Elkagorasa the Casual

Here's what happened last expansion. I never saw several of the fights because I can't manage to randomly get into a brand new LFR " Downfall " group. 

g'bye old friend 6 years ago, I purchased a refurbished HP M8307C from Fry's Electronics. This PC featuring a screaming Core 2 Quad 6600 processor was wonderful when I first go it. Over the years, I've added more RAM (upto 6GB), added several hard drives (now have 4TB storage) and replaced the video adapter after it burnt out. Last Friday, after issues with performance and a very frustrated spouse, I plopped down the credit card. I bought the computer from Digital Storm , based on a friend's recommendation. I had been looking at an off-the-shelf HP or Dell from the local CostCo . He likes Digital Storm because they build specifically gaming machines. This means faster video adapters instead of the card built into the motherboard. Better cooling on the CPU so that it's easier to overclock it. A higher (600w) wattage power supply so that you can fully power the machine. Top it off, they don't have the high sticker price that would come from buying AlienWar...

This morning I jump into my WoW reading list to see that Beta invites have gone out. Woo-hoo! It's drawing closer! This got me excited, hey, did I get one also? Look into my Battle.net associated mailbox and what do I find? Well, that's awesome! I think... With all the coverage from the open Alpha that's been streaming, constant flood of updates on WoWhead about this UI change and those new do-hickey accessory things, it's been a bit too much. Am I excited about the new expansion? Sure. It sounds like a lot of great ideas are finally coming together. New character models, "player housing", etc. All fine and dandy. Do I want to see it early? I think so . With Cataclysm, I explored the Goblin starting area and went all the way through the underwater Vashjir(?) quest line. Pandas I took it slower and played the Panda starting area up to a point. It changed quite a bit by the time I came back on Live. With all the Warlock changes, I had to try out all thre...

Elkagorasa was getting a little bored waiting for his turn. Esha-this, druid-that. Just left this 'lock bored and frustrated. So frustrated that when he finally got his chance at the Brawler's , he blasted the Bruce , then Vian , Goredome and Vishas all within a few seconds. The only thing slowing down Elk was the line. Fight, win, requeue, wait for 2 other players, repeat. 2 days later, Elk ran back to the fight hall late at night and found no one else there. Empty! Hey Boss, get me a fight!  Rank 2, done. Rank 3, done. Rank 4, done... The only fight that Elk had to do twice was Ixx  because he stood in front of him and his Devastating Thrust . Now he is up to Yikkan Izu . This evil bird has been the first real challenge. Sort of like the giant baby head in the Green Fire quest line, he spawn lots of adds ( 4 at a time) who do decent damage. Something I still haven't mastered on the other quest either.. This large crow thing has one annoying thing about him - add...

I have just recently completed listening to the War Crimes audio edition. This book, as if you don't already know, takes place soon after the events that happened in Siege of Orgrimmar. King Wrynn has saved Garrosh's life and he now stands trial for his crimes against Azeroth. To make this work you have to make two concessions: Horde and Alliance can openly talk. Blizzard has already established this part of the lore via the SoO ending cut scene, but I guess we've had this in all forms for awhile. We can both talk to the Pandarian ,  Kirin Tor , and the Goblins . It's just player-to-player communication that doesn't work in-game. (We're just not worthy!) Just by being a leader of a race, you are now a pretty good litigator. Sure, you've had to deal with political in-fighting, this must  qualify you to defend or accuse in a court of law, er, celestial training facility.  The story provides a lot of wonderful backstory to events leading up to and ...

This week has been rather fruitful for my druid. Got another Burden of Eternity, so I converted a head  token. Of course, then ...  Tanked phase 1 of Siege of Orgrimmar successfully, picking up 3 items, head , neck and trinket 2 . No wipes and very few deaths and now only one item still left post-boost set (main hand). Sort of liking the look of the head piece, so not sure if I'll transmog it back to Rayne piece or keep it. Realized as a Blacksmith, I can make my own belt buckle . (doh!) No excuse now for not having one equipped. They're still selling for 500+ gold on my server, whereas the living steel sells for around 250-400 gold. Took about 4 hours, going through Klaxxi quest chain to reach Honored and pickup recipe . Having two alchemist (only one with recipe), I made the living steel as well. 60 Ghost Iron bars = 1 living steel bar. A stack of 20 ghost iron are selling for about 80g. So for about 250g I made myself a buckle.  In the process of running ...

For the last 2 weeks, I've been having a lot of fun with the addon  oQueue . If you haven't used this add-on before, it's something the helps breathe new life into the game. What does it do? oQueue allows users from cross-domains find each other. Players can setup a request for other players, post it out there. Then players see that request popup, and request to be put on the wait list. If the event organizer loves you, they can send you a meeting invite and off you go! This is the addon that Blizzard hopes their new Group Finder will replace. BUT will they go far enough? Another central innovation in Warlords is our Group Finder feature, which will allow players to easily form and search for raid groups (among other activities) with players from their entire region. [...] For players who want to take the next step beyond Raid Finder, or who want to find a weekend run for their alt, or who just need a last-minute tenth member for their raid, Group Finder will make th...

Spent about 2 hours yesterday gathering up items from the Discovery Transmog . The beauty of this set (especially if you haven't quested during leveling up) is that all the pieces drop from quests and not random drops off mobs. I've gotten 4 of 6 pieces so far and found a belt on the AH that I like (so far). Head piece is from a single quest given by Rayne in Eastern Plaguelands. At 90, I could fly directly into the towers, drop the flower seeds and run back out. The chest and shoulders are rewards from a short 5-quest chain near Rayne, starting at Carlin Redpath  and ending at Chromie . The shoulders come from a mob kill which show how questing has changed since Vanilla. One player, one kill vs multi-players, shared kill. Had to wait for respawn on the wolf for about 45 seconds before I could get my own kill. The pants required flying south from Orgrimmar down to Gadgetzan and finding  Megs . She had 3 quests for me, then she moved to Lost Rigger Cove for Dead ...

Last weekend, I ran a full Last Stand of Zandalari with Sinabun -Thrall, another guardian druid. I got a little over-anxious due to Sinabun's gear level and started running ahead pulling mobs back. AAGRRO!! Sin just laughed as I died a couple times and finally PST me saying "slow down hun..". It's then I really took those Pandarens to heart and 'slowed down..'. Bowing down, I let Sinabun dictate the pulls and how to run each fight. Jin'rokh - I followed Salts video almost to a tee. Grabbing aggro each time Sinabun was hit by electro-smash. I never got wall tossed, so it was basically just stay out of the water.  Horridon, line the dino perpendicular across each door in order. This put the DPS between the dino and the door to grab adds as they came out.  Council, I tanked Mar'li and sometimes Sul until the stacks of Frost got too high on Sinabun. Then I grabbed Frost King for a few turns while they dropped.  Where's the Cheese? Still no...

I've been doing some thinking about the Alliance chopper and why it didn't win. Here are my thoughts. 1. What's to love? From the first time I saw the layered shield effect of the gas tank, I believed it looked buggy. I know I've heard it mentioned on a few other podcasts the exact same thing. "Looks like an ant." Personally, I think it looks like a wasp or mantis. Other people have complained about it having treads front and back instead of tires. just chop of head, and grab wings 2. Faction size/community.  Infographics like this, don't really represent anything useful. On my own account, I have 12 toons; 8 Horde, 3 Alliance and one panda who hasn't gone beyond starting area (aka neutral). My only 3 max level characters are all Horde. I log into each of these 3 at least once a month. Does the 52% equate to only max level characters? All toons ever created (from that overall 100 million accounts)? From my own experience, my very first t...

Hey, it's not that bad?! After running dungeons from 15-60+, I was timid about hopping into to full fledged raid tanking. Now instead of just 4 other people dying because of something, I had 24 other people's repair bills to keep in mind. Healing wasn't so scary, because I have typically 5 other healers who could cover for my lack of gear.  Tuesday night, sporting 493 average gear (3 green 483 post-boost items [legs, trinket & mainhand], rest 496 Timeless token items), I hopped into the Mogu'shan Vaults . I had went through both the Bryna and Evaly videos on this raid tier and was prepared for the worst. Despite that, the 'main' tank was a pally sporting a luscious set of gear that I could only wish for, so it was basically me off-tanking everything. Each trash group and boss appeared to be a tank/spank boss with no real tank swap mechanics. "boy this is easy!!" Middle of the last fight, I realized that I hadn't loaded any good add-ons. Wh...

Looking at all that's coming out about garrison 's in Warlords, I am excited. The opportunities of having various npcs all working for me sound intriguing. Gathering blueprints from the various questing zones so that I can expand my garrison into areas that this single toon can't do. I look forward to expanding a blacksmith's hut and getting myself some nicer weapons. So I spend the next 2 years building up this awesome, working town of Elkagorasa'shire. With everything I need to level up my gear, start raiding and maybe even some world PVP. I am totally excited that I'll be able to guide my progression through the game and tailor my daily quests to what I love to do. Plant a farm, go fishing, make GOLD on the AH... all at my garrison. I can almost hear the jingle in my head. But like any expansion, I foresee my Pandaren farm going fallow. Why would I need to plant Windwool cactus while living in Draenor? My garrison is already going to have a farm ran by an...

June is starting to get busy for Blizzard. June 2nd, Monday, voting ends on the bikes.  June5th looks to be the announcement date on the voting winner. (Not Blizzcon 2014 like I had guessed). Can you guess what's under the red tarp?  The winner! #ForTheHorde June 10th the valor bonus ends. Seems like Blizzard is trying to keep us involved in playing just a little bit longer. (Get valor quicker, upgrade all your gear by 4 levels and go raid heroic?) Makes me think that the Beta would be right around the corner and they're just being tight-lipped about it. Or AZ is correct?? Blizzcon 2014 is going to announce another expansion, completely out of left field.