Gitr Knows WoW

Thanksgiving is only one week away, and no one has donated any money to buy Boxes of Hope. Please consider helping them out. A.M. Tampabay interviewed the pastor in charge of the ministries at Metropolitan Ministries this morning. He said that during Thanksgiving and Christmas, they help out 1,400 families.

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 20th, 2006 with whatever funds have been sent in. Make a donation using this button.

Just some proof that no one has sent any funds in to my PayPal account. Don’t worry, I won’t post names or information of donations that come in after this.

I have noticed a butt-load of hits from Google searches looking for how to get to Swamp of Sorrows. It’s simple, really, if you are PvE or you do it during off-peak hours on a PvP server. You’ll need to get to Grom’gol Base Camp in Stranglethorn Vale. The easiest way for that is to take the zeppelin.

Head out in a northeasterly direction to the road and run all the way through STV to Duskwood. At the ‘T’ in the road, turn right to go East. Right before you are going to get to Darkshire, veer off at a 45-degree angle into the field and cut the corner to the eastern road heading out of town. Take that road through to the Swamp. If you follow the road until a fork, take the right path to get to a flight point in Stonard.

Congratulations.

I went to see “Swamp Eye” Jarl in Duskwallow Marsh and an orc in Brackenwall Village a few times yesterday. Between them, I think I got 6 quests completed and over 15,000xp. It was very productive. I dinged last night questing against the Darkmist Spiders and Recluses and put another point into Shadow Weaving.

I forgot to post a picture of my questing wonder in Shimmering flats from the night before. I was hunting for wrecked race car parts for Kravel Koalbeard by the race track, hardened turtle shells, and salty scorpid venom. I had just flown in to Tanaris and ran out the pass to head East, counter-clockwise around the track. In the southeast corner of the zone, I was suddenly presented an Elite basilisk, Ironeye the Invinsible. I noticed that he was a level above me, but was thankfully a gray elite. That means good loot, I hoped. I blasted him with Corruption, Pain, Mind Blast, and started wanding him. I had to renew my bubble and Pain, but I killed him in about 45 seconds with 87% health. He dropped a Blade of the Basilisk for me and I was simply delighted at my questing fortune.

Oddly, Gadgetzan and Shimmering Flats are the only places I have been with like (or higher) level Alliance toons that didn’t attack me. A NE hunter and I went after basilisks in the same area for quite a while, and he didn’t even mind that I was skinning his kills.

That leads me to my next story. This morning I was trying to wrap up a Brackenwall quest that I attempted last night. It was Part 2 of the Spies of Theramore quest. I had killed all the Infiltrators around the village and the orc was sending me to the docks of Theramore to look for a sunken footlocker. I headed off to turn in Unpopped Darkmist Eyes to Jarl for his second quest along the way and continued in the same general direction to get me into the water north of Theramore.

Out of nowhere, I get a Curse of Agony on me and I see a red 40 warlock as my target. I thought it was an NPC, so I kept running, but he was staying on as my target and I got cursed again. Dang it! The race was on. I ran into the water…shoot, it just occurred to me what I should have done…anyway, I dove in and decided that I could outlast him underwater. I swam and swam and swam. Eventually I got to the southeast corner of all the docks and had to come up for air. He caught me and pretty much cursed me to death. If you have seen this guy on Burning Legion, KILL HIM ON SIGHT!

I have to be quicker in deciding to fight. I feel that mobs don’t throw enough crap at me to get me any good at PvP. I don’t know how to react or what to throw when. I was quick enough to use my racial to ward off the fears he cast, but I coudn’t decide if I should heal or fight. I could have outlasted him healing myself, I think.

Back to what I should have done. I should have levitated him out into deep water. Right?

I started using the Easy Gold Guide last night and did learn some things about Auctioneer that I didn’t know before and got some excellent mods that I didn’t know about. I spent a boatload in auctions, taking me all the way down to 13g. I was back up over 45g this morning before I bought even more stuff.

Along the way, I got some new gear and looked at my stats.  I’m pretty happy with them. I have pretty much three different sets started, which is going to get expensive. I have a very low 30s Healing set, a current +INT +SPI set, and a current +Shadow set.

I updated Deadr’s profile this morning with all my bags, bank, and money for all to see. I think I may concentrate on WSG for a while, at least after I look for the jeweled necklace from the mud crab guys in Theramore Bay. I want to get to friendly for that piece of gear.

I just checked my stats this morning, and I’m about to break a record today, thanks to a top-line link from Tobold’s MMORPG Blog – Free Advertising for Gold Guides. In his post, he states:

You might think I’m strange, but I do think that people selling guides how to earn gold in WoW quickly are worse than people selling that gold directly. That is because the information how to earn gold in World of Warcraft can be learned from lots of free websites. So gathering free information and selling it on seems disreputable to me. Especially since the guy needed to collect the information only once, and can sell it to other people many times. A gold farmer, if he isn’t using a bot or dupe, can only sell the gold he farmed once, that is he is selling some sort of “work”. A gold guide seller is selling stolen intellectual property. Of course Blizzard would argue that WoW gold is their intellectual property and that a gold farmer is selling stolen intellectual property as well, but that argument never convinced me.

You seem to be making a bit of an assumption in your comments about selling guides. You state that they are “stolen intellectual property.” If one was to combine all the posts from someone leaving detailed accounts of their journey from level 1-60, THAT would be a guide. It would have info on what quests to run when, who to kill, where to farm, and how to play the AH.

No one is critical of Joana’s leveling guide that I have seen, yet why is it that selling tips on making money are so “disreputable.” If everyone knows about buying low and selling high, and everyone knew about getting the items in most demand, then there would be no demand. Everyone would be equal. However, there are people out there call idiots, dummies, and nincompoops. They post things too low, don’t buy the limited supply items, and buy things for too much gold.

To look at it from the same perspective about Joana’s guide, if everyone knew what quests to do, in what order, what gear to buy, and all the things involved in leveling quickly, then other people would be leveling faster than him every now and then.

Look at the tabs in the header. See that new one? Go check out your server’s status on server reset days. I’ll finish them up by the time they start coming online. DANG!! there are a lot of servers!

Want some stocking stuffers or a t-shirt to wear to some parties this Holiday party season? Go in style in WoW clothes, or get your kids some World of Warcraft-themed shirts for school. I have added Gitr’s Store to the tabs at the top too.

It became blatantly obvious yesterday that this global community of Web 2.0 can have a psychological effect on one’s self-image. I enrolled in Orble yesterday to start putting some of Deadr’s stuff in his own blog and attempted to get a paid blogging position by submitting what I think are my two best posts. In the evening, I checked my account and clicked “My Friends” to find this message:

That’s not very nice. I have lots of friends. Who are they to say I’m a loser?