When in doubt, mount.

LOTS of mounting going on around in my neck of the woods lately.

Washed away the dreary malaise of level 76 and pushed through the Zul'drak main quests. Glad I did so, since I got to ride a storm giant in the end. That was pretty freakin sweet.

Hit 77 and flew back up to K3, where I found to my surprise that a kind goblin was willing to give me a Loaned Wind Rider while I saved up enough to buy my Cold Weather Flying Skill.
It flies at 60% speed and operates like a vehicle, but it was an incredibly nice surpise all the same. Did a bunch of quests for the Goblins of K3, including the sprawling battle across the minefields. That was crazy. Reminded me of films and stories of World War I, with doomed soldiers charging the trenches on the other side of death.

Then I logged on today, and found I had Auction House mail available from nearly three weeks ago! I sold a Tranquil Mechanical Yeti the on the Monday before WotLK hit, right when all the in-game mail got screwed. Thought I'd lost it all, but hey, all of the sudden here's 266 gold in my mailbox. Not bad at all. And with that extra golden boost, I had enough for my Cold Weather Flying Skill.
Sooo nice to be flying again! And doing quests for the giant warrior women is hilarious. Makes my Turbo-Charged Flying Machine look like a carnival ride. :D
And FINALLY...I declare The Storm Peaks to be my new favorite zone. Ever. Love the soft, mournful music with a touch of heroism to it. However you want to describe it. I love the quests I've done so far for Xarantar the Witness in Camp Tunka'lo. He says he was one of the very first druids, and he's learned how to talk to the rocks and the water and the sky, etc. Very cool stuff.
You know, with folks like him popping up, and insane areas like the Engine of the Makers, allusions to Uldar and things apparently coming to an ultimate showdown between the Alliance and Horde. It makes me wonder if Blizzard isn't just going all out with the lore in this expansion because they expect it to be the last one? I'm guessing the Uldar are related in some way to the ancient creationist lore we got way back in Uldaman. Are we getting the whole shebang? I guess I'd be OK with that. At least we'd go out on a high note. WotLK is a godly step up from Classic WoW and BC in every possible way. And those versions of the game were great in their own way.

Oh, and I also love the ghost mount.Epic flight in death ftw!

Gnomish Army Knife – no tool for RRoD

Welcome to Monday.

Cue fireworks.

Been a crazy week, and not a lot of WoW has been happening for me or to me.

In between work, Thanksgiving, a wedding and various RL obligations, I didn’t get more than 6 hours in game over the last five days.

I DID however reach exalted with the Tuskarr early on Thanksgiving day, and quickly grabbed my penguin pet, epic fishing pole and blue breast plate. High five.

Also hit 437 (or something) last night in engineering after a painful stretch of mats-intensive items like Sonic Boosters, Noise Machines and Heartseeker Scopes. Thankfully, I was able to get into Gnomish Army Knives at 435, and I’m back in love with the profession. I love this tool – jumper cables (useable by engineers only), blacksmith hammer, mining pick, skinning knife, flint/tinder, arclight spanner and gyromatic micro-adjuster all in ONE. SINGLE. SLOT. Awesomeawesomeawesome. AND it’s not soulbound or bind on use. You can trade it around if need be.

I sent one to our guild blacksmith last night, and linked another in guildchat for whoever else wants one. I love that so many non-engineers can find multiple uses for an engineering item. Easy mats, too. Only 10 saronite bars, a hammer, a pick and a skinning knife.

Level-wise, Paquita remains at 76. More guildies are hitting 80 each day, and I’m fairly sure I won’t be the first guild hunter at level cap. I seem to be a in a rut with questing. The motivation for dings just isn’t there. Maybe it’s the quests – I’m wandering aimlessly around Sholazar Basin these days, tapping every saronite node I can find and only doing incidental quests for Nesingwary and the two warring tribes in the zone. I had been working through Zul’Drak, but that place is incredibly dreary and a pain in the ass to run through unmolested.

I probably just need to lay off the engineering for a while and focus on getting to 80.

Actually, I picked up Gears of War 2 on Saturday and was prepared to put WoW aside for a few days, but apparently Microsoft had other plans.

The Xbox 360 dashboard (OS) update hit last week, upgrading the menu system and implementing a new Wii-ripoff avatar landscape. I hated the idea when I first heard of it and saw the cutesy avatars, but after the update I found I could live with it. I made my avatar look ridiculously stupid, so I was happy. And the menu system is actually very nice…if you can ignore the frequent screen tears and system crashes accompanied by LOUD static bursts.

Yeah, it’s fucked. I was able to just restart the console after the first couple of times, no problem. But it got to the point where just starting it up and flipping through the menus would trigger the frozen screen and static sound.

Then, on Saturday, as I started it up to pop in my freshly-purchased copy of Gears 2, it froze for the last time. I restarted, and the 360 only took a few seconds to give me the glowy round finger in the form of 3 flashing red lights. Fuuuuck.

Thankfully, I only purchased it back in February so it is still under warranty. I called the Xbox service line, and encountered the dreaded automated repair technician, which was of absolutely no help whatsoever. I did appreciate the “hip” voice intonation though, no doubt provided to exude a cool, X-games competing, Mountain Dew-chugging, Pac-Sun employee vibe. So I now have Microsoft sending me a pre-paid shipping box, which I’ll use to send the console back for repair. Who knows how long that’ll take.

I find it amusing how every time I try to switch between game genres after a while, it costs me a pretty penny. Had to buy an Xbox 360 in February to get back into consoles after almost 2 years of WoW. Tried to return to WoW in late June, only to find that my video card had crapped itself, and I had to purchase and install a new one.

And now that I’m in danger of burning out again on WoW, I wanted to lay off a bit and enjoy a little console action. But it looks like I have to pay for it. Not in dollars, hopefully, but it’s still a pain to box it all up and send it back to Microsoft. Plus, I’ll be without a DVD player for a while.

Bugger.