Monthly Archives: November 2011
Monday mailbag
Yeah, I know, just barely sneaking this one in under the wire today, but here we go…
Apologies for the belated response. Last week was my on-call week in the Horde Medical Corps, and we had our hands full keeping those boozehounds off Drek’Thar’s lawn. Came out well, though; we had most of the Lok’Tar, they had most of the Ogar.
Unfortunately, that caused me to miss EarthCon. To answer your question, yes, AE is a hybrid spec. You can find it in the Mechanical Engineering tree, but you have to look. Basically, they’re the guys who build and operate everyone’s flying mounts in Earth Online. It’s a nice spec, with a few serious drawbacks. First, there aren’t very many raiding guilds that can really use it. Which leads to the second drawback: if you get booted from one raiding guild, it can take a while to find another one that’ll take you. I’ve done OK with it, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it. It’s kind of like goblin engineering that way, you should stay clear unless you have a burning desire for it (emphasis on “burning”). That said, the teaser trailer for the next patch looks pretty awesome:
For the rest … yeah, we snooze, we lose. Oh well. As I said, Lor’themar’s not a bad fellow, just mostly useless.
–A Concerned Citizen
Haha, I like that – “We had most of the Lok’Tar, they had most of the Ogar,” that’s a good one. I’ll have to use that sometime.
So the preview video looks pretty cool…also kind of funny how they obviously modeled that rocket on the one that the goblins out at Area 52 have been working on. See, that’s one thing I really enjoy about Earth Online, how they manage to work in all these little references to things in the real world.
I might have to look at the engineer class at some point. Right now I’ve mostly been bouncing between the veterinarian I rolled originally, and the teacher class I made a few weeks ago. I know, I know, it’s just going to take me longer to get to max level if I don’t stick with one toon, but whatever. Have to say the teacher class seems like a high-skill, high-reward kind of thing. Most of the time it just feels like this huge uphill battle, but every so often if you manage to play a sequence really well, you get this huge Charisma buff and can convert some of the student hostiles into minions. Come to think of it, that could be REALLY fun and handy if you could maneuver it just right, and get the buff with a student pack that’s not like the gobliny nerds, but had more of a predisposition toward mischief and violence. Then you could have a really useful bunch of minions! I might have to work on that, it could be fun to have a little army at my disposal…
Also, since you brought him up again, let’s try to keep an eye on Lor’themar just the same. Nice guy or not, there’s something about that guy that doesn’t sit well, and given how things went with the LAST blood elf leader, I’d just as soon be extra careful with him. Oh and also, if you happen to find any powerful ancient magical weapons, don’t show them off to him. Bad enough the arcane crackhead is hanging around the Sunwell these days, last thing we need is to dangle more magic candy in front of him.
Continued thanks for your ongoing good work in Stonetalon. Your efforts will not be forgotten. We will be in contact soon with further updates. Appropriate reimbursement will be forthcoming.
–MGT.
Wait, how did this end up in my e-mail? Grebo’s dead! I buried him right next to Krom’gar. Which is to say, I tossed both their bodies into the same gulch. Fuckers.
Anyway, though, I guess when he died they closed his e-mail account, so I guess maybe it got auto-forwarded to his commanding officer? But that would have been Krom’gar, and he’s…ah. So forwarded again. Fuck, does this mean I’m going to start getting spammed with all their crap? I guess I should print this out and send it to his widow, seems like he had some kind of business venture going on on the side. So on top of everything else he was stirring up in Stonetalon, he was moonlighting to boot. Awesome.
I was just eating a cupcake with the most delightful lemon icing and it made me think of you. Would you like to share the other half of it with me?
Your most devoted admirer,
–Wega
Wait, are you hitting on me? Because first of all, I’m not completely sure from your name if you’re a girl or not, and don’t get me wrong, but I’m not into dudes. Not that there’s anything wrong—wait, what am I saying, there’s TOTALLY something wrong with…never mind. (The Kor’kron lawyers are telling me I have to be more careful about saying stuff like that.) Anyway, second, if you ARE a girl, you’re just going to go making my other mailbag admirers like Uukra jealous. Although…that could have its benefits, too.
So actually, let me put it this way – LEMON SQUARES OR DEATH?
Greetings Garrosh,
Based on all the good things you’ve mentioned, being Warchief sounds like a pretty sweet deal. How does one go about getting the job? And hey, it’s been a while since you’ve treated us to your poetry, surely you’ve been working on something! Can we see?
–Ambitious Near Astranaar
Well, ANA, this is your lucky day. Two birds with one stone, cue the origin cut-away…
Now this is the story all about how
My life got flipped, turned upside down.
And I’d like for you to listen, you won’t be bored.
I’ll tell you how I became the Warchief of the Horde.
In downtown Garadar born and raised,
Fighting ogres is how I spent most of my days.
Fishing with Dranosh every afternoon,
And hunting with Nesingwary ’round Oshu’gun.
When a couple of guys who were flinging some mud
Said Grom hooked the orcs on drinking demon blood.
I spent a few years moping – Greatmother had sass,
She said, “I’m getting Thrall up in here to pull your head out your ass.”
The Warchief rolled in and he showed me the truth:
Mannoroth said “You’re mine,” Grom said “STFU!”
Thrall said, “Stop being emo, you’re gonna go far!”
And I thought yeah man, come on, take me to Orgrimmar!
I pulled up into Durotar, after Northrend I’d hit,
But that’s when all the elements went fucking apeshit.
Thrall went to check it out, that’s when I scored,
And I took up my throne, as Warchief of the Horde.
EPIC VERSE!
Visiting Desolace
Just got back from the final part of this last inspection tour, this time making a couple stops in Desolace. Most of the time there I was in Shadowprey Village, which, well…you know, trolls. Wall to wall trolls. So you can probably imagine how that went. And I mean, they seem to be on top of things there pretty much, but I’m at a loss for what it is that these trolls find so fucking funny all the damn time. You try to talk to them about anything, and it’s just a big laugh riot. I’m starting to wonder if they’re all just smoking something.
I’d heard they had some pretty good seafood there, so I tried asking Lui’Mala about it, since I figured she would be in the know what with her being the fishing trainer there, but apparently the question was too damn funny for her to pull her shit together enough to answer, so yeah, on to Plan B. I finally managed to get an answer out of Jinar’Zillen, who told me they were a little short on fish at the moment, but they’ve been bringing in some really high quality crab lately if I wanted to swim down and bring up a few of the traps. I couldn’t help but wonder why they would actually need the fucking Warchief to go haul back his own crab traps, what with it being a fishing village where you’d think there’d be someone around whose actual fucking JOB that would be, or at the very least they’d have some random noobs to go do it just to keep them busy and out of trouble, but whatever, what with all the traveling I haven’t had the chance to do my usual swimming routine anyway, so fine. He said they were having their best luck with the traps a little way to the north, so I swam down there, only when I got there I couldn’t see any traps anyplace – and while I was looking, this huge orca came rolling up on me and decided it was snack time. Didn’t work out so well for him, but still. Turns out, the orca was kind of famous around the village – name of Blubbergut apparently – so I don’t know how Jinar’Zillen could have mixed up his feeding territory with the trapping spots. Still, that solved the whole problem with the lack of fish, so at least I got a decent lunch out of it.
After I finally got tired of trying to figuring out what all the trolls were finding so damn hilarious all the time, I ended up spending most of my time hanging out with Rokaro, a Champion of the Horde and successor to Rexxar there in Desolace. Speaking of which, gotta say, we had a fun time exchanging Rexxar stories, since we’d both spent a lot of time with the guy, and if you know Rexxar well, trust me, you get a lot of entertaining stories about him. Not to go spreading a lot of stories out of school (seeing as I was hardly ever actually IN school), but you know, you watch Rexxar closely and it’s not too hard to connect the dots. Hangs out with a bear all the time, always wearing a weird wolf mask…well, you do the math. Although I have to admit the bear thing is kind of cool…it would be nice if we could at least get Rokaro a worg or something.
We ended up swinging by the Mannroc Coven for a while, which is this area that’s overrun with demons that had been summoned by the Burning Blade. We spent a little time wiping out a few dozen of them just kicks, but these were pretty obviously low demons on the demon totem pole, so they were really easy to kill, and after a little while it just started getting boring. So we just headed back and figured we’d leave the rest of them to be finished off by some aspiring adventurers, um, looking for…you know…some critical mission vital to the survival of the Horde. Or some shit like that.
[Header image provided by Angelya from Revive and Rejuvenate, used here with permission and many thanks.]
Alliance are funny when their plans go to crap
Sorry I’ve been missing in action lately. The last few days have been pretty busy and I haven’t had much time to tend to the blog. That also means I kind of missed the last day of Hallow’s End for the in-character mailbag, but based on the responses I got, I might have overestimated how many of my readers are gamers. Seriously, though, you guys would like Earth. Give yourselves a break from Azeroth once in a while and try going there.
I ended up having a few delays leaving the Barrens, but mostly the big hold-up was in Mulgore. While I was in Thunder Bluff meeting with Baine, this big gang of Alliance wannabes came storming in to raid the place. Apparently somebody had the hot idea that they could roll on in and kill Baine and weaken the tauren. (Trust me, people, those cows don’t fold that easy.) So right in the middle of our meeting, these guys come charging in on us.
It was actually kind of funny – they obviously had this big fancy plan, all coordinated with some of them keeping the guards busy while the rest moved in, getting themselves in position to take on Baine…and then they come running in and see I’m there too. Seriously, you should have seen the “OH SHIT” looks on their faces. Priceless.
So Baine and I spent a good long while wiping the floor with the scrubs. We really should have made pretty quick work of them, but you know how stubborn and pig-headed those humans are – no matter how many times we slapped them back, they just kept coming and coming and coming, and it took for fucking EVER before they finally figured out they weren’t even putting a dent in us and gave up.
Gotta say, though, the one thing funnier than all of that is the thought that they also tried hitting up Orgrimmar first, fought their way through waves of Kor’kron guards, took all these massive casualties just getting into Grommash Hold…only to find I wasn’t even there in the first place.
Stupid humans.
