Archive for October, 2009

10 Tips for Finding the Right Guild

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

If you are looking for a guild and are having trouble finding one that just seems “right”, use this guide to help you find the right fit for you. Do not be afraid to try different guilds out. Nobody cares if a new member leaves a couple weeks later. Try them out until you find the guild that you can contribute to and who you get along with. WoW is a social oriented game and you can greatly increase your playing experience if you find the right guild.

Friends

Friends are a great way to find a good guild. Generally, the people that you associate with tend to gather around others of the same type. If you find yourself making a lot of friends in a particular guild, that guild would probably be a great fit for you. It will also help that you already know people when you first join. It also seldom hurts to have a good reference from a friend who is already in the guild.

Progression

Progression is usually a bad sign of how you will like a guild, but there are some major warning signs that can pop up from this. If you are in the latest gear and looking for a guild that is currently running PTR content and you find a guild that is still running heroics for gear, then look somewhere else. Progression may not seem like a huge deal to you, but it can get in the way of having a fun time.

Atmosphere

This is something that you can only find out by joining a guild. It is a great way to tell if you will like the guild or not. Does it bother you when fifty people say “ding” all at once in gchat? Or does it seem like nobody is ever on? Or do you never get an answer to a question or a reply to anything? The atmosphere of a guild should fit your personality and your preference.

Gear

A good telltale sign of how a guild functions as a whole is to compare the gear of top rank members to lower rank members. If a guild leader is sporting full t8 and everyone rank 2 is still working on most of their set, you can see that there is a disconnect there. Also, if nobody in the lower ranks has decent gear, you can pretty much determine that they swap members a lot. This could be a sure sign that you should stay away.

Leadership

The leadership of a guild should be the glue that holds it together. Make sure that you are in agreement with all the guild rules and that you get along with the leader. You shouldn’t join a guild where you question the leadership and their methods.

Timezone

Obviously if you are planning on raiding with a guild but are only available from 2am-4am server, then you need to find that one specific guild that raids during that time. Also, if you are in a guild that has weird hours, you will find yourself logging on during off-peak hours and the guild feels like a ghost town. Make sure to find a guild that sleeps/works/etc around the general time that you do.

Location

If you are lucky enough to find a local guild or a semi-local guild, these can be a great jumping off point.

You can fulfill a need

If a guild is running low on healers and you just happen to love healing, you can be a great fit for the guild. If you are dependable, you will quickly become a trusted member of the guild and will climb the ranks relatively quickly. If you are DPS #500 for the guild, it would be much harder to fit in.

Attitude (serious or not)

A guild’s attitude towards the game should fit yours. If you are very serious about the game and are hardcore, then your guild should reflect it. Same with if you are casual and don’t take it seriously.

Reputation

If the guild is known for harboring ninja looters and jerks, move on. Same with if the guild has a bad reputation. You will immediately pick up that reputation with whatever guild tag you are wearing.

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The Elusive Item

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Yet another week has passed and I have logged back on my Warrior to check what is inside of my Cracked Egg. Not to my surprise, there is a few more Aged Yolk. In my bags currently sit 47 Aged Yolk and I have gotten multiple of every pet as well (3 Tickbird Hatchling, 5 White Tickbird Hatchling, 1 Cobra Hatchling, 3 Proto-Drake Whelp), but still have yet to see the Reigns of the Green Proto-Drake. It is the item that is very elusive for me.

When I was leveling my Warrior in 2005, I was around level 40 and got Robes of Insight drop off of a random mob. I sold those robes for 600g (an unheard of amount back then). When I hit level 53, one afternoon I had about 10 minutes to play. I flew my warrior to searing gorge and randomly killed an Orc there and he dropped a Destiny. I was able to sell that weapon for 400g to afford my epic mount when I hit 60. I was extremely lucky to get those random world epics. At the time I read that statistically, most people would never see a random world epic drop while playing. Since then, I have had an epic drop on every character that I’ve played. Randomly when leveling, I get an epic drop off a random mob. It would seem that the statistics are in my favor, and yet I still can’t get that Proto-Drake.

During TBC, we raided a lot of Naxx. Darafeln played on his paladin and was fully decked out in t4 at the time. No matter how many times he ran Karazhan, the Triptych Shield of the Ancients would never drop for him. Every paladin including the horrible ones got the shield before he did. We had full cleared other TBC instances on new characters before he saw one drop. Many weeks of farming Kara for that shield turned up nothing. That used to be his elusive item.

Running through Naxx in WotLK was mind-numbing to say the least. But when you are wearing all BiS gear and you are just running it to get that last piece that has eluded you forever, it pretty much ruins the experience. Especially if that item drops off of one of the first bosses, if it didn’t drop, it felt like there was no reason to go on.

You may have that elusive item that you’ve been waiting for and farming for. The fact is, you may never see that item. There is a good chance that by the time you get that item, it will already be outdated. So don’t focus too much on one item and miss the big picture (unless it is a Green Proto-Drake :) .

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Feeling of Nostalgia

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

For those of you who have been playing WoW for a long time, do you ever get a feeling of nostalgia when you visit certain old world places, watch old PvP videos, look at old loot items, etc? A couple weeks ago, I was leveling my herbalism skill and I went to Azshara to gather a bit for the end of the vanilla herbalism. Wandering around in that zone gave me a feeling of nostalgia. Although I rarely ever went there when I was level 60, I still felt the same way about the zone. It is the look, the sounds, the overall “feel” of the zone that gives it a personality. My mind instantly flashed back to being level 60 and going there to farm felcloth. It wasn’t just this zone, it is a lot places that give me the feeling as well.

When I visit Elwynn Forest, I can remember when I leveled up my first character there and the many hours spent there socializing with everyone. I also despise Duskwood to this day and my all-time favorite vanilla zone is Searing Gorge (I couldn’t even give you a reason as to why, it just is). There are a lot of zones that bring back old memories, good and bad. Something, anything, triggers our brains to remember those old times we had in Azeroth.

If we compare vanilla to the expansions, do you get the same memories about TBC that you did from vanilla? I definitely do not have a feeling of nostalgia when I need to visit outlands. I do not think that the expansion was bad, I had a lot of fun playing it and logged my share of hours doing so. I just think that the vanilla zones really shaped our perspective on WoW. No matter if you started playing on day one or just a few months ago, you will always visit the vanilla content first.

Cataclysm will forever change the vanilla zones as we know them. I have read a lot of people think this is Blizzard just re-hashing old ideas and re-using content. I, however, think that this is one of the most original changes yet to come. It is a feeling of nostalgia but different. It will be like the old days, before TBC, except it will be different. It should be vanilla WoW minus all of the headaches. It brings the word “epic” to mind.

Do you get the feeling of nostalgia when visiting vanilla or TBC content? Share your story with us.

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Perceived Experts; Social Experiment

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Perceived Experts

I completed the final part of my honor grind for my battlemaster’s trinket (62,000 honor still makes me wonder why the cap is set to 75,000). I had some really good games and some really frustrating ones. Specifically the WSG where we had 5 players who had under 14k health and the next closest to me was 20k. During the grind this week, I see a type of player starting to crop up everywhere. The player that I would call a “Perceived Expert”.

You know the player. It doesn’t matter if you are winning or losing, this player needs to tell everyone else that they fail. They always share their plan of attack, but feel that nobody ever helps them. They are usually the ones who nerd rage during the final seconds of a loss. They are the ones who crack me up.

For example: I joined an Isle of Conquest match. When I joined, 30/40 of my team was dead and the Alliance were about to break through our walls. I checked the map and we literally had nobody at the Alliance base. It was a ghost town. I started healing the players around me when a ret paladin whispers me, “give me fort”. I usually do not oblige people who ask for buffs, but I was feeling generous. With fort, he had a grand total of 17.7k health (he was wearing 2 pieces of deadly, 1 furious, and the rest were blues). He was quickly stomped by the Alliance presence in our base which apparently made him angry. In the final minutes of the match, he let everyone know that we were scrubs, we didn’t know how to play, Horde always lose, and that he deserves better. It was hilarious.

Another example was in EoTS. We were handily winning the game and I was at BE tower defending with two DK’s. The DK’s were having a discussion on how PvP isn’t fair for them. “Rogues are so simple to play” said one to the other. “Yeah, they don’t even need gear”. I checked their gear and noticed a couple pieces of deadly and mostly PvE epics (Naxx level). Their discussion quickly turned to PvE and how they were experts at PvE. They felt that PvP was worthless and that it took no skill. Their view on how good they were at the game made me laugh.

I see this type of player show up more and more. It is the “expert” player who is very moody and has bad gear. There have always been players like this, but I think it is multiplied by the fact that it is getting late in an expansion and people have probably had time by now to level another 80. It is a big transition from being geared to having no gear.

This ultimately brings up the question, “Who really is an expert?”. Although there are exceptions to the rule, most “experts” in my experience are the unsung heroes. They are the ones who help out random people by answering questions in guild chat or trade chat. They are the ones who give friendly advice at the right times instead of just telling the other player how bad they are. They are the ones who know how to take a loss without whining. They are the ones who have been around a long time and have extensive experience with the game.

I think there is a fine line between “expert” and “elitist” and most WoW players fall in the latter category. I do know that the experts aren’t the ones barking orders in bad gear then nerd raging out of BGs.

Social Experiment

There is a fun social experiment you can try. I had a classmate who used to make up words and then say them over and over. He would say these words so many times around people that they would start to say them without thinking. We had a lot of fun making up new words and seeing who we could get to start saying them. You should do the same in World of Warcraft. Make up a short phrase or take an existing phrase and start using it a lot around guildies or friends. See how many of them you can get to start using that term.

Let me know if you are successful! We’d love to here those stories.

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Confessions of a Bad Player

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

The inside truth as to what really goes through a bad player’s mind.

Confessions of a Bad Player

  1. Yes, my capslock is broken - I really need everyone to know that it is broken, so I will say anything that comes to my mind. HEY IT IS RAINING HERE.
  2. I need a summon from the mage and a food table from the warlock - How can you blame me? I don’t see how anyone can keep those two classes straight.
  3. When I’m casting pyroblast, you can’t expect me to move – My DPS is so important to this group that I need healers to focus on me.
  4. Honestly, I really don’t know how to spec. I think I’ll just put 1 point in everything. – That’s the strategy that everyone goes for anyway.
  5. I gladly gem my gear with green TBC gems. - Anything else is just too expensive. Hey, it isn’t the gear that makes the player.
  6. Pots make up for skill. – I’m new to this class, and the game, but I brought some flasks with me so prepare yourself to be blown away.
  7. I take PvP so seriously that nobody else is worthy to play on my team. – Sure, I might be at the bottom of the KB, HK, and Damage meters, but that’s because everyone else sucks so bad that I just stopped caring.
  8. Epic ground mounts are too expensive. – I really don’t have the time to play this game if it is that hardcore. Plus, they aren’t THAT much faster.
  9. I regularly Divine Storm thin air. – I’m actually just checking for “rouges”.
  10. I can’t kill anything because my class is gimp. – Blizzard hates me.

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PUGs; Arena Pacing

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

PUGs

We’ve all seen it; Someone is starting a PUG raid and needs a few healers, dps, or tanks. They say in LFG: “LF 2 healers, 3 dps, and 1 tank for VoA25. PST stats and achievement or no reply.” The key point they are trying to make is that they want only quality players who have experience at the fights.

You have been looking for that group all day. Finally you get a chance to join a raid to do that instance. Except there is a problem… You have never done the instance before on this character. Like me, you have done it dozens of times on other characters and know the fight backwards and forwards. You could contribute to the kill with your eyes closed. Your character has the gear and you have the experience but you will never get an invite because you don’t have the achievement.

The sad fact is that bad players ruin raids. Sometimes it only takes one bad apple to spoil an otherwise good raid. This causes a fear and a bad stigma of new players. Very few people want to invite a new player or help them out which makes new players lie to get groups. So the resounding solution is to make sure people have done the fights before, and the achievement is proof of this.

The problem with this thinking is that achievements are not an accurate measurement of how competent a player is. I have played WoW for almost 5 years and have 3 level 80’s, yet I can’t get invites on certain characters because I haven’t done those fights on that particular character. I have also seen people with the achievements stink up a raid because they were carried there by a guild or a random PUG.

IMO, a more accurate representation of how well a player knows his/her class is their gem choices/spec. It is pretty common for a bad player to not know how to gem/spec for their class. It just takes a bit of knowledge by the raid leader to see these mistakes and make a more accurate decision on who gets an invite. The main problem with this is that a lot of people don’t have this knowledge. They know how they themselves should gear and spec, but any other class is like a foreign language.

So is there a solution for new players, veteran players with new 80’s, and raid leaders alike? I would say the best option is for new players to work at getting gear with a guild. Blizzard always offers options for more casual ways of getting gear. So get in that Naxx PUG or get a few friends together and farm ToC. Raid leaders should be a little more generous with who they let come to their raids. Most players aren’t going to ruin your raid and if you aren’t capable of seeing which players will be a hindrance, leave the raid leading to someone else.

Arena Pacing

I have recently gotten my resilience up to an amount that is respectable for arenas (1063 on my priest). Just the increase of 200 points over last week is a night and day difference so far. I am able to stand my ground against faceroll comps and actually stand a chance even if Pain Suppression is on cooldown.

Overall, I am enjoying the changes to resilience for this season. With the new season of gear scaling and all the damage numbers higher than ever, it is nice to have a tool to reduce that dps. There have been very few situations where I get dropped in a GCD (it still happens once in a while). This allows us to play to our class strengths and makes skill and coordination ever more important in arenas. A very good change over previous WotLK seasons where cleave teams were dominant due to high burst damage.

For anyone who plays a healer class, if you have the time and resources, gather a high resilience set of gear and try it out in BGs. At times, you will feel like a raid boss because 4-5 players can’t kill you. It sure gives BGs a whole new dimension when you are tanking half the opposing team. If you happen to be one of the many who is trying to kill Ferngully, be sure to /salute and let me know you’re a reader.

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Horde vs Alliance

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

The Big Decision

We’ve all made the decision. Whether it was on a whim or a well thought out process, we have all chosen a faction in World of Warcraft. Everyone has different reasons as to why they chose to fight for the Horde or the Alliance. For me, my first character was Alliance because all of my college buddies were going Alliance at the time. They did go Alliance when we got the game, but ended up being on a different server (a story for a different time). I actually played through vanilla and some of BC before I leveled a Horde character. For me, there wasn’t really a decision when I first started playing. Since my friends were playing Alliance and I wanted to play with them, it was an easy decision.

As I played more and more and began to learn about the game, I sometimes regretted the decision of rolling Alliance. This was well before the days of faction changes and even transfers, so the only other option was to level another character. That was something that I was not willing to do. Cut to today and faction changes are relatively cheap (or expensive however you feel) and they are easy. This really negates a lot of old arguments as to which faction is better. If you think Blizzard favors a certain faction or if you feel that certain racials are more powerful or even if you just like the look and feel of the other faction, it is painless enough to obtain without needing to level to 80 again.

The Grass is Always Greener

It is a topic that comes up regularly amongst many WoW players and on the WoW forums (who reads those anyway?). It isn’t the debate as to which side has better lore, or which side feels better to fight as, it is the question of whether or not Blizzard favors a faction and balances the game accordingly. If you’ve played WoW, the thought has probably crossed your mind. Even if you keep in mind that most of these posts are by trolls and it probably does not represent the viewpoint of the majority, you still can’t help but notice racial “stereotyping” in guild, trade, or BG chat.

What I have come to find out is that the old adage “The grass is always greener on the other side” applies to this situation. When I played Alliance for the first couple years, I felt as though Horde had a huge advantage in certain situations. Back then it was mainly in AV and geared Shaman could literally 1 shot players. I then met a couple of people who lived in my dorm and they played Horde. It was fun to discuss the topic with them because 95% of the time, they felt the exact opposite. When I thought AV was imbalanced because the Horde base only had one way into it, they felt the same about the Alliance base. Even little things like how difficult Onyxia attunement was for Horde came up at times. Then when I leveled a Horde character, my outlook on the game began to change. I noticed that my thoughts switched and I began to feel like Blizzard favored Alliance (Although I have never felt that they actually favor a faction, I do think there are subconscious and accidental advantages to both factions).

Ultimately it comes down to personal experience. If you ask a player in a strong Alliance battlegroup which faction is better at PvP, they will most likely answer Alliance and visa versa. You have probably met a player who thinks their class is the absolute bane of blizzard. They cry over every nerf and can’t stop talking about how weak they are. Even if they are playing the most faceroll class currently, they genuinely feel that their class needs serious buffs. If you are completely honest, you have probably felt this way at times about your current main.

There isn’t a way to stop these perceptions that we have about the game. The best thing we can do is to know that we hold bias and make opinions based on that. I can guarantee that Blizzard already does this.

Epic Flying Mount

I finally saved up enough money even with buying epic gems and enchants as I geared up to get my epic flying skill. I have had the bronze drake sitting in my bags for a long time waiting to be used. This is my third level 80 and my first drake mount.

Bronze Drake

Bronze Drake

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Current and Future Battlegrounds

Monday, October 12th, 2009

The State of Battlegrounds

I was grinding some honor this weekend so I can switch out my trinkets with a Medallion of the Horde and a Battlemaster’s trinket. The PvP daily for Sunday was Alterac Valley. I tried multiple times during the day to complete the daily, but every AV that I was in turned into a turtle with Alliance winning. I gave up after multiple games and tried playing some WSG and AB to get the marks that I need for turn-ins. We lost so horribly in both, that I gave up all together. The honor grind is bad enough without the current problems with BGs. This made me think about the current state of battlegrounds and how they can be improved.

I guess it isn’t really a matter of winning or losing. Sure, winning games technically makes your honor grind 1/3 of what it would be if you lost every game. I wasn’t in a preform, so I wasn’t going in *expecting* to win every game. The problem was that I had to wait 12 minutes for a que to pop and then we not only lost, but we dragged the loss out. The last WSG that I tried, the alliance had a Resto Druid, Holy Paladin, Disc Priest, and a geared Prot Warrior. This would take a decent group of people to kill them, let alone a team of random scrubs. After a ton of turtling and losing the game because time ran out, it really got me thinking about the current state of battlegrounds and where it could go in the future.

Battlegrounds have come a long way

If you were around when battlegrounds were first introduced, you can remember having to run all the way to Ashenvale to play them (a particularly time consuming task for Alliance when the closest port was Darnassus). Those were the days that premades reigned supreme. If you were unlucky enough to play against one, your team didn’t stand a chance. At the time, many players were complaining about battlegrounds and how it took away from World PvP. Compared to today’s battlegrounds, those starting WSG matches did not even compare to how easy/fast/convenient battlegrounds are today. Whether you think that is a good thing or not.

Before arenas, battlegrounds were the only way for a player to get good PvP gear outside of raiding. It was for hardcore players only, nobody got GM without having 2-3 friends play on their account while they worked/slept/ate. For many people, it was a turn off because of the sheer amount of time required to get anywhere.

Cut ahead to today where battleground honor grinds is THE way for casuals to get gear. The current system is great because it opens up the opportunity for the whole playerbase to get PvP gear. The downside is that it opens the opportunity for the whole playerbase to get PvP gear. The same upside to the system is the same thing as it’s main downfall.

With all the improvements, I will outline some problems that I currently see and outlooks on fixing them.

Que Times

Depending on where you play and which faction you play as, these problems might not be existent or as noticeable. As it currently stands for my battlegroup, during peak hours of the day, a horde player can expect to wait in the que for 10+ minutes before playing anything other than AV. This has been a problem for a while. There does not seem to be enough horde players queuing for anything other than AV. I can see merging of battlegroups to fix the long que times, but this will bring up other issues such as lag and overpopulation of battlegroups.

The solution for this problem is a complicated one. It isn’t necessarily a problem with how queues work, it is more a problem of players not wanting to play battlegrounds. Blizzard needs to simultaneously keep working on the queues and somehow make Battlegrounds more worthwhile to those who take it seriously. With the announcement of rated battlegrounds, I can see an opportunity to take battlegrounds where they should be: A place for casuals to play PvP but yet not interfere with more serious PvPers.

Bad Players

Maybe it is just me, but it seems like the quality of the playerbase seems to be declining. It used to be a fairly rare occurrence that I would find a truly bad player and have a good laugh about it with my guildies. Now it is such a common occurrence that we don’t really even point them out anymore. We all know who I’m talking about; It is the warrior with spirit gear, or the hunter with the spec that looks like he closed his eyes and clicked wildly, or even the player who has decent gear/spec and still can’t seem to break 1000 dps. There is always the independent player who never seems to want to contribute to the team and the loner who tries to contribute but wants to do so by himself.

When you get stuck on a team with a bunch of bad players, it is frustrating. We’ve all been there. You are grinding out 62000 honor for your next Relentless offpiece and there are multiple people in the group who are going for their first deadly piece. In WSG, your team can’t seem to kill the FC who has one healer on him because everyone is just that bad. Frustrating to say the least.

Luckily, this problem should be solved with rated battlegrounds. Hopefully the low geared players will stay at lower ranks and will not end up playing the higher geared and skilled players. The change to battlegrounds in TBC where gear affected who you played against was a step in the right direction. Moving to rated battlegrounds is another great step.

Away from Keyboard

Over the history of battlegrounds, AFK’ing has been a problem. There have been many improvements to players combating AFK players in battlegrounds. We have the deserter debuff and AFK flagging as a result to the number of complaints there were of players in the AV grind. It seems like Blizzard has run out of solutions for this.

The first problem with the current system is that it takes too much effort from players to police the AFKers. You don’t always notice that player who AFKed in a spot that looks like they are participating. I am usually too into the fight and don’t want to take the time to look around for AFK players. The bright side is that if someone notices an AFKer and points them out, it is not hard to get them reported.

The second problem with the current system is that it doesn’t have very steep of a penalty. If a player is reported AFK over multiple battlegrounds and keeps doing that, then Blizzard will investigate and might ban their account for a short period of time. Really, that is no deterrence for the problem. The player still ends up taking up a slot for the remainder of the battleground match and in some matches can make a difference.

I think that the current measures would be adequate if two things were to happen: Battleground honor grinds need to be either shorter or more fun and the penalty needs to be steeper. If a players grind of 370000+ honor that it takes to get the season’s off pieces was more variant, I think people would AFK less. Also, if reported players had 1 minute to get into combat otherwise they would be removed from the battleground and given a 30 minute deserter debuff, that would stop many of the players who use a bot to AFK.

Future of Battlegrounds

I think anyone can get excited for the changes that are planned for battlegrounds in Cataclysm. I plan on being there and experiencing it all. For right now, we can just play together and make the best of the current system. So if you play on the Reckoning battlegroup and see me on my character Ferngully, be sure to give me a shout out (or a friendly /wave as I kill you if you are Alliance).

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Blatz’s Monthly Featured Addon

Friday, October 9th, 2009

Featured Addon: Auctionator

Addon Author: Zirco

Download Link: Download (Curse)

About Auctionator

Auctionator is a lot like the more popular Auctioneer. It will automatically set a sell price for the item that you have selected to sell, it can find bargains on items so you can save money, and it has a lot of the same features. So why would you want to use Auctionator instead of Auctioneer?

Auctionator is able to scan items on the fly. You do not need to do a full auction house scan before putting items up for sale. It will automatically scan the item auctions when you put an item up for sale and set it’s price to that. This allows you to save time and is easier to sell items that are more rare. It also benefits because it does not take as much memory as Auctioneer.

Some great features that are more advanced for Auctionator are:

  • The ability to make custom stacks of auctions (4 stacks of 5 items instead of 1 stack of 20)
  • An item database to search for items which you do not remember the name
  • On the fly scanning (Full scan is available)
  • Search for bargain items
  • Automatically price items based on current market values
  • Make a custom shopping list
  • It automatically remembers past auctions so if there are no current auctions for the item, it will set the correct value
  • Custom undercutting amount settings
  • Custom default selling stacks for certain items

Plain and simple, Auctionator makes buying and selling easier and also helps you save money and make more money.

Click on the download link at the top of this post, or head over to the Download page to download this addon.

Screenshots

WoW Addon: Auctionator

WoW Addon: Auctionator

WoW Addon: Auctionator

WoW Addon: Auctionator

WoW Addon: Auctionator

WoW Addon: Auctionator

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Welcome to k3b1

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Change to k3b1

We have switched gears on k3b1.com. There have been a lot of followers of our past endeavors. Many of you will remember Exigo, ESP, PC Gaming and further back to the classic k3b1 forums (if you don’t, i’ll be glad to tell you the stories). Today we are transforming k3b1 into a WoW blog. I will tell you why, but first let me share a little about who we are:

About Us and Our Condensed WoW Story

k3b1 stems from our names “Kent” and “Blake”. We coined that term many years ago when we first started programming games and making websites (dope fish + star wars). We are brothers who live in North Dakota.

We started playing WoW in early 2005. Over the years we have leveled many characters and made a lot of friends as well as some enemies. During this time we have logged over 600 days playtime combined. We have grown to know the intricacies of the game and the classes. We have spent time focused on PvE as well as PvP, have leveled both Horde and Alliance characters, and have led large raiding guilds as well as been members in them.

In vanilla WoW, we played a Warrior and Paladin on Hellscream US. We did not have the time to push for R13, so we did not have top of the line PvP gear. Even though we were undergeared, we beat many of our opponents by using game mechanics alone. I am reminded of Darafeln standing outside of IF and nobody would duel him because he just beat another 60 with his “lightsaber” (enchanted training stick). Because of the multiple hour que’s to log into Hellscream, we transferred to Dalvengyr in the first ever PvE to PvP transfers. Towards the end of vanilla, we got into raiding. Starting with MC and later going to ZG and AQ 20/40.

In BC, we kept our characters and started focusing on raiding. After leaving our guild over differences in opinions, we started our own guild and cleared Kara/Gruul and started on TK and SSC. At this point in time, the Dalvengyr population was very casual. It was extremely difficult to constantly get 25 people online for raids and there was a very small player pool to recruit from. We decided that we could have a lot more fun on a well populated and established realm. We decided to reroll.

We both started Blood Elf Paladins on Dragonmaw US. We played these characters until the end of S4 and decided to reroll again on Dalvengyr before WotLK came out (Dalvengyr had been selected as a “recommended” realm and the population bloomed). Darafeln started leveling a Shaman and I started leveling another Warrior. Before WotLK, I switched to leveling my 56 Paladin (which I had leveled in the Kara/Gruul days) due to the huge ret buffs before WotLK.

WotLK came out and we hit 80 on Shaman/Paladin. Our small guild cleared Naxx within a couple months and most of us were soon bored with Naxx. Darafeln then leveled a Rogue and some on his Paladin where as I leveled my warrior to 80. We started getting into PvP again and focused on Shaman/Warrior comp in S5/6. During this time we did a little Ulduar raiding but nothing major. As you may know, Shaman/Warrior is one of the worst comps during those seasons and we decided that we wanted to reroll a good PvP comp.

We convinced our friend to roll a Mage and I rolled a Priest. We were going to run a RMP comp in 3’s. We hit 80, transferred off of Dalvengyr back to Dragonmaw and faction changed to Horde to play with a bunch of old friends. We started the comp a couple months ago and thats when we decided to start this blog.

Our current main characters are:

Ferngully (Undead Priest, Dragonmaw US)

Ballsagna (Blood Elf Rogue, Dragonmaw US)

Our other 80’s include:

Blatzkowitz (Human Warrior, Dalvengyr US)

Macabuwia (Draenei Shaman, Dalvengyr US)

Contiguous (Dwarf Paladin, Dalvengyr US)

And other various characters 60+

Why the change

We have played WoW for almost 5 years. I know there are new players out there who are trying to pick up every new tidbit they can and also veterans who enjoy discussing WoW. This blog is the place for that. We want to share our knowledge with the WoW community; New players will find this blog both helpful and encouraging. We were all new at one time.

Another side to this is if you are a veteran player and really enjoy discussing the latest patch notes, class balance, BG’s, raids, etc. we love to discuss it also. We spend hours in vent some days discussing talent builds, glyphs, strategies, etc. We are looking to help out newer players while trying to get some good discussions going. Hopefully we make some friends along the way.

Welcome to k3b1

We have another site (www.doodadnox.com) where you can freely host your gaming screenshots without all the clutter and advertisements of larger image hosts. Feel free to check it out and sign up for an account to start sharing your screenshots today.

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