Ctrl Alt WoW - The Podcast...

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

Ctrl Alt WoW - The Podcast...

Pages

Monday, January 10, 2011

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

Sunday, January 2, 2011

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