The Golden Rule of Invading Capital Cities

The various factions in the World of Warcraft have their own respective Capital cities. Some of them are easier to breach than others. On some PvP servers, raids are organized almost weekly to storm into an opposing city and take out their leader.

Why would you do that?

Bolvar doesn’t drop any loot, gold or massive honor points. Killing Thrall doesn’t offer you a quest reward or access to Stormwind’s coffers.

So why do these raids happen? Because they just want to have some fun! Sometimes its nice to simply let yourself go and team up with other players to level towns and kill NPCs.

So what’s the golden rule?

When invading a capital city, don’t just bring a raid group. Bring a damn army. See below:

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Horde forces struck early in the evening. We had no warning at all. We returned to Stormwind after a successful win in Alterac Valley when the alarm sounded. The portals were activated and an advance group of Rogues and Druids went ahead to scout what we were up against.

We didn’t hear anything from them since because they lagged out. One by one, I watched their raid frames wink “offline”. An organized and well equipped AV premade should’ve been enough to rout these challengers since we had home field advantage.

Assuming it was only 1 Horde raid.

But there were 3.

When I emerged out from the Mystic Ward, it seemed we were too late. Skeletons littered the bank and the auction house. It seems an advance group came in and caught the city with their pants down and knocked out the 3 auctioneers without hesitation.

Figured that Horde forces would try to pick apart our economy first.

As our counter offensive streamed out of Ironforge, we looked down the road.

For the first time, I was shocked and awed.

Never had so many come to destroy so few.

I tried to throw what Lightning Bolts I could. But 7 second cast times made it impossible for me to do anything. Playing with that many characters around you in an open area was like trying to swim with your hands and feet bound. We could do nothing but watch as they strolled in and headed for the King’s Throne.

With that, the retreat was sounded and those of us with hearthstones available withdrew back to Darnassus. It didn’t take a Gnomish Rocket Scientist to figure out that once they were done with Ironforge, Stormwind would fall next. To even try and raise an army that could come close to challenging a unit of that size would have been inconceivable.

AddOn: Dispel Announcer for Raiding and PvP

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I finally found me a mod that I think will benefit all Priests regardless of their purpose or style of healing. Actually, it doesn’t have anything to do with healing at all. What it does is it announces Dispels in a chat channel of your preference. It’s fairly flexible in the the settings (see below screenshots). I do believe it works with Mass Dispel as it announced me taking off a Paladin’s bubble and it works on offensive and defensive dispels. The Ace 2 framework is required for you to modify any settings.

More importantly,This addon has been fully tested on a Hunter dispelling enemy buffs with Arcane Shot and with a Druid dispelling poisons but it should also work perfectly when dispelling with any other skill.

Get Dispel Announcer from Curse.

It also announces when debuffs on yourself fall off such as Shouts and such.

Works in:

  • Say chat
  • Party chat
  • Raid warning
  • UI error frame
  • Default frame

Locations:

  • Outside
  • 5-man
  • Raid
  • Battleground
  • Arena

Anyway,  have a gander at the shots below and you’ll get a rough idea.

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Announcing Plusheal dot com

A blog can only do so much. A blog is a virtual canvas for an author to paint their thoughts onto. A few weeks ago, I asked if you were interested in taking part in a community with other like minded healers. An overwhelming number of you said yes.
Today, I’d like to introduce Plusheal as a new place for you to get acquainted with other healers and healing bloggers, with the goal of sharing information to make us all better healers.

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You might wonder why I’m starting a healing community when I already have this blog?

Well, a blog:
* Presents topics guided by the original author
* Is an outlet for one voice

Whereas a forum forum:
* Empowers readers to create and participate in their own discussions
* Is a potential outlet for multiple voices

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At Plusheal, we’re hoping to foster discussions among groups of players, beyond the scope of the limits offered by blog conversations. I’ll be joined there by other healing bloggers like Anna, Siha, Auzara, Lume, Pat, and of course, Wyn who’ll be helping me with the community as it grows and sharing their expertise with the rest of us. I hope to see a lot of you over there, too.

Special thanks to my speechwriter. You know who you are!

In Five Hours, the World Will End. What Will You Do?

I’ve inadvertently inspired several bloggers when I interviewed Phaelia many months ago. Herein lies the scenario:

Let’s hypothetically assume Blizzard goes out of business and decides to shut down their servers and WoW for good. You have 5 hours before the server shutdown is permanent. What would you do in 5 hours?

It’s reached the shared topic of the week for Blog Azeroth and I’ve inkling it might be discussed in this weeks Twisted Nether Blogcast.

What others have said:

(Don’t mind if I borrow the list from the TNB post, Fim ;))

What would Matt do?

Simple. I’d make like Madonna and try to save it. Matt ain’t no quitter.

EDIT: In pure blogging irresponsibility, I forgot to link to the original post by Larisa.

TED: You a One Buttock Player? And a Goodbye to Priestly Endeavors

 

I love TED. I really do. Every year, there’s some great people with great ideas who give awesome talks. Benjamin Zander is no exception. Although the talk here is mostly about classical music, the underlying themes involve embracing new possibilities, new experiences, and new connections.

What can you take here and apply to WoW?

I picked out a few select quotes that and modified them slightly:

“Most of you have heard the story of two salesmen who went down to Africa in the early 1900s to find if there was any opportunity to sell shoes.”

Situation hopeless, stop. They don’t wear shoes, stop, one of them wrote.

The other wrote:

Glorious opportunity, they don’t have shoes yet, stop.

Warcraftized:

“Most of you have heard of the story of two Guild recruiters who were trying to attract Priests into their Guild and they managed to find one.”

Player hopeless, stop. No enchants or gems, stop, one of them wrote.

Glorious opportunity, he hasn’t properly optimized his gear yet and we can help him, stop.

Here’s another one:

You notice that there is not the slightest doubt in mind that this is going to work. It’s one of the chararacteristics of the leader that he not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he’s leading to realize whatever he’s dreaming.

Imagine if Martin Luther King said “I have a dream!”, but of course I’m not sure if they’ll up to it.

To GM’s:

“The conductor of an orchestra does not make a sound… He depends for his power on other people to make them powerful… I realized my job was to awaken possibility in other people.”

But enough, go check out the video above.

On another sad note, long time Priest and Hunter blogger Kirk from Priestly Endeavors has decided to call it.

Some highlight reel posts: