Blog Archives
Alpha To Omega – Prelude
Starting from scratch. Naked is scratch, right?
I blame Gimli.
No, I’m not talking about the bastard brother of some hobbit. Gimli is a very Icelandic down in Manitoba (that be in Canada for all you non-Canuckleheads).
I happened to find myself driving through Gimli one day, and as I was leaving down I saw a big ol’ sign on the side of the road. It said “Odin Green”. A good name for property in a Viking town.
“Sounds like a football player’s name,” I thought to myself. Next thing I knew, I was saying the name Leeroy Jenkins-style. “OOOOODIN… GREEEEEN!”
As I drove home, the name stuck in my head. That’d be a good name for a WoW character. Probably a Warrior, given the Viking-esque image I had in my head everytime I said OOOOODIN… GREEEEEN. But another toon? Another warrior?
I let the idea slide.
Then the whole raiding thing happened and I was hit with another idea. Since raiding was something new for me, why not go all new with it?
I’m a casual player, but I’m not a terrible player. I do my research and find things and ways to not suck. I’m not min-maxing, but I’d rather be a functional part of a group rather than the anchor. I’ve got tools to keep me in the fight.
Why not put that to the test?
So that’s when the idea came to me – take a brand new character, a class I’d never played before, and go from killing rats at Level One to killing Archimode at Level One Hundred.
It felt like it worked on a few levels. It got me out of Draenor for awhile. It had me playing a character I didn’t have multiples of. New style, new format, new everything.
I’d only played a cloth class once. I took a warlock to level 30 and ended up deleting him. But I’d never played a Mage before. I heard they weren’t that tough to roll with, so I decided I’d go for it. I’d take a Human Mage from the starting zone of Stormwind to the end raid on Draenor.
Naming him was easier than deciding on what class to choose.
Awesome Addon Spotlight – GTFO
Okay, stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
You’re running a Heroic dungeon. You play DPS, cause you’re down with the sickness. It’s been a decent PuG so far and you’re burning through packs of mobs like a wildfire through Colorado. But somewhere in the fifth pack of beasts you suddenly get the LOW HEALTH warning and, while you’re looking around to see what the Hell is attacking you, you drop dead.
“L2Play noob,” is the last thing your corpse sees before you’re kicked from the group. Kicked before the body is even cold.
What the Hell just happened? And what the HELL happened just before that?
Now there’s one of two reasons you didn’t stop me. Reason the First is that this has, in fact, happened to you and it scarred you deeply. You try to suppress the memory, maybe with liquor, maybe with porn, maybe with Goldshire RP (which tends to be a combination of both liquor and porn.)
Reason the Second is that it has never happened to you, which is a damn dirty lie and you are a damn dirty liar. Congratulations, you have successfully suppressed the memory. Put the bottle down, be it Jack Daniels or Vaseline. There there, everything’s going to be okay.
Reality Check: Everybody gets caught standing in something they shouldn’t, aka “The Stupid.” Some people play World of Warcraft with the spell effects set low (or off), or they get tunnel vision in the heat of combat. In either case, by the time the poor soul notices they have lost a fatal amount of health, they’re staring at a Spirit Healer.
I hear it’s easier to play if your head is not up your ass. True story.
That is why I was so stoked to find the addon that all the cool kids are using (to not die in The Stupid.) It is the aptly named addon GTFO:
GTFO provides an audible alert when you’re standing in something you’re not supposed to be standing in. In some cases, you’ll be warned before you start taking damage. This mod improves your situational awareness and is recommended for dungeon divers and raiders of all skill levels as even the most seasoned veteran sometimes needs a reminder to GTFO.
It’s particularly useful for individuals that play with their spell graphics turned down as well as assisting with PvP when you can’t tell who’s casting the AOE.
I love this addon. There’s no configuration required, so just drop it in the folder and it’s ready to go straight out of the box. However, if you want to pimp your settings, it can be configured to provide visual cues when used alongside Power Auras Classic. It’s alarm is annoying enough for you not to be able to ignore it. It’s the best thing next to having someone stand over your shoulder and tell you to move your ass, without the harsh judgement.
Sally, you’re standing knee deep in the shit again. What the Hell is wrong with you!
GTFO. Get on it.
Rokk Talk 