Best wishes for 2011

Just a short post as I’m a bit busy these days.

I would like to wish a very happy new year to the wow blogging community. May this year bring you health, love, prosperity, success, and of course lootz&purplez.

My year began with a good diner with the boyfriend, none of us, for once, was sick on the New Eve. Unlike the last two years, this year, Christmas and all the family diners in this festive period didn’t messed up our stomachs… We were home, nice and cosy, had the TV on for the counting, the game on for the fireworks and the table set with good things to eat.

Going back to work on Monday was hard…

Anyway.

The guild is on the raiding road again. We officially set the beginning of the raids on Thursday 6th, DKP starting then, but we are of course already raiding 3 to 4 times a week. We killed a few bosses, are working on new ones. The fights are really nice with some fun mechanics. I really like it.

I’m busy levelling my reps, I got my leatherworking and alchemy to 525, jewellery is nicely levelling too. My shaman is 85 and trying to get some gear for heroics when I have a little bit of time between the hunter and guild stuff. I farmed the gold for a Darkmoon fair card and should have it by the end of the week, before the fair closes up.

I had the best of surprises went we killed Valiona yesterday and, what a total miracle, the crossbow was there, just for me ! :’) Guildies took the time to ask if it was the end of the world, because I usually spend half (if not all) of a patch waiting for a appropriate ranged weapon to drop. I’m silly happy…

The fun thing with Theralion was that he died in the air and stayed there, we couldn’t loot the damn lizard… Ahaha, but I got my crossbow, who cares ! 😀

That was me when I looted the weapon :

My Internet tribe

This week has been strange. First, we got our Bane of the Fallen King title.

It was great !

Monday night, we heard that Ascendance had kill LK 25 hardmode. First Alliance side, 3 weeks after the Horde guild. That felt odd. Actually, I couldn’t make my mind with what to think about this kill. I knew they would do it one day. I thought it would have been earlier, but with the holidays, like many other guild, I suppose they had a hard time raiding in good condition.

In June, before I got kicked from the guild, nothing was more important for me than killing this boss. Being Light of Dawn was my priority. Obviously, it wasn’t the case for most of the guild, some wanted their wyrm, other their purplez, I grew bitter and criticized the GM about not being pugnacious enough about this fight, who found out, didn’t like it and kicked me like you already know if you read the blog for a while.

Four months later, they got the kill. About time I should say. They needed about the same time to kill him in 10-man.

In a way, I’m sad, I know I could have that title too. I have the skill and the knowledge for it. What I don’t have, is a 25-man guild. I loved the big raids. Ten-mans are good but I find it less epic.

But yesterday night, we did what we were secretly working on for weeks : killing 10-man Algalon with ilvl 226 gear.

 

Heralds of the Titans

Look at these people.

Yesterday night, we did our first FKS as a new guild. The Quichons are the first on the server to get that title.

And there isn’t a single person in this picture that I wouldn’t want to see here. They are all friends.

In a big guild, you can’t like everyone. Actually, in Ascendance, there wasn’t many people I really liked. I had those you can see on this picture, a few others, very sparse. There were some people I liked but who betrayed me too. And there was a few people I feel dirty just to think their toon was on the same screenshots as mine.

Quichons is my tribe. My Internet tribe. In this guild, there are nearly all my friends in this game. I left a few friends on my old server but on this one, nearly everyone is there.

I know them for one year and a half. I know the first names of nearly all of them even if we never use those names, I met some of them IRL. I know what are they jobs or studies, what kind of music they like, what are their other hobbies. All of them have a very strong temper, we often argue, but it’s like arguing with your siblings : you won’t hesitate to go into a fight against them, but the next day, it will be forgotten.

Yesterday after the raid, we had fun in front for the fountain in Dalaran, in our T8 set, our new title, we took screenshots during the event for the quest with Rhonin and had some fun showing off a bit. That feels so good to just hang around with friends on TS and in game, being silly, not caring what other people could think, just being happy with our new title.

The fight in itself is actually quite easy. The farming of gear can be quite long depending if Lady RNG is on your side. I had kept all my gear from back in the days and only needed a cloak to be ready but most of the guild had to find new gear. Our holy paladin had to come barefooted, with blue items caught on the AH 5 minutes before, with non-enchanted items, because we didn’t have anyone else who could come. We all think the smell of the dwarf feet did a lot to Algalon’s quick defeat.

Or maybe it was the glyphed Thorns our kitty was putting on the tanks. As you may (or not) know, Algalon’s swing timer is very very quick, like a rogue. He hits the tank very quickly, which means that with the new thorn on the tank, he deals himself a lot of damages : around 5-6k damage twice per second. That’s a lot. And with the glyph, it becomes a 20 seconds buff with a 25 sec cooldown…

I wouldn’t be anywhere else at the moment in this game. I feel good here with our crazy Recound-wore shadow priest, our nice gnome-warlock-eating kitty bear, our now-chicken tree, our hunter-hater warrior tank, our rogue who can’t tank, our 280% flight speed gnome GM (we down bosses when he’s in holidays), my hunter brother and bare-footed holy paladin friend, the angry retpal, the disconnected priest, the dwarf priest, the mute-on-TS priest (too much priests, all crazy)… And of course my significant-other mage. I’m home. Definitely.

PS : did you notice how nearly all the toons in the guild are female, when most of the players are actually male. I love to imagine in a RP fashion the gang of girls leading the guild with an iron grip. The little energetic gnome lady death knight, the pretty red-haired human warrior, and the athletic night elf huntress leading a bunch of crazy girls of all races and the occasional boys to kill big bad bosses… Makes me chuckle…

I sometimes wish I could draw to be able to make comics about our guild. That would be really fun !

Nefernet Explorer

Nefernet Explorer is my guild note. My guildies thought it was clever and I find it funny. It sounds like that Web browser I’m never using…

The fun thing about that is that I didn’t have the title until yesterday night. I should have been wiping on LKhm with the guildies, I had built the raid and was ready to help leading it, but when I tried to enter Icecrown Citadel, I had a bug : « You entered too many instances recently ». WTF ??!? I had just done the Brewer Fest’s boss 2 or 3 times in a raw just before the raid…

So… I was stuck outside, we had someone to take my slot in the raid, no problem, the raid went on, and I was there, in front of ICC like an idiot, a bit surprised to be benched when I was leading our raids for 3 months, but mostly very disappointed to miss an evening on LK… After half an hour of watching the raid on the boyfriend’s screen, I decided to get my Explorer title at last, I had been postponing it for months, I just had a few zones left in Eastern Kingdoms.

So achievement after achievement, while my friends were dying in defiles bigger than Mexican Gulf (I’m exaggerating) or taking Shadow Trap Airlines (copyrighted Quichons), I got my title. It was gratz-ed by some friendly « fat achievement ! » and « now you ARE Nefernet Explorer ! » that made them laugh a little bit, they needed it as their evening wasn’t that great either, those wipes were not fun as they didn’t make any progression that night.

Anyway, as I still had some time to spend, I went though my various titles. I tried my Explorer title of course, but in French, it’s not so funny as it makes « Nefernet l’exploratrice », looking like Dora… But I could get a fox when Cataclysm will be there, and name it Firefox… I have of Darnassus and a few other faction related titles. I don’t have all the Alliance reputations to the maximum as I’m not a fan of questing and dailies. I don’t have many reputations at the max except the WotLK dungeons ones.

I have two, maybe more seasonal titles : the Flame Watcher which I like a lot, I love that event, and the Elder, which I love too. I don’t know if I have other titles, I’m not an absolute fan of those seasonal event at the least.

I have some raid-related titles : Kingslayer, ICC reputation, that I never wear. Nearly everybody got them these days. I have the Sarth3D titles too. I remember when I got the 25 title more than a year ago, I was an applicant in my new guild (a guild that would become my favorite guild, where I met my current friends and guildies) and they were the only ones on the server to kill the beast with his 3 little friends. They had wiped on it for weeks. And we 1 or 2-shotted it. I never wear that title, because I feel like I didn’t deserved it. I hadn’t wiped, I hadn’t worked on it for weeks. Out of respect for the guildies that got it the hard way, I didn’t wear it.

I also have the 2 Algalon related titles, which I like, Starcaller is a beautiful title (even in French : Mande-Etoile), and Astral Walker is too. Starcaller is the one I love for my druid and I’d love to get it for my shaman.

I have the Immortal, which is my favorite title at the moment. Not so many people got it (or wear it) on the server, and I find it highly amusing to wear in pvp. It’s a fun paradox to wear the « Immortal » title in BGs or arenas, or when wiping 20 times every evening on LK… I didn’t get that title when it was really hard in T7, but much later, in ToGC and ICC gear, when we were bored with Anub and waiting for the new wings in Icecrown. But anyway, I like that title.

I recently got Jenkins, which I didn’t have, when we ran some old Vanilla dungeon with the guild. That title is mandatory to kill hardmode Saurfang, just so you know… The whole guild turns that title on when we are fighting him.

And I have a final title that I love and hate at the same time. Grand Crusader. That’s the title I got for the first Insanity 25 of the server. We are 25 to have it on Elune-EU. 25 people share that title, some of them are friends, and some of them are those who broke me and betrayed me in June. That’s still the one my ex-GM is wearing. On one side, I hate that title because it creates a bond between me and those people I want to forget. I don’t want to be associated with that guild any more.

On the other side, that title is very important for me. It represents months of efforts, perseverance, discipline, all qualities needed to be a good raider, it’s also the reward I never got from guildies for being an officer and helping to manage the guild for months. It’s an achievement on the server, to be the first to manage the perfect raid, after weeks of failure at one or two tries short.

That title reminds me the state of mind of that night. The night before, the first guild of the server had managed to grab the Death Demise title, the one for the first « Alone in the Darkness » kill. We got the server wide spam of their achievement during the raid. It was mortifying because we knew that the next day, they would be in ToGC, trying to get another server first, like us. The next night, we cleaned up to Anub without any wipe. Everybody was so concentrated, no one talked on TS except tanks and RLs. We had never spend so much time between fight to get really sure we were ready. Some people had contacts with the other guild Horde side after each boss, and we knew we were both in front of Anub with our 50 tries left.

And that’s when the wait began. The RL didn’t want to go on without one of our paladin healer, who wasn’t on at the moment but should be on later. Usually, when we had to wait, people tend to lose concentration, but not that night, everybody was tensed. We waited 45 minutes, preparing everything, repeating ten times assignments we knew for weeks. At some point, we learned that the other guild had wiped and the tension rose even more. When our paladin logged on, we were ready. I remember the poor fellow was back from a party with friends and quite inebriated, but he was able to concentrate and do his job…

We killed it. It was our turn to spam the server with our own feat of strength. Everybody got tells from people of the server congratulating us, it was huge. And such a relief, so much pressure was gone. I remember that moment, just before the fight, and the fight in itself, the concentration, the feeling to live outside the time, with only one thing in your mind : what’s happening on your screen and the job you have to do. And the huge feeling at the end, when the boss is dead at last, when the achievement pop on your screen and you think « YES !! We’ve done it  !!! », your heart is beating like mad, you’re sweating and shaking, the adrenaline in you makes you wanting to jump everywhere. That’s for moments like that one that I love raiding.

That title represent all the things I love in raiding : the team, the preparation, the efforts, the perseverance, the concentration, and the reward after a good fight, the satisfaction of a job well done, and the recognition of your skill as a raider.

And I’m not wearing it any more. Because of a few morons. Screw them. After writing that, I think I’ll wear it more often. On LK especially. To remind me what is needed to kill a hard boss. To help me finding that state of mind, that concentration needed to make a perfect kill, and help my team to find it also.

WoW is exciting today !

These days, I’ve been quite low in mood.

In guild, we are experiencing problems to fill in raid spots. Yes, see, Arthas isn’t dying in 2 attempts, it’s too hard to wipe the whole night three to four times a week. Not that progression guild aren’t meant to wipe on progression fight… Whatever, Ascendance is recruiting, one or two priests would be great. And we are officially recruiting « all classes », because the GM hopes it will motivate people to perform (or go their own way without bothering us any more…). Except hunters. Feel free to apply if you speak French.

Being an officer is tiring and thankless. I need some sleep. I didn’t raid Wednesday and Thursday, I watch some silliness on TV, and went to the restaurant with friends, it felt good. I’m ready to rock Arthas on Sunday night !

But today was an exciting day. I was thinking about Tamarind having problems with his guild about his blog, but I still don’t know what to do. This blog is secret. Only my boyfriend knows about it, and a few readers and bloggers. It’s my secret garden. I want to protect it. But anyway, these days I lack inspiration. I have a few post in my draft folder but none of them is actually worth the effort. Either rant or too old or both…

I discovered Tamarind idea of a blogging guild, I joined them, and inspiration came back. I don’t want to talk about my guild and my experience as an officer too much, and I will keep this blog from my frustration if I can. But this bloggers guild is such a great idea. I allways wanted to roll some toon on an English server, but never had the courage to do it… Because being alone on a new server frightened me a lot. But there, it’s different. It’s not like we know each other, but we all share something in common : we are a part of this blogging community, either by being writers or readers. I’ve been more a reader these days but I feel the urge to write today.

I know some of them, because I read their blogs every day. There are a lot of them I don’t know, and my feedreader will be growing tremendously in the next few weeks I expect… I wonder if that guild will grow in something more than just a bunch of people coming to chat with bloggers, like if we will have forums for example and any kind of website were we could share our blogs and ideas with others. Maybe a platform like Blog Azeroth or any other community site will do the trick… I don’t know.

Anyway, the few people I met today were great. They all rolled a shaman, I don’t know why… As I said in my previous post, I met a blogger I commented on his blog these days, and it was nice : « Hi ! Remember me ? » « Oh yes nice to meet you ! » Tam describes the guild very well, for what I found out very quickly : it’s the guild « where nothing gets done because we’re too busy talking about it« … I actually spent more time chatting on my new guild chat than questing, and managed to bring my shaman to level 3 in half an hour… The leveling will be looooong I think…

At one point, someone asked if anyone wanted to join a group, but then we realized that it was just not to feel lonely and the guild chat was so … chatty that no one would feel lonely at the moment…

And as a quick update, my dear hunter Nefernet is a regicide, and my baby druid is a Starcaller. I’m proud of them ! Ulduar is fun to heal ! Yeah ! I still need to heal Vezax and Yogg Saron though. Maybe this week-end. We hope to get Arthar 25 downed this week *cross fingers* and are trying hard… We’d like getting the first kill server but another guild is raising on Horde side, an old guild reforming and quite well known for being first a few months back in time… They got the FK in 10-man. I think they can get the 25-man version pretty soon too. We need to work harder against that bloody boss !

I’m still alive… Barely…

Yep, I’m still there.

And I wish everyone a very happy year 2010.

I have 927 messages in my feedreader.

I haven’t posted here for a whole month.

I’m now officer in my guild in charge of the website.

I may try to find some time to write soon…

I hope…

Summer festival funnies…

I got my first « world event » title last Saturday : Flame Warden. It’s actually my second title overall, the first one being Twilight Vanquisher that I’m not wearing because I got the title after patch 3.1 with GoW in Ulduar gear and out of respect for those who got it the hard way I won’t show it. I’m not very interrested in titles, even if some of them are quite nice. I like the Elder one, mainly because I was in a guilde called <les anciens> and in French, the title is Ancien. And Gardian of Cenerius would be great on my druid but I don’t know if I will ever find the courage to get exalted with Cenarian Circle… But there is actually one I really want : Starcaller (Mande-étoile in French which is really nice). And It’s getting closer and closer… My guild downed Freya+3 this week and is working on Mimiron hard mode, and then, we will have access to Algalon’s room…

Well ! The fun in this is that I visited in a rush the Horde’s capital cities. And all the fires in Azeroth and Outland. I even managed to do that bloody jungler’s quest… And got my title.

Ron and I had a lot of fun doing the visits to our hordish neightbours. Undercity was quite empty and the fire was just at the entrance. We entered it, took the fire, got out and port to Ironforge… Not sure any horde player noticed, except maybe some 15ish Undead rogue… Having a mage and a hunter for this kind of expedition is just awesome. The mage can do emergency portals, the hunter can track humanoïds and avoid to be tracked with aspect of the beast… And the night elf racial, Shadownmelt, is every useful when waiting for the squishy mage to come back from the cemetary… Thunderbluf was a joke, noone to stop us either, the NPCs killed us though but we got the flame.

While in Orgrimmar, we rushed to the fire, and Ron was killed by NPCs (squishy !!!) and I waited for him shadowmelted. No horde player found me and we took the fire, then decided to get the Ragefire achievement, while we were here (Ron had it already but not me…). Of course, a ret pally saw us, and being pvp flagged and <Gods of War> tagged in an Horde city is pretty Kill On Sight… Of course he killed us. I just sucks at duels and was so excited I couldn’t play normally, and all I know is that I saw him coming with my tracking, he rode past us and turned back, attacked Ron and killed him in no time, I think I had time to throw him an explosive shot (I should have drop an iceblock trap instead, or shot a wyvern sting…) and he was in melee range and I was just laughing so hard I got killed too. The guy was from the best guild Horde side, the one most able to do server second on Yogg Saron. It was great !

We run back to our corpses, and as we were not camped, we could easily reach Ragefire entrance, with quite a bunch of NPCs running after us… Run ! And… « Instance server full, please try later » What ?! Are you kidding ? We were stuck outside the instance, in an enemy city ! Hopefully, we got a spot in a few minutes and it was all right. I got my achievement, and there was one thing left to do here : fishing… Right, let’s go ! We run to the pound, And got spotted by a few players… Dead again… Last corpse run, fishing, tadam achievements, and portal to Ironforge, after a little hit with my Arcanite Reaper, in the water to the knee, very smart… I got a picture for you…

Arcanite Reaper in Orgrimmar

The screenshot is not good. You can see my Power Aura telling me I’m in aspect of the beast (the yellow lion head on my character…) But you can see I installed Bartender4 and an addon hiding in a bag all the minimap buttons (like Shy suggested in one of her comments). I still need to clean the bars a little, but it has never been cleaner before (except maybe before I was level 40…).

And last capital city : Silvermoon. That one was fun too. The fire is quite deep in the city, we rushed through the gates to where the fire was. A deathknight saw us and run after us but we had time to steal the flame before he caught on us. He killed Ron while I shadowmelted in a corner, near a tree. And he waited… He looked for me a little but he was not very clever : a few aoe would habe been my end I suppose. Instead he was waiting on Ron’s corpse and didn’t see him rez behind the tree, and make a portal. Actually he saw it quite late and deathgripped him, but I attacked him at that moment, Ron blinked and took the portal and I followed. Now I wish I’d stay for a little Aimed shot, because I think it would have killed him… My explosive shot put him half life…

Anyway, I had fun, I got a few achievements, a ton of gold in the process (that was the original aim actually, making a few coins). Guildies made fun of us because we have so few pvp oriented achievements and we were just ganked by any Hordy passing by but whatever… We had fun.

Non-Wow Week-end

No Wow this week-end. Non-Wow post.

Both my parents and my boyfriend’s parents were at home and we were busy enough. It was the first time my parents went visiting my new house, they were so happy.

Saturday, we went to Le Bourget, to the « Paris Air Show« . I offered the visit to my Dad for his birthday. He works in aircraft maintenance for years and had never been there. It was awesome and my father was so happy, I could see little stars in his eyes the whole day, like a kid in front of a Chrismas tree. We saw many aircraft, it was the 100th anniversary of the salon and many old planes were invited and made the show. For example we saw a Bleriot, the same plane Louis Blériot used to cross the Channel for the first time in History in 1909. I can barely imagine how this thing can fly but it does… I saw it…

My favorite wasn’t exactly an old plane but rather one of the newest. I saw A380 fly for the first time in real (I’d seen it on TV before), it was a great moment ! That plane is fanastic. It’s a huge monster of steel but when flying, it looks so graceful. I suggest you watch this little video of the construction of that plane. The travel the different pieces have to do is just epic. And the city where you can see it on a barge, going under a bridge is Bordeaux, my hometown.

Well, at the end of the day I was just exausted. I spent the Sunday sleeping. And didn’t raid Sunday evening, even if the parents were gone. I didn’t feel like playing. I watched a few episodes of NCIS instead, and it was a nice evening.