Here’s a picture of Scoots making the boy king’s bodyguards very nervous. Why they let a midget wearing a wolf head get this close to royalty is beyond me.

If you took note of my current level at the beginning of this post, you’ll also note I haven’t leveled in weeks. So, the truth is, I haven’t been playing much WoW. The Chicago weather has turned nice for the past couple weeks, and I stepped *gasp* outdoors. And for some strange reason, I’ve been feeling guilty about not playing enough. The summer, I’m sorry to say, may be a similar story. What can I say, I admitted from the beginning that I have a life outside of WoW. My heaviest playing days so far have been on bad weather days. Chicago winters are brutal. I spent a couple great weekends cooped up with a little space heater next to my WoWspace, and the heat turned down in the rest of my apartment. Which leads me to another observation: WoW can save you money. Not just on those crazy gas prices, but from renting movies, buying $5 beers at the bar, going out to restaurants, etc. Sure, it can destroy your social life. But the money you save!

I haven’t gained a single experience point in about a week. I’ve been playing Warsong Gulch. Last weekend, I took advantage of the bonus honor points from the Call to Arms: Warsong Gulch world event and landed myself around 3000 honor. This weekend will be the Arathi Basin event, but sadly there will be no WoW for me. Scoots will be back next week though, so no worries Scoots lovers.

I’ve come across lots of people discussing their favorite WoW sites, like Thottbot, the Gobling Workshop, and WoWhead. My current favorite is WoWwiki. I use it most often when running instances. I’ll have the instance’s WoWwiki page open on my laptop and read (reread) up on the different parts and bosses of the zone. I find that it helps me memorize the zone. WoWwiki just tends to have those extra little pieces of information that Thottbot sometimes is missing, or that you have to scan through all those crappy user comments to discover. WoWwiki isn’t perfect–it’s not as complete as Thottbot in terms of having every single little thing in the game. But, I still find it incredibly useful. It’s taken over my number 1 most-visited WoW site crown.

It was a great weekend for Scoots. I picked up several pieces of equipment, most of them from a single run of Maraudon.

Blackstone Ring

Began the weekend by looting this sweet blue item from the Princess in Maraudon. Lev req 49, +6 stamina, increases attack power +20. Increases hit rating by +10 (1.1% at 54). I have to admit, I don’t understand what the beneficial math is on this, but from reading posts in forums and on Thottbot, it appears to be a sweet ring.

Albino Crocscale Boots

On the same run, I loot these sweet blue item boots from Rotgrip, a big-ass crocodile. Now these stats, I understand: +20 to agility, +5 to stamina, and +5 to nature resistance. These replace level 29 Highlanders Boots. What can I say, those boots (I had them enchanted) were just better than a lot of level 40 boots.

But the fun didn’t stop there. While I was running Maraudon, a member of the group shared his quests. One of the rewards for the quest was an awesome sword.

Thrash Blade

You get this awesome sword as a quest reward. The quest, called Corruption of Earth and Seed, requires killing the princess in Maraudon. It has 35.2 dps, 2.70 speed, and chance on hit to grant an extra attack. Pretty sweet stuff, and it’s free. Finally, a quest that has eq I can actually use. Warning though, the Princess is tough. I’ve killed her both times I’ve faced her with a group of upper 40′s and low 50′s, but it’s always been a near wipe.

And to cap off the weekend, I used my honor points and marks from the PvP battleground reward for two more pieces of eq.

Sergeant Major’s Leather Armsplints

Pretty straightforward piece of eq: +6 agility, 14 stamina, 64 armor. All it cost was 10 Warsong Gulch marks and 308 honor points. Easy enough to get.

Insignia of the Alliance

4,000 honor points. Dispels fear and charm spells.

As you can see, it was a productive weekend for Scoots in the World of Warcraft. I’d be ashamed to post the equipment those items replaced. The Maraudon run I did on Friday night was a huge success, and I recommend the zone to all players. Get the quests!

I spent sometime in Warsong Gulch last night. I’m trying to use up some of the blinding powder I have in my inventory. So, I’ve been using the blind skill a lot in Warsong. When in a small group fighting another small group, I stealth, blind one player, and stun lock another. I figure taking one player out of the fight with blind for up to ten seconds plus using stun lock on another is a semi-powerful crowd control option. Not as powerful (or annoying) as a warlock’s Howl of Terror though. The key is going into a fight late because I get to choose a player who is not taking damage. Just like with sap, it’s annoying when I use blind only to have it broken by another’s player damage. Don’t waste my blinding powder fools!

Some good blind tips ripped from WoWwiki:

• When fighting rogues, spamming your blind ability can give you an opportunity to break out of a stunlock.
• In PvP, using blind gives you plenty of time to bandage and restealth, so consider alternating uses of vanish and blind as means of restealthing in combat.

I just finished the entire Zul’Farrak instance. After about 8 runs of this zone, someone finally had the Mallet of Zul’Farrak that summons the final boss, Gahz’rilla. You get the mallet from a tough mob in Hinterlands, and you need a group to get it. Seems like if you go through all the trouble of traveling to the Hinterlands, you should just get the mallet. Not sure I get the game design reasoning for this one.

Anyways, killing Gahz’rilla allowed me to finish a quest, which had the reward of a Carrot on a Stick. It’s a silly trinket that increases your riding speed by a whole 3%. I guess the point is that it stacks with other riding speed eq. So if you collect enough gear, you’re suddenly a speed demon.

My Carrot on a Stick.

I also looted a Embrace of the Lycan from an earlier boss in the zone. It is a sweet little head item you see Scoots wearing in the picture above. Doesn’t it look ridiculous? Perfect for Scoots. Perhaps not the greatest rogue item, but Scoots doesn’t have much blue gear anyways, as I’ve been hoarding up his gold for higher levels.

Embrace of the Lycan.

I also leveled while running the zone. Current level:48.

After a few weeks on intense playing, I’ve been taking a “break” from WoW– a break meaning playing every day for only 15 minutes or so.

There’s a new patch coming out, and it’s got some major changes in it. Check out the rogue side of things and some discussion at the WoW Rogue forums. It looks like rogues are getting buffed. I’m very happy about regular ol’ sap becoming improved sap. Blind can be improved through the talent tree. More blinding powder drops from junkboxes (I’ve already got too much of it though. I don’t use blind as much as I should). Poisoned blades no longer have limited charges and now all run on timers. That is a nice, subtle change that improves the rogue’s gaming experience. I hated pausing every 5 minutes while running a trash-laden instance to re-poison my daggers. This change will make the game a little less frustrating.

Wandered across the Caverns of Time today and just had to take a screenshot. They should post signs, “Great place for tourist pictures.” See the bigger picture here.

I play WoW on a Black MacBook, and it runs fine. I can’t have all the graphic modes set to highest, but don’t I have to have them on the lowest either. With a little tweaking, the game still looks beautiful.

Just a quick tip for those who play on Macs: Macs support dual monitors–you don’t need an extra video card or anything like you do on most Windows machines. I plugged in an old CRT monitor and now play Warcraft in windowed mode in the bigger CRT (17 inch), and use the laptop window for various other tasks, mainly WoWwiki, Thottbot, and iTunes. You do have to buy an adapter cord so you can plug your CRT into the DVI slot. I got mine at the Apple store. See pictures of my WoWspace below.

Wowspace 1 WoWSpace 2