Thursday, December 30, 2010

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 195 - We're Not Digging it Man

Aprillian, Ashayo, Virshna and Jeppy discuss another week of playing World of Warcraft, Blizzard's great MMORPG. Contest Ongoing send an email to ctrlaltwow@gmail.com telling us how you play WoW, either as an altaholic or dealing with it in your family life to being placed in a drawing for a month free of WoW or a $10 iTunes Gift Card or an Authenticator.



What We've Been Doing:

Aprillian
Find Herbs works with Pricklypair

Went to do a free transfer a toon off of Jub Jub, so I can start Goblin DK, couldn't transfer because of mail, only mail was 6 year anniversary.


Aprillian & Vrishna




Logging started on 12/23/2010 at 12:54:30.
13:16:49 Baron Ashbury becomes enraged!
13:21:02 King Genn Greymane says: It's over Godfrey. You have no support left among the eastern lords.
13:21:07 Lord Godfrey says: No... I'd sooner die than have one of your kind for a king!
13:44:05 Marcus says: Bloody Forsaken! They'll pay for what they've done!
13:46:33 Marcus says: This is our land -- they're not going to take it away without a fight!
13:51:57 [Kiilluu]: hi
13:53:24 [Kiilluu]: it ok i wasnt
13:53:51 Enslaved Villager says: It's true then? Even those afflicted by the Curse are fighting the Forsaken!
13:54:01 [Kiilluu]: how do you get the key
13:54:08 [Warsha]: off of the guards
13:54:12 [Kiilluu]: k
13:54:43 Enslaved Villager says: It's true then? Even those afflicted by the Curse are fighting the Forsaken!
13:55:28 Enslaved Villager says: It's true then? Even those afflicted by the Curse are fighting the Forsaken!
14:02:09 [Kiilluu]: ty
14:03:32 [Kiilluu]: ty
14:03:50 [Kiilluu]: lamw
14:04:02 [Kiilluu]: not nice you used me !@# holes
14:04:30 [Warsha]: how did we use you

14:04:36 [Kiilluu]: so it still not nice

Logging started on 12/23/2010 at 12:54:30.
14:01:57 To [Kiilluu]: want to join us to kill brothogg
14:03:33 To [Kiilluu]: thanks
14:04:15 To [Kiilluu]: you got credit





Vrishna
Worgens are TOO cute. Never would have thunk it could be true. Love my Worgens !

Phased areas of Gilneas.

Still can't get over the coolness of the xp for gathering professions

Ashayo
Jekle
- Deep into Deepholm. Completed chains and opened dailies for Therazane rep. (Shoulder enchants) Also have tabard.
- Tip: There is a portal at Temple of Earth up to Therazane's Throne for dailies
- Halls of Origination
- Honored with AIE
- Good quest line leading into Twilight Highlands. Nice area - looks like Australian Gum/Eucalyptus trees, so feel at home
- Questing as a druid is cheating.. and loving it! Mushrooms that throw you in the air :)
- Crucible of Carnage, Grim Batol
- Went from iLevel 315 to 329 ; ready for heroics. Only bought two "fake" pieces - cloak and relic.
- Trying Heroic Vortex Pinnacle - so close to a wipe on Altairus - wind changing direction.

Pud
- Uldum - some great cinematics leading into the zone and the first few quests to tell the story. Quite engaging.
- BRC, Stonecore (healer dropped on last boss)
- Ding 84 in Deepholm
- Ding 85 in Uldum on quest "Premature Explosionation"
- Vortex Pinnacle
- Levelling BS. Even more ore than before -2 ore to a bar, 2 bars to a folded obsidium
- Halls of Origination - 'cept one of last bosses
- Lost City, Grim Batol


DwP
- Guild ach for speed kill on Malygos

Winters Veil - Ashariss
- AV - died before 1 kill
- Another AV , got all 50 in one go, and we won. Fun fight
- Seems lower levels got more this year?
- Got toons with 3 mechanical grinches and 3 wands of holiday cheer

Anomander
- Ding 81 from mining obsidium
- can't get breadcrumb quest to get to Deepholm at 81, nor use potion, but if you get summoned, can get quests there.

Jeppy
Money Money Money
Emails

Email #1 from Janic

hey guys,

The last time I sent an email was 2 years ago I think. I mentioned that I was about to get into raiding. Well, for the past 2 years I did just that, I raided the entire Wrath content 5 days a week, 3 hours a night. Finally, when my guild killed Lich King, I realized how burned out I was on WoW. During BC, when I saw people in Tier6, being the first to experience all the raid content, I envied them. Now I was one of them and I hated it.

At one point I almost didn’t even have time for anything else than work and WoW.

I walked around in Westfall on my main for a bit and remembered how much I loved the atmosphere there when I leveled my first characters. The game had turned from something "I couldn't wait to get home for" into work, without me even realizing it. I stopped playing completely for half a year (I couldn't believe how much free time I had on my hands all of the sudden).

I knew that I never wanted to raid again but just leveling alts wouldn't keep me interested either.
So, I decided to completely focus on my twinks that I used to play on the side. I even bought a second account after 3 years of monoboxing, to get them the best gear possible ;) I can still have the enjoyment of minmaxing and competition without having to invest a lot of time or being on a set schedule.

I'm now leveling a troll hunter on my second account while listening to CtrlAltWoW and I'm finally enjoying WoW again like I used to several years ago.



Best regards from Germany


Email #A from Tranith

G'day CAW crew,

Just a quick email giving my thoughts regarding your discussion about
healing in cata.

Dinged 85 a week ago and spent a lot of the levelling process healing both
guild groups and pugs. Since dinging, I have healed both normal and
heroics, mainly in pugs.

Yes healing in a lot different than Wrath where the success of a 5 man
group was largey dependant on tanks and healers.

In cata, the success of a 5 man is dependant of everyone, and I think this
is the reason for healer distress. We do not have the mana pool to heal
people who don't get out of the stupid, as we prevoiusly did. I'm not
talking about unavoidable damage due to the mob's mechanics, I'm talking
about avoidable incoming damage by standing in the right spot, getting out
of the fire/gas/poison/cyclone/etc. DPS seem be struggling with this,
expecting healers to be able to save their butts like we were 3 weeks ago.

A good example is the last boss in heroic Grim Batol. In a pug where 4 of
us were there for the first time. We got a quick explanation but 1 dps
didn't quite avoid the aoe damage. I healed him through it, then found my
mana bar at 10%. Not good when the boss is still at 70% health.

Next attempt, everyone avoids incoming damage as much as possible, even to
the detriment of their dps. Boss down, my mana never went below 70%.

Just an example that stood out to me and alot of other bosses seem similar
(many bosses in vortex pinnacle).

So as a healer, I'm really enjoying the challenge. It's harder with more
wipes, but I think I've used every healing spell I have rather than the 4
spells I used in wrath.

Cheers

Tranith

(Don't put me in draw)

PS Please ban dps meters.


Email #2 from Dimented


Hello one and all it is me dimented again here to tell you that i now have cata. Yes thats right on dec. 19 i went to best buy and picked it up. it's been great so far i started with dimented at mount Hyjal, That place is so fun I got ganked got an a long quest chain got a noncombat pet and a few Achievements one I got was "Coming down the mountain witch is to complete 115 quests and I also got "Beware of the 'Unbeatable?' Pteradactyl" witch is complete the jousting quests in mount hyjal up to and including egg wave. and on top of that i dinged 82. I did a little on Seng he is still 80 though i might take him threw Vashj'ir just to see all of that or at least most of it. I did nothing really on "He who must not be named" Haha kinda feel like harry potter right their "We do not speak his name" lol but i did pick a few herbs and a few nodes. well thats it for now, now I am off to get lvl on seng before work Take care.. FOR THE HORDE!!

Dimented from the mighty Pants on Head Were we all wear are pants firmly upon our heads..


Email #B

New Year's Eve Episode

Hello CAW crew,

Just a quick note.
i hope that the new year eve episode is going to be just as epic as last year new year eve episode.

that one is podcast gold!!
Its still my favorite podcast episode ever!

or maybe it was just funnier in my head ;p

anyway, little present from me to you: here is a code for a lil moonkin pet:

Leralond

Ps: dont count me in for the /roll



Email #3 from Mysterios & Frottola

Dear Ctrl Alt Wow Crew (Aprillian, Ashayo, El Jeppy and Vrishna),
Mysterios the priest and Frottola the warlock from the Etrigg server checking in again. It has been another great week playing WOW. We have leveled our characters from level 10 to level 30! We are both Gnomes, and completed all the quests in Loch Modan and almost all in the Wetlands.

Our great adventure for the week was our encounter with the Modan Monster in Loch Modan. We were level 16 when we were questing and we just found him while fishing. We send in Frottola's felguard and Mysterios kept him healed. We almost lost the felguard a few times and did just as the monster had about 100 life left. Now he was coming at me, Mysterios, I stuck on a shield and prepared to go hand to hand with the beast, since I did not have any mana left. After more time with DOTs and backup spells from Frottola he met his demise. Although we were not able to loot anything off him we still had that high from the intense fight.

We continue to further our professions, alchemy and engineering and selling low level mats on the market for great money. Nothing too great we can make around the 100 mark, but Frottola likes to make target dummies and confuse the baddies.

When we dinged 20 we were so excited to get mounts. A gnome warlock on a felsteeed looks funny, but at least better than a mechanostrider, clunkity clunk, sputter. Its great riding around, it really makes the quests go faster.

A misadventure that we had was trying to get north to the wetlands by going over the Stonewrought Dam. We didn’t see how far down it was and we both broke our legs and died. The next time down we used the soul stone, then I revived right where I died and then I resurrected Frottola after she jumped to her death. We found a fun way to jump down to avoid long detours we just have to jump in the right order and resurrect each other.

We really appreciate your podcast with all of the content and it keeps up so interested in the later content. That made us attempt Gnomeregan, wow a whole new side of the game, now we actually need food and drink to replenish. Your message of doing what is fun in the game had lead us to created a rouge/druid team, they are about lvl 10.



Take Care and of course, For the Alliance,

Mysterios & Frottola and our new alts


Email #4 from Empororwang

I have a question for Ashayo. Who should I cast the spell dark intent on? Another caster or the healer ? Just not really sure. Thanks for any help. Love the show.

Sent via DROID on Verizon Wireless

Email #C from Kurly

Hello!! I hope all is well!! I was hoping to send this email as an Audio submission as I have finally downloaded Audacity. This is, I hope step one in creating my own little podcast. So, if one of you all is reading it, I clearly did not record bupkiss.

So, I 100% share the opinion of being overwhelmed. As the majority of my homeguild mates on Norgannon are NOT toon-touched they are more than happy to level on, pvp with, or run instances on their main, while I, the fearless guild leader, are on one of four other servers leveling my goblin, troll druid, undead hunter, or tauren priest.....did I mention I shut off my real ID....um...so they couldnt track my movments....BAD KURLY!!

Anyway....after getting my Priest to level 85 I was able to dole out some whoop-arse in PVP for maybe two days...now that the world is way ahead of me with the new uber resiliance gear I am back to getting three shot (or should I say swiped) by feral druids that seem to have thing for priests.

I was able to ZIP to level 10 on my mage in CAW...you know...the guild you all are like never on.......and have also been healilng warsong gulch with Khurly me knome (in case Verishna is reading this) priest....also rolled a Pally, Awndura, I am going to use to tank and of course...my Worgen hunter Jynja and her sidekick Freddie......get it....Freddie and Jynja....oh dear...

Love you all...many hugs...and all that jazz.

PEACE....

Kurly


Email #D from Eranth

Hail and well-met, guildmates!



I just thought I’d drop a quick line to let you know I haven’t done much with WoW while the holidays have been in full force. Too many family things to focus on.



However, I did see a link in Twitter to a contest by Blizzard to give away free Authenticators. Well, this Monday, much to my surprise, I was surprised to have an email in my inbox from Blizzard saying I had been randomly chosen as one of the ..I think 100 winners for the day, or the hour or whatnot. Woot!



So, apparently they’ll be sending a belated Christmas gift to me in the form of a Blizzard Authenticator to my registered Battle.Net address. Very exciting! I suspect it’ll be a couple of weeks before they get them out, but I’ll let you know when it arrives and report back with an update then.



I had updated my phone over the holidays too, but unfortunately, not to a version that supports the free Authenticator App. Apparently, I’m still living in the 20th Century, not yet the 21st.



“Be well…”



Eranth






Email #E from Bidkar

Hey CAW crew,

Bidkar, neglected mage Borean Tundra here.

I forgot what day it was so this is really late and probably won't make it in time, but what the hey, I can just add to it next week.

Haven't done much, I started my Worgen rogue, Furari. His name is Latin for "to steal". It was just a happy coinkydink that Furari contained "Fur". Furari is up to level 32 and having a good time. I like how linear the questing is now and there are enough familiar quests interspersed so it all still seem very comfortable.

I actually only minded one vehicle quest in all of Cataclysm so I would say they have been much improved. I don't dread them anymore like I dreaded them in Northrend. I didn't care for the one where you have to flap the wings of the hippogryph. That partly may be attributable to my wrist injury. I've been one handing it for about 2 months playing WoW.

Have a great day!

FOR THE HORDE and for the alliance and CAW!

Bidkar and a couple of his alts

Email #

Email #


Shout Outs & Thank You
Momomoments

Hello all,
Hope you are having a wonderful Holiday and end of the year.
As yesterday was Christmas hope you had fun and gave/received what you wanted (I know we did :)).

I have played an average time of wow this week and will have more time as I have most of next week off.

I have been able to do a few instances with my troll 85 priest moheal but not as much as I want to. Main reason is that I really do not want to do randoms as I am sure you know why. I do have to say the few randoms I have been able to do this past week, they were not that bad. A couple of them were really nice; I said as I always do now "please wait until I have full mana" and the tank/dps have! amazing. Healing has been harder at least for me but I think I am getting better. The little practice I had in ICC in trying not to over heal so much and to only heal when I have to I think helped. That is the name of the game as I see, heal when you have to and also realize not everyone will be at 100% health. It also falls upon the tank and dps to heal themselves as well. Using bandage and eating food might be a new concept to some but those little things can go a long way. Moheal is at about 321 item gear and to get into heroics 329 is needed. I was able to buy a item level 346 with my justice points, I got the head piece which looks goofy in my opinion. I was confused on what valor points are but I was told and read that you get them in heroics and raids.
In other mo news, my druid-mage pair made it to 78 and almost into cataclysm material. It has been harder to dual box them in the new content, I am assuming it is all the graphic burden on my video card. Has anyone dual boxed recently 80 content.
I will try to dual box with them but I may have to separate them and I know that will be hard on them.

For my RAF, they have made it to level 20, my goblin pair and having lots of fun. I was doing Azshara content even thought it was below their level, it was still fun. I was wondering, did I miss something but I completely missed the other zone next to Kazan. Do goblins go back to the starting area? or how can one go back? Actually I mean lost isles as I have not been to Kazan yet, or have I? Im so confused.

I was able to start a worgen while I was waiting for my other half Gretchen, why you ask? :)
well she said she wanted to do a trial of wow!
WOW
I was so excited but it took so long for wow to install on her mac that it really didnt happen, yet Im still happy.

The Worgen area was fun, it is a hard choice if I have to pick one between worgen and goblin area.
I started a Worgen Druid and leveled up to 9 and I will be starting a RAF pair. I think I will be doing a weird combo of rogue and mage. We shall see I might change my mind.
I usually like to have a heally in the pair.

Thank you as always and shout out to Juuno on her podcast, you are doing GREAT!!!

Have an awesome end of 2010 and,

FOR THE 2011!


--
Mo

ok my first PS,
I just realized that goblins start in kazan and than move to lost isles!!
I just had a momentary lapse of reason I guess :0

Thank you :)

--
Mo

Renee Valentine (@Iceflare)
12/21/10 13:11
Props to @Aprillian for naming her hunter Pet "Ahhh" (sp?) and her hunter "Shucks" loved it!


Thanks Mark

You are receiving this e-mail because Mark has purchased a Moonkin Hatchling Pet for you as a gift from the Blizzard Store!

Moonkin Hatchling Pet Pet Key:

To use this key to activate the Moonkin Hatchling Pet, simply follow these instructions:

1. Create a Battle.net account (or if you already have one, log in) at http://www.battle.net
2. Verify your e-mail address. For existing account holders, click the 'verify this e-mail address' link in the main Account Management page and follow the steps. For new accounts, check your e-mail account immediately after account creation for a verification e-mail. Click the link in this e-mail to verify your e-mail address.
3. Return to the Battle.net account management page, then click on [Item Code Redemption].
4. Enter the above Pet Key in the [Item Redemption Code] field.
5. Once you have successfully redeemed this code, you will be able to use the Moonkin Hatchling Pet.


We strongly recommend you keep this e-mail on file for future reference. If you have any questions about this gift or about your Battle.net account, please contact our Sales, Billing & Account Services team at:

Phone: 1-800-592-5499
E-mail: sales@blizzard.com

Live phone support is available seven days a week, 8:00AM - 8:00PM Pacific Time.

Enjoy!

Blizzard Entertainment

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 194 - Overwelmed

Aprillian, Ashayo, Virshna and Jeppy discuss another week of playing World of Warcraft, Blizzard's great MMORPG. Contest Ongoing send an email to ctrlaltwow@gmail.com telling us how you play WoW, either as an altaholic or dealing with it in your family life to being placed in a drawing for a month free of WoW or a $10 iTunes Gift Card or an Authenticator.

Juno

Hello darlings! Again, I'm so sorry I missed last ep! Didn't even realize I'd missed it at first...hehehee. But I hope you're all doing well and that you have a great holiday!! =D

Big snowy hugs!

Juuno



Forgot to roll last week, will have to roll twice this week. Also, must talk about prizes!!!!!
What We've Been Doing:

Aprillian
Finally got Shucks off of that island, took her into RFC & forgot to get her a tabard. There's a quest to go to the flightmaster, probably why
Got Shucks to 14 9/10ths and had Deellaa give her levels up to 19. Then she turned in some quests and dinged 20. I wasted over an hour trying to figure out where she got her trike. Luckily she had the Sparkly pony. Finally figured out the Goblin Slums

Started a worgen pair. Third cata account can't start anymore. Too many characters, guess it's time to ....

Cooking dailies give RAF xp

RAF Cata dilemma

Level 4 Guild
Aprillian & Vrishna
We finally got OFF the Island. Hey ? What's up with the REALLY low perspective for the darn Goblins. Crazy XP for Herbing and Mining etc.
Vrishna
Leesa and Breesa get Simply Abominable and Oh Metzen ! Spent days trying to find cookies. Went to several cities and several Smokywood Pastures vendors to no avail. Finally googled it. Was very spoiled last year because of Aprillian.

Ashayo

Pud
- Mnt Hyjal ; ding 82
- Stonecore - rough on healers
- Jub Jub queues still there - 500 at 5pm on a sunday

Mining
- Leveled Mining to 525 just on obsidium ore - got 39% into level 80 (657400)

Jekle
- Ding 82 doing ToT with DwP
- Vortex Pinnacle
- Questing in Deepholm
- Tip - don't hand in "On even ground" till you have done "Crumbling Defenses" - the npc's you are helping might be fighting an elite you need to trip up

Alchemy
- Price for mats of truegold staying the same, but price of bars dropping - significantly less profit and higher risk
- Except when it procs - 4 bars!!

DwP
- Guild achievements - 18 Abominations and kill KT in Naxx - says in the guild ach who got it

Jeppy
Slowly slowly catchy 85ey
Emails

Email #1 from Agi

Hello Apprillio', Vrisho, Jeppo, Juno-oh, and Ashay...oooooo.

Its Agitarsi here from Pants on head on the wonderful Jubbly Wubbly. I have been listening for about six months now and i thought it might finally be time to send an email to tell you how much I appreciate this podcast!

For about four months now, shortly after I joined PoH, I have been raiding with Paranoid (you know, The Addicted's raidgroup). After getting the Lich King down several times I figured I might try out this altaholic business you guys keep raving on about.

I'm starting to need something more; so recently I made a pair undead sisters. One a hunter, one a warrior, to check out all the nice new starting areas that blizz has kindly put in. Dubbed Wittybetty and Witlessbetty (with pet spider WitlessBarry), they set out over Tristfal Glades to explore the shiny new world. Although Wittybetty has been sleeping in the inn for a little too long.

(spoilers!) Witlessbetty and her dumb spider Barry have been trendsetting with Sylvanas up and down Silverpine Forest and throughout the Hillsbrad Foothills; blowing up ducks, infiltrating Gilneas, hunting worgen, being hunted by worgen, picking spider eggs out of live bears (gross btw, i would skip that quest if you have a weak stomach), and all sorts of other mischief.

Anyway, I better cut it off there as I am having to email from work as my internet is out at home. (bloody Australian internet! it had to die just after Clysm was released :<)

See ya! Agi - For the fireballs.

ps. Gnomes are awesome and be nice to Vrishna!

Email #2 from Xenfoo

CataWoW!

B.F.R (Before you read) - this is long if it makes it to the podcast, feel free to slice and dice it up!


Morning C.A.W Crew!!

Well Cataclysm is upon us and all I can say is holy cow is it the expansion of expansions! And I'm not even talking about the level 80 to 85 stuff :) Well last I mailed you guys I was working on Xenfoo and getting him to 80, having started him around the time the pre-event for Cataclysm started. Well he made it to lvl 76 (if I remember correctly ;)) when I went and picked up my Cataclysm Collectors box... Then I rolled my Worgen Mage "Gruen" and went thru the Worgen starting area. Holy canoly is that the best starting zone I've seen! The immersion and depth of the quests is great. It has a good feel to it. Haven't tried the Goblins yet but they are next on my list, after I get my Druid to 85!

Yup you read that right! Oh good lord where do I start, after getting Gruen to lvl 14 I thought hmm Druid... Worgen Druid. Interesting. Oh I have an one open character slot... DONE! Having never gotten a Druid past 10 or 11, I started one just to see what happens. Well that was on Friday and in three days Praevus dinged lvl 31, and that's without heirlooms. The questing now is so smooth it's great, no more going from one end of a zone to another and back again. It's awesome. I have spec'd him Feral/Resto and I plan on running DPS or Heals when I do dungeons. Having healed on a priest, a paladin, and a Shaman I figured I'd round out my heals with a Druid. I healed into ICC on my Shaman (Thymr), never got to ol' Lichy but we got pretty far into it.

Could Praevus be my first 85? Not sure, I'm having a blast with all the new leveling redesigns and content that's for sure. I have a weakness for "alts", that is for sure! Here's a question for you, what do you feel signifies a "main"? I've got 8 80's and I don't consider them "alts" really... I feel they're all my mains really.... I play the toon that I feel like playing that day.

Well that's the end of my long, probably too long of an email!

Take care guys and gals, my Mondays always seem to fly by when I'm listening to a 3hr episode of Ctrl Alt WoW :)

-Xenfoo "player of many alts, master of none =]"


Email #A from Gabe Audio
Hello Guys,
Here's a quickie segment I made for ya. Sorry for all the gasping, forgot
to move my mouth away from the mic when I was recording... I'll try to
remember that for the next time. No contest as always.

Lots of love,
Gabe


Email #B from our Favorite WoW Couple

Hello all!

Iceflow and Caoboi here again to tell you what we've been up to in game this week. Well if it was even possible, it's been more of a busy week this week than last week!

We got into a pretty good routine this week. We would come home from work and we would run our cooking, fishing, and jewelcrafting dailies. Then off to Deepholme for our dailies there. And lastly to Twilight Highland's for the dailies there. Our friends in our raid groups run them together so it makes it pretty fun.

After dailies, then it's time for heroics. At first, we were only able to run one and maybe two heroics if we were lucky. They just took so long that we just didn't have time. The other day, our group was able to run three heroics in one night which was a big accomplishment. We finished up Cataclysm Dungeon Hero for the guild which requires all the dungeons run on heroic. We felt really good about that one.

I also got my fossilized hatching out of the archaeology profession. Now to get my raptor.

On a high note, Caoboi and I did what the show is all about. We made two new alts. Goblins in fact. I made a mage called Icesprocket and Caoboi made a hunter called Kabooey. We loved, loved, loved the goblin starting area. This shows what Blizzard is capable of and I love it so much I really don't want to leave the islands yet. We've been reading the text of every quest which is a first for me. I'm enjoying it immensely and I look forward to many long hours playing my goblin mage. I love that they cast underhanded. Caoboi tamed a pet monkey and I love the sounds he makes.

Our raid group dipped our toes into raiding on Friday night. We one-shot Argaloth who is the first boss in Baradin Hold which is like the Cataclysm version of Vault of Archavon. Three of our raid members died at the end and we got it done. Our resident mage got the first piece of tier 11. We went on to Blackwing Descent but this was a little tougher than the previous fight. I'm glad we are raiding again because deep down, I enjoy that most of all. I have to say, I've missed being properly enchanted, gemmed, and reforged.

And the huge news....drum roll.......Caoboi and I have both race changed our main toons into goblins! I told myself that I wasn't going to do it when the goblin race was announced, and I kept telling myself I didn't want it. But then I saw one of my raid members as a goblin. And it got me. So now I'm enjoying my Single Ladies dance and Caoboi is enjoying his Soulja Boy Dance.

So I hope you all are enjoying a wonderful week and hope to see you in game.


Email #C from Bidcar

Woof Aprillian, Ashayo, Jeppy and Vrishna,

Aroooooooooo grrrrrrr! Bidcar still level 80 WORGEN mage on Winterhoof here. This week I race changed my human mage into Worgen. I am extremely happy with my change and gladly accepted the worgen bite that transformed my mild mannered human into a feral pile of claws and fur. Someone in game actually yelled at me for doing a race change and said I should have to level through. I told him that I had 7 level 80's and about 40 different alts and had done my fair share of leveling. Then someone whispered me and called me a nerd. Best thing ever! I had such a good laugh over that bit.

Bidkar the undead mage is only 81. I had planned to level him to 85 first, but I ended up playing Allerea the belf warlock first. She has jewel crafting and I really wanted to get the ball rolling on the jewel crafting dailies. I started leveling her and just couldn't stop. She is now 84, closing in on 85. Side note, I actually met someone in game who knew where I picked the name Allerea from. I named her after Alleria Windrunner, the sister of Sylvannas. You can see a statue of Alleria in front of Stormwind. Alleria and Turalyon went missing after Draenor broke apart. I keep hoping the two of them will show up in game again. I refuse to believe they are dead. You can see their son Arator in Honor Hold I think.

Other than that, I got all my 80's rolling in Mount Hyjal. Not too keen on water be it real or pixelated. My guess it comes from growing up on the shoreline and knowing many people who drowned. My sisters are actually even worse than I am. Irrational, yes, but what can I say, I gotta be me. I will go to the other starting zone one of these days just to take a look.

I tried Archeology, gonna throw that in the same pile as fishing and level it when I have nothing else to do. I only have fishing on two toons and it is staying that way. Does the fishing daily reward improve at level 475? I sure hope so, the shiny bag things is the most disappointing reward I have ever received, thought the skill point is nice. I suppose you need to take the turnips with the chocolate sometimes.

Speaking of disappointing, my Landro's loot card from the Collecter's Edition was Path of Cenarius. The range being Spectral Tiger the best, to me Path of Cenarius is the worst. I would rather have gotten a card saying "ha ha, you lose, love Chris Metzen". Every time someone talked about getting Path of Cenrius, I thought "I would never want to get that card". That was my first loot card I ever scratched and it will be my last. I guess it can't be Christmas every day. I can laugh about it now, but at the time my disappointment was so intense it was palpable.

Cataclysm is great, though the leveling to 85 seems to be a bit short. I'm not too worried about it though. I play my own way, not Blizzard's way, so I will find plenty to have fun with.


Happy Christmas everyone!

Bidkar and his many alts, Ruff, ruff arf!



Email #D from Gravenau


Greeting from cata 1.5 weeks in

This week in my wow no audio submission mainly because I haven’t really got anything to report on. lost a couple people at work so I have basically had very lil to no time to play how little well my goblin on underwire is yet to crack lvl 10 my hunter their also is yet to crack lvl 36 and my main and co main on khaz goroth is yet to crack lvl 81 and lvl 77 respectively so yes it’s going to be very quiet on my end for the next 3.5 weeks mainly because as work has no one else to work nights I am the man and hence I will be either at work or sleeping to go to work. So I like to wish all the CAW crew a Merry Christmas and a happy new year and to El Jeppy well mate 2 out of 3 anit bad and Aprillian my voice has been known to kill Babel fish so it’s no wonder people don’t want to try and translate it.



P.S My female Worgen hunter has a top hat which is awesome



P.P.S Do all normal English women sound like Lady Sovereign or is she like me and just has a really strong accent.



P.P.P.S The only cricket team more disliked when the aussies play them are the kiwi’s (aussie slang translation those that lie with sheep also known as New Zealanders)



Shout Outs & Thank You

MoMoMoments

Hello all,
hope you are doing well.

I am sorry for not emailing you last week. My cats ate my email! crazy huh! I know its unbelievable (I hope your buying this).
Ok truthfully I have been having so much fun in game that I could not, would not, did not! spare a square, i mean minute to write an email.
And for that I am sorry, that is bad of me, but do you really blame me, or I mean can you blame me.
Blizzard has done it again..."just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in" (spoke in your best Al Pacino impression) Not that we were ever out of it but wow, WOW!!

Where do I begin!?
Installation for the most part could not be easier (I am still having issues with my laptop, so I have concluded its my sucky dell laptop dudes).
How awesome was it to buy the game digitally, I was able to get 2 accounts going within minutes and my RAF, yes :) another RAF which I will get into.
I had also ordered the collectors edition from Amazon which arrived the next day and that is AWESOME too!!! I love soundtrack for movies and really loving game soundtracks too now (wow, starcraft, civ, just to name a few).
Deciding what to do first was hard but not really :) When I started playing wow oh so long ago my warrio motauren was my first and main character until about year or so ago when I loved most of my characters to feathermoon and my troll priest moheal became my main as I was always the healer as I enjoy healing.
So, at midnight, I log in (moheal was in org) and it was a madhouse as expected. I walked around org some more because I had not did a full city explore; trained my flying for Azeroth, tailoring, mining, first aid and logged.
Yes so exciting :) I was tired and I was actually kicked out I think as I could not log back into the game.
since December 6th my priest moheal has hit 85 :) and I was not pushing it either however I just could not stop playing the 80 zones. They are all so much fun!!
My favorite has to be Uldum, the egyptian, ancient, archeological theme is so cool and different. Reminds me of the movie Mummy, the first one. I know many hated that movie but I like it. Or of course Indiana Jones, and OMG all the parody in the game just so funny! there are so many I cannot name one right now! :)
I can tell you so much more but I will skip over many things so WAKE UP please!

As I mentioned I started my 3rd RAF in mohistory, and I cannot say how much I love RAF, the triple xp is like nothing else in game. I started 2 goblins of course, moblin the hunter who will be engineer and groblin the priest (she is name after Gretchen :)
The goblin arean, WOW just wow. Blizzard is simply amazing! I love it!!! They are only level 12 because I am on Moheal so much.

And that is it! I know, I have so much to do and see. I have not started a Worgen yet. I have not been to so many 80 zones, bg, cities. And I cannot wait to get leveling on my goblins to see all the changed zones. And of course I have all my other alts, 2 hunters at 80 I need to level and their professions of course, the poppa character of my Motauren 80 warrior, and my last raf combo, the 76 druid and mage which i want to get to 80 still.

So yes I will be busy with wow for this century fo sho!!!

Thank you as always and to Juuno (awesome job on your podcast by the way) and to emailers,
Thank you to Bidcar and Nevik on twitter, just to name a couple,
Hope you have a wonderful rest of the year and have fun with whatever you believe in and celebrate.

FOR THE LOVE OF BLIZZARD!!!

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 193 - I Feel Like Gilligan

Aprillian, Ashayo, Virshna and Jeppy discuss another week of playing World of Warcraft, Blizzard's great MMORPG. Contest Ongoing send an email to ctrlaltwow@gmail.com telling us how you play WoW, either as an altaholic or dealing with it in your family life to being placed in a drawing for a month free of WoW or a $10 iTunes Gift Card or an Authenticator.



What We've Been Doing:
Aprillian

Invite to KS

Goblin starting area with heirlooms dual boxing is fun


Aprillian & Vrishna
Goblin Starting area
Vrishna
Triple boxing for the win ! Cata up on 2 clients. Waiting for my NEXT RAF to upgrade that account.

Ashayo

Jeppy

Emails

Email #1 from Manbone

Hi CAW folk,

Manbone here.

Twitter just does not have enough words to convey, well just about anything.
My tweet about the show was in regards to the chat at the start of the show.
It was a vague reference to metatalks (I have listened Jeppy) being recorded in binaural. I was thinking if CAW was recorded that way, having 4 people talking at the same time and trying to come out of the headphones in 4 different places would have been to much for my brain to handle.
Thats it. Next time I will just tweet what a great show it is because, as usual it was a great show.

thanks for your time and sorry for the confusion.

Manbone. PoH. Jubb Jubb

ps. Where was the skinning trainer?


Email #2 from Brew Dawg

Hope y'all are doing well. Thanks for reading my e-mail last week.

I wanted to clarify that my hunter's Lich King kill was on November 11, eight months after hitting 80. I didn't get there overnight it took a fair amount of work and the help of many guildies.

The thrill of finally overcoming a boss together with friends after working on it for weeks is what raiding is all about. Loot is just a means to an end.

Like so many things I think there is a perceived barrier to raiding. If you can tank, heal, or contribute meaningful DPS in the ICC 5 mans you have the skills needed to raid. It's just a matter of finding a group of like-minded folks jumping in and doing it.

Y'all joke that Ashayo is the only host providing content but I've picked up great tips from each of you. I run a lot of battlegrounds and 5 mans so I out-level zones long before I complete them or in some cases before starting them. Whenever y'all talk about something I think sounds cool in the game I go check it out. An example is the log ride in Grizzly Hills. Neither of my 80s did any questing there outside of kissing the frogs for the Argent Tournament. I would have never known it was there if it hadn't been mentioned on the show.

This past week I have enjoyed the break from raiding. Ran a bunch of randoms with Treaul, got him to exalted with Bilgewater and picked up a three-wheeler. It doesn't seem to scale so he looks like an teen-ager sitting on a Big Wheel. I even rolled a Disco Priest and started to level him, my first healer.

I wouldn't mind having a couple more weeks to sit back and play in the new
world. Come Tuesday the push to 85 starts followed by rep grinds and
heroics.

I would like to give a shout out to my raid leader Delthan. Del went AFK
over a month ago with no warning. Always a person you can rely on I was
concerned for his health. Sure enough we found out recently he had spent
much of that time in a hospital ICU. He is slowly recovering. I was thrilled to see him in game for a little while over the weekend. I wish he could have been with me on my Lich King kill. Thanks to Eade for the invite to join his team and finally get him down.

Well I've given y'all a wall of text. I hope everyone enjoys the opening of the new world.

Regards,
Brew Dawg

PS: It was cool to see that Aprillian, Iceflow, Caoboi, and Brewdawg are all in Verandus. Alea Iact Est E Pluribus Unum!


Email #A from Caoboi & Iceflow

Hey CAW Crew,

Somehow I will try to fit all of the Cataclysm goodness into one email without taking up an hour. This will focus mainly on our mains as there is so much to do in this expansion.

Alea Iacta Est had to break up into smaller co-guilds since they were too big for Blizzard to handle. Our raid group ended up in Alea Iacta Est Verendus. Verenedus means to be regarded in awe or reverence. I really like the seamless mod that our officers created to get everybody assigned to the correct guild and getting the across guild chat mod to work correctly.

Caoboi and I picked up two collector's edition at midnight on Tuesday and promptly logged in with minimal problems at 3 am. We immediately bought flight training in orgrimmar and started off in Hyjal. No spoilers but the craziness of having to do quests with 100s of other people competing with you is awesome! Some of the respawn rates are really slow and others are really fast. It almost felt like a race to 85.

We sped through Hyjal and went off to Darkholme. We totally loved that zone and even though it felt like we were questing there forever, it didn't matter. I loved doing quests with Caoboi and I loved talking about all the quests with my raid group through vent. After we did a lot of quests in Deepholme, we couldn't find anymore but we hadn't got the achievement for all quests completed yet. We were concerned but it was happening to everybody else as well. So we decided to go on and start questing in Uldum. Later we found out that it was a bug and Blizzard retroactively gave people their achievement quests for Deepholme.

Moving onto Uldum was a great choice. I loved the Egyptian quality to the zone and both Caoboi and I felt like we were actually playing an RPG. That's a zone I will look forward to visiting again with our alts. After doing all the wonderful quests in Uldum, we moved to Twighlight Highlands and while there, we dinged 85. It was a great feeling and now I feel like I can really being exploring everything that Cataclysm has to offer.

Both Caoboi and I have been running all the new dungeons in Cataclysm and we like them a lot. They take some thought, they are beautiful, and are definitely worth the wait. We have done both heroic Halls of Origination and Blackrock Caverns and they feel like a raid. It was nice seeing the guild achievement earned as well.

We are having fun right now doing archeology, getting our rep up with factions, and doing dailies. Flying over Azeroth is amazing and that's how you can truly see the destruction that Deathwing has rained upon the land. Well I don't want to take up too much more of your time.

I hope everyone has a lot of fun and here's to you getting killed by Deathwing in the old world. You all want that achievement don't you? :)

For the horde,

Iceflow and Caoboi


Email #3 from Gravenau

Audio

Audio from Zebestes

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 192 - Cataclysm Day One

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 192 -


Aprillian, Ashayo, Virshna and Jeppy discuss another week of playing World of Warcraft, Blizzard's great MMORPG. Contest Ongoing send an email to ctrlaltwow@gmail.com telling us how you play WoW, either as an altaholic or dealing with it in your family life to being placed in a drawing for a month free of WoW or a $10 iTunes Gift Card or an Authenticator.

http://www.cafepress.com/nevikdesigns.492705132 - CAW iPhone 4 Clear Case



http://www.cafepress.com/nevikdesigns.492705134 - CAW Christmas Ornaments





What We've Been Doing:

Aprillian

Hunter Trainer in Crossroads?
Deviate hides are lootable for everyone
Torn between getting my warlocks to 42
Monday morning, wow, IF is deserted
Maps inside the instances!!!!!!
Anyone can use the AH in Dal!!
Running my Level 36 warlock on WH through Uldaman with my level 68 Pally
Wasn't getting gnome rep, but then Tues evening started getting it.
Leaving my mages and some of my toons hearthed in dal
RAF summoning reduced to 30mins

And CATA drops

Can fly a non cata account in a rocket in old world
love the duality of worgen create screen

Horde on Winterhoof
Aprillian & Vrishna

Vrishna
Day & a half to download new client .... AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH !!!!!!

Ashayo

Jeppy

Emails

Email #1

Heya folks:

Do you guys know about this addon called Altaholic? It's for tracking everything about all your alts. I haven't heard you talk about anything like it but it sure sounds like something you could all use. Here's a link: http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info8533-Altoholic.html

Agruvona



Email #2 Audio

So I got into playing again, then recorded this. Hope you enjoy :)

2 side-notes:
1. Smack Vrishna (I sure hope that's spelled right) less. I cringe every time I hear that sound.
2. I heard on one of the shows that I listened to that you missed me. Awwwwwww.... I feel so loved :D

See ya soon!
Zebestes
80 Boomkin
Earthen Ring



Email #B from Kurly

Good afternoon all. I know its been a while and I am most apologetic. My job stinks and Its been really busy and I let myself get dragged down into the yuck. Anywho, I hope you have all been having a great time post Sundering. I know that I have....maybe too much. I created an undead female hunter and got her invited into the GLBT guild "The Spreading Taint" and I am very excited to meet and run with all of those wonderful folks. My own personal Horde guild, Living Dead Gurls, is now packed (minus a goblin) with the addition of a Troll Druid, and Tauren Priest and Paladin.....HOOORAY
I created a Gnome Priest for CAW, and have had so much fun leveling her as well. I cant say enough good things about this WOW. I have been taking flight points at the northern most part of each contient all the way down to the south. Its a great way to see all of the new stuff!!

I found out this morning that Gilneas is open for business. I sent my level 80 hunter down there looking for new pets to tame and saw that not only is the gate open...but....but....oh shucks...I wont tell...go and see for yourself!!

XOXOX
Kurly!



Email #2 from Eatchu

Just a quick email to say, your show has very quickly become a favourite of mine. I love the fact that your podcast is so conversational, in that it feels like I’m sitting down as part of a conversation rather than have someone speak at me for an hour or so. You are one of the many wow podcast’s I listen to (Tv in Australia is useless, and books can be very expensive) while I play, but I always look forward to a new CAW (omg did Jeppy just a get new vauxhall) more than the rest.

Yours Truly
Eatchu, Warlock of Barthilias

(Oh, if any words are simply missing, my main window keeps losing focus so it’s more than likely Bill’s fault)


Email #3 Xenfoo

What thuh?
Hey there C.A.W crew! So what are your feelings of the pre-event for Cataclysm? It's over already, man I feel it was really a let down as a whole. The attacks were interesting but just didn't feel as epic as they could have been. All of the elementals that spawned through the world were fun for a few run-ins but as a whole just didn't feel as complete as the Wrath or BS pre-event. Also I would think that the whole "Shattering" thing with the world that happened with 4.0.3a they would release Deathwing upon us and have him flying through the world at that time, give some significance to the extreme damage and not just have a switch flipped and wham it's destruction. What would have been cool would be to have Deathwing now fly randomly over zones, randomly clearing areas out, as well as maybe some random world elites for 5 to 10 people groups that spawned in random zones. Include like they did with the world map for the Wrath invasion thingy an icon would show where the elites currently are. I just feel it wasn't so thought out... I don't know maybe it's just me :)

Well I've been busy and have been leveling a new Blood Elf mage and should be level 70 by the time the next show is released. I started this Mage shortly before the whole Cataclysm events began. I tell you I love leveling with the heirloom chest and shoulders in combination with dungeons. I have basically leveled this toon by running the LFG and then a quest or 2 before the next LFG was set to go. It's an insane way to level fast. Now on all my other toons I have strictly leveled by questing but I've seen all of the quests so many times I just couldn't do it again. I've seen more old world and BC dungeons on this toon than any other toon I've leveled. Oh and can I exclaim, why have I never leveled a mage before I love this class. Nuke'm high I say :) 5yrs of playing and just now started a mage :)

Well guys I now have another member of my stable of alts, now I'm at 8 80's

Thymr - Resto/Ele Shaman (Alliance)
Themisto - Unholy DK (Alliance)
Damaros - Marks/Surv Hunter (Horde)
Elunastron - Fury/Prot Warrior (Horde)
Elunadin - Ret/Holy Paladin (Horde)
Elunadeath - Unholy DK (Horde)
Elunalim - Aff/Destro Warlock (Horde)
Deathheal - Holy/Shadow Priest (Horde)

Soon to add Xenfoo Fire/Frost Mage (Horde)

And numerous low level goof offs... guys do I have a problem? And all of these are from someone with 2 kids and a wife. ;-)

Take care guys.. and have fun in Cataclysm

-Xenfoo (my current main, till I level my worgen MAGE hehehe)



Email #4 from Nabboo

Hi Ashayo, Virshna and Jeppy

Sorry about this but nabboo here yet again as you can see i missed one person out as she left the room as my email was read last week, (Bad Aprillian) when i got home i almost deleted my lvl 60 mage aprillian grrrrr, but then i forgave her how can you stay mad at a voice like that,
Anyway last week i wrote into the show a little too early and didnt explain how fudged up.
Well the night before the new patch i was doing quests in searing gorge i did about 20 quests and couldnt be bothered to hand them all in so i said to myself i will wait till tommorrow, BIG mistake as when i loged in my quest logs were empty gutted, luckily pilgrams bounty was going and managed to get a good chunk of xp of that. Then one night i was on my new set of druids at 44 now and was in the LFD queue for 1 hour before i got in, then when i got in the tank left and the group slowly fizzled away i was mad so i thought how hard can dual boxing a tank and healer together? i then respecced my main toon to the bear and the other toon to a healer (all i know how to play is it balance the range dps spec) any ways i clicked lfd and got into a dungeon instantly sweeeeeet :d my tanking buttons were 1-6 and healing 7 to +
i charged in and lasted a whole 3 seconds before i died i left grp:( i think one of the main reasons was my druid was in all cloth intellect gear i forgot druids cn wear leather) so i then bought leather gear and went tank dps and everything went great not 1 wipe. Also would like to thank again for the shout out to my girlfriend almost slipped up and let the podcast play a lil too long luckily i stopped it in time :D
So just wanted you to know how my week was going so far Keep up the great show guys
Nabboo Hellfire EU
P.S still having trouble with pronouncing tribalh it sounds like tribalhaitch tribalH
PPS sorry for been mad at u aprillian :D
LOve YoU GuYS ByEeeeee

Email #5 from McFluffy


the mining pick is greater than the sword...hopefully

Hey all,

so before i get started let it be known that I never recieved a beta invite on any of my accounts. theres a whole different 'one of us' going on here, and because theres so few of us it just makes us all that more special!

anyway... What has Mcfluffy and his various alts been doing of late? Well our guild has been going into raid overdrive trying to get everyone that wants it the Kingslayer title, probably got it for around 30 guildies in the past month. Then there has been the distraction the Auction House, my futile efforts to sustain the high prices on glyphs has wasted a lot of time and reaped little reward.

These two factors combined has limited my levelling time significantly with only my deathknight Doomflower advancing at all as he struggles towards 80. So sadly not much altaholic behaviour to report.

I have however hatched a plan for my next RAF which I will set up when Cataclysm arrives. Its probably a daft idea but im looking forward to it greatly and this is how it goes -

2 characters, one for fighting, one for gathering.The objective will be to do as much leveling as possible just through the gathering proffesions with the gathering character having to do as little fighting as possible and the other character doing bodyguard duties. So basically I want to level as a pacifist. Any thoughts on just how dumb an idea this is?

keep up the good work,

Mcfluffy (Saurfang EU)

Email #6 from Grim

G'day everyone!

I'm just writing to let you know that the goal you all inspired some months ago has finally been realised...

I now have an level 80 toon of each class to play with :-)

Even though I can't raid I have had fun getting to know a bit about all the classes while, in true CtrlAltWOW fashion, covering all the professions at the same time.

Thanks goes to all four of you for keeping the journey fun,

- Grim.

Email #C from our fav Wow Couple
Hey CAW crew!

Iceflow and Caoboi here to tell you what we've been up to in the last two weeks. Since we were traveling last weekend I neglected to send you an email and this is why this one is so long. I did promise you a Jeppy sized email Aprillian and I'm not sure if it's Jeppy sized but I'll do my best.

Our alts made sure to shoot turkeys and run from city to city cooking up a storm. I truly do love Pilgrim's Bounty.

We've been logging onto our various toons to get the 6th anniversary feat of strength. Yes it would have been nice to get a pet with it but I'm not being too greedy.

Now for the big news: Caoboi's warrior and my shaman hit 80 last Saturday after we got back from out of town. *cheer* We immediately hit the heroic dungeons and I realized how much of a blast I was having on my enhancement shaman. If I wasn't so committed to Iceflow, I would change it to my main. Our raid group has a lot of alts they've been working on so we decided to take our ragtag group into ICC on Tuesday. We cleared up through the Blood Princes on Tuesday with a minimal amount of trouble and I managed to get some nice gear. On Friday, we cleared up through Sindragosa which I think is good for our first time in ICC. It was kind of sad because I knew that's the last time I would go into ICC for a long time.

We are gearing up for the expansion and I get more and more excited with each passing day. We will be picking up our Collector's Editions of Cataclysm at midnight and will be ready to play at 3 am. Do you think buying adult diapers would be too much of a stretch? ;)

Well I hope you all have an awesome cataclysm launch and I'll be looking for updates on Twitter.

For the horde!

Iceflow and Caoboi


Email #D from Bidcar the Mage

Hello El Jeppy, Ashayo, Vrishna and Aprillian

Bidcar, level 80 mage on Winterhoof. The past few week I leveled Bidcar on Winterhoof to 80 and moved his Herbalism to 450 and Skinning to 390. I like the side effects of those two professions. They seem well suited to a mage.

Sorry I left out Vrishna's name in my last email. I would like to say that I was prescient and was able to predict him going to bed early, but alas, no. I usually do these emails when I am very tired and just forgot to paste his name in. I doubt that you notice, but I like to sometimes arrange your names in different orders according to different criteria. This week I used shoe size. I like to put patterns in everything and try to see the patterns in everything. Just throw that onto your pile of weird Bidkarisms.

I was disappointed in the Elemental Invasion a bit. I think I would have liked it okay if Blizzard didn't say "it would blow my mind". I expected something more interactive and unpredictable like the Zombie Invasion or the Corrupted Blood Incident. I've been thinking about it, the Elemental Invasion was as good as a holiday event, but not an expansion pack event. I think I expected and have been expecting more than the game can provide. A good example of this is when the players first when into Ice Crown, I thought that Blizzard would have Arthas making random counter attacks in Dalaran. Also, when the Valkyrie come to the Argent Tournament, they would actually attack players. I fly too high in my imaginations and the thud of the reality was a bit hard on me this time.

I think Blizzard also thinks I am a gold farmer or something because they wouldn't sell me the $5 WoW. I tried since day one to get it and even called customer support. They told me the problem was on their end and they would fix it, but they never did. So, no dual boxing RAF all year for me. I probably need to call them again because I still can't buy anything from the store.

I am looking forward to Cataclysm. I think the expansion will make the game more alive as I have been longing for. Everybody must do a worgen, the starting area is EPIC. The storyline drew me in and kept me in.

Another idea for Juno's contest. Maybe have everyone write in with how they started playing WoW and the four of you could pick the most interesting story?

Okay, I am off to work for the second time today. Forgive my poor editing and grammar correction. This email only has a "lick and a promise" as they say.

FOR THE HORDE, for the alliance, and For the CAW

Bidkar and his many alts

Email #7 from Dimented

Hello Ctl-Alt-Wow crew Dimented here just wanted to stop bye and say that it is going to be a sad day for me come the 7th because I will probably be the only person without Cata I know it's bad as everyone around me talking about how great Cata is but then again I can't comeplain to much seeing as I did get a beta invite (Ooops sorry Aprillian :) ) but it's not to bad it was my Birthday on the 3rd. hint hint lol well time for me to go and grovle in the corner talk to you all later.


p.s sorry for the downer of an e-mail.

lvl 80 DK (with the name that must not be said
lvl 80 mage Dimented and Seng and a few other Alts
from the Pants on Head guild


Email #E from Skral

I don't know if Vrishna saw the tweet I wrote to @ctrlaltwow, but I thought I would write again to explain the cryptic license plate / underwear comment in my email last week. It was in fact another Real Genius quote. I have a million of 'em. You could choose to not read this email on the show and let the listeners keep thinking I'm completely insane by not explaining it. :)

I saw the tweet about the new For The CAW guild on Winterhoof. I will be signing up with a new character. That way I can share more Real Genius quotes with other players. Just kidding....well, mostly kidding.

No need to include me in the drawing each week, I'm happy just listening to the great show you provide each week.

Skral

Sent from my iPhone from my iBathroom


Shout Outs & Thank You
From Gary

G’day Caw crew it’s Gravenau again hopefully I am not to late to submit some audio again and for the people having trouble with my name it’s pronounced Grave n a u and when I talk about tongs in this clip I mean the kitchen type large metal or plastic type device used to grab and hold things you don’t want to touch. And remember words from a wise man you can say anything you like as long as it has either a smiley face or lol at the end of it.


Momomoment

Hello all,
Happy week before Cataclysm! :)
Hope everyone is doing well.
I unfortunately do not have much to report on my wow playing as, well, this week did not get a chance to play at all :(
With getting home late from work and crashing and internet going out for four hours the one night I was going to play my wow playing was severely non exiting this week.

I am hoping I can fix my wow on my laptop and have my desktop ready on launch night to get some playing time on Wednesday and Thursday as I have those 2 days off.

I hope everyone else is also ready to go and that is all from me, MO

Take care and a shout out to Nevik for his coolness in setting up some more CAW goodness in cafepress store and Juuno with her new podcast which I hope I can listen to today.

For the fans!

--
Mo


Shout out to Indy & Twitter

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 191 - We're Shattered And We Need A Mage

Aprillian, Ashayo, Virshna and Jeppy discuss another week of playing World of Warcraft, Blizzard's great MMORPG. Contest Ongoing send an email to ctrlaltwow@gmail.com telling us how you play WoW, either as an altaholic or dealing with it in your family life to being placed in a drawing for a month free of WoW or a $10 iTunes Gift Card or an Authenticator.


From Juuno

Hello darlings! I hope Aprillian and Vrishna had a GREAT Thanksgiving! (I don't think Jeppy and Ashayo celebrate it... lol!) I have been BURIED in WoW!!! Totally lost track of time! XD I hope you're loving it as much as I am!! =.D

*big hugs*

Juuno


Patch 4.03

Heading towards our 4 year anniversary

What We've Been Doing:

Aprillian
OMG, love the new log in screen.

Left Epril at the base of a "needle" in 1k needles, ended up on top. Freewind post taken over by grimtotem invaders

Orgrimmar!!

Started a troll, love the troll starting area.

Life is a little bit harder without portals in dal, RAF to the rescue!
FP in Dolanar & Brill

Ran a toon from the Nelf starting area to Darn to summon Aprillia only to find it was on the wrong account. Then thought, I should run an alt on both toons to darn, when I encountered the "you have too many toons on this account"

Went to buy extra codes for wow, bc & wraith and they were sold out.

Flying carpets in old world = cool

Hard to get back and forth without Dal & portals

Killing other people's turkeys is evil! I don't know why anyone would do that.


Aprillian & Vrishna
nada, niente, zip, butkus, squat, zero, zilch, etc., etc. This portion of the show was sacrificed to our individual RAF's needs.
Vrishna
OMG, hate the new log in screen.

Orgrimar!!

Went to the new troll area. Flight paths in Razor Hill and Senjiin Villiage.

Too many toons stuck in Dalaran.

Dying in an instance.

It's not Cataclysm it's Cata- CHASM ! What the heck happened to the Barrens. Don't they know I just wanna get from Crossroads to Razorfen Kraul ! (Which has been anti nerfed by the way)

Got my mounts on my raf mage and lock.

Ashayo

CT
- ICC. Annoying bug where trash resets when you switch from normal to hard mode
- Tried heroic Blood Princes - can't move.
- Tried heroic Blood Queen
- Dreamwalker with no hunter to kite zombies
- One shot Sindragosa
- Back working on the LK for Sharp, Chol and Wingy


DwP
- Mimiron - Firefighter
- Vezax - I love the smell of saronite in the morning
- Tried Yogg-Saron with just Thorim up. Ended up leaving guardians up - [The Secrets of Ulduar], [The Decent into Madness]
- Reset for 4.0.3a :(
- Disarmed on Kologarn
- Still got some more ach - Con-speed-atory - killed Fraya within 20 mins of first mob in Conservatory of Life

Shattering
- fly in dalaran
- porting ppl to org on lowbie mage
- withers pet from Darkshore (buy for horde, quest for alliance)
- sunflower pet from doing PvZ quest in Hilllsbrad - "Lawn of the dead"
- Faction rep tabards, working in lower dungeons too. (Already people with Trikes for exalted with Goblins - gratz Tranith and Wingy)
- Gnome starting area: expected to spend more time underground.
- Troll starting area as a druid. Hate quest givers that walk away from you while you are reading
- Deadmines has changed
- Quest in Badlands to punch Deathwing (haven't seen it)
- Raving over the Azshara rocket way
- Pleasure Palace in Azshara seems popular, but nothing there.
- LOTS more flightpaths

Pilgrims Bounty
- Working on ach for Ashariss. Pilgrims peril for Horde is HARD
- Getting cooking up for all level 80's - had got to 350 on another 5 toons.
- Start at Bulwark for Turkinator


Jeppy

Emails

Email #1 from Wtfson


Hail once again from Wtfson

like always great show .... even though Ashayo was not there. anyway great job on saying my name or should i say not saying my name you guys had me rolling and then Jeppy just blurted out WT......with him proclaiming that he didn't say it all that was great. To be honest I never thought that my name could be a prob but then again with a CLEAN tag you just can't blurt stuff out like that (lol) so I think for now on just for the Ctrl-alt-WoW crew you can call me Dimented. I think that will be fine. Really that toon was supposed to be a throw away Dk that i was lvl'ing threw the starting zone just for gold and after many many toons later and this one being my last I said that's enough I joined BoE and started lvl'ing. One last thing Junno with her own show EPIC ! I can't wait to hear it. well I guess that enough rambling from me now bye-bye

The lvl 80 Dk (with the name that must not be said)
Dimeted
and Seng from the Pants on Head Guild



P.S 1-355 cooking..........got to love Pilgrim's Bounty


Email #A from Saphire

Hello Ctrl-Alt-Wow crew again! Just for you to know I am going to spice up this email..Just because Aprillian said that it was kinda dull in the middle xD.. Ok so heard I won the contest..YAY I scream in my head! So anyway.Yes I am a dude a (guy) lol..I just type like a girl for some reason..its fairly funny when you talk to people that help you..and then you ask them to voice chat..and you talk..and their like ???..Ah just cracks me up! But I'm straining away from the email..THE SHATTERING HAS COME UPON US!! Please Caw crew..Do your best to Spam blizzard and tell them it's a bad idea..for them to do this!! PLEASE~! I am not prepared..I have a million of things to do..not to mention all my characters are in different zones..questing :( Just 19 minutes ago I logged into wow..hoping that the servers weren't online..And Yay they weren't..So I still have time to get thing together..The time now is 10 EST..and the servers don't go online till 1 EST..So I am happy about that..But anyway I did not really play anything on the beta..sorry people who didn't get beta..Truly I think beta is a waste..well if you like to experience thing when other people do..But more about me..I am Sàpphïre A Death knight (yes with weird characters, Girl names FTW Vrishna) on the Shattered Halls..pvp server..I hate it xD..But I have found some nice people..Just recently I created a Social Leveling/Raiding Guild.The guild is called SectumSempra (Give you 10 points if you know what it is(It's from harry potter) lol).Many people tell me that it's a great thing to start up..they say it brings back memories..I remember back in my day when we joined a guild and all it was were people leveling and helping :P But yes..I am siked (stupid gmail doesn't recognize the word xD, i even had to google the word to see if it was really a word!) to find out that Guild Leveling is almost here! I think it will be so awesome trying to raise your guild level and get those extra guild buffs..or ticks..whatever they are called lol.. So I hope this email isn't too long..I wanted to make a voice over email..but was kinda busy..Hopefully next Week! So Until next time (Hopefully my character will still be alive) PS: DO NOT PRESS ESCAPE WHEN YOU LOG INTO WOW! EXPERIENCE THE JOY OF THE PRETTY CINEMATIC! For The Alliance! Oh and just want to put some info out there..mostly all my characters consist of Female Draenei xD..Oh and about the contest..I guess I will take a free month of wow Ty! all! Buh Bye :) wow..I just noticed..how long this email is..Oh and now I'm making it longer :( Sorry for the one that is reading this xD!

Email #B from Thymr

Love the show I'm an avid listener and extreme Altaholic (9 lvl 80 alts )

Shows been going good but I think you guys need to move a mic or set it to "push to talk" or when you start talking it comes on. Jeppy was talking it up and all I heard was click click clack clack of someone hammer their keyboard.

Love the show, keep'm up and running.

Thymr
lvl 80 Resto/Ele Shaman
GROWING PAINS
Runetotem US


Email #2 from BrewDawg

Greetings Lady and Gentlemen. I'm known as BrewDawg on the internets and the rugby pitch. I've been playing wow for almost a year and a half. For the first six months I wandered aimlessly and accumulated many toons across several servers. Most of these are in their teens and twenties. I tried different classes, races, and factions as well as PVP vs. PVE servers.

In October of last year I rolled a toon on Earthen Ring, joined AIE and found a home. My raider is a troll hunter named Treaul(troll), but I consider my druid BrewDawg my main.

For a long time I bounced from toon to toon with a new favorite every week. However without any 80's I felt like I was missing out on a lot of end-game and world event content. My New Year's Resolution was to only play my hunter until he hit 80. Treaul was in his 30's at the beginning of the year and hit 80 on April 5th. Treaul finally got the Kingslayer title a few weeks ago.

Not bad progress considering my in-game time is limited; job, Rugby ref, a wonderful but non-gamer wife and a three year old daughter.

After spending so much time min-maxing my hunter I may no longer be an Altoholic. With all I've learned about hunters, I realize how little I know about other classes. Ashayo I don't know how your able to switch from toon to toon and run end-game content. My hats off to you and Gratz on multiple Kingslayers.

I recently picked-up my Druid and namesake BrewDawg tanking randoms and BG's. He ding'ed 80 last month in time to get the Brewmaster title,
Brewmaster BrewDawg the only title he'll ever use.

Now I have to decide which toon to level to 85 first. It will depend on the needs of my raid team.

I enjoy the show, it's very entertaining and I pick up a tip or two along the way.

Regards,
Brew Dawg


Email #3 from Naboo

Hi again Ashayo, Virshna, Jeppy and the mmmmmm Aprillian, nabboo here again hope you are all ok and having fun

This email is in 3 parts hope you enjoy.

Part 1

Aprillian got my name right the second time it was meant to be spelled naboo its on a english tv show called the mighty boosh, btw i have never seen any star wars films ever i get asked if i named my toon that alot in wow and then i have to correct them. Secondly Tribalh, the way i pronounce it is Tribal (H) alphabetically i picked this name as I am a tattooist from England and the day i picked up the game i had been doing tribal tattoos all day lots of blood and pain, exactly what my warrior brings to any hordie he spots and is flagged pvp.

Now my week,

This week i've been dual boxing a lot, Aprillian and the other mage have just hit 50, I made 20k gold on the ah selling gems and stuff, all was going great until me and my girlfriend had a huge argument over WoW, :( (dual boxing A LOT doesn't help when she HATES the game) so to prove she means more to me than WoW, I went into the next room and clicked uninstall ( don't panic just yet) as she walked into the room she saw on the PC World of warcraft was successfully uninstalled, she then said to re download it and she was sorry for been awkward, i said it would take ages and I would do it tomorrow, long story short i knew how this would play out so instead of uninstalling WoW i uninstalled the cata beta :D (I know im not the first to say it but sorry Aprillian)If she ever found out i did this she would kill me. She also said she would try the game and is now levelling her level 12 warlock (human) called hollier. If she ever found out i did this she would kill me.

Part 2
(this is where i introduce my partner and ask for a shout out to hollier) this is the only part of the podcast i will show her as if she hears the previous part im dead)

Hi ctrl alt WoW crew hope you are all ok nabboo again here huge week again for me as my girlfriend started playing could i ask for a shout out to hollier ty guys have fun in wow

Part 3

Now back to me again ty for doing that if you do read it on the podcast again. Last week i was laughing my head off was awesome, so again thank you for the great shows keep up the good work and love ya LONG LIVE CAW
BYYeeeeeeeeee
Nabboo, Tribal(H)
Insomnia guild
Hellfire EU

P.S sorry for the long email I just wanna hear Aprillians voice more ;D

Email #4

Subject: Check out my acronym

Heya JAVA (Jeppy, Aprillian, Vrishna, Ashao):

Yeah it's me again with the Icky Report because 4.0.03a nerfed my favorite hunter soloing pet: the WORMS.

Since the patch, worms no longer hold threat when they use their AOE Burrow Attack. Any mobs damaged by it will come running straight for your hunter, even if you haven't fired a single shot. Yeah I tested it. Now there's a work-around, but this involves standing your hunter right next to your worm, so all the mobs stay in the AOE zone, which means letting all the mobs beat on you. And if you want any experience or loot from the mobs you'll have to damage them yourself, such as by dropping a trap. And you can expect your hunter to take some heavy damage, too. Maybe 50-75% damage, depending on what mobs you're fighting. Assuming you live.

And, yeah, Blue Post to the forums: if your pet kills a mob without any help from you ain't nobody getting no loot or exp. That's how the devs want it.

So does this mean we all go back to turtles for extreme hunter soloing? Of course not! Because turtles are lame! And BEETLES have the same special ability that turtles have: that of reducing all damage taken by 50% for 12 seconds, on a 1 minute cooldown.

Visit Petopia. Check it out.

Now if you're still a low level hunter you've got no choice but to tame a turtle, but if you can tame level 40 you could get a Silithid Defender from Thousand needles and OMG a big brown bug is so much more cool than some goofy turtle, if only because it makes people go, "EEEEWWWWWWW!!!!!!!"

And by the way: Newb Alert!!! If you decide to try dual speccing (and you should because it's only a 100 gold now) you need to check all your pets' talents, because if YOU dual spec then all your pets do too. Which means choosing two talent builds for every one of your pets.

And make sure you include Blood of the Rhino in your tanking-pet talent-build. For two points it increases all healing effects on your pet by 40%!!

Happy Hunting,

Agruvona of Terokkar

Oh and p.s.: HA!!! You all laughed about my six year old Dell, but it's running the latest patch just fine, (and, YES, in COLOR!!) and did I mention I just got the coolest mount in the game? The CENARION WAR HIPPOGRYPH!!!! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!



Email #5

Hey CAW crew, it's Skral again. I haven't written in a while, but I am still listening. My wife and I have made some progress on our Venture Co characters and are now starting to see some PvP from time to time. Thousand Needles, Ashenvale, and the Stonetalon Mountains have provided a few funny encounters for us.

My first taste of PvP was in Stonetalon. After running some quests, we are hoofing it back to the Barrens. We are still learning the layout of the area, and we get turned around a few times. It was the perfect opportunity to get ganked, and we were. That scummy dwarf rogue was in his upper 40s and my level 22 mage and my wife's level 24 hunter just couldn't kill him. I managed to get him down to about 1/3rd health before dying.

I admit I was felling a little bit of noob PVP rage, so I decided not to hit the release button right away. I decided to take a minute to catch my breath and think about if I was just going to get ganked again if I ran back. The graveyard was really close by, I probably could have made it back to my body in 30 seconds or so.

My attacker must have had too much Mountain Dew because he was going crazy with the anticipation of killing us again. He tried random emotes for a little bit. Then he started jumping around. Finally, he starting getting on each and every mount he owned and running laps around our dead bodies, a few laps at a time and then switching. I began cracking up watching this, so I just let the timer keep going. He finally got tired of waiting and logged off just before the timer expired. I thought the ones that were ganked were supposed to be the ones to logoff in a huff?

The same weekend we went to Booty Bay to try to fish. Now I knew there were goblin bruisers there to keep order between the factions. Someone forgot to tell this level 11 human mage we ran into. We saw in chat that he was fighting and dying several times- we thought he would get the idea. But no. While I'm fishing, he spots us and jumps in the water. He swims to us and jumps behind me. I turn around and we just stare at each other for ten seconds. I was thinking that maybe the light bulb was going off above his head finally since he paused. I casually turned around to resume fishing. He plunged a dagger in my back, and the guards killed him in three seconds. I'm not sure which is more funny- the fact that he still didn't learn his lesson or, as a mage, he thought the best way to start a PvP battle was with his dagger.

Since you have had a few listeners ask about if they should play on PvP servers or not, I thought I would share these so they can see what they are missing. We play on RPPvP servers, so we get the fun of killing the Alliance, and I get to laugh at my wife when she gets creeped out by the roleplayers in the taverns. It's full of win. Just remember to get even with anyone that ganks you. It's a moral imperative.

Skral

P.S. It is time to step up your game. I want to hear everyone try the Pandaren monk saying "Jub Jub."

P.P.S To Vrishna- "Your mother puts license plates in your underwear? How do you sit?"


Email # C from Nevik

Greetings JAVA!

What was the first thing you did after the Shattering? Did you log in to find that your troll rogue, whom you had parked south of the Dalaran crater, had been tossed THROUGH a mountain straight into the Alliance AV tunnel and promptly killed by the guards?

No? That was just me eh? Oh well.

After the initial shock of logging in dead, I fruitlessly tried to find the entrance to the tunnel and was forced to spirit rez in the end. I then promptly mounted up and headed over to Brazie's farmstead for some sweet sweet Peacebloom vs Ghouls action. Nothing was going to come between me and my singing sunflower. Not even Deathwing himself could stop me.

A few PvG quests later and my troll rogue rejoiced as he obtained the sunflower pet.

I still haven't checked back on the farmstead to see if the endless mode is enabled, but I have every intention of getting the Bloom and Doom achievement (survive 100 waves). PvG is just so much fun, but I digress ...

what did all of you do? I bet Aprillian logged in, looked around, shed a tear or two over how beautiful everything is and then went back to baking bread.

Anyhoo, back to my tauren paladin on jub jub.

For the Peacebloom!

Nevik



Email #D Audio

Hey CAW crew Juno once again has drawn me from my cave dwelling so I humbly offer up this next audio submission. I like to also if I could take my self out of the weekly draw because I feel the prizes need to go to people who can use them and I have both a iPod with battle net authenticator on it and all the pets but I would like to donate the new mookin hatchling and the other new pet to the show as prizes if I could when they finally do come out. Warning my voice has not gotten any better.

Email #E



Shout Outs & Thank You

Momomoments

Hello all,
hope everyone is doing well and you had a great Thanksgiving feast, if you have that if not, hope you had a feast anyways.
Just a quick email from me this week as I will be going to Vegas after our Thanksgiving coma. I did want to say how awesome Blizzard is as they never cease to amaze me. The last patch was a new game! We have cataclysm and the killer is we dont even have the expansion yet so that means we have more goodness to come.

I have only had a chance to view Org. so far and wow is it amazing! I spent hours just riding around town checking every new corner. Than I spent more hours looking at our new maps. If you noticed all the previous zones that were not clickable or blank, they are not anymore. They are all new zones and than some! Simply amazing, I really am speechless at how awesome it is. I also notice 2 little islands below the middle of the map, where you click to see the goblin starting zones. I am sure those will be some future raids or something.

I did jump in some randoms for a guildy to heal for him and so far holy priests are still awesome! I know 5-dungeons vs raids is not a good comparison but still, healing was not an issue (as I think it will be once they bring us down to earth and mana management will be an issue again).

I hope everyone is enjoying the game as I do not have any complaints :)

Have great time in game and I cannot wait to get back to it next week!

Oh yes, I did get my set of wow 1, 2, 3 for only $26!!! of course for my upcoming RAF :) I just dont know when to start it.
I was thinking of starting it after the 7th but I dont know.

Cant wait for the goblins, worgens and my HOLY Cow!!!! Tauren Priest!

bye!


Xandarr strikes again

Check out yours truly podcasting again, this time about music... No World of Warcraft mentioned except in intro.

You can find it here:
http://jen.phantompower.org/2010/11/21/special-guest-xandarr/

Monday, November 22, 2010

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 190 - Piggy Pilgrim

Aprillian, Ashayo, Virshna and Jeppy discuss another week of playing World of Warcraft, Blizzard's great MMORPG. Contest Ongoing send an email to ctrlaltwow@gmail.com telling us how you play WoW, either as an altaholic or dealing with it in your family life to being placed in a drawing for a month free of WoW or a $10 iTunes Gift Card or an Authenticator.

From Juuno

What We've Been Doing:

Aprillian

Love defending TB & Og. It's scaled so if you're not fighting, you shouldn't be there.

Got good gear. Spent JP & honor on Epril & Auruk. A lot of resilence stuff. Looked into reforging and didn't know which one to sacrifice.

Pilgrim's Bounty is overwelming.

Had one hunter in Trisfal farming turkey

Dungeons



Aprillian & Vrishna
Did several Doomsday instances. Got some nice gear. Had one bad experience and several good ones. Got lost trying to get back to Mauradon and had my first angry chat with a tank. (I was healing) . Only one of the five got back quickly. I was following Aprillian because I had never been there, we got back last but just after the tank who immediately began huffing. So I whispered him that he took pretty long to get there himself,(upwards of 6-7 min.), so then he insults my healing, my gear, my parentage, wow. The list goes on. It's a game people. RELAX !
Vrishna
Can only buy food at level . What"s up with that ?

Running my raf toons thru instances with my level 43 hunter to get them to level with their actual intended partners. I am upset that ALL my gear has intellect. Although, even though these instances are below my level, every now and then I get gear that is better than what she has. However, the cloth gear for my raf mage and warlock has been SWEET ! Did Wailing caverns and am now onto Razorfen Kraul.

Why is it EVERY TIME I NEED TO SELL OR REPAIR Orgrimar is under attack !!!

Defended Thunder Bluff with Virinya. Definitely scaled. At first I was killing the elementals with little to no effort. But as the fight wore on and others began to arrive in Mulgore, I was getting my butt handed to me over and over and over. Whew !



Ashayo

Jeppy
WOW?
Emails

Email #1 from Nabboo

How I Wow

Hello Aprillian, Ashayo, Virshna and Jeppy hope you all are great and having fun in wow:D
Well this week has been a huge week for me in game, as i started dual boxing all thanks to you guys i got my first set of mages to 60 then a set of druids to 60 and made a level 60 shaman.
As i was leveling in dungeons though some people was very rude. One tank called me a cheater and said he would not tank for me :( and left group i then re queued and waited for 15 min for the same tank to pop up again i said "hi" he said "bye" but thanks to RaF i out leveled him and havent seen him since. Also i would like to give a shout out to damomage who boosted me through so many dungeons which i repaid him with a chopper. Ive listened to the show for over a year now and you are always my first podcast to search for. Thank you for doing a great show keep up the good work
Nabboo 80 lock
Tribalh 80 warrior
Neptune 71 priest
Deathmix 64 dk And aprillian lvl 40 mage :D
all alliance and human lol
Hellfire EU
P.S Aprillians voice is the hottest of all podcasts :D Love you guys BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Email #2 from Leralond

episode 188 computer advice and more (jeppy sized mail)

dear CAW,

on episode 188, listener janine asked for advice about mac or pc for WoW.

i would not advice a macbook air for WoW.
an imac or macbook pro would be good.
and Ashaeo is right with his comments about the graphics card, a graphic card is more important then processor speed.

btw, i have a 1st generation intel macbook pro (intel core duo, 4 years old) and WoW goes reasonable, not all the graphics are on high, but it goes reasonable.
i have a new imac and WoW plays well on that too. i had not had any problem with the patches for WoW or Starcraft, even though i heard stories of other macbook owners that did had problems (no imac stories).
i also have a game pc, running window 7, 64 bit.

believe it or not Aprillian, but i prefer to play on my pc.
why?
keyboard and mouse bindings work on my pc better then on my mac.
i have a logitech m705 on my mac and the logitech G5 on the pc.
the G5 works and responds way better on the pc.
when it comes to the graphics... yeah, the mac owns the pc, but when it comes to the gameplay, pc still wins for me.

Janine is definitely better of with at least 4 GB RAM (6 GB preferred)
She can go for a End Of Life imac or macbook pro.

anyway, i still have to listen to episode 189, so maybe she already has some answers from other listeners.

now that im writing anyway, ( a jeppy sized email), Aprillian, ive seen some of your twitpics where you where multitasking.
running on the tredmill, watching true blood, and playing wow.....
wouldn't your multi-tasking brainpowers better be used to.. oh maybe find a cure for cancer or find the solution for world peace or some quantum physics computing??

anyway, the final things i have to say are:
Juuno is awesome.
I still remember the first time she send an audio submission.
i was playing on a lvl 14 orc in the barrens.
the moment she began to talk i let go off my mouse.
because i wanted to completely concentrate on her audio and not miss a thing.
so for the time she was talking on that first audio entry to your podcast, a lonely lvl 14 orc hunter was standing still in the barrens, doing nothing cause his controller (me) was bedazzled by Juuno.
Her audio entries where getting better and better.
WoW, she is awesome!
if it wasn't for the bunny killing i would be a complete fan!

there is only 1 person more awesome then Juuno.
and that person is Vrishna.
Why?
1: he doesn't kill bunnies
2: his look at life
3: he doesnt kill rabbits
4: his look at games
5: he doesnt kill bunnies
6: he laughs at making mistakes, his motto: "mistakes are the spice of life" is inspiring.

Ashaeo, your knowledge and stories about the dungeons have been invaluable and lifesaving. thank you

El Jeppy: why don't you use your multitasking skills and brainpower for the good of mankind?
you are awesome to. plus, your a fellow european :)

Oh and one last shout out to Nevik.
great designs for the T-shirts and other CAW stuff.
im a proud owner now of 2 CAW shirts and a CAW bottle and a CAW hoodie.

ive made a character on the BoE server.
hope to see you there.

greetings from Boskoop, the Netherlands
Leralond
Evil Wabbits
Azjul Nerub EU



Email #3 from Sapphire

Hello People of the Ctrl-Alt-Wow Crew..First thing You guys are amazing! I love how you guys speak out what you do over your weeks of wow! But anyway, what i wanted to type this email about is my Cata and pre-cata experience! So when I found out I had got beta! {sorry aprillian :( } I was soo excited! My wow account was not subscribed at the time..soo i decided to play beta anyway! To find out that the streaming client was waiting their downloading..and taking forever :( When the download was done, i started the client and found the amazing Backround DEATHWING moving thingy..lol Sorry, i couldn't tell you the technical thing..but the thing you see when you open up wow and see the dragon flying..ANYWAY!! I logged on and made a WORGEN DRUID FTW~! (For the Alliance) So when i finally got into game..I was disappointed to find that I (SPOILER ALERT) was human! Ugh a Human i said to myself :(..So after that devastating exposition..I leveled! I found out that the worgen area is soo FUN! its like Blood elf starting area but 10x better! (come on you gotta love the Belf area!) My worgen on the beta is level 13 and i'm so happy..but to find that if your internet speed is not fast enough..most the game you cant access till it has been downloaded..So i'm kinda bummed about that..But I resub to wow for a month to see all the wonderful changes they made to wow! I truly cannot believe why people hate the patch soo much? I like it..It gives wow a fresh new start..to make the noobs (which i am) a new kind of feel to the game..like they are learning at the same time as the old players! So after typing this email I am currently doing the phases, And I like them alot..Other than the trolls spamming trade chat and so on.. I am Very happy what wow has become! Well Back to Questing with me!

Email #4 from Curme

Part 1 Levelling

Hey JAVA,

I'm leveling character number 6 through Azeroth, a subtlety rogue. I've mixed in battlegrounds and dungeons to give some variety to the leveling process, and I've even consciously tried to check out different zones I haven't done in the past, or only parts of. However, I find that I'm tending back to some of the same places simply because I know I can bang out the quests quickly and move on, and admittedly, I'm a bit bored with it. I'm totally dreading heading to Outland and doing the same Hellfire quests again. At least in northrend you have two sides to choose from. So, when you're working through alts, do you have a regular path? Do you have a handful of quests that you always hit? Do you try and do different paths on successive toons?

I've also been doing the world events on a couple toons. On the rogue, mid 50's, each phase seems to be worth a big chunk of a level. However, on my mid 20's shammy, each phase is worth over a level. Crazy. I'm really looking forward to Pilgrims bounty for the exp and leveling up cooking.

Thanks for the podcast!

Curme
Part 2 Warrior Tank Tips
Hey JAVA,

I broke this up from the other email so that it would be more manageable in size, and as a stand alone.

For warrior tanking, I like thinking of the tanking skills as different groups, which have shifting priorities based on what's going on.

Group control/Positioning:
shield bash (silencing + threat)
concussive blow (stun)
shockwave (group stun + threat)
heroic throw (ranged silence)

Mobility
charge
intercept
intervene

On Cooldown
revenge
shield slam
heroic strike/cleave - based on number of mobs

Spamming
devastate

Specific use:
thunderclap - use at initial charge, use on cooldown most of the time, but save to fights with adds
Commanding shout - start of fight; weave in later too
demoralizing shout - use on big pulls

Mitigation
shield block
shield wall
last stand
enraged regeneration
trinket #1
trinket #2

So here's a typical, complicated pull
Commanding shout; Heroic throw at one caster; charge other caster and shield bash, thunderclap, devestate/shield slam/revenge while walking backwards to position mobs for shockwave. At this point you should have massive aggro, and you can start spamming some moves, Intercept/charge to casters that get away and shield bash to silence. weave in rend to help out your friendly rogue and throw some devastates around as well. You can use thunderclap on cooldown for now, but save for add fights and be careful with it come Cata.

The best place to practice is Heroic HoR, and actually the Bran fight can be tricky with a Warrior tank if your group isn't too over-geared.

For a boss fight its way easier:
shout -> pull with heroic throw -> devastate -> revenge -> shield slam; after that keep up thunderclap and demo shout for damage reduction; and spam with devastate while keeping your abilities on cooldown. Remember to use all of those mitigation cooldowns. If you have 2 on use trinkets you can almost always have some type of additional mitigation rolling.

Remember, the great strength of the warrior is the lack of rotation. We have a wonderful mix of spam attacks and cooldowns, but there is no rotation. We also have way more mobility than other tanks and can really control the battlefield, use it to your advantage.

Hope this helps

Curme - 80 prot warrior, the brotherhood
and many other alts, including the other 3 tanks.....



Email #A from Tranith

Dear gang,

Jeppy wanted everyone to speak their emails so here goes:





Not sure if you heard that but it was both amusing and insightful.

Love the show.

(don't enter me in weekly draw, although I'm not sure this email should qualify anyway)

Tranith

Sent from my iPhone

Email #5 from Wtfson

Hail to the fine makers of CtrlaltWow

First I would like to say What a fine Show. My first thing is to Jeppy with itunes i to seem to have problems with it downloading shows to my ipod well one really that's right it's BoE some times it will take 3 days after they post it for my Itunes will note that it is new and will then sink to my ipod.

Second I to had the same problem as Nighthaunt when I was lvling my priest but there are 2 that I want to share the first was in Boring Tundra I had an alli ganking me over and over so finaly i got on my mighty Mage Dimented made a quick macro so that when i hit him with an arcane blast I would then lol at him. This went on for a while, I am taking it that the person got mad because he sudrenly had a lvl 80 escort feeling good with my self I got back on my priest and continued leveling. A day or so later I was lvl in Grizzly Hills (having about 5 mobs on me) a lock decided to stick his nose in my battle and tried to kill me so I quickly feared them all off, targeted the lock, put a few dots on him feared again and I hit him with drain life and he was no more. I finisjed killing my mobs and went about my day. I never really got ganked much I guess being in the U.S. I am playing on Jub Jub's off time. well That's it from me untill next time keep the shows rolling.

Wtfson Pants on head
Dimented Pants on Head
Seng Pants on head
and all my other toons....lol


P.S loving the event stuff.


Email #6 from Gary

Hi Caw crew and Juno if she is on please read this before playing my audio piece for anyone with sensitive hearing please skip my work because it will cause bleeding from the eyes and ears at the same time. If mat diox thought he had a annoying voice trust me I make him sound like angels. If you love Juno’s voice work then you will learn to fear mine. If you thought every aussie looked like Hugh Jackman and sounded like the BOE crew or Ashayo you were wrong in my case dead wrong. It may be the lack of a decent mic set up and or recording area or any skill in audio (make do funky stuff sorry my grammar like my voice could use work) so I say again please if you value your hearing and sanity skip my section if not please press play and Juno I warned you but had to coax me out of my cave.

Email #B from Matt

Here you go.

- Matt.

Email #C from our Favorite WOW Couple

Hey CAW crew,

Iceflow and Caoboi here once again to let you know what we've been up to in (and a little bit out) of game this week. Remember that Herald of the Titans title and achievement? Well it didn't happen for Not in The Face this week and might not happen at all depending on what Blizzard is doing this coming Tuesday. If The Shattering patch (4.0.3a) happens on Tuesday then this achievement is gone for good. If it isn't, we'll have one more crack at it. But even if we don't get it down, we'll have lots of 226 gear to remember it by.

Our mains did a little bit of Lich King Raiding that we had never gotten around to. Our raid group went into Heroic ToC 10 man and got the tribute achievement and the achievement for completing heroic ToC. It was a lot of fun had by all even if there was no loot that anybody needed.

We've been alting it up in true CAW style. Caoboi's warrior, Warcao, has long since caught up with my shaman, Icedrop. He is now 76 and I am now 75 and we have just completed the Wrathgate event which I recommended that anybody finish up before the Shattering as this event will likely no longer be there. We'll probably push onto 80 before the expansion and this will make Caoboi's 8th 80 and my 5th.

Before I started concentrating on my shaman again, my warlock got all the way to level 24 and it's a ton of fun. It's dot, dot, dot, go to the next mob, repeat. I always thought warlocks were a squishy class that did meaningless dot damage while I was doing more superior melee burst damage. I have since discovered I was wrong as I continually top the charts in randoms as long as there are more than a few mobs to kill. ;) And Ashayo, I apologize for not acknowledging your warlock prowess. It's just when you look in the dictionary under warlock, you see Aprillian's picture.

Out of game, we have been celebrating the one year anniversary of our marriage and we've been marking the occasion by playing lots of WoW and watching Deadwood. It's appropriate that we play WoW since that is how we met. Thank you for the hug Aprillian. It was much appreciated.

Hope everybody has had a wonderful week and I look forward to telling you how we have been next week.

Everybody have a safe and happy Holiday (if you celebrate that kind of thing) and play WoW for us since we will be out of town so no gaming for us.

Iceflow and Caoboi



Email #D from Nevik

Gobble Gobble CAW CAW!

Er, that intro makes me sound like a big 'ol cro-key.

*cough*

What I meant to say was ... Heeelllloooo JAVA!

By the time you're reading this, Pilgrim's Bounty will be upon us all (actually it's already been live for quite some time for those of us living in the future). It may seem like an odd time to be celebrating what we're all thankful for with all of the chaos circling around us, but we can't live in fear and let the cultists win!

Nay, let us not tremble in fear (well, I guess some trembling is allowed with all of the earthquakes). Instead let us raise our turducken legs or side of roast helboar and be thankful that we have each other.

I'm thankful to have been apart of the CAW-community and found so many wonderful friends over the past year. I'm also thankful for all of the friends we'll all continue to make over the next as we persevere through these crazy times.

So as your sipping on your spiked cactus-apple cider, think about what you're thankful for.

Thank you Aprillian, Ashayo, Jeppy and Vrishna!

For the Stuffing!

Nevik

PS. I hate to sour the happy demeanor of this letter, but I have something important to share. Never, ever ever ever click on ANY link in an email even if it looks legit. I received no less than 3 wow-related phishing emails today that made it past my spam-filter. 1 was obviously a scam since it was ridden with grammatical errors, but the other 2 looked 100% legit.

These "legit-looking" emails came from noreply@blizzard.com (cloned email address) advising me that my account information had been changed and to click on the link to verify the changes. They also included a legit link to email Blizzard's billing department and their 1-800 #.

If ever in doubt to the legitimacy of an email, always manually enter in battle.net and verify the security of your account or call Blizzard directly.

Just a friendly reminder to always protect your WoW account!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Shout Outs & Thank You
MoMoMoments

Hello all,
hope everyone is doing well.
It has been a rough week for me as for the first time in my wow history (5+years) I have had my first computer issue with wow.
Just sad. On the positive side the issue was only on my laptop. On Tuesday (I believe it was 4.03 patch day) I was watching some quality television and was going to update my laptop with the latest patch.
I click on the wow launcher as usual however the game did not load as usual. I received the message: Launcher failed to get patch info (or something, just a sad news thats all!) and it said to check my internet settings. Of course I was stubborn and was mad at why this was happening.
I try several solutions which did not help at all. I looked on google, forums, and nothing. As of when you read this email I am sure I will be looking for a solution. I even copied the wow folder off of my desktop because I am not having any issues on my desktop...wait...that is not entirely true. On my desktop, after I downloaded the patch tuesday, I have notices many ui changes. For example, my bartender has shrunk it seems like. I have no idea why. I really did not mind, it did allow for more game viewing.

Minus my technical difficulties and stubbornness, as usual I chat with some of the fine people out there that play wow and are on twitter, as in ElJeppy, Bidcar, Aprillian, Ashayo, just to name a few. I am @mohalen if you want to follow and watch my sports twitter spam :)
so, in tweeting with Bidcar, I think it will be fun along with what we did in our wow week we can say what our best and worse moments of the week were (in game or out of game, whichever floats your boat).
I know you will guess what was my worse thing of the week! yes the laptop wow failure, but I have to also give 2nd place worse moment to the next phase, the portals and elementals were, disappointing as Bidcar has mentioned. We may be in the minority but I was having more fun doing the usual leveling thing.
My best moment of the week was when I read that they will be increasing the leveling from 71-80 by 20%!
My Druid-mage pair are now 75 and having fun as usual. I thought I would start questing in Sholazar but I was wrong, you have to 76 it appears. I have to quest some more in Grizzly hills and I realized I have not done the wrath event. I think I have to do that before the expansion right? I am not sure but I thing that is going away.
Well something I noticed in my travels to Sholazar, I had my mage following behind my druid leaving Dalaran and they both kept of phasing in and out. I have not started any quests in either zones there.
I have no idea why this was happening and why?! Needless to say it was a bit annoying and they would keep losing each other. I have this addon: keep follow (or something like that) it basically doesnt break follow unless you give the command to do so. It works well dual boxing.

That is all I have this week. Oh our Icc raid may try the Lich King again, we shall see. We are still missing a few raid members and after a failed attempt last week with some pugs, many of us would rather wait until we can run it with at least 8 guild members.

Have fun everyone and for the WOW!

--
Mo