Ctrl Alt WoW Episode 96 - Happy New Year!

Aprillian, Glanthur and Ashayo discuss another week of playing World of Warcraft, Blizzard's great MMORPG. Actually no Glanthur this week. But he'll be here next week. Write us at ctrlaltwow@gmail.com Visit us at http://ctrlaltwow.com If you get a chance, review us in iTunes and we'd be ever so grateful. What We've been Doing Aprillian Doing a couple of dailies a day on Aprillian. Mostly trying to get my DK's up so they can play with her. Friday Morning, grinding in Nagrand with theprimall. Didn't realize it was possible for a zombie to loot. Theprimall dinged 63 at 7:11am on Friday and I've been playing her straight through on the train to Washington. She's grinding in the Spirit field, there are mobs galore. Got to 63.5 by BWI Airport at 12:30p In the Train station grinding the Vir'Ani and killed an Arcanist, a Four of Lunacy dropped In Chicago playing in the First Class Lounge, Theprimall dinged 64. She went to the Consortium's camp and turned in over a 100 [Oshu'gun Crystal Fragment]. Then I logged off and went to the website so I can change her name and appearance and I'm thinking of doing a Figure print with her. Then I pulled out Epril to do get her to 64. I'm doing it mostly because at 64 they can get the quests in Nagrand, especially the nessingwary, I love those Renamed ThePrimall to Elyte. I was surprised that was available. I had them grinding in Oshu'Gun because once they hit 64, they can turn in the following quest: Stealing from theives A Head full of ivory Epril dinged 64, then went to Garadand and picked up a mess of quests. Then I decided I want to level a Priest with RAF. I made a Troll Priest and teamed her with my level 6 Orc Shaman who hadn't done the starting are quest there because I took her to Eversong Woods to farm eggs with a BE Hunter. I do not want a way to start at a certain level on any race/class like the DK. This is a horrible idea and would make it impossible for new people to ever get into WoW. Took the twins Epril and Elyte to Ebon Hold for Training. DK training is expensive. Good thing they made money grinding. I don't know what the time limit is but I am sure glad that when you dc, you don't get put back in queue if you log back in right away Lost internet for a while. But when it came back the queue was way too long, went to Lethon server. Got back on later Sunday night, short queue, everybody must be going back to work/school tomorrow. Was actually on a 3G network for a while and able to Dual Box Epril and Elyte. Doing the Nessingwary quest, too bad I don't have a skinner. Got this [Crystalblade of the Draenei] in Nagrand. Crystalblade of the Draenei Binds when equipped One-Hand Sword 70 - 131 Damage Speed 1.60 (62.8 damage per second) 195 Armor +18 Stamina Durability 90 / 90 Requires Level 66Equip: Increases defense rating by 13 (6.76 @ L66). Elyte turned in the osh powder and got her first Halla token. I am thinking of trying the whole pvp aspect in Nagrand this week Ashayo Gobu invited to raid for Vault of Archavon - an instance you can run when you own Wintersgrasp Very quick instance - about 10 minutes, and the boss drops tier 7 loot. Unfortunately you can only run once a week. Tried to run the 25 man variant with 10 players ; cleared the trash fine, but not enough DPS for the boss. Then headed to The Obsidium Sanctum underneath Wyrmrest. Jekle and Hiide started questing in Howling Fjord. Probably only done a dozen or so thus far, but quite enjoyable! Hiide even ran an instance! Dills tanked on his DK and Cairubel healed on her druid. Jekle has healed Utgarde Keep - with Aprillian! Asheal is now fully Holy Tried healing oculus - failed on last boss (while mounted) Heal Heroic Utgarge Keep Try to heal Culling of Strat ; wipeage NYE Alliance Boss raid - Ashayo now has a [Black War Bear] Starting Knights of the Ebon Blade quest lines in Icecrown Death Knight is levelling waaay fast - currently 65 just by running some instances. Levelling Engineering to 300. Jumper Cables. Quest for mote extractor schematic Achievement Day! Heroic Halls of Lightning Timely Death - kill in under 2 mins Halls of Lightning Northrend Dungeonmaster Timear Foresees - 4 x daily dungeon quests AQ40 achievement Exalted with Wyrmrest Accord - Sandals of the Crimson Fury, Reins of the Red Drake Cracked Egg - White Tickbird Hatchling, Cobra Hatchling Chef disappointment - Got Captain Rumsey's Lager from daily fishing - Did the Dinner Impossible by presenting Great Feast in each Battleground - Did "The Northrend Gourmet" to cook 30 Northrend recipes... and didn't get Chef. - Chef says "The Northrend Gour..." - but it refers to the 45 version, and there arn't even that many in the game at 3.0.3 :( Blade's Edge Ugh... hey guys... Blade here... With the Winter Veil festivities all week long in real life, ol' Blade hasn't spent a lot of time in Azeroth... so nothing's really changed... I DO have a Dwarf Guardian character in Lord of the Rings Online, though... a result of someone's valiant effort to show ol' Blade that there are other games out there... other than WoW... ... but Ol' Blade wasn't fooled for a second... What with presents-giving, nog-drinking and visiting of little-sprog relatives... Ol' Blade hasn't had a lot of extra time to throw together a long narrative-style email like I usually do... So here's the nitty-gritty... From the 'Dirty Little Tricks' Department: Following the macro thread I started before... something for Warriors... specifically the Protection-specc'd tanks out there... with the Night of the Living Deathknights (aka Wrath of the Lich King) having spawned all kinds of new and OP tanks, plus Paladins have been spoon-fed their tanking greatness for a while now (wait for it... there's more coming for them in the 3.0.8 patch... a ranged taunt!) Ridiculous, I say. Warriors seem to be being left in the proverbial dust. We / they did get a little bit of a pat on the back with the Protection talent tree revamp in 3.0... quite a few warriors are now leveling as Protection-spec tanks now... but how to make it just THAT much more /awesome? Ol' Blade's got your back, he does... So here's some love for the First-Among-Tanks... the Original and (in Blade's not-so-humble opinion) Best... The Warriors. It's a simple macro... more for saving space on your hot-key bar... and it's great now that Charge can be used in combat... no more stance dancing! /Charge /Taunt Yep. That's it. Again... they're on different timers, so you end up Charging in guns a-blazing, and drop a taunt pretty much the moment you hit the mob. Nifty! Spam it again in six seconds... you can't charge (cause you're too close) but Taunt works just fine! Let's add to it... just to spice things up... Toss in a /cast Thunder Clap as a third line... it won't cast it the first time (when you initiate combat), but any successive times you cast your Charge/Taunt macro, it will Thunder Clap all the nearby mobs... this one's a bit tricky... as TC is on a separate timer, it will Thunder Clap WHEN you hit the macro... if you're too low on Rage to have TC go off, it's fine... all other times, you'll look like you just got blasted away from your Thunder Clap... good for dropping a large chunk of threat on the mobs surrounding you as you speed off to intercept the aggro off the healer... Voila. You're now a Paladin (get it? aoe attack spam?)... without all that mamby-pamby healing 'Oh noes! I'm getting attacked! /bubble /hearth' nonsense. And from Ol' Blade's Easter Egg basket: Ol' Blade and Mrs. Blade have been watching some older movies of late... and one sorta stuck in my head... because it reminded me of the Arcane Protectors in the starting lowbie-Blood Elf zone... it seems both they and Robocop have the same Prime Directives... "Serve the Public Trust"... "Protect the Innocent"... and "Uphold the Law"... Also... the Alliance zone of Elwood Forest is home to many things... Hogger, the level 11elite Gnoll that is the bane of all Alliance players over level 10... as you will inevitably get at least one /tell asking you to 'Hlp kill Hoger plz' as you pass through the zone... ... but did you know there's a Lumberjack in Elwood Forest? One that 'is ok' and 'works all day'...? As a Horde, I don't think I can get him to talk without sticking a shiv between his ribs... but I'm sure you Alliance types could get a few words out of him... he's at the Eastvale Logging Camp. He's named Terry Palin... after Terry Jones and Michael Palin, the Monty Python members and writers of the 'Lumberjack Song'... That's all for this week... next week, I'll share some of my (mis) adventures in Ironforge! As always, an awesome podcast guys... Blade Email Email #1 from Mimdalf Just a note from a fellow guildee, Mimdalf to say Hello, and your doing a great job. Such good chemistry on your show. -- In Fraternitas Email #2 from Mo Hello all at Ctrl alt wow, and listerns, and i guess the Alliance, :) I dinged 80 finally, on my main main, that is the first character i ever made, oh some 3+years ago; Motauren on Balanzzar, yes he is a tauren warrior if you did not guess from the name :) I think you have covered dailies for northrend but would you please suggest any good pointers, possible addons as im an addonholic as well ;/, I have just started doing dailies for some factions and even started the cooking. I was sad that i can only do one perday, what is the deal with that? well thank you as always and another quick point, following up an email from last week, about leveling your weapon skills; depending on what level you are, i usually try to level weapons as i level, but if you are 80 and trying to get the achievements, i find low instances the best places to skill them up. Especially if you need the instance achievements anyways. As a warrior, i am also a weaponholic, i like using all weapons, well I would like to but only my axe is a real weapon for big boy land. Hope you all have/had a great new year and enjoy wowing, -- Mo Email #3 First, wanted to let you know that the Collector's Edition arrived right on time and I gave Frosty to my husband for Christmas, so now he won't feel so left out when my daughter and I have our Frosty pets out :-)

Our two guilds of real life friends and family try to run instances, but since we're all pretty casual players and most of us are altoholics, it can be a little challenging. Getting 5 people together with the same 3 hour block of time to play is one thing (and I could write a whole other email about that), figuring out what instance to do and who to bring can take on a life of its own as well.

We wind up with a some memorable instance runs, like when we went through Deadmines with 4 draenai shaman and one crazy, gnome warlock. There were so many totems that you couldn't see the gnome at all, though you knew she was there, because all the mobs were attacking her. Thank goodness shaman can resurrect.

Or the all female, Night Elf Druid runs, punctuated with yells of 'Going Bear!' as the designated healer pulls aggro and then everyone else switches to their backup roll. We designate two teams of druids: the tank team (one would bear, one cat) and the healing team (one casting, one cat) and switch as needed either because of a terrible pull or when running out of mana.

Not to leave the horde out of it, our horde guild is named Hunters'R'Us, so you can guess what kind of groups we put together there. Five hunters and their pets rampaging through an instance makes for much chaotic fun.

We also have to be very flexible in our play styles. Depending on who else is on the run, I may be tanking with my gorilla or off-tanking or pulling out my core hound for dps. We also run lower level toons through with some high level help (makes it easier when we can only get three people together).

Those runs are fun for the high level toon, since you get to decimate an instance that probably killed you a few times before, and it's good practice for the low level toons: we use the time to try out different shot or spell rotations without worrying too much about wiping the party.

Our only problem is the lack of healers. We're working hard to level some paladins and priests to help with healing. So, any tips for leveling healers would be great.

Your podcast just keeps getting better. It's fun when Glanthur can join you (to bring a third viewpoint and a little Alliance love) and Blade's letters are awesome. I especially liked his tip about Aspect of the Beast.

Keep up the great work!

For the Horde and Glory to the Alliance!

Karen (I have too many alts and they are all so different, I'm going to stick with my RL identity)

Horde on Arathor

Alliance on Uther

Email #4 from Chad Hi, Long time follower of the show, first time player considering trying my hand at recruit-a-friend/dual boxing. First of all I must say that I love my alts and and sorry that I didn't beat a certain someone to 70. I've been playing for a year and love to try as many characters and classes. I have many tunes near or at lvl 30. I only have one tune that I've stayed with past 30 (Thingoll lve 64 hunter on the Sentinal server) and only did so in order to be able to play a Death Knight. I'm going to be taking part in the recruit a friend program this weekend and was wondering what do you think should be the classes that I should consider running first. thanks, Chad Hi Aprillian, I heard that I won again. I feel a little guilty, so I have decided to send my winnings to another guildie who could use it. Please send an authenticator to: Address Removed He is a friend of mine and plays Asterien in the guild. PS - please reply with all of your show email addresses. Thanks _________________ Email # 5 from Forlornelf Subject: Hi From Forlornelf lv 80 DK on Khaz\'goroth Message: Congrats to Aprillian on 70 ! Question for Blade, have you seen the little pack of critters, four deer and four mice, that wander about together up by the Refurbished Shredders in the Venture Bay PVP area?