Alt Week: Mage

I know I’ve said every week that this is a big one but … well, each week it’s been true!

Rozjin

When Juna first started raiding, there were a couple of troll mages she met who dazzled her with their shiny purple arcane missiles. So, after Juna and Arelin got leveled, the next character I rolled was Rozjin.

Despite being wooed to mage by the arcane, it was NOT a good spec for leveling back in Wrath. So Roz went about setting things on fire and then switched somewhere in the 60s when he learned arcane blast. He leveled fast and got to Naxx, where he won himself the armor set that I’d wanted so bad.

So anyway, Roz became part of the max level trio, and also joined my buddy Fiak (who got me into the game in the first place) in PvP. Then our guild kinda died, and I moved to another server, dragging a reluctant Fiak along with me. That one didn’t really last either, although we made friends there who I am still friends with to this day (shout out to the Shenanigans crew!). So, I started rolling Alliance alts on a third server. That one did last, and my Alliance are still housed there today.

Karius

One of the first toons I rolled there was Karius.

It wasn’t long at all before the original Horde toons began to collect dust, while Karius became the new main. He remained as such throughout the rest of Wrath, although the DK upstaged him because of a need for a tank and got Kingslayer first. He had a lot of fun though, and had really awesome friends to hang out with, like Elgar …

and Hartbane …

and Lore …

yes, I’m the dead one. :p

And of course, Grom!

He made a serious attempt to remain as the main in Cata, but .. like with Kaly and the Lich King, people just did not need another DPS. I made the swap to holy pally and haven’t really looked back because, well, I do enjoy healing. So Karius remains in limbo, although Roz did get leveled because he HAD to get Darkspear Revolutionary.

And that’s it for Mage Week. It’s a class I have played as my main and enjoyed quite a lot. 🙂

Whimsyshire!

So I was hanging out last night, just putzing around WoW (Argent Tourney dailies woo) when Cayle pinged me from D3 .. “come get yur pony level screenshots.” He knows me too well. And he sure as heck didn’t have to ask twice. I logged in and joined his game. Arv was in the party as well. We headed out of New Tristram to Old Tristram Road.

Yes, my gigantorzombie is standing on top of the NPC. Sorry? >.<

Whee! Ponies!!

Pony parts everywhere. The, uh … way their skeleton appears when they die is … um … a nice bit of attention to detail? Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. There’s even a decapitated head in the upper left of this shot. So strange on the background of rainbows and flowers.

Oh yes, and that is Lorenthar again. Cayle hung around long enough to get Arv and I through the portal and then he split and left us to our fun, but Lore saw where I was and hopped in to kill with us. Made it go quite a bit faster having a 60 along for the ride. The boys tore this electrified fire chains group apart so fast I barely even realized they were rares.

Guess I better get back to work on collecting the rest of the items for the quest. I just need the item from the cave in Act III (stupid rare mob never spawns for me) and the recipe from Act IV.

Thanks Cayle!

Hanging With Friends

You know … some people are unhappy about the always-online requirement for D3. Heck, I’ve mentioned myself plenty of times how I am a mostly solo player when it comes to leveling … and that applies across pretty much all games. BUT … I have to admit, I’ve really enjoyed the cooperative mode.

Saturday night I hopped on, and was grinding my way through Act 3 on nightmare, which amounts to bucketloads of kiting on the Witch Doctor. Then the notice pops up that someone has joined the game and the minions of Hell have grown stronger. Ohai Arv! Sweet, now I have a much more effective partner than my templar, even with the shrunken screen, keyboard turning, and ability clicking.

We worked our way up to the demon gate and killed the Siegebreaker Assault Beast, then started on the inside before it got late and we quit for the night. We got a LOT farther than I would have gotten on my own, that is for sure. So thank you Arv. Good times.

Sunday I played a little on each character, and even started leveling my wizard a little bit, when Lorenthar hopped into my game. He’s level 60 and I’m like, level 9, so … yeah. hehe. BUT he had a Demon Hunter that was 23, which happened to be the exact level of MY demon hunter. So we switched over to those. Seriously … one demon hunter alone is OP, two is just completely unfair. We wreaked havoc on everything in sight. AND he’s OCD about clearing every corner of the map just like I am, so we made a good team.

I think we were level 28 when we quit. We may have cleared each entire map, but we still stuck to what Lore has termed ‘The Baltok school of leveling.’ Balt is a prot warrior so that pretty much equates to ‘chain pull and mow it all down without stopping.’ I’ve played with him enough though that I knew what to expect, and I kept up pretty well. We killed Kulle and Belial, moved on to Act 3, and finished at the Ravening Beast. She will probably be my next character to play through the entirety of normal mode.

Thanks again for hopping into my games, guys. It’s nice to have friends to play with. 🙂

A Weekend of Friends

Some people got to have weekend Blizzcon parties and hang out in real life. Some even luckier people probably got to attend Blizzcon in person. The rest of us watched the virtual feed and/or got news from guild chat and websites. Most people I know were pretty psyched about at least some of the announcements. Myself, personally … well, I’m only lukewarm on the Pandaren themselves. I’ll roll a monk (probably belf … what?) but the inclusion of a new class isn’t a game changer for me. The zone art looks *amazing* and I am excited about getting Tyrael’s Charger and having something interesting and fun to do with my extensive pet collection. Some people that I know, however, and probably people on the forums … I don’t go there so I don’t know … have had very negative reactions, scoffing the inclusion of pandas and Pokemon and basically saying they are done with the game and/or will never come back to the game if they have already left.

You know what I’m most excited about? It’s not Pandaren, it’s not monks, it’s not the new talent system (which looks awesome btw), it’s not pet battles … it’s the simple fact that this game, MY GAME, is not over and is still expanding. It’s the knowledge that my friends and I will be taking on some sort of raid bosses for the foreseeable future. Because the friends that I have, are the number one reason that I play. I have friends that have left the game that I still keep in touch with, it’s not like I only have in-game friends. But having cool people to play with makes the experience worthwhile and fills my leisure time with joy.

On that note … let me introduce you to a few of them, because I got to hang out with a lot of them over the weekend.

Kalethos finished leveling his trade skills to Outland levels thanks to a donation of enchanting mats from Khizzara. As I was heading out to do some trick or treating, I saw that Ado was getting ready to tank some Outland dungeons on his belf DK, Metro. I managed to talk him into dragging my just dinged 58 and undergeared butt along for a seemingly endless string of Ramps runs. He’ll tell you he doesn’t know how to tank, but don’t let him fool you. He’s no Cayle, but he  can pull a whole room without stressing my blue bar.

After he had to leave, I noticed another friend online at the right level to hit Outland dungeons, so I coerced him into tanking a Slave Pens for me. Many of you will recognize the name, if not the actual toon. He’s infamous for deleting and rerolling his max-level toons, and poor Solarios was no exception.

Yeah, he’s a belf nao. Yum. Oh yeah, and I’ll bet some of you out there remember the BAT TEAM! (Good god, Kerick was a cute baby pally.) So of course, we both happened to have bat wands in our bags, and …

Speaking of Kerick, I logged on to him yesterday to invite Khizzara’s baby druid into Crits (yay more Horde spies) and since guild chat was interesting with her and Bocat and Lyssianna all online at the same time, I stayed on him and did some trick or treating. As I was passing through Grizzly Hills, I noticed Arcturis up. I mentioned it in guild chat, but no one jumped up and yelled about wanting him, so I texted Lore. Yep, he wants him! So he logged on and I put out a Have Group and the bear found a new home.  🙂

Aaaaaand ……. that ended in another dance party. Gnome pirate style.

Then last night, I saw Stunnah on and realized he was all the way up to 77 now, so I hopped on Dyle and we hit some dungeons together. I haven’t played him since Dizzee left him, but it didn’t take long to get back into the swing of disc healing. (Arv’s next project, btw, is in the high 60’s already. So maybe Dyle will get to play with him again later.) We had some good times, doing about four dungeons until Dyle dinged 80 and now we can’t queue anymore. *sigh* But it’s ok, Dyle will be sitting there waiting until Stun catches up. Now I gotta get his professions up to Cata levels.  He just needs one more stinkin point on his tailoring.

This next screenshot was Saturday night, I believe. What the hell were Arv and Van doing running regular SFK? I dunno. I think Arv wanted to get that last 20 VP he needed to cap, even though there’s probably nothing he can even buy with them anymore. LOL. I kept telling him I was bored and he should pull more, so he pulled like 3 rooms of trash before the second boss … but with all the purple on the ground and green channels all around, I didn’t see him slip around a corner and go out of LoS until it was too late. Hooray for getting cocky and wiping in regular heroics! LMAO.  Good times indeed.

So I guess the day I quit the game will be the day I run out of friends to do things with. As you can see … there’s no danger of that happening any time soon. =D