WoW: Final Dungeons

After reaching level 42 or so, I'm putting down WoW again.  It's reached that repetetive nature again and I've been messing about with some awesome Indie games!  Anyhow, I just wanted to throw down the last set of pics from the dungeon adventures.

A little discussion after destroying the pesky arcanist.

This run required 2 cow power.  The other tauren is Kagato.

A quick break before taking on the Inquisitors. Thanks to Kagato, Tseluyu, Andromeda, and Vitallremains for the assistance in purging the Cathedral.

The finishing touch on the Armory with thanks to Rekkaell, Vilynne, azerr and Skiknee.  Also a thanks to all those other randoms that ran the Graveyard 8 bazillion times.

WoW: Randoms and Scarlet Monastery

I just wanted to post up a few fun photos of Purehide's adventures.

Look at those sexy horns.

Rain on Thunder Bluff.

Look at my hat! Best cow hat. Ever. Thanks to Cjsolddad, Pradulegend, Udderlyill, and Healdeeznuts for this SM run.  I still hate your names though :P

WoW: No Such Thing as a Free Duel

While browsing around Tarren Mill, a level 50-something troll mage challenged me to a duel.  He insisted, so I accepted.  Since I had no hoping of winning, even with the most devout level of endurance and focus, I decided to just be the biggest PITA to kill.

By placing distracting totems and breaking line-of-sight to prevent spells, I was able to delay my defeat for a couple of minutes.  Anyhow, for being a chore to kill, the mage rewarded me by helping me clear out a few quest mobs that I could not tackle on my own.

I never noticed just how bright trolls are.

WoW: Psychotic Critter Killer

Thanks to the achievements To All the Squirrels I've Loved Before, To All the Squirrels Who Shared My Life and Pest Control, I've becoming a loving killer. 

The objective of the first two achievements is to share your love with certain critters like rabbits, hares, gazelles etc. While the last achievement's objective is to slay cockroaches, snakes, etc.  Sadly, many of the critters could either be pests or critters in my eyes and I'm too lazy to check the achievement page each time I cross a new critter, so I first profess my love to the critters and then blast them with an earthshock to ensure I cover either potential achievement objective. /love

WoW: Water Quest

The water totem quest for the Shaman is a traditional go-here-fetch-that quest line.  Previously, these quests would seem like a pain in the ass, but this time around I find them quite fun.  This one was particularly fun because it brought me to two of my favourite locales and coincided with a current topic of interest of mine, water (read Dune and then National Geographic's Water edition and you'll undestand).

One leg of the quest brought me to Tarren Mill, which meant I had to pass through the ever so spooky Silverpine forest.  I just love all the hidden nooks and art pieces in this forest.  The lore behind this region is also some of the more interesting.  I really should create an Undead toon just to play this section to its fullest.

I kind of like how this quest put emphasis on a detail that I've otherwise never really noticed.  The well in Tarren Mill never seemed like anything special, but now it has a special meaning.

The other major locale the quest brought me through was Ashenvale.  There is just something awesome about a slightly corrupted, Asian inspired, purple forest.  This place also brings back some of my fondest PvP memories from pre-battleground times.

The one odd thing about this quest is that it brings Shamans through a coastal section that looks unfinished.

This bit of coast lacks aesthetics compared to the amazing detail of the rest of Silverpine.  I know that it still has some detail, but compared to the rest of the game it seems like the placement artists just forgot about a spot.  At least they made it up with a cool pirate ship nearby.

WoW: Guilds

When I joined Azeroth yet again, I hadn't even put any thought into whether I wanted to join a guild or go solo.  That was true until I got a random invite to Gumbie's Finest.  During the dawn of WoW random guild invites were considered as annoying as gold beggars.  Many people joined a guild of other solo artists just to stop the annoying random invites.  Now, however, many are just openly solo and few guilds remain that want to randomly invite.

Anyhow, I actually took up the random invite on a whim.  I was actually surprised at how kind and civilized it was for a guild that was built up over the previous week from random invites.  The guild master, Jaxmancrit, was well to do and many of the others were chill.  Unfortunately for Jaxmancrit, his trust was being abused by people joining the guild and taking stuff from the overly open guild bank.  I have a feeling the guild will last for a few months, but will likely waver due to that fact it was built by strangers that are unlikely to have similar guild goals.

I stuck with Gumbie's Finest until I did a run through Blackfathom Deeps with a druid named Moomoodrood.  Apparently he though my antics were pretty entertaining and invited me to a established fairly social oriented guild, Inner Sanctum.  I've just been in there for a couple sessions, so I don't really know the peeps yet.  However, through conversations with Moomoo, it looks like this guild matches my ideal guild. They also get a bonus for have a nice cozy tabard (above).

WoW: Stockades, Gnomeragan, and BFD

I completed a whole bunch of instance runs over a couple of days.  They were all short runs, since the Stockades are a mini-instance, I joined the BFD run half completed again and the standard route for Gnomeragan to Mekgineer Thermaplug is short.

Most of the groups were fairly impersonal as the runs were so short.  In fact, if they were like me they wanted to cry every time Stockades came up.  This is a bad instance.  It's just 20 minutes of the same looking mobs and the same looking setting doing the same basic melee attacks.  Even the bosses are just named melee mobs.  If you're not paying attention, you would think they were regular mobs.  Thank you, Tankerl, Carakmine, Obilette, Uchihastorck, Kelseth, Armoredp, Veliarra, Regenerating, Zalindor, Artemis, Malailma and Klynkz for the Stockade runs. Ya, I did that many runs, and more.

Gnomeragan is one of the more complex classic instances.  Sadly, all of the groups I joined just wanted to bee line for the boss.  There really isn't much incentive to do the wings of it.  Nevertheless, thank you Zalindor (again), Valoria, Doubledice and Rexeral (all above) for the run that I actually did start to finish.

Finally, a quick shout out to Lightbrngr, Gallissa, Whoopuazz and Moomoodrood for another run of BFD.  Sadly, all the group photos kind of failed.  I missed Ghamoo'ra again, but I still got to enjoy the latter part of the instance with these peeps.

On a final note, I did not do Shadowfang Keep before it disappeared as an option on the Dungeon Finder.  I still have yellow quests for this place.  I probably should pop over to the suggestion forums to fix some of the odd instance level requirements.  The currently seem to be +/- 5 the lowest mob level, whereas I think they should be +/- the highest mob level.  Anyhow, small quirk that I can deal with.

WoW: Blackfathom Deeps

I joined a partially cleared run of Blackfathom Deeps.  Sadly, they had already killed Ghamoo-Ra, the giantest turtle ever.

Blackfathom is one of my favourite classic dungeons.  During the initial launch, it's water laden design caused many bugs and sources of grief.  On top of that, the dungeon entrance was one of the most remote and hidden.  So, at that time, overcoming all of these unintended obstacles felt like a real triumph, because many others were diverted by the frustrations and never did complete the instance in its entirety.

While this crew was polite, they were initially eerily quiet.  They neither spoke or emoted.  It actually took me some probing to get them to speak.  Finally the priest admitted that she was new to her role and did not want to lose her concentration lest the group fall.  Her dedication paid off, she was the smoothest healer since my return to Warcraft. Siol, I tip my horns to you.

I had some initial troubles keeping track of the tank, as she was the most scantly clad and the other elf, a male, looked identical in the midst of battle.

During an extended mana break, I did what any good tauren would do...hunt.  So what if it the prey was an innocent fish trapped in an underwater cavern that severly lacked any kind of balanced ecosystem (I'm looking at you five giant Ogopogo man-eaters in 100 cubic metres of water).

This troupe may have been quiet, but, as I said, they were polite and agreed to pose for a picture.  Thank you, Rekked, Eatmore, Siol and Truble for an extraordinarly efficient and death-free run.

WoW: Wailing Caverns

For the spelunking of the Wailing Caverns I got a pretty light hearted crew. 

A random note about this group was that each person was a different race.  Naturally , there was some cultural confusion.

Rare it is that someone apologizes for his own death and not blame the other four.  So, thank you, Parisees, Shamietown, Ronami and Katodanzo for a run well had.

WoW: Deadmines

The highlight in an adventure through the Deadmines.

The rest of this group was 'fo seriuz' and couldn't take the time to stop for a group photo.  My thanks to the warrior tauren, who also posed at the end of the instance, so I could take a bunch of fail photos that were so bad I couldn't even salvage one of the five for anything remotely decent. /flex

WoW: Purehide

Welcome to the blog that documents my gaming adventure geekiness.  I just wanted a place to throw up all the random screenshots I take while I'm messing around in games.  I'm always amazed by the details that the artists put into games and screenshots are a great way to slow down and take a moment to enjoy them.

So, I've been cursed again and have rejoined the legions of the Horde as Purehide.  Yes, my imagination and taste failed me when choosing the name, but oh well.

Purehide is a tauren shaman specializing in big stick swinging.  His adventure takes place in the realm of Arathor (It's a PST PvE server).

Thus far his adventures have taken him as far as Thunder Bluff and not that much farther to...

...the Barrens.
The adventure really isn't that epic at all yet...