Conversation From a Few Months Ago…
Me: “So guess what, I heard that in Wrath of the Lich King, I’ll be able to tame those big dinosaurs from Un’Goro.”
Boyfriend: “Really?”
Me: “Yep!”
Boyfriend: “…can you do me a favor?”
Me: “What?”
Boyfriend: “Tame one of those… and name it Wash.”
So it took some sleuthing, geekery and hackery, but the WotLK beta runs as smooth as butter under Linux with Wine.
Took me a good five or ten minutes to figure out how to use mounts.
Took me another five or ten minutes to distribute talent points (55 points in Beast Mastery is okay, right?)
Ten minutes of running around Shatt trying stuff out and using The Beast Within (Sade, was that you in front of Aldor bank? ;o I wasn’t sure so I was kind of afraid to ask. I’m shy like that.)
Ten minutes of setting up my hotkeys again, training Tux, and pewpewing a couple things in Terokkar. Steady Shot feels… off. I’m sure I will adapt to it with more time.
Then I went to Stormwind, found the harbor, stood on a boat with a group of people, all of us asking “is this the boat to Northrend?”… realized the boat wasn’t going anywhere and hopped on another boat…
It’s huge you guys. I’m so excited. Too bad I have to go to work now >.>
Oh, what are some addons that work in Beta? Somebody in trade mentioned that X-Perl did so I will be looking into that. I hadn’t realized until now how much I rely on stuff like Scrolling Combat Text and RatingsBuster.
If you are also in Beta and wish to say hello, you can find me on the Northrend realm, both Alliance and Horde; Tawyn on the former and Lunapike on the latter. ^_^
(Warning: Techie-ish Post mostly for the benefit of people who may reach this via Google. Read at your own risk!)
So the Wrath of the Lich King Beta installer worked fine on Wine at the beginning– no issues, nice smooth graphics on the pretty Installer screen… and then I had to read the EULA (where “read” is defined as “hit Page Down twenty times within a span of two seconds”) and hit “I Agree”. Pretty straightforward right?
Well no, because the Installer decided to keep the “I Agree” button grayed out and not let me click it. Bugger.
A quick Google search showed that this was indeed a Wine bug and could be fixed by one of two options; either updating Wine (which in all honesty is itself a bit of a chore simply because I am using an older version of my distro) or doing something crazy and hacky.
Obviously I chose the latter.
This is what I did:
1.) Installed “IEs4Linux”, which sticks a Wine-version of Internet Explorer on your computer. (Yes I installed IE. This is the type of sacrifice I make for this game.)
2.) An attempt to run the installer via IEs4Linux’s Wine told me I needed to have Burning Crusade installed. So, I went over to my Burning Crusade folder, opened the terminal inside the folder, and typed the following:
pikestaff@pintsize:~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/World of Warcraft$ WINEPREFIX=~/.ies4linux/ie6 wine wow.exe
Which created the registry files for the original WoW/BC, then I hopped over to the WotLK folder and…
pikestaff@pintsize:~/Desktop/WotLK-Beta-3.0.1-enUS$ WINEPREFIX=~/.ies4linux/ie6 wine Installer.exe
And I was able to start up the installer, click the “I Agree” button, and…
All set!
Of course, now comes the dreaded patch downloads, and my computer tends to download patches at a horrifically slow rate, so I’m off to bed while it does that. My characters haven’t copied over yet anyway (I am copying both Tawyn, my level 70 Alliance hunter, and Lunapike, my level 68 Horde hunter, to Northrend, the PvE beta server. When I’m all set up you fellow beta-people can say hello!) so, I’m okay with waiting.
I will continue to bring you updates of a Linuxy nature and a huntery nature as they come. I will also continue to bring non-Beta news to those of you who would like to keep WotLK a surprise– in all honesty I don’t plan on spending as much time in Beta as a lot of other people are cause I’d sorta like to be mostly surprised too. I just gotta get in on the new hunteryness for a bit. Anyways, I think I might mark my Beta posts with [WotLK] or [Beta] or something in the title as a spoiler alert.
I figure, lotsa bloggers are showing you the nuts and bolts of Beta, I will give you vintage Pike thoughts on Beta =3
Wrath of the Lich King™ Beta Test
You have been selected to participate in the beta test of World of Warcraft®: Wrath of the Lich King™. Welcome!
In the beta test you’ll get an opportunity to test the first zones of the new Northrend continent, and the new levels above 70. We look forward to your feedback on the overall experience, including quests, monsters, zones, aesthetics, and more. We would also appreciate reports on any bugs you may encounter. These can be logged using the /bug command explained below.
I am off to work now, which is actually fine because the downloader tells me there are at least six hours remaining. I come to you all with a question, though. I know many of you frequent my site in part because I am one of the hunter blogs out there that is still dealing primarily with the non-WotLK content. I sort of don’t want to change that. Plus, so many other bloggers out there are already covering the Beta.
But is there anything in particular that you would like me to cover or not cover, aside from “How well this all runs in Linux with Wine” which is probably the first thing I will be reporting?
And which is “so far so good” by the way:
I honestly mostly just want to mess around and get some ideas of new huntering for myself I think– if current content is what you all want, then that is what you will get, because I still love the current stuff. And I don’t want to spoil WotLK too much for myself!
The Tauren Hunter was merrily bounding into the Silverwing base in Warsong Gulch; she had been enjoying these player-verses-player excursions lately and was rather fond of her 25,000 honor that she had stockpiled for when she would hit 70 in a couple more levels and would need a nice set of war gear to go with her set of standard adventuring gear. She made it to the roof of the enemy building when suddenly she was jumped upon! By a very persistent gnome rogue.
Now, the tauren knew that many of her fellow hunters dislike the rogue because they are very good at taking away that which hunters prize most: space. However, she has an odd knack for managing to catch rogues before they catch her, and even when they do catch her first she has a knack for wriggling her way out of their grasp, so at first she wasn’t afraid. She directed her trusty red lynx to Intimidate the rogue, during which time she laid down an Immolation Trap and got a little bit of range and then hit him with a Serpent Sting.
He was soon on top of her again though, and sadly his first initial strikes had taken a critical toll so she was down on her luck right from the start. Still, they tussled for a bit, before the hunter’s health ran low and she collapsed to the ground.
She did not release her spirit though, for the rogue was himself weak, and he was still burning from the Immolation Trap and still feeling the ache of the Serpent Sting…
He saw her watching him, so he targeted her and /laughed.
Then, smugly, he started to bandage himself.
Serpent Sting removed the bandage effect.
The gnome’s eyes widened. They say in this world of pixels and polygons, facial expressions cannot change. I swear to the Earthmother, though, that his eyes widened as he came to a sudden realization.
The last tick of the Serpent Sting went off and he fell to the floor.
They lay there for a few seconds, simply targeting each other. Then, when the tauren hunter was sure her message had clearly been sent across, she calmly released to the graveyard.
The moral of the story, oh best beloved…
…is do not /laugh at a hunter, for they have a disturbing tendency to have the last /laugh. Or the last /giggle, anyways.
Levels 41-60
That’s right, we’re gettin’ you to level 60 today. Mostly because you simply do not learn a whole lot of abilities in your 40s and 50s. Here’s what your trainer is going to give you:
Aspect of the Wild at level 46. This will give you, your pet, and your group a whole lotta nature resistance. If you group a lot, you will sometimes be asked to use it in various PvE situations; for example, the end boss of Slave Pens, or Hydross the Unstable in Serpentshrine Cavern (yeah that’s a long ways off, but see, some of your most random abilities go a long way!) I also use it when solo’ing sometimes if there’s a big poison on me or my pet, or are otherwise fighting something that does lots of nature damage. Other than that, you won’t be using it all that much. I have heard it said that it lessens the effects of hunter stings and rogue poisons in PvP but I haven’t tried this and honesty I think there are probably better aspects you could be using. (Hawk/Monkey/Viper, depending on your situation.)
Track Dragonkin at level 50. This is your last tracking spell, grats on getting it! If you are Alliance, go into Stormwind Keep and pop Track Dragonkin. No wonder Lady Prestor is so grumpy all the time eh?
And finally, Tranquilizing Shot at level 60. This shot is going to get some love in Wrath of the Lich King but until then it is mostly going to be one of your Things You Never Use. In its present incarnation, it removes frenzy effects from certain mobs and those mobs are in a limited number. I believe I’ve used it twice total, once on a boss in Molten Core and once, just for kicks, on one of those undead horses in Karazhan:
Ventrilo Reinactment:
Me: “Hey [tank].”
Tank: “What?”
Me: “I just used Tranquilizing Shot.”
Tank: “…you did what?”
Now right around in here is also when you will probably be learning your top-tier talent in your chosen talent tree. Let’s talk about ’em a little. The Beast Within is my personal favorite because it’s exciting and also sort of an “I win” button in a lot of situations. It gets you out of CC and makes you un-CCable for 18 seconds, it lessens the mana cost of all your abilities, and increases your damage output.
In PvE use it when you need to kill something fast, if you want your pet to nab more threat but your Intimidation is on cooldown– and in instances/raids I use it basically anytime it’s up so long as the following conditions are met: the tank has a bunch of aggro, and it’s not going to be wasted (using The Beast Within when the mob is going to die in three seconds, for example, is not ideal.)
In PvP use it when you’re heavily CC’d, fighting a warlock, need to kill something fast, or when you want to annoy the living heck outta rogues/warriors. Typical Line Running Through Pike’s Head In That Last Situation: “Oh you think you can slow me huh? Oh I THINK NOT! I’ma kite you I’ma kite you I’ma kiiiiite you~”
Marksman hunters get Silencing Shot. Now this is going to turn into a “real interrupt” in Wrath of the Lich King, until then it’s still a lot of fun in my humble opinion. Some of my earliest Alterac Valley jaunts were spent as Marksman and those were the days, Silencing Shotting priests to my little huntery heart’s content. Also super useful for pulling casters when trapping them in PvE. Overall Silencing Shot is probably one of my favorite things from the Marksman tree.
Survival gets Readiness. The “usefulness” of this ability often seems to be debated, but while I haven’t ever used it myself it seems to me to me to be something that could really save your rear sometimes. Trap resist and your new trap is still on cooldown? Bam, readiness, new trap. Or double-Deterrence “tanking” in an emergency. Stuff like that. Still, a lot of people opt to skip this one in favor of other talents.
Well, that’ll do ya ’til 60. Your basic Shot Rotation and playstyle is still going to be basically the same– your world hasn’t changed quite yet for another couple of levels.
Things to do between levels 40 and 60:
“The Hunter’s Charm”: a questline that starts at any hunter trainer while you are in your 50s, this will take you to Azshara and eventually into Sunken Temple and culminates in a handy hunter trinket of your choice.
Alterac Valley: All my hunters get Ice Barbed Spear, that’s just how it goes. Some people opt to get the bow instead; it’s hard-hitting but in all honesty the stats are not as good and it is slooooow as all heck, which means if you are Beast Master you will eventually run into some issues down the road. That’s far down the road though, by which time you will probably have a new bow. So pick what you want, especially because sometimes you will get lucky and find something with similar stats to my beloved Spear on the Auction House. Oh, and you get one of these rewards by winning an Alterac Valley. Pick up the quest at your faction’s AV entrance at level 51.
My Ice Barbed Spear is still in the bank. I loved it dearly. I’m tellin’ ya though: come Wrath of the Lich King, our love will be reignited.
Well, that’ll do it for this time. Grats on getting your hunter to level 60! And thanks for sticking with me on this project! For those who want to catch up, here’s where we’re at currently:
So You Want to Play a Hunter?
Part One: Introduction & The Birth of a Hunter
Part Two: Just Starting Out & Levels 1-5
Part Three: Levels 6-10 and Jump Shot Kiting
Part Four: Talent Points & Pets
Part Five: Life With a Pet
Part Six: Levels 12-20
Part Seven: Intro to Freezing Trap
Part Eight: Levels 21-30
Part Nine: Levels 31-40
Part Ten: Levels 41-60 [Current]
See you next time! /salute
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Those Rockapella guys were pretty cool. That was a pretty good show, really. I used to watch it every day alongside “Ghostwriter” which always had its biggest cliffhangers on Friday so I’d quietly go insane over the weekend. Poor lil’ Pike.
Anyways!
I generally try to keep this blog WoW (and specifically, hunter) related but I have been tagged by one Lassirra to participate in a “Where Were You When…” meme. So without further ado:
September 11 Attacks
September 11, 2001: I was getting a ride to school (I was a senior in high school at the time) from some acquaintances and they were flipping through radio stations. I heard for the space of about two seconds something about airplanes crashing into a tower, which startled me, but they kept flipping through those stations and I soon forgot about it.
Then I walked into school and knew something was different… kids were huddled around in small groups talking in hushed tones. I caught up to my group of friends and was quickly told the news: airplanes had crashed into both the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. On top of that there were about a million other rumors going around: there was a car bomb on Capitol Hill, there was a bomb on the Statue of Liberty, etc.
I really can’t remember my reaction other than the fact that I felt really bad when one of my most cheerful friends came up to us all bright-eyed and asked what was up. I felt bad because we had to be the ones to tell him that the world had turned upside down.
At 8:28 AM I went into A.P. Art, my first period class– CNN was on TV– and the very moment I sat into my chair the second tower collapsed, live. That was… surreal.
That entire day we did very little in each of my classes; in every single class we either watched CNN or had discussions about what was going on. Well– almost every class. Spanish class we did vocab.
One year to the date after it happened I wrote up a little document for myself so as not to forget some of the details of the previous year. Here’s an excerpt:
At first, when no one really knew what was going on, people were clamoring to compare it to something. Oklahoma City, they said. Then they knew it was bigger than that, much, much bigger. So they changed it. It was like Pearl Harbor.
Then they said it was even worse than Pearl Harbor, for several reasons.
At about this same time, people were wondering what to call it. The news channels on TV said, simply, “AMERICA ATTACKED” in big, bold, defiant letters. Sometimes they were called “The Terrorist Attacks on Tuesday,” or “The Terrorist Attacks on September the Eleventh.”
But it really wasn’t called anything. So people drew on Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor was the day that would live in infamy. So this became “The Other Day that would live in Infamy.”
President Bush gave a speech that night. His main quote was “We will draw no distinction between those who carried out the attacks and those who harbor them.” It was a strong quote, but it offered no material to name “it,” as Roosevelt’s speech had done with Pearl Harbor.
A week went by and life was not normal. It would never return to normal, of course. So it became “The Week that would live in Infamy.”
Then, it was “The Month that would live in Infamy.”
Then, it was “The Year that would live in Infamy.”
And, finally, it wasn’t named after this quote from Pearl Harbor. It wasn’t named “World Trade Center” or “Pentagon.” It was given two names.
September 11; and, 9/11.
It wasn’t “nine-one-one” like everyone thought it would be at first. No. Nine-one-one is still associated with who you call if there is a fire in the building. This was different. This was “nine-eleven.”
From that point on, no one could get through the date of “11” without bringing it up. The months ending in “-ember” were worst. November 11. December 11. It sent eerily familiar chills up peoples’ backs; sent an ugly jolt of memories back to some obscure fragment of the brain…
Surreal to read that. I’m glad I chose to write it up. Solemn times, indeed.
Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster
January 28, 1986: I was two years old. I seem to have this vague, vague memory of sitting on the living room floor watching something about a space shuttle on TV and wondering when I could watch Sesame Street instead, but I dunno, maybe that’s a false memory my mind conjured up.
Hurricane Katrina
August 29, 2005: I don’t really remember what exactly I was doing when I first heard about this, but I do remember the aftermath; reading the newspaper in shock in the breakroom at Target (where I worked at the time). Oh wait, LiveJournal to the rescue:
Sep. 1st, 2005 at 11:00 PM
This whole Hurricane Katrina thing is just plain surreal. A major city wiped out (or very nearly so), pure chaos, no food or water, people getting raped and/or shot at, corpses in the streets…
You think “Wait, this is America. This type of thing doesn’t happen in America, except in movies.”
But look, apparently, it does happen in America. It’s happening right now, and it could’ve happened to any city or town in the country, or in the world for that matter. If not by a hurricane, than by something else.
Yellowstone National Park is really just one giant volcano, if it were to blow right now I’d never know because I’d be dead so quick.
Surreal.
That last word really defines it all for me I think; it was just this this big feeling of “unrealness”.
Reagan Assassination Attempt
March 30, 1981: Erm… I wasn’t born yet.
John Lennon’s Death
December 8, 1980: See above answer.
Kurt Cobain’s Death
April 5, 1994: This would’ve made me about ten years old I think. In all honesty I had no idea who the guy was at the time and thus no idea this had happened. You gotta understand that I was the oldest child in my family so I had no older siblings who were going through a grunge rock phase, and my parents were both of the Early-Metallica generation and from what I can gather thought Nirvana was some sort of imposter anyway, so I didn’t hear anything from them on the matter.
John F. Kennedy’s Assassination
November 22, 1963: Obviously I wasn’t around for this, heck, I don’t think my parents even remember this! I feel like a young’un.
Other Stuff That Wasn’t On the Meme But I Remember Anyway:
Princess Diana’s Death: I was in seventh grade. This was a big deal; my parents, siblings and I were watching the news until us kids had to go to bed and then my parents remained up long into the night.
OJ Simpson Trial: I was in sixth grade. I knew enough of what was going on to form my own coherent opinion that OJ was guilty as charged, only to have them come on the intercom at school to say that he’d been found innocent. Good times…
The Unabomber: Another thing that happened in sixth grade. See, this happened in Montana, which
happens to be where I live (I ride a buffalo to work. …ya know how many people believe me when I say that?) so this was a huge thing. News cameras all over the place.
Berlin Wall Coming Down: I was in kindergarten and the teacher was pointing out East and West Germany on a globe and telling us that they were now one big Germany and it was really historical. I didn’t really understand what was going on but took her word for it. And then went to recess.
Gore/Bush Election and the Subsequent Infamous “Recounts”: Even though I wasn’t old enough to vote yet this was a pretty big deal at the time. Big enough that the next year we got all new history textbooks: “New! Includes the Gore/Bush Election!” and then September 11 happened a few weeks later. Ironic. This election also resulted in me deciding I didn’t like the Electoral College, an issue which I have since waffled on (hey, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about “issues”! So when I actually do think about one it’s a big deal! ;P)
World of Warcraft Release Date: “Huh, so my brother has this new game. He’s a big cow named Dairygold. Oh look, he died, and now he’s… a ghost? Huh. Weird. *goes back to Starcraft/Final Fantasy*” (Perhaps ironically enough, he does in fact still play a cow.)
Well, there you have it. Where Pike was and what she was doing when history was being made. I hope you enjoyed the interlude, I enjoyed writing it up and it was interesting to look back on some of the stuff that has happened. Makes me glad I’ve always been a writer and journalist, a lot of this is stuff I don’t want to forget.
Have a great week and I’ll see you next time when we get back down to hunter-business!
Ahem.
“It never gets old, does it?”
“Nope.”
“Kinda makes you want to…”
“Roll another hunter?”
“…well, that’s not where I was going, but…”
I love each of my pets
And I love Steady Shot
I love The Beast Within
I love more stable slots
I love my hunters
I think I’m quite obsessed
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda
I love to Feign Death
And Aspect of the Hawk
I love to bother rogues
I love when Frenzy procs
I love my hunters
And all their epicness
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda
I love my Choco-Bow
I love my Agi ‘chants
I love crit rating
And non-revealing pants
I love my hunters
I play them all day long
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda
I love to chain trap
And I love kiting things
I love the jump-shot
I even love my stings
I love my hunters
And all they stuff they do
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda
I love to Misdirect
And I love Kill Command
I love to Aimed Shot priests
And weave my shots by hand
I love my hunters
I really, really do
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda
Boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda, boom de yadda…
I’ve lately been playing my hordie hunter Lunapike quite a bit. She resides on an RP-PvP server, as opposed to Tawyn who is on a regular RP server, so seeing the game from the PvP-server side of things has been a bit of an adventure. I’ve been ganked by the obligatory level ??s who have nothing better to do, and I’ve reciprocated by raiding Southshore. I’ve learned to be wary upon seeing corpses of mobs laying around– might be the other faction, after all– and I’ve learned to rely oh so heavily on Track Humanoids. (Hunters have it easy here, I think.)
I have had to put up with not being able to go to Halaa to buy my arrows because the other faction has it, and I’ve rejoiced when we’ve put together a raid to take it back. (By contrast, on Silver Hand, Alliance controls Halaa about 99% of the time… so I never had to worry about it. Though in all honesty, VeCo Horde has it a bit better than VeCo Alliance in World PvP I think. Us hordies probably have it about 75% of the time when I’ve been there.)
I read once on the WoW website that, lore and RP-wise, Blizzard considers PvE and PvP servers to sort of be differing dimensions of the same point in history: PvE servers are where Horde and Alliance have established an uneasy truce, and PvP servers are where they are still actively at war. This, I have found, brings some depth to roleplay (nothing like getting demolished by a night elf druid after you have just killed a beast that is important to night elf druid lore) and offers a fun twist on a world that you have perhaps already explored PvE-wise… and makes for some interesting stories.
This particular story takes place in Blade’s Edge Mountains. I was doing a semi-long questline that involved putting on a gas mask, talking to a projection, killing some demons, gathering keys, and powering up some big obelisks. As I headed off to do the first step, an Alliance Shadow Priest, only one level lower than me, showed up at pretty much the same time.
She saw me and hesitated for a bit, trying to size up whether or not I would attack her, I imagine. I tend not to attack people first, though, unless they are being annoying in some way, so I went right past her and started attacking the mobs I needed. She did too. We stayed far clear of each other, each of us keeping a wary eye on the other as we turned in our first step in the quest chain.
Off we went to do the second step. About partway through, I noticed that one of my mobs had some DoTs on it… DoTs that weren’t mine. Shadow Priest had opted to make the first move and establish herself as “friendly”. So I reciprocated a few minutes later when she seemed to bite off more than she could chew and I helped whack the extra mobs off of her.
Still, we remained silent to each other. I have seen it happen in the past; people who do something to assert themselves as “friendly” and then conveniently change their mind shortly later. Despite that, I was getting good vibes from her, so we continued questing.
Then came the final part of the chain, where you used keys to activate five obelisks. Only one person can do this at a time and Shadow Priest got there first. One by one she activated them and I stood by and watched, waiting for my turn.
And what did activating those obelisks do? Summon a level 68 elite.
Shadow Priest was level 66. And alone. Well, alone except for…
She turned and saw that I was standing there watching. I like to think that we somehow communicated something there. Some sort of nonverbal and nonemote “nod”. She charged in.
After she got in the first hit I sent in my pet and away the two of us went at the thing. It was a long and hard fight and by the end of it, Shadow Priest was literally down to 3% health, but we did it.
She turned to me and /bowed, our first real communication, and I /bowed back. Then she sat to eat and drink while I went off to activate the obelisks myself. And on cue, the level 68 elite showed up.
I sent in my pet and started my attack. Shadow Priest was right there, tossing DoTs on it after I’d tagged it. This particular elite hits hard and my Mend Pet really wasn’t cutting it, but with aggro constantly bouncing back and forth between my pet and Shadow Priest, we somehow managed to do it. Like last time, it had been a close one, and my pet did die in the final few seconds. But, we’d done it.
Afterwards we /cheered at each other. Then she Mind Controlled me and gave me Power Word: Fortitude.
We went on our separate ways, having completed the quest.
Flash forward about an hour later and I was doing a different quest in a different part of the zone. Somehow I’d wound up with more mobs than I could take on top of me. I ran into a tunnel hoping to shake them off, only to unwittingly run into more. I was bracing myself for the final blows when suddenly the mobs were all feared. Feared?
I turned around. Shadow Priest to the rescue! It took a while but we managed to take down all the mobs. I /cheered at her again and she Mind Controlled me again and gave me Fort again before we parted ways.
Later I Armory’d her and found out that she has over twice as many honor kills as I do, and I have a lot– clearly she’s no “care bear”. Clearly she likes her PvP, as do I. But while a wise man once said “It’s easy to forget what a sin is in the middle of a battlefield”, you also never know what sorts of crazy alliances with kindred spirits you’ll make.
And I salute ya for that, Syphrilia of VeCo. /salute