Now that's flying in style

Albino drake 'cos you've got 50 mounts? Wrymrest drake? Maybe there's even a flying elephant out there.

Forget 'em all. If you're going to fly do it in style - Business Class.

The carpet is the only way to go, complete with a fancy pattern, lamps and a bolster. The only drawback is I can't get Bukoswki on there. You know - a cat curled up on the mat.

But still, the Flying Carpet is undoubtedly quality when it comes to whizzing round the skies

Can you be too old to play Wow?

Interesting question isn’t it? There comes that period in the day when you know the very young are online. School’s out. In General Chat, the facile comments start emerging, there’s the name calling, the swearing and immature sexual innuendo.

There is a collective sigh and eventually someone chimes in:
‘Isn’t it time the kids were in bed?’

Dare I suggest that there is a perception abroad that Wow is a young man’s and woman’s arena. It’s not the place you expect to find mum and dad – or even granddad (!) invading.

Of course Wow is the playground for youth – predominantly. And that’s as it should be.

But I rather suspect most of us would be surprised at just how old some people are behind those chars.

Just as its no guarantee that the female night elf before you is actually female in RL, so it’s no guarantee that the warrior is a 20-something (or 30).

I raise the issue because a fascinating report emerged in the UK yesterday (that’s Britain, btw not Utgarde Keep) where the discussion about dementia and Alzheimers has been a rather hot topic in our national press for the past couple of weeks.

It says that older people who indulge regularly in – and I quote – ‘hobbies such as quilting, pottery and playing computer games substantially cut the risk of dementia.’

This is unlikely to see a sudden rush of ‘oldies’ on to Wow, but I suspect there are quite a few around already. And won’t they be glad to read about the benefits of raiding?

Old people?

Raiding?

Or do you pigeon-hole them into gentle questing, dodgy ability, unable to react and move fast in instances. Let them trundle around making things and leave the ‘real stuff’ to the youngsters.

Is that your view? Well let me tell you it’s sadly misplaced. There’s some old folks online who can show you a thing or two. I know some of them.

Indeed an interesting question would be: ‘Who’s the oldest person currently playing Wow?’

How old am I., do I hear you ask?

Well what do you think? I’m a GM and am leading our guild through Naxx, have a level 80 druid tank that comfortably handles heroics, an 80 frostfire mage that knows a trick or two and 73 MM hunter that whips out a ton of damage.

Does that make me a 20 or 30 something?

Well I’m not going to answer your question, but I have a daughter who plays – and gets married next weekend.

;O)

The druid that became a warrior

A POST from Part Time Druid has struck an interesting chord. http://parttimedruid.com/

He’s sort of ‘come out’ in Wow terms by owning up to the fact that the druid is no longer his main char.

It seems his warrior has been elevated to that role, but, he says, his blog is established and he will continue to plough this new furrow. I suppose in a sense the name of his blog still stands!

All power to him, but it does raise an interesting question. Can you jump ship mid-stream in the blog world and retain an audience?

I ask it because the observant among you will notice that though this is vaguely a hunter’s blog – and Draigg was my first ever and still favourite char – he is not yet level 80 and, indeed, from my char list alongside you will notice that my druid, Cadmus, and mage, Frazzle are level 80s.

That’s primarily down to guild needs – Cadmus is the GM of Cote (why isn’t Draigg, I hear you ask. It’s a complicated story – so don’t ask!) and I popped Frazz along to 80 because we didn’t at the time have another high-level mage.

But then this never set out to be a pigeon-holed blog and since Day 1 has touched on a variety of issues, not all hunter-related. So that begs another question?

Do such blogs have a viable audience?

There are some great hunter blogs out there that will crunch numbers, serve up tactics and deal with raid issues far better than I ever will, but hopefully there is space in blogworld for a more scatter-gun approach to Wow issues. Pink Pigtail Inn is an ideal case in point. http://pinkpigtailinn.blogspot.com/

There is clearly a need for the theorycrafter and class-serious blogs, but the blogs, thankfully, also mirror RL by tapping into the wider in-game issues.

Like running Wintergrasp for the first time and not having a clue what’s going on … but that’s a story for another day.

NOTE: Also we’re finally back on stream for some regular posts after the disruption of the past few weeks – that’s assuming anyone is left out there reading this stuff.

If not, well it’s fun writing it.

Ghostcrawler and ghost island

SO…. we’ve just got used to playing our classes as everything settles down from the Lich King and subsequent patches and now it looks like a lot of it is getting kicked up in the air again.

It seems that Blizz is in a current state of continually meddling with our specs, talents, spells and buffs – an unbroken round of nerfs and boosts.

There is all sorts of stuff leaking out ahead of patch 3.1 even while people are digesting and adjusting to those from the last patch and subsequent hot fixes. While Ghostcrawler's blue posts give fodder to the Wow rumour mill it doesn’t create a lot of stability.

Take mages for instance. Fire was king, then frostfire, then arcane and the frosties saw their hopes ebb and flow of dealing decent raid dps. So people keep switching specs only to learn that it’s all going to be tinkered with again.

And of course we hunters have also seen the crown passed from spec to spec as the nerf bat is waved and the buff boosts given. (I will post a view on that particular aspect in my next piece).

With Ulduar also ‘ready to go’ I can’t quite understand the thinking behind all these changes. After all people need to be on ‘top of their game’ for Ulduar and fiddling around with specs isn’t ideal.

But then I have a view on people who keep switching around ….watch this space.

In the meantime I decided to give my spider, Incywincy a run out to level her up some as Bukowski has been partnering me through WotLK to date.

For old times sake I paid a visit to the Isle of Quel Danas ….. talk about a ghost town.

There was NOBODY else there! I mean, no-one. Not a single char.

Indeed there were so many cobwebs from under-use that Incy felt quite at home.

I know the XP isn’t as good as Borean Tundra and I know the gold for quests is rubbish, but it’s a fun place.

The question is what are Blizz going to do with it? If they’ve got itchy fingers why not quit tinkering with our chars and do something interesting with the Isle to entice people back there.

Snow, falling downstairs and nerfed hunters

Where have you been, you may ask? Well my mum fell downstairs and fractured her back so I’ve been chasing backwards and forwards to hospital over a hundred miles away.

Then she came to stay at our place as part of her recovery before going home. I was then walloped by flu – not the ‘man stuff’, but the real McCoy and where’s a healer when you need one? – which put me off the planet for a week.

So the blog has understandably taken a back seat. Still everything is virtually back to normal (if you call being snowed in at home for the first time in 20 years normal!).

This is just to tip the hat and let you know I’m back in circulation for there’s much that has cracked off in the hunting community.

The BMs have been nerfed and many evacuated to an SV build – and then Blizz has held up its hand and admitted it was a nerf to far.

Meanwhile we MMs stand back - further than most cause of our ranged ability

/grin

.. and just shake our heads at it all.

Back with evaluation on this stuff soon.