BREAKING NEWS

Does this seem as cool as I think?

An undocumented (and unconfirmed) new spell on the PTR for us Hunters is:
Disarming Shot

Disarming Shot 6% of base Mana 35 yd range Instant cast 1 min cooldown Requires Ranged WeaponA long-range shot that disarms the target for 10 sec.

Does this seem as cool as it looks?

6% of Mana is pretty steep but this really, really helps Hunters not just in the Arena, but in many circumstances.

It just seems really cool. I hope it becomes permanent.

That Sinking Feeling Part II

When I started this endeavor, I kept having these great ideas of things to write about. Not just the "here's what happened to me today" posts, but the "Really helpful, really useful, boy was I dumb but you can learn from my mistakes" posts.

I had a whole bunch of things to talk about, and now... I can't remember them.

I really, really want this blog to be more than entertaining. A place to help us learn something... or at least make everyone go "Yeah, I feel that way too dude!"

But I am finding it harder and harder to write posts of substance and so I write less and less and so people visit less and less and then it just dwindles away to nothing.

I'm not sure if anyone noticed but I removed a blog from my blog roll this week. Huntard with Cheese went away from my blog roll because he hasn't posted since August and I figured if he wasn't updating, there was no point in having a link, but I really, really liked his site. I thought he had a weird and snarky quality to his blog that I would love to have in mine if I had the talent for it. I'm not sure why he stopped blogging, maybe he wasn't getting enough hits or maybe it was taking up too much time, but I find it sad.

My blog colleague Exanimo from Full Time Wow Addict has a recent post questioning the usefulness of his blog.

And I can certainly understand where he is coming from. And even though I have in-game friends who have told me how much they like the blog, so I know some people are reading and enjoying it, I can't help but have that sinking feeling again that I have nothing important or even entertaining to impart and I should just stop doing this.

But I probably won't, I guess I'm just channeling my mother, trying to guilt my readers into saying something nice about me, even though you're already here and reading this.

So, you come here, you read what I have to say, would it kill you to show me your affection through a comment or two, is that too much to ask?

Hacked like a n00b

Well, technically, I was a hacked like a n00b, because I was one.

I had only been playing for about two months at the time and I knew nothing!

I had just hit 60, I was starting to get some gold thanks to a lucky drop and I logged in one day to find my character naked in Ironforge, everything gone except my mount and my hearthstone and all my money gone.

I put a ticket in right away, they closed down my account until I could verify I was indeed myself. (I had to fax a copy of my passport to them) and then in about a week I got much of my stuff back. My guildies had been nice and threw some money my way so it wasn't that bad.

But how did I get hacked in the first place? I run Norton anti-virus and Internet Protection and the definition were up-to-date. So then I downloaded Spybot: Search & Destroy and they found a couple of cookies that they thought were a problem, but no keyloggers or really malicious threats. SO what was the deal?

Here was the deal... I only use about five different password and username combinations (except for my credit card and online banking stuff) and when I signed up for WoW I just used my most popular one. Obviously, it was on some list somewhere and a hacker just used it randomly. They may have even known about it for awhile and lay in wait until I had enough gold to make it worth their while.

In my defense, I will say that I was unaware of all these hacking shenanigans when I signed up for WoW and figured I did not need to use a super secret Passwords. Now, I use a password that I use no where else except WoW.

When I was communicating with a GM about all of this, they tended to be very circumspect about how their fraud department went about penalizing the parties involved, but here is what I fathomed about what happened and I got a "Could be..." reply from the GM:

Someone bought gold from a website selling it, and this fly by night operation, instead of farming the gold themselves, hacked accounts, sent the gold to the unsuspecting sap who paid $108 for 1,000 gold and then got their account canceled because there was a clear trail right back to where the fraud began.

So the moral of this story is twofold:
1. If you buy gold with real money -- you are a loser and I hate you.
2. Don't use the same username and password for WoW that you use to register for your local newspaper!

Tales from a n00bside I

In the lands of Azeroth there are thousands of tales from the n00bside, this is just one of them:

I was level 60 and I felt like I was walking on air. I had 300 gold in my pocket and I was in the Eastern Plague lands killing scourge and building my Argent Dawn Reputation, when all of the sudden -- GONG -- I'm honored, so I go to the quartermaster to see what new stuff I can buy.

Hmmm... what is this[Hallowed Brazier]? The tool tip doesn't seem to help, so I right click on it to get some more info.

I here a clink of gold, and I think oops, I bought it -- and then I look at my gold and OMFG more than a third of my former stash was GONE! This thing that I just bought and had no idea what it was just cost me 120 gold! And it was red in my inventory so I couldn't even use it!

Argghh -- I could put in a ticket to a GM and see if I could get my money back or just vendor it back for 30 gold and chalk it up to lesson learned.

I took the lessoned learned route and now I look up things and their prices before I buy em.

That was a tale from the n00bside, there are many more, if you would like to share your's email them to eternal.n00bie@gmail.com.

A Good Read

Yes, we all know I'm a n00b. That is the reason for the blog. Sometimes I just wish I wasn't so much of a n00b.

On the steps going up to the Moroes fight, once again, I mis-tabbed and somehow selected the group behind the group we were taking down, sent the pet, watch him disappear over the rim of the steps and all of the sudden there were two groups of angry, knife throwing, undead bad-dancing MoBs, instead of one. (I think this is the third time I have done that.)

I apologized for pulling the extra group and my RL, replied saying, "No, that's okay. This way I get a good read."

And I thought to myself, how prescient of our raid leader, he wants to see how the group reacts to the new threat, see how well we work together and where areas of weakness occur. Because, we all know that when fights go as planned, you don't learn anything about anyone -- when they go wrong, and its not a total and absolute complete mess and wipe, you can look for who picked up on what, who improvised and who panicked and ran into a corner and sucked their thumb.

In that moment, in that statement, I understood the RL's role a lot more. I don't have that ability to watch what everyone is doing, I watch the fight and I improvise where needed, but I don't really pay attention to how the other raid members react to new situations. I had a new found respect for all raid leaders who can process all this information amongst such chaos.

And then, not one second later my RL clarified: "If you haven't read Merv's blog yet, you should. This pull should make for a good read."

Odds & Ends

I know, its been a while since I posted anything of substance that may help us shake off some of that n00bness that still clings to us and makes our clothes reek at the end of the day. So, while I do have a couple of posts planned that should help cover up, if not totally alleviate that odor, they are not quite ready for publication. So, I will drop in little tidbits about whats been happenning to me and how things are progressing in general. There is a small chance you may find something helpful in these ramblings... at the very least, I hope you will be entertained.

ACL: I came back from my vacation to read a post on my guild forum that I had been made Assistant Class Leader for the hunters. I knew it was in the works, but it was nice to see it was official.
Before it was official, I sent my class leader a message with some thoughts I had about the upcoming raiding group that was being put together and how it related to hunters. Now, the CL is my friend, so I mentioned that I hoped I wasn't being presumptuous, since it the promotion wasn't official, but I just thought that we should start talking about things. Funnily enough, no one had asked her if she wanted me to be her ACL, she said very nicely that she would have chosen me anyway but you would think they would ask the CL who their ACL should be. (Of course, the Guild has some responsibility to make sure the CL and the ACL are complimentary, and they should also not be adversarial.)

LBK: So, I saw BRK's post from last week, I think, talking about Little Black Kitty's blog typesetting error. I had never been to LBK website, but saw that she was on my server and I added her to my friends list and when I saw her on the server, I said "Hi". She thought that was cool enough to post on her blog and I am now reciprocating. I wonder if when she turns 70, if she'll still be little black kitty?

HERT: So we had our first run this weekend as a "High End Raiding Team". Still not sure how a n00b like me made it to the team, but I must have friends in high places or maybe because I can do a goodly amount of damage or maybe some combination of both. In any case, I couldn't make it Friday night, right now Friday is reserved for, after the kids are in bed, spending time exclusively with the wife (i.e. not getting on the WoW, watching or doing whatever she wants to do, etc.) So I missed our first take down of Gruul. Made it Saturday for Magtheridon's Lair -- which while we didn't get him down, was still a fun fight.
One of the aspects of the lair is that the Channeler's will not aggro you until you attack them, so you can move around the room, discuss tactics and get into position. As this info was presented to us, I said, "So I guess we should take our pets off aggressive." And while most people laughed, someone, I'm not sure who, actually said, "Your pets should NEVER be on aggressive during a raid!" Course, that didn't stop a warlock from summoning his pet, only to realize that it was still on aggressive... oops, I think that was wipe number 3. (Wipe 1 was also an oops, someone pulled aggro, but no one copped to that one.) I will state emphatically for the record, that I was not the one who pulled aggro on that or any attempt at Mag!

FP: (Future posts) So, I want to do series of posts entitled "Tales from the n00bside". Stupid things we may have done in WoW that we are embarrassed by. They can be stories that will amuse or have a moral, whatever... I have a few but I would like to fill it out with other people's experience, so if you have one, please feel free to email me (at the link above) and I will include it in the post.

TTFN: Ta ta for now

Bloggin' on my iPod

Got my new iPod touch. Very cool. Creating this post (very slowly) on it.

Will post more later, but I just thought this was cool to find wifi somewhere and be able to post.