Friday Five - 5 Top WoW Blogs

Now I've got the Emo shit out the way, here's a WoW post.

My Friday Five is 5 WoW blogs I love.

Let's hear it for the F5!

In at number 5, a relative newbie to the Warcraft Blogosphere. In fact, he's so new, he posted for the first time today. Grokknar is my buddy and Raid Leader for the team I'm in. I have high hopes for his blogging future. Show him some love and add him to your feed.

Number 4 is one of the stalwarts of Warcraft bloggers, HotsandDots. A great look at raiding and life in Azeroth, some alt adventures and general Warcraft stuff all wrapped up with a Resto Drood and Shadow Priest.

At joint 2nd place (I can't decide on which one I love more) are Zal's Blessing of Fish, and Amber and Cel at Ilikebubbles. Things you didn't know from Zal and Friday Flowcharts from ilikebubbles are two of the bestest things on the internetz. Eva.

In first place, for the blog I return to time and again, that always provides useful, clear, concise and helpful information is Cynwise's Battlefield Manual. I've mentioned it umpteen times here I'm sure and I'm always talking about Cyn's blog on twitter. I love it. I don't play a warlock. I don't PvP and yet Cyn's stuff is so well written and so helpful it makes no odds. I also owe Cyn a huge debt of gratitude for de-mystifying key binding, BGs and tube maps for me.

Did you know if you google "demethedk" it asks if you meant "demented". Trufax!

Suffer Well!

Deme :)

Off Topic - A Personal Thank You

This is not a post about WoW. It's got nothing to do with Death Knights. It's a personal thank you and a bit of a splurge about the shit I've been dealing with in the past few months. If you want the TL:DR version, it's at the bottom. If you don't want to know why I've been all emo on twitter and facebook, I wouldn't bother reading.

Go get a cup of tea and a biscuit. You're going to need it.

OK, take a deep breath and here we go.

Back at Easter, my fabulous, wonderful 93 year old Granny had a heart attack. Two weeks later, I ended my marriage of 3 years, we'd been together for 6 years in total. Then at the beginning of this month, I packed up the marital home, put my life in storage and moved back in with my Mum. Two weeks ago my lovely Granny had another heart attack and then last week she had a big stroke. Sometime in the middle of all of this I joined match.com in the hope of meeting some un-complicated chaps to go to the movies with. Yesterday I discovered that the only one I'd bothered with had blocked me. Oh, and I'm trying to buy my sister's house and move in within the next 6 weeks as I've planned a big party for the end of August.

For some people this would just seem like a stressful time in their lives. For me, it's pushed me to breaking point on several occasions, and I'm not out of the woods yet. As my beliefs around marriage and the most paramount relationship in my life have come tumbling down, the woman who has inspired more love, more care and more warmth than anyone I've ever known is reaching the end of her life. My Granny is the most incredible woman. In all her years I have never heard a cross word from her, her love for her sons and her grandchildren and all 15 of her great grandchildren (including various step-brothers and sisters) is unparalleled. Her heart is so big that the love she has given out is now coming back to her in floods of light, comfort and tenderness. I can only hope that when I reach that point in my life I have half of what she has. I love you Granny.

The end of my marriage is extremely personal. It's a long process to the road back to love and every day something pops up that makes me think "Did I make the right decision? Is this pain, this anger worth it?". I have to remember just how miserable I was, how broken the marriage had become and how much more both of us deserve.

Through out all of this, there have been several things that have kept me sane.

1. My family and friends.
2. WoW
3. The WoW Community, some of whom now fit into number 1.

Warcraft has been a great distraction. Raiding is one of the few times I totally forget about everything else. The WoW community, via twitter and in game, have been tremendously supportive. A special shout out and thanks to Shammie, Shatterbound and EntropiaWoW. As a whole, I've never met a more supportive group of people than the WoW community. From coast to coast and continent to continent, you guys pwn.

My guild
Aww shucks, you bunch of gay noobs are great. I love you all!
My raid team, the Deadbeat Desperados
What can I say? GIEF ME NIPPLE! Thanks for letting this noob OT do her thing 3 times a week. Love you a lot!
The WoW crowd on Wave
My special Warcraft friends. Thank you for listening to my various rants and emo moments. xxx

Trusty Crutch
You know who you are. You'd better be reading this! I'd say something sappy about "love you!" but that'll just scare us both. Thank you for being my rock, for making me laugh every single day, for listening to my crazy talk and for believing in me, even when I don't.


My two amazing sisters and my fabulous Mummmmmy
Words can never say how much I love you or how grateful I am to have you so close to me at the moment.

My bonkers and loving Daddy
Spending time with you and Granny is incredibly special for me. I love you Pops.

My Bestest Girls and Brothers from another Mother
Your strength, humour and drunkenness are a real tonic, even when you are having shite times, you're there for me. I love you all.

My extended family and friends from all over the world
Your messages of support carry me through and I'm grateful for each and every one of you.


TL:DR - THANK YOU.

The Grind for Loremaster

There are some POSSIBLE SPOILERS for lore here. You have been warned.

Recent posts have strayed a little ways off the Death Knight path. This one attempts to find our way back, albeit with a-round-about route.

In my off-time in game, i.e. when I'm not raiding or running a quick HC for frosties, I've been working on the Loremaster achievement. Until I started it I had no idea quite what I'd let myself in for. Deme is a DK. That means 55 levels of questing have been effectively by passed on that character. By my reckoning, that amounts to about 300+ quests on your "home" continent and probably 200+ on the other. Now with a DK, you're lucky to have 150 on each. So rather than having to make up 400 or 500 on each continent, you might as will be starting at nothing. And boy does that feel like a lot.

As someone who loves Warcraft Lore, I've enjoyed taking Deme through a lot of the older content, especially now I understand more about what is actually happening. The first time I levelled in Westfall and the Deadmines I couldn't have told you a thing about why I was there other than the fact that some dude called Marshal Dughan sent me there. This time round I've paid attention to the quest text. I know why Van Cleef is pissed. I've taken the time to go through Stranglethorn Vale. I hate STV. I hate Nemingway. But I've done it. I've revisited Duskwood, where I would quite happily camp Deme permanently if I could. It's dark, forboding, has worgen, big spiders, undead, ogres, a gothic town and some interesting (ie SPOILER ALERT DON'T CLICK IF YOU WANT TO AVOID THEM!) lore points. I can tick off Stormwind's quests and Elwynn Forests. I've done 1/2 of the ones in Gnomeregan. Which is far more fun than I remember it was. I reserve judgement on whether that is a level thing until I do again on an alt.

As for how I'm doing it, well I'm using everything I can lay my hands on! I read the Add on Spotlight post at wow.com then downloaded the add-ons it recommended. I've always got my "low-level quests" flag on the map and it's taken me weeks, nay months to get to where I am now. Which is 450/700 on Eastern Kingdoms and a paltry, piffling, 146/700 on Kalimdor. I'm not too worried about Outlands or Northrend simply because they aren't about to get (CATA SPOILER) nuked to buggery. If the Loremaster requires this much dedication, I have no qualms in saying that those who try The Insane, deserve their title.


For MOAR Lore, try these guys on for size
For the Lore
LoreCrafted
Know Your Lore

For Shatterbound

Shatterbound is a very cool dude over on Twitter that I bumped into with this whole Warcraft thing. He's also got a thing about English words and accents. So as a thank you for bigging me up lately, here's a little something for you buddy! English words, music and scenes of the countryside. Contains Swears!

Cross Faction Relations

I have a horde friend. There I said it. Damn me and curse me for being a traitor to the Alliance. Actually I have two. In fact, if I properly thought about it would probably be more. But I have one particular horde friend who I chat with regularly via Skype and trash talk during world PvP.

Yep World PvP. It still happens on my server. And it's bloody good fun because there seem to be a few regulars that turn up and kill each other on a consistent basis. I can sit on Skype and listen to him cursing me and my friends and swearing when things go wrong. When you hear your friend getting very cranky because you just killed him, it's extremely funny. I can also log onto my hordie and trash talk him whilst he logs onto his ally and returns the favour. I have Ally friends who just LOVE to rip him a new one and frequently do, /2 channel tends to get a little blue to say the least. But I've never known someone brush it off and secretly enjoy it quite so much.

All in all it makes for a good evening when you need a break from raiding and frankly, when your horde mate is an infamous and argumentative as mine is, well you want to whack him as often as possible. Here's to horde bashing. /cheer

Authenticate and Ignore the Latest Hoax.

Just a warning guys, I got the following email to my demeternoth@aol.com account today. I'm not stupid enough to use this account to log in to WoW with so they've fished the address from here I expect. THIS IS A HOAX. There is NO need to click on any of these links or do anything. If you read the obvious typos in the email it's clear it's a piece of crap. I expect with the rush on Blizzcon tickets they're pushing their services .... Love the little "if you already have an authenticator ignore this email" pointer at the end .... Stay Safe!

Greetings!

Recently, the problem of account invasion is getting worse and worse which cause enormous players’equipments and virtual currency stolen. This severely damages the benefits of mass players, also causes our company lose a lot of customers.

Our company has to adopt some measures to safeguard our common benefits in order to strengthen the safety of mass players'accounts, and firmly resist the account to be stolen again.Through our company's research and investigation to xxx customers,we will make the following decisions: we launch a package of updated code strengthen system and dynamic code protection card which can effectively prevent the accounts invaded. We will send this package of code protection system to players free of charge.

Please open this connection: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/secure

If your account passes the check successfully, we will send this package of dynamic code protection card to you in the form of e-mail.

In 3 days after you receiving the e-mail, if you don't submit your information, we have right to freeze your account, every player is obligated to protect the safety of the account. You must work together with us to be determined to crack down all the behaviors of destroying games.

If you had already authenticator your account, please disregard this automatic notification.

Regards,

The World of Warcraft Support Team
Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowindex/

Leveling and hitting the raid tier in Cataclysm, some thoughts.

Having read Zal's blog post about levelling to the new cap and raiding in Cataclysm, I got to thinking.

How is my current guild going to handle this? As a guild it was formed quite late into Wrath from 2 teams who were disgruntled in their current raiding guild. I joined later having failed to get where I wanted to be in raiding with my old guild. I play on a server which appeared when Wrath did. For many this will be the first time we're levelling a "main" to a new cap to then start in on the first tier of raiding at the right time. Currently the guild focusses on 10 man and plays around in 25 man. I'd like to say we're more progressed with 25 man but frankly we've not pulled it together. I've grown to enjoy 25 man a lot and I'd love to continue with it in the Cataclysm. I expect the guild will raid 10 man till the first tier is clear and then start on 25 man on that tier once we can focus 10 man on the next content. So that's all the guild stuff, but then what about me and Deme, my main?

Bearing in mind that Deme is going to get shafted into blood spec whether I like it or not, it's raised a lot of questions for me. Do I level Deme like mad to catch that first wave of raiding that I missed by a country mile in Wrath or do I grab another char and make that my raiding main?

Let's say I stick with Deme, is our team destined to stay together, level and play together through the new content or will we disband and have to rebuild again once we're ready to raid? Frankly that would suck in my mind. I've played in two raid teams. The first one was not stable. At all. It was a ball ache to try and get people in the right place at the right time and to raid level specs. The second one, where I am now, is probably one of the best groups of people I've ever mucked about with. We have a great atmosphere and we get shit done, but we're still struggling to nail down a regular 3rd healer.

If I stick with Deme, then I'll likely be able to catch that first wave one way or another and thus coast on through the rest of the Ex pac with my gear up to date. Especially if I stick to tanking. I've NEVER levelled as a tank though so that would be interesting.

If I dump Deme, hmmm well what are my options? A level 65 warrior, a level 41 priest and a couple of lowbie alts. Anyone who knows me, knows I level slowly so I don't think that's going to help the team.

And then there's the worgen.