WoW is ruined: Three still ride on

Yes, it's a provocative title. However, that is how it feels right now, as the Three Dunces/Stooges are clearing one Cataclysm 5-man instace at a time, one shotting the bosses which we spent several sessions to overcome with our first team.

Blackrock: Cleared in two sessions, with several wipes due several issues. Explanations, explanations, but in the end it felt less of a challenge than with the first team.

Throne of Tides: cleared with couple of wipes in two sessions only because the final boss event bugged. Our general thoughts were along the lines that the game is broken or we are just that awesome, clearing the place with our trio at just adequate level. Well, tankadin and rogue were at the proper level, healer-shammy one below. In the first team it was a pain to go through the instance at the proper level.

Stonecore: Whereas we struggled with different parts of this dungeon with the first team, we just blasted through it with the second. Granted, the team was just on level 83, right after the MoP patch, but it just felt wrong in the sense that our gear is not up to date. My shammy still has stuff of level 78 on him, so every gear drop with int/spi is an upgrade. And I mean every!

So we are playing, enjoying the giggles and amazing the update on the game client. The new one really blew some new light into the cinders and seems to be working as intended. Also the changes to talents and shammy play are a source of constant wonder, so there is still a lot to do. WoW is definitely getting more simple by the patch. I'm waiting for the five button combat, which is bound to be just around the corner, right after MoP burnout fall of subscribers...

I'm just wondering am I going to go for the Mists with my brothers... But I'm just wondering.

The Three will ride on. With less deaths and gore than before, but still riding on!

Summertime schedule

Ah, summer.

It means two things. First, the schools are out and the Wold of Azeroth is constantly full of students on leave. Material prizes fluctuate more than over the rest of the year, you can score great deals both buying and selling and generally the population is more on the jerk side.

Secondly, the summer vacation of the blogger. As a working dad and all, the summer weather poses serious hazard to the game time, even though there are a few projects I've taken to keep myself occupied over the furious outdoors living.

I - the one who resents PvP in all forms and functions - have started new toons on a PvP server. And I've locked already a rogue to lv 19. My baby warlock is about to be locked at 14, just to accommodate a more casual bracket. So the big, big project will be to level up that DK who will provide materials and money to these two. I'm now contemplating over the professions for the DK to a) generate nice nest money, b) to help the twinks gearing and enchanting and c) create a nice income to accommodate more toons in different brackets.

The second project is to level up an enhancement shaman along with my son, who's warlock is going to join the Three Stooges on their scheme of world domination. As soon as that addition to our team is geared up, the Three Stooges and Son will take on heroics and Wrath raids (stay tuned for more spectacular failures!).

Of course there is always my pet, Gnomore. I've played him once or twice now, without an update, but rest assured, when I need to slow down my pace in killing things and ... bigger things, I will return to him.

As a recap, summertime causes some delays in the posting schedule. Despite of this, the toons are going strong and my banker is now sitting on 280k (again!!!) with over 250 stacks of Cataclysm herbs in his mailbox, waiting to be milled.

Wishing you a warm and relaxing summer.

C out
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A lost soul

I recently started a new toon, a dwarven shaman, who is now badly geared and seeking his way in the world. At level 25 he's Enhancement specced with high portion of gear of +Sta and +Int contrary to the current +Agi gearing.

The answer to the Why? part is that this toon is accompanying my son's dwarven warlock and helping him to level up to the group of Three Stooges. Then it will be Three Stooges (or Dunces) and son, for sure!

Now we levelled to the cap of trial, which is 20 (with 10g money cap which annoys my son immensely!) in less than two couple hours sessions. The starter area of dwarves at least till Wetlands is so streamlined that it's impossible to keep up with the exhilarating speed the story proceeds. As it happens, you overlevel the quests way too fast for the questing itself being meaningful except for the storylines present. Doubly so, if you do as we did, went for LFD right at level 15 when it all comes possible.

Only because my son kept dinging earlier than me - and got to 20 around the time I got to 18! - I had to try the warlock way of doing it. So I rolled a troll warlock on another server to see how it goes.

And it goes. Like wham-bang and so on.

Warlock is a killing machine.

But it didn't explain the difference in experience we saw, so the only explanation is professions. You see, my son had mining in his professions, while I had skinning/leathercrafting.

Note to self (and others): if you only want to level up a character in WoW, do pick Herbalism and Mining to go by. You increase the rate of gaining experience right away = shorten the time spent levelling.

By this experiment I learned two things about the game.

First of all, WoW has lost it's soul. The thing that made it special in the beginning. It has lost the questing and adventuring part which made it loved and special, as the quest content is overlevelled by design. This has resulted the fact that the LFD groups are worse and worse, as people are trying to level as fast as possible by killing the mobs in instances as fast as possible and not taking anything else into account. A simple boss with any other action than tank and spank is considered a poor boss, unless it can be downed in few seconds/minute.

The game actually forces the speed levelling on player. If you want to enjoy the quests and their 'challenge' at appropriate level, you have to freeze your experience. That is completely against the idea of level based RPG thinking and thus is out of the question for players. You cannot enjoy the easy mode way the Old World is crammed into your throat, even if you loved the story and quests. It's too darn easy and too darn fast to overlevel.

Secondly, I just like levelling more than doing the same old dailies in the level cap. Even though the quests get over levelled, even though the elites met along the way are too easy at equal levels, even though the greens just keep pouring in from each loot. The quests and the stories are worth it to me.

Beats reading a bad novel any - rainy - day.

But I'm not talking about sunny days anymore.

WoW has lost it's soul of questing in favor of speedy levelling to level cap.
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Failure is not an option

Ah. Here again.

The latest adventures of the three dunces/stooges are unreported. There will still be one report missing after this one is done, and more to come on Thursday. We'll see when that report gets written, though...

Anyhow. After success in the Halls of Origination, the three -stupid- Stooges took up on the old nemesis. The Lost City of Tol'Vir. Remember the visit, eh? (Sidenote: it seems that this has been hinted a couple of times, but never really reported. Sorry folks, I'm only sub-human.)

It started as a nice retaliation with a vengeance on those mobs.

And our earlier nemesis, that General Husaam, was our puppy this time. "Look mom, no deaths still!"

Then we got to Lockmaw, and with the dps we can muster, it started to feel like a job. But...

Sleep thee well, Lockmaw!

On and on, till we downed...

but Siamat left untouched. "Can't touch this" was so right. The storm is strong in that one...

Back to Stormwind with the three of us, singing...

"We shall overcome"
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Outdated update

Oh, joy.

This post was supposed to be posted about a week ago, but alas, blogger was down. Still bugged in some parts it seems (at least I'm having trouble to comment on blogs with Blogger comment section), but mainly working.

Anyhow, a week ago three brothers took up on a sword and rode into the Halls of Origination, where they were beaten severely on their former try. Guess how it went now...?

That should give you a slight hint...

There is one particular set of mobs which caused us some grey hair, and that was the one after Temple Guardian Anhuur on the way to Brann Bronzebeard. The one with one big baddie and three other ones. Tricky if you do not sap the infuriating caster type and kill the other one as soon as possible.

After coming to terms with the kill order, that mob was easy. Surprisingly so.

To our misguided amazement we found ourselves in the Hall of Lights or whatever the place is, and proceeded to dismantle the safeguards: the four elementals and a bunch of troggs. Long story short (as one picture equals some hundreds of words, like they say):

As you can see from the sequence, we had problems with only one of the elementals, that being the water one. The bubble, coming on the healer at the right moment, is a bugger, and really caused some hilarious moments. On the other hand, our main theme of the evening was that the healer lives, everyone else dies, even though in the last picture it's the rogue alive. He - on the other hand - used his vanish on each and every occasion things started getting hairy, getting the tank aka me killed more than I really deserved.

We skipped most of the 'unnecessary' parts and finally took the fight to the main boss, fiery Rajh. We had some negative pepping going on when the fight started, and the trash guarding the boss was really a pain: in randoms this would cause several groups to disappear into thin air if the end boss wasn't in sight.

 What a warm and loving fight that was. Heated debate, streaming solar flares, burning embers raining from the sky. What more can a man desire?

In the end, it was one mob standing. That being the three unbeatable, who again did the job of five, which so many random groups still fail to do (in heroics).

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Time to ride again

If a group of 10 or 25 is a raid, isn't a group of 3 doing the content for 5 a ride?

Anyhow, it's time for the three to do the job of five again, this time all at the cap. The only thing I'm nervous about is not to waste any Justice Points on vanities and to find as good upgrades before the round up as possible. Now where are the easy solutions when you are in a hurry, eh?

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Three on two occasions

Previously on Three Stooges:

After seriously banging their head on the Lost City of Tol'Vir without seeing a single glimpse of hope on General Husam and later Lockmaw, the worrisome threesome decided to tackle on an old nemesis of theirs. The reason to give up the Lost City of Tol'Vir was due to the fact that even though General Husam was put to rest, the fight felt like sheer effort on luck, with no effect based on the way the three were performing. Lockmaw even more so, and the collective intellect suggested that the main reason to this is the lack of survivability of the lowest common denominator, the Tank.

The old nemesis was... Mr. Sunshine himself, The Lich King in Hall of Reflections, into which the three plunged themselves like vaseline to... well, slided in like... /snap Ouch. Entered the instance like a brave group of - undermanned but severely overgeared - adventures.

For the first time ever the instance felt like it had felt in full group at the glory days of WotLK, when the tank was overgearing the content and AoE ruled the world.

Needles to say, the instance was a breeze and the trio decided to fulfill the one instance needed for the Rogue's Northrend Dungeon Hero achievement: the Halls of Stone, in which he was lacking the Maiden of Grief.

In short, the three went wham-bang through these two instances, gained Guild achievement on one of them and lived happily ever after.

Yesterday, current time (check the timestamp, please)

Instead of taking on the Lost City of Tol'Vir, the three decided to go for the Halls of Origination. Wider selection of nice bosses and sidetracking, the instance 'felt' like a good second choice for the undermanned group.

The trash from the beginning, the menace of an unsuspecting PUG even, was just about the right challenge for the three, so much so that it felt like home after the Lost City of Tol'Vir experience. Even though the Temple Guardian Anhuur requires the flick of a switch - two in fact - it was clear from the first try that this boss was doable. The three stated almost in unison after the first wipe that this one is doable, when they were not in unison with the General Husam earlier, which tells quite a lot.

Temple Guardian Anhuur taught the Healer the first usable spot for the Leap of Faith (or HealGrip): as the Tank had flicked both of the switches, the Healer pulled him up with the Leap of Faith and the slaughter would commence. The point was that this provided the Healer a few moments to heal the Tank up before the damage started raining in and get his stuff on the roll before the snakes came into the show.

After four or five tries it was the Healer who got the honors in letting Temple Guardian Anhuur to rest: the Rogue and the Tank came to the conclusion that the Healer had let them die deliberately to get all the honor and recognition to himself. He even made the point to dance on the dead, mutilated bodies of his companions before resurrecting them. The disgrace!

Instead of taking the scenic route to the end, the threesome decided to take the long route instead and started their way to Earthrager Ptah. The road to good intentions - especially in Egyptian themed instance - is always paved with Scarabs, though.

But the way to Earthrager Ptah - the twin brother of ICC's Marrowgar - was easy enough to clear and fun to run around with the camels provided (tell me there isn't a grande reason to have them rideable over there, please!), and as much as we tried we couldn't make this boss feel as ominous as it should have felt.

Boy were we taken. By the hand, by the feet, by the platter and everything that hurts. The encounter is fun and furious, and it's sad how people just 'ignore' this encounter and go through only the mandatory ones.

It took the threesome around fifteen (15) tries, where in the middle of them the Tank had to go to Stormwind and replenish the potions and flasks, after which he learned a lesson, too. Somehow the Tank had missed the memo stating that the cooldown of a potion starts only after the combat ends, and thus he ended up being potionless in the end because he had popped a Earthly Potion (or whatever) in the beginning.

That resolved, the Earthrager Ptah went down on the third try after this revelation. This time the term 'close call' got a whole new meaning, even closer than the one experienced on Tempel Guardian Anhuur. You see, the damage over time effects left on Earthrager Ptah by the Tank and the Rogue killed the boss at the same second the Healer died. The tank followed the dropping health down from 80k to zero from the ground zero, telling the others the status of the boss as they were too busy in (I hoped to say killing the boss) staying alive.

But hey! Earthrager Ptah was put down by merciless effort and good spirits.

Now the question is why would the Threesome bother to take on so many wipes on this one, but gave up on the Lost City of Tol'Vir. The reason is simple: the Tol'Vir combats didn't show even a promise that something was changing from one wipe to another, while the Halls of Origination encounters showed clearly the difference in changed tactics. The effort - reward - ratio was right, and the encounters really responded to changed tactics.

By far this Earthrager Ptah fight has been the most fun I've had with my pants on in Cataclysm. Temple Guard Anhuur felt like a victory with capital v, but Ptah proved that we can change, adapt and persist.

What the Three Stooges wouldn't do for a few deserved - and poorly documented - deaths?

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Asaad day

There they were: the foolish three who had once failed to conquer the Vortex Pinnacle. Facing the portal, feeling confident and willing to die for... the sake of dying.

Fast forward, with subtitles:
"If you just sap that one and I pull the rest... Oh, it can't be sapped, and omgwtf LET ME AT IT!"
"Could you use Fade or something, so I can keep the aggro?"
"Um, well, it might be better for my mana if I stopped doing damage to them, right?"
"Ok, I'll go and strangle that one, silencing it? Ah, for crying out loud, you pulled it already..."

The groups of different sizes of winds and clouds came and went, and the majority of the time my screen was like this:

Happily smashing away, from one pull to another. Ok, save the one time an exploding cloud warrior pushed me over the edge of the Pinnacle, but otherwise the trash mobs were pretty uneventful, as if someone had tweaked them - again! - to some lower level of challenge. This time the Grand Vizier left another man standing, and it wasn't the tank...

Bloody priest! He should keep the tank up rather than the rogue, as it was the tank who bit the dust first again.

No reason to cry over the spilled milk, though.

Jump to the next, the mid-boss Altairus was a nice, fast and simple fight, right after the fellowship thought out to use the wind to their benefit. Old hunter adage was proven correct: always stand downwind...

Finally it was time to face Asaad. The trash mobs of the Tol'Vir after the Grand Vizier were a sort of nice change to the pace, as our rogue could sap and control the excessive healers. Otherwise it was - like I commented in Twitter - "sap one, tank on rest, kill the second, wham-bang-slam-smash."

Now Asaad. That is one bugger of a boss. The stars around pounding extra damage to us all, with no way of putting them out of their misery, having to run from one Containment Field to another while tossing things to the Lord of Wind and Fury himself, the fight was actually very interesting. Thrice we fell, until...

The perfect performance.

In the end, all we could conclude was...

After which we searched for new challenges. I wonder if this is good enough?

Oh, by Golly!

The first fights in the Lost City of Tol'Vir were intense, interesting and way better than all the fights so far in Cataclysm, with several aspects to take into account. It is indicative that we didn't get the first boss - General Hasam -  down on the first run we were there, yet everyone of us felt that we were doing our best, with little to improve in our playing.

So off to the questing it is. Mind you that we cleared Vortex Pinnacle with tank and healer being at lv84 and 'just' the rogue at 85, and the healer dinged to cap while in the Lost City of Tol'Vir. More or less, it's down to gearing up from now.

It seems that the game just turned interesting, if the quality of the instances grows this rate from now on...

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Again three did the job of five

It's been a month since the Three Stooges (or Three Dunces) rode together. Calculating the /played over that time on these characters, the time is around half an hour a character.

No wonder the game felt clunky and jittery, as we soon found out...

The first set of characters was - in lack of better word - a mess. Of the five, three were running wild, one was being pounded by our 'overlevelled' rogue (Förgelös, 85) and the last one was being handled by our healing dps machine (Bishopgeorge, 84). So what the heck was the tank (Laiskajaakko, 84) doing?

Trying to get a hang of the buttons and binds. Removed from this set of skills and keybinds, succumbed to Rift with another set, had had it's cost on efficiency. Really, during the whole run I was fumbling with the buttons and at no point did I feel that the character was working as intended. Also, compared to the response and speed of Rift (or my spriest, for the matter), the response and cooldown time was absolutely horribly sluggish! I know I have mentioned it earlier how the queuing system for skills killed the responsiveness for me, but I never, ever thought it was really THIS bad. Push a button, once a second. The need for the skill passes by faster, so there is nothing you can do but to hope that you can still counter the attack by the skill needed. Oh, it passed and I launched a useless reflect, nice.

And so on.

Never the less, everyone of the three wondered if something had happened to the game, as the encounters seemed to last longer and the whole gameplay felt slow.

The mobs
We passed the trash in the traditional mess we like to do them. The tunnel between Corborus and Slabhide was amazing, as the annoying rock spider thingies just kept on spawning after a spawn. The flood of them was constant, not like the last times, obviously meant to keep us going. Otherwise the 'trash' was uneventfull till the end.

The bosses
Corborus, you dear ground worm you. How lackluster you are on the umpteenth time. One thing which has happened over the last month is that the DBM updates have made it impossible to miss the crystal barrage even on a team mate way over where.

Slabhide
This old, wary dragon just doesn't hold the magic anymore. The fight is furious and fun in it's own way ("Are you out of mana, yet?" - "Not just quite yet" - "HEAL!" - "Sorry, out of mana, try to hang on" - "YOU JUST SAID YOU WERE FINE" - "Sorry, can't help it" - "AAAARGHH!!!"), but still it's like wiping the stains off the window. No, not the way that they still are there after a while, but the way that it's easy to make the stains to go away. Really.

Ozruk, our earlier nemesis because the tank (that bugger) didn't understand the finesses of the fight. Well, didn't remember them the first time around this time, either. So yes, we wiped, gloriously, but the second run was flawless. Hit, bash, maim, mutilate - oh, ground smash - splash, boom, bang - oh, shatter RUN! - kill maim KILL!! In a way, I like this encounter for it's simplicity but still requiring solid concentration.

High Priestess Azil
Grande biatch of the highest order. We came, were cautious and ... wiped. The void zones just kept spawning so that the second or third wave of the adds just didn't catch them. So we had two dozens of those pesky worshippers pounding on us, add a few criticals from them and down we went. But the second time over was lovely. Bishopgeorge learned to dance the tune, Förgelös just kept on hopping and jumping from the voids and I... I tried my darnest to keep the adds from Bishop and in the voids.

Down she went and all we got was this lousy achievement.

"What shall we do next?" -
"Conquer the World! Let's try Vortex Pinnacle?"
"Isn't that supposed to be extremely hard?"
"Aren't they all?"
"Ah, ok, let's go."

So off we went to Uldum and Vortex Pinnacle, first visiting some sort of repair shop. The overall monetary stuff on Laiskajaakko ended being negative, repairs costing more than the quests and loot could make. I guess that's because Laiskajaakko is in his early 84s, as Förgelös (that overlevelled bastard rogue) claimed to have made over 250g over the night...

Anyhow, the night was turning late when we started. The first group of five mobs proved to be a challenge: not a huge one, but a challenge for a change. The Wild Winds seem to be the buggers of this place, annoying casters who shake the stuns off of them in record time.

And they cannot be sapped, which crippled our secret weapon!

Another problematic trash mob was the Cloud Princes, as they summon immediately and uninterruptably three Wind Gusts or something. So a nice trash group of two mobs turns into a foray of six, all hitting at an unimaginable rate.

Still, long story short.

We.
Killed.
Grand Vizier Ertan.

On our first visit, on our first try.

That was just the halfway spot, but still. Three did the job of five.

Again.
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First of Three

Congratulations Förgelös for hitting the Cataclysm level cap!

Förgelös is the first of the Three Stooges to gain the revered level 85. I'm pretty sure Bishopgeorge will follow him soon enough, leaving Laiskajaakko last, where the order in WotLK was quite the other way around.

Supposedly this will help the Three Stooges to clear the rest of the 5 mans undermanned and unmannered.

As always, dying can be glorious.
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Stooges with a headache

Despite Tobold trying to explode my visitor counter, I will stick to the schedule I have now established on my mind.

Yesterday was yet another Three Stooges night. The holy trinity of warrior (lv83), priest (lv84) and rogue (lv84) entered Stonecore with all the confidence in the known world to overcome their nemesis from the earlier attempt: Ozruk. For the record, we still feel - even more so - that this instance is easy for a full group, let the composition of the group be anything. If we can do it with such an ease as far as we do, the a full group should just do it.

Corborus was really a pushover and Slabhide was just another boss dragon with it's own dance moves. In the end, the trash mobs provided more entertainment value due to their uncanny way of getting some adds to the fight. This one ability proved to be the one we couldn't later overcome.

But let's continue with the dungeon delving.

After Slabhide there comes the passage with the mobs and sentries. Nothing strange in there, kill the sentries as fast as possible or face the consequences: they call ALL the mobs to protect the High Priestess. Carefully we disabled the ones which might have caused any further trouble (or so we thought) and faced our nemesis.

We banged our head on this rocky fellow time and again. Running around like chicken in heat. Pulling those extra mobs while running from the Slabhide teleporter, the ones we thought wouldn't cause any trouble. And wiped once more.

Until this one particular warrior, Laiskajaakko (his player, in fact), suddenly had an realization that you do not have to run from the Ground Smash, just side step. So instead of running around from the Shatter Blow and Ground Smash, you have to pull away only from the first and NOT MOVE OZRUK.

Stupid player that guy. Heard he's writing a blog or something. Real git.

All this and some more, the next try resulted.

Yes, Ozruk was down. And the only reason it took us so long was this stupid tank person who couldn't read the signs and interpret the graphics on this fight.

On we went, through the meaningless bunch of the Cultists, until we met Her.

High Priestess Azil. The fight is really a simple one for a bigger group, as ranged dps can do her damage all the time. We - on the other hand - are lacking two dimensions of dps in our group: ranged and area. Both of which would be nice to have in this one, making life just a bit easier.

Needless to say, this fight is messy and not too satisfactory.

And the conclusion pretty clear.

In short: the Three stooges are lacking some serious damage dealing on Azil, and our tank has to learn more about grabbing the aggro from the healer. The major cause to the headache resulting wall banging was the fact that the healer was being pounded by the Cultists, while the tank was being Power Gripped and unable to say "Cheese!". The main reason for the frustration on High Priestess Azil encounter was the fact that no changes we made to our approach gave us any noticeable advance in the encounter: everything we did to change the result was in vain. On Ozruk we saw from the beginning the problems and could work on them, but here... nothing sticks. It just bugs the living daylights from us.

Like the song goes, she bangs, she bangs. But not for long, for as Förgelös (the rogue) said...

WE WILL OVERCOME, AZIL!
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Stooged in Stonecore

Deepholm. Lovely scenery, interesting story and Stonecore.

Three Stooges had been warned about the instance time and again, that it will be the one that will challenge the group. Having only one level 84 (Bishopgeorge) and mostly in greens and select blues the trio embarked on the trip to the challenge land.

The initial shock was short and sharp. The rag-tag group of five turned into a mess of twelve, as everyone seemed to aggro everything. Score 1 for Stonecore and Millhouse the Mad Gnome.

But as accustomary, the Stooges learn from their mistakes. The next time wasn't as trivial, and as we started our slow trek into the depths of the Core, we noted the skills, damage and peculiarities of the mobs. Without hesitation - and needless dying - we encountered Corborus.

Believe or not, Corborus was a snack to our professional group, not even sweat broke on this first try. It was too easy, considering the level, we stated, not noticing the mockfull tone in our comments.

Onwards and deeper we went, and on to the Slabhide. Lovely dragon, who's breath is really, really bad. She should really make an appointment with a dentist and do something to her reflux problem.

As usual, our group of professionals couldn't find a proper - nor unanimous - way to conduct the battle.

This fight was interesting, not only because it had a lot going on simultaneously, nor because we took the spanking like three man do, but because as we returned to the instance, the encounter was locked. The impenetrable wall was blocking our way to Slabhide, who may as well be a he.

Out we went, repaired, reset the instance and in again. This time Corborus did a trick to us and emerged from the side of the cliff after his first dive and caused us some trouble.

And then the world fell apart. Three quarters of the WoW EU population were kicked out of the game, without the option to re-enter. That meant that our meager group was reduced to one, Laiskajaakko, while the two others were locked out of the game. As it happens, this affected the whole server and later I learned that it affected the whole EU area. Better part of the guild raid running at the same time was kicked out, and as Laiskajaakko took off to do some mining in the meanwhile, it seemed that a good part of the mobs were having a vacation, too.

Anyhow, the situation resumed later and we proceeded with Slabhide. She's a beauty in the end, as we found out.

Down and down we went, and met our next obstacle. Barrier. The wall to bang our heads on.

Ozruk.

We tried, we fought and we... failed.

One or two tries were very close, and it was just the final punch that was lacking. We were certain as we logged out, that we could do it, easily, given the difficulty so far. Remembering how Lady Naz'jar was our nemesis earlier, Ozruk will be done next time.

All in all, the Three Stooges are certain that the difficulty of the instances as such is too easy. If three can handle Stonecore on their first visit there ever like this, how can five fail?

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No three to report

Yes, due to a real life commitment, Three Stooges didn't ride. At least not together. I'm not sure what Förgelös and Bishopgeorge may have gotten into their mind on doing, the best I can hope for is for them to do some questing and get some gear.

On the other side, I'm nearing 100k gold through my AH experiment. That's only 30k more from my starting point, but it has accumulated through effort, not through luck, and within a short period of time (2 weeks to be honest). From this I can offer a few insights on the AH market to the newcomer.

* Start small. Do not try to grasp the whole glyph market on the first try if you're new in the game, short on money or short on time. Best way to go is to sell materials: cloth, ores, stones and herbs.
* Trust the market. Do not put cheap materials for sale in stacks of one: instead, put full stacks and at a bit higher price.
* Know the market. Too often I find a piece of rare recipe, schematic or plan in the market for a fraction of it's real price. I purchase a rare recipe for 6g and sell it for 300g. The same goes with all the stuff in AH: know the competing and/or real price of the items you are about to sell. Saves you the headache when you notice that you could have gotten 10 or 100 times the money you put it in for.
* Plan and develop a system. Saves time for the actual play.

Unless of course, you plan to play the AH rather than the questing, grouping or raiding.

It's a choice. Your choice.

.Current balance (alliance side): 90 635g, invested another 2540g in Elementium and Obsidium ores for prospecting.

Throne revisited

There they were again. The Three Stooges, in all their glory. Well, this time - again - in Stormwind, but dedicated to take on The Throne of the Tides again: this time the whole experience.

To get to the Vashj'ir - as well as any other Cataclysm high end area - is pretty easy. Just login, go to the island within Stormwind and pick your portal. WOOSH and you're there.

Except that when we are around, things are not exactly that simple. Oh, the WOOSH part was ok, we got to Vashj'ir area, but to get through the maelstrom in the Shimmering Expanse was another story. You see, we should have understood at that point that the game was somehow bugged. While Laiskajaakko, the tank and miner and bullsh blacksmith went around the area mining (it's amazing how empty Vashj'ir is nowadays, and how much there is to mine!), Förgelös was the first to enter the maelstrom...

"Wait! What?! I died!"

Silence.

"Yea, I died as I parked above that swirly-thingy. No reason!"

You must be kidding, bro.

"Wait. Killed by Exhaustion?!"

At this point Bishopgeorge tried to enter the maelstrom and noticed that a) he got the fatigue debuff and b) he didn't get in, right away at least. And concluded that you have to enter the darn thing exactly from the top of it, and smack in the middle, otherwise you get the fatigue debuff and - eventually - die.

I had to try it myself, and sure as hell, I was about to die before I got out of there and went for the white hole for entry. We then summoned the ill fated rogue among us, he would have gotten lost in the whirl otherwise...

The instance felt even easier than before. Main things that had changed were that we were all now level 83, so slightly on the high side for the normal levelling instance. But our undermanning tactic should have countered that. At the same time Förgelös had received some green rings (Alcite Band) and some other green crafted gear to compensate the outdated Northrend blues, still being below the gear score of the normal dungeon PUG you might find through the Dungeon Finder.

No, really. The trash felt almost as trashy as the ones in the WotLK instances. Crash in, trash them, move on. Very little need for any crowd control or care. The overall comment was that the instance felt sluggish and the characters abilities seemed to lack the punch they had a week ago.

This went on to Lady Naz'jar, whom we downed after several tries last time. This time - however - she went down on the first try and without breaking a sweat. Only one time pop of cooldowns from the tank, no real thing in there. Wo-hoot and rejoice.

Except that from this point things continued to go 'our' way.

The encounter didn't proc the conclusion and we couldn't initiate the cut scene nor open the gate to let us out. We tried this and that and some more, until we gave up and hearthed out. Only to find out that the instance was stuck in the moment and we had to reset it to proceed.

Rinse and repeat. This time it worked, we had not died once (to our surprise and disappointment) and we faced the Ulthok thingy.

All posh and full of ourselver we crashed in and...

Wiped. (Hooray, we died!)

It was a splash, bang, 50k+ in and out! We had gotten careless due to the instance being so easy till now. As we ran in and took Ulthok down without even blinking, we came painfully aware of the fact that the instance WAS too easy. To add to the injury, we killed Erunak's squid helm without a thought and helped Neptulon to defeat Ozumat, even though Förgelös decided to die and watch the fight from the other side of the gate again. Like I mentioned earlier, he has this cunning habit of giving the bosses some equal ground every now and then, and this time he decided to do this before the final of the instance.

His loss: as he was standing outside when Ozumat was vanguished, he didn't receive the achievement for the instance!

Due to the running from SW twice, we spent some time discussing how anti-climatic the finale of the instance was, very much a let down in both story and difficulty, and noting time and again that the instance was - in the end - very much too easy. Even though it's an entry instance for the WotLK skipping newcomers, it still doesn't pose any real challenge to a full group. Hecklers, if the three of us cleared the place in two tries, severely undermanned in the end, then a whole group should clear the place in their underwear!

To add insult to the injury, everyone else got a piece of gear or two except the tank, who is running around in WotLK purples and crafted Cataclysm greens. Which means that the gear composition of the group is pretty much in level with the required ones.

The decision was made to tackle Stonecore next. Let's see if we can two shot the first real instance.

I sincery hope not.

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Preparation pays

Be prepared and you do not end up like this.

Or this.

Not to mention this.

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