IHS: Finishing up 2009

I haven't been posting because I've been PLAYING. Currently I Heart Seki is doing weekly ICC25 & we are on the Plagueworks. I've been killed by Festergut but not been there yet when the raid has had the pleasure of returning the favor. Actually, I don't think we've done it yet on 25man. I think only on 10man mode, which is run on Tuesday nights, when I am slaving away at the Korean bar.

In 2009 Blizzard brought back Onyxia, making the fight harder & the rewards better. I never really cared for the Onyxia fight. It might have been because I'd only ever done it as Alliance & we'd all swim over the bay from Theramore, & then if I wasn't following someone I couldn't find the damn spot in the rocks where I could climb out of the damn water. It was embarrassing. And I played a Hunter, so it's not like I could have any dignity about not being able to figure out how to do something. It could also have been the little how-to video we had to watch that made me motionsick.

Anyway, I didn't go on a lot of 2009 Onyxia runs, but I did take a couple of pictures.


Most of the time I think we were running Trial of the Champion (5) & Trial of the Crusader (10 & 25). Initially we got the hang of ToC5 quickly, & then rather flippantly stepped into ToC10 & got our asses handed to us. We decided that we would need to get everyone into 232 gear & try again later.

I think my favorite encounter in ToC10/25 is definitely the Faction Champions, not just because I enjoy PvP but because it's always exciting. Most PvE fights are just the same routine; once you figure out the correct routine, which is the hard part, then it's just rinse & repeat. PvP fights, of course, are always relatively different, barring predictable class actions. To be able to have a PvP style PvE encounter is really fun; it still does come down to a fairly routine strat, but somehow it's more challenging & exciting.

We did a fair amount of ToC10 & did joint ToC25s with a guild called Frost Shock, made up primarily of a group of our guildie Owinfrey's friends who followed him to Staghelm after he had transferred here & joined IHS, guilded with us, & then split to make their own guild. I understand this is because Owinfrey's friend Sweetmeat needed to have his own guild in order to raid at an earlier time. Naturally he quit the game shortly after forming Frost Shock.

I do have an opinion about this: it sucked. I met Owinfrey on Facebook via Mafia Wars; he was one of FTM member Carey's friends & when he inquired about IHS I of course said that any friend of Carey's was welcome to join us. And of course, he was & is a really cool guy & a skilled player. Guilding his friends wasn't part of the deal, although no one was going to bitch about it so long as they had someone to vouch for them. The first few who transferred over & were guilded were fairly cool, but they didn't know they were going to ditch us & make their own guild yet. The later transfers, when guilded, pretty much kept to themselves. Conceivably they already knew this was just a stopover & they didn't consider the friendly ginvite a privilege nor did they have any respect for the people who unquestioningly took them in.

Because IHS is a guild of RL friends, there is a certain familial feeling. Even gay sometimes. But there's a niceness & a kindness & a really pleasant lack of drama because most of us are fairly intelligent & mature. This is what we were allowing these people into, & in retrospect I guess we shouldn't have. Just because they knew someone in our guild didn't automatically buy them membership, & I didn't feel comfortable guilding some of these folks but there was no tangible reason, then, not to. And then they saved us a bunch of grief by vacating anyway, & they didn't even bother to say bye or thanks before they typed /gquit or even after I whispered some of them "bye." Just no response. Whatever.

Since then (in 2010) Frost Shock fell apart & we've taken some of them back but except for Owinfrey I haven't seen much of them. If Sweetmeat ever reinstates his account I don't want him in our guild. I like my guildies. They're my family. He's not welcome in my family.

In other news, I finally killed Terry.


Seki also started playing with us again, transferring his rogue from Bloodscalp & began going on runs to get himself geared up to par. Two items dropped for him, & as I ran around doing my cooking daily I could hear Tako & Baron gloating about how they were rolling Need because they didn't intend to just let him have it just because it dropped.

No. Seki was going to have to quest for it.

"Fucking bastards," he said.

Baron required Bryan to gather various vanilla WoW items found in areas all over the old continents, including one zone that Horde didn't even have a flight point in. I was impressed with Baron's creativity. Bottle of firewater. lol

Anyway, Baron later changed the Goblin Rocket Fuel requirement to Volatile Rum, which is easier to get in that it is a fairly common drop rather than something that drops only off of 3 mobs, one of them Rare & the other an Elite in a rather huge instance or has to be crafted by an Alchemist, with ingredients that are so old that no one stocks them any more & they would have to be farmed.

He did run into a little difficulty with the Hops. I seem to recall that they didn't drop all that much when I was doing the Thunderbrew Lager quest as Alliance, & that I had had to go after those little gray robots in the fields that were never good for much except dropping Hops, & then not very good at that either. Anyway, it took him awhile.


Did I mention Seki's birthday is in November?


In 2009 a new 5man & 10/25man instance called Ice Crown Citadel opened & we were all over that. Blizzard also made cross-server LFG available, so if we needed to fill a spot in our group we could queue & fill it fairly quickly. We began doing ICC25s with Frost Shock, & now are running it ourselves, although we still have to pick up players to fill a few spots. We do have a couple of regular PUGs & Kelson suggested we just guild them but I'm glad we're not because I still see this as a friends & family guild; we don't ginvite people just for the sake of raiding. I hope we never do.

ICC5 is pretty fun; it hasn't gotten that commonplace for me yet, but that could also be because I don't get to run a lot of 5mans with everyone. You'd think with my schedule I'd be racking up those Frost Emblems, but no. I have DOGS. One of those dogs is an American Bulldog puppy. I actually spent like 3 hours watching Dog Whisperer episodes. Seriously. When you have a big dog, you also have big responsibility, because if she kills someone... & people find out about it... you could get into a lot of trouble & you'd probably lose your dog. We also want to keep Breed Specific Legislation from coming to Hawaii, although imho the locals aren't doing that great of a job with pit bulls here. Freaking Bloodline. It just gives the breed, & Waimanalo, a bad name.


But to be totally honest, if my dogs killed an intruder on my property (well, technically it's my dad's, & I just live here) & no one heard the screams, I'd chop that fucker up & put him in freezer bags in my freezer. A 30 lb bag of premium kibble costs me $50! I was doing 50/50 kibble/raw for awhile, & learned that it takes longer than half a day to defrost a whole turkey. Was definitely fun cutting it up though. But it's so hard to keep a supply of raw food, & so at this time they're just eating kibble. Imagine 150 lbs of fresh meat. Omg, that's dogfood for a month. I know that some of you may think that's gross, but just remember that the next time you have a body you need to dispose of.