Reflections From The Pond

Posts Tagged ‘achievement’

Should we feel sorry for Ensidia? Larísa over at the Pink Pigtail Inn asks this question in a recent post of hers.

My answer is “yes, I really feel sorry for Ensidia”, but not because they lost their achievement and not because they will be out of the game for three days. I feel sorry for them for being so utterly stupid.

As I see it, Ensidia’s action and their subsequent ban and revoked world first Lich King kill is a direct result of one of two things: Either they knew they were doing it wrong, or they did not.

Doing it wrong

Now, I don’t play this game at Ensidia’s level, I am not in a sponsored guild getting payed to play, so I can only guess at what obligations comes with that sponsorship, and what pressure they are under to provide results.

I am not a top player but that does not mean I can not personally feel the competitiveness and the will to get better, to desire to top those charts, be it as dps in a 5 man dungeon run or a guild member in a server wide guild ranking. I guess Ensidia would feel the same way, regardless of whether they are sponsored or not, and lately the competition at the top must have become a lot more intense than in previous raids. Never before has so many guilds been at the top, competing for those world first kills. As I write this, four guilds have defeated the Lich King in the 25man version according to GuildOx, with many more to come soon as many guilds have already defeated the first two bosses in the Frost Wing, opened their way to the Lich King.

I guess every one of those four guilds, five with Ensidia, were desperate for that little extra edge, that little extra boost that would push them to the top so they could claim their victory.

So when they noticed that their use of Saronite Bombs actually had a very very positive effect on the encounter, it actually seemed to trivialize it or a part of it as far as I can understand, did they stop to consider that this must be a bug, that this was not the encounter working as intended? If they had been using these bombs in their usual dps rotation, would they not be surprised that they did not only do damage in this encounter but actually helped rebuild the throne?

Or did they make a simple cost-benefit analysis and came to the conclusion that the risk of using the bombs was worth taking in order to get that first kill? Was the competition so fierce that the possible delay of asking a GM what was going on might result in another guild claiming the kill? Did they gamble on their legendary guild status to protect them should they be caught?

I don’t know, I can only speculate. But no matter why, the question is how they could be so incredibly stupid and believe they would not get caught? Every other world first and first kills have been scrutinized and achievements have been revoked during the entire WotLK raiding season, so how could they be so stupid and think their kill would survive if there was even the slightest whiff of something funny about it?

Granted, they have apparently been treated leniently by Blizzard before, but on the biggest bad guy of them all in this entire expansion? Come on.

Or did they not know?

But what about the other scenario? What if they didn’t know they were doing it wrong then?

You know, I have a co-worker whose mantra is “it is not criminal to be stupid”. He is right of course, it is not criminal to be stupid, to sit on a chair all day and do nothing except being stupid.

But while it is not criminal to be stupid it might well be criminal to act stupidly and most people do stupid things once in a while, some more often than not, and with very different consequences.

If you construct bridges, you are expected to dimension them properly or you might end up with a collapsed bridge.

If you are a construction worker, you are expected to know that using a power tool to cut reinforcement bars comes with certain restrictions or you might end up with a burning building due to a stray spark.

If you suddenly find 300 million Euros on your bank account when last you checked there was nothing but an overdraft, you are expected to contact your bank and not run off to South America for a life long vacation.

If you had spent years playing a computer game, analysing it into the smallest detail, poring over logs and videos to perfect your performance, knowing every spell in the book and having done all bosses many times on 10mans and 25mans and in both normal and heroic versions, if you were that player, facing the last boss in the game, the biggest badass of them all, and if you find that the platform you are standing on, the one that is slowly falling apart, suddenly stop falling apart and instead start to rebuild itself and thus making the entire encounter so much easier, negating the need to deal with the adds, would you not be expected to suspect Blizzard might consider that an exploit? Especially given their track record with exploit bans in this expansion?

The first three are examples of criminal stupidity, the last is an example of plain simple utter moronic stupidity.

So should we feel sorry?

I have made my thoughts on using so called exploits clear before, I think it is Blizzard’s job to make the game fool proof and if anyone finds a way to use the game or fight mechanics to work for them in a way Blizzard has not foreseen, then all the cred to them. If Blizzard does not like it they can always fix it, but why punish the players?

If I had my way, Ensidia would keep their achievement and would not be banned. They found a way around Blizzard’s encounter and beat it fair and square with the tools available to them.

But Blizzard obviously think otherwise, and we all accept their right to run their game their way every time we log into the game, so even if I don’t like their way of handling these things I have to accept it and be aware of if I want to keep playing. And anyone who plays this game at the top end can’t be unaware that Blizzard comes down hard on players they think are guilty of exploiting the game.

I don’t know the whole picture, I was not there, and I haven’t tried to look into it anymore than the posts on wow.com and Ensidia’s own site, but I can’t see it happen any other way. If they did know what they were doing, or if they did not, it does not matter, either way it was so senselessly stupid to not alert Blizzard to the fact that there seemed to be something smelly going on. It seems like such a waste.

Or is this entire thing a publicity stunt?

It was “only” a normal kill, after all. Maybe they are so sure of their own superiority that they believe this three-day ban will not interfere at all with their getting the world first heroic Lich King kill that they don’t mind giving the competition a three day head start.

And that would indeed be an achievement.

I’ve been talking about the joys of exploring before, and by exploring I do not necessarily mean just world exploring, I mean going into new instances without a clue of what will happen there.

Well, I know there will be mobs and bosses and Bad Stuff happening and hopefully some shiny things dropping now and again, but that’s about it. I don’t know if there will be fire or frost or poisons or void zones, if we need to spread out or stay together, if we need to run away from stuff or to stuff or maybe behind stuff.

The thing is, we will find out, and we will find out together, and although I know we will make mistakes and mess up I also know we will also have so much fun learning and progressing together.

Raiding is great but there will be plenty of time to research fights and follow in other peoples’ footsteps later, the thrill and joy of looking at bosses and their lairs with fresh eyes for the first time is one of my truly favourite things in game.

So you can imagine how I felt when the leaders in my raid guild announced that we were going to enter Icecrown Citadel without any prior knowledge gathering concerning its denizens and layouts! No reading up on tactics, no looking at videos, all bossmods disabled, we were just gonna walk in there and see what would happen.

And so we did.

We entered Icecrown wearing nothing but our raid gear and with our eyes and ears wide open. We looked at the scenery and the inhabitants of the place, we noted their abilities and their tricks and their way of doing things, and we talked to each other, both during the raid nights and subsequently on our forum, discussing and working out tactics of our own.

We did not one-shot all of the four bosses in ICC but within the first week we had killed them all as number 9 on our server (according to GuildOx), 6 days after the gates were opened.

The boss we had the most trouble with was Saurfang, but it was great fun to spend an entire night and a half wiping on him, working out different raid setups as our raid leaders ran around the platform deploying us chess pieces raiders to our designated spots carefully spaced so we would not splatter hurt on each other, and having the ranged practice Blood Beast targeting on melee so they would pick up the right beast immediately when they spawned and eliminate the risk of a beast running loose and hitting raiders in its way, and working out healing rotas so we would cover everyone and not lose any marked people.

We nailed our difficulties one after the other by trial and error and teamwork and after a lot of biting of dust and kicking of buckets it all slotted into place and we performed a flawless Saurfang kill even earning us the server first I’ve Gone and Made a Mess achievement!

Anyways, this post was not intended to brag about our raiding, but rather point out that it is quite possible to raid successfully without reading up on other peoples tactis or watching other peoples videos.

And, most importantly, to have a blast doing it!

I mean, these raid instances will be around for a long time, you will always have a chance of reading up on stuff but you will have only one shot at getting that fresh powerful feeling of wonder and awe and amazement that comes from experiencing something for the first time so why not make the most of it? Stuff those tactic guides and work things out with your guild, your friends! The kills will taste so much sweeter then, I promise!

Now another gate has opened in the Icecrown Citadel and we are putting on our Explorer’s hats again, bringing out our map-making kits, ready to go beat our sticks and heads and just about everything else we have available against anything that will come our way.

There be dragons there for sure, bring them on! :-)

Dick Fosbury is an american athlete who developed a new high-jump technique in the 1960’s. He discarded the commonly used straddle method of jumping and instead came up with a way of sprinting diagonally towards the bar, turning away and leaping back first over the bar.

Using this technique of his own, called the Fosbury Flop, he won an Olympic gold medal in Mexico City 1968 and set a new Olympic record at 2.24 meters.

It was quite an exploit. 

Exploit? Yes, exploit.

Didn’t you know that exploit can be used to mean something great, something grand, a once in a lifetime achievement?

Sadly, nowadays, in my world at least, an exploit is something bad, a cheat of some kind, something to be avoided.

But how do you know an exploit when you see it?

If I quest around in the world of Azeroth and discover that wow, this huge nasty elite mob can be kited all the way to the fortified town where the town guards will help me kill it, is that an exploit?

Or if I discover that not only roaming elites but also dungeon bosses actually may be stupid enough to let me kite them away from their henchmen adds to be killed leisurely in an adjacent room, is that an exploit?

If I stack up so much dodge that it reaches an amazing 110% and noone can hit me, is that an exploit?

Or if I discover that spellstealing the Bone Armor of the DK’s in Naxx makes me all but invincible and able to kill the raid bosses there all on my own?

If I discover that there is a small path at the edge of the mountain, behind all these pine trees, that will safely take me around the hill on a safe distance from the roaming mobs even if it seems I am walking on thin air doing it, is that an exploit?

And if said path actually leads me past some impenetrable wall into hitherto uncharted territory, is that an exploit? 

Well, in this game, an exploit is what the developers say is an exploit, and they carefully write their EULA to make sure they can ban whomever they like for as long as they like using the flimsy excuse of exploits.

In a way, this saddens me, partly because I think it oppresses the creativity of players and partly because punishing players for finding and using these kind of things makes the world of Azeroth feel less like a real living, breathing, developing world and more like some dry lifeless Potemkin village.

Why did you climb Mount Everest? Because it was there! Why did you swim the Straits of Gibraltar? Because I could! Why did you attempt travel to the North Pole by hot air balloon? Because it was uncharted and unknown and noone had been there before!

And would you not be most surprised if someone came along and told you that no, climbing the north side was considered an exploit because you avoided the icefalls that way, or that donning a wetsuit while swimming was an exploit because that made you too invulnerable to hypothermia. Or that going to the North Pole was not allowed because it was outside the boundaries of the known world.

To me, all of the above exploit examples are players testing the limits, thinking “what if” and then proceeding to test that “if”. They like the game, they enjoy playing it and they are not just sitting around watching boss kill videos or reading up on strategies, they are using their own brains to think or they are out there in the world, poking at things and seeing what happens instead of just following a quest guide telling them where to go.

Clearly, Blizzard has designed their world and the encounters in them and an “intended” way of doing things. But why do you have to do things the way they are “supposed” to be done? Hasn’t anyone at Blizzard ever experienced the joy of actually solving a problem on your own, of finding the solution to the riddle, of reaching the goal your way and not just following in someone else’s footsteps?

I mean, where would we be today if people had settled for doing things the way they’ve always done it? Still in the caves? Still in the trees?

So, should Blizzard just sit idle by and watch as players come up with one clever use of game mechanics after another? No, of course not, just as players learn and get wiser so should the game.

The roaming elites and bosses smarten up and learn from their previous mistakes, run back to their preferred haunts and turn a blind eye to the kiting-happy adventurers, the Naxx DK’s change their buffs, making them safe from pilfering mages, an avalanche blocks the meandering mountain path, rendering it impassable.

But why punish the players who discover these tricks and short cuts? Is it not enough to tweak the game? If some bug or exploitable feature has passed the scrutiny of the developers and the trials of the public test realms and made its way into the world, should we not consider it as “approved by Blizzard” and safe for use? Should Blizzard if not thank these curious players for bringing odds and quirks and alternate ways of doing things to their attention at least not punish them?

Or should the game be stamped ”use at own risk”?

I wonder, if the IOC had been run by Blizzard, had Dick Fosbury been allowed to keep his gold medal? Or would he have been stripped of it for not jumping the way you were supposed to jump?  Would he have been banned for jumping higher than all the rest of the athletes by being cleverer and finding his own way of doing things?

I hope not, but I fear he would have been.

When I got me the achievement Respect Your Elders in the Old Kingdom I got it the tricky way.

We pulled the boss – Elder Nadox – all the way to the platform right before the instance entrance and fought him there. The Guardians spawned at the boss’s original location and they were moving so slow they never got to him before he was dead.

I think that was a clever use of game mechanics which enabled us to pull off the achievement without being in an uber-geared group.

It was a bit tricky becuase our tank (a druid) had to engage him, switch to cat form and leg it all the way to the platform in one piece. No heals while running to avoid healing aggro and splattered healer.

This is now “fixed” by Blizzard so any attempts at pulling the boss out of his room will make him enrage and wipe the group.

The way to go now is apparently to pull the boss to one end of the room and the Guardians to the other (their Immunity buff has a 100 yard range or so) so you essentially get 2 groups because you will be out of reach to help each other. This requires brute-forcing the boss down asap while some uber-geared paladin or likewise deals with tanking the Guardians and staying alive at the same time.

We did the same tricky thing for Volunteer Work on Jedoga the Shadowseeker, pulled her to the platform where you enter the huge cavern from the little webbed tunnel short cut.

She descended from her elevated airborne position, waddled all the way down to us, where we battled her heroicly, and then she waddled all the way back to her own platform, called on her add and waddled back down to us again.

Same here, clever use of game mechanics which enabled us to make it in our not-so-hotly dressed group.

This is also “fixed” by Blizzard so that pulling her off her platform will reset the entire encounter.

So the way to do it now is to simply heal through everything she throws on you, which of course requires good gears on the entire group.

I’ve been in Halls of Lightning a few times lately, and got me a few achievements there as well, Lightning Struck (hard nuke and heal through it), Shatter Resistant (hard nuke and heal through it) and Timely Death (hard nuke and – guess what? – heal through it). Some minor differences in the fights, spread out, run from adds, or stay on top of each other, but the gist of all encounters were the same, just brute-force the bosses down.

Those achievements doesn’t really feel like achievements at all. And looking through the rest of the dungeons achievements, there seems to be a lot of these kill-everything-fast-enough-and-heal-through-it-all-achievements. There are some that requires plain luck, like Snakes. Why’d It Have To Be Snakes? and Share The Love, and some that requires some moving around, like Intense Cold, but most of them are the brute-force variety, either by having a set time to kill the boss, or by requiring a group geared enough to last through some serious damages.

Or are they?

Maybe there are some secret tricks to all of these seemingly be-epicced-out-or-be-dead-achievements.

I would really like to think so, because to me, getting an achievement by using a little of them grey cells we all have and figuring out a clever new way to do things would be so much more satisfying and rewarding than just spamming Chain Heal til my fingers get numb.

But, sadly,  judging by the way Blizzard fixed the tricks to the two fights I mentioned, it seems they want us to go the way of the brute-forcers :-(

Real life raiding! 

The bold and the brave – Kaitsja with his wife, Dalno, Portshia, Paxinarion and me and Petson – met up on the Silja Line ferry going from Stockholm to Helsinki on Friday afternoon the 20th of February to spend some afk time together. Was good to get a face to some of those voices I’ve been hearing in my head for many months now ;P

By a cunning combination of asking nicely in swedish and being more direct in finnish (chopchop! bottoms up! move along!) we secured ourselves a table at the ferry pub and started introducing ourselves to each other and discussing important things like why would anyone buy a cheap whisky just to get a coffee for free with it?

While the men were getting involved discussing the whisky questions us female raiders decided it was time to get the show started with a little pre-raid of our own. We worked our way down the ferry promenade and found a promising shop. Skillful and experienced as we are, we one-shotted the shop! It dropped loot for all of us, a pair of boots for Kai’s wife, a bag for Portshia and a very bling-bling bag for me!

(No, this is not the bag that dropped, but it’s about as bling as the one I got ;P)

You know what they say, time flies when you are having fun, and before we knew it it was time to go freshen up and get dressed for dinner.

We had all made reservations at the buffet, two hours of unlimited food and wine and beer and it was very good actually! So we ate and we drank and we talked more or less non-stop.

Somehow we managed to miss the karaoke but we did try out both the live music dance floor and the discotheque one. The first one was pretty lively and you could dance pretty much any way you wanted, the second was more or less dead but at least you got a lot of elbow room there ;P

The black jack casino raiders emerged victoriously too this night, having defeated the BJ boss against all odds! More drinks for the people!

Those winnings did seem a little less attractive the morning after though, when resurrection sickness – dry mouth and sore head – reared its ugly head. An abundant breakfast buffet helped remedy that a lot though. 

Petson had explored Helsinki before and I’m not that much of an explorer so we headed back to the cabin for a while to get us some rested bonus while Dalno, Paxi, (edit: apparently me and Petson were not the only one gathering rested bonus, see comment below!) Portshia and Kaitsja defied the sub-zero temperature and earned themselves a new achievement: 

Congratulations to them!

When the explorers returned we all teamed up for some serious buffing. Kai took us to the Zetor restaurant where we all enjoyed delicious traditional finnish food (and a lot of it! the servings were huge! Real gonna-go-chop-wood-all-day servings!) in traditional finnish surroundings. The restaurant is allegedly owned by the Leningrad Cowboys but we didn’t see any of them around.

Anyways, for starters we shared some savumuikkpurkki, which is smoked vendace in oil on toasted rye bread. Really really tasty!

For main course I had blinis with sour cream, onion, smoked reindeer and roe (yummy!) while the others had some more muikas,

and Petson, the brave soul, even dared the creamy finnish hash, also known as Dr. Feelgood’s Creamy Super Mega Unhealthy Dish.

(No wonder he was not hungry for the rest of the trip, eh?)

Mikazh joined us at the restaurant at about this time and treated us all to a mana refill – cheers!

Before we headed out again to engage and defeat the lurking shopping mobs, Kai introduced us all to another finnish delicacy, consisting of oven-baked cheese in caramelsauce and brandy-marinated arctic cloudberries. Not bad!

We had one more stop before we headed out to engage and defeat the lurking shopping mobs, the Ateljee Bar at the top of a tower hotel. The view was truly breathtaking, and we all got the ka-ching! of yet another achievement;

The view from the bar’s bathroom is equally breathtaking I hear, so if anyone plans to spend some time in such a facility this might be the place to visit. But don’t take my word for it, ask those who did spend some time there…

By this time we were overdue for some serious shop raiding, so we said our goodbyes to Mikazh and headed out our separate ways to find the rare shop mobs.

There were quite a few shop trash mobs but I successfully steamrolled through them all and finally I encountered a worthy shop boss! It put up a semblance of a fight but I pwned it with my enchanted magic card and a pair of black leather jump boots dropped for me!

Muahahha!

Heading back from the successful raid I suddenly spotted a rare shop mob lurking stealthily on a street corner! Taking a few minutes extra to stalk that one my magic card once again did the trick and the mob dropped another pair of boots for me!

Muahahahaha again!!

Before we ended our Helsinki raiding we visited the Karl Fazer Café where Kai and Dal had the best hot chocolate I’ve ever seen! Melted chocolate in a huge cup, served on a tray with whipped cream, hot milk, crushed mint chocolate, cinnamon and cardamon to mix to perfection! I was still soo stuffed from our lunch but I was really envious!

Back on the boat some of us attempted some spa raiding but were told that additional instances could not be launched, please try again later.

That night we went to the Happy Lobster, where they served the mother of all seafood platters,

although some of us went for spicy shrimp soup and rare steaks instead.

The spicy shrimp soup, although tasty, was about as spicy as a bowl of oatmeal, but informed sources told us that finnish people generally don’t like spicy food, so we guessed the soup was finnish-spicy variety and not generally spicy. Good to know for future reference.

After dinner we headed over to the karaoke bar, and suddenly all my preconceived notions of how a cruise on the Finland ferry should be turned out to be true! Damn, I felt old there! ;P

We studied the clientele for a while, sipping champagne, and then we headed over to the other nightclub, where we gambled at the black jack and danced the night away to the tunes of Frank Sinatra.

All too soon it was Sunday morning, the ferry was coming back to Stockholm and it was time for us all to say goodbye for this time =(

So, what are my impressions from this my first RL raid (was actually the 4th Ascendo Tuum RL raid, the AT gang has been in Dublin, Gothenburg and Glasgow those last two years)

• It was great! I had such a blast and I am looking forward to our next one already!
• While we were only six that could make it this time, it was pretty good actually because you got to spend a lot of time with each and every one, getting to know them a little bit more than if we had been more.
• I like the game a lot already but I am sure I will like playing even more now, because now we have some real great afk experiences that will knit us closer together.
• I was a bit worried beforehand that we might snow in on non-stop game-talk but we actually didn’t talk very much about the game at all, we talked about our families and work and hobbys and habits and dreams and past trips and travels.

So if anyone out there is trying to decide whether to join up for a real life raid or not, I can only say one thing: Do it!

The last penny in the achievement a Penny For Your Thoughts is Vareesa’s Copper Coin.

Now, there is no character named Vareesa in the entire WoW universe as far as I’ve been able to ascertain. There is, however, an elf named Vereesa Windrunner.

I am guessing they are the same person, and that the confusion in spelling is similar to that of King Arthur’s wife Guinevere for example , whose name I have seen spelled Gwenhyfar or some other variety with about the same pronounciation.

So, Vereesa tossed that coin into the fountain and made her wish. “Asto’re da shan’re. Turus Fulo Il’amare. A’Talah Adore. Isera’duna…”

Do you understand what she says and what she wished for? I didn’t, I don’t speak elf, but a little detectiving and trial and erroring has made me come up with a far-flung and rather tentative guess.

Some background information on Vereesa first:

Vereesa Windrunner is a High Elf who used to live with her prominent family at the Windrunner Spire in the beautiful forests of Ouel’thalas in northern Eastern Kingdoms. Nearly all of her family were killed by orcs in the Second War or in Prince Artha’s invasion of Quel’thalas.

Her sister Sylvanas was the Ranger-General of Silvermoon, military leader of all high elven forces. She was murdered by Arthas and as a petty revenge raised as an undead to serve him. Sylvanas eventually rebelled against Arthas and managed to tear free of his control. She gathered other undeads  and powerful allies around her and named her new force the Forsaken.

Vereesa had another sister, Alleria, who was the head scout of the Alliance Expedition to Draenor (Outland) and she was believed to be dead when the portal was destroyed. She was not found when the Dark Portal was opened again and her whereabouts are still unknown.

 Vereesa herself was also a ranger, and she was assigned a simple mission to escort a human mage called Rhonin safely to his ship. The mission soon turned astray and eventually they ended up in Grim Batol, where they defeated the orcs and the Black Dragonflight and freed the Red Dragon Queen Alexstrasza.

Vereesa was appointed Alliance Ambassador by King Terenas Menethil II, last king of Lordaeron and father of Arthas. Vereesa and Rhonin toured the Alliance forces, reminding them that there were many dangerous forces still at large in the world and  that they would have to face these threats sooner or later.

During this time, Vereesa and Rhonin fell in love. They were married and had twins, Galdarin and Giramar.

Vereesa is now the leader of the Silver Covenant, a militant faction of the Kirin Tor.  

So what did Vereesa say, when she tossed that coin into the fountain?

Well, although her native High Elf tongue is Thalassian, I doubt she still speaks that as it is the language of the Blood Elves now, enemies of the Alliance and the Kirin Tor. I think she spoke the words in Darnassian, the tongue of the Night Elves.

At WoWwiki.com there was a suggestion that her wish was “I wish for my honor. I will make peace, and the people will survive. Orcs are…” , and on WoWhead there were some suggestions as to what certain words meant in the comments.

Now, if you are a Night Elf you can turn on your Darnassian language filter and everything you say will be turned into Darnassian. Other Night Elves will understand you but people who don’t know Darnassian (ie, every other race) won’t. The in-game translator is not a real translator, it merely makes words look like Darnassian based upon the number of letters in the word, so the translated words are not really translated.

But since I don’t know any Darnassian-speaking people out of game, the in-game translator was all I had to work with. I logged onto my druid Joaquime and turned on her Darnassian translator, partied up with a borrowed a human from my husband’s account and started talking. Too bad I couldn’t do it the easy way, speak Vereesa’s wish with the human and listen in my druids Darnassian, I had to have my druid speak the words and see how they looked to the human.

“Asto’re da shan’re. Turus Fulo Il’amare. A’Talah Adore. Isera’duna…”

Using the in-game translator, honor did actually come out as adore, but so did elven and grace.  Peace was translated into turus, and I guess it is close enough to turos. People, however, came out as ethala and survive as mush’al. Orc got turned into ash and green (as in greenskins) became thera.

I tried other words and quickly found a match, love came out as fulo, but a few tries later I found that so did ever, free and pain.

I found that goodbye was turned into asto’re, and so was restful.

On wowwiki you can find that adore is assumed to mean be with you, as in Elune adore – Elune watch over you, or Elune be with you, and on the same page you can find that talah means survival and shan means honor.

Now, the translator also translates name, and I found the following matches:

Sylvanas – Il’amare

Terenas – Shan’re

Silvermoon – Isera’duna

(Translate names? Well, many names have diminutives and comes in different versions in different languages, and if you have read the Appendices to Tolkien’s work you know he translated all the names as well, so I thought why not here in WoW as well?)

So, from this complete mish-mash of known translations and in-game guessworks and odd forms of the words I tried, I came up with a wish that rang true to me.

Vereesa has has been through hell and back, almost all of her family and close ones have died horribly or painfully. Her old way of living is gone and her homelands are wasted. Still, she has dared to love again and has a husband and children, and even though she is a fighter, living in perilous times, I think she wishes for peace , both for herself and for those who have died.

Asto’re da shan’re. Goodbye/rest well honoured Terenas.

Turos Fulo Il’amare. Peace for my beloved Sylvanas.

A’Talah Adore. Let us all live [through these times].  (survival be with us)

Isera’duna. Silvermoon… (I guess words failed her here as sadness and sorrow and horror overcome her)

 
I probably don’t have a single word right here, but that’s ok, and as long as noone proves me wrong I am gonna keep believing that she wished for peace.

You know the warlocks’ Ritual of Summoning, used to gather people from afar so you all can be one happy family together.

The summoning can be used for other purposes as well, like  to pick up people who have fallen into waters and can’t get up or to summon stuck people (roots in the underwater passage to the Coilfang instances, anyone?)

This below is a screenshot of Larue, ze resto shaman, being summoned from the platform of Feugen to the platform of Thaddius in Naxxramas.

The distance between those two platforms is only a couple of meters and should be easy to jump across.

Well, “should be” does not always equal “is”.

The trick here is that when you have killed Feugen and his counterpart Stalagg  who resides on a third platform, Thaddius will be released and you will have to get down to him and fight him asap.

So, you need to jump. Fast. And the raiders jumped. And the raiders landed on Thaddius’ platform. All the raiders except one. One raider landed on one of the round thingies below the platform (you can see them in the screenshot) and were out of line of sight from the whole raid.

To be out of line of sight is a bad thing for a healer.

I legged it back through the green slime goo on the floor and ran up on Feugen’s platform for another daring attempt to cross the abyss. And I landed in the very same spot again.

Venting my frustration on Vent, running back trough the slime and up again, thinking I would spend this bloody fight running back and forth here and not doing much else, I realised that I could actually reach my compadres from Feugen’s platform with my heals – I didn’t have to jump! Our other healer, a tree, cleverly positioned himself on the other side of the raid to cover those who happened to get out of range from me.

Standing on the edge, accompanied by a white cat (our hunter’s pet was wiser than me and didn’t even attempt to jump the gap), I managed to pull my weight on the boss fight and help keep everyone alive.

Of course I couldn’t switch sides when Thaddius did his polarity shift, but then again it didn’t really matter that much because I was way more than ten yards away from anyone else, so the only one I could damage was myself.

 Fight went splendidly, I got myself a brand new achievement, and everyone was happy.

Then I realised, staying in my cosy comfortable position up here on the platform also meant that I was too far away from the boss to be able to loot him!

And that, my friends, was where our friendly neighbourhood warlock really earned himself a big hug from me :-D

Larue’s Note To Self: Don’t enter the Construct Quarter of Naxxramas without a friendly warlock along.

Sadly, though, this is not the first place Larue’s been having problems with jumps.

Remember Azjol-Nerub, that loong drop from Hadronox’  lair to the bottom of the pit? Remember the water below that you land in?

Well, most people seem to have no trouble with this, and their only concern is to get out of the water on to terra firma again.

Now, Larue, she follows the lemming train going over the cliff, faaaaaalling all the way down. And then she dies. Poof, not a shred of life left.

No, I didn’t accidentally have Water Walking on. No, there were no DK’s who put up a Path of Frost. No, I didn’t hit anything going down, I was at full health all the way down, and then when I landed in the water I had no health at all so I died.

I was in a run there once with three warriors and a rogue and I died (I kid you not!) 8 times in that fall! One of the warriors had a pair of  jumper cables on him, which he successfully used to ress me twice, and I used my own self-ress twice ( we had a bit of trouble getting Anub’arak to roll over and be dead, so we had to run in a few times).

In my subsequent runs I have tried jumping off (or running off without jumping at all) from about every possible place around the hole’s rim and I have actually survived some of the falls! But I can never be sure, so…

Larue’s Note To Self: Don’t enter Azjol-Nerub unless you have another resser along to pick you up.

After this run I ticketed a GM to report that constant dying as a bug.

Huh, what did you say? Of course it’s a bug!

Well, anyways, the GM’s suggestion was that the warriors, being plate wearers, had more damage mitigation than I did as a mail-wearing shammy and thus they took less damage from the fall.

News-flash for you, mr GM, damage taken from falling is a percentage of your health and not mitigated in any way by what kind of armor you have! (I think it is like this anyways, how would achievements like Going Down? work?) And how can anyone working as a GM not know that the fall in Azjol-Nerub lands you in water and you are not supposed to die when landing in water that is deep enough?

So my theory was that somehow the tall draeneis were too big to safely jump from any spot whatsoever around the rim, that they sometime would hit the eggs on the bottom and die instantaneously.

This theory was falsified though when I was there with my gnome warlock Paynne for the first time.

 That place just seems to hate me…

with a plaque commemorating  Archbishop Alonsus Faol.

Apparently he is not buried in the cathedral though but rather in Tirisfal Glades, in the cemetery called Faol’s Rest outside Scarlet Monastery.
 
Sometime during his busy days he found himself in Dalaran tossing a coin into the Eventide Fountain and making a wish.  The Three Virtues he wished for were respect, tenacity and compassion.

Wish granted? I’d like to think so.

Attumen the Huntsman was also in Dalaran once and made a  coin wish. Anyone who has ever done Karazhan and seen his skeletal undead steed Midnight can surely understand his wish for the bliss of a well-padded saddle.

Wish granted? Well if Attumen was too cheap to buy himself a softer saddle for his tender behind, he can only blame himself.
 

Dornaa is a Draenei orphan who turns up during Childrens Week, when she is dragged all over Azeroth and Outland by Alliance players doing the childrens week quests. Apparently she sometime even got into Dalaran, where she tossed a coin into the fountain and made a truly heartfelt wish!
 
It has been suggested that she actually got her wish granted in a way because a pile of magnataur doody may have been the secret weapon used by Grand Apothecary Putress in the battle at Wrathgate, almost choking Arthas with the stench.

Nowadays, Elling Trias, Master of Cheese,

is the owner of the Trias cheese shop in Stormwind which he runs with his wife Elaine (Mistress of Cheese) and son Ben (Apprentice of Cheese), but besides his cheesy business he appears to have many contacts still with his former employers as he is involved in many alliance questlines,  for alliance rogues in particular.

Sometime in his early career he was in Dalaran tossing a coin into the fountain and making a wish.

Wish granted? If his life’s true passion involves cheese in any way, I’d say he got it.
 

Genn Greymane was the leader of Gilneas, a human nation south of Silverpine. He believed in the true superiority of Gilneas and was not interested in taking part in the affairs of the Alliance nor the Horde. Thus he built the Greymane Wall to keep Gilneas isolated.

Damn the orcs, damn the Alliance, and damn you! The last thing Gilneas needs is sponges from other nations drawing from our resources, Dalaran wizards meddling with our affairs, and someone else’s enemies killing our soldiers! Gilneas is its own nation and it always will be.

Despite this he found himself in Dalaran at one point, but even though he popped a coin into the fountain he didn’t deign to make a wish.

Krasus is the name the red dragon Korialstrasz  uses when in his high elven guise, and nowadays he resides on top of Wyrmrest Temple with his queen Alexstrasza.

Once upon a time he made a wish at the Eventide Fountain and chucked a coin into it.

Grim Batol is a fortress located in the mountains in eastern Wetlands. During one of the wars, it was the main center for the Horde’s dragon breeding program and Alexstrasza (Krasus wife) was held captive here and forced to breed Red Dragons that the orcs used as mounts. Eventually she was freed by and band of heroes led by the mage Rhonin and destroyed every orc she could find.

Apparently there is still something sinister at Grim Batol, the place is guarded by dragons and there is a huge iron door that is locked.

So did Krasus get his wish granted? I’d say yes, no more are red dragons being held captive there.

Although Landro Longshot was passing through Dalaran once in his life and  wished upon a coin in the fountain there, he can now be found in Booty Bay where he redeems loot from the trading card game. He is also a playable card in that very same game, and apparently one of the few cards whose outcome depends on a coin flip or dice roll.

Wish granted? No, he obviously didn’t get his coin back since I just fished it out of the fountain! (But maybe I can get a wish granted if I bring him his coin back, maybe he would give me the coveted Fishing Chair!)

 
Murky is both an achievement and a pet. The Murky murloc is usually standing around in Ironforge but, like so many others, he has apparently been in Dalaran sometime before, where he too made a wish upon a coin. I suppose that the Northrend icy seas is a real cold shock to a little murloc used to the mellow waters of California, but usually cold water makes people the opposite of sleepy…

Wish granted? Not yet, but in time maybe the increasing population of Northrend and the increase in air pollution etc that comes with it will cause some greenhouse effect and raise the temperature of the waters. Not sure  if a murloc would live long enough to notice this though.

Once upon a time a young soldier named Private Marcus Jonathan happened to be in Dalaran and he took the opportunity to make a wish and toss a coin in the beautiful marbled Eventide fountain, with a  wish that seems to have come straight from the heart. Now, many years later, the young soldier is a scarred veteran known as General Marcus Jonathan, High Commander of Stormwind Defense.

And I’d say that’s a definite yes, he got his wish granted.

Squire Rowe is also part of the illustrious crowd that has wished upon a coin in the Dalaran fountain. Back before the King came back to Stormwind you talked to Squire Rowe on the quest Stormwind Rendezvous to get Marshal Windsor to come forward so you could escort him to the Stormwind Keep, where he exposed Lady Katrana Prestor for the black scheming dragon she was, namely Onyxia.

Well, if that is the kind of action he wants no wonder he feels Stormwind is a bit dull at the moment.

Cersei Dusksinger whom he wishes to meet again is a Blood Elf  in Stonard, the Swamp of Sorrows, who seems to be pretty full of herself and the other residents of Stonard seems to be rather scared of her and whispers behind her back. She is perfecting a weapon to use against the Draenai and she offers a quest for Horde players to assist her in this. In this quest she specifically refers to feeding a stupid human caged by the Lost Ones in the swamp as “a waste”.

So is the Squire’s wish granted? Not yet, he is still in Stormwind and judging by what I have seen of the Cersei he wants to meet up with, he might be better off staying put.

The last copper coin found in the fountain is a rather special one, and it merits a post of its own, so

To be continued…

So who were all these people tossing coins into the Dalaran Fountain that we fish up nowadays? What did they wish for? Did they get their wishes granted? And how is it possible to catch a coin with a fishing hook?

There is an anonymous Footman who sacrifices a coin and hopes he gets to lug around wood like his cousin instead of fighting in the wars.

Well, footmen fight and peasants lumber. Wish granted? No idea.

Archmage Ansirem Runeweaver, the former leader of the Kirin Tor is found outside the crater where Dalaran used to be in Soutshore, chucks a copper coin in the fountain and wishes for happiness and acceptance for his daughter, who feels so out of place there.

Now, his daughter is Catelyn, who ran off to be a pirate in Booty Bay. She is involved in a quest chain there ending with the perpetually bugged Curse of the Tides, and in one of these quests she says:

“My FATHER sent you? I’d have thought that old codger would have given up on me by now. It wasn’t really his fault I ran off, he just shouldn’t have expected I’d be willing to live a boring life, reading over musty books and associating with grey-haired, stiff-backed, stuffy mages!”

She seems happy and accepted in Booty Bay, so I’d say his wish seems to have been granted, although maybe not really in the way he hoped for. Bet he is wishing he used a silver coin instead! ;P

Danath Trollbane, Militia Commander of Stromgarde, Tactical Advisor to General Turalyon, Force Commander of the Alliance Expedition that marched into the orc homeworld of Draenor (also known as Outland).

He has a statue in the Valley of Heroes in Stormwind, still saying he is presumably deceased, although he was found to be very much alive when the Dark Portal was opened again.

Apparently he was in Dalaran at some point of his life, tossing in a coin and hoping for a troll to die, right… NOW! Well, trolls get killed and die a lot in this game don’t they, and judging by his last name alone I’d say he got his wish granted.

Eitrigg used to be an old hermit orc. Once upon a time, long ago, he encountered and battled Tirion Fordring, one of the Alliance top honchos, but after Tirion had been knocked senseless by a collapsing tower, Eitrigg tied him to his horse’s saddle and sent him on home, thus saving his life. After some lenghty and convoluted turns of events this resulted in Tirion being stripped of his titles and exiled when he returned the favor.

Tirion is nowadays Supreme Commander of the Argent Crusade and Eitrigg is working for him and can be found in Zul’Drak.

Eitrigg’s wish as he tossed his coin was that Tirion’s quest here in Northrend should end with success, or failing that he may die honorably in battle. Given that Tirion’s quest is to defeat the Lich King, he seems to have his work cut out for him.

Falstad Wildhammer (also known as Falstad Dragonreaver), High Thane of the Wildhammer Clan which he presides over in Aerie Peak tossed a coin and wished that he would end up in another book eventually.

This is a bit of an odd wish, since the only book he seems to have been in so far is The Day of the Dragon, a book about World of Warcraft, and I wonder how Falstad knew he was in that. Is he comfortable knowing he is just a figment of someone’s imagination.

So will his wish be granted? Only time will tell…

Father Inigo Montoya’s wish for his coin is to have his father back…

Straigtforward wish it may seem but apparently Inigo was involved with the Argent Dawn, and when Kel’Thuzad was defeated in Naxxramas, his phylactery was given to Inigo who was supposed to give it to the Argent Dawn. However, the AD never got the phylactery and it thus seems that Inigo was working for someone else.

In Northrend, in the quest An End and A Beginning, Highlord Bolvar Fordragon says to the lich you are fighting:

You dedicated your whole life to fighting the Scourge. You saw what they did to our beloved Lordaeron. The Lich King took everything from you!

So how, then, did Father Inigo Montoy, bastion of virtue for the Argent Dawn, become the embodiment of that which he hated most?

This would seem to indicate that Arthas himself raised Father Inigo Montoya and turned him into a lich. The quest item you use seems to verify this.

So no wonder the poor man wishes he had his “father” back. (But how did he manage to sneak into Dalaran and get that coin into the fountain after he was raised as a lich?). Will he get his wish granted? Don’t think so.

Kryll is a goblin in the same book Falstad Wildhammer was in but it seems Kryll is not a game NPC. Somehow he still managed to get into Dalaran and toss a coin. In the book, the Day of the Dragon, he is portrayed as a skilled alchemist and engineer, whose main interestes were experimentation and mayhem, preferably both at the same time. Wish granted? No.

Molok is another character from that book, a gryphon rider under the command of Falstad. I am guessing the lass he wants to ride with in his coin wish is Vereesa Windrunner. Falstad took Rhonin, the current leader of the Kirin Tor, and his wife Vereesa from Aerie Peak to Khaz Modan and Molok was riding with Rhonin. They were attacked by dragon riders from the Dragonmaw clan, and after a long and heroic fight Molok died when he got knocked off his gryphon. Wish granted? No.

There is actually a rare ogre in Arathi Higlands known as Molok the Crusher but I don’t think it was him tossing that coin.

Princess Calia Menethil is the sister of Arthas, and she was betrothed and then married to Lord Daval Prestor, who really is the evil dragon Deathwing, formerly known as Neltharion. The coin of hers must have been tossed before their betrothal. Wish granted? Yes, but probably not with the results she was hoping for as her handsome fiancee turned out to be an old scheming dragon.

Salandria is a Blood Elf orphan who gets to see daylight only during Children’s Week. She lives in the orphanage in Shattrah but somehow during her excursions that week she has managed to toss a coin into the Eventide Fountain.

She seems to be a determined young belf, when she gets a Toy Dragon she tells us that she plans to own one someday. The guards at the Caverns of Time initially attack her but ceases when Zaladormo says she will not be punished for things she might do or fail to do in the future.

Wish granted? I’d be willing to bet a lot on that she gets what she wants (for a time at least).

Stalvan Mistmantle is familiar for anyone whe has levelled an alliance char from the long quest chain The Legend of Stalvan. Stalvan was a school teacher in Moonbrook, Westfall, who fell in love with one of his students. The object of his desire was betrothed to another man, and she seems to have flaunted for him and compared him to an old uncle. Stalvan massacred her and her entire family for this, and then fled to his house outside Darkshire.

I am guessing he went to Dalaran before he went all mad and butchered those people, as his coin wish seems to have been meant for someone alive. Wish granted? Well, he obviously didn’t get whatever he wanted to “hasten the unevitable fate of two people in love”, but he might have gotten his wish of ruin to everyone as the city was destroyed.

Archmage Vargoth was one of the mages who founded the village of Kirin’Var in Netherstorm, and anyone who have been questing there must have encountered the long quest chain he is involved in.

Vargoth was locked up in the tower in Kirin’Var for a long time where he had lots of time to paraphrase, as is noticed by him saying things like “Plenty of room at the cursed Violet Tower”, “Any time of year, you can find me here” “Some scried to remember, some scried to forget”, “And still their voices are calling from far away, waking me up in the middle of the night” (Hotel Netherstorm, anyone?), and now he’s in a secret chamber in Dalaran, accessible only for those that have mastered the Higher Learning achievement and read the Schools of Arcane Magic – Mastery.

I do hope he gets his coin wish granted, but its not looking too good atm because Captain Sanders is still in the tavern in Old Hillsbrad Foothills, where it appears he has been sampling a lot of wine himself.

To be continued…

There is a fountain in Dalaran that is perfect for idling away those hours waiting for instance groups to form, before raid starts, or just to feel a little useful while chatting away in gchat.

Usually a few people fishing there all the time, and the occasional misclick happens when you hear the splash only its one of your fellow fishermen/women who catches something. Ah well, just throw it in again and hope for a Big One.

And of course, once in a while there will be someone who thinks its fun to obstruct others in their game play. Aerie Peak being a pve server does not mean its free from asshats and morons and people who think its their god-given right to have fun on other people’s behalf.

Parking your mammoth in the fountain and go afk would be a prime example of this.

When your fishing bobber lands too close or inside that fat mofo you can’t click it to catch your fish and you will lose your catch.

Ah well, maybe he was just being absentminded and didn’t notice the smell of wet mammoth…

Fishing in this fountain provides you with a never-ending supply of Fountain Goldfish, a few Sewer Carp and a whole lotta different coins. Seems people have been throwing coins into this wishing well for a long time.

You can fish upp copper coins, silver coins or gold coins. The first two can be sold for a handful of copper coins (why do you get 62 copper each for both copper and silver coins? Would have thought the metal value of the silver coins would be worth at least one silver).

If you check the above picture you see I have three buffs on me.

The little flower icon that looks like a goldclover is a 2 minute buff you get from throwing one of your fished-up gold coins back into the fountain, which increases your chance of fishing up more coins. Incidentally, having a big fat mammoth in the way for my casts is slightly vexing when trying to make the most of this buff.

(The other buffs are me having a fantastic day by eating a Tasty Cupcake and a fishing skill boost applied to my fishing rod.)

Tessye is currently at 392/450 fishing at I am (again!) seriously considering getting her that comfy fishing chair for her city fishing trips.

Anyways, the coins you fish up are all part of an achievement, A Penny for your Thoughts, Silver in the City and There’s Gold in that Fountain, which together make the Coin Master achievement. The reward for that last one is a Titanium Seal of Dalaran, which of course is a must have for anyone as indecisive as me!

Only wish I had the time to get that Seal on all my girls!