Sleepypete's Pillow

More World of Warcraft. Gonna have to try and find some alternate subjects to talk about soon but things went rather well for the team tonight. Apologies if I’m boring people with all the WoW stuff !

Anyway, after the trials of the weekend, things started looking up yesterday with the first taming of Onyxia since Guildlink lost two of its biggest guilds. And that taming was probably the most perfect take down yet. We outdid that tonight though, the Molten Core team went through 6 bosses in 3 hours 42, which is an all time new record. We only got wiped out once during the entire session as well … Fantastic stuff. (And I got more loot too)

Being able to do that is a testament to the quality we have in the new team. Sure, we still have one or two passengers but we managed to take down most of the bosses without anyone getting killed, which is pretty special. Even with taking in a lot of new people, or even because of that, we’re fitter, faster, stronger and far more disciplined a fighting unit than we ever were before.

And I got more loot too. Yey ! But we got to hear the Overqueen on TeamSpeak as well, which we didn’t get yesterday due to illness. It’s always better when you’re hearing stuff over TS. I’m going to have to get back into the habit of turning my microphone back on so I can join in with the laughing. And the way we do Molten Core, there is always a lot of laughter due to the tone that the Overqueen sets but at the same time, we’re also doing a good job of professionally demolishing of the instance.

Hmm. Onyxia again tomorrow and around that I’ll be continuing to powerlevel my hunter, Finlay the orc. Level 26 so far, in 32 hours of game time. Hoping to get him up to level 60 quickly, so I can play with the big bombs.

Another World of Warcraft post, this time a happier one.

We took on Onyxia today, which meant a full 40 person raid, with the better players in. That’s the ones who have gone through a rather long quest chain to get themselves the key to Onyxia’s lair.

We struggled a couple of times before with Onyxia but this time, it went down like absolute clockwork. That’s one thing about the newer, shinier Guildlink, people may not have the same initiative but we seem to have got rid of the dangerous wild cards. (We now have people who are a bit too tentative, instead of the suicidal)

Amazing how much smoother it can go with a decent core team … Molten Core tomorrow, that’s another 40 person run. We’ll still have passengers in that, but passengers affect 40 person runs a lot less than they affect 20 person runs.

I’m still trying to figure out what I’ve done to deserve the punishment duty I apparently have.

The group today was better … but we still had about 5 or 6 passengers, which is fatal in a group of only 20. One of those passengers was the third tank, who decided to bounce around like a mad thing, instead of taking up the tanking like he was supposed to. Numerous times. It was noticed …

And then there’s the healing … tanks were able to get the attention of the boss but then immediately died because the healing wasn’t there. That’s not really good enough … Mind you, I can’t really talk about healing because I don’t have the mindset to do that job.

It still feels as if I’m being punished for something though. There’s a team that gets all the best people and then there’s the team that I get put in. That’s starting to get extremely old. I’d like to know what my crime was, who the jury are and how long I have to serve on my sentence.

Nothing too substantial today, or rather I’m going to try and keep it short so I don’t start ranting.

Had our first trip into the newly opened Ahn’Qiraj instance today, which means learning for everyone. Well, maybe not so much learning because we’ve researched what things do. Or so you’d think …

Instead of learning about what’s inside the instance, it ends up learning how to actually play the character for most people in there. Healers who don’t keep tanks alive, tanks who don’t bother actually tanking, tanks who don’t know that what they’re doing is actually increasing their aggro when they’re supposed to be handing off to the next tank. (The boss does something that makes it impossible for the tank to do his job).

Translation – I was in the B team, the one that has all the people who haven’t been picked for the better team. I don’t know why I’m in there. I have one of the best equipped characters for my class in guildlink and I’m one of the best mages in terms of skill for GL too. I can also figure out alterations to strategy to optimize what we do as well. But I’m still never picked for the top team. I haven’t a clue why that happens when we split into 2 20 player raids. It’s getting to the point where I’m wondering whether or not to bother signing up to the 20 player raids.

And I’ll leave it there.

Before I start tapping, I’m not doing too well at the moment due to my ongoing ear problems … So I might appear a little more waspish than I’d like to. Struggling to think of a theme as well today :-(.

Thirteen Things about Sleepypete 1…. I’m a bit of a loner … but I’ll feel left out if I’m not part of a group. 2… I’m a chocolate fiend. Chocolate and especially Mini Eggs, is not safe around me. 3… But I’m on a diet, so I must resist. (1 stone lost so far, stalled there though) 4… I’ve run 100m in less than 12 seconds, when I was 14. 5… I’ve been constantly afflicted by disabling injuries since I was 14. 6… I like my gadgets but I’m not a fanatic. Why have an MP3 player if you don’t listen to music outside of where you can listen to it in high quality ? 7… I have a habit of upsetting people and I don’t suffer fools lightly. 8… I’ll help anyone who asks politely but I’ll not help people who have made no effort to help themselves. 9… I can see why change is necessary, I really can ! But that doesn’t reduce my natural inertia against change much. 10… I could kill for a KFC right now … (it’s the funny chemicals they put in) but there’s no way I’m getting in the car again tonight. 11… Pushy people irritate me, whether that’s pushy in terms of how they drive or whether they want me to do stuff that they should be doing themselves. 12… Alisha’s Attic music gives me the irresistable urge to sing along. 13… Peace and quiet is all very well but I do miss having company around. Maybe that’s why I play WoW so much. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

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One of the things they’re going to change in the next World of Warcraft patch is the top end small group instances … These are places that are designed for 5 person parties but which can currently take up to 10. What they’re doing is making them slightly easier but they’ll be enforcing stricter limits on how many can go in.

So, Stratholme and Scholomance join Dire Maul (great names huh ?) as being a maximum of 5 people. Which will up the challenge to make them interesting. Trouble is, it may also make them too hard for random groups to do. Hell – I haven’t got a problem with that, it will encourage people to learn their class better. Sure, it encourages the hard core but you don’t need to be on the game 24 hours a day in order to get really good at it. And the instances were perfectly doable with just 5 as they were before as well.

The place we blitzkrieged tonight is a place called Upper Black Rock Spire, which can currently take 15 people. It’s being limited to 10 after the patch, so we thought we’d see how we’d do with just 10 players with the instance in its harder prepatch state. How did it go ? Errmmm … kinda embarassing. The mobs were dismissed like tatters in the wind as we whirled through the instance. We got through the instance extremely quickly, good profit for little cost. Just shows what you can do with a strong group.

We missed the Overqueen, who was the inspiration behind the run. Things were a bit quiet, apart from the dying screams of those foolish enough to try standing before us that is. There’s a definite bit of fun and laughter that comes in when the Overqueen’s voice comes over Teamspeak. Especially when you come up with a comment that gets her close to dissolving into giggles 🙂 (managed to do that twice now) Ah well, we’ll have to drag her through there at a later date when she’s feeling a bit better.

Make an appointment with the Doc & get those ears syringed… It’s actually fun… honest…. and you’re hearing will be outstanding… for a few hours until your brain adjusts….

Just dropped out of a Zul’Gurub run because of not feeling too great. At least it means that someone well, willing and able can take my spot :-). (I hung around for about 10 minutes so that they wouldn’t go in short)

Ear problem must be worse than I thought. It’s affecting my balance, which means I was concentrating hard on trying to walk in a straight line while I was at work today. At least I could concentrate a little more, which is better than some stages of last week. Mind you, I also have a sore throat.

This sounds like excuses doesn’t it ? Ah well. I try to not tell people what to think but try to get them thinking for themselves. If that’s what they think, so be it 😉 but at least I can be happy knowing that I haven’t let the team down because I hung around to make sure they didn’t go in short.

In the meantime, I’ll start looking for an anchor to stop the room moving, while just generally crashing out in front of the telly.

Heh – relatively early mornings for me, yesterday and today. cricket was on !

I managed to emerge yesterday at around 8.30 ish and was out of bed and into slumber position on the sofa today before 8am. That’s before I get up for work in the week ! Shame the cricket wasn’t really worth watching at that point. I even turned it over to the South Africa v Aussie game for a while.

India decided to make it interesting towards the end though, as they tried going for the win. About 200 runs to get off 25 overs and it actually looked at one point as if it might reach the nightmare condition of them having a chance for them. Not to be though, the fading light brought an early close. I think that had something to do with Harbhajan Singh of India having 2 of his 3 stumps removed from the ground by a 90mph ball from Steve Harmison that he probably never saw.

Good result for England though. Because they were missing their Captain, Vice Captain and one of their 4 fast bowlers, they went into this match very short on experience. They had no less than 3 players making their debuts … However, they avoided defeat quite handily and put India under pressure. Even game, although the pitch stopped either side having a good chance for the win.

Oh yeah – England bowler Matthew Hoggard is going to get some ribbing from the people looking after the England team … He’s just been shown riding around the outfield on the 125cc motorbike that he received as part of his Man of the Match award.

sleepy said: lol – Now why would he be so big ?

Probably because everyone on the block feeds him…