MMOments: May 2008

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

We have a winner !

Yes, it's a Paladin.

Currently protection specced, future ? Help me decide, post a comment :D

Monday, May 26, 2008

Rurik's tale coming to an end ?

So I know I haven't posted a video in a week, which is a long time, yes there is a winner to the contest, no need to post any more phrases, (it's not like a lot of classes can heal ehehe), the winner will be announced in my next video

However the topic for this post is quite different, it turns out Ashes fearless leader Scullcrasher is having a tough time handling the pressure & drama of our current guild position and as such he has announced his possible retirement, tomorrow he will make a final decision on what he plans to do with his character and from that decision the fate of about 30-40 Raiders from our guild (Ashes of Auchindoun) will be decided (myself included o course).

While I have raid leaded before (and done it again this friday & saturday through Black Temple all the way up to Teron [not much I know]), I clearly don't have the availability to be the main progress raid leader because I work for 2 companies at the moment as tech support, and some of the times I'm even on the phone while playing (yes I'm dead serious).

Actually I think I was marking and pulling while on the phone friday night :D and while it's challenging, it's also not feasible for key/progress raiding, imagine me fighting Illidan whilst having to explain someone on the phone how they proceed to access our FTP server, or how to change a UV lamp for an industrial printer ...

I already said I'll raid lead as a backup, but I'll never be the main raid leader. This has been the reason for me not posting a video sooner, I mean playing WoW has become my main source of unwinding after work, but being a former clan leader on another game I always understood the pressure our Raid Leader and Guild Master went through, and I was even accused of being an 'Ass-kisser' on several occasions, well now everyone can see the result of acting like irresponsible idiots towards your raiding guild, the Raid Leader will get tired of it and will burn out.

I completely understand why he's tired, and all I had to say to him was a big Thank You, for taking me with him as far as he did, and if it all ends tomorrow, the memory of everything I've done alongside him and all the dedicated raiders/friends will remain eternal.

Did you like the videos I made for the Ashes guild ? Do you think you have anything that can convince the Ashes Guild / Raid Leader to stay with us ? Would you like to thank him for the videos he allowed me to create ?(since he is the raid leader leading the group behind all the videos you saw [editing/filming is quite simple when compared to raid leading, trust me I know !])

Leave a comment below and I'll get the message to him.

(If you enjoyed Ashes Videos, please leave a comment below).

Thank you for reading,

Rurik

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

MMOments and thoughts on the current contest.

So, the 'contest' I made is having a really positive feedback and has kinda sparked my creativity for more interaction with the viewers of MMOments.

I'm getting some really cool ideas of other interactive things we can do, and not just interacting with me and my videos but interacting with us and our videos.

Ehehe, I don't really want to get into more details at the moment, since thinking stuff up is actually quite easy, but getting it done is a different story, and ensuring things have the desired effect once they're done is even harder !

This was just a quick update to tell everyone I'm really appreciating the response the contest is having and I hope your anticipation to watch my next video is as high as my anticipation to make it ehehe.

Cheers,

Rurik

Rurik's Blog, ScreenFlow and New Alt Contest.

New clip where I announced this blog :) and started the My New Alt Contest.

Music used in this video = Brad Sucks (www.bradsucks.net)

Monday, May 19, 2008

Dragonstrikes, Guild Drama, New Alt Contest

Hello Everyone,

I'm not really sure how many people visit the blog on a regular basis, or if anyone actually read the wall of text I made last time, but I still like to put stuff up here so I don't really care wether you see it or not :P .

So after giving a try to the Double Dragonstrikes, all I can say they are well worth the effort, my warrior's DPS has never been so high (despite not being top DPS, it gave me quite a boost).

Also PVPed a bit with them, and basically when I got heals I wtfpwnt everyone, when I didn't get heals I got 2/3 shotted (furylol). Still I find Fury to be much more amusing in PVP then Arms, although my preferred style of play for just about everything (apart from grinding) is still Raid-Spec Protection.

So we had a few problems in the guild lately (lack of attendance) I think everyone suffers from that, and we ended up merging with another guild, however a few people didn't agree and bitched and whined to one of our officers (who was also one of our top healers). So the results of this were, 2 people left the guild without any apparent reason (Shadow Priest, Resto Shammie), the officer mentioned before got burnt out from all the complaining and transfered away to another server (he intends to return after a month if we still accept him) and some random healer from the guild we merged with also left claiming he didn't felt his gear was good enough for our progress level (MH/BT) (despite no one actually complained about his healing).

After all these events one of our hunters felt we still needed more drama and decided to /gquit right in the middle of a raid (and right after he pulled LOL). Another one of our Shadow Priests also decided to pour some drama in the pot claiming he was going to leave because there was no room for him, he still hasn't left though ...

But we're still here, standing strong and ready for whatever else fate throws in our way. Scullcrasher's vision for WoW is that of the perfect leader, when interrogated about how he had taken all these events, he simply said "I'm fine, it's just a game."

So I am quite confident that we will survive this incident, and resume progress without much fuss.

In the middle of all this, I've tried to keep the guild in a good mood, and most of those who are still with us seem quite pleased and eager to continue our progress where we left off, after all we must beat everything before the coming expansion and the clock is ticking.

The new officer (former guild leader of the guild we merged with) started his own Zul'Aman group freeing that instance from Scull's hands, whom was already getting burnt out from running it since I personally can't raid every night and therefore was unable to Raid Lead during the ZA days.

To fill up some free time I had in the weekend, I started fooling around with a new alt (not new to me, just new to those who watch my vids and follow my blog). And so far it's exceeding my expectations, I laughed my ass off, specially after playing a warrior to lvl 70, you really appreciate a feature like healing ... *hint*

I'm hereby hosting a contest right now, comment on this post and tell me the class of my 'new' alt, and I will mention your name on my next video and I'll say a sentence of your choosing.

(not that I have a huge audience, but hey, at least about 80 people will hear what you had to say so ... that's better then nothing !)

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Blog Updated !

Finally I got around to update my blog to match youtube in terms of videos. Of course here you'll also find the high resolution streams of my Warcraft videos, and I plan on adding a few text commentary as well which can't really be done very well on YouTube. So suffice to say you can expect to see new comments here every now and then which will not be available on YouTube.

If you just enjoy my videos there's really no need to come here unless you want to look at my stuff in some kind of order (which gets kinda messy on youtube). But either way there will be text / video / screenshot content here whereas in YouTube You'll only get video comment, because it is a video website.

So to start the blog I have something to say regarding World of Warcraft, most of you know me for being a Dwarven Warrior that 99% of the time plays protection spec.

Being a protection warrior I picked Mining/Blacksmithing as a profession (I had no idea it's almost useless for protection) which I later on developed into ArmorSmithing, only to find (much later) that the Special item this gives you (Bulwark of ancient Kings) is a pure DPS plate and utterly useless for a tank (except for offspec).

So I switched into swordsmithing to get the nice tanking sword BlazeFury even though I only really ever got FireGuard which it was still very useful, but it got replaced by King's Defender as soon as I got the chance.

So then swordsmithing became kinda useless as well, and after long lusting for Dragonstrike (I always liked hitting fast on previous RPGs [Frenzy Barbarian in Diablo 2 anyone ?]) I eventually switched to Hammersmith and crafted the T1 version (Drakefist Hammer) and slowly upgraded it till I got a Mongoosed Dragonstrike which I still have.

I used this in offspecs and during offtanking certain Bosses which required me to keep up Aggro close to the MT, and trust me this mace makes offtank a lot easier, since Revenge doesn't really come into play and you'll get a lot less rage due to not being hit when your offtanking thus your threat will be a lot lower, so hitting harder will compensate for that. (There were a few times where I surpassed druid offtanks and even stole aggro from the MT!)

Anyways that was just to give you a little background on my Dragonstrike. Lately I've been using it quite often as fury during raids (because Blizzard like prot warriors so much they designed content around Prot Pallies and Dr00d bears), and if you saw the recent patch notes 2.4.2 you'll know that Dragonstrike is no longer unique or main hand, making it possible to be dual wielded.

Knowing this from the patch notes I had already began to slowly purchase vortexes and nethers and last night I bought the last ones I needed, and this morning I crafted my 2nd Dragonstrike which I will be applying Executioner, this giving me a huge increase in DPS.

I'm not a big numbercruncher in regards of WoW, but basically, considering the haste bonus from Dragonstrike now procs A LOT more often, and I'll also have a nice executioner bonus to add instead of Dual mongoose (which I had earlier with S2 offhand) I think things will definitely improve.

This weekend I also got a nice drop from Vashj [Krakken-Heart Breastplate] (and I know I haven't made a movie on her yet, but I haven't really been in a creative mood lately) so I'm guessing once I spec back into fury I'll give the rest of the DPSers a nice run for their money in my offspec set.

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and if you didn't tell me why :)

Thank you for taking the time to read it though.

Rurik

Rurik's Boring Video (Kinda reminds me of slappa :P)

Help my friend get a scholorship, make his video (Below this sentence) popular.

Thank you :)

Tiny Update :P

Just another tiny update, don't mind the quality / resolution much, it's my first stab at Final Cut.

Rurik's Update & Upgrade

Upgrades on my Mac and Update

All music by Brad Sucks:
Brad Sucks Website

Re: Goodbye Virginity or Goodbye Internet

Save the Internet !!

Stop Virgin IPower Clip
My WoW Forums Post

Re: Mac vs PC: My little 4 core vs an 8 core server

Response to emeek77 so he could scrub it in the face of a user who said he had assembled a super server that would wtfpwn a MAC PRO, clearly that guy failed.

Unboxing of the MAC PRO

Yep ... it finally arrived, and it's even sweeter then I could expect :)
This video was posted to youtube on April 03, 2008.

MMOments, Update !

Part1

Part2

Just an update on what's been going on.

Ashes Progress Report Vol4.

Ashes Downs Kael'thas.

HD Version in Filefront:
(You'll need Quicktime to see this, which is a free download at Apple)
FileFront Link

Please download the real deal and comment on the quality if you can :).