Exercise & WoW

[thistlechaser]

Man, and I really posting less than once a week now? It's been ten days since my last update! Perhaps good news on that front: The random LJ image sites have started working again! Woo woo! Perhaps I'll find some wild and wacky stuff to post.

Exercise: Dance Fitness for Beginners with MaDonna Grimes: Urban Street Heat isn't exactly what I thought it would be. Picture hiphop taught by your mother, set to the most bland and inoffensive music possible, with background dancers who the most rural midwestern farmer wouldn't glance twice at.

That being said, it's embarrassing that I can't keep up with the instructor. She must be nearly 50, but she moves so fast! Ha ha. ...hmmmm, maybe her name was supposed to be a clue as to her age. "MaDonna", Ma Donna?

Hopefully the other urban dance DVD will be better. (I've done the samba one twice now, I love that one!)

---

In WoW world, I've started doing instances! After "hating" them for as long as I've been playing WoW, I've actually been having fun doing them. And by "hating" I mean my usual "I've never (tried|done|eaten) that, but I know I hate it!". They're so nice and short compared to things like FFXI Dynamis (heh, I had to google to make sure I spelled that right!). I've only done them with friends so far, I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to try it with randoms. WoW culture is so different, it still shocks and hurts me when some random stranger I've never before spoken to /whispers that my armor sucks. I just so totally don't understand how that's an okay thing to do... (Plus, I'm mostly in purples (and not even PvP purples!), so I'm not sure why it sucks. Sure lots of things could be improved, and my trinkets and one ring are still green, but "sucks" seems kind of harsh...).

Last night we did HoR with the Lich King chasing us. That was great fun! :D Especially since ICly my character wants to go back to him... Luckily we were doing the run OOCly, otherwise it would have been dooooooom.

The other WoW thing I've been wanting to write about is the inscription profession. As I wanted my latest character to be herbalism (for my other character's alchemy), it seemed a logical choice to make inscription his second profession. (PS: WRONG! Having two professions which requires tons of herbs sucks.) Anyway, I did a crapton of research, got all the addons set up to do mass-glyph-making, did everything "right". All these sites claim that people make a thousand gold a day (with no effort!) making glyphs. I've had friends who said they made a ton of gold that way, too. Someone somewhere is smoking crack, and it's not me. I have a number of professions I make good money on, one of them DOES make more than a thousand gold a day, but it sure as hell is not inscription. In the work:profit ratio, inscription is far and away the very worst.

I should give up on making money from it (it's not like I need the gold anyway), but it annoys me that I took it this far and the money's just not there. It really is a crapton of work too, even with addons to auto-cancel things when you're undercut, find the most profitable ones to make, etc.

Speaking of addons! Part of why I like instancing now is DBM. I really, really don't understand how that isn't cheating ("MOVE! RIGHT NOW! YOU'RE STANDING IN POISON!" "TURN AROUND! GAZE-ATTACK COMING!"), but it sure does make things easy. Part of why I hadn't wanted to instance was that I knew I'd end up standing in fire or something, but man... no one worries about that? Everyone has this addon telling them what to do? I should have gotten it sooner!

Comments

[pomr.livejournal.com]

There's another Addon called GTFO that does that all the time...warns you when you're standing in something that is bad for you. =)

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/gtfo.aspx

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ha! I love it!

[fealubryne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in the raiding world there's certain addons that are mandatory in some guilds. Cheating? Perhaps. But I guess the way people see it is that when you're already watching a bunch of things on your screen that are directly related to your job, it helps to have audio warnings about the OTHER stuff you need to be paying attention to.

...And of course, it makes it all the more pathetic when you've got people standing in shit when you know for a fact they've got warnings both on screen and blaring in their ears.

But just ignore the whole "gear sucks" thing. Unless you're raiding 24/7(which, as much fun as it can be sometimes, is far more trouble than it's worth) you're never going to have "OMGAMAZING" gear. Far more fun to point out that, despite all their infinite knowledge, they probably don't the ultimate gear either! Mwahaha.

Oh, and thank you for the balloons! Nobody's ever loved me enough to give me a virtual gift, so I'm all, "Awww!"

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

Or, you know, they just stand in the fire/poison/void/goop/whatever anyway.

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

Also, Heroic Halls of Reflection makes my prot warrior cry.

[voidmagus.livejournal.com]

For you, Thistle: Game Of Thrones HBO cast

[voidmagus.livejournal.com]

Also, fun side note. Reactivated FFXI last night. Big announcements about 3 more expansions, level cap being pushed up to 99 with the expansions adding zones to match, got my friends and I chatting about the game, so we reactivated with the commitment that noone is allowed to do endgame crap. We play, we have fun, noone is allowed to get too serious.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oh, the balloons went through! Yay! I had been trying to send them to you, but got an error saying you couldn't accept them.

But I guess the way people see it is that when you're already watching a bunch of things on your screen that are directly related to your job, it helps to have audio warnings about the OTHER stuff you need to be paying attention to.

True! I wish I had the ability to watch more things. I'm so busy watching abilities cool down and DBM's warnings that I can never watch the fights and see all the cool stuff going on -- I'm hard pressed to watch close enough to make sure I don't get out of range!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ha! Yeah.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

*pats your warrior* We seemed to have a nice little group, Nai tanked on her paladin and we had, um, some kind of healer, and the rest of us were DKs. (We don't throw tons of DKs at stuff on purpose, it's just that our RP group is 95% DK, so we just always have a ton of them around.)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I saw that a moment ago! EEE! YAY!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ha! Those are good conditions for going back. Post screenshots and stuff! :D

[achika-soladia.livejournal.com]

Halls of Reflection.../TWITCH

I had an amazingly awesome PUG for that instance once in the many times I've done it. The tank d/ced, we lost one member to death early on, but we still made it to the last wall before we wiped. Got a new tank, and cleared it. We also didn't wipe on the wave attacks.

The only other times I've seen past the wave attacks is with a guild run.

The only profession I make money with is tailoring. I could make it with my mining and skinning but I don't play my paladin enough. I have a jewelcrafter to that I only use for guild purposes.

And DBM is awesome. It's saved my hide many a time.

Except after ICC was put in and there was a bug that didn't announce that draenei females were spiked on Lord Marrowgar. >_> Marrowgar spikes basically being a strong DoT that puts that character out of commission that people need to break or else the person will probably die.

[achika-soladia.livejournal.com]

Oh, I meant to thank you for balloons as well! It slipped my mind. D= I'm a bad friend!

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

Ya the armour thing is kinda stupid. It happens a bunch in the game because WoW is so much more gear dependant then FFXI. In FFXI if you don't have Byakko's haidate you can still be good and people know that. But in WoW if you don't have Tier *blank* then you might as well delete your character because you're worthless.

Plus the anonymity of the internet and the ability to ignore people so you can't respond to their attacks allows people to be "brave". In fact, just today I was watching trade channel looking for some PUG VoA (since it's one of the few raids I feel PUGs can competently complete) and someone tried to start a politic shit fest (I believe the comment was "So who thinks bush should be hung?"). I said one sentence (Which was "I think people who bring politics into a game should be shot."), a couple people agreed with me in trade, and it went back to normal. After a couple minutes and him realizing his attempts to start shit had failed I got a lovely "Fuck you cock sucker!" (with punctuation or full works for that matter) whisper. My "<3 to you too!" response was hit by the 'Player has ignored you' message so I just laughed.

HoR is so fun. I had a run today where we were on the final ice wall of the gauntlet and our tank died because he wouldn't back up fast enough and then the 2 other DPS died. I used Army of the Dead, death gripped the final enemy into the corner and tried to beat him down. Managed to finish him off, wall comes down, I was the only person left alive and just booked it. Was really fun.

And yes, DBM is so cheating. I'm surprised that Blizz lets stuff like that continue because it is almost like playing on auto sometimes. But then again I become even more surprised when people die even with DBM telling them stuff like "Move away from the giant death orb!". Then those people stand there like they are rolling dice deciding which direction to go in and end up deadified.

Maybe it's because I just know my rotations and the # keys that correspond to which abilities but I don't even look at my bars anymore. I'm mostly watching the enemies/ground/my damage scrolling by in MSBT. I know it sounds like a "WoW is easy" arguement but the game itself really is. The hard part comes from them making it so that if you have 1 incompetent person they can totally screw the rest of your group over. And since this is the internet it's full of incompetent people.

Out of curiosity, what addons do you use now anyways?

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

I like how they set up HoR honestly. Because if you have inferior DPS or tanks or healers you won't even make it past the first boss (since he slowly lowers healing and damage efficiency) so you don't get saved to the instance and can try it again once you get a new group.

Except after ICC was put in and there was a bug that didn't announce that draenei females were spiked on Lord Marrowgar

Owned...

[achika-soladia.livejournal.com]

It's typically the first boss that my groups never makes it past, or I'm pulled in when a healer drops from wiping on the second.

And happy b-day Galka-Tauren. =p

[achika-soladia.livejournal.com]

I once was witness to a religious debate in trade chat. Think it was some Christian trying to get everyone to follow Jesus or something. I made a comment about not liking when people push their religion, and that I made up my own. Guy sends me a tell calling me a hypocrite because I was "pushing my religion" on someone and that he was reporting me. Reports are ever more funny than just ignores.

I think I'm going to try to record some of my raids one day, just so people can see what I go through. =D

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

Last night someone was talking about how they get really pissed off when people are being "haters" in trade chat. It was hilarious because it became like 3 people go on about the epic paradox of a hater hating haters and the poor guy was just so dumb he couldn't wrap his head around it at all and just slowly degraded until HE WAZ TYPIN LIK THIS.

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

I've had the same thing happen to me in HoR although I didn't have the luxury of Death Grip. But it was a caster and I had my Heroic Throw silencing thingy up so that made it walk up to me so I could smack it as the LK started beating on Jaina. I had my ass wedged into the corner to stay out of the aura. Nobody else died but it was touch-and-go.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

But in WoW if you don't have Tier *blank* then you might as well delete your character because you're worthless.

Oh blah! That's too bad. Our little group seems to be doing okay though, even though I think next to no one has tier whatever stuff. Me, two 80s newer than me, our paladin (probably has good stuff), and another DK who has been 80 a little longer than me.

Maybe it's because I just know my rotations and the # keys that correspond to which abilities but I don't even look at my bars anymore.

For me, it's more timing. I'm not used to how long cooldowns are in WoW, so I'm generally hit macros too quickly unless I watch them. I'm getting better at it now, if we keep doing runs every couple days I soon won't have to watch too!

Out of curiosity, what addons do you use now anyways?

A better question would be: What addons DON'T I use! I started using ~5 new ones just for Inscription stuff. I have a handful just for RP. A bunch for GUI/bar stuff. I think DBM is the only one for instance-type stuff, though I do need to reinstall Recount or something like that.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

*laughs* No problem at all! You're welcome! :)

[achika-soladia.livejournal.com]

You should talk to my guild leader's wife. She's our resident add-on queen.

So far, the only one she hasn't been able to give me any suggestions on is a map one (Since Cartographer isn't going to be updated anymore.). O_o

But she's the reason why my instance boss battles play Phoenix Wright music, winning the battle is Final Fantasy Victory Theme, and losing is Keyboard Cat!

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

You should get Zelda Loot (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/zeldaloot.aspx) if you don't have it already.