Sunday, February 28, 2010

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 156 - Drowning in Lucky Red Envelopes

Aprillian, Ashayo 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, they are back in the store.



What We've Been Doing:


Aprillian

Got a cape with my Frost Badges. Riding through Dalaran I clicked on a sign in the square. Then I went to the Kirin Tor vendor to find that awesome ring and accidentally sold back my cape. Couldn't buy it back, but I did get my Frost badges returned. Repurchased Cape and got a Resilence gem.

Decided, with less than an hour to spare, to give the Zhevra to Prilly, level 60 hunter, load her up with stuff and transfer her to JB. Decided to quest with her in Outland. Took her through to the portal in og, brought Tiiaa with her. We rode right up to it and Tiiaa went through, Prilly didn't.

Aprillian & Vrishna

Ran Gnomeran on JB and ER.

Vrishna

Virinya to 65. Questing in Zangamarsh. Finished two tiers of Hellfire Penninsula. Lost my Zhevra ? You're right Ashayo, it NEVER gets old.

Ashayo

10 man Raiding
- DwP had an ALT night in ToC. Took Jekle along as boomkin and we got down Northrend Beasts and Jaraxxus. Also went and took down Onyxia.
- Crazy Train is also in ToC. Got down Faction Champs after 3-4 tries, Twins down after 3 attempts and we oneshot Anub.
- DwP in ICC, where we one-shot Festergut, but are still struggling to get down Rotface. Getting very nice upgrades though
Marrowgar - [sliver of pure ice]
Deathwhisper - [bracers of dark blessings]
Festergut - [signet of putrefaction]

25 man Raiding
- DwP had a frustrating night wiping on Saurfang - getting as low as 3%. Bought the frost emblem cloak to make me feel better!
- Pants on Head had a go at ToC. Got down Northrend beasts and Jaraxxus. Had a couple of goes at Faction Champs, but wasn't successful.

Misc

Bought a Battered Hilt for Pud
- Take to Quel'Delar's Rest south of Argent Tournament grounds
- Travel to Wymrest, back to Dal. Need to get a book.
- Get the Silver Covenant Orders from a member in the sewers
- Get a Silver Covenant tabard from shandy Glossgleam ; need to help with laundry
- Get to go into the Alliance area of Dalaran
- Pit of saron to forge blade
- Halls of reflection to kill the sword. Just needed a healer
- Off to Isle to Qual'Danas
- Have to enter the Sunwell Plateau

Elders in Dungeons. Elder Pudendal

Ashariss couldn't get the quest in Org for the Gnomer Transponder. Maybe because he was alliance? Opened a ticket, which got escalated. The GM fixed it up and signed off with "Keep opening tickets for help, because you know, for every ticket opened, a gnome gets punted." Strangely, after that the corehound pup arrived in his mail.

Heroics
- Finally got [The incredible hulk] in Utgarde Pinnacle.
- Many heroics on Pud - up to 250 emblems of triumph

Jeppy

I had an absolute fun filled week - playing the Starcraft 2 beta - doh!

Emails


Email #1 from Jonathan


Hey guys! I’d like to say you’re an awesome podcast. :D I play on Blackrock (US), with a level 80 NE Druid/Human Death Knight/Human Paladin.I have a gearscore of 5084, but I find it hard enough to find raids. L Haha. My guild only has 1 raid up for ICC (10 Man). I’ve been thinking of transferring servers to Barthilias (Oceanic), and faction changing it. What do you guys suggest?

I currently am not playing because I have no money… Haha, and I have school.

If I win the draw could I receive the game card!

Jonathan

Email #2 Xomat

Hey there CAW Crew! Hope your days in Azeroth have been plentiful.

Well I recently had a conversation with a co-worker about WoW. He recently transferred and faction changed 2 of his characters and plans on doing more. Those 2 characters cost him roughly $110 and for him to transfer his DK, Hunter and Rogue will cost him a pretty penny. I recently, as I emailed you about before, transferred one of my characters a lvl 75 Shaman and faction changed him as well. I really had a hard time doing that because of the cost, not to mention the wife aggro it generated J But his main reason to transfer his characters was because he didn’t want to experience the level grind again and this brought up a good question. With the introduction of the Death Knight in WotLK, why couldn’t Blizzard implement something like this for all classes. Now I’m not talking about starter zones for all classes etc.. but give us the ability or option to start a character at 55. Maybe they could make this a cost if that’s an incentive, maybe $5 or $10 to start a character at lvl 55. My thought would be to maybe charge $5 to $10 and you can then start a character at 55, but there’s 3 things that are associated with this. In order to do this you also must have at least one max level character before you are able to do this. Also my thought would be the character you choose to create will start in their home city and with no gear at all just pants and shirt and a pool of talent points up to lvl 55. That would force you to go to the Auction House and buy some gear to start your leveling at 55. If they force the “must have max level character” prerequisite then you’ll have enough money to buy some starter gear.

So what do you think if Blizzard was to implement something like this? Would you take advantage of a feature like this?

Well this was just a quick question to see what you’re thoughts are. Take care everyone and keep on exploring!

For the Alliance! (Did I just say that?) =)

Thymr (formally Xamot, lvl 75 Orc Shaman)

Lvl 76 Draineye Shaman


Email #A from Falkork

Hello ctrlaltwow crew,

Falkork here or was as I have now joined the ranks of the Hoard, my once noble nightelf falkork is now a proud Tauran falkai.

Anyway sorry for not emailing in for a while as well real life bites at times but I'm back and all is well.

It puts a smile on my face to hear of your adventures now that you are 80. It just takes me back to when I got there on my first toon.

So much so that I am now working on a warlock tri-boxing team.

Love the show and as always keep up the good work.

For the Ali... Oh wait for the hoard!!!

Falkai 80 resto druid
Quel'thalas eu

P.s. The ganking in wintergrasp is just as bad on both sides on my server lol!!


Email #B from Kurly


Hey all...its your good bud Kurly!
Sorry that the names of my toon flummoxed Jeppy. They are, ah, a little odd but Aprillian was correct!! Mizezdanviz = Mrs. Danvers. Mrs. Danvers is a character from the movie Rebecca, released in 1940 starring Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine. Mrs. Danvers was creepy, and crazy, and I happened to be watching it when I made a female undead DK....seemed to fit in my mind.
Ahbygsissie = A big sissie. Which is kind of like me! I am 6'3", weigh in at a beefy 230, and since I am gay American (got to be PC!) I through the sissie on there. (can you say Gay on your show?)
Sizzawakyra is just Sizzawakyra...no hidden meaning in there...just something I thought was a cool sounding name. Speaking of her, being a priest at low level STINKS!!! My main is a level 80 priest but he's been 80 for so long I have forgotten how difficult it can be to play one. I am leveling her using the LFG and in BG's only, and she runs out of mana every three seconds. I am doing the same thing with a Shaman on another server and her mana seems to work out fine, you would think a priest....you know....PURE HEALS....would have better mana management talents...JEEZ!
Anywho..its fun being in POH, those Aussie's are just filthy....its so hot!
Peace and hugs!!
Kurly!
Email #C from Makiling
hey guys, makiling here.

i had just listened to your last episode and i have to say that i share the same sentiments with the end of Love is in the Air. i had been taking advantage of the easy dailies on alts in different realm. but some thing had dawned to me as the holiday was ending. i had been doing the dailies on alliance toons a different realm when it hit me: instead of doing it on another realm, i can level an alliance toon on the same realm as my lvl 80 horde toons! but i was running out of slots on their realm, so i decided to delete my lvl 5 troll rogue and gave the leather heirlooms to my new night elf druid. i am finding that because of their diverse abilities, druids are quite easy to pick up and level in any spec that may bee needed in a group. my only regret is that i wish i had thought of it earlier so that i would have had the most benefit form the holiday dailies.

but with the start of the lunar festival, my week in WoW can be described as filled with epic travelling. and i do mean epic, because my earnings from selling the primordial saronite has earned me enough gold to buy a mechano hog and a grand ice mammoth for my mage! i had been riding them around azeroth for the different elders, and all those time i had only been ganked thrice by rogues outside darnassus, stormwind, and the entrance to BRD. i really cant blame them, because the sight of a clothie on a bike must have been incredibly tempting for them to ignore. i had run into alliance pallies, warriors and hunters on the way to the different elders, but none of them took as much interest in me as the rogues. all in all, id have to say that the most difficult town to get to was darnassus simply because it was the one that was out of the way. the tram between ironforge and stormwind is convenient, but i would recommend going to stormwind first.

my exposure to my alliance toons has given me a whole new appreciation of what jeppy is doing with his alliance toons. i remember a time when i would just glaze over podcasters talking about the alliance, but now i have whole new appreciation with their point of view of the game. so i hope to hear more from jeppy and his game, and i hope vrishna feels better by the time of your next show.

for the warcraft!

twitter.com/makiling_mage

Email #3 from Aro
Hey ppl!
Aro here long time listener and first time emailer.........and yes I'm an altaholic! Probably not to the extent that I have multiple accounts or utilize recruit a friend but I have stacks of toons over at least 4 servers with toons ranging from lvl 10 - 80 all starting with "Aro" to help my guildies and friends keep track of me. My fav would be my first toon an 80 tauren warrior named Aroghan on Caelestrasz which I made a bit over a year ago when I started playing WoW. However I recently rerolled some new toons on lovely jublies and joined the Pants on Head guild and loving it. They're all a great bunch of people there, really friendly and I must admit I get a little star struck when I realise I'm chatting to someone from the podcasts I listen to!
I love experiencing everything in WoW (hence all the toons), I enjoy questing trying the different professions, the different races and starting areas and especially classes and how each can fit into group situations with dungeons and (when I can find time) raids. I enjoy checking out the holidays in WoW (mainly because I still haven't experienced them all), it helps change things up from time to time when I seem to hit a wall during questing or I'm not sure what toon to play. With Cataclysm coming out soonish I'm a little sad that I may miss a fun bunch of quests somewhere tucked in a corner I havent discovered yet. Would anyone have any suggestions of things I should keep an eye out for in the old school wow areas?
My wife and I both play on our laptops. Originally she didn't play and would complain when I would spend hours on my computer playing "That Game" but after showing her one weekend what it was all about and how you could interact with other people she now plays more than I do! I struggle to find time some weeks to sit down and play for more than 30mins. I'd love to play more and some friends have had "WoW holidays" where they have a day or two off work and have a long weekend playing WoW. If I had more time (and a slightly better net connection to fend off the "lag monster") I'd try my hands more at the higher end content too. With so many toons and so many accounts how do you all find time and better yet keep track of them all?
Keep up the great work guys I'm always looking forward to hear what else "seemed funnier in Aprillian's head"
Aro
Aroghan, Arodread, Arogoor, Aromann, Aromagus, Arostrike, Aroprayer, Aroknight, Arorighteous, Arodemonic, Arototem, Arostabb, Arokynn, Arofang, Aroblight.
One day the Aro's will take over the world.

Email # D from anonymous


Subject: no more penile enlargement ads for jeppy!!

hi guys
It's me again, the anonymous one.
I can't believe Jeppy jeopardised my secret identity out in the interweb!! Good thing my social network name isn't the one I use in game, I feel like some kind of super hero who's trying to hide his true identity from the public lol
And as a punishment for Jeppy, he'll never receive anymore tips on penile enlargement bargains from me ever again! You try to be nice to people and this is the thanks you get.
Anyway, still enjoying your show, although am a bit disappointed that certain someone is stealing cookies from the jar and smearing their dirty little fingers on another MMO.
In game wise, my guild is on Sindragosa now and hopefully will get her down and see Arthas in the flesh sometime this week so I can get my hands on some phat loot. Accidentally, I was looking up in wow-heroes yesterday and noticed I have the second highest gearscore for an elemental shaman on the realm, so in your face Aprillian!!!

Keep up the good work and fight the devil that's STO!!

Still gonna remain anonymous, even tho my twitter name has been outted :P

Email #E from Karen

Hey Ctrl-Alt-Wow crew!

My real life situation has calmed down a little, though I'm still very busy, embarking on a new career teaching in higher education (as we like to call it).

And not only am I an altaholic, my alts are divided between horde and alliance on two different servers (because I need 10 horde toons and 10 alliance toons). I've settled into this method (taking Ashayo's advice to concentrate on one alt to heart, but giving it a little twist):

On each side, I have one toon that's instancing and one toon that's leveling.

So, on alliance (where most of my guildies play), my level 80 human warrior is leading the team through all the WOTLK instances and then we'll move on to the heroics. My little gnome dk is leveling so I'll be able to dps an instance run or two if someone else wants to tank.

On horde side, my beloved tauren druid is venturing into random heroic pugs as boomkin, getting his gear together to one day be able to heal in heroics. He's kind of a shy guy, but he wants that pug pet and so far so good. My dps is slowly inching up as I improve my gear and get my rotation down.

My undead rogue is waiting in the wings to level after my dk is at 80.

Even though I'm progressing slowly by most other people's standards (sometimes I don't play at all during the work week), I am progressing and when I sit down to play I just need to decide whether I want to instance or to level.

Works for me.

Great work as usual (and I'm listening to that podcast about that other game that will not be named, enjoying the podcast, and if a real mac client comes out, I'll be sorely tempted to try it)

And, if Ashayo still doesn't have a Starcraft Beta key, here's mine from Blizzcon, I'm not a Starcraft fan (and wouldn't have time anyway):
Insert code here

I just scratched off my card from two years ago, so I guess it should work. It says you should go to www.blizzcon.com/beta enter the code and follow the online instructions.

Good luck!

Karen

Email #F from Bidkar


Hello CtrlAltWow Crew,

Bidkar, undead mage here. This will be short and sweet.

My mage and pally merely did the cooking and fishing dailies. The warlock continues on her jewelcrafting dailies. I want to go out and finish up Northrend on them someday, but I was distracted by my new endeavor.

I started a human female warlock, Ashcroft. I tried to copy Aprillian the warlock, but there was only so much I could do with the human female. I really like the look of her warlock. Ashcroft is only level 16 because I keep distracted by my love of exploration. I want to see what the ally side of things look like. I've never had really had a chance to take a gander. Ally have it easy. Beds, not hammocks, hot night elves, not orcs and trolls, etc. I'm based out of Dalaran so I've been checking out the capital cities which was a bit time consuming.

The hunter, priest and druid continue to wait their turn while I explore the ally side of things. It really is like a whole new game. I also started dual boxing this week. I ran a level 2 alt out to Tanaris so I could use the neutral auction house to outfit my ally. It's fun to dual box. I think I'm getting the hang of it. I don't see the triple or quad boxing thing happening though. Two is enough.

As always, great podcast. I really appreciate the work all of you put into the podcast. I realize it isn't the easiest thing in the world to do. I barely have time to write an email much less do a podcast.

For the Horde and for El Jeppy and Glanthur (Welcome back!)

Bidkar and his many alts

P.S. I've enclosed 4 time codes for 4 free months of Wow to give you guys a hand. Thanks for everything!

Email #4 from Heatly

Hello ctrl alt wow people

Heatly here let me start off by saying I am a guy and by planning a wedding I mean pretending I care which color purple the ribbon around the tables is going to be and writing the check.

Thanks for the advice on playing my alts I'm now just gonna play which ever one I'm in the mood for!

You never answered my question from last week on what level vrishna's main is.

Now for my question I've been listening to the podcast "this is outcasted" and it's peaked my interest in DnD I was wondering if any of you have ever played DnD, and if so what were your characters and what were the games like.

Also if you did play do you have any advice to a player that would like to get involved?

Still got many more questions to ask you all so I'm gonna try and write in every week love the show it makes my Monday!

chio!

Heatly (Darrowmere)

P.S. Ill take the game card if im lucky enough to win!

Shout Outs & Thank You





Monday, February 22, 2010

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 155 - Thank you!

Aprillian, Ashayo 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, they are back in the store.


What We've Been Doing:


Aprillian

Shadow Priest get shadow heart.

Levelling Tiiaa, my then 56 mage to get her up to level with Virinya. Decided to start doing the dailies for 8the Love is in the Air Holiday. She had to go to Everlook to ruin the crown

Aprillian was doing the necklace quest

Friday morning - ran toons to SFK to do the deathstalker quest, just a few mobs to fight & horses. Rogue with 1 lp, opened chest.

Got Tiiaa to 58 just by doing necklace and Ruin the crown

Aprillian did Heroics Friday night, her DPS is better: http://aprillianer.blogspot.com/

Aprillian & Vrishna


Vrishna



Ashayo

Raiding - 10 man
Crazy Train - Razorscale, Freya down on 3rd attempt, had a crack at mimiron
- Moved on into ToC. Got Northrend Beasts down on 3rd try, Jarraxus easily. Hit a wall on the faction champs.
- Weekly Razorscale - achievement for grounding on 2nd round
- ICC rep clears. Tried marrowgaw, got through to 2nd bone storm. Not ready yet.


DwP 10 - Festergut down. Rotface- grrrrrrrrrrr
XT for weekly - did it in hard mode, as well as pulling XT while trash mobs were up

The Hundred Club - Naxx with no frost resist gear.
Just Can't Get Enough - kill 18 abominations in phase 1 of Kel'Thuzad fight

DwP - Ashayo - ICC. New offhand and waist. Did well with DK dps subbing in as off tank.
Got the weekly ICC raid done again by using invisibility on both rotface and festergut
Tried going deep affliction ; didn't seem to make much difference. Trying SpellPriority mod.

Raiding - 25 man
Guppers - Indefinite hiatus due to number. /sad

DwP 25 - VoA
- ICC - Marrowgar, 1-shot deathwhisper, Downed Rotting Frost Giant. Messy fight - spreading disease with immunity. Gunship battle easily. Saurfang - finally got him down in 25man with 11 seconds before enrage timer. Woot!
- Decimate on Stinky in 25 man is lethal. Had armies of the dead tanking it in the end

Lunar Festival
Elders - Pud travelling ; got all world Elders. Working on dungeons.
Did we get exp for coin 'quests' last year? (Sad that not getting exp on lower level alts ; just 75 rep)

Misc
Ashariss - bought Chest heirloom. Ran AN, Nexus, and Old Kingdom ; put on 8 bubbles

Crazy how fast PTR patch notes affect economy. Frozen orbs went from 5g to 25g overnight

Jeppy

Very sad Love is in the Air is over. I have been making tons of gold and nice chunks of XP. I managed to get my original 2 Boulderfist Paladins to 67. 1 my level on them and I can pass down cold weather flying.

Took advantage of the mass drop in price of bracelets. A 2 gold item has the potential to make 11 gold profit on an 80.

It is official I suck at Jousting. I also made the rookie error of attacking the commanders rather than lieutenants.

I want to thank NevikJames for a link to http://neviksnotebook.com/2009/08/15/jousting/ which gave me some good advice. I also want to thank GettingWorse for some excellent chat during the twisted nether live recording.

Hopped over to the UK servers to do the dailies for the pet on my main and hooked up with some long lost guildies. Took my alt mage from 62 to 73.

The druid team is now level 27 (slow levelling due to holiday stuff and UK messing about)

Started an Orc hunter team over on Earthern Ring in my RAF team.

Facing the prospect of another game effecting my WoW time. Weird feeling of itchiness when doing other things

Emails



Email #A from Kurly

So, I cant quite remember the last time I sent you all an email, but I do know its been a while. I can tell that a lot has been going on in my personal life, and I have not been able to devote as much time to the WOW world as I had in the past. Now things are slowing down (sans my 40th birthday on March 3rd), and I hope that I will be able to get back into the swing of sending these emails on time, so that you don't read them weeks after I send them!!
I turned most of my alts to either tanks or heals. Mizezdanverz and Ahbygsisse have been taking here and there and I have to say that everyone in every group has been in have been very patient, helpful and complementary. Although Gnomeregon is the Occulous of that level. Have you ever been through Gnomeregon, ALL of it? Its massive and no-one seems to know where to go, people drop out right away and when we try we get lost and after a 30 minutes of wandering around people leave.

SIgh!

So between tanking and rolling a shammy, the game has taken on a whole new life. Also, I rolled a priest on POH. So if you see her (Sizzawakyra) please giver her a wave....and mail her a mana pot!! LOL

XOXO
Kurly

Email #1 from Heatly

Hello ctrl alt wow dudes and girl!

Never emailed into a podcast before but I figure I'd give it a shot. I am a pretty serious hardcore raider and raid 4 days a week. That being sad I also have 6 toons at level 80 and a few 60s coming up the rear. I was just wondering on how each of you manage your time in the game with so many alts. I work 40+ hours a week and am in the process of planning a wedding and sometimes feel like there isn't enough time in the day to give all my alts the love they deserve. Also on a side note I would love to here updates on varishnas (I'm sure I butchered that) progress in leveling. I can't wait to here about his adventures when he hits 80!
I actually have a few other topics/questions for you to answer on the show but I think I'll save those for next week.

Love the show! keep it up and don't listen to all those Debbie downers the interruptions are classic and the drunken episode is pod casting gold.

For the Alliance!

Heatly (darrowmere)

P.S. I'll take the game card if I am lucky enough to win the drawing

Email #2 from Xamot

Hey there C.A.W Crew… so sorry I didn’t supply the answer to my quiz in my last email, yes it was the Twins from the GI Joe series. As you said, google is your friend J

So my question today has to do with the next expansion or better yet the lead up to the expansion. So what is do you guys think will come prior to launch of Cataclysm? Do you think there will be a buildup towards the prelaunch event?

I was thinking that what would be cool is if they had incremental patches that would implement some of the old world changes, for instance the split that is going to happen to barrens could start as a small crack and slowly build bigger and bigger. They could have NPC’s in barrens that could build a makeshift bridge over it when it gets too big to either jump over or jump over on a mount. Or have extra lava begin to flow from Black Rock Mountains… I think something like this would really make this “cataclysm” not so much of a logoff at 11pm Tuesday, log back in on Wednesday morning and everything is changed. I don’t think that would be very immersive, now a slow degradation of the world over time would be. I think seeing the orcs begin to reinforce Orgrimmar would really be cool and make the feeling of impending danger even more evident. Now I’m not saying all of the old world would see slow buildup, but certain areas where there’s going to be serious landscape changes could begin to see destruction is near and that something is happening that is not good.

What do you guys feel about something like this? Do you think you’d be up for a slow buildup to the impending doom?

Was just thinking.. great show and take care!

-Xamot

Level 75 Enh/Resto Shaman

Email # B from Curme


Hey CAW crew,

Thanks for the tips on starting out. I'll try the starting areas in the couple pairing you suggest and see how it goes. For the prize, I'll take the free month to try out this crazy dual boxing thing. Thanks again and I'll update you on the progress.

For the horde!

Curme

PS in case you want to know:
Curme: islands in desolation sound BC - German name I believe
Curufin: crafty elf (silmarillion)
Anarion: isildor's uncle, died in the escape (silmarillion)


Email #C from Bidkar

Greeting Ctrlaltwow crew,

Bidkar, undead mage here. I haven't written in awhile because "real life" has been rather hectic. Apparently I'm a money tree for all repair people. I guess I'll have to go back to dancing and "art" films pretty soon.

I finished up Storm Peaks on my mage and got the achievement for that. I go back every Sunday morning and finish quests on my mage. Someday he'll have them all done. Bidkar runs the cloth cooldowns every time, but I'm thinking about laying off those. I have 4 stacks of ebonweave, 3 stacks of spellweave and 3 stacks of moonshroud. I think that's enough for anyone. I tried to sell some on the auction house, but it's undercut like crazy with the cloth, so I think I'll just make bags.

My warlock, Allerea, dinged 80 and hit 450 in her jewelcrafting. She runs the jewelcrafting dailies and the cooking daily. I was doing the icy prism every day on her, but I stopped that for awhile because I have 19 stacks of rare gems and 16 stacks of the uncommon gems. I'm trying to cut back on my pack rat tendencies.

Joash, the druid, moved to Northrend after sticking it out in Outland til he was 72. I was really enjoying questing out there this time, but I really love professions and I wanted to level his alchemy. His alchemy is now 450 and he is doing the Northrend Research and making an epic gem every day. He also runs the cooking daily.

I started playing the Yancy the hunter and Sagrado the priest again when the "Love is in the Air" event started. I had them do the dailies associated with the event and a few quests in the general area of the Crown fellows. Yancy moved from about 24 to level 37. Sagrado the priest went from 17 to 30. The priest is turning out to be a very interesting toon. I really like the spells he picked up at 30.

Jehi, the paladin, finally hit exalted with the Kirin Tor. I sent him out to farm the charms for the bracelets associated with "Love is in the Air". I went all over Northrend trying to farm charms after they had nerfed the drop rate. I found the best place to be in Crystalsong Forest killing the Crown fellows. I should have been able to figure that out because everybody else was farms there too, but hindsight is 20/20. I think Blizzard might want to rethink that next year because I have never had Dalaran lag since I got my new computer, but it sure lagged this week.

My death knight continues to languish in Dalaran creating glyphs for everybody.

I tried out Star Trek online. I really liked the ground missions, but I just couldn't get the hang of flying in space. I could not tell if the ship was moving or not, but I think I could work that out. The reason I didn't start playing STO was because all the time I was playing I was thinking "I have to hurry and finish this so I can play WOW". I got frustrated and cancelled my preorder of STO. I can only play MMO at a time.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text, but I have one more thing I want to ask about. You may have discussed this already but it doesn't stick out in my mind. It's about the disenchanting when you are in group. It really bothers me because I just don't understand why it is ok to use someone's profession against their will other than the "Blizzard said so"reason. I am not a greedy or selfish person. I carry extra bags and gold in my bags when I go to the lowbie areas so I can help out people starting the game. I have never charged for enchanting or porting because I really like helping out other people. I just don't care for having something taken from me. If one really wants something disenchanted, go level enchanting. Part of the reason I started so many alts is because I really wanted all of the professions. I would be happy even if they just made it an option for the enchanter to participate or not. It is wrong to just take a portion of a person's profession away against their will. I do not think I am entitled to someone else's work and I do not think they are entitled to mine. Anyway, I was wondering what you guys thought. Sorry for going on and on, but it really does bother me.

Thanks for the great podcast and your patience in my wall of text.

Thanks for following me on twitter Aprillian! Vrishna, I am so sorry to hear about your cat. I know what it's like to lose a friend like that. It still hurts me every time I come home and my dog Lucy is not there to greet me. It's like a part of your life is missing.

For the Horde, El Jeppy and Glanthur!

Bidkar and his alts

Email #D from Madoran

Ctrlaltwow,

You all have deserved an e-mail from me a long time ago, but too much work and too much WoW kept me distracted. I just wanted to say that I love the show and I appreciate the time you put into what is very evidently a labor of love for all of you. I hope you don't let schweppe's review hurt you too much. It is merely a sign of your growing popularity since you cannot please all of the people all of the time. I remember when I first subscribed to the show that I was tempted to unsubscribe after the first listen since I was looking for end-game raiding information. But I just could not hit the unsubscribe button. After I few more shows, it dawned on me why I could not unsubscribe. Among the dozens and dozens of WoW podcasts, this one was the only one I could describe as 'delightful'. So let the other podcasts have the 'explicit' tag, the detailed end-game strats, and the regimented formatting. You just keep doing what you love and we will keep listening.

(no prize entry necessary)

Minsc lvl 65 Night Elf Hunter and Boo (his giant miniature space hamster... err Bear)
Madoran

For the Alliance

Email #3 from Maudit Winner

Hello all at the ctl alt wow

My name is Maudit in game or Dan in reality. I wanted to shoot you a quick note about how I deal with playing wow in my family.

I am a father of 2 soon to be 3. I started playing wow with my first child about 4 years ago when she would be up at night doing midnight feeding thing. I use a bottle when feeding children like you other listener said as well. Anyway she seemed to like basking in the glow of azeroth as much as I did. We kept up the playing together as she grew up and when my son was born he to was introduced to WoW in the same way.

I play a healing priest and after a few wipes when a critically needed heal was cancelled by a small hand jamming the keyboard a no touching while we play rule was invented. This worked until my girl started talking. Imagine my surprise when my two year old let me know she needed a character to play.

This gave rise to Eeyor the druid. I macroed the dance button and the shapeshift button to the keyboard taught her the buttons and away she went.

Now my daughter and son love to go help me save my friends from the bad guys in dungeons and hearing them tell the mobs to "go to sleep" is quite fun.

My latest adventure/surprise was when my daughter saw the blood elfs and asked to play one. She made the choices on everything. Two things the toon had to have were a headband and blonde hair like her. So now we are working on her DK in helfire. She is quick enough with the keys now to take single mobs by herself. However her steering of the camera is enough to make you get motion sickness.

Love your show and look forward to listening.

Maudit and CO on the scryers and sentinals server.


Thank you

Shout Outs & Thank You

Momomoments

Hello,
Hope you are all doing well and had a busy wow week as I have.

For my priest Moheal, the daily grind of random LFG to get frosties continues, I am working on my 3rd tier piece and for our guild we are starting 2 groups for ICC. The group my priest is in we are raiding Sundays for now and any other day we can muster in. I am working on my druid as I mentioned before to heal for the group that is going to give it a go Fridays.
On my druid I am level 61, I would be higher if I did not have to spend time on my 80s but still going at a good pace. For our guild weekly old dungeon fun we did AQ20, or shall I say AQ6, as it was my 61 druid trying to heal (please laugh here as it was funny) and 5 80s. I only died about 12 times or so :)
But it was fun. Yes my heals meant nothing to 80s as I only max heal at 3k now but I am only level 61 you know. I have leatherworking and skinning on the druid and looking forward to the day I can make the drums(you know the drums that wonderfully buff the group). I just do not know if I am able to use multiple drums with one character.
You know in wow you just cannot have enough buffs!

That is pretty much all I have this week.
Thank you as always for your great podcast and reading my emails and of course thank you for your kind words.

Have a great time in and out of game.


--
Mo

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 154 - Destroying Podcasts for the Good of Mankind

Aprillian, Ashayo 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, they are back in the store.



What We've Been Doing:


Aprillian

In my day, Quest sharing meant standing nearby someone.

Got Crusader title on Aprillian. Went to get my

Aprillian & Vrishna

Did Valentine's day quest on several toons.m

Vrishna

Took Virinya for a solo spin in Outland. Quests quests and more quests. Flying and dropping into the fray. Every turn in gives better gear, and how !

Ashayo


Love in the air - Great with Tempeste with mage ports. Ulduar 2 man - shoot each other's dwarfs before it got nerfed. Got the title on Pud.
Ran the SFK boss several times, and saw the ooze ncp only once.

Crazy Train - Few tries on Hodir ; doing really well a couple of times, just requires a bit of luck. Reset, and cleared through to crazy cat lady again. Did some of the Freya trash for triumph emblems as well.

DwP 10 man
Wiping on Rotface. Down to about 15%. Oneshot Festergut. Had Ostira go invisible on Rotface after getting the debuff - allowing us to hand in ICC weekly! Trued Blood-Queen Lana'thel. Warlock has to tank Prince Keleseth and put corruption on balls to minimize shadow damage.
Raid weekly was Razorscale, and killed her in one pass for the first time.
ICC 10 man - reset and cleared 1st wing - Asheal

DwP 25 - Jekle! Soo many priests - VoA, cleared ToC. Nice Ring and Cloak upgrades

Dinged 74 on Ashariss running dungeons.

Pud running random heroics, have over 140 emblem of triumph.

Jeppy

Doing enough valentine stuff to get peddle feet on all potential 80s including EU

Tuskarrmageddon Exalted with the Kalu'ak - got my fishing pole (higher DPS than my melee pole arm) and Pengu.

Master of Arms on both hunters

Love fishing and cooking dailies. 3 porcelain bells http://www.wowhead.com/?item=45977 in a row.

Got the two blue recipes Recipe: Delicious Chocolate Cake Recipe: Stormchops and green Recipe: Captain Rumsey's Lager

Slowly going through the remaining Northrend zones. Jumping between Sholazar, Storm Peaks and Icecrown.

Started Argent Crusade.

RAF Druids begins - noobs

Talk of JAE reforming a 25 man team. Maybe start of in Ulduar with plans to move onto ToC and ICC.

iTunes Reviews



Emails


Email #1 from Xamot

Hey there C.A.W Crew! First time emailer long time listener J Well I, like yourselves, am a serious altaholic! I’ve got 3 80’s (Fury Warrior, Ret/Holy Paladin, Blood Death Knight), 4 characters in their 70’s (Shadow Priest 75, BM Hunter 74, Demon Warlock 73, Resto/Enh Shaman 73) all of which are horde. Oh and not to mention a few in their 30’s (Mage, Rogue). Well I am getting ready to transfer Xamot (73 Shaman) from Staghelm US to Runetotem US as well as doing something I thought I’d never do, change his faction from Horde to *gasp* Alliance. Well one problem I see is that his name is already taken; so my hopes of having 2 Shaman Draineye with the names Xamot and Tomax are not a possibility L (Quick quiz – Where did I get the names for my twins from? Xamot and Tomax) So now I have to think of a name for him on the Alliance side. Do you guys have any ideas for some good sounding names? I’ve recently been getting my names from the different moons in our solar system. But I thought I’d hit up the C.A.W Crew for a possible name for my transplant.

Well with that one slot free that’ll open up a spot for a Goblin Shaman or Goblin Warlock J I still need to dip my toes into the Druid way of play. I haven’t been able to play a druid past 11-12 due to it’s slow play. I think it’ll be like the Shaman who is slow to level till you hit lvl 40 and they sky rocket and really pick up in leveling speed.

Well that’s it for me for now, maybe I’ll find something to send to you in the future…

Take care guys and keep the podcasts going!

-Xamot


Email #A from Makiling

happy valentines day ctrlaltwow crew!

my week in wow can be described as filled with a lot of realm hopping. the recent server maintenance left our oceanic realms with a lot of lag and a lot of mid-week maintenance. but it was a blessing in disguise because i had rediscovered other toons i had on different servers, particularly a lvl 18 warrior on the Haomarush realm. i queued her as a tank and got into a group for sfk. i have to say that it was fun playing a warrior tank! she didnt have all the abilities, but i saw the potential she had for tanking. it got me all excited to run and play a warrior. but im still contemplating on whether i'll make one on the same realm as my other toons for the heirloom items, or just run the young warrior and basically start from scratch.

another toon that i had rediscovered was a lvl 16 night elf druid on the Bleeding Hollow realm. i queued her as a tank and got in to a group for rfc! it was strange seeing gnomes and night elves as party members. i wanted to swipe them, but i realized they were the heals and dps in our group ;-p but it didnt look like they knew what they were doing when the gnome mage was pulling all the mobs she could see, and i was frantically trying to get aggro back. i dropped group after we wiped, and i found my ghost near razor hill. it was a long run to org, and i can only imagine how hard it would have been if you didnt know how to get to rfc.

this leads me to thinking of the advantages of playing the opposite race in the light of the new dungeon finder. knowledge is power, after all.

im glad i have found something else to do outside doing the end game stuff, and i hope i can encourage other people to step outside of their box and see the game outside of one faction.

thats it from me for now, for the warcraft!


Email #B from Kyle

Oh... my... god... /diesoflaughter
Your shout-out to the eastcoasters and their snowmagetton, that was so much funnier than it could have possibly been in your head! I haven't laughed so hard in a long while, it topped the week! I had to repeat that line and phrase many times on my ipod. It was just too funny!
--Kyle


Email #2 from Curme

Hey guys and gal!

I'm thinking of taking a trip down the rabbit hole and creating an additional account to dual box and get a healer and dps up to level 80, or at least 60 together and then moving them back to my main account once RAF is done. I've checked out dual-boxing.com for some tips but really I'd like to avoid lots of addons or macros. Any advice on how to get started? I've been tossing around some combination of hunter/shaman/priest or rogue and meeting up with my 29 Druid. If you've covered this many times and can point me to an old episode that would be cool.

Thanks,

Curme - the insiders 80 prot warrior
Curufin - the fallen 76 prot pally
Anarion - the insiders 79 unholy dk





Shout Outs & Thank You

MoMoMoments

Hello all,
hope everyone is doing well and having fun in and out of game.

Lots of the same old same old things for me in wow: random heroics, raid here and there and weekly raid, some holiday questing and looting of the holiday boss.
AND
LEVELING of course! :)
As I mentioned I did start another DK, another attempt at the class that many enjoy, so I created Deathbymo (yes I know creative name) BElf Unholy and I have made it to Hellfire and than a Shammy female orc named mocoloco and already level 10.
In out guild we are working to have a 2nd raid group and as always a healer is needed. Since I enjoy healing I have moved another of my characters to that realm, a level 55 druid named Moid, you know Im Mo and he is a druid, you know?! I will of course be going resto with him and a guildy friend will be leveling his warrior tank with me as we power level through dungeons. I figure it will be better to level that way as it will be great practice for my healing and his tanking.
Of course we have heirloom items so I wonder how long it will take us to get to level 80 for our raid groups...hmmmm we shall see.

Friday night we had a great ICC run did get a bit farther, we attempted rotface a few time and that encounter is just crazy but we will get the hang of it.
I was lucky enough to win some loot and get my 2nd T10 gear :)
It is a good feeling when you are geared and healing is easier and you can work on your boss strategy and movement for it.
I will leave you now and have a great weekend and week everyone.

Thank you again for a great podcast (I will be bothering you all once I get sto :))




--
Mo

Monday, February 8, 2010

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 153 - Love Is In the Air & The Whine Is Over

Aprillian, Ashayo 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, they are back in the store.



What We've Been Doing:


Aprillian

Crazy stuff. Leveling new alts on JB, thinking maybe it would be better to level two alts independent of Vrishna and then give levels. Ran around Durator leveling alts 2 sets of alts. Still having a problem with one always being behind. Gave some levels from another pair to one toon. Now I think I will run the other toon with a higher one and see if that helps.

Wed morning got on Aprillian feeling like I neglected her when she is so close to being Crusader. Then I remembered an email we received this week. (Read email # ) Feel stupid, didn't realize dual spec meant dual glyphs.

Wed morning, I took Epril with Aprillian to do some Tournament Dailies. Epril got over 1k exp per kill, should have had her on follow a while back. She's 78.5

Wed afternoon I decided one of my main goals, before RAF runs out, is to get Vrishna's pally and warlock on JB to 60. Took a brand new level 20 hunter (granted levels from 12 to 20) into RFC with a level 13. Had to finish the Hunter quest. But first I got her her mount. Got excited when I saw the pet still out while mounted.
Even twittered that it was part of the patch, yes I'm evil. So after a visit to the AH and some more training, we went in and wiped on the first group of 3 Trogg's, so I brought in my pocket healer, Gingah the pally with the shoulders of gold. I put her on follow on another computer with the cursor over the heal button. Worked like a charm. Each toon getting 200xp per kill. Not too shabby. And even though they were 7 levels apart, the two RAF toons were getting the bonus.

Aprillian & Vrishna

ALTS alts and more alts. Refer a friend is still great Jeppy ! We started off in Durotar,went into Ragefire chasm, then on to Shadowfang Keep, and then POOF, we were off to ICC with all level 80 toons ! LOL
Aprillian wanted another Pally but we got to level 6 or 7 before we realized that I had started another warlock (Freysa) by mistake. So we started over with the Pally (Breesa) and got up to 27 within a few hours of play. Of course, I couln't let the warlock go, so she's up to 27 as well. (although Breesa is about to ding 29 after Blackfathom Deep) All that was not enough because we wanted rogues as well. Mine (Blackcat) is up to 24. LOVE Refer a friend. BTW, Rogue quest in the Barrens no longer bugged.


Eye of Kilrogg vs. Hand of Reckoning. Love to find new ways to pull mobs. Shadowfang was a great proving ground for this technique. Hope it will stand the test of time.

Vrishna



Ashayo


25 man Raiding
---------------

Crazy Train in Naxx
- Plague Qtr ; many many dead for most of safety dance, but got there.

DwP in Ulduar for weekly ; Got the [Stokin' the furnace] achievement - under 4 mins

VoA - Toravon - Tougher in 25-man, big dps race, but doable.
Tanked as is, but move away for frost orb. switch when dot drops off - about every 10 secs
- freeeze effect on tanks, so can't dodge
- summon frozen orbs that aoe ; ranged take down
- aoe called white-out - raid wide damage and increases frost damage

ICC - Easily getting down Marrowgar, Deathwhisper and the Gunship battle, but stuck at about 10% on Saurfang.


10 man Raiding
--------------

Crazy Train in Ulduar ; FL, XT, Razorscale, Kologarn, Auriaya (1 shot - was just going to 'take a look')
Crazy Train in Ulduar (night 2)
- Ignis - spank and tank method ; just offtanked the adds, didn't shatter them. Didnt kite the boss
- 2-shot Iron Council - Completed The Antechamber
- Had a couple of goes at Hodir, but it's a fight that needs practice

DwP in Ulduar for weekly ; FL in 42 seconds, Razorscale [A Quick Shave]

DwP in ICC - Ashayo. [Boned] - no player impaled for more than 8 seconds. One shot deathwhisper and gunship.
Saurfang seemed buggy, but got him down. Now weekly quest inside ICC as well. This week was to get down Festergut and Rotface - but you have to survive both fights to hand in.

VoA - Toravon the Ice watcher. Pretty easy in 10 man. Just need to dodge the frozen orbs.


Gearing Up!
-----------

Re-looking at Triumph gear.
You can buy heads, legs, hands chest and shoulder with triumph emblems.
Chest, Legs, Hands : i232 tier gear (ie with set bonus) or i245 tier gear, but also requires [Trophy of the Crusade] (ToC bosses)
Head, Shoulders : i232 tier gear or i245 tier gear (but also requires [Trophy of the Crusade]). Or you can buy a non-tier i245 with just with triumph emblems.

So bought [Shoulderguards of Enduring Order]

Ashayo - Enough frost emblems for the cloak.

Patch
------

- [Test at Sea] is fixed
- Party Leader is now a separate chat option to Party.

Heroics
-------

- Drak'tharon keep [better off dred] with Tempeste healing on her priest.
- Nexus - [chaos theory] - don't kill rifts (easier now that only 1 rift spawns)
- Got the Bronze drake after tanking CoS with 7 mins to spare. (But don't have epic flying)
- Shocking run of bad mages in pugs. First one we had a mage demanding more groups be pulled, heedless of tank/healer. Second one had a warlock that wouldn't eat, and dps that couldn't follow simple directions - actually dropped group on that one. Another that openly abused Tempeste as the healing in PoS boss fight; again dropped group.

Levelling
--------
- Ashariss dinged 73 on last boss in Nexus. Ran a bunch with the BoE guys.
- Running randoms on Ashariss - Got Keristrasza in Nexus down to 3 hp left before wiping.

Jeppy

Hit Hit more Hit and a lot of fishing and cooking.

A new 90 days of fun fun fun has begun as RAF enters my life for the 11th time,

Emails


Email #1 from Random


Dear Ctrl alt wow,
I remember you talking about getting a new trinket with emblems of triumph. I don't mean to be rude or anything but you bought the trinket with 1000 or so attack power. I think you need to stop looking at g score and start looking at stats. Thanks,
Random person

Email #B from Makiling

hello fellas, makiling here

i had just listened to your last episode, and it was fun to listen to as always.

my week in wow can only be described as filled with epic fishing. because last saturday i had finally won the Dalaran fishing tournament and got the Master Angler of Azeroth Achievement! i had not obtained the title at this point because i still needed to do the coin fishing achievement, so the rest of the weekend was spent in dalaran fishing up coins form the fountain. if anything, it was a very eye drying experience, as i had spent hours staring at the fishing bobber. i met a couple of people who hanged around the fountain fishing up coins, comparing achievements with them on how many we needed. it was at this point when i received an email from aprillian with the lil kt code, so i had a cute companion with me while i fished, thanks to you guys! i was down to my last gold coin on my second day of fishing, and it was late at night and i was falling asleep, when the last gold coin came up and i got the achievement Accomplished angler! from then on i had become Salty Makiling and i will be seen riding around the cities on my sea turtle around the cities with my fishing pole =)

the path i took to get the achievement was long and filled with trials. but allow me to share with you some tips on how to do it.

first, practice makes perfect. i didnt one shot this, and if my memory serves me correctly i started trying to win the tournament more than half a year ago. it was the booty bay tournament then, but i had since been only close to winning, but did not come soon enough.

the second tip is to do your research. whether you do the dalaran or the booty bay contest, be sure you know when and where to fish for what you need.

if you've done your research, have practiced doing the tournament, but still find yourself only close to winning, you might want to lower your video card settings. i know it helped me, because you wouldn't want to port to dalaran and find yourself running along a wall because of the lag.

hope those tips help!

before i end, i have a question about character transfers you talked about transferring a toon with boa items to the realm of your dk, i was wondering if this was in the same wow account or the same batle net account? what i mean to ask is if it is possible to transfer to a different wow account on the same battle.net account, or only on the same wow account. and, is it possible to transfer to a different battle.net account?

thats it from me for now, for the horde and for jeppy!

twitter.com/makiling_mage

Email #2 from Anonymous

Hi guys and girls
It's me again. the aloof one who rather strangely enjoy your show way too much :)
I'm not going to waste time with the pleasantries so let me get straight to the point.
Having just listened to your latest podcast where Aprillian was talking about her dps and how other pugs says she sucks. Well, I looked through her gear and her talent build, and here's the problem I see. Please don't take offence, I'm just trying to help you out a little. Seeing how Ashayo, who plays a Warlock isn't giving you much tip on how to gem your gear :P
First and foremost, there are certain things you need to take into consideration when gemming up your gear. Obviously, getting the hit cap is the most important part, you spent 3 points into Suppression, which gives you 3% hit, so now you'll only need 14% hit to be capped without any raid buffs from a Spriest or a Boomkin. so the extra you should aim for is 368, thats your optimal hit rating from gear or enchants. So get rid of some hit rating gems and start putting other things in there. Your meta gem, the 42 attack power gem is for melee dps, what you want is the Chaotic Skyflare diamond, which gives 21 crit rating and 3% crit damage. You'll need to have 2 blue gems to activate that meta, so your nightmare tear can stay and just get a Glowing Dreadstone for the other blue gem needed.
Now the important stats. As a Destro lock, the stat priority is as follow:
Spell Power > Haste > Crit > Spirit > Int So you can put the gems in accordingly
Also, I see you are missing your Glyphs. Don't ever underestimate how important Glyphs are to your dps. As Destro Lock, you would want Glyph of Life Tap, Glyph of Conflagrate and Glyph of Immolate as your major glyphs, don't matter what you do with minor glyphs, they're just there to make life easier on a non combat basis most of the time.
Now for your spell rotation, it depends on if you're fighting trash or a Boss, for trash, you can do pretty much anything you want because no one really should look at their dps for trash. I often just tab each target and cast a Seed of Corruption on them all and watch them blow up. On a Boss fight, you would want to get the rotation down so it becomes second nature and you won't have to keep looking at your hotkeys to see which button to press next.
Make a hotkey for your Life Tap rank 1. this is important as you will be doing a lot of life tap to generate the extra spell power given to you with the Glyph of Life Tap, and you wont freak out the healer seeing your life constantly going down if you use the highest rank of Life Tap.
Start off with your Life Tap rank 1 -> Curse of Doom, (or if its just heroics and you know the boss isnt going to last more than 60 seconds, use Curse of Element instead) > Immolate -> Conflagrate, (this is where your Backdraft will start) > Chaos Bolt -> Incinerate -> Incinerate (your backdraft will end here after 3 casts) than you rinse and repeat, if you have Curse of Doom still ticking, just skip the Curse and go straight to Immolate and carry on the rotation.
I know you enjoy your alts and probably don't really have time to refine the finer details on just 1 particular class, but I find that if you can get 1 class down, the basics will help you with other classes you play down the line. I don't play with my Warlock that often and his gearscore is lower than yours, but I can still manage to pull 3-4k dps on boss fights if it doesnt involve much running around. Getting your dps up is all about how tight you can squeeze your spells in your rotation, and practice makes perfect, spend a little time on the target dummies in the major towns to get the rotation down and I can guarantee your dps will jump up a lot.
And for Ashayo, here's a good macro for your Pally tank, you mentioned about the mod or whatever it was. When I tank with my pally, I just set up a macro to grab the stayers that goes for the healer in heroics, and its as follow:
#showtooltips Righteous Defense
/cast [target=focus] Righteous Defense

It's ok having the nameplates of the mob grow bigger so you can click on them while they beating down your healer, but what if there's more than 1 mob on the healer? What this macro does is before you start pulling your first mob, you set focus on your healer, whenever your healer gets a stray mob on them, you just hit that macro and it'll get up to 3 mobs to attack you instead of the healer, lay a consecration down, change your target and smack it a few times with your Hammer of Righteousness and they won't be going anywhere for a long time. :)
Hope these info helps and you guys won't take it as some insult, just trying to be helpful here :)

Sincerely
Still going to remain anonymous

Just a note about the last email sent to aprillian on her warlock rotation. Since blizzard made the changes to shadowbolt in patch 3.2.2 the rotation may have to change with shadowbolt instead of incinerate. But I haven't had time to change spec to test out the shadowbolt boost to give a definitive answer yet. So feel free to test out both to see which works better for u.

Anonymous

Sent from my iPhone

Email #B from Donna


Hi Everyone,

Sad news from Donna this week. I woke up this morning to find an e-mail from Blizzard telling me my account had been suspended for 3 hours due to spamming and then they sent an e-mail telling me they are resetting my password. Funny thing is the e-mail was sent at 1 o'clock in the morning last night and I was fast asleep, warm in my bed. Hence, this little piggie had been hacked. Since we could not get online today due to maintenance, I decided to check my characters through the armory. Poor Botswala has been molested beyond belief. She is standing in nothing but her tabard with all of her gear gone. I suppose all of my gold and items, etc. are gone as well. The really bad thing is not only did they sell everything and steal the gold, they also deleted just about all of my other characters. The only one I could find on the armory was Botswala. Also, I had TWO accounts so both accounts were under the same battle net account so both of the accounts were hacked and all characters raped and pillaged. My husband was using my second account, so all of his characters on that account are gone as well. Are two AIE characters are gone, Zingaya and Verdonna.

I have to say I am in a state of shock but I suppose I deserve it as I was not smart to use an authenticator. Ironically, I just downloaded the Iphone authenticator app this week to set it up but had not gotten around to it yet. So now my account is locked and I cannot play. I was really excited too, because Botswala was so close to her Loremaster achievement. Only a handful of quests left in Icecrown to complete and she would have been done. Now who knows when or if I will be able to get back to that project. She had just recently gotten her raptor from Un'Goro as well and was so thrilled to finally be done with that. My priest Sistajosepha as also working on that one, but now she is gone. Boo hoo hoo!

Let me be a lesson for everyone out there in the World of Warcraft community how important it is purchasing that authenticator. I never thought I would be a target because I did not have tons of great gear and I kind of laid low, but guess that plan did not work out. Get your authenticators!!! We are ordering ours today by the way. When my account problems finally get settled, I am hoping to get back in game.

I just want to say thank you to Ctrl Alt Wow for the free month of WOW (which I just added to my account, doh!). Hopefully I will get to use that free month soon! Also I want to say thank you to everyone out there who gave tips on completing my loremaster achievement, especially Blade. It was good to hear from him. They were all very helpful and have made the job much easier.

So stay safe out there and enjoy playing the game. I will miss you guys for a while but hope to be back soon.

Donna

Email #3 from Deathskeeper

Hey guys
Deathskeeper here sorry to say Death is not in AIE anymore... What!!! Good news he's in Pants on Head now he's almost one of the cool kids almost.But the reason I'm sending this because of what Blade asked in episode 152. My friend who got me started in WOW and quit a week after but I'm going down a QQ story no one wants to here. But when he came back when BC came out he wanted to play Alliance on Windrunner he found a guild that was for adults with families the "Cult of the Plush Gnome"so I ran a human Lock from 1 to 70 and then Wrath came out and I ran a DK to 80. So I've played both side and its really a personal thing as to what side is best. Cause when Harus was trying to get me to play he gave me the WOW strategy guide and after reading it I knew I was a undead warlock, it was my first toon and he is level 61 on Blakwater Raiders. But the thing that made me come back to the Horde even with i level 73 human lock and level 80 DK and a tons of other Alliance alts was Finger prints there no way I was spending money to get one of a human anything. I'm still a Horde at heart and I always will be. I liked play Alliance and there are adults who don't live with there moms who play it. The Plushie Gnomes was a great guide I'm just a Horde but if you have not played both side yet I say make a DK and do all the starter zones to get a feel for the lore you may like it.

See you in game Deathskeeper.

Email # D from Nevik

Greetings Ctrl Alt Wow crew,

My it's been awhile hasn't it? Many apologizes for the hiatus in email writing. I had been sick for over a month and only recently have I found my energy levels approaching normality. So while I could blame my lack of correspondence on my lack of fortitude to sit down at the computer and write, that would only tell part of the story.

My motivation to log into WoW has waned over this past month and writing into a WoW podcast didn't seem to make much sense. Not to worry though, I'm still lurking in the shadows and there will be a triumphant return to Azeroth ... at some point ;)

I felt compelled to write in after listening to episode 152; Aprillian & Vrishna appearing a little more frequently on Jubbly bubbly? There hasn't been a day over the past couple of weeks where I haven't thought about transferring my priest, death knight, or even my rogue over to Jubei'thos.

Okay, that's not entirely true, but I have been giving it serious consideration. I just haven't pulled the trigger on doing it yet but I'm getting awfully close. If it weren't for another mistress pulling me away from WoW the news of Aprillian & Vrishna's presence in Pants on Head would be the reason to push me over the edge.

I'm of course alluding to Star Trek Online. I wouldn't feel comfortable elaborating on my reasons in an email, but suffice to say STO is offering a suitable alternative as I recharge my "WoW batteries." Who knows, I might even end up on a podcast or two talking STO ... ^^;

A little birdie told me that the guys over at the Addicted had a special guest to talk about the game. So if you are indeed Trek-curious you might want to give the Addicted episode 28 a listen. That same bird also told me that there's a strikingly similar podcast to this one that has started up named Ctrl Alt Trek or something.

Anyhoo, I think that's enough with the shameless cross-promotion, keep up the great work! For the Federrr .... er I mean Live long o'gar?! Rub your tummy commander? No, that didn't work either. I guess it really was funnier in my head.

Nevik


Email # 4 from Catharina

my Dear podcast-makers

(alphabetically Bind-on-Equip, Casually Hardcore, Ctrl-alt-wow, Epic dolls, Guild-chat, How-i-wow, Rawrcast, and Twisted Nether Blogcast)


For quite some time I have been listening to your podcasts. Regretfully I must admit that I have only very rarely written to any of you. Mostly because I do not have anything specific I want to say or ask. And some other factors contribution to my not-writing , are a little hesitance since English isn't my main language and maybe a little laziness.


As a casual-player and altoholic I love listening to the podcasts. I usually will have them playing during my time playing WoW. They are especially good during fishing or farming sessions for leather, herbs or mining.

And I also regularly play them when I am traveling or sometimes at work.


To Aprillian, Ashayo , Jeppy , Vrishna and Glanthor specifically I want to ask and say:

  • I love to hear a show where the focus is on having fun, and enjoying all the different aspects of WoW. To me it seems there are very little shows that mention and enjoy the leveling process.

  • I hope Jeppy is doing fine again and will so for a very long time :-)
    (and of course I wish the same to Aprillian, Ashayo , Vrishna and Glanthor )

  • it's funny to hear how Vrishna grows in what he how he perceives the game. And to sometimes unexpectedly hear him say things like 'More DoT's more DoT's'.



Again my thanks for all your efforts and my sincere best wishes to all of you.


Kind regards,


Catharina - 80 mage (and quite a number of other toons) - Darkspear-EU


P.S. Should you feel that my mail is too long, or my grammar is confusing, please feel free to shorten or change it.


s
Email # 5 from Robin

Hello ctrl alt wow!

Love the podcast! I am currently trying to level my level 70 warlock alt. I dont particularly care for borean tundra, and some of the howling fjord quests are bugged and so I decided to level my lock using the dungeon finder until I get to a level that I can go to a different area. I waited for nearly an hour to get into Utgarde keep only to find myself extremely frustrated with the group. The group I ended up getting into was Me, a mage, a paladin, a druid healer, and a warrior tank. The mage and I did not have the greatest gear (im still in mostly outland dungeon drops) and I am in the process of relearning what stats I need to do more damage, so we weren't doing as much dps as we should be. The entire time the healer was complaining that we sucked and throwing all sorts of insults at us. I find it interesting that the dps was being targeted when the tank was treating the instance like he was an 80 in all tier 10 gear. He would pull 8 or 9 mobs at a time and then wouldnt give us time between groups to get mana or loot any corpses. Then he would skip mobs! which is understandable in heroics, but other than that its skipping valuable xp! once we got to the first boss (prince keleseth, where there are 4 other vrykuls before the boss, and then the boss spawns adds as well) he pulled the entire room and we wiped (even though i had soulstoned the healer). Once we came back I didnt even have time to get my imp out! I went through nearly the entire instance relying solely on life tap for mana, and without my imp, which gives a good buff to the whole party. I finally got my imp out and we were on the last boss...at this point i had forgotten to soulstone the healer again (mostly because I wasnt given the time) and we wiped...again. At this point the paladin says he would have spit on me if he had died as a healer, and he begins to spam recount, because our dps was like 300dps lower than everyone elses. I normally love the lfg system, and don't normally have this problem. I have leveled a shaman from 20-30 solely on the lfg system (and intend to do so further because i'm sure questing resto would not be pleasant). I just wanted to share my horror story with you, and to tell you that I am also an altoholic. I have recently leveled my first alliance toon past level 4. It's funny because you hear everyone say that the alliance are all children, later that day i went to a gas station and got carded for my purchase because the clerk thought i was 11!! (I'm 22).

Hope you're having fun!
and farewell from my 80 blood elf DK, my 70 Blood elf warlock, my 30 troll shaman, my 26 tauren druid, my 25 blood elf paladin, my 15 troll hunter and his cute tiger snoofus all on the lightning's blade server among many other alts below level 10.

Shout Outs & Thank You

MoMoMoments

Hello all,
I am sorry for being late and missing emailing but with work and getting sick again time has been short the last 2 weeks.

Hope all of you are well and having fun.

In wow, the last few weeks, well the same as usual for my 3 80s on feathermoon, daily random Heroics for badges and a few raids here and there on my healer moheal. Holy priest is so much fun for me, and I pair nicely with my friend/guildy who is a discipline priest. This past Friday I was not able to make our ICC10 run but my guild downed Festerbut or is it festergut. Well either way that was nice to hear that. One thing that keeps coming up in guild dramas (in all wow guild I hear at least) is loot and how loot is distributed. How do you pass out loot, what system do you use? We have been mainly doing roll if you need and if you have won than let someone else roll for it.
It seems it is time for us to have a better system. We have had many people leave our guild (after they are geared mind you) because they did not like how the loot system worked.
I have passed loot over to a guildy many times if I see it is a better gear for them and their spec however we cannot expect everyone to do that.

To let Aprillian know, Moheals gear score is 2803, I know you are in the GS kick lately :)

On other wow news I have purchased heirloom items for a DK and a Shamman I have started. I have played many DK's but just the beginning zone because it is so much fun. I just cannot get into playing a DK, not sure why. I will be giving it another go. Another altaholic goal I have had is to have one of each healer at level 80, so I still need a druid, shammy, and pally...lots of work ahead of me :)

I have not purchased STO yet but will this coming week. I am a start trek fan and a Star wars fan, cannot wait till that comes out.

How have you all liked STO? Anyone playing Aion? I stopped Aion after just a few weeks, just could not get into it.

And for TV, any of you LOST fans? I love that show, best show out there right now in my opinion, and on the mo scale, definitely top 5 show of all time!!! I would say Star Trek TNG #1, than toss up between, Seinfeld, Cheers, Lost, and...
So many choices!!!

What are your top shows you all watch?

Well short email and I will do my best to heal myself and write more for next time. Take care all and for the Ctrl Alt Wow/STO :)

--
Mo