Half of a Solitary Cat and Orange Face

Cat is truly a Feral Cat. She makes her solitary way through the world and she’s pretty happy that way. I’ve met people who only play in groups; a woman I met once said she’d have to “practice” playing alone because she wasn’t good at it. It seemed strange at first but I think she’s right, if you play one way exclusively you DO play differently. If you’re always alone you don’t have to worry about pulling aggro, you’ve already got it all. Cat used to get in trouble that way back a few expansions. Not a nice feeling when a boss turns around from the tank and says, “Hey you! Druid, com’ere!” Oops.

Cat loves to find a group for Galleon, I don’t know why she has it in for him. They are pretty hard to come by anymore but the other day a group was forming so she set out for The Valley of the Four Winds. On reaching Galleon they had assembled quite a large group, they were full. I noticed plaintive requests for an invite … repeatedly. I whispered the few people asking, telling them it was all good, just help during the fight, you’ll get a roll.

I got whispers back, “That won’t work, no heals.” I didn’t know what to say to that. It hadn’t even occurred to me. Really? They weren’t even going to try without heals?

THE REST OF THIS POST HAS BEEN DELETED DUE TO BORING. Boring. boring … snore …

I know what’s going on, every time I try to play the game as intended this happens. I don’t know why I do it, it makes me unhappy and then I hate the blog too. And then I delete everything. This time I left half of the post so you’d see I WAS making an effort but just … you know, who gives a shit.

So … orange face. I’ve become one. Years ago I worked with a very pretty young lady. Really, the first thing you’d notice was that she was exceptionally pretty. The second thing you’d notice was her orange face. Why? Why would such a pretty girl put so much makeup on that it would turn her face orange?

One day we were having lunch and she started talking about how self-conscience she was about her face. I didn’t know if I should acknowledge the  excessive use of makeup. She went on, she was talking about her acne scars. Acne scars? Huh. I’d never noticed. I’d only noticed the orange face. BACK TO THE FUTURE.

I have every skin condition there is, I am allergic to everything including the dogs. I have now been gifted with rosacea. It makes your face red and if you’re really lucky puts pits and stuff on your face and you’ll eventually look like this.

You know how when you look in a mirror you see who you think you are rather than what people see? And then sometimes when walking past a mirror or a window you’ll accidentally see yourself the way you are, I guess you take your brain by surprise and it can’t filter fast enough so anyway I saw my face.

I HAVE BECOME THE ORANGE FACE. In an effort to obscure the red I am now orange.

Well yeah … not that interesting but believe me it’s WAY more interesting than the rest of the post was. Trust me.

Yours Truly,

Orange Face

Wolfie McLonewolf’s Adventure Runs Amiss

I’m going to try to stay on topic here. I’ve started on my bucket list; I’m doing Wrath era dungeons that I’ve never seen before. It’s a great way to see dungeons really, as it’s pretty stress free. I can take my time to admire the content without the worry of being beaten to death.

I’m going to tell you about what happened when Jaina and I were trying to escape Arthas in the Halls of Reflection but first, I’ve got to ask. Is it just me or do you let your real life weather affect your virtual life? This morning I barely made it back from a dog walk. It snowed overnight and since then, has been sleeting. It’s freezing cold and the snow is covered with a sheet of ice. I logged in planning to continue my dungeon tour but instead ended up with my friend Winkey in Tanaris. I know it makes no sense but after lying in that hammock I really do feel warmer now.

Anyway, I went to Dalaran to do the Violet Hold. I’d never done it because it sounded a lot like The Black Morass which I don’t really like. Yep, it was. Probably just do it one more time on heroic.

Oh and if you’re a Wolfie McLonewolf by circumstance or choice and you’re wondering, I’m dual specced, kitty/bear, just wearing mediocre kitty gear of ilevel 360. I could probably do some of these as kitty, but in bear I can answer the phone or do something distracting without worrying about dying.

So after Violet Hold I see Apprentice Nelphi wandering around, and I did really have a vague memory that she started a quest chain to become attuned with the Pit of Saron, Forge of Souls and the Halls of Reflection but wasn’t really paying attention.

So Pit of Saron, Forge of Souls, lots of fun, didn’t get lost too much. Finally managed to figure out I had to take down Krick to get to Scourgelord Tyrannus. All good.

So on to the Halls of Reflection. That stupid Arthas is there. Wow, what a jerk. Couldn’t we just kill him here Jaina? What? Oh, Wrath of the Lich King, sure, no problem, I can do that.

Finally we’re at the part where I remembered WHY I do all this stuff alone. I found Jaina, there with stupidhead Arthas. I was auto running at the time I entered. The phone rang, I was waiting for a call from a client so minimized WoW so I could see their website on the screen. About half an hour later I came back to find that somehow I had managed to auto run off the side of the cliff by the ship and was dead. Yeah, welcome to my world.

It took forever to find my corpse BECAUSE I WAS LOOKING FOR IT OUTSIDE THE INSTANCE. Yeah, how stupid is that. Well it looked the same! Finally figured out why I couldn’t find it and resumed.

While my BFF Jaina and I were running from Arthas (this part is pretty scary) I kept thinking (to myself, I would never actually say this to Jaina) come on Jaina, hurry up and break through that thing, he’s getting closer and closer.

This happened a few times before I realized it was all up to me. Jaina somehow managed to break through just as I finished off the last bad guy before Arthas. OMG! We’re depending on me? Next barrier I pulled out Berserk and went to town on the bad guys with A LOT more alacrity and whew, we made it.

And I even got a new bag out of it, James Brown would be proud of me.

It was really a lot of fun, even alone. Is there a moral to the story? It’s more of a cautionary tale directed at me. If it’s going to take longer than a holiday boss, just say no. You don’t want the blood of innocent WoW players on your hands. You know you don’t deal well with guilt.

Kara for One Please

Now I really love Ironsally, don’t get me wrong, I really do. My Ironman Challenger is dear to my heart but on getting her to level 83 and a bit, her handler needed a break, big time.  My self esteem needed a pick me up. I’m tired of being so squishy. Hmmm, what would be fun and boost my lagging spirits? I KNOW, I’ll go beat the crap out of some low level bosses. Just the thing! I thought I’d try Karazhan, whether or not I could complete it, I wanted to at least SEE it.

One of my big wishes was recently granted. I just can’t ask some unknown person to form a raid with me, I just can’t for the same reason I’d be in Paranoid if I could be on an EU server. With the advent of WoW’s starter edition that changed. I created a starter account and leveled a character to 10. I checked, and the key was no longer needed for entry so I was ready to go. I formed a raid with my new friend and headed to Karazhan.

I really need help, I’m in a raid with ME and I’m getting anxious butterflies, geez. On entering The Livery Stable I thought I’d get an idea about how well this was going to go from Attumen the Huntsman. You have to clear all the trash first or they’ll join the fight. No problem. Great, let’s see if I can find anyone else. My biggest challenge will probably be finding my way, it usually is.

I must say that Medivh really knew how to live. Lots of art, beautiful ballrooms. I think I killed every single trash mob in there trying to find my way to Moroes but I finally found him. I won’t bore you with blow-by-blow encounter descriptions. With one exception they were all extremely easy.

From the little bit I read I think I was lucky that on The Opera Event I got Romulo and Julianne. No problem if you kill them at the same rate so that they’ll die within a few seconds of each other. Hey, that’s me! I’m doing my badass bear dance.

I continued to get lost and encountered a room with a giant dragon. I need to lrn2 read. I just lumbered in there without taking the time to look up Netherspite. A big mistake. I noticed all these beams of light and the fact that no matter what I did this dragon was not going down. Hmm, perhaps this bear should have prepared a little. The door was locked and Shadowmeld didn’t work so Netherspite got me.

I was not thrilled about the repair bill so this time I looked up Netherspite before continuing. I found a great video that showed me how to approach Netherspite. Although Netherspite’s optional, I wanted payback. Here’s my pokey little video of the end, I can’t help playing with FRAPS but I should take the time (once again) to read about it first.

Ha Ha Ha! I just noticed that I’m by myself and I still roll greed, pathetic. But anyway, take that you dragon.

Next up, The Chess Event.

Can you do the Chess Event solo? Yup, if I managed it, anyone can. I think it took about 6 tries, just try to use your King to do most of the work.

Finally, Prince Malchezaar next for the achievement! He was a little anti-climatic, no problem. Karazhan done!

My druid is wearing iLevel 360 dps gear. She is dual specced feral, so does have a tank spec but considering the ease of the raid at 85, I don’t think you need one. So if you aren’t a raider from back in the day and want to see it, it’s a fun way to spend a few hours. I know poor Attumen the Huntsman will be seeing me on a weekly basic for the chance at Fiery Warhorse’s Reins!

Is Solo play Dead or just Grievously Wounded?

Yep, this is kind of how I feel about things right now. I was brought up by a mother who had a lot of rules about manners one of them being if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything. Boy us parents can really do a number on a kid, lol. There is nothing wrong with constructive criticism but I have a hard time with it so I usually just keep my mouth shut.

Others apparently feel the same about some aspects of the game that I do, this, and this. There, they said it better than I could.

I don’t want to get into the whole mmo debate thing, yes, yes, multiplayer, yada, yada. Nothing about multiplayer means you have to join a guild. I mean when I first started I thought I kinda was in a guild, my faction. I had the idea that all the Alliance/Horde players were going to cooperate to accomplish goals like group quests, dungeons, etc., silly me. So I joined a succession of guilds and with one exception I still had no one to accomplish goals with. I still had to pug. I realized that since I played at odd hours and sometimes in odd little bursts with a lot of afk in the middle that the fault was probably mine, perhaps if I had been on in the evenings things would have been different so I gave up on it. I put all my characters in my bank guild where they will get no guild perks (okay, I lie, as of yesterday I’m in a level 2 guild) they will have druids flying past them 10% faster to beat them to the herbs and they will have to put up with that, sigh. My cook will have to come to terms with the fact that she will never be able to complete Iron Chef because the two recipes I need are guild achievement recipes. I might indeed be able to single-handedly cook 5,000 Cataclysm cooking recipes for the one recipe but there’s no way I’m catching 50,000 fish from a pool, just no.

I had already come to terms with not being able to complete anything involving raids and if I want to see the inside of a dungeon I wait til I can solo it. This is not the way I wanted to play the game but it has been a workaround that well, worked pretty well until now. I got by on the solo content which was fun, sometimes challenging and plentiful. I do not like the linearity of questing in Cataclysm. I feel I’m being pushed on a fast track to level cap so I can RAID with a GUILD the way Blizzard wants me to play the game. The solo content is no longer challenging, there are some great quests, Gnomebliteration comes to mind (my apologies, Gnomes, really) but it was clever not challenging.

I feel like a poor unwanted relative that showed up at the family reunion, a second class citizen, I feel that Blizzard doesn’t want my type in their game. Loner, misanthrope, join a guild and cooperate or get out of Azeroth. Some of the blue responses on the forums seem so, well, arrogant. It’s as if they are appalled that these sleazy little loners were having fun playing their game and are now trying to force them to conform, there will be no enjoying of the game unless it’s as intended. Okay, maybe it wasn’t intentional on Blizzard’s part, maybe they didn’t intentionally change their game so that it was less enjoyable to solo but it is for me.

I still love Azeroth, I’m still playing, and when I get in a place like this I usually make an alt, which I have he’s glaring at you above. Prompted by comments made by Ironyca and Döra in response to Will the Real Me please stand up? I’ve made a male character. I’ll let you know if he begins to cause my play style to change, oh, and I just pre-ordered Rift as a backup in case Blizzard starts hunting down us loners and expelling us from Azeroth.

Another Uldum Quest but not for Everyone

Well sometimes it pays to rush in killing everything and ask questions later. When my hunter went through the quests in the Obelisk of the Stars I remembered that my druid had a quest to kill the scarabs, where was mine? Apparently you have to kill a scarab to get the quest Just a Fancy Cockroach. I’ll have to go back after the servers are up and see if there are any scarabs still there. Another quest where you have to kill one to get the quest is Dirty Birds at the Cradle of the Ancients.

Now for the last one. After you complete Shroud of the Makers, which was horribly frustrating to me, I mean I don’t want to hurt Sullah’s feelings or anything but whoever sold him that Shroud sure saw a live one coming, I mean that shroud got me killed numerous times, I guess the keyword there was “nearly” invisible, anyway after the quest is done go back to see the damage you caused.

All those elites are gone and Myzerian is slowly circling around, occasionally flopping down in pain, he’s down to about a third of his original health. Okay, go kill  him. Huh, yep, go kill him. Really I wonder who the first person was who took a look at him circling around and said well, hell yeah, I’m going to kill that dragon for no reason whatsoever.

After you kill Myzerian, on looting him you’ll get Myzerian’s Head which you can return to Sullah for a nice reward, but the sad part for me is not everyone can pull this off alone. My feral druid tried it repeatedly. I tried getting up bleeds and then kiting, no luck. I tried bear, no luck, I just couldn’t do it. I’m sure some feral druid will manage it but I sure didn’t. After about 5 tries I gave up.

Now my hunter is in Uldum questing and I thought I’d give it a try. My hunter’s gear is not great, just quest greens and blues and her bear is level 84. She does have the Glyph of Mending. Not a problem, took a while but the bear was never, ever, close to low health. My hunter took more damage from the Fire Spits than the bear did. I had to bandage my hunter once but other than that it was no problem. I’m sure it will be the same for my warlock whenever she finally gets there.

So Myzerian’s Head is there for the taking for certain classes solo, you know who you are … you, you, pet owners.

I vant to be alone … sorta

There are so many reasons that the majority of my time spent in WoW is spent soloing. I enjoy leveling, stopping to smell the Mageroyal along the way, seeing the sights, reading the quest text and finding out things like that Toby Zeigear got a new gig as a speechwriter for High Tinker Mekkatorque after West Wing was canceled.

Some people like to group and mow through solo content together, they might be raiders just leveling up a needed class for their guild, I can understand that but to me the content on the way is the game.

Some of my characters have just given up on grouping. Somewhere in the middle of BC my dps kitty became persona non grata. All I would hear was “u resto?” No, “nvm” that girl could not get in a group. Now she just sneaks into holiday bosses as they are so short you don’t get kicked for being a cat, lol.

I work for myself, I sometimes login when I have no work or I’m waiting to receive it but if the phone rings I’m immediately afk. Once I got a call while I was in Stratholme with the Abominations. I found that if you leave a bear in there for 45 minutes they CAN actually kill it. This is one of the major reasons I don’t group, I don’t want to commit to a group unless I’m positive I can stay for the entire time.

So some of my reasons for being solo are choice some are circumstances beyond my control and sometimes I think I’m really alone but this week I found Leveling is my game and  The Soapbox: Playing alone together that made me think I might solo but I’m not alone.