Friday Laziness = Top 5 List (vol 1)

You know why I grew up liking video games? It had nothing to do with lethargy or shyness (I spent most of my childhood riding bikes with friends), it was because, at a young age, I loved things that were Fucking Metal. I was the child who played air guitar to his dad's Led Zeppelin records when I'd had to much sugar, and I was the also the child that routinely combined my medeival and outer space legos into new, warped creations, because a spaceship covered in swords piloted by a blaster-weilding cyborg knight was more metal than a plain old spaceship.

So because on Fridays I am way too lazy to post anything that's actually constructive, I'd like to usher you into the weekends instead with a top 5 lists of why x awesome old-school video game was fucking metal.

We begin with what very well may be the most fucking metal series ever to grace consoles: Mega Man.


I mean, look at the box art for Mega Man 9. It's not enough that Dr. Wily is apparently now a cyborg who has reduced the earth to a smoking, post-apocolyptic wasteland. It's not enough that Mega Man is apparently being pursued by a giant robot with buzzsaws for hands. He's got a giant cannon for a hand, and what do you think he uses his other hand to hold?

Another gun.

Fuck yes.


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Top 5 reasons (of MANY) that Mega Man is fucking metal:

5) He's made of metal. L. O. L.

4) His real name is Rock. His sister's name is Roll. Get it?

3) This is a guy who has a gun for a hand. He's not fucking around.

2) The games had a feeling of solitary heroism to them. It was just you, a single robot, against an army of evil themed robots and wave after wave of their minions and traps. You played a rugged individualist standing up against the corrupt system with the odds stacked high against you. And you would have to conquer them alone.

1) The soundtrack. I can still remember many of the levels' tunes, many of which pumped intense techno beats accompanied by epic guitar licks. I would seriously listen to a CD of these things. Every time someone on the internet does a remix or instrumental version of this stuff, I am THERE, pouncing like a hungry panther. A hungry cybernetic panther covered in swords that shoot lasers.


EXTRA AWESOME WEEKEND GIFT BONUS WHOA!: Listen to The Protomen. They've set the saga of Mega Man to a series of original epic rock songs with a revolutionary air. You've been doing a disservice to yourself if you haven't already listened.

Go!

Rogue leveling build (70-80)

If you don't want to know anything about rogues, then don't bother reading this post.

With the xpac fast approaching, it's high time to consider leveling talent builds for 70-80. Since I plan to level my rogue first, I've been absorbed lately in researching what would be best for him.

Certainly I can't keep my current 5/51/5 combat raiding spec. It is built for pure sustained damage. It has no defensive talents, and while it can put out massive damage over a long fight, its real strength lies in capitalizing on the full duration of slice n dice and rupture as finishers. Since these can take anywhere from 12-30 seconds to use their full duration (depending on combo points used), any time I spend away from my target is lost efficiency. This difference becomes very pronounced on mobile boss fights, or even boss fights where I lose melee range on the boss for even short periods of time. My dps suffers on trash because I usually can't build enough combo points to get off a useful eviscerate, let alone get a cycle going.

While leveling solo or in small questing groups, I'm never going to be in a sustained damage situation. I'll quickly blast through non-elite mobs, mowing them down and moving on to the next as quickly as I can. This is better suited to a burst-damage build that doesn't waste energy keeping up things like SnD and rupture when I won't be getting the full duration. So, I should de-emphasize my white (autoattack) damage and focus on my instant yellow (special ability) damage moves: meaning combo point builders, eviscerates, and poisons.

Another important thing to consider when leveling is mobility. It's easy to underestimate the leveling time wasted simply traveling on foot from mob to mob or through indoor areas where you can't mount. So anything that gets me from target to target more quickly is good.

Then, you need to look at your weapons. What are the best weapons you have? For me, I have a fist/sword combo that outperforms my daggers and all other weapon combos currently available to me. This means I will probably level faster, at least at first, if I avoid a dagger-dependent leveling spec. As you level, you'll inevitably find new weapons. For this reason, I generally prefer to avoid weapon specializations while leveling so as not to limit my options. Also, keep in mind there are more maces/swords/fists out there than there are daggers, so you're more likely to find some good weapon upgrades if you avoid daggers. This is not to say that leveling with daggers is somehow innately inferior (especially considering that you can now mutilate from the front!), just that I personally find it more convenient to avoid dagger builds while leveling. I don't want to waste money respeccing while leveling, either.

The final difference is utility and survivability. In a raid, you get no advantage from improved stealth talents or better CC abilities. You don't need much survivability in general, because you should never be attacked during normal circumstances, and if the tank goes down it's a wipe anyway. When leveling, there is no other tank - you have to take all of the damage yourself, and kill the target quickly to reduce the damage you take, and thus your downtime. You'll also end up in some desperate situations on your own: maybe you get ambushed by 4 monsters accidentally. You'll find improvements to your defensive cooldowns (such as evasion and vanish) invaluable for avoiding a corpse run. I cannot tell you how many times preparation (the talent that resets your cooldowns) saved me while leveling my rogue to 70. Another benefit of prep is being able to take down elites that you otherwise could not have killed. This way, you can complete some quests without a group, or with a smaller group than was intended. Me and my girlfriend's priest duo'd many 3-5 man elite group quests on our way up. Double evasion with ghostly strike is crazy good for tanking.

So as you can probably guess, I want some points in the subtlety tree to get prep. I also want to avoid the deep assassination tree, as mutilate requires daggers and hunger for blood (51 pt talent) will have a lot of wasted uptime while leveling. The combat tree has a lot of appeal, but I'd hate to have to respec every time I got a new weapon, and a lot of the talents in there are focused more on sustained raid damage than burst damage. Plus, if I went deep combat, I'd either have to give up the strong burst/grinding talents at the top of the assassination tree, or I'd have to forgo the desirable utility of the subtlety tree.

I ended up settling on this spec: 20/0/41

It grabs all of the burst damage and grinding talents from early assassination, and at levels 71 and 72 I'll be able to spec into fleet footed, which gives a run speed increase. I elected to leave that talent out of the initial build so i could fit in Shadowstep, an even more effective mobility talent (which also has other advantages I'll describe in more detail below). After I fill out Fleet Footed, I'll likely sink the next five points into dual-wield specialization in the combat tree, then decide from there where to progress based on how much I'm grouping. Gear-wise, I'll stack agility whenever I can (a great stat for us, and this build boosts it by 15%), build combo points with Hemo, and use Eviscerate if I have 3 or more combo points and I think it will kill the target. Instant Poison will be on both weapons, as Deadly won't have time to tick much.



Here's an in-depth evaluation of the talents I took, and why:

Assassination:

5/5 Malice: Every rogue build ever made should have this. Period, no argument.

3/3 Imp. Eviscerate: this will be the only finisher you can get great use out of while grinding. It has been buffed significantly for the xpac.

2/2 Remorseless Attacks: A grinding-only talent. This will get even better when stacked with other talents that boost your specials.

5/5 Lethality: another no-brainer. I should have high crit, and synergizes with remorseless attacks and the agility increase.

1/1 Vigor: Fully optional- spend the point in Imp. Poisons if you want. I expect to often cap out on energy while traveling between targets, and against dangerous targets I'll want the extra energy for a better stunlock.

4/5 Imp. Poisons: this looks at first glance to be inferior to its sibling Vile Poisons, but in reality it's a better deal if you aren't using Envenom. Instant Poison only procs off 20% of hits, so a 2% increase in chance to apply is actually a 10% increase in poison damage! Compare that to Vile's 7%.

Subtlety:

5/5 Relentless Strikes: Makes finishers cheaper. If I move quickly from mob to mob, this becomes more valuable while vigor becomes less so.

3/3 Master of Deception: Invaluable for questing (especially on a PvP server!) You'll be able to sneak to more places without being seen, and "cheat" a lot of quests to level more quickly.

3/3 Camoflage: Movement speed increases are always welcome in leveling builds. Makes using stealth while grinding a lot less punishing. If you are picking pockets or fighting dangerous mobs, this build will do well using stealth and opening with a Cheap Shot.

2/2 Elusiveness: Makes some of your best "oh shit" cooldowns come back faster. Awesome.

1/1 Ghostly Strike: does good damage (not as good as hemo) and helps with survivability. Use it when you need some extra defense. Especially cool during an evasion to potentially reach over 100% avoidance.

3/3 Serrated Blades: A strong dps increase, especially while solo and against clothies.

3/3 Initiative: if you are stealthing between mobs, this makes it more attractive to open with cheap shot. Improves stunlocks. Not the best talent, but you need to get something to reach...

1/1 Preparation: You already know why. In my opinion, this is the best rogue talent in the entire game. It just has almost no use in raids.

1/1 Hemorrhage: If you don't take all the sinister strike talents in the combat tree, this is your best combo-builder for non-daggers.

2/2 Dirty Deeds: another talent that helps Cheap Shot, it also has a nice built-in dps increase. Obviously better against bosses (who are below 35% health for longer), but there are few other options at this point in the tree.

2/2 Heightened Senses. My choice for filler. Put these 2 points wherever you want.

5/5 Deadliness: straight damage increase.

1/1 Premeditation: taken for two reasons: prereq for a key talent coming up, and better than the other options. Limited usefulness.

3/3 Cheat Death: It might not seem like much, but this thing WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE. Basically forces any mob to kill you twice. Makes a big skull appear over your head, which for me triggers the pavlovian response of hitting my vanish button. Keeps you from getting killed by surprise if a situation gets out of control or you forgot to check your health bar. Especially nice because it makes it impossible for you to get one-shot by a wandering Void Reaver or a loose instance boss.

5/5 Sinister Calling: big damage increase, and buffs Hemo. Goes a long way to making up for the filler talents you had to take to get down here.

1/1 Shadowstep: The ultimate in rogue mobility, this makes jumping from mob to mob a snap, cutting down wasted time. It also boosts the damage of your opening hemo, which synergizes very well with Remorseless Attacks. 20% increased damage on a hemo that has an extra 40% crit chance? Sign me up!


So on November 13th when you see me Shadowstepping from mob to mob in Borean Tundra spamming Hemo with my fist weapons, give me a /wave.

Any suggestions for improvements? I want to make leveling as efficient and painless as possible. My main worry is the possibility that a deep combat SS build will simply put out so much more damage that the increased mobility/survivability of my build will be negated. I'll test it out and let you know what I discover.

R-A-F: Ludicrously Tasty

I've been 'sploiting the recruit-a-friend system in WoW for about a week now. Remember the rules:

-The recruited account is "linked" to your account.
-A pair of "linked" characters get TRIPLE XP from quests AND mobs while grouped and near each other
-Characters on the recruited account can "gift" free levels to characters on the original linked account, as long as the character receiving the level is lower level than the character giving it.
-Characters on the recruited account can "gift" one level for every two levels they themselves earn, starting at level 3 until level 59. Thus, a level 59 character will have 29 giftable levels.

So last Tuesday, I "recruited" a free trial account under my own name.

At the outset, my full stable of non-70 alts amounted to a lone level 23 mage. My original plan was to level a different pair from 1 to 59, then give all of the gift levels to the mage. Perhaps I would level him to 30 before gifting the levels, making it easier for him to hit 59 himself. After some discussion with my girlfriend (we were going to share the new 3rd account), we decided that I would make myself a hunter on my main account, and make a paladin on the shared account to level together. This worked especially well because horde paladins can only be Blood Elves, and I had already settled on BE for my hunter (my main is a troll, my druid is tauren, the mage is undead, and I didn't want an orc). What can I say, I'm a completionist.

There was some doubt expressed by my girlfriend that I could run two different WoW accounts simultaneously on the same computer. I wasn't entirely sure of this myself, but when I opened up two separate instances of WoW, then logged one in on my main account and one in on the new trial account, it worked! There was just one small hitch: trial accounts can't make Blood Elves, as Burning Crusade content is locked out for them.

Upgrading the account to a regular account would cost $20, and then another $20 for the Burning Crusade upgrade online directly from Blizzard. I decided I was already giving Blizzard enough money, and instead saved myself $10 by ordering the battle chest, which includes both the original game and the xpac from Amazon.com for $30. I have free 2-day shipping, so I was going to have to wait at least 2 days to get started on my Blood Elves.

But, enamored with the idea and eager to begin, I instead rolled two new characters...an Orc warlock and warrior pair, and began to level them while I waited. This experiment was so ridiculously successful, I quickly hatched a new plan to take optimal advantage of the system. I would still level the hunter/pally pair to 59. But I would also level the lock/warrior pair to 44. This would leave the warrior with 21 giftable levels, and the paladin with 29. As it turned out, 21 was exactly the difference between the mage's 23 levels and 44. And 29 was pretty much the difference between having 2 44 characters or instead having a 58 and 59 character. It all came together almost too neatly to be believed!

So, at the end of this 2-week project, I expect to have 4 new level 59 characters: a mage, hunter, paladin, and warlock, as well as a level 44 warrior.

The actual effort I will put in will be equivalent to gaining about 34 levels the regular way (59+44=103/3=34.3).

That's fucking ludicrous.

Mouthful of Medulla

For a crazy few days, the entire World (of Warcraft) was shaken by a plague that sparked a zombie invasion. No corner of Azeroth was safe, and by the end Shattrath and Orgrimmar were littered with corpses. In fact, you were 100 times more likely to die in a formerly-safe major city than you were to die out in the wild.

Sure, this could be annoying if you were just trying to quest. It could also be awesome if you have enough sense of humor to think vomiting on someone then exploding into a dozen zombie chunks would be fun.

I have a lot of respect for people who can be mature about not liking the event.

I personally found the end results of the event annoying. My bank alt died every time I tried to use him. My lowbies couldn't hand in their quests. Shattrath was nearly unusable this weekend.

Despite the fact that the event was annoying, and despite the fact that a few times I had to put myself in check from getting angry about a corpse run, I'm really glad the event happened.

Early on, I had a lot of fun being a zombie and converting players, though by the end of it I had suffered so much that I couldn't bear to bring it on other people and would just explode in some out-of-the-way corner. I'm happy for everyone who had fun with it. I don't blame anyone, since they were playing in the spirit of the game and within the rules of the event.

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However, there were some for whom a 2-minute delay for the flight master, or a brief corpse walk back to their bank alt WOULD NOT STAND. The Cesspool (aka WoW General Forums) was . . . heh heh, plagued . . . with posts from people demanding that the event end NOW and threatening to cancel their accounts. They are free to have their opinion, and I understand why they feel that way even though I see it as an overreaction. When people express displeasure over the event in chat, I'm not that guy who tells them to stop QQing.

Until one member of my guild monopolized guild chat for an entire day doing nothing but complaining about the event. And he wasn't just complaining. He was violently spewing haterade all over our shoes. He could not stand that other players could force him to become a part of the event. That loss of control didn't just drive him crazy, it drove him to a level of nerd rage I've never seen before in my life. He just kept yammering angrily about it, in long paragraphs, making guild chat unusable for hour after hour. He was typing so much I found it hard to believe he had time to do all of the things he was complaining about. At first, those who loved the event would give polite counterarguments. But after a few hours, they started alternating between arguing with him and teasing him. Nerds who get that upset are always the best targets for griefing, after all. Eventually, this escalated to a point where he was having an open, cursing, screaming argument in guild chat with a few of the event's proponents, accusing THEM of forcing him to be part of the event, labeling them as griefers for daring to disagree with him. He got so full of G.N.E.R.D.S. that he /gquit over it.

He was the type that always needed to be right. He was known for picking unconventional specs and claiming they were better than the cookie-cutter specs, despite reams of theorycraft and real-world data proving him wrong. He'd specialize as an avoidance tank (terrible idea for raids...you wanted to stack stam and armor), or a Healing Touch balance/resto druid hybrid (vastly inferior to full resto for healing...unless you asked him and listened to his cherry-picked theorycrafting). He just needed to be special and right all the time. I imagine that's probably a common trait among people who vocally HATE the event.



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What I LOVE about the event is the way it disrupted the status quo. It changed things. It broke up the routine of even the most insular control freak. YOU COULD NOT IGNORE IT. That's why it was awesome. I'm pissed as hell at the Lich King for messing with our shit, and I'm looking forward to charging the frozen throne shoulder to shoulder with the rest of my guild.


It could not have done it without the annoyances. It wouldn't have worked otherwise. That's why I'm also not mad at blizz for doing it. I'm actually impressed. They, for the first time, found a truly effective way to change things in an MMO without breaking the game.

Though I think they stopped it at the right time, I'm very disappointed that there was no immediate follow-up. Blizzard has really dropped the ball. The plague had reached a climax, and instead of capitalizing on that excitement with the next step of the Lich King's assault, they just let the event...fizzle.

New Stuff Roundup

I really want to post about all of the new crap happening in WoW; the Zombie invasion, my guild's post-3.02 raiding experience, and the latest guild drama (now with 100% more zombie!) but I'd also like to keep my RL job, so it will have to wait for another day.

Legolasagorn of the Random Number Generator

A quick aside on the Sinister Squashling.

For the two weeks before Halloween, Blizzard has traditionally run a Hallow's End event where the major cities are decorated with pumpkins, players can trick or treat at inns, and a number of holiday-themed quests are temporarily available. They keep adding to the holiday every year. Last year, they added a Headless Horseman boss that could be summoned from the Scarlet Monastery graveyard. He was, if I remember correctly, the first holiday boss to drop epic loot (an assortment of heroic badge ring knockoffs and some plate helmets). He had a tiny, TINY chance of dropping a vanity pet called a "Sinister Squashling", a small jack-o-lantern with vines for legs. This was all actually quite a good time last year. We'd get together in groups, take turns summoning and defeating him, and get some cool stuff.

This year, that all changes. Thanks to the achievement system, what used to be a fun, goofy event has become life-or-death SERIOUS BUSINESS (or, as I prefer to call it, SRS BZNZ).


Every holiday event now has a series of achievements attached to it. If you complete every achievement for a given holiday, you get a title ("The Hallowed" for halloween, "Brewmaster" for Brewfest, etc.). If you get all of the holiday titles, you get a 310% speed epic flying mount (normal epic flying mounts are 280% speed) that uses the new Northrend proto drake model, which looks pretty sweet. It is one of 3 currently known ways to get some kind of proto drake mount, and with the other two being hardcore raiding achievement sets, one can only presume this is meant to be a bone thrown to casual players. As you can imagine, the titles and the possibility of a mount, coupled with the transitory nature of the holiday events, can make some achievers pretty stressed out about the whole thing.

The funniest part is that if you look at the achievements, Blizzard clearly intends for almost no one to ever get the mount. The Brewfest achievements cannot possibly be completed in less than a year because they require every single "brew of the month club" beverage. One Children's Week achievement requires all three questable pets, which means a minimum of three years (unless, like me, you got two pets already over the past 2 years).

As if that weren't enough, Blizz also plans to enforce rarity on the titles and mount in another way. You may think this would involve some heroic effort, some sort of grindy time investment (like a rep grind) for a guaranteed reward if you just try high enough, something like that, right?

Instead, Blizzard has decided that Vegas would be more fun.

One of the achievements to get "the Hallowed" title requires the player to get a Sinister Squashling pet. Last year, the pet had a 2% drop rate off of a boss that the average person could only fight 5 times a day in a 5-man group, because each player only has 1 summon a day and no group would willingly take someone who couldn't contribute a summon. Yes, some people could get more attempts using alts, and such, but that wouldn't be the norm. So the average person who was trying their hardest to get the achievement had a very low chance of completing it: in 2 weeks they would get 70 attempts, meaning the Squashling would likely drop once, maybe twice, and when it did drop you would have to compete with everyone in your group for it. The chances were quite tiny, even if you busted your ass to try to get it. Blizz did up the drop rate this year, making it slightly more likely, but they were very publicly stating on the forums that it was their intent to limit the number of people who could get the achievement, and they were OK with doing so via randomization. They were OK with the fact that some people would work their butts off for the achievement for 2 weeks straight, and could very likely come away from it with NOTHING.

I have a Squashling, getting lucky on, literally, my 59th attempt (I'm one of those people who worked with guildies and our alts to get extra summons every day). It's the only one I've ever seen drop. I only got it because my guildies in the group passed to me. The high achiever in my guild (every guild has one), the guy who already had 50 mounts and 50 vanity pets and the Diplomat title (for completing the most notoriously annoying rep grinds in the game), that guy hasn't seen one despite spending all of his free time on it for the past week. It's entirely possible he'll never get it.

After player outcry and reports of rampant deception and trickery being employed across all servers to cheat for extra attempts, Blizzard finally caved and made the Squashling a rare drop from Trick or Treating (which each character can do once an hour). The drop rate seems to be roughly 4%, which also appears to be the drop rate off the horseman overall. This really helps people who put in the time and effort have a better chance at the drop, but it still relies on the Random Number Generator (RNG) to decide whether or not you deserve a reward for your hard work.

This is not fun for people. This makes the entire holiday NOT FUN for people who care about getting the title or the pet.

Blizzard, when are you going to grasp the power you have to control player behavior via rewards? They seem to have opened a pandora's box with achievements that they were unprepared for. They really need to think through every single achievement, especially those that offer rewards, carefully, because the carrots guide player behavior. Remember how they did the same thing with Battlegrounds? By offering easy epics there, they guided many who hated PvP to sit through unfun, grindy hours of BGs just to remain competitive in raids. What about all those people who just like to collect cute pets, but can't get a squashling because everyone else wants it for the achievement (and wouldn't bother with it otherwise)? Last year, non-collectors were passing the pet to their collector friends. Not likely this year.

And can you imagine what it will be like for that one guy who gets all of the holiday titles except one, but then goes year after year being unlucky on the drops of a RNG-based achievement? How is that a good idea?


Previous holidays have been pretty fun, but this year I spent the first 5 days stressing over trying to get the pet, and then once I had it I was so soured by the experience that I had no interest in the holiday anymore. These things are supposed to be fun and playful, but poorly thought-out achievements can turn them into unfun jobs. I don't mind making the mount or titles rare, but that should be done via measuring actual commitment and effort, rather than luck with the RNG. I like the achievement system and think it's a great addition to the game, but this isn't the way to use it.

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Originally, I was excited about "the Hallowed" achievement because it sounded like a cool title. I'm not going after the mount, and usually I half-ignore holidays and just grab the few things I want, not worrying much about rare drops. I decided I wanted the title just for the title's sake. But now, I'm not sure I would even wear it. It doesn't symbolize that I "achieved" anything. It doesn't show that I cared more about getting the title than the next guy did, or that I put in any special effort. All it says is that I got lucky on a roll. That I was favored by the RNG.

When I see someone else wearing the title, I won't see, for instance, "Legolasagorn the Hallowed". I'll see "Legolasagorn, the Guy Who Got Lucky on the Random Number Generator".



[editor's note: "Legolasagorn" is stolen wholesale from my girlfriend, who reserved the name as soon as she heard Blood Elves would be in the game. On day 1 of TBC, she logged in as Legolasagorn, BE Hunter, and very loudly ran around the newbie zone pretending to be an egotistical bafoon: a parody of what you would expect from someone named Legolasagorn. I personally witnessed her shaming a few people into logging off of their characters named "Drzzt" and such.]

I pay Blizzard to let me power-level myself

I really can't decide who's the sucker here.

With my rogue and druid both sitting at 70 in full epics, I've basically had nothing to do in WoW for the past few weeks except raid, and even that's been sparse thanks to WAR. Until patch 3.02, my guild hadn't gotten a 25 man raid off the ground for over a month. I had a regular ZA group attempting every reset to get a bear mount (we got one on the Saturday before the patch removed them forever!), but other than that...not much.

So, of course, I started feeling the dreaded alt itch.

"Hunters will be able to tame Silithids!" I thought to myself. "These new mage talents look cool...I've never played a pure caster before..." I tried to resist it, but I couldn't hold out for long, and was soon sending bags and cash to my 23 mage and a new level 1 hunter. I wanted to play them, but the release of the patch and the imminent arrival of the xpac kept me away.

That is, until I stumbled upon a FAQ explaining the Recruit-A-Friend program.

I had previously dismissed the program because it just seemed like cynical attempt by Blizzard to wring more money out of you. At 11 million subs, they really must have exhausted every target demographic they can think of, so now they're targeting the only market that they know is a guaranteed sell: all the people who already have subscriptions. I have a few guildies who were using the system to level alts, and the basic premise is that that you can pay Blizzard $50 for another account and a few months subscription, and in return you get the privilege of manually power-leveling yourself via dual-boxing.

It works like this:
-The recruited account is "linked" to your account.
-A pair of "linked" characters get TRIPLE XP from quests AND mobs while grouped and near each other
-Characters on the recruited account can "gift" free levels to characters on the original linked account, as long as the character receiving the level is lower level than the character giving it.
-This all only works up to level 59.
-ZEBRA MOUNT! 'nuff said. I'm a sucker for novelties.


If I was going to level alts, obviously I was going to have to use this system. I figured that I can make $50 in like 2 hours at my job, and using the system would save me more than 2 hours.

But there's less than 2 weeks left until the xpac releases and when it does I'll be spending all my game time levelling my rogue. After all my calculations (I'll explain in my next post), I have less than 2 weeks to gain about 180 levels across four characters, all the while leading Hyjal/BT raids for my guild and trying to get a Sinister Squashling from the Halloween event. And remember, I have a job, friends (who I can tell you right now are barely going to see me for the next month or two), and live with my girlfriend (who, thanks to luck I can't even fathom, is also an avid WoW player), so it's not like I can catass it either.

Am I crazy? Clearly. Am I a sucker, or is Blizzard? I'm not sure. Can I pull this off? Stay tuned to find out.