ElunesgracePodcast Episode #1

My first ever podcast for the World of Warcraft!!

What is going on right now:

• Lunar Festival - Feb. 16 - March 8
• Arena Tournament - began Feb 16. Initial phase of the tournament will last from Feb. 16 to April 15 in North America and Europe and March 3 to April 15 in Korea.
• Go to www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/arena for more information

Forum Trolling

• Not all healers are stuck up or jerks
• If you are not the main tank, do not get upset that you are not getting the priority heals

Quest Spotlight

• The Bombing Run in Hellfire Penisula - Expedition Point

You Know You Are a Noob when:

• So my first example was not so good. Feel free to send me your "noob" moments and favorite quests at elunesgracepodcast@gmail.com

MP3 Link

My Epic Mount and First Encounter with a “Bot”

After hitting 60 I figured my next goal would be to earn an epic mount. I didn’t really feel I needed one until I hit the battlegrounds and realized how slow I was in comparison. Having about half the required gold, I decided to spend two weeks doing nothing but farm and play the AH.

I mainly farmed for Elemental Fire. Being an Alchemist I can use this in a greater fire protection potion or sell it on its own. I believe it is a component in other professions too. So I basically farmed the fire elementals in Arathi Highlands. This is where I encountered my first “bot”. I have heard about them, but never saw one in person.

It was a Dwarf Hunter with a pet. I realized he was different from a normal player in that when I was attacking a mob his pet would also come and fight it. Typically if a live person is behind the keyboard, they stop and go on to another mob once they realize someone else is on the mob they originally targeted. Needless to say, this guy’s pet went for every single mob that respawned. So at first, I looked at it as a competition, but then felt completely robbed as the pet’s dash or whatever allows it to get to mobs a whole lot faster than I can. So I whispered the guy, being nice I first said hello. He didn’t really respond. I heard from a pod cast I listen to, that if you talk to a bot they usually log off. That is exactly what he did. So I had the area to myself for about 5 minutes, then he came right back on.

It was really something to watch this guy. I was on my mount on top of a rock watching him. He would move in jerk like movements in a circle – standing in place. It was not the fluid movement you typically see from a player. It would send his pet before the mob even started to appear. One time the Hunter sent the pet without having a view of the mob. There was a rock between him and the mob, a big rock. So when I ran down next to the Hunter to see – there was no way he could see that mob spawn if it was a real person.

So I reported him to Blizzard and decided this was war. I started whispering him more. Every time I was on a mob his pet would come attack and I would whisper for him to stop attacking my mobs. Then I would whisper him to be more of a hog. I asked him if he spoke English and he finally replied and said no he didn’t speak too good English. So I continued to whisper him to knock it off when his pet attacked a mob I was on. And he would reply sorry no speak English. He continued to take my mobs and I continued to whisper him. He finally put me on ignore. I added him to my friends list in order to track him every time I was on.

So after two weeks of farming and selling stuff on the AH, I earned 400 gold. A big accomplishment for me, but one I don’t really want to have to do again. Especially since I had to deal with a bot, they really do have an unfair advantage.

WOOT!! My Epic Mount – isn’t she pretty?

So are you wondering what happened to the bot? Well, after seeing him every time I logged in he was still in the Arathi Highlands and I saw what he was selling on the AH – he is no longer in the game. It was about a month after I reported him that Blizzard made an announcement of account bans, and I have not seen him since. I am sure he is back under a different name, but I am still happy to see him gone.

Since that experience I have come across at least one more bot. It was kind of funny. This one was in Azshara, farming for fel cloth. He got himself stuck in one of the little tents. I just stood there and watched. He was running in place trying to loot a corpse, but the program didn’t recognize that he was in a tent. So I took screen shots and reported him. I have not seen him on since either.

Remember, if you see a bot, report it right away. Blizzard may seem slow to act, but they want to make sure they are not banning the wrong people.

My First Mount

I don’t know about you, but I worked my tail off for my first mount, my non-epic mount that you can purchase at level 40. So I hit level 40 and was short gold, so instead of questing and leveling I decided to grind and sell and grind and sell some more. I mainly did this alone. One weekend night I was close. A guild member, Carlandes sent me 4 gold because that is what I needed. I opened my mail to see the gold, but hit the Return button instead. I wanted to do this on my own. So it was 1:30 AM at this point – this was about a year ago and I still remember.

So I did more grinding and finally got enough gold. Of course I wanted to have at least 10 gold after purchasing my mount, I didn’t want to have zero money. I chose the Spotted Saber as I did not see a lot of people on it. It was around 2:00 AM when I bought it. Only one guild member was still logged in – a person I have lost touch with, but that night was awesome because he congratulated me and I felt very proud of my hard work.

My Sister Sal also got her mount, in fact I think she got hers before I did. I did not know which one she chose though and we ended up getting the exact same mount – pretty cool!

Friendships

So before I share my end game experience I would like to talk about the friends I have met in WOW. How awesome is it that you can log into a game and encounter real people from all over the world! As Sal and I got more involved with the guild we were in, we got to know some core people that we had the most in common. We are all around the same age; we are all working people with careers and play close to the same amount of time each week.

In pic above - left to right: Hantros, now a 63 Mage; Carlandes a 63 Paladin. I love talking with him on Vent or TS in order to get him to laugh. He has a great laugh! That's me in the middle. Arrelia and Rajnook are married and they are a 60+ Warrior and 60+ Warlock.

Our core friends have grown, which has been great! Bombera, a 60 Mage loves to PVP (On the far left in the pic below). He is in the battlegrounds a lot.

I have a level 60 Warrior alt that spent some time with Bomb in Alterac Valley recently– it was really awesome! Man is he a good player! Bomb has his main on the Horde side and his 60+ Shaman is on a PVP server. So when the Burning Crusade came out, everyone wanted to play a Blood Elf. So I recommended a PVP server as something new to try. Not sure if everyone was thrilled with the idea, but we said if we didn’t like it, we could always transfer off. So far it has been good. One day though, I was ganked by Alliance 60+ people, as I am sure it is a HUGE challenge to kill a level 20 opponent when you are level 60 or higher. So now that I am playing Horde on a more regular basis, I can’t really say the Alliance is the “good” side.

I play WOW because of the content, the challenge, the lore, the excitement of working together to defeat a common foe. WOW is a truly amazing game because it has something for everyone.

My first guild and hitting 60

My very first instance run on my Alliance Priest was was Blackfathom Depths. We met a really nice person who we grouped with. His name was Avigrow. He invited us to his guild called The Legacy. So Sal and I talked about it and decided to join. Now joining a guild for me was pretty scary. I didn't know what to expect or what was expected of me. There seemed to be a good number of people around our level and even though Sal and I never "expected" help from higher levels or the same level, we often received good advice. Advice like where to go on the internet to look up a quest I was stuck on instead of them telling me the answer and having to become a WOW encyclopedia.

There was a time when we were in our 30's that a bunch of the level 60s in the guild left. So Avigrow became the Guild Master. The guild was told that most of the 60s left to experience end game raiding. What was that I asked? Since 60 seemed so far away I never read about what or knew what happened at 60.

As Sal and I leveled I was asked to be the Priest Officer as I was the highest level Priest in the guild. So I took this seriously, maybe too seriously, and did research on the class because I wanted to be prepared to answer questions for any priest leveling up. Even though we never had a lot of priests in the guild, I learned a lot from my research. My sister became the Hunter Apprentice Officer - this was the Hunter Class Officer's "right hand man" so to speak.

My sister and I hit 60 within a week of each other. I hit it the weekend before Memorial Day weekend 2006. Sal hit 60 on Memorial Day. It was awesome. Sal and I also organized a fish fry for the guild. It was a guild event where we had a fishing competition. Not a huge turn out, but people had fun and gold was awarded! Never again was a guild event ever done because Sal and I didn't do it. I think people had fun, but no one wanted to actually step up and plan the next event.

Being the only level 60 Priest in this casual guild was really starting to take a toll on me. Knowing the minute I logged in I would be asked to go to this instance or that instance. I lost some of "me" time because of that and started not really liking the game. I felt obligated to go and help them with quests and getting loot as I was the only Priest that could at that time. I was also getting very tired of doing the same instances over and over again.

Once the guild had two other level 60 Priests and after much thought and the fact that this casual guild was not moving toward end game content, like Molten Core, Zul 'Gurub, etc, I decided to leave. This was a very hard decision. This was my first guild ever and leaving it was difficult. But I made the choice nonetheless and joined an end game guild.