Alternate title: Shut the fuck up and keep your nose out of things you know very little about, you idiotic cunt.

I generally try to keep RL out of the blog, except in very YAY times, or very ARGH times.

Tonight was the latter.

I’m minding my own business at work in the Cereal aisle, stacking shelves, y’know, being bored. It just so happens the cereal aisle gives the best view in the shop of the shop doors. So, I’m minding my own business, when suddenly, a Ned lashes out at the Security Guard, as a tannoy announcement goes out for “All Security report to the front door”, with the Guard fighting to restrain this hooligan.

Now, I’m a skinny guy. I mean underweight skinny, and I have no idea what the fuck I’m meant to do in this situation, so all I can do is watch whilst other, much fitter (but the same age as me –shame-), colleagues arrive, and help the guard pin the struggling shop lifter to the ground. And before anyone says anything, yes, I felt absolutely awful that I wasn’t doing anything to help – but seriously, there is no way I’d have been able to hold this violently writhing guy down.

Of course, the shop has plenty of other customers at this point, all incredibly curious as to what’s happening, since there are staff forcibly restraining someone who’s shouting and bawling about “IT’S NOT SHOPLIFTING UNTIL YOU’VE LEFT THE SHOP” and other such idiotic nonsense that you’d expect from someone so thick to attempt shoplifting. The only reason you didn’t get out the shop with your ill gotten goods is because you were stopped by the guard. You had every intention of leaving, and none of giving up the products when confronted – instead, assaulting him.

Anyway, some guy with his two children takes an excessive amount of interest in what’s going on, telling myself, and the people holding this shoplifter down, that they are being far too heavy handed.

Excuse me?

You didn’t enter our fucking shop until after this guy had, and let me emphasise this, ASSAULTED A MEMBER OF STAFF. Staff were now physically restraining this idiot, so that he couldn’t LASH OUT AT THE STAFF, THE CUSTOMERS, OR, MOST IMPORTANTLY FOR YOU, YOUR FUCKING KIDS WHO COULD GET CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE SINCE YOU WERE BEING CARELESS AND BRINGING THEM WITH YOU RIGHT NEXT TO THE PERSON BEING RESTRAINED.

Do you know what would have been heavy handed? Beating the shoplifter up. That would be heavy handed. Restraining a violent customer? Not heavy handed.

But oh no, after you’ve purchased your stuff, you hung around outside until the police arrived, then interrupted them taking statements from witnesses to tell them you thought people were being heavy handed.

Seriously mate, you didn’t see fucking HALF of what happened – you had absolutely no business making any sort of statement about what happened. Fucking arsehole.

But hey, that’s perfectly normal in today’s society, eh? Sympathise with the felon. Idiot.

Moving away from that imbecile of a customer, I’d like to commend the bravery of the till staff, who continued to cheerfully serve customers throughout the whole ordeal. When I told one of the ladies I was impressed at her serving customers, “calm as you like”, she exclaimed;

Calm? We were shitting it. It was all we could do to say “Thank you” to people without adding “Oh, and mind you don’t step on the shoplifter on the way out.”

For my part, I just kept stacking shelves whilst watching in terrified fascination. Just as the police arrived, and the customer (who had been stealing alcohol in glass bottles) was being allowed to stand up, there was a shattering noise. I absolutely crapped it – I thought one of my colleagues had been bottled. Fortunately, it was just another customer had chose that exact time to drop a bottle.

Of course, despite the assault, the perpetrator will get away with nothing more than a light slap on the wrist, I’m sure, and be free to violently attack other people again within the next week or so. Obviously I’m not expecting much, but a few months imprisonment should certainly be in order. –crosses fingers-

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?

Due to my recent hiatus from WoW, I’d not really been keeping up with the changes due in 3.2, beyond the big stuff like omgdruidforms and omgmountchanges. I’ve only just taken a proper look at the details. I don’t want to just regurgitate patch notes, but I’m gonna give my opinion on some of the things that look to be going into the PTR. Certainly not an exhaustive list, even of Shaman changes, because there’s not much exciting to be said about combining Cure Poison and Cure Disease, for example.

Emblems:

• Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.

This has been divisive. From “amagad nubs can get teh gud gear!” to “Oh, this’ll make it so much easier for late comers to catch up,” there’s been a wide range of reactions to this change.

Personally, I think they might have went a bit far. Instead of bumping everything up to Conquest, I think they could instead bump everything up a level – Heroics and Naxx10 dropping Valor, Naxx25 and Uld10 dropping Conquest, etc. Allows people to progress through content quicker, but without allowing people to almost skip straight through tiers. But hey, whatever.

Also, Heroic daily is meant to give two of the new Emblems coming in 3.2. Now, Blizzard, if you’d kindly make a Totem available with those emblems, instead of insisting on making us rely on one damn drop, that would be greatly appreciated. If you can give axes to Rogues (see later) because previously that had made drop tables so unfair, then you can bloody well cut Relics out of drop tables and make them Emblem only, since Relic drops are ridiculously specific.

Mounts:

Basically:

• Travel Form, Ghost Wolf, Aspect of the Cheetah at 16.
• Ground mount at 20.
• Epic ground mount at 40.
• Flight at 60, and also boosted to 150% speed.
• Past that, same as previously.

Again, there was uproar. “Great, now we’re going to have people not knowing how to play their class.”

I’d like to quote Jezriyah’s response to that statement on twitter. “Since when was running a class skill?” Seriously people. As far as player skill is concerned, you will be doing exactly the same amount of quests and mob killing as before, it’s just easier to move between quests and mobs. This will have no effect on people learning to play a class – learning when to use CC is almost an exception, but you’ll still learn than from the inevitable adds you’ll still get.

Shaman Stuff:

• Mana Regeneration: All items that provide “X mana per five seconds” have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.

Ok, that’s not just for Shaman, but Restoration Shaman piles on the most MP5 out of any caster, so this is totally awesome for them. I really can’t see myself going OOM as a Resto when this change goes through.

• After much quiet contemplation, rogues now possess the ability to learn how to use one-handed axes.

Nothing directly to do with Shaman, but fucking what?! Putting aside the fact that Axes just don’t scream “Rogue!” to me, this is just taking the idea of making sure as many classes as possible can use items too far. There has to be some sort of distinction. I tell you this now, if I ever get to Yogg-Saron, and a Rogue ever rolls on this, there will be blood. Unless I’ve missed something, Shaman aren’t getting the ability to use Swords, so this is just totally unfair, in my opinion.

Of course, I’m just irritated with Ulduar 10 weapon itemisation anyway. Would you believe that axe is the only normal mode weapon that’s actually perfectly suited to an Enhancement Shaman, and we’d need two of them? I’m pretty sure Rogues have at least a couple of items they can get before the last boss, depending on spec. Urgh.

• A customizable totem bar will now be available for shaman allowing the storing of 4 different totems. These totems can be placed on the ground at once in one global cooldown for the combined mana cost of all 4 totems.

Yes yes yes yes YES YES YES.

It’s hardly revolutionary – none of this totem pole nonsense for transporting totems, but it makes dropping them at the start of fights, refreshing them, or moving them into much less of a chore. Finally!

By 80, we’ll have three abilities that will place a different set of totems per ability – Call of Fire, Water and Wind – giving us much faster, easier totem placement, and the ability to keep the quick placement flexible. For example, I can have Call of Fire set to drop Strength of Earth, Windfury, Mana Spring and Magma Totem. But, if there’s a DK in the group with Improved Icy Talons, I can use Call of Water to drop a Wrath of Air totem instead, whilst keeping the other totems the same! Very handy.

Also, for leveling Enhancement Shaman, this ability, combined with use of Water Shield and Improved Stormstrike should make placing totems more viable. I actually stopped dropping totems by around 60 – dropping even one generally wasn’t worth it, as they really sucked up mana.

• Shamanistic Rage: Cooldown is now 1 minute, down from 2 minutes. Successful melee attacks now have a chance to generate mana equal to 15% of the shaman’s attack power, down from 30%.

Hmm. They’ve given similar treatment to a Druids Innervate – halved both the effect and the cooldown. It’s just a case of training myself to use this earlier than I do now, which is when I’m running almost totally dry.

In PvE, this is used mainly for the mana regen aspect, but now that it’s on a much shorter cooldown, the damage reduction aspect could be taken advantage of, without fear of having wasted a cooldown.

Druid Forms:

I’m basically refusing to play my Druid until 3.2 hits. Firstly, knowing that I’m going to be able to travel faster in 3.2 has just put me off him, as the normal mount seems unbearably slow with that in mind. Second, I really, really want to level with the new forms.

Pretty darn snazzy, I think. Admittedly, I think the Tauren Bear Form is twice as awesome as the Night Elf form, and I’ll have a kind of silly pink hairdo as a Cat, but a vast improvement over what’s currently available. First port of call after the patch will be the barbers, get that unruly blue mop of my Druids turned white.

Edit: Oh, I didn’t notice this was my 200th post. Geez, I could have done something vaguely interesting if I’d realised. Oh well. Yay, 200 posts!

Low moan – Whu? … No.. go away. Head splitting… want… sleep… shouldn’t have… guh… too much Fiery Festival Brew…

Whu-wha? Oh no… Kiaara’s gonna kill me. –groan- Actually, could you, please… really… not feeling so good… I… I’m gonna crawl back into bed now…

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As you may have noticed, I don’t really do Holiday events. I’m really not someone who goes out of their way to get Achievements – especially not the holiday ones, which tend to be boring and grindy. But I really wanted the title from this one. Flame Warden. Isn’t that just perfect for a Shaman? I think so!

Thus, I dragged myself all around Azeroth and Outlands to both Honour and Desecrate bonfires. Kalimdor resulted in some frustration when I was ganked by no less than three Hordies when I was desecrating the Mulgore flame. Seriously, come on. Three on one! /golfclap. Of course, I was destroyed by far bigger groups than that when going for City Fires, but that’s understandable, what with invading the heart of their nation.

A few of us from Soul Haven also put Ahune in his place – four times. We were quite lucky with drops – apparently, on normal mode, the Enchantment and the Scythe are 3% drop rate, but we got both over the course of four fights. Yours truly snagged the Scythe!

Looks snazzy, eh? It’s also pretty strange in that it gives “Spell Critical Hit Rating” despite the merging of Physical and Spell Critical into one stat back in October! Also, I now actually have the tabard I’m depicted with in the avatar that Pike did for me.*

After splurging all my blossoms on the outfit, I spun round one of those poles, and earned my title!

Edit: There we go, added a much better “Flame Warden” picture, as promised!

Unfortunately, since this is the last event till Brewfest, I can see a lot of people sticking with Flame Warden and the Horde equivalent for quite some time, so I won’t be a unique snowflake. But I’m extremely pleased that I now have a title that I feel truly fits my character.

-

*If you’re following me on Twitter, you’ll have seen this quite a lot for the past couple weeks. Snazzy, eh?

Edit: Ohh, and I have to put this in. Yimi is awesome.

In part because I was listening to the music, and in part due to discussions with Samodean on twitter… I’m really missing FFXI. Brief hopes of giving it another shot were, well, shot when I found the only way to recover my password was via contacting their Info Centre, via Phone (from UK to US? Pass.) or Web Chat (lengthy wait, poor support – went through this recovering the account after it was hacked).

Besides, playing FFXI now would mean a break from WoW blogging, until I was bored of frustrated enough with the game to return to WoW. Not to mention I’m starting University in about three months – University Course + Part Time Job + ~Hour long commute each way + Hopeful socialising = very little time for MMOs in general!

But I’m feeling nostalgic, and with the announcement of FFXIV for release as early as next year, I feel like doing a post that blends fond memories with wishes for how they’ll do things in FFXIV.

Solo vs Group Play

In FFXI, beyond around level 15, to do any real leveling you needed to party, unless you were a Beastmaster, or skilled at a select few other classes. When I first started playing (Imported US version a few months before EU release, which was still unannounced – I wish I’d waited!) new players like myself were common – partying to level was easy and fun!

However, I was the FFXI equivalent of an Altoholic. You could play any class on one character, free to change whenever – and so I did! I leveled my main class, Ranger, at a truly glacial pace – thus, as I leveled, it became harder and harder to find people my level to party with.

That was just plain stupid. Whether that decision was a misguided idea that MMO = group play all the time, or the general preference of Japanese players, it simply wasn’t a great idea.

In FFXIV, I’d expect that you at least have the option of soloing – sure, parties could be (slightly – don’t want to be forced into doing so) more efficient for levelling, but it should be entirely possible to go from level 1 to the cap by yourself.

I was perfectly fine with major storyline Missions requiring parties – makes sense!

Class Playstyle – Physical DPS

Comparing FFXI with WoW, the melee classes and Ranger were dull, dull, dull. Most classes had two or three abilities (earned very slowly) that were on, by WoW standards, long cooldowns of a few minutes, that had pretty specific uses. Otherwise, your damage was auto attack and the occasional weapon skill.

As Ranger, a class which did a lot of damage per hit, battles were even worse! Wait for aggro… Fire a shot. Wait for aggro… Fire a shot. Repeat until you have 100%+TP and the mob has low enough health that Sidewinder (A very, very powerful weaponskill) would take them out in one shot, and use it – if it doesn’t kill it, aggro time! Occasionally use Barrage (4~5 shots at once) in the same situation for the same reason.

Thief was slightly better – it’s two main abilities, Sneak Attack (major damage when striking the opponent from behind) and Trick Attack (slight damage boost and “misdirect” effect if used with another player between them and the mob) were on a “mere” 1 minute cooldown, allowing for semi regular use, and could be combined with each other and weapon skills for huge damage at no threat cost.

In FFXIV, classes really should be given more abilities like in WoW – things you can use fairly often. Hell, even a couple of abilities on ten second cooldowns would be such a huge improvement.

Other Roles

Healing is much as it is in WoW, though with less class abilities to augment it, so slightly more boring.

Tanking was class dependent – Ninja (my preferred tanking class) was absolutely insane after 40 – constantly watching your shadows, whilst simultaneously keeping up debuffs and the “elemental wheel” on the target. Paladin was more “take a few hits, self heal, repeat” in playstyle.

Caster DPS was perhaps as varied as it is in WoW, as far as pure DPS spells are concerned – abilities to enhance those were lacking.

Then we get to the truly good stuff – classes I would love to see in FFXIV – perhaps not identical, but very similar.

Bard

Bard was an interesting support class. Bards could play songs that had effects from Refresh (Replenish, basically) to boosting attack power, to putting the foe to sleep. For parties, two songs could be active per person per bard – thus, the bard had to move around and make sure to give the mages and melee different songs.

Blue Mage

Blue Mage, introduced in the third expansion, was a fun melee/caster hybrid. Those familiar with the FF series will know that Blue Mages cast spells learned from their enemies. In order to learn a spell, the BLU had to see the opponent cast it, be within a few levels of said opponent and the spell level, and have a great deal of luck. Once you had the spells, you could set a few of them (limited number of spells at a time) – certain combinations would even bestow traits upon you, like Regen or Attack Bonus! BLU spells could be incredibly powerful, and combined with the traits they could bestow, allowed BLU to be one of the few solo-capable classes.

The sheer power of BLU, along with the fun of turning a creatures own abilities against it, makes me really want to see this in FFXIV.

Corsair

Corsair, also from the third expansion, was another support class, though with greater DPS capabilities than Bard. Like Bards, Corsairs used “Rolls” (one for each class, with an effect suiting the class) to boost their parties power – again, making sure to give the right rolls to Melee and Mages. It’s not as simple as that, though. When you rolled, aside from the totally awesome card animation, you’d get a number between one and six. Every 15 seconds for 45 after you rolled, you could “double up” – rolling again, to increase the effect of the roll.

Generally, the aim would be to get to 11, or as close as possible – rolling over 12 would result in a Bust effect, preventing a roll from being added for 5 minutes. Two busts would result in no rolls being able to be used! But it’s not as simple as that! Whilst generally 1 gave the weakest effect, and 11 gave the greatest, each roll had a lucky (high) or unlucky (low) number, that would be almost as good/bad as an 11 or 1, respectively. Thus, reaching the lucky number usually meant not needing to double up, whilst the unlucky number would definitely require a roll.

For me, the fun of this class was if you were sitting on an 8 – doubling up was a 50/50 chance of going bust. At least when I played it, most people would settle on 8’s. I’d roll on them – take the risk! It was somewhat thrilling – would you get a boosted effect, or would you go bust? – and it was a lot of fun, even if my parties hated it. –grin-

(Why yes, I really, really love the concept of Corsair – I would LOVE to see a class like this in FFXIV!)

Scholar

Scholar, one of the classes added in the fourth expansion, was another fun class. Like Red Mage, Scholars were proficient in both White and Black magic, though not to the degree that White and Black mages were. Unlike RDM, which was always operating at “maximum power” for those spells, Scholar worked best when specialising in a school – a specialisation they could change almost at will (cooldown allowing) with a pair of spells – Light Arts and Dark Arts. Specialising in one would incur a cast time and mana cost penalty on the other school – so the class really needed careful thought.

In addition, if they planned on staying in one art for a prolonged period of time, they could use “Stratagems” (charges on a relatively long cooldown) to gain access to further spells in their current school, or as one-time buffs to the next spell, with effects such as reducing mana cost. And that was just at low levels! (I never got beyond 13, thanks to the fateful hacking, the long recovery from which sent me to WoW)

At higher levels, Scholars could even create localised weather effects around themselves and party members, boosting the power of spells that matched the weather – I imagine with this, Black Mages would have been truly terrifying. For themselves, at higher levels, they can learn “Helix” spells – DoTs that do much more damage based on the weather.

(Again, I really liked Scholar – it was like Red Mage, my very first class, but with a greater focus on strategy and forward thinking. Want in FFXIV!)

Open, to a degree, to modding – or at the very least, greater variation in equipment!

You think Wrath had a general lack of armour models before Ulduar? Try FFXI. Things are recycled a lot – doublets at level

~10, ~25, ~30 and ~35 were all exactly the same – not even minor recolours!

However, in FFXI, if you had the tools, it was relatively easy to change armour and weapon skins, and in fact, even creature skins. I wasn’t much good at anything beyond recolours – though I spent weeks perfecting a remodelling of some high level BLM gear to look somewhat rangery, which was fairly complex – but others were capable of some really awesome changes.

(Me with a recoloured, armourised chocobo, plus slightly recoloured armour and weapons.)

If you’ve played the game and have a keen eye, you might spot a few in the above screenshots. The most prominent example I can point out is if you look at the very first Screenshot, then the Blue Mage one. In both, my character is wearing a “Lizard Jerkin.” The top picture is the standard model. The second is a reskin by someone else, made to actually look like lizard skin.

I’d love to see it being similarly easy to change item models in FFXIV, and even for it to be supported! It was a pretty shady practice in FFXI, to be honest. I can understand that the artists would not be pleased at this, though, in which case I’d like to see a general increase in quality, even of low level gear, for FFXIV. The example given, the Lizard Armour, shows just how easy it would be to make equipment look the part.

I can only hope…

Really, I hope that FFXIV turns out well. If it had even a couple of the classes, or ones pretty similar, that I enjoyed, and capability of solo leveling, I’d definitely pick it up. WoW is indeed an incredible MMO, and I thoroughly enjoy it, but I’ve a greater attachment to the Final Fantasy series than the Warcraft, even if in recent years I’ve had a “bleh JRPG” reaction to the series. Love stories and androgynous leads bug me!

I raided tonight!

Shocking, Iknorite?

As you may have noticed, I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus. Still sort of am – no other raids this week that I can make, but I did join an Ulduar raid tonight.

Bosses were relatively uneventful – took Razorscale down, wiped over and over on Ignis, gave up and exploded Kologarn, got some healing boots. Good stuff. Not particularly exciting, but not bad.

What was fun was the banter. The guild mage, Yimi, (also known as HMS Battleship Yimi –cower-) always has something interesting/disturbing to say, be it over vent or in chat, such as:

Randomly shouted over vent: “Stop humping my frog!”

Philosophical: “It’s not fair – I just can’t multitask, even though I have these boobs”!”

In addition, she helped spawn a new guild meme.

Explaining Kologarn to someone who’d never seen him before:

“He’ll stare at you very intently, and you have to run away.”

“Stare at you WITH LASERS.”

Lasers are now the guild answer to everything. “How did you die?” “Lasers.” “Wow, your DPS is so high!” “I have laser gloves.” Apparently, she likes how I say the word “laser”, too.

Yes, yes, silly guild is silly, but it was nice to raid with ‘em again.

(We were killed – with lasers.)

Go build a time machine to a couple years ago, and level a DPS class in FFXI if you want levelling to be a challenge. I’d normally say “Go play FFXI it’s ridiculously hard,” but apparently Level Sync has made levelling relatively easy.

Me, I’m going to revel in the fact I can actually play other classes beyond my Shaman, Hunter and Druid without getting so very frustrated at how slow levelling in “Old Azeroth” is. I’ve seen about 98% of the content there by now, when I level an alt, I want to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

This change will make that so much easier. Standard mount at 20? Hah! Fuck you, Ashenvale! Epic Ground at 40? Kiss my ass, Tanaris! Flying at 60, with a significant increase to flying speed? Suck it, Hellfire!

Assuming they make sure to drop Druid Flight Form to 58/60 (partly because I want to save the cash, but mostly because I don’t want to ride a Gryphon), patch 3.2 is going to be the best thing ever for my little druid – some fantastic new Feral Forms* and speedier flight will make things that much more awesome.

*On the subject of the new Feral Forms… I likes ‘em. No, they still don’t scale with gear – a level 10 White Bear will be identical to level 80 White Bear – but these are such a huge improvement over the old models. Bring on 3.2!

Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond – or doesn’t, for this picture. Warning – non WoW post ahead, but it does have some lovely pictures of the Scottish Highlands.

Don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it, due to it not being important for WoW blogging, but I live very close to Loch Lomond (the largest lake in “mainland” UK) – right next to the Leven, which runs from the Loch. It is, in my totally biased opinion, an absolutely beautiful area. Near the Loch is Ben Lomond – a modest, 3,200ft mountain, and the most southern of the Munros. Despite having lived in this area our entire lives, me and my friends had never climbed the Ben. So, yesterday, we did so.

The day started off badly – at 8AM, an hour before we were due to leave, it was gloomy and had just finished raining. It didn’t bode well for the rest of the day, but we had been meaning to do this for years, so we decided to give it a shot anyway. Arriving at the foot of the mountain at about 10AM (twisty, treacherous country roads are treacherously twisty!), the sun began to peek through the clouds.

(Official foot of the mountain.)

That was our goal. Sure, it’s not the highest of mountains – far from it! – but trust me, that is a lot further away than it seems. About 3,000ft higher than us, at this point. The first part of the climb, going up the “shoulder” of the mountain, was fairly easy – just long and tiring. However, the last stretch involved a steep zig-zag path up the side, passing by a terrifying sheer face. Didn’t help that the weather couldn’t make up it’s mind between sun and hail!

(Just behind him is the massive drop. Scary stuff. Also behind was this nice little valley.)

After a two hour and a half climb (apparently it can take up to four hours – we were going at a fair clip, though) we reached the summit, which offers some truly breathtaking views of Loch Lomond and other Lochs and Mountains at the start of the Highlands.

(Stone at the peak)

(I’m one of those people that hates them self in photos, so this is a rarity)

(Comparing these pictures with the views out across the land south of the Loch, you can really see a huge difference between the Scottish Highlands and Lowlands)

(I’ve never actually seen rain falling from a distance… It usually just rains on me, not elsewhere!)

(Of course, we weren’t the only people at the summit. Plenty of other climbers, too! Oh, and you can see our starting point in this one – that little bit jutting onto the Loch on the bottom right. You can see the path snaking up to the left of it, too.)

We spent about forty minutes at the top, taking pictures and having a well deserved break, before starting the descent. Surprisingly, we found this worse – going down steep paths feels more dangerous than going up them, and by the time we reached the bottom, our feet were absolutely killing us. We timed the whole thing well, too – by the time we were driving away, the hailstones were thundering down.

It was an extremely worthwhile trip though – the views were fantastic, it felt like a real achievement getting to the top, even if it was only 3,200ft, and it was nice to talk to the other climbers, especially the other two groups we kept passing when they took a break, and vice versa. Maybe we’ll do Ben Nevis someday… when we’re in much better shape, heh.

Oh, and obligatory WoW news… Uhm… I haven’t played beyond logging in and idling in an Inn since last weekend. Since the weather was nice most of this week, and it was my Birthday, and I was playing Resident Evil 5 in my game time, just not really felt like WoW recently. I’ll get back into it in a little while.

(Note: Most photos taken by friends. The low quality pictures of the stones at the foot and peak of the mountain are from my Phone, the rest are from their cameras)