Usually I am all for people taking my RSS and republishing it on their site, as long as they give credit where credit is due. However, in this case, I can’t stand it. The following site, http://wow.consolenewsblog.com/ is taking my content, and republishing it without a mention of my name anywhere. It looks like they are taking WoWInsider.com’s content and doing the same thing…

Now, I wouldn’t normally make this kind of information public as I don’t feel humiliation is the right way to go about it. But there isn’t contact information anywhere on this site.

If you are reading this, take my feed off of your system immediately.

I was sitting here today, reading the forums, and started thinking back about how long it has been since I started playing this game. How much fun it has been… From the start of Molten Core, to the beginnings of Naxxramas, there are literally, a ton of memories.

Dungeons

I guess most of my memories come from the 20 & 40 man dungeons I have played, as this is where more than 75% of my time in this game has been spent. I remember the first time I zoned into Molten Core, and was so overwhelmed with the magnitude of 40 people grouping together to kill 2 mobs. I remember when I only used Auto Shot & Arcane Shot on every mob in there my first time, for fear that I would pull aggro. I remember only starting to use Multi-Shot when I was EXTREMELY comfortable that it wouldn’t jump to the guy 80 yards away and pull him on the raid group.

BWL was an odd adventure though. To me, it seemed like we progressed through there with almost no trouble, like it was 10x easier than Molten Core. I guess this is because I was more used to the raid scene, and knew pretty much everything going on around us. I remember the first day I was in Method, they were putting together their first BWL run. It didn’t happen because not enough showed up, but the next time we got together for BWL, we took down Razorgore on our 2nd or 3rd attempt.

AQ40 & Naxx are all a blur to me though. Not too many good memories through these, as I was starting to get burnt out with guild drama, and people being loot whores. You could probably tell this through me not posting as much on here, etc… Now that I am with a group of real life friends in Core, I am sure this will be completely different, and bring back all of the fun I remember from Molten Core & BWL.

Guilds

From The Vague, to Nightelf Skinning Co., to Method, to Teen Girl Squad, to Core. These are the guilds that made the memories. These are the groups of people that have consistently amazed me with their dedication to the game. These are the people that frustrated me to no end. These are the closest to real life friends I will ever get in an online game.

Back when I played Battlefield 1942, I thought it was one of the most addicting, well put together games I had ever seen. I figured it would never be toppled in terms of memories. Then, in September of 2005, I bought WoW. My initial blog post about World of Warcraft never hit the pages of Aeigelus.com, but rather my personal web development blog, joshdura.com. I posted that more than 1 year ago, and to this day, I am addicted as I was that very day. Thats something for Blizzard to be proud of. They have created a game, that nothing in history can rival. Yet, they are releasing an expansion next week, that will hopefully take the game to even higher levels.

Guild drama is one thing I am really intrigued with in this game. I guess since I have been working at an 8-5 job for the last 10 years, I expect group activities to be run as a business, and if anything ever goes wrong, things will be worked out in a civil manner. So, when Nightelf Skinning Co. broke up due to only 1 or 2 of the officers leaving, I was absolutely amazed. I was begging people to understand, and to just realize those 1 or 2 people do not make the guild. Yet, no one would listen. The sky was falling. The same thing kind of happened in Method, except I could tell it was happening for months. There were people not paying attention, people being lootwhores and not caring about the next person in line for loot, etc… Once again though, it amazed me that people were willing to just easily quit something that they had worked a year to create. I guess this is something I will just never understand about the game.

The Future - Burning Crusade

I guess the reason for this post, is because with the Burning Crusade being released on Tuesday, I will probably rarely attend a 40 man raid ever again. All of those memories will be made again in new instances with new people. There will be more guild drama, more lootwhores, more first time kills, more yelling on vent (be it good or bad), more yelling at bosses for not dropping your loot, etc… And yet, I can’t wait to go through every single bit of it again. I can’t wait to zone into that 25 man instance, and be wow’ed by the first set of mobs in there.

I am going to be out of the office (where I usually do most of my posting) for the next week or so. I just wanted to post something to tell everyone Happy Holidays, and be safe. I’ll be logged on Aeigelus most of next week, so if you want to drop into Burning Legion, and say hi, please do I’ve got a snowball waiting for you.

Sorry for the lack of updates, been pretty busy at work, and figured I would make one huge update. Been playing a lot of beta lately, and also doing some PvP on Burning Legion. Nothing too exciting going on with Core yet, as we are all just waiting on the expansion to do some raiding. We might be getting a ZG together this Thursday, but I am not sure how many will be willing to give up their PvP grind for less than popular loot.

Blood Elf Paladin

So, sometime about 2 weeks ago, I was putting together a group for Hellfire Ramparts in the beta to complete a quest. So, I use the LFG tool, and also spam the General channel, as beta has come to a standstill with players. I get a whisper from Puah, a 62 Blood Elf Paladin wanting to go. I jumped on the chance. Luckily, he was Holy specced too! The pally was able to easily main heal the entire group, while staying at pretty much 50-75% mana unless we pulled a double or triple pack. Also, the Blessing of Might is quite possibly my favorite buff now. I can’t wait until I can have 2 pallies in a raid, and get Wisdom, Might, and Aspect of the Viper (thats ummm, about 100 mp5, and 150 attack power, drooooooool). So, after we get done with Ramparts, the group shows interest in running Blood Furnace, which is only a 1 min walk from Ramparts. We plow through there as well, and get about halfway through 62 in the process.

Later in the week, I am back online, and had already dinged 63 while doing some quests in Zangarmarsh. I had put a LFG into the system for Underbog, but with the population on the beta server low, I didn’t expect much. Luckily, we got a group of 3 or 4, then Puah whispered me again, wanting to go. Again, I jumped on the chance Underbog is a LOT tougher of an instance than Ramparts or Blood Furnace, but was still doable with our group. I believe the group was myself (a 63 Hunter), a 64 Pally, a 65 Rogue, a 63 Tank, and a 64 Shaman (Dual Wield). We wiped a few times, but it was mostly due to bad pulls, etc. Unfortunately, there are a lot of terrain issues in Underbog. One caused us to have to have the shaman hearth because he was stuck, and wait for him to come back for the last boss. Not fun.

Beautiful Scenery

To this day, I am still absolutely amazed by the scenery in the expansion. Terokkar is amazing. Not only do you get a huge neutral city (Shattrah), but you get a great looking zone. I haven’t really quested here too much, but have poked around and found Auchindoun. Looks to be a really great instance. Whats great about it as well, is most of the mobs are fairly easy to take down. I didn’t really find too many annoying mobs, other than the ones that consistently mana burn. Although, this is really only a problem for me when in melee range. I took a journey into Shadowmoon Valley, and was able to pretty easily take down a level 69 mob.

Plans for Expansion

I have been thinking a lot lately about how I am going to level Aeigelus in the expansion. Truthfully, I think we all realize that the quest mobs are going to be completely overrun for the first 2 or 3 weeks. I think I am going to do instances for the first couple of days, to let a lot of that die down, then hopefully I can have a good head start on most of the quests, and fly to 70. Leveling the hunter is going to be a lot easier than leveling Korgg though. Hell, levelling anything is harder than a hunter Hopefully, the servers will be able to actually hold up during the first week. Would hate to actually have the expansion, and not be able to play. What are ya’lls plans for expansion?

Last night, Core went on our first ever raid. Zul’Gurub was our poison of choice. All in all, things went extremely well. We downed the Bat, Snake, Spider aspects, and Bloodlord too. Time was our only problem. We started the raid at 7pm, and it ended at 10pm. Thus, being my first raid to lead, things went a little slower then normal.

Looting, Speaking, Strategizing, etc..

Ok, so I never really thought about this aspect before, but doing all of these things as raid leader, and still playing your class to its top potential is a really hard thing to do. Not only did I have to loot all of the coins, and bijous, I was the one responsible for telling all of the strategies, answering all of the questions, distributing loot, and everything else you can think of that a raid leader does. Don’t get me wrong, it was the most fun, yet challenging thing I have done to date, but it was just a lot more than I expected.

One way I think this can be fixed, is to distribute the responsibilities to different officers. Maybe leave one officer in charge of looting, one in charge of telling strats, one in charge of pulling/marking (thanks Syd, you did a great job btw), etc. This is probably the only way it wouldn’t eventually overwork me. Anyone have any other suggestions?

Loot

I forgot most of what loot dropped, as I was busy doing other things, but heres what little I remember…

Primal Hakkari Aegis x2
Primal Hakkari Stanchion
Runed Bloodstained Hauberk
Zulian Defender
Band of Jin
Zanzil's Seal
Bloodsoaked Pauldrons

Korgg picked up the Zulian Defender. Finally