You know what would be cool? If we could send tweets from inside WoW #

lines moving almost there #

I’m awake, and have started the Coffee transfusion. Unlike @shawncoons, I got 6 hours of sleep #

Tonight, Tanya and I will be helping guild mates get to Dalaran And friends. #

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I just received this email as well as others in my guild.  This is NOT from blizzard.  It is a Phishing attack trying to get you to log into a system which will provide your username and password to them to log in and clean your account out.

The email claims you are trying to sell your account and wants you to log in to verify you own it.  When you follow the link it does not take you to Blizzard but instead to an off shore server where they will capture your information.

Steps to resolve following the email.  It looks like this (URLS have been altered to prevent anyone from linking to them.)

Blizzard@ic04.XXXXXXXX
to gcfsmeagol
show details 9:54 AM (4 hours ago)
Reply
from    Blizzard@ic04.XXXXXXX
reply-to    Blizzard@ic04.XXXXXXXX,
Account@ic04.ic.cz,
“Services <acc”@blizzard.com
to    gcfsmeagol@hotmail.XXXXXXX
date    Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 9:54 AM

subject    Account Notification

Greetings,

It has come to our attention that you are trying to sell/trade your personal World of Warcraft account.
As you may or may not be aware of, this conflicts with the EULA and Terms of Agreement of Blizzard Entertainment and World of Warcraft.
If upon further investigation you are indeed attempting to obtain monetary profit against the terms of the user agreement, your account can and will be disabled. Blizzard has the right to consider legal action if necesarry, based on the severety of the action.

If you hope to avoid account suspention you should verify your personal possession of the account in question.
We at Blizzard Entertainment take infractions of the user agreement quite seriously, and we must confirm the original ownership of the account.

Please Complete the information in  http://worldofwarcraft.XXXXXXXX..XXXXXXXXX/en/manage/loginservice.html this form to verify you are the owner of the account in question.

If you ignore this mail your account can and will be closed permanently due to suspicions of alternative ownership.
We ask that during the time of the investigation you give approximately twenty-four hours of inactivity after sending a response email. This should provide enough time for Blizzard to confirm your identity and that the terms of agreement are being followed as is necesarry.

Blizzard Entertainment Inc
Account Administration Team
P.O. Box 18979, Irvine, CA 92623

Regards,

Account Administration Team
Blizzard Entertainment Inc.

This is NOT from blizzard and is very dangerous. 

If you fell for it please log into the official warcraft account site and change your password right away. If you find you are locked out contact blizzard.  Also report this to blizzard so they can follow up.

For those of my readers who do not know what is happening, well, World of Warcraft is launching its second major expansion tonight.  In the process of getting ready a lot of changes have been made to the game system, a system that I think far to many people take for granted.  You know, the same people who have no idea the work that goes into that Hot Mocha they just ordered at Starbucks.  The same people that if you ask them where milk comes from they will answer, “the store.”

In a game with over 11 million subscribers it becomes a hotbed of whiners and QQers (For those not up on the lingo, just isolate the QQ and tell me what you see.  *smile* )  Not only does Blizzard have to balance the customer support nightmare but they have to make sure things go smooth tonight with the launch. 

Ok, so some hiccups nailed them when they applied whatever implantations of the software server side yesterday.  Ok they spent all day, and even part of today with the servers down to make sure people end up happy.  I would HATE to be in the shoes of the technician who are trying to get things back up.  Especially when EMO kids are complaining.

I had a little spar with someone on the official forums.  I made a simple comment about how I would rather have the down time when it happen than come home from Gamestop tonight, load the game and not be able to enter Northrend.  The reply I got was, and I paraphrase:

“OMG Blizzard SUCKS!.  I pay $14.95 a month to play this game.  I expect my cell phone, cable TV . . . blah blah blah.  to work. . .Blizzard is the worst!”   

I would have laughed but this attitude just struck a raw nerve.  Here is a person, who thinks the world owes them something, complaining because their life is impacted for a short time.  The feeling is that his “INTITLEMENT” gives them the right to make over reaching over generalizations.  And we wont even talk about the laps of common sense.  Ok maybe a little.. . Just that morning our Comcast Cable went out. Had no Internet for the first 6 hours of the day   O.o  IT WAS THE END OF THE WORLD   /slit

But I digress. 

The issue is not that Blizzard has failed.  heh, I dare anyone to show us that they could run things any better.   .  .  . *still waiting*

The issue is that people need to relax, enjoy life, go outside some times, and enjoy what is around them.  Realize that things happen and we just have to deal.  Do we always like it when a storm comes through and knocks out power for 2 days?  Heck no. . But do we look back at the quality time we had with our family when we could not hide in a corner with a T.V. or computer or . . . Oh yea.

So, to all the emo QQ’ers who are going to quit the game over this.  I have one thing to say.

There’s the door. 

*smile*  I know. . mean. . But serious!

And now for those expecting something about the church, after all, I did put it in the title.  Well, just reread the article, replace the word Blizzard with your churches name and wala. . . .

Let’s not be emo QQing noobs anymore!

/rant

Grr, I lied, Turning Rant back on after talking to a guild mate in Gtalk Dori, before posting this.

One thing that REALY disappoints me is that some of the very same people who where yelling the sky was falling and they where going to quit took advantage of a glitch when the servers did come up.

Once servers rolled online apparently you could purchase select PvP gear that used to require a high personal rating.  The price was messed up, most likely from a careless oversight in the rush to restore databases.  So when people found out they did they told Blizzard about it so it could be fixed.  WRONG

The took a virtual ROCK and tossed it through the window of the department store and walked off with the item, all the time justifying it by saying Blizzard sucked and made them wait to get back online.

ARGGG.  Ok. . I’m going to finish now before this becomes a novel on the social ills of idiots.

Love you all. . .its going to be a good day no matter what

Taar asks:

Will I be able to start leveling past 70 at midnight on Thursday, even if I do not have the expansion yet?
- Taar

Nethaera responds:

Unpossible.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/12454631457-level-to-80-without-wotlk.html

Later on in my life I became an avid gamer, as most of you know by now *smile*.  I have to admit my favorite genera of games where war based games.  I spent many years in clan’s that played Day of Defeat, Battle Field 1942 and other mod’s of these games that allowed us to experience what others went through without putting ourselves in harms way.

Some would make the mistake of thinking people who like to play or simulate war campaigns as twisted or sick.  Lovers of war.  But on the contrary.  I am a huge history buff, firmly believing in the old adage that if we do not learn from history we will relive it over and over and over. 

After my grandfather passed away in 2002 I discovered a lot about his part in World War II.  As I was preparing his service I spent time going through his belongings, looking for more clues to use when speaking about him.  My grandmother gave me a box that contained some documents and papers from his service.  Patches, nick knacks, all completely trivial or useless to someone else, but to me . . . it was gold.  It gave me a chance to appreciate my grandfather that much more.  Why?

Because my grandfather was one of the millions of men and women over the past two centuries who put themselves in harms way to secure the rights that we all take for granted. 

I want to take this time today to thank my grandfather, George Delano Hall and all the other men and women past and present who stand to protect us and our way of life, a salute.

Thank you . . .

Related

Big Bear Butt: For All Who Serve This Country, Thank You
Big Red Kitty: Happy Veterans Day

Fixing Bob’s computer. Man its messed up. #

home and playing wow with @tanyanorton, my beloved mage #

I hate Healbot. . It criples good healers #

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We encountered some issues and need to extend the maintenance.  We currently estimate that all realms will be playable by approximately 1:00pm PST.  Thank you for your patience.

I am speculating that we will see the next large pre expansion event.  It only makes since after the popular plague.  I do hope so. . I’m getting bored. . Need more fun story line driven fun.

VOTE!

I FREAKING LOVE PROT PALLADINS AND TANKING AGAIN!!!!!

Blizzards has finally given protection speced paladins the tools needed to do everything we have always dreamed of.  They have given us at least two new talents that have turned the tables on all those old stuck in the mud, this is how it has always been done, warriors out there who say Paladins can tank 5 mans but never a raid. 

One of the bigest concern and arguments used against paladin tanks on larger raids has been that. . you use mana.  A tanking situation is a careful dance of agro managment and mitigation.  In order for a paladin prior to the patch to stay ontop of the threat list he had to do holy damage.  To do holy damage he had to use his skills which would use mana, lot’s and lots of mana.  When you run out of mana you are unable to do your spells and before long that mage in the back starts to overtake your threat.  If you are unfamilure with what happens when a mage, or any other class, over takes your threat on a boss, well, lets just say it looks a lot like the floor.

It was because of the mana issue that many old school raiders would never allow a paladin to tank raid bosses.  To some extent they had a valid point, however, I have seen some fantastic tankadins prior to the patch porve the sceptics wrong. 

So, what to do about mana?  Blizzard answerd our issue with this.  Greater Blessing of Sanctuary

This new spell, which is only in the protection tree, offers a wonderful solution.  What does it do?

1. Reduces damage taken by 3%.  This may not sound like a lot of damage mitigation, but every bit helps, and frankly, this is not the reason it will be the only blessing I use.  This is:
2. Gain 10 rage, 20 runic power, or 2% maximum mana whenever the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack.

O.o  Let me put this in real world terms.  The new guild I am in just did our first Kara run Saturday night.  I seldom had to drink.  When we got to Prince on the roof we had one slight misshap.  Many of our team had NEVER been in Kara and did not know the dance with the enfeble.  We ended up loosing half the raid, BUT, we 5 maned prince and got him in one shot.  I tanked him with only 5 members for more than 3/4 of the fight.  When he died I looked at my mana bar.  It was full! 

This allowed me to keep at least 1K TPS (Threat Per Second) on the boss at all times.  So mana is no longer an issue for a tankadin.  It should also be noted that Warriors, Druids, and Death Knights will also benifit from this blessing when they are off tanking to us paladins. 

The next tool that Blizzard has given us is our 51 point talent *drum roll*

Hammer of the Righteous

Oh how I LOVE this new talent.  This is a new AOE, err. . well 3 target Melee atack that gives the paladin up to 4 times (NOTE, tool tip is being changed to reflect the real 4 times damage with 3.0.4 as I write this) your main hand damage per second as Holy damage. This attack causes HIGH treat. 

Perfect!  What we have always needed!  In normal situations a tankadin would use his Avengers Shield to get a head start on frontloading threat.  Only issue with the old method is a very long cool down on Avengers Shield makeing it nearly useless to climb back on top of the threat list once you started to slip.  With HotR we simply nail the mob every 6 seconds to not only build threat on them, but on the mobs next to them then you are AOE tanking.

I have to admit I am aprensive to write about HotR.  I am so fearful of others crying about it. You see. . I belive this little gem has made the prot spec fun again in more areas than just tanking.  It has helped to increase tankadins over all DPS.

In our Kara run I was 4th on the DPS chart!  I have NEVER been above another DPS class no matter how bad their gear was before patch. It was just not my build or skill set.  Now I am wraking up 2.5K avenger shield pulls, 1.5K to a whopping 3K HotR crit.  Its. . its. . just AMAZING!

And then!  PVP!  OH MY WORD!  Forget how over powered Ret Paladins are in BG’s.  In previous days I would take Val into BG.  I could live a long long time, but kill nothing!  Now. . .Arms and Fury warriors run from Prot Paladins.  Ret Paladins end up screaming WTF when a prot nails them into the ground with HoTR and a few avenger shield tosses.   ITS AMAZING!

In conclusion, (You know, I was taught to never end a message or post like that )  I am so excited to play my tankadin again.  It is so much fun.  We are still having the OH WOW factor.  Just last night we took a 65 fury warrior, and a 66 Enhacment shaman into Underbog.  It was cake.  We planed to do Slave pens as well to get the quest done for them.  We where done in no time.  Tatiaana, my wifes mage, had to go at this point, but Mel, my healer and I said, why not do Steam Vaults.  When all was said and done, even with under level DPS, we did all three colfaing instances in under 2.5 hours!  WOW!  I can not wait to hit Northrend.

Here is to all the protection paladins out in the world.  Education will prevail and we will be given the chance to do what we always knew we could, or always wanted to do.