Hello everyone! Just a quick update before the big post sometime this weekend on what I think works.
BM PvE has never been quite this loose before. There was usually just one way of doing things: for once, we now have some choices! I’m just trying to determine what works and when.
I promise the content is coming: all I ask is a little patience while I get the time to write it, the time to sort the data, and the time to really put out something worth reading.
Always Fabulous,
Klinderas
Tracking time is a lot harder than it looks.
So the idea of posting and redoing all of my awesome guides in a prompt and quick fashion? Totally not happening.
My workload, despite my fabulous ability to do anything, is actually far too large to leave hanging. I will NOT be updating as frequently as I would have liked, but that’s just what happens when you’re being fabulous everywhere.
So please don’t expect daily posts, or even 3 times a week. Maybe 1-2 posts, tops. And that will do, because otherwise I would die.
So stay tuned, but be prepared for some wait times.
Here begins our story. Again.
The bar was nigh on empty, the dim light from fading lamps and candles casting flickering shadows across the walls. The bartender, a blood elf with long blond hair and clear evergreen eyes, cleaned a few mugs just to pass the time. When you’re a blood elf, you can just magically wish for the dishes to do themselves and chance are, it will happen. Whistling, the bartender turned towards the patron sitting on the stool in front of him.
“Now stranger, anything else before I close up?” He put the mug he was cleaning in front of the figure.
The man sat in silence for a few moments, his cloak hiding most of his features save for a mesh of rich, auburn coloured hair that fell out of his hood.
“Actually, I haven’t had a bottle of Pinot Noire in… two years? I’d like a bottle.” He paused for a moment. “… please.”
“That’ll be twenty silver coins please.” The clattering of coin sounded throughout the bar, and moments later the bottle was empty.
The man wiped off his chin, put the bottle on the counter, and smiled at the bartender. “You’re a super nice person, ‘tender. Mind if I call you ‘Tender?”
The bartender just shook his head and continued to clean glasses.
The man stood up. “Thank you all for the terribly soundless evening. It was soundless, like, without sounds.” He bowed, nearly fell over, and turned to the exit,
And collided with a Death Knight.
The Death knight’s cold, eerie and metallic voice chilled the evening air. “Funny, bumping into you here. Sit down and have a drink, it’s on me.”
The man shook his head. “I think I’d rather go somewhere else, if you don’t mind.” He started to make for the exit again, but a large, gauntleted hand grabbed his shoulder and held him fast.
“I didn’t ask.” Grinning, the Death Knight sat the man down at a table, then sat down opposite him.
The Death knight’s ice blue hair framed his elfen features, all perfectly maintained despite his resurrection. His cold eyes were the only real give away of his ‘profession’ other than a hefty smell of gore and decay. His armor was thick and plated, and showed gouges and scars of having fought fiercely up in Northrend against his former master.
“So to what do I owe you the pleasure of my company, Death kinniget?”
The Death knight looked pensive for a second. “Actually, it’s to ‘whom’, and a lot of people at that. First, do you remember Eldadres? He studied for a long time on where you could have been, and how to get in contact with you; and although he didn’t find a way to contact you, he found out a way to track where you were in a general sense. You went to universes I didn’t know existed, planes where I didn’t you could exist. What they all had in common were the elements. Which is where the second person comes in: Windpaw, a shaman. She focused really hard on learning how to find out which place you were in by speaking to the elements of that plane. So when you came back to this one, we knew you had come back, down to the second you came.”
The man shifted in his chair, not uneasily, but largely because the chairs were uncomfortable, more so than he remembered.
The Death knight continued. “Once you got here, we only needed to track you down. So, you owe Aifel here too. The instant you set foot back on Azeroth, he was on your trail.”
From the shadows of the bar emerged a young blood elf. His spiky brown hair did nothing to cover the completely uninterested look on his face. He sat down at the table with them. “Sup.”
The death knight continued. “Once he had your movements all mapped out, he informed me of where you would be. And here you are.”
The man smiled. “I suppose you got help from another old friend of mine. Where’s Colemand?”
The Bartender turned around. “Alright, now that he knows, can someone take this frivolous magic off of me? It tastes like mildew.”
With a wave of the death knight’s hand and some arcane mutterings, the bartender turned from a young blood elf bartender into a stooped, fearsome looking Forsaken death knight.
“Much better. I don’t know how you can all live with that crap all the time.” Colemand sat down at the table as well. “Honestly, it’s worse than being dead, and now I know both.”
The Death knight shook his head. “Well, no one said you had to be here Colemand. You could have stayed in your kitchen, feeding the war effort.”
Colemand’s guttural laugh filled the bar. “Hellscream doesn’t know the meaning of food! Cooking for his army felt like cooking dirt. I’d rather go out and make my own food. Besides, I haven’t made a Gnome pie in ages, and I heard they make them in priests now, too. If there’s anything more delicious than irony, I want to taste it.”
The man sat still for a moment, then looked up at the blood elf across the table from him. “So why all the love? I’m not the most important elf on Azeroth, not by a long shot. I wasn’t even present to see the downfall of Arthas. I’m definitely no hero of the Horde, and I’m certainly not on Hellninny’s good side.”
“True, but Hellscream does know that you got shit done. With Deathwing on the rise, that’s what needs to happen; but that’s not the reason we sought you out. To be honest, Hellscream probably doesn’t care that you’re here at all.” The Death knight clasped his hands together. “Look, we all know you left to search the universes. For a woman, no less. A gentleman’s move on your part, to pursue love; but it didn’t work, did it?”
The man’s face turned sombre as the death knight continued. “Maybe she died, maybe she didn’t love you, maybe both. Either way, she’s not in your life anymore. And now you’re here, drinking yourself silly from the west coast of Kalimdor to the east coast of the Eastern Kingdoms. We’re here to make you do what you were born to do. You are a hunter, and a damn good one. Maybe not the most practical, nor the most flexible, but certainly one of the best.”
The room went silent. Aifel sat silently picking his teeth with a dagger. Colemand starting scratching doodles into the table using a clawed, iced finger. The death knight sat in silence his hands still clasped in front of him. The man stared down at the table. This continued for what seemed like ages, the silence falling on the room like a musty covering.
Finally, the man looked up at the death knight. “I don’t see how a lot of what you said is your business. You’re treading on ground that I honestly don’t want anyone to tread on yet; but you’re right about one thing, Elnoriah.”
The man threw back his hood to reveal long auburn hair, tied to keep it out of his face, bright evergreen eyes, long elegant ears and eyebrows, and a large smile. He whistled sharply, a piercing sound, and no sooner had he done so than a large black wolf had bounded into the room and knocked the man over and started licking his face.
“I am fabulous.”
This post might hurt.
Me more than you, I mean. By writing this post, I am going to be putting a lot of memories, good and bad, in the past.
Yes, this means I am quitting WoW. I am putting the World of Azeroth, the lore, the game, behind me.
Apparently, this is a big deal.
After I explained to the Peon why I was leaving, his situation seemed to get worse.
But it pains me to say it. As you may or may not know, I do love this game. Or loved. I mean, I loved every part of it! PvP, PvE, exploring, the lore, the achievements, the look, the feel… every inch of this game was something I’ve been waiting for as a kid. I’ve always wanted to be the hero, to defeat my enemies, and to stand proud and tall when people give me praise.
Today, I’m typing this to you with shoulders slumped and head bowed, for I have lost my feel. The game no longer inspires the same feeling it once did. Not from burnout, no. I never suffer burnout; but I do feel like I’ve been playing this game for so long, and it’s been affecting me adversely.
For starters, my job hunt did not go well this year. I believe that if I had spent less time working for WoW than I had, I would be happily sitting on a pile of money right now.
If I was sitting happily on a pile of money, then I wouldn’t have the arduous choice of picking another year of school and therefore being successful, or work for a year; my course is clear though, and I know what I’m picking because I have something else I don’t want to leave behind. Not again, not for a long time, not ever. Some people measure success by money, some by fame.
Mrs. Klin is the most precious thing to me in my life. I had to go to school for a year, seeing her over Skype and talking to ehr every day of every week of every month. I came home to visit once a month without fail… and yet it wasn’t enough. It never was. Once I got home, Mrs. Klin and I have spent so much time together that I never want to let her go again, ever.
Mrs. Klin, I love you, and I want to stay close to you forever. To do that, I’m going to have to work hard for you, but I’m prepared to do anything it takes to stay by you for as long as I live.
Some people measure success by money, some by fame. I want to measure my success by you.
It’s weird, to know that your time with something you love is limited, to wonder if you’ll ever go back and see the things you’ve accomplished.
Klinderas is my finest achievement in a game. Smart, efficient, and able to beat the odds when it really counts. Klinderas is likely a name I will never forget, and a character I will continue to use throughout my life as an example of a good person, even if he was a little full of himself.
When I made Klinderas, I was modeling him after me. Tall, not too bad looking, and a little frail but good with a bow. After I made him, I began to realize he was becoming a different character than when he started: noble, active, just. A man who wouldn’t put up with bullshit if he saw it, who would help out those in need, who would hold the right people accountable for their actions and persecute them for what they did wrong.
I’d like to think I grew up with my character, and my avatar on the fields of Azeroth. I’d like to think I’m a little more Klin than I used to be.
Before I go, there’s a few people I want to thank for my time here in Azeroth.
To Eldadres: my man, you and I have been playing together for long enough that I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to play without a friend. Where my friends were busy raiding BT or quitting, you were playing right alongside me. We’ve earned our glory in arenas, mopped the field with our enemies in BG’s, and made the Bosses in raids and heroics piss their pants when they see us coming. We were a %$#&ing awesome team, dude.
To Dan “BRK” Howell: for inspiring me to become the hunter I became, and then reminding us what’s really important… hopefully before it’s too late. I think I’ve managed to do that okay, for once.
To all the friends I made in game: It was a pleasure playing with all of you, raid leading you, or otherwise just dickin’ around with you. I hope my old guild leaders have successful new guilds, that Gradii enjoys his new writing career and tanks his way to Arthas, that Hannah gets some shoulders to match her new chest piece, that Connected gets his Protodrake, and that the many, many people I’ve met lead happy lives.
Lastly, I’d like to thank the people I’ve met through this blog. Everyone I’ve read, who’s read what I had to write, and everything else that involves this blog… none of it would have happened without you guys.
Yes Link, we're staying here boy. We're retired, see? Means "no more quests".
Link and Radix together again at last.
/bye
Now Mikey, there aren't any fresh corpses where I'm going. You sure you want to come?
Mikey stays.
Now, let's see what's over that horizon.
Klinderas: You know, Colemand? We had a good run. We got pretty damn far, and did a whole damn lot here in Azeroth.
Colemand: Indeed.
Klinderas: I’m going to miss this place.
Colemand: Agreed. So where are we going next?
Klinderas: … No idea. I have an option though: let’s walk that way until we find someplace nice to stay. An ocean, some sand, maybe some game for me to hunt once in awhile.
Colemand: Can there be gnomes? I’m going to miss them… they make funny popping noises when they die.
Klinderas: We’ll see, Cole. We’ll see.
Colemand: Will we ever come back?
Klinderas: Maybe; but it’s going to be a long time from now if we do, so don’t pack lightly. We’re going to be gone awhile.
QUICK NOTE: I’m not done blogging, just done blogging about WoW and playing WoW. If you want to keep reading what i have to say about stuff in general, you can find me at Phil, Meet World.
This is pretty big news, but our resident death knight has decided to write!
Colemand has been graciously allowed to write for Nance, the author of Alterac Volley. Many of you know Nance’s work on the WoW Headlines and PuG Checker sites, so it’s a huge surprise to be allowed to write on his main blogging site part time.
Colemand’s shenanigans will be kept at this site. What Colemand will be writing about includes death knights, death knights, and more death knights. PvP, PvE, Tips and tricks… they will be all over there. As this continues, I’ll be writing Hunter equivalent posts here if I’m allowed.
In the mean time, congratulate our chef extraordinaire on his first bold step into informative blogging!
I am not dead yet. Stay tuned, for there’s stuff happening this week!
Should not be found on the bottom end of a rock.
Trust is a pretty serious word nowadays.
Recently, a blogger I had never heard of before named Ferraro was found to have stolen the identity of a certain Tech Darling, Mrs. Sarah.
Matticus has made a post detailing the oddities of stealing someone else’s identity, and how to use critical thinking to come up with your own conclusion for things.
Gevlon from Greedy Goblin chimed in with his business like demeanour, crediting Ferraro’s readers with nothing more than being a sap and forgetting the simplest rule of the internet: trust no one and nothing.
Although I think Gevlon has a very good point and is right, I really wish he wasn’t. See, trust is really one of those hefty words that is thrown around nowadays. It has great rewards, and staggering losses; but because of all the losses, people are afraid of the rewards. People don’t trust.
Allow me to explain.
People don’t trust on the internet. This makes sense, as the information is available to everything and everyone with a connection. From the best people to the very worst, the fact that I am a dude who plays WoW and has fun doing it is no secret to anyone with enough brains to use a search engine. I don’t put up anything else of note really to avoid being hunted down and used for target practice.
However, real life shouldn’t be this fear laden. You only make yourself available to those you choose to meet. You can choose not to see another person, to not tell them things. You can choose not to trust people, and to show them who you are.
But what’s so wrong with who you are? When I meet people face to face, I tend to trust them. Mrs. Klin has pointed out to me time and again that it’s not a good idea, and time and again she’s been right; and me, like an Alzheimer’s patient, have a hard time learning this lesson of distrust and fear.
We fear that people are being dishonest, so we’re dishonest with them. We put on a poker face the instant someone tells us they are selling anything. We frequently tell small, white lies to hide imperfections in our identity so that no one can hurt us for them.
I have a strict rule with people: I’m honest with you, you better be honest with me. I better be able to trust that what you’re saying is true. I want reliable, gods-be-my-witness accurate information of exactly what you saw, did, and thought. I don’t want lies to make things “sound” better. I don’t want lies as an act of vengeance. I don’t want distrust, ’cause if I find any I will excommunicate you so fast that you won’t know how angry I am at you.
I’ve seen distrust and lies do ugly things to good people. People get sent to jail without a good reason because of distrust of the defendant. This society prides itself on “guilty until proven innocent” but hardly ever operates that way. The instant someone is arrested, they are “the bad guy”. They didn’t even say anything, but no one could trust a thing they say. There’s a natural distrust of the accused when there should be trust in the fact that he/she isn’t guilty, not until proven so.
Because of this, no one trusts the system either. The system loses power in the people(who are the real power, after all).
This natural distrust is a response to all the rest of the natural distrust. I want to trust you, I really do; but how can I if you don’t trust me?
Real life shouldn’t be like this, but it is. It’s a constant game of hide and go seek where the stakes are as high as your lively-hood. You can’t truly trust anything anyone says because they can’t truly trust a thing you say. Preen-ups are a form of distrust, but you need it because you can’t trust the other half of the relationship. Politicians, the people who run countries, can’t be trusted because they “lie” all the time(which they do, more often than not I’m sorry to say).
Where did all this distrust come from? Why can’t we trust one another? This Ferraro incindent, the start of this little rant, is a perfect example of why we can’t trust everyone; but it’s so important to trust people. Without trust, society degenerates into a frothing mass of cavemen at the bottom of a pit the size of Texas.
Let me leave you with a story of how things once were.
The ancient Greeks were once so trusting that they would bring strangers into their house, bathe them, clothe them, and feed them, let them sleep the night, and then they’d ask who they were. This was hospitality, and it was so important to them that Zeus himself was the patron god of Hospitality.
There’s a story from ancient myth that tells of a time when Zeus and Hermes disguised themselves as mortals, and then went down to a city. They were tired, and went to a house and asked them for hospitality. They did as we would do; they refused the grungy looking hobos they saw from entering their house. Zeus and Hermes continued to ask for house and home for a night, and continued to be refused entry.
Zeus and Hermes stopped at the last house within the city limits, which was perched on a lonely hill. The people inside the house were very poor, old, and could barely farm at all due to the ungrateful land around them.
When Zeus and Hermes asked these two for a place to rest, they said yes. Why wouldn’t they? Normal people were supposed to trust other people on this level. Only an abnormal person would refuse them.
When they entered, Zeus and Hermes both took on their real forms. They spoke and ate the offerings the old couple, and told them that they were the only ones to grant them hospitality. As a reward, Zeus flooded the valley. The flood killed all the people in the city, all the people who didn’t grant them a house to live in. At the same time, this gave the old couple the most fertile land in the area, and they were prosperous until the end of their days.
This type of trust was the norm, once a long time ago. Think about that for a second, and you can see just how far we’ve gone from that.
Now Ferraro’s actions make sense. The “immorality” which Matticus is only the social norm. Gevlon has described the motto of this world: trust no one. Does it have to be this way? Only if you make it so, dear reader.
Only if you make it so.
/rantoff
... buh ifs fertaimly stuck in mah toof.
May 24 is here for me, folks. You know what that means?
I’m gone again folks. To a place with no internet, to my standing knowledge.
What this means is that, with all obviousness, I won’t be able to post during this Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and possibly Monday as well. But know this…
Upon my return, there will be some major posting going on, and every post will be juicy. Yes, juicy. You could make physical juice out of the posts I will write, and you will like it.
So what will the posts be about? Well, I’ll tell you something: I’ve got an itch. I want to flex my RP muscles around this blog some more, and I think that this would be a cool time to try to flesh out how Colemand came to be where he is now. In addition, I will write the next installment of the Furrious Raiders series: Cunning pets. Lastly, I think it’s time we did something hunter related without it being a pet post, or a talent post. I hope everyone likes strategy tips, because it’s time I did something new around here: Beastmaster/Marksman/Survivalist comparison post. Well, actually, that’s more like a lineup of 3 posts…
In short, there will be stuff when I get back.
Lastly, I’m too sexy for these pants, but I must wear them anyway. *sigh*
If I had to classify Mother’s Day in WoW, it would be a rogue.
Every year without fail, Mother’s Day sneaks up on me like a cat sneaks up on a mouse, and then it pounces, leaving me dazed, confused, and guilty.
For having forgotten to actually remember it.
Every year, this has happened, and every time I feel terrible about it. I keep forgetting when it is. Why is that? Why does it keep happening? If anything, you’d think I would have learned my lesson by now.
No dice though. I forgot again this year, and I’m feeling terrible about it. No doubt every one else has remembered, right? Right.
So here I am, without a present and I have a homemade card just for her. You know what I’m doing for a present?
I’m mowing the lawn. Worst. Present. Ever. In the history of presents, I believe this is the lamest I’ve ever done. Lame like waiting for that one piece of gear, getting something better, and then that piece of gear drops. But I have a plan. I am a musician, am I not? I can play music that stirs the soul, reduces the manliest men to a whimpering heap, and lifts the spirits of those downtrodden from years of labour to heights they never thought they could reach. I could play her music!..
And then I realized I hadn’t practiced nearly enough to constitute it as a present so much as audible torture. Well, that takes care of that idea. So there’s only one thing left to do.
Like any other day I’m at home, I spend time with the Mom. But on this day particularly, any time spent with the Mom is important, and special to her. It’s like giving her a pat on the back saying “You’re the best there is, and that’s the way it’s going to stay”.
The Mother’s Day is like a rogue. It sneaks up on you, jumps you, and you feel bad about letting it happen time and again, but you can’t stop it. No sir. Happily, the person operating this rogue is the Mom, and she loves and cares for you like no other. She doesn’t care if you brought no presents, so long as you love her and care for her back. That’s what I’m going to do.
To the Mom, the most intelligent, movie addicted, calm, collected, and loving person I could have ever wished for. The Mom who was there for me when I was sick, tired, sad, kicked out, kicked in, kicked in the face, overloaded, underloaded, and everything else I can try to come up with.
Here’s to moms everywhere, and to a happy day to all of them wherever they may be!
This is more of a curiousity thing than anything, but it’s something I hope will help Slow Wolf as a blog and as a source of entertainment and information.
As of late, I haven’t been posting nearly as much, and for this I apologize. I really have been hit with job searching, spending time with Mrs. Klin, my friends, the family, and playing WoW for the first time in months. The blog sometimes takes a backseat, which bugs me a lot.
Apparently, it has bothered a number of other people as well. For the 2 months after I was mentioned on WoW Insider, I had roughly 300 visits a day. Since coming home and my lack of punctual writing, that number has been halved, and it seems the trend is that it might continue like this. It’s disheartening really, but it’s to be expected.
So what will I do? Well, I’m not going to stop writing. I love writing, and I particularly love writing about WoW, so that’s not going to happen. But I do want to have a readerbase! If I’m writing and no one reads it, this essentially turns into a diary, and I have never been good with diaries.
What I think I need is a new goal for this blog. Ever since it’s inception, Slow Wolf has expanded in all kinds of different ways, and I think it might be losing focus. Thing is, I don’t know what to focus on, and this is where I could use help.
I ask this question, readers; What works on this blog? What do you like about it, and what don’t you like? What needs to change, what needs to stay the same? Should I write and do a podcast or write to the exclusion of all else? Or should I stick to doing podcasts? Really, I need a review. I need a grading, a mark, and some criticism.
My writing style is what it is, but the content can change. What do you all think I should be writing about? Maybe more importantly, what do I write about best?
Thank you everyone for reading Slow Wolf, and I hope I can keep writing and having fun doing it while keeping you all entertained and informed. Hopefully, with the responses and e-mails and such, I can accomplish that much at least.
/flourish
Slow Wolf 