RSS

Realm Status!


Tags

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Where in the world is Grizz?

Posted: June 20th, 2008, by Grizz

If you’ve been asking yourself that, then the correct answer would be Boston!

That’s right, your loveable favorite nekkid cow has been (in addition to lazy, busy, moving, un-creative, etc) in Boston for the Red Hat Summit! ZOMG!

The cool part of this is… well, Botson! The bad part is that my hotel’s internet connection has the latency of a gummy worm, and I can just barely browse the web and chat, let alone play WoW. So I’ve been off doing other things.

I return Sunday! Look for me to get back into regular posting then!

Before I go, though, I’d like to take a moment and answer my first reader question!

Rod says…

Hey I was wondering where you got your Realm Status gizmo on your front page?

We’d love to have one like that on our web page.

Rod, that’s a teeny little PHP script I found here. It’s fairly easy to configure, and pretty damn nifty if I do say so myself.

:(

Posted: June 4th, 2008, by Grizz
“Unfortunately, the Account Investigator has recovered all the items and money that they were able to in the course of the investigation.”

/crytime

Oh well. At least they didn’t unlearn my professions or anything crappy like that.

Guess it’s time to go farm more repair bot materials.

Halp!

Posted: June 3rd, 2008, by Grizz

So, here’s the deal. I’m not a noob. However, I’m not entirely proficient with CSS, and the paragraph spacing on this site is driving me insane. I don’t know how to change it! If you think you can steer me in the right direction, please drop a comment, or hit me up on the contact form.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: Jezrael hooked me up. Thanks a ton!

Grizz lives!

Posted: June 2nd, 2008, by Grizz

Heya folks! Sorry about the long silence there. I got a little hung up in moving to the new apartment while going on vacation. Oh yeah, and I was keylogged! Let’s talk about that for a minute.

Last Wednesday I get home and happen to spy an email in my mailbox titled “World of Warcraft Account NEKKIDCOW* - Account Change Notice”. Hmm, I say to myself, that can’t be good. Opening the email shows that my password had been changed. Double ungood!

Quickly I do the “Halp I forgot my password” option on the WoW website, get my temporary password, and quickly run through my characters. Max, looks okay. Mal, looks okay. Etsi… well, crap. Etsi had nothing on her except her hearthstone and whatever gear couldn’t be vendored. Not cool! I made a quick check of the rest of my characters to make sure everything was okay (in true keylogger fashion they went straight for the 70 - they probably would have gotten more money from Max, but whatever), and opened a ticket, and was talking with a GM not five minutes later.

I think that’s probably the single fastest response time I’ve ever gotten. I was shocked.

Not long after my conversation with the GM, I received a ton of items as part of something they called a preliminary restoration, the intent being that my character would at least be playable while waiting for the rest of the equipment to be restore. All my DPS gear, resto gear, and whatever misc. bank stuff they were able to quickly put back. Pretty nifty, no?

Anywho, I changed my passwords from the laptop, cleaned the stupid virus off of my computer, and went to that evening’s raid.

The following evening I get another email from Blizzard in my inbox. Opening it reveals the text “After a thorough investigation, we have found this account to be eligible for restoration.”.

Woohoo! I’m getting my stuff back!

Continuing down the email, I read this:

Account: NEKKIDCOW*
Character: Etsi
Realm: Feathermoon
Money Restored: 207g 27s 73c
Item(s) Restored:

… wtf? Sure enough I get ~200 gold ingame, and no items.

No 70+ Field Repair Bot 110G’s. No 130 Badges of Justice. No engineering materials, no ores, no potions/elixirs/water… nothing. A quick chat with a GM only gets me the instruction to reply to the email I originally received (which I had already done), and other than that I’ve gotten no other information from Blizz.

I’m hearing from other people that have had their accounts hijacked that none of their Badges of Justice were able to be restored, so I’m not holding my breath. I guess it’s a small blessing that it was only one character, and that they didn’t make it to the guild bank before I changed the passwords.

*NEKKIDCOW is not my real account name, sillies.

A quick update

Posted: May 22nd, 2008, by Grizz

So you might have noticed I’ve been pretty quiet over here lately.

I promise, I haven’t given up on blogging, or died, or lost my hand in a tragic gerbil-feeding incident - I’m moving!

So as you can imagine I’ve been a tab busy packing, cleaning, throwing away a lot of crap that’s built up, and straightening out things like electric, internet, and so forth. Doesn’t leave a lot of time for WoW, unfortunately. :(

But! I’ve been updating my personal blog with moving news and info. If you’d like to read more, go here.

Revisiting last night

Posted: May 19th, 2008, by Grizz
Okay, I’m better now.

Calmer, less frustrated, and a lot less dead.

Last night I was asked to kite the striders for the Vashj fight. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the fight, during one part you have to handle mobs that Vashj will call to her. One of the mobs can’t be tanked and must be kited around the fight area. It has a fear aura, and its melee attacks hit (on me, at least) for about 12,000. Anyone who has a slowing effect is supposed to be using it, as well as several items that can temporarily immobilize it. It needs to die quickly.

The end result of all this is you have an angry strider moving anywhere from 70-50% of it’s original speed, stopping and starting unpredictably from snares. Because the range on my shocks is only 20 yards, I have to stay between 10-20 yards so I can shock it without getting feared/smacked/pwned.

It’s challenging, to say the least, and I was getting very frustrated last night. It didn’t help when they swapped me with another elemental shaman who was able to kite it a bit better. I logged off less than happy.

I think what upset me more than anything was that I had set before me a task that my class is capable of handling, and I wasn’t able to follow through - and now I’m faced with a choice. I can be angry at myself for not knowing how to play my class and bitter that another shaman was able to follow through where I couldn’t, or I can look at what I was doing wrong and try to fix it.

I have to confess, the first choice was winning there for a few hours. Well, not so much the bitter as the angry. But making a mistake is understandable; refusing to learn from it is not. That said…

  • I need to go somewhere and practice kiting without being hit, and ideally in a situation where I’m not going to cause 24 other people to have to repair if I can’t pull it off.
  • I’m going to pick up the S1 PvP gloves - they’ll extend my shock range by 5 yards.
  • I’m gonna smack myself on the back of the head for allowing myself to get so upset and flustered over something that’s just a game.

Any other ideas?

Nights like tonight…

Posted: May 18th, 2008, by Grizz

… make me seriously want to not raid.

We still haven’t made it to phase three.

Four hours, and all we learned is that I fail as a kiter.

I’m at the bottom of the DPS list, and I don’t think I managed to ever kite one strider successfully without getting caught in it’s melee attack. Stupid 20 yard shock range.

Travel Form!

Posted: May 15th, 2008, by Grizz

I can’t really think of anything to say, so I’ll let the picture speak for itself.

Yes, this really is my license plate!

Travel Form!

Supercow: The Theme

Posted: May 15th, 2008, by Grizz

Supercow theme song, based off the intro to Freakaziod.

Enjoy!

Super-moo extraordinaire
Supercow! Supercow!
Runs around in underwear
Supercow! Supercow!

Rescues dudes in Thunder Bluff
Supercow! Supercow!
Does it all while in the buff!
Supercow! Supercow!

His brain’s overloading
It has a chocolate coating
Textbook case for Sigmund Freud
Supercow! Superdude!

Check out Grizz Wildhoof
Awesome beartank ace
Took brain damage in Karazhan
The Prince all in his face

He turned into the Supercow
Naked and super-white
He drives his allies crazy
Dancing into the night

His home base is the Superlair
Supercow! Supercow!
Floyd the Barber cuts his hair
Supercow! Chimpanzee!

Rides around in the Moo-mobile
Supercow! Superzoo!
Hopes to make a movie deal
Super me! Super you!

He loves to shed his gear
And shake his bright white rear
He might just get you dancing too
Supercow! Supercow!
Supercow!

2.4.2 - The Noisy Patch

Posted: May 14th, 2008, by Grizz

So yesterday was patch day, and it seems every patch always brings a little something unexpected.

I was running around on Grizz in the Netherwing mines, sinking my claws into the flayers, doing that entirely awesome druid thing… and suddenly I hear a Bloodlust go off.

“That’s odd,” I say to myself. “I didn’t pop Bloodlust.”

Then it occurs to me I’m not on my shaman. WTF?

A little careful observation later and I notice that every time the Nethermine Ravagers enrage, the Bloodlust sound can be heard. That’s kinda unusual, to say the least, so I hop over to the bug report forum to toss up a post. While I’m over there, I find the below gem.

Although this wasn’t originally an intended change, the developers felt it was “too awesome” and decided to keep it.

Note that this appears to be tied any ability considered an enrage - Bloodlust, Bloodrage, mob enrages, trinkets and so forth.

What the hell, Blizz? You make a mistake and think it’s awesome? You do realize that sound actually means something to DPS - well, used to, at any rate - right?

Can I at least have my clearcasting sound back?

There’s also a few other changes that seem to have been snuck in. There’s some fuss about rogue animations floating around ( I can’t really verify any of these since I don’t really play a rogue), and one of my friends said something about parts of the orc model being redone.

Anyone else notice any other stealth changes?