So close, and yet so far...

This isn’t a hundred percent accurate (because it doesn’t show just how far ahead the winner was), but it’s a pretty good representation of how my marathon session of Pandaria went.  Really, really well! Just not well enough.

It was just my luck that the most dedicated person was another Warlock…

Pandaria delenda est!

The Cataclysm is almost upon us

29 hours until Mists of Pandaria goes live and all that is wrong becomes reality. Stupid pandas...

I was preparing my main toons for this apocalypse and realized there are only 2 things that need to be done to really be able to enjoy the leveling process without too much stress:

-clean out your bags
-clean out your bank

This should be self-explanatory but unless you have a vendor mount like the mammoth from Dalaran, you'll find yourself filling up on grey and white items really quickly.  Those of us that haven't been leveling alts have probably forgotten just how quickly bags can fill up.  And even if you have that mount, you want to sell just about everything that you find outside of grey items. Sell on the auction house, I mean...  Remember that there will be people on every server going for "server first profession" stuff, and even if they're not, millionaires will be looking to level their professions as quickly as they can.  To put it into perspective, I was selling stacks of embercloth for 250-1000g faster than I could put them up, and volatile fires and earths were going for 100-500g a piece during the first hours of Cata's launch.  And now everyone has more gold than they had back then, so... yeah!

And your bank? That's for all the crap you don't know what to do with.  I don't know how you play, but my bank fills up with lots of items that I'm keeping for possible later use.  Most trinkets that I get as quest rewards go in my bank because I can't know when I'll actually need that extra hit, or haste, or mastery and I can't predict what gear will drop for me.  Most pieces of gear go into my bank, in fact, if they're sidegrades, for that same reason.  So a big bank is definitely a plus.

I spent about an hour trying to decide if any nostalgic items can be destroyed and sold (answer: no, I kept them all) and then transferring 100 things into void storage.  My bags are now almost empty and my bank has only 2.5 full bags in it.

I don't know if I should keep my pvp gear in the bank or just vendor/disenchant it, but I guess I'll keep it for now. If it turns out to be totally useless over the next five levels, I'll keep the pieces needed to transmog into it and that's all.

And finally, the only other possible preparation is to clean out your bank alt.  Make it easy to send things and to open all the letters you'll be sending. The less time you spend shuffling items around, the more time you have to sell them and get back to leveling on your main.

I suppose you could stock up on things to level even more efficiently, but that's not a big worry for me. Leveling isn't difficult, it doesn't matter if I have 300 more intellect or not, but I guess buying some food/water could make sense, since Warlocks have lost all self-healing abilities out of combat...

It's a really weird time in WoW right now, lots of people are playing to finish leveling alts, but dungeons and raids are composed of very strange toons: either very new ones in terrible gear or very experienced ones.  I'm guessing the latter are those that are coming back from dormancy and trying to learn their class before pandas...

In any case, one more day, and then my work just announced that I have Tuesday off, which made me lol, because it has never worked out so well for me at a wow launch. Yay.

Pandaria delenda est

And then don't do that thing!

The most interesting man in the world has this advice on careers:

"Find out what it is in life you don't do well... and then don't do that thing."


As a Warcraft player, we don't want anyone thinking that you're doing the very thing in your WoW life that you don't actually, well, do well.  Well well well.  To explain my point, I have included this handy chart of the very essence of each role and what it should do well:

So yes, if you can't do those things well, you should probably not do those things. A tank holding aggro on only 1 mob out of a trash pull, a healer selectively letting people die, and a dps being alt-tabbed while the dungeon is cleared... not cool. Don't do that thing.

But suppose you have the general idea of your role down pat. You keep mobs on you as a protection paladin.  You keep most of your party mostly alive through a dungeon run. You do good dps and things are dying. Should you be happy? Should you just bask in a half-assed type of glory?

You've probably guessed that the answer is "NO!"

Here are some tips of what everybody from tank to healers, through dps and even rogues, should think about when doing dungeons.  This applies to people still gearing alts right now before Pandaria launches and it applies to veterans who have server first titles who will be leveling to 90 in less than a week's time. To situate this post, I've recently gone from 75 to 85 as a Paladin tank (Equinok on Moon Guard - US) entirely from random dungeon groups.

-Makes sure to buff appropriately.
-Don't attack something before the tank has hit it.
-If you can interrupt, interrupt everything!
-If a skull is marked by someone, kill the damn skull.

I'm not advocating major changes in your approach to gaming, and chances are if you're reading this that you probably do the 4 basic things I've listed above.  While 2-4 are pretty self-explanatory, I think number 1 needs a tiny bit of explanation.  If you're a Priest or a Druid, you have one general group buff and you use it (if you don't, shame on you). But if you're a Paladin, you have two options: Kings or Might. Check your buffs, check which isn't being provided by another party member, and use that one. There is nothing stupider than running with another Paladin and NOT having a mastery or a stats buff and the other Paladin simply ignoring any attempt at communication.  I had a Stonecore run where the other Paladin would constantly switch blessings and I just gave up at some point...

Pandaria delenda est

Theramore's Whimper

Theramore's Fall is live and what a load of crap that was!

12 million paying accounts per month (10-15$ a month) and this is the best the design team could come up with? The 4th graders that I teach every day could have come up with a more compelling storyline than this asinine excuse of a scenario.

Following this line are spoilers (lol, yeah... whatever).


Mmo-Champion proudly proclaimed "THERAMORE'S FALL IS LIVE!" on their homepage when I got home from work and I logged in instantly.

Excitedly.

Foolishly.

The high point of this whole event was the login process that asked me for my authenticator.

Upon logging in I flew around Orgrimmar looking for an exclamation mark on my minimap that would guide me towards the attack upon Theramore - knowledge which I gleamed by metagaming and knowing Theramore gets blown up.  More importantly, I was searching for the story that would lead me to the attack itself.

There was no exclamation mark. There was no breadcrumb quest. There was simply hitting I and then queuing for a scenario. Yay? Well, of course, I expected the story to be told as we joined the scenario. Surely that would be the least Blizzard would do!

No. Nein. Nope. Nie. Nyet. Fuck you. Non.

When I accepted the queue the game transported me to the docks of Theramore (oddly the only thing still left standing because the Alliance ship paths still go there) where I was simply told "OMG DESTROY SIX BARRELS AND DO IT 5 MINUTES AGO!" so I went and blew up barrels which apparently devastated Theramore's fleet.

I have no idea why I'm even in Theramore. I follow Thrall and Garrosh is a dumbass but somehow I ended up in Garrosh's landing party.

Then I'm told to kill a bunch of Alliance dudes. Ok, sure, whatever, the story is coming right?

Well, no. Not at all. I kill some big Alliance boss and then go save a flirtatious blood elf (you're stuck in an enemy prison and 3 guys come to rescue you. Do you A- thank them and get the hell out quickly B- cook a pasta dinner C- flirt with your rescuers and suggest that instead of untying you they could have their way with you.  If you answered A or B you are wrong and that's not what happens at all.) and then I'm teleported to Orgrimmar even though the whore-elf said Silvermoon City and then I get a cut-scene of a goblin ship flying to Theramore and dropping a nuke on it.  I don't even know what happened later because the cut-scene ends at the explosion.  A flight to Theramore was what I needed to confirm that Theramore was indeed gone, as per the screenshot at the start of this post.

Questions:

1- what the fuck just happened?
2- where is Jaina?
3- why the hell was I laying siege to Theramore?
4- wasn't Garrosh the one absolutely furious in Thousand Needles for some jackass fanatic Orc general dropping a nuke on some druids? "The Horde has honor" or some shit like that, he said. Yeah... what gives now?
5- WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED

WHY WAS I THERE WHAT LED TO THE ATTACK WHY WAS THERE A SIEGE WHO COMMANDED IT WHO ORDERED IT WHO DESIGNED THE NUKE WHY WAS IT USED WHY DID JAINA NOT PICK UP ON WHAT WAS HAPPENING WHY IS GARROSH STILL WARCHIEF WHY WHY WHY

This is by far, unequivocally, the shittiest even in the history of shitty events.

Pandaria delenda est!

Pandaria Delenda Est

During the times of the Roman Republic, Cato the Elder was veritably obsessed with the Carthaginian Empire as a threat to Rome and was convinced that only Carthage's utter destruction would assure Rome's continued survival.  To that effect, and to impress upon his fellow Senate members' the importance of this fact, he always ended his speeches with the phrase Carthago delenda est, meaning "Carthage must be destroyed", regardless of the content of the speech.  He could have been talking about basic sanitation for the Greek quarter, but Carthage's destruction was still slipped into the end.

Historically, we all know what happened. Carthage was destroyed, Rome survived for about 7 more centuries as Rome (and 15 more centuries as Constantinople).  If you didn't know that, shame on you.

Warcraftically (yes, what?), I abhor the concept of Pandas and Pandaria, and thus is born this blog.  Well, of that hatred and my utter love of the Warcraft universe and expansions. Combine the two, and you get this.

Pandaria delende est!