And a year later.... another post.

Just wanted to write one more time to say goodbye to Daniel nee BigRedKitty. It was his blog that made me a better hunter and player and his blog that inspired this one. His early comment kept it going and his early link to it helped me get some of my regular readers.

Enjoy WOW retirement Daniel and kept those falling rocket boosters from hitting my house.

On Hiatus

Yeah... the time has come to let this go.

I just don't have the inclination to keep this up for now. Between working, raiding, farming and now being the official Auction House boy for my guild I just don't have the focus I need to continue this and produce quality posts.

There are many, many great WoW blogs and to those of you who enjoyed mine, I thank you. But there are others that I'm sure you will find equally as entertaining and informative.

So I bid you a fond adieu for now and wish all your drops be purple!

(And I can't wait to get my hands on this crossbow!)

I'm just not in the mood...

I'm not in the mood to blog, I'm not in the mood to read other blogs. I'm spending more time than ever on my guild's website and working with the Officers to the detriment of this blog and my regular reading.

I'm enjoying leveling my Shaman (just hit level 52!)and I still enjoy raids, but most of the stuff I do with my Hunter outside of that is pure farming for the raids or daily quests to fund my addiction to elixirs. Just not as much fun as questing.

I think I am woefully under geared and yet I still am usually in the top three on the DPS meters. (Except when I have another tasks -- like kiting or trapping or the like.)

Has the nature of the game changed for me? I still enjoy it but my need to read everything about BM hunters and the game in general is fading and my need to share on this here blog is fading as well. (Hence the severe drop in posting.)

I'm not sure what will snap me out of this funk. More gear? I just got Ranger-General's Chestguard and we're downing a new boss almost every week in SSC. Maybe I just need the expansion to light a fire under my tush.

Now I'm really mad!

How dare they!

I checked my email this morning to find that I had two new comments on my site. I always like comments, everyone blogger does. It validates what we do, even if the comments are "You are so wrong..." its nice to be able to continue the discussion.

So I was excited, a new person was commenting on my two most recent posts. I opened the email to see what was written.

It was a gold seller spamming my site. Well the first thing I did was delete the posts, but it makes me mad and makes me regret that I keep this site PG-13 because there are some choice words I would like to use right now.

If your account has been hacked, like mine was once, gold sellers are about as evil as it gets. Sure there are many who pay meager wages to people to play the games and farm gold for them, but there are also the ones that hack accounts and steal your gold and sell all your stuff and.... grrrr this just put me in a really bad mood.

Of course, they are wasting their time here as all my wonderful readers would never consider buying gold. Whats the point? It cheapens the gaming experience and causes server-wide inflation to all of us. But I would think that people who spend some time reading WoW blogs and trying to learn a little bit more about game play are not likely to go cheating.

On the plus side, I crafted Boots of the Crimson Hawk.. not a huge upgrade, but any plus to crit is going to help me.

That's Sir n00bie to you!

So my guild does the unthinkable -- they promoted me last night!

Yup -- I'm now one of the few, the proud, THE MAN -- I am now a junior officer in our guild (they call us Councilors --as we are expected to offer Council to Members and officers alike)

This on the heels of me getting my T4 leggings from Gruul last night -- Demon Stalker Greaves.

They changed raiding from Friday and Saturday (and I could never do Fridays) to Wednesday and Thursday with a Free for all sign up on Sunday afternoons (and then I have ZA Sunday night). So I'm getting involved in a lot more and we are dropping bosses. Three new bosses last week Mags, Fel Rever and Hydros. When we dropped Mags on Sunday I bid on and received his head, so I got Ring of the Recalcitrant out of the deal too. However, since we use the Suicide Kings Loot system, I will not be seeing any new loot for awhile from Raids (with the exception of ZA or KZ).

So you ask... does this lift your ennui? does that mean you'll be back to posting 5 to 7 times a week? Making wonderful and funny insights on this game we are all so addicting to?

Lift my ennui? Maybe a little. Being able to post more? I'll try.

I think that I try and make these grandiose posts that say something or are meaningful or fun... and lately, I just don't have the patients or the inclination to continue in that vein, but I will try and post more but make smaller posts -- meaty, but not always poignant, Interesting but not fully researched and linked. Is that okay?

In the meantime, I need some advice. Now that I got the greaves, I'm thinking of skipping out on the Shifting Camouflage Pants since its only a minor upgrade and I am still 12 Badges short. I could use 10 or 20 badges and get a primal nether and make Boots of the Crimson Hawk for which I just go the pattern. With three nights of raiding, I'm just not sure I could get into a heroic and then roll for the nethers... is it worth the 20 badges? Should I get one nether from a Heroic run and then use the 10 badges to buy the other?

I know, I know... I suck

Yeah -- I've been sucking at this blogging thing lately. I apologize. This is just a quickie to say I will be back soon. And thanks for visiting.

An Alt Holiday

Since all raids, runs and anything that involved any organization has been canceled over the last few weeks due to lack of everyone -- I have not played on Mervyn except to do the daily cooking quest. (Hey Blizz... lets add a little more diversity to these!)

So I have been concentrating on my Alts. (My Alliance Alts... I have a whole article in my head about playing a horde Alt and finding yourself as a n00b all over again -- I'll get to it someday.) Kelvyn, my Shaman is now is level 42... but he is no longer rested, so I'm giving him sometime to rest up and now focusing on my level 20 Druid Vynesa. (See the name pattern?)

I do have to say I love how much quicker you can level the alts... it makes it much more worth my time to spend it on these low level alts that I have never paid much attention to.

As a matter of fact, most of my friends have spent the holidays playing their alts, we were shocked when we saw someone come in on their main!

Kelvyn is currently my highest level alt, as I have never taken the time to level any other characters other than Mervyn, and while I find myself with the intention of making sure I try new quests and new areas that I did not focus on in my previous trip leveling up, I find myself sneaking back to the familiar. Dustwallow Marsh excepted, I keep picking up new quests, only to abandon them when they turn grey, because I have focused on "What I know".

I have another chance to experience new quests with Vynesa, but I fear the same thing will happen. Meanwhile, Sevyn, my level 20 mage has been sitting in The Exodar since days after Burning Crusade came out... he was my first alt and he seems to have been forgotten.

None-the-less, as the holiday fades and we get back to Karazhan, Zul'Aman and Serpentshrine, I still feel that I will co0ntinue to spend time with my alts.. at least now that Kelvyn has a mount it makes the grind a lot less of a chore... now we just have to get Blizz to give every class a 20% speed boost at level 20, that would make things much easier.

At last my arm is complete!

... is what I would have yelled had we A) Gotten the Prince down and/or B) he dropped the bow.

Neither event happened. In all three attempts on the Prince, who usually goes down fairly easily, we had terrible luck with inferno placement and just kept wiping... and since we didn't have a warlock, we had skipped Shade... so we eventually had respawns and not enough interest to re-clear all the way to the Prince.

So my ennui continues - as you can tell since I write this post 5 days after the fact!

In the meantime, I have been spending some time with my Shaman in Dustwallow Marsh and as much as I like the quests, I just can not stand the quick respawn rate on all the MoBs... I mean you kill your way to the objective and while you are sitting down and getting your mana back the mobs respawn behind you and jump you... and you've already killed them once! So frickin' annoying.

Well I've hit level 38 with him and there doesn't seem to be much left in that area so I will be moving on... maybe to Stranglethorn.

In the meantime, have a happy holiday... maybe a nice new year and I hope to have many, many more posts in the coming year.

(Don't get the reference in the title? Go see "Sweeney Todd")

I miss the loot!

It's been months and many runs and there has not been a hunter drop of anything I have needed in a long time. If not for the belt I bought from PVPing, I would have no new gear to speak of.

I am getting up there in Badges of Justice so I may get the Shifting Camouflage Pants in a month or two!

It seems like a long time ago when Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix dropped for my group (and I wasn't there) and there have certainly been a bunch of Prince deaths since, but has he dropped that bow again? Sure, the one other time I wasn't there -- a rogue got it.

I have not gotten any real loot in so long I forgot how it feels to put on that new piece of armor, flex and see how much your DPS goes up.

I think maybe that is tempering my excitement for the game and my ennui about keeping up with this site. I would really like to be writing 4-7 entries a week, and now that work is not quite so busy I certainly have time for it, but I just don't have the motivation. So on Sunday, everyone say a little prayer to Elune for getting me the Bow and if it drops, I promise to write 5 entries of some sort next week.

Without internet, do we exist?

Arggghhh! for the last week I have had severely limited service to the internet as my throughput of cable seems to have been throttled back to nothing!

Generally in the afternoon, we have some TV on the cable boxes and some connection to the internet, but not really enough to play WoW. By 8PM, the cable boxes are useless messes of pixelation and the cable modem is a doorstop.

Comcast comes today to hopefully fix the problem, but I don't have high hopes... I think they are going to tell me that the cable has to be re-run from the hub... which means under three driveways and the last time that happened it took three months to complete.

Verizon did lay fiber optic in front of my house, so if it really becomes a problem, I can go that route.

But what about poor Mervyn (and Kelvyn my level 34 Shaman who is exploring Dustwallow Marsh) do they still exist if I have no connection to them?

I suppose as long as no one logs in as me and types "DELETE" they are probably somewhere in the nether.

It's just I miss them -- hopefully I'll be back soon

DRAMA

First I must apologize: I've had a general malaise hanging over me and just haven't felt like writing. This simple post has taken me over three days to complete. Maybe I'm coming down with some kind of holiday bug or WoW ennui? In any case, I appreciate you coming here and taking the time to read my works, even if you're all lurkers and never comment. On to the Post.

Every since my guild decided to really focus on end-game progression there has been problems and grumbling within the guild. We've had a smattering of /gquits and a lot of screaming in private channels on vent.

In part it is these 25-man teams that just seems to be made to exclude people, in part it is the fact that no one seems to be able to agree on raiding nights, I'm sure there are other reasons, but it seems like everyone was on edge for quite awhile. And then something happened; it was the kind of thing that, depending upon the reaction, could pull the guild apart or make it more cohesive. Luckily, the latter came about and, at least for a little while, end-game raiding complaining quieted down.

What happened? you ask. Well, I'll tell ya.

My Guild does not use the DKP system, we use the Suicide Kings, which is basically a list. The person on the top of the list has the first shot at the loot, if they take it, they drop to the bottom of the list and everyone else moves up.

This story involves a well respecting member of the guild, funny, good at his role, a favorite of the officers, a class leader and the designated disenchanter of Tokens for his class.

A T4 shoulder token dropped and no one requested it, so this person, who was at the very top of the Suicide Kings list, took the token in order to DE it.

So he turned in the token for gear and then, instead of disenchanting it just sent two void crystals to the Guild Bank AND THEN SHOWED UP THE NEXT NIGHT FOR THE RAID IN HIS NEW T4 SHOULDERS. So in essence he took the gear without suiciding himself down the list.

As punishment, the Guild Leader and officers present made him DE the gear then and there and then suicided him to the bottom of the list and asked him to leave the raid.

Many people in the guild thought this was too lenient as the guild charter says that any "Ninja" type move will be grounds for expulsion from the guild.

Of course, this was just the Officers' first reaction they had not had a chance to debate the issue they continued to have a very somber raid night.

When the incident was revisited and discussed amongst the membership and officers a decision to /gkick was decided, even though the culprit claimed all along that all he wanted to do was just "check out" the shoulders, however, his protest rang silent and his regardless of his motives his actions really rocked the guild.

In the end, he quit before he could be kicked, but in a final goodbye on the forums he never owned up to the fact that he did something wrong... in fact, he claimed he was /gquiting because he felt he had been treated unfairly (by being made to DE the item and then be suicided to the bottom of the list).

This was a likable, funny, person who in leaving the guild in such spectacular fashion, he brought such pain and angst that he actually brought us all together... at least momentarily.

Sticking it to Your Allies

Let’s all admit this right here and now... there are more people in our guild, in our party, in our raid on the trade channel, etc that we just want to gank, than there will ever be on the opposite side of the server.

As a hunter we have a wonderful tool called Misdirection, in which we can put aggro onto anyone in our party or raid. I usually like the people I play with, so I only jokingly announce that I am casting misdirection on the healers, but there have been rare instances where I just want to send a whole bunch of MoBs against an annoying mage, warlock, rogue or priest just because I can. So far, I have controlled those urges, but maybe one day I will follow through on that threat.

However, I feel it will be ultimately unsatisfying… why? Because while misdirection is nice, you’re not shoving that knife blade into the toon yourself, and it seems only fair that you should be able to do that.

The other day, in the chat channel, I saw someone write, “Hunters are useless I always kick them out of any party I am in.” I started to write in response, “Misdirection on …” but then I remembered I was on my level 30 shaman and that wouldn’t make sense, plus other hunters said a few things, nothing as threatening as I was going to write, but they defended the class nicely.

On a related note, I was farming Netherdragon Scales up in Netherstorm and it is just strange to be attacking M0Bs that are green. They walk by you; they say “Hey how’s it going? Thanks for defending us down there in Shadowmoon.”
“My pleasure, you gave me a great mount for doing so,” And then you send your pet on them, kill them and skin them for their dragon scales… it seems rather heartless.

ZA, 2.3 QQ, etc.

Man, it's been a hell of a week.

The meeting at work went great... thinks for asking.

Since I had to work late on Tuesday, in my downtime, I grabbed the laptop that is pre-loaded with WoW, updated it with the patch, got on-line made my [Quiver of a Thousand Feathers] put 100 feathers up on the AH (at 40 gold a stack), did the cooking quest and stationed myself at the Light's Hope Chapel and logged.

Got home Tuesday at 8:30PM, plopped myself in front of the computer and set the patch to install, turned and asked my wife and children how their day was. Turned back to the computer when the patch was done, got a few new add-ons, put my headset on, logged in and was ready for Zul A'man.

We had a really good time there too. We downed Nalorakk in two shots (he dropped the [Robes of Heavenly Purpose]) and then we moved on to Akil'zon, and we tried about four times to down him, got him to 24% on one of the attempts. We were happy with our performance. The other guild group didn't make it passed the waves of Amani'shi Warbringer so we were pretty proud of ourselves.

Before bed I farmed the [Pattern: Bag of Many Hides] and checked my auctions (jerks had undercut my feathers). Eventually I lowered the price to 25 gold per stack and they sold no problem, I also sold a ton of Heavy Knothide Leather (they would sell as soon as I listed them) and one of those nice leatherworking bags for 445 gold (that won't happen again, the price has already dropped to 250!) So I made about 1,000 gold in two days, through some nice planning on my part.

Of course, I got some serious and deserved Spouse Aggro in the morning for coming home and ignoring the family.

New Topic: Okay... so the hunter forums are all in an uproar because we lost the following abilities: Double Trapping and Feign Death Drinking. I never double trapped, although things do sometimes walk into my traps unintentionally so I think this change is not a real well thought out one, since our CC is not very target specific, plus it seriously nerfs the Survival tree. The FD Drink thing, I also never used. I would put a Superior Mana Oil on my weapon and use Elixir of Draenic Wisdom, Aspect of the Viper, plus some fel mana pots to make sure I had enough Mana for the long fights. I never liked how the FD drinking took you and your pet out of the fight, so no loss there, but the crying that is going on on the forums, after all our great buffs in 2.3, is personally embarrassing to me.

Finally, I will be away for the next week doing the Family Thanksgiving thing, so I will miss our next two ZA runs... Alas. I will try and post in that time, but if I don't get a chance to, I'll be back in a week.

Patch Day, working alot, Working late, oh my...

Okay, so I have 80 minutes before a big meeting for which I have been preparing for quite awhile, hence the slow down in posts.

I will be working until 8PM tonight get home at 8:30 and go to ZA, assuming everything loads in correctly, at 9PM.

I have two posts already written in my head (one about allies one about guild stuff) but no time to put them down on "paper".

Maybe tomorrow.

How magnanimous am I?

2.3 is almost upon us and I have amassed over 300 light feathers, 100 Heavy Knothide Leathers, a primal nether and 2 primal airs. As soon as 2.3 goes live I will be making myself a [Quiver of a Thousand Feathers] (I'll be able to put a roll over link to that after 2.3 is live). The question is, what will I do with my remaining 200 feathers?

I have offered to friends and guildies, that if they run me through a heroic to get the Primal Nether, I will make them a quiver. (Ammo pouches are out of luck, as I never attained revered with Honor Hold.) I even mentioned that I would trade feather and leather for Primal Shadow and Primal Fire, since I need them for my [Ebon Netherscale Girdle]. I also said I would farm Nether Dragonscales in trade for those primals. But what do I do if Light Feathers start selling for 20 gold per stack? Nether Dragonscales for 100? Am I a nice guy or do I make a quick profit?

Here's what I'm thinking -- early Tuesday morning before the patch I will put up 5 stacks of Light Feathers for sale at the crazy price of 40 gold. If they sell at that price great, if not, I'll have them available for friends.

I guess there is a price at which friendship just can't overcome, especially when those friends have gold of their own. After all its fake money in a pretend game and I'm usually the good guy. Plus if they didn't know to start stocking up on Light Feathers shouldn't I punish them for being a n00b?

Of course when you put it that way, I'll feel really guilty, being a n00b myself... but I'll just throw all my gold onto the bed and roll around in it and then I'll feel better!

Being a n00b is better than being a jerk!

So our Kara team is taking a little break -- we were going to take two weeks off, but it looks like it will be only a week as we will start up Zul'Aman when 2.3 drops on Tuesday.

In the meantime, four of us decided we would spend Tuesday running heroics. That left one spot for pugging and since we had two hunters, a priest, and a feral druid, we really needed a mage. We picked Slave Pens and started looking for a fifth. We found one and summoned him using the summoning stone did a /inspect and see that he was wear all blues and greens. We agreed that he was not quite ready for heroics and asked him to leave. He understood, we apologized, he opened a portal and off he went -- no hurt feelings -- at least not too badly. I'm sorry to say I don't remember his name, because he was cool about it.

I do however remember the name of the mage we picked to replace him and if you're on Hyjal and send me a tell I'll spill the name so you know not to group with this person.

This fire mage shows up and certainly doesn't bring the DPS like I do, on par with our MM hunter though and the sheep are nice. The first sign of trouble comes when our Priest fears a sporebat into another group.

Look, the pet was on the bat, but intimidation was on CD and I couldn't get the pet off of the squishy who was about to die so he cast fear. It's a shame that it happened we tried to stay up, but we wiped. It happens. This mage types, "That was really bad, guys."

Without further incident we got to Mennu the Betrayer and got him down with no significant problems. Our mage's typed response, "That took too long".

About 5 minutes later I pulled aggro on a pat because I backed up a little too much. We wiped again. On our way back to the instance, I noticed our mage disconnected. She never came back.

She just decided she didn't want to be a part of our group anymore and instead of saying to us, "Guys, I don't like the wiping, I'm leaving." She pulled this passive aggressive BS on us and we wound up waiting for 10 minutes to see if she would reconnect and then another 10 while we found a replacement (another Feral Druid, who off-tanked what the mage would have sheeped).

And of course, we rocked the instance and got through it without another wipe.

I just got really irate at this person and their jerky attitude. I would much rather people say about me, "He's a n00b, he backs up into pats (but he does bring the DPS)." Then saying, "He's a jerk, he says disparaging things to his party mates and drops out of instances without comment."

Am I Uberz?

So last week, while I was in Kara, there was a discussion amongst guild officers and class leaders about how to read the WoW Web stats that we were putting up on our guild's forum. I could not attend, as I was in Kara... doing this:

Now, what I want you to note in the above that pets are not combined. I am at the numero uno position at 17.4% and my Ravager Kodos is at number 7 at 7.2%. Combined it looks something like this:

DAMN -- this is a boatload of damage. Blkwidow at the five spot would probably be higher but she, like a good class leader, was in the meeting, as they dissected the WoW Stats, so could not give Kara her full attention.

However, when she returned from her Vent meeting, she told me that they asked "How does Mervyn do so much damage?"

"I really don't know" she told them, "He's doing it right now in Kara and his gear is not as good as ours... must be some beast master thing."

As you can see from below on one of our failed Gruul attempts, I am number 1 baby! As a matter of fact 1,2 & 3 are all hunters! (7 & 11 too, but someone shattered them early in the fight.)

So, I think it's pretty cool that people are wondering how a n00b like me gets to be such a DPS machine /flex!

And I tell them, I play my character and my spec well. I know what I am doing and I study up on things I need to know.

So now that I have presented my bona fides, I think I will spend some more time this week on "How I roll..." posts, so look for them.

In the meantime, since on one else will invite me, if you know of an arena team that wants an uber hunter....

And now for something completely different

Okay:
So this will be a post without a single reference to WoW. Then I will get back on my game and start talking about things. I even have the germination of something I want to write about in my head but for today... something different.
*********
So I was listening to the news the other day and heard that Dennis Kucinich was asked in a presidential debate if it was true that he had seen a UFO. He replied:

"It was more than 25 years ago, I don't want to go into details right now because that is not why I am running for president, but I can affirm that I did see something and it was a UFO. But so have a lot of other Americans."

And at first I guffawed, whether you agree with the man's politics or not, he is not serious contender for the Democratic nomination, and this just added to the weird stories about the man.

And then I thought, 'oh crap, had I been asked the same question, I would also have to say that I saw some things in the sky that I have no way of knowing what or who it could possibly be.'

Here is the story: In the summer of 1992 my mother invited me to join her on a trip to a spa in the Berkshire mountains. My father could not go and she wanted company... so I thought a free trip to the Berkshires, exercise and massages, I suppose I could go.

One night we went out to Tanglewood, which is an outdoor concert bowl and the summertime home of the Boston Pops. We got lawn seats to sit and listen to John Williams play some of his most famous pieces. Since we were on the lawn we could not see the symphony, so the only thing to do was look up at the brilliant cloudless, moonless sky and see the sea of stars. It was absolutely incredible, I could have watched those stars for hours!

I was lying facing North-North-West when I saw four green blobs moving across the sky heading in a Southerly direction. The blobs were about 5 times large than the largest star and glowing green they were moving in almost a "V" formation, but they would sometimes move a little bit to the side and move back. I have created an illustration:

They were a little more glow-y and larger than the ones in the example above and they didn't move straight across the sky like birds or planes. They wobbled in a semi-straight path and at one point one of them jutted out to the side quite a bit, as if it went to take a closer look at something, as illustrated below:

I knew of no flying machine or even bird that could quite move like that. I also knew I wasn't seeing things, because there were lots of people pointing up at the sky at the blobs showing them to their friends. I tapped my mother and showed it to her, she agreed it was mighty weird, but we dropped the conversation and went back to the music as they disappeared over the horizon.

That night I called my girlfriend (now Mrs. EN) and told her about the weird thing I saw, she thought it too was weird and we said our goodnights and I feel asleep.

About two months later I was at Mrs. EN's parents' house and she says to me, "Tell my Dad about what you saw at Tanglewood."
"Huh?" I asked, "What did I see?"
I had no recollection of the blobs. As she explained it all to me, I started to vaguely remember seeing them and then all of the sudden, the full memory of it came back to me, but the memory was so blanked out prior to that re-telling I feel that had I never told Mrs. EN, I never would have thought of it again.

In general when it comes to Aliens, UFOs, ghosts, etc. I consider myself a skeptic, and I still do, but I just can't tell you what those things in the sky were and why I didn't remember them the next day.
Does that make me a weirdo?

The 50th Post!

This was meant to be a sweeping post, congratulating me for finally having some substance to this blog. Except if you look at my last post and even my last few posts -- I'm not sure I have anything of substance to talk about.

Last night, in Kara, we started talking about our various blogs and I mentioned that I was blocked. "Some of my most popular posts were about the sex buffs, maybe I should continue in that vein," I asked. We have a rather fun and loose group and that was met with relative cheer. "Having done Straight and Gay buffs," I asked, "where do I go from there, bestiality?"

To which my raid leader responded, "Oh -- cross race -- I'd love to hear about Tauren-Gnome couplings."

Okay, let that image sit in your head for awhile and then start laughing.

Funny... but not substantive.

I'll work through this block, however it does kinda mess up my celebration of the 50th post.

In the meantime, here is a edited/modified version of the entry I had in mind:

50 posts! Wow, that is just great, I just... well I don't know what to say. There are a few people I have to thank, the ones that helped me get here and all. Well, first off, we must thank Elune, ya know, just because. I, also, owe a big debt to Big Red Kitty, without reading his blog I'm not sure I would have even considered starting one of my own (and I have a feeling that many of my fellow colleagues feel the same way.) I want to thank all my friends who came to this site and gave me very positive feedback and I want to thank all the readers, lurkers and commentators alike.

When I began this blog i said in the very first post:

If you, like me, feel as if there are aspects of this game that you don't get, come here and share -- I'm certain that I will always have n00bish moments but hopefully, I can start learning from them -- maybe one day I will learn not to use Multi-Shot in a Crowd Control situation!

So hopefully I have entertained and informed in these past 49 posts and I will continue to do so... in the meantime, here is a list of some general "Don'ts" that I have learned from my time in WoW.

Don't:

• vendor stuff that may be useful to another player. (Quick hint: "of the whale" vendor or DE it, "of the bandit" AH that badboy)
• be an arrogant ass in PUGS
• be an arrogant ass in Guild
• be an arrogant ass anywhere -- there are people on the server that can kill you. (It may take ten of them, but they'll get you down.)
• come to raids without Pots, water and food (the ones that give you buffs)
• keep epic (or really nice blues) un-enchanted, you are doing yourself and your group a major disservice
• put up with BS from your friends and guildies. At the very worst, you can always move to another server and make new friends (assuming you are not an arrogant ass)
• go into an instance ignorant. Before entering anywhere new go to wowwiki or bosskillers and learn a little bit.
• make the game not fun anymore -- if that happens take a break.

and finally:

• Don't (on the stairs leading to Moroes in Karazhan) send your pet wildly after party guests, only to return having aggroed the entire ballroom. (Yes I did AGAIN last night -- that would be the fifth time... in my defense though I assisted the tank and he changed targets)

So, fifty posts later I thank you for your interest!

Arggghhhh -- I'm blocked!

I have writers block.

Well at least I am blocked when it comes to talking about what I want to talk about here on this blog and that is: examples from my career as a n00b to use as fables to help me and my readers learn something from my mistakes.

And its not as if there is nothing to write about, flitting in and around the edge of my consciousness are all of these half remembered stupid moves I've made. I know I've thought of them in the past and thought 'that would be a good thing to write about', but invariably I am in my car at the time and I can't write the idea down and then it disappears back to the fringes of my memory.

Things in Kara have not gone exceptionally well, but not worth writing or whining about.

I could talk about the way I went without enchantment for months as a level 60 because I didn't understand how they worked. I could mention the first time I ever saw a need/greed roll and kept getting confused and rolling need. But those are minor issues, certainly not worthy of any kind of entry.

I mean it's Halloween -- I should have some story to scare the bejebus out of you, right?

Well, I'll work through this and figure something out!