I consider myself to be in semi-retirement now, not being a member of a guild and not raiding on any regular schedule, but even still it takes a lot to make me smile anymore in relation to the game.

I’ve seen it all.  I was there for almost every major event in WoW history; if not in game then in spirit as I read the blogs that chronicle every nuance of every event.

But this morning, something happened that I wasn’t expecting and that I’ve never seen.

I was checking my mail in Shattrath City when there was an announcement — Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain would be performing in the World’s End Tavern (home of such auspicious patrons as Haris Pilton) at the top of the hour.

I looked at the clock — 5:59am.  Perfect.  I hopped on my wyvern and headed down to the tavern to see what the fuss was all about.

And sure enough, the band showed up and performed one song.  It was just me and a lone Draenei Pally in the audience, but I partied like it was 1999, stripped down to my tabard, and did my Britney dance.

Apparently this is not a new phenomenon, but it has escaped my attention until this morning when it hit me by complete surprise.  I /cried when they finished their set, and the Draenei Pally /comforted me.

With as much reading and playing as I do, I don’t know how I’ve always missed the L70ETC concerts, but I’m glad I did.

The surprise was able to bring a smile to my face from a game that rarely does anymore.  It’s always the little things…

(click on the pictures for something that doesn’t resemble a blurry mess)

But I do it anyway because this is as much a journal for me as it is entertainment for them. So without further ado…

I’ve played a Retribution Paladin for a while now and put up with all that that entails.

Among other things, it means I get asked to heal more than I get to seek retribution on my foes.

It means I get kicked out of groups because my DPS isn’t up to par with Warriors and Rogues.

It means I’m mostly ridiculed in the community.

Even after working exceptionally hard and overcoming the gear curve, I was still reviled. Even though my damage was finally better than most of any DPS I could find in a pug, I was still the odd-man out.

That all changed Tuesday when Blizzard released Patch 2.3 – The Gods of Zul’Aman.

Retribution finally got its … well, retribution. Blizzard took a long hard look at Ret Pallies and buffed them up so that they could compete.

What does this mean? A lot of things, but mainly 3% more crit and 30% less threat. That’s all WoW math, but it basically means Ret Pallies can do a lot more damage in a group.

The first day I logged in after the patch, I was amazed to find myself standing atop the pile in my first Arathi Basin match. I did more damage than 39 other people. That’s amazing.

Last night I went into my first instance since the change and helped a pug clear Steamvaults. I demolished the other DPS in the raid. No one came close the damage I did.

All while maintaining my ability to heal and bless my fellow combatants.

Did they overpower the Ret Pally? Is it fair that a class that can already heal or tank also be outdamaging Rogues and Warriors?

Only time will tell. I expect there will be some nerfs in their future. No amount of nerfs, however, is likely to return the Ret Pally back to the hated spec he was before.

For now, life is good. I am playing a class and spec that is at the top of the heap. In an everchanging game of balance and tweaks, I know well that I must enjoy it while it lasts for nothing good lasts forever.

Blizzard is the best video game company ever.

Why, you ask?

Well among other things are the tasty Hallow’s End Pumpkin Treat that you can get by doing a few quests to help the orc orphans collect some candy.

These beauties give you a 20 minute costume for the festivities — it’s random, but always loads of fun.

Then there’s the innkeepers all set up for your trick-or-treating pleasure. Once per hour you can hit up an innkeeper for either a trick or a treat depending on your luck.

If you get tricked, you’ll probably get turned into a bat or a cat, and sometimes even a frog.

But if you get treated, you get a special bag of goodies ranging from candy to flimsy paper masks of one of the other races of Azeroth.

And new this year is the ability to summon and fight one of the kings of fright — the Headless Horseman.

First you fight his full body. Then his head comes off and you fight that. Then they join together and you fight them again. Fun times for everyone.

Even better are the awesome drops, such as the helm of the horseman shown right.

Though my paladin is an extremely well geared Ret Pally, this helm is an upgrade for her and I plan on squashing the horseman’s head until he lets me have this.

He also drops broom mounts, little pumpkin pets, and even a pumpkin helmet so you can walk around with a gourd on your melon. What’s better than that?

The festivities begin today and last until Nov 1st. That’s a lot of time to kill the horseman, collect candy, and dress up like a female draenei. Let the fun begin!

Well that’s not entirely true. I think we’re never fresh out of cryptids. I’m just out of compelling cryptids that I want to write about right now.

So instead, I’m posting an lolcat because lolcats are always good for a laugh and this one is Warcraft related.

For those that don’t know, /afk means “Away from Keyboard.” In WoW, it’s an easy way to let others know that although you are still logged into the game, you aren’t at the computer.

It’s taken on a life of it’s own though when related to the PVP elements of the game where people go AFK and just let others earn them a bunch of honor.

This led Blizz to make it such that if you go AFK while in a battleground, you immediately exit the battleground.

So then that led to creative uses of things such as the Logitech G15 Keyboard to make the game think you aren’t AFK when you really are.

And now there’s going to be a new feature in which people can ‘report’ people as AFK in a battleground, causing them to get no honor if enough people agree that said person is AFK.

Sounds like a good way to grief someone to me, but we’ll see how it goes.

The topic of going AFK and letting others do the dirty work is a long standing problem with WoW that the developers may never fully tackle.

EDIT: Lest you think that I think WoW invented AFK, I only say this picture is related to Warcraft because that’s Warcraft on the screen in the background.  It’s a warlock to be exact. /shudder

I was in Nagrand, helping the Mag’har tribe save their dead ancestors from being possessed by demons. It seemed like a the honorable (read: greedy) thing for a Blood Knight such as myself to do.

After I finished up that slightly messy task with the help of my wife and her pet velociraptor, I went to hang out with Greatmother Geyah and let her know that she owed me some bucks.

She went on about how the leader of their tribe, Garrosh Hellscream, was all down on himself because his daddy had drank the blood of a demon and doomed them all to be bloodthirsty buttheads.

“Waahh,” Garrosh says, “My daddy left me a rotten legacy. Wo is me!”

Then the name clicked. Hellscream…Hellscream…Where have I heard that name before? Oh right… etched right here on my axe:

“The axe of Grom Hellscream has sown terror across hundreds of battlefields.”

So it turns out that the Greatmother is the grandmother of Thrall, son of Durotan. I’d run into Thrall before, always trying to make him understand that we Blood Elves aren’t all that bad.

Thing is, Thrall didn’t know his Grandmother was alive. His dad had died when he was young, yada yada. Thrall was good friends with Grom Hellscream, though, even though Garrosh had never known his daddy.

So basically I decided to help the deranged family out.

“Look, granny, I’ll go tell Thrall that his grandmama is out here with his best friend’s son and I’m sure he’ll come set you all straight on the sitch,” I told her.

So I went to Orgrimmar and walked right into Thrall’s throne room. He has an open-door policy cuz he’s cool like that.

Thrall was like, “Granny’s alive!”

I’m like, “Yah. I took her gold.”

So Thrall tells me to go tell granny that he’s on his way. And sure enough, shortly after I get there he comes strolling into Garadar like he owns the place. A few minutes of hob-knobbing with his biggest fans, and Thrall wanders in to see granny.

Luckily they aren’t the private type, so I got to watch the whole thing. Granny’s all concerned the Mag’har are going to pot because Garrosh is a big emo sissy, always whining about how his daddy was a loser.

So Thrall never being one to let an Orc be emo, finds Garrosh and explains that although his daddy did drink demon blood and turn them all into buttheads, he also freed them from the same curse by defending the other orcs and defeating said demon with his trusty axe (that must have then gotten lost, because I totally have it strapped to my back).

Suddenly, Garrosh is all like, “I’m the son of a hero! Kneel before me, suckers!”

And that’s why I was late for work. I had to sort out the issues of my warchief’s family and friends. Being a Blood Knight is a tough job, but someone has to do it.

Best Warcraft quest line ever.

First off, I hate my cat. He woke me up at 4:30am this morning. This has become a 3-4 night/week ritual in which he decides to meow incessantly. If I call for him, he’ll come up in the bed and be quiet for 5-10 minutes before jumping down and meowing again. The toll it’s taking on my sleep is beginning to become unbearable and I really don’t know what to do to make him stop.

Since I wasn’t being allowed to sleep, I went downstairs to log into WoW. I had time on my hands afterall, because going to work at 5:30am isn’t exactly a fun thing to do.

That brings us to what I hate next: large mobs. It seems that Blizzard thinks that the higher in level we get, the bigger mobs need to get. It’s getting to the point that its near unplayable in some places. You simply cannot see anything at all when fighting some of these mobs. If you get another, you can’t tell. If you try to run away, you can’t see what’s in front of you. It’s very annoying when you’ve been woken up at 4:30am by a stupid cat.

Next up: Rascal Flatts (playing on my radio when I got in the car this morning).

If you don’t listen to country music, you may not know who this group is. Country radio seems to want to have their babies. I want them to die in a fire. I simply hate this group. It is the worse musical group in the history of the world and I don’t understand why they get any attention or album sales at all.

Their songs are extremely trite, and the lead singer’s voice is more grating than fingernails on a chalkboard. I’d rather listen to Paris Hilton explain quantum physics than listen to Rascal Flatts. Unfortunately, my local radio station insists on playing their crap every other song.

Which brings me to my local radio station. I hate them too. They play a grand total of 5 different country songs on repeat all day long. I miss Texas where they understand the genre and aren’t catering to these wannabe cowboys who think they’re cool if they listen to Rascal frickin’ Flatts.

Then there’re stupid drivers. Most people will tell you that they hate people talking on their cell phones while driving. I don’t hate that. I hate people who are incapable of doing it effectively.

Case in point: a Toyota FJ Cruiser this morning who literally was swerving back and forth between lanes, without signaling, while talking on his cell phone and varying his speed greatly. Passing him was dicey due to his sudden and inexplicable lane switches.

Furthermore, he had 3 bags of concrete on his luggage rack. This isn’t so alarming in most cases, but this gentlemen seems to think there is no need to tie these things to his vehicle. One slam on the brakes and someone’s getting a concrete bag in the windshield. Luckily, that wasn’t me this morning.

So far, that’s all I hate this morning. Having woken up at 4:30am, though, I’m bound to find more. Consider this a warning. If you’re reading this, don’t be something I hate today.

I also got a glimpse of the Ret Pally changes that are upcoming.  I’m excited about those.

They’re doing lots of interesting things with Instance keying as well, such that whole guilds may get keyed at once.  Also, keying one character on your account may in the future key them all.  I don’t know if that’s just for raids, or for heroics as well.

Zul’Aman looks to be a fun instance.  They didn’t go into too much detail about the gameplay and bosses, but they did show off some of the loot.  Looks like DPS Plate is back baby!

Also, they really like the epic crafter-only items for professions like blacksmithing and are adding others soon.  Jewelcrafting, for instance, is going to be able to make epic gems out of blue gems that only they can use.  Among others, one is a +18 stam gem.

They also hinted at potions that only alchemists would be able to drink.

There’s probably more, but I just drove to San Diego for the rest of the vacation so that’s it for now.  Not a fun blog post, I know, but time is of the essence!  Shamu is calling.

To my surprise, they actually had a playable demo on the showroom floor! The wife and I were able to get 20 minutes in the Howling Fjord — one of the entry zones into Northrend.

Interestingly (and wisely), Northrend will actually have two entry zones so not everyone will be crammed into the same zone come release day.

They went into pretty big detail about the game, showing off the Death Knight class and how it will work and fit into the game. It’s considered a “hero class” but it’s not a class that your character turns into.

Instead, you must do a questline (they compared it to the Warlock Epic Mount quest) and then you’re able to create new characters as Death Knights.

He’s supposed to be a tank/DPS hybrid who doesn’t need shields in order to tank effectively.

He doesn’t use rage, mana, or energy but instead is getting a new “rune” system which involves him inscribing runes onto his weapon to determine the spells he can cast during combat.

Aside from the new expansion, there was Starcraft 2.

Honestly, it feels very very early in development and some of their ideas for the single player “story mode” are kinda weird. The plan is to take the time between RTS missions to give you an adventure/RPG like interaction with characters.

My first thought was that it was kind of hokey. I hope they work it out. In their defense, it was pretty early on into development.

There were also tons of folk in costume, which I hope to post up when I get back from Cali. There’s just a couple of samples here for now.

Day 2 looks to be less hectic and certainly lower on the new information flood. I’ll blog about it… eventually.

I’ve gathered up some of my favorites for this post. I’m even gonna give links for all the abilities so you lay-Warcrafters can read what the ability actually does to hopefully aid in the funny, though some of them actually play off of the name of the ability instead of the ability itself.

One time…

• Blessing of Protection crit and I became sterile.
• Polymorph crit and it gave me a stack of wool.
• Magma Totem crit and Hawaii was lost.
• Curse of Elements crit and I killed Captain Planet.
• Revive Pet crit and it was Pet Semetary all over again.
• Blessing of Freedom crit and I invaded a Middle Eastern country.
• Blessing of Sacrifice crit and I became a Messiah to millions of people around the world.
• Intercept crit and I ran it back for a touchdown.
• Tremor Totem crit and California broke off of the mainland.
• Detect Traps crit and I realized that the new Death Star was a fully functional battleship.
• Feign Death crit and I became lootable.
• Water Shield crit and I caused a flood.
• Cleanse crit and I cured cancer.
• Perception crit and now I can see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
• Mind Control crit and spawned the People’s Republic of China.
• Vanish crit and my wife forgot about me.
• Sprint crit and I won the Olympics.
• Bear Form crit and I prevented forest fires.
• Aimed Shot crit and Lyndon B. Johnson became president.

And the one you’ll wish you could say to me by now:

• If my Curse of Tongues crits will you shut up?