Novus is Dead. Long Live Novus.

2010-03-17T11:30:00.001-07:00

Video Games | ScrewAttack | Angry Video Game Nerd: Action 52

Victory at Last.

2009-09-04T07:01:00.000-07:00

Ikaruga

2009-08-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

Just took down the newest Trial of the Crusader boss last night. Most enjoyable boss fight yet. Kinda easy, (only 2 attempts needed) but very cool mechanics. The twin Val'kyr. One is light, the other is dark. There are 4 charging portals in the arena, 2 light, 2 dark. You charge yourself with one or the other. When charged, you abosorb all damage of the same color, and deal damage to the opposite.
Throughout the fight, black and white orbs appear around the arena and seem to fly around all over the place. Getting hit by the same color starts building up a stacked buff on you. Opposing color seems to do mild damage to you. The stacked buff, however, kicks all kinds of ass. If it stacks to 100, you gain empowered darkness or empowered light. It makes you stupidly powerful. Building up this charge is something to watch during the fight. I wouldn't call it crucial, but it's very fun.
Also, the two bosses share a single health pool, and occasionally fire off a special ability. One might do a massive AOE, at which point you need to switch to the same color as the AOE before it goes off to avoid death. Another might cast a shell on herself and begin casting a big heal. Everyone has to switch to the opposing color and break the shell in order to interrupt the heal.
It's really a lot of fun, and reminded me of the old Gamecube/Dreamcast/XBLA game Ikaruga.
Video of the fight will probably be available next week.

Champions Again.

2009-08-12T09:23:00.000-07:00

We took down boss #2 in the Trial of Champions this week in about 3-4 attempts. I also managed to snag the Drape of the Untamed Predator off the first boss. Cause that's what I am.
Here's a video of this week's victory over the first boss.

Champions

2009-08-05T07:31:00.001-07:00

Patch 3.2 just launched yesterday and we discovered some bugs that cropped up as a result of a fix. Our XT-002 strategy no longer works (tanking him on the right side of the room), but as a result of fixing the bot spawns, they increased the spawn rate significantly. Our attempts last night had 3-5 bomb-bots spawn from every corner and at least a dozen scrap bots. We were utterly overwhelmed. They have made the boss un-fun. Hopefully a fix is coming soon.

We abandoned Ulduar till it's fixed and went to take on the first boss of the new Colosseum. It's a set of 3 different bosses, and we managed to down them in 3 attempts. Pretty easy so far.
Blizzard has changed how the new content is accessed however. We only have access to the first boss during the first week, and only on normal 25man. We must beat all bosses on normal25 before heroic25 is unlocked, and those bosses are being released in a weekly scheduled I believe.
We also found that the new VoA boss has not been implemented.
So that means, if Ulduar isn't hotfixed today, we may have no raiding to do tonight.
Overall, I really like a lot of the new stuff they've put in this patch, but the caveat is that Ulduar is temporarily broken.

The new dailies actually seem pretty cool, and there are about twice as many as before, so grinding Champion Seals should go faster.
The new Dragonhawk mount is gorgeous, so it's becoming a high priority. 150 seals is the price.
I'm hoping to get a little time in tonight to find the new Ravasaur trainer in Un'goro. I'm getting closer and closer to the 100 mount achievement. I plant to pick up the new low-level Undercity horse as well just to fill in the numbers. Also, I only need 4 more pets to get the 75 pet achievement.

I must say, my favorite addition of this patch is the change to the ammo-box materials. 2 saronite bars gets me 1000 ammo now. Old cost was 15 bars for 2000. Very happy about that change. I also like that Ultra-high shadow settings runs smoothly now.

So yeah, 3.2 gets a thumbs up from me.
Check out my youtube channel. I have almost every Ulduar boss video posted now. Still to go: Flame Leviathan and Yogg-Saron.

No Clean Shave Today.

2009-07-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

Razorscale goes down in 3 rounds. We were missing 5 or 6 people this night.
In other news, it seems we've hit a wall with Yogg Saron. We can't seem to make it through phase 2. Not enough DPS on the brain, too many tentacles in the raid... It's a rough fight for us at the moment. Hopefully we bring him down in the coming weeks, but we might need to overhaul our strategy.

TREE!

2009-07-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

Here's last night's Freya fight. We cleared all Keepers on night one, and a quick Vezax kill tonight should allow us plenty of time to master the Yogg-Saron fight.
I've got some sound files on a few macros you can see in this latest video. Enjoy!

It's Very Cold.

2009-07-20T07:31:00.000-07:00

Here's Hodir doing his thing, and us doing ours.

Scream for Me

2009-07-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

I finally started adding sound files to my macros. It's made my fights more exciting. I hope to have a video up soon to show off what I've done. For now, enjoy this dirty sloppy messy Auriaya kill.

NEW TOYS???!

2009-07-16T07:50:00.000-07:00

Got my 4th piece of tier 8.5 last night off of Thorim. Consistently breaking 5k dps now. Got a few videos to post as well. For now, here's our XT-002 strategy.

Burn in the Makers Fire

2009-07-09T08:04:00.000-07:00

Quick video of our brute force strategy on Ignis, The Furnace Man.

No new loot this week, but Marksman spec is my new favorite spec. Very fun, very easy. Tonight, the only boss left in Ulduar is Yogg-Saron, and we're taking that big mouth down.

Ding Ding Ding

2009-07-07T07:09:00.000-07:00

Three new pets hit level 80 this weekend. Kargath, Oneqwah, and Freewind II.
I've also amassed over 11000g. It was a good weekend.

I've hurt worse.

2009-07-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

Looks like this week has been a little rough. We've only downed Thorim, Freya and Hodir so far. Short on people I guess. Nothing new dropped for me, but I'm going to be testing out a Marksman build tonight, so that should be fun. Also finally dropped my Hyena and picked up a wolf. He barks, and howls, and is generally awesome.
Here's a video I made of our Kologarn kill this week. Enjoy!

General Vezax (Zoidberg)... More Like General KilledbySubterfuge.

2009-06-26T06:34:00.000-07:00

General died last night in 3 attempts. Pretty easy fight once everybody starts paying attention. Spent an hour working on Yogg-Saron but could only get him into phase 2 twice, and only for a few seconds before we all died. Going to try again on Sunday it seems.
Hunter week continued as Brakthor came away with Lotrafen, the pole-arm equivalent to Twisted Visage. It's powerful, but kind of plain-looking. Physx was disappointed, but I'm quite sure we'll have no problems downing this guy again next week.

Screenshot from exactly one year ago:

Lilt has come a long way.

Also, made a video of our last Mimiron fight. We have him down with no problems these days.

Lootz

2009-06-24T07:03:00.000-07:00

We never managed to bring Vezax below 50% last week. So begins a new week of raiding. I arrived late last night, but it would seem to be Hunter week in Ulduar. I came away with a new tier 8.5 chest and the Twisted Visage staff, Physx got himself the Wrathstone, and Brakthorn got a new pair of gloves.
When going through my screenshot repository lately, I've enjoyed comparing screenshots that are approximately a year apart. It's interesting to see the progress I've made.

Dynatherms Connected! Megathrusters are Go!

2009-06-12T06:23:00.000-07:00

Most satisfying win I've had in a long time. Click the pic to get a better look.
Took us 90 minutes of wipes, but when we all got on task, we got our first win against Mimiron and his V-07-tr-ON force. Only 3 dead in the end as well. We were all cheering at our keyboards. No hunter loot, as usual, but I've come to expect that from Ulduar.
Only the General stands between us and the Death God now.

The fight is very frustrating for me as a hunter. So much depends on the healers. In most fights, my survival greatly depends on my situational awareness and my ability to avoid shiny crap that kills me. But phase 2 of this fight is such a clusterfrak that there is very little I can do besides pray to the Earthmother that the healers are on point and keep me alive. I was getting a little upset after the first hour of wipes, but in the end, Subterfuge's magnificent healers came through. Grats to all.

Oh and yes, I did bring an underleveled pet to raid. At first I was using my giant wasp for DPS, but this fight is so brutal on hunter pets that I just decided I wouldn't have him fight anymore. At that point I decided it was better just to bring in my underleveled cunning pet for Roar of Recovery. It helps me hit full mana between each phase of the fight. As a reward for helping us down Mimiron, I went out and leveled him to 77. Good old Freewind II.

I Hate Shamans

2009-06-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

Lost out on another t8.5 helm last night to another healer Shaman. /sigh
Still had a lot of fun. Downed Ignis, Iron Council, and Thorim. Then we wiped few times on Mimiron before calling it a night. Our new hunter is still struggling to keep up with Physx and I, but that's okay. He's still learning to cope with Survival spec.
We're going to put a few hours in tonight to try to finally get our first Mimiron win. Might even spend some time leveling my new pet parrot as well.
Still hoping to get a new piece of t8.5 to allow me to use my Wrathstone trinket. At this point, I would lose way too much hit rating.

Mimiron dies tonight. Wish us luck.

Heigan

2008-12-19T07:54:00.000-08:00

The ubiquitous "Ding" post

2008-11-24T08:34:00.000-08:00

Now with fancy video! Check out the high quality version. I'm very proud of my new PC's ability to run the game on max settings.

Bad. Ass.

2008-11-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

Dailies on the Isle of QQ

2008-08-19T08:28:00.000-07:00

Just made a quick rundown of most of the dailies I pick up. Failed to record the one on the boat heading east, but you get the idea. Visit the youtube page for annotated version, and high quality version.

Oy. Crit Alert. For. The. Win.

2008-08-12T11:21:00.000-07:00

SO yeah. Here's my first video. I hope to be adding a lot more in the coming days. Video walkthroughs, add-on info, etc. Watch it! BAM!

Leveling an Alt made easy.

2008-08-06T06:48:00.001-07:00

Emobear/Chrille had informed me of a little Add-on that he had used to lvl alts in the past. I thought it seemed like a nifty little thing so I downloaded it recently. The name is TourGuide. TourGuide is a nifty little program that gives you a complete leveling guide for your selected starting area, and then progressed side. It tells you a very specific order to get things and do quests and events. In such detail as when to travel to the next city, and when to use hearth to go back to town for turn-ins. Now this by it's self is fairly good. But add to that the use of LightHeaded and Tomtom. What this enables through setting up your options, is TourGuide will look up the location for every NPC and quest in it's quide in LightHeaded, and mark it on your map with Tomtom. It will also automatically remove the marker and move on to the next one when you complete it. This pretty much makes leveling an alt, Easy Mode. If it's in alt, you've already seen most of the game, you just want your character up there. This set up, I have found thus far to be AWESOME, and really helps smooth along the process. Pick them up if you ever think you are going to level an alt.

Aran

2008-07-21T07:33:00.000-07:00

Ran a couple bosses from Kara with the Thunderbluff Pirates again, and was pleasantly surprised to find my spot on the damage list at #2. Right under another Beastmaster hunter with the Crossbow of Relentless Strikes. First time I went, I was like #7 on the list. Overall, I'd say I've made good progress.

How I spent my Honor Points

2008-07-07T09:04:00.000-07:00

Pretty cool new shoulders, and a slick Scout Tabbard.

Pitbull

2008-06-30T07:42:00.000-07:00

I've started using two really cool new add-ons.

First is Pitbull.

It took me a couple hours to get it set up just how I wanted it, but the beauty of it is the freedom it allows. I've looked at a half dozen screenshots from other players who use pitbull, and every one of them looks different.
Here's a random shot I took last night.

The second is Crit Alert. It plays a sound when you crit. Big deal right? The best part is that I went into the folder and replaced the sound effects. A regular crit now plays the sound you hear when Link uses Light Arrows in Ocarina of Time, and when Aimed Shot crits, you hear the sound found right here.
It is so satisfying.

--edit---
Apparently Crit Alert plays an extra special sound effect if you crit for 666 damage. Freaked the hell out of me last night since my sound effects were off and I had nice relaxing tunes playing. I'm going to get in and tinker with the sounds so it plays something a little less jarring, should it happen again.

The world just got a little less funny

2008-06-23T10:49:00.001-07:00

Banners

2008-06-17T14:12:00.000-07:00

Not really a big deal, but since we're getting more and more people close to 70, I started to make banners for everyone who has broken the 60 barrier. I keep regular tabs on everything, so when you hit 60, I'll throw a banner up for you. If you want a custom avatar, just send me a screenshot, or look me up in game and I'll take a photo of you. My screenshots are especially sharp.

Oh yeah, I also got the mount I've been seeking since I rolled this character. Check him out:

Kara time

2008-06-02T07:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm completely geared and ready to go into Karazhan. In fact, a guild ran me through it just so I could learn it this past week. Now I just need to get 9 other guild mates to actually hit 70 and gear them up.

In hindsight, I'm surprised at how easy it actually was to get geared up. I set some goals on what I wanted to get. I used Atlas Loot and a few websites to find out what drops it. Then when I logged in each night, I'd hit the "I" key, and set myself as "Looking for Group" for 3 of the dungeons I needed to run. One night I saw someone looking for an extra DPS for Magtheridon's Lair, which was out of my league, but I volunteered anyway. A few deaths, and an hour later, I had a new Tier 4 chest-piece. Getting the right enchantments and gems that I needed wasn't terribly difficult. I do 6 or 7 daily quests each day (more if I have time) and it keeps a nice influx of money coming.

Anyway, if you need to get gear at level 70, it's pretty easy to do. Just start your night out Looking for a Group for 3 specific instances, and just do your daily quests. At some point, someone will message you or invite you for a dungeon.

Oh and if you group with some good players, don't hesitate to add them to your friends list. You will want a nice big list of people to look at when you're in a group of 4 looking for one more DPS.

P.S. I also found out how to turn up my multi-sampling setting and man did it make WoW look pretty. No jaggies, and somehow, the sun looks awesome.

Woo!

2008-05-23T07:49:00.000-07:00

Yeah, that's right. Turbo Charged.

This baby is tweaked out with 8, that's right, Eight Khorium Power cores, strapped on with Felsteel Stabilizers. You know what's inside a single Khorium Power Core? A Primal Fire, harvested from enraged Fire elementals found at the Hand of Gul'dan volcano in the heart of Shadowmoon Valley. Each Primal Fire is encased in a shell forged from 2 bars of Khorium, the hardest, rarest metal in all of Outland.

That's what is under the hood. You will also note, that since upgrading my old Flying Machine, I've given it a wicked paint job (to denote it's wickedness), and stuck a hula girl on the dashboard. It still stalls occasionally, but it rides a little smoother than before.

You're looking at a happy (and a little crazy) Orc.

One down, one to go

2008-05-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

I am done with Battlegrounds now. I burned through massive amounts of PVP this past week, and spent nearly 18000 honor on my new belt. The last piece of gear I need is the Sky Hunter Swift Boots, and that means grinding away at the first boss of Sethekk Halls.

I also tamed a Dire Raven, and named him DeepCrow. Seemed appropriate. I'm going to be scrapping all of my pets over the next few weeks and getting an entire new stable. The first to go was Guilt the Ravager. He will be missed. Kind of.

Karazhan

2008-05-15T07:19:00.000-07:00

Well, it would seem, according to Be Imba, I've actually got sufficient gear to tackle Kara. So does Johannite. So it's time for us to stop worrying about getting better gear, and start focusing on everyone else.

Personal Plan for teh awesome.

2008-05-14T11:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, there is no way I have the patience to keep running Eye of the Storm, and now that I have my fancy new axe, I no longer need the Sonic Spear, so no more Shadow Labyrinth runs.

But I still need to upgrade my boots and my belt. The Marksman belt I'm wearing is okay, but if I get myself 17850 honor, and 40 Arathi Basin Marks, I can get the wonderful Vindicator's Chain Girdle. It improves virtually every one of my stats significantly.

Secondly, I need to get rid of my stupid looking boots, and I've found that the PVP ones I was looking at require way too many Eye of the Storm marks for me. So I found the Sky Hunter Swift Boots that drop in Sethekk Halls and they seem to be a nice upgrade, and don't look half bad either.

Lastly, I need to start killing more Sunfury Archers because they drop the schematic for Adamantite Arrow Makers, which allows me to make a box of 1000 Adamantite Stingers. Not only is it nice to carry extra cases of condensed ammo in my inventory, those stingers are a relatively nice increase over my current Warden Arrows.

Here is my current profile. Don't click on the model viewer! The stalker gear I'm wearing has no models and my character will be quite nude. It's not a pretty sight.

Here is what things will look like once I get those 2 new pieces. Again, stay away from the model viewer.

If anybody actually reads this, do you see any enchants you'd recommend I get? I'm nearly exalted with Aldor so I'll be able to put a better glyph on my shoulders soon.

Pronounciation!

2008-05-06T07:14:00.001-07:00

Melee = May-lay (sorry D, look it up)
Auchindoun = Aw-kin-dune (Ha! Finally)
Reagent = Re-agent (D you corrected me on this one)
Hearthstone = Harth-stone (I have been wrong all this time)
Kil'Jaeden = Kill-Jay-Den
Scholomance = Sco-lo-mance
Orgrimmar = ORG-rimm-ar (too many people make it sound like Ogremar. Orcs live there, not Ogres. It was named after a guy called Orgrimm Doomhammer.)
Quel'Danas = Kel-Dah-nas
Naxxramas = Naks-ram-ahs
Magtheridon = Just sound it out.
Teldrassil = Tell-dra-sill.
Gnomeregan = Nome-reh-gon.

Stranglethorn Vale

2008-04-29T09:24:00.000-07:00

Since nobody else seems to contribute, I'm just going to post whatever strikes my fancy.

I finally got the money for my first epic windrider. It's fast. I talk about it too much.

I also nabbed this screenshot while we were executing Alliance gankers in Stranglethorn Vale this weekend. It's nothing special, I just like the composition.

If anyone would like to contribute to the site, please send me a message in game. Just mail your email address to Lilt.
You don't have to contribute anything meaningful. This is just a casual site.

Progression

2008-04-21T06:20:00.000-07:00

So this is the advised progression when Burning Crusade first came out. Since then, additional, more difficult dungeons have been released such as Black Temple, Zul'Aman, and the Sunwell stuff.
The best advice would be, at this point, don't move on to something more difficult until you are sure you've gotten everything you need from the current set of dungeons.

So to Aaron and Dave, our next official instance should be Sethekk Halls, followed by some rep grinding. Lets also look into getting the Arcatraz Key. I've always been curious about that place anyway.

Quest mods

2008-04-17T07:01:00.000-07:00

Is the current quest log not doing it for you?
There are 3 add-ons that I couldn't imagine playing the game without anymore.
"Doublewide"
"Lightheaded"
"TomTom"

Doublewide, as you can see above, moves the quest description into a new panel so you can now see more of your active quests on the left. If you've got traditional 4:3 monitor, this might take up a lot of screen real estate, but if you've got a widescreen monitor, this is incredibly nice.

Lightheaded works hand-in-hand with TomTom to make questing significantly easier. When you click on a quest in your log, the panel on the right shows you all kinds of info on that quest downloaded directly from wowhead. Blue text is, of course, a link. If the blue text is a set of coordinates, TomTom will mark that spot on your map when you click it. You can also click through pages of message board posts regarding each quest which give you a better idea of where you are going and what you are doing. It really helps speed things up when you're looking to finish up some quests.

Some thing to keep in mind though, if you're clicking on a set of coordinates, TomTom will mark that spot on your map in the zone you're currently in. If you're in Barrens, and you're checking out info for a quest that takes place in Thousand Needles, you're going to have to go to Thousand Needles before you let TomTom mark your map, otherwise you're going to end up marking the wrong spot. The only exception to this is when you click on a quest-related NPC's name. In the photo above, if I were to click on the blue name "Tor'chunk Twoclaws" it would take me to a list of coordinates where he is found. If I click on them, it marks that spot in whatever zone he is actually in. This helps immensely when you need to go to a different NPC to complete a quest and you've no idea where to start looking. That's the only time you don't need to be in the same zone for TomTom to mark your map correctly.

There you have it! Quest mods that will make your life much easier.

Faction guides for outland

2008-04-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

Mag'har (Talbuk mounts!)

Netherwing (Netherdrake mounts)

Skyguard (Nether Ray mounts)

Cenarion Expedition (great arrows, and the Hippogryph mount. my personal favorite)

Consortium (free gems every month? interesting...)

There are many more, but I wanted to make note of these for now. I hope to reach exalted with each of these in the coming months.

Old, but still funneh.

2008-04-11T07:33:00.001-07:00

http://www.expectnothing.com/pub/posts/attached/0002k1cc.gif

TopScore

2008-04-09T11:57:00.000-07:00

Last night I noticed that FuBar TopScore is working again, and now I can keep track of my highest crits. Still no luck on the DPS monitor though.

TopScore is a pretty sweet little mod though. Worth checking out.

More Hunter nerfisms

2008-04-08T07:05:00.000-07:00

In patch 2.4, there was some stealth changes to the way aggro is generated by pets. Folks have been complaining about pulling hate from their pets far more often than pre-patch, and Blizzard decided that there were enough complaints that they would investigate.

Long before I started playing, it became common hunter knowledge that Boars were the best tanking pets in the game. They have the Charge skill that was able to generate massive amounts of aggro on a single target in an instant. It was the perfect tank, and almost impossible to pull hate off of. Been that way for years.

Unfortunately, when people brought up the aggro issues, Blizzard's "investigation" revealed that the Charge ability has not been functioning properly for years. It's not supposed to generate any addition aggro on a target at all. Hunter's have sworn by Boars as solo-tanking pets for years, and Blizzard has now said "yeah well... tough shit guys."

Life of a Porcupine, Pt. 1

2008-04-04T07:01:00.001-07:00

With such mixed views of paladins out there, and very little view from people who seem to know anything about them, I thought I would attempt to help out anyone looking to play a pally. First off I would like to say that this is mainly for Protection Paladins. Other paladin builds have their uses, but they are not what I play. I will touch a little on them all, but later installments will be Protection specific.
There are resources out there to see what prot palies are capable of. Hobbs videos are a great place to see some good work at it. There should be a link over on the side there. He is good, but he doesn't ever really explain what he's doing, so it's a little much for someone new to figure out. So after about 53 lvls of playing around with it, here's what I know. First, the intro.

Paladins are a class not quite like anything else. You are feared, but why? Our melee damage is laughable at best. We wear plate, but so do warriors. It's all in the playing that makes us feared. Here's a few reasons why in my opinion.

Lesson 1 to playing a Paladin: you make everyone else around you awesome. It's true. With the largest assortment of selectable buffs in the game, you get to choose how to influence everyone around you. Make everyone tougher, cast better, have better resists. Make a rogue hit better, a mage regen faster, keep that squishy shaman from pulling too much agro. All of it is possible with just your buffs.

Lesson 2 to playing a Paladin: Make yourself unkillable. With healing spells, heavy armor, a shield, mana-free bandages, and potions a plenty you should be hard to kill anyways. Add in your bubble shield, and it should be easy to figure out. The fact that the later Divine Shield doesn't stop your attacking either should make this a surefire advantage over other classes, who's bubble either absorbs, or redirects. Ours is invulnerability for a period of time. Game over.

Lesson 3 to playing a Paladin: stopping others. As a Blood elf, you already have a racial ability to AE silence all those around you for a few seconds. This is a serious advantage for a pally who doesn't want a mage to move anyways, and who is forced to play as a blood elf anyways on horde. I always see b elf pallies use this ability more than any other b elf. On top of that you have Hammer of Justice which stuns your target for x amount of seconds. Both of these abilities have cool down, but do NOT be afraid to use them ALL the time. Your hammer should always be used. That rogue running away? NOT ANY MORE! that mage about to get a fireball off? NOPE! My biggest recommendation is to turn on target casting bars in your interface so you always know if your target is casting. As a paly you can't stop every spell out these, but you should never let someone just cast away. Just cause you're hard to kill doesn't mean you need to just take it to the chin.

This will end the first segment. These notes should help you get started and see the view point differences for paladin vs. other classes. We can't out damage you, we can't outrun you, or out cast you. But we sure as hell can outlast you.

Tune in next time, when I attempt to handle paladin combat. The weird and original thing it is.

What I wish I had done with my first character, or "Learn from my Mistakes"

2008-04-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

Lilt is my 2nd character I've focused on getting to level 70. My first was a Night Elf Hunter named Sylvaris on the Perenolde server. On Lilt, I've done things much differently, and it's made things much more fun. So I'm going to try and give as many tips to new players as possible so they can avoid ending up a clueless level 70 player like I was. This will be done in installments, since each might be somewhat long. I'll try to keep them simple and to the point.

1. PVP
The best time to start running battlegrounds is in the late 20's. You will have 2 available to you: Arathi Basin (AB) and Warsong Gulch (WSG). WSG is a classic capture the flag game, and it's layout is fairly basic. Hunters typically play defense here thanks to their traps and tracking abilities, Rogues and Druids are typically the best flag runners. These aren't set roles, so don't be afraid to defend or capture flags if you're a Paladin or Warrior. This is just typically what certain classes excel at.

AB is a little more complex, requiring your team to hold different points on the map in order to build up points. The first team to 2000 wins. There are many strategies to winning AB you can find online, but I've found that a team that communicates wins. Pay attention to your chat box and always have your minimap open.
Don't be afraid to play defense on either of these battlegrounds when you start out. You will still get small amounts of honor, and you'll gradually develop solid PVP skills that will help you as you progress. Don't be discouraged by losses. You still get marks (which you can spend at the Hall of Legends in Orgrimar or the world entrances to each battleground). Since Venture Co. is a PVP server, you're definitely going to want to establish a reliable strategy for beating other players.

As your leveling, keep in mind that each battleground has a bracket. Each bracket typically caps at 9. Meaning you will be the highest possible level in each bracket at 19,29,39, and 49. There is also a 50-60 bracket, and a 61-70 bracket.

I also find it's helpful to go to the world entrance to the battleground you want to fight in. WSG's entrance is near the border between Ashenvale and Barrens. AB's entrance is in Arathi Highlands, directly behind Hammerfall. When available, the entrance to Alterac Valley is north of Tauren Mill (found in Hillsbrad Foothills). At the world entrances, there are different consumables and rewards that can be bought that aren't available in the Hall of Legends. If you plan on doing several matches in a row, you can spend a few silver and honor points for Battleground specific bandages, food, and potions. They are cheap and easy to resupply between matches.

Don't put off PVP battlegrounds until you're 70. You will be terribly unprepared, and insanely out-geared, and it will be much harder to learn at that point. Every time you've got an 8 or 9 in your level, spend some time to play some matches. It really pays off over time.
How do you do well in these battlegrounds? Well, your gear is a good start, and I'll cover that in the next installment.

Alterac honor tip

2008-04-03T07:57:00.000-07:00

I haven't tested this to verify, but I thought I would pass it along.

This is much easier to do if you have the Deadly Boss mod installed, since it gives you a convenient set of movable bars that give countdowns for capture points across the map.

Typically capturing a graveyard or tower in Alterac Valley takes somewhere around 3-5 minutes and nets you healthy amount of bonus honor whenever your team takes one. Once the battleground ends (in victory or defeat, doesn't matter), you have 2 minutes until it closes. You can review your stats at this time. However, if your team was in the process of capturing any tower or graveyard when the match ended, if it completes while you are still reviewing your stats, you get the bonus honor (typically around 42 honor if i recall).
So my tip is, if you have the Deadly Boss mod, check your countdown bars and see if anything will cap during the post-match wrap up. If so, just let it ride.
In the photo below, the Deadly Boss timer is to the left of the minimap showing 1:23 left before that capture succeeds. At the bottom of the stat sheet, you can see the BG closing in 2 minutes. I'm going to test to make sure this works in the next day or two, but waiting that 2 minutes should net me another chunk of free honor.(click for full screen version)

Faction add-on

2008-04-02T17:42:00.000-07:00

Check out Fizz-widget's Faction Friend.
I highly recommend it.

http://fizzwidget.com/factionfriend/

The thing I like the most is that it actually adds a line in the tooltips so when you hover over an item that can be turned in for faction, it lets you know what faction it's for. For those with access, you'll see I've already placed some faction turn-ins in the guild bank for other people to use if they want.

Note to self regarding pets

2008-04-01T07:55:00.000-07:00

At level 64, I need to go to Terrokar and tame a Scorpid Bonecrawler in order to learn Claw 9 from it.
Then teach Claw 9 to both of my cats.
Then I need to tame a Dreadfang Widow in Terrokar to learn Bite 9 from it.
Then I need to go to Blade's Edge Mountains and tame my 3rd and final permanent pet, The Rip-Blade Ravager. I will learn Gore 9 from him, then teach him Bite 9 and Dash 3, which I have already learned by that point.

This "3 stable slots only" thing is lame. They had better increase the # of slots in WotLK.

BRD

2008-03-31T09:46:00.000-07:00

Johannite, Sidil and I ran part of Blackrock Depths last night. I have photos on my Flickr page over on the left. Got some nice shots.
Mana regen for hunters still sucks.

Alterac Valley 2

2008-03-26T07:34:00.000-07:00

I've been getting the hang of the turn-ins in AV, but had to look up what to do with the flesh I was picking up off fallen players and NPCs. They are apparently for Wing Commanders, who you must rescue. I've tried locating them, but have had no luck.
I did turn in so much blood last night that we nearly summoned the ice god. That was cool.
Vials of blood are turned into the Tauren Druid in a small cave in the main area of the fortress. When enough are turned in, a team of druids will ride to the middle of the map and start summoning a god. 10 players have to help in the summoning, then he will show up and start rampaging. He can be healed, so it's best to have players supporting him.
Pieces of armor are turned in to an Orc near the cave with a blue question mark over him. The armor provides strength increases to friendly NPCs from what I understand. Whenever you see your inventory loading up with these turn-ins, zip back to base and drop them off. Deadly Boss mods even automate the turn-in process so it just takes one click.
So does anyone know where the Horde Wing Commanders are being held?

What I've learned of Alterac Valley so far...

2008-03-24T12:43:00.001-07:00

Since I'm still new to Alterac, I'm just putting down my experiences to help anyone else who hasn't done it yet.

Taking Coldtooth Mine (F) is an easy thing to pull off with 2 or 3 people at the most. A single Hunter could solo it, but backup makes things go much faster. Your goal in the Mine is to kill the boss named Snivvle. The easiest path to him is through the lower entrance to the mine. Just fight through, hang a right, then a left and you should spot him. He stands out. Kill him, then leave the same way you came in.

If you're there at the beginning, I've found it's a lot of fun to stick with the large group of Horde who head due north to Stonehearth Bunker (11), cap it quickly, then head straight to Stonehearth Outpost (10) where Balinda lives. Balinda is tough, and you should get at least 10 people to help take her down. After that, I just sort of wander from fight to fight. Like I said, I'm still pretty new at this.

When you take out enemies, make sure to loot their corpse. You'll get a bunch of crap. Most of it can be turned in back at the Frostwolf Relief Hut (B) and surrounding camps. Keep an eye out for NPCs in that area with blue question marks. Turn in as much of the loot as you can to the various NPCs. If you have the trinket that allows you to quickly return to the Frostwolf Keep, use it for quick turn-ins. If you find yourself spawning at the northernmost graveyard, make your way to the main offense heading towards Dun Baldar. Don't try to take on the Alliance boss until you've got at least 15-20 people ready to go. Also, when fighting the Alliance boss, do not run outside of the building if you get aggro. If you run out, he resets to full health and everyone must start the fight over. Take the death, and just respawn.

I hope to post more in the future as I get a better grasp on this Battleground.

For easy add-on updates

2008-03-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

The program you're looking for is called Wowmatrix. It's the best one I've found that will easily update all your add-ons, and has a convenient list of hundreds of other add-ons that can be grabbed with a single click. A quick google search will bring it right up.

Primo

2008-03-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

This will just be an easy place to post messages to the guild when not playing. I'll be sending out contributor invites so you can all post on here.