Light the Torches, Pass Out the Pitchforks

It's always entertaining to read another's tales of woe, strife and other players. This is why I've been such a big fan of Hannelore at the Egotistical Priest and have been catching up on recent Big Bear Butt posts. In fact, reading a post from a few weeks ago reminded me of an incident that happened to a guildie and me.

We're questing in Hellfire Peninsula, and are heading out of the Den of Haal'esh. We've been slaughtering arakkoa and kaliri left and right in an attempt to get to friendlier ground. At the entrance to the area, we spot a blood elf escorting an NPC, presumably doing the escort quest there. Now, I hate escort quests, and so does my friend. When we see this blood elf struggling to bring the pilgrim to safety (and she is struggling), we both jump in to help, even though we're playing Alliance. What does it hurt us? We all have to leave, we have to fight our way out anyway, and whenever I'm doing an escort I'm desperately grateful for any assistance. The two of us don't even discuss it as we start pulling aggro off the NPC and give the Horde player a bit of breathing room.

After a couple of very violent minutes, there are arakkoa bodies everywhere, and nothing but clear ground and open sky for our blood elf friends. Just as we are scanning the horizon for more threats, along comes a draenei paladin. He races over, dismounts, and consecrates right on the NPC. Bam! Bam! Bam! We rage helplessly as this guy three-shots the escort. Our blood elf friend can't do anything either, since she's still below half-health.

As I watch this jerk ride away, I have an epiphany. A new mode of PvP that will allow me to inflict justice on those injustices I see. Lynching. Now, I've got to admit that I'm a little hazy on the details, and I definitely see how this could be abused, but when I see some murloc-loving son-of-a-kodo who's allegedly on my side pulling stuff like this, it makes me want to break out the pitchforks and light the torches.

I Am Shamalamabam - Hear Me Roar!

A few months ago, Blizzard came up with the Refer-A-Friend promotion. As a confirmed altoholic who had a passing interest in dual boxing, this promotion spoke to me on a personal level. I play on one server in a guild with real-life friends, play on another server in a guild with relatives, and play on a third server where my second guild has an Alliance branch. Triple XP meant that I would be able to level some characters quickly on each of those servers, and it would give me the excuse I've always needed (wanted) to get that second account for dual boxing. At the end of the promotional period, I had a few level 60+ characters on each of these servers, as well as some levels I could grant to new or existing characters.

Fast forward to today. I have a couple of accounts and a bunch of characters strewn over a few servers. I have at least one of every class. I've explored Azeroth on my rogue. I've healed my way to the mid-70s on my priest. I love my warlock, my paladins get more fun the more I play them, and hunters are always fun. I like druids, always seem to wind up using my mages as bank alts, and I'm giving my warrior another chance. The one class that has remained an enigma is the shaman.

I currently have three shamans (shamen?). Since I hadn't played one before, I thought I'd use some of the grantable levels I had accumulated to start a shaman at the high 50s. I did the same on another server to get one to level 30. I started a third one from level 1 to try out the Wow-Pro addon, since I'm a big fan of Jame's Levelling Guide. Between the three of them, I'm starting to have fun.

I plan on focussing on my shamans (shamii?) in this blog, but will talk about other classes or other WoW-related topics that interest me. Ooh! Shinies!