…my family got me this shirt:
It even has Tux on the top!
I am in love.
All posts by Pike
Dear Google
Every so often I check my Sitemeter referrals to see how people are finding my blog. I do this mostly to see if anyone is linking to me that I don’t know about yet, so I can go check out their site and perhaps reciprocate the link =D But a lot of people find my site through Google, too. There are a few search terms that people consistently seem to be finding my site from; I wanted to address some of those here. So without further ado…
If you have found my site through Google and are searching for information on one of the following things, here is any help I can offer:
Pike World: This is probably the one that I get the most hits from. I have no idea what Pike World is but it sure is popular. I’ve Google’d it myself and the closest thing I can find to a “Pike World” is “Pike’s World: Exploration and Empire in the Greater Southwest”, a museum exhibit in Colorado that I don’t think is around anymore. If this sounds like what you were searching for, then here’s a link to it.
Leveling a low-level pet in WoW: Unfortunately I know of no easy way to do this. Once, quite some time ago, I wrote a post on my own attempts at doing this and my own little strategy. You can find that post here. However, keep in mind that I wrote that post a few months ago when I was still in my 50s, level-wise. Also keep in mind that I think this mostly comes down to finding your own little strategy. The next patch should make pets level up faster, though, so that’s always a plus. For more general pet-related information I direct you to Petopia and Mania’s Arcania. A quick search of my own also turned up this guide.
Linux and WoW: I wrote up a basic Q&A about this which you can find here. You might want to try searching for information regarding your specific distro. If you use a ‘buntu then I can’t recommend Ubuntu Forums enough.
Linux and Ventrilo: Unfortunately I have yet to get Ventrilo working entirely on Linux, although I plan on making a more concerted effort sometime soon. The best advice I can give to you is to check out this thread on Ubuntu Forums, and also this great guide over at Synarch (the blog formerly known as /dev/random).
Funny WoW Huntard Stories: /chuckle Well, I’m sure you can find a few of ’em if you look around my site long enough… though I try to focus more on being a “good huntard”…
Hunters in Battlegrounds: I wrote up a few basic information posts on being a hunter in battlegrounds, the series starts here. They are more aimed for PvP-newbies, though, so if you have some experience already they might be too “basic” for you.
Guides on How To Be a Good Hunter: While I am immensely flattered that my blog somehow shows up when you search for this… I cannot in good conscience keep anyone away from BigRedKitty. Read the articles he has posted on his sidebar under “Hunter Training List”. Read the comments. Read more articles. Visit his forums and ask questions.
If for some reason you come back to my blog after feasting on the wisdom of BRK, then glance at the blogs I have in my blogrolls on my sidebar. Click on some links and explore them. There are a lot of blogs out there that provide very valuable information.
…if after that you still come back to my blog for some reason, well make yourself at home and feel free to leave me a comment or question or two. ^^
Alrighty, there you have it, Google-searchers! Have fun.
Instances and Groups
The other day I wound up in a partial-PuG and partial-guildies group for Steamvaults. This was probably not a wise idea for many reasons, including the fact that it’s a level 70 instance and we were all hovering around level 68, and as it turned out… the PuG members were rather… less than ideal.
I went into it really wanting to do a good job, because the healer whispered me and begged me to be a good hunter, he told me that the last five or so hunters he’d grouped with had been horrible. So of course, this is where Pike’s HUNTER-PRIDE ACTIVATED! And I told him not to worry. But it just wasn’t meant to be. We were wiping on every other pull, we were having issues with the PuG’d people, gigantic annoying plants kept blocking everybody’s vision, and overall it just wasn’t working. So we scrapped the run.
We still wanted to do an instance, though, so we said goodbye to the PuG-players and picked up people from our guild to flesh out our little party. This particular party now was one that we had all been in many times before– our usual tank, our usual healer, and I as the usual CC, etc. We decided to do Escape from Durnholde Keep.
How was the instance run? Well, by most standards, I think, it went pretty well. We had a couple problems and a couple wipes (one of which was entirely my fault, by the way; it involved me not paying attention and running blindly around a corner straight into a bunch of mobs) and a couple near-wipes, but overall the run went well; all the group members were fulfilling their role’s function to above-satisfactory levels and for the most part, everything went smoothly.
However, we all left the instance feeling sort of less-than-satisfied and thinking we could have done a lot better.
It was kind of odd, but then I thought about it and I started thinking: maybe it’s just the fact that our group has worked together so many times before. We’ve grown a sort of synergy with each other, and developed high expectations of each other, and acknowledge that there are high expectations on us as individual group members; so when a run isn’t 100% flawless, we sort of beat ourselves up over it. That’s my guess over why we felt so unsatisfied.
I’m still trying to decide if those high-expectations are a good thing for a guild or group to have, or if it might cause issues down the road if everyone is striving for “that perfect run” and it is always a little bit out of our reach. We are a very laid-back social and light-roleplaying guild, but we also have a core group of higher-level instance-running members and our expectations for instance-running people are pretty high. I hope that’s the right attitude to have and that it doesn’t cause problems later on. I can’t say, because this is my first time around, so I can really just hope.
Anyways, I hit level 69 last night. It’s very surreal how close I am to 70…
Oh, and before I forget: Escape from Durnholde Keep is the coolest instance idea ever. I ran around Old Hillsbrad for about a half hour after the instance was done, geeking out over the lore.
Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!
It's that time of the level-bracket again.
I’ve sort of been taken a break from leveling this whole past week. There were two main reasons for this. The first one is that The Boyfriend (hmm, should I call him Mr. Pike? Heehee) has been pretty busy, so he got about a level behind me. We try to stay equal in level, especially as we’re approaching 70, so I told him I would wait to level until he’d caught up.
The second reason is that I decided it would be fun to focus on PvP for a while. The reasons for this include wanting to stockpile honor and marks now so I have a jump on the level 70 PvP gear (I learned the hard way yesterday that going into the level 70 bracket AV with level 68 gear is… not a pleasant experience)… and the fact that I just plain like battlegrounds. I think my PvP skill is improving, too… I will still refrain from calling myself very good at PvP, but it felt good to see this:
I am usually near the top of the “Damage Done” charts, but I am very rarely actually first, so it was a nice surprise to see this. I’ve also noticed that my kiting skills have improved lately, and I’ve discovered a lot of little things about playing hunters in PvP that I should have known before, but didn’t. For example: Rogues love Serpent Sting. …actually, they really hate it. *cough* Because they can’t stealth if they’ve got it. I never knew this before! Fantastic. Oh, and The Beast Within handily works as, effectively, a second trinket. I didn’t know this either. Oh the fun I’ve had since I found this out. Can’t regain distance because of a warrior’s Hamstring or a rogue’s Crippling Poison? Pop The Beast Within and get back to business.
Speaking of which, I’ve noticed lately that there’s sort of been a complete turnaround for me in terms of classes that I do well against and classes that I don’t do well against. In my earlier levels, warriors and rogues were the bane of my existence. These days, I do quite well against them. Meanwhile, warlocks, who I was always pretty good at taking out before, have suddenly become near-invincible. I’m not sure if it has to do with the talents of our respective classes, or if it’s just a change in my playstyle, or maybe both. But it’s quite interesting.
Anyways, while I’ve had a lot of fun in the battlegrounds this week, I have been bitten by the dreaded Level 70 Bug, so I’ve started up my questing again. The newly-christened Mr. Pike is now at level 68 with me and we want to spend the weekend leveling. We’ll see how far we get!
My First Screenshot
Firstly, I would like to thank everyone for their input on my question about WordPress. When it comes down to it, I don’t really have any big plans for this blog (yet), and a custom domain name would be nice but it’s definitely not a top priority right now. This would suggest that sticking to Blogger would be just fine, but I am curious about the types of customization that WordPress seems to offer. So I think I will probably end up making a WordPress blog and messing around with it for a while, and then deciding whether to make the switch or not. Either way, I will keep you all posted.
However, this post is about something entirely different, namely, the first screenshot that I ever took in WoW:
That, my friends, is Tawyn Q. Huntard, Esq.
I don’t have Hunter’s Mark on my action bars anywhere because I figured I’d run out of room to put new spells, and Hunter’s Mark didn’t sound very exciting to me anyway.
Tux is there, yes, which is a wonder because I had no food for him when I first tamed him and now that I look back on it I’m lucky I managed to get some food in time. You will notice he does not know Growl. I had no idea that move existed; my general strategy at this point was shoot stuff and make it come to me so my pet and I could melee it together. Yes… it’s sad, but true.
The raid icon is above my head because I’d been grouping with a friend who wanted to show me around and they started messing around and putting those icons above my head, which was freaking me out because I had no idea what they were or what they did.
I am in Menethil because I was whisked away to Stormwind at the wee level of 6, but at level 10 I got the quest to tame my first pet and I had to return to Teldrassil. I used my hearth to get back (since I’d forgotten to set it to something in the human lands), but it was on the trek back with my new pet that I forgot all about the flight paths I had collected last time and I needessly walked basically the entire way, dying multiple times.
The reason I took this screenshot was because I found it amusing that the Menethil Sentry was partially submerged in the ground. Ironic that now I see things like that all over the place in Outlands… heehee =P
So yeah. At least I had Aspect of the Hawk on…
I’d like to think Tux and I are doing a lot better these days.
You readers, if you are up to it, are hearby dared to post or link to the newbie-est screenshot of yourself that you can find!
(Oh, and ding 68)
Quick Blog-Related Question
The new current fad seems to be switching from Blogger to WordPress; BRK just did it yesterday but a lot of other bloggers have done it recently as well.
What I’m wondering is… would it be worth it for me to make the switch as well? I know a lot of people have been praising WordPress for being more customizable and whatnot… I guess I’m just curious to know a comparison of some of the features they offer verses some of the ones Blogger does. Because up ’til now I’ve sort of been taking the view of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, which is why I’ve been sticking with Blogger.
Another reason I’m wary of switching is because I don’t want to annoy people with having to update bookmarks or RSS feeds or blogrolls. And I worry my readership might take a bit of a hit– not that I’m super popular or anything, but 60-70 hits a day really isn’t too shabby, and I kinda like those hits… makes me think I might actually be a decent writer or something! =P
So I will leave the opinions open to you guys; because you guys are the ones who read my blog so I’d like to know what you think. Do the benefits of moving to WordPress outweigh the possible cons? Are there any other good blogging software or sites out there that I should consider also? My personal journal is over at LiveJournal (and has been for over three years) but even though I love LJ it’s more for exactly that, personal journals, instead of blogging.
What do you guys think?
Lessons Learned in Warsong Gulch
People respond to kindness:
I’m sure most of you have been there. The battlegrounds game where within five minutes, somebody has, say… taken the flag but then something goes wrong and they lose it. And then somebody pipes up with “Wow you guys suck.”
I’m here to say… don’t let your team have that attitude.
“Nah, we don’t suck, we just got off to a bad start”, I said. “Come on, we can do it.”
“Yeah,” a couple other people sort of tentatively agreed.
And so we were off again. After some hard battling we managed to capture a flag.
“See? We can do it. Now we just have to keep it up.”
That was basically really all I had to say. It took off from there, people encouraging each other, thanking each other, and helping each other out. Mr. “Wow-you-guys-suck” decided to be obnoxious again at some point, proudly proclaiming his top position on the damage meters to everyone and making a big deal out of “why can’t you guys keep up”, but a quick “Yes, you’re doing a good job, keep it up everyone” reminded him that it was a group effort and hushed him up pretty quick.
Somehow, someway, after nearly an hour-long game, our scrappy little team won that Warsong Gulch game 3-0. Even with one of our members AFK nearly the entire time. Furthermore, while Mr. Originally-Obnoxious-But-Really-Not-So-Bad kept his top spot in the damage charts at the end, there were four more of us up there with him.
Was it my encouragement and our team’s overall helpful attitude that gave us this victory? Maybe we’ll never know. But I’d like to think that it at least helped a little. I’ve had similar things happen to me before; our team coming from behind and winning not because of our skill so much as because of our attitude. Don’t underestimate the power of a little encouragement; it can go a long way.
I love worthy opponents:
I ran across a female orc hunter in a completely different WSG match. She was Beast Mastery spec’d, like myself, and she and her bright green Windserpent were good. At some point early on in the game, I think we both subconsciously decided that it was a matter of hunter pride to make each other our sparring partner, so throughout the entire game we were hunting each other down and taking each other on 1 on 1. Sometimes I won, but most of the time she did. I’ve long thought that most hunter-on-hunter matches come down to gear and stamina, but this orc had skill. You could tell. I wish I’d had time to /salute her before the game ended, she was a fun opponent.
Level 19 Mage PvP:
My mage got to level 19 and I took her to WSG a few times. It was my first time PvP’ing as something other than a hunter, and I’d like to think I did decently, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. Not to mention that it’s tough being a squishy in there.
Somehow I managed to do less overall relative damage than I do as a hunter, but got a lot more killing blows. It was kind of strange.
Not being able to track people was driving me insane, though, and I missed all the other hunter abilities too. After a few games I missed my hunter so much that I had to log out of the mage and onto the hunter, and that’s where the previous WSG stories came from.
Just a few more levels until the level 70 battlegrounds! If any of you guys happen to play on the US battlegroup “Bloodlust” then I look forward to working with you… or sparring with you!… soon. Give me a /wave!
Just a Bit More on WoW Gender-Bending
I got a lot of great comments in my previous post about this subject, and I’ve seen some more articles too. What’s great is that it’s shown me there are a lot of valid reasons to play the opposite gender in WoW– more reasons than I’d even thought of before.
Maebius says that he plays the opposite gender in order to specifically avoid making just an “avatar of himself”.
Matticus says female characters let you see more of the screen.
Mirsh just recently wrote up a great article about how he’s been able to discover and express new aspects of himself through playing the opposite gender in WoW.
Anyways, I just wanted to thank everybody for their comments and responses; I’ve really discovered a new appreciation for playing the opposite gender… like I said before, it was never that I had a problem with it, so much as I was a bit mystified by how widespread it was. But it turns out there are a lot of very good reasons for it that hadn’t occurred to me.
And now I’m inspired; I want to go make a male gnome rogue, I’ve got some great character ideas floating around in my head for him… and yes, I know I’ve said before that I can’t stand playing melee classes, especially rogues, but I dunno, it seems like I’ve had an unusually high number of people recently telling me how fun rogues are, I think maybe something’s trying to tell me to give it another shot. It’s so hard for me to play other classes, because to me… WoW = hunter, for the most part. But sometimes, it’s nice to wander off and do something completely different. Hence why my mage will randomly get sudden spurts of playtime.
I have way too many blog post ideas, I should really start writing them down…
Wipes. Not the Baby Kind.
I have been tagged by Bremm to share my five “worst wipes”. Unfortunately I fear that, largely because I have only been playing for seven months… well, I don’t have two years’ worth of wipes to draw on. So some of these are rather less than exciting, but are more… “You had to be there” types of moments.
Five Worst Wipes Meme
-invented by Pelides
1. Dire Maul: We were near the end of this instance, in some gigantic room and we had to get to a little circular area in the middle to fight a boss. The other four members of the party got there just fine, but I was loitering around for some reason. Finally they informed me that I should join them, so I headed towards them… and ran into a patrolling mob. Okay, one patrolling mob, I can handle it, especially since my fellow group members can help me… oh wait, there’s another mob… and another… and another…
…and we wiped, thanks to me not listening and following my groupmates fast enough.
(Actually now that I think about it this may have only been a semi-wipe; I think me and a couple other people died but not everyone.)
2. Sunken Temple: So… that room where you have to summon the dragon god and there’s all those mobs trying to stop you, as you gather items from them to put out the four fires? The first time I did this room, nobody in our group knew you were supposed to do that. The putting-out-the-fires thing, that is. We fought wave after wave of nonstop mobs for ten or fifteen minutes and died a very slow and painful death thanks mostly to eventually running out of mana and having all our good stuff on cooldown. I still shudder just thinking about that room, despite the fact that I’ve done it successfully since then.
3. Underbog: There’s a sort of dragon-type boss whose name I can’t remember; he’s standing on a big ledge, really high above some water. The first time my group ran this, it didn’t occur to us that the boss could push you off the edge. So there we were, starting the boss, expecting your typical tank’n’spank and suddenly the tank was gone. One minute he was there, the next… *poof*… no more tank. The “Uh…”‘s in party chat were met with the tank’s reply, “He pushed me off into the water” about a second before the rest of us turned into dragon food, still with silly looks of mystification on our faces I’m sure.
Now whenever we fight this boss, we pull him to the wall first. No more disappearing tanks for us!
4. Dire Maul, Again: I mentioned this a couple posts back. Basically I jumped off a ledge, forgetting a little minor detail: my pet. A few minutes later, in the midst of minding our own business, Locke runs up with more elite mobs than I’ve seen in my life hot on his tail. Our whole party was squashed basically before I could blink. It was embarassing but oh-so-hilarious.
5. Zul’Farrak: We aggro’d one of the scarabs. Enough said.
So, there ya go! I tag… whoever wants to do it! (I’m not very good at this tagging thing.)
Oh, and ding 67… yes, ignore my Armory profile and the banners on my blog that are dependent on my Armory profile. The Armory hasn’t updated my character in a week now, and I’ve no idea why (especially since my guildies are getting updated just fine…)