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What I’m Most Looking Forward to in Patch 2.4

March 19, 2008 By Gitr Leave a Comment

I have been in the dark about Patch 2.4 for a while because I started to seclude myself from the WoW news while I was sick. I just didn’t care to follow anything.

Now that has all changed. I found the changes they are putting into the patch and I’m totally stoked about some of it. Here’s my list:

Magister’s Terrace – There’s going to be enough well-geared people in my guild to let me run along on such a nice 5-man instance. I can’t devote the time to Kara, and I’m not geared for anything above that, so this is my end-game action for now.
The end (finally!) to getting CC’d mobs broken with multiple mob actions, such as Cleave, Multi-Shot, Avenger’s Shield, and Swipe. This is going to be a major improvement in the terrible life of PUGgers who have to group with idiots who can’t play their class.
For me and my pallies, I will enjoy Turn Undead working on demons, too.
In groups with druids, everyone will benefit from 20% lower mana cost on Regrowth.
Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers. Woot!
From wowwiki.com, “A representative of the Keepers of Time has been spotted at the World’s End Tavern in Shattrath. Players in good standing with the faction will be granted ease of passage to the Caverns of Time.” ‘Bout time! I hate getting to Tanaris from Shattrath.

Here’s to hoping it comes out Tuesday.

Trudging Along… in Life and WoW

March 19, 2008 By Gitr Leave a Comment

The great Chinese flu of March 2008 hit my household 3 weeks ago, and its effects are still being felt. It was great to stay home for 4 days a couple of weeks ago, but the headache and coughing that ‘luxury’ required downright sucked.

There’s been a great need for gold in my account, so I’ve been playing Gitr for a few hours and getting through a bunch of level 68-70 quests. I’m still waiting to go back to Kara, but my school and work schedule seem to be making that impossible. All I can do is wait for Magister’s Terrace with the patch, I think.

I’m literally back in the saddle again, with Protectr climbing through level 41 with his practically free charger and jumping back and forth between Tanaris and STV for the next leap in mob leveling. Things get much better in Tanaris as level 43-44, but a protection pally does just fine as long as I don’t get overwhelmed. In fact, a level 40 prot pally can beat Caliph Serpentsting if he gets pulled away from his bodyguards. It only takes about 7 minutes to grind his level 46 butt down to dead.

Phil and I are enjoying leveling at the same pace and doing 5-mans with some semblance of sanity for ugly PUGs gone bad. At least we can /w each other nasty things about sucky players. We got into a group in SM Monday that turned stupid when the mage wouldn’t sheep the Monks or Abbots until they were the last mob standing. So I’m whacking it, Phil has curses on it, and I keep hearing a brief “baaahh!” with a flash of smoke.

How some people manage to tie their shoes, I’ll never know.

I’d like to take Phil into Uldaman with one healer for my butt and see how we can rock the joint with a real group. He still needs his silly warlock hat, though, so I think we’re going to be spending more time in SM for some more loot. I guess the silk won’t hurt my First Aid any, either. There’s no gear for a plate-wearer in there, so it’ll be a labor of love for later on when I need mad dps to join me somewhere.

Blue Screen of Death Remains – Latency Fixed

February 28, 2008 By Gitr 2 Comments

I have to give Phil (Tastes Like Burning) full credit for pointing me to this solution yesterday. I’ll fall short of saying he saved my life, but that he sure saved me a lot of money avoiding my toons to a new server. He referred me to Doomilias’ site A View From Behind.

I knew that there was something fishy with a recent WoW patch, but I had no proof. It messed up my computer in general with those BSoDs with WoW, Media Player, and who knows what else video-related that I hadn’t discovered. I have been hopping mad at having to reboot my computer and immediately load WoW at sign-on in order to successfully play.

Things took another turn recently, as the lag on Silvermoon has made playing as a paladin unbearable. With the constant dancing around my consecration, sealing, judging, and healing while grinding, the last thing I needed was a 2 second delay in my spells. My latency was posted as 230-350ms, but the delay was much more than that. Sometimes I had to hit a seal several times to get a response, and I’ve almost developed carpal tunnel syndrome from spamming my judging key.

Apparently there is this thing called Nagle’s algorithm that puts your commands into a queue of packets to send to the server until there are enough packets to warrant a transfer. What that means for casting spells is that a single keystroke often isn’t enough information to see a response in-game. Moving is fine, because you hold down a key that transmits rather soon after you start moving, but even that was herky-jerky.

Blame it on Blizzard again, folks. In patch 2.3, they started using Nagle’s, but when the problems arose from it, they “fixed” it in patch 2.3.2. I say that in quotes because they simply removed the code from the game and their servers, but didn’t tell your computer to stop using Nagle’s. My suspicions and symptoms were correct, because as soon as I downloaded and installed FasterPing and re-booted my machine, the problems were completely erased. Just for you, I’ve placed a copy on my server for queue-less downloading.

Bottom line, before shelling over $25 for a paid character transfer due to lag, you owe it to yourself to turn off Nagle’s algorithm using whatever method you want. This is just an easy one.

Now if only the darn BSoD will go away, because the BIOS stuff didn’t work and my RAM voltage appears to be lower than my motherboard goes. I’m at a loss there, so I’m going to save up for new RAM. I just don’t know why it didn’t do it for the first 6 weeks.

Worst. Priest. Ever.

February 25, 2008 By Gitr 14 Comments

You would think that by the time you get through 27 levels of playing a class, you would have some clue about being in a group of two. Yes, the number 2. Let me set the stage for you.

I was running through Duskwood with Protectr (Level 27 Protection Pally) to go turn in a quest in Darkshire, and passed the path to Stalvan, when I Blessed a priest. He gave me a Fort buff and asked in the /s channel if I was questing. I said I was about to kill Stalvan. With that, I sent the invite and he accepted.

We went to the area and I immediately noticed that he was running out of mana on level 30 ghoul. Not a good sign, but I trusted that he knew that Stalvan would be an endurance fight for 2 lvl 27s.

Never trust a priest who uses /s chat, I suppose. I don’t know, but that’s the only thing that I can say could be a tip-off about what followed.

Twenty seconds into the fight (just after I told him to start using his wand), we got an add, because he wouldn’t follow me as I dragged Stalvan back to the area where we already killed the wandering mobs. Noooo. He stood there and aggroed on in the field, so I had to go rescue him and hope he could heal me. No such luck, as he was already out of mana.

By the way, his response to my:

[Protectr]: Wand him.
[Idiot]: Wand?

No, I’m not kidding.

After we died, I told him once again to use his wand to do damage to conserve mana to heal me, unless he wanted to tank and me heal him. He said he didn’t want to do that because then he couldn’t do as much damage.

I fell short of yelling and calling him a stupid noob and ask him how old he was. I told him to just do it or we’d die again. We died again.

[Idiot]: What happnd that time? It wouldn’t let me cast any spells or heal you.

I logged off and went to watch TV.

Guest Posts Available

February 20, 2008 By Gitr Leave a Comment

It seems to be that time of year, folks. Gitr’s busier than he cares to EVER be, and it’s affecting his blogging, and your time-wasting at work. Cue the QQ on that second one, big time. My employer, for some reason that is beyond me, wasn’t fond of me writing posts outside of lunch hour, no matter how much waiting on other people I was doing.

Anyone who knows anything about blogging about content like this knows that quality content doesn’t often come in an hour. I just can’t bring myself to put out crap for all you fine readers. You deserve better than that. Nothing irks me more than 1-4 posts per day and no one commenting because the article sucks.

I’ll tell you what I do have time for, though:

Guest Posts with Passion

Based on the number of subscribers we’ve got going here in this community, there are more than enough blogs represented. Some of you are new to blogging and would like some link love. Here is your chance! Every guest post that passes muster will get a plug at the bottom about the author and a link back to their blog. We’re all in this together.

The rules are simple:

Make it real – show your passion about the topic. I really don’t care what it’s about, as long as it’s WoW-related. BGs, gameplay, Blizzard sucks, WoW news, screenshots. If it’s good, it’s good.
Provide me with a 90×90 avatar for your profile and a short bio to go at the bottom. See the other authors’ bios for good examples of what to do.
I reserve the right to edit for grammar, spelling, and offensive content. Other than that, it’s all you. I’m a copyeditor by day, so if you want some polishing, let me know.
You must send your request to wow.gitr@gmail.com with the subject line: “Guest Post.” I am setting up a filter to forward those messages to notify me. You wouldn’t believe the stuff spam blockers don’t get on that address.

Level 12 Draenei Paladin Quest Walkthrough

February 13, 2008 By Gitr 5 Comments

Continuing our series of class milestone guides we proudly present the walkthrough for the level 12 questline for Draenei paladins. To avoid much of the confusion that seems to bring comments saying that the quest isn’t available, let’s state the assumptions right away:

you are a draenei
you are a paladin
you are level 12

If those 3 assumptions have been met, please continue for a picture-perfect walkthrough.

Once you are assuredly level 12, get your little toon self to Exodar and pay a visit to Jol, Paladin Trainer (39,83 in The Vault of Lights). She’s a cute little number, and will tell you study the [Tome of Divinity] that she gives you when you accept her first quest in the Redemption chain. Find the book in your bags and just click through the pages. No one really reads that stuff anyway, right? If you did, you wouldn’t be reading this guide.

Turning in the quest gets you 460xp and lets you get the next quest.

Still called Redemption, the next part of the quest sends you out to Bloodmyst Isle to resurrect a Young Furbolg Shaman. I found one at 65,78 in Bristlelimb Enclave. To make the most of my journey, I combined it with Saving Princess Stillpine (68,81), which involves killing High Chief Bristlelimb (non-elite) pretty close to the shaman. If you can’t kill the chief, you suck as a paladin and should give up playing a pally now, before you waste any more of your time. Seriously, you have no idea how much pain and suffering I just saved you there.

There will likely be a Bristlelimb Warrior or two in the area to clear out before being able to perform the spell without aggroing any unwanted attention. Once you have the all-clear, perform the resurrection.

After you get back to Jol, she grants you the spell: Redemption, Level 1. If this is literally your first day playing WoW, then I suppose you need to know that this is the resurrection spell that paladins use, making you very sought after for groups where the potential for dying is high. That way, everyone can go to the bathroom while you hoof it back to the corpses and rez everyone, leaving you to hold it a while longer.

My sincerest apologies that this isn’t as long as the other class level guides, but… well… they didn’t put much imagination into this questline. Check out the Level 12 Blood Elf Paladin Walkthrough for a more creative story and process to get the spell. My experience so far with these Alliance starting area quests is that the Blood Elf starting area is much more interesting and I’ve got quite a few readers and writers around here to back that sentiment up.

Do we have any real Draenei starting area fans around here? What are you seeing that we aren’t?