Old Ass

Cute Ass

Silliness aside, what is it with people finding my blog with “ass.” First, there was “Ass Battle” then, today, there was “ass climber (ice climber hack).nes pour.” I have no idea, and don’t want to have an idea, of what that person was looking for.

The fact that this post is going to make matters worse aside, what is it with people finding my blog with Ass?

Is it, as Llanion said, because my blog is all about the ass?

Ellaria rocks gently back and forth in a corner, weeping

Three wipes on Anub’Rekhan… three wipes! /Flailsey*

Fail PUG is really fail. I should have learned my lesson by now, but I’m clearly a glutton for punishment. With the release of Ulduar, I’ve not seen any guilds recruiting for Naxx25, nevermind Naxx10, so I figured I’d try and PUG it. How bad could it be?

Wipe three times on Anub’Rekhan bad. I don’t know what my problem with this guy is – he’s the second easiest boss in Naxx, apparently… yet, even on my whopping two clears, we always wipe on him. The wipes this time were a combination of “tank eating locust swarm” and “idiot Paladin who could barely remember to bless people stood in the swarm and thus couldn’t heal.”

It was incredibly painful. We had beaten Grobbulus (was a save where Patchwerk was down – that should have been my first warning, that someone had a save with only one boss down, suggesting a group that couldn’t do the next boss) after one wipe, and then we wiped on Gluth, too – I can’t kite, at least not myself. Earthbind only covers a small area, I have no speed boosts, and Frost Shock is only 20 yards range. I’ll take the blame for that wipe.

It’s just so disheartening… and even if I do get a group that can clear, I need to have extreme loot luck – stuff I want needs to drop, then I need to win the roll. Yesterdays wipes wouldn’t have been such a bother if Grobbulus had dropped the bracers I wanted.

I’ve narrowed myself down to a few “must haves” – my tier Shoulders, Cloak of Mastery and Bands of Anxiety to get rid of some of the blues I have. I’ll still have blue boots (superior to naxx 10 epics because of two delicious red gem slots), and a blue trinket/ring, with much needed Hit Rating. If I get my Tier Legs/Helmet (Goodbye, Goggles. -tear-) and the fist weapon from KT I’d also be happy. But if I can get those three things I’ll consider myself set for 10 man Ulduar. I cheated and spent 625g (550g plus an expertise gem) on Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets to remove some of the randomness in my gearing up. No doubt those will drop from Faerlina/Gluth next time I run Naxx, just to spite me.

But the problem is running Naxx. I really should just look for a proper guild, but as I’ve mentioned umpteen times before, job messes things up – and it’s only two shifts a week! Best case scenario (for raiding, that is.) is that I work Thursday (Pub Quiz night) and I always work Saturday, so I’ve got 5 nights open for raids that week. However, because that one shift is random, I can’t make set raid days. I can’t join a guild that expects me to raid on, say, both Wednesday and Friday – because I could have shifts those days! -grumble-

So I need a “casual” guild that doesn’t expect me to raid 3-5 nights a week, doesn’t expect me to make set raid days, and is content for me to do 10 mans, but is still capable of beating the content. -sigh- Specific needs are specific.

-fistdesk- I can do this, damnit!

Me and Kazura also spent some time wiping on the new boss in VoA last night – he’s a lot harder than Archavon, which is both refreshing yet annoying. I could do with my tier 7 legs, but people aren’t so keen on joining PUGs that might save them to Archavon without Emalon down. On the upside, it’s totally awesome being a sapper.

Ready to Strike (Across the oceans, in the dead of the night)

I don’t see much effect on the walls from my charges, but it’s still fun to parachute down and explode in the middle of a huge battle.

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Some minor blog tweaky news – Sylly hooked me up with a snazzy armory Plugin, so you should be able to see both Ellaria’s and Faulsey’s armory profiles on the right sidebar. Faulsey seems to be a bit broken atm, but Ellaria is working fine.

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* You didn’t think it ended at /Faulsey, did you? Oh no no. We have /Failsey (Self explanatory), /Flailsey (panic.), /Flatsey (being chased by a giant titan guy and falling to my flat pancakey death) and, most recently, /Wailsey (Waaaaaaaail!)

I’d been thinking about doing the jump to my own domain for a while now… I was lucky tonight to check Dreamhost on a whim and see they had a very, very good offer on, and I snapped it up.

The blog is mostly complete – RSS Feed set up, sidebars tweaked to perfection, old blog data transferred over and handy item/spell/achievement popups courtesy of WoWhead! All that remains is a new header, which I’ll sort soon.

As I mentioned on the old blog, if you linked to Master’s Call, please change your link to /Faulsey, and if you were subscribed, I’m afraid you’ll have to re-subscribe – but don’t worry, it’s easy! There’s a big button just to the right that’ll get ya sorted.

I freakin’ love my Shaman. I’m having so much fun on her right now. Much more fun than I am having on my Hunter, and I’m also performing better than I was as Hunter.

So it’s pretty much official that yes, Shaman (of the Enhancement flavour) is my main.

I’m not abandoning Faulsey, not at all. I’ve decided he’s still gonna be my “achievement whore” – he’s started the nice mount and pet collection, he’s going to continue it. He’ll get to do the fun stuff outside of raids, and when I’m tired of Shammy, I’ll bring him in to raid, too.

Now, I really, really need a new blog name. The thing is, I always expected Druid would be my second to 80, if I ever got a second 80… I surprised even myself with how much I’ve come to enjoy Shaman. I expected talking about alts to be a minor thing – this was meant to be a Hunter blog. Oops.

I still intend on talking about my Hunter a lot on here, and no doubt I’ll QQ about Hunter changes, but for end game purposes, Shammy is my focus.

Not my art! Klinderas’ art! From being totally 1337 and snapping a picture of his blog at 10k views!

Awesome, eh?

Say what you will about cats, you wouldn’t mess with Erethia now, would ya? She looks, to borrow a phrase, fuckawesome.

Thanks, Klin!

So I’ve been tagged for a haiku meme… I’m not good with haikus…

Let’s start with a non-class related one then, eh? (I have no idea how you actually pronounce meme… BA Chat consensus was “Meem” to rhyme with Theme.)

The Wow Blogging Memes

rampant they run, until there

is no one to tag.

See? Told you I’m bad at them.

Ok, so, a Hunter one…

Beast Master Hunter

Big strong and red – but watch out!

Rogues still make you dead.

How about Shaman?

Swing, swing those weapons!

Stack up those maelstroms, at five -

Zap! Lightning bolt go!

-shakes head- See what you’ve done, Anea and Sylly? Unleashed these horrible poems on the interwebs!

I refrain from tagging anyone individually, but if you think you can make a clever little Haiku, I demand you do so! -nodnod-

Edit: Now that I think about it, I tag Kazura, who hasn’t posted here in a while! -folds arms and taps foot impatiently- Where’s the WAR vs WoW post? I expect to see it and the Haiku posts on my desk within the week!

I kid about the deadline, but seriously… moar posts!

I had accumulated quite a few widgets on my side bar there, and it was such a pain to have to scroll down for-ev-er to see them all, and given my previous theme had a huge gap to the right anyway… I’ve switched over to a nice three column theme.

Bear with me whilst I get all the widgets in the correct places – trying to put related things together, so if you have any suggestions as to where to put things, let me know!

And the header will be sorted tomorrow – it’s late here, so WoW is dark, which is not conducive to taking nice header screenshots!

Edit: Header up. Probably not a final one – couldn’t split Faulsey and Ellaria’s halves up to my satisfaction, but it’ll do for now.

I’m going to deal with the big news first. As you surely known, BRK, possibly the biggest and most loved WoW blogger of all time, has announced that he’ll be taking a three month break from WoW and blogging… Hopefully, this will not be the end of BRK,  but I’ll admit that it seems likely.

BRK is the second huge blogger (after Phaelia) to have left the blogosphere in the past couple of months. Both of them have good reason for doing so, and it’s absolutely the right thing to do… but I can’t help but feel a sense of dread, wondering who will be next to go. Perhaps this is a sign that WoW has reached it’s plateau – players and bloggers are beginning to drop off a bit. I really hope this isn’t the case, and we’ve just had a double dose of Real Life recently.

Anyway, this is getting a bit bleak, so I’m going to stop here. There have been many other bloggers who have wished him farewell far better than I could hope to. I echo their sentiments, and I must say that without BRK, I wouldn’t be half the hunter I am today. (Pike provides the other half of my lack of total Huntardness. -nod-)

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On a happier note, I dinged level 80 on Ellaria tonight! My train of thought is kinda wrecked right now, so I’ll do my usual Ellaria milestone RP post at a later date.

Second level 80, way hey!

I then spent 520g on spells. Eugh. That’s what you get when you skip totems and shocks that aren’t of any use for leveling.

Thanks to that most regal of ladies, Jess, I am proud to receive the following award!

“This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.”

-proceeds to Faulsey- (It’s my verb, I can be a hypocrite and use it all I want! -raspberry-)

Unfortunately, I don’t get a little naked man made of gold to display proudly. Instead, I get a list of responsibilities that must be fulfilled!

The Rules are thus!

1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.
2. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

Ok, so I’ve done part one!

I’ll skip to part three first, for the sake of being logical.

Ten Honest things about me?

1. I do not, in fact, panic all that often. Really! Honest! Just for big things like my first raid or omgwtf being mentioned on TNB -nodnod-

2. I have a ridiculously thick Scottish accent, that combined with a rapid fire speech pattern means that I am totally incomprehensible to foreigners. -grin- Or so I am told!

3. I am going to do an engineering course at University, yet I am crap at Maths. Lolwut?

4. I have far, far too much time on my hands, due to the world going to shit on my gap year. Yay 8 hour work week leaving far too much time for WoW! -sigh-

5. If you call me “English”, I let the first offense slide. The second I kill you. I have nothing against the English, but I am no more English than a Texan is a New Yorker. (Is that even the right term? ) Right nation, wrong state, as it were.

6. I have this strange obsession with female fronted Power/Symphonic Metal bands. I do not know why, beyond the fact such bands are made of win.

7. I’m a complete sap. As much as possible, I try to avoid conflict. My Aunt once said “Never talk Religion or Politics with someone who doesn’t share your views”*, and this is something I’ve extended to everything that I feel could cause offense. It makes me somewhat boring, as I probably won’t argue with you unless you really piss me off.

8. I deliberately use Scots words to confuse people. It amuses me. Usually not in the blog, but certainly on Twitter and in BA chat.

9. I am running out of steam as far as honest things are concerned.

10. Oh, I live in one of the most beautiful areas in the world, in my opinion. Cities can kiss my ass. Loch Lomond <3

Well, that was harder than expected. Now, the fun part! Tagging!

1. Klinderas at Slow Wolf – Writes consistently amusing and informative articles. Two thumbs up!

2. Pike at Aspect of the Hare – C’mon! It’s Pike! One of the most newbie friendly blogs out there, I wouldn’t be half the hunter I am today without her blog.

3. Anea at Holy Discipline – Everyone’s favourite Calimari priestess! Always a pleasure to tweet to, and maintains an excellent blog.

4. Brajana at Mend Pet – (I’m on my blog, taggin’ urs agen! ) It would be froword to find anything wrong with her blog!

5. Syrana of Sideshow and Syrana – A great blog, with a cool ongoing RP story – if you haven’t already read it, I strongly suggest you do so now.

6. Cait of One Among Many – Kudos for taking the gargantuan effort required to put together the biggest blogroll in the history of ever!

7. Softi of A Little Space for me – Not technically a WoW blog, but the post that started all this wasn’t from a WoW blog, so I’m returning it to it’s original habitat! Softi writes a cool little RL blog that’s a nice change of pace when the rest of the blogs I read are WoW based!

*Unless they start it first, then you are free to unleash all hell if their views are offensive. -nod-

I haven’t had anything interesting to write about recently and since Klinderas, in his traditional dastardly way, tagged all of his readers to do a meme, I’m going to do it. This time, it’s what character names mean. I have quite a few characters, but I’m going to limit myself to four for this post.

Faulsey:

This one is mostly based on my surname, which is Faulds (BA Chatters: That’s why I was called Fauldsey when first we met.) When I was really young, at primary school, no one could pronounce it – they always skipped the D, so they said it as False. After a while I earned the nickname Falsey, which isn’t a particularly nice sounding name, so I stuck the U in there to make it more like my real name.

That was probably about 10 years ago I first came up with it, and it’s sort of stuck with me accross the internet for years. I’m usually the only Faulsey about, so it’s pretty unique, which I like.

Ellaria:

This is one of those “off the top of my head” ones. It just came to me when I got too attached to a Tiger I’d tamed to learn Dash (Oh, back in the day!), and when I made my Shammy, I thought it would be a good name to revive.

Turns out it’s not quite so unique – there are loads of Ellarias listed on the Armory!

Ilthiran:

Again, an off the top of my head name. This one wasn’t originally from WoW though – I had a character called Ilthiran years ago on a small MMO I played called Tibia. Like Faulsey, I’ve sort of carried this name with me through to WoW.

Ilthiran didn’t start with the name – he was previously called Nulinator, which was the name of my druid on Tibia. I really hated the name though, so I had it changed.

Numinator: (Spoilery if you are a fan of Ian Irvine. Skip if you are and haven’t read second book of Song of the Tears series.)

Needs moar business card, when I can get a good 1h sword and Kazume to pose.

This name is a bit of an “Oops…” one. I first saw it in one of the books in Ian Irvine’s “The Well of Echoes” series. (Yes, I like me some cheesy fantasy-ish books. It’s my one other geekish vice beyond video games.) At the time, very little information was given about the character, but I liked the sound of the name, and I picked it up as another name for game characters – first Tibia, then WoW.

Of course, last year, the second book in the follow up series “Song of the Tears” it’s revealed that the Numinator is a woman. I suppose you could argue that since my paladin is a male Blood Elf, he’s not far off a woman. -halo-

Spoilery stuff done.

So, there you have it – where my character names come from. Not the most exciting post, but I was in dire need of an update.

Though Klin has technically tagged everyone, I’m going to specifically tag Sarai of Spirit Bond, Brajana of Mend Pet and Harii of Ctrl-Alt-ELITE! to tell us all where their names came from!

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Oh, and as you may have noticed, Ilthiran now has a “business card” picture. I liked the idea enough that I’m still aiming to do one for all of my characters. Ilthiran’s and Ellariana’s are rough drafts, but they are there, at least!

My About and Characters pages have been updated slightly – About has more up to date info, and character bios have been added for Ilthiran and Ellariana, with Ellaria’s being brought up to date, too.