wanted - dead or alive

i hit 42 last night, and i'm pleased to say i'm really not far off 43. all it's going to take is a bit of grinding in tanaris, and i think i'll be great.

i'm coping fairly well and i'm quite happy with the way i'm going. i seem to survive things i possibly shouldn't, and manage to get through some rather tough spots without too much bother. i get a bit annoyed, actually, when people barge in and try to lend a hand without asking just because they assume i can't handle myself.

brah had an issue where someone was bagging him for not being decked out in purples and blues the other day. but i'm not decked out, either, and quite frankly i haven't felt too much of a need to be. maybe in the endgame levels it's important but why bother at this point in time? i'm not dying without them. the colour of your equipment means nothing when you're not 60, i think. otherwise it's just a bit excessive. nice, to be sure, but a bit excessive. hardly important. and i think looking at brah, who hit 50 and is about to ding 51, to know he's done so completely legit with little help from above and absolutely no one to hold his hand and give him some purples and blues on a plate, then he should be pretty damn proud of the fact he's gotten to where he has on his own steam. i know i am.

oh, and here's forty-two's poem:

deep thought knew it and i do, too
some things you just know - and you know them true
i have wolf - will travel
to any old battle;
like life, the universe and everything, i'm forty-two.

grimloch of arabia

i found some dragons in the badlands. level 44+ elites (well, mini dragons). they looked fun, so when i walked talhe down to show her the flight path in the badlands, we thought we'd swing by and have a go at one of their necks. shull, my favouritest questing buddy, joined us - ever eager to slice big chunks out of stuff.

we had a go at them and killed a couple before thinking that the big group in the middle gathered about a pillar would possibly be just a tad more than we could chew...

nonetheless, we'll be going back in a few levels and see what we can do.

my next adventure came when shull and i were walked to tanaris by azzaa - resident iron fist legend. flying overhead, brah the magnificent chuckled and decided to meet us there.

the landscape around these parts is magnificent, and the salt lake is quite amusing - especially the little gnome camp where they build little rocket-powered carts as though breaking speed records. quite amusing. oh, and they sell strawberry icecream there...

the actual little goblin town you come across is gadgetzan, looks something cut and pasted from mad max - it's brilliant. there's even an arena there to fight in and i kept looking for guys with chainsaws.

the desert area here is kind of cool. i totally love it. the white sand, the cool yet parched look. it's brilliant. and then there's this place just south west where these big bugs are and they die so nice it's just awesome. they twitch like real bugs. so amazing and funny. azz and brah took me and shull through that part as there pretty much wasn't anything we could hit considering our levels were too small.

today, though, i found a nice spot east of gadgetzan, which looks like it was cut out of the bahamas. with a bit of a tear in my eye at the land which would no doubt soon be turned into a tropical resort, i hastned south to beat up some pirates and steal their hats. truly - i was asked to steal their hats.

which i did.

gleefully, and with attention to stitching.

i was annoyed through much of the killing as every time i was killing something, some twerpy alliance nob kept throwing up a challenge to me to duel. so i'm having to click the decline in the middle of my fight. i'm sure he was doing it just to irritate me and get me killed which i consider to be the grossest form of rudeness. i'm totally disappointed and would have grabbed a pic of his toon, but i don't want people thinking i put photos of little 12-yr olds on my site...

in any case, i did my bit and strolled out without a scratch.

hooray for the horde, for the orc and for the iron fist!

of guilds and guildies

had an awesome last few days. actually, so did shull, who levelled today while i was at work - finally making it to the coveted 40. she gleefully announced it and managed to find the generosity of some amounted to a new mount.

amounted.

mount.

get it?

anyway.

she's thrilled to bits, no doubt but i won't be hearing about it tonight thanks to the tuesday night shutdown. very annoying.

in any case, we journeyed all over the place, and finally made it to the badlands - which means we can frolic with the bad stuff and kill dragons soon! yay! i really can't wait...

i've found that touring with my guildies has been immense fun, and it's always nice to benefit from their assistance and positivity as much as it is to help generate the same. it is then with great sadness i was informed today of the abandoning of the guild of another of our level 60 guys. it seems sad to me that you can join with a bunch of guys like the iron fist, and benefit so much from the near-family feel only to jump ship as soon as you've gotten all you think you can benefit from. perhaps that's not the case to them, but that's what it looks like to me.

i'm totally saddened by it, as it just seems absurd to me that you would prefer to spend your time chained to a bunch of comically over-achieving accumulators than spend your time with a bunch of hellishly generous and supportive guys and girls. how the lure of more money (or more gold and purple items) can just infect even gameplay is just astounding to me.

surely a little escapism's not a bad thing. so let's escape the pressures of living up to the expectations of the joneses and the smithses and just enjoy the game and the people who love to play it.

in a way i'm kind of glad when the 60s who leave have done so. i figure if they feel so little a connection to the guild which sustained, supported and encouraged them to grow, then good riddance. personally, i don't care if it means i can't do any raids. if any guild says to me i have to swap guilds to raid with them - then they can go and do something both unprintable and biologically near-impossible to themselves because i'm just not interested. i don't see these guilds stopping me in the street and asking if i need a hand, or even saying hello to me in passing.

they can chew on my axe-handle. they're not fit to polish my keyboard.

helping out my guildies

here i am, helping out three of my guildies by going on a wc run. it was quite entertaining, but i was running on limited time, so we just pushed in to get one of the bosses and left it at that.

mickle was after something, and the others were seemingly along for quest fulfillment. all seemed pretty smooth, and then we had dal call in and ask to join us, which we did because the belief of the iron fist is that we pretty much help each other out! and why not?

i'm going to make a small little rant here, and i hope it gets read in the spirit in which it's intended. basically, it was put forward very clearly by mickle that we expected rolls on chests, and the basic politeness as relating to needing and greeding. all fairly standard - but something i was puzzled in hearing. i mean, in all the runs i've done, i've never had to say that. i guess i've been spoilt in brah, azzaa, shaniqua and shull - who've been my regular questing buddies. we've never ever felt the need to say that.

we just do it and there's never even been a slight moment of hesitation or anything but the most positive of feelings. when there's a need, it's been a blatant case of being an item specific to that person and that person only so there was never a need for anyone else to worry about it.

that's how it should be.

so i was confused as to why mickle felt need to say such a thing.

dal, however, had a few problems along the way. he said he didn't know how to roll, so just took a chest anyway. he had a problem with remembering which button was need and which was green, and managed to need a blue item which was soulbound to him and thus not able to be given to someone who actually needed it - and then decided to need something someone else actually needed more. all in all a confusing series of events and i'm really hoping they were a single case of a series of unfortunate accidents. i really do.

because that kind of thing can be taken the wrong way, and you can find yourself left out, or in a position where it might be difficult for someone to think about helping you. it's a sad thing, i think, and requires a lot of care. it can really frustrate your friends and fellow questing buddies.

anyway. that's enough of that. the whole needing thing irritates me, i know that. but i'm prepared to think this was a one off. i brought it up because i've been thinking about it for a while.

otherwise, it was a fine run. i just hope i didn't ruin the fun for anyone because of my size. sometimes i get a bit enthusiastic in the killing, and i'm hoping they didn't think i was just running in and taking all the fun. that's the only bit that really worries me.

christmas comes to the horde

i've never been too much into mounts. i didn't see the point. and, being primarily a soloer, i never really felt the need to keep up with the joneses. unfortunately, since questing with my guildies, i've had to run to keep up with them gleefully swagging along on their various kodos and lizards. to make me feel guilty they sometimes ditch their mount and jog along beside me.

so, at 39, i decided to give in and do the decent thing - for the iron fist. not for myself. i want that understood. not for me. for the iron fist. hehe.

anyway, i started saving and grinding as much as possible and managed to make myself up to around 30 gold on my own - quite an achievement when i'm not a farmer or anything and i had completely ignored my professions in favour of killing stuff. so, hitting 40, i was unable to afford a mount - much to the distress and bewilderment of most of my guildies - especially shaniqua, who groaned at my technique and promptly tossed me the gold to buy a wolf, along with 10 gold i was gifted by ex-iron fist guildie, rahzell.

slightly embarassed, i accepted the gift and showed off my new timberwolf - which you can see here. i was going to choose the dire wolf, but you know... everyone does.

another surprise was the sudden and abrupt appearance of christmas decorations all over the world and i have really enjoyed running around collecting eggs and things to get my little christmas quests done. and getting the funky thing which changes my mount into rudolf the red-nosed reindeer was also well worth it.

absolute genius. and that's the thing i love about this game. the small changes which sweeten the experience. and, speaking of sweetening the experience, you can see me there showing off to shull.

it's now my goal to try and get her to 40 so we can go grinding in the badlands together. kill some of those elite dragons that fly around there! brilliant!

speaking of grinding, i was also running solo through sfk just for the hell of it, and for a few extra pieces to sell, and have started doing these small things as these items sell quite well even though the auction houses seem a tad depleted as of late. why, i don't know. shan has a theory it's related to the imminent release of the expansion.

brah was also a king among men (or tauren?) and gifted me with a siamese!!! a siamese!!! look at her there in the picture beside my worg and she's not even slightly afraid. personally i think the worg better look out!
anyway. basically i really want to thank all my guildies of the greatest guild ever, the iron fist, and i'm even more dedicated now to trying to help out everyone as i've been helped. it's an amazing thing to do and despite the sacrifice in time and xp, it's well worth it i think to know someone feels how i felt when i got help. brilliant stuff.

the iron fist

those who know me, know i'm usually an extremely reclusive person - especially in online games.

i'm not one for socialising or joining guilds and groups no matter what game i play. i remember playing ultima online for months without hardly talking to anyone. i made one or two friends on it, but nothing worth gaming for. it just felt like everyone was maybe twelve years old or had completely different goals to me. they were always more concerned with the numbers than the gameplay, if you know what i mean.

and then there were the other gamers more interested in mutual masturbation sessions - and that just creeps me out. i mean, i'm trying to kill stuff here, and that kind of thing is just so totally sad. amazing how many there are, though.

anyway, i still remember how i was recruited and how nervous i was about the whole thing. by the end of the first adventure i was already considering finding how to quit the guild. however, by the next day i was hooked. i had accidently fallen in with a rather unique crowd.

you see, the thing i've enjoyed most about the iron fist is that they're not like other guilds i've met, touched with, and encountered briefly. my experience with guilds is that they're often focussed on acquisition and levelling. twinking and raiding seem the norm and there's a big push for getting what you can get. an extreme version of capitalism i find repugnant.

fortunately, the iron fist is something more positive. they have a more humorous attitude to levelling, and when someone dings we cheer and encourage without focussing on it as the prime motivation for playing. often you'll find everyone just trying to lend each other a hand. we admit freely there's less guild questing than normal, but we've been remedying that and so far i've truly enjoyed all my guild activities as they're very loose and easy-going. i find with very few exceptions that everyone's just totally happy to get in there and get their fists wet with blood and die if they have to without getting all pointy and angry and abusive about it - yelling at someone else to do their job, or something retarded like that. and i haven't had to worry about anyone needing for something they don't need or anything like that. it's all extremely uncaring in relation to that kind of thing. often we're all just there so one person can get one thing and everything else is just secondary junk which we all acknowledge as. we may not run in with set tactics and following the rulebook on how to do stuff, but we go in there with enthusiasm and a greater respect for our companions, i think, than anyone else in the game that i've ever seen.

whereas on the few occaisions i've had to quest with other guilds/randoms, they often go with their own agenda and once they've completed that, they hearth out without a word. extremely annoying.

we may not have a fistful of 60s. we may not have the best euqipment - most of us are totally self-funded and lacking in twinks. we may do things in a completely unprofessional way. but i know that, to some, our guild may seem a little less than one of the others, but there's no way you could pursuade me to leave for another - not for all the gold in the game or all the armour in naxx. not even for a big shiny whirling green axe.

razorfen downs

guess what? i turned forty!!! that's right. the big four-o! brilliant stuff. i was laying down the law to some trolls in stranglethorn vale when i suddenly exploded up a level. excited, i zoomed on over to org to zap myself up to wearing my plate armour - and wow, don't i just look so sexy right now?

check out those shoulders! spikey and delicous, aren't they?

sure, they're not the greatest armour level, but they're the spikiest i could find and that's all that counts.

so, tonight i decided to celebrate my newfound fortiness by visiting razorfen downs which i haven't yet visited, in search of some plate armour. why not?

we began with a quiet callout among the guildies - a casual fling wondering who'd be interested and got a few interested, including azzaa the golden and brah the eternally magnificent. oix soon jumped on board and led the way to razorfen downs, where he promptly summoned us in - except for brah who was a bit tied up at the time.

oix soon roped in a friend of his, and we were a bit intrigued to find ourselves with a shammy who seemed both unable to utter a hello and who seemed defiantly eager to just zoom right in - at the expense of the rather concrete presence of brah.

oix's friend (whose name totally and utterly escapes me at present), zoomed in, smashed some guys to get his quest, promptly needed a pretty cool item and then hearthed out, abandoning both party and friends in his quest for self-satisfaction. brilliant. fantastic. such an admirable sense of fairness, honour, and gameplay. i was moved by the respect he had for us.

oix remedied this by pulling in a priest of all things (i've never yet quested with one, so this was a first), and we were amazed to find this one too pretty much refused to say hello and seemed to belong to the same guild as the first (the outland raiders, i believe). i was a bit concerned about the dedication of this particular individual, and totally unconcerned with my guildies.

i was proven wrong as oix promptly disappeared and our new friend, laws, stayed for the long haul despite once uttering one of only three or four sentences (well, words), in "tired."

we found ourselves gleefully entering the instance, and though laws once questioned a need for a mage, he offered no further details as to how we might remedy the situation to his satisfaction. he was a bit shy, i think and perhaps struggling with his english, but what he lacked in communication skills he made up for in healing.

the only glitch in the program was when we encountered a large mound of heavy metal skeletons who seemed engaged in a mosh session. while they weren't particularly tough, they were present in numbers and unfortunately cottoned to the fact that laws was a priest and promptly went him. i did my best to fend them off, but was a little late and laws fell under their bony claws. as a token of my regret for this incident, i pretty much volunteered him to receive the benefits of the big skeleton. it seemed fair to me.

it was at this stage we were joined by fellow guildy and all-round merlin, flunk the not-so-flunky.

our good friend and mage jumped straight in, punishing those around us so fast i really thought something had gone wrong with my video card.

we tried a few times to communicate with laws at this stage, but had a few problems. however, he seemed cheerful enough and quite content to follow along and heal us, so i didn't want to appear ungrateful. concerned as to whether or not he was struggling, happy, or just plain weirded out, i asked if he was ok, and with typical undead priestness, he responded with a curt, yet positive, "ok."

what a guy.

we rounded a bend, slapped the big bad guy with our axes until he grovelled, and then received our booty. gleefully looting all in sight, we stood around for a happy snap then hearthed out of there.

i'm not sure if laws was pleased or disappointed, but i'm glad he came along and would like to offer my thanks to him/her if he/she ever gets to read this. it was an odd, yet comfortable pleasure.

in any case, it was another victory for the horde and for the iron fist. we battled spiders (ick), and one of those green things which guard undercity which i've always wanted to fight (yay!) and lots of piggies (oink). i really enjoyed it. it was one of the easiest fights i've had in a long time despite a few hairy moments as i struggled to keep fighting. however, led along by brah's determined persistence and azzaa's bounding enthusiasm, i trundled along behind taking credit for the kills while being kept alive by the ever-vigilant laws - until flunk came along and made me look bad by killing stuff before i'd even had a chance to swing at it and reminding me of my nickname when i used to play baseball as a pitcher - snailball...

anyway. i'd like to thank everyone of the iron fist, especially brah, flunk, azzaa, shaniqua, talhe and the ever-delightful shull (last but never least as she's my consistent questing buddy!). also thanks to hyacia, for the potions. woot! i've almost drunk them all... i'd also like to thank rahzell for the gold he put toward my upcoming wolf mount. thank you all, guys. you're a bunch of gods.

finally, for those of you who enjoy such things, here's my poem for my forties.

i'm big and i'm green and i'm orky
these trolls are so lean and quite warty
i leave tracks in their blood
scream "naxx here we come
- so look out, cuz i just turned forty!"

turning 39

i turned 39 the other day, and we celebrated shull and i by going to stranglethorn vale and killing trolls. brilliant. she's a troll after my orcy heart.

she managed to level up to 37 too, so that was good!

tonight we were going to do the scarlet monastery, but we ended up doing strom instead.

we started out with the iron fist gang of guildies in myself, azzaa, brah, shull and talhe. we went in and whipped the humies with relish and splattered their armour all over the place. brilliant. then we did it again as we each kind of splintered off at different parts of the quest.

we had a feeble nightelf player come along and start leading enemies into our group and then giggling himself silly as we had to fight them to bits. mind you, he didn't manage to get us killed and i think this bored him and he ran off. in any case, i think he's a complete moron.

we then proceeded to slaughter everything in the place, quietly avoiding more nightelf morons, and then shull had to leave for bed. poor lady's been living on near-zero sleep.

lucky for us, shaniqua was around and decided to lend a hand. which happened with typical efficiency on shan's part.

we continued with our efficent loosing of axes, cats and magic. talhe did a brilliant job along with shaniqua at keeping our backs covered and we just pretty much slid through the boss guy with barely a sweat.

all in all it was a great way to kind of stretch my fingers on the mouse and do some tappy tappy to get rid of some excess unsettlement. brilliant.

my level 39 poem

all level 60s think they're so damn fine
but even decree ain't seen moves like mine
i'm on a roll
just killed a troll
now look at me, guys, i'm thirty-nine!

losers of the week

i just want to point out that these guys ruined my night. they invaded my kill with absolutely no respect for my fun and killed off an elite i was happily chewing into with no over-exertion on my part and gleefully getting ready for happy snaps when these guys zoomed in and finished up my kill!

i was trying to work out some issues in my head with wholesale slaughter and these guys came in, giggled at me, and killed my guy. i'm so mad about that. it was the rudest interruption i've ever faced.

in any case - GRRRRRRRRRRRR!

fire and steel

i've been working off some of the disappointment i have in regard to my life in general by randomly slaughtering anything in my path.

and, although i primarily grind along, now and again i seem to meet up with some of my guildies and go from there. i'm not into questing with randoms, and actually find many of them irritating. i get too many people wanting me to babysit them through a quest that's about five levels too high for them. i just have no respect for anyone who won't at least play a bit more sensibly and with a little more honour. i worked hard to get where i am and i'm not about to give anyone a cheating hand.

my guildies, however, seem to share my opinion, so i've gotten along famously with everyone there. as we go on a push to raise ourselves to level 60 and try to keep our commitment to stay iron fist and not slip over to one of the level 60 guilds (which i find highly irritating as they're an absolute pain in the ass to talk to with their god complexes firmly in place), it's becoming a very tight knit group which i like. it's small, sure, but it's tight and dedicated. all very pleasing to me.

today i went for a bit of a jaunt to kill some ogres near grom'gol, and then did a small quest which got me drowned as i tried to recover some piece of some tomb in an undersea ruin off the coast. pathetic quest that because i had to do it without trying to kill anything because the water was so deep that if i tried to kill anything it wasted my breath and i'd die. rather annoying, but i did the quest anyway. being forced to leave all those elites unkilled really did annoy me, though.

anyway. off to eat and then get back into the killing frenzy. i'm working off a lot of disappointment today as i learn the simple basic rule of life as it relates to me - all i'm good for is games.

just wish i could be the player and not the played...

new fashions from the dressing room

the new patch came in the other day, and everyone was scurrying about trying to get things settled back to normal. one telling example of this is the horrendous price of some things on the auction house. i don't care how many times i might die - i am NOT paying 3g for some healing potions. damn you all to hell.

zuh - resident demigod of the iron fist - then showed me an axe i might be able to buy one day. and have a look at it! it's all skully and big and double-bladed and stuff! oh, i weep with delight at its mesmerising gorgeousness! only the girl of my dreams has such an effect on me. could this, too, be love?

later in the night, however, i was shown the green axe! i apologise deeply but it was 2am and i was about to ding, so i just can't recall who showed it to me, but i thank them anyway because LOOK AT IT!!! it's so GREEN!

i think i love this dressing room thing more than anything else about WOW. it keeps you interested. you can SEE what you MIGHT look like one day as you grow up and that's a marvellous thing indeed.

it keeps me paying my monthly fee, anyway.

man oh man, look at those axes...

instances and incidents

never can get the hang of if i'm doing an instance or an incident. it's a blindspot term for me. i don't know why. in any case, everyone knew what i meant when i climbed aboard iron fist legend brah's excursion into uldaman.

we started out fine after a long and arduous journey to get to there thanks to my not having been there before. with the new patch in place this kind of journey should be pretty much obsolete which is fantastic. this night however, brah was kind enough to walk me there so i wasn't splatted by the locals - a distinct possibility considering where i was and my current level.

in the end, though, we made it, and we slid past the minor irritants guarding the entry and into the instance proper.

brilliant.

we had with us some guy called squawk, and he was the biggest of us warriors (of which i think there were three), so he strapped on a shield with great reluctance - although i don't know why as i figure if you survive does it really matter what you're wearing? in any case he ditched the board after a while anyway.

we did the first place and it was brilliant. just killed everything in sight with a great rending of splashy effects and sounds. just graceful. brought an honest tear to my eye. however, the second part where we needed to go to get mak's enchanting skills upped was just a trifle harder...

see, there were these scorpion mobs coming at us in what seemed a horde. they just ploughed into us - usually aiming at me for some reason and went totally berserk all over us. we survived well, with only myself struggling like a loon to keep swinging at the little terrors.

unfortunately, after this part we found a lot of level 40 something elites and i became obsolete - unable to score a strike. so, as we killed the goblin hugging machine (see photo), i pretty much only hung out round the edges picking off the lower level 38 elites instead. greatly disappointing.

then we were led out through a backdoor much to our confusion, by squawk, who then hopped his kodo and just rode off into the sunset with some obscure reference to meeting up with some iron fist reinforcements who had arrived at the front door to uldaman. why he decided to do that is a mystery but not nearly as mysterious as why he seemed to think the front door to uldaman was in orgrimmar...

in any case, i enjoyed the hacking (the little we had), and tried to meet up with shaniqua and shull who had arrived at the front, but i got lost, then cornered by a couple of elites and just couldn't break through as they began respawning all around me. i ended up hearthing and just getting grumpy at stuff instead.

then last night we went to the scarlet monastery. with brah, mak, shull and zuri it was an iron fist event, and as such a mostly successful one. we went down the first arm and just blew through it with ease, picking up some delightful stuff and then deciding to go right on in and doing the cathedral.

we destroyed everything in our path and had an absolute ball doing so in even some of the most hairy moments i've ever seen while playing the game, and my new skill sweeping strikes is just bloody well saving my life.

shull pulled masterfully at the cathedral proper and we learnt a lot through the experience, i think, and only died a few times when mobbed or caught by a respawn from behind. the killing of the bosses went fairly smoothly, but was definitely helped by mak doing a masterful job on the crazy lady at the end.

all in all, a genius night made poor only by my having to talk with the girl of my dreams as i struggle in my life to make sense of the world around me and the whole unfairness of it in relation to me, myself, and the happiness i should have had at her side but which seems terribly unlikely. well. it wasn't poor because of her, because she always makes me smile. but, poor because i spent a long time with her and everyone got tired of waiting for me and left. i'm really sorry, guys, but it's a sad time of my life for me.

a sad story made less sad only by the fact that it inspired me to run off into the wilderness and in a frenzy of speed and alarm to kill everything that moved with such dedication and focus that, somewhere around 2am, i exploded with that joyful mix of light and sound to become a level 38 orc warrior of DOOM!

brilliant stuff.

all in all a successful and highly entertaining evening.

so, as i leave you now, let me leave you with my last two poetic dedications from my levelling to 37 and then 38:

a whirlwind axe is a mighty weapon
designed by hell and built in heaven
see my axe - i'll swing it
see my level - i'll ding it
just like this second i turned thirty-seven!

and

i was bred to fight and raised to rage
for my axe and i had a war to wage
and though it's come late
i think it's worth the wait
cuz it ain't every day you turn thirty-eight!

hamming it up in razorfen kraul

so i was approached last night in a vague manner by a few iron fist guildies to join up on an excursion into razorfen kraul. considering i'm now a level 36 warrior orc of doom, i felt reasonably comfortable with the crawl through the kraul, and so hastened to climb aboard our five-man party toward furthering the reputation of the iron fist.

brahmabull and azzaa were in charge, eagerly recruiting myself and shaniqua into the mix before kicking a random to make room for oix (the twink - and i'm still a bit dubious about the whole twinking thing but i'll tell you about it at the bottom of this post) and getting underway in a most professional manner.

we slipped easily into the mix, downing boars by the meattruckload, and pretty much glud fairly comfortably through thanks to brahamabull's stoic leadership and supreme efforts to maintain his position as prime tank.

with azzaa prowling the herd and shaniqua obliterating everything in the way, i was greatly enjoying myself. oix bopped heads and stabbed in the back, and everything was brilliant.

i took these gorgeous pictures of our time with the boars, as we downed the big boar thing that got in our way with barely a scratch to our armour.

a few tense moments involving a bit of confusion - oix was in a bit of a hurry while the rest of us were just more concerned with sticking together - managed to stifle the caves for a little while, but it worked out in the end.

unfortunately, azzaa didn't get his axe which he'd been hoping for, but we're a determined bunch and will no doubt give it another try quite soon.

now to my concern regarding twinks. see, i haven't given it much thought until this past few days and it all began while i was enjoying an immensely fantastic and thoroughly rewarding session in stranglethorn vale with shull.

we were cruising through the area punching up trolls when a twink came running up to us (level 30 - vastly smaller than he should have been considering he was playing in an area of level 38 creatures), and he said hello via "invite me."

my first response was "why should i? and hello to you, too."

he seemed to find that amusing, and promptly responded with "come on! invite me plz."

as he died three times in front of us, i still refused to invite him. i did send an invite only because shull felt sorry for him, but he didn't seem to respond to that. perhaps he missed it. in any case, he repeated his demand and i finally gave up as he died yet again and said, "dude, you really might want to think about going to tarren mill for a while."

to which he responded, "and you should consider inviting people more often!"

should i?

i fail to understand why i should babysit twinks, aiding them to leech off my back while they reap the rewards of my efforts. i figure if they're so impressed by their collection of items far beyond what their character needs, then they can bloody well fight on their own two feet - not on mine. their equipment is beyond mine but they still want to stand behind me.

we had another twink in an instance with us the other night, and he seemed more intent on needing items than actually doing anything remotely useful and it got to the point where we just had to hearth out and leave him to his own devices despite the whining pleas following us out.

i guess what i'm saying is i really don't care if people want to create twinks for themselves. i guess it's a brainless way of starting a character and involves less hard work, but at the same time i really don't feel like being imposed upon to make their lives even more easy in the same way i wouldn't lend money to paris hilton.

on a positive note, i'm glad that at the moment in our guild, as some of the higher level guys run away and join other guilds, there's a bunch of us around the same level who are determined to stay together. i'm very comfortable with these guys, and think it's been simply brilliant lately.

grimloch turns 36

i've had an enjoyable rise from 34 to 36, and have been helped greatly by some of my favouritest ever people in the world - the guildies of iron fist. they're an amazing bunch of guys and girls, and the general feeling of this guild is second to none. i've yet to be involved with any gaming group so totally dedicated to just relaxing and being friendly as these guys are.

i had help from zuhimmi to get my fantastic new axe - whirlwind. and brahmabull was there to show me the way to my alltime favouritest bestest ever landscape of the game today in desolace which is truly one of the most spectacular places ever designed with pixels.

and then there are my regular questing partners, shaniqua and shull the troll twins, who just make questing a pure delight with their easygoing grinding natures slotting in just fine with my 2h-axe technique. it's been brilliant, and i've had a lot of fun with them both.

i've been killing giants and centaurs lately, and even went to kill some demons and their gateguarding demons of doom who all died with the greatest of ease beneath my new furious axe of doom.

you can also see my constant companion, my tabby cat, in this photo of me in desolace as i consider which of the many centaurs to slash to ribbons first.

i've started two little alts. one of them is a priest (soon to be shadowpriest and pvper of my trio), and the other is a warlock - who is an immense killing machine just splatting everything in sight for weeks. in fact, i can't wash the blood out of her shirt.

my only problem so far is a constant lack of cash, but i'm working on that. i have my priest learning the art of enchanting and my warlock the art of alchemy. grimloch needs potions, you see. and i'm sick of paying for them.

in any case, i've enjoyed this past week as you can tell by the way i'm chopping into that demon there who seemed to be of the opinion that a good set of pants makes up for the fact he's not wearing any chest armour. the silly fool. i put a few good thwacks through his sternum and that ended that silly idea.

so, before i go, here's my new ode to my latest levellings:

from the heart of winds, this axe is mine
it whirls through stuff and makes them die
so ooh and aah
and drool and gasp
for this axe just hacked me up to thirty-five!

and:

in desolace i got my kicks
and found a giant whose skull i split.
with my whirlwind axe
i kill all in my path
and here's your proof - i'm thirty-six!

giantkillers of the iron fist

resident iron fist warrior from hell, brahmabull has been a great help to me since i joined the guild, and last night went out of his way to help me with my quest to get that big whirlwind axe, and also showed me a new place to go killing in, called desolace.

we trudged for a long way to get there, but as we came into the valley, and i saw the landscape, i fell in love with it. the total grey of it all - the rank yellow pools of slime and the sound of wind and a seeming echo of crows. it's a dead land, and i really think a few more undead style things would have made this place perfect.

i was busily trying to run behind my fellow guildie when i noticed a huge - and i do mean HUGE - shape waddling across the landscape. it was a giant! and boy, was it ever! it was huge!

my first instinct was to rush in and start swinging that axe of mine with the frenzied pace of a man possessed.

however, with the patience of an inhuman orc god, i put aside the emotional turmoil that had gripped me since the girl of my dreams clawed the last remnants of my heart out of my chest a mere hour before, and gave myself over to a colder more calculatingly homicidal side of my nature and examined what it was i wanted to kill.

and it was big.

and elite.

i sighed with regret and resolved to return in a few more levels and lay this guy out on a rock and cut out his magnificently huge heart.

feed it to the crocodile things around here.

we got the flight path and headed back to do some exploring and kill some centaurs. a slight letdown after the giant. along the way we saw yet a second such giant, and i was resolved to ignoring him, too, when another warrior, mingdao, entered the area and proposed to my good pal brahmabull that we slit its gizzard and feast on its blood.

i was a bit puzzled but managed to follow up a few seconds later as the attack began. it wasn't until i was a few hacks into the giant that i realised what was wrong and spat a curse.

mingdao was a pro. he'd duped us both. see, he hadn't partied up to kill the giant. as he died under the giant's mallet of doom, the iron fist reaped the whirlwind and slew the giant with our mighty axes cleaving the bastard into smaller more manageable bits.

a great victory for us, the iron fist, and the horde!

and our companion, mingdao? well, he slimed back to life and claimed the booty. after all, he'd done the sneaky unorcy thing of acting like an alliance elf (i bet he has alliance alts, and probably most of them paladins), and getting in the first swings to steal the kill and its booty. when questioned as to the nature of the booty, he claims he found a mere three silver and no items at all.

i'm not convinced.

not at all.

grumbling, but not letting it ruin our evening, we found some centaurs and went chopping for a while to round out a great evening.

hopefully tonight i will have my axe, and that in itself will be a story of its own...

of hard won battles and nude trolls

i was rather ill offline during the beginning of the week, so i've had a lot of blue double xp to play with this last night or two. fantastic!

previous to that i'd had some nice adventures with shaniqua and shull again. both these two troll ladies have been walking me through the quests and trying not to giggle when i stumble over my own feet.

as you can see, i also found the loch ness monster, which i thought was extinct! i found it floating off the coast of ratchet and it looked in dire need of being reminded of the fact that prehistoric 'saurs really do belong in the past - so i hit it on the head with my axe until it agreed.

as you can see, it was in full agreement by the time i swam away again.

my excursions with the troll twins was going along merrily last night, too. and we managed to hook up to do a quest involving finding some magical staff, imbuing it and then tossing it down in a graveyard amid some big bully alliance. a next to impossible task without a really really good healer, i think.

asking around my guildies the other week, you'll remember me saying how i did this one - nude.

so, after much giggling, i told the troll twins what they'd need to do to complete the quest.

suspicious of my intentions, they nonetheless derobed and waited while i stood there gawking and wiping the drool off my chin. here was a moment most orcs dream of - a moment alone with two underdressed troll babes. i was very polite, though, and didn't take any pictures.

as you can see.

finally, i managed to up a level tonight. with a little more help from my favourite troll, shull (who went to see the cat empire the other night without me!). i ended up hanging my axe on a raptor in stranglethorn vale for my 34.

and, in honour of all these events, let me present to you my poem:
near dalaran, i kicked guards' asses sore
and hurt their little wizards even more
i saw a troll dance
and two lose their pants
- so much fun to turn 34!

happy birthday to me

i just couldn't think of anything better to level up on than the necks of ogres, so i visited their little lair which was right next to where the yetis were. i stumbled around like a drunken orc chopping wildly to the point where i died from inattentiveness just before i exploded into level 33 with a bang and a gush of ogreblood.

highly amusing and twice as exhilirating.

my guildies applauded as i reeled off yet another stroke of genius with an orc poem devoted to my killing prowess as proven with my levelling, and i was richly rewarded with a hearty round of awe-inspired jaw-dropping cries of devotion by my fans.

well, they would have if they weren't afk.





















and, as per request, here's my level 33 poem:

i was born both big and green;
my axe chops necks - not logs from trees
so stand and cheer
bot not too near
cuz i've just killed my way to thirty-three!

the troll twins

okay okay, so they weren't really twins, but it sounded good when i thought it.

two new guildies joined today. shaniqua and shull. i've known shaniqua for a while, and toured through a few places with her before. it's always been a delight, so when i found out she was in our guild i was thrilled. i gleefully hitched my orc axe to her wagon and followed into the hills to murder some centaurs again in search of goodies. unfortunately, i hexed that quest up good by not carrying the quest key i really needed.

what a dullorc.

shaniqua and shull were very understanding, though. i'm sure in their heads they were rolling their eyes and saying "stupid male." but there you go. they were nice enough not to say it aloud.

from there we jogged off to kill some ogres. i love killing ogres as you know. they make a delightful thump. we rampaged through the ogre lair and quickly chopped them to pieces. revelling in our superness, we decided to hit some dwarves in their little hole in the mountain.

that's pretty much when things started to get a bit hairy, and i'm not talking about me because i'm not hairy in the slightest.

as you can see, we make a rather pretty trio. well. two of us are. okay, there's four including the cat, so that's three pretty ones and one decidedly dopey looking green one. still - i AM green and there's no arguing with my axe.

the dwarves, however, decided to try.

we slammed them. absolutely slammed them.

then got overrun by a couple.

and died.

we ran back to our corpses to find everything had respawned.

ick.

we got overrun.

and died.

you see, we'd been drawn to a twilight zone of dwarfy terror as the respawn rate here was insane. climbing deeper into the dungeon, our health and mana potions dwindling along with our armour, we slashed, hacked, and fireballed our way into the bowels in search of some demonic little runt of a dwarf surrounded by perverted little holy priests in dire need of having their stupid dwarfy heads cut off.

which i did my best to do. sleepy, fussy, angry, respawny - no matter their cute little names i chopped them and fed them to shull's cat as best i could inbetween dying.

if it hadn't been for shaniqua's gorgeous sheep spell, we would have died so many more times. she also made me some of the most insanely cool potions i've seen - not being one to see many potions. in fact, the last cool potions i ever saw were hers, too! and shull's huntress skills were doing their best to keep me alive too. i was so many times on the edge of death when her cat would leap in and save my orcy hide.

in the end we slurped up the main boss with an ease that bordered on the ridiculous and settled down to go through his pants in search of stuff.

and found 31 copper pieces and that was it.

totally devastated, i sat in a chair to sulk, as you can see. shull announced bed - obviously not celebratory so i added no stupid male jokes and instead chose to climb wearily to my feet and begin the slow fight out - whining to shaniqua all the way about how i really thought we could hearth out now.

shaniqua scored a brilliant little staff for herself and on the final kill, shull fluked an awesome bow she was running about with waving in the air and squealing like a baby magpie about. i don't quite know what i got out of it other than a few more deaths and a joyous amount of killing beside two very nice trolls.

all in all - a highly successful and enjoyable evening. i hope they do more stuff to me.

i mean, with me.

cp, i dedicate this kill to you

so i had an awful weekend. a really awful one. and today wasn't all that much better.

angry at the fact the girl of my dreams thinks life as a muppet is acceptable, i found i had no way to vent my frustration in any shape or form other than a speed-driven massacre of a night in wow. and why not? that's what it's for!

so i slipped the mouse on the table, a coke in my fist, and thought i'd catch up with a yeti or two. give it a damn good thwacking with my axe so i can make it understand the futility of life.

first place i found myself in was a dark room. after a good private cry, i sprinted into the mountains in search of those elusive yeti again. damn their eyes - i was gonna cut them out, too.

unfortunately, i found my alltime ever favourite hunting gound of today had been taken over by some feeble little elf who was busy killing the creatures who had obviously been spawned for my pleasure alone! how dare he!

i made some rude gestures and just couldn't believe my eyes as he interfered on my kills, getting in a few good thwacks on yetis who were plainly dying beneath MY axe! such rudeness i have never seen, but it's pretty much what you expect from alliance scum.

my heart still reeling from the excess damage it had taken over the weekend (girl of my dreams is a level 60 mage when it comes to dealing damage on my heart and soul), i didn't let it get to me. i just ran down the mountain and found some brown yeti in desperate need of having their insides emptied out all over the lawn.

i obliged.

many times.

in fact, i was so obsessed with slaughtering as many of these hairy lumbering logheads as i could get my fists on, i didn't notice myself levelling up. in fact, it was such a surprise when my screen exploded with that levelling colour and sound that i nearly dropped my axe.

in any case, i can only dedicate this swift rise in levels to the girl who has stolen my insides and used them as a coathanger.

yes, i dedicate this kill to you, cp.

why'd i have to fall in love with a girl who didn't even know i exist? i guess it's true and level 30s shouldn't be raiding with level 60s. they'll only get damaged.

real damaged.

real fast.

well.

there you go - a real lesson for today.

and the levelling poem? well, here it is:

see my axe all shiny and new
swung at necks, it cleaves right through
and i just got tougher
and a whole lot rougher
because look at me - i'm thirty-two.

the abominable orcman

so i kind of flew over the landscape on my way to tarren mill, looking for something interesting, when i spotted what looked like a mine in the hills above. interested in mining its goodness, i headed on up the hill and noticed a few ogres in the distance who were quite a few levels above me. a bit TOO well protected from my flavoursome axe of doom.

so i headed round a sneaky bend where i found some lions and a few stray humies in need of their bits sliced and diced.

i taught them all manner of my favourite new cheffing techniques, including one i like to call the double-triple-inside-out-quadruple-chop-with-flourish.

brilliant stuff.

cheerful, yet a bit disappointed at killing animals yet again, i wandered off toward the mine. along the way i saw a stray lion who looked a bit starved so decided to put it out of its misery with a few well-timed swings of the ol' axe.

as i was gleefully spilling lionblood, i noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye. i tried to get a good look but between the lion clawing away at me (ungrateful wretch - couldn't it see i was doing it a favour?), and the distance, i couldn't quite make out what it was.

but it DID look killable, i was pretty sure of that.

i soldiered on up and found a small canyon leading into a snowy part.

and there.

what was that? movement?

i looked closer, peering through the snowy haze. and i saw it!

i swear it was there - i'm not making this up!

i stepped up closer. i grinned and couldn't believe my orcy eyes. yes, it was true! all those stories were true! the yeti really DOES exist, and here it is! see? there! right between the two hills! i still can't believe my eyes!

what? well, lucky for us i took the cynical nature of my audience into consideration and did the only logical thing i could do to get further proof of the yeti's existence.

that is, i charged it, slit it up the middle, and took photos of it.

and here, in delightful colour, is the undeniable proof that the yeti exists. see? i even took a photo of its feet. and they're pretty big, aren't they?

i looked around for someone to show this corpse off to but couldn't see anyone around, but i DID see something else worth seeing.

more yetis.

dozens of them.

maybe hundreds - in all the excitement i couldn't count.

i charged.

and charged.

you see, when meeting new species, i am always aware of my obligations to the horde, and to promoting a civilised meeting of minds. teaching capitalism to such primitive monsters is no easy task, i'm telling you.

yes, you heard me. i was teaching them the basics of capitalist theory.

that is, i owned them.

all of them.

every single frosty one.

ahhhh - such bliss!

a night out with talhe

went to shadowfang keep last night. why? well, i know i'm a little old for the incident, but i'd heard you could make a bit of cash there as it dropped some fairly good stuff you could throw on the ah and forget about. i only meant to go in and see how things looked in there and get out. however, i was telling talhe about my journey, and she popped up out the front and demanded entrance. never one to disappoint - and always one looking for a reason to kill stuff - i popped out and pulled her in. another guildie, azza, also asked for a hand in, but he was off in the gulch and would be a while.

in the meantime, talhe and i wandered further into the keep. i'd already wiped out everything up until the last few buggers in the courtyard, so we continued from there.

first thing we did was die as i annoyed all the horses and they dived on me.

brilliant way to impress my newest party member. watching me get wiped out by rogue stablescum.

from thereon in we did well, pretty much wiping our boots with corpses in some very close but flavoursome fights. it was a fantastic effort. even though my level is 31, hers was 25 (turning 26 i believe), and we managed to guzzle down elites like they were blades of grass.

then azza joined in.

first thing i do is get us killed. seemed like a tradition. get a new party member and die with them. brilliant.

we'll call it a team-building exercise.

in any event, it turned out a little harder than we thought. we were a hunter, a mage and a warrior with an axe just ploughing through. i found it difficult to survive because i didn't expect to be going this far in and hadn't brought more than two healing potions. i'd really only gone for a peek and should have gone for healing potions when talhe joined.

sadly, we got almost all the way through and she had to leave. then azza and i died some more and watched our armour go that delicious shade of red which means we had to pause and consider our future.

it was a sad and miserable end to an otherwise very hearty and delightful expedition. i'm sure i could have made it all the way through with just a few more bottles of potions. the times we died we died only barely, with creatures left on the weeniest of health points. those jars of juice would have made all the difference and i'm really annoyed i didn't have any.

well, at least i've learnt my lesson today. always expect the long haul. it is, after all, a game of addiction...

another flightpath

i found myself a new flightpath out of undercity - via bats! woah. ain't these guys so awesome?

was a long night of fun last night. ogres. bats. stuff.

i'm kind of hanging out to hit level 40 so i can start wearing plate armour. i have a few little quests i have to do in regard to my warrior, and i guess i should try getting them done this weekend. at least, i hope so. one of them means i have to journey into razorfen kraul and that'll involve a group incident again. i'm not really a fan of such things, but it breaks the monotony, i guess. keeps things chipper.

in the meantime, however, i think i'll go take another bat. i really love the journey out of undercity. so cool. so very tim burton and the sewer pipes look brilliant. all that glowing green slime!!! so nice...

another day another massacre

i was getting close to levelling up, so decided to take a jaunt to a place i like where there's lots of ogres - boulder'gor.

i kind of fell in love with killing ogres. they're like the mudmen things in diablo. the first diablo, that is. when you get to the caves and they run about grunting and dying so nicely. pure warrior kills. straightout hack and slashers. and they look so big and die so well.

so, i ran all the way there, hopping and skipping along, joyful in mood and hurty in spirit. i'd had a long day looking at the girl i love and knowing she doesn't love me, and so i was in a desperate mood to kill some stuff.

lots of stuff.

any stuff.

so long as it died with in a loud and violent manner.

ogres = perfect!

unfortunately, what i had was a team of pesky alliance clods running around like a bunch of frilly dudes with their little gnomes and dwarfs running about like silly little anklebiters.

and they were killing MY ogres!

damn them to somewhere dark and funky where evil things get done to their armour.

i took great delight, then, in following them around, and as they killed i'd pick off the closest next ogres to them, so they were forced to pretty much run more than i did. it was a challenge, but it worked. as soon as i saw them moving toward something, i charged it. stole their stuff, so to speak.

yay! my way of annoying them.

in the end, however, i was content to just level up and journey back to orgrimmar.

and, in tribute to this marvellous moment, i composed the following thing:

in boulder'gor where the ogres run
alliance tried to ruin my fun
but i was greener
and a damn sight meaner
and killed their ogres by the ton.

- behold! i'm now level 31!!!

my night out on the town

i was taken out for a night on the town again by my guildies. they grabbed me to grom'gul and made me walk in the jungles until we found an arena. gurubashi arena. we went there to await a spawning of a chest of some kind which would contain all sorts of goodies.

we weren't the only ones there, either. a bunch of alliance wussies showed up and were busy stalking the jungles in search of easy horde meat. that meat being us, we did our very best to hold our own, and i believe we were doing okay considering we were vastly outnumbered by about four to one at one stage.

an incredible and breathtaking experience which showed the true courage of the alliance as they competed to take out myself and one of our other guildies. i being a terrifyingly high level 30 and azza being a hugely threatening level 24 or something daft. naturally, we were the blazing fires of our guild and had to be stomped first with such skill and effort by the gathering level 50s who seemed to squabble over who would get the right to slit my gizzard.

but i wasn't going easy. no way.

seen here is a mage, so we can't show you his name. he's a level 50. and guess which orcy got the final killing blow in on this one?

that's right! me!

mind you, as i took this photo, some level 60 steamed up behind me and let my insides out all over the path, but it was worth it to get this photo of a level 50 mage who felt the thrill of getting his head chopped off by my little level 30 axe...

finally, the chest spawned.

a veritable horde (no joke intended) of alliance zoomed in on the chest, and my fellow guildies (by the way there were only about six of us), raggedly swiped at them all.

alliance, being alliance, decided to show us their prowess, determination, and sheer intelligence by turning on us to wipe us out.

meanwhile, as per plan, our resident rogue (and public enemy number one on the alliance hitlist), hyacia the magnificently deadly, did a smooth little stealth behind the lot of them and filched the chest right out from under their alliancy noses!!!

it was a supremely beautiful moment made even more beautiful by the frustrated howls and demented berserk rage of the alliance as they scrambled around in circles desperate to find something to blame while we stood around giggling like loons.

an absolutely fantastic evening out.

i recommend it.