The deed is done. My weeks of waffling (no pancakes!) on the subject are finally at an end. You see, I made a painful decision on Monday. I was going to leave my friends, and go play the game with some other friends. A while back, Oh I don’t even remember when, August? I got an email from Drew. He was “getting the band back together”. I jumped at the chance. Spent my $25 and moved Maerdred over to Lightninghoof to play with two of my oldest and greatest friends in WoW. Probably the best thing I have taken from my time with this game; my friendship with Liz and Drew.

I moved to their server and Drew’s plan was to build a small, tight knit 10′s guild. Sadly, this didn’t really happen. The guild dwindled to 6 people, maybe 7. I’d log on for hours at a time and have nobody to talk to at all. Liz and Drew would log on and we’d chat while each did our own thing, and it was cool to be with my friends, but It was pretty lonely 90% of the time. I had moved to be with my friends, and to play the game with a great group of people. That group never materialized. I was alone, not having fun. So, I made my choice. I’d leave Drew and Liz yet again.

Feeling horrible about it the whole time, I talked to Liz and told her of my plans. She was very understanding and was completely right. We have IM, Email, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs. We’re not going to stop being friends. We’re not going to stop talking to each other. We’re just not going to party up and kill bad guys in WoW together anymore. Who knows, when the cross-realm communication they talked about at Blizzcon comes out, we’ll have our own chat channel anyway, I am sure.

With my decision made, My application accepted, I logged in to the account management and purchased another server transfer. This time for Maerdred. Kael’thas bound, Maer was ready for his guild invitation. I had applied and been invited with open arms on Monday with my new DK, Nightmaer, and also with my newly transformed Dwarf Paladin Fohrbin on Tuesday.

Maerdred was now ready to become a member of the Sidhe Devils; a guild which I had heard great things about from reading Bear’s blog, and talking to some current members in BlogAzeroth chat. Friendly, mature, active, casual. All things I hope to be. Log in once a month or all day every day. They don’t mind as long as you’re good people. There are always people around to chat with and that’s what the game’s about. Making new friends and being social. When Maerdred made the move, I got very excited. I even /squeed. Though that was more for Jess’ benefit than my own.

It’s a weird kind of feeling being happy when you just left your friends behind, but as Liz said, We’ll always have Facebook. I’ll miss playing with them, but I’m already sure I won’t regret my decision to move to the Sidhe Devils. The people have been very welcoming and I am sure that soon it will feel like a second home.

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Tuesday night, I decided to bite the big one and move my Blood Elf Paladin to the Alliance. It was in preparation for something I’ll be telling you about in a future post, possibly to be posted later today. Some of you already know what it is.

The first thing I did was log in and make sure I had all of the items I wanted to take with me to the other side. I cleaned out the mail, emptied the bags of useless stuff. Made sure I had some gold from my banker alt. That type of thing.

I then screenshotted everything I could think of which may change during the process so I had some point of reference. I took pictures of my bank and bags. I looked at Reputation and Honor. I looked at Talents and skills. I forgot to look at my quest log and my achievements, which was rather silly of me. I looked at pets, but not mounts. I checked my character pane and even the currency tab.

I then logged out, while in a neutral place (just in case) and went about my Faction change. Once I got the confirmation which took about 20 minutes, I logged back in chose my new race(Dorf) and made him look silly. I kept the same name, because some people said it sounded Dorfish. I then logged in, found myself in Ironforge, and got a new achievement. Hmm… I toured the Fjord! Cool. I wish I had checked the Horde Achievements first to compare them. Dummy. I know I had already gotten that one.

I then made my way to Stormwind, got on a boat, rode to Northrend, and then flew to Dalaran. Once there I got to the bank and took a string of screenshots to compare. The only glaring differences were what you’d expect. Horde Reputations moved over to Alliance ones in just the way explained on the Faction transfer FAQ. I lost all my quests and Quest items. Mounts changed from the Horde version to the Alliance version, just the way they’re explained in the FAQ. That was pretty much it. Everything that wasn’t faction specific didn’t change. I did notice once I got to Valiance Keep, there were a ton of quests available. I’m betting that they offer Faction specific rep or rewards, and the FAQ does mention that certain factions will be reset, along with all of the quests leading up to them.

If I notice anything else funky, I’ll be sure to add it in here. Keep an eye out on my twitter @maerdred, where I’ll post any updates to this post.

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Welllll… That was fast. Tuesday I logged in needing a Hallowed Helm and a Tooth Pick. I got my Tooth Pick in my first treat bag of the evening. I then Instantly joined Trade chat seeking out a HH Group. Don’t ask why LFG doesn’t happen in the LFG channel. If you don’t know that Trade is for LFG by now, you haven’t been playing WoW nearly long enough. Or you have a guild with more than 5 people in it. Wait, I think we have 6. Drew, Liz, Tom, Me, Eli(what’s her name anyway?), and that other guy… What’s his name? Oh I forget. Noah. That’s his name. Right?

Well. yeah. I joined Trade chat to look for a group. Got a group pretty quick. got 6 summons because someone hadn’t ever done it before, and didn’t see the helm drop at all, but we did have 4 Temporary mounts drop. So I have a Broom for the next little while. I still have not seen the mount drop at this point. So, I logged off Tuesday night needing only the Hallowed Helm for my achievement. Wednesday night I logged in, Started looking for a group. Got a group, ported to IF, Got on a Gryphon and… WoW Error. Log back in. Oh good. I’m still in the group. WoW Error. Run a Repair, Log In. Kicked from the Group, sitting in Chillwind Camp. Great. no trade chat. Join LFG for H Nexus, Spam LFG for HH boss. No dice. Fly back to IF. Join Trade Chat. Heals LFG HH. Have Summon. Invited. This is why we use Trade as LFG…

We get there,  The rogue is still in WG. WTF? The DK Tank questions my ability to heal with a level 70 Mace, Level 70 Gloves and Bracers and a level 68 Starfire Idol… OK. Umm…. healing HH is easy. a DK with Bandages could do it. Plus, I kind of have experience. I healed every TBC encounter up to Bloodboil(in T4 gear). In Wrath, I’ve healed all but the last boss of ToC and Algalon… I kind of know what I’m doing. Plus, I’ve healed HH 5+ times a day since Sunday. I’ve got this down. So. the rogue was taking forever and the Spriest had to leave for a raid in 5 minutes. so we used his summon and took out the HH. The Helm dropped and I won the Roll.

Achievement done. Hallowed be my Name! We sat and waited, then the group kind of fell apart. So, I hearthed and started doing Dailies, and also I ran to get a new mace from the Kalu’ak, because I could. Get a whisper for H Nexus. Oh yeah I forgot about that. Sure. I’ll go. Nervous as all get out. We did fine though. The rest of the group was better geared than I, but I think I just forgot how easy that place is. I never had mana issues and we roflstomped it. No helm or mace for me though.

After that was done, we headed to Gundrak, and had a pretty good time roflstomping that. I’m now the proud owner of 10 Emblems of Conquest, which is cool. I’ll be able to afford a big Boy idol soon. It also gave me confidence to try some of the harder Heroics. There was a group for H HoL starting, but I don’t remember that place being easy, so I decided to wait and go to Nexus again tonight. Cross your fingers for my Mace and Helmet.

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I’ve been very lax in updating my blogroll, since, I generally don’t ever look at it. I figured today, I’d look and see if there was a way to combine my Google Reader subscriptions with my WordPress Blogroll, and lo and behold I found it in a simple google search. Check it out. The very first link in that search brought me to this post from January of this year, so it’s been doable for quite a while. And it’s from a Booze blog(my term)! Who knew those existed? I’ve found a new entry for the Blogroll, I think.

Basically, in the settings menu of your reader account, you go to Tags and Folders. Create a Blogroll folder and make it Public. Add the feeds you’d like to this folder, and then at the end of the line, choose the link that says “add a blogroll to your site”. From here, choose the color scheme (I chose” none”, just like the Dash of Bitters’ author did), and change the title to something that’s more fitting for you, then copy the code and paste it into a Text Widget. Boom. Google Reader and WordPress Blogroll are combined!

It really couldn’t be simpler.

Oh, and for readers who blog, If I missed you somehow just yell at me and I’ll add your blog to that folder. I can assure you that leaving you off the list was unintentional. You are most assuredly in my feed reader, but the list is so long I can’t add everyone to the blogroll.

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Not mine yet, But I’m working on it. Last year I was packing and moving during Hallows End, so I missed out on much of the fun. Sure, I got some achievements done with Maerr, and I have some fun Screenshots to prove it. But I didn’t really take the time to finish much of the holiday. This year, however, with Maerr on the back burner for the time being, I’ve gotten Many of the simple achievements already with Maerdred.

I’m almost done getting candy in the old world. I’ve gotten my G.N.E.R.D. Rage on in AV. I’ve eaten so many sweets I puked. I killed the Headless Horseman 7 times. Bad Grish is bad. We wasted a summon or it would have been 8. What else have I done? I got my Sinister Squashling pet as well as both Spellpower rings from the HH encounter. I have two of the masks I’ll need, I have plenty of pumpkin heads so that should be easy to finish. I helped put out the fires in the Goldshire in and Blacksmith and became the Savior of Hallow’s end. I doused some Stink bombs in Southshore and I paid the Wicker Man a visit. I even got turned into a Bat once.

It was a pretty busy Sunday. I’ve been pretty unlucky with Trick or Treat, getting a treat only once in the 5 times I got to try. Let’s hope I have better luck for the rest of the two weeks. How are you faring so far with this Holiday? Are you participating or ignoring this one?

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I don’t know why this has gotten me so upset, but for some reason the idiots who are complaining about Battle.net have me just plain angry. I feel like there’s something wrong with me because of it. Why does something which has no bearing on my life at all effect me so? Why should I care that these few people just don’t get it? Is it that my faith in humanity is somehow on the line? I think it may be. You see, If there are people out there who are this dumb, what’s that say about humanity on the whole? Our average IQ just dropped a few points.

Ok. I’ll tell you which of the people I find so exasperating. It’s these people who are bitching and complaining that they have one household email account, and they can’t set up Battle.net because of that. Here’s the most recent forum post I could find on the subject, but it’s not the first I’ve seen.

So are you saying that each person has to have their own individual email address? I have set up my battelnet account, so what do I do with my 12 yo son’s account? He shares my email address. How do we manage two accounts with one email?

This was from The English European Forums. Perhaps they do things differently than we do over here. But I doubt it’s that different. I understand that things are different now than they were when I was a kid. I understand that people are more security conscious and all that, but when I was a kid and the “Internet” first showed up, the day it was set up on my dad’s computer I had my own account. My cousin who was probably 6 at the time, had his own account. Our dads limited our time on the accounts, but we had free reign over what we did with them, which was very little. There was no such thing as shopping online, so we couldn’t really get into trouble in that way.

My nephew who is 8 has his own domain, with email attached to it. He doesn’t get to log on without Mom there, as she has his password and he doesn’t know it. But still he has his own. Who are these luddites who only have one email account for an entire household? I saw one guy complain that his wife and he share a single email address. Why? How do you separate the emails? How do you Christmas shop like that? If I shared an email with my wife(if I had one) she’d be able to see the order confirmation emails, the shipping confirmation emails of everything I bought for her at Anniversaries, Birthdays, Christmas, Random Wednesday just because…. That would not work! Do these people not shop online?
I don’t understand how someone who owns a computer which can play World Of Warcraft, and DOES play World of Warcraft could be so computer un-savvy to only have a single email address for an entire family. I have 12. Me. Alone. How can two, or three, or four people share just one? I just don’t get it.

What I really love(sarcasm) is that some of these people are using their “single Email household” as a threat towards Blizzard. Threatening to quit the game if Blizzard forces them to change to a Battle. net account. “If I don’t get my way, I’m taking my three World of Warcraft accounts and I’m going home!” *huff*

Seriously… Please do. I don’t want to have to deal with you anymore. You people leaving would help to lower my blood pressure. Please. Just go. Take your stupid technology-fearing self away and stop ruining my day!

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Last night while doing Dailies for the Oracles, Kalu’ak, The Argent Crusade, and Kirin Tor(cooking/fishing) I entered into the queue for the Culling of Stratholme and Trial of the Champion, knowing that CoS drops an Okay Offhand and a pretty good trinket for a fresh 80 Resto Druid, and ToC drops a very nice Belt and set of Shoulders for a resto Druid, from what I’m told. I’ve never been there.

So as I’m doing my Dailies I get a group invite, and a whisper “Normal Toc?” So I accept, 3 Paladins and a DK… Hmm Am I healing or DPS? Healing? Ok. Cool.

Oh crap! I don’t have any healing Glyphs! I’m still wearing 5 pieces of level 70 kit. I’ve only got 13.7k health compared to their 19k+ The tank has 27k. I have like 12 mana. Ok. I can do this. As long as they don’t kick me from the group. I can do it. I know I can. I could probably heal the Heroic in this gear. but they don’t know that. They see gear and don’t know a thing about my experience. I had better shine.

The Mounted portion of the fight was fun. Simple but fun. Then it’s into the fray. I had no idea what to expect. How much damage would be coming my way? Why is Grid turned off? Crap! One of the ret Pallies died. Run back. Don’t Kick me! Please! Ok. he’s back. the Boss is… Down? There’s a chest on the floor! Nice! Next up 3 “packs” of mobs and a boss. Ok. Crap. Let’s see if I can do this. Drink while you can noob. your Mana Regen sucks in this gear.

Ok. We’re fighting. Heal! Don’t forget to heal yourself dummy! Why the hell is Grid off??? Ok Boss down! More loot! Spellpower belt and shoulders! Awwww… they have hit… “Can I take for my DPS set?” Woo!!! New Purpz!

Now it’s time for the Black Knight! Woah! He’s Dead!!!? Really? That was short. Oh hey he’s back! Heal Heal Heal! He’s Dead!! Oh wait. he’s back! Heal! Heal! Dead Boss! Woah Trinket! I’m the healer. I can need that thing. Right? Woohoo!

“Let’s do it again” says the DK. Sure. Ok. I’m in.

Whisper from Tank Pally: “your[sic] a real[sic] good healer.”
Thanks. I know the gear doesn’t show it, but I’ve got lots of experience.

We then ran a second time, and between the jousting and the first boss I get this: “I like how you’re still in some 70 gear lol” To which I could only reply, “I’ve only been 80 for a day.”

As far as the second run went, I had a better idea of what to expect, and used innervate less and used less pots.
For what it’s worth. That’s a really fun and easy instance. Now I just have to run some more other instances and get a Helmet, Gloves, Bracers and a Mace. Once I start hitting the heroics I’ll spend some badges on an idol, and I’ll be done with level 70 gear for good.

So, Who wants to run Nexus(H)?

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If you’re unaware, By November 11th, your account will need to be merged with an existing or new Battle.net account. The announcement went out, Well I think it was on Monday, but I don’t recall, so we’ll say Early this week. The forums are in an uproar about it. Some are saying they’re going to boycott Blizz for this some are asking whether it’ll be easier for people to hack their accounts. Some are feeding the trolls and spreading fear, and even fewer are trying to get the word out that Battle.net is not a bad thing.

I know that many blogs have written about this, but you may not read many blogs, you may only read one; this one. So, do yourself a favor and stay away from the Battle.net forum posts and go take a look at Blizzard’s FAQ page on the subject, then take the 2 minutes necessary to merge your own account if you haven’t already.

I merged my account moths ago when I signed up for the Blizzcon stream, and I’ve seen no ill effects at all. With the new features Bizzard is adding to the Battle.net service, for free, I see no reason not to jump on this ASAP.

Taken from the FAQ page:

What will change in World of Warcraft after the forced migration?

The core gameplay experience will remain unchanged as a result of the migration. However, you’ll be able to take part in all of the new Battle.net features, such as cross-realm, cross-faction, and cross-game chat.

That to me is enough of a reason to sign up. Cross-realm and cross-faction chat. I’ll be able to move my characters to a guild on any server I want and still be able to talk to my friends. Or heck. I’ll be able to talk to friends I never could before because they’re on another realm. I’ll no longer have to roll innumerable alts in multiple servers just to keep track of all of my friends.

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Maerdred’s been a busy boy. A few weekends ago he hit 3 levels in 3 days. 73 on the 18th, 74 on the 20th, and 75 on the 20th. He then hit 76 on the 2nd, 77 on the 4th, 78 on the 8th, 79 and 80 on the 12th. Phew! that was a busy month. There were even a couple weekends in there where I didn’t play at all. This final push to 80 on my second character(first to 70 wut wut) has been pretty eventful. It all started Saturday morning with the realization that Hey, I can do Argent Tournament Dailies now! So I flew off to start training!

Soon after that, I logged, but I made sure to log on the next day and do my dailies, and the next day I had enough Aspirant’s seals to turn in and take the next step towards Crusader!

I then spent much of my day doing other assorted Daily Quests and started questing in the Basin. I met up with Hemit, and helped him out for a while. Which was okay. I guess I got about 120 Chilled Meat from killing all of the beasties he wanted killed. so that will be good for cooking.

Soon ater that, I was done in the Basin, so I headed to K3 to do some of the starter quests for the Storm Peaks, and Boom. 4 quests into it, Here I am!

Since nobody in my guild was online at the time, I couldn’t even celebrate correctly. All I did was head to Moonglade and Train Dual-spec, and make sure I learned everything from the trainer for the past three levels.

All I have to do now is find people willing to take a Druid who still has T5 shoulders and a ZA helmet into Heroics based solely on his Skill at the position, and we’re off!

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A while back I posted a request for reader questions, hoping to turn the question/answer topic into a recurring feature, mainly because I was feeling lazy and didn’t want to have to come up with Blog Topics on my own.

Well, I’m doing it again! Post a question, or email me. I’ll answer in as many or few words as your question merits, and I will take any question at all which pertains to General World of Warcraft, Guilds, Druids, Questing, Raiding, User Interfaces… If you have any question of any type, I’ll answer it to the best of my knowledge, and if I’m required to do some research to answer our question, well all the better! I love it when we all learn. So, please. Hit that link above that says Contact me, Fill out the information and send me a question. No matter how big or small!

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