Monday, May 25, 2009

Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 116 - Raiders of the Lost Alt

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

Tempeste of Bind On Equip Podcast, which can be found at Bindonequip.com and on iTunes, joins us for some excellent hilarity and Raiding tips.

What We've Been Doing:



Aprillian


Decided to start a RAF since I was doing the Starting area on the oceanic server. You get the triple xp during the 10 day trial. Hmmm. I deleted one of my DK's to start an Ally one. I wanted to do the AH and the last PVP server I would get random gankage

Auruk got the tower key from fishing reward bag, 16g, not bad.

Took the quad in ER to BT finally found the way to Caldaraak

Trying Frost on DK.


Ashayo

3.1.2
- Objectives drop down is nice - able to minimise and get out of the way
- Equipment manager - basic, but functional.
- price drop in AT mount (and others?)

Oracles - 4 x white tickbird hatchling

Argent Tournament on A&A / J&H
- Hiide becomes champion of Orgrimmar and gets his gruntling. Figured out all the quartermasters sell the same gear.
- Jekle becomes champion of Thunder Bluff
- Hiide becomes champion of Sen'jin - and DINGs 79
- Got a champion's Seal in Champion's Purse with gold
- Ashayo bought the Argent Hippogryph (reduced to 150 seals in the latest patch)
- Sell your pets (40 seals) while the prices are still high on the AH

Naxx 10 man
- Ashayo finally got 'Safety Dance' achievement

Naxx 25 man
- Asheal healing - nice cloak upgrade

Warming up to start dual-boxing Death Knight and Holy Paladin
- Started with a big bag shuffle. Been hording stuff to level eng on DK. - need amazing amount of ore and materials to level. up to 440 (120 saronite ore for 5 pts)
- Some very sweet gear, and can use some of it at lower levels - no level requirement, just engineering skill level requirement
- A crap ton of bombs
- Mechanized Snow Goggles (of random enchant) - using "Of the Battle" on my level 68 DK - 1671 armor, 73 str, 62 stam, 32 crit
- Sonic booster trinket - 81 stam, proc for 430 atk pwr for 10 secs
- crit rating & movement speed to boots
- fire damage rocket launcher to gloves
- stun mechanicals to belt
- track gas clouds to belt
- agility and slowfall to cloak
Last 10 points will be tough
Specced paladin holy - How the hell do I heal? (And where do I get gear - blacksmith makes stuff all INT / SPELL DMG gear)

PvP Death Knight dinged 61 - and still plenty of quests to do in HFP.

Glanthur



Bladed Edge

I'd like to say that I'll have an audio recording soon...
I'd *like* to say it... but every time I have two seconds to rub together something else needs my attention...
Total time played this week I can confidently say is less than an hour. /sigh
That said, I have found an audio track to end my segment with... and finding the time to cobble it into my Audacity master-piece is proving to be a little less difficult than finding a spare moment to sit down to record my voice segment.

That said...

The Bladed Edge

Hey all, Blade here... you wouldn't believe the week I've been having.
Apologies to one and all for missing the last episode... when I'm finished school, I anticipate I'll have more free time on my hands...
That said, let's get straight to the meat-and-potatoes... and in a /nod to our guest of honor, the lovely and vivacious Tempeste... I'll slip in a few 'Australian-ese' expressions...
Now before I start... do keep in mind that Ol' Blade's not a fair dinkum Aussie... so I may get some of these wrong... don't rubbish me too much...


Evil Orc Laugh

From the 'Dirty Little Tricks' Department...
Dunno about the rest of you, but when Ol' Blade is questing, grinding or leveling his alts, I often neglect my 'peripheral skills'. You know... the skills you learn for your character when they're available... but forget to use?
(Ol' Blade has a Mage in his 70s that's still using Mageweave bandaids... doh!)
I was reminded of this the other day when I went to hit a regular hotkey to cast one of my regular rotation of spells on my priest alt, and I hit the 'wand shoot' button instead...
Wands skill level 1 ?!?!
Holy crap! How did I manage to forget all about wands? Not that they're overly powerful at lower levels in comparison to some of the level 80 cannons you can find... but having a little extra dps when and if your caster character runs out of mana can't hurt.
But how can you level up wands without putting yourself in a fairly hazardous situation as a cloth-wearer?
Attack spellcasters... specifically take your wand-user to a lower-level zone, farm some herbs or mine some nodes and toss off a few wand shots at a caster mob. You'll resist their spells, you're too high level... and your wand skill will increase as their spells bounce harmlessly off your paper-towel armor.
This also works in lower-level dungeons like Ragefire Chasm, Wailing Caverns and the Deadmines... you'll resist their spells and gain a few (probably quite a few) levels in your wand skill - maybe even killing the mob - while they burn through their own mana trying to take you out.
Speaking of leveling up skills... the Scarlet Monastery is another good place - this time for melee weapon skills... take on a few Scarlet Chaplans. They cast heal-over-time spells on themselves and are normally a bit of a pain in the backside that way... but you can skill up pretty much all of your weapon skills to a very decent level with a couple runs through SM.
Anyone know if you can skill up your weapon skills or wand skill in a duel against another player?

Now... on to the ubiquitous macro:
From what Ol' Blade has been led to understand, Mages are getting bumped out of their places in the Arena teams for other classes... maybe... maybe not... in either case, this macro should help you in Arena combat... or in any other battlegrounds...

/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast [modifier:shift]Counterspell
/cast Ice Block


What's it do? Dunno if any of you are sick of getting chain-feared... I'm sure most people would be... this takes a bit of the fear out of the warlock's fear spells... Hit the macro to ice-block, hold shift when you press the macro to pop *out* of Ice Block and drop a Counterspell, then (if or when Ice Block is off cooldown) Ice Block again. Click it to get out of the first fear, then shift-click it to hit them with a Counterspell the second they start casting fear again. If Ol' Blade's math is correct, that gives you about 8 seconds before they can fear again (plus four more before they can do anything else... if they're like Ol' Blade... they haven't leveled up their wand skills either...

Evil Orc Laugh

You'd have to have a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock not to use *this* little trick to best advantage...

And... a macro to save a button-space...

/cast [nocombat] Pyroblast; Fireball


In a nutshell? Casts Pyroblast if you aren't in combat, casts Fireblast if you *are* in combat (ahh... the ever-popular Pyro opener... don't forget to add your trinket boosts, Presence of Mind boosts or anything else to kick-it-up-a-notch before you cast it (you can stick them into the macro for a one-button "IWIN" cast...)
But DON'T do it if you're in a raid or an instance... and your tank hasn't got solid aggro... that's a really noobish mistake...

Don't forget... if you want an edge for your particular character race or class... or want to find a dirty-trick way of completing a quest or aquiring an item... let Ol' Blade know...
Email: thebladededge@gmail.com
Find Ol' Blade on his blog at http://thebladededge.blogspot.com/
... or pester Aprillian, Glanthur and Ashayo at ctrlaltwow!


Evil Orc Laugh

From Ol' Blade's Easter Egg Basket...

This week, I'll give you two selections that may very well be beyond the back stump for most people... and two that should be pretty easy to see...
For those of you tougher-than average raider, Ulduar holds few secrets... see what I did there? The Secrets of Ulduar? Holds few secrets? Bah! No one appreciates my punniness...
Anyway...
If your raid defeats General Vezax after defeating the Saronite Animus on regular or Heroic difficulty, you will earn the achievement "I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning". This is a reference to the 1979 movie Apocalypse Now, in which Lieutenant Colonel Bill Killgore (played by Robert Duvall) utters the very famous line:
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Smelled like... victory."
Also from Apocalypse Now... let's head back to old-world Azeroth - to northern Stranglethorn Vale. If I recall correctly, you Alliance-types have a quest to head to Colonel Kurzen's camp - he apparently gone a bit bushranger... went insane and raised an army in a small hidden compound... much like his namesake Colonel Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando). The backstories of the two Colonels are very similar... and, by extension, are references to the character Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, the 1902 novel by Joseph Conrad upon which Apocalypse Now was based.

Back to Ulduar. This time, raiders, you have to defeat 9 Guardians of Yogg-Saron within 12 seconds (on either Normal or Heroic difficulty) in order to get the achievement "They're Coming Out of the Walls". This is a reference to a line uttered by Private Hudson (played by Bill Paxton) in the 1986 movie Aliens as the small Marine squadron is attacked.
"They're coming outta the walls!"
Also in reference to the movie Aliens, let's head over to the Skyguard Outpost in Blade's Edge Mountains... every two hours or so, the Skyguard gear up for their flight attack on Bash'ir Landing. During their pep-talk, the Skyguard Lieutenant asks: "Anyone have any questions?" to which a Ranger replies: "Look man, I only need to know one thing. Where they are." Jenette Vasquez (played by Jenette Goldstein) says this very thing to *her* Lieutenant (Lieutenant Gorman - played by William Hope) during their mission briefing before dropping down to the planet below.

As always, an awesome podcast guys!

Loremaster Blade

Emails

Email #1 from Crossbow

Hi there gracious Aprillian, mighty Ashayo and "Allie"Glanthur. Oh yeah and Blade.
My name is Crossbow. I am a lv 80 Troll hunter on Dentarg(EU). I have been playing for just over a year and have 16 toons at various levels. (a total alteholic) Finances allow me to only have 2 accounts.
I'm playing from South Africa and l stay in a small town on the stunning Garden Route.
Unfortunately RECRUIT A FRIEND is not available to South Africans. Why Blizz?????? Aprillian I love your predicaments with the RECRUIT A FRIEND and wish we had that option available to us too. We pay the same monthly fee so why are we excluded?? Well, end of my rant for now.
I came across an interesting site a couple of months ago. I've been trying it since then and think I want you guys to know about it if you don't already use it. Its called ISBoxer Toolkit.
Here is the main site:
I am not a rep for them but could not keep this a secret because it helped me so much.
Here is a couple of YouTube vid's that shows the software in action. I was concerned that one can be banned for using this so I contacted Blizz and they didn't have any problem with it.
The setup is a bit daunting at first but after watching these instructional vid's I got started and can't believe that I was alt tabbing just a week before. What it does is put your whole multi boxing team on one screen and makes it possible to click to different toons with ease and fight as one.It also has a form of key cloner that works much better than the one you tried Ashayo. The features are plenty and I will let u go check them out for yourself. The only drawback is the fee. When I first listened to Jeppy and his plan to level 62 toons to 80, I was almost sure he must be using this software.
Instructional Vid's
Ashayo you are my hero. I think the way you approach the game is pretty much the same as mine. I can't wait to download every weeks episode from iTunes but once again we get shafted because as South Africans we can not leave a review.
I am a single, 30something dad of 2 and find WOW the ideal escape from a busy day after my younglings has gone to bed.
I love u guys and the podcast. Keep it coming. Sorry for the wall of text.
Regards
Crossbow



Email #2 from Thundyr
Thundyr from the Cenarion Circle US
Hello all,
Well I have fairly recently left my guild they were a medium end raiding guild, mostly people used the guild as a stepping stone to gear to eventually leave for progression guilds. I was a officer in this guild and I found as more, and more people left it became draining, and made the game less fun for me, it came to the point that even though I had been in the guild as a officer for over a year, I felt a need to escape.
So my this leads me to my question, I /gquit all my toons on a off time with out a word, then wrote a letter explaining my situation. Is this a poor departure?
Have any of you been in a uncomfortable guild situation?
Thanks a ton
My Alliance alt nation
Thundyr 80 shaman
Prophyt 80 pally
Wyldweaver 80 Druid
Wyrdwolf 80 Hunter
Darkprophyt 73 Deathknight
Rhette 60 Priest
Frostwynd 48 Mage
Drogg 40 Warrior
Darklore 33 Warlock
Smallshadow 31 rogue

Email #A

Subject: Stooges

Wait you guys have fans that email named Mo & Curly? Should I change my name to Shimp? nyuck nyuck
-Keelhaul
PS. Keep the "clean" rating, you guys are great just as you are.
:)


Email #3 from Gareth

Hi Aprillian i just wanted to give some maybe useful advise, the daily's your doing at the moment in outlands seems a bit out of the way so i was thinking of pointing you in the direction of the faction 'The Kalu'ak' in Northrend.

Ashayo will be able to tell you about the three daily's you can get from them and where they are on the podcast, i'm sure it will be good advise for other listeners wanting to do some daily's that don't require you to be higher level.

The three daily's you get with them will give you a lot more out of them then the daily's in outlands, the only downside to it is that you wont be able to fly, BUT you will be able to take a boat to the 3 places where you can pickup the daily's.

1. you will get more XP,
2. more gold,
3. the best so far is you will gain rep with them (at exalted you can get the epic fishing pole AND a lovely cute pet)



Quite a bit has happened since last time i wrote in, my Druid called Dreamweaver has had a name change and is now known as Hitsuju (due to me having a silly a in my first name i was losing mail) I LOVE my alts....

Hitsuju - 80 druid
Aramite - 80 Priest
Nightweaver - 80 hunter
Daydreamer - 80 Death Knight
Shimato - 74 Warlock
Night - 71 Rogue
Voodoobaby 70 shamen

oh and another 80 Death Knight on Lightbringer EU called (might not get away with saying this on the podcast) caressmasacc who is still in the Gardeners of Gilneas (kind of fallen apart now as you might of guessed)

What you might find shocking is that i have never duel boxed in my life O.o its all been down to having time on my hands while I'm trying to save up for a new home, and yes i do have a full time job. anyhooo i need to get off to get ready for a 25 man ulduar raid with my fluffy druid.

All my best to you Aprillian, Ashayo and ofc i wont forget you this time Glanthur.

Best of wishes Dreamweaver aka nightweaver on twitter.

For the Horliance




P.S WHY CANT ENGLAND HAVE HULU /cry

Email #4 from Matt


hey guys love the show.


ok i want to start dual-boxing. but i want to be able to do it on one pc i need help finding programs (software) to do this i want to be able to use keys and mouse movements and how to set it up. i know that you guys are busy when you have time to put up walkthrough on how to do it with alist of software.


any help would be great

thank you for the help


thanks Matt

Email #5 Elsinne

Hello, Glanthur, Aprillian, and Ashayo

It's Elsinne again, from Earthen Ring.

This email is a direct response to Glanthur's achievement of hatching a green proto drake from the egg.

Every winter I take a break from WoW for a couple of months. I've been doing this for four years or so. It allows me to explore some other games that are out there that I have been ignoring for the past year and also it allows me to be more focused on my in-game goals when I start playing again.

Around the end of January, my time had come. I was going to leave WoW for my annual hiatus. My first ever oracle egg had hatched and it was a was a white tickbird. Not what I wanted, of course, but I would take what I could get. I bought another egg and flew back to Dalaran to whisper goodbye to my in-game friends.

I returned in late March. I was excited to be back. I wanted to get right into PvP. I PvP'd for about a week before I remembered anything about the Oracles. I finished up my last Warsong Gulch battleground for the evening and was just about to log out in Dalaran when I clicked on my cracked egg.

Holy flying lizards, Batman! Reins of the Green Proto Drake! Only the second egg in!

So much for logging off. Immediately, I would head out to my favorite zone in the entire game, Storm Peaks, and fly around. Unlike Glanthur, I didn't care about how cool it looked walking. It was my first epic flight mount. I was impressed with the SPEED. My ground mount would never see the light of day again (except in battlegrounds of course). I was impressed with the enormous wingspan of the thing. It was a creature of beauty.

Yeah. I know didn't do anything special to get it other than buy an egg for two Sunday nights in a row. Killing stupid puppy men or blowing flutes on mountain tops to get an exalted reputation only requires the minimum amount of brain activity, not much more than it takes to turn a doorknob or bring a sandwich to your mouth. I didn't down a giant raid boss or anything. But it's mine. My own. My precious.

My character that received this gift is mostly retired, but every now and then I might wheel out the old proto drake for a spin around Northrend.

Have fun with your ghetto epic flying mount, Glanthur. It's fantastic! Don't let anybody tell you different.

Elsinne


--
Elsinne Starsong/Earthen Ring (US)
http://elsinne.wordpress.com

http://www.twitter.com/elsinne

Email #6 from Jason

Hey guys
I still love your show but at the moment my internet is completely screwed.....
it takes 45 minutes to download your show, and my In-Game latency is over 800ms
If you guys didn't have the [clean] tag on your show this e-mail would be filled with a swearing rant
keep up the good work

Jason

Email #7 Karen

Notes from RL

Greetings all,

I haven't had much time to play WoW (new job, training for a duathlon, life in general), but thought I'd bang out a quick note with some random thoughts.

I played the 'Try to Get Blizzcon Tickets' Game and lost, so no tickets yet for my guild. We live in Southern California and all went last year, so we'd like to go again (it's right at my birthday as well, which would be a fun way to celebrate). Alas, the RNG's were not smiling on me on the first try. For round two we'll bring out most of our guild and try a 5-man strategy. We'll see.

We had a good time going last year, though the long lines, dim light and loud noise made us a bit cranky. Can you tell that we're all mature gamers ;-)

I've had just enough time to complete my argent tournament dailies on one toon and that's it. She's my pet collecting toon, so mostly I'm trying to grind the champion marks to buy pets. I have my scorpion (which stings me when it gets bored) and my batling (which puts out a red sonic pulse when it gets bored).

We also made a try at Ajzul-Nerub on the alliance side. After some success with Nexus, we were a bit cocky and A-N handed us our heads. Of course, we were trying it with a different group makeup and our healer had switched to tanking while one of our dps was trying healing for the first time. Ah, the joys of a small, casual guild. We went back down to Utgarde and actually made it through that for the first time. My guild is not one of the ones complaining that it's too easy.

Finally two easter eggs that I don't think Blade has mentioned yet. One discovered while surfing the internet (who says you have to be in-game to have fun with WoW?), one discovered by my husband.

While trying to look up Tyke and Myke (two naked corpses that appear on our server near the mailbox or flightmaster of major cities) I discovered that Mike Rowe, the host of Dirty Jobs, is in WoW.

[From Wikipedia] he is portrayed as a fisherman named "Dirty" Michael Crowe, frequently saying "You might wanna stand back. Fish guttin' is a dirty job."

He's in Theramore, so looks like he rolls Alliance.

The second one is a bit more obscure. On the edge of the Sepulchre is a general supplies merchant named Edwin Harly. He's named after Ed Harley, the main character of the movie Pumpkinhead. And Ed Harley owned a little store in the movie. One of my favorite horror movies and I didn't even notice old Ed until my husband pointed it out to me a couple of weeks ago.

Well, that wasn't a short email after all, consider it a month's worth of musings brought on by CTRL-ALT-WOW.

I leave you with this little tidbit: my glacier worm seems to have ghoul envy. I swear he's trying to say 'sh-shiny' when he goes in to attack a mob.

Great podcast as always, keep it up,

Karen

Email #8 from Makiling

greetings! i stumbled upon your show after listening to aprils interview on an old how i wow episode and i have to say your podcast became an instant favorite for mine. i love listening to how people play wow, and in yor case, how to play "extreme" wow (ie. multi boxing). i just wanted to comment on your latest episode where april says she plays with the arrow keys instead of WASD. i find it hard to imagine how you will be able to play and assign hotkeys if your hand in on the arrow keys. WASD configuration places all your spells nearby and adding shift or ctrl functions adds more buttons. the only person in real life that i know of who plays using the arrow keys in wow is my friend who introduced me to wow, and the reason he uses the arrow keys is because his fingers are too big =) anyway, hope to hear more from you guys! -Makiling of Thaurissan


MOMOments


Hello CtrlAltWow, Aprillian, Ashayo, Glanthur,
thank you for a great show as always and this weeks email is short and hopefully sweet.

Like many of you, I do not discuss wow or play wow with some of my friends, family members or even coworkers. Also, similar to most of you, I utilize gchat as I too love anything Google!
So as the story goes, and it is a true story, one say while working hard at work, surfing the net, and of course on gchat with countless number of people, I was chatting it up with people that play wow and ones that do not.
As I was discussing the happenings of the guild with a guild member, at the same time I was talking to a friend about some life things at which point I started typing wow stuff to this non-wow person...of course her reply was ???? And asked "what are you talking about!? I did not see that and continued talking about wow and the wonderful loots I need or the farming I had done. Finally, my non-wow person had to use some bad word you may know that is similar to a puck, and asked me if I was mental.

So lesson learned, Please be advised on where you are typing wow stuff as you do not know who may call you Mental!!!

One quick note to all listeners, I had to resubscribe to CtrlAltWow on iTunes, for some reasone it was not downloading. Another way I listen to it is throw my Google Reader feed.

Thank you again, and until next week....

For the MO,
oopsi
For the CTRLALTWOW!!!



Shout Outs!



My Orc's name is Thirah, on the Moon Guard server. Thanks :) I look forward to the next podcast!

1 comment:

  1. Hey, me too. Can't wait for your next updates.

    http://www.wow-leveling-guides.info/

    ReplyDelete