A post over at WowInsider titled Forgetting to Hit the Need Button reminded me about a post I put together back in December on My Upgrades Spreadsheet.
Since then, the spreadsheet has undergone a few changes, but not too many. But here's an updated list that is for mages which includes all known upgrades on Tiddlywinks. If you have gear that is worse than mine, it won't have all the upgrades that you need listed.
Here: Click
Apr 24, 2009
The Antechamber
With the Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, and XT-002 defeated on Wednesday, the Gold Team was left with a choice - continue into the Antechamber of Ulduar or finish The Siege of Ulduar...we chose the Siege! To Ignis we went. Our first strategy was to be the "normal" strategy whereby Aravic would tank Ignis in a circular pattern while Santorum would pick up the adds and, via Vetarra's roots, trap them in the fire until they became brittle, at which point I would blow them up. We tried this strategy quite a few times and it all worked well until Ignis would pick up Vetarra or Santorum and put them in his naughty bits bucket. Then the roots would be gone, we'd have extra adds, or they would have no tank and they'd run over the raid. So it was finally decided...ZERG!
The zerg strategy is quite a bit tougher, but really, the only way to complete Stokin' the Furnace - which we didn't even get close to, but perhaps with one less healer and more DPS we could get close. To zerg Ignis, you tank him right on the border of a pool so the Scorch he does doesn't leave pillars of fire. Meanwhile, Santorum needed to pick up the adds and just hold them while doing DPS to to the boss. It's a simple race against time in the zerg strategy. Because for each Iron Construct add left alive, Ignis gains a 15% damage buff. I believe at one point, he was doing 135% more damage, maybe even 150%. Our first attempt was a learning experience - trying to figure out where to place the Constructs, how to heal through the massive damage, etc. But after a couple of zerg attempts, Ignis went down, we received The Siege of Ulduar and a few of us got Hot Pocket.
With Ignis down, we gathered everyone up and prepared to enter the Antechamber of Ulduar. After getting past some trash in the antechamber, we were rewarded with a beautiful sight...
Ulduar truly is a spectacle of immense proportions. It's quite obvious that it was in fact built by the titans and they spared no expense. It's a massive, beautiful place to visit, until, of course, you encounter someone that wants to rip you limb from limb.
After learning the Kologarn fight, it took us 4-5 tries to defeat him using a strategy of blowing all cooldowns at the start to defeat the Right Arm, then having ranged DPS AOE down the adds while melee DPS continued to focus on the body. Ranged DPS then focused on the body when adds were down and everyone switched back to the arm when it was reconstructed. We found that defeating the left arm is not a good idea as more adds are spawned and the damage the arm does is inconsequential. Make sure you watch out for him when you enter his chamber, he does try his best to surprise you!
With Kologarn down, we considered continuing across his "bridge" to Auriaya, but decided to back track a bit to the Iron Council. At the Iron Council, we had 4 or so attempts before it was time to call it for the night. I'm quite certain we'll be able to get them down next week - we got close a couple of times but ran into healing or interrupting issues.
Next week I'm hopeful that we can get through the Iron Council and Auriaya to then have fun with the Keepers of Ulduar - I'm especially wanting to see Freya...go go Gold Team!
The zerg strategy is quite a bit tougher, but really, the only way to complete Stokin' the Furnace - which we didn't even get close to, but perhaps with one less healer and more DPS we could get close. To zerg Ignis, you tank him right on the border of a pool so the Scorch he does doesn't leave pillars of fire. Meanwhile, Santorum needed to pick up the adds and just hold them while doing DPS to to the boss. It's a simple race against time in the zerg strategy. Because for each Iron Construct add left alive, Ignis gains a 15% damage buff. I believe at one point, he was doing 135% more damage, maybe even 150%. Our first attempt was a learning experience - trying to figure out where to place the Constructs, how to heal through the massive damage, etc. But after a couple of zerg attempts, Ignis went down, we received The Siege of Ulduar and a few of us got Hot Pocket.
With Ignis down, we gathered everyone up and prepared to enter the Antechamber of Ulduar. After getting past some trash in the antechamber, we were rewarded with a beautiful sight...
Ulduar truly is a spectacle of immense proportions. It's quite obvious that it was in fact built by the titans and they spared no expense. It's a massive, beautiful place to visit, until, of course, you encounter someone that wants to rip you limb from limb.
After learning the Kologarn fight, it took us 4-5 tries to defeat him using a strategy of blowing all cooldowns at the start to defeat the Right Arm, then having ranged DPS AOE down the adds while melee DPS continued to focus on the body. Ranged DPS then focused on the body when adds were down and everyone switched back to the arm when it was reconstructed. We found that defeating the left arm is not a good idea as more adds are spawned and the damage the arm does is inconsequential. Make sure you watch out for him when you enter his chamber, he does try his best to surprise you!
With Kologarn down, we considered continuing across his "bridge" to Auriaya, but decided to back track a bit to the Iron Council. At the Iron Council, we had 4 or so attempts before it was time to call it for the night. I'm quite certain we'll be able to get them down next week - we got close a couple of times but ran into healing or interrupting issues.
Next week I'm hopeful that we can get through the Iron Council and Auriaya to then have fun with the Keepers of Ulduar - I'm especially wanting to see Freya...go go Gold Team!
Apr 22, 2009
What a Night!
So there we were, the Gold Team had gathered and we were just sitting around the campfire with nothing to do. The Argent Tournament quests were complete, the severed arm had been returned to Olissara, and Glowergold's cheese was safely in his hands again. So...what to do? Let's go to Ulduar!
We quickly formed up and decided that since we defeated the Flame Leviathan just after causing an overload last time, that this time we would NOT catapult our druid and shaman on top of him and just DPS him down. And so it would come to pass that the Gold Team would take down the Flame Leviathan in one attempt and earn the Shutout achievement. What next we wondered? Would we go and attempt Ignis and his flaming naughty bits or Razorscale and his breath of doom?
Since we had the most practice with Razorscale we decided she would be first. The first time through, we decided that we'd try and hold off on the harpoons until all of the watchmen and sentinels were down. However, they just kept spawning and eventually ate us up. We regrouped and adjusted our strategy to just make sure no sentinels were up when we used the harpoons and we easily took her out even though Dylana, our awesome healy tree went down really early. Eleazarjr and Jizo did an amazing job keeping us all up. And what should she drop for me? The Eye of the Broodmother! It's the second best trinket with only the Scale of Fates being better at this current time.
After Razorscale we once again assessed our surroundings. Flaming naughty bits or a spoiled robot? XT-002 it was. We quickly grouped up as Aravic had to return to Dalaran and took him on for the first time. We almost had him killed when some random enemies joined the fight and made quick work of us. We regrouped and then realized that we had not cleared the trash before engaging XT-002. We quickly cleared them, engaged XT-002 again and easily took him down. Utilizing a heroism on the first heart exposure enabled us to quickly get him down as when his heart was no longer exposed, he was already at half health and his heart was exposed again. When all was said and done, he rewarded us with two achievements - Nerf Gravity Bombs and Nerf Engineering! A pleasant surprise after taking him down in (almost) one shot (darn trash).
All in all, an amazing run. Tomorrow we shall gather for four more hours of fun. The Antechamber of Ulduar awaits us.
We quickly formed up and decided that since we defeated the Flame Leviathan just after causing an overload last time, that this time we would NOT catapult our druid and shaman on top of him and just DPS him down. And so it would come to pass that the Gold Team would take down the Flame Leviathan in one attempt and earn the Shutout achievement. What next we wondered? Would we go and attempt Ignis and his flaming naughty bits or Razorscale and his breath of doom?
Since we had the most practice with Razorscale we decided she would be first. The first time through, we decided that we'd try and hold off on the harpoons until all of the watchmen and sentinels were down. However, they just kept spawning and eventually ate us up. We regrouped and adjusted our strategy to just make sure no sentinels were up when we used the harpoons and we easily took her out even though Dylana, our awesome healy tree went down really early. Eleazarjr and Jizo did an amazing job keeping us all up. And what should she drop for me? The Eye of the Broodmother! It's the second best trinket with only the Scale of Fates being better at this current time.
After Razorscale we once again assessed our surroundings. Flaming naughty bits or a spoiled robot? XT-002 it was. We quickly grouped up as Aravic had to return to Dalaran and took him on for the first time. We almost had him killed when some random enemies joined the fight and made quick work of us. We regrouped and then realized that we had not cleared the trash before engaging XT-002. We quickly cleared them, engaged XT-002 again and easily took him down. Utilizing a heroism on the first heart exposure enabled us to quickly get him down as when his heart was no longer exposed, he was already at half health and his heart was exposed again. When all was said and done, he rewarded us with two achievements - Nerf Gravity Bombs and Nerf Engineering! A pleasant surprise after taking him down in (almost) one shot (darn trash).
All in all, an amazing run. Tomorrow we shall gather for four more hours of fun. The Antechamber of Ulduar awaits us.
Tiddlywinks the Mercenary
Now wouldn't that be a great title? Unfortunately, I did not get it when I completed Mercenary of Sholazar last night. Now that it's done, I'm going to wait for Children's Week to come around to see what they'll have us do, then back to the Oracles to continue looking for the mount.
On a completely unrelated note, I love the Argent Tournament dailies. There's so much gold to be had for relatively quick work. The best part about it is you can do Valiant quests at the same time as Champion quests. For example, you can do A Valiant's Field Training and At the Enemy's Gates for Valiant's Seals at the same time as Taking the Battle to the Enemy and Battle Before the Citadel. So when you have to kill 15 scourge for a Champion's Seal, you automatically are done with killing 10 scourge for a Valiant's Seal. When you kill the Boneguard Lieutenants for Champion's Seals, you finish the quest for Valiant's Seals at the same time. You then go back and turn in each quest for the Valiant's Seals and receive 13g23s for each quest and then you turn in your Champion's Seals quests and receive 13g23s PLUS a Champion's Purse which has another 10g in it. Combine those with the jousting dailies, the Threat From Above, and any others that make you travel to SE Northrend and you quickly gain 5 Valiant's Seals, 5 Champion's Seals and you're up 132g61s. Love it.
Of course I do those dailies along with the new fishing daily and the old cooking dailies every day and I easily earn 150g a day just from 9 quick quests. Too bad most of it will go to repairs and consumables in Ulduar in the coming days...
On a completely unrelated note, I love the Argent Tournament dailies. There's so much gold to be had for relatively quick work. The best part about it is you can do Valiant quests at the same time as Champion quests. For example, you can do A Valiant's Field Training and At the Enemy's Gates for Valiant's Seals at the same time as Taking the Battle to the Enemy and Battle Before the Citadel. So when you have to kill 15 scourge for a Champion's Seal, you automatically are done with killing 10 scourge for a Valiant's Seal. When you kill the Boneguard Lieutenants for Champion's Seals, you finish the quest for Valiant's Seals at the same time. You then go back and turn in each quest for the Valiant's Seals and receive 13g23s for each quest and then you turn in your Champion's Seals quests and receive 13g23s PLUS a Champion's Purse which has another 10g in it. Combine those with the jousting dailies, the Threat From Above, and any others that make you travel to SE Northrend and you quickly gain 5 Valiant's Seals, 5 Champion's Seals and you're up 132g61s. Love it.
Of course I do those dailies along with the new fishing daily and the old cooking dailies every day and I easily earn 150g a day just from 9 quick quests. Too bad most of it will go to repairs and consumables in Ulduar in the coming days...
Apr 21, 2009
A Busy Week
Last week was pretty busy. It of course all started on Tuesday with the Argent Tournament, continued Thursday with 10 man Ulduar, progressed Friday with 25 man full clear Naxx and 2 attempts at Flame Leviathan, extended to Sunday with a Sunwell clear, and finished yesterday with more advancement in the Argent Tournament.
Back to Friday, we quickly gathered up and discussed what our next move would be. Would we concentrate on 25 man Ulduar, or continue for a few weeks in Naxxramas, continuing to gear up players and, maybe more importantly, get gear for secondary specs. It was decided we would stay in Naxxramas for 2-3 weeks and gear people up as the week before was our first time downing Kel'Thuzad (progress bars on the right updated). So we pressed forward and cleared Naxxramas in record time. The week prior, we had taken time on Thursday to clear the Spider wing, whereas on Friday, we cleared the whole place in under 3.5 hours - a very good time for us. We had two wings down in under 1 hour. So with our record time, we decided to head over to Ulduar to see what was going on there.
We quickly formed up, explained the first fight and promptly...wiped on trash. We just got too spread out, so on our next attempt, we stayed together and easily made it to the Flame Leviathan. Unfortunately, some people had issues with their vehicles and we also had problems picking people up after they had jumped on the Flame Leviathan. So we didn't get him down on the two attempts we had before we had to call it for the night. I'm looking forward to having more time in there - we should be able to easily take out the Flame Leviathan, but I can see issues with XT-002 already (it's a healer check) and I'm hoping Razorscale is a little bit easier on 25 man than it is on 10 man.
Then on Sunday, I see someone advertising a Sunwell run in trade chat. Bleh, I've been before and even at 80, unless your team has good coordination, you're not going to get past Felmyst or some other later bosses (which you can zerg as well). But then Aenador messaged me from the group and wanted to see if I wanted to go. With her and others from Familiaris Incursio in the group, I felt a little safer and decided to give it a shot. And I'm glad I did. It was quite fun and I got to finally see M'uru, the Twins, and Kil'Jaeden. I also won a piece of Tier 6 which makes me happy and earned another achievement. I just have the Black Temple left now. Here's some pictures from the run:
Which leads us to Monday. After quickly completing the daily cooking quest in my search for a Chef's Hat (I'm now over half way there), I headed up to the Argent Tournament ready to become a Champion! I quickly completed the dailies, bested a Champion in a joust, and earned my title. Tiddlywinks of Gnomeregan.
With the Champion title achieved, it was time to work for another faction. Ironforge just happened to be standing right there, so I went to work for them. He only had one quest for me on the day, so I headed over to the main tent to see what else I could do. Ah yes, the Black Knight!
I accepted the challenge, went outside and picked a steed and awaited the Black Knight. And what happened next? I demolished him. Pretty disappointing. I feel like this was a real opportunity wasted - so did my other guildmates who bested him yesterday. But hey, it's 10 more achievement points, upping my total to 5,860.
After that, it was time to work on getting some more Champion's Seals. The quests are getting a bit tougher this time around. The jousting opponents are much tougher and trying to work your way through the boneguards near the Citadel is a bit tougher. But all the quests were completed, even the group quest with the help of the wonderful Vetarra and I got my 5 seals, bringing me to 15. Just a few more days and I'll be able to get my Mechanopeep!
Back to Friday, we quickly gathered up and discussed what our next move would be. Would we concentrate on 25 man Ulduar, or continue for a few weeks in Naxxramas, continuing to gear up players and, maybe more importantly, get gear for secondary specs. It was decided we would stay in Naxxramas for 2-3 weeks and gear people up as the week before was our first time downing Kel'Thuzad (progress bars on the right updated). So we pressed forward and cleared Naxxramas in record time. The week prior, we had taken time on Thursday to clear the Spider wing, whereas on Friday, we cleared the whole place in under 3.5 hours - a very good time for us. We had two wings down in under 1 hour. So with our record time, we decided to head over to Ulduar to see what was going on there.
We quickly formed up, explained the first fight and promptly...wiped on trash. We just got too spread out, so on our next attempt, we stayed together and easily made it to the Flame Leviathan. Unfortunately, some people had issues with their vehicles and we also had problems picking people up after they had jumped on the Flame Leviathan. So we didn't get him down on the two attempts we had before we had to call it for the night. I'm looking forward to having more time in there - we should be able to easily take out the Flame Leviathan, but I can see issues with XT-002 already (it's a healer check) and I'm hoping Razorscale is a little bit easier on 25 man than it is on 10 man.
Then on Sunday, I see someone advertising a Sunwell run in trade chat. Bleh, I've been before and even at 80, unless your team has good coordination, you're not going to get past Felmyst or some other later bosses (which you can zerg as well). But then Aenador messaged me from the group and wanted to see if I wanted to go. With her and others from Familiaris Incursio in the group, I felt a little safer and decided to give it a shot. And I'm glad I did. It was quite fun and I got to finally see M'uru, the Twins, and Kil'Jaeden. I also won a piece of Tier 6 which makes me happy and earned another achievement. I just have the Black Temple left now. Here's some pictures from the run:
Which leads us to Monday. After quickly completing the daily cooking quest in my search for a Chef's Hat (I'm now over half way there), I headed up to the Argent Tournament ready to become a Champion! I quickly completed the dailies, bested a Champion in a joust, and earned my title. Tiddlywinks of Gnomeregan.
With the Champion title achieved, it was time to work for another faction. Ironforge just happened to be standing right there, so I went to work for them. He only had one quest for me on the day, so I headed over to the main tent to see what else I could do. Ah yes, the Black Knight!
I accepted the challenge, went outside and picked a steed and awaited the Black Knight. And what happened next? I demolished him. Pretty disappointing. I feel like this was a real opportunity wasted - so did my other guildmates who bested him yesterday. But hey, it's 10 more achievement points, upping my total to 5,860.
After that, it was time to work on getting some more Champion's Seals. The quests are getting a bit tougher this time around. The jousting opponents are much tougher and trying to work your way through the boneguards near the Citadel is a bit tougher. But all the quests were completed, even the group quest with the help of the wonderful Vetarra and I got my 5 seals, bringing me to 15. Just a few more days and I'll be able to get my Mechanopeep!
Apr 17, 2009
In to Ulduar...
Last night, the gold team formed up and headed into Ulduar for the first time. We weren't quite sure what to expect from the instance when it came to difficulty and so after getting into our vehicles, we were ready to tackle the gauntlet and the Flame Leviathan.
We quickly tackled the gauntlet and repaired our engines before engaging the Leviathan, and, he was EASY. Maybe a little too easy to start off Ulduar we were thinking. But we took our loot (I received a Lifespark Visage) and we continued on - or at least tried to.
We ran into an issue where we couldn't get out of combat, no matter what we tried, so in the end, we had to run all the way back to the start and out of Ulduar. Upon returning, we were able to take the teleporter to the Forge and we decided to see what Razorscale had for us. Unfortunately, not good news.
After multiple failed attempts, trying multiple different strategies, we gave up on Razorscale (his fireballs do a little too much damage for us apparently). We then went over to see how Ignis was doing and..umm..wiped a bunch on his trash. So yeah, that was a humbling experience right there. After finally getting those two molten colossuses (colossi?) down, we proceeded to then figure out how to get the rest of his trash down. We tried avoiding cyclones, but they kept going after the healers it seemed, so with healers down, we wiped a few more times. We finally got to Ignis, but it was getting late. Nonetheless, we got about 5 or 6 attempts in on him before having to call it for the night.
For those out there complaining that Ulduar is too easy because a couple guilds have downed Yogg-Saron, you're just wrong. Simple as that. Ulduar is fun, challenging, and exciting. I look forward to progressing further in the coming weeks.
We quickly tackled the gauntlet and repaired our engines before engaging the Leviathan, and, he was EASY. Maybe a little too easy to start off Ulduar we were thinking. But we took our loot (I received a Lifespark Visage) and we continued on - or at least tried to.
We ran into an issue where we couldn't get out of combat, no matter what we tried, so in the end, we had to run all the way back to the start and out of Ulduar. Upon returning, we were able to take the teleporter to the Forge and we decided to see what Razorscale had for us. Unfortunately, not good news.
After multiple failed attempts, trying multiple different strategies, we gave up on Razorscale (his fireballs do a little too much damage for us apparently). We then went over to see how Ignis was doing and..umm..wiped a bunch on his trash. So yeah, that was a humbling experience right there. After finally getting those two molten colossuses (colossi?) down, we proceeded to then figure out how to get the rest of his trash down. We tried avoiding cyclones, but they kept going after the healers it seemed, so with healers down, we wiped a few more times. We finally got to Ignis, but it was getting late. Nonetheless, we got about 5 or 6 attempts in on him before having to call it for the night.
For those out there complaining that Ulduar is too easy because a couple guilds have downed Yogg-Saron, you're just wrong. Simple as that. Ulduar is fun, challenging, and exciting. I look forward to progressing further in the coming weeks.
Apr 16, 2009
Valiant
So with the patch, other than Ulduar, I haven't really found that much that interests me other than the Argent Tournament. To start, there's a couple quick quests to do and then you can pick up three quests which reward Aspirant's Seals. Once you have 15 of them, you earn the Argent Valor achievement and can now become a Valiant for your faction. So after getting my 15 seals (5 per day for 3 days), I now can start working on collecting Valiant's Seals, needing 25 to then challenge the Argent Champion. Once I best the champion, I believe I will be an Exalted Champion of Gnomeregan, thus becoming Tiddlywinks of Gnomeregan.
I'm believe I can get 5 Valiant's Seals per day, so it might only be five days (yay Monday) until I become a Champion of Gnomeregan, however, it is yet to be seen whether all nine seals are available each day. Once I become an Exalted Champion, I believe I'll be able to pick which faction I want to champion next. At 5 days per faction, it should be relatively easy to earn the titles with each faction. Also, upon becoming an Exalted Champion of Gnomeregan, I can challenge the Black Knight and earn It's Just a Flesh Wound.
Basically though, I'll be an Exalted Argent Champion of the Alliance in 25 days. Five for Gnomeregan, and then 5 more days for Exodar, Stormwind, Darnassus, and Ironforge. So in just 25 days I'll be done with the Argent Tournament. Of course, after the 25 days, I'll have to do the dailies every day to earn Champion's Seals in order to purchase my 5 faction specific pets (200 + another 200 seals to earn those pets to trade to the horde in exchange for their pets), then 250 more for the Argent Hippogryph and 500 more for the faction specific mounts from each faction - the Great Azuremyst Elekk, Swift Ironforge Ram, Turbostrider, Swift Darnassian Mistsaber, and Swift Elwynn Steed.
So that's only 1150 Champion's Seals...minus 50 from becoming a champion of each faction (10x5), and I only have to earn 1100. At 5 per day...well...that's 220 days of dailies - but there should be more dailies opened up once the coliseum is built, but who knows. Obviously the pets come first, so that's just 70 days of dailies, still a few too many for me.
So, have fun at the Argent Tournament - a nice long grind once you complete championing your factions. Yay!
I'm believe I can get 5 Valiant's Seals per day, so it might only be five days (yay Monday) until I become a Champion of Gnomeregan, however, it is yet to be seen whether all nine seals are available each day. Once I become an Exalted Champion, I believe I'll be able to pick which faction I want to champion next. At 5 days per faction, it should be relatively easy to earn the titles with each faction. Also, upon becoming an Exalted Champion of Gnomeregan, I can challenge the Black Knight and earn It's Just a Flesh Wound.
Basically though, I'll be an Exalted Argent Champion of the Alliance in 25 days. Five for Gnomeregan, and then 5 more days for Exodar, Stormwind, Darnassus, and Ironforge. So in just 25 days I'll be done with the Argent Tournament. Of course, after the 25 days, I'll have to do the dailies every day to earn Champion's Seals in order to purchase my 5 faction specific pets (200 + another 200 seals to earn those pets to trade to the horde in exchange for their pets), then 250 more for the Argent Hippogryph and 500 more for the faction specific mounts from each faction - the Great Azuremyst Elekk, Swift Ironforge Ram, Turbostrider, Swift Darnassian Mistsaber, and Swift Elwynn Steed.
So that's only 1150 Champion's Seals...minus 50 from becoming a champion of each faction (10x5), and I only have to earn 1100. At 5 per day...well...that's 220 days of dailies - but there should be more dailies opened up once the coliseum is built, but who knows. Obviously the pets come first, so that's just 70 days of dailies, still a few too many for me.
So, have fun at the Argent Tournament - a nice long grind once you complete championing your factions. Yay!
Apr 15, 2009
Random Thoughts
On 3.1:
In all, other than the time it took them to patch the servers (which didn't matter to me since I wasn't available to play until 9 server), I was impressed with the patch. Most of my addons worked, only a few gave errors, and when I clicked through the errors, they all worked as intended. I started in Dalaran, did the daily cooking quest, and picked up the new daily fishing quest. It took me to Sholazar which was nice since I got my Frenzyheart dailies done at the same time. I then returned to Dalaran, turned in the quest, and then flew up to Icecrown for the Argent Tourney.
On the Argent Tournament:
Pretty darn cool. I easily breezed through the intro quests, picked up the other dailies, and quickly earned 5 tokens. The quest to obtain 15 tokens will be done on Thursday, so it should be nice to see what opens up after that. Dueling on horseback is pretty sweet and the dailies take you all over Northrend. The only issue we had was after starting the Black Knight quest line and going to Westfall, when we tried to hearth back to Dalaran, the Northrend server was down and I had to call it a night.
On WoWMatrix:
Yesterday, news was released that WowMatrix had been blocked by both Curse and WowInterface. I completely understand the reasoning behind blocking WowMatrix, and, ultimately, it was the right decision to make for both sites, however, the way they handled it was completely wrong. They waited until patch day to block WowMatrix. They had been planning for weeks (if not months) on blocking the application, yet they didn't alert anyone to that fact. They gave no one a chance to prepare for the application breaking. The kept all the end-users in the dark and waited until the worst possible moment for everyone to break a vital application.
Like I said, I understand why they did it. Simple economics. WowMatrix made it so you didn't have to visit Curse or WowInterface to get your addons and they lose income because of that. There is no other reason other than simple $$$. However, again, like I said, the way they broke WowMatrix was despicable. They chose to break the application without providing any viable alternative. The Curse downloader obviously only works on Curse and is quite gimped and installs addons you didn't choose to install. As for WowInterface's updater, well...they don't have one. They'll gladly shut you out of their network, yet provide no alternative. Kudos to you guys.
So they shut down WowMatrix, which was a simple, efficient way to download addons without providing an alternative and they do so on the busiest day of the year. And what happens? Both sites crash or slow to a crawl. Gee, who would have seen that coming? Both Curse and WowInterface reported bandwidth drops of 30% and up, however, both were unable to stay up as people who used WowMatrix flooded their sites looking for updates, and, in most cases, not finding them due to poor search results, slow sites, and outdated addon listings.
On Achievements:
On Monday a few of our regular raiding team got together to do heroic achievements. Still working on that red drake and all...we decided to try the spider lairs, Azjol'Nerub and Ahn'kahet. After repeated wipes on Watch Him Die, we skipped it and proceeded to easily get Hadronox Denied and Gotta Go!. Not too bad. Over in Ahn'kahet, we easily got The Party's Over (Phosphorex had to sit that one out) and Volunteer Work. Respect Your Elders took us two tries, but only because we had a slight healing issue in the main room, but we got it done. Volazj's Quick Demise will have to wait as that is a very tough achievement. I think we'll have to all go in as DPS as I had troubles getting the healer down in the madness portion.
Of course, last night I earned Argent Aspiration and Dual Talent Specialization. I was a little disappointed to see no new achievements outside the Argent Tourney and Noblegarden. There are some smaller ones like for Dual Spec and for the new fishing dailies, but nothing fun like in the last patch. Oh wells, I think the Argent Tourney and upcoming holidays will keep me plenty busy.
On Paladins:
On Monday, I met a fellow blogger in the game after she saw my spam in trade chat. Please take a second and go say hi to Platezilla. She has some very cool updates to read and an awesome story about her death knight Velanora.
Thus ends my rants, tonight, more Argent Tourney fun, and maybe some tries at the Emerald Whelpling out in the Swamp of Sorrows. Oh, and perhaps some manual addon updating since WowMatrix doesn't work :(
In all, other than the time it took them to patch the servers (which didn't matter to me since I wasn't available to play until 9 server), I was impressed with the patch. Most of my addons worked, only a few gave errors, and when I clicked through the errors, they all worked as intended. I started in Dalaran, did the daily cooking quest, and picked up the new daily fishing quest. It took me to Sholazar which was nice since I got my Frenzyheart dailies done at the same time. I then returned to Dalaran, turned in the quest, and then flew up to Icecrown for the Argent Tourney.
On the Argent Tournament:
Pretty darn cool. I easily breezed through the intro quests, picked up the other dailies, and quickly earned 5 tokens. The quest to obtain 15 tokens will be done on Thursday, so it should be nice to see what opens up after that. Dueling on horseback is pretty sweet and the dailies take you all over Northrend. The only issue we had was after starting the Black Knight quest line and going to Westfall, when we tried to hearth back to Dalaran, the Northrend server was down and I had to call it a night.
On WoWMatrix:
Yesterday, news was released that WowMatrix had been blocked by both Curse and WowInterface. I completely understand the reasoning behind blocking WowMatrix, and, ultimately, it was the right decision to make for both sites, however, the way they handled it was completely wrong. They waited until patch day to block WowMatrix. They had been planning for weeks (if not months) on blocking the application, yet they didn't alert anyone to that fact. They gave no one a chance to prepare for the application breaking. The kept all the end-users in the dark and waited until the worst possible moment for everyone to break a vital application.
Like I said, I understand why they did it. Simple economics. WowMatrix made it so you didn't have to visit Curse or WowInterface to get your addons and they lose income because of that. There is no other reason other than simple $$$. However, again, like I said, the way they broke WowMatrix was despicable. They chose to break the application without providing any viable alternative. The Curse downloader obviously only works on Curse and is quite gimped and installs addons you didn't choose to install. As for WowInterface's updater, well...they don't have one. They'll gladly shut you out of their network, yet provide no alternative. Kudos to you guys.
So they shut down WowMatrix, which was a simple, efficient way to download addons without providing an alternative and they do so on the busiest day of the year. And what happens? Both sites crash or slow to a crawl. Gee, who would have seen that coming? Both Curse and WowInterface reported bandwidth drops of 30% and up, however, both were unable to stay up as people who used WowMatrix flooded their sites looking for updates, and, in most cases, not finding them due to poor search results, slow sites, and outdated addon listings.
On Achievements:
On Monday a few of our regular raiding team got together to do heroic achievements. Still working on that red drake and all...we decided to try the spider lairs, Azjol'Nerub and Ahn'kahet. After repeated wipes on Watch Him Die, we skipped it and proceeded to easily get Hadronox Denied and Gotta Go!. Not too bad. Over in Ahn'kahet, we easily got The Party's Over (Phosphorex had to sit that one out) and Volunteer Work. Respect Your Elders took us two tries, but only because we had a slight healing issue in the main room, but we got it done. Volazj's Quick Demise will have to wait as that is a very tough achievement. I think we'll have to all go in as DPS as I had troubles getting the healer down in the madness portion.
Of course, last night I earned Argent Aspiration and Dual Talent Specialization. I was a little disappointed to see no new achievements outside the Argent Tourney and Noblegarden. There are some smaller ones like for Dual Spec and for the new fishing dailies, but nothing fun like in the last patch. Oh wells, I think the Argent Tourney and upcoming holidays will keep me plenty busy.
On Paladins:
On Monday, I met a fellow blogger in the game after she saw my spam in trade chat. Please take a second and go say hi to Platezilla. She has some very cool updates to read and an awesome story about her death knight Velanora.
Thus ends my rants, tonight, more Argent Tourney fun, and maybe some tries at the Emerald Whelpling out in the Swamp of Sorrows. Oh, and perhaps some manual addon updating since WowMatrix doesn't work :(
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