Shadowmourne Unveiled; Wishlists Rule.

The PTR was abuzz with yesterday’s unveiling of Shadowmourne, the new legendary axe from Icecrown Citadel. This thing is pure sex and awesomeness in the form of a lethal two-handed weapon, crafted from the souls of enemies slain by my hand, infused with the blood of an Old God, designed to be wielded by me to slay one of the greatest threats Azeroth has ever known, and I want it more than I want you to be happy. Ok, maybe not (depending on who you are), but statistics favor the axe over you. Dem’s da breaks, pal.

I’m looking forward to seeing what, exactly, all of the necessary steps will be for its construction; I’m hoping to avoid a repeat of Val’anyr (we obtained I think maybe 11 shards total?) this time, but seeing as we’re a casual raiding guild, I don’t really expect us to obtain one. Wish? Hope? Pray? Sacrifice kittens to dark forces? Maybe. No expectations, though.

A guy can hope, right?

In other news, I’ve been updating my Amazon.com wishlist for the upcoming holidays. See, I’m similar to TheFerrett in that I am often difficult to buy things for, simply because I tend to buy things when I want them (save for expensive things, since I’m generally poor). Given that, I find it best to keep a running list for people who might be gift-inclined around my birthday (December 3rd!) and/or xmas. I also promise not to buy anything on my wishlist for myself from mid-november to post-xmas. It’s not very up to date, but I’m working on it, and I hope to have it done by the end of this weekend. I fully realize that almost none of you were planning on getting me anything for any reason, but hey – my mom reads this blog (hi mom!), and I know she appreciates lists.

No Money, Mo’ Problems, but at Least I Can Level.

As much as getting one’s hours cut at work can hurt the wallet, there are certainly bright sides to such an occurrence. In this particular case, one of those benefits has been playing WoW all day. This is pretty rad. I find that the daytime crowd, while fewer than the prime-timers, more than make up for it by being either a) even bigger douchebags or b) robots (see fig. a and fig. b, right).

Conversations such as these are just a tasting of my daytime experience, though, as I’ve spent most of my time working to better myself in-game. Fed up with being poor both irl and in-game, I’ve reactivated my second account and once again set up a side machine solely dedicated to working the auction house.

You see, I don’t want to work for my money. Why spend all my in-game time farming or doing dailies, when I could instead just set up another machine that constantly scans the auction house, looking for foolishly-low-priced deals? I make him jump every 20 minutes or so, and when the computer makes an audible “ding!”, I look over and click “yes” or “no”. Easy money.

I will say, however, many of my friends make UNREASONABLE money by working professions into it. Maybe I’ll try it; I’d love to make 20k a week instead of 2.5k. The trick, of course, seems to be having a jewelcrafter. This will require some work.

To that end, I’ve been leveling my Shaman. I’ve spent a good portion of the past several days remembering that level 51-53 is, in fact, the worst level area in all of leveling. You’re too high to do any of the quests that are close together, you’re too low to do most of the plagueland quests, and the only things that are reasonable for you are like, Felwood quests that are 48907 miles apart from one another. Before 51, you can find quests to do if you look hard enough/have done them enough to know where to be/where not to be (hint for Alliance – stay out of Feralas altogether). At 53 or so, Tirion’s quests in EPL open up and it’s tons of grinding (over a hundred mobs he wants dead) – it’s like a carpool lane to Outland. I’m actually on my way to freakin’ Un’Goro right now, because at least if I grind there, I can skin everything and maybe make some cash.

EDIT: Ok, so I totally forgot about Un’Goro. There are, in fact, a ton of quests for low-50s toons, they’re close together, and they involve a lot of grinding. Also, Shamans¹ are OP – I’ve been soloing devilsaurs all weekend. So yeah, levels 51-53 aren’t as devoid as options as I may have previously declared. My bad. I will revise my statement, and declare that the 50s in general are the worst, if only because they take the longest (you may say “but no, the 40s are worse!” but that’s because you’re trying to level on Alliance in Feralas, and that’s never a good idea).

Anyway, if all goes well, I should be in Outland by later this evening, at which point it’s smooth sailing to 80.

EDIT 2: Level 58 has been achieved, and I am on my way to Hellfire. Wish me luck. I’m home tomorrow as well, so I’ll try to get a post up about the Mike Doughty show I attended on Friday; we’ll see.

¹ Yes, Shamans is, in fact, the correct pluralization of Shaman. I don’t like it either; I think it’s unsightly at best. But hey, that’s how it goes. I’ve accepted it and moved on.

11/05 Recap.

• (+) Borderlands is one of the coolest games I’ve seen in a long time. I have it on the xbox 360, if you wanna play.
• (-) Borderlands has nearly consumed my non-work time.
• (=) My enjoyment with Prototype has been greatly hindered by Borderlands. In fact, since acquiring the latter, I have yet to replay the former. This is a shame, as I’m paying GameFly for the privilege of borrowing it. Conundrum.
• (=) My guild is working on, but struggling with, Northrend Beasts hardmode. Phase 2 is rough.
• (-) I am Thassarian’s Legplates of Triumph away from my 4pc. Tier bonus, which is still stupidly overpowered. I have enough emblems, but do not have a trophy. I still need a VoA 25 run this week. Wish me luck!
• (-) The past few weeks of Rock Band 2 DLC are of no interest to me. This doesn’t matter much, though, as I cannot even afford the Beatles Rock Band DLC that I do want. All in good time.
• (-) My downstairs neighbor apparently works nights, and hates it when I play drums. This will end poorly.
• (+) I have found a new hobby within WoW!




• (-) That hobby is going for The Loremaster on my death knight.




• (-) The folks over in Maine voted against equal rights. To their credit, it was a thin margin, which says to me that only slightly over half of Maine voters are bigots. Yep, I went there. You suck, assholes.

I’ll post something substantial on these or other subjects soon, but I have a lot of games to play tonight, and not enough time to play them all.