Sunday, January 30, 2011

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 200 - The 200th

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.

Anniversary:

Premise for podcast - Have fun, talk about alts, encourage contributions, never criticize guest or contributers

What We've Been Doing:

Aprillian
Clicking on v bar for muddy crawfish

Aprillian & Vrishna
Virinya, Epril, Auruk and Aprillian doing heroics.

Vrishna and Astara in outland.

Wailing Caverns with the twenties.
Vrishna
New refer a friend with cata. Kudos to blizzard for the favor.
Pally twins to 25 maybe 26 by end of show. Jeppy was right.

Saw Ashayo in the flesh ! (Or at least the pixels)

Virinya to 84. WOOT WOOT
Doing the elders and the honor snafu.
Chocobo works for both jousting tourneys.
Archaeology to 280. Got Fossilized Raptor, Kaldorei Wind Chimes and Fossilized Hatchling.

Question for Ashayo about Arkinventory and transferring rules and category bars across accounts.

Ashayo

Jeppy

Emails

Email #1

G'day CAW Crew! Just thought I'd send in an update on Praevus, alittle over a month after Cataclysm was released my Worgen Druid Praevus dinged 85. Let me tell you, the Cataclysm zones are amazing both in content and looks! I really don't have a zone I don't like, which is really odd. With Wraith I had some zones I just didn't care for like Grizzly Hills and Borean Tundra, but I just can't find one in Cataclysm. I hear alot of complaints about the Uldum cut scenes but I really enjoyed it! Though I do have to say to Blizzard, VOICE ACTING! Why oh why do we have such good in game cut scenes and we have to read chat bubbles, it really breaks the feel of the scene that they are trying to show. If they have to make it an optional download for those that don't care but man give us voice actors..
On another note Praevus is maxxed out in Skinning and Herbalism and man oh man the money for both Skins and Herbs is crazy! I'm tempted to drop a gathering skill to pick up either Leatherworking or Inscription but just not sure at this time.

Aprillian and Vrishna, you need to pull up your bootstraps and get on out there in the new content. You are missing out on some great great questing and mullah! The mobs are not as bad as you think they are. They hit alittle hard, true, but it's all manageable. You can do it! Hey it's more fun when you're at level then being 85 banging on lvl 80-81 mobs. Come on you guys get out there and get to the new content :)

Well time to get back to working on Thymr, my lvl 82 Enh/Resto Shaman :)

Take care all and have a good time in and out of game...

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


Email #B

Hey guys, Congratulations on episode 200! fabulous work! I have just been running around on my mage goblin, just hit 81 and have been really enjoying Frost. I do a little bit of everything so it will be great to have a solid pvp and raiding spec when I finally gear up. After looking forever it feels like I finally came up with enough Khorium ore to finish my turbo flying machine from engineering so im glad to get that out of the way. I just feel like a goblin looks better on a crickety looking home made helicopter than a dragon.
I'm some what looking forward to running more heroic instances. I'm a little bit with Aprillian on the whole not carrying your weight fear in heroics. Plus you have to deal with rude people and the groups fall apart for no reason and all that good stuff so it can be a bit daunting. But you have to deal and carry on, pretty much like every day life some people just want to ruin the fun for others.
I heard Jeppy over on the Addicted cast and he was super funny as always. I just started listining to that one so i'll have to go give a shout out to Hyp and Cypher over on thier site. Yours and theirs are definitaly my two favorite casts.
Have a great week!
Phobic

Email #C

Greetings Ctrl Alt Crew,



It has been quite some time since I last wrote and I figured what better time to chime in than episode 200! I ended up taking a break from WoW around September until the Cata launch. The time away really renewed my interest in the game and the expansion sealed the deal.



“Just when I thought I was out….”



I rolled a couple new characters to try out the new starting areas and really enjoyed the Worgen storyline. Eventually I settled back on my main, Keelhaul Undead Warrior and leveled him up to 85. I tanked a few of the new dungeons but really enjoyed exploring the new areas. Uldum being my favorite of the lot.



With all of the guild perks, some of which requiring guild rep, I find it difficult to play my other toons. Are you guys feeling this as well?


Anyway I decided to focus on my professions on Keelhaul and will have jewelcrafting maxed by the time you read this message. Last weekend I decided to drop mining and pick up enchanting. I really enjoy both professions but they can be costly if you are not patient, luckily, I am and have been farming many of the old dungeons for mats. It is a decent way to pick up some of the older enchanting recipes as well. Not to mention some of the older enchants still sell very well as they can be applied to heirloom gear.



While running these dungeons I have also collect a warehouse full of cloth which I have been sending to Aprillian since I do not need it and I’m sure more than a few of her army of alts are tailors or at least it can be used to power level first aid. So far, I have been able to solo all of the dungeons up to Heroic Halls of Lightening. My first solo run I got the blue drake mount woot!



I am still running a few of the older dungeons for various drops and rep. If I see you guys on I'll send you a whisper to see if you have an alt that needs whatever dungeon I happen to be running. Thanks again for all of the great episodes and here’s to the next 200!

Cheers!



~Keelhaul

85 Undead Warrior

AIE Guild Earthen Ring




Email #


Hey CAW crew-

Just wanted to write in and say gratz! Your podcast has dinged 200! I just wanted to say (again) thanks for putting on a great podcast. It is something I Iook forward to every week.

I recently re-made my annoying, /dance - ing, bunny-killing gnome warlock on Winterhoof into a Worgen mage. I just never seemed to get attached to the gnome and so I never played him. I'm already enjoying his new look and the Worgen starting area.

After a few hours of questing, I decided I was going to keep the Worgen. And after saying I was going to join the Ctrl Alt Wow guild for months, I finally showed up in the CAW channel and got the invite from Nevik (thanks!). I look forward to seeing my new guildies in game and killing bunnies for the glory of the guild. Only 50,000 critters and we can get the armadillo pup pet, so come on people, let's focus on what is really important. :)

Skral

P.S.- Best wishes to Jeppy and family- I hope he gets well soon.


Email # from Nicky


I've just gotten my droid phone and I'm still discovering all the apps
and such. I wanted to add your feed to my Google Listen List but I
can't seem to find an RSS http address. Is it because of the PodBean
thing? I'm trying to keep everything all together and don't want a
ton of sign ons. Let me know if you have any insite into how that
stuff works.

http://ctrlaltow.podbean.com/feed


Email #

Hi CAW Crew,

It's been awhile since we've let you know what we've been up to. We loved being on the show and there's no way that we can bring as much content as Ashayo can but we tried. Thanks for having us on!

We didn't know you all were recording early so we missed the opportunity to let you all know how great the podcast is and how much we appreciate all that you all do. Oh well, I guess we'll have to do it this week. :)

Caoboi and I have been playing WoW but we are constantly getting pulled away and distracted by other games as well. We got into the Rift Beta which plays a lot like WoW as well as a game on Steam called Magicka. Not to mention my playing of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.

But I'll concentrate on WoW for the purpose of this email. We've been playing on two sets of alts lately. Our lower level goblins have been getting a little less love than our level 82 shaman and mage. We've been having an awesome time demolishing quests in Mt. Hyjal. We'll be leet like Ashayo soon and have our second 85s.

We've been having fun raiding on our mains. We took down Maliorak in Blackwing Descent. He's been a monkey on our backs for a week or so and glad to have gotten him down. I know I've said it before but i really enjoy raiding. Doing what I need to do and it's the best when I don't make a mistake :)

Well we love you guys and I plan on playing more WoW so we have more things to report. Also we've started a blog for both of us called atvalentine.com. It's just a blog where we talk about all the stuff we like to do. I know it's a shameless plug but it's the first I've ever done. I hope you don't mind. If you do, no need to read :)

You all have a great WoW week.

Iceflow and Caoboi


Email

Hey Aprillian, Ashayo, jeppy and Vrishna,
Well it has been a very long time since I last wrote to you( episode 59). I thought Hitting 200 was important enough to write again. You 4 collectively make Ctrl Alt Wow my favorite podcast to listen to each week. I have been missing you all on Winterhoof. I have decided that our guild deserves to at least reach the second level and I am now leveling a Paladin to help my Level 85 hunter do that. Anyway Congrats on hitting the big 200 episodes. May there be many more to come. Well I know this is short but I have to get back to it, guild's don't hit level 2 by themselves.

Matahorn/Elodar from Winterhoof
Shout Outs & Thank You


Momomoment200

Hello, a BIG HELLO!
Happy 200th episode!
Wow that is cool, all the people that have hosts, guest hosts, listeners, emailers, everyone! So cool, awesome, great, any other work you can think of say it now!
You are all, we are all part of each others lives believe it or not and hope we dont take each other for granted because that is how regular you are in our lives.
A big big thank you and you really dont know how much I appreciate all of you for entertaining us just because the love of game/live you have. Thank you!

I truly cannot remember when the first episode it was and how I started with the first few teens listening in each week but I do know that each week I look forward to listening in. I am glad I can contribute is any way I can. I do remember years ago when I first started emailing in and I won a month of wow! I was so happy, giddy, I could not believe it :)

For the last few weeks I...well have been just doing the same :)
Mainly working on my priest moheal, trying to do heroics or regular dungeons and yes I say try as you all know how dungeoning is.

I have also been looking at other servers and guilds to possible join. Mr Nevik was kind enough to suggest his guild Awry on Cenarius server, a horde guild. I have been trying to apply to their guild and move a character but life/work really keep getting in the way. For the days I have been able to log on I just get a dungeon in and than Im done.

I was going to go into a few horror stories but I think I will save them for next week.

Thank you again for your awesome work and I know I may have passed it up in the past but maybe one day I can come on and say hello over the skype world to you all and also looking forward to leveling my winterhoof characters.

FOR THE CTRLALTWOW!!!!!

Friday, January 21, 2011

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 199 - Ashayo's Back & We've Got Him

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
Hopped on the worgens on Winterhoof. Brought in Shaasha to take them around.
Epril is levelling up JC. Having a good time prospecting but not making high level gems just yet
Cooking dailies




Aprillian & Vrishna
OMG - HEROICS BAYBBEEE

Drak'Tharon Keep Healing and then tanking. Actually getting better gear which is great but also sad.

What's up with Brunhildar disguise on Aprillian ? Ashayo ? And the Hodir quests. Aprillian's rep is quite high but she is still unable to do certain dailies ? Unfinished quest chains ? Ashayo ?

Went to Mt. Hyjal and started the quests there

Visited Winterhoof finally and ran our Worgens from Lor'danel to Astranaar






Vrishna
What a drag in the drag ! Granted, I was a rogue at the time but c'mon brothers and sisters. I was stopped, waiting patiently for a re-spawned prickly pear and bam ! Alea Iacta Est Invictus goblin trike riding snipin' little green man comes along and .. oh well. "(sigh)

Dinged 83 doing dailies and archaeology. I try to use my rocket to chauffeur my low level toons to as many FP's as possible. I've learned to leave them a safer distance from my actual digs as opposed to agro-ing EVERY mob in the area ! Finished all the quests in Storm Peaks as well. From 79 to 83, solo questing only in Storm Peaks.

Ashayo

Jeppy

Emails

Email #A Kurly

Hey All,
So my IPOD broke this last week...what a total bummer!! Since it is the method by which I use to listen to podcasts, I have not been able to listen to any starting from last week. I cant listen to them while I play WOW as I find it too distracting. I am hope to pick up a new shuffle come Friday January 20th, and will happily catch up as listening to podcasts has become a big part of my life! My bitterness over my loosing my ipod, however, has sucked the desire to submit an audio submission right out of me, so for now, EMAIL!!

I did a race change on my hunter..she is now a human female named Khurlie, and she is my second 85. Having seen all of the new zones (but not all of each zone), I have to say that the best way to find each of the new dungeon entrances is to start in Vash'jir, then go to Uldam, and then Twilight Highlands. This feature of the expansion (having to find the entrances to dungeons before you can queue for them) is not my favorite. Having done Hyjal, Deepholm, and T-Highlands the only dungeon she "found" was stone core, and the lesser amount of dungeons you have discovered the longer it takes for you to get picked up for a random, and by the time I did get one, I was just about ready to call it quites for the night on that toon.

I have also been severly neglecting my toons in other guilds...namely AIE, CAW and Taint. Of my three toons that were in AIE, I have only been able to get one back in and with all of this Guild Leveling nonsense I actually feel a little guilty NOT playing in my home guild. Also, as my guild on Ysondre is a guild of me, me, and only me, will it ever leveL?

Still, there is so much to see and do. The Therazane dailies offer some very good rep rewards and with 7 of them it takes very little time to work up. I am going to start doing the Tol Barad dailies as well as figure out what 80 to level next. Having done Heals/DPS (My Priest) and then DPS (My hunter) I was thinking a tank, but since my tank seems to be stuck at level 72 (not because I am afraid to tank or anything), ima think my boomkin may be next.

I hope you are all having fun as well.

Peace n' stuff!

Kurlz


Email #B from Mattdiox - Audio

Monday, January 17, 2011

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 198 - Hello, It's Called A Lance

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.


Drawing for Episode 197

Audio from Juuno

Sparkly Pony contest closing for Episode 200
What We've Been Doing:

Aprillian
Asking level 85's to buy meat for me
Flew Epril around Mt Hyjal getting the finally Uldum, beautiful
Want to get Tiiaa to 80
Got 3 80's to 81
Got AT dailies for Aspirants done on Auruk & Epril
Aprillian tried to help Epril & Auruk with the 3 Commanders and she couldn't see the town
Getting used to rested xp again
Champion's Seal in every Champion's Purse? But Commendation Writ can be used on Exalted faction to overflow to Goblin rep
Tiiaa dinged 71 just doing Archeology and cooking dailies. She's not getting xp each time she digs. She's at 91 and has over 250 fragments.

Epril gets her dailie


Aprillian & Vrishna
Met Cypher in Boston

Dailies in Grizzly Hills and the Argent Tournament
Helped me with Chillmmaw and we did the lts/Comm & Stuff

Flying to landing

Did Violet Hold and it went very well.

Tried the Obsidian Sanctum under Wyrmrest Temple. BIG MISTAKE ! But extremely funny.
Vrishna
Dailies dailies and more dailies ! Including the Argent Tournament ! (hence the LANCE comment) What's up with the Black Knight quest ? Got his orders and the stolen invite and then nothing ! Up to 7% , on the cusp of 8% for the first guild achievement. Auruk and Virinya together making that go up pretty fast I think for only 2 people.

Virinya hit 82 doing dailies and archaeology ! Started doing the Hodir dailies in the Storm Peaks after the Grizzly Hills dailies.

Reilana , my rogue dinged 60.

Karinya, RET Pally on my #2 acct. , got to 10 and can now do the cooking daily in Orgrimar ! Speaking of which, the snipers doin' that daily are brutal !

Alas, poor Winterhoof. Perhaps this coming week.





No Ashayo
Caoboi & Iceflow
Iceflow - finished Worgen starting area. Underwhelmed. Raiding on a regular basis. LOVING it. Farming on hunter and sending ore to prospect to Iceflow and rest to the bank. 17 on goblins in azshara. 100,000 Critters. (Secret of how it was done.)

Jeppy
5 not 10
Emails

Email #A from Zebestes
So here's that non-lore one. I re-recorded it and it is a little under 6 mins.

Email #B Gravenau audio

Hey peeps sorry I missed last week I was dead dog tired so I sleept when I should have recorded and now my main system has decided to play dead well it better be playing or its going to pay dearly hopefully this audio submission lives up to my normal level of skill. Sending from Gmail again due to foremention pc maybe death well I hope you all are fine and I hope my grammar has held up long enough to be read.

Email #1 from Lighthearted

Greetings JAI VAC! Okay, that acronym didn't really work, but I didn't want to leave out the guests.

I think you all are already rolling on the show, so I may be a little late with this email, but I thought I would give it a shot since your guests happen to be from my hometown and can probably pronounce Louisville correctly (at least to those of us who are from there).

It's been a super busy week, so I didn't get to play as much as I might have liked. Tomorrow is a day off, but looks like it will probably be a day off from WoW also (mostly).

Last week I was disappointed when my paladin had honored with our guild and hit 525 jc to fill in the last block on the "working together" achievement, but not be awarded it. Come to find out, as I think you all mentioned, you have to have 535 for a dranei. :( That was after I spent 2k on mats to level it to 525. So, another 2-3k later, with some help from a guildie (working together), I finally reached 535 and our guild got the achievement along with the award banner. Then I noticed I was eligible to buy heirloom cloaks and I spent the rest of my money, leaving my poor level 85 totally destitute. However, thanks to ah sales, I am back up to around 1500. I know Jeppy makes that much in less than an hour, but I'm too busy with my lower level toons.

I finally got Homd (Husband of my dreams) leveled up enough to join my Fwote (Favorite Woman on the Earth) only to realize that I was out of rested xp and she was fully rested. I guess we'll give it a couple more days. Ironically, the reason I'm having so much trouble keeping up is that my noob wife is already dual-boxing and I am struggling away monoboxing with (now) three heirloom pieces. She decided to take a few days off to let me catch up.

In the meantime, we did some questing through Outlands with our toons on an alt server where her friend plays and her highest level toon resides. Unfortunately, I don't have any heirloom gear there. I'm still debating whether it's worth it to me to switch over a low-level toon with heirloom gear, but I can't seem to justify spending the $25.

Well, I was going to mention the adventures in bgs with my kids, but my wife is ready to sign-on, so I better sign off.

For the Alliance!

Thgil, Liteharted, and the many alts.


Email #

Email #

Email #


Shout Outs & Thank You

MoMomoments

Hello all,
hope you are doing well.
For me this week in game I just did the usual: log on my priest moheal, do a heroic (or try to) than do another random for some more justice points, do some rep quests; log in my one hunter to do jc dailies, ah some things; log in my warrior to do cooking daily. Exciting huh! :) well I have been enjoying the game as usual. my priest is up to 337 item gear level or whatever that is called. I have been able to get a few heroic gears and couple more pieces with justice points. Heroic or regular, I am still hitting some challenges as...well Forest Gump said it best: "random dungeons are like a box of chocolates (please read this in your best Forest voice :) you just dont know what kind of crappy chocolate you are going to get."
I know it has been said and will be said a million times but people are just strange. I still say why cant we all just get along, is it really that hard. I zoned in one day and it was Deadmines and I have not done that on heroics so I say that in party chat. Things are going fine until I life grip the druid as he is dying and you would think he would appreciate that! Nope...he says please dont do that again. I say to myself ok, I guess Ill just let him die next time. We move on and the different heals I have on healbot I sometimes accidently click the spell, which this time turned out to me life grip on the druid lol so he says in party chat "um ya thanks but dont yonk me, I lost threat" now I may be new to this game, I have only played for 6 or so years but since when does the dps need threat!? I tell him it was an accident calm down dude. We move on and I make a few mistakes which they make a point to point out with snide remarks :(
This was not the worse experience this week for me and yes I am going against what I said last week, I will be talking or typing about my bad experiences hope you dont mind.

At least a handful of times I get into a dungeon where the tank and dps zerg through and get mad at me for not being able to keep up. When I am not frustrated I try to compensate for other players incompetence by trying to better my skills. I took the advice of Molsan as he stated on his podcast and installed boss info addon. It basically shows boss info :) for instances and you can show it in party chat too. Not that ingenious but it helps to know what the bosses can do.

I do have to tell you my first heroic was in Shadowfang keep, which was hard but I was in a good group. Tank was being realistic and dps was helpful.

On other news, our guild is as dead as ever, there are days I log in and it is just me. At times I do envy the people that are in guilds like AIE or even guilds only 50 or 100 people in it. I do like to keep to myself at times but the game is more fun when you are interacting with others (well others that are not being idiots of course). Well I just have to deal with it.

My poor raf characters are suffering from a lack of activity. The sad part is that I dont feel bad for wasting valuable raf time. Do you think I should go see a wow Alt-doctor? :)


Hope you are all having fun in game and that is all from mo!

Take care

--
Mo

Tiwtter

liteharted Thgil Liteharted @CtrlAltWoW After getting the heirloom cloak and getting w/in 1 lvl of my wife, I just realized she has nearly full rested xp. :( sigh... 12 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply »
liteharted Thgil Liteharted @ @CtrlAltWoW It was a great show, even without the Australian co-host. 12 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply »
Allecia13 Allecia #FF @eljeppy @BindOnEquip @wemb @tempeste @TheWych @CtrlAltWoW @Ashayo @Vrishna137 @Aprillian @alachia It's a podcast FF :) And awesome ppl 19 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply »
jasonetheridge Teo @CtrlAltWoW Chaos Orbs drop off last boss in heroic dungeons, and are used in top-end crafting recipes. Cata equivalent of Frozen Orbs. 14 Jan Favorite Retweet Reply »
jasonetheridge Teo @CtrlAltWoW @Eljeppy is right, shadowmeld does currently pop you out of your current form. A shame I don't still play my nelf druid. :(
2 of 8 1/15/11 10:51 AM
Twitter / @CtrlAltWoW http://twitter.com/
14 Jan Favorite Retweet Reply »
jasonetheridge Teo @CtrlAltWoW According to devs on last Blizzcast, Uldum is pronounced "Ul-doom". Still calling it "Ul-dum" myself. 14 Jan Favorite Retweet Reply »
Indigored_hot Indigored @jasonetheridge @ctrlaltwow My hunter is 84 1/2 and haven't set foot in one and it's not a chore! 14 Jan Favorite Retweet Reply »
jasonetheridge Teo @CtrlAltWoW You can easily go 80-85 having never stepped foot in a dungeon at 80, with your greens/blues that you got from questing to 80. 14 Jan Favorite Retweet Reply »
bogadh Bogadh @jasonetheridge @ctrlaltwow agreed. Did that with my hunter. Did intro cata quests just fine in wrath heirloom gear. 14 Jan Favorite Retweet Reply »
jasonetheridge Teo @CtrlAltWoW The gate remaining closed in UP sounds like a new, post-Cata bug. Worth putting in a ticket to ensure Blizz knows! 14 Jan Favorite Retweet Reply »
Scoon24 Rowland @CtrlAltWoW AIE Member here looking for a alliance guild to jus casually play with on a worgan ;-)

Monday, January 10, 2011

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 197 - Bunnies, Why Did It Have To Be Bunnies

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
Ran Tiiaa through Uptgarde Keep. Want to have 5 80's

Doing Archeology on all time.
Aprillian & Vrishna
Vrishna tricked Aprillian's toon into committing suicide.

Aprillian tricked Vrishna to kill many rabbits !

Tanking with Virinya in Utgarde went well. Had to bring her in to get by those 2 bosses, Skarvald & Dalronn. THAT darn gate, glitch or hurdle? What say you Ashayo ? Oh, right. No Ashayo. I'll never remember to ask him next week. Oh well.

Ran
Vrishna
Levelled Arva's inscrption to 104.

Levelled mining on Lorena and Hannara into the 130's. Over 600 XP for gathering ore.

Started archaeology on Virinya.

Sprynkle & Vannara finally RAFing with Hannara & Lorena. Within 2 levels of each other now. Questing around Tarren Mill. And onto Arathi Highlands. Finally getting approx. 10k XP per quest turn in .

Transferred all my toons on earthen ring to one guild across 3 accounts. Parallel configured my ark inventory for all 3 accounts. Brutally boring and tedious but the results were exceptional !



Ashayo

Jeppy
Gold GOLD GOLD!

Mysterious Fortune Card = stupid tax (which I paid)

Karlaine gets to 83 on few quests but lots of mining and Archaeology (didn't realise it's XP was tied to rested)

To RAF or not to RAF (40 days left)

Worgen hunters hit 18 before hitting Darnassus. I hate the top hats!

Going down

Damn parachute
Emails

Email #A from Nevik

Greetings JAVA!

Merry Festivus and Happy New Year! It's a shame that you're recording the night /after/ New Years, but I suppose we wouldn't want to devalue the podcasting gold that was last year's New Year's CAW ^^; 2011 holds a lot of promise for us all and I can't wait to see what becomes of it.

Will my newborn son allow my wife and I some sleep? Will I actually have more than two max-level toons? Will one of those max-level toons be Alliance?!? Will I succumb to my usual winter break from WoW? So many questions and so few answers ... it'll be exciting to discover them as we go.

Here's to another fantastic year of Ctrl Alt Wow. I absolutely love you guys.

FOR THE SLEEP DEPri ... zzzzzzzzZZZZzzzzzzz!

Nevik


Email #B from Bidkar

Happy New Year CAW Crew,

Bidkar the ticked off mage here. Bidkar is getting cranky because he has tailoring and enchanting. The other toons with herbalism and mining are getting played quite a bit more. They can send embersilk and miscellaneous drops to Bidkar for the leveling of his professions so there is no need for him to venture forth in the world.

I had a WoW-A-Thon this Saturday. I actually had a whole day off, which does not occur very often. I played about 14 hours with only an hour off to tend to the kitty litter. I could smell it while playing and it was very distracting(and disgusting). I did miscellaneous dailies and general housekeeping in the game like I always do. One must do the chores first then level a toon. It's a rule I keep so I don't get full mailboxes and unattended auctions.

I leveled Furari my Worgen rogue on Winterhoof from 32 to 47. I thought I would get further, but that included going back and doing auction house a few times etc. I'm pleased with his progress and I had a lot of fun, so it's a win win. I very rarely get to play uninterrupted so it was a rare treat. If anybody is ever on Winterhoof and whispers me, don't get offended if I don't answer right away. I am the King of Afk.

I hope everybody has a great New Year. It's a brand new year full of new opportunities and adventure. I'm curious as to what awaits me. I know I'm a dork, but I always look forward to what the day brings. Many bad things happen, but there's always a diamond hiding in the talbuk dung.

FOR THE HORDE and for the alliance and CAW

Bidkar and his many alts

Email # 1 from Liteharted

Greeting CAW Crew!

I've been listening for a little over a year and often have thought about writing in, but have never seemed to get around to it.

I started just before the August episode that had all the sound gap problems in it (#128?). I wasn't quite sure what to make of the show and almost removed it from my iTunes subscription list after that show, but I'm glad I didn't! You all have been an entertain companions during my runs and a backlog of shows helps push me out the door because they remind me that I've gotten slack.

I just thought I would tell you that after months of hearing about how much you enjoyed playing WoW as a couple, I finally got my wife an account (even though she had no interest). As it turns out, her best friend from childhood plays, so we teamed up and got her to start a toon. She wasn't too sure at first, but now she has about 4 alts that I'm aware of. Just after that RAF ran out, we ended up getting a RAF for our kids to play also. My lvl 80-85 alts aren't getting much attention lately, but I am having so much fun playing with my wife and children. Unfortunately, even with two pieces of heirloom gear on, I can't seem to keep up with the kids RAF xp. Hmmm. Does that mean I need another? (I hear my wife chiming in at this point and saying we are already paying too much, so I guess I'll pass.)

Of course, it probably doesn't help that I have about five alts that I am actively playing (one at a time) and another couple that I play fairly regularly, not to mention the mail I have to keep up with on the other eleven. And then there's the juggling of professions and gathering and giving gold and bags as their alts seem to keep multiplying (my kids have more alts than my wife).

Well, this is probably more than enough for you all to read today. Perhaps more will follow later (even if it takes another year and a half to get there).

Liteharted (gnome mage, Alexstrasza), Lighthearted (human paladin, Bronzebeard), Thgil (dranei paladin, Alexstrasza), and a multitude of others that I won't bother naming, but am probably playing even more.

Thanks again for the great show. Happy New Year!


Email #C Caoboi and Iceflow

Hi All!,

First of all we want to send our well wishes to El Jeppy and hope that
he's feeling much better. The show is better with more English.

Aprillian, don't be terrified of dungeons. As long as you take your
time, it will be fine. Granted, I haven't done any with the random
dungeon finder but I think you'll do fine. And you actually get to
use your CC; Fear (make sure it's glyphed so they don't run around
everywhere) and banish elemental. If you ever want to do one and
Caoboi and I are free, look us up and we'll go with you.

There are a couple of things I forgot to mention in my last email.
There is an addon that makes archeology a lot easier. It's called
Archy. If you have Tomtom installed, it will point you toward the
nearest dig site and it has a onscreen interface that shows you how
far along you are in the collection of artifacts for each item and a
list of all the dig sites that you have available. It also records a
spot on the mini map where you have dug up fragments before. And
finally, it has a color indicator to show how far away you are from
where you dug (green, yellow, or red). Give it a try if you like and
let me know what you think.

Also, we forgot to tell you that Caoboi and I both got killed by
Deathwing and got the achievement! Quite by accident on Caoboi's
part. I was doing archeology and all of a sudden flew right into his
face. He immediately covered me in flame and I was dead. Caoboi just
happened to be in the same zone as me and was AFK. He came back to
find himself dead and bones all around him. So in the end, it was
easier to get killed by Deathwing than I thought.

Caoboi and I have been working on our goblins some more in Azshara and
taking our time. Even though the quests are all green to us due to
our heirloom gear, we keep going because they are so much fun! I love
the goblins and their toys. We are up to level 17 now and I look
forward to continue leveling them.

Our raid took down Halfus in Bastion of Twilight. I am loving the
raiding scene. It's like a comfortable blanket.

I am still loving Cataclysm and I can't believe that on the AIE
forums, some people are saying they are bored with the expansion
already! There is so much to do! Well, maybe they don't like making
alts. What's wrong with them? I hope it's not contagious.

Well we love you guys! Stay warm!

For the horde!

Iceflow and Caoboi

Email #2 from Curme

Hey JAVA,

I tanked my first heroic this past week. Throne of Tides. I picked up a nice ring off the second boss I think, but didn't win the roll for the chaos orb, which was sad. I want a nice pair of goggles. After not really running dungeons on my trip from 1 to 80 and then learning the dungeons on Heroic mode, I vowed that this would not happen in Cata. Well, sure enough, it did. I ran one Grim Batol at 85 to get back into tanking and then hit up a heroic the next day. I managed to put together decent enough gear with the rep, a piece of honor gear, and a piece with leftover justice points. I also found that there is some nice 333 gear that drops of quests in the twilight highlands, in fact, I've been running around with a 333 shield off of the early quest chain just to get there. For plate wearers, there is also a good chunk of DPS plate that can be reforged and is serviceable until you get better tank gear. Here's a fews things that I noticed however, though I'm sure some of its been said before.
1. Heroics are long, I'm sure they will speed up once I know them better and the wipes are fewer, but it takes a long time for now
2. One thing going wrong can easily wipe a group, for instance, my heroic throw missed, a caster was loose, and in the process of picking up the group I broke CC, wiping the group.
3. Use your cooldowns - all the time. With the exception of lay on hands, all tank cooldowns will be back after a pull or two, and some you may be able to use every pull
4. Threat generation was good, not crazy, but generally good. DPS usually should give the tank a second or two, but I did manage to pick up the group after the mage let off a frostbolt early.
5. DPS must not take too much damage, raw DPS numbers don't matter that much, but limiting incoming damage does. As a tank, if the rogue refuses to sidestep outta the green goo, the move the boss completely away, and they have to move.
6. Stamina is no longer king. While a big health pool is important, if you're never at full health, then those points of stamina don't matter as much, complete different from the overhealing of the end of Wrath. Use a good mix of mitigation stats, and make sure you get those socket bonuses. I felt that with the DPS gear I had reforged I had a sufficient health pool, but my avoidance was not high enough.
7. There is just more stuff going on. I had one of the "You know, there just might be too much going on for me to handle" moments. Made it through, and realized that though portions of run bordered on work, it was a whole lot more fun than just speed running UK.

Curme - 85 Prot warrior - "The Brotherhood"

Email #3 from Phobic

Hey Ctrl Alt Wow gang. Hope you all are doing fantastic this week. It's dark, cold, and snowy here so I have been couped up in the house with the wife. I finally talked her into giving wow a try again so she reluctantly agreed to give it a go. I know several couples that game together and have always had fantasys of my wife and I running around as an unstoppable killing team. I was so excited when she rolled her first toon, of course it was a blood elf hunter but I thought that would be a good solid class to start on for her. Well we both logged in and my dreams were proptly crushed. "why is this animal chasing me?", "how do you change clothes I dont like these?"....after about a half hour I knew all was lost. My first mistake was showing her how to talk in general chat, that promptly turned into some kind of instant messenger system with everyone in the starting zone as her toon sat afk. Then she could not for the life of her get her character to follow me. She looked like some kind of drunk stumbling around left and right being distracted by every little bush or tree she came across. The final straw was when she decided to go for a swim and could not manage to get herself out of the water before she drowned....by that point she was bored and probably doing it on purpose anyways.
I had to send her back to wii monopoly for the sake of our marriage, I love here dearly but I guess some things are just not meant to be. I'll just have to stay jealous of you couples and your shared wow addiction.
Phobic


Email #D from Kurly

Hey kids!! I think this one stinks, I will leave it up to you to decide to play it or not (like, who else would decide?).

All the best!!

Kurly



Shout Outs & Thank You

MOmomments

Hello all,
Happy 2011!
It has been a long year hasnt it :)

Hope everyone is ok and having fun.

I have returned to work, as many others have as well, which means less wow time of course. I know sad isn't it.
In game I first start with my priest moheal and to the usual random dungeon, or I should say try to. I will do my best to only tell you the good side or story of a pug life. I have none today though :(
Along with doing dungeons to get gear and justice points, I have been working on rep, I try to do as many dailies as possible however I have only been focusing on 2, Guardians of Hyjal I think they are called and Therezyne (again I may have misspelled it) with their lovely good looking princess. The item buffs from those factions are real good for priests. I wonder why are the buff or enchants you can buy are not bind on account. In Wrath the ones you would get from Hodir for example you could mail to your alts. Maybe they will do that at the end of the year or something.
Well, after my priest I like to do dailies on my one hunter for jc daily and warrior for cooking daily though it does not happen everyday.

On other monews, the mage of my druid/mage was real low in tailoring so I was going to trek on grinding for cloth....that did not happen! :) With cataclysm I have been making gold just from questing selling items that I just used the ah and than de'ed everything I made and put that on the ah. I ended up spending about 300g and making 500g from all the things I put on the ah. I have been using auctionator (I think that is the name) it is a real simple light addon.
I mentioned before that dual boxing has been more difficult and not just because of graphic reasons; the phasing really cramps my dual boxing especially in 80 content. I will continue to try it out but any of you having a hard time, if you are dual boxing in 80 content?

My raf goblins are real sad as I have ignored them as the 80 content is so much fun! I am hoping to get some leveling on them as they are at 26ish right now.

And that is pretty much it. Our guild is non existent on my main server and I have been meaning to level my winterhoof characters, oh I did create worgens so hope to see some of you on there. I had joined the caw channel a week ago but no one was on.

Thank you as always and have fun everyone.

--
Mo

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 196 - Baby, Can You Dig Your Horde...

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

Happy New Year!

Hello Darlings! I have been on vacation...spending lots of time out at Mom's "ranch"...there's no recording equipment out there though, so I don't have an audio for you... *gasp* I know, it's terrible! But...well...holidays are all about the fam here, so...just wanted to let you know I'm having fun but I really do miss ya and I'll be back on schedule next week. I hope everyone had happy Christmases, and boxing days and I'm wishing everyone a very happy New Year!

*great big hugs*

Juuno

What We've Been Doing:

Aprillian
Loving Archeology. Got over half a level on Shucks with just a few digs. Works with RAF!

Didn't train archeology on all ats, so went to train on Auruk & Deellaa and found that my RAF account couldn't train.

Got Shucks to 27 just doing Arch. Had to stop at 48. She was outlevelling her RAF. Decided I should be doing it on higher level toons.

Took Aprillian and Auruk Arching.


Aprillian & Vrishna

Vrishna


Ashayo
Tip: Don't forget to check Quartermasters! Even Therazane has items other than shoulder enchants (rings)

Jekle
- DPS specs have talents such that spirit counts as hit.
- Dailies offered with Dragonmaw in Twilight Highlands

Ashayo
- Levelling inscription. Different! Mysterious fortune cards. Forged documents (24hr cooldown, starts quest, gives gold)

Pud
- Levelling archeology, got fossilized hatchling pet
- Questing in Hyjal to get Guardian of Hyjal rep
- Lost City - last boss is hard! Thrown off edge
- Started questing in Twilight Highlands to open up dailies
- Tried Heroic Shadowfang Keep - first boss is HARD

Crazy Train
- Vortex Pinnacle
- Grim Batol - watch the bridge Temp...

Misc
- Haunted Memento glitch
- Goblin - broke. Lucky I got Jingling bell for wintersveil. - 100g :)


Jeppy

Emails
Email #A

Worgen you like to be a Worgen too

Hey CAW Crew! On Ep. 195 Vrishna was talking about Gilnaes and how it was completely phased after the player has completed the area. You know after finishing the area with Praevus, I really miss that zone. It really blows me away that Blizz completely shuts us off from that city. As a worgen that is our "home" city! They really should have made that another major city, I understand we have Stormwind and Ironforge on Eastern Kingdoms but man Gilnaes is really a "city". It's laid out as a city would be laid out, it just seems like it would be the perfect major city.

What do you guys feel about the lack of "city" status when it comes to Gilnaes?

Well guys, happy new years and I hope 2011 is a good one for each of you!

Take care,

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



Email #1 from Phobic

Well played Vrishna

Hello Aprillian, Ashayo, El Jeppy, and Vrishna, Phobic from the Rexxar realm here. Just wanted to commend you on your cast, its quite tolerable for a bunch of Alliance lovers. Who was that rather lively fellow from the end of the last episode? He made as much sense as Juno on a box of pixi sticks. Speaking of sugar, that little imp needs to get her priorities straight, I missed my fix of her this week!
I also wanted to commend Vrishna on his ore snipe, or at least the unbeknownst snipe of somebody elses. This is probably my warlock side coming out but its always fun to stealth and sit on a node only to grab it before the unsuspecting person knows what hit them. Thats still not as fun as running a max hunter over to a low area and taming some lvl 6 boar or so on and merrily hoping around till somebody unexpectantly attacks and falls into pvp....I know there must be a special place in wow hell for me some day, but to be fair I am a lock, what do you expect?
I started a new Goblin Mage named fizzlesticks and can I just say awesome work Blizzard. The new starting area is wonderful and quite entertaining. I think you touched on this in the cast but what is the deal with people and wanting to quest with you. I'm all for helping guildies and the occasional newb I take pitty on but I think I had about 15 people follow me around the starting area. I felt like the Pied Piper leading my little army of Gobs around the map. I tried to explain in a pointed yell that your map indeed shows you where to exactly go if you are lost...plus we are on an island just wonder in circles you are sure to find the rocket car sitting 10 feet away!
In conclusion keep up the good work all, and I hope jeppy feels better soon.
For the Horde and this damn entertaining game!
Phobic




Email #B

Hey there....MY FIRST AUDIO FILE!!!

XOXO

Kurly

Email #C from Garry

Hiya this is Garry sorry for the address change but the demo time on my out look has run out and I hasn't the money at the moment to upgrade to the full product come on pay day so i can. Still loveing your awesoem work and hopeing el jeppy is better this time round.

Email #D

Hi CAW Crew and Happy New Year,

I can't believe that I forgot to send in the update for Cao and I last week. With all the holiday excitement, I totally forgot. Well I hope this email will more than make up for my forgetfulness. I'm all filled up on my traditional New Year's meal of collard greens and black eyed peas so I'm ready to write.

Since I last wrote, Caoboi and I haven't been doing dailies as much as we used to since we are becoming exalted with all the reputations that we need. We only need a couple more and all rep should be gotten. We still need the gold so I try to be vigilante as much as possible.

We are still running heroics and having a blast. It's always fun running with people you know and can trust.

Caoboi has changed from his elemental spec to enhancement but he's still healing for raids. He managed to get most of the gear he needed and is loving it. Plus I like having him in melee with me. It's awesome to be there DPSing a boss and look over and see your husband.

Our raid group finally took down the first boss of Blackwing Descent, Magmaw. That was a really fun fight and I can't wait for Ashayo to experience it so he can talk about it on the show. It felt good to finally get it and I look forward to many more nights of raiding now that the holiday madness is over.

Our alts have been delegated to farming mats for our mains. We quested to get them to Deepholme and have been spending a lot of time of time flying around and around gathering mats. It becomes zen-like when you do it for a while.

Caoboi and I both have gotten the archeology mount and it's so cute. Too bad it doesn't fly but I use it every chance I get. Caoboi still works on archeology regularly so that he can get his vial of the sands. It will be awesome when he can turn into a sandstone drake and I will be able to ride him. (Clean-tag approved.)

Well, Caoboi and I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday and a Happy New Year. Do you all make any New Year's resolutions? We try not to because they are so easily broken.

For the horde and the New Year,

Iceflow and Caoboi


Email #

Email #


Shout Outs & Thank You


iTunes Review