Ulduar - bleurgh!

Well, all the excitement is about Ulduar and from what I've read I don't want to go. It seems the first boss will be a mechanoid sort of thing where you will have to fight through waves of army vehicles on vehicles of your own - siege weapons, tanks, motorbikes and the like.

I play this game to play my character - I heal. I have 11 or so heals at my disposal. I even use most of them from time to time. I work on my gear to tweak my skills and abilities. WHY on earth would I want to go with 24 other people and mess about in a vehicle or on a motorbike with 5 or 6 controls, of which 1 or 2 might be heals?


These are the reasons I hate vehicles.....

1. They don't work properly with my tweaked action bars.
2. They are "clunky".
3. They are all called the same thing - you can't differentiate between people easily.
4. I want to play the character I created, not one that someone else made for me that is the same as everyone elses.
5. They don't look pretty.
6. Just .. NO.

I hate Malygos phase 3, I have Wrymrest temple dailies, I hate Nexus dailies. I've not got very far with Sons of Hodir because you have to use other things - bears, dragons, etc. I don't go to Wintergrasp or Strand of the Ancients - not only because I hate pvp, but also because of the vehicle things.

If this is the way forward for WOW then Blizzard will be losing a player who has been with them over 3 years. And I don't think I will be the only one. Sad panda.

Some tips for Valentines achievements

Well, I've been doing all the Valentines achievements and noticed on various blogs some hints and tips, but thought I'd write some of my own as none of the guides seemed to cover it all as far as I can remember. This is Alliance biased as I don't have a Horde character.

First put on your Perfume (to talk to Male chrs - Most if not ALL the IF guards are male) or Cologne (for Female chrs - almost all if not ALL the Darnassus Sentinels are female). You can buy these from Innkeepers - get some love tokens while you are there. Get LOTS.

Pledges come from Guards (SW or IF) or Sentinels (Darnassus). You can get a pledge of Adoration once an hour, which contains one of the rare items (picnic basket, trueshafted or Silver shafted arrow, lovely black dress, love rocket, love fool, bag of candies, box of chocolates, handful of rose petals, unbestowed friendship bracelet). You always get a Card or Pledge of loyalty as well.

Gifts come from normal NPCs such a bread vendors. Again the "of Adoration" can contain anything listed above as well as one of the other items you need such as bread, brew or wood crafts (depending on the City). Be careful in IF - one if the wandering NPCs is actually affiliated to SW and will give bread not beer.

You can obtain the "normal" items any time - these are Cards, pledges and crafts. If you collect 5 of each thing - card, pledge and craft/food/beer you can combine them all to make a gift collection for the particular city (and get a buff for doing it - Agility in Darnassus, Intellect in SW and Stamina in IF - you can't have more than one buff at a time though).

If you collect all three city Gift packs you can create an Alliance gift pack which you take to Peddlefeet (he's in the King's room in IF). If you hand it in you get a reward of a Box of Chocolates and one of 5 of Arrows, Love rockets or Handful of petals. Give him a /kiss and you will receive a +200 health buff as well.

This means that you don't have to wait to receive all the items in your adoration once an hour thing. You can get your chocolates, rockets, arrows and petals by other means.

The Love fools - again you don't have to get these, but you will need a friend with them. You can /pity any fool that is in the location required, so if you don't get them in your gifts but a friend does you can follow them along for that part.

You can trade the lovely dress, fools, rockets, petals, pledges, cards and crafts/beer/food, but NOT arrows, chocolates, picnic basket, truesilver arrow or candies.


For the flirt with disaster achievement you need to remember alcohol to get completely smashed and your petals to throw on him and then you have to /kiss him. He is usually found wandering around the middle circle of Ironforge (surrounded by people).

You can follow your own way about the quest from the guy that leads to the coloured dresses or suits... it ends up out the back of beyond in Arathi - I've done it every year for 3 years, but I still struggle every year to find it!

Shoot people with arrows - easy enough. Cure people's hearts - Darnassus is good because there's never anybody there - stand by the bank or up the top of the ramp in the way out. In the square by the AH in SW is also good, as is the bridge in IF.

Dalaran is a good place to find the class/race combinations you need to throw petals on.

The easiest place to get a bunch of ebon roses is off the first boss in Utgarde Keep. Take a group and run it over and over until you all have what you want (it only drops for one person). Or do like I did and have such wonderful guild mates that they know you do mad things and want strange items that they will come with you JUST for killing the boss - /hug guys. I LOVE MY GUILD.

YAY - Naxx 25 two days after Naxx 10

We did it!

We had 37 people sign up for a raid - it was so hard being on the Council trying to make a team to go, knowing that some would be let down and disappointed.

We finally got a group together and went and one shot 4 horsies (no priestly loot - that means NO T7 tokens for the whole clearance for priests - Boo Hoo). We one shot Sapphiron.


He dropped a nice dress which I blew my SK place on. I still find it annoying that I have to wear a tabard and cover how lovely it looks...

We moved on to KT. We had 3 or 4 tries and with an "almost going to be 1% wipe, but we pulled it off" escape he died!


Well done to all who were there, sorry to those who were not, but I'm sure that we will see it happen more times now we know we can do it. He didn't drop any priesty T7 either. Please Blizzard can we have some loot this week that would benefit our poor little priests?

Now - on to achievements - Valentines stuff - no time to raid this week - only got 5 days to get all that work done.

Hurrah - 10 man Naxx defeated

Well, this week on Wednesday I was invited by a guild friend to join another bunch of friends in a bid to complete Naxx 10-man. Like I may have mentioned before we're having trouble fitting it all in but we made a start on Wednesday while the rest of the guild were doing OS and WG. We cleared 3 wings.

On Sunday we started earlier than usual and made our way swiftly to Sapphiron. Everyone had crafted their Frost Resist gear so we made easy work of him and snagged our second EoE key for the guild.

On to Kel'Thuzad. We had about 3 learning tries on him while we worked out all the bits and pieces we all needed to do and down he went!


Much rejoicing and a new wand for Seph.

I gathered my minions around his throne and began my new reign - muahahaha...


Have to do something about the decor though - the purple is OK, but the skulls are a little depressing.

The guild is up for some tries on the last bits in Naxx 25 tonight - we've got 4 horsies and then Sapphiron and KT to go - wish us some luck!

Best GM interaction ever!

I decided yesterday to tidy up my Warcraft pets collection and make it for a single character (now I have a croc - did I tell you I finally got a croc?).

I noticed that I did not have a mechanical chicken. This is the one you get as a reward for doing 3 homing chicken quests in Ferelas, Hinterlands and Tanaris. I had no idea which I'd done on Seph (if any), so decided to ask a GM. I put in a ticket and waited a while (quite a while actually, but it was the weekend).

I was standing around in Darnassus, when a GM popped up in front of me and asked me, in normal "say" if I was having chicken troubles. I said yes - I didn't know which I'd helped to rescue and which I had missed. The GM told me that I'd only done the one in Ferelas and that I should search elsewhere for the others.

This was the conversation...


Suddenly 2 enormous chickens spawned...

El Pollo Grande from the guild The Black Chicken of Death.

These were quickly killed and 2 more came...


I almost fell off my chair laughing.

The GM continued...


I was turned into a pirate with a pumpkin head and rose petals cascading down - which I said was ugly, so I became a ninja..

The person next to us at the bank who commented that it would help my search was turned into a leper gnome and was blasted into the air! I mentioned that the GM's level was a bit low (was 70) and it instantly changed to lvl 80 :)


It all happened so very fast that I didn't get as many screenies and I could have done, but it certainly brought a huge smile to my face. If only all customer service interactions could be as much fun!

Oh and I went to Hinterlands and killed half of it to get my drop, then to Tanaris and repeated my killing spree in Zul'Farrak to happily escort both chickens safely home.... I was rewarded for my efforts with a little friend of my own...


The more eagle eyed among you may also notice that I got my elders done too and was rewarded with another title. What a great weekend!