Instead, my beta attentions have been focused on FFXIV, having managed to get in the last few days of closed beta, and poke around the open beta.. I’ve been rather looking forward to FFXIV since it was announced last year, hoping that SE would have learned from the mistakes of FFXI – namely, the crippling difficulty in doing anything without a party, the iffy controls and the clunky UI – and produce an MMO that would be fun and easy to play. I’m not sure why I got my hopes up.  I’m not saying it’s a total trainwreck, but it’s far from great. Let’s look at each area, and score it out of 10.

Story

Pros

I’ve finished the intro section of story for each of the three City States, and found all the stories to be pretty intriguing, enough that if I do pick up the final release, I’m no longer sure just which city I’ll start in. Also of interest is that it seems the storylines of the three city states will come together at some point – each intro involves at least one character with a strange pair of tattoos on their neck, suggesting there’s some sort of overarching plot to the game.

Cons

Emote quests. As the intro story basically serves as a tutorial to the game, there’s a small bit in each city state where you have to emote at an NPC. In Limsa-Lominsa, this quests was merely a bit boring and time consuming – it was pretty clear which emote you had to use. In Ul’dah, it was significantly less clear which emote you had to use, and, critically, in what order. In Gridania, you seriously begin to wonder if it’d be possible to repeal child cruelty laws, because there is very little explanation given of what emotes to use, and the Children don’t even use the right actions. It’s just fortunate you only have to do that once.

Score: 8

Aesthetics

Pros

Character models are excellent – if I looked half as good as my character, I’d be gettin’ all the girls (I’m just sayin’!) Plenty of options for customisation, and very detailed. Monster models are also pretty detailed – assuming you’re fighting something that isn’t basically a balloon animal, a la the mole a bit below.

The cities each have their own distinct feel, and look pretty good.

Cons

The starting areas are pretty large expanses of… sameness. They look kinda pretty, but they aren’t all that detailed in actual fact, and they seem the drag on and on forever.

Score: 7

Combat System

Pros

The combat system in FFXIV is pretty good – when compared to FFXI, at any rate. In FFXI, most melee classes were simply about auto-attacking enemies until you had enough TP to fire off a weaponskill, repeated ad nauseum. If you were a lucky class like THF, you might have had an ability or two you could use every minute, which was highly exciting in comparison.

Firstly, there’s no auto-attack option in FFXIV – you instead have to press a key for your basic attack. This has recieved some criticism, but I don’t see it as a particularly bad thing – it makes it seem (very slightly) more like an Action RPG than your usual MMO. In addition, while the level of additional abilities in no way approaches the level of WoW for melee classes, you do get a good few buttons to press, and TP is far easier to generate than in FFXI (and is not all used up in one attack), so if you have multiple weaponskills equipped you can often fire two or three in quick succession for massive damage.

The ability to fuse abilities from one class with another is effectively a much improved subjob system, and allows for at least a degree of customisation on your character.

Cons

Occasional difficulty in targeting an enemy – more than once I’ve targeted an enemy right in front of me, only to be told “you are not facing the target.” This has cost me a couple of battles against aggressive mobs. Likewise, you cannot attack enemies that are, say, on a small ledge (less than a couple of feet high) above you, even if you happen to be an Archer, which is pretty pathetic.

Score: 8

Synthesis System

Pros

Cool animations during crafting – if you are a blacksmith, you do it at a little anvil, a carpenter has a workbench, a weaver has… that… circular thingy with cloth on it that people use for embroidery. It’s a nice little touch. Synthesis actually involves active pressing of options – allowing (in theory) you to chose between making high quality items, at significant risk of failure, or making them quickly and efficiently, but the resulting goods being of poor quality.

Cons

You’re told to watch what your synthesis is doing to determine what actions to use, but that’s rather cryptic. The only way to find recipes in game seems to be to be told them after local guildleves, of which you are lucky to get three in a two day period. There’s community involvement, then there is forcing people to use time they want to be playing the game to use that time to find recipes.

Even early, basic component recipes often need full crystals, rather than the shards which you will obtain easily from killing mobs. I had plenty of materials on blacksmith to make a few bronze nuggets, and from the nuggets, some other items – but I needed Fire Crystals to make said nuggets. There had better be an auction house in the final release, otherwise obtaining crystals and materials is going to be ridiculously difficult.

Score: 6

Gathering System

Pros

I haven’t tried Fishing or Harvesting, but I did give mining a shot for a good while, to gather some materials for smithing. Gathering at a point starts a simple mini game, so that the gathering process is a bit more involved than “find node, auto hit node, find next node.” Gathering is never likely to be exciting, but it is, at the very least, not boring.

Cons

Only real con is a small niggle with the gathering interface, which is simply one problem within the gigantic problem that is the UI. Basically, why do I have to press the menu button labelled “Strike” when they could either make it automatically start the minigame, or the first click in the minigame wheel would start it.

Gathering: 7

Levelling

Pros

Guildleves are relatively easy, able to tailor them to group size if solo isn’t your thing, and provide a source of gil and the occasional piece of gear.

Cons

Hoo boy. Here’s the first big criticism section.

There simply aren’t enough Guildleves. People were optimistic during closed Beta on this score – “Oh, well, there may not be many Guildleves, but they won’t be the only way of leveling, who knows what other aspects of the game will be revealed in Open Beta!”

The answer, of course, was absolutely bugger all. When you are out of Guildleves, suddenly you are back in FFXI and you have to grind mobs for EXP. In a modern MMO, that is just ridiculous. You are able to get through the first five Battlecraft leves in the space of about half an hour, and after that… you’re somewhat at a loss. Their stated aim with FFXIV is to attract more casual players – but it seems, to me, that this has went so far past “casual” they are almost approaching “hardcore” from the opposite end. Honestly, how little time are we meant to be playing a day? Fifteen minutes? Yeah, right.

Grinding mobs, quite aside from not really being any fun, is also highly inefficient due to the absolutely stupid way you level up. You have your “Physical Level” which affects your stats (STR, DEX etc) and elemental resistances, and then you have your “Rank” which is effectively your level for whatever class your playing. Mobs give far too much Physical experience relative to Rank experience. Given that we are being encouraged to play multiple classes to mix and match their abilities, the fact your Physical level goes up far quicker than your Rank is ridiculous.

The reason it goes up so much faster than your rank is that mobs give set physical EXP. However, to rank up, you are reliant on getting class skill increases during combat, which are then awarded at the end of combat. With guildleve mobs, the contrast is stark – you may be fighting a bug that takes two or three hits to kill, thus providing little opportunity for skillups, but it then gives you something ridiculous like 900 Physical Exp. Even in longer fights, sometimes you get a good run of them, other times you are lucky to get one skillup of 40 in an entire battle.

The speed of Physical levelling itself is not a problem to me – it’s just a problem when compared to how much your rank lags behind, given you are encouraged to rank up multiple classes. It’s disheartening to be 3-4 Physical levels above your Rank when you haven’t even tried other classes yet.

Score: 4

Controls

Pros

Uhhh… If you played FFXI you might not have a huge amount of bother? That’s not really a pro, is it? No, FFXIV loyalist community, it most certainly is not. Movement isn’t too bad, as it’s standard WASD. That’s not really a pro either, it’s only a pro when compared to FFXI.

Cons

Mouse controls still pretty awful. No actual hardware mouse, so movement is laggy, targeting sometimes iffy, and there’s a distinct lack of hotkeys. There is a map hotkey, praise be, but no hotkeys for anything else – given how absolutely dire the UI is, some hotkeys to go straight to menus would be appreciated.

Score: 2

UI

Pros

Nothing.

Cons

Everything.

The UI is absolutely god awful. It makes me want to cry bitter, bitter tears. Absolutely nothing learned from FFXI in this department, it seems. First of all, takes way too many menus to do anything. For example, let’s take changing your weapon. You need to go through the following shenanigans;

1. Open main menu, either via Home Key or clicking menu button.
2. Open the Attributes and Gear submenu.
3. Click the main hand slot.
4. Find the weapon you want to equip, click it.
5. Press the “equip” button.

In this day and age, that’s far too much in the way of buttons. I really could not care a fig they are releasing this for PS3 at somepoint, and that’s the kind of menu a console game is limited to. This is the frickin’ PC version, I expect a UI tailored for a PC gamer. Seriously.

Interacting with objects is also a huge pain in the butt. You approach an object, a bouncing ! sign appears on your screen. You press this button and, rather than take you straight to a list of interactions for that object, it takes you to the main menu. Where you then click the button with the ! next to it, and then you are taken to the interaction list. What? That is just totally uneccessary. Skip the main menu, take me straight to the action list. In fact, skip the having to click the ! button that’s in the corner of the screen – allow me to click the damn object. Why does it have to be so hard?

The Synthesis interface is fine once you actually start the crafting process, but getting to that point requires much clicking and picking. Much to my amusement, people on FFXIV community forums have been deriding the “recipe list” of WoW crafting, but given the extremely clunky UI and control system, I’d much rather press “synthesis” and then pick an item to make from a list, rather than pressing synthesis, then choosing which hand to use, then picking ingredients (one at a frickin’ time) to use for crafting, then that brings up a list of what can be made with those items, then you have to confirm the item you are making, and finally you are told what crystals it needs to be made. Too. Many. Fricking. Hoops.

Score: 0

Other Stuff that’s probably terrible but I haven’t experienced

Repair system; requires that players do it if you want repairs anything past 50%, which is pretty sucky. Better than an EXP loss system, but why do NPCs only do it to 50%? That’s penalising people for either not having that craft themselves, or for not seeking crafters out. Instead of a 50% durability penalty, how about a bonus for people who DO get a player to do it? Maybe their gear can be repaired to 120% durability?

“Surplus” system; I may think you get too much Physical experience right now, but a system of gradually reducing EXP is not cool. It’s also not the answer to balancing “casual” and “hardcore” players – it’s just gonna piss people off. Again, like the repair thing, this is punishing people for the sake of balance. Why not give players who don’t play often some sort of EXP bonus, rather than inflict an EXP penalty on those that do? You should never punish players for playing.

Overall

Averaging out the scores I allocated above, FFXIV gets a score of  5.25/10. Yikes.

I really, really want to enjoy FFXIV, as in many ways it is a much improved version of FFXI, which I played for many years,  and there are large parts of the game I do like – but the problems with controls, the UI and levelling are so fundamental to playing the game that unless those are resolved for release, I’m not going to be playing FFXIV. If I’m feeling faithful in SE in a weeks time, I will leave me pre-order, get the game, and give it at least a good go for a month. If, by then, these issues haven’t been resolved to my satisfaction, SE won’t be recieving a subscription from me, unless someone comes to me in a few months and tells me that everything has been fixed and the game is wonderful.

Yeah, right.

Level 40… Yep, done that five times. Hit it in Dustwallow Marsh? Yep, five times… Talk about déjà vu. Of course, it’s my first Horde character to hit 40, so it is something a little bit different!

The 30-40 stretch is, in my expert opinion from having done the bloody thing twice, the worst stretch in Enhancement Shaman levelling. Getting up to 30 isn’t any more exciting, but you can power through the levels pretty quickly. At 30, the speed of levelling starts to slow right down. You still don’t have any of your signature abilities, and as enemies health goes up, your ability to deplete that health doesn’t keep pace. Levelling really becomes glacial.

Fortunately, this time, with the random dungeon tool, it was easy to get parties as a healer and get easy EXP that way. Of course, with PUGs there’s always a bit of bother. For one thing, while I’m perfectly capable of watching the health bars of five people, tanks can’t even watch one Mana bar, so I was forever shouting “MB PLEASE DAMNIT.”

They clearly weren’t paying too much attention to me, because if they were, they’d have seen that I wasn’t the kind of healer who would take any crap.

Other problems included a Warlock rolling need on the mail helm dropped by Herod, which would have been quite nice for when I hit 40, and winning – I’ve instead got a pretty boring green, though a trip through Maraudon at 41 landed me a nice blue.

As usual, I also did a bit of PvP. There was a period this morning where we were usually starting about 6-12 in Horde’s favour in AB, so we had a run of 5 cap wins, before finally being beaten (all of the earlier teams had gone by this point) after we failed to capitalise on our starting advantage, falling prey to the “herp derp, let’s not defend the farm, or the blacksmith, or the lumber mill” disease – I can only be in one place at a time, and that place was the mine.

Now that I’m in my 40’s though, it’s bliss. Even with just dual wield and Stormstrike, battles are going that little bit faster, and come 47, when I’ll have greater accuracy, Lava Lash and two points in Improved Stormstrike, not only will battles go even faster, but I’ll be able to drop my use of Water Shield (to lessen downtime) in favour of Lightning Shield for that little bit of extra damage.

If I’m really lucky, I’ll hit 58 sometime soon and get to Outland for the first time as a Hordie (Death Knights don’t count,) exciting!

Whilst I made it through the 20-29 AB on Eisla quite happily, the 30-39 bracket of PvP on the Blackout battlegroup appears to be dominated by the Allies. So I now had fresh experiences with which to draw a daft battle plan. (You will most likely have to enlarge the pictures to see them properly.)

To begin with, the basic aim of the game:

Doin’ it rite: You want to hold more bases than the enemy, so that your points go up faster.

Doin’ it wrong: LOL WE CAPPED A BASE, NEXT ONE!

AB’s big no-no – the 5 bases obsession:

Doin’ it rite: Carefully balance your attack and defence teams (unless the enemy team is filled with absolute numpties OR short on members.)

Doin’ it wrong: OMG WE NEED FIVE BASES TO WIN!!!!!111oneeleventy!!11

(Excuse the rather poor “zomg I drew a line in the wrong place quickly copy and paste paper over it” cover up.)

General Winning/Losing strategies:

Doin’ it Rite: Assuming a full 15 vs 15 match, you can really only hold three bases consistently. Split the team evenly between defending the three bases, with another similar sized group “roaming” for lone ranging enemies, providing support to bases under attack, or if feeling cheeky, attack a weak enemy base.

Doin’ it wrong: Cap the base closest to your side and two others, leave these with no or marginal defence, whilst the bulk of your team presses on to cap the enemies closest base. This leaves all three of your other bases open to easy capture even from lone or small groups.

Now, you too can contribute to stunning victories and crippling defeats in Arathi Basin!

 FOR THE HORDE, MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS!

(Please, folks, PvP with sense!)

I may be done University for the summer, but I don’t really have the inclination to play WoW for all of that summer. In addition, I am really, really strapped for cash. Ah, the joys of living on your own and not having found a job. But I digress. That is a topic for another blog.

In line with not being quite back, I’m playing an alt. I have popped onto all my characters to pick up the penguin pet I assume was sent due to registering a battlenet account. I did get a rather excited greeting from Yimi (OMG ELLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!) when I logged onto Ellaria, but the guild was raiding, so no real banter. Will need to pop on pre or post raid at some point for a catch up. Anyway, my character of choice for these 7 (now 5ish) days is Eisla, my troll Shaman.

I’d last played her at 20, with a cheeky little Turquoise Raptor mount, but without her Water Totem, so that was the first port of call. For said quest, you get sent all over the bloody world, which is kinda stressful when you are on a PvP server – though I’ve yet to be ganked.

20-26 was a rather uneventful experience. There’s not much you can say about grinding your way through quests in the Barrens and Ashenvale. At 26, though, I felt confident about joining BGs without (at least, in theory) being a ridiculously easy target for anyone. Unfortunately, low level Enhancement is pretty dire when it comes to actually dealing damage to other players. We’re great at hindering them, and can speed away from any battles by shifting instantly to Ghost Wolf form, but killing them? Not likely. Slow two handed weapon, only one real instant ability, which is on a 6 second cooldown – not a lot of potential for going toe-to-toe with anyone.

Still, we make quite respectable defenders in Warsong Gulch, since we can easily hinder the target who will mostly be aiming for flight, not fight. In Arathi Basin, I took the role of professional hinderer – being generally annoying to anyone I couldn’t kill who was trying to capture a point. I also had a nice little sideline going in scouting, thanks to Far Sight. When I say scouting, I really mean trying to take pretty pictures of the battle field.

Arathi Basin quickly became my favourite, in spite of the fact I remember having a preference for WSG before. Perhaps it’s the fact it’s totally outdoors – I absolutely hate not being able to ride or shift into Ghost Wolf in the forts in WSG. Plus, WSG isn’t as fun outside of the 10-19 bracket, where Shammies and Druids are totally broken, with our 40% speed boost forms. The fact it seemed to give much better Experience (perhaps due to the fact it was the Call to Arms BG?) helped, too. First time I finished it I got 13k experience! That was a surprise level up, let me tell you.

With the high EXP from battle grounds combined with a tidy cluster of quests in Thousand Needles (Involving some Grimtotem with a distinct resistance to Nature damage. So frustrating to try and interrupt a cast and have your Wind Shear resisted), it didn’t take me very long at all to get to level 30. I dinged mid skirmish, actually, which was an unpleasant surprise to the folk trying to kill me. Oh, they still managed to do so, but I lasted long enough for reinforcements to arrive thanks to the level.

Much to my annoyance, though, I didn’t get my 7k exp at the end of that match, probably because I was no longer within the bracket. Given I only  had 2k EXP to go to level, I’d have been better just grinding a few mobs instead of doing a 20 minute battle, to be honest.

I was considering doing a guide to AB in the vein of a previous post, but my AB experiences were entirely positive. Not a single loss, and the occasional pleasant BG chit-chat, compared to the losses and constant whinging of WSG. Oh, I’ve had plenty of bad experiences before, but it just doesn’t feel right to bitch and whine about a BG that was totally successful this time round!

Not sure if I could make 41 – and the delicious, fully fledged Enhancement Shaman that magical number represents – before my time runs out, but it’s worth a shot. Either that, or I’ll give Ilthiran a dusting off, see if I can try a few dungeons in Northrend, just to keep my hand in. Though part of the appeal of playing Eisla is that the furthest I’ve ever got as Horde is 32 (my Hunter on the same server), so the quests are going to new to me very soon.

I just feel I should make it explicit – I no longer play WoW, and have no intention of picking the game back up in the near future. I may or may not start playing again at some point in the further future, but frankly, not only is there too much going on in my life right now, but I’m also just bored, bored, bored with the game anyway.

Also, while I’d toyed with the idea of just making this a “gaming” blog, budgetary constraints mean I’ve not been playing any other games either, because I can’t afford any new ones, so this blog is officially in hibernation.

Thanks to all those other bloggers who commented on and linked to this blog and it’s predecessors, to all those who were subscribed to or otherwise read the blog and to Soul Haven, my first and final “real” raiding guild, for making blogging such an enjoyable experience.

I’ll still be hanging around in BA Chat and on Twitter (though I pay less attention to both of those than I used to), so I’m not completely gone! That’s right, you can’t get rid of me that easily. I make it my business to torment you.

It was a relatively easy fight. I one shot it. I had a brief omgomg moment with whelps, but that’s what Earth Elemental Totem is for. The flight phase took absolutely ages, as I had to try and regen mana with Water Shield (I had a flame resist totem up, so no mana spring) and the occasional hit on Onyxia when I wasn’t healing/smacking a whelp.

Also, it’s not fun that she’s fire immune. Lava Lash was useless, but as you can see… I still used it. I couldn’t not use it. I’m wired to use Lava Lash!

So hey! Solo’d Onyxia just before she gets buffed. Took me long enough to get round to doing!

So, for what little good it will do, I’m gonna clear up some common misconceptions about Scotland and the United Kingdom here.

The United Kingdom

Sometimes, people, particularly in the US, are a bit confused as to exactly what the UK consists of. The UK is Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The rest of Ireland (the lighter green part of the island) is it’s own, independent country. Sometimes people think it’s part of the UK – it’s not, so be careful with that!

Basically, each country in the UK is like an American State (well, except England… it’s complex.) – The UK as a whole is governed by the British Parliament in Westminster, London. However, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each have their own “devolved parliaments”, with certain powers over their countries – somewhat like the Federal and State division in the US. However, England does not have it’s own government, and is represented solely by Westminster.

While I say the situation is somewhat akin to American states, I think it’s worth pointing out that, unlike American states, as they exist today, with the states beyond the original 13 all having been settled by Americans with the intention of the new lands joining America, the Countries that make up the United Kingdom all have long histories as independent states –thus, each have distinct national cultures that are probably far greater than the differences between, say, an inhabitant of California and an inhabitant of Maine, despite the greater physical distance in the latter case. In fact, Scotland, Ireland and Wales all have native, Celtic languages, totally unrelated to the Germanic English language, though, in Scotland, Gaelic is spoken by a small minority.

To make matters even more complicated, there are substantial, though not in the majority, groups in Scotland, Wales, and particularly Northern Ireland (which has suffered greatly over the years over the issue of being in the Union) who advocate seceding from the UK. Thus, while “British” is a catch all term for people living in the UK, you may find that people prefer to be called by their “proper” nationality.

For example, and here’s where I may stir things up politically with any British readers, I support Scottish independence. I bear no ill will to any of the other countries in the UK, I just feel we should be independent, and as such, I object to being called “British” instead of “Scottish.” It doesn’t offend me, I just don’t consider myself to be British, as such. However, calling me “English” does offend me – because I feel that shows a great deal of ignorance about how the UK works.

Scotland

Firstly, and most importantly – Braveheart is not an entirely accurate portrayal of Scottish history. I know, I know, it’s hard to believe – but there’s a lot wrong with it, historically. It’s a fantastic film, however – don’t let inaccuracy spoil it for you.

The most standout one, in a way, is also the least important. You know how they are all wearing blue face paint (woad) and kilts? Well, those are both anachronisms. Woad was utilised by the Picts, who were the original, inhabitants of Scotland. It was most certainly not used in the 13th-14th centuries. And in the other direction, kilts, especially not of the style in the film, were not actually worn by Scots until much later!

Also, perhaps influenced by Braveheart, there are misconceptions about William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, and how Scotland came to join with England.

William Wallace

William Wallace was “Guardian of Scotland” – he was not, at any point, in the running for King of Scotland. Basically, he was a general.

Robert the Bruce

The Scottish Monarchy did not end with The Bruce. While the Bruce dynasty was short lived, Scotland continued to have it’s own Kings and Queens from the mid 1300’s, when the wars of Independence finally came to a close, until the 17th Century, when the Scottish Monarch also became the English Monarch.

The Union of Scotland and England

I rarely see this, but I do see it often enough for it to make me /facepalm. The Union of Scotland and England was entirely peaceful. There was no war involved. Some people seem to think we were put to the sword and made to join – not quite. As stated above, the two countries started sharing a monarch in the 17th century. In the early 18th Century – 1707 to be exact – the two countries joined together to form Great Britain. While the Union was peaceful, it was also incredibly unpopular in Scotland at the time.

Silly things

As much as we like to tease foreigners about it, and Scottish readers will be so cross with me for unveiling our great lie – Haggis is not a real animal. We do not chase it round mountains. It’s just meat in a sheep gut. No, I have never tried it, and I do not intend to.

Similarly, The Loch Ness Monster doesn’t exist. Well, to the best of my knowledge. Who can really say? I mean, it’s a pretty murky Loch, and very deep… If there’s something there though, it’s damn well not a plesiosaur. Seriously people.

We do not wear kilts all the time. I have worn a kilt once in my life, for my high school leavers Ceilidh and the only time I anticipate wearing one again is if I get married.

We most certainly do not all sound like Groundskeeper Willie! See here for an example of how I speak. Nothing alike!

-

There we go! The more you know!

Warning – wall of Text crit time!

TJ Blogs Azeroth

Temerity Jane: I acually write about 95% of the wow blogs on the internet now
Temerity Jane: I keep the real bloggers in the basement
Aertimus: ha ha
Nibuca: TJ is the new Fararro.. only hotter and less attainable.
Llanion: She really does, it’s true (send help)Temerity Jane: Care to join them?
Temerity Jane: Punch and pie.
Llanion: *cough*don’tdrinkthepunch*hack cough*

Sleeve Lettuce (Following from last piece):

Nibuca: .. Is it sad.. that I got a salad for lunch.. and only at half.. and am now picking the candied nuts and apple bits out of said salad as dessert?
Temerity Jane: WHO LET YOU GET A SALAD IN THE BASEMENT?
Ratshag: does it have sleeve lettuce in it?
Ratshag: (TJ really hates sleeve lettuce)
Temerity Jane: Dont even act like sleeve lettuce has never happened to you
Nibuca: um.. unfamiliar with sleeve lettuce.. does it "hang down like sleeve of wizard"?
Nibuca: (veiled Borat reference FTW)
Temerity Jane: I don’t veil my borat reference in this house, I am always threatening to smack Phil with my wizard sleeve
Temerity Jane: anyway, no
Temerity Jane: sleeve lettuce is when you’re eating a sandwich
Temerity Jane: and wearing long sleeves
Nibuca: L. O. L.
Temerity Jane: and some lettuce falls out and falls in your sleeve
Llanion: I’ve… never heard of such a thing, honestly.
Temerity Jane: and gets way up there by the elbow
Temerity Jane: IT HAPPENS
Ratshag: AC gchat never was the same after you left TJ
Aertimus: you must eat a lot of lettuce 
Nibuca: .. then .. No.. this would rightly be termed "bosom lettuce"… the only lettuce dropped perched on bosom until retrieved
Faulsey: I’m not sure any chat would be the same after TJ leaves it o.O
Aertimus: now THAT I can believe
Temerity Jane: No, see, Nib, that’s tooooo common of an occurrance, so it has an over arching title
Temerity Jane: Boob Food
Temerity Jane: As in "When I stood up after dinner, all my boob food fell onto the floor"
Nibuca: or on men.. "moob Food"

Matron Hydra:

Faulsey: I sigh a little every time I see a Patron/Matron Warlock.
Ratshag: lol
Faulsey: You guys are meant to steal souls and eat babies! Not lead children around and give them candy and be all heroic!
Ratshag: "Home Alone" isn’t very heroic
TheStoppableForce: Nope
Faulsey: This is true.
Faulsey: But it’s hardly evil.
Ratshag: depends on where you hearth from
Faulsey: -ponders-
Faulsey: Heigan’s room? :3
TheStoppableForce: Possibly!
TheStoppableForce: I left mine hanging out with the Frost trainer in Acherus
TheStoppableForce: He’s a lich, maybe he liked kids in his former life, I dunno.
Hydra entered the room.
Ratshag: hey Hydra
Hydra: *wave* Hello
Faulsey: WhyhellotharrHydra
TheStoppableForce: hi Hy
Hydra: D-less. I am Matron Hydra. and it makes me giggle. I feel like handing out candy to lure children and push them into a furnace.
Hydra: like the one in UK
Ratshag: rofl
TheStoppableForce: … I like you, Hydra.
Faulsey: Well, that’s a devilish use of the Matron title… so I suppose these locks are actually very clever then
TheStoppableForce: <3

 

BRK’s Brain

Faulsey: BRK’s brain brings all the visitors to the blog -sings poorly-
Saresa: ‘damn right, it’s smarter than yours’?
Faulsey: Ooh, genius
LadyJess: LMAO
Saresa: ‘I will teach you, if you’re a huntard’?
Faulsey: Win.
Saresa: thus clearly proving MY brain only functions within 30min of getting out of bed any other time my response would be ‘uuuurrrrgh….’

Soufflé

Nibuca: you know.. a good souffle wiggles like the breast of a woman…
Faulsey: -jiggles-
Nibuca: (random things heard on airplanes)
Faulsey: Actually, I’m far to skinny to jiggly at all. :\
*I was jiggling with excitement before. I am a man, honest. Not testing breast jiggle.
Ratshag: which woman?
Ratshag: ’cause, there’s variation
Nibuca: mighty fine woman with eyecatching rack wearing low cut blouse.. picking a pencil up off the floor
Ratshag: and I’d hate to ruin the souffle
Ratshag: thankee
Nibuca: .. straight legged.. in high heels
Nibuca: and.. a mini skirt…
Nibuca: dang slippery pencil
Ratshag: what color skirt?
Nibuca: duh, red
Faulsey: So.
Nibuca: you know.. I really hope this mental image pokes you in the mental eye the next time you hear the word "souffle"
Ratshag: hee hee
Faulsey: A good souffle jiggles like the eyecatching rack displayed via a low cut blouse of a woman who is picking a pencil up off the floor in a straight legged position, wearing high heels and a red miniskirt?
Nibuca: indeed

Night Elf Eyebrows

trizophenie: you sure there’s no barber in darnassus?
Faulsey: There isn’t.
Faulsey: SW and IF are where they are.
Faulsey: Though given the length of Night Elf eyebrows, I’m not surprised there isn’t one there. 
Ratshag: elf eyebrows cannot be cut
Faulsey: Why? Are they the source of their power?  
Ratshag: they are made of the hardest material in the universe 
Ratshag: punch right through epic plate helmets
Faulsey: Those would make some epic rogue daggers…
TheStoppableForce: The difficulty comes in severing them from the elf’s face.
Boize: Or just lope off the head, and use it as a spiked mace?
Faulsey: easy.
Faulsey: Cut the entire eyebrow off – flesh included.
Ratshag: ooh, elf head on a stick!
Faulsey: The attatched flesh would serve as a comfortable grip!
Boize: True. You wouldn’t want to cut your hand while wielding the razor-sharp eyebrows of doom.

First Boss – Scream at your thick tank to “PICK UP THE DAMN [Insert race of ranged opponent here]”, because you can’t heal them when you are dead. Twice now that has happened, twice being the sum and total of the times I have healed this instance. Pick.Up.The.Damn.Troll.

Second Boss – Gnash your teeth at your DPS because you don’t give a damn if you can heal through the flashy light, it’s the principle of the thing. Don’t look at the blinding exploding guy is on the same tier as don’t stand in the frickin’ fire.

Third Boss – Cry to [deity/enlightened being of your choice] because why the hell does the final form of the last boss have to be so much of a bitch to heal and OMG DEATH LASERS I just died again rage.

After you win – Mutter to yourself because despite the numerous upgrades that you could have got for your main spec, none of them dropped, indeed, no upgrades for anyone else dropped, and all you got was some flashy healer belt, further putting your off spec gear ahead of your main spec gear in terms of quality.

I don’t like Trial of the Champion. It’s an evil place. Whilst Kazura waltzes around in her nice new gear earned from there, I get my face blown up by the ridiculously difficult to heal final phase of the Black Knight and mourn my lack of shiny maces.

Disclaimer: Screaming and crying not advised. Gnashing and Muttering certainly advised.

We spent most of last night wiping on those damn Jormungar in the new 10 man raid. Gormok was ridiculously easy after a few shots – chasing Snobolds down quickly became routine. We just couldn’t get the Jormungar down. That fight has got to be a prime example of where 10 mans are more difficult than 25 mans – if someone dies, which is very likely to happen, then your entire attempt is pretty much doomed. Guh.

I’ve kind of lost steam on Ilthiran – not really that interested in playing him right now. In fact, I’d say after that brief period of revival, I’m kind of bored of WoW again. –shrug- Anyway, I did manage to get to level 71, and thus, Swift Flight Form;

I also managed to finish the Nexus – we had absolutely zero problems this time, so, ha, suck it, Kyp, it was totally the healers fault last time!

Faulsey received a brief revival as well. He had 26 Emblems of Heroism, which were just sitting there, annoying me, so I ran a few HCs to get up to 40 EoH and 200 SKS, to spend on an heirloom chest and shoulders for my Paladin – he’d previously been using some mail shoulders.

Logging onto said Paladin, I had a case of “hey, I should have read the patch notes” when I noticed that A. My Judgements were returning a flat 8% of my Base Mana when cast, despite there being nothing in the tooltip to suggest they would do so, and B. Hand of Reckoning now does ridiculous damage if used to pull a target. Geez, as if leveling Ret Paladin’s had to be even more powerful! –grin-

And random cool screenshots:

(So Algalon is kind of old news by now – I’d never seen this, and didn’t expect any of the scrubs on my server to have been able to take him out!)