Well, well, well - look who we have here

I did the inevitable. I took a break from WoW. My last blog update, and the only blog update of 2014, until this one of course, was in January; but no, that's not when I started my break. That's perhaps when I should have started my break. Should I have had my break then, things might be quite different from now. But no, I did the worst thing I could do - went mysteriously inactive for a time too long, and announced my break to what was left of my guild sometime during the summer. Kinsey was on a break, Lanfranco was on a break and not even certain if he'd play in Warlords of Draenor or not. I made the decision to put down the mantle of the Hex Machine for the time of my break, and made a trusted guildy the guild master. But that didn't work out, and the guild remained rather inactive until my return in the midst of this month. I made my return the night before the Warlords patch went live. The following day, there I was again, on World of Warcraft, alongside my good friends and co-guild masters Lanfranco and Kinsey, feeling excited about the game after so long. Lanfranco's face looked bloody awesome.

I returned to be a part of no raid team. I returned burdened with feelings of sadness, guilt and regret - feelings I'll probably never be able to shake off completely. I returned to a dying guild - yes, it is about time I admit Menagerie is a dying guild. Our Menagerie. The least I can do is lay the guild to rest honorably, just once I can gather my bones together to be the guild master I should have been all along. It's not impossible that Menagerie would one day rise to raid again, but for now I don't possess the motivation, energy or time to do it. And, I secretly admit that I'd like to be just a regular raider for a while. Imagine me saying that! I, who once said I could never imagine not being a guild master anymore. But now, as I've been that for over three years now, I could swear I'd never take that position again. It is an exhausting job, and I truly give my respects to anyone who can do that actively for years.

Finally - after four years and over 200 attempts.

 To be honest, I made a terrible guild master in the first place. I am too proud and too stubborn for a position like that. And too kind, as well. I never really understood why anyone would like to be in a guild with Nicasia as the holder of the highest rank. Must have been because of Kinsey and Frank. I enjoy being very hard on myself emotionally, and carrying the weight of a guild on my shoulders just isn't a good addition to that.

But yet, to have been the guild master of Menagerie is one of the greatest honors I have received in my life, and an experience I have learnt much from. Each and every member of the guild, current and past, has my heartfelt thanks for being a part of that crazy ride. Menagerie achieved a lot, not only in the way of raiding. While guilds are known have lived longer than that, not many do in the end. And not many mean as much to their founders as my guild does to me. No other guild will ever be referred to as my guild, for there is no guild I can feel as proud of as I do of my Menagerie.

What I had time to Fraps before my PC broke - again!

The title says it. Here are the most recent Menagerie raid videos from Siege of Orgrimmar. I would most certainly record more, as Menagerie is nearly at Garrosh, but Saturday morning my PC showed no signs of life. Therefore it's leaving home yet again to be fixed, if it can be fixed that is. It may be that they will just give me a new individual. In fact I hope they finally would.

Either way, I am working on building a supermachine of my own. My budget is around 1500 euros and I'll probably get around to buying stuff around the change of year. If you have any suggestions for what pieces I should consider, I'd love to know! I'll just say that I'd like to go for nVidia this time, instead of AMD Radeon.

Back, not quite in business though

Turns out I was able to reinstall and run WoW on my terribly bad old laptop, "craptop", after updating as many of its drivers as I was able to. As expected, the play experience is far from desirable with less than 10 FPS standing still in an empty room. As you have probably already figured, raiding is not an option for me before I get my primary PC back. Until then, I may redirect you to my attempt to maintain a personal blog number infinite+1, called That Rogue's Broken Keyboard and Other Lame Excuses. Despite the name, it's pretty much Finland-exclusive.

Lanfranco and I were responsible for this year's April fool's guild message of the day in Menagerie. A Menagerie ghost roleplay event was to be arranged in Hearthglen, Western Plaguelands (a very strategic location for Menagerie). Everyone taking part would be required to remain dead throughout the event. The idea of ghost RP first came up in a humorous recruitment advertisement we posted in the Moonglade trade chat once. Last year's April fool's message asked everyone to add 'lol' in the end of each message they posted in guild chat, or they would get a warning.

It's likely I won't be posting anything to Adventures while in England (9th - 24th of April), but when I return, I will have my good computer back. Below is yet another video that gets posted late.

I wasn't sure if I would ever post the next one, but decided to do so anyway. It's my first ever, and due to technical difficulties, also my only experience in the solo dungeon loot scenario...whateverthedevil thingy. I'm looking forward to doing smoother loot runs in the future!

Tsulong & Lei Shi videos

Pushing through four new bosses during the same lockout is definitely our record!

HoF & ToES videos

Here are some recent Menagerie raid videos from Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring.

That Garalon we love

Who would grow tired of watching a berserk as awesome as Garalon's, anyway?

We've got this... Really...!

As we got around to doing our usual Wednesday Mogu'shan Vaults run, suddenly after the Stone Guards I got the idea of recording our raiding for the first time since Dragon Soul, from where we sadly don't have much better material than the Kalecgos part of the Madness of Deathwing Chromatic Champion achievement, a (very stylish indeed) heroic Morchok clip and some early Dragon Soul progression kills like Zon'ozz, Yor'sahj, Hagara and Ultraxion with the classic bad screaming, despite clearing the raid on heroic mode. Those videos actually make me miss Dragon Soul, heh. The oldest raid video of us, known as "Shannox now", dates back to early Firelands and, well, Shannox, Rageface and Riplimb.

We are well past our progression phase in normal mode Mogu'shan Vaults, but my sudden idea to Fraps the raid really messed with our heads. Before beginning, I told everyone how we should portray ourselves: we mustn't stand in poop, we mustn't die, we mustn't go out of mana, we mustn't do anything stupid! We mustn't do anything that wasn't what I did. For long I've thought I don't really tunnel vision, but after Feng, well, I am humbled. Please do enjoy this exclusive content of a Menagerie raid that was by far the most fun raid I have attended. We sure didn't live through our smoothest kills in history, but people were positive all the way from the first second to the last and beyond, which was really spectacular and made me incredibly happy. It really reminded me of why I fell in love with raiding in the first place.

I just wish Fraps had been running when the Eye of Kil'rogg made the first pull on Gara'jal the Spiritbinder.

Then came the time for the most flawless Elegon kill.
"Did you record that?"
"Nope."
"...You're kidding me?"
"Nope."

This is just one of those times when I try to say that you guys mean a ton to me.

New year's resolutions for WoW

It would certainly be beneficial if I promised to do dailies every single day, cap valor points on every level 90 character I have each week (6000 valor points! Wrathion, please. It may be my main, but still.), run all necessary LFRs on each alt to finally gear them up... But let's face it - I am incredibly lazy. I know I wouldn't stick to that, simply because I sadly don't hold it in such importance, so it would be pointless to even pretend I promised that. But to ease the burden, I do promise not to bring other leveling projects to higher levels for a while now. Let us see how long that promise holds.

My original goal was to get all available reputations to exalted before patch 5.1 hit. That didn't work out, so I extended my deadline up to 5.2. Will about two months be enough for a rather lazy individual like me? We'll see, but I'll be happy if I get a couple of them close to exalted. Klaxxi and Operation: Shieldwall are looking pretty good at the moment. The rest are, well... In more or less questionable states.

I talk about our guild here quite a bit. It's important to me, it's our baby. I also care about the members, and bonding with people through raids is a rewarding experience, which is why I promise to try to recognise any issues within the guild and make effort to fix them as swiftly as possible. I'll speed up recruitment if I have to and hire Nica's little helpers to give me a hand with it. The people in the guild give me a lot, and I want to give just as much - and more - back to them. I can't say I haven't felt inadequate recently.

It's been a pretty crazy year in many ways, and I'm glad that I've got such a warm welcome from other WoW bloggers. Again, a big thanks to every single person that ever visits the blog. With these words and thoughts I wish you a fantastic year of 2013. Rock on.

Nica

Through Your Interface: 15 Days of Screenshots #10

Back to this challenge! I'm not yet very close to the end, but I've carefully kept my eye out for another challenge to accept once I'm done with this one. Are you hosting a challenge? Feel free to throw me suggestions!

See Saz's blog for more information regarding the challenge!

10. Your WoW crew
Who are the people you hang out with day in and day out? Do you only hang out with your raid mates? Do you have a small, tight knit group of friends that you hang out with? Or are you a strange longer who just hangs out with your pets?

I digged up some really old screenshots for this one! Enjoy!

A pre-Cataclysm hole!

I most likely wouldn't play WoW at all if it wasn't for that crazy drood. My bestest durid! We do loads of weird and crazy stuff together, and have fallen into a ton of holes (as you see above). Hearthstone is a good friend. Kidney is awesome!

Ehehehehahaahaahahheeihhhohihoh! I have much better pictures of Lanfranco, but I want to show him that I have a shot like this. Haha. The paladin in the background is a lovely one. Just look at his gear, it consists of like 333-346 blues. Man, that was long ago. It was also a very important time for me, because I stayed in a crappy guild for two reasons: to be in the same one with Kidney, as it is natural, and to be around Lan. I'm not sure if I've admitted that to him, but it was like that for a long time - it didn't end until we both got kicked... But that's a different story, heh. There's so much to say about him, so I'll summarise it like this: <3

You can also see Billx, a golden-hearted dwarven hunter in the shot. We recruited him to the guild when killing Omen that day. And nowadays he's with us in Menagerie.

You see a night elf death knight, too? That's weird, 'cause I don't.

Remember this, Mae?

The bear you see above is someone I know as Mae, our main tank for most of Dragon Soul and currently a very versatile personality. Despite everything I'm happy he's stuck with us. Sometimes it surprises me that he has. My journey with him is one of those weird chains that happened for an unknown reason, but I'm sure they were meant to happen.

I don't have individual screenshots of everyone I spend time with on WoW, so I'll just give a shout out to our whole raid group for being lovely and tolerating me. I love raiding with you, wiping with you and sharing the guild with you. You're the ones that made it our guild. And you guys are epic!

<3

And I said heeeeeeeyeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeyeeeheeh

I said hey, what's going on? This post is going to cover a bit of stuff that has happened recently that aren't quite important enough to have individual posts, but should be mentioned anyhow.

1. I've been sick. I am sick. Stupid, stupid flu. Stuck to my bed and unable to stay up more than two hours a day, and even that is a struggle. Work lagging behind, school lagging behind and WoW life shut down, since I am unable to do anything else but lie down and/or sleep. Luckily the worst seems to be over now.

2. Menagerie, our guild, completed Dragon Soul on heroic mode, ranking 11th on the server, 7th on Alliance side. With a sudden sprint of progressing through the last two encounters during the same evening, I'm quite happy that we made it to 8/8 heroic by the end of the expansion. That also got me thinking the definition of casual. I've always considered us a casual raiding guild. It's quite obvious to all that Dragon Soul is the easiest raid for the designated level so far, also the most nerfed. But on our server, Moonglade EU, there are guilds that also call themselves casual with a progression that barely reaches the end of normal mode.
I thought some of our most important casual features were flexible raids, that we could have a couple of breaks during the raid time and we didn't have any super important progression schedule. Surely, every time we down a new boss, I set the goal to learning the next one (as I am the main raid leader and one out of three guild leaders).
I think on a very global scale, as a raid team, we're mediocore at our best. But I'm constantly looking to optimise the team for the best possible progression plan.

Commercial time! Do you want to be a part of Menagerie? We're a growing guild on the European RP realm Moonglade. We currently have about two raid groups, including the core group that raids Friday and Saturday evenings, and a less progression oriented bunch of people and alts that raid on Thursdays and Tuesdays, or one of those days. Let me know of your interest, or whisper Nicasia, Lanfranco or Kinsey, or alternatively an officer, in-game. This Menagerie is NOT for guests only!

3. I defeated my archnemesis. Vladan has struggled with Instructor Razuvious of Naxxramas for a long time, always getting slain by his abilities obliterating half of his health at once. Apparently the class changes of 5.0.4 buffed him so much that I was able to one-shot him (as in not dying to him before killing) last time I visited Naxxramas, and was finally able to finish the Military Quarter. Against all odds, the Four Horsemen were a surprisingly easy encounter.

Currently I have the most issues with Gluth, and it's because of lack of damage. I'm unable to damage through all his zombie-devouring heals before berserk. Due to not getting past the dog, I haven't had a shot at Thaddius, or the two mini-bosses before him. The two bosses mentioned are the only ones I can't kill alone in Naxxramas.

I'm very eager to try the Lich King, but according to my common sense, it's probably impossible to get through the gunship battle alone. Therefore I'll have to grab at least a couple of people with me. I did try to duo the gunship with Lanfranco, but we either wiped to the Skybreaker taking too much damage, or me dying because of the stacking debuff of the Horde boss that he does when I go out of his melee range to get rid of the mage.

I guess that was pretty much all the important stuff for now. I'll try to see you more when I get better and I'm done with my current work task. Take care, have fun and remember: 2 weeks till Pandaria!

Patchfever

I only just realised that the only thing I've mentioned regarding 5.0.4 is a bug. A bug! Before the patch was released, I complained about my Cataclysm burnout, Pandaria not being released yet, guild worries... And not one positive word now that the game is actually fun again. In fact it's fairly logical, since I really want to play it now - that leaves no time for writing, right?

Anyways, I thought I'd go through the start of the patch and how it has worked out for me. The most notable difference in gameplay are obviously the new talents and abilities, so I'll start with those. For Nicasia the elemental shaman, my main, I chose the following talents for heroic Dragon Soul raiding purposes: Astral Shift, Frozen Power, Totemic Restoration, Echo of the Elements, and despite the fairly overpowered totem, Ancestral Guidance.

After testing in multiple encounters, I came up with the result of Echo being better than the other two options. It was particularly strong in encounters with steady DPS maintenance, such as Ultraxion. Her major glyphs are Telluric Currents, Flame Shock, Spiritwalker's Grace, and for minor ones I went with Far Sight, Totemic Encirclement and Lakestrider, which has nearly got me killed already! I was really jaded raiding with Nica. I kept thinking about swapping for my death knight for the remains of Dragon Soul... Until 5.0.4 came out. Then BAM! It all got fun again!

Vladan received Boiling Blood, Purgatory, Asphyxiate, Death Pact and Blood Tap talents for his blood spec, and Unholy Blight, Anti-Magic Zone, Asphyxiate, Death Siphon and Runic Empowerment for his frost spec. His blood glyphs are Unholy Command, Icy Touch, Anti-Magic Shell, Horn of Winter, Resilient Grip and the oh-so-essential Corpse Explosion. His frost glyphs are Shifting Presences, Death Coil and Icebound Fortitude, which I thought I'd find useful in some situations. The minor glyphs are the same, apart from Tranquil Grip replacing Resilient Grip.
I wonder if Chilblains is actually meant to be spelled with only one L?

Purgatory is, to my mind, a very cool talent mainly because of the feel of it. It suits the death knight playfeel perfectly. I think it's useful for raid tanking. And because I was bored, I bound various insults to Vlad's Dark Command taunt. It's not common for people to share my sense of humour, but we'll see!

Raleigh, who is a holy paladin, has got a bit less attention post-patch. He did make my jaw drop after doing 20k DPS on a dummy, though. Sadly I don't find protection very interesting at the moment, so I will more than likely make his offspec retribution - again. This is also because holy pretty much lost Exorcism, and I think that spell has the sexiest sound effect in the whole game. That sound is no doubt one of the best things about paladins.

Despite Nica's raiding getting a lot more fun, I still think Vlad is on top of the gameplay chart, bursting 60k DPS on a raid boss with relative ease, and with an item level lower than Nicasia's. This doesn't mean that Nica isn't still my main, and most loved character.
The remaining three Dragon Soul runs in fact seem a bit saddening now that we had a really fun raid last Saturday. It's been a long time since we've had that much fun as a group - at least I felt that was the case. Otherwise, too, I think the recent rough times are over for now. The timing of 5.0.4 couldn't have been better, since the new stuff is really refreshing, and it shows. Thank you, Blizzard, for this patch!

P.S. I'm going to be studying Mon-Thur evenings now and I'm not sure about how much that affects my WoW playing and blogging, but in case I seem a bit inactive, it's most likely because of that.

Through Your Interface: 15 Days of Screenshots #4

See Saz's blog for more information regarding the challenge!

4. Greatest accomplishment
Proud of a boss kill? Excited about taming that rare? Over the moon about getting a title? Show us your greatest in game accomplishment!

I wasn't sure if non-full screenshots were allowed in this challenge, but at least the rules didn't say anything about that! So therefore I present our guild.

Menagerie is level 25 these days, the shot was taken to remember the message of the day of 1st of April. I consider the guild my greatest accomplishment in the game. I formed it together with two good friends, who are still leading it with me, and still have their original unique guild master titles among my own. The guild turned 1 year in the beginning of July and we've grown significantly during that time. It's been a rocky road, and still is, but I don't regret forming the guild and I wouldn't give it up for the world. It's become a great part of my WoW persona.

A mixed post!

I thought I'd start this month's posts with a beta one, particularly since there have been lots of new stuff added to it since the latest patch. Pet battles and all that stuff. I found out the beta post would have been way more text than screenshots, so this'll be a very mixed post. I meant to post it days ago already, actually, but things have come up.
I know July wasn't a very active month posting-wise, compared to the previous two. It's because I haven't been very inspired about WoW, and lots of unfortunate events have taken place. I'm definitely not going to quit playing WoW or anything, I'm just taking a silent break while maintaining all guild things as usual.

Part V of the story of Vlad is probably one of the things that will be out pretty soon, followed by part VI, which is intended to be the last part of the story. However, it will not be the last part of Vlad's story altogether - I've began to really like him as I've progressed with the story, so he'll be heard from.

Beta things start here, so spoiler warning.

Alright, let's get to Pandaria things. It's been a while since I've been to the beta. The first thing I noticed was a new launcher. I liked the old one better, because it was wooden. There was also a Pandaria loading screen, which I thought I screenshot, but didn't.

With my beta-shaman Nicasia I spawned extremely close to the newly introduced farming place in Valley of the Four Winds. What people mistakenly call the Farmville of World of Warcraft is actually much closer to the Harvest Moon of World of Warcraft with the Best Friends system and all. It is indeed a new minigame that lets the player take care of their own farm: plant and harvest crops, earn seeds and other rewards, build relationship with the various NPCs around the ranch, get gifts from them and take care of various issues around the farm. It's related to the Tillers faction.

I'm not sure whether I like this myself or not, but the most wonderful thing about the minigames is YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO THEM IF YOU DON'T WANT TO. I wish everyone understood this. Plus it's in Pandaria, and a Pandaren thing. It's not like it's going to be a part of Stormwind City's dailies. Just don't adventure into Pandaria if it makes you sick. Let the Pandaren live their lives, and live yours somewhere else. Or consider it a holiday in China, with some Chinese tourists elsewhere in the world.

As most of World of Warcraft's players are casual ones - those that want to log on every now and then and do something, minigames like these are very understandable. They add to the casual player's to-do list, which before Pandaria included mainly questing, dailies and some dungeoning, perhaps PvP. I won't get into all the things I hate about the raid finder, but it's also one of those things for the casual players.

See that libram? It didn't show as I inspected the items, so it's a special thing. I have no idea where or how one can get it, but I think it's awesome! And that paladin PvP set, too, is one if my favorites paladin sets so far. To me it has a Judgement-like feel to it. To avoid confusion, the malevolent set was transmogged into the dreadful one, hence the inspection looks different.


I found a capturable pet in the Valley of the Four Winds, but I couldn't battle it, because I was stuck in combat for some silly reason that I couldn't figure out.

At times it is and has been very difficult to get through these last months of Cataclysm. I'm pretty sure that when September hits, though, we'll be very close to the pre-MoP events. And because of that, I recommend everyone to visit the good old Theramore Isle while they still can.

Here are some more screenshots of unimportant things.

I had my first Panda greenie drop!

I like this helmet in a twisted way.

PvP shield - trollish voodoo stuff.

Shiny paladin.

A very cute worm!

Fangs of Fluty

Thank you, thank you. -Fluty

Wings of the Father.

Nicasia = Interviewer, guild master.
Fluty = Core raider, honored member.

N: Congratulations, Fluty!
F: Whoo!
N: How do you feel now that this journey towards your laggers is finally over?
F: Awesome.
N: How are you planning to use your daggers in the future?
F: Stab stuff, flair.
N: How do they feel in your hands?
F: Have you looked at them? There are tentacles on the handles.
N: So, wiggly then?
F: Yes, very.
N: That is fascinating. How do you think that will affect your fighting?
A part of the interview has been censored.
N: How do you feel about their pink colour?
F: Yay! Pink! Landslide should be pink, too.
N: Fair enough. How do you feel about Pandaria's greens replacing your oranges?
F: They what? They are not going to replace them with greens!
N: Well, blues then.
F: Meh, I'll still have them to show off.
N: Will you be sad when you cannot feel the wiggle in your hands anymore?
F: Yes, wiggling in hands is good.
N: I can't really come up with any more questions. How are you feeling overall?
F: Well, WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! That and slightly hungry.
N: We will get you some food immediately.
F: Whoo! Food!
N: Thank you for the interview and congratulations again!
F: No problems, and. Thank you, thank you.

Shiny admiring shiny.

Because we do not appreciate censorship, we have published the parts that originally had to be cut out of the interview.

F: I might "accidentally" stab Mael.
N: Who is this Mael? Would you describe them for us?
F: Maelarii? He's known mostly as Dolores.
Muffet: Fluty, can I touch it?
F: He mumbles and he calls himself a tracker, but he usually gets lost. And he's lazy, very lazy.

Hail Fluty

On Friday 25th our little guild fought the evil Warmaster Blackhorn, his companion Goriona and their horrifying friends. Our aim had always been to save the ship from any damage caused by Twilight Barrages. However every time at least one was too far, or had a particularly unfortunate timing.

Desperation filled our hearts as our beloved Skyfire was about to suffer a blow! Luckily our amazing rogue Fluty bravely sprinted into two barrages, sacrificing his life for the sake of Skyfire!

Fluty's heroism will inspire our further adventures. He had to make a macro to thank people for praising him.

All hail Fluty, champion and savior of Menagerie! And the Skyfire. Sky Captain Swayze also sent his regards to him.