Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 187 - Oops We Did It Again Again

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

Gnomeragan retaken?

Did the Free At Last Quest on Epril from last year's Hallow's End

Ran my level 16 Dranei bank alt hunter around to try to get to 20. Dinged 17 doing candy

Putting all my toons in my secret channel, when they log in, you can see it.

Monday Morning got the Reins of the Headless Horseman on Aprillian

Tues morning = Maintenance and I totally forgot about the EU patch download. Tried to do it last week but it took so long. Says 5 hours for the download of the downloader

Rode around with level 1 RAF doing candy baskets for the exp

Aprillian & Vrishna

RAF again. Call the guys in the white coats

I got TWO rockets ! Ask Aprillian WHY ?!?

Vrishna

41 on the twins. Doing the southern end of Stranglethorn Vale now. In between a few instances with Aprillian.

Virinya got the "Reins" but I guess everyone else did as well. Can fly in most of Dalaran. Also got about 5 squashlings but can only use 1. (sniff sniff)

Bus commute to Hades ..... AAAAHHHHHHH !!!!! Public Wi-Fi Shmi-Fi.

Ashayo

Hallows End
-----------

Jekle got Sinister Squashling
Glaciuss got Sinister Squashling x 2
Ashariss got SS
Pud just needed Sinister Squashling - got it in a treat bag, but logged out.

Shadowthrone got helm, broom and REINS in one bag (Kind of fitting since he still has the laughing helm and pumpkin sword from last year equipped.)

Pud got broom and REINS in one bag

Pud finally got the SS and Long Strange Trip!
Ashariss got Hallowed achievement

Crazy Train
-----------

PP & Sindy down
Working on LK - a horrid night of disconnects and lag and horrible buggy behavior

DwP
----

Also working on LK and also having issues with disconnects and lockups and ending up in different instances. But perseverance paid off, and we killed him, getting a bunch of us new titles
Got the Undying achievement
- started with Saph & KT
- 4horseman easy
- Left 3 folks stay out with Safety Dance
- No hunter for Gluth, but killed before decimate
- nearly lost 2 people on Thadiuss that missed the jump - Redband and Blankenship


Levelling
--------

Glaciuss hit level 80. Only learn Mastery. Not even a talent point. Dinged picking a flower. Very anticlimatic!
Persisting with questing in Icecrown - intending to complete it one last time before Cata

Jeppy

Now THIS is a problem http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/882513?page=3

Violated and not in a good way.

Ummed and Ahhed over BlizzCon stream kind of glad I saved the money (ish)

How fast can you login and out of 10 accounts?

No to extra slots.

Lots of self hating geeks and nerds out there.

Emails

Email #1 from Wingy

a big hi de ho to all of the caw caw crew.

I had a suggestion since all of you all are mad PVP'ers and love doing it live!!!
I think you should all do a random battleground and record it. I would love to hear your reactions at killing and get killed.
oh i can hear it now.
April takes in 4 dk's, Verishna takes in his duel pallies, jeppy brings in his chopper possee, and Ashayo brings in his druid.
April and Verishna run off together one way towards the hut of love. Jeppy rides off in search of herbs and mining nodes and Ashayo stealths off and finds a cnr to hide in so he doesnt get killed. hehe.

April, can i have a gumball.. thanks !!!!

I would love to tell you a story that happened whilst i was running SM with Berat some while back.
We que up for a random and got the Cathedral. The group is going well when out of the blue this player in group says 'Whats this ghost thing here, it seams to be following the mage?' As berat and me are vent we decide to have some fun. and we reply ' What ghost thing?We cant see any Ghost thing?' There is alot of laughing between us when i throw the haunted memento to berat. And we hear the player say 'and now it is following the preist'. Berat then throws it back to me. Laughter ensues between us as we chat to each other in party chat about this haunted ghost.. the ghost in the darkness... THE END.

and now for what ive been up to on winterhoof.
I am now level 65 on my mage. It seam like only yesterday Berat and i were questing in Exodar. I duel specd her as it was only 100g and went down the fire tree.. Im still prefer my tanking frost spec though. Im loving the portals and teleports i can create. picked up the shat teleport and waiting to hit 66 for the portal.

oh another story
Slave pens.
We qued for slave pens and it popped. Berat was stuck on the loading screen.. For some stupid reason the tank decides to pull and he wipes the group. I saw what was happening and zoned out. Berat finally got in, and I said to the tank perhaps it would be nice to wait for the healer before you pull.. all he can say to that is Rez !! we ignore him  as Berat is waiting for a plz. this goes on for atleast 5 minutes.. the rest of the group can see what we are doing so they are giving him heaps too. mean while i crack out the leather balls and we are all playing our own game within a game waiting for this tank to say please. the game was to make sure you are not the person holding all 5 balls.. we finally resed him when he said please and we went on to
Question: do you create games to play whilst playing?

well story time is over and i must go to bed..  night night

Wingy
 


Email #2 from Moranith

Hi ctrlaltwow gang,
  Moranith here again.
  To answer your question you had about my emil in episode 184. I picked up the T10 paladin healing set.


Email #3 from Aleara

Audio from Aleara

Email #4 Blitzkriegg

Hello ctrl-alt-wow (plus Juno this week!)

I'm a big fan of the show - please please don't scare me anymore by talking about what you could do if you weren't 'keeping it clean'.  I think the show is more impressive by how much you make me laugh without an explicit tag.  Just sayin'.......

So, I am a huge altoholic, and after listening to you all talk about dual-boxing, I want to give it a try.  First thing I did was go to your show website, figuring you had some FAQs or links or guides or....something.  But I couldn't find anything.  So I checked out wow-wiki, and an internet search, all of which made my head hurt. 

Do you have a list of addons/software/websites/tips&tricks that you could put on your show website to help a dual-boxing wanna-be?

thanks!

For the Alliance!
Majrpayne, Blackwater Raiders

For the Horde!
Blitzkriegg, AIE Guild, Earthen Ring

and all those alts thanks you as well.... 


 

Email #5 Warpoet from Warpoet


Greetings Ctrl Alt WoW Crew,

First, let me thank you for continuing your podcast during the recent lack of content. Everyone's love of the game never seemed to waiver. 

Second, Aprillian, no need to drain souls, out of combat you can do Soul Harvest and get all your shards back.

Third, on my iTunes review. Experience and Inexperience may have been the wrong words to use. Was not my intent to insult anyone. Vrishna brings a fresh set of eyes to the game and the podcast.

Finally, Juno's Bumpers Great!!! Love The Show, Keep Up The Great Work

/roar Warpoet  For The Alliance!!!


Email #A Kurly

Hello all!
Part 1

So.....what shall we talk about....hmmm??  The patch from hell?  Maybe, perhaps, a little?  After finally learning how to play my priest...and play her very well I might add.....along comes 4.0.1.  I wont mention the other things...you know....disconnecting every time you click on a soul well, or an item or anything else....never mind getting stuck in the loading screen to and from battle grounds and instances....never mind "line of sight" not working correctly in Warsong Gulch to the point of being killed by an arcane blast in the Alliance grave yard from someone hugging the cliff....never mind that Mages have become the new original DK's because they can kill you in .05 seconds....and rogues are back to being the most hated character in the game if you are in a bg under level 39.  So all of that not being mentioned I logged on the few days following the patch, only to find myself logging out after 20 minutes and for the first time in two years seriously considering canceling my account.  I knew that changes were coming and I knew that they were going to be big changes, but I didn't not expect the utter demolishing of the way I know how to play.  The amount of bugs that continue to happen (sound being totally out of sync, having to wait through 4 or 5 res cycles in a bg before you actually res, and being penned in our grave yards in battle grounds) finally got to me. 

 

Part 2

Shortly after I started wow I was asked to sign a guild charter after I had just created my Paladin.  I had no idea what a guild charter was, but I was offered two gold and said yes, than immediately whipped out my manual (yes, I used to reference the manual) to see what I had just done.  The Guild was Mana is a Myth started by a young couple in Seattle.  It was primarily a leveling guild, but a large number of the members had hit level 70 and they were doing raids that I was not able to participate in as I was much to low.  That guild disbanded but I stayed in touch with that young couple over the years until we created Rabid Kittens, which now houses all of our wow buds.  I went to Seattle last week, met them and their four year old daughter and had one of the most wonderful vacations I have had in a long time.  We met another one of our guildees and we all had a great night out.   We also played some WOW and were it not for them, I could very well still be contemplating canceling my account.  Big Shout to Whillen, Bella and their little chip monster, and Mount Rainer is one of the most gorgeous places I have ever seen.

Conclusion

I am now starting to get back into a groove and my WOW is back to being fun! It has been a trial by fire, but after the initial scorching things started to fall back into place AND me and some people in my guild have decided to go to Blizzcon next year.......another WOW vacation??? ....Werks fer me!

 

Peace out all of you hot messes!!

 

Kurly

Email #B from Acaldraa

Hello Ctrl Alt Wowers,

Acaldra here writing in for the first time in a very long time. My last month or two has been amazing busy and I just haven't been able to find the time to write in. Of course, Ctrl Alt Wow still stays as one of my number ones when listening to my iPod. 

To quickly summarize what I have been up to as of late, I spent the week and a half before the patch frantically buying out any herbs I could get my hands on and making them into inks and then promptly into glyphs. Once the patch hit, I was selling glyphs for insanely high prices! 150g a glyph? Sure why not! My only regret is that I had more time to prepare and was able to post sooner after the patch dropped. I ended up coming out a little over 14k richer for only a few hours of work on my end, not bad! On a completely different note, I have been raid leading "Cloudy with a Chance of Purples" in ICC 25. We have been having lots of fun as a of late, clearing 10/12 in two nights. Now we are extending to try and finish off Sindragosa and Lich King before the expansion drops. 

As a wrap this up, I have a question for you guys, do you have plans on raiding come Cata? If so, what are they? I know I will be doing 10 man in the form of harder core progression. 

All the bests,

Acaldraa and Acaldro

Paladin/Dk of AIE

Email # C from Iceflow and Caoboi

Hello CAW Crew and Happy Hallow's End!  Sorry for the Jeppy size email.  

I hope everyone is doing well and I hope you all are having a ton of fun playing WoW.  Hallow's End crept up on Caoboi and I this year.  Well actually all of the events seem to creep up on us since our mains already have the purple drake and we aren't worried too much on getting them on our alts at this point.  But I've jumped into Hallow's End with a slight bit of gusto this year. 

There is an achievement I still need.  The one where I get all the masks.  I figured this will take me another couple of years since I'm not camping out at my computer and trick or treating every single hour.  I do it when I can and I still need seven masks.  Caoboi needs the same.

We have been running the Headless Horseman every day on all of our 80s and....Cabooi got the reins the other day!  He's super excited and this has been his primary mount ever since he got it.  I was feeling slightly guilty for having the reins for years but now all of the guilt is gone!  

Since Iceflow already has the Headless Horseman Reins and she's capped out on justice points, I'm doing it for the gold and the possible masks that I can get out of the pumpkin bag.  And by the way, that is new this year.  Last year, you couldn't get the masks from the Headless Horseman so that should help out with that quest.  This is my favorite holiday so I'm actually doing it on my alts as well.  I'm taking it easy though so I'm not stressing about getting all of them.

I too miss the PvP fights outside the Scarlet Monastery Dungeon.  I remember I got my Make Love Not Warcraft Achievement on a dead alliance last year.  Ahhhh memories.

There is are temporary bug fixes for the cog mouseover bug. 

There is a macro to turn your tooltips off and a macro to turn them back on.

Turn Off Tooltips
/script GameTooltip.Temphide = function() GameTooltip:Hide() end; GameTooltip:SetScript("OnShow", GameTooltip.Temphide);


Turn On Tooltips
/script GameTooltip:SetScript("OnShow", GameTooltip.Show);


But there are mods for this as well but the macros are a quick lightweight way for me to deal with it.

Iceflow finally obtained her Ravasuar mount and Iceflare is a couple days away.  I guess I'll do it on two more toons.  I heard a reliable rumor that it will not be able to be acquired after the land changes in Catclysm.

I worked it out and Iceflow needs 1,325 more Crusader's Seals before being done with the Argent Tournament Dailies.  Getting 13 seals a day, that will take me 102 days.  Obviously this will get done way after cataclysm but it will get done.

Caoboi has started another shaman, this time enhancement, named Shibboleet.  His Shaman started at level 25 and got to level 37 all in one day.  He urges everyone to start alts if you want an easily leveling process before Cata comes.  Afterwards, all the mobs will be adjusted for the increased power.

I have been leveling my shaman who is now 69 and is questing in Northrend.  I'm having a ball in Borean Tundra and level 80 is getting close.  I will be sad that the journey will be over for her.

Well you all take care and we hope you all have as much fun in WoW that we have.

Iceflow and Caoboi


Email #6 from helmar

Howdy CAW!

Just listened to your latest episode and wanted to follow it up. Changing the EQ does work, thanks for the suggestion. I want to make it clear though, I love the Juno segments. Also, I'm not British, I type with my iPhone cause I listen to the show at work and don't want to forget to email you guys. Which is why I said me ears instead of my... Not sure how it happened though.

Anyway! I also want to tell you why I joined the Scryers realm instead of the realm y'all suggested. I stopped play WoW for a while but wanted to get back in. I'm much more of a social player and a friend told me to join her server and the Excessus guild. I soon understood why she likes the guild. They're very friendly and active. They even have things for lower level toons to do.

Oh! I'm also trying to make The mad dash to 80 before Cata. I've actually never gotten past 60, so to just hit 70 would be fine with me. Yesterday I leveled from 51 to 54 just doing Call to Arms for two hours. I'm a bit worried that I'm missing stuff like tanking gear by not going into dungeons, but I hate not going without guildies. What do you think?

Helmar from Excessus on Scryers



Email #D from Nevik

Greetings JAVA!

You know, I think I'm really starting to like this "the world is coming to an end" thing. Quartermasters everywhere are having fire sales of their best gear regardless of stature.

"Here want some tier 10? Whatcha got? Justice points? Sure, I take that. Here you go, it's yours. Now scram!"

Maybe I'm missing something in regards to these justice points, but I'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth. Perhaps they're just stockpiling all these points for trade on some tummy rubs or something, who knows?

Anyhoo ...

As you can imagine with the great fire sale of 4.0.1 I've been able to find amazing deals on gear to kit out my rogue. It's like a dream come true and the dps he's able to pump out now in heroics is crazy. Maybe not caster dps pre-nerf crazy, but crazy nonetheless.

There is a downside to all of this though, my poor baby rogues and mage over on Winterhoof have sorely been neglected. But at least that neglect will come to an end soon ... at least if my daughter doesn't nag me to play her blood elf hunter ^^;

Yes, that's right. My daughter is now playing WoW. I control the mouse and movement and read out all the quest text for her, but she controls the killing and has gotten quite good at it.

We've only hit one snag, she wants a black n white tiger and doesn't want to be a night elf. So it'll be awhile until we can tame King Bangalash in Stranglethorn.

At least she's FOR THE HORDE!

Nevik

Sent from my iPod

Shout Outs & Thank You

From WhoFirst


Ty so much for the pet! I can't tell you ty enough for the time and energy you put into your show.

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 186 - Congratulations, Your Mind Has Been Expanded

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

Can't believe my level 26 Warlock who could summon yesterday, can't summon today.

Mage has portal, teleport button. Mana lollipop

Bought another enchanted broom and sold it for 950g on Alliance ah - Made titansteel bars with Epril. Sold all stockpiled glyphs Mi had in guild bank. Found I had another guild I had forgotten about - Lone Sentinal - has one DK in it

Sent Mollyshot the mats for Mechano Hog

The Flight Path map is bigger - Tracker changers0.

I can Summon a Felguard but not a portal at 3

Spoops orphan candy quest is available

Aprillian & Vrishna

Ran Scarlet Monastery with the twins.

Hallow's End with Virinya

Vrishna 

Virinya soloing in the Storm Peaks. Made over 500 gold this week. WOW ! I think it's GREAT that I can still experience content AND get paid for it ! The daily, Overstock, at K-3 killing the fleeing mobs. I have to learn to read the actual quest. Was running around killing, TRYING to kill, these running mobs. Actually FINISHED the quest. Found out it was a daily and realized that part of the quest was laying down mines ! LOL SO much easier ! Virinya completed many of the achievements for Hallow's End including killing the Headless Horseman and Sinister Calling. Just 4 more to get the title.

Level 38 at the end of this week.  The twins did Tricks and Treats of Eastern Kingdoms all on their own and everything in Kalimdor except Winterspring in Everlook. It is great to get so many new flight paths !Tried to get there through Azshara. Actually got the better part of the way before getting killed by high level mobs. Then tried SWIMMING from Darkshore past Moonglade to get there. That was an hour of my life I can never get back. So, finally asked Aprillian and she tells me to go through Ashenvale .... (sigh). If only I had looked at the damn map FIRST ! The path into Felwood looks REALLY obvious now, in retrospect !  Like to give a shout out to Dosi & Norynna. (Same person, different alts.) My first CtrlAltWow guild invitee.

Love the water in 4.0 but sadly had to turn both my video setting to their lowest setting to avoid IMPOSSIBLE lag in Dalaran. I guess we need new computers !

Ashayo

4.0.1

- Quest items now have yellow border
- Blizz announced long-strange-trip drakes won't be 310% any more. But not so! yay!
- Transmute timer now truly daily - resets midnight server


DK Tanking
- Blood tanking seems ok

Druids
- spirit gives hit - need 446 for hit cap - I have 1100
- according to elitist jerks, mastery not beneficial, and haste much better now than crit
- gems: brilliant (red) , reckless (yellow) , purified (blue) - if only for meta activation, plus a nightmare tear
- reforged some crit/hit off into haste

Lunar Shower - increases Moonfire damage ; more if you move, up to 3 stacks
Prime Glyphs - insect swarm, moonfire, wrath
Major Glyphs - starfall, focus, innervate

Ashariss had 7500 Justice points, so bought
- T10 DPS Chest
- T10 Healing Shoulders, Robe, Helmet, Legplates
- Purified Lunar Dust trinket
- Idol of Lunar Eclipse

Pud bought Heirloom gear.
- Heirloom mail shoulders, chest, 1h mace, int trinket

Inscription
- Tried Northrend Inscription Research - and learnt something new!

Mage
- Water elemental now dismisses when you mount up - no more trail aggro

Warlock - Destruction
- Start with Soulfire - 15% haste when mob above 80%
- After Conflag , cast Incinerate and Chaos Bolt (reduce by 30% for 15 sec)
- Shadowburn at end - will get soulshards back if mob dies in 5 sec
- use Soulfire - talent that adds 7 sec dot (though Imp fireball does it too - doesn't stack)
- keep Immolate up - increases damage of Incinerate and Chaos Bolt
- Aura for Empowered Imp - next Soulfire to be instant
- Warlocks now useful in Lich King fight to stun Val'kyr? Shadowfury stuns enemy in 8yds for 3sec and Shadowflame glyph slows by 70%
- Getting 7k on a target dummy only self buffed.


Crazy Train
- Restart ICC
Buggy night. Deathwhisper event started without getting near her.
Cannons in gunship bugging out - no interface. Stuck in combat after end of fight
Rotface died in record time - 2min 56, fell over -- and disappeared
Wiped on Blood Queen at 23% - no bites up!
Oneshot Dreamwalker

PoH
- More heroics for Glory of the Hero. Tranith got it, Wemb just needs dehydration
- Gruul's & Magtheridon

Hallows End
- Did Southshore quests in 1st hour - strong alliance resistance - nice as tank
- Got helm in first bag
- Still had pumpkins from last year to get Check Your Head achievement
- Chol had wisp wand ; last one I needed
- Just need sinister squashling - praying RNG is nice.

DwP
- Tore through ICC , now facing the LK again

Jeppy

100 gold for dual spec = sweet

Where's my wolf!

2 seater rocket > Chopper?

Is it just me or do holidays bring out  a lower level of DBag?

Shakes....shake....shake

Emails

Email #1 from Londrik

Hello Aprillian, Ashayo, Vrishna and Jeppy

So I wrote a number of weeks ago telling you all I had been farming
for enough gold for my Tundra Mammoth. Well after toiling away I
finally made it and have been loving having a repair bot and vendor at
my fingertips. It is very useful and I do enjoy giving rides to
friends whenever I can. Once I finished up with that I ended up
focusing on my Warlock which in less than two months has made it to
level 58 and is questing in outland. This is a record for me
considering it took me over a year to get my DK to 80. Granted I have
heirlooms and the random dungeon finder to thank for that.

So the 4.0 patch launched today and besides being distressed by the
fact that all of my addons are broken I am impressed with some of the
new additions to the game. For one I think I like some of the UI
changes in the glyph and talent trees. I also find it a lot easier to
pick the talents that make the most sense for my toon. My favorite
thing so far though is the fact that my ghoul is like the hulk and
when he gets mad he grows into a huge monster and just kicks butt.
Also I have an ENTIRE bag free now because my warlock doesn't keep
soul shards in his bags anymore. Oh happy day!

What are some of your favorite additions so far to the game?

Londrik of the "Want to Date My Avatar" Guild
Dragonblight US Server

Email #2 Aleara

Here's a submission for you, April! I hope it's not too long. It's about a minute.

Hugs!

--
Aleara Jackley
alearajl@gmail.com
Aleara's Hobbit Hole blog/podcast: http://alearajl.blogstpot.com



Email #3 from Helmar

Hey CAW!

/waitsforthecaws

Ok, so I think I figured out why the Juno part of the show hurts me ears. It's a mixture of three things:

1) Podcast or Skype quality might be bad for playing a recording. I'm not too sure about this one, but I never have a problem with listening to you guys talk.

2) I have awesome headphones. This could be a huge factor as the sound quality for my headphones is amazing. Also, I turn them up loud so I don't have to listen to the bad whisper singing of my co-worker.

3) I have really good hearing for audio. Don't believe me? Jeppy (at least I believe it's him) has facial hair and is constantly rubbing it. Aprillian, please let that go.

Anyway, I don't have a problem with it. I just lower the volume a bit. Thank you Juno for your concern!

Helmar of Excessus on The Scryers

Email # A From Iceflow and Caoboi
Hi CAW Crew,

Caoboi and I hope that you all are doing well.  It feels like forever since we've written but that's because so much has been happening.  Caoboi and I are avoiding the panic that has been spreading through our guild like wildfire.  There are way too many speculations with regards to guilds over 1000 so we've chosen just to wait and see.

The big news is the patch.  Since the patch, I haven't had a lot of time to play my alts because I'm feeling like I have to learn how to play my mains all over again. It has been a flurry of activity trying to get my mains back up to speed.  Caoboi farmed for inscription mats before the patch but instead of selling them on the AH for a tidy profit, he opted to help guildies by making them glyphs.  Isn't he awesome like that? 

Iceflow is all talented and glyphed out and I'm still trying to get used to her new abilities and the new rotation.  Luckily we raid tonight so I'll get to try it in order. 

And the patch has changed so much!  Good and bad!  The couple of things I like:  1) The water is sooooo pretty now!  Smooth like glass and very believable.  2) I also like how when I ride my headless horseman's mount onto Krausus Landing, I don't have to dismount and mount back up to fly.  I can just take off!

The things I don't like about the patch (that I hope will get fixed):  1) There's a bug when you die in Icecrown, you go at walking speed as a ghost.  Very annoying.  2)  Some of the name plates of the mobs are invisible.  I get surprised very easily that way!

I am soft capped on Justice points (what the badges turned into) so I can't get anymore until Cataclysm.  That takes a bit of the pressure off of me trying to run heroics anyway.

So this week and probably next will be spent on getting our many many alts ready to go.  I imagine it will take awhile.

We hope you all are doing well.

For the horde and the alliance

Iceflow and Caoboi


Email #4 from Curme

Patchmegadon

Hey CAW crew,

While I knew that the patch was coming and that it would completely change things, I don't think I was ready. With 5 toons at 80, and dual specs on each, I was immobilized by all that had to be figured out. So instead of actually working on the toons, I simply sold glyphs and epic gems for a ridiculous amount. I also realized that I need to create glyphs for all my toons, my wifes toons, and figure out how to spec her mage (dual spec as well) and if I need to move around any of her gems. Fortunately my raid worthy toon is warrior tank, so I don't really have to do much gem switching. However, I've heard that threat is kinda low, so I'll have to relearn that. End result? I didn't run a single heroic dungeon, spec any of my 80's, or try and figure out how to play them. Their just parked in their home cities near their class trainer. Rather than trying to deal with that level of thinking, I brought out my lvl 24 rogue, specced back into subtlety and proceeded to one-shot ambush mobs in the Barrens and Thousand needles while earthquakes rolled and rolled. I dinged 4 levels in a couple hours of play time and decided that its way more fun to face roll than deal with min-maxxing. By the way, recuperate is officially OP,  rogue DPS with a HoT. Just a suggestion to anyone overwhelmed by the patch like myself. Grab a lowby or roll a new toon, and quest for the uncomplicated joy of it. Sure I'll get around to speccing my toon sometime, maybe even a couple of them, but I have absolutely no motivation to learn how to play a blood tank, frost DPS, disc priest, prot pally or even relearn my warrior tank for the moment. Too much work.

Curme

PS. In your show a few weeks back you talked about where you put abilities on the hot keys. I realized that I had every single toon and every single spec set up differently. Since I mostly tank and heal I don't have a rotation per se, but I think I'll take that into consideration when spec them out this time. The only nice thing about have them set up differently is that for every toon, I know immediately that I'm doing something different and that helps get the brain engaged.

Email #5 from Mandrageron

There I was... then Lich King released the Spouse Agro!

Greetings,

There I was... on the verge of getting the two main's to 80 before our favorite hostess.  As I prepared to sharpen my skills and begin help build up the Argent Tournament the Lich King released a hidden 5th column upon my hero's the dreaded spouse argo.  "Arthas!"

Now close to 16 months later I've made my return to North-rend I find that several things have changed...

- my favorite show about Alt's has dabbled with Space (made it to Captain myself before I retired)

- has four talking heads with two new voices

- Quad boxing with 5 tunes?  Does that mean that the show is really done with one person doing all voices while the 5th character online?  If so amazing pipes to get those accents down.

- Confused on when my Blood Elves let their inner Dwarf's come out.  I remember paying to make the change on one tune but I swore my Level 73 Hunter was still a Blood Elf and not a gun toting short person from Iron Forge.

- Not to mention trying to remember what all of those buttons due, not to mention all of the talent changes actually do or if my old guild even exists anymore!

love the show,

Mandrageron, DK Sentinal Server

Email #6 from Agruvona

hunter pets in Cataclysm

CAW CAW:  hey, how's it going?

Here's something I never thought I'd say:  worms are so cool!

Frostheim from Warcraft Hunter's Union has been doing a lot of research on Cataclysm and he came out with a preliminary list for how hunters might fill out their stables.  He suggested getting a worm (not to be confused with serpents) for solo PvE because they're tenacity pets and it looks like worms are the only pets that will have a real AoE attack, which matters a lot, since bears lost their Swipe with the latest patch.

I got a L72 Jormungar worm from the Crystal Vice chasm in north-central Dragonblight and I took it to Sholazar Basin to grind some leather from the beasties.  And OMG it was a scream!  (I can just hear Juno shrieking about it!)  The worm's AoE attack is called Burrow Tunnel (or "burrow" something).  The animation makes it look like it's boring a hole straight into the ground, and once it started this attack I could hit Multishot till I used all my energy (usually about 3 Multishots in a row).  Most times that left me with nothing else to do but get out my skinning knife.  On my L80 hunter with some pretty trashy gear (yeah trashy but pretty, at least for a troll) and my worm at L78 I could handle 3 or 4 L75-L76 mobs at a time no problem:  crocks, gorillas, serpents, whatever.  The worm rarely had trouble holding aggro.

So then I took the worm over to Ice Crown to try it on some of those "converted heroes" you have to kill for the Tournament quest givers.  The "converted heroes" come in crowds of 7 and they're high 70s or 80, but if I did things right and had luck I could handle them too.

So anybody wondering what to do with all those new stable slots definitely you should try a worm.  Check them out at Petopia.  They're pretty cool looking and the tamed ones are huge compared to most pets, even compared to most Taurens.  And they don't leave nasty trails of slime behind, like some slugs we all know LoL.

Happy hunting:

Agruvona of Terokkar

Email #7  from Boozah

Hi ctrlaltwow! I thought I’d drop this email by to tell you how I play World of Warcraft for the competition.

Basically it all started back in the year 2005, it was the summer, and even thought I was 13 and should have been full of life running around playing football (or soccer as some of you may know it as) and other outside activities with my friends, I found myself cooped up in my downstairs cupboard screaming “THEY’RE ALL CAMPING B!!”. Me and my friends, agile as we we’re, played computer games instead of playing in the sun. Summer of 2005, the summer of Counter Strike: Source.

So yeah, all through school I played console games, it was only when I moved into secondary school that I got converted into the geek I am today. Counter Strike: Source was the culprit, me and my friends all decided to play, and struggled to do so on our terrible computers that our dad’s used for work. Integrated graphics? It may as well not even be called that, running a game on very low is just terrible. We managed to find a free TeamSpeak and so we would wake up, get a bite to eat and then head to our PC’s for a full day’s worth of gaming, also by being 13 alcohol didn’t really interest us and so going out partying on the nights we’re never considered as an option.

Then, one day a friend came round to my house with a small, thin looking game box. It was entitled “World of Warcraft 14 Day Free Trial!” and I was like “What the hell? World of Warcraft, man that game sucks, FPS is the way forward”. He replied with “No man, seriously you have to play this game, I mean it’s a bit laggy in main cities and our computers are just good enough to run it, but it’s so worth it, my Brother has just started playing and it rules man!”. I took up his advice and within three days not just me and my friend had started playing, but all the guys who played CS:S we’re now on TeamSpeak shouting something along the lines of “I’m sick of this Warlock, I’m making a Warrior”.

Fast forward to 2010 and you get me and all the same guy’s all playing on the same server, raiding as a guild. Awesome right? Although I’ve been left school for 2 years now and I’m in a full time job, and people have just started University (I’m from England in case you hadn’t of guessed by now) we all still manage to get around the obstacles to play this fantastic game together. That’s how I play World of Warcraft.

You see, many people play with guilds, but are these guys you go to the pub with on a Friday night? Are these people you sit down with on a weekly basis with to play poker? Didn’t think so, playing with friends is the only way I play WoW. Now obviously in our guild there are plenty of other people we play with, it’s needed for the synergy of raiding, but as long as the original gang are raiding with the addition of other players, that’s fine with me.

I don’t really play solo play, I mean I do do the odd daily quest here and there, but it’s mainly done with one of my IRL friends. We all feel this way and this is the way we feel most comfortable playing. We sometimes have LAN’s were I’ll get all the lads round to play in my house on a weekend, we’ll have some cans of lager, get in a curry or a Chinese takeaway and then farm heroics, and there’s no need for TeamSpeak when your tank is like 2 feet away!

Even if we’re levelling alts, we’ll do the 300% extra xp so we can quest and instance together. That’s how I play World of Warcraft; I play with friends, thanks for taking the time to read this entry into the competition!

Newcastle, England, UK

a.k.a Boozah on Stormscale EU!

Shout Outs & Thank You

MoMoMoMoMOoooomoments:

Momomoments - sick mo is not a good mo/wow wow wow they have done it again!!!

(Intro to the latest mobook for Ctrl Alt Wow!)

Hello all,

I have missed you and missed emailing in so you will get an extra long email, are you prepared!? Contrary to what that Illidan says I think you are prepared :)

Prior to the patch I was able to get more playing time than usual and I was able to get some dailies and random heroics in.  The guild I am in with my mains is starting to pick up a little bit.  There are more people on than the last few months which is nice.

Most of the last 2 weeks I had a litch king type plague and this past week I was off as I have plenty of pto left to burn for this year.  Instead of going somewhere I just had a staycation, meaning I just stayed home :)

I dont know about you but I am ok with that.

So with all that time and being sick I was able to get even more wow time and than Blizzard drops a bomb on me baby!

(Chapter 1 - Patch me baby!)

This latest patch has to be the best patch I can think of; yes it has lots of bugs but come people, what doesnt have bugs.  Even beds have bugs!

I have read on the internet universe about so many people quitting wow, how bored they are, how they hate this patch, how they dont care about cataclysm!?!?!

I am sorry they feel that way as I do not.

One reason I think this latest patch was so exciting to me was that I was staying away from any spoilers; not on purpose, just worked out that way.  Many of the things on the patch I had not heard or read about.  On the other side, similar to Vrishna's reaction, it is annoying to have everything reset pretty much but as you all have stated this only happens what once a year or two?  I think its worth it.

On to the patch: the talents, wow!!!

For me its like a new old game :)

Right now I would say my main has been Moheal for a long while now, holy healing troll priest and he was drooling from his tusks!

There are a few things missing from before for a holy priest but wow wow wow all I can say.  I see the holy priest as the new druild resto healer.  When I am healing, I always have at least 2 DOT heals going, mainly because of my mastery.  Each of my heals also heals for a specific % amount for 6 seconds! This is a big deal for me and I love it so far.  I know we will all get nerfed at least twice I think before the patch but thats ok.  I healed VOA right away after I was able to fix my ui enough to heal.  Yes I healed with the wow UI and with no healbot!!! I know blasphemy! :)

So in VOA as you can imagine everyone was a noob and not playing well but that did not show as the dps was dpsing like they never have and i was healing with my eyes closed and my hands tied behind my chair (not really).

I need to back track a bit, on patch-tuesday I actually spent most of the night as I was having so much fun spending talent points on my Feathermoon characters.  Now that is only 15 characters of many many many more! I have lots of more fun times ahead and I love it!

It was so exciting and fun to read and learn all the new talents.  I just need to learn how to Master each character :) a Momaster if you will.

I would say the hardest class for me right now to momaster are my hunters.  I just need to get used to the focus and rotation but OMG the changes!  Pets at level 1! No ammo in my bags!! Christmas in October!

I was also able to work on my Druid/Mage pair, they are at 73 now, real close to 74.  I have moved onto Grizzly hills.  I love that zone, it looks cool, AWESOME music and just so lively and green.  One of my favorite zones in WoW.

(Chapter 2: Mount Hyjal)

I was on my priest and I saw a message in trade chat of course (dont ask me why people ask for raid stuff, lfg, etc in the trade channel) for heals for Mt Hyjal.  I dont know if any of you have done that but I have not.  Mt Hyjal I think was an end game raid for BC after Black Temple, is that correct?  Well either way I have never been there so I said I will help and I was able to drag my mage too, level 73 mage! It was fun, minus the cluster-(fill in the black) of putting 20+ people in a raid and making sure they follow the raid leader.  we were able to complete it and get the achievement.

I suggest trying it when you can or when you can get 20+ people together.

(Chapter 3: advantage...?)

Someone was gloating in trade chat that his vanishing powder was selling in the AH for 5g a stack.  Now I know people should know better but do you all think people should take advantage or exploit others like this?

I say no but you know it will still happen :(

(Chapter 4: JP for you JP for me)

Do you know if there is a cap on Justice points?

(Chapter 5: MoHallow's End!)

YES! Hallow's End! THE BESTEST holiday event and Halloween = best holiday of all!

As you can guess I like Hallow's end.  Like many of you I am doing my best to log in each day, every hour when I can :) to trick or treat myself and to run Headless Horseman.

On Monday I started on my priest and worked my way down through my 80's but wow was I having issues with lag and  dc'ing.  I know I was not alone but any of your and your servers part of this nightmare! :) get it nightmare!

As soon as I would zone into the HH instance I would get dc'ed.   However let me tell you on one of my hunters; I zoned in and dc'ed as I mentioned.  As I am trying to get back into the game which is taking a real long! time! I finally zone in to find the fight is over :( I apologize to the group and surprisingly they were not mean.

I found the pumpkin in my bag and clicked on it and was expecting noting...first I get the HH's mount!! YES!! and a flying broom! AWESOME!!!! I get grat's from the group (again surprising) and we all leave the instance.

I really would like to take as many of my non 80's around to check in the instances but not sure how many I am able to complete the achievement on.  I just want the loot and treats and the xp is nice.  At level 60 I am getting about 5700 xp; I do have heirloom gear on so I am sure that helps.

Chapter 6: The END (play the Doors song "The End" here) :)

Well if any of you are still alive in game and awake in real life thank you for your patience.

On non-wow-because there is more to life than wow rant, 

I need to provide a public service announcement because I like to help others after my and Gretchen's misery.

If you did not know laptops do not like water; in fact I do not know any techno-gadget that likes water unless they are waterproof.  My other half Gretchen has had the macbook I bought for her for, hmmm since the last macbook came out, I forget how long that is.  Anyway, she spilled water on our kitchen counter and the lively water rolled its way into the cd slip of her macbook and drowned her laptop (named gbook) :(

yes sad

and I have replaced her laptop already because she has the moprotection plan as she calls it (why do relationships cost so much money!?) and she promises not to drown her gbook.

So please remember, keep water or any liquid away from your devices.

thank you and take care

For the "waterproof" and WOW!

--
Mo


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