Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Epic WoW Marathon! (plus news.)

That was some weekend. (Warning LONG post ahead. There is some news for the non-WoW-minded down there, if you want to skip to the end.)

We spent Friday night playing Rock Band with hubby's sister, and stayed up waaaay too late. Saturday morning we dragged ourselves out of bed to get the house in shape for Emily's party that afternoon. After the party, the kids went to my parents for the rest of the weekend, and hubby and I buckled down to level our last pair of characters before our Recruit-A-Friend time ran out. It's important to have goals, right? :)

We started questing at first, mostly because our friend had not logged on yet. After a while hubby queued us for a PuG, just to get our Stockades quests done. We ended up leaving before it was done. It started out well enough, it seemed like the tank knew what he was doing, but he just kept pulling, no matter how many times the healer asked him to stop so he could get some mana. So the healer left. We pulled in someone new after a bit, but the same problems continued, so we left. We went back to questing, and finally a different friend of ours said he would run us, so we met up with him outside the instance, and were joined by an alt of our guild leader's wife. We finished that in short order, and then he ran us through Gnomeregan. I believe we called it a night not long after that.

On Sunday morning we were level 31 or 32. We quested in STV most of the day, with a couple of breaks to PuG two wings of Scarlet Monastery and RFD. Hubby got a few nice pieces from his Satchel of Helpful Goods, not so with me. Some "of the Bear", some "of the Bandit", only one "of the Sun". I did pretty well in the dungeons themselves though, so I can't really complain. We had some interesting adventures in STV though. It was Fishing Tournament day, and about ten minutes or so before that started, we headed up to a little island off the coast to discover it for a quest. On the way, we passed the Horde town, and I must have walked a bit too close, because I got flagged for PvP. Oh well, right? It'll wear off and nothing will happen, it hasn't before. Apparently the undead shadow priest we passed not long after had different ideas. He followed us for a bit, and as I was jumping into the water, he struck, and down I went.

I was a little miffed, to say the least. We played our druids for 60 levels on a PvP server and never got ganked once, and here on our "carebear" server... POW. Hubby came to my rescue though. He logged on his level 80 druid and came down to STV to avenge me. I was concerned that the priest's flag would wear off before hubby could arrive, so I went looking for the priest again. I found him, and wandered past like I didn't see him, then "accidentally" encountered a crocolisk and started fighting it. I was hoping he'd attack me again and refresh his flag. Sure enough, down I went again. But this time I was laughing. He was probably thinking, "what a stupid mage!" Little did he know what was in store for him.

Hubby arrived shortly after, and we set out to find the guy one last time. By the time we found him, my flag had worn off, so I was able to watch without fear as hubby tore the guy apart. Revenge was sweet! He waited a while to rez, and took off like a bat out of hell as soon as he did. Not so fun when you're on the other end, is it, Mr. Priest?

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We took a break and went out for dinner (steeeaaaaak YUM). When we logged out for the night we were level 45. Fifteen levels to go and one day to do it, as our shared bonus would run out at 7 PM on Monday. We technically didn't have to get to 60 by then, because that account is paid for until some time in March, but we wanted to see if we could do it.

I had Monday off at work, and the kids were still with my parents, so we had the whole day. We got up around 7AM, determined to be 60 in the next 12 hours. We did a lot of questing, and by 2 PM we were 52. We gathered as many quests as we could for BRD (except one, oops), and started talking about getting someone to run us together so we could get everything done in one run and not spend the whole rest of the day in there running each other. But nobody was around. Then it hit me. I read quite a few WoW blogs, and a few people out there have done RAF accounts on their own, and dual-boxed them. So I decided to see if I could do that as well. I put my mage's session in windowed mode and opened up another one to log on Saraabi. It worked, and soon all three of us were in a group. I set my mage to follow hubby's rogue, and clicked over to Saraabi's window and started killing stuff.

It was weird but awesome at the same time. I would clear a room or a path, and then click over to my mage to pick up loot for quests and whatnot. It was awesome because we were getting triple xp for all of the mob kills, AND all of the quests we were able to complete within the dungeon. The most awesome part was at the beginning, when we did the quest to find Kharan Mighthammer in one of the prison cells. So we found him, then we were supposed to head back to Ironforge to talk to the king there, then return to the dungeon to save the princess. Normally we'd trade off summons and take turns doing this, but this time we had my mage, and she had a portal to Ironforge. So hubby summoned me first. Then I opened a portal to IF, and we both went through. We raced to the king, turned in our quest, and then I accepted the summon, which took me right back to Kharan's cell. I summoned hubby back in, and ta-da, quest complete and we still got our triple xp for doing it.

By the end of the dungeon we were level 56. Turning in quests got us to 58. So we ran Stratholme the same way, this time with my hunter in the lead so she'd be able to pick up Baron's horse if it should drop (it didn't, of course). We didn't get nearly as much xp from that run, but we hadn't picked up any quests for it either. My mage got quite a bit of loot from both runs, hubby only got one thing. There just wasn't much loot on the tables for rogues back in the day I guess. After Stratholme it was back to questing, because I was getting strung out from maintaining both windows in an instance with a lot of patrolling mobs. We had an hour and a half to get a level and a half. We ran around to cauldrons and through Andorhal time and time again, frantic to beat our deadline. Then suddenly, with about ten minutes to go, I looked at my xp bar, and the two quests we had to turn in, and noticed that we'd only need one to make it. We went back to Chillwind, turned it in, and DING! Total time played, 1 day, 9 hours. I couldn't believe that we made it.

OK NON-WOW PEOPLE HERE IS YOUR NEWS.

I have got a lot of non-WoW stuff going on right now. Not all of it is good, and no I really don't want to talk about it. At all. I need to make some changes in my life, and I can't be here posting like everything is fine when it really isn't. So... cue radio silence. I'm leaving here, Facebook, and pretty much every social on-line thing I have. I'm keeping my weight loss blog up, because I still need the accountability of seeing my weight in print every day to keep me going. But that's about it. It's been a wild ride, but you have to get off even the most fun rides once in a while or you'll vomit all over everyone. I don't like to vomit. I may or may not be back. It has been wonderful getting to know you all, thank you for spending this time with me.

Goodbye!

9 fellow footsteps:

Linda said...

Oh my gosh, Carrie ... I understand completely that real life needs to take precedence over Facebook and blogging and everything else that's computer-related. I obviously have no idea what's going on but I hope that whatever it is gets resolved with the best possible outcome and that there is no vomiting involved.

Should you ever decide to get back on the ride then please, let me know as I will certainly miss you.

Take good care of yourself and your family. You will be missed!

Crazy Working Mom said...

It's been a fun ride...when you get the feelings back in your feet, we'll be here ready to ride some more. :)



...and if you feel like you wanna chat about stuff, like dieting, etc...you have my e-mail. ;)

&hearts & (((HUGS)))

Mo and The Purries said...

I guess I'm just stunned by the abruptness.
I wish you well, and hope everything turns out okay for you and your family.

Mo

SQT said...

I just noticed you were off of FB. I hope everything is okay. I certainly understand where you're coming from. There are days when I think I want to do the exact same thing.

Jenny said...

I hate that the stupid mount never drops. Anywhere. From anything. And I've been farming forever!!

Sorry to see you go though. Seems like a lot of WoW bloggers are. It makes me sad.

Lara West said...

I love how you have a non-wow section to your blog posts. Thats cute :)

Sarkoth77 said...

Sorry to bug you as I am sure you get messsages like this all the time, but I was wondering if you could take a few minutes to watch this Wow video I made showing how to not play the game (comdedy). thanks, Sarkoth77. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLiNgXOcqKI&feature=plcp

Unknown said...

Cool article! Please visit my WoW guides Blog

Thx!

bbr said...

How active are you of late - in regards to blogging compared to when you started WoW blogging?
Be a sport and drop by here: Linky here - calling all bloggers
I'm doing a writeup to see how many WoW bloggers are still "active" - if you'd be interested in a link exchange, just let me know, it'd be good for some extra pageviews ^,^