Elkagorasa the Casual

Being a California native and dad of 2 small kids, I have made numerous trips to the Magic Kingdom. Mickey is good friends with this orc and his kin. As an adult, one of the most intriguing aspects of Disneyland is mystic and freshness of everything. I can't help but marvel at the perfect flower beds, the clean park grounds and newness of everything. The time, I played the Human starting area, I thought darn aren't flower beds neat and grounds tidy. Dungeon = Ride . Finish one ride, er, heroic dungeon, simply re-queue. Like on Splash Mountain, Brer Fox and Brer Bear will be right there again with Brer Rabbit captured (in honey) again, waiting for you to save him. Disneyland @ Christmas Holidays are never forgotten. Long is Disney's, and Blizzard's tradition of celebrating the holidays. Ok, this is a bit of a stretch, but I wanted to include it, especially since we're just ending a long series of in-game holidays.  Interesting Cinematics - Now, I don...

The 4.2 patch is going to drop. MMO-Champion estimates this coming Tuesday (6/28). Sounds good, as it will give most people the long (US) holiday weekend to explore the Firelands new content and get them prepared for the new raid content. Reminder on Currency Conversion : With this new raiding tier, comes the standard currency conversion. At least, unlike Wrath, Blizzard isn't going to create a new currency, per se. They are simply going to devalue your current valor points, so that they are equivalent to Justice points. I'd like to suggest you spend some points this today and get yourself under 4000 combined total. I am a little torn about what to buy. What you could buy now for valor points, will be purchasable in 4.2 for Justice points. So no effective price difference between today and next week. If you have enough, buy a valor item now. If you have an abundance of Justice Points, then buy a BOA item and send it to that alt you've neglected. The BOA gear isn'...

Just before midnight on June 19th, Eride reached level 80. It wasn't that momentous. We had just killed the second to last boss of Oculus and loot was being distributed. I almost completely missed grabbing a screenshot when it happened. Happily, I was able to switch to healer (green) dragon rather easily after a test wipe. Spam #1 on boss, then it's a warlock style health funnel (#3) on the party. At 80 : BOA gear didn't appear to grant extra XP; when turning in a quest. I flipped between a level 80 green chest and the boa chest and saw the same 7500 xp for a hyjal quest.  BOA gear has an estimated iLevel of 187.  By replacing my wrath BOA gear, with cata greens, I was able to get to up to an ilevel of 216. I spent approximately 150g at the AH and bought 4 or 5 ilevel 265+ gear.  Questing in Hyjal , is, well, boring. At least compared to dungeon running. (IMHO). I completed 16 quests into the area, picked up a nice 275 green quest reward staff, then looked for so...

At least when I logged Sunday night I was absolutely positive that I had. See, upon logging into Warcraft, I was not prompted for my authenticator pin. I was sure that a hacker had my password and removed my authenticator from my account! To make matters worse, it was taking dreadfully long to get into my account last night, as Warcraft actually failed to load correctly. I immediately went over to us.battle.net and found that my authenticator worked there. Hmm. OK, not removed. Come to find out, that Blizzard did this on purpose. They had implemented a new policy that states if you consistently access your account from the same location, they won't prompt for your authenticator, regularly. Why didn't I get an Authenticator prompt this time? The Authenticator system will now intelligently track your login locations, and if you are logging in consistently from the same location, you may not be asked for an authenticator code. This change was made to make the authenti...

I just finished listening to a fun little audio book drama. The story which, isn't safe for the mini-van, has a strong female character, a good dose of humor and is wonderfully put together with numerous voice actors. At the end of the book, the main character states that ( I shall garble it up... ), if don't break the rules, those who make the rules are in control, so break the rules and be yourself . This got me thinking... < scroll idle thoughts logo >.. (pressing a little harder on accelerator ).. I like to think of myself as an individual. I play a warlock, the loner class of WoW. What are a few rules that we can break? Spend talent points on things seldom used by a build. I play a destro lock, with points into the Jinx talent ( 9/1/31 ). Why? Cuz, I want my CoE to spread around. Mana conservation on this highly mana intensive build. Of course, when I play Destro, I am usually lower on the DPS/Damage counters than when I play demo. ?? Maybe that's a bad...

My Disc Priest has reached the time in her career where she's just about out grown her BOA gear. Last night, she reached level 78. In every other expansion, the last two expansions (58, 68), she seamlessly jumped into the next expansion dungeons. Cataclysm changed that and she'll be stuck leveling the final two in the Wrath dungeons. Up until last night, I had been trying to figure out what she was going to wear upon hitting 80. I was even thinking that I should invest in the Priest tier-10 gear available in Dalaran. See 5 of my pieces of gear have stuck around since level 15 and I haven't really thought about what to wear. Chest Shoulders (quit wearing those about 2 levels ago) Main hand Trinket 1 Trinket 2 Now, last night, I did a search and amidst the Wrath BOE (ilevel 160 - 180) gear, I spotted a ilevel 300 item that I could use. Yes! Cataclysm gear that my level 78 Disc could use. (Can I start go to Hyjal??) Run over to Orgrimmar, wander around the cata ...

I just realized the full impact of the upcoming 4.2 currency conversion. See, I have been saving my valor points in order to purchase that 700 valor point wand, immediately when 4.2 drops. Unfortunately, it appears Blizzard is not going to let that happen. With the release of patch 4.2 all Valor Points will be converted down to Justice Points up to the 4000 point cap, with any points over the cap being converted to gold at a rate of 47 silver per point. In addition, all previous Tier 11 Valor items will now be purchasable with Justice from the Justice Point vendors, and new Tier 12 Valor items will be available from the Valor vendors. ( source ) So, if your valor + justice points equal more than 4000, SPEND SPEND SPEND . Buy an heirloom piece, buy a bag of goodies.  Personally, the 47 silver for each point over 4000, isn't going to be worth it. At least, I'll get my 2 more tier items ( legs and hands ) immediately. Final note: The last PTR download was under 5mb. Besides ...

Over at Disciplinary Action , they've gone through all of the various classes and displayed their best characteristics as a stained glass window. (Edit) Nicely done, so that half the windows are alliance and half are Horde. The warlock, is Goblin.. :) (Guess I needed to look closer at each one). (Also a great resource if your alt is a disc priest.)

Sharden asked How do you think dying in an MMO should affect the characters? In WoW we have a relatively insignificant repair cost from durability for a PVE death and no consequence for dying to another player. Do you think this is enough, too much, or needing improvement?  1UP I had thought a bit about dying in our MMO. As a fairly avid video game player since the 90's, I've had my fair share of virtual deaths. In many of those games, dying meant returning to a save-point; be it one manually triggered when I thought I was doing good, or the milestone-type rebirth you get in a Wii game, dying seldom meant an actual death. Usually the death was fairly painless. Sure, you may have to replay a portion of content over again, or lose one of those precious "lives" you have gathered in the game, but you went on. In Warcraft, the world does not stop; the game does not go back in time upon your death. Despite all my best efforts, The World of Warcraft does not revolve...

Last night's raid failed. We simply didn't have enough people to get the party off the ground. Sure, it was our healer's RL birthday, so he and his wife (2nd healer) didn't log on. Unfortunately, the crowd 3 people that did logon weren't motivated to do anything else. No raid? Guild chat is filled with a round of  g'night! all. Sadly, no one wanted to run a single heroic.. :( I blame the pug. Nobody loves 'em. Everyone hates that he rubs his hiney on the carpet, has smelly, kibble breath, and constantly yelps. As I mentioned earlier, even the bag of goodies for the Dungeon Call to Arms, doesn't appear to be encouraging those necessary players to 'do one for the team'. Really, why ? Most people who are seriously raiding multiple times a night have all the gear they could want. They are either sporting an average ilevel of 359 gear (or heroically higher), or are very close to max'd out on tier gear. No need to suffer the pug's smell...

If you haven't seen it, take a look over a the DPS edition of Ask a Dev . Here are questions that are coming up on the forums. If  you have questions, that you would like the Blizzard devs to answer, now is the time to submit. Here's the warlock related items, in no apparent order ('cept how I found them). 2 questions about new skin for our pets. Really?? (#8 and #47) Thoughts about Warlock dots? (#101) "only one warlock PVP build?" (#10 & #77) How about an entire PVP tree (Rift anyone?)? single target dps for demo locks?(#24 & #71) complex warlock rotation at low levels for minimal dps gain (as compared to dps gains at higher levels). (#35) using felhunter as a demo lock?  ( #47) soulburn revamp? Only 2, maybe 3 good uses. Any chances to add new functionality? (I like soulburn + soul stone for instant battle-rez!?) (#39 & 71) Revamp of warlock talent trees, demo = buffbot, destro straddled with ISF (#118) Soul swap explained.. (#82) Possi...

I logged onto the PTR tonight (5/31 - 6/1) and decided to take things for a spin. Since "a picture is worth a thousand words", here's my wall of text: A i378 Wand for 700 valor. Good bye Corla's Baton. (yes there is also a healer wand ) Update: As Xayide pointed out in the comments, they just introduced a Crystalized Firestone Quartermaster in Firelands. There's more info on this on the Wowhead blog , but by downing a Firelands boss (minimum gear iLevel 355 requirement) you can pickup a firestone and exchange the stone with your item to get the i392 item.  New i378 Valor point bracers . ( Healer and DPS) New Tier Gear is the same price as existing valor gear. Old Tier Gear is priced equivalently, just in JP. Last, a new animation for Soul Harvest! No longer look like a shadow priest. I don't remember a portal in Hyjal back to Orgrimmar?? Finally, I ended the night, by starting the epic quest chain to rescue Thrall. I got ab...