"Error: not enough disk space for installation"

Or something like that. After clearing space, and a ridiculous 8+ hour download for reinstall yesterday, I still do not have "required disk space" to install the update. I found another blog online that mentions the free space you need is equivalent to twice what your WoW folder currently is, because it's completely re-doing the way the client runs. It's all "temporary" data, and that's all well and good for people with umpteen-million gigs of hard drive space, but for us laptop users, 19GB x2 is a crazy stupid amount.

Currently, I am transferring all WoW data to an external hard drive with more than enough space. Found some forum posts that suggest this might be my solution. I won't be running WoW from the hard drive, I'll move everything back once it's done being a jerk about space. It's Thursday and I still haven't gotten to play the new stuff. I'll be getting on Super's computer later because I'm finally not going to be at work late and he'll be out, but I want to play on my own computer, re-ad my mods, etc. I'm so uber frustrated with this patch/update/Blizzard/WoW that I have to jump through all these hoops for TEMPORARY files. My computer is now stripped down to the basics, and by basics, I mean pretty much just WoW. I transferred all my music and pictures to a hard drive, this machine is now good for word processing, internet browsing, and WoW. I have a $1,200 Apple netbook now, and I'm not happy about it.

Will post again later if external hard drive was the solution to this insane problem.

It's Cata, yo

As the majority of the people now know: the Cata patch dropped yesterday. I'm sure many people are enjoying it (or not in some cases) even right now. I have yet to be able to touch it. Not because I've been too busy (although, that's the reason for the lack of posts in the month of September), but because of my laptop's lack of hard drive space.

It downloaded just fine last night while I was sleeping (had it at work, and didn't want to download it on the clock, silly me), but when it went to install, it couldn't because there wasn't enough temporary space free. My laptop is almost four years old, the total hard drive space is 80GB, which I think iPods are either at or have surpassed. The patch needed close to 20GB free temporarily in order to install everything, something I just didn't have, so I had to make space. I cleared my pictures, music, anything I didn't need anymore (which included old patches). I thought I'd be set when I got to work this morning (brought it with me again today, have to stay late and didn't want to be without something fun to do) and the login screen was new and I had to agree to the terms and conditions. Much to my dismay, I couldn't log in. At all. I could enter my info, push "login", and then WoW would quit. The installer had error messages about not being able to delete some older patches (which I had deleted myself, it seems, prematurely), so I think that was probably the problem. The only solution I could really find was to uninstall WoW, and download the latest client (which includes 4.0.1 and doesn't need 20GB of temporary space), and re-install.

So that's what my laptop's been doing for the last, oh, 4 hours. It's at 34%. 3.0GB out of 7.4GB. I desperately want a new one, something faster with far more hard drive space so I don't run into this problem again. Super got on last night when the servers came up, and got to play this morning I'm sure. I have yet to see what in the world my poor Kady looks like, I have no idea what I'm going to do to her talent tree.

I need food...

Spells We've Re-named :)

It's a game, plain and simple. I think sometimes serious raiders tend to forget that, forget to enjoy the game. We wiped non-stop on Arthas last Wednesday, but I had more fun than I've had raiding in a while. One liners left and right coming from the guildies, including a couple that made it to our Guild Message (sadly not all could fit!). The repair bills didn't matter, we were having fun. What a novel idea. Having fun while playing a game ;)

Here are some spells that we've re-named in the process of having fun with ICC.

Love Chain: Pact of the Darkfallen

Fire Farts: Swarming Shadows

CHOMP!: Frenzied Bloodthirst

The Clap: Necrotic Plague

I'll have to post some raid quotes another time, but they're usually quite hysterical XD

Waving Hello to Artie

Pictures from tonight's raid: Our first attempt at the big LK :)

Raid Progresssion

It's been a while since I posted how our guild is doing with raid progression. This post has especially good timing considering the progress we made last night :)

The tabard that Kady is wearing is her new guild tabard. Gates of Dawn and Broken Kingdom officially came together and created a new, merged guild called Run Away Little Girl. The old guilds still exist and have alts in them to maintain them, but we will be using the new merged guild, RALG, for the purpose of staffing both sets of raid nights. The merge paid off last night when the former GoD crew (now dubbed the "Wednesday" group), along with members from the BK crew, downed Sindragosa for the very first time! It took several attempts but eventually we mastered the fight and took that annoying, PMSing dragon down!

After distributing the loot, we headed over to Plague where we pwn3d Festergut and Rotface big time. It was like watching a choreographed dance, we were smooth, seamless, and kick-ass! There will be discussion next week as to whether or not we'll want to extend the raid lock and wave hello to the big LK (after the Prof. of course). We also have not yet set foot in the Ruby Sanctum (not as a guild anyway, the Thur/Fri group, and a few of our Wed raiders have pugged it, but that's the extent of it), and I'm eager to try that one out.

What do you do during que?

As a tank, or even a healer, the Random Que doesn't take very long. You get your frosties in no time at all and you're on your way.

As a DPS on the other hand, you can wait fifteen minutes or more just for one dungeon. What to do with that time? Sure you can do dailies or work on getting Loremaster. I do those sometimes, but mostly, I knit.

I took up knitting a month or so ago. Not as difficult as I originally thought and way more fun. I'm very much a visual person, colors and shapes attract my attention. Creating something, crafting something, being able to do it anywhere I go (without the annoying necessity of batteries), I was probably bound to pick up knitting one way or another. Ravelry.com is now another website that I've become addicted to, users can upload pictures of projects and share patterns as well as buy new ones. Very cool, very useful.

Chieftain Swiftspear and Frostfloe Deep

A friend on another realm was telling me today about a new thing that hackers are doing. A buddy of his had been hacked and when he had regained his account, one of his characters was dead in a strange cave in Stormpeaks. After looking around for a bit, he noticed what appeared to be several horde bots (characters being run by algorithms) running around and killing the elementals in the cave, Wailing Winds. Apparently they're a pretty good source of crystallized fire. What hackers have been doing is taking geared toons on accounts they've hacked up to this cave and just farming crystallized fire and putting stacks of eternal fire on the AH. What my friend found more interesting was the fact that neither he nor the buddy who had been hacked, had seen this cave before. After talking with some friends on the horde side (Camp Tunka'lo is pretty much directly south of this cave) they found out their friends didn't know anything about the cave either. Since checking wowhead.com would make too much sense for them, I did it ;)

The cave is called Frostfloe Deep. Inside the cave is the spirit of a Tauren named Chieftain Swiftspear. As a Horde member only, you get a quest from Xarantaur at Camp Tunka'lo to find Swiftspear and ask him about his memories. Turns out, the cave is a burial ground for the ancient warriors of Tunka'lo that has been taken over by a strange, elemental force. This force has been disturbing the spirits in the tomb as well as erasing Swiftspear's memories from life. He asks you to take his totem and close the rifts that have opened inside the tomb to restore the peace. You get sent back to Xarantaur after that to finish up the quest lines. It's really an interesting bit of lore, almost makes me wish I played Horde. Almost ;)

The mouth of Frostfloe Deep.

Chieftain Swiftspear

Dehlia - Level 80 #4

I have been having an absolute ball leveling and playing my warlock, Dehlia. Affliction is sooooo much fun! I hit 80 with her last Saturday while Alindras was over leveling her druid. We were supposed to go swimming, but with both of our toons halfway through 79, the call of 80 was too much to bear. We definitely skipped swimming altogether and once we leveled to 80, we didn't stop there. Oh no, of course not, we had to start doing the high-end dungeons (ToC, FoS, and PoS--we tried HoR but it was too much for our low gear) to replace blues and get emblems!

I still haven't gone swimming since Saturday, but I have been farming heroics!

Not a new comic, but close :)

Alindras drew this for me. I had the idea for the picture while we were on one of our failed attempts of the Dreamwalker fight. I think Heap had made a joke about helping the healers by using his frostweave band aids and that's when the light bulb went off above my head. Alindras agreed and handed me the drawing yesterday afternoon (which coincidentally was the same afternoon that she hit 80 with her druid and I hit 80 with my warlock XD). I LOVE it! :)

New modem = less lag!

Garaba's twin, Frost Armor Vendor (Priest gear)

Our internet has been wonky for a while. Last weekend was the last straw. It was only up for a minute or two before going down and staying down for much longer than it had been up. I hate Comcast. Too bad they're a monopoly in this area. Super was able to go to one of their service locations and just swap out the modem since we were pretty sure that was the problem and turns out it was. Thankfully we didn't have to schedule service guys to come out, with Super working nights (and sleeping during the day) and my crazy work schedule, it would have probably been weeks before service guys could actually take a look at our system. We raided last night with only a few lag issues (mostly Heap had them, he was on a hotel's internet) and FINALLY got the Prof. down for only the second time.

BIG NEWS! We've been in talks with BK about merging the two guilds (they have the same problems we do with finding people for the last one or two spots in their 10man raids) and creating a brand new guild for raiding. Both original guilds will remain intact for leveling alts and things, and the new guild will primarily be a raiding guild. Each set of guildies will retain their original raid night(s) with the added bonus of being able to help each other fill the remaining spots. No more pugs! After an incredibly productive vent discussion between the two guilds (each guild elected 3 people to speak in vent while others could listen and post concerns/questions in their respective guild chats, that way it wouldn't be a free-for-all and everyone's voice could still be heard), GoD has been invited to use BK's online forums to discuss new guild names. So far, there have been lots of good name suggestions made but no decisions have been made yet. My favorites has been "Set Sail For Epic Fail" and "I Stand in Fire" (neither of them were mine but I love them anyway!).

Altoholic Fail...

I apparently have 25 warlock trainers in my personal guild bank ("Spider Pride")...

Why Leveling Alts Makes Me a Better Healer.

Now that I've got a full set of toons that I can use almost interchangeably in our weekly raids, that is, I have a DPS, a tank, and a healer, I can say confidently that I am a healer through and through. However, I'm not completely ignorant of the fact that my other toons teach me about being a healer. What can a hunter and a warrior teach you about healing? Plenty.

As a Hunter/DPS, I didn't have too much use for healers in dungeons/raids unless I accidentally stood in the stupid or a mob got loose and I pulled aggro. I did like it when healers would throw up a heal or two on my pet, that made me happy that they acknowledge my pet was a valuable part of the party. Even if it was AOE-heals, my pet still got something other than Mend Pet and that was nice. From that experience, I don't think of pets (Lock pets included) as non-members of the party, if I can, I'll throw some heals their way. Or if I see a hunter rezzing a pet, I'll rebuff it. Hunters spend time with their pets, they level together, they quest together, they get to pick out talent points for them, pets are very important to the hunter, even if they're not Beast Master spec'ed. Keeping the hunter's pet happy also keeps the hunter happy. And if the hunter's happy, they won't misdirect to you on purpose...(I've been offered gold to MD to random people in the party/raid, which I've taken XD, but not usually if I like the person)

As a Warrior/Tank, where do I start? Tanks and healers have to be close, they need to trust each other, the tank especially needs to trust the healer. My method of healing has typically been to keep the tank topped off whenever possible, or at least be my main focus. The tank moves, I move. The tank doesn't loot, I don't loot. Only in extreme cases will I /oom and stop to drink. When I'm on my tank, the way I heal is only reinforced, especially when I get healers that can't keep up or have to drink after every other pull. As a Warrior specifically, I get to watch my rage drain as the healer's mana bar goes up. I get itchy, ready to pull the next group and refill my rage. I LOVE charging into groups and using Thunderclap. I HATE when I can't charge because the healer went AFK at the last second and I suddenly have to stop mid-pull and pop cool-downs. I tank the way I do because I'm also a healer and I heal the way I do because I'm also a tank. I make sure my healer has the mana they need and when I'm healing I make sure that the tank isn't slowed down by me.

If you read my previous post, you'll see that I have a new appreciation for Warlocks and Life Tap since I'm leveling one myself now. I had one sitting on my character page for a while, as is typical me, and I decided to get her more heirloom gear (only had the shoulders from leveling Kady, bought the robe and the staff) and actually start leveling her. It was a struggle to get her out of Redridge, but I pushed through and got to questing regularly. It's so nice to be leveling again, to have a goal to be working towards, something to do that's within fairly easy reach and that I can do at my own pace (not once a day for example).

Each alt that I level teaches me something new about healing and about my play-style, even if they only sit on my character screen for months eventually seeing only the "DELETE" window instead of level 20. But they only teach me if I'm willing to pay attention, like right now, I have no idea what makes Shammys happy because I haven't leveled one past the ability to turn into a wolf...

Dear Warlocks,

I hereby apologize for telling you to be more mana efficient. I take back what I said about stealing my mana for healing you as you LT yourself. Having been raising a Warlock lately, I now understand that your spells are expensive and LT is the only way to continue to put out damage sometimes. I've been really good about making sure any Warlocks I group with are always topped off now that I know. Thanks for helping me see the other side.

Love,
Kady




My Warlock is up past level 50 now and is quickly on her way to being my 4th 80. I'm having a ball leveling with her, even though Vanilla is soooooo tough to level in once you get up to the 40's. I just have to make it a few more levels to 58 and I can get the heck out of Azeroth and REALLY love leveling. I've been using Dungeon Finder as often as I can to help. I've found that I can solo a lot of quests that are actually well above my level (as in orange and red ones) so I run out of quests in a zone more quickly than I probably should. DF helps supplement questing nicely, not to mention the gear choices are way better and way more accessible now that everyone's into pugging low level dungeons. Between heirlooms and DF, I've been steadily leveling over the past several weeks and--for the most part--avoiding the zones that are painful to quest in (got out of Tanaris as soon as I could). I'm also now fairly comfortable running a lot of the low level dungeons without having to look at Atlas to find my way through. What's good about hitting the same dungeon over and over is that, chances are, your first time through there, you'll end up with a tank (or at least one person) who's already gone through it several times. By the time you're in their position, there's someone else in your pug who's running through for the first time and you can show them through. Having a group that knows where they're going helps orient you to the dungeon and running the same thing over and over, also does that XD

Children's Week, Twice Over

Finished Children's Week today, on both Lade and Kady.

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Ok, done with that. Kady still needs Flame Warden before she gets her drake, but I did manage to get all of School of Hard Knocks done on THE FIRST TRY in each BG! Holy Crap! I think it was because I knew what I was doing this time, plus I could heal myself. I went Shadow which was tons of fun, must think about doing more BGs in Shadow...

Now I'm just having fun and taking my time doing all the quests the orphans give you so I can get more cute pets :)

Happy end of F***ing Children's Week!!! XD

Violet Drake

1 Year of Posting

I think this might be my longest running, consistently posting blog. Yay :) In preparation for this anniversary, I spent last night uploading some of my favorite screen shots to Flickr to create a gallery of my time played. It still needs work, but there's some shots of Lade while I was still leveling her (in crazy, mis-matched gear) and Kady while she was still human, among other things. I've got to get back to cleaning so I can maybe get my drake today, but enjoy the pix!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/canikeephim/

Daily Quests

Found another WoW comic that I'm now in love with :) www.daily-quests.com

Good news everyone!

After several, not-so-solid attempts at Prof. Putricide, we managed to get him down tonight! This was a very nice boost in our confidence, especially since we couldn't get past a specific point in the Dreamwalker fight. Each time we wiped on the Prof, we managed to get him a little farther down, each wipe we were farther into the fight than the previous attempt. We made tweaks here and there and managed to finally defeat him! This makes me happy because it's one more boss we know we can beat and it's one more boss closer to the Lich King. I got a new mace (Lockjaw) and paired it with what is technically a DPS offhand (Scourgelord's Baton), however I did the math (in between wipes) and I get more stats out of it than if I have my Mag'hari Chieftain's Staff. Wasted stat or not, my heals are still epic XD

Side note, Garaba and Nayana helped me get the EoTS part of the School of Hard Knocks yesterday. We attempted to get the other two, but I fail at BGs so Lade still doesn't have a pink drake. She is one step closer though, and that's good. I don't know yet if Kady will get it. I started doing the Children's Week achievements with her today, but only because I was bored and killing time before raid. I'm off work tomorrow and as a reward for cleaning the house, I'm going to allow myself achievement time later. We're also going to have an alt run in ToC, which should be cool, we'll also do the weekly (this week it's Ignis) and get some more frosties. All in all, a pretty good night tonight :)

School of Hard Knocks = Bane of My Existence

Capture the flag in Eye of the Storm
Assault a tower in Alterac Valley
Return a fallen flag in Warsong Gulch

are all that stand between Lade and her pretty pink drake (actually it's kind of ugly, but it's my only shot at 310% flying speed). I don't really see AV being very difficult, other than the queue to get into it (was in 3 BGs yesterday, didn't get it once, got WG twice). WG I almost returned the flag--twice, both times I wasn't quiiiiiite quick enough. I think EotS is going to be the most difficult one and I'm not looking forward to it.

Seriously considering not even doing it on Kady, but then again, that's what I did last year for Lade and could have had my drake ages ago if I had done it...

Celestial...Seahorse?

I thought it looked like a seahorse, lol.