Turkey Day

Eat up, I'll be back Tuesday with a new post that is not about World of Warcraft.

Realm First(s)

So, that blurry character on the left is me after we downed the 10 player version of Kel'Thuzad. We raided for the past week since the release of WotLK and we have been racking up server first left and right. I'm an "Obsidian Slayer" now that we were the first to down Sartharion and soon after we cleared up the mess in the Vault of Archavon. Late Saturday night we went to visit the ten player version of Malygos and got a rude awaking. He was not happy to see us and told us so when we could barely get him 90% of his health before wiping.

We venture into 25 player Naxx tonight were I will be switching roles from restoration to elemental. This is a change that is both exciting and frightening for me. Exciting because it is a role that has been left vacant for a while. So I will get a chance to bring totem of wrath and a few other talents to the raid, as well as dibs on any elemental loot that drops. Frightening because Blizzard apparently wants all shaman to DPS as enhancement. There is a large itemization gap for elemental shaman when it comes to gear with hit. My options are to get tier 7 gear or fight for cloth and leather with the other caster classes. I'm stacking hit gems and saving up elixirs of accuracy, but still coming up short. I'll have to cross my fingers for some tier 7 or eventually get shipped back to the land of healing I'm sure. Which isn't a bad thing of course.

Overall I'm enjoying raiding a lot, but a little concerned that I have seen or killed all of the raid content in the expansion in just over a week. We still have 25 man Naxx to contend with, but I can't imagine it would be much harder than the 10 man version. We still haven't solved the Malygos game tape yet, but I'm confident on that front as well. Let's hope the devs at Blizzard are putting together something special with Ulduar.

Around the World in 80 Levels

Well, I'm back. It was a crazy five days of leveling, raiding, pvp, a poor diet and no sleep. By Monday night I was siting on a pile of blues, my first emblem pieces and some sort of nasty sickness. I missed work and blogging on Tuesday unfortunately as a result, but I'm feeling much better this evening. Time for a brief run down I guess.

11/13/08: Showed up at my local Gamestop with my brother at 11:30pm (11/12/08). I was out of the mall and back at my house game in hand at 12:07am and on the boat to Northrend by 12:45am. Lots of leveling and yawns later and it was 11:45am and time for a nap. Near 12 hours of gaming can do that to the best of us. Three hours of napping later and it was time to level again. To be honest my mind was a bit of blur at this point, I don't remember what level I was and when.

11/14/08: Sometime around 4am I crashed hard, I went to bed and slept a deep sleep till noon Friday. I had planned to wake up five hours later, but the flesh was not willing. I felt much better than I had in days when I got on though. It was a little bit of catching up with my group, but we were unhampered.

11/15/08: Realm first 80 was secured by my friend on Saturday. Congratulations to Majargjr on realm first 80, shaman and troll. No, his name is not a coincidence we both named our toons in homage to our friend Majarg. Around 4am Saturday I decided to go to sleep as I had two level lead on winning the realm first Orc to 80.

11/16/08: I woke up at 10am and not thinking clearly reset my alarm to 12pm. The sleep was nice, but it ultimately put me an hour behind the realm first orc Magnuso, another friend and guild member. It wasn't my goal to hit realm first, but when it came down to the wire I tried to make the push. It was a lot of fun to 80, but really that is only the start. Level 70 gear is trash for the most part, as we soon learned in our first heroic. It was tough and the blue drops were outpacing our tier six.

11/17/08: Monday was more heroics and our first trip to Naxxramas 10 man. We cleared the arachnid quarter, downed Patchwerk and wiped till we were sleepy on Grobbulus.

11/18/08: Tuesday I was supposed to go back to work, but a sinus infection that had been building for 2-3 days took a toll on my sleepless body. I woke up sick as a dog and ended up sleeping most of the day. By the evening I was feeling better, but probably shouldn't have raided. We cleared the construct quarter and got our first pieces of tier seven.

Tonight I am heading back into Naxx with the same group of ten, but before I go I'll do the numbers.

Days to 80: 3.5

Purples Replaced: 15 (as of 11/19/08)

New Purples: 5

Coolest New Purple: Aegis of Damnation

Special thanks goes to...

• My beautiful wife for being supportive and understanding given my addiction to not just WoW, but all things geeky.
• My brother for calling to wake me up many times and leveling with me from start to finish, grats on realm first mage and undead.
• Chort for leveling with me from start to finish, I hope all of your family business is better now.

T Minus Zero

I am prewriting this post on Wednesday because I am not available to write on Thursday. If you are wondering dear reader where I am, I'm most likely in the middle of a 120 hour gaming bender. Wrath of the Lich King came out Wednesday night or rather Thursday at midnight. The plan was for my brother and I to brave the night and pick up our copies as soon as they were released. So in theory I started playing around 12:30 am Thursday and have off from work until Monday next week to play video games (5 days or 120 hours).

Ah yes video games, I am sure even people who have known me for many years are casting judgment. Being obsessed with playing, reading and watching video about video games is one thing, but taking off work. Yes, my hard earned vacation days are being spent boarded up in my office. I'm sure it seems odd or unhealthy to some, but it is the hobby I love. Wanna fight about it?

See you Tuesday!

P.S. This blog started after I took off a day of work following the release of Burning Crusade.

The Walking Call of Anarchy

COD World at War
After playing the crap out of Call of Duty one and two I thought I was done with the franchise. It was a ton of fun, but I didn't think they could squeeze any more juice out of the WWII FPS fruit. Then came COD4 and I was back on the bandwagon. A change in setting and a new leveling system made the game fun again. The single player was captivating and the multiplayer was so addicting that I probably played enough for two life times.

Last week I got into the beta for COD: World at War. It goes back to WWII and is not developed by Infinity Ward. I distinctly left COD3 out of my brief history lesson above because it was a piece of crap that was not developed by IW. World at War is not a piece of crap, but the magic is gone. The IW touch that made 1, 2 and 4 so great will be saved for COD5 I'm sure. WaW is essentially a very professional WWII mod for the COD4 engine. New skins and models for $60, I'll pass.

Son of Anarchy
How this show is not on HBO or Showtime I don't know. It gets away with violence, nudity and foul language in a 10pm time slot and it is amazing. Ron Perlman (who has been mentioned twice now in two weeks) and Katey Sagal are the only recognizable actors, but the entire cast is great. The series was created by one of the writers/actors on The Shield and has moved quickly in short period of time. The show follows a motorcycle club that shares it's name with the title of the show. The plots catch you off guard and make it is surprisingly easy to root for the bad guys. They are outlaws, but live by their own code of honor. It is violent when it needs to be and has sincere character moments when it needs them to. A must watch if you get Fx.

The Walking Dead
Walking Dead is my new comic that I just can't put down. I ordered the first eight trades on the good faith that Invincible had built and it paid off. Kirkman delivered again. Walking is the ongoing story of the a zombie apocalypses in the United States. It follows a band of survivors that are trying as hard as they can to pick up the pieces. No one is safe from Kirkman's writing axe, but in the time that the characters are alive he builds them up into people you actually care about. It is a great book because it takes what could easily just be a classic rehashing of zombies on the march and turns it on its head.

How you like me now?

So the long and short of it is Obama won. Gloating over politics seems silly, but there is nothing wrong with getting excited about your candidate winning. Especially when the state of Virginia has been the state of the red for the eight years that I've been voting. Apparently there has been a demographic change. Not in the county I live in mind you, old rich people aren't too dynamic when it comes to changing their hearts and minds. It felt good to know that my vote mattered though.

To be clear, I felt like either candidate would have been a breathe of fresh air in light of the Bush administration. The economy sucks, we need good international P.R. bad and education/science/technology have taken a back seat for far too long. McCain didn't have answers for all of those issues, but I think he would have done a better job than Bush. His time for that was back in the 2000 primary though. In 2008 he was just more of the same and to be frank we couldn't live through four more years of more of the same.

Obama is hope and one of the first politicians I have ever been inspired by. Not only is he an eloquent speaker, but the words have real thought and meaning behind them. His speech on race in March of this year was some of the most profound and truthful ideas I have ever heard from a politician. That speech and the many others since made me a believer. The proof is in the pudding of course. Four years is not a lot of time to reverse what is turning out to be a a very low point for our country. It will be tough, but I can't imagine anyone else I would want to lead us out of this tunnel.

Black Temple Field Trip

Sunday evening I was not prepared for my field trip to the Black Temple. I had all the flask, oils and other consumables I would need, but my brother told me not to worry about the actual strategies. Afterlife has had BT on farm since early July of this year and has since moved on to Sunwell to down four more bosses. With the latest patch nerfing all of the bosses in the Burning Crusade it seemed like a stroll through the content at just under four hours. This is a boon to some hardcore raiders, but a blessing for latecomers in clown farts like me.

I am a confessed lore fiend, so when our guild master gave me the go ahead to "see some cool shit" I was geeked. It was not so much about the gear, although it is nice, but seeing all of the content I otherwise would have missed. In my vanilla WoW days I made it through MC, BWL, almost all of AQ40 and quit before Naxx came out. I was not upset to start BC in tier 2 instead of tier 3, but wished I had at least seen the content. Thankfully achievements have let me see C'Thun and the expansion will bring back Naxx.

With a baby on the way this April I don't know if I will have time to be on the cutting edge of raid content like I have been in the past. There will be 10 man versions of every raid and Afterlife's passion for progression content though. So either way I will get to see some cool stuff.

Speaking of the gear earlier I figured I'd at least post my new goodies...

Skyshatter Headguard
Naturalist's Preserving Cinch
Illidari Runeshield - not currently in use

I know I said it's not about the gear, but a two piece T6 bonus sure would be nice for leveling to 80 in a week.