top 3 you might think that I would absolutely love them. However. (This has been building up for a while, can you feel the tension?)People and aggro, more specifically their aggro control, people seem to see the damage meters as a race rather than a meter and seem to pay more attention to them rather than omen and KTM or whatever threat meter your guild happens to prefer. (If anyone mentions the Morogrim video, ill kill ya, how’s that for dps :P). But I don’t blame this purely on the damage meters, oh no, as the horde I have noticed a distinct lack of regard for aggro since we gained the blessing of salvation. We now seem to be dependent on this buff, without it we have about as much control as an enraged cleft hoof, myself included (see Morogrim video), This is something we as the horde need to sort out, we used to be so good at controlling our aggro pre-tbc, how much can possibly have changed?

That’s not the end though.

This again is something I'm guilty of, but marking raid skill, or personal progression on the damage meters alone is possibly the most stupid thing I have ever heard, and yet I often catch myself doing it, this is the main reason that spamming the damage meters has been banned in PL raids. it causes too much in house competition, witch again leads to aggro ( I'm not mentioning any names here *coughobliviocough* and why once I have written this post I'm going to suggest to our raid leader that we ban having them showing mid boss fights at all.

The positives, Lets face it, damage and raid meters were not made for us, the general raiding public, they were created for guild leaders to gauge how each member is progressing and to help weed out and help anybody who is slacking in a particular role, and in this aspect they do their job amazingly, wow web stats gives comprehensive reports that allows raid leaders to know exactly what everyone was doing the whole raid, helping spot those undeserving, unworthy or in need of help members.

*****EDIT******

The following is a rather excellent post, by one of my guildies (<3 you adagar :D), its relevant, so i figure ill post it up :D

"Since i've noticed this weird trend lately on raids, where people pull aggro and wear it like a badge of badass, i thought i'd put in a note about aggro. If you're perfectly aware of how aggro works, and how to manage yours, read this post anyways, if nothing else just to agree / disagree with something i write.

Kenco did extensive research on threat, and although the research is old, it is still very much valid:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Kencos_Research

If you can't be bothered to read it, i'll sum up the most important stuff.

When someone (a tank, preferably) has aggro, it takes more than just passing him on the amount of threat to actually get aggro yourself. You must pass him by a certain amount.
- For melee distance, you must pass 110% of the tank's aggro
- For out-of-melee distance, you must pass 130% of the tank's aggro

A common misconception is that if you use ranged attacks, the 130% applies to you no matter what. It doesn't. What matters is your distance relative to the the mob you're attacking. The important thing to note here is:

If the mob moves, so does the melee range of the mob.

This can cause horrible problems if people are pushing the dps, which in some
cases are necessary to get a mob down.

Let's say that all the ranged are around 120%, and then suddenly Mr. Badass the ranged dpser gains aggro. Now, if Mr. Badass is not very fast at responding with whatever aggro reducing abilities he has available or very very quickly move towards the tank, the mob is coming for him... and it's taking it's melee range with it. If the mob has a large hitbox, it also has a large melee range, and if the casters stand together, you now have Mr. Badass standing in a group where everyone has 120% aggro, and they're all within melee range... so they're above 110% and they are going to die. Fast. Sure the tank can taunt, and the other dpsers can use their aggro reducing abilities if they have any, but still.

It's up for debate what to do in the situation where mob gets to the ranged group and starts oneshotting people. However, it should never come to this, not even on trash mobs.

To sum it up:
- Be mindful of your threat (this should be a given) - Be mindful of your distance to the mob (this apparently is not a given) - Remember that the size of the hitbox, and subsequently the melee range, can be different from mob to mob
- If you take aggro from the tank on a straightforward mob (like VR for example, or the bog thingies in SSC), you might have high dps, but you're still a very poor raid member"
Adagar - on the Phoenix Legion forums

Morogrim Downed

To continue on this nice little streak we seem to have got going, Pheonix Legion down Morogrim Tidewalker, bringing our totals to

5/6 SSC
3/4 TK

thats right, vashj and Kael await us, this is going to be one hell of a fight :D

So this week i decided to test just how good my new spanking computer was and recorded all the attempts on the new boss morogrim, i recorded attempts ALL night, it was sods law that made the attempt that we kill him on the ONLY attempt that i pulled agro and died.

Ah well, enjoy

A Multi-Headed Post, A Hydra

Hey guys, first off apologies for not posting in damn near a week, but as i shall explain there has been shit happening thathas barely given me enough time to play, never mind think about(yeah right-ed) Plan and produce a blog post.

However rest assured that we are back into the swing of things, I have a weeks worth of thoughts i am anxious to get written down so let me kick off this new spree of posts with some good news!

My SPANKING computer is back with me 19 days without it, forced to survive on a crummy laptop, and boom here it is, Sparkling in its glory as good as it ever was, but not only that, its BETTER.

I'll Explain. THe graphics card that was in my computer previously was, to put a fine word to it, buggered. SO we have replaced it with a Geforce 8800 GtX, or for the computer illiterate, a BIG SHINY ONE. WoW looks good again, Crysis looks amasing. all in all, VERY pleased, the graphics on crysis alone were (almost) worth the 19 days without machine.

So with a Sparkling new computer i turned my attentions to getting myself sorted and back into the internet routine, so i checked my emails for the blog to find myself inundated with litterally 2 emails asking who i was, what my character looked like and what realm i play on. Now this disturbed me slightly for 2 reasons.

1, it might mean i have stalkers leveling on the alliance with the sole purpose of killing me.

2. becuase i have told everyone who and what i play several times in the last 2 months of blogging, wich makes me wonder what kind of retard i am actually attracting to my articles.

But for the retards among you, i play a character called QUINCEY , on the realm EONAR (eu), feel free to come and talk to me, i am always pleasantly suprised, and usually more than willing to talk to anyone with constructive critism for my blog, i take it well honestly. Just please be considerate with it, for example spamming me in the middle of arena, or Serpent Shrine will probably not yield the best results and may in extreme cases lead to me ignoring you completely!

One of the conversations i have had becuase of my blog came from a young rogue, he was rolled on Magtheridon EU (can't remeber your name, sorry dude whisper me again i'lll credit you honest) he was asking what kind of stats a rogue should be aiming for to move out of karazhan and into big boy raiding. Now i have never pretended to be an expert on all that is rogue, i dont do theory crafting and for damn sure number aint my strong point (thats numbers, AND spelling do i have a strong point?) so all i can do for you mr-ye-who-cannot-be-named is show you the stats that I currently have as a fairly average SSC rogue.

Now this is fully raid buffed but here are the stats i had in SSC last night

Hmmmmm Heartless.

(quite proud of my rogue, so hurtfull comments down to a minimum PLEASE)

Now probably the 2 most important factors to bare in mind are you Attack power, and your hit rating, since the rogue in question is just comming out of Karazhan haste really isnt an issue since there isnt that much knocking around.

a good ammount of hit to aim for comming out of karazhan would be around 220 - 230 ish, the more the better of course, dont ever stop collecting hit untill you hit 304, but be sure to balance it out with your other stats too, particully Attack power

Now attack power can vary, not just on gear, but on your specc too, never underestimate the 10% extra attack power granted by 5/5 deadliness in the subtely tree, but as a rough, and i do mean a rough guide a rogue shoul look at a minimum of around 1300-1400 attack power to head into serpent shrine (unbuffed) this should warrent at LEAST 2k attack power buffed, again the more the better, but in a delecate balance with your HIT rating, they should scale up together as best as you can possibably manage. This leaves us with the wonder stat....

Haste- haste is a wonder stat, but only in large quantities, small amounts will fruit you not enough in the way of returns while large amounts are the single best stats for your dps. However comming out of karazhan there really isnt that much available to you. You should, however, by this time be running heroics fairly regularly (preferably with your guildies, a good guild willl never make you PuG), combine this with karazhan and you have yourself a reasonable amount of Badges of Justice comming in,giving us Badge gear and the gear from ZA DOES have HASTE, our lovely wonder stat, and in reasonable amounts too, but you have to watch your self with this gear, make sure the rest of your gear is well gemmed and enchanted since this gear lacks a lot on the hit rating front. Not much good being able to hit fast if your hitting thin air. Makes sense. I guess.

I hope that answers your query Mystery Rogue, and gives you some food for thought, make sure to contact me, or any of you, if you have a question for me, im contactable through my email address, Phoenixquincey@gmail.com, or in game of course.

Right, what else did i want to talk about, Oh yes, THAT

We have had some new arrivals into the hell pit stop, Phoenix Legion, Zenzeurad Avantis and Gnawed, all melee, and therefore under my durisdiction Muwhahahaa *cough* ahahaah. but in all seriousness, all 3 have demonstrated fairly good skills as raiders and all 3 have excellent attitudes, unless something drastic happens i can't see why all 3 of won't pass thier trials with flying colours and with a little guidance and gear become top notch Phoenix Legion members.

In other news..
As some of the readers will be able to tell you, my brother has been away for the better part of a year, but i am pleased to annouce that my brother has landed back in the UK saftley, a whole 3 days before my parent expected. yes he gave them quite a shock ;). im glad to see him back safe and sound, but ye gods he hasnt stopped talking since he got back, i can hardly get a word in edgeways!, im joking, Glad to see you back Ben.

and finnally
Entrecard. as some of the more observant of my readers may have noticed we ahve a new widget on the site, the infamous Entrecard Widget.
For those of you who don't understand, or have never heard about entrecard let me explain, entrecard is a form of free advertising for blogs. people exhange adverts on other blog for entrecard credits, allowing us to carefully select who we want to advertise with, and who gets to advertise on our blog. for all of you who dont have a blog then this will probably not make much differnce, i have tried to place it out of the way, while making it easy to see at the same time, not an easy feat. if you want to learn more about this i suggest you head on over to entrecard.com and check it out.

Phew, glad to get all that off my chest :D
See you later for more mad, badly spelled ramblings at a later date

-Quin.

Another day another kill.

Fathom Lord Karathress, destroyed by the might of the legion.....not the burning legion but...




Downed Leo last night, Karathress tonight, we are on a roll, its a shame it resets tonight to be honest, we might have had a shot at morogrim with another night.

Leo Down

My guild Phoenix Legion killed Leo in SSC tonight

Woooooooooo

this high will carry me through till tomorrow I'm sure :)


In other news - No computer yet. Quincey be getting mad.

Horde attack the middle east

One of the many, many blogs that i read, LagOrama , has shown me one of the funniest stories i have read in a long time, so i urge you all to check out his post HERE

For the lazy among you i'll just give you the jist of the article.

Basicly last week a chinese television network, CCTV 7 broadcast images to explain what was happening with the war on iraq.

They showed this map, to help the people in china understand EXACTLY what is going on



Now as many of you have probably noticed, this isn't exactly how the middle east looks, but there is something familiar about it.

Let me explain



this is a post of Arathi basin. yup, you got it, the Chinese seem to believe that the HORDE are attacking the middle east :P

Who you calling "Elder" fool

Yaaaaaaay

Thats right you probably have guessed it! Quincey has been promoted to the grand spanking new rank of ELDER, this new rank comes with a bunch of new responsibility, and a bunch of privileges.

I received a letter from Creamcheese via the in game, outlining the new stuff that is now available to us, including access to the new board on the forums (check out Phoenix Legion's website HERE ).

After reading the new board i learned that the most important role of the elders seems to be the "mentoring" program, this mostly involves the (i want to say taking care of, but that sounds a bit condescending) look after the new members, making sure they understand the guild's rules and regulations, the standards that we expect and basics of any instance we happen to be raiding.


So all in all Quincey is-a-happy rogue at the moment, and ish itching to prove his worth to to his most favorite of guilds :)

Creamcheese on the warpath

First off let me tell you, there is nothing quite like a 7ft tall angry bull on the warpath, i tried to find a suitable picture, but there really isn't anything that Evan remotely pictures it so i went for this instead.

So anyway heres the story. Tonight was going to be our return trip into Tempest Keep, we have had recent success in there and many of us regular raiders were looking forward to Nuking (nuking, the picture, get it?) Down 3 bosses and having another look at the Oh-so-shiny one Kael.

But alas, yet again, too few sign ups, too few people Evan showing up for the raid has meant that we had to cancel, AGAIN. The 4th time in the weeks. Well i thought i was a sad panda about this, but apparently where i was sad Creamcheese is actually starting to get just a fair bit annoyed. I can honestly say in my 2 years in Phoenix Legion I've never once seen him lose his rag with people. ever. There ain't many guild leaders who can have that said about them i assure you.

The Plan
So now everyone in guild has received an in game mail, outlining just HOW pissed he is, what he intends to do about and how long we *ahem* they have to sort their attitudes. Ours is a RAIDING guild, therefore, to be a member you have to...wait for it....RAID,Dun dun duuuuuun.

And no. I'm not going to post the letter here. It's kinda private to PL members.

In other news.

The Elder rank promotions are going to happen this weekend. I crossing my fingers, but secretly i think my hopes have been tarnished by not being able to raid these last 2 weeks. Stupid computer breaking.

The new Elder rank comes with brand spanking new responsibilities ( i tried and failed to spell that about 14 times).

1. -Elders are expected to maintain a high raid attendance. Although this will vary in usual PL style ( ) a ball-park figure of 75% is a good guide. This includes raids that were signed but oversubscribed, of course.
2. -Elders are held to a high standard in general player relations - you are standard bearers for the guild. Do not bring the guild into disrepute.
3. -Elders are assigned to new members as mentors and must ensure new members settle in and learn all they need to know to be productive members, and to not feel lost or confused.
4. -Elders are also to be active with regards to encouraging guild sign-ups and publicising recruitment.
5. -Finally, Elders are encouraged to assist less experienced players in improving their own personal WoW skills and help keep Officers appraised of any issues that need dealing with (social or raid-related).

and of course there are the benefits that the rank gives

1. -Elders have their own board on these forums. Please note that this board is primarily for issues relating to the Elders extra responsibilities.
2. -Elders have higher withdrawal limits for the guild tab (although since people put in more than they take out... )
   
3. -Elders may edit the GMotD (again, part of the extra responsibilities involve this).
   
4. -Elders get a bonus when it comes to looting (see below).
   
5. -Finally, we aim to allow Elders a small daily allowance from the Guild Bank towards repairs. However, don't take that for granted as we need to ensure such fund are sustainable.

2.4 Changes to Alterac Valley.

First off, there is a little bit of homework for you before you read this post.

You must first read This Post
And then you must read This Post

otherwise the full force of this probably wont hit you like it should, if that doesn't bother you then read on good sir.

After reading that and hearing there are changes en-route for AV, as a Hordie my ears pricked up, was this the fix that was so obviously needed? is this the re balance that could mean it was worth spending time in AV again? My hopes were raised, i was expecting something really epic to prove to me that my favorite company Blizz has not let me down.

I'm sure you can see where this is going, I've been wrong before, I'll probably be wrong again, in fact the list of things I've been wrong about is long and distinguished (that computer will run FINE without that fan).

Let me introduce you to the REAL changes to AV coming in content patch 2.4

"Alterac Valley will see a few very significant improvements in the next patch and we wanted to share the details of what we have planned.

The first change will be to move the Horde's starting tunnel back to a more equal distance from the first objectives, which will help evenly distance the starting points for each side across the terrain when the battle commences.

In addition, the General and Warmasters for each faction will receive a stacking buff from each other that boosts their health and damage. The more of them that are still in the battleground, the more dangerous they will all be. This will put a greater focus on destroying (and defending!) the towers that remove the Warmasters as players work toward defeating the appropriate General and conquering the land.

Also Balinda Stonehearth has been studying her spellbooks to become a more challenging opponent to the Horde and will do more damage with her spells. The additional health we recently added to Balinda and General Vanndar Stormpike will no longer be needed with these improvements and will be changed back to their previous amounts with the patch.

With these improvements teamwork and strategy will be more important than ever from beginning to end as the Alliance and Horde battle for victory in Alterac Valley. We'll see you on the battlefield."

This hit me like a ton of bricks.



Well, they certainly wont see me on THAT battlefield, i can assure you.

Lets follow logic here,

first AV- long not great for honor, but despite everything. good fun with a roughly equal win loss ratio. Changed.

AV Mark II- Shorter, Awesome for honor win or lose, still the same win ratio-ish. They introduce the weapons to be bought with honor points instead of ranks, suddenly awesome pvp gear is about the grind, QQ starts and the term "honor per hour" is invented. Due to a build up of alliance QQ, this is also CHANGED

AV, patch 2.3 - The alliance are buffed without valid reason in AV, this changes the win loss ratio by a significant amount in the alliances favor, i write my blog post about Arathi Basin and vow not to re enter AV until it is fixed. Horde are in desperate need of a CHANGE and so it was CHANGED

In the alliances favor again, this time they didn't even bother really giving excuses, they might as well have said "owned horde" on the forums and laughed about it, because somebody at Blizz HQ is having a real good giggle over this.

So now we come to AV Patch 2.4 - Non existant. i can only hope. I can only hope that my fellow hordes join me in Arathi Basin, leave pit of human error and stupidity well behind, join a balanced / mirrored map that favors nobody at all. Where we can win simply for being better.

-Quin

How to Waste Time in raids - Part 3

This is a collaborative post with my friend, guildy and fellow blogger Cryon check out his blog Here, Here and Here .

so far our list includes
The Poker Mod
Awesome Guild Chat

and tonight we have for you

How to waste time in raids - number 8

AFK

Now we had to put this one kinda high up the rankings since it has to be done with expertise and flash in order to perform it right.

All raiders know that a misplaced or mistimed AFK can cost a raid valuable minutes BUT i go afk on my raids all the time and they don't even know about it :P What can i say, after raiding for 2 years with the same people i can predict with reasonable success how long they take from say, a wipe, or Boss tatics or Sorting loot. I often take my leave of a raid for several minutes at a time. Grabbing drinks, watching a little TV hell evan doing a quick boss on the Playstation . All without the raid ever knowing i was missing, its a dying art form :)