Many of you may have noticed the fact that for the past 6 months I've been logging in to raid and not on much the rest of the time.  Even my Wrath levelling has been late at night and solo most of the time and I've been forced to be as efficient as possible which has squeeked out a level every 2 days.

The reason for all of this is because I'm working 2 jobs.  I've got my regular job at Apple and I picked up contract work for a game developer which means I've been working 50-60 hour weeks.  Fortunately, I pretty much make my own hours for both jobs which is the only reason it's been tolerable.  That and I actually enjoy writing games.

The fact that Wrath Raid 1 got moved up 2 weeks has therefore really screwed me.  I'm going to be on vacation this week and likely without internet access good enough to play (though I'm going to try).  If I can play, I might be 80 in time.  If I can't then I'm going to miss at least 1 week.

Anyway, I do expect to have more time in the future, so this is just to let you all know what's been going on and to expect me to be back in game more often once my contract work is done (a couple months).  In the meantime, I intend to do as much raiding as possible.

I've been playing a bit on the beta, and my gf's been playing a lot and I figured I'd share some of our findings with all of you.

Death Knights are cool and they've done something really fantastic with the death knight starting area.  They've taken the game mechanism of "being in a different phase" (like the collecting the mana cells daily) and made it triggered on quest completion.  What this means is that the death knight starting area is seemlessly dynamic as you complete various quests.  This also means that we can't go on a death knight purging event in EPL since all the noob knights will be phased from us.  The death knight quests will take you to level 58 before you are done with them.  You will need to do them all since you start with zero talent points and completing the starting area quests give you additional talent points.  Death knights start with green gear and get each and every piece replaced with blue gear as they go through the starting quests.  I recommend speccing to get the ghoul pet, it makes levelling easier.   The place to purge death knights is going to be Hellfire Peninsula :-)

Inscription is undergoing a lot of changes and right now levelling it is completely unbalanced regarding the herbs you need.  Mageroyal will get you all the way to 400 skill for instance.  It's selling for 30-50G apiece (not a stack) in the beta AH.  So far there are only major inscriptions available (no minor ones), and I'm not even sure they are all working even though you can apply them to your spell book.  You'll need about 15-20 stacks of low (0-30), mid (30-60), high (60-70) and wotlk (70-80) zone herbs to completely level it.

From the PTR patch notes:

• Curse of Shadows: This spell has been removed.
• Curse of Elements: This spell now applies to Arcane and Shadow damage, as well as Frost and Fire.

Honestly, I only pay attention to the wall of green text that spews on my console about 20% of the time.  Part of the reason for this is the level of stupid it contains.  So, in the interest of reducing a bit of the stupid, here are some rules for trying to be funny.

 #1) Be original.  If I see one more "That's what she said." when someone is trying to be funny I'm going to send a million volts through your computer chair.  Trust me, I'll find a way.  Instead, come up with a clever and original way to say the same thing.  "Who's got two thumbs and Keisjaa's mom to stick them in?  <-- this guy." is getting on the right track.  But with a little thought (yes, the hard part) you can do even better.  "If you notice Allikat's pussy getting looser, sorry Shihli, that's my bad." would not only leave some people incapacitated in laughter, it would be remembered too.

#2) Use implication.  Don't just call someone a whore, imply it.  Implication causes people to use their imaginations and sometimes they imagine even worse than what you intended.  "You know why people follow Jas all the time, right?  They're hoping for a freebie." is a reasonable example.

#3) Diction.  You don't get as much respect for your attempt at humor if your spelling is horrendous and you're using shorthand for everything.  It makes you look like a hack and it isn't quotable.  "UR all my beetches cuz I pwnd al ur moms."  just makes people want to hurt you.

I think 3 rules is enough for now.  Don't want to cause any brain hemorrages. 

Hey everyone,

It looks like I'm picking up some contract work from my game publisher for the next several months (in addition to my regular job). That and some ongoing personal issues mean that my time online is going to have to be reduced by a lot. I'm not quitting raiding, I enjoy it too much. But other than the Monday and Friday raids I normally attend with Hamfist, I won't be on much. I guess it's a good thing I've got a ton of gold saved up.

Tankard