Everybody Lies

It’s a common theme in House. A lot of issues with treatment come up because the patient lied about something, or withheld something else important. (Either way, it never turns into anything good for the patient.) It comes down to whether or not you can really ever know another person.

It’s common practice with everyone else to put up a front. You see what they want you to see, and nothing else. Maybe because of my own honesty I tend to believe that everyone else is honest. Not like every random person I meet, but after being around someone for a certain amount of time, and talking with them, and getting to ‘know’ them, I would think that I would know something of their real self.

Most recently, I got a bit of a shock about someone that had it not come from the source it came from, I never would have believed it. After starting this post several times in my head, I was going to keep names out of it, but after thinking about it, I see no reason to.

I play on the server Kael’thas, and always have. There has been a guild on the server for nearly as long as I can remember called <Redemption>. The GM and leader of this guild was a guy named Moneyus, who when BC came out switched his main to Muneyus.

Muney is a very good people person. He always dodged my questions of what he did IRL, but I always assumed he was some sort of councilor. He gave me lots of great advice when I was looking to improve my leadership as an officer of <OOB>. I was able to talk to him about problems I was having in the guild, get advice, that sort of thing.

He was one of the few people to garner respect server-wide. When he posted on the forums, people from outside his guild would attack trolls on his behalf. He could ask questions that would get other people pounded into the ground, and get real answers.

Back in December when <OOB> was struggling toward our first Kael kill, Muney said Redemption would be in BT come January. I believed they could do it, but it wasn’t meant to be. January came and went, and patch 2.4 came and went, and I still think they haven’t downed Kael.

And then I heard Muney was turning over GM of <Redemption>. He did it in the way I’ve seen suggested on the wow forums, where you leave the guild, or just leave an alt in to keep people from still relying on you once you’ve given away leadership. He even went so far as to transfer off the server. He said he was tired of raiding, and that he needed a break.

He’s now on Antonidas, in 3/4 T6.

Why do people insist on lying?

Character: Nabith

Nabith: Level 70 Night Elf Hunter (0/28/33)
Enchanting/Leatherworking

Name origin/meaning:
Nabith is an elf traveler I created for an interactive story. You can find her character page here. I modeled the in game character off of her (sans the height, which I couldn’t do much about.) and even had an owl pet named Siffy for her first 40 levels.

Reason created:
Matthew’s roommate in college, Dan, had a hunter in Havoc, and I spent many a night watching over his shoulder as they raided. Not only that but I loved all the different types of pets he had and would try out.

Key moments:
Discovering my bow did more damage than my melee.
Walking into Darnassus for the first time.
Realizing I could not complete [Relics of Wakening] at level 9 and grinding to level 10 to get my pet.
Spending the better part of a day trying to figure out how to fish and swim underwater.
Hopping on the boat and sailing to Menithil Harbor.
Discovering the auction house.
Going back to Wailing Caverns at level 40 to catch and train a blue level 20 wind serpent.
Realizing I did not have to feign death every 30 seconds in raid in order to not pull aggro.
Kiting Drakk in UBRS for the first time.
Getting Hyacinth Macaw for 25g.
Completing my epic bow quest.
Getting my first (and only) piece of tier 2.
Stepping through the Dark Portal.

Comments:
Because she was my first character, I didn’t know much at all about the game. I spent much of my time early on exploring every nook and cranny that I could find. She’s really the character that developed from an actual incompetent newbie to a skilled raider, because she is with whom I learned it all as well. I never really got into pvp, even though I have done it.

Currently:
She is my main raiding character, and very possibly will stay that way in the forseeable future. She has been BM for a long while, but is now trying out survival for the added raid buffs. I pretty much use her only for raiding and her professions on occasion.

Screenshots:
2006-03-13 – Moon: This is the first screenshot I have, and couldn’t have been taken more than a week after I first started playing the game. Despite Darkshore’s general ‘gloomy’ feel, I was still amazed by the scenery.
2006-03-17 – Skeleton: Took this screenshot because I was amused by the skeleton that was so far off the ground. In it you can see my default UI, my owl pet, Siffy, and my non-combat pet, as well as the fact that I was doing the “waste of time” quests that had you run all over Azeroth. But then I guess since I was new to the game, seeing new places was part of the fun.
2006-04-23 – Doorway: The exploits of the recently turned level 40, with a cat I was trying out from STV. I happened across the Dark Portal for the first time, and thought it was so cool.
2006-08-23 – Onyxia: Pretty sure I’m level 60 here. It was right after the patch that put Onyxia’s model in for the Masquerade quest instead of the little dragonkin, but before they moved the pvp generals out of this room. (I was probably pvping to get the 200g off my epic ground mount.) As you can see, my bars have filled out and the UI has changed slightly.
2006-09-08 – No, you get closer…: Even though I’ve done a ton of raiding since, this was my first experience with a end game end boss. Shows my leet raiding UI, and some of the old <Order of Bahamut> members. Still remember how we were all scared that getting any closer would pull Hakkar.
2006-10-21 – Tier 2: I wanted this helm so badly, that I set a crazy record (at the time) bidding on it to make sure it was mine. It’s one of the items I’ll never de.
2007-01-18 – On the other side: Two days after BC was released is when my copy finally came in the mail. This is the beginning of my exploits in Outland.

Counciled

We’d read the strats about how similar to the Maulgar fight, the Illidari Council was all about the pull, getting into position, and doing what had to be done. I don’t think I’ve ever used so many mana pots in my life, and when you hear the paladins start complaining about being oom…well suffice to say it was a lengthy fight.

Despite what other people think of this fight, I found it a great deal of fun. Of course my only job was misdirecting the pull and then running around after the paladin who is in a near constant state of motion due to all of the stuff we can’t stand in.

The fight was a lot of the same over and over. The kill attempt was not beautiful or perfect, but we all did what we needed to do. Also, it seemed that a lot fewer people died once we began calling out who was a poison target.

And at 1%, the stupid priest got off a heal, which stretched the fight on a bit more, but we held it together and finished them off.

Gratz to Lesia, Koho, and Allysa for their shiny new t6 pants. And to Kindasil, who’s giddier than a schoolgirl with his [Helm of the Illidari Shatterer].

And I had something a bit longer planned for this moment, but in light of…things, we’ll just leave it as: My Final Goal Accomplished. Now it’s just up to the guild how far we go.

Raiding Day

So yesterday was Koi’s birthday. As a birthday present, he wanted to have a raiding marathon. As such those of us in a reasonable timezone were on at 11 server time. And after a MgT run to wait for a few more people, we headed out to Hyjal and cleared the place (sans Archi), earning some gems, three t6 tokens, and badges of justice for everyone.

Also, a special gratz to Rosalind who completely cleared himself out of dkp while in Hyjal.

At normal raiding time we went into Black Temple, (after all logging off to update Omen at the same time) one shot Bloodboil, then went and 2-shot Mother Shahraz. Oh, right, that was our first kill of her. And yeah, it’s about that underwhelming. Though I guess it was a nice change after all those horrible wipes on RoS. The video is just as underwhelming. (I’ll get it up sometime.)

However, gratz to Grianne, Azurmahn, and Lelaine on their respective t6 shoulders. (Yeah, we got one of each.) And Burdokva who got [Shadowmaster’s Boots].

So with an hour left we headed up to play with the final roadblock.

As for the misspelling, I fixed it but in truth I really didn’t give a rat’s behind. This boss exists as nothing more than a way to force you to spend extra time in the game using a mechanic that has nothing to do with skill, and everything to do with how much time you spent farming in one form or another.

Emo Boss

This boss is the embodiment of the emotions of our good friend Illidan. As such it’s not hard to understand exactly why it’s so emo. The guy [Illidan] made some poor choices in life, and even if he had the best intentions in mind to start, he is just seriously messed up now.

RoS also did an extremely good job of making us emo. This is the first boss I can say that we should have had down a week earlier. And not because it’s an easy boss/strat and people are just being stupid, but because it seemed like the game was conspiring against us. We worked through the first two phases, got them down pretty well last week, and then we had a rush of mass disconnects (like three people at the same time as soon as phase 2 started) and lag for people who never have trouble with lag.

We came back this week and one shot his multi-face.


There was a healing wand and some leather gloves. I don’t feel like looking up the links and such right now. /emo

New items

I did indeed get the [Rift Stalker Hauberk] the other night when we downed Kael. First time it’s dropped, and it only cost me about 16k…which is actually a lot, but since I had about 53k, it didn’t seem like much in comparison. I also got [Rift Stalker Mantle] and [Netherbane] both for much less than I was expecting. Now, Nabith really doesn’t need anything else from Tempest Keep at all, so next time we go there, depending on class composition, I might ask to bring Near to get her vial.

Saturday was another run through ZA on Nabith. [Dagger of Bad Mojo] dropped, but I insisted Therk roll on it too, and he ended up winning it. Still no trinket.

Sunday the session unfortunately didn’t happen. (I was going to get my Pegasus too…) so SD and had lunch and went shopping. When I logged onto WoW, they had not done the ZA run Therk had scheduled. They were looking for a priest for Hex Lord, but needed a healer, so I respecced holy and jumped in with my little 1200 + healing. Unfortunately Drego disconnected as soon as we started, and Lesia and I were unable to keep up the raid as only two healers. We ended up only getting the first chest, but eventually worked our way through the rest of the bosses (with a huge burp on Hex Lord, during which I specced back to shadow). I ended up taking three new healing pieces home, nullifying the money I had spent just earlier that day to boost my healing. Still a little bitter about that, but life does go on.

[Brooch of Nature’s Mercy]
[Hood of the Third Eye]
[Two-toed Sandals]

“That Guy” Fight

Well the title on this one is just not coming to me. In all truth, I spent much of the fight terrified I would be chosen, screw up somewhere in my killing of the constructs, thus causing a 1% wipe. The looming ridicule really doesn’t help either, even if it’s all in good fun, but then I’m a hunter, what do I know? Hm, I seem to be extremely bitter for some reason. As such, let’s move on.

Teron himself is pretty small. I did the quest involving him before his real model was in the game, so this was my first time seeing him. I guess it’s nice for the tank to not have to stare at a mob’s feet for the entirely of the encounter every now and then.

So in we went to our little nook-place and started dpsing/healing the heck out of our respective targets. Three brain heals and a heroism for every group was rather nice as we finally got our entire mini army of shamans together in the same raid this weekend. Our first attempt, he didn’t put his little death mark on anyone for the first 30 sec of the fight or so, so by the time the first person died, we already had him near 60% iirc. He wasn’t quite so nice on the rest of the attempts however.

So at an hour past raid end, with respawns at our heels, we went in for our ‘last attempt'(TM). I started fraps just to have a little video so that people could see some of what they were doing. But I’ll be darned if we didn’t go and down him.

So our constructs killers: Blayne, Waldo, and Azurmahn. Gratz to those three for adapting quickly and allowing us to live. For all those who tried and failed, gratz on the experiance. As such, it should be noted that the constructs do not despawn when the boss dies, and waiting for two of them to wipe out the 15-20 people who were left at the end of the fight was annoying and stupid. (And no, I’m not blaming the last person to be ghosted, I’m complaining about a poor design decision on Blizzard’s part.)

Hm, more bitter. I think I’m going to post the kill pic and be done with this.

[Softstep Boots of Tracking] to Ickeris
[Cowl of Benevolence] to Llewyna

Untitled

Life’s still going. I’m still fairly content with my current situation outside of work, which is just pretty bad in general. But then I still have no clue *why* I dislike work so much. It’s possible that I’m actually completely crazy, and have just convinced myself somehow that I am normal, but that bit of craziness pops up whenever it’s time to think about or go to work.

As for the good I have:
A loving fiancé
A place to live
A working (and pretty decent) computer
Internet
My health
A Job (even if I don’t like it, at least I have it.)
My parents and siblings all alive and healthy.
Friends who don’t think I’m totally horrible.
A plan for the future, that i’m pretty sure God has specifically laid out for me.

So really, not all that bad. I just have to live through the 8 hours, five days a week that I am at work.

In other news, my writing and posting to my blog has been going really well, and I’m proud of myself. I do find myself a little sort of stuff to post sometimes, but I think getting in the habit of posting something (the fact that it can be kinda short really helps) twice a week means that I’m forced to write *something*. It’s not all great, but none of it is horrible. I think this will allow me to keep struggling forward with my writing, and that’s all I could ask for.

In WoW news, I have Nabith, Near, Pandemonium, and Isrio all at level 70. Isrio now has her epic flight form, and after the discovery that with 375 in both mining and herbalism, you can see both nodes on your map at the same time, I am a very happy panda.

As for the guild, we’re still pushing forward. Mount Hyjal is cleared as of Saturday, putting us as the #2 Alliance guild on the server. (Finally pushed past Reason and SPG, who both stopped raiding.)

Tonight we’re planning on downing Kael again for some vials. I *will* get my t5 chest if it drops, and then I’ll finally have that two piece bonus that will hopefully make Raika a lot easier to keep alive.

Current projects include enough money for one more epic flyer for Nabith, and leveling my shaman/warrior duo Jerelyn and Addendum. No rush on the leveling this time though. My only goal is to get them to 70 before LK, so I have time to play them a bit, in case I want to change my main.

We’re also going to work on making the guild less dependant on Koi. I am assured that he’s not going anywhere, but he worries that what happened to Reason and SPG is a direct result of them losing Arc and Axium, and being unable to go on without that leadership. Whether that’s true or not, it holds some truth for our guild. We have been crazy dependant on Koi since day one, so a little less dependence on him would be beneficial. We’ll sew how it goes though. I think Therk’s leading raid tonight, and he’s pretty decent as long as he doesn’t joke around too much.

The Unforgiving Fight

First off, I would like to state how ridiculously tired I am right now. I was tired last night and yet I stayed up making the movie, watching it over and over, going through Avril Lavine song after Avril Lavine song trying to find one that fit because I simply couldn’t sleep. Well I did get some sleep, but now I’ve been up for about an hour and a half (Probably close to 2 hours by the time I post this.) because, well I’m fricking excited. Archimonde is down. The past is safe, and we have added more t6 to our arsenal.

Okay, so Archimonde is a pain in the butt fight. Everyone has to know what they’re doing, and they have to do it. We spent a day last week and Friday unceremoniously throwing ourselves at Archimonde. For one this, this fight beats on your soul a bit more than any before. Besides the obvious reference to soul charge, like Vashj there is no trash. However unlike Vashj, and even Kael’thas, you don’t get a few phases in and then wipe. No, with Archimonde you are wiped out pretty quickly when you screw up, added to that the long graveyard run (Hey at least Hjyal is the closest portal.) back and you’re left with lots of time to contemplate what went wrong, and a frickload of attempts about which to think. What started out as a reasonably fun encounter got really *really* old after almost two nights of wipes.

But we were getting better at least. We used to spiral down after just one death, no matter the class. We got better at recovery, consistently getting to 60% before all hell broke loose. But it was getting late, things were looking down, but yet no one seemed to lose. And then we got our salvation. Our beloved Fishy Azurmahn (I told you I was tired.) spoke with some of the members from Recon who told us that staying *on top* of your other group members (Like permanently attached at the hip.) really helped to control the fires. That seemed to do it for us, so thank you Recon.

So as for the fight itself. We had one person go down fairly early, but we managed to make it through that and keep going. A million fire trails and a ton of air bursts later, I look up and realize that Archi’s at 30%. At that point, the thought dared to cross my mind that we might actually do it this attempt! However, the main focus stayed on that orange nipple. I would be where I was supposed to be, and trust everyone else to do the same.

And then the next fear happened, and we lost two people at once. The soul charge knocked out another, and I thought it was over. Our saving grace being that Archi did not spam out those soul charges. Our healers had enough time to top us off before the next one hit.

I knew people were struggling at this point. I can’t even imagine what was going through the healer’s heads as they performed spectacularly in keeping everyone they possibly could alive. He was below 20%; the end was in sight. A soul charge knocked into us, and my health dipped. Healthstone and bandage on cooldown, I hit a health pot. The next second air burst on the group and I went into the air with 260 health and a panic that if I did not nail this landing, I would be dead.

We lost more people and as I bandaged, he dipped to 10% and broke off of Koi. We had 16 people up. The number of soul charges on Archi that had not gone off…

But up went the bubble. Vent was exploding, my hands were shaking as I poured my full 1:1 rotation into his tree draining butt. It was not until watching the video afterward that I saw that the Elune bubble was on my buff bar as red. But during the fight I had no clue how long we had to dps. Any second I was expecting us to have run out of time. And then at 3% he exploded. My heart stopped for the briefest of seconds thinking we had run out of time and were about the be wiped out, and then the loot popped up on my screen.

It was over, and we were still alive.

[Scepter of Purification] to Azshane
[Savior’s Grasp] to Whiteliter
[Helm of the Forgotten Vanquisher] to Amberh
[Helm of the Forgotten Vanquisher] to Devv

I’m going to upload the movie, and go back to bed.

Tier 6 Geto!

So into Hyjal we went, cleared through a few bosses, and decided. Hey, we like progression. Let’s give the next boss a shot. It seemed like a decent enough idea, so we talked to our good buddy Thrall, and lo and behold more trash started spawning. We dove right in, and cleared it out, and Magtheridon’s big brother (Not really.) came out to play with us.

We got him down to about 20% or so, but some shaky healer positions, unlucky dooms without soulstones, and a lot of freaking fire coming out of the sky spelled death for the tank. So we picked ourselves up, brushed ourselves off, and then realized. “Wait…what if the soulstones/battle rezes aren’t up when we get to the boss?” So we decided two wipe twice on trash in order to make sure our revivals were off cooldown.

Truthfully, I was expecting more…hard.

And since Koi did this with the ZA clear, and it seems like a not horrible idea. I give you the winners of the drops off Azgalor’s first kill:

[Gloves of the Forgotten Vanquisher] to Lelaine
[Gloves of the Forgotten Vanquisher] to Azshane
[Bow-stitched Leggings] to Tzoid
[Design: Inscribed Pyrestone] To Whiteliter
(Unfortunately something about the site won’t let me both link to wowhead for mouseover and color the link purple. Fix that Koi.) Edit: Works on takoumori.com.

So then we raced up the mountain to get more ancient gem veins, and found all these night elves and a huge tree. And there was this guy using life drain on the tree. We went over to ask what was up, and he wiped us out in 51 seconds. (Not that anyone was counting or anything.) We might have to go pay him another visit, along with practicing jumping off the cliff and not dying.