Merry Christmas

Wow, it is Christmas time already.

I have been so busy as of late not really much time to blog or what not.

This has been an interesting experience this whole blogging thing.

But I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and maybe I will do some more blogs in the future.

Wrathgate - Therigwin's story

Many of you know Therigwin back when he was pre BC, BC, and pre wrath.

He was sporting brown hair in the monk cut with a full beard.

After experiencing the Wrathgate questline in game, I changed Therigwin's hair to what it is today, grey hair, scholar, with the duelist goatee. Why do you ask, well here is a story (not as nearly polished as my wife's various stories) of what happened.

Wrathgate - Therigwin's Story
It had been 3 months since the day Therigwin and the paladins of EM squad had descended on Light Hopes Chapel to assist Tirion Fordring in protecting the honored soldiers that had defended the land.  The squad just missed the final confrontation, but Therigwin was able to dispatch his once pupil and brother of his banker, Tiorin and put him at rest.  This was a great comfort to Druin and Merla that finally their brother was out of the Lich King's grasp.  He was one of the few that did not turn and Therigwin blamed himself.

Now he stares out at Naxxramas, wishing he could take care of that place and rid this town of its filthy presence.

"Sir Therigwin, you have been requested to report to Bolvar up at Wrathgate." said a soldier delivering official papers.

"For that is Holy, we have this floating thing here in the city and they want me up there?  Tell me why, there has been no indication that we can even breach those walls yet until we take care of this threat."

"Just read this note, it is from your wife."

It had been two months since he last saw Daraia.  SI-7 had sent her to the Borien Tundra, while his commanders had sent him to Howling Fjord.  Therigwin quickly scanned the letter.

"My Dearest Love, I have been assisting the Dragon Flights and they have agreed to assist us.  Bolvar is ready to attack the Wrathgate and confront the Lich King.   Make haste and join in the battle.  I have asked Bolvar to authorize you coming.  Make haste.  I miss you. Daraia"

"This changes everyting, I ride out immediately."

"Sir Therigwin reporting for duty sir."

"Ahh good to see you again.  Today we confront Arthas and demand justice.  I will lead the first squad.  Therigwin, you will be part of the second charge.  Commander Daraia, I want you to wait back and make sure our Horde Friends don't do anything rash."

Therigwin turned when Daraia was mentioned and embraced his wife. "Daraia, I have so missed you."
She kissed his bald head and "Now is not the time, we have a battle husband."

They made preporations and Bolvar approached.  The Horde joined in and they were finally at the gates.  Scourge warriors pushed back.

Therigwin and his troups were at the back and the Lich King came out.  He killed the horde champion.

Then the horde betrayed them.  A plague of barrels dropped from the sky.  Therigwin heard the call for retreat and began directing his men backward.  He saw Bolvar, go down.

"Retreat, Retreat!" Therigwin coughed, but already he was breathing in the green plague.  "If I can just call on the light....." and he passed out.

The red dragon flight came and burned away the plague.  Daraia was able to get Therigwin away and got Merla and Syyiand working on him right away.

"He should recover my Lady, he only got just a little bit of it and he is strong in the light." said the dwarf priest to her commander.

"I must go and talk with the Dragon Queen" said Daraia.

Daraia left and was then sent with Bolvar's shield back to the King.

Therigwin awoke.  He learned all that happened.  He had aged that day.  The combination of the light and the plague had bleached his hair grey and caused it to grow. 
"Imma liking your new look mLord" said Merla.
"Thank you.  I will wear my hair this day forward as a reminder of what transpired here.  We will get the Lich King yet and find out what happened to Bolvar."




Thanks for reading.

Patch 3.3 First Impressions

While I did not play overly much last night, I did like the following -

Updated Map with Quest Information (Good Bye Questhelper)

Quest query system (Hello EveryQuest Mod with Loremaster Mod) - I will finally find the last 99 quests I am missing for Kalimdor.

Things I did not like was a broken scrolling combat texts, bugged raid instance (Ony still flying with 1 life? AHHH), broken xperl and minimap and the constant prompting of bugs in my bug catcher and my bug catcher not fully working either!

So ya, I fought with mods mostly, but found a good replacement mini map, it is sexymap.

I got rid of a couple of mods and I helped my wife out with her computer and mods as well.

So game play, didn't see much.

Hope to see it all tonight!

Oh, and the Core Puppy is so cute!

The Slumps

There has been an interesting trend happening right now.

You see it in various blogs from my wife's to my good friend's (Enok) to other guild members, former guild members, and the basic Wow blogging community.

People are going into the Slumps, burn out, etc whatever you want to call it.

For me I see it as a natural cycle of the game. Even though we as a guild have not accomplished all our goals, the game is getting boring for many, myself included.

I have to admit, this past weekend we dusted off Sims 3 and I have been playing with that, raising up my little sim families and we have the expansion pack for sims 3 arriving at our house today.

But that all being said, it is a cycle, and we will see things kick back up with the Holiday festival in game along with the up coming patch.

Happy Gaming!

Proof is in the pudding

Ya, my blogging skills and consistency are incredibly lacking, but today I felt like blogging once more.

Last night I was faced with a tough or maybe easy decision.

We were doing Ony 10 and I had one of my new Off Tanks in there that I had been running with on instances on my shammie. He got himself to be crit capped and I thought sure, he can off tank Ony 10 with me, it is a simple enough fight.

Our first attempt I had him on the adds and well, the aoe threat was not there in his gear to compensate for the threat of the heals, etc. So I had him take over doing the single add.

We downed Ony and then the decision time came. The tanking Judgement Helm dropped. I will still sporting my T 8.5 helm, but my other tank had the crafted i200 epix tanking helm. Being that this was his first raid with us, he only had 2150 EP, so I easily out rank him on the priority list for loot.

So, eating my own message and doing the right thing, I gave him the helm. Then I promptly cut him a meta gem and epix gem to socket into the helm.

It was the right thing to do.

Life is a journey

So today I am going to be all over the place in my blog.

We discovered recently that our Kitchen floor was rotting out from underneath us. We had a contractor over that is a good Christian man that has done work for some of our relatives to find out the damage is gong to cost us the entire kitchen floor and dining area. the only thing keeping thing up at this point is the slate tile floor.

So our next battle is with our insurance to see if they will cover any of it and ask your prayers in this matter, cause otherwise we have no idea how to pay for it.

So life is a journey of ups and downs. A testing of ones character. Just when you think all is good, these things happen.

So I am attempting to stay positive and up beat for my wife, but it is going to be interesting for sure.

So lets move to in game news.

Recently, my Guild Eternity Matters has downed some new content for the first time. From ToC 25 man. Tonight we are going to attempt to finish off the Valkery Twins and Anuberak.

My Shammie got to go heal Nax 10 for the first time this weekend in an alt run and she came away with her Tier 7 helm! I almost have her fully epixed out in item 200s or higher. I still need an off hand and trinket replaced, but that will come with time.

Last bit of musing from me today during my lunch is back on the topic of ministry and criticism.

I find it very easy to criticize others for trying to do the right thing and then not doing it according to my standard. I recall growing up this phrase or question, "Why is that Christians only put on their armor to beat on other Christians rather than the true enemy?"

I had all but given up on ministry of any type this weekend because of the guild drama. My recent blog posts shows my shift in my thinking in that my guild was not a ministry. Well, God bless my wife and she challenged me on that. I had re-written the What is Eternity Matters section numerous times and finally we came up with one that we could both agree on.

This jist of it was Eternity Matters is not a church and it will never be one. It is not a street preaching ministry virtually in the game.

It is an organization of Christians that play world of warcraft to succeed in end game content. But being that we are comprised of Christians, it is a place of ministry among those Christians. God can still use us, despite ourselves.

I look at it this way, you get a bunch of believers together and you get 1 of 2 things.
If they are in tune with God, you get ministry because it is a natural part of their life. They just bless people by encouraging them, etc.
OR you get fighting, because everyone is entitled to their opinion and their is no harmony.

The problem I was facing was trying to overtly be a ministry and raid, and we could not do both, because of the perception of being uncaring that raiding guilds bring.

The question then became, Does God care that we play this game? That we raid? That we succeed at raiding?

I have been told that he doesn't care one way or another.

I happen to disagree. If God cares enough to keep track of the hair on my head, he cares enough about what I do with my time and how I spend it.

So I guess I am saying, that yes, you can Raid for God's Glory. That attitude is one of self sacrifice and not being one after the loot. And yes, Eternity Matters can still be a place of ministry, even with the changes it has had.

Thanks for Reading!

A better understanding

I meant to blog at lunch today, but ended up reading a good book.

That aside, I just wanted to follow up from my previous blog.

Me and my former guildie has come to an understanding and I hope can still be friends.

We don't see eye to eye, but that is ok, diversity is part of God's creation.

That all being said, I think we have both moved on, both made some mistakes, and are both better for it.

For one thing, God has been working in my heart and mind about the concept of what ministry is.

For many, minisitry is what the church does, what a mission group does, etc. For a while, I thought my guild in a way was a ministry.

I have come to understand that is not the case. Ministry is not an organization. Ministry is what God has called us to do. That includes the simple things such as taking care of someone needs to the more blatent telling people that Jesus loves them. It is supposed to be our way of life, the way we give back to God.

So what is the Church? The Church is the place God uses to energize and equip his people for ministry. This is going to be my topic on next weeks Ventrillo Guild message for my guildies that are interested.

So my guild in all senses is just a group of like minded people, but we have the opportunity as individuals to do ministry, but its purpose is not ministry, but an organization for a game.

Now there are some legit ministry organizations out there, but they are not ministry, what they do again is similiar to the church, the equip the individual to do ministry.

Anyway, I will go more into that this up coming Tuesday, in my Vent Study on God's gifts to the church, how some minister.

As to fun game news, my main just got a new shield and tanking ring.

Therigwin is looking pretty good!

Have a great night!

Drama Queens

I have always tried to be real with people, both online and in real life. What you see is what you get.

I am blogging today to sort out what just happened in the past day.

Recently I announced that I was going to change things in the guild to better accommodate things for me cause I was starting to burn out.

Now let me state this first, we have had little to no guild drama in the past few months. It has been really nice.

Ok, the major change I announced was I was no longer going to be doing the in game devotionals in say chat on Sunday. The primary reason for this is we started a Tuesday Prayer and Bible Study in Ventrillo where I feel I could do more. On top of that, the last Sunday Bible time we did in game, only 1 person showed up, while the Ventrillo meeting was getting a good following of people. But I believed both were sufferring in that I did not feel I had the time to spend on both. Now the Sunday Devotional used to be covered by 3 people taking turns. Jon and Chris cofounders of the guild helped out and they were the ones that suggested it. Well, they have left the game and left it entirely to me. When no one was coming any more, I felt it was time to stop.

Most people were encouraging to me. One person was not. They posted a nice long response basically accusing the guild of not caring about people anymore. It went to private PMs between my wife and him until it came down to a he said, she said. At that time, I had enough. This person was someone we had kicked from the guild once before because he was a problem and he was becoming a problem again. So with the agreement of our officers, we suspended his web account and put him in Time Out rank.

He then used his facebook page to post a picture of my avatar with a Hitler head and called my wife a female dog (b word). This was reported by one of our retired officers. At that point, the rest of the officers, even those that had met him in real life and liked him, called for him to be kicked from the guild.

We kicked him and in his spite, he continues to attack us.

It makes me sad.

All I ever really wanted to do was play the game and be a Christian at the same time. People have different ideas on what that means and I guess to them I am a hypocrite.

I got an email from him asking that I remove all his artwork from the guild website. So I have decided to do a full website purge, cause in honesty, the guild has changed, the members have changed, and he was one of the few remaining members that caused drama. He is now gone and I find it time to start over, move forward and not look back. The EM website will be a blank slate that the current membership can make their own, rather than having the negativity of the past cloud it.

To the member I kicked and his clan of supporters, I do wish you best. I do forgive you for the hurtful things you have done constantly and the misguided lies you believe to be truth. I respectfully ask that you leave us alone.

All Grown up

I have a secret.

I have an alt that is NOT a paladin.

On top of that, it is a girl... ya, I am a guy playing a female avatar...

Well, I refer to her as my baby girl. She is all grown up now. I got her to level 80 this week.

It is my Shammie I am talking about. Myriah. She has become my healer. As a tank, I love my paladin healers, but as a player, I love playing a shamman healer. The challenge is there to if I riptide, chain heal, or do that awesome healing wave.

I have healed a couple of heroics, a bit shaky at first with a couple of deaths occasionally, still learning the mana management, but overall, she is a nice break from all things Therigwin.

Speaking of Therigwin, he is going to be getting hit with a nerf bat in 3.3. They are taking away 20% of dodge to tanks. Kinda stinks since the librim I just got gives dodge and the T 10 set bonus gives dodge. Hope they change those things.

Anyway, my little break at work is over, have a great weekend!

RL Weapons

So, as every boy knows, they love swords, maces, etc in real life.

In college I purchased my first sword. A nice Knight's Templar 1 Handed sword. The balance was great and I cut up a many a pumpkin, trees, etc.

When I got married and we had our first kid, I got rid of the sword because it was just not safe to keep around the kids without having a secure way to keep it (which we did not have).

Now skip ahead to today, I would love to get a paladin mace for Haloween to go with my renfair garb. Well, Blizzard today announced Musem Replicias had real life WOW stuff from Frostmourne to tabbards, etc. What was not said was the weapon was made of Latex.

And I found this cool hammer there, so my desire to have a paladin hammer in real life will soon be true come next year when we get some spare cash.
LARP Paladin Warhammer - MuseumReplicas.com

Brains.....

Brains....

Me want brains!!!!

Ya, it is 3 AM, Sunday morning and I am waiting on a DBA at work to finish moving a database to hook up, so writing this blog about...

BRAINS!

Or Zombies.

Tons of Zombies.

This past week, I helped some guildies get the Zombiefest achievement.

Basically, you tank the second boss in the inn for about 4 minutes allowing all the zombies to spawn again, then kill the boss, go kill the third boss, then come back, gather the zombies and bring them to be killed in one swoop, this grants about 80 kills, then go kill 20 more in the remaining part of the instance and bam, achievement.

Here are some pics I took -

4 set awesomeness

So yesterday was a great day in that I now have all 4 pieces I need for my T9 four piece bonus!

This bonus is great in that it reduces Bubble Wall to a 1 minute cooldown. This is very nice to have in some fights, taking the load off the healers.

But it got me thinking about T10 set bonus and again, I am not very excited. Dodge seems like such a poor thing to give as a bonus, sure it is lots of dodge, but what about those pesky spell casters.

I much prefer my T9 bonus of bubble wall every minute.

I was told.....

I was recently told I don't blog enough.

So while I was on a process for work, I decided to write a blog.

This is on the new T 10 paladin gear.

I love the look of T9. It is allaince, it is gold and shiney, it screams classic paladin.

I dread T10, because they will try to toss that undead theme into from Icecrown. COME ON! I AM A HOLY FIGHTER FOR THE LIGHT!!!! I DON'T WANT SKULLS ON MY GEAR!

That being said, I was pleasantly surprized by T10. I still like T9 better.

T10 has the good old red, purple, pink color scheme again, because don't ya know, the majority of paladins are BELF Chicks.

But overall it doesn't look too bad and the Judgement helm could work with it.

Tell me what you think?

Blogging once more, guild dynamics

So work had turned off access to Blogsites, but quickly found that many in the company have need it. So once I got access, I am now blogging again as it was a lunchtime activity for me. Yes, I could have written it in email and sent it on that way, but ya, I didn't.

So it has almost been a month since I blogged and I wanted to write about interesting dynamics of a Christian based guild.

This came up with our raiding week. We had a raid with 10, count it, 10 paladins in it. Talk about pink power!

When looking at the guild make up, you will find we have more paladins than pretty much any other class.

What are we missing? Warlocks.

Now I find it an interesting dynamic. Christians are warned in the bible against demonology, the occult, etc. And while warlocks scream all of that, it is just a game (though I would never play a warlock myself). I think it is for that reason, Eternity Matters doesn't have many warlocks in the guild. This hurts with raid composition and the utilities they bring to raiding, but it is understandable.

Now paladins are the big protectors of light, the crusaders and angels (avenging wrath!) so it makes sense that Christians are attracted to this class. So it is kinda a light/dark issue :-)

So just a random thought as to why Eternity Matters guild is out of class balance with these two particular classes. What do you guys think?

Better Half

I would like to thank all the dedicated readers of this blog. I know I do not blog as often as I would like, but thanks for hanging out with me and all my craziness.

Today I want to talk to you about the most important woman in my life. This would be my wife. She writes this awesome blog about wow stuff from a rogue's perspective. I believe I have shared some of her fan fiction concerning our characters, how they met, fell in love, etc.

Well, the real story of Therigwin and Daraia began before we even met. We both had a connection to a Christian Camp in Michigan, Camp Barakel. My family has been working at that camp for many summers and attended it as campers as well. My wife worked up there as a teen as well. It was during that summer that she met my brother and future sister-in-law. They came away thinking that I should date this girl, even though I was in a relationship at the time with another girl.

Time passed and I found myself at college and not dating anyone. And I met my wife through the drama department. Now I had my eyes set on another girl, but she was not who God had planned for me. We worked on a couple of plays and dramas together, helping out the local Christian High School back staging, cueing the actors and helping with the set. All the kids could see the chemistry between us, but we did not, we were just good friends.

I remember we went rollerskating, and I did not do that well, but my wife helped me out. It was at that event my brother and sister-in-law found out that I had met the girl from Camp. They told mom and dad and everyone started praying.

Well, I was still fixated on this other girl in college, but she turned me down for the formal winter banquet. This was the "valentines" day banquet the college put on each year. So, all my friends were going and I really did not want to go by myself, so I asked her. She said yes and I got the best shock of my entire night that night of the banquet.

My wife is what she calls a "low maintenance" person. She doesn't wear much makeup, keeps her hair in a ponytail, etc. Your basic good looking woman that doesn't demand much.

Well I still remember how beautiful she was that night. All her girl friends had done her up to beyond what she normally was. It took my breath away and I got this thought in my head, maybe this was the girl I should look at for my wife.

Over the next 3 weeks we did various dates and the more I learned about her, the more I was falling in love with her. I asked her to be my girlfriend at the end of that third date. She said no. Man what a blow to me. She told me I was on rebound and I was not truly interested in her and told me to be just friends with her.

Nothing like a challenge to get you more interested. Well I told her she was wrong and asked her what I could do. She knowing that I was very much into Knights, fantasy, and all that stuff, she told me that I had a quest, if I could figure out the one thing she would be my girlfriend. She figured it would take me a year to figure it out. So over the next few days I tried various things, from poetry, flowers being snuck into her dorm room by her roommate for me, starting daily devotional with her, and pretty much romancing her entire dorm. They all wanted her to date me, but she was firm, I had to do this one thing for the quest before she would be my girlfriend.

That one simple thing to do, was to kiss her. She believed I was too shy to try that, and in truth I was very shy and insecure. As I have shared in the past, my previous girlfriend from highschool was a mess and used physical interaction against me to manipulate me. She was really messed up and I did not want my new relationship based on anything physical until we were closer to being married.

Well, I remember the night that I overcame this fear and whispered in her ear, "Is it a kiss?" and saw the hope and panic in her face. I attempted to kiss her 3 times that night in her dorm, only to be interrupted by people walking by, including her "dorm manager or dorm mom". So I grabbed her hand and we went for a walk. We walked over to the seminary on campus where there was a pond and willow tree. Standing under that tree, I looked her in the eyes, bent my head down and kissed her. We prayed after that asking God to direct our relationship. It took me 1 week to complete that quest and win my wife over to be my girlfriend.

A couple months into the relationship, I realized that I loved her, really really loved her and I told her. She said that was nice and she just wasn't ready. Oh the heart break. Then one day while we were walking around campus talking about "The Corner on the Truth", she blurted out, "I Love You". I was the happiest man alive. I remember the exact spot on campus she told me, though the landscaping has changed since that time, I will always remember where she confessed her love for me. She was scared that it would not last over that summer, but it did. We both went to two different camps to work, but visited each other during the summer.

Our love grew and I found out of a tradition of how the guy proposes to their spouse in her family. It was by presenting a teddy bear. We were working on the fall drama again. She was the backstage manager and I was in the sound booth. My parents were coming up and I was trying to stall her as much as possible to make sure all was ready. She was a wreck worrying about her responsibilities and the play. Well the seminar was where the stage was at and I had my parents put the teddy bear all dressed in armor with a pouch around his neck in the spot we shared our first kiss on a blanket.

I was walking her over to the seminar when I said, hey, whats that over there. She thought it was a couple, but I dragged her over there. Now she knew that eventually I was going to be asking her, because we had already picked out her ring and I had ordered it, she just did not know it would be so soon.

I remember her words so clearly..... "I hate you" "I love you" "I hate you" ya, she was a bit stressed. We dug out the ring from the under the armor and I got on my knees and asked her to marry me. She said yes and the rest is as they say history.

So now we turn full circle back to the beginning of the story. Camp Barakel. That is where my wife is presently with my sister-in-law at a Women's retreat. She has been gone since Friday and while I am glad she gets to get a break from the family and renew her spirit, I really miss my partner, my helpmate, my love. She will be back later tonight and then we will celebrate our youngests 5 year birthday.

One of the things I did for her when she was gone was completely redo her UI and I will now share her previous UI and her new one.

Previous -















New -

Laughing no more, and improving failures

So we did Ulduar 25 last night. We were down some people, had a couple of pugs, but overall we smashed through the flame leviathan really fast.

And to my shock, [Titanguard] dropped. It was a very hard decision to make for me.
I had been using [Last Laugh] from KT as my tanking weapon. And while it was not [Sorthalis, Hammer of the Watchers], it was still an upgrade. But it was an upgrade for all the tanks going with us.

Then I needed to remind myself of our loot system. That it did not make sense to horde points. I was top on the list, so I needed to spend those points. So I spent them and got this sword.

It is not the best model out there, there are other tanking weapons that look better, but it was nice to be using a sword again. My hope now is that I will some day get a tanking mace instead, as paladins should be using maces. :-)

Mod Spotlight - EnsidiaFails
This is an awareness mod.
It spits out a report during and after a boss fight of all the things that people should be aware of during the fight. Like, get out of the fire! Stop casting!
It is a tool to help your raiders know what they need to work on. If there are so focused on one thing, then they may die or cause a wipe. It is an excellent tool.

Ret DPS

Today I want to talk about my off speck.

Ret.

Wow, I never thought my off speck would be ret and not Holy. Who knows, maybe I will dabble back in Holy later on.

Anyway, back to Ret Paladins.

They can be either the most rewarding or most frustrating dps to run. The big reason is their spell rotation is a priority system, meaning based on what is available for you to hit, you should hit that.

For many, this can be very frustrating, never knowing which button to hit and their dps in parties and raids are very very poor.

Well, I am here to tell you there is hope!

First off, you need to make sure your paladin is geared correctly. You want to be hit capped (267ish). After that, it is all about Strength and Crit. The more the better.

Be glyphed. Make sure you have glyphs in each spot. I like the Divine Storm, The Judgement one and the Seal of Command one.

On trash, run Seal of Command. On Bosses, run Seal of Vengence.

Now for that tricky spell rotation.

Get this mod - clcret

It shows you what button to hit next.

There you have it, get your dps in ret where you want it to be!

UI Mods Part ummm next? Raiding

Ok for those following my mod UI series here we go -

Charming... Very Charming is all about Target Charms.

UI Mods Part 1 - Solo all about my solo UI and a full listing of Mods at that time.

UI Mods Part 2 - Continues talking about View ports.
UI Mods Part 3 - 5 man discussing my UI for 5 Mans.

Ok We also have my classic thread on my 3.0 UI

Oh ya, and we talked about Chocolate Bar here

Finally I did have a plug for Ampere an awesome mod for turning mods on and off without logging out of your character... that takes us to.....

DARE TIME!
Click the picture.

RAWR.

So this pic is a bit old, I have updated again since I took it, but WOW is down and I did not want to wait to blog. So here we go.

I am in a 10 man, tanking Hodir, for those wondering. Notice Xperl is now showing the two raid frames. I have debated getting rid of showing party and raid frames all together since VuhDo now does that much better than healbot, but ya, that is another blog for another time.

Lets talk about this picture.

You can see Mik's scrolling combat text in action.
You see Chocolate Bar with all the Broker Plug Ins.
Omen is going on along with Tidy Threat.

Yeah, lots of things going.... I know, how about an updated list of my mods and I will let you know which ones you see active in the picture.....

!BugGrabber This capture those nasty bugs, you don't see it active completely, but kinda, ya...
Acheron - I love this mod. You see the purple skull up at the top, it access it, but right now you do not see it up and active. I should blog about it later.
Achieved! - You don't see it on this screen shot, but this allows you to move the achievement windows.
Ackis Recipe List - This one tells you all about recipes and where to get them.
Ampere - Yup talked about this one.
Atlas - The classic map of the dungeons and raids.
Atlasloot Enhanced - Tells ya what loot drops from what, really handy.
AtlasQuest - Fan Update - Tells what quests are part of dungeons.
Auctioneer - A classic.
Bagsy - Hmmmm, I forget... Oh ya, I got this with Combuctor to help manage my bags.
Bejeweled - Fun game in a game!
Broker uClock - the Clock in the corner
Broker_CalendarEvents - the calendar in the corner
Broker_CPU Memory - The performance meter
Broker_Currency - My cash
Broker_epgp - Access to EPGP woot!
Broker_Location - where are you?
Broker_Recount - access to Recount via broker
BugSack - Get those bugs info from BugSack
ButtonFacade - Make the buttons purdy
ButtonFacade: Caith - The skin I use in the UI
Capping Battleground Timers - For my wife, I don't pvp
Chinchilla Minimap - How I made my minimap so awesome
ChocolateBar Broker Display - Yummie Chocolate!
ColorTools - Just found this one on wow interface, allows tweaking of colors even more!
Combuctor - Yup, my bag mod... LOVE IT!
CowTip - Tips of awesome! You see it in action in the picture too!
CurseProfiler 2.0 - Um, this is an evil mod... But it comes with the Curse Updater. I have it turned off cause it lags my system up.
DBM-Sarth-ShadowFissureWarn - Nice DBM addon for Sarth to let you know when the shadow zones.
DBM-VictorySounds - I missed my BigWigs victory song, I got it back with this.
Deadly Boss Mods - Yup, I am a DBM user.
Deadly Boss Mods - Burning Crusade mods
Deadly Boss Mods - LibDataBroker
Dominos - How I get my buttons arranged where I want them in my UI.
Dresser - A much better way to dress up when CTRL clicking items.
DualSpeccer - See that broker mod up top, one click and it switches my speck!
Elephant - Records all chat channels, cause well, ya... It is good to have it when people are stupid.
EnsidiaFails - This is a great mod that announces the failures to the raid so they learn.
epgp (dkp reloaded) - yup, our points system. I love it.
EPGPLootmaster - This makes epgp worth it, everyone has this installed and loot go so smoothly.
EWOlson_RealName - This is a classic mod I used to put my real name in Guild Chat.
Fishbringer - Great for the fisherman in you.
Gem Quota - Great for getting your meta active.
GuildBankSearch - Every want to find something in your guild bank? This helps you find it.
GuildCheck - This lets me know when people leave, join, etc when I am offline I get a report when I log back on.
HeadCount - Raid tracking and loot tracking awesomeness.
Hit Assist for casters and melee - Great mod to help with hit cap
InspectEquip - when you inspect someone, it tells you where they got that gear.
Learning Aid - Learn a new spell, a window opens for you to add to your action bar
Livestock - The cage, horseshoe and winged shoe icons in my ui. Brings out a pet or mount.
Macro Broker - This allows you to create a macro and put it in your broker mod. I used this to get VuhDo and Trinket Menu into a quick access.
Mapster - You saw this one before ;-)
MikScrollingBattleText - Numbers scrolling in the picture.
Misspelled - I LOVE THIS MOD. Spell checker for wow chat.
Omen Threat Meter - Yup... I am tanking and have threat.
OmniCC - The nice numbers on my buttons that count down to let me know I can push the button again.
Outfitter - Best equipment manager in the game. PERIOD!
Overachiever - achievement tools and tweaks - Revamps the achievement system to be more friendly.
Peggle - another game in a game!
QuestHelper - You all love it, you know you do.. .Just turn it off before the raid.
RatingBuster - While blizz has good item tool tips for gear compare, I still use this mod because it gives so much more info.
ReadyCheckAnnouncer - Lets everyone know when everyone is ready!
Recount - Please don't post the numbers to raid please lol
RecountGuessedAbsorbs - Hey, is that Disc priest really doing it?
RepairBroker - Time to repair, I guess. Nice mod.
Reputation Monitor 3.0 - Good rep tracking mod
SatrinaBuffFrame - Ok, I use this in conjuction with xperl It gives a few more visual identifiers so I can hit exorcism when it is an instant cast or keep Divine plea active for mana.
SharedMedia - Musics and fonts and images for mods!
Sunn - Viewport Art - Yeah, you have seen it before.
Sunn - Viewport Art Pack 1
Sunn - Viewport Art Pack 5
SustainedTps - This one I am thinking of dropping cause I never look at it... lol. But outputs to chat frame my tps after each fight.
TankadinTps - my gui replacemetn for Sustained TPS
TargetCharms - Charming, I know.
tomQuest2 - My replacement for QuestFu. I love it, cause well, my name is TOM! lol
TrinketMenu - A classic for trinket management. I still love this mod.
Volumizer - Best volume control broker mod ever!
VuhDo - This healing mod rocks. The next thing, replacing healbot for sure.. Even GRID and Clique I would say have a tough time holding there own this bad boy.
WIM (WoW Instant Messenger) v3 - PST me please! This is a must for those that manage tons of whispers.
X-Perl UnitFrames - So purdy
ZOMGBuffs - I have talked about this mod before and it keeps getting better. I recommend for all classes, especially paladins.


SO you have seen my UI and my mods. All my mods except EWOlson_RealName can be found on Curse.com or wowinterface.com

Over my next few blogs, I will hit some of these mods in more detail. ya I got lazy and stopped linking them at the beginning lol. But they are easy enough for all of you to find.

I hope my server is back up... Happy Gaming!

Charming... Very Charming

Today's Blog is on a mod that I believe is a must for anyone that is party leading or raid leading.

I think it is key to either have macros or an addon for you to perform the following two tasks -
Mark Adds with Charms (Icons on the head)
And perform Ready Checks.

I stumbled apon this mod a while ago, called Target Charms.

This is a very versatile mod allowing for custom size, shape, moving, hiding, etc.

If you look at my UI from prior posts you will see a Ready? button for the ready check and the icons listed just above my action bar for quick access of marking targets.

Well, that is all I have for today, time for me to get back to my job that pays the bills.

Follow up

Well, it appears that a blog post was pulled.

It is always a tuff decision or should be when people blog about stuff.

I know I always debate before I hist the Publish Post button.

My hope is that my blogs can be a source of encouragement, an understanding of who I am and a way to better play the game.

Off to Church

Disciplining those you care about

One of the things I hate to do is discipline. As a parent, I dislike doing it. As a GM, I dislike doing it as well.

But God commands parents to discipline their kids and raise them right. He also disciplines us in our lives.

Now discipline is meant not as punishment but as corrective measures so that we may be better in the long run. It takes discipline to accomplish goals.

One of the things we have in Eternity Matters is a code of conduct. Simple things about respecting others, respecting the raid leaders, let them do their jobs, be positive, create a positive place for people to play.

Since I have taken over, people have been keeping it positive, being respectful in vent, etc

The reasons for these rules is we care about the people and the experience they have with us in EM. Plus without them, it all turns to chaos.

There were a few members I was concerned about, but they had been doing very well. A few of the younger members we have had to redirect and that went well.

What blew my mind is that two weeks ago, one of our newer members called out that I was dead during a Thadius fight. He later apologized for that. I thought that was cool. Older members have problems apologizing, but our newer ones are pretty good about it.

Well, the other night we did Ignis in 25 man. It was rough and two of the members were making it more so. One was giving out instruction even though she was not a raid leader. The other was complaining in healer chat. Both were a little disruptive on vent. The following day, my wife was still getting whispers from many of the members asking how the fight was supposed to go, because they were confused by all the information given.

Anyway, after the raid I sent them this note since they logged off - (they are married to each other)
Subject: Warning
Just to let you know, this is an official warning and .
You both need to remember to keep a positive attitude while raiding.
And if you have suggestions, voice them in whispers to both Daraia and Myself.
This will avoid confusion on the part of those that are learning the fight.
Turn it around and enjoy the fellowship of the raid and fellow believers.
Otherwise, take a break from raiding.
Therigwin

This was said to them because I care about them and I want them to be positive and not chase away, confuse or hurt other members.

Well, as soon as the one person read the note, she pulled all her characters. Later that night, so did her husband. He just pulled one character, his main that he raided with.

I was upset, but moved on. I prayed for them and went yup, that was their decision to make.

Well, I was informed recently that he blogged about it.

Reasons given for their leaving -
1. We did not care about people anymore but cared more about Raiding.
2. This is shown in that we are recruiting.....
By the way, guess what we do to recruit.... I posted one note on the Eldre'Thalas forums. That is it. I am not going out and looking up people and asking them to join....

So yes, his blog entry got under my skin, because it was not true. I asked them to be respectful and enjoy fellowship and be positive. So rather than take the corrective action, they ran away and blamed it on us not being caring.

That is how I see it.

Sigh........

See you all online, hope to have more UI posts later.

My UI Part 3 - 5 Man Content Style

I dare you again, click the picture and see what awaits you.

Yes, I am starting this blog very late at night or early morning. Been on a tech call for work (love being on call, NOT) so before I head to bed, I wanted to start this blog. We will be going over various elements in this ui, as this is a special configuration just for the new 5 man.

Insert Time Lapse Here

Ok, it is now lunch time and I am at work finishing up this blog entry.

As you can see I am using Xperl Unit Frames Mod to display the party frames and my frame and target, etc.

But what is that thermometer in between my target of target frame and my target?
That is a brand new threat mod, called Tidy Threat. It is nice and small and will fit in there nicely, also works great with the default blizzard frames.

You may also notice a bar in the bottom middle with icons and the shield is highlighted. That is Outfitter. I only turn on that bar when doing ToC 5 man so I can quickly switch out my jousting stick for my tanking weapon.

Well, lunch is over, so I will have to blog more about my UI on a later date.

UI Mods Part 2

No new picture today.

You just look at the one from the last blog - http://tank4thelight.blogspot.com/2009/08/ui-mods-part-1-solo-play.html

Today's quick bit will be on a viewport mod and a settings mod.

Viewport mods change your screen real estate by adding graphics to the screen. On top of that, they can also modify the viewable area of your character.

What does that mean? Ok, say I wanted to be able to scroll back and see EVERYTHING that I could see with having mods turned off. Ok, take that box, now put it into the viewport. This allows me to place all my controls, mods, etc off the viewing area or view port. In theory, I could make my setup so I could record videos and have none of my UI as I could crop it out in the video editing.

Anyway, I use Sunn - Viewport Art with art pack 1 and 5 for my characters.
Now again, you have the option of having it lay the graphics on top of the screen, or making an actual view port. I have chosen to make an actual view port. So it lets me see the same amount of play area without having it covered by the graphcs. Infact, I have my chocolate bar set to invisible and use the Sunn Art behind it.

Now the other mod I want to talk about is TweakWOW
It has a bunch of little tweaks that are normally UI Console commands that you can now configure. This includes setting the max distance for your camera to be even farther out (my primary reason for using the mod).

So this gives me maximum distance and viewing of the area, while getting my ui out of my face, so I can see what is going on while tanking.

Tomorrow, we will cover some more of my interesting addons.

UI Mods Part 1 - Solo Play

Today I embark on sharing my UI for Wow 3.2

Click the Image... I dare you.

BUHAHAHAHAHA.

Anyway here is my UI. I am presently non grouped and flying in my main speck as a tank. Over the next couple of blogs I will include shots of my UI in my two specks grouped and ungrouped with other mods popped open. My previous Blog, I covered Chocolate Bar as the main mod of focus.
And if you have looked at some of my past UIs I have posted in various spots, you see that I have pretty much established my look and feel.

So we got rid of FuBar and I am now using ChocolateBar.

Now again, this is going to be a series, so let hit a section of the screen at a time.
First you may notice I have my map open and it is not taking up my entire screen. In fact, I can size it, make it transparent, etc. This is all courtesy of Mapster. It works with Mods like Questhelper as well. It adds the coordinates and everything.

Ok, let me now cover my new strategy for ChocolateBar.
I have divided Chocolate Bar into six areas.
The top left deals with my location, guild and friends, and quests.
The middle deals with raiding, grouping, combat, etc.
The right deals with time, sound, whispers, and my active/inactive lockouts.
The bottom left deals with UI stuff and Atalas.
The bottom center deals with performance and errors.
The bottom right is my cash, bags, regeants, and repair status.

Well that is all there is for today, except here is a list of all the mods I am running right now -
!BugGrabber
Acheron
Achieved!
Ackis Recipe List
Ampere
Atlas
Atlasloot Enhanced
AtlasQuest - Fan Update
Auctioneer
Bejeweled
Broker uClock
Broker_Bags
Broker_CalendarEvents
Broker_CPU Memory
Broker_Currency
Broker_epgp
Broker_Location
Broker_Recount
BugSack
ButtonFacade
ButtonFacade: Caith
Capping Battleground Timers
Chinchilla Minimap
ChocolateBar Broker Display
Combuctor
CowTip
CurseProfiler 2.0
DBM-Sarth-ShadowFissureWarn
DBM-VictorySounds
Deadly Boss Mods
Deadly Boss Mods - Burning Crusade mods
Deadly Boss Mods - LibDataBroker
Dominos
Dresser
DualSpeccer
Elephant
EnsidiaFails
epgp (dkp reloaded)
EPGPLootmaster
EWOlson_RealName
Fishbringer
Gem Quota
GuildBankSearch
GuildCheck
HeadCount
Hit Assist for casters and melee
InspectEquip
Learning Aid
LibDataBroker-1.1
Livestock
Mapster
MikScrollingBattleText
Misspelled
Omen Threat Meter
OmniCC
Outfitter
Overachiever - achievement tools and tweaks
Peggle
QuestHelper
RatingBuster
ReadyCheckAnnouncer
Recount
RecountGuessedAbsorbs
RepairBroker
Reputation Monitor 3.0
SatrinaBuffFrame
SharedMedia
Sunn - Viewport Art
Sunn - Viewport Art Pack 1
Sunn - Viewport Art Pack 5
SustainedTps
TargetCharms
tomQuest2
TotemTimers
TrinketMenu
Volumizer
VuhDo
WIM (WoW Instant Messenger) v3
X-Perl UnitFrames
ZOMGBuffs

Everybody loves chocolate

Chocolate...

The stuff that some claim is better than woohoo.

But the chocolate I am blogging about today is an addon or mod for World of Warcraft.

While it is pretty impressive and does replace a long standing addon in my UI, it does not go as far as the Hershey's Chocolate Bar.

So lets dig into this MOD highlight for this Friday.
ChocolateBar Broker Display
This mod is now replacing my once beloved FuBar. I originally thought about switching back to Titan Panel as it had native Broker Mod support, but decided to look for an alternative.

Like FuBar, it allows the creation of a bar at the top and bottom of the screens. It can be skinned to look like what you want. It has left, middle, and right icon placement support.
It has a very simple control scheme in the addons configuration.
It supports profiles for multiple characters.

Example Bar:

Another one:


Now when I switched over to ChocolateBar, I needed to find some replacement mods for FuBar. This was a good thing, as I found some new broker plug in mods that did the same thing as my old FuBar mods, but worked even better than the FuBar versions. I will be going over all this mods in my weekend blog that looks at my revamped UI for 3.2 and all the MODs and addons I now use.

Have a great weekend and eat some chocolate for me.

All Washed Up - Change

I keep feeling that I am epix fail at this blogging.

I have all these great things I want to write about but do not have the time to do so.

First on the list is a new updated UI and MODs blog describing my UI and fun mods since Patch 3.2 hit.

Next is a revamp of the Paladin Talents Review Guide updated for Patch 3.2.

Maybe I will get some time to work on those latter this week or this weekend.

So instead of those things, I want to blog about change.

Change, it is not what it is all washed up to be.... Most people hate change, others endure change, and some embrace change.

Life is about change and change makes us uncomfortable. Each patch brings about changes. Some are good, some are ok, others are not good. But without change, life and the game gets stagnate and doesn't go anywhere. So embrace the changes!

I have two changes that I dislike right now. First is the removal of the Seal of Martyr and second is the cast time added to Exorcism. I know they gave other tools to make up for those changes, but it is getting used to it that bugs me.

It was nice having Exorcism to help pick up stuff, along with having taunts available, etc. It was also nice to mix that into my 969 rotation to alive some bordom in some tank fights.

But alas, those days are now gone.

Other changes are incredible. I have my T 8.5 Helm, and other nice upgrades do to badges, the new 5 man and being able to clear farther in the content the guild is at right now.

It is nice to go back into the old five man heroics cause people want badges.

These are all great things.

The new epix gems are nice as well, getting the recipes are slow (costing 4 JC tokens each), but that is ok. I am getting the recipes.

Finally, the biggest changes have been happening in the guild. We have gone Raiding mentality and it is working. We still are social, we still are Christian, but we are getting things done.

But those changes brought about Mod changes. And that will lead into Therigwin's updated UI and Mod post latter on.

But for a sneak peak, let me tell you about a MOD I just got. I know, it is time for a

MOD SPOTLIGHT
This MOD spotlight brought to you by the letter A.

Ampere - This mod allows you to turn on and off mods in game and then do a reloadui. This means no more logging out of World of Warcraft to turn on mods for raiding, etc.
Curse Download
Wowinterface Download
(Yes it does require to load out of date addons)

Patch 3.2 My Specks and glyphs

Ok, so this is what I am thinking now for Prot -
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#sZE0xAMuMuscufdtsMhb:NGpVcm

And this is what I am thinking for Ret -
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#smZEZVfrtbIuhdIfsu:AV0Vcm

Patch 3.2

So Patch 3.2 comes out today.

I am kinda prepared.

I changed my Mining to Blacksmithing.

But beyond that, I have read some blogs, but I have not done the research that was needed for my protection speck and ret specks.

So tonight, I will be messing around with specks until I have a pretty good grasp on it.

I also plan on farming badges to finally get my T8.5 helm. That will be really nice to finally have that helm. I think it will accent Therigwin's dashing looks even more. :-)

Well, back to the grind at work, blog some more later this week.

(Yes, I know, I need to update my Talent Guide, maybe I can do that this weekend.)

Socket Bonus AHOY!

So Therigwin made the transition from Mining to Blacksmithing.

Now his Blacksmithing is not maxed out, but I did get high enough to be able to Socket Bracers and Socket Gloves.

So now Therigwin is a Min/Max Jewelcrafting Blacksmith.

The big reason for this change was the changes coming in Patch 3.2. The Dragon's Eye gems will no longer be Prismatic (meaning they count as all colors) but are changing to be color specific. Well, with Blacksmithing, I now can use them in those sockets and not worry about socket bonuses being missed. It did mean I changed up some of my existing gems, but overall, I saw a net gain in stats verses having the mining.

So the PTR has gone into retail state and that means we will soon have the patch on our hands.
It is going to be an exciting time for Eternity Matters because it will allow us to do more hopefully.

But that will be another blog post.

See you all online!

Changing of the Guard

So after three years of being under the gentle guidance of my loving wife, Eternity Matters is changing it up. Daraia handed the GM position over to me yesterday. It was after much prayer, sweat, tears, and heartache that she came to that decision.

As of late, Eternity Matters has been dealing with people respecting each other. There has been this vary callous attitude permeating the guild where the leadership is disrespected and treated poorly. In the last few months, we almost lost our core officers.

In fact, that was one of the decisions we faced, disband the guild and reform it. We decided instead to change the leadership.

Now wait Therigwin, Daraia was your wife and you were basically her right hand man, how does this really change anything?

It doesn't change much except the stress is off my wife's shoulders and now on mine. My wife was more gentle in dealing with individuals. I am a holy righteous hammer swinging paladin of protection that will smash things.

So there will be some changing in for my guild.

The guild's motto has been bringing the peace of God to a World at War. We have had very little peace in the guild, so our goal cannot be met.

So where we used to be like, yup, you can join, that will no longer be the case. Guild members need to realize that they represent us and what we stand for. Those that break the rules will be removed much quicker than we have previously done.

I love my Lord and Savior. I Love my wife. I love my family. I love my guild. And I want us to be a good representation to all.

The bar has just been raised, I pray that everyone rises to it and those that do not, can understand where we are coming from.

Vacations are good

So I am on my last day of Vacation from work.

I had last week Thursday, Friday, and Monday, and Today off. It was originally so we could go to the wedding of our good friend, but childcare never happened and we were unable to do that.

I have found that is good to take a break from things. First, I had a break from work. It was a much needed break as it can be a high stress at times. (In fact, I am going into 2 weekends of high stress).

But sometimes it is good to take a break from playing wow and raiding and even your main character.

So part of my vacation I helped my son get his Shaman up to level 55. He was finally able then to make his Death Knight. So we made Death Knights together. We did the starter quests and got ourselves all set for regular leveling again. We did some quests in the plaguelands and did Scholomance together.

Then I embarked on my new goal for this Death Knight. As always, I use my alts to support my main and to be a distraction and vacation. Well, this character was going to be a suporting character mostly. I made her (yup, I made a girl), a miner and herb picker. I got her up to 315 mining and she has a bank full of bars, stones, and raw ore. Level 62.... Yup, she is fun to play and easy too. (DK's are OP)

So this is the plan. Therigwin is going to drop mining once Mystriah (a mystery) my death knight is able to provide Therigwin with the ore to prospect and use. Therigwin will instead pick up Black Smithing.

Here is the main reason, with the changes to Jewel Crafting coming in 3.2, the primatic Dragon's Eye gems will no longer be all colors, but instead be the specific colors that match their ability.

Paladin tanking gear has no blue sockets. I like socket bonuses, but I also like my 41 stamina gems.

So from Blacksmithing, you get 3 sockets for gems. I get 3 dragon's eye for gems as well. That means I can always utilize the best gem for those 3 slots. So this gives me +82 stamina then verses the 50 stamina from mining. It also benefits my off speck in that the 50 stamina is not wasted, but instead I can gem up 54 strength instead.

Now when patch 3.2 hits, that stamina bonus is increased from 41 a gem to 51 a gem, giving 102 stamina verses the 60 stamina they buffed mining with.... And the strength goes up to 34 from 27, giving my ret paladin speck +68 strength.

So my in game goal is to get my Death Knight to 77 so she can mine stuff up for Therigwin and have it all in place before patch 3.2

On a side note, I got the Northern Barrier last night. My wife bought it for me for 7k on the AH.

Oh and a pick of Mystriah for you all to see. (She is Myriah's twin sister for those wondering)

Big Projects

So, I have finally got my guild's website updated with the latest versions of phpBB3, ezportal, and coppermine.

It has been an experience getting it all working correctly and migrating the data from the old system.

I am really happy with how it all turned out. Still a couple of things I want to add, but it is getting there.

Now for the next Big Project. Finishing the Guild Video that I have been working on. That I will tackle this coming weekend.

And last, I finally killed Gruul. It has taken forever, but I finally got it after numerous tries in the past that ended in failure do to technical reasons (disconnects, no instances could be launched, bugged encounters)

Fires take down site

So, today, I had great plans.

I was in the process of upgrading the guild website from phpBB2 to phpBB3. I was going to add the primetime portal for the front page stuff. It was going to be awesome.

Well, I guess wherever the datacenter that hosts the site, they lost power do to a fire and the website is down.

Well, my second project is a video I have been working on.

But all the data I need is on the guild website.

Well, I did rework some of the video, so for my guildmates that are interested here it is -

Reading the Librim

All paladins when they get into the higher levels (above 50) start picking up Librims.

It is basically a tie back into that they were once priests and these are their holy books, being that of scripture, prayer books, etc.

Well, in my Guild, Eternity Matters we are doing some new things. Sure we always have done a Bible Study in the game every Sunday at 3:30pm servertime. But many of us were feeling burnt out, discouraged, facing all sorts of drama.

Then it hit me. We were not reading our Librims. So this week we embarked on some new changes.

We did our normal Bible Study on Sunday where we typed it all out in chat.

But Monday, I prepared a special retreat for the officers. We did Kara. But at each boss, we read our Librim. I picked out scripture to go with each boss. It was a time of encouragement.

Enok writes about it in his blog, Now that is a little different.

So last night we started my next new concept for reading our Librims.

I call it our "Pray and Raid" night.

From 8:15pm to before the raid at 9pm, we had a Bible Study and prayer time in ventrillo.

Yesterday we read and talked about John 17. We listened to two worship songs on vent, one at the beginning and one at the end. We had a good time of prayer.

After that, we went in and did OS 25 with 1 Drake up with 23 people.

Not a bad night.

Tonight, we continue with another BC raid where I will take my officers back into their Librims while we take down some bosses.

Overall, this experiment has been met with positive results and I pray that it only gets better.

Time to hang up the shield

You heard me right, it is time to hang up my shield.


It looks nice on the wall. The good old Royal Crest of Lordaeron

It would be nice to have a guild house or a person house to display old armor and stuff. It waits in the bank for that day Blizz may do that.

Now I have the ugliest non paladin looking shield in the game....

Wall of Terror


But it is nice to have upgrades. :-)

Happy Tanking Everyone

Pleasant Surprises

Well, as many know, me and Gruul have a love hate relationship.

I have attempted numerous times to kill that guy on my main character. (I did do it on my alt).

This past Monday, we made another attempt.... for 20 minutes we banged our head on the instance portal, getting the message that no new instances could be launched.

Well, one of my officers decided to fly over to the Eye of Eternity and try that one.... what do know, bam, he was in...

So we gave up on Gruul (I will kill you someday Gruul and get my achievement!!!) and went of to the Eye to have some fun. We had a couple of lower levels mixed with the 80s that were able to get some good gear.

And we were able to kill Kael Thalas Sunstrider!!!!

Overall, it was a very fun instance. I can see that it would have been hard back in the BC days.

Now, remember how the summer can be hard to get people to raid because of schedules?

We went to Nax last night and by the end of it, we had a full 25 people.

It was a nice pleasant surprise.

Hopefully tonight we can get the priests we need so we can do the Military wing.

Summer Time Challenges

Many guilds face the summer time challenges of trying to raid with the lure of the glorious outdoors taking their raiders away.

The Summer is a great time and a great time to spend out doors in real life. Being that I am in the Great Lake State, God's creation offers many fun things to do during these months. On top of that, it seems that many camps are available or even now required for some of the teens to go to for their school activities.

Vacations abound and outdoor activities are a plenty.

Where does this leave a guild that is trying to raid?

It leaves them with a smaller pool of consistent raiders, but a larger pool of raiders overall.
Smaller in that many people are taking vacations, etc.
Larger in that you have all the school kids available.

This was very evident this past week. I and my wife took some time off because our boys were home from school and I was on call. The guild went on and did Nax 25, but had to pug many individuals in, in key spots such as healers and tanks. They were able to clear everything up to Thadius. Then they hit the brick wall.

Well, we went back in there last night and again, we had the hardest time filling the raid with people from our guild or even friend guilds. We had to dip in the dreaded PUG area deeper than ever. At the end, we just didn't have the people to do it. We got him down to 18% consistently, but it was not good enough.

So what are guilds to do this summer?

First, don't give up. You may be stuck doing Nax and bringing in Pugs, but it gives a great opportunity to recruit new blood.

Second, cut back. Do the 10 man stuff and work with those that have given a commitment.

Over at Eternity Matters, we will be doing a bit of both.

Happy Gaming!

Time Out

Wow, I have not blogged in a while.

Sorry about that.

Lets see, what has been going on....

First, I have been really busy with work, giving me less time to play.

In fact, I was on call this week, covering any emergencies that may have come up.

I was backup the previous week. So real life took a chunk of play time.

In addition, the boys started summer vacation, so things are more crazy around the house.

But enough with real life, what about gaming?

Um, I have a silly admission to make.....

I like Sims.

I like growing a family up that is different than mine, seeing how they react.

Sims 3 came out and well, that is where I have been playing. So I took a Time Out from wow this week to play with some Sims.

It has been a nice break, no guild to worry about, just my happy little Sims.

You can learn alot from that game about time management.

Well, my Time Out is done and it is now time for me to pick up my sword and board be there for my guild once more.

For the most part, they made it through the week drama free and did ok, but it is nice to know that I was missed.

You Hypocrite!

YOU HYPOCRITE!!!!
YUP I AM TALKING TO YOU!!!!
WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THERIGWIN, I AM NOT A HYPOCRITE.....

Now that I have got your attention, I want to talk to you about hypocrites. This is a wow and moral and religous based blog today, so read at your own risk....

Ok, now that we have scared away all those that are not serious about this blog, when we talk about a Hypocrite, what are we talking about?

The word hypocrite is a greek word that deals with the actors. Now we get into some of these fun Biblical facts that helps shape our modern society and language.

We all know that Jesus was trained to be a carpenter and until his ministry at age 30, he probably was practicing this trade. Now in our modern idea of carpentry we think of things like cabinets, chairs, pretty furniture.

What we should really think of is that carpenters were more like your general contractors, building structures, houses, theaters....

Did I say theaters? Yup I did. In fact, there was a theater built very close to Nazareth. And Jesus being a carpenter, probably help build it. This is something we don't think about with that culture is that it was integrated into Greco-Roman Society. That includes Greek Theater....

Now a Greek actor was known as a hypokrites. Notice how it looks like the word hypocrite? Now greek actors would have this big masks that displayed an emotion and they would shout out that emotion for all to see.
The culture knew all of this.

So when Jesus talks about not being like the hypocrites the Pharisees who act very religious, the people understood what he was talking about. Not to be like the actors portraying a role that was fake.

So back to my first part of this blog....

We all are hypocrites when we play World of Warcraft. Because we can hide behind an avatar and not be ourselves.

The true test of character, is removing that mask, becoming real to the people you play with. Building friendships and depending on them as family. Then there is no hypocrisy for us that play this game, but a true community.

My Response.... is my responsibility...

Warning this will be a preachy blog today. Yes, it has ties into World of Warcraft.

As I mentioned in my previous post, this month has been the drama month for Eternity Matters.

What saddens me the most is many people are missing one key thing that we all know. What is that?

My Response to whatever happens is my responsibility. What does this phrase mean?
It means the following-
When something good happens to me, the appropriate response is to be excited, but yet humble. There is no excuse for going "Ha, I got this and you didn't. I am so awesome and YOU ARE NOT!"

By the way, I am using extremes here to get the point across.

Ok, what about when something bad happens.

Example - We wipe, and we wipe, and we wipe on a boss.
Appropriate response - Being sad is good. Being angry is justifiable. Using that sadness or anger to lash out or make condescending comments is not. Having a positive attitude despite the bad things.

What I am trying to say, is it wrong to behave poorly despite the circumstance you find yourself in. Even if someone else hurt you, you have no right to lash back out.

What? Therigwin, you lost your mind?

Nope, I just follow a greater example, that turned the other cheek. He went and died on a cross even though he had done nothing wrong. And by his victory over death, he give me the ability to respond positively to life's situations.

Now lets get personal.

What is the hardest thing for Therigwin to respond positive to?
I have helped many players in World of Warcraft. Trained them up, given them advice, help them grow. Hoping that they become a key part of Eternity Matters, to only have them leave for whatever reason. I try to be happy for them but inside it hurts. Well, those wounds heal and I try to be positive and upbeat with my whispers with them, because many of them still come back and talk with me, ask me for advice, even though they may be farther in the game content than I am.
Ok, here is the kicker. Where my response is my responsibility. They link me something they just won. Ouch, it hurts, cause I want that. Appropiate response is a simple gratz and be happy for them. Inappropiate response is jealousy and envy.

I struggle with my response. But in the end, God helps me have the appropiate response.

Long Time, No Blog? NOT THE DRAMA!!!!

Well, I have been quite busy.

We have decided that the theme of May is drama.

We have experienced this past month so much guild drama that it would kill any other guild.

Funny thing, we have grown still, despite the drama. Despite us loosing some good players, we press on. Despite having an immature member do scams and smear our name(we gkicked them), we are there still on the server, doing our stuff.

Why is that? Because Eternity Matters is a guild that overall, cares about all the players on our Server. Not about how they play, but where they are going for Eternity. We may be human and mess up (and we do), but we press on sharing our love of God in a non threatening way.

So despite the drama, we go forth.

Enough about the guild, Therigwin, how are ya doing?

Lets see, my wife loves me. She bought me this ring - Signet of the Earthshaker my first 226 item.

Now the sad thing is, I picked up a 213 helm that was a mail caster helm. Ya, for Flame Leviathan. I can also use it with my healing set, but ya, my main speck prot and secondary speck ret still have 200 item level helms.

Go Figure, LOL

Anyway, Ulduar 10 tonight. Hoping we can make it further into this instance.

Have a great weekend!

No Emblem for you!

Conquest... such a great word.

Conquest... Emblem of Conquest.

Yes, we are on a quest to get this Emblem.

Last night, we went into Ulduar 25. We one shot the Flame Leviathan.

Me and Enok were in a siege engine. I was his gunner, he was the driver.

It was epix. Me and my co-tank killing bad guys. Ya good times.

We down the boss. I get out of my vehicle. We say as standard, wait to loot till we res everyone.

At this time, I begin to notice something seriously wrong. There are no sparklies on the boss body. I call for looting of the body and my lovely wife who is master looter bends down and gets our toys.

Ya.... 11 people of the 25 got Emblems of Conquest. The remaining 14, did not. I asked everyone to open a GM ticket.

I then waited 1 hour and 30 minutes till the kind GM talked to me. He went that is bad, I will need to escalate this. Ok. So the window changes to your ticket has been escalated.

Well, I updated the ticket and logged for the night since it was late and I needed to go to work in the morning.

All day today, checking email, nothing in my email.....

Here is hoping that when I login when I get home from work that I have an Emblem of Conquest in my mail or something from Blizzard.

Overall, it was a great run last night. We had a few undergeared in the vehicles, which shows me on normal mode, we can at least farm this guy every week.

Now if we just didn't have to pug in the remaining group and have a solid 25 from EM.

Well, see you all online!

Crazy Weekend

So, it was a crazy weekend for me.

From doing tons of things in real life to some guild drama online, it was a crazy weekend.

Though, my boys enjoyed the weekend. They got to visit grandma and grandpa, see some cousins, hug mothers and grandmothers, etc.

Yup, Mother's Day.... I gain a new appreciation for my wife and what a great mother she is to our family.

So we are now into the week.

I main tanked KT last night. I had been having my co tank Enok tank the fight because I believed warriors were better suited to MT him, but we decided as a tanking team to let me have a shot at it.

It was a crazy and fun and lasers were going pew pew....

We killed him for my second ever kill of KT on 25 man. I was happy to see my co-tank get his T7.5 helm. I lost out on Last Laugh and as I had to remind everyone, they are just pixels on the screen. While I disagreed it going to a DK Tank for dual weilding, in the spirit of our guild, I was not going to let my selfish desires tarnish our testimony.

My wife ended up loosing out on her helm, but got Sinster's Revenge because Boomaster kindly passed the weapon down to her.

Lastly, we had a caster sword drop. There was some drama with it from a pug, but it ended up being won by one of our paladin healers, giving him a good solid weapon for his healing.

This week we head into Ulduar for some 25 man and 10 man action. I am hoping that all goes well, people have fun and we get some good upgrades people can use.

Ulduar fun after all

Well, I was originally not going to go to Ulduar last night, but plans change.

Today I write this from the hospital family waiting room (where they have free interent woot) while my son is having a scheduled procedure.

Thus my original thinking of not going to Ulduar yesterday because it was going to be an early morning today (and believe me it was lol)

Well, we had the off tank drop because of RL issues and a few others so the standby list started getting used.

So that was it, I was going to tank it and we were going to do it fast.

I informed every we got 60 minutes to get as much done as possible.

We did great clearing to the first boss. Then we wiped on him at 10%. Big reason, he glitched. When he was supposed to do the over power bit, he did not stop, but kept attacking us.

Second attempt went flawless.

On to the happy exercising robot boy boss.

Easily cleared the trash.

I had read up on a new strategy over on Honor's Code blog where you tank him to the right side of the room in between the two trash piles. This prevents those trash piles from spawning adds so you can do it much easier.

We tried it and one shot it, plus got the achivement for preventing him getting any adds to repair himself.

So on to the Dragon boss. This is the first time I did this boss and bam easy as pie. 1 shot.

Ok, time for Ignis, the bane of encounters.... Wife taps me on the shoulder, time to go to bed, guess he will have to wait for some other time. 3 bosses in 60 minutes is not bad, but next time I want to make it 4. :-)

No Ulduar for you.....

So tonight is Ulduar 10 man night.

Yet again, I will be missing out on seeing and doing the new stuff.

Last week I had to work, this week we have something personal going so I will be unable to attend.

Anyway, lets catch up.

I finally grabbed myself a new belt from Nax 25 last night.

Fleshless Girdle

So in my tanking gear, only my sword, helm, and trinkets are still item level 200.

I also finally crafted Titanium Frostguard Ring

So now in my frost resist with aura up I have an excellent rating, 543 defense. Feeling pretty good about it.

That should hopefully help us tomorrow night in Nax.

Friday will be a big push as we push to get Thad down, Plague and Bug. Providing we do not face the random DC monster (my wife has been getting that alot lately) we should finish Nax this week.

So next week can be our happy fun fun Ulduar week!!!!

I have been a naughty paladin

Yup, I have not blogged in what seam like in a month... well, maybe a week and a half.

So, lets get caught up on things shall we?

We all enjoyed the Noblegarden festivities and I got Therigwin the Noble title. That was fun as I managed to get it all done a few minutes after midnight just after all the quest givers and eggs despawned.

Then we have the Kids Week stuff happening right now. Big on my list to get this achivement for a very silly reason. At the beginning of the guild, my wife and I were affectionally known as Guild Mom and Dad. So the Patron and Matron title was something I wanted for both of us.

I managed to do everything except the School of Hard Knocks. When I attempted to do the pvp, people were so rude that I ended up logging for the night. Well last night I got on and we formed up a premade of guildies and went in and had fun pvping. We won some games, lost most others, but in the end, we had fun and the majority of us got our Achievement!!!

So now that is done, this week we start our Raiding again tonight.

Plans is to do OS 25. I am hoping we have the right people sign up so we can do it with 2 drakes up.

Tomorrow we venture back into Nax 25 with a big push to try to get 3 wings done.

Thursday, back into Ulduar 10 man. I want to get 4 bosses down this week (the first 4).

Friday, back into Nax to finish it off.

This will be our last week of this raiding schedule.

For my guildies who read my blog, I am going to let them in on a secret.....

Blizzard has been nerfing Ulduar.....

So Next week will be an Ulduar week. Mixing in 10 man and 25 man Ulduar to see how much we can get done.

Then the week after it will be back to the other, and so we will be mixing back and forth...

Cause I really want Mally dead :-p

Anyway, Happy maintenance day and see you all online.

Not your typical Ulduar Raid

So last night we went back into Ulduar 10.

It is always a tough time for me because I have to pick and choose who comes along on the raid based on who signed up, gear, etc and many times I disappoint people because I did not pick them.

So last night from my core, I was going to be missing my boomkin and co-tank. So we were down the druid buff and a second tank, which limited our options come whatever bosses we decided to tackle.

Then at the last minute, the holy priest had to drop.

Fortunately, I had many other guild members to choose from. I brought in another Arms Warrior instead of my cotank, a Warlock instead of my boomkin, and a shadow/holy priest for our priest.

We were down the druid buff, but besides that it looked to be a good solid group with 1 tank. I was hoping I could tank it all.

We did pretty good with the trash leading up to Leviathan, only loosing two vehicles. We wiped on our fisrt attempt as people were learning the fight. The second time we got him down.

He dropped Flamewatch Armguards which I ended up snagging up.
He also dropped Energy Siphon which we passed on to one of our paladin healers still sporting a i200 trinket.

So on to our next boss. We decided to do XT-002 Deconstructor. We decided on the heartburn strategy with me tanking all the big robots, our priest in his secondary speck, etc. We wiped a few times and finally got a strategy figured out. We finally decided that the warlock would Sead of Corruption the Pummler adds while I tanked them and the boss.

Our final attempt we kept everyone alive through all three heartburn phases. Then the pummlers came and I could not target them quick enough to taunt them on to me. Bam, our melee dps went down with 2% on the boss to go and like 30 seconds on the enrage. We kept at it, I hit my bubble wall to take a strain off the healers and at 1 second left to enrage, Eternity Matters had its first XT-002 Deconstructor kill.


For our efforts, our paladin healers each got an item.
Armbands of the Construct and Helm of Veiled Energies

Overall a good run for us. It helped that the boss had been slightly nerfed, doing less damage and a longer enrage timer. Makes me hopeful we can eventually start doing this on 25 with our pugs that are friends.

All that is Therigwin.... Updates

So what has been happening to this pally?

Well in real life, I am battling a stomach bug. We are now on day 2 of missing work. So those praying friends out their, say a prayer for me so I can get back into the swing of things without loosing my lunch.

As far as in game, this is what Therigwin has been up too....

His secondary speck is Retribution. I can say that I am loving the speck I came up with, it is working great in 5 mans and soloing. I still need some better gear for this speck, but it will come in due time.

I have been having a blast with the Argent Tournament quests. I am one day behind everyone else, so in 2 days I will have Champion, so tomorrow! I can't wait, because that two hander sword, Claymore of the Prophet is awesome!!! (Though I have a good weapon in Demise)

Speaking of weapons, I finally got a better tanking sword, Broken Promise, off the four horseman. This is the first time we have seen it drop. I am very thankful to my cotank Enok for outright just passing to me even though we have the same weapon.

Now for the fun. Ulduar. Everyone is doing it.... Including Eternity Matters. What a very nicely done instance. We downed the first boss, which is a nice vehicle fight. It took some bit getting used to. I started with a battering ram type vechicle and ended up using the motorcycle. I love the motorcycle.... I must get one for a normal mount.... ;-)

Anyway, here is the pic of our kill.


Ok, what else have I been doing? MODS!!!!

That is right, getting my mods to work.

So a quick run down of mods I have replaced -
Itemrack is GONE!!!! I replaced it with Outfitter. Outfitter supports dual speck switching and is a very nice mod. Originally the author had pulled it in protest, but realized he was just hurting the players. I found Outfitter did everything I had Itemrack doing.

Pallypower is GONE!!!!! What? That is the paladin buffing mod of awesomeness.... Well, I discovered ZOMGBuffs. This mod supports paladin buffs, druid buffs, etc... It is incredible. A couple of bugs here and there that require reloading the UI, but for the most part it rocks!

CowTip is GONE!!!!! Yup, this awesome mod I replaced. Even though I had updated it a couple of times, it would still give an error on some things. So I replaced it with TipTop, which is similiar, has less features, but does not error out on me.

Last, I picked up a new mod. DualSpeccer. It is a broker plugin that allows you to click it to switch specks without going into the talent screen.

All other mods are working fine in my UI, so this is one happy paladin.

Tonight - Eye of Eternity 10 Man... I pray we finally get this dragon down.