Dire Aquatic Form

Been playing around with it, and found some amusing stuff. For starters, whoever out there is reading me from Fargo, North Dakota? You hit my blog more in the past month than I did. Sorry I couldn't update more often.

Apparently, Firefox is considered the browser of choice among the people reading my blog, because more than 75% of my hits came from Firefox.

I'm actually getting more hits from being on Phaelia's blogroll over at Resto4Life than I am from Entrecard, and BigBearButt is about to pass Entrecard for referrals.

And, finally, whoever came to my blog on their iPhone? You're my hero.

...game, that is. Me and Sharon dinged 70 last night, doing the Manaforge Ara stuff. She's got her flier, and I picked up a flier of my own for stuff like the Skettis bombing daily quest.

I also discovered, through some of the rewards from Netherstorm, and the resilience I overlooked on the Mok'Nathal Clan Ring, that once I get my base defense skill trained up to 350, I'll be uncrittable. I still have quite a lot of items to get to be Kara ready(12k hp 17k armor 16.5% dodge right now), but I'm definitely on my way. Farming primal shadows for my hat(and for Sharon's fel leather set) is going to suck, though. We need 32 between the two of us. I'm thinking maybe I'll farm Oshu'gun while she farms Void Ridge(since I need the crystal powders, and any greens I pick up will be thrown into the shredder that is her enchanting skill) and see how many primals we can bang out in a couple hours tonight.

I've also hit this kind of wall, and I'm not sure where it came from. The "Now What?" wall. We dinged 70 last night, and I figured we should head off on the Ogri'la chain, and discovered you need to do some five mans to open the dailies up. I'm not sure why, but it kinda floored me. Not in a surprised way, but in a...now what? sort of way. Okay, we're 70...now what?

It seems silly to me, because I've been 70 before. But I've run almost no instances in Outland as of yet, and I just kind of sat there, turning in place, wondering what the hell I should do. No more xp grinding. I could have asked the guild to see if anyone wanted to lend us a hand with the Ogri'la stuff(they're usually pretty awesome with that), but to be honest it didn't even really occur to me. To be honest, I'm still a little shaky on what to do now.

I think part of the problem is one of the major reasons I haven't done most of the instances in Outland yet. I was waiting for the people I was levelling with. Problem there is, we have somewhat divergent schedules. Now, I don't mean this to sound like they're holding me back and I blame them. To be honest, the main reason I held off on trying to do instances wasn't pressure from them to do so(there was none), but...more or less feeling like I should. I don't know, it's difficult to explain.

Now, I'm at a point where running 5 mans is going to get me stuff I need to be ready to step up into the guild's Karazhan runs. Plus, I really enjoy running 5 man content, especially as a tank. I know I need to get into guild runs, maybe even start some...but even thinking about it leaves me with this vague, nagging feeling that I'm leaving my friends behind, and I'm really not sure what to do about it.

On a more positive note, I believe at some point in the next couple days we'll be getting our Ogri'la stuff taken care of. Someone in the guild brought it up, and offered to help, so that should be taken care of.

And, in writing this, I've come to a decision. Tonight, I'm tanking an Outlands instance, come hell or highwater, friends, guild run, or pug. Update tomorrow with how it went.

...into the wild blue yonder!

Dinged 68 last night, and immediately ported back to Moonglade to get flight form. Man, I am so happy to be flying again. I'm not sure why, because I'm the only one in our little group with it so far, but still. It feels like a big achievement, a milestone, and I'm there.

We did Ramparts a couple nights ago, and then Blood Furnace. We were all overlevel(68 lock, 67 druid rogue shaman, 65 pally healing) so I told the group if we wiped once they were all fired, and I'm pleased to say that they are all still gainfully employed by Dire Aquatic Form Conglomerate LLC. Got the pally some pimp new gear, and of course Ursol's Claw dropped for me, seeing as I'm ready to do Ring of Blood for my Staff of Beasts. A rather nice leather chest piece, Vest of Vengeance, dropped, and after messing with Sharon about us both greed rolling for it, I passed on it and she's wearing it now.

Also, it was brought to my attention that I have neglected to put a link to Sharon's blog in my blogroll. Bad druid, no cookie! That has been fixed as of two minutes from now.

No, not the spec. Sharon's got her stuff back. It started with a panicky, terrified call to me on my way into work this morning, saying they'd been back in her account and she caught them in the act and all her stuff had been moved around and what should she do(punctuation removed to simulate being on my end of the conversation). I told her to run to my computer and change and her password, and she goes "...wait." Well, as it turns out, it was Blizzard restoring her stuff. They moved her to the bank, loaded up her bank, and then just mailed her the rest of the stuff.

And, not just that, it appears they felt she was entitled to everything her character was used to farm, because she got all kinds of gems and adamantite ore that the hacker had been farming. Seems a little odd, but I'm not going to complain.

So, with that out of the way, I'm hoping we can get back to our regularly scheduled addiction. We still have yet to run any Outlands instances with our little levelling group, and the only Outlands instance me and Sharon have run is Ramparts. I want more blue lootz, damnit!

..so I've already been through it.

Did some stealth runs in BRD tonight with Sharon(druid+rogue=win) to get some dark iron ale for a jubling, and killed Pyromancer Loregrain four times to get Sharon the Fiery enchant. While we were there, I figured we might as well get attuned to MC, just in case we decide we want to kick it in the face some time.

Other than that, not much to speak of. Dinged 66 last night(*deep breath* WOOOOOOOOOOOOO Lacerate!) doing group quests with the group in Terrokar. Sharon dinged, too. Still waiting on her restoration, but luckily they left her gear intact so she can play, more or less. Bagspace is becoming an issue for her, since we don't know if we can put some cheap 12-14 slot bags in her bank bag slots to tide her over, or if that will cause problems with the restoration. Anyone out there know how item restorations work? Do they put the items back where they were, or mail them, or what?

It's my birthday. Woot! Means I get to pick dinner for tonight(Sharon's homemade chicken fingers), and that I have presents coming in the mail sometime in the next few days.

Nope, not me. Sharon. The person who's only been playing the game for a couple months now. We slept in saturday morning, enjoyed a glorious morning of dozing and not having to climb out of bed. We go to log on to check mail and such, and her password isn't working. Odd, I think, maybe the authentication server is borked. Nope, I got in just fine. So I race over, reset her password, and log in to see what the damage is.

The majority of her stuff is gone. All of her alts have been deleted. She was left in the drain going to Coilfang Reservoir to drown when we logged in. Apparently, according to friends who saw her popping on and off all night, the person that hacked her were in and out of slave pens. My guess is they were farming ore out of there. They'd bought 89 flash powders, and there were 10 adamantite ore sitting in her bags.

There has been some amusing tidbits from this, while we wait on getting her stuff restored and her alts undeleted. They got her mining up to 375, upgraded two of her rings(or maybe sidegraded) and got her somewhere in the neighborhood of 100k xp. Rat bastards got her ahead of me! I call shenanigans!

So, right now we're playing the waiting game, and I know stuff like this has been going around lately. I was wondering if any of my faithful readers out there have any tips for cleaning up the problem locally? I installed and ran kaspersky, found no traces of anything. Installed zonealarm, nothing suspicious outbound that I can see(although anything that I'm not 100% positive of is getting locked down). She's running vista, and aside from a keylogger, I'm really not sure how they could have gotten her password. Brute force, I suppose, but that doesn't seem likely. Any thoughts?