The end of Shadowpriest.com

I have just discovered that Shadowpriest.com is no more, while I wasn't a heavy user of the site, partly due to my infrequent use of the shadow spec, I did occasionally have use for it. 

It was during the Burning Crusade when I discovered the site and as I was raiding as a shadow priest for the greater part of that expansion, and I found the site invaluable as a way of increasing my DPS and knowing the BiS gear from the lists that were supplied. More recently, the help I received from the community (and a guild mate, Ronny, assisted but if I give Ronny too much credit I'll never hear the last of it) gave me a 20% increase in DPS, yes I was THAT bad. The official announcement taken from the US forums is below. 

AddOn Idea: Auction House iLevel Column

Just a  quick idea for any addon writers out there, which I give to you free. I claim no intellectual ownership and want no public thanks.

I would like a sortable column on the Auction House that displays the iLevel of armour and weapons as is done within the Auctioneer add-on shown above. The thing is I don't want to use an add-on the size of Auctioneer simply for a column on the AH, when IMHO it should be a standard feature of the AH.

A while back I did look through the code to see if I could spot it but I failed horribly and am not gifted enough with lua to even hope to do this myself.

Don't Read This If You'e Gold Rich

I've seen a lot of guild chat from folks that haven't got enough gold to get by and for anyone with a level 85 that to me is hard to believe.

As someone that isn't short of gold I thought I'd pass on my tips to always ensure you have enough gold to keep you moving along and hopefully to get you to the point that you can lavish your main and alts with all the goodies you dream of.

How I Finally Got Val'anyr

After 3 years and 4 months I have finally gotten my legendary mace, Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings and I appreciate that it is an expansion too late but my first fragment was gained on April 15th 2009 (the day Ulduar was introduced in Patch 3.1) thanks to one of my healing crew passing up the chance for the fragment, thanks Spicefang! 

Finally last week I hit the magic 30 fragments on our Leviathan kill, which meant all I needed to do was grab myself a Yogg'Saron kill with 1 keeper missing and throwing the Shattered Fragments of Val'anyr at Yogg. But we were a small group and many had never seen the Yogg fight and there was a lot of tired people failing miserably so my planned night of victory failed at the very final hurdle.

My Gorgeous Booty

After 4 days of slowly killing the residents of Booty Bay, Evlyxx has finally attained the title of Bloodsail Admiral. Rather than relying on outside help from a raid, I deployed the Doublerum method. This is done by a quest called, Doublerum which starts a phased event of an assault on Booty Bay by the Bloodsail Buccaneers and once this starts all the bouncers become level 35. Leaving you relatively safe in killing the Booty Bay residents for reputation.

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: Flavours of WoW

The Blog Azeroth shared topic for August 20 - 26 was suggested by Cymre from Bubbles of Mischief:

It would not be uncommon to hear about the initial release of World of Warcraft as Vanilla or Classic. In terms of ice cream or gelato (which is my preference), Vanilla was once considered the most popular flavour of it’s time. So if Vanilla represents Classic WoW, what flavours could represent the following expansions?

Mists of Pandaria: Cinematic and News

We have waited a long time for this and oh boy was it worth the wait,despite the fact there is yet again no gnome in the cinematic. Unlike cinematics from the past there is no big sell in the trailer. Which is odd, no new class or race announcement within it, But the quality is awesome and make me think that the delay to the mythical Warcraft movie is only delaying the inevitable outcome of Blizzard doing it in house, which would be awesome!

The other big news, is something that I know will be welcomed by all new players, the ability to create a new toon of ANY race come 5.0.4 (except Pandaren who will be available to ALL players (even those without the Mists of Pandaria expansion) on September 25th. It is move like this that keep Blizzard and WoW at the top of the MMO tables, awesome work.

10 Tips to Prepare for Pandacraft

In only a few short weeks, we will begin the charge to Pandaria and to level 90, but before September 25 arrives, we even begin preparations for the big day.

We need to consider many things for our characters and our computing hardware. Many of these tasks are quick and simple housekeeping type of things that if we weren't so busy we would keep on top of all the time but always find some excuse to put them off. But now there is precious little time remaining, we can procrastinate no more, the time for action is upon us!

The Alt Factory: Mugruith

Primary role: Tank
Birth Date: January 2008

Mugruith, was named after a druid from Irish mythology after I did some research on Wikipedia, who said

Mug Ruith (or Mogh Roith, "slave of the wheel") is a figure in Irish mythology, a powerful blind druid of Munster who lived on Valentia Island, County Kerry. He could grow to enormous size, and his breath caused storms and turned men to stone. He wore a hornless bull-hide and a bird mask, and flew in a machine called the roth rámach, the "oared wheel". He had an ox-driven chariot in which night was as bright as day, a star-speckled black shield with a silver rim, and a stone which could turn into a poisonous eel when thrown in water.

While I thought I was being clever and selecting a unique and meaningful name I wasn't and had I checked the armory I would not have selected the name but I'm happy with the name.

Mugruith has always been a bit of the black sheep of my team although in cataclysm I have used him a lot more than before and enjoyed it too. He wasn't my first druid, that was Wildthorn who I deleted at a low level and then Morphyxx who I deleted at level 25. I found druids incredibly dull to level and after trying balance and kitty for levelling stopped playing him at level 40 and mothballed him. Then after dabbling with recruit-a-friend I had some free levels to grant and boosted him to 3xp short of 61 by some clever use of the level grant system. I levelled him to 62 but once more got bored with being a kitty and disliked resto so again mothballed him until Feb 2009. 

I picked him up again and started playing him as balance and loved it. Don't know what changed but hey I didn't care! I eventually maxed him out in Wrath and after Deadwood started to fail I decided to go see Shadowsong on the Hordeside and was not impressed so my time as a cowman was brief. However, it did reinvigorate my desire for the class and I ended Wrath raiding as a moonkin and a tree in ICC with the guys from Saturday Knight Fever. 

At the beginning of Cataclysm he was the first character I levelled as he went herbing and mining on the first day and gained almost 2 levels. Over the coming weeks and months I levelled him purely through gathering and that made him very vulnerable by the time I was questing in Twilight Highlands in ICC 10 man gear. I switched him to feral soon after dinging 85 and have thoroughly enjoyed it so much I went a trialled him with another raiding guild shortly before switching Evlyxx and the rest of the army to Exhumed, where once more Mugruith has gone into a semi retirement. I'm hoping for bigger and better things for my druid love in Mists though so watch this space...

Mists of Pandaria: Raid Release Schedule

Our first raid will be Mogu'shan Vaults

Blizzard have announced that the raid content in Mists of Pandaria will be drip fed to us in the first couple of weeks of the new expansion. The schedule was a shock to many and sees the return of "gated" content and to be honest I was shocked to see that it will be impossible to raid in week 1 and that it will be a full month before Raid Finder opens. I can understand why this has been done and also some of the frustration by the raiding community. I have mixed feelings on the schedule but overall I'm not unhappy with it.

Glory of the Firelands Raider is MINE!

The past few weeks the folks at Exhumed and I have been going back and doing the meta, Glory of the Firelands Raider. We had all the required heroic kills and lacked only the Do a Barrel Roll achievement because we had always managed to hit a tornado. So our mission was simple get in there and kill her without getting hit by tornados. Easy!

Well it would have been had we not been plagued by a series of random DCs, people getting hit by brushfire (one of our group had that to get as well) and after 2 hours of wiping we decided to not calling a wipe for the brushfire, and then promptly went ahead and avoided ALL 4 obstacles at once, go figure.

A few of the team (aka the slackers) still need a few achievements and I'm sure we can go get them soon as the hardest ones are all done anyway.

I’d like to thank Sophina for being the pain in the ass wanting to start this achievement, Baniza for making it happen and all the other players that came along at various points to join the core of 8 that got the meta last night.

Top work folks, you made an old man very happy,

A Cast of 10

Back at the beginning of the year I announced a set of personal goals in WoW and I'm happy to announce I've hitting a few of them and have been slowly working my way towards some of the others. Today I have hit one of the major ones as I got the last five characters to 525 fishing skill. All at once, with the help of some planning and the Darkmoon Faire profession quest.

Now I need to work a bit more on the old archaeology step...

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: Why I’m Not Playing the Pandacraft Beta

The Blog Azeroth shared topic for August 6 to August 12 was suggested by Frinka from Warcraft Street:

Are you playing the MoP Beta? Why or why not? How much time are you spending there vs. the "live" servers?

2 years ago I made a few posts about the incoming expansion and did play a lot in beta, not the 80-85 content but was investigating the scenery changes and was avidly exploring the old world and trying to find bugs by exploiting landscape and doing the weird things people do.

This time things have been very different as apart from a few hours levelling a panda in the starting zone and a morning in the Jade Forest I have done nothing. The simple reason for this is that all the content to test and explore is the content I will experience when the expansion goes live.

Back to SWTOR?

Coming back soon!

Seems I late to the party on this but it seems that the Warcraft monster has battered SWTOR into going free-to-play.

What this means for me is that I'll be ready to pick up my old Light Sabre again and give the game another shot. I really enjoyed SWTOR but couldn't justify the 2nd subscription.

For full information I have included the full announcement from the SWTOR team:

I want to reach out today to share my thoughts on our recent announcement to expand our game to offer a Free-To-Play option this fall. I’d like to give you some insights into why we made this decision, how it benefits you and how enthusiastic our team is about this new direction.

Since launch, our team has spent a lot of time trying to find new ways to be able to bring the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ experience to as many potential players as possible. We quickly became aware that our subscription only model was a major barrier for a lot people who wanted to become part of The Old Republic universe. In fact, many players who have left the game said they would happily come back if they could play without the commitment of a monthly fee.

We feel that flexibility and choice in playing our game is important for all current and future players. For that reason, we began the exploration of expanding the game to include a Free-to-Play option.

Starting this Fall, there will be two ways to enjoy the game. First, you can continue as a subscriber, which gives you unlimited access to all game features and future Game Updates at no additional charge. Second, you have the option to play free to Level 50, with game play restrictions that limit game options and access to certain game content. Our goal is to ensure that our current players continue to receive the AAA content they are used to and enjoy the new rewards. To that end, I am proud to say that we have a lot of great new content coming your way, and that it will be coming more frequently. We have a great lineup in development including: a new Operation, Terror From Beyond, a new heroic mission series on the planet of Belsavis; a set of level 50 space combat missions for those looking for the ultimate challenge mode; introduction of a dangerous new Companion to accompany you; and for our PvP fans, a new warzone, Ancient Hypergate!

Starting today, you’ll be earning rewards as part of our new rewards program, making your current subscription more valuable than ever. Current and lapsed subscribers will earn 150 Cartel Coins for every paid month prior to today (July 31, 2012) and then 200 Cartel points from August 1st until the Free-to-Play option launches. For those who purchased the Collector’s Edition, we have an additional bonus reward of 1000 Cartel Coins for you. With Cartel Coins you can purchase convenience items, boosts, visually unique gear, collectibles, and more. The new Cartel Market gives you the option to add to your game play experience with items that fit your play style and allow you to customize your character.

Our team is extremely excited about this new plan. We are working hard and having a lot of fun preparing new content and items for the game. We believe that this is the right direction for our game – more choices, more options and more ways to customize your play experience to suit your play-style. We want to be able to keep our fans excited, engaged and having fun every time you login. We look forward to hearing your thoughts, suggestions and feedback.

Thanks for your support over the last seven months. We have the best fans in the business!

May the Force be With You.

Jeff Hickman, Executive Producer – Star Wars™: The Old Republic™