In order to become an elder you just need to do the achievements. Is it that simple? No way if you are a lvl 74 character and have only 1 week to get to 80 so you can enter Gundrak heroic. So here is what you need to do to achieve this:

• visit all the elders you can (solo, prowling, stealth, invisible) - you will hit a problem with Upgarde Pinnacle and Gundrak
• a bunch of friends willing to go the extra mile to help you out ( this includes babysitting your char for the more difficult quests and taking you in the dungeons)
• lots of time and coffee

So you will need to get to lvl 80 in 1 week. Start visiting the normal elders (not dungeons) and the ones from the dungeons where you can get without having to fight your way in. This should not take more than 1 day. In the rest 6 days you have left you will need to do 1 level per day so better start questing.

The last 4 levels will need to be done in about 3 days. Here is where the friends come into play. You will need at least 1 friend (lvl 80 offcourse) to help you with the quests marked as Group because they do give an insane amount of experience for the time it takes to complete it (like killing an 80 elite takes 1 minute and get a bucket of xp and a quest to collect some stuff takes longer and gives a drop of xp). Another thing to do are daily quests that also give some very nice xp.

So here you are on the last day of the event at 22:00 hours and still 50% of level 79. You say to yourself “I’m not going to make it but I must try or the last days when I played like a mad man will mean nothing”. So you get your mount ready and go get some more quests. At 23:30 you still need about 500k xp but you sudden realize that you have about 10 quests not turned in. A glimpse of hope starts to be seen. Go and turn then in….. 300k still needed. Your friends are about finished with their raid so you ask one of them to help with some group quests. Even if it is late he accepts.

You start dragging your friends all over the map for those hard quests, you manage to get lost on the map and to die like a fool a couple of times but you’re nearly there: 1K left.

Now comes the “fun” part: it’s 1:30, everybody is tired and can’t keep their eyes open but they stick with you and help you do 2 instances to get to the elders. During one instance you finally ding making you a very happy person and in the end you do get the tile 2 hours from the event closure.

I would like to thank Patricus, Jensomething, Belgua, Neoublie, Rijje and all the others for helping me get older and elderly.

PS: Sorry about the ninja looting for that herb. Could not think that clear after 3 days staight of WoW.

PS2: Got a whole bunch of items to sell after this (bank is full, bags are full… not even a little space for some honey tea)

Nothing much new on the baby druid front, mainly because I’ve been raiding almost non stop with the warrior (guild rebuilding is going well, but we still don’t have enough players to feel comfortable) and I’ve found a leveling buddy for the mage so I’m keeping busy.

In the meantime (in the small hours of the night, after the raids), Cinn managed to hit level 17 and, lo and behold, the LFG interface is open to me!

The one and only attempt was met with failure: we decided to go to Deadmines (or Minas de la Muerte), but only one member was in Westfall. I was in Exodar, another member was around Kalimdor… and the two other were messing around in Darkshire. After asking for 10 minutes if someone would come help summon, the guy in Westfall left. After another 10 minutes of the two idiots still messing around (and dying) in Darkshire, I decided it was too late to play with such people and went to sleep.

Better luck next time, I hope. In the mean time, I’ve been taking noob healer lessons and I hope we don’t wipe too much when I manage to get a group.

Judging by the people I still kept finding even in level 40 PUGs with the mage, it will probably be a painful experience.

Ok, so it’s not actually about getting a guild. I managed that at level 10 by signing a random guy’s charter. He was very impressed that I signed it for free, apparently, but hey, I made my first gold faster than the level 3s begging in Stormwind so I didn’t need the money anyway.

My relationship with my new guild is… interesting. The guild master is a nice guy who plays a level 65ish warlock, who knows my Spanish (especially WoW-related) is limited and helps me out. He even offered to send me gold 30 minutes after meeting and got me some bags the day after. In turn, I’m a small deity with my level 74 and 80 characters, since all the other guildies only have low-level toons.

All would be fine - without the communication problem. Someone asks about a quest. I know where he’s supposed to go, but all I know so far are the name of the classes, the fact that Stormwind is Vientormenta and… that’s about it. And when you’re dealing with people who don’t even have coords, it can get tough.

But so far it’s still fun. My little druid is level 14 and just learned Cure Poison, and in the process I finally got to do the sickly deer quest! I’ve been wanting to do it ever since I was a baby draenei running around Darkshore and I was very sad it was druid-only.

How can you not feel sorry for the poor deer?

So, I made a new character.

People make them all the time, so what’s so special? Well, I was tired of some recent guild drama, and since a friend kept talking about the French server she joined, I figured I’d get two birds with one stone: get away from the stress and improve my language skills.

Thus Cinn was born, on the Spanish Exodar server.

She’s level 11 and so far I’ve proven two things to myself.
1. I can get by even without money help from my main/guildies. I made 2 gold in about 8 hours played and got some decent bags already (the thing I miss most of all is the 16-slot bags all my alts are equipped with from level 1…)

2. My Spanish is good enough to talk to people. My first successful “conversation” was actually an argument, but I can understand most of what’s said to me and can reply in a coherent way.

However, the major problem is… also the language. WoW has a lot of internal slang, and my Spanish classes didn’t include the proper way to call instances or how professions are translated. There’s no ‘LF’ since that’s an English abbreviation, I’m still trying to figure out what instance Murallas is, hell, I can’t even remember what Stormwind is called! (Ok, I do, it’s Vientormenta.)

And the main issue isn’t understanding. If I click a linked item I see the English name and most things are easy to figure out through translation, but it’s difficult to communicate. How do I tell a player I made money on the AH since I have no idea how to say “auction house” in Spanish?

But so far I’ve been ok. I’ve memorized the most important things and, being level 11, there’s not much interacting to do. I managed to land myself in a guild after I signed their charter, and the guild master is a nice guy who’s patient with my Spanish. Seeing as I know more about guild than he does, I’m useful to him too, so it’s a fair trade.

I’m downloading the Spanish language files as I type and I’ll give it a try, but I think having everything in Spanish will be too confusing.

I was reading WoW Insider one morning and ran into an interesting Breakfast Topic: Should the girlfriend play WoW?

295 comments later, it was clear people didn’t agree on one answer (of course). And that no one seemed to have the same experience as I did. Rather than adding comment 296 which no one would read, I figured I’d make a post out of it.

Why?

The opinions most prevalent through the comments were:
1. (Men) No, you’ll have to hold her hand and give her money all the time;
2. (Men) No, you need your own space;
3. (Women) Yes, I play and I give my boyfriend money;
4. (Men) Yes, she’ll understand you better, but have her create a char on another server;
5. (All) Yes, playing with your partner is fun!

I won’t rant and rave about the misconception that girl = won’t be able to play = a burden, because it seemed like the people who said this hadn’t actually tried to play with the girlfriend.

People I know

So far, all the girls I know who play with their boyfriends/husbands do perfectly well on their own. Ok, it might be because I’m in a raiding guild, so I only get to meet those girlfriends who have proved they can play, but they are girls and they do play with their partners, so they meet the definition. And they range from college students to mothers who go AFK during raids because the baby is crying to mothers who also have children in the guild, so it’s a pretty diverse group.

My story

I started playing because my boyfriend (then just friend) bought me the game and bugged me to install it. Read the rest of this entry »

Grizzly Hills is a wonderful area in Northrend and it can be quite inspiring for someone like me who likes to take things further and imagine even more.

Here is my first machinima, based on a Romanian song named “Amintire cu Haiduci” (Outlaw Memory) by Vali Sterian. Even though the song it’s in Romanian, I know this web site has many Romanian viewers so this post is mostly aimed at them :)

Amintire cu Haiduci in Grizzly Hills from Sirg on Vimeo.

For the other readers, in Romanian history, centuries ago, there were bands of highwaymen or outlaws (hajduks), somewhat like Robin Hood, who hid in the forests and mountains to strike upon the rich, usually the occupying Turks or invading Tatars, plunder their wagons and wealth to give it to the poor. Thus we have many legends and songs about famous outlaws, some which existed and others who are just fantasy. This machinima is about them, a memory of a distant past.

later edit - I have problems embeding the movie in the page, it seems the editor doesn’t allow that kind of code, so you’ll have to click the link :/

This night at about 2 am I completed this map. This is by far my favorite map from Northrend. I collected so many herbs that I can`t even count, the quests are very funny and the scenery is beautiful.

Obviously you`ll find many beats here along with the great hunter Hemet Nesingwary. For the first time ever he`ll actually do some hunting, instead of sitting in his camp bossing you around.

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Done with Grizzly Hills too. Pretty easy map with a smaller number of quests to complete for the Achievement “Fo’ Grizzle my Shizzle” (Snoop Dogg anyone?), only 85. In case anyone is wondering, the blue question marked quests (PvP) can be skipped and you still have about 90-92 quests to do. I didn`t do the PvP quests, I`ll probably complete them at 80 for more gold.

Grizzly Hills is a nice forest filled with wildlife, giants, dwarves, the vrykul people and trolls. I didn`t find anything special on this map but I did like the Silverbrook story (they hide a dark secret) and the daily quest that involves burning mindless troll zombies at Drak’Tharon.

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First quest hub: Wintergarde Keep. I was thinking to myself “Oh crap undeads again”. I don`t want to give any spoilers but from the Keep you`ll start one of the best chains in World of Warcraft which ends with the achievement “Veteran of the Dragonblight”. At a certain point you`ll see the best cinematic ever, it gave me goosebumps. Lore addicts must not miss this chain.

“Please don`t kill me, I`m scared!”

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I chose this map to start my adventure in Northrend because…well because I took the boat from Menethil and that`s where it took me. I`m glad I started with this map. I like the bloodthirsty vikings, the large forest, the pirates. The maps in Northrend sure are huge compared to Outlands, both in width and in depth, you go in all sorts of caves, temples, crypts, hollows, etc.

Utgarde Keep is nice and easy. I also did the Nexus (nice music in there, Trance-like) and both spider instances. The feeling of large spaces is in there too, especially in Ahn’Kahet the Old Kingdom. Azjol’Nerb is very short and fast.

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