Wrath's Release Is Imminent

Well that's it, where do we go?

Stick to WAR, continue the leveling process up to 40 and get the gear maxed out until Mythic bring out an expansion?

Back to WoW, return to the addiction of grinding to 80, farming honor/arean points, raiding (in a successful guild for a change) and watch over WAR players running around at half my level?

I have finally ran out of money on my WAR account, just in time to make a quick decision on which I'd prefer to invest in.

I'll look at a few pros and cons...

I'm in a guild where I have some importance in WAR, I'm a Vault Manager, the guild's web designer (even though I'm not that great), I've met some great people already in WAR, I'm enjoying leveling up Thwomp greatly, I'm more into the RvR side rather than PvE aspect of the game.

WoW, I have 3 level 70s, one of them is well geared (in my opinion) and I do have a very vast knowledge of this class in particular, as well as the game in general. Some of the game mechanics for damage mitigation, threat generation, mana regeneration, etc, are not one of my strong points but I have experienced some of the numbers needed to optimize output of these stats. I've spent a good 2 years or so playing WoW, and enjoyed playing from when I first played.

WoW currently lacks what WAR has which benefits players like me greatly. I'm not great with finding groups to run an instance, since I prefer to either be head hunted, or be in the LFG queue and wait an hour or 2 before I am contacted. With the PQ system in place, and open parties, I can contribute to taking BO's, Keep's, etc without having to look for the group myself. It's a huge waste of time in WoW and I never liked it.

I'm not the highest level in WAR yet, not even close, but after a previous post about the Sovereign armor set for Black Orcs, which looks almost impossible to get after reading all of the requirements to get to that stage, it's orientated for a player like me. Even if I wanted to be anti social for many levels, I can still pick up my first armor set by nothing more than grinding to rank 40 and renown rank 37+ or something along them lines.

In fact, after writing this post, I've realised I've already made up my mind.

Thwomp will continue his crusade! I will more than likely not play WoW again until Thwomp is fully clad in full Sovereign and the guild rank is 40! Even then I may decide to level up an alt... or even taste what WAR has to offer on Order's side...

Thank you so much Mythic, you've converted me and I'm deeply proud you have... how many more can you convert?

Yet Another Ding-Fest!

Thwomp hit rank 23! He'll be sitting here now possibly forever, it will depend on if I put more money on the account.

Who am I kidding, I'm putting more money on!

Anyway, here's Thwomp with a ding while killing Skaven in Chaos tier 3 (Talabecland)

He pretty much got straight into Tor Anroc and got renown rank 15...

The Chaos Within guild rank at the moment is getting pretty close to 12, I'm hoping that by the time I net login (hopefully Tuesday or Wednesday if not) it'll be 13 which would hopefully take no time to get the next rank for the next standard unlock!

I also gained (at least) 2 titles last night! obtained from earning 50g in your careers' lifetime and which is obtained from dying (with ink not killing yourself) 25 items

As a bit of comedy to all of this success, here is something I picked up while killing in Talabecland...

Elegant?! What's elegant about a slag?!

Bugged Rank 22 Mastery Tactic

The clue is in the name...

Thwomp hit rank 22 and was ready to pick up some more moves to smash, bosh, crush and... thwack his way to the next rank.

He picked up the big mastery tactic Gork Smash! This tactic increases critical strike chance by 10% when you have Da Gud Plan, and increases you critical strike chance by 20% (not cumulative with the first 10% boooooo!) when you have Da Best Plan. One of the best dps tactics I've seen for a Black Orc!

However (you knew I was going to say that), upon collecting my flashy new tactic, and clicked on train, it appeared to have bugged my tactics...

I'll show you... here are the 2 pages of my tactics...

You should also notice that the train button is greyed out... this proves I pressed the button, but my new 'best' tactic cannot be found!

This appears to be a bug, I didn't log out and log back in to see if that rectified the problem. Chances are this might have been a known bug...

Anyway, Thwomp is rank 22 and is on track for 40 by Christmas!

Hold The Line!

I've been reading up on Hold The Line!

This is one of those abilities of mine that takes up a slot in my action bar, but is just about never clicked on!

Well after having a good inspection of the ability, it appears more useful that I first thought!

It clearly states that you (I) will increase chances to dodge (melee and ranged attacks?) and disrupt by 45% for 12 seconds.

12 seconds isn't that long, and it pretty much drains all of your action points. Read on with me...

You (I) will also defend all allies behind you up to 40 feet away, increasing their chances to dodge and disrupt by 15% as long as they remain at your back.

Allies may have this effect stacked on them up to 3 times.

So... Thwomp runs into battle with all the squishy healers and ranged guys throwing everything at Order, but Order are doing the same, leaving me to charge into melee! I quickly pop Hold The Line! and all of my fellow runts behind me (including the healers keeping me alive) won't be getting minced by all of the Bright Wizards flamey goodness, the Witch Hunters magic bullets or the Archmages... whatever it is they cast. Ok 15% isn't that much, but it's better than nothing right?

What if 3 Black Orcs ran up the field? Each of us would get 45% chance to dodge and disrupt, and as long as all 3 of us were close enough to the runts, they would get 45% too!

Hang on... am I reading it right?

Is it possible that 4 Black Orcs (Thwomp being one of them) run in, I stop slighty before them, they all pop Hold The Line! buffing me with 45% chance to dodge/disrupt for being behind them, and then I pop Hold The Line! to make me have 90% chance to dodge/disrupt?

Although Hold The Line! seems like a great ability when getting stormed or fighting a really immensley hard boss, it's not particularly that good for holding agro or dealing any damage back, since all you will be doing is Auto-Attack...

With everything said, is Hold The Line! really worth it? Can't it have a large cooldown, cost a set amount of AP but continue to have the same effects? Much like (I dread to say this) the Shield Wall ability for a Warrior in WoW? Although it won't be used very often, but it provides excellent protection for yourself and all the runts, which would make me use it more than 'never'.

The Great Talisman Crafter

Talisman crafting, also known in WoW as Jewel crafting. In fact, it's pretty much exactly the same!

I've been looking for a decent Talisman Making guide, but I = fail!

Although I've scouted one that will greatly help me out (and others) with understanding the basics of the Talisman Making mechanics(if it can be said like that).

To craft a talisman (or a 'socketable' gem), you need a few items, to start, you will need your container. I have no idea where to get these from, as a guess, I'd say head over to a merchant, they have all sorts of stuff for Apothecary, so surely they must have a starting container. You'll next need something called a fragment.

Fragments can be obtained by Salvaging (a gathering trade skill) a magical item. Fortunately I have picked up Salvaging and Talisman Making on Larlas, so he should be self sufficient.

Other ingredients like Gold Essences and Magical Essences help enhance (increase stats) or stabalize (decrease the chance of failing the creation) the talisman. The guide that I got most of this information from is listed in 2 parts, part 1 and part 2.

I have also added http://warhammeronlineleveling.blogspot.com to the blogroll since it's a pretty handy one to keep referring to.

A Suitable Surname

I only found out recently that you can have a surname! That's a great idea, but what if you pick the wrong one?

Well I'm learning new things about Mythic's top product all the time! WAR has some fantastic features and a surname is a great idea!

Think of a recent post about guild colours... why have guild colours when you can all unite under one surname? Well a number of reasons... lets have a look and find out.

Firstly not everyone will want to have the same name as other people? Well that's fair enough, but seriously, what's the problem with it? People will be able to refer to a surname when complimenting or complaining about or something like that. Although, when they say... 'it ended in something like chaoswithin' which wouldn't be any help since all members will be named the same.

Guild colours would be a better idea in my opinion, since we would be noticed by the similar colours, and it would look a lot smarter than a bunch of yobbos in mismatch coloured gear. Thinking about it again though, some complete retard can colour his gear the same, just to pretend to be in the guild, but they can do the same with a surname I guess.

I can imagine that all members would turn their nose up if they had to pay it themself, but keeping prices in mind, a surname would be 4g per member, whereas it could be 2g per full colouring per member, which although right now it seems hands down that colours would be cheaper, gear can be upgraded and so will need recolouring, which eventually can turn out to be considerably expensive.

I can only see the guild paying for the first paint job and the player has to pay for it afterwards, but it could also turn out that the guild will pay if (for example) it colours more than 4 items.

With the guild tax, surely it would be more appropriate for the guild to pay it all the time, since it's almost like a payment for paying your guild tax?

So which would it be, a guild surname, guild colours, both or neither?

I Smash Yer Face In Now!

Thwomp is getting stronger and stronger. He's rank 21, but more importantly than that, he can now kill faster...

He completed the greenskin chapter 10 PQ and picked up a meaty 2h axe! something like 42 dps instead of a 1h axe with just under 20 dps.

Ok I don't have as much survivability now without my shield, but I'm able to grind through mobs faster, if I can do this to less mobs at a time then I'll either have the same downtime, or maybe less.

Using a 2h weapon limits my actions I'm able to use now, it used to be a nice big rotation of: -

1. Open with Wot Armor?, Big Slash, Savin' Me Hide
2. Follow 'Me Lead (with 'Ave Another One tactic), Trip 'Em Up, Skull Thumper
3. Wot Armor?, Tuffer 'N Nails, Skull Thumper
4. Start again with #1

Occasionally I'd mix it up a bit if Big Slash was on cooldown, or I lose my plans (why does that happen?) or I'm in a different situation that I will need to react to or I'll suffer, for example, I have 3 mobs on the go, and allof a sudden, 2 mob join up... I'll quickly get my defensive buffs up as fast as possible, Tuffer 'N Nails, Savin' Me Hide, and also throw in Right In Da Jibblies just to help my avoidance a little more.

However now all I seem to be doing is Wot Armor?, Big Slash (or Trip 'Em Up), Skull Thumper (or Da Big 'Un if I'm fighting more than one mob)... I very rarely use Savin' Me Hide now unless I pull 3 mobs, but then again, now that I'm using Da Big 'Un which causes less damage than Skull Thumper but hits a lot of mobs in my view that forces me to use Savin' Me Hide in the following rotation since I occasionally get another 2 mobs.

I Gotz Me Big Pig!

Thwomp did it last night! He's rank 20 and mounted on his boar! I'm going to call him Pigsy!

Here's some shots of Thwomp hitting rank 20 and Thwomp and Pigsy together...

Here's me thinking that a mount costed 20g when here is the reality!

"I gotz me big pig!"

It looks as if the guild have made some progress as well, we now have Guild Rank 10! And not only that, we're halfway to getting Guild Rank 11! Which means more space in the guild vault!

I've been doing a lot of scenarios last night, why though was I jumping into Talabec Dam and Tor Anroc when I was only 19? I must have been a bit mad. Then again, any way of getting the last 10k xp for level 20 is better than questing in Dark Elf lands... I'm not looking forward to going there in tier 3

Latest XCM Moves

I've not had much practice with the deck since my last post about being able to fan (not that greatly though)

I have actually been able to perform a one handed single cut called a Charlier... why Charlier and not Charlie or whatever I have no idea... I'm quite good at it, but it's still a bit harder with a full deck.

I have tried out a new move today, it's called the hot shot! You perform a Charlier cut, then a single card flies out of the deck into the other hand...

Sounds impossible right? But look at this and you will understand that it can be done without a fixed deck. I even showed this move to a colleague at work, he could do nothing but sit and smile...

Anyway, it's really coming along now, I'm picking up some pretty cool cuts, and I'm really enjoying it. I never realised I'd get so into it! Then again, it is something I've wanted to be doing for quite a few years now.

I'm looking at doing something called a Revolution, basically spin a 'packet' in one hand or a few fingers, along with other smart moves like Buckeye.

Anyway, I thought I best post the latest.

A Very Annoying Quest!

Since I do not have as much time as others playing WAR, I have been quickly logging in during the mornings before I head off to work.

The past few morning attempts at doing a quest called Heroes' End

Now I know I added the link to http://www.wardb.com/, but I've been extremely good for not 'cheating' and finding out how to do it using a spoiler...

I've killed Lithia (the first part of the quest) on the first attempt... but there are 3 big tents around where she is, and a smaller tent behind them.

I need to place her head on the 'Planning Desk' in the 'Command Tent', well the only tent that stands out from the others is the smaller tent... but why would that be the command tent?

I've noticed that the greenskin and chaos quests seem to be very enjoyable and at times simple. I don't want every quest to be simple, since I don't want every other player able to solo most of the quests (like I can). Champions are the biggest problem for me, but because I can take them on, they aren't even a threat anymore (unless they have about 4 other weedy mobs with them or are a much higher level than me!).

The Dark Elves quests are (excuse my language) sh*t! When I first arrived in Shadowlands, the quest givers were sending me all over the place for minimal xp for the area! Not only that I spent probably an hour finding things for certain quests!

I'll be glad when I'm out of Ellyrion... it's just as bad as Shadowlands, and it's the location where this Heroes' End quest is...

Guild Colours

A guild has it's obvious nameplate sitting under a players name, but what other things make a guild stand out?

The heraldry, you can have your guild's emblem in your cloak (can it be anywhere other than that?) which could define your guild when you see their back to you... but what else?

Guild colours crossed my mind. Although colours don't necessarily mean you belong to a guild as much as the heraldry emblem and actual guild nameplate above you, but isn't it nice to see a group of cheerleaders all dressed in the same outfit doing the same together?

Can the same be done with a guild in WAR? Would a guild not take a member who isn't wearing the colours of the guild into ORvR to be a recognised guild member?

Which colours would be the ones that stood out on the server? Could Thwomp be bearing the colours of the leaders? If anything, I'd want the colours of Chaos Within to be White/Yellow like Thwomp's currently is.

The only problem with the cloak on Thwomp, is that some random player (who was extremely kind and I owe you for Thwomp's great uniform now) gave it to me, I have no idea where to get them from. Anyway, the cloak was pure white, not the 'dyed white' (or is it called chainmail?) that the vendors can do. The cloak is the standard white with the yellow (or gold) around the edge to go with the rest of his gear.

How difficult is it to find these white cloaks?

Black Orc Guide

I thought I'd quickly post this before I finish work today.

I found this really great post on http://warhammeronlineleveling.blogspot.com and I'm quite impressed!

But this is the post which has all the info about being a Black Orc and the best abilities and stuff.

Well worth a read!

WAR Dropout

I've been adding other blogs to the blogroll, and I have been using some of them from The Greenskin website, since that place is trusted and a top place to be!

I was about to add one called Bloghammer, until I read this recent post!

This is similar to how I felt about trying WAR, but now that I've started playing it, I'm more hooked on this than I was with WoW!

Ok I'm not the best player in WoW, as mentioned in a previous post, but I've found the game is repetative when compared to WAR. I've leveled 3 characters to 70... I am losing or have completely lost the motivation to pay the funds for WoW only to be in a similar situation as I am now.

WAR is new, Mythic have a lot to live up to with Blizzards huge game having such a massive impact. But Blizzard aren't delivering for me. One of my favourite battlegrounds was Alterac Valley. It was only a few months ago that Blizzard decided to move the Horde starting place back to balance it out... only 3 years to do that!!! That is extremely slack! At least Mythic are releasing fixes fast, and they offer a game that I've been looking for.

I'll go back to the WAR dropout...

He played WoW longer than me... 4 years is a long time to throw away on another game. I will almost definately not be doing the same.

Corporeal Mistake!

I posted previously that I was told about Corporeal Resistance being the resistance against physical attacks... for a tank, that is a must have stat!

To my horror, while busy sorting out my bank on Larlas (Zealot if you forgot) I had my mouse hovering over one of his spells... it caught my eye... the word Corporeal pointed out that I was mistaken!

So let me get this straight, a Shaman deals Elemental damage, a Sorceress/Sorcerer deals Spiritual and a Zealot deals Corporeal damage?

Do some casting careers have more than one school of magic? For example, you stumble across a mob with high resistance to Elemental spells, so you instead cast Spiritual spells to wittle them down?

I logged in on Thwomp quickly to see how the guild were doing with leveling. Squig is 20, which clearly points out I'm already falling behind. They'll be taking on tier 3 while I'm lagging back in tier 2! I'll pass on the guild signups for ORvR so I can grind the levels to catch up... but will they be able to proceed without a tank? Some attempts on the champions in Friday's warband had me sitting idle while I was on the phone with the rest doing what they do best.

Will I be missed? Will I be left behind and they find another guild tank to run ORvR with them?

I must step up the pace! I need to be strong and get a few levels over the others, just to allow for slack times like what I'm going through at the moment, along with me having little time to game next week!

Gear Increasing Levels

I have been reading my favourite Warhammer blog The Greenskin, and I've just read about the 'gear treadmill' (as Snafzg says). If I had enough time to devote to both leveling and RvR, I'd be blown away to see Thwomp sporting the Sovereign set which requires all of the previous gear but also rank 40 and renown rank 73 (at a minimum), at the time of this posting, he is rank 18 and renown rank 11. He's got a long way to go.

Thwomp is a beast in his current gear... but if he could get his hands on the sovereign set... I'd be ecstatic each time I logged in.
This is what an orc tank should look like!

Gearing up is something I've never really been up for in my experience of MMO's. My first experience of MMO's was Runescape... yes, laugh at me, I know you want to. I leveled to be a mage for a number of reasons. Firstly since it was the easiest way to get around the game teleporting and portaling others, but the problem with it was I was not set to be a 'Pure'.

A Pure was someone who was geared and skilled for PKing (player killing). They would outclass any other player who was maybe 5 levels above them which had a varing choice of combat specialties such as Attack, Defence, Magic and Prayer. I created my character (Cunning Git) in the hopes that I would be one of the highest rated mages in the game.

Who could ever be better than the legendary Zezima?

Zezima was one account, one character, and possibly 6 people playing. I knew the true best player in Runescape. Sadly he died. 'The Old Nite' was a great guy, I met him once (ingame) to do business.

My gear in Runescape was nothing special, I had rubbish gear for long periods of time. ocasionally daring the wilderness to get to the Mage Arena in deep level 55+ wilderness. Once I had 230k gold while running up to the Mage Arena to buy runes to further my Magic level. I stumbled upon a clan just outside the entrance. I could do nothing, they slaughtered me, mages binded me while rangers shot me down. It was at this point that I became less interested in Runescape.

I devoted a lot of time on my recent MMO choice, World of Warcraft. I have a Rogue, Warlock and Druid at 70. Both the Druid and Rogue are poorly geared, either Karazhan gear or lower. Wakeofdeath, my Warlock that I grew attached to as mentioned in one of my first posts is taking a time out from gaming. Wake has respectable gear for entering Karazhan and Gruul's Lair, it's entirely possible that he could perform well in Tempest Keep and Serpent Shrine Cavern.

Would my guild take me there? No... so I left the guild and have been working on my PvP gear, which isn't really that great, but who cares when it' going to be replaced in a few weeks. Who cares if Wake doesn't return to WoW?

We come to WAR... I've spent my time at work, creating and editing the guild website. I've started and enjoy writing this blog. I love playing the game. I love playing alongside my guildmates in WAR. Why should I be bothered if I never see Thwomp wearing the Sovereign set? Why should I be bothered if Thwomp isn't the toughest tank in the game? I'm not playnig it to be the best! I'm not playing it to laugh at players less geared than me. I'm not playing it to pass the time until another MMO comes out.

I'm hooked... I admit it... Why should I look for anything other than WAR?

I play WAR cause it's a fantastic game, I'd be more than happy to be sitting at level 40, renown rank 45 and equiped with full Conquerer (or the Black Orc equivalent).

Friday Open RvR

Friday night was fantastic! Plenty of Open RvR! The night started out with a half warband meeting at Barak Varr warcamp to assault the keep and take control. Unfortunately we met resistance.

It started out as one bright wizard trying to harrass us and turned into a mini warband of Order killing us while we tried to take on the champions. Even with us taking on the Hero and 2 champions at the same time... we were at this for about an hour, maybe longer. We did get close to killing the hero at one stage, but a healer agro'd and ran back to the ledge causing a reset... I do believe that he was not a guild member.

After stacking up 5x battle fatigue making me go to pretty much below 2000 health, I decided I'm not going any further. I disbanded, and soon the rest of the warband gave up. Squig invited me to a group and started organising a global tier 2 takeover! Squig was kind enough to get plenty of photos of us taking the BO's...

Thanks for all the members of Chaos Within that took part: -

• Myself
• Squig especially for starting the group
• Aedronil for the lovely heals
• Effyr (who joined Chaos Within during one of the takeovers from Alpha Legion)
• Gorssen
• Kaboela
• Thanks also to Toocs (The Darkside), Marena (Unholy Legion), Sarkath (Unholy Legion), Lazareth and Sinate (not sure of guild names)

I'll be looking forward to more ORvR with these guys and maybe we can take some keeps!

I have created myself a new character, 3 big reasons why. Larlas (his name) is a Zealot, and my goodness does he enjoy healing in scenarios. He has picked up salvaging and talisman making so i can craft my own talismans for any characters I use and the guild (if he gets good enough for that). Most importantly, Larlas was created to be a bigger bank for Thwomp!

Thwomp is starting to pick up so much with his scavenging that I'm commonly leaving items behind, having to destroy useless items or potions to allow for room, or having to go find a merchant to sell sell sell!

Being an Apothecary stinks at the moment, my scavenging is getting close to 100, but my apothecary is 31... it took 15 potions to get from 30 to 31... I'm not spending time and money to increase it up to 50! Maybe it's the low level items I'm using from the merchant? I've picked up about 100 waters for level 50 use, which have been sent over to Larlas along with plenty of other main ingredients.

I'm well over my 20g budget for my mount at level 20.

I was quite slack on Friday if I'm going to be honest, I probably spent too much time devoted to ORvR instead of getting Thwomp to level 20, or 19 at least.

This week is a bad one for me. The girlfriend has the week off and wants me to spend as much time with her as possible. I can only be online for Wednesday and Thursday, this is until Monday the following week! Even then I'll only be able to play that Monday and Wednesday...

Let's hope that the guild and my fellow RvR group don't get too far ahead of me with leveling.

Thanks again to Squig for getting the pictures of us in action, I hope we see some more. I'll be putting all of the photos on the guild website and hopefully do a little more work on the site.

The Chaos Within Website

I've had some thoughts on this, and they are good thoughts. http://the-chaos-within.webs.com/ also has it's own email incase anyone wishes to leave feedback privately about a member of The Chaos Within, the website itself, or any suggestions to put up onto the website or guild info in-game.

On the website is a photo gallery, and I'm not 100% sure how much space we have to store images and stuff. The Chaos Within email will be like an archive of images, each character will have their own folder, and images will be emailed to this account and when an admin is available, they can upload these images to the photo gallery on the website.

The Chaos Within email address is... the-chaos-within @ live.co .uk (spaced out to avoid email bots)

This will (hopefully) be in the guild info in-game and on the website, should it all be approved.

Are there any other guild bloggers? Or bloggers on Karak-Norn that wish to add me to their blogroll to help me get some more traffic?

The Chaos Within Grows...

Thwomp reached a big rank 18 last night! And to celebrate, I customed Thwomp's gear so that it's not just white, but now white and yellow...

Here is Thwomp giving us a ferocious RAWR!!!

Here's another one from a slightly different angle and performing Da Biggest war bellow...

I was quite surprised while playing last night, Fjorten offered me the title of Vault Manager in the guild, with me being someone he can trust... well the only time I've spoke to Fjorten was when he invited me into the guild... how could I have been so foolish, Fjorten is my Squig Herding greenskin hunting partner also known as Squigboss.

Not long before it was getting late and people were heading off to bed, I was having a bit of a think, is there a guild website? After asking, I was told that there isn't one yet and that Fjorten (I'll call him Squig from now on since I'll probably be referring to him in future posts) had forgotten the codes to create one, so I offered... and here is my first attempt http://the-chaos-within.webs.com/ it's not great of course, but it's just to see the reaction of Squig and the rest of the guild. If they like it, great, I'll continue. If it needs a tweak in major areas, fine, I'll stick with it, if they don't like it, well... they can do it themselves right?

Anyway, as Vault Manager, one of my duties is to organize the guild vault. Unfortunately, we are only guild rank 9, so we only have 1 tab available to us. If we can get guild rank 11 iirc, we get a second tab to use, but the third is a long way to get.

I mentioned in a previous post whether I would be able to get my 20g for my mount at level 20 before I get to that level of course...

This might answer that...

In fact, I seem to remember me checking before I logged out last night, I'm sure it was 24g...

XCM And Chaos Within Activity

I'm impressing myself how quick I'm picking up these flourishes using a deck of cards. I'm now getting the hang of fanning half a deck (which is what I've been using now for all flourishes for practice). I'm still using an old deck so it sticks very often and leaves gaps and stacks in various places frequently. This is not to my dismay... I'm still determined to perform a fan using this dirty sided old deck...

I'm not doing too bad... here's one I've quickly whipped out... ... ... Well I was going to add it on here... but for some strange reason, my computer can't recognise my phone... when it did it about 10 minutes ago with the image of the cards in this post...

(edit: image now added)

Anyway... I'm picking up the fan (which I will post when I get chance, if it works)... but thats enough ofmy newest hobby.

Thwomp is now rank 16! He hit the magic number of 15 in the Phoenix Gate scenario with a group of guildies... those guys were great to battle alongside... I must say I wasn't at my best in the battles, but I did what I could and killed my fair share of Order scum!

While I was with these great guys, and I should mention Squigboss, I changed the colour of my armorset to white! I'm sure any female WAR players on Karak-Norn Destruction would love me as their Knight In Shinin' Arma' since white is kinda shiny...?

Tonight's project... finish up the quests I currently have in Chaos T2 and head over to Dark Elf T2 for my last push towards getting my mount! Ooo I must get a screenie of my cash at the moment, I'm sure I'm close to 20g now... maybe even 15g... image should hopefully arrive tomorrow.

Till then... TARA MUSH!

Update

Today's post will entail plenty of gubbins and stuff that Thwomp has been getting himself into along with a few things about what I have been up to.

Let's start off with Thwomp.

Thwomp has been a bit mad with the leveling, he progressed up to 14! But I don't have the screenshot of it at the moment (it's on my computer at home). However I do have a shot of him at level 12...
This gave me my first tactic also... Thwomp is making big steps right now at becoming a full blown killing tank!

The shot of rank 12 is in early content of greenskin tier 2, the next shot is me collecting my rewards of the local public quest, and boy oh boy did I enjoy smashing all them stunties!

Not only was this an upgrade from my shocking shoulders from before, but they were my first blue item! And here they are equiped...

I'm still bearing the rank 2 shield in the picture... even as level 14 I'm still using... but there have been some PQ's that I'm sure I've seen a nice flashy new one...

Thwomp has been a bit of a busy bee lately, before all of this happened he did some hardcore high elf killing, and picked up the ToK unlock. after completing the PQ to pick up his first blue (shoulders), he also got the 'Kill 100 Dwarves' which I'm quite pleased about!

As I said earlier, Thwomp is now rank 14, renown rank 8 (I think) and sporting a nice (blue) one hand axe! I'm still on the lookout for a new shield since I'm still carrying around my rank 2 Recroot Chopstoppa (I'm sure it's called that).

A level 20 something Chosen called something like Fjorten invited me to my first WAR guild Chaos Within. I had the usual pleasant welcome, and everyone seems like friendly people, which is what you want in a leveling guild right?

I had only found out on monday from the guild that Corporeal Resistance is resistance against physical damage... so I'm a tank... and I have plenty of Elemental Resistance, and Spiritual Resistance thinking that there can't be many spells that deal Corporeal damage... so I have very little... if only I knew then what I know now, my choices of accessories would be stacking more Corp than Ele and Spirit Resist. I take it that Corporeal Resistance is similar to WoW's Resilience Rating except, it works on PvE? Or doesn't it work on that?

I'll move onto something out of WAR...

I have found a new hobby! Card Manipulation. Being able to control a deck of cards and performing flourishes that appear impossible or extremely difficult without a fixed deck of cards.

Well i've been having a look at some tutorials on YouTube, and I'm starting to pick it up already! I've only really had about 2 or 3 hours of practice, but I'm performing some swift cuts and I'm picking up something called a 'Sybil Cut'... it looks smart if I could execute is quicker, but I'm not that great yet. Practice makes perfect as they say!

Hacked Off!

I'm pretty pissed off now... I had a huge post that I've been adding to all day. For some reason... probably blogger devs are retarded, I had two of the same post in my 'edit posts' page. Well I deleted one without checking it... there should be some form of backup...

basically it's all gone... I'll have to do it monday now... cause I can't be arsed with rushing it in now and risking the same thing happening again when I come back to publishing it.

Long story cut short, Thwomp is rank 12, got his first blue item, got some decent tome entries, and other screenies... oh well...

Monday I'll hopefully publish this post...

Thwomp Continues To Go On A Rampage

Thwomp went a bit mad for it last night, he hacked and slashed and bashed and crashed his way through a few more ranks, he's now rank 10! He entered his first scenario as well last night, bagging me some nice xp from Green-Faced Killa and Gates of Ekrund quests along with possibly another one that I can't remember.

I was quite shocked in the scenario how good I played, it took more than a few people (with a healer) to take me down for my first death, but after seeing Thwomp take a bit of a beating, some Zealot (can't remember the name, but cudos to that player) must have clicked and noticed I was short of heals. That guy was great, he followed me like a bad smell, I died about 4 times in the whole battle...

Desctruction won, something like 500 - 250ish, and I was well up there with the top damage, something like 7th overall out of like 25, and I think 3rd or 4th from destruction... that was with a sword&board!

I traveled to Nordland and spent a fair bit of time questing there, it was quite fun, but I did prefer my greenskin quests. I stumbled across the entrance to greenskin T2, my my my... enemies ranked 11 and 12 everywhere and I was only 9... or... was I?

Anyway, rank 10, renown rank 5 I think, loving the initial choice of career I chose.

I gained my first entry with the title of 'Victim' in the Tome of Knowledge... A high elf and a dwarf were wandering through some orc place (near the passage of rite with all the spiders in between Ekrund and Mount Bloodhorn), they were killing fellow orcy guards... well i'm not bloody having it! I ran towards them giving them emotes and all sorts! Then, the elf flagged himself for RvR, and you can bet your arse I gave him some clicking! The dwarf joined in, but didn't do much... why did a lonely rank 9 (at the time) black orc try and jump a rank 10 high elf healer type thing and a rank 10 tank type dwarf?

Sod it! It was my first taste of open RvR, these punks were going down... unfortunately, my damage couldn't take out the elf, even after my morale ability, tripping him up, taunting, skull thumping, and all that shabang! At half health I tried making a break for it... 'Dey iz arda!' I screamed as I hit the Flee ability and ran up the hill back to my orc buddies, but I got snared, I was walking up the hill! NOOOOOO!!!!! The elf polished me off, but trust me... I'll kill more than my fair share of elves, and I don't care what they throw at me, spells, arrows or blade!

I'll be finishing off rank 10 and getting some scenarios entered and won!

'Ere we go! 'Ere we go! 'Ere we go!

Destruction Over Order And WAR Over WoW?

I've recently added the Video Bar, although being as pitiful as expected, it has made me watch the cinematic trailer again for Warhammer Online. My god the forces of destruction own!

In a fairly recent post by The Greenskin, is it the trailer that has incorporated the results of how imbalanced the forces are between the two?

If Chaos were a playable character in WoW, I'd have most likely been playing on the Horde instead of Alliance, but WoW is in many ways different from WAR.

Anyway, the imbalance between the two forces means that more people will be going for destruction causing further imbalance. I however have made a bit of a tactical choice when creating Thwomp. Thwomp resides on Karak-Norn EU, and two reasons would come to this... Karak-Hirn (where my cousin's Chosen and friends Black Orc are) was the place I wanted to be, but after logging in and seeing an 18 hour queue (yes 18 hours!!) I wanted to go elsewhere to play. Also I decided to choose a server that didn't have too many forces on either side (at the time). Karak-Norn was one of these, another bonus about Karak-Norn was that order players were getting an experience and renown boost... so that would look like more nooblet players would be joining there just to get the fast xp/renown which is easy killings for a big bad black orc like Thwomp!

WAR in my opinion, has massive potential, as mentioned in a few blogs I've read recently, Mythic listen to the community, unlike Blizzard... then again, the difference in player numbers of something around 750k WAR players to 5m+ WoW players which would denote that Blizzard care nothing more than to make something for the community and ignore everything they suggest / comment on / complain about / request / etc just to get all the cash rolling in.

Is there a blog or a site somewhere out there in the great wide web that holds the info on each mastery path for each career in WAR? Seems as that is a major 'out of game' difference between the two. WoW even has websites that allow you to make your own talent tree, completely imbalancing that class or editing current talent trees in place, this would include war-tools but there are many sites out there.

But why WAR and not WoW for me? Well Wrath of the Lich King is released on 13/11/08 that means I have about a month to wait, well I'm not wasting my time grinding honor, raiding, etc just so that in about 3 - 4 levels I will have replaced all of my epics for lowly looking 'greens'...
things like...



Besides, I've been a bit of a fan of TT warhammer for years on and off of course (that much on and off, I have a case full of about 1500 pts of lizardmen undercoated and have been there for over a year) and I just wanted to 'try' the game... now that I've got past the annoying part of installing the game and setting up my account which was an absolute nightmare to do, it looks extremely promising that I willl be putting my monthly 'gaming allowance' on WAR rather that WoW.

Oh well, it's just gone 3pm and that means I can go home soon and fire up the beast and get me some quality time killing and 'smashin stunties' and the likes.

Peace out home slice!

Layouts, Templates, Skins

I've spent a little bit of time looking at custom layouts for Blogger blogs. Some caught my eye more than others, but to find a Warhammer one... is like 'looking for chicken's teeth'... it just doesn't exist!

There must be someone out there... some boffin, who can bash together a few images, gadgets, etc like they have done for MySpace and other profile websites and make a Warhammer one...

Warhammer has been out for... well, longer than I have lived... something like 25 years or so, MySpace has been around for 10 years at most? But people (as stated above) are bashing out layouts of Grannies, Cars, Pets, Babes, Hunks, Dinosaurs, etc. Basically you can search for anything... however, when searching for 'Blogger' layouts, Google pretty much laughs at the word 'Warhammer'...

Now I'm not changing my search engine from Google, simply by the things it isn't showing me, since all search engines would do the same afaik.

On a new note in this post, that would be the first time I have ever used the acronym afaik (as far as I know). It took me months to work it out with people saying it on WoW. I didn't want to sound like a complete noob (and that I'm not in with the crowd) and ask what it meant.

Anyway, this is just another 'Frustration' I'm currently riddled with, off now to look at YouTube items to add... or maybe possibly if unsuccessful with that... a new site to unleash my thoughts and tell the tale of Thwomp... after all, it was Thwomp that helped me into this blogging malarky

Frustration!

Right! That's it then! I'm not the brightest spark there is, but come on... how the hell do you make a damn slideshow on this blog?!

I've spent well over an hour trying to get one to bloody work... photobucket, picasa, it's all a pile of bull to be honest...

From what can be seen now, is a slideshow (yet to be renamed due to deletion's approach soon) sat on the side with 'feed could not be loaded'...

Well pull your finger out of your arse and load it!!! I made the stupid mistake of trying to load from photobucket, in the end the popup for adding a slideshow had some sort of script error and crashed... 'do I wish to continue'... well what the hell do you think... obviously I look like I have all the time in the world to sit watching paint dry...

This blog idea... where/who did I get it from? *flashbacks* somewhere I was reading about leveling slowly in Warhammer so I could enjoy it more 'create a blog' was one of the things they said... well I would if the bloody thing would work the way I want it to!!!

For now... I'm more than annoyed... so I'll just post a new rank from time to time. Here's Thwomp finishing his first quest in Dark Elf lands (Blighted Isle?) and got a ding

Bye Bye IE8 Beta

I've had Internet Explorer 6.x for many years on pretty much every computer I've had since prehistoric windows 98 where it was most likely IE 5.x

Upon the release of IE7, people were doing the windows update and installing the crappy thing on all computers everywhere... at work, at the missus's, at home, at friends, etc... all except mine... IE7 was nothing special, riddled with bugs, unfixable issues, frequent crashes... you get the idea...

Anyway, a long time has passed since IE7 was introduced, and about 6 weeks ago, there was an introduction to IE8 beta, so I thought I'd head on over to good old microsoft.com and test it out for a bit, see if it was worth a crack...

Well after a 6 week period, I'm glad to see the back of it... uninstalled, removed, gone, BANISHED from my computer. I know it's still in beta, it'll be fine when it's finally released, but to view almost every page in whats called 'compatibility view' is just ludacris...

Now I'm back to IE6, I'm more than tempted to install IE7 due to the similar looking interface, but is IE7 really all that?

Boredom Sets In

Stuck in work, doing nothing more than browsing others blogs. The Greenskin is definately one of my favourite reads! I have enjoyed the comics from there also, but there are other sites around, what was that one called... something like Book of Grudges *checks history* yes it was http://bookofgrudges.wordpress.com/ I particularly feel for this poor person not having the internet for 2 weeks... I'm also an addict, I couldn't last without it...

Quote from Hawley's most recent post:-
I’ve not had broadband for two weeks.
And I’m here to say that yes, I am an addict.

There are plenty of links on the blogroll on that site (which I may have to link to as they are great reads), but one that caught my eye was Save Da Runts! It sounded like a funny blog to digest, and I happened to stumble across this post which is absolutely fantastic for any healer. I will be returning to see the 10 Tip From A Healer To Tanks post, anyway, here's 10 Tips From A Tank To Healers.

Wake Sits And Has A Cuppa

As mentioned in my previous post, I'm a bit of a WoW player... for those interested, I'm a dirty fiendish Gnome Warlock on Kazzak EU named Wakeofdeath.

It is a pretty crappy name, but I couldn't think of anything at the time of creation, and with my unfortunate bank balance due to buying christmas gifts early this year I can't really afford a single penny towards the renaming charge...

With me struggling for cash, i've also not got the cash spare to pay for a WoW account as well as a WAR account... I've got WotLK on preorder, and I'm looking forward to the grind to 80, but i wanted to experience WAR before it's release, after all, there's about a month left til then.

My WoW account has been frozen temporarily, depending on how WAR goes, it might not become active for more than a month.

Best to see how the cash fairs up also. It's definately not over for Wake, he'll return and ruin Northrend!

Thwomp Enters The World

And so Thwomp began his great journey through the world of Warhammer (I can't remember what it's called at the moment... very much a bad start wouldn't you say?). Why did I pick an orc, well they look 'ard as nails and I like the fact that I can run in, do some damage while receiving almost no damage.

Anyway, Thwomp tasted his first kill last night (I wish I had a screenie of it). After having waited 3 days before being able to play it, due to installation/patching time, server downtime, girlfriend attention. Thwomp has quickly gained rank 7... with each rank (obviously not rank 1) saved as a screenie (for my own viewing really, but just to see how he progresses), and this will continue up to 40 (and beyond if then)

While this is my first entry, I do apologise if I am droning on, never wrote a blog before, never really knew what one was for years!

Things coming up soon will include...
- Blogroll (or something similar)
- Screenshots of Thwomp in action
- Some references to Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King (as i'm a player of TBC WoW)
- Others (keep your eyes peeled!)

How do they say...? Chow for now? Or should it be 'ciao'?