WoW

I played some more WSG last night, not feeling like grinding demons, bears, stags, wolves, or wyverns. I played 3 matches. It was a real off night for the Horde, as we lost 2 of them. I haven’t been that disgraced on the battlefield since I played an Alliance toon. Playing as a 29 didn’t help one bit, because they were all 28s and 29s, with a LOT of PvP titles under their belts. Now I’m just waiting to see what my rank is when the servers come back online.

I have been wondering why my traffic is 1/3 of what it usually is. I finally did a search for ‘wow blog’ on google, and I’m not there any more! Time to scramble to get back on. I have no idea how I got to #2 in the first place, so it beats me how to get back. This should be interesting.

Edit:

No, actually, it’s just no longer saying the blog title in Google. It is displaying the latest crawled post title. I believe I have fixed the code. Time will tell.

Deadr just dinged 29 this morning. It was a blue morning in the Auction Hall, as you can tell by Deadr’s profile now.

Yesterday started with a grouping with a mage called Napkins. We pretty much dps’d the crap out of things and I bubbled as needed. We ran quests up on the Pinnacle, Alien Egg, and then went after the Wyvern eggs. At that point, he said he was close enough to level 27 that he just wanted to grind there. That was fine by me. We were taking down level 28s and 29s pretty easily, with no downtime. He got really close to dinging and had to go. His guild was doing AV and they needed a full team. I kept on grinding there until I dinged level 27.

Now I had a choice: explore, quest, or grind for level 28. I decided to do a combination of exploring for quests to grind for. But I mostly just killed everything one level below me to 3 levels above me.

I was kind of like Dorothy in Oz, only not lions, and tigers, and bears. It was hyenas, harpys, and kobolds. I downed Steelsnap and Arikara. I’m really proud of Arikara, because it took me two tries, so I know it was an accomplishment. Besides, what chance does a poor level 27 have against a level 28 Elite? Um…pretty good by my records.

I am pretty happy with the gear stats Deadr had after 28 levels. I didn’t update the screenshot after leveling this morning, but he’s way past what Priestr could do now. After shopping this morning, I added a new hat, gloves, and FINALLY a wand! I have my DPS up over 40 now, and am really looking forward to getting out and grinding some more for level 30, but, alas, I had to write this post you you’d all know what’s going on. After hours of grinding for a quest, I also got a Rare belt. Here are my new Blues that I’m sporting around Burning Legion these days, or at least until something else catches my fancy.

Warsong Sash
Starfaller
Gloves of Old

After hours of leveling, I decided to go back to the battlegrounds and do some Warsong Gulch. Last night was just not the night for the Horde. After 2 tries as winning a round, I decided it was time for bed. I died 15 times in one match. It was almost over in 5 minutes, but we all pulled back into the base and played defense. All of a sudden, we were all there and wiped them clean. That got old after a while and we did need their flag a whopping 3 times, so when we split to do that, they took us for a ride again. The amazing this was that it wasn’t a guild match, despite the Alliance’s usually poor showing in WSG.

For many of the years I have lived in Tampa, I have helped Metropolitan Ministries around Thanksgiving and Christmas with either the soup kitchen for serving a meal or in the drop-off tent sorting donations. This year, due to health reasons, I’m unable to give of myself as I usually do. After seeing what Darren Rowse did in Australia with his blog, Problogger.net, by raising enough money to donate 110 pairs of chickens to the poor, I decided that I could do far more good for the community by pooling all the resources of my readers to help out the families this year.

Following the same spirit as Darren, I will be donating Boxes of Hope to the needy. My goal is 100 boxes for 100 families in the Greater Tampa Bay area. A box costs $35, but donations of any amount will collect and add up to purchase boxes. Please give whatever you can, even $1.00, no amount is too small when we add them up together. Each box contains the following:

• 1 gift certificate for a turkey
• 1 loaf of bread (fresh)
• 1 box of cereal (hot or cold)
• 1 package of cookies or pastries
• 1 can of cranberry sauce
• 1 box of dessert mix
• 1 bag or box of dry beans
• 1 can of fruit
• 1 can or packet of gravy
• 1 family box of Jell-O or pudding
• 4 cans of vegetables
• 1 can or box of potatoes
• 1 bag or box of rice
• 1 bag  or box of stuffing mix
• 2 cans of black beans
• 2 cans of yams

There are 3 ways to join the effort:

1. Make a donation at GivethePerfectGift.com
2. Mail your donation to:

Metropolitan Ministries
2002 North Florida Avenue
Tampa, Florida 33602-2204

3. I will be tracking all donations to my PayPal account and making a bulk donation on November 18th, 2006 with whatever funds have been sent in. Make a donation using this button.

Deadr entered the PvP realm last night and went to 2 Warsong Gulch Battles and an Arathi Basin debacle. The first WSG took a mere 8 minutes for a Horde victory, with Deadr getting 23 HK and 2 killing blows.

Then came the interesting part, my first ever AB. I’ve never waited out the queue for an AB on Kargath as an Alliance toon. They have always been more than an hour. I think I was in the queue last night for all of 53 seconds. I had no idea where to go, I couldn’t get ClickHeal to show the Raid party, and the Alliance players were killing all around me. After about a minute, I got the raid to show up, and I started healing everyone around me. After many, many deaths, we lost 2000-1980. Everyone was talking on the raid channel about how good of a game it was. Whatever. I have no clue. I ended with another 36 HK.

Then came the longest WSG ever. A 48 minute zerg of the idiots. I’ll say this for their method: it worked at slowing us down. Every 2 minutes or so, 7 of them would zerg our fort. Eventually, we got 3 steals when we fortified and took them down with brute force in our flag room. Thankfully, they had one lvl 21 and a 23, but the rest were 29s. My bubble doesn’t last long against a dual-sword-wielding rogue 3 levels above me.

So I ended the night with 78 HK and turned in my badges for WSG for 2800xp.

There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom. Deadr dinged 26 last night. Korgg was available to take me around Thousand Needles and we finished 5 quests in under an hour. I only had to grind the centaurs near Freewind Post for 30 minutes or so before I dinged. I dropped 10g on a Gnarled Ash Staff for a few extra stats.

I updated my profile and was a bit surprised to see that I’m up to 1700 mana. Then I checked Priestr’s profile, who is sitting at level 27, with 1900 mana. He has a bit of a different build, though. He’s built for pure grouping and instances, so I pumped up his +INT, and he has 12 more INT in item bonuses, while Deadr has about the same advantage in +SPI for gaining mana back for non-stop grinding.

I’m not quite sure where to go next, after the centaurs, but I think there are still higher level mobs left in Thousand Needles. I will probably explore the pinnacle a bit more now that I have another level under my belt.