A great place to be

If you read my blog then surely you're a reader of Righteous Orbs. If not, then you shall go and read it, it's an order! Tam and Chas really catch you with their posts and it's impossible to resist the urge to jump in and drop some lines. Ok, if you're a Righteous Orbs reader then you probably know about the incident Tamarind had with his guild and how this lead him to gquit. But Tam is a special person and this incident brought a good idea to his mind: to create a guild where bloggers and readers could meet, play together, discuss, whatever they felt like. Go to Tam's post about the Single Abstract Noun guild and read it, he's much better than me at writing down words :)

So I've decided to join too the Single Abstract Noun. Currently I'm playing a belf mage called Seredar, but I'm planning to bring a belf paladin tank too, since there's a shortage of them in the guild, named Verech.
Since I always liked leveling chars it's a breath of fresh air since playing at level 80 has become a tad bit boring: randoms, dailies, more randoms... only some ICC raiding really motivates me, but we keep hitting the Festergut and Rotface brickwalls, even with the new buff. So SAN is a place where I feel free of these game frustrations and also have the joy of leveling with people I've been reading and sharing thoughts.
Meet you there!

PS: Verech is already in, competing with the one and only, Tamarind himself, to be the sexiest belf tank of SAN. He has advantage though, he wears heirlooms! But at least I got a little revenge: he mocked my pants... but he's now wearing the same, the copycat! Seems I'm leading on this season' style! Yeah! Pretty Points for Verech!

Hard to post lately

It's been a long time since I published my last entry. And no, I haven't been slacking with the blog. It's just... I don't find something consistent enough to blog about. During this time I prepared two blog entries that I realized weren't worth publishing. Even the second one was a kind of revision of the first and why I shouldn't post it, but again I find the entry futile. On the other hand I haven't found any remarkable situations inside WoW worth pointing out. Not even some epic failpug. Aside from the typical Oculus quitters and some noobish tank who couldn't handle threat properly, all pugs I've done lately were very smooth. I even did several runs with the same group that worked as a charm (in fact was a guild run from another server who just lacked a healer).
Raid stiuation is at stall right now. Saurfang doesn't seem a big problem if we have enough dps to kill the beasts very fast, but we usually have problems with Precious, even not being a boss. Too many zombies running rampant. And when we finally get that doggie down (Stinky is much less problematic) we're having problems facing Festergut. Our best try so far is 68%, with the tank survivality being the biggest problem even before he releases the gas. The poor chap goes from over 45k to flatline in a blink... Anyway we're trying as much as we can, since we're a casual raiding guild and we don't go there every night. Still is great to have gone this far, I'm sure very few guilds who do casual 10man raiding have gone so far inside ICC. We've also reached the Vampire Council but haven't tried the fight yet and this week opens the Frostwing. The first boss, being completely different from anything done before seems promisingly fun and chaotic at the same time.
My chars got also some upgrades, but it's hard to play with all of them without getting burnt out, so I'm not doing lots of randoms (also the wait time if you're dps is a killer, specially if the char doesn't have any gathering profession).
So here I am, in a certain WoW impasse, trying to find something worth to be posted. Meanwhile check the blogroll list at the right side and you'll find some cool people with interesting posts.

Are you dead yet?

No, I'm not dead yet. I know I haven't written a single line for several days, yet I've been playing a lot lately thanks to some holidays I got last week. Just I haven't found anything remarkable to create a post (and still I have an unfinished one that's a pain to write). So what's been happening to the *urnaks these days?
Vurnak got exalted with Netherwing after several days of grinding rep. He doesn't have any gatherer professions, so I had fewer quests to get rep (well, one quest less, but it's a nice amount of rep less every day). Anyway he grinded everyday and is now the proud owner of the Azure Netherdrake (I still think the Obsidian looks better, but that's Kurnak's flying mount already). Also yesterday finally did The Oculus, the last dungeon I was missing and now I can create the Wispcloak. And last but not least also got the achievement for completing all heroic daily dungeon quests. Talking about achievements, got several of the Pilgrim fest, thanks to the teleport spell it's not a pain in the ass, but since I don't like much the frenzy people get in during festivals to get all achievements and claim the violet drake I didn't complete them all and won't do any on other characters.
Turnak was invited to ToC25 with our allied guild... as MT healer! (gasp!) An important responsability that I think I managed in a good way (I was only in ToC10 as dps before). Raid took several wipes since it was an alts/non-regular raiders and we didn't manage to kill Anub'arak in the end (damn enrage timer!) and the raid took longer than expected, so as a kind of compensation we went to Onyxia's lair to get some easy loot.
Surnak the warlock dualspecced destruction. Since demonology does such weak dps I wanted to try the only spec I haven't played yet (formerly he was affliction). Destruction spec increases his dps greatly, but it's boring as hell. At least it has a clear rotation to follow. He also got the epic flight skill and crafted the Turbo-Charged Flying Machine, since he's an engineer. I just lack now the rep with Alliance Vanguard to get the Chopper plans. I've been playing Surnak more and more lately and also since he can access the AH in Dalaran he's been selling tons and tons of gems that Turnak prospects. And I've made a ton of gold in a short time. I've almost recovered all the money invested in him (1k for dualspec and 4k for epic flight).
The rest of characters have been mainly inactive. Jurnak still needs to level leatherworking to 450 (he's 433 atm) and then all my characters main professions will be at top level.

Post soundtrack: Are you dead yet? - Children of Bodom


PS: This entry was supposed to be posted through Google Wave, but seems the Blogger plugin is not working correctly yet.

Feeling better

Seems the heals and cleanses finally arrived (thanks Tam!) and yesterday was much better, enough to give a hand to the guild and do some Ulduar raiding (also after so many time in bed my back was killing me). Fortunately I could rid of the fever (thursday I was over 38ºC), the headache was almost gone and the choughing reduced to minimum. I've also taken so much paracetamol for the muscular pain that probably I'm still half anesthetized. Still my voice sounds like Darth Vader after smoking half dozen of cuban cigars, so the few times I talked in vent I probably scared someone.
We tried the Golf Caddy (copyright Tamarind) with the 4 beacons up, but there was too many shit going on and people wasn't that experienced and we wiped, so we took down 2 of them and then flatlined the caddy easily. A good start. Next was Razorscale who was also killed on first try granting also the Quick Shave achievement. Things were on a roll. XT-002 also was downed without any problems (no achievement this time, we lacked firepower). But things came to a dead end with Ignis. We tried like 6 times and we couldn't get him down, wiping at 9%. Frustrated we decided to move on because it was getting late and we didn't seem to improve on each try. Kologarn was going smooth until the left arm was destroyed, nobody said anything in vent and I didn't saw the adds on time, so they killed the healers. Darn! Not again with this boss! We rezzed, rebuffed and this time I set the camera so I could see the left arm while kicking the right arm. Luckily the left arm wasn't destroyed this time and the giant fell like a chopped tree. It was getting very late so we had time only for one boss more, the Crazy Cat Lady, that's it, Auriaya (a.k.a. Screaming Bitch). We cleared the sentinels from the right side but thinking we could get her down fast we didn't clear the ones from the left side. Big mistake. And mistakes here are paid with blood. After the Feral Defender was killed and we moved to the other side someone was feared into the sentinels, so a smooth boss kill turned into a chaotic hell. Of course we wiped, even after trying to tank the sentinels at the same time. This time we killed these sentinels and this time the screaming titan went down without any problem (message to Deadly Boss Mods creators: you should get Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden to record his famous cry "Scream for me (city name)!!!", so when she goes down screaming like mad we could hear Bruce "Scream for me Ulduar!!!". That would be truly epic!)
Let's see if tonight we can get enough people again to continue, at least I'd like to see some new bosses like Hodir and Freya.
Btw, Turnak got a new shiny shield from XT-002, the Pulsing Spellshield, much prettier than the Aegis of Damnation and that silly rune it has. Bye bye egyptian look.

Post soundtrack: Gods of War (live) - Bruce Dickinson

WTB Cleanse

Woke up today feeling sick, seems flu has finally got me (right now doesn't seem swine flu at least). Sore throat, headache, cough, muscular pain...
Next week I'm on holidays, so WTB Cleanse very fast, no matter price, but must be effective, just /w me.

Every story has a beginning

Hello there, brave adventurer! Welcome to The *urnaks! A place of thrilling mysteries and... oh wait! Sorry! I can't start like this. Let's try again... Beware brave adventurer, tread carefully on the... cut!! Can I take a different approach? This is not even original. Once upon a time... no! Somebody fire the writer please!
Ok, I'll do all the dirty work. My name is Kurnak, a veteran warrior of the Hellscream EU realm and elder of the *urnak family. Me and my alts have been around the world of Azeroth since almost the begining. So what's the deal with this blog? You won't find here theorycrafting or statistics. I'm not a numbers junkie. I prefer to have fun rather than chugging out "bit critz lol!". I know there're lots of blogs with funny stories out there and I hope to bring you some too.
So first of all let me introduce you the family and friends:

Kurnak. Warrior. Cold and precise. He's my main char, the first one I created. Not rare, I tend to create a warrior on all MUDs/RPGs/MMORPGs I play. maybe because is possibly the easiest character and lets you get the grip on the game. He enjoys bashing heads (started as Arms until I got really tired of it and discovered the joy of Fury). He doesn't like tanking but when needed he switchs to Protection and puts his face on the frontline, ready to be biffed and spanked just so the rest of the group can dps safely.

Turnak. Paladin. Caring and generous. He started a career as dps when Retribution wasn't a good dps spec, so he finally switched to Holy (guild was low on healers too). While Kurnak doesn't like tanking he really loves it. I suspect he has a secret passion for martyrdom.



Murnak. Priest. Serious and with a twisted vein. Follower of the Shadow during his entire life he discovered the joy of Discipline some time ago. Nothing teachs you better to respect the gods than a good face melting.




Vurnak. Mage. Wild and a bit crazy. After playing with the Arcane for some little time he decided to investigate the power of Frost until he turned to the other side... Fire. Only to go back to Frost. And he's thinking on switching again.




Surnak. Warlock. Cold and dangerous. After mastering the way of Affliction turned to Demonology to investigate the preternatural beings that can be summoned into Azeroth. Someone you don't want to upset.




Jurnak. Rogue. Cheerful and playful. The younger of the family and possibly the most irresponsible. He forged a respectable career in the field of Assassination but decided to give a shot to Combat. He's still developing his rogue skills and plans to go back to Assassination because he just loves to wield daggers.



Durnak. Death Knight. Dreadful and fearless. The last member of the family who came back from the Dark Side and offered his abilities in Blood and Frost to the Alliance. He thinks the Lich King is a boring snob.




These're all the *urnak family members, but in their joruneys around the Warcraft world they made some great friends that share their adventures in Azeroth and Outland.

Grimbol. Hunter. Brawler and good-hearted. This proud son of Ironforge swore to follow the *urnaks wherever they went. A great Marksman in his early years he decided to extend his love for beasts and decided to go deep in the ways of Beast Mastery.



Lorathiel. Druid. Distant and silent. No one really knows why he decided to follow the family, but they're happy to have this professional Feral and Restoration druid around. He enjoys prowling around stealthed and you never know when he's there watching you.



Valaak. Shaman. Solid and loyal. The last companion that joined the band, coming from the crashed ship Exodar, crossed the paths with the family and found their goals were the same, so he offered his knowledge in the art of war as Enhancement and also his healing skills as Restoration.



So now you know the family a bit. What's then with them? Although I like to add some roleplay I've never developed a full personality for all (or at all in most cases), so I usually don't project difrferent parts of me into the different characters. All are basically me :) I find disappointing that all races (and specially with humans) have an unique body configuration. It would be great to have mages and warlocks with a crooked and fragile look, fat and rounded priests, warriors with a beer-belly and so. Shouldn't be a big deal when you check the amount of models WoW has. Who knows... maybe in some very future expansion...
And what about the blog itself? I don't really have a script or goal for it. I want to write about any possible aspect of WoW, specially about the funny issues you might find on a daily basis. After all, WoW is a game and the goal is to have fun with it. When you get your nineth character to level 80 there's not much fun in the daily play per se. It's the people behind the characters who really make you login everyday, either by what they say or the actions they perform in-game. So again be welcomed here, hope you find my posts amusing.