Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog

I pledge,  that when the people who see the Warcraft movie get their free copy of Wow,  that I will be nice to the noobs new players.

I will not however,  provide free gold,   chopper rides around Goldshire , free bags, or stockade runs.

I may dispense some advice, and will refrain from recalling the days of old when leveling involved walking up hill in the snow with no shoes selling vendor trash just so I could afford my training.

I confess that recent events with people in my Battlegrounds means I haven’t been as nice or patient to people who have been doing their achievements,   I have called them Tourists,  and expressed my frustration when they only stay until their have done what they came to do,  and completely ignore the battleground objectives. They’re  my BG’s.  They are sacred to my game enjoyment.   I don’t expect the noobs to be in my BGS for  a fair while so they are safe.

If a new player does happen to find my blog in their travels.   I hope you do have fun, and enjoy the game  ( and the movie ) and hope you pick Allianz.  Because WE GOT TRAVIS.  ( and he is an Aussie so  you already know he will be awesome.

When I looked at who I would cast as the human in a Warcraft movie in blog post in 2008 I picked  Russell Crowe Who is also an Aussie.   Co-incidence…..     maybe.  ( Yes – I know he isn’t Aussie, but like all of the good NZ things we do claim them as our own.

2008 is a long time coming.

An unnamed gaming blog has already called the movie ‘not good’

I’m not saying I couldn’t be disappointed by a bad job,   but I will watch it through the eyes of a player who has loved playing the game, and am hopeful  I will also love the movie.

I   bought some WOW cookie cutters this weekend from EB with a Murloc Plushy,  ( because I didn’t have one ) . I  have a reasonable track record with cookies and I had seen on etsy some  un-official cookie cutter designs before and was excited to see some proper ones.  They came in a fancy Blizzard long box.

So while SO was at a concert I played domestic goddess.

Inside the box came with a cookie recipe,  that I swear I followed.  Mostly.

Had to covert the cups of butter to  grams, and rather then beating I crumbed the butter into the batter.  I  did make sure I  stuck it in the fridge for a reasonable period,

Action shot!

The results were a little disappointing,  I did try and stamp harder, and tried different thicknesses of rolled out dough,  but it didn’t seem to matter as much,  I thought I did it wrong,  but then I found someone elses pictures and they turned out the same/ similar.

I did have plans to decorate them with a thin icing  matching the colour of the cutter,  but I have misplaced my icing sugar.

FYI – they still taste nice….

Repost of an old post – Now with Demon Hunters!

‘Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to this evening’s presentation tonight, we plumb the depths of the human soul as we join a lost, lonely girl trying desperately to find love. See for yourself what tragedy lies ahead when the paths of star-crossed lovers meet. Will she survive? Will she prevail?  Only time will tell ( Ok so I stole those lines from the Opera Event… )

Who would be your Perfect partner?

The Demon Hunter

In hopeless campaigns, and bitterest strife,  Demon Hunters feel like they have been at the front all the days of their lives. *  Your object of affection has overcome  the thrall of a charming and illustrious  ( and green and yellow glowing ) leader, and still faces  the doubt of his new allies when fighting at their side,  expect your family and friends to not invite you both to events for a little while.   When threatened, or someone leaves the toilet seat up,   they  may lose themselves in a uncontrollable rage, that causes a terrible metamorphosis. A kitten may sooth the savage beast, but please see a a good blacksmith for appropriate caging options in the event of overnight stays.  They may also jump your bones,  the bed,  and the roof  of any dwelling if surprised.

Dislikes:  Suprise birthday parties & mirrors  Hobbies: Paragliding  and Parkour.

Looking for: A lover not a demon

Death Knight

Not since Angel on Buffy have we seen such a brooding and dark creature, wracked by eternal guilt the Death Knight has long avoided intimate contact with loved ones. You will really need to grab and pull this one out of their shell. Persistence and a lot of love and tender care required to nurse a Death Knights heart back to normalcy and once you have done, you will find a devoted partner – who given that you are their first love in a long time may get a touch obsessive.
You may find the Death Knight watching the moon rise wistfully in the cool night,  their glowing eyes, a jeweled beacon,  illuminating their pale pallor in the  darkness. They don’t  like talking much,  their voices crackle back at them, and get mistaken for a mechanical  being. Ignore their awkward  attempts at the Bus stop   or water cooler  humor when it comes to  small talk.  They are still adjusting. They really are great people.

Dislikes: Unfocused, erratic individuals Mushy emo stuff, and Pink.

Looking for – nothing. They don’t need anything they say. They have fought the bounds of the prince of darkness what could you ever offer them in comparison. What they really need is a slap on the head to knock them out of their melancholy  . Go on. Do it. It will shock them into taking your pursuits seriously.

The Druid

The Druids heart belongs to no one,  they are free spirited  and love to love everything.  Often Vegetarian ,  they are also active environmentalists, the druid is an outdoorsy Type , loves long runs/swims/flights in the nude.  Loves to garden and uses natural therapies  and rolls in piles of leaves. To catch a druid you must be playful and joyful, and run very fast agilely through the woods,  they like all shapes and sizes but be prepared to share. They may drool when petted and stroked.

Dislikes: Being used as a scratching post, or peed on by Worgens,  being kept indoors or being tied down to one person,  Pollution.

Looking for: Multiple someones who don’t mind a little bit of fur or feathers around the house, doesn’t eat deer meat and loves the outdoors.

Hunter

They love the thrill of the hunt being experts in tracking and laying traps, and the challenge that each new beast presents.  A patient person they will wait for the perfect opportunity to take their target, and  will only go after partners that present a challenge. Often a loner, its hard to get close to the Hunter’s heart,  but if you do you will have to be constantly interesting and hunter worthy or your hunter will move on to another conquest.   Likes playing games in the bedroom so be prepared to get a little adventurous.  They get along with household Pets of all types, but be prepared to have an indoor tiger or bear as a pet, and when you break up  don’t be surprised if your Cat or dog went with them..  You will find your hunter out Camping and game shooting.  Its advisory to wear bright colours and make lots of noise so as not to be mistaken for an animal on first contact.

Dislikes: Vegetarians, and Sit down dinner parties that don’t allow pets under the table.

Looking for: A Partner that understands that sometimes you just need to be alone, and will  knows how to cook what ever they have brought to the table, and have a warm mug of ale waiting at home for them after  a long hunt.

Mage

With a slight touch of Neurosis Mages find themselves driven to the perfection of their chosen talents and can become quite narrow minded in their pursuit, they enjoy Reading non fiction books on topics that include science  & astronomy, and enjoy intellectual debate. Seasoned  travelers in far off and mystical places they are constantly searching for answers. As they prefer the pursuits of the mind as apposed to exploration of the body. Role playing and a fierce intellect in a potential partner is a must  If you want to keep a mages mind engaged.  Steal their heart by knowing as much as they do

Dislikes: Dumb People, and working out at the Gym. Loves watching Reruns of captain planet  for the moments  where the elements are called into power.  EARTH,  WATER, FIRE and thick dusty tombs.

Looking for: Someone who will support their ambition with lots of book shelves, and who can   keep up intellectual debate.

Paladin

Is very social and compassionate, likes talking but is a great listener. An early riser they are practical and courageous, they like getting their hands dirty and are self sacrificing. A practical high achiever they want to make their mark on the world.  If you want to catch a paladins eye tell them about your charitable work down at the local orphanage.  Paladins are loyal partners, and devoted fathers. You will never fear taking a Pally home to meet your parents, but beware their Martyrdom.

Dislikes: Money and Large corporations

Looking for: A partner who will be at their side helping them make the world a better place.

Priest

The priest doesn’t have much room in their life but for their one true god.  Often respectable figureheads in their local community they are stoic and steadfast in their beliefs, often to the point of  stubbornly. Some priests enjoy Ghost Hunting and Public speaking.  Dependable and reliable,  once committed to a cause or person they remain so.  To catch a Priest you need to share their devotion,  coming to them for advice and showing your commitment to the faith is a good start, Often found in medical facilities, they make good surgeons & nurses, able to heal or hurt they wield their powers with benevolence. They struggle with the temptations that shadow allows them,  the pressure to heal while others enjoy themselves a ongoing battle.

Dislikes: Unfaithfulness people, and waste.

Looking for: Someone who understands there is the dark and there is the light and there is what must be done for the good of all.

Rogue

Are often misunderstood People who were frail or weak in childhood, they learn often deviously that their strengths lie in depriving people of things and  stealth – theory.   While not necessarily aligned with evil, or  bad, their unsocial like behavior does not encourage many friends.  Collectors of rare and valuable things they are often wealthy and smart. Look for your rogue at Auction houses, or in Museums.  Catching their eye is not difficult if you are a pretty thing,  they will feel the urge to possess you.  Once however their interest is caught they will shower you with gifts and affection,   just make sure those gifts don’t have someones name engraved on it.

Dislikes: Being the center of attention, Loud parties, and noise.

Looking for: A shiny bauble to possess.

Shaman

The Shaman is a supportive type,  non judgmental,  and slow to anger, But will defend their love ones with all the powers at their call.   They are are romantics, looking for their one true life partner.   They like cuddling and have a great sense of humor.  Creative people who love Music and screen- shoting and storytelling.   You will find your Shaman at the Inn sharing a beer with the locals, they don’t do one night stands,  so be prepared to show your true inner beauty to make the shaman fall for you. Shamans will turn any sedate gathering to the party of the raid calendar year,  and  always bring their own disco balls and strobe lights to any party.

Dislikes: Rudeness, and Bigotry

Looking for:  The one that the moons rises in their eyes, and smiles sparkles with the brightest stars

Warlock

Is a studious character and also somewhat unsociable.  A Hoarder of knowledge they can be often found chanting demonological languages under their breath at local formal wine bars.  Appreciators of fine music and wines they like their entertainment on the exclusive side.   Watchers rather then participators they appear vague and aloof. To win what is left of their heart be prepared to demonstrate your extensive knowledge on the culinary delights of various cultures. If you can impress them with your class and style they will be yours.  Meeting their minions for the 1st time can be quite a shock, and their loyalty to their partner  is often questioned when their mistress appears.

Dislikes: Drunks and Gaudy people.

Looking for: Dark and Sultry

Warrior

A rather down to earth character. who loves watching and participating in all sorts of sports.  Can get hot tempered when he has been drinking with the Shamans in the pub, and likes a good ‘trying to balance on logs’ while drunk challenge.   Be Prepared for Bruises and breaks that are not work related.  The Warrior trains hard but likes to party hard too.  To catch a Warriors eye,  be on the dance floor doing the latest dancing fad.   Do not be taken back by his slurred one liners, he really is a romantic at heart,  just has trouble expressing himself with all the drills pounded into his head.   A Fierce defender of what is his, and  is great with his hands  but be aware,  his loyalty lies with his Commanding officer,

Dislikes: Middle management, and sewing.

Looking for: A practical person to learn to cook sew, mow the lawn, and patch the roof.

*paraphrased from  The Vanguard a Poem by Henry Lawson

We have been slowly transitioning to a ‘office cubical flare free’ environment. We no longer have set desks and so float around the floor  at a different desk each day.  ( mostly ). We lock our stuff in lockers at the end of the day and wipe our desks down courteously with alcohol wipes for the next person.
I’ve suggested that just for fun they give the keyboard a little upside down tap every now and then,  just if they’re curious and want to count the eyelashes. They think I’m weird.

I pull out of my locker every day my  Warlords WOW mouse mat. The one piece of ‘flare’ that I can roll out, or fold out.  I keep my Cata one at home.
It’s been a conversation starter, an icebreaker and a homing missile, detecting the curious and the real gamer who recognize what the graphic means and have no other way of asking a random person in the office ‘are you a gamer?’  How do you  tell in a corporate environment without a flash of flare, or a turn of a conversation, like one  awkward drinks and mingle that turned into an interesting discussion about gaming and  micro transactions. I think I have sussed out all the gamers in our greater team now,  the oldshool gamers,  the current and active,  the wistful, ‘ when I used to have time..’

I’ve had some great conversations with people I wouldn’t normally know how to break the ice with outside of discussing work related stuff, and got to know some strangers a little quicker, the games  they play, have played or even what quest they are stuck on, and that makes me feel a little more connected,  a little more included, and in all my years of work,  the people you work with really  make the difference.  I’ve been in older teams where I have had little in common with their interests,  and struggled at work related events to find common ground outside of work,  and now at least I know a few I can snatch an interestng conversation with.

WordPress had been sending me reminder emails to renew my domain ect for a little while now and I was faced with the choice to abandon the custom URL or pay the fee.I’ve paid the fee again,  even though I’m not blogging,  I’m always hopeful I will find enough to say to start writing regularly again and I’m not prepared to let it go just yet.

For the first time in my playing history WOW hasn’t been my first gaming choice. I was distracted by Elder scrolls online and then a game called Unturned on steam, when World of Warships came out I got to a tier 7 and the game slowed down and I then  decided to have another crack at World of Tanks.  I’m currently playing Ark  and while the thrill of riding around on dinosaurs is wearing off,  I’m still as keen to keep them fed on berries and meat for me to log in to keep them alive and pick up the odd new dino  and make my bases bigger.  ( Snakes…  I hate  the snakes..  )

I’m staying guild-less in WOW.  The analogy  of raiding sometimes being a second job meant that I had to focus on one and some great real life opportunities also meant  a couple of career hops up and I am back managing a team again, with some renewed focus on career as a  priority.  I picked focusing on the job that paid the mortgage,  but sometimes temptation is hard to resist,  so it made sense to me at the time to walk away from potential distractions including a guild.   It was timely because Shadow was frustrating me  and  I wasn’t prepared to go heals in PVE again, even though from a progression success level,  I’ve done better when I am healing.

I am now healing PVP,  holy wasn’t great, so disc is awesome, even though sometimes I forget I’m supposed to be healing, and not chasing horde with a discus.  I want my Bloodthirsty title,   and I am still around 30k HK’s off.  Long term goals are good for motivation,  you can tackle it a little bit at a time.    I’ve played as Horde a couple of times, but the flipping of the familiar BG’s and the fact that I was fighting against my faction  wasn’t as fun as I thought it could be.

I also finally found 100k spare gold  ( well more concentrated saving/earning / AHing stuff and making  bags)  to buy myself the Allianz bike  the Champions Treadblade. Not many people are riding them,   and it matches my faction based  Transmog,

I’ve also kicked myself hard to focus also on the stuff that makes me happy,  and that is writing.   While blogging was always part of that,  creative writing my stories,  my novel ect..  has what has made me happy.   I took a writing class  to reinvigorate/inspire me, and I spent some annual leave happily writing and editing the novel.   It’s a little way off,   I should have done the hardest chapters first,  but I also submitted an 8k story somewhere  for a comp which would be a personal feather in the cap if they even seriously considered me.

So we will see,  I sometimes write blog posts in my head  and writing regularly is good,  and I want to form better habits.

Does anyone even read blogs anymore…..

Australia getting our own Wow servers is somewhat big news. For years its what our Top Gamers have asked for. The extra 180-220 ms delay meant that we were worse off in PVP and when pushing the harder content.

Oh it was only 180 – 220ms?

It may not sound like much, and you don’t notice the difference in things like LFR, but it wasn’t just the ping – it was how smooth and consistent the connection was, and the priority our ISP’s gave to our gaming connections. Our own servers should improve the over all reliability of our connection, not just give us reduced lag.

I used to use a Ping reducing proxy it used to bring me down from sometimes Yellow MS to most of the time green. It’s been a lot better the last 12 months, and I noticed with Battlenet already logged in, wow didn’t seem to be benefiting at all from any reduced ping via the proxy, so I stopped using it, but I’ve not been trying to do edge of the content type stuff, and I gave up on Rateds.

I can’t see Aussie servers making me want to play more, four, five years ago it would have been awesome sauce. H LK, or even some of the things with Fire in Dragon soul and less ticks of damage we would have noticed the improvement, and I guess there’s still plenty of juice in the game and players to warrant this, and it will give our Hardcore gamers a better chance at equally competing for first kills in raids.

I wonder how many will stay and if there will be a mass exodus from foreign soil, and if ex Pat Aussies will come home to Oceanic. A lot of people left over the years looking for better pools of players chasing harder content.
Some like me came back. I found a guild I have stayed in for the longest ever in my Wow playing. ( 2 years in January next year ) Casual and serious enough to get 10/14 heroic SoO and I’ve been ok with that.

I have two 90’s still on Proudmoore that I could bring over as part of the free transfers to Oceanic so we can make best use of the Aussie servers – but I think I will leave them there. The guild doesn’t seem to mind me popping in now and then ( well they haven’t kicked me yet ) the x server mail for account bound heirlooms would still be available.

The only really disappointing thing with Aussie based servers, is the server maintenance times don’t appear to be changing.
While we are seeing a lot less full shutdowns, and early on it was every tuesday guaranteed so it was a forced break from wow, and sometimes we ended up in a cocktail bar or a pub talking about Wow. Now there are more restarts so things like daily’s can be accomplished. The unreliability of our time Tuesday night availability is that its never been plan-able raid night, and while most of the guilds Ive been in have run a combination of Sunday/Monday/Wednesday/Thursday night raids – an extra available day might allow more guilds to have 3 raids a week, or shorter raiding times on some nights.

So yes, the Aussie servers are a good thing, and a very long time needed thing.

It seems fitting I shall briefly come out of hiding to say goodbye to River from A High Latency Life

He was a long-term commenter and reader of this blog.

On a post I made about another lost blogger back in 2009  he asked  “I wonder if I suddenly dropped dead what would happen to my readers…all 5 of them.”

I hope he knows,  that they tweeted, they blogged, they commented, and they  will remember him and there were a heck of a lot more  than 5 of them.

No I never met him, but  I read him,  was read by him. I didn’t always agree with him,  and his love of posting scantily clad women on his posts I am sure where just to rile  us up,  but he was a character – and he will be missed.

Goodbye and thankyou,  for your words,  your support when I was a fledgling blogger, for your  humor, for your views.

Swagger all you like,  You pups don’t stand a chance

This was my favourite taunt.  Hagara’s taunt. It’s funny, and I was always tempted to do a

/e swaggers  in response.

Boss taunts really need to screw with your head a little more.  I am never intimidated by them.

Threatening me with my doom are you Ultraxion?

Telling me you can see me  Durumu  – whoop de do

Much less effective then,

” Your tanks are under geared and your healers have gemed wrong”

She talking about me?
“Your DPS has bad trinkets, and ‘that’ one is sending naughty messages to some trade channel troll”

“I am not!”

“That one keeps DCing because he is downloading p0rn”

“Hey I only dc’d once”

“What is up with your spell rotation, you couldn’t kill a stormwind rat with that ?”

“well some rats are really big!”
“Why can’t that noob move out of the fire, like ever.  BURN ! Mwhahahahahah!”

“I have lag”

“RUN the Kobolds are comming!  Candle revenge”!

“WTF?”