Pepe

Ah Pepe, you fluffy little in game bird that has annoyed and delighted players in equal measures.

When he first came out I did take a passing glance at him and then shrugged off his existence. Completely forgetting about him until yesterday.
Why yesterday you ask? Well that would be the arrival date of the Pepe plushie in the photo above. However, he's not mine. This little fuzzball belongs to Francis.

His arrival time was some ungodly hour of the morning and was a surprise due to the poor little chap being squeezed into a FedEx 'medium' box (with no air holes, the monsters!)

Once back at my own computer I logged in and went to his tree. There he was, sat there doing not a lot. I clicked on him but wasn't close enough. I mounted up but even on the biggest mount I had I still couldn't reach him. I flew up a little. I was now technically in reach but was greeted with the message 'you are mounted'. I tried to land in the tree. That didn't work and as a result of my efforts all I had managed to do is cause him to go away.
Being Pepe-less I went to Stormshield to collect my seals (I haven't been near my computer for five days) and have a look at what goodies having a feathered friend would bag me.




The bird whistle is the obvious item. If you like Pepe then you want him all the time! There was a lot to get through and I still had the whole 'he flew the nest' thing to contend with.
I was informed that if I went back into my Garrison it would reset him. So back I went, ran up to his tree to be confronted with an empty branch. I went out and back in my Garrison twice more, each time getting to the branch and seeing nothing. I tried the /tar Pepe and nothing happened, I tried it out on another npc milling around and it worked perfectly. At this point I conceded that Pepe was gone forever and I decided to look at wowhead to have a look at the bird whistle achiement in more detail due to the number of raid bosses you need to kill.

It was upon reaching the comments section I decided to read through them as there can be comedy gold in those posts, scrolling through comments about not having certain critter killing pets out, I then stumbled on this...


Little feathery bastard had been hiding from me!
Lo and behold, there he was...


He looks like Leatherface. Creepy little shit...
Anyway, I collected him and got the achiement for finding him in his scarecrow costume (wut?) and had his fat ass on my head as we went in to raid. Trash went a bit wrong and he decided that there was no reason to hang around with my corpse so he buggered off again.

I might be tempted to complete this, as he is kinda cute but the sheer effort needed now nothing is current is going to be horrendous. Unless I can convince the raid team to spam the old dungeons and raids while we have birds sitting on our heads it's going to be a lfr job... Can I actually be that bothered? Possibly not!
Anyone wondering about what you need, boss wise, the list is below. Good luck!


Gug'rokk: The last boss in Bloodmaul Slag Mines

Teron'gor:The last boss in Auchindoun

Skulloc:The last boss in Iron Docks

Ner'zhul: The last boss in Shadowmoon Burial Grounds

Skylord Tovra: The last boss in Grimrail Depot

Yalnu: The last boss in The Everbloom

High Sage Viryx: The last boss in Skyreach

Warlord Zaela: The last boss in Upper Blackrock Spire

Brackenspore: Boss in Highmaul

Ko'ragh: Penultimate boss in Highmaul

Oregorger: Boss in Blackrock Foundry

Hans'gar & Franzok: Boss in Blackrock Foundry

Operator Thogar: Boss in Blackrock Foundry

Beastlord Darmac: Boss in Blackrock Foundry

Kargath Bladefist: First boss in Highmaul

Twin Ogron: Boss in Highmaul

The Butcher: Boss in Highmaul

Tectus: Boss in Highmaul

Imperator Mar'gok: Final boss in Highmaul

Blast Furnace: Boss in Blackrock Foundry

The Iron Maidens: Boss in Blackrock Foundry

Kromog: Boss in Blackrock Foundry

Gruul: Boss in Blackrock Foundry

Flamebender Ka'graz: Boss in Blackrock Foundry

Blackhand: Final boss in Blackrock Foundry

Drov the Ruiner: World boss in northern Gorgrond

Tarlna the Ageless: World boss in southern Gorgrond

Rukhmar: world boss in Spires

 

Know your DBM pull timers!

Jollyjanes' son created a video guide on how to use pull timers while we were having issues with ninja pulls and itchy fingers. I First spoke about why we needed it in this post. The video has been around for some time now and has been referenced every time that we still have ninja pulls.

http://youtu.be/cik7a6__vGk

The guildies knew about it and it was sitting at a modest amount of views until one day, it got linked on the wow sub-reddit by a guildie.

I have to admit, I've never really looked at reddit due to most things like this being full of keyboard warriors and cancerous trolls who like to lord it over people regardless of how much of a complete twat they are. Half of me was expecting that the usual crettins would come out and slate the video even though they are made fully aware that the creator of it is (was) 7 years old. My faith in humanity is restored however when reading the comments.



















 

 

And then theres twitter...


And general sharing...


And how about getting the boy to 50k views? We can do it!

Is it fair?

I realise that it's been a long time since my last post. I have so much stuff to type up but alas, it lost out to typing up my assignments and getting A's (go me!  I digress...)

We killed Archimond on Sunday, great stuff! We did have a few wobbles but after five pulls or so, we had him down.



One thing that was a hiccup was the chains and breaking them in order. I use dbm and doing this boss with this group was the first experience I'd had. When we got to the chains part I noticed that amidst the other flurry of text on my screen, it said what chain number I needed to break. 'Great!' I though. 'now I don't need to be turning my camera all over the place to see who has done what'.
Yeah. Dbm doesn't like to make it that easy.

Dbm tells you what position in the chain breaking queue you are. Which is nice! Big letters fill your screen. Im always third (stupid alphabet) but I get this announcement.

ZIONXI BREAK CHAIN: THIRD

(or something like that, I was tempted to take a screenshot but thought that instead of tweeting, I should probably be killing the boss...)



This is someone else's screenshot showing the chain. Now when this first happened I was expecting something like the below shot when I needed to break it...



But no... That would be too easy on a fight like this! So they give you this...



Well, not quite. They do however demand that while you're running around screaming at being chased over ts that you steady your nerves with a little counting puzzle...



Wtf dbm! You're expecting a group of people who are crying because the imaginary Wolf thing with dreadlocks is chasing them and trying to bite their arses to then have enough mental prowess to complete a puzzle? No no no no. What you get is this...



Such fun...
Implement this plox.

Pugging

We had a raid last night that didn't quite go according to plan.
Starting at 8:30 anyway, we were missing a tank and two healers which meant we had to go to the glorious world of pugs.
Which was fine, we had done it before. However this time it took us over an hour to find the people we needed.
First tank shows up, gets here and then says they need to go.
A healer joins but all they are doing is server hopping.
Another healer joins and stays.
Then we get a ranged. A Warlock! Summons all round!!! COOKIES!
A tank.
Final healer.
Sorting the groups out (as we were starting on Kilrogg) things went swimmingly!
No one died. Everyone got in the visions... I had heartseeker right before my group and seamlessly swapped with Frank...

While we were waiting for people in Kilroggs room it was noticed that I had something on my head.

Frank: what's that parasite on your head?
Me: that's a bird pretending to be Leatherface...
Frank: Pepe... Whenever I hear that name I just think of a Mexican
Me: or Pepe Le Pew!
F: nope it's still a Mexican name... What's that thing you hit with a bat?
Me: a moron?
Ketod: ellas...
Me: a piñata!
Frank: yes! That's it
Me: Ketod... Did you just say ellas?
Ketod: I insulted you and you didn't even realise... Well I'm still in the group...
Me: I'm tolerating it...
Ketod: tolerating it because you don't have enough healers???
Me: ...yes...

We got to Gorfiend and the mini boss went down before rather smoothly. Coordinating the group of three hunters to stand in the circles that do the aoe damage they went down so quickly.
We got organised as Gorfiend was crawling out of his pit.

Me: I didn't die!!! Why have I lost Pepe?!? Oh. It might have been an hour.  Fuck my life...
Ketod: jesus christ ella get a grip woman...

Gorfiend was started well and we got to the first feast of souls. Adds were dead and we were going for it. Suddenly people were dropping like flies.
I turned my camera around to see what the fuck was killing us and I was greeted my the crone mini boss. It took a few seconds to work out that it was her but when I saw the purple pools you have to stand in I knew we had some how annoyed the gods of blizzard.
We fake wiped it, ressed the dead and had a good chuckle at it.
The next attempt was smooth as silk.

We were going to go to Xhul but the three we pugged in left. Jolly started organising an archimond group for ring upgrades. Xozox (Zoz-Zox) asked to join.
Oz: I can come
Jolly: you're going to have to remind me who you are...
Me: it's Oz!
Jolly: look, I might not sound as old as Grumpy
Ketod: oi!
Jolly: but I'm getting there...

Ketod did say something that rang true. I've been having fits of hysterical laughing over things in the past couple of raids. "does this mean you're actually having fun again?" he asked.
It does. And now we're more or less on our feet again it's good to be able to stop stressing over it and enjoy raiding and having fun.
As Jollys lad would say: Smash keys, smash boss, get loot... And have a bloody good laugh while doing it.

Field Photographer

WoW is a tiny bit dull atm. The things to do which could easily eat up your time before you realised it was two days later and you're late for work are diminishing.

I like looking through my achievements tab to see what little things can be done to hitch up those points. If it has a title with it, even better,

Field Photographer caught my eye. Nice and easy, I knew where about 97% of the places were and it would be pretty easy to get round them all.
Well, it would be after I sorted them all out into continent order and then in a logical order to get to them.

Anyone who is anyone should still have their hearthstone set to Shrine in Pandaria. It also helps that I'm a scribe, so I have two hearthstones (like Shamans with Astral Recall) which helps me getting to and from places.

Barrage is so clutch

Tuesday night raids are fun, the crew gets back together and we kill bosses.
This time we started on the upper floors. Having the main of a pugged pally join us.
Everything was going ' normally'. I'd just downed a Red Bull and was feeling casual with my approach to dps.
Being presented with a pack of adds on Iskar I announced "barrage!" as I pressed the button.
"I'm to scared to use barrage in here" Moose said as a hail of arrows swept into the group of mobs Chris was tanking.
I did it again in the next pack.
"omg. As long as the robot doesn't get pulled!" Chris spluttered.
It didn't.
We were fine. Killed the boss and went on our way.

The next Trash pack was in the red hallway. The huge guardian in the corner bit was pulled. The red beams went round.
"is that what you're supposed to look away from?" I asked as I was thrown up into the air.
"no, it's the other one." Chris replied.
The other one was announced. 'crowd control'.
"And half of the people didn't look away"

While we were spending our time looking at the opposite wall or being cursed by an almighty beam of light the next guardian had stopped in the doorway.
"Is it going to move?"
"Yeah, it will in a minute"
"What happens if we pull it? Will it pull the rest of them?" Jolly asked.
"Yeah we need to wait for him to fuck off first." Chris assured us.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm pretty positive"
"Well..."

10 man memories

Last night was a bit ropey on numbers. A dps was away, another dps was out getting drunk and a tank didn't have Internet.
We did manage to get a 10 man together which was great considering we only had 8 signed up.

We started on the first boss on normal and set about clearing trash.
"I know we usually go clockwise to clear on trash but can we go anti-clockwise? There's a reason but I can't remember why?" Jolly asked.
I couldn't work out why you would need to go anti-clockwise.
"Clockwise is the forward way so it's the proper way" I deduced.
We went round, after getting to the back of the room it was starting to get really annoying having the huge green circle on the floor and the shit we kept getting hit by.
"What the fuck is that?" I asked and panned around, spotting the cannon. "The cannon! That's why we go anti-clockwise! There you go Jolly!"
"I knew there was a reason..." he replied as he charged off.
We got through that and the boss with no problems.
When the loot came up, I'd forgotten to put it on master looter, again.
Two bits of loot were passed on and the box dissappeared.
"omg who has the loot?" I asked starting to panic.
"you" came the reply but I wasn't quite getting it.
"the box has gone, does someone have the loot?"
"Ella, it's in your bags..."
So it was!

Distributing this to Jolly to de we took on Iron Reaver.
Since learning the top tip about her left foot we have been really good about moving out of barrage.
"Oh, guys. I totally took that one to the face..." Ant announced.
"It's fine, it's normal" Marvv replied. "Although if this was heroic I'd kill you myself..."
Reaver down, loot master on we went to the next boss, Kormrok.

Marker for hands placed, runes allocated, pool order decided we started.
Things went well and then I announced hands a little too late and while we were in them, Jolly got big...
"Oh! Jolly is going to explode in our hands again..."
We survived him exploding all over us and spread out. That was the only boo-boo of that encounter and we got onto council.

We did the 'stupid' tactics where we stack in a safe corner for ghosts to minimise the damage. A couple of reaps were put quite close but we survived.
We were joking about the loot as we waited with baited breath what turned up.
"What trinket would it be that warlocks need?" I asked.
Marvv linked one.
"Probably this one..."
"It would be so funny if that dropped..."
"Warforged and a socket"
"I'd take a picture and send it to Shane"
"If that dropped, I'd do that myself!"
Alas it didn't, so we couldn't troll our absent dps while he was out drinking.

It's been a while

After a fair few weeks in Hellfire with an inconsistent raid team we didn't get much progress.
Kills were messy or things that we downed before were suddenly a roadblock.
All in all. It had stopped being fun.

With the constant change in players came a lax view on discipline. I was increasingly getting frustrated and due to having pmt I completely lost my shit with everyone.
We took the decision to bench two players who were at the time failing with the set up of 'raid leader' and 'everyone else'.
One took it well after the reasons were given to him. He could see what the problem was and realised (once recount was disabled) that his dps was still viable but it's the following instructions that really counted.
The other... Well.
After discovering he didn't use any add ons and his flippant discription for tactics as 'stupid' it was a case that attitude was the biggest thing here. Yes he pulled the numbers but the other members of the team were insignificant. Even the RL.
Upon being benched for only one night due to his constant elitist attitude he decided to rage quit the team and guild.
To quote Stephen King and The Stand "no great loss"

So we buckled up with 12 players and set to going through the first five bosses on normal. This wasn't for the loot, this was to prove we could have a flawless run when we all put our minds to it.

We even started on time! The determination to pull ourselves out of the gutter and climb back up to where we were in SoO was impressive.

Legion hype!

You may think I'm a bit slow getting on the band wagon with this but not so. I've been reading the opinions of fellow hunters and have come to the same conclusion that I had when I first read about it all.
I'm dubious about it.

There is the bonus that the social segregation that is the Garrison will be a thing of the past and the ship yard can go and sink into the watery depths of Shadowmoon for all I care.

Dalaran is back (yay!) I like neutral city's. Dalaran holds some mystical power over people as even now it's still more populated than the major Alliance cities. And it's prettier and more compact than Shattrath. Everything you pretty much need without it being a sprawling mess of empty terraces or 'fake' buildings.

However, Garrisons might be gone but we're only half way back to everyone being under one roof. Class halls.
That's right people, we're so close to having everyone together again, where you and your guild mates adopt a particular area of a city as your own and you know that's where someone will be to chat shit with and make new friends.

RIP Macbook

I love my Macbook.
However, it's gaming life is coming to an end.
The plastic base has melted and bubbled, to the extent it's peeling away from the casing at the side.
I've spilt juice on it. Got nail varnish on it.
I've generally 'loved it' more than it was designed for.

Three months ago it started doing crazy things on the screen if I played wow for three or four hours. So this pretty much happened at the tail end of raid nights when I was crabby anyway.
Somehow, through the lag and the disco screen I'd still be able to cobble together some form of rotation.

One evening (while I was questing) my screen went again and I took some snaps and sent them to Francis.



Over ts I was greeted with "Omg how long has this been happening?"
"A while"
There was silence for a minute or two...
"Ella your screen is fragmenting. That means your graphics card is about to die. We haveto get you a new laptop!"

This did worry me slightly. Whenever wow its running the fan is going like crazy and judging by the visible external damage, I'd cooked the insides.

I did get a laptop ordered. And there were three of us sat in ts while we were discussing the options.
Francis was telling Marvv about the graphics cards I could have and the processor, Marvv was 'ooh and aah-ing' like it was fireworks night.
I don't computer. So this meant absolutely nothing to me but considering Francis has a 'battlestation' that is so quick it seems wow loads by thought alone, I trusted his judgement.

Scroll along to yesterday. Hellfire Citadel normal and we were on Gorefiend. This is a new boss to us (this might seem slacky but considering we have been struggling to get enough healers to do anything, then needing to teach them because they're completely new, it's hampered progression slightly...) anyway, after failed attempts due to mistakes, my screen went into disco mode.
"My screen has fucked up"
"Omg I don't know how you play like that..."
"I'm used to it now"

My raid frames were flashing random numbers instead of the names and colours, my portrait was a blank flashing mess, I couldn't see the number of deterrence I had left, the boss health bar was flashing between 100% and around 60%... not only all of that but the mechanics and shit on the floor don't show up very well as things like massive purple and blue doom shit on the floor also flash in and out of existence. So I have to be so, so careful.
I never know what exactly I'm stood in and have to rely on dbm to tell me to move, which means I take avoidable damage, which wastes healers mana... I'm also looking more at the floor than at what's going on so if something in targeting dies, I'm caught in the horrible position of trying to reposition carefully and not actually shooting anything.
Which means my dps was below standard and I was feeling miserable and I did something I've done once, perhaps twice in my entire time raiding, I left the raid.

I did get a pep talk later from Chris, who informed me that I was doing the mechanics and I talk, which was good. I'm just hampered by having only switched spec two days ago into something I haven't played for two years (FUCK MM, HOW MUCH I HATE IT) and playing on a potato.

I am looking forward to getting the new laptop. £600 ish well spent if it means it makes up for my missing dps. If it doesn't, then as Ketod says "just delete the damn character..."



Maybe I can use the flashing on my mini map as an excuse as to why I always end up lost?

I've been very quiet...

The blog posts have been scarce. It's not to say things haven't happened but I don't think five posts on us trying to get kilrogg down would have been that exciting.

So it's time to have a little round up.

We've had our moments as a raid team. From charging into Hellfire Citadel with not one single clue what we were doing to struggling to get down Kormorog with five pugs and once they left, one shot it with room to spare.

The one liners have been epic.
On Kormorog we had an accident. That mechanic where the tank gets big and then explodes? *snigger* well we had that happen next to us while we were in the grasping hands.
Jolly then says over ts "I'm so sorry guys for exploding in your hands"

We then delayed starting a boss to have a good giggle at 'finding a unicorn' which was some sort of random code phrase for making a woman orgasam.
This lead to the topic which we have been going on about for days. Sexual innuendos via pokemon.
Squirtle and Starmie being obvious ones. We then had some epic down time going through the pokedex to find some others.
Diglet cropped up as a given, there was also Jinx the sex doll.
Onyx was named. The quick reply being "everything is a dildo if you're brave enough!" Stunned silence from those who were taking that comment in and loud laughter from those who got it immediately.
There was another crude comment, to which Jolly replied that there were ladies in the ts channel.
"Danue is the only lady in this channel..."

Then there's the obvious hilarity at taking the piss out of someone's char name...




There's been the pathfinder achievement, of which I've only just completed.
Sat with some of the guys in ts, they were taking the piss out of my awful sense of direction in wow.
The thing is, in Draenor, I was so busy just zooming through to 100 that I didn't take any locations in, or study the lore, or finish any quest lines. So when I looked it all up I had the following quest lines to finish:
Shadowmoon = 1
Gorgrond = 2
Talador = 3
Spires = 4
Nagrand = 5

Starting with the lowest I went through and slowly started the grind. Yet again, I didn't read any quest text so I wouldn't be able to tell Thralls arse from Yrels elbow. (Oh how I hate her,  but that's another story)
I worked my way through up until my last one was Nagrand. Lots of "finally" gz messages would come in from my team mates when I got the quest line achievements.
Off to Nagrand and I wasn't looking forward to this one. I'd literally spent two quest lines here. I hadn't even built my outpost even though I was stood next to its wooden carcass most of the time (The pain of trapping in Nagrand was very real and I was really glad to get rid of my barn).
As I was going through, I had managed to miss a quest line in the middle of the series, but carried on regardless. I was at the pivotal moment where Yrel (urgh) and I had to 'deal' with Garrosh. I wasn't really paying much attention to it all until the cinematic. I didn't have sound or the subtitles on so I only had the visual to go on. Watching Thrall and Garrosh beat each other about the head but not end up with a scratch on them. Then Thralls eyes went all red and my immediate thought was OMG THRALLS GONE BAD!
Then he used his shaman magic. Garrosh was clamped in a hand and then electrocuted.
Wait what?
Hold the front page!





I've spent the entire time from launch (and when I dinged) to now thinking that Garrosh was still alive and well, causing mischief somewhere.
Frank then said that ages ago they were talking about lore and he said then that Garrosh was dead, wasn't I listening?!
Clearly not!
The fact that everyone else was 100% aware and my obvious astonishment at what I'd just seen made the situation ten times funnier than what it could have been.

Better late than never though!

Confused

Last night we had several attempts on Kilrogg. I don't know what was wrong with us however as we were just not getting it.
I was getting angry, people were getting fed up and stupid mistakes were being made.
It was completely draining and sucked the fun out of us.

Apart from one thing...

As standard, we needed to pug in healers to cover our current shortfall. We had a pally join us and a druid.
Giving out the ts details we had people logging in and we decided to get cracking.
After sorting out the groups for the visions I was very very glad I wasn't needing to deal with them. Usually I miss things because I'm not paying attention but this time it was because I couldn't even see them.
The room is green. Very green. And in Blizzards eternal wisdom they decided to make the vision markers green as well.
It got so bad that I was considering switching to a colour blind mode to see if it helped.
While I was getting arsey about the decor, our pugged druid healer was seemingly shambolic. We were yelling things out, typing things out and he just appeared to be in his own little world.

After four wipes, I'd run in and found Walter off to one side.
"There's a repair bot up. Everyone repair!"
No one had said that they had put one down. It was just ninja pulled out of someone's arse and hidden off to one side.

We went again. The druid didn't move for the heartseeker countdown and got hit right next to the boss.
"What the actual fuck"
"Who the fuck was that"
"I'm not going to name names but it was our druid friend..."
I looked in ts
"There's no point, he's not in ts" I said, annoyed.
"But he logged in?"
A flurry of 'what to do with heartseeker' tips were put up in raid chat.
"He's in the rt1 channel"
We stopped talking
"What?"
"Yeah look! There he is!"
We started laughing. Uncontrollably.
Marvv dragged him into our channel.
"Wrong chanel mate!"
After he realised what was going on and where he was he started talking.
"I was so confused. I was getting messages and then what was being said was completely different"
"I bet!"
"There was calls for cooldowns and I kept telling them I'd already done it"
"Haha! It must have been amazing when we were all dying but they were still sounding like they were going"
"Could have been worse, you could have asked for a res mid fight"
"The funny thing is, I did. And I said I'd put a repair bot down..."

We then started laughing in guild chat and causing havoc.


As it happens, they wiped and as the guild has already decided that 'it's Rolys fault' one can only assume that it's because he stopped healing to yell at Duethril.

The poor poor druid. We teased him about this for two hours.
We had completely lost our focus and had to call it early but still were laughing about it on ts well after we had all disbanded and gone our separate ways!

Tweeting the news

So its been a while since I actually posted on my website. Aska kindly reminded me that i was slacking.

The reason? Well, since the twitter integration its been so easy to take a screen shot and add a few words and send it off!

You can follow us on @TRJWoW to see everything as it happens but I thought I would go through and pick out some of the highlights that really deserve the story behind them being told. 

We decided to go in to HFC. And by decided I mean we just kinda shrugged and went 'why not?'
None of us had read anything, let alone watched a video about what we should be doing. We just decided that if we read the dungeon journal it would be a-ok. How wrong we were.

While I was trying to get my head around what everybody should have been doing, the rest of my team mates decided to amuse themselves. After a bit of smack talk, someone got a wand out and started shooting at another player. Soon everyone was shooting at each other and running around. My ability to hold their attention long enough to discuss tactics was diminishing every second.
In the end, the phrase 'boys... put your wands away...' was a common occurrence over ts.



It should be said at this point that I myself have been guilty of ninja pulling. Not just because I am a Hunter.
I was merrily stood still, away from the group who were killing trash while I was tweeting something that had happened. Busy cropping the screenshot, I didn't realise that they had killed everything and the boss was running over to the exact spot I was stood in.
Screaming, running around in circles, general confusion, "oh Ella!!" Was shouted.
"I was tweeting!"
"Jesus Christ Ella..."
"Priorities..."

Once we had gathered some self control we had the boss down. There was the magical loot box and the inevitable spam clicking to see what's inside it.
"Whoever is in the box, can they please get out..." Jolly asked after many futile attempts at getting in.
"Oh sorry, that might have been me" I piped up, exiting the loot window.
"No worries, I know we all want a look"

Loot was distributed and went skipping off to Iron Reaver.
We had an amazing ninja pull. We knew who's fault it was without even asking.



This boss is generally a clusterfuck. And it's usually equal amounts of knowing what we're doing and luck that gets us through this.
The main thing being yelled out by people is "get the fuck away from me!!!!"

We then had the joys of the pool boss. Can't remember it's name. It just likes wallowing. Henceforth it shall been known as Hippo.
Rawls was explaining the tank tactics to Jolly.
"There's a mechanic where I'll get big and explode and then you'll get big and explode..."
While Rawls was explaining sexy times to Jolly (we were allthinking it) the rest of us surveyed the room. Being in a mischievous mood the inevitable question cropped up.
"Rawls... What colours are the pools?"
"There's a green one here. A green one over there and a purplish-green one at the back..."
"So when you say move it to the green one..."

This one was actually fairly easy. It seemed easier to get to grips with than the last boss.
We had a couple of wipes where people were all trying to get in on the action with the runes so Francis got tough.
"If you're not assigned to do the runes then keep the fuck away from them!"
Everyone went silent...
"Ok"
Point made, we tried again. This time we were organised (as much as we can be) and we kicked Hippo ass.

It might be a time to point out that three of us were drinking.
I'd had four beers and contemplating hitting the rum. Francis was on his way to seeing six screens instead of three.
The tactics for council were typed out. I was struggling to remember everything.


Somehow, we did manage to kill this without much effort.
It wasn't without someone going crazy over the dispelling.
Ariadna, who had joined to help out was having colour issues.
"I don't fucking understand what colour we are meant to dispel on! I see yellow, browny-red, a purple? I just don't know what the fuck is the fucking colour!"
"Just dispel on yellow"
"I don't ever see fucking red! When does red happen? How are we meant to dispel on red when I don't ever fucking see it!?!"
"We will do it on yellow, it will be fine"
And fine we were! Ish.
We may have pushed one of them over too early and covered the floor in purple shit but we did kill it.

We called it after that. Happy with what we had done.

I would however like to point out that five of us went into a Mythic dungeon after that. Only to have Francis become too drunk to heal properly... Giggling at the situation, he told us that he had to go to sleep as he couldn't focus and he was starting to get a migrane.
What a cute little pisshead!

Lilouann needs a helping hand

After what could only be described as a disastrous night raiding it was decided that I need to gear up Lilouann so that we could have that magical third healer.
Looking at my gear it was a sorry sight.
As I don't like healing dungeons I'd never bothered with proving grounds. I'd essentially found the right treasure loot or bought what I needed to bypass hc dungeons and go straight into lfr in Highmaul.

When I was talking to the guys about it, I confessed that I'd only ever attempted bronze at level 90 and that was it.

"I still need to start the legendary on this char..." I laughed.
"Oh my god" Francis whispered.
"Oooh" Rawls said.
"I'm going to boost you through the dungeon. Come on" Francis said decidedly.

We were off towards Skyreach for that stupid band thing. Ketod came along as well and we got two lowly players who as a happy accident were boosted as well.
One of them asked why it was a boost run.
"Slacking healer needs a ring" Francis replied
After the band was looted we Garrison hearthstoned.
"Now go do proving grounds"
"I can't"
"What?"
"I tried and failed so I gave up on it and just geared myself for lfr" I replied, laughing.
"How do you expect to raid heal?" Rawls asked, unconvinced.

There was a flurry of whispers and finally Francis asked "shall we give it a go Ella?"
The giving it a go resulted in the two of us in a meeting room and one very confused recital of log in details.

Eventually, he was in. We rejoined the chat group and he had a bit of a mealtdown.
"Oh my god Ella! Your ui is going to give me seizures!"
"Why do you have run keybound to S?"
"What keys do you use to move?"
"Z and X, right?" Rawls interjected.
"I use the arrow keys to move. They're just for strafing" I added
I tried to log into armory but ended up cutting him off.
"I got dc-ed. Did you try to log in again?"
"No I went on armory"
"Ok maybe don't log into anything, you're going to have to just sit there on ts"

Francis logged me back in and went to proving grounds and got through bronze.
"I just used tide on the last bit..."
"Where is ascendance?"
"Um somewhere between Q and P..." I said, not entirely convinced it was.
"I don't even know what I'm doing"
"Ella do you have a flask?"
"I don't think so... I might have a crystal of insanity..."
"Where's that?"
"Press B and it's in the top row"
"That's the old one... hang on. I've found a flask"



He started on silver. We all went quiet.
"Fuck sake I just tried to turn around and used wind shear instead..."
Ketod broke the silence to ask how it was going.
"Nearly there. Shuuusssh"

Shit was getting serious.

"I'm done. And I'm going to log off your account as I literally can't look at your ui anymore"

Ketod asked me to log in again to give me some upgrades. I literally was yawning at everyone on ts and as it was 11:45 and I needed to be up at 6, I had to request they were mailed to me.



Apparently I was logged out in proving grounds. I'm suprised I wasn't left on top of some random tower in Theramore! Apparently my ui is so bad that he didn't trust himself to not have a seizure getting over there!

Mythic SoO for the lolz

Unfortunately, this is just going to be wall of text because any screen shots are on my computer and I haven't pulled my finger out of my ass to get them. But, oh my. What had we let ourselves in for?

We had decided to go through SoO on Mythic for a chance at the mount. The were a few of us and then we pugged the last few spots. Which were mostly dps.

Most of it was a tank and spank. We did have a slight blip at Fallen Protectors which we thought was going to be a sign of what was to come.
At one point, we lacked healing. Francis and I logged onto our alts. Then people were alive but now not enough dps. While we were waiting for more suitable dps, Francis started jumping around at the broken bit by the entrance to the Protectors.
"Are you trying to get up there?" I asked, watching him bounce around.
"Maybe" He replied. Still trying.
I ran to the ledge with the little puff of smoke, clicked it and was sent up the to top of the stairs.
"Are you fucking kidding me?! I have never noticed that" He said as he landed next to me.
We had Mack on his lvl 91 shaman healing as well which should have been fine and dandy but he hasn't played it in months and was a bit rusty.

We pulled anyway and it was a giant clusterfuck. People had zero clue what they were doing. The group on ts were operating as they should, moving out with the white line, stacking when needed etc. The group not on ts, well, they didn't move at all.
We had Rook go into his phase and Sorrow, Misery and Gloom appeared. Starting to dps those suckers down we suddenly had Sun go into her phase too.
"What the fuck?" I said, which seems to have become my standard phrase in pug groups.
"I know..." Marvv replied, unimpressed.
Shooting anything that moved, Rook started pummeling the group in the dome. People ran away and then regrouped just as He went into his phase.
Marvv had the add chucked on him and then proceed to struggle to stay alive due to lack'o'heals and the fact that the crazy pug dps had already pushed Rook into his phase again because they couldn't control themselves.
This went on with all three of the bosses until their last 30%. Which is when the fun started.
They just went nuts with whoever they could target first. Not paying any attention to the health pools of them. We had two bosses die and then go back up to 30% because... reasons.

I've had some super messy kills on this one. But nothing like this. Literally the dps were like rabid animals and couldn't see past the middle of their screen. Yes zerging is good. But you have to zerg them together not as and when you can be bothered to press tab... Eventually, they died. We finished sweating over the enrage timer which was coming close.

Moving on to Norushen we managed to pull the entire area apart from three mobs who logically should have been the only ones we could have pulled if we were walking on the route that takes you by the cliff... I really don't know how we manage it!

Norushen was a bit boring. Aside from the zillion of gold orbs around the room that I had zero clue as at why there was so many of them. I however got into 'rawr' mode, forgetting that not everyone was on ts.
"There's an orb..."
"Under the boss is an orb..."
"Can someone soak the orb"
"The orb is still there!"
"I've soaked the FUCKING ORB!"
Once the boss was dead we all started to run into the next room. A select few who have had nightmares about this room backed away.

"Hell No."
"We've bugged it. Pacman floor is showing?"
Everyone went in to have a look at this point.
"I'm going to dispell everyone" Mack said as people started running around the outside of the room.
"DON'T!" I shouted. Running away from everyone.
"I'm going to dispel Ella" Francis said, chasing me around the room.
Luckily the adds were dead before he got a chance and we were thrown against the wall.
We had been in here before with a different pug group and people failed at not releasing people from prisons...
Hopefully this wouldn't be the case again.
Sure enough people got trapped and you could see who knew what they were doing and who didn't.
There was a group of us running around all the prisons releasing people while others stood soooo close to the button but just couldn't quite muster up the brain cells to go stand on it.
It was a small mercy that enough of us were totally over geared for this and could just kill it quick.

We reconvened to another night as we had been worn down to faceplanting on our keyboards due to the Pug people. And it would take far too long to kick them all.

The next night came around and we stated off again. Taking the portal to Ogrimmar we started on Galakras.
I point blank refused to go up the tower. I've seen enough of them to last me a life time.
Tower group was sorted however and we pulled. Shit went down very quickly as the zerg'o'meter hit overdrive.
Slight hiccup when the tower dps died due to fire and SOMEHOW I found myself up there. Autopilot kicked in. I'm clearly scarred for life with that building and just can't help myself.
Tower? No.
*Tower opens*
Tower! GO GO GO!
(Help me now)

Juggers was just the same. People were everywhere. Some, who had clearly endured this all before stood by the gate. The ones that hadn't stood on Juggers' side and faced the consequences of being thrown a million miles away and receiving zero heals.
There was the bonus though of being able to just stand there while all the shit hit you though, which was nice. Almost like being able to play a Hunter properly. Stand there and go semi afk!

Shamans was probably the first time we could appreciate that we were doing Mythic. Although not in a way that killed us.
Last time we were here and this pair went down we were ecstatic. These bastards had caused us no end of trouble as we tweaked what we did every time until we found a tactic which worked for us.
The urge to put up markers had to be contained.
Marvv pulled the entire area for us to aoe down. Which before would have lead us to run away screaming over ts.
While the last mobs were being cleared up I asked if we were resetting.
"I think the Mage has gone in?" Marvv replied.
Watching my mini map, I could see many many dots going in.
"Stand back I'll get them" Marvv said, joining in the scrum.
The bosses came out and we were going. Whether you had sorted out your stuff or not!
It was at this point I was taking to other people and I wasn't really paying attention to what I was doing when a massive rock landed on me and knocked me back. Giggling to myself I realised that I might need to move out from the swirly circles on the floor.
It was quite messy. With no clear direction on where to take the mobs there were walls everywhere, people were dying to stacks of some hideous shit that we didn't even realise was a thing. And there were rocks trying to crush us.
Half the raid was dead when we got them down.

Nazgrim was next. Another fairly boring fight... Being able to push right through defensive stance meant that we didn't need to plan anything. We nuked straight through and on to Malkorok.

We assumed out positions around the outer ring. The one thing to note is that the vast majority of us had no idea what the mechanics were.
The fight started off normally, people got launched into the air etc... then there were swirly things everywhere. Not your normal soaking swirls. These were floaty ones, and we didn't do anything with them. In the confusion in 80% certain that things came out of them (although I might be confusing them with the adds from the first boss) regardless, everything I remembered that needed to be done and everything that needed to be controlled was forgotten in an instant as soon as the boss was pulled.

Once he was good and dead then the next challenge was spoils. We actually needed a plan for this one. Arranging people so that we had a balance on both sides. I was with Jolly to go back to the good old days of yelling at him to open boxes.
Once we got down, the boxes were opened by everyone. There were more adds than needed and they were punching clothies like there was no tomorrow.
"Why the fuck are they opening everything!" I yelled, while typing a raid warning.
"I don't know but I wish they would stop" Jolly replied.
He gave up trying to tank everything and resorted to the good old 'you pull it, you tank it'. Once we were into the next room we still had adds from the previous room following us around. Trying to deposit bombs while opening boxes and being kicked by adds couldn't have been easy but quite literally we gave up caring.
Marvv's side was more well behaved and he was struggling to get them opened quickly enough.
It resorted that they were so slacky at doing anything, we had to send people over to help.

Then we had the joy of Thok. That stupid Dino that still hadn't given me the neck I wanted.
This was another zerg. He was dead before we had needed to really do anything. I ran over to look at what his bloodied remains had relinquished.
No neck. AGAIN!

We had fun at the door to SCBF. It wouldn't open at all. Turned out we needed to kill some of the mobs that were frozen... helpful.
I wouldn't like to say it 100% was true but I have a feeling that this thing was dead before the first wave of weapons came out. I certainly don't remember having to deal with them from all angles...

Paragons. No one could remember the order and no one seemed to care about what boss was marked to focus.
It took us two attempts to get Korven out of Amber. But we were soooo close to the grand finale that it was just an aoe-fest to get everything down.

When we finally got to Garrosh a silence went out over ts. Marvv have a brief recap on tactics.
"Who is doing the engineer?"
"I can I guess" Mack said
"Where are we stacking?" I asked as I was concerned that Mack wasn't going to make it.
"By the back wall" Marvv replied.
This was fine. I turned around and liked at the 'death star' that was due to go straight through us.
"I can go and help out" I said "if it's looking doubtful it will go down"

We pulled.
The weapon went out and was killed quickly.
"Engineer" Mack said as he trotted off to deal with it.
"MACK!" Marvv shouted "kill it please!"
I ran off to the side where the wheel was that would run straight through us. I was expecting the engineer to be nearly dead.
He was full health.
I got one shot on him and then the wheel broke free.
"That's how you win at engineers"
"Mack! You were killing the wrong one!"
"So much win right there"

We reset and did it in our normal central position. Dealt with the engineers. I made use of the mind control macro that I still had from progress on this thing.
It all went very smoothly.
Until we got to the Stormwind phase.
It was the perfect time for me to lag out and by the time I loaded into it. I was dead.

However. The mount dropped.
There was a need roll by everyone which lightning won.
Mack then asked every one in ts to hs in 3, 2, 1...
People were PISSED OFF.
Mack was being spammed abuse even though Lightning had won the roll.
We had people reporting us and getting their friends to pretend to be the Blizzard Police.
It was quite funny but I'm pretty sure we won't be making it on to their Christmas card or friends lists!

Gz on the mount Lightning!

Garona and Jeeves

I'd been so content having Walter that I didn't really give the actual repairbots any thought.

When I bit the bullet and dropped herbalism for engineering I went around and collected plans but never really did anything with them.

Yesterday I finally handed in one of the last parts of the legendary questline after wandering around with Blackhands severed arm for about a week. I went off to find Kadgar and Garona hanging around outside the Horde camp. Kadgar was as casual as usual, standing there, not caring if he was spotted. Garona was hunkered down, waiting to go on a killing spree.
Picking up this quest I already knew it was going to be a headfuck. No real skill from you. All you had to be concerned about was if your computer could handle enough graphics to clearly show what way the mobs were facing. I'll give you one guess about the state of graphics on mine...

Heading up with Garona, I could get to the pit with the Horde having some kind of rally but my computer decided that if a mob walked away too far from my char then it would fade into the distance so I never knew when it was walking back. Coupled with the other mobs that were roaming around the was a tiny split second to send Garona in and hope for the best.
Needless to say, it didn't go well.






After repeating this over and over and at one point watching a guide for so long that the mobs reappeared behind me. I cheated. I joined a random group and got into the first tower that way.
I then joined a second group to get up to where I was supposed to hide behind some barrels.
I got up there and had no idea where I was supposed to be hiding. So, I left the group and let them all come at me. Garona and I were dutifully 'rescued'.
I went off again, this time trying to sneak around the back, Garona followed me around, enjoying looking at the Horde architecture. Knowing really that there wasn't going to be a back door I crept back round to the front. There were no mobs.
I inched up to where I needed to go. Half expecting my computer to suddenly kick into gear and all the mobs appear instantly. I nestled myself into a corner and waited. Still no mobs.
I reloaded.
They all appeared.
Garona had vanished.
I could see the little shit down by Kadgar as I poked my head over a wall.

So all that was left was to pick them off one by one Hunter style.
As I inched along the wall of the upper section, coming from the tower opposite the path you're supposed to take, I shot the mobs one by one. Pulling them over and silencing them before dispatching them quietly away from prying eyes. I had to kill four this way before I got to the crates and could see the cut scene of Deadeye turning into a weird dead looking Horde with spikes.
After the cut scene I was transported back down to Kadgar and Garona. Turning on the quests they disappeared and I was left looking at Hordies.
Thanks for that!

After completing that nightmare I was at a loose end. I'd got a couple of raid achievements that I needed a hand with but started looking at my professions.
I'd looked at making all the research I could to get all the glyphs and then thought about making all the Hunter glyphs but it was a headache having to flick between the inks tab, glyph tab and then the auction house and by that time I'd forgotten the seven herbs I could use to make the ink.
As mentioned before, my computer isn't the quickest thing in the world so I can't run wowhead and wow for long before my fps drops into single figures. It has meant I've turned to fashioning myself a paper form of my most used Wowhead pages using flashcards.


After writing out all the inks I decided to take a look through my engineering. And my engineering button was right next to my inspiration on what to research making.
Walter was sat there with his little '2' icon. It made me think about when I was last in a raid and the Horde were being very unfriendly and wouldn't let us put a mount up. We had to coordinate repairbots so we wouldn't have to go outside.
Scrolling down to Jeeves, I'd collected all the plans for the components to make it but never got any further.
I wrote everything down on a piece of scrap paper and then checked the auction house for bits.
Two hours later, which involved lots of calculations, smelting, farming and nearly being stuck in a Wintergrasp battle. I'd nearly got everything and I was 4k lighter in the gold department.
The last little bit I needed was King's Amber.
Turns out there were npc's who sold it for justice points or honor. Not anymore though.
Looking at my scribbled notes on the possibilities my options were; prospecting it from ore, farming Onyxia for her gem bag, getting a jewelcrafter to create an icy prism or finding an alchemist who can transmute it.
The idea of farming ore again was not something that made me jump for joy. However I'd have to go down that route for three options anyway. So I went to Onyxia. The gem bag dropped. Twice on two chars (it was late and I couldn't be arsed taking the others over there) but both bags contained one solitary Dreadstone.
Now locked, I had to look up the other options. I had previously sold all of my gems so had nothing at all on me. For the prospecting and icy prism I'd need to farm a lot or spend a lot of gold. Transmuting seemed the only viable option. There was a snag though...


So I would need to find at least one alchemist who was able to do it, if I was able to do it on my DK. Otherwise, I'd need to find two.
I went to the ah to find the lesser gems, Autumn's Glow. Annoyingly there was King's Amber for sale at 300g per gem. I'd spent far too much already so really wanted to reel in the throwing gold at the auction house. Glow was up for 9g each, bargain. Now all I needed was the Eternal Life to finish up the mats list.

When I was creating the Titansteel I had bought the mats I could (before I started wincing at the cost) and farmed the rest. I had a bunch of Eternal Earth, and I was hoping that I had found the recipe to transmute it to an Eternal Life. No such luck.
The recipe was available on the ah. For over 5k. No. No. No. No.
So I bought the Eternal Life and hopped onto my DK to double check if she had the transmute recipe and if she didn't, then get it.
I went off to Dalaran. Going straight to the 'retail zone' looking for the Alchemy place. I ran around but just couldn't see it. I had to ask a guard. "It's the one with the doorway shaped like a giant flask, you can't miss it!"
Well I did, so I can.
When I did find it, the bright blue bubbling doorway, I ran in to find who I was looking for and the conversation kinda went like this...
Alchemist: "I have a job you can do for me"
Me: "Oh yeah? What's that?"
Alchemist: "Transmute me five amazing gems from some shitty ones and I'll teach you how to make another one"
Me: "Errr. I don't actually want to know how to make that gem so I'll pass. So, do you sell anything?"
Alchemist: "Err no. Clearly I'm too intelligent to just 'sell things'. Ask that wench behind the counter..."

So I asked her. And she must work in the most epically rubbish store in Dalaran as all she sold were empty bottles.
I did what any disgruntled shopper does, I just walked away.
I ran to the anvil to do my living steel cooldown and then had a flick through my other recipes.
Holy shit. I already knew how to make the gem.
But...
But it said cooldown resets daily...
It's a shared cooldown with crappy living steel.
Enough fucking around. I walked into the auction house and bought the damn things. 440g although this time it was from the DK's money pot so I didn't feel too disheartened.
Mailing them over, and logging onto Zionxi, I finally made Jeeves. Being impatient lead to it costing me nearly 5k!
Best run a lot of old raids to get my bank balance back up to a level where I'm not having a mild panic attack every time I look at it.

Hello London!

There's something rather exciting about meeting your guild mates. These people that you spend hours talking to over teamspeak, you've messaged each other, you know what you look like.
Then you decide to name a date to go somewhere and hang out.

This date was today, the 11th of April. The date of the grand national and the boat race. Our mission however was to have some fun in London. Even though Francis was wondering if we would be able to see the grand national while we were here!
We didn't have any plan of what to do, just see where we ended up.
We met at King's Cross. Francis/Yjelza arrived first, announcing that he was outside the station. This prompted the question of where? There were three places he could be near. The giant bird cage, the taxi rank or by the holy grail of Costa. It was the bird cage. As my train pulled into Kings, he mentioned the bird cage had a swing. Jokingly I said to get on it, as I walked around (past Costa and the taxi rank) I could see someone on their phone, swinging merrily.
"Are you on the swing?" I asked. "Yep" "I see you!" First person found!
All I could say while grinning like a Cheshire Cat was "You're an idiot" as he tried to get off the swing but got his headphones tangled up in the chains. A quick phone call later and we discovered Blunnerz was here as well but was getting food. The quest to find him was on. Propping up the counter at Wasabi, we waited until his posh 'Super Noodles' were ready and headed back outside to wait for Rawls to show.


There was a slight groan when we thought we needed to head to Euston to collect him. As we crossed the road we dipped into Costa to get a pilgrimage coffee and it was while we were in there we learned that he was going to get to King's Cross. That coffee need saved us a wasted trek!
We sat back down at our bird cage bench while Blunnerz ate his posh super noodles. He picked out a lemon slice with his chop sticks. "Should I eat this?" He asked. Almost instantly the reply was "yes." He did indeed eat it and then discovered the woes of #lemonburps. Francis decided to go for a loo break while we were waiting. Going in one door, he seemed to take forever to come back again. "Do you think he's lost?" Blunnerz asked. "yep" I said, nodding. Francis chose that moment to reappear from a completely different direction. "I got lost!" he yelled as he came towards us, I can only assume we both looked completely confused as to how he got lost in what is essentially a very wide corridor.
I finished my coffee and went to recycle my cup and when I turned around to walk back, Chris/Rawls had sat down in my place. "You're in my seat!" I joked as I came up. We were all here and we were ready to rock and roll.

As we didn't know really what we wanted to do I suggested the river. The river as in The Thames. It was a 45 minute walk but also a nice scenic one. And in good company wouldn't seem like any time at all. Walking down there with myself as the 'tour guide' we headed off. I'd walked this route many many times, Francis however decided to ask halfway down 'are we nearly there yet?' "No".

While walking we went down a side road to take us onto Fleet Street. With Francis pointing to something vaguely as we were walking down, saying 'what is that?' we weren't sure what exactly he was pointing at. "A building?" Blunnerz said. "No shit sherlock" He replied with a swift "what???" to my reply of "a cloud?" (I had no idea what he was pointing at!) Arriving at St. Paul's we stopped for a moment to take in the sun and read the flurry of messages that had come through.


Francis was rather excited over a Shaun the Sheep that was outside. He asked if we had seen the film. It was a unanimous 'no' to which Francis said that it was really good. Uh hu...!

Walking onwards a truck went past us electronically muttering something. "Did that truck say it was reversing?" Blunnerz asked what we were all thinking. "It's a very confused truck" He then spotted a bridge. "That looks like an important bridge..."
"That's the Millennium Bridge"
Francis started wandering off. "Guys,  we going to cross?"
At that moment the traffic light God's were with us and we could cross the road over to it straight away. The wind was quite strong and the sun was constantly going behind the clouds, Francis decided to walk in the sun. Gloating for all of five seconds as the clouds came up and plunged his nice 'warm side' into shadows. Going over the bridge there was a people traffic jam, a person cooking something in caramel that smelled delicious and also a pigeon that 'attacked' Francis. I spotted something in the river. "Is that a syringe?" I asked, squinting in the water below. "Oh, no, its a bottle". Rawls laughed, "that would have to be some syringe!" "One for an elephant?" I quipped, miming using a syringe the size of a tree trunk.

We were at the pub!


Going in we headed to the bar and ordered drinks, we chose to sit outside as even though it was fairly windy, it was a sweat box inside. Heading out we picked our bench and procceded to wipe off the rain from the seats. Rawls somehow managed to wipe his dry and then spill beer on it. I went to the loo and brough back tissue to dry my spot. We were chatting about all sorts, Francis tried to mouth something to Rawls who had to give up after many attempts and announce that he cant lip read. Blunnerz told us about the time he unexpetedly opened up a blood orange and went to laugh about it with Rawls, even though Rawls would not know why it was so funny as all he would see was a green fruit. It was at that moment when we were all very much 'not prepared' that a huge gust of wind sprang up. My pint glass fell over and smashed against the ashtray, emptying is contents all over Francis and his bag. Rawls managed to catch Blunnerz' bottle (which was pretty much empty) and forgot his own which sprayed him in beer. All we could do was laugh. There was glass everywhere. Rawls realised that it wasn't just his hoodie that soaked up most of it. He looked like he had wet himself after the bottle just poured out into his lap for a split second before being stood up again. It turned out to be the most expensive pint I've had after only managing to drink a quarter of it before inadvertently throwing it all over a guild mate.




The conversation turned to physics. Blunnerz and I looked at each other and shrugged. I then started watching some geese by the river. "Oh we've lost Ella" Rawls laughed. "I was just watching the duck/geese things down on the rock" I replied. "Where?" Rawls asked. "Down there on the rocks" Blunnerz pointed out for him. "I can only see one, they're very well camouflaged" "they are, the whole river is covered by them" We joked.
We then had to decide what to do next. We were discussing going to a museum but the ones we wanted were in Kensington. I was checking Google maps to see how long it would take to get to them when Francis had an amazing idea. "Let's go to London Bridge! It's only over there"
"It would take us 1 hour 45 minutes to walk" I announced.
"How slow do you think we are?"
"What?"
"Were only going to the bridge!"
"Ohhhh. Well then, not that long..."
We headed off. Francis was obsessed with going up stairs and had to be called back down. Asking the way we found a little fountain comprised of small jets of water coming out of the floor.
It was too tempting as we stood around it. I flicked Francis with it. I had promised him he was going to get dunked so this was as close as I could get. This lead to a mini water fight. I scooped up a handful and flicked it his way. He did the same but as I skipped out of the way he only managed to hit an unsuspecting family with it. Apologising profusely as we briskly made our escape he caught up with us. Blunnerz and Rawls having made a quicker exit when they could see how this was going to end.

I didn't take this photo but where the woman in red is sat, that's where the unsuspecting family were that got a face full of water...

We got to London Bridge eventually. There has never been seen so much disappointment and confusion over a bridge before.
"Why are we here?" Francis asked.
"This is London Bridge" Rawls replied.
"What? What's that then?" Francis blurted pointing at the well known London landmark.
"That's Tower Bridge" Came the chorus of replies.
"What the fuck. Why would this be London Bridge? I wouldn't care if this one fell down! It's just a bridge!"
"Do you want to go to Tower Bridge...?" Rawls added.
"Yes"
We walked back down again. Passing sone sort of performance/meeting going on outside of city hall. We stopped for a while listening and enjoying the sun.
Moving on we were closer to Tower Bridge and Blunnerz spotted something.
"That bridge has a giant penis on it!"
We all looked.
"Where?" Rawls asked.
"In the middle. It looks like a glowing penis..."


As we walked up to it, the lure of stairs again meant that people started to go up. I was busy reading a sign telling us we were going into 'the exhibition' and was not paying any attention to where I was walking. I walked straight into a bollard. Grabbing hold of someone's shoulder to stop myself falling over we negotiated our way through the crowd and walked up the steps to the actual bridge. Crossing over it. It didn't seem as big as I'd imagined. Francis though was happy!
It was getting on to a very late lunch time so the McDonald's app came out and we made a pit stop. The next port of call was Covent Garden, which Francis assured us was 'over there and to the left' setting him up as group leader we followed him off down the street.
We had in fact gone round in a big circle, coming back to the road we went down to get to Fleet Street. As we pressed onwards, Francis told us to cross the road and carry on. Unfortunately his maps hadn't quite caught up to where we were and this was the wrong direction.
"It's over here!" He called from his position at the front. I crossed my fingers and held them up so Blunnerz could see and the laughing from the back caused both Francis and Rawls to turn around.
"What?"
"Nothing!"
We passed a building clad in orange and green plastic.
"That building is very..." Blunnerz started to say.
"Orange?" I added.
"OMG, Rawls! What colour is that building?!" He asked.
"Green?" Rawls replied, as that was the only colour he could see but knowing it was likely to be wrong.
"You're half right, that big bit is orange."

Taking the right street this time we realised we were right next to Forbidden Planet. A unanimous vote to go inside and have a look round, it was big. Upon going in we almost immediately were questioning where each other had disappeared to.
Blunnerz found Jesus.
Jesus was kinda cute.


Francis had disappeared into the black hole of the Star Trek section and many questionable noises were heard as he was picking up boxes and other trinkets.
We headed downstairs into the comics/books section, wandering around looking at all the weird and wonderful titles. We Found a book on shit taxidermy, highly amusing and very very wrong on equal levels. Then stumbling on a World of Warcraft poster book Francis almost had a mealtdown as the 'do I - don't I' demons set in. There were a few other WoW books on the lower shelf and a I ducked down to check them out Francis lowered the poster book and inadvertently hit me on the head. Not realising what he had hit he lifted the book up to see. Realising it was me, he then boofed me on the head with it again for good measure. I decided to just waggle my foot at anything on lower shelves after that!

Coffee was calling by this time. It was heading on to 5pm and we needed a second wind. Heading into Covent Garden market we found another Costa and sat down to relax for a bit. The phone chargers came out and we spent the time looking through the 1000 images we had all sent and received in our little chat group.
My magical artwork of how to kill Garrosh and the MS Paint tactics for some of the Highmaul bosses where we played a little game of 'guess what boss this is describing'.
Rawls had a train at 6pm. At 5:23 I checked how long it would take to get there from where we were.
"It takes 35 minutes to get back to King's from here..." I announced.
"So I better leave now then?" Rawls questioned.

Blunnerz whipped out his phone and put us on target.
"It's going to be five past six by the time we get there according to this" He said.
We walked down shady back streets. We were on our epic ground mounts as Blunnerz was informing us that we were ahead of schedule by a minute.
"Not quite enough!" Rawls said. "I'm probably one of the only ones who want their train to be cancelled so I can get a later one"

We came to a dead end in the road.
"Where do we go?"
Blunnerz checked the map.
"Through the pink building apparently"
"Let's go thorough the pink hole!"
(There's always one! And this time it wasn't me!)

We could see the train station. It was so so close but we could also see the clock and that said six as we were waiting to cross the road.
"Hopefully we can get across both sides in one go" Blunnerz said.
"We need all this bullshit to go away first" I replied, gesturing at all the traffic going past us. I turned round to check how Rawls was holding up. I didn't actually have to ask. The nervous laughter said it all. However all was not lost. Checking his train times, it left at 6:08. Francis was checking his phone as we walked up the street and managed to walk into a lamp post, right next to a bus full of commuters. As we got into the station Rawls ran off to check the departure boards. Running back we got time for a swift goodbye before he had to chase after his train.

The rest of us had a while. Francis had to wait for an hour and Blunnerz and I had open returns (clever people!) We decided to find a pub. There was a sign for happy hour. We needed no more temptation.



We sat there, cocktails in front of us and contemplated our WoW experience so far, as fought the wind and a wobbly table. Four cocktails later, Francis realised he still had to get back across London to make his train. Time to go!

Cata dungeons

The easter break means raids have been put on hold for two weeks. The first week was a little 'confusing' for the few of us who were logging in. Not enough to raid and not wanting to Pug some angry teenagers, we inevitably just hung around in our Garrisons until boredom overcame us.

This week I've been a bit more proactive. I competed lfr in one go and then did something I haven't done in a while. I opened up my achievements tab.
I was suprised to see I had over 11,000 points. Not bad for someone who discovered dungeons for the first time at the tail end of Cata. Now Dungeons and Raids is my 'go to' section for things to do during downtime.

Having a flick through I settled on the Cata dungeons to have a crack at. There was a lot I hadn't done. Zul'gruub and Zul'aman being two I hadn't done at all. I knew where Zul'gruub was so I headed off there.
The last time I went in here on my own I failed miserably. The boss on the altar with the two swirly green lines had hexed me or done something to me where I couldn't kill it. After ressing I just left not giving it a second thought. This time (and with me being slightly over geared for it) it should be a walk in the park/jungle.
It was to an extent. I got lost. I had to keep checking my mini map to try and work out where mobs were. On the final encounter I had to check Wowhead to see what to do with the chains. The time spent meant that I had a zillion ghosts pummeling me and was in the 30% health region. After completing it I did discover a while host of achievements that I'd glossed over. Some I had got just by being able to one shot bosses. I'd missed the kitty one and also due to being a bit soft and feeling that I should let him get on with his work, I'd not killed the master chef either.

Briefly looking through I paid a visit to Uldum as there were three dungeons there that I needed things in.
Heading into the Lost City first I knew I needed a lot of angry crocodiles and also to get electrocuted a whole bunch. Both of which were easy to come by. I'd also killed everything in there and when I got out, mounted up and headed into the sky just in case the reason that there were lots of skeletons around was still about. I checked my list again and realised that I'd missed one. I'd have to wait to come back for that solitary achievement.

I then made a list. On actual paper. Of The dungeons and what achievements I had left in them. I didn't particularly want to have to keep going back to shrine and then to Stormwind every time because after I'd killed things I'd realised I'd missed something. I was wearing the portals out as it was and I'd run past the same character afk'ing at the Mage Tower at least five times.

Onwards to Vortex Pinnacle. Which I really think is quite a beautiful dungeon. When it isn't covered in skeletons.
I had 'kill Asad quick' and 'gather 5 Orbs'. I had the crazy notion that the Orbs were the light pillars of which there were two at the start. I wandered over to it and just sort of walked off the edge thinking I would land on it and jobs a good'un. The answer was 'no.' and I fell off the edge like a fool. I had to admit I had no idea what the Orbs liked like so had to have a quick Google of what I was looking out for. Turns out they were pretty large and I really shouldn't of been able to miss them but after taking three chars through this dungeon on HC I could honestly say I had never ever seen them before. Observation skills 0 - treating all chars like a Hunter and going 'afk' 10.
I got two really easily, another two were with the Drake boss (which coincidently handed me the reins to the Drake of the North Wind again) the fifth one nearly lead me to punching my laptop.
'Jump off and click furiously!' Claimed nearly every single wowhead user. That's all very well and good but I have a track pad and having to use the up key and then the space bar to jump up and out, and then to position my cursor over the orb to then be able to click furiously was easier said than done. After six attempts at one orb I was just left furious.
I went off to clear the rest of the dungeon. Orbs were quite literally everywhere and all just out of furious clicking reach. I ignored them for a while and just went back to kill Asad, fed up of being ported back to the start for every failed attempt. I know you can use the wind tunnels to get you back to certain points but after 20 minutes of trying on different ones, any run at all is too far away.
With Asad dead I took the wind tunnel back to the start and flexed out, ready for another go at the ones near the start. I tried zoomed in, top down, far out... All these helpful tips seemed like the most unhelpful things ever written. I just went back to a normal camera and started throwing myself off the ledge, hoping for the best and pummelling my track pad.
The achievement popped up! AwwwwwwYiiiiiissss! I could finally leave this shitting cloudy hell hole (it had lost its allure after all that time spent spinning around mid air)

I did Halls, Deadmines and Shadowfang before heading to Throne of the Tides. I used feign death more times in here than I've used in a whole raid night. Old Faithful took some working out as I thought that you needed to kill the three adds to get her out of the phase where she is shielded. This resulted in what can only be described as a Benny Hill sketch with me running around trying to avoid her hoping that more adds would spawn. Three attempts later she had blown to bits one of her Naga witches and I was off for the last boss.
This one really showed how little I had paid attention to it. Keeping behemoth alive until you get the buff. I just killed everything and then was left twiddling my thumbs when no others came out. I got the buff but had to let the dude in the middle with the water ocd die to reset it. I then let the add live but it killed ocd dude. Once again I was perusing wowhead to see how to do it. Bandages was one option. Going BM for sprit mend was another. I had Raidwiper 1.0 with me so a quick respec and I was away. It was a face roll when you actually knew what you were doing. Sprit mend kept ocd dude up and I picked off the other adds around him. I got the buff and 'boom' everything dead. Ocd dude was happy again and I got my achievement.

I did also go to Stonecore. A tedious dungeon. All I needed in there was the 60 disciples to be killed in 10 seconds while the encounter is active. I'm not going to lie, I'd been here before and killed all the ones in front before I'd pulled the boss and lost it. So this time I pulled and then waited. As I was trying not to get sucked into the gravity wells I somehow lost my mind and didn't kill anything. A few died to the wells which meant the timer was started and I just kept kiting what was left. Once the floor was completely covered in shit and I realised the error of my ways I was so annoyed that I just killed her and hearthstoned out in true stroppy teenager style.

Sulking on a roof in Stormwind I had a look through what was left in my achievements. There wasn't much. I did still have a few loose ends to get through and the whole of Zul'aman to do but the list was a damn sight shorter than when I started! (Even if my stress levels were higher)

More tales from Twitter!

I seriously have had a spam overload to the guild unofficial Twitter account.

One thing that would be nice is to be able to look through the last few screenshots/selfies taken and chose what one to post. The amount of times I've taken a few in quick succession to get that perfect shot and then have to go through the folder on my computer to find it... I digress but idea for you Blizz!

While scrolling through my time line I found a few more photos with little stories behind them. There's a whole post going to be needed on the lfr we did in Highmaul not long after we got our cameras! However, here are some that are from the last couple of days.



Repair bill





I'd taken a moment to go afk after we got to our 'call it' point. People were using their hearthstones or a Mage portal to vacate the raid.
I was stood there minding my own buisness when I got back to my laptop to see the boss attacking me. As I died and expressed my confusion with a subtle exclamation of 'what the fuck?' over ts.
There were a few sharp intakes of breath as my health went from full to zero in seconds.
Fenrir then explained, trying to hold in the laughter, that he was trying to kill Marvv and I ended up being in the way and subsequently flattened.
Marvv essentially skipped away laughing as I took a fist to the face and Fenrir had behaved like a true paladin and hearthstoned out as well.
I think I did get ressed by someone, even though Jesse put his foot down at doing it.
(Fenrir did pay my repair for that later, bless him!)


@nickclegg

We had the dubious joys of Nick Clegg joining us for a clear. He buckled under pressure a fair amount (as in real life).
Nick Clegg gets booed whenever he logs in. Despite it just being Rawls at the other end of the keyboard, when Nick Clegg logs in that's it. The gloves are off!
"Oh look who just logged in..."
"Booooooooooooooo"
It did prove rather amusing when on Iron Maidens in lfr when one of the healers, after that long, suddenly realised who exactly they were healing.
[Raid chat]: I've just seen the tanks name and laughed so hard
(Over ts)
Rawls you've been spotted...
What? Oh.... HAHA!

Which leads very nicely onto...


Nick Clegg killed us all

I don't think there that is really much to say to this. We were counting on Nick Clegg and he let us down... twice! and took half his raid team with him.
Bad Cleggy!
It was also in this raid where we realised once we got in, that we were in the dubious position of not having any healers we trusted. We were not expecting miracles but at least we had two tanks we could count on! (Almost)