Bye, Rag!

 

OotiniCast #1 is out on the Bind on Equip feed. And we are already on iTunes!  OotiniCast.com.

Paranoid had some members on short time this weekend. So, no heroic attempts. We easily took out all seven bosses (2-shot Ragnaros with all ten alive at the end) and also helped Drae with his legendary staff quest. Good stuff. 

Next weekend is Thanksgiving and the (final?) beta test weekend for SWTOR. We plan on trying that out in groups instead of trying to raid WoW. Patch drops after that, so this could be our last Rag kill for a while.

The Pants on Head-related podcasts rock!

It seems like a number of Warcraft podcasts have been disappearing lately. 

Spouse Aggro just had its last episode – and they’re hardly the only ones. What is now Dregcast used to be a podcast about Warcraft. There are more, including some that exist but without a regular schedule any more, but you get the point. 

Happily the three podcasts most closely linked to the Pants on Head guild are going strong and putting out great podcasts on a weekly basis.

Bind on Equip are still having fun. Wych went to BlizzCon and I for one am looking forward to hearing the stories.  These are the leaders of our fine guild and quite the Warcraft rock stars. 

The Addicted are going strong. Hyp and Cypher are two guys I’d like to play WoW with. Oh, that’s right – I do!  If you haven’t listened to them, then get to the choppa!

Ctrl Alt Wow are having fun. They practically have a new co-host with the remarkable Juno. These guys have a lot of alts in Pants on Head, though I seem to miss them a fair bit. But then they’re very busy – if you consider me a heavy altaholic you clearly haven’t listened to this show. 

I write this on my iPhone, so excuse me not putting up links. All three are available on iTunes and for other devices, have sites, Twitters, and so on, and are easily Googleable with their name plus the word ‘podcast.’

How come you’re called Chill?

Everyone in Pants on Head calls me Chill.  It was more or less by accident, though Teo says it fits my personality.

Growing up, I played tabletop RPGs.  Because of that, I still have a bit of a yen for RP, though RPing in WoW is a subject for another time.  Suffice to say that when I make a name, I want it to sound somewhat realistic.

I loathe “leet-speak” names and would never use one personally.  To each his own if you do,  but…I shudder just thinking about playing a toon with a name like “Killzuded.”

Funny names lose their charm for me over time, I find, and I now avoid them.  I like funny names on OTHER people’s characters.  Exception:  hunter pets.  I will use a funny hunter pet name in a second.

That leaves mostly realistic or descriptive names.  Realistic, by which I mean “sounds like a fantasy character name,” in the vein of Gandalf or Anakin, or an actual person’s name.  But the made-up fantasy names I make up always sound fake to me, and the actual names, no matter how obscure, seem to be taken.

So, descriptive names.  Single-word names are almost always taken.  So I usually put together two words, usually in an attempt to be a bit poetic.

When I joined Jubei’thos with the intention of playing with Pants on Head, I rolled a death knight.  This was right at the end of the “death knight army” phase of the guild.  Plus I could start at level 55, of course.  I thought about the aspects of death knights – blood, frost, and unholy – and words associated with them.  Chill had a nice ring to it, and I quickly came up with Chillheart.  It’s still one of my favorite character names, ever.

My second toon was a healer, so I reversed and went with Warmheart.  I like her name, too, derivative or not.  The beginnings of a plan was in place.  Healers would start with Warm, and toons that couldn’t heal would start with Chill.

My third toon was a warlock, Chillblood, and my fourth a rogue, Chilldeed.  I like their names quite well.  There was also Chillbank, and I think you can guess what she does.

Then I rolled a druid.  I even planned on healing with one of his two specs.  So, Warm it would be…or so I thought.  But by then everyone in the guild called me Chill in chat and in vent.

Eventually, I went with Chillpaw.  It’s probably my second-favorite name of all toons on Jubei’thos.  Chillshot the hunter and Chillmon the troll mage have followed.  Granted, Chillmon is a bit of a joke name, but for a joke name it’s pretty subtle.

And now all my Pants on Head toons, except Warmheart, start with Chill.

This topic was a topic of the week from Blog Azeroth, suggested by http://pocketheals.blogspot.com/.

Alliance Leaders Down

The Pants on Head guild took out the Alliance faction leaders yesterday, successfully completing all four parts for the “For the Horde” achievement.

There were 20 of us.  All but one, me, were level 80.  I bought Chillhand, being very tired of the paladin Charger, and never a big fan of the blood elf hawkstrider.  At 72, my damage was low, but as a ret paladin I was able to bring three things:  buffs (we had a prot pally and a healing pally, so with me there as well we were fully covered for pally buffs), replenishment, and judgements.

It was well-organized by the Bind on Equip leaders.  They sent in a warlock and some rogues, and found a quiet, empty room just outside the Great Forge.  Thus, we started with the Ironforge leader.  The rule was to move in a group, so for the most part we didn’t even mount up.  We moved in and took out the dwarf king very quietly.  One alliance was there unflagged, and we wondered if we would soon meet resistance.  But Bronzebeard went down, and we moved to the Deeprun Tram.

One of us missed the tram, so we waited one cycle, then moved to Stormwind.  Here the defense was fiercer, and by fiercer I mean one mage started shooting frostbolts at our tank, got death-gripped into our group, and melted like butter.

At this point the two difficult ones were over.  Instead of running to the Stormwind Docks, we portaled to Dalaran, went to Org, and flew to the Zoram Strand.  From there we rode north on the water–thank you, Path of Frost–and went to Darnassus.  I saw not one alliance from here out.  Naturally she went down quickly, and we went to the Exodar.  The fears were annoying, but with no PvP resistance it was inevitable that he would go down as well.

Now my paladin has a Black War Bear.

Later some of us went to the Black Temple in Outland.  With just twelve of us we took down boss after boss until we got to the three-faced pain/anger/desire boss, whose model was later used in Forge of Souls.  After wiping, we looked up the boss mechanics.  Unfortunately it requires multiple interrupts and so on, which requires a larger group, 80 or not.  Eventually we called it.  My paladin again was the lowbie of the group, and actually got some slight upgrades on a couple of pieces.  The experience point gain was horrible because of the 80s around me and because of the hefty raid penalty.  I gained more by exploring a couple of locations in Northrend afterwards.

I also got Chillhand’s engineering up to 450, and made a level 200 epic helm for her, which will see her nicely well until 80s gearing.

Lich King down!

This weekend, the Paranoid raid group of Pants on Head downed the Lich King.

We were very excited, and topped it off the next day with our first Ruby Sanctum completion.

Granted, a lot of folks already have the Kingslayer title.   But we did it very legitimately.  We had hardly any 25-man or heroic gear, and still downed him.

It will be a while before we get tired of our new title.

–Chill

First post

For now, the blog is pretty basic.  This is my first WordPress blog.

I am a World of Warcraft player with active characters on the Oceanic Jubei’thos server.  My characters are in the Pants on Head guild.

Pants on Head is the official guild of the wonderful “Bind on Equip” podcast.  Not only that, but it is a mecca for bloggers.  You’ll find Hypknotoad and Cypher from “The Addicted” there.  Also, you’ll occasionally see folks from other podcasts, like Ctrl Alt WoW, there.  It’s a friendly and well-rounded guild, and I highly recommend them.  If you’re not Oceanic, don’t worry; there are lots of U.S., European, and Canadian players in Pants on Head.

Note that Pants on Head is considered both a fan guild and an adult guild; you should be both to apply.  /join boe  will get you in the chat channel, and you can ask for an officer.  Warning:  they do a quick quiz to see if you’re actually a fan.  Don’t worry, though, it’s no big deal; they’re really looking for whether you have listened to Bind on Equip or not.  So go listen!  It’s available on iTunes, and, well, probably lots of places.  http://www.bindonequip.com/ is their site.

There are multiple 10-mans raiding weekly; another is forming up right now.  We do 25s of ICC occasionally, but do not have a dedicated group for it.

While not exactly a PvP haven, I with some others have started some arena teams.  So if you’re into that, ask in guild chat for us.

And who am I?

Well, all my character names in Pants on Head but one start with Chill.  So call me Chill.  Everyone does.

More on me in later posts.

–Chill