Honor's Code

Today I'm handing over the blog to one of my guildmates, Savvy Mark. I'll be back posting Soon(TM). Without further ado, here's Savvy! Real life effects us all.       Everyone's reasons for playing MMO's is different.  What isn't always obvious when you start is the amount of time that you invest into it.  Not sure how long you've been playing? Type /played on your "main" and you will find some disturbing information.      Now do that with all your toons on all your accounts.  The total can be huge.  But is this a waste of time?  Unfortunately (or fortunately) we have no means of tracking time spent with our televisions in the "on" position.  If you are like me, you turn the TV on when you are in the house (and some sleep with their TV's on).      A little about me, I am an avid gamer going back to the days of the Atari 2600 (1979).  Adventure was my first foray into fantasy game...

I apologize for the lack of updates. Real life has intruded in a big way but last night we had one of those raid nights that you are telling stories about 2 expansions later. Real Life Stuff I was late getting online as we were negotiating to buy a house. Part of the real life stuff that is going on is that we decided to sell our house. It sold really fast. I mean sign in the yard on Wednesday, signed contract to buy the house on Friday. We couldn't really start looking until our place sold. The real estate market in my home town is extremely hot right now and if you put in an offer on a house contingent on selling yours, it will only be accepted if you already have a signed contract on yours. We've been looking for the past month, but with the market so hot, there aren't nearly as many houses on the market as usual. We faced the basic problem of what we could afford near town was either small or in a not so great area. The stuff that was big enough and in decent are...

WoW has been something of a haven for me this past week as my life in the real world has been fairly chaotic. Thursday night, we started on Kromog. After much discussion on Twitter and Maintankadin, we found a suggestion that the first tank on Kromog only take one stack of Warped Armor and then the second tank would pick him up and get two stacks. Then we would rotate as stacks cleared. It was a good plan and with me starting initially, my stacks were cleared by the time the 'hands' phase was over. I only had to remember to taunt him to make sure my co-Tank didn't get his third stack. We still had to deal with three stacks from time to time and we used external cooldowns to help him through. I continued to use "Stupid Paladin Tricks" to avoid the 'rune' phase completely. The first 'rune' phase, when the Runes of Grasping Earth are showing up, make sure you are NOT in a rune. Yes, that's right, don't be in a rune. When Kromog is about ...

Progression. It is like oxygen to the raid guild. Sometimes progression is taking down a new boss, but sometimes progression takes another form as Dirty Casuals learned on Tuesday night. The night started on a positive note as a new Hunter, Savvy Mark, joined the raid. I always think of Jack Sparrow when I see his name, savvy? Mark responded to my recruitment post and it was great to have him aboard. I loved that he played the night as Beast Mastery. When I mained my hunter for a while at the beginning of Cataclysm, Beast Mastery was my favorite spec. I really need to go level that guy again. Ah well, one day. We've anchored ourselves in Blackrock Foundry for a while. The Bosses of Highmaul had begged for mercy. Steel and I took the tanking duties. A one shot of Gruul made for a great start. We headed over to Oregorger already set to four healers. We are getting better about watching how much ore he has already gorged and we moved into position a little faster. The attempt wen...

Sometimes you'll hear a commentator on a baseball talking about how the starting pitcher just doesn't "have their stuff" on a particular day. It must be weird being a profession baseball pitcher and knowing some days you will just not have it. That's sort of how I felt on raid night. I just didn't have it. I don't know if I was tired or what and I was having a little bit of lag. My ping was around 230ms where usually its sub 100ms. That extra quarter second delay made everything feel off. I thought that maybe the lag was caused by the new patch and I turned off as many addons as I could spare as well as the new Twitter integration. That seemed to help a little bit. There wasn't any discussion this time, I simply showed up Prot spec and we went to town. Gruul went down fairly quickly without any heroics needed. We banged our head on Oregorger for a bit. People were really starting to get frustrated. The positioning is so key, especially as everyone ...

The Dirty Casual Nation INFO: We are an Adult GAMING GROUP (18 and up) that is currently recruiting for our Warcraft Branch on Hyjal US Horde Side AND our Twink Guild on Burning Blade Alliance! We play multiple games together, have a closed facebook page, and are currently progressive raiding Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at 9:30pm EST. CONTACT INFO: For More information and easy contact info Tweet us @TDCasuals or go to www.TheDirtyCasuals.com Contact EsmeraldaSky, Kreelix, Byjaxx, Tachinori In game on Hyjal US HORDE for more info!  Apply quickly on the forums to join the gaming group  WHISPER any Guild Member for an invite! WHO ARE WE? We are a gaming group for DIRTY CASUALS! (or dirty casuals disguised as hard-core's or hard-cores disguised as dirty casuals....) WHAT DO WE VALUE? A sense of humor. A sense of community. Gaming with like minded people! RECRUITING: Guild : " DIRTY CASUALS NATION" US, Hyjal Horde Progressive Raid Team : We ar...

This post will cover Gruul, Oregorger, Hans'gor and Franz'gar, Beast Lord Darmac, and Flamebender Kagraz. I'll do another on the other bosses once I get some more experience with them. This is based upon my experiences in Normal Blackrock Foundry. If there's stuff on higher difficulties that would alter the choices I've made here let me know in the comments and I'll edit the entry (and credit you). If you think there are better choices, let me know and we can discuss it. I'm always ready to learn. I also wanted to address the idea of 'its Normal mode, do whatever you want.' We all have our own experiences and its easy to think that our experience is the typical one. It leads to comments like the one I saw on Twitter recently "Oh the ilvl 645 and lower things? Do they even matter?" Yes, they do matter. Plenty of people are still LFR 640 geared or worse and the 645 tokens represent a small or maybe even a large upgrade. In the same way, the...