As such, I’ve been collecting more than I’ve been able to name.  Here’s what I have so far:

Found this guy leveling my Archeology outside of Southshore.  His original name was Cranky Benj and he was a LOT larger than the more common turtles around him.

Mangeclaw, from a Dun Morogh quest chain.  I already have another bear – a black bear named Betsy – but I’d like to keep this guy, too.

This little sporebat was tamed not for any special ability but because it’s darned cute.

This wolf is a quest mob found early in the new EPL quest chain, and is the only translucent wolf that I’ve seen in game that IS tameable and ISN’T a spirit beast.  I named a previous wolf pet Banshee, a homage to the wolf pet’s trademark howl, but I want this lovable guy to have a name that’s more … I don’t know … fitting?  Unique?  One of those.

Other pets that will be on the way:

• Silithids of the non-stinging variety  (I already have a wasp.)
• Non-albino devilsaur.
• Shale Spider
• Spider of the non-shale variety

I have other pets, but these are the ones that are doomed to rename nameless – at least until inspiration strikes me.

Click to enlarge.

I’m ticked off.

The image above was received last night from a GM after submitting ANOTHER ticket about a Fortune Favors member who could not be promoted to Officer because he “did not have an authenticator” – even though he had one.

This is not a new issue.  Last month our membership dwindled further because an officer logged in and was somehow demoted to Sub-Officer (our rank for officers without authenticators) even though the only two players who could do that were not online.  My only guess is that this was another variation of the same glitch, but it doesn’t matter now because he and another officer /gquit over it.  Never mind that the log didn’t say ANYONE demoted him – just that he was demoted.

So you know what?  Forget it.

I was thrilled that Blizz was changing the guild structure so that some ranks could be set as “Authentication Required.”  The only times Fortune Favors got burned by compromised accounts involved officers, and those attacks spawned some (not all, not by a long shot) of the problems that led to the guild falling apart.

But it has been implemented poorly, at best.

Even in Heroes of Lordaeron I have an alt or two that can’t be promoted because Blizz won’t recognize that I have an authenticator, and that’s been going on since Cata came out.  In my case I don’t sweat it because I’ve been on the Guild Master side of the issue trying (and failing) to streighten things out.  I trust my current Guild Master because I’ve seen things from his perspective.  Frankly, I don’t care if I’m an officer or not.  I haven’t desired a leadership role in-game for quite some time now.  (I’ve left the Guild Leader role of Fortune Favors over to my wife months ago.  I only get pulled back into service when things hit the fan.)

But most people are not like me.  Glitches like this are too easily replicated by Guild Masters who want to do shady things, and they bring up issues of trust.  Apparently I’m not as trustworthy as I thought, since I’ve seen far too many /gquits where I was being blamed for one thing or another.

*Deep breath.*

OK, in the long run this shouldn’t bother me as much as it does.

I more or less left to play on other servers some time after we lost most of our officer core, burned out and depressed that I wasn’t able to give them the guild they wanted.  I haven’t thought of Fortune Favors as an “active” guild for months now, and I’m amazed any time I log in to see some people are still logging in from time to time.

But when issues like this pop up, the open up old wounds and insecurities that aren’t quite healed yet.  While everything I can see tells me the issue is not of my making, I have to sit and wonder “Is this person going to blame me as well?”

I don’t know.

So here’s what I did:

• I renamed some ranks.  “Sub-Officer” is now “Officer” and the former “Officer” is now “Authenticated.”
• I changed permissions so that the new “Officer” rank should allow everything the “Authenticated” rank does.

I have effectively unlocked the barn door and swung it wide open for the next opportunistic gold farmer to reactivate a canceled account, log in, and clear out the bank.  If that happens it WILL be my fault, as I’m the one allowing for the gaping security hole here.

But you know what?  I won’t have anyone else leaving because I “wouldn’t promote” or “demoted” them.  At least this time, when someone logs in and sees the Guild Bank has been cleaned out, when they blame me for it there will be an ounce of truth in their accusation.

Oddly enough, I like that thought more than the alternative.

Pic is most assuredly unrelated to the content of this post.

Wrath BM Hunter:

Thank goodness all I have to do for DPS is stack Attack Power!  Oh, and hit.  Need to be hit capped, definitely hit capped.  Crud, I went from 7.8% hit to 10% hit.  How the heck did that happen?  Hm, if I swap these gems for … (repeat for another paragraph).

Wrath Disc Priest:

OK, so this has Int, which is good, but I lose a ton of Crit anyway because of … (repeat for another paragraph).

Cata Prot Warrior:

OK, so this has a lot of Stam, which is good, but a lot of hit, too.  Hit WOULD be good, but I’m already over cap and need Expertise. Sure, I can reforge, but will it be enough to make up for what I’m losing?  Now if I equip this and those boots I got a while back, I might break even all around except for an extra 2k health, which is good, but a lot of math, so … (repeat for another paragraph or three).

Holy Paladin:

Plate with Int?

Check.

More Int than what I had before?

Check.

MINE!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

So, um, I was planning on leveling a hunter, priest, or druid, but instead I might be leveling a paladin after my warrior gets to 85.  If for no other reason than to dispel all the “But picking pally gear is EASY!” thoughts floating in my head right now.

It’s similar to watching cartoons from your childhood so you understand why your parents called them crappy.  That, or lancing a boil.  At least I know (because of how much I kept finding on my warriors – natch) there’s a lot more 40+ plate and sub-40 mail with Int out there, so I’m less likely to be wearing a dress.

So here it is.

The picture is related, though what you’re missing is the sound of me screaming about why all my dig sites have to be Troll, when I’d much rather have … well … anything else.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Here’s my addon list, all of which were installed using the Curse Client. A guide/explanation of it can be found here: http://wow.curse.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-news/919518.aspx

Ackis Recipe List: Lets you know what recipes/schematics/etc. you don’t have, and where to get them.

Addon Control Panel: Lets you turn addons on and off without having to log out and back in again. Great for troubleshooting to see which addon is giving you performance issues.

Altoholic: Stores information about your other characters, so you can access it without toon hopping. Know you have a stack of thorium ore somewhere, but can’t find it? Altoholic will tell you who has it, whether it’s in their bag, bank, or mail, and how much of it is there.

Archy: This addon is great for leveling Archeology. It’s unfortunate that it was causing my frame rate to drop to 4 fps in instances, but then that’s why I had Addon Control Panel installed. I disabled it for for the run and then turned it back on afterwords.

Auctionator: Similar to Auctioneer in many ways, Auctionator helps you buy and sell things on the AH. Which of those two addons is right for you depends on how you prefer to use the AH. If I was still posting 100s of glyphs a day I’d be using Auctioneer. Right now, Auctionator lets me go in, sell the stuff I found while leveling, and get back out again.

Bagnon: Makes all my bags look like one giant bag, and gives them a search bar.

Deadly Boss Mods: Won’t move a bad player out of the fire, but lets a good player know they’re going to need to move soon.

FuBar: Places small horizontal bars on your screen that can show a variety of things depending on the addons you’re using. Any addon with “Fu” at the end of the name requires FuBar to be installed.

FriendsFu and GuildFu: Show who’s online, where they are, player notes, and guild rank.

AltoholicFu: Fubar interface for the aforementioned Altoholic addon.

GarbageFu: Dumps gray items from your bags in order of how inexpensive they are, so you can make space without accidentally dumping that gray that vendors for 100 gold. It can also be configured to dump other things, like for example if your warrior keeps looting drinks.

PerformaceFu: Lets you know which addons are resource hogs and what your FPS is.

GatherMate2: Tells you what you mined/herbed/archeologied (I’m just making up words now) where and puts little icons on your mini map and zone map. Very helpful for any gathering profession.

MailOpener: Opens all mail from the AH with a single click, or all mail from everyone with a shift-click. Indispensable tool for a bank alt.

Prat: An addon that adds timestamps to your chat window and lets you copy/paste text.

RatingBuster: Adds tooltips to items to tell you how much your stats will change if you equip them.

Skada: Modular addon that can function as both a DPS meter (like Recount) and a threat meter (like Omen).

Swindler Preventer: Lets you know when that awesome item in the AH for just 50 gold can actually be purchased from a vendor for 50 silver.

T-No Duel: Instantly declines all duel requests and has you do the /no emote. Great for dealing with those people who think “Oh, they declined my duel request. That must have been a mistake, for clearly dueling me is an awesome experience. I shall send them 20 more duel requests so that they cannot miss the opportunity of doing battle with one such as myself.”

Very often I will roll an alt with the sole intention of playing alongside a friend or family member.  Sometimes it’s done with low expectations, others … the hopes are higher.

A while back I rolled a gnome warrior named Crashbang because I wanted to try out tanking.  My sister and wife both had lowbies as well, and the idea was that we would level together through randoms.  This sounds great, in theory.

In reality, it didn’t work out at all.  It’s hard enough getting two people who’ve devoted the rest of their lives to each other to both be interested in the same set of characters at the same time, but three people?  That’s reaching impossible odds.

(As an aside I should note that I’m not laying blame here – or more accurately I’m not placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of others.  We all have varying interests, and there were plenty of times when I didn’t want to play Crashbang.)

Time went on, and I was faced with a dilemma: Did I play Crashbang anyway, and face the wrath of my wife for leveling yet another character without her?  Or did I continue to allow him to languish unplayed, while I leveled a different character that did not hold my interest as well?

In the end it was my sister who came up with the solution.  At her suggestion I rolled another warrior, one I could play on my own while waiting for the right time to play Crashbang.  Bakh the blueberry was born, and reached level 80 while Crashbang languished in his low 20s.  It was no surprise when the time came to roll a worgen and my poor little gnome was deleted to make space.

Not one month later I found myself looking at my character selection screen, dumbfounded.  Of all my alts, of which I had many, not a single one looked interesting enough to play.  The worgen druid I rolled to replace Crashbang had started off as a healer, then respecced to tank to fill the void left behind by the little ball of rage.

It was definitely not the same.

TL;DR version: I recreated Crashbang, and now I find myself waiting for a time when my wife, sister, best man from my wedding, and myself are all on and want to play our lowbies.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[Insert stock "I rolled a Worgen and I like it" confession.]

[Insert stock "I wanted to try a class I haven't gotten to 80 yet." musing.]

[Insert stock "Healing! 2 of my 80s are healers, so this should be- ASDFGHJKL WHY IN THE WORLD IS OUR TANK WEARING CLOTH ARMOR?!" rant.]

So … anyone have tips for speccing/gearing a lowbie feral druid tank?

Let’s try something.  Emphasis on “try.”  All of the following is an experiment I’ve been thinking about for a while, but have not placed a lot of emotional investment in because I’ve no idea about the responses I’ll get.

I’m sitting here with this lonely little domain name.  I picked “My Guild Home” instead of something more specific to a particular guild or blog’s name because I wanted the ability to house multiple blogs/forums/whatevers under the same roof.  That worked out for a time, but at this point only WTB: Spellchecker is active.  That saddens me.

So I’d like to give away some space.

What’s in it for you?

A free WordPress install with the subdomain address of your choice (Examples: myguildhome.com/mycoolblog, myguildhome.com/myincrediblesite, myguildhome.com/etc.).  I’m already paying for more bandwidth and server space than I’ll ever fill, so I don’t mind sharing. (And that’s with the most affordable plan from Dreamhost.  I <3 Dreamhost.)

Because this is a hosted version of WordPress, you’ll have access to more file storage than I saw last time I tried WordPress.com.  That means if you should, I dunno, want to try your hand at podcasting, perhaps, you can just upload the mp3 files here instead of looking for a host elsewhere.  The file size is limited to 7 MB, but there’s no limit on how many files.  This will be a one-stop-shop, except there’s nothing to purchase.

Oh yeah, and should you want to do things like embed Google Ads or do other attempts at making money I’ve no problems with that either.

When I set up your initial install I’ll also link to you on myguildhome.com as a way of free advertising.  I need to remove my failed projects from there anyway.

Is there anything you can’t do with it?

Well, I’d prefer for it to be WoW, or at least Blizzard product themed, but you won’t hear from me with emails saying “You posted on such-and-such a date talking about your new cat!  Put more WoW in it or I’m shutting you down!”  Seriously?  That would just be silly.

I would however like to stress that I want the content on my server to be … within certain limits.  I’m not talking about the odd profanity here and there (I follow Rilgon on Twitter, for crying out loud!) but anything more extreme than Brigwyn on an average day will make me kind of nervous about giving you server space.

Bottom line: Insert generic user agreement about not posting or linking to nudity, hate speech, slander, violation (perpetrated or condoned) of any local, national, or international laws, or extreme NSFW-ishness.  I decide what that means.

I fully expect, if this idea takes off, to have at least one person act like Marcel Duchamp submitting a store-bought urinal to an art show (Ooh, Art History reference!) just to see what my limits are.  If and when that happens I’ll deal with it.

Why is this better than ____ blogging service?

Can’t give a definitive answer for that, but I’ll try anyway.

• I think it’s nicer to be on a domain where I know name choices are available without adding numbers and odd accents to my name.
• I also like being able to upload podcasts without seeking out a 3rd party.  (I haven’t done that here, but I’ve done it on other domains on the same server.)
• I may be just one guy, but I answer email.  If you have a tech support issue with the blog, I may actually be able to get back to you within a reasonable amount of time.

Nevertheless, I’d say it comes down to personal preference.

What’s in it for me?

Knowing that I’m helping someone join the community of WoW bloggers & podcasters.  If you’re happy with the service a link back to myguildhome.com would be nice, but I’m not going to require it.

Questions?

Leave a comment on this post (preferred, as others might have the same question) or email me at splat [at] myguildhome.com.

Interested?

Drop me a line at splat [at] myguildhome.com and I’ll hook you up.

The State of the Guild

The guild is dead, long live the guild!

Er, that’s more dramatic than I would like.  Long story short, <Fortune Favors> never completely recovered from last year.  Oh, the guild bank got restored and some bridges were mended, but it really hit me anyway.  Hard.

And when it came down to it I really didn’t have the energy to try rebuilding the guild yet again.  There are still some people who log in from time to time, including my wife who recently got nether drake mounts on not one but TWO characters, but <Fortune Favors> is a hollow shell of its former self.

Currently, I’m spending a lot of time in <Heroes of Lordaeron> – the official guild of the All Things Azeroth podcast.

The State of the Blog

New header! Not that big a deal.  Otherwise, same old, same old.

The State of the Summer

Almost over.  In fact, I’ve already gone back to school more than once to start getting things ready.  This year is going to rock even more than last year, and that’s saying something.  Of course it means less time for WoW and blogging, but so be it.

The State of Twitter

I still dislike it but I’m still on it for the company I keep there.  Seriously, there are some awesome people on Twitter.  (Now if I could only encourage them to use something else … no, NOT Facebook.)

The State of RP Realms

It is awesome every time I encounter random RP on Argent Dawn, and it happens more than some think.  On the other hand, Blizz needs to streamline some way of reporting names that are TOS violations.

The State of Hunters

Still love them, but I’ve perhaps been playing them too much.  My eye has been wandering towards other classes of late…

The State of Healers

Fail tank fail tank fail tank fail tank fail tank fail tank fail tank fail tank fail tank fail tank …

And that was just from one day.  If I see ONE MORE “tank” that’s actually a balance druid in cloth gear … you know what?  I saw one.  So I rolled a warrior.

The State of Tanking

OK, to be honest?  When I rolled OSplat I was somewhat terrified of tanking with him.  Only did it once, on a guild only run.  It went OK, but I never did an instance again.

But seriously?  Tanking is fun.  If I can get a night where my latency is decently low and an awesome healer (both my wife and sister are quite good at playing healing classes) I’m pretty much unstoppable.  It may have something to do with Blizz making leveling more accommodating for new players, but wow I never new bashing things repeatedly could be so much fun!

So I’m now leveling 3 warriors.  /sigh.

Look at your DPS. Now look at mine.  Now back to yours, now back to mine.

Sadly, your DPS is not like mine.  But if you rolled a hunter you could spec it like mine.

Close your eyes.   Now open them.  What’s that? It’s a big red turtle tanking that instance you like.

Look down.  Look up.  You’ve just been caught in a Freezing Trap, set by the hunter your hunter could spec like. Black Arrow!

Look again, now my hunter is getting crits off his Chimera Shot so high that your interface will only display the damage to the power of ten.

Anything is possible when you roll a hunter.

I’m on a sparkle pony.