Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 95 - Crashin Thrashin Winter's Veil

Aprillian, Glanthur and Ashayo discuss another week of playing World of Warcraft, Blizzard's great MMORPG.

What We've Been Doing

Aprillian:

This has been my best week ever.

12/22/08 @ 2141 server time, Aprillian dinged 68.

At the advice of Glanthur and Ashayo, she headed to Northrend. It was great and overwelming at the same time. I enjoyed Howling Fjord, the quest were different and fun and I read the quest text. Only got a little confused by the two quest you have to fly to. The first time I did the bombing ship quest, I didn't realize I was suppose to drop the bombs from the air, so I flew out and back and had to go again. Each quest were intricate and not the normal kill and loot and return. I loved fighting side by side with our own NPC's.

Plenty of herbs in NR.

I loved the dudes in Baleheim, they were suppose to be these nordic giants but their hair looked like dreadlocks. I hope we get that hair style in the game the next exp.

Joined a level 70 for the quest and she immediately popped up Free for all and so I left the group. Plays with her boyfriend, ended up being pretty cool.

I continued to play just Aprillian. It was very hard to do, I kept wanting to have my skinner with me or a miner.

Summoning Felguard when current one loses health.

And on Christmas eve she dinged 69. I loved the New Agammand and the gathering of the body quest. The one where you went into the plagued village and made one of those UC guard things and then exploded on the plagued Valkri guys was fun.

I am loving the feel of Northrend. Got to the Tusky people, the icebergy look is cool
Pumped to get to 70.
Christmas day, grinding so hard in NR, it's crazy. Aprillian dinged 70 on Christmas even on her lunch hour

Starting to have Space management issues.
Bought another Guild Bank tab for We Live to serve

Did my first Daily. I suppose I need to go to that island now. And no, I am no hurry to get to 80. Went to put on my first gem and it didn't work.

I am loving flying. Aprillian bought the Mythic Spellthread from Scryer, and made one

Encountered Queues on Sunday night.

Monday I pulled both Epril and ThePrimall and Auruk down to Nagrand. Epril is 63 and Theprimall is 62, so they can't do any quests, but they just followed Auruk and helped him when needed

Making money on the AH



Talked with nieces and nephews about WoW at Family gathering, way cool

Glanthur

Ashayo

Full week!

A second 80 - Asheal dings!

Topped and tailed by instance runs on Death Knights. Looks like I'll be levelling just by running instances.
Running them with 3 DK's, 1 Hunter, and Jekle for heals. Ramparts, Blood Furnace, Slave Pens, Underbog. Already 63.
Tried keyclone with two DK's but because they are both melee, it is hard to position them


Professions:
- Stopped 'learning' from daily inscription research. There are only 60 minor glyphs - 6 per class. You just stop learning ; it doesn't say anything useful like "you know them all"
- Levelled inscription to 425 so I can use the epic offhand. (Ponfarr PM'ed me to say that restriction is being removed in the next patch. YAY)
- Cooking achievements to get over 3000
- Sous Chef - 100 recipes ; good money making in AH by looks of it


Daily quests:
- "Aces High!" Wyrmrest quest opens up at 80. Fairly tricky vehicle quest (flying dragon). Much easier in a party - or dual boxing with key clones
- Started doing Oracle dailies - three, but varies each day, and an achievement to do them all. Egg that hatches into things including pet or mount... waiting!

Respec!
- Changed Ashayo from affliction for 1st time ever. Now a hybrid Destruction/Demonology. DPS much improved. Increased from around 800 dps to 1500. Started running some Heroics with Ashayo, and the difference a strong group makeup makes is significant.

Missing:
Siphon Life
CoExhaustion
Dark Pact
Unstable Affliction
Haunt

Gained
soul link
Fel Domination
Demonic Empowerment
Summon felguard

Heroics
- Azjol'Nerub ; trash on first boss tough without cleansing - humbling
- Utgarde Keep - easy
- Drak Tharon keep - achievements - Better off Dred, Oh Novos! (Palatinus mad tank, Onassi mad healer)

Random note of the week: Can fly onto Zepp while leaving Borean Tundra enroute to Org

Asheal has managed to heal some more instances: Ran Halls of Stone in Storm Peaks. It includes very "Indiana Jones" type event, followed by a long lore discussion. Quite interesting!
Tried helping out with healing in Riversky's Naxx group on Asheal
Managed to down 4 Horsemen, Patchwerk, and Grobbulus (first time kill)

Winter's Veil Presents! Love having so many alts - got all the presents easily, including jingling bell and both red and green winter helpers.
Had decided the jingling bell was most rare, then logged onto alliance and got four of them!




Emails and PM

From Blade

Hey guys... "Professor" Blade here...

In my quest to optimize my characters with well-put together macros, I hit a stumbling block.
Also... there's a bit of a snag coming up for hunters in patch 3.0.8... we / they are losing a fair chunk of dps.
Yeah yeah... I know there arer some hunters out there that are saying 'It's not THAT bad'... but I will counter this naivete with 'It's bad enough when they're buffing a class like Deathknights... making it even easier to /roll your face across your keyboard to win.
But I digress... Ol' Blade's not here to rant about silly things out of his control... I'm here to give an edge to the players that still like a little bit of challenge to their game.
Those of you that have interracted with me in game will probably know that I vastly prefer to play my Hunter over my Deathknight... because I find the Hunter more challenging. (Seriously! There's are two two-handed tanking swords out there!)
That said... of late I was playing around with some macros in anticipation of the upcoming nerf... attempting to figure out how to keep my hunter's dps in the acceptable range...
Aspect of the Beast. Have you noticed the new changes to it?
It used to be a pretty useless Aspect... only making you untrackable... useful in PVP, I suppose... but not anywhere else.
NOW, however... it's got an extra little boost. +10% to pet damage.
THIS changes everything. I have that little treasure up almost all the time now.
I've also jury-rigged some macros together to cast different Aspects when I used different attacks or items...
For example... whenever I mount up on a land mount or my flier, I cast Aspect of the Viper... I won't be in combat ANYway, why not get a big mana regeneration boost while I'm moving from Point A to Point B?
The problem came when I linked the macros to the spells I wanted to cast... I'd cast the spell once, and all was good, then I'd cast ot again and the Aspect would turn off!
What to do?

I searched and searched and finally found my answer deep in the archives of some long-forgotten tome in Ironforge...
(Not really, but it sounded good, didn't it?)

An Exclamation Point. !
Put an exclamation point in front of your macro text... what this does is makes the command 'sticky' and will cast it only if it's not on/active already.
For example... here's the one I've put together for pet attacks:
/cast Hunter's Mark
/cast !Aspect of the Beast
/PetAttack

The exclamation point in the second line keeps the Aspect going no matter how many targets you send your pet after... and as Aspects cost no mana, all you'll see is the Aspect popping again and again as you switch targets.
If you leave out the exclamation point, you will toggle the aspect on and off each time you switch targets.

Here's another one in the event you're hopping on and off your mount, but not in combat...
/cast !Aspect of the Viper
/cast Swift Green Wind Rider

This will keep your Aspect on whether you hop on or off your particular mount of choice.

Oh... as a final tip for hunters? To get used to the upcoming nerf, play almost 100% with Aspect of the viper on... the huge damage reduction will make the 3.0.8 patch seem not so bad.

Hope that helps!

And now a little something from Ol' Blade's Easter Egg Basket...

With everyone doing achievements and running hither-and-yon across the old world doing the old-world dungeons, you will inevitably find yourself in Gnomeregan. As an Alliance, it's easy to get there... get yourself to Ironforge, exit the main entrance and run west. As a Horde, you've either got one heckuva run ahead of you, or you can do a small quest chain starting at the Engineer shop in Orgrimmar. First you have to take the quest 'Rig Wars' from Nogg, then Sovik (the goblin engineer) offers a second quest that sends you to Booty Bay to talk to another engineer there (Scooty)... from Scooty you get a little device (Goblin Transponder) that will 'port you to Gnomeregan. Getting back is an entirely different matter, though.

While killing mobs in Gnomeregan, you will eventually happen across a White Punch Card. These are used to access different areas in Gnomeregan based upon their colors. You can change the colors of the cards by using special machines called 'Matrix Punchographs'... but that's not the secret.
Each color of card has a different string of binary code on it. I'm not going to type them all out here... but I *will* give you the translations...

White Punch Card: Thrall and Jaina sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G

Yellow Punch Card: If you can read this, you're standing too close.

Blue Punch Card: The gnome king wears night elf underwear.

Red Punch Card: Help! I'm trapped in a binary punch card factory!

Prismatic Punch Card: Message to Castpipe: your laundry's ready for pickup.

Second... I know Ol' Blade's been a little hard on the Alliance of late... so I found this little goodie to follow the theme of last week's bank NPCs... All you Hordies out there will have to roll lowbie Alliance toons or sneak into Ironforge like I did...

There's three bankers... all of the Stonemantle Clan... nothing noteworthy about the name Stonemantle... but wait... it's a first-name thing again, isn't it!
Very astute, my young apprentice... their names are Barnum, Bailey and Soleil.
Barnam and Bailey are probably the more commonly known... from Barnam and Bailey's Circus, naturally... Soleil is from the Cirque du Soleil - an acrobatic circus.

This gets me thinking, though... how much respect can I truly give the Alliance faction... when they have former circus clowns as bankers?

As always, an awesome podcast guys!

Blade




PM

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Message subject:	Weapon Leveling
From:	Ponfarr
Sent at:	Tue Dec 23, 2008 7:44 am
To:	Ashayo

Message
Heard your last podcast. I leveled my polearm skill against one of those heroes in Blasted Lands (you said Netherstorm or Shadowmoon I think....dont know about those guys), but last night I tried again on my gun and found out (like you) that they changed that for those guys too. However, I did read about another method which I have not tried yet. Go fight the healers (monk or something) in Scarlet Monestary. They will continually heal themselves during the fight. You should use a low level weapon with low damage.

Email 2

'ello! Marrly, on the Eonar realm, here writing again.

Randomly I got to the big eight-zero within a few days of getting the expansion but that is random info. Sadly I never got my artisan Flying training but by my odd luck I got myself the epic engineering plane (A monetary setback) and the bronze drake from the Cavern of Time Culling of Stratholme Time run. Fun...

But onto My real question:

I myself Can only barely run WOW application once on my computer at the lowest settings. How do you manage to run two or more Wow apps at once? I am frankly confounded about it