New Study Reveals Exhumed Killed General Zon'ozz!

After our defeat of Yor'sahj last week we added Zon'ozz to the agenda for this week and well he died after only 5 pulls and one of them wasn't really worthy of being called a pull because we forgot how to bounce the ball.

Annoyingly after we distributed the loot the corpse despawned so the boss is actually AWOL in the screen shot but still a great effort guys, gals and Jim. For the naysayers out there that may disbelieve that we killed him I provide a link to my achievement.

Next week we'll add the wicked witch Hagara to the Dragon Soul tour!

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: Professions of a Priest

The Blog Azeroth shared topic for July 30 - August 5 was suggested by Effraeti from Effraeti's RP:

Some of us have farming professions. Some of us have crafting professions. Some of us have a little bit of everything! Professions are leveled because they fit our style of play, help us in raiding, allow us to outfit our alts, and make us money.

What professions do you have on your main? Do his/her professions fit their personality? Why did you choose them? If you chose professions based on your character and not on gaming needs, would that change some of their professions they use?

Pandacraft Comes on 25 September 2012!

Yes I know I should have posted earlier but with work and raiding I sort of forgot! But finally it is coming!

The official date is 25 September 2012 and that is just perfect for me and my previous prediction of 18 September wasn’t too far out at all. Seems my logic was right at least.

My pre-order for the CE box is in thanks to shopto.net who after fantastic service with my Cata delivery, a day early despite the snow induced traffic problems across the UK compared to Amazon’s 4 weeks later delivery (yes seriously!) were my preferred choice despite a £5 saving. I did consider play.com too but they wanted the money upfront.

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: Introducing Friends to WoW

The Blog Azeroth shared topic for July 23 – July 29 was suggested by Frinka from Warcraft Street:

Have you ever tried to introduce real life friends to WoW? If yes, how did it go? If you never have, why not?

How to Fix an Empty Guild and an Empty Auction House

Tired of an empty guild, an empty, a very expensive Auction House, a newly dinged level 85 with no gold and a desire to try to get into some Horde side raiding I finally realised that keeping my Horde priest on a low pop realm and on a minority faction was a pointless exercise. I had considered a realm transfer a week ago but struggled on, the Blizzard hit me with an advert on the loading screen.

The timing was impeccable and I decided that with all the problems and the offer it was like a sign from the gods. My dear old friend, Gricey, happened to be online and on his Horde alt on Draenor EU and a few questions to him suggested it sounded like a suitable candidate for my new home. Then a trip to Warcraft Realms stats page confirmed that it could be a good realm but a couple of other realms also looked appealing so I rolled a couple of level 1 toons and set of for 30 minutes “spying” in Orgrimmar.

I was looking for signs of an active community, a active but not stupidly priced mats market on the Auction House what I was also looking for the treatment of the trade trolls a section of the wow community I have no respect for and will avoid at all costs. Draenor as a recommendation was my first visit it looked good financially as the AH was full and prices not to far off the prices I’m used to on Shadowsong EU. The one thing that I was worried about though was the spam in trade and lack of pug activity.

I also gave Kazzak EU a look and that ticked all the boxes and had a over stocked AH with rather low prices on mats and good prices on finished products meaning my tailoring and enchanting could be levelled up and then return an income, which is high priority as I have 200g left of my 7000g from last week after levelling enchanting to 350 (and getting ass raped for the price of the rods needed to do the enchants) and HATE farming for gold. Other realms that looked good were Defias Brotherhood and Stormscale but visits there didn’t give the same warm fuzzy feeling I got from the other 2 realms. It was hard to split Kazzak EU and Draenor EU so I decided to visit the realm forums and there was nothing to split the 2. In the end it came down to the AH prices and the sheer volume of pugs being advertised on Kazzak EU that sent me there. 

I was mad at myself for not doing this last week when I could have played the markets a bit with my 7000 gold and transferred some profitable items over to Kazzak EU, but with a measly 200g it simply wasn’t worth the effort of looking for items I could drag over with me. Mistakes, we all make them this one is recoverable. 

Next on my to do list is finding a full time guild there, but as I got invited to a level 25 "super guild" within a few minutes of logging on the immediate rush to do so has been removed as I can get the benefits of the guild perks already, but I have a good feeling that my Hordeside adventures will be much better after the move. 

How Firelands Is Saving My Guild

Diablo 3, summer, end of expansion blues and more are affecting the WoW community right now. Many guilds are struggling to keep their members active in the game but here on Shadowsong EU, my guild, Exhumed, are thriving. All because of Firelands, yes I kid you not!

For the past few weeks we have been scheduling Firelands raids once per week to go and grab some achievements, heroic kills and a bit of fun to break up the monotony of nothing to do except maybe another alt run through Dragon Soul. A few people claimed they had been there, done that and got the T-shirt and weren’t interested. A few had never been and wanted to go get some easy HC kills via ye olde zerg method of beating old content. Warnings were given to say it wouldn’t be that way, the warnings were laughed at and we set off for doing normal kills with achievements.

Yor’sahj Is Now Sleeping

This week saw the Power of the Aspects increase another 5% so now bosses are hitting 30% lighter and only have 30% of their original hit points. While it has made some normal modes far too easy (I’m sure even the most casual of raiding guilds could 5 man Morchok and therefore should be able to kill him on heroic mode) it is allowing my guild to make more progress into heroic modes so I’m not complaining too loudly. However I am a bit concerned that there is a Wowhead entry for the spell to be increased to 35% as this is just plain silly as we’ve reverted back to 3 healers on Deathwing purely because it is far too easy to do too MUCH DPS on the toe nails and spawn the Blistering Tentacles soon after the Mutated Corruption has spawned even when starting on the blue platform!

Anyway I digress, nerf or no nerf the guys and gals of Exhumed downed Yor’sahj on heroic mode this week which puts us at a not too shabby 3 of 8 on heroic mode. We’re not the first by a long way but all the same we’re proud to have done it and that is all that matters. We’d spent an hour or so wiping and hit the enrage timer at least once and in the end we decided that we could 2 heal and 1 tank so myself and Brimar donned our off spec guises and went and hit things. My off spec gear is still crap due to running with 4 or more paladins each week and having 3 warlocks occasionally raiding and stealing my OS tier loot. But I was pleased to do well enough on our first try with me DPSing to actually kill him.

In other news, I’ve now finally got my 1st 85 Horde, my “other” priest, Wilkini who I have levelled as Shadow and am in the process of gearing up to get him some healing action and  into some Raid Finder. I’m in a 900 strong guild and so far this past few weeks have seen no more than 4 people online! So needless to say I’m looking for a more active guild in terms of numbers online, if they raid at any level its a bonus so if you’re Hordside on Ahn’Qiraj EU send me a message and I’ll gladly come join your guild! 
EDIT: I have just taken advantage of the Blizzard Summer Sale on 25% off realm transfers and moved him to Kazzak EU! Now I need to find a guild there ;p

Looking For Dungeon a New Twist

A busy day in town surely we can find something for these folks to do?

Ever wondered why running dungeons has become a clinical, interaction free, non social event if you use LFD and yet they are immense fun with guildies just like they used to be during TBC and vanilla even when pugging? Well I have and a thought occurred to me a few days ago while bored at work on my break. Why not try to get some Shadowsong EU residents to join me and my guildies in LFD if we can't get a full guild group?

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: Starstruck

A gnome, I'm starstruck by a gnome!
 (image © Type "H" for Heals original can be found at http://typehforheals.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Savior.jpg)

The Blog Azeroth shared topic for July 9 – July 15 was suggested by Dragonray from Azerothian Life:

Are you starstruck by anyone? Does someone in the community respond to a post or a tweet and get you all speechless because they actually responded? Is there anyone you are waiting to have respond directly to you? Is there someone that you would like to chat to, but are too chicken? Am I the only one who puts other bloggers on a pedestal?

Time for Pandacraft?

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We will soon begin public testing of patch 5.0.1 of World of Warcraft, a patch that will precede the Mists of Pandaria release, and includes many features and functions that are new to the game.

We encourage all players who wish to test patch 5.0.1 with us to take careful note of the following:

• It will not be possible to access the 5.0.1 PTR realms with a game account that accesses the Mists of Pandaria Beta.
• If a game account has been flagged with a Mists of Pandaria Beta license, it can only be used to enter Beta realms.
• This limitation is on each World of Warcraft license, and is not Battle.net account-based.
• While testing 5.0.1, players will not be able to access zones or content that is a part of the Mists of Pandaria expansion.

Thank you for your continued support of our testing and tuning process. We look forward to seeing you in-game.

This is good news. Unless you subbed up for the 12 month trial and got your guaranteed beta invite and does make me wonder how many of us who want to test the PTR have 2nd accounts to enable this. Hopefully enough s the PTR isn't too under subscribed that it last for more than the typical will last for 4-6 weeks.

This means that we can guess potential dates for the Pandacraft pre-patch of August 14/21/28 and using the usual 2 weeks between the pre-patch and expansion launch means we will all be "rolling" on our Pandas on Aug 28/Sept 4/Sept 11.

However, with Guild Wars 2 out on August 28th I don't think Blizzard will be cruel enough to go on that date and I'm not sure they will be prepared to launch on Sept 11 either because of the place that date has in the hearts of America. So my money is on September 4th, although that will upset me greatly as I doubt I will be able to get the time off work because I am on Olympic cover until September 9th  So I'm actually hoping for Sept 18th or later.