vacation

I've been on vacation(s) for most of the summer so far. Look for more to come.

Meet my mage

Aenigma has been a difficult skeleton to get to know. Perhaps in this case the personality has grown out of the name. Or perhaps it's because I suck at playing mage. He has stood at level 29 for months, at the top of the battleground bracket, where I am inclined to leave a character with whom I'm uncertain about continuing. Playing an undead is quite fun. You can't help but start feeling sinister, intelligent, and grimly humorous.

Aenigma returned to action the other night for a trip to one of his favorite places, the comfy Shadowfang Keep. To his left is Toquen, (25) my RL sister, who was on her first instance. If you're a hunter, you know how many mistakes you can make, and she is learning quickly. Ziko be very proud. To her right is Zdrastutya the Ice Queen, (33) one of Rashomon's alts.

After wiping a couple times right away, we ran through the Keep without further deaths. We stand above in Arugal's expensive corner office, having dispatched him fairly easily with our tank, "titi," gnawing on him while he took crossfire from the two mages and a hunter.

SFK is such a fun instance. Not too long, lots of loot, not too hard. It was so much more fun than running around the Sunwell for the Nth time.

Where are they now?

Our friend Ziko of the yellow hair and blog title, was not my first character on Scarlet Crusade. Alas, Kazamara, what happened? The Shaman with so much potential. Level seven and a beast of burden.


Ziko spends a lot of time in his hammock deciding if he should pick up a trade and start making leather armor. He is, of course, cunning and wise in the ways of hunting and killing. Running around Nagrand killing beasts with a troll hunter is one of the top 5 easiest things to do in the game. He's too lazy to sell the skins, and he's too lazy to take up a trade. He already did leatherworking for while and quit that. He was an engineer for a while, and quit that. Ziko like da barbecue and cactus juice. It may be time to sell the skins.

Axes aweigh!

OK, our intrepid orc Shaboo acquired two Grunt's Waraxes and went out questing in Hellfire. I have no idea if he is doing better DPS or whatever, but he is having a blast. He is swinging so fast that there isn't much to do except let the rage build up and start swinging strikes and whirlwinding while the mobs go down. Much easier than timing slams, which he was not good at. Later, buddy Rashomon the Shaman showed up, and they made merry mayhem.

You know, Shaboo kills baby deer and eats everything in his path, but he misses Salandria. Don't say anything, or he'll rip your head off.


Sleepy Willy is fun and all, and he is totally hilarious when he kills frogs, but he and Shaboo haven't quite bonded yet.

Meet Shaboo

Shaboo, the orc warrior, is my secondest leveled character. Thus far, he has managed not to obtain modifications to his original intelligence (23) or spirit. He lives on Scarlet Crusade. He likes to eat bunnies. Favorite saying: "SHABOO KILL." Favorite holiday: Brewfest.


I'm not exactly sure I remember leveling him to 60, but it was probably because he has a lot of fun ... until Hellfire, which has been a total drag so far for this happy but dim orc. He's a pretty good tank, but he has decided to get BIG AXE and BIG ARMOR, so he's motivated to level up. Yesterday, he talked to the warrior trainer, who suggested making things simpler. "Shaboo carry axe in each hand," he said. Today Ziko, who has got mad smartz compared to his orc friend, will help him negotiate the purchase of a second axe. They may buy some magical voodoo colors to put on them, too.

Alterac Valley sociology

It's been AV weekend, and I got in today with all the other weirdos of warcraft to play for our welfare epics. I think it's a big axe that Ziko wants. I'm not even sure, but I like the battlegrounds.

The Reckoning battlegroup struggles on the Horde side, let's just say. There's no generally agreed-upon strategy. We have the intrepid who try to help. There are a few fast-typing reasonable players who do know how to win. But how do you really convey a winning strategy to 30 or so people (cavers not included) in less than a minute? You don't really. So to fill in for the smart players, we get the bossy whiny complainers, some of the most hilarious players in the game.

I'm starting a new feature, Great Leaders of WoW. Look for these motivators to appear soon.

Alt massacre

I found the other day that you can only have 40 characters per account. I kept trying new toons on different servers, and it would say "You have reached you limit on this account," which I kept reading as "limit on this server." I added up my characters: 40. I'm now down to a slim 25 after getting rid of a lot of level ones, and a lot of under-10s that I decided I'll never play.

Now you see why I only have one 70. The only alt I really miss was Sunstone, a Shaman on Chromaggus. Sunstone was a 45-50 shaman, somewhere in there. Chromaggus was teh suck. Perpetually low population, impossible to find groups to do anything. Plus, shaman was the QQ class du jour. I gave up on Sunstone. I sold everything except my cape, and I bought a long straight staff that looked like friar tuck's. Sunstone was all white, and he was formidable in size and hilarious-looking as he ran around Orgrimmar. I took him to the battlegrounds. I got every reaction from lols to people offering me gold go get gear. (The latter really surprised me.) I dispensed shamanly wisdom on a PVP server. In the end, I send all my gold to a family member and dissolved him.

I bet there's some secret way to yank him out of the twisting nether.