Weekly Update: WoW's 7th Anniversary

At 11820 achievement points this week, which means I only got two achievements this week, of which one was a feat of strength.

WoW's 7th Anniversary 

Happy birthday WoW. ;-) May we see you live to 100!

My own WoW-experience isn't this long, I started playing august 2007. Of course, in 2007 achievements weren't launched yet, so the first "WoW's Xth Anniversary" I and anyone else participated in was the 4th one in 2008. Aaah, the good old days... Yeah right. xD Mounts weren't obtainable until level 40, so getting Aspect of the Cheetah at level 20 (or was it 25? 30?) was a really big deal. But I didn't get a mount at level 40, cause I couldn't afford one! It was about 90 gold for mount + skill, which was more than double the amount that I had available. At level 43 my first WoW-friend, Rockskin the hunter, insisted to lend me the money so I could buy one. Probably cause I was moving so damned slow while we were questing. :)

Around Christmas, after playing A LOT these 4 months, I finally reached level 70. I had leveled all the way as Beast Master, and kept the spec at level 70, as it was really strong. Endgame for me in Burning Crusade consisted pretty much of doing the daily heroic quest, daily cooking and fishing quest, daily quests for Sha'tari Skyguard and Shattered Sun, and after that battleground grinding. Of which my favorite was Alterac Valley, followed by Arathi Basin.

Draenei hunter Laeleiweyn
in tier 7 and with Wolfslayer Sniper's Rifle

Max geared from battlegrounds I started leveling alts, and by WoW's 4th Anniversary I had three additional level 70 characters; elemental shaman, protection paladin and shadow priest. I had done some typical noob hunter errors which made me nervous about the whole dungeon/raid-thing. Like tab-sending the pet oh so far away, applying Serpent Sting to a target before trying to trap it and so on... :/ Trapping was a real challenge. You would either have to peel your target off the tank by overaggroing it (can't remember if we had Distracting Shot back then) or be the puller and trust the tank to get the other adds off you quickly enough. There was no Freezing Arrow either, so the trap had to be placed at your feet and the mob had to be kited through it. Eventually I got better, successfully managing my two tasks in Karazhan; chain-trapping my target in the Moroes encounter and starting the Opera Event with a Feign Death so we knew what fight to expect. :)

At this point I found the priest a lot easier to PVE with than the hunter, so although the priest was the character I leveled last to 70, it was the first character to level 80 in Wrath of the Lich King. I did 25mans, having crucial roles in Naxxramas as one of two shadow priests that could do the Mind Control on Instructor Razuvious and Grand Widow Faerlina. The first time we killed Malygos was just amazing; the first really accomplishment-feeling I ever got from a raid. :) All my alts got leveled to 80 and got some Naxx/OS-runs done, allowing me to see the fights from all perspectives; ranged, melee, tank and healer. I decided to go Survival on my hunter at this point, as it was supposed to be really good. (And I really liked it. :)) The hit cap for a draenei hunter at this point was 263. How and why can I still remember that..? xD The Ulduar-tier came and went, where we got all but the last 2 bosses down. ToC came, and I missed my hunter so bad... A lucky guild-change happened which made me able to make her my main again by WoW's 5th Anniversary.

As the rest of the hunters in the guild were Survival I decided to go Marksmanship for the first time, providing Trueshot Aura. It was the days of Armor Penetration-stacking (hard cap 1400!), and though my numbers were good, and I liked the Readiness-mechanic, I never enjoyed this spec as much as the other two. Chimera Shot just doesn't have the same Oompf! as Explosive Shot and Big Red Pet/Kill Command... We worked our way through Icecrown Citadel, first on normal and then heroic. Only Lich King was still alive on heroic when WoW's 6th Anniversary happened.

Draenei hunter Laeleiweyn in tier 7

The change to 10man vs 25man that would happen in Cataclysm had been announced; you could only do one of them each week and they would drop the same loot. The choice to leave 25man raiding was easy. Less disconnects, less people, less drama. A group of good friends decided to make a guild, and as the most eager and vocal one, I became Guild Master of Release and Run. We leveled, geared up in heroics and recruited so that we got enough people to start raiding Blackwing Descent, Bastion of Twilight and Throne of Four Winds. Progress was a bit slow, as the bosses were tough! But one by one they had to cave, eventually giving us "Defender of a Shattered World", and 5/13 heroic kills before Firelands came. It took us 2 months to get Ragnaros down, and then a nerf to make us 6/7 heroic, which we are now. We're not really working on Ragnaros heroic now, we're farming the heroic bosses we already have and running some alts through, looking forward to the Dragon Soul raid.

It's been a very good year, and it's been very good years. :) Happy birthday WoW!

Bustin' Caps to Make It Haps

A couple of nights ago I equipped my PVP gear and joined the queue for Battle for Gilneas (which is my favorite battleground). Which means I guess I'm starting to work on PVP achievements. Which is really tough for two reasons; 

1) I get so insanely mad when I do random battlegrounds! Most of the time cause of my own team, sometimes cause of griefing stupid enemy people. I really loved it when the guild did Rated Battlegrounds, but we kind of stopped... :/ 

And 2) 3 seconds into the battleground I forget that I'm there for achievements, and start focusing on winning... :)

Other things this week:

Hydraxian Waterlords rep is now 17974/21000.

Attumen is stupid.

Opera Event is stupid.

Lae