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So this weekend this little ‘rain storm’ rolled through New England… Hurricane Irene, later just Tropical Storm Irene now just cute little storm formerly called Irene. I watched it from my bedroom window while doing dailies as winds ripped limbs from trees, stripped branches of leaves and blew rain uphill on the buildings across the green from me. The news was following the storm, calling it an event and I usually don’t buy into the hype often but I had a bad feeling about it. We didn’t get nailed as hard as people thought but my state of Vermont is in a state of panic.
In Vermont there are at least a dozen small towns isolated due to flood waters, roads and bridges 100+ years old washed away in the torrents of the Otter, Deerfield, Ottaquechee, and White rivers. Three of the major “cities” in the southern end of the state are under several feet of water or totally inaccessible. Power lines are down, dams are under a lot of pressure and more water is on the way as the already saturated ground pours more water into the valleys of the Green Mountains where most people live. Towns on the southern end of the state are also issuing mandatory evacuations, boil water orders, and are expecting more trouble as Monday goes on.
Further north our State Capitol is currently being evacuated as the Marshfield Dam may have its flood gates open to alleviate the swelling reservoir behind it. If the dam fails it’ll be worse, emergency managers and the power company who owns the dam says, so we have to do what we can to save it. Dozens of schools are closed state wide, naturally though, the school I graduated from isn’t on the list.
I have a grandmother and two aunts and uncles down in Southern VT. Gramma is fine, not that she goes anywhere anyway, and still has power thankfully. Uncle D got trapped in the town of Willmington (which at 10am Sunday was isolated with all roads lading to it washed out) with the rest of the volunteer fire department and with Aunt L stuck at the hospital she works at. Uncle T and Aunt P had to be evacuated as the river rose and filled their town and outlying areas with 4+ feet of water, washing out bridges and roads. The water is still rising.
This spring we got hit, hard by floods and many roads and bridges are still not fully repaired. What worries me the most though is that all 4 routs to get to my parent’s house up in the mountains are all closed. I’m glad I went shopping with my mom, I know they have what they need. They still have power, more than can be said for 30,000+ other Vermonters. I work with my parents in our custom door business but if I can’t get there well I guess I get the day off.
Up here in Burlington there was a lot of wind, the rain turned main street’s big hill into a massive water slide but that was it. The worst is expected to happen today as the 90mi long Winooski river reaches and surpasses flood stage. Called the st police and they said stay out of my home town, half the roads are under water and most of the routs around those places are a mess… or the bridge is gone. All unnecessary travel is prohibited, the Governor asking people to ‘stay safe, stay dry, use common sense’ which surprisingly a lot of Vermonters have. So far only one fatality has been reported.
Irene may have spared most of us high winds and hurricane epicness but she left a f-ton of water and Vermont is trying hard to stay afloat. The long and short of it. We’re soggy, gunna get soggier and if you gotta go somewhere, you can’t get there from here.
So I promised I’d write more on the PVE aspects of 4.3 but we haven’t gotten a lot of info about it just yet. We have, however, seen two major posts about the other stuff… namely Transmogrification and Void Storage. It’s done some weird things on my server too…
You see a lot of people are stoked for the ability to make their gear look different and its prompted a massive rush to do old content for equipment. The theory is that you have to have the gear in order to change it. This was kind of confirmed by the post about the void storage, which implies it’s where you could store the items you’d use for the Transmogrification process. The Void storage itself is a set 80 slot storage space, which when items are stored at a price lose their enchants and gems as well as reset anything you’ve reforged.
You can take it back out again but it has a fee. The current charge they are thinking of putting down is like 300g per item. Bit steep in my opinion actually but in theory you won’t be pulling things back out. It serves as long time storage which could be useful. Not as awesome for roll players as previously thought but for gear sets you don’t use or things you wanna hang onto but don’t wanna have to abuse bank space for. I still think it will be worth it but it does point out strongly towards needing the equipment in order to change the look of things.
This has caused some slight insanity on a lot of servers. Namely the running of old content for drops. Now back on MG this happens all the time. Its an RP server, people want items to make costumes and such, so there’s a lot of pugging and gear grabbing. I never had too many positive experiences with gear pugs but it seems to be happening more and more even on a normal realm. A few folks, like the DKs in my guild, are frustrated with it mostly due to the fact that only in Wrath are their tier sets and cool looking armor. You can have any armor of the same class true but why look like a warrior or paladin when you’re a bad ass mo fo DK? Well I can think of reasons but that is besides the point.
We’ll see where this goes from here. Till then its back to argument for stuff that doesn’t matter in current content. Vanity apparently matters more than friends and being cool with one another.
Short post really to inform you now that life has calmed down a lot… and a lot has happened believe me… I’ll be getting back in the saddle of writing for this blog.
Things like moving, new roommates, deaths in the family, new expansions, job troubles… you know life and such just tends to gum up the works.
I plan to post weekly on Wednesdays maybe a special feature on weekends if I have the time.
Things to expect are topics and posts about the following list of ideas:
So you call yourself a Dungeoneer? – Hunter tips for the Cata dungeons and how to survive them
The Daily Grind: Looks at the daily quests, easy ways to do them, and why you might want to care.
Running with the Pack: Updates and progress as well as observations about my raid team, Silver Pack, and where we’re going… and where we aren’t. Occasional camio and comparisons with the other raid team in my guild.
Shooting into the Darkness: The joys of being a hunter in cataclysm from Alihandra’s point of view.
Dude where is Dawnqui?: A look at things on the Horde side since I play mostly Alliance.
On the Prowl: Postcards and screen shots from a Druid’s point of view.
Fire and Ice: Lame title is lame… stories, anecdotes and tales from my little lock and project:Mage.
Powder Keg: Progress and shenanigans from my WHU Hunter Kaywinnet!
Power Word Project: Leveling a Priest, the squishy of squishy, and why a hunter ought to care.
I also plan to do some work with you folks out there *taps screen* Yeah you guys. From art and story features to stories, and maybe even a contest over the in game holidays.
Anyway that’s the plan and I am sticking to it… if I don’t I’ll end up going batty.
See you around!
-Ali
Going to make this one short. Due to work, a few other things and my sanity taking an extended AFK I’ll be taking a break from the blog until probably Blizzcon. Sucks I know but if I am going to make it out there and not take a long walk off a short dock I’ll need the break.
Even in Nature there are PUGs
Howdy All,
Its been an interesting month or so in the life of me and while I don’t want to bore you too much with all of it I do have some nice pictures to share after the cut below. A quick run down of recent events that I may or may not elaborate on more in the future are as follows…
- Finally killed that jerk Arthas! It was a lot of fun, very frustrating and it really kind of ended a chapter in my WoW career. I finished an expansion, a part of the game, before the new one came out. And it was hard, challenging, and so totally worth it.
- On a similar note we went in and took out AQ 40 which knocked off my second to last dungeon achievement. All the classic dungeons are now done and the only one I am missing is Sun Well.
- In regards to Sun Well I had two chances to go out and knock it out but… well its the tail end of summer and I’m trying to get some of my summer fun in before I spend the next 10 months indoors. I live in New England when summer is over its just snow and rain until summer again. This included my annual trip to Maine to commune with nature and the bottle of several rum bottles.
- A big congrats to Wyrmfoe for winning 10 spots in beta thanks to a witty and smart entry written by Frostheim of the WHU. 10 members of the guild will be going in as a group to test out the Guild system and various other fun things… like raids and non pug dungeon groups. It will be a lot of fun I’m sure when we all get in there and start breaking things.
- Expect some more posts more frequently. Now that things have calmed down a bit on my end I expect to have more time to write. This includes stuff I’m doing in game, maybe some writing, screen shots and of course the care and feeding of Sea Horses…
Yeah… you heard me… Sea… Horses…
I think I shall name him Nemo
Beta here I come!
First though, those promised pictures.
Been a while since the last post blah blah blah…
Summer can get a bit stressful. Its hot, muggy, people do things outdoors away from computers, raids don’t go, rise of alts and all that. Heat can burn you out and so can all this information about Cataclysm. Everyone gets so stoked for what is to come many stop seeing a point to playing until its out.
So sometimes a bit of catharsis is in order. Something that just cheers you up and brightens your day and lets all the stress of botched Halion runs or being stuck once again three men short of a full raid team roll off your back.
One of my favorites (besides playing a game involving wildlife and how many I can hit with Corruption before the first one dies affectionately called the Dot Dot Dead game.) is to go into Scarlet Monastery Cathedral wing and go hug the Scarlet Commander, High Inquisitor, and all their friends. At once. I spent a lot of time in there getting my tail handed to me and it was a pain in the ass. Now its just fun to hop on the ill used paladin alt, smack the rocket boots and the Arcanite Ripper and have some fun.
So, the handful of people who actual read this blog, what do you do to blow off some steam or chase the blues away in WoW?
Ah the Fire Festival. Where the countryside is burninating for the good of all. This time of year tends to be a bit slow Raid wise and well this is the last holiday till Brewfest so we may as well enjoy it.
This is one of the least difficult meta achievements to get it just takes time. After a few runs on a few alts (Ali, Dawnqui, and Iraka) I figured a fairly smooth path for the Alliance to follow. Arguably Horde can reverse this and probably use it.
This is simply a suggestion of a rout to go, I’m going under the assumption you kinda know what you are doing and you know the world in which you will be travling… and map reading. Seriously.
Follow behind the cut for the routs starting with Eastern Kingdoms, thru Kalimdor and then Outlands.
Going through all my pictures from the Baby Sharp Beak adventure I found this… it has no place other than by itself…
This week’s moment of Random is brought to you by Starbucks Coffee – I’ve had too much.
*bounces around* I got tickets! I got tickets! Woooooo!
I’m a little more broke now and the rest of the year is going to somehow be miraculously slim when it comes to spending. I’ll have to make my contacts as to my friend who is going with me, the potential pair of people coming with for the vacation end, the airline tickets… Oh don’t forget the 2 weddings just before the convention!!
Oh and you know actual work…
As you can see that’s a fair amount of stuff to do and get done and started… but don’t worry it will get nailed down and done.
I’ll keep you posted!
A long long time ago, in a vanilla a few years back there was a quest… an epic quest… that took dedication, skill, a lot of travel time and a lack of a fear of fire. Rhok’delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers was once the best bow in the game and a true testament to the distance a hunter would go for not just the best weapon…but for the pride in knowing they had the ability to do it. Now at 80 and nearing Cataclysm we run into the news that Molten Core, the dungeon where the quest chain begins, will be no more. Ragnaros is trading up for new digs and he has a world tree to burn. Not to mention I’d be sick of some fresh 80 DK rolling into my pad and taking out all my stuff.
This isn’t exactly a guide on how to do it… there are plenty out there. It’s more of an account of my adventures trying to get this done and enjoy crossing off one of my longest standing check boxes on one of my oldest lists.
And for your listening pleasure – Apollo 440 [link ]
The Misdirect List 