Monthly Archives: March 2008

fun

You Know Your Main Is a Hunter When…

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You Know Your Main Is a Hunter When:

– You instinctively back up and try to get range when you’re playing a caster class (or any other class, for that matter).

– You send your imp in to attack first when you play a warlock, and then wonder why he keeps dying or why he can’t hold aggro.

– You constantly shoot things with your bow. On your rogue. (Ranged Rogues: As bad as Melee Hunters?)

– Anytime you see a cool looking creature you reach for the Beast Lore icon and then get all disappointed when it isn’t there.

– Playing a cat druid or watching somebody else play a cat druid confuses the heck out of you. Because they are tracking humanoids with the track beasts icon.

– You keep reaching for the freezing trap/feign death/wing clip button or hotkey, and panicking when it isn’t there or doesn’t work.

– Not being able to track things makes you feel naked. (You will probably take up mining or herbalism as a profession, simply to semi-compensate).

– You miss having a pet so much that you go buy one of those little vanity pet cats from the Crazy Cat Lady in Elwynn, or a dragonhawk from Silvermoon, and you almost always have it out.

– You do horrible things to lowbie hunters who duel you. Like stand on their toes and not let them have range. Because you know what it’s like, don’t you?

– You feel pangs of jealousy when you see hunters run by with their pets.

– You buff hunters and their pets. Always. (Unless it’s Arcane Intellect). And pets get Thorns if you’re playing a druid. Pets, not the hunters. They need it the most; they’re the ones getting attacked (hopefully).

– You inspect the gear/talent tree of any and all unsuspecting hunters that happen to be standing next to you.

– …did I mention the instinctively backing up to get range thing? People tell you over and over you don’t have to do it, and yet I bet you do it anyway.

– Oh gosh you mean all my minions and I level at the same time?? /squeal of happiness

– You tell the newbie hunter in Deadmines to put their pet on passive and turn growl off and not use Serpent Sting before trapping something and NO DON’T HIT IT WITH YOUR AXE! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? /sob Oooh sorry, went overboard there. /blush

Well I don’t know about you guys, but I am guilty of every single one of those points, and probably countless more…

Alts are fun. But I think hunters will always be home.

(That said, I think I’m gonna try leveling a druid. No guarantees on how far I get before Hunteritis sets in again. But I promise I’ll try my best!)

karazhan, movies

They're Gonna Put Me In the Movies…

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…all I gotta do is act naturally!

Yeah, I figured you guys might want to see a little more than just screenshots!

Our little guild’s second ever try on Moroes; the first try doesn’t really count, I think, because somebody got disconnected and the pull was a complete accident. Now I’m no BRK; watching this movie there are a few things I would have liked to have improved on, but overall I think I did a pretty good job that I can be proud of. Me and the other hunter were sort of bouncing traps off of each other during the second half; what you don’t hear in the movie is the two of us on Ventrilo discussing how we’re backing each other up.

About four minutes into the movie is a sort of funny moment as you can see both us hunters trying desperately to get green triangle into one of our traps… he was pretty heavily planted onto the off-tank at that point though.

And yes, the song is indeed “Scatman”. Partially because the other hunter requested that song, partially because it fit perfectly with the length of the movie, and I won’t deny, partially because this song has long been one of my favorite songs to WoW to. It’s overdone, but I like it.

Enjoy!

(And I realize the video is pretty small; I may try to see if I can post up a bigger, higher-quality version, if enough people would be interested.)

karazhan

Karazhan: Liveblogged.

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Tawyn & Locke and her guild (and a few non-guildies) vs. Karazhan:

This is going to be edited frequently throughout the night:

4:25pm: Having a roleplaying guild meeting and trying desperately to fill out our group because we had a few people drop out…

4:40pm: At the summoning stone. Tying up last minute details. Let it be known that I am really, really nervous.

4:55pm: The Boyfriend/Guild Leader is giving the Pre-Kara Peptalk.

5:05pm: Goin’ in!

5:25pm: Standing in front of the first boss, getting ready for him. I chain trapped something and was proud of myself. ^^

5:35pm: Attumen the Huntsman down. I got some bracers; [Stalker’s War Bands] (I’d link ’em on WoWHead but I’m in the middle of a raid! =P)

6:00pm: We’re currently in the room with Moroes. I successfully pulled off four chained traps in a row a little while back, I’m glad I’m managing so well so far! =D

6:20pm: First wipe on Moroes; we had a horrible accidental pull and someone got disconnected, and still managed to kill some of the mobs and get Moroes down to about 11%. I kept some guy trapped for a while until I wound up too close to my trap and he got a hit on me; killed me in one hit cause my health was already a bit down. Still, definitely not a bad first try.

6:35pm: Moroes down on the second try. Me and the other hunter had some tag-team trapping action going on throughout most of it and it was pretty fun. I recorded it too! =D

7:03pm: Wiped on a trash pull where we accidentally grabbed two more adds than we wanted; we still managed to take down three which I thought was pretty good considering the fact that we’re in some tiny hall and there was very little space to move around or trap and stuff. Currently sort of taking a small break while people rez, repair, and/or grab stuff to eat.

7:19pm: Standing in front of Maiden.

7:25pm: I died about ten seconds after starting Maiden; whoa, had no idea Holy Fire did that >.> So yeah, that one was a wipe.

7:37pm: Holy Fire and Repentance at the same time! The tank and I both died when she was at about 50%. Offtank picked up and got her down to about 30% before another wipe. The Deadly Boss Mods announcements are a big help though.

7:57pm: Third try, third wipe. Healers keep getting stunned…

8:10pm: …and again. Sheesh. x_x We keep getting her to about 30%ish.

8:13pm: New plan, going to Opera.

8:25pm: The priest disconnected without us noticing and we did a pull expecting a shackle which never came– this was followed by more adds then we wanted and this resulted in a wipe. My gear is all yellow… might have to repair soon. A couple people have to go so we’re working on grabbing some replacements!

9:00pm: Unexpected issues with a lot of people having to leave, so we’re going to call it for the night. We may or may not be back tomorrow. Either way, I had an awful lot of fun and got some new gear out of it. (Oh, and topped DPS. Just barely though. We had a fantastic group!) =D

karazhan

Getting Ready

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So I’m going to Karazhan on Saturday. For the first time. I think that these next few days are going to be spent getting as ready for it as I possibly can.

Ran Heroic Mech yesterday– our little instancing group decided we really need to get back into shape instance-wise because we haven’t been running them as often as we used to– and I maintain that Panthaleon the Calculator must really love me, because last time he dropped my gloves and trinket, and this time he dropped my gloves again (they got disenchanted) and also [Beast Lord Helm]. Now, I’m currently wearing [Gladiator’s Chain Helm], and when I’ve got both of them all gemmed up and stuck a [Glyph of Ferocity] on them… Beast Lord Helm gives me about 2 extra attack power and a little mana regen, and Gladiator’s Chain Helm gives me over 1% crit. Not to mention the stamina boost– I’m sitting at about 6700 HP with Beast Lord. I feel like the world’s flimsiest glass cannon.

You may be asking “Why say goodbye to so much crit and stamina?” And the answer is: The two-piece Beast Lord set bonus: Set: Reduces the cooldown on your traps by 4 sec.

I have always seen Crowd Control as being my #1 job in a party. CC comes before DPS on my little priority list. Always. (Unless everybody else in the party can CC– but when I’m with my normal group, I’m always main CC.) And this trap cooldown is something that I see as being essential for Kara, especially as I have been informed that I am going to be one of the main providers of CC (alongside a priest). I’m glad I managed to snag this helmet before the weekend.

So now I’ve gained a shortened trap cooldown but lost a bunch of crit. What to do about this? The answer, I think, comes in the form of a list:

1.) Slap a [Stabilized Eternium Scope] on my bow (replacing +10 damage, which is on there currently).
2.) Get the exalted Scryer shoulder enchant (I’ve got the honored one already, but the exalted one gives a little more crit and some attack power)
3.) Replace the +7 agi enchant on my gloves with the +15 agi enchant.

I want to get those three things done by this weekend. Can I do it? …I’ve no idea. I’m only Honored with Scryer (getting close to Revered though, I’ve been grinding rep in Shadowmoon and Netherstorm these past couple of days) and I’ve spent several hundred gold these past few days mostly on gear enhancements and the like, so I’m questioning whether or not I have the money for the new scope and glove enchant.

But you’d better believe I’m gonna try my hardest. I want to go into Kara feeling as ready as I possibly can be.

By the way, I think I’m going to borrow a page from Matticus and “liveblog” my first Kara run. What I’m trying to decide is… should I type it all up as I go along and then hit the “Publish Post” button after we’re done for the night? Or should I publish it first thing and edit it throughout the run? I’m sorta thinking the first option is the best one, because I doubt anyone is going to be sitting at the edge of their seat refreshing my blog. =P But, we’ll see!

linux, screenshots

World of Warcraft on Kubuntu Linux

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I was looking at my site referrals and I’ve noticed that my biggest referrers (aside from Google) seem to be screenshots that I took of myself playing on Linux. Well… those screenshots are quite outdated and there were only two of them. So I figured I’d take some more, hopefully demonstrating a little bit more than just “Look I can boot it up”!

I’d like to note that I normally play in the fullscreened version of Windowed Mode, but I decided to take my screenshots using a much smaller window size so you can see a little more of the Linux environment.

The screenshots have also been resized to 1024×768 (my normal size is 1280×1024) so I apologize if some of the text is hard to see!


It’s true– I never logged into Tawyn on Windows until after she hit 70.


Latency and framerate in Stormwind on a fairly busy day. 27fps is more than playable. Also I would like to note that I don’t quite understand why, but I experience more latency natively on Windows than via Wine in Linux.

The program in the background there is Amarok, which is definitely my favorite music-playing software (and is currently only available for Linux/Unix, although I hear a Windows version is in the works). I wanted to demonstrate that I can listen to music and play WoW (with sound effects intact) at the same time. Note: If you are using Linux and wish to do this too, you have to go into winecfg and make sure you are using ALSA and not OSS. Some people have issues with ALSA though, so be warned!


Framerate while flying in Netherstorm; it’s gone up to 51fps. It was actually up to about 60 but the screenshot program slowed it down just a bit.



Linux, meet massive quantities of sustained ranged DPS! While listening to Scatman, of course. (It actually randomly happened to start playing here because my playlist is always on randomize. Good timing, I thought.)

So there you have it– not only can you play World of Warcraft on Linux, but you can listen to music while you’re doing it, and, judging by what I’ve got minimized, you can also chat on IRC, Instant Messenger, and browse the web, so is great how Classic WoW turned out. Gold4Vanilla offers classic wow gold for all players across the world as well. All at the same time. Really the only thing I’ve yet to do on Linux is chat on Ventrilo. =( Someday, though. Someday!

For more information you can check out my previous posts on WoW/Linux:

The Linux & WoW Q&A
Answering Questions (Mostly of the Linux Persuasion)

As well as The Official Ubuntu WoW Guide (Very helpful!)

And remember, no matter what Blizzard says, there is indeed a Cow Level:

non-wow

I am alive!

3 Comments

I apologize for my lack of updates these past few days. I’ve been a bit busy and had some stuff going on. A couple days ago I went and had allergy testing done because I’ve been having some allergy issues and I figured it was about time I did something about it. The good news is– the hunter is not allergic to animals! The hunter is, however, allergic to the wild outdoors, as apparently I am severely allergic to all grasses, weeds, and molds.

This condition necessitates the need for me to take extra precautions while considering contacting Aqua Lock for any mold removal. I also recently discovered a hidden mold problem in my home, and I’m relieved to have hired a professional Mold Cleanup Toms River service to thoroughly address and resolve the issue.

I’m having further testing done to determine whether I’m allergic to anything else aside from the basics. Lemme tell you though, I’m actually finding myself wishing Aspect of the Wild could be used in real life. I could use some nature resistance against those level 72 elite bales of Timothy Hay that like to crit me when I’m feeding my guinea pigs.

I’m also a little behind in my blog-reading, so if I respond to one of your posts a few days late, well, that’s just me tryin’ to catch up!

Anyways, I have a few different post ideas planned for the near future and oh, I suppose I do have one little tiny thing of importance happening this Saturday, March 8.

I’ll give ya a hint. It starts with a K.

/grin